from_name: Dan Collins

subject: [WikiEN-l] I appeared to be banned from Wikipedia.

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Removing semi-protected tags when the article is still protected doesn't
> sound like it's a useful kind of editing.
> Why would you want to do that?
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 12/30/06, RCTLocoWikiSpam <rctlocomotionwikipeida at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> If they didn't request unblocking i was banned permanently for removing
>> semiportected tags. It's against Wikipedia policy. I'm not spamming
>> anymore.
>>
>> "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking
>> plane!"
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://www.nabble.com/I-appeared-to-be-banned-from-Wikipedia.-tf2897550.html#a8095323
>> Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
forwarding the reply to the user

--
GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 888 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20070104/58b6ab6f/attachment.pgp


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

body:
This has to be the most absurd argument I have ever heard in the history of
Wikipedia. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

People who are offended: Unfortunately, not everyone understands how what
they say may be offensive to others. They mean well, even if it's not
obvious.

People who aren't offended: People -do- get offended when you make allusions
to a government that massacred millions of people. In fact, doing anything
supportive of Nazism in Germany will get you a very long prison sentence.
That's how much they hate it.

If you made comments alluding to Nazism: Please stop. This is Wikipedia, the
free, revolutionary encyclopedia of intelligent people who are awesome and
can work together, and if you get stuck in a debate about Nazis, that says
something about us.

On 1/4/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 1/3/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> > wrote:
> >> "The Cunctator" wrote
> >>
> >>> Who is expressing hate for anyone?
> >> You called someone a 'deletion nazi'? This should have been Game Over
> for
> >> your argument.
> >
> >
> > Oh, come on.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_Nazi
> >
>
> No intehrwebz for you!
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
ASSUMPTION OF BAD FAITH ALERT!

Holy Jimbo I don't think I've ever seen such malice towards a group of
contributors (well, then again, I *do* intentionally avoid dramatic areas).
Just because someone likes deleting things doesn't mean they have a personal
security complex where they must satisfy themselves with the destruction of
other people's work. If you are an inclusionist, how would you like it if
someone said that inclusionists want to see Wikipedia fill up with crap? Or
if you are a mergist, how would you like it if someone said that you want to
see Wikipedia articles be astronomical in size to the point no one can read
them or edit them?

As David Gerard said, "working with people you believe are idiots is NOT
OPTIONAL." If we are going to make this work, we have to work together and
fight the real enemies: ignorance and closed content. We are fighting this
by making a freely-distributable encyclopedia.

On 1/4/07, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Message-ID:
> >       <dfd0b40701030958l119eb62dgd51274d0013cce4a at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> > It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by
> > its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why
> > does it need to be deleted? WHY?
>
> I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.
> Why do these people get so much pleasure from deleting articles
> that are doing nobody any harm and are potentially helping
> someone?  Do they squash ants for fun too?
>
> Zero.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
Oy vey, more factioning!

On 1/4/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/4/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > zero 0000 wrote
> >
> > > I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.
> >
> > More radical incivility.
> >
> > Charles
> >
>
> Should be noted that deletionists are now pro-encyclopedists and
> inclusionists are pro-content
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Removing semi-protected tags when the article is still protected doesn't
sound like it's a useful kind of editing.
Why would you want to do that?

Mgm

On 12/30/06, RCTLocoWikiSpam <rctlocomotionwikipeida at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> If they didn't request unblocking i was banned permanently for removing
> semiportected tags. It's against Wikipedia policy. I'm not spamming
> anymore.
>
> "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking
> plane!"
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/I-appeared-to-be-banned-from-Wikipedia.-tf2897550.html#a8095323
> Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hope sucked out of Wikipedia, experts report

body:
On 04/01/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:

> As for the article, it should be taken with a grain of salt. It is on
> uncyclopedia after all. I liked the "geeks trying to impose a stark
> impersonal monolithic bureaucracy", "deletionists and fun haters of the
> world"...

Keitei wrote it using genuine quotes from the MFDs as much as
possible, and I added a blinder of one.

- d.


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/4/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >I would note that "Game Over" comes from American video game culture
> >
> It's much older than.  It appeared on pinball machines before video
> games ever existed.
>
Hmmm... you're going to have to edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_over then...

How would it appear on a pinball machine? Electronic displays started
appearing on pinball machines in the 1970s (if Wikipedia is to be
trusted), the same era as the introduction of video arcade games.


list: commons-l

from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
Fredrik Josefsson a ?crit :
> I do think that if we want to develop this free stuff concept, our
> software needs to be more user friendly. Wikipedia is getting big, but
> it is still too complicated for ordinary people to do things that
> should be simple, such as uploading files.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, since many many people out there
seem to have very inaccurate ideas of copyright and other issues related
to images. This is not YouTube.

-- DM


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> Yes.  I have an essay somewhere which uses Eric Moussambani as an
> example.  As losing finalist in a single Olympic swimming event we
> would delete the article.

It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.

-Jeff


body:
On 1/4/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has to be the most absurd argument I have ever heard in the history of
> Wikipedia. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
>
> People who are offended: Unfortunately, not everyone understands how what
> they say may be offensive to others. They mean well, even if it's not
> obvious.
>
> People who aren't offended: People -do- get offended when you make allusions
> to a government that massacred millions of people.

Guess we better not talk about the Soviets, Chinese, Americans,
Catholics, Romans, Ottomans, Burmese....

My attitude is that people shouldn't get upset on someone else's
behalf. It's fair to take umbrage if you're being insulted, but you
don't need to jump into a discussion just to turn up the heat.


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google faking semantics

body:
On 04/01/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> So Google has basically created a database of all Wikipedia's infoboxes,
> and is serving up entries from them as search results on its website?
> Does this count as mirroring our content? Are they in compliance with
> whatever rules apply to whatever it is they're doing?
>
> Aside from that, something concerns me here. These snippets are
> displayed right at the top of search pages, above the search results,
> even when the Wikipedia article itself is nowhere near the top search
> result. In other words, anyone who manages to sneak the right value in
> at the critical moment when Google is re-indexing the page can achieve
> an effect similar to a [[Googlebomb]], but even more powerful. How long
> before people start craftily changing infobox labels and values in an
> attempt to abuse this?
>
> *blocks self for WP:BEANS violation*
>

What is wrong with Google manipulating data, they do provide
attribution for it and they are not creating new works, just pulling
facts from old works as-is.

A googlebomb is possible still if you know how to do it and not get
caught. And wikipedia has always known that google can index any
version, even the vandalised ones, so its nothing new from that
aspect.

Peter Ansell


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] 64 bit processor - 32 bit mode OS

body:
Hi,

What mode are the Wikipedia OSs running on for the 64 bit machines? Is it 32
or 64 bit mode? We have some 64 bit processors but our hosting provider
recommends we run the OS in 32-bit mode unless we require a huge amount of
memory - which we don't. Are we missing out on anything by doing this?

Thanks.
Travis


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Game Over (was Thousands of *awful* articles on
	websites)

body:
On 1/4/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Thursday, January 4, 2007, 3:47:10 PM, The wrote:
>
> > How would it appear on a pinball machine? Electronic displays started
> > appearing on pinball machines in the 1970s (if Wikipedia is to be
> > trusted), the same era as the introduction of video arcade games.
>
> But you don't need an electronic display for that: all you need is a
> small lightbulb behind a coloured glass: when the game is over,
> the light bulb lights up.
>
> These "electromechanical" pinball machines have been made from the 1930s
> until the advent of electronics.
>
True enough. Do we have any examples of that existing so we can fix
the [[Game over]] article?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Google faking semantics

body:
On 03/01/07, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> It looks like google is pulling some information from wikipedia in a
> pseudo semantic way,
>

I don't see how this is faking semantics. They are taking semantically
tagged data and answering questions with it. That is as close as AI
will get for a long time to semantics. The "Semantic Mediawiki" does
exactly this, although they do it in a more clunky, hard to use manner
where you enter fact-relationships in-text.

Peter Ansell


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
David Monniaux wrote:
> People have been told to request permission from the web site before
> reusing content. Even though our page say that you can reuse content
> under the terms of <link to GFDL or CC or whatever>, people assume they
> must email those who run the site, that is, the Foundation.
>
I get emails like that too. I just reply with, "sure, you have
permission", and try to reinforce a bit with "just like the license on
the image page says", although I'm sure they stop reading my message
once they see the "you have permission" part. :-)

We do tell people not to rely on WP as their sole source, so it
shouldn't be too surprising if responsible persons want confirmation
about the information on an image page. It's not like it's protected
from vandalism...

Stan


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Inline Wiktionary links

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 02/01/07, Conrad Irwin <conrad.irwin at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>When an obscure term is used in a body of text that has no Wikipedia article
>>associated with it, the author of the article, at the moment, has to include
>>the meaning of the word in the article itself. Would it not make sense to
>>have a way of quickly making links to look up a word in Wiktionary,
>>something like {{define|miscellany}}.
>>
>>
>Different words will be lost on different people. I've always wanted
>some kind of javascript extension/tool where one can right-click a
>word (or hold "D" and left click or something) and a small box will
>open up with a Wiktionary definition of the word... Perhaps this has
>already been written.
>
I can't see this as generally possible.  It may work with more technical
terms that have a single definition, but beyond that many words have
multiple definitions.  Which is most appropriate in a given context is a
matter of judgement.

A reader should, of course, be able to look up any word in Wiktionary.
There should be no need to define the word again in a Wikipedia article
unless it is the subject of the article.

Ec


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
The huge amount of copyright violations on youtube is only one factor.
Per WP:EL we avoid external links to content which would belong inside
an ideal Wikipedia.

Many of the non-copyright violating informative videos should be
inside wikipedia. It is worth out time to get free licensed releases
of this materal so that we can assure that the content will remain
perpetually free for all purposes and that articles will not be
stripped of this useful information by powers outside of our control.

Wikipedia is not a web directory... We didn't get where we are by
simply linking to content elsewhere. Every non-copyright-violating
youtube video is a chance to expand our community of contributors.

On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> A group of editors set off to remove links to YouTube, requiring that
> before they went back in we clarified the copyright status and
> encyclopaedic merit of the links. This met with some resistance. There
> appear to be two camps now, which might be summed up as follows:
>
> * those who believe that YouTube links should go in unless you can
> prove they are violating copyright
>
> * those who believe that YouTube links should stay out unless you can
> prove they are ''not'' infringing copyright
>
> Guess which group I'm in. The argument rages at [[Wikipedia:External
> links/Identifying copyrights in links]], [[Wikipedia talk:External
> links/YouTube]], [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sir Nicholas de
> Mimsy-Porpington]] and various other places. It's been moved out of
> [[WP:EL]]/[[WT:EL]].  Latest from Berberio is this revert:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AExternal_links%2FIdentifying_copyrights_in_links&diff=98267778&oldid=98264236
> with the summary: "Puts too much Burdon. For instance, we can assume
> that the YouTube link on Adam Buxton's article is okay, since it's to
> his own user account on youtube, no need for further licencing
> information."  This case is already covered higher up, since we know
> it was uploaded by the copyright holder, so is not actually relevant
> to the clause under discussion.
>
> So the default-in version is:
> * Does it have a clear statement that the content is hosted with
> permission of the copyright holder or could it be rationally assumed
> to be hosted with permission of the copyright holder? For example, it
> is published with a user account known to be the copyright holders, or
> published on their own website.
>
> and the default-out version is:
> * Does it have a clear statement that the content is hosted with
> permission of the copyright holder or can it be established to be
> hosted with permission of the copyright holder?
>
> The problem I have is that assumptions are not really good enough if
> push comes to shove.  [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
> that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
> violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.  I
> don't think it's excesive to require people to clarify copyright
> before adding, but there is this committed group who are insistent
> that the default should be the other way round. More input required, I
> think.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
> >
> > Should be noted that deletionists are now pro-encyclopedists and
> > inclusionists are pro-content
>
> I can't agree to that definition. "Encyclopaedic" content is simply
> content presented in a particular style. IMO, one can write an article
> on a Pokemon character or a high school in an encyclopaedic manner.
>

Of course you won't agree, unless you're Pro-It. That's the point.

Still, I think "pro-encyclopaedic" is not sloganiferous enough. How about
Pro-Content vs Pro-Quality?

Thoughts BAD, slogans GOOD,
Dan


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Donation of DVDs to Wikimedia Foundation Projects

body:
That's, in part, because the ones that have.drifted into the public
domain really haven't:  The PD movies are PD because their copyright
was not renewed, however most of them contain copyrighted plots, or
copyrighted music which were renewed.

Do something really interesting and you can expect rights holders to
show up with their hands out.

On 1/4/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> > At least with free/open source content you have the option of doing
> > both.  And more.  I'm really curious what will happen with "Steamboat
> > Willy" once it's copyright expires (if it ever does).
> >
>
> Evidence suggests not much since not much has happened to the movies
> that have drifted into the public domain.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Inline Wiktionary links

body:
 Still it should be used sparingly. As Oldak said, different words are lost
on different people and that could easily result in overlinking. Firefox has
multiple lookup extensions that are perfect for things like this. - ~~~~

Mgm

On 1/4/07, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/2/07, Conrad Irwin <conrad.irwin at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> > When an obscure term is used in a body of text that has no Wikipedia
> > article
> > associated with it, the author of the article, at the moment, has to
> > include
> > the meaning of the word in the article itself. Would it not make sense
> to
> > have a way of quickly making links to look up a word in Wiktionary,
> > something like {{define|miscellany}}.
> >
> > Conrad
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> There is a way. Just type [[wikt:ENTRYNAME|]] (the ending pipe is the pipe
> trick, so the "wikt" doesn't show in the text).
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On 1/4/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/01/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > > [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> > > ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> > > infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
> > > that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
> > > violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> > > innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.
>
> > By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
> > webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
> > contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
> > position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
> > Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards may
> > well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.
> > Use common sense please.
>
>
> Indeed. I've had POVpushers remove links claiming "copyvio" when the
> link-remover is working for the organisation that has failed to sue
> over the last nine years of the page's presence because they knew damn
> well they'd lose if they tried.
>
> The question with anything in the external link is: Does it enhance
> encyclopedic value by being one of the few very best and most
> explanatory links on the specific subject of the article on the Web?
> If it's video of the event that's the actual subject, it's relevant
> for example.
>
> For another example, see [[FLV]] - I removed the link to Adobe's Flash
> page (arguably too generic to warrant inclusion in that particular
> article), and added links to two pages reverse-engineering FLV
> (because they're actually informative about the format)

YouTube already aggressively polices copyright violations on their site. I
think it is reasonable policy for us to not try to do their job for them.


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/4/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> At least with free/open source content you have the option of doing
> both.  And more.  I'm really curious what will happen with "Steamboat
> Willy" once it's copyright expires (if it ever does).
>

Evidence suggests not much since not much has happened to the movies
that have drifted into the public domain.

--
geni


body:
geni wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>At least with free/open source content you have the option of doing
>>both.  And more.  I'm really curious what will happen with "Steamboat
>>Willy" once it's copyright expires (if it ever does).
>>
>>
>Evidence suggests not much since not much has happened to the movies
>that have drifted into the public domain.
>
But then those movies weren't so interesting to the cats that want to
get a hold of _that_ mouse. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Our own expirence shows this to be false. Go to youtube search and
punch in some popular music.. Try "stairway to heaven" for example.

The youtube upload page makes it quite clear that they are purely
reactionary. They don't even bother to forbid folks from uploading
copyright violations. Rather, they explain how they conform with the
dmca takedown process.

On 1/4/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 04/01/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > > On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> > > > [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> > > > ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> > > > infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
> > > > that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
> > > > violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> > > > innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.
> >
> > > By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
> > > webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
> > > contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
> > > position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
> > > Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards may
> > > well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.
> > > Use common sense please.
> >
> >
> > Indeed. I've had POVpushers remove links claiming "copyvio" when the
> > link-remover is working for the organisation that has failed to sue
> > over the last nine years of the page's presence because they knew damn
> > well they'd lose if they tried.
> >
> > The question with anything in the external link is: Does it enhance
> > encyclopedic value by being one of the few very best and most
> > explanatory links on the specific subject of the article on the Web?
> > If it's video of the event that's the actual subject, it's relevant
> > for example.
> >
> > For another example, see [[FLV]] - I removed the link to Adobe's Flash
> > page (arguably too generic to warrant inclusion in that particular
> > article), and added links to two pages reverse-engineering FLV
> > (because they're actually informative about the format)
>
>
> YouTube already aggressively polices copyright violations on their site. I
> think it is reasonable policy for us to not try to do their job for them.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
A group of editors set off to remove links to YouTube, requiring that
before they went back in we clarified the copyright status and
encyclopaedic merit of the links. This met with some resistance. There
appear to be two camps now, which might be summed up as follows:

* those who believe that YouTube links should go in unless you can
prove they are violating copyright

* those who believe that YouTube links should stay out unless you can
prove they are ''not'' infringing copyright

Guess which group I'm in. The argument rages at [[Wikipedia:External
links/Identifying copyrights in links]], [[Wikipedia talk:External
links/YouTube]], [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sir Nicholas de
Mimsy-Porpington]] and various other places. It's been moved out of
[[WP:EL]]/[[WT:EL]].  Latest from Berberio is this revert:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AExternal_links%2FIdentifying_copyrights_in_links&diff=98267778&oldid=98264236
with the summary: "Puts too much Burdon. For instance, we can assume
that the YouTube link on Adam Buxton's article is okay, since it's to
his own user account on youtube, no need for further licencing
information."  This case is already covered higher up, since we know
it was uploaded by the copyright holder, so is not actually relevant
to the clause under discussion.

So the default-in version is:
* Does it have a clear statement that the content is hosted with
permission of the copyright holder or could it be rationally assumed
to be hosted with permission of the copyright holder? For example, it
is published with a user account known to be the copyright holders, or
published on their own website.

and the default-out version is:
* Does it have a clear statement that the content is hosted with
permission of the copyright holder or can it be established to be
hosted with permission of the copyright holder?

The problem I have is that assumptions are not really good enough if
push comes to shove.  [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.  I
don't think it's excesive to require people to clarify copyright
before adding, but there is this committed group who are insistent
that the default should be the other way round. More input required, I
think.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
I'm not sure if this got brought up on the mailing list already, but I'd
like to see some discussion on it anyway.

So the Canadian government had a cabinet shuffle today, and just like that,
twenty pages became outdated. About ten articles that said something along
the lines of "the current minister is ..." needed to be changed, and
infoboxes and succession boxes also needed to be updated. This kind of thing
happens once every year or so (sometimes more often, sometimes less often),
so is it at all possible to limit the amount of time Wikipedia spends in the
present tense? Would it be difficult to use phrases like "as of 2007" more
often?

Obviously, not all present tense should be reverted. Something along the
lines of "zoology is the biological discipline which involves the study of
non-human animals" is obviously a definition, not a reference to anything
temporal. But I'll bet anybody that within four or five years, all of those
cabinet pages will be outdated in their present form again. Same goes for,
say, sports records. "Records are made to be broken", as the saying goes.

Basically, my issue is with pages that contain statements that may be
*directly* false in the future. (Omission of facts that may be true in the
future is, of course, completely expected.) So instead of "Person X is the
CEO of ABC Company, Inc.", or even "as of 2006, Person X is the CEO of ABC
Company, Inc.", we'd write instead, "as of 2006, Person X was the CEO of ABC
Company, Inc." Even if X is no longer the CEO of ABC sometime down the road,
that statement -- as of 2006, he WAS the CEO -- is still true. I was
thinking something along the lines of a template saying "this article
contains facts that may not be true in the future", but any thoughts?

--
theProject


from_name: Gatto Nero

subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues

body:
2007/1/3, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net>:

> > I'm sorry, 'cause of language differences maybe I've not understood:
> > are you saying that "lack of resources" is one of the reasons why are
> > we collecting money?
>
> Yes.
>
> > This means, "people needs to be payed"? (I'm asking, 'cause I'm not
> > sure, that's not an accusation)
>
> See "human and technical" above. There's a need for servers, and there's
> a need to hire staff to do the things that volunteers can't, won't, or
> aren't trained to do.

Oh My God.
Question: who is *not* going to be payed?
Only editors? (The ones that made wiki so big)

>
> > In the recent past, I remember a user answering to me and other
> > italians "Communities doesn't matter. Funding does. Capisce?".
> > How does this phrase should be interpreted?
> > Let's think about a new user who's starting to communicate with the
> > Foundation, and he's been answered in this way.
> > Obviously, I don't think this is an isolated case.
>
> I don't know who said it or how it was intended to be interpreted. At
> face value, it's certainly not an appropriate expression of the
> Foundation's position. However, I'm surprised that you would take a
> random comment like this, that sounds like it was made on IRC, as an
> authoritative statement. A "new user" who wants to "communicate with the
> Foundation" is looking in entirely the wrong place there, and I'm not
> sure how a truly new user would receive such an answer (as opposed to
> someone used to getting information passed by word of mouth in a chat
> room). As I mentioned with regard to OTRS, good customer service skills
> are expected, and we do work with new volunteers so they understand not
> to give such inappropriate responses.

I'll respond to this in another mail, cause it's a little more
complicated than how you draw it.

> ...if
> you've been subscribed to this list, and truly have no memory of reading
> communications about the Foundation's issues, I really can't help you
> with that.

Maybe you can't help me, but you should be worried about it.
"Receiving" is one of the most important element of the communication.
It *is* the most important element.
A communication which's not received, is a communication which has
failed. If theres' no receveing, there's no communication. There's one
of the first things learned by a communicator.
What you should do is wondering "Why has he not memories of CommComm
comunication at all?"

> Ideas are cheap compared to action.

Oh, ok. I'm cheap.

Speaking seriously: it's funny.
I made a long intervention explaining why perception is important in
communication (and that's why we should not have had advertising on
wiki), but noone seemed to have read it.
Communication, withous receveing.


subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues


body:
Robth wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
>>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
>>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>>>
>> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
>>
>
> Professionally published dictionaries use those kind of sites as
> primary sources (examples of contemporary usages) in academic research
> about the usage of the English language.  In other words, exactly the
> sort of thing we [[WP:OR|don't do]].
>
Indeed, the OED folks consider original research to be part of their
mission.

Ironically, they've long had a bit of wiki-ness about them, in that most
of their examples are selected from contributors sending in snippets.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
theProject wrote:
> So the Canadian government had a cabinet shuffle today, and just like that,
> twenty pages became outdated. About ten articles that said something along
> the lines of "the current minister is ..." needed to be changed, and
> infoboxes and succession boxes also needed to be updated. This kind of thing
> happens once every year or so (sometimes more often, sometimes less often),
> so is it at all possible to limit the amount of time Wikipedia spends in the
> present tense? Would it be difficult to use phrases like "as of 2007" more
> often?
>
You mean everybody isn't doing that already?

1/2 :-)

Stan


subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
Whomever uploaded is usually the author?
On commons? What data is this claim based on?

I wish it were true but I'm not sure that it is...

On 12/30/06, bawolff <bawolff+wn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why not just edit stuff in the [[mediawiki:*]] namespace to make the
> uploader field more prominent in the file history? Whomever uploaded
> it is usually the author, and you don't need users to do the "right
> thing" its automatic.
>
> -bawolff
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
> > Yes.  I have an essay somewhere which uses Eric Moussambani as an
> > example.  As losing finalist in a single Olympic swimming event we
> > would delete the article.

> It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.

Minus the context, this particular one fails the "but I coulda done that" test.
In fact if someone just posted something like "Olympic swimmer who did the 100m
in 1:53" I'd probably think it was a hoax.

Dan


body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Isn't that the very definition of a primary source.  Something we seem
> loathe to allow.  We can't state that "these words were used in this
> document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this
> web address on this date.  Sorry, but this is the same thing as
> providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.  The OED
> make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources
> to provide the citation.
>
The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional
judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their
assertions. For instance, if you look closely, you'll see that they're
very careful about claiming to know when a first usage occurred. I don't
know how OED does business in the modern age, but I would expect they're
screenshotting web pages and keeping them on file permanently, just as
they once did for the scraps of paper that contributors sent in.

WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources; very few
amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or
how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass
ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are
unaware of how much they don't know.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
How about we act as if it's true?

On 1/4/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Our own expirence shows this to be false. Go to youtube search and
> punch in some popular music.. Try "stairway to heaven" for example.
>
> The youtube upload page makes it quite clear that they are purely
> reactionary. They don't even bother to forbid folks from uploading
> copyright violations. Rather, they explain how they conform with the
> dmca takedown process.
>
>
>
>
> On 1/4/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/4/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 04/01/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > > > On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > > [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> > > > > ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> > > > > infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad).
> Given
> > > > > that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow*
> that
> > > > > violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> > > > > innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.
> > >
> > > > By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
> > > > webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
> > > > contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
> > > > position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
> > > > Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards
> may
> > > > well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.
> > > > Use common sense please.
> > >
> > >
> > > Indeed. I've had POVpushers remove links claiming "copyvio" when the
> > > link-remover is working for the organisation that has failed to sue
> > > over the last nine years of the page's presence because they knew damn
> > > well they'd lose if they tried.
> > >
> > > The question with anything in the external link is: Does it enhance
> > > encyclopedic value by being one of the few very best and most
> > > explanatory links on the specific subject of the article on the Web?
> > > If it's video of the event that's the actual subject, it's relevant
> > > for example.
> > >
> > > For another example, see [[FLV]] - I removed the link to Adobe's Flash
> > > page (arguably too generic to warrant inclusion in that particular
> > > article), and added links to two pages reverse-engineering FLV
> > > (because they're actually informative about the format)
> >
> >
> > YouTube already aggressively polices copyright violations on their site.
> I
> > think it is reasonable policy for us to not try to do their job for
> them.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote

> Tough shit.  The rest of us don't have to modify our behavior to satisfy the
> irrational and capricious preferences of a few uptight jackasses.

See about that.

> > Furthermore Godwin's Law applies: call someone a Nazi, you LOSE the
> > argument.
>
> What a wonderful example of your misundertanding of Godwin's law.
>
> Godwin's law is, essentially: "As the length of an argument on
> $ELECTRONICCOMMUNICATIONSMEDIUM continues, the probability of a comparison
> involving Nazi Germany approaches one."
>
> That's not the exact formulation, of course, but that's the gist of it.
> Nothing about "losing" the argument.  Nor should there be.
>
> Why?
>
> Because there are times when comparisons with Nazi Germany are quite apt--such
> as in the case you're having a shitfit about.

Right. So it really wasn't a Seinfeld allusion at all. It was suggesting that enforcement of policy on website articles is actually donning jackboots.

The reason that Godwin's Law has such a corollary (with Gresham's Law as applied to threaded discussion, which I thought everyone takes as read) is that once the Nazi comparison is made, the rational case for anything goes straight out the window. Whose fault? Quite obvious.
> > I really don't think I'm the one who is maturity-challenged here.

> You're the one getting upset about stuff that doesn't matter...

Actually putting people in a pillory rather than explaining why you disagree with them matters a great deal. You are reading into my comments that "I'm upset". What I think, and am prepared to make an issue of, is the radical lack of civility being shown, to others rather than to me.

Charles

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

references:
<20070104112249.MVMR17393.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<f80608430701040331l291c2c91i20f66dc54d5a0f16@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050701040357g6b1ca93che1c833406449b0a1@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0701040432m196df6eak73d11e1580bdba25@mail.gmail.com>
	<snvpp2lr48lc39otjoj1iouq140n220ghc@4ax.com>
	<1760.69.21.252.114.1167922236.squirrel@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<h3dqp25rhaavhg0lceojt72c1jnla7fk5n@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:50:36 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>>It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.
>
> Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?

Yes.  Or something.

-Jeff


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright in quoting wikipedia contents?

body:
On Jan 4, 2007, at 9:27, howard chen wrote:

> We want to quote some contents of a specific term from the wikipedia,
> and will put a full link to wikipedia page.
>
> I want to ask:
>
> 1. Are there any limit on the words that we can quote?
> 2. Any specical things we need to take care of?
>
> Thanks.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia for
information on citing as it applies to academic papers and such.
However, Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL; if you want to repost
the entire article, you can, as long as you link to a copy of the
GFDL and the history page of the article in question (see http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Copyrights#Reusers'_rights_and_obligations for more
information that is less prone to error than I am :]).

If you're just posting a few sentences, linking to the Wikipedia
article is fine, afaik. Hope that helps.

--Keitei


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Bug 8476] make it more obvious that edit failed

body:
b> robchur says
b> It's bright, bold red. If your users need something blinking and
b> pink, then customise the system message yourself; that's what the
b> MediaWiki namespace is for.

Ah ha, you are probably depending on class='previewnote'.
Well I'll have you know that it is not every user who download
the complete set of pages and images that accompanies every article.

Also depending on color violates the very basics of Accessibility 101.

Therefore please test that it grabs the users attention even when seen
with
$ w3m -dump

The warning was only 2 1/2 lines out of 232 for the page in question.

Maybe toss in some lines of ASCII "****"

Or maybe have each rendered line prefixed with a ! or something, all
throughout the article...

Something to make the whole first screen look different at least.

OK, over and out.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
zero 0000 wrote

> I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.

More radical incivility.

Charles

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Indeed. I've had POVpushers remove links claiming "copyvio" when the
>link-remover is working for the organisation that has failed to sue
>over the last nine years of the page's presence because they knew damn
>well they'd lose if they tried.
>
If it has been there for nine years a copyright infringement action
could fail on the sole basis of statutory limitation periods being
exhausted.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 1/4/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> zero 0000 wrote
>
> > I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.
>
> More radical incivility.
>
> Charles
>

Should be noted that deletionists are now pro-encyclopedists and
inclusionists are pro-content

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
On 1/4/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> theProject wrote:
> > So the Canadian government had a cabinet shuffle today, and just like
> that,
> > twenty pages became outdated. About ten articles that said something
> along
> > the lines of "the current minister is ..." needed to be changed, and
> > infoboxes and succession boxes also needed to be updated. This kind of
> thing
> > happens once every year or so (sometimes more often, sometimes less
> often),
> > so is it at all possible to limit the amount of time Wikipedia spends in
> the
> > present tense? Would it be difficult to use phrases like "as of 2007"
> more
> > often?
> >
> You mean everybody isn't doing that already?
>
> 1/2 :-)
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Not really, no. Just looking through some of our featured articles, some
things jump out at me immediately. For example, from [[Hero of Ukraine]]:
"Since the technical scientist
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borys_Paton>Borys Paton first received
the title in 1998, 170 people have been awarded
the title." One also sees phrases like "very recently" and "in recent years
..." used in [[Quantum computer]] and [[Swastika]].

I recognize some there need to be some exceptions, of course. All articles
on living people start with "... is", which will become outdated upon the
death of the individual. That's to be expected, and it'd be extremely
awkward to start every single article on a living person with "as of 2007".
But we should minimize the amount of potentially outdated statements as much
as possible. As it stands now, when I read "only three people have performed
such and such an accomplishment", I immediately think, "as of when?"

On a related note: our fictional writing is often written in past tense,
when it should be written in present tense. *sigh*...

--
theProject


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:

>On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
>>>link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
>>>on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.
>>>
>>>
>>Can you give some examples of copyvios that have been linked to /
>>should be removed?
>>
>>
>Sure.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keep_it_to_Yourself_%28single%29&diff=prev&oldid=87401447
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luther_Blissett_%28footballer%29&diff=prev&oldid=87403693
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Snowman_%28album%29&diff=prev&oldid=87398157
>
>and many more.
>
One of the tests for determining whether there is contributory
infringement mentined in Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse
Ministry
<http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce/copyright/release10/IntRes.html>,
the case referenced in [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] is whether there is a
reasonable likelihood that the site hosting the material will be found
in violation.  In that case the hosts included a whole handbook, and
there is a likelihood that that alone would fail the proportion of
material used test for fair use.  The fair use argument is available to
YouTube's uploaders, and fair use is not a copyright infringement.  It
is not up to us to go through the full fair use rationale because we are
not hosting the material.

Ec


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 04/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > zero 0000 wrote
> >
> > > I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.
> >
> > More radical incivility.
> >
> > Charles
> >
>
> Should be noted that deletionists are now pro-encyclopedists and
> inclusionists are pro-content

I can't agree to that definition. "Encyclopaedic" content is simply
content presented in a particular style. IMO, one can write an article
on a Pokemon character or a high school in an encyclopaedic manner.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Steve Block wrote:
>>
>>> Isn't that the very definition of a primary source.  Something we seem
>>> loathe to allow.  We can't state that "these words were used in this
>>> document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this
>>> web address on this date.  Sorry, but this is the same thing as
>>> providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.  The OED
>>> make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources
>>> to provide the citation.
>>>
>>>
>> The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional
>> judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their
>> assertions.
>>
>
> I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without
> worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as
> long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable
> it didn't matter.
>
Well then, how do you verify? How do you know a primary source isn't
flat-out lying? Experts write whole monographs on the massive extent of
falsification and error in the primary sources for Roman history, for
instance; other experts then use that analysis in constructing a
plausible narrative of what happened. Our role is as glorified
stenographers for all these experts; we summarize their results and
withhold judgement on which version is "correct".
>> WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources;
>>
>
> No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want.  We
> have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the
> community may not agree.
>
That's why I didn't say "never use primaries"; I've used them myself.
But they are tricky to use correctly, and if a large fraction of the
community doesn't have a clue about scholarship, I'm not going to take
that as a reason to give up and let WP turn into everything2 or fark or
whatever. If a WP editor is opposed to the idea of doing scholarship,
they should find a different website more amenable to their tastes;
there are lots of popular wikis to choose from these days.
>   very few
>
>> amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or
>> how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass
>> ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are
>> unaware of how much they don't know.
>>
>
> No, that applies to Wikipedia across the board.  Not many people know on
> what topic to start an encyclopedic article, if we look at the speedy
> category.  That doesn't stop us creating new articles.  And that's
> ignoring the logical flaw in your argument; that the people telling us
> we can't use primary sources may actually be the wikipedians who are
> "unaware of how much they don't know". Swings and roundabouts.  We used
> to judge info on a case by case basis.  Now we have hoops we can all
> jump through and strange and varying criteria we have to meet.  Welcome
> to Wikipedia, not a bureaucracy in name only.
>
I've been working on WP steadily for almost four years now, and if you
look at my oldest edits, you'll see many of them (though not all!)
including reputable secondary sources, and I did that because I read it
on a policy page. So this isn't some kind of new thing.

If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really
need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be
involved with.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

> It would never come to trial, but it seems that internet copyright is
>
>a very grey area at the moment. P2P technologies have been unfairly
>blamed (and tried) for some of the uses they are put to. It has become
>possible to be tried for facilitating copyright violation, rather than
>committing it. In theory, we could be "facilitating copyright
>violation", or supporting it, in the courts eyes, by linking to
>copyvio YouTube videos.
>
I certainly agree that it would never come to trial, and that it is a
very grey area.  The case that we reference sought nothing more than a
preliminary injunction.  There was a real case against a real
infringer.  If the matter ever came up regarding any of our YouTube
video links, I'm sure that we would have plenty of opportunity to react
before anyone stsarted a court action.  If YouTube itself took down the
video, we would just be left with a dead link.

Our actions should be based on something stronger than being merely
"possible" or "in theory".

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OG

body:
Some of the media manager apps (like amrok under Linux) will even
autoconvert formats for files transfered to players.  There are lots
of good solutions for this.

As far as MP3 patents go.. Not only does rca/tomson have patents in
the US but in Germany as well (mostly the subband coding patents are
the interesting ones). Typical terms require per download fees, so
having a licensed encoder isn't enough.

It's all carefully managed in a way to keep the pain threshold for
free format (Ogg/Vorbis) adoption just slightly higher than the fees.
Such is life.

On 1/4/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's plenty of conversion software out there that allows you to
> make the conversion for such files yourself. Have you googled it?
>
> Mgm
>
> On 1/4/07, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can
> learn
> > stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my
> MP3
> > player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further,
> > MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free
> players:
> >
> >   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011514.html
> >
> > Our policy is motivated correctly: Wikipedia needs to be free, and that
> > includes the technology which is required to access it.
> >
> > However, is there any problem with having a rule along the lines of: "MP3
> > format can be used by Wikipedia only in those cases where the same
> material is
> > also available in Ogg in equal or better quality"? That way, Wikipedia
> audio
> > content can always be read by legal free players AND by devices which do
> not,
> > and maybe cannot, support Ogg.
> >
> > (As usual, feel free to point me to wherever this has been beaten to death
> > already, if that's the case)
> >
> > -- Matt
> >
> > Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
> > Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
> >
> > Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
theProject wrote:
> [...]
>  Just looking through some of our featured articles, some
> things jump out at me immediately. For example, from [[Hero of Ukraine]]:
> "Since the technical scientist
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borys_Paton>Borys Paton first received
> the title in 1998, 170 people have been awarded
> the title." One also sees phrases like "very recently" and "in recent years
> ..." used in [[Quantum computer]] and [[Swastika]].
>
You didn't notice the smiley face? Writing in the present tense as if
nothing will ever change is a little bit of sloppiness that everybody is
guilty of sooner or later. We've long had a style page somewhere that
talks about all this. Feel free to fix any you see, dunno if there's any
way to automate detection and/or improvement.

I note that we have some distinguished company, in that many of the 1911
EB articles do the same thing; a number of times I fixed up that kind of
wording as part of importing the old article.

Stan


from_name: Robth

body:
On 1/4/07, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>
> > Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
> > credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
> > sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>
> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.

Professionally published dictionaries use those kind of sites as
primary sources (examples of contemporary usages) in academic research
about the usage of the English language.  In other words, exactly the
sort of thing we [[WP:OR|don't do]].

--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
On 1/4/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> You didn't notice the smiley face?
>

Sorry. I saw the tongue-in-cheek a bit, but I guess I didn't play along as
well as I would have liked. :-)

I brought this up on the list because I'm thinking something along the lines
of a template much like {{fact}} or {{cn}}. You know, "blah blah blah blah
blah [may become outdated]." This would be distinct from [update needed], in
that this tag would pick on style, while [update needed] just picks on time.

--
theProject


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 16:07:43 +0100, "Erik Moeller" <erik at wikimedia.org>
>wrote:
>
>
>>By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
>>webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
>>contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
>>position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
>>Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards may
>>well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.
>>Use common sense please.
>>
>>
>I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
>link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
>on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.  What I'm proposing is
>that we don't ignore the copyright status of YouTube links, since a
>lot of them are copyright violations and that could get us in trouble.
>As always I advocate a Clue-based approach, but some people seem to
>want to legislate anti-Clue.  Jjay's version was best: *do not link to
>material that violates copyright*.  Neat but not gaudy.
>
A policy that presumes material to be an infringement is certainly
"anti-Clue".  Imposing Wikipedia's rules about a fair use rationale on
YouTube pages is cluelessly ignoring common sense. Nobody is arguing
that we should ignore the copyright status of YouTube.  Some may indeed
be copyright violations, but you don't even offer any evidence to show
which proportion of them are, and we don't have the staff or resources
to properly investigate a single one of those.

To say "do not link to material that violates copyright" is fine if you
_know_ that it violates copyright.  Onw should not extrapolate from that
to any page which is speculated to be a copyvio.  Doing that would be
utterly absurd and clueless.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Our own expirence shows this to be false. Go to youtube search and
>punch in some popular music.. Try "stairway to heaven" for example.
>
>The youtube upload page makes it quite clear that they are purely
>reactionary. They don't even bother to forbid folks from uploading
>copyright violations. Rather, they explain how they conform with the
>dmca takedown process.
>
That seems very sane of them.  If they comply with that process on
anything we link we will be left with a dead link.

Ec


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

references:
<i3mpp25ifn8mp58s02diamfnioboc7ita0@4ax.com>
	<b80736c80701040707xcbe34edn448f150eb237b1ea@mail.gmail.com>
	<6tcqp2lh0pmj4b2t2gfu3en878p5psuu09@4ax.com>
	<b80736c80701040937n7f67eda4nb3841843f086d05b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
> > link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
> > on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.
>
> Can you give some examples of copyvios that have been linked to /
> should be removed?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keep_it_to_Yourself_%28single%29&diff=prev&oldid=87401447

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luther_Blissett_%28footballer%29&diff=prev&oldid=87403693

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Snowman_%28album%29&diff=prev&oldid=87398157

and many more.


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>The huge amount of copyright violations on youtube is only one factor.
>Per WP:EL we avoid external links to content which would belong inside
>an ideal Wikipedia.
>
Is this the Borg theory of Wikipedia?  "You will be assimilated."  I'm
sure we would receive complaints about less than notable details that
appear on some of these sites.  These are perfectly respectable
supplementary sources.  Some mega-corporations do like to buy out
upstart competitors to restrict competition.  Being a mega-player in the
information carries some major ethical responsibilities that we have yet
to seriously explore.  .Ethics are not the equivalent to laws and rules,
but rather the philosophical underpinnings to those laws and rules.

>Many of the non-copyright violating informative videos should be
>inside wikipedia. It is worth out time to get free licensed releases
>of this materal so that we can assure that the content will remain
>perpetually free for all purposes and that articles will not be
>stripped of this useful information by powers outside of our control.
>
We are not alone.  We can and must also rely on others to do some of
that task. Keeping it free is only part of the task; another important
one is making it free.  I commend those who avoid pusilanimity, and take
the risks necessary to make it free.

>Wikipedia is not a web directory... We didn't get where we are by
>simply linking to content elsewhere. Every non-copyright-violating
>youtube video is a chance to expand our community of contributors.
>
:-D

Ec


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:50:36 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> >It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any
> Olympian.
>
> Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?
>
> Guy (JzG)

To my knowledge, no Olympic athlete's article has been deleted via AfD.  And
there have been some attempts, on some of the more obscure Olympians.  See WP:AFD/Lecomte,
WP:AFD/Albert
Baumann, and WP:AFD/Christine
Robinson as a few examples of what happens when articles about Olympians get
nominated for deletion.

Jonel


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>The problem I have is that assumptions are not really good enough if
>push comes to shove.
>
And where has push come to shove?

>[[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
>''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
>infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad).
>
"Makes us look bad" is a purely subjective determination.

"Knowingly" is a tough standard to establish.  It needs to be proved.
For most of the YouTube material we have no way of "knowing" whether it
is a copyvio or not.  This is why the DMCA process requires that a
claimant state his connection with the material.  A stranger has no
personal knowledge of the situation, and has no right to start a legal
action.  Maybe the real owner just doesn't care enough about copyrights
to even answer letters of request.  Maybe the permission is implicit in
his failure to take action.

>Given
>that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
>violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
>innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.  I
>don't think it's excesive to require people to clarify copyright
>before adding, but there is this committed group who are insistent
>that the default should be the other way round. More input required, I
>think.
>
It is not logical to argue that because many YouTube videos are copyvios
some specific video must be a copyvio.  If many are copyvios then many
others are not.  Arguing that something is likely is not the same as
arguing that it is.

Although I have no problem looking the other way in many circumstances,
it's not even relevant here.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 13:32:13 +0100, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but take
>for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest sailor to
>cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
>because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to cross
>the Atlantic". Clearly that's crystal-ballery, but a mere Google search
>would've shown he already finished the trip at the time and that there was
>plenty of news articles to use as sources.

Yes.  I have an essay somewhere which uses Eric Moussambani as an
example.  As losing finalist in a single Olympic swimming event we
would delete the article.  As "Eric the Eel" it's an unambiguous keep.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
There's nothing wrong with deleting articles, as long as attempts have been
made to clean them up, or solve their problem some other way. A lot of
articles that are nominated for deletion can be rescued by renaming, merging
or simply adding a line to claim notability.

I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but take
for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest sailor to
cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to cross
the Atlantic". Clearly that's crystal-ballery, but a mere Google search
would've shown he already finished the trip at the time and that there was
plenty of news articles to use as sources.

I'd like to see people do more research on their nominations and give more
than just two words in their nomination reasoning. Sometimes I believe
nominators are rushing their nomination.

Mgm

On 1/4/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/4/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> > <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > > zero 0000 wrote
> > >
> > > > I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.
> > >
> > > More radical incivility.
> > >
> > > Charles
> > >
> >
> > Should be noted that deletionists are now pro-encyclopedists and
> > inclusionists are pro-content
>
> I can't agree to that definition. "Encyclopaedic" content is simply
> content presented in a particular style. IMO, one can write an article
> on a Pokemon character or a high school in an encyclopaedic manner.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
Thursday, January 4, 2007, 1:22:49 PM, charles wrote:

> zero 0000 wrote

>> I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.

> More radical incivility.

Actually, according to a New York Times article, incivility is
becoming one of the characteristic features of Web 2.0:

(I think this link was posted already on this list):

<<
As a Web 2.0 site or a blog becomes more popular, a growing percentage
of its reader contributions devolve into vitriol, backstabbing and
name-calling (not to mention Neanderthal spelling and grammar).

Participants address each other as "idiot" and "moron" (and worse)
the way correspondents of old might have used "sir" or "madam."
>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/weekinreview/31pogue.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>There's nothing wrong with deleting articles, as long as attempts have been
>made to clean them up, or solve their problem some other way. A lot of
>articles that are nominated for deletion can be rescued by renaming, merging
>or simply adding a line to claim notability.
>
Observing that would cut down the arguing.

>I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but take
>for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest sailor to
>cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
>because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to cross
>the Atlantic".
>
The youngest verifiable person to cross the Atlantic was probably a baby
during early colonial days. ;-)

Ec


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

references:
<20070104112249.MVMR17393.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<f80608430701040331l291c2c91i20f66dc54d5a0f16@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050701040357g6b1ca93che1c833406449b0a1@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0701040432m196df6eak73d11e1580bdba25@mail.gmail.com>
	<snvpp2lr48lc39otjoj1iouq140n220ghc@4ax.com>
	<1760.69.21.252.114.1167922236.squirrel@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<h3dqp25rhaavhg0lceojt72c1jnla7fk5n@4ax.com>
	<a4359dff0701040915h76e4c8dekf5140baa0fa8f043@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 1/4/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any
> Olympian.
> >
> > Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?
>
> This is getting a little off topic, but I'll contribute anyway. Anyone
> that qualifies for the olympics is notable for that reason alone. The
> problem with this particular case is that he didn't qualify, he got in
> on a wildcard. Basically, he reached the olympics by luck - you can't
> be notable simply by being lucky.

Sure you can! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_McNamara

However, it is a fairly unique case
> and got lots of press coverage, so it's notable for that reason even
> if he isn't notable for simply being an Olympian.
>
> A similar situation - a Formula One racing driver that is always at
> the back of the field. He's not notable within F1, but he's very
> notable within racing in general, as he's reached the top competition.
> Reaching F1 (and similarly the olympics) is a major achievement, even
> if you lose.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> How do we know reliable sources aren't lying.  Every newspaper and
> source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the
> 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that
> mathematically won the cup.  Monty's story simply made better press.  If
> we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct,
> why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying.
>   Obviously some judgement is at play.
>
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your
example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in
reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as
good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review
spread over multiple years.
>> If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really
>> need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be
>> involved with.
>>
>
> Maybe you want to check my edit history before you start chucking such
> accusations about.  If you want to make the apology now I'll accept it
> in good grace.  Just because I happen to disagree with you it doesn't
> mean you get to impugn my edits, my contributions or my considerations
> of Wikipedia.  Get off the soap box.  My first edit was
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helen_Hoyt&diff=prev&oldid=12263884
> a new article written from scratch and referenced.  I have a static ip
> before anyone pulls that one too.
>
Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming
from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use
rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem
of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy
sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius
Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt
the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death
Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single
unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem
("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your
references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.

I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's
what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of
information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're
inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a
different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a
heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an
expert to do some original research and then publish the findings -
which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.

Stan


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 04/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:50:36 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond" wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.
>>>
>>>
>>Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?
>>
>>
>Being an Olympian, whether they won or lost, is reason enough to have
>a Wikipedia article. Olympians represent some of the best athletes in
>a particular country at a particular time. If that is not "notability"
>[spit], what is?
>
Some losers, like British ski-jumper Eddie the Eagle are especially
memorable.

Ec


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 1/4/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only
> example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince
> myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page)
> that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet
> doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of
> articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the
> internet.

How inaccurate the online sources are depends on the subject matter,
however.  Generally internet sources are not much worse than the
popular press when it comes to accuracy; such an article,
pre-Internet, would likely pick up the same kind of errors from the
popular press if they were used as the source.

For some subject areas, the academic works are published online and
available.  In others, there are no academic works to use, and
sometimes the most authoritative works are online.

-Matt


list: textbook-l

from_name: anthere9 at yahoo.com

subject: [Textbook-l] (no subject)


body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

> My attitude is that people shouldn't get upset on someone else's
> behalf. It's fair to take umbrage if you're being insulted, but you
> don't need to jump into a discussion just to turn up the heat.

I think it is entirely fine to comment strongly on a lack of civility, as a third party. I believe that carries more weight.

I think that the comment under question has been read by some on this list as a declaration of open season on 'deletionists', with a unsubtle definition as those who read the WP policies on deletion as applying to WP.

Charles

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


body:
On 1/3/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Robth wrote:
>
> >Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading
> >Wikipedia.  If we're going to relax our content standards
> >substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they
> >learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
> >
> Do you have any evidence for that theory?  Those who are interested only
> in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the
> flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia.  We also
> have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting
> standards for their area of interest.
>
> Ec
>

It's a hard theory to provide specific evidence for, seeing as it does
involve trying to get inside people's heads, which is all but
impossible on the internet.  What I do think we can reasonably state,
though, is as follows:

1. People learn more about how to write Wikipedia from reading
articles than they do from reading style guides.  I know this has been
the case with me, and I haven't met anyone with whom it isn't.  We
have an ungodly amount of guideline material relating to what articles
should look like, and anyone who attempted to read it all before
sitting down to begin writing for Wikipedia would get bored and give
up before they ever started typing.  Style guidelines are all well and
good, but we have to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, the
drive-by contributors who account for most of our material are, in the
best case scenario, going to write something that looks like other
articles they have read on Wikipedia.  The better the average article
is, the better the average passer-by contribution is likely to be.
Think how great it would be if just 1 out of every 10 college kids who
make a drive-by contribution to Wikipedia went and got a book from the
library, checked their facts, and cited their sources when they wrote.
 That isn't impossible, but it would require that our across-the-board
quality be high enough that getting the book would seem like the
natural way to contribute to Wikipedia.  Quality begets quality.

2. You can't quarantine topics from each other.  Now I'm not arguing
that people are going to read poorly sourced webcomic articles and
then immediately go write articles on medieval Scandinavian literature
sourced from the same blogs.  You refer to people who are "only
interested in serious topics", but people do read and write about more
than one topic apiece on Wikipedia.  And there is a startling amount
of really shitty content about serious academic topics on the web,
waiting for people who have learned to look to google for their
sources to come snap it up.  I don't use web sources when I'm writing,
but every now and then I google the topic I'm working on and am blown
away by the sheer quantity of incorrect information there is out
there.  If people observe that "Some Internet Guy said it" is accepted
as a reasonable source for large portions of our site, they're going
to go look and see what Some Internet Guy has to say about medieval
Scandinavian literature when they decide to help out Wikipedia by
writing an article about this cool book they just heard about.  And
the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.
(Really, google an academic topic you're familiar with, and imagine
just how atrocious an article based on the sites that come up would
be.  I suspect that history is the worst, as some basic storytelling
impulse inspires people to write breathless semi-informed narratives
about stuff they took a class on one time, but it isn't alone.)

3. We don't have the manpower to contain the spillover.  This is my
problem with the argument that we can allow Some Internet Guy to serve
as our source for articles about stuff that only Some Internet Guy
cares enough about to write about, but then, through rigourous
enforcement of our standards in other topics, ensure that only
reliable sources are accepted for most subjects.  Now this might work
for subjects like Israel-Palestine, where both the IDF and Hamas have
full-time personnel vetting every single edit (or have we not reached
that point quite yet?), but it won't work for the vast majority of
topics, in which most articles are monitored loosely or not at all,
and any edit that isn't vandalism tends to stick.   Remember, source
quality and style guidelines are invoked only in those rare cases
where two people find themselves working on the same article at the
same time; editing in a fairly popular academic subject area, I have
seen such simultaneous editing on only two or three occasions (outside
of the FA or GA processes) in my year here.  We don't have the
resources to maintain the kind of line that seems to be envisioned in
many people's comments on this topic.

I suppose that what you take away from this depends on your
perspective.  I'm sure there are people who would argue, given these
three points, that we should do our best to contain this spillover and
accept what we can't contain as a necessary byproduct of having these
articles.  I don't reach that conclusion.  By including these
difficult-to-source subjects we make available information, to our
present internet audience, on topics of short-term interest (let's not
kid ourselves about that) that are already covered in spades by the
rest of the internet.  This is a good thing.  If, however, by doing so
we impede the development of content that will be of use to a much
larger potential long term and offline audience, then forget it.
Including information on websites, fads, webcomics and the like is a
nice thing to do, if it can be done without spilling over and
worsening our coverage of stuff that people are still going to care
about 10, 20, and 50 years from now.  But if covering those subjects
involves lowering our standards in a way that adversely effects the
average quality of incoming contributions, and the standard or writing
on other subjects--and I believe that it does--then forget it.

This was long.  Sorry about that.

--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
theProject wrote:

>On 1/4/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>>You didn't notice the smiley face?
>>
>>
>Sorry. I saw the tongue-in-cheek a bit, but I guess I didn't play along as
>well as I would have liked. :-)
>
>I brought this up on the list because I'm thinking something along the lines
>of a template much like {{fact}} or {{cn}}. You know, "blah blah blah blah
>blah [may become outdated]." This would be distinct from [update needed], in
>that this tag would pick on style, while [update needed] just picks on time.
>
You make a valid point, but I don't know if there is a general solution
at all. The example from the Canadian cabinet shuffle is the kind that
is likely to be fixed quickly.  Nevertheless there are many more
articles where this will pass unnoticed.  Articles about schools often
name the principal of the school, and I doubt that there is any
mechanism for updating these as needed.

Ec


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibook User Arbitration

body:
I have lothed the day that this would be necessary, but Wikibooks has
now gone to a formal user arbitration situation.

For details, see:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Arbitration/Panic2k4_vs._SBJohnny

I have agreeed to step in here in terms of trying to resolve this
situation.  Panic hasn't been doing blatant vandalism, but he has been
making it tough (apparently) to edit the C++ Programming Wikibook and
has made a few enemies and a few others who are upset over his editorial
style.

In an attempt to formalize this discussion and try to bring some order
here, and to keep this from spilling into areas like policy pages to
legislate the behavior of Panic out of existance, this has really turned
into a judicial situation instead.  Both that, and this situation is
quickly approaching the level of blatant wheel warring, and I want to
nip that right away to keep it from happening.

Yes, this is perhaps a little more complicated than the Wikipedia
arbitration.  OK, that is intentional in this situation, as I would like
to set this up in such a way that you don't want to go through this meat
grinder if at all possible.  Arbitration is clearly the last and final
resort beyond trying to pull in people from outside of the project to
make very arbitrary decisions based on very incomplete information.  I
certainly don't want to see Jimbo, Anthere, or Erik having to get
involved here being pressured to act when they won't know what is going
on in the first place.  I know I have had to ask around a bit and work
hard to even see if there is a case to be made here at all.

It is my hope that these arbitration/mediation cases are very, very
rare.  I'm trying hard to stay objective here as well, and am leaving
most of what is said to the discussion pages above.

Once all of this has been more or less resolved, I hope that we can come
up with the formal arbitration guidelines that have been discussed now
for more than a year on Wikibooks.  I guess that until a situation like
this came up, there wasn't a percieved need to get this put together.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
Agree.

Jay.

On 1/4/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The huge amount of copyright violations on youtube is only one factor.
> Per WP:EL we avoid external links to content which would belong inside
> an ideal Wikipedia.
>
> Many of the non-copyright violating informative videos should be
> inside wikipedia. It is worth out time to get free licensed releases
> of this materal so that we can assure that the content will remain
> perpetually free for all purposes and that articles will not be
> stripped of this useful information by powers outside of our control.
>
> Wikipedia is not a web directory... We didn't get where we are by
> simply linking to content elsewhere. Every non-copyright-violating
> youtube video is a chance to expand our community of contributors.
>
>
> On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > A group of editors set off to remove links to YouTube, requiring that
> > before they went back in we clarified the copyright status and
> > encyclopaedic merit of the links. This met with some resistance. There
> > appear to be two camps now, which might be summed up as follows:
> >
> > * those who believe that YouTube links should go in unless you can
> > prove they are violating copyright
> >
> > * those who believe that YouTube links should stay out unless you can
> > prove they are ''not'' infringing copyright
> >
> > Guess which group I'm in. The argument rages at [[Wikipedia:External
> > links/Identifying copyrights in links]], [[Wikipedia talk:External
> > links/YouTube]], [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sir Nicholas de
> > Mimsy-Porpington]] and various other places. It's been moved out of
> > [[WP:EL]]/[[WT:EL]].  Latest from Berberio is this revert:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AExternal_links%2FIdentifying_copyrights_in_links&diff=98267778&oldid=98264236
> > with the summary: "Puts too much Burdon. For instance, we can assume
> > that the YouTube link on Adam Buxton's article is okay, since it's to
> > his own user account on youtube, no need for further licencing
> > information."  This case is already covered higher up, since we know
> > it was uploaded by the copyright holder, so is not actually relevant
> > to the clause under discussion.
> >
> > So the default-in version is:
> > * Does it have a clear statement that the content is hosted with
> > permission of the copyright holder or could it be rationally assumed
> > to be hosted with permission of the copyright holder? For example, it
> > is published with a user account known to be the copyright holders, or
> > published on their own website.
> >
> > and the default-out version is:
> > * Does it have a clear statement that the content is hosted with
> > permission of the copyright holder or can it be established to be
> > hosted with permission of the copyright holder?
> >
> > The problem I have is that assumptions are not really good enough if
> > push comes to shove.  [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> > ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> > infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
> > that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
> > violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> > innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.  I
> > don't think it's excesive to require people to clarify copyright
> > before adding, but there is this committed group who are insistent
> > that the default should be the other way round. More input required, I
> > think.
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues

body:
Gatto Nero wrote:
> We *must* discuss about our communication problems. And we must decide
> which is our "starting point" in this discussion.

Oh, a thought.
Transcom had a hard time because there was no one really available to
coordinate translations of site notice and to make sure translations
went live on the website.

Aphaia, god bless her, was supposed to be offline at that time, and jd
had said he would help. It so happened that Jd was not available either,
and thank god, Aphaia came to help nevertheless.

I suggest that we need more back up on transcom. There is room for at
least one more coordinator there.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
2007/1/4, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr>:
>
> Fredrik Josefsson a ?crit :
> > I do think that if we want to develop this free stuff concept, our
> > software needs to be more user friendly. Wikipedia is getting big, but
> > it is still too complicated for ordinary people to do things that
> > should be simple, such as uploading files.
> This is not necessarily a bad thing, since many many people out there
> seem to have very inaccurate ideas of copyright and other issues related
> to images. This is not YouTube.
>

Unless you give me evidence that the people who have problems with our
software are the same people who have problems with copyright, this is an
extremely bad way to tackle this (admittedly large) problem.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070104/55413b8e/attachment.htm


body:
On 1/4/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  And
> > the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.
>
>
> Why so?
>
> Evidence?

Bad, inaccurate sources=bad, inaccurate article.  To pick an example
I'm familiar with, here's are the first five non-Wikipedia google
results for the first major article I ever did for Wikipedia,
[[Epaminondas]] (filtering out totally off-topic or near-duplicate
results).

http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/ANCIENT/nepos-epam.html
-Ancient primary source of dubious validity.  Usable only with input
from reliable modern sources.

http://www.in2greece.com/english/historymyth/history/ancient/epaminondas.htm
-Utterly atrocious page written by Some Internet Guy, containing
numerous inaccuracies.

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=haaren&book=greece&story=epaminondas
-Dramatized story of the man's life.  Glosses over critical aspects,
quite inaccurate on some points.

http://www.nndb.com/people/812/000095527/
-Best of the lot, but contains numerous inaccuracies and omissions.
>From the second page of google

http://www.lbdb.com/TMDisplayLeader.cfm?PID=5744
-Short

You could write an article from these sources.  It would omit numerous
important points, and would probably also include numerous untruths.
Such an article would be, in my opinion, worse than nothing.  And I
have seen sites like these used as the basis history articles; here's
one of my favorites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Methuselah&oldid=71757344
-Article bloated with dubious speculations drawn from the internet
(not all of them directly cited, but google shall reveal for those
that aren't) and of course, the requisite In Popular Culture section.
And actually, looking back, my rather timid cleanup probably wasn't
sufficient.

That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only
example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince
myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page)
that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet
doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of
articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the
internet.

--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> No, we don't.
>
> We have a policy that says that articles that do not assert notability
> in certain areas (people, groups of people, web content) may be speedy
> deleted.  Anything else goes to AFD, where the criteria are not
> policy, but rough consensus is required to delete something.

Ok, so I generalised, I'm sorry. My point stands, though, as we are
talking about "web content". CSD is policy and it says that articles
about websites that don't assert notability (or "importance and
significance", but notability is close enough) can be deleted. True,
it doesn't say "must be deleted", but that's just semantics when the
deletion is allowed to be completely unilateral. It just takes one
admin to want it gone, and it's gone. If people want to keep such
articles, they need to get a concensus to change A7.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
> I agree 101%.  Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.

Define "Deletionist". As far as I can tell, a deletionist is anyone
that wants to delete an article that the speaker wants to keep.