from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Yes, Liviu, that's exactly what I said. Please re-read my e-mail.

Mark

On 20/03/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/03/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Note: '^' means "start of word", and "$" end of word, and the rules are
> > > intended to be applied from top to bottom to reduce ambiguity.
> >
> >
> > > ? = ? (all occurances of ? in a latin text can be treated as if they
> > were ? during conversion)
> > > ?? <-> ghiu
> > > ?? <-> chiu
> > > ?? <-> ghia
> > > ?? <-> chia
> > > ?? <-> ghe
> > > ?? <-> ghi
> > > ?? <- ?in
> > > ?? <- ?im
> > > ?? <-> iii$
> > > ??$ <-> ii$
> > > ? <-> ^ia
> > > ?? <-> aia
> > > ?? <-> iia
> > > ?? <-> ?ia
> > > ?? <-> uia
> > > ?? <-> eia
> > > ?? <-> oia
> > > ?? <-> ?ia
> > > ?? <-> ia$
> > > ? <-> ^iu
> > > ?? <-> aiu
> > > ?? <-> iiu
> > > ?? <-> ?iu
> > > ?? <-> uiu
> > > ?? <-> eiu
> > > ?? <-> oiu
> > > ?? <-> ?iu
> > > ? <-> ^ie
> > > ?? <-> aie
> > > ?? <-> iie
> > > ?? <-> ?ie
> > > ?? <-> uie
> > > ?? <-> eie
> > > ?? <-> oie
> > > ?? <-> ?ie
> > > ??? <-> aio
> > > ??? <-> iio
> > > ??? <-> ?io
> > > ??? <-> uio
> > > ??? <-> eio
> > > ??? <-> oio
> > > ??? <-> ?io
> > > ?? <-> che
> > > ?? <-> chi
> > > ?? <-> cea
> > > ?? <-> ciu
> > > ?? <-> gea
> > > ?? <-> giu
> > > ??$ <-> ce
> > > ??$ <-> ci
> > > ??$ <-> ai$
> > > ??$ <-> ?i$
> > > ??$ <-> ui$
> > > ??$ <-> ei$
> > > ??$ <-> oi$
> > > ??$ <-> ?i$
> > > ?$ <-> i$
> > > ?? <-> ge
> > > ?? <-> gi
> > > ? <-> ci
> > > ? <-> ea
> > > ? <-> a
> > > ? <-> b
> > > ? <-> v
> > > ? <-> g
> > > ? <-> d
> > > ? <-> e
> > > ? <-> j
> > > ? <-> z
> > > ? <-> i
> > > ? <-> c
> > > ? <-> l
> > > ? <-> m
> > > ? <-> n
> > > ? <-> o
> > > ? <-> p
> > > ? <-> r
> > > ? <-> s
> > > ? <-> t
> > > ? <-> u
> > > ? <-> f
> > > ? <-> h
> > > ? <-> ?
> > > ? <-> ?
> > > ? <-> ?
> > > ? <-> ?
> > > ? <-> ?
> > >
> > > End of table.
> >
> > Unfortunately, that will leave a lot of words spelt incorrectly. For
> > example, the word "crea" should be "????" and not "???" because of
> > syllabification; same for a few other words. Another inconsitent rule
> > is that "obiect" should be "??????" rather than "??????", also for
> > quite a few other words again because of its pronunciation.
>
>
> "Crea?ie" should well be spelled as "???????" and
> not "??????". While "??????" is wrong.
>
> See, Cyrillic writing for Moldovan is very phonetic. How you pronounce
> > something changes how you write it. Romanian writing, on the other
> > hand, is a bit more loosely phonetic, and seems unconcerned with
> > distinctions between the different "i" sounds for example, or with
> > writing words differently based on syllable rules.
>
>
> Another *huge* problem is names. Romanian and Moldovan names should
> > convert just fine, but other names are a problem. What about "Mihail
> > Sergheievici Gorbaciov"? That should be converted as "?????? ?????????
> > ????????" (I think; it might be ~????). Or what about "chabad"? That
> > should be "?????", not "??????".
> >
> > Mark
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Liviu
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
SJ wrote:

>On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>Furthermore, our *goals* -- neverminding the legal problesm that
>>Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote about -- our *goals* include a very
>>high degree of reusability.  Hosting materials that are subject to
>>copyright everywhere in the world except in the USA is a mistake on the
>>simple grounds that such work would not be redistributable anywhere else.
>>
>>This is why we should take a very very skeptical eye toward the use of
>>"fair use" even in English.
>>
>>
>In counterpoint, Wikipedia is a prime example of the importance of fair
>use as a catalyst for better information and education.  To the extent
>that the world is still working out the 'right' way to allow commentary,
>satire, and analysis while protecting author's rights, it is relevant that
>Wikipedia takes advantage of fair use.  Changing policy to stop doing so
>would likewise influence those ongoing "fair use standards" debates.
>
This is an interesting and important strategic point.  One can go
overboard when it comes to being squeaky clean.  There is always a need
to maintain a certain dynamic and avoiding interpretations of the law
which our adversaries design solely for their own benefit.  Many
copyright notices serve only to deter the ignorant.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
G'day Marcyu,

> The account name is Marcyu and can be seen at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Marcyu&action=edit
>
> Admin Nlu claims a personal attack, but he deleted the page permanently
> so there is no evidence against the contrary.

Ach, that's where you're wrong.  The page hasn't been deleted
permanently, and it's still possible to view what you said.  Let's take
a look ...

   I have decided to become the self-proclaimed policeman of these out of
   control Wikipedia editors.  They have no sense of tolerance,
   diversity, or humility.  Their grammatical and editing skills are
   suspect, to say the least.

You then added a template to your userpage, requesting that it be
deleted.  Finally, and this is just delicious:

   In my own personal opinion and experiences, I have found the following
   admins to be extremely biased, immature, and unprofessional:

   [[User:Nlu|Nlu]]

   [[User:R._Koot|R._Koot]]

   Email me if you want me to add your name to this page as those who
   support the cause of having a voting method to revoke admin powers of
   certain users.  Also email me if you have another admin you would like
   to add to either list (see below) and I'll take a look at their
   history.

   And on the flip side, here is a list of admins I believe to be fair
   and level-headed:

   [[User:Android79|Android79]]

   [[User:Dave_souza|Dave_souza]]

Congratulations to android79 and Dave for making the cut, for what it's
worth.  I'm kinda baffled that you'd say "so-and-so is extremely biased,
immature, and unprofessional", and *then* have the hide to claim that
any block or deletion was unjustified.

I guess you'd hoped that Nlu had covered up not his own actions, but yours.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel against Wikipedia and Jimbo

body:
On Mar 20, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Fastfission wrote:

> In
> any case, "controversial people" seems just as nebulous, if not even
> more so, so it'll probably go the way of the buffalo pretty soon
> itself, I reckon.

Buffalo aren't extinct; I had buffalo chili a few months ago, in
fact. Assuming that you mean "bison", although I don't think Asian
water buffalo are extinct either.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [Foundation-l] Free images and model releases

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 3/17/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What really brought my attention to this matter is an image recently
>>proposed as a featured image on enwiki:
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sunbathe_Buttocks.jpg ... Now it
>>may be that the image was created with the consent of the subjects, I
>>don't intend to criticize this particular image...   But really, lets
>>consider such an image with identifiable subjects who didn't know the
>>image had been taken.  What if she were to return to her dorm room and
>>find the Wikipedia article on sunbathing stapled to it?   Were the
>>image taken without her consent it's quite possible that she'd be
>>pissed, and I believe that she'd be justified. There is no reason that
>>illustrations like this in Wikipedia can't be ones which are created
>>with the subjects consent.  So even ignoring any possible legal issues
>>with such images, I think we're breaking good ethics to use images
>>like this without the subjects consent.
>>
>>
>In a case like the one you give, I agree.  Wikipedia should respect
>people's right to privacy (which applies in cases where the identity
>of the person is not important for any educational/newsworthy
>purpose).
>
What is unclear about the picture is whether the subject is
identifiable.  She has a towel (or something) over her head which would
hide her identity.

Ec


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 3/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Mar 20, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Fastfission wrote:
>
> > In
> > any case, "controversial people" seems just as nebulous, if not even
> > more so, so it'll probably go the way of the buffalo pretty soon
> > itself, I reckon.
>
> Buffalo aren't extinct; I had buffalo chili a few months ago, in
> fact. Assuming that you mean "bison", although I don't think Asian
> water buffalo are extinct either.

This is Wikipedia.  Bad ideas never go extinct, they just get
relegated to a [[WP:LAME|few]] [[WP:BJAODN|preserves]].

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] To Gerard re: Moldovan wiki

body:
> If by "adding content" you mean Mark adding loads of incorrect two-line articles, then cheer up, you have your wikipedia. It reminds me of the good old communist Romania, where the agricultural and industrial production figures were artificially inflated by producing crap. Of course, that system was not democratic, so that one person could have his way without good reason against the will of the people. Looks much like today's mo.wiki, where Mark blocks everything just because he wants to.

Dpotop is a silly guy. Check out
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaMO.htm :

Users sorted by # of edits:

61.248.143.2 -- 574 (South Korean IP)
Russ -- 208
Node_ue -- 185
193.164.229.102 -- 78 (Paris, France IP)
81.11.225.209 -- 66 (Vilvoorde, Belgium IP)
Gabix -- 52
24.201.83.39 -- 46 (Montreal, QC IP)
213.164.241.16 -- 37 (Cluj, Romania IP)
24.251.243.233 -- 34 (my IP)
Ronline -- 33
Home05149.cluj.astral.ro -- 20
Phrstvb	-- 19
Robbot -- 13
Vertaler -- 12
211.186.6.105 -- 12 (South Korea IP)
Dmitriid -- 10
132.216.68.207 -- 10 (Montreal, QC IP)

65% of total edits are by anon users.

Average article has 164.179104 words (193.75 for Romanian WP, not a
huge difference)

Also, speaking of democratic systems, check out
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere/Arhiv%C4%83 where
the majority, all of whom were repsectable, confirmed, existing users
with many many many edits (instead of just 25), votedto KEEP mowiki.

> BTW, someone asked me why I'm against mo.wiki. I am not fundamentally against it. The only thing I say is that it should remain in the private space of Mark while it's a pure creation of Mark.

Pure creation of Mark? The majority of contribs come from other people.

> Otherwise, I request that the american us.wikipedia.org is created! It is right, as some people believe this language exists, and we should add content to it. There are even american dictionaries. Of course, I will fill it up just like Mark does, by copying articles from en.wiki, and by writing two-line crap articles. Unfortunately, I will not be able to produce as many grammar errors per sentence as Mark does. Maybe someone level en-1 would like to join me in promoting americanism against the imperialist brits (the "imperialist" part it adapted from Mark's posts)?

...

Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
{{unreferenced}}

On 3/20/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> How would that apply to an article like this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2001_Census
>
> Jay.
>
> On 3/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > True, but I think one should consult secondary sources *first* for our
> > project, and primary sources *second*. You cannot consult a primary
> > source without an interpretative framework, and you should be deriving
> > that from a secondary source, in my interpretation of [[WP:NOR]].
> > Primary sources are great for adding color and authenticity to an
> > article -- nobody disputes that -- but articles based solely on
> > primary sources are chancy indeed, and no individual user's individual
> > idiosyncratic interpretation of a primary source should trump the
> > interpretation given in a secondary source. The people who usually
> > insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
> > who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
> > indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.
> >
> > FF
> >
> > On 3/20/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "Ilmari Karonen" <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote in
> > > message news:441B614A.7020406 at vyznev.net...
> > > > Fastfission wrote:
> > > [snippety-snip]
> > > > I suspect you're wrong about this being universal.  It may well be true
> > > > for history, but in mathematics, for example, citing primary sources is
> > > > perfectly reasonable and even desirable.  The difference, of course, is
> > > > that history, unlike mathematics, requires context and interpretation.
> > >
> > > The difference is between recounting what someone actually said, for which
> > > you need primary sources, and deciding whether what they said was true, for
> > > which you almost always require the support of secondary sources.
> > >
> > > Both have their place and function.


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Theresa Knott wrote:
> > On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
> >>> descirbing could easily be text.
> >>>
> >> Invent one then ;) Bear in mind that if it's multiple choice, then the
> >> robot could just have a few goes.
> >>
> >
> > A colour that's the opposite of black
> >
> > the number of days in a week
> >
> > A pet animal that goes woof woof.
> >
> >
> Unfortunately, Googling and word-counting is a rather powerful way of
> cheating at these sorts of simple general-knowledge questions:
>
> Searching for "animal that goes woof woof". removing trivial words from
> the page fragments Google returns on its search page, and then counting
> the most common remaining words gives the following:
>
> 43: woof
> 9: animal
> 8: dog
> 7: goes
> 6: joke
>
> for "colour that's the opposite of black" we get:
>
> 21: colour
> 10: black
> 6: opposite
> 6: white
> 5: you
>
>
> If you then try the words which are not in the question, the highest
> rated few words tend to contain the answer to the question. Even if we
> try at random from the top-rated words, there's a good chance of
> success, which is all a bot needs.
>

OK so simple quiz questions are out, and so are multiple choice
questions. What about this:

Take the second letter of ADAM, the first letter of  OGRE and the last
of RAINING.

Is it possible for a bot to get around that?

Theresa


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] List moderation (Re: Blocking policy violation)

body:
On 3/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> That we advertise in a few places that you can post here if you're
> having a problem.  E.g. on the message blocked users get - I believe
> it informs them if they believe themselves blocked in error, they can
> ask here to get unblocked.

Sure, but asking them to subscribe first isn't a big deal is it? Or is
the list supposed to be used simply as a "tell all the admins about my
problem, one of them will get back to me" deal? Wouldn't some other
means (like an actual mailing list of admins) be more efficient? It's
sometimes a bit odd when in the midst of interesting discussions about
policy or the future of Wikipedia or whatever, you suddenly get 3
messages along the lines of "I got blocked just for trying to tell the
truth no fair!"...

Steve


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
How would that apply to an article like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2001_Census

Jay.

On 3/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> True, but I think one should consult secondary sources *first* for our
> project, and primary sources *second*. You cannot consult a primary
> source without an interpretative framework, and you should be deriving
> that from a secondary source, in my interpretation of [[WP:NOR]].
> Primary sources are great for adding color and authenticity to an
> article -- nobody disputes that -- but articles based solely on
> primary sources are chancy indeed, and no individual user's individual
> idiosyncratic interpretation of a primary source should trump the
> interpretation given in a secondary source. The people who usually
> insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
> who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
> indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.
>
> FF
>
>
>
> On 3/20/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Ilmari Karonen" <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote in
> > message news:441B614A.7020406 at vyznev.net...
> > > Fastfission wrote:
> > [snippety-snip]
> > > I suspect you're wrong about this being universal.  It may well be true
> > > for history, but in mathematics, for example, citing primary sources is
> > > perfectly reasonable and even desirable.  The difference, of course, is
> > > that history, unlike mathematics, requires context and interpretation.
> >
> > The difference is between recounting what someone actually said, for which
> > you need primary sources, and deciding whether what they said was true, for
> > which you almost always require the support of secondary sources.
> >
> > Both have their place and function.
> >
> > HTH HAND
> > --
> > Phil
> > [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Greasemonkey script to filter the watchlist page

body:
Goodie :)

On 3/20/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{PAGENAME}}&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s


subject: [WikiEN-l] Interlanguage Links - The Interwiki-Link-Checker

body:
On 3/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I spent last night interwiki-ing Norwegian and Catalan, of all things...

I haven't tried this tool, but is it smart enough to know that if
en.foo links to fr.foo, and fr.foo links to ca.foo, then en.foo should
link to ca.foo? Otherwise this problem seems like a massive amount of
manual intervention...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
ASCII paswwords?

_______                      ________________
|                    /\                        |
|                   /  \                       |
|                  /___\                     |
|                 /        \                   |
|________  /          \                  |

Theresa


body:
Ok, to see/discuss the watchlist filter script:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Stevage/filterwatchlist.user.js

To download it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Stevage/filterwatchlist.user.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s

Thanks to some nice irony, Greasemonkey attempts to install the
"discussion mode" version (the URL ends in .user.js), but doesn't
recognise the raw version (since it doesn't). So you'll have to save
it to disk first.

I'll put up the history+diff script tonight, so someone can find the
bugs in it ;) (it's pretty flakey atm)

Steve

On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Goodie :)
>
> On 3/20/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{PAGENAME}}&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s
>


body:
> MW> 65% of total edits are by anon users.
>
> You're trying to convince us that there's a community of anonymous
> users ? Ha-ha.

I'm not trying to convince anybody there's a "community" of anons. All
I was trying to say is that it's not "my" Wikipedia because I dont
have the majority of contribs even.

> Here's the top, according to that link:
>
> 61.248.143.2 -- Seoul, Korea -- Russ, not logged-in, 574 edits
>   (Russ used to transliterate by hand articles from ro.wiki)

Proof that it's Russ?? Please?

> 193.164.229.102 -- Strasbourg, France -- blanked articles, 78

And?

> 81.11.225.209 -- Antwerp, Belgium -- reverted blanked articles, 66

Meaning this user supports mowiki

> 24.251.243.233 -- Arizona, US -- Node_ue, 46

Yes

> 213.164.241.16 -- Cluj, Romania -- ro:Danutz, 37

...

> 24.201.83.39 -- Montreal, Canada -- en:Domnu Goie, 34

...

> Home05149.cluj.astral.ro -- Cluj -- again ro:Danutz, 20

...

> 132.216.68.207 -- Montreal, Canada -- blanked articles, 10

Goie I assume?

> 211.186.6.105 -- Korea -- other IP of Russ, 12

Prove it's Russ.

> These make 80% of the anon edits and none is involved in
> the creation of actual content.

Wrong, all 574 edits of the first IP were content creation. Yes some
was badly spelt but it was content nonetheless.

> Almost all of the rest were involved in the endless
> discussions of the status of mo.wiki. :-)

Source?

> MW> Average article has 164.179104 words (193.75 for Romanian WP, not a
> MW> huge difference)
>
> Of course, since the articles are taken from it. :-)

Diff is that Russ copied a lot of little articles from rowp; I copied
almost only big ones.
Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Odd,
	and potentially somewhat serious bug with SVG image uploads.

body:
Today I uploaded a replacement of
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuvola_apps_important.svg

The image is used in MANY places.

The first upload attempt just went to a blank screen. I tried again
and got an error like:
"If reporting this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators,
please include the following details: Request: POST
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload, from 0.0.0.0 via
srv6.wikimedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE12) to commons.wikimedia.org
([unknown])
Error: ERR_ZERO_SIZE_OBJECT, errno [No Error] at Mon, 20 Mar 2006 20:42:02 GMT"

I then noticed that the image was actually replaced with my new
version, yet there is *no* record of my change anywhere on the image
page or in the upload log. I've tried at least half-a-dozen more times
with the same error each time.

I find it more than a little troubling that the image was replaced
with my new version, and yet there seems to be no record of it.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

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

Guy Chapman aka JzG stated for the record:

> Maybe, but it must be said that it is an offensive username, and I was
> *very* polite.
> Guy (JzG)

You were indeed, and Fenny-boy is in flagrant violation of [[WP:DICK]]
- -- which, alas, does not merit blocking.

- --
 Se?n Barrett     | Portions of this message were
 sean at epoptic.org | composed using a computer.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEH0IjMAt1wyd9d+URAhd1AJ0QhQmg7WwbFSe8hqDYXUORUr6fWgCeNAcD
3l7TmDXr0w8/T6+3E49bCQE=
=26G1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Theresa Knott wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
>>>>> descirbing could easily be text.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Invent one then ;) Bear in mind that if it's multiple choice, then the
>>>> robot could just have a few goes.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> A colour that's the opposite of black
>>>
>>> the number of days in a week
>>>
>>> A pet animal that goes woof woof.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Unfortunately, Googling and word-counting is a rather powerful way of
>> cheating at these sorts of simple general-knowledge questions:
>>
>> Searching for "animal that goes woof woof". removing trivial words from
>> the page fragments Google returns on its search page, and then counting
>> the most common remaining words gives the following:
>>
>> 43: woof
>> 9: animal
>> 8: dog
>> 7: goes
>> 6: joke
>>
>> for "colour that's the opposite of black" we get:
>>
>> 21: colour
>> 10: black
>> 6: opposite
>> 6: white
>> 5: you
>>
>>
>> If you then try the words which are not in the question, the highest
>> rated few words tend to contain the answer to the question. Even if we
>> try at random from the top-rated words, there's a good chance of
>> success, which is all a bot needs.
>>
>>
>
>
> OK so simple quiz questions are out, and so are multiple choice
> questions. What about this:
>
> Take the second letter of ADAM, the first letter of  OGRE and the last
> of RAINING.
>
>
> Is it possible for a bot to get around that?
>
>
> Theresa
>
>
On its own, probably no. If you start using thousands of questions of
the same form, though, someone will write a simple program to do them,
and it then becomes trivial.

I tried to think of a good text-only captcha scheme some time ago, but
came up short.

The ideal text captcha is:
* endlessly variable (there must be at least millions of potential
challenges, to defend against replay attacks)
* easy for people to answer without any specialist knowledge
* easy to answer for people without advanced skills in the target language
* not generated by a simple algorithm which can be reverse-engineered
(as with the above)
* not Googlable
* easy to assess the answer using a computer program (which typically
means it's a simple word or phrase)

It's hard to generate large numbers of questions which are easy for
people to answer, but hard for machines. For a start, questions about
obscure topics are a test of general knowledge, not humanity and many
people will fail them. Questions with contorted syntax will be difficult
for non-native speakers.

Questions of the form "what is the capital of X" are easily dealt with
by simple lookup, or Googling. In general, any database of facts you can
find in public to pose questions can also be found by a spammer.

Algorithmically-generated questions are vulnerable to reverse
engineering: questions which require the reader to perform simple symbol
manipulations or answer auto-generated logic puzzles are easily
performed by computer. Devious riddles like the Riddle of the Sphinx
will stump most readers if they do not already know the answer, and all
the common ones are Googlable anyway. Questions with ambiguous answers
are hard to mark correctly using a computer.

Even assuming a carefully compiled list of, say, 1000 suitable questions
that avoid all these pitfalls could be composed by hand (perhaps by a
group effort), a spammer would only need to build a list of them once,
and they could then be answered perfectly by simple lookup.

The nice things about visual captchas is that the operations used to
create them are effectively one-way: for example, stirring the pixels in
the current Wikipedia captchas is easy to do, but hard to invert
programmatically, yet the human eye can still decode it. What's needed
is a similar operation for text that uses the power of the human
cognitive system in the same way that visual captchas use the power of
the human visual system.

For example, one good class of anti-bot precautions uses Javascript, and
works on the principle that most bot authors cannot be bothered to
include a Javascript interpreter in their bot, but that every modern
browser is capable of interpreting Javascript without the user needing
to do anything special.

Similarly, you can slow down spammers by creating a computation burden
by requiring the far end to generate hash collisions, something that
can't be done without a powerful computer at the other end working away
for some time. In fact, it's probably easier to create questions that
machines can answer, but people can't.

What's needed is something that exercises a uniquely human skill that
only involves understanding. Perhaps story understanding? Or reasoning
about hidden emotions or mental states, both things that people have
evolved to do very well? (Note that many real people with autistic
spectrum disorder won't be able to answer these questions, though).

-- Neil


from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f1c3529e0603200617x7c05c5f2n9671e14bfa4c753a at mail.gmail.com...
> On 3/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I spent last night interwiki-ing Norwegian and Catalan, of all things...
>
> I haven't tried this tool, but is it smart enough to know that if
> en.foo links to fr.foo, and fr.foo links to ca.foo, then en.foo should
> link to ca.foo? Otherwise this problem seems like a massive amount of
> manual intervention...

That's a later stage of the process.

This particular tool is to allow human intervention to ensure that
[[en:foo]] and [[fr:foo]] are actually about the same "foo", and similarly
for [[ca:foo]].

I'm doing the "de-en" set at the moment, and there are quite a few cases
where the two articles, despite having the same name, are radically
different.

The usual reason is that there are a good many things called "foo", all of
which probably appear on [[foo (disambiguation)]] or the equivalent.
However, different languages have their own ideas about which of those many
instances of "foo" should get the main article of that name.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Ben McIlwain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
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Fastfission wrote:
> True, but I think one should consult secondary sources *first* for our
> project, and primary sources *second*. You cannot consult a primary
> source without an interpretative framework, and you should be deriving
> that from a secondary source, in my interpretation of [[WP:NOR]].
> Primary sources are great for adding color and authenticity to an
> article -- nobody disputes that -- but articles based solely on
> primary sources are chancy indeed, and no individual user's individual
> idiosyncratic interpretation of a primary source should trump the
> interpretation given in a secondary source. The people who usually
> insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
> who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
> indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.

Strongly agreed.  I'm doing mediation right now on some Islamic-related
articles and one of the disputants is sourcing everything directly from
the Quran :-(

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: Liviu Andronic

body:
On 19/03/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Note: '^' means "start of word", and "$" end of word, and the rules are
> > intended to be applied from top to bottom to reduce ambiguity.
>
>
> > ? = ? (all occurances of ? in a latin text can be treated as if they
> were ? during conversion)
> > ?? <-> ghiu
> > ?? <-> chiu
> > ?? <-> ghia
> > ?? <-> chia
> > ?? <-> ghe
> > ?? <-> ghi
> > ?? <- ?in
> > ?? <- ?im
> > ?? <-> iii$
> > ??$ <-> ii$
> > ? <-> ^ia
> > ?? <-> aia
> > ?? <-> iia
> > ?? <-> ?ia
> > ?? <-> uia
> > ?? <-> eia
> > ?? <-> oia
> > ?? <-> ?ia
> > ?? <-> ia$
> > ? <-> ^iu
> > ?? <-> aiu
> > ?? <-> iiu
> > ?? <-> ?iu
> > ?? <-> uiu
> > ?? <-> eiu
> > ?? <-> oiu
> > ?? <-> ?iu
> > ? <-> ^ie
> > ?? <-> aie
> > ?? <-> iie
> > ?? <-> ?ie
> > ?? <-> uie
> > ?? <-> eie
> > ?? <-> oie
> > ?? <-> ?ie
> > ??? <-> aio
> > ??? <-> iio
> > ??? <-> ?io
> > ??? <-> uio
> > ??? <-> eio
> > ??? <-> oio
> > ??? <-> ?io
> > ?? <-> che
> > ?? <-> chi
> > ?? <-> cea
> > ?? <-> ciu
> > ?? <-> gea
> > ?? <-> giu
> > ??$ <-> ce
> > ??$ <-> ci
> > ??$ <-> ai$
> > ??$ <-> ?i$
> > ??$ <-> ui$
> > ??$ <-> ei$
> > ??$ <-> oi$
> > ??$ <-> ?i$
> > ?$ <-> i$
> > ?? <-> ge
> > ?? <-> gi
> > ? <-> ci
> > ? <-> ea
> > ? <-> a
> > ? <-> b
> > ? <-> v
> > ? <-> g
> > ? <-> d
> > ? <-> e
> > ? <-> j
> > ? <-> z
> > ? <-> i
> > ? <-> c
> > ? <-> l
> > ? <-> m
> > ? <-> n
> > ? <-> o
> > ? <-> p
> > ? <-> r
> > ? <-> s
> > ? <-> t
> > ? <-> u
> > ? <-> f
> > ? <-> h
> > ? <-> ?
> > ? <-> ?
> > ? <-> ?
> > ? <-> ?
> > ? <-> ?
> >
> > End of table.
>
> Unfortunately, that will leave a lot of words spelt incorrectly. For
> example, the word "crea" should be "????" and not "???" because of
> syllabification; same for a few other words. Another inconsitent rule
> is that "obiect" should be "??????" rather than "??????", also for
> quite a few other words again because of its pronunciation.

"Crea?ie" should well be spelled as "???????" and
not "??????". While "??????" is wrong.

See, Cyrillic writing for Moldovan is very phonetic. How you pronounce
> something changes how you write it. Romanian writing, on the other
> hand, is a bit more loosely phonetic, and seems unconcerned with
> distinctions between the different "i" sounds for example, or with
> writing words differently based on syllable rules.

Another *huge* problem is names. Romanian and Moldovan names should
> convert just fine, but other names are a problem. What about "Mihail
> Sergheievici Gorbaciov"? That should be converted as "?????? ?????????
> ????????" (I think; it might be ~????). Or what about "chabad"? That
> should be "?????", not "??????".
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


body:
On 3/20/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Well, how about this link, then?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s&title=User:Stevage/filterwatchlist.user.js

Do you have to make me look stupid in front of the whole list? :) Your
point is well made. Now go forth and make that script better. :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:
> ASCII paswwords?
>
>
> _______                      ________________
> |                    /\                        |
> |                   /  \                       |
> |                  /___\                     |
> |                 /        \                   |
> |________  /          \                  |
>
>
>
> Theresa
>
>
Alas, they won't work for the blind either.

Oh, and there's one more problem with textual captchas: you will also
need them to be available in every language, which implies a non-trivial
translation effort.

At least the current visual captchas can be used by anyone familiar with
the Latin alphabet (although they're currently harder for non-English
speakers).

I still think the best idea is a web form where the user is required to
make their request for access in natural language using complete
sentences, possibly prompted by a set of simple questions. Real requests
should be easy for human beings to distinguish from chatbot-like
computer-generated requests, unless they are generated using canned
human-generated sentence structures, which will be easy to filter out
using a Bayesian scheme. Engaging in an arms race against this will of
course be possible, but will require significant amounts of human effort
from the spammers, which will slow them down.

Sample questions might be:
"Please tell us why you want to edit."

"Please tell us what you think of Wikipedia."

"How did you find this website?"

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Theresa Knott wrote:
> >
> > Take the second letter of ADAM, the first letter of  OGRE and the last
> > of RAINING.
>  >
>  > Is it possible for a bot to get around that?
>
> In a word, yes.  Unless you want to try coming up with new and
> interesting variations faster than the bots can be taught to parse them.

And I bet if you give that captcha to enough humans, enough will fail
for things to get very tense very quickly. "What do you mean take the
second letter? What do I do with it? I just want to help with
wikibooks!!!"

Mind you, graphical captchas can get beaten too, unless they're done
very carefully.

Perhaps if linkspam is the problem, we should just implement severe
restrictions on including URLs? It's hard to imagine many situations
where a new editor with almost no editors is adding a really useful
URL that complies with [[WP:External links]]. And is there a reason
Wikipedia doesn't use Google's suggested "nofollow" tag?

Steve


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 32, Issue 36

body:
The problem is not what the users do from AOL IPs, it is the way AOL
*assigns* IPs. Right now, if you are an AOL dial-up user, you will be
assigned a new IP every 15 minutes, or every page load, whichever comes
first. Literally *every time you load a page, you will have a new IP*. That
makes blocking problematic AOL users *impossible*. By the time a sysop can
discover and block a given address, the vandal has jumpted IPs at least
once, potentially a dozen times. Additionally, no sooner than the block
button is clicked, a legitimate AOL user with an account will be assigned
that IP, and will be blocked. This is not as much of a problem on smaller
projects, with fewer editors, fewer vandals, (and fewer AOL users as a
result), but it is a serious problem on large projects like en.wikipedia,
where there are thousands of AOL users.

I can think of two users off the top of my head (two of a thousand, maybe
ten thousand similarly affected that I don't happen to know personally) who
are blocked as a result  of an AOL IP block nearly *every time they try to
make an edit*. EVERY TIME. The only advice to them is to suck it up, or get
a new ISP. (There is a little known trick that has come to light recently,
but I'm not willing to state it publicly, lest vandals begin abusing it).
These are good users, valuable contributors, who are being prevented from
editing with no recourse.

What we need is not for AOL to take action against vandals; we don't go to
the ISPs of other vandals (routinely) and shouldn't for these. What we *do
need* is for AOL to stop running what amounts to a massive anonymous proxy
service. If AOL would just assign a single IP when a user connects, and
leave them on that IP until they disconnect (which is what most ISPs do, as
I understand it) it would solve a lot of our problems. Not all of them;
there would still be collateral damage autoblocks, because AOL is huge and a
lot of people use it, but at least we could begin to block *the people
responsible for vandalism* instead of carpetbombing AOL users, which is
basically what we do now.

Essjay

On 3/20/06, Stacey Doljack Borsody <hjernespiser at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:06:36 +1000
> > From: "Craig Franklin" <craig at halo-17.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch
> > To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
> > Message-ID: <001501c64c16$bff788e0$015a5a0a at equinox>
> > Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > Scr?obh Mark Williamson :
> > >The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
> > >pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
> > >like a good approach to me.
> >
> > Frankly, I have to agree.  I can't see any problem with this.
>
> Is the user violating any AOL AUP term?  I highly doubt it so I wouldn't
> expect AOL to stop this.
> Maybe the user just needs to be left alone and ignored and a campaign
> initiated to educate the
> public on what the real term of the railroad switch is.  :)
>
> .s
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Gerben van der Stouwe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
Tim Starling schreef:
> As for AOL itself: sad to say, but we might need to put up some entry barriers. Bug 550 is an
> extreme example of this: a feature which would let sysops restrict access to trusted users only.
> Email confirmation with an aol.com address required would be better.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

No, it wouldn't be better. Bug 550 is not restricted to AOL. It's much
more wide spread. It's about schools, proxies, filtering services,
company's

I think the best solution is to give sysops the option to mark users as
trusted. Those users then should be able to "hop" over IP blocks. That
way good contributers can bypass ip blocks but will still be blockable
(by user name).

But WHY hasn't this been picked up earlier, it has been an annoyance for
years now? Are the devs really this ignorant? I guess so, because
there's definitely community support.

Gerben van der Stouwe
G.vanderstouwe at gmail.com
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Gerbennn

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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm British, but I don't find his user name (which would appear to be
> sarcastic)  nor his user page especially offensive.

I have to say, I agree.  I'm a little bit more concerned that he has a
fair use image on his userpage.

--
Sam


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
On 3/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> True, but I think one should consult secondary sources *first* for our
> project, and primary sources *second*. You cannot consult a primary
> source without an interpretative framework, and you should be deriving
> that from a secondary source, in my interpretation of [[WP:NOR]].
> Primary sources are great for adding color and authenticity to an
> article -- nobody disputes that -- but articles based solely on
> primary sources are chancy indeed, and no individual user's individual
> idiosyncratic interpretation of a primary source should trump the
> interpretation given in a secondary source. The people who usually
> insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
> who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
> indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.

I'm just less impressed than most by the necessity of relying on the
expertise of experts. I have to admit that I do think you're being
territorial. There's little reason for the contextualization and
interpretation that historians do to not happen on Wikipedia. And that
doesn't require original research. in theory, if historians are basing their
judgment purely on context and not personal biases, then the interlinking of
Wikipedia should be a sufficient equivalent.

But it's not a huge deal to me. I just personally would rather rely on my
own judgment than be forced to see the world through the interpretation of
others.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
G'day Mercyu,

> Do the aforementioned comments constitute a personal attack?  As
> noted, I am merely stating my opinion.

Yes, "so-and-so is extremely biased, immature, and unprofessional" does
indeed constitute a personal attack.  *Any* statement, however incivil,
however personal, could be described as "merely stating [one's]
opinion", so that won't get you anywhere.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> To download it:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Stevage/filterwatchlist.user.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s
>
> Thanks to some nice irony, Greasemonkey attempts to install the
> "discussion mode" version (the URL ends in .user.js), but doesn't
> recognise the raw version (since it doesn't). So you'll have to save
> it to disk first.

Well, how about this link, then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s&title=User:Stevage/filterwatchlist.user.js

Or this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevage/filterwatchlist.user.js?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: mdangers

body:
Steve Bennett schrieb:
> On 3/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I spent last night interwiki-ing Norwegian and Catalan, of all things...
>
> I haven't tried this tool, but is it smart enough to know that if
> en.foo links to fr.foo, and fr.foo links to ca.foo, then en.foo should
> link to ca.foo? Otherwise this problem seems like a massive amount of
> manual intervention...
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Actually the different bots based on the pywikipediabot network are
smart enough to do this and are responsible for insertion of vast
amounts of Interwiki links (IWL). The tool is as yet the only means I
know of to at least semi-automatically insert IWLs into articles which
are *not* linked to any other language.

Since FlaBot, which is inserting most/lots of the verified IWLs, is also
pywikipediabot-based, it is inserting extra IWLs along these lines, e.g.
if en: is verified to be the same in de:, extra links to fr: on en: are
also inserted in de: (hope this is readable/understandable, you know
what I mean, anyway, I guess).

I already tried to persuade Flacus earlier to primarily include articles
without any IWL. This would make sense in language pairs with a huge
backlog, at least. I came too late, anyway, because just then the
February dump data was already included into his database. From personal
experience, I believe that this would not make a very big difference,
anyway, maybe 10-20% less article pairs.

marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:
>
> Take the second letter of ADAM, the first letter of  OGRE and the last
> of RAINING.
 >
 > Is it possible for a bot to get around that?

In a word, yes.  Unless you want to try coming up with new and
interesting variations faster than the bots can be taught to parse them.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
"Ilmari Karonen" <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote in
message news:441B614A.7020406 at vyznev.net...
> Fastfission wrote:
[snippety-snip]
> I suspect you're wrong about this being universal.  It may well be true
> for history, but in mathematics, for example, citing primary sources is
> perfectly reasonable and even desirable.  The difference, of course, is
> that history, unlike mathematics, requires context and interpretation.

The difference is between recounting what someone actually said, for which
you need primary sources, and deciding whether what they said was true, for
which you almost always require the support of secondary sources.

Both have their place and function.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>This is all fine if we want to create a rule that gives flexibility to
>people acting in good faith, and doesn't expect them to answer stupid,
>petty, provocative or otherwise pointless questions. But that's not
>what I'm talking about here. To repeat, with a bit more context, what
>I'm talking about is a situation where i noticed that two users were
>in an edit conflict, which provoked a question on this person's talk
>page, which this person deleted. I then made a similar comment that
>was more broad in scope, and the user then deleted this. I restored my
>question, asking to please discuss the matter with me. He deleted
>again.
>
>Cormac
>
>
The issue here is really the ability of the "owner" of a user talk page
to censor the content on that talk page.  I'm using the term "owner"
very loosly here, and I know that, but in this case the talk page is
directly tied to a specific user account by default with MediaWiki
software, and has features built in where that user will be notified
with a special message if some new content is added to that page.
 Certainly by custom among Wikimedia users this has been used as a
communications venue for asking questions that are addressed to a
specific user.  Sometimes, like in the case of Jimbo's user page, it
sometimes becomes a community forum, but this is really quite unusual.
 Admins sometimes have this happen occasionally to a lesser degree, or
for very active Wikimedia users.

In this sense, the user who has set up the account should also be able
to control what the public in general is going to be seeing associated
with this user.  And in the specific case of the user that you have been
having a conflict with Cormac, he is using his user talk page as a
registration site for people who are interested in enrolling in the
Wikiversity class that he is putting together and offering to teach.
 Keeping it free from non-registration comments seems to be a general
goal of this user in this situation.  This is not a standard practice or
a typical experience for a user talk page, but it certainly is an
interesting and innovative use for user talk pages.

I think it would breech common courtesy and ettiquette (not necessarily
policy here) if you were delete content from somebody else's user talk
page, and IMHO would be a much larger concern or a sign of vandalism
even.  That is certainly not the issue being discussed.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


body:
On 3/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> What is unclear about the picture is whether the subject is
> identifiable.  She has a towel (or something) over her head which would
> hide her identity.

The woman in the back's face isn't obscured.


body:
On 3/20/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> This particular tool is to allow human intervention to ensure that
> [[en:foo]] and [[fr:foo]] are actually about the same "foo", and similarly
> for [[ca:foo]].
>
> I'm doing the "de-en" set at the moment, and there are quite a few cases
> where the two articles, despite having the same name, are radically
> different.

Ok, I can see how that could happen...
fictitious example:
En: [The Foo King] is about an anglophone TV series, with a paragraph
at the end to the original book [Le Roi Fou]. Links to..
Fr: [Le Roi Fou], an article about the book. It was written by a Czech
author, who is well known in France precisely for this single book. So
information about the author makes up at least half the article. It
links to...
Cz: [Fou Fouzcy]...about the author, somewhat known in Czech for all
his other great works. No mention at all of that particular book...

You're right, it wouldn't make much sense to link [The Foo King] to
[Fou Fouzcy] in this case...

(ok that example was probably a bit farfetched...but anyway...)

Steve


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Can everyone just stop a second from the semi-masturbatory tech-talk
about the ultimate CAPTCHA that no bot will get around and that all
humans will be able to recognize, without using any browser never than
1992. Please :P

We can all agree that the VAST majority of users will be able to view
an image CAPTCHA, and solve it. Like, 99.5% atleast. So the question
is, what do we do with the 0.5%? I want to reiterate my earlier point,
why not just provide an email address, either to something like OTRS
or the helpdesk, or to a special email solely dedicated for this
purpose, where people will be able to set up an account for them?

Doesn't this sound alot more sensible than wasting developer time
developing an ultimate text-string that will, at best, make us look
silly. Also, it would take up huge amounts of contributor time just
figuring out the "questions" or whatever.

"If you have problem seeing this image, or signing up in general,
please contact someone at wikimedia.org with your account information,
and we will assist you in creating an account"

That's all it takes. That's IT!

--Oskar

PS. Sorry if I sounded slightly rantish, but jeez, the suggestions you
people have......


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Our Featured Article of the Day Contains Probable
 Copyright Violations

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 3/7/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>John Lee wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>[[Triumph of the Will]] has a gallery of fair use pictures. The gallery
>>>>>itself violates fair use under American law, which requires that the
>>>>>subject of the images be critically discussed by the article using those
>>>>>images. As if that were not enough, the images are *high-resolution*. It
>>>>>has been suggested that the images are public domain, but this has not
>>>>>been conclusively proven, and the images are currently marked with a
>>>>>copyright of 2005 by the uploader, who also wrote much of the article.
>>>>>It would be bad enough if this is any ordinary article, but...
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. It's a featured article, which means it's the best we have to offer
>>>>> 2. It's on the frickin' main page right now
>>>>>
>>>>>Then again, I suppose this does reflect the condition of how fair use
>>>>>and copyright law are blatantly ignored/misunderstood by most
>>>>>Wikipedians...for further information, see [[Wikipedia:Fair use
>>>>>review]], which has a fuller description of what's going on.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Why are we talking about fair use when the film is clearly in the public
>>>>domain?  It was released in 1935!!!  1935 + 70 = 2005.
>>>>
>>>>Ec
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Wrong country. Leni Riefenstahl died in 2003.
>>>
>>>Further details:
>>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)&diff=42060761&oldid=41976931
>>>
>>>
>>Riefenstahl did not own the copyright; she did the work as an employee
>>of the German government. The talk page for the article cites
>>http://www.twobirds.com/English/publications/articles/GermanFilmsandUKEnemyPropertyAct1953pt1.cfm
>>"Leni Riefenstahl appealed, and the German Federal Supreme Court of
>>Karlsruhe ruled on 10 January 1969 that the copyright was not vested in
>>Leni Riefenstahl but in the former Nazi party"  The 70 year clock for
>>government and corporate copyright owners starts when the work is made
>>public.  The US situation is even simpler, because the extension of
>>foreign copyrights from 50 to 70 years was not applicable to enemy
>>properties.  The rights there expired at the end of 1985.
>>
>>What "wrong country" are you talking about?
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>I seem to remember reading something about the Allies voiding all German
>government copyrights at the end of WWII. Can anyone confirm or deny
>this? I seem to remember something about the copyright of Mein Kampf
>being a special case, since it was never owned by the German state.
>
See http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/1998/63fr19287.pdf

There is no reason why this would not also apply to Mein Kampf.  The
state goverment of Bavaria claims that it owns the copyright, although
at least one Swedish court has denied that claim while simultaneously
saying that it was still protected even if the owner could not be
identified.  The net effect is that the German language edition is in
the public domain in the United States.  All four English translations
are still protected.  The three American ones were all properly renewed
for the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston.  Murphy, the British
translator, IIRC died in 1946, and his version would thus be protected
until the end of 2016.  A person with a lot of time on his hands could
safely do a new translation that could be released under GFDL. :-)

Ec


from_name: Jim

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
To me this is a no brainer - from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username#Inappropriate_usernames

   - Names that refer to symbols of hatred, including historical figures
   who are widely associated with such

Seems clearly to qualify - it is surprising that it took this long to
notice.

Jim

--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
"Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
- Neal A Maxwell


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:52:57 -0500, you wrote:

>The people who usually
>insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
>who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
>indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.

Even when the establishment view *is* bunk :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article violates patent?

body:
"Fastfission" wrote

>I read over the article more closely -- it's not the sentence, per se,
> but the "fact" that was granted. It will be interesting to see what
> the courts rule -- all precedent that I know of attests to not being
> able to grant patents on "facts".

NB that US patent law is pretty much sui generis.  In Europe it is much more
strongly held that patents are for 'processes'.

Anyway it behoves us to go on putting scientific facts on Wikipedia,
regardless of 'ownership' claims, and worrying only about copyvio.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
He doesn't seem to be the the kind of fellow I'd like to have a beer
with, and his userpage is not pleasant, and if he ever got an RfA I'd
oppose solely based on it, but it's not nearly enough to block him, in
my opinion.

--Oskar

On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Could somebody who is not British (and therefore the target of this
> user's ire) please review this user page for me:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fenian_Swine
>
> I think it violates a few policies and sundry guidelines (including,
> arguably, user naming) but being British I can't really call myself
> unbiased here, and even if I were I can't go along and say anything
> without merely reinforcing his prejudices.
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
On 3/20/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> > Is that really their reason?  That is *remarkably stupid* of them. I
> > had thought there was a real reason; such lame excuses disgust me.
>
> Nope.
>
> The real situation is that our current blocking system sucks. A lot. And if we
> just "flipped a switch" it would suck *MUCH WORSE* because it would be virtually
> impossible to actually block anyone -- just create a bunch of accounts and
> you're immune until someone laboriously tracks them all down.
>
> So, it'll take more options and rethinking and generally some better, clearer
> idea of what blocking's supposed to do.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I disagree- this move would add granularity to our blocking system. If
we still had problems with sleeper accounts, well, I laboriously
explained above that that would *still* be an improvement over the
status quo.

~Maru
>


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
In message
<cbffa3750603200844y6b5e8268l4e6c565c4e418603 at mail.gmail.com>, Sam Korn
<smoddy-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>On 3/20/06, Matt R <matt_crypto-/E1597aS9LT10XsdtD+oqA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> I'm British, but I don't find his user name (which would appear to be
>> sarcastic)  nor his user page especially offensive.
>
>I have to say, I agree.  I'm a little bit more concerned that he has a
>fair use image on his userpage.
>

I agree too, I raised my eyebrows when I first saw "Fenian Swine" appear
last year, but mainly because I would consider it a highly derogatory
term that some British people might use about the Irish, not the other
way round.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> "If you have problem seeing this image, or signing up in general,
> please contact someone at wikimedia.org with your account information,
> and we will assist you in creating an account"

That's pretty much the current text. Except no one has gotten around
to actually adding the email address. Which is what started this whole
thread.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
So can someone set it up and add it?

On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "If you have problem seeing this image, or signing up in general,
> > please contact someone at wikimedia.org with your account information,
> > and we will assist you in creating an account"
>
> That's pretty much the current text. Except no one has gotten around
> to actually adding the email address. Which is what started this whole
> thread.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
G'day SPUI,

> Mel Gibson wrote:
>
>>The account name is Marcyu and can be seen at:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Marcyu&action=edit
>>
>>Admin Nlu claims a personal attack, but he deleted the page permanently
>>so there is no evidence against the contrary.
>
> Given that Nlu saw
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SPUI&diff=44465982&oldid=44465933
> as a personal attack, I'd take his claim with a grain of salt.

Uhh, but we *know* what Marcyu said, and it wasn't "your mother".  See
further on in the thread.

And don't be so snide.  There's people as can pull it off, and people as
can't.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


from_name: John Lee

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Am I alone in wondering what the benefit of allowing posts from people
>>not subscribed to the list is?
>>
>>
>
>That we advertise in a few places that you can post here if you're
>having a problem.  E.g. on the message blocked users get - I believe
>it informs them if they believe themselves blocked in error, they can
>ask here to get unblocked.
>
>-Matt
>
>
But if the messages come in so late -- after the block(s) expire, in
fact -- what's the point?

John


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikipedia-l] AOL (was Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 32, Issue 36)

body:
This has been my experience on en.wikipedia, as well as what we (the users)
are told when we complain about AOL. It is certainly the case that within
seconds of blocking an IP, a legit user is affected, while the exact same
vandal is mysteriously on a new IP continuing his vandal spree. It seems
awfully coincidental to me that the vandal would be able to get onto a new
IP within seconds of the old one being blocked (I've had dialup, and I was
never able to disconnect and reconnect in a matter of seconds) while at the
exact same time a Wikipeida contributor dials in and is assigned the IP the
vandal was using, as opposed to some non-Wikipedian being assigned it.

Perhaps I'm completely wrong; I only know what a lot of vandalfighting has
taught me, along with what I've been told by people who are supposed to know
what they are talking about.

Essjay

On 3/20/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> - Essjay - wrote:
> > The problem is not what the users do from AOL IPs, it is the way AOL
> > *assigns* IPs. Right now, if you are an AOL dial-up user, you will be
> > assigned a new IP every 15 minutes, or every page load, whichever comes
> > first. Literally *every time you load a page, you will have a new IP*.
> That
> > makes blocking problematic AOL users *impossible*. By the time a sysop
> can
> > discover and block a given address, the vandal has jumpted IPs at least
> > once, potentially a dozen times. Additionally, no sooner than the block
> > button is clicked, a legitimate AOL user with an account will be
> assigned
> > that IP, and will be blocked. This is not as much of a problem on
> smaller
> > projects, with fewer editors, fewer vandals, (and fewer AOL users as a
> > result), but it is a serious problem on large projects like en.wikipedia
> ,
> > where there are thousands of AOL users.
>
> That's certainly not the impression we gained when we researched this a
> couple of years ago. Has
> something changed recently? AOL's information on this subject certainly
> hasn't changed:
>
> http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html
>
> My understanding on this subject is that in the US, AOL uses a proxy
> cluster with load balancing by
> a hash of the destination URL. Thus if you block an AOL IP which edited a
> particular article, you
> block all AOL edits to that particular article.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
On 3/20/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all, as the title suggests, I'm writing about etiquette.
> Specifically, whether it's ok to delete  valid questions or comments
> from a talk page (in the particular case I'm talking about, deleting a
> question from their own user talk page).

What about when the question is from a troll? Would the advice about
[[don't feed the troll | not feeding trolls]] mean might actually be a
good idea in some cases?

Even if the question wasn't from a troll, should people be forced to
communicate with others when they really don't want to? If there's an
issue with an article, that can be brought up on the article talk
page, where it would be wrong to delete it, but I think users should
have some control over whether or not they want to respond to messages
on their talk page.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


body:
Hi all,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s&title=User:Stevage/EnhanceHistory.user.js

This one displays diffs in the history of an article (get GreaseMonkey
to make it work).

Still a bit buggy but results are promising.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Could somebody who is not British

I'm not currently in Britain. Is that close enough?

> please review this user page for me:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fenian_Swine

I'm was going to say I'm amazed he wasn't blocked for having an
offensive username, but he was blocked for it. It's even more amazing
he was unblocked for being "not offensive enough".

Considering his name and attitude, I see nothing in the previous discussions at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=21901342#User:Fenian_Swine
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Fenian_Swine
to justify the unblock.

Angela.


from_name: Conor G

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ipod thing

body:
Hey stranger

Im only doin this cause i need 2 send it 2 five people

Have a look at this. Want an ipod nano? I don't care. Cause i do.

http://giftresource321.com/?r=QUF0QlgECCk2A2oMAyQF&tc=2

>From Phonzie
or Conor.
whatever
its all good
Catchya

_________________________________________________________________
Want 1c text 24/7? Click here for details
http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fadsfac%2Enet%2Flink%2Easp%3Fcc%3DTEL185%2E19163%2E0%26clk%3D1%26creativeID%3D29997&_t=753375536&_m=EXT


from_name: Craig Franklin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
Scr?obh Mark Williamson :
>The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
>pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
>like a good approach to me.

Frankly, I have to agree.  I can't see any problem with this.

Cheers,
- Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
G'day geni,

> On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>What exactly do you object to?
>
> Calling for an armed upriseing in whales is pretty anoying. However I
> can live with that.

I don't think Jonah really needs any encouragement to try to escape ...

(I know, I'm sorry.  I tried to resist ...)

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


from_name: Mak

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
...continuing masturbatory tech talk....
What kind of audio captchas have people tried? I would think that asking
people to identify a piece of music would be a pretty good captcha, although
could be difficult to not make it Eurocentric. For instance, if you had a
bunch of songs as universally recognisable as, say happy birthday, and then
had a bunch of different recordings of those, it would be extraordinarily
difficult for a computer to recognise the piece, since it could be in any
key, in any tuning, with slight rhythmic diffences, but would still be
recognisable to anyone who knew the piece. Yes, you would have to figure out
what pieces to use and get the recordings, but it would still be cool. Of
course, Carnildo/Mark's workaround would still be there.
Makemi

On 3/20/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/20/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > I tried to think of a good text-only captcha scheme some time ago, but
> > came up short.
> >
> > The ideal text captcha is:
> > * endlessly variable (there must be at least millions of potential
> > challenges, to defend against replay attacks)
> > * easy for people to answer without any specialist knowledge
> > * easy to answer for people without advanced skills in the target
> language
> > * not generated by a simple algorithm which can be reverse-engineered
> > (as with the above)
> > * not Googlable
> > * easy to assess the answer using a computer program (which typically
> > means it's a simple word or phrase)
> >
>
> Even this isn't good enough.  Spammers have already figured out out
> how to defeat every visual captcha out there, and there's no reason to
> believe it won't also apply to audio and text captchas.  It's very
> simple:
>
> 1) Advertise free porn on USENET and other locations.
> 2) In order to get the pictures, users need to answer a captcha.
> Serve up the captcha for a site you're trying to register for.
> 3) User answers the captcha.  User gets the porn, spammer gets the new
> account, everyone's happy.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland Meetup 2006

body:
Wikimedia Polska is organizing a meetup at the end of April, during
which we'd like to hold a panel discussion on the future of the
Wikimedia projects in Europe. I'd like to call out for speakers and
panelists from various European countries on foundation-l, to hear if
anyone would be interested in joining us. I've already notified the
European local chapters on this fact.

The meetup will take place in Wroclaw, during 29th April - 1st May.
30th April will be the most interesting part, during which we'll hold
every discussion, including the discussion panel I mentioned earlier.

Hope to hear back from anyone interested soon.

--
Regards,
Dariusz Siedlecki


from_name: Heiko Evermann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links

body:
Hi everyone,

some weeks ago I came across a proposal to allow for the inclusion of macros
from commons. This would mean e.g. that it would no longer be neccessary to
replicate babel templates between the wikipedias.

The other benefit that was proposed was the simplification of interwiki links.

One would simply define a template:interwiki_english_article_name with the
complete list of interwiki links. Then all those other languages would just
have to add {{interwiki_english_article_name}} at the bottom.

For the transformation one would need a special robot, but after that we would
no longer need the interwiki robots and all the interwiki links would always
be up-to-date.

Are there any plans to make this possible?

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links

body:
On 3/20/06, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
>
> Heiko Evermann napisa?:
>
> > One would simply define a template:interwiki_english_article_name with
> the
> > complete list of interwiki links. Then all those other languages would
> just
> > have to add {{interwiki_english_article_name}} at the bottom.
>
> There would be one problem - the list would include the language of
> the Wikipedia you use it in, so if I included such list at, say,
> Polish Wikipedia, I'd get a "pl:Polish title" in bold.

There are another couple of problems: en.wiki does not have all the entries
about every possible topic dealt in wikipedia, and there is not necessarily
one to one correspondence between different projects (Entry x in wiki A may
just be part of entry y in wiki B). Thus I don't think it's a good idea.

Cruccone


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 3/20/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> We can in fact determine the AOL client IP using a Java applet or ActiveX control. I once floated
> the idea of serving Java applets to AOL users, but it met with a cold reception, for usability
> reasons. And of course the results returned by an applet running on the client could be spoofed.
>
> Maybe we could use an SSL web bug or redirect script. I imagine SSL requests wouldn't be proxied.

cookie based blocks
cookie based blocks
cookie based blocks

Come on.. fairly straight forward to impliment. Catch at least *some*
of the twits!


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links

body:
Heiko Evermann napisa?:

> One would simply define a template:interwiki_english_article_name with the
> complete list of interwiki links. Then all those other languages would just
> have to add {{interwiki_english_article_name}} at the bottom.

There would be one problem - the list would include the language of
the Wikipedia you use it in, so if I included such list at, say,
Polish Wikipedia, I'd get a "pl:Polish title" in bold.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> BTW, if people use browser unable to display images, how much would an
> audio captcha really help (I mean, sound's way more hi-tech)?

Anything with sound would be a backup for people who can't use the
image based one. The idea was that even if we don't want to have
special systems for people who choose to use browsers like Lynx, we
probably do want to cater specially for people who are blind, for
example, and have to use technology like screen readers to browse WP.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/20/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Theresa Knott wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Take the second letter of ADAM, the first letter of  OGRE and the last
>>>of RAINING.
>>>
>>>
>> >
>> > Is it possible for a bot to get around that?
>>
>>In a word, yes.  Unless you want to try coming up with new and
>>interesting variations faster than the bots can be taught to parse them.
>>
>>
>
>And I bet if you give that captcha to enough humans, enough will fail
>for things to get very tense very quickly. "What do you mean take the
>second letter? What do I do with it? I just want to help with
>wikibooks!!!"
>
>Mind you, graphical captchas can get beaten too, unless they're done
>very carefully.
>
>Perhaps if linkspam is the problem, we should just implement severe
>restrictions on including URLs? It's hard to imagine many situations
>where a new editor with almost no editors is adding a really useful
>URL that complies with [[WP:External links]]. And is there a reason
>Wikipedia doesn't use Google's suggested "nofollow" tag?
>
>Steve
>
>
We already have a spam filter. And the nofollow proposal was rejected by
the community.

John


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:43:02 +1100, you wrote:

>Considering his name and attitude, I see nothing in the previous discussions at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=21901342#User:Fenian_Swine
>and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Fenian_Swine
>to justify the unblock.

I just left a very polite notice suggesting he consider a username
change, since some find his username offensive, and got this response:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJzG&diff=44728752&oldid=44720855

Which was, I guess predictable.  Ah well.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I agree with Angela.
>
>

It should be noted that Mr Swine is not Fenian Swine. There was no
valid reason for the block in the first place thus there was no reason
not to pull it. The whole situation was handled badly thus it is
hardly supriseing that the user did not react in a totaly calm manner.
The whole thing happened months ago and since then the users
contibutions in the article space appear to have been acceptable.
There was no reason to take action before there was no reason to take
action now.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links

body:
Hi Heiko,
   interwiki robots do a very good job indeed, but they do need some form of
human control to solve ambiguities. I run one of these bots, and I can say
it's definitely not 100% smooth. The bot "pilot" has to choose whenever more
than one alternative is present.

> There are another couple of problems: en.wiki does not have all the
> > entries
> > about every possible topic dealt in wikipedia, and there is not
> > necessarily
> > one to one correspondence between different projects (Entry x in wiki A
> > may
> > just be part of entry y in wiki B). Thus I don't think it's a good idea.
> I wonder why this is not a problem today. The interwiki robots seem to be
> making a good job today. And if there is no entry for a topic in en.wiki,
> then why not start an interwiki ring in another language? As soon as
> en.wiki
> wants to join, it would be possible. I do not see the problem.

Cruccone


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

references:
<gpvs129rrveni3ikspriahmneq4qo4v173@4ax.com>
	<8b722b800603200243y26400668hd02e6f1f084c4073@mail.gmail.com>
	<upeu12tgb05lrlj6j329drgcb8po36hqlg@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:43:02 +1100, you wrote:
>
> >Considering his name and attitude, I see nothing in the previous discussions at
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=21901342#User:Fenian_Swine
> >and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Fenian_Swine
> >to justify the unblock.
>
> I just left a very polite notice suggesting he consider a username
> change, since some find his username offensive, and got this response:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJzG&diff=44728752&oldid=44720855
>
> Which was, I guess predictable.  Ah well.
> Guy (JzG)

After last time it is to be expected. People have a tendency to
generalise from single events. Thus he views admins with suspicion.

--
geni


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Could you possibly host this on WP itself, so we can watch it and discuss it
>>at our leisure? I'm kind of allergic to all the popups I get at angelfire
>>:-(
>
>
> Sure, but to actually deploy it it needs to be delivrable as a clean
> .js file (no header etc). I don't think I can do that on Wikipedia.
> Then again, with a greasemonkey script...:)
>

Actually, you can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{PAGENAME}}&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz]

body:
G'day Neil,

> Mark Gallagher wrote:
>> G'day Oskar,
>>> BTW, if people use browser unable to display images, how much would an
>>> audio captcha really help (I mean, sound's way more hi-tech)?
>>
>> Some people use browsers that cannot display images because they're
>> blind.  In such cases, audio is a Good Thing, and use of images
>> specifically designed to be unreadable to computers is not.
>
> An E-mail request link is pretty effective, I think. It is reasonable to
> assume that anyone who is intending to edit Wikipedia has some way of
> reading and writing text, whether directly or via assistive technology,
> and this will accommodate everyone who has them, without being
> bot-friendly.

Ahh, but we don't require email addresses to sign up to Wikipedia.  This
will be a new requirement, and will undoubtedly result in much squawking
along the same lines as "need to register to create an article" did.  I
won't bore anyone with the arguments of why some people won't be willing
to cough up an email address over the Internet, or why these people
shouldn't be treated as irritants ...

> Also, a secure but accessible sound captcha is rather more difficult to
> pull off than a visual captcha, since there are many more people in the
> world with partial hearing than partial sight.

Absolutely.  I'm not arguing that a sound-based captcha (or an email
rego, or whatever) is the way to go, either: I think putting all our
eggs in one basket is a mistake.  There's only one solution that will
please everyone and, alas, that one pleases the bots, too.  As such, an
image-based captcha, along with other options for the eventuality of
those people who can't view images (preferably provided without abusing
said people), is presumably the way to go.  Developers willing, o' course.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 3/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>>
>>>Am I crazy or are they violating the GFDL in that link? I mean they
>>>publish a few complete articles without mentioning the authours and
>>>without providing the text of the GFDL. God, it would be sweet to sue
>>>these assholes (pardon me' french). Can't we atleast send a Jack
>>>Thompson-esque threatening letter?
>>>
>>
>>They'd probably claim "fair use" for commentary purposes.
>>
>
>
> 1. They're probably quoting a little too much to be termed "fair use".
>
> but
>
> 2. We have credibility, they don't.
>
> Wikimedia Foundation shouldn't sue them for the same reason a guy in a
> nice house wearing nice clothes and with a reputation for fairness
> doesn't go out in the yard with a shotgun and blast a dog for shitting
> on his lawn.
>

Oops... *buries remains*

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:44:18 +0000, you wrote:

>After last time it is to be expected. People have a tendency to
>generalise from single events. Thus he views admins with suspicion.

Maybe, but it must be said that it is an offensive username, and I was
*very* polite.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question: CSS Formatting on Page

body:
Hi Varun,

The code that you're using is actually part of the syntax for creating
tables in HTML pages, so it's just showing up as text because you're not
writing out the entire syntax: see
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table> for details on that.

If you'd like to just format a chunk of text without creating a table
(recommended unless you're actually formatting some tabular data), then
you can use something like this:

<div align="left" width="35%" style="background-color:#FFF7F7;
border-bottom:1px solid #AA8888; border-top:1px solid #AA8888;
padding-top:5px; padding-right:10px; padding-left:10px;
padding-bottom:10px;">

Your text here...

</div>

Hope this helps.

Varun Munjal wrote:
> Hello -
>
> I am not sure how to include CSS formatting right on my Wiki page, and I
> would like to include formatting like this:
> |align="left" width="35%" style="background-color:#FFF7F7; border-top:1px
> solid #AA8888; border-bottom:1px solid #AA8888; border-top:1px solid
> #AA8888; padding-top:5px; padding-right:10px; padding-left:10px;
> padding-bottom:10px;" valign="top"|
>
> When I try to do so (without a template), it just shows up as text!  Is
> there a plugin or directive that I can install/change to enable this?  Many
> thanks,
> vm2058 at gmail.com.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

references:
<gpvs129rrveni3ikspriahmneq4qo4v173@4ax.com>
	<8b722b800603200243y26400668hd02e6f1f084c4073@mail.gmail.com>
	<upeu12tgb05lrlj6j329drgcb8po36hqlg@4ax.com>
	<f80608430603201544l701b32dam6a3eb582ae8f16e@mail.gmail.com>
	<srfu12poacnos20mqumsb6h7od2bonbs8m@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:44:18 +0000, you wrote:
>
> >After last time it is to be expected. People have a tendency to
> >generalise from single events. Thus he views admins with suspicion.
>
> Maybe, but it must be said that it is an offensive username, and I was
> *very* polite.
> Guy (JzG)

Unfortunety last time people were not.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Jim <trodel at gmail.com> wrote:
> To me this is a no brainer - from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username#Inappropriate_usernames
>
>    - Names that refer to symbols of hatred, including historical figures
>    who are widely associated with such
>
> Seems clearly to qualify - it is surprising that it took this long to
> notice.
>
> Jim

What symbol does it refer to? You might do better on the national
slurs bit but blocking:

Frog
Frog One
Frog lee
Frog man
Frog man45
Frog man46
Frog on a log
Frog one
Frog park
Frog prince
Frog queen
Frog queen1995
Frog-On-The-Pond
Frog00
Frog007
Frog08un56
Frog243
Frog29
Frog33
Frog442
RoastBeef

Would probably be regarded as excessive.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 3/20/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
>
>>We already have a spam filter. And the nofollow proposal was rejected by
>>the community.
>>
>>
>
>For en.wikipedia only, I thought?
>
>-Matt
>
>
Well, this *is* WikiEn-l... (Shouldn't the Wikibookians have their own
list?)

John


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links

body:
See also <http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/4547>.

Heiko Evermann wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> some weeks ago I came across a proposal to allow for the inclusion of macros
> from commons. This would mean e.g. that it would no longer be neccessary to
> replicate babel templates between the wikipedias.
>
> The other benefit that was proposed was the simplification of interwiki links.
>
> One would simply define a template:interwiki_english_article_name with the
> complete list of interwiki links. Then all those other languages would just
> have to add {{interwiki_english_article_name}} at the bottom.
>
> For the transformation one would need a special robot, but after that we would
> no longer need the interwiki robots and all the interwiki links would always
> be up-to-date.
>
> Are there any plans to make this possible?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Heiko Evermann

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
On 3/20/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Cormac Lawler wrote:
>
> > Is it not considered rude to ignore someone?
>
> If that "someone" is a troll or a stalker, it is they who are
> rude, and not their victim.  Some questions are nothing but
> provocations ("have you stopped beating your wife?" being the most
> well-known example). You cannot really have rules to keep people
> from being rude, because the truely rude will always abuse such
> rules to their own benefit.  We're all volunteers here, nobody is
> forced to do any work or answer any questions.

This is all fine if we want to create a rule that gives flexibility to
people acting in good faith, and doesn't expect them to answer stupid,
petty, provocative or otherwise pointless questions. But that's not
what I'm talking about here. To repeat, with a bit more context, what
I'm talking about is a situation where i noticed that two users were
in an edit conflict, which provoked a question on this person's talk
page, which this person deleted. I then made a similar comment that
was more broad in scope, and the user then deleted this. I restored my
question, asking to please discuss the matter with me. He deleted
again.

I'm not being rude, I'm not trolling (I might have come across
slightly authoritatively, and I've apologised for this). I'm asking
for clarification on a point of conflict, and pointing out where their
behaviour isn't very helpful, which this person refuses to talk about.
(The full context of this makes it even worse, but I'm deliberately
not giving it here to be fair to the person, who admittedly is pretty
new.) I can't believe that people here don't think this is clearly
being uncivil. What I'm arguing for is a general point of at least
*trying* to engage with other people -  this is showing good faith.
Sure, we work as volunteers, but we also work in an inherently
collaborative environment. Give them a chance - don't delete a comment
on your first contact with someone, unless it is itself clearly
uncivil. And, to be clear, I'm not talking about a rule or law to hold
people to - I'm simply talking about setting out good and bad examples
of behaviour. It'd be pretty clear if someone was trolling and used
the fact that someone didn't respond to a question against them, that
this person was still a troll. But that's just not the case here.

Cormac

>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-21

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 275 of 297 tests (92.59%) FAILED!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links

body:
Hi Marco,
> > There would be one problem - the list would include the language of
> > the Wikipedia you use it in, so if I included such list at, say,
> > Polish Wikipedia, I'd get a "pl:Polish title" in bold.
Right. This would require a small change in the software: just do not treat
an interwiki link to one's own wikipedia in a special way. Just present them
like all others. Or just filtr it out centrally.

> There are another couple of problems: en.wiki does not have all the
> entries
> about every possible topic dealt in wikipedia, and there is not
> necessarily
> one to one correspondence between different projects (Entry x in wiki A
> may
> just be part of entry y in wiki B). Thus I don't think it's a good idea.
I wonder why this is not a problem today. The interwiki robots seem to be
making a good job today. And if there is no entry for a topic in en.wiki,
then why not start an interwiki ring in another language? As soon as en.wiki
wants to join, it would be possible. I do not see the problem.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Echte DSL-Flatrate dauerhaft f?r 0,- Euro*!
"Feel free" mit GMX DSL! http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

> Is it not considered rude to ignore someone?

If that "someone" is a troll or a stalker, it is they who are
rude, and not their victim.  Some questions are nothing but
provocations ("have you stopped beating your wife?" being the most
well-known example). You cannot really have rules to keep people
from being rude, because the truely rude will always abuse such
rules to their own benefit.  We're all volunteers here, nobody is
forced to do any work or answer any questions.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


from_name: SPUI

subject:
[WikiEN-l] major groupthink on [[WP:CASH]] (California state
	highways)

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_March_19#Template:CAFES_and_Template:CAFESAlt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_Route_2_%28California%29
I would appreciate some actual informed discussion on either side,
rather than the current grasping at straws.