from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Scheduled global downtime

body:
What I wonder is, in moves like this, why are they all moved at the
same time? Why not move half, and then after we get _those_ up and
running again move the other half?

Mark

On 04/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> On 7 June, 2005 at 3:00AM Eastern Standard Time (9:00AM Paris/Berlin
> time) we will be moving the bulk of the servers to a new facility across
> the street.
>
> I assume we will try to set up a sensible "downtime" page on the paris
> squids or something.  But the site will absolutely be down for awhile.
>
> The colocation facility is providing staff to do the move, and we are
> also supplying myself, Chad, Terry, and possibly Michael Davis and
> possibly a friend of Chad's -- all to make this go as quickly as possible.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: possible interwiki solution

body:
Elly Waterman wrote:
> Actually I think the system of interwiki links is not optimal at all.
> It would be better, to have a central location were all the
> interwiki's are listed, like commons. [...]

I think your proposal is mostly working from the assumption that there
exists a one-to-one mapping between the articles of one Wikipedia and
all the articles of all the other Wikipedias.  Unfortunately, some
Wikipedias are a bit pig-headed and almost deliberately ensure that this
assumption can never hold.  For example, the German Wikipedia seems to
have a rule that forbids it to ever have an article like [[Vulcan (Star
Trek)]].  Instead, the interwiki link on the English article links to a
German article about all Star Trek races which is very much less
detailed.  Obviously, there can never be a link back to the English article.

Ideally, maybe all Wikipedians should decide independently of language
what articles should or should not exist, and then write those articles
in all languages.  Unfortunately, this idea is doomed because some
Wikipedians have a very strong "localist attitude" -- any idea that
would combine decision-making across several Wikipedias would be passed
off and rejected as "rule from en".  Supposedly, Wikipedians who do not
speak language X are not supposed to have any say whatsoever on what
happens on the language-X Wikipedia.

Timwi


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] people biographies pulled in via RSS

body:
On 04/06/05, QuotationsBook.com Webmaster/Support
<quotationsbook at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks very much for your note. I had a good read of these links, and
> due to being new to wikipedia data access methods, still couldn't make
> sense of what would be the best course of action. I essentially need
> to pass a search query to wikipedia e.g. "Wilde, Oscar" and for the
> first article returned, display the article text on quotationsbook.com
> for that author.

Well, if you want to use a large amount of such content, but don't
mind it lagging slightly behind the copy on Wikipedia itself, the
"cleanest" solution is to download a copy of the database and extract
the information yourself. However, that might seem a technically
complex solution, and the content you want may actually only be a
fraction of the Wikipedia database.

In which case, you have a further two options: ask for the "wikitext"
source of an article, using Special:Export or
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=<some article>&action=raw and have
a local copy of MediaWiki (or one of the programs at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers) to turn that into
HTML for you (less load on the Wikipedia server, but more complex for
you) or just request the rendered article and separate the content
from the navigation stuff (easy enough to automate if you look at the
source, though you may want to play around with some styling to make
things look right).

BTW, note that person articles in Wikipedia are generally titled
"Firstname Lastname", not "Lastname, Firstname" - e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde  You could probably have your
software guess the correct name in most cases, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=<some terms> may
also be useful (this will return an article with a completely matching
name if it exists, and search results otherwise).

> I don't know whether I can do this dynamically (request by request),
> or store a single cached copy of an article on my site, so that the
> request is only made once.

Well, that's almost entirely up to you - once you've downloaded data,
you can do what you like with it; nothing Wikipedia does could allow
or prevent a particular caching scheme at your end. However, out of
consideration for the frequently overloaded servers maintained by the
non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, some form of caching would probably
be considered far preferable to making a fresh request every time. A
standard HTTP "if-modified-since:" header, like most browsers and
proxies use, would do if you wanted to stay up-to-date; but how you
actually manage the request storage is entirely up to you.

Also note that relying on Wikipedia responding before you returned any
of your own content could slow down your site *a lot*, as the servers
often have heavy load or even go down for hours at a time. Not
necessarily a problem, but worth bearing in mind when designing your
caching solution.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Email authentication on Wikimedia wikis + Single
	user sign-on

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>>Anyway, the code for SUL was written and released
>>in 1.4, the only thing missing is a conversion script and a sysadmin
>>brave enough to apply it. So there's no need to tie it to the release
>>cycle. The email authentication problem can be solved in some other way,
>>such as marking all existing email addresses authenticated.
>
>
> If my taking the heat for applying it will be helpful, then once there
> is a conversion script and someone feels it is probably ready to run,
> then I am happy to say "Let's run it now" so that if/when people's heads
> explode I can be the one to blame.

I'm not sure what Tim is referring to.

There's support for using a shared user table for multiple wikis; that
can't be used for our sites as it came two years or so too late.
Accounts are already established separately on each wiki which can't be
automatically resolved in a clean way, so this has never been an option.

There's support via the AuthPlugin interface for a global account system
as an overlay, but we don't yet have a suitable infrastructure for it to
plug in to or a migration interface (which would be user-driven,
allowing them to resolve most conflicting accounts without intervention
from sysadmins).

So no, we don't have something that can just be run and magically make
things happen unless somebody's been hiding it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> We should maintain a culture of welcoming to those 15 year old
> contributors who are doing great work.

Speaking of which.  I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to
Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American
children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?

LiveJournal have, for a long time, evaded the problem by simply
prohibiting young children from using LiveJournal.  Nowadays they allow
it, but only if they receive evidence of their parents' consent.

Timwi


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
The Arbitration Committee is seeking public commentary and suggestions
pertaining to an ongoing problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RFC

--Mark Pellegrini


subject: [Wikipedia-l] US Education system (was NPR interview)

body:
To add to that:

American history is a big deal in school here. In highschool though,
in order to graduate, you must take at least one class on world
history (iirc), and the theme for the entire year of 8th grade is
world history I think (by "world", they mean europe, asia, and africa
usually).

In some states, students need more credits in state history than they
do in "world history" in order to graduate from high school. This is
especially outrageous since many will go to college out of state, and
may never return for the rest of their lives. How helpful will a
detailed knowledge of Arkansas history be in California, let alone
Croatia??

In addition, they don't learn much about the present state of any
other country. Sure, Byzantines once ruled over much of Europe, but
who "rules over" Europe now?

With most Americans, when asked to pick out of a list of four
countries which one wasn't real, I would expect that they would get it
wrong at least half of the time. Well, actually, it depends on the
countries. If you said USA, Canada, Mexico, Laponia, most would know.

However, if you said Maldives, Brunei, Tonga, Laponia, they would very
likely choose the wrong answer (hint for those of you who don't know:
the Maldives are south of India, Brunei is in Australasia, and Tonga
is a Polynesian kingdom).

Mark

On 04/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
> > Christopher Mahan wrote:
> >
> >>>How do you explain to somebody that Toyota != Toyota Motor
> >>>Corporation when their level of expertise is limited to US High
> >>>School education level?
> >>>
> >
> > Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about other
> > countries?
>
> No, it is not true.  It is true that US education tends to be quite
> heavy on American history, with a lesser focus on European history, and
> still less on the history of say, China or Africa.
>
> <POV>
> If I had to criticize the way history is taught in the US, it is not
> that students are not taught _anything_ about other countries, but
> rather than they are taught about other countries in a way that tends to
> suggest that other countries are out there somewhere, but don't have a
> lot of importance for us except that sometimes they start to fight with
> each other and we have to go make them stop.
> </POV>
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG

body:
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.

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


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG

body:
On Sat, 2005-06-04 at 18:22 -0400, Delirium wrote:

> Mp3s can indeed be both created and played with tools from Debian's
> 'main' (i.e. completely free, as opposed to 'non-free', which is
> non-free, or 'contrib', which is free but depends on non-free
> libraries).  One such tool that can do both is Audacity (see
> [[Audacity]] on de:, en:, fr:, nl:, pl:, or zh:; Debian package 'audacity').

But the user has to download and install the LAME libraries manually,
because they can't be distributed with Debian.  Yes, users are off the
hook, but distributors still have restrictions.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Technically, the word receipt doesn't have a "p" in it. It's just
spelt that way.

With most such words (knife, knight, know, cough, hiccough), it is for
etymological reasons: people really did pronounce them that way at
some time or another. ("gh" sounding a bit like French "r").

The reason receipt is spelt that way is long, complicated, and frankly
quite boring.

Since everybody is so fond of long, complicated, and boring
explanations, I will elaborate.

"receipt" was, at its point of entrance into the English language
(from Old Norman French), spelt "receite", identical to its spelling
in the language of origin. Unlike most such words (ie, those with
silent letters), it was never actually pronounced with a medial /p/
while it was an English word. The Old Norman word "receite" was
derived from the Mediaeval Latin "recepta", from the Latin-Latin
"receptus", the past participle of "recipere", to take back, to
regain. (essentially that means that "receptus" means "received").
"Recipere" is itself a combination of the prefix "re" meaning back or
again, and "capere", to take.

"re" is a shortened form of "red", which has its origins in
Proto-Indo-European *wret, a metathetical variant of *wert.
(metathetical means some guy who couldn't pronounce the word correctly
changed it by flipping the order of two phonemes, like how some kids
say /p at skEti/ instead of /sp at gEti/ for "spaghetti") *wert means "turn"
(in this sense as in "turned back"), and itself is an extended form of
*wer, meaning to turn or to bend.

"capere" has its origins in Proto-Indo-European *kap-yo, to grasp
something, a suffixed form of *kap, to grasp. *kap-yo is also the
origin of English "heave", which is from the Old English "hebban", to
lift, from the Proto-Germanic *hafyan.

If your daughter asks again why a word is spelt a certain way, you can
ask me and get the truth, which will either make it so she never asks
again why a word is spelt a certain way or make her become interested
in word etymologies.

Mark

On 04/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
> > And here I am trying very hard to understand how someone can think that
> > a word that is pronounced the way "renowned" is, can possibly have a k
> > in it.  It is not even pronounced anything like "know" or "knowledge".
> > Furthermore, as "gnostic" versus "agnostic" clearly teaches us, letters
> > do not tend to become silent when there is a prefix before them.
>
> Here is the best way to understand it: English spelling and
> pronunciation are highly irregular.  When a person is "world renowned"
> then they are _known_ around the world.
>
> Since "know" and "knowledge" have a silent 'k', then adding a prefix
> would not _make_ the k silent, it would merely _leave_ the k silent.
> The fact that "know" and "knowledge" sound different from "renowned"
> isn't really helpful, since they sound different from _each other_, and
> it is quite common for variants of English words to be pronounced
> differently for no apparent reason.
>
> A German and I once had a very confusing conversation at a restaurant in
> Austria surrounding the word "dough".  A certain item on the menu was a
> piece of meat surrounded by duff, apparently.  Hmm?  What's that?
> Interesting food these Austrians eat.  Unfortunately, when I got the
> meat and ate it it was tuff, and I had to coff.
>
> My daughter recently asked Danny why the word 'receipt' has a 'p' in it.
>  Well, he gave a decent answer but I think he made it up out of thin air.
> That's the best that most of us can do, even very well educated and
> smart people.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid-for-articles WPs in smaller languages

body:
I don't see any potential downside for the Foundation - either it
works or it doesn't, and none of the Foundation's resources go out to
it either way.

Another thing though - in some areas, people are so poor and so
wanting for money that they would be absolutely shocked that you would
pay them just to write in their language.

And remember, 1/2 of a US dollar will buy you a loaf of bread in Viet
Nam, and much more in some other places.

Mark

On 04/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > I would be wary of any scheme to pay people for articles.  We have
> > prided ourselves on an all volunteer production in all languages.
>
> I am both wary and wildly enthusiastic.  This is something which is
> springing up around the world with little or no input from us,
> spontaneously and grassroots, and that's usually an indicator of it
> being a Good Thing.  I am hopeful that it will prove useful, but I wonder.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sco/fiu-vro in danger..

body:
The most likely reason is that Wikipedia attracts intelligence, and
intelligent people are much more likely to be willing to consider
other possibilities and head down roads that unintelligent people
might not.

If I weren't intelligent, I probably would've ignored the fact that I
am attracted to other men, or said "I'm attracted to other men, but
I'm straight".

Intelligence isn't really the only factor though. A very intelligent
person from a lower socioeconomic class is less likely to be "out",
and a Dutch man is more likely to be "out" than a Korean man, who is
in turn more likely to be "out" than a Bhutanese man.

Mark

On 04/06/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050605 07:15]:
> >
> > > It is my estimate based on attending technology conventions and
> > > Wikimedia meetups that Wikipedia is less male dominated than free
> > > software and tech generally, but still male dominated to an unfortunate
> > > extent.
> >
> >
> > As far as we can tell discussing the topic on #wikipedia, Wikipedia is run
> > by a homosexual conspiracy. And the ones that aren't are transgender. IT'S
> > THE WIKIPEDIANS! THEY'RE IN IT WITH THE MARTIANS!
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
>
> Indeed, the amount of openly LGBT Wikipedians is interestingly high. I don't
> know why Wikipedia is so appealing to homosexual contributors, but it
> appears to be that it is.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: URGENT: blocking open proxies

body:
On 04/06/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Then make them care. Hack something into MediaWiki that allows us to
> > display a pre-set message to non-logged-in users with certain IPs or
> > within certain IP ranges. Use that to encourage users who are forced
> > behind an open proxy to switch provider, implicitly mumbling something
> > about their management. Keep telling the providers that we're actively
> > doing this to their users. When they start losing customers, they will
> > start caring.
>
> It's pretty arrogant to think that providers will actually lose
> customers due to this, it's far more likely that we'll lose users and
> editors.
>
> Even in the case that a customer would be annoyed enough at the
> provider (rather than us), there are many people who don't have a
> choice.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: link for complaints

body:
Hi,

Le Friday 3 June 2005 19:44, Sean Barrett a ?crit :
[...]
> Newbies get bit around here far too often.  Biting a newbie with a
> legitimate legal complaint through an officially approved channel is a
> recipe for disaster.

That exactly what happens *now*.
Complains come (from French speaking people) to wikifr-l and random users
answer. Not good. I think that David's request is very well needed.

> --
>   Sean Barrett     | We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
>   sean at epoptic.com | unlike the rest of you squares.
>
>                    | --"The Folk Song Army" by Tom Lehrer

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


body:
Oh crap. Sorry for sending an empty message.

Anyhow.

While what you say is true, do you believe that it's a nessecary
sacrifice in emergency situations?

Mark

On 04/06/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/06/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > > Then make them care. Hack something into MediaWiki that allows us to
> > > display a pre-set message to non-logged-in users with certain IPs or
> > > within certain IP ranges. Use that to encourage users who are forced
> > > behind an open proxy to switch provider, implicitly mumbling something
> > > about their management. Keep telling the providers that we're actively
> > > doing this to their users. When they start losing customers, they will
> > > start caring.
> >
> > It's pretty arrogant to think that providers will actually lose
> > customers due to this, it's far more likely that we'll lose users and
> > editors.
> >
> > Even in the case that a customer would be annoyed enough at the
> > provider (rather than us), there are many people who don't have a
> > choice.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
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> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

references:
<Pine.LNX.4.61.0505271324140.4830@mimosa.opentrend.net>	<d7ajq0$887$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d7kab6$s7r$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
> news:d7ajq0$887$1 at sea.gmane.org...
>
>>Quite to the contrary, you only asked if the image could be used on
>>Wikipedia, not whether they would license it under the GFDL or anything
>>else. Therefore, they only agreed to using it on Wikipedia, and therefore
>>it should not be used on Wikipedia because it isn't free.
>
> Am I the only person stunned by the complete lack of logical progression
> here?
>
> A) The owners of the image agreed for it to be used on Wikipedia
> B) Therefore it can't be.

Suppose I write an article and then allow you to "use it" on Wikipedia
under the restriction that you may not make any modifications to it.  It
is hopefully clear to you now that the text cannot be used in Wikipedia,
even though I gave permission to "use it".

It is only your summarisation that reduces it to the point where it
seems contradictory (but isn't actually). Just because someone agreed
for something to be used on Wikipedia, does not necessarily mean that it
can be (or should be) used on Wikipedia.  In a way, by saying that it is
contradictory, you're only stating that you don't understand it.

Timwi


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] GNU-FDL and Ultimate Wiktionary

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Jimbo, could you give us an update on where we are with regard to CC-BY-SA/FDL
> compatibility? Might it make sense to organize an electronic meeting
> with Wikimedia's legal team and the CC/GNU folks to speed matters up?
> Sorry if I'm out of the loop on this.

I'm sorry, I can't offer an update.  I am talking to everyone relevant
and doing what I can.  I am hopeful that the GNU FDL 2.0 will be much
improved, but compatibility is difficult.

I don't think a meeting with Wikimedia's legal team and CC/GNU folks
would be productive at this time.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL Clarification

body:
Robert Brockway wrote:
> I said "I'd like to use a picture in the [Wikipedia] article. Would you be
> able to provide a picture of Schapelle that can be legally used in the
> Wikipedia article (ie, without copyright concerns)? If such a picture is
> available just email it back to me".
>
> Mercedes Responded (in part): "Attached is a photo taken at Schapelle's
> cell. This was taken by our camera.. Also if you are able to find the
> photo on the web of Schapelle, brother James and 2 freinds Katrina and
> Ally that was taken by Mums camera at the Brisbane airport so that one is
> fine to use aswell."
>
> Attached to the email from Mercedes were 2 of the 3 images I uploaded to
> Wikipedia, the 3rd being the mentioned group image which I did locate.
>
> After reviewing the wording of my request and Mercedes' response it is my
> contention the pictures are licenced under the GFDL.

I think this is not sufficient.  We need a clear statement, preserved by
you, and posted along with the image, that the photos are released _by
the copyright holders_ under the GNU FDL.

"It's fine to use this" is not enough.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
Robert Brockway wrote:
> If I had asked Mercedes Corby if I could licence the images under the GFDL
> I'm sure she would not have had the slightest clue what I was talking
> about.

It is not difficult to explain.  You can just tell her the basic
conditions of the license and ask.  Give her a URL with the license and
warn her that it is complicated.  Explain the basics clearly, and
document everything.

> If we do not then Wikipedia will ultimately be the loser.

But if we do not get proper licensing, then Wikipedia will *really*
ultimately be the loser.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Am I the only person stunned by the complete lack of logical progression
> here?
>
> A) The owners of the image agreed for it to be used on Wikipedia
> B) Therefore it can't be.

I think that's a perfectly logical progression, but it is missing a few
steps.

A) The owners of the image agreed for it to be used on Wikipedia, but
_only_ on Wikipedia."

B) Wikipedia is a _freely licensed_ encyclopedia, meaning that things on
Wikipedia may be used by lots and lots of people without them having to
ask permission

C) Therefore, even though something may be licensed to "Wikipedia only",
Wikipedia can not use it unless it is licensed under a free license.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ellywa's Law

body:
Or Pippu in Sicilian, or Roderick in Maltese, or Mountain in Chinese... ;)

Mark

On 04/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> > Jimbo mentioned enough good things to make it worth your while. I really
> > liked that EllyWa's law is now known to Jimbo. I think most wikipedians
> > have seen this variations on Murphy's law in action. :)
>
> I wonder if someone would be so kind as to state "EllyWa's Law" in some
> standard form by which it is understood in the Dutch community.
>
> I am personally thinking of this as I think of the "Piranha Effect" as
> identified by the French community.
>
> I think it is lovely, just lovely, when ideas like this become known
> from different communities to help us all understand our work better.
>
> For those who don't know, Ellywa is one of the most important and
> beloved editors in the Dutch community.  She's like Angela in English or
> Anthere in French. :-)
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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


subject: [WikiEN-l] The mythical golden age

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

> Nobody should kid themselves that there was ever a golden time when
> there was no 'bickering'.  If you look at the traffic numbers you
> see huge growth. Every month or so an asocial user kicking up a fuss
> about the way things are handled... it's the price we pay for being
> a radically open community. Remember, this is a big volunteer
> project; all that happens is that some people simply make it too
> hard for them to be accepted as volunteers.

Absolutely right.  There was no golden age.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Scheduled global downtime

body:
On 7 June, 2005 at 3:00AM Eastern Standard Time (9:00AM Paris/Berlin
time) we will be moving the bulk of the servers to a new facility across
the street.

I assume we will try to set up a sensible "downtime" page on the paris
squids or something.  But the site will absolutely be down for awhile.

The colocation facility is providing staff to do the move, and we are
also supplying myself, Chad, Terry, and possibly Michael Davis and
possibly a friend of Chad's -- all to make this go as quickly as possible.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Scheduled global downtime


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: people biographies pulled in via RSS

body:
Amit wrote:

> Does Wikipedia have customised syndication of its content?

Not currently, no. But i'm working together with evan on a extension
that provides extensive and customizable RDF information for articles
and media files. I hope this will be enabled on the wikipedias as soon
as we go to MediaWiki version 1.5. See
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=RDF>

An XML representation of wiki markup is also being worked on (by me and
others), but this will probably not be available before version 1.6. See
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/XML>

It would help to know some more technical detail about how you what data
you want to query and how you are going to precess it.

regards,
Daniel

--
Homepage: http://brightbyte.de


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> These official positions are intended for assisting external
> collaboration, and for honour and recognition, is that correct? Rather
> than authority and leadership?

Hmm, I think that's right, although to me the word "leadership" implies
something natural and normal, not imposed, so yes I expect these people
to embody qualities of leadership.

You didn't mention "communication", which for me is quite important.
One problem we have been having more often lately is that it's hard to
know who to talk to, if we want to know what's going on in some area.
Having someone be the focal point is hopefully helpful in that regard.

> Also, people will be allowed to deal with
> external organisations without an official title, on the same terms that
> they do now, won't they? That is to say, although certain official
> positions may carry the power to speak "on behalf of the foundation",
> that won't inhibit other people from doing various external activities
> in aid of the foundation, such as Thomas Koll's WikiReader publication,
> or Erik's collaboration with Kennisnet?

Absolutely.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions


body:
Alphax wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>>>How do you explain to somebody that Toyota != Toyota Motor
>>>Corporation when their level of expertise is limited to US High
>>>School education level?
>>>
>
> Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about other
> countries?

No, it is not true.  It is true that US education tends to be quite
heavy on American history, with a lesser focus on European history, and
still less on the history of say, China or Africa.

<POV>
If I had to criticize the way history is taught in the US, it is not
that students are not taught _anything_ about other countries, but
rather than they are taught about other countries in a way that tends to
suggest that other countries are out there somewhere, but don't have a
lot of importance for us except that sometimes they start to fight with
each other and we have to go make them stop.
</POV>

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized
> the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that,
> but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would
> not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia
> milestone.

I think the opposite in this case.  The press will care about 2 million.
 They will not care about Wikimania.  Using 2 million as the hook to get
attention to Wikimania makes sense.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> I find plenty of copyvios that are several days old, and I've had to
> undo the work of weeks or months because some people just copy and
> paste stuff from other web sites (no, not WP mirrors) without being
> caught. That is a very unpleasant experience for everyone involved,
> especially if other editors kept working on the text in good faith.

I wonder what we can do to improve the situation.

> <rant>
> Some comments on [[m:Avoid Copyright Paranoia]] ain't exactly helping.
> </rant>

Indeed.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> If we wish to be anti-intellectual-elite we should not avoid this
> process,

As for me, I am not anti-intellectual-elite at all.  Indeed it is my own
insufferable snobbish insistence on extreme intellectualism that causes
me to be skeptical about credentialism as often practised in the world.

Let no one ever mistake me for egalitarian, please. :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Elly Waterman

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> schreef in bericht
news:d7sci3$g1q$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Elly Waterman wrote:
>> Actually I think the system of interwiki links is not optimal at all.
>> It would be better, to have a central location were all the
>> interwiki's are listed, like commons. [...]
>
> Timwi wrote:
> I think your proposal is mostly working from the assumption that there
> exists a one-to-one mapping between the articles of one Wikipedia and all
> the articles of all the other Wikipedias.  Unfortunately, some Wikipedias
> are a bit pig-headed and almost deliberately ensure that this assumption
> can never hold.  For example, the German Wikipedia seems to have a rule
> that forbids it to ever have an article like [[Vulcan (Star Trek)]].
> Instead, the interwiki link on the English article links to a German
> article about all Star Trek races which is very much less detailed.
> Obviously, there can never be a link back to the English article.

This is exactly the cause of some of the current almost unsolvable errors,
which keep running about. The English article on the Vulcan race should, in
my opinion, not link to a general German article on all Starktrek races. A
more general English article about all Startrek races, however, should (if
it exists). If there is no lookalike article in another language, you just
should not link to it. I think these problems will also be diminished by a
central database, at least they get more clearly visible.

But the one-to-one relation luckily holds for a lot of articles, years,
dates, people, simple objects, countries, small and big cities, mountains,
units, physical theories, chemical subtances, you name it. And for these
myself and many others are interested in more information other languages
may provide. We wikipedians are not so strange to each other as the Star
trek races ;-) , we have a very large common knowledge base.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Combined effort

body:
Hi all,

I have only had minimal success in sending out e-mails about inactive
Wikipedias.

But then, most of the people I e-mail, I don't know.

I figure that if each of us knows two or three people who speak
languages of inactive Wikipedias, and we each tell all of these people
that we know that there is a Wikipedia in their language, the effect
would be much greater.

So, if you know anybody who speaks one of the following languages,
please tell them.

By continent/country...

Africa --
Botswana: Tswana
Burundi: Kirundi
Congo: Kongo, Lingala
Djibouti: Tigrinya
Ethiopia: Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo
Ghana: Akan
Kenya: Gikuyu
Lesotho: Sotho
Madagascar: Malagasy
Nigeria: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Fulfulde
Rwanda: Rwandan
Senegal: Wolof
Somalia: Somali
South Africa: Ndonga, Shona, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
Swaziland: Swati
Uganda: Luganda

Eurasia (including Pacific islands) --
Afghanistan: Pashto (Afghan)
Aromania (Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia): Aromanian
Assyria: Assyrian (not an independent nation)
Azerbaijan: Azerbaijani
Bangladesh: Bengali
Bhutan: Dzongkha (Bhutanese)
Burma: Myanmar (Burmese)
Cambodia: Khmer
Fiji: Fijian
France: Breton (in Brittany), Corsican (in Corsica)
French Polynesia: Tahitian
Georgia/Abkhazia: Abkhaz
Greenland: Greenlandic
Guam: Chamorro (Guamanian)
Hawaii: Hawai'ian
India: All major languages
Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstani
Laos: Laotian
Maldives: Divehi
Isle of Man: Manx
Marshall Islands: Marshallese
Nepal: Nepali
Pakistan: Sindhi
Papua New Guinea: Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu
Russia: Avar, Abkhaz, Bashkir, Chechen, Komi
Samoa: Samoan
Sri Lanka: Sinhala
Switzerland: Romansh (in the canton of Graubunden)
Tahiti: Tahitian
Tajikistan: Tajik
Tibet/China: Tibetan
Tonga: Tongan
Turkmenistan: Turkmen
Uzbekistan: Uzbek
Vanuatu: Bislama

Americas (includes Carribean; in Latin America the languages are more
widely spoken) --
Bolivia: Aymara, Guarani
Canada: Cheyenne, Cree, Inuktitut, Inupiak, Ojibwe
Chile: Quechua
Ecuador: Quechua
Greenland: Greenlandic
Haiti: Haitian Creole
Mexico: Nahuatl (Aztec)
Paraguay: Guarani
Peru: Aymara, Quechua
USA: Choctaw, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Cree, Creek, Inupiak, Muscogee, Navajo, Ojibwe

Mark


body:
I think that depends on the Wikipedia.

48 hours is always ideal, but if it's a vandalbot on a small Wikipedia
(as is the case at li:), a period of a few weeks is better.

Mark

On 04/06/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/4/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh crap. Sorry for sending an empty message.
> > Anyhow.
> > While what you say is true, do you believe that it's a nessecary
> > sacrifice in emergency situations?
> > Mark
>
> Agreed, but we should acknowledge the risks brought on by our haste by
> using temporary  blocks, and demonstrate our attempts at fairness and
> good faith by leaving a note on the talk page.
>
> For users which we don't expect to change between many addresses we
> could do longish blocks, say 6months. For users who can obviously
> change among many IPs, we should short blocks, ideally no longer than
> 48 hours.
>

--
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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redress against personal attack?

body:
>I'd like to know what my options are after Ambi called
>me a jerk:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration#Everyking_3_deadlock.3F
>
>Now, before I make a fool of myself making an
>inappropiate fuss on the wiki, maybe someone could
>tell me if there are any proper channels of redress
>for this kind of thing, whether or not Ambi is
>'untouchable' and therefore it's not worth me
>defending myself.

Here's the best option in such cases, in my opinion:

"Ambi, I am really very sorry about all this.  I did not mean to be a
jerk.  My comment about 'Perry Mason' was rude and uncalled for, and I
regret it.  I also think that you should not have called me a jerk, but
since I hope you will forgive me for my behavior, I have already
forgiven you for calling me a jerk.  Here's hoping we can be friends
soon, and again, I apologize for causing you any trouble."

Thinking about "defending" oneself is already going down a path to
further conflict.

WikiLove...

--Jimbo


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia logo on T-Shirt

body:
Saluton

We, in Russian Wikipedia, want to print 10-20 T-shirts with Wikipedia
logo. Someone like http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.18995781 but in
Russian language.

So, can we use official copyrighted Wikipedia logo? (example
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nohat-logo-XI-big-text-deutsch.png
)

--
Cxion la plej helan,
[[meta:ajvol]]


from_name: Александр Сигачёв


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/4/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Brion regularly sends complaint letters to apparently relevant parties.
>  The success rate is not very confidence-inspiring.
>
> A significant number of providers *just don't care*.

This cuts both ways. Mindspillage and I edit from a roadrunner cable
modem a lot of the time, and a few months ago we received an IP listed
in one of the openproxy lists.

This kept me from logging into a couple of IRC networks from home, but
it wasn't a huge inconvenience to me because I could just ssh into
something elsewhere on the internet.

It had been listed almost a year before we'd received the address, and
of course we are not running an open proxy. The requirement from the
open proxy list to be delisted was for someone authoritative for the
netblock to contact them, so they ignored all contact from me. Even
after I ran into an engineer from my upstream at NANOG I was unable to
get them to send a darn email. ... Eventually we got a new IP and the
problem was gone.

Had we been joe random, unable to just come from another IP, and had
wikipedia been using that open relay list you very likely would have
lost a contributor.

I think we must ultimately accept that blocking can not exclude
someone from our community, and that is it not desirable to use it as
a punitive measure, and only somewhat effective as a technical
measure. Jumping through huge hoops to close every loophole will,
ultimately, be as futile as a vandal trying to keep his bad edits
in... and likely to cause lots of harm to others.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ellywa's Law

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Jimbo mentioned enough good things to make it worth your while. I really
> liked that EllyWa's law is now known to Jimbo. I think most wikipedians
> have seen this variations on Murphy's law in action. :)

I wonder if someone would be so kind as to state "EllyWa's Law" in some
standard form by which it is understood in the Dutch community.

I am personally thinking of this as I think of the "Piranha Effect" as
identified by the French community.

I think it is lovely, just lovely, when ideas like this become known
from different communities to help us all understand our work better.

For those who don't know, Ellywa is one of the most important and
beloved editors in the Dutch community.  She's like Angela in English or
Anthere in French. :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikipedia logo on T-Shirt

body:
Hi ajvol

I think it is a good idea to make tee-shirts :-)

To answer your question, the main question I would ask is "where would
the benefits of the sale go" ?

cheers

Anthere

????????? ??????? a ?crit:
> Saluton
>
> We, in Russian Wikipedia, want to print 10-20 T-shirts with Wikipedia
> logo. Someone like http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.18995781 but in
> Russian language.
>
> So, can we use official copyrighted Wikipedia logo? (example
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nohat-logo-XI-big-text-deutsch.png
> )
>
> --
> Cxion la plej helan,
> [[meta:ajvol]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: link for complaints

body:
Sean Barrett a ?crit:
> Yann Forget stated for the record:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Le Friday 3 June 2005 19:44, Sean Barrett a ?crit :
>> [...]
>>
>>> Newbies get bit around here far too often.  Biting a newbie with a
>>> legitimate legal complaint through an officially approved channel is a
>>> recipe for disaster.
>>
>>
>>
>> That exactly what happens *now*.
>> Complains come (from French speaking people) to wikifr-l and random
>> users answer. Not good. I think that David's request is very well needed.
>
>
> It appears that you did not read what I wrote.  How does having "random
> users answer" consititute an "officially approved channel"?
>
> Being able to dismiss a stupid or offensive answer as having come from a
> random user of a public mailing list renders the Foundation immune to
> suits, not more vulnerable.
>
> --
>  Sean Barrett     | Aw, Mom, you act like I'm not even
>  sean at epoptic.com | wearing a bungee cord!
> --Calvi
> n

Hi Sean

The main difference is make is this one

* if some one answers very quietly, with no usage of slightly offensive
words or without dismissing the complainer request, that makes no
difference at all, as usually the issue is fixed amiably.

* if some one (whoever) makes a rude, or agressive, or dismissive
answer, the complainer is obviously very displeased; and usually his
tone gets less pleasant; What was before just a question becomes a
request. What was a request becomes a legal action. So, of course, in
front of a tribunal, what the first random person answered will not be
used against us, but if he had never made the first answer, we would
possibly not be in tribunal... I go a bit far, but the problem is
generally that when someone was greatly upsetted by a first
inappropriate answer, it takes a *lot* more effort to reach a quiet
agreement.

Ant


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I would be wary of any scheme to pay people for articles.  We have
> prided ourselves on an all volunteer production in all languages.

I am both wary and wildly enthusiastic.  This is something which is
springing up around the world with little or no input from us,
spontaneously and grassroots, and that's usually an indicator of it
being a Good Thing.  I am hopeful that it will prove useful, but I wonder.

--Jimbo


body:
Guaka wrote:
> First of all, 30% or so is already "wasted" on administration in
> developed countries. Then there's often conditions on the use of the
> money. For instance, USAID has the policy that its money should be spent
> on American products, where possible. That often means more expensive
> products. Then there's often the urge to finish the budget. If "this
> year's budget" isn't finished, next year's budget will be less. Often
> money is wasted like that.
> Then there's often incompetence, stupidity and/or the urge to use the
> highest-tech available. It's much cooler - for the NGO and for the local
> mayor - to show off a big shiny satellite dish (compared to a modem
> +telephone line). even if the satellite connection will cost the village
> 300 US$ every month. 300 dollars that will be paid to an American or
> European company, and that will have to be earned by the village
> population.
>
> These days 'everyone' has a digital camera, so cameramen aren't really
> needed anymore, unless you're big time stuff like UNESCO...
>
> "In Cambodia, over half of the international aide goes to 740
> 'international consultants' working in the country. In 2002 those 740
> people were paid just as much as all the 160.000 people working in the
> Cambodian public sector."
> http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=299724 (in French)

I hereby give my solemn promise to the community, that Wikimedia will
never become an institution which wastes more money on photo shoots and
consultants and looking good than in trying actually do something
useful.  This is really an outrageous situation when it happens, and I
refuse to let us ever play that way.  We're about people, people who
care, people who can make a change.  Let's never forget it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..

body:
Angela wrote:
> Something's gone very wrong when playing chess on the wiki
> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chess_championship>) is
> acceptable but creating a demo Wikipedia in a new language is not.

Angela is right.  These demo Wikipedias have my full support.

(I notice that I'm a few days behind, so probably this is already
resolved one way or the other.)

--Jimbo


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Anthere,
>
> Remember that, so far as we have been able to tell, there _is_ a
> disproportionate majority of male Wikimedia project users...

I am quite certain that I have met more Wikimedians than anyone else,
and I am quite pleased to report on what I think may be a historic first
in the history of our projects.

I was sitting at a table at a meetup in Hamburg a couple of days ago and
there were 5 women and 4 men at the table.  A majority female discussion
at Wikipedia?  Cool.

Ok, I guess this happened once before when Angela, Anthere and I had a
face-to-face board meeting. :-)

It is my estimate based on attending technology conventions and
Wikimedia meetups that Wikipedia is less male dominated than free
software and tech generally, but still male dominated to an unfortunate
extent.

--Jimbo


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG

body:
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?
>
>
Mp3s can indeed be both created and played with tools from Debian's
'main' (i.e. completely free, as opposed to 'non-free', which is
non-free, or 'contrib', which is free but depends on non-free
libraries).  One such tool that can do both is Audacity (see
[[Audacity]] on de:, en:, fr:, nl:, pl:, or zh:; Debian package 'audacity').

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Timwi wrote:
> And here I am trying very hard to understand how someone can think that
> a word that is pronounced the way "renowned" is, can possibly have a k
> in it.  It is not even pronounced anything like "know" or "knowledge".
> Furthermore, as "gnostic" versus "agnostic" clearly teaches us, letters
> do not tend to become silent when there is a prefix before them.

Here is the best way to understand it: English spelling and
pronunciation are highly irregular.  When a person is "world renowned"
then they are _known_ around the world.

Since "know" and "knowledge" have a silent 'k', then adding a prefix
would not _make_ the k silent, it would merely _leave_ the k silent.
The fact that "know" and "knowledge" sound different from "renowned"
isn't really helpful, since they sound different from _each other_, and
it is quite common for variants of English words to be pronounced
differently for no apparent reason.

A German and I once had a very confusing conversation at a restaurant in
Austria surrounding the word "dough".  A certain item on the menu was a
piece of meat surrounded by duff, apparently.  Hmm?  What's that?
Interesting food these Austrians eat.  Unfortunately, when I got the
meat and ate it it was tuff, and I had to coff.

My daughter recently asked Danny why the word 'receipt' has a 'p' in it.
 Well, he gave a decent answer but I think he made it up out of thin air.
That's the best that most of us can do, even very well educated and
smart people.

--Jimbo


references:
<BAY22-F1E0E5C4004EF510B0BE6BB70C0@phx.gbl>
	<d6tmad$aa5$1@sea.gmane.org> <42928814.2020301@vankalken.net>
	<d6vqsc$g02$1@sea.gmane.org> <42A1E1A1.3080603@wikia.com>
	<d7t8oa$g9k$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Then make them care. Hack something into MediaWiki that allows us to
> display a pre-set message to non-logged-in users with certain IPs or
> within certain IP ranges. Use that to encourage users who are forced
> behind an open proxy to switch provider, implicitly mumbling something
> about their management. Keep telling the providers that we're actively
> doing this to their users. When they start losing customers, they will
> start caring.

It's pretty arrogant to think that providers will actually lose
customers due to this, it's far more likely that we'll lose users and
editors.

Even in the case that a customer would be annoyed enough at the
provider (rather than us), there are many people who don't have a
choice.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Scheduled global downtime

body:
On 6/4/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I wonder is, in moves like this, why are they all moved at the
> same time? Why not move half, and then after we get _those_ up and
> running again move the other half?

You can't make a subnet appear in multiple places without ugly hackery
and an extra network connection (tunnels, perhaps address translation,
maybe origami routing).

So unless you're also renumbering (which has it's own outage causing
issues) most places are pretty much stuck.

All of this says that while you can avoid downtime it's usually costly
and complex, and if there are problems they often cause more downtime
then you would have had without the the extra measures.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> How does the law define "collect"? We do store all information that
> these children put on their user pages themselves, in the same way
> LiveJournal stores only information that was entered by the user...

Live journal has structured fields where the user is asked for the DOB and such.
I'm not aware of people offering plain email services with no metadata
collection being concerned with COPPA, even though they have the same
'user leaks their own info' problems that we have.


subject: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems

body:
Soufron wrote:
>> Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this
>> these days ?

Yes, I think we are.

The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from
museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the
public domain for a very long time.  If I get one more like that, I'm
going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Research Team: Getting started

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:
> However, in the light of what has been said on the other threads about
> official positions, I find the use of a logo quite strange. Somehow,
> the fact that this "research team" should have a "logo" makes it too
> independant from what I understood the official positions were
> supposed to be, ie. a part of Wikimedia, and even somehow a part of
> the board.

Yes, the logo is, as SJ said, a mutant anyway. :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enciclopedia Libre

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Just read it on the french pump
>
> The Encyclopedia Libre has been heavily attacked by a spam bot 2 days
> ago. It spammed about 500 pages with a change of ip for each edit. It
> took them 1 full day to restore it all.
>
> As a consequence, log-in is now mandatory for contribution on EL.

What software version are they using?  Is there anything we can do to
help them?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> > We need a clear statement [...] that the photos are released _by the
> > copyright holders_ under the GNU FDL. "It's fine to use this" is not
> > enough.
>
> Unfortunately, many people in this thread have forgotten the option of
> public domain. If you just ask the copyright holder something like "do
> you forgo your copyright?" or perhaps even "can anyone use it for any
> purpose whatsoever?" then they are not only much more likely to give an
> informed answer, but in the case of a "yes" it's even more useful. We
> all know that the problems with the GNU FDL are even worse for images.
> How would you use a GFDL image in a (new) printed document?
>
> The images I have contributed are [crap, but at least] public domain. :)

In many countries an author can not just abandon their copyright and
place works directly into the public domain. Even in the US, using a
work after being given a statement the someone has abandoned their
copyright can place you in a somewhat risky position.  We are better
off with licensed works. There are licenses which are very nearly as
liberal as PD, for example, BSD without the advertising clause.

We should discourage the use of {{PD}} entirely, and in it's favor
replace it with more clear tags which prevent confusion and to clarify
matters because of differing handling of PD around the world.  Classes
we should isolate should include,

* PD due to copyright lapse:
  * works older than the 1920s
  * works newer but not renewed
* PD due to statement by author (non-uploader, should include email
and we should avoid these)
* PD due to wishes of uploader who holds copyright (again discourage
in favor of a very liberal BSD, CC or the more restrictive GFDL).
* PD due to US government

and abandon {{PD}} for the wishful-thinking copyvios that it is
currently used so often on..


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: license roadmap ?

body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> On another hand, we are all talking like if re-licensing should be  done
> right now in the blink of an eye... when we have time and we can  do it
> slowly.
>
> If we need something like a roadmap :
>
> 1. A good first step could be to enable dual-licensing as the default
> policy for new additions,
>
> 2. then to begin to authors of old-gfdl content to re-license their  stuff,
>
> 3. and finally to replace gfdl-only content if necessary.
>
> That would allow a slow but smooth process for relicensing. With
> adapted tagging, it could be a very good solution.

One of the biggest obstacles to relicensing may be that I don't support
it and that I don't think it is necessary or a good idea.

My opinion could change over time, of course, depending on
circumstances.  But I see no reason for it now.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: license roadmap ?


body:
On 6/4/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh crap. Sorry for sending an empty message.
> Anyhow.
> While what you say is true, do you believe that it's a nessecary
> sacrifice in emergency situations?
> Mark

Agreed, but we should acknowledge the risks brought on by our haste by
using temporary  blocks, and demonstrate our attempts at fairness and
good faith by leaving a note on the talk page.

For users which we don't expect to change between many addresses we
could do longish blocks, say 6months. For users who can obviously
change among many IPs, we should short blocks, ideally no longer than
48 hours.


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

> Timwi stated for the record:
>
>> Speaking of which.  I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to
>> Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if
>> American children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their
>> parents' consent?
>
>
> It does not apply at all.  COPPA specifies what information a site is
> allowed to collect about children under 13.  We don't collect any
> applicable information about our users.
>
The exception being e-mail address, which is optional, but is collected
as part of Wikipedia user registration.

I don't know enough details to say for sure in what ways access to the
email addresses of users is restricted; this use may fit the exceptions
outlined by the FTC
(http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm), below:

*Exceptions*

The regulations include several exceptions that allow operators to
collect a child's email address without getting the parent's consent in
advance. These exceptions cover many popular online activities for kids,
including /contests/, /online newsletters/, /homework help/ and
/electronic postcards/.

Prior parental consent is not required when:

    *

      an operator collects a child's or parent's email address to
      provide notice and seek consent;

    *

      an operator collects an email address to respond to a /one-time/
      request from a child and then deletes it;

    *

      an operator collects an email address to respond /more than once
      to a specific/ request -- say, for a subscription to a newsletter.
      In this case, the operator must notify the parent that it is
      communicating regularly with the child and give the parent the
      opportunity to stop the communication before sending or delivering
      a second communication to a child;

    *

      an operator collects a child's name or online contact information
      to protect the safety of a child who is participating on the site.
      In this case, the operator must notify the parent and give him or
      her the opportunity to prevent further use of the information;

    *

      an operator collects a child's name or online contact information
      to protect the security or liability of the site or to respond to
      law enforcement, if necessary, and does not use it for any other
      purpose.


references:
<BAY22-F1E0E5C4004EF510B0BE6BB70C0@phx.gbl>	<d6tmad$aa5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<42928814.2020301@vankalken.net> <d6vqsc$g02$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>>
>> Cough .....
>> There are wikimedians whose provider forces them behind an open proxy
>> and who do not have the financial means to change provider.
>
>
> What are these providers? I'm sure Wikimedia can exert some pressure to
> get them to make the proxies less open.

Brion regularly sends complaint letters to apparently relevant parties.
 The success rate is not very confidence-inspiring.

A significant number of providers *just don't care*.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: license evolution

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> While it's occasionally suggested that there are ongoing talks with FSF
> and/or CC, perhaps we sometimes expect there's more going on than there
> really is. Jimbo would hardly have the time to be focusing on these
> issues constantly, and it's not his field of expertise (the same is true
> of Richard Stallman, for that matter). Actually generating ideas for
> them to consider might yield more results.

Actually my sense is that people think that there is _less_ going on
than there actually is.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: license evolution


body:
On 6/4/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> For an example, check the WMC vs Cortonin case. Can content be decided by
> which side explodes in frustration first? I submit that this may not be the
> best of ideas.
>
> A lot of it is that the AC has been too effective; so people start dealing
> with others as problems to be dealt with, with the AC at the end of the
> process. This is not a good attitude either.

I don't really have anything to add here because David made his point
here so clearly.
I think this is a really important perspective. We come here to write
an encyclopedia, not to politic.

Thanks David.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: license evolution

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The point is that the clause is like signing a blank cheque.  You have
> no control over the way it will be changed in the future.  If you don't
> opt out of a future change with an explicit statement you will be
> assumed to have implicitly agreed to the change.

But we *do* agree to the change, and we require all contributors to
agree to the change.  That's why the "or any later version" clause is
important and so should remain on the site quite prominently.

If we eliminated the "or any later version" requirement, we would be
permanently stuck with the terms of the present version of the license,
terms which I think most people agree are inconvenient in some important
ways.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: license evolution


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia e-mail (fwd)

body:
Hi "Noitall",
I'm sorry that my response to you is delayed; I access Wikipedia from
a dial-up account, & I only read your email about half an hour ago.


list: wiktionary-l

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate
	Wiktionary

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Apparantly you do not understand that there are several issues that make
> the GNU-FDL not practical.
>
> *Wiktionary data cannot be imported properly into Ultimate Wiktionary.
> UW has no room for gzipped or bzipped history. It is a server side
> database and nobody is going to see the information in this way.

I do not find this objection compelling.  Ultimate Wiktionary is a
database and so whatever information is needed can easily be stored
and/or tracked in the database, and displayed at any point at which it
seems relevant to do so.

> *Ultimate Wiktionary  will import data from many Wiktionaries, the first
> one could be the nl:wiktionary. Many articles have been copied to and
> from the it:wiktionary. Suppose an article is shared, it arrived first
> from the nl:wikipedia so that one rules.. right ? Now what history
> should we have with the article ?? From a GNU-FDL point of view it is
> unforseen, crazy.

I am confident that GNU FDL 2.0 will deal with this problem, but in any
case, it is not an insurmountable problem.  Just merge the histories --
there are several ways to do this.  If we were going to do it in words,
we would say:

"This article is based on <this Italian article> which has <this
history>, and on <this Dutch article> which has <this history>, and..."

Alternatively, we could say at the start of every history "This article
is based on the original Wiktionary project, and the history for that
project, in total, is <this>".

> *When we keep all these histories, who can say it is "my" work? I
> contributed to it ??

Can you be specific about what clause of the license you're thinking about?

> *When we export content to the .dict or RFC 2229 format, this is a
> subset of the data that we have on a word, a concept. We have the UW
> history and all these Wiktionary histories. Histories for each word.
> Histories for possibly a file with a few fields like: "Word"
> "Description" "Translation" "Original source". The amount of bagage that
> we should carry according to the GNU-FDL is unforseen and crazy. It just
> does not make sense. It is also data that has no stucture. Who will ever
> look at it ??

I agree with this complaint, but it is not impossible nor particularly
difficult to comply with the license.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Now, that's an interesting point. IF this were really the point, I
> MIGHT just give up. You say that MP3 cannot be "legally used in free
> software". So, what is going on? Is it indeed not used in free
> software? In that case I agree with not including it. Or is it used,
> but do we say that's illegal?

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?

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] MP3 and OGG


from_name: shi zhao

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PCWorld The 100 Best Products of 2005

body:
Wikipedia gain web of  PCWorld The 100 Best Products of 2005. See

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120763,pg,6,00.asp

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship discussion: Thanks to all

body:
Dovi Jacobs wrote:
> Wikimedia is committed to free software and free content: All of our
> projects are provided "free as in beer" and licensed to be used
> freely (as in "free speech"). We are also committed to "free speech"
> in the traditional sense, namely that fear or threats of censorship
> will not be allowed to interfere with the development of any existing
> or proposed Wikimedia project."

I agree with you, and I think you've been mostly right about everything
that you've said.

The reason it took me so long to answer this thread (in addition of
course to being insanely busy day and night with everything) is that I
have been thinking about it slowly and carefully.  It's really important
and in my opinion it is really really difficult.

I want to state a hypothetical and then at the end of this letter, I
will also talk about what happens when the assumptions in my
hypothetical are not true.  So read to the end before responding to my
hypothetical. :-)

Imagine for a moment that we knew with absolute certainty (we don't)
that starting a Chinese language Wikinews would result in complete and
total and permanent censorship within mainland China of all Wikipedia
projects.  Remember, all of Wikipedia is currently accessible in China
and Wikipedians in China are doing a wonderful job of building a
wonderful resource.

This is something very important -- if I remember correctly even the BBC
is routinely blocked in China.

Now, imagine that we start Chinese Wikinews anyway, out of a strong
desire not to bow to fear or threat of censorship.  Suppose we start it,
indeed, with a majority of mainland Chinese Wikipedians opposing it, and
only a slim majority of non-mainland Chinese Wikipedians supporting it
(hypothetical assumptions, again).

And then suppose that all of Wikipedia is, as per the hypothetical in
which we are operating, blocked permanently from China.  The Mainland
Chinese Wikipedia community would effectively be destroyed.  Chinese
Wikipedia(s) would continue to grow, but much more slowly, and 1 billion
people would be deprived of the opportunity to learn about it.

We would be lauded as heros in the western media.  I'd have my face on
the cover of Time Magazine and Der Spiegel and so on.  "Wikipedia shut
down by the Chinese government" -- an exciting story!  We feel great
about ourselves for fighting against censorship!

But would we really have done anything useful?  Not really.  We would
have ruined the chance to get free content into China by fighting for
something not even supported very strongly by the Wikipedia community.

Do you agree with me that *if* the conditions of this hypothetical were
true, then as a matter of _tactical_ wisdom in our fight for freedom of
information, it would be a suicidal battle to engage in?

Fighting a war is a bad analogy for what we are doing, but it does
illustrate that not every retreat or avoidance of the enemy is a moral
failing.  So long as we remain strongly committed to winning the overall
battle for freedom of knowledge, we can choose our battles wisely -- let
us choose the battles that we will win, not the battles which will lead
us to a ruinous loss.

Now, if you agree with me that *if my hypothetical were true* then we
should avoid this fight at this time, and if you agree with me that if
an opposite hypothetical were true (i.e. that we _know_ that wikinews
won't hurt anything) we should open it, then the remaining question is
how to make a decision under conditions of uncertainty.

There is only one way: careful deliberation and judgment in consultation
with people who know and care about the overall goals.

And that's where we are.  We aren't surrendering to Chinese censorship,
we are pausing to evaluate the situation.  We are gathering in strength.
 We are learning about what to do to ensure freedom in the long run.

--Jimbo


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

body:
> To answer your question, the main question I would ask is "where would
> the benefits of the sale go" ?

I hope, benefit will go for the good of Wikipedia :), but it will be
not monetary.

I plan this so: several wiki-users in Moscow will have a whip-round
and order in printing office tee-shirts for themselves + a few as
presents for admins (most active participants) and/or as prizes in
contests. (If we shall agree upon it)

Also, I think, some people will want to print the same tee-shirts for
themselves in other cities.

--
Cxion la plej helan,
ajvol


from_name: Александр Сигачёв


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 05:08:24PM +0200, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> <POV>
> If I had to criticize the way history is taught in the US, it is not
> that students are not taught _anything_ about other countries, but
> rather than they are taught about other countries in a way that tends to
> suggest that other countries are out there somewhere, but don't have a
> lot of importance for us except that sometimes they start to fight with
> each other and we have to go make them stop.
> </POV>

I have a great many issues with the way history is taught in US public
schools, and most of them deal with the way American history is
(mis)taught.  Heh.  A clear indicator is the fact that American history
textbooks tend to have titles like "Rise of a Nation", whereas chemistry
books tend to be called things like "Principles of Chemistry".  To
paraphrase someone else (whose name escapes me at the moment), I've
never seen a chemistry textbook titled "Rise of the Atom".

I do share your difficulty with the dismissive attitude taken toward
other nations' histories in public education.  I just tend to believe
that's a mere symptom of a pathology in the way American history is
taught.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] test.leuksman.com

body:
Thomas, you really should send all these emails about enabling/fixing
something at brions testwiki to brion and not this mailing list since
it's his personal wiki.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Trophees du libre prizes

body:
> >> * 4 subscriptions to DirectionPHP (
> >> http://www.directionphp.biz/a_la_une.php ).
> >
> >
> > That could be fun. :)
>
> Meaning? :) You want to be subscribed? What to do with the 3 other?

What is that offer (and the other one) about exactly? (For those of us
not fluent in French.)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Switch on wikien-l moderation again instead of
	rejection?

body:
How about configuring it to reject all mail from persons not
subscribed to the list and send a message somewhat like "sorry, you're
not subscribed to this list, please do so at *yadayadayada*...",
that's what I did for wikiis-l after the spam got too much for my
taste.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
David Gerard (dgerard at gmail.com) [050604 20:54]:

> How's the antivirus filtering on mail.wikimedia.org? The less
> obviously dispensible crap in the mailing list queue, the closer it
> will be to humanly manageable ...

Further on this, I see we're running Postfix. Would the following be of
use? It's a list of filter expressions for Postfix to catch the Nazi spam:

    http://www.formorer.de/blogs/index.php?/archives/28-Nazi-Spam.html

(Of course, there'll be another propaganda virus next week or month ...)

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Switch on wikien-l moderation again instead
	of	rejection?

body:
Ivan Krstic (krstic at fas.harvard.edu) [050604 21:06]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >>How's the antivirus filtering on mail.wikimedia.org? The less
> >>obviously dispensible crap in the mailing list queue, the closer it
> >>will be to humanly manageable ...

> I strongly recommend taking a look at greylisting:
>  http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/
> I've run it on two high-volume production mail servers for a few months
> now without a single legitimate message getting hard-bounced, and the
> spam volume has dropped tremendously. Adding one or two good, trusted
> RBLs (say, SBL-XBL) might also be worth considering. Greylisting is
> trivial to set up with Postfix, by the way.

If something like that works well enough we might even be able to just let
unsubscribed messages through :-D Although I understand there are now spam
engines that retry failed messages ...

- d.


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

body:
> Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050605 07:15]:
>
> > It is my estimate based on attending technology conventions and
> > Wikimedia meetups that Wikipedia is less male dominated than free
> > software and tech generally, but still male dominated to an unfortunate
> > extent.
>
>
> As far as we can tell discussing the topic on #wikipedia, Wikipedia is run
> by a homosexual conspiracy. And the ones that aren't are transgender. IT'S
> THE WIKIPEDIANS! THEY'RE IN IT WITH THE MARTIANS!
>
>
> - d.
>

Indeed, the amount of openly LGBT Wikipedians is interestingly high. I don't
know why Wikipedia is so appealing to homosexual contributors, but it
appears to be that it is.


from_name: aerik at thesylvans.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating / voting for articles

body:
Is there already work in progress for a rating / voting mechanism for articles - perhaps as part of the validation project?  I was thinking that some wikis (particularly wikicity wikis) mike very much like such a feature, and if developed to be configurable, could also be a part of the article validation process.  What I'm thinking of is something that gives one the ability to to epinions style ratings, but configurable from wiki to wiki.  I poked around Meta for awhile, but didn't find anything conclusive.

Thanks,
Aerik


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

references:
<BAY18-F208BD9D4BEDD1DD4C87D44B8040@phx.gbl>
	<6E61B93E-C5B9-4FE1-8191-DC6C2BD1FE0C@sbcglobal.net>
	<550ccb82050530224467f908ba@mail.gmail.com>
	<d7qb31$sit$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<550ccb820506031447710f0edf@mail.gmail.com>
	<d7rulr$h88$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Skyring wrote:
> > On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >>Skyring wrote:
> >>
> >>>Why not look at the Internet communities that DO work?
> >>
> >>How can we when you haven't mentioned what they are?
> >
> > Are you saying that you only know of non-functional Internet communities?
>
> No, I just think that different people have different opinions on what
> constitutes a community that "works". In my mind, Wikipedia works, but
> clearly you disagree.

Nobody is saying Wikipedia doesn't work. I don't.

> So when you tell us to look at something that
> fulfills _your_ criteria, you should tell us what it is, or we will be
> left to guess what _your_ criteria are.

You've got that wrong too.

> But anyway -- I've noticed elsewhere in the thread that you were
> probably talking about LiveJournal and BookCrossing. I don't know the
> latter. As for LiveJournal,

I wasn't talking about Livejournal. If you have anything relevant to
Wikipedia and its problems, say so.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Timwi

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Brion regularly sends complaint letters to apparently relevant
> parties. The success rate is not very confidence-inspiring. A
> significant number of providers *just don't care*.

Then make them care. Hack something into MediaWiki that allows us to
display a pre-set message to non-logged-in users with certain IPs or
within certain IP ranges. Use that to encourage users who are forced
behind an open proxy to switch provider, implicitly mumbling something
about their management. Keep telling the providers that we're actively
doing this to their users. When they start losing customers, they will
start caring.

Timwi


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Saturday, 4th June, 2005, at 22:28, David 'DJ' Hedley
<spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:

> Indeed, the amount of openly LGBT Wikipedians is interestingly high. I
> don't know why Wikipedia is so appealing to homosexual contributors, but
> it appears to be that it is.

I'm not entirely sure that this is anything more than a combination of two
factors; firstly, that people are likely to feel much less intimidated into
concealing their 'defects' [0], and so be more open about themselves; and,
secondly, the high-tech world in general and on-line communities in
particular do tend [1] to attract a rather larger proportion in population
of non-"heteronormative" [2]. It has been theorised [3] that this may be due
to a greater level of emotional and general 'intelligence' required to
access social networks of this type, which means that such people are more
likely to be able to think of themselves as different. Personally, I'm not
so sure about this, and the former seems more of a 'goer'.

[0] - In their own fears of others' opinions.
[1] - Or, rather, used to, in days of yore when usenet was a bless?d place
      of tranquility. Umm. :-)
[2] - Oh, ye gods, how I detest that term.
[3] - But quite possibly not by anyone encyclop?dic. ;-)

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> Timwi stated for the record:
>
>> I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to Wikipedia, and
>> whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American children
>> under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?
>
> It does not apply at all.  COPPA specifies what information a site is
> allowed to collect about children under 13.  We don't collect any
> applicable information about our users.

How does the law define "collect"? We do store all information that
these children put on their user pages themselves, in the same way
LiveJournal stores only information that was entered by the user...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> I'm not familiar with COPPA.  What does it stand for?  I also have no
>  memory of evr visiting Live Journal.

If your answer is "I don't know", then why do you reply?

> When someone says that he is not a child, who can tell the
> difference?

That is irrelevant. I am talking about cases where we do know.

Timwi


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Don't judge the content, but the user conduct. If people keep editing
> without discussing it and trying to reach common ground, you can take
> the case because of conduct. It's the controversial cases in which
> large numbers of people disagree that are the problem. Unfortunately,
> those take time, and can't be properly handled by a small group of
> people (they're probably divided on it themselves).
>

That's what we do at the moment, look at the conduct and leave the
content to work itself out.  The question is whether we are missing the
underlying problem by doing this.  Are we missing the frustrations that
/lead/ to good people loosing their temper and acting badly?  And would
it be better for there to be some other means, outside of the AC,  to
solve these content disputes before that happens?

I have mixed feelings on all this - I see that there are problems, but
am not fully convinced that the majority of them won't be fixed with a
little time and a little faith in the good will of editors.  I'm not
saying we ignore things until they go away, just that a proactive
solution may give disputes an emphasis that might be harmful - maybe
without intervention the eventualist approach will work in a lot of cases.

But that said, I realise we are in a whole new situation with the
growing Wikipedia, and maybe what worked a year ago won't do so
nowadays.  And content does seem to be the key issue in many disputes
that we have looked at recently.

--sannse


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

body:
"We have talk pages and email addresses. There is the RFC process.  If
content disputes get out of hand it's because "good" people cannot bring themselves
to act like good people."

This is demonstrably not true. I can see you have never dealt with the
likes of Plautus before.
-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> We need a clear statement [...] that the photos are released _by the
> copyright holders_ under the GNU FDL. "It's fine to use this" is not
> enough.

Unfortunately, many people in this thread have forgotten the option of
public domain. If you just ask the copyright holder something like "do
you forgo your copyright?" or perhaps even "can anyone use it for any
purpose whatsoever?" then they are not only much more likely to give an
informed answer, but in the case of a "yes" it's even more useful. We
all know that the problems with the GNU FDL are even worse for images.
How would you use a GFDL image in a (new) printed document?

The images I have contributed are [crap, but at least] public domain. :)


from_name: Richard Rabinowitz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 23, Issue 17

body:
>From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Name sounds familiar
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <fb7fdd9c05060313284a91202f at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

>I don't care what he's a member of. If he can abide by Wikipedia
>policies and keep his edits NPOV, I welcome SPUI to continue editing.

>--Mgm
>On 6/3/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> [[Gay Nigger Association of America]]. A trolling group.
>>
>> > SPUI's involved in this? and what's the GNAA?

Agreed.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Don't judge the content, but the user conduct. If people keep editing
without discussing it and trying to reach common ground, you can take
the case because of conduct. It's the controversial cases in which
large numbers of people disagree that are the problem. Unfortunately,
those take time, and can't be properly handled by a small group of
people (they're probably divided on it themselves).

--Mgm

On 6/4/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Mark Pellegrini (mapellegrini at comcast.net) [050605 05:23]:
>
> > The Arbitration Committee is seeking public commentary and suggestions
> > pertaining to an ongoing problem:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RFC
>
>
> Everyone should read and consider this. We've had *lengthy* discussions on
> this matter on wikien-l.
>
> Basically: most of the really poisonous arseholes have in fact been kicked
> off en: Wikipedia, and when new ones show up they are ejected in reasonable
> order. (In a lot of cases, it's not even reaching the AC as they're dealt
> with as obvious vandals and trolls by WP:AN/I.) So now the AC is getting a
> lot of grey-area cases that are really a proxy for a content dispute. What
> to do about this?
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
There does need to be some sort of final say on matters of NPOV and
opinion. Concensus cannot always be achieved, and many contentious
pages are controlled by a POV lobby which alert one another when a
vote w partican potential comes along.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 6/5/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't judge the content, but the user conduct. If people keep editing
> without discussing it and trying to reach common ground, you can take
> the case because of conduct. It's the controversial cases in which
> large numbers of people disagree that are the problem. Unfortunately,
> those take time, and can't be properly handled by a small group of
> people (they're probably divided on it themselves).
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 6/4/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Mark Pellegrini (mapellegrini at comcast.net) [050605 05:23]:
> >
> > > The Arbitration Committee is seeking public commentary and suggestions
> > > pertaining to an ongoing problem:
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RFC
> >
> >
> > Everyone should read and consider this. We've had *lengthy* discussions on
> > this matter on wikien-l.
> >
> > Basically: most of the really poisonous arseholes have in fact been kicked
> > off en: Wikipedia, and when new ones show up they are ejected in reasonable
> > order. (In a lot of cases, it's not even reaching the AC as they're dealt
> > with as obvious vandals and trolls by WP:AN/I.) So now the AC is getting a
> > lot of grey-area cases that are really a proxy for a content dispute. What
> > to do about this?
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Well, that may be the case, but those being disadvantaged in content
cases are always going to claim such a committee is taking sides. How
exactly do you plan to bring together an impartial team to judge such
things.

Take for example the school issue. It's been dragging for a long time,
but I don't think making a decision can be reached at the moment which
both sides can be content with.

How would you deal with such a thing?

--Mgm

On 6/5/05, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > Don't judge the content, but the user conduct. If people keep editing
> > without discussing it and trying to reach common ground, you can take
> > the case because of conduct. It's the controversial cases in which
> > large numbers of people disagree that are the problem. Unfortunately,
> > those take time, and can't be properly handled by a small group of
> > people (they're probably divided on it themselves).
> >
>
> That's what we do at the moment, look at the conduct and leave the
> content to work itself out.  The question is whether we are missing the
> underlying problem by doing this.  Are we missing the frustrations that
> /lead/ to good people loosing their temper and acting badly?  And would
> it be better for there to be some other means, outside of the AC,  to
> solve these content disputes before that happens?
>
> I have mixed feelings on all this - I see that there are problems, but
> am not fully convinced that the majority of them won't be fixed with a
> little time and a little faith in the good will of editors.  I'm not
> saying we ignore things until they go away, just that a proactive
> solution may give disputes an emphasis that might be harmful - maybe
> without intervention the eventualist approach will work in a lot of cases.
>
> But that said, I realise we are in a whole new situation with the
> growing Wikipedia, and maybe what worked a year ago won't do so
> nowadays.  And content does seem to be the key issue in many disputes
> that we have looked at recently.
>
> --sannse
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On 5/24/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
> > On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm
> > > their credentials.  When you do this, a small icon appears by your name
> > > in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of
> > > the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
>
> The other is simply that Wikipedia, among other things, is a fantastic
> demonstration of a particular model of aggregate authorship (the wiki);
> it is, in fact, sort of the perfect poster-boy for that model, and its
> reputation depends to a large extent on the public perception of that
> model's strengths and legitimacy.  There's a very symbiotic relationship
> between Wikipedia's reputation and the reputation of the wiki in
> general.  If one falters significantly, the other can as well.

What Chad said.  Wikipedia will be recognized as an unparallelled
reference work soon enough, without anyone apologizing for its muddy
openness.  And I think that we will see small scalable gains by
improving the way we recognize excellence and expertise in
subject-areas -- say, by avoiding the initial stages of certain edit
wars, by improving the efficiency of RC-patrol, watchlist-patrol, and
article/subject reviewing.  But it seems far more interesting to me to
emphasize that our success emerged from the mud and with its help,
than to assure everyone that the mud can be washed off.

It isn't clear to me that the project would have become such a success
/without/ contributions from dedicated kooks, eccentrics, trolls, and
people who are just plain misguided in their convictions.  Explicitly
focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its
absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends
give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in
Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.

--SJ


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On Jun 5, 2005, at 1:31 AM, Sj wrote:

> On 5/24/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
>>> On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> What Chad said.  Wikipedia will be recognized as an unparallelled
> reference work soon enough, without anyone apologizing for its muddy
> openness.  And I think that we will see small scalable gains by
> improving the way we recognize excellence and expertise in
> subject-areas -- say, by avoiding the initial stages of certain edit
> wars, by improving the efficiency of RC-patrol, watchlist-patrol, and
> article/subject reviewing.  But it seems far more interesting to me to
> emphasize that our success emerged from the mud and with its help,
> than to assure everyone that the mud can be washed off.
>
> It isn't clear to me that the project would have become such a success
> /without/ contributions from dedicated kooks, eccentrics, trolls, and
> people who are just plain misguided in their convictions.  Explicitly
> focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its
> absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends
> give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in
> Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.
>
> --SJ
> _______________________

In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in
fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on
wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions,
and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and
other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.


body:
At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated
explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to
be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of
those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and
commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that.  (I am
more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).

So I do not think these are random museums breaking from tradition, or
overeager law departments stretching to expand their control beyond
current limits; perhaps the precedent here is unclear, or unclear to a
significant subset of museums and their lawyers.

SJ

On 6/4/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Soufron wrote:
> >> Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this
> >> these days ?
>
> Yes, I think we are.
>
> The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from
> museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the
> public domain for a very long time.  If I get one more like that, I'm
> going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
>
> --Jimbo

--


subject: [Wikitech-l] request for 2 mailing lists

body:
History flow, as implemented (without open source code) is about
visualization of statistics, interface design, and how it is used by
people working on other research projects.   Seems like a research
candidate to me, that programmers would be little interested in.  Some
relevant discussions could be corssposted to both lists...

On 6/3/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>Stuff like HistoryFlow also should be discussed on wikitech-l, in my opinion.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mass handling of "zh" translations??

body:
Hi Mark,

Thanks for the reminder.  Yes, two versions, or implementation of a
Chinese-language option, are important.  You would prefer "zh-cn" and
"zh-tw" ?

SJ

On 6/1/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> You may or may not have read my earlier message warning people that
> it's not OK to put Simplified text as the zh translation for press
> releases, system messages, etc. outside of the 3 Wikimedia wikis that
> support it (zh-books, zh-pedia, zh-wikt).

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