from_name: Andre Engels

body:
I think large part of the educated classes in Africa are quite well
versed in either English or French (depending on the country which
formerly colonized them). The *ideal* would be to have everything
available in any language that is in actual use. But we have a finite
number of people, who are moreover volunteers which we cannot force to
do a specific task.

Therefore, we need to look at the amount of work that has to be done
to get a full-fledged encyclopedia in that language as well as the
number of people that will be helped. It will be much easier for us to
create an excellent in resource in English and French than a mediocre
one in 500 different African languages. I also think it will be at
least as useful.

Arabic is a natural extension, also being spoken in large parts of
Africa. If we really want to cover Africa fully, Portuguese has
already been mentioned, I would like to add Amharic to that list. But
for the time being, getting paper versions for English and French
would be the 'most value for money' option, together with perhaps some
kind of injection for the Arabic version.

Another issue that we found at least on the Dutch Wikipedia, is that
Africa is rather underrepresented in the encyclopedia. Getting more
articles on African subjects would benefit both Wikipedia as a whole
and a specific project to get information to Africa.

Andre Engels

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:23:23 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, you're being very unrealistic.
>
> What percentage of the population of Africa is fluent in English?
>
> Ge'ez.
>
> Mark
>
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:42:39 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > >It is very linguistically imperialistic of you to assume that the
> > >entire population of Africa is best-served by English.
> > >
> > >
> > No, it is simply realistic.  I'm not trying to tell people what
> > languages they ought to know, merely observing what languages they *do*
> > know.  My goal is to get information to people in a language they can
> > read it, not some quest to promote particular languages.  If Espertanto
> > were more successful and most of the world spoke it, I'd be happy
> > publishing just one Wikipedia in Esperanto.  As that's not the case, we
> > have to do the next-best thing and publish in multiple languages,
> > choosing the languages to reach as many people as possible.
> >
> > See, I speak Greek fluently.  Being Greek, I like the language, like
> > speaking it, and would like it to be preserved.  But it would be silly
> > to argue that Greek ought to be one of the first languages being
> > considered for a print version of Wikipedia.  Not only are there many
> > other languages with many more speakers, but many Greeks speak one of
> > those other languages anyway (mostly English, with some German).
> >
> > Is there any good argument for putting Greek anywhere near the top of
> > the list of languages we ought to produce a print version of?  I don't
> > think there is---any of a number of languages (English, French, Arabic,
> > German, Spanish, Chinese, etc.) are more useful to a much larger number
> > of people.  So why would there be a similar argument for any other
> > language of about the same size (Greek has around ~11 million native
> > speakers)?
> >
> > The question is, basically, "what reasonable subset of the world's
> > languages can we pick that will serve the largest number".  The answer
> > might include some languages we're not currently good at, but not that
> > many.  From what I can tell, the only languages in the top 10 whose
> > Wikipedias are fairly inactive are Bengali and Hindi, and possibly Russian.
> >
> > -Mark
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Languages for Africa

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Delirium wrote:

> I'd question that: I think Africa is "best served" by whatever content
> the most people can read, which is likely to be English.  Even expanding
> to say, four languages, the best choices are likely to be English,
> French, Arabic, and Swahili (although I can't find very good statistics
> on this).

I would agree with your statement, and choice of languages. One might
throw Portuguese in there, but that is really only Angola and
Mozambique.

One might take Swahili out, as many literate Swahili-speakers also speak
English.

Cheers,    Andy!

[[en:User:Wikiwizzy]]


list: wikien-l

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bugs in the database

body:
Error in numRows(): Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try
restarting transaction
Backtrace:

Database.php line 502 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()
User.php line 452 calls databasemysql::numrows()
Skin.php line 585 calls user::getnewtalk()
CologneBlue.php line 53 calls skincologneblue::pagetitlelinks()
Skin.php line 396 calls skincologneblue::dobeforecontent()
Skin.php line 190 calls skincologneblue::beforecontent()
OutputPage.php line 417 calls skincologneblue::outputpage()
OutputPage.php line 614 calls outputpage::output()
Database.php line 360 calls outputpage::databaseerror()
Database.php line 309 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror()
Database.php line 885 calls databasemysql::query()
LinksUpdate.php line 84 calls databasemysql::insert()
index.php line 207 calls linksupdate::doupdate()

I knew I shouldn't have quit the software team. *Sigh* if only I had
taken the time to learn PHP and MySQL.

Uncle Ed


from_name: pinco

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Day 4 Fund Drive Report (updated)

body:
Andre Engels ha scritto:

>... It will be much easier for us to
>create an excellent in resource in English and French than a mediocre
>one in 500 different African languages....
>
THIS is reasonable... and realistic, in my opinion.

Ciao,
Nino

--
http://www.vessella.it (italiano, esperanto, kiswahili, english)
http://www.changamano.org (Iniziative di solidarieta` per la Tanzania)
http://www.lernado.it (Articoli di quotidiani della Tanzania, Corso di lingua swahili, Corso di lingua esperanto, Vocabolario esperanto-italiano, Jifunze lugha ya Kiesperanto, Kamusi ya Kiesperanto)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:

>On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:32:59 +0200, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If we plug away at the en: wikipedia, adding African-related articles,
>>maybe a couple of years down the line we will be able to automatically
>>translate to Xhosa. I think that is a /much/ better use of everyone's
>>time than writing a Xhosa wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>I think not. As your KDE example showed, translation is far more
>complicated than simple dictionary lookups. Xhosa is only spoken by
>7.9m speakers (mainly in South Africa) and with so few speakers (and
>so little commercial possibility for making a translator) I would
>imagine that Xhosa may never be able to be translated.
>
>Actually, I just read that it is similar to Zulu, which probably adds
>some more "speakers". Still, I think development of a machine
>translation program is unlikely.
>
>
It may still be possible to do human translation though.  As hard as
translation is, I think translating 1000 articles from [x] to Xhosa may
be easier, in terms of time and especially required research resources,
than writing 1000 new articles in Xhosa.  Since all the articles in all
the languages are GFDL, this is a good way to bootstrap new Wikipedias
if there's an interested translator.  This has been going on on el:
(Greek) for example.

It might also answer the question of how to get more diversity into
languages with non-diverse speaker populations.  Even if there's no
Chinese (for example) who speak a particular language, it can still get
the Chinese point of view if someone speaks Chinese and can translate
information from zh:, or from some other Wikipedia (like en:) that
Chinese editors.

Even the larger Wikipedias could benefit from some of this.  I've
translated several German Wikipedia articles to English, despite my
terrible knowledge of German, simply because they had a lot more
information on certain subjects (e.g. [[Gregor Gysi]]).

The ultimate vision, IMO, would be to have all Wikipedias have
essentially the same content, just translated, rather than each one
taking its own biased-towards-its-speakers viewpoint and focus.

-Mark


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to get rid of those posting e-mails.

body:
Having has 400+ e-mails arrive here in 48 hours, I can sympathise
with people's concerns here. I'll need to delete quite a few e-mails
myself.

I recently enabled this e-mail setting, but now I may change it back.

People may not know that they can turn off the posting e-mail flow. If you
do know, you need proceed no further. Otherwise, here goes.

Go to http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l, log in
at the bottom there using your wikien-l e-mail address, enter your e-mail
address password at the next screen and when you see your wikien-l settings, and
change the Mail delivery option in the grey area near the bottom to disabled.

If youve forgotten your e-mail password, then there is a forgotten
password feature on that password page you can use to get it back.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicholas Knight" <nknight at runawaynet.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-L needs dailing posting limits
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:53:51 -0800

>
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > I don't want to seem rude since I'm the one supposedly causing all the
> > problems by posting a lot recently.  But what is the problem? If you don't
>
> You're not the only one that recieved a rather disingenious email
> in private from him.

>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
pinco wrote:

> Andre Engels ha scritto:
>
>> ... It will be much easier for us to
>> create an excellent in resource in English and French than a mediocre
>> one in 500 different African languages....
>>
> THIS is reasonable... and realistic, in my opinion.
>
> Ciao,
> Nino

We are creating a resource in English, French and name all the other
languages. These resources are culturally biased. When people want to
create their own wikipedia, a wikipedia in their own language, we should
support that. If there is one thing, we have time and money to work on
our projects. We can make them as NPOV as our community allows us to be.

When a new project is started, it has to get momentum but when you watch
the subjects that THEY choose to write about, you know that it is
significantly different from what the emphasis is on the en fr nl
projects. African wikipedia do not start writing about America, France
the Netherlands. They write about their country, their language, their
government, their issues. Even with all the good intentions that we
have, we cannot write a proper encyclopedia that is relevant in another
culture. What we can do is enable people to write an encyclopedia in
their own language.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 5 Fund Drive Report

body:
On Day 5 (Tuesday 22 February eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not
available in UTC) we made $6,704.38 (USD equivalent) through PayPal (completed
payments only; no updates available for other sources at this time). This is a
increase of 6.63% from Day 4 and represents 16.21% of total funds collected so
far ($$41,352.44 ; only counting full days) and 8.94% of our goal ($75,000).

All Wikimedia sites were either down or slow and read-only for most of the day.

Day 5			        Day 4 comparison
Breakdown:
PayPal		USD equiv	USD equiv	%change
AUD	  42.22	     $33.37	   $23.46	 42.25%
CAD 	 287.30	    $232.80	  $608.01	-61.71%
EUR 	 953.10	  $2,553.09	$1,844.16	 38.44%
GBP 	 313.77	   $595.47	  $598.17	 -0.45%
JPY	13792 	   $130.73	   $76.61	 70.65%
USD	3158.91	 $3,158.91	$3,137.11	  0.69%
PayPal total:	 $6,704.38	$6,287.52	  6.63%

MoneyBookers
		no data	            $0.00	-na-

	TOTAL	$6,704.38	$6,287.52	6.63%

NOTE: Pending transactions are also included in the below numbers (some of them
will likely turn out to be canceled)

Grand totals so far (only counting complete days)

PayPal		   USD equiv	%GrandTotal
AUD	 1197.00     $946.23	 2.29%
CAD 	 1972.57   $1,598.37	 3.87%
EUR 	11343.52  $14,828.25	35.86%
GBP 	 1951.24   $3,703.06	 8.95%
JPY	104096	     $986.73	 2.39%
USD	18863.11  $18,863.11	45.62%
PayPal total:	  $40,925.75

Moneybookers:
		    $426.69	1.03%

GRAND TOTAL	 $41,352.44	100.00%

% toward goal 	    55.14%

For the most recent grand total and other details visit
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1

Some selected comments from Day 5:
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_5

"The best site to arise from the internet: free access to all human knowledge"
by Raymond Hill

"Wikipedia is my homepage. I learn something new everyday." by Anonymous

"Knowledge should be free, and that is what Wikipedia is about!" by Hendrik
Richter

"I wikipedia now instead of google my searches." by Michael Patronik

"as an international student in sweden where books are expensive, this free
library is wondeful" by Florian Gruenke

"just a small token of appreciation for SUCH a wonderful group of resources" by
Anonymous

"Wikipedia is the most informative website I have ever been to" by Timothy
Oster

"Hopefully this can help prevent future outages! Keep up the great work, from
everyone at tp.org!" by Joseph Moran

"Wikimedia is entertaining, reliable and important. Thank you." by Anonymous

"Thanks Wikipedia. You're my favourite website." by Oliver Kiehl

"Nice work to all involved behind the scenes!" by Anonymous

"Wikipedia is a shining example of the power and durability of the original
Internet spirit: preserving and extending the commons." by Fergus O'Reilly

"image is nothing, thirst for knowledge is everything" by Anonymous

"Wikimedia projects: the 8th wonder of the world, thanks !" by Francois Schnell

"I'd rather read Wikipedia than my college text books." by William Rose

Some of my favorites:

"i just found this place out! and hell yes i'll support this!" by Don Nguyen

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true
liberty." by Izaro Lopez-Garcia

"You guys rock. We use MediaWiki software for our wiki and love it. Thanks for
making our dream project possible." by Jack Herrick

"If you use it, and you can afford it, you SHOULD pay for it." by Tucker Lentz

"Brilliant" by Anonymous

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 5 Fund Drive Report


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 5 Fund Drive Report


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship, really?

body:
I'll risk choking up your e-mail accounts to say that I agree with Oneguy here.

----- Original Message -----
From: OneGuy <oneguyks at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship, really?
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 00:12:52 -0600

>
> Someone wrote:
>
> <something about censorship>
>
> Every newspaper/encyclopedia/media has some kind of editorial policy.
> This is not the same thing as "censorship."  A newspaper puts all the
> sports stories in one section, all the local news in another, and
> keeps the classified ads separately from the news and editorials.
> Censorship means trying to disallow expression of certain views in all
> media, but we are not trying to remove the picture from everywhere on
> the internet. You are free to post that picture on your web site if
> you want. We won't campaign to get it deleted from your web site.
> Having an editorial policy on graphic pictures is not "censorship."
> That has to be the most absurd claim posted yet. Should we have no
> editorial policy and no limits? Should we allow trolls to upload child
> porn as an excuse to "illustrates" the child porn article? How about
> allowing trolls to upload bestiality, anal sex, coprophilia,
> urolagnia, necrophilia, and rape porn to illustrate those articles?
> That's clearly absurd. There should be clear editorial policy on
> graphic pictures. If not, and if every troll is allowed to upload all
> kinds of graphic pictures as an excuse to "illustrate" articles,
> Wikipedia would get blocked by all child protection software, some
> ISPs, and all countries where porn is illegal. That's clearly harmful
> to Wikipedia, and it opens the door to trolls to disrupt Wikipedia by
> uploading even more extreme and graphic porn,  and then cry
> "censorship" when it is removed.
>
> OneGuy
> (Sorry, couldn't resist responding when I read some preposterous claim
> about "censorship" on the archive).
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:32:59 +0200, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:

> If we plug away at the en: wikipedia, adding African-related articles,
> maybe a couple of years down the line we will be able to automatically
> translate to Xhosa. I think that is a /much/ better use of everyone's
> time than writing a Xhosa wikipedia.

Well, that's the thing: it's not a zero-sum game.  The set of people
who would work on African articles in en: and on a Xhosa wikipedia are
not the same.  We're not all going to learn Xhosa, and not all
would-be Xhosa writers know English.  (For example, I would speculate
that there exist well-educated Xhosa speakers who speak Afrikaans but
not English.)

Provided the resources are there, I don't see why we couldn't simply do both.

Steve


from_name: Alex Y. Kwan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia
	again

body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> Why? What makes Cantonese or Singlish suddenly so special?

No, special or not isn't the point. Singlish evolved out of English.
Cantonese didn't evolve out of Mandarin.

little Alex


body:
Gerard, I don't understand why you're answering to me!

I agree with everything you wrote.

I'm trying to help in editing the Swahili version, but only during my
spare time, which is not very much!

Ciao,
Nino
.

Gerard Meijssen ha scritto:

> pinco wrote:
>
>> Andre Engels ha scritto:
>>
>>> ... It will be much easier for us to
>>> create an excellent in resource in English and French than a mediocre
>>> one in 500 different African languages....
>>>
>> THIS is reasonable... and realistic, in my opinion.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Nino
>
>
> We are creating a resource in English, French and name all the other
> languages. These resources are culturally biased. When people want to
> create their own wikipedia, a wikipedia in their own language, we
> should support that. If there is one thing, we have time and money to
> work on our projects. We can make them as NPOV as our community allows
> us to be.
>
> When a new project is started, it has to get momentum but when you
> watch the subjects that THEY choose to write about, you know that it
> is significantly different from what the emphasis is on the en fr nl
> projects. African wikipedia do not start writing about America, France
> the Netherlands. They write about their country, their language, their
> government, their issues. Even with all the good intentions that we
> have, we cannot write a proper encyclopedia that is relevant in
> another culture. What we can do is enable people to write an
> encyclopedia in their own language.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

--
http://www.vessella.it (italiano, esperanto, kiswahili, english)
http://www.changamano.org (Iniziative di solidariet? per la Tanzania)
http://www.lernado.it (Articoli di quotidiani della Tanzania, Corso di lingua swahili, Corso di lingua esperanto, Vocabolario esperanto-italiano, Jifunze lugha ya Kiesperanto, Kamusi ya Kiesperanto)


body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> And now you should start another movement and let the public accept it
> before coming to ask for a Cantonese Wikipedia.

You could have just stated that was your definition of "widely accepted"
before letting all of us get into this long, long discussion.

> Yes, there was. But majority of the population know only how to read
> some wenyanwen, but not write.

Odd that you'd say that. I hang out at this online writing forum and
quite a number of the people there write almost perfect wenyanwen. But
that's besides the point.

> His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well.

His examples from www.cantonese.org.cn?

> are only two possible solutions: 1) do not translate these terms into
> Cantonese, which makes a Cantonese Wikipedia a repetition of Chinese
> Wikipedia, or 2) translate, and no one understands.

You just said that written Cantonese is so easy to understand and now
you say once a term is translated, no one will understand it?

> Whatever it is, it is written. Cantonese is not.

I don't get why you're making statements like those when there is
evidence to the contrary.

little Alex


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [1.0] Server logs from poorer Africa?

body:
David Gerard ha scritto:

>On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:David_Gerard/1.0 , en:User:Payo1
>raises this interesting question:
>
>    Would it be possible to find some schools in developing countries that
>    do have internet access and track what articles their students access
>    for a couple of months? We might even be able to identify gaps in
>    content by looking at their failed searches.--Payo1 10:21, 23 Feb 2005
>    (UTC)
>
>This is regarding selection of articles needed for a paper Wikipedia.
>
>Is such a query feasible or framable? This might be of use!
>
>
>
According to my experience in Tanzania, students who have access to
internet belong to the English-speaking and culturally non-african
africans (they are called "black whites"). Obviously, I can be wrong!

Ciao,
Nino

--
http://www.vessella.it (italiano, esperanto, kiswahili, english)
http://www.changamano.org (Iniziative di solidariet? per la Tanzania)
http://www.lernado.it (Articoli di quotidiani della Tanzania, Corso di lingua swahili, Corso di lingua esperanto, Vocabolario esperanto-italiano, Jifunze lugha ya Kiesperanto, Kamusi ya Kiesperanto)


from_name: Peter Jacobi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiki Problems?

body:
Dear All,

kate wrote:
> it's probably a little early to blame mysql.  most of livejournal's
> problems, when the same thing happened to them, were caused by problems
> with their RAID controllers rather than mysql itself.

I know that "blame MySQL" is a stereotype and somewhat unhelpful advice.

I also know, that a complete failover second location would make the point
somewhat irrelevant, and may be the "sort of final" solution.

But I'm wondering whether Firebird SQL would be a replacement candidate.
Firebird is supposed to be free of the problem, they are discussing the
Wikipedia blackout, and they are also discussing the low visibility of
Firebird and things to improve it. Perhaps to the point, where Firebird
developers would be willing to contribute to integration efforts and add
features and fine-tuning to Firebird SQL?

Regards,
Peter Jacobi

--
Lassen Sie Ihren Gedanken freien Lauf... z.B. per FreeSMS
GMX bietet bis zu 100 FreeSMS/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/mail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Downloading many articles

body:
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:03:47 +0000, Theresa Knott
<theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:

> A box should appear that says "Interenet Explorer will add this page
> to your favorites" There is a checkbox  that says "make available
> offline". Ttick this box.
>
[snip]
>
> Click next then go on to say how often you want to sychronise your
> offline pages with wikipedia.

But wouldn't a solution like this (which is incidentally IE-specific)
only provide the articles in rendered (i.e. HTML) format?  When
downloading articles for editing, one would surely want the wiki
plaintext, no?  How does one get at that automatically, short of using
a bot?

Steve


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
"Used" is an inaccurate description here. Japanese, for example, is
"used" in the US, Brazil, Korea, Australia, New Zealand...

What we are talking about here is "official status". For most European
countries, official status of a language means it is actually widely
spoken by the population. But for most African countries, it is simply
the language of the former colonial overlords. In some cases it is
widely spoken, in others it is not.

Most of the misleading official status goes to English, French, and
Portuguese. Russian also has some measure of this but it's at least
spoken by a minority in all the independent nations where it's
official.

Mark

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:56:43 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Michael Becker wrote:
>
> > The following is a list of these languages in terms of the number of
> > countries where each is spoken.  The number that follows is the total
> > number of countries that use that language (from Weber, 1997):
> >
> >   1. *English* (115)
> >   2. *French* (35)
> >   3. *Arabic* (24)
> >   4. *Spanish* (20)
> >   5. *Russian* (16)
> >   6. *German* (9)
> >   7. *Mandarin* (5)
> >   8. *Portuguese* (5)
> >   9. *Hindi/Urdu *(2)
> >  10. *Bengali* (1)
> >  11. *Japanese* (1)
>
> Portuguese is spoken in seven countries: Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde,
> Guinea Bissau, S?o Tom?, Angola, and Mozambique.  I don't know if it's
> still being used in East Timor.
>
> Bengali is used in two countries: India and Bangladesh.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Sheng Jiong

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
> > His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well.
>
> His examples from www.cantonese.org.cn?

No, but from the Cantonese test site on meta.

> > are only two possible solutions: 1) do not translate these terms into
> > Cantonese, which makes a Cantonese Wikipedia a repetition of Chinese
> > Wikipedia, or 2) translate, and no one understands.
>
> You just said that written Cantonese is so easy to understand and now
> you say once a term is translated, no one will understand it?

I mean technical terms can be tricky, because essentially no one knows
what one technical term should be translated into Cantonese. And in a
topic that is very technical (which does come out often in an
encyclopedia), that will make reading and understanding difficult.

formulax


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Resolving disputes on Wikimedia meta

body:
How do you resolved disputes on Wikimedia meta? Sorry to post here but
I can't find any pages dealing with this.

Christiaan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 5 Fund Drive Report

body:
"F?r ein freies Internet! Danke an alle Schreiberlinge!" - Stefan Noll
"Wissen ist Macht, Unwissenheit ein Segen nur manchmal. Vielen Dank
f?r Eure Arbeit Jungs und Maedels! Geniale Arbeit die Ihr da leistet!
Gruss crazy Oleg" - Oleg Savschouk
"F?r ein lohnenswertes Projekt, auch wenn es einige Macken hat." -
Valentin Abgottspon
"Wiki ist die meist zitierte Quelle meiner FBA. Ohne euch h?tte ich
meine Matura nicht schaffen k?nnen. Wissen ist Macht! Freies Wissen
st?rkt die Demokratie! Leider kann ein Sch?ler nicht mehr geb" - Anon

(only german today? hmm)

Mark

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:43:07 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Day 5 (Tuesday 22 February eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not
> available in UTC) we made $6,704.38 (USD equivalent) through PayPal (completed
> payments only; no updates available for other sources at this time). This is a
> increase of 6.63% from Day 4 and represents 16.21% of total funds collected so
> far ($$41,352.44 ; only counting full days) and 8.94% of our goal ($75,000).
>
> All Wikimedia sites were either down or slow and read-only for most of the day.
>
> Day 5                           Day 4 comparison
> Breakdown:
> PayPal          USD equiv       USD equiv       %change
> AUD       42.22      $33.37        $23.46        42.25%
> CAD      287.30     $232.80       $608.01       -61.71%
> EUR      953.10   $2,553.09     $1,844.16        38.44%
> GBP      313.77    $595.47        $598.17        -0.45%
> JPY     13792      $130.73         $76.61        70.65%
> USD     3158.91  $3,158.91      $3,137.11         0.69%
> PayPal total:    $6,704.38      $6,287.52         6.63%
>
> MoneyBookers
>                 no data             $0.00       -na-
>
>         TOTAL   $6,704.38       $6,287.52       6.63%
>
> NOTE: Pending transactions are also included in the below numbers (some of them
> will likely turn out to be canceled)
>
> Grand totals so far (only counting complete days)
>
> PayPal             USD equiv    %GrandTotal
> AUD      1197.00     $946.23     2.29%
> CAD      1972.57   $1,598.37     3.87%
> EUR     11343.52  $14,828.25    35.86%
> GBP      1951.24   $3,703.06     8.95%
> JPY     104096       $986.73     2.39%
> USD     18863.11  $18,863.11    45.62%
> PayPal total:     $40,925.75
>
> Moneybookers:
>                     $426.69     1.03%
>
> GRAND TOTAL      $41,352.44     100.00%
>
> % toward goal       55.14%
>
> For the most recent grand total and other details visit
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1
>
> Some selected comments from Day 5:
> See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_5
>
> "The best site to arise from the internet: free access to all human knowledge"
> by Raymond Hill
>
> "Wikipedia is my homepage. I learn something new everyday." by Anonymous
>
> "Knowledge should be free, and that is what Wikipedia is about!" by Hendrik
> Richter
>
> "I wikipedia now instead of google my searches." by Michael Patronik
>
> "as an international student in sweden where books are expensive, this free
> library is wondeful" by Florian Gruenke
>
> "just a small token of appreciation for SUCH a wonderful group of resources" by
> Anonymous
>
> "Wikipedia is the most informative website I have ever been to" by Timothy
> Oster
>
> "Hopefully this can help prevent future outages! Keep up the great work, from
> everyone at tp.org!" by Joseph Moran
>
> "Wikimedia is entertaining, reliable and important. Thank you." by Anonymous
>
> "Thanks Wikipedia. You're my favourite website." by Oliver Kiehl
>
> "Nice work to all involved behind the scenes!" by Anonymous
>
> "Wikipedia is a shining example of the power and durability of the original
> Internet spirit: preserving and extending the commons." by Fergus O'Reilly
>
> "image is nothing, thirst for knowledge is everything" by Anonymous
>
> "Wikimedia projects: the 8th wonder of the world, thanks !" by Francois Schnell
>
> "I'd rather read Wikipedia than my college text books." by William Rose
>
> Some of my favorites:
>
> "i just found this place out! and hell yes i'll support this!" by Don Nguyen
>
> "The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true
> liberty." by Izaro Lopez-Garcia
>
> "You guys rock. We use MediaWiki software for our wiki and love it. Thanks for
> making our dream project possible." by Jack Herrick
>
> "If you use it, and you can afford it, you SHOULD pay for it." by Tucker Lentz
>
> "Brilliant" by Anonymous
>
> Daniel Mayer,
> Wikimedia CFO
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
> http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Yes, 7.9m people is so small... Wait Tomer, isn't your native language
Hebrew? Remind me how many people speak Hebrew? Or do Xhosa speakers
count for less because they're Africans?

Mark

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:20:32 +0000, Tomer Chachamu <the.r3m0t at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:32:59 +0200, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
> > If we plug away at the en: wikipedia, adding African-related articles,
> > maybe a couple of years down the line we will be able to automatically
> > translate to Xhosa. I think that is a /much/ better use of everyone's
> > time than writing a Xhosa wikipedia.
>
> I think not. As your KDE example showed, translation is far more
> complicated than simple dictionary lookups. Xhosa is only spoken by
> 7.9m speakers (mainly in South Africa) and with so few speakers (and
> so little commercial possibility for making a translator) I would
> imagine that Xhosa may never be able to be translated.
>
> Actually, I just read that it is similar to Zulu, which probably adds
> some more "speakers". Still, I think development of a machine
> translation program is unlikely.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Henry Tan-Tenn

body:
Delirium ti 2005/2/23 ChS 01:16 sia-kong:

> I'd question that: I think Africa is "best served" by whatever content
> the most people can read, which is likely to be English.

I'd like to hear the opinions of Africans on these issues, and not just
the elites.  My current opinion is that a Wikipedia limited only to a
few European languages would be a disaster.  They would likely serve, at
best, only the top echelons of African societies, in the sense that
"whatever content the most people can read" would automatically exclude
those who cannot (currently) read.  To this some Wikipedians might point
out that the projects are meant only for the Internet-using population,
and it is not our goal to disseminate knowledge beyond that limited
population (globally speaking).  My response would be that we should not
assume Wikipedia would always remain textual.  In order to disseminate
knowledge to the rest of the population, recordings will eventually need
to be made, initially on a selective basis.  For that we need as many
languages as practically possible and for which there are willing
volunteers.  At this very early stage in Wikimedia's development, urging
editors to close ranks under the banners of a few mega-languages is in
any case premature.

And by the way, a language with 8 million speakers is _not_ a small
language at all.

To put matters into perspective, the following is an article describing
how a US evangelical Christian group (related to the Ethnologue) is
handling languages.  They are currently proceeding at a rate of starting
translations into 90 new language per year:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/002/28.74.html .  Wikimedia is
not out to save souls (or languages) but there is something about having
a vision that is worth looking into.

>Even expanding
> to say, four languages, the best choices are likely to be English,
> French, Arabic, and Swahili (although I can't find very good statistics
> on this).  Unless you have a plan to simultaneously publish editions in
> 500 different languages, publishing in the major languages---i.e. those
> that the most people are able to make use of---seems like the best plan.
>
> -Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [1.0] Server logs from poorer Africa?

body:
pinco ti 2005/2/23 ChS 07:51 sia-kong:
> According to my experience in Tanzania, students who have access to
> internet belong to the English-speaking and culturally non-african
> africans (they are called "black whites"). Obviously, I can be wrong!

The process of "obtaining" Internet access may well change how one
chooses to access information and the sort of information deemed worthy
of access.  Still the idea that Wiki*edia could try to fulfill the needs
of the African elite class is intriguing.  Better still, though, would
be to have their participation even though the risk of introducing
systematic bias is amplified by the socioeconomic realities on the
ground -- which might have led to a wider "digital divide", among other
associatd divides.  Whereas in the Euro-Anglo-East_Asian world "going
on-line" says more about a person's age group than wealth or education,
elsewhere there might be a closer link between having Internet access
and belonging to a social, economic, racial and/or political class, with
their associated values (such as a preference for a Language of Wider
Communications (LWC) to one's native language).  Nevertheless Wiki*edia
decreases its overall systematic bias through the greater participation
from this corner of the world -- the particularity of the participants
within their own countries being (arguably) less important than little
or no participation.  The same could be said of the benefit of greater
participation from people living in the Andes, southwestern China, the
the Phillippines' Muslim south, the St. Lawrence Island, to name a few.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Even if machine translation can reach such a level, there are still
certain things about language that take a human to fix.

For example, if I translate a document from Chinese, it may be
difficult to understand and seem unnatural, even though there are no
real grammatical errors and all translations are technically correct.
If I find this happens, I will go back and read the Chinese version,
and rephrase the English translation into a more "English" way of
saying the same thing.

There are also other issues, but most are very difficult to explain.

Mark

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:44:47 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
> > Never ever a machine will be able to translate correctly - not now,
> > not tomorrow, not in 100 years - it's a dream many have - sorry, I
> > must destroy it.
>
> A pedantic point, but this is assuming that machines are not capable of
> human-level intelligence.  Many in the AI community would beg to differ. =]
>
> (Although whether it'll be 10, 20, 50, 100, or 500 years before an
> artificial intelligence can learn things like languages with the same or
> better aptitude as humans is a matter of debate.)
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Conflict resolution on meta Wikimedia

body:
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this message but I
was unable to find anywhere more suitable. How are disputes dealt with
on Wikimedia meta? Unfortunately I've been involved in an edit war.
I've been looking for another way to resolve it but wasn't able to find
anything on Wikimedia meta.

After many requests to refrain from doing so, and to discuss on talk
page instead, User:GerardM has continued to post discussion, personal
opinions and Wikipedia NPOV tags to [[meta:End-user image
suppression]]. He has also reverted efforts to clarify the purpose of
the page. i.e. it is a page for exploring the ins and outs of how
end-user image suppression might be implemented, _if_ it were ever
called upon. From the language in his posts it appears he thinks he is
on some type of crusade to save the world from [[meta:End-user image
suppression]].

Christiaan


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia down again?

body:
What's going on and when will it be back up?

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
>> Never ever a machine will be able to translate correctly - not now,
>> not tomorrow, not in 100 years - it's a dream many have - sorry, I
>> must destroy it.
>
> A pedantic point, but this is assuming that machines are not capable
> of human-level intelligence.  Many in the AI community would beg to
> differ. =]
>
> (Although whether it'll be 10, 20, 50, 100, or 500 years before an
> artificial intelligence can learn things like languages with the same
> or better aptitude as humans is a matter of debate.)

I would call Sabine's comment realistic rather than pedantic. I realize
that technophiles dream of these artificial solutions, but the best they
can realistically hope for is competent interpretation of technical
material.  When it comes to metaphor technophiles are playing in the
right field of dreams. (I wonder how a machine would translate that into
the language of people who know nothing about baseball.)

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary DNS

body:
Thanks to Brion and all who helped out with the outage.  Bad things
happen despite the best of preparations, and even in hindsight I doubt
if anything could have been done aside from the costly and impractical
alternative of having a fully redundant site off in a bunker somewhere.
 Not all failures can be foreseen.

In the interest of harm reduction for the future, I would like to
recommend the excellent services of the folks at easydns.com, who
provided reliable secondary services and mail queuing for me for some
years while I was handling IT stuff for an employer.  Their prices are
cheap, they have competent technical support, and they have a network
of secondaries on at least two continents.  I would suggest that we
include them in our plans even if other measures are taken.

Best regards

The Uninvited Co., Inc.
(a Delaware corporation)


body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

> I think that Gerard's paragraph that he added and you keep removing is
> highlighting the negative side of you idea. Why isn't he allowed to
> put that there?

As Nicholas has pointed out this page is for exploring the
implementation of the idea; the opening paragraph clarifies this. There
are many places where the merits of it are being and have been
discussed throughout the Wikimedia community (including the talk page
of this article). If we let the article become bogged down with
discussion and POV about the merits of the idea then it would become an
article about "whether or not it should be done", instead of "how could
be done" (which is the stated purpose of the article!). But it's not
simply that, Gerard has been wholly reluctant to raise specific issues
instead using a slash and burn policy complete with emotional language,
straw man arguments and inappropriate posting of Wikipedia NPOV tags.

Christiaan


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:21:40 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I find amusing is that he says things about how Cantonese isn't
> written, and then in the same breath he says something about how
> _when_ Cantonese is written, it can't be understood.

Mark, let's not be so literal here. You know what Formulax is talking
about - in the general case, Cantonese is not widely written. It has a
rich spoken tradition especially for film, music, opera, poetry, arts
and the like. But in the area of  written nonfiction, very little.

> And even more interesting is how you act for a moment conciliatory
> buay conciliatory (I think you'd be more likely to hear "act yong hor
> buay yong hor") about how you encourage this enthusiasm... but then
> your true nature rears its ugly head (that's what the "buay yong hor"
> part is for) and you're back to your snappy,
> Cantonese-is-not-a-written-language-and-if-it-is-I-dont-like-it self.

Don't punish people for trying to find middle ground.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

> Never ever a machine will be able to translate correctly - not now,
> not tomorrow, not in 100 years - it's a dream many have - sorry, I
> must destroy it.

A pedantic point, but this is assuming that machines are not capable of
human-level intelligence.  Many in the AI community would beg to differ. =]

(Although whether it'll be 10, 20, 50, 100, or 500 years before an
artificial intelligence can learn things like languages with the same or
better aptitude as humans is a matter of debate.)

-Mark


body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Well I kinda understand his reaction. Have you ever lived in a country
> were they block 30.000 websites and growing? Where the government is
> actually implying a policy of what its inhabitants are "allowed" to
> see? Why should we make it any easier for these kind of governments?

You didn't respond to any of my points. And the point you make above is
yet another straw man. If governments want to block or filter Wikipedia
there's nothing stopping them from doing that right now. What this
proposal does is provide users with a choice about which images they
are presented with when surfing Wikimedia projects.

Christiaan


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and policies

body:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 08:17:56PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> >  Therefore, any labeling of selected categories as "potentially
> >  offensive" is an NPOV violation and unacceptable on that regard.
> >
> I refer you to the argument regarding disambiguation pages that has
> already been discussed by others on this list.
	[snip]
> It's not POV and actually inconveniencing for those of us looking for
> other articles (imagine , but it's accepted because the cost to
> benefit ratio is not that severe.

You're right:  disambiguation isn't an NPOV problem.  It also isn't
terribly relevant to the issue at hand, even if you repeat that claim
five times in one post.  I'll respond to it just once.

Here's the difference:  Disambiguation doesn't involve anyone trying to
hide away material, or "protect" me from things "for my own good".  It
also does not involve any judgment that some material is "less suitable"
or "offensive" -- only that it is less likely to be looked-for.

In contrast, any kind of censorship / filtering regime necessarily
contains within it the assumption that some material is _lesser_ than
others, by dint of offending the protected group ... and moreover, that
some people's offense is unimportant, while other people's offense is
important.  It is not presented as a guess, but as a moral injunction
("this material IS offensive, it MUST BE turned off by default") which
it is not within Wikipedia's purview to make.

> However, I have also pointed out before that photographs have more
> psychological impact than illustrations, which have more psychological
> impact than text (just try asking a psychologist). Therefore, a good
> deal of people offended (or at least annoyed) by the photo formerly at
> [[autofellatio]] probably wouldn't feel the same way about text.

I don't think we actually have sufficient evidence on that.  Again,
consider _Ulysses_, a work of text (no images) that was once banned in
the U.S. for obscenity.

One of the past discussions related to this issue had to do with whether
Wikipedia should link to sexually explicit material offsite, rather than
keeping copies of them within the database.  The idea was that people
who are judgmental about such material would thus not be able to decry
Wikipedia as a collection of pornography.  However, it seemed to me (and
still does) that such folks would just as easily call Wikipedia a Web
directory of pornography.

> I have never argued for catering to the whim of extremists. That's
> stupid. There is no reason why we shouldn't filter certain images,
> though.

It seems to me that when challenged, you rather readily lean on what you
call "common sense".  I'm not sure what you mean by "common sense",
since the some of points that we're discussing are actually pretty deep
political ideas and not everyday issues at all.  "Common sense" usually
means people's knowledge of the everyday, like "things fall when you
drop them".

It sounds to me kind of like you're using "common sense" to mean that
everyone reasonable must agree with your assumptions, and anyone who
disagrees is an "extremist" and their views should be ignored.

I don't think that's a very convincing mode of argument.

> It's the cost to benefit ratio we're talking about here: You're
> extremely far more likely to find someone damn pissed to be looking at
> a photograph of a clitoris than to find someone damn pissed to be
> looking at a photograph of a caterpillar.

That position generalizes very poorly to other classes of articles,
though.  (And generalizability is a must for rules.)  The fact that
people get "damn pissed" about something is no reason not to keep it in
an encyclopedia.  There are an awful lot of _historical facts_ it's
worth being damn pissed about.

Moreover, it isn't clear to me that we can do a cost-benefit analysis of
the principles on which Wikipedia was founded, such as NPOV.  Neutrality
is not just a benefit, but a basic ground-rule of Wikipedia.

(NPOV for Wikipedia is not just a "benefit", but rather a "boundary".
We don't ask, "Is this violation of NPOV worth what it gets us?"
Rather, we take it as read that any violation of NPOV is a bad thing,
and we try to avoid such violations wherever possible rather than making
excuses for them.  We don't always _succeed_, but we don't give up.)

> Besides, it's not really an imposition of someone's POV as to what is
> offensive. It's an editorial decision about what images would be
> potentially offensive or greatly distractive to a substantial amount of
> people.

Sure, and I'll just go make an "editorial decision" that homeopathy is
bunkum, and put that all over the article [[Homeopathy]].  When someone
accuses me of an NPOV violation, I'll just tell them it was nothing of
the sort, it was an "editorial decision".  :)

Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.  An NPOV violation is still
against Wikipedia policy, even if you call it "editorial decision".

> >1. All images are treated equally by default -- either displayed, or not
> >  displayed.  Thus, the system does not incorporate any POV biases such
> >  as the idea that nudity is "offensive" and caterpillars are not.
> >
> I do not entertain the idea of such extremist pandering to NPOV. By
> virtue of that logic, we might as well host a disambiguation page at
> [[Chicago]] even though almost everyone will be looking for [[Chicago,
> Illinois]].

If you think NPOV is "extremist" and that that's bad, you're on the
wrong project.  This is Wikipedia, where NPOV is a basic ground-rule.

Or, in another sense, there's nothing wrong with being extreme about
NPOV.  It's what we do here.  Wikipedia _is_, in this sense, an
extremist project; that's why there are so people from Britannica,
mainstream media, and other "normal" "middle-of-the-road" publications
who can't figure us out, and assume that we're doomed to failure.

> >4. Existing NPOV policy is applied in full force to categories.  This
> >  means that it is a violation of Wikipedia policy to create categories
> >  such as "images appropriate for children" or "images of sexual
> >  perversions".  Editors who do so persistently are treated the same as
> >  any other systematic POV-pushers.
> >
> Agreed.

Great!  That's one of the biggest issues right there!

Now, read on for an implication of that ...

> The trouble is as Wikipedia grows, we seem to have a penchant for
> relying on legalistic issues. Instead of having a general policy of
> "reverting except for vandalism is bad" we need to have the 3RR which
> is easily gamed. Instead of having a policy on personal attacks, we
> have to go through the whole merry-go-round of RFC, RFM and RFAr.

Sounds to me like your proposal would be more of this, rather than less.

It would end up with nasty, unresolvable arguments over what should go
in the "off by default" categories, because of what those categories
would really mean:

If the category "Nudity" is off by default, then the meaning of that
category would really be not just "these images contain nudity" but
rather "these images contain nudity AND Wikipedia believes nudity is
offensive".

And that is a judgment that Wikipedia still has no business making; and
it is a judgment that would cause endless dispute.  Just as Wikipedia
does not have an opinion on the issue of whether homeopathy is bunkum,
Wikipedia does not have an opinion on whether nudity is offensive.

Trying to place that opinion in Wikipedia's mouth is precisely an NPOV
violation.

> Problems like these are going to crop up more often over the years, and
> I am pessimistic that more than a very few editors will learn the
> lessons of this debate. When the community is divided like hell on this
> (in other words, you would need hell to freeze over before obtaining
> anything even resembling consensus), we need something to defuse the
> situation.

I don't see how you get the idea that your proposal is defusing, rather
than escalating.  Defusing means that people quit fighting and go find
something else to do ... not that you give them a whole brand new arena
to fight in, and make the issues over which they're fighting all the
more important.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
I really didn't come here to debate this issue. I came here looking for
dispute resolution procedures.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> The proposers of this idea assume that mechanism for censorship will
> only be triggered by individuals

No, actually they don't. This is clearly covered in the article and in
discussions I have already had with you on [[Talk:End-user image
suppression]].

> They fail to answer several questions:
> * Who is going to add these tags

 From the article:
Tagging images would simply involve ensuring that [[potentially
offensive images]] have all been given [[categories]] as per normal
procedures.

> * What is the basis for tagging content. What to be done when someone
> comes along who wants even more tagging or the tagging of different
> categories.

 From the article:
Tagging images would simply involve ensuring that [[potentially
offensive images]] have all been given [[categories]] as per normal
procedures.

> * How do you prevent organisations or countries from censoring our
> content using our own mechanism

The mechanism is categorisation, which we already a have, so you don't,
not now not ever.

> * How do you ensure that the integrity of our NPOV content is
> maintained if people will not see the whole of our content

It is up to the user what they see and what they don't. This proposal
actually ensures that images are not completely removed from the
servers or suppressed by default as is already happening now.

> * What argument do you have against tagging content if you state that
> this is only about images

As noted on [[Talk:Potentially offensive images]] this scheme is a
reaction to events that have been taking place regarding controversial
images on Wikipedia. Images are immediate; there is no other way to
avoid them when surfing to a page other than to have them turned off or
hidden. In this sense they a kind of push media.

> Censure is what I do not want for our content.

Self-censorship is already taking place on Wikipedia. This scheme would
help put an end to self-censorship.

Christiaan


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:32:59 +0200, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
> If we plug away at the en: wikipedia, adding African-related articles,
> maybe a couple of years down the line we will be able to automatically
> translate to Xhosa. I think that is a /much/ better use of everyone's
> time than writing a Xhosa wikipedia.

I think not. As your KDE example showed, translation is far more
complicated than simple dictionary lookups. Xhosa is only spoken by
7.9m speakers (mainly in South Africa) and with so few speakers (and
so little commercial possibility for making a translator) I would
imagine that Xhosa may never be able to be translated.

Actually, I just read that it is similar to Zulu, which probably adds
some more "speakers". Still, I think development of a machine
translation program is unlikely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language


body:
Please I'd like to avoid getting into a big debate here on the
foundation mailing list. I just want to know what dispute procedures
there are on meta.

Walter van Kalken wrote:

>> You didn't respond to any of my points. And the point you make above
>> is yet another straw man. If governments want to block or filter
>> Wikipedia there's nothing stopping them from doing that right now.
>> What this proposal does is provide users with a choice about which
>> images they are presented with when surfing Wikimedia projects.
>
> And what if their providers/governments make the choice for them,
> Thers is no choice for them left.

As I said governments and providers can do this already.

> Also who decides on what is inappropriate? I much better like another
> solution. Put the shocking pictures on a subpage to the article
> instead of electronically tagging them.

Then by all means go start a page on meta that sets out the
implementation of such an idea. I may not agree but I won't troll the
page that seeks to set out how to do it.

> There is nothing stopping anybody from blocking or filtering wikipedia
> right now no ..... I do not see one reason why we should give them the
> tools to give them an excuse to do so and make it easier for them. Now
> they might not filter becuase it is to much of a pain for them. But
> when we will tag the things for them we only make it easier for them
> to think hey yes we could do that! I see no reason to help them or
> give them that idea.

We already tag, it's also called categorisation. This scheme simply
asks that all [[potentially offensive images]] are categorised before
being said to be implemented.

Christiaan


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> I am sorry to say that this person is wearing blinkers. He only sees
> what he wants to see and all othere considerations are not about "what
> is being discussed". Yes, govennments can block wikipedia but that is
> an all or nothing operation. With the censoring tags in place, they
> can say partially block our content, and that is what the censoring
> tags are there for.

Actually we have a name for these tags on Wikimedia projects. They're
called categories.

Christiaan


body:
Hoi,
The article [[meta:End-user content suppression]] was recently renamed
to [[meta:End-user image suppression]]. It is an article that descibes
how we should tag our content eh images so that people can choose to
have content presented to them or not. The proposers of this idea assume
that mechanism for censorship will only be triggered by individuals and,
that it is to prevent them from coming across content they may find
disturbing. They fail to answer several questions:
* Who is going to add these tags
* What is the basis for tagging content. What to be done when someone
comes along who wants even more tagging or the tagging of different
categories.
* How do you prevent organisations or countries from censoring our
content using our own mechanism
* How do you ensure that the integrity of our NPOV content is maintained
if people will not see the whole of our content
* What argument do you have against tagging content if you state that
this is only about images

In the article that is now called [[meta:End-user image suppression]] I
have added a tag to say that the subject is controversial and, the
reasons why it is controversial. This is not appreciated and resulted in
a slash and burn reaction. Apparantly you are not allowed to say that
"when it walks like a duck an it talks like a duck, it must be a duck".
I am afraid that censorship is alive and well.

The proposers of this policy say that it is only technical. I beg to
differ. Censure is what I do not want for our content.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this message but I
> was unable to find anywhere more suitable. How are disputes dealt with
> on Wikimedia meta? Unfortunately I've been involved in an edit war.
> I've been looking for another way to resolve it but wasn't able to
> find anything on Wikimedia meta.
>
> After many requests to refrain from doing so, and to discuss on talk
> page instead, User:GerardM has continued to post discussion, personal
> opinions and Wikipedia NPOV tags to [[meta:End-user image
> suppression]]. He has also reverted efforts to clarify the purpose of
> the page. i.e. it is a page for exploring the ins and outs of how
> end-user image suppression might be implemented, _if_ it were ever
> called upon. From the language in his posts it appears he thinks he is
> on some type of crusade to save the world from [[meta:End-user image
> suppression]].
>
> Christiaan
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wind Up Willy on Wheels

body:
Looks like our old fiend WoW is taking advantage of the lack of watch
lists by creating
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wind_up_Willy_on_Wheels]] and
moving articles to "Wind up" and then the old title. He may also be
acting on other languages.


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
Christiaan, Gerard, et al:

* I have not previously been involved in any of the discussions over
image suppression / self-censorship / content choice, and do not, at
present intend to state any particular opinion about this issue.
* I don't know what, if any, formal conflict resolution procedures
there are on meta, but since you've asked here, I thought I would give
some personal opinions about the conflict you are having. I would
stress that I have no set opinion on this debate, so although these
are my opinions, I hope they are relatively unbiased.

* Firstly, I do not consider Gerard's actions to be "trolling", but
nor do I consider Christiaan to be "blinkered". This is a conflict of
understanding, pure and simple, regarding the purpose of a particular
page. This seems to be something of a problem on meta, because it is
so unstructured, and lacks a coherent community of its own, so people
vary greatly in how they perceive it. (I've been involved in similarly
heated debates over pages to do with single login proposals.)

* Secondly, I don't think the use of a "disputed tag" is appropriate
here: meta has no NPOV policy, or any equivalent, and simply linking
to that of the English Wikipedia is irrelevant. Meta is a very
different environment, and meta pages are more closely related to
those of traditional wikis, in that they are a kind of on-going
refactored discussion, rather than content aimed at presentation.
Indeed, it's debatable whether many of them should have separate
"Talk:" pages at all - a traditional Wiki simply refactors discussion
["ThreadMode"] into structured content ["DocumentMode"] as necessary.
[Note that there is an exception in terms of "documentation" pages,
but those are increasingly confined to the Help: namespace] In other
words, disputed or disputable content is the norm, not the exception.

* Thirdly, I do think it is important for those creating a page with a
particular purpose in mind to not only state what is on-topic, but
provide an outlet for what is off-topic. If "philosophical" discussion
about the proposal is taking place elsewhere, it should be referenced
clearly. In other words, the introduction should read something like
"This page discusses technical implications of implementing such a
scheme; for discussion of whether it would be desirable, see: ..." If
there is no page appropriate to end that sentence, it should be
created, if only by adding a heading to the existing page under which
the discussion can take place. It seems to me that there *is* a lot of
existint discussion about this, so it ought to be possible for a
central point to be found or created. [References to appropriate parts
of the mailing list archives could also be added.]

* In summary: *in my opinion* it is perfectly OK for a page on meta to
exist that discusses the technical measures needed for something that
may never happen; however, it is also OK for people to discuss the
necessity and/or desirability of the feature. Therefore, if it seems
appropriate to separate the two, they should be adequately
cross-referenced, so that it is clear to anyone entering the
discussion how they relate.

I hope this helps, and I hope it doesn't read too much like legalese -
I've been reading documents from my local Borough Council all
afternoon...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for
	everyoneto edit Wiki

body:
Certain religions and ideologies systematically devalue most of humanity.
Wikipedia policies are a sustained assault against that frame of mind.

Fred

> From: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:51:50 -0500
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyoneto
> edit Wiki
>
> When one editor sees another not as human but as sub-human,
> intrinsically and irreversibly, such a dialogue, though it might find
> formal expression, is a caricature by any stretch.
>
>> The hardest thing with Wikipedia is to realize that two editors with
>> diametrically opposite views both still are humans, and still can be
>> reasonable people. Denying that your opponent is also human is a grave
>> error and leads to lots of bad things happening in the world.
>
>> For an example of a well-behaved, NPOV-writing nazi (albeit a convert)
>> see Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
>> The page is about implementation details. Philisophical discussion of
>> whether or not it should be implemented are off-topic.
>
> I fundamentally disagree with that. If we are not going to do it,
> discussing how we are going to do it is useless. If we are going to do
> it, objections should be allowed to be raised. Also, stating the
> objections to a given idea might well aid in improving it by showing
> the places where it needs improvement.

There is absolutely nothing at all stopping you from raising
objections. Just raise them in the appropriate place, not on the page
where we are trying to describe _how_ it might be implemented.

Christiaan


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> So basically you provide me with THE argument to get rid of
> categories..

Well you're welcome to propose the idea. I won't be supporting it.

> pictures are not categorised

Right. Which planet are we on again?

> and we do not have software to prevent pictures from being seen.

That's right, while [[End-user image suppression]] is looking into
site-based software that will allow users to defer the seeing of
certain images.

I'll say it again and I'll say it a million times but you always ignore
me: self-censorship already takes place on Wikipedia due to some people
taking offence at certain images, such as the clitoris and
autofellatio. This scheme leaves it up to the user what they see and
don't see, the choice is theirs.

Christiaan


body:
I think your comments will help a lot Rowan, particularly about
pointing to desirability discussion in the opening paragraph.

Thanks,
Christiaan

On 23 Feb 2005, at 6:07 pm, Rowan Collins wrote:

> Christiaan, Gerard, et al:
>
> * I have not previously been involved in any of the discussions over
> image suppression / self-censorship / content choice, and do not, at
> present intend to state any particular opinion about this issue.
> * I don't know what, if any, formal conflict resolution procedures
> there are on meta, but since you've asked here, I thought I would give
> some personal opinions about the conflict you are having. I would
> stress that I have no set opinion on this debate, so although these
> are my opinions, I hope they are relatively unbiased.
>
> * Firstly, I do not consider Gerard's actions to be "trolling", but
> nor do I consider Christiaan to be "blinkered". This is a conflict of
> understanding, pure and simple, regarding the purpose of a particular
> page. This seems to be something of a problem on meta, because it is
> so unstructured, and lacks a coherent community of its own, so people
> vary greatly in how they perceive it. (I've been involved in similarly
> heated debates over pages to do with single login proposals.)
>
> * Secondly, I don't think the use of a "disputed tag" is appropriate
> here: meta has no NPOV policy, or any equivalent, and simply linking
> to that of the English Wikipedia is irrelevant. Meta is a very
> different environment, and meta pages are more closely related to
> those of traditional wikis, in that they are a kind of on-going
> refactored discussion, rather than content aimed at presentation.
> Indeed, it's debatable whether many of them should have separate
> "Talk:" pages at all - a traditional Wiki simply refactors discussion
> ["ThreadMode"] into structured content ["DocumentMode"] as necessary.
> [Note that there is an exception in terms of "documentation" pages,
> but those are increasingly confined to the Help: namespace] In other
> words, disputed or disputable content is the norm, not the exception.
>
> * Thirdly, I do think it is important for those creating a page with a
> particular purpose in mind to not only state what is on-topic, but
> provide an outlet for what is off-topic. If "philosophical" discussion
> about the proposal is taking place elsewhere, it should be referenced
> clearly. In other words, the introduction should read something like
> "This page discusses technical implications of implementing such a
> scheme; for discussion of whether it would be desirable, see: ..." If
> there is no page appropriate to end that sentence, it should be
> created, if only by adding a heading to the existing page under which
> the discussion can take place. It seems to me that there *is* a lot of
> existint discussion about this, so it ought to be possible for a
> central point to be found or created. [References to appropriate parts
> of the mailing list archives could also be added.]
>
> * In summary: *in my opinion* it is perfectly OK for a page on meta to
> exist that discusses the technical measures needed for something that
> may never happen; however, it is also OK for people to discuss the
> necessity and/or desirability of the feature. Therefore, if it seems
> appropriate to separate the two, they should be adequately
> cross-referenced, so that it is clear to anyone entering the
> discussion how they relate.
>
> I hope this helps, and I hope it doesn't read too much like legalese -
> I've been reading documents from my local Borough Council all
> afternoon...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
I am sorry to say that this person is wearing blinkers. He only sees
what he wants to see and all othere considerations are not about "what
is being discussed". Yes, govennments can block wikipedia but that is an
all or nothing operation. With the censoring tags in place, they can say
partially block our content, and that is what the censoring tags are
there for.

The problem as I see it is that this has not been considered because it
is detrimental to "the cause". By saying that it provides the user with
a choise, the responsibiltiy for colletoral damage is being denied. This
is what is not being discussed, this is what is not considered. And
everything else is a strawman's argument.

Thank God, I still can say what I want to say. Thank God, that I can
fight for what I think is important. Me not believing in a God is
immaterial to the sentiment.. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM

Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>> Well I kinda understand his reaction. Have you ever lived in a
>> country were they block 30.000 websites and growing? Where the
>> government is actually implying a policy of what its inhabitants are
>> "allowed" to see? Why should we make it any easier for these kind of
>> governments?
>
>
> You didn't respond to any of my points. And the point you make above
> is yet another straw man. If governments want to block or filter
> Wikipedia there's nothing stopping them from doing that right now.
> What this proposal does is provide users with a choice about which
> images they are presented with when surfing Wikimedia projects.
>
> Christiaan
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Felix Wan

body:
Mark:

I appreciate your support on setting up a Cantonese Wikipedia, but I
think it is time to tone down the rhetorics.  If an argument is not
true, let's just state that.  If two arguments are contradictory to
each other, let's just point that out.  There is no need to ridicule
the person at the same time.

On Tue, February 22, 2005 11:21 pm, Mark Williamson said:
> What I find amusing is that he says things about how Cantonese
> isn't written, and then in the same breath he says something about
> how _when_ Cantonese is written, it can't be understood.
>
I would rather say that finally, no one is denying the existence of
written Cantonese, and treat the expression "Cantonese isn't written"
as a figure of speech.  That is a step forward.

> He started out saying that Mandarin and Cantonese are written
> identically, but then he made some concessions. So now they aren't
> identical, but Cantonese is inferior because - well, because he says
> so.
>
> Formulax, we are going in circles here.
>
I don't really care if other people find it inferior or equal.  At
least now, everyone agrees that they are different.  That is a step
forward.

> Quit telling native speakers of Cantonese what they should have to
> do with THEIR LANGUAGE. Such a movement as the May 4th movement is
> extremely difficult to spark, and usually comes amid great political
> or economic strife, which currently isn't exactly present in Cantonese-
> speaking areas.
>
At least now I understand what is the standard of "widely" used is in
his mind.  We may go on to discuss if that requirement is reasonable,
comparing Cantonese with other languages that have Wikipedias.

> If you can understand Cantonese so well and it's so similar, then
> we're back to the question "Why are my contributions to zh.wikipedia
> in pure unadulterated Cantonese 'corrected' to Baihuawen?" which you
> have already answered with your typical accusations of inferiority
> and lack of standardisation.
>
> As I said, we are going in circles.
>
Actually, I will make the same copy-edits given the same situation
because zh: is supposed to be written in Baihuawen.  I don't find the
attitude of Sheng Jiong important to the issue.  We just need to point
out that this example illustrates that Cantonese is different enough
to warrent a copy-edit.

> And even more interesting is how you act for a moment conciliatory
> buay conciliatory (I think you'd be more likely to hear "act yong
> hor buay yong hor") about how you encourage this enthusiasm... but
> then your true nature rears its ugly head (that's what the "buay
> yong hor" part is for) and you're back to your snappy,
> Cantonese-is-not-a-written-language-and-if-it-is-I-dont-like-it self.
>
Every person has strong opinions on certain issues and it may not be
possible to change that.  Even if a person *act* conciliatory for a
moment, I appreciate that.  Wikimedia projects are collaborations of
different people of very different ideological backgrounds after all.

> Mark
>
Mark, once again I appreciate your support.  I don't think we will get
the blessing of the community to start a Cantonese Wikipedia soon, but
it does not mean that it cannot be done later.  Let's calm down, find
more supporters and supporting evidence, and earn some credibility by
contributing to the community at the same time.  Eventually, people
will understand.

I hate to see your valuable input being discounted only because of
complaints about your attitude.  I hope you can get my message and
do not find it offensive.

Felix Wan

> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:18:24 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Sheng Jiong wrote:
>>
>>> And now you should start another movement and let the public accept
>>> it before coming to ask for a Cantonese Wikipedia.
>>
>> You could have just stated that was your definition of "widely
>> accepted" before letting all of us get into this long, long discussion.
>>
>>> Yes, there was. But majority of the population know only how to read
>>> some wenyanwen, but not write.
>>
>> Odd that you'd say that. I hang out at this online writing forum and
>> quite a number of the people there write almost perfect wenyanwen. But
>> that's besides the point.
>>
>>> His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well.
>>
>> His examples from www.cantonese.org.cn?
>>
>>> are only two possible solutions: 1) do not translate these terms into
>>>  Cantonese, which makes a Cantonese Wikipedia a repetition of Chinese
>>>  Wikipedia, or 2) translate, and no one understands.
>>
>> You just said that written Cantonese is so easy to understand and now
>> you say once a term is translated, no one will understand it?
>>
>>> Whatever it is, it is written. Cantonese is not.
>>
>> I don't get why you're making statements like those when there is
>> evidence to the contrary.
>>
>> little Alex


from_name: El C

body:
I felt necessary to do that after less than one hour, this mailing
list is a traffic intensive one.

>Having has 400+ e-mails arrive here in 48 hours, I can sympathise
>with people's concerns here. I'll need to delete quite a few e-mails
>myself.


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Africa info

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Fred Bauder wrote:

> Might try http://allafrica.com/
>

I use it a lot. Do not, however, use it for ==External links.
allafrica.com are news aggregators (they do not write anything
themselves) and after a few days the articles are only readable on a
subscription basis.

Find the original material and link to that instead.

I agree with another poster who said that to access technical subjects
(computers, science, voting systems?) a first-world language can be
required.

For instance, KDE has a Xhosa translation. But a friend who is a native
Xhosa speaker says the menus are very confusing - "Run" as in "Run this
program" get translated to "Run away" or something. He says it is much
easier to use the English menus.

Fault could be laid at the translators door, but often the concepts are
not easily represented in African languages.

If we plug away at the en: wikipedia, adding African-related articles,
maybe a couple of years down the line we will be able to automatically
translate to Xhosa. I think that is a /much/ better use of everyone's
time than writing a Xhosa wikipedia.

Andy's 2 cents ..

[[en:User:Wikiwizzy]]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyoneto
	edit Wiki

body:
When one editor sees another not as human but as sub-human,
intrinsically and irreversibly, such a dialogue, though it might find
formal expression, is a caricature by any stretch.

>The hardest thing with Wikipedia is to realize that two editors with
>diametrically opposite views both still are humans, and still can be
>reasonable people. Denying that your opponent is also human is a grave
>error and leads to lots of bad things happening in the world.

>For an example of a well-behaved, NPOV-writing nazi (albeit a convert)
>see Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer.


body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> I am sorry to say that this person is wearing blinkers. He only sees
>> what he wants to see and all othere considerations are not about
>> "what is being discussed". Yes, govennments can block wikipedia but
>> that is an all or nothing operation. With the censoring tags in
>> place, they can say partially block our content, and that is what the
>> censoring tags are there for.
>
>
> Actually we have a name for these tags on Wikimedia projects. They're
> called categories.
>
> Christiaan

So basically you provide me with THE argument to get rid of categories..
Actually, you are wrong. pictures are not categorised and we do not have
software to prevent pictures from being seen. The proposal is to have
our mediawiki software react to specific tags. When you program for
pictures, you can also program for text because in essence there is no
difference.

I have never liked categories anyway, they only provide people the
opportunity to, well categorise, nothing creative about it and much
opportunity to get it wrong.

When you want your tagging, you do not take into account that it
infringes on people's rights to represent their material in a certain
way. Basically censorship is bad, it is very much POV and it prevents
people from learning about subjects in the fullest sense of the word.
When you do not want to see sex do not go to natasha.com (or whatever
they are called) When you want to learn about sex, go to Wikipedia, it
explains what a vagina is and what parts are where. Really instructive,
I would not like to have people not know when they look it up.

Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 07:41:18 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:

> The page is about implementation details. Philisophical discussion of
> whether or not it should be implemented are off-topic.

I fundamentally disagree with that. If we are not going to do it,
discussing how we are going to do it is useless. If we are going to do
it, objections should be allowed to be raised. Also, stating the
objections to a given idea might well aid in improving it by showing
the places where it needs improvement.

Either the people writing this page want to include it, or they don't.
If they don't want to include it, they should stop wasting their and
other people's time on it. If they do want to include it, they should
be ready to discuss its inclusion.

Andre Engels


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and category-based image filtering

body:
Of course, the advantage to a Wiki is that we can change our content
to match the mores of the times, unlike a print object. If this was
1972 we could link to the image, and then in 1990 we could inline it.
No content lost. Nobody too confused. Maybe a few people upset that we
would be ashamed at showing a human body inline. People who will find
errors in any policy.

I'm not sure I see the advantages of trying to really parse out a
hardline approach to defining "objectionable," but the lack of any
easily quantifiable approach is itself not evidence that no policy
should be created.

It has always seemed to me that a number of policies were "community
judgment calls" (NPOV, VfD, etc.). I'm not sure why this should be any
different. In the question of what is "objectionable" (which will of
course will have as many opinions as there are people giving them), I
think that a reasonable solution would be that in the event of a lack
of clear consensus (which is not the same thing as majority), we ought
to defer on the side of caution (linking to the content rather than
inlining it).

The potential benefits though seem to be about equal to the potential
harm in either case?what is respectable in one mind becomes offensive
censorship/content in the other. When in doubt, though, perhaps we
ought opt to not "surprise" anyone with something that a sizeable
percentage of people find extremely unpleasant.

Just one opinion on it, just to clog up your inboxes...

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:06:59 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Fred Bauder said:
> > Although many of our potential readers might object to these
> > images they are unobjectionable.
>
> Well the Pioneer plaque was controversial in its day.  The Philadelphia
> Inquirer apparently retouched the copy of the image to hide the male
> genitals and the female nipples.  The Chicago Sun Times at first published
> an unaltered picture and then successively airbrushed out features with
> each later edition.  The LA Times carried the picture on its front page,
> and received angry letters about tax-payers' money being used to "spread
> this filth, even beyond our solar system", and decrying the lapse of the
> newspaper's standards in depicting "sexual exploitation" on its front
> page.  The two figures are shown standing side by side, some distance
> apart, facing the viewer.  The man's hand is raised in greeting.  Some
> feminists objected to the "passivity" and "submissiveness" of the female
> figure.  One man insisted that the man's hand was raised in a nazi salute,
> and proposed that another spacecraft be sent out to destroy Pioneer 10
> along with this symbol of fascism.  Frank Drake, the ETI researcher who
> along with Carl Sagan had designed the plaque, later remarked that the
> image had turned out to be "a cleverly disguised Rorschach test." (The
> Depths of Space, Mark Wolverton.)
> As well as the mission (it was Pioneer, not Voyager) I got the author of
> the plaque wrong. It was not Sagan's third and last wife Ann Druyan but
> his second, Linda Salzman, who drew the nekkid people.  John Naugle,
> NASA's associate administrator for space science, approved the drawings
> after erasing the single line representing the woman's vulva.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Germany Website Relaunch

body:
Hello,

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. just relaunched its website. It contains an
official weblog that will be used for announcements (mainly in German).
All messages are also directly posted to vereinde-l at wikipedia.org.

Greetings,
Jakob Voss


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Downloading many articles

body:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:18:19 -0500, Stephen Forrest
<stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:03:47 +0000, Theresa Knott
> <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A box should appear that says "Interenet Explorer will add this page
> > to your favorites" There is a checkbox  that says "make available
> > offline". Ttick this box.
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > Click next then go on to say how often you want to synchronise your
> > offline pages with wikipedia.
>
> But wouldn't a solution like this (which is incidentally IE-specific)

Well he did say he was using IE

> only provide the articles in rendered (i.e. HTML) format?

Yes, but judging from what Robert had already tried (saving individual
pages) I assumed that was what he wanted.

> When
> downloading articles for editing, one would surely want the wiki
> plaintext, no?  How does one get at that automatically, short of using
> a bot?

I don't think  downloading large numbers of articles for editing is
particularly sensible unless they are all  very low volume, otherwise
you'll get numerous edit conflicts.  But in answer to your question, I
suppose you could add each page in your watchlist to your favourites
(it would take hours) but add

&action=edit

to the end of each URL. e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Theresa_knott&action=edit

Then you could synchronise your favourites for offline viewing and
they'll all be in edit mode ready to go should you want to make any
changes. I don't know if this would actually work mind you, i haven't
actually tried it out!

Theresa


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
The opening paragraph of [[End-user image suppression]] now reads:

This page deals with the technical implications of implementing
[[end-user]] controlled suppression of [[potentially offensive images]]
on [[Wikimedia projects]]. For discussion of whether it would be
desirable, see [[desirability of end-user image suppression]], the
[[February 2005]] archive of WikiEN-I mailing list, and
[[Wikipedia:Image censorship]].

?Christiaan


subject: [Wikitech-l] End-user image suppression technical implications

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_image_suppression has been
fleshed out a little now and discussion about its desirability has been
moved to:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Desirability_of_end-
user_image_suppression

I have a couple of specific questions on:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:End-user_image_suppression
- How might the user-preference option work?
- What might performance and caching implications be?

And some opinions on how easy or difficult this would be to code would
be welcome too.

Thanks,
Christiaan