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

body:
On 11/11/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >Maybe we need an incubator Wiki for potential new sister projects.
> >Wikicities is certainly not the solution for that.  Wikicities is a
> >for-profit project complete with advertising being run by a for-profit
> >company whose only tie to Wikimedia is that its two founders are on
> >the board of directors of Wikimedia (one of whom is the founder of
> >Wikipedia).
> >
> >Anthony
> >
> >
> I would agree that there is a need for an incubator project.  Clearly
> the jump from minor discussion on this list and a minor writeup on the
> Meta Wiki to turning on a seperate Wiki domain is much larger than
> comparable projects on Wikicities, just for instance.  As far as
> Wikicities not being the correct solution, I would have to in general
> agree but from everything I've seen that is the current recommended
> solution with just about everybody strongly pushed onto Wikicities if
> their content doesn't fit a current Wikimedia project.  Even the new
> projects proposal page strongly recommends Wikicities.
>
I can see recommending Wikicities for projects which aren't applicable
to Wikimedia at all - a wiki for fictional works for instance.  But
for proposed Wikimedia projects which just haven't been fleshed out
enough to stand on their own, I don't think it's appropriate to host
them on Jimmy and Angela's private server.  You seem to agree with me,
and that's good.

> I do want to emphasis, however, that Wikibooks is not the place to do
> this either.  This is a need for a whole new project altogether.

Wikibooks isn't the place for incubation of new projects, I agree.
And I can see the argument that Wikiversity goes beyond the original
scope of Wikibooks.  Essentially I feel that Wikiversity is a superset
of Wikibooks.  For that reason I don't really feel comfortable saying
that Wikiversity should be a separate project, I'd rather see
Wikibooks expanded to include other materials.  But I'd be willing to
concede that point, in fact I essentially have.

As for Wikijunior, well, I find it hard to see how that's not a book,
but that's a completely different discussion.

> Are you interested in helping me with organizing that project? The
> Foundation board has talked about this issue from time to time, but
> there is a need to really sit down and try to come up with the
> guidelines for when a project can be started on the incubator/test wiki.
>  This is a policy issue rather than a technical issue.  This is also
> something that rather than an abstract idea, there needs to be something
> written as a formal proposal with debate over the principle ideas for
> how the whole process would work.  Eventually it would also require a
> change in the New Projects policy as well, with the ability to both
> create and cull projects from the incubator Wiki.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

I'd be willing to help.  But in my opinion the guidelines should be
very minimal, maybe two or three interested sponsors and a one page
project proposal (which could be modified as the idea gets fleshed
out).  It's kind of the whole point of the wiki to make the threshold
very low - unless there's a strong majority sentiment that the project
could never become a Wikimedia project would I suggest removing
something (barring a project which took up enormous resources,
anyway).

And yes, it'd be useful to change the whole policy for new projects to
basically state that you have to make a test run on the incubator wiki
first, but that's really a separate issue which could be hashed out
later.  Along those same lines I'd like to see the more borderline
AFDs copied over.  If Wikipedia decides to get rid of info about
Pokemon maybe it could be made into a proposed project there
(elementary schools which are considered non-notable might be a more
reasonable candidate).

Anyway, send me a link to a page on meta and I'll transfer my thoughts
on this there.  Or if I don't hear from you about it in a few hours
I'll do it myself.

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthony DiPierro


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

body:
Once again, there is no way Wikinews can issue "press pass" today.

If wikinews wishes to issue some accreditation or whatever, why not... but

As I explain, this should lead the Foundation to become responsible for
the content of Wikinews.

As a lawyer and a journalist, I have the following points to stress out :

First, if these accreditations are denounced as false press pass, the
foundation will be liable in many countries for that. The policy might
well explain that Wikinews does not supercede national laws or whatever,
but national journalist unions will certainly think otherwise and they
can pretty much sue the Foundation for that.

Second, if there is any wrongdoing made by someone with an accredited
pass, the Foundation will now be liable for it. I mean its liability
will come first, even before the liability of the author of the article.
This is a famous mechanism meant to protect journalists : instead of
pursuing them, it is mandatory to sue their editors first. And if we
accreditate people, we will be assimilated to editors, becoming liable
at first.

And this leads to my third and more important point. Accreditating
people will transform the Foundation from being a publisher to becoming
an editor... which means that we will now be liable for any content
written on the website by anyone else.

Are you sure that the Foundation is ready to become liable for anything
written on Wikinews ?

If yes, I think this would be a major change of the Foundation policy.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Legal Officer

PS : Also, the name wikinews is not yet a registered trademark and it
should not be said so until its registration actually ended.

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Would the policy at
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews_accreditation_policy settle
>> this situation? It requires accreditation policies to be approved by
>> the Board before press badges can say "Wikinews".
>
> Absolutely brilliant! That is exactly what I wanted. Thank you Angela! :)
>
> -- mav
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica onWikimedia

body:
cc'ed from foundation-l to wikitech-l.

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I understand too that the commons has been growing fast with an average
> file size that is much larger than what we would find in a text bsed
> project.  In principle I think that these scans do belong in the
> Commons, but if any kind of division is needed a logical split would be
> by having text page scans in something like a Wikiscan project.

The extension design I have in mind is something accessible by all
projects. You'd just have something like...

<scan_collection>
name=EB1911
index_format=Grosz
</scan_collection>

And that would give you an embedded image, with navigation links to
other pages. The URL for a typical page would be something like

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopedia_Britannica?vol=02&page=34

The extension would read the volume and page from the respective URL
parameters and display the appropriate image.

The extension would be configured with a directory of page scans,
probably a directory under
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/. It would be accessible
by any wikimedia wiki with the extension enabled. Technically, they
wouldn't be a part of any wiki, they wouldn't appear in
[[Special:Imagelist]] for example. However I imagine Wikisource would be
the project primarily interested in hosting the relevant extension tags
and indexing the collections.

Adding more page image collections could be done by FTP. I have an FTP
server set up at the moment for Brian's uploads. It isn't very well
configured at the moment, which is why it's password protected, but with
proper restrictions and quotas we could probably open it up for
everyone, or at least anyone on request.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbiter recusal

body:
On 11/9/05, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> An obvious test should be whether the dispute predates the Arbcom hearing.
>
> Peter (Skyring)

I don't think abitrators (or arbiters) should be prevented from
recusing themselves from a case if it became apparent midway through
the arbitration that they were unable to hear the case fairly, e.g. if
someone they were close friends with (or a strong enemy of) suddenly
became joined to the case midway through.  Arbiters should have
complete ability to recuse whenever they see fit.  Recusal means "I
can't possibly hear this dispute without being biased", rather than "I
am involved with one of the parties in this dispute".  People should
remember this before demanding recusals left right and centre.
Arbiters do have a modicum of honesty in them and should know when
they are obliged to recuse.

Sam


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reputation Systems

body:
Delirium wrote:
> admin Yellowikis wrote:
>
>> Has anyone tried integrating a reputation system with MediaWiki?
>>
> It's been talked about on and off, but:
>
> 1) They have an impact on the community, and so there needs to be some
> consensus as to what form they should take.
> 2) They are notoriously easy to game.  It may be possible to design a
> reasonably robust one, but it's non-trivial, especially if it is also to
> match whatever constraints (1) proposes.
> 3) Nobody has actually implemented one in MediaWiki.

I was always under the impression that we don't want such a reputation
system because no matter how robust you make it, it is always easier to
game than it is to make it robust against that particular attack.

Which is kind of the opposite of wiki philosophy, where undoing
vandalism is supposed to be made easier than to vandalise.

Timwi


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 11/11/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ?
> > And this leads to my third and more important point. Accreditating
> > people will transform the Foundation from being a publisher to becoming
> > an editor... which means that we will now be liable for any content
> > written on the website by anyone else.
> >
> > Are you sure that the Foundation is ready to become liable for anything
> > written on Wikinews ?
> >
> > If yes, I think this would be a major change of the Foundation policy.
>
> Let me be clear. The foundation *would not* be accrediting anybody. Period. All
> the foundation would do is give permission for those people who have gone
> through a *community run* and accreditation process to use the Wikinews name
> and logo on press badges.

Errr. How is this different from the Foundation accrediting?

In short, you're saying that this (from meta):
"This accreditation process is overseen by the Wikinews community,
though the **Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation have
overall responsibility for the system**. In order to use the term
"Wikinews" (a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation) on **press
badges**, approval of the process by the Board must be sought. This is
done by submitting a summary of the Accreditation policy of the
Wikinews edition seeking approval in English to the
board at wikimedia.org address.

The criteria for accreditation will be documented on the relevant
editions on Wikinews. **The Board may at any time revoke the
accreditation of any Wikinews user, or even revoke approval of the
project's accreditation process**."

...does not make the Foundation liable (my **tagging**)?

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: permission

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> Good point. I also have had several ... not-quite-fights ... with users who
> either attempt to replace free-licensed pictures with supposedly 'better'
> "fair use" pictures, or who object to my removing a fair-use picture in
> favor of a free one. They complain that the free ones look 'amateurish'
> because they're not studio shots.

That /is/ a valid argument, you have to admit. Aspiring to be a serious
encyclopedia project, many of our contributors feel that the quality not
only of the text but also of the pictures is a more important goal than
some obscure (in their mind, not mine) copyright concern. As long as
"fair use" means "we can use it legally", to most people it meets that
goal better than an inferior-quality image with free licensing does.

The primary reason we want freely-licensed images is not because they're
more beautiful but because they make our content as a whole more
reusable. So maybe there should be a feature whereby an article can have
two images, but if you visit wikipedia.org you will only see the
better-quality-but-fair-use one, while the database dumps will contain
only the ugly-but-freely-licensed one.

Obviously, there will be varying opinions on how this should be designed
and implemented, so it's probably not going to get done.

Timwi


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>
> --- Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ?
>> And this leads to my third and more important point. Accreditating
>> people will transform the Foundation from being a publisher to becoming
>> an editor... which means that we will now be liable for any content
>> written on the website by anyone else.
>>
>> Are you sure that the Foundation is ready to become liable for anything
>> written on Wikinews ?
>>
>> If yes, I think this would be a major change of the Foundation policy.
>
> Let me be clear. The foundation *would not* be accrediting anybody. Period. All
> the foundation would do is give permission for those people who have gone
> through a *community run* and accreditation process to use the Wikinews name
> and logo on press badges.

Let me be clear. Press unions, officials and plaintiffs will defend the
idea that giving "permission for those people who have gone through a
community run and accreditation process to use the wikinews name and
logo on press badges" is exactly the same thing than accreditating these
people... period.

The means of this accreditation has nothing to do with it : a press
accreditation is a press accreditation. Whether it is community-based or
centralized. The Foundation will be described as a press editor
accreditating its members, with all the implied obligations within !

The Foundation could argue against it, but I don't know whose story a
judge would buy !

And from my legal point of view there is much opportunity that the
Foundation would be found liable.

Are you sure that's what we want as of today ?

And as I said... that would mean that the Foundation would now be liable
for all of the Wikinews content !

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Legal Officer


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>
>> If you want to issue press credentials there are strict steps to
>> follow, and they have nothing to do with trademark law or whatever :
>> they depend on national press legislations. Press organizations have
>> special privileges related to press, but they also have special
>> obligations to fulfill, and special liabilities !
>
>
> So an organization cannot, without permission of government-sanctioned
> bodies, send people to observe and report on events?  We're not
> talking about official government press passes here (the U.S. analog
> is state-issued passes), simply a piece of paper that indicates the
> person in question has the sanction of Wikinews to report on their
> behalf.  People are free to ignore that piece of paper of course, and
> demand something government-issued, but are you saying that the mere
> act of issuing that piece of paper is illegal, even if it is not
> represented as an official government-sanctioned press pass?
>
> I know in the U.S. at least this is perfect legal, and any attempt to
> /require/ press credentials be granted through a government agency
> would be explicitly unconstitutional (violating the First Amendment).
> A particular event can of course specify that they only accept
> state-issued press credentials for entry of journalists, or impose
> even more stringent requirements (White House press briefings require
> their own approval process), but that's a separate matter---nobody is
> expecting that Wikinewsies will be allowed in /everywhere/ that other
> journalists are, at least not in the near future.
>
> -Mark

Who said anything about a government event?  Private organizations also
give out press passes for different kinds of events, such as the X-Prize
flight that was done completely by private individuals.  You can also
get press passes to sporting events and sometimes special conferences.
 One of the nice things that you can get along with your press pass is a
press kit as well, that can be invaluable in terms of trying to prepare
a story.  This will include quotes from people involved and sometimes
even digitized photos on a CD-ROM or perhaps a password to a press area
on a website, together with reprint premission for your organization.
 If you are in a sporting event, the press pass (I've had them before
for some other work I've done) will get you into areas that the normal
public will never be allowed, including locker rooms and sometimes even
onto the event field itself.

For some of the events you even get a pile of free food from the PR reps
who are trying to butter you up to write a positive story about the
"event".  I've had prime rib on some occasions, or a BBQ buffet that was
reserved just for members of the press.  Major League Baseball parks
even have a seperate kitchen and staff that caters just to members of
the press.  College Football tends to be a little more laid back and
open, but still has a huge table laid out with souviners and trinkets as
well.

The most important "bonus" is the access to the people running the whole
show.  Having press credentials when covering a political event will let
you get "onto the floor" with almost the same privileges as a delegate
when you are at a convention or be able to directly ask questions to a
politician.  Tech conferences will even have a seperate room where there
is one press conference followed by another that goes on for the whole
conference/convention.

None of this is available to Wikinews reporters if they don't have the
formal credentials in the first place.  The other aspect is to try and
keep the standards for issuing the credentials high enough that the
people organizing these events will take a Wikinews press credential
seriously.  Otherwise all we would be able to do is report what ordinary
people see at one of these events (that can still be very interesting).
 We would be missing a big part of what mainstream reporters get at,
even from small-town newspapers or radio stations.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

body:
On 11/11/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've just edited WP:AUTO adding a bit about "If you already have an
> article about you". (I also tightened the waffly writing considerably
> and removed the "Disputed" notice - if it's so very hotly disputed, it
> would have seen some talk page action in the last six months.) Further
> tweaks would probably be a good idea, keeping in mind [[m:Instruction
> creep]].
>

I added a bit more; I'm sure you'll hate the waffly writing, though.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy on including templates in automatic categories

body:
> In parallel with this, I'm wondering whether there is a case for
> having more than one "category-like" namespace, so that we can have a
> separate set of "categories" for project-related stuff. [...] It
> would have been nice if we could have had something like
> [[wikipedia-category:articles which survived deletion]] to keep this
>  stuff in.

You know, I don't get why this was never done. Back when categories were
first introduced, I expected this to be an obvious thing. I expected
there to be at least eight new namespaces: 'Category', 'Image category',
'Wikipedia category' and 'User category', plus all their corresponding
Talk namespaces. Now that we also have templates and the help namespace,
there should also be a 'Template category' and a 'Help category'
namespace, along with the relevant Talk namespaces. In fact, templates
may have come before categories -- I forgot.

In fact, I would go even further and contend that images that are used
solely by the Wikipedia namespace should be in a 'Wikipedia image'
namespace which in turn should be categorisable by a 'Wikipedia image
category' namespace, pages within which you can discuss in the
'Wikipedia image category talk' namespace.

The way I'm phrasing it probably sounds like it's getting really silly,
but I mean it quite seriously.


body:
By the way, I summed up some of my points at :

http://soufron.typhon.net/article.php3?id_article=108

Thanks,

Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 11/11/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> --- Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 11/11/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> In short, you're saying that this (from meta):
>>> "This accreditation process is overseen by the Wikinews community,
>>> though the **Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation have
>>> overall responsibility for the system**. In order to use the term
>>> "Wikinews" (a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation) on **press
>>> badges**, approval of the process by the Board must be sought. This is
>>> done by submitting a summary of the Accreditation policy of the
>>> Wikinews edition seeking approval in English to the
>>> board at wikimedia.org address.
>>>
>>> The criteria for accreditation will be documented on the relevant
>>> editions on Wikinews. **The Board may at any time revoke the
>>> accreditation of any Wikinews user, or even revoke approval of the
>>> project's accreditation process**."
>>>
>>> ...does not make the Foundation liable (my **tagging**)?
>> That is a very good point. The policy needs to be rewritten to say that the
>> foundation is not accrediting the individuals, it is just giving those
>> individuals who have gone through a community-run and board-approved process
>> permission to use the Wikinews name and logo on press badges.
>
> But you don't need permission to use the Wikinews name and logo on press badges.
>
>> To be even more
>> clear those badges should have a disclaimer on them saying that the foundation
>> is *not* vouching for that person's credentials and accepts no responsibility
>> for anything that person does.
>>
> Wikimedia and indeed the reporter emself rarely have any control over
> what is printed on a press badge in the first place.
>
>> In fact, it may be safer (at least clearer) to drop all mention of
>> accreditation or credentials. Just use a different word for it like "community
>> approved Wikinews reporter" or something like that.
>>
>> -- mav
>
> And your position is that someone needs the permission of the board in
> order to call themselves a "community approved Wikinews reporter"?
> That's completely out of touch with reality.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Some corporate bias to watch out for

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
>
> Delirium wrote:
>
>>These seem to have been cleaned up pretty quickly, which is nice to
>>see. Wikipedia's actually better now for Mr. Kell's
>>contributions---even though the original ones were not neutral,
>>they did contain some good information that we previously didn't
>>have, and now do.
>
> The problem is, I cleaned them up by cutting out a lot of potentially
> useful information because it was original research and I didn't know
> how to go about citing it, since I'm not familiar with the issue.
> Check the edit histories.

Shouldn't you be moving such sections to the Talk page?


body:
> How is Wikinews different than this situation?  The problem with
> Wikinews in this sense is that there are no "leaders" or
> editors-in-chief who can take the legal arrows, so to say.  In this case
> I think it would be more the administrators who are maintaining and
> verifying the credentials of Wikinews reporters who would have the legal
> liability.
>
> Not necessarily something pleasant to think about for that matter, and
> dangerous in a volunteer organization.  Certainly something to
> discourage you from becoming an admin on Wikinews.  Having the Wikimedia
> Foundation take the heat instead would help insulate the admins and
> others on Wikinews but opens up other issues as you have suggested.  The
> real question then is who has the certifying authority and who has the
> liability for the problems?  The two go together.
>
> There is a need for accredited reporters, as there are some news media
> events that can clearly be covered only by accredited press members.  In
> the USA in particular, the government has no role in the accreditation
> process and instead it is from the authority of the news agency they are
> working for.  This is the real meat of this issue, and to decide on how
> the accreditation will happen.
>
> BTW, I was turned down from one media event already where I tried to
> cover the event as a Wikinews reporter but lacked credentials.  There
> will be other opportunities in the future, but this is a real situation.

Maybe one solution would be to become some kind of Non-Governemental
Organisation, or to create local comitees. Anyway, we need to think
about it !


from_name: Patrick Danowski

subject:
[Foundation-l] URGENT: Call of Paper KnowRight 2006 DEADLINE
	15.11.05

body:
Hallo alltogehter,

found this Call of Paper and thought it will be kewl if someone can
present the view of the Wikimedia Foundation. The deadline for
submissions is the 15.11.05 but when you signal interest it can be
extendet.

Contact:

Erich Schweighofer,U.Vienna&WZRI, A
Erich.Schweighofer at univie.ac.at

I have absolutly no time in moment to do it myself. Please write me a
short massage if you will do it ;-)

PatrickD
-----------------------------------------------------------

Call for Papers and Contributions
KnowRight 2006
Knowledge Rights ?
Legal, Societal and Related Technological Aspects
http://KnowRight06.ocg.at
University of Vienna (Juridicum - Law Faculty Building)
16 - 17 February 2006
Organized by: Austrian Computer Society (OCG) jointly with
IRIS (Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposium)
http://www.univie.ac.at/RI/IRIS2006/

CONFERENCE OUTLINE
This conference will resume the general interest of the KnowRight
Conferences, held since 1995, on the interaction of Intellectual Property
Rights, related Information Rights, Ethical Problems, and Information
Dependent Technology. It will be supported by the Austrian Computer
Society and will be held in tandem with the IRIS conference
(Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion). It will provide strong
emphasis on the social environment in which the intellectual and
information property system, information services, mobile applications,
e-commerce and the electronic civil society evolve.
The concept of an ?Information Society? or "Knowledge Society" is
neither well defined nor are its foundations and implications well
understood. Governments and authorities in many countries and
regions (e.g. the EU) are still discussing options to establish and
regulate at least special aspects of an Information Society. Increasingly
it becomes harder to master future technologies with traditional laws
based on national or regional methods and concepts. We have to
develop new forms of international legal regimes and practices. They
should empower coordinated means to avoid abuse of such new
technologies.. Fairness should be preserved in the emerging non-local
availability of up to now local resources. Open Source and Open
Content are investigated as examples of dynamic innovations of legal
concepts. The conference will discuss which requirements - such as
safety and security of related methods and media - must be fulfilled and
how these requirements may be enforced. Which regulations and
preventive measures should be promoted in the light of conflicting
interests. Regulating the flow of information must guarantee that
clashes between individual rights (e.g. of intellectual/ industrial
property,
privacy and data protection) and collective demands (e.g. for security,
universal access as well as preserving and expanding the heritage of
mankind) are treated and resolved in human ways. Information in the
public domain on the wired or unwired communication channels should
deserve special attention. Commercial interests should be balanced
with moral and civic obligations.

MAJOR CONFERENCE TOPICS
Intellectual Property
? Status of IP law for e-products and e-services
? Bundle of WIPO Treaties: To be enlarged?
? TRIPS: Efficient against large scale IP infringements?
? Competition and regulation in the music and video industry
? Media and entertainment law - responsibility and liability of IPproviders
? Rules for mobile applications
? Private use and fair use of intellectual property
? Rights management systems
? Open source and open content
? Open access: Copyright restrictions for science and research
? Copyright and copyleft
? Global trademarks
? Software patents
Access to and Reuse of Public Sector and Private Information
? Freedom of information and data protection
? Access to public documents
? Legal framework of public sector information reuse
? Socioeconomic conditions of PSI reuse
? Extent of and limitations on database protection in Europe
? Long term archiving of public and private information
Network Security
? Technological proposals and implementations
? Embedding regulation into hard- and software
? Regulations and their development
? Privacy and identification - electronic identities
? Authentification, authorisation and remuneration
? Electronic signatures
? Fraud on the internet: Tech-tools and legal framework
? Online policing
Data protection
? Pervasive computing
? Automatic ?forgetting? of database
? Retention of data
? Legal means against violation of data protection
Information Ethics
? Information in the public domain - balancing commercial interests with
moral and civic obligations
? Fair use concept at the global level: equitable use of global and local
knowledge
? Access to personal data: protecting citizens' and users? security and
privacy versus public interest
? Equity in the access to information (tariffs, fees, taxes)
? Special regulation for developing countries?
? Free speech and censorship
? Minors access to violence and adult content
? Age verification and privacy
? Responsibility of internet professionals
Don't feel restricted if your innovative topic fits the general purpose of
the conference but none of the special items on the list.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE (co-chairs bold)
John Bing, Univ. of Oslo, NO, - jonb at jus.uio.no (Jon Bing)
Walter Blocher, Vienna U Busin Adm, AT walter.blocher at wu-wien.ac.at
Daniele Bourcier, University of Paris II, FR - bourcier at msh-paris.fr
Alfred B?llesbach, Bremen,DE Alfred.Buellesbach at daimlerchrysler.com
Gunter Ertl, Regional Court of Appeal, AT - g.ertl at kabsi.at
Fernando Galindo, Univ. of Zaragoza, ES, cfa at posta.unizar.es
Jens Gaster, European Commission, EU - Jens.Gaster at cec.eu.int
Thomas Hoeren, U.of M?nster, DE, - Hoeren at uni-muenster.de
Bernt Hugenholtz, Univ. of Amsterdam, NL, hugenholtz at ivir.nl
Dietmar Jahnel, University of Salzburg, AT - Dietmar.Jahnel at sbg.ac.at
Veith Risak, Univ.of Salzburg & Bratislava AT,CZ - risak at ocg.or.at
Ahti Saarenpaa, Univ. Helsinki FI, Ahti.Saarenpaa at ulapland.fi
Peter P Sint, Austrian Academy of Science, A - sint at oeaw.ac.at
(Coordinator)
A Min Tjoa, Univ. of Vienna, AT, tjoa at ifs.tuwien.ac.at
Erich Schweighofer,U.Vienna&WZRI, A Erich.Schweighofer at univie.ac.at
David Vaver, Univ.of Oxford, UK - david.vaver at st-peters.oxford.ac.uk
Peter Wahlgren, Univ. Stockholm, SE, Peter.Wahlgren at juridicum.su.se
Andreas Wiebe,Vienna U.Busin Adm.AT andreas.wiebe at wu-wien.ac.at

SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS
Papers should be of high quality, original, unpublished, and not
submitted elsewhere. Authors of papers are asked to submit an
abstract or a full text version (strongly recommended) of the
respective contribution (abstract: 2-4 pages including main references,
full text: 8 to 10 pages).
The guidelines for the final version are available at
http://www.ocg.at/publikationen/books/paper.html.
Submissions of contributions to the conference be handed in as printout
and in electronic form to
Austrian Computer Society
Wollzeile 1-3
A-1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe

DEADLINES
? Submission of full papers or abstracts: 15 November 2005
? Notification of acceptance: 30 November 2005
? Final paper: 20 December 2006 (some extensions may be
negotiated)
Due to the tight timetable and the target to have the published
proceedings available during the conference try to send the
papers by the beginning of November.

CONFERENCE VENUE
The conference will take place in the University of Vienna (Juridicum -
Law Faculty building) in the city centre.

CONFERENCE LANGUAGE
The conference language willl be English.

PARTICIPATION
If you are interested in participation or to keep informed on the further
development contact the
Austrian Computer Society (OCG) KnowRight 2006
Wollzeile 1-3
A-1010 Vienna
E-Mail: KR06 at ocg.at
Phone: +43 1 512 02 35, Fax: +43 1 512 02 35 9
or visit the conference webpages:
http://KnowRight06.ocg.at (or http://www.univie.ac.at/RI/IRIS2006/ )

REGISTRATION AND PROCEEDINGS
Authors should have registered by 10 Jan. 2006.
Participation including conference proceedings and social event:
EUR 70,--
The proceedings will be published by the Austrian Computer Society
and will appear in the books at ocg series.


body:
Actually that could very well be my stuff.

Just for the record, apart being the legal officer at wikimedia, I am
currently a researcher in law at the CNRS and the University of Paris 2.

Actually Dani?le Bourcier, my PhD director, is even in the submission
commitee.

Too bad for the deadline but I can try to produce something before
Sunday maybe.

Is it possible to do something about it ?

Jean-Baptiste Soufron

Patrick Danowski wrote:
> Hallo alltogehter,
>
> found this Call of Paper and thought it will be kewl if someone can
> present the view of the Wikimedia Foundation. The deadline for
> submissions is the 15.11.05 but when you signal interest it can be
> extendet.
>
> Contact:
>
> Erich Schweighofer,U.Vienna&WZRI, A
> Erich.Schweighofer at univie.ac.at
>
> I have absolutly no time in moment to do it myself. Please write me a
> short massage if you will do it ;-)
>
> PatrickD
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Call for Papers and Contributions
> KnowRight 2006
> Knowledge Rights ?
> Legal, Societal and Related Technological Aspects
> http://KnowRight06.ocg.at
> University of Vienna (Juridicum - Law Faculty Building)
> 16 - 17 February 2006
> Organized by: Austrian Computer Society (OCG) jointly with
> IRIS (Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposium)
> http://www.univie.ac.at/RI/IRIS2006/
>
> CONFERENCE OUTLINE
> This conference will resume the general interest of the KnowRight
> Conferences, held since 1995, on the interaction of Intellectual Property
> Rights, related Information Rights, Ethical Problems, and Information
> Dependent Technology. It will be supported by the Austrian Computer
> Society and will be held in tandem with the IRIS conference
> (Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion). It will provide strong
> emphasis on the social environment in which the intellectual and
> information property system, information services, mobile applications,
> e-commerce and the electronic civil society evolve.
> The concept of an ?Information Society? or "Knowledge Society" is
> neither well defined nor are its foundations and implications well
> understood. Governments and authorities in many countries and
> regions (e.g. the EU) are still discussing options to establish and
> regulate at least special aspects of an Information Society. Increasingly
> it becomes harder to master future technologies with traditional laws
> based on national or regional methods and concepts. We have to
> develop new forms of international legal regimes and practices. They
> should empower coordinated means to avoid abuse of such new
> technologies.. Fairness should be preserved in the emerging non-local
> availability of up to now local resources. Open Source and Open
> Content are investigated as examples of dynamic innovations of legal
> concepts. The conference will discuss which requirements - such as
> safety and security of related methods and media - must be fulfilled and
> how these requirements may be enforced. Which regulations and
> preventive measures should be promoted in the light of conflicting
> interests. Regulating the flow of information must guarantee that
> clashes between individual rights (e.g. of intellectual/ industrial
> property,
> privacy and data protection) and collective demands (e.g. for security,
> universal access as well as preserving and expanding the heritage of
> mankind) are treated and resolved in human ways. Information in the
> public domain on the wired or unwired communication channels should
> deserve special attention. Commercial interests should be balanced
> with moral and civic obligations.
>
> MAJOR CONFERENCE TOPICS
> Intellectual Property
> ? Status of IP law for e-products and e-services
> ? Bundle of WIPO Treaties: To be enlarged?
> ? TRIPS: Efficient against large scale IP infringements?
> ? Competition and regulation in the music and video industry
> ? Media and entertainment law - responsibility and liability of IPproviders
> ? Rules for mobile applications
> ? Private use and fair use of intellectual property
> ? Rights management systems
> ? Open source and open content
> ? Open access: Copyright restrictions for science and research
> ? Copyright and copyleft
> ? Global trademarks
> ? Software patents
> Access to and Reuse of Public Sector and Private Information
> ? Freedom of information and data protection
> ? Access to public documents
> ? Legal framework of public sector information reuse
> ? Socioeconomic conditions of PSI reuse
> ? Extent of and limitations on database protection in Europe
> ? Long term archiving of public and private information
> Network Security
> ? Technological proposals and implementations
> ? Embedding regulation into hard- and software
> ? Regulations and their development
> ? Privacy and identification - electronic identities
> ? Authentification, authorisation and remuneration
> ? Electronic signatures
> ? Fraud on the internet: Tech-tools and legal framework
> ? Online policing
> Data protection
> ? Pervasive computing
> ? Automatic ?forgetting? of database
> ? Retention of data
> ? Legal means against violation of data protection
> Information Ethics
> ? Information in the public domain - balancing commercial interests with
> moral and civic obligations
> ? Fair use concept at the global level: equitable use of global and local
> knowledge
> ? Access to personal data: protecting citizens' and users? security and
> privacy versus public interest
> ? Equity in the access to information (tariffs, fees, taxes)
> ? Special regulation for developing countries?
> ? Free speech and censorship
> ? Minors access to violence and adult content
> ? Age verification and privacy
> ? Responsibility of internet professionals
> Don't feel restricted if your innovative topic fits the general purpose of
> the conference but none of the special items on the list.
> PROGRAM COMMITTEE (co-chairs bold)
> John Bing, Univ. of Oslo, NO, - jonb at jus.uio.no (Jon Bing)
> Walter Blocher, Vienna U Busin Adm, AT walter.blocher at wu-wien.ac.at
> Daniele Bourcier, University of Paris II, FR - bourcier at msh-paris.fr
> Alfred B?llesbach, Bremen,DE Alfred.Buellesbach at daimlerchrysler.com
> Gunter Ertl, Regional Court of Appeal, AT - g.ertl at kabsi.at
> Fernando Galindo, Univ. of Zaragoza, ES, cfa at posta.unizar.es
> Jens Gaster, European Commission, EU - Jens.Gaster at cec.eu.int
> Thomas Hoeren, U.of M?nster, DE, - Hoeren at uni-muenster.de
> Bernt Hugenholtz, Univ. of Amsterdam, NL, hugenholtz at ivir.nl
> Dietmar Jahnel, University of Salzburg, AT - Dietmar.Jahnel at sbg.ac.at
> Veith Risak, Univ.of Salzburg & Bratislava AT,CZ - risak at ocg.or.at
> Ahti Saarenpaa, Univ. Helsinki FI, Ahti.Saarenpaa at ulapland.fi
> Peter P Sint, Austrian Academy of Science, A - sint at oeaw.ac.at
> (Coordinator)
> A Min Tjoa, Univ. of Vienna, AT, tjoa at ifs.tuwien.ac.at
> Erich Schweighofer,U.Vienna&WZRI, A Erich.Schweighofer at univie.ac.at
> David Vaver, Univ.of Oxford, UK - david.vaver at st-peters.oxford.ac.uk
> Peter Wahlgren, Univ. Stockholm, SE, Peter.Wahlgren at juridicum.su.se
> Andreas Wiebe,Vienna U.Busin Adm.AT andreas.wiebe at wu-wien.ac.at
>
> SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS
> Papers should be of high quality, original, unpublished, and not
> submitted elsewhere. Authors of papers are asked to submit an
> abstract or a full text version (strongly recommended) of the
> respective contribution (abstract: 2-4 pages including main references,
> full text: 8 to 10 pages).
> The guidelines for the final version are available at
> http://www.ocg.at/publikationen/books/paper.html.
> Submissions of contributions to the conference be handed in as printout
> and in electronic form to
> Austrian Computer Society
> Wollzeile 1-3
> A-1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe
>
> DEADLINES
> ? Submission of full papers or abstracts: 15 November 2005
> ? Notification of acceptance: 30 November 2005
> ? Final paper: 20 December 2006 (some extensions may be
> negotiated)
> Due to the tight timetable and the target to have the published
> proceedings available during the conference try to send the
> papers by the beginning of November.
>
> CONFERENCE VENUE
> The conference will take place in the University of Vienna (Juridicum -
> Law Faculty building) in the city centre.
>
> CONFERENCE LANGUAGE
> The conference language willl be English.
>
> PARTICIPATION
> If you are interested in participation or to keep informed on the further
> development contact the
> Austrian Computer Society (OCG) KnowRight 2006
> Wollzeile 1-3
> A-1010 Vienna
> E-Mail: KR06 at ocg.at
> Phone: +43 1 512 02 35, Fax: +43 1 512 02 35 9
> or visit the conference webpages:
> http://KnowRight06.ocg.at (or http://www.univie.ac.at/RI/IRIS2006/ )
>
> REGISTRATION AND PROCEEDINGS
> Authors should have registered by 10 Jan. 2006.
> Participation including conference proceedings and social event:
> EUR 70,--
> The proceedings will be published by the Austrian Computer Society
> and will appear in the books at ocg series.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbiter recusal

body:
Emphasis on "should". The reason for rules is people often fail to do
what they should, or even end up doing what they should not ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/11/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/9/05, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > An obvious test should be whether the dispute predates the Arbcom hearing.
> >
> > Peter (Skyring)
>
> I don't think abitrators (or arbiters) should be prevented from
> recusing themselves from a case if it became apparent midway through
> the arbitration that they were unable to hear the case fairly, e.g. if
> someone they were close friends with (or a strong enemy of) suddenly
> became joined to the case midway through.  Arbiters should have
> complete ability to recuse whenever they see fit.  Recusal means "I
> can't possibly hear this dispute without being biased", rather than "I
> am involved with one of the parties in this dispute".  People should
> remember this before demanding recusals left right and centre.
> Arbiters do have a modicum of honesty in them and should know when
> they are obliged to recuse.
>
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Editor_tags

body:
MGM is right, and if nothing else, dispute tags will let certain
journalists know that the article they are making fun of isn't exactly
our best work.

I, as a reader, was perfectly happy reading a disputed article, and
having a knowing chuckle when I found foolish content, rather than the
outrage I felt when finding it on an undisputed page. It was one of
those untagged outrages that inspired me to edit in the first place ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/11/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tags that warn an article is disputed or subject to controversy need
> to be on the article page to inform the casual passerby who doesn't
> think of checking the talk page. And having certain tags on the
> article itself will also make the fact they need to be improved more
> visible and may speed that process up.
>
> Shouldn't we be trying to fix the articles to get rid of these tags
> entirely. If we do, there'd be no discussion on where to put them.
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 11/10/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > This is a summary of the criticism of the WP:ET idea's
> > at
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Editor_tags
> >
> > # Template messages should be bigger! -
> > ## Too small!
> > ## Readers should read (and understand) them, not just
> > editors
> > ### Not appropriate for NPOV / POV tags (OK for
> > others)
> > ### Appears to "cover up" any disputes
> > ### Suggests the talk page is in dispute as opposed to
> > the article itself.
> > ### "They should be like a big honking stopsign to the
> > reader"
> > ### "they warn readers and tell them to not read the
> > article."
> > #### "If they do, then they'll get false information."
> > # "Messes up categorizations"
> > # I dont like it!
> >
> > ROFL
> > SV
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
> > http://farechase.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail

body:
I got this note regarding a potentially wrongful block. Please have a look.

Jack (Sam Spade)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: User3 <bernardrooney at gmail.com>
Date: Nov 10, 2005 7:56 PM
Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
To: Sam Spade <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>

Hi. Thanks for your message. I got blocked trying to edit the
'torture' page removing a reference to ronald reagan. This block is on
both my username and ordinary editing, ie IP address 203.26.16.67.
Maybe it goes away in a few days. I cant email the guy who blocked me.
I dont edit much.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbiter recusal

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>If arbitrators had to recuse themselves every time someone came before them
>who they considered a 'known troublemaker', let's say no disruptive user
>would ever get banned.
>
>
There's an informal (formal?) rule that if a majority of arbitrators
ever recuse on a case, they all are automatically unrecused.  The
justification is that, in all probability, a situation that resulted in
a user having personal conflicts with nearly every single arbitrator is
more likely to be the fault of the user than the fault individually of
every arbitrator.  A more practical justification is that it serves as a
deterrent to trying to "win" a case by forcing everyone to recuse.

-Mark


body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Are the proposed "press credentials" of Wikinews anything more
>than business cards?  Obviously they are not a "press pass".  What
>are they really?  What are the important differences?
>
>
Perhaps this can be a way to avoid the legal problems---instead of
"credentialling reporters", how about we simply have a process for
authorizing Wikinewsies to carry "Wikinews" business cards?  These would
not be press credentials of any sort, merely business cards, but would
be useful proof of affiliation.

-Mark


body:
> So an organization cannot, without permission of government-sanctioned
> bodies, send people to observe and report on events?  We're not talking
> about official government press passes here (the U.S. analog is
> state-issued passes), simply a piece of paper that indicates the person
> in question has the sanction of Wikinews to report on their behalf.
> People are free to ignore that piece of paper of course, and demand
> something government-issued, but are you saying that the mere act of
> issuing that piece of paper is illegal,

I am just saying that not only can it be illegal, but also that it will
certainly engage the liability of the foundation.

Unions accreditating journalists will certainly be mad at it (as in
France), and it would picture the foundation as a liable editor rather
as a not-liable publisher.


from_name: Mark Bergsma

subject: [Wikitech-l] cluster monitoring

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Nagios is still on larousse although it is not running at the momment. I
> could easily upgrade it to lastest version (2.0b4), tweak the config
> files to add the new servers (something like 60+ new friends).
>
> We will have to choose a server to run nagios on. Larousse seems to be a
> good choice as it is mostly idling, serve pages for
> http://noc.wikimedia.org/ and got used for servmon. Larousse could
> become THE monitoring device (and eventually move ganglia from zwinger
> to larousse).

Yes. Although larousse is getting old, and the install running on it is
too. We might want to do a reinstall before that.

> Reusing gmetad data is probably a better idea, the data in nagios and
> ganglia would be the same. One of the problems is that we will have to
> code a nagios plugin that cache the gmetad data to avoid multiples
> queries (we probably dont want to query gmetad for cpu, then for memory
> then for nfs call, then for each disk space usage).

I don't know ganglia too well, but this seems like the best option to
investigate. If ganglia is flexible and uncomplicated enough to add new
metrics easily, then this could certainly work.

> SNMP is a great tool for grabing devices status. Again it s probably
> redundant with gmetad but will let us monitor network equipment such as
> the switches, our ISP router and probably the console switch.

Can we use SNMP for devices that support it, and use ganglia for the rest?

In my experience, SNMP is nice and easy for things that the standard
net-snmpd supports, but it gets nasty beyond that, i.e. if you want to
add things yourself...

--
Mark

mark at nedworks.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Is Wikimedia a publisher?

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 11/11/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Unions accreditating journalists will certainly be mad at it (as in
>> France), and it would picture the foundation as a liable editor rather
>> as a not-liable publisher.
>
> I thought it was the position of the foundation that it wasn't even a
> publisher, but rather an ISP, essentially a common carrier.

My mistake. I just typed out as it came.


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> The difference is that non-fans can in principle look up all the same
> sources as fans, checking the things the fans write for accuracy. If
> someone writes an article about their own personal experiences without
> any outside sources to refer to, on the other hand, how can I check it?
> I'd be reduced to just asking the editor "Um, really?"
>
> I faced this dilemma a while back on the Space fountain page, wherein
> Keith Lofstrom, the originator of the space fountain concept, stopped by
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Space_fountain and wrote up a
> description of the history of how he came up with it. I've asked him to
> copy and paste it onto his own homepage so that we'd have an outside
> source to refer to, until then I'm not really comfortable putting it in
> the article.

On seeing the name "Keith Lofstrom", I had to re-read that paragraph a
few times. He falls into a very tiny set of people who both deserve an
article on Wikipedia & also know me well enough to say more than hello.

And what makes your exchange with him all the more puzzling is that he
was in the audience of my talk about Wikipedia this summer, & I could
have sworn I mentioned the concept of "no original research" in that
talk. I do know I've chatted with him a couple of times about making
contributions concerning himself, & that it was a good idea for him not
to do so. (I even offered him my help in working with Wikipedia.)

So I guess I let the project down by not training him well enough. My
apologies to all.

Geoff


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

> Unions accreditating journalists will certainly be mad at it (as
> in France), and it would picture the foundation as a liable
> editor rather as a not-liable publisher.

This will most certainly be different in different countries, and
we should be careful to use the right names and phrases for the
simple goals we want to achieve.  What I imagine that Wikinews
reporters want is a useful way to answer the question "who are
you, and who sent you here?" at the door of a press conference.
It need not be the press room of the U.S. president or the U.N.
general secretary, perhaps only the mayor of Hoboken, N.J.

I can say "I'm Lars Aronsson, only representing myself", but that
probably won't open the door for me.  It would be a lie to say
that "I'm a reporter for Le Monde", so I won't try that either.
If I say that "I'm a reporter for the Aronsson Daily", they might
never have heard about this newspaper and could want to check with
the editors if I'm actually telling the truth.

As the legal officer of Wikimedia Foundation, what do you
recommend that the Wikinews reporters say at the door, that will
help them get in?  What kind of document should they show?

Suppose that I could at least show a business card with my name,
the title "volunteer reporter" and the logotype and address of
"Aronsson Daily". I think this could help when I say I'm reporting
for them.  It wouldn't have any "official" status such as the U.K.
"press pass", but it would be obvious that only a limited number
of people could legitimately carry business cards with this
company's logotype.  And no newspaper would send two reporters to
the same event that didn't know of each other.

Are the proposed "press credentials" of Wikinews anything more
than business cards?  Obviously they are not a "press pass".  What
are they really?  What are the important differences?

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


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitrator recusal

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

> geni wrote:
>
>> On 11/12/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>> > There's an informal (formal?) rule that if a majority of arbitrators
>> > ever recuse on a case, they all are automatically unrecused.  The
>> > justification is that, in all probability, a situation that
>> resulted in
>> > a user having personal conflicts with nearly every single
>> arbitrator is
>> > more likely to be the fault of the user than the fault individually of
>> > every arbitrator.  A more practical justification is that it serves
>> as a
>> > deterrent to trying to "win" a case by forcing everyone to recuse.
>>
>> No. Last time we disscussed this the general conclusion was that we
>> would call up past arbcom members and people from other languages if
>> posible. The solution you list runs into the problem that if you have
>> multiple sibjects to abitration it is posible for none of them to have
>> gone overboard in disputes.
>
> Erm. What on Earth do you mean, "no"? Mark was entirely correct - that
> is exactly the policy we came up with back in January 2004, when we
> wrote the policies in the first place.

That was the policy as it existed in its original draft form, but not
the policy that was actually adopted. The provision for "unrecusing"
already recused arbitrators was dropped from the policy based on my
objections, see [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitration policy comments]]. I refuse
to accept that this could be policy, formal or informal, since it's
never been done in practice and was specifically objected to at the time.

The better approach is simply for arbitrators not to recuse themselves
over trivial issues, or when they have merely been targeted by the
editor in question. For these reasons, I support the refusal of Kelly
Martin to recuse herself in the Silverback case. The conduct of the
arbitrator, not the person whose conduct is being arbitrated, is what
determines the necessity of recusal.

Geni is correct that in March there was some discussion of how to deal
with arbitrator recusals. See this message I posted about the issue:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-March/020510.html
My proposal received some acclaim, but I wouldn't say it was formally
adopted, and in practice we've never had occasion to need it. I still
think the "all arbitrators have to recuse themselves" scenario is pretty
chimerical.

However, I maintain that we could benefit greatly from developing a
group of temporary arbitrators, or magistrates, for the purpose of
reducing the workload, filling in for recusals, and allowing cases to be
handled by smaller panels. It would also get us out of the dilemma we
currently have, between elections where we as a community make guesses
about who's qualified and will actually do the work, or having Jimbo
appoint everyone based on his own guesses and the advice of those he trusts.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>On seeing the name "Keith Lofstrom", I had to re-read that paragraph a
>few times. He falls into a very tiny set of people who both deserve an
>article on Wikipedia & also know me well enough to say more than hello.
>
>And what makes your exchange with him all the more puzzling is that he
>was in the audience of my talk about Wikipedia this summer, & I could
>have sworn I mentioned the concept of "no original research" in that
>talk. I do know I've chatted with him a couple of times about making
>contributions concerning himself, & that it was a good idea for him not
>to do so. (I even offered him my help in working with Wikipedia.)
>
>So I guess I let the project down by not training him well enough. My
>apologies to all.
>
>
No, I think you did fine - the only edits he made to the article itself
was to remove his middle initial from the title of one of the external
links because he doesn't use it himself, and since the article's not
about him in particular I don't see a problem with omitting that tidbit.
The rest of his contribution was to talk:, and it was very good. I just
wish he'd copy it to his homepage so that I could actually _use_ it. :)


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion, & recreation

body:
On 11/11/05, Jason Y. Lee <jylee at cs.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Since when it has become standard to keep articles and delete recreations on sight?  Whatever happen to the philosophy we had on allowing an article to be deleted so that someone with the proper knowledge can properly write the introduction of the article?
>
> --
> Jason Y. Lee
> AKA AllyUnion

Do you have any evidence that such a philosophy existed in the first
place? If it ever did is suspect it died over the notabilty arguments.

--
geni


from_name: Autymn D.C.

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

body:
On 11 Nov 2005, at 05.02, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> English has been such a "mutt" since at least 1066, when the Norman
> French mixed their language (already a "bastard" French mixed with
> Norse) with an Anglo-Saxon which already had some "corruption" of
> Latin from the Romans.  Are you attempting to undo a millennium of
> linguistic intermixing?

Check my note at Talk:Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.  I'm arguing that
it's good to know that the language is full of duplicate words and
which and, where possible, to fling away (centrifuge) the Latin and
Greek from the English and to think harder about how to put down
(deposit) these words without downputting (decreasing) the lot (number)
of English whims (ideas).

> And, while "riht" may have been the correct spelling of that word in
> the form of English spoken 500 years ago, this too has changed, and
> it is now considered wrong.

I know how it's /considered/.  Already now, people within the same
language speak and write differently.  Even if they agree that they
should write however the greatest dole does, it will have several kinds
of rhetoric and dialect.  That they can't live together means that
their agreement is on the wrong grounds and they don't know what
they're doing.  Knowing what one's doing and putting it distinctly is
how to deem objectively.

On 11 Nov 2005, at 18.59, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Autymn D.C. wrote:
> <snip screed about english being polluted>
>> What in specific haven't I proven?
>>
>> -Aut
>> 1^2 = -1^2
>> (1^2)^.5 =^.5 (-1^2)^.5
>> ?1 :: ?-1
>> ?1 = ?1; ?-1 = ?-1
>
> Since you've just tried to prove that +1 = -1, I think we can safely
> assume that your banning was in good order. If you want to write in
> some
> language that isn't english, go do it somewhere other than the English
> Wikipedia.

/You/ are a troll, and your email is meaningless, having nothing to do
with the argument to this point.  It's the opposite of what I was
doing.  I have to deal with illiterates and mindlesses every day over
the internet, who criticize and badmouth others and me because they
can't see how /they/ slipped up.  They, like you, can't support any of
their attacks, and they use a host of fallacies to defend themselves
whilst doing nothing to expose  whatever wrongness was in the claim.
And often the victims get punished, but /they/ don't; they get to keep
running around thinking that they got the best.  And no one watching is
the more competent to switch back the harm.

-Aut


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: caught in a floating ip ban,
	no way to contact an admin

body:
Jtkiefer wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>> According to the block log your IP has been unblocked.
>> 23:36, 10 November 2005 Jtkiefer unblocked User:192.88.124.202
>> (improper indef. block of an IP)
>>
>> Usually IPs shouldn't be blocked indefinitely and I'm pretty sure
>> Bluemoose will be reminded of that.
>
> Yeah, I unblocked the IP and left a note on Bluemoose's talk page
> reminding him that indef. blocks on IP's are outside of policy unless
> the IP is an open proxy, especially since this is a college IP and may
> be a shared computer.

Always remember that if it is a shared IP, someone may have been running
an open proxy on it in the past.


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: permission

body:
On 11 Nov 2005, at 17:50, Timwi wrote:

> Matt Brown wrote:
>> Good point. I also have had several ... not-quite-fights ... with
>> users who
>> either attempt to replace free-licensed pictures with supposedly
>> 'better'
>> "fair use" pictures, or who object to my removing a fair-use
>> picture in
>> favor of a free one. They complain that the free ones look
>> 'amateurish'
>> because they're not studio shots.
>
> That /is/ a valid argument, you have to admit. Aspiring to be a
> serious encyclopedia project, many of our contributors feel that
> the quality not only of the text but also of the pictures is a more
> important goal than some obscure (in their mind, not mine)
> copyright concern. As long as "fair use" means "we can use it
> legally", to most people it meets that goal better than an inferior-
> quality image with free licensing does.
>
> The primary reason we want freely-licensed images is not because
> they're more beautiful but because they make our content as a whole
> more reusable. So maybe there should be a feature whereby an
> article can have two images, but if you visit wikipedia.org you
> will only see the better-quality-but-fair-use one, while the
> database dumps will contain only the ugly-but-freely-licensed one.
>
> Obviously, there will be varying opinions on how this should be
> designed and implemented, so it's probably not going to get done.

Well I have vaguely suggested having a server like commons called non-
free; an addition to mediawiki
that removed the image links to this completely for mirrors/based on
config would work. Also
has the advantage that non free images arent in the normal dumps.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbiter recusal

body:
On 11/12/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> There's an informal (formal?) rule that if a majority of arbitrators
> ever recuse on a case, they all are automatically unrecused.  The
> justification is that, in all probability, a situation that resulted in
> a user having personal conflicts with nearly every single arbitrator is
> more likely to be the fault of the user than the fault individually of
> every arbitrator.  A more practical justification is that it serves as a
> deterrent to trying to "win" a case by forcing everyone to recuse.
>
> -Mark

No. Last time we disscussed this the general conclusion was that we
would call up past arbcom members and people from other languages if
posible. The solution you list runs into the problem that if you have
multiple sibjects to abitration it is posible for none of them to have
gone overboard in dissputes.

--
geni


from_name: Ellimist

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

body:
To whomever can help me with this issue:

When I try to edit an article in Wikipedia, I receive the message:

"User is blocked. *Your IP address is ***.***.**.***. *[I'd rather not have
my IP in this message; if you need it, please email me.]

Your user name or IP address has been
blocked<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>by
Radiant! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Radiant%21>.

The reason given is:
*Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
"Ellimist<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ellimist>".
The reason given for Ellimist's block is: "Flying Spaghetti sockpuppet"."
*

There are several apparent problems here.

1. I have so far been incapable of emailing Radiant! about this because
he/she does not allow members of Wikipedia to email him/her. Also, I have
received no response from another admin I emailed a week or two ago, so I
turned here.

2. After looking up "sockpuppet," I realized that I performed no such
action. I came to this conclusion by both realizing that I never performed
the action of "sockpuppeting" and I checked through my edit history. All I
saw there were votes on article deletions. I was not aware that voting would
be "sockpuppeting." Maybe it isn't. I don't quite understand. Perhaps this
arose out of my editing my own vote, fixing spelling errors after saving or
something?

3. After doing a bit of looking into Radiant!'s profile, I see that he/she
has banned others for similar alleged offenses. If they are all being banned
by the same criteria I am, I think there should be an inquiry made by other
admins on whether Radiant! is banning fairly.

If any administrators of WIkipedia would be kind enough to assist me with
this issue, I would be quite appreciative.

Thank you.

~Zack (Ellimist at gmail.com)


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrator recusal (was: Arbiter recusal)

body:
geni wrote:

> On 11/12/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
 >
> > There's an informal (formal?) rule that if a majority of arbitrators
> > ever recuse on a case, they all are automatically unrecused.  The
> > justification is that, in all probability, a situation that resulted in
> > a user having personal conflicts with nearly every single arbitrator is
> > more likely to be the fault of the user than the fault individually of
> > every arbitrator.  A more practical justification is that it serves as a
> > deterrent to trying to "win" a case by forcing everyone to recuse.
>
> No. Last time we disscussed this the general conclusion was that we
> would call up past arbcom members and people from other languages if
> posible. The solution you list runs into the problem that if you have
> multiple sibjects to abitration it is posible for none of them to have
> gone overboard in disputes.

Erm. What on Earth do you mean, "no"? Mark was entirely correct - that
is exactly the policy we came up with back in January 2004, when we
wrote the policies in the first place.

Saying "no", and that "we would call up" is... odd. You are not Jimbo.
In fact, the number of people who are not Jimbo is quite astonishingly
large. "You" will do no such thing as "call up" people. It is, has been,
and seems likely to continue to be, Jimbo's Committee - after all, it is
merely a delegation of his powers given committee form.

Yours sincerely, if rather perplexedly,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
On 11/12/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> Erm. What on Earth do you mean, "no"? Mark was entirely correct - that
> is exactly the policy we came up with back in January 2004, when we
> wrote the policies in the first place.
>
> Saying "no", and that "we would call up" is... odd. You are not Jimbo.
> In fact, the number of people who are not Jimbo is quite astonishingly
> large. "You" will do no such thing as "call up" people. It is, has been,
> and seems likely to continue to be, Jimbo's Committee - after all, it is
> merely a delegation of his powers given committee form.
>
> Yours sincerely, if rather perplexedly,
> --
> James D. Forrester

Read through the mailing list archives around the time of the 172
issue (a bit before since it was the tony sideways, snowspiner, me and
ed poor case that triggered the disscussion).

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Timwi

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

body:
> In my opinion, every natural language is at least worth being
> considered for the purposes of transferring knowledge here. But why
> should one want to use a fictional language like Klingon for the
> purpose of writing a non-fictional (online) book? Most probably for
> entertainment reason only. A nice pastime for those who like it,
> sure. But is a project dedicated to information/knowledge really the
> right place for that?

Maybe not "the" right place, but certainly not a wrong place either.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lifting of a block

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Thanks to everyone who voted for me as an Admin in the recent Request for
> Adminship.
>
> Unfortunately, I have to ask your assistance in another capacity. An hour
> ago, Who blocked a user 203.26.16.67 <http://203.26.16.67> for leaving an
> offensive message on a user page. It seems that my IP range has been blocked
> as part of the ban. It was not me who left the offending message.
>
> I was wondering if it would be possible to unblock my account. I understand
> if it is not possible.

I don't see any reason why you can't unblock yourself if you're caught
in a block by mistake.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lifting of a block

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> Chris,
>
> Thanks to the kind person who unblocked me.
>
> There were two reasons. The first is that it might be seen as a conflict of
> interest even though I was innocent. The second is that I was blocked from
> all editing including unblocking as far as I understood.

Currently a block only prevents editing, it doesn't prevent use of any
admin tools including rollback, protecting, blocking, etc.. See
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3801.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lifting of a block

body:
On 11/12/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Currently a block only prevents editing, it doesn't prevent use of any
> admin tools including rollback, protecting, blocking, etc.. See
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3801.
>
> Chris

Could someone cheack that? When I got caught in an autoblock it did
mess with with the admin functions (deletion I seem to recall).

--
geni


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitrator recusal

body:
Our current policy encourages involvement by anyone at the /Workshop
level of arbitration cases, considering and commenting on evidence,
advancing proposed principles, findings of facts or remedies and
commenting on them. Work at that level will both advance the current
arbitration cases and serve as a vehicle for demonstrating your
ability to do the work of an arbitrator while giving the community a
chance to evaluate your work.

Fred

On Nov 11, 2005, at 10:54 PM, Michael Snow wrote:

> However, I maintain that we could benefit greatly from developing a
> group of temporary arbitrators, or magistrates, for the purpose of
> reducing the workload, filling in for recusals, and allowing cases
> to be handled by smaller panels. It would also get us out of the
> dilemma we currently have, between elections where we as a
> community make guesses about who's qualified and will actually do
> the work, or having Jimbo appoint everyone based on his own guesses
> and the advice of those he trusts.


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
I was always in favour of deletion of pages, and
disagreed with those who wanted to keep every
irrelevant, impossible-to-make-encyclop?dic article.
But rampant deletionism has hit ridiculous levels on
WP now. I daren't even go near the article deletion
page because of what goes on there. Now the template
deletion page has become ridiculous.

While it is understandable to delete most single use
templates, it seems to have hit a stage where
perfectly valid, obviously usable templates are been
dumped.

It shouldn't be too hard to tell the difference
between a once-off template that is unlikely to have a
use on more than one page, and one that obviously has
widespread uses now and in the future, but simply
hasn't been put into all the articles they may be used
for 'yet'.

I created one as part of a wholescale rewriting of
articles on the government of Northern Ireland.
Because of problems saving stuff due to those
goddamned error messages I worked on two articles on
my desktop. I put the template into one (it already
was in the first one to be written) to find that it
had already been proposed for deletion. Anyone with
elementary cop-on would have realised from its
contents that it was going to be used in up to 10
articles.

Single use templates with massive amount of codes are
being deleted and substituted even though firstly that
makes them are easier to vandalise, secondly they make
an article difficult to edit if there are a lot of
codes all over the place, and thirdly it then means
that they cannot be used elsewhere even though their
contents make them ideal for multiple use as a
template.

We could no with a page of ''useful templates'' where
existing templates could be picked out for use in new
articles.

It seems to be the same 'greek chorus' of deleters who
do the blanket nominating and do blanket voting to
delete everything in sight. They seem all too often to
drown out protests from others that their deletionitis
is out of control.

Once it was the case that only crap was deleted. Now
it seems that crap survives while the delete gang
propose good articles, good templates and good
infoboxes for deletion.

Wikipedia needs to do something to reign in the delete
brigade. Deletion used to be used to keep up
standards. Now it is bringing down standards, doing
damage to content and design and seriously pissing off
users who are doing serious work and have to spend
their days fighting off attempts to delete things. The
final twist is that many of the most fanatical
deleters seem to be down damn all writing themselves,
simply proposing large numbers of things for deletion
all the time, irrespective of quality, usefulness or
benefit to Wikipedia.

Thom

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> As someone said in #wikipedia the other day: "the
> deletionists go around
> deleting stuff; the inclusionists just whinge on
> wikien-l about how bad
> it is." So: stop complaining, and start telling
> people *why* they need
> to be kept.

Unfortunately the greek chorus of deleters all group
around chanting ''delete, delete delete. Begone you
nasty template'' like something out of Lord of the
Flies.

And they don't like anyone saying 'Hold on a minute'.
You get the image they all turn around and mutter in
unison: did someone dare speak on our page? How dare
he? He isn't one of us.' lol
>
> Notifying the creator/last editor of such templates
> would be a Polite
> Thing To Do. But no, it's far easier to subst: and
> {{d}} something,
> because that way you can get away with it.

I'm beginning to think they do it that way in the hope
people who might disagree with them won't notice.

When recently a whole blitz of Irish templates were
put up for deletion by the one user (He seemed to be
having one of his 'and today I will wipe out Ireland'
moods) I dared to contact Irish users to suggest they
look at the proposed deletions. One of the deleters
went beserck. How DARE I "spam" users to tell them
about the deletions. She went on and on and on and on
in the "How dare I" rant in message after message.
Obviously users are meant to have psychic powers to
know that she and her colleagues had now picked Irish
templates for wipeout. And for daring to disrupt the
smooth running of deletions by bring aliens who might
vote 'no' onto the page. (She made snide comments
about how they were all doing my bidding when they
dared disagree with her.) she promptly nominated a
another template I had created on the page even though
WP was perfectly happy with it and using it all
over!!!

The Deletioners and their antics  makes Lord of the
Flies sound positively heavenly.

Thom

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Model Search 2005 - Find the next catwalk superstars - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/model-search/


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/11/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Anyway, send me a link to a page on meta and I'll transfer my thoughts
> on this there.  Or if I don't hear from you about it in a few hours
> I'll do it myself.
>
> Anthony
>
Yeah, my IP address is currently blocked from editing meta, so forget it.

Anthony


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Samogitian Wikipedia

body:
2005/11/12, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com>:

> (PS: Is it possible to get feeds of individual messages on this mailing list
> - I only get digests and for that reason I can't reply to individual
> messages in a thread)

Go to http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l, fill in
your address at the bottom (in 'unsubscribe or edit options'). Next,
give your password and click on 'Login'. In the resulting screen,
click on 'Off' at the 'Digest mode' option and submit.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Brian Haws

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

body:
So your concerns are about the process and not the particular arbitrator involved?

geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:On 11/12/05, Fred Bauder wrote:
> She "withdrew" cause they were giving her a hard time. The
> arbitration committee had no reason to withdraw her name.
>
> Fred

So arbcom can give people check user rights without their consent.
That is an ... intersting interpritation of policy.

--
geni
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Users with 'fun' tools.

body:
Some users on en wiki have started using a javascript tool that causes
them to http get every article that shows up on recent changes rapid
fire.  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/recent2.js
)

We wouldn't normally permit a bot to hit the wiki that fast and bots
aren't potentially in the hands of thousands of users equipped with
nothing more than a web browser.

Should we set up some guidelines on this now, or just wait until we
have to limit per-source http request throttling?


body:
She "withdrew" cause they were giving her a hard time. The
arbitration committee had no reason to withdraw her name.

Fred

On Nov 12, 2005, at 8:18 AM, geni wrote:

> On 11/12/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
>> Seeing as there hasn't been much public discussion on this (at
>> least on
>> the English-language Wikipedia) I thought it would be a good idea
>> to let
>> you all know that Raul654, Fred Bauder, Kelly Martin, The Epopt and
>> Jayjg have all been granted access to the checkuser tool[1] (the tool
>> which allows for checking of sockpuppets by giving access to IP
>> addresses, including those of signed-in Wikipedians).
>>
>
> I could of sworn Kelly Martin withdrew. Oh well.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kurt Maxwell Weber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion, & recreation

body:
On Saturday 12 November 2005 08:27 am, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 11/11/05, Jason Y. Lee <jylee at cs.ucr.edu> wrote:
> > Since when it has become standard to keep articles and delete recreations
> > on sight?  Whatever happen to the philosophy we had on allowing an
> > article to be deleted so that someone with the proper knowledge can
> > properly write the introduction of the article?
>
> That's a poor argument for deletion.  If an article is rubbish, you
> don't have to delete its history to produce a rewrite.

Unfortunately, too many incorrectly view deletion as a debate over the content
of the article rather than the worthiness of the article for inclusion.  The
deletion policy page explicitly states that "Article needs improvement",
"Article needs a *lot* of improvement", etc. are problems that are not valid
reasons for deletion, but the deletionists conveniently ignore this book of
their Bible.

If an article is completely without a shred of correct information, but the
subject itself is worthy of inclusion, then the article can always be blanked
to remove the anti-content; but listing something for deletion is a statement
that the subject itself is unworthy.

--
Kurt Weber
<kmw at armory.com>
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrator recusal

body:
geni wrote:

> Read through the mailing list archives around the time of the 172
> issue (a bit before since it was the tony sideways, snowspiner, me and
> ed poor case that triggered the disscussion).

I am not for a minute saying that it was discussed here. I am just
pointing out that discussions here (or, indeed, anywhere, on- or
off-wiki), have nothing to do with how the Committee runs itself. It is
not a community organisation. The community has, for the time being,
agreed that the Committee, Jimbo's experiment, should be treated as
sovereign (the "Arbitration policy ratification" documents). That is all.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
No, we discussed this on both IRC and the Arbcom-l mailing list.
There was no basis for withdrawing his name.

Fred

On Nov 12, 2005, at 8:45 AM, geni wrote:

> On 11/12/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> She "withdrew" cause they were giving her a hard time. The
>> arbitration committee had no reason to withdraw her name.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
> So arbcom can give people check user rights without their consent.
> That is an ... intersting interpritation of policy.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitrator recusal

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> James D. Forrester wrote:
>
> > geni wrote:
> >
> > > On 11/12/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
 > > >
> > > > There's an informal (formal?) rule that if a majority of arbitrators
> > > > ever recuse on a case, they all are automatically unrecused. The
> > > > justification is that, in all probability, a situation that resulted
> > > > in a user having personal conflicts with nearly every single
> > > > arbitrator is more likely to be the fault of the user than the fault
 > > > > individually of every arbitrator.  A more practical justification
 > > > > is that it serves as a deterrent to trying to "win" a case by
> > > > forcing everyone to recuse.
> > >
> > > No. Last time we disscussed this the general conclusion was that we
> > > would call up past arbcom members and people from other languages if
> > > posible. The solution you list runs into the problem that if you have
> > > multiple sibjects to abitration it is posible for none of them to have
> > > gone overboard in disputes.
> >
> > Erm. What on Earth do you mean, "no"? Mark was entirely correct - that
> > is exactly the policy we came up with back in January 2004, when we
> > wrote the policies in the first place.
>
> That was the policy as it existed in its original draft form, but not
> the policy that was actually adopted. The provision for "unrecusing"
> already recused arbitrators was dropped from the policy based on my
> objections, see [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitration policy comments]].

I remember discussion about it, yes. It wasn't "dropped", though.

 > I refuse
> to accept that this could be policy, formal or informal, since it's
> never been done in practice and was specifically objected to at the time.

Hmm. You mean, in the same way that the clause in the 25th Ammendment to
the Constitution of the United States allowing (the majority of?) the
Cabinet to sign a letter stating that, in their opinion, the President
is unfit for and can be removed from office, never having been used, is
not actually part of the Constitution? Emergency special-powers rules
exist for a particular reason.

> The better approach is simply for arbitrators not to recuse themselves
> over trivial issues, or when they have merely been targeted by the
> editor in question.

Absolutely agreed. I have recused just once - when someone filed a case
against me, where it would hardly be seemly to rule. My personal rule
for recusals is if it 'feels like the right thing to do' - not only to
be sure that one is able to neutrally comment on all parties and on all
aspects, but

> For these reasons, I support the refusal of Kelly
> Martin to recuse herself in the Silverback case. The conduct of the
> arbitrator, not the person whose conduct is being arbitrated, is what
> determines the necessity of recusal.

And the appearance of unimpeachable and impeccable behaviour - it is
vital, I think, that Arbitrators behave in such a way so as not to
diminish the Committee at all.

> Geni is correct that in March there was some discussion of how to deal
> with arbitrator recusals. See this message I posted about the issue:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-March/020510.html
> My proposal received some acclaim, but I wouldn't say it was formally
> adopted, and in practice we've never had occasion to need it. I still
> think the "all arbitrators have to recuse themselves" scenario is pretty
> chimerical.

Indeed. I would be very surprised, too, if it occurred.

In reality, what would happen if we /didn't/ follow the pre-specified
policy is that it would be handed directly to Jimbo, rather than us
doing it in his stead, and Jimbo, being awfully fair but no longer
sufficiently un-busy enough to be able to understand the twists and
turns of the sometimes-tortuous aspects of policy, written and
otherwise, and would, equitably and rapidly, ban all members of the
complaint for a month. :-)

> However, I maintain that we could benefit greatly from developing a
> group of temporary arbitrators, or magistrates, for the purpose of
> reducing the workload, filling in for recusals, and allowing cases to be
> handled by smaller panels. It would also get us out of the dilemma we
> currently have, between elections where we as a community make guesses
> about who's qualified and will actually do the work, or having Jimbo
> appoint everyone based on his own guesses and the advice of those he trusts.

This has been discussed e'er and anon. The primary problem that keeps on
coming up is that there don't seem to be enough people who actually
would want to take on the obligations and duties of becoming an
Arbitrator, let alone a "second rate" one wherein you get more of the
work and less of the "glory" (forgive me whilst I snort).

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
I temporarily withdrew with the hope that delaying the request with
relation to me would perhaps allow it to go through with respect to
the others.  I see no reason why I should not have CheckUser, and did
not withdraw the request permanently.  I am aware of no credible claim
raised against my qualifications to use the CheckUser tool.

Kelly

On 11/12/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/12/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> > Seeing as there hasn't been much public discussion on this (at least on
> > the English-language Wikipedia) I thought it would be a good idea to let
> > you all know that Raul654, Fred Bauder, Kelly Martin, The Epopt and
> > Jayjg have all been granted access to the checkuser tool[1] (the tool
> > which allows for checking of sockpuppets by giving access to IP
> > addresses, including those of signed-in Wikipedians).
>
> I could of sworn Kelly Martin withdrew. Oh well.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lifting of a block

body:
On 12 Nov 2005 at 03:29, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:

> > Unfortunately, I have to ask your assistance in another capacity. An
> > hour ago, Who blocked a user 203.26.16.67 <http://203.26.16.67> for
> > leaving an offensive message on a user page. It seems that my IP
> > range has been blocked as part of the ban. It was not me who left
> > the offending message.

Who blocked the user... What unblocked the user... I Don't Know let
this happen...  Who's on first?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Users with 'fun' tools.

body:
The point of that tool is to check the diff for common vandalism tools,
not to have 'fun'.  I know NullC is working on a bayesian filter tool
that connects directly with the database, which will make this tool
obsolete, but until then this is useful.

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Some users on en wiki have started using a javascript tool that causes
>them to http get every article that shows up on recent changes rapid
>fire.  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/recent2.js
>)
>
>We wouldn't normally permit a bot to hit the wiki that fast and bots
>aren't potentially in the hands of thousands of users equipped with
>nothing more than a web browser.
>
>Should we set up some guidelines on this now, or just wait until we
>have to limit per-source http request throttling?
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Users with 'fun' tools.

body:
Oops, you are NullC. But you probably already knew that. :)

Brian wrote:

> The point of that tool is to check the diff for common vandalism
> tools, not to have 'fun'.  I know NullC is working on a bayesian
> filter tool that connects directly with the database, which will make
> this tool obsolete, but until then this is useful.
>
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>> Some users on en wiki have started using a javascript tool that causes
>> them to http get every article that shows up on recent changes rapid
>> fire.  (see
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/recent2.js
>> )
>>
>> We wouldn't normally permit a bot to hit the wiki that fast and bots
>> aren't potentially in the hands of thousands of users equipped with
>> nothing more than a web browser.
>>
>> Should we set up some guidelines on this now, or just wait until we
>> have to limit per-source http request throttling?
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>>
>>
>


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

body:
[about helpdesk-l]
> The moderation queue is being cleaned out, so there are a *lot* of new
> messages to answer. You can subscribe to the list at:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l

A mailing list is chronically unsuitable for the task that helpdesk-l is
trying to solve. In order to answer someone's question everyone has to
remember to send the reply back to the user and not just to the list.
Potential follow-ups from that user then go to the answerer and not to
the mailing list. There is no real way to get a glimpse of what queries
are as yet unanswered. Since anyone can subscribe to the list and reply
to questions, and replies cannot be edited by other users, the requestor
has no way of knowing how authoritative or accurate the answer is. A
lesser problem is the potential of the user receiving several (possibly
contradicting) replies from different users.

An issue-tracking system would be vastly more appropriate. Perhaps best
would be a system like LiveJournal Support, or perhaps exactly that
system. The system knows what requests are answered and unanswered (open
and closed), the question and the answer(s) can be seen on one page, the
user's follow-up reply is on the same page, etc.etc.

Just a thought. If people in general are happy with the mailing list,
then of course I won't intervene and let you use it. But I won't help
answer questions there.

Timwi


body:
My reason for temporarily withdrawing was because some people had
irrational objections to my selection which seemed to be slowing down
the process of getting anybody selected to supplement David Gerard.
This is an important problem that has been delayed long enough, and I
was simply willing to "take one for the team" if that would help get
us closer to where we need to be to effectively deal with the problems
that the ArbCom has to deal with on en.

I have grave objections to the process that was followed, and am glad
that the situation has been resolved in accordance with policy without
even more interminable debate and mudslinging.

Kelly

On 11/12/05, Brian Haws <brian at bhaws.com> wrote:
> So your concerns are about the process and not the particular arbitrator involved?
>
> geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:On 11/12/05, Fred Bauder wrote:
> > She "withdrew" cause they were giving her a hard time. The
> > arbitration committee had no reason to withdraw her name.
> >
> > Fred
>
> So arbcom can give people check user rights without their consent.
> That is an ... intersting interpritation of policy.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 11/12/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> Basically, it represents the viewpoint (largely true in the past) that most
> such people who come to Wikipedia are crackpots or scarcely notable. Our
> notability/notoriety has now gone beyond that, and I suspect we will see
> much more of this in the future.
>

I think this is where there is a place for a distinction between those
who start articles about themselves, and those who merely contribute
to articles about themselves. We should probably discourage people
starting autobiographies, but if someone else considers a person
notable enough for an article, then they should certainly be allowed
to edit, with the caveat that the ordinary rules against original
research and unverifiability apply against them also, and will
probably be policed more strictly.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com