body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Steve Summit wrote:
>
>
>>With equal emphasis on the "edited in some fashion to remove the
>>need" part, bearing in mind that in many cases the appropriate
>>edit is simply to remove the tag.  Although many instances of
>>the {fact} tag are properly applied to surprising or dubious
>>facts which do need to be cited or removed, many others refer
>>to obvious facts or facts which are in fact supported by an
>>article's existing references.  So (as ever) some care is needed
>>here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for
>>7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the
>>encyclopedia up for a fall.
>>
>>
>Yes, of course.  My feeling here is that the fact tag is in essence a
>request: "Could some other human look at this and confirm for me that
>this sounds sketchy and either needs to be referenced or removed?"  And
>so there are (roughly) three possible responses: (1) reference it (2)
>remove it (3) note (on the talk page, I think) that the fact tag was
>removed because the claim is not, after all, sketchy.
>
I don't see the need to become compulsive about removing the tag in all
instances.  Sometimes the right action is to just leave the tag in place
as an equivalent to "buyer beware."  If I am reading about a relatively
obscure subject I could be inclined to add the tag to a statement which
may be correct but would be strenghthened by being referenced.  When I
do that I am hopeful that someone someday will have the necessary tools
to fact check the point, but since the topic is relatively obscure I
have no illusion that the evidence will be found so quickly as in seven
days.  If the tag remains for a year no harm is done, and the reader is
warned that the "fact" is not entirely confirmed.

Becoming compulsive about correctness strikes me as unwiki as political
correctness.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> That comparison is misleading. The real comparison is with the money "our"
> side is spending now. The battle over software patents in Europe showed
> that the better arguments have a fair chance of winning against monied
> interests if you can get your arguments heard. And there's no shortage of
> good arguments in this case.

Right.  So one of the things I am hearing loud and clear is that our
community would generally like to see more money spent on lobbying
efforts for copyright reform.  That is a point very well taken.

However, our task at the moment is not to dream about _that_ per se, but
rather to dream about what kinds of work under existing copyright, we
would like to see made free.  There have been many good suggestions, and
I welcome more.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: Insight into users' behaviour

body:
On 10/16/06, christoph.huesler at css.ch <christoph.huesler at css.ch> wrote:
> Yes. What about visually impaired people using screen readers?
> a list of links which all say "click here" is not very helpfull
> for them, but "change your preferences", "upload an image", etc.
> just tells them what they can do with the links.

Never used a screenreader. Do they really just read out the text of
the link with no surrounding context?

Steve


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Are we going down the line where every sentence is followed by
> a footnote?

Not every sentence, but at a bare minimum every sentence which is or can
be reasonably called into question.

--Jimbo


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
> would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
> generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
> purchased and freed.
>
> Dream big.  Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
> copyrights to be made available under a free license.  What would you
> like to see purchased and released under a free license?
>
> Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific,
> be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.

One of Wikipedia's big weaknesses is a lack of free images of leaders,
entertainers, and other notable individuals between 1923 and about the
mid 1990s.  If a collection of such images (news archives, maybe?)
were made available, it would provide a major boost to Wikipedia and
potential content re-users.

--
Mark
[[en:User:Carnildo]]


list: commons-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Commons-l] [Wikisource-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 16/10/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> Much of the limits of Wikisource now is on the capability to scan and
> ocr documents. There is no good free OCR software, apart the new
> software recently released to GPL by Google, but it works only for
> English and has still limitations.

Including that it appears to be only mostly-free software - the neural
net software "may be freely used and modified for research and
development purposes" and requires acknowledgement of the original
authors for such use. It's not clear whether this is in fact a free
software licence.

- d.


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:

> Another example, unrelated to copyright reform: Wikipedia editors need
> access to primary sources, particularly academic journals. The fate of
> current ventures in Open Access journals largely determines whether most
> potential Wikipedia editors will have easy access to the sources they need
> in the years to come, and funding for these journals (or lack thereof)
> will
> be a major factor.
>

Oh, very good.

That brings up a whole host of other related ideas...

1) Would a fraction of the money going to subsidize operations of journals,
to make it viable for them to go Open Access, make sense?  Form a WikiMedia
subsidiary open journal foundation to do that?

2) Completely separately; WMF purchasing "institutional subscription"
primary source electronic subscriptions to appropriate journals and
conference proceedings in the humanities and sciences, the equivalent to
what libraries get for universities etc.  Would probably require
establishing some level of threshold for access to them - buying an
institutional subscription now doesn't let you give it away free to everyone
in the world, but journals might go for it if say the threshold was "any
Wikipedia editor with 1,000 plus edits".

That's not going to completely open the material, but does get it available
as a common reference pool by active editors.

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


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 16/10/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > > I would like to gather from the community some examples of
> > > works you would like to see made free, works that we are not
> > > doing a good job of generating free replacements for, works
> > > that could in theory be purchased and freed.
>
> There are lots of contents that could (and should) be free, but is
> still under copyright.  Some are in the hands of museums and
> archives, some in publishers, some in government agencies.
>
> I think it would be a mistake to start pouring money into such
> institutions, which should instead be forced (by a change of
> copyright law or national policy) or encouraged to give it away.
> We'd run out of money much too soon, and we'd build expectations
> that old collections can bring profits.

Give this man a prize. It's happening already, though not with copyright per se.

A specific example: In the UK, the various county record offices have
a large number of deposits - papers that are held, catalogued, curated
and made available by them, but with the ownership kept private, and
handled as a long-term indefinite loan, anything from photograph
archives to manorial tax records. Every now and again, someone
withdraws one of these to sell it - you can get a goodish amount from
an American university, usually - and they're faced with the dilemma
of letting it go or trying to match the price offered.

By squeezing the pips you can usually get enough together to keep it.
Unfortunately, the first problem is that other depositors then say
"Cor, they got two million for that stuff? I'm taking mine to the
States too!", cue exodus of everything else - and potential depositors
start asking tricky questions like "Why should I leave this stuff with
you when I could just sell it to someone outright?"

(University archives aren't immune to this, but tend to mostly have
purchases, gifts and bequests rather than on-loan material...)

Probably the most efficient use of your money would be to bribe enough
people to pass a law fixing the orphan-work problem, but I don't think
that's an appropriate answer ;-)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Commons-l] [Wikisource-l]  Dream a little...

body:
Hi,

Danny tells it right. I have little to add to his mail.

daniwo59 at aol.com a ?crit :
> My own thoughts on this, which I also expressed on the meta page:
>
> 1. There is plenty of material out that that is already public domain.
> Part of the problem is that it can take forever and a day to digitize it
> all. In the case of books and magazines, digitization often involves
> destroying the hard copies in the process. There are, however,
> specialized scanners that can do the work without ruining the books
> themselves. These are expensive (about US $30,000 a machine). Ten
> machines, strategically located around the world, along with student
> staff to operate them around the clock could help to preserve these
> texts and store them for prosperity. Additional people (paid and
> volunteer) will be needed to OCR, proof, and hyperlink the material to
> ensure that it doesn't get lost in a glut of material (I have visions of
> the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark was finally
> stored in some crate in an army warehouse).
>
> 2. While OCR capacities exist for some languages, they do not exist for
> other languages, where the material is much more likely to get lost.
> Manuscripts in Tibetan monasteries, for example, can be scanend but not
> OCRed easily. To make this information available, developers should be
> paid to create adequate OCR tools for these languages. Rough cost: $5
> million.

Much of the limits of Wikisource now is on the capability to scan and
ocr documents. There is no good free OCR software, apart the new
software recently released to GPL by Google, but it works only for
English and has still limitations. So developing a good free and
multilingual OCR software would be my priority. AFAIK there is no good
OCR software (free or not) for any Indian languages, including Sanskrit.
I have never seen any for Tibetan either.

But having a software is not enough. A few OCR servers managed by the
Foundation where anyone can sent an automated OCR request would be very
useful. There are already proprietary OCR software who can do that.

> 3. Music has been recorded around the world for well over a century, yet
> many of the early recordings are being lost, especially those on wax
> cylinders and porcelain records. Preservation includes locating,
> identifying, and remastering. People must be trained to do this. Rough
> cost: $35 million over two years.
>
> 4. This is true of old films as well. Celluloid copies are extremely
> rare and extremely flammable. Restoration is exceedingly costly. For
> example, [[Theda Bara]] is a well-known vamp of early Hollywood (the
> word "vamp" was first used to describe her), yet none of her films
> survive, and they were made less than a hundred years ago. Films are
> international, they include important historic documents such as
> newsreels, and they are being lost every day. Today, most
> preservation work is being done by major studios, since it is so costly.
> In other words, they are taking important works now in the public
> domain, restoring them, and contending that the restoration is an
> original work, i.e., another hundred years at least until some Vigo or
> Charlie Chaplin films enter the public domain ... and little attention
> is being paid to newsreels of events like the Russian revolution, World
> War I, etc. Like music, people should be offered scholarships to learn
> the art of film restoration and work on these projects. Until this
> happens it can be outsourced. Rough cost: $50 million.

I would add a special request for some of Cartier-Bresson photographs of
  Gandhi's funerals. I would have said a copy of the Encyclopedia of the
Enlightment (1750, by Diderot and d'Alembert), but we already have it. ;o)

> 5. To ensure all of this remains accessible, we will need a LOT of
> servers and bandwidth: Initial outlay: $10 million.

Yes, it's important not to forget that point.

> Total $100 million dollars, spent over 5 years. Costs include staffing,
> identifying prospective targets, transportation, overhead, etc. Just
> coordinating a project of this scope will take a lot of effort.

Yes, I would generally put more money on people's work than on documents.

> And there is competition too. As an example,
> http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/ is a collection of
> Internation Women's Journals, some of which are very important
> historically. They are already scanned, but they are inaccessible
> because a private company has (rightfully or wrongfully) copyrighted the
> scans.
>
> Lots to be done. You will see how quickly $100 million can be spent.
>
> Danny
>
> In a message dated 10/15/2006 11:27:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> jwales at wikia.com writes:
>
>     I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
>     would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
>     generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
>     purchased and freed.
>
>     Dream big.  Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
>     copyrights to be made available under a free license.  What would you
>     like to see purchased and released under a free license?
>
>     Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific,
>     be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.
>
>     I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a
>     position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what
>     we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would
>     expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.

Yes, fun has just started.

>     --Jimbo

Regards,

Yann


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Wikisource-l] [Commons-l] Dream a little...


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> The point is: suppose someone wanted to buy $100,000,000 of existing
> copyrighted material and set it free.  What should it be?
>
In other words, Goo^H^H^Hthis unnamed company wants to do something
useful that could also be a $100M tax writeoff...

It would be interesting for this company to approach the different news
agencies and ask them to bid on a package of free images that would be
comprehensive coverage for people and events 1923-2003 or so. They
wouldn't necessarily want to free up their best images, the ones that
make them money on a daily basis, but there would be a lot left over. We
could even help by collecting un-illustrated articles and ones with
unfree images, and making up a big wantlist that they could match
against their stock.

Stan


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f1c3529e0610160321nb4ed444u82034f320c2d54f6 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 10/16/06, christoph.huesler at css.ch
<christoph.huesler at css.ch> wrote:
> > Yes. What about visually impaired people using screen readers?
> > a list of links which all say "click here" is not very helpfull
> > for them, but "change your preferences", "upload an image", etc.
> > just tells them what they can do with the links.
>
> Never used a screenreader. Do they really just read out the text of
> the link with no surrounding context?
>
> Steve

There is a links list, and that is exactly what it does.  It is not the only
way of rendering the page, but it is often where a reader (listener) will
start out when browsing, just as we visually scan the page for blue links
that go where we want.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki roadmap - the road to nowhere?

body:
Mark Clements wrote:
> Are there any kind of concrete plans for specific future versions of
> MediaWiki, or is it just a matter of "we've got a bunch of bugs and feature
> requests and we'll do the ones we feel like".

Generally we have a few things floating around which we'd like to make sure we
get in, some of which happen sooner and others which happen later.

There's not a concrete master plan at this time.

> The reason I ask is that http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_roadmap is
> quite prominently linked to from the main page of mediawiki.org, but
> contains no useful content.  It has dates for versions 1.9 and 1.10, but
> under 'planned milestones' they both just say 'no plans yet'.

Please remove any such links you see to that kind of page; they're never
official or maintained.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Maury Markowitz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
>$100 million is a drop in the bucket as far as copyrights are concerned.

Oh balogna. That would easily pay for a takeover of Jupiter Media, for
instance.

But forget that. The problem here isn't the law, or the companies in
question -- is this really about figuring out ways to get Disney images on
the wiki? No, the problem is that the vast majority of content one might
want to use on the wiki is of completely unknown origin, and thus covered by
default copyright and unable to be used.

There is a HUGE amount of media that could, and should, be distributed
freely, but isn't because the person is unaware of the legal defaults.
There's another very large group who look for some sort of license to put on
their media, and are presented legalese arguments that presents the very
first argument they find, which is the default copyright. This isn't about
copyright, IMHO, but a lack of knowledge of the alternatives.

Everyone from a librarian scanning in an old map to a company who puts a
picture of their product on their own web site should be actively encouraged
to release their media under one of the various non-restrictive licenses. We
should further explain why that will be of _benefit_ to them.
$100 million could fund a truly extensive campaign in educating these
holders in the variety of licenses out there. It could, for instance, pay
for the mailing of a pamplete to every curator, librarian, school principal,
archivist and so forth, asking them to consider using one of the many
suitable licenses they likely never even heard of.

Maury


list: foundation-l

from_name: Friends Club Committee

subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikimedia.co.nr

body:
I will be setting up 3 domain redirects for Wiki.

  www.wikinews.tk
  www.wikibooks.tk
  www.wikiquote.tk

  They should be working by Tuesday for sure.

Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
  .co.nr is a redirect service only, yes. There are seven valid
subdomains of .nr (see http://cenpac.net.nr/). .co.nr is just a
redirect service like cjb.net or dot.tk.

On 10/15/06, Lawrence Lo wrote:
> Hmmm I just checked and it says the domain is not in their database
> which means that it has not been registered yet? Anyway isn't that a
> "free" domain redirection service? There are plenty other similar
> services out there, should we bother with them at all? Interestingly
> wikipedia.co.nr is banned by the service provider because the
> registrant broke their term of service.
>
> --Lorenzarius
>
> On 10/16/06, Friends Club Committee wrote:
> > I just set-up www.wikimedia.co.nr.
> >
> > It should take a day or two to be live.
> >
> > Feel free to send feedback!
> --
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> Tel: +852 95825791
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

---------------------------------
Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com.  Check it out.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikimedia.co.nr


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Maury Markowitz <maury_markowitz at hotmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Everyone from a librarian scanning in an old map to a company who puts a
> picture of their product on their own web site should be actively encouraged
> to release their media under one of the various non-restrictive licenses.
[snip]

Yea, such a campaign should exist.. but it'll need a really catchy
name... hmm. Something which is sure to attract participants without
troubling them with any thought to how free or unfree the licenses
actually are...

How about "Creative Commons"?

..oh wait.. ;)


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Creek Language Native Translations of Wikipedia

body:
The Creek Nation has been added and active translations of Wikipedia are
in process for this Muskogean Dialect.

I have been away from things for about a month due to family issues, but
I am back to work now.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNOEGEDEAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<e692861c0610151154g5684b732lb5d3187504603ec7@mail.gmail.com>
	<813fe08a0610160844t7347ad3uc2260dd2cd3a2f5@mail.gmail.com>
	<4533CC97.2020705@gmail.com>

body:
On 10/16/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> When it is not possible to play a piece by Haydn Mozart Rossini because
> there is no music available, we should SCAN these works and digitize
> them.

For some orchestral pieces finding scores which are not modern
arrangements can be a challenge. ... for works where unaltered scores
are available there should be little problem in obtaining a legal
recording.

http://www.mutopiaproject.org/  < folks working on score
transcriptions, wikisource style, for works which can be legally
cleared. As you can see, their collection is not that large.


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
> It is also worth pointing out we currently do not have
> the capabilty of truly digitizing music.   We can only
> host images of sheet music right now.

But for the low price of one Brion proof anti-stabbing jacket we could
be there in no time:

http://www.wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Kristian Menchaca]] - link to video

body:
On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I deleted the link completely.
>
>

Why? We went through this with [[Nick Berg]]. The conclusion was that
the link should stay.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I will not pretend to really understand this stuff.
> However Wikitex uses Lillypond and brion has marked
> Lillypond "wontfix"  because it is inherently unsafe.
> But if the Wikitex thing is really something different
> please forgive my confusion.

Wikitex jumps through a **lot** of hoops to make its use of lilypond safe.

The question of the efforts taken being sufficient is a matter which
is open to debate. (It should be, built it's a lot of complexity to
audit).

This is why a stab proof jacket is a hard prerequisite for getting
this support, probably a lot of patience, etc..


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 16/10/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I deleted the link completely.
>

Why? I thought the community had discussed this and come to a conclusion.

I don't think WP:RS and WP:NOR apply in this instance, certainly not to the
inclusion of a link. If the problem was that the link were used a source (or
only used a source) for prose writen by one of our editors, it would be a
problem. To simply link to a video on a container site for readers to view
at their discretion, is not using the site as a source.

Regardless, would it not be better (and more in the spirit of Wikipedia) to
simply find an alternative or ask someone to find an alternative, than just
delete the link (to the deficit of the article)?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Come now.  Unless a bot is trying to do section editing or
> something, it's got the entire text of an article available
> to it, so it's trivial to search the whole article for the
> template(s) to be edited.  And it's not "a mess of code";
> it's either a slightly-differently-named template, or the
> addition of a single parameter.  This is no problem at all.

Hmmm yes I supose you could do it by creating templates like
{{fact1610}} {{fact1710}} {{fact1810}} and so on. Might want a
{{factindef}} for cases where people don't want the item removed.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
>Another example, unrelated to copyright reform: Wikipedia editors need
>access to primary sources, particularly academic journals.

Hear hear!

Maury


body:
On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Ogrish could put anything up, and you would want to link to it?
>
> --Jimbo

That would appear to be a strawman. In this case it would appear that
the past agreement is to link to such videos (at least where people
care enough to find them) with a warning. Would you rather someone
manged to rip the video and host it localy?
--
geni


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Semi-Protecting User Talk Pages

body:
I've just gone and removed semi-protections from about a dozen user
talk pages. All of them were targets of vandalism in the past,
generally due to their own anti-vandalism efforts. The pages included
pages of administrators.

For obvious reasons, anyone who is warning and blocking new users in
turn needs to be able to be contacted by these users with questions,
concerns, etc. Semi-protection must not be used in this fashion, and
I've removed the line supporting it from the semi-protection policy.

-Phil


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> I think it would be a mistake to start pouring money into such
> institutions, which should instead be forced (by a change of
> copyright law or national policy) or encouraged to give it away.
> We'd run out of money much too soon, and we'd build expectations
> that old collections can bring profits.

I have to agree here. It seems that, as a general priority, we should
let money talk to those who only understand money. Big publishers,
news agencies, photo agencies, etc. (In this process, we should of
course also only liberate content in areas where we are currently
weak: video, professional illustrations, historical photographs,
textbooks, ..)

I think we should also focus on works from the last 30 years and put
some energy behind a copyright reform effort to get even older content
liberated by legal means.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Commons-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Making copyright reasonably shorter would only make the preservation
> of old works even harder by removing the incentive to preserve old
> works

I strongly disagree. Projects like Gutenberg, DP, the various digital
libraries at universities, etc. have proven that once you remove the
barriers of traditional copyright, the amount of work that can be done
to preserve content is multiplied. Furthermore, economic analysis has
shown that the vast majority of content that is "trapped" by copyright
actually has hardly any economic value anymore (check the Amicus
Curiae briefs in the Eldred case). Market forces alone tend to be poor
guardians of history.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
On 16/10/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > Regardless, would it not be better (and more in the spirit of Wikipedia)
> to
> > simply find an alternative or ask someone to find an alternative, than
> just
> > delete the link (to the deficit of the article)?
>
> Ogrish could put anything up, and you would want to link to it?

Of course not. In this case, a very well publicised video is available to
the public on Ogrish - I see no reason to not use Ogrish if the mainstream
press refuse to provide the video.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Ed Sanders

subject: [Commons-l] Java player for Ogg Vorbis/Theora

body:
Cortado (http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/) is a GPLd implementation of
Vorbis/Theora in Java. It would be useful to have this on all .ogg pages.

Ed.

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I added a java (GCJ compatible) audio player on enwiki a while back
> and I've been mostly unable to get people to even comment it (although
> it has been used by tens of thousands)...
...
> 3) There are free software java codecs for both Ogg/Theora and
> Ogg/Vorbis. I haven't worked too much with the Theora plugin because
> it was a bit buggy under GCJ six months ago, but the java vorbis codec
> is very mature and robust.  We couldn't ask for a better framework
> from which to build a video player (and there is even a SOC project to
> deeply integrate this support with MediaWiki).


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/15/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>So (as ever) some care is needed
>>here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for
>>7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the
>>encyclopedia up for a fall.
>>
>>
>We don't have the manpower.
>
That's a simple enough fact!  We really need painstaking fact-checking,
and that can only be achieved over a very long time.  Mutant bots that
simply remove fact-tags in accordance with simple time-based parameters
aren't helping anybody.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Maury Markowitz <maury_markowitz at hotmail.com> wrote:

> In opposition to any effort this $100 million could possibly generate, the
> entire media industry is arrayed with a variety of well established lobby
> groups to ensure no such change takes place. It is resonable to suspect that
> the only changes to the law will be to increase the length of time for
> protections, while at the same time removing existing user rights.

I was not suggesting that any or all of the money we are talking about
be used for that purpose; knowing a bit more of the specifics of this
proposal, I doubt that this would happen (though it might be worth
asking). But this attitude of utter resignation is pitiful. Humanity
has fought greater evil than excessive copyright terms, and prevailed.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > I think we should also focus on works from the last 30 years and put
> > some energy behind a copyright reform effort to get even older content
> > liberated by legal means.

> What are the legal implications of this type of "energy"?  Non-profits
> are quite limited when it comes to engaging in political activities.

That's a very valid question. It may be necessary to set up a separate
organization for some of the campaigning. However, quite a bit _is_
possible: See, for example, the http://defectivebydesign.org/ campaign
by the FSF.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:
> On the "dream" thread: putting 100.000.000 $ as stock in a foundation
> will result in 1.000.000 $ or something per year to spend -- why not
> use it that way?

Well the point is not an unrestricted gift, though that is fun to think
about too.  The point is not political lobbying, though that is fun to
think about too. :-)

The point is: suppose someone wanted to buy $100,000,000 of existing
copyrighted material and set it free.  What should it be?

--Jimbo


body:
On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Original research.

Since a film is a series of images it fall under the photo exception.
Nice try but I'm probably not the best person to try rule lawyering
against.

--
geni


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Stock video, e.g. footage of historical events. An inline video control for
MediaWiki is trivial, and should be done soon, but we will need something to
play with it. I'm thinking that we need clips to support 20th century
history and biography articles in Wikipedia.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>  >Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the
>  >word blackboard ??is now perceived by some as being ?politically
>  >incorrect? in the United Kingdom.?? ??Citation needed,?? a parenthesis
>  >cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30
>  >blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
>
> This is a quote from:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
>
> Our full text reads:
>  >Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or
>  >restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed
>  >acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
> by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom,
> [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a
> "chalkboard" >instead.

 From last six months:

Pet lip
Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Aug 16, 2006; Sophy Doughty; p. 3

Standing up to the PC brigade
Western Daily Press 24 August 2006

My news archive is limited to post 1992 but I can get back to:

Political Correctness goes beyond a joke
The Sunday Times (London); May 16, 1993; Peter McKay;

I can cite the portion where the cite is needed, but I can't cite the
follow on text, that chalk board is now preferred.  Considering most
schools moved to white boards by now, it's a bit redundant, but...

--
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from_name: Pedro Sanchez

body:
On 10/15/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> geni stated for the record:
> > On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> >>I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears
> >>within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
> >
> >
> > Would need to be done by bot or we would need a way to clone
> > wikignomes. We don't have the manpower.
>
> There are many of us who would eagerly remove great swathes of dubious
> {{fact}} if we could be sure that rabid admins wouldn't at best start a
> sterile edit war and at worst try to ban us for "vandalizing" their
> favorite campgrounds.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Therapy is expensive. Popping
>  sean at epoptic.com | bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFFMl8m/SVOiq2uhHMRAkOGAJ9gBGBqAIH3+sayd1s+4kEZ1iXrCACg4Dm+
> p/RqoSPnDSQuMJVDxNggkvs=
> =ucY+
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

You just have to alert the rabid admins who don't wan't these kind of
unsourced statemets lying around to ban the people who keep adding
them :P


body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>  >Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the
>>  >word blackboard ??is now perceived by some as being ?politically
>>  >incorrect? in the United Kingdom.?? ??Citation needed,?? a parenthesis
>>  >cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30
>>  >blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
>>
>> This is a quote from:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
>>
>> Our full text reads:
>>  >Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or
>>  >restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed
>>  >acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
>> by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom,
>> [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a
>> "chalkboard" >instead.
>
>  From last six months:
>
> Pet lip
> Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Aug 16, 2006; Sophy Doughty; p. 3
>
> Standing up to the PC brigade
> Western Daily Press 24 August 2006
>
> My news archive is limited to post 1992 but I can get back to:
>
> Political Correctness goes beyond a joke
> The Sunday Times (London); May 16, 1993; Peter McKay;
>
> I can cite the portion where the cite is needed, but I can't cite the
> follow on text, that chalk board is now preferred.  Considering most
> schools moved to white boards by now, it's a bit redundant, but...

Spoke too soon:
PC or not PC ... that was 1993's burning question;Review of the Year 1993
The Sunday Times (London); Dec 26, 1993; Maurice Chittenden;

Contains the line:"Blackboards have been replaced with chalkboards in
some schools."  I would think that supports the claim, although perhaps
it may be wise to contextualise it to the early 1990s.

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from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] What to do with wikimedia.com/.org

body:
On 10/11/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would advocate to have a halfway house between a user and the current
> standard address in English. I would like people to opt for there
> anonymous usage of our services by just indicating a language
> preference. This would be associated with that user on a platform and
> consequently they will get a user interface (when we have it) for that
> language on any of our projects. In my opinion, this would be a great
> help for many people. This would also make the step that people have to
> take a lot less steep. I know that many English wikipedians would like
> less people contributing, this feature is not for them. This feature
> will help people who do NOT speak English as their first language.

Sounds thoughtful, however I failed to imagine what you meant. Could
you please show us a mock-up?

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Commons-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 15, 2006, at 3:30 PM, geni wrote:
>
> > On 10/15/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:
> >> Go to apimages.com and you will see a few hundred images we can't
> >> produce.
> >
> > I'm seeing maybe 1.
>
> You must not have gone beyond the entry page then, go search their
> holdings
>

I flicked thorugh various pages. A few sports events those NK pics and
pics of people.

> The rest of this is an entire philosophical issue.  Yes, it would be
> best if everything we had was absolutely free content that we could
> pass on to anyone else to use as they wish.  If we stick to that as
> our only criteria for using material then all fair-use material goes
> out the window and all material used with permission goes out the
> window.  I believe having it with permission and restrictions on use
> is better than not having it at all.
>
>
> --Guy

I doubt you would be able to chnage wikipedia policy to that degree.

--
geni


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 16/10/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
>
> > I wonder if content acquired within the restrictions you mentioned (pick
> > any of the good suggestions made by others) could be used as a lever in
> > some dual-licensing scheme (as used by several major open source
> software
> > companies). As long as the content is under a free license but not in
> the
> > public domain (e.g. GFDL or CC-BY-SA), we'd have a bargaining chip that
> we
> > could parlay into access to other works. -- We can't do that for
> Wikipedia
> > itself (because there is no single copyright owner), but if we owned a
> > significant piece of desirable content, things might be different.
>
> I am afraid this really isn't much of a reply to your suggestion, but
> it leaped into my head when I read it...
>
> If we went down the road of "buying copyrights", we'd probably end up
> setting up a "licensing trust", a registered charitable organisation
> whose sole purpose is to acquire intellectual property and license it
> out For The Betterment Of Humanity.
>
> Of course, the benefit of a registered charity is that donations to it
> are tax-deductible - and, much to my delight, it seems that this even
> extends to gifts of intellectual property. So, put two and two
> together, and how about having them tout for donations?
>
> "We reckon the rights to that 1953 memoir your grandfather wrote are
> worth maybe $250. However, that's if it gets republished, and there
> isn't much commercial demand for books on 1940s Minnesota state
> politics. But if you want to get *something* for it, you could donate
> the copyright to us and put it down as a tax-deductible donation of
> $250..."
>
> Unfortunately, the legal burden of confirming that the person you're
> dealing with is, in fact, the copyright owner may be insurmountable -
> most "unwanted IP" will be inheritances, and figuring out who got them
> in the will is not always easy. But it's worth a shot.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

This may not be all that hard, in many cases.

My late Grandfather wrote a reasonably widely used introductory general
science college textbook in the 1950s, with several editions through the
late 50s.  There's probably no likelyhood that it could be republished now,
and even if it could be I think all involved would react positively to
CC-something licensing it, perhaps just outright donating it.

There had been some talk about this after my grandmother passed away a few
years ago, but nobody acted on it.

In a lot of families, there are younger scientists of some sort in a newer
generation, and many of those could likely be a positive force arguing
within families to donate the copyrights, or at least open-licensing the
material, for the common good.

I think that it's likely that people will be more willing to open license
than outright donate rights completely; in a sense, it's a family heirloom,
in many cases.  But unlike most family heirlooms, book rights can be useful
to the general public still, without the family losing it.

I bet that there would be a huge net benefit to starting up and organising a
donations campaign for such a trust.  A website, some volunteers, a
consistent donations policy, and a little legwork to get some PR out in the
scientific press would go a long way.

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


body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>>  >Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the
>>>  >word blackboard ??is now perceived by some as being ?politically
>>>  >incorrect? in the United Kingdom.?? ??Citation needed,?? a parenthesis
>>>  >cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30
>>>  >blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
>>>
>>> This is a quote from:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
>>>
>>> Our full text reads:
>>>  >Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or
>>>  >restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed
>>>  >acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
>>> by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom,
>>> [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a
>>> "chalkboard" >instead.
>>  From last six months:
>>
>> Pet lip
>> Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Aug 16, 2006; Sophy Doughty; p. 3
>>
>> Standing up to the PC brigade
>> Western Daily Press 24 August 2006
>>
>> My news archive is limited to post 1992 but I can get back to:
>>
>> Political Correctness goes beyond a joke
>> The Sunday Times (London); May 16, 1993; Peter McKay;
>>
>> I can cite the portion where the cite is needed, but I can't cite the
>> follow on text, that chalk board is now preferred.  Considering most
>> schools moved to white boards by now, it's a bit redundant, but...
>
>
> Spoke too soon:
> PC or not PC ... that was 1993's burning question;Review of the Year 1993
> The Sunday Times (London); Dec 26, 1993; Maurice Chittenden;
>
> Contains the line:"Blackboards have been replaced with chalkboards in
> some schools."  I would think that supports the claim, although perhaps
> it may be wise to contextualise it to the early 1990s.

Mind you, something that gets my goat here: this article has two works
referenced already.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1987) David Crystal.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995) David Crystal.

Now did the person who added the tag check the two references to make
sure those claims weren't sourced there before they added the tag? Did
you Jimmy? I'm never quite clear on how the reference system is supposed
to work, but that's how I thought it did.  You check the reference work
cited to ensure it supports what the article asserts, no? The example
has been in the article since creation, so I'd bet the editor who
created it sourced the statement from one of those two works.  The
creator, in my mind, has satisfied the requirements to write the
article.  Are we going down the line where every sentence is followed by
a footnote?

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body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>First, and example, and then a question/suggestion.  If you get bored
>with my example, please continue anyway to my question/suggestion. :)
>
>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/10/15/how_many_times_must_a_man_look_it_up/
>
> >Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the
> >word blackboard ??is now perceived by some as being ?politically
> >incorrect? in the United Kingdom.?? ??Citation needed,?? a parenthesis
> >cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30
> >blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
>
In the context of that Boston Globe article our cynicism ends up looking
pretty good.  Compare this to the others who simply quoted the
politically correct material without question.  The one who couldn't
distinguish explication from political correctness in Dylan's lyrics
does not even have the musical sense to recognize that replacing a
monosyllable with a pentasyllable won't work.

I believe that the word "blackboard" is indeed retreating into
obsolescence, but not for the reasons stated.  Slate is an expensive
commodity that is best reserved for useful things like pool tables, that
has first been replaced by manufactured greenboards where chalk could
still be used, and more recently by whiteboards where we can use a kind
of erasable magic marker.  If you think that whiteboard is not
politically correct you can no longer complain by long scratchest with
your fingernails.

>This is a quote from:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
>
>Our full text reads:
> >Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or
> >restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed
> >acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
>by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom,
>[citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a
>"chalkboard" >instead.
>
>The tag was added here:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semantic_change&diff=43364581&oldid=43286452
>
>So from March 12 until now, we have a request that this dubious tidbit
>be sourced, with no movement.
>
That diff also shows that that editor also made a number of unrelated
changes to the article at the same time.  Also missing at the time of
his edit were the key words "by some" that appear in your quote.  I
would think that the standard of evidence should be much stricter if the
words "by some" are omitted.

Ecan


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
Are there any kind of concrete plans for specific future versions of
MediaWiki, or is it just a matter of "we've got a bunch of bugs and feature
requests and we'll do the ones we feel like".

The reason I ask is that http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_roadmap is
quite prominently linked to from the main page of mediawiki.org, but
contains no useful content.  It has dates for versions 1.9 and 1.10, but
under 'planned milestones' they both just say 'no plans yet'.

If there is a grand plan, or even a not-so-grand plan (or, to be honest,
even some small items that are definitely going to make it into the next
release) it would be good to get them on this page.  If not, then we should
rework the page to say as much and remove the link from the main page.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
> > On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > > I will not pretend to really understand this
> stuff.
> > > However Wikitex uses Lillypond and brion has
> marked
> > > Lillypond "wontfix"  because it is inherently
> unsafe.
> > > But if the Wikitex thing is really something
> different
> > > please forgive my confusion.
> >
> > The current status, as I understand it, is that
> Peter Danenberg is
> > coming up with a new security model for WikiTeX.
> He has tentatively
> > stated that he wants to be done by December 1.
> Then the WMF tech team
> > can take another stab at reviewing it (and its
> components) for
> > integration.
> >
> > As you know, I strongly believe we need this and
> other extension-based
> > functionality; we just need a general security
> model for it that makes
> > sense.
>
> While this might be useful on wikisource on en it
> would have the
> problem of making the code shown on the editing
> pages even more
> incomprehensible.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________

I am unsure what you mean here.  The code will look
the same at en.WS as it does at en.WP.  It will only
show up where there is a need to display music.  Many
editors will never come across thes edit screens at
all.  However much of a learning curve there is with
this code it will be more efficient than cropping
images from book scans.  I don't understand what you
are advocating here.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews language coordinator needed

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Ideally at
> some point we will
> have a Grand Unified Language Policy (GULP) but
> we're still quite a
> bit away from that. ;-)
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik

I hope you are talking about mininum launch
requirements and not some top-down bureaucracy
independent of the projects.

Birgitte

Birgitte

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subject:
[Foundation-l] [WMF website] which page your language community
	needs in their own language?

body:
Hello,
Here is the list of Wikimedia website pages:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Site_map

Most of pages are available in a few languages (around five or six).
So we need to ask translators help. And here a matter of priorities
arises, since most of translators would like to know from where they
are expected to start.

To determine the order of requests, I would like to hear from the non
Egnlish communities. Which page do you want in urgent? And why?

This question is independent from another which information the
Foundation would like the world to know in my opinion. To find the
best way to satisfy the audience, I would like to know what could be
"the largest happiness of the majority", that is why I make that
question.

When I talked with a speaker who is good at English as second/foreign
language as well the majority of his native language community, he
suggested that his community would be happy to have some pages in
their own page even if they are not heavily troubled to read English
documents. On the other hand, a community which are tend to be
xenophilophobia would answer "all" - but I expect not every community
says so, and since we cannot do everything in a moment, we would do a
better job, knowing what is the most needed and what is the less, even
if we provide all in translation at last.

If you bring this question to your language community, either mailing
list or wiki discussion page, and gather the answers, it will be a
great help for our further working.

Cheers,

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>> Are we going down the line where every sentence is followed by
>> a footnote?
>
> Not every sentence, but at a bare minimum every sentence which is or can
> be reasonably called into question.

Fair enough.  I guess arguments over what constitutes reasonable are
what the talk page was invented for.

--
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from_name: P. Birken

subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
2006/10/15, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:

> How about recordings of out of copyright (i.e. classical)  music?  The
> only rights holder should be whomever recorded it and whomever they
> signed agreements with in order to be permitted to record it.  There
> are a number of small record labels such as [[Nimbus Records]] as well
> as the concert halls themselves which have large libraries of music.
> I think this would only be worthwhile as a funded endeavor if it could
> land us a truly massive archive which would enable us to illustrate a
> majority of our articles on long-dead composers.

Classical music recordings are what I would call the classical
copyright nightmare. It might be possible to get solo pieces under a
free licence, but orchestra pieces... I talked to a Conductor of the
local university orchestra about putting some of their recordings
under a free license. You have to get forty people (the recorders) to
put this under a free licence. The next part is that while the music
is free, orchestras usually rent the notes from some music publishing
company (because it's too expensive to buy a complete set of notes for
every piece). These companies in turn put demands on your use of their
notes, most often fees for commercial use, which would in a way apply
if you put this under the GNU-FDL or CC-by-SA.

Nevertheless, it sounds like a good idea to fund a piano player to
record the major Bach, Beethoven and Mozart piano pieces.

Cheers,

Philipp


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Precisely.  It has all the flavor of an urban legend.  I found many many
>> messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a
>> source.  Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems
>> to suggest otherwise.
>>
> This opens up the question of whether we need "a source" or "an original
> source".  If we don't accept original research, we shouldn't be
> demanding it.  Tracking these possible urban legends to their ultimate
> beginnings should not be required.  Naturally, some source would be
> necessary, the more reliable the better, and messageboards are
> questionable at best.  If another reputable source questions the claim
> that too should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV.
>
> "Flavor" is not evidence; it is nothing more than strong instinctual
> suspicion.

Hmm.  We might be talking past each other.

For claim X, when it seems that X may be an urban legend, we ought not
to assert X unless and until we find a proper source for it.  And
"proper" is an editorial judgment which will depend on the context, and
about which reasonable people ought to be able to find some compromise
or consensus.

For claim X, when it seems that X may be an urban legend, we ought not
to assert that X is an urban legend, unless and until we find a proper
source for it.

Generally speaking, anytime a claim seems reasonably suspect, we ought
to try to remove it while we sort things out.

Yes, some trolls will use such a policy to try to remove things like
"Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President" until we get a source.  But we
should set our standards assuming rational people as our colleagues, and
deal with the trolls as a separate behavioral issue.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> Dreaming a little to the tune of $100,000,000 but with restrictions is
> hard, especially knowing that there is a real possibility that such a
> project may do more harm than good.

Well we want to make sure it will do more good than harm, to be sure.

And as soon as someone hands me $100,000,000 with no restrictions on
what we do with it, we can do all kinds of interesting things.  We'll
put the mania in wikimania. ;-)

> I wonder if content acquired within the restrictions you mentioned (pick
> any of the good suggestions made by others) could be used as a lever in
> some dual-licensing scheme (as used by several major open source software
> companies). As long as the content is under a free license but not in the
> public domain (e.g. GFDL or CC-BY-SA), we'd have a bargaining chip that we
> could parlay into access to other works. -- We can't do that for Wikipedia
> itself (because there is no single copyright owner), but if we owned a
> significant piece of desirable content, things might be different.

Now you're talking!  Can we explore this more?  Is there a
sustainability model here?  Can we use $X to leverage the
content-freedom of $10X worth of good stuff?

--Jimbo


from_name: Jon Harald Søby

subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikimedia.co.nr

body:
.co.nr is a redirect service only, yes. There are seven valid
subdomains of .nr (see http://cenpac.net.nr/). .co.nr is just a
redirect service like cjb.net or dot.tk.

On 10/15/06, Lawrence Lo <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmmm I just checked and it says the domain is not in their database
> which means that it has not been registered yet? Anyway isn't that a
> "free" domain redirection service? There are plenty other similar
> services out there, should we bother with them at all? Interestingly
> wikipedia.co.nr is banned by the service provider because the
> registrant broke their term of service.
>
> --Lorenzarius
>
> On 10/16/06, Friends Club Committee <resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I just set-up www.wikimedia.co.nr.
> >
> >   It should take a day or two to be live.
> >
> >   Feel free to send feedback!
> --
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> Tel: +852 95825791
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikimedia.co.nr


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
> Yes, some trolls will use such a policy to try to remove things like
> "Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President" until we get a source.  But we
> should set our standards assuming rational people as our colleagues, and
> deal with the trolls as a separate behavioral issue.

Those kinds of trolls are fairly easily dealt with:

"Thomas Jefferson: Third President 1801-1809"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/tj3.html

>From the Biography of Thomas Jefferson, found on the official White
House website. That took about 1 second - if I had a whole minute I
could have found lots better stuff.

People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts";
however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are
generally extremely easy to source.

Jay.


from_name: Roger Luethi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:43:05 -0400, Maury Markowitz wrote:
> >I think we should also focus on works from the last 30 years and put
> >some energy behind a copyright reform effort to get even older content
> >liberated by legal means.
>
> I'm sorry, but I believe this will have no measurable effect on the wiki.
>
> In opposition to any effort this $100 million could possibly generate, the
> entire media industry is arrayed with a variety of well established lobby
> groups to ensure no such change takes place.

That comparison is misleading. The real comparison is with the money "our"
side is spending now. The battle over software patents in Europe showed
that the better arguments have a fair chance of winning against monied
interests if you can get your arguments heard. And there's no shortage of
good arguments in this case.

If you want to win against special interests, you need to drag them and
their flimsy out into public view. Doing that takes a lot of time and
money, but it doesn't take more money than they can afford to spend.

> It is resonable to suspect that the only changes to the law will be to
> increase the length of time for protections, while at the same time
> removing existing user rights.

Possibly. And if we don't do anything, that is exactly what will happen.

> Meanwhile that same amount of money could liberate a huge variety of media
> that would immediately be available for use. Such examples would make the

$100 million is a drop in the bucket as far as copyrights are concerned.
Whatever you can buy will be a tiny fraction of what was stolen from the
public each time copyright durations got extended retroactively.

> media holders happy, not mad, and could cause other media asset libraries to
> be put up for sale as well.

Pretty much everything is for sale _right_now_, if you can afford it.

Roger


body:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:

>
> People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts";
> however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are
> generally extremely easy to source.

A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to
source obvious facts.

-Phil


body:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
>
> >
> > People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts";
> > however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are
> > generally extremely easy to source.
>
> A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to
> source obvious facts.

Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever, and
inserting spurious fact templates gets more difficult. And every once
in a while, you discover that what you thought was an "obvious fact"
was slightly different from what you imagined, or more complex than at
first glance, or even completely untrue.

Jay.


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] John Doolittle

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> Needless to say there is an edit war.  Of course these facts are
> cited; but do we really need to know that he took campaign
> contributions from some guy and did not give them away like the other
> people who took the guy's money?  Is that *honestly* the business of a
> neutral encyclopaedia article?

Seems like a balance issue rather than a BLP one, no?  The facts are the
facts, but given without proper expansion of other points doesn't create
a BLP issue.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "What Joe Mauer's doing is sick. He's 23 years old. What's
	he going to do when he gets man muscles?" - Torii Hunter
	on Joe Mauer.


from_name: ScottL

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:13:36 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Well the point is not an unrestricted gift, though that is fun to think
>> about too.  The point is not political lobbying, though that is fun to
>> think about too. :-)
>>
>> The point is: suppose someone wanted to buy $100,000,000 of existing
>> copyrighted material and set it free.  What should it be?
>
> Dreaming a little to the tune of $100,000,000 but with restrictions is
> hard, especially knowing that there is a real possibility that such a
> project may do more harm than good.
>
> But here is my restriction-compliant dream:
>
> I wonder if content acquired within the restrictions you mentioned (pick
> any of the good suggestions made by others) could be used as a lever in
> some dual-licensing scheme (as used by several major open source software
> companies). As long as the content is under a free license but not in the
> public domain (e.g. GFDL or CC-BY-SA), we'd have a bargaining chip that we
> could parlay into access to other works. -- We can't do that for Wikipedia
> itself (because there is no single copyright owner), but if we owned a
> significant piece of desirable content, things might be different.
>
> Roger

   Also something I have not seen on this thread yet, which this comes
close to, is the lobbying power of this having a significant positive
impact.  Wikipedia itself is a powerful example of what good open can do
and politicians and voters do notice.

   With that in mind I think the textbook suggestions or the language
learning suggestions are among the best.  It also works better for the
donor to be able to see "look what impact this $100 million had".  Quite
aside from the good press for the donor it also leads directly to
thinking about how the commons is a good thing, a good thing that laws
should be more friendly towards.

SKL


from_name: xaosflux

body:
The certainly are times that it is warranted, and admins SHOULD have email
enabled to be contacted, but [[WP:SPP]] is meant to be a temporary action
anyway, "a couple of weeks" is generally more than long enough for a talk
page.

xaosflux
----- Original Message -----
From: "Oskar Sigvardsson" <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Semi-Protecting User Talk Pages

> On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've just gone and removed semi-protections from about a dozen user
>> talk pages. All of them were targets of vandalism in the past,
>> generally due to their own anti-vandalism efforts. The pages included
>> pages of administrators.
>>
>> For obvious reasons, anyone who is warning and blocking new users in
>> turn needs to be able to be contacted by these users with questions,
>> concerns, etc. Semi-protection must not be used in this fashion, and
>> I've removed the line supporting it from the semi-protection policy.
>
> While I do agree with the general principle, I think there are
> certainly times where semi-protecting a talk page is warranted. If a
> useris being harrassed by a persistant sock-puppeteer for instance.
>
> Second, if a person recieves so much vandalism on his talk page that
> it's beginning to be a problem, I think semi-protecting it for a while
> is a good idea, atleast so that the user isn't driven away by all of
> the abuse he receives. That has a tendancy to happen with
> vandal-fighters.
>
> --Oskar
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:08:52 -0400, Maury Markowitz wrote:
>>> $100 million is a drop in the bucket as far as copyrights are concerned.
>> Oh balogna. That would easily pay for a takeover of Jupiter Media, for
>> instance.
>
> Actually, that seems more like a measly third of their market cap. Even
> iStockphoto went for $50 million. And that's only images.
>
> How about buying out the major scientific publishers and their copyright on
> our primary sources? $100 million are at least an order of magnitude short
> of what it would take to buy only one of Thomson, Reed Elsevier, or
> Springer Science.
>
> Yes, drop in the bucket describes it pretty well.

   Yes, it does describe it well if you are including every thing under
copyright in the bucket.  Or perhaps if you man that copyright will
still exist (which seems to bug a few people).  But, in terms of the
significance or usefulness of what could be done with it, then I think
"drop in the bucket" is excessively trivializing.

SKL


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
Not true, cleanup also has a huge amount of articles, and while there's a
backlog, there's also a lot of people working on it.  Currently,
[[Category:Articles with unsourced statements]] has a massive, totally
disorganized backlog, and was actually deleted a couple months ago because
it was so hopeless. A cleanup-like system would be a huge improvement, and
allow us to take care of the ones that most need sourcing first.

On 10/16/06, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/16/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> > > Hmmm yes I supose you could do it by creating templates like
> > > {{fact1610}} {{fact1710}} {{fact1810}} and so on.
> >
> > Huh?  I was thinking of something like {{fact|October 2006}},
> > by direct analogy with [[Template:Cleanup]].
>
> {{Cleanup}} is a ticket to a year-long line.  If we want to get
> these issues addressed with any kind of speed (and it's clear
> from the start of this thread that we do), any system that we
> come up with needs to be as unlike {{cleanup}} as possible.
>
> Personally, I suspect that the only way to handle these things
> is to do them yourself.  I long ago gave up on the notion of
> article tags being an effective way to get anything but the most
> trivial (and thus edit-count-building) maintenance work done.
>
> --
> Robth
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] John Doolittle

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Seems like a balance issue rather than a BLP one, no?  The facts are the
> facts, but given without proper expansion of other points doesn't create
> a BLP issue.

Without making any statement on this particular case, which I have not
studied enough, I just wanted to point out that a balance issue can and
often is a BLP issue.  Indeed, BLP issues are more often about balance
than anything else.

It is often that case that the worst bios of living people involve a
skeleton bio with a huge puke of negative information (properly sourced)
in the middle, so that the article as a whole is completely biased.
Because of certain cultural norms against ever ever ever removing any
precious little tidbit of information, despite it boring the reader to
tears and being a form of attack and bias, it can be hard for people to
combat it.

Remember, NPOV is non-negotiable.  Wikipedia is not a data dump.
Quality requires editorial judgment and good sense.

--Jimbo


body:
Temporarily, it can be useful, but admins tend to forget to unprotect it;
look at my user page for an example. While my userpage isn't a talk page
(and it doesn't matter enough to me to get it unprotected), it's an example
of something that an admin protected from vandalism then completely forgot
about and never unprotected.

On 10/16/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've just gone and removed semi-protections from about a dozen user
> > talk pages. All of them were targets of vandalism in the past,
> > generally due to their own anti-vandalism efforts. The pages included
> > pages of administrators.
> >
> > For obvious reasons, anyone who is warning and blocking new users in
> > turn needs to be able to be contacted by these users with questions,
> > concerns, etc. Semi-protection must not be used in this fashion, and
> > I've removed the line supporting it from the semi-protection policy.
>
> While I do agree with the general principle, I think there are
> certainly times where semi-protecting a talk page is warranted. If a
> useris being harrassed by a persistant sock-puppeteer for instance.
>
> Second, if a person recieves so much vandalism on his talk page that
> it's beginning to be a problem, I think semi-protecting it for a while
> is a good idea, atleast so that the user isn't driven away by all of
> the abuse he receives. That has a tendancy to happen with
> vandal-fighters.
>
> --Oskar
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject: [Foundation-l] Closing inactive Wikinewses

body:
I would place a much shorter window on the inactivity threshold --
perhaps 1 month.

I second the suggestion for the higher reactivation requirement, as
well -- it encourages the redevelopment of a community. One must
notice though that the reactivating users may not at all be related to
the originating users, and yet they would have this higher burden of
rounding up members.  I would suggest that in response we should be
quicker at unlocking the wiki once the votes are in.

-ilya haykinson

On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I suggest the following policy:
>
> When a Wikinews edition has seen no new stories for 8 weeks, the wiki
> is locked and a site notice is added: "This Wikinews edition is
> currently inactive. If you are interested in working on it, please
> indicate so on [[m:Wikinews/Reactivate an edition]]." (In the correct
> language, of course.) Instead of just 5 votes, you would need 10
> Wikimedians to sign the reactivation pledge.
>
> Inactive editions could also be removed from the interlanguage link
> list on the Main Pages, but that would be optional if it's too much
> maintenance.
>
> There are currently a few Wikinewses that meet this criterion. In
> general our setup policy tends to at least determine whether there's a
> general interest but that doesn't ensure that people keep posting.
>
> Without such a policy, I think we are just turning these sites into
> magnets for vandalism and spam, as well as making Wikinews look
> unprofessional (a news site with news that are a year old isn't much
> of one). An open recognition that an edition is dead seems preferable
> to me.
>
> Wikinews is of course very special in this regard because it doesn't
> really matter that much if a Wikipedia edition is dead for a couple of
> months, but for Wikinews, it is a very obvious sign that the critical
> mass is not there.
>
> Does this policy proposal sound reasonable?
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
> DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
> in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
> position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
P. Birken wrote:
> 2006/10/15, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
>
>
>> How about recordings of out of copyright (i.e. classical)  music?  The
>> only rights holder should be whomever recorded it and whomever they
>> signed agreements with in order to be permitted to record it.  There
>> are a number of small record labels such as [[Nimbus Records]] as well
>> as the concert halls themselves which have large libraries of music.
>> I think this would only be worthwhile as a funded endeavor if it could
>> land us a truly massive archive which would enable us to illustrate a
>> majority of our articles on long-dead composers.
>>
>
> Classical music recordings are what I would call the classical
> copyright nightmare. It might be possible to get solo pieces under a
> free licence, but orchestra pieces... I talked to a Conductor of the
> local university orchestra about putting some of their recordings
> under a free license. You have to get forty people (the recorders) to
> put this under a free licence. The next part is that while the music
> is free, orchestras usually rent the notes from some music publishing
> company (because it's too expensive to buy a complete set of notes for
> every piece). These companies in turn put demands on your use of their
> notes, most often fees for commercial use, which would in a way apply
> if you put this under the GNU-FDL or CC-by-SA.
>
> Nevertheless, it sounds like a good idea to fund a piano player to
> record the major Bach, Beethoven and Mozart piano pieces.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Philipp
Hoi,
When it is not possible to play a piece by Haydn Mozart Rossini because
there is no music available, we should SCAN these works and digitize
them. When we have done this, we should make them available. When we
make these works available, it will become easier to perform these
works. As more material becomes easily available, more music will be
played. This in term will stimulate the performance of music.

The performance of music by amateur musicians is imho more important
than to have another performance by an acknowledged master performer. I
think that popular music is popular because it is easy to get a band
together and just play. When it is EASY to get the music, it will become
easy to perform.. Remember Bach was a composer and his compositions were
first and foremost consumables. When it is easy to just have another
piece of music when you decide you do not like the one you have, the
entry level to music will be lowered and music will become less of a
consumable and more participatory.

When you invest money, you have to consider what you want to achieve
with it.. When I buy music I want my violin concerto performed by Maxim
Vengerov or I might buy the latest Patti Smith. When I were to invest
money, I would consider what WE should spend money on, what would help
US. Our success exist because of us cooperating. When we invest, it
should make us stronger. We do not get stronger by paying royalties; we
get stronger by investing in the restoration of the same material and we
should only invest in it when we Free this material at the same time.
When we are to invest in politicking, I would echo Elian and have "Free
Donald and Mickey" be our battle cry.

I would echo Danny where he wants to spend serious money into our
hardware; there are many challenges that can be overcome with ample
funding, I would however spend a lot more money in the development of
our software. So many dreams are not realised because there is nobody
willing to consider it, willing to code it. Much functionality is
unlikely to get coded because it is just too much work.

Yes, we can spend $100.000.000,- but let us spend it in a way that makes
us stronger. When we show that we can spend wisely, it will be the
beginning of something great; the restoration of a participatory
society. When we spend wisely, we will be trusted with much more money.

Thanks,
    Gerard


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 16/10/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> > 2. While OCR capacities exist for some languages, they do not exist for
> > other languages, where the material is much more likely to get lost.
> > Manuscripts in Tibetan monasteries, for example, can be scanend but not
> > OCRed easily. To make this information available, developers should be
> > paid to create adequate OCR tools for these languages. Rough cost: $5
> > million.
>
> Much of the limits of Wikisource now is on the capability to scan and
> ocr documents. There is no good free OCR software, apart the new
> software recently released to GPL by Google, but it works only for
> English and has still limitations. So developing a good free and
> multilingual OCR software would be my priority. AFAIK there is no good
> OCR software (free or not) for any Indian languages, including Sanskrit.
> I have never seen any for Tibetan either.
>
> But having a software is not enough. A few OCR servers managed by the
> Foundation where anyone can sent an automated OCR request would be very
> useful. There are already proprietary OCR software who can do that.

This is a very, very, very good idea. Having a dedicated system to
input TIFF images (or the like) and spit out high-grade OCR, rather
than just relying on whatever the scanning volunteer can come up with,
would help the wikisource-like projects leap ahead.

...has anyone proposed this to Project Gutenberg? If they can get the
money together, it might free up an *awful* lot of their volunteer
time.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: 孙国君

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to implement 'wikihow' web style??

body:
i think lots of people here had browsed this site www.wikihow.com. i have several technical question about the site,dos anybody can give
me some trains of thought :)

  1)i saw "Create page" link url was implemented as "http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?action=edit&rex=4",here "rex" le
    seems a additional customized parameter, why use this additional url parameter? how to "Create page" by this way?

  2) while clicked "create page",in next new page, has several textarea to input "Introduction"?"steps"?"tips" etc separately. MediaWiki
     just has one textarea to add content?how to customize edit page like that?

  3)while clicked "discuss this page" will goto http://www.wikihow.com/Discussion:Cook-Food, we can find here has a new namespace
   "Discussion"?and in this page,top area of page lists all discussion and bottom placed a textarea to add discussion?it's very convenient
   for user to check and add topics? in standard mediawiki,discussion page just lists topics,should click"+" again to add topic, wikihow
   style is a better choice, how to do?

   thanks in advance!

   wind sun


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:19:13 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Right.  So one of the things I am hearing loud and clear is that our
> community would generally like to see more money spent on lobbying
> efforts for copyright reform.  That is a point very well taken.

It is not so much about copyright reform as it is about investing money
rather than spending it, and this is a rare opportunity to talk about that.

Another example, unrelated to copyright reform: Wikipedia editors need
access to primary sources, particularly academic journals. The fate of
current ventures in Open Access journals largely determines whether most
potential Wikipedia editors will have easy access to the sources they need
in the years to come, and funding for these journals (or lack thereof) will
be a major factor.

> However, our task at the moment is not to dream about _that_ per se, but
> rather to dream about what kinds of work under existing copyright, we
> would like to see made free.  There have been many good suggestions, and

I agree. All I ask is that if such a decision is ever taken, consider very
carefully not only the value of the information you are setting free, but
also the message you are sending to content owners/producers and other key
players.

Roger


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> While this might be useful on wikisource on en it would have the
> problem of making the code shown on the editing pages even more
> incomprehensible.

What is more incomprehensible:  a standard language for music notation
which takes about fifteen minutes to learn for someone who already
knows notation,  .. or an opaque image which can either only be edited
by the same language using software most editors do not have installed
OR edited by recreation in an expensive propritary application (which
also outputs copyrighted gliphs)?

We really do need in wiki music notation editing ... right now the
extra steps to create notation offline and upload it are a substantial
discouragement to authoring.


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:08:52 -0400, Maury Markowitz wrote:
> >$100 million is a drop in the bucket as far as copyrights are concerned.
>
> Oh balogna. That would easily pay for a takeover of Jupiter Media, for
> instance.

Actually, that seems more like a measly third of their market cap. Even
iStockphoto went for $50 million. And that's only images.

How about buying out the major scientific publishers and their copyright on
our primary sources? $100 million are at least an order of magnitude short
of what it would take to buy only one of Thomson, Reed Elsevier, or
Springer Science.

Yes, drop in the bucket describes it pretty well.

> the wiki? No, the problem is that the vast majority of content one might
> want to use on the wiki is of completely unknown origin, and thus covered by
> default copyright and unable to be used.

That's not a problem you solve by buying stuff for $100 millon.

> There's another very large group who look for some sort of license to put on
> their media, and are presented legalese arguments that presents the very
> first argument they find, which is the default copyright. This isn't about
> copyright, IMHO, but a lack of knowledge of the alternatives.

No, alternatives exist. And in many cases, people even know about those
alternatives but don't use them.

> Everyone from a librarian scanning in an old map to a company who puts a
> picture of their product on their own web site should be actively encouraged

Libraries are prime offenders in locking up content that is not even under
copyright anymore. And in many cases, companies want control even more than
they want exposure.

> holders in the variety of licenses out there. It could, for instance, pay
> for the mailing of a pamplete to every curator, librarian, school principal,
> archivist and so forth, asking them to consider using one of the many
> suitable licenses they likely never even heard of.

I very much agree that education is an important issue. But curators and
librarians have often a vested interest in keeping their stuff locked up,
and if they don't, their bosses do. A pamphlet won't change their behavior,
that would at least take some intense discussions and in many cases some
additional force/incentives.

Roger


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/17/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I am unsure what you mean here.  The code will
> look
> > the same at en.WS as it does at en.WP.
>
> Pages at en.WS likely have lower editing rates. New
> users looking at a
> page full of code should be a less of a proble,
>
> > It will only
> > show up where there is a need to display music.
> Many
> > editors will never come across thes edit screens
> at
> > all.  However much of a learning curve there is
> with
> > this code it will be more efficient than cropping
> > images from book scans.  I don't understand what
> you
> > are advocating here.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
>
> I'm suggesting we be careful before adding yet
> another form of
> incomprihensible code to articles.
> --
> geni

Please, please tell me that you are not meaning to
imply that en.WP's preferences should be factor in
deciding if development resources are allocated
towards a fucntionality for the Wikisource projects.

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


from_name: Chris Picone

subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
Sorry, I'm new to mailing lists, so bear with me. I am user Ccool2ax
on English WIkipedia (too lazy to link), and I've noticed in the past
that many "Episode summaries", plot summaries of TV shows, have
absolutely no sources. They are completely OR. Family Guy, the
Simpsons, Lost, all of them have no sources! Every time I bring up
discussion I get "The episode is teh reference!" as a reply. I'm here
to ask you guys what we should do about these thousands and thousands
of OR articles? So far, all there is is WP:EPISODE (again too lazy to
link), a small essay saying that episode summaries need sources. What
should we do?


from_name: gwern branwen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am afraid this really isn't much of a reply to your suggestion, but
> it leaped into my head when I read it...
>
> If we went down the road of "buying copyrights", we'd probably end up
> setting up a "licensing trust", a registered charitable organisation
> whose sole purpose is to acquire intellectual property and license it
> out For The Betterment Of Humanity.
>
> Of course, the benefit of a registered charity is that donations to it
> are tax-deductible - and, much to my delight, it seems that this even
> extends to gifts of intellectual property. So, put two and two
> together, and how about having them tout for donations?
.....

Now, I can't be the only one thinking this, but could this finally be
a way to claim Wikipedia editing as a tax deduction since you are
donating intellectual property ?

> - Andrew Gray

--Gwern


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
> Dreaming a little to the tune of $100,000,000 but with restrictions is
> hard, especially knowing that there is a real possibility that such a
> project may do more harm than good.
>
> But here is my restriction-compliant dream:
>
> I wonder if content acquired within the restrictions you mentioned (pick
> any of the good suggestions made by others) could be used as a lever in
> some dual-licensing scheme (as used by several major open source software
> companies). As long as the content is under a free license but not in the
> public domain (e.g. GFDL or CC-BY-SA), we'd have a bargaining chip that we
> could parlay into access to other works. -- We can't do that for Wikipedia
> itself (because there is no single copyright owner), but if we owned a
> significant piece of desirable content, things might be different.
>
> Roger

Roger, could you expand on this? I'm not following how it works. I
understand that dual-licensing works for software because companies
may not want to copyleft their work, and because just source code
isn't actually all that useful minus maintenance and support and
documentation and other things that companies like Redhat provide for
money, but how does this apply to regular old content? Is the GFDL as
'viral' as the GPL in regard to modification and incorporation, and is
not being GFDL valuable enough to various parties that the relevant
corporations would still realize their desired sums?

--Gwern


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/16/06, gwern branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Roger, could you expand on this? I'm not following how it works. I
> understand that dual-licensing works for software because companies
> may not want to copyleft their work, and because just source code
> isn't actually all that useful minus maintenance and support and
> documentation and other things that companies like Redhat provide for
> money, but how does this apply to regular old content? Is the GFDL as
> 'viral' as the GPL in regard to modification and incorporation, and is
> not being GFDL valuable enough to various parties that the relevant
> corporations would still realize their desired sums?

I'm not roger, but...

GFDL, CC-By-SA, and the GPL (as well as many others..) are copyleft licenses.

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

Copyleft licenses ensure that all decedents of the copylefted work
remain at least as free (but potentially no more free) as the original
copylefted work.

The result is that if someone wants to make a derived work starting
from a copylefted base they may not deny downstream recipients the
same rights which they received.

In the future, please avoid calling the share-alike nature of
copylefted works "viral": Because nothing forces you to make use of
the copylefted work of others the comparison to others, and no
violation to force you to open your own works (rather, a failure to
option in the face of a violation of a copyleft licenses leaves you
open to prosecution for copyright violation), it is inaccurate to use
the derogatory term "viral" to refer to copyleft licenses.

As far as dual licensing, the GFDL and CC-By-SA  are not compatible.
There used to be a larger philosophical schism between the two
licenses (for example, in terms of the intensity of DRM protection)
but the new GFDL drafts (Esp the SFDL) substantially reduce the real
incompatibility (by making unfortunate changes, such as leaving the
GFDL with less DRM protection than CC licenses) .. but the gratuitous
incompatibility remains and is not likely to be resolved due to an
increasing disconnect between RMS
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman) and the creative
commons (which happily endorses unfree licenses like CC-By-NC-ND which
inhibit read write culture, along side acceptable free ones like
CC-By-SA-1/2.0).

So long as the GFDL (or really the SFDL) is going to be functionally
equal but gratuitously incompatible with CC-By-SA-2.0, the dual
licensing makes sense....


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 15/10/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
> would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
> generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
> purchased and freed.
>
> Dream big.  Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
> copyrights to be made available under a free license.  What would you
> like to see purchased and released under a free license?
>
> Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific,
> be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.

A general worldwide gazeteer. SFAIK, this is a current gap in the
various collections of free reference material...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk