from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 21/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> No, it isn't.  I'm sorry you can't see that.
>> Perhaps you could humour me and explain how they are different?
>
> I suspect Anthony might be of the opinion that an encyclopedia should
> only be a tertiary source, summarising the judgment of secondary
> sources.

If so, it seems like pointless pedantry to me. What if we were to
summarize a transcript of the episode instead? The extra step of
indirection has no effect on the end result.

And primary sources are explicitly allowed by WP:NOR anyway, so the
whole issue seems moot. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary_and_secondary_sources>

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-07-21

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 409 of 426 tests (96.01%) FAILED!


list: wikien-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] insist on sources

body:
On 7/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> A point I have made more than once.  But this seems to single
> Armstrong out.  The section is gradually getting bigger and bigger,
> with special pleading and guilt by association creeping back in.  I do
> not see how it can be considered neutral to give the strong impression
> that he is a doper who has not been caught, which is what one or two
> editors are determinedly trying to do, when the legal position is that
> he is clean, despite being quite possibly the most tested athlete in
> history.

I suppose it depends how you word it. If we could cite some
respectable opinion pieces that said he was probably a doper, you
could throw in some weasly "he remains under a cloud of suspicion"
type sentences.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Update on ombudsman issue

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
>>
>>I don't think the name "User:Ombudsman" instantly strikes someone as
>>an official position. In Britain, the position "Ombudsman" tends to be
>>reserved as a governmental complaints mechanism and watchdog on
>>trading standards and banking.
>
>
>
> Well, when I ran into the name  User:Ombudsman recently, I thought the WMF
> had found someone to fill that role. But alas it was not true.

Which role would you think such a person should hold ? Can you give some
examples of what he would be supposed to do ?

Ant


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories for deletion/discussion issues

body:
On 7/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> It'd probably be a good idea to move it from "Limited-access roads"
> but I'm not sure what to. "High-speed roadways" is a problem in that
> some rural lanes in Texas have higher speed limits than interstates
> (as someone mentions in the discussion). "Freeway and motorway" is
> problematic because these are just two examples of what these
> structures are named.
>
> How about something like "High-throughput roadways"?

This is going to be one of those great debates, I can see.  The
current situation is awesome:

Category:Limited-access roads
This category is for [[highways with full control of access and no
cross traffic]]. It is not for [[limited access road]]s, as that is an
ambiguous term.

A category that is not to contain items about itself! :)

How do people get so worked up about it? Can't you just put all
highways into  [[Category:Highways]], then freeways into cat:freeways
and so on, and just, well, stop squabbling? If there's no good term
that covers all these things, maybe the category doesn't need to
exist? Maybe it should just be a list?

Wow, there's even an AfD on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slang_terms_for_freeways_and_expressways

I love it.

Steve


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 20/07/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> These are all freeways - motorways are freeways, autobahns are freeways,
> etc. A freeway is a highway with full control of access and no cross
> traffic. This category is for freeways, and it was originally called
> Category:Freeways.

As a Brit, I'm sure you mean "These are all motorways - freeways are
motorways, autobahns are motorways, etc."? Anyway, I'll forgive your
confusion. ;)
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

body:
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> To say that any interests are "less useful to us" is nonsense. We have
> practically unlimited space and for this reason I deny we can ever
> really have too many factually accurate, verifiable articles on a
> particular subject. We can, of course, have too few articles on a
> given subject. For this reason, a common interest is not less useful
> to us, but a rare interest is more useful to us.

Ok, I think we're talking about different things. A tenured professor
who is world expert in his field and is taking the time to write high
quality articles about some important field is immensely valuable to
us. A 15 year old polishing up an article about the Battle Zoblaorgeth
on Mondoorba is less valuable. Not worthless, but less valuable.
That's all.

> Yes, but no one should be less welcome than average.

:)

>
> > > Perhaps not. The current situation is that we are making editorial
> > > calls on what popular culture is worthy of an article. I would rather
> >
> > With very little success.
>
> Could you cite an example?

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28fiction%29

Summary: "Only start articles about minor characters and fictional
things if the main articles are too long". That's the extent of our
thinking on fictional subjects.

Steve


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

body:
On 7/20/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:

> One hypothesis:
> Allowing too much "fancruft" in Wikipedia creates an imbalance in the community
> structure. There is a really large pool of 15 year old, computer savy kids (some
> may be older) who get easily attracted to writing wikipedia articles about f.e.
> star trek compared to a very small pool of for example experts on let's say
> homer.

What? We have lots of Simpsons articles! ;-)

An alternative hypothesis: The kind of editors who would avoid
Wikipedia because it accepts the work of 15-year-old Star Trek fans
might also be likely to run into social problems when arguing about
the influence of the Iliad on modern storytelling -- because, in their
character and their social interaction, they are simply not used to
notions like the search for consensus, or collaboration in WikiLove.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia _built_ by a community, and the
encyclopedia can only be successful if the social interactions of the
community are healthy. Therefore, expertise cannot be an excuse for
aggressive or dismissive behavior. If there is a group of
knowledgeable people who cannot exist in the social environment of
Wikipedia, then we should provide other means for them to contribute
than being a full member of the community -- rather than trying to
restructure our content and, by extension, our community to allow them
to fit in.

I personally find it amazing and wonderful that so many teenagers wish
to contribute to a work of knowledge. That many of them do so in areas
of popular culture is hardly surprising, and the environment of
Wikipedia is well suited to gradually expose them to new ideas and
knowledge.

Erik


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quackpotwatch AfD

body:
On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/20/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > > Its notability derives from Quackwatch.
> >
> > Shouldn't it just be mentioned in the main quackwatch article then?
> >
> > Steve
>
> Is AfD now required to change an article into a redirect?

If you want the redirect to stick it may be a good option.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On 7/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Are they really making major changes to the rules?

yes see CSD.

--
geni


body:
On 21/07/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to Wikipedia, an ombudsman is a government representative chosen
> by the people. Perhaps we could name this position "Wikipedia
> Representative"?

It's sounding more and more like a position I don't think Wikipedia should have.


subject: [Foundation-l] Organization of News Ombudsmen

body:
On 21/07/06, Sydney aka FloNight <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I see a Foundation appointed person doing something similar. Looking at individual serious problems that exist because of fixable flaws in the system. This should keep these same type of problems from reoccuring.

A Foundation appointed person is not preferable to a community
selected person. The Foundation was not selected by the community
(although the majority of positions on the Foundation should be
community-selected) so should not keep watch over the community. The
community will only be answerable to the Foundation when the
Foundation changes.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
On 20/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Not all articles use something as a source for itself (e.g., using an
> episode of Friends as a source on what happened in an episode of
> Friends).

We never copy an account word-for-word. Even published synopses have
to be summarised by our editors. I cannot see the fundamental
difference between summarising an episode and summarising a summary of
an episode. This must be original research by your standard too?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/07/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > According to Wikipedia, an ombudsman is a government representative chosen
> > by the people. Perhaps we could name this position "Wikipedia
> > Representative"?
>
> It's sounding more and more like a position I don't think Wikipedia should have.

We already do at board level. At wikipedia it is what arbcom may
become if we are not careful

--
geni


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
>
> I don't think the name "User:Ombudsman" instantly strikes someone as
> an official position. In Britain, the position "Ombudsman" tends to be
> reserved as a governmental complaints mechanism and watchdog on
> trading standards and banking.

Well, when I ran into the name  User:Ombudsman recently, I thought the WMF
had found someone to fill that role. But alas it was not true.

I think the name should be reclaimed and the individual should choose
another.

-Andrew


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] insist on sources

body:
On 7/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> We say a good deal more than that.  Have you looked at the doping
> allegations section?  It's rapidly coming to dominate the article.

That section needs a good rearrange. It begins well, by establishing
that Armstrong has never failed a test despite being one of the most
tested athletes ever. However then it goes into 'allegation mode',
essentially giving a list of the allegations made against Armstrong at
various times.

The section would be better, IMO, by cutting some of the less
important or most unreliable allegations (the whole last paragraph,
for example, is very shady) and make the descriptions of how he was
cleared every time clearer.

Unfortunately it's bed time, so someone else will have to edit if they
want to :)

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>>PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
>>
>>
>
>I don't think the name "User:Ombudsman" instantly strikes someone as
>an official position. In Britain, the position "Ombudsman" tends to be
>reserved as a governmental complaints mechanism and watchdog on
>trading standards and banking.
>
>
>
An alternative usage for this term that I've seen is for somebody who
offers legal advise, often free or pro-bono, to members of a community
or organization.  Usually this is something that is often
topic-specific, for example this use here:

http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/

where the U.S. Dept. of Education has a legal team to help cut through
the red tape on student loan and aid programs for U.S. citizens.

I think something like this would be useful to help cut through the red
tape of copyright and trademark issues that keep coming up for Wikimedia
projects.  The problem here would be who would be willing to serve in
this capacity.  And this is also something that simply should not be
elected, as you would have specific legal qualification that would be
necessary to do something like this effectively.

This, I admit, is also a completely different kind of a position than
the one originally suggested by Angela and worthy of a seperate thread,
having nothing to do with the checkuser issue.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wikipedia database broken a bit

body:
A couple of days ago Ariel, the database master for en.wikipedia, crashed in
some way for a brief time. This was not logged in detail in the admin log, so I
don't really know what happened as I was out at the time.

Today, when applying a full PHP update and sync to the software, en.wikipedia
suddenly began to display a read-only message about being locked due to a server
crash. It was determined that the database configuration file had been edited,
but then not synchronized, during the earlier crisis. The read-only message was
removed and the file resynchronized, opening the wiki back for editing.

Unfortunately, there was a combination of two other problems:

1) The config file also had ariel commented out, presumably to avoid error
messages during the temporary crisis two days ago. As a result, the next server
in the list was considered to be the master by the software.

2) The database slaves for en.wikipedia were misconfigured. All slaves *MUST* be
kept in read_only mode or there is a high risk of data corruption in the case of
wiki configuration errors.

They were *not* set in read_only mode, so db4, one of the slaves, ended up
accepting edits for 40 minutes.

Further, edits went back on ariel for several minutes while figuring out what
had happened.

en.wikipedia is currently locked while we examine the databases to see whether
recovery of the last 40 minutes' work is feasible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Nathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tech help: Video format conversion

body:
I know I found one somewhere.
I know WinAVI might do the trick.

- Nathan

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Cormac Lawler wrote:

> On 7/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > I have a handful of public-domain instructional videos (moving diagrams)
> > that I'd like to upload, but they are in SWF format.  Can someone
> > contact me directly, off-list, to help me convert them to an acceptable
> > format?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
>
> Why off-list? I'd be interested in finding out about an swf open
> format converter - I was looking around for something like that the
> other day, but couldn't find anything. Possibly Gnash:
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/>, but I'm not sure if it converts
> or simply plays Flash files.
>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
My offer was to do it for you, so you don't have to do the work.

- Nathan

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Sean Barrett wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Nathan stated for the record:
>
> > I can do, if it's still needed.
> >
> > On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Sean Barrett wrote:
> >
> >
> > I have a handful of public-domain instructional videos (moving diagrams)
> > that I'd like to upload, but they are in SWF format.  Can someone
> > contact me directly, off-list, to help me convert them to an acceptable
> > format?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
>
> Yes, still needed.  We have a request (hi, Cormac!) to keep the
> discussion on-list, so let's stay here at least at first.
>
> I'm running Gentoo Linux, but have access to XP if needed.
>
> Please begin, Nathan.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Back off, man, I'm a scientist.
>  sean at epoptic.com | --Dr. Peter Venkman
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> CQKLJ//w/nd9IN54FoF+n8k=
> =3ZWy
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> 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] "Exclusion" essay

body:
On 7/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> I don't see how the "fancruft" we include is any more a "random
> collection of information" than the vast amounts of sportscruft,
> militarycruft, politiciancruft, and other sorts of subjectcruft that for
> some reason have an air of respectability about it that recent popular
> culture alone seems to lack. Who ever complains about how Wikipedia has
> articles for almost every ship that happened to participate in WWII, no
> matter how trivial its role? Or how there are articles about people
> whose sole claim to fame is an unspectacular one-year Senate position in
> Smallcounty, Iowa back in the 1820s?

(This has been said many times before by many others, so ignore if
this is familiar.)

The problem is the context in which the information is provided. Yes,
we have plenty of information on ships from World War II (that's
[[List of World War II ships]], for those of you playing at home) but
from what I've read they're all written in an appropriate
encyclopaedic style and tone.

Many of the popular culture articles which get labelled cruft are so
labelled because they don't have an encyclopaedic style or tone; the
context utilised is that of the fictional universe from which the
subject comes, rather than the Real World from which the encyclopaedia
comes.

As an example, take [[Bulbasaur]]: well-written, well-referenced,
indeed it is a featured article. It does an excellent job of staying
(almost exclusively) to a discussion of the role of that particular
Pokemon in the video games and in the cartoons. The lede evens uses
CNN and Time in order to assess the importance of the subject.

Many, many other articles (in all areas of pop culture, not just
Pokemon) are not written in such an encyclopaedic fashion, they are
written from a point of view within the fiction.

The Pokemon WikiProject, to its credit, maintains a page to try to
push articles into a format like the Bulbasaur article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_Adoption_Center/Style

Other WikiProjects on fictional subjects, take heed.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
WinAVI will do what he needs it to do (converts SWF to AVI). I've tested
it with a few videos from Youtube (that are *.flv, it works with *.flv as
well).

Again, I offered to do it for him, so I don't see what all the fuss is
about.

- Nathan

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> On 7/20/06, Nathan <lists at home.nathanr.com> wrote:
> > So you have flash animations, is that right?
> > What do you need them converted to?
> > Can you send me the files? I'm pretty sure I can convert them.
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> He'd need them either as animated GIFs or as Ogg/Theora.
>
> (Animated gifs work inline, but stink for anything with many colors) :)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Oh. Well crap, what you require is some editing tools to edit stuff out
before conversion.

I can't do that :\

- Nathan

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Sean Barrett wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Gregory Maxwell stated for the record:
>
> > On 7/20/06, Nathan <lists at home.nathanr.com> wrote:
> >
> >>So you have flash animations, is that right?
> >>What do you need them converted to?
> >>Can you send me the files? I'm pretty sure I can convert them.
> >>
> >>Thanks.
> >
> >
> > He'd need them either as animated GIFs or as Ogg/Theora.
> >
> > (Animated gifs work inline, but stink for anything with many colors) :)
>
> I vastly prefer Theora to GIF.  The files can be found at
>
> http://www.epoptic.com/flash/turn_anderson.swf ,
> http://www.epoptic.com/flash/turn_racetrack.swf ,
> http://www.epoptic.com/flash/turn_y_back.swf ,
> http://www.epoptic.com/flash/turn_delayed.swf , and
> http://www.epoptic.com/flash/turn_williamson.swf
>
> Each begins with a page of text that should be left out.  What I want is
> the animation you get after clicking on the "play" button (the
> right-pointing triangle in a circle).
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Back off, man, I'm a scientist.
>  sean at epoptic.com | --Dr. Peter Venkman
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> _______________________________________________
> 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] fancruft

body:
On 21/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> No, it isn't.  I'm sorry you can't see that.

Perhaps you could humour me and explain how they are different?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: mboverload

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
I don't see the problem with bending the rules a bit for episodes.  Who's it
going to hurt?

On 7/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Not all articles use something as a source for itself (e.g., using an
> > episode of Friends as a source on what happened in an episode of
> > Friends).
>
> An article about an episode that cites nothing but the episode itself
> is a poor article. It amounts to an article about the Mona Lisa simply
> putting a high resolution copy of the image and saying "you can see
> for yourself". In order not to violate NOR, we could say very little
> about the episode. We couldn't say if it was good or bad. We couldn't
> say what fans thought about it. We couldn't say if the jokes were
> funny. We couldn't say it was the first time Rachael kissed Ross.
>
> We could say "The episode lasted 23 minutes". We could offer a plot
> summary. We could describe some of the gags. How boring.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> 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] fancruft

body:
A serious encyclopedia that wants to archive the summaries of one of our
most important cultural references - TV

On 7/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/21/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't see the problem with bending the rules a bit for
> episodes.  Who's it
> > going to hurt?
>
> Ouch. So we have a serious encyclopaedia based on a set of principles,
> but for TV episodes the rule is "anything goes"? Please, no.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Further, edits went back on ariel for several minutes while figuring out what
> had happened.
>
> en.wikipedia is currently locked while we examine the databases to see whether
> recovery of the last 40 minutes' work is feasible.

Tim tried running the slave de-sync script, but it was slow enough it could take
two or three hours to complete.

To get things back on their feet more quickly, we've bumped the revision ID
position on the master so new edits won't interfere, and the recovery can
continue in the background.

There were about 3500 affected edits; in theory most should be recoverable
without significant conflicts. A few might possibly have conflicting id numbers
and get scrapped.

en.wikipedia is back read-only. There may be some broken diffs and bad cached pages.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right

body:
I like the waiting bin idea.  We also need to go through and wipe all images
older than 3 weeks that have never been used.

Too much crap.

On 7/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are two problems with letting just anybody upload images:
> > 1) Copyright law is very complex.  Most people don't understand it.
> > 2) Most people *aren't aware* that they don't understand it.
> >
> > By letting everyone upload images to Wikipedia, we're telling them
> > that we trust them to understand what is and is not allowed.  Then, we
> > turn around and bite them by deleting their images when, inevitably,
> > they make mistakes.  It confuses people no end to be told that they
> > both are and aren't able to upload images correctly.
>
> Suggestion: Make the default level of privilege "you can upload into
> the waiting bin". Then privileged users can retrieve from the waiting
> bin and make them publicly accessible, or delete them, at their
> discretion. Periodically purge files that have been sitting there more
> than a month or two.
>
> The privilege to make files publicly accessible should be granted
> liberally, but revoked when needed, perhaps on a "3 strikes" basis.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> There were about 3500 affected edits; in theory most should be recoverable
> without significant conflicts. A few might possibly have conflicting id numbers
> and get scrapped.
>
> en.wikipedia is back read-only. There may be some broken diffs and bad cached pages.

Note that some affected pages currently show the wrong contents and are
uneditable. This is a known problem and should be resolved within a couple hours.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia and books for African children

body:
Hello,

Let me forward this email to Foundation-l for other
people feedback, and let's keep in touch with this in
any case :-)

Florence Devouard

--- Marlies Klooster <marliesklooster at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This is the e-mail I meant.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Marlies
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> > Date: 17 July 2006 2:21:43 PM
> > To: Marlies Klooster <marliesklooster at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: Wikipedia and books for African
> children
> >
> > Thank you! :) You might consider sending this
> email as well to
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org so that more people in
> our community will
> > see
> > it and learn about this wonderful organization.
> >
> >
> > Marlies Klooster wrote:
> >> Dear Mr Walsh,
> >>
> >> I am impressed by the work and initiatives of
> Wikimedia, especially
> >> Wikipedia. You developed something that is truly
> unique for our times
> >> and I want you to compliment for that. Recently I
> read an interview
> >> with
> >> you in the Dutch newspaper NRC (www.nrc.nl) in
> which you made the
> >> intriguing remark that if Wikipedia were ever to
> make money from
> >> advertisements, you would want this money to go
> to books for children
> >> in
> >> Africa.
> >>
> >> As a volunteer and fundraiser for Biblionef I
> feel I should tell you
> >> about this great book organization I know:
> Biblionef. This NGO donates
> >> new storybooks--free of charge--to needy
> children?s organisations
> >> throughout South Africa. (There are more
> Biblionefs in other
> >> countries,
> >> see http://www.biblionef.org/). Since 1999
> Biblionef South Africa only
> >> has donated over 250.000 books. Their target
> group comprises children
> >> living in disadvantaged communities who have no
> access to books.
> >> Biblionef is unique in South Africa in the sense
> that the books they
> >> donate are in each child?s own language, which
> means they cover all of
> >> South Africa?s eleven languages.
> >>
> >> In South Africa over 60% of schools have no
> library and at least half
> >> of
> >> them is located more than 40 miles away from a
> public library. The
> >> main
> >> aim of Biblionef?s work is to establish a culture
> of reading. This is
> >> only possible when the books have an impact on
> children. That is why
> >> Biblionef carefully collects the books that will
> be donated. In doing
> >> so
> >> Biblionef closely cooperates with local
> publishers in various ways.
> >> Publishers donate newly published storybooks in
> the African languages
> >> to
> >> Biblionef. For other projects Biblionef initiates
> reprints or
> >> publications. Whenever possible Biblionef links
> its donation to
> >> existing
> >> reading initiatives or plans.
> >>
> >> I personally worked with Biblionef for over a
> year, during which we
> >> created the website (www.biblionefsa.org.za) and
> during which I had
> >> the
> >> chance to visit a great number of schools and
> libraries who had (or
> >> asked for) Biblionef books. Some were really
> small, some had hardly
> >> any
> >> books but they were always FULL with children.
> You have to visit an
> >> African library to understand its importance in a
> world deprived of
> >> information and quiet workspace. A number of
> those libraries is in the
> >> process of getting computers and internet
> connection, too. But doesn't
> >> all learning and reading start with colourful
> stories conveyed in
> >> quality books? If you ever have the opportunity
> to donate toward books
> >> for children in Africa, I strongly hope you will
> think of Biblionef.
> >>
> >> Thank you so much for your time and
> consideration.
> >>
> >> Kind regards,
> >>
> >> Marlies Klooster
> >> for: Biblionef South Africa
> >> http://www.biblionefsa.org.za
> >>
> >> Biblionef is a member of the American Fund for
> Charities, a 501(c)(3)
> >> public charity that allows American individuals
> and companies to make
> >> tax-deductible donations to Biblionef SA through
> their fund.
> >>
> >> "Motho ke motho ka batho babang" (A person is a
> person because of
> >> others)
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> >
>
#######################################################################
> > #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture
> and  Free Knowledge #
> > #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a
> free world         #
> >
>
#######################################################################
> > begin:vcard
> fn:Jimmy Wales
> n:Wales;Jimmy
> org:Wikia, Inc.
> email;internet:jwales at wikia.com
> title:Chairman
> tel;work:+1-727-231-0101
> x-mozilla-html:FALSE
> url:http://www.wikia.com/
> version:2.1
> end:vcard
>
>

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


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:

>By making image uploading a privilege to be earned rather than a right
>conferred by registering an account, we can relax the policy and deal
>with uploaders individually, rather than automated notification of
>problems and nearly-automated deletion of problematic images.
>
Amen. It seems like it would be easy to only grant uploading privs
to accounts active for, say, a month, and with at least 100 edits.
Sure it can be gamed, but the point is filter out the ignorant, not
the malicious.

It would be more fun to have an automated quiz, where you have to
answer some image-copyright-related questions correctly to gain the
priv, but also more coding.

Stan


from_name: Michael Hopcroft

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The wiki Paradoxes from my perspective (was Re:
 Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right)

body:
Some problems I see with this:

If you are doing an article on any subject related to popular culture,
you are in a serious bind, because any film, television or comic image
is under copyright BY DEFINITION, even if the creators of the work you
are illustrating the article about had nothing to do with that image's
creation.  For example, ANY picture of Superman would be in violation
regardless of its age or source, because the image of Superman is itself
someone else's intellectual property (in this case Time Warner).

This, and the dispute over fancruft in the other thread, is compounding
the dillemma I am facing over whether I can accept the idea of contuing
to be involved with Wikipedia. If uploading images is such a legally and
ethically complicated thing, then is not the editing of Wikipedia itself
even more so? The civil penalties for libel and slander are much more
severe than those for copyright violation, after all.

My point is that I find myself questioning, almost as I did at the
beginning of my involvement with the project, the reason for it and the
point to it. The very concept of "An encyclopedia anyone can edit" is a
complete contradiction in logic. The purpose of any encyclopedia is to
provide a reliable baseline from which one can gain enough groundwork to
do additional research about a topic without being led horrifically
astray. This purpose is utterly defeated by the ability of anyone,
anywhere in the world to alter and delete articles at will. while one
can certainbly show off what one knows or thinks he knows by editing
Wikipedia, the question is what does anyone actually gain from READING it?

I am wondering whether we are not all engaged in some gigantic folly
that is destroying not only our own credibility but that of the Internet
as a whole.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
On 7/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 21/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > No, it isn't.  I'm sorry you can't see that.
> >
> > Perhaps you could humour me and explain how they are different?
>
> I suspect Anthony might be of the opinion that an encyclopedia should
> only be a tertiary source, summarising the judgment of secondary
> sources.
>
> (am I right?)
>
I think summarizing something directly (e.g. using a Friends episode
as a source for facts about itself) is, by its very definition,
original research.  The Friends episode isn't even a primary source in
this case - the Friends episode is the subject, and the summary would
be the primary source.

There are a number of reasons to do this.  One is that it helps lessen
the amount of "fancruft".

Anthony


body:
On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are two problems with letting just anybody upload images:
> 1) Copyright law is very complex.  Most people don't understand it.
> 2) Most people *aren't aware* that they don't understand it.
>
Isn't that a problem with letting just anybody add text, too?


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
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Michael Hopcroft stated for the record:

> I am wondering whether we are not all engaged in some gigantic folly
> that is destroying not only our own credibility but that of the Internet
> as a whole.

There will never be a method of communication that in itself is
credible.  Error and falsehood have never been difficult to convey in
any medium.

In other words, teh Intarweb has never had any credibility.

Or at least has never deserved any, which I admit isn't exactly the same
thing.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Death of teh Intarweb eminent!
 sean at epoptic.com | Wikipedia article at 11!
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The wiki Paradoxes from my perspective (was Re:
	Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right)

body:
On Jul 21, 2006, at 7:39 AM, Michael Hopcroft wrote:

> Some problems I see with this:
>
> If you are doing an article on any subject related to popular culture,
> you are in a serious bind, because any film, television or comic image
> is under copyright BY DEFINITION, even if the creators of the work you
> are illustrating the article about had nothing to do with that image's
> creation.  For example, ANY picture of Superman would be in violation
> regardless of its age or source, because the image of Superman is
> itself
> someone else's intellectual property (in this case Time Warner).
>
> This, and the dispute over fancruft in the other thread, is
> compounding
> the dillemma I am facing over whether I can accept the idea of
> contuing
> to be involved with Wikipedia. If uploading images is such a
> legally and
> ethically complicated thing, then is not the editing of Wikipedia
> itself
> even more so? The civil penalties for libel and slander are much more
> severe than those for copyright violation, after all.
>
> My point is that I find myself questioning, almost as I did at the
> beginning of my involvement with the project, the reason for it and
> the
> point to it. The very concept of "An encyclopedia anyone can edit"
> is a
> complete contradiction in logic. The purpose of any encyclopedia is to
> provide a reliable baseline from which one can gain enough
> groundwork to
> do additional research about a topic without being led horrifically
> astray. This purpose is utterly defeated by the ability of anyone,
> anywhere in the world to alter and delete articles at will. while one
> can certainbly show off what one knows or thinks he knows by editing
> Wikipedia, the question is what does anyone actually gain from
> READING it?
>
> I am wondering whether we are not all engaged in some gigantic folly
> that is destroying not only our own credibility but that of the
> Internet
> as a whole.

I think the way to look at it is from the improvement that your own
editing makes to the project. Everyone's small improvements add up to
something very useful.

Fred


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Please implement the [[Wikiversity:Main_Page]]

body:
Angela is currently in the process of resigning from the board -
please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-03/Angela%27s_resignation

On 21/07/06, Eric R. Meyers <ermeyers at adelphia.net> wrote:
> On Thursday 20 July 2006 22:29, Angela wrote:
> > On 7/21/06, Eric R. Meyers <ermeyers at adelphia.net> wrote:
> > > The 5 board members are actually living, breathing and thinking human
> > > beings with the full mental capacity to be very proactive for "The Right
> > > Thing" to happen at "The Right Time,"
> >
> > Do you have any evidence for that claim?
> >
> > Angela.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> You know better than me.  I actually was just thinking about you. :)
>
> You're great!
>
> Eric
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>

--
	?Xyrael ~ <xyr>
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


subject:
[WikiEN-l] The wiki Paradoxes from my perspective (was
 Re:	Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right)

body:
Rob wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Michael Hopcroft <michael at mphpress.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I am wondering whether we are not all engaged in some gigantic folly
>> that is destroying not only our own credibility but that of the Internet
>> as a whole.
>>
>
> We're also creating a giant black hole to suck in the contents of the
> entire universe.
And this is a good thing how, exactly?

My point remains -- what precisely is the point of research and writing
an article that can be completely dismantled or deleted at whim by
anyone with a dial-up connection and an ax to grind? And what is the
point of reading a "factual"  article whose contents change constantly
even when the subject of the article does not? Novels and plays may be
constantly re-interpreted, but only in an Orwellian world can they be
un-written. Destroying every copy of a film that could conceivably exist
does not mean the film was never made. An event that took place at a
specific time in the past does not suddenly revert to not having taken
place because people no longer want to think about it. You cannot unkill
John Lennon., any more than you can entirely erase him from the past
even if you somehow manage to destroy all traces of every note and word
he ever sang, played or wrote. Yet someone could go to Wikipedia and, if
he is especially unlucky and a vandal has been especially resourceful,
he might find that the biographical article on John Lennon is an
argument that there never was such a person and that the Beatles and
their recordings never existed in the first place. Although hopefully
the community would jump all over such blatant and irrational
revisionism, the fact that such a thing is even conceivable is
compelling argument against the concept of Wikipedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> There are a number of reasons to do this.  One is that it helps lessen
>> the amount of "fancruft".
>>
>
> First it behooves to demonstrate what's actually wrong with "fancruft"
> before trying to come up with arbitrary limitations intended to reduce it.
>
> For quite a while now I've been using Wikipedia first before IMDB when I want to know whether a movie or TV show is worth watching, a synopsis is rather important in that regard.
>
As anyone who's been in a college literature course can tell you, there
are many important things to ask about any work of art that go well
beyond what happened in it and who was involved in tis creation. "why is
this important?" "why do people talk about it, and what about it do they
discuss?" "what does it mean, both intrinsically and in the context of
the times and situation in which it was created?" "what reasons do those
who dislike or dismiss it have for doing so, and how valid are those
reasons today?" "has the way the work has been percieved changed
signficantly between the time in which it was created and now?" The same
can be said in many respects for the creators of a work; "Why was
Shakespeare?" and "Why does Shakespeare matter?" are even more vital
questions for a scholar (and encyclopedia writing is an essentially
scholarly exercise) as "Who was Shakespeare?"

There are many things that would be readily accepted in an article about
Macbeth that would dismissed as "fancruft" in an article about The
Sopranos -- but there is no fundamental difference between the purpose
of those two articles. None at all. "Why does The Sopranos matter?" is
just as important a question as "Why does Macbeth matter?", just as "Why
is The Sopranos the way it is?" is just as important a question as "Why
did Shakespeare write macbeth the way he did?". Just because a work is
newer, is less mainstream, or is more poorly regarded in the mainstream
does not make it any less worthy of this sort of examination. Sometimes
quite the contrary, at times: if one is writing an article on Plan Nine
from Outer Space, the low-budget science-fiction film of legendary
shoddy awfulness, it is important to provide some reason WHY it is worth
talking about -- as an example of delusional hubris on the part of the
idiot auteur Ed Wood, or perhaps as an example of the perseverance and
improvisation that enabled Wood to complete the film in the face of
innumerable obstacles like the death of his only remotely qualified actor.

Meanwhile, many wikipedia writers seem to be letting relatively minor
things occupy more of their attention -- not because those things should
not be included, but because they stop with them and do not go any
further. I find this most common the biographies of actors, particularly
LGBT actors. The last time I checked the article on Raymond Burr, one of
the most significant actors in early American television, the only point
mentioned other than a bare stub was his homosexuality -- a fact that,
while worth noting, is utterly irrelevant to his legacy or, for that
matter, to what made raymiond Burr a significant figure. Although if you
want to examine the life of Raymond Burr his sexuality would matter, the
article must still answer the question "Why is Raymond Burr important?
What did he do and what did it mean? How is the world different than it
would have been had Raymond Burr not existed?"

To partly answer that question: Burr matters because he was one of the
first true "TV stars", because he had a knack for combining gravity with
subtle humor which brought to vivid life one of the seminal characters
of the medium of television, and his charisma enabled him to trancend
the mold of the "leading man" stereotype of the era -- helping prove in
the process that the new and not-well-respected medium WAS worthy of the
attentions of a serious actor. In short, if you want to understand the
way mass media developed in the United States, Raymond Burr is VERY
important. Yet only his sexuality was considered important by whoever
did his wikipedia article (unless it has been edited further since I I
read it).

When writing a pop-culture article, even a stub I wish would be
completed by others, I have made a practice of showing, as best I could,
exactly what about my topic is significant. Because anyone who
approaches editing cultural Wikipedia with any degree of serious should
realize that they ARE scholars -- even if they're scholars of the
Collected works of CLAMP rather than The Collected Works of George Orwell.


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> For quite a while now I've been using Wikipedia first before IMDB when I
>> want to know whether a movie or TV show is worth watching, a synopsis is
>> rather important in that regard.
>>
>
> No one, but no one, is claiming that synopsises of TV shows are
> fancruft. Fancruft is the documenting of the entire fictional universe
> in detail. Out of control fancruft is documenting not only the
> official fictional universe, but subsequent fictional universes
> created by fans (fan-fancruft).
>
Which si no less relevant to the question I asked about: "Why does
(subject of article) matter? Why are you even reading this article? Why
did someone reasonably believe that it was worth his time and effort to
write it?"


from_name: Eric R. Meyers

body:
Hi Cormac and Anthere,

First, I'd like to amplify what I wrote earlier:
> ... bring this good thing to fruition, or just kill it outright, so that it
, KNOWLEDGE,
> can find a better home in this world.

On Friday 21 July 2006 07:14, Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In the past few days, I have been considering the three levels, data,
> > information and knowledge. Most of our projects are actually providing
> > "information". Wiktionary is rather providing "data". Wikibooks is
> > sometimes providing "information" but it is sometimes wandering in
> > "knowledge". Wikiversity will definitly entering the field of knowledge
> > and this is what worried editors the most (the teaching part). Still, if
> > I look well, the Foundation is claiming bringing knowledge. I see no
> > reason why this project should not be started.
> >
> > Ant
>
> Thanks Anthere,
>
> that's a really good way of putting it. The way I've always seen
> Wikiversity is that we are not simply providing information, but
> generating knowledge. That, after all, is what learning is all about.
> I would argue (and have done) that generating knowledge and learning
> is an incidental part of what we do as participants on any Wikimedia
> project - it's just that we make this an explicit aspect of
> Wikiversity.
>
> To backtrack slightly, when we got going on the modified Wikiversity
> proposal, in the wake of the community vote and the board
> non-approval, we were at a loss to tie together the interests/needs of
> several in the community who wanted to teach courses, and the board's
> recommendation that we "exclude online courses". Our solution is to
> primarily host content, while also providing for learning
> communities/study groups around this content - networks/spaces for
> asking and answering questions, or posing and solving problems.
> However, I think in order to be sustainable, Wikiversity will need to
> put a primacy on its content, as was suggested by Daniel (Mav). We
> simply do not know how communities will work - this is an experimental
> side to Wikiversity, which could fail, though I anticipate it to be
> its central success :-)
>
I'm truly fighting with myself to find the right way to get what is in my
brain into your brains, most efficiently, and vice versa.  I began editing
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ermeyers last night to try to begin
informing you of what I'm actually trying to do with The Perl Wiki, in
"particular."

This "particular" wiki is going to be the central wiki for the "particular"
community (a global community), and it's "particular" system and it's
"particular" methods are going to fully integrate with everything "generally"
available from Wikimedia to the fullest extent possible.  The "particular"
community is going to be the main source of "particular" Expertise, Data,
Information and Knowledge, and the "particular" community will have its
Teachers and its Learners at its "particular" University tied right into
Wikiversity and its extremely valuable "general" Educational Resources.  If
this "particular" University manages to get itself accredited (etc.), in the
future, on its own, then that will be an absolutely great thing to happen for
that "particular" community.

About The Perl Wiki, or "The Glue Wiki":

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Encyclopedia" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Dictionary" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Library" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Debate Forum" of Perl.

PAST:		This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Legacy."

PRESENT:	This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Story."

FUTURE:		This central Wiki is going to lead "The Perl Future."

This central Wiki has an free and open Steering Committee forum.

How will a "particular" community work everyone?  That's why I originally came
here to ask my "particular" questions to the Wikimedia experts on
foundation-l, just so that I begin prototyping one for my own "particular"
community interests.

I hope this helps you Cormac.:)

Eric

>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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body:
Hi Cormac and Anthere,

First, I'd like to amplify what I wrote earlier:
> ... bring this good thing to fruition, or just kill it outright, so that it
, KNOWLEDGE,
> can find a better home in this world.

On Friday 21 July 2006 07:14, Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In the past few days, I have been considering the three levels, data,
> > information and knowledge. Most of our projects are actually providing
> > "information". Wiktionary is rather providing "data". Wikibooks is
> > sometimes providing "information" but it is sometimes wandering in
> > "knowledge". Wikiversity will definitly entering the field of knowledge
> > and this is what worried editors the most (the teaching part). Still, if
> > I look well, the Foundation is claiming bringing knowledge. I see no
> > reason why this project should not be started.
> >
> > Ant
>
> Thanks Anthere,
>
> that's a really good way of putting it. The way I've always seen
> Wikiversity is that we are not simply providing information, but
> generating knowledge. That, after all, is what learning is all about.
> I would argue (and have done) that generating knowledge and learning
> is an incidental part of what we do as participants on any Wikimedia
> project - it's just that we make this an explicit aspect of
> Wikiversity.
>
> To backtrack slightly, when we got going on the modified Wikiversity
> proposal, in the wake of the community vote and the board
> non-approval, we were at a loss to tie together the interests/needs of
> several in the community who wanted to teach courses, and the board's
> recommendation that we "exclude online courses". Our solution is to
> primarily host content, while also providing for learning
> communities/study groups around this content - networks/spaces for
> asking and answering questions, or posing and solving problems.
> However, I think in order to be sustainable, Wikiversity will need to
> put a primacy on its content, as was suggested by Daniel (Mav). We
> simply do not know how communities will work - this is an experimental
> side to Wikiversity, which could fail, though I anticipate it to be
> its central success :-)
>
I'm truly fighting with myself to find the right way to get what is in my
brain into your brains, most efficiently, and vice versa.  I began editing
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ermeyers last night to try to begin
informing you of what I'm actually trying to do with The Perl Wiki, in
"particular."

This "particular" wiki is going to be the central wiki for the "particular"
community (a global community), and it's "particular" system and it's
"particular" methods are going to fully integrate with everything "generally"
available from Wikimedia to the fullest extent possible.  The "particular"
community is going to be the main source of "particular" Expertise, Data,
Information and Knowledge, and the "particular" community will have its
Teachers and its Learners at its "particular" University tied right into
Wikiversity and its extremely valuable "general" Educational Resources.  If
this "particular" University manages to get itself accredited (etc.), in the
future, on its own, then that will be an absolutely great thing to happen for
that "particular" community.

About The Perl Wiki, or "The Glue Wiki":

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Encyclopedia" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Dictionary" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Library" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Debate Forum" of Perl.

PAST:		This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Legacy."

PRESENT:	This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Story."

FUTURE:		This central Wiki is going to lead "The Perl Future."

This central Wiki has an free and open Steering Committee forum.

How will a "particular" community work everyone?  That's why I originally came
here to ask my "particular" questions to the Wikimedia experts on
foundation-l, just so that I begin prototyping one for my own "particular"
community interests.

I hope this helps you Cormac.:)

Eric

>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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body:
Hi Cormac and Anthere,

First, I'd like to amplify what I wrote earlier:
> ... bring this good thing to fruition, or just kill it outright, so that it
, KNOWLEDGE,
> can find a better home in this world.

On Friday 21 July 2006 07:14, Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In the past few days, I have been considering the three levels, data,
> > information and knowledge. Most of our projects are actually providing
> > "information". Wiktionary is rather providing "data". Wikibooks is
> > sometimes providing "information" but it is sometimes wandering in
> > "knowledge". Wikiversity will definitly entering the field of knowledge
> > and this is what worried editors the most (the teaching part). Still, if
> > I look well, the Foundation is claiming bringing knowledge. I see no
> > reason why this project should not be started.
> >
> > Ant
>
> Thanks Anthere,
>
> that's a really good way of putting it. The way I've always seen
> Wikiversity is that we are not simply providing information, but
> generating knowledge. That, after all, is what learning is all about.
> I would argue (and have done) that generating knowledge and learning
> is an incidental part of what we do as participants on any Wikimedia
> project - it's just that we make this an explicit aspect of
> Wikiversity.
>
> To backtrack slightly, when we got going on the modified Wikiversity
> proposal, in the wake of the community vote and the board
> non-approval, we were at a loss to tie together the interests/needs of
> several in the community who wanted to teach courses, and the board's
> recommendation that we "exclude online courses". Our solution is to
> primarily host content, while also providing for learning
> communities/study groups around this content - networks/spaces for
> asking and answering questions, or posing and solving problems.
> However, I think in order to be sustainable, Wikiversity will need to
> put a primacy on its content, as was suggested by Daniel (Mav). We
> simply do not know how communities will work - this is an experimental
> side to Wikiversity, which could fail, though I anticipate it to be
> its central success :-)
>
I'm truly fighting with myself to find the right way to get what is in my
brain into your brains, most efficiently, and vice versa.  I began editing
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ermeyers last night to try to begin
informing you of what I'm actually trying to do with The Perl Wiki, in
"particular."

This "particular" wiki is going to be the central wiki for the "particular"
community (a global community), and it's "particular" system and it's
"particular" methods are going to fully integrate with everything "generally"
available from Wikimedia to the fullest extent possible.  The "particular"
community is going to be the main source of "particular" Expertise, Data,
Information and Knowledge, and the "particular" community will have its
Teachers and its Learners at its "particular" University tied right into
Wikiversity and its extremely valuable "general" Educational Resources.  If
this "particular" University manages to get itself accredited (etc.), in the
future, on its own, then that will be an absolutely great thing to happen for
that "particular" community.

About The Perl Wiki, or "The Glue Wiki":

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Encyclopedia" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Dictionary" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Library" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Debate Forum" of Perl.

PAST:		This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Legacy."

PRESENT:	This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Story."

FUTURE:		This central Wiki is going to lead "The Perl Future."

This central Wiki has an free and open Steering Committee forum.

How will a "particular" community work everyone?  That's why I originally came
here to ask my "particular" questions to the Wikimedia experts on
foundation-l, just so that I begin prototyping one for my own "particular"
community interests.

I hope this helps you Cormac.:)

Eric

>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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body:
Hi Cormac and Anthere,

First, I'd like to amplify what I wrote earlier:
> ... bring this good thing to fruition, or just kill it outright, so that it
, KNOWLEDGE,
> can find a better home in this world.

On Friday 21 July 2006 07:14, Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In the past few days, I have been considering the three levels, data,
> > information and knowledge. Most of our projects are actually providing
> > "information". Wiktionary is rather providing "data". Wikibooks is
> > sometimes providing "information" but it is sometimes wandering in
> > "knowledge". Wikiversity will definitly entering the field of knowledge
> > and this is what worried editors the most (the teaching part). Still, if
> > I look well, the Foundation is claiming bringing knowledge. I see no
> > reason why this project should not be started.
> >
> > Ant
>
> Thanks Anthere,
>
> that's a really good way of putting it. The way I've always seen
> Wikiversity is that we are not simply providing information, but
> generating knowledge. That, after all, is what learning is all about.
> I would argue (and have done) that generating knowledge and learning
> is an incidental part of what we do as participants on any Wikimedia
> project - it's just that we make this an explicit aspect of
> Wikiversity.
>
> To backtrack slightly, when we got going on the modified Wikiversity
> proposal, in the wake of the community vote and the board
> non-approval, we were at a loss to tie together the interests/needs of
> several in the community who wanted to teach courses, and the board's
> recommendation that we "exclude online courses". Our solution is to
> primarily host content, while also providing for learning
> communities/study groups around this content - networks/spaces for
> asking and answering questions, or posing and solving problems.
> However, I think in order to be sustainable, Wikiversity will need to
> put a primacy on its content, as was suggested by Daniel (Mav). We
> simply do not know how communities will work - this is an experimental
> side to Wikiversity, which could fail, though I anticipate it to be
> its central success :-)
>
I'm truly fighting with myself to find the right way to get what is in my
brain into your brains, most efficiently, and vice versa.  I began editing
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ermeyers last night to try to begin
informing you of what I'm actually trying to do with The Perl Wiki, in
"particular."

This "particular" wiki is going to be the central wiki for the "particular"
community (a global community), and it's "particular" system and it's
"particular" methods are going to fully integrate with everything "generally"
available from Wikimedia to the fullest extent possible.  The "particular"
community is going to be the main source of "particular" Expertise, Data,
Information and Knowledge, and the "particular" community will have its
Teachers and its Learners at its "particular" University tied right into
Wikiversity and its extremely valuable "general" Educational Resources.  If
this "particular" University manages to get itself accredited (etc.), in the
future, on its own, then that will be an absolutely great thing to happen for
that "particular" community.

About The Perl Wiki, or "The Glue Wiki":

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Encyclopedia" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Dictionary" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Library" of Perl.

This central Wiki is going to be like "The Free Debate Forum" of Perl.

PAST:		This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Legacy."

PRESENT:	This central Wiki is going to tell "The Perl Story."

FUTURE:		This central Wiki is going to lead "The Perl Future."

This central Wiki has an free and open Steering Committee forum.

How will a "particular" community work everyone?  That's why I originally came
here to ask my "particular" questions to the Wikimedia experts on
foundation-l, just so that I begin prototyping one for my own "particular"
community interests.

I hope this helps you Cormac.:)

Eric

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

from_name: Karl Wick

subject:
[Textbook-l] Technology to print one book at a time (NYTimes
	article)

body:
Technology Rewrites the
Book<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/technology/20basics.html?ei=5070&en=035c8c67bd0e7b25&ex=1153627200&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1153499297-7EnVRxXA0I8C+aFxihUolQ>

Clear uses for Wikibooks.

Karl


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Anthony wrote:
> There are a number of reasons to do this.  One is that it helps lessen
> the amount of "fancruft".

First it behooves to demonstrate what's actually wrong with "fancruft"
before trying to come up with arbitrary limitations intended to reduce it.

For quite a while now I've been using Wikipedia first before IMDB when I
want to know whether a movie or TV show is worth watching, a synopsis is
rather important in that regard.

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from_name: SPUI

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:58:33 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The bit about not all places using that term is not a problem,
>>as we have to choose a term, and no one has put forth an alternate term.
>
>
> Limited access highways is fine.  Autobahn, autoroute and motorway all
> translate more or less equivalently, freeway is the odd one out.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited-access_highway .


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:40:29 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Not so - the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Cross_Route is a freeway
>>but not a motorway, as it was stripped of its motorway status in 2000.
>>Motorway is a classification rather than a standard of building; many
>>longer sections of road are freeways but cannot be classified as
>>motorways, as slow vehicles are banned from all motorways.
>
>
> Really they are dual carriageways.  That is, roads, which have two
> distinct and separate carriageways.

No - they're more than that. Dual carraigeways can be full of at-grade
intersections.


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>
>In any case, I think the worry about copyright is ignoring the real
>problem:  WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PHOTOGRAPHERS!  Even if we ignore the
>advantages of being able to work with the creator, when the copyright
>holder uploads their own content our problems are greatly reduced.
>
Here's an evil hack - waive the one-month requirement if we see the
image has metadata showing camera as the source...

But seriously, I'm not sure we can do much to encourage photography;
it's like trying to get people to write about the Sphaerosepalaceae
rather than Friends episodes.

Stan


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are two problems with letting just anybody upload images:
> > 1) Copyright law is very complex.  Most people don't understand it.
> > 2) Most people *aren't aware* that they don't understand it.
> >
> Isn't that a problem with letting just anybody add text, too?

Not really.  I think it's a product of the public school system, but
people generally understand that taking somebody else's writing and
passing it off as their own is wrong, even if they don't understand
that it's a copyright violation.  The same can't be said of images.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Rob

body:
On 7/21/06, Michael Hopcroft <michael at mphpress.com> wrote:

> I am wondering whether we are not all engaged in some gigantic folly
> that is destroying not only our own credibility but that of the Internet
> as a whole.

We're also creating a giant black hole to suck in the contents of the
entire universe.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quackpotwatch AfD

body:
On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Is AfD now required to change an article into a redirect?

It's not required, but it's the most common outcome. When you think
about it, what is an AfD really there for?  We very rarely actually
want to replace an article with a redlink. Pretty much "deletion"
debates are actually arguing for merging, or replacing by a redirect,
both of which could be done without the debate.

Steve


body:
On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are two problems with letting just anybody upload images:
> 1) Copyright law is very complex.  Most people don't understand it.
> 2) Most people *aren't aware* that they don't understand it.
>
> By letting everyone upload images to Wikipedia, we're telling them
> that we trust them to understand what is and is not allowed.  Then, we
> turn around and bite them by deleting their images when, inevitably,
> they make mistakes.  It confuses people no end to be told that they
> both are and aren't able to upload images correctly.

Suggestion: Make the default level of privilege "you can upload into
the waiting bin". Then privileged users can retrieve from the waiting
bin and make them publicly accessible, or delete them, at their
discretion. Periodically purge files that have been sitting there more
than a month or two.

The privilege to make files publicly accessible should be granted
liberally, but revoked when needed, perhaps on a "3 strikes" basis.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Not all articles use something as a source for itself (e.g., using an
> episode of Friends as a source on what happened in an episode of
> Friends).

An article about an episode that cites nothing but the episode itself
is a poor article. It amounts to an article about the Mona Lisa simply
putting a high resolution copy of the image and saying "you can see
for yourself". In order not to violate NOR, we could say very little
about the episode. We couldn't say if it was good or bad. We couldn't
say what fans thought about it. We couldn't say if the jokes were
funny. We couldn't say it was the first time Rachael kissed Ross.

We could say "The episode lasted 23 minutes". We could offer a plot
summary. We could describe some of the gags. How boring.

Steve


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] insist on sources

body:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:07:37 -0700, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:

>   I think the original point of this example (and tell me if I am
>wrong) is not the specific case but cases like it.  Where you risk being
>POV with perfectly verifiable stuff.  Violating NPOV can be done by
>selection of what to include as easy as it can with how you include it.
>  This is the claim that is frequently made against the media, that
>their bias is not in untrue reporting but in what they chose to report.

Yes.  And in the specific case of Armstrong, he recently won a case
against the Sunday Times which strayed over that line.  Socafan seems
to me to be intent on having the Foundation follow the same path...

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


body:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:58:33 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:

>The bit about not all places using that term is not a problem,
>as we have to choose a term, and no one has put forth an alternate term.

Limited access highways is fine.  Autobahn, autoroute and motorway all
translate more or less equivalently, freeway is the odd one out.

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


body:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:38:24 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:

>These are all freeways - motorways are freeways, autobahns are freeways,
>etc.

Or rather, freeways are motorways :-)

In many countries they are not "free" either.

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


body:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:40:29 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:

>Not so - the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Cross_Route is a freeway
>but not a motorway, as it was stripped of its motorway status in 2000.
>Motorway is a classification rather than a standard of building; many
>longer sections of road are freeways but cannot be classified as
>motorways, as slow vehicles are banned from all motorways.

Really they are dual carriageways.  That is, roads, which have two
distinct and separate carriageways.

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


body:
On 7/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> (Personally, I don't object to [[Category:Freeways]] any more than I
> would [[Category:Elevators]])

[[Category:Diet sodas]] is an interesting one. Not even all Americans
use it. Someone must have gotten confused.

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Help requested on Commons copyright woes

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>>On Thu, July 20, 2006 13:00, Brianna Laugher wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Here are some recent issues that I would like resolved:
>>>* To what extent are we bound by local laws and to what extent are we
>>>bound by Florida's laws (as the home of our servers).
>>>
>>>
>Will the placing of some media servers in countries with more liberal
>copyright laws ever be a viable option? Even if we housed some media
>in, say, Sweden, would the content still be judged by the standards of
>Florida because that is where the Foundation is based?
>
To a large extent this is unanswerable, and waiting for legal certainty
is a sure road to paralysis.  The laws of Florida on copyright matters
do not have a big impact on what we do since copyright is a federal
matter in the United States.  There may be slight variations from one
state to another or from one federal judicial district to another, but
in carving out broad policy on copyright it is probably reasonable to
say that what applies in one U.S. state will also apply in all the others.

As things stand US copyright laws in many of the aspects that concern us
are at the liberal end of the scale.  In particular the United States
has developed the fair use concept more than most other countries.
There are also other peculiar features to U.S. law that have been since
repealed, but are nevertheless grandfathered that give some advantages
to having U.S. law apply at least until the year 2046.  If the laws of
Sweden or any other country were to be made applicable it should be
based on a positive case for that being made by the proponents.  That
case would of course include an examination of the relevant laws of that
country.

In my mind the only positive case that exists so far is for Wikisource
to include certain materials on servers in countries with a Berne
Convention life + 50 expiry on copyrights.  Project Gutenberg appears to
have done this successfully on Australian servers before that country
changed its copyright laws.  The important thing in those circumstances
would be to have those servers under the control of that national
organization and with a top level domain in that country.

For now, I can see no other practical situation where this would apply.

Ec


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 7/21/06, Nathan <lists at home.nathanr.com> wrote:
> Oh. Well crap, what you require is some editing tools to edit stuff out
> before conversion.
>
> I can't do that :\
>
> - Nathan
>

Can Sean (or someone) not edit the raw file in Flash, and then convert
to AVI using WinAVI (will this convert to Theora?). I know I used a
flash animation in a video I made last year (using Adobe Premiere,
which I sadly no longer have access to), so I presume there must be
some way of saving this eventually as a Theora or something similar,
bypassing Gregory's proposed solution (?)

Anyway, thanks for keeping this on list!

Cormac


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Anthere wrote:

>>This, I admit, is also a completely different kind of a position than
>>the one originally suggested by Angela and worthy of a seperate thread,
>>having nothing to do with the checkuser issue.
>>
>>
>
>Anthere. Not Angela.
>We are two different people.
>
I apologize on this issue.  I tried to look in the e-mail stack (there
has been a bunch of stuff here on this topic) and I thought it was
Angela who proposed this based on some earlier comments.  I should have
dug a little deeper here on this issue before I named names.

>If you come to Wikimania (I hope you do),
>
I would love to come, but time and money are going to make it difficult
for me this year.  Perhaps next year?  Being in North America helps for
me, but it is in the wrong end of North America for me to make it
easily.  Like the distance from Siberia to Paris if you want to compare
to Europe.

Please note that I was trying to explain what an ombudsman was, and
perhaps what a board-appointed one would be like, although admittedly in
a very different area from the proposal related to check user status.

>I have had the checkuser status since its beginning. I received several
>complaints for abuse (generally not justified). I studied these
>complaints, as confronted to the Foundation privacy policy. I am today
>trying to delegate this to others (thus proposing the creation of an
>ombudsman commission).
>
>The benefits would be
>1) complaints explored by neutral people (rather than a party)
>2) complaints hopefully handled in a more timely fashion
>3) more free time for me :-)
>
>I really think we need this to be "independant" party.
>
I think in this situation, if you want to encourage independence, you
need to change it to a broader issue than just checkuser issues.  The
whole reason for the parnoia over being really stingy regarding
checkuser issues is mainly dealing with the Wikimedia Foundation privacy
policy and potential violations of that policy.  It is indeed in these
violations, and other privacy issues unrelated to checkuser scans, that
is the main concern about why such an ombudsman would be necessary.  And
this should be something board appointed if we are talking somebody who
understands throughally both the meaning and intent of the privacy
policy, as well as the legal implications if  people with access to
private information violate this policy.

The Privacy Policy Ombudsman would also be a good point of contact if
there is a legal issue that comes up that requires disclosure of private
user information, covered in the privacy policy.  This would be like in
a libel lawsuit involving a Wikimedia user where there is a court order
to disclose the IP address and other information about a user who made
an edit.  Also, if some user thinks information about themselves is
improperly being disclosed, either through a check user scan or like has
been done on Wikibooks for publishing author information, that user can
seek an independent and authoritative legal opinion about the issue and
even recommend to project admins or stewards to take action correcting
the problem.

Because this is a legal position, there are obviously specific
requirements that somebody must meet before they can be in this
position.  For that reason alone, I think it would be better to be an
appointed position through the Wikimedia Foundation.  The fact that the
privacy policy is also a Wikimedia Foundation policy rather than an
individual project policy also reinforces this aspect of being an
appointed position.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
On 7/21/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't see the problem with bending the rules a bit for episodes.  Who's it
> going to hurt?

Ouch. So we have a serious encyclopaedia based on a set of principles,
but for TV episodes the rule is "anything goes"? Please, no.

Steve


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 21/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So, you wouldn't allow photos of buildings where a company's logo was
> > on their building?
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:NYC_Top_of_the_Rock_Pano.jpg
> > is a featured image on commons and has logos, even if they are a bit
> > blurry. A clearer example is
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Melb_cbd.jpg
>
>
> If we can be sure that we aren't breaking the law, then I'd be very
> happy for Commons to house such images. I really can't say whether
> we're breaking the law to copyleft an image with a copyrighted logo in
> it, I certainly hope law isn't that restrictive.

The feeling at the moment tends to be: it's *in context* so it's OK.
We have quite a few images that have a mishmash of logos. But if you
crop any of those photos to just show one logo only, then that crop
would not be free.

Brianna


from_name: Angela

body:
On 7/21/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> >> I may have been mislead on this (not a good situation for the bureaucrat
> >> doing 95% of the namechanges on en.wiki) but my understanding is that
> >> en.wiki does not permit forced name changes.

I thought it just required an RfC to change a name, not an arbitration case.

Anyway, unless the users Wikimedia's ombudspeople are going to use
that account, I don't see a reason to change it, and I wasn't aware of
any plan for those people to have a role account. They can do until
their own usernames. Also, the position is specifically for
"ombudsperson checkuser", so "ombudsman" would be too general and
could give the impression they're an ombudsperson for all activities
on the wiki, not just for the checkuser role.

Angela.


body:
On 7/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Much of the image deletion policy is based around the fact that there
> > are maybe a dozen people on Wikipedia who understand the image use
> > policy well enough to enforce it, and are willing to take the time to
> > do so.  At the same time, over two thousand new images are uploaded
> > each day, adding to the 553,000 images already on Wikipedia.
> >
> > By making image uploading a privilege to be earned rather than a right
> > conferred by registering an account, we can relax the policy and deal
> > with uploaders individually, rather than automated notification of
> > problems and nearly-automated deletion of problematic images.
>
> I, too, have faced all the challenges that you mention in your
> email... I especially 'enjoy' watching someone play license template
> roulette. :-/   But I don't believe it would be wise to turn off image
> uploads.
>
> What you say about copyright being hard is mostly true, but I think
> that what matters more than it being difficult is that it doesn't
> match up to people's natural instincts. They think "I got this off a
> webpage for free so it must be okay." or "No one will complain".

That's my point with "they don't understand it, and aren't aware they
don't understand it".

> In any case, I think the worry about copyright is ignoring the real
> problem:  WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PHOTOGRAPHERS!  Even if we ignore the
> advantages of being able to work with the creator, when the copyright
> holder uploads their own content our problems are greatly reduced.

At the same time, we have no incentive to increase the number of
photographers.  When you can just grab a picture off the web and stick
it in an article, there's no incentive to get out there and start
taking pictures.  It's not like digital cameras are hard to come by --
every other cell phone has one, and cheap dedicated cameras can be had
for $50-$75.

> We could also replace the upload link in the standard public skin with
> an instruction page... and require people to redlink images in order
> to upload them. (This would reduce the huge number of images which
> spend their whole life orphaned, freeing up our resources.. and would
> require new uploaders to read a bit in order to figure it out).

That would certainly help.  Part of the problem is that it's so easy
to upload images, people are surprised when they get it wrong, and
they haven't been around long enough to know how to fix things, or
where to go for help.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/21/06, Nathan <lists at home.nathanr.com> wrote:
> WinAVI will do what he needs it to do (converts SWF to AVI). I've tested
> it with a few videos from Youtube (that are *.flv, it works with *.flv as
> well).
>
> Again, I offered to do it for him, so I don't see what all the fuss is
> about.

Fuss? Huh.

If you want to send me the .avi I can edit out whatever needs to be
edited out, and covert to Theora.


body:
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/07/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > By making image uploading a privilege to be earned rather than a right
> > > conferred by registering an account, we can relax the policy and deal
> > > with uploaders individually, rather than automated notification of
> > > problems and nearly-automated deletion of problematic images.
>
> We have already stripped new users and anons of far too many rights.
> We have already gone through the creation of semi-protection, the
> prevention of page creation, and now we have a suggestion that we
> prevent them uploading! It is an utter disgrace that we still refer to
> ourselves as an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit".
>
> It is clear that we have completely lost sight of the original aims of
> Wikipedia.

I agree.  We've completely lost sight of the original aims of Wikipedia.

Originally, Wikipedia was supposed to be free content and be an
encyclopedia.  We're still reasonably close to being an encyclopedia,
but the idea of "free content" has been lost in the flood of hundreds
of thousands of non-free images.  Most users wouldn't know a free
license if it bit them in the ass, and the only reason we've got a
million GFDL-licensed articles is because of a snippet of text nobody
ever bothers to read.  I doubt so much as one editor in a hundred
actively wants their contributions to be freely licensed -- the other
99 just want their work to be on Wikipedia.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>
>We have already stripped new users and anons of far too many rights.
>We have already gone through the creation of semi-protection, the
>prevention of page creation, and now we have a suggestion that we
>prevent them uploading! It is an utter disgrace that we still refer to
>ourselves as an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit".
>
But notice it says "edit", not "upload to".

:-)

If you have a suggestion that doesn't involve large numbers of
nonexistent volunteers working all hours to keep WP out of
legal peril, feel free to enlighten us.

Stan


body:
On 7/21/06, Michael Hopcroft <michael at mphpress.com> wrote:
[snip]
> My point remains -- what precisely is the point of research and writing
> an article that can be completely dismantled or deleted at whim by
> anyone with a dial-up connection and an ax to grind?
[snip]

We have developers on dial-up??

:)

Random folks on dialup can't delete anything. The text is still in the
history.   We do need to get better at making sure good work isn't
lost in the history someplace, but we do rescue stuff all the time.

Obviously, we will do things over time to help ensure that quality
articles don't regress (unless the folks that advocate Wikipedia as
foremost a Wiki or, worse, a game of [[nomic]], win those arguments),
but a lot is done already.

If you are uncomfortable contributing, then by all means: don't.   But
please keep in mind that there are enormous numbers of articles which
are uncontroversial, where your content is unlikely to be contested or
deleted by anyone, and where love and attention is much needed.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia as a gazetteer

body:
Hi!
> Working with co-ordinates has made me wonder about their use. It seems
> a bit bizarre to represent a huge country (or ocean, river, etc) with
> one random dot. Is there any neat, standardised way to refer to
> geographic areas? I can't think of one...any ideas?

For places larger than a village it should really be a collection of points.
Or one central point and a radius, but this would require the shape to be
regular. A single point would be acceptable for a small village (it usually
coincides with the main square, or the main administrative centre) but it's
hardly going to represent places like NYC... A collection of waypoints is
used to track a route on navigation, so it should be an acceptable system to
deliver a canal or a river shape, possibly a long road. Dealing with
mountains you'd want to have at least a collection of the main peaks. In
many ways you can think of an ocean as a "negative mountain", in which depth
can be used pretty much in the same way, but if you need dynamics (currents)
on your map, then you are going to need both a collection of rough reference
points and a directional vector, possibly an estimation of involved volumes,
temperatures, etc.

I cannot tell how a collection of points can be connected with a
cartographic source thru a template, though. It looks as a pretty nasty job.
That's unless we may come to have a source for free maps (say just
geographical relief), on which we can draw shapes based on co-ordinates. At
that point all you need is to anchor your marks to the coordinates of the 4
corners of the map. I know it's used to show the position of towns and
villages on a map, but I haven't seen it used to "draw rivers", yet. Would
come very handy to model maps based on real data, when dealing with things
like "El Nino" or the Gulf stream. It might also be used to model birds
migration.

B?rto


body:
On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> In the past few days, I have been considering the three levels, data,
> information and knowledge. Most of our projects are actually providing
> "information". Wiktionary is rather providing "data". Wikibooks is
> sometimes providing "information" but it is sometimes wandering in
> "knowledge". Wikiversity will definitly entering the field of knowledge
> and this is what worried editors the most (the teaching part). Still, if
> I look well, the Foundation is claiming bringing knowledge. I see no
> reason why this project should not be started.
>
> Ant
>

Thanks Anthere,

that's a really good way of putting it. The way I've always seen
Wikiversity is that we are not simply providing information, but
generating knowledge. That, after all, is what learning is all about.
I would argue (and have done) that generating knowledge and learning
is an incidental part of what we do as participants on any Wikimedia
project - it's just that we make this an explicit aspect of
Wikiversity.

To backtrack slightly, when we got going on the modified Wikiversity
proposal, in the wake of the community vote and the board
non-approval, we were at a loss to tie together the interests/needs of
several in the community who wanted to teach courses, and the board's
recommendation that we "exclude online courses". Our solution is to
primarily host content, while also providing for learning
communities/study groups around this content - networks/spaces for
asking and answering questions, or posing and solving problems.
However, I think in order to be sustainable, Wikiversity will need to
put a primacy on its content, as was suggested by Daniel (Mav). We
simply do not know how communities will work - this is an experimental
side to Wikiversity, which could fail, though I anticipate it to be
its central success :-)

However, to address your point, the bylaws
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws>
state that we develop and maintain "collections of documents,
information, and other informational databases in all the languages of
the world". I wonder if this should not be changed to include
"educational resources" (since this is what we do) - "information"
just seems too narrow. It doesn't really (for me) encompass our better
known ideal of "a world in which every single person is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge".

What say ye?

Cormac


body:
On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Much of the image deletion policy is based around the fact that there
> are maybe a dozen people on Wikipedia who understand the image use
> policy well enough to enforce it, and are willing to take the time to
> do so.  At the same time, over two thousand new images are uploaded
> each day, adding to the 553,000 images already on Wikipedia.
>
> By making image uploading a privilege to be earned rather than a right
> conferred by registering an account, we can relax the policy and deal
> with uploaders individually, rather than automated notification of
> problems and nearly-automated deletion of problematic images.

I, too, have faced all the challenges that you mention in your
email... I especially 'enjoy' watching someone play license template
roulette. :-/   But I don't believe it would be wise to turn off image
uploads.

What you say about copyright being hard is mostly true, but I think
that what matters more than it being difficult is that it doesn't
match up to people's natural instincts. They think "I got this off a
webpage for free so it must be okay." or "No one will complain".

In any case, I think the worry about copyright is ignoring the real
problem:  WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PHOTOGRAPHERS!  Even if we ignore the
advantages of being able to work with the creator, when the copyright
holder uploads their own content our problems are greatly reduced.

This is why so many of our problems are centered around images and not
text... because while the copyright situation with text is
fundimentally no different, there is little expectation by random
folks that we'll accept text copied from elsewhere... as very little
of Wikipedia text (esp pop culture stuff) is obviously copied from an
outside source, while many of our images (esp pop culture stuff) do
come from outside sources.

Go take a look at featured images on commons... Even most of the
images there are found-on-the-web stuff, although they are (hopefully)
free content found-on-the-web stuff.

So, as a result I'd be hesitant to support any measure which
discouraged photographers from contributing, because I think that our
habbit of using images from outside sources (free or not) is a huge
part of the problem.

Perhaps we could look at doing something to shove new uploaders into a
(web based) chat, which we could staff with half-clueful folks who
could determine if the uploader understands, and set an upload
permission bit?   But the idea has a lot of challeges, such as how to
staff the channel.

We could also replace the upload link in the standard public skin with
an instruction page... and require people to redlink images in order
to upload them. (This would reduce the huge number of images which
spend their whole life orphaned, freeing up our resources.. and would
require new uploaders to read a bit in order to figure it out).