from_name: Claudio Mastroianni

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 21:23, Pedro Sanchez ha scritto:

> I'll try to reword Gregory's argument since I think it's still not
> clear to you (and for what I see, most it: people).
>
> 1. On italy, you're allowed to publish with permission but not
> under fair use.
> 2. So you can upload if you get permission
> 3. Once the file has been uploaded in italy with permission, USA
> people can access it
> 4. Should the cirterion met, USA people can reuse the content under
> fair use (since there, fair use applies no matter what the licencing
> terms are (permission or not))

Ok, that's received.
BUT the permission grants use *only* under certain condition.
More specifically, quite *all* the permission say "You can use it,
but ONLY on it.wikipedia".
This is our permission, and this is our deal.

> therefore he's suggesting you to tag your images with the text
> * This image has been published in  Italy with permission (not under
> nonexistent "italy fair use")
> * This image *could* be used on some other countries as fair use where
> those countries law allow it

Saying this, I'm "inviting" other people to use it *outside*
it.wikipedia.
This goes against our deal and our permission.
It's like when I have a gun and I leave it on a seat in the park: if
anyone use it, I'm legally in trouble.

(By the way: is it etical doing what are you saying? It's a dirty trick)

> Am I right greg? Did I explain it correctly?

You've not said the phrase "You're paranoid", that could be a problem.

Gatto Nero


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Also, it should be a much easier task to convert non-Wikipedia
> projects, where there is already a large number of that language
> admins. For example: EN, DE, ES, FR, NL?, PL. Wikinews, Wiktionary,
> Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity. Some thirty-odd
> projects there that we already have the capacity to deal with, were
> they to turn off local uploads.

Don't know if you know, but es.wikiversity has been commons-only since
the very beginning :D


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Mark Wagner wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Nothing will change for en.wiki? Hardly. If I'm reading this
>>>
>>>correctly, most of the images used under a claim of "fair use" are no
>>>longer allowed, and we'll need to figure out how to delete some
>>>200,000 images, as well as how to educate thousands of users who are
>>>used to uploading those sorts of images.
>>>
>>>
>>Record album covers? book covers?  publicity shots?  These are all used
>>to such an extent that the owners can be treated as having abandoned
>>copyright
>>
>>
>Unfortunately there is no "statute of limitations" on copyright
>infringement.  Unlike trademark and patent laws, copyright can be
>enforced retroactively many years, even decades after the infringement
>has occured.  It does not require active enforcement if somebody wants
>to go in and try to seek damages... even if the image has since passed
>into the public domain.  And due to the Berne Convention, there is no
>asserted copyright that must be filed first in order to assume
>copyright.  All images have complete copyright protections unless you
>have explicitly recieved the content via license... hence the need for
>something like the GPL and GFDL.
>
This is not correct.  See Section 507 of the US copyright law which
provides a three year limitation for civil action, five years for wilful
criminal infringements.

Under Section 411 registration of US works is a prerequisite to starting
an action for infringement, and no damages can be collected inrespect of
a period that preceded registration.  To satisfy the Berne convention
the work is still protected from the time it is produced, but that is
not enough to start an action.

>This is relatively recent in terms of American copyright standards,
>where you could assume abandonded copyright if it wasn't registered with
>the Library of Congress, or if the copyright wasn't renewed.
> Politically, I think that is a much more valid way to address copyright
>where only those things that people are willing to say "I want this
>copyrighted!" can get that kind of protection, but that isn't current law.
>
As a rule of thumb I would say three years of complete inactivity on the
part of the copyright owner would be sufficient for a claim of
abandonment.  In the case involving the Scientology papers a shorter
period was ruled applicable for abandonment.

As things stand almost anything can be copyrighted, including such
ephemera as advertising flyers that most of us like to throw away.  We
could not legally reproduce a 50-year old grocery flyer to show what the
prices were like then; it does not matter if the company long ago ceased
operation.  The need to register would create a situation where orphaned
material of this sort could be forced into the public domain by
abandonment.  The broad brush of the current regime only favours the big
publishers, and creates confusion for everybody else.

I have occasionally considered the idea of promoting an OrphanWiki.
Because of the potential legal implications this would need to be a
separate project.  Such a Project would include certain works which are
strictly speaking still protected by copyright, but whose owners are
unknown.  What the project is doing would be flagrantly publicized in
the hopes of flushing out the owner.  If nothing at all is heard for
three years the work could be treated as having gone into the public
domain by abandonment.

Ec


list: wikien-l

from_name: Yonatan Horan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
I'm pretty sure jayjg was agreeing with you, saying that the category should
be named Jewish People.

On 2/8/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I see where you are getting at. But what do you think of the consistency
> issue?
>
>     - Cool Cat
>
> On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/8/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > jayjg wrote:
> > >
> > > >The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> > > >Edition.  2000.
> > > >
> > > >"Jew" is not a dirty word.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > While true, that's a different question than presented here.  "Greek"
> is
> > > not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at [[:Category:Greek
> > > people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].
> > >
> > > -Mark
> >
> > Steve Bennett specifically said that he finds the word "Jew" to be
> > "awkward" and have "unfortunate connotations". The response was made
> > in that context.
> >
> > Jay.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Use of logos within Wikimedia sites

body:
On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, geni wrote:

> On 2/7/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This is cute.
>>      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NotSuckBanner.jpg
>>
>> It strikes me that images such as this one, which use project logos (not
>> the Foundation logo) should
>>
>>   a) be available under a specific license describing how they can be
>> reused without permission
>>   b) be fairly unrestricted for community use, allowing derivations
>>
> Sounds extreamly messy. Define community.

Certainly any project taking place on Wikipedia wikis counts.

>> There has been work in other communities regarding distinguishing between
>> "official" and open-use community logos.  For instance, you can see
>> Debian's dual logos here:
>>     http://www.debian.org/logos/  [1]
>>
>> --SJ
>>
> From what I understand the result of that is that most people use the
> free one for pretty much everything.

That sounds a bit like the history of Wikipedia itself.

SJ


subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
 (some important points)

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>Enwiki went through something similar when the with-permission,
>non-commercial, and non-derivative images that were permitted (or at
>last tolerated) early on became speedy deletion candidates... many
>people upset at the loss of their hard work, and no one is ever happy
>about making that happen even where the ends are something we want.
>
Making the deletion speedy can be as much of a problem as deleting at
all.  Sometimes a more respectful process might take a little longer,
but it gives people the opportunity to feel they have been heard.  For a
questionable image that has hung around for a couple of years, an extr
week should make little difference.

Ec


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 08/02/07, Piero <pierogra at libero.it> wrote:
> Moreover considering that images with permission are checked to assure
> that they are used only for allowed case (through OTRS), and fair use
> images are not.

No, that is not how OTRS permissions work. OTRS checks that the
copyright-holder has released the media under a free license, not that
limited-permission media are being used in those limited ways. 'Images
with permission', if you mean Wikipedia-only permission images, would
these days be told 'sorry, that's not free enough'.

I thin IT.wp just needs to accept this announcement. Wailing about it
is not going to make any progress. (And no I'm not a fair use
apologist. I think we should abolish all fair use, too...)

regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: Marco Chiesa

body:
On 2/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell a gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> I think that is far too much smoke here for such a small amount of
> fire. On itwiki the images impacted by this seem to be mostly tagged
> with {{Copyrighted}}.  If we look at the whatlinkshere
> (
> http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciale:PuntanoQui/Template:Copyrighted&limit
> )
> we find that there are less than 2,000 images in this state. Is all
> this concern from itwiki really just about 2,000 images or are there
> several other templates that I am missing?
>
> In any case, if you go through these images you will find many images
> that anyone could take, public buildings and such. You will also find
> many images created by Italian Wikipedians who are deciding to not
> release their work under a free license.  This is a terrible thing,
> and it's deeply troubling that anyone thought that these images were
> ever okay.

I agree that we can get rid of the images for which a free alternative is
possible. Of course there are people that think that commercial reuse of
their work is evil, they'll cope with that. In
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Censimento_licenze_immaginithere
is a very recent analysis of the images present on
it.wiki. It makes about 12-13k non-free images. This includes 4k coat of
arms of Italian municipalities, which, independent of copyright, require the
municipality permission for reuse. Plus, of course, many a user on
it.wikiis really pissed that fair use won't be phased out.

Marco (Cruccone)


body:
On 2/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> I think that is far too much smoke here for such a small amount of
> fire. On itwiki the images impacted by this seem to be mostly tagged
> with {{Copyrighted}}.  If we look at the whatlinkshere
> (
> http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciale:PuntanoQui/Template:Copyrighted&limit
> )
> we find that there are less than 2,000 images in this state. Is all
> this concern from itwiki really just about 2,000 images or are there
> several other templates that I am missing?
>
> In any case, if you go through these images you will find many images
> that anyone could take, public buildings and such. You will also find
> many images created by Italian Wikipedians who are deciding to not
> release their work under a free license.  This is a terrible thing,
> and it's deeply troubling that anyone thought that these images were
> ever okay.

I agree that we can get rid of the images for which a free alternative is
possible. Of course there are people that think that commercial reuse of
their work is evil, they'll cope with that. In
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Censimento_licenze_immaginithere
is a very recent analysis of the images present on
it.wiki. It makes about 12-13k non-free images. This includes 4k coat of
arms of Italian municipalities, which, independent of copyright, require the
municipality permission for reuse. Plus, of course, many a user on
it.wikiis really pissed that fair use won't be phased out.

Marco (Cruccone)


body:
On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, ?ukasz Garczewski wrote:

> On 2/7/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There has been work in other communities regarding distinguishing between
>> "official" and open-use community logos.  For instance, you can see
>> Debian's dual logos here:
>>     http://www.debian.org/logos/  [1]
>
> And we have our own open-use community logo, although not widely
> recognized yet. Please take a look at:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Community_Logos

Since we also have the benefit of an official Foundation logo, perhaps
the project logos can themselves be open-use.  What are the problems we
are trying to avoid, and what things that we want are being held back
due to licensing issues?

For the latter point, there is a joy of creativity and
project-identification when a WikiProject develops its own visual
identity, whether that is in the form of style guidelines, unified
template or infobox format, or icons and logos.  And there is a wider
remix culture around a project that is encouraged by incorporating
community icons into images and other media in innovative ways.

SJ


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fluctuating Google result count with Firefox

body:
On 9 Feb 2007 at 11:48, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. Search for "Wikipedia is great" in the FireFox search box.
> 2. Mostly (but not always), Google reports 29,600 matches.
> 3. Repeat the search just by pressing Google's "Search" button.
> 4. Google reports 14,800 matches.

Meanwhile, "Wikipedia sucks" yields 1,250,000 results.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

body:
"Platonides" <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:eqg5f4$f9p$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Mark Clements escribi?:
> > Is there a way of telling MW to block certain page names, e.g. to
disallow
> > new pages that match the regex "/index\.php\?title=/i"?  If not then
this
> > seems like a worthwhile config setting to add.
> >
> > - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
>
> Setting a captcha for anonymous page creation would be easier. This *is*
> a good use of it, instead of adding it /against/ humans...

Except that the pages we need to block in this case are pages that will
never need to be created, so it won't get in the way of any legitimite
activity which a captcha would.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Liang Chen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Why in some case the "/" in article title fail to work?

body:
HI,
   I tried to add an article behind another article following by a
"/", like "Abacus/TOEFL", and "User:BiGreat/Gaokao2".

   However, in the second page "User:BiGreat/Gaokao2", there will be a
"< User:BiGreat" below the title, but in the first page
"Abacus/TOEFL", there isn't a "< Abacus".

   I don't know why. Could somebody help me?
The two page at:
http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/Abacus/TOEFL
http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/User:BiGreat/Gaokao2

Thanks!

--
                     ---BiGreat---
               www.Liang-Chen.com


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/8/07, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
> Which won't work on browsers that don't support CSS. I believe the best
> way to do this would be to load the diambiguation page using [[Ajax
> (programming)|Ajax]]. This should degrade nicely on browsers without
> JS/CSS.

The whole scheme[1] is totally dependent on css anyway. If we get as
far as having a box that can be expanded and that transcludes another
page, CSS and javascript is a given.

How would an Ajax implementation work? Would the MediaWiki code need
to be modified?

Incidentally, I've made an expanding version of the "otheruses-4"
template: [[User:Stevage/Otheruses4-expand]]
There's an example of its use here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevage/Disambig2

Steve
[1] That is, using the 'hidden' template.


body:
On 2/5/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_2#Category:Jews
>
> I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add "people"
> to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose" votes. What
> do you think?

For what it's worth, I do find the formulations "Jews", "American
Jews" etc rather awkward and find they have unfortunate connotations.
Is it preferable to have "Jewish people" inconsistent with
"Buddhists"? I don't know.

I do know that tags instead of categories (which is what these really
are) would make this easier: "Jewish", "American".

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] An expanded-topic Mailing List

body:
On 2/8/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Good reason to avoid it!  The problem with chat rooms is that they are
> geared toward people with short attention spans who think is one-line
> bites.  The kind of thoughtful discussion that Marc envisions does not
> fit in that kind of environment.  In some cases I prefer to wait a day
> or two to think about my answer before replying.

In any case, IRC and email lists are not compatible choices. IRC
doesn't suit me. Email doesn't suit others. We can't just send those
that want to discuss some topic to IRC, unless something about the
medium itself is particularly relevant.

But seriously, I am all for splitting this list. A single list that
deals with issues as diverse as "Why did I get blocked", "Check out
this cool article", "Interesting report about Wikipedia", and "Where
should Wikipedia go in the next 5 years" just doesn't really gel.

I'd like a seriously moderated list where only serious discussion is
tolerated. Without depriving the freshly blocked of a forum to rant
in.

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-09

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19840).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


body:
Il giorno 09/feb/07, alle ore 00:15, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> Yes, although I should make sure to be really clear.  (2) is only okay
> if (4) would be possible. The reason for this is that we want the
> material submitted to itwikis to be maximally free in the rest of the
> world.

That's silly. Fair use is not maximally free "in the rest of the
world". Fair use is "maximally free" only in such countries where
fair use/fair dealing exist.
Which are...? United States, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia,
India... Commonwealth?

But not in Czech. Nor in Nederlands. And the other countries?
Why are you talking "for the rest of the world" is fair use is usable
only by fair-use-countries?
Are you fooling us?

> We don't care about only the US, we also care about the whole world..

Again.

> Countries that I believe have explicit law similar in intent to fair
> use include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Germany,
> Hungary, Japan, Poland, Sweeden, United Kingdom.. and pretty much
> every place that was at one point a UK holding.

Again.

> Of course, it's also
> the case that it exists in Italian law too, but people here are
> insisting that it only applies to text. This doesn't appear to be the
> case to me, but I will not argue.

Again, you're stating that you understand italian laws better than
italian people.
Are you crazy or what? Who do you think you are?
Sorry Mister, but I and "people who are insisting" MAYBE know our
laws better than you.

Gatto Nero


from_name: Joshua Brady

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

We are putting way too much on an admin pool, where only a small group
handle 60% of the load. We all need to remember, adminship is *NOT* a
big deal. You are not and should not be defined by your edit count.
Everyone is quick too jump on prospective admins, without examining it
all, and getting to know how someone will handle things. Without
requiring 5,000 edits (Which yes, is not hard to obtain.). Now this
doesn't mean there are occasions where something needs to be
WP:SNOW'ed away.

Threats from unknown sources, I know when my RfA went through, I
received a few threats against myself. Now, while I am quite used to
it, not everyone is. No one should be subjected to them. I am not sure
if these were from actual editors, trolls, or what-have it.

Abuse does happen, and when it does happen, even in small amounts it
builds up a group of people who turn and look at the admin pool as if
it was full of abuse and corruption (There is no cabal, becomes, There
is a cable and we haven't found the leader yet.). Which when this
happens, it puts stress on the admin pool.

Vandalism continues to happen, and is something we will never stop.
But we can slow it down, and rather than just block half the internet,
we need a stronger relationship with the tech community to handle the
abuse at the account end (You can't pull a new IP, if you have no
account.). We need to make it known, childish pranks *WILL NOT* be
tolerated, and blatant vandalism will result in more than just a block
and a reset of your modem/router/connection/tin can on a string.

Some proposed solutions:
 * Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to
compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin
issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So
lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his
contributions and WILLINGNESS.

 * ArbCom needs 9 new appointments (3 per term), ArbCom yes has great
arbitrators who do a wonderful job, but it is the same people doing
it, and slow down those eager to mediate disputes. So I propose we,
not take away from those arbitrators doing a great job already, but
give them more help. Arbitration is a very time consuming job, and
these should be people willing to mediate. (I do not propose we remove
the arbitrators currently serving, but we add more.)

 * ArbCom needs an "internal affairs" department to look at complaints
of abuse and decide if they are just base less complaints which can
hurt an admins rep, or if the complaint is actually abuse, then
forward it to ArbCom. The committee should consist of non-ArbCom
members, and contain atleast 2 non admins.

 * Admin actions need to be supported. You can not have an admin take
a good action, a user jump them, and other admins choose to take the
popular route in hopes of not pissing someone off.

 * We need to get more of the people who are reading articles, and
just reading, to edit. Devising a strategy to do this, is not
something I personally am an expert in. I'm better involved in other
ways.

> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com

Regards,
Joshua Brady
[[User:Somitho]]


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
	(some important points)

body:
On 2/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Fair use is somewhat different in that many third party uses,
> especially educational ones, will be permissible as well. Beyond that,
> fair use and similar exemptions are a good way to describe a set of
> content which we, pragmatically, will accept, but which we can
> communicate clearly as being philosophically incompatible with our
> core mission. The important point is that there is a clear division
> into two spheres:
>  * fair use / fair dealing and similar exemptions
>  * free content

As much as I condemn the whole revolutionary clash. As much as I agree
with the strong statement let's ban ND, NC and "with permission", as
much as I agree with the fact that "fair use" is "more permissive"
than those non free licenses or those non-licenses, I cannot help but
feel sorry that two members of the board have expressed the
differences in these terms.

As we say in French, I would appreciate if we called a cat a cat. When
you say "we will communicate clearly as being incompatible with our
core mission" I find this utterly contradictory.

I'm sorry. Clearly communicating for me, means expressing a clear YES
or a clear NO. And if we are to take our core mission as witness, then
either we are true to it, or we are not. And if we are not, because to
some extent, for the time being, we cannot, fine. Let's say it.  If
the board decision is that we're keeping the status-quo as far as fair
use is concerned, this is totally fine by me. Your decision, I will
defer to it.

But let's face it, fair use is unfree, a little less than another
maybe. The only difference is that the en community and also the WMF
has decided to accept it, out of, as Erik points out, pragmatism.
This, for me would be the right phrasing. And the fair one, to
everyone.

Do not forget that there are probably 100 wikipedias with enough
articles to be of note, and that probably one and only one of them is
going to invoke fair use. Granted, it's the biggest one. But that does
not make it the "right" one. So tell me we're accepting fair use
because the English community is divided, tell me it's because the
Foundation is in the US and it makes sense there. Tell me it's a
political move.

Tell me anything but don't tell me that fair-use can be used for this
that and the rest and that it's not so bad, after all. (at least, this
is what I repreatedly hear, this manichean speech that says ND/NC and
permission are EVIL, fair use is LESS EVIL). Don't even hint at it. I
said it earlier, I believe fair-use is evil. ;-) And it seems I am not
the only one.

If anything, I think it very sad that the biggest Wikipedia is
condemning itself to be distributed "as such" only in countries where
the fair use doctrine exists, and bars itself from being distributed
in the rest of the world.

I have, however, faith that the other wikipedias will show the light.
Slowly, but surely...

Cheers,

Delphine

--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Notes missing in enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml

body:
Afonso Arantes wrote:
> I'm currently writing a custom script that will translate the english language
> wikipedia dump into html. Everything seems ok except that the Notes: sections
> with external links seem to be missing.
>
> As an example, the article on Autism (id 25) goes straight from "See also" to
> "References". In the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism page there is an
> extensive "Notes" section between these two with extensive commentary and
> numbered links to external sources. I cannot seem to find this material anywhere
> on the page, nor are there template directives that might include them. Links to
> the notes are made throughout the article but are not present in the xml.
>
> Am I missing something obvious or do should I download another file with this
> extra information? I thought that maybe this was just an older dump but other
> articles seem to be affected as well.
>
> Thank you for your help.

I haven't seen the dump myself, but the Autism article utilizes <ref>
and <references /> tags [1], which means that Wikipedia is generating
the Notes section from the many <ref> tags in the article body. This is
thanks to the Cite.php extension [2]. My guess is that the dumps haven't
done anything with the <ref> tags, so you should be able to piece
together a Notes section with your script.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Autism&action=edit&section=28
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Hello,

Although 2007 is already 1/12 over, there's no reason we can't still
think about what we'd like to achieve in the remaining 11/12 of it. :)

This has two parts - my hopes for 2007 (medium-term future), and my
hopes for the next 3-5 years (long-term, or still medium?).

Here are some things I would like to see Commons achieve or continue
to do, for 2007.

* Continue its aggressive approach to multilinguality.
By this I mean actively seeking out translations and translators,
rather than passively waiting for whoever feels like it to translate
whatever they feel like. This also refers to making sure the most
vital pages (policy, newbie guides, signup process) are translated,
and making an effort to communicate with users in their preferred
language (for example, by asking a bilingual admin to work with them).

* Continue its relaxed and welcoming approach to new administrators.
Our current attitude is doing a good job of attracting reliable
admins. By 'reliable' I mean: I can't recall any case where a month
after sysopping someone, we have had reason to doubt that decision.
(Or even any length of time, really...) We have also shown respect for
users' local experience and there are many cases where a 'image
warrior' on a local project has gained adminship at Commons - not
*because* of that, but it certainly helps. (I like to think such folk
would be successful without the inevitable flood of local project
voters such cases usually attract. :))

* Improve clarity and appropriateness of help documentation, and
consolidate information on a topic in one area.
This is always tricky in a wiki environment, because of the dispersed
and usually undriven approach (whoever feels like writing something
writes it, as opposed to something being ordered to written because it
is needed). But it's something we need to keep reviewing and checking.
Consolidating our help files is useful because it decreases the
translation needs, and it decreases the potential for conflicting
information to exist.
The number of users who clearly ignore or don't understand our
requirements shows that this needs constant improvement. We have to
concentrate on finding  SUCCINCT and clear ways to express ourselves.
I would suggest that Special:Upload as it stands, needs to be
rewritten again. I don't know exactly how. But this is a constant
process.
For a start, I would like to see us emphasise and separate help files
for people contributing  their own work. There is no reason these
people really need to look at Commons:Licensing and get so scared (or
worse, ignore it). For these people, who are our BEST USERS, because
they are typically contributing original, unique, exclusive work, we
really need to make their lives easy.
I suggest we start by writing a guide [[Commons:Contributing your own work]].

* Continue to develop quality review mechanisms, and highlight
high-quality work.
The development of [[Commons:Quality Images]] is a great one I think,
and I hope mechanisms like this continue to grow. [[Commons:Picture of
the Year]] is also proving very successful which is fantastic.
One area we are possibly lacking in is in pushing our high quality
stuff back out to wikis. It is easy to miss this small %age which is
our best of the best. We can promote this stuff by perhaps organising
more translations, organising a weekly/monthly newsletter out to wikis
that lists these images and suggests possible uses, ...? how else?

* Reach out to local Wikimedia wikis and actively promote "Commons
only" upload policies.
Switching to Commons only has massive benefits for both the local wiki
(hugely reduced maintenance burden) and us (new contributions). But we
all know now that preparation is required to make the transition a
success. WE need language-speaking active admins; THEY need to promote
Commons policy beforehand and attempt to educate their users as much
as possible before the switch.
I suggest we create a guide [[Commons:Turning off local uploads]] (or
choose another name) to smooth the path for wikis who want to go down
this road. We can offer tips from the ES.wp and PT.wp cases (is there
another?? I have a feeling there was but I can't remember it, maybe
SV.wb?).
Maybe one of the steps will be a small group (even one?) of volunteers
from the local wiki making contact with a small group of volunteers
from Commons, and both groups committing to work together to move to
Commons only uploads (community approval pending, of course). For
example the Commons person can look for existing language speakers and
encourage them to become admins or translate, and identify key pages
for translating.
I suggest we also start finding out more about the new-wiki creation
process, and get involved with groups there, to encourage groups to
consider starting their wiki with "Commons only" uploads from the very
start.
Also, it should be a much easier task to convert non-Wikipedia
projects, where there is already a large number of that language
admins. For example: EN, DE, ES, FR, NL?, PL. Wikinews, Wiktionary,
Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity. Some thirty-odd
projects there that we already have the capacity to deal with, were
they to turn off local uploads.

* Adopt a simple-to-use media rating system.
Having a star-rating system (a la Youtube) on all Image: pages would
be an incredibly simple way to quickly amass information on media
quality. Imagine how useful it would be to view a category ordered by
average star rating - a very simple and effective filter.
http://www.wikihow.com/WikiHow:RateArticle-Extension should be able to
be developed towards this purpose. I'm not sure we'd be able to get it
adopted within 11 months, but I hope we should make some progress
towards putting this on the radar for the developers.

* Continue to push local projects to adopt CommonsTickers.
Related to several points above. Vital tool for inter-project harmony!

* SUL implemented. (bug 57)
We don't have anything to do with this, but it will be a major
improvement for us of course.

* Introduce user recognition system.
We are all volunteers, but there's no reason we can't develop an award
system that aims to recognise the time-intensive effort and/or
outstandingly high-quality contributions that longterm users have
made. The benefits of such a system are two-fold: they give the
contributors in question tangible, public and formal recognition of
their efforts, which thanks and encourages them; and it offers
concrete examples to other users of what kind of conduct is
appreciated and needed.
I have started writing about this on my user page, but I have some
more ideas in my head, that I hope the community will welcome when I
finally write them down. :)

Here are some things that I hope Commons can achieve over the next 3-5 years.

* FileStore implemented
This will allow image moving/renaming (bug 709), and extension-free
image names (I think).

* Core functionality integrated into native MediaWiki.
** Bulk uploading (bug 488)
** User galleries (bug id?)
** CheckUsage (bug 1394)
** Automatic transfer of images from local projects to Commons
(automatic as in when requested by admins) (bug 5283)

* Some progress towards resolution of galleries/categories into one
tool. (bug 3712)

* Some progress in multilingual support for categories (bug 3311, 5638)

* Some degree of press recognition and fame :)
We have a great project, let's get it out there! How can we promote it?
I noticed my newspaper now runs about 6 blogs, and the bloggers
regularly use photos from Flickr. One recently was 'licensed under a
Creative Commons license' and I went and checked the Flickr page, and
it actually said 'All rights reserved'. So I left a comment on the
blog to that effect, and with links to two lovely photos from Commons.
they didn't publish my comment, but the blogger emailed me to say
thanks. :)
there's no awareness out there!
Why are we a fantastic media archive?
* All media free to use however you like in any publication, with
minimal conditions
* Huge range, constantly being expanded
* Multilingual access (potentially...)
* High quality original contributions found nowhere else on the web,
especially in the SVG field
* Useful specific descriptions and annotations (this is totally
missing from all stock photography archives I've seen)
* ...

Comments on any of this, or further ideas or hopes are always welcome,
of course.

regards
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: rfrangi at libero.it

body:
Please take a look at:
A- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Amazingspiderman50.jpg
B- http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Spider-Man50_cover.png

Image A is tagged as "fair use" on en.wiki
Image B is basically tagged as "copyrighted, used with permission, NC-ND" on it.wiki

I daresay that most of the italian community thinks that anything different from both A and B have to go or both A and B can stay is simply unacceptable.

So if I understand correctly, we can simply add a second template stating that the image may be considered as fair use in places where this notion exist, and the "fair-use" template overrides the "used with permission NC-ND" template.

It's ok in this way?

Roberto (Snowdog)

P.S.: Strong support for Delphine. Fair use is evil.

------------------------------------------------------
Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
http://click.libero.it/infostrada9feb07


body:
On 2/9/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/8/07, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > If anything, I think it very sad that the biggest Wikipedia is
> > condemning itself to be distributed "as such" only in countries where
> > the fair use doctrine exists, and bars itself from being distributed
> > in the rest of the world.
> [snip]
>
> I will offer you an interesting point for consideration here:
>
> If and only if we are really good at only allowing "fair use" when no
> free image is possible (i.e. only after we've tried to get the
> copyright holder to make a release, only after we're sure that no
> Wikipedian can create a comparable image)

Maybe I'm an eternal optimist. But frankly, in the long run, I don't
think that there is going to be ANYTHING worth mentionning in an
encyclopedia which will not provide at least one kind of media that is
free.

Because if we are true to our mission, we're going to fight to make
these things free. Images from space, images from artworks, images
from celebrities (well, for those we can already all turn into
paparazzi).

So yes, I have no doubt that one day we will be the "free encyclopedia".

And definitely, I agree that cooperation is the only way forward.
We've got time. Don't we?

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Subject linking in Wikisource (was: Advice on a custom
	extension)

body:
Jim Hu wrote:

> For example, the web service at Pubmed provide the abstract and
> links to full text (at yet another website) for a publication.
> My users would want to add things like: "This paper describes a
> resource that turned out to be useful for doing X" or "Figure 1
> in this paper shows this thing that the authors didn't notice"
> or "The xxx gene described in this paper is also known as yyy;
> they were shown to be the same 10 years later" etc.

I have a similar problem.  At http://runeberg.org/ I digitize old
books, among them several encyclopedias.  For the sake of
familiarity, you can think about scanned books in Wikisource
rather than my website.

In many cases an encyclopedia from 1889 is useful for knowing the
population of Aberdeen in 1889.  It could be nice to report what
the current population is, but in some cases it is also important
to point out that the reported number for 1889 was indeed wrong.
But if scanning and OCRing one page takes 3 seconds and
proofreading takes 3 minutes, how long does it take to check all
the facts?  Not knowing how this should best be addressed, it
seemed like a stupid idea to digitize more old works that are full
of errors.

When Wikipedia was started in 2001 and started to get off the
ground, this became the obvious place to put information on the
current and historic population of Aberdeen.  The scanning of old
texts no longer had to carry this role.  It was really only in
2002 and 2003 that I got the energy to scan more works for my own
site, and in 2005 I scanned this for Wikisource,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work

Turns out Aberdeen's population in 1911 was 163,084,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work/1-0016
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work/Aberdeen
but this bit of information is not linked to or included in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen#Population

So one problem still exists: From the scanned book page, there is
no link to the Wikipedia article that provides more up-to-date
information.  The reader of the scanned page can of course use a
search engine, and will often find the Wikipedia article.  But is
this really the ultimate solution?  And even if the Wikipedia
article is found, the other scanned pages that link to the same
article are not found from there.

Should each scanned book page include a list of links to Wikipedia
articles that are relevant for the page?  Could such lists be
compiled (or suggested) automatically?

Should Wikisource have a [[category:Aberdeen]] that collects all
pages, chapters and books that pertain to this town?  Today the
English Wikisource has one [[Category:Works by subject]], but
under this is a very small tree, compared to all articles in
Wikipedia.  There is no category for Aberdeen, but one for
Scotland that has 15 links of which 4 are to articles in the 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica.  The 1911 EB article "Aberdeen (burgh)"
is not among these four,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Aberdeen_%28burgh%29

Wikisource also has a [[Category:Ottoman Empire]] that contains
four articles from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, one other
chapter and two other works.  But the corresponding category on
the English Wikipedia has 56 pages and 12 immediate subcategories.
Even the sub-subcategory Ottoman railways has 6 Wikipedia
articles.  On Wikisource there seem to be 6 mentions of the
"Orient Express", but these are found through Google and not
through links on the website,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22orient+express%22+site%3Aen.wikisource.org

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


from_name: geni

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
On 2/9/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> It isn't quite WMF's fault that other countries don't release their pictures
> under free licenses (or like the US into the public domain).  You could just
> as well say that because enwp uses English sources it is biased towards the
> US\UK and therefore is not NPOV. No encyclopedia in the world is NPOV going
> by the same standards because they don't really go to North Korea and take
> photos there nor do they get a North Korean writer to write some parts of
> articles regarding NK.

En managed the next best thing.

--
geni


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Joshua Brady wrote:
> We are putting way too much on an admin pool, where only a small group
> handle 60% of the load. We all need to remember, adminship is *NOT* a
> big deal. You are not and should not be defined by your edit count.
> Everyone is quick too jump on prospective admins, without examining it
> all, and getting to know how someone will handle things. Without
> requiring 5,000 edits (Which yes, is not hard to obtain.). Now this
> doesn't mean there are occasions where something needs to be
> WP:SNOW'ed away.
>

Yeah, I was pretty astounded at how RfA worked when I went there after a
long period of not looking at it.  I became an admin back in mid-2003
sometime, after being active on the project for about 6 months, with
maybe 400 or 500 edits.  I didn't have to answer some 20-question-long
interview, and nobody really pored over my edit history with a
fine-toothed comb.  If I had to go through some bureaucratic process, I
would probably tell the process-wonk asking me to answer some
questionnaire where he could stick it.

I had been around for six months, seemed to know what was going on and
hand't done anything stupid, and so of course I was given adminship upon
request.  Why don't we do that now?  It's still not hard to take back
adminship if someone badly misuses it, so IMO all RfA candidates should
get adminship by default, with the burden of proof being upon anyone who
thinks they should be denied it to argue why.  More concretely, any
unexplained "no" votes should not be counted.

-Mark


from_name: Philippe Elie

body:
On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 at 21:57 +0000, Kat Walsh wrote:

> Greetings!
>

Hi Kat,

[snip]

> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop educational
> content under a free content license or in the public domain. For
> content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal
> restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the
> content for any purpose.

[snip]

> It is therefore vital that all projects under the Foundation umbrella
> use these standards, not only because of our desire to enable the
> creation of free reference works, but also because of our commitment
> to allow those works to benefit everyone who wishes to use and reuse
> them. Because of this, all media we allow on our projects must be free
> for all users and all purposes, including non-Wikimedia use,
> commercial use, and derivative works. (Some media may be subject to
> restrictions other than copyright in some jurisdictions, but are still
> considered free work.)

I don't get the figure. The Foundation mission statement is "to develop
educational content" but the board is saying "than all media [...]  must
be free for all users and *all purposes*". This disallow all license type
"for educational purpose" whilst giving at a first glance no advantage.

I and many people agree for a license allowing commercial/non
commercial use and derivative works which fulfill the mission
statement but the actual license requirement go far ahead from that.

> Some Wikimedia projects use media that is not free at all, under a
> doctrine of "fair use" or "fair dealing". There are some works,
> primarily historically important photographs and significant modern
> artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be released under a
> free content license, but that are hard to discuss in an educational
> context without including the media itself. Because the inability to
> include these works limits scholarship and criticism, in many
> jurisdictions people may use such works under limited conditions
> without having license or permission. Some works that are under
> licenses we do not accept (such as non-derivative) may meet these
> conditions. Because of our commitment to free content, this non-free
> media should not be used when it is reasonably possible to replace
> with free media that would serve the same educational purpose.

So it's agreed than "fair use is not free at all" but it's acceptable
whilst a license for educational purpose allowing derivative works and
commercial use isn't. That look like weird.

--
regards,
Philippe Elie


from_name: Yonatan Horan

body:
It isn't quite WMF's fault that other countries don't release their pictures
under free licenses (or like the US into the public domain).  You could just
as well say that because enwp uses English sources it is biased towards the
US\UK and therefore is not NPOV. No encyclopedia in the world is NPOV going
by the same standards because they don't really go to North Korea and take
photos there nor do they get a North Korean writer to write some parts of
articles regarding NK. NPOV is the sublime ideal we should all strive for
but in order to further one ideal, you sometimes have to give up another and
in this case when you look at both sides I think it's a no-brainer.

Yonatan

On 2/9/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
> Geni said:
> > >/ To me, these include, among others://
> />/ * military operations and hardware
> /
> > US military photos and trade fairs. Also various open days. About the
> > only think you won't get is NK stuff such as Ch'onma-ho
>
> So, only US hardware and activities. So much for NPOV. (There are tons of
> interesting things
> that you won't see unless you're in operations. Trade fairs will show only
> small arms.)
>
> >/ * spacecraft
> /
> > NASA for a lot of stuff and countries tend to put a lot of their space
> > hardware on display
>
> NASA => only US
>
> You've therefore made the point that our current policies favor the
> broadcasting of the
> activities of the US government. So much for NPOV. :-)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Carlos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

references:
<eqb9ee$omv$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<eqbli0$jtp$1@sea.gmane.org>	<45C963F9.1070803@gatech.edu>
	<eqda57$fmc$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Mark Clements wrote:
[...]
> Is there a way of telling MW to block certain page names, e.g. to disallow
> new pages that match the regex "/index\.php\?title=/i"?  If not then this
> seems like a worthwhile config setting to add.

You can hook a function to the 'userCan' event, and check for action
'create' (or 'move', 'edit', 'read').

See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:MediaWiki_hooks
and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki_hooks/userCan

--


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
 Alkavar also recently had three of his horribly poor speedy deletions
> challenged, and I'm not sure how bad his image deletions were within
> that context, or any others.
>
> What do we need to do right?  Maybe elect more admins who can do things
> right so they don't get challenged, stressed, and then bail?
>
> -Jeff

A certian percentage of any user type will always walk away. Admins
are no exception. Some turnover is even required as long as we promote
fast enough and enough  experenced people stay on.

Speedies could be helped by getting people to prod rather than false
speedy tag but that is always going to be an issue.

--
geni


body:
Ah, my bad I really shouldn't barge into conversations when I haven't read
them fully. Anyway I, as a Jew, am with jayjg - if someone finds it
offensive they're overly sensitive (of course as long as you're not saying
"don't jew me out" and the likes).

Yonatan

On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No, the exact opposite.
>
> On 2/8/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm pretty sure jayjg was agreeing with you, saying that the category
> should
> > be named Jewish People.
> >
> > On 2/8/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I see where you are getting at. But what do you think of the
> consistency
> > > issue?
> > >
> > >     - Cool Cat
> > >
> > > On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On 2/8/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > > jayjg wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > >The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language:
> Fourth
> > > > > >Edition.  2000.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >"Jew" is not a dirty word.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > While true, that's a different question than presented
> here.  "Greek"
> > > is
> > > > > not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at
> [[:Category:Greek
> > > > > people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].
> > > > >
> > > > > -Mark
> > > >
> > > > Steve Bennett specifically said that he finds the word "Jew" to be
> > > > "awkward" and have "unfortunate connotations". The response was made
> > > > in that context.
> > > >
> > > > Jay.
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Jewish is not only a religion but also a race. Someone can be an atheist and
still Jewish. For example, I personally don't really believe in god but I'm
still a Jew. Heh, I was about to automatically add ~~~~...

Yonatan

On 2/8/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Cool Cat wrote:
>
> >You might want to stay away from the mailing lists if you are that
> fragile.
> >The point of the mailing list is to discuss wikipedia related stuff, not
> >your personal beliefs or whatever.
> >
> Sorry, but I thought that you had started this thread to push your own
> beliefs.
>
> >Just to satisfy you, I want to amend my comment. "Almost anyone has a
> >religion".
> >
> :-P
>
> >[[Category:People who do not have a religion]] is just as bad as
> >[[Category:People who do  have a religion]]/[[Category:People who are
> from
> >'type religion here']] in any case.
> >
> The logical conclusion from that is tht we should not have religious
> categories at all.  If that's the case why are we even bpthering with
> any distinction between Jews and Jewish people.  We could be deleting
> both.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 2/9/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> I've asked before, but are there any publications of the scale of
> Wikipedia that acutally use fair-use artwork?

Google. Yahoo.

After that there are not very many publications on the scale of wikipedia.

--
geni


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] If you don't object to this, you're consenting

body:
On 2/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In particular, are there any OTRS volunteers who can tell me if that's
> the best way to raise a substantial legal concern about something on
> en:wp?

Yes, it should (generally) go to OTRS. Volunteers there know how to
put matters before the right people if necessary, or deal with it
themselves if it's just some junk in the article.

You might like to also mention pages such as [[foundation:designated
agent]] where the Foundation contact page is mentioned.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 2/9/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The *totality* of italian people I've read of, for now, totally
> disagree with the decision of WMF.

Message received, and received, and received.

Please wait until the actual resolution arrives before telling us
again how everyone in Italy feels.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>
> That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if you're using
> IE.
>
Is there a particular reason why the "IE Fixes" files are loaded separately?
Would it be feasible to conflate them into a single ifle, with the selectors
for particular versions *inside* that file, and then simply load that one
file for IE users?

If I've understood the rest of this thread, the combined file could be
compressed quite a lot, so the question would be whether loading one bigger
file is more efficient than possibly loading 4 smaller files.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/-Wikitech-l--Bandwidth-usage-tf3184309.html#a8884916
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


from_name: stvrtg

subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
On 2/8/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
> While it's easy to agree that there are a lot of useless and lame
> categories, it's also the case that campaigns to purge these categories
> do more to create friction than to solve problems.  With patience those
> with an identity crisis will eventually go away at which time the
> pointless categories can be removed without much fuss.
>
> BTW, Methylated Wesletarian (who are dead) need to be distinguished from
> Ethylated Wesletarians, who are merely drunk.  This must be divided into
> two categories. :-)

That's being unnecessarily categoristic - youre chauvinistic categorism is
no doubt
motivated by a nefarious desire to destroy the fragile compact that holds
the various
tangential and differentiated branches of the Methylated Wesletarian
community together
under a single monicker.

-SV , (human)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Subject: Re: Project as namespace

body:
On 2/8/07, Christof Sperl <christof.sperl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Although surely a project namespace would be convenient, I don't think it
> is
> worth all the workload.

But different people say the "workload" is minimal.
Whom is correct?

-SV


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to
>> illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?
>>
>
> Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have
> been a lot less ah dramatic.
>
Given that the issue was unimportant one way or the other, I don't see
where the massive damage comes from.
> Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders
> troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those
> involved are still admins.
>
I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've
heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?

This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause
underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no
permanent damage is possible, but POV-pushers and other miscreants have
learned that they can get their way by blowing everything way out of
proportion, accusing admins of tyranny and cabals and bla bla bla, so
that the reasonable people get tired of it all and walk away.

It's kind of a clever way for POV-pushers to get control of WP actually;
raise the bar for new admins, drying up the supply, and drive the old
ones away with continual harassment.

Stan


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/8/07 10:12 PM, Jeff Raymond at
jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:

> People who edit articles simply are not valued on
> this project anymore.

What is valued?

Marc


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] Four Questions About Freedom (was: Clearing up
	Wikimedia's media licensing policies (some important points))

body:
On 2/9/07, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tell me anything but don't tell me that fair-use can be used for this
> that and the rest and that it's not so bad, after all. (at least, this
> is what I repreatedly hear, this manichean speech that says ND/NC and
> permission are EVIL, fair use is LESS EVIL). Don't even hint at it.

I don't really like to use the word "evil." What I want to communicate
is that the liberation of culture is a process, not a state. Within
that process, it may be acceptable to make temporary concessions to
reality -- until we have changed that reality.

The questions we should ask, I think, are the following:
1) How can we make the division between free and non-free clearer?
2) How can we encourage the liberation of non-free works?
3) Are there works which we can never hope to liberate, at least not
under the existing paradigm of freedom?
4) What concessions can and should we make for different language projects?

Here are some thoughts on each of these questions:

1) Making the division clearer. One way to do so would be to caption
every image that is used under an exemption doctrine with a notice to
that effect, e.g. "Copyright (C) XYZ. Used under fair use. [[About
fair use in Wikipedia]]" That latter link could explain our policies,
our desire for replacements, and the general free culture philosophy
underlying this framework.

Another method is to completely phase out local image uploads for
anything _but_ materials used under an exemption doctrine policy
(EDP). This is what we have done on English Wikinews from the start
and one the Polish Wikinews for some time. The upload link says
"Upload fair use media"; another link says "Upload free media" and
points to Commons. This makes editors more aware of the difference,
and makes it easier to patrol fair use uploads. Right now, the
perception is often "Commons is for stuff I want to use in other
projects," which is of course only half the truth.

For new projects, it may also make sense to disable local uploads by
default, until the project has established an EDP. We did this on
Wikinews for a while, though I think the process has fallen behind a
bit. This would ensure that the initial community is required to
"grok" the division before it can start using non-free materials.

Some liberation is a matter of government policy. It seems still
absurd to me that anything funded with taxpayer money should be
copyrighted at all. While even the US policy on this could be more
liberal, it is internationally among the most progressive. We
non-Americans have to admit in this one instance: our governments
suck. Where they do make government materials available, it is usually
under some restrictions -- non-commercial, educational, etc. This is a
policy we need to work to change. Perhaps the chapters can play a role
in this process.

Let us also not forget the issue of copyright terms. Imagine the
fringe role fair use would play if copyright lasted 14 years --
thousands and thousands of current fair use materials would be in the
public domain. The impact on global culture and knowledge distribution
would be magnitudes greater still; it would be the most significant
cultural liberation in the history of humanity. This is by no means an
impossible goal. It is simply a political decision we need to advocate
-- together with the rest of the free culture movement.

2) Liberation of non-free works. For many pictures, liberating them
will be a matter of paying a certain amount to the copyright holder.
So perhaps what is needed is a Content Liberation Group, either a
point of contact within WMF, or a separate non-profit which seeks to
raise funds to free existing works. I would favor the second option,
as it could then be generalized to non-free software, and other works
which are not as relevant to us.

Such a CLG could also systematically contact copyright holders of
works which are no longer financially relevant. It could develop tools
that make this process efficient and scalable. As Board member, I
would be in favor of the WMF bootstrapping such a thing, even if it
becomes a separate organization.

3) The permanently non-free. Here I'm not referring to Mickey Mouse.
Mickey is non-free, but it could theoretically be bought, or its
copyright could expire (it would have if not for Disney's purchase of
politicians to prevent it from happening). One example I can think of
are identifying images, i.e. logos, coats of arms, seals, and so on.
There is often a legitimate desire to prevent misuse of these images,
and copyright and trademark law can help to prevent that. Moreover,
there is often a strong commercial _incentive_ to misuse them: many of
them are highly valuable.

Even Wikimedia does not put its logos under an existing free license.
I don't like the Debian approach of using two logos much because it
tends to lead to either confusion or dominance of one over the other
(who even knows the non-free Debian logo?). And this is one instance
where there has been infighting within the free culture movement --
Debian shouting at Mozilla and vice versa. A Firefox fork named
Iceweasel. Silliness.

I think we may have to sit down with the CC folks, the FSF, Debian,
and other stakeholders and try to develop an "Identifying Works
License" or something like that, a license which grants certain
liberties, as long as the use identifies only the desired entity and
_nothing else_. It might permit modifications if they used only for
commentary and nothing else, and so on. It might even have to make
explicit reference to commercial vs. non-commercial use.

In other words, I think in this single instance -- works which serve
the purpose of identification -- the definition of freedom may need to
be adjusted. If we can come up with something that is significantly
more free than standard copyright, but still protects the interests of
organizations which would use such a license, then we can start
evangelizing that others should make use of it, too. Right now a
strongly negative attitude against copyrighted logos seems a bit
hypocritical.

4) Different language projects. This is a tricky legal problem, and
the Italian Wikipedia is one example. First of all, only to point out
the obvious, a language is not inherently tied to a country. But
languages are of course strongly correlated with geography, and as
such, their use typically falls predominantly within certain national
borders (Esperanto is a nice exception).

Legal caution and protection of our users suggests respecting the laws
where a language is predominantly spoken. As Gregory has pointed out,
we will not do so if these laws are utterly unreasonable. In those
cases, we can fall back to US law and internationally dominant legal
standards. Outside copyright, an exception are censorship laws.

Therefore, the development of Exemption Doctrine Policies must always
be the result of a discussion between WMF and a language community,
with the involvement of chapters where they exist. I think we should
try to streamline that process -- one of many tasks we should discuss
with our general counsel.

- -

I'd like to hear how others would answer these questions. That
Wikimedia is a free culture organization, however, is neither
negotiable nor reversible. Therefore, as long as we accept some
non-free content as a matter of cultural transition, I do believe a
strong and visible division between the two is essential, as is
thoughtful discourse about systematically transitioning from one to
the other.

But most of all, I think we need to focus on the positive message, not
the rules of exclusion. That message is: We are here to transform
civilization, with free knowledge, free software, free science, free
art -- free culture. People should never feel that they are part of
this because these are the rules we set. If that is what we
communicate, then we have failed to share our own enthusiasm and love
for this fantastic idea. As important as policy is, let's never stop
speaking about freedom.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/9/07 6:48 AM, Gurch at matthew.britton at btinternet.com wrote:

>
> Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard
> of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things; and unbelievable
> though it may sound, it is more important to us than this stupid little
> website, and we just have to call it quits. Like adminship itself, this
> should be no big deal.

Perspective! Feels good!
>
> The way to deal with this is to stop imposing such preposterous
> requirements at RfA. Most (not many, MOST) of the current admins don't
> measure up to the standards being imposed on new candidates.

Where do these standards come from?

Marc Riddell


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The important point in this is to avoid having people jump to
> conclusions.  We have no shortage of people willing to boldly find an
> excuse to embark on some kind of deletion campaign.

Precisely for this reason, I can't help but ask why Kat felt it
necessary to post anything at all.  Couldn't she just have been
silent?  Perhaps the posting should have started with an
explanation exactly why the posting was necessary. I can't believe
that upsetting the Italian community was among her reasons.

We all wish that the Italian community would understand that the
Foundation really doesn't hate Italy, but apparently such wishes
can't stop another hundred messages from cluttering this list.

In every practical aspect, policies from the Foundation (or from
Brion) now behave like a mass medium and tend to be redistributed
and misinterpreted in the same manner.  This means spokespeople
need the same kind of [[media training]] that political candidates
have to go through if they want to communicate their message
successfully.

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


body:
On 2/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> I can't believe that upsetting the Italian community was among her reasons.

Gatto Nero's frequent histrionics about virtually any issue should not
be confused with the opinion of the Italian community. There is an
issue to resolve here -- one that has now come to our attention -- and
that is a legitimate one, but let's see not more controversy than
there actually is.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/9/07 7:05 AM, Timwi at timwi at gmx.net wrote:

> The big problem with this sentiment is that you think that quantity gets
> in the way of quality. That is a major mistake, because it will stop you
> from promoting people to adminship who would later turn out to be
> high-quality admins.

How does the Community define a "quality admin"?

Marc Riddell


from_name: James Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 09/02/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I had been around for six months, seemed to know what was going on and
> hand't done anything stupid, and so of course I was given adminship upon
> request.  Why don't we do that now?  It's still not hard to take back
> adminship if someone badly misuses it, so IMO all RfA candidates should
> get adminship by default, with the burden of proof being upon anyone who
> thinks they should be denied it to argue why.  More concretely, any
> unexplained "no" votes should not be counted.

Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll
leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to
be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore
all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's
spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way
deliberate). Let's do it - if it doesn't work, we can always return to
the era of the Spanish Inquisition RfA.
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester at wikimedia.org | james at jdforrester.org | jdforrester at gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Rich Holton

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair
	use"	decision

body:
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
> Sometimes, getting a "free" photograph may be difficult, dangerous, or
> even illegal. For example, getting a "free" photograph of some living
> celebrities may entail Wikipedians becoming the paparazzi.
>
> If I were a celebrity, I would not release my photo under a free
> license. If I were a professional photographer or artist, I would not
> release my work under a free license either.
>
> Why? Imagine Fiona Xie releasing her photo under a free license to let
> Wikipedia use it, and a nasty vandal creating a derivative work by
> enlarging the size of her boobs, and publishing the derivative photo.
> If I were a professional photographer or artist, and I released my
> work under a free license, I wouldn't be able to earn a living.
>
> Wikipedia is over-emphasising freedom, compromising quality in the
> process. While I believe in freedom, I believe quality is more
> important. The main reason why I don't support free software is that I
> find it too ideological, and not pragmatic.
>

Honestly trying not to write a flame, or be overly dismissive of your
views, I still would suggest that your beliefs in this regard are not
consistent with the dominant ethos on Wikipedia and Wikimedia. You truly
may be more comfortable working on a different sort of project.

It's also true that the ethos of Wikipedia/Wikimedia is quite different
from the ethos of capitalism and much of the (at least western) world.
It is clear that, in many ways, Wikipedia is about changing a part of
the dominant ethos.

For me, the quality of Wikipedia is directly related to the freeness of
it. If John Q. Celeb does not want to have any free photograph of him on
Wikipedia, then I'd much rather not have any photo of him. Even if he
wins 10 Academy Awards. (Of course, if he wins 10 Academy Awards,
chances are there's some free photo of him somewhere). We want to change
the ethos such that John Q. Celeb *wants* to release a free image.
Certainly part of celebrity is being made fun of.

-Rich


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I was originally thinking of that kind of solution, like with
> GreaseMonkey or something. But then transclusion is so easy :)
>
> Presumably this could be done by inserting code into common.js?

Yes

> Would you want to load the disambig page when the main page loads, or
> only when the user clicks "show"? In the first case, you're loading
> two pages every time you load one page (much more work than
> transcluding). In the second, you lose some of the time saving that
> we're trying to gain with this whole scheme.

My suggestion would be to load the page every time as soon as the user
come to the article. The user would not notice this because it loads
after the page is rendered in their browser. There would be a slight
performance tax, but it is nothing the user would notice and nothing
the servers couldn't handle. Well, I shouldn't put words in the
developers mouths, but that's what I imagine. I think that would be
the best solution.

--Oskar


from_name: Taco Deposit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

references:
<eqho26$hep$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<C1F1D09B.1660%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<b8ceeef70702090510p2582bb80g35119179340a4ef7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > How does the Community define a "quality admin"?
>
> Duh. 100% edit summaries. 3000 edits, well distributed across article
> space, project space and article talk space. Never having pissed
> anyone off. Ever.
>

And you can't have made the 3000 edits over too long or too short a period
of time.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Can't get extended toolbar

body:
On 09/02/07, Jonathan Buck <jonathanpbuck at gmail.com> wrote:
> My toolbar only shows the standard 11 buttons.  I have seen examples in the
> mediawiki help pages with a larger toolbar allowing tables and other
> features to be added easily.  As I am looking for the tabling functionality,
> how can I get the rest of the buttons?

I'm not aware of this. Can you please post a link to where you saw
this larger toolbar? Then we can figure out if this is availlable for
Commons or not.

thanks,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've
>> heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?
>>
>>
>
> It resulted in the brief deletion of the counter vandalism unit see:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism_Unit_%28third_nomination%29
>
>
Bleah. I couldn't even read the whole thing, it's so sordid and petty.
>> This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause
>> underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no
>> permanent damage is possible,
>>
>
> Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
>
There are many hurts in life. I know Mr. Linkspam-Cabo-every-day is
bummed that I revert him over and over, he's even said so, but his goal
is to make a buck no matter what it does to WP. I'm sure if he was
smarter, he could find editors to testify to the arbcom that I'm being a
mean and nasty admin by not reverting him with an individually-composed,
sensitive, and caring message each time, and should be desysopped as an
example to the others. So, are you on his side, or on mine?

If I'm not going to be supported by other editors, admin or not, then I
don't want to be an admin any longer.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 2/9/07 9:36 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman at spamcop.net wrote:
>
>
>> There is a culture of baiting these admins until they crack.  A recent
>> example was MONGO.  There are others.
>>
>> Guy (JzG)
>>
>
> As I suggested in a post a while back, perhaps there needs to be an
> identified, organized support system within WP that an embattled admin can
> turn to for encouragement and perspective. In this way they may not feel
> they are so alone in a given situation.
>
>
It would be continuously attacked, as proof positive of the evil admin
cabal. That's all part of the baiting culture. There are also quite a
few editors who are inclined to regard admins unfavorably to begin, as
tiny manifestations of the The Man(tm), and who I'm sure are secretly
gleeful when admins are taken down. It's not an organized program of
divide-and-conquer, but the net effect is the same. One of the reasons I
don't do more admin work is that I see what happens to other admins who
stick their necks out, and it's just not worth it to me.

Stan


body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> Be creative.  Celebrities are people too, and they love Wikipedia.  Have you
> tried asking them for a free image?
>

Right. It's very possible that, with the continuing growth of Wikipedia,
  any up-and-coming celebrity would be eager to have a free image shown.

Maybe we should start using some sort of place-holder image for living
people without free images. It could show a typical generic shadow bust,
with "No free image available" written in bold letters.

Essentially, try to create a situation in which not having a free image
available for Wikipedia is seen as a detriment to one's career.

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
>
> Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do
> before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and
> not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.
>
> So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe
> admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means
> electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.
>

Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to
illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?

-Rich


from_name: Afonso Arantes

body:
I'm currently writing a custom script that will translate the english language
wikipedia dump into html. Everything seems ok except that the Notes: sections
with external links seem to be missing.

As an example, the article on Autism (id 25) goes straight from "See also" to
"References". In the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism page there is an
extensive "Notes" section between these two with extensive commentary and
numbered links to external sources. I cannot seem to find this material anywhere
on the page, nor are there template directives that might include them. Links to
the notes are made throughout the article but are not present in the xml.

Am I missing something obvious or do should I download another file with this
extra information? I thought that maybe this was just an older dump but other
articles seem to be affected as well.

Thank you for your help.


from_name: Aude

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Over-tendency toward editcounts as criteria in RFA is definitely not good.
The couple months before and after my RFA (a year ago), I averaged 2000
edits/month.  No way that is sustainable for me, considering real-life
demands and priorities.

Since July, my edit count is half that each month -- a more sustainable
level.  Even at that, I may have to cut back more in order to spend more
time doing freelance paid work, in addition to my regular job.  Though this
has nothing to do with wikiconflicts, it may resonate with other folks.

Very unlikely that I would ever quit Wikipedia entirely, but slower and
steady is the way to keep going on Wikipedia in the longer-run and not
burnout.

--
Aude


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to
>> illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?
>
> Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have
> been a lot less ah dramatic.
>
> Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders
> troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those
> involved are still admins.
>

Yeah, the userboxes thing I've heard about. How much actual damage to
the project was done? Who, aside from those directly involved, were
affected by this?

I have no idea what the "Bobby Boulders troll" is about. But again, how
much actual damage was done to the project?

For both of these, and the other unspoken cases, would having many more
admins have helped or hurt?

It seems to me that no method of selecting admins will be perfect...
there will always be some who, with hindsight, we can say should not
have been made admins. But it would almost seem to be a question of
ratios. If our de-facto policy of selecting admins results in a very
small number actually being selected, is our ratio of good to bad admins
significantly better than having a less restrictive selection process
that allows many more people be admins?

What we don't want is to have admins be so rare that it becomes big news
when one screws up. That would be a bad thing. Far better to have so
many admins that it's no big deal when one screws up. Just like it's no
big deal when a page gets vandalized. The vandalism gets fixed, perhaps
the vandal gets blocked, and we move on.

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> How does the Community define a "quality admin"?
>
> on 2/9/07 8:10 AM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp at gmail.com wrote:

Never having pissed anyone off. Ever.

Steve,

Are you really serious about this one?

Marc


from_name: Robert Leverington

subject: [Commons-l] Can't get extended toolbar

body:
This is done using JavaScript, and I believe the English Wikipedia has
it in their global JS page. You will probably have to ask there.

On 08/02/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/02/07, Jonathan Buck <jonathanpbuck at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My toolbar only shows the standard 11 buttons.  I have seen examples in the
> > mediawiki help pages with a larger toolbar allowing tables and other
> > features to be added easily.  As I am looking for the tabling functionality,
> > how can I get the rest of the buttons?
>
> I'm not aware of this. Can you please post a link to where you saw
> this larger toolbar? Then we can figure out if this is availlable for
> Commons or not.
>
> thanks,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: teun spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
historically important photographs and significant modern artworks,
that we can not realistically expect to be released under a free
content license

I tend to disagree with the latter part. We might be able to secure a grant
some day for buying sets of modern art images into the public domain.
Allowing fair use will make us stop looking for ways to get these images.

On 2/8/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Mark Wagner wrote:
>
> >On 2/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 10:05, Mark Wagner ha scritto:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Nothing will change for en.wiki?  Hardly.  If I'm reading this
> >>>correctly, most of the images used under a claim of "fair use" are no
> >>>longer allowed
> >>>
> >>>
> >>No, uncorrect. Foundation said that fair use images *should* not be
> >>used.
> >>The term is important, compared to "need to phased out" used with
> >>images with permission.
> >>You - en.wiki - as far as I've understood, have the right to choose
> >>if allow or not fair use images on your projects.
> >>Guess what are you going to choose? :D
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Read it again.  Fair use is pemitted for "some works, primarily
> >historically important photographs and significant modern artworks,
> >that we can not realistically expect to be released under a free
> >content license, but that are hard to discuss in an educational
> >context without including the media itself."  Maybe one fair-use image
> >in twenty on the English Wikipedia meets these criteria.
> >
> >
> There are also a fairly substantial number of photos that I've found
> which are licensed "for use on Wikipedia only".  These are currently
> cataloged and listed under fair-use images, but are not allowed for a
> 3rd party to use.  I just found a couple of these yesterday, and it sort
> of surprised me that they were even there, as the copyright owner has
> given the WMF permission to host them on Wikipedia but they are
> otherwise unfree for anybody else to use them.
>
> With this new policy, I guess these sort of images would have to be
> deleted on en.wikipedia.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] "About Wikipedia" in navigation sidebar

body:
On 09/02/07, Glen S <wikiglen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Geepers... well my left sidebar was getting so cluttered its reaching all
> the way down the page - but, simple solution I guess;
> li#n-About-Wikipedia
> {display:none}
> :P

Yeah, there is the "more and more crap" problem ... what would people
suggest removing, if anything?

(There is a plan somewhere on the Village Pump to reorganise the
sidebar completely.)

- d.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 18:29:54 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
>ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
>need to learn to do right?

Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to
chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy.  Look at the
crap Carnildo got simply because he was bot-tagging images which
violate our copyright policies.  A lot of Alkivar's problem is that
there are quite a few editors who flatly refuse to accept that an
image scraped off the net somewhere is not an inherently legitimate
illustration for any vaguely related article.  That's probably the
biggest cause of friction.

The second major cause of admin burnout in my opinion is trying to
keep insidious POV pushers and off-wiki warriors apart.  As soon as
you step in and prevent one action, you are immediately seen as
"involved" and are no longer trusted by the other side - the best that
can happen is when both sides decide you are biased against them.
Wikipedia is the number 1 destination for people seeking to fix
problems without he outside world, and the editors who come here to
pursue these agendas have endless time to pursue them.  Caring even
slightly about the neutrality of the project means that you *will* get
stress.

The third biggest cause of friction is groups who believe they
"deserve" a Wikipedia article because they are so great, even though
there are no reliable secondary sources.  I am getting crap at the
moment about the General Mayhem forum, which is of surpassing
significance to its members and (as far as I can tell) nobody else.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:54:06 -0800, Stan Shebs
> <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>> There are also quite a
>> few editors who are inclined to regard admins unfavorably to begin, as
>> tiny manifestations of the The Man(tm), and who I'm sure are secretly
>> gleeful when admins are taken down. It's not an organized program of
>> divide-and-conquer, but the net effect is the same.
>>
>
> Seen the ED page on MONGO?
>
Um, yeah, but what's real and what's vandalism on it? I couldn't tell.
ED is a useful example of why WP needs to be tough on vandals and
trolls, so we don't end up the same way.

Stan


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
Be creative.  Celebrities are people too, and they love Wikipedia.  Have you
tried asking them for a free image?

On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
> > Sometimes, getting a "free" photograph may be difficult, dangerous, or
> > even illegal. For example, getting a "free" photograph of some living
> > celebrities may entail Wikipedians becoming the paparazzi.
> >
> > If I were a celebrity, I would not release my photo under a free
> > license. If I were a professional photographer or artist, I would not
> > release my work under a free license either.
> >
> > Why? Imagine Fiona Xie releasing her photo under a free license to let
> > Wikipedia use it, and a nasty vandal creating a derivative work by
> > enlarging the size of her boobs, and publishing the derivative photo.
> > If I were a professional photographer or artist, and I released my
> > work under a free license, I wouldn't be able to earn a living.
> >
> > Wikipedia is over-emphasising freedom, compromising quality in the
> > process. While I believe in freedom, I believe quality is more
> > important. The main reason why I don't support free software is that I
> > find it too ideological, and not pragmatic.
> >
>
> Honestly trying not to write a flame, or be overly dismissive of your
> views, I still would suggest that your beliefs in this regard are not
> consistent with the dominant ethos on Wikipedia and Wikimedia. You truly
> may be more comfortable working on a different sort of project.
>
> It's also true that the ethos of Wikipedia/Wikimedia is quite different
> from the ethos of capitalism and much of the (at least western) world.
> It is clear that, in many ways, Wikipedia is about changing a part of
> the dominant ethos.
>
> For me, the quality of Wikipedia is directly related to the freeness of
> it. If John Q. Celeb does not want to have any free photograph of him on
> Wikipedia, then I'd much rather not have any photo of him. Even if he
> wins 10 Academy Awards. (Of course, if he wins 10 Academy Awards,
> chances are there's some free photo of him somewhere). We want to change
> the ethos such that John Q. Celeb *wants* to release a free image.
> Certainly part of celebrity is being made fun of.
>
> -Rich
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Feb 8, 2007, at 21:29, George Herbert wrote:
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests;
you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.

In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record
and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must
jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets
along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin,
one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted
their page, trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers
pissed that one has protected their page, users insistent that one is
just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust
and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that
one is abusing one's powers, and "valued contributors" insistent that
one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much
more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.

It's a wonder all the admins haven't left the project.

And from my experience as an admin at other wikis, it's not the
newbies or the vandals that get you down. It's the bitter resentment
from invested users targeted at you over and over and over again. As
if because the admins have such unspeakable power, they have to be
abused to keep them down, so they won't take over in power-mad fits.
It just gets to the point where one is like, "Fine! If you don't want
me around so much, I'll leave. Have fun."

And why shouldn't they? Nobody is obligated to stay and if admins
aren't valued, why would they want to?

--keitei


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> Marc Riddell wrote:

>> How does the Community define a "quality admin"?

on 2/9/07 8:35 AM, Timwi at timwi at gmx.net wrote:

>
> Why do you need such a definition?

Timi,

I would think for the same reason that, before you decide something is
substandard, you would first need to define what the standard is.

Marc