body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
[snip]
> Is it really sensible to have different logos for the Wikimedia
> Foundation and Wikipedia itself?

I think it is. I think that reasons for this will become more evident over
time, especially if things shift in ways I foresee them doing... legitimacy
for other projects being the obvious reason, but there's more to it than
that.

> I'll tell you the truth: while I *love* the new Wikipedia logo (puzzle
> ball) and fully support it in every way, I *really* preferred the logo
> that's now on the wikimedia foundation website (the #2 logo, the
> abstract peace-person) all along.

Ditto. Failing that, I thought it was perfect as a WM logo... I think that
the #2/3 logoing was very wisely done.

> So, I hope the answer is "Yes, of course, the Wikimedia Foundation is
> an umbrella for many differently-branded products, and so just as
> AOL-TimeWarner has a logo for AOL and a logo for Time Magazine, we can
> and should have different logos, too.  The Microsoft logo is not the
> same as the XP logo.  And so on."

"Yes, of course, (blah blah)." Really, I think that is true... see below.
(On a completely tangential note, last I heard, it's just Time Warner again
now. They're not so happy with AOL these days.)

> But, I wonder.  We're not a huge media organization, yet.  And the
> beneficial branding impact of a logo depends on people actually seeing
> it a lot.
>
> If millions of people visit Wikipedia (and they do, and they will)
> then if I send a letter on Wikimedia Foundation letterhead to the Ford
> Foundation, say, then if that letterhead has the Wikipedia logo on it,
> there's a good chance that someone there will instantly have happy
> feelings towards us, because they'll instantly know who we are and
> what we do.
>
> But if the logo is different, and on a website that we don't really
> expect a lot of people to visit (as compared to Wikipedia proper),
> then it'll just be an abstract thing.  They'll think "Gee, why is the
> UN earth peace council sending us a letter"?  (ha ha)
>
> So, what am I supposed to do when I print letterhead?  Should we
> really do this?  Or should we use the puzzle-ball logo for everything?

I'd personally advise putting /both/ of them on letterhead to be used in
Wikipedia-related contexts; cases where it's clearly a Foundation issue
should have that alone. Putting them together isn't that much more
work/cost/what have you, and builds association between the two for those
that see it. Something like
(wikipedia logo with name underneath) a project of (wikimedia logo with
name)
or suchlike. I think that having the two logos (and consequently, two levels
of identity) will become more important over time, and it's the sort of
thing to do right from the beginning, lest we settle into a situation where
the idea of having them separate simply doesn't enter into people's minds.
Besides, imagery is needed to differentiate well in people's minds.

I had about four more paragraphs of this, but it was either incoherent or
redundant, usually both. Anyway, my thoughts on the matter (for now).

-- Jake


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia, MediaWiki logos uploaded

body:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Jake Nelson <jnelson at soncom.com> wrote:

> > I'll tell you the truth: while I *love* the new
>> Wikipedia logo (puzzle
> > ball) and fully support it in every way, I
> >*really* preferred the logo
> > that's now on the wikimedia foundation website
> >(the #2 logo, the
> > abstract peace-person) all along.

Stevertigo writes:
Well, the people have spoken --havent they?

Jake:
> Ditto. Failing that, I thought it was perfect as a
> WM logo... I think that
> the #2/3 logoing was very wisely done.

JW:
> > So, I hope the answer is "Yes, of course, the
> Wikimedia Foundation is
> > an umbrella

Jake:
> (On a completely tangential note, last I heard, it's
> just Time Warner again
> now. They're not so happy with AOL these days.)

SV:
Thats what they get for buying a piece of crap like
AOL. Suckers.

JW:
> > But, I wonder.  We're not a huge media
> organization, yet.  And the
> > beneficial branding impact of a logo depends on
> people actually seeing
> > it a lot.

SV:
Speaking of media --  we *need* a news wiki.  No joke.

JW:
> > then if I send a letter on Wikimedia Foundation
> letterhead to the Ford
> > Foundation, say, then if that letterhead has the
> Wikipedia logo on it,
> > there's a good chance that someone there will
> instantly have happy
> > feelings towards us, because they'll instantly
> know who we are and
> > what we do.

SV:
 This is exactly right (I thought this logo stuff was
just a trivialty, huh?)  and the two runners up need
some professional post-election refinement/treatment
of their own.  I might suggest a merger of  the PM
sphere with the Neolux model.

Ill work on a mockup today.   This way the WM logo
would contain both -- IF Neo doesnt like it? Well it
was an arbitrary executive decision by Erik to use it
at all, and he could just at well executively allow
for some modifications.  Nohat's got some free time ;)
 Ill set up a new page on meta for modding the WM
("urgent") and MW logos (less urgent) and blurb them
on the WP.

JW:
> > So, what am I supposed to do when I print
> letterhead?

SV:

Give the raster-monkeys a week to come up with
something.

Jake:
> I'd personally advise putting /both/ of them on
> letterhead to be used in
> Wikipedia-related contexts; cases where it's clearly
> a Foundation issue
> should have that alone. Putting them together isn't
> that much more

I disagree --they could be better combined  --Think of
them as each "winning concepts" --- free to alter to
best effect.

~S~

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
--- David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
>
> (with it's shiny new logo)
> >
> > - David [[User:Nohat]]
>
> ITS shiny new logo. ITS ITS ITS.
>
> Excuse me while I punish myself for my
> apostrophe-itis breakout.

Actually you're correct -- there are *three forms :
Its, it's, (of it) and the contraction of it is -
it's.

I think
~S~

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list: textbook-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I don't think we should focus on standards.

I think that it is absolutely imperative that we do.

> It would be better to focus on making good textbooks.

But, have you looked at the standards?  I don't see any tension at all
between making good textbooks and following the standards.

> These groups don't particularly like books that were formulaically
> constructed around state standards.

If they're just opposed to the standards *period*, because they want a
Christ-centered curriculum or whatever, then they aren't really going
to be happy with our product, either.

But if the opposition is due to the generally lame ways that
mainstream texts write to the standards *and* to pander to various
pressure groups, then they will like our texts a lot, because they
will be NPOV.

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
Sanford Forte wrote:
> Note that the California frameworks are considered to be very
> progressive, and thorough, even by institutions that are outside the
> public school system, including home and private schools.

Can you expand on what you mean by 'progressive' here?  To me,
'progressive' is a political word used to describe a particular
viewpoint that is offensive to many.  I don't think you meant it that
way, did you?

> If you look at the frameworks for just about any course, they're really
> quite thorough. The beauty of open source content is that a lot more
> creativity and variety can be placed around state-approved curriculum
> frameworks.

Yes, I agree with that 100%.

Also, I didn't mention this in my other email, when I said that if
people are looking for a "Christ-centered" curriculum, then wikipedia
texts aren't going to be right for them.  However, it is worth noting
that a solid Wikipedia foundation would provide enterprising
home-school curriculum providers with a solid base from which to
derive their own variants.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Erik wrote:
>
>>>I have used the second place design by User:Neolux
>>>as the more important Wikimedia logo. I think it looks
>>>very nice on the Wikimedia Foundation page, please
>>>do take a look:
>>>
>I like it, too.
>
>On this point, I'll do whatever I'm told to do, because I'm not in any
>mood to argue about the logo with anyone.  :-) However, I do have a
>question.
>
>Is it really sensible to have different logos for the Wikimedia
>Foundation and Wikipedia itself?
>
>So, I hope the answer is "Yes, of course, the Wikimedia Foundation is
>an umbrella for many differently-branded products, and so just as
>AOL-TimeWarner has a logo for AOL and a logo for Time Magazine, we can
>and should have different logos, too.  The Microsoft logo is not the
>same as the XP logo.  And so on."
>
>But, I wonder.  We're not a huge media organization, yet.  And the
>beneficial branding impact of a logo depends on people actually seeing
>it a lot.
>
>If millions of people visit Wikipedia (and they do, and they will)
>then if I send a letter on Wikimedia Foundation letterhead to the Ford
>Foundation, say, then if that letterhead has the Wikipedia logo on it,
>there's a good chance that someone there will instantly have happy
>feelings towards us, because they'll instantly know who we are and
>what we do.
>
>But if the logo is different, and on a website that we don't really
>expect a lot of people to visit (as compared to Wikipedia proper),
>then it'll just be an abstract thing.  They'll think "Gee, why is the
>UN earth peace council sending us a letter"?  (ha ha)
>
>So, what am I supposed to do when I print letterhead?  Should we
>really do this?  Or should we use the puzzle-ball logo for everything?
>
I agree with Jimbo on this.  Having completely different and unrelated
logos on different projects makes no marketting sense at all.  Adopting
the 2nd and 3rd place logos from the voting to represent different
projects is contrary to the purpose of having a logo in the first place.

If there is any place where the puzzle ball most belongs it's WikiMedia.
 Although not the original or biggest project, it has become the root
project through which everything becomes related.  The puzzle ball is
more important to WikiMedia than to WikiPedia.  By using the puzzle ball
in WikiMedia we can establish a theme that has linking thematic threads
that run through all the other projects in the same way that the word
"wiki" has been made to run through them all.  That may be accomplished
by using variants of the logo, by using my previous puzzle piece idea in
each logo, by using a scaled down mini-ball as part of each logo, or by
anything else that preserves the thread.

My response to the question about what to use on the letterhead:  Use
the puzzle ball on WikiMedia letterhead.

Ec


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>I would like to ask Jimbo to make a formal declaration of policy so
>>that sysops won't be accused of overstepping their bounds when
>>deleting pages.
>>
>Yes, that sounds like a good idea.  I will follow this discussion
>closely and try to see what people are saying, and propose a solution
>that addresses everyone's needs and concerns to the greatest degree
>possible.  And then we can see if we can get consensus on that, the
>old-fashioned way.
>
What bothers me about this is not the decision that Jimbo would make,
but the request that he make such a declaration.  It strikes me as an
admission of failure on the part of those making the request.  People
need to be willing to apply WikiLove and WikiFaith in dealing with these
problems rather than turning them into some kind of competitive battle
with Crusader and Saracen alike looking for a sign that God will be on
his side.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair use and "Bolivian Gas War"

body:
First a few words about a specific example, but please also read to
the bottom where I make MY MAIN POINT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_Gas_War

This is a generally good article-in-progress, and the photos are very
nice, but I find them highly problematic.

There are currently 3 images on the page, all taken from
indymedia.org.  Two of them are likely taken by IndyMedia activists,
and it strikes me as unlikely that they will complain about our use,
fair use doctrine or no.  IndyMedia is an extremely political website
whose views are, ahem, quite different from my own, but nonetheless I
suspect that they have no beef with our NPOV policy.

It *does* strike me as likely that they would object vociferously,
though, to re-use by potential re-licensees, and I think that in a
case like this, _even if our use_ qualifies as "fair use", re-use by
_many_ other people would _not_ qualify.

For that reason, I think that these images, and images from similar
sources, should not be used in Wikipedia.

The third image, the professionally-done graphical map showing the
events of October 12, was taken from IndyMedia, but even the person
who uploaded (Stevertigo) notes "Fair Use//maybe problem -- untraced
source--via Indymedia".  Ai-yi-yi!  Very bad!

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

MY MAIN POINT

"The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media
outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings
of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who
continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's
distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity."

Their efforts in this area, as far as I've been able to determine,
mainly consist of promoting tyranny around the world as an antidote to
the problems of freedom and prosperity. ;-) But my own political
leanings aside, it *does* seem likely to me that the IndyMedia people
could be quickly convinced to adopt a policy consistent with their own
stated goals, i.e. to release all their images under a free license.

If they could be so persuaded, then there would be no problem at all
with our use of their images.  They would achieve some of their goals,
I suppose, by getting their images included in a respectable source,
as well as being cited by that source.

And here's where I think a too-easy reliance on the crutch of "fair
use" can be harmful.  We have an opportunity before us to encourage a
likely receptive audience to engage in free licensing, and yet we have
passed on that because it's just too easy to take their content and
mumble and wave our hands about fair use, knowing full well that they
probably won't complain anyway.

Fair use is a dangerous crutch, and I *really* think we need to start
reforming our fair use practices to be *much* more strict.

Fair use is an absolute necessity for us in some contexts.  But it
should be used judiciously and with great care, and only when every
other (freely licensed) alternative has been exhausted.

In this case, I think that hasn't happened.  We used the images (well,
Stevertigo did) because they were good, and because it was easy.

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] annotation capability

body:
It looked like Magnus developed a way to do annotation of
texts. Is that feature usable now ? Or does there need to
be a wiki software upgrade ?

I could use it in my ochem book, and certainly in the
not-annotated annotated texts.

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia, MediaWiki logos uploaded

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Wikimedia (our umbrella organization) and MediaWiki (our software) now
> have official logos, namely the second and third place submissions from
> our contest. I have used the second place design by User:Neolux as the
> more important Wikimedia logo. I think it looks very nice on the Wikimedia
> Foundation page, please do take a look:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/
>
> My sunflower logo, which came in third place, seems well suited for the
> software. The square brackets give it a technical look, which may be
> inappropriate elsewhere, but is a nice reference here. I've also added a
> little slogan to the logo. You can see it here:
>
> http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
>
> (We may want to move the project to mediawiki.sourceforge.net, but that's
> not a priority.)
>
> I for one am happy with the logo situation now. I think our projects
> altogether have a far more professional look than when we started.
>
> All best,
>
> Erik

Since the Mediawiki project is part of Wikimedia, shouldn't there be a
link to it (with it's shiny new logo) on the Wikimedia.org page?

- David [[User:Nohat]]


body:
(with it's shiny new logo)
>
> - David [[User:Nohat]]

ITS shiny new logo. ITS ITS ITS.

Excuse me while I punish myself for my apostrophe-itis breakout.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: Burnout (was Re: [WikiEN-l] (no subject))

body:
Anthere wrote:

>I thank you Jimbo
>I apologize to all of you collectively for my
>emotional dismay, which also show me I must take a
>break.
>Given that I am a hopeless wikipediholic, I will try
>to take holidays from the en wiki.
>
A good plan - it's very easy to get wrapped up in serious debate,
but that takes away the enjoyment - and yet there are thousands
of "fun" articles to add, noncontroversial content that is a necessary
part of a comprehensive encyclopedia. In the space of eight months
I've seen a bunch of heavy-duty contributors burn out and leave
when the fighting overshadows content creation, so I think we need
to watch out for signs of burnout and encourage each other to explore
new and different areas that will be re-energizing to work on.

Stan


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Images cp status (Arnaud)

body:
On Tuesday, Oct 14, 2003, at 06:01 US/Pacific, Arnaud G wrote:

>> Nowhere is it written the description of copyright
>> status had to be in english. French only is enough
>> (but of course, it might be beneficial to put some
>> description in english for other wikipedias uses)
>>
> I never said that! I was just answering the centralized image
> repository proposition and how the descritption text for this
> architecture should be done. Another participant state that he was
> unable to understand the copyright notice of an image coming from the
> korean wikipedia and that a centralized repository might solve this.
> That's why I said that even if a centralized db is used for images,
> the copyright notice may not be written in english and will not solved
> the problem (execpt if you expect people to write the notice in
> english). Morevover if the description of the image should contain the
> copyright in all langue + description it will be very unpratical.

When we get such a system set up it will be localized, as the wiki
interface is, to be read in any language. The base copyright
information is a multiple-choice question:

[ ] GFDL, submitted by copyright owner
[ ] GFDL, submitted by third party
[ ] public domain
[ ] other -- needs to be examined very carefully, may not be
appropriate!
source URL or citation: [_____________________]
description: [_____________________]

The description is going to be only in whatever language(s) people
write in, but the multiple-choice bits will be translated at the
interface. If you visit the site in Korean you'll see "GFDL, submitted
by copyright owner" in Korean. If someone else visits it in French,
they'll see it in French.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 8:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] history texts

> Sanford Forte wrote:
> > Note that the California frameworks are considered to be very
> > progressive, and thorough, even by institutions that are outside the
> > public school system, including home and private schools.
>
> Can you expand on what you mean by 'progressive' here?  To me,
> 'progressive' is a political word used to describe a particular
> viewpoint that is offensive to many.  I don't think you meant it that
> way, did you?
-------------------
Thanks for bringing this up, Jimmy. There is no particular political
connotation intended by my use of the word 'progressive' (above).

By 'progressive' I mean the very extensive process of inclusion and reaching
out to citizens, parents, students, educational researchers, and others
involved in education. The very scope of the current California Frameworks
effort is unparalleled in public education.

Note that California has had to include many, many viewpoints in the
construction of curriculum for its public school students due to the massive
cultural diversity present in this state. The outcome of this process is why
the California frameworks are considered a model for others to follow. Note
that these frameworks are used even by many private, and home, schools in
California.

> > If you look at the frameworks for just about any course, they're really
> > quite thorough. The beauty of open source content is that a lot more
> > creativity and variety can be placed around state-approved curriculum
> > frameworks.
>
> Yes, I agree with that 100%.
>
> Also, I didn't mention this in my other email, when I said that if
> people are looking for a "Christ-centered" curriculum, then wikipedia
> texts aren't going to be right for them.  However, it is worth noting
> that a solid Wikipedia foundation would provide enterprising
> home-school curriculum providers with a solid base from which to
> derive their own variants.
----------
Absolutely.

Sanford

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Maybe. But ballot stuffing isn't our only problem and there are
>>reasonable ways to detect it. Sysops not having clear directions
>>what to do is the other problem. Some delete when there is a 2/3
>>majority, some do not delete when the author of the page
>>protests. It is absolutely important that everyone can follow the
>>same standard, and I think the most reasonable course of action is
>>for Jimbo to set such a standard.
>>
>Yes, I think that's right.  On this narrow question, i.e. given the
>way we are voting now, what constitutes a threshold for action, we can
>all agree that it's very important that we have some sort of standard,
>while leaving open the possibility that over time the details of the
>standard might need to change, or that we might change the entire
>process in fundamental ways.
>
There seems to be a whole industry developing in the VfD issue.
 Personally, I don't waste much time there.  My view on deletions is
that as long as there is reasonable doubt, it should stay.  Any
percentage based threshhold is bound to be arbitrary.

Voting there is one big time-waster!  Yesterday (Oct. 16) there were 11
items added to the list.  If I am to give an informed vote on any of
these, I need to go to and read the article.  If that only takes an
average 5 miniutes per article that's 55 minutes, much more on some
other days.

There's also the [[Wikipedia:Pages needing attention]].  I often suspect
that it's there for people who want somebody else to do their work for
them.  A person who puts something there on an unfimiliar topic should
perhaps try to clean one up about something that he knows better.

>As such, while I'm sympathetic to the notion of excluding votes from
>mysterious users who have only edited 1 time, I think that unless it's
>a huge huge problem, we can safely ignore it.
>
I agree

>(Indeed, although I don't condone people making multiple accounts in
>order to cheat on a vote -- I would consider that as coming very close
>to a bannable offense, and certainly it's bannable if continued after
>warnings, etc. -- I *also* think that if someone is willing to go to
>that much effort, we should try hard to see if there's something we
>aren't seeing, something that can be accomodated.)
>
Certainly.  If the amount of attention paid to any kind of cheating (not
just voting) is out of proportion to its occurence, preventing it wastes
a lot of time for no significant benefit.  If the margin of victory in a
vote is wide, a few cheated votes are of no significance.  If the margin
of victory is very small, we have a divided community whose problems
won't be solved by tracking down those few cheated votes that would
reverse the result.  The unnecessary tracking down of cheaters runs
contrary to the presumption of good faith.

Ec

>


from_name: Gregory Pietsch

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
Actually, "its" is the possessive adjective, "it's" is a contraction of "it
is" or "it has".

The "of it" bit would be included in "its".

Gregory
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevertigo" <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 11:34 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

>
> --- David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
> >
> > (with it's shiny new logo)
> > >
> > > - David [[User:Nohat]]
> >
> > ITS shiny new logo. ITS ITS ITS.
> >
> > Excuse me while I punish myself for my
> > apostrophe-itis breakout.
>
> Actually you're correct -- there are *three forms :
> Its, it's, (of it) and the contraction of it is -
> it's.
>
> I think
> ~S~
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
> http://shopping.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
Florian Schnadt wrote:

> Hi,
>
>>> (with it's shiny new logo)
>>
>
> Its it's? It's its after all.
>
> sorry, couldn't resist :)

I understand; when it's too severe scratch it. ;-)

Ec


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> There are currently 3 images on the page, all taken
> from
> indymedia.org.  Two of them are likely taken by
> IndyMedia activists,

They may even be Reuters, XingHua, or Agency Presse,
or other photos -- thought I was careful to select the
ones that were not explicitly labeled as the others.
Indymedia isnt very clear or concerned with proper
attribution, -- they arent making product - they
report news (or make news, depending on who you ask.
;)

The map is problematic, and it should be removed
before too long. (before someone copies it under
GFDL.) (BTW, why do some 4reference articles (WP
content) show up better than WP? )

> fair use doctrine or no.  IndyMedia is an extremely
> political website
> whose views are, ahem, quite different from my own,
> but nonetheless I
> suspect that they have no beef with our NPOV policy.

>From what ive seen, Indymedia is slowly increasing it
standards becoming moderated -- they were hurt
severely when an anti-semitic post got them booted off
the Google wires -- but they still show up there
(marginally).  The POV aspect of Indymedia is offset
however by the fact that they report on things that
mainstream media completely ignores. Until the 13,
hardly anyone in the US reported on the massacres --
let alone things like "15 soldiers executed for
refusing to fire on crowd" -- Its more than validity
and verification -- its plain news prioritation, that
more and more people are understanding as a thing WAY
out of whack in US media. (its why I decided against a
journalism carreer --in days before web pub'ng.)

> It *does* strike me as likely that they would object
> vociferously,
> though, to re-use by potential re-licensees, and I

No, but we better get some communication with them to
get the facts straight. I dont think they are
concerned with copyright or left at all -- to they
point that they even ungratuitously boost content from
other newssources.  I'm going to talk to someone there
--Im also curious about their technology --it would
seem that their whole process is gettig an overhaul
but there is no consensus on which direction.  If they
were *talked* into using Mediawiki (instead of dead,
dead Twiki) it may score some more developers for
Mediawiki.  (Im just getting into the IM thing... )

> "The Independent Media Center is a network of
> collectively run media
> outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and
> passionate tellings
> of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration
> for people who
> continue to work for a better world, despite
> corporate media's distortions and unwillingness to
cover the efforts to free humanity."

They are not too dissimilar.

> Their efforts in this area, as far as I've been able
> to determine,
> mainly consist of promoting tyranny around the world
> as an antidote to
> the problems of freedom and prosperity. ;-)

I disagree.  Solidarity with the working man ain't
tyranny.  Solidarity with Stalinist apologists is just
stupidity of course (or just part of the any warm body
welcome policy ). John Stossel has a nice new
editorial on this whole "do protestors help at all"
question.

> But my
> own political
> leanings aside, it *does* seem likely to me that the
> IndyMedia people
> could be quickly convinced to adopt a policy
> consistent with their own
> stated goals, i.e. to release all their images under
> a free license.

And to perhaps adopt NPOV too! ;) -- Super LPOV seems
to be shooting themselves in the foot in some ways. I
think some of them recognize it -- others well...
theyre just angry and angrier reactionists.  Bakunin:
"Given six months, and the revolutionary will become
worse than the Czar himself."

> If they could be so persuaded, then there would be
> no problem at all
> with our use of their images.  They would achieve
> some of their goals,

Let the GNUtually beneficial dialogue begin !

> And here's where I think a too-easy reliance on the
> crutch of "fair
> use" can be harmful.  We have an opportunity before
> us to encourage a
> likely receptive audience to engage in free
> licensing, and yet we have
> passed on that because it's just too easy to take
> their content and
> mumble and wave our hands about fair use, knowing
> full well that they
> probably won't complain anyway.

So... you *have* been thinking along these lines for a
while...

> Fair use is a dangerous crutch, and I *really* think
> we need to start  reforming our fair use practices
to be
> *much* more
> strict.

Or loosy-goosy.  It may be that the goals of an
increasingly transparent and highly fast turnover news
site are simply incompatible with the goals of making
stuff to hold onto forever --They can always say
"sorry -- we'll take it down."  By the way, Im going
to start doing some illustrations for some of the
articles -- with a request list.

> Fair use is an absolute necessity for us in some
> contexts.  But it  should be used judiciously and
with great > care, and only when every
> other (freely licensed) alternative has been
> exhausted.

This kind of contradicts what you just said before.
Either fair use is a defense, or it is not. Where that
slider is set, is going to be harder to explain than
GNU is.

> In this case, I think that hasn't happened.  We used
> the images (well, Stevertigo did) because they were
good, > and because it was easy.

All too easy -- but I guess that's the point.

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Burnout

body:
--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> A good plan - it's very easy to get wrapped up in
> serious debate,
> but that takes away the enjoyment - and yet there
> are thousands
> of "fun" articles to add, noncontroversial content
> that is a necessary
> part of a comprehensive encyclopedia. In the space
> of eight months
> I've seen a bunch of heavy-duty contributors burn
> out and leave
> when the fighting overshadows content creation, so I
> think we need
> to watch out for signs of burnout and encourage each
> other to explore
> new and different areas that will be re-energizing
> to work on.

Not to mention -- that this is free and donated time.
IOW - a hobby.  When the rent checks start piling up,
its best to put the vandal-chasing and the article
arguing away for a while.

~S~

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from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] "New" logo JIMBO, PLEASE INTERVENE

body:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:12:13 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Ehrenberg
<littledanehren at yahoo.com> gave utterance to the following:

> But the Nohat logo doesn't have any *words* on it! No
> matter how many minor modifications are made, it still
> won't have words. Wikipedia is about words, not just
> letters.

Dan, did you ever read the starting brief for the logo contest? It
included the condition that, because W is multilingual, the logo should
not use words. So the original "winning" logo was in breach of the rules
and shouldn't have made it to the final 10.
But it did anyway, and won - as a concept. And by its designer's own
admission it wasn't up to production standard yet.

>
> Why weren't these modifications in the original logo
> vote like other modifications were?

Because the announced plan was to work on refining the winner wikistyle.

> PS. About a week and a half ago, I posted some
> complaints about the logo, but my comments were
> deleted by an anon. I'm really mad at him/her, but I
> can't do anything about it.

Why can't you just reinstate them from the page history?

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Florian Schnadt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
Hi,

>>(with it's shiny new logo)

Its it's? It's its after all.

sorry, couldn't resist :)


body:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:43:52 -0700, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> Erik wrote:
>> Wikimedia (our umbrella organization) and MediaWiki
>> (our software) now have official logos, namely the
>> second and third place submissions from our contest.
>> I have used the second place design by User:Neolux
>> as the more important Wikimedia logo. I think it looks
>> very nice on the Wikimedia Foundation page, please
>> do take a look:
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/
>
> Yes! That looks very nice. However please remove "Home" from the
> sidebar; the
> logo makes it redundant since it links to the home page.

But is a skin which is logoless capable of reinstating the Home link? If
skinning is purely by CSS, then the link will needd to stay.
>
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy-
> But, I wonder.  We're not a huge media organization, yet.  And the
> beneficial branding impact of a logo depends on people actually seeing
> it a lot.

I think that is a good reminder that we need to increase the profile of
the Wikimedia Foundation. At the very least, each of our projects should
have a link to it on every page. We should strive to make the Wikimedia
page itself somewhat useful as well, with a clear mission statement, and
perhaps the news directly on the main page (weblog-style).

Aside from that, I believe the "umbrella organization" logic is correct --
it would not be fair to our other projects (Wikibooks, Wiktionary,
Wikiquote), all of which are coming along nicely, to use the Wikipedia
logo for the Wikimedia foundation as well. The present Wikimedia logo is
nice and abstract and favors none of our projects in its style or
substance.

As for letterheads, I believe the name "Wikimedia" is sufficiently close
to "Wikipedia" for people to have some familiarity with it, but just in
case, we could use a design like this:

[  WIKIMEDIA  ]                            [   ] [   ] [   ] [   ]
[             ]                            [ WP] [ WB] [ WK] [ WQ]
[             ]
[             ]

That is, put the logos for all of our projects in small versions on the
letterhead, next to the large Wikimedia logo. And, of course, we could
write something like this in the intro:

"Wikimedia's largest project is *Wikipedia*, a free encyclopedia with over
X articles in Y languages..."

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [WikiEN-l] [hardy@math.mit.edu: 25 years ago today]

body:
It's in the "In the News" row, see "John Paul II".

It's there since October 16, 06:06 UTC.

	Regards,

		JeLuF

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 05:00:35AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Hardy <hardy at math.mit.edu> -----
>
> From: Michael Hardy <hardy at math.mit.edu>
> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:51:13 -0400 (EDT)
> To: jwales at bomis.com
> Subject: 25 years ago today
>
>
>     Who runs the "Main Page"?  Is it worth mentioning in
> "Week in history" that 25 years ago today a man from communist
> Poland was elected Pope (and is still the incumbent)?  That
> was something of a political coup.    -- Mike
>
> --
> Michael Hardy
> hardy at math.mit.edu
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Actually you're correct -- there are *three forms :
> Its, it's, (of it) and the contraction of it is -
> it's.
>
> I think
I don't think you do. (Sorry, kidding, but had to make the comment...)
PIHNA, people! (Possessive Its Has No Apostrophe) For explanation, it's
because its is a pronoun. His and hers don't have apostrophes either.

-- Jake


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Robot code: open source or lock away in safe?

body:
--- Rob Hooft <rob at hooft.net> wrote:

> I'd like to evoke a discussion on this list to help me find a
> solution
> to this. What do wikipedia developers and admins think about it?

I personally think that the use of bots should be discussed with the
appropriate people prior to use.

Also, you might want to discuss ways to allow wikipedia to somehow
find a mechanism to somehow disallow the use of a bot on some pages,
so that if a vandal-kiddie gets a hold of it, they can be stopped
before too much damage is done.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>
> When we get such a system set up it will be localized, as the wiki
> interface is, to be read in any language. The base copyright information
> is a multiple-choice question:
>
> [ ] GFDL, submitted by copyright owner
> [ ] GFDL, submitted by third party
> [ ] public domain
> [ ] other -- needs to be examined very carefully, may not be appropriate!
> source URL or citation: [_____________________]
> description: [_____________________]
>
> The description is going to be only in whatever language(s) people write
> in, but the multiple-choice bits will be translated at the interface. If
> you visit the site in Korean you'll see "GFDL, submitted by copyright
> owner" in Korean. If someone else visits it in French, they'll see it in
> French.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

This seems to be exactely what we need!

-- Looxix


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
> Actually you're correct -- there are *three forms :
> Its, it's, (of it) and the contraction of it is -
> it's.
> I think

Nope, pretty much two:

Its (possessive) - "Let the dog eat its dinner..."

It's (contraction) - "It's time to go to home..."

That's it.


from_name: Alex R.

body:
Crossposted to Wikilegal-L

>  From: "Stevertigo" <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
> ...
> > --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> > Fair use is an absolute necessity for us in some
> > contexts.  But it  should be used judiciously and
> with great > care, and only when every
> > other (freely licensed) alternative has been
> > exhausted.
>
> This kind of contradicts what you just said before.
> Either fair use is a defense, or it is not. Where that
> slider is set, is going to be harder to explain than
> GNU is.

There is another argument to look at here. The
argument regarding fair use as being a way to create
more of a public domain. Practically all the images
that are used on Wikipedia (except perhaps for that
one chart in the article that is way beyond fair use
for other purposes but probably fits into fair use
in an npo free encyclopedia) are low resolution and
if they were reused they could only be used in
informational contexts. Are any GFDL downstream
uses ever going to be non-informational? Perhaps
not.

The point is that fair use requires use. And if enough
people use an image for informational purposes
(because there is no other images showing that, or
the image is very generic or has little copyrightable
content, i.e. is mostly representing information without
any authorship) the question becomes not does that
image not fall under fair use, but is the image use so
widespread that more uses of it become fair and it
becomes unreasonable to remove it from general
circulation. This is similar to the argument that is
used with images that have great historical value,
they take on an iconic quality that is much more
than the authorship of the image. Remember that
information is not copyrightable, thus an image that
only shows information (such as the protest image
taken from a standard angle of a public event)
may have a very weak claim to copyright to begin
with if one can suggest that it is similar to other
images taken at the same time and used widely
in journalistic distributions.

The argument about fair use being only a defense
is a non-starter. Why?  Because anyone can file
a copyright infringment lawsuit and the case can
get thrown out of court later. Being afraid of someone
filing a potential lawsuit when there is a strong
fair use defense is, as they say, just being a wimp.

This is perhaps a subversive argument (yes lawyers
use the law for all different purposes) that is encouraging
fair use that becomes viral through a free content type
license. It is used in an informational context and no one
contests it.  Google routinely has thumbnails and they
are often of very commercial protected copyrighted
material, but no everyone is forcing Google to take them
down even though Google is a commercial enterprise.

Such fair use can become something like public domain
by estoppel. If people use and reuse these images
all over the net how will a corporate owner stop it?
Send a DCMA take down notice to every infringer?
Considering drafting one of these notices can cost
anywhere from $500 to $2,000 each the cost of doing
so quickly becomes prohibitive. The result: they
don't care. And they start thinking that maybe it
is tolerated because the image gets out there and
(as long as attribution is maintain which would be
necessary under the GFDL anyway) then it brings
people back to the original image and if there is a
commercial tie-in the creator actually benefits. The
GFDL becomes a means of free advertising that brings
one back to the source of the content. Why would
anyone not want that? "Hey, neat photo, let me
go to the site where it comes from." "Hey, the NY Times
sells prints of that photo that I can give someone as
a gift and it is not that expensive." They would have
not gotten back to that image source if it was not out
there. Thumbnails are thus like free advertising that
creates a new, previously non-existent marketplace
through hyperlinking attribution (one of the reasons
I always stress putting the source link back to the
URL where the image came from so that anyone
using or seeing the images can go back to the source
immediately). Take us to court and tell the judge
we are helping you exploit the image, not destroying
its value, bingo, you have one at least one of the
fair use factors and the owner will have a hard time
in most cases getting past the other factors. It may
even become a freedom of speech issue (which
I get to below) like parody fair use that has become
very broad.

Perhaps this is another one of my long winded posts,
but what I am trying to say as simply as I am able
to say it is that fair use does not necessarily mean
incompatibility with FDL, even for uncontemplated
downstream uses. Is it always clear? No, but neither is
copyright issues in any Wiki collaborative project.
Why? Because as hard as an wiki contributors
try then can never be certain that the content that
someone else adds to a pagee is not a copyright
infringment when someone posts it, and when it
is thus made part of an ongoing collaboration
of editing, reorganizing, and/or expansion the
underlying infringement may still be there and
may be very difficult to extract without destroying
the whole collaboration.

Does that stop it from being free? I don't think
so because after it is edited there is always the
argument that it has become part of the article.
There are several arguments that can be used
to support such an interpretation (granted
I have not found any case law on wiki social
software copyright issues and it is hard to
imagine when or how such case law would
develop in the future, but why not get ready
for it before it happens).

Well,besides the preceeding arguments
there is an argument that a wiki site that is FDL
is a collaborative work so each subsequent
modifier of earlier work has (some) moral rights
obligation (especially true when the work passes
through a jurisdiction that has strong moral rights
provisions in municipal copyright law) not to
deface or destroy the other creators' contribution.
(even in the so-called common law jurisdictions
there may be an implied obligation to respect
that ties to collaborative works that may be similar
in scope to moral rights). Adapting the FDL license
to a collaborative process puts a lot of pressure
on the collective aspect of it and would prevent
some kind of rampant misuse of fair use material
 that is used in a respectful way that does not
prevent commercial exploitation of the original
work (can anyone really make a t-shirt from a
200 pixel resolution thumbnail without transforming
it in the process into a pixelated work of art?).

I think of all the issues that Wikimedia might
want to test in the courts it is the question of the
limits of fair use on a wiki. Why? This will show how
developed and open the transfer of information
has become in a hyperlink society. These references
actually give the author more respect, more
potential to exploit there high quality originals
and it encourages attribution rather than
plagarism, something I think is a problem on
Wikipedia that has yet to rear its ugly head
when done with offline sources (not everything
is posted on the internet). There are other reasons
too (history pages with copyright infringments
on it is one, but I know this post is way too
long already so I won't get into that now).

So I am saying that before we rush to say that
all fair use is bad we should think about it carefully.
It may be very important to has some tolerable
standards for fair use as that may help innocent
infringements fit into the GFDL as well as making
content more free by creatively bending the limits
of fair use into a realm where people can use
even that new related information that is captured
by digital cameras at the scene of the crime (or
historical event, statue, public figure, etc. ,etc.) in
 a very non-creative manner, purely a digital rendering
of an actual event, place, person or thing that might
otherwise be protected by copyright, personality
rights or privacy rights that can be used anywhere
because of its limited resolution and value to general
human knowledge.

True there may be the obvious faux pas, such as the
the 1200x900 graphic lifted from some site, but I think
that most smaller pixel width contextually relevant
images are not going to result in a rash of DCMA
takedown notices hitting Wikimedia/Bomis. If the images
are also reused by forks and other non-similar
downstream licensor/licensees of the information
hasn't the goal of free content been advanced if it
becomes tolerated?  Why not try to expand the public
domain a little by taking a bit of a stand?

Just a thought.

Alex756


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
Peter Gervia wrote:
> It's funny to watch someone debating its (oh, okay, his/her ;)) mother
> tongue. :-)
>
Indeed. I spend far too much time doing this, too. :)

-- Jake


from_name: Rob Hooft

body:
Some of you might have seen that I did write a bot to edit on Wikipedia.
  Actually it is not a bot per-se, but a framework to be able to write
wikipedia bots. I have used this framework to make a new and consistent
lay-out for all the nl: year pages, and currently its two greatest hits
are automatically adding consistent interwiki links and
semi-automatically disambiguating links to disambiguation pages.

I am running these robots on the nl: wikipedia only, and I think that is
  the way it should stay. My idea is that if a language wikipedia agrees
to have a robot sniff around, it should be handled and monitored by
someone that is a very regular visitor of that language.

Now of course I am getting into trouble with this: there are other
people that want to run this software. First other user was Andre
Engels. I just gave him a copy of the code. Then there was Christian
List on da:, and he got a copy. But then more people working on
wikipedia started asking for the code, and recently also people that
have other instances of the wikipedia software running for other
projects. I am quite fond of free software, but here I am hesitating a
bit: if I give out the code to a growing select few, maintenance for me
is going to be a nightmare.

Now, I could just start an open source project at sourceforge to
collaboratively develop it further. BUT: I am afraid of the power of
this software, and the damage it could do if it ends up in the wrong
hands (vandals). On the other hand, it is not very difficult to write a
vandalizing robot for wikipedia, and I haven't heard anyone did it so
far; why would it start if a decent piece of robot software would be
freely available?

I'd like to evoke a discussion on this list to help me find a solution
to this. What do wikipedia developers and admins think about it?

Regards,

Rob Hooft

--
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
> Also, I didn't mention this in my other email, when
> I said that if
> people are looking for a "Christ-centered"
> curriculum, then wikipedia
> texts aren't going to be right for them.  However,
> it is worth noting
> that a solid Wikipedia foundation would provide
> enterprising
> home-school curriculum providers with a solid base
> from which to
> derive their own variants.
>
> --Jimbo

Do you mean to say that people are not allowed to
write textbooks that advocate for a certain religion?
I know that someone can't just go up to a history
textbook and write a chapter about how Jesus saved us
all, but aren't seperate religious textbooks allowed?
I assume you'd allow comparitive religion textbooks.

This also brings up the issue of forking textbooks
within Wikibooks. Is this allowed?
LDan

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from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 05:28:48AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> So, what am I supposed to do when I print letterhead?

'pedia on right and 'media on the left? :-)

grin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
On several days, several guys (where's the gals?) wrote:
> > Actually you're correct -- there are *three forms :
> > Its, it's, (of it) and the contraction of it is -
> > it's.
> >
> > I think
> I don't think you do. (Sorry, kidding, but had to make the comment...)
> PIHNA, people! (Possessive Its Has No Apostrophe) For explanation, it's
> because its is a pronoun. His and hers don't have apostrophes either.

It's funny to watch someone debating its (oh, okay, his/her ;)) mother
tongue. :-)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Robot code: open source or lock away in safe?

body:
Rob Hooft wrote:
> Some of you might have seen that I did write a bot to edit on Wikipedia.
>  Actually it is not a bot per-se, but a framework to be able to write
> wikipedia bots. I have used this framework to make a new and consistent
> lay-out for all the nl: year pages, and currently its two greatest hits
> are automatically adding consistent interwiki links and
> semi-automatically disambiguating links to disambiguation pages.
>
> I am running these robots on the nl: wikipedia only, and I think that is
>  the way it should stay. My idea is that if a language wikipedia agrees
> to have a robot sniff around, it should be handled and monitored by
> someone that is a very regular visitor of that language.
>
> Now of course I am getting into trouble with this: there are other
> people that want to run this software. First other user was Andre
> Engels. I just gave him a copy of the code. Then there was Christian
> List on da:, and he got a copy. But then more people working on
> wikipedia started asking for the code, and recently also people that
> have other instances of the wikipedia software running for other
> projects. I am quite fond of free software, but here I am hesitating a
> bit: if I give out the code to a growing select few, maintenance for me
> is going to be a nightmare.
>
> Now, I could just start an open source project at sourceforge to
> collaboratively develop it further. BUT: I am afraid of the power of
> this software, and the damage it could do if it ends up in the wrong
> hands (vandals). On the other hand, it is not very difficult to write a
> vandalizing robot for wikipedia, and I haven't heard anyone did it so
> far; why would it start if a decent piece of robot software would be
> freely available?
>
> I'd like to evoke a discussion on this list to help me find a solution
> to this. What do wikipedia developers and admins think about it?
>
> Regards,
>
> Rob Hooft
>

I used to think bots should be kept secret, but I've changed my mind. I
think making available a decent bot, with error checking and throttling,
would likely do more good than harm. Editing is not a particularly good
way to vandalise Wikipedia, as Michael eventually worked out. Moving
pages is much more effective.

But I have one feature request: can this bot load [[Wikipedia:Bots]] on
startup, check if its username is listed there, and if it is not, exit?

Perhaps we could put the code in CVS.

-- Tim Starling.


body:
--- Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz> wrote:
> Dan, did you ever read the starting brief for the
> logo contest? It
> included the condition that, because W is
> multilingual, the logo should
> not use words. So the original "winning" logo was in
> breach of the rules
> and shouldn't have made it to the final 10.

It had words in all different languages. I think the
rules were intended to say that it can't have words
that would need to be changed for different versions
of the logo.

> Because the announced plan was to work on refining
> the winner wikistyle.
>
I guess I didn't hear that, but I did read over all of
the meta pages about it. Maybe it was only mentioned
on the list while I was away. If you can refer me to
that, I'll drop this.

> Why can't you just reinstate them from the page
> history?
>
> --
> Richard Grevers

I did, a while ago.
LDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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from_name: James Duffy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
Seen in an advertisement some years ago.

BIG MAC'S - 79p.

I kept wondering - Big Mac's /what/? Who is Big Mac?

And a car sales shop near me has the sign NEW CAR'S AVAILABLE.

AAAAAAGH!

JT

>From: "Jake Nelson" <jnelson at soncom.com>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's
>Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 04:53:28 -0500
>
>Peter Gervia wrote:
> > It's funny to watch someone debating its (oh, okay, his/her ;)) mother
> > tongue. :-)
> >
>Indeed. I spend far too much time doing this, too. :)
>
>-- Jake
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Southern California Linux Expo

body:
Anyone planning to go to this? Might be fun to organize something
Wiki(p|m)edia-ish.

http://www.socallinuxexpo.com/
November 22, 2003
Los Angeles Convention Center

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Stuck db processes, uninterruptible sleep,
	wonky i/o

body:
On Sunday, Oct 19, 2003, at 05:23 US/Pacific, peter gervai wrote:
> If something writes lots of data to the disk (as 'bo' indicates) it can
> make others' disk access to stall (uninterruptable wait for disk
> resources).
> What filesystem do you use?

ext3, which of course means extra journaling overhead.

> Is the 12MB/s indicated in 'bo' the speed limit of your disks, or can
> they do
> higher average speed? (For example mine does max 20MB/s, and it means
> ~15MB/s
> "average maximum".)

I'd be surprised at much faster than that, particularly when doing
semirandom reads at the same time, probably. Here are the drive models,
I haven't been able to turn up very useful specs from googling yet:
   Vendor: IBM      Model: DDYS-T36950N     Rev: S96H
   Vendor: IBM      Model: IC35L036UWDY10-0 Rev: S23C

The second drive holds only the innodb data store and backup dump files.

Oh, and Tim: I've hardlinked the slow query log into /usr/local/mysql,
which should be accessible. It's grown a bit over time and sits around
230+megs, so you may wish to cut pieces off with tail. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apostrophe's

body:
James Duffy wrote:

> BIG MAC'S - 79p.
>
> I kept wondering - Big Mac's /what/? Who is Big Mac?

It's about his 79p, but I wouldn't know what they want to do with it.

> And a car sales shop near me has the sign NEW CAR'S AVAILABLE.

Clearly only their one new car is available.

It reminds me of the jeweller that was selling pedants.

Ec


from_name: tarquin

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 05:28:48AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>
>>So, what am I supposed to do when I print letterhead?
>>
>>
>
>'pedia on right and 'media on the left? :-)
>
>
>
lol! good idea!

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia in occitan

body:
--- gnu_thomas <thomas.contamine at laposte.net> wrote:

> I'm interresting in occitan, i saw there is an
> occitan version of
> wikipedia on http://oc.wikipedia.org but it looks to
> use an old version
> of the wiki and it's not fine readable. I want to
> communicate on
> wikipedia in occitan but i think it will be a better
> idea to wait that
> oc.wikipedia.org use the new version of the wiki and
> have a better
> graphism. I can do some work to make this but i
> don't know how and what
> to do and who can help me.
> Thanks you for reading me and helping.

Language coordination issues are handled at intlwiki-l
AT wikipedia DOT org -- this list is more for software
issues.

The Oc. version of the Language.php file will need
translating.
I made a start page for you at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageOc.php

You can see other locales and how they are done at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locales

Brion usually handles locales and updates here:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Todo_list

Be well,
~S~

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from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikitech-l] ia.wiki, vo.wiki and la.wiki admin

body:
I would like admin priviledges on
ia. la. and vo.wiki, they are my
most usual hangouts, although I'm
also a contibutor at the simple.wiki
the quote.wiki and others... The
interlingua wiki has grown a lot lately
and I've been encouraging others
to actively support it among the
various email lists devoted to that
language. The vo.wiki needs some
attention and I'm willing to put forth
some effort there also. The la.wiki
has had a lot of good feedback on
its homepage looks and I'm very
glad of the progress there.

For now I need IA.wikipedia.org,
LA.wikipedia.org, and VO.wikipedia.org
admin access.

Any objections?

If not could someone, maybe Brion
look into this and let me know?

cheers,
Jay B.
[User:ILVI]


body:
From: "Christopher Mahan" <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>
> Also, you might want to discuss ways to allow wikipedia to somehow
> find a mechanism to somehow disallow the use of a bot on some pages,
> so that if a vandal-kiddie gets a hold of it, they can be stopped
> before too much damage is done.

The ia.wikipedia has grown without
the use of bots and it would be good
to have a feature where bots aren't
allowed to add pages except with the
approval of an admin user.

...my two cents worth...
Jay B.
[User:ILVI]


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
> BIG MAC'S - 79p.
>
> I kept wondering - Big Mac's /what/? Who is Big Mac?

"An apostrophe does not mean, 'Here comes an S!' "

A pet peeve of mine as well, I must say (said the translator/proofreader);
right up there with the quotation marks as some kind of mutant intensifier.

HAVE A "NICE" DAY!

*claws eyes out, his own or the quotation mark abuser's*

matt/montrealais


from_name: Adam Bishop

subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
A few days ago there was a renewed discussion about whether or not certain
wars have apostrophes in their names, at
Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention#History.  Is it "Hundred Years' War" or
"Hundred Years War"? Right now there is an apostrophe and the one without
redirects.  I argued that that is the correct way, but there is still
disagreement about it.

>From: "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes
>Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 12:32:16 -0400
>
> > BIG MAC'S - 79p.
> >
> > I kept wondering - Big Mac's /what/? Who is Big Mac?
>
>"An apostrophe does not mean, 'Here comes an S!' "
>
>A pet peeve of mine as well, I must say (said the translator/proofreader);
>right up there with the quotation marks as some kind of mutant intensifier.
>
>HAVE A "NICE" DAY!
>
>*claws eyes out, his own or the quotation mark abuser's*
>
>matt/montrealais
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia in occitan

body:
On Sunday, Oct 19, 2003, at 10:37 US/Pacific, Stevertigo wrote:
> The Oc. version of the Language.php file will need
> translating.
> I made a start page for you at:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageOc.php

Note to Steve and others: please do not copy Language.php in its
entirety, as it contains a lot of common stuff that does *not* need to
be in the individual language files: default settings, the list of
language names, and a lot of code. Please look at the others for a
basis on how they should look.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
On Sunday, Oct 19, 2003, at 11:40 US/Pacific, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Matt M. wrote:
>> "An apostrophe does not mean, 'Here comes an S!' "
>
> Maybe you think this list is about apostrophes.

Can we please move this discussion to usenet? There's a very nice
newsgroup dedicated to the subject, alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
Adam Bishop wrote:

> A few days ago there was a renewed discussion about whether or not
> certain wars have apostrophes in their names, at
> Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention#History.  Is it "Hundred Years' War"
> or "Hundred Years War"? Right now there is an apostrophe and the one
> without redirects.  I argued that that is the correct way, but there
> is still disagreement about it.

The apostrophe absolutely belongs in these construction.  What style
manual says differently? I've removed the issue from pages needing
attention.

Ec

>


from_name: peter gervai

body:
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:09:18 -0700, Brion Vibber
<brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> The notable things are that the number of processes in uninterruptible
> sleep (the 'b' column) is bigger than usual (0-1 with an occasional 2 is
> normal), a few processes are even swapped out ('w' column), and i/o has
> gone all wonky; some unusually low input ("bi") and very unusually high
> output ("bo").

If something writes lots of data to the disk (as 'bo' indicates) it can
make others' disk access to stall (uninterruptable wait for disk
resources).
What filesystem do you use?

Anyway, someone writes lots of data to the disk. (I've seen that in
resiserfs,
but it shouldn't take more than some seconds.) Dunno about mysql's possible
braindeadness. Dunno about your partition layout either, but /proc/ can
contain
separate stats for every partition (don't remember the name and it's
kernel dependent)
so you can see where's the activity. Maybe it helps.

Is the 12MB/s indicated in 'bo' the speed limit of your disks, or can they
do
higher average speed? (For example mine does max 20MB/s, and it means
~15MB/s
"average maximum".)

grin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Can we please move this discussion to usenet?
> There's a very nice
> newsgroup dedicated to the subject,
> alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe

Hear here.

By the way, there was a Zappa album called
"Apostrophe" (usually paired with 'Overnite Sensation'
--a fine combo.

  "Well I told 'em right then"
  "It should be easy to see
  "The crux of the biscuit
   is the apostrophe"

They can discuss it here:
http://chunga.apana.org.au/~heederik/fz/faq/notes2/Apostrophe.html

~S~
Which reminds me --We need an article on "bromidrosis"
- http://www.books.md/B/dic/bromidrosis.php

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia in occitan

body:
Hello,
my first post on this list, I hope this is the good place to post my
question...

So,
I'm interresting in occitan, i saw there is an occitan version of
wikipedia on http://oc.wikipedia.org but it looks to use an old version
of the wiki and it's not fine readable. I want to communicate on
wikipedia in occitan but i think it will be a better idea to wait that
oc.wikipedia.org use the new version of the wiki and have a better
graphism. I can do some work to make this but i don't know how and what
to do and who can help me.
Thanks you for reading me and helping.

Gnu_Thomas

PS: you can answer in english or in french


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia in occitan

body:
Stevertigo a ?crit :
> --- gnu_thomas <thomas.contamine at laposte.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I'm interresting in occitan, i saw there is an
>>occitan version of
>>wikipedia on http://oc.wikipedia.org but it looks to
>>use an old version
>>of the wiki and it's not fine readable. I want to
>>communicate on
>>wikipedia in occitan but i think it will be a better
>>idea to wait that
>>oc.wikipedia.org use the new version of the wiki and
>>have a better
>>graphism. I can do some work to make this but i
>>don't know how and what
>>to do and who can help me.
>>Thanks you for reading me and helping.
>
>
>
> Language coordination issues are handled at intlwiki-l
> AT wikipedia DOT org -- this list is more for software
> issues.
>
> The Oc. version of the Language.php file will need
> translating.
> I made a start page for you at:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageOc.php
>
> You can see other locales and how they are done at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locales
>
> Brion usually handles locales and updates here:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Todo_list
>
> Be well,
> ~S~

thanks you and sorry for the noise


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
Matt M. wrote:
> "An apostrophe does not mean, 'Here comes an S!' "

Maybe you think this list is about apostrophes.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] apostrophes

body:
>
>Adam Bishop wrote:
>
>>A few days ago there was a renewed discussion about whether or not certain
>>wars have apostrophes in their names, at
>>Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention#History.  Is it "Hundred Years' War" or
>>"Hundred Years War"? Right now there is an apostrophe and the one without
>>redirects.  I argued that that is the correct way, but there is still
>>disagreement about it.
>
>The apostrophe absolutely belongs in these construction.  What style manual
>says differently? I've removed the issue from pages needing attention.
>
>Ec

Yes it should have but in reality it rarely does. Historians got so fed up
with essays from students about the 'Hundred Year's War' that to keep there
own sanity they simply write 'Hundred Years War'. I think in practice,
though less correct, it is more recognisable for people. (Even if it drives
purists like me demented!)

JT

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Is it really sensible to have different logos for the
>Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia itself?

Because Wikimedia is the /whole/ thing (the foundation, Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
Wikibooks, Wikiquote, and yes MediaWiki), while Wikipedia is just Wikipedia.
Different projects need different logos; the foundation also needs a logo and
minus the word "Foundation" that same logo also symbolizes the whole free
content wiki package along with the software that serves it.

Just because Wikipedia is the bomb right now and the foundation and other
Wikimedia projects are almost unknown in comparison, is not a good reason to
abandon the establishment of distinctive branding. Nuff said.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS: All that is really needed to establish a sense of Wikimedia-wide
cohesiveness is the phrase "A [Wikimedia] project]" right below the logo on
each Wikimedia project. [Wikimedia] would be a link to our project portal at
http://wikimedia.org


body:
David Friedland wrote:
>Since the Mediawiki project is part of Wikimedia,
>shouldn't there be a link to it (with it's shiny new
>logo) on the Wikimedia.org page?

Yes! Most definitely. Please somebody make it so. :-)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
SV wrote:
>Speaking of media --  we *need* a news wiki.  No joke.

Already a very active one at [[Current events]]. Which, BTW, helps keep the
/encyclopedia/ up-to-date. Wikipedia would be harmed by diverting that effort
into a different project - it is simply way too similar to just updating the
encyclopedia to reflect current events.

Besides, there is already Indymedia.

Oh and I like the Wikimedia logo /exactly/ the way it is. The only thing I
would change on the MediaWiki logo is to obtain a photo of a more perfect and
healthy flower (unless that is supposed to be somehow symbolic ;).

The PM logo was a wonderful concept but PM's specific implementation of that
idea was a monster that needed refinement. The runners up did not need such
refinement (as always, IMO).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Do you mean to say that people are not allowed to
> write textbooks that advocate for a certain religion?

Not under the Wikimedia Foundation auspices, no.  NPOV is an absolute
non-negotiable requirement of everything that we do.

I know there was some discussion about NPOV and textbooks awhile back,
but I really should make clear that I think that discussion wound up
with a definitive answer: under the Wikimedia Foundation, everything
we do is required to be NPOV.

> I know that someone can't just go up to a history
> textbook and write a chapter about how Jesus saved us
> all, but aren't seperate religious textbooks allowed?
> I assume you'd allow comparitive religion textbooks.

Sure.  Books _about_ religion are fine.  Doesn't even have to be
comparative.  A fine book would be an NPOV look at the history of
Islam, for example.  But it can't be pro-Islam or anti-Islam.  It has
to be neutral in the NPOV sense.

> This also brings up the issue of forking textbooks within
> Wikibooks. Is this allowed?

What do you mean exactly?  I guess it's allowed for NPOV reasons, but
not allowed for POV reasons, if you see what I mean.

The analogy I would use to illustrate this is how articles are
sometimes split up on Wikipedia.  People are tussling over what a
particular article should say, and then they realize that, hey, the
problem is that I'm trying to write about X and you're trying to write
about Y, but we've unfortunately named the article XY.

If a group is writing a book about genetics to fit the requirements of
a particular sort of course on genetics, and if some other people try
to put in too much information about political controversies within
evolution, then it would be perfectly fine for the groups to part
company and realize that they are working on different things.

But it would NOT be o.k. to have 2 books written "from a perspective".

If people want to do that, I think it's great.  Someone should write a
GNU FDL book about evolution, specifically from a Christian point of
view let's say.  And other people could redistribute it or modify it
or whatever.

But that's not the right book for us.

--Jimbo


body:
Erik wrote:
>Aside from that, I believe the "umbrella organization"
>logic is correct --  it would not be fair to our other
>projects (Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote), all of
>which are coming along nicely, to use the Wikipedia
>logo for the Wikimedia foundation as well.

I could not agree more, but would like to add that the word "Wikimedia" (by
itself) is the whole thing - the foundation and all projects including
MediaWiki and meta. The term "Wikimedia Foundation" is more specific and
deals just with the foundation.

>The present Wikimedia logo is nice and abstract
>and favors none of our projects in its style or
>substance.

Exactly why it is perfect. Here are some more reasons; it is a copyright
symbol turned on its side so that the open part points up. Within that space
an abstract flower grows. The symbolism is perfect for Wikimedia.

>That is, put the logos for all of our projects in
>small versions on the letterhead, next to the
>large Wikimedia logo.

This sounds like a good idea, at least until Wikimedia becomes nearly as
famous as Wikipedia is already. By that time we might have so many projects
that the letterhead would be too cluttered (not to mention distracting - we
want people to /read/ the letter, not ponder the letterhead ;).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Grin wrote:
>'pedia on right and 'media on the left? :-)

That might work too. I kinda like that idea.

--mav


body:
Erik wrote:
>We should strive to make the Wikimedia page
>itself somewhat useful as well, with a clear mission
>statement,

Good idea! A page on meta should be used to write this. Let's do that here:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mission_statement

>and perhaps the news directly on the main page
>(weblog-style).

Another great idea! Perhaps the first 4 or 5 H3 headings at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News would work via a simple script
(ignoring the wiki-specific text in the H2)? A link to "more..." would, of
course, be to the fully editable meta page and the "News" link in the sidebar
should also stay.

If that is done though, full HTML should be disabled for that exported text
(otherwise somebody could edit the Wikimedia News page to do nasty things to
the computers and personal info of anybody visiting the Wikimedia home page).
Oh and wiki links would need to be converted to HTML 'a hrefs' on-the-fly for
this instead of being displayed as bracket text (the current behavior of
Brion's neat-o 'export meta page text to wikimediafoundation.org' hack).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News should, of course, be
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News , but that can wait.


subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Wikibooks could, in my opinion, be somewhat more expert-centric than
> pure NPOV would allow. In case of controversies, we should try to
> decide whether this is a legitimate controversy among experts on the
> subject, or whether we are dealing with "crackpot" theories which
> have no place in serious textbooks. On Wikipedia, we would always
> try to include the opposite POV, if only as a link to a separate
> page. On Wikibooks, we may sometimes have to decide to remove it
> entirely.

Well, my position is that what you're talking about is fully subsumed
under NPOV.

I think concrete examples can be very enlightening here, because at
this level of abstraction it's hard for us to be very clear about what
we mean "on the ground".

And assuming for a moment that we all here more or less agree on a
broadly humanist, scientific world view, an example running contrary
to that might be best.

But since I can't think of one, I'll keep it abstract.  :-)

A book might contain in the preface a disclaimer, added only if needed
in response to someone who actually is complaining about the content
of the book, similar to this:

"This book deals only with accepted mainstream views of physicists.
There are certainly other views out there, ranging from creative new
innovations, as yet unproven, by the great scientists of tomorrow, to
purely crank theories that are unlikely to ever be noticed beyond the
feverish dreams of the creators.  Although a book about such theories
would likely be stimulating and entertaining, they are beyond the
scope of this particular text."

"On controversies within mainstream physics, we endeavor to speak
neutrally, to merely present the controversy in a way that both sides
would consider fair.  On controversies that lie beyond the edge of
mainstream physics, we endeavor here too to speak neutrally.  The lack
of inclusion of some idea here is not a condemnation (or endorsement,
of course) of that idea, but rather an acknowledgement simply that the
idea is not sufficiently mainstream to permit us to include it within
our limited scope."

O.k., let me spin that around and make it about something else
entirely, to try to illustrate the same point again in a different
way.

"This book deals only with accepted mainstream views of Catholic
doctrine.  We are here attempting to simply present in a neutral
fashion what Catholic doctrine is, and controversies within the
Catholic church, rather than addressing critiques and controversies
arising outside the Church.  There are certainly other views out
there, and a book about such critiques and controversies would likely
be stimulating and entertaining, but those are beyond the scope of
this particular text."

"On controversies within the Church, we endeavor to speak neutrally,
to merely present the controversy in a way that both sides would
consider fair.  On controversies that lie beyond the edge of the
Church, we endeavor here too to speak neutrally.  The lack of
inclusion of some idea here is not a condemnation (or endorsement, of
course) of that idea, but rather an acknowledgement simply that the
idea is not sufficiently internal to the Church itself to permit us to
include it within our limited scope."

The point is that in a chapter in this book about homosexuality, it
would be perfectly appropriate to exclude secular critiques of the
Church's position, except to the extent that those critiques have
gained currency within Church or theological circles.  The book would
simply not be _about_ that.

I think that such limitations of scope are perfectly NPOV, and also
resolve the issues about how to keep textbooks from having to
endlessly cover crackpot theories or extraneous controversies.

"On the ground", we'll have to look to specific controversies and come
to some consensus or compromise as to what we're doing.  Probably the
most effective way to resolve such things is to negotiate and then
_firmly adhere_ to an overall statement of purpose for each book.
That way, particular controversies can be handled by asking "does this
meet the mission statement of the book", something that's easier for
partisans to agree upon, rather than "Should this book be about X or
about Y?" a question upon which opinions may legitimately vary.

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

body:
This issue has not yet come up in any textbook. However, my
hope is that, on occasion, Wikibooks could be home to
textbooks advocating a certain point of view. In cases such
as these, the POV of the book could be explained in a
mission statement at the beginning of the book. That way a
creationist textbook could be written and prepared on the
site by and for creationists.

My tendency is that rather than regulate freedom in this
sense, let the books fend for themselves. If enough people
think that they have merit, they contribute to the book and
it advances. If not, then the book just sits there.

I'd like to at least keep the door open and deal with it as
it comes up instead of outright outlawing it from the
start.

Karl

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subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

body:
Karl Wick wrote:
> That way a creationist textbook could be written and prepared on the
> site by and for creationists.

Well, I don't think that abandoning NPOV is going to help at all.

Let's use this example, because I'm guessing that all of us here today
think that creationism is essentially wrong, a false theory about the
world.

A book *about* creationism, written mostly by creationists but also by
anti-creationists, with both sides working hard to accomodate the
other, could easily be NPOV.  Abandoning NPOV merely weakens the book
for everyone.

> I'd like to at least keep the door open and deal with it as
> it comes up instead of outright outlawing it from the
> start.

Well, certainly as a practical matter, we can deal with it as it comes
up.  No sense generating a priori rules and regulations for a problem
that doesn't exist.

But I think it is critically important that the Wikimedia Foundation
adhere *strictly* to NPOV, globally, as matter of quality control.

We want people to say "Well, the Wikimedia Foundation book about
creationism is a revolutionary tour de force.  It has been widely
adopted in college courses dealing with the controversy, and it is
pointed to by evolutionists and creationists as the most wide-ranging
and fair treatment of the subject.  Newcomers wishing to learn about
the controversy can ask for no finer presentation of the issues and
arguments."

We do NOT want people to say "Yes, those Wikimedia people will publish
anything.  They have a pretty good encyclopedia, but they also publish
books that are pro-creationism, pro-Nazi, and pro-homosexual
marriage."

NPOV generates credibility, because it is a credible decision rule, a
credible process.  NPOV is that which we can all agree with.  And NPOV
also gives us a way to settle internal controversies peacefully,
because of the standing rule that if two people are arguing about the
content of an article, they should both be working hard to try to
accomodate the other point of view.

--Jimbo


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003, Christopher Mahan wrote:

>
> --- Rob Hooft <rob at hooft.net> wrote:
>
> > I'd like to evoke a discussion on this list to help me find a
> > solution
> > to this. What do wikipedia developers and admins think about it?
>
> I personally think that the use of bots should be discussed with the
> appropriate people prior to use.

But who are the appropriate people? And how am I to contact them?

Andre Engels


body:
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> When we get such a system set up it will be localized, as the wiki
> interface is, to be read in any language. The base copyright
> information is a multiple-choice question:
>
> [ ] GFDL, submitted by copyright owner
> [ ] GFDL, submitted by third party
> [ ] public domain
> [ ] other -- needs to be examined very carefully, may not be
> appropriate!
> source URL or citation: [_____________________]
> description: [_____________________]
>
> The description is going to be only in whatever language(s) people
> write in, but the multiple-choice bits will be translated at the
> interface. If you visit the site in Korean you'll see "GFDL, submitted
> by copyright owner" in Korean. If someone else visits it in French,
> they'll see it in French.

Yes! This is what we want!

Still, some details:
* I would like to see some more options here: "Other" now ranges from "It's
  freely usable when the author is mentioned" to "I got special permission to
  use this on this specific one Wikipedia page." I'd like to see some more
  options like "GPL", "Creative Commons License" (with variants), "free usable
  with attribution", "free for non-commercial use".
* For the same reason there should be a further specification option behind
  the 'other' option.
* Which leaves still open what to description to give to some pictures. For
  example, there's many flags on Wikipedia. Are these public domain? Or is it
  fair use? What about logos?
* Apart from 'source URL or citation', what about adding a separate "author"
  line?

Andre Engels


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Burnout

body:
> A good plan - it's very easy to get wrapped up in serious debate,
> but that takes away the enjoyment - and yet there are thousands
> of "fun" articles to add, noncontroversial content that is a necessary
> part of a comprehensive encyclopedia.

I believe that this indicates that we need a better way to agree (or at
least act) on controversial matters.

It is good advice anywhere to avoid burning out on unimportant issues,
but that seems especially true at Wikipedia.  The amount of frustration
that editors suffer trying to resolve something over a single article is
high, because the process is unclear, and because of the wide range of
attitudes of those involved in the decisions.

Louis


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote (regarding VfD):

>
> The process actually works reasonably well now, so it would be wrong
> of me to try to decree some huge change to the process.  This is a
> process that has grown up 'organically' over time.  All we need *right
> now* is just the tiniest bit of formulation of what the final decision
> rule should be.

Are you sure?  I think it's true that VfD works well in the clear-cut
cases.  Probably 80% of the cases are clear-cut, in that there is a
clear consensus in favor of deleting or retaining the article.

For the other 20% it works poorly.  These are cases where we end up
discussion what Wikipedia is, or how the article space should be
organized.  Most of these conversations end up deadlocked, and the
outcome is that the articles are kept.  The many "List of," "Slogan,"
and "biography" discussions are examples of this.  The quality of the
decision making was low, and the number of Wikipedians made upset in the
process was high.

A good deletion process should meet three goals: it should produce
high-quality decisions, it should require minimal effort, and it should
stress out Wikipedians as little as possible.

> As such, while I'm sympathetic to the notion of excluding votes from
> mysterious users who have only edited 1 time, I think that unless it's
> a huge huge problem, we can safely ignore it.

It is only going to get worse, and if we actually have _votes_ rather
than a consensus system, we will have to address the matter of who is
entitled to vote.  The project has greater public prominence than it
once did, making such questions more relevant than they once were.

Louis


body:
> Now, I could just start an open source project at sourceforge to
> collaboratively develop it further. BUT: I am afraid of the power of
> this software, and the damage it could do if it ends up in the wrong
> hands (vandals).

My two cents:

1.  Change your bot so that it adds a User-agent header to the HTTP
requests that identifies the request as coming from a bot (unless you've
already done this).

2.  Ask Brion or someone to add a check for the "User-agent: Bot" and
then check the already-exising "bot" flag in the user record, and toss
out the edit if it is made from other than a "bot" user.

3.  Once this is done, release your source.

Quick and easy.  Now, to be sure, anyone with software skills can change
the source so that it doesn't produce the header.  But then, anyone with
software skills can write their own bot.

Louis


subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: "Auto Extraction from WWW"

body:
On Monday, Oct 20, 2003, at 12:18 US/Pacific, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Could someone take over this question? I don't know what to tell these
> guys.

Tim answered a long time ago, but nobody's heard anything back from
them but the initial form letter cut-n-pasted, so far as I know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rameez

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
--- "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> Perhaps there is a way to reconcile the seemingly
> POV approach of these books with the non-negotiable
> NPOV of Wikipedia/media? I am not certain there is.
>
>  A textbook may have a  particular purpose, i.e. it
> is used to
> advance certain theories of knowledge, so it seems
> to
> me that on some level there can be no NPOV textbooks
>
> that deal with interpretive subjects (history books
> are
> often like this, as history is not written by the
> vanquished there is often an implicit POV
> even if it is written in  NPOV language there
> is still often an agenda, different theories of
> history,
> such as social historians have fundamentally
> different POVs from political historians, they
> see the cause of events not being political events
> but development and transformation of social
> institutions, classes, ecnomic forces, etc.) So it
> might be very hard for a really well written history
> text book to be NPOV as that would detract from
> the ability to explain the subject without
> constantly
> having to put in foot notes making cross
> references..
>
> So how to be NPOV and still publish things from
> the point of view of particular theoretical
> approaches
> or from a certain school? Every page would have to
> make it clear that such a page was being written
> from
> a particular perspective and that it was only being
> explained from that perspective; to be fair it would
> have to point to the other POVs that would also have
> to be explained in detail. This seems to defeat the
> purpose of having such a textbook.  Would anyone
> who needs such a text book use it? Well they might
> edit out the NPOV references to make it POV in thier
> fork, but that would seem to defeat the purpose of
> writing it with all the references to other works of
> competing opinions. Would the creationist write
> the book that cannot be used without the reference
> to all the anti-creationist stuff (and indeed the
> anti-
> creationist would have to collaoborate with the
> creationist -- hard to imagine that happening also).
>
> I can't see a way to write such a book from a NPOV
> approach so that it could be useful to someone who
> has a particular "agenda" of course, as Jimmy points
> out, anyone could start a creationist textbook wiki
> and make such a book; it just does not work with
> NPOV.
>
> Alex756

I don't see why NPOV is so absolutely necessary. As
you said, NPOV is impossible for textbooks. So what
determines what views can and can't be on Wikibooks?
Certainly an evolutionary standpoint would be allowed,
and it wouldn't need much NPOV to make it clear that
some people don't believe it. Why not a creationist
textbook? Sure, there's no scientific basis for it,
but who's to judge whether scientific things are
better than religious things? IMHO DPOV would solve
all of these problems, making it so that different
textbooks could have different prestated POVs and not
have to worry about making every sentece NPOV. Your
suggeston is somewhat like DPOV but only for the
majority view.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Warning to RK

body:
The following are examples of unkind and antisocial remarks that
I'm not going to tolerate for much longer.  RK, if you can't keep
yourself from engaging in attacks on others, I'm going to have to
ask you to leave the project permanently.

The truth or falsity of the charges RK is levelling may or may not be
an interesting topic, but it's really beside the point.  We just don't
act this way on Wikipedia.  Everyone needs to proceed with kindness
and benevolence towards other contributors.

This kind of behavior only escalates problems, it doesn't solve them.

>From page history of [[ecoterrorism]]

"(Reverting bald-faced lies and apologetics for mass murder. This
article was not only a POV violation, it is hatespeech.)"

from page history of [[PETA]]

"(Stop trying to hide facts. This is an encyclopedia, not a whitewash
machine.  We need to add more information, not delete things to make
you feel comfortable.)"

And the talk page for PETA:

"Ah, like so many others here, Axel believes that the way to achieve
NPOV is not to make this a better and more comprehensive encyclopedia,
but to cut out material until one achieves some kind of balance. What
nonsense. This isn't about NPOV. Axel is just minimizing a viewpoint
he doesn't want to see in print.  RK 16:23, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)"


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

body:
Perhaps there is a way to reconcile the seemingly
POV approach of these books with the non-negotiable
NPOV of Wikipedia/media? I am not certain there is.

 A textbook may have a  particular purpose, i.e. it is used to
advance certain theories of knowledge, so it seems to
me that on some level there can be no NPOV textbooks
that deal with interpretive subjects (history books are
often like this, as history is not written by the
vanquished there is often an implicit POV
even if it is written in  NPOV language there
is still often an agenda, different theories of history,
such as social historians have fundamentally
different POVs from political historians, they
see the cause of events not being political events
but development and transformation of social
institutions, classes, ecnomic forces, etc.) So it
might be very hard for a really well written history
text book to be NPOV as that would detract from
the ability to explain the subject without constantly
having to put in foot notes making cross references..

So how to be NPOV and still publish things from
the point of view of particular theoretical approaches
or from a certain school? Every page would have to
make it clear that such a page was being written from
a particular perspective and that it was only being
explained from that perspective; to be fair it would
have to point to the other POVs that would also have
to be explained in detail. This seems to defeat the
purpose of having such a textbook.  Would anyone
who needs such a text book use it? Well they might
edit out the NPOV references to make it POV in thier
fork, but that would seem to defeat the purpose of
writing it with all the references to other works of
competing opinions. Would the creationist write
the book that cannot be used without the reference
to all the anti-creationist stuff (and indeed the anti-
creationist would have to collaoborate with the
creationist -- hard to imagine that happening also).

I can't see a way to write such a book from a NPOV
approach so that it could be useful to someone who
has a particular "agenda" of course, as Jimmy points
out, anyone could start a creationist textbook wiki
and make such a book; it just does not work with
NPOV.

Alex756

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Wick" <karlwick at yahoo.com>
To: "text" <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 12:25 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

> This issue has not yet come up in any textbook. However, my
> hope is that, on occasion, Wikibooks could be home to
> textbooks advocating a certain point of view. In cases such
> as these, the POV of the book could be explained in a
> mission statement at the beginning of the book. That way a
> creationist textbook could be written and prepared on the
> site by and for creationists.
>
> My tendency is that rather than regulate freedom in this
> sense, let the books fend for themselves. If enough people
> think that they have merit, they contribute to the book and
> it advances. If not, then the book just sits there.
>
> I'd like to at least keep the door open and deal with it as
> it comes up instead of outright outlawing it from the
> start.
>
> Karl
>
> __________________________________
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