subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>Jack Lynch wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I personally am perfectly willing to pay a fee for expert adminship.
>>>Have you seen the recent fund-drives? I've never donated money (just
>>>time) to the wikipedia, but I would for paid admins I could trust.
>>>
>>
>>You mean yourself.
>
>
> Haha. How much do you think the Foundation should charge for
> bureaucrat status?
>

cf. a post to the list a few weeks (months?) ago:

"Dear sirs, I want to be an administrator, how much will this cost?"

(Can't remember the exact words or email or anything...)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jacob Kingston

subject: [WikiEN-l] thank you for attention

body:
I would just like to thank the administrators at this site for allowing us a way to respond.  I have talked to the individual who made the comments and I think everything is fine.  I will make sure my son no longer creates articles about non-famous people, and ensure you that his editing from now on will be limited by myself as well as your team.

Thank you.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty"

body:
On 11/14/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> And "The Encyclopedia of Chicago," "The Star Trek Encyclopedia," and "Oh,
> Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" are not part of any comprehensive
> encyclopedia either, nor should they be.

I only half-agree here.  The single focus of these works should not be
in Wikipedia in terms of selection and treatment, but there is no
reason why many of the subjects covered in these could not be in
Wikipedia.

-Matt


from_name: Brown, Darin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Of Pokemon and baseball

body:
> Message: 9
> Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:20:59 -0600
> From: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<bd4c411e0511130920l16ce374dk30a584fd7b43d67f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 11/12/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > It'd be a fine thing if all the authors of waaaaaay too many Pokemon
> > articles turned their attention to more "serious" endeavors, but there's
> > no way to make that happen.
>
> Well, we can hope that when they grow up and go to college and
> eventually move into the real world, they will continue to edit
> Wikipedia, and hopefully not simply to keep the Pokemon articles up to
> date with the latest release.  Even if only a few percent of them move
> onto real articles, some good will come of it.
>
> And if not, well, we'll have the best encyclopedia of anime and
> computer games in the world.  There's something to be said for that.
> [[Exploding sheep]] is a fascinating article, for example.
>
> Kelly

Good lord, can we listen to ourselves?? Since when does any one person have
the moral authority over deciding what topics are "serious" or not? The
articles stand as they are, many are written pretty well, and that's that.
Prompting people that they should spend their time on more "serious"
endeavors seems to serve no practical purpose. Most likely, they might take
it as an insult and just decide to leave or become vandals. Myself, I've
read a few of the Pokemon articles, and having no previous knowledge or
interest in them really, found them really quite fascinating and
enlightening. Clearly, Pokemon is enormously popular, and any cartoon that
is in a position to advertise on a Boeing 747 is culturally relevant. The
same arguments leveled against Pokemon could easily be leveled against, say
[[baseball]]. After all, what purpose does it serve?? It's not really
"serious", and as friends have informed me, large segments of the population
find baseball as boring as dust and dry as a desert. Should we tell the
baseball people (which includes myself) to do more "serious" things?

darin


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] First Post, Requesting Assistance

body:
The block was infinite, and applied in August.  I've unblocked you.

Charles


from_name: Travis Mason-Bushman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
Yes - as I feel it is my role to be an advocate for someone who is on
probation, in my opinion is trying to make some good faith edits in
compliance with his probation (note on his Talk page my discussion with
him) and is simply being endlessly reverted by two people who appear to
disagree with his views.

If a person who is on ArbCom probation does the right thing (again,
IMO) and is not supported for doing the right thing, then there is
absolutely no incentive for that person to cooperate or continue
editing the encyclopedia - and the point of ArbCom probation, if I do
not miss my guess, is to correct someone who has made mistakes but
could otherwise be a valuable editor.

-Travis
FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia

On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:06 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:

> One problem that has emerged is that the assigned person from the
> mentorship committee can be easily drawn into becoming an advocate of
> the user on probation. This recently happened in the case of
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mentorship_Committee#Onefortyone
>
> where one of the members of the committee ended up being banned for 24
> hours for breaking 3RR
>
> No one would be placed on probation by the arbitration committee if
> there were not other users who had been complaining about their
> behavior. Those parties can be expected to still be watching the
> articles in question and to have strong opinions on the matter.
>
> Fred


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for languagereasons.

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax

>
> My understanding was that the Official Name in English, /as
> requested by the Government of C?te d'Ivoire/, was C?te
> d'Ivoire. Not "Ivory Coast".
> They changed their name to C?te d'Ivoire. End discussion.
> That's their name. Use it. Redirects are cheap.

Have "Ivory Coast" redirect to "C?te d'Ivoire" or vice versa. WP:BFD &
WP:IAR apply in this case, and the only people who really care about how we
spell the name are probably Ivory C?teians or those who care overmuch about
consistency.

Putting your balls on the line over the spelling of the name of a country
that couldn't field a decent baseball team strikes me as caring a bit too
much.

Sort it out on the talk page, be civil, don't engage in endless revert or
move wars, have a nice day.

Pete, blatant hypocrite


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Slimvirgin wrote:
>On 11/14/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote:

>> > Would anyone favour the idea of me just handing back the CheckUser
>> > bit? I'm this >< close.

>> No! We need you! You're sane! You know network stuff!

BWAHAHAHA.

>Is that honestly the nicest thing you can think of to say about David
>-- that he's sane? Mind you, on Wikipedia, that counts for a lot.

I'm also modest. And 4'10" tall.

- d.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
One problem that has emerged is that the assigned person from the
mentorship committee can be easily drawn into becoming an advocate of
the user on probation. This recently happened in the case of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mentorship_Committee#Onefortyone

where one of the members of the committee ended up being banned for
24 hours for breaking 3RR

No one would be placed on probation by the arbitration committee if
there were not other users who had been complaining about their
behavior. Those parties can be expected to still be watching the
articles in question and to have strong opinions on the matter.

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 10:36 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> Arkady Rose wrote:
>
>
>> There are enough accusations of major decision-making being made by
>> "secret cabals" already as it is; this is just one more thing to
>> substantiate such suspicians and conspiracy theories.
>>
>
>
> It's more a case of people using a handy real-time communication
> mechanism to resolve a problem quickly. In this case it's potential
> upside without much downside, and you can be sure lots of people will
> be watching them like hawks.
>
> Most, if not all, of the accusations of cabalism are spurious. You'll
> also see a lot more of it on this list than is warranted, as wikien-l
> is pretty much the official sewer for en:. The listadmins are a lot
> nicer about letting people kicked off the wiki or ignored on the wiki
> complain here.
>
> Not everything should go through committee committees to form a
> committee on the committees before someone can do something. We got a
> taste of this with the checkuser issue just recently, where we slogged
> through bureaucratic swamps for weeks, finally reached a decision,
> then the stewards decided it'd be a fine idea to start the entire damn
> discussion from scratch. Bureaucratic instruction creep.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
I don't think there is any need to ask a lawyer, regardless of
whether a legal cause of action would exist, anyone  misusing the
checkuser function is responsible for foreseeable damage whether or
not there is any legal forum available or any practical way to seek
redress. This especially applies to those logging in from countries
with inadequate practical guarantees of personal liberty. One might
be able to raise a legal defense, but there is no moral defense.

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 11:13 AM, Anthere wrote:

> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>> Chris Jenkinson stated for the record:
>>
>>> Kelly Martin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 11/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> What would happen if either of you (Kelly or Sean) disclosed
>>>>> private
>>>>> information into the public domain? Aside from ethical
>>>>> concerns, what
>>>>> prevents you from doing this?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At work or on Wikipedia?
>>>>
>>>> At work, I would risk being fired, sued, and possibly prosecuted.
>>>>
>>>> On Wikipedia?  It would be wrong.  It would also be breaking
>>>> several
>>>> promises I've made.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge
>>> private
>>> information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to
>>> having
>>> a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
>>> checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?
>>>
>> The situation is not reasonably similar; it's not even remotely
>> similar.
>> Disclosure of the information I handle at work would immediately and
>> directly endanger lives and damage national security, and I am rather
>> well paid for accepting the responsibility.
>> Disclosure of a Wikipedian's IP address can only lead to harm through
>> tortuous chains of unlikely happenstance, and the privilege of
>> contributing to Wikipedia's success is not sufficient compensation to
>> persuade me to accept the possibility of a prison term.
>>
>
> In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
> government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy
> to prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in
> particular those from certain regions, or those participating to
> wikinews, are at the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself
> directly endanger a life in giving private information. I hope that
> in spite that you do not receive a sufficient financial
> compensation, you will be careful. I think feeling less
> responsability due to the fact you are not paid is not a very good
> approach of the tool.
>
> Aside from this point, the question of what would happen if Sean or
> Kelly or anyone with the tool would release private information to
> the public is a good question.
>
> They would lose access to the tool certainly. Very likely, they
> would lose position at the arbcom. Aside from this, I suppose that
> anyone having private information released by a person without a
> good reason (such as protecting our network) have the opportunity
> to sue Sean, Kelly or whoever on top of suing the Foundation.
>
> Maybe a question to ask a lawyer ?
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
 From Wiktionary:
Mentor: 1. A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.

It's the Mentorship Committee, not the "Parole Officer Committee."

(Though running afoul of 3RR might not have been so wise. I needed a
Wikibreak anyway. C'est la vie.)

-Travis
FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia


body:
No, if they are in such a situation they should cry out to the very
heavens. And we should make every effort to expose any government
that acts against them. Not that we should misrepresent the situation
or our weakness should such events occur. I don't think anyone in
North Korea, Cuba, the People's Republic of China, Iran or Saudi
Arabia is so naive as to think that selecting the link, "edit this
page" is a safe thing to do.

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 11:58 AM, Carbonite wrote:

>  If someone's life or family is endangered by editing Wikipedia,
> they should
> immediately stop. Seriously, if a user is in a situation where
> they'll lose
> their job, freedom or life because of what they contribute to a
> website,
> they need to take responsibility for themselves and cease all
> editing. Of
> course we need to protect the privacy of all editors, and I fully
> support
> removal of checkuser access for anyone who misuses the tool. However,
> ultimately it up to the every user to ensure they're not putting
> themselves
> at risk.
>  Carbonite


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 11/14/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:

> > In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
> > government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
> > prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
> > those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
> > the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
> > in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
> > receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
> > think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
> > not a very good approach of the tool.
>
>  If someone's life or family is endangered by editing Wikipedia, they should
> immediately stop. Seriously, if a user is in a situation where they'll lose
> their job, freedom or life because of what they contribute to a website,
> they need to take responsibility for themselves and cease all editing. Of
> course we need to protect the privacy of all editors, and I fully support
> removal of checkuser access for anyone who misuses the tool. However,
> ultimately it up to the every user to ensure they're not putting themselves
> at risk.

Indeed.  While those of us who use checkuser are aware of the
potential for either financial or personal injury to those who edit
Wikipedia when they ought not be, and will endeavor to protect the
privacy of such people, the onus on those who violate either
employment agreements or local legal authorities by editing Wikipedia
when they ought not be falls on them, and not on us.

Kelly


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

body:
On 13/11/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

> Each time an edit is comitted from an unknown IP address a new
> proxy-to-ip-pair is added to the mapping. MediaWiki could then simply
> look in the mapping for the proxy which has a certain IP. In the
> example above, the proxy would be "anon1". And the "userid" field in
> the row would contain "anon1" instead of "34.19.215.33". Preferably
> only a few key developers and the MediaWiki software should be allowed
> access to the proxy-to-IP mapping.

Hmm. Let's cut this down to a more day-to-day level.

Some anonymous user has vandalised a page I watch. I rollback, but do
I warn them or not? If they're on an AOL proxy, or coming through an
obvious webcache - my research suggests this is 10-20% of our users -
I won't; they probably won't see it, but *someone* will, and it'll
just cause more confusion and get people annoyed with the project. Nor
is there much point in blocking them except if they're systematically
attacking a single page (since they seem to retain the same IP here,
for some reason).

We regularly have people contacting this list to ask for a block to be
lifted because an administrator accidentally blocked a college of
fifteen thousand people, or an ISP serving half of Chicago, or the
proxy server for all of Dubai, or something. Imagine how much more
common this would be where admins weren't ever able to do a quick
"whois 34.19.215.33" to check on who they were actually blocking.

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


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Because the situation is completely dissimilar:
> 1) IP addresses are not very important

Personal information of any form is still personal information. I know
the Foundation is a U.S. organisation and is not subject to EU laws, but
various courts in the EU have found that IP addresses are personal
information.

> 2) Arbitrators are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation
> 3) It is not in Wikipedia's best interests to introduce ridiculous legal
> hurdles that make it even harder to recruit people for a mostly
> thankless volunteer job that we already have trouble filling reliably

I think this is largely irrelevant. If we aren't going to take the
trouble to be careful when dealing with personal information, then no
one should have access to it. Taking shortcuts on it is just foolish.

Chris


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects (was
	Vote to create Wikiversity Vote)

body:
On 11/13/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyway, I can't edit on meta, and you seem to have a much different
> > idea of an incubator wiki anyway.  Besides, the idea has been floating
> > around for months already.  The cynic in me thinks that the red tape
> > to create a project is probably too great, especially a project which
> > threatens to "end up being a fork of" Angela's website.

By the way, I just realized that some people might misunderstand my
quote.  Angela, referring to wikiseed (the incubator wiki), said in an
IRC board meeting "Angela thinks it will end up being a fork of
Wikicities."  That's all I was referring to when I referred to the
project that way.

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> We have been careful.  The people selected to have CheckUser rights
> are all people who are aware of the issues involved and are (in the
> opinion of the Committee) unlikely to release personal information
> inappropriately.

I know, and I do trust the current people with checkuser rights to be
careful with what they are doing and to know the consequences of their
actions if they do divulge it.

However, this is no guarantee that future people who receive the ability
will be as careful or as knowledgeable as you are. Call this a slippery
slope argument if you like, but I'm just concerned about my personal
information being dealt with in a legitimate and fair manner by all
parties who have access to it. I hope you agree my concerns are valid.

Chris


body:
M. Creidieki Crouch wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:

>> 2.  it would be utterly poisonous to the community. Merely being
>> checked on would be seen as a black mark (c.f. geni's attacks on Kelly
>> Martin's character in this thread).

>I think that this danger would be minimized if the admin explained the
>reason for the check, ideally with a link to something that would be
>considered "reasonable evidence".

Even then, it's much easier to not violate it and not cause trouble in
the community by not making the log public. It's hard to run afoul of
the privacy policy by doing your very best imitation of a [[Magic
8-ball]].

This is not ideal. I recently misidentified [[User:TheChief]] as
[[User:Agriculture]]. It was highly questioned but I couldn't answer
most of the questions people were asking so as to substantiate the
match as I simply wasn't allowed to do so. Eventually someone else
spotted that they had close-together edits at widely disparate
geographical locations. (I'd done a time-IP chart myself, but
evidently missed that one.) Which is not hard (if I wanted I could
show an IP record of me flitting from Australia to Wisconsin to London
in five minutes, all through legitimate accounts), but is very far
from common, so I called it "not a match."

It's all a tricky one. Saying "'cos I say so" really doesn't go down
well, but it's often the only answer I can give. Getting second
opinions from other checkers can help, though that certainly isn't
going to become routine. (I'm sure *requests* for it will ...)

>> 3. It's a sysadmin level function, allowing certain people to assist
>> the devs so they can get on with running the actual servers. No-one
>> using a website can seriously expect the sysadmins will *not* check
>> their IP, usage patterns, etc. as is necessary for good functioning of
>> the site.

>I'm worried about "you should have expected it" as a rationale for
>revealing personal information, but perhaps.

It's not *revealing* the personal information - that's what's *not*
happening. It's *having someone look at it at all*. No-one can
reasonably expect the people running a site will never look at the
usage in as close detail as is needed.

What they *can* expect is that the data will be confidential per the
privacy policy. At present, all those on en: with it are arbitrators.
(I also asked for Linuxbeak and Fvw to get it, but the board is
presently happier with just the AC having it. That's fine, 'cos
Linuxbeak and Fvw know they need only ask if they have some heavy-duty
vandals that need tracking. In the last few weeks I ran a pile of
checks for Linuxbeak tracking Jarlaxle and MARMOT, for instance, and
some time tracking [[User:SuperTroll]].)

I got the power at all because the devs didn't have time to give the
AC the checks it needed (they're busy running the site and writing the
software) and I was on the AC and knew my way around a network. The AC
are people trusted not to fuck up Wikimedia's policies, ways of doing
things and internal and external image and so forth, so were
considered suitable for the confidential information. They also know
how good and bad editors work, and the social structure of the wiki.
So we picked some of them that can find their way around a network
(the technical consideration). You'd typically find the technical
skills in a sysadmin, for example (there's lots on Wikipedia). I
picked up mine tracking Usenet and email spammers for my own amusement
;-)

(And just to cross-thread: this is a good example of something that
people shouldn't even be thinking of voting on, any more than you'd
vote for root or MediaWiki lead. [[m:Voting is evil (and stupid)]] )

>> 4. There's a log the other checkuser users can see and keep an eye on
>> each other. If you react "ZOMG CABAL!!!", you can say that to the devs
>> next, because they can check this stuff too, and do as they see fit.
>> With no logs at all.

>Does this log contain explanations or comments on why a specific check
>was done?  This certainly would prevent an admin from doing a check on
>everyone they came in contact with.  But if you see one or two checks
>a week on users you've never heard of, are you going to track down the
>admin and ask about it?

It just has lines like:

* 15:54, 10 July 2005 David Gerard got IPs for David Gerard
* 15:55, 10 July 2005 David Gerard got edits for 82.153.102.255

(that's me looking up my own name and then one of the IPs.)

Note that it's not "admins". It's not every admin having access to
this. It's a (deliberately) very small pool of people.

>I'm sorry to be contributing to the already-long discussion against
>this.  I'm not at all convinced that checkuser is a bad idea.  But I
>want to make sure that we've thought about the best way of
>implementing it.

It gives sensitive information, but it doesn't actually give a huge amount.

* I'll typically be found on two static IPs and one that's dynamic but
changes slowly.
* Someone else might be on dialup and have their IP for any given
session be anywhere in a /12, which is 1,048,576 possible addresses,
in which case you have to understand social aspects of the wiki (usage
patterns and what sort of things sockpuppeteers tend to do) to declare
a "possible match" or "likely match" or whatever.
* Someone else might be on AOL, where each *page view* might use a
different AOL proxy, in which case you can stop the check right there
because you can't say anything other than "is on AOL" (which is 22% of
the US internet, so generally wouldn'tt really count as revealing
personal information).
* Someone else might have their username using IPs from all over the
world in close succession ... in which case it's a good guess that the
IPs are open proxies and the user is hopping about on them to evade
detection.

This sort of thing is why a software version that just gives "MATCH",
"NEAR MATCH" or "NO MATCH" or whatever is not possible (and again, if
someone thinks it is, show us the code and show us it works well
enough). It takes a human who knows the little ways of the Internet
and the little ways of good and bad editors to make sense of the
little information you get from knowing what IP a given user made a
given edit from.

Any more questions, anyone?

- d.


from_name: Carbonite

body:
On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
> government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
> prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
> those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
> the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
> in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
> receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
> think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
> not a very good approach of the tool.

 If someone's life or family is endangered by editing Wikipedia, they should
immediately stop. Seriously, if a user is in a situation where they'll lose
their job, freedom or life because of what they contribute to a website,
they need to take responsibility for themselves and cease all editing. Of
course we need to protect the privacy of all editors, and I fully support
removal of checkuser access for anyone who misuses the tool. However,
ultimately it up to the every user to ensure they're not putting themselves
at risk.
 Carbonite


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Pentti Mannonen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML

body:
Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:

>Heippa Pentti,
>
>You can just cut and paste the HTML file in the article
>and then upload the pictures.
>
>The only thing is - HTML is very complex and hard to edit,
>which is why Wikipedia uses a separate syntax.
>
>It all depends on the level of formatting you have. If it's complex
>formatting, it will be hard to convert to the Wikipedia syntax.
>
>As to pictures, the Wikipedia image syntax is the only one
>that works. You can link images by placing the following code:
>
>[[Image:NameofFileUploadedtoWikipedia.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Caption]]
>
>Thanks,
>
>Ronline
>
>On 11/14/05, Pentti Mannonen <pentti.mannonen at kolumbus.fi> wrote:
>
>
>>How to include my already made html file witm pictures in Wikipedia
>>without retyping it.
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
Thank you Ronline, the information was helpy.


body:
Chris Jenkinson

>I think this is largely irrelevant. If we aren't going to take the
>trouble to be careful when dealing with personal information, then no
>one should have access to it. Taking shortcuts on it is just foolish.

You mean, anyone who doesn't sign a legal document promising to pay a
notable penalty if the Foundation decides they've broken the privacy
policy should not be allowed access to the data? That sounds like a
great idea. We'll have an all-paid sysadmin team before you know it,
because every volunteer will get up and *leave*. Did that bit occur to
you?

- d.


from_name: ecemaml @ es.wikipedia

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
So, what can I do to get unblocked? As far as the blocker does not accept
mail, I cannot contact him. Please, notice that currently I'm accessing from
my employee network, so that my IP address is different from the one being
blocked (you can see edits from [[User:Ecemaml]] during my morning). Is
there a way to assure that once I get home I may edit in wikipedia.

Best regards

// ecemaml

On 11/14/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> No
>
> Fred
>
> On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:22 AM, ecemaml @ es.wikipedia wrote:
>
> > Is it sensible to be an administrator and not
> > accepting mails?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> You mean, anyone who doesn't sign a legal document promising to pay a
> notable penalty if the Foundation decides they've broken the privacy
> policy should not be allowed access to the data? That sounds like a
> great idea. We'll have an all-paid sysadmin team before you know it,
> because every volunteer will get up and *leave*. Did that bit occur to
> you?

Of course it did. The consequences of it don't matter. What matters is
that we treat personal information with the respect it deserves.

I imagine there are alternative possibilities to the one you suggested.

Chris


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> Let me be the next to queue up.  Why in, as Pogo used to say, the
> ever-lovin' blue-eyed world would I want to agree to your terms, Chris?
>  What are you going to do if I refuse?  Fire me?

If this policy were implemented, and you refused, your access to the
personal information would be revoked.

I don't know why you would sign up to anything, and I wouldn't want to
guess on your behalf. It's your choice; not mine.

Chris


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

body:
In the real world, not all reference books are encyclopedias. That's not just
because encyclopedias are "paper. "Great Books of the Western World" is not
the same thing as "The Encyclopaedia Britannica," just as Wikisource is not
the same thing as Wikipedia.

And "The Encyclopedia of Chicago," "The Star Trek Encyclopedia," and "Oh,
Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" are not part of any comprehensive
encyclopedia either, nor should they be.

Forks are not intrinsically evil; as I've always understood it, the ability
to produce forks is supposed to be one of the _strengths_ of the GFDL and
other free licenses.


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> As one of the people trusted to keep private information confidential,
> I am somewhat offended that you think that we don't.

As I said in another email, I do think (and hope) that you do keep it
confidential. But this isn't a guarantee for the future.

Chris


body:
On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think that if one chinese editor edit the english article on say...
> Tien An Men events, and a request comes from a chinese governement
> official saying you should provide private information about the editor,
> for the motive that talking about such a topic is violating their local
> laws, I will consider that any checkuser providing liberally such an
> information without first checking with the Foundation and its legal
> counselling, will be a violation of the tool use and of the trust put in
> the check user.

And I would never intentionally reveal such information without a
court order specifically naming myself issued by a court with contempt
power over me.  And not until after I had challenged the validity of
the order, and lost.

Any such challenge would be brought by my own counsel, rather than the
Foundation's, unless the Foundation is also offering to insure me for
any legal liability I might incur while exercising CheckUser privilege
(which I doubt they are).  Any consultation of the Foundation's
counsel would be of courtesy.

That said, should I accidentially reveal such information, I will
certainly resist being held to any legal obligation for such accident.

Kelly


subject:
[WikiEN-l] How to properly penalise volunteers? (was Arbitration
	Committee members granted checkuser tool)

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:

>> You mean, anyone who doesn't sign a legal document promising to pay a
>> notable penalty if the Foundation decides they've broken the privacy
>> policy should not be allowed access to the data? That sounds like a
>> great idea. We'll have an all-paid sysadmin team before you know it,
>> because every volunteer will get up and *leave*. Did that bit occur to
>> you?

>Of course it did. The consequences of it don't matter. What matters is
>that we treat personal information with the respect it deserves.

And we do. Your idea so far appears to have not much visible upside
and tremendous visible downside.

>I imagine there are alternative possibilities to the one you suggested.

Yes, like not doing something so jawdroppingly stupid.

You may think I am wrong on this (it's happened). If so, you may care
to run this excellent idea of yours past wikitech-l, where the devs
hang out. "You all need to sign a document saying you will be
penalised if the Foundation considers you have broken confidentiality.
What say you?" I look forward to seeing their responses.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
OK, I see the poing, but what can I do?

Isn't there a way to unblock a given user even if s/he is accessing from a
banned IP address (I'm not an expert at all in MediaWiki)? I just want to
access as myself (especially given that I'm in the middle of a controversy).
Any clue?

Many thanks

// ecemaml

On 11/14/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> Ok, did a little work on this (others will need to follow up as I
> have a nasty schedule today). Look at this block log:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:
> 80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42>
>
> It seems the address you are using is being used by some sort of bot,
> an internet robot. I don't want to be responsible for unblocking this
> address without knowing more about the situation.
>
> Fred
>
> On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:22 AM, ecemaml @ es.wikipedia wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > this is the first time I post a message here. I'm a legitimate user in
> > en.wikipedia and nowadays I'm currently blocked.
> >
> > The messages I get are the following:
> >
> > *Your IP address is 80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42> <http://80.58.11.42>.
> Please
> > include this
> > address, along with your username, in any queries you make.*
> >
> > Your user name or IP address has been
> > blocked<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>by
> > Curps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Curps>.
> >
> > The reason given is:
> > *Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
> > "NSMC58577107<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > title=User:NSMC58577107&action=edit>".
> > The reason given for NSMC58577107's block is: "user...".
> > *
> >
> >
> > Furthermore, the block is infinite.
> >
> > Although my main target is nowadays getting unblocked, what I'd
> > like to know
> > is whether an administrator may not provide any means to get in
> > contact with
> > him (he doesn't accept mail). Is it sensible to be an administrator
> > and not
> > accepting mails?
> >
> > Many thanks in advance
> >
> > // ecemaml
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] How did this happen (comixpedia??)

body:
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:39:55 +0000
> From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<fbad4e140511140939sb9e3631od43e79d42bb18d18 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> geni wrote:
> >On 11/14/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> That's absolutely and incredibly not true. They write a verifiable
> >> article about something they know, get abusive comments on AFD (for
> >> some reason, civility and assume good faith don't work there ... the
> >> reason AFD is so damn poisonous to the community is that it blatantly
> >> encourages participants to assume *bad* faith) and *leave*.
>
> >That would be unusal. More likely they will simply be ignored. Most
> >stuff that lands on afd is not implicetly verifiable.
>
>
> Case where this happened really badly: webcomics. We now have a
> project fork, Comixpedia, entirely caused by AFD. You may recall
> extensive discussion surrounding this on this list a few weeks ago.

Wow, I was totally unaware of this happening. After browsing around
"comixpedia" for an hour or so, I have to admit I'm totally mystified and
agree with David. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about the
articles at this "comixpedia" site to differentiate them from any number of
articles at other places, except that certain people seemed to think certain
articles weren't "notable". But really, come on, less than 1,000 articles,
yeah that's *real* threatening. It's *1/10th of 1%* of wikipedia articles.
And a large number of these are copies of Wikipedia articles, and a large
number of the remaining are actually far from stubs, and many contain some
interesting information. What next, every time some people get in their head
that there are too many stubs on a subject, we'll just banish them to a
fork? Moreover, the move to the fork sets up an artificial barrier to
linking to other topics on wikipedia.  One of the joys I have found about
the project is the ability to begin at one article, and gradually move on to
interesting articles in other areas simply by clicking on interesting links
3 or 4 times. It gives a sense of connection and inter-relatedness. The
impression given here is that "comics" are somehow beyond the pale of
acknowledgement and have to be banished in exile.

Am I just really missing something?? How did this happen? I have a Jonathan
Swift suggestion: Why don't we just create 1,000 different forks -- let's
have a math fork, a physics fork, a chess fork, a baseball fork. We'll call
them "mathpedia", "physicspedia", "chessipedia", and "baseballpedia", they
can all have different webpages, different admins, different statistics,
different everything. And they can all link to each other via external
links. That's a great idea.

BTW, I wonder how many people feel the way I do, but never registered their
opinion simply because they weren't even *aware* a debate was going on.  (I
do remember some posts about webcomics, but I never caught on that an entire
fork was being created. And besides, what about people who don't keep up
with this discussion list??

darin


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Keller Florian

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Creating Automated Wiki Sites,
	without self inserting into Database

body:
Hello,

I've a little question about automated creating a new Wiki Site over a
self made Formular. I've reverse engineered the Database Design. It
works well with my own inserts into the wikidb, but I want to use Wiki
Functions to do this. Im using at the moment the latest stable Version
(1.5.2).

Could someone give me a hint to do this. It's very hard for me to study
the Wikicode without any good Developer Documentation. I found nothing
with that issue @ Meta Wiki.

I think the solution is near:

Line: 376 in EditPage.php
# If article is new, insert it.
$aid = $this->mTitle->getArticleID( GAID_FOR_UPDATE );
....

I hope someone can help, otherwise I will need more sleepless nights :D

Greetings,

Florian Keller


subject: [WikiEN-l] disputing block: 69.108.172.162, lysdexia

body:
>Informing people is not losing.  If the law worked here as it did on
>Wp, then some admin could've banned you indefinitely for trolling.  I
>still want back on.  Why is no one doing anything for me?

You have been answered in detail already, but here are your own words
explaining the problem:

>They're incorrigate too, as whenever I correct them they often get
>hostile and defend their stupidity; many discussion group owners have
>banned me for correcting people's spelling /offlist/.  Such people must
>be taken down.

i.e., you have a proven inability to work with others, but fail to
consider that working with others involves working *with* them, and
that the common factor in you getting kicked out of other Internet
forums is you.

>They are not willing to do it for me, immediately dismissing my reasons
>and ignoring my explanations, thinking that they know better.  They
>give wrong reasons that I had already dealt with.  They ban me because
>I am and do controversial and dispopular.

i.e., you go into collaborative spaces but are not willing to work
with others. The strange thing is that you are then surprised by the
(repeated) results.

>It implies relation too--as in "my kind" or "my child".  Shutting down
>my use of "my" when I was talking about an article I wrote is lame and
>mindless.

[[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]

>You disagree why?  Corrupting languages is harmful to readers.  The
>illiterate have criticized my use of "lige" and "lyging" instead of
>"lie" and "lying".

You know damn well what everyone else (EVERYONE else) means by
"English" here, but you come to a collaborative space and demand it
bend itself around your entirely idiosyncratic personal meaning for
the word.

Again, the strange thing is that you are then surprised by the
results. Over and over. The common factor is not a conspiracy, but
your behaviour. Until you realise this, you will continue to have the
same experience on other Internet social spaces. Over and over.

If you don't have something new to say, I won't be approving any more
of your messages to wikien-l.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy

body:
I'll tell you when I return home. I'm crossing my fingers :-)

Thank you very much

// ecemaml

On 11/14/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> Well my work wasn't very good. The link shows that this address is
> unblocked. Unless an autoblock would not show up, but it should,
> shouldn't it?
>
> Fred
>
> On Nov 14, 2005, at 6:50 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> > Ok, did a little work on this (others will need to follow up as I
> > have a nasty schedule today). Look at this block log:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/
> > block&page=User:80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42>
> >
> > It seems the address you are using is being used by some sort of
> > bot, an internet robot. I don't want to be responsible for
> > unblocking this address without knowing more about the situation.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:22 AM, ecemaml @ es.wikipedia wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> this is the first time I post a message here. I'm a legitimate
> >> user in
> >> en.wikipedia and nowadays I'm currently blocked.
> >>
> >> The messages I get are the following:
> >>
> >> *Your IP address is 80.58.11.42 <http://80.58.11.42> <
> http://80.58.11.42>. Please
> >> include this
> >> address, along with your username, in any queries you make.*
> >>
> >> Your user name or IP address has been
> >> blocked<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>by
> >> Curps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Curps>.
> >>
> >> The reason given is:
> >> *Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
> >> "NSMC58577107<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> >> title=User:NSMC58577107&action=edit>".
> >> The reason given for NSMC58577107's block is: "user...".
> >> *
> >>
> >>
> >> Furthermore, the block is infinite.
> >>
> >> Although my main target is nowadays getting unblocked, what I'd
> >> like to know
> >> is whether an administrator may not provide any means to get in
> >> contact with
> >> him (he doesn't accept mail). Is it sensible to be an
> >> administrator and not
> >> accepting mails?
> >>
> >> Many thanks in advance
> >>
> >> // ecemaml
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Carbonite wrote:
> > On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
> >>government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
> >>prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
> >>those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
> >>the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
> >>in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
> >>receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
> >>think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
> >>not a very good approach of the tool.
> >
> >
> > If someone's life or family is endangered by editing Wikipedia, they
> should
> > immediately stop. Seriously, if a user is in a situation where they'll
> lose
> > their job, freedom or life because of what they contribute to a website,
> > they need to take responsibility for themselves and cease all editing.
> Of
> > course we need to protect the privacy of all editors, and I fully
> support
> > removal of checkuser access for anyone who misuses the tool. However,
> > ultimately it up to the every user to ensure they're not putting
> themselves
> > at risk.
> > Carbonite
>
> I disagree with you Carbonite.
>
> And probably do all those who ever risked anything precious to support
> freedom.
>
> In memory of all those who became unofficial soldiers to liberate their
> country from a hostile invador.
> In memory of those who risked their lives to hide jews in their caves
> during WWII.
> In memory of women who were burned as witches for saving poor girls from
> an unwanted pregnancy.
> In memory of dissidents who lost their lives to ask for independance.
> In memory of journalists who died covering a war to provide *you* with
> information.
> In memory of encyclopedists who were exiled or put in jail for trying to
> publish enlightned encyclopedia de Diderot.
>
> Some people put the public good over their own private well-being. We
> have nothing to criticize, because if noone had done this in our
> countries, we would not savor our current freedom. The best we can do is
> at least to protect them to the best of our abilities.

 I think perhaps we're getting a little melodramatic here. I was under the
impression that we're here to write an encyclopedia, not fight oppression.
If the former happens to lead to the latter, that's a great bonus. My point
was that it's up to the user to protect himself. If a slip of an IP address
will likely lead to harsh punishment, the risk of editing is almost
certainly too high. I'm NOT saying that we should be careless and expose IP
addresses, but to treat this as a matter of life and death is unnecessary
rhetoric.
 Carbonite


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
>
>In the real world, not all reference books are encyclopedias. That's not
>just
>because encyclopedias are "paper. "Great Books of the Western World" is not
>the same thing as "The Encyclopaedia Britannica," just as Wikisource is not
>the same thing as Wikipedia.
>
>And "The Encyclopedia of Chicago," "The Star Trek Encyclopedia," and "Oh,
>Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" are not part of any
>comprehensive
>encyclopedia either, nor should they be.
>
>Forks are not intrinsically evil; as I've always understood it, the ability
>to produce forks is supposed to be one of the _strengths_ of the GFDL and
>other free licenses.

Amen.

Jay.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] <link> elements for interlanguage link information

body:
On 11/14/05, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> I was pointed to this section of the HTML 4.0 spec ("Notes on helping
> search engines index your Web site") at W3C recently:
>
>         http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
>
> I was specifically interested in this section, which I quote in full:
>
>         Specify language variants of this document
>
>                 If you have prepared translations of this document into
>                 other languages, you should use the LINK element to
>                 reference these. This allows an indexing engine to offer
>                 users search results in the user's preferred language,
>                 regardless of how the query was written. For instance,
>                 the following links offer French and German alternatives
>                 to a search engine:
>
>                 <LINK rel="alternate"
>                          type="text/html"
>                          href="mydoc-fr.html" hreflang="fr"
>                          lang="fr" title="La vie souterraine">
>                 <LINK rel="alternate"
>                          type="text/html"
>                          href="mydoc-de.html" hreflang="de"
>                          lang="de" title="Das Leben im Untergrund">
>
> I think it'd be useful for most multilingual MediaWiki installations
> that use interlanguage links to have such hidden <link> elements. <link>
> elements aren't rendered in most browsers (Mozilla 1.5+, I think, will
> show links in a menu on the toolbar), but as mentioned they do provide
> some guidance to bots and spiders.
>
> The downside is that they still take up network bandwidth, and for
> oft-interwikied pages on big sites (e.g. Wikipedia) this section could
> run to the 5-10kB size range. (My off-the-cuff estimate for, say,
> articles where each <link> is about 100B, and  there are 50-100
> interwiki links.)
>
> Barring objections I'm going to add a feature to HEAD to render these
> <link> elements, controlled by a variable $wgInterLanguageLinkElement ,
> default to false.

Great, and it should default to false because non-wikimedia sites
often use the "on other languages" bar for something that isn't a link
to other languages at all. But it should definitely be there on
Wikimedia sites.

B.t.w. better links would have been:
* http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd
* http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization/abstraction.html

Since we use the XHTML transitional spec, what you did appears to be
perfectly valid in XHTML 1.0 Trans. as well, except that you have to
write <link ...> not <LINK ...> as with all XHTML elements, also it
appears to be recommended to include xml:lang="" as well as lang="".
*


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Assumptions about westerners

body:
OK, now you're just spewing anti-Western rubbish. I am an opponent of
colonialism. End of discussion.

Mark

On 14/11/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> Mark, I was very angry while I was thinking that you are much older
> then you are. But, when I realize what was me in your age, I can say
> that you have great advantage to become a good and qualitative person
> in the future. You are an important member of Wikipedian community,
> you are working a lot and with good faith and I am sure that you would
> become just more and more important community member through the time.
>
> In the most of my emails your behaviour was just an example which I
> used to show others what is wrong in community. I don't think that you
> are a dangerous person (as I thought while I was thinking that you are
> much older), but older persons who are better organized then you can
> be real thereat to the community.
>
> The idea about Wikipedian community is to grow up and to be
> independent of Jimbo's power to decide what is right in the moment
> when community doesn't have any response. Community should grow up and
> I am talking about this. I could send an email to Jimbo with the words
> "Jimbo, please stop the parody about Zlatiborian!", but this is not
> the right way for solving problems. Because the problem would not be
> to have Zlatiborian Wikipedia, the problem would be to have a number
> of tries of making non-existing language Wikipedias. And this is the
> matter of community, not the matter of constant Jimbo's decisions.
>
> On 11/14/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> > Your mails sound good in theory at a number of occassions.
> > But your theories are often impossible realities.
>
> Maybe I am asking too much, but I would try it :)
>
> And I would use Mark as an example once again, but, Mark, this is not
> about you personally.
>
> When Mark says: "This has to be done in this way and it should produce that",
>
> 1. "This has to be done" means that Mark is young;
> 2. "in this way" means that he has "colonialist arrogance"; and
> 3. "it should produce that" means that Mark is Westerner.
>
> (To be clear: A lot of other cultures are also aggressive such Western
> is. But, I am not now talking to Aztecks nor to Hutus nor to
> Balkanians. I am talking now on the list where Westerners are great
> majority for sure.)
>
> The third part is Walters "sounds good in theory", too :)
>
> What about people who don't want the same as Westerners want?
>
> So, all of us should think a lot before any step made from the power
> position. This power can be factual, but it can be "social", too.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
>From: Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>
>
>On 11/14/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > Forks are not intrinsically evil; as I've always understood it, the
>ability
> > to produce forks is supposed to be one of the _strengths_ of the GFDL
>and
> > other free licenses.
>
>The best thing being, of course, that we can have the stuff back when
>they're done with it. ;=)

Assuming it's in a form that conforms with our polices...

Jay.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
ABCD wrote:
> Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
> are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
> although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
> something be done about this?
>

Apart from serious abuse of the <blink> tag? :)

Change [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] to "From Wikipedia, the Free
Encyclopedia that anyone can edit (just click on ''edit this page'')"?

Put [edit] next to the first section headings (there's a bit of
javascript on [[WP:US]] that can do this)?

Read http://rinkworks.com/stupid/ for a laugh and resign ourselves to
the fact that no matter what we do, some people will NEVER "get it"?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Ben Yates

body:
Sure, but wikipedia succeeds where forks like Wikinfo didn't (What's
Wikinfo? Exactly.) for the same reason that betamax and Ebay's competitors
failed: the more people use a particular format or site, the more useful
that site becomes, the more people want to use it.

Why shouldn't Wikipedia have an exhaustive entry on the Heavy Metal Umlaut?
It's not like it's taking up space that we can't spare; hard drives are
cheap.

There might be a time when forks will work well, but that'll be several
years from now, when the user base is much bigger and there are better
sofware interfaces and visualizations to sort through the differences
between the forks.

Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rating system simplest form

body:
I'd oppose an "elementary-school-safe" rating; it'll just make it more
tempting for vandals to insert obscene material into high-rated articles.

Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com

On 11/9/05, Thomas Haws <tom.haws at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I assume the rating system will have a form something like the following
> in
> the user interface? Simple is best.
>
> This is an exemplary encyclopedia article: 0000000000000 Reduce Agree
> Increase
> This article is elementary-school-safe: 000000 Reduce Agree Increase
> This version of this article is trusted: 00000000 (Automated rating)
>
> Or in HTML:
>
> This is an exemplary encyclopedia article: 0000000000000 Reduce Agree
> Increase
> This article is elementary-school-safe: 000000 Reduce Agree Increase
> This version of this article is trusted: 00 (Automated rating)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 11/14/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of facts, so not every
> single bit of information gets in. We are first and formost an
> encyclopedia, not a data dump.
>

I agree (with the above quoted, and the part trimmed away).

What should differentiate Wikipedia from a specialised Wiki is (a) our
standards for NPOV, NOR, attribution, etc etc and (b) our intended audience.

A specialised Wiki - e.g. Memory Alpha - can assume a different audience
than we do. From what I've read of their (often very good) content, they
assume an audience of Star Trek fans.

They can also have different content policies than we do - e.g. dkosopedia,
where bias is fine and NPOV is not a policy.

What I have a problem with is the (stated or unstated) view that 'if we
allow articles on topic X, how will anyone take us seriously as an
encyclopedia?'

I don't see anything wrong with Wikipedia having a very well-written
coverage of Pokemon, for example. Written for a general audience,
comprehensive, NPOV, properly sourced, with no copyright violations - it
would be quite worthwhile.

We should not be embarassed by the wide variety of topics we cover. We
should only be embarassed of BAD ARTICLES.

-Matt


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: foundation-l Digest, Vol 20, Issue 35

body:
Wikijunior has only been registered in case all this squabbling ends, and a
static version of the Wikijunior line of Wikibooks can be posted at this
domain.

Had everybody waited around, Wikijunior's recognition as a name would have
increased, and commercial entities would have likely registered it and held
it hostage.

Simply put, your interpretation of it being bypassing standard procedures is
silly. Danny's original proposal to the Beck Foundation stated Wikijunior as
an encyclopedia, whose best articles would be published as "an extensive
series of topical pamphlets". Along the way, it got skewed a bit, away from
a kids Wikipedia that publishes books, into a Wikibooks project. Never has
it intended to be something radically different, inbetween the two.

Nick Moreau
"Zanimum"

On 11/14/05, foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org <
foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> There is all this talk about how useful Wikijunior is. There is a domain
> for http://wikijunior.org (try it if you don't believe me).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 11/14/05, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
>>are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
>>although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
>>something be done about this?
>
>
> Is the problem really that they can't find it, or just that they don't
> know what it means? I remember seeing that link in early 2003 and I
> had no idea at all that it actually meant *I* could edit that page,
> though luckily I tried it anyway. :)
>
> I don't know how to get across to people that they actually can edit
> Wikipedia without introducing instruction creep onto every page. The
> link is already expanded from the default "edit" to "edit this page"
> and it now appears in bold text. I think the issue is more the concept
> of an editable website that is difficult - not the format of the link.
>

Having been an internet forum regular since 2000, the concept of being
able to edit stuff on webpages (your own posts) wasn't exactly new to
me, but the concept of being able to edit things written by other people
*was*.

The earliest I remember finding Wikipedia was about July 7, 2004 (I
saved the pages) - even back then, it said "Edit this page". I probably
found a few {{stub}}s too, which would have helped.

Hrm, we need more stubs! :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
Because that's what it was: anti-Western rubbish. He made blanket
statements about Westerners, etc., etc., etc.

Just because some people didn't understand the problems with blocking
open proxies in Thailand, does not mean _nobody_ understood. If you'll
recall, I supported what you said back then...

And I really wouldn't consider his e-mail thoughtful. It was a pile of
rubbish about what is wrong with Westerners, and by extension me, etc.
etc etc

Mark

On 14/11/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >OK, now you're just spewing anti-Western rubbish. I am an opponent of
> >colonialism. End of discussion.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> Mark .......
>
> You just do not know when to stop don't you. Milos send a thoughtfull
> email and what do you react with? With this rubbish?
>
> Waerth/Walter
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
On 14/11/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> When Mark says: "This has to be done in this way and it should produce that",

Find me a single occasion on which I said that something _had_ to be
done in a certain way.

I've certainly said things that I think should be done, or that I hope
will be done, but never that _have_ to be done.

For example, I said that I _hoped_ that the sr:, hr:, and bs:
Wikipedias could merge eventually. I didn't say "It must be done".

These are problems with YOUR interpretation, NOT with me.

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
<snip>
> The earliest I remember finding Wikipedia was about July 7, 2004 (I
> saved the pages) - even back then, it said "Edit this page". I probably
> found a few {{stub}}s too, which would have helped.
>

Oh yes, the main page text - "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia that anyone can edit" - probably helped too.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [Wikitech-l] sr.wiki has been waiting for months!

body:
Hi everybody,

Representatives of the Serbian Wikipedia have asked a number of times
how they can get their conversion engine installed for sr.wikipedia.

1) It was approved in a vote by Serbian Wikipedians
2) It will make Wikipedia more usable to many people, including most
Montenegrins
3) It does not require any new software; rather it is a fully working
Mediawiki component already.

Now, so far there has been no response from this community.

Please, somebody, respond -- how is it that the Chinese Wikipedia got
a conversion system implemented as soon as it was written, but the
Serbian Wikipedia is waiting and waiting and waiting?

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki-to-XML

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>The website seems to be completely broken:
>
>Warning: set_time_limit(): Cannot set time limit in safe mode in
>/home/www/ww4553/html/wiki2xml/w2x.php on line 8
>
>Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by
>(output started at /home/www/ww4553/html/wiki2xml/w2x.php:8) in
>/home/www/ww4553/html/wiki2xml/w2x.php on line 64
>REDIRECTMetasyntactic variable
>
>
Sorry, I forgot my hoster insists in safemode :-(

Should be fixed now.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wiki-to-XML

body:
Frando wrote:

> Hello,
> while testing the latest CVS version locally, I got 2 "only variables
> can be passed by reference"-errors in lines 231 and 232 of
> wiki2xml.php (im using php 5.0.5).
>
> This is a well-known problem of scripts written for older php versions
> and ran under php 5, the solution is quite simple:
>
> lines 231 and 232 of the recent CVS version of wiki2xml.php:
> $target = array_pop ( explode ( ">" , $target , 2 ) ) ;
> $target = array_shift ( explode ( "<" , $target , 2 ) ) ;
> and my modified version that runs under php 5:
> $target = array_pop ( @explode ( ">" , $target , 2 ) ) ;
> $target = array_shift ( @explode ( "<" , $target , 2 ) ) ;
>
> apart from this the produced results seem to be quite good, I'll do
> some further testing in the next days..

Applied, thanks!

Magnus


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I rather pay someone who is willing to be accountable and who we can
therefore expect to be responsible.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/14/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Chris,
>
> > As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
> > information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
> > a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
> > checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?
>
> On Wikipedia, they're valued, trusted volunteers.  In real life, they're
> employees being paid to assume their responsibilities.
>
> Volunteers like Sean and Kelly are valuable: they put in the equivalent
> of an employee's work without the financial outlay.  Asking them to also
> put their arses on the line is more likely to drive them away than
> increase our security.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Status of Wikimedia

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I'm very sympathetic to all these points.  I don't have an easy answer
>to what to do, and kicking language fanatics off the mailing lists isn't
>exactly our normal style.  I do think we need some serious reform of our
>language policy to end what I see as an ongoing drive to reclassify
>every dialect in the world into a standalone language.  I do think we
>need to be much more severe about closing down unwatched spam traps.
>
>And so on...
>
>Each person's list of things like this will be slightly different, but
>the overall point is that I am beginning to sense a need with the
>community for us to turn inward, to change some of our very open
>policies which lead people to endless new-project proposals and
>new-language speculation.
>
>
Would it be useful to separate discussion of new projects (incl.
languages) to a separate mailing list?  It's currently taking a
disproportionate amount of general mailing list traffic (particularly
wikipedia-l and foundation-l), so discussion of improving existing
Wikipedias tends to get lost in the mess.  It's also a frequently
recurring topic that doesn't seem like it will be going away anytime soon.

Of course, there is a danger that only a self-selecting and
non-representative group would subscribe to such a mailing list, but
perhaps that could be ameliorated by notifying wikipedia-l or
foundation-l when there has been some major debate or an action about to
take place, ideally with summaries of the discussion posted on meta.
That way the wider community could participate in a decision without
being subjected to the more detailed (and constant) discussion of
languages and dialects.

(I don't pretend this is an ideal solution either, especially since it
adds to the proliferation of mailing lists, but the benefits seem to me
to outweight the downsides.)

-Mark


body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 11/14/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>>And "The Encyclopedia of Chicago," "The Star Trek Encyclopedia," and "Oh,
>>Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" are not part of any comprehensive
>>encyclopedia either, nor should they be.
>>
>>
>
>I only half-agree here.  The single focus of these works should not be
>in Wikipedia in terms of selection and treatment, but there is no
>reason why many of the subjects covered in these could not be in
>Wikipedia.
>
>
I agree---I don't necessarily think a million Pokemon pages are the most
useful thing on Wikipedia, but I don't see why it *hurts* anything to
have them either.  I do think a lot of the reason for specialized
encyclopedias doesn't apply to Wikipedia: 1) They tend to be produced by
different, specialized companies; and 2) They have space constraints.
Wikiprojects can mimic (1) without actually forking, and (2) doesn't apply.

-Mark


from_name: David Gerard

body:
I've removed Lysdexia from the list. They posted a rant ending in a
personal attack, which I rejected, and they couldn't see where the
personal attack was and made further ones. Too bad, IMO.

If I'd read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Lysdexia earlier it
would have happened a lot sooner. Note the progression with time.

- d.


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:

> From Wiktionary:
> Mentor: 1. A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
>
> It's the Mentorship Committee, not the "Parole Officer Committee."

You know, this only works in the probationed editor actually wants to
cooperate and improve. Many of them don't.

When a person messes up the first time, we try to explain to them what
they did wrong so they can behave better in the future. If that
doesn't work, we try again. And again. Eventually, it goes up to RFAr.
To my mind, most people who made it all the way to RFAr and got a
decision against them (a months-long, difficult and painful process)
already had more than enough opportunities to reform. If being on
probation still isn't enough, and they continue the bad behavior, they
shouldn't be met with even more patience and understanding. I am happy
that Wikipedia is so open, but I think this would be going too far.

Probation, then, serves as a blanket license to treat transgressions
more harshly because of past history. It doesn't mean that the
probationed editor is being granted a mentor to "teach" them the ways
of the Wiki. It means "shape up or ship out" -- and as ugly as it is,
there are some people who have to be dealt with this way, or we will
never get anything done.

Ryan
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translations between different wikipedias, and GFDL

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> For translations the previous version should be stated in the section
>entitled history. The most straightforward way to do that would be to add a
>section entitled history to the article itself. One could argue that this
>requirement is met by simply adding a note in the edit summary, but this is
>a somewhat tenuous argument.
>
Why is this a tenuous argument?  There *is* a section entitled
"history", viewable by clicking on the "history" tab at the top of each
article.  I don't think the GFDL requires the sections to all be in the
same physically-transmitted HTML file...

-Mark


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Mon, 2005-14-11 at 08:32 -0800, Evan Martin wrote:

> What problem is this change trying to fix?

It's not trying to solve any problem. There's a standard mechanism in
HTML for specifying an alternate version of a document in another
language; theoretically using this standard mechanism would help some
MediaWiki-ignorant bots and spiders to find alternate language versions
and "understand" the relationship between them.

>   I'm not sure I see the
> pros outweighing the cons...

I can see that. The pros are theoretical; the cons are more concrete.
I'm of the opinion that if you follow Web standards, Good Things Happen
(TM), but I don't have any proof that that's the case in this instance.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: <link> elements for interlanguage link
	information

body:
On Mon, 2005-14-11 at 20:09 +0100, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> >         Specify language variants of this document
> >
> >                 If you have prepared translations of this document into
> >                 other languages, you should use the LINK element to
> >                 reference these.
>
> Would be good if articles on the different projects were translations.
> Most of the time, although they are about the same subject, the articles
> are differents.

Yes, that's true. It's not clear how literal a translation an alternate
document in another language has to be, though. Is the article about
George Bush on Wikipedia fr: an "alternate in another language" to the
one on Wikipedia en:? I'd say it's about as close as possible without
being a translation.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: [HelpDesk-l] print version collaboration]

body:
On 11/14/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> This isn't the only one of these; there have been several others about
> CD and print versions...
>
> Quick! How long before 1.0 is available???
>

A year maybe. It depends how much support the 1.0 project gets.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
On 11/14/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimbo wrote:
>
> That's absolutely and incredibly not true. They write a verifiable
> article about something they know, get abusive comments on AFD (for
> some reason, civility and assume good faith don't work there ... the
> reason AFD is so damn poisonous to the community is that it blatantly
> encourages participants to assume *bad* faith) and *leave*.
>

That would be unusal. More likely they will simply be ignored. Most
stuff that lands on afd is not implicetly verifiable.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
Arkady Rose wrote:

>There are enough accusations of major decision-making being made by
>"secret cabals" already as it is; this is just one more thing to
>substantiate such suspicians and conspiracy theories.

It's more a case of people using a handy real-time communication
mechanism to resolve a problem quickly. In this case it's potential
upside without much downside, and you can be sure lots of people will
be watching them like hawks.

Most, if not all, of the accusations of cabalism are spurious. You'll
also see a lot more of it on this list than is warranted, as wikien-l
is pretty much the official sewer for en:. The listadmins are a lot
nicer about letting people kicked off the wiki or ignored on the wiki
complain here.

Not everything should go through committee committees to form a
committee on the committees before someone can do something. We got a
taste of this with the checkuser issue just recently, where we slogged
through bureaucratic swamps for weeks, finally reached a decision,
then the stewards decided it'd be a fine idea to start the entire damn
discussion from scratch. Bureaucratic instruction creep.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Ryan Delaney wrote:
>
>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>>Jack Lynch wrote:
>>>
>>>>I personally am perfectly willing to pay a fee for expert adminship.
>>>>Have you seen the recent fund-drives? I've never donated money (just
>>>>time) to the wikipedia, but I would for paid admins I could trust.
>>>>
>>>
>>>You mean yourself.
>>
>>
>>Haha. How much do you think the Foundation should charge for
>>bureaucrat status?
>>
>
> cf. a post to the list a few weeks (months?) ago:
>
> "Dear sirs, I want to be an administrator, how much will this cost?"
>
> (Can't remember the exact words or email or anything...)
>

Aha, found it: it was on helpdesk-l :)

(name suppressed) wrote:
> Hello, I am thoroughly impressed with the Wikipedia
> project.
>
> May I ask, would it be possible to receive an
> administration account in return for a sizable
> donation?
>
> Free flowing information is the way of the future, and
> I intend to make my mark.  Please respond as soon as
> possible, Thank you kindly,
>
> (name suppressed)
>
>

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
geni wrote:
>On 11/14/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> That's absolutely and incredibly not true. They write a verifiable
>> article about something they know, get abusive comments on AFD (for
>> some reason, civility and assume good faith don't work there ... the
>> reason AFD is so damn poisonous to the community is that it blatantly
>> encourages participants to assume *bad* faith) and *leave*.

>That would be unusal. More likely they will simply be ignored. Most
>stuff that lands on afd is not implicetly verifiable.

Case where this happened really badly: webcomics. We now have a
project fork, Comixpedia, entirely caused by AFD. You may recall
extensive discussion surrounding this on this list a few weeks ago.

- d.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Of Pokemon and baseball

body:
Brown, Darin wrote:

>Good lord, can we listen to ourselves?? Since when does any one person have
>the moral authority over deciding what topics are "serious" or not? The
>articles stand as they are, many are written pretty well, and that's that.
>Prompting people that they should spend their time on more "serious"
>endeavors seems to serve no practical purpose.
>
>
Hear hear! There was a wonderful little article in the Onion a while
back (that I can't find online via Google any more, alas) titled
something along the lines of "Walking Star Trek Encyclopedia Made Fun of
by Walking Sports Encyclopedia" in which a stereotypical sports-obsessed
guy made fun of a stereotypical Trekkie for not "having a life". But
there was clearly a one-to-one correspondence between their obsessions;
the sports guy memorized endless pointless statistics about players
while the Trekkie memorized pointless statistics about fictional
characters, the sports guy dressed up in his favourite team's jersey
while the Trekkie wore a Star Fleet insignia, sports guy went to
playoffs while Trekkie went to conventions, etc.

Practically _every_ topic can have "-cruft" appended to the end if you
ask the right person. I once saw a VfD for a transuranic element's
article with the justification given that the subject was "sciencecruft". :)


body:
I would change that to "much of the time".

On the larger Wikipedias, there is some overlap, and on many small
Wikipedias, a large portion of the articles are translations (mt.wiki,
br.wiki, are examples)

Mark

On 14/11/05, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > I was pointed to this section of the HTML 4.0 spec ("Notes on helping
> > search engines index your Web site") at W3C recently:
> >
> >         http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
> >
> > I was specifically interested in this section, which I quote in full:
> >
> >         Specify language variants of this document
> >
> >                 If you have prepared translations of this document into
> >                 other languages, you should use the LINK element to
> >                 reference these.
>
> Would be good if articles on the different projects were translations.
> Most of the time, although they are about the same subject, the articles
> are differents.
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
> http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
> IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
On 11/14/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Case where this happened really badly: webcomics. We now have a
> project fork, Comixpedia, entirely caused by AFD. You may recall
> extensive discussion surrounding this on this list a few weeks ago.
>
>
> - d.

You relise I don't view the existance of Comixpedia (other than their
choice to use CC) as a bad thing. Wikipedia needs these subject
specific spinoffs. I hope to see more of them.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty"

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I agree---I don't necessarily think a million Pokemon pages are the most
>>useful thing on Wikipedia, but I don't see why it *hurts* anything to
>>have them either.
>>
>>
>
>Considering the world wide profile of pokemon I think your example sucks.
>
>
But there is no requirement on Wikipedia that there be a "world wide
profile" for our topics.  Plenty of our topics, especially on scientific
subjects, are interesting only to a handful of specialists.  There's no
reason not to have these.

-Mark


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
That people may risk death for the sake of knowledge should at least
be honored by their being considered to be part of reality.

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 1:36 PM, Carbonite wrote:

>  I think perhaps we're getting a little melodramatic here. I was
> under the
> impression that we're here to write an encyclopedia, not fight
> oppression.
> If the former happens to lead to the latter, that's a great bonus.
> My point
> was that it's up to the user to protect himself. If a slip of an IP
> address
> will likely lead to harsh punishment, the risk of editing is almost
> certainly too high. I'm NOT saying that we should be careless and
> expose IP
> addresses, but to treat this as a matter of life and death is
> unnecessary
> rhetoric.
>  Carbonite


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML and subpage support on internal wiki needed

body:
Could somebody add HTML and subpage support on internal wiki? I just posted a
huge HTML doc there that needs to be subdivided. Right now it is a mess.

Thanks in advance. :)

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
OK, I stand corrected. But I do think instances like Star Trek, which have a
huge obsessed fan base, are the exception rather than the rule.


body:
Also, I don't think the star trek and kos wikis are technically forks, even
if they do use mediawiki.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
On 11/14/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> Absolutely not. It is a fact that an article is being
> kept in a location against the explicit rules in the
> MoS but a vote of users of one particular language,
> many of whom seem intent on putting their defence of
> that language above Wikipedia's own rules.

The rule is explicit.  The way it should be enterpreted in this case
is not.  The most common English name should be used.  Some people
consider C?te d'Ivoire more common, some consider Ivory Coast more
common.  If you stopped seeing things as black-or-white,
right-or-wrong, you might find this whole issue easier to deal with.
Both are acceptable, and the amount of debate this *minor* issue has
had is absurd.

Sam


from_name: David Newton

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource Copyright

body:
I've recently been in a discussion on the Wikisource website and I
would like some definitive answers about the licence that the text of
Wikisource is under and also about the policy with respect to fair use
on Wikisource. I've posted this question here as there is no dedicated
Wikisource mailing list that I can find.

The copyright issue has come up over the text of UN resolutions, many
of which are on the Wikisource website, and also with the British Act
of Parliament the Hunting Act 2004. The former are placed on the site
under "fair use" despite the fact that the copyright info page of
Wikisource says that fair use should not be resorted to for texts
except in exceptional circumstances, and then only for quotes. There
are hundreds of resolutions placed on the site, and the UN certainly
claims copyright over its works if their website copyright notice is
anything to go by. The British Act of Parliament is under Crown
copyright as it was passed in 2004. There is a waiver on copyright of
British statutes allowing them to be reproduced pretty freely, but it
does have conditions that are incompatible with the GFDL. On
Wikisource the rather dubious claim is also made that foreign statutes
and court decisions are not subject to copyright at all in the United
States. I agree with them that statute law in the US means federal
government works are not under copyright and that case law probably
means local and state government laws and decisions are not under
copyright, but that does not extend to foreign laws.

Given the above I have two main questions:

1. Is Wikisource subject to the same text licensing rules as
Wikipedia, ie GFDL, public domain or GFDL-compatible text?
2. What is the position on fair use at Wikisource?

David Newton


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource Copyright


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Boycot

body:
>...you're making a lot of assumptions about "Westernernes".
>
He is not making a lot of assumptions about Westerners. He is saying the
truth. Just to hark back to the blocking of my provider by wikipedia a
few months ago. Suggestions were made to me by some very well regarded
wikipedians that clearly showed that they had no idea whatsoever as to
what it is like to life in a country which is not their own. Yes in
England etc. those suggestions would have made sense. But in Thailand or
most other countries they do not. Most people on this list and in
wikipedia clearly think from a western background and show that they do
not understand that the reality/situations in most countries on this
planet differ from the realities they grew up with/in. And I am saying
this as a Westerner. Milos is hitting the nail on the head.

Every day here in Thailand I see Westerners, even those whom lived here
for more than 25 years, making total asses of themselves. Offcourse the
tourists can be forgiven ... partly. But many people should know better.
and when you tell them they should respect some things. Even highly
educated westerners would answer that they see the Thai way as inferior
and that they feel they should change to become more Western (read the
send in letters sections in the nation newspaper on the internet these
statements appear in there regularly bitching about everything in
Thailand: www.nationmultimedia.com) . To all Brits forgive me for saying
this ... but they are especially irritating ... most Brits that I know
here from very highly educated ones with very responsible jobs down to
your beer belly tourist feel that everyone who doesn't speak English has
some mental defficiency and is second rate. This is not just a mentally
problem over here, but also in the west. As I told my friend once: "with
a pension, social security, healthcare and never having suffered from
disease, hunger or anything it is very easy to criticize other countries
and other cultures ..... isn't it?" (this is an ironic statement which
might not come through as it was translated from Dutch and I am not a
native English speaker).

Mark it is you who doesn't know what he is speaking about. You might
have a lot of knowledge gained form reading books etc. But it is all
theoretical knowledge. You do not have any practical knowledge. You are
looking at your own field in absolutes through rose colored glasses, not
thinking about or having feelings for the somewhat different realities
in real life. Your mails sound good in theory at a number of occassions.
But your theories are often impossible realities.

Walter/Waerth


subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
Having invented Wikipedia:Probation, let me say that yes it is ugly,
the alternative was often banning. Probation will amount to banning
sooner or later if they keep up whatever they were doing. However,
successful change, with help from whoever is willing to offer it is
also contemplated.

Fred

On Nov 14, 2005, at 3:17 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote:

> Probation, then, serves as a blanket license to treat transgressions
> more harshly because of past history. It doesn't mean that the
> probationed editor is being granted a mentor to "teach" them the ways
> of the Wiki. It means "shape up or ship out" -- and as ugly as it is,
> there are some people who have to be dealt with this way, or we will
> never get anything done.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 14/11/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:

> Absolutely not. It is a fact that an article is being
> kept in a location against the explicit rules in the
> MoS but a vote of users of one particular language,
> many of whom seem intent on putting their defence of
> that language above Wikipedia's own rules.

...wait a second. Unless I misread that talk page, the majority of the
voters on both sides are Anglophone - I recognise many of the names. I
fail to see how this is "a vote of users of one particular language
... intent on their defence of that language". Unless that language is
English, of course.

Unless I've become part of the grand Francophone conspiracy, along
with a good number of native English speakers I recognise voting on
there, it's hard to read this sort of complaint as anything but a
bad-faith accusation and an attempt to circumvent a process to obtain
consensus *which you yourself initiated*. If you will resort to
voting, please have the common decency not to try and undermine it
when you dislike what the community seems to be saying.

As Sam says below, this is an issue of interpretation of a clear and
sensible rule which is, in this case, ambiguous. We had the same over
Gdansk/Danzig, over Gasoline/Petrol, over Alumin(i)um, a score of
other pages. I have no doubt that a sizable proportion of people on
both sides of those disputes knew for a fact that they were right
about their preferred usage being vastly more common, and quoted
specific searches to prove it.

(History, of course, records that at least half of them must have been wrong.)

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


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>We simply can't include every webcomic in the world.
>
This is an unsupported assertion. We can include every hamlet and
township in the US, every sportsperson to play professionally, every
ship in the navy, and every music album published by a record label. Why
not every webcomic? A few thousand articles will vanish like a drop into
the sea of Wikipedia if you're not interested in the subject.

>To avoid people
>using Wikipedia as a promotional vehicle we have to use inclusion
>guidelines to keep in stuff that deserves an article - highly popular
>(verifiably so) webcomics with a not so small run - and stuff that
>doesn't deserve an article - your average Joe site with 4 comics, a
>dead forum and no Google or Alexa rank because they don't have
>visitors.
>
>
You can include an article about a small, defunct comic without
promoting it. It just depends on how the article's written.

>Of course, Google and Alexa aren't everything, but if those can't be
>gauged to determine a comic's audience, we need the author to provide
>the information by other means. If the audience can't be verified it
>doesn't belong on Wikipedia.
>
>
Verifiability is indeed an important consideration, but separate and
different from the "notability" one that's usually named instead in
these cases.


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This isn't the only one of these; there have been several others about
>> CD and print versions...
>>
>> Quick! How long before 1.0 is available???
>>
>>
>
> A year maybe. It depends how much support the 1.0 project gets.
> --
> geni
>
>
*COUGH* _article ratings_ might help 1.0 arrive a bit sooner...

-- Neil
>
>
>


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] FYI: Summary of the Zurich meeting (Wikimedia CH)

body:
A summary of the 13th November meeting in Zurich (main topic: discussion of
foundation of Wikimedia CH) may be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CH/Meeting_Zurich_13_November_2005#After_the_meeting:_Summary
in English, German and Alemannic.
Regards
Michael

--
An eternity is very, very long, especially towards the end


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Help needed for helpdesk-l

body:
On 11/14/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> We definitely need some sort of ticketing system since this is getting
> ridiculous (164 unread messages and at least a couple hundred messages
> in the moderation queue).  If possible I'd suggest something that's
> easier to use then the bugzilla system but unlike the OTRS system it
> should be something that is open and that anyone can jump in and help
> on.  It should also be something that's easily ticket based and
> searchable so that people can pull up old requests if they want.

This sounds to me like a good use of PHPbb.  I am strongly against the
use of this for general Wikipedia talk, but it seems a useful idea for
this case.  I'll host a test forum on my own server if this would be
appreciated.  Does the Foundation have a problem with using this
software?

Sam


from_name: Brown, Darin

subject: [WikiEN-l] opinions

body:
Geni said:

>>You appear to think that respecting you means that I have to respect
your opinions. This is not the case.

You appear to think that respecting someone's opinions means you have to
agree with their opinions. This is not the case. It is possible to disagree
with someone's opinions and still respect their opinions. Saying that you
respect someone, but you don't respect their opinions is just empty
posturing.

darin


from_name: Peter Shaw

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
On Monday 14 November 2005 13:48, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Peter Shaw wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > or <Standard Mac Browser>
>
> Safari. But don't forget all the Linux web browsers! Konquerer etc.

The point kinda was, that people who can cope with a linux desktop, will be
able to figure out how to use wikipedia. But perhaps it?s true that the
filtering would have to be by distro as well.
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