body:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:36 PM, Hermione1980 wrote:

> That's probably part of the problem with AfD: People
> don't want to expend the effort to do any sort of
> research. That's also probably part of the reason any
> suggested reforms get shot down in a ball of flames
> (mixing my metaphors here, I believe); most of them
> require more work than AfD.

One could say the same about a lot of articles that get put up for AfD.
If an article's authors had expended a little more effort in writing
them, so that they would clearly state the article's importance, they
could have saved people a lot of time nominating them and voting on
them.

In my opinion, this all comes back to the fact that the Cleanup system
is hopelessly broken. One cannot simply tag a borderline article - an
article about a subject that may be worthwhile but is hopelessly poorly
written, has no sources and amounts to a personal essay "cleanup"
because in all likelihood that article will sit around untouched with a
Cleanup tag for six months or a year or even more. So what's to do?
Nominate it for deletion, because while the subject may be worthwhile,
nobody's going to see it and be able to improve it into something
resembling a usable stub unless someone sees it - and if you put it on
AFD, at least someone's going to see it.

WP:AFD is the *single fastest way* to get a borderline/potential
article cleaned up into a worthwhile stub, because *people look at
AFD.* I agree, that means our system is broken. Let's figure out how to
fix Cleanup.

-FCYTravis


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Another AfD example -- a serious proposal to fix it

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Travis Mason-Bushman stated for the record:

>
> On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:17 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>> Since the statement you attribute to me has absolutely no resemblance to
>> anything I actually wrote, it's clear that you are only seeking to fan
>> the partisan flames here.
>
>
> Excuse me? My quote is a *direct quote* from your earlier e-mail.
> Unaltered and unedited. Are you now retracting your statement?
>
> You wrote: "I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two
> years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted
> shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self. Have
> nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would
> make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not
> less."
>
> You proposed to form a committee whose sole purpose would be to punish
> "deletionists" by banning them from deletion pages. That is inarguably a
> hostile act that will do nothing but embitter those you target and make
> them more determined to oppose *anything* you present as being the work
> of, as you said, a "bitter, cynical, twisted" person. You could have
> made a rational suggestion, like geni's "So your article has been
> nominated for deletion" page, which I have already worked to improve, or
> kat's call for more speedy keeps. Those are both rational, logical
> ideas. Creating an anti-deletionist bureaucracy is nothing but spite.
>
> -FCYTravis

ONE: The straw man you were attacking, as you know, was "Lord knows
those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground,
pounded into dust, made never to return."

TWO: As for the "bitter, cynical" remark -- is the whole subject of
humor unfamiliar to you, or just the sarcasm subset of it?

THREE: Your question would be taken as rhetorical by the vast majority
of people, but a lack of answer of course allows you to read anything
you want into my silence, so the explicit answer to "Are you now
retracting your statement?" is "No."

- --
 Sean Barrett     | There's no place like 127.0.0.1
 sean at epoptic.org |
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from_name: Travis Mason-Bushman

subject:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal to
	fix it

body:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:42 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:

> 1. No article may be listed on AFD unless a serious attempt at
> discussing cleanup, redirection, renaming, etc., has been made on the
> article's talk page.
>

So I couldn't AFD [[Bob's Used Cars]], an article on a hypothetical
clearly non-notable organization that doesn't meet speedy deletion
criteria, unless I had a pointless conversation on how this article
which fails all Wikipedia guidelines could somehow magically be made to
fit those criteria?

Let's be honest here - the VAST MAJORITY OF ARTICLES which get AFDed
are deleted by clear consensus without controversy. We are talking
about a small minority of controversial deletion decisions. Out of the
150+ nominations each day, fewer than 5 make it to DRV. Some get
speedy-kept with no controversy, some get speedy deleted with no
controversy and the rest get some sort of consensus, or a no-consensus
keep.

-FCYTravis


subject:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal
	to fix it

body:
--- Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com>
wrote:

> WP:AFD is the *single fastest way* to get a
> borderline/potential
> article cleaned up into a worthwhile stub, because
> *people look at
> AFD.*

I know. There have been several times that I've been
sorely tempted to put something on AfD just so that it
would get more attention. If every AfD vote could be
transformed into an edit on an article on Cleanup,
we'd be a whole lot better off. Maybe we should just
redirect AfD to Cleanup.

-Hermione1980

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


subject:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Another AfD example -- a serious proposal
	to fix it

body:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:48 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:

> TWO: As for the "bitter, cynical" remark -- is the whole subject of
> humor unfamiliar to you, or just the sarcasm subset of it?

You apparently missed my sarcasm in quoting your words at their face
value, just as you quoted my words "pounding into dust" at face value.
Both are, of course, hyperbolic and humorous.

The fact that said "pounding deletionists into dust" mentality exists
is inarguable. Witness Bjorn Lindqvist's missive, stating that
"lifetime bannings (of deletionists) are OK for me," and that they "are
doing more harm than any other type of troll or spammer."

Just a wee bit inflammatory, you think?

-FCYTravis


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Because fair use images are fundamentally against the principles of a
> free content encyclopaedia. If a fair use image isn't improving an
> article, or if there is a replacement free image, then the fair use
> image should be deleted with impunity. Each fair use image on Wikipedia
> hinders our efforts to create a distributable free content encyclopaedia.

I really want to get this bit straightened out:

1. Copyrighted images should not be used in any situation that is not
considered fair use.
2. Wikipedia articles should be maximally redistributable.
3. Images which are used within fair use on Wikipedia may not be
elsewhere, and as such, limit the redistributability of the page they're
used on.

#1 is the only one of those that also applies to user pages.

The whole point in getting rid of images which actually are fair use (as
opposed to copyvios claiming to be) is allowing redistribution. User
pages have no need to be redistributable. They're available for
download, for a variety of very good reasons, but that's not the
download that mirrors and downstream users are supposed to use for
content that's going to be put back out.

-- Jake Nelson


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Earth copyright (now that you bring it up)

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

> I am perfectly happy with genuine fair use. [...]

>
> [...] some things are not
> going to be well illustrated in a free encyclopaedia compared
> to otehrs. Live with it.

Now you're contradicting yourself. If it's acceptable that
the encyclopedia contain fair-use images, then you can't use
"freeness" as a reason to include some fair-use copyrighted
images but not others. If you allow in even one copyrighted
image or bit of text, the encyclopedia is by definition no
longer free.

> As discussed elsewhere, quotes are generally quite clear with respect
> to legality, fair dealing. They are small parts of works. Images are
> in themselves complete works.

A screenshot of a movie or a game is a microscopic excerpt,
smaller in number of bits than a one-sentence quote from a
normal-sized book. So does that mean screenshots are OK?

>
> Sorry are pictures of celebrities not "copyrighted by photographers and
> news organizations"? Those were only an example where the entire
> category is bogus as almost none are publicity photos in the sense
> that the category claims.

Usually celebrities' own headshots are made as works for hire,
and so they own those copyrights. I agree that news agency photos
should be scrubbed, and even though I give them secondary priority
vs basic tagging and sourcing, I take time to whack a few as I go
along.

> Like "The use of a small number of low-resolution Pok?mon images to
> illustrate articles about the subjects of the images in question on
> the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United
> States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, is believed to fall
> under the fair use clause of United States copyright law"

I've said before that I think these are pushing the envelope, but
didn't get much response at the time. Sooner or later we're
going to have to come up with a consensus policy decision and
communicate it to all the uploaders.

Stan


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proofread flag feasibility

body:
Hello devs,

Before submitting a vote on FR wikipedia and posting a request on bugzilla,
I would like to get an informal opinion about the feasibility of this new
function.

The principle is to add a "Proofread asked" flag to pages when submitting
changes, with a checkbox next to "Minor edit" and "Watch this page". Thus, a
hesitating contributor who would like his changes to be checked (for
spelling errors, wiki links, layout, etc.) could do it simply by one click.
This page would then appear in a list of special pages, for instance
"Special:PagesToProofread".

** This proposal is __not__ a validation issue : the flag is put by an
editor asking his own edits to be checked by someone else. The aim is to
easily improve global quality of articles by offering to users a tool which
helps them finding articles with potential minor errors.

The flag would be put up by default for IP changes, but the checkbox would
be clickable so as to allow them to uncheck the box. The flag would by put
down by default for registered users, but the checkbox would be clickable
too ; for registered users, default flag could be personalized via
"Special:Preferences" (for example for people who know they make a lot of
spelling or wiki mistakes). As long as edits are made with the box checked,
the flag stays up. The flag is set down with the first edit with an
unchecked box. The flag could also be put down easily, for example by
submitting the article unchanged but with the box unchecked.

Pages with the flag up would appear in "Special:Recentchanges" and
watchlists with a symbol like "N" for new pages and "m" for minor edits (for
instance a "p"). This symbol also needs to appear in the page history each
time it is set up or down, so as to keep a trace. Another possibility, which
is maybe more complicated, is to create a flag history for each page, to
prevent flag events from inflating the basic history.

This feature differs from "pages to verify" because changes needed in "pages
to proofread" are minor and don't refer to what is said in the article.

That's all folks. This feature would help us a lot to improve global quality
of articles by doing little work, so it would be a great tool for lazy
people like us :)

Could you please tell me if this feature is feasable ?

--
Guillom
"Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom


subject:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal
	to	fix it

body:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
>
> Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting
> ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath
> notice.

I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles
are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and
other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a
*worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.

-FCYTravis


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] renaming index.php to index.cgi

body:
On 19/01/06, Martin Baumann <mailsgetlost at web.de> wrote:
> But at the same time the design changed. The skin is 'MonoBook' but it
> looks like 'Simple'. I have no idea where
> this came from.

Sounds like either the CSS files, or a reference to them, got
changed/out of sync somewhere.

First, make sure it's not a caching issue - get a page preview (so no
internal caching) and do a "hard refresh" (hold down ctrl or shift
while refreshing, depending on browser) to force your browser to
reload everything.

Second, have a look at what CSS files are mentionned in the HTML
source of a page, and see if the paths being referred to are correct.
Also try loading those exact URLs into a browser, to make sure those
aren't suffering from redirection problems.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/20/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually I think you've just highlighted a point where Wikipedia /does/
> have a claim to fair use: commentary. Parody and satire are not within
> the scope of an NPOV encyclopedia, but commentary probably *is*.
>
> BTW, what is the current reason fair use images are allowed on en:?

I suspect historical ones. They were allowed to start with (since if
they are truely fair use they probably are better than nothing) and I
doubt you could get a consensus together to get rid of them.

--
geni


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
geni wrote:
> On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>Yes, that makes sense when the idea is bad, but what about in this case?
>
>
> It is a bad idea. Unless there is a plan to change the way the
> software works wrt catigories. It won't even result in the creation of
> a useable list.

I can't speak for Sean but as far as I can see, this thread is about an
article which is on VfD for no discernable reason.  I do not see how
your objections to the creation of a category are relevant.  Please take
it to the relevant talk page.

--Jimbo


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Some broken links on static.wikipedia.org

body:
Right now, the links for de, fi, fj, nl, st, th on http://static.wikipedia.org
do not work.

Axel


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

> Note: Copyright violations and other "urgent deletions" (for example,
> as in a past case, the revelation of the real name, city of residence,
> college currently attended, and exact place of work of a certain young
> woman depicted in certain pictures on the Internet under a stage name)
> should be dealt with outside of the system used for normal articles.
> Listing something that is not an "urgent" deletion on the page for
> those should be recognized as a violation of policy.

The reason many people treat the current deletion process as having
urgency is the same reason we get flak for stuff like the Seigenthaler
article. Since we give readers little help in figuring out which of our
articles are decent and which are junk, it shouldn't be surprising that
some people have a strong urge to trash the junk when they see it.

Stable versions, please, any day now...

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >I went through a rather tortured process yesterday in which I had to
> >really put my foot down to put a stop to a CfD vote which was taking
> >place without _any_ community dialogue or discussion first.
>
>
> This appears to be the preferred way of proceeding for many: try to
> beat a bad idea into the ground *rather than* discuss it.
>
> Presumably, that's the way COMMUNITY CONSENSUS works!
>
>
> - d.

When someone is trying to inforce a bad idea on you it is general
human respond in kind. Comunication lines do need to be improved.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal to fix it

body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> David Gerard stated for the record:
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> >>I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an
> >>ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people
> >>and existing companies*.  "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an
> >>instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the
> >>subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and
> >>effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
> >
> > Jumping into VFD discussions with a reference to this email? Though
> > let's see how many times the obnoxious have to be hit over the head
> > with this before someone decides it's "spamming" and blocks them!
> >
> > You see what I mean when I say that AFD/DRV consider themselves worlds
> > unto themselves, and bitterly resist anything perceived as outside
> > interference, i.e. the rest of the Wikipedia infrastructure.
>
> Many of us have been saying for a long time that the *fD gangs are doing
> active and hard-to-repair damage to the reputation of this encyclopedia.
>  Of course, every time we do, the reply is an accusation that we are
> mindless inclusionist, and no serious discussion can be held.
>
> Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
>
> I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review
> Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless
> WP:VfU).  The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who
> nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and
> /damaging/ deletions.  Deletions of unpublished garage bands can
> continue just as they do today.
>
> The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of
> various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process --
> and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the
> offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their
> thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks.  Any offenses
> too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
>
> I would appreciate discussion of this suggestion, particularly by Jimbo
> and my fellow ArbCommies.  Starting question: should we bash on it here,
> or take it to a Meta page?
>
> - --

So no action against those who vote to keep stuff that should be
deleted? Remeber a keep vote is worth more than a delete vot on AFD.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google Earth copyright (now that you bring it up)

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

> On 21 Jan 2006, at 00:19, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I'm sure that a Darth Vader Halloween costume would be copyright
>> protected.
>
> Unlikely under US law I believe.

You are aware that the movie-related merchandise (action figures,
costumes, Lego sets, whatever) sold on the mass market is *always*
produced under licenses from the studio, producer, or whoever holds the
rights to the intellectual property in the movie? That they will make
vigorous legal action against people who mass-produce such items without
obtaining a license? That the rightsholders invariably prevail in such
cases?

Fair use for your personal Halloween costume or your personal photo
album is not the same as fair use for publishing a photograph to the
entire world over the internet.

> There are some on commons.

Commons certainly isn't perfect at abiding by its policies, just like
en: and de: aren't.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] FYI: www.wikipedia.de does not longer redirect to
	de.wikipedia.org on a temporary basis

body:
Guettarda wrote:
> While I don't know a whole lot about the law, and even less about German
> law, I find this baffling.  If it were a minor I could see there being some
> logic, if it was a living person I could see some sort of "defamation" issue
> (although that would be stretching it).  I don't understand what the issue
> is here ("we don't want our family's good name sullied by linking it with
> him"???), and I most certainly don't understand what the legal grounds are
> for requiring the name to be removed.
>

Nor I. Information wants to be free...

--
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: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> I think one of the core problems here is that the original nominator
> should have raised the issue on the talk page of the article!!!  We have
> gotten to a cultural state where "Gee, I never heard of this" seems to
> be a good enough excuse to nominate something for deletion, RATHER THAN
> raising legitimate issues on the talk page first to see if anyone can
> help improve the article.
>
> In this case, the nominator should have said "Gee, I never heard of
> Fawcett or Playboy, and this New York Times thing sounds fishy, and I
> looked in Google and found only n listings for the name, so I wonder if
> there's a problem here.
>
> Then, pop a note on the talk page.  "Hey everybody, I don't know much
> about publishing or science fiction, but I never heard of this guy and
> had trouble verifying the information.  It's probably my own lack of
> searching skills, so I wonder if anyone can help me out here.  Is this
> article as good as it could be?"
>
> I went through a rather tortured process yesterday in which I had to
> really put my foot down to put a stop to a CfD vote which was taking
> place without _any_ community dialogue or discussion first.
>
> I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an
> ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people
> and existing companies*.  "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an
> instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the
> subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and
> effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________

 Here's an idea.

Why not add a template to the article/category/whatever talk's page. Stating
that a discussion about this article is warranted, for whatever reason
(notability, bad category and so forth).  So that a category is created with
all those articles and people can have a say on it on the article's talk
page. If after a month or so of discussion people still agree that it should
be deleted, then it can go to AFD/CFD etc.

Of course, no '''Delete'''' 's or ''''Keep'''' 's should be on that
article's talk page.

Garion


list: foundation-l

from_name: John Walling

subject: [Foundation-l] SpamFilter project startup

body:
Announcing new project

SpamFilter project addresses deficiences in existing SpamBlacklist extension
and $wgSpamRegex filter.

Project link: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpamFilter

= John


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>
>
>
>  Here's an idea.
>
> Why not add a template to the article/category/whatever talk's page.
> Stating that a discussion about this article is warranted, for whatever
> reason (notability, bad category and so forth).  So that a category is
> created with all those articles and people can have a say on it on the
> article's talk page. If after a month or so of discussion people still agree
> that it should be deleted, then it can go to AFD/CFD etc.
>
> Of course, no '''Delete'''' 's or ''''Keep'''' 's should be on that
> article's talk page.
>
> Garion
>
>

Hmm, clicked on the wrong button. Wanted to discard that message after I
checked wikipedia deletions and read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Brainstorming#Decentralise
and
other idea's there.

Garion


body:
The way these things keep going... ah hell, here's an updated version of
what I suggested about a year ago:

1. No article may be listed on AFD unless a serious attempt at
discussing cleanup, redirection, renaming, etc., has been made on the
article's talk page.
2. No article may be listed on AFD twice in the same month.
3. If three (3) users (not IPs, have contributed to article space, had
accounts for at least a week, not found to be sockpuppets, yada yada,
etc, etc) say "Speedy keep" on an article's AFD, it is immediately
closed as "speedy keep". (Abuse of this rule to stifle an actual debate
on the merits would, of course, be a violation of policy.)

Note: Copyright violations and other "urgent deletions" (for example, as
in a past case, the revelation of the real name, city of residence,
college currently attended, and exact place of work of a certain young
woman depicted in certain pictures on the Internet under a stage name)
should be dealt with outside of the system used for normal articles.
Listing something that is not an "urgent" deletion on the page for those
should be recognized as a violation of policy.

I don't know why people have to hit over the head with the basics:
If an article can possibly be merged or redirected, don't put it on AFD:
talk about it on the talk page, use {{mergeto}}, and so on.
If an article isn't a copyright violation and doesn't have some other
really pressing need to have something expunged from history (cf.
example above), then deleting it is not a priority- certainly ranking
far below adding content to articles.

-- Jake Nelson


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Notability meta-guidelines

body:
> I actually don't see /how/ you could create 30 articles on a
> single Pok?mon character without violating a) WP:NOR, b)
> WP:V, c) copyright, d) the laws of physics.

I don't know whether documenting every single thing the character does
in every episode would violate copyright. But you have a point.

> Yes, with WP:NOR and WP:V doing a good job at covering just
> about everything else - most of what /could/ be called "nn,
> d." can more succinctly be summed up as "The subject of this
> article is non-notable because what has been written amounts
> to original research and is not verifiable". I've been
> arguing this for about a year now.

This is a very interesting approach. In other words: If no one else has
written about it, it musn't be notable. We don't decide for ourselves
what is notable, any more than we decide for ourselves what truth is.
The trouble is that there certainly *are* areas where nothing serious is
written about it, yet is clearly interesting. [todo: find me an example
someone :)]

> Well, a while ago someone said "there are /no/ notability
> guidlines", and I almost believed it. Of course, this was
> before I realised what a trollpit AfD was; we quite clearly
> *do* have notability guidelines, cf. WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, etc.

Yeah. The other thing is, now that I think about it, very very many
bands have articles written about them in local "music scene" papers.
But these have two problems:
A) So many articles are written, it doesn't really mean much in terms of
notability. Even debut performances can get writeups in advance.
B) Actually finding these articles. If they're not on the internet, how
would you find them?

> Put them up at [[Wikipedia:Notability guidelines]]?

Good idea. Anyone want to do this before I come back from [[Les Trois
Vall?es]] on Monday? :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Notability meta-guidelines

body:
> are we talking about physical elements that are know to exist
> or ones that are subject to speculation in only a couple of papers?

Ones with atomic number >103. Whether they exist or not is a grey area.
They can generally be "made to exist" for short periods of time. I'm not
sure whether it's fair to include an element just because it *has* been
made to exist (for a millionth of a second) and exclude another because
they couldn't decide whether made it exist or not. Anyway, scientific
theories have a place in Wikipedia, right or wrong - provided they have
been published in reputable journals.

Question: Are there any "reputable" sources that publish articles about
Pok?mon characters?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Notability meta-guidelines

body:
Surely most articles do a bit of both. [[Bill's Fish and Chips]] could
"educate" the reader about its menu and pricing.  For some very small
number of people, this information could be genuinely useful.

So it should be more a "detracting factor" or something. The more an
article makes misrepresents the notability of its subject, the more it
deserves to die. But then, AfD is supposed to be about subjects, not the
contents of the article itself...

Steve

> On 1/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 1) A subject should not become *more notable* by appearing in
> > Wikipedia.  {The vanity principle}
>
> I would put it this way: an article should not exist solely
> to make its subject more notable. If an article makes the
> subject more well known, alongside educating the reader about
> the topic of which the subject forms a part, then that is no problem.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Notability meta-guidelines

body:
So, notability guidelines serve to stop idiots deleting worthwhile
articles? But they don't serve to justify deletion? That could be an
okay tack.

Meta-guideline: "There can only be hard rules for keeping articles,
never for deleting them."

Sound good?

Steve

> WP:MUSIC has its problems.  Even so, IMO, WP:MUSIC is more
> useful as a quick check in which passing its guidelines
> affirms notability with no further argument required.
> Failing the WP:MUSIC guideline just means that none of the
> quick and easy ways of describing the subject's importance
> work.  It doesn't mean that the subject is not notable for a
> less common reason.


body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
> So I couldn't AFD [[Bob's Used Cars]], an article on a hypothetical
> clearly non-notable organization that doesn't meet speedy deletion
> criteria, unless I had a pointless conversation on how this article
> which fails all Wikipedia guidelines could somehow magically be made to
> fit those criteria?

"clearly non-notable" - in this hypothetical, is it a business that
actually exists?

If so, it's not "clearly" non-notable: it's debatably non-notable. The
correct action would be not to AFD it, but to put up the standard
boilerplate template about "fails to state the importance", and make a
comment on the talk page asking if anyone can demonstrate that it has
any importance.

If you can't find any evidence of such a business existing, put up
{{unverified}} on it, and put a note on the talk page asking if anyone
can demonstrate it exists.

Then go off and do other things. Check back on it at some point, see if
anyone's provided information that resolves the issue. If not, then you
could AFD it.

-- Jake Nelson


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Yes, that makes sense when the idea is bad, but what about in this case?

It is a bad idea. Unless there is a plan to change the way the
software works wrt catigories. It won't even result in the creation of
a useable list.

--
geni


body:
geni wrote:
> No they are unlikely to notice. Big institutions for the most part.

That's actually untrue- for the big institutions especially, they often
have staff whose primary duty is finding examples of their images being
used in infringing fashions. Getty Images is somewhat infamous for
seemingly doing nothing but.

-- Jake Nelson


body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> geni stated for the record:
>
> > On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> >>Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
> >>
> >>I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review
> >>Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless
> >>WP:VfU).  The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who
> >>nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and
> >>/damaging/ deletions.  Deletions of unpublished garage bands can
> >>continue just as they do today.
> >>
> >>The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of
> >>various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process --
> >>and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the
> >>offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their
> >>thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks.  Any offenses
> >>too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
> >>
> >>I would appreciate discussion of this suggestion, particularly by Jimbo
> >>and my fellow ArbCommies.  Starting question: should we bash on it here,
> >>or take it to a Meta page?
> >>
> >
> > So no action against those who vote to keep stuff that should be
> > deleted? Remeber a keep vote is worth more than a delete vot on AFD.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> No, no action.  An erroneous "keep" is harms no one, since copyvios,
> attacks and libel, and similar damaging material are not subject to
> Votes for Deletion.
>

Have you ever tried to bring up issues of copyright violation on AFD?
I have. I got kinda outvoted (to be fair the subject was to do with
schools).

Hoaxes are subject to AFD. Are you going to claim that voteing to keep
them does no damage?

--
geni


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proofread flag feasibility

body:
Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> The principle is to add a "Proofread asked" flag to pages when submitting
> changes, with a checkbox next to "Minor edit" and "Watch this page". Thus, a
> hesitating contributor who would like his changes to be checked (for
> spelling errors, wiki links, layout, etc.) could do it simply by one click.
> This page would then appear in a list of special pages, for instance
> "Special:PagesToProofread".
>
Did you guys see my "Tasks" feature [1] (see "tasks" tab and "open
tasks" insidebar)? It could easily be extended to include "proofread".

Magnus

[1] http://magnusmanske.de/wikipeerdia


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>
> When one wants to write free text about Darth Vader, one reads other
> (usually proprietary) writings and then summarizes them in one's own
> words. Likewise, when one wants to draw a free image of Darth Vader
> shouldn't one view other (usually proprietary) images and then
> summarize them with one's own artwork?

If that were true, then one could draw original comic strips or
animated television cartoons featuring Star Wars characters without
needing any kind of license or permission from anybody. But a quick
Googling for ' movie merchandising copyright ' turns up sites like
http://www.marklitwak.com/articles/general/movie_merchandising.html ,
in which Mark Litwak, Esq. generously offers a sample merchandising
license, wherein we read

  "... Licensor grants to Licensee [...] the exclusive right, license
   and privilege to utilize the names, characters, artists' portrayal
   of characters, likenesses and visual representations as included
   in Picture ..."

and so forth. In other words, the pros at this have already figured
out all the tricky angles. :-)

Stan


body:
(another point)

Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
> Let's be honest here - the VAST MAJORITY OF ARTICLES which get AFDed are
> deleted by clear consensus without controversy. We are talking about a
> small minority of controversial deletion decisions. Out of the 150+
> nominations each day, fewer than 5 make it to DRV. Some get speedy-kept
> with no controversy, some get speedy deleted with no controversy and the
> rest get some sort of consensus, or a no-consensus keep.

The vast majority of emails I get in a day are spam. They can be marked
as junk and put aside without worrying. If I were to set my spam filters
to mark almost everything as junk, we'd be talking about a small
minority of controversial spam-labeling decisions. Out of the one to
three thousand emails I receive each day [not an exaggeration... average
is 1621 last time I looked], less than a hundred are not spam.

If I were to set my spam filters to mark nearly everything as spam, I'd
lose messages that matter. Maybe not a lot, maybe it works most of the
time... but I'd lose some. Whereas if I set things so that messages are
only marked as spam if they absolutely are, I can get 0 real messages
junked and only a few dozen bad ones slip through. Those get in the way
a little, but I can get rid of them easily enough. In Wikipedia, they
don't even get in the way of getting at things you want to see. They're
just in the background.

Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting
ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.

-- Jake Nelson


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 1/20/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> > Most uses are just decoration, and they are stopping free images
> > being used to replace them. You can be quite lateral with illustration.
>
> Where are you expecting to get free images with which to illustrate
> Star Wars? They don't exist.

You could always make some.

> Anyway, even if you eliminate "most uses" because they are just
> decoration, you haven't got rid of all of them. And if the use of
> copyrighted material compromises WP's goal of being a free
> encyclopedia, that principle applies to copyrighted textual quotes
> as well. So unless you're prepared to delete fair-use quotes, you
> still haven't got a "free encyclopedia". In fact, the quotes are a
> more serious problem for the freeness goal, because while the images
> are tagged and filterable, the quotes are not easily removable.
>
> Stan

The quotes are for the most part usable by anyone in the world.  Many
of the fair use images aren't even usable by everyone in the United
States.

Anthony


body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
> On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
>>
>> Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting
>> ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
>
> I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles
> are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and
> other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a
> *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.

Hoaxes: Slap an {{unverified}} up top, edit the page if you've got
evidence it's a hoax to cite that evidence.

Attack pages: #6 for articles on [[WP:CSD]]. Speedy it.

vanispamcruftvertisements: if it meets CSD (Unremarkable people or
groups), speedy it. If it doesn't, slap a warning on it for unverified
and biased, and edit it to something more neutral. Most of the time, if
it's a big blob of advertising-y text, it's copied verbatim from another
site, so just put a link to that in External links, ditch the adtext,
and put a stub in.

-- Jake Nelson


body:
On 1/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The only way I can see to interpret 1) is to make "notable"
> > mean something like "well known".
>
> Yes, it was a mistake on my part.
>
> > And frankly, the rule doesn't make sense to me.  Providing
> > someone with information on something when they request it
> > isn't advertising.
> > Advertising is when you provide someone with information
> > other than what they requested.
> >
> > IOW, if someone does a search for "Bob's Garage Band" and
> > they get information on it, how is that advertising?
>
> I'm not 100% sure of the logic either, but articles get turfed for being
> "vanity" all the time. Even, as we have seen recently, when they are
> written by people unknown to the subject.
>
> Actually now that I think about it, maybe a subject *does* get false
> notability from being on Wikipedia. If I searched for Bob's garage band
> and found nothing but a crufty geocities website, that would be one
> thing. If I found a fully-fledged Wikipedia article, I would think
> something completely different about them. I would think they were more
> notable than they really were.
>
> Steve

What if the Wikipedia article said that they weren't notable?

What exactly does notable mean, anyway?

Anthony


body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Good point.  Allow me to modify my proposal accordingly: anyone whose
> vote shows a culpable lack of elementary research should be penalized.
> This would include both those who deleted Jimbo's example that began
> this discussion, and those who /carelessly/ vote "keep" on fraudulent
> material.
>
> Note that in both cases "I did my research but that was too subtle"
> ought to be considered as a defense.  For example, both "okay, so he's
> genuinely notable in Kyrgyzstan, but I don't read Kyrgyzyse and that's
> the only language he's been published in" and "okay, so it's a hoax, but
> numerous credentialed scientists were also taken in" would be considered
> as mitigating factors by the Review Board.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett

Ok now it we've got it reframed so it is not such an obvious attempt
to push inclusionism lets move onto the buracratic bit. While it
appears the board at least favors increasing committes and the like:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions

(looking at that you start to wounder if the foundation is running the
EU as well)

The general wikipedia community tends to be less in favor. Where would
these board members come from?

Anyway if you want to try and go forward with this you need to start
discussing this on wikipedia as soon as posible.~~~~

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pointless deletions, bogus guidelines

body:
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geni stated for the record:

> On 1/21/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Welll, I'd say that it's a very good reason to use your noggin and
>>reverse its most egregiously borked decisions. Something that you may
>>have noticed some of us are quite adept at doing.  Looks like Jimmy
>>Wales took a leaf from our book! :)
>
>
> Not really. Your recent record only looks good compared to your out of
> process deletion record.
>
>
> --
> geni

"Out of process" -- that means "bad," right?

Does it matter what the result was?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | There's no place like 127.0.0.1
 sean at epoptic.org |
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body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>
>You're comparing Apples and Oranges here.  Drawing an image of Darth
>Vader and putting it in an encyclopedia is not the same as making a
>comic strip or cartoon of Darth Vader.
>
I quoted the license specifically because it mentioned "names" and
"likenesses", in other words redrawing the imagery doesn't get you
off the hook here, and if your excuse is that you're just doing it
for use in the encyclopedia, then you've come right back to relying
on the same old fair use argument.

Don't think you can outsmart these guys so easily, they have a whole
industry based on licensing of copyrighted material. In fact, the
most intelligent course of action might be to contact them and just
*ask* what amount of content they would like to see. If they say zero,
then fine, the fair-use haters have their reason to flush it all,
but my guess is that they don't want to lose the free visibility,
and will give us guidelines. Of course, if they say "use as much as
you want, we love Wikipedia", fair-use haters lose one of their key
arguments... :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] interwikilinks - WP forgot the World WP came from

body:
Nathan Reed wrote:
> On 1/19/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 1/19/06, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
>>
>>>WP forgot the World WP came from
>>>
>>>There is a Wiki-World beside WP.
>>>
>>>I can'nt understand why wikipedia is dominating evreything. Wikipedia is
>>>like a black hole. So my q. is. : Why dont exist any other
>>>interwiki-links beside de:wp etc., beside wikipedia ?
>>
>>Interwiki links do exist to other websites.  Off the top of my head, I
>>can think of c: for Wikicities, meatball: for Meatball Wiki and wiki:
>>for c2.com/cgi/wiki
>>
>
> There's a list at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map
>
> I'm not sure if it's complete.
>

Mediawiki updates itself from it periodically, so if it's not there, it
won't be recognised :)

--
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: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fair use images on user pages and enforcement

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
>>Short quotes of text also tend to be the kind of fair dealing which is
>>broadly accepted by all countries and is essentially indistinguishable
>>from "not copyrighted".
>
>
> Perhaps. Certainly no-one will object that a particular article contains,
> say, a short quote from a particular Bible translation. But when you pile
> up articles like that in an organized way you essentially enable people to
> read the whole translation. Start here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_1:1
>
> Read the KJV translation of the verse. Then click on next verse and the
> read the KJV translation of that. Proceed until you run out of verses.
>
> I understand that the copyright of the KJV is enforced in Britain. Would
> this series of articles be in violation of British law? Mostly an academic
> question, I think, but you get my point. It's probably no coincidence that
> the translations chosen for this Bible verse project are (almost
> everywhere) in the public domain.
>
> - - -
>
> A few months back we established here on the mailing list that our use of
> this featured picture:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LindisfarneFol27rIncipitMatt.jpg
>
> is in violation of British law. In fact a great many images where we rely
> on Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. could not be legally used in a
> Wikipedia published outside of the United States of America.
>
> A Wikipedia which restricted itself to content which is free to use by
> everyone in every jurisdiction would have to let go of a lot of good
> stuff. It would be a very painful sacrifice and I doubt it would be worth
> it.
>

We are already not allowed to have photos of the Louvre and other
buildings in France. This is the price we pay for Free content; if you
want to excercise Free Speech, use Tor or Freenet...

--
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:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious
	proposal to fix it

body:
On 1/20/06 6:02 PM, "Tony Sidaway" <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

>  But there should be more
> emphasis on improvement.

Agreed. But nobody's listening.

Again, I point out that there are 15,000+ articles piled up on the Cleanup
queue. I am *not* just going to tag an article "Cleanup" and let it sit
there for six months. That is *not* a solution.

Fix the Cleanup system, get an actual Cleanup Patrol going to deal with
these articles, and I'll be much less tempted to just speedy or AFD
borderline tripe that I can't make heads or tails of, but sure shouldn't
just hang around on the encyclopedia like it is.

-FCYTravis


from_name: JEFFREY KAUFFMAN

subject: [WikiEN-l] Travels with Wyss :)

body:
I posted earlier about this brouhaha, but evidently because I had not yet subscribed, the message is in limbo.  So there may be another one coming on this situation.  I would truly appreciate some feedback from those who are more acclimatized to Wikipedia.  The summary:

I was contacted over a year ago by an author who was working on the Frances Farmer article for Wikipedia.  He had linked my web article "Shedding Light on Shadowland" and recognized I had a certain expertise in this subject.  He invited me to come to Wikipedia and begin revising/correcting the Farmer article (as well as others that linked to it), which I happily did.  Prior to this, I had never even heard of Wikipedia (sad, but true).  Over the past year, I have pretty much completely rewritten the article, adding a lot of salient information and correcting a lot of misinformation in the article, trying at all times to keep it completely factual, non-sensationalized and as free of POV as possible.  I should state here for the record that my Farmer research has received worldwide attention and served as source material for several books and newspaper articles, as well as documentaries on both NPR and A&E Biography.  So I feel, hopefully rightfully, that I know whereof I speak on this subject.

About two days ago a user named Wyss started making wholesale edits to the article, which in and of itself doesn't bother me at all--if you look at the edit history I have let many a revision pass if it contains factual information.  However, several of Wyss' edits contained outright factual errors.  I don't want to pester you with details, but if you go into the edit history, you will see my first fledgling attempts to correct them.

I then posted to her Talk page (evidently incorrectly, as I did it at the top and didn't sign it, which completely set her off), asking her please to fact-check her material before posting it.  She then posted vaguely threatening messages to my Talk page, including such sinister sounding lines as "I don't know what you're up to" and "I'm watching this page."  She then reverted her edits back to the incorrect version.  She also denied she had made any errors.  I ultimately provided her with a URL of her edit history, describing the errors she had made, and hopefully showing her that she had indeed made them.

When I posted this to her Talk page, she, actually quite laughably, posted to my Talk page calling me a "bonehead."  She then, rather incredibly, spent the next several hours denying she had called me a "bonehead."  (I know, it's ridiculous, but it gets better or worse, depending on how you look at it).

So anyway she has continued to edit, adding completely wrong information repeatedly.  She also began wholesale copying of my copyrighted article "Shedding Light on Shadowland," which I, again, posted to her talk page about, warning her that she was pushing the limits of Fair Use and that she was facing possible legal action if she continued quoting my research without citing it.

This is where is gets incredible to me:  she then had me banned indefinitely for "making threats and harrassing."  Interestingly, the person who banned me then immediately went "inactive."

Now Wyss on both the Farmer talk page and her talk page is accusing me of having "cloned" her, whatever that means, and of harrassing her anonymously.  I have made NO anonymous edits to any article prior to my editing privileges being revoked, and I certainly do not have the Wiki-knowledge to clone someone's user page.  As Wyss herself took me to task for, I couldn't even post to her Talk page properly, and I have to struggle to make edits to Wikipedia.

I state for the record I am a near-50 year old husband and father who, quite by accident, ended up spending 20 years researching Frances Farmer and who gained a certain renown as a Farmer expert.  My web article has been read by tens of thousands of people and commented on by such notable people as Leonard Maltin and Washington Post reporter Jack El-Hai.

So here I am, "banned" from Wikipedia, still struggling to correct Wyss' incorrect edits (though I am "banned" I can still edit--maybe someone can explain that to me), while I also am suffering from what I personally consider to be her near-slanderous comments that I have "cloned" her and/or harrassed her.  She is also now claiming that I am not Jeffrey Kauffman and I did not write "Shedding Light on Shadowland."  Hopefully my email address is some proof for you, but I also refer you to my website:

http://jeffreykauffman.net/<http://jeffreykauffman.net/>

I even posted to the Farmer Talk page what I believe has happened:  I am rather well-known in the Farmer fan community and I know for a fact there are several others who have been following Wyss' incorrect edits for the past few days.  These are all younger folk, the Cobain contingent as I call them, and they certainly have more Wiki-knowledge than I.  It is quite possible that Wyss is being targeted (wrongly, as I myself posted on the Talk page) by one of these people, but I again state it is *not* me who is doing this.

In the meantime, Wyss has just in the past 10 minutes added several more inaccuracies to the Farmer article, which, when I try to correct them (providing source material, as I always attempt to do), she immediately reverts back to her incorrect versions.  All the while insisting I'm not "me."

I would very much like someone to offer me a little help.  If I have done anything wrong, I apologize.  But I have worked for a very long time to make sure only the facts about this actress are published on Wikipedia, and it pains me greatly to see someone come along and destroy over 12 months' of very careful, considered work.


body:
On 1/20/06 8:58 PM, "Tony Sidaway" <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not going near cleanup while some people are trying their very
> best to use "process" as an excuse to get rid of quite a lot of
> perfectly good articles.

Well, I am - attempting to wade through a few of these. There are 200
articles with a cleanup tag from January, 2006 beginning with A-Bo. Anyone
like to join me in trying to reduce that some? It's barely scratching the
outer layer of the surface, but it's a start.

-FCYTravis


from_name: Tony Bowden

subject: [Wikitech-l] Installation specific tags in <head>?

body:
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 10:44:09AM -0800, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> 1.  Apply this patch (which should eventually find its way into MW):
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3603

Aha. Excellent. When browsing the source I did spot addScript(), but
couldn't work out how to use it. This looks perfect.

> 2.  Write a very small extension which calls $wgOut->addScript('<script
> src="myveryownjsfile.js"></script>');  I can't think of which hook to
> use off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's one that's appropriate.

I'll dig around and see. If anyone can suggest one, I'd appreciate it!

> You will still have to remember to resync until the patch finds its way
> into a release you are using, but it's the most likely way I can think
> of to solve your problem.

*nod*

I'm happier resync-ing a patch that will hopefully be going into a
future release than a random one of my own.

Thanks a lot,

Tony


body:
On 1/20/06 9:11 PM, "Jake Nelson" <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:

> This was, in fact, much of the point for the creation of Cleanup in the
> first place, but it was only halfway successful: Cleanup was created,
> but people kept listing pages on AFD instead.

Why are you thinking this is either-or? There are some articles which should
be cleaned up. There are some articles which should be deleted. AFD *and*
Cleanup have their purposes.

-FCYTravis


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an
> ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people
> and existing companies*.  "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an
> instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the
> subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and
> effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
>

I've had three companies pop up on my radar recently.  Two I've
already written about in Pointless deletions. Another has shown up on
deletion review where there is all kind of petty quibbling over a
company that on its website gives actual case studies--which I've no
reason to doubt are accurate and are in any case verfiable--involving
really major customers such as Camden Borough Council, BP Upstream and
so on.  There is some discussion but it seems mostly to be along the
lines of "well it doesn't meet [NAME OF STRINGENT GUIDELINE] so it was
a valid deletion."  Why are we deleting stuff like this for such
pusilanimous reasons?


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
On 1/20/06, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. Copyrighted images should not be used in any situation that is not
> considered fair use.

Not to pick on you, but this irritated my inner pedant.  We use
copyrighted images all the time.  In fact, every image we use that
isn't public domain is copyrighted.

What you meant to say is that copyrighted images *that are not under a
free license* should not be used.

-Matt


body:
On 1/20/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Justin Cormack wrote:
>
> > On 21 Jan 2006, at 00:19, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >> I'm sure that a Darth Vader Halloween costume would be copyright
> >> protected.
> >
> > Unlikely under US law I believe.
>
> You are aware that the movie-related merchandise (action figures,
> costumes, Lego sets, whatever) sold on the mass market is *always*
> produced under licenses from the studio, producer, or whoever holds the
> rights to the intellectual property in the movie? That they will make
> vigorous legal action against people who mass-produce such items without
> obtaining a license? That the rightsholders invariably prevail in such
> cases?
>
Are you sure you're talking about copyright law, and not trademark
law?  I'm not personally aware of any lawsuits based on copyright law
pertaining to halloween costumes, though that of course doesn't mean
there aren't any.  A halloween costume may very well be a copyright
infringement, but if so it's pretty much always *also* a trademark
infringement.

> Fair use for your personal Halloween costume or your personal photo
> album is not the same as fair use for publishing a photograph to the
> entire world over the internet.
>
No, it isn't.  Of course fair use for commercial merchandise isn't the
same as fair use for an encyclopedia (even a commercial one).  And for
trademark law, the two couldn't really be much different (trademark
law was designed for merchandise, and rarely is applicable to a photo
in an encyclopedia.

> > There are some on commons.
>
> Commons certainly isn't perfect at abiding by its policies, just like
> en: and de: aren't.
>
> --Michael Snow

There are certainly differing degrees of compliance in those three
situations, though.

Anthony


from_name: Tomasz Ganicz

subject:
[Foundation-l] Just for fun:;
	Polish Finace Ministry created its own Wiki

body:
I think you may find it interesting:

Polish Ministry of Finance has just started wiki-based service:

http://www.podatki.gov.pl/wiki/

"Podatki" means "taxes" :-)

The idea of the Wiki is to let people complain about absurds in Polish
taxation system and to propose projects how to change the situation.

Is it the first example when wiki was launched by goverment?

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 20 Jan 2006, at 21:32, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> I've had three companies pop up on my radar recently.  Two I've
> already written about in Pointless deletions. Another has shown up on
> deletion review where there is all kind of petty quibbling over a
> company that on its website gives actual case studies--which I've no
> reason to doubt are accurate and are in any case verfiable--involving
> really major customers such as Camden Borough Council, BP Upstream and
> so on.  There is some discussion but it seems mostly to be along the
> lines of "well it doesn't meet [NAME OF STRINGENT GUIDELINE] so it was
> a valid deletion."  Why are we deleting stuff like this for such
> pusilanimous reasons?

Working for Camden Council does not mean your company deserves an
entry on wikipedia. Accurate and verifiable it may be. We are not a
collection of random facts.

Many of my friends and their companies have worked for Camden. It
doesnt matter. They should not have entries.

Justinc


body:
On 1/20/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 1/20/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Justin Cormack wrote:
> >
> > > On 21 Jan 2006, at 00:19, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > >
> > >> I'm sure that a Darth Vader Halloween costume would be copyright
> > >> protected.
> > >
> > > Unlikely under US law I believe.
> >
> > You are aware that the movie-related merchandise (action figures,
> > costumes, Lego sets, whatever) sold on the mass market is *always*
> > produced under licenses from the studio, producer, or whoever holds the
> > rights to the intellectual property in the movie? That they will make
> > vigorous legal action against people who mass-produce such items without
> > obtaining a license? That the rightsholders invariably prevail in such
> > cases?
> >
> Are you sure you're talking about copyright law, and not trademark
> law?  I'm not personally aware of any lawsuits based on copyright law
> pertaining to halloween costumes, though that of course doesn't mean
> there aren't any.  A halloween costume may very well be a copyright
> infringement, but if so it's pretty much always *also* a trademark
> infringement.
>
Doing a quick Google for <i>"copyright law" costume</i> gives:

http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/unprotected.html
"The print found on the fabric of a skirt or jacket is copyrightable,
since it exists separately from the utilitarian nature of the
clothing. However, there is no copyright in the cut of the cloth, or
the design of the skirt or jacket as a whole, since these articles are
utilitarian. This is true even of fanciful costumes; no copyright
protection is granted to the costume as a whole."

and

http://www.orrick.com/fileupload/513.htm
"Elements of Halloween costumes that are separable from the costume
itself may be entitled to copyright protection, the Second Circuit
held.  Chosun sued Chrisha Creations for copying Chosun's Halloween
costumes.  The district court dismissed the complaint, holding that
Halloween costumes are "useful articles" that cannot be protected by
copyright law.  The Second Circuit reversed.  It held that because it
is possible that some of the elements of Chosun's costumes could be
separated from the overall design without adversely affecting the
functionality of the costume, dismissal was improper."

Neither really answer the question of the copyright status of a photo
of a Darth Vader costume in general.  It would depend on the
specifics.  But when I try to think of some I kind of come to the
conclusion that all of this is kind of discussion over nothing.  A
photo of a Darth Vader costume would be nice to have in the part of an
article which is talking about Darth Vader costumes, but it wouldn't
be so useful in say the introductory section of the [[Darth Vader]]
article (unless the costume had a probably proprietary image of Darth
Vader on the front of it or something).

I'd say the ideal solution for illustrating the [[Darth Vader]]
article would be with a free image which depicted Darth Vader.  A
drawing of Darth Vader need not be a derivative work of an existing
non-free Darth Vader image.  If you're going to take the requirement
of freedom *that* far then you'd exclude pretty much every bit of
image or text in the encyclopedia, because pretty much everything is
based in some part on other things.

When one wants to write free text about Darth Vader, one reads other
(usually proprietary) writings and then summarizes them in one's own
words.  Likewise, when one wants to draw a free image of Darth Vader
shouldn't one view other (usually proprietary) images and then
summarize them with one's own artwork?

Anthony


body:
On 20 Jan 2006, at 21:40, Stan Shebs wrote:
> Deleting fair use would take away nearly all book covers, album
> covers, film/tv/game/software screenshots, logos, many symbols,
> modern-day stamps and currency, photos of unusual or rare products,
> works by 20th-century artists, etc. Even if energetic Wikipedians
> were to get busy and stalk all the celebrities to get candid snaps,
> you're still going to end up with an image-less Star Wars article.

So what. We can link to sources of external images (such as official
Star Wars sites).

Making a free encyclopaedia involves certain compromises, such as er
not having non free content.

And even I who wouldnt recognise a "celebrity" if they walked past
managed to take a bad picture of one.

The fact that illustration is a bit biased in coverage is not a real
problem.

What does a book cover add to an article on War and Peace?

Most uses are just decoration, and they are stopping free images
being used to replace them. You can be quite lateral with illustration.

Justinc


from_name: nfs_ nfs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Search Engine

body:
Hi all,

Just launched new Wikipedia Search Engine, it is new but will grow fast.

Wikipedia Search engine : http://www.wikipediasearch.org/

Thanks.


body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> I'm afraid your casual dismissal of the issue will not make it go away.
>
> Since you haven't been paying attention, I'll recapitulate: Jimbo
> receives e-mail messages /at least daily/ from outsiders wondering why
> "we" [the AfD gang] are so nasty and insulting as we delete
> easily-verified information about highly notable people.  The AfD gang
> is actively doing damage to Wikipedia's reputation on a on-going, daily
> basis.
>

I recive (through the helpdesk) emails about this on a daily basis as
well. However I also get a stunning number asking about link exchange.
I also recive complaints about people reverting stuff. Should we start
a comitte to regualate that?

--
geni


from_name: Travis Mason-Bushman

body:
On 1/20/06 9:57 PM, "Jake Nelson" <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:

> A lot of articles listed on AFD belong on Cleanup.
> A lot of time is spent watching AFD to try and keep things from being
> deleted that shouldn't be deleted. That time can't be easily redirected
> unless things stop being listed on AFD that shouldn't be.

And a lot of articles on Cleanup should be listed on AFD, as I'm finding out
by going through the Cleanup pages.

-FCYTravis


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/20/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/20/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, I've been paying attention, thanks.  I've personally gone to a number
> > of message boards to discuss AfDs with groups who are offended by an AfD
> > discussion. Usually patient discussion and explanation works wonders.
> > Perhaps a "So you've been nominated for deletion" page would be helpful in
> > this manner as well.
>
> I like the "so you've been nominated for deletion" page idea.
>

Something like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geni/so_your_article_has_been_nominated_for_deletion

Feel free to suggest changes.
--
geni


body:
On 1/20/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >
> > When one wants to write free text about Darth Vader, one reads other
> > (usually proprietary) writings and then summarizes them in one's own
> > words. Likewise, when one wants to draw a free image of Darth Vader
> > shouldn't one view other (usually proprietary) images and then
> > summarize them with one's own artwork?
>
> If that were true, then one could draw original comic strips or
> animated television cartoons featuring Star Wars characters without
> needing any kind of license or permission from anybody. But a quick
> Googling for ' movie merchandising copyright ' turns up sites like
> http://www.marklitwak.com/articles/general/movie_merchandising.html ,
> in which Mark Litwak, Esq. generously offers a sample merchandising
> license, wherein we read
>
>   "... Licensor grants to Licensee [...] the exclusive right, license
>    and privilege to utilize the names, characters, artists' portrayal
>    of characters, likenesses and visual representations as included
>    in Picture ..."
>
> and so forth. In other words, the pros at this have already figured
> out all the tricky angles. :-)
>
> Stan

You're comparing Apples and Oranges here.  Drawing an image of Darth
Vader and putting it in an encyclopedia is not the same as making a
comic strip or cartoon of Darth Vader.

Likewise, if you wrote a book about the adventures of Darth Vader,
you'd get sued and most likely lose (even under the fairly liberal
fair use laws).  But if you write an encyclopedia article about Darth
Vader you won't (even without any fair use laws at all).

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Thanks to Gmaxwell for removing this from my user page. D'oh! How embarrassing.
>
> The image itself has been deleted too. Does anyone have a copy to
> hand? I want to put it on Uncyclopedia, where it would almost
> certainly be just fine in a suitable context. Parody and satire allow
> *fantastic* leeway for fair use ...
>
>

You could try a DB dump, or [[User:Goplat]]...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
On 20 Jan 2006, at 22:41, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Justin Cormack wrote:
>
>> What does a book cover add to an article on War and Peace?
>
> If nothing else, it makes it clear that the article is about the
> book, not the movie, or the board game, or the ...

Image worth one word. Even that might not be clear.

> Now, what does the Abbey Road album cover add to its article?
> Quite a bit it turns out - the article even has a section entitled
> "The famous photograph".

Yes, but these few real uses are swamped by the rubbish ones.

>>
>> Most uses are just decoration, and they are stopping free images
>> being used to replace them. You can be quite lateral with
>> illustration.
>
> Where are you expecting to get free images with which to illustrate
> Star Wars? They don't exist. Photos of Yoda dolls are not only
> pathetic, but they are not enencumbered copyright-wise either - the
> movie maker retains rights to the characters, and gives out licenses
> to reproduce them in other media. WP does not have such a license.

We dont have to illustrate everything. You can take photos of the
stars at film openings, or prints on the walk of fame, there are
lots of free photos out there.

> Anyway, even if you eliminate "most uses" because they are just
> decoration, you haven't got rid of all of them. And if the use of
> copyrighted material compromises WP's goal of being a free
> encyclopedia, that principle applies to copyrighted textual quotes
> as well. So unless you're prepared to delete fair-use quotes, you
> still haven't got a "free encyclopedia". In fact, the quotes are a
> more serious problem for the freeness goal, because while the images
> are tagged and filterable, the quotes are not easily removable.

99.99% of the images labelled as fair use are not. 99.99% of the
fair use text is. A few errors either way are not important to
the goal of making a free encyclopaedia. The lies and blatent
copyright violation in the images is.

I too can find a handful of fair use images. But I have yet to see
something in say [[Category:Promotional images]] that is actually
a promotional image (and there is really no justification for us
having real promos anyway as we dont accept permission images). Its
a blanket copyvio category. There are thousands of them, and more
added every day.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I can't speak for Sean but as far as I can see, this thread is about an
> article which is on VfD for no discernable reason.  I do not see how
> your objections to the creation of a category are relevant.  Please take
> it to the relevant talk page.
>
> --Jimbo

The start of this thread (at least as far as gmail is concerned) at
least was about catigory listed on CFD. I was explaining people's
behaviour. Trying to impose things from the top down out of the blue
on a group that is as open as wikipedia tends to be is unlikely to
work very well.

--
geni


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious	proposal
	to fix it

body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
> Again, I point out that there are 15,000+ articles piled up on the Cleanup
> queue. I am *not* just going to tag an article "Cleanup" and let it sit
> there for six months. That is *not* a solution.
>
> Fix the Cleanup system, get an actual Cleanup Patrol going to deal with
> these articles, and I'll be much less tempted to just speedy or AFD
> borderline tripe that I can't make heads or tails of, but sure shouldn't
> just hang around on the encyclopedia like it is.

The "fix" for the Cleanup system is also the source for the people for a
"cleanup patrol": get everyone to stop wasting time at AFD.

This was, in fact, much of the point for the creation of Cleanup in the
first place, but it was only halfway successful: Cleanup was created,
but people kept listing pages on AFD instead.

I keep hoping, "this time it won't get stuck halfway", "this time people
will actually try to fix it instead of just slapping it on AFD and
running"... If we actually convince enough people to dig in at cleanup
and get rid of the backlog, we might be able to dig ourselves out of
this pile. Too often, I still think it'd take Jimbo himself deleting AFD
to make it stick.

-- Jake Nelson


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:

> On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
>
>> Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting
>> ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
>
> I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles
> are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and
> other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a
> *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.

Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you
describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently
disagreeing.

Ec


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 1/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>>On 1/19/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>The challenge to Google's claim of copyright on the image (which in
>>>>itself was educational) didn't come until the image had already been
>>>>up there for months.  In fact, the image itself didn't even include a
>>>>claim of copyright by Google, it was from one of the very first
>>>>editions of the software when Google didn't yet have the audacity to
>>>>make such an obviously specious claim. (*)
>>>>
>>>>Anthony
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>(*) The image in question was exported from Google Earth (example at
>>>http://www.newrecruit.org/images/blog/googleearth/paris.jpg).  The
>>>compass on the bottom left was not present and neither was the
>>>copyright notice on the bottom right (not because I removed them, but
>>>because Google had not yet added them).  Like the image I presented
>>>there were no 3-D elements.  I think it's clear to anyone with any
>>>knowledge of copyright law that Google has *zero* copyright interest
>>>in such an image.  You don't get copyright on something simply because
>>>it is part of the output of a program you wrote, and all the rest of
>>>the possibly copyrighted features are held by someone else (in the
>>>case of my photo, the state of New Jersey).
>>>
>>
>>I know in France the architect has copyright photos of their buildings,
>>but the State of New Jersey has copyright over your photo of...?
>>
>
>
> It's not my photo I was talking about, but the aerial photos used in
> Google Earth, which, in this particular case, were made as a work for
> hire of the State of New Jersey.  Google obtained these aerial photos
> and then manipulated them *per my instructions* and sent them to me.
> As I'm the one who chose all the creative elements (the location, the
> angle, the zoom level), I'm the one who owns the copyright on the
> derivative work, not Google.  All they did was provide me with the
> tools to create the image.  They own the copyright no more than
> FUJIFILM owns the copyright to [[Image:Capemaypoint.JPG]] (which is
> the actual photo I took from that location).
>
> Frankly, I think this conclusion is pretty much indisputable by anyone
> with basic knowledge of copyright law.  In fact, it follows naturally
> from the absurdity of the law being any other way.  The Mozilla
> Foundation (or is it the Mozilla Corporation?) doesn't own this text
> simply because I used their software to create it.  Cakewalk doesn't
> own the songs just 'cause they're created using their music production
> software.  Corel doesn't own a painting because it was designed using
> Corel Paint.  Likewise, Google doesn't own an image simply because you
> used Google Earth to create it.
>
> Discussing this issue is, in and of itself, educational.  And using an
> image to facilitate such a discussion is fair use, which means it's
> not illegal and not an act of civil disobediance.
>
> Of course, that discussion was kept to the talk page.  The original
> purpose of my creation and distribution of the image was to show how
> well Google Earth can create a particular real life photo.  Even if
> that's not educational (and it is), it's use for the purposes of
> commentary, which in many ways is actually a stronger argument for
> fair use than merely educational purposes anyway.
>
> And frankly, Wikipedia should try to keep most, if not all, of its use
> *in the article space* to *commentary*, not simply educational
> purposes.  When you are commenting on a work, there is no real
> substitute for the actual work itself.  Pretty much any other use
> (save parody, which isn't really applicable to Wikipedia), can be
> theoretically substituted rather adequetely without resorting to fair
> use.  Even if Dolly the Sheep is dead and all the images of her are
> copyrighted, it's still possible for an artist to look at *several*
> images and create an original work which accurately depicts what the
> sheep looks like.
>
> Someone else mentioned how fair use images aren't treated like fair
> use text.  Well, that's essentially how fair use text is treated.  If
> you're commenting on the quote itself, then you use the quote itself.
> If, instead, you're using the information contained in the quote, then
> you read up on a bunch of different sources and paraphrase it, copying
> the facts but not the expression.  The only real difference is that
> there are a lot more Wikipedians who are skilled at writing but not
> nearly as much at drawing.
>
> Anyway, I've turned this into a rant about something completely
> different.  Sorry.
>

Actually I think you've just highlighted a point where Wikipedia /does/
have a claim to fair use: commentary. Parody and satire are not within
the scope of an NPOV encyclopedia, but commentary probably *is*.

BTW, what is the current reason fair use images are allowed on en:?

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

>>Fair use for your personal Halloween costume or your personal photo
>>album is not the same as fair use for publishing a photograph to the
>>entire world over the internet.
>>
>>
>No, it isn't.  Of course fair use for commercial merchandise isn't the
>same as fair use for an encyclopedia (even a commercial one).
>
Fair use is fair use.  However this distinction comes under the purpose
and character of the usage for determining whether there is fair use.

Ec


body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the
> ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my
> former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self.
>
> Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all,
> would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for
> deletion, not less.
>
> - --

If you look at the list of deletionists over at meta you will find
most don't list much stuff for deletion.

--
geni


body:
On 1/20/06 11:27 PM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
>
>> On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
>>
>>> Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting
>>> ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
>>
>> I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles
>> are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and
>> other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a
>> *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
>
> Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you
> describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently
> disagreeing.

And we are saved from falling to the [[false dilemma]] [[strawman]] raised
by Mr. Nelson, that somehow you cannot rid Wikipedia of patently bad
articles without deleting good ones.

-FCYTravis


body:
On 1/20/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> The real irony here is that while we're apparently getting daily
> complaints about the *text* of people's bios, we don't ever seem to
> get any complaints about the *images* in them.

Helpdesk does. Have you any idea how hard it is to get an image
deleted if it is on a wiki where you don't speak the language?

I has to be said that most of the complaints are not about fair use images.

--
geni


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>geni stated for the record:
>
>
>>On 1/21/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Welll, I'd say that it's a very good reason to use your noggin and
>>>reverse its most egregiously borked decisions. Something that you may
>>>have noticed some of us are quite adept at doing.  Looks like Jimmy
>>>Wales took a leaf from our book! :)
>>>
>>>
>>Not really. Your recent record only looks good compared to your out of
>>process deletion record.
>>
>>geni
>>
>>
>"Out of process" -- that means "bad," right?
>
>Does it matter what the result was?
>
Absolutely!  You can't allow facts to interfere with process, or nothing
would get accomplished ;-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 1/20/06, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>1. Copyrighted images should not be used in any situation that is not
>>considered fair use.
>
>
> Not to pick on you, but this irritated my inner pedant.  We use
> copyrighted images all the time.  In fact, every image we use that
> isn't public domain is copyrighted.
>
> What you meant to say is that copyrighted images *that are not under a
> free license* should not be used.
>
> -Matt

I've been exceeded in pedantry; hats off to you, sir.

Yes, you're quite correct. I was using the shorthand form
all-too-commonly used in these discussions, which is less clear than it
should be.

Let the record read "Images which are not available in the public domain
or under a free license should not be used in any situation that is not
considered fair use."

-- Jake Nelson


body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
> Why are you thinking this is either-or? There are some articles which should
> be cleaned up. There are some articles which should be deleted. AFD *and*
> Cleanup have their purposes.

(writing eight paragraphs of a response, then deleting the whole thing)

A lot of articles listed on AFD belong on Cleanup.
A lot of time is spent watching AFD to try and keep things from being
deleted that shouldn't be deleted. That time can't be easily redirected
unless things stop being listed on AFD that shouldn't be.

Maybe 'Article improvement month' - nobody delete articles for a month,
while everyone focuses on creating and improving articles instead of
getting rid of them. (Exceptions for "urgent deletions" as described
prior, of course.)

-- Jake Nelson, who shouldn't be up this late when he has to be at a big
meeting all day tomorrow...


body:
On 1/20/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >
> >You're comparing Apples and Oranges here.  Drawing an image of Darth
> >Vader and putting it in an encyclopedia is not the same as making a
> >comic strip or cartoon of Darth Vader.
> >
> I quoted the license specifically because it mentioned "names" and
> "likenesses", in other words redrawing the imagery doesn't get you
> off the hook here, and if your excuse is that you're just doing it
> for use in the encyclopedia, then you've come right back to relying
> on the same old fair use argument.
>
Well, first of all, just because someone purports to give you a
license to do something doesn't mean that you didn't already have the
right to do it anyway.  People put totally unenforcible things in
license agreements all the time.  In fact, sometimes they put things
in a license agreement precisely *because* a court has ruled that it
isn't covered by copyright law.

Anyway, not all fair use arguments are equal.  All countries provide
*some* exceptions to copyright law.  I think the difference between
ripping an image off some website and drawing your own from a
description of the character are worlds apart in terms of what types
of people are going to be able to redistribute the work.  In the
former case, even a non-profit organization selling print
encyclopedias in the United States would be in a dubious legal
position.  In the latter, I would think anyone could use the image
anywhere in the world, at least within the context of an encyclopedia.

But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe a judgement could be handed down
against such an image.  But if so, I don't see why a textual
description of the character wouldn't likewise be utilization of the
names, portrayal of characters, likenesses, etc.

IOW, if a visual depiction of the character isn't legal, then isn't
the entire article, which is a textual depiction of the character,
illegal?

There's just gotta be some kind of visual depiction of Darth Vader
which is legal for distribution in an encyclopedia by anyone anywhere
under any terms, at least with regard to copyright law (for all I know
discussion of Darth Vader is banned in China
or something, so I'm explicitly excepting something like that).

> Don't think you can outsmart these guys so easily, they have a whole
> industry based on licensing of copyrighted material. In fact, the
> most intelligent course of action might be to contact them and just
> *ask* what amount of content they would like to see. If they say zero,
> then fine, the fair-use haters have their reason to flush it all,
> but my guess is that they don't want to lose the free visibility,
> and will give us guidelines. Of course, if they say "use as much as
> you want, we love Wikipedia", fair-use haters lose one of their key
> arguments... :-)
>
> Stan

Hey, I agree with you here.  Of course, I'd say getting rid of the
fair use images would provide quite a bit of incentive for people to
start asking the copyright holders to work with them.  In fact, it'd
also provide quite a bit of incentive for the copyright holders to
work with Wikipedia.

Anthony


body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> geni, I wish you'd drop the straw-man arguments.  As you know full well,
> those seeking and being denied link exchange are not comparable to
> million-selling authors whose internationally-published works are being
> falsely accused of being vanity printings.
>

True there isn't a template for million selling authors. I wasn't
being entirly serious in that part of the text.

> Complaints about being reverted are not so easily dismissed -- by you or
> me.  The same nasty personalities who are delighted by calling a renowed
> scientist a quack or a best-selling author a hack are just as delighted
> by reverting well-intentioned edits with hateful personal attacks.  So:
> yes, we should have a committee to oversee on-article personal attacks.

Who said anything about personal attacks? For the most part the emails
are along the lines of "my contribution was reverted. Why?".

>  I think we should call it something like ... the "Arbitration
> Committee" or something like that.  I'll be one of the first to
> volunteer to serve on it, and I'll even accept a three-year hitch.  And
> furthermore, I'll bet you that I'll serve one of the longest spans in
> office of any Arbiter.

I can't at short notice think of an arbcom case where a newbie
sucessfuly complained about the behaviour of a slightly more long term
editor.

--
geni


body:
On 1/20/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call
> to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator.

At your service.


subject:
[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal
	to fix it

body:
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
> Your inflammatory statements are only serving to fan the partisan
> flames here. We could be having a rational discussion about ways to
> improve the deletion system so stuff that should be kept gets kept and
> stuff that should be deleted gets deleted

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geni/so_your_article_has_been_nominated_for_deletion

Just needs an introduction before being throw open to the general
community to disscuss.

--
geni


body:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all,
> would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for
> deletion, not less.

I don't think words like "deletionist" are helpful here, really.  But
Jimbo has hit on the core problem: that there is not enough
discussion, not enough thought, put into alternatives to nomination
for deletion.  Our written deletion policy has lots of pious words
that, if followed, would turn a large proportion of our daily deletion
listings into merges and whatnot.

You know if arbcom gets a request, and the person making the request
hasn't bothered with other parts of the dispute resolution procedure,
and hasn't given a good reason for not doing so, the case is rejected.

Let's develop a similar procedure here.  If someone sees a deletion
nomination where deletion could obviously be avoided if a merge or
redirect were to be negotiated, then that person should remove the AfD
tag and start a discussion on the talk page about that alternative
action.  The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those
proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO
ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*.  It should be  for
those proposing that the article, category, article template or other
encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence
that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.


body:
On 1/21/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Let's develop a similar procedure here.  If someone sees a deletion
> nomination where deletion could obviously be avoided if a merge or
> redirect were to be negotiated, then that person should remove the AfD
> tag and start a discussion on the talk page about that alternative
> action.  The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those
> proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO
> ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*.  It should be  for
> those proposing that the article, category, article template or other
> encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence
> that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.

You appear to be asking them to prove a negative. That is generaly
considered to be imposible (outside maths).

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On 1/20/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> Working for Camden Council does not mean your company deserves an
> entry on wikipedia.

Now this is precisely the kind of statement that I find problematic on
Wikipedia.  Camden is a major London borough--the NHS trust and the
British multinational oil company BP, who are also customers who have
used this company's product for major operations involving decisions
on the commitment of hundreds of millions of pounds, are also major
concerns.  That this company produces a product that was entrusted by
all three (and these three chosen at random from a dozen or so) counts
for rather a lot.  It is not to be written off by  facile, thoughtless
statements such as the above.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example

body:
On the CfD, I don't think that many of those engaged in the CfD
realised how useful categories are within the database.  With such
category linking, it is pretty easy to produce comprehensive reports
of living people, the amount of editing their articles get, and so on.
 We could if we decided to make an overnight decision to semiprotect
all such articles, and I for one wouldn't object.  But we could only
do so if first we identified the articles on living people in a manner
that enables them to be located quickly within our rather immense
database.