body:
>>  Do we really want to have, at minimum, one footnote per
>> sentence? Unless MediaWiki gets fixed fast and we can have, say,
>> implied metadata for any piece of text in an article, it would be
>> unreadable.
>>
>> That said, it would be nice to eventually have such a system.
>
> Well, to be honest at least one referencing system available on
> wikipedia makes extremely discreet little superscripted numbers which
> don't interrupt readability at all. And theoretically it wouldn't be
> hard to make those numbers disappear or appear with CSS...
>
> Too bad there are at least three separate referencing systems
> currently available, with absolutely no consensus on which is the
> best. At the same time everyone is screaming louder and louder CITE
> YOUR SOURCES!

I think discreet superscripted numbers *would* be annoying if they
appeared after each and every statement of fact. And we'd have 500
cites per article.

That said, I'd prefer a dynamic metadata system so that any arbitrary
piece of text could be matched to a source, the editor who wrote it,
and so forth. But that would be way, way beyond any of the software
we have now in complexity, I think.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

references:
<20060120161554.80281.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<op.s3zwefxar18sbe@mainframe.home.gateway>
	<9C20BB2D-89F6-427A-BA05-9817A6B785C4@philwelch.net>
	<op.s31v3axar18sbe@mainframe.home.gateway>

body:
>> Wouldn't they purge the entire User: namespace anyway? We're not
>> so interesting as for our user pages be republished in an actual
>> encyclopedia.
>
> Yeah, but the images are not stored in the User: namespace.
> Currently there is no way to selectively download images that are
> just used in articles (unless you use a spider to grab content
> instead of the database dumps, wich realy is not a good idea as it
> kills our servers).
>
> Now granted our image dump already contains a *lot* of copyright
> problems (like our 30.000+ untagged images), so orphanded fair use
> parody images from userpages might not be the biggest problem for
> re-users at the moment, but at least we are working toward the goal
> of cleaning up that mess. However if we allowed fair use on user
> pages those would never be cleaned up on our end (unless a better
> image dump system gets developed), meaning we would basicaly force
> reusers to download a bunch of files they can't use and have to
> delete just because some Wikipedia users wanted to have something
> funny on theyr userpage. Personaly I don't think can rely be
> justified.

Perhaps in addition to the Image: namespace, each page could have an
additional image page much like the talk page, where images intended
for use only on that page (i.e. fair use in articles, but also
userpage images) could be uploaded. I have no idea how this would
work with respect to our db and image dumps but it might be a partial
solution.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] German wikipedia to be printed - where's the stable
	version feature?

body:
Magnus, couldn't some feature of the multilingua wiki or namespace
manager be a possibility for this?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki

this allows for innerwikilinks ... so this would allow for "stable
printed version" instead of "language"

Example:
There is one article that is being printed and therefore is stable
(let's talk about Munich)
Then there is one article that is open for editing and further development

So we could have the ordinary article link:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wik/EDITABLE:M?nchen
and the stable version.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wik/STABLE:M?nchen

This would also make sense for a future "new printed edition" because
the stable version can than be substituted by the new and corrected and
proofread and whatever version of the editable version.

The two articles would be linked through "inner-wiki-links" and if there
should one day be more printed wikipedias ... well the stable articles
would then be linked by ordinary interwiki links (unless we will not
have a different way to link articles one day).

well I don't know if this is really feasible, but thinking logic: if it
is possible with language versions .... it should be possible also with
stable and editable versions.

If I did not explain well and things are not clear, please let me know.

So what are your opinions about that?

Ciao, Sabine

Magnus Manske wrote:

>Directmedia, the company who brought us the German Wikipedia on CD and
>DVD, has expanded to print publishing, as can already be seen in form of
>"WikiPress", a topic-specific series of books.
>
>They just announced that they will publish the German Wikipedia *in full
>print*, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in
>October 2006, to end with Z in 2010.
>
>For this, they hired a few people. The plan is for these "editors" to go
>over *the stable version* of each article.
>
>Some of you might have notices a slight problem with this - there is no
>stable version feature in Wikipedia. As usual, we have discussed a lot
>about the stable version (which is good), and AFAIK most people agreed
>that it won't do much harm, .....
>

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
>>worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album
>>covers.
>>
>
>Look at this yummie gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
>
>Especially yummy, if you wanted to prosecute Wikipedia, is the fact that
>the same entity holds the copyright on all of them. Also interesting is
>that the gallery makes no note of this. It contains no critical commentary
>on the images in question and has no claim to be fair use - nor does it
>assert that it is. It's just a web gallery of pretty little copyrighted
>images used without permission of the copyright holder - about as blatant
>a copyright violation as we could arrange if we tried.
>
If it's such an awful violation, then why not send a letter to
Nintendo and/or Pokemon USA informing them of this nefarious
activity going on right under their noses?

We're all sitting around trading guesses on this sort of thing,
but an actual note from the copyright holder could put an
immediate end to the back-and-forth, plus it can be quoted to
any future uploaders, plus it can be used in speedy deletion
criteria.

It's such a simple solution, I'm a little surprised that fair-use
opponents haven't tried this already. (Of course, if the copyright
holder officially shrugs about WP usage, or defines what they
consider reasonable limits, that would make it harder to argue
that fair use is always unacceptable, so there's a little risk.)

Stan


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The thorny bit was talking about WP:AFD and its ... little ways. He
> sprung on me in the interview that he had created an article on
> himself, it was deleted as "vanity", several of his readers recreated
> it, it was deleted all those times too, and apparently some of the
> deletion discussion comments were more than a little spiky.
>
> So please, when discussing things on AFD ... FOR FUCK SAKE, COOL IT IN
> YOUR COMMENTS AND TREATMENT OF OUTSIDERS. AND PEER-PRESSURE OTHERS TO
> DO SO. Thanks.

Well, you were likely being deliberately ironic, but still, it's not
particularly convincing to shout obscenities at Wikipedians encouraging them to
"cool it" with their treatment of others :)

Personally, I don't think it's a PR problem to have deleted a vanity page from
some podcaster whose best claim for notability appears to be he "has listeners,
so is doing better for notability than a lot of podcasters".

How about we talk about something that vaguely matters? I think it's a much
more serious PR problem for the English Wikipedia that the German Wikipedia is
lightyears ahead of us in distributing CDs/DVDs/print editions. Where's English
Wikipedia 1.0? I heard that the plan was to have it finished by December
2004...

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Leander Hanwald

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API

body:
HI

Oh, I was to stupid to read the complete message, I missed the links
under the text, sorry :) I will now read them.

Leander Hanwald schrieb:

>Hi all
>
>One question: Is SOAP really the best for wikipedia here?
>As I know SOAP, it can't Cache with Squid and normally you have to use a
>big lib. to to request and handle the response.
>When I think about million request to the wikimedia servers with SOAP... ;)
>
>Why don't think about REST or simple called: XML over HTTP. You could
>use all existing mechanisms to create a website, but try to create a XML
>instead of the website itself. It's not really harder to use then SOAP,
>but you don't need any* additional knowledge and tools to handle it. And
>I think the caching is very Important for Wikimedia, and XML over HTTP
>is the same then HTML over HTTP for Squid I think.*
>
>Did anyone have a Link to the diskussions made where SOAP was choosen?
>Thx :)
>
>
>?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason schrieb:
>
>
>
>>On 1/26/06, Michiel van Hulst <michiel at vanhulst.nu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>So could anyone tell me the story of the API ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Of course I may not have all the facts of the matter but this is
>>basically what happened: On 2005-06-23 Jimbo Wales on behalf of
>>Wikimedia/Wikipedia announced that an API (most likely SOAP) would be
>>written to access Wikimedia content. As far as I know the foundation
>>did not actually follow up on this, somebody obviously has to write it
>>and they didn't hire anyone to do that (yet?). Perhaps they were
>>hoping that someone would do it for free upon them announcing it but
>>that obviously hasn't happened. Long story short lots of talk but not
>>much of anything else.
>>
>>I actually started writing a SOAP API that used standard MediaWiki
>>functions at one point which worked for some limited things like
>>getting article text but didn't finish it because other things came
>>up.
>>
>>There are several issues with implementing a robot API like that, one
>>is that a lot of our logic is still tied to our current XHTML output
>>code, which would have to be split off into a backend and presentation
>>frontends. Another is that it's inherently hard to write some simple
>>things like getting the first paragraph of an article (or a summary)
>>because we don't store those things relationally, and UA's having to
>>implement their own parser for our syntax isn't really practical due
>>to its complexity.
>>
>>See the page on meta[1] and bug 208[2]
>>
>>1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/KDE_and_Wikipedia
>>2. http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>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
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>>Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pok?mon images". Our
>>>gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're searching for Pok?mon
>>>images on Google you'll find that Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of
>>>them.
>>>
>>#11 when I checked, but I get your point.
>>
>
>I suppose it depends on whether you include the acute accent and whether
>you include the phrase within quotes.
>
"pokemon" by itself to Google images only gets me Arpingstone's
photo of the 747 with recognizable Pokemon characters, but look
at this - it's on commons!! Oh the humanity! We're going to be
sued out of existence for sure!

:-)

(I'm thinking maybe I should send a pile of complaint letters
to copyright holders myself - getting tired of the apocalyptics.)

Stan


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: German wikipedia to be printed - where's the
 stable version feature?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Directmedia, the company who brought us the German Wikipedia on CD and
> DVD, has expanded to print publishing, as can already be seen in form of
> "WikiPress", a topic-specific series of books.
>
> They just announced that they will publish the German Wikipedia *in full
> print*, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in
> October 2006, to end with Z in 2010.
>
> For this, they hired a few people. The plan is for these "editors" to go
> over *the stable version* of each article.
>
> Some of you might have notices a slight problem with this - there is no
> stable version feature in Wikipedia. As usual, we have discussed a lot
> about the stable version (which is good), and AFAIK most people agreed
> that it won't do much harm, depending which version is presented (I'd
> consider that consensus, provided we still show the current version
> first), and then, in good tradition, did - nothing.
>
> As I said time and again, I don't care if it's my stable version
> extension, or Tim Starling's, or one donated by a merciful god, but we
> should *use* one, on every wikipedia that wants it. And /soon/. Like
> now. Or next week. There's nothing left to discuss, except repeating old
> arguments over again.
>
> Magnus

And what actually needs to be done for any version of the tool to go
live Magnus ?

ant


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On 1/27/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> Why cant we support inlined or cached external images?

Because our less-than-fully-mature friends will quickly inline
hello.jpg into every article they can get their grubby little hands
on.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

body:
I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.
Wondering if we can't get "wp" to do the same replace
"wordpress."

SV

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we are cool

body:
Im surprised nobody with a bot hasnt yet chimed in to
say how he could do the same thing in 4 minutes. :)

S

--- charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

> Because in 45 minutes this morning I could create
> and fill with 40 articles
> [[Category:Fixed points]], ranging from work of John
> Nash to quantum field
> theory, touching on voting systems and [[Common
> knowledge]] on the way.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

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

Stan Shebs stated for the record:

> "pokemon" by itself to Google images only gets me Arpingstone's
> photo of the 747 with recognizable Pokemon characters, but look
> at this - it's on commons!! Oh the humanity! We're going to be
> sued out of existence for sure!
>
> :-)
>
> (I'm thinking maybe I should send a pile of complaint letters
> to copyright holders myself - getting tired of the apocalyptics.)
>
> Stan

[[WP:POINT]]

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Some days it's just not worth filing
 sean at epoptic.org | the environmental impact statement.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
Matt R wrote:

>Personally, I don't think it's a PR problem to have deleted a vanity page from
>some podcaster whose best claim for notability appears to be he "has listeners,
>so is doing better for notability than a lot of podcasters".

No, it's an example of larger broadcasters. They do get their stuff
deleted too. This is a taster of the sort of relations it creates.

>How about we talk about something that vaguely matters? I think it's a much
>more serious PR problem for the English Wikipedia that the German Wikipedia is
>lightyears ahead of us in distributing CDs/DVDs/print editions.

Yeah, it's not like we'll have to work with anyone else or have any
sort of good image in the world to get that accomplished.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>Matt R wrote:

>>How about we talk about something that vaguely matters?

>Yeah, it's not like we'll have to work with anyone else or have any
>sort of good image in the world to get that accomplished.

I'm pleased to see WT:AFD is taking this a bit more seriously as a
symptom of the problems:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WT%3AAFD#Public_relations

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blue sky thinking around "neutral point of view"

body:
While we're at it, anyone care to deal with the term "POV-pusher"? It
seems to me legitimate for someone to take an underrepresented but
valid point of view (eg, "The US is not the centre of everything worth
describing on Wikipedia"), and systematically adapting articles to
include this point of view. If someone distorts an article to the
point where it over-represents a minority viewpoint, that would be one
thing. But systematically expanding the range of viewpoints in
articles to include a more global viewpoint...

Steve

On 1/25/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > \Just some blue sky thinking:
> >
> >   Our neutral point of view policy has aroused a fair bit of
> > discussion at [[WP:NPOV]]
> >   recently, and this has got me thinking:
> >
> >   We've all seen arguments where people keep arguing that this is
> > "POV" or someone
> >   is being "POV" where in normal English we'd just call something
> > an "opinion" and
> >   note that someone has an opinion on something. Indeed, the made-
> > up term POV
> >   is bandied around usually to mean something along the lines of -
> > you are wrong,
> >   I am right, and because it is a NPOV issue, the point is non-
> > negotiable, which isn't
> >   a very good place to start from if the issue is to be resolved.
> > Plus far too many
> >   people read NPOV as equating to "no point of view" as opposed to
> > the real requirement, which is to write from a neutral viewpoint.
> >
> >   My blue sky thinking (which I don't claim to be a panacea, just
> > an interesting thought) is why don't we rename the policy page
> > [[Wikipedia:Neutral viewpoint]] and make
> >   the shortcut link to it [[WP:NEUVIEW]] (or [[WP:NEUTVIEW]]). It
> > goes without
> >   saying that the underlying concept behind the policy would remain
> > completely
> >   unchanged - just the name of the page would change - plus it
> > would enhance
> >   people's perceptions that it is about requiring a neutral
> > viewpoint, rather than no
> >   viewpoint, or neutrality more generally: it would help define the
> > policy in positive terms
> >   and (and perhaps I'm going too far here:) ) may help stop content
> > disputes escalating
> >   in scale and viciousness.
>
> That might work. On the other hand, that might be about as effective
> as changing "Votes for Deletion" to "Articles for Deletion". Renaming
> things only serves to disguise problems in a quasi-Orwellian manner--
> it doesn't really solve them.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Poll for Wikistandards

body:
GerardM wrote:

>On 1/27/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>On an other level, when a project can only be considered properly
>discussed when it has been discussed in the same way as the
>Wikiversity project, it denies that it is a different proposal. The
>arguments for these projects are different. Comparing these two
>proposals in such a way serves no purpose.
>
>I did copy the people who indicated their support as voting in favour
>of this proposal. I did this because these people do not frequent the
>Wikimedia projects as a favour. I promissed Oscar that when someone of
>this list would remove all of them. I will.
>
>Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
>
>
I have been a critic of how bureaucratic the process of becoming a new
project has become, so in some ways I see what you are doing as a sort
of breath of fresh air.  It is nice to see that this proposal has been
moving forward and a serious attempt is being made to get the whole idea
working.

As far as Wikiversity is concerned, I was just using it as a comparison
to how perhaps a successful project should be done.  Another very good
example and the true standard that most new projects are put up against
is Wikinews and the whole proposal process that got that project going.
 There was some serious discussion that happened over the course of
several months including the development of the [[m:Wikinews]] project.

Here is a comparison to the level of discussion I think should be for a
new project at a similar stage to where Wikistandards should be at.
 Compare these two pages on Meta:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews&oldid=72346

and the corrisponding talk page

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikinews&oldid=73381

There is a reason why Wikinews was developed relatively quickly from
when the proposal was put together and the vote started.  And even that
wasn't without any hangups or rough spots once it got going.

Ultimately, what you need to do as well is somehow convince the
mainstream Wikimedia users that this new project is going to be
developed and can be considered an equal to the rest of the Wikimedia
sister projects.  Two projects that were started earlier and have been
struggling since are the 9/11 Memorial Wiki and Wikispecies.  Most of
the opposition votes on both Wikiversity and Wikinews were to never see
projects like that started again.  I think it is reasonable to offer a
comparison to Wikispecies and potentially what Wikistandards may offer,
even if it is just in contrast in suggesting that a fairly large group
of individuals is going to get the project going, and that you have a
reasonable plan to not only deal with potential objections but that you
also have an idea of where the project will be in a couple of years and
what the ultimate vision of this project will be.

As for the votes, I was suprised that my name was listed when I know
that I didn't vote on that page as a vote of support.  Yes, I support
the idea of Wikistandards, but I know of no other user interest poll
that started with a bunch of votes already seeded when the survey was
started.  If you genuinely have the support of these individuals, it
wouldn't matter if the poll was brand new or not, they would take the
time and do the voting themselves after they see what their name is
attached to.  Having organized the Wikiversity vote, I made extra steps
to make sure that there could not be any objections to any one of the
votes that were cast in support, and indeed a good number of supporting
votes were culled before the final count was made.

One other issue that needs to be dealt with immediately is the
opposition vote by a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board.  This
proposal is already starting out on the wrong foot if you can't at least
keep the board members neutral on the idea in a "let's wait and see what
the community will come up with" attitude.  I would highly recommend
trying to overcome Angela's objections as this whole thing is going to
have to end up in formal discussions with the Foundation Board anyway.
 It would be far better to have a supporter than an opponent on the
board before the voting ends.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Hoping not mistaking adresse

body:
Moi non plus j'ai rien capt?.

Steve

On 1/27/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cyrille,
>
> Quel est exactement ton probl?me ? (Tu peux parler en fran?ais si tu
> pr?f?res.)
>
> g.
>
>
>
> On 27/01/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Forwarded to wikien-l itself, which this presumably was for. Can
> > someone please help?
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: burophone.lyon <burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr>
> > Date: 27-Jan-2006 08:46
> > Subject: Hoping not mistaking adresse
> > To: wikien-l-owner at wikipedia.org
> >
> >
> >
> > Good morning,
> >
> > Since I've not speak english for a very long time, I don't undestand
> > exactly what you expect from me. Shall I re_subscribe or not. I'd like
> > to have a "interlocuteur" (somebody to speak with) and hav try to find
> > a translator on your site but with the big work I have to do at this
> > time (en ce moment) I can't go as fast as you. I have "b?anmoins"
> > have contacts with some of yours for a projet (the Skype one if I
> > remenber well and was very interessting to participate an implicate to
> > it. If I have done or say something wich make that I must stop any
> > relation with your "aimable" so insteresting but "?trange et complexe
> > for me" I 'll ask for your indulgence and pray you to forgive me. I
> > shall first read the "Wiki-rules" sure but let me a little time or
> > send me a trans lator a burophone.lyon at wanadoo.fr as soon as possible.
> > There is also the fact that some people NOT CONCERNED who have access
> > at this adresse, so my mail "perso" c.j.ferreira at free.fr will be ready
> > in 1/4h (the trouble was that it was full). And to end, if you don't
> > want of the collaboration of a "acharn?, travailleur et honn?te
> > homme", just tell it to me... hoping I have not again do a mistake
> > answering at this adress.
> >
> > Dans l'attente d'une r?ponse au c.j.ferreira at free.fr that will totally
> > be free at 11h00 (hour of France). I hope. 'cause there is a Cpatain
> > of PJ (Police Judiciaire who wait to listening me for one of my
> > custumer who have trouble with TVA stories...
> >
> > So, waiting for your answer,
> >
> > Je vous prie d'agr?er, Monssieur l'expression de mes courtoises
> > salutations.
> >
> > Cyrille Jean Ferreira
> > Le Diacre PSSW C#a&b at O
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Guillom
> "Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we are cool

body:
On 1/27/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Im surprised nobody with a bot hasnt yet chimed in to
> say how he could do the same thing in 4 minutes. :)

I've got a bot that can create a category and fill it with 40 images
in 4 minutes.  Of course, the developers probably wouldn't be any too
happy about the server load from a multithreaded bot doing an edit
every two seconds... ;-)

--
Mark Wagner
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we are cool

body:
Because in 45 minutes this morning I could create and fill with 40 articles
[[Category:Fixed points]], ranging from work of John Nash to quantum field
theory, touching on voting systems and [[Common knowledge]] on the way.

Charles


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
On 1/27/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So please, when discussing things on AFD ... FOR FUCK SAKE, COOL IT IN
> YOUR COMMENTS AND TREATMENT OF OUTSIDERS. AND PEER-PRESSURE OTHERS TO
> DO SO. Thanks.
>
>
> - d.

I tried adding a less umm blunt version of this to the afd2 template.
It was slightly reverted.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Matt R wrote:
>
> > Personally, I don't think it's a PR problem to have deleted a
> > vanity page from some podcaster whose best claim for notability
> > appears to be he "has listeners, so is doing better for
> > notability than a lot of podcasters".
>
> No, it's an example of larger broadcasters. They do get their stuff
> deleted too. This is a taster of the sort of relations it creates.

Do you mean this debate?

   [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Fonseca Rendeiro]]

Doesn't seem overly "spikey" to me, unless I've missed further debate
elsewhere. Why exactly do these Wikipedians need to "cool it"? As AfD goes, it
seems pretty harmless. I'm sorry, but I don't really think it's constructive to
shout and swear at Wikipedians based on what appears to be an unconvincing
example of us treating outsiders badly.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
NEW Yahoo! Cars - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online! http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> Magnus, couldn't some feature of the multilingua wiki or namespace
> manager be a possibility for this?

> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki

> this allows for innerwikilinks ... so this would allow for "stable
> printed version" instead of "language"

It would also make sense to me, especially that some articles for the
printed version would need to be shortened due to the fact that
printed Wikipedia *is* paper. So this namespace could contain a
version tagged as "prepared for print" rather than "stable".

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Asrticle in German on de.wikipedia (PC-Welt)

body:
http://www.pcwelt.de/news/unterhaltung/130716/index.html?NLC-Newsletter&id=130716

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice: chiama da PC a telefono a tariffe esclusive
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
Matt R wrote:

>Doesn't seem overly "spikey" to me, unless I've missed further debate
>elsewhere. Why exactly do these Wikipedians need to "cool it"? As AfD goes, it
>seems pretty harmless. I'm sorry, but I don't really think it's constructive to
>shout and swear at Wikipedians based on what appears to be an unconvincing
>example of us treating outsiders badly.

Whether he's overreacting or not is actually not so relevant. When we
piss off people with an audience, they will tend to say so to their
audience. Is this something to be avoided if possible?

  [  ] yes
  [  ] no

Feel free to stay in self-righteous denial about a PR nightmare.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> Matt R wrote:
>
> >Doesn't seem overly "spikey" to me, unless I've missed further debate
> >elsewhere. Why exactly do these Wikipedians need to "cool it"?
> > As AfD goes, it seems pretty harmless. I'm sorry, but I don't
> > really think it's constructive to shout and swear at Wikipedians
> > based on what appears to be an unconvincing example of us treating
> >outsiders badly.
>
> Whether he's overreacting or not is actually not so relevant. When we
> piss off people with an audience, they will tend to say so to their
> audience. Is this something to be avoided if possible?

I think the AfD response to that particular page was completely reasonable. If
that guy was upset about his treatment here in this instance, then  that's just
his problem. They did not need to "COOL IT" "FOR FUCKS SAKE".

> Feel free to stay in self-righteous denial about a PR nightmare.

Any chance you could be less rude? I'm in "self-righteous denial" just because
I didn't heartily endorse your comment? Come on. It's quite reasonable to
question your example, particularly when it doesn't really demonstrate any
problems of the sort you claim it does.

>From what I've seen in press articles, Wikipedia's real PR problems come from a
perception of unreliability, and not from how we treat questionably-notable
people who decide to write encyclopedia articles about themselves.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Win a BlackBerry device from O2 with Yahoo!. Enter now. http://www.yahoo.co.uk/blackberry


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
On 1/27/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Matt R wrote:
>
> >Doesn't seem overly "spikey" to me, unless I've missed further debate
> >elsewhere. Why exactly do these Wikipedians need to "cool it"? As AfD goes, it
> >seems pretty harmless. I'm sorry, but I don't really think it's constructive to
> >shout and swear at Wikipedians based on what appears to be an unconvincing
> >example of us treating outsiders badly.
>
>
> Whether he's overreacting or not is actually not so relevant. When we
> piss off people with an audience, they will tend to say so to their
> audience. Is this something to be avoided if possible?
>
>   [  ] yes
>   [  ] no
>
> Feel free to stay in self-righteous denial about a PR nightmare.
>
>
> - d.

Is there any reasonable way of deleting article's that will never
result in pissing of the author or subject of the article?

 [  ] yes
 [  ] no

If not what level of pissing off is acceptable and what is the
optimium cost benifit point.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
"David Gerard" wrote

>Feel free to stay in self-righteous denial about a PR nightmare.

My past experience, not always but sometimes, is that phrases like "PR
nightmare" can be used as a smokescreen for doing the 'wrong thing'. As in:
why are we not doing the 'right thing' here?  Well, it would be a 'PR
nightmare'.  Or in other words, having maturity enough to get round to
admitting the organisation is fallible makes image management harder.  (Of
course, image management for an organisation that is infallible is like
falling off a log.)

To get back to WP and David's point, which is not invalid by any stretch of
the imagination, we should continue to delete pages about living people that
are clearly self-promotional rather than informative.  We actually cannot
screen out the creation of such pages, so we have to delete them.  We
enfranchise anyone who can type, so there is going to be some juvenilia
posted.  Our PR line actually must factor that in: we are not EB, you don't
have to have an office in a prestigious academic institution for your
opinion about what goes in WP to matter to _us_.  So, yeah, some ignorant
things are said.  But, look, who exactly is fighting to combat ignorance on
such a broad and accessible front, as of January 2006?

I agree with David that people should be calm, cool and collected as they go
about their business; and with Morven that profanity has not very much to do
with achieving that aim.

Charles


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the rest

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 1/26/06, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>>sannse wrote:
>>>
>>>>I think that something needs to be done to bring the two versions
>>>>together.  It seems clear that people are writing to helpdesk-l,
>>>>thinking that they are writing to the "site owner's" email address, and
>>>>asking questions that would be better answered officially.  And there
>>>>are plenty of mails on OTRS that could be better answered by a general
>>>>help desk.
>>>>
>>>>The only way I can see of bringing them together is on OTRS.  Perhaps
>>>>with two queues, one official mail and one helpdesk.
>>>>
>>>>I don't know, but I do think it's something we should look at.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Unfortunately there will always be people who use the wrong one.
>>
>>Yes, but with OTRS it is easy to switch email from one queue to another.
>>  If there were clear guidelines as to what goes in which queue, then it
>>wouldn't be a problem that some mail initially got in the wrong queue.
>>
>>Or we could have one big queue - with both addresses leading there (and
>>/many/ more helpers on it!)
>
>
> I like the idea of using the ticket system for both addresses: grant
> access liberally to the helpdesk queue (anyone interested and
> reasonably clued) while having a smaller crew of people to answer the
> mail that really must be handled carefully and discreetly
> (confidential concerns, potential media blowups, etc.), to be easily
> moved back and forth. I don't think helpdesk-l works as is, as it's
> difficult to keep track of messages, and the boilerplate responses are
> a *big* help answering mail in OTRS. (You can see these at
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en> - it's amazing how much of
> the mail we get is people applying to our university or wishing to
> email celebrities.)
>
> The possible benefits of having the helpdesk as a list -- many
> experienced eyes all looking at one question, openness, easy signup,
> etc. -- are negated by the sheer volume of the list, dearth of regular
> volunteers, and the fact that many people are confused about the
> difference between sending to the private info address and to a public
> mailing list -- I don't think anyone anticipated the sheer volume of
> it when it was created.
>

I support this idea. How soon before we can change helpdesk-l to an OTRS
queue (oh, and maybe call it helpesk and have helpdesk-l forward there...)?

Completely burned out,
--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
>    [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Fonseca Rendeiro]]

A model AfD, except for the word "vanity" which was unnecessary and
irrelevant (though, as it turned out, true).

If you are unhappy with the way this article was deleted, David, maybe you
could tell us how you would have preferred it to be deleted? I'm asking in
good faith. How would you have expressed a delete opinion on that page if
you had done so? And, if AfD were replaced with some other system of your
choosing, how would you have handled this article in that system? Or do
you think that deleting this article under any system does more harm than
good?

Anyone who's been on this mailing list for 15 seconds knows you don't like
AFD but I'm still not quite sure what you want to replace it with. You've
suggested disbanding it altogether with the argument that it only deletes
some 200 articles a day anyway. But disbanding it and replacing it with
nothing would greatly increase the influx of new marginal articles. People
who've previously been turned off by having their stuff deleted would be
"back in business". The place would start filling up with articles on
non-notable people, dolls, webcomics etc. ;)

But I know you're not actually a super-inclusionist. Just a couple of days
ago you said on [[WT:AFD]]:

"Note: my personal opinion is that almost everything nominated on AFD does
in fact deserve as quick, messy and painful a death as can be managed."

I'm not sure what to make of that. What system do you envision to achieve
the following two aims?

a) Solve the PR problems currently generated by AFD.

b) Deal a quick, messy and painful death to almost everything currently
handled by AFD.

But I'm probably misinterpreting, considering the opinions you've
expressed elsewhere - like cautioning against haste in deletion - you were
probably being ironic. Presumably what you want to do is:

b) Deal a slow, clean and painless death to almost everything currently
handled by AFD.

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>It's such a simple solution, I'm a little surprised that fair-use
>>opponents haven't tried this already. (Of course, if the copyright
>>holder officially shrugs about WP usage, or defines what they
>>consider reasonable limits, that would make it harder to argue
>>that fair use is always unacceptable, so there's a little risk.)
>>
>
>Fair use is fine. I'm an advocate of fair use. The problem is that
>*galleries* of proprietary images with no commentary are very unlikely to
>be considered fair use even if each image in itself is fair use in the
>right context.
>
>Fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikachu
>
>Unfair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
>
Come to think of it, why would one say it's not fair use? The intent
is to not make an attractive presentation - they are listed in order
of how the image is named (which is well-nigh random), they are
thumbnails forced into a constant size, and there are no captions or
other descriptive material. One could even argue that the category
aids in ensuring that we only have as many images as we need, for
instance by helping detect duplicates (for which a textual rendering
would be less useful, given the abovementioned randomness of names).

That said, I would support software hackery that would make
non-free-image category pages invisible to spiders; the pages
are only legitimately useful to editors.

It's too bad Alex756 doesn't participate in these discussions
anymore; as an actual lawyer, he was very helpful in explaining
how fair use is supposed to work. You can find a bit of his
discussion on meta still.

Stan


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 1/26/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> (That said, I haven't signed up to OTRS yet - who do I email?)
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

Me. :-) (Or sannse.) Are you volunteering? If so I'll get you set up
straight away...

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] note David Gerard's just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

body:
On 1/27/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> That said, I'd prefer a dynamic metadata system so that any arbitrary
> piece of text could be matched to a source, the editor who wrote it,
> and so forth. But that would be way, way beyond any of the software
> we have now in complexity, I think.

I worry about the usability of such a system and about its impact on
our users - particularly, it would increase the learning curve for
newbies quite substantially.

I also have concerns about moving away from a text-based article
source, or about the unreadability of a text-based version of this.

-Matt


body:
On 1/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> While we're at it, anyone care to deal with the term "POV-pusher"?

I believe the word 'pusher' connotes more than wanting to improve
Wikipedia's balance; it implies a wish to over-promote a certain
viewpoint and especially to REMOVE viewpoints the pusher disagrees
with.

Of course, some POV-pushers THINK they're just correcting bias.

-Matt


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
>> That said, I'd prefer a dynamic metadata system so that any arbitrary
>> piece of text could be matched to a source, the editor who wrote it,
>> and so forth. But that would be way, way beyond any of the software
>> we have now in complexity, I think.
>
> I worry about the usability of such a system and about its impact on
> our users - particularly, it would increase the learning curve for
> newbies quite substantially.
>
> I also have concerns about moving away from a text-based article
> source, or about the unreadability of a text-based version of this.

This system would clearly only be usable on a virtual medium, and
would have to abandon the text-based model. Between that and the
programming complexity, I don't think it's practical to implement it
on en. until maybe 2010.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
> CSD can't be expanded forever.

Sure it can :) Just make [[WP:SNOW]] a speedy deletion criterion: "If you
think an article doesn't have any chance of surviving AfD then just go
ahead and delete it."

But if someone disagrees you'd better be prepared to undelete...

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Stewards policy proposal

body:
On 1/27/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> <subliminal message>
>
> Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local
> projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it.
>
> </end of subliminal message>

Agreed on this...

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Could an Administrator please look into this
	conflict?

body:
On 1/25/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> I don't think we should penalize copyright holders for serving WP
> with a cease-and-desist for a copyvio, whether formally or
> informally, although we might want to require them to, as a
> prerequisite for their future participation, state that their
> grievances are met and that no further action will be taken.

In general, we don't and shouldn't punish copyright holders for
good-faith requests for copyright violation removal.

What we do want to punish, and strongly, is what has become the common
/modus operandi/ of Usenet kooks; constant threats of legal action
against anyone who disagrees with them.

'No Legal Threats' stops that behavior dead in its tracks.  It either
makes the nuts play nice at least to that degree (because they don't
actually intend to sue anyone, just intimidate by the threat) or gets
the incorrigible ones banned in short order.  WP:NLT is a great nutjob
filter.

As a practical matter, we want our contributors to settle their
differences peacefully rather than escalate the argument arms-race to
lawsuits.

-Matt


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eliezer is not a suitable administrator

body:
Note that the exception to the 3RR only applies to "simple vandalism" like
blanking, insertion of attacks, profanity, gibberish text, etc.  What you
describe here seems to be a content dispute and does not seem to fall under
the banner of simple vandalism.  I am not saying you are doing this, but in
the past some editors have claimed that the other party in a content dispute
is engaging in "vandalism" in an attempt to circumvent the 3RR.  I suggest
that in the future you strictly adhere to this rule regardless of what you
think about the quality of another party's edits.  Use the talk page to make
a note of these edits.  If they are in fact vandalism some other editor will
revert them.

On 1/27/06, david weiss <loveisrael at mail.com> wrote:
>
> he currently has me under a 24-hour block because he claims i
> violated the 3rr rule (though the 3rr rule permits me to revert vandalism
> by OpenInfo.  e.g. "he claims to be from the knesset" "opinion of ONE
> israeli", etc. instead of permitting me to entitle my own comments
> "reason for alert" and the like)
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: German wikipedia to be printed - where's the
	stable version feature?

body:
Anthere schrieb:
>
> And what actually needs to be done for any version of the tool to go
> live Magnus ?
Someone with access to Wikipedia servers would have to
1. check the tool is working OK
2. copy a few files
3. create new database table
4. edit one file

2.-4. takes, what, five minutes?

1. could have been done already...

Magnus

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body:
Anthere schrieb:
>
> And what actually needs to be done for any version of the tool to go
> live Magnus ?
Someone with access to Wikipedia servers would have to
1. check the tool is working OK
2. copy a few files
3. create new database table
4. edit one file

2.-4. takes, what, five minutes?

1. could have been done already...

Magnus

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from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
> Just make [[WP:SNOW]] a speedy deletion criterion: "If you
> think an article doesn't have any chance of surviving AfD then just go
> ahead and delete it."

I appreciate that your comment was intended humorously, but
nevertheless: half of the point of AFD, to my mind, is that it may bring
an article to the attention of someone who can improve it to the point
where it doesn't need deleting.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fair use has come back to bite us

references:
<43D9BF3C.8040903@gmail.com> <drcnfu$sou$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43DA3020.8080706@gmail.com>

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
> worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album covers.

We aren't. We're an encyclopaedia that illustrates its articles about
movies or albums with images of their posters or covers.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
> Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
> worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album
> covers.

Look at this yummie gallery of 200 copyrighted images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images

Especially yummy, if you wanted to prosecute Wikipedia, is the fact that
the same entity holds the copyright on all of them. Also interesting is
that the gallery makes no note of this. It contains no critical commentary
on the images in question and has no claim to be fair use - nor does it
assert that it is. It's just a web gallery of pretty little copyrighted
images used without permission of the copyright holder - about as blatant
a copyright violation as we could arrange if we tried.

Is anyone doing anything about this?

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
> Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images

And I know this isn't anything new, we've been talking about this problem
for a long time. So is anyone working on a technical solution?

I mean, it's not like these galleries are hidden to the reader or even
hard to find. Go to [[Pikachu]], click on the image and then click on
[[Pok?mon images]] - a very natural thing to do.

Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pok?mon images". Our
gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're searching for Pok?mon
images on Google you'll find that Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of
them.

We're seeing revert wars and blocks over fair use images on user pages. I
assert that our fair use galleries are a bigger problem.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 15:39 +0000, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
> > Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
>
> And I know this isn't anything new, we've been talking about this problem
> for a long time. So is anyone working on a technical solution?

There are a lot more than 200, thats just the first page.

The best technical solution is to delete them all.

I did once submit 5000 audio files to IfD in one go. And
got them deleted.

The Pokemonites are rabid though, they wont let you delete
anything.

Justinc


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WP:AFD and public relations

body:
"Nick Boalch" <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote in
message news:43DA3680.3030904 at durham.ac.uk...
> Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
> > Just make [[WP:SNOW]] a speedy deletion criterion: "If you
> > think an article doesn't have any chance of surviving AfD then just go
> > ahead and delete it."
> I appreciate that your comment was intended humorously, but nevertheless:
> half of the point of AFD, to my mind, is that it may bring an article to
> the attention of someone who can improve it to the point where it doesn't
> need deleting.

So you're saying that nominating an article for AFD is a cunning way to jump
the clean-up queue?

That's a Baldrick-worthy plan, and I don't even mean clever Baldrick from
Series One.

As I have said before, if the AFD regulars put half the effort into cleanup
that they do into AFD, there would be many more high-quality articles on
Wikipedia.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
"Haukur ?orgeirsson" <haukurth at hi.is> wrote in
message news:29291.206.165.150.70.1138376359.squirrel at webmail.hi.is...
> > Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
> Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pok?mon images". Our
> gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're searching for Pok?mon
> images on Google you'll find that Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of
> them.

#11 when I checked, but I get your point.

So what about if you try a Google IMAGE Search:
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=%22Pok%C3%A9mon%20images%22&sa=N&tab=wi

Are they about to sue Google because you can display pictures of Pok?mon
images through Google?

Are these images used properly on the actual pages in which they are placed?
If so, why would you want to delete them, since this would presumably damage
those articles.

WP:AGF says that I shouldn't speculate as to whether that might be the
idea...

The category listing is a purely mechanical list generated for management
purposes. It has no more real significance than the Google Image Search.

Possibly a better thought would be to add the Category namespace to
robots.txt: why does anyone need to crawl any namespace bu the main one
anyway?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> On 1/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> ..
>
>>I support this idea. How soon before we can change helpdesk-l to an OTRS
>>queue (oh, and maybe call it helpesk and have helpdesk-l forward there...)?
>>
>>Completely burned out,
>>--
>>Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
>
>
> Darn! I had just joined helpdesk because I heard the current editors
> were almost burned out and I wanted to avert it. :(
>

Don't worry, you're quite welcome to stay on...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
>> Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pok?mon images". Our
>> gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're searching for Pok?mon
>> images on Google you'll find that Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of
>> them.
>
> #11 when I checked, but I get your point.

I suppose it depends on whether you include the acute accent and whether
you include the phrase within quotes.

> Are these images used properly on the actual
> pages in which they are placed? If so, why
> would you want to delete them, since this
> would presumably damage those articles.

I don't want to delete them - I just don't want them to put us in trouble.
And the problem isn't really about Pok?mon, that's just a good
illustration of it.

> The category listing is a purely mechanical list generated for management
> purposes.

Yes, this is the problem. It's a complete accident that it comes out as a
gallery. But it still does. An accidental copyright violation is still a
copyright violation. And even though it's intended for management it's
still easily accessible to the general reader (and Google searcher).

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 16:09 +0000, Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Haukur orgeirsson" <haukurth at hi.is> wrote in
> message news:29291.206.165.150.70.1138376359.squirrel at webmail.hi.is...
> > > Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
> > Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pokmon images". Our
> > gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're searching for Pokmon
> > images on Google you'll find that Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of
> > them.
>
> #11 when I checked, but I get your point.
>
> So what about if you try a Google IMAGE Search:
> http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=%22Pok%C3%A9mon%20images%22&sa=N&tab=wi
>
> Are they about to sue Google because you can display pictures of Pokmon
> images through Google?

Funny, someone just did.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/27/google_cache_copyright_breach_ruling/

However a brief scan suggests that our Pokemon collection would not be
covered under this ruling at all.

Justinc


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

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

Steve Bennett stated for the record:

>>Google WP - wordpress, not Wikipedia, is the top google hit
>>(for the time being, at least).  If you google NPOV or 3rr on
>>the other hand...
>>
>>>>I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.
>>>>Wondering if we can't get "wp" to do the same replace "wordpress."
>
>
> I see. I think that's the first time I've seen "google" used as an
> intransitive verb. :)
>
> Steve

Intransitive?  It appears to me that "NPOV or 3rr" is the object of the
verb "google" in that fragment....

Or am I too drunk to parse the [[English language]] correctly (thank
Thoth for spieling chuckers)?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Some days it's just not worth filing
 sean at epoptic.org | the environmental impact statement.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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=fiPt
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body:
On 1/27/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> I think discreet superscripted numbers *would* be annoying if they
> appeared after each and every statement of fact. And we'd have 500
> cites per article.
>
> That said, I'd prefer a dynamic metadata system so that any arbitrary
> piece of text could be matched to a source, the editor who wrote it,
> and so forth. But that would be way, way beyond any of the software
> we have now in complexity, I think.

Such a system already exists.  It's called Project Xanadu
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu), and it's such an
incredibly complicated system that it's taken 38 years for a
preliminary implementation to appear.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 1/25/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

>  Do we really want to have, at minimum, one footnote per
> sentence? Unless MediaWiki gets fixed fast and we can have, say,
> implied metadata for any piece of text in an article, it would be
> unreadable.
>
> That said, it would be nice to eventually have such a system.

Well, to be honest at least one referencing system available on
wikipedia makes extremely discreet little superscripted numbers which
don't interrupt readability at all. And theoretically it wouldn't be
hard to make those numbers disappear or appear with CSS...

Too bad there are at least three separate referencing systems
currently available, with absolutely no consensus on which is the
best. At the same time everyone is screaming louder and louder CITE
YOUR SOURCES!

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 16:30 +0000, Justin Cormack wrote:
> > Are they about to sue Google because you can display pictures of Pokmon
> > images through Google?
>
> Funny, someone just did.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/27/google_cache_copyright_breach_ruling/
>
> However a brief scan suggests that our Pokemon collection would not be
> covered under this ruling at all.

We definitely arent covered by this case. It covers temporary
cacheing with the copyright holder knowing that there is an
opt out agreement.

Replying to myself, one option to get us covered under this would be
to replace all our Pokemon images with offsite urls which we could
then temporarily cache ourselves.

Why we actually have to download all these "fair use" images and
store them (and redistribute them) when most are on websites anyway
(or could be put on Pokemon fansites in countries with lax laws)
is beyond me.

Why cant we support inlined or cached external images?

Obviously the links break every now and again but the
armies of Pokemonnies can fix that.

Justinc


body:
>> I think discreet superscripted numbers *would* be annoying if they
>> appeared after each and every statement of fact. And we'd have 500
>> cites per article.
>>
>> That said, I'd prefer a dynamic metadata system so that any arbitrary
>> piece of text could be matched to a source, the editor who wrote it,
>> and so forth. But that would be way, way beyond any of the software
>> we have now in complexity, I think.
>
> Such a system already exists.  It's called Project Xanadu
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu), and it's such an
> incredibly complicated system that it's taken 38 years for a
> preliminary implementation to appear.

There's an open-source implementation of Xanadu, is there not? Maybe
we could use in MediaWiki (or, more realistically, a successor
system) in the far future.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair use has come back to bite us

body:
Some kind soul wishes to link to us because we have an excellent
collection of posters. I've removed the personal details, but I think
the legal ramifications of this are pretty clear.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [HelpDesk-l] Important Information about your site
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 21:11:16 -0600
From: (NAME REMOVED)
Reply-To: Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects
<helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org>
To: Helpdesk-l <helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org>

Hello my name is (NAME REMOVED). I am seeking out possible link
partners that our visitors would be interesting in visiting. I've
found your website to be a very good fit for our visitors. I have
already gone ahead and added your link to our website at (WEBSITE REMOVED)

I am contacting you to see if its ok to have done so, Also, I
would like to ask if you mind linking back to us? If so, please
use the linking details below and send me the location of our
link on your website.

Here is our linking details:
Tilte: Where Can I Buy Posters?
Description: Where Can I Buy Posters website gives you the chance
to choose from 300,000 Posters & Prints, Designer-Framed Prints,
Canvas Transfers and More...100% Guaranteed!

We've got several PR6 and 7 websites, so we expect this site to
become atleast a PR5 within 1 month and we eventually become a 6
or 7 in 2-3 months.

I hope this can be a way for us to benefit our visitors with
excellent content. Hope to hear from you soon.

(NAME REMOVED)
(SITE REMOVED)

---------------------------------------------------------

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
Are there any pokemonite admins? If not, let's crush these 12 year olds. >:D

Steve

On 1/27/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 15:39 +0000, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
> > > Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
> >
> > And I know this isn't anything new, we've been talking about this problem
> > for a long time. So is anyone working on a technical solution?
>
> There are a lot more than 200, thats just the first page.
>
> The best technical solution is to delete them all.
>
> I did once submit 5000 audio files to IfD in one go. And
> got them deleted.
>
> The Pokemonites are rabid though, they wont let you delete
> anything.
>
> Justinc
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
 "Phil Boswell" wrote.
>
> So you're saying that nominating an article for AFD is a cunning way to
> jump the clean-up queue?
>
> That's a Baldrick-worthy plan, and I don't even mean clever Baldrick from
> Series One.

Certainly is.  I have always resented this.  Someone tells me: 'clean that
up now, I mean now, or it's binned', and I think of them less well.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 12:13 -0500, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 1/27/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> >
> > Why cant we support inlined or cached external images?
>
> Because our less-than-fully-mature friends will quickly inline
> hello.jpg into every article they can get their grubby little hands
> on.

Yes but some changes to mediawiki so they behave just like normal
images except for us not having to have the source would be ok.

ie you still have an image page and image links (say XImage:),
but there is just a url attached not a real image. Not much
work - just change the file references in Image: to URL refs
in XImage:. We can still manage deletion, creation, talk pages
etc, just we no longer host the things, and can enforce which
sites they come off based on robots.txt etc.

Justinc


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
>
>>> Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
>>> worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album
>>> covers.
>>>
>>
>> Look at this yummie gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
>>
>> Especially yummy, if you wanted to prosecute Wikipedia, is the fact that
>> the same entity holds the copyright on all of them. Also interesting is
>> that the gallery makes no note of this. It contains no critical
>> commentary
>> on the images in question and has no claim to be fair use - nor does it
>> assert that it is. It's just a web gallery of pretty little copyrighted
>> images used without permission of the copyright holder - about as
>> blatant
>> a copyright violation as we could arrange if we tried.
>>
> If it's such an awful violation, then why not send a letter to
> Nintendo and/or Pokemon USA informing them of this nefarious
> activity going on right under their noses?
>
> We're all sitting around trading guesses on this sort of thing,
> but an actual note from the copyright holder could put an
> immediate end to the back-and-forth, plus it can be quoted to
> any future uploaders, plus it can be used in speedy deletion
> criteria.
>
> It's such a simple solution, I'm a little surprised that fair-use
> opponents haven't tried this already. (Of course, if the copyright
> holder officially shrugs about WP usage, or defines what they
> consider reasonable limits, that would make it harder to argue
> that fair use is always unacceptable, so there's a little risk.)

If they are really concerned they probably would have sent out a take
down order long ago.  Perhaps the person who sends Nintendo a note
should send them the note privately rather than as a Wikipedian.  In his
note he could complain about how the evil people at Wikipedia are
flagrantly violating Nintendo's rights, and he wants to warn them of
this grave injustice.  It would be interesting to see how they respond
to that. :-)

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New anti-spam initiatives

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> I'll leave Brion to tell you about his CAPTCHA extension.

A couple months ago I half-coded a captcha framework to plug into MediaWiki;
Neil Harris wrote a little script to generate the distorted text images to go
along with it. A captcha of course is that annoying little thing that makes you
type in a word or code to continue, to prove that you're probably not an abusive
bot. (Or a blind person. Whoops!)

The idea of a captcha is to slightly inconvenience some legitimate users in
exchange for erecting a huge speed bump against abusers. In the Wiki world this
is one aspect of "SoftSecurity"; even the original Ward's Wiki these days has a
captcha-like system where edits may require inputting a displayed code depending
on abuse level.

The plugin can be configured to trigger only when new URLs are added, so it can
prevent most automated linkspam without disturbing other edits. It can also be
set to trigger only on anonymous and new accounts, so established editors,
sysops, and registered bots won't be inconvenienced.

It could also be enabled for all edits, for instance to help combat a vandalbot.

I've been fixing up some old bugs in the extension; it could use some further
improvements but it's currently demoing on http://test.wikipedia.org/ and I may
start enabling it for production testing on our 'real' sites soon. Triggering
URLs will be logged, so we can also get a better idea of what's being hit 'live'.

Remaining things to do:
* Requires cookies for PHP session info; this could cut out some users making
legitimate anonymous edits with cookies disabled.

* Selection and expiration of used captcha images is not really finished yet,
though probably adequate for the moment.

* Currently it's only available for edits. Being able to trigger on other
high-risk actions such as new account creation is a logical step.

* More 'smart' triggering, eg based on vandalry keywords, known-bad IP ranges,
bayesian analysis ;) or more generally some switches that can be flipped by
sysops/bureaucrats/stewards in response to abuse attacks.

* An audio alternative might be useful for some vision-impaired users. If anyone
has experience with such systems and can help with this, that would be welcome.

Currently the extension relies on one or two extra hooks which are in 1.6 which
I don't think have been backported to 1.5. I would like to include a basic
captcha by default in 1.6 to discourage automated linkspam, with the option of
the site operator to disable it of course.

(Note that linkspam on most MediaWikis won't actually _help_ the spammer in
major search engines due to the use of rel="nofollow". That helps keep the
search utilities we all rely on clean and usable, but doesn't by itself stop the
automated edits which are a nuisance. A captcha system should reduce this a lot,
hopefully at a minimal user-annoyance cost in exchange.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Matt R

subject:
[WikiEN-l] fwd: I would like to propose printing and binding the
	Encyclopedia into a real book

body:
I'm relaying the following message, which was posted at
[[Wikipedia:WikiReader]]. -- Matt
----------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Wikipedia Users,

I am the Senior Sales Manager of a company called myphotobook GmbH. Recently, I
have been thinking a lot about how myphotobook could help support Jimmy Wales?
vision. His idea is to make the knowledge on Wikipedia available for people in
Africa who cannot access the Internet or cannot pay for it. It goes without
saying that this help should be free.

Kurt Jansson, from WikiMedia Germany, approves my project and has advised me to
discuss it with you here so as to get your feedback.

I would like to propose printing and binding the Encyclopedia into a real book,
which would be sold in the ?First? World. For every copy sold, a free copy will
be printed and delivered in Africa. This would be a great way to support the
Third World.

Since we print every copy on demand (from one up to as many as required), it
would not cost the Wikipedia Foundation anything, contrary to normal printing
solutions.

A few questions are yet to be answered, such as how the whole work should be
published or whether all entries should be included or not.

I would really appreciate it if you could send me your suggestions.
Those of you who wish to contact me directly can send an email to:

wikipedia at myphotobook.de

Many thanks in advance!

Friendly regards,

Mike Zimmermann

myphotobook GmbH

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Photos ? NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


body:
I'm relaying the following message, which was posted at
[[Wikipedia:WikiReader]]. -- Matt
----------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Wikipedia Users,

I am the Senior Sales Manager of a company called myphotobook GmbH. Recently, I
have been thinking a lot about how myphotobook could help support Jimmy Wales?
vision. His idea is to make the knowledge on Wikipedia available for people in
Africa who cannot access the Internet or cannot pay for it. It goes without
saying that this help should be free.

Kurt Jansson, from WikiMedia Germany, approves my project and has advised me to
discuss it with you here so as to get your feedback.

I would like to propose printing and binding the Encyclopedia into a real book,
which would be sold in the ?First? World. For every copy sold, a free copy will
be printed and delivered in Africa. This would be a great way to support the
Third World.

Since we print every copy on demand (from one up to as many as required), it
would not cost the Wikipedia Foundation anything, contrary to normal printing
solutions.

A few questions are yet to be answered, such as how the whole work should be
published or whether all entries should be included or not.

I would really appreciate it if you could send me your suggestions.
Those of you who wish to contact me directly can send an email to:

wikipedia at myphotobook.de

Many thanks in advance!

Friendly regards,

Mike Zimmermann

myphotobook GmbH

___________________________________________________________
NEW Yahoo! Cars - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online! http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

body:
Google WP - wordpress, not Wikipedia, is the top google hit (for the time
being, at least).  If you google NPOV or 3rr on the other hand...

On 1/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry? That was a little too succinct for me. Can you be more explicit?
>
> Steve
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of stevertigo
> > Sent: Friday, 27th January 2006 9:20 PM
> > To: English Wikipedia
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb
> >
> >
> > I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.
> > Wondering if we can't get "wp" to do the same replace "wordpress."
> >
> > SV
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
John Lee wrote:
> Telling people to cool it won't solve anything, from my experience --
> especially in a volunteer project. As I've been saying on [[WT:AFD]],
> we need to reduce the volume on AfD so people:
>
>   1. Don't get stressed out and all tense from voting "delete" on a
>      dozen garage bands, and carry this attitude over to possibly valid
>      article deletion debates;
>   2. Are able to devote more time to reviewing the points of fact on
>      each controversial debate, and thus come to a more reasoned
>      conclusion;
>   3. Don't have to worry about brevity for the sake of ensuring all "nn
>      bio" articles are deleted -- many AfD regulars keep their comments
>      brief because they have to spread their attention over almost 200
>      debates everyday.
My favourite suggestion is to simply extend the duration of an AfD
listing to a month. Takes the time pressure off, allows plenty of time
for lengthy discussion and fixing of articles that need it. Since the
rate of inflow and outflow doesn't change this would have no significant
impact on the "backlog" aside from a one-time expansion of about three
weeks' worth of AfD listings (not much in a multi-hundred-thousand
article work).

Further changes to AfD may still be needed but this strikes me as a
reasonably nondisruptive first step.


from_name: John Knouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Domain names

body:
I apologize for this off-topic post, but I think everyone involved in the
Internet has a right to know this:

Athens' Own, a business that has had a domain registered with Register.com
for the past few years, attempted to transfer it to Dotster.  Register
refused to allow the transfer, despite repeated (and correctly-done)
attempts, then auctioned the name athensown.com off to another bidder.
Register.com is a bunch of crooks, and I urge everyone not to do business
with them.

John Knouse
jknouse at frognet.net


from_name: GerardM

body:
On 1/27/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Kernigh wrote:
>
> >>fyi, i have started a poll concerning '''wikistandards''' at
> >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards#Poll
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Because [[Wiki for standards]] and [[Wiki for standards/Vote]] are not
> >linked from anywhere else in Meta (in fact, I only know about them from
> >reading foundation-l), I have posted a comment to the vote page:
> >
> >http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards/Vote#comments
> >
> >-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]
> >
> >
> I would like to point out that while the vote page seems to be
> structurally sound, take a look at the history page and you will see
> that almost none of the people listed on the supporting side have
> actually cast their votes.  This is merely somebody who has gone through
> the effort to consolodate a list of general supporters of the concept.
>  This is not that they are sock puppets, but that they havn't really
> been given the opportunity to really review the proposal.

You assume that the whole history of the proposal can bw analysed from
the history page. That is not the case here. It is also not correct to
suggest that the people who did create these supportes do not actually
support it. The opposite is true. This vote is a vote, while on the
[[Proposals for new projects]] people actually indicate their interest
in joining. Anyone can vote but I care more for the moment when people
indicate their support.

The suggestions that these people are sock puppets is as rediculous as
the suggestion that the text of the proposal is not known by these
people. They are the ones who provided for the translations..

>
> It would also be useful to try and advertise this interest survey onto
> the other sister projects as well.
>
> I know that the people involved with this want to see it become reality
> and in general I support their efforts.  I think this would be an
> excellent candidate for the seed wiki (or whatever name that goes under)
> to try and see what the group of supporters could come up with.  The
> content that they are trying to develop doesn't really fit on any of the
> current Wikimedia projects, including Wikibooks, which is the most
> likely candidate for hosting content of this nature.

Indeed this does not fit in any of the current Wikimedia projects.
What is the point of suggesting a new project when it DOES fit into
another project ?

The other question, what these people can do is probably best
experienced by actually giving it a go and reevaluate after say a
period of half a year/ a year. When it does not work, end it. When it
does not work, the people who expressed their interest in this
project, will abandon it in themselves.

>
> I wish that before this vote began, that a little more discussion took
> place to try and develop this concept, as well as try to make it a
> broader proposal than just a language standard Wiki.  Yes, there were
> some comments here on this mailing list, some discussion at the
> conference mentioned in the proposal, and some private e-mails on the
> topic, but this page that is discussing the project proposal was only
> linked to the New Project page yesterday.  I hardly call 1 day of wide
> discussion enough to come to a community concensus by even supporters of
> the project, much less trying to turn the idea into a polished proposal.
>  Seeing what the Wikiversity supporters are going through right now in
> developing their revised proposal, I don't see anywhere near that
> quality of work going into this proposal.
>

On one level, how much discussion is needed? This is an existing
community that wants to have a project in the Wikimedia Foundation. I
do not vote on issues that I have no interest in. I have an interest
in this project because it will help the project that I am interested
in. It will help WiktionaryZ.

This project will help the Wikimedia Foundation in that it will help
us when existing standards do not allow us to achieve our aims. To be
precise we always discuss if a language is a language.. There are
people that indicate their intention to join this project who had
dealings with ISO 639. There are languages without defined
charactersets, there are several issues that we need these people to
help us with.

On an other level, when a project can only be considered properly
discussed when it has been discussed in the same way as the
Wikiversity project, it denies that it is a different proposal. The
arguments for these projects are different. Comparing these two
proposals in such a way serves no purpose.

I did copy the people who indicated their support as voting in favour
of this proposal. I did this because these people do not frequent the
Wikimedia projects as a favour. I promissed Oscar that when someone of
this list would remove all of them. I will.

Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Googlebomb

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>(thank Thoth for spieling chuckers)
>
>
Pliez dunt tyke thu naim uv Djehuty inn vein lyck theiss.

--Michael Snow


body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
>> I appreciate that your comment was intended humorously, but nevertheless:
>> half of the point of AFD, to my mind, is that it may bring an article to
>> the attention of someone who can improve it to the point where it doesn't
>> need deleting.
>
> So you're saying that nominating an article for AFD is a cunning way to jump
> the clean-up queue?

No, as I suspect you know perfectly well from the context that is not at
all what I'm saying.

I was drawing a distinction between AFD, a process which lasts for a few
days and gives ample time for an article to be improved to a point where
it's improvable, and CSD, where the article is just gone.

Does this make sense?

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] Stewards policy proposal

body:
Hoi,

A steward is someone who is trusted to do right. Are you of the
opinion that by curtailing what a steward can or cannot do you improve
this trust. The only thing that you do is that someone who is trusted
in his local environment and is trusted in a broader scope should give
up his position?? For what ??

No, this is something that may you think is the right thing to do. To
me it is not necessary. Worse, I think it is an awful idea.

As to the checkuser tool. When a suspicion exists that some sock
puppetry is happening and a trusted person, someone who knows how to
use the tool, uses this tool discreetly, I am all for it. I am all for
it because it is not necessary to fan the flames. When asked all that
needs saying if anything at all is that there is some sock puppetry
going on.

Please understand the operational word... trust....

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 1/27/06, Mihai Floran <mihai at emma.ro> wrote:
> As the stewards community got larger and not so many things to do right now I think we should have a larger policy about stewards, their status and functions.
>
> First of all I think that if we want to have neutral stewards they should not be members of staff in local projects (sysop, bureaucrat) because this can influence their decision.
> The current stewards should have a period to think about the issue and consider if they want to leave their local status or the steward status.
>
> Another urgent issue is checkuser policy regarding stewards. We don't have one and I think is immediatly subject.
>
> Any other ideas?
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Stewards policy proposal


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vatican is asserting copyright

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

Sean Barrett wrote:

> The British Crown claims to own the King James Bible.

Legally, the Crown /wrote/ the Authorised Version; having yet to die (in
the way that all un-natural persons die - that is, through dissolution
of the body corporate), and yet being a continuous natural person in who
it actually "is" at any one time, its copyright claim continues to be
valid to this day under the Berne Convention's standard elements (but is
invalidated by said Convention's limits, and by the bounds that other
countries wish to place upon themselves through international law).

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

subject: [Foundation-l] Stewards policy proposal

body:
As the stewards community got larger and not so many things to do right now I think we should have a larger policy about stewards, their status and functions.

First of all I think that if we want to have neutral stewards they should not be members of staff in local projects (sysop, bureaucrat) because this can influence their decision.
The current stewards should have a period to think about the issue and consider if they want to leave their local status or the steward status.

Another urgent issue is checkuser policy regarding stewards. We don't have one and I think is immediatly subject.

Any other ideas?


subject: [Foundation-l] Stewards policy proposal


from_name: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

references:
<20060120161554.80281.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<op.s3zwefxar18sbe@mainframe.home.gateway>
	<9C20BB2D-89F6-427A-BA05-9817A6B785C4@philwelch.net>

body:
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:10:08 +0100, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net>
wrote:

>> So if someone download the article dump and the image dump with plans
>> of publishing it in the US (outside they would have to delete all the
>> faur use images anyway, or obtain permission for each individual image)
>> then your humorous fair use image from your userpage become a copyright
>> violation for that reuser because without your userpage he has no fair
>> use defence for it. This means that re-users would have to spend time
>> and effort to purge these humor, parody and other orphanded userpage
>> stuff from the dump, and while it's not rocket sience to automate such
>> a purge it's still an extra burden on re-users that is completely
>> unnessesary.
>
> Wouldn't they purge the entire User: namespace anyway? We're not so
> interesting as for our user pages be republished in an actual
> encyclopedia.

Yeah, but the images are not stored in the User: namespace. Currently
there is no way to selectively download images that are just used in
articles (unless you use a spider to grab content instead of the database
dumps, wich realy is not a good idea as it kills our servers).

Now granted our image dump already contains a *lot* of copyright problems
(like our 30.000+ untagged images), so orphanded fair use parody images
 from userpages might not be the biggest problem for re-users at the
moment, but at least we are working toward the goal of cleaning up that
mess. However if we allowed fair use on user pages those would never be
cleaned up on our end (unless a better image dump system gets developed),
meaning we would basicaly force reusers to download a bunch of files they
can't use and have to delete just because some Wikipedia users wanted to
have something funny on theyr userpage. Personaly I don't think can rely
be justified.

--
[[User:Sherool]]


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 1/27/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>><subliminal message>
>>
>>Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local
>>projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it.
>>
>></end of subliminal message>
>
>
> Agreed on this...
>
> -Kat

Rob Church is currently doing some coding of a nice userrights
interface, I'm sure that the ability for bureaucrats to grant/revoke bot
status will be part of it if we ask nicely. :)

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Some kind soul wishes to link to us because we have an excellent
> collection of posters. I've removed the personal details, but I think
> the legal ramifications of this are pretty clear.
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [HelpDesk-l] Important Information about your site
> Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 21:11:16 -0600
> From: (NAME REMOVED)
> Reply-To: Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects
> <helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org>
> To: Helpdesk-l <helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org>
>
> Hello my name is (NAME REMOVED). I am seeking out possible link
> partners that our visitors would be interesting in visiting. I've
> found your website to be a very good fit for our visitors. I have
> already gone ahead and added your link to our website at (WEBSITE REMOVED)
>
> I am contacting you to see if its ok to have done so, Also, I
> would like to ask if you mind linking back to us? If so, please
> use the linking details below and send me the location of our
> link on your website.
>
> Here is our linking details:
> Tilte: Where Can I Buy Posters?
> Description: Where Can I Buy Posters website gives you the chance
> to choose from 300,000 Posters & Prints, Designer-Framed Prints,
> Canvas Transfers and More...100% Guaranteed!
>
> We've got several PR6 and 7 websites, so we expect this site to
> become atleast a PR5 within 1 month and we eventually become a 6
> or 7 in 2-3 months.
>
> I hope this can be a way for us to benefit our visitors with
> excellent content. Hope to hear from you soon.

That looks like link exchange spam to me. Some of the OTRS queues get it every day. I very much
doubt the sender knew anything more about Wikipedia's image use policy than he knew about the
thousands of other email addresses he spammed. Besides, Wikipedia has long since passed the point of
being impressed by PR 6 or 7 ;)

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
> If it's such an awful violation, then why not send a letter to
> Nintendo and/or Pokemon USA informing them of this nefarious
> activity going on right under their noses?

Because I'd like them to, you know, *not* put us into trouble. Wikipedia
is not a suicide pact. :)

> It's such a simple solution, I'm a little surprised that fair-use
> opponents haven't tried this already. (Of course, if the copyright
> holder officially shrugs about WP usage, or defines what they
> consider reasonable limits, that would make it harder to argue
> that fair use is always unacceptable, so there's a little risk.)

Fair use is fine. I'm an advocate of fair use. The problem is that
*galleries* of proprietary images with no commentary are very unlikely to
be considered fair use even if each image in itself is fair use in the
right context.

Fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikachu

Unfair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images

Kve?ja,
Haukur


from_name: Anthere

body:
Mihai Floran wrote:
> As the stewards community got larger and not so many things to do right now

I like that statement very much :-)

I think we should have a larger policy about stewards, their status and
functions.
>
> First of all I think that if we want to have neutral stewards they should not be members of staff in local projects (sysop, bureaucrat) because this can influence their decision.

When first stewards were elected, there was a lengthy discussion about
that and there was a conclusion : a steward should avoid as much as
possible being the one who *desysop* people on his project. For example,
Maverick was asked not to desysop editors on the english wikipedia.

I think current stewards would do well to avoid doing any action when
they are in one way or another involved. And yes, recently, it happened.

> The current stewards should have a period to think about the issue and consider if they want to leave their local status or the steward status.

I do not support that proposal :-)
Being a steward on meta, and a sysop on one's local project are two
different issues.

> Another urgent issue is checkuser policy regarding stewards. We don't have one and I think is immediatly subject.

Absolutely agree with you. *this* is an issue.

> Any other ideas?

Yes

<subliminal message>

Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local
projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it.

</end of subliminal message>

:-)


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we are cool

body:
On 1/27/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/27/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Im surprised nobody with a bot hasnt yet chimed in to
> > say how he could do the same thing in 4 minutes. :)
>
> I've got a bot that can create a category and fill it with 40 images
> in 4 minutes.  Of course, the developers probably wouldn't be any too
> happy about the server load from a multithreaded bot doing an edit
> every two seconds... ;-)
>
> --
> Mark Wagner
> [[User:Carnildo]]

You might get away with it 5-6am GMT saterday/sunday morning.

--
geni


body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>>
>> Yes
>>
>> <subliminal message>
>>
>> Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local
>> projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it.
>>
>> </end of subliminal message>
>>
>> :-)
>
>
> And I absolutely agree with Anthere there! I want to put all my wight
> behind that ........ and believe me that is quite a few kilo's ;)
> ...............
>
>
> mmmmmm I have an idea for votes. Someone's vote weighs as much as the
> person heheheheheheheheh
>
> Waerth/Walter

Let me hurry to register mine then. This evening... 75 kilos.

puff puff


body:
>
> Yes
>
> <subliminal message>
>
> Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local
> projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it.
>
> </end of subliminal message>
>
> :-) Agree without conditions!And if there is installed the stewards interface to bureaucrats (of course simplified) they will have the possibility to give also rollback rights and in this case I think we should reconsider reintroducing this permission.M