subject: [Wikitech-l] $wgLegalTitleChars vs. 20070206 XML Dumps

references:
<4608584F.3080003@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<eua6s8$qpr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4608B1F6.2060101@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>
>> The default in 1.9.x is:
>>
>> $wgLegalTitleChars =
>> " %!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?@A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF+";
>>
>> This includes all multibyte characters due to the \x80-\xFF range
>> near the
>> end, including your example "?". The value used on Wikimedia is
>> identical
>> to the default except for the order of characters in the class:
>>
>> $wgLegalTitleChars =
>> "+ %!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?@A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF";
>>
>> Did you perhaps accidentally remove the \x80-\xFF range at some stage?
>>
>>
>>
>>
> No, I did not remove it.  I am re-running importDump with the debug
> logging enabled and a debugger.  It appears the
> problem is more involved than previously reported, which is why I
> delayed on updating the
> fix to the data dumps page on meta.  I am re-reunning the program to
> debug further, modifying the title chars fixed one title
> only for another to crash further down in the dump.   It takes several
> hours to get to the point in the dump I am seeing the corruption and
> error,
> Should crash in another 30 minutes or so again so I can post morten it
> again.
>
> Jeff
>
>

Confirmed precise location of the failure.     The number on the left
hnd side is the article number.

2698244:Dog adenovirus
2698245:David A. Caputo
2698246:Famous Detective Conan (Case Closed
2698247:William Hughes Mulligan

THIS TITLE PRODUCES THE IMPORT DUMP FAILURE.

2698248:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greatest Hits Volume One (The
Byrds)

2698249:Image:Tripitaka storage2.jpg
2698250:Natalie Golda
2698251:Image:Big Passage outside Ampleforth College Library.jpg
2698252:Canine infectious hepatitis
2698253:P?-irreducible
2698254:Image:Zebra sideview.jpg
2698255:Amy Freed

Jeff


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James Farrar

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was Wikimedia
	Foundation sued)

body:
On 26/03/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:

> Basically any non-admin is now excluded from the DRV after Doc Glasgow
> speedied it unless someone restores the history for us.

Which means that the deleting admin acted far too hastily in speedying
it for legal reasons. (No, I don't buy it being deleted not for legal
reasons. There is such thing as being too much of a coincidence.)


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is this the first time the WMF has actually been sued?

If memory serves me correctly, yes.

There have been actions related to the projects (the current Zoeller
suit, for example) and there has been an action involving the German
chapter (the Tron suit) but this is the first time that the Foundation
has been named as a party in an action that has got so far as to have
been filed.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikireader (was re: Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin,
 March 25, 2007)

body:
Titoxd at Wikimedia wrote:
> One question: were the de.wp WikiReaders "published" (meaning that they were
> done by a commercial entity and sold to the public) or not? Were the en.wp
> WikiReaders "published" as well, or were they just handed out at Wikimania?
> I ask this because the Version 1.0 Editorial Team is interested in picking
> this up and producing commercially available WikiReaders (and several
> WikiProjects have announced that they're interested in this: WikiProjects
> Military History, LGBT studies and Tropical cyclones, off the top of my
> head. Military History has actually begun work on this at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MILPUB . However, remembering the Lulu Press
> incident, we want to make sure all our ducks are in a row.
>
> Titoxd
>
It is funny you mention the Lulu Press incident.  I made some comments
about that on en.wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles#Should_we_publish_a_compilation_of_featured_articles.3F

I don't think they listened very well as there is now a website,
definitely not run by the WMF as far as I can tell, that is selling at
least the Wikipedia DVDs and possibly the Wikireaders here:

http://www.wikipediaondvd.com/

I would like to note the very extensive use of the WMF logos and
trademarks on this website, not to mention the name "wikipedia" in the URL.

I don't think they are trying to intentionally harm the WMF, but I think
some people here on this list should be aware of this issue.

-- Robert Horning


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Foundation Licensing Policy

body:
On 3/27/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> What I'd like to see is a total cleanup of all non-free images of
> living people that can be replaced with free content, using the "No
> free image" method as e.g. demonstrated on:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommi_Hovi&oldid=114878341
>
> It would also be nice if free content became a more consistent part of
> the featured article candidate process; at least a couple recent
> articles featured on the Main Page had to have their images removed
> because of excessive use of non-free content.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Well, within a year or so, for what I gather from the resolution. Most
images of living people can be replaced with free images, so they
can't be argued and will be removed within a year. Am I getting it
right?


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-27

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20732).

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

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

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


body:
Titoxd at Wikimedia wrote:
> Except that the Foundation is aware of it, and has been working side by side
> with Linterweb (the people who will press and sell the Version 0.5 CDs)
> throughout the entire publication preparation process. It is not run, per
> se, by WMF, but WMF is, as of even right now, taking steps to see its
> publication soon.
>
> Note that there have been no talks with Linterweb about WikiReaders; there
> may be, but we're way too early in the WikiReader process to even be
> thinking about that.
>

I'm curious about what terms the WMF has on stuff like this (I caught
the bit about Linterweb after I pressed the "save" button).  The Meta
page about licensing terms is only suggestions and musings about what
licensing terms could have between the WMF and 3rd party projects.  I
guess there is a press release that is being worked on that will explain
this in further detail near the launch date of the DVD.  And that is
just in a few days.

--Robert Horning


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: $wgLegalTitleChars vs. 20070206 XML
 Dumps

body:
christoph.huesler at css.ch wrote:

>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>THIS TITLE PRODUCES THE IMPORT DUMP FAILURE.
>>
>>2698248:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
>>deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
>>deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
>>deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greatest Hits Volume One (The
>>Byrds)
>>
>>
>
>pretty long title, huh?
>
>

Pretty broken title. Check the 20070206 XML dumps and guess what's it it
-- this title.

:-)

Jeff

>-- chris
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation Licensing Policy

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:
> The board has now passed its resolution on the media licensing policy,
> available now at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
>
> This policy is intended to reflect the principles in the message
> posted earlier at
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027547.html
> and to make the guidelines for acceptable media licenses clearer
> across all projects.
>
> A beginning draft of an FAQ page is on Meta at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_policy_FAQ_draft -- please
> add your own questions and suggest answers.
>
> Please pass this information on to your project communities!
>
> Cheers,
> Kat Walsh
I guess I need another hard drive on my computer for the responses :)

--Robert Horning


from_name: Rich Holton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was
 Wikimedia	Foundation sued)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Denny Colt wrote:
>>  Unfortunately since no one but admins can see the stuff in question
> now, any
>> non-admins have been unfairly (in violation of policy?) removed from any
>> decision making here that is of real value... I "recall" seeing RS on the
>> article before it went away, but if someone challenged me on that--what do I
>> say? "Sorry, can't see it/confirm"?
>>
>> Basically any non-admin is now excluded from the DRV after Doc Glasgow
>> speedied it unless someone restores the history for us.
>
> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
> are doing.
>
Jimmy,

I am an admin, and I am truly sorry that you feel this way. And even
sorrier that you stated that you feel this way.

As a project that was founded on and thrives on cooperation, the last
thing we need is an increase in the perceived elitism of admins.

If there are potential legal reasons to keep "hidden" the revision
history of certain deleted articles while the deletion is under review,
revealed only to a small group, then let's make it clear that it is for
legal reasons.

If this is not the case, then let's reveal the revision history.

-Rich Holton
user:Rholton


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>>It's hard to know what brought on this personal attack.  If there is
>>anything "subtly misleading" in my posts let him present the facts that
>>support that.  Otherwise, I can only assume that Charles' statement was
>>made out of the sheer pleasure of being argumentative.
>>
>>Ray
>>
>>
>Went through my Trash folder, results appended (my comments in [ ]).
>
>Charles
>
Thank you; so now let's go through these one-by-one.

>*We have no need to be strict about notability. [Oh really]
>
Notability is mostly subjective, and the occasional non-notable article
will probably not be noticed because it is non-notable. Nothing
misleading about that.

>*Having "non-encyclopedic topics" (whatever that means) does not make us a worse encyclopaedia. [Not ?whatever that means?]
>
Ditto. Notable and encyclopedic are very similar concepts. Not misleading.

>*>>Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or
>
>
>>>observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
>>>
>>>
>>The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary source.
>>
>>
>Another non-sequitur. [Silly quibble with Thomas Dalrton.]
>
No doubt that I have frequently disagreed with Tom. If A is the primary
source, and B utilizes A that does not make B a primary source. There is
nothing misleading about a logical analysis of the statements.

>*Idolatry is not a valid basis for argument.  [Personal attack on Steve Bennett or stevertigo, or someone]
>
The response was to stevertigo; Steve Bennett had mad an intermediate
comment. The comment was in the nature of "If Jimbo says it it must be
right". "Idolatry" is ad rem since it refers to the statement;
"idolator" would have been ad hominem. The wording was perhaps a bit
strong, but strong comments are anything but misleading.

>*I think your response is just another way of saying that you do not know. [Sort of personal attack or sniping at stevertigo]
>
I remember writing that, and it was perhaps a tad sarcastic, but since I
forget what I was responding to, I will not comment at this point about
whether it was misleading.

>*Much of what is said to the media in a first instance (is) off the cuff and not necessarily supported by a broad consensus. [Well, an individual is being interviewed.]
>
The media look for sound-bytes, and when people are caught unawares it
is very easy to say things that have not been thought through. The media
hate dead air, and people often feel obliged to say something when
things get too silent. Those who are media savvy will of course do
better. Nothing misleading in that.

>*Stonewalling is indeed an effective tactic.  The only problem with it is that it pisses people off just as effectively. [Silence is golden, you know. Contradicts the ?off the cuff? comment, too.]
>
That was not necessarily in relation to the media. Government officials
can be very adept at this when they don't want to admit anything. It's a
part of being media savvy, and the media savvy do not get trapped into
off-the-cuff remarks. Again, not misleading.

>*[>Because the topic of Wikipedia's governance and processes of control
>
>
>>are typical fodder for trolls, who are far more interested in hurting
>>the project than helping it.
>>
>>
>That's like saying that democracy is too precious to be put under the
>control of the general population. [Oh really. Arguing with stevertigo again. Trolls really do go wild about constitutional definitions.]
>
If you say that was in response to stevevertigo I'll believe you; the
banter does tend to go in series of comments. IIRC the argument had just
been made in favour of limiting participation in governace discussions
on the above basis. When you start limiting participation out of a
prejudged fear that some participants might be trolls my comment is
perfectly applicable. If there are trolls identify them and deal with
them individually rather than acting out of fear that they might be
there. Nothing misleading about that.

>*>And indeed, a constitutional monarchy is the best analogy for the
>
>
>>English Wikipedia at the moment.
>>
>>
>Charles I discovered the hard way that there are limits to monarchy. [He wasn?t  a constitutional monarch, as you know. Seems to be sniping at Jimbo now.]
>
There was an intervening comment that lacked the adjective
"constitutional". Perhaps the allusion was a little sharp, but it was
not misleading.

>*When a process becomes backlogged it is evidently not scaling well. [No.]
>
Perhaps it might have been better if I had said "chronically backlogged"
If the in-box keeps filling up faster than the outbos we need more
effective processes. Not misleading.

>*>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
>
>
>>suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on
>>how public the figure is. For non-public figures, it says "material
>>
>>
>>from primary sources should generally not be used," whereas for public
>
>
>>figures it says "material from primary sources should be used with
>>care" though that is under the heading "Presumption in favor of
>>privacy".
>>
>>
>Court judgements (and, for that matter, court filings by the disputants,
>and even trial transcripts) are a matter of public record.  This is an
>important component to maintaining the transparency of the judicial
>system.  Privacy should not be a factor with this kind of material. [Privacy is written into WP:BLP, so this is not the point at all.]
>
We evidently are using different interpretations of "privacy". As I see
it information that is already available to the public is not private.
You have chosen a different definition. Failure to agree to your
definition does not make my comments misleading.

>*Being "not supposed to do it" is not a strong enough excuse for not
>doing it.  One shouldn't become doctrinnaire about sources when an
>article is just started; that only quashes the inspiration to do
>something. [Wrong. And somewhat wrong.]
>
All that says is that rules should be applied flexibly to suit the
circumstances. Articles need time to grow, and immediately sourcing
facts is more importasnt in some areas of knowledge than others. I've
been consistent in my view so there is nothing misleading about it.

>*Fractal systems incorporate a lot of randomness. [Tosh. They may or may not.]
>
You can never be sure where new structures will develop. Not misleading.

>* I do not believe that reliability should be or even can be one of our goals. [Really.]
>
Really! Although we should always be ttrying to improve the content, we
also need to disavow people of reliability. That will encourage them to
seek additional sources. Not misleading.

>*The queen retains her power by not exercisiing it. [Bad history ? 1973 general election.]
>
In which country? There was no UK general election that year. I tried to
look it up to find out what you were talking about. Once in 55 years
does not exactly make her a radical interventionist. Nevertheless,
"using it sparingly" might have been more precise wording, but the
general tone stands, and is not misleading.

>*A statistical mathematical model should be capable of marginalizing the effect that idiots have on the article. [Or not.]
>
Statistics allows for exceptions. When a single vote makes the
difference between winning and losing the trolls can matter much more
than if their votes are burid in a larger pattern of voting The idea
might be radical but it's not misleading.

>*The alternative would be for the reporters to learn what putting Wikipedia in proper perspective means.  They might even have to check their facts. That would not be the easy way out for them. [Implication that our coverage suffers from a lack of professionalism. Anyone believe this is helpful?]
>
Your implication is not mine. Reporters will be happy with Wikipedia as
long as they can easily use the material in their work. They still need
to check their facts. When they don't and the Wikipedia article that
they use turns out to be one that has been subtly vandalized, they are
more likely to blame Wikipedia than to take responsibility for their own
action. This seems to be what happened with the publicity folders for
Sioux Lookout. If anyone's professionalism is being criticized it's that
of the reporters. Not at all misleading.

Ray


from_name: Florence Devouard

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin,
	March 25, 2007

body:
Hsiang-Tai Chien wrote:

> 5. WikiReader editing begins
>
> The editing for WikiReader on Wikimania 2007 now also begins and is planned
> to be delivered to the attendees when Wikimania is been held in August 3-5,
> 2007.

Hello

Can you tell us more about what this wikireader is about and what you
are looking for in terms of volunteer jobs ?

Thanks

Ant


list: textbook-l

from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks is no more

body:
Dnia Tue, 27 Mar 2007 01:22:51 +0200, Robert Horning napisa?(a):

> Well, I'm sure it is a minor glitch with the dev team, but it looks like
> Wikibooks disappeared from the Wikimedia projects list briefly today.
>
> I'm sure there is an interesting story behind this, as not all Wikimedia
> projects are affected.
>
> -- Robert Horning

Reload the main page, should be working now. Tech people say it was only an accident. Wikinews were down as well for some time.

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikireader (was re: Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin,
	March 25, 2007)

body:
> A "wikireader", at least as I've seen it used in context, is a
> collection of Wikipedia articles centered around a specific topic like
> Chemistry, Astronomy, or a historical topic like the "Napoleanic Wars".
> de.wikipedia has been doing this for some time, but it hasn't been done
> in any other languages, including English.

It has been done in English. One about Frankfurt was given out at the
first Wikimania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader/Frankfurt

Angela


from_name: Zoney

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - personality
	cult

body:
On 24/03/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:
>
> And more
> importantly, why do they *stay*, doing free labor? Stark coercion, of
> the sort if-you-leave-we'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you, is extraordinarily
> rare. Much of the process is about manipulating a psychological need.
> Transcendent purpose, internal status, external dangers - these are
> all deep human triggers.

--
> Seth Finkelstein
>

To be honest, my own opinion is that a lot of people are just addicted to
Wikipedia and "wiki-fiddling". I'm a former addict myself. I genuinely got
hooked adding content on Irish-related topics, because it was information I
knew about and I was happy increasing the country's profile on Wikipedia.

However, now looking at it objectively after essentially quitting for
several months, and then coming back as a casual editor, there is no way I
can justify spending my time on Wikipedia rather than putting it to better
use (even if just relaxing in order to concentrate on my studies better the
next day)!

I have serious issues too with licencing your content free of charge, I do
not think this will in the long run be good for anyone. I'm happier having a
non-profit organisation pursue it, but it is worrying in that it means
people are less careful about letting other organisations make profit from
one's work (with one seeing any payback). Citizen journalism is an example;
we will just end up without professionals, and the really proficient people
won't be able to make money from their skills.

Mind you, if there was even a normal form of author attribution (not just
page history) that would be a start!

Zoney
--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug9326 / r20571

body:
On 27/03/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This was my first bug report, it appears to be resovled, but not
> implemented.  What is the next step in the release cycle?

It has to be synchronised live, i.e. a shell user updates the code on
the live servers. Normally this happens within a few days, but we're
pending some big database upgrades at the moment, so regular updates
may be delayed.

Rob Church


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Woah, woah, woah.

Now you are insulting speakers of Singlish!

JLWS merely said that, I believe, due to his/her ongoing quest for a
Singlish Wikipedia which seems to have been all but ignored.

My suggestion to you JLWS: Create a Singlish Test-Wiki at the
incubator (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/). I promise I will do all I
can to help.

Mark

On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/3/27, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com>:
> >
> > Which language? Singlish?
> >
>
> I think making jokes about someone's knowledge of English is below the
> normal level of conversation on this list. And anyway, the original poster
> seems to be from Argentina, which makes it quite unlikely that he would be
> proposing Singlish.
>
> For Emmanuel: You can find the necessary information at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy. Be however
> warned that there have been no proposals accepted in the last few months.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: James Farrar [mailto:james.farrar at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 07:37 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
>
>On 27/03/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > > Also, I have a hard time imagining a situation where it is absolutely
>> > > impossible to purge POV from the bio of an otherwise notable person
>> > > without nuking the article.
>>
>> > But is that the point? If a credible legal threat it made, we might as
>> > well just delete the thing first and ask questions later. No single
>> > article is worth getting sued over - whether the Foundation would win
>> > the case or not.
>>
>> Such cases are why we unfortunately have the  necessary evil that is WP:OFFICE.
>
>Indeed.
>
>And in the absence of an Office intervention, surely an admin speedily
>deleting an article that has already failed an AfD is acting beyond
>his powers?

No, any user may remove or delete libelous or malicious material without limit.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
Well, most of the more successful recently-created Wikis did not have
translated interfaces until they left the incubator, by which point
some of them were already relatively large.

Mark

On 27/03/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2007/3/27, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> >
> > > As far as Gerard and I have talked about this issue and I understand
> > > it, it seems like a sensible policy to me. If you want a new language,
> > > it should not be that difficult to at least prepare the groundwork for
> > > MediaWiki localization before you start. If you cannot even get that
> > > organized, how are you ever going to write a useful encyclopedia?
> > >
> >
> > What if your interest is in writing an encyclopedia, and not in translating
> > software? If you have 10 people happily writing articles, but none of them
> > having interest in going through all 200+ MediaWiki-pages, does that mean
> > that it can never be an encyclopedia?
>
> Exactly. There is a lot of crud in the MediaWiki messages. Even when
> you start a new wiki in English, how many people go through the
> messages to localise them and create all the referenced pages such as
> Project:About? (I sure don't.) As opposed to, how many dive into the
> exciting project of content creation?
>
> Why is localisation so important? The messages will be translated as
> the wiki progresses. I am not convinced that localisation before
> launch is more likely to ensure a successful project. Is there some
> research or some cases that show this?
>
> regards,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ron Ritzman [mailto:ritzman at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 07:59 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
>
>On 3/26/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And in the absence of an Office intervention, surely an admin speedily
>> deleting an article that has already failed an AfD is acting beyond
>> his powers?
>
>If you are talking about the Barbara Bauer article, the AFD on that
>was closed "keep". These are the previous AFDs on "Daniel Brandt"
>which a recent "out of process" delete ignited a wheel war...
>
>Keep AFD 2 March 2007
>Speedy close, AFD 23 February 2007
>Keep, AFD 28 December 2006
>Speedy keep, AFD 12 August 2006
>Speedy keep, AFD 13 July 2006
>Snowball keep, AFD 19 June 2006
>Speedy keep, AFD 10 June 2006
>Speedy keep, AFD 5 June 2006
>Invalid, AFD 13 April 2006
>Speedy keep, AFD 12 April 2006
>Snowball keep, AFD 05 April 2006
>Keep, AFD 13 November 2005
>Speedy keep, AFD 07 November 2005
>
>The "office" is the only way that one's going away.

But there is no problem with that article, at least as far as we are concerned.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikitrans Live and Integrated into MediaWiki

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitrans_(MediaWiki_Extension)

Wikitrans is a MediaWiki extension that enables full machine translation
support for MediaWiki during editing and PHP article generation.
Wikitrans converts and translates wikitext into a target language in
HTML output through MediaWiki, while retaining and saving the original
English text in the body of the Article.   Wikitrans renders and
translates the wikitext dynamically into HTML when the article is saved
in the database.

Sample Pages at Wikigadugi:
(you can edit and test drive it with MediaWiki)

http://chr.wikigadugi.org/wiki/%E1%8F%97%E1%8E%A6%E1%8E%B4%E1%8F%B4%E1%8F%97%E1%8F%8D%E1%8E%A9_%E1%8E%A6%E1%8F%AC%E1%8F%82%E1%8F%8D%E1%8E%AC:WikiSysop

I still have a lot of performance optimization to do, but the first cut
seems to work well with Cherokee.

Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikitrans Live and Integrated into MediaWiki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 27/03/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Also, I have a hard time imagining a situation where it is absolutely
> > > impossible to purge POV from the bio of an otherwise notable person
> > > without nuking the article.
>
> > But is that the point? If a credible legal threat it made, we might as
> > well just delete the thing first and ask questions later. No single
> > article is worth getting sued over - whether the Foundation would win
> > the case or not.
>
> Such cases are why we unfortunately have the  necessary evil that is WP:OFFICE.

Indeed.

And in the absence of an Office intervention, surely an admin speedily
deleting an article that has already failed an AfD is acting beyond
his powers?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 27/03/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > And in the absence of an Office intervention, surely an admin speedily
> > deleting an article that has already failed an AfD is acting beyond
> > his powers?
>
> If you are talking about the Barbara Bauer article, the AFD on that
> was closed "keep".

I was, yes.


body:
Well, yes, but the policy is written partly by you.

You speak about the policy as if it's written in stone and as if
criticism of it is illogical because it cannot or will not ever be
changed.

Please read the last 10 messages on this thread. The consensus so far
_in this thread_ seems to be that it is illogical to require full
translation of MediaWiki messages before allowing a new Wikipedia to
be created.

Then please read the title of this thread, and note that it was posted
by Arbeo, who is a very respectable person.

Mark

On 27/03/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The new policy does not deal with the mess that exists as a consequence of
> not having this policy in the past. Mark's argument is based on things that
> happened before the policy came into effect.
>
> Solving the mess is what we do want to address .. so far there have been two
> languages provided with their initial messages in MediaWiki... We are
> working on a solution for all issues but it does take a lot of work. For one
> of the pieces of the puzzle we have been told to wait until Brion has rolled
> out single login. We have explicitly asked for some priority because this is
> an important issue to us. I have had information from Brion and from within
> the board of trustees that our issues do not have priority.
>
> As it does not have priority for the WMF, we are in a state of limbo with
> many of these issues. New languages do not have any priority. I would like
> to see that the support of languages in MediaWiki does have priority.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> On 3/27/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 2007/3/27, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Hoi,
> > > The reason why they did not have translated interfaces is because nobody
> > > bothered to set up the message files. The accepted policy of the
> > language
> > > committee requires them.
> >
> >
> > What is being questioned here is the validity of this policy. Erik stated
> > that if you cannot get someone to be bothered to set up the message files,
> > it is reasonable to expect you cannot setup an encyclopedia either. Mark
> > now
> > answers that it has been done a few times. So that removes one argument.
> > Apparently, now the reason that it is policy is that the committee has
> > decided it is. Which is a rather lame reason in an open organization as
> > the
> > Wikimedia foundation is (I think) hoping to be.
> >
> > --
> > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium to launch this week

body:
On 3/27/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I appreciate the sentiment behind trying to deal with this problem,
> since I often encounter abbreciations on this list that I need to puzzle
> over before giving my best guess.  I don't think the hard line approach
> will help them.  It's just not a winnable battle.
>
> Ec

What I do is that I simply put in "WP:" plus the abbreviation/acronym
in the search box and click Go. That will pretty much always give you
the right answer. Take ASF, for instance. WP:ASF leads to the Avoid
Self Reference policy page.

--Oskar


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Hi Brion,
>
> I have completed my analysis of the latest breakage in the XML Dumps
> with importDump failing with the enwiki-20070206
> XML Dump and it appears to be related to improper rendering of wiki text
> markup titles () when the dumps are rendered
> from sql to xml from the Wikimedia sites.
>
> Here is an example of the article title in question that uses characters
> outside of wgLegalTitleChars as they are defined by
> default in MediaWiki 1.9.3:
>
> Article Link:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C2%B2-irreducible

The default in 1.9.x is:

$wgLegalTitleChars =
" %!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?@A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF+";

This includes all multibyte characters due to the \x80-\xFF range near the
end, including your example "?". The value used on Wikimedia is identical
to the default except for the order of characters in the class:

$wgLegalTitleChars =
"+ %!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?@A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF";

Did you perhaps accidentally remove the \x80-\xFF range at some stage?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Dycedarg

body:
On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> We are talking about very rare cases.  The particular case in question
> is quite remarkable.
>
> We have a choice: WP:OFFICE where actions are carried out by single
> staff members or by me personally (which does not scale, and carries
> with it enormous risks of bias), or relaxing just a little bit and
> trusting the community of admins to oversee each other.
>
> What is NOT a choice is keeping vicious crap up on the site while people
> discuss it.  There's no point to that.
>
> --Jimbo
>

Do you mean that in this particular instance you don't think the material
should be undeleted? Because if so, I'd like to point out that you're a wee
bit late. The revision history of the article was restored 10 hours ago.

--

Dycedarg


body:
On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Temp undeletion aids the discussion. It can always be redeleted later.
>
>
I'm not debating that. Or anything else, for that matter. But Jimbo's
comments could be interpreted to mean that he does not feel that the article
in question should be undeleted, so I was merely ensuring that he knew that
it had been in case he wants to do anything about it.

--

Daniel


body:
On 3/27/07, Dycedarg <darthvader1219 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Temp undeletion aids the discussion. It can always be redeleted later.
> >
> >
> I'm not debating that. Or anything else, for that matter. But Jimbo's
> comments could be interpreted to mean that he does not feel that the article
> in question should be undeleted, so I was merely ensuring that he knew that
> it had been in case he wants to do anything about it.
>
> --
>
> Daniel

I meant article history, by the way. The article is still blanked, just with
the history restored.

--

Daniel


from_name: bobolozo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
--- Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I tried to find the answer to this question in the
> policy sections of WP,
> but couldn't:
>
> After you have placed a "citation needed" flag into
> an Article, is there a
> specific length of time you wait for either the
> citation to be added, or the
> statement in question to be removed by the person
> who wrote it, before
> deleting it yourself? The Article in question, BTW,
> is the one on [[Franz
> Kafka]].

There is no specific answer on this, you do whatever
you think is best in the situation.  You don't have to
put a citation needed flag up at all, you can remove
anything you want from an article, particularly if
it's unsourced.

It's more a matter of using common sense and
communicating with whoever else is editing the
article, if anyone is.  The higher the traffic of the
article and the more editors are involved, the more
the need to discuss changes and form consensus and see
what everyone else thinks.  Little forgotten stub
article no one ever looks at with no talk page, do
whatever you want with it.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Bored stiff? Loosen up...
Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.
http://games.yahoo.com/games/front


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
--- Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Thank you for you responses. This case is just one
> of many I have come
> across where the subject of the Article is reported
> to have been afflicted
> with "clinical depression". In Kafka's case, the
> statement I question is
> this: "It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered
> from clinical depression
> and social anxiety throughout his entire life."
>
> Clinical Depression is a serious mental health
> condition that requires a
> formal, professional diagnosis. And the Kafka
> Article is just one of many,
> many I have come across in the encyclopedia where
> this statement is made
> without citation. This casual use of the term
> "clinical depression" is not
> fair to the subject, and can be misleading to the
> reader.

If you believe the statement is untrue, why not just
pull out the word "clinical"?  This changes it from an
unsourced medical diagnosis into the more general term
"depression", which is often commonly used to mean any
sort of unhappiness. Those who want the statement left
in the article will probably be satisfied with this as
a compromise, and perhaps you can be too.

____________________________________________________________________________________
The fish are biting.
Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php


from_name: Eugene Zelenko

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Hi!

> > Be however warned that there have been no proposals accepted in the
> > last few months.
> This is a bit pessimistic :) The normative Byelorussian wikipedia just was
> created and substituted the old version, the latter was renamed into
> be-x-old.

When be-x-old will be available? And why nobody asked opinion of
ex-BE:WP community regarding domain name?

Also, I think, will be good idea to notify about such swaps in future...

With best regards,
Eugene.


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
>> On 3/25/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> This part of their policy is almost funny seeing how much we all
>>> just
>>> "love" WP:TLAs
>>>
>>> "No initialisms. The Policy pages of the Citizendium may not contain
>>> any three-letter "initialisms." For example, "IAR," "NOR," and "AFD"
>>> are three letter initialisms. These expressions are a considerable
>>> problem for new users who are unfamiliar with them. The first time a
>>> user introduces such an expression in a policy page, he/she will be
>>> warned and the expression removed. The second time a user repeats
>>> this
>>> offense, he will be banned for a suitable amount of time.?
>>
>> I look forward to seeing what sort of private jargon they wind up
>> developing -- and if they realize that they've done so.  Initialisms
>> are the English Wikipedia's jargon.

Conservapedia doesn't have any objection to initialisms as such, but
they've adopted one--VSA for Very Short Article--in order to avoid
calling them stubs, i.e. to be different from Wikipedia for the sake
of difference.

The template which expands into "This article has been identified as
having problems with length, content and/or style, and is therefore
classified as a Very Short Article (VSA)..." is... wait for it...

{{stub}}


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
On 3/27/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> I tried to find the answer to this question in the policy sections of WP,
> but couldn't:
>
> After you have placed a "citation needed" flag into an Article, is there a
> specific length of time you wait for either the citation to be added, or
> the
> statement in question to be removed by the person who wrote it, before
> deleting it yourself? The Article in question, BTW, is the one on [[Franz
> Kafka]].
>
> Thanks,
>
> Marc Riddell

It all depends on the statement.  If the statement is correct, but needs
citation, then the tag merely says that it needs to be cited.  If you have
reason to doubt the information, then you can remove it after a reasonable
amount of time - if you have reason to suspect that the original author
didn't get a chance to see it, drop them a note.

Wikipedia is full of uncited information.  All of it needs to be cited
eventually, but the mere fact that something is uncited isn't enough of a
reason to remove it.

_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia, the encylopedia that anyone can't edit

body:
We now have about 1500 articles in
Category:Semi-protected, which new editors and IP
addresses can't edit.  I picked a few at random, and
most I checked were entirely uncontroversial articles
which had briefly had some trouble from an IP address,
which was over months ago and there was no reason to
believe it would ever occur again.

This is in violation of one of our basic principles.

Would it not make more sense for admins to be expected
to automatically make this sort of semi-protection
have a time limit, assuming there was no reason to
believe the article was a permanent vandal magnet?

An ever growing list of permanently semi-protected
articles is not what we want, especially given that
it's happening out of sheer laziness.

____________________________________________________________________________________
We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love
(and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list.
http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265


body:
On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
> are doing.

I don't distrust the admins either, but that's not the point. When it
comes to influences in discussions, admins have no special position.
Their opinions doesn't count extra in an AfD or RfA for instance. They
get to judge consensus in a way that normal people can't (i.e. closing
AfDs) and they get to manage the community and the encyclopedia
(blocking/protecting) but they don't get any extra authority to make
editorial decisions of any kind.

I've been a user for almost three years but not an admin, should my
opinion not count for anything in this particular discussion?

--Oskar


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/26/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have to appreciate that by having a committee, a committee that spends a
> lot of time to come up with some sensible policies, they have to have a
> certain authority because only this will make things move forward. The
> requirement of the message files has  been communicated on many occasions.
> It is the one thing stopping projects becoming full projects.

As far as Gerard and I have talked about this issue and I understand
it, it seems like a sensible policy to me. If you want a new language,
it should not be that difficult to at least prepare the groundwork for
MediaWiki localization before you start. If you cannot even get that
organized, how are you ever going to write a useful encyclopedia?

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Jeff Raymond wrote:
> > Cary Bass wrote:
> >
> >
> >> I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never
> seen
> >> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
> >> These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from
> them
> >> should be eliminated.
> >>
> >
> > This is the type of backwards, ten-years-ago thinking that I really wish
> > we'd be able to overcome.  I can list off a dozen blogs that are
> perfectly
> > reliable for the subject matter that they offer up in various areas of
> > culture and information.  This idea that "self-published" = "bad" is
> > antiquated thinking.
> >
> > -Jeff
> >
> >
> This sort of insulting commentary is entirely inappropriate.
>
> Cary

He could have phrased it more gently, but I agree with the underlying
opinion.  Blogging is a tool for publication more than it is a form of
publication.  It's certainly no worse (and often a lot better) than the
op-ed pieces you get in newspapers.  In addition, it can be a valuable
reporting tool - someone pointed out that bloggers covered the Scooter Libby
case far better than the mainstream media...but much in the way that
reporters did a century ago.  If the medium had existed, Mencken would have
blogged the Scopes Trial.


body:
What I'd like to see is a total cleanup of all non-free images of
living people that can be replaced with free content, using the "No
free image" method as e.g. demonstrated on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommi_Hovi&oldid=114878341

It would also be nice if free content became a more consistent part of
the featured article candidate process; at least a couple recent
articles featured on the Main Page had to have their images removed
because of excessive use of non-free content.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: christoph.huesler at css.ch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: $wgLegalTitleChars vs. 20070206 XML Dumps

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
> THIS TITLE PRODUCES THE IMPORT DUMP FAILURE.
>
> 2698248:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
> deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
> deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for
> deletion/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greatest Hits Volume One (The
> Byrds)

pretty long title, huh?

-- chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
On 3/27/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 3/27/07 9:10 AM, bobolozo at bobolozo at yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > --- Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> Thank you for you responses. This case is just one
> >> of many I have come
> >> across where the subject of the Article is reported
> >> to have been afflicted
> >> with "clinical depression". In Kafka's case, the
> >> statement I question is
> >> this: "It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered
> >> from clinical depression
> >> and social anxiety throughout his entire life."
> >>
> >> Clinical Depression is a serious mental health
> >> condition that requires a
> >> formal, professional diagnosis. And the Kafka
> >> Article is just one of many,
> >> many I have come across in the encyclopedia where
> >> this statement is made
> >> without citation. This casual use of the term
> >> "clinical depression" is not
> >> fair to the subject, and can be misleading to the
> >> reader.
> >
> > If you believe the statement is untrue, why not just
> > pull out the word "clinical"?  This changes it from an
> > unsourced medical diagnosis into the more general term
> > "depression", which is often commonly used to mean any
> > sort of unhappiness. Those who want the statement left
> > in the article will probably be satisfied with this as
> > a compromise, and perhaps you can be too.
> >
> OK. Let's make you the subject of the Article. In your Article appears
> this
> statement: "It is generally agreed that bobolozo suffered
> from depression throughout his entire life."
>
> In fact, as most of us do, you did have days when you were unhappy; but,
> for
> the most part you were pretty content with yourself and the world.
>
> How would you feel about the statement then?

Hey, it isn't an insult.  Don't try to make it into one.  "It's generally
agreed that Churchill suffered from depression for much of his life" - not
based on non-existent medical documents, but based on his own writing.  But
it's not an insult any more than is the conjecture that someone suffered
from diabetes.

Of course, something that's "generally agreed" but for which one cannot find
a source...that's iffy.


list: commons-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Commons-l] How's the POTD working on Gmail?

body:
On 27/03/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Last few days' pictures have been fine for me - link displaying at top
> > in a useful manner. Has anyone else been getting the message
> > displaying without the link?

> I actually just inserted another line that says 'Body of email:', so
> now it's getting chopped off instead of the link. *grins*
> Good to go with comcom RSS etc promo??

Sounds good to me! Let's draft a press release - the world's basically
never heard of Commons.

(Currrent ComCom plan is to do a small release on the en:wp 0.5 CD as
the first bit of serious proactive press, but Commons POTD isn't news
that'll go stale, so we're not in a rush.)

- d.


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
Folks,

I tried to find the answer to this question in the policy sections of WP,
but couldn't:

After you have placed a "citation needed" flag into an Article, is there a
specific length of time you wait for either the citation to be added, or the
statement in question to be removed by the person who wrote it, before
deleting it yourself? The Article in question, BTW, is the one on [[Franz
Kafka]].

Thanks,

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] WMF licensing policy announced

body:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy

[...]
Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP):
a project-specific policy, in accordance with United States law and
the law of countries where the project content is predominantly
accessed (if any), that recognizes the limitations of copyright law
(including case law) as applicable to the project, and permits the
upload of copyrighted materials that can be legally used in the
context of the project, regardless of their licensing status. Examples
include: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use and
http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Dozwolony_u%C5%BCytek.
[...]
In addition, with the exception of Wikimedia Commons, each project
community may develop and adopt an EDP. Non-free content used under an
EDP must be identified in a machine-readable format so that it can be
easily identified by users of the site as well as re-users.

Such EDPs must be minimal. Their use, with limited exception, should
be to illustrate historically significant events, to include
identifying protected works such as logos, or to complement (within
narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works. An EDP
may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to
upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the
case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals. Any
content used under an EDP must be replaced with a freely licensed work
whenever one is available which will serve the same educational
purpose.

Media used under EDPs are subject to deletion if they lack an
applicable rationale. They must be used only in the context of other
freely licensed content.

For the projects which currently have an EDP in place, the following
action shall be taken:

As of March 23, 2007, all new media uploaded under unacceptable
licenses (as defined above) and lacking an exemption rationale should
be deleted, and existing media under such licenses should go through a
discussion process where it is determined whether such a rationale
exists; if not, they should be deleted as well.

Now then - en:wp does have an EDP in place, so we can't quite Burn All
{{fairuse}} yet. But the above does give us room to narrow fair-use
abuse sensibly. Particularly for living famous people who are out in
public a lot, may I suggest.

- d.


from_name: Cary Bass

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> Nick Wilkins wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/26/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what
>>>>
>> they
>>
>>>> are doing.
>>>>
>>>
>>> ... woah.
>>>
>>> That's quite the statement.  We've apparently come quite far from the
>>>
>> idea
>>
>>> that adminship is no big deal.  Not that I have a problem with that, per
>>>
>> se,
>>
>>> but telling non-admins to trust "the Admins" with policy decisions is
>>> something that seems a major departure from previous practice here.
>>>
>> We are talking about very rare cases.  The particular case in question
>> is quite remarkable.
>>
>> We have a choice: WP:OFFICE where actions are carried out by single
>> staff members or by me personally (which does not scale, and carries
>> with it enormous risks of bias), or relaxing just a little bit and
>> trusting the community of admins to oversee each other.
>>
>> What is NOT a choice is keeping vicious crap up on the site while people
>> discuss it.  There's no point to that.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>>
>
>
> In all of this, no one even addressed what was the BLP violation and which
> sources are lacking.
> Deleting something without doing the legwork is a case of bias. I'd rather
> have actions be taken by people who have all the facts than people who claim
> there is a BLP violation without clarifying the issue.
>
> Keeping "vicious crap" is an option. Only a handful of admins can now see
> it, of which only a handful have the knowledge to determine the reliability
> of the sources. If this history remains hidden, I doubt any more than 10
> knowledgeable people can see it. I'm all for open discussion, but deletions
> should depend on people who have done the research, not on personal opinions
> after a cursory glance.
>
> Mgm
>
Blog entries are bad sources and BLP violations.  They should never be
used as source material in a biography.  They are not news.  A great
portion of this article was derived and sourced from blog entries.  The
history was restored and has been available again for some hours.

Cary
---
~bastique


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
On 3/27/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 3/27/07 10:05 AM, Guettarda at guettarda at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Hey, it isn't an insult.  Don't try to make it into one.  "It's
> generally
> > agreed that Churchill suffered from depression for much of his life" -
> not
> > based on non-existent medical documents, but based on his own
> writing.  But
> > it's not an insult any more than is the conjecture that someone suffered
> > from diabetes.
>
> Guettarda,
>
> I agree with you that it is not an insult. But statements about someone's
> mental and/or emotional condition are not dealt very kindly in the larger
> culture. And, it can be very tricky legally - if the subject of the
> statement wanted to pursue it.
>
> Marc

True, but weren't we talking about Kafka? He's been dead a while.

Anyway, your comment read like an insult, which it isn't and shouldn't be
portrayed that way.  Playing into that attitude strengthens it.  And that's
the kind of thing that stops people from getting help.

Ian


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was Wikimedia
	Foundation sued)

body:
On 27/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:

> >I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
> >are doing.

> So do a lot of others who have put in a lot of time without ever having
> bothered to become an admin.

Becoming an admin these days is a stupidly big deal. RFA needs an
enema in so many ways. Lots of good people don't bother any more - so
the process filters for a cross between politicians and semi-humanoid
killbots.

Jimbo, this isn't the RFA you remember.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
On 27/03/07, Emmanuel Maggiori <emmanuelmaggiori at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, I'm interested in adding a new language go Wikipedia. I would like to know what is what I have to do. Thank you very much.

Apparently you need a shrubbery. A nice one, mind you.

- d.


from_name: Denny Colt

subject:
[WikiEN-l] blogs vs websites - (was Bauer DRV question -
	history)

body:
On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And what makes blog entries less reliable than your average website.
> You're
> applying too much of a generalization.
> Newspapers are a good example. Generally reliable, but that doesn't mean
> they all are.
>
> Mgm

This might be my semi-newbieness asking  but could someone explain to me why
we even differentiate "blogs" at all? all a blog *is* is a private web
site/web space.

Whats different between:

1. dennycolt.blogspot.com
2. www.dennycolt.com, running with blog softwares...
3. www.dennycolt.com, with hand-edited pages

I don't understand why the ruckus about blogs specifically--shouldn't it be
"personal non-notable websites by non-notable people, if editors judge it to
be a crap website"? A 'blog' is just a site organized... with a certain
structure. Some news sites that are RS even run off blogging/blog style CMS
software... simply because they're good at organizing stuff.

Would a blog about NBC written by the CEO of NBC be bad? I am actively using
a blog on the [[RegisterFly]] article that is on blog.icann.org that is
written by the CEO of ICANN, Paul Twomy. It's written an in a personal tone
but it's a fine source for the ICANN/registerfly issue.

on the same token, a privately held website on flora of south america could
end up being a great, fantastic source on south american trees. or a
blogspot.com by Jerry Seinfeld on his about stand up comics. or a movable
type blog on emeril.com by emeril lagasse could be a good authority on cajun
cooking, and so on...

I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet Letter
connotation...

--
- Denny


body:
On 3/27/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Blog entries are bad sources and BLP violations.  They should never be
> used as source material in a biography.  They are not news.  A great
> portion of this article was derived and sourced from blog entries.  The
> history was restored and has been available again for some hours.
>
> Cary

If an author writes a book on Jimmy Wales, and gets it published, and it
sells a zillion copies, and it's fair, and balanced, and NPOV, and so on...
it's a fine source.

If the book is released by the author as an e-book in PDF form, the PDF is
still a fine source.

If the book is made into a basic HTML and posted as a website by the author
is still a fine source.

If the book is released chapter by chapter in a newspaper, the individual
newspaper articles are fine sources.

But if the author posts each chapter of the book as a "blog" entry on a
website, it's a bad source.

Huh?

- Denny


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There are reliable blogs just like there are unreliable websites. If the
> blog is run by a notable indivual in the field of the article, it's
> notable.
>
> Mgm

What if the blog author is a biographer by trade? Why are his books ok, but
not the blog--no, scratch that--website entries. We trust his published
books, but not his words in general?

--
- Denny


body:
On 3/27/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Actually not.  WP:ASR does.  I would still be puzzling over ASF.  ;-)

Ohh... right... I meant that :)

Silly me :)

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l]  Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 27/03/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>> Blog entries are bad sources and BLP violations.
>>
>
>
> See, this is the sort of rule that if applied without thought leads to
> occasional stupid results.
>
I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never seen
a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from them
should be eliminated.

Cary.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
on 3/27/07 8:14 AM, Guettarda at guettarda at gmail.com wrote:

> On 3/27/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> Folks,
>>
>> I tried to find the answer to this question in the policy sections of WP,
>> but couldn't:
>>
>> After you have placed a "citation needed" flag into an Article, is there a
>> specific length of time you wait for either the citation to be added, or
>> the
>> statement in question to be removed by the person who wrote it, before
>> deleting it yourself? The Article in question, BTW, is the one on [[Franz
>> Kafka]].
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Marc Riddell
>
>
> It all depends on the statement.  If the statement is correct, but needs
> citation, then the tag merely says that it needs to be cited.  If you have
> reason to doubt the information, then you can remove it after a reasonable
> amount of time - if you have reason to suspect that the original author
> didn't get a chance to see it, drop them a note.
>
> Wikipedia is full of uncited information.  All of it needs to be cited
> eventually, but the mere fact that something is uncited isn't enough of a
> reason to remove it.]

Guettarda & David,

Thank you for you responses. This case is just one of many I have come
across where the subject of the Article is reported to have been afflicted
with "clinical depression". In Kafka's case, the statement I question is
this: "It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression
and social anxiety throughout his entire life."

Clinical Depression is a serious mental health condition that requires a
formal, professional diagnosis. And the Kafka Article is just one of many,
many I have come across in the encyclopedia where this statement is made
without citation. This casual use of the term "clinical depression" is not
fair to the subject, and can be misleading to the reader.

Marc Riddell


body:
On 3/27/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...
>
> Actually the three examples preceding the blog example would probably not
> be
> considered reliable sources either, as they are self-published. Obviously,
> however, this is ludicrous for, say, people like Jakob Nielsen. If their
> books are citable, why shouldn't their self-published works (especially on
> the same topics) be citable as well?
>
> Johnleemk

Huh? If the book is published normally, and as a *book* is a fine source,
but then the author turns around and just freely releases the SAME book
online or via a newspaper or Readers Digest or whatever, why would the SAME
material not be a bad source? It's the same material by the same person.

--
- Denny


body:
On 27/03/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Also, what is the effect of the "machine readable format" bit in the text?

> I think it would mean that re-users can strip out any nonfree material with
> an automated process, rather than painstakingly going through the material
> by hand.

i.e. don't pull any image with a {{fairusein}} template.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote
>
>
>>We never know whether we will find the key source in the
>>next place that we look.  Fermat's Last Theorem remained unproven for
>>three centuries because nobody could find the killer counterexample.
>>
>>
>No, because no one could find a proof. We _now_ know that was the reason.
>
That's the benefit of hindsight.  During those three centuries people
would have been satisfied with either proof or disproof.

>>Until recently the only available sources for writing about the Crusades
>>were European ones.
>>
>>
>The Receuil des historiens des croisades (1881 onwards) included Arabic language sources in translation. Amin Maalouf's book mentions at least one other 1890s translation. 'Only' is certainly wrong.
>
Nearly 600 years after the Battle of Acre is recent.  Judging from
Maalouf's notes there does not appear to be any serious attempt to look
at the Arab perspective until the 1950s with Gabrieli (1957 not 1969)
and the French translations of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn al-Qalanisi.  Maalouf
(p.270) makes an interesting about the suppression of stories of
Frankish cannibalism: "In the twentieth century, however, these accounts
have generally been concealed - perhaps in the interests of the
West's'civilizing mission'?"

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old (was New language)

body:
Hi!

Just for self-education... Are all Chinese language suffixes (zh-...)
ISO-complaint?

Thank you,
Eugene.

On 3/27/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hoi!
>
> As per not communicating the swap you are absolutely right and I excuse
> myself personally. I know it won't help much but as you can understand this
> is not "everyday business" and we have no standard procedure to manage such
> events. Yet I read Byelorussian and it should have been my own
> responsibility to reach you and inform you. I did not do it and I officially
> excuse myself for that.
>
> Feel free to contact me personally at any time for any possible problem, you
> can write in Russian if it makes things easier. I will have to answer in
> English only if the answer has to be notified to LangCom, as I'm the only
> Russian speaker in LangCom and a Cyrillic answer would not be of any use to
> the other members.
>
> Now to the answers: the domain is being setup by Brion these days, AFAIK
> there are a few minor technical problems, but that's all. It should be up
> very quickly.
>
> Domain names are not "fabricated" on community demand; they follow an
> international ISO standard. The X part means it's a private code that has
> value for wmf only (it's a standard, too). Under the current rules the wiki
> should be simply shutdown, since it does not have an ISO code.
>
> The Board decided to delegate an ad hoc Committee for this kind of decisions
> and IMHO that's a good warranty for everyone. In the meantime we decided not
> to have any particular descriptive code for the old Byelorussian edition,
> since it would have implied some kind of political recognition, which is NOT
> what wmf is about.
>
> If in the future your linguistic flavor will obtain a valid ISO code we will
> be glad to adopt it just as we adopt any other internationally recognized
> code, but we are not willing to issue ANY code on our own. This is a final
> decision.
>
> DISCLAIMER: this is my personal POV and NOT a collective statement from wmf
> LangCom.
>
> Berto 'd Sera
> Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN:  [20616] trunk/phase3

body:
raymond at svn.wikimedia.org schrieb:
> Revision: 20616
> Author:   raymond
> Date:     2007-03-22 01:22:24 -0800 (Thu, 22 Mar 2007)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> * (bug 4624) Namespace selection for Special:Whatlinkshere

> Found another bug: scrolling backwards at Special:Whatlinkshere was broken since ?
> 'previous' shows always the first page in reversed order but not the real previous page.
> Fixed now by changing backwards scrolling mechanism.

Ok, together with r20714 (removing unsed variable only) the backwards
scrolling isn't completely fixed :-(

The current version is a little bit better because it is possible to
scroll once back, the second click jumps to the beginning of the list in
correct order.

The previous version jumps at the first backwards click to the beginning
of the list, in reversed order.

I think we need a database request to figure out the offset for every
backwards scrolling in dependency of the current page and the limit. But
I do not know how to do this in the cheapest way, without melting the
servers :-(

If nobody has a quick idea to solve the problem I will open a new bug
for this issue.

Raymond.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
Karl Chen wrote:

>We're lucky.
>
>Why?  Because the plaintiff is a known troll.
>
>If a competent, well-respected media darling like Seigenthaler had
>sued we'd be in big trouble.
>
Seigenthaler would likely have been more circumspect in his choice of
battles.  He began with an honest attempt to settle the problem, and
that worked, though he did find the process more difficult with the
mirrors   I wonder how he feels about having become a virtual eponym for
this kind of situation.

>But in this case the public is on our side.
>
The public does not rule in the courts; judges do.

>The US legal system is a game of picking battles.  A lawsuit
>against WMF is inevitable so it would be great to have an easy
>first battle that sets a favorable precedent.
>
It is absolutely inevitable, but a case that is too easy is not the best
scenario.  If the plaintiff chooses to capitulate out of court there is
no precedent.

Ec


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Denny Colt wrote:
> >  Unfortunately since no one but admins can see the stuff in question
> now, any
> > non-admins have been unfairly (in violation of policy?) removed from any
> > decision making here that is of real value... I "recall" seeing RS on
> the
> > article before it went away, but if someone challenged me on that--what
> do I
> > say? "Sorry, can't see it/confirm"?
> >
> > Basically any non-admin is now excluded from the DRV after Doc Glasgow
> > speedied it unless someone restores the history for us.
>
> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
> are doing.

Obviously not. I would've understood and perhaps supported a deletion based
on notability concerns, but a BLP violation means facts aren't sourced or
sourced badly.
The fact that reliable sources are being ignored here is what I have a beef
with.

Mgm


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
2007/3/27, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com>:
>
> Which language? Singlish?
>

I think making jokes about someone's knowledge of English is below the
normal level of conversation on this list. And anyway, the original poster
seems to be from Argentina, which makes it quite unlikely that he would be
proposing Singlish.

For Emmanuel: You can find the necessary information at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy. Be however
warned that there have been no proposals accepted in the last few months.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Cary Bass wrote:

> I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never seen
> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
> These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from them
> should be eliminated.

This is the type of backwards, ten-years-ago thinking that I really wish
we'd be able to overcome.  I can list off a dozen blogs that are perfectly
reliable for the subject matter that they offer up in various areas of
culture and information.  This idea that "self-published" = "bad" is
antiquated thinking.

-Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 3/27/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: James Farrar [mailto:james.farrar at gmail.com]
> >Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 07:37 PM
> >To: 'English Wikipedia'
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
> >
> >On 27/03/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 3/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > > Also, I have a hard time imagining a situation where it is
> absolutely
> >> > > impossible to purge POV from the bio of an otherwise notable person
> >> > > without nuking the article.
> >>
> >> > But is that the point? If a credible legal threat it made, we might
> as
> >> > well just delete the thing first and ask questions later. No single
> >> > article is worth getting sued over - whether the Foundation would win
> >> > the case or not.
> >>
> >> Such cases are why we unfortunately have the  necessary evil that is
> WP:OFFICE.
> >
> >Indeed.
> >
> >And in the absence of an Office intervention, surely an admin speedily
> >deleting an article that has already failed an AfD is acting beyond
> >his powers?
>
> No, any user may remove or delete libelous or malicious material without
> limit.
>
> Fred

Go ahead then. Let's start being productive and identify this so-called
libellous material, because as far as I'm concerned there's nothing in the
Bauer article that is badly cited or libellous.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 3/27/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/27/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh pshaw.
> >
> > Even ignoring the fact that en's inclusion policies on articles like
> > this are a load of crap, it passes the most stringent proposed ones.
> > It has multiple non-trivial mentions in reputable sources (SFWA and
> > Making Light), the sources are all reputable (her website is a valid
> > primary source for information on her). There's a reason it
> > overwhelmingly survived an AfD last year.
>
> But is it NPOV?
>
> That's the key concern with biographies of living persons. A BLP can
> be impeccably sourced, but if it only presents one side of the
> story...
>
> In my experience doing OTRS work from time to time, a large proportion
> of problematic BLPs are (fairly) well sourced, but they are
> nevertheless not NPOV.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com

How would you suppose we NPOV the article on a scam artist?

Mgm


body:
Shouldn't the policy be reworded to talk about where an exemption doctrine
can't be made instead of where one exists.
If things that don't have such a doctrine can be deleted, it kills of
multiple media for which a fair use rationale can be written if only a
chance is given.

Also, what is the effect of the "machine readable format" bit in the text?

Mgm

On 3/27/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
>
> [...]
> Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP):
> a project-specific policy, in accordance with United States law and
> the law of countries where the project content is predominantly
> accessed (if any), that recognizes the limitations of copyright law
> (including case law) as applicable to the project, and permits the
> upload of copyrighted materials that can be legally used in the
> context of the project, regardless of their licensing status. Examples
> include: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use and
> http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Dozwolony_u%C5%BCytek.
> [...]
> In addition, with the exception of Wikimedia Commons, each project
> community may develop and adopt an EDP. Non-free content used under an
> EDP must be identified in a machine-readable format so that it can be
> easily identified by users of the site as well as re-users.
>
> Such EDPs must be minimal. Their use, with limited exception, should
> be to illustrate historically significant events, to include
> identifying protected works such as logos, or to complement (within
> narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works. An EDP
> may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to
> upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the
> case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals. Any
> content used under an EDP must be replaced with a freely licensed work
> whenever one is available which will serve the same educational
> purpose.
>
> Media used under EDPs are subject to deletion if they lack an
> applicable rationale. They must be used only in the context of other
> freely licensed content.
>
> For the projects which currently have an EDP in place, the following
> action shall be taken:
>
> As of March 23, 2007, all new media uploaded under unacceptable
> licenses (as defined above) and lacking an exemption rationale should
> be deleted, and existing media under such licenses should go through a
> discussion process where it is determined whether such a rationale
> exists; if not, they should be deleted as well.
>
>
> Now then - en:wp does have an EDP in place, so we can't quite Burn All
> {{fairuse}} yet. But the above does give us room to narrow fair-use
> abuse sensibly. Particularly for living famous people who are out in
> public a lot, may I suggest.
>
>
> - d.
>
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> WikiEN-l mailing list
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Cary Bass wrote:
>
>
>> I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never seen
>> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
>> These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from them
>> should be eliminated.
>>
>
> This is the type of backwards, ten-years-ago thinking that I really wish
> we'd be able to overcome.  I can list off a dozen blogs that are perfectly
> reliable for the subject matter that they offer up in various areas of
> culture and information.  This idea that "self-published" = "bad" is
> antiquated thinking.
>
> -Jeff
>
>
This sort of insulting commentary is entirely inappropriate.

Cary


body:
2007/3/27, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:

> As far as Gerard and I have talked about this issue and I understand
> it, it seems like a sensible policy to me. If you want a new language,
> it should not be that difficult to at least prepare the groundwork for
> MediaWiki localization before you start. If you cannot even get that
> organized, how are you ever going to write a useful encyclopedia?
>

What if your interest is in writing an encyclopedia, and not in translating
software? If you have 10 people happily writing articles, but none of them
having interest in going through all 200+ MediaWiki-pages, does that mean
that it can never be an encyclopedia?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 3/27/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunate, I can not discover any procedure how an EDP should be
> written. The resolution doesnt state any procedure of approving by the
> Foundation, as I beleive it was in the proposal. The backside of this
> is that it is very well possible that projects will develop EDP's that
> are conflicting with law, as many projects do not have sufficient
> lawyer capacity (such as nlwiki), especially on US law of course, but
> also on local law(s), to determine whether an EDP is conflicting or
> not. Further there is no demand that the foundation can check whether
> the EDP is as it was meant to. These are points I brought up earlier,
> and I am sad that they were left out completely now. I hope very much
> that some procedure will be developed anyway to have EDP's approved by
> the WMF.

See point 6 in the resolution: "The Foundation resolves to assist all
project communities who wish to develop an EDP with their process of
developing it." Though if a project can develop one on their own with
minimal assistance, that's even better!

As for "no demand that the foundation can check whether the EDP is as
it was meant to", I'm not sure what you mean. As for the difficulty of
checking, we can always have something translated. As for whether we
have the authority to, I don't think it needs to be said -- if a
policy exists it means that we can change things that do not conform
to it, same as any other policy. There is no formal approval process
in place, no, but all are subject to review.

> Further I understand from the examples that a project might have
> multiple EDP's? (w:en:WP:FU is mentionned as one example, I guess a
> project could have more EDP then just FU?)

Even if for some reason they are split across multiple pages, it's
still one policy on what can be included.

-Kat

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Cary Bass wrote:
> Jeff Raymond wrote:
>> Cary Bass wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never
>>> seen
>>> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
>>> These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from
>>> them
>>> should be eliminated.
>>>
>>
>> This is the type of backwards, ten-years-ago thinking that I really wish
>> we'd be able to overcome.  I can list off a dozen blogs that are
>> perfectly
>> reliable for the subject matter that they offer up in various areas of
>> culture and information.  This idea that "self-published" = "bad" is
>> antiquated thinking.
>>
>> -Jeff
>>
>>
> This sort of insulting commentary is entirely inappropriate.

It's about as inappropriate as a blanket statement that you've never seen
a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.  I'm
not really seeing the problem here.  It *is* backwards, it *is*
antiquated.  When the mainstream media consistently uses blogs as reliable
information for their stories, there's absolutely no reason why we can't
do the same thing.

-Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Cary Bass wrote:
>
>> Jeff Raymond wrote:
>>
>>> Cary Bass wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never
>>>> seen
>>>> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
>>>> These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from
>>>> them
>>>> should be eliminated.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> This is the type of backwards, ten-years-ago thinking that I really wish
>>> we'd be able to overcome.  I can list off a dozen blogs that are
>>> perfectly
>>> reliable for the subject matter that they offer up in various areas of
>>> culture and information.  This idea that "self-published" = "bad" is
>>> antiquated thinking.
>>>
>>> -Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> This sort of insulting commentary is entirely inappropriate.
>>
>
> It's about as inappropriate as a blanket statement that you've never seen
> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.  I'm
> not really seeing the problem here.  It *is* backwards, it *is*
> antiquated.  When the mainstream media consistently uses blogs as reliable
> information for their stories, there's absolutely no reason why we can't
> do the same thing.
>
> -Jeff
>
>

I've *never* seen a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as
source material, you *are* insulting me by calling my comment backward,
and you *are* entirely way out of line here.

Cary


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
on 3/27/07 9:10 AM, bobolozo at bobolozo at yahoo.com wrote:

> --- Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Thank you for you responses. This case is just one
>> of many I have come
>> across where the subject of the Article is reported
>> to have been afflicted
>> with "clinical depression". In Kafka's case, the
>> statement I question is
>> this: "It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered
>> from clinical depression
>> and social anxiety throughout his entire life."
>>
>> Clinical Depression is a serious mental health
>> condition that requires a
>> formal, professional diagnosis. And the Kafka
>> Article is just one of many,
>> many I have come across in the encyclopedia where
>> this statement is made
>> without citation. This casual use of the term
>> "clinical depression" is not
>> fair to the subject, and can be misleading to the
>> reader.
>
> If you believe the statement is untrue, why not just
> pull out the word "clinical"?  This changes it from an
> unsourced medical diagnosis into the more general term
> "depression", which is often commonly used to mean any
> sort of unhappiness. Those who want the statement left
> in the article will probably be satisfied with this as
> a compromise, and perhaps you can be too.
>
OK. Let's make you the subject of the Article. In your Article appears this
statement: "It is generally agreed that bobolozo suffered
from depression throughout his entire life."

In fact, as most of us do, you did have days when you were unhappy; but, for
the most part you were pretty content with yourself and the world.

How would you feel about the statement then?

Marc


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was
	Wikimedia	Foundation sued)

body:
On Mar 27, 2007, at 5:45 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> We are talking about very rare cases.  The particular case in question
> is quite remarkable.

No it's not.

Nor is it vicious crap.

It's a well-sourced article on someone whose only claim to notability
is being a famous scam artist. It's sourced to multiple respectable
sources each of which gave a non-trivial mention of it. It passes our
most stringent sourcing and notability purposes.

The only thing that makes the case remarkable is that the WMF got
sued. But this is not a lawsuit about a false, defamatory, or even
sloppily done article. This is a lawsuit targeted at WMF on an
article where the process had previously worked and worked pretty
well. It's a lawsuit targeting us at, if not our best, at least at
our pretty darn good.

This is a very important thing to note here - this is very strongly a
case where we don't want to give in.

-Phil


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> But is that the point? If a credible legal threat it made, we might as
>> well just delete the thing first and ask questions later. No single
>> article is worth getting sued over - whether the Foundation would win
>> the case or not.
>>
>>
> This all depends on what you mean by a "credible" legal threat.  Bauer
> has gone beyond the threat stage, but was her threat credible in the
> first place?  There comes a point where a person has to take a stand or
> be forever backpeddling.  Litigious people are well aware that most of
> the population is deatly afraid of being sued, and have no compunctions
> about taking advantage of the fact.
>

This is regrettably true. I know some folks who ran an early web
community site. They received something like a legal threat a week for a
period of years. Nothing ever with merit; just people unhappy with
something someone else said on the web. The site was polite but
unyielding. Nothing other came of the threats, not one. But from the
polish on some of them, it was clear that making hollow but
plausible-sounding legal threats were a standard maneuver for some
bottom-feeders.

I'd be very uncomfortable with a delete-first-and-wait-for-the-lawyers
approach to articles under threat. Assuming we feel the content meets
appropriate standards like BLP, then I'd prefer we just carry on. If
that makes some people too nervous or there's a legitimate content
dispute, I'd rather someone trimmed the contentious text and put
something like [[User:William_Pietri/Legaldispute]] at the top of the
article so that people know they are not getting the whole story.

William


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Cary Bass wrote:

> I've *never* seen a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as
> source material, you *are* insulting me by calling my comment backward,
> and you *are* entirely way out of line here.

Very well.  You're completely incorrect, however, and your belief does not
mesh with general mainstream activity.  I assume you're unfamiliar with
TMZ.com, an entertainment blog that was the main source for the recent Mel
Gibson/Britney Spears/Michael Richards fiascos.  I know you're unfamiliar
with Optical Atlas, which is the de facto reference source these days for
a certain type of independent music.  There's a signifiant group of
editors who view William C. Connoley's RealClimate blog to be a useful
resource.  Did we forget that a blog, Little Green Footballs, was the one
who broke the [[Rathergate]] document scandal?

Yes, it's backward.

-Jeff


body:
On Mar 27, 2007, at 8:21 AM, Cary Bass wrote:

> Blog entries are bad sources and BLP violations.  They should never be
> used as source material in a biography.  They are not news.  A great
> portion of this article was derived and sourced from blog entries.
> The
> history was restored and has been available again for some hours.

I really wish the Office representatives would stop advocating
flagrantly bad sourcing practices.

The blog, in this case, is a blog from one of the most important
editors in science fiction and fantasy. Her words do not suddenly
become lower quality sources because she typed them through Blogger
first.

There are a horde of people who will take this statement and attempt
to apply it to the letter, and in the process break a bunch of
articles. Really, guys. Choose your words more carefully and think.
It's like nobody up there has even read the numerous discussions of
the problems with citation/sourcing fever we've had here.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On Mar 27, 2007, at 9:56 AM, Cary Bass wrote:

> I've *never* seen a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as
> source material, you *are* insulting me by calling my comment
> backward,
> and you *are* entirely way out of line here.

I'm sorry, but he's really not. Your comment was 100% untrue. It has
no value as a guideline on sourcing, and that it came from the Office
makes it even more dangerous.

That you're refusing to back down so much as complain that people are
being mean makes it even worse.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Cary Bass wrote:
>
>
>> I've *never* seen a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as
>> source material, you *are* insulting me by calling my comment backward,
>> and you *are* entirely way out of line here.
>>
>
> Very well.  You're completely incorrect, however, and your belief does not
> mesh with general mainstream activity.  I assume you're unfamiliar with
> TMZ.com, an entertainment blog that was the main source for the recent Mel
> Gibson/Britney Spears/Michael Richards fiascos.  I know you're unfamiliar
> with Optical Atlas, which is the de facto reference source these days for
> a certain type of independent music.  There's a signifiant group of
> editors who view William C. Connoley's RealClimate blog to be a useful
> resource.  Did we forget that a blog, Little Green Footballs, was the one
> who broke the [[Rathergate]] document scandal?
>
> Yes, it's backward.
>
> -Jeff
You are completely incorrect, however, in calling me completely
incorrect. You are insulting and counter-productive.

Furthermore, you are responding to my initial email which I have already
modified by saying that there were exceptiosn.

You are also ignoring the underlying issue in which the blogs being used
were not reliable sources, and were merely opinion pieces.

Blogs as sources are the exception and not the rule, and each needs to
be considered and weighed before it is used, and not after.  Blogs are
generally unrelaible and non-notable and should not be used as reliable
sources.

Jeff, I respectfully request that you stop responding to my posts with
insults such as "You're completely incorrect" and "Your thinking is
backward".  Please, no more commentary on me.

Thank you.
Cary


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
on 3/27/07 10:05 AM, Guettarda at guettarda at gmail.com wrote:

> Hey, it isn't an insult.  Don't try to make it into one.  "It's generally
> agreed that Churchill suffered from depression for much of his life" - not
> based on non-existent medical documents, but based on his own writing.  But
> it's not an insult any more than is the conjecture that someone suffered
> from diabetes.

Guettarda,

I agree with you that it is not an insult. But statements about someone's
mental and/or emotional condition are not dealt very kindly in the larger
culture. And, it can be very tricky legally - if the subject of the
statement wanted to pursue it.

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
Cary Bass wrote:

> You are completely incorrect, however, in calling me completely
> incorrect. You are insulting and counter-productive.

If it's insulting to call someone incorrect when they're incorrect, then
I'm an insulting asshole.  I can accept that.

Is it counter-productive to call someone out when they're wrong?  I hope not.
>
> Furthermore, you are responding to my initial email which I have already
> modified by saying that there were exceptiosn.

Very well.  So you understand that blogs can often act as reliable sources?

> Blogs as sources are the exception and not the rule, and each needs to
> be considered and weighed before it is used, and not after.  Blogs are
> generally unrelaible and non-notable and should not be used as reliable
> sources.

Nope, that's where you head off the wrong trail.  In many cases, they
*should* be the rule based on the subject and the available resources.
EVERY source needs to be considered and weighed, and singling blogs out as
something inherently different is, again, backwards thinking.  They
*should* be used as reliable sources whenever appropriate.

>
> Jeff, I respectfully request that you stop responding to my posts with
> insults such as "You're completely incorrect" and "Your thinking is
> backward".  Please, no more commentary on me.

If it walks like a duck, I suppose.

-Jeff