body:
>Hi Wouter,
>
>Can you tell me, do you think Zeelandic is further or the same
>distance linguistically from Dutch as Limburgish??
>
>Mark

Yes Mark, I can. It is closer to Dutch than Limburgish. That is why I am not
sure at all if Zealandic can get a Wikipedia of its own. Limburgic is
clearly different from Dutch for its tonal nature and features like umlaut
in diminutives and irregular verbs. I already pointed out the main
differences at this list earlier. The differences between Dutch proper and
Zeelandic are comparable with those between English and Scots. An advantage
is that Zeelandic is far more coherent than Limburgic: the differences
between the dialects are minor. While some Zeelandic sentences will be so
similar to their Dutch equivalents that it would seem madness to request a
separate Wikipedia, spoken Zeelandic remains very problematic to be
understood by those who speak Dutch as their native language.
Imagine Western Europe having remained in earlier stages of development, and
Africa being the leading area in modern politics and science. Imagine an
African linguist coming in through the polders, trying to record the
languages of the Lowlands that need yet to be investigated. He would
probably conclude that Zeelandic and Hollandic (Dutch) are two closely
related but separate languages, connected by a dialect continuum, that
Limburgic is slightly more distant but also connected to both of them with a
dialect continuum (being is the Brabantic dialect area), and that Frisian is
also somewhat more distant, but unlike Limburgish hardly connected with
Hollandic by a dialect continuum. Respecting to the Low Saxon dialects in
the Northeast part of the country, *we* consider it a seperate language on
for historical reasons, but our African linguist would draw a similar
conclusion for Netherlands Low Saxon as for Zeelandic.
Interestingly, Ethnologue names a lot of Low Saxon dialects in the
Netherlands as separate language: Veenkolonial, Twentish, Stellingwervish,
Achterhoeks... It is ridiculous, I think, to consider them all seperate
languages. But they made a big mistake /not/ to mention Zeelandic - I think
they just forgot, considering the otherwise low threshold for language
variants to be called languages.

As I said before: I myself am not absolutely convinced Zeelandic (and Town
Frisian) should get a project of its (their) own. But I would like to know
if it could get your support, as I have the impression the defintion for
languages/ dialects in the Netherlands is rather strict. If most of you
can't approve this, I could request a Wikicity, of course, but for cases
like these (imo on the border of what it a language and what isn't) I found
a discussion desirable.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: foundation-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5

body:
Fruggo wrote:
> If I understand you correctly, you say that Wikimedia projects
> shouldn't be censored in any way. But isn't censorship a very
> important part of (at least) Wikipedia? Since all POV remarks in
> articles are consistently removed. We only allow NPOV contributions.
> Isn't that censorship as well?

I think when people equate the concept "editorial judgment" with
"censorship" they destroy both concepts.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: katimawan .

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Kapampangan application

body:
Hi, Mark,

I'm a native speaker of Kapampangan, and would be willing to write much of the content of the Wikipedia myself.  It's an excellent opportunity for my language to have a presence in this esteemed cyberspace institution.
I don't have collaborators yet, but I can find enough to satisfy the requirements, and will inform the group the moment I get the minimum number.  There are several active Kapampangan Internet fora and sites.

Edwin

Message: 7
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 18:10:45 -0700
From: Mark Williamson
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Kapampangan Wikipedia
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <849f98ed05061118102855347e at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi Edwin,,

Just wondering but do you speak Kapampangan yourself?

And would you be willing to write much of the content on the
Kapampangan Wikipedia yourself?

Is there anybody else col-laborating with you?

Mark

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

Correo Yahoo!
Comprueba qu? es nuevo, aqu?
http://correo.yahoo.es


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright and local liability

body:
Dori wrote:

>On 6/13/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This is a huge grey area, but for example the
>>>German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
>>>
>>>
>>This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly
>>confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:,
>>which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which
>>doesn't.
>>
>
>I don't care much about fair use, though for some things there is no
>other way. But I don't like this either because if you take it to the
>extreme and obey the law of every country, there's going to be little
>that is allowed. What if some country prohibits the GFDL itself?
>
>
Unless the prohibition is against specifically the Free Software
Foundation licenses in general, or a very specific anti-American
licensing law (both are possible and weird), the GFDL is simply a
contractural agreement on how you can reuse copyrighted material.  If
you fail to follow the proscribed method to legally reuse the content,
you are then subject to copyright violations that in many places,
notably the USA and Europe, can be quite harsh with multi-year jail
terms and fines in hundreds of thousands of dollars.... per violation.

Outlawing the GFDL or GPL is going to be a pandora's box that will
essentially make copyright laws useless, and make it impossible to
license somebody to legally copy any copyrightable content.

Fair-use, on the other hand, is something that the courts are very vague
about, and even in the USA I would not stake my reputation on complying
with copyright law if it is just "fair-use" as a justification to copy
the material.  There were plenty of professors that got burned when
Kinko's (a photocopy center business chain) was prohibited by a judicial
decree resulting from a lawsuit from publishing compilations of
copyrighted material for university classes.  This was a widespread
practice until the mid 1990's at most American universities, to have
students "go down to Kinko's" and grab lecture notes and supplimentary
material not in a textbook.

It is important also to simply be as "reasonable" as possible, and in
the case of Wikipedia or all Wikimedia projects to try and err on the
side of caution.  I just bumped into the anti-fair-use issue with
WikiCommons, but I agree with the decision that no fair-use material
should be on that server.  It makes life a little harder for those of us
who want to write spashy and spectacular articles, but when all is said
and done with what is on fair-use restricted sites, the legal questions
about what can be published are much easier to deal with.  The problems
seem to be particularly rough with photographic images and audio
recordings, as most textual information on the Wikimedia projects is
original material where fair-use questions are not even a problem.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes
>sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of
>maximal reusability.  This is a huge grey area, but for example the
>German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
>
>
This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly
confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:,
which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which
doesn't.

-Mark


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> If German copyright law or precedent made such reproductions
> copyrightable, would the German Wikipedia have to remove them? Would the
> Commons?
>
> Are we increasing the risk of such a situation arising with every new
> chapter and every new server cluster around the planet, particularly
> with servers which are not mere proxies? I would prefer to see all
> copyright liability directed at Wikimedia USA and to be able to defer
> solely to US precedent in cases like this. But perhaps it's already too
> late for that and we're headed for a global legal nightmare.

Well, I think this is a very valid and very confusing question. :-)

First, the German association is specifically not responsible for the
website, and we have been clear about this with several (bogus)
trademark complainants already.  This is a very helpful strategy, I
think... the German association gets a bogus complaint, and tells the
complainer to complain to the foundation in the US, and we tell them to
go away.

Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes
sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of
maximal reusability.  This is a huge grey area, but for example the
German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.

When we place servers in different countries, we do introduce new legal
risks, although in some ways these risks are minimal.  Consider for
example the Amsterdam cluster -- these machines are for us to use, but
we don't own them.  We don't have any assets in the Netherlands.  So if
by some chance there was legal trouble there, well, I suppose "they"
could force someone to shut down the Amsterdam cluster, but we wouldn't
lose any money.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG

body:
So, based on all this, I think it is safe to say that our existing ban
on MP3s should stand.

--Jimbo

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 2005-06-04 at 20:03 +0200, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I am willing to defer on this issue to Debian.  Can anyone report on
>>> whether or not MP3s can be created and played with software that Debian
>>> has in their 'free' category?
>>>
>>
>>
>> Fraunhofer, the owners of the mp3 patents, claim $0.75 royalties per
>> decoder sold; they explicitly say that this fee is waived for "free
>> software distributed over the Internet", but that does mean that Linux
>> distributions on CD or sold by other means cannot include MP3 decoders
>> without triggering the fee, but they can point users to where free
>> decoders can be downloaded.
>>
>> Whether their claim has any legal validity is another issue entirely.
>>
>>
>>
> While I would grant that many software patent issues are dubious at best
> (notably the LZW GIF issue from back elsewhen), this one is quite
> legitamate, and well known by at least those who are quite familiar with
> the development of multimedia software.  The compression algorithm was
> specifically designed by Fraunhofer for the MPEG  Audio (ISO/IEC
> 11172-2) specification, and credit for that effort is published in the
> appendex of that specification, with a specific warning that it needed
> to be contacted in order to resolve any patent issues.  And the
> algorithm employed by Fraunhofer really is unique enough that I don't
> have as much of a problem with them claiming patent status as opposed to
> the incredibly silly patents that have been issues (like the one-click
> patent by Amazon.com).  Their "legal" website is:
>
> http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html
>
> I've been involved with multimedia data formats for some time, and I
> would have to say that the "non-free" status of MP3s is indeed a huge
> issue for an organization like the Wikimedia Foundation.  This is not
> something to be lightly swept under the rug.  While you can have "free
> software" that implements the specification, the legal issues are hardly
> clear.  Another website I would strongly recommend to look at is:
>
> http://www.mpegla.com/
>
> This is the "licensing authority" for most MPEG products, and will give
> you at least somewhat of a legal whitewash if you license stuff through
> them.  It doesn't, however, cover MP3s, which is why you need to license
> directly through Fraunhofer.  By legal whitewash, I mean that people
> known to the MPEG committee to have patent issues with the standards
> have been contacted and negotiated with to set the fees.  They still
> don't guarentee that you will be safe from patent violation, but you
> have been covered from the major players who open insist on royalties
> for those patents that are covered by the specs.
>
> Ugly, and it does get worse.
>
> Where it comes down to what the Wikimedia Foundation is concerned, there
> would be interest in selling copies of Wikimedia content (on CDs, in
> books, etc.) even if it is just as a fundraiser to pay for the server
> farm.  Fraunhofer is insisting on a royalty for even distributing MP3s,
> so some of the money raised from the sale of a Wikipedia CD (for
> example), would have to be sent to the MP3 licensing authority.  I don't
> know the legality of this in Europe, but I wouldn't avoid paying this
> fee there either without a lawyer on retainer to deal with potential
> lawsuits.
>
> The "free" aspect is more a recognition that one of the major reasons
> why MP3s are popular is because they are widely traded over the
> internet, and they don't want to hassle all of the free MP3 download
> sites, unlike the RIAA.  This still violates the terms of the GPL,
> notably clause seven:
>
> "7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
> infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
> conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
> otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
> excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute
> so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and
> any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not
> distribute the Program at all."
>
> While this clause is not in the GFDL (I am surprised here on this
> point), I would expect a similar legal argument if it were brought up.
>
> While I am not a lawyer, I do have experience in this issue from a
> professional standpoint, and it is my strong recommendation that the
> Wikimedia Foundation avoid MP3s on any of the Wikimedia sites, as it
> violates at least in nature free media, and could produce headaches for
> the Foundation that would be better left alone.  When the Fraunhofer
> patent expires, that may be another issue, and I do expect that the
> Wikipedia will outlive this patent, but that is several years in the
> future.
>


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Friedland

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Discussion on English Wikipedia in languages other than
	English

body:
I have noted an increase of discussion on English Wikipedia in languages
other than English lately. For now, I'll forgo naming languages and
listing particular offenders here.

Do we have a policy on this? Should we?

My opinion is that we should not allow or least sternly frown upon
discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.

Is this racist/anti-nationalist/Anglo-centric? I don't know. I like to
consider myself open-minded, but there is something very ominous to me
about discussions in foreign languages on the English Wikipedia. Of
course, probably the vast majority of such discussions are completely
innocuous, but the rest of us have no way of knowing that unless we know
what the discussions are about. There is little more frustating that
having a conversation (in some cases which is clearly about you) hidden
in plain sight.

Of course I am symphathetic to users whose first language is not English
and for whom discussing in English may be difficult. However, I am
hesitant to extend such sympathy to being permissive of non-English
discussion on the English Wikipedia, which is, after all, written in
English. In the cases I have seen, the editors who are discussing in a
foreign language have demonstrated elsewhere that they are competent
writers of English, so it seems especially pernicious when they "lapse"
into another language, as though they are hiding something.

The policy question is what to do about users who insist on carrying out
discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.
Users who discuss in other languages should be invited to translate
their discussion (and remove the discussion in the original language to
discourage responses in the original language) or have them removed. We
should not remove such discussions summarily, of course, but after a set
period of time given to the user to remove their discussion, informing
them on their user page, etc.

The policy should not apply to user pages and user talk pages, but
non-English discussion on those pages should at least be strongly
discouraged. It creates an atmosphere of distrust.

We don't permit articles in foreign languages, so why should we permit
discussion in foreign languages?

Please commence with the vilifying of me for being an insensitive
Anglo-centric asshole.

- David [[User:Nohat]]


from_name: Dori

body:
On 6/13/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes
> >sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of
> >maximal reusability.  This is a huge grey area, but for example the
> >German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
> >
> >
> This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly
> confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:,
> which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which
> doesn't.

I don't care much about fair use, though for some things there is no
other way. But I don't like this either because if you take it to the
extreme and obey the law of every country, there's going to be little
that is allowed. What if some country prohibits the GFDL itself?


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Report from this month's Board meetings

body:
Two board meetings were held this month. Some highlights from the
meetings follow. Please see
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/June_7%2C_2005 and
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/June_9%2C_2005 for the
full details.

The first meeting was, unusually, attended by the entire board. The
second was even more unusual in that it consisted of the entire board
with the exception of Jimbo.

We have approved two changes to the bylaws:
1) elected terms shall be two years rather than one, and
2) there will be no difference between contributing and volunteer
member representatives.

Other proposed changes were informally agreed upon, but will not be
officially approved prior to a legal review.

Work on the contacts for Mandriva's planned distribution of Wikipedia
is ongoing. The Portuguese Wikipedia might now be included, in
addition to English and French.

Jimmy is meeting Eben Moglen on 15 June to talk about proposed changes
to the GFDL.

In terms of hardware, Kate has helped to determine what we need from
Yahoo. This is expected to be set up next month. Details from the
system administration team on what we would like from other potential
sponsors would be appreciated.

We have approximately US$50,000 in the PayPal account. The fundraising
drive will postponed until after the elections. Feedback from the
sysadmins on what we are going to buy and when is required before the
fundraising drive.

Angela
--
Angela Beesley
WikimediaFoundation.org


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Unit Conversion (Patch for Bug 235)

body:
On 13/06/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> That's another one of my ulterior motives for cleaning up the
> extension syntax. The Mediawiki software is already suffering
> from some serious feature creep, and its use at other sites is
> only going to increase that pressure. I'm hoping that giving
> the feature-hungry masses a way to add some whizbang to the
> software that we at Wikipedia can choose to ignore may appease
> them a bit.

Well they can (and do [1]) do that, just as easily, with the existing
extension syntax - your "<<extension foo bar>>" has a direct
one-to-one mapping to the existing "<extension>foo bar</extension>" -
or am I missing something?

Of course, there *are* limitations to that extension mechanism, but
they're not to do with syntax; the ones that spring to mind are:
* caching means mixing dynamic content into static pages is near-useless
* there's no "clean" method of returning wikicode rather than HTML, or
passing the results of the extension back to the parser (a simpler
problem to fix, but no-one's got round to it)
Between those two issues, a lot of the things people would like to do
with extensions are a lot harder than they might seem.

BTW, there's also an "event hooks" extension mechanism, and an
AuthPlugin system, so there's now quite a few ways for people to "add
some whizbang"...

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_extensions lists some of these.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Guaka

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for a Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
> And let's pray we can expect more new succesful non-western Wikipedias in
> the near future, or hope for the animation of many of those dormant
> wikipedias!

About those dormant Wikipedias... today Aliu Mamadu Jallo helped me
translating the Fulfude interface a bit. We also managed to start a nice
first article. :)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Discussion on English Wikipedia in languages other
	than English

body:
On 6/13/05, David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
> Do we have a policy on this? Should we?
>
> My opinion is that we should not allow or least sternly frown upon
> discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.

In general, I disagree with you.

For practical reasons writing in other languages is already
'discouraged' if by no other means than the simple fact that few
others will understand it in most places. If anything at all needs to
be done, I'd suggest that someone leave a polite reminder that this is
the English Wikipedia, most english-first-languagers are notoriously
monolingual, and that the peanut gallery would really like a
translation. :)

I, for one, have been glad that speaking in foreign languages is
permitted, because it is the only way I've been able to work with
others when I've made the effort to contribute media I created to
non-english wikipedias.

If you're concerned about conspiracy, I'm afraid that the situation is
already beyond hope: Those that would wish to hide their conversations
from you could do so far more effectively by communicating via private
mailing lists or wikis. ... They could even use the 'email this user'
feature, unless you suggest that we disable it as well. :)

If you're worried that someone is making fun of you, then end your
worries: As you've pointed out, few people can read the material... so
you've been releaved of any need to defend yourself.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
Jimmy:

> Nor to me.  But this is one of the problems.  Most of us aren't
> interested in pedophilia.  Pedophiles are.  Let's hold a vote on what
> the pedophilia articles should so, a vote on which references are valid,
> and see what happens.
>
> Instead what we should do is use serious judgment to determine how to
> find out which references are valid, and rely on those judgments.  We
> can consult with psychologists and sociologists and get an idea of
> whether or not a particular user is acting in good faith or just citing
> crackpot sources to push a POV.

Thanks for giving me such a nice example to work with. See:

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

This is perhaps the only scientific study (a meta-analysis of existing
studies) that was condemned by the US House of Representatives. It
concluded that, contrary to mainstrean opinion, child sexual abuse does
not necessarily cause pervasive harm in later life.

Many "experts" would characterize Rind et al. as a "crackpot source".

Now, there has been, over the last 25 years, a gigantic amount of
hysteria about child sexual abuse in the United States. Thousands of
innocent individuals have been accused of abuse in a wave of
allegations, mostly based on the pseudoscientific theory that memories
of abuse are "repressed" and have to be recovered by "trained
therapists" in special "repressed memory therapy" which involves
suggestive questioning, hypnosis, "scenario exploration", and drugs.
Respected anti-pseudoscience organizations such as CSICOP have tried to
alert people to this problem.

Good starting points:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Ritual_Abuse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder

An excellent book on the topic is "Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria" by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0520205839

Also highly recommended: "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting
Children from Sex" by Judith Levine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0816640068

(With a foreword by Jocelyn Elders, the former US Surgeon General who
was fired by Bill Clinton because she said about masturbation that "it
is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.")

Suffice it to say that there was and, to some extent, continues to be an
entire "therapy industry" that profited massively from creating "child
sexual abuse" claims (including the most bizarre allegations of murder
and torture you can imagine). Some of these "trained experts" have now
moved on to "therapize" victims of abductions by extraterrestrials.

What does this have to do with Rind et al.? Many of the same people who
work in that industry have massively attacked the Rind study. There were
methodological problems with it (particularly from a European point of
view, where "child abuse" typically refers to acts with children under
14, while in the US, it often refers to persons under 18), but many of
the criticisms were simply very vile personal attacks against the
authors of the study.

Of course, pedophiles near and far have trumpeted Rind et al. as
evidence that child abuse is not harmful. To some extent, they are
correct: The ridiculous assumption that a 16-year-old cannot decide to
have sex and will be instantly traumatized when they do so deserves to
be questioned. The age of consent is something that needs to be
carefully examined on the basis of scientific evidence. To exclude
individual scientists who challenge the emotional mainstream as
"crackpots" is not a good way to do this.

I am absolutely confident that if a pedophilia or child abuse related
article was brought before the ArbCom, and they consulted with an
"expert" on child sexual abuse, the chances are pretty good that said
expert falls into the group of questionable psychologists described
above, and that they would strongly recommend to entirely ban any
mention of Rind et al. from child abuse related articles.

A villified user would be positioned against a trusted and respected
expert. They wouldn't stand a chance.

Such a decision would be highly POV and absolutely incorrect.

It is questionable whether a democratic process would lead to a better
result, but at least someone quoting Rind et al. would not be treated as
a crackpot by some committee which decides the dispute. At least they
would have a chance to submit their arguments to the whole community on
equal footing with everyone else, and the community would have a chance
to read all arguments and *judge for themselves* which ones are plausible.

Hence, the child sexual abuse / pedophilia example is an *excellent*
reason not to delegate any kind of authority to credentialed experts.
Credentialed experts are largely responsible for creating the hysteria
around this topic, and many of them made a lot of money by doing so.
*Especially* in cases where a topic is highly emotionalized, making
decisions based on "expert opinion" is the wrong thing to do, because
the expert is very likely to be biased one way or another.

And I absolutely challenge the notion that, if a decision were made in a
democratic process, nobody would be interested. In fact, I believe that
an emotional topic like pedophilia, if properly announced, would attract
a very large number of commenters and voters.

Yes, there are pedophiles on Wikipedia. That doesn't mean that
everything they say is wrong by default, and that we need some expert to
tell us so. We can deal with these people on our own.

As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and
open community processes. If we choose credentialism, then we implicitly
assume that experts can be trusted to do the right thing. But history
shows that this is a very, very dangerous assumption to make. Open
processes are the only way that we can reliably challenge experts when
they happen to be wrong.

Erik


body:
Jimmy Wales:

> "Community-based" means a lot more than "hold a vote".

Absolutely. A vote must only be held under very rigid, community-centric
conditions which require and reward rational discourse and consensus
seeking. That is to say, the current practice of holding votes
willy-nilly if you can get away with it needs to be stopped, and a
proper framework should be developed instead that is compatible with our
highest ideals.

Erik


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Minor bugbear fixed: newtalk notification

body:
Everyone's seen the "sticky" newtalk notification problem -- that ugly
orange box hangs around for longer than it's meant to and can be hard to
get rid of. I fixed one cause of this: the client cache. We've always
had a system to invalidate the client cache when the newtalk status
changes, but it was broken shortly before 1.4 was branched and nobody
noticed. I'm pretty sure it's now fixed.

The changes were inapplicable to HEAD, since newtalk handling has
changed completely. It will need to be tested separately.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Enciclopedia Libre

body:
Short answer: No.

Long answer:The point of not naming names is that you don't name
names. Some people may feel they are the target even if they are not,
but it saves face for the real target and for the original person as
there is no specific accusation directed at a specific person.

If you were to ask an expert on Western social customs, you'd find
that it's often -- if not usually -- considered more polite to accuse
one single person in very general terms, so that they know you're
talking about them but nobody else does, than to give your criticisms
to a specific person in front of the whole crowd.

An example might be, speaking in front of a crowd, saying "Almost all
of you did a terrific job. However, there are some people here in whom
I am disappointed. You know who you are" is better than saying
"Everybody did well except John Doe, Jane Smith, and Tom Buck, in all
of whom I am extremely disappointed".

Mark

On 12/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > No, it wasn't directed at you and Susning.nu, it doesn't match because
> > as you said Susning has fewer articles than the Swedish Wikipedia, and
> > it doesn't share any articles.
>
> I would like to say that I share Lars distaste for you making criticisms
> that might be about any number of people in such a backhanded way.  If
> you want to criticize someone please just say the name so we can know
> what you're talking about.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Does Aliu Mamadu Jallo have regular internet access? And if so, can he
type the special characters nessecary for writing Fulfulde?

And how will Fulfulde be handled in terms of dialects, namely that
some will tell you Fulfulde is a dialect of Pulaar?

But yes, it's a wonderful achievement. :)

Mark

On 12/06/05, Guaka <guaka at no-log.org> wrote:
> > And let's pray we can expect more new succesful non-western Wikipedias in
> > the near future, or hope for the animation of many of those dormant
> > wikipedias!
>
> About those dormant Wikipedias... today Aliu Mamadu Jallo helped me
> translating the Fulfude interface a bit. We also managed to start a nice
> first article. :)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugzilla votes

body:
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller at gmx.de) [050613 01:21]:

> It's a very bad idea to use a rating system with a large scale (e.g.
> from 1 to 1000), as everyone will use it differently and the average
> becomes meaningless (as does the individual vote unless you look at that
> person's entire voting record). The other problem was that, due to the
> terminology "vote", many people were likely to assume that they only had
> a single vote.
> A 1-5 rating system (without the term "vote") would probably be optimal,
> but the current solution is a big improvement to make the statistics
> more meaningful, which will be useful to the Research Team.

This was the thinking behind a 1-4 scale for article ratings - yes/no is
too binary for a lot of things, but 1-10 is too broad.

For Bugzilla votes, one vote or none is probably fine ... particularly if
that's what the devs who would be paying attention to them want to measure.
I'd call that an overwhelmingly convincing reason to go with the current
system ;-)

By the way: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/page.cgi?id=voting.html still
says "Indicate how many votes you want to give this bug. This page also
displays how many votes you've given to other bugs, so you may rebalance
your votes as necessary." - this should probably be changed if the system's
changed.

(/me goes votes for bug 550 - any bug I can remember the number of probably
deserves a vote)

- d.


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>If anything at all needs to
>be done, I'd suggest that someone leave a polite reminder that this is
>the English Wikipedia, most english-first-languagers are notoriously
>monolingual, and that the peanut gallery would really like a
>translation. :)
>
>
Even of those us who didn't learn English as a first language would
appreciate a translation, unless it happens to be in our first language,
which in my case (modern Greek) it almost never is.

-Mark


body:
Jimmy:
> Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes
> sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of
> maximal reusability.  This is a huge grey area, but for example the
> German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.

Well, the situation on the German Wikipedia is not very satisfactory in
this regard, and many editors are increasingly recognizing this.
Articles which are richly illustrated in English are entirely without
pictures in German. This is especially true in cases where we will never
be able to get free content images of the characters, such as cartoon
series. (Making them available as free content would allow the creation
of derivative works, which obviously the creators do not want.)

An interesting exception is this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons

Compare:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Simpsons

Here, the German Wikipedia is trying to be clever by using 3D puppets of
the Simpsons characters. However, such puppet designs are just as much
copyrighted as a other picture of the Simpsons cast, so the "workaround"
isn't really a workaround at all. (Note that Disney has threatened
bakeries for selling Mickey Mouse shaped cakes and the like.) It
actually makes the situation worse because we claim that these pictures
are GFDL and therefore can be used for derivative works and commercial
purposes.

The simple fact is, you won't get free content pictures of the Simpsons
cast. Just forget it. You can have photos of the voice actors, of
course, but getting a picture of Homer Simpson even under CC-BY-ND-NC
would be difficult. Permission for Wikipedia only might be possible, but
I think we all agree that this isn't very helpful.

When the copyright policy on the German Wikipedia was originally
drafted, I suggested making exemptions that are allowed for scientific
purposes under German copyright law. However, that proposal was narrowly
defeated by the now established "no fair use" doctrine. A heated
discussion is underway to again somewhat relax the policy.

I agree with you that we should maximize reusability. There are,
however, two additional comments I would make on this:

1) Many countries have legal frameworks which are similar, but not
identical to the US framework. We should generally try to interpret
local law in a way that is generous to us, as the above demonstrates.
Insofar as German law has "fair use" like exemptions, I believe it is
unwise to reject those.

2) We should *never* comply with laws that would violate the spirit of
Wikipedia. [*] Having no pictures of the Simpsons in a free content
encyclopedia is forgivable. Removing facts from an article about Taiwan
because of fear of Chinese censors is not.

This is precisely what worries me about Chinese Wikinews -- that our
current attitude to it emboldens users in the Chinese Wikipedia who
would remove facts and justify it by citing the threat of censorship for
the whole Wikipedia, or worse, justify it by citing your comments on
this. Defying censors needlessly is indeed wrong, but so is appeasement
if it affects our core principles.

I am concerned that the proliferation of chapters will contribute to
more conservative legal interpretations, as people will feel they need
to prevent the organization from being held liable (even if its bylaws
explicitly disclaim liability). I think the above goals, if we agree on
them, should be formally written down somewhere (perhaps the WMF bylaws,
and a general chapter policy) and be introduced into the discussion
process of any new chapter.

Erik

[*] Note that I did not say "foreign laws". What we should do if US law
made Wikipedia's existence impossible as it is today is an interesting
question. I personally believe that in an extreme situation, a new legal
home for the project and its organization should be sought.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
Jimmy Wales stated for the record:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I apologize to Sean.

I accept without reservation.  I overreacted; though I want to claim
that the original accusations didn't bother me, they obviously did, and
then what I mistook as a swipe from a very unexpected quarter upset me
more than it should.

You'd think an arbiter would have thicker skin, wouldn't you?  I need to
work on my calluses.

Thank you, Jimbo, and I will continue to enthusiastically support
Wikipedia in any way I can.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Follow your dream! Unless it's the one where you're
  sean at epoptic.com | at work in your underwear during a fire drill.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews radio

body:
I am posting this to foundation-l and wikitech-l, because there is both
a technical and a policy aspect here.

A small but growing group of Wikinews contributors is actively making
audio recordings of Wikinews stories. This effort is coordinated here:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews

The files are uploaded to the Commons in Ogg Vorbis format. Now, two
members of this group have started to also produce a streamed version of
this, which is broadcast at specific times -- effectively Internet
radio. This could grow into a real independent wikiradio project which
perhaps could encompass more than just news. The usefulness of realtime
broadcasting for news should be obvious.

The current Wikinews page is at:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:WikiNews_Network

Now, here is our dilemma:

Streaming audio in realtime requires special software. WNN currently
uses ShoutCast, which is not free/open source software. It is also not
hosted on Wikimedia's servers, but on the server of one of our
contributors. (We have the same issue with the print edition, but I'll
try to resolve this separately.)

Do we want to run this on our own servers? If so, there is a free
software implementation called Icecast. Would it be possible to securely
set up an Icecast server for this purpose on our hardware?

If we don't want to run it on our servers, should we allow it to be
called "Wikinews Network", or should it use a different name?

Should we set any specific limits for the project's scope beyond NPOV,
or should we let it experiment freely with the format for the time
being? (There was some talk about ads on the program, but I made it
clear that this was absolutely impossible.) As for NPOV, a wiki-radio
project might want to broadcast news *about* the wiki community; do
these have to strictly adhere to NPOV (the German Wikipedia:Kurier, for
example, does not)?

Best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews radio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikinews radio


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinews radio

body:
On 13/06/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> A small but growing group of Wikinews contributors is actively making
> audio recordings of Wikinews stories. This effort is coordinated here:
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews
> [...] http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:WikiNews_Network

The Wikinews Network looks like a great idea. I'm pleased to see
people are working on moving the projects beyond a simple text-based
approach.

> If we don't want to run it on our servers, should we allow it to be
> called "Wikinews Network", or should it use a different name?

It would probably depend on why we didn't want to run it on our
servers. It could be an official Wikimedia project without being on
our own servers.

> Should we set any specific limits for the project's scope beyond NPOV,
> or should we let it experiment freely with the format for the time
> being? (There was some talk about ads on the program, but I made it
> clear that this was absolutely impossible.)

Perhaps a trial period will highlight whether or not any limits do
need to be set. I'm not convinced NPOV and no-ads are going to be
policies that need to be adhered to for this. Aiming for a balance in
POV overall rather than in specific items might be better, though this
should be experimented with before any decisions are made. Content off
the main websites has been published with ads before (at least one of
the WikiReaders <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiReader> for
example), so even that is something which should be open to discussion
rather than immediately dismissed, particularly if it isn't going to
be hosted on our own servers.

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Minor bugbear fixed: newtalk notification

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> The patchlet #1 solves the problem you are referring to (at least in my
> reference implementations and implementatation of other people).
...
> [1] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2014 published 26 April 2005

No it doesn't, it reintroduces the bug, which you fixed (albeit
inefficiently) with a previous patch. That patch replaces the use of
UserTalkUpdate with a call to User::saveNewtalk(). The latter function
which was written by Evan for User.php 1.140, does not update the
user_touched field, which is the source of this bug. UserTalkUpdate
calls User::saveSettings(), which does update user_touched. Both
versions suffer from concurrency and replication lag problems due to
their use of $wgMemc->delete() instead of $wgMemc->set() to refresh the
cache.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Jan Kulveit wrote:

>Hi,
>
>
>the problem is, country laws may prescribe specific requirements
>for contractual agreements, or licenses, not fullfilled by GFDL. E.g.
>-a contract must consist of an offer and an acceptation. An offer
>has to be directed (not "You,...")
>-the acceptation is valid in the moment, when the autor recieves
>some notice about acceptation (impossible in GFDL)
>-specific requirements for licenses, e.g. written form, explicit
>mentioning the license is not payed etc.
>
>For example, in the Czech Republic, few years ago, GPL (and also
>GFDL) was probably contradicting both copyright law and contract
>laws. Now the copyright law changed and contract laws are going to
>change, and legal situation is unclear. In practice, nobody cares
>about the law and GPL and GFDL is respected.
>
>***
>
>The safest way how to avoid legal nightmare is to route all legal
>issues to the US.
>
>What's interesting, it would still be possible to have mirror
>servers in Czechia under Czech law, even if the legal status of the
>content is unclear. CZ has special law "about services of
>information society", and part of the law explicitely exempts
>"caching" from much of the copyright liability. AFAIK major part
>of the law was inherited from EU directives, thus it schould
>be possible to have mirror/cache/... servers in most EU countries
>without necessity to comply with their copyright laws.
>
>Jan Kulveit
>(user:Wikimol)
>
While I would agree some portions of contract law in different countries
might not specifically permit something like the GPL, it is still a
protection in the sense that in those countries where the GPL or GFDL is
not permitted that the content simply become sealed and propritary.
 That is not an ideal situation, but it does protect people unless
copyright is simply ignored altogether (like China.... well at least in
the past and somewhat in the present).  I think larger problems would be
issues like discussions regarding national socialism, images of a
swastika, where places like Germany it is illegal (or highly regulated)
but elsewhere you are free to talk about it.  I know similar kinds of
laws are in France, and discussion about the Quran (Koran?) in less than
reverent tones is illegal in most Arab countries as well.  Routing legal
disputes over things like that to the USA simply isn't always going to
be so easy.

BTW, version 3 of the GPL is currently being discussed at the Free
Software Foundation, and (this is not specifically being directed at you
Jan) if you have comments or know of legal conflicts of the GPL or GFDL
that revisions of the license would make it easier to distribute "libre"
content world-wide, please add some comments@ gnu.org

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Ed W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugzilla votes

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>In the past you had many votes to give away but they were a finite
>>resource. When a bug was given a massive amount of votes by one person
>>it meant that the request was really important.
>>
>>
>
>Maybe that's what it meant to you, but what did it mean to the 170 out
>of 320 voters who have only voted for one bug? And what did it mean to
>the many people who voted with a value of 1, without ever giving
>consideration to multiple votes?
>
>As for the rest of your post, I've always done my best to do the right
>thing by Wikipedia and its users, I know you're annoyed that that's a
>"p" in the middle of the word instead of an "m". You're not going to
>make me feel guilty by pointing out that the group of users to whom I
>freely give my time and assistance doesn't include you. I'm interested
>in vote tallies to the extent that they give an indication of the needs
>of Wikipedians.
>
>

If many people feel as strongly as you, then perhaps there is scope for
a wiki "bounties" page where people can offer to pay for development?
Seems that hard physical "beer tokens" are a better form of vote than
electronic ones anyway...

Ed


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
So far I've only seen discussion in other languages in the user namespace.
Exactly how common do you think this is?

--Mgm

On 6/13/05, David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
> I have noted an increase of discussion on English Wikipedia in languages
> other than English lately. For now, I'll forgo naming languages and
> listing particular offenders here.
>
> Do we have a policy on this? Should we?
>
> My opinion is that we should not allow or least sternly frown upon
> discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.
>
> Is this racist/anti-nationalist/Anglo-centric? I don't know. I like to
> consider myself open-minded, but there is something very ominous to me
> about discussions in foreign languages on the English Wikipedia. Of
> course, probably the vast majority of such discussions are completely
> innocuous, but the rest of us have no way of knowing that unless we know
> what the discussions are about. There is little more frustating that
> having a conversation (in some cases which is clearly about you) hidden
> in plain sight.
>
> Of course I am symphathetic to users whose first language is not English
> and for whom discussing in English may be difficult. However, I am
> hesitant to extend such sympathy to being permissive of non-English
> discussion on the English Wikipedia, which is, after all, written in
> English. In the cases I have seen, the editors who are discussing in a
> foreign language have demonstrated elsewhere that they are competent
> writers of English, so it seems especially pernicious when they "lapse"
> into another language, as though they are hiding something.
>
> The policy question is what to do about users who insist on carrying out
> discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.
> Users who discuss in other languages should be invited to translate
> their discussion (and remove the discussion in the original language to
> discourage responses in the original language) or have them removed. We
> should not remove such discussions summarily, of course, but after a set
> period of time given to the user to remove their discussion, informing
> them on their user page, etc.
>
> The policy should not apply to user pages and user talk pages, but
> non-English discussion on those pages should at least be strongly
> discouraged. It creates an atmosphere of distrust.
>
> We don't permit articles in foreign languages, so why should we permit
> discussion in foreign languages?
>
> Please commence with the vilifying of me for being an insensitive
> Anglo-centric asshole.
>
> - David [[User:Nohat]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jan Kulveit

body:
Hi,

On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 10:17:59PM -0600, Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >
> >I don't care much about fair use, though for some things there is no
> >other way. But I don't like this either because if you take it to the
> >extreme and obey the law of every country, there's going to be little
> >that is allowed. What if some country prohibits the GFDL itself?
> >
> >
> Unless the prohibition is against specifically the Free Software
> Foundation licenses in general, or a very specific anti-American
> licensing law (both are possible and weird), the GFDL is simply a
> contractural agreement on how you can reuse copyrighted material.  If
> you fail to follow the proscribed method to legally reuse the content,
> you are then subject to copyright violations that in many places,
> notably the USA and Europe, can be quite harsh with multi-year jail
> terms and fines in hundreds of thousands of dollars.... per violation.
>
> Outlawing the GFDL or GPL is going to be a pandora's box that will
> essentially make copyright laws useless, and make it impossible to
> license somebody to legally copy any copyrightable content.
>

the problem is, country laws may prescribe specific requirements
for contractual agreements, or licenses, not fullfilled by GFDL. E.g.
-a contract must consist of an offer and an acceptation. An offer
has to be directed (not "You,...")
-the acceptation is valid in the moment, when the autor recieves
some notice about acceptation (impossible in GFDL)
-specific requirements for licenses, e.g. written form, explicit
mentioning the license is not payed etc.

For example, in the Czech Republic, few years ago, GPL (and also
GFDL) was probably contradicting both copyright law and contract
laws. Now the copyright law changed and contract laws are going to
change, and legal situation is unclear. In practice, nobody cares
about the law and GPL and GFDL is respected.

***

The safest way how to avoid legal nightmare is to route all legal
issues to the US.

What's interesting, it would still be possible to have mirror
servers in Czechia under Czech law, even if the legal status of the
content is unclear. CZ has special law "about services of
information society", and part of the law explicitely exempts
"caching" from much of the copyright liability. AFAIK major part
of the law was inherited from EU directives, thus it schould
be possible to have mirror/cache/... servers in most EU countries
without necessity to comply with their copyright laws.

Jan Kulveit
(user:Wikimol)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> steven l. rubenstein wrote:
>
>>Moreover, no one has mentioned "unpopular" content and Sean is just
>>waving a red herring to distract us from a serious problem.  In one of
>>my own messages -- here or at the project page -- I pointed out that one
>>use of such a committee is to ensure that the content is being presented
>>in an NPOV way, or to ensure that the sources are properly represented.
>>Anyone can assert something and cite a book.  But in some cases readers
>>need to know whether the author of that book was published by a
>>university press, a trade press, or a vanity press, or whether the book
>>was written by someone with a PhD. in Biblical Studies or Geology.  You
>>might think that disputes revolving around such questions would be easy
>>to resolve, and of course, in many cases, they are.  But sometimes they
>>are not, and there is a need for some mechanism to arbitrate content.
>
>
> I fully and totally agree with every bit of this.

I realize that I made a mistake by agreeing to every bit of a very long
paragraph.  I do not think Sean is "waving a red herring to distract us
from a serious problem" -- I think he has serious and genuine concerns,
concerns which I think are not compelling given the nature of the
proposal under consideration.

No one _has_ mentioned unpopular content, but nonetheless it is of
course very worthwhile to ask the very legitimate question of whether
some proposal new rule would lead to the outcome of unpopular content
being banned.  Sean is right to raise those concerns.

I apologize to Sean.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax proposal

body:
Regarding image syntax, would it be possible to allow an image to be a link
elsewhere, but if not specified defaults to its image description page? On
the main page, [1] could link to [2], which is the logical intention of that
image being a link. Another example would be the Wikiproject Spoken
WIkipedia sound icon [3]. That image, and others like it, aren't intended to
draw you to the images page, but rather the project page instead. I think
when you click on it you initially expect to be taken there, too.

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Other-langs2.png
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#lang
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Loudspeaker.png

/Alterego


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> Jimmy Wales stated for the record:
>
>> steven l. rubenstein wrote:
>>
>>> Moreover, no one has mentioned "unpopular" content and Sean is just
>>> waving a red herring to distract us from a serious problem.
>>
>>
>> I fully and totally agree with every bit of this.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>
>
> Wow.  I am such scum.  Let this be a lesson to me.

I sent, under separate cover, an apology for quoting that bit.  But for
the record, Sean has presented here a highly edited quote of what I
wrote.  I quoted a very long paragraph from Steven, virtually all of
which I agreed with.  I made a mistake by leaving in this line.

Someone finding Sean's post here might assume (if they didn't check the
history) that I was agreeing with the assessment of Sean's part in this
discussion as "waving a red herring".  I don't, and I apologize to Sean
for inadvertantly also quoting this bit.

I don't appreciate my words being edited down in this fashion, which I
feel might confuse people.  But nonetheless the blame rests squarely on
my shoulders for writing such a dramatic statement without properly
checking _every bit of this_.  That was wrong of me.

--Jimbo


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and
> open community processes.

This totally mischaracterizes what this is about.  It's a choice between
voting and reasoned discourse.  Both are community processes.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Enciclopedia Libre

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> A couple of points. Firstly, the above smacks of a boss-worker relationship,
> which AFAIK does not hold within Wikipedia, except maybe with Jimbo :-)

Yes, I work for all of you, and expect to be publicly abused when I
screw up and disappoint people. :-)


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes
>> sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of
>> maximal reusability.  This is a huge grey area, but for example the
>> German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
>>
>>
> This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly
> confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:,
> which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which
> doesn't.

Right, but it isn't so much about the editors, but about the places
where the content is most likely to be reused.  We naturally expect that
German Wikipedia will be redistributed by people in Germany (and other
places too).

I think it is likely that we will not be 100% consistent in our
policies, because such questions are generally left to the judgment of
each language community.  I consider it a difficult judgment call in
many cases.

--Jimbo


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 23, Issue 42

body:
Erik writes:
> I am absolutely confident that if a pedophilia or child
> abuse related article was brought before the ArbCom, and
> they consulted with an "expert" on child sexual abuse,
> the chances are pretty good that said expert falls into
> the group of questionable psychologists described
> above, and that they would strongly recommend to entirely
> ban any mention of Rind et al. from child abuse related
> articles.

Erik, this is a valid concern, and precisely the sort of
thing that we need to look for.  But your very well-written
letter here sort of shows that your concerns are not a
string rebuttal to Jimmy Wale's point:  You proved that
Wikipedia articles already expose these "experts" as
crackpots!

Any fair ArbCom on such subjects would _not_ base its
decisions on such subjects by listening to the views of
people who make bizarre claims of child abuse, child rape
and child kidnapping for *profit*, as these "psychological
experts" do.  They have created a virtual industry in which
they have claimed that *millions* of American children are
raped, and even claim that hundreds of thousands of
American citizens practice "Satanic Ritual Abuse" on
children.

I agree with all your points about how these self-appointed
experts are dishonest, and have built their careers by
maligning others through ad homenim attacks.  I just think
that our articles already show this.  And I am glad that
people like you are helping us build articles on these
topics!  People like you can help the ArbCom select geunine
experts, rather than those self-appointed experts for
profit.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Find restaurants, movies, travel and more fun for the weekend. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/weekend.html


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> [*] Note that I did not say "foreign laws". What we should do if US law
> made Wikipedia's existence impossible as it is today is an interesting
> question. I personally believe that in an extreme situation, a new legal
> home for the project and its organization should be sought.

If US law were to ever change to make Wikipedia' existence impossible, a
new home for *Jimbo* should be sought as well. ;-)

--Jimbo


body:
On 6/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and
> > open community processes.
>
> This totally mischaracterizes what this is about.  It's a choice between
> voting and reasoned discourse.  Both are community processes.

A good point to bring up is the sort of participants that each of
those methods will bring...  Votes are far more likely to bring around
the fear and emotion driven, reactionary, and mob mentality crowds
than something that actually requires time and thought.

But the problem with things requiring time and thought is that often
it discourages so many people that the decision is ultimately made by
a small group with a special interest.. and many of the more neutral
people are too disinterested or two annoyed from dealing with the
click that they avoid it.

Which is one of the things about a number of our voting processes..
they are not strictly votes but rather the interpretation of a poll by
a trusted member of our community who must answer for his or her call
if it comes into question. I'd like to see more of that, and less
implying that it's actually a vote.


from_name: Sorw

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Automatic Unit Conversion (Patch for Bug 235)

body:
> Please do not include it in MediaWiki at all.

> This is my opinion.  I defer to the judgment of others.  But I think it
> is a perfectly awful idea.

Hello,

Why do you think it is a perfectly awful idea ? I can't figure out why, but
I don't know MediaWiki well though.
Furthermore, are you against this particular conversion system ? Or any
conversion system at all ?

Matt's conversion system sounds quite useful to me, I would mind hearing the
pros and the cons.

-Sorw


from_name: Rick

body:
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> So far I've only seen discussion in other languages
> in the user namespace.
> Exactly how common do you think this is?
>
> --Mgm

It's been happening quite a bit lately on article Talk
pages, especially between a certain few Users who are
pushing a particular national agenda.

RickK

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Matt Wright

body:
On 2005-06-12, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-06-12 at 20:01 +0200, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> > Please do not include it in MediaWiki at all.
> > This is my opinion.  I defer to the judgment of others.
> > But I think it is a perfectly awful idea.
>
> I don't think it's a good idea for Wikipedia, but I can see the
> possibility that it might be useful for other special-purpose
> wikis using the Mediawiki software.

I wrote the converter specifically for Wikipedia in response to a friend's
suggestion that it would be nice and bug 235 in Bugzilla (which was clearly
written as a proposal for Wikipedia based on Village Pump discussion).  I
don't run any separate MediaWiki installations or think that this would be
particularly useful for them if it isn't useful for Wikipedia. In addition,
making it an extension removes most of the functionality (user preferences,
cache hashing, multiple language support, etc.), so I won't press this issue
any further.

It is clear that none of the top developers of the project like the idea,
but I never really heard why. Is it because they think it can't be done well
by software or that it complicates the syntax and adds load to the servers?

I thought it was a good idea because: it adds semantic value around text in
Wikipedia, allows registered users a unit preference, ensures correct and
standard unit formatting ( , km² etc.) and makes it easier for
editors to input units.

Additionally, should one of the top developers note on bug 235 in Bugzilla
that it has been discussed and is not desired, so that no one else wastes
time on this?

Thanks,

Matt Wright


body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>>Please do not include it in MediaWiki at all.
>>
>>This is my opinion.  I defer to the judgment of others.  But I think it
>>is a perfectly awful idea.
>
>
> Your idea of MediaWiki may be different than mine but I see nothing
> wrong with including it in the extensions module and giving Matt CVS
> access to maintain it if people want to use it on their own wiki's
> (note that I don't have CVS admin access).
>
> However I agree that something like this should not make it into the
> main syntax or the main distrubution for that matter.

Then we agree just fine. :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] LA Times Pays Sincerest Flattery to Wikipedia

body:
http://nytimes.com/2005/06/13/business/media/13lat.html

"wikitorials"


from_name: Sondra Frisch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Beatles music videos?

body:
Are there any single music videos of The Beatles??? If so, where could I
find them?
Sondra


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP-  Time constant with Mysql queries?

body:
Kevin Carillo wrote:
> I have written a PHP script in order to make a couple of modifications in
> the table "old" (for a research project onWikipedia groups).
> I am using all the functions present in Mediawiki (by including them in my
> PHP script).
> Globally, the script launches a bunch of "select" queries on the table, and
> update some fields.
> However, my script stops after 30 seconds, each time it is launched, with no
> error or anything like that. I've checked many times, and it is always after
> 30 seconds that it stops.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.info.php#ini.max-execution-time
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.set-time-limit.php

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
"Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:849f98ed0506130501469f774f at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> An example might be, speaking in front of a crowd, saying "Almost all
> of you did a terrific job. However, there are some people here in whom
> I am disappointed. You know who you are" is better than saying
> "Everybody did well except John Doe, Jane Smith, and Tom Buck, in all
> of whom I am extremely disappointed".

A couple of points. Firstly, the above smacks of a boss-worker relationship,
which AFAIK does not hold within Wikipedia, except maybe with Jimbo :-)

Second, this is only actually worthwhile if you have already spoken to those
with whom you are disappointed, so that they know (so that arrogant b*st*rd
John Doe can't sit there smugly and think "well, he's not talking about me")
and also if you make it quite clear that you are *not* disappointed with
anyone with whom you have not already spoken (so that shy, timid Alice
Mouseling doesn't sit there quaking in her chair thinking "he must mean
me").

Whether or not you've spoken to the arrogant b*st*rds to whom your words are
really directed, there are many shy timid types who will think you mean them
and will take great hurt from your perceived criticism.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Habj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Discussion on English Wikipedia in languages other
	than English

references:
<d8jbel$eoc$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0506130105857e0ae@mail.gmail.com>
	<42AD51EE.6030002@hackish.org>

body:
Myself a non-native speaker of English, I fully agree that diskussions
on en WP should be held in English. However, IMO the policy should not
be that posting in other languages than English would be "not allowed
or sternly frowned upon". Rather, efforts to write in English should
be encouraged. I.e., don't say "don't write in foreign languages". Say
"explain what you mean in english, and if you quote sources in other
languages please translate.  If you find doing so difficult, please
try and find someone who can translate for you" and then gently point
them to the relevant Babel user category as a means to find people to
ask.

I have myself recently translated a quotation in Swedish, used to
support a point of view, on an article talk page. I can happily do so
again, if someone thinks (s)he has a good source to support his/her
opinion but is not brave or confident enough to translate it to
English - and finds the matter important enough to take the trouble to
go ahead and ask me. If it was not important enough to take the
trouble, then (s)he needn't post it.

I hope, though, that I can write a short sentence,like "hi, cool to
see you active at the English version as well" in Swedish on a user
talk page without offending anyone. (I did once, and got a comment
from him that people might not like it.)

/~~~~

On 6/13/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> >If anything at all needs to
> >be done, I'd suggest that someone leave a polite reminder that this is
> >the English Wikipedia, most english-first-languagers are notoriously
> >monolingual, and that the peanut gallery would really like a
> >translation. :)
> >
> >
> Even of those us who didn't learn English as a first language would
> appreciate a translation, unless it happens to be in our first language,
> which in my case (modern Greek) it almost never is.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

body:
>I have noted an increase of discussion on English Wikipedia in languages
>other than English lately. For now, I'll forgo naming languages and
>listing particular offenders here.

Offenders?

>Do we have a policy on this? Should we?

>My opinion is that we should not allow or least sternly frown upon
>discussion on the English Wikipedia in languages other than English.

Why? Every day, thousands of discussions take place on Wikipedia of which I
have no knowledge, because I don't read them.

If I were actively engaged in editing a page, AND other people were
conducting discussions which I could not understand, AND the result of those
discussions were edits that I did not agree with, AND THEN they refused to
engage with me in genuine discussions in English of the points in dispute--
then, sure, I'd take it to RfC.

If they're editing a page written in English, there's a reasonable
presumption that they know enough English to talk to me, so refusal to do so
can be reasonable interpreted as "failure to engage."

But my beef would be "failure to engage," not "discussion amongst themselves
in a language I don't understand."

Besides, bad as they are, the automated translation services such as
babelfish.altavista.com are usually good enough to at least understand the
subject being discussed in a foreign language, and tell whether it's actually
germane to anything I need to know about.

(We allow Cabal members to communicate with each other via secret code words
and steganography in Wikipedia images, so how is this different?)


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding global guidelines?

body:
Timwi stated for the record:

> and all links to such pages
> unnessarily look like this: [[Hide and Q (TNG episode)|Hide and Q]].
>
> What is everybody's opinion on this?

That redirect is indeed unnecessary, since [[Hide and Q (TNG episode)|]]
(the "pipe trick") would do just as well ... or poorly.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Non curo. Nullo metro compositum est.
  sean at epoptic.com | Si metrum non habet, non est poema.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
> Please do not include it in MediaWiki at all.
>
> This is my opinion.  I defer to the judgment of others.  But I think it
> is a perfectly awful idea.

Your idea of MediaWiki may be different than mine but I see nothing
wrong with including it in the extensions module and giving Matt CVS
access to maintain it if people want to use it on their own wiki's
(note that I don't have CVS admin access).

However I agree that something like this should not make it into the
main syntax or the main distrubution for that matter.


subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax proposal

body:
On 6/11/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 15:24 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
 > Paragraphs inside list items are not part of my content model, though
> perhaps they should be.  You can achieve line breaks with \\.  I could
> be convinced either way, but if we want paragraphs inside list items,
> we'll have to come up with a syntax for it--perhaps \\ on a line by
> itself could mean that.

I figured, but
asdf

asdf
 is preferable to

asdf

asdf
, the former defines two paragraphs and the
latter defines one with a gap in it, our markup should translate as
gracefully to /real/ markup languages as possible, in particular XHTML
which is our main application.

> > I like where you're going with the image syntax but I don't like it
> > *quite* enough to really like it, I'll explain: What I don't like
> > about our current image syntax is that due to the way it's all
> > cluttered up it's hard to extend, yours is better but IMO not quite
> > good enough, for example I'd like to have (comments begin with #):
> >
> >  <<begin image>>
> >  file=pl_bulet.png
> >  style=frame # instead of just "frame", no "magic words", just attributes=values
> >  width=5em
> >  caption=Logo
> >  <<end>>
>
> I like the idea of comments on variable lines.

Seems I didn't make myself clear enough, I meant that multiple lines
like this should always have the format of "key=value" rather than
simply "value" (you put "frame" there), I didn't mean that comments
should be introduced.


from_name: Kevin Carillo

body:
Hello

I have written a PHP script in order to make a couple of modifications in
the table "old" (for a research project onWikipedia groups).
I am using all the functions present in Mediawiki (by including them in my
PHP script).
Globally, the script launches a bunch of "select" queries on the table, and
update some fields.
However, my script stops after 30 seconds, each time it is launched, with no
error or anything like that. I've checked many times, and it is always after
30 seconds that it stops.
Is there any time constant defined in the source code that may explain such
a  behavior? or anything in the global variables?

I've checked differrent files such as setup.php, localSettings.php,
DefaultSettings.php, but I have not found anything.

Thank you.

Kevin Carillo


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Andrew Gray stated for the record:

> On 13/06/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>What is everybody's opinion on this?
>
> ie - whatever page "Hide and Q" ends up at, have a redirect page at
> Hide and Q (TNG episode). This means that if you're writing an article
> and want to link to it you don't have to go and check if it's listed
> as "Hide and Q", or "Hide and Q (episode)", or "Hide and Q (Star Trek
> episode)"... which is often one of the reasons to use standard page
> titles, for linking simplicity.

Similarly, WikiProject Ships includes the hull number or pennant number
in every ship's name, regardless of whether the ship's name is unique or
not.  The article is [[USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76)]], even though [[USS
Ronald Reagan]] (or even [[USS Reagan]]) would not be ambiguous.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Non curo. Nullo metro compositum est.
  sean at epoptic.com | Si metrum non habet, non est poema.


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Correction

body:
Geni wrote:

172 and Guanaco have both lost their adminship due to arbcom cases...

I did not "lose" my adminship due to an Arbcom case. Instead, admin
abilities were removed from my account apparently at the advice of Michael
Snow, after the Arbcom did not even bother to review Netolitic and
Silverback's spurious charges against me.
[http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023903.html]. I am
not particularly interested in having them restored (nor am I even
interested in returning as a regular editor), if the arbitrators are
actually concerned about following their own rules and procedures in a
transparent manner, they should reopen the case before allowing a user to be
sanctioned without reference to process.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Correction

body:
Geni wrote:

172 and Guanaco have both lost their adminship due to arbcom cases...

I did not "lose" my adminship due to an Arbcom case. Instead, admin
abilities were removed from my account apparently at the advice of Michael
Snow, after the Arbcom did not even bother to review Netolitic and
Silverback's spurious charges against me.
[http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023903.html]. I am
not particularly interested in having them restored (nor am I even
interested in returning as a regular editor). But if the arbitrators are
actually concerned about following their own rules and procedures in a
transparent manner, they should reopen the case before allowing a user to be
sanctioned without reference to process, regarless of my level of activity.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Matthew Gertner

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiProxy

body:
Hi,

Thought this might be of interest to those of you who are
Firefox/Greasemonkey users. With the help of Stefan Magdalinski, who wrote
the original WikiProxy for the BBC News site (www.wikiproxy.org
<http://www.wikiproxy.org/> ), I wrote a Greasemonkey script that adds links
to Wikipedia to every page that you visit. It uses a simple algorithm to
guess which terms on the page might be in Wikipedia and confirms these using
a web service. The effect is quite cool. it's as if every page on the web
linked carefully to all the relevant Wikipedia articles.

You can download the script here if you want to try it out:
http://wikiproxy.whitelabel.org/greasemonkey.html. There is some more
discussion on my blog: http://www.allpeers.com/blog/?p=165 and
http://www.allpeers.com/blog/?p=167.

Note that you need the latest version of Greasemonkey
(http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/) for this to work.

Enjoy!

Matt


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
Sean Barrett wrote,
>Jimmy Wales stated for the record:
>
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > I apologize to Sean.
>
>I accept without reservation.  I overreacted; though I want to claim
>that the original accusations didn't bother me, they obviously did, and
>then what I mistook as a swipe from a very unexpected quarter upset me
>more than it should.
>
>You'd think an arbiter would have thicker skin, wouldn't you?  I need to
>work on my calluses.
>
>Thank you, Jimbo, and I will continue to enthusiastically support
>Wikipedia in any way I can.
>--
>   Sean Barrett     | Follow your dream! Unless it's the one where you're
>   sean at epoptic.com | at work in your underwear during a fire drill.

Obviously Sean took offense at my stating he was waving a red-herring.  I
wrote in strong terms because I wanted to make a strong point.  I apologize
to Sean for using intemperate language.

To make my position clear, "for the record," I do not believe that the
proposals being floated will in any way threaten our NPOV policy, or lead
to any content being deleted on the grounds that it is unpopular.

I do not think that people should raise these concerns as objections to the
attempt to develop a mechanism for either enforcing content-related
policies, or for ensuring that content is accurate (or for both).

I do believe that the people who are developing different proposed
mechanisms are not intending to censor content on the grounds that it is
unpopular, or that would violate our NPOV policy.

I do believe that as we decide which proposal is most likely to be
effective, it is important that we be vigilant in ensuring that the
mechanism to be put in place explicitly states that one function is to
ensure compliance with our NPOV policy, and that the procedures involved in
such a mechanism focus on enforcing our content-related policies and
ensuring the quality (primarily meaning that the claims of any article are
accurate, that when an article, to comply with NPOV, must provide
conflicting claims, that its account of the conflicts are accurate, that
articles provide accurate accounts of the contexts in which such claims
have been made, and that articles provide not only verifiable claims and
provide sources (thus complying with two other content-related policies),
that it also provides enough information, accurate and unbiased, about the
source (e.g. relevant information of the author of the source, including
but not limited to the person's education, current institutional
affiliation, and (only in such cases where this is really relevant and
appropriate to the article) religious and political affiliations, and
relevant information about the source (e.g. internet, book or
article?  Popular magazine, newspaper, scholarly journal or archive?)  And
relevant information about the publication (e.g. is it peer-reviewed; is it
a university press or trade press; does the publishing institution have an
explicit religious or political affiliation?  Is the archive of a scholarly
institution (university or university or public library; a business; a
religious institution; a political party or movement).

These are the criteria I would use in selecting a proposal, and the issues
I hope the mechanism will help police.  People may share only some of these
criteria, or may have others of their own.  I agree that it is important
that such criteria be used in selecting and developing a proposal.

But I do object to flat out rejections of attempts to devise such a
mechanism.  Let's all think creatively, as many have, about how to develop
the best, the most appropriate, and the most effective mechanism.  If at
the end it turns out that we cannot come up with a mechanism that the vast
majority, if not virtually all, of regular contributors can agree fits
their criteria, well, okay -- then we won't adopt that mechanism.  But at
least we will have tried.

My only intention was to encourage people to be creative and constructive
first, and be critical only of specific proposals once they have been
formulated -- and even then, try to be constructively critical, looking for
ways that we can solve the specific problem with the mechanism.  Like I
said, if in the end we discover that is impossible, that all the
constructive attempts n the world cannot lead to a good mechanism, well,
okay, at that point we give up, reminding ourselves that it was worth trying.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Beatles music videos?

body:
Dear Sondra,

The place to ask general inquiries is at the Wikipedia Reference Desk:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk

Hope they can help you out,
FF

On 6/13/05, Sondra Frisch <sjfrisch at nethere.com> wrote:
> Are there any single music videos of The Beatles??? If so, where could I
> find them?
> Sondra
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugzilla votes

references:
<42AAAFC0.4010601@yahoo.com>
	<51dd1af8050611071232cc5374@mail.gmail.com>
	<d8esel$psb$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d2f92e8b05061108006b0fecd6@mail.gmail.com>
	<42AB0320.6040909@gmail.com> <d8f4lt$de3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<42AD436D.5080508@wildgooses.com> <d8kdht$lcp$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> So if Wikipedians aren't interested in working on the various other
> projects of the foundation, you think we should just use money donated
> by Wikipedia readers to pay for them instead?

I think he means that people could voulenteer to pay for developments
of certain things.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy Wales:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and
>>open community processes.
>
>
> This totally mischaracterizes what this is about.  It's a choice between
> voting and reasoned discourse.

Well, if this is your definition of "reasoned discourse", then you may
be right. This is exactly the kind of "reasoned discourse" that I would
expect if content disputes are handled on a regular basis by the ArbCom.

	"You're wrong. Go away."

I am absolutely against a simplistic voting model without discussion and
fallback options and you know it.

Erik


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikinews radio

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I am posting this to foundation-l and wikitech-l, because there is
> both a technical and a policy aspect here.
>
> A small but growing group of Wikinews contributors is actively making
> audio recordings of Wikinews stories. This effort is coordinated here:
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews
>
> The files are uploaded to the Commons in Ogg Vorbis format. Now, two
> members of this group have started to also produce a streamed version
> of this, which is broadcast at specific times -- effectively Internet
> radio. This could grow into a real independent wikiradio project which
> perhaps could encompass more than just news. The usefulness of
> realtime broadcasting for news should be obvious.
>
> The current Wikinews page is at:
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:WikiNews_Network
>
> Now, here is our dilemma:
>
> Streaming audio in realtime requires special software. WNN currently
> uses ShoutCast, which is not free/open source software. It is also not
> hosted on Wikimedia's servers, but on the server of one of our
> contributors. (We have the same issue with the print edition, but I'll
> try to resolve this separately.)
>
> Do we want to run this on our own servers? If so, there is a free
> software implementation called Icecast. Would it be possible to
> securely set up an Icecast server for this purpose on our hardware?

Why not use [[podcasting]] instead of live streaming? Podcasting has the
advantage that you can listen to the whole show whenever you like,
instead of only at the appointed hour. If you can tag the relevant ogg
files on commons with an appropriate category and sort tag, then all
that is needed is a way to generate the appropriate RSS from category
galleries. Note that this would also let you generate multiple podcasts
by defining multiple categories.

-- Neil


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

body:
For people who can't be bothered to go to bugmenot:

This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called
"wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue
with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web's
free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors.

"We'll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an
editorial to your satisfaction," Mr. Martinez said. "We are going to
do that with selected editorials initially. We don't know how this is
going to turn out. It's all about finding new ways to allow readers to
interact with us in the age of the Web."

Mr. Kinsley said that he was just trying something new with the wikitorials.

"It may be a complete mess but it's going to be interesting to try,"
he said. "Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six
months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation."


body:
On 6/13/05, Matt Wright <mw at mattwright.com> wrote:
> I wrote the converter specifically for Wikipedia in response to a friend's
> suggestion that it would be nice and bug 235 in Bugzilla (which was clearly
> written as a proposal for Wikipedia based on Village Pump discussion).

First of all, it would be nice if you could attach the patch to bug
235 so people could try it out/comment on the implementation, whether
it gets in the main tree or not.

> making it an extension removes most of the functionality (user preferences,
> cache hashing, multiple language support, etc.).

Ideally extensions should be able to do anything, and theoretically
can with the $wgHooks system, if there's anything you can't do please
file a bug if there isn't one already.

> It is clear that none of the top developers of the project like the idea,
> but I never really heard why. Is it because they think it can't be done well
> by software or that it complicates the syntax and adds load to the servers?

(Note: Although I happen to have CVS access the following is my
opinion and not necessarily the one of the MediaWiki project, and
certainly not  that of Wikimedia)

First of all, if people dislike it they can dislike it for two reasons
(that I can think of), I'll give you my view on both.

1. They don't want it in the main MediaWiki tree.
2. They don't want it on Wikimedia servers.

First of all MediaWiki is meant to be a general wiki distribution (see
meta:Sites using MediaWiki), although its most noticeable deployment
is on Wikimedia servers and indeed most development is something to
scratch a Wikimedia-site based itch we still like to keep it reusable
for other projects, the only people who seem to want this patch are
the people on the English Wikipedia who want it because they can't
agree on whether or not to use Imperial units or SI units so they
agreed on using both, and since they don't want to maintain both
versions manually or can't agree on whether to write "x km (y mi)" or
"y mi (x km)" they want to have it done automatically.

So, the % of total installations where this would be used is a very
small % of the total number of installations, very few people would
presumably want to use it outside of Wikimedia and the only projects
that seem to want it inside Wikimedia are projects written in English
which are 4-10 but there are around 800 wikis (last I checked)

Furthermore your specific implementation is designed in such a way
that people already maintaining the codebase would have more things to
maintain, and people interested in rewriting the codebase (or the
parser) would have more things to rewrite, it would touch the main
wikisyntax (hence complicating it which is always a big sacrifice),
preferences, parser cache, translation etc.

So, weighing in all the pros/cons of your implementation and the
possibility of installing it on the Wikimedia cluster not to mention
maintaining it indefinitely I think the cons vastly outweigh the pros.

> Additionally, should one of the top developers note on bug 235 in Bugzilla
> that it has been discussed and is not desired, so that no one else wastes
> time on this?

I don't think that's a good idea, people mainly seem to have an issue
with the idea of putting it in the main tree (your specific
implementation) rather than something like a standalone extension.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugzilla votes

references:
<42AAAFC0.4010601@yahoo.com>	<51dd1af8050611071232cc5374@mail.gmail.com>	<d8esel$psb$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d2f92e8b05061108006b0fecd6@mail.gmail.com>	<42AB0320.6040909@gmail.com>	<d8f4lt$de3$1@sea.gmane.org>	<42AD436D.5080508@wildgooses.com>
	<d8kdht$lcp$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Ed W wrote:
>
>
>>If many people feel as strongly as you, then perhaps there is scope for
>>a wiki "bounties" page where people can offer to pay for development?
>>Seems that hard physical "beer tokens" are a better form of vote than
>>electronic ones anyway...
>>
>>
>
>So if Wikipedians aren't interested in working on the various other
>projects of the foundation, you think we should just use money donated
>by Wikipedia readers to pay for them instead?
>
>-- Tim Starling
>
Hoi,
When developers aren't interested in working on functionality for the
various projects of the foundation, we should find developers that are.
The motivation why a programmer does what he does is no issue. As much
as it is in your right to do what you do, it should be acceptable when
someone writes code for money when this gets us the functionality that
is lacking.

Money can be donated for many reasons. Money can come from many sources.
Kennisnet pays for the Wikidata development and Ultimate Wiktionary as
its first project. It is morally wrong to deny the people who donate
money to the Wikimedia Foundation the right to earmark money for
projects that they want to donate money to.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Donations:Putting_your_money_where_your_mouth_is
describes a scheme that explains how this can be done.

It is up to the board to decide how and where we spend money. We know
that in Togo and Ossetia content is payed for. This is one way of
creating content where we are weak. Suggestions have been made of
creating "Wikimedia scholarships" where students work for the WMF to
write content. The benefit for the student would be that he would need
to work only 20 hours a week in stead of 30 hours. The bottom line is
that spending money on these things is one way of achieving our
objectives. We can get a lot of money from the public if we are clever
and thrifty in the way we spend this money.

When money should only be used for hardware, we do not need to ask for
money as there are plenty of organisations that are willing to donate
hosting and bandwith to the WMF. So get the KNAMS "vandale" server to
host a database because this is one way of saving us a lot of money
because it will allow us to use all this free hosting.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax proposal

body:
Just something to think about: for languages written right-to-left
(mainly Hebrew and Arabic and other languages written in those scripts)
editing wikitext with markup can get real ugly due to bidirectional text
layout in the browser's text editor widget.

Among other things, the on-screen position and direction of punctuation
pairs (eg [], {}, and <>) may change depending on whether surrounding
text is LTR or RTL. If you're mixing Latin-script keywords and local
text together, things start flipping around in interesting ways and it
gets hard to tell what's what.

Where keywords are used, making sure it's possible to use localized
keywords throughout the system, and being able to isolate necessary
Latin keywords (such as CSS style definitions) can make a big difference
in usability here.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax/Styles

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-06-12 at 04:57 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>a) This {{i may be {{b}}nested, as long}} reads horrible. Having
>>styles separated from words with spaces makes them look like words.
>>They are markup syntax, hence must be clearly visually distinct from
>>the content they describe.
>
> I agree it looks bad, so let's consider some alternatives (I've
> separated this into a separate thread).
[snip]
> Another possibility is to put the ID between the braces:
>
> {i{ may be {b{ nested}}, as long}}

Well, to be consistent with other stuff consider:

{{i|may be {{b|nested}}, as long}}

Humans may of course use extra whitespace for readability:
{{i| may be {{b| nested}}, as long}}

However I'll chime in on not being too thrilled about using curly braces
for this; co-opting our current syntax to do something totally different
is troublesome in a way that replacing old things with different new
things isn't.

Not necessarily a killer; actually you could use the above syntax
exactly to produce things that look sort of like styles now, minus
nesting etc. Put in [[Template:i]] "<i>{{{1}}}</i>" ... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax proposal

body:
On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 20:00 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just something to think about: for languages written right-to-left
> (mainly Hebrew and Arabic and other languages written in those scripts)
> editing wikitext with markup can get real ugly due to bidirectional text
> layout in the browser's text editor widget.
>
> Among other things, the on-screen position and direction of punctuation
> pairs (eg [], {}, and <>) may change depending on whether surrounding
> text is LTR or RTL. If you're mixing Latin-script keywords and local
> text together, things start flipping around in interesting ways and it
> gets hard to tell what's what.
>
> Where keywords are used, making sure it's possible to use localized
> keywords throughout the system, and being able to isolate necessary
> Latin keywords (such as CSS style definitions) can make a big difference
> in usability here.

Thanks.  I admit total ignorance in this regard; I've never used a
Hebrew or Arabic browser, and I can imagine that mixing texts would be
a problem.  I don't think being able to localize keywords would cause
any problems, and if it simplifies the user experience a lot (which
is, as I've said before, my #1 goal), then I'm all for it.

Of course, I'd prefer that the localizations themselves be a defined
part of the standard.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>