body:
Jtkiefer (jtkiefer at wordzen.net) [050704 06:43]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >The idea is that an overwhelming majority may *indicate* consensus. For
> >RFA, that's taken to mean >80%; 75-80% is at bureaucrat discretion.

>    Hopefully we have to have trust in the bureacrats when it comes to
> RFA's that are 75-80% because those are the ones that are normally
> controversial and pose a real challenge on the decision of whether they
> should be approved or not.  For the most part I trust the bureacrats to
> make the decision but would have no problem letting them know if I ever
> disagreed with their decision.

And in practice, this is precisely what happens ;-)

- d.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Maury Markowitz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-free images, there has to be a better way

body:
During May I wrote an article on the IBM 1360. This machine is
historically important, it was the first (commercial) terabit store.
None of them exist any more, they were all decommissioned in the 1980s
and scrapped. I spent a week getting permission from the UCal to use
some of their images, images that really helped make the article, and
added these on June 2nd.

AFTER posting the images I went back to change the image info on one of
them. I was shocked to see a notice saying they would be deleted,
although there was no date given. Needless to say I was more than a
little pissed off that I was only told about this AFTER going through
the effort. There was no notice of this, at least at the time, on either
the main page or the upload page. I wrote about this in the image
discussion page.

More recently I went back to the article and found all the images
deleted. The deleter added a note, but as far as I can tell did so AFTER
deleting them ( I can't get history on the image itself, of course).. He
stated I should have tagged them differently. Yes, well, thanks for
that,  maybe someone should have told me that in the month between me
uploading them and them being deleted so I could have actually DONE that.

My complaint here is the completely arbitrary and largely invisible
nature of this decision and its ramifications. The entire dicussion
appears to have take place offline. If there was a public online
dicussion, it was rather well hidden. I certainly was not privvy to it
until AFTER the decision was made. Further, reading over the discussion
here, it seems no dissenting views were considered. Nor is there any
real reason given, other than "we don't like them". I asked for someone
to explain it to me, but no one did, and they were simply deleted.

What's particularily baffling is that the deleter suggested I simply
re-tag them to PermissionAndFairUse. This strikes me as absolutely
rediculous. First of all, why are these OK and not ones used with
permission? And if these are OK, why didn't it say so in the warning on
the Permission tag? And finally why didn't anyone bother to tell anyone
the answers to these, and all the other questions?

Maury


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TeX not working

references:
<da9cjv$voc$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20050703194906.GA3749@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<da9kp8$4l4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi (timwi at gmx.net) [050704 07:21]:

> >/c/wp/wiki> math/texvc '/c/wp/wiki/images/tmp' '/c/wp/wiki/images/math'
> >'1+1=2' 'ISO-8859-1'
> >C0cfae383362bc63d7ac429a5755fef051 + 1 =
> >2<mn>1</mn><mo>+</mo><mn>1</mn><mo>=</mo><mn>2</mn>-

> It creates latex files in images/tmp but not the png files in images/math.
> Any more ideas?

This sounds just like the problem I was having with 1.4rc1 at home (FreeBSD
5.3, as per the meta page on FreeBSD) - 55,000 files created in /tmp ;-)
No-one could come up with an answer for this either ... Some time in my
copious free time I'll try doing it all from scratch :-)

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Jerome Jamnicky:
>
>> Not directly related, but I'm told that there are plenty of IRC
>> networks which are as stable as or more stable than Freenode, and
>> which get by with no donations of money at all.  Which leads to the
>> question, why donate at all?  I haven't been able to find an answer
>> for this yet.
>
>
> What alternative do you have in mind?

I had in mind either using an IRC network which doesn't need
fundraising, or just not bothering with helping Freenode to raise money.

> I don't think a network of
> Freenode's size will be able to survive without either fundraising or
> sponsors. Freenode could probably get more sponsorship, but it's good to
> avoid dependency situations. I have seen big IRC networks shut down
> because a major sponsor suddenly lost interest.

Freenode's budget: http://freenode.net/fundraiser.shtml

If you look at the budget, you'll see that none of it (except perhaps
the "telecoms" portion of the $2250 portion near the bottom of the list)
is allocated to network infrastructure.

 From talking to people who run IRC networks, what I hear is that in
fact it isn't a problem to run networks of such a size without any
donated money.  For example you can ask Domas who runs Aitvaras; see
users/channels stats comparison here:
http://irc.netsplit.de/cgi-bin/ncompare.cgi?n1=Aitvaras&n2=freenode

> I think being part of the largest open source chat network in existence
> is also very compatible with our general philosophy. As I type this:
>
>     #gentoo - 827 people online
>     #debian - 723 people online
>     #ubuntu - 452 people online
>     ##linux - 390 people online
>     #python - 371 people online
>     ##c     - 329 people online
>     #fedora - 321 people online
>
> and so on. For people with a simple IRC client that doesn't support
> multiple connections, being able to hop easily from one cool channel to
> the next is a big benefit. In practical terms, not being on a network
> with lots of skript kiddies and warez channels is desirable from a
> public relations perspective, from a signal/noise perspective, and from
> a DoS attack perspective.
>
> $16,000 of their fundraising goal goes into lilo's salary. This is quite
> ridiculously small pay given the amount of time he puts into the
> project. Except for the occasional downtime (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*),
> I find the network to be very pleasant. There are useful services like
> ChanServ, NickServ, SeenServ, MemoServ, good documentation, and there's
> generally someone available to help you.

I've no doubt that Freenode is a pretty good place to be for Wikipedia &
co., in that it's a relatively sane environment.  Yes, there is a sort
of lock-in effect because of the difficulty in using more than one IRC
network at a time.  The bit about working for small pay is confusing,
given the bucketloads of people who work for $0 per year, some more than
full-time.

 From googling I see that this question has been asked many times:  Why
can't Freenode get by with just volunteer labour, since other networks
can do it?  _Apparently_ nobody ever gives a straight answer to this,
hence my previous email.  Someone could claim that the good environment
of Freenode requires a paid employee, but I haven't seen that argument made.

> Now, why they changed the perfectly cromulent name "openprojects.net"
> into freenode.net, I will never understand.
>
> Erik

Note that I have nothing against Freenode or lilo; I'm just trying to
make sense of a confusing situation.

----
Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Philippe Roth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Diff?rence de recherche Wikimedia 1.3.13 et 1.4.5

body:
Cher Brion,

Un grand merci pour ta r?ponse qui a r?solu notre probl?me.
Ouf...

Mais j'aimerais savoir si cette fonction est document?e ? quelque part, car je n'avais pas r?ussi ? trouver cela sur le web et surtout sur le site MediaWiki...
En fait, y a-t-il un descriptif des diff?rences fondamentales entre les versions 1.3.x et 1.4.x?

Enfin, un autre petit probl?me:
j'ai un utilisateur du nom de "zuzu".
Dans la version 1.3.13, si je tape ce nom, j'ai une page indiquant: Utilisateur
Zuzu 100% (*****)
Dans la version 1.4.5, si je tape ce nom, j'ai la liste des pages cr??es par l'utilisateur mais aussi la page de l'utilisateur.
Comment faire pour avoir une r?ponse identique ? la version 1.3.13?

Encore un grand merci pour ton aide tr?s pr?cieuse.

Avec nos meilleures salutations,
Philippe Roth


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship

body:
On 7/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "Nathan J. Yoder" <njyoder at energon.org>
> > > No, it's supposed to work that way.  It's doing exactly what it is
> >intended
> > > to do.
> >
> >No, it's supposed to protect against block evasion, how is it doing
> >that in this case?
>
> Attempts to edit while you are blocked are attempts to evade the block.

That doesn't make sense. A blocked user CANNOT edit. It is like
removing the engine from the car of a driver whose license has been
suspended and saying that turning the key in the ignition is an
attempt to drive. It isn't - the car's not going anywhere. The driver
KNOWS this.

What it is, is poor interface design. The edit button shouldn't even
show up if the user is blocked.

Again, I suggest that you get blocked for a week, and see if you still
automatically hit that "edit" button before the week is out if you see
something that needs editing.

> >What purpose does it serve exactly?
>
> Protects against block evasion.

How so? A blocked user CANNOT edit. If you already have absolute
protection, then you don't need any more. Surely this is plain common
sense.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Time to get some new servers

body:
On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 18:48:01 +0200, Camille Constans wrote:

> - Some new web servers(3 or 4), P4 2,8Ghz with 2Go of RAM

The web servers use about 210Mb ram currently (according to 'free'), 512Mb
ram and no raid for web servers would buy the same performance for the
same money.

>- A server which
> could be a backup for nfs server, zwinger, with bigger disk, 80Go is very
> low, maybe 200 or 250Go - Upgrading disk of zwinger to 200 or 250Go (or
> add a new one) - A db server in 64 bits mode with 4Go of RAM (if we cant
> make working geoffrin), like this one :
>  http://www.macomp.com/products/servers/patriot2200.asp With raid 10 disk
>  system, 4 or 6 drives in raid and 1 stand-by. I prefer 15000rpm disk, but
>  I can understand that they are more expensive
> - Maybe another squid server
>
> What do you think of that ?
>
> Shaihulud

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] SHOWCASING Abuses of Admin Power

body:
Hi. I see that what looks like an identical version of this email is
waiting in the moderation queue, however I assume from the fact that
this email is through onto the mailing list that you don't want it
accepted to the list.

> Yeah, it's not like it's the biggest holiday weekend of the summer or
> anything.
>
> Wait. It's the 4th of July weekend? WHOOPS!

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that I am not
performing my job properly because I'm relaxing on a long weekend? I'm
Australian, and don't celebrate the 4th of July. I'm actually in the
middle of helping out at a national conference, so I apologise if my
replies or administrator actions are sparse. The other four mailing
list administrators appear to have been taking up the slack while I've
been busy.

> Marmot is a user wrongfully banned from Wikipedia for the "crime" of
> dissenting and pointing out when Admins were abusing their powers.
>
> Kurita77 I know you knew about; he was a recent new user who came to this
> list to ask why someone had PERMANENTLY BLOCKED his account from Wikipedia,
> and instead of treating him respectfully the Admins around here treated him
> like complete crap, made fun of him, sent him nasty emails laced with racial
> slurs, and sat around slapping each other on the back congratulating
> themselves for driving him into enough anger that he started swearing, at
> which point the admins on THIS LIST used that as an excuse to block him
> (oops, sorry, "moderating" him which means you'll just let all his emails
> sit and expire without even bothering to read them) for getting upset at
> wrongfully being blocked.

I've just had a look over my archives of WikIEN-l. I might have been
told in passing about Kurita77 spamming the mailing list (perhaps in
the IRC channel?) but the threads in WikiEN-l were unread by me
(according to Gmail, anyway). I don't actively read WikiEN-l all the
time, and often require my attention to be brought to a situation in
order to take any sort of action. As it stands, it appears from that
thread that Kurita77 was placed on moderation by Angela, who is not a
WikiEN-l mailing list administrator. She is a member of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees.

As for Marmot, I will have a look at the user's history on Wikipedia.
I presume that is the person's username on Wikipedia.

There are 532 members of the WikiEN-l mailing list (including your
four temporary addresses). Accusations of misconduct about refusing to
respond to Kurita77's complaints pretty much accuses all 532 of them
(or at least the Wikipedia adminstrators among them) of corruption of
some form.

> Let's test that shall we? Hmm?

Yes, your email was accepted. I note it was not me who approved this
email either (I was asleep) however I would have done so as well.

> If you think those were over the line, fine.
> I stand by my categorization of Ambi as being Wikipedia's version of the Red
> Queen. Her constant agitation for harsher and harsher punishments by ArbCom,
> combined with her absolute refusal to show ANY effort to communicate with
> the users in question, is the equivalent of the Queen sitting around
> screaming "Orf Wiv 'Is 'Ead" at anything that got near her.

I'm not sure who the "Red Queen" was. Is it something out of Alice in
Wonderland? I can't remember. However, you are perfectly entitled to
share your opinion (again, in a civil manner).

> In general, the Ambi/Gerard theory of Wikipedia has sucked. Instead of a
> Wikipedia based on encouraging civil discourse and where temporary blocks
> are for the purpose of encouraging users to behave within policy (and NEVER
> supposed to be punitive) we have admins like Bauder, Gerard, Ambi, Sidaway,
> and others I can name running around like the Wikipedian Inquisition.
>
> They make up new policy as they go, they enforce things that aren't in
> policy, they REFUSE to enforce policy against each other or against their
> "favorite" users.
>
> This needs to stop. But anytime it gets brought up, they instantly go off
> the deep end looking for any reason, no matter how minor, to block accounts
> and attack those who are calling their behavior into question.

That's more like it. How do you recommend we fix the system?
Constructive criticism is good.

> Unfortunately, your IDEAL of how they should act and the REALITY of how they
> act are two completely different things.
>
> The fact remains that if they knew my Wikipedia account name, they wouldn't
> hesitate for a nanosecond to slap a block on it.

I guess there are some who would be prepared to do that. But, in my
opinion, there would be even more administrators who would object to
such an action and would be prepared to reverse it. Maybe I should
further clarify the role of the mailing list (as independent) on the
mailing list information page. Any comments on this are of course more
than welcome from the Wikipedia community.

> No, but they quickly get ignored or derided for daring to come here for
> redress of the regular abuses of power we see from Wikipedian admins.
>
> Rather than this place being where new users who have been bitten by
> overzealous, power-hungry admins can come to get redress it's become a place
> where the users come so that the rest of the admins can have a good laugh at
> their expense.

As I said above, there are many people on the mailing list (and
obviously not all are Wikipedia administrators). Instead of having at
least some of these people responding to these requests for redress,
we get people unsubscribing from the mailing list, not reading it or
actually complaining about the messages and requesting an end be put
to them. So it may be failing as a place of redress for unwarranted
blocks, but more as a result of the reaction of its subscribers as a
whole. In some ways, the administrators have been simply responding to
the list's subscriber base.

> I'm giving you a chance to behave in good faith here. We'll see what
> happens. So far I have four cases of abuse by Wikipedia admins, and ZERO
> indication that they - especially as 90% of your list adminship are also
> Wikipedia admins - are inclined to act in good faith.

Actually 100% of our list adminship are also Wikipedia admins. I think
I became list administrator for this mailing list maybe a week before
I got made a Wikipedia admin.

I am prepared to unmoderate you on the *strict* undertaking that you
be constructive and civil. Please do not make me regret doing this, as
it would be a demonstration of bad faith on your part.

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l mailing list administrator


body:
On 7/4/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Skyring skyring at gmail.com:
>>On 7/3/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Or instead, we could give the trolls what they
>>> actually deserve and kick them off the list, that way
>>> we don't have the list overwhelmed with troll posts
>>> that we have to pick through to get to the actual
>>> discussions here.  Turning the other cheek only goes
>>> so far.
>>
>> Hmmm. Six lines of post and a couple of a hundred of
>> quoted material.
>> Perhaps you should examine the log in your own eye,
>> brother, before
>> pointing out the speck in another's!

> Yes, because accidentally forgetting to trim a bunch
> of quoted text is exactly the same thing as calling
> someone a "fascist hag".  Duly noted.

Nobody says it is, least of all me. In fact I reject your implication
utterly. Perhaps you could withdraw your remark?

I see that you have taken my point about forgetting to trim a post, so
we'll say no more about that. We all make mistakes from time to time
and I am certainly not putting myself forward as an exemplar in this
or any other regard!

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: more active censorship

body:
On 7/4/05, Nathan J. Yoder <njyoder at energon.org> wrote:
> I also notice that no one has made an argument for why it should work
> that way, since it's clearly only meant to thwart block evasion (which
> this is not a case of).

You're right, Nathan. It does (at least in my estimation) seem to be
either a bug or a serious design flaw. I had a look through Bugzilla
(where the bugs with the software are reported) with a view to making
a report, and it appears to already be reported, at the following URL:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=856

Perhaps a solution would be to only autoblock the IP address if the
user clicks edit while not logged in as the blocked username. That
way, if they try to edit with a brand new username the autoblock would
kick in (and thus avoid the problems you mentioned). It would also be
handy if the period for the autoblock were reduced to match the time
remaining on the main block, which is another bug/design flaw entirely
I think.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thoughts on the process of requesting adminship

body:
>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>
>Consensus is a fantastic method for governance when the decision is
>something with directly effects everyone... it is perhaps the only
>method for governance where it is possible to act without ethical
>compromises.
>
>However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction
>is less harmful than action.

Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with the
existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to take care of admin duties.

>In the case of those adminships, there was no consensus to admin but
>there was also no consensus to fail to admin. Because adminship is no
>big deal, and because the natural state of a longtime and trustworthy
>user should be as an admin, it would be reasonable to argue that the
>correct result of a no consensus adminship should be adminning.

Exactly.  And the people who are denied adminship are generally either not
longterm or not trustworthy.  Of course there will be exceptions to this,
but these are few and far between.  If we radically re-vamp existing
processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection, we
are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect, none will ever be, and the
likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.

>The adminships I cited were not just random failures:

There's no evidence they were "failures" at all.

>In each of the
>cited the reasons given by the oppose were cited by a fair number of
>the supporters as not reasons to oppose. In each of the cases the
>support community contained a group of wikipedians at least as well
>respected and as experienced as users in the opposed camp.

i.e. There was no consensus.

>By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice
>to the Wikipedia community.

This is simply hyperbole.

>Short of actually being adminned, these
>users will have no way of proving themselves. (that much is clear, at
>least one of them had a failed prior adminship due to real issues and
>put in an additional year of hard work before someone renominated).

The community changes and evolves; there are many cases of people who failed
at amin nominations the first time, only to be accepted the second time, so
there is clearly no systemic issue here.  Rather, these individual cases
raised specific and individual concerns that had not been adequately dealt
with at the time of nomination.

>The complex popularity game that it takes to become an admin turns
>adminship into something it should not be, a big deal... and it is our
>duty to tack action to fix that.

No, it turns it into what it should be; a process for ensuring that admins
are trusted by the community and created by consensus.  There is no duty to
take action to fix something that it not broken; on the contrary, it is our
duty to ensure that working processes are not damaged by those seeking
solutions to non-existent problems which will not improve Wikipedia as an
encyclopedia.

Jay.


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
>From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
> > Most of the time I prefer to avoid those hot-tempered arguments but this
>time I'd like to share a few things that crossed my mind while reading the
>e-mails on the Dutch Low Saxon issue. I hope I can keep it reasonably
>short.
> >
> > 1. Of course, Wikipedias should try to unite as many people as possible
>and transcend minor variations in languages (e. g. British and American
>English share one Wikipedia).
> >
> > 2. Of course, the regional variants of Low Saxon form a dialect
>continuum, i. e. mutual intelligibility decreases with increasing distance.
> >
> > 3. Of course, in linguistics national borders don't equal language
>barriers.
> >
> > 4. However, in real-life political borders in Europe have throughout the
>centuries left clear marks on the way people speak and write. New words and
>idioms entered the dialects almost always via Standard German or Standard
>Dutch respectively. Whenever speakers of Low Saxon dialects write something
>down, they fall back on the languages they were taught writing in - that is
>either Dutch or German. Furthermore, all Low Saxon speakers in the
>Netherlands are confronted with Standard Dutch every single day while those
>living east of the border deal with Hochdeutsch day after day. Thus, speech
>varieties can and do develop separately if they're spoken 4 km apart from
>one another - even if that's only the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot in
>Arizona.
> >
> > 5. Of course, splitting nds into Dutch and German editions will not
>eliminate the difficulties a person from Pommeria will face in trying to
>understand the vernacular speech of someone from East Frisia. But it will
>reduce the overall spectrum the Low Saxon Wikipedia has to cover now.
> >
> > When I first read the request for a Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia I
>considered it a little far-fetched myself. But it's a matter of fact that
>we can't expect people from the Netherlands to adapt to the "German"
>lexicon and way of spelling used in nds if they want to contribute.
>Accordingly, any "Dutch" orthography and loan words like "pagina" or
>"kreeren" would simply appear strange and "foreign" to anyone living in
>Germany.
> >
> > So I've come to the conclusion that while it might appear an
>inappropriate solution from a scholarly (or ivory tower?) perspective to
>set up a separate Wikipedia for Low Saxon in the Netherlands, it is a very
>workable solution from a real world perspective.
>
>I really do not think that this is the solution.

Will you quit? You really don't realise this is an attempt to quit this
pointless discussion? Boris (was it him? I forgot) tried to come up with a
consesnus and you are - again - going counter to him.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/3/05, A. Nony Mouse
> Kurita77 I know you knew about; he was a recent new user who came to this
> list to ask why someone had PERMANENTLY BLOCKED his account from Wikipedia,
> and instead of treating him respectfully the Admins around here treated him
> like complete crap,

I'm writing not for your benefit, but for the benefit of those who
might stumble onto this thread in the future and not know the whole
story.

It has been pointed out several times that Kurita77 used the same IP
as enviroknott. The IP does not appear to be a proxy. Enviroknott is
blocked from wikipedia for being an abusive sockpuppetting troll.
Furthermore Kurita77 initial edits were on the same subjects and
enviroknott, and even came out in support of enviroknott. Finally,
this is the third user to magically appear, turn out to be from the
same IP as enviroknott.

With these facts in mind, no rational person would believe that
Kurita77 was anyone but enviroknott. That you choose to ignore this
and continue to cite events related to this user in the furtherance of
your complaints shows a remarkable lack of reason on your part. You
have posted dozens of angry, drama inducing posts on this and related
matters. If someone were actually being wronged this would be
forgivable... But anyone who understands the issues can see that this
is clearly not the case. As a result you are, whether or not you
intend to, trolling this list.

I understand that you believe the community is mishandling the matter,
but you aren't the one that is going to be able to fix it. I'm sorry,
because of your behavior we can not accept your help.

At this point, I think it is fairly clear that you have been asked to
leave. In case it is not, I'll do it again: Nony, your participation
here is not productive for anyone. Please leave.

I'd encourage others to cite the url to this message in the archives
when replying in a critical way to Nony in the future.  I don't think
it ethical to be rude to scare away users, as the users who need to go
enjoy the dispute... However I also feel no sorrow for those who have
been politely asked to leave and who receive some harsh words when
they refuse to cooperate. Quite frankly, we've assumed good faith and
I think we should continue to assume good faith, but I will not
complain about those who have run out of good faith for you.


body:
>I am curious to see what exactly the confirmation of permission was.

A very fair question.

I learned of the images from another web page on the 1360, which I
referenced in my article. The author of that page told me they were
copywrite of the LLNL, so I wrote to their archives office and after a short
time received e-mail confirmation from them, directly, that I could use the
images. This information was provided in the image tags, along with the
filing number of the originals.

Really, I couldn't have done anything more. LLNL WANTS me to use these
images in the wiki.

>The only images that are acceptable are those that are either fair use
>or under a free license. Anything else is shot on sight, and rightly so.

Why? This is still a complete mystery to me. If we have permission to use
them, why not use them?

I looked at the thread the tag pointed to, and there is no discussion of the
logic behind the decision. As far as I can tell, it's "because".

Can anyone give me a straight answer to this seemingly fair question?

>[[Special:Upload]] states (possibly not quite clearly enough):
> > Please do not upload files under a "non-commercial use only" or
> > "copyrighted, used by permission" licence. Such files will be
> > deleted.

It says that _now_. It did not say it all along. According to correspondance
on my talk page, the decision was taken last August. Then on May 19th it was
made final. It was at THAT point (or possibly later) that the tags were
updated. However I can't tell when the tag page itself was updated, as it
does not have a history. Certainly there was no change notification (ie, big
red letters) on the tag page, so you'll forgive me if I simply missed it.

Basically the problem here is this: the decision was made that "from
today..." with no advance warning. If it had simply taken one day to receive
permission, the images in question would still be on the system due to the
[[WP:PUI]] arbitation process. That's an arbitrary decision, one of the
things that the wiki process is supposed to avoid. And it wasn't even a good
date, like "June 1" or something at least non-random.

Further, I think the images in question could have won the [[WP:PUI]]
arbitation process. But I wasn't given the chance, because I uploaded after
the arbitrary and unnoticed cutoff date.

>revert war brewing - they don't take the sensible options of notifying
>the uploader, asking for a second opinion, or warning the user(s) - they

This is precisely what I wanted. Someone to explain to me why this was going
to happen.

I too am an admin, and have considered reverting the deletion, but I really
still don't know what to do. _I_ don't want to start a revert war, but I
feel cheated.

>opinion, because it's the only option available to me. Maybe you're just
>tired and bitter

Well sure, you would be too. But that's to some degree beside the point.

The failing here is the process. A major failure. If changes like this are
taking place, with ramifications this big, everyone should know about it IN
ADVANCE. It should be on the front page of the wiki, up top, in the "gold
box". It should be discussed, on the wiki, so people can say their two
cents. People who are going to get whacked should be notified, in advance.

None of this happened. The decision was made outside of the public view,
took effect on a seemingly random date, with absolutely no warning. That's
just plain wrong.

Maury


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump uploading trouble

body:
Nicolay A Vasiliev wrote:
> Hello there!
>
> I am trying to upload the Norwegian wikibooks dump. When I upload the
> 20050623_cur_table.sql I get an error message "ERROR at line 1: Unknown
> command '\'." Does anyone know what happens and how can I solve it?

The files are compressed; can you confirm you're uncompressing them
before they get into MySQL?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On 7/4/05, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I entirely sympathise. Personally, I don't see why we have to run
> around deleting images with non-free licences from Wikipedia when we
> have Commons for the fully free licences. What is the reasoning behind
> removing all of these images? Apparently my user page image is going
> to be deleted because I refuse to release it under a free licence (as
> opposed to used with permission).

Mark, the goal of the project is to make a free encyclopedia. When we
speak of free we speak of freedom and not price.
There are already many good unfree encyclopedias, and you can even
obtain access to them at no cost.

Every non-free image we incorporate potentially puts many people who
use our content in the intended fashion in a legally precarious
position. This risk is not only extends to our users, but also puts
the Wikimedia Foundation that runs our servers in danger. Thus every
nonfree image and every insufficiently tagged image we incorporate
reduces the freedom of Wikipedia. This is simply unacceptable because
in a large enough scale it defeats the purpose of our project.

There are places where the law in most of the world will permit us to
use some images which are mostly free because of the nature of our
use. However since this use is only permissible in a very limited
scope and in a way which applicable world wide, this use also reduces
the freedom of Wikipedia and should be avoided even though it is
permitted by the law where our servers are operated.  Because in some
cases we can not adequately do our job without borrowing some
copyrighted content in a way which is legally permissible, we continue
to permit these images but they must be tagged as such and they should
be replaced should a replacement become available. Through these
measures we mitigate the harm to Wikipedia.

Mark, I understand the uncomfortability of your situation, but
Wikipedia's goal of providing content that people can easily use
freely without risk of running afoul of the law superseeds our desire
to be liberal in what we permit our editors to store on their
userpages.  I would encourage you to locate an offsite webhost and
provide your unfree content via external link.


body:
On 7/4/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is considered courteous for the uploader to be notified when an image
> is listed on [[WP:PUI]]. In fact, the image deletion process is normally
> quite long and requires the uploader to be contacted, original copyright
> holder to be contacted requesting permission if there is any possibility
> of release under a free licence, etc. Not doing so in this case seems
> rather rude.

As far as I can tell the uploaders are always contacted for images on
[[WP:PUI]] which are questionable some time prior to deletion. The
notice does not usually occur concurrently with the posting of the
image on the list because it is useful for others to remove mistakes
before contact is made.

Can you cite a specific example where an image went through the entire
[[WP:PUI]] process without a contact? Please provide a diff link to
the edit that removes it from the PUI page... not all images are
deleted via pui, so just evidence of a deleted image isn't enough to
implicate PUI.


body:
On 7/4/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Non-free images are goind to be deleted because
> * Wikipedia as a whole can not be reused if it contains non-free images
> * it increases pressure to get free alternative images, where possible
> * Jimbo said so :-)

The second point is important. There are many qualified photographers
on wikipedia. Many of the PUI which are being deleted are photographs
of common objects,  which almost anyone can replace, or public places
which many people can replace.

Often the images we have appropriated from the internet are poorly
suited to our needs. In many cases they have other distracting objects
in the image, or otherwise fail to clearly illustrate the point which
needs to be made.  Wikipedia would be much better off if the majority
of our images were created with the intention of illustrating an
encyclopedia.

If Wikipedia isn't getting enough photographs, we should reach out and
encourage more photographers to join our community.  A lack of content
isn't an excuse to break the law.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hey, I won't be serious this time :)

In year 2005 Gabriel Wicke cited 1 year old message:

>> - Some new web servers(3 or 4), P4 2,8Ghz with 2Go of RAM
> The web servers use about 210Mb ram currently (according to 'free'),
> 512Mb ram and no raid for web servers would buy the same performance
> for the same money.

You can still all take a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_report%2C_March-June%2C_2005

One year ago we had slightly different loads ;-)

Cheers,
Domas


from_name: Alejandro Sánchez Marín

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TeX not working

body:
Brion Vibber escribi?:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> Timwi wrote:
>>>
>>>> However, I get the same behaviour as if TeX was turned off
>>>> ("<math>1+1=2<math>" in the wiki page).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Parser cache or browser cache.
>>
>>
>>
>> Is a parser cache enabled by default? If not, then nope. If yes, how do
>> I disable it?
>
>
> Yes, it's on by default since 1.4.
>
> You should not generally disable the parser cache. Rather, as a site
> administrator it's your responsibility to ensure that your configuration
> is correct. If you've changed the software configuration in a basic way
> (such as enabling an extension which pages were already trying to use),
> then to clear cached parse pages you probably want to do one of the
> following:
>
> * Edit the affected pages. (Do a preview for a quick test.)
> * Use ?action=purge on the affected pages.
> * Set $wgCacheEpoch to the current timestamp to invalidate all previous
>  cached renderings.
> * Run 'DELETE FROM objectcache' if using default table-based cache.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
I do all these step and all of rest this topic mailing list and has same
problem. I use ubuntu hoary updated, with all standard packages needed
to make text, with 1.3.12 runs ok, but when i update to 1.4.5 fails. Any
suggestion?

Erchache.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Thoughts on the process of requesting adminship

body:
>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>
>On 7/3/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia is about creating an encyclopedia, not promulgating an
>ideology.
>
>I agree with your point about not focusing on admins, although I think
>that end is best served by making many people admins as it dillutes
>any unintended power of adminship.

I agree with this to an extent as well.  I just (continually argue) that 500
existing admins, with hundreds more coming on board each year, effectively
does that, moreso than in any other online community I have heard of.

>There were already a number of good encyclopedias before Wikipedia
>came about. You can not separate Wikipedia the encyclopedia from
>Wikipedia the ideology.  I do not think this is a bad idea.
>
>Even as a non-editor you can not be completely ignorant of the
>Wikipedia ideology if you are to effectively use our resources, since
>the results of vandalism and POV pushers will always end up visible
>once in a while and because the inner workings of the project are so
>useful by themselves (it's very handy to have some ability to ask
>questions of the person who wrote the text you are reading).

There are lots of great things about the ideology, which are useful in
creating a great encyclopedia.  There are also inherent problems with the
ideology, which mitigate against that (particularly the issue of assuring
high standards, which we are struggling with).  To the extent that the
promoting ideology supports the goal, I'm all for it.  In areas where
promoting the ideology works against supporting the goal, I think the latter
must take priority.

Jay.


body:
On 7/4/05, Maury Markowitz
[snip]
> Really, I couldn't have done anything more. LLNL WANTS me to use these
> images in the wiki.
[snip]
> Why? This is still a complete mystery to me. If we have permission to use
> them, why not use them?
[snip]

First, I'd like to extend you my gratitude for actually expending
effort to find out the copyright status of your images and to clear
them. Far too many users just grab images off the internet and expend
little to no effort to determine their true copyright status.

The reason we can not use 'by permission' images is because the
permission is usually limited enough that it is incompatible with our
goals.   For example, a permission on an images of a partical
accelerator might say "you may use this image in wikipedia", but where
does that leave us when we want to use the image in the "How to build
your own particle accelerator" wikibook?  Another example, a common
'with permission' is something like "you may use this image on the XYZ
article on the Wikipedia.org website, as long as you provide a link
back to us", so where does that leave someone who wants to build an
offline copy of wikipedia for use in computer labs in some third world
nation?

Quite simply we can not accept general 'with permission' images
because they are not sufficiently free.

In some cases someone may have actually managed to get with permission
language which is sufficiently free, but it doesn't match one of the
small set of licenses we accept and consider free.  If we had many
such images any user of our content would have to hire a team of
attorneys to consider every case... Our work can not be free when it
comes with such a costly burden. As a result we may even decide to
remove some images with sufficient permission that we could rightly
keep just because it doesn't fall nicely into one of our existing
licenses.

There are new instructions which instruct users to obtain permission
under one of our existing licenses to avoid running into these issues.

I'm sorry that our policy had to change, ... we can't get everything
right the first time.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 24, Issue 22

body:
>From: "J.F. de Wolff" <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk>
>
>It seems Weyes has left. What a disgrace. We've never had such a diligent
>RC patroller, and he was more right than wrong in his crusade against
>excessive external links. That's another one gone after RickK. Why on earth
>do we fail the Wikipedians who do so much to protect our project from
>vandals, cranks and idiots?

Amen.  Weyes was a diligent vandalism patroller, and his anti excessive-link
campaign was far more right than wrong.  And I say this knowing that his
case was an example of a failed admin campaign.

Jay.


body:
On 7/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction
> >is less harmful than action.
>
> Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with the
> existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to take care of admin duties.

There are many axis to consider harm.
For example, after making 2000+ edits, failing to abuse procedure, no
vandalism, etc.. A user goes up for adminship and is denied. We have
500 admins, why not one more?
*Most* people would feel hurt by that.

I'd call that harm.

Obviously we can't just make everyone admins because their feelings
would be hurt otherwise... but I think that in cases where a user is
likely to abuse the tools after they've been around long enough for 2k
edits that it is abundantly clear. In these cases we see unanimous or
near unanimous opposition.

In other cases, I think we should give the user a chance to prove
themselves as an admin. That the risk of a vandal becoming an admin is
infinitesimal at that point, and the the risk of bruising a valuable
editors ego is more important.

> Exactly.  And the people who are denied adminship are generally either not
> longterm or not trustworthy.  Of course there will be exceptions to this,
> but these are few and far between.  If we radically re-vamp existing
> processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection, we
> are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect, none will ever be, and the
> likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.

I think the people which are unilatterly or near unilaterly denied
adminship are potentially not trustworthy. Many of the no consensus
users eventually become admins on the second go around, they aren't
different people... Usually they just used the time to get to know a
few more admins to help their support base.  That isn't a bad thing,
but it isn't how we should decide adminship. How much good will did we
lose from them by denying them once?

Like I said above, I think you are measuring error incorrectly. Our
current adminship probably detects all vandals, but it also
misidentifies many good potential admins.

To make a more clear example:  If the security at the airport simply
shot all the passengers we would successfully stop all hijackers
pretending to be passengers.

In any system of classification we must weigh both the false positives
and the false negative to know the accuracy of the system.

> >The adminships I cited were not just random failures:
> There's no evidence they were "failures" at all.

I meant failures in the sense that they failed adminship. I think it's
pretty clear they were not made admins. :)

> i.e. There was no consensus.

Yes. It appeared that you understood the point my message started
with, that I think that we should accept in the case of no consensus
not reject. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point out that there
was no consensus when that's what I'm obviously talking about.

> >By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice
> >to the Wikipedia community.
> This is simply hyperbole.

Well it certainly isn't intended to be... I do go on to provide an
argument supporting that position.

> The community changes and evolves; there are many cases of people who failed
> at amin nominations the first time, only to be accepted the second time, so
> there is clearly no systemic issue here.  Rather, these individual cases
> raised specific and individual concerns that had not been adequately dealt
> with at the time of nomination.

As you point out, many of the no consensus people become admins
eventually (the long term trend appears to be all of them).  These are
perfect examples of where the system has failed once, but worked on
the second pass.

How much good will did that first rejection cause us?

> No, it turns it into what it should be; a process for ensuring that admins
> are trusted by the community and created by consensus.  There is no duty to
> take action to fix something that it not broken; on the contrary, it is our
> duty to ensure that working processes are not damaged by those seeking
> solutions to non-existent problems which will not improve Wikipedia as an
> encyclopedia.

or you can say that it is a process they denies a bunch of 'no big
deal' permissions to people without any consensus to deny them, and
one which insults the integrity of some of our most trustworthy
contributors. (Clearly if they eventually pass it they are a
trustworthy contributor, so that the process failed them the first
time is not a success).

I think you are spending too much effort here defending the
preexisting 'working process'. The goal of wikipedia is to be an
encyclopedia, not a set of unchanging processes.   I do not believe
you have demonstrated how it will harm our goal of making an
encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus
opposition.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
I would like to point out that this discussion (regarding the chess
championship anyway) has already been had at [[Wikipedia talk:Chess
championship]], and, much more importantly at [[Wikipedia:Votes for
deletion/Chess championship]] where the community decided that it
should stay. This should settle the matter for the time being as these
sort of decisions should be made by the consensus in the community.

However, this being wikipedia, I understand that a vote that should
settle a matter is seldom the end of the discussion I will provide the
view from someone who does play games on the wiki.

We have seen many times that great contributors leave the project
because of the sometimes excruciating difficulties this sort of
project brings (we had one recently, if anybody recalls). Almost
universally for these users they leave because of the air of
hostility, the endless arguments and the general incivilty that,
despite our best efforts, still cripple the project.


body:
Sorry, pressed send by mistake prematurely, here is the rest of my message

This is a natural consequence of wikipedia, because virtually all
discussions on wikipedia are about disputes. You don't put something
on a talk-page if you agree with them, and you don't start an RFC
either.

The chess championship is a way for users to interact in a way that is
not related to disputes. Please let us have it. If it gets out of
hand, I'll be the first to send it to a VfD

- gkhan


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 04/07/05, Nathan J. Yoder <njyoder at energon.org> wrote:
> > As the community size becomes large the probability of a unanimous
> > decision becomes infinitesimal and the ability of one member to block
> > a decision becomes a target for disruption.
>
> That's very true, which is why it seems silly to call it a 'consensus'
> rather than a super majority.  There should be official policy
> somewhere outlining exactly what percentage of votes is needed to pass
> a given thing (e.g. "four-fifths majority is required to appoint an
> admin").

I'm not sure if there's a single list (never looked too closely at
policy pages), but from WP:RFA > About RFA > Nomination Process -
"Nominations usually remain for seven days, for votes and comments.
Bureaucrats may at their discretion extend this when consensus is
unclear; the threshold for consensus on this page is roughly 80
percent support."

> > For many of our votes in the community, Wikipedia uses a two stage
> > near-consensus process which is highly effective.  For example, VFD:
> > Members of the community state both their 'vote' and their position
> > and have an ability to discuss their votes and change their votes in
> > an open environment that is free of true coercion.
>
> What about cases where people are being recruited to vote on something
> like that?  I've seen at least one VfD where people were recruited
> from another source of like-minded people to skew the vote.  I'm not
> sure there is something that can be done about that without potential
> for abuse, but it's a shady thing to do.

>From the deletion guidelines: "For example, administrators can
disregard votes and comments if they feel that there is strong
evidence that they were not made in good faith. Such "bad faith" votes
include those being made by sock puppets, being made anonymously, or
being made using a new userid whose only edits are to the article in
question and the voting on that article."

It depends. Again, I haven't paid much attention to VfD lately, other
than pages I brought there - I simply don't have the time - but used
to trawl it daily. From my recollection... Lots of articles, usually
vanity ones about an individual or organisation (*especially* ones
involving some kind of internet forum) got placed on VfD and hit by a
lot of new users, anons, &c voting keep. [pokes around] Here's an
example:

Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Charles_Mason_(Revolutionary)

Thirteen keep, nine delete; not a "clear consensus" Decision to
delete. Why? Every one of the keep votes was a new or anon. user,
often with inspired arguments (I particularly like one which
summarised as "Wikipedia should keep this because it was supressed by
the capitalist media so they can't verify it"), versus every delete
vote was by an established user (I recognised six of the nine names,
offhand). So you have a community consensus - delete - and a
background noise.

Is it right to do this? Yes, I suspect. It's an infinitely gamable
system, otherwise; the potential for abuse by ignoring such users is
less than the potential for abuse through sockpuppetry.

It's worth noting that floods of anonymous and new users very rarely
show up to vote "keep" on articles which get established during VfD as
being borderline notable - usually this is limited only to articles
which are otherwise reasonably indefensible. What that may be
construed as, of course, is for the reader.

(Incidentally, going through old VfDs, I found
Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Race_and_intelligence - does anyone else
get a weird problem displaying that page? I think there's an unmatched
<s></s> tag somewhere, and as a result it doesn't even display an edit
tab...)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Non-free images, there has to be a better way

body:
Maury Markowitz wrote:

> More recently I went back to the article and found all the images
> deleted. The deleter added a note, but as far as I can tell did so
> AFTER deleting them ( I can't get history on the image itself, of
> course).. He stated I should have tagged them differently. Yes, well,
> thanks for that,  maybe someone should have told me that in the month
> between me uploading them and them being deleted so I could have
> actually DONE that.

As the person who deleted these images, I'll explain that I did so based
on the policy that newer images tagged with the {{copyrighted}} template
(i.e., Wikipedia-only permission) should be deleted on sight. The reason
I added the note to the image talk page after deleting is because I did
not even discover it had a talk page until Maury complained about the
deletion (use of talk pages for images is exceptionally rare). I am
sorry that I missed that fact, as I would not have deleted the images
based on the information there.

The template involved is the one that Maury used himself, and it warned
about this potential deletion at the time that he used it. Arguments
against images of this kind have been brought up for quite some time,
and various announcements have been made and advertised in many places
to discourage their use. I think it's worth noting that the talk page
for the template has this note from Jimbo: "We should keep this message
around, so that people will use it. This will ensure that we can find
these images and promptly delete them." This statement was written on 18
Feb *2004*.

> What's particularily baffling is that the deleter suggested I simply
> re-tag them to PermissionAndFairUse. This strikes me as absolutely
> rediculous. First of all, why are these OK and not ones used with
> permission?

I was trying to be helpful and provide some information that would allow
Maury to restore the images, which I hope he still has access to. So
long as we allow fair use images (not everyone agrees that we should),
the fact that we have permission bolsters our claim to fair use. Thus
even when the permission by itself is too limited for our needs, it is
very useful to note that we have permission.

> And if these are OK, why didn't it say so in the warning on the
> Permission tag?

As has been noted, many people who really want some particular image on
Wikipedia are quick to claim fair use when they really don't have a
basis for it. So I think this is not done in the interests of not
advertising this dubious escape hatch too widely.

--Michael Snow


body:
On 7/4/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > Mark, the goal of the project is to make a free encyclopedia. When we
> > speak of free we speak of freedom and not price.
> > There are already many good unfree encyclopedias, and you can even
> > obtain access to them at no cost.
>
> Wikipedia has passed the stage of being comparable
> to other encyclopedias you can access at no cost.

It's an encyclopedia. It's always comparable.
... and just as is the case for any other encyclopedia, the world
doesn't end because we can't include some images.

> This argument is getting a bit tired. Do you have an
> [[IBM 360]] in your backyard? Do you have a [[Z machine]]?

Funny you should ask that...
I don't actually have a IBM360, but I have at various times had a
number of large vaxen, and a few flavors of PDP.
I've also had in my garage at various times, an airport style x-ray
machine, several multiwatt lasers, the complete line of NeXT
computers, a large optical jukebox, several hundred Sun workstations,
and many other things.

So, no, I don't have a IBM 360, but people have a lot of equipment
that you wouldn't expect.. If not at home then at work... I'm willing
to bet some other Wikipedia user does, but they aren't likely to shoot
pictures of it if there is already an unfree image on the page.

In the cases of historical objects the lack of an image can be a good
opportunity to invite more specialists into our community.  Why take
in image from "Joe's web museum of old computers" when we can just get
joe to upload them himself, and perhaps improve the articles as well?

You picked a fairly bad set of examples in any case.. The [[IBM 360]]
page has images which were granted under a free license, the sort of
used with permission we don't object to... and the Z machine is a
perfect example of something where we can probably get a grant under
CC-BY or GFDL.

> > If Wikipedia isn't getting enough photographs, we should reach out and
> > encourage more photographers to join our community.  A lack of content
> > isn't an excuse to break the law.
>
> No-one is suggesting we do.

Yes, actually people are... or rather there are some suggesting that
images they've found on the internet should be acceptable for us to
use.

> It is a simple matter for downstream users
> not to include images tagged used-with-permission.
> Wikipedia articles very rarely rely on the images
> in their main text.

Actually, it's a pain in the butt to remove the images because of the
way we store the tagging.. once you mix in the inconsistency of the
tagging it becomes impossible.

The vast majority of the images going up on WP:PUI are images that are
likely copyvio for even for us to use.. and are not examples of used
with permission.

> And I can sympathise with people who don't give a
> rat's toenail for the current downstream users,
> much as I believe in the GFDL.

Sympathize as much as you like. Preserving freedom downstream is a
goal of the project. Downstrem users doesn't just refer to random
useless mirror on the internet, but also refers to people publishing
printed works, and to other sister projects like wikibooks.

> This is confusing to me. It's *fair use* that's currently
> allowed - and *that* only works in the US. It's
> *used-with-permission* that's forbidden and that
> will work anywhere in the world. I'd argue fair-use
> is much more dangerous to world wide publication
> than used-with-permission is.

I brought up fair use because it is almost universally the response to
complaints that images are unfree.

> And, sadly, it seems that Jimbo's fatwah against UWP has
> increased the number of far-fetched rationalizations for
> fair use on Wikipedia.

I'm am strongly against abuse of fair use.  I haven't noticed WP:PUI
accepting images as fair use which shouldn't be... can you cite some
examples?

Yes people claim fair use incorrectly.. they claim a lot of things to
keep images they found via a google image search or that they didn't
obtain with sufficient permission. That doesn't mean we shouldn't
remove unfree images of all types as we are able.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal attacks and low EQs

body:
Alex Regh wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On Mon, 04 Jul 2005 07:29:54 +1000, Jerome Jamnicky wrote:
>
>
>>>Calling someone a hypocrite IS criticizing their behavior.  Having to
>>>write out "your behavior is hypocritical" in place of "you are a
>>>hypocrite" is just tedious and redundant.
>>
>>It's useful because Wikipedia is not written by Vulcans.  The emotional
>>impact of differently-worded but logically equivalent statements is
>>different, and this affects how constructive the discussion is.
>
>
> No, actually, those two statements are not "logically equivalent".

I didn't claim that they are, nor did I mean to imply it.  The point I
tried to make is that changes in wording can change the emotional
impact, even in the extreme case that the meaning is exactly the same.
Obviously this would also apply in the case where the meaning is similar
but different.

(And I should have written "can be different" in place of "is different"
in my previous mail.)

> Calling
> somebody _a_ something implies that this person engages in this behaviour
> regularly, while saying "your behaviour here is something" does criticise only
> a behaviour at a certain place and time.
>
> "You lied about X" is therefore far less (potentially) insulting than "you are
> a liar". Not to mention the fact that it is impossible to say the latter about
> any Wikipedian whom one does not personally know, and very well, too - because
> I doubt that there are any people who spend so much time on WP that their
> behaviour here, even if they were constantly lying (or doing anything else) on
> WP, would constitute most of _all_ behaviour they ever exhibit.

Yes, thank you for putting this so clearly.

> Alex
> (who wanted to keep out of the debate, but that had to be said)

Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
On 7/4/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> Certainly. Nor will the world of our downstream users
> if they can't use every single image Wikipedia itself
> can. They can't do that anyway because fair use only
> applies in the U.S.

The goal of the project is not to produce an encyclopedia with content
that is free for some people for some uses.

It is our intention to provide an encyclopedia of completely free
content which is free in perpetuity without descrimination of field of
endeavor.

> I'm sorry - this was a typo for [[IBM 1360]] which
> is the machine in question if you're following the
> thread. It's nice that we have free pictures of the
> IBM 360. And it's nice that you have had lots of
> stuff in your garage at various times.

My point was just because some piece of equipment is exotic, big, or
expensive that doesn't mean that there are not people with the ability
to photograph them.

> > and the Z machine is a
> > perfect example of something where we can probably get a grant under
> > CC-BY or GFDL.
> Have you followed the discussion on the permission
> for the Z-machine picture? By all means, go ahead
> and ask them to release it under CC-BY.

Sorry, I've been busy with other images.
The responsiblity to get permission ultimately rests on those who wish
the content to be included.

> In my opinion there's nothing wrong with Wikipedia
> using that image even if non-encyclopec down-stream
> users can't. I'm sure they would allow a Wikibook
> too if you ask them. If you can get them to release
> it under CC-BY that would of course be great. And
> if you can get a PD image of a z-machine which is
> as good as this one I salute you.

Well, the policy of Wikipedia disagrees with you, and has for a fairly
long time.
> No-one in this thread has suggested we break the law.

Fair enough. Pardon my tunnel vision, because the vast majority of
images being canned right now are not cases where we have been given
permission and in those cases people are suggesting we break the law.

> > Actually, it's a pain in the butt to remove the images because of the
> > way we store the tagging.. once you mix in the inconsistency of the
> > tagging it becomes impossible.
>
> It's a straightforward technical problem.
> It's not "impossible", it's not even really
> that difficult.

As I said, if the images are not tagged it is impossible short of
having someone read all of the image texts and removing a lot of
images that are free but left untagged.

> And it's good that we're removing those. I'm only
> concerned with used-with-permission images here.

A fair concern, I'm sorry for mixing other aspects of the unfree image
issue into it.

> >> And I can sympathise with people who don't give a
> >> rat's toenail for the current downstream users,
> >> much as I believe in the GFDL.
> >
> > Sympathize as much as you like. Preserving freedom downstream is a
> > goal of the project.
>
> Yes. One that I am aware of and agree with.
>
>
> > Downstrem users doesn't just refer to random
> > useless mirror on the internet, but also refers to people publishing
> > printed works, and to other sister projects like wikibooks.
>
> Yes. Unfortunately most downstream use up to this
> point has been useless mirroring.

Downstream work which is visable to you, there is a lot of substanital
downstream work which isn't useless and in any case we are not
providing freedom if we exclude even the stupid mirrors.

> > I'm am strongly against abuse of fair use.  I haven't noticed WP:PUI
> > accepting images as fair use which shouldn't be... can you cite some
> > examples?
>
> No. But your comment above indicates that you are aware of
> the tendency of people to claim fair use when they're told
> that they can't use an image - including a used-with-permission
> image.

Right... I am well aware. But isn't a reason to change our
enforcement... if it's right to remove an image, it's right to remove
it no matter what lame excuses people will use to defend it.

With permission isn't a lame excuse, it's a good one.. but it's still
not one we can always accept.


subject: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship

body:
>From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
>
>On 7/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: "Nathan J. Yoder" <njyoder at energon.org>
> > > > No, it's supposed to work that way.  It's doing exactly what it is
> > >intended
> > > > to do.
> > >
> > >No, it's supposed to protect against block evasion, how is it doing
> > >that in this case?
> >
> > Attempts to edit while you are blocked are attempts to evade the block.
>
>That doesn't make sense. A blocked user CANNOT edit.

Well, that's not really accurate, but most blocked users can no longer us a
different Userid to avoid the block, precisely because Wikipedia blocks the
IP address when attempts are made to do this.  That wasn't the case before
the IP blocker was added.

> > >What purpose does it serve exactly?
> >
> > Protects against block evasion.
>
>How so? A blocked user CANNOT edit.

If only that were the case.  In practice, blocked editors edit all the time;
this simply stops the ones with fixed IP addresses from editing with
sockpuppets.

Jay.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

> Will you quit? You really don't realise this is an attempt to quit this
> pointless discussion?

Wouter, the only way to quit a pointless discussion is: to quit.
You can never end a discussion by discussing the ending of it.

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


from_name: Servien Ilaino

body:
Hi everyone,

First of all, Mark: you said I've never tried to explain the points,
but I have, you just don't seem to understand/want to understand my
points. I agree with Mark on the point that NDS is the wrong title for
the current Wikipedia and should be changed to MIS. You mentioned that
if it was in proper LS we would be able to understand it better, maybe
so, but as Boris mentioned the language issue between Dutch and German
plays a big role. I also don't intend to divide it up by COUNTRY but
by LANGUAGE in which people were taught and come into contact with
every day. Which is logical. Comparing DLS with the Scots leid is way
off, first of all DLS and the Scots leid are not under the same
language subfamily, and second the Scots leid is way closer to English
than DLS to GLS so, if you want to be consequent in this issue you
should complain and tell the Wikipedia developers to remove Nynorks
because there is already a Norsk-Bokm?l, and remove Scots because it's
too close to English, and remove Scottish-Gaelic because it's too
close to Irish and remove Afrikaans because it's too close to Dutch
and so on and so on...

Veerder lykt et myn 'n goed idee ?m hierover te disk?ssieern in et
NDS, k?'w drekt sien wies NDS goed genog is ?m dit te verstaon haha!
:-)

Groetnis!
Servien!

2005/7/4, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> Uhh... hello? That's what an opinion is. It means you disagree with
> somebody. Obviously you haven't read much of anything I've written.
>
> Mark
>
> On 04/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
> > > > Most of the time I prefer to avoid those hot-tempered arguments but this
> > >time I'd like to share a few things that crossed my mind while reading the
> > >e-mails on the Dutch Low Saxon issue. I hope I can keep it reasonably
> > >short.
> > > >
> > > > 1. Of course, Wikipedias should try to unite as many people as possible
> > >and transcend minor variations in languages (e. g. British and American
> > >English share one Wikipedia).
> > > >
> > > > 2. Of course, the regional variants of Low Saxon form a dialect
> > >continuum, i. e. mutual intelligibility decreases with increasing distance.
> > > >
> > > > 3. Of course, in linguistics national borders don't equal language
> > >barriers.
> > > >
> > > > 4. However, in real-life political borders in Europe have throughout the
> > >centuries left clear marks on the way people speak and write. New words and
> > >idioms entered the dialects almost always via Standard German or Standard
> > >Dutch respectively. Whenever speakers of Low Saxon dialects write something
> > >down, they fall back on the languages they were taught writing in - that is
> > >either Dutch or German. Furthermore, all Low Saxon speakers in the
> > >Netherlands are confronted with Standard Dutch every single day while those
> > >living east of the border deal with Hochdeutsch day after day. Thus, speech
> > >varieties can and do develop separately if they're spoken 4 km apart from
> > >one another - even if that's only the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot in
> > >Arizona.
> > > >
> > > > 5. Of course, splitting nds into Dutch and German editions will not
> > >eliminate the difficulties a person from Pommeria will face in trying to
> > >understand the vernacular speech of someone from East Frisia. But it will
> > >reduce the overall spectrum the Low Saxon Wikipedia has to cover now.
> > > >
> > > > When I first read the request for a Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia I
> > >considered it a little far-fetched myself. But it's a matter of fact that
> > >we can't expect people from the Netherlands to adapt to the "German"
> > >lexicon and way of spelling used in nds if they want to contribute.
> > >Accordingly, any "Dutch" orthography and loan words like "pagina" or
> > >"kreeren" would simply appear strange and "foreign" to anyone living in
> > >Germany.
> > > >
> > > > So I've come to the conclusion that while it might appear an
> > >inappropriate solution from a scholarly (or ivory tower?) perspective to
> > >set up a separate Wikipedia for Low Saxon in the Netherlands, it is a very
> > >workable solution from a real world perspective.
> > >
> > >I really do not think that this is the solution.
> >
> > Will you quit? You really don't realise this is an attempt to quit this
> > pointless discussion? Boris (was it him? I forgot) tried to come up with a
> > consesnus and you are - again - going counter to him.
> >
> > Wouter
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger
> > http://messenger.msn.nl/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Nathan J. Yoder

subject: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship

body:
> Well, that's not really accurate, but most blocked users can no longer us a
> different Userid to avoid the block, precisely because Wikipedia blocks the
> IP address when attempts are made to do this.  That wasn't the case before
> the IP blocker was added.

You're not listening at all.  I was editing only with my User:Njyoder
account, not a sock puppet nor logged out.  If you block a username, it
has _always_ been the case that that username can't edit.

> If only that were the case.  In practice, blocked editors edit all the time;
> this simply stops the ones with fixed IP addresses from editing with
> sockpuppets.

As stated above, it also renews it for non-sock puppets.  This is how
it currently works:

1.  Admin blocks User:foo.
2.  User:foo logs in as User:foo.
3.  User:foo hits 'edit page.'
4.  User:foo block is renewed for another 24 hours.

So what exactly is the purpose in reblocking the original account that
was already blocked to begin with?

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


subject: FW: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
This is what Mark sent to me privately.

>Here's *my* attempt at coming up with a consensus:
>
>1. Of course, Wikipedias should try to unite as many people as
>possible and transcend minor variations in languages (e. g. British
>and American English share one Wikipedia).
>
>2. Of course, the regional variants of Low Saxon form a dialect
>continuum, i. e. mutual intelligibility decreases with increasing
>distance.
>
>3. Of course, in linguistics national borders don't equal language
>barriers.
>
>4. However, in real-life political borders in Europe have throughout
>the centuries left clear marks on the way people speak and write. New
>words and idioms entered the dialects almost always via Standard
>German or Standard Dutch respectively. Whenever speakers of Low Saxon
>dialects write something down, they fall back on the languages they
>were taught writing in - that is either Dutch or German. Furthermore,
>all Low Saxon speakers in the Netherlands are confronted with Standard
>Dutch every single day while those living east of the border deal with
>Hochdeutsch day after day. Nevertheless, these differences may be
>surmountable and the issue should be explored further rather than
>acting rashly to create a linguistic fork.
>
>5. Of course, splitting nds into Dutch and German editions will not
>eliminate the difficulties a person from Pommeria will face in trying
>to understand the vernacular speech of someone from East Frisia.
>Although it will reduce the overall spectrum the Low Saxon Wikipedia
>has to cover now, it won't address the other problems that are at work
>here, not least the fact that nds.wiki is written mostly in
>Missingsch.
>
>When I first read the request for a Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia I
>considered it a little far-fetched myself. I still do, and so far
>nobody's actually crafted a logical response to my arguments other
>than Boris, preferring instead to discount them because I'm not a
>native speaker, or to repeat the same thing over and over.
>
>So I've come to the conclusion that while it might appear to be an
>acceptable solution from some perspectives to set up a separate
>Wikipedia for Low Saxon in the Netherlands, it is not a very workable
>solution from a real world perspective.
>
>Mark
>
I cannot understand this in any other way than: "I am right, so create no
nds-nl Wikipedia". Mark you seem not to know the word "consensus". That
means that two opinions meet somewhere in between, not that either party
gets what it wants!

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


body:
>From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
>
> > > Marmot is a user wrongfully banned from Wikipedia for the "crime" of
> > > dissenting and pointing out when Admins were abusing their powers.
>
>
>User:MARMOT was originally blocked for sockpuppet abuse, particularly on a
>RFA. (He successfully fouled up Weyes' RFA and started impersonating admins
>and arbitrators on the revote.) It appears he acted such a dick that he's
>stayed blocked. This is not by decree, particularly not mine. If any of the
>500-odd admins feel this block of MARMOT is unwarranted, they are free to
>unblock him. None of them have. This is either (a) massive corruption or
>(b) he really was *that much of a dick*. Of course, it could have been
>both.

Isn't there a saying "Absolute dicks corrupt absolutely"?

Jay.


body:
> Have you followed the discussion on the permission
> for the Z-machine picture? By all means, go ahead
> and ask them to release it under CC-BY.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Zmachine.jpg
>
> Currently the image information page has a license
> which says:
>
> "encyclopedia articles are fine. We only require a
> credit in the form, 'Courtesy, Sandia National Laboratories,'"
>
> In my opinion there's nothing wrong with Wikipedia
> using that image even if non-encyclopec down-stream
> users can't. I'm sure they would allow a Wikibook
> too if you ask them. If you can get them to release
> it under CC-BY that would of course be great. And
> if you can get a PD image of a z-machine which is
> as good as this one I salute you.

Why don't you just ask them then?  Since they said they only require
that credit, you could ask if they mean that for ANYONE using that
image.  If they say anyone can use that image as long as they give
that credit, then that's their "open content" license and should be
allowed on Wikipedia.  Since the image is of a very specific thing
only existing at their labs, people would have to credit anyway.

Also, I'm a bit confused as to why it's not public domain since SNL is
a government agency.  Since it appears that SNL itself has control
over the copyright (as opposed to the photographer who took the
picture), shouldn't it be that way?  I was under the impression that
any works created by U.S. government employees were PD and I'd guess
that if the "contractor"/photographer transfered rights over that it
would be effectively the same.

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


from_name: Theo Clarke

body:
A very important bonding and befriending exercise for me was my participation in the writing of European Toilet Paper Holder and the subsequent occasional silliness that has flowed from that.  This kind of play has in turn led to encyclopedia enhancements like WP:FLC or the [[List of cultural references in the Divine Comedy]]. In my experience some trust and friendship develops from cooperation on an article. Equally, some articles develop from friendly discussion arising from play.

Theo

On Mon, 4 Jul 2005 13:38:49 +0100, David Gerard wrote:
>?I do see your point on this. It's why some people complain of an?"IRC
>?clique" - i.e., IRC habitues tend to know each other as reasonable?folk to
>?chat to, so form a picture of each other as humans rather than?nametags on
>?disagreements. In-person wikimeets do this too. Interesting. Do the?various
>?Collaboration Of The Week projects have any similar effect? What?else does?

in response to?Oskar Sigvardsson writing:

>>?The chess championship is a way for users to interact in a way
>>?that is?not related to disputes.


from_name: Carlos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Language problems in es:wiki

body:
[Carlos <angus at quovadis.com.ar>, 2005-07-02 20.36 CEST]
> Since some weeks, messages in es:wiki alternate between our customized
> [[es:Especial:Allmessages]] and the defaults in LanguageEs.php. We
> thought it was a temporary situation, because of the upgrades (?), but
> we are using the new version now, and the problem continues.
>
> Can this please be fixed? We would like that only the customized
> messages are used.

Something similar happened in the vietnamese wikipedia some time ago, and it
was solved. Maybe the same solution could be applied to the spanish one.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683

--


subject: [WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
On 7/2/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
[snip]
> The issue is that games can exist entirely in parallel to
> encyclopedia-building. For example, the user who created the
> "Wikipedia:Wikigames" project (since redirected) has never made a single
> edit to a Wikipedia article. When the fun activity becomes the primary
> focus and the encyclopedia becomes incidental, a line has to be drawn.
[snip]

We also have administrators who make no edits in the main namespace.

The point is that our community is now so large that we really can't
call people unproductive simply due to lack of article writing,
although .. our primary activities should always be encouraged.

Comradeship and relaxation are important aspects of building and
maintaining a community. If outsiders sometimes come in to play, more
often than not they will be eventually sucked into our community. It
is inappropriate to squelch a harmless activity because if we all
stopped doing every but the activity harm would be caused.

Do you suggest we remove all mention of Wikimania from the site?
After all.. a conference is completely unnecessary for the direct
goals of Wikipedia.

Like anything else, we should pay attention to it... and apply breaks
if it gets out of hand.

--gmaxwell (who has no interest in playing the games himself)


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> Mark, the goal of the project is to make a free encyclopedia. When we
> speak of free we speak of freedom and not price.
> There are already many good unfree encyclopedias, and you can even
> obtain access to them at no cost.

Wikipedia has passed the stage of being comparable
to other encyclopedias you can access at no cost.

> Often the images we have appropriated from the internet are poorly
> suited to our needs. In many cases they have other distracting objects
> in the image, or otherwise fail to clearly illustrate the point which
> needs to be made.  Wikipedia would be much better off if the majority
> of our images were created with the intention of illustrating an
> encyclopedia.

This argument is getting a bit tired. Do you have an
[[IBM 360]] in your backyard? Do you have a [[Z machine]]?

> If Wikipedia isn't getting enough photographs, we should reach out and
> encourage more photographers to join our community.  A lack of content
> isn't an excuse to break the law.

No-one is suggesting we do.

> Every non-free image we incorporate potentially puts many people who
> use our content in the intended fashion in a legally precarious
> position. This risk is not only extends to our users, but also puts
> the Wikimedia Foundation that runs our servers in danger. Thus every
> nonfree image and every insufficiently tagged image we incorporate
> reduces the freedom of Wikipedia. This is simply unacceptable because
> in a large enough scale it defeats the purpose of our project.

It is a simple matter for downstream users
not to include images tagged used-with-permission.
Wikipedia articles very rarely rely on the images
in their main text.

And I can sympathise with people who don't give a
rat's toenail for the current downstream users,
much as I believe in the GFDL.

> There are places where the law in most of the world will permit us to
> use some images which are mostly free because of the nature of our
> use. However since this use is only permissible in a very limited
> scope and in a way which applicable world wide, this use also reduces
> the freedom of Wikipedia and should be avoided even though it is
> permitted by the law where our servers are operated.  Because in some
> cases we can not adequately do our job without borrowing some
> copyrighted content in a way which is legally permissible, we continue
> to permit these images but they must be tagged as such and they should
> be replaced should a replacement become available.

This is confusing to me. It's *fair use* that's currently
allowed - and *that* only works in the US. It's
*used-with-permission* that's forbidden and that
will work anywhere in the world. I'd argue fair-use
is much more dangerous to world wide publication
than used-with-permission is.

And, sadly, it seems that Jimbo's fatwah against UWP has
increased the number of far-fetched rationalizations for
fair use on Wikipedia.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: David Gerard

body:
> > Marmot is a user wrongfully banned from Wikipedia for the "crime" of
> > dissenting and pointing out when Admins were abusing their powers.

User:MARMOT was originally blocked for sockpuppet abuse, particularly on a
RFA. (He successfully fouled up Weyes' RFA and started impersonating admins
and arbitrators on the revote.) It appears he acted such a dick that he's
stayed blocked. This is not by decree, particularly not mine. If any of the
500-odd admins feel this block of MARMOT is unwarranted, they are free to
unblock him. None of them have. This is either (a) massive corruption or
(b) he really was *that much of a dick*. Of course, it could have been
both.

- d.


body:
>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>
>On 7/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction
> > >is less harmful than action.
> >
> > Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with
>the
> > existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to take care of admin
>duties.
>
>There are many axis to consider harm.
>For example, after making 2000+ edits, failing to abuse procedure, no
>vandalism, etc.. A user goes up for adminship and is denied. We have
>500 admins, why not one more?
>*Most* people would feel hurt by that.

Can we deal with one specific case here?

>Obviously we can't just make everyone admins because their feelings
>would be hurt otherwise... but I think that in cases where a user is
>likely to abuse the tools after they've been around long enough for 2k
>edits that it is abundantly clear. In these cases we see unanimous or
>near unanimous opposition.

In many cases, I've seen rather mixed reviews, with significant numbers on
both sides, and those who oppose (often on purely policy related concerns)
being treated rather harshly by supporters.

>In other cases, I think we should give the user a chance to prove
>themselves as an admin. That the risk of a vandal becoming an admin is
>infinitesimal at that point, and the the risk of bruising a valuable
>editors ego is more important.

They have a chance to prove themselves as an editor, and again, I see a
bizarre imbalance here.  We rarely show this much concern about bruising the
egos of valuable admins, who have *already proved themselves*; instead, we
accept with equanimity baseless accusations of "abuse" and cliques", or bend
over backwards tut-tutting about admins possibly slipping from impossibly
high standards at one point or another.  But let one controversial "valuable
editor"'s ego become bruised because they *weren't* accepted as an admin,
and suddenly we have a HUGE problem which must be fixed by overturning all
the rules by which and admin is created, and letting everyone become an
admin.

> > Exactly.  And the people who are denied adminship are generally either
>not
> > longterm or not trustworthy.  Of course there will be exceptions to
>this,
> > but these are few and far between.  If we radically re-vamp existing
> > processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection,
>we
> > are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect, none will ever be, and the
> > likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.
>
>I think the people which are unilatterly or near unilaterly denied
>adminship are potentially not trustworthy. Many of the no consensus
>users eventually become admins on the second go around, they aren't
>different people... Usually they just used the time to get to know a
>few more admins to help their support base.  That isn't a bad thing,
>but it isn't how we should decide adminship. How much good will did we
>lose from them by denying them once?

No, they don't get to know a few more admins; rather, they make a quite a
few more edits demonstrating their trustworthiness, or even improve their
editing ways, removing previous objections.

>Like I said above, I think you are measuring error incorrectly. Our
>current adminship probably detects all vandals, but it also
>misidentifies many good potential admins.

Again, this is just an opinion.  With any screening system there is a risk
of false positives; I argue that the the number of "good potential admins"
who are screened out are small, as opposed to the suggested new system,
where huge numbers of negatives will come flooding in.

>To make a more clear example:  If the security at the airport simply
>shot all the passengers we would successfully stop all hijackers
>pretending to be passengers.

Um, maybe that's clear, but it's not a relevant analogy.  A more relevant
one would be that you are suggesting that we shouldn't subject airplane
passengers to security checks at all, because the vast majority of people
screened are not hijackers at all, and we risk bruising all their egos.

> > i.e. There was no consensus.
>
>Yes. It appeared that you understood the point my message started
>with, that I think that we should accept in the case of no consensus
>not reject. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point out that there
>was no consensus when that's what I'm obviously talking about.

Consensus is required for change; that's pretty standard in Wikipedia.

>As you point out, many of the no consensus people become admins
>eventually (the long term trend appears to be all of them).  These are
>perfect examples of where the system has failed once, but worked on
>the second pass.

No it's a perfect example of the system working; the people do whatever is
required to gain trust, and in so doing become more trustworthy.

>How much good will did that first rejection cause us?

How many positive changes to editing patterns did it engender in those
candidates who were rejected?

>(Clearly if they eventually pass it they are a
>trustworthy contributor, so that the process failed them the first
>time is not a success).

Nothing clear about that at all; more likely they cleaned up their act.

>I do not believe
>you have demonstrated how it will harm our goal of making an
>encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus
>opposition.

I belive I have demonstrated the *potential* for huge harm.  And I do not
believe you have demonstrated how it will help our goal of making an
encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus opposition.
  In fact, the arguments I hear are all about philosophy and feelings, not
about how article content will improve.

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and U.S. specific laws (was Non-free images
	etc.)

body:
On 7/4/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > The goal of the project is not to produce an encyclopedia with content
> > that is free for some people for some uses.
>
> But that's exactly what's happening as long as
> all the focus is on U.S. laws. Fair use won't
> protect you if you're publishing Wikipedia derived
> content in Denmark. Nor will Bridgeman v. Corel.
>
> Recently a picture of the Lindisfarne Gospels
> taken from the British Library website became
> a featured picture even though the BL explicitly
> claims copyright on it and that claim may well
> hold up in a British court.

Well I can't speak for others.
In general I believe we should never feature a picture not produced by
a Wikipedian. The behind featuring works is to show the best we have
to offer, not the best we've found someplace else and are
redistributing. :)

> > Well, the policy of Wikipedia disagrees with you,
> > and has for a fairly long time.
> I know. And I will abide by it. But I will also argue
> that it should be changed.

I too would like to see some changes. For example putting the onus on
those who claim fair use to demonstrate why there is no possible way a
free image would work in the place of the fair use image.
> Fair enough. I'm sure this is a stressful job
> and I applaud you for doing it.

I've only done a little, there are others who deserve the real credit.
In any case, it is sometimes streesful work, but it is good work.

> > As I said, if the images are not tagged it is impossible short of
> > having someone read all of the image texts and removing a lot of
> > images that are free but left untagged.
>
> Agreed. But if we properly tag everything the
> technical problem is a minor one.

Of course if we don't put the teeth of deletion behind incorrect
tagging we won't get much of it tagged.

> I don't want to exclude stupid mirrors or anyone else.
> If a neo-nazi wants to publish Wikipedia content modified
> to a nazi POV that's fine with me as long as she respects
> the GFDL.

Heil-Jimbo! er. nevermind.

> But I hope you'll agree that we have a visibility problem
> here. We're losing the excellent Eastern Yellow Robin.jpg
> because its author won't release it for use outside of
> Wikipedia, due to concern about stupid commercial mirroring.

We'll lose out on some great images, but in the long term it is
perhaps the uncooperative author who will lose out: We will eventually
produce or obtain an equal or better under more free terms...

Just visit a site like dpreview and look at the pictures people post
in the forums (esp the higher end camera forums)... Some of the bird
photographs are stunning... and even if only one tenth of 1% of all
photographers in the world would be willing to agree to release their
work under the GFDL or CC-BY they will eventually fill our needs in
all areas of replacable images.

> We should by all means try to highlight the positive reuse
> that the GFDL allows.

Agreed there. I think the biggest freedom that free licenses provide
is a freedom from worry. By permitting so many uses people do not need
to worry that their use will be wrong. This means that people will
have the freedom to use the content without worrying that clearing the
copyright will be more trouble than it is worth.

>
> > With permission isn't a lame excuse, it's a good one.. but it's still
> > not one we can always accept.
>
> I'm arguing that in many cases it is
> no worse an excuse than the U.S.-specific
> legal niceties currently tolerated.

With this I agree, but I think we disagree on the solution. I think we
should discourage fair use images as well where possible and that
after the nosource and with permission images have been cleaned up we
should start evaluating free use images and replacing them as well.

However, it is fundimentally impossible to well cover some subjects
without using a copyrighted work: for example if the subject is a
copyrighted painting it may be nessassary to take from that painting
to discuss it. This is the use fair use was intended to protect, and
this use is effectively protected in most nations if not by law then
by common sense.

I don't think we can make the same argument that some with permission
images are attached to subjects where there can be no free
replacement. If there are indeed some cases I promise that it is far
more rare than the correct use of fair use.


from_name: Guaka

body:
> In spoken language, I would most likely not really be able to
> understand that, but in written language I can read it with not much
> trouble at all. Certainly, nearly all the words are spelt differently
> than I would spell their English counterparts, but it's obvious which
> words they're cognate to. I certainly wouldn't say it's "difficult"
> for me to read either.

So why do we have a Scots Wikipedia? Or maybe we should get rid of the
English Wikipedia and convert everything into Scots.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Mark Ryan wrote:

>I entirely sympathise. Personally, I don't see why we have to run
>around deleting images with non-free licences from Wikipedia when we
>have Commons for the fully free licences. What is the reasoning behind
>removing all of these images? Apparently my user page image is going
>to be deleted because I refuse to release it under a free licence (as
>opposed to used with permission).
>
>
Non-free images are goind to be deleted because
* Wikipedia as a whole can not be reused if it contains non-free images
* it increases pressure to get free alternative images, where possible
* Jimbo said so :-)

Magnus
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from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship

body:
>From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
>
> > Well, that's not really accurate, but most blocked users can no longer
>us a
> > different Userid to avoid the block, precisely because Wikipedia blocks
>the
> > IP address when attempts are made to do this.  That wasn't the case
>before
> > the IP blocker was added.
>
>I'm talking about the same logged-in user.

I'm talking about the same user, using a different login, or no login.
That's what the system was designed to prevent.

> > >How so? A blocked user CANNOT edit.  If you already have absolute
>protection, then you don't need any more. Surely this is plain common
>sense.
>
> > If only that were the case.  In practice, blocked editors edit all the
>time;
> > this simply stops the ones with fixed IP addresses from editing with
> > sockpuppets.
>
>No it doesn't. In such a case they CANNOT edit. The system stops them.

Um, that's right, they can't edit.  Why say "No it doesn't" when you mean
"Yes it does."?

>The fact that the block is reset doesn't stop them editing. They can't
>edit anyway.

The block is reset because attempts to avoid blocks (e.g. by creating new
userids and attempting to edit with them, or attempting to edit without
logging in) are violations of the block, and the general rule is that
attempts to violate blocks reset the timer.

>Please address the point.

I have.  You asked what it was for, and what it prevents. I've explained
both.  It works effectively to prevent a certain kind of sockpuppetry.  It
is not completely effective, and may have other side effects.

Jay.