subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia timing out

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 20:39, James Duffy wrote:
> > Wiki is getting increasingly frustrating to use. I have gone
> through three
> > browsers and each in turn has had to be abandoned because wiki is
> so slow
> > any attempt at contact times out. Since the new logo was
> introduced the
> > situation has become impossible. Is it a co-incidence already
> existing
> > problems have become even worse since our new large logo was
> introduced?
>
> Hmm, let me think -- is it a miniscule increase in bandwidth usage?
>
> Or is it more likely to be related to a complete rebuild of the
> system
> with new parts which haven't been thoroughly tested and some of
> which
> don't fit right and are temporary until new bits can be bought?
>
> It's *gotta* be the logo. Yeah. Must be it.

Made me think of an interesting way of slowing down vandals and such:
 Throttle bandwidth on their IP to verrry slow...

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

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Committe volunteers requested

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:
> >Could people please write to me privately to volunteer for mediation
> >and arbitration committees?  You can't be on both, but please indicate
> >your willingness to serve on mediation, arbitration, or either, and
> >your preference, if any, so that I may make some selections based on
> >what people are willing to do.
>
> Ugh. In my opinion this is a bad idea. The way I was thinking about the
> committees is that they'd be chosen more or less at random on a regular
> basis from a pool of volunteers.

Well, the big problem I see with this concept is that it isn't like we
have an excess of volunteers.  I'm looking for around 11-15 people for
each of arbitration and mediation.  That's 22-30 people.  If we had
300 volunteers, then rotating frequently and randomly would be
interesting to be sure.

Another disadvantage of randomness is that some people will be better
at this than other people.  I think that voting will help guide us to
better selections in the long run, and provides a popular check on
power that randomness might not.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [cynjus@earthlink.net: Copyrighted material on
	Wikipedia]

body:
Jimbo said:

This should be studied and addressed ASAP.  There's a kind offer here
to let us use the material with attribution, but that's not something
we can do under the GNU FDL and our policies on such things.

Ok, Angela has edited this page back to a stub, but page history still
brings up the material. Should it rather be deleted then a new article
written? In this case can it simply be deleted without discussion or vote?

Fred


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Ok, Angela has edited this page back to a stub, but page history still
> brings up the material. Should it rather be deleted then a new article
> written? In this case can it simply be deleted without discussion or vote?

It'd be o.k. to delete it without discussion or vote.


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> > This should be studied and addressed ASAP.  There's a kind offer here
> > to let us use the material with attribution, but that's not something
> > we can do under the GNU FDL and our policies on such things.
>
> Doesn't the FDL require attribution to a certain degree? Something like
> ''Originally based on ... by ..., licensed under the FDL'' should be OK.

Oh, yes!  I was not clear enough.  The original author did not release
under GFDL, but did offer to let us use it with attribution.  Since
that person probably doesn't even know (yet) about GNU FDL, we can't
take such permission as the more general permission to edit,
redistribute, etc.

If someone says "You can put this on your website as long as you
attribute it to me" they have not given us enough permission, because
we would only have permission to use it, verbatim, not to make and
distribute derived works under a copyleft license.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyrighted material on Wikipedia

body:
user_Jamesday wrote:
> Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested
>attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the
>evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be
>useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.

The mailing list archives serve that purpose well enough.  It's better
to just delete it, because in the future someone might peruse the
history and think "Oh, look, this article used to say thus-and-so, and
now it doesn't, so I'll revive it."


from_name: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk

subject:
[WikiEN-l] An excellent resource to learn about mediation and
	arbitration

body:
An excellent resource to learn about mediation and arbitration:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >Please edit the reference as you see fit here:
> >http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&action=edit
> >
> That's sneaky.  If he comes on and even makes a simple minor edit he
> will implicitly be giving permission under FDL

Well, I'm sure it wasn't meant that way.  And of course we'd never
try to do something like that to someone.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Please edit the reference as you see fit here:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&action=edit
>
That's sneaky.  If he comes on and even makes a simple minor edit he
will implicitly be giving permission under FDL

Ec


list: textbook-l

from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject:
[Textbook-l] turning an image into a usable hyperlink in wiki
	books

body:
On 03-10-2003, KNOTT, T wrote thusly :
> I don't normally reply "me too" to a message but I would like it as well for
> a different purpose. I'd like to put up a multiple choice question in the
> form "Which  of the following diagrams/graphs best represents bah blah blah"
> then when users click on one of them, take them to a correct answer, or
> incorrect answer page.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Wick [mailto:karlwick at yahoo.com]
> Sent: 02 October 2003 18:31
> To: text
> Subject: [Textbook-l] turning an image into a usable hyperlink in wikibooks
>
> On my organic chemistry textbook I would like to have the
> feature of having a little icon up in the corner of the
> editable part of the page that takes the reader back to the
> table of contents page. Is this possible to code ? How ?
> Right now if you click on an image it takes you a page
> about that image. How can I change this destination page to
> be the contents page for my book ?

Hi all,

I think this is the right time to discuss wikibooks' needs for changes in
Wikimedia software.

Basicly there are at least three types of content:
* textbooks
* courses
* wikipedia-like annotated texts
and we will at some point (now ?) need some software enhancements.

Besides we might benefit from some editor tools like navigation, multiple
choice tests and quizzes, easier tables, annotation etc

Probably it would be best to contact Wikimedia software developers team and
ask them for help. Eventually we might try our coding skills ourselves ;-)

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Civility as a workable rule (for Abe)

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I suggest rereading ?Posting old
> message - formatted
> this time!? at  which  explains why we shouldn?t
>realistically expect much civility on this issue,
> which clarifies my points to all the concerns you
> raised.

First of all Abe, the message came in fine the first
time.
Second, Ill *note the points you didnt reply to.

You still say "we should'nt really expect much
civility on this issue?"  What???  Since when is the
Wikipedia community under any obligation to forfeit
its principles-- the first being strive for NPOV,  the
second (in my mind ) simply demands reasonable degree
of civility towards others.  Even if 'civility' is
just an informal rule, its the only term that can
apply and its the only reasonable way to delimit
acceptable conduct from the unacceptible.  We can't
ask people to love, honor, obey, or even respect
another, but we have every right to demand civility.
If you are saying that there are people who will,
under certain circumstances, blow their top entirely--
what exactly are you saying that is new or relevant?
Such people suffer the unbearable lightness of being,
and I say, 'welcome to the club.'

That you are saying that basic principle should be
bent for sake of this one particular political issue--
is not reasonable. In life. would you suggest that the
Ten Commandments be altered as well?  "Don't
steal?"--"Go ahead", "Dont covet your neighbors
wife--"Go ahead".  "Thou shalt do no murder"--"Oh why
not." These are *universal* principles, codified in
different way and in different languages-- just like
civility is a reasonable principle for WP. Again, you
can't seriously be demanding there be a loophole in
our core principles--for uncivil behaviour, in
connection to particular political conflict. First,
you only want the loophole to apply to the pro-Israeli
side!  Second... well... its just beyond me that
anyone could take you seriously.  RK's departure
represents a change in tone-- and a last obstacle to a
more formal and widely acceptible policy of civility
is removed. In case you handnt read the list-- a great
many 'pedians are fine with his exit, and have some
reason for it.

I understand your basic point (as silly and willy
nilly as you came around to it )-- you're essentially
making a wholistic concept analogy, advocating that WP
be open to all communicable infermities--that it will
have some developed resistance to them.  This may be a
meaningful analogy to vandalism, (ie soft security),
but not to treating newbies with POV problems.  People
change-- I for one was under some misconceptions when
I first logged in-- ( via Sensei's Library, > Meatball
>WP ) that POV had to be dealt with with some gusto.
But anyway, I changed-- and some of this change comes
from some straigtforward discussion with some rather
clear thinkers-- Slrub, Danny, LDan, etc.  RK has had
no beneficial personal change on me, save building my
resistance to BS.  Consider that in your thesis.

> However, I?m of no faith and this is a rude remark
> when directed toward  anyone in general.

Abe, I understand this, and most will agree with you.
But when I refered to your Faith, I knew nothing of
your particular Faith, save that you are a human
being, who no doubt at times needs to look outside of
your finite concepts and confines for guidance.  Thats
all I meant by it.  "Consult Faith, whatever it is."
If you claim to have none, then I, as a fellow
agnostic should like to remind another fellow agnostic
that we're really not as "faithless" as we like to
pretend.

That you understand the inherent contradictions of
ethnicity and religion is something that many others
dont-- and I'm glad you stated such. But again--
civility has nothing to do with ethnicity or religion,
save that religion has traditionally been the guardian
of principle.  Refer back to paragraph 1 for the
continuation.

Like LDan said, even my "correct" POV is not in itself
NPOV.  This takes some getting used to for everyone--
which is why its extremely important that people have
some clarity in their discourse-- that we can
communicate NPOV to newbies right away-- that they can
at least start to work it into their heads.  Beyond
that, everyone should already know what civility is,
unless you're insane, deliberately partisan
(pretending you dont know), or a feral child-- in
which case, simply logging on might be a miracle in
its own right.

> First, don?t conflate this often-ambiguous
> collective identity with an
> ethnic one. It is not an ethnic or racial identity,
> and only a nationality
> within the context of Israeli citizenship. If one
> were forced to use an
> ethnic identity, you could note that most Jews
> (although there are converts)
> have Semitic lineage.

Of the three, religion, ethnicity, and nationalism--
you picked the most meaningless one to me.  Somewhere
in an very old law book is a little line about
'nations being merely "dust" before G-d.'  I (semi)
quote it because its old, and couldnt put it better,
even though I cant remember it exactly.

> Third, you state that I suggest that I ?consult my
> faith? rather than  ?consult[ing]? the history of
> US-Middle East foreign
> policy? if [I
> am]looking for metaphorical solutions.?

I suggest that you appeal to higher principle, in
other words.

> and this ?Jewish
> ethnicity? (which is utterly meaningless- use a
> dictionary and find out why
> this is a contradiction of terms),

I understand the inherent contradictions-- I disagree
that its meaningless at all. Even in the sense that
your ethnicity has a political reality has some
meaning-- that you are not at all religious or think
yourself 'faithless' is nothing I would take any joy
from.

> now Sv?s accusing me of opposing
> a ban on RK [because?] I share his views on
US-Middle > East foreign policy!

No, I dont think we share views-- you were just
claiming that the Iran-Iraq war was a good example of
US manipulations and statecraft.  I hardly agree-- nor
can anyone with any real appreciation for the value of
a human life agree that politically engineering such a
perversity is in any way desirable.

> I admit, my normative views of the
> Israel-Palestinian matter are more
> agnostic,

By 'agnostic'--I take it you mean "political and
nationalistic" Fine --As long as we understand each
other. ;-)

> and opting for the less provocative one of
understanding
> and comparison.

Comparison is a meaningless word with human beings.
Have you ever read the Desiderata -- dont compare
yourself to another-- it either makes you bitter with
envy, or vain with gloating? Of coure nobody reading
that has any idea how it relates to the discussion of
civil behaviour on WP. I grok you though, Abe.

> I'm not going to speak as  a partisan of either
side. Nor
> would I be qualified; I?m not a Mid East
specialist.

Nor would it help anyone. Partisanship is the source
of that whole mess-- it will never be its solution.

> In short, I support RK?s role; I don?t stand by his
> often-sketchy work.

This is directly in contradiction to what *others have
said-- that RK's work was stellar, and that his "role"
was sketchy disrespectful.  I understand that you see
RK as kind of an e-coli bacterium--nasty, but
necessary for digestion. Its silly as hell, but thats
your essential argument. Now re-frame your case-- this
time, for an single individual bacterium-- that some
here might see exactly how silly it is.

> And if you don?t want RK at your throat on the
> Middle East articles, just
> wait until your buried under the avalanche that you
> wanted to create.

I'll defer to what Anthere wrote on this one. You did
understand her, eh?

>The  minute the balance, tone, evidence, and analysis
of
> the articles sees a
> minor, ostensibly trivial shift, just wait for the
> irate new RKs to flood
> the site in droves, lambasting Wikipedia for a lack
> of neutrality.

Again, you claim that RK and "people like him" know or
care what neutrality is, and that NPOV is gone without
him.  He did not, they do not, it is not.  Partisans
of all tribes will be treated as partisans-- their
comments will be framed as partisan terms.  That they
may want their partisan terms called "NPOV" is their
partisan business, and myself knowing that 'their
"correct POV" is not NPOV'-- will have nothing of it.

> They?ll start attacking you from every direction and
at
> once, and making your job
> even harder. And you?ll then realize that it
> would?ve been far better to
> deal with the devil you knew, rather than the new
> ones you don?t.

Abe why not just go ahead and include the term
"Nazipedia" in your headers?   Your last email on
'Nazi sociology' and all that nonsense completely
missed the point that RK's use of the term to apply to
the 'whole Wikipedian community' was beyond
ridiculous.   I hope you realize that now.  I can only
imagine that it was 4 in the morning, and your pencil
was'nt exactly at its sharpest, when you wrote it.

With all due respect
to all those my senior,
~S~

"Love, peace and harmony,
Oh very nice very nice
very nice very nice very nice
But maybe in the next world...."
-English poem

"Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging...."
-American poem

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at joey.bomis.com> wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > Ok, Angela has edited this page back to a stub,
> but page history still
> > brings up the material. Should it rather be
> deleted then a new article
> > written? In this case can it simply be deleted
> without discussion or vote?
>
> It'd be o.k. to delete it without discussion or
> vote.

Does cynjus *want* his text to be at wikipedia, or
does he just allow it? If he wants his text there, I
don't think we should delete it.
LDan

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Another milestone (not)

body:
>> Google knows more than a million pages containing 'wikipedia'.
>> (Oct 4: 1,010,000)

> Strange; oct 4, 10:37 UTC
> Google finds "1,610,000 pages containing 'wikipedia'
> And whit google.be i have sometimes 1,730,000 hits

Oops, I forgot my preferences: show only pages in English and Dutch.
Sorry

Erik Zachte


body:
Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.

The history is not a great concern. It's not intended to be part of the publication. Only the current Wikipedia page has that intent and that will remain true so long as search engines don't index the history pages. Something which isn't intended for publication and is documenting compliance with a legal notice is unlikely to be copyright infringement.

The request has now been honored so it's time to reply to the author saying something along the lines of:

"Sorry about that. We've added the credit you requested.

Unfortunately, we will have to rewrite the article to remove your work. Our fundamental objective is to create an encyclopedia all or part of which can be used for any commercial or non-comercial purpose. Part of means that someone could edit out the credit to you. To do this we use the GFDL license (link to it).

If you feel that you are willing to license this part of your work under the GFDL, accepting the way it works, please let us know. If not, please once again accept our apologies for the inconvenience and check back in a week to ensure that the revised version doesn't infringe your rights in any way, assuming that someone removes the credit to you. If it does, please let us know what further changes are needed.

We have a page at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_military_ranks which is an index to many descriptions of ranks. We'd appreciate it if you could review any of those which may infringe your rights and let us know if any do, so that we can carry out the same process on any of them which require it.

We keep records of past versions of our articles, which aren't part of the normal publication but are available to those who specifically request them. You can see the history of this article at
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&action=history and one of the older versions at http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&diff=0&oldid=174619 . While we prefer to keep those for our records, so we can demonstrate compliance with your request, please let us know if you would like us to make it impossible for those working on building the Wikipedia to see those working documents.

Finally, if you wish to revise the article to meet your requirements, you can do so yourself at any time by clicking on the edit link at the top of that or any other Wikipedia page which has an edit link. Please note that any revised version will be released under the GFDL, so take care not to include any material which you don't want released under that license. Anyone can do this at any time, not just you, so to assist others, please include a note inside <-- and --> saying that you're the original author, giving the source page and stating that you've removed it as a copyright violation. This will help us to know that it was a deliberate change rather than one of the occasional cases of someone exploiting our open process to vandalise a page. Yes, we really do let anyone change almost any page at any time."

That addresses his likely concerns, while giving the Wikipedia as much chance as possible of keeping all useful content. And he just might like the concept and decide to produce a few pages himself...


from_name: elian

subject: [WikiEN-l] More benefits of RK's bad behavior

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I am perhaps also an exception among all those who had
> a disagreement with RK : he never said I was an
> anti-semite or a nazi ! ;-)

No, you are not an exception. Astonishingly, although I was working a lot
on the hot topics (Israeli/Palestinian and Jewish/Muslim issues), RK never
called me an ant-semite neither. only the usual "troll", "vandal", "bald
faced liar"...

To the rest of your comments, I heartily agree. Whoever supports a return
of RK should take upon himself the task and mediate conflicts and support
newbies getting in trouble with RK. It is quite difficult for a newbie to
grasp the internal structure of Wikipedia. If someone tells them to go
away, does he speak for the entire wp community?

greetings,
elian


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Uploads disabled

body:
On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 19:52:39 -0700, Vancouverguy <blairr at telus.net> gave
utterance to the following:

> Why have file uploads been disabled?
> -Vancouverguy
>
Probably because we are running on one (the wrong) server...
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] wiki software (table of contents)

body:
While we are discussing software stuff, is there a way to
configure a particular page to open with the table of
contents open or closed by default ? Or for a page to have
a table of contents generated only if it reaches a minimum
size ?

I have some smallish pages that have a couple of headers
and the table of contents seems like overkill, especially
because with the normal header that runs across every wiki
page, the actual content of the page gets pushed off the
bottom of the screen when viewed on smaller monitors.

Also the table of contents and "edit" links are showing up
in the middle of some colored tables that I did and it
messes up the clean aesthetic I was shooting for.

Overall of course the TOC is a killer feature. Are there
ways to submit it to our will though from before a page
loads ? So it shows up by default the way we want it to ...

Thanks, Karl

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from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sometimes, there is every reason to be

body:
>Btw, many romanian people speak french, don't they ?
>
>
Uh-oh, "you got me started" alert, combined with "I've got too much free
time on my hands" alert! :)

There was a very strong trend towards speaking French until the end of
WWII (quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Romania):

"Carol was crowned as the first King of Romania
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_Romania> in 1881
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1881>.

"The new state, squeezed between the great powers of Ottoman,
Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, with Slav neighbors on three
sides, looked to the West, particularly France
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France>, for its cultural, educational,
and administrative models."

After the communists came to power however, Romania stopped "looking to
the West, particularly France", and instead started looking to the East,
particularly USSR. :(

So, nowadays there aren't so many French speaking Romanians left,
although it is one of the traditional languages being taught in schools
(we learn two foreign languages during eight, respectively seven years
until the end of high school, typically an assortment of English, French
and German; I for instance studied French and English in that order, but
I speak reasonable English while being almost fully incapacitated in
French).

Incidentally, my wife speaks impeccable French, she works at Radio
Romania International (http://www.rri.ro), the French branch. Maybe I
would've spoken better French than I can, hadn't I married her: a couple
of years back we went to Paris for three weeks, and she did all the
talking, the only French words I said being "Une blanche!". :)

Gutza


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy-
> This should be studied and addressed ASAP.  There's a kind offer here
> to let us use the material with attribution, but that's not something
> we can do under the GNU FDL and our policies on such things.

Doesn't the FDL require attribution to a certain degree? Something like
''Originally based on ... by ..., licensed under the FDL'' should be OK.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Allan Crossman

body:
I think the page can safely be deleted and the stub re-inserted, since no
substantial edits have occurred since the first version we have, which is
attributed only to "Conversion script".

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


body:
> Doesn't the FDL require attribution to a certain
> degree? Something like
> ''Originally based on ... by ..., licensed under the
> FDL'' should be OK.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Yes, but AFAICT, that is supposed to be covered on the
history page in Wikipedia. This case is different,
though, but I credit could be given by someone making
an extremely minor edit and entering a note in the
description about the article's origins.
LDan

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from_name: James Duffy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The last word on RK

body:
I don't want to dig up the dreaded RK issue again, but as I was knocked off
the wikilist and so have come on with a new email account, I haven't had a
chance to comment.

1. Abe made a very useful and thought-provoking point about the useful of
having RK on wiki, if only because his virtual waging of war on anyone who
disagreed with him tended to lead people to be restrained in what they wrote
on the Israel-Palestinian issue. Unfortunately RK went way to far. Far from
being a useful restraining force he became a destructive individual who
scared people away from wiki.

2. For me the last straw was seing Robert's mucking up of the [[Mel Gibson]]
article. Robert had done it before; taken articles that were on individuals
and overloaded them with the issue of anti-semitism. But in the case of
Gibson, it hit farcical proportions. Gibson is an actor. He is known as an
actor. People would come to the page to read about the actor. But Robert, as
usual, turned the entire article into a polemic rant about Gibson's views on
jews. Yes, Gibson has what I personally regard as anti-semitic views. And
homophobic views. His views make my skin crawl. But that is no justification
whatsoever for turning the article into one big expose of Gibson's opinions
on jews, much less turning much of it into a rant about his father's views
as a Holocaust denier. As a gay man I would love to give Gibson right
rollicking over his homophobia but if I was to turn the article around so
70% was about his views on gays I would be actively disgracefully. Gibson's
personal views on any issue, no matter how repulsive, warrant no more than a
paragraph in an article primarily focused on the broad view of who Gibson
is, what his career is, what his film career is like etc. But then Robert
did this in article after article after article. And true to form, given his
hypersensitivity being such that he would read anti-semitism into the wrong
location of a comma, Robert accused everyone who tried to turn the Gibson
back into a proper balanced encyclop?dia article, of being anti-semitic and
trying to cover up the truth.

Eloquence's actions in banning Robert were 100% correct. I thought a
temporary ban was right, but having read Robert's ''nazipedia'' rant that
followed, I cannot see any reason why wiki should take Robert back. He has
caused too much offence, too much chaos, made too many outrageous personal
attacks. I don't know of a single other user whose behaviour was so
continually outrageous, who treated people so badly and yet was allowed to
go on, unbanned for so long. Wikipedia needs to ensure that no-one is ever
allowed to behave that way again. And that no-one is shown so much
tolerance. The tolerance he was shown amounted to a slap in the face of
everyone else who was bullied by him, who had to clean up his polemics, and
deal with the regular wars he triggered. He should have been dealt with
months ago. His behaviour caused more damage to wiki, and drove away more
good people, than any troll. That scale of blank cheque tolerance to one
user, and by implication toleration of his disgraceful treatment of everyone
else, must never be shown again.

JT

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] info@wikipedia.de error

body:
On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Please, could someone reactivate info at wikipedia.de? It should redirect
> to info-de-l at wikipedia.org. This is the error I got:

Someone should have said they were using wikipedia.de in mailing
addresses...

info-de-l at wikipedia.de and company should work now.

I don't see an 'info' in our list of aliases. Was there before?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] My (User:172's) response to Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> You're a bit off on the role of MAD in the collapse of the Soviet
> Union... [huge snip]

Yeah, I know. I try to keep it light. I'm not the one who brought up
MAD in the discussion. I wanted to comment on the the fact that
collapsing stalemates do not make for happy endings.

As far as the history of the Soviet Union and its transition to
Russia, I agree that what I wrote was not quite accurate.

Thanks for the links.

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

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from_name: ray at ganymede.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] access to download.wikipedia.org

body:
Hello -

I tried to download the file
http://download.wikipedia.org/archives/en/20030927_old_table.sql.bz2
and I was able to do so, but I had to re-start the download 7 or 8
times.

Is this normal?

I was using curl to do the downloading. I do not have problems
transferring other large files, though I do not often download files
this big. Am I the only one having this issue, or is it a problem with
the server itself?

thanx - ray


from_name: Martin Harper

body:
I'm assuming there's a really good reason this specific article is being discussed on
the list rather than at the relevant talk page?

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Commodore_(rank)

And a similar reason why the issue of copyvios in article histories isn't being
discussed at the cunningly named:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations_on_history_pages

And the complex process of asking GFDL permission is presumably something quite
different to that discussed at:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission

And the current community-decided process for deleting possible copyvios is
irrelevant to the process, so nobody should bother reading:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:votes_for_deletion/copyvio

Take it to the wiki pages. That way, you get to avoid rehashing tired old arguments
that have already been discussed a million times before, and boring the stuffing out
of me. Plus, there's a slim chance that way that comments will be based on the
wisdom of the ages, rather than the whims of the moment.

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


from_name: Youandme

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguagePl.php

body:
Could someone submit
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:LanguagePl.php
to CVS and then put onto the server? Please, be so kind...
This file is consistent with the stable branch of our software.
Thanks,
Youandme


body:
On Sat, 2003-10-04 at 23:15, ray at ganymede.org wrote:
> I tried to download the file
> http://download.wikipedia.org/archives/en/20030927_old_table.sql.bz2
> and I was able to do so, but I had to re-start the download 7 or 8
> times.
>
> Is this normal?

Apache's being restarted hourly on that server because we've been having
a memory leak problem.

Annoying for downloading the large backups, I know. :(

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] info@wikipedia.de error

body:
Please, could someone reactivate info at wikipedia.de? It should redirect
to info-de-l at wikipedia.org. This is the error I got:

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

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

   info at wikipedia.de
     SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:<info at wikipedia.de>:
     host wikipedia.de [130.94.122.197]: 554 <info at wikipedia.de>:
     Relay access denied

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

There haven't been any mails on info-de-l from outside since 20 days. I
hope not too many mails have gone lost.

Maybe someone of you Linux guys should set a cron job and send test
mails every week to all our contact addresses.

Kurt


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration

body:
Alex link
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/
En Francais, sur la page d'accueil, cliquer sur codes
(facile, c'est a cote des trois drapeaux francais,
anglais, espagnol)

puis cliquer sur "nouveau code de proc?dure civile"

Puis voir le livre IV, l'arbitrage

One of the things not to forget in wikipedia, would be
that the arbitration should respect a certain time.
There is a beginnning, and an end. The word END
appears essential to me :-)

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from_name: Alex R.

body:
From: "user_Jamesday" <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com>
...
>  The history is not a great concern. It's not intended to be part
>  of the publication. Only the current Wikipedia page has that
>  intent and that will remain true so long as search engines don't
>  index the history pages. Something which isn't intended for
>  publication and is documenting compliance with a legal notice
>  is unlikely to be copyright infringement.

Have you read the lively debate between Brian Vibber and myself regarding
the above? I was arguing devil's advocate the above position (it came out of
a discussion about the GFDL status of Wikilists, I think it was on the
general Wikipedia-L discussion list) and I think Brian put up a very good
fight for the position that all history pages are released under the GFDL
and thus anyone has the right to use them even after they become "outdated"
like legacy software releases. The mantra around here is once GFDL always
GFDL. Perhaps that is true. If it is, probably better to delete, but even
deletion does not matter because some downstream licensee/licensor has
probably already adapted it. . Since we can't know for sure that rationale
is:" probably" better to delete "potential" copyright infringements.

I say "probably" and "potential"  because there is also the argument that
could be used that the edit history pages are an archive that allows for
infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is usually honoured to a
high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows archives to maintain copies of
otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would also operate in such a
situation.  Is such material available under GFDL? Probably not, but once it
gets into the archive (i.e. it is a page history URL not a live Wikipedia
page url) then there are probably no damages or no infringement or both,
page histories are rarely viewed and if they are relicensed under the GFDL
it is such licensor/licensee who must deal with the problem, not Wikpedia,
there is no Wikipedia warranty included with the license (in fact Wikipedia
is not the author of any article on Wikipedia, it is a coauthorship
copyright owned by all contributors to that page).  I feel that these later
statements are the best arguments to look at regarding history pages, not
the GFDL or the copyright infringement out of publication  arguments.  So
following this lastline of  argumentation to its natural conclusion nothing
needs to be done until someone comes to a different conclusion that is
consensus.

Alex756


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Alex R. wrote:

>From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at joey.bomis.com>
>
>>With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be
>>likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at
>>first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload
>>actually demands it.
>>
>
>My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away
>the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or
>duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and
>the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic
>than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia)
>then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember
>that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of
>state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).
>
I suspect that anything bigger than a 3-judge panel could soon become
unworkable.  The RK problem ended up on this mailing list where it
produced interminable chatter without very much being accomplished
through it.  Fairness requires that the members of the panel take time
to objectively review the evidence, and produce a reasonably quick
decision.  There will also be a need to eliminate from the panel, anyone
who was previously a mediator in the matter, or who is himself involved
in the dispute.

>The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is
>not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such
>cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or
>overturned.
>
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court
is unrealistic.  Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little
chance of recovering costs.  Add to this the difficulties involving
jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have
an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.

Ray

>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at joey.bomis.com>

> With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be
> likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at
> first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload
> actually demands it.

My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away
the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or
duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and
the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic
than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia)
then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember
that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of
state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).

The only other alternative is to have the committee chosen by
some "random" process. In the SDNY judges are assigned to
cases with one of those bingo or lotto ball type cages where
the different judges are each assigned a number, so you can't
choose your judge, but neither can the other side. This is
a commonplace process in US courts.
>
> My thinking is that we will have a quorum requirement (to account for
> the fact that people go on vacation or have periods of inattention) on
> votes, but that all arbitrators will vote on all cases when possible.
>
Once again I am worried that this has less legitimacy than some
form of randomness or some ability for the accused to chose an
arbitrator so that the accused does not feel coerced into a process
in which choice has been completely removed from the user (if
the accused user is someone who is part of the process of creating
the procedure I would say that would be o.k. to submit one's will
to the committe, but at least some people who might face bans
are people who have not yet contributed to Wikipedia and thus
they will not in any way participate in this process of forming
mediation or arbitration committees.

BTW arbitrators are usually allowed to make their own rules
as long as they exhibit a minimum of fairness or due process such
as giving both sides an opportunity to makes submissions to
the arbitrators.

It is important to keep this in mind because by creating an
arbitration system you are giving a banned user the
possibility of submiting such a decision to a court of competent
jurisdiction to review and either set aside the arbitration decision
or to confirm it (sorry Jimbo even though you are almost a God
King to us all, beyond the realm of Wikipedia there are other even
greater powers that we must bow to).  Usuallyarbitration decisions
are overturned when the process is totally without reason or
it is something that the parties did not really agree to
(all the more reason to have somethiing like the proposed
Submission Standards (or Terms and Conditions in mav's
 nomenclature). Key to agreeing on arbitration is that
it is of a basic form that has some similarities to generally
accepted arbitration schemes. Such as the mutually agreed
upon arbitrator or third member chosen by first two members
and that the arbitrators also have a chance to consider
objections to the rules or create a process that has some
responsiveness to the demands of the two sides seeking
a binding arbitration decision.

Regarding the rules, yes having the whole committee vote
on those rules is a good idea.

I would point out that en banc hearings are usually reserved
for appellate bodies so this begs the question:  Are you thinking
of a two level arbitration process (i.e. a preliminary decision
by one or three arbitrators appealable to the whole committee)
before you give the final yes/no ratification Jimbo? That could
have  another added feature much like the Cour de cassation
in France the appelate body could "break" the decision and
then send it back to another panel for review (in that case
the other panel should be chosen by random).

The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is
not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such
cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or
overturned.

Alex756


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikimedia

body:
Why is the adress www.wikimedia.org redirecting to the
english wikipedia ?

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikimedia

body:
On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 02:12, Anthere wrote:
> Why is the adress www.wikimedia.org redirecting to the
> english wikipedia ?

The webserver 'larousse' (for english wikipedia and wikimedia.org) died
12 hours after its upgrade, and the database / other web server had to
take over its place until we get it fixed *again*.

It seems I forgot to copy the wikimedia.org files over. Sigh.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Regarding the contract of arbitration you may want to look
at the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure of France
(this is the English translation):
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/html/codes_traduits/ncpcatext.htm
The place to look is in: BOOK FOUR ARBITRATION
art. 1442 and following to art. 1507.  It is interesting
to note that the arbitration proceedings in France are
viewed as being an [[adversarial]] proceeding (for those
of you who thought that French procedure was only
based upon the [[inquisitorial system]] now you know
otherwise). Here is the link to the original text in
French:
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/RechercheSimplePartieCode;jsessionid=114h7etCy4r4ozkk12vFtiAem71qk5UQpXTpNP5o4MPq94KAPh5W!898887499!iwsspad1.legifrance.tours.ort.fr!10038!7002!856080096!iwsspad2.legifrance.tours.ort.fr!10038!7002?commun=&code=CPROCIV0.rcv

Laws throughout the world on arbitration:

http://www.jmm.rubikon.pl/pag/?section=prawo.arbitrazowe

This provides a link to laws around the world that are
in relation to arbitration. I know that the intro text is
in Polish and this is not a Polish discussion list, but
the list at the bottom of that page is pretty comprehensive
and many of the links are in English.

Reference legal  publisher regarding arbitration:

http://www.kluwerarbitration.com/arbitration/arb/rules/RulesofInternationalInstitutions/

This is a good link for the rules of various international bodies (remember
that
Wikipedia is a multinational undertaking even in English).  It is necessary
to
get a 14 day free trial to use that site (otherwise it is about $2000 a
year) though
many of the links are free.

On line North American arbitration site:

http://www.cacniq.org/en/arb_enligne_gutilisation.htm

This is an organization in Quebec (of which I have no particular
association)
that has developed a recognized online arbitration program. I suggest you
have a look at the rules to get some idea of the nature of arbitration (
this
is specifically adapted to Quebec law, but Quebec arbitration law is
generally
in accord with UNICTRAL). It also has rules in Spanish and French so some
European contributors can read these versions for greater comprehension.

Once again I must stress that while mediation can be fairly flexible and
organized in a willy nilly way you should be concerned about certain
fundamental structural issues in arbitration so that it ends up being
binding.
(Would Wiikipedia want an arbitration procedure that could be overturned
outside Wikipedia? i hope not!)

Short of setting up an internationally recognized arbitration body it is
probably
best to be a bit flexible on allowing the accused person to pick an
arbitrator
to their liking (within reason and certain minimum standards of competence).

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Don't know why that link to the French code de procedure civile was so long
in the instant post:

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/RechercheSimplePartieCode?commun=&code=CPROCIV0.rcv

Alex756


from_name: Chong Yidong

subject: [Wikitech-l] Math is dead again.

body:
TeX markup is not working again. Looks like the same old problem. Is
there any way to stop this from happening every once in a while, or is
it somehow unavoidable?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Math is dead again.

body:
On 4 Oct 2003, Chong Yidong wrote:

> TeX markup is not working again. Looks like the same old problem. Is
> there any way to stop this from happening every once in a while, or is
> it somehow unavoidable?

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump#TeX_niggles?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stevertigo

body:
--- "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> I say "probably" and "potential"  because there is
> also the argument that
> could be used that the edit history pages are an
> archive that allows for
> infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is
> usually honoured to a
> high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows
> archives to maintain copies of
> otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would
> also operate in such a
> situation.

Got boilerplate?

~S~

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from_name: Abe Sokolov

body:
You're a bit off on the role of MAD in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The structural problems, and the macroeconomic imbalances, while not evident
until the 1970s, predated the Cold War. The underlying problems were not the
product of the Cold War, but the Cold War did reinforce them, and did pose
obstacles to any timely reform. If you want you can read my sections on this
in the Wiki articles on Soviet history.

The "East", in many respects, had been behind the "West" for centuries.
Russia was left competing with all the advanced capitalist countries put
together in a bloc (the UK, W. Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, etc.),
and the USSR certainly had to devote a far higher share of its resources to
military expenditures. Its military-industrial complex had to be privileged
over the consumer economy, and reform was for practical purposes was
contingent on marginalizing this sector.

Thus, I don't understand why you'd confuse the mechanisms that limited the
Cold War to proxy wars; and attempts to buttress geo-political influence
through political, diplomatic, and economic means; to the underlying causes
of Russia's troubles today. If you want, there's a lot of information about
this in the Wiki article on the history of post-Communist Russia.

-Abe Sokolov (aka User:172|172)

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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Jimbo sez?
>> With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be
>> likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at
>> first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload
>> actually demands it.

Alex R sez
>My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away
>the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or
>duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and
>the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic
>than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia)
>then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember
>that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of
>state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).

The usual procedure is for each party to a controvery to pick one
arbitrator, the two arbitrators picked then pick the third.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Sometimes, there is every reason to be

body:
> From: Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Sometimes, there is every
> reason to be
> >Btw, many romanian people speak french, don't they
> ?
> >
> >
> Uh-oh, "you got me started" alert, combined with
> "I've got too much free
> time on my hands" alert! :)

Well, perhaps your wife then ? :-)

> There was a very strong trend towards speaking
> French until the end of
> WWII (quoting from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Romania):
>
> "Carol was crowned as the first King of Romania
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_Romania> in
> 1881
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1881>.
>
> "The new state, squeezed between the great powers of
> Ottoman,
> Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, with Slav
> neighbors on three
> sides, looked to the West, particularly France
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France>, for its
> cultural, educational,
> and administrative models."
>
> After the communists came to power however, Romania
> stopped "looking to
> the West, particularly France", and instead started
> looking to the East,
> particularly USSR. :(
>
> So, nowadays there aren't so many French speaking
> Romanians left,

I know several Romanians who emigrated in Belgian or
France. Especially scientists who could not find
necessary resources to go on with their research about
10/15 years ago. Two of them live 6 months there, and
6 months in Antwerpen now.
One of my co-worker wife is also from there. She is
currently struggling with paperwork :-(
And of course, we had many poor people who came to
France in the 90ies. I do not know really if they
succeeded to stay and find their way, or if they were
sent back :-(

Usually, they manage in french.

>Incidentally, my wife speaks impeccable French, she
>works at Radio
>Romania International (http://www.rri.ro), the French
>branch. Maybe I
>would've spoken better French than I can, hadn't I
>married her: a
>couple
>of years back we went to Paris for three weeks, and
>she did all the
>talking, the only French words I said being "Une
>blanche!". :)

Well, that is an important word :-) Along with "ou
sont les toilettes s'il vous plait" :-)

Cough, cough

Could not your wife write us a couple of article on
Romania ?

Look : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roumanie

This is *absolutely* shameful given the long
relationships between our two countries.

Don't you think ?

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body:
From: Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Sometimes, there is every
reason to be

>> Could english people please *stop* creating new
>> articles for a couple of days ?

>If wikipedia continues to be completely uncontactable
>as it is for me
>this
>morning, you will have your wish :-) But If it is
>unreachable then I
>guess
>fr can't make new articles either.

Seems we are in the same bath

>> What about 2/3 days when all of you make an effort,
>> and head to your second favorite language
wikipedia,
>> and create a few ones for the press release to be
>> correct ?

>Although I got ridiculously high marks in my school
>French exams, you
>really wouldn't want my attempts at writing it :-)

We have a contributor who is mostly contributing in
english, so...

>> How many do we need ?
>
>At least 11,000 across all languages other than en.
>(en had 161,000
>yesterday)

Well, except for a bot, we have no chance then.

It seems everything is heading for a big crash again :-(

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
> Hi all,
>
> I think this is the right time to discuss wikibooks'
> needs for changes in
> Wikimedia software.
>
> Basicly there are at least three types of content:
> * textbooks
> * courses
> * wikipedia-like annotated texts
> and we will at some point (now ?) need some software
> enhancements.
>
> Besides we might benefit from some editor tools like
> navigation, multiple
> choice tests and quizzes, easier tables, annotation
> etc
>
> Probably it would be best to contact Wikimedia
> software developers team and
> ask them for help. Eventually we might try our
> coding skills ourselves ;-)
>
> Regards,
> Kpjas.

Why should there be different types of pages? I think
it would be better if all of the formatting was
available to all pages. A quiz might reside on its own
special page, though.
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] RK - various

body:
> *Axel wrote:
> >I have ended the temporary ban on RK.
>
> I don't think that was a good idea. The last thing
> we
> need is block/unblock wars. There was a lot of
> objection to the EofT ban, but it would be very
> wrong
> for any sysop to simply go and unblock the account.
> Regards,
>
> Angela.

The EofT ban and the RK ban were completely different.
The EofT ban was discussed and the RK one wasn't even
mentioned until he was banned.
LDan

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from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sometimes, there is every reason to be amazed

body:
On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 08:08:40 -0700 (PDT), Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> gave
utterance to the following:

>
> Could english people please *stop* creating new
> articles for a couple of days ?

If wikipedia continues to be completely uncontactable as it is for me this
morning, you will have your wish :-) But If it is unreachable then I guess
fr can't make new articles either.
>
> What about 2/3 days when all of you make an effort,
> and head to your second favorite language wikipedia,
> and create a few ones for the press release to be
> correct ?

Although I got ridiculously high marks in my school French exams, you
really wouldn't want my attempts at writing it :-)
>
> How many do we need ?
>
At least 11,000 across all languages other than en. (en had 161,000
yesterday)
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 13:28:34 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at joey.bomis.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> > This should be studied and addressed ASAP.  There's a kind offer here
>> > to let us use the material with attribution, but that's not something
>> > we can do under the GNU FDL and our policies on such things.
>>
>> Doesn't the FDL require attribution to a certain degree? Something like
>> ''Originally based on ... by ..., licensed under the FDL'' should be OK.
>
> Oh, yes!  I was not clear enough.  The original author did not release
> under GFDL, but did offer to let us use it with attribution.  Since
> that person probably doesn't even know (yet) about GNU FDL, we can't
> take such permission as the more general permission to edit,
> redistribute, etc.
>
> If someone says "You can put this on your website as long as you
> attribute it to me" they have not given us enough permission, because
> we would only have permission to use it, verbatim, not to make and
> distribute derived works under a copyleft license.
>
In which case, have you replied to him explaining our license constraints
and asking if he is prepared to accept them? (Saying that we will of
course remove the material if he doesn't).

--
Richard Grevers
Wikikarma: created [[spirula]], learned how to revert vandalism properly


body:
On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 13:52:41 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at joey.bomis.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> user_Jamesday wrote:
>> Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested
>> attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the
>> evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be
>> useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.
>
> The mailing list archives serve that purpose well enough.  It's better
> to just delete it, because in the future someone might peruse the
> history and think "Oh, look, this article used to say thus-and-so, and
> now it doesn't, so I'll revive it."
>
Hopefully they won't if the history shows the comment "article removed at
copyright owner's request"
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Joachim Kerschbaumer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User:Jimbo_Wales/Pushing_To_1.0

body:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Pushing_To_1.0#What_should_be
_excluded_??IS_THIS_SERIOUS??

Hi Jimbo, You have this 1.0 Page as subpage of your Userpage. So, when I
have read it, I thought, this are mostly your Ides / Ideas supported by you.
But someone added things without signing, so it looks like this are your
thoughts. I think it is important to understand/separate what "you" think
and what other users think.

Thanks for any ideas to solve this problem,
Joachim :-)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Richard Grevers
>> How many do we need ?
>>
>At least 11,000 across all languages other than en.
>(en had 161,000 yesterday)

Actually it is /much/ closer than that when you also include the UseMod wikis:

En.Wikipedia: 161,813
All others:       158,895
TOTAL:           320,708

Numbers based on October 1st count here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics
(please check my math somebody!)

But even if the non-English count passed the English one in the last few days,
it would be very schizophrenic and confusing to say in the press release;
1) we have reached 300,000 articles (MediaWiki count)
2) there are now more articles in other languages than in English (MediaWiki +
UseMod count)
3) there are 162,000 articles in English

That just does not add up!

Better, IMO, to wait for the MediaWiki + UseMod 1/3 of a million milestone.
That count includes all Wikipedias and it would then not be confusing to say
that there are more articles in other languages than in English.

The 300,000 figure is getting a bit stale anyway with all the
hardware/performance delays. IMO, the issue will be moot by Wednesday the 7th
anyway, since that marks a week since we hit the 300,000 "milestone" - stale
(and not really correct) news by that point.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The last word on RK

body:
JT wrote:
>1. Abe made a very useful and thought-provoking point about
>the useful of having RK on wiki, if only because his virtual
>waging of war on anyone who disagreed with him tended to
>lead people to be restrained in what they wrote on the Israel-
>Palestinian issue. Unfortunately RK went way to far. Far from
>being a useful restraining force he became a destructive
>individual who scared people away from wiki.
>...

I tend to agree. My first bad experience, in fact, with another user on
Wikipedia, was with RK over such an article. Luckily I was already hooked on
this crack pipe otherwise known as Wikipedia, so I just dealt with it (Larry
also helped to defuse the situation by neutralizing the disputed article -
which I thought was hopelessly POV against Palestinians). Since that time I
have refrained from doing any substantial work on these articles other than
reverting vandalism or fixing really bad formatting/organization.

It would still be a real pity if RK never came back; when he actually worked
in his area of trained expertise (biology) we made excellent to superior
contributions.

Many of us know a lot about certain controversial things that we may be /way/
to biased to write neutrally on. I for one, find it very difficult to write
neutrally for articles on homosexuality even though I know a lot about the
subject (from biased sources, of course), so I tend to stay away from making
substantive changes to those articles.

I wish RK could do the same thing with Israeli-Palestinian articles....

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Karl wrote:
>While we are discussing software stuff, is there a way
>to configure a particular page to open with the table of
>contents open or closed by default ?

_NOTOC_ prevents a TOC from being displayed at all. There is currently no way
to force a TOC to display minimized other than clicking "hide".

>Or for a page to have a table of contents generated only
>if it reaches a minimum size ?

3 headings are needed before a TOC is generated.

>I have some smallish pages that have a couple of
>headers and the table of contents seems like overkill,
>especially because with the normal header that runs
>across every wiki page, the actual content of the page
>gets pushed off the bottom of the screen when viewed
>on smaller monitors.

Perhaps the problem is that you are creating too many headers? ;-) Properly
constructed small pages usually don't need more than a heading or two.

There was some initial talk about creating a _TOC_ tag that could then be
placed where the author saw best to place it (including in a left or
right-aligned table or div), but I don't think that was ever implemented
(can't test it right now since the database server is down).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Textbook-l] turning an image into a usable hyperlink in wikibooks

body:
Karl wrote:
>On my organic chemistry textbook I would like to have
>the feature of having a little icon up in the corner of the
>editable part of the page that takes the reader back to
>the table of contents page. Is this possible to code ?
>How ?

At [[Image:Ethane3D.png]] create this redirect:
#REDIRECT [[Organic_chemistry:_Contents]]

>Right now if you click on an image it takes
>you a page about that image.

This is the correct and expected behavior of every image on MediaWiki. Turning
an image description page into a redirect is hackish and non-standard. Just
insert an explicit link to the table of contents.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject:
[Textbook-l] Hard-coding of "Next" and "Previous" navigation links
	is a bad idea

body:
Hard-coding of "Next" and "Previous" navigation links is a bad idea, BTW. What
happens if you want to reorganize your book or add a new module in-between
two existing ones? It is better, IMO, to just have a link to the book's
contents page and start page. The "Next"/"Previous" functionality should be
done by the software, but that hasn't been coded yet (our developers have
other, far more important things to work on right now).

See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide for an example of
how I think Wikibooks should be implemented until we get the WikiBook
functionality into MediaWiki. Numbered modules are also a bad idea for
similar reasons.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
From: "Stevertigo" <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>

> > I say "probably" and "potential"  because there is
> > also the argument that
> > could be used that the edit history pages are an
> > archive that allows for
> > infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is
> > usually honoured to a
> > high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows
> > archives to maintain copies of
> > otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would
> > also operate in such a situation.
>
> Got boilerplate?
>

Check the photocopy machine in any  public library in the
USA.

Here is one that is used by the U of Mass:
http://www.lib.umassd.edu/SPpages/copy.html
If need be it can be adapted to be posted on the
page histories if consensus so decrees.

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>

> The usual procedure is for each party to a controvery to pick one
> arbitrator, the two arbitrators picked then pick the third.

You can check my original post, that is what I first suggested.

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Copyrighted material on Wikipedia

body:
Martin,

Yes, there's a good reason it's being discussed here. While I can't currently read them again, as I recall them, the other articles discuss what to do if some Wikipedia user thinks that there is a possible infringement. If a copyright holder objects to something, that's a different situation and the time thresholds are short - less than 24 hours to "expeditiously" respond to a DMCA infringement complaint unless there's a willingness to risk losing that safe harbor. That's why the talk page for the article isn't the right place for this.

This discussion is producing material which can update the general GFDL permission request with form letters to handle cases where an author requests credit and perhaps where a DMCA takedown notice is received.

Once the Wikipedia is available again the talk page could handle any further discussion.

I'll add some suggested changes to the copyvio and GFDL articles when I an get to them. Then the usual process for those pages can handle sorting out what to do, off the list.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>

> The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court
> is unrealistic.  Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little
> chance of recovering costs.  Add to this the difficulties involving
> jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have
> an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
>
The cost would not be expensive and there are "summary" procedures
that allow arbitration awards to be reviewed at very low cost. Reviewing
arbitration awards is not a full blown law suit under the laws of most
jurisdictions.

Stating over and over that no one is ever going to sue is not a good
rational
way to deal with the issue and then suddenly find the whole matter in front
of a judge. It would be much more proactive to prevent the problem before
it occurs.

Regarding jurisdiction I don't think it is difficult to contemplate that the
jurisdiction is anywhere anyone who is involved in the case may be (unless
we clearly create a juridiction locus in the "contract" between users (and
don not assume one already exists, it just needs to be codified).

Regarding witnesses, usually they are not necessary in an arbitration.
There is a writen record (it will be created by email, IM files, and
wikipages). It is this record that will be presented to a court of competent
jurisdiction (as opposed to exclusive jurisdiction). In other words
reviewing arbitration  proceedings is often a type of "appeal"
procedure, it is based on the record of the arbitration, though the scope
of appeal is often limited (see art. Article 1484 of the French code de
procedure civile:

Where, following the distinctions drawn under Article 1482, the parties have
renounced to a right of appeal, or where they have not expressly provided
for this right in the arbitration agreement, a review to vacate an
instrument termed arbitral award may nevertheless be brought albeit contrary
stipulations to the same.
The same shall lie in the following cases:

1? where the arbitrator has ruled upon the matter without an arbitration
agreement or where this agreement is null or has lapsed;

2? where the arbitration tribunal has been unlawfully constituted or a sole
arbitrator unlawfully appointed;

3? where the arbitrator has ruled upon the matter contrary to the assignment
given to him;

4? where the adversarial principle has not been respected;

5? in cases of nullity as referred to under Article 1480;

6? where the arbitrator has acted in contravention of a rule of public
interest.

There are always going to be ways that arbitration can be appealed,
especially
if it is done in a manner that is contrary to the principles of fundamental
justice.

I should point out that in France arbitration appeals are broadly
entertained under article 1482:
The arbitral award shall be appealable save where the parties have renounced
to an appeal in the arbitration agreement. However, it is not open to appeal
where the arbitrator has been appointed as an amicable compounder, save
where the parties have expressly provided for this right in the arbitration
agreement.

This is not true in a lot of other jurisdictions were the review of arbital
awards are based upon something
similar to the rule expressed in art. 1482, see for example the rules in NYS
under art. 75 of the
CPLR (Civil Practice Law and Rules) (too long to reproduce here).
http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=16&a=55

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] [cynjus@earthlink.net: Copyrighted material on Wikipedia]

body:
Ec wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>Please edit the reference as you see fit here:
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&action=edit
>>
>That's sneaky.  If he comes on and even makes a simple minor edit he
>will implicitly be giving permission under FDL

No he won't and I'm surprised you would even suggest I would be so diabolical
to begin with! (I am a mastermid -INTJ- but I use those powers only for good)

He would only be promising that what he wrote for that diff was under the GNU
FDL. That would not affect his text that was copied by somebody else without
his permission.

--mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Copyrighted material on Wikipedia

body:
Alex756,

> >  The history is not a great concern. It's

> Since we can't know for sure that rationale
is:" probably" better to delete "potential" copyright infringements <

If the article had gone through many revisions and much of it was not infringing it would be less clear that deletion was a good course. Losing the history with a delete and creating the article from the pieces which didn't infringe would lose the history of the non-infringing gradual construction of the page and risk losing that defence against a bogus infringement claim based on accidental resemblence to some other document. Not such an issue in this case because the history is insignificant. I don't want to see delete as the method for all cases, though.

To see how Google handles this, take a look at http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=kazaa&btnG=Google+Search and follow the convenient link they provide to the takedown notice, which includes the content they have been asked to take down, effectively making it available again. That's approximately what the history pages here do, though I agree with your archive argument and suggest also that the history is a working document and not part of the current publication, which is the Wikipedia itself, not the history of every page in every version. That's well illustrated by the many sites making the Wikipedia but not the history available.

Sounds as though you and I and Google agree that it's not likely to be problematic (you wrote "probably no damages or no infringement or both") and the only potential disagreement is in how far to go to reduce the chance of a suffering a lawsuit which will fail on its merits but still cost money.  Personally, I'm inclined to think that anyone taking action against the Wikipedia will generate strongly negative publicity for themselves and that the risk of that will significantly inhibit baseless legal action. Besides, it might be cheap publicity as long as its settled in the very early stages ... AFTER the Wikipedia press release and Jimbo Wales TV appearances about it.:) Settlement offer along the lines of "$1 as far more than your demonstrable losses and you don't have to explain to the court and the ethics committee why you're wasting the resources of the court".

Still, if Jimbo is more comfortable with a delete, he's the one other than the contributor who is most likely to be hit by legal action and his comfort level matters so long as that remains true.

It might be useful to downstream users to keep a clear log of what we've acted on to deal with actual copyright infringement notices, to help them know tha thtey have pages which are likely to attract legal attention. We're also lacking, so far as I know, a page listing the people we've contacted for permission and what the result was, so we can avoid making repeated requests for the same thing. Think its worth creating them?

Yes, I've read the history page discussion. I generally agree with the view expressed by Brian Vibber, that anyone may choose to use any revision of the Wikipedia they wish, or any combination of revisions and derivative works based on them. That's not inconsistent with the intent to have the current Wikipedia as the currently published document. The history is really just our working document available as part of the process of constructing the actual work.

Where I disagree is in cases like abuse or personal information about themselves which private people contributing to the Wikipedia (rather than public record about public figures) want removed. While it's true that they were once published that way, it's socially good to assist people with removing such things, including ceasing to make them available through the history. Yes, someone could have the page and it would be GFDL, but it's still socially good for Wikipedia to stop distributing it, to inhibit further distribution. Our removal also makes it a bit easier for them to pursue a right of privacy action against whoever is harassing them, though I wouldn't like to speculate on their chance of success.

I don't agree that talk pages or the mailing lists need to be under the GFDL. I think that gets in the way of frank discussion and isn't necessary. A narrower licence, "GFDL but only within the Wikipedia project and for the purpose of that project", suffices for them and doesn't get in the way of researchers, who have ample fair use rights for the purpose.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Copyrighted material on Wikipedia


from_name: Daniel Herding

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tables' cellpadding being ignored

body:
Hi,

This bug has been reported & fixed earlier:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-August/005582.html

Now someone has changed the Cologne Blue stylesheet again and brought
the bug back:

When you create a table and use the cellpadding tag to make sure that
the text doesn't stick to the table border, the Cologne Blue
stylesheet ignores this setting (screenshot in posting linked above).

It can be fixed by changing cologneblue.css:

When you remove all paddings from #article TD and #article TH,
cellpadding information isn't ignored anymore, and 1 pixel is used as
default by most browsers.

So please change

-------------------------
#article TD {
         PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 10pt;
PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; COLOR: black; PADDING-TOP: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana,
Arial, sans-serif
}
#article TH {
         PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 10pt;
PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; COLOR: black; PADDING-TOP: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana,
Arial, sans-serif
}
-------------------------

to

-------------------------
#article TD {
         COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif
}
#article TH {
         COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif
}
-------------------------

Thanks
Daniel


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyrighted material on Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 23:30:32 +0100, Martin Harper
<martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk> gave utterance to the following:

> I'm assuming there's a really good reason this specific article is being
> discussed on
> the list rather than at the relevant talk page?
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Commodore_(rank)

1) because Wikipedia has been totally unavailable all morning (it's back
now)
2) because wiki pages are actually hopeless for conducting a threaded
discussion which is easy to follow, and in this forum there is no chance
of someone changing what you write.
3) because as soon as there are more than 2 people actively engaged in
discussion on a talk page, the chances of hitting an edit conflic seem to
rise rapidly towards 100%.
>

> Take it to the wiki pages. That way, you get to avoid rehashing tired
> old arguments
> that have already been discussed a million times before, and boring the
> stuffing out
> of me. Plus, there's a slim chance that way that comments will be based
> on the
> wisdom of the ages, rather than the whims of the moment.
>
The need to avoid edit conflicts tends to make people write more hastily
on talk pages, IMO. And this forum is archived.
What I'm saying is, let's look at an impoved system for talk pages. Maybe
we could retain a wiki-style talk page for low-level comment, but have the
option to switch to some sort of threaded forum once discussion becomes
active?
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
I tried posting this I did does not seem to have gone
through.
Alex756
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Copyrighted material on Wikipedia

> From: "Stevertigo" <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
>
> > > I say "probably" and "potential"  because there is
> > > also the argument that
> > > could be used that the edit history pages are an
> > > archive that allows for
> > > infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is
> > > usually honoured to a
> > > high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows
> > > archives to maintain copies of
> > > otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would
> > > also operate in such a situation.
> >
> > Got boilerplate?
> >
>
> Check the photocopy machine in any  public library in the
> USA.
>
> Here is one that is used by the U of Mass:
> http://www.lib.umassd.edu/SPpages/copy.html
> If need be it can be adapted to be posted on the
> page histories if consensus so decrees.
>
> Alex756
>


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Alex R. wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> >The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is
> >not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such
> >cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or
> >overturned.
> >
> The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court
> is unrealistic.  Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little
> chance of recovering costs.  Add to this the difficulties involving
> jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have
> an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
>
IANAL, & this is a US-centric view, but I'd go further & say that the
possibility that a court would even hear a case like this is unrealistic.
As I understand what we are talking about concerns simple banning --
whether or not someone could contribute to Wikipedia for a definite or
indefinite period of time. And I doubt that as long as Wikipedia is a
volunteer activity -- where no one is making any money from contributing --
any court would find merit in hearing the case.

And if there was some conceivable tangible advantage to being a contributor
or editor (e.g., a clear pattern of contributors to Wikipedia being hired
to, say, a publishing job), by that point I'd expect we have hammered out
some kind of predictable pattern for how people get banned -- other than
the vague "this contributor does not play nice with others."

Geoff


from_name: Björn Lindqvist

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What if?

body:
Now that WP is once again down (which is bad cause I was in an editing
mode) I'm getting a little worried about one thing. What if Bomis gets
infected by an evil virus or there is a major power outage or one of the
admins fuck up majorly or if the cia confiscates the servers or if there
is a terrorist attack or if some other really bad thing happen. What
will happen to my and thousands of other WP editors contributions? Is it
possible that they someday will be lost due to an incident like one of
the above? I don't know what I'd do if that ever happened.

Another question (or request), could it be made so that the search
functions immidiately go to the google search atleast temporarily? They
seem to be wasting resource to no use as the "Go" function isn't very
useful and it really is a search you want. It doesn't matter that the
Google database are some weeks old.

BL


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The last word on RK

body:
I wrote:
>Many of us know a lot about certain controversial things
>that we may be /way/ to biased to write neutrally on. I for
>one, find it very difficult to write neutrally for articles on
>homosexuality even though I know a lot about the subject
>(from biased sources, of course), so I tend to stay away
>from making substantive changes to those articles.

Just to clarify: IMO, RK's POV over the past year has been expressed not in
actual blatant POV writting, but in scaring off or otherwise antagonizing
people who have POVs in opposition to his own. The articles, therefore, have
an Israeli-POV bent to them.

Sorry, I know this is the wrong list....

--mav


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server hell

body:
The server pulled its usual crashing trick some hours ago, and came back
up after rebooting but without the database partition mounted or the
mailing lists activated.

Everything should be fine now, for a definition of "fine" that means
"could crash again at any time and going to have to handle the full
English webserving load as well as the database and all other languages
until we get both servers fixed".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server hell

body:
Brion wrote:
>The server pulled its usual crashing trick some hours ago,
>and came back up after rebooting but without the database
>partition mounted or the mailing lists activated.
>
>Everything should be fine now, for a definition of "fine" that
>means "could crash again at any time and going to have to
>handle the full English webserving load as well as the database
>and all other languages until we get both servers fixed".

Hey Brion, Jason, et al - thanks for trying your best to fix this problem. I
have no idea how hard it would be to perform a triple bypass in the
battlefield but I'm sure you guys are getting a taste of it.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikimedia.org misdirected

body:
Given our current hardware difficulties, I think it was a great idea to add a
prominent donation notice to each page. But clicking on the "Projects" link
on the Wikimedia Foundation donations page takes me to the English Wikipedia.
We have more projects than that, no? :)

http://wikimedia.org/

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikimedia.org misdirected

body:
Brion wrote:
>Should be sorted out now. Not as pretty as the one
>that's on larousse, but workable.

Thanks Brion! That was a super fast response.

--- mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikimedia.org misdirected

body:
On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 17:05, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Given our current hardware difficulties, I think it was a great idea to add a
> prominent donation notice to each page. But clicking on the "Projects" link
> on the Wikimedia Foundation donations page takes me to the English Wikipedia.
> We have more projects than that, no? :)
>
> http://wikimedia.org/

Should be sorted out now. Not as pretty as the one that's on larousse,
but workable.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikimedia

body:
On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 02:26, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 02:12, Anthere wrote:
> > Why is the adress www.wikimedia.org redirecting to the
> > english wikipedia ?
>
> The webserver 'larousse' (for english wikipedia and wikimedia.org) died
> 12 hours after its upgrade, and the database / other web server had to
> take over its place until we get it fixed *again*.
>
> It seems I forgot to copy the wikimedia.org files over. Sigh.

Okay, got something in place.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikimedia.org misdirected

body:
Brion wrote:
>Well, I'd already done it when your mail came down the pipe. ;)

Yikes! Add clairvoyance to your bag of tricks too. ;)

--mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikimedia.org misdirected

body:
On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 17:24, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Brion wrote:
> >Should be sorted out now. Not as pretty as the one
> >that's on larousse, but workable.
>
> Thanks Brion! That was a super fast response.

Well, I'd already done it when your mail came down the pipe. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Removing personal information was: RE: Copyrighted
	material on Wikipedia

body:
From: "user_Jamesday" <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com>

>Where I disagree is in cases like abuse or personal information about
themselves which private people contributing to the Wikipedia
> (rather than public record about public figures) want removed.

This is not a copyright issue. If someone places material on Wikipedia, they
do so, they have the right to do so and as long as that information is not
defamatory or breaking any laws there should be no prohibition against
posting any such information. The persons posting information is responsible
for posting it, not the volunteers nor Jimbo. It is the person who has
posted the information who is responsible for it, not the OSP, this seems to
be the case law that you and I  have been reviewing lately James.

> Our removal also makes it a bit easier for them to pursue a right of
privacy action against whoever is harassing them,
> though I wouldn't like to speculate on their chance of success.

I think if a person posts information about themselves anywhere on the
internet there is a reasonable expectation that it can be
reposted by other people.  It is not the job of Wikipedia to determine when
to take down information they have put up there.
Once it is out there it is irrelevant if it is hidden in the page history
files. The person who is harrassing them is abusing that
information and they have a claim against that person, not Wikipedia.

There is one fact that you do not seem to keep in mind, the user page
creates a link to the person  in the world outside Wikipedia. This is
important in terms of authorship. Each user has copyright to their
contributions and if someone wants to relicense Wikipedia content they have
some expectation that there will be some way to determine that a user has
contributed. Otherwise such user can be submitting infringing content.

Of course if someone has a reason (like Isis did as it appears to me)  then
that person can discuss it with Jimbo (and I am guessing
it will eventually be a Wikimedia board decision once we become a
constitutional monarchy).

Actually the arbitration process that is being created for banning people
could also be used to resolve all these types of  issues. Personally I would
think it would be better to do it in such a context that have these kinds of
non-copyright issues discussed to death.
I became part of Wikipedia because I liked making contributions to the
encyclopedia I am finding that I am spending way too much of my available
volunteer time responding to opinions about issues that are just plain wrong
or misleading.

Can I make a complaint to the arbitration committee about that?

Alex756


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Removing personal information was: RE: Copyrighted
	material on Wikipedia


subject: [WikiEN-l] RK - various (LDan)

body:
From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] RK - various

> *Axel wrote:
> >I have ended the temporary ban on RK.
> > I don't think that was a good idea. The last thing
> we
> need is block/unblock wars. There was a lot of
> objection to the EofT ban, but it would be very
> wrong
> for any sysop to simply go and unblock the account.
> Regards,
> > Angela.

>The EofT ban and the RK ban were completely
different.
>The EofT ban was discussed and the RK one wasn't even
>mentioned until he was banned.
>LDan

I find hard to believe you never ever heard about all
the troubles some associated to RK, about his /ban
page and the controversy around it, about the fact
Jimbo ask ed people to accumulated "facts" before
heading for a banning case, and of the page about RK
on meta.

It is not *exactly* as if this banning was a surprise
and came from nowhere with no warning whatsoever.

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Removing personal information was: RE: Copyrighted

body:
material on Wikipedia
Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 16:51:22 -0700
User-Agent: KMail/1.5
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-Id: <200310051651.22290.maveric149 at yahoo.com>
Status: RO
X-Status: Q
X-KMail-EncryptionState:
X-KMail-SignatureState:

Alex wrote:
>...
>Can I make a complaint to the arbitration committee about that?

As our pro-bono lawyer, why don't you set up a PayPal account so that people
can send a few bucks your way in appreciation of your effort? I would if I
could, but I'm slatted to be laid off by the end of the year so money is
tight (I work for the state of California and our current governor is a
moron! I can't wait until Larry Flynt takes office. Even Gary Coleman would
be better than Grey Davis. ;).

-- mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jerusalem

body:
Could someone knowledgeable try to have wik and ip
reach a compromise ?

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http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Header donation solicitation is a good idea for
	fundraising drive

body:
This was done by Brion as a quick experiment on the English Wikipedia. Two
users loudly complained on the village pump and many more said it was a great
idea. Count me in the latter group.

Given the fact that so many readers enter Wikipedia through Google (thus
bypassing the Main Page), I think this would be an excellent way for us to
perform all our future (annual? quarterly?) donation drives.

Yes it is a bit annoying, but not nearly as annoying as US public radio drives
that actually interrupt content for periods of time. Also, a little annoyance
works wonders in encouraging people to donate; The donation text in small
font below "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" (or corresponding other
language/project message) is a great way to subtly nudge those with the means
to help us keep going.

When the drive is over the header text should be removed but the new "Donate"
link in the side bar should remain. The cache, however, needs to be updated
before the month long drive starts (it will start as soon as the press
release is distributed). Therefore I propose this, or a similar, message be
displayed:

   Help us buy a new database server. [Donate today!].

[Donate today!] would be a link to http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising/

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Hm, that's odd.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising/ doesn't work yet,

http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising does....

Oh well. Forget the / then.

--mav


body:
On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 22:47, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> This was done by Brion as a quick experiment on the English Wikipedia.

(By Erik Moeller, rather. I just made some changes to it later.)

-- brin vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Alex T.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Geoff Burling" <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > Alex R. wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > >The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is
> > >not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such
> > >cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or
> > >overturned.
> > >
> > The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court
> > is unrealistic.  Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little
> > chance of recovering costs.  Add to this the difficulties involving
> > jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have
> > an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
> >
> IANAL, & this is a US-centric view, but I'd go further & say that the
> possibility that a court would even hear a case like this is unrealistic.

Why is it unrealistic? Volunteers who have been snubbed by organizations
often bring law suits against such organizations. Parents whose children
are thrown out of an after school activity. Sometimes they do it to just
to get publicity. Why is it US-centric? Arbitration is actually much more
common in Europe than the US, after all it was created by the Roman
jurisconsults, it is not an American invention, such a statement shows
a lack of knowledge of the history of arbitration and the interplay between
private contract and the rules of public order. Courts confirm and overturn
arbitration decisions all the time, check any legal reporter and you will
see this is a daily fact of life in most societies. That is why practically
all societies have arbitration rules in their civil law.

> As I understand what we are talking about concerns simple banning --
> whether or not someone could contribute to Wikipedia for a definite or
> indefinite period of time. And I doubt that as long as Wikipedia is a
> volunteer activity -- where no one is making any money from
contributing --
> any court would find merit in hearing the case.

What the court would do is overturn the ban, yes, then Wikipedia would
have to reinstate the user. That is what we are talking about, not a court
awarding damages, but reviewing the arbitration proceeding and saying
"you guys did it wrong, you think you can do whatever you want, well,
you cannot, there are some basic principles that must be followed in
a democratic society and you did not follow them."

> And if there was some conceivable tangible advantage to being a
contributor
> or editor (e.g., a clear pattern of contributors to Wikipedia being hired
> to, say, a publishing job), by that point I'd expect we have hammered out
> some kind of predictable pattern for how people get banned -- other than
> the vague "this contributor does not play nice with others."

All I am saying is that reinventing the wheel is a pretty stupid idea,
especially when you decide it is oblong when for thousands of
years they have been making it round.  If you are going to create
a system of arbitration make sure it sticks, that way when someone
takes Wikipedia to court the judge will be on Wikipedia's side,
not the agrieved user who was banned without respect to there
rights under arbitration.

Also if you do go to such court and the ban is enforced you have
the extra added effect that if the user tries to circumvent the ban
they may then be held in contempt of court as the court's confirmation
of an arbital award converts it into a judgment that is enforceable
by the courts.

If you want to create an arbitration scheme
why not do it along the well recognized legal principles that exist
so that you do not have your decisions overturned by people you
do not even know (i.e. judges who have jurisdiction if Wikipedia
does not play fair with contributors). Is that so unreasonable?

Alex756