from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject:
[WikiEN-l] 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion references
	Wikipedia

body:
In an opinion (which I'm having a lot of fun reading) by a three-judge
panel of the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit]]
striking down the use of mass metal-detector searches at protests, Judge
Tjoflat referenced [[Homeland Security Advisory System]].

http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200216886.pdf

 From page 16:

"Although the threat level was 'elevated' at the time of the protest,
'[t]o date, the threat level has stood at yellow (elevated) for the
majority of its time in existence. It has been raised to orange (high)
six times.' Wikipedia, Homeland Security Advisory System, available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
(last referenced Aug. 16, 2004)."


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: case sense on links for czech wiktionary

body:
Nefercheprure Waenre wrote:
> Could please anybody sufficiently privileged make the Czech Wiktionary
> fully case sensitive? I.e. to add:
> $wgCapitalLinks = false;
> to LocalSettings.php ?
>
> It was discussed on the wiktionary itself and gained a wide acceptance.
> (23% of registered users were in favor, the rest is inactive (ca 40-60%) or
> unopposing (the rest))
>
> Furthermore there was no opposition to the switch on wiktionary-l where I have
> been advised to ask.
>
> Therefore I reckon the claim be well supported.
>
> --TMA (sysop on wikt:cs:) http://cs.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikipedista:TMA

Hello,

http://cs.wiktionary.org/ is now case sensitive.

Ex:
http://cs.wiktionary.org/wiki/jen%C5%BE
http://cs.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jen%C5%BE

Are both different articles now :o)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Administrator Abuse

body:
Okay, okay, I was wrong on both counts. Mea culpa.
I didn't mean to say that being a female makes a difference -- that bit
was in relation to the way Ute was addressed (but Ute has since replied
and clarified that he is male). The age thing is something that I tried
to note but that's still unclear and others have made valid points
about not giving younger contributors free reign, so I rest my case. It
was just a flip thought anyway.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 16 Oct 2004, at 12:37, Anthere wrote:

>
>
> Jens Ropers a ?crit:
>> Based on the name and conduct, I dare say Ute is probably female and
>> (possibly quite) young.
>> Maybe that could be asked about and/or taken into account?
>> Just a thought.
>> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>
>
> Why being a female should exactly make a difference ?
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kiss All

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How to change license and language after
	installation?

body:
Thanks a lot!

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:34:16 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Oct 16, 2004, at 7:18 AM, Kiss All wrote:
> > Hi,all
> > Originally, I just chosed the license of our internal medawiki as
> > GFDL. But our group memebers don't think it is proper for the actual
> > content.
> > Could anybody tell me how to change it?
>
> Edit LocalSettings.php and change the license settings. (Set them all
> to "" to leave it vague and unspecified; you can clarify in MediaWiki:
> messages or help pages if you like.)
>
> > I also installed mediawiki 1.3.5 on my personal machine with chinese
> > language option. But the help link is linking to english wikipedia
> > site's bad title page. I don't want to hack the sidebar and only want
> > to switch to english. How can I do this?
>
> Edit LocalSettings.php and change $wgLanguageCode. You'll also need to
> rebuild the MediaWiki: pages from the English language file, use the
> 'rebuildMessages.php' script in maintenance/. This needs to be run from
> the command line, and you should make an AdminSettings.php first (see
> AdminSettings.sample).
>
> IMPORTANT NOTE: if rebuildMessages.php seems to "hang" with no output,
> type the number "2" and hit "enter". On some PHP configurations there
> seems to be an output buffering problem, and so the prompt doesn't
> appear before it sits there waiting for input. The prompt looks
> something like this:
>
> Current namespace size: 1739
> 1. Update messages to include latest additions to Language.php
> 2. Delete all messages and reinitialise namespace
> 3. Quit
>
> Please enter a number:
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>

--
Be good....


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Goings on reminder

body:
As a reminder, the meta main page proposes now a list of hot topic :
check out http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Also : the goings on have been refactored : please check out
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on

When you add news here; please try to be specific, so as to avoid
readers to have to go to the page so as to understand what the topic is
about. Provide a couple of lines to introduce the topic.

Also, just simply REMEMBER to add news there please.

-------

While we are thinking of providing the world with news, let us think of
also sharing information within our project first.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Goings on reminder


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Report from the Wikimedia Foundation Meeting,
	9 October 2004

body:
A report from the last board meeting has now been published on the
Foundation wiki at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_9%2C_2004 and is
included below.

Please use http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Board_meetings
if you would like to give feedback on this report, or
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_agenda if there is anything
you would like raised at future meetings.

Board meeting, including the Chief Financial Officer,
#board.wikimedia, 9 October, 2004

Present: Angela Beesley, Michael Davis, Daniel Mayer, Florence
Nibart-Devouard, Tim Shell, Jimmy Wales.

The agenda for the meeting was published at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Board_agenda

Contents:

1 Financial report
2 Hardware budget
3 Bandwidth and hosting fees
4 Domain names
5 Travel expenses
6 Other costs
7 Donors
8 Merchandise
9 Convention 2005
10 Membership
11 Other matters arising
12 Date of next meeting

1 Financial report

    * Wikimedia raised close to US$60,000 in the fundraising drive.
There is $47,675.54 USD in the PayPal account, $25k in the bank, and
?10,000 due from Ars Electronica, making approximately $85 overall.
Quarterly fundraising drives are planned.

2 Hardware budget

    * Daniel presented a draft hardware budget at meta:Wikimedia
budget/Q4 Hardware and asked for policy direction on this.

    * Daniel projected 85 percent growth by the end of the quarter,
thereby requiring $45,000 to be spent on hardware in this period.
Florence noted that the sites are still at the stage where one server
failing can have a large impact on speed. It was proposed that the
developers be given the choice to order what they need within the
constraints on the budget total. Tim Starling will be asked to report
on the proposed budget at the next meeting. A total hardware budget of
$50,000 was approved.

3 Bandwidth and hosting fees

    * The Foundation has recently signed a bandwidth contract for
40Mbs, doubled from the previous 20Mbs commitment. Current activity
suggests this may need to be increased again within this quarter, and
at this point Jimmy would no longer maintain the 50% donation he
currently pledges. Approaching the colo about donating bandwidth in
exchange for a banner was felt to be unnecessary since the Foundation
has received hosting offers which will soon allow us to divert
bandwidth seamlessly. It was agreed that $20,000 should be budgeted
for bandwidth and hosting for this quarter.

4 Domain names

    * Jason Richey is preparing a comprehensive report regarding
domain names, which will be discussed in more detail at the next
meeting. Jimmy noted briefly that the Foundation is paid up with
current domains. The Netherlands domain name is owned by Wikimedia
technically but the legal transfer can not take place for some more
days. Jason will be asked to inquire about this.

5 Travel expenses

    * Agreed upon travel costs for this quarter were $3,000 for Jimmy,
and $1,000 each for Angela and Florence. These amounts are maximums,
and any unused money would remain in the general Wikimedia fund. The
Foundation will be sharing the cost of Tim Starling and Brion Vibber
attending the MediaWiki developers' conference in Berlin in December
with Wikimedia Germany. Travel for the conference will cost $2600.
Conference tickets may also need to be paid for. It was agreed that
outside of the developer conference, the Foundation ought to be
conservative about travel expenses.

6 Other costs

    * Jimmy and Michael are to investigate and report back on
insurance costs, including liability insurance.

    * $500 will be budgeted for an accountant at the end of the year.

7 Donors

    * Letter of thanks will be sent to all donors above some threshold
at the end of this year, with consideration will be given to the fact
that we can not solicit donations outside of Florida.

    * Daniel will explore the possibility of sending emails
acknowledging all donations made with PayPal.

    * Jimmy will add the details of the hardware donation September
2004 to the benefactors page on the Foundation website.

    * Angela asked for feedback regarding the proposed scales at
Talk:Benefactors to be given following the meeting.

8 Merchandise

    * Whether or not a printed newsletter should be funded by the
Foundation was discussed. Florence agreed to publicise the
meta:newsletter poll more widely in order to gain additional feedback
on this. There was no opposition to printing locally on a small scale
but mass printing was not felt to be a viable option.

    * For small ventures, such as the printing of flyers for an event,
approval of the entire Board was not deemed to be necessary.

    * A report from the existing wikishop (http://shop.wikipedia.org/)
should be obtained before decisions are made about the Foundation
embarking on a similar venture.

9 Convention 2005

    * Elian has been working on putting together the committee for
selecting the location of the Wikimedia Convention 2005. This will be
announced on October 10, along with a shortlist of cities. Volunteers
will be asked to present their city to the committee.

10 Membership

    * Membership issues were postponed so that Angela, Florence and
Jimmy could discuss these in detail over the course of the next week.
Their conclusions will be discussed at the next meeting.

11 Other matters arising

    * Tim requested that a public relations committee be added to the
agenda for the next meeting.
    * Angela noted that boilerplate letters for OTRS
(http://ticket.wikimedia.org) were needed and Tim suggested that some
emails being received by the board ought to be going to our PR
department.

12 Date of next meeting

    * Saturday 16, 2004. 22:00 UTC. Tim Starling will be invited to
this meeting.

Angela Beesley, on behalf on Wikimedia.


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

body:
> Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical
> Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?

     WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;
see:

     http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem

What's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

body:
On Oct 16, 2004, at 5:51 PM, Peter Danenberg wrote:
>> Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical
>> Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
>
>      WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;
> see:
>      http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem
>
> What's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?

What would there be a consensus about? It's an extension, not part of
the core distribution.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

references:
<opsfzdvyrbv3cvyb@hause.local>
	<20041017005122.GA5688@localhost.localdomain>
	<AE29C6CE-1FD9-11D9-8B07-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>

body:
> What would there be a consensus about? It's an extension, not part of
> the core distribution.

     Aha; as touches upon the test server, however: should I
petition to get it up in a working environment?

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
regarding NOR policy:

Does NOR mean you cannot edit an article or create an article on a
theory or concept you concieved, even if it is widely accepted or if
you're not even the one who wrote the article?

I had thought that NOR applied only to statistical data and the like.
Does it also apply to any information not to be found anywhere else?

--node

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 06:56:34 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Generally speaking what goes into Wikipedia articles of this nature is just
> material that has been reported in the press. As original research is not
> included much that might be known cannot be included as it is not part of
> the corpus of knowledge.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "Omri Schwarz" <ocschwar at MIT.EDU>
> > Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:07:20 -0400
> > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Articles that might draw fire.
>
>
> >
> > Hi, folks.
> >
> > I and some friends have been discussing the issue of whether 10 years
> > from now it will become important for your average corporate manager
> > not to do anything that might wind up being documented in his company's
> > Wikipedia entry. A brief look through Wikipedia does show articles
> > detailing the controversial actions of some corporations, but not enough
> > to indicate a concerted effort by any corporate history geeks or labor
> > history geeks.
> >
> > Said friends reached the conclusion that the addition of many articles
> > on corporate history and ongoing activities would be a good thing indeed,
> > but a concerted effort to do so would be obnoxious, since it increases the
> > chance of Wikipedia facing disruptive efforts (in the form of legal threats
> > or revert-wars conducted by paid minions). It would be a good thing since
> > a wiki is not time indexed, like any press article, and cannot just be
> > "ridden out." But before any effort is made to write articles on
> > corporate activities, it would be good to come here and ask whether
> > possibly controversial articles are wellcome in Wikipedia, or whether a
> > fork of the project would be a better thing to do.
> >
> > So, what do y'all think?
> >
> > Thanks for your attention,
> >
> > Omri Schwarz
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon wiki

body:
Don't forget, the OE Wiki needs an article on Pokemon... ;)

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 6:48 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon wiki

http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrodulf_readnosa_hrandeor

Need I say more? ;p

Does this mean a Gothic Wikipedia is a possibility, or no...?

--node

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 19:17:51 +0000, modean52 at comcast.net
<modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> The Anglo-Saxon wiki is up (thanks Tim, Angela!).  I was wondering, how do
I go about getting it on the statistics pages, and on the other languages'
links?
>
> We already have 7 users so far!
>
> Thanks,
>
> James
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Stan Shebs

references:
<200410140107.i9E17KXf023831@zygorthian-space-raiders.mit.edu>
	<BD93D3A2.7F78%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<849f98ed04101619044f9412a0@mail.gmail.com>

body:
"No original research" just means don't add anything that's not been
published elsewhere already. Doesn't matter if you're the author or
not, the information just needs to be somewhere where a random WP
editor can go and verify that an article says the same thing as the
source publication. ("Publication" is generally broadly interpreted
to include websites, and there is a ragged edge of dispute as to
whether a random personal website is sufficient.)

Stan

Mark Williamson wrote:

>regarding NOR policy:
>
>Does NOR mean you cannot edit an article or create an article on a
>theory or concept you concieved, even if it is widely accepted or if
>you're not even the one who wrote the article?
>
>I had thought that NOR applied only to statistical data and the like.
>Does it also apply to any information not to be found anywhere else?
>
>--node
>
>On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 06:56:34 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>>Generally speaking what goes into Wikipedia articles of this nature is just
>>material that has been reported in the press. As original research is not
>>included much that might be known cannot be included as it is not part of
>>the corpus of knowledge.
>>
>>Fred
>>
>>
>>>From: "Omri Schwarz" <ocschwar at MIT.EDU>
>>>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:07:20 -0400
>>>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Articles that might draw fire.
>>>
>>
>>>Hi, folks.
>>>
>>>I and some friends have been discussing the issue of whether 10 years
>>>from now it will become important for your average corporate manager
>>>not to do anything that might wind up being documented in his company's
>>>Wikipedia entry. A brief look through Wikipedia does show articles
>>>detailing the controversial actions of some corporations, but not enough
>>>to indicate a concerted effort by any corporate history geeks or labor
>>>history geeks.
>>>
>>>Said friends reached the conclusion that the addition of many articles
>>>on corporate history and ongoing activities would be a good thing indeed,
>>>but a concerted effort to do so would be obnoxious, since it increases the
>>>chance of Wikipedia facing disruptive efforts (in the form of legal threats
>>>or revert-wars conducted by paid minions). It would be a good thing since
>>>a wiki is not time indexed, like any press article, and cannot just be
>>>"ridden out." But before any effort is made to write articles on
>>>corporate activities, it would be good to come here and ask whether
>>>possibly controversial articles are wellcome in Wikipedia, or whether a
>>>fork of the project would be a better thing to do.
>>>
>>>So, what do y'all think?
>>>
>>>Thanks for your attention,
>>>
>>>Omri Schwarz
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> The real issue are data; Only the U.S. has very comprehensive public domin
> spatial data.

The most comprehensive public domain spatial data is probably on the US, but
there is an awful lot of it on the rest of the world too.  I've been working
recently with "VMAP Level 0" data, which is a 1.8 gig collection of
worldwide GIS data at a 1:1,000,000 scale.  Yes, the scale is poor compared
with US data, but it's a good start.  Additionally, if the project was able
to get a little bit of funding, there is a whole bunch more worldwide data
available through the Freedom of Information Act.  All you have to do is pay
the FOIA copying fee for the CDs and the data itself is public domain.

> A separate WikiGIS/WikiMaps project (we own the .com and .org for
> both names) would probably be needed to improve those data and create data
for
> the rest of the world (also serve the result to all Wikimedia projects as
a
> part of Wikimedia Commons). *That* would be fairly unique and difficult to
do,
> since I'm not aware of any such similar project based on the Internet.

I'm strongly in favor of this.  In fact, I've registered wikiteer.org and
have already begun working on it.  I was planning on completing a prototype
before really pushing for support from Wikimedia, but if people are
interested maybe we should get started right away.

> " the whole idea of copyrights on spatial data seem to be absurd to me;
how
> could anybody claim to *own* any exact digital reproduction of the street
> network for Paris or the exact location and shape of the Zaire River? "

While I agree with your sentiment (I don't even think software should be
copyrightable), the digital reproduction is by no means exact.  As such, a
large number of choices have to be made, both in terms of selection and in
terms of how to most accurately reproduce the data.  In this sense it's no
more absurd than a copyright on a digital photo of a paris street.

Anthony


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature to win the win the vandalism battle

body:
On Saturday 16 October 2004 11:23, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> > * once one person validates a version, do others still have the option
> > to validate it as well?  what if a vandal comes, changes a page on her
> > watchlist, and immediately validates it?
>
> don't validate your own edits, simple as that.

it's not that difficult for a vandal to create
any number of user-accounts..

daniel


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Enotif 1.21 for MediaWiki 1.3.6 released

body:
I released the new version of my email notification patch. It is based
on the current version MediaWiki 1.3.6.
(Developers can ask me for the diffs against CVS 1.4, because I have it
ready for 1.4)

1. Full tgz (MW+Enotif)
http://www.tgries.de/mw/enotif/mw136_incl_enotif121.tgz
2. Patches and diffs to previous versions
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454
3. Documentation pages http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif

Changes enotif 1.2 -> 1.21:
* "updated (since my last visit)" markers are only shown for pages after
last visit (ie. watched pages without the marker have known content)
*  number of watching users per page is added in recent changes view

Tom Gries
Berlin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Formal request: Wikinews project

body:
I'm skeptical about how well suited a wiki is to original research.  But I
think it's extremely well suited to news summaries, a la Slashdot.  Since
there isn't really anything out there to do this, I think this will quickly
become a huge success just for the news summaries.  Maybe it'll work for
original news reporting too, I think the current proposals on how to run
things are necessary changes to the wiki model which are necessary for it to
have a chance.

I do have a couple comments though.

"These stories will then undergo systematic review for another period of
time, in which the editors try to find consensus."

I'm not sure it's reasonable to require consensus support for publication.
I'd rather see a requirement that two or three accredited editors support an
article, and they can be named somewhere in the article.  Then, as long as
there isn't a majority of opposition to the article, the article can stay.
In theory there will be many more news articles in Wikinews than there are
encyclopedia articles in Wikipedia.  That's just the nature of news.  I
don't think it's reasonable to expect every news article to be a
collaborative work of all editors.  That's just not scalable.  This is a
fundamental difference between Wikinews and Wikipedia, and it needs to be
addressed.

GFDL

There was talk about the impact Wikinews would have on Wikipedia, and a
comment was made that Wikipedia will naturally copy Wikinews content where
appropriate.  But if Wikinews is GFDL, this isn't as simple as using copy
and paste.  It would be best if Wikinews contributors were asked to give
permission for this from the beginning.  This might take the form of
"contributions made to Wikinews may be included in a derivative GFDL work so
long as that work gives credit to the original author."  Even this becomes
problematic when copying news stories with multiple authors, but it's better
than having to adhere to the details of the GFDL regarding history sections
and title pages etc.

Note that the tempting solution of just using a different license altogether
is probably not a good one, because Wikinews stories will likely benefit
greatly from being able to include introductory text from Wikipedia, even if
that does mean they then have to include a byline and history section
mentioning the Wikipedia author(s).

Copies from VOANews and other PD sources?

One thing I'd like to do in Wikinews is copy some stories from PD sources
such as VOANews.com and edit them.  This doesn't seem to fall under
"summaries from external sources", but I don't think I should be required to
be an accredited editor to do this.  I'd like to see it clarified that this
falls under the types of news stories anonymous editors can create.

Anthony


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews license

body:
> A GNU FDL / cc-by-sa dual licensing scheme could be used for Wikinews...
But
> this would eliminate the option of re-incorporating third party
improvements
> back into Wikinews and would also make it impractical to incorporate
Wikipedia
> content into Wikinews for background content (since in both cases the
third
> party/Wikipedia users would have to agree to dual-license their work). So
what
> we really need is GNU FDL and cc-by-sa compatibility ASAP.

>  -- mav

One advantage we have with Wikinews is that the number of authors and edit
history of a typical Wikinews article is likely to be *much* smaller than a
typical Wikipedia article.  Perhaps a solution could work where all articles
are GFDL (for the sake of allowing a reuser to use a single license), but
individual articles can be dual (tri-, quad-, ...) licensed as determined by
the initial author.

Alternatively, we could just have some standard for contributors to specify
that their content is dual licensed under <<whatever>>, and let reusers sort
out the edit history.  We could specify that edits marked "minor" are
released into the public domain, and if we wanted we could even require
anonymous edits to be public domain.

There's a lot we can do with Wikinews that we can't do with Wikipedia, due
to the nature of the articles as well as historical problems with Wikipedia.
I think we should really think about this before we launch Wikinews.
Hopefully a future version of the GFDL will be much more lenient, but we
can't rely on that.

Anthony


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Image tarball

body:
Andy Rabagliati wrote:
> It will take me a week or so to get a good look at these - but -
> a question for the developers - am I right to only accept files
> matching ./en/[0-9a-f]/../* from the archive ?
>
> Presumably uploads are just hashed into these dirs ?

Yes, that's correct. The directory name is derived from the MD5 hash of
the filename.

> There are a few pics that come with the mediawiki software that I
> would, naturally, leave alone.
>
> In the first (Jun) archive /thumb/* was about 700Meg, and /archive/*
> was similar. There were also a lot of encyclopedia pics in the
> root dir - I threw them all away without noticing anything untoward.

In the real root directory there's symlinks to images in the other
directories, apparently left there to avoid breaking URLs used in an
earlier version of the software. Obviously tar has converted them from
symlinks to duplicates. You can delete them.

> I might run a script over the archive and convert large images
> to ones of the same size but, say, 70% quality. I imagine I
> could easily halve the archive size that way.

Quite likely.

> If there are other regexes that would catch files resized by the
> server I would be very grateful for the hint.

The thumb directory contains all the images resized automatically,
although the ./en/[0-9a-f] directories will contain some duplicate
images resized by hand.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: tic at tictric.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

body:
I realised that there is some ppchtex macros in the tetex distribution of
debian which would allow to generate structural formulas of chemical
compounds.

Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical
Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?

I believe that would be a great feature especially for wikipedia.

thanks
--tic


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews

body:
Is it possible to protect only certain portions of a page, like a person's
picture, etc.?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 11:28 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews

> The second point has to do with liability. If an article contains an
error, but may not be corrected after a week, we will be liable.
> And this time, we wont be able to say "there is a incorrect statement ?
Please, do correct it".
> Putting a correction in an attached page wont do it either. Because other
sites will use our content, and they are not likely to bother go check error
corrections mentionned in another page. This type of "correction" work well
in paper journal. It just is not okay online.

Wouldn't the answer with these things be to have it protected, but
editable by one level of user (be they sysops, bureaucrats, whatever),
who could then correct any urgent errors?

-- ambi
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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff

body:
Wikiversity seems to me like it should be a way to view wikibooks, or a
subdomain within it, like wikikidsbooks or wikisciencefiction would be about
kids books or sci-fi, but that's just me.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 11:40 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff

But if it can't offer those, then I would like to repeat Robin's
question: What would wikiversity offer that wikibooks doesn't? That's
no negativity, that's a legitimate question. Apparently it is NOT
dems, pracs and class discussions. So what is it?

Andre Engels

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:08:42 +1000, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Robin Shannon wrote:
> >fifthly, what would wikiverstiy offer that wikibooks doesnt? i fail to
> >see how a wiki is capable of producing anything that a university
> >offers other than text books (and class notes ect.). How is it going
> >to be able to do dems and pracs, and class discussions?
> >I really want to like the idea of wikiversity, but I'm gonna need some
> >clarifying before ill do that.
> >
> >
> >
> It can't offer pracs and class discussions, the proponents were very
> clear on this. There's no need to be so negative about it.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
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subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff


body:
I can definitely give you at least 10+ people for Anglo-Saxon Wikinews.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Erik Moeller
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 6:13 AM
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Formal request: Wikinews project

Anthere-
> Erik and I discussed all this, and a proposal is to have a solid and
> clear presentation in english, then to have it translated and promoted.
> A poll will follow to clarify opinion of contributors toward that new
> project.

Here's my suggestion:

1) We cut down the Wikinews proposal to five minimal requirements:

   a) that we launch Wikinews in all languages where there are people
      interested in working on it;
   b) that the project goal is to report news in a wide range of
      subject areas from a neutral point of view;
   c) that it will include original reporting on these subjects;
   d) that articles will undergo at least three stages:
      development - publication - archiving;
   e) that, in recognition of the increased responsibility and legal
      liability that comes with original reporting, each Wikinews project
      will try to develop checks and balances to assure that articles are
      fair and accurate at the time of publication.

The specific implementation(s) and possible further requirements will be
worked out through the usual wiki process on the project website once it
is operational.

2) [[m:Wikinews]] will elaborate on these requirements.

3) [[m:Wikinews/Vote]] will list them in short form as above, and ask
users to vote on them (Yes/No).

4) [[m:Wikinews/Implementation proposals]] will be an open space for
exploring possible policies and software changes to satisfy requirements
b)-e) (this will include much of what is currently at [[m:Wikinews]]). The
purpose of this page is to make sure that we have some ideas to build upon
if/when we actually launch the project.

After these pages are finished, we will then invite translators to
translate at least [[m:Wikinews]] and [[m:Wikinews/Vote]]. There will be a
period of 7 days for translations.

After the period for translations is over, there will be a period of 21
days for voting. The vote will be widely publicized.

If, within the first 7 days of voting, there is a 90% level of agreement
or higher, the project can launch immediately. Seeing as this procedure
may well become the standard for future Wikimedia project proposals, I
find it important to minimize bureaucratic overhead for proposals which
have an exceptionally high level of agreement, even if that may not be the
case for Wikinews.

Is this agreeable?

Regards,

Eirk
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Formal request: Wikinews project


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Image tarball

body:
On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:55:00 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> In the real root directory there's symlinks to images in the other
> directories, apparently left there to avoid breaking URLs used in an
> earlier version of the software. Obviously tar has converted them from
> symlinks to duplicates. You can delete them.

Perhaps tar could be told to --exclude these, so they don't take up
everyone's space and bandwidth - from my glance at 'info tar',
something like this might do it:

tar --no-wildcards-match-slash --exclude "*.*"

(I know it looks like "exclude everything", but I'm assuming none of
the directories will have a . in the middle of their names, and that
first argument should be pretty self-explanatory...)

Of course, for all I know, there's stuff in that root that *is* useful
in the tar-ball, in which case the appropriate args may be a lot more
complex.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikinews

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>>"A Wikinews project in a language will be started under two conditions: a)
>>that the language is accepted as one of the Wikimedia project languages, b)
>>that there is at least one person who expresses an interest in working on
>>that language edition."
>
>
>>I wish that this requirement is modified.
>>One person interested is not enough if only for one single reason : if only
>>one person is editor, he will also have to be the one person making all
>>policies, and the one doing the validation and publication. There will be no
>>feedback and no control. No discussion either. This is not a wiki, but a
>>blog. This mean that any pov pusher can ask for a wikinews, announced
>>himself big chief, and go wild.
>
>
> That's a legitimate concern. However, I seem to recall that the "one
> person, get started" policy is what we used for Wikipedia in the past?
> Often it will just be one person who does the work of promoting the
> project initially.

I absolutely agree
The issue I raise here is essentially due to the publication process.

> One person without sysop access can't do anything that other people cannot
> undo. Anything he "publishes" can be edited by anyone else. It's quite
> possible that he won't be able to satisfy the four Wikinews requirements
> without sysop access.
>
> My suggestion would therefore be as follows:
> 1) That there will be no sysops until there are at least 10 genuine
> registered users.
> 2) That the project will not be considered an official Wikinews language
> until it satisfies the requirements defined in the proposal. The
> consequence of this is that it will be listed separately on the Wikinews
> language list, as "work in progress".
>
> I believe this allows individuals or small groups to use their
> wikinews.org domain to promote the project effectively and develop some of
> the required pages, while minimizing the potential for harm to the
> Wikimedia Foundation. Of course any clear abuse would be punished in any
> case.
>
> What do you think about this approach?

That suits me on the principle.

>>The second point has to do with liability. If an article contains an error,
>>but may not be corrected after a week, we will be liable. And this time, we
>>wont be able to say "there is a incorrect statement ? Please, do correct
>>it".
>
>
> I have added the text
>
> "Corrections and updates can still be linked to, but the article text
> itself may not be changed."
>
> to the "archival" stage. Does this address your concerns?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Well, I am not sure of what you mean here.
If the text cannot be changed, then the external media will pick it up
with the mistakes, even though it is mentionned in an external page that
there are some corrections.

An idea, though I agree it requires dev work.
Why would not be technically an article constituted of two parts, one
"not editable" after  a certain number of day, while the other part
stays editable, is visible at the bottom of the page, and contains
correction.

This was, when the page content is copied, the information about the
correction is available.

-----

I must say I wonder over the accredition system, because news need to be
published as quicker as possible. It wont get easy to approve an article
in a very short time.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikinews


from_name: Sj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Objecting to hatespeech is grounds for
	beingbanned? Huh?!

body:
On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:34:54 +0100, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Rebecca wrote
>
> > Sometimes, Charles, I really do wonder if you read people's posts
> > before replying to them.
>
> Not a fair comment. My point is that consistency cannot under current
> conditions be instantly demanded, in the form that if Y is just as bad as X
> etc.  It can be demanded in the longer term in the form of precedents; which
> indeed is something to ask about.

Couched in these terms, and considering the problems caused by
time-lags between decisions (particularly when interrelated), I hope
that precedents will arise for speedily issuing partial decisions
while working on a complete decision.  In this case, for instance, an
initial restriction to editing outside of a particular range of
articles might have preceded decision on a full ban.

I also hope that precedents for harshness of tone and decision are
being consciously made with an eye to future cases.

+sj+


subject: [WikiEN-l] Canada and Massachusetts sites noticing wikibooks/versity

body:
It's nice to see people writing about more than the 'pedia.

The North Adams Transcript covers WP, EvoWiki, and Wikibooks:
  http://www.thetranscript.com/Stories/0,1413,103~9054~2471955,00.html

And does anyone know these Canadian IT Traning people?  They
apparently just started setting up a site, but half of their links are
to Wikimedia projects... and they're obviously waiting for a
wikiversity site to be set up (check their one "Press Release").
  http://www.canadianittraining.com/Main.htm

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tracking Wikipedia growth

body:
Sweet.  I wonder how many metrics-companies like comScore are out there...
Their total pool seems to be 150k internet users.

~sj~

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:29:15 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> For those of you that are interested in this subject, here's a report
> that has Wikipedia as the 4th-fastest-growing website in the US for the
> month of September, in terms of unique visitors.
>
> http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041015/cgf040_1.html

--
+sj+


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom Community Service

body:
The problem with this is that we generally don't punish anyone; we try to
craft a remedy which prevents them from continuing the disruptive behavior
at issue. Giving a "lighter sentence" would mean that rather than fully
preventing the behavior they would continue to have an opportunity to keep
on doing it.

Fred

> From: "Patrick Aiden Hunt" <skyler1534 at comcast.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:49:56 -0400
> To: "'English Wikipedia'" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom Community Service
>
> Perhaps in the
> future ArbCom can be given the option of giving community service in
> exchange for a lighter sentence.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] <chem>

body:
I accidentially deleted the mail about wikiTeX and chemical formulas,
but I saw the page at
    http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem

and all I have to say is
    <aol>me too!!!</aol>

This would be *so* great not only for chem articles, but also for wikibooks.
Can this be made available by default? Please?

Magnus


from_name: Patrick Aiden Hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom Community Service

body:
Thinking about it logically, community service does seem like a viable
option. However, the way it was originally said to be applied was not.

If a person were willing to go through the whole arbitration process
until ruling, I would say there is a good chance they actually do enjoy
Wikipedia and may have some value to the greater good. Perhaps in the
future ArbCom can be given the option of giving community service in
exchange for a lighter sentence.

For example, given: User X is knowledgeable in an area where a minority
of Wikipedians can make substantive contributions, and the user's only
problem is that they tend to get hot under the collar, make personal
attacks, or other anti-social behavior. If this user is willing to do
community service in the area they do well in, then it can be seen as a
sort of "good behavior" and the user's ban will reduced from 4 months to
1 month. If, after one month, the ArbCom can pass a straight vote on
whether or not the user has satisfied their community service, the
user's ban can be lifted. If not, the ArbCom can issue a statement as to
why it has not been satisfied and another vote can be scheduled for the
next month.

This way, a potentially valuable contributor to the community can show
their good faith and think about what they can do in the future to curb
their behavior by carrying out the community service while still
participating in the community.

Obviously, this would not work for all users, but even if it is offered
to all users, any user who is shown to have violated conditions of
community service and the soft ban can have the offer revoked. It will
be good for the community and good for the user if they comply. It would
be something akin to parole. As soon as you violate parole, you are back
in jail. Until then, you can be a productive member of society.

-Skyler1534

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthere [mailto:anthere9 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 6:42 AM

Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 00:55:47 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
>>
>>>One comment :
>>>
>>>1.1) RK is banned from editing Wikipedia for four months. In the time
he
>>>is banned, he will be required to do 'community service' work on
>>>Wikibooks on topics exclusively related to biology.
>>>
>>>Fortunately, this did not pass.
>>
>>Yes, this was a bizarre suggestion.  Perhaps the next suggested remedy
>>will require financial donations in reparation, before restoring a
>>long-time user's editing privileges.
>
>
> Community service is a very valid remedy in the real world. Why not
here? A
> better proposed remedy would have added community service as an option
RK could
> choose instead of a total hard ban.
>
> *That* is just the type of thing that would have been appropriate for
(using
> your own words) somebody who obviously cares a great deal about the
project.
>
> If the only tool you have is a hammer, then all your problems start to
look
> like nails. The ArbCom needs more tools.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I perfectly agree it might be a solution, and a good one for RK to show
his good will. And I definitly support this kind of solution.

But this can only be an option endorsed by RK himself. Not forced on
him.

There is a huge difference between real life and Wikipedia.

We chose to participate and be part of Wikipedia community. We can also
choose not to. And that will be okay.

We did not choose to born, and in most places we have no choice but to
be part of the civil society.


subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

body:
Thank you for your work Peter. It's really cool.
I'll use it.

BTW about you wanting to integrate wikitex permanently into mediawiki.
Since mediawiki is about to become _really_ popular for different wikis it
will be important to keep installation hurdles as low as possible because
when folks install it on rented webspaces with database and php enabled
they still won't be able to use tex or wikitex at all.
And they will start complaining about that stuff not running and you will
have to explain a million times why.

Instead if we can get wikitex from mediawiki cvs server for separate
installation in the extensions folder everybody will be happy. And that's
where math/ too belongs in my opinion (but that's where it is for
historical reasons i suppose).
Installing tex may be not that difficult with most distributions but
dvi2bitmap you gotta compile and it's not trivial (even though it is easy
:-) ) and you need to know where to get which libraries from.
BTW you should write the move from gif to png into your README because
only found the entry in the changelog after heavy grepping :-)

I just wonder why wikitex is not enabled on wikipedia?
I'm shure people are missing it as badly as I was missing it.

--tic

Am Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:51:22 -0700 hat Peter Danenberg
<danenberg at mitdasein.com> geschrieben:

>> Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical
>> Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
>
>
>      WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;
> see:
>
>      http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem
>
> What's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?
>
> --
> Peter Danenberg                                           .
> wikisophia.org                                           ..:
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

references:
<opsfzdvyrbv3cvyb@hause.local>
	<20041017005122.GA5688@localhost.localdomain>
	<opsf0dxnytv3cvyb@hause.local>

body:
Ah yes I forgot to mention.

Now I remember heavy discussions about how easy the syntax of wikimarkup
has to be to be understood by the contributors so as not to scare them of
wikipedia. And it's quit right. It has to be simple because many just
wouldn't have the time or devotion to invest in a steep learning curve.

But for things like math or wikitex this discussion appears a bit
_childish_ (sorry didn't find a better term) for folks who are going to
construct structural formulas or care about feynman diagrams not only
often speak more then one or two languages but are also capable of
handling even more challenging tasks.
So I don't think it of real importance what tags look like.
Also, it might be a cool thing to use curly braces on an english layout
but on a german one it's a real pain in the a.. to type them all the time
and < > are much more convenient.

What I wanted to say: Always look on the bright side of live :-)

--tic

Am Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:57:13 +0200 hat tic at tictric.net <tic at tictric.net>
geschrieben:

> Thank you for your work Peter. It's really cool.
> I'll use it.
>
> BTW about you wanting to integrate wikitex permanently into mediawiki.
> Since mediawiki is about to become _really_ popular for different wikis
> it will be important to keep installation hurdles as low as possible
> because when folks install it on rented webspaces with database and php
> enabled they still won't be able to use tex or wikitex at all.
> And they will start complaining about that stuff not running and you
> will have to explain a million times why.
>
> Instead if we can get wikitex from mediawiki cvs server for separate
> installation in the extensions folder everybody will be happy. And
> that's where math/ too belongs in my opinion (but that's where it is for
> historical reasons i suppose).
> Installing tex may be not that difficult with most distributions but
> dvi2bitmap you gotta compile and it's not trivial (even though it is
> easy :-) ) and you need to know where to get which libraries from.
> BTW you should write the move from gif to png into your README because
> only found the entry in the changelog after heavy grepping :-)
>
> I just wonder why wikitex is not enabled on wikipedia?
> I'm shure people are missing it as badly as I was missing it.
>
> --tic
>
> Am Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:51:22 -0700 hat Peter Danenberg
> <danenberg at mitdasein.com> geschrieben:
>
>>> Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical
>>> Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
>>
>>
>>      WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;
>> see:
>>
>>      http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem
>>
>> What's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?
>>
>> --
>> Peter Danenberg                                           .
>> wikisophia.org                                           ..:
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] FYI wikiversity

body:
Hello,

Just for information: There are currently two german grant applications
underway for wikiversity, one from a Berlin university and one from an
institution in Stuttgart. The Berlin proposal was drafted on Meta-wiki
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversit%C3%A4tSkizze2). Not sure if
we really get them, though.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] FYI wikiversity


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: wikinews and other stuff

body:
Rebecca a ?crit:
> *sigh*
> How many times do I (and any of the other people interested in this
> project) need to say this?
>
> Wikiversity is *not* just about writing textbooks.
>
> -- ambi

It might be that information is not clear enough then.

Honestly, it is not clear in my mind what the difference is. I suppose
it is my fault for not reading enough all mails about both. But still...
it *is* confusing.

Anthere


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion
	references	Wikipedia

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

> In an opinion (which I'm having a lot of fun reading) by a three-judge
> panel of the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh
> Circuit]] striking down the use of mass metal-detector searches at
> protests, Judge Tjoflat referenced [[Homeland Security Advisory System]].
>
> http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200216886.pdf
>
> From page 16:
>
> "Although the threat level was 'elevated' at the time of the protest,
> '[t]o date, the threat level has stood at yellow (elevated) for the
> majority of its time in existence. It has been raised to orange (high)
> six times.' Wikipedia, Homeland Security Advisory System, available at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
>
> (last referenced Aug. 16, 2004)."

Wow.  *That* seems pretty irresponsible on their part.  We're no
authority on the homeland security advisory system, and there's no
guarantee that our statement there is true, and I notice our statement
isn't sourced.  They ought to have cited some primary sources if they're
going to be basing a legal opinion on this.

-Mark


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff

body:
*sigh*
How many times do I (and any of the other people interested in this
project) need to say this?

Wikiversity is *not* just about writing textbooks.

-- ambi

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 23:07:42 +0200, James R. Johnson
<modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Wikiversity seems to me like it should be a way to view wikibooks, or a
> subdomain within it, like wikikidsbooks or wikisciencefiction would be about
> kids books or sci-fi, but that's just me.
>
> James
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
> Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 11:40 AM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff
>
> But if it can't offer those, then I would like to repeat Robin's
> question: What would wikiversity offer that wikibooks doesn't? That's
> no negativity, that's a legitimate question. Apparently it is NOT
> dems, pracs and class discussions. So what is it?
>
> Andre Engels
>
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:08:42 +1000, Tim Starling
> <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> > Robin Shannon wrote:
> > >fifthly, what would wikiverstiy offer that wikibooks doesnt? i fail to
> > >see how a wiki is capable of producing anything that a university
> > >offers other than text books (and class notes ect.). How is it going
> > >to be able to do dems and pracs, and class discussions?
> > >I really want to like the idea of wikiversity, but I'm gonna need some
> > >clarifying before ill do that.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > It can't offer pracs and class discussions, the proponents were very
> > clear on this. There's no need to be so negative about it.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews and other stuff


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.7 released

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

MediaWiki 1.3.7 is a security update, which contains a fix for an
additional cross-site scripting vulnerability discovered during a code
review. All MediaWiki users are strongly urged to upgrade to this
latest release.

(Users already running 1.3.6 need copy in only the updated
DefaultSettings.php and Title.php. Versions before 1.3.6 are vulnerable
to a number of other security bugs, so please upgrade!)

Changes from 1.3.6:
* Fix protected-page related security issue.

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=275934

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.7.tar.gz?download

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFBcw5CwRnhpk1wk44RAjs3AJwJcvnjjLH654zNtguzIkCvXyvKigCeLOe8
LN26AopYLxkAV0BRpWKv8Bs=
=F9jb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Image tarball

body:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 00:52:47 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:55:00 +1000, Tim Starling
> <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > In the real root directory there's symlinks to images in the other
> > directories, apparently left there to avoid breaking URLs used in an
> > earlier version of the software. Obviously tar has converted them from
> > symlinks to duplicates. You can delete them.
>
> Perhaps tar could be told to --exclude these, so they don't take up
> everyone's space and bandwidth - from my glance at 'info tar',
> something like this might do it:
>
> tar --no-wildcards-match-slash --exclude "*.*"

Ahem! Better make that:
 tar -cf $FILE_OUT $IMG_PATH --no-wildcards-match-slash --exclude
"$IMG_PATH/*.*"

[probably ;)]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
I think people are misunderstanding Kelson's proposal here (unless I
am): perhaps the terminology chosen triggered the wrong associations.
As I understand it, what is being suggested is a per-article, per-user
label, recording when that page was last looked at - like a kind of
"bookmark this version" feature.

Some online forums do something similar, keeping track in some way of
where you have read up to ("There are 45 new posts since you last
replied, and 15 since you last viewed this thread"). So this isn't for
''assessing'' articles, it's just to say "this is the version I've
read".

I actually think this is a really useful idea: currently, the
watchlist gives you two links: diff of most recent change, or history
page to manually select a larger slice of the history. If more than
one change has been made since you last looked, you'll miss all but
the last one if you click "diff"; I often end up loading the history
and looking for an edit I know I've already seen, or one I made, and
diffing back to that. With this feature, you could have a third option
"diff to last bookmarked/validated/viewed/whatever", which shows a
cumulative diff comparing the current version to how it was when you
'bookmarked'/'validated'/viewed it.

As you can see, I'm not sure what the least confusing name for this
button would be, but I would certainly like to see it. Alternatively,
of course, we could reset the version every time the user loads the
page, but I think loading doesn't necessarily imply reading, so this
might be a bit annoying. We could, otoh, reset it when the user
*edits* a page: you're unlikely to want to check on edits further back
than your own last change.

> On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:40:52 +0200, Emmanuel Engelhart
> <emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:00:54 +0200
> > Emmanuel Engelhart <emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi
> > >
> > > I propose to add a new feature, to improve our fight again vandalism.
> > > I mean a diff, for watchlist articles, between the current version and the last
> > > read one.
> > >
> > > I need opinion about the feature ?
> > > and about an elegant technical solution too ?
> > >
> >
> > Nobody again... ?
> >
> > Follows my technical proposition:
> > - add a field "wl_validate" (containing an article version id)
> > - add a tab to validate an article (shown only if the article belongs to the user watchlist)
> > - add a link for each modified article in the watchlist to compare the current version with the last validated one.
> >
> > Kelson

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Canada and Massachusetts sites noticing
	wikibooks/versity

body:
Sj wrote:

>It's nice to see people writing about more than the 'pedia.
>
>The North Adams Transcript covers WP, EvoWiki, and Wikibooks:
>  http://www.thetranscript.com/Stories/0,1413,103~9054~2471955,00.html
>
An encouraging site.

>And does anyone know these Canadian IT Traning people?  They
>apparently just started setting up a site, but half of their links are
>to Wikimedia projects... and they're obviously waiting for a
>wikiversity site to be set up (check their one "Press Release").
>  http://www.canadianittraining.com/Main.htm
>
I'm trying to make sense of this.

I'm naturally suspicious of this.  They have too many domain names which
appeared when I looked more closely at the contact information.  They
also have canadianitoverseas.com and educationbeyondboundaries.com which
link back to the same website.

The phone number for the CEO is listed as belonging to one W. Jolly of
Richmond Hill, Ont.  The other phone number appears to be unlisted.

I also followed through the link to their Nova Scotia based Web design
provider.  That gave me another site of theirs at
http://www.cittilearningsystems.com/  That, at least, has a more
substantial page about the courses that they offer, mostly IT and
business related but with none of the courses being described beyond
having a title.  Evolution Learning of Halifax
http://www.evolutionlearning.com/# also seems to be theirs.  The lack of
any personal names to all this is an alert to me.

I suspect something like Vancouver University International that was
dicscussed not long ago.  They may be trying to piggyback on Wikiversity
to build credibility for themselves!!! :-D   So far their track record
is too slim to be meaningful.

Ec


body:
... and they're obviously waiting for a
> wikiversity site to be set up

See, even the Canadians agree with me... ;)

-- ambi


from_name: Marco Muccinelli

subject: [WikiEN-l] OpenFilm: could we do it together???

body:
Hello Wikipedians,
I'm the OpenFilm project coordinator.

OpenFilm is a Open project which aims to create a system like Wikipedia
but for the movies (an open imDB I could say...).

So, as you know the more difficult part isn't to install and project the
DB and the dynamic pages but to create a community!!!

In fact we have thought to you: we would like to link our project to yours
(like a sister project)...is it possible???

Thanks,
the OpenFilm's Staff


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

body:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 18:04:46 +0100
Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think people are misunderstanding Kelson's proposal here (unless I
> am): perhaps the terminology chosen triggered the wrong associations.
> As I understand it, what is being suggested is a per-article, per-user
> label, recording when that page was last looked at - like a kind of
> "bookmark this version" feature.
>
> Some online forums do something similar, keeping track in some way of
> where you have read up to ("There are 45 new posts since you last
> replied, and 15 since you last viewed this thread"). So this isn't for
> ''assessing'' articles, it's just to say "this is the version I've
> read".
>
> I actually think this is a really useful idea: currently, the
> watchlist gives you two links: diff of most recent change, or history
> page to manually select a larger slice of the history. If more than
> one change has been made since you last looked, you'll miss all but
> the last one if you click "diff"; I often end up loading the history
> and looking for an edit I know I've already seen, or one I made, and
> diffing back to that. With this feature, you could have a third option
> "diff to last bookmarked/validated/viewed/whatever", which shows a
> cumulative diff comparing the current version to how it was when you
> 'bookmarked'/'validated'/viewed it.
>

Exactly.

Enotify patch from Thomas Gries should provide this feature or
something like that. So I'm now waiting on the integration of enotify
into the CVS tree.

> As you can see, I'm not sure what the least confusing name for this
> button would be, but I would certainly like to see it. Alternatively,
> of course, we could reset the version every time the user loads the
> page, but I think loading doesn't necessarily imply reading, so this
> might be a bit annoying. We could, otoh, reset it when the user
> *edits* a page: you're unlikely to want to check on edits further back
> than your own last change.
>

Yes, or a new "reviewed" button/tab ...

My opinion is that the "validate" term, as used now, is not
correct. "Vote" would be better for a system which is more a voting
system. If users want to validate some articles, basing on the voting
system results that's an other problem.

But I want to see Enotify integreded, to speak more about the workflow
details.

Emmanuel

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
La tol?rance ne devrait ?tre qu'un ?tat transitoire. Elle doit mener
au respect. Tol?rer c'est offenser.                           Goethe
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Replies from RK about the ban

body:
Ed Poor writes:
> Perhaps I was less than clear. My offer to un-ban you
> was CONDITIONAL on your seeking out my advice and
> following it. My promise was (and still is):
>  * No one who seeks out my help and follows my
>   advice ever comes to harm.
> I have had no messages from you, either in private
e-mail,
> the Wikipedia mailing list, or the Wikipedia website.
> I can't help someone who refuses to communicate.

Just to clarify, I thought that I had communicated with
you, on various occasions, on this very list, and I thought
that I in fact did what you suggested.

As per advice, I got out of edit and revert wars.  I
repeatedly took Wiki-breaks to let things cool down. I have
taken many contentious articles OFF of my Watchlist. I have
asked for and successfully used mediation .

As for a personal e-mail to you alone, I want you to know
that I did try to contact you privately, but I could not.
That is why I used the Wiki-En list.

Jimbo writes:
> Robert, I'm astounded to see you twist the facts
> in this way. 1. First, I never said that you would
> not be banned. Please refer to my actual words:

Jimbo, I never twisted any facts. I simply misunderstood
you.  I'm sorry about that, but this is no reason to get
angry at me!

In any case, only four of the seven self-appointed
arbitrators voted for this ban. Worse, they did so
retroactively on long past events, which seems to be a
violation of your instructions and Wikipedia policy.
Consider the following:

1* I removed myself from most articles with revert wars or
edit wars, and let others do most of the editing in such
cases.

2* I repeatedly took week-long (or longer) Wiki-breaks to
let things cool down.

3* I have taken many contentious articles OFF of my
Watchlist, and simply let others do what they want.

4* I have asked for and successfully used mediation when
necessary.

5* I have shown that I can successfully working with a
large group of others on potentially acrimonious articles,
without revert wars, and with great progress being made on
many articles.

Jimbo, under such circumstances, when has a Wikipedia user
been given more than a week-long ban?

To the best of my knowledge, no-one has received more than
a week-long ban under such circumstances.  As such, isn't
it clear that this penalty is the end-result of a grudge,
rather than a fair and impartial process?

Ambi (Rebecca) writes:
> What I am suggesting is that he does also have some
> reason to be incensed, for the reasons that
> Sj mentioned. There are many other users who have
> caused as much trouble as RK, but just haven't been
> around as long. Many of those users also lack the
> history of positive contributions, and some do not
> appear to give a damn about the project. Many of these
> are also, as he says, skilful at manipulating the rules.
> Yet, once they get to the ArbCom stage, it'll take a
> couple of months for them to be even put on probation.

Thank you for pointing this out.  Over the last few months
many of us here wrote that Wikipedia adminstrators
repeatedly allow attacks and edit wars on a constant basis.
 It seems clear that some people pick-and-choose based on
personal grudges who they will ban, and for how long.  This
is not how Wikipedia worked under Jimbo Wale's and Larry
Sanger's leadership, or how it worked when the first admis
started a while back.  In practice, banning people has
often become a matter of personal animosity and politics.

The result of any process is never valid when it is not
applied fairly and consistently. That is considered a
matter of law in the US and most liberal democracies
nations. In fact, in most liberal democracies verdicts are
routinely overturned in such situations.

Robert (RK)

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from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Robert stated for the record:

> In any case, only four of the seven self-appointed
> arbitrators voted for this ban.

/Self/-appointed?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Community service as an option

body:
Anthere writes:
> I perfectly agree it might be a solution, and a
> good one for RK to show his good will. And I
> definitly support this kind of solution. But this
> can only be an option endorsed by RK himself.
> Not forced on him. There is a huge difference between
> real life and Wikipedia. We chose to participate
> and be part of Wikipedia community. We can also
> choose not to. And that will be okay.

Interesting idea.  Here are my thoughts:

(A) Even if it helped me or someone else out, I wouldn't
want to "force" anyone to edit certain types of articles as
community service.  However, we do not and cannot force
anyone to do anything. Everything here is volunteer work,
thus my concern vanishes in practical terms.

(B) It seems counter-intutive to suggest this for a
volunteer project.  However, there is a practical way to
make this work:  Wikipedia has several lists of articles
that are orphaned, that are stubs, or that don't exist -
yet are requested.  Few people take the time to work on
them.  Thus. Wikipedia community service could this take
the form of working on orphans, stubs and requests (and/or
articles of a similar nature.

Given the above, I endorse Anthere's option.

(As someone else here mentioned, when all you have is a
hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail.  If Wikipedia
had a few more tools, people wouldn't be forced to use the
same solution for every situation.  If people wanted
nothing but a hammer, they will have self-limited what they
can build by their own restrictive choice.)

Robert (RK)

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Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
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body:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:25:42 +0200, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I know you have mentioned my validation feature, but perhaps you didn't
> realize that is, among other things, does *exactly* all that. It even
> has a "validate" tab. It doesn't do the "last viewed" thing, though.

Sorry, but I'm lost: which bits does and doesn't your system do? I had
thought (without delving far into it) that yours was a 'global'
validation feature: a way of the community communicating to each other
their opinion of the quality of an article. Whereas the feature
proposed here was an *individual* validation feature, to say "I have
read this version" and then be told "this is what's changed since the
version you read".

It seems something similar to the latter is bundled in with the
'eNotif' system, but I'm just confused at what "... does *exactly* all
that ... doesn't do the "last viewed" thing ..." was referring to - it
seems a bit of a contradiction.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Victor Fariña

body:
Why mediwiki developers dont include this excelent patch on mediwiki
distribution ???
I think its a nice feature ...

Thomas Gries wrote:

> I released the new version of my email notification patch. It is based
> on the current version MediaWiki 1.3.6.
> (Developers can ask me for the diffs against CVS 1.4, because I have
> it ready for 1.4)
>
> 1. Full tgz (MW+Enotif)
> http://www.tgries.de/mw/enotif/mw136_incl_enotif121.tgz
> 2. Patches and diffs to previous versions
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454
> 3. Documentation pages http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif
>
> Changes enotif 1.2 -> 1.21:
> * "updated (since my last visit)" markers are only shown for pages
> after last visit (ie. watched pages without the marker have known
> content)
> *  number of watching users per page is added in recent changes view
>
> Tom Gries
> Berlin
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
Problems with Windows - Reboot.
Problems with Linux   - Be root.

Vic (aKa CoffMan)
vic at wickle.com


body:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:07:02 +0200
Victor Fari?a <vic at wickle.com> wrote:

> Why mediwiki developers dont include this excelent patch on mediwiki
> distribution ???
> I think its a nice feature ...
>

Will be done in the next days...
Be patient.

Emmanuel

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'experience a fait remarquer que, dans les pays ou les peines sont
douces, l'esprit du citoyen en est frapp?, comme il l'est ailleurs
par les grandes.     Montesquieu, "de l'esprit des lois" livre VI/XII
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31


body:
I know you have mentioned my validation feature, but perhaps you didn't
realize that is, among other things, does *exactly* all that. It even
has a "validate" tab. It doesn't do the "last viewed" thing, though.

Magnus

Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:

>On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 18:04:46 +0100
>Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I think people are misunderstanding Kelson's proposal here (unless I
>>am): perhaps the terminology chosen triggered the wrong associations.
>>As I understand it, what is being suggested is a per-article, per-user
>>label, recording when that page was last looked at - like a kind of
>>"bookmark this version" feature.
>>
>>Some online forums do something similar, keeping track in some way of
>>where you have read up to ("There are 45 new posts since you last
>>replied, and 15 since you last viewed this thread"). So this isn't for
>>''assessing'' articles, it's just to say "this is the version I've
>>read".
>>
>>I actually think this is a really useful idea: currently, the
>>watchlist gives you two links: diff of most recent change, or history
>>page to manually select a larger slice of the history. If more than
>>one change has been made since you last looked, you'll miss all but
>>the last one if you click "diff"; I often end up loading the history
>>and looking for an edit I know I've already seen, or one I made, and
>>diffing back to that. With this feature, you could have a third option
>>"diff to last bookmarked/validated/viewed/whatever", which shows a
>>cumulative diff comparing the current version to how it was when you
>>'bookmarked'/'validated'/viewed it.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Exactly.
>
>Enotify patch from Thomas Gries should provide this feature or
>something like that. So I'm now waiting on the integration of enotify
>into the CVS tree.
>
>
>
>>As you can see, I'm not sure what the least confusing name for this
>>button would be, but I would certainly like to see it. Alternatively,
>>of course, we could reset the version every time the user loads the
>>page, but I think loading doesn't necessarily imply reading, so this
>>might be a bit annoying. We could, otoh, reset it when the user
>>*edits* a page: you're unlikely to want to check on edits further back
>>than your own last change.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Yes, or a new "reviewed" button/tab ...
>
>My opinion is that the "validate" term, as used now, is not
>correct. "Vote" would be better for a system which is more a voting
>system. If users want to validate some articles, basing on the voting
>system results that's an other problem.
>
>But I want to see Enotify integreded, to speak more about the workflow
>details.
>
>Emmanuel
>
>
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion references
	Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
>> In an opinion (which I'm having a lot of fun reading) by a
>> three-judge panel of the [[United States Court of Appeals for the
>> Eleventh Circuit]] striking down the use of mass metal-detector
>> searches at protests, Judge Tjoflat referenced [[Homeland Security
>> Advisory System]].
>>
>> http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200216886.pdf
>>
>> From page 16:
>>
>> "Although the threat level was 'elevated' at the time of the protest,
>> '[t]o date, the threat level has stood at yellow (elevated) for the
>> majority of its time in existence. It has been raised to orange
>> (high) six times.' Wikipedia, Homeland Security Advisory System,
>> available at
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
>>
>> (last referenced Aug. 16, 2004)."
>
> Wow.  *That* seems pretty irresponsible on their part.  We're no
> authority on the homeland security advisory system, and there's no
> guarantee that our statement there is true, and I notice our statement
> isn't sourced.  They ought to have cited some primary sources if
> they're going to be basing a legal opinion on this.

Really it's not that much more irresponsible than an appellate court
engaging in fact-finding in the first place, which in the US system at
least is theoretically the job of the trial court. Anyway, I suspect the
reason they used Wikipedia is not so much because we're the definitive
source, but simply that we provide the handiest summary of the points
the court wanted to mention, and we're reliable _enough_. In other
words, just the sort of thing people turn to encyclopedias for.

--Michael Snow


body:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:25:42 +0200
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> I know you have mentioned my validation feature, but perhaps you didn't
> realize that is, among other things, does *exactly* all that. It even
> has a "validate" tab. It doesn't do the "last viewed" thing, though.
>

It's right, I apologize, a user validates an article version, not just
an article.

Emmanuel

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sit?t que les hommes sont en soci?t?, ils perdent le sentiment de
leur faiblesse ; l'?galit? qui ?tait en eux cesse, et l'?tat de
guerre commence.      Montesquieu, "de l'esprit des lois" livre I/III
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Really it's not that much more irresponsible than an appellate court
> engaging in fact-finding in the first place, which in the US system at
> least is theoretically the job of the trial court. Anyway, I suspect the
> reason they used Wikipedia is not so much because we're the definitive
> source, but simply that we provide the handiest summary of the points
> the court wanted to mention, and we're reliable _enough_. In other
> words, just the sort of thing people turn to encyclopedias for.

An added bonus is that the citing judge could tweak the Wikipedia entry prior
to publishing his opinion so that the material more closely supports the logic
of his decision. ;)

-- mav

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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>Really it's not that much more irresponsible than an appellate court
>>engaging in fact-finding in the first place, which in the US system at
>>least is theoretically the job of the trial court. Anyway, I suspect the
>>reason they used Wikipedia is not so much because we're the definitive
>>source, but simply that we provide the handiest summary of the points
>>the court wanted to mention, and we're reliable _enough_. In other
>>words, just the sort of thing people turn to encyclopedias for.
>>
>
>An added bonus is that the citing judge could tweak the Wikipedia entry prior
>to publishing his opinion so that the material more closely supports the logic
>of his decision. ;)
>
Even better, if people revert, the judge could find them in
contempt of court! Just think, real-life jail for edit warriors!

:-)

Stan


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglo-Saxon wiki

body:
...which in some respects is probably better than editing on en: or de:.

As far as human resources, one person at least has expressed a desire
to create it, and on GOTHIC-L, I asked and got quite a few supportive
responses.

And regarding dark ages on pedias: Can somebody make me a sysop on sa:
even though I speak none? There are some tasks it needs done now
rather than later. For example, most of its 1000-plus pages are former
redirects with {{delete}} on them, or are 100% in English, or are just
collections of links to other pages. Since I don't know Sanskrit, I
can't tell if pages like their page on Oman is actually in Sanskrit or
not, so I'd leave it alone for somebody else to handle in the future.

--node

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:46:15 -0400, Henry H. Tan-Tenn
<share2002nov at lomaji.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson ti 2004/10/16 ChS 12:47 sia-kong:
> > http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrodulf_readnosa_hrandeor
> >
> > Need I say more? ;p
> >
> > Does this mean a Gothic Wikipedia is a possibility, or no...?
>
> I think it'd always remain a possibility.  Developer-resource not
> withstanding, it ultimately comes down to the human resources that can
> be mobilized toward a pedia (i.e. number of active editors).  The
> experience of editing small (well, okay, tiny) Wikipedias can be very
> different from editing en: or de: -- a bit like living in a village
> where you know everyone (and don't necessarily like half of them).  Once
> the novelty has pretty much worn off, much of the motivation has to be
> internally-generated.  Unavailability of a few key editors for any
> reason can suddenly plunge the pedia into the Dark Ages.  On the
> brighter side, a Stubpedia (assuming it's not on the vfd Death Row) is
> also a bit like Asimov's The Foundation: it's a stepping stone toward
> Better Things.
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ArbCom Community Service

body:
Well, they do have the choice of just leaving Wikipedia... which is how
I saw numerous decisions ended... that's what I was referring to...

-Skyler

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthere [mailto:anthere9 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 7:46 PM

Patrick Aiden Hunt a ?crit:
> Thinking about it logically, community service does seem like a viable
> option. However, the way it was originally said to be applied was not.
>
> If a person were willing to go through the whole arbitration process
> until ruling, I would say there is a good chance they actually do
enjoy
> Wikipedia and may have some value to the greater good. Perhaps in the
> future ArbCom can be given the option of giving community service in
> exchange for a lighter sentence.

Errrr. I think you are making a mistake on a point Patrick.
Those who go through the whole arbitration process are not necessarily
willing... I would even dare saying they usually are not.

They just do not have any choice.

For all other points about reducing sentence through good behavior
(community work showing efforts), I absolutely agree with you.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] CVS 1.4 problem - recent changes views does neither
 show User link nor User_talk link

body:
The current CVS 1.4 version in a fresh checkout with a fresh database
has a problem in Skin.php:
recent changes views (standard or enhanced) do not show User link nor
User_talk link.

I analysed, that it could be problem of module makeLink()
Does anyone know, what goes wrong and could please repair it in the CVS ?
Tom


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion references

body:
---Snip---
An added bonus is that the citing judge could tweak the Wikipedia entry prior
to publishing his opinion so that the material more closely supports the logic
of his decision. ;)
---/Snip----

It's always easy to present a good arguement when you can make up the facts
to support it :)

--Mark


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] Editing process

body:
Hi,

Because I noticed some discussion about having some form of peer review and
"wikiflow" in Wikipedia, I thought you would want to know about the solution
to this issue I introduced in my project.

Our solution is described at:

http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Article_versions

and

http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process

In short, there are two editions for each article, a protected one visible to
the websurfer and an editable one in a Test: namespace. Maintainers reviee the
changes and keep the good ones. Admins move the good
edits into the main namespace whenever it is decided to have a new article
version (1.0->1.1->1.2->2.0 et cetera). My solution does not require any
software changes, but I will soon introduce a new mediawiki that will
automate this process. The changes will be opensourced under gpl so you will
be able to import them in your mediawiki if you wish.

I don't know whether this is useful to you but I hope it helps,
--
NSK (Nikolaos S. Karastathis)
Personal page at http://nsk.wikinerds.org/
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
Project Manager of http://maatworks.wikinerds.org


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ArbCom Community Service

body:
Patrick Aiden Hunt a ?crit:
> Thinking about it logically, community service does seem like a viable
> option. However, the way it was originally said to be applied was not.
>
> If a person were willing to go through the whole arbitration process
> until ruling, I would say there is a good chance they actually do enjoy
> Wikipedia and may have some value to the greater good. Perhaps in the
> future ArbCom can be given the option of giving community service in
> exchange for a lighter sentence.

Errrr. I think you are making a mistake on a point Patrick.
Those who go through the whole arbitration process are not necessarily
willing... I would even dare saying they usually are not.

They just do not have any choice.

For all other points about reducing sentence through good behavior
(community work showing efforts), I absolutely agree with you.


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglo-Saxon wiki

body:
Mark Williamson ti 2004/10/16 ChS 12:47 sia-kong:
> http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrodulf_readnosa_hrandeor
>
> Need I say more? ;p
>
> Does this mean a Gothic Wikipedia is a possibility, or no...?

I think it'd always remain a possibility.  Developer-resource not
withstanding, it ultimately comes down to the human resources that can
be mobilized toward a pedia (i.e. number of active editors).  The
experience of editing small (well, okay, tiny) Wikipedias can be very
different from editing en: or de: -- a bit like living in a village
where you know everyone (and don't necessarily like half of them).  Once
the novelty has pretty much worn off, much of the motivation has to be
internally-generated.  Unavailability of a few key editors for any
reason can suddenly plunge the pedia into the Dark Ages.  On the
brighter side, a Stubpedia (assuming it's not on the vfd Death Row) is
also a bit like Asimov's The Foundation: it's a stepping stone toward
Better Things.


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: Projects linking

body:
Incidently, for those convinced of the necessity to link projects,
please, do vote for bug (enhancement) N?708

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org (you need to log in)

Gerard Meijssen a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Hi G?rard.
>>
>>
>>
>> I disagree with you on one point.
>>
>> You say "The fact that dictionary information has no place in
>> Wikipedia is also an established and respected fact."
>>
>> It is not as true as you seem to imply. It is roughly what is done,
>> but it is not so widely established.
>> I think this might be a very cultural issue :-) The french wikipedia
>> long hesitated, and I would say some users
>> still consider the encyclopedia and the dictionary content may be
>> available in one common place.
>> I have personnaly no problem with an encyclopedic article containing
>> some dictionary content, and when I see some
>> I certainly do not remove it.
>> However, I recognise that some dictionary articles have no
>> encyclopedic content, so are not so welcome
>> in the encyclopedia. Hence, it is best that there is a dictionnary :-)
>>
> Maybe I should have said, on nl:wikipedia it is accepted that dictionary
> content has no place. On nl:wikipedia it is a reason to remove stuff.
>
> Thanks,
>    Gerard
> M


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I, for one, will seriously consider community service in the future as an
option.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 19:48:56 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Community service as an option
>
>
> Anthere writes:
>> I perfectly agree it might be a solution, and a
>> good one for RK to show his good will. And I
>> definitly support this kind of solution. But this
>> can only be an option endorsed by RK himself.
>> Not forced on him. There is a huge difference between
>> real life and Wikipedia. We chose to participate
>> and be part of Wikipedia community. We can also
>> choose not to. And that will be okay.
>
>
> Interesting idea.  Here are my thoughts:
>
> (A) Even if it helped me or someone else out, I wouldn't
> want to "force" anyone to edit certain types of articles as
> community service.  However, we do not and cannot force
> anyone to do anything. Everything here is volunteer work,
> thus my concern vanishes in practical terms.
>
>
> (B) It seems counter-intutive to suggest this for a
> volunteer project.  However, there is a practical way to
> make this work:  Wikipedia has several lists of articles
> that are orphaned, that are stubs, or that don't exist -
> yet are requested.  Few people take the time to work on
> them.  Thus. Wikipedia community service could this take
> the form of working on orphans, stubs and requests (and/or
> articles of a similar nature.
>
>
> Given the above, I endorse Anthere's option.
>
>
> (As someone else here mentioned, when all you have is a
> hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail.  If Wikipedia
> had a few more tools, people wouldn't be forced to use the
> same solution for every situation.  If people wanted
> nothing but a hammer, they will have self-limited what they
> can build by their own restrictive choice.)
>
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
> http://vote.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
That's more or less true, Jimbo asked for volunteers then appointed most if
not all who volunteered, but added one that had not volunteered. Two have
now been elected.

Fred

> From: Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org>
> Organization: Boskonia
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 19:41:44 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Replies from RK about the ban
>
> Robert stated for the record:
>
>> In any case, only four of the seven self-appointed
>> arbitrators voted for this ban.
>
> /Self/-appointed?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why didn't you ask for help? (was: Hateful ban)

body:
Jimbo, my offer to un-ban RK unilaterally was only a response to his
expression of concern that he might (as you put it)

* be banned "any moment now, for absolutely no reason at all".

Since I am a computer programmer, I expected that my valiant offer would
be parsed by the usual rules of formal logic. It only applied to a ban
that would be (A) sudden and (B) for no reason.

If I led Robert on, i.e., if he interpreted my offer as some kind of
trump card or "Get Out Of Jail Free Card", then I may have done him a
disservice. But that was not my intention. I was disappointed that he
did not let me know what was happening, and as he never mentioned it
again to me I soon forgot about it.

Ironically, the very day the ban was announced he blithely pounded
another nail into his coffin by insinuating a fellow contributor was a
"Nazi"; I distinctly remembering using HTML strikeout codes to draw his
attention to this error.

I can't help someone who won't listen. But I am convinced that, if RK
had followed my advice, there is NO WAY the arbcom would have banned
him. Because my advice would have been to stop using inflammatory
language in talk pages and edit summaries.

My offer only applied to RK being suddenly, unreasonably banned. It was
not an offer to let him continue a pattern of unchecked provocations. It
was not an offer to subvert the rule of law, but a remedy against what
he complained of: a possible arbitrary ruling which would IGNORE the
rule of law.

Anyway, whether my 'offer' had any influence or not, the upshot is that
the arbcom delivered an airtight decision: one which not even our most
anarchic of contrarians (The Cunctator) has objected to.

I wish Robert well, and I hope that when he returns in mid-February, he
will make more effort to get along with the other contributors.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales [mailto:jwales at wikia.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 1:21 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why didn't you ask for help? (was:
> Hateful ban)
>
>
> Just to inject a bit of legal formalism here, if RK had
> sought and followed Ed's advice, and the arbcom banned him
> anyway, and Ed unblocked him anyway, Ed would be in the
> wrong.  We have worked very hard to put into place the "rule
> of law" as opposed to arbitrary individual bans/unbans, and I
> intend to vigorously defend that.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> > RK,
> >
> > Perhaps I was less than clear. My offer to un-ban you was
> CONDITIONAL
> > on your seeking out my advice and following it. My promise was (and
> > still
> > is):
> >
> > * No one who seeks out my help and follows my advice ever comes to
> > harm.
> >
> > I have had no messages from you, either in private e-mail, the
> > Wikipedia mailing list, or the Wikipedia website. I can't
> help someone
> > who refuses to communicate.
> >
> > Now I must ask you the same question I asked Lir:
> >
> > * What advice of mine did you ever follow?
> >
> > Sadly,
> >
> > Ed Poor


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] <chem>

body:
> Can this be made available by default? Please?

     I'll  do  my  part by uploading it into the /extensions
folder, but I have yet to ascertain who makes  the  decision
to install; Jens, Erik, Tim, Brion, Gabriel, ... ?

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


subject: [Wikitech-l] ppchtex

body:
> Installing tex may be not that difficult with most distributions but
> dvi2bitmap you gotta compile and it's not trivial

Noted;  we're likely migrating to a commoner utility: dvipng
or ImageMagick.  That should eliminate a step.

> BTW you should write the move from gif to png into your README

Good point; it'll be featured prominently  in  the  upcoming
version.

> I just wonder why wikitex is not enabled on wikipedia?

We hope to work that out presently.

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..: