from_name: Taco Deposit

body:
On 11/14/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [Memory Alpha] is under an incompatible license, which should mean that none of
> the content in MA was even taken from Wikipedia.

I was browsing Memory Alpha today and read the notice "The main text
of this synopsis is based on the corresponding Wikipedia article" at
the bottom of http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Conspiracy.

But I don't know whether "based on" means "taken from" or not

TD


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

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

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Chris Jenkinson stated for the record:
>
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 11/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>What would happen if either of you (Kelly or Sean) disclosed private
>>>>information into the public domain? Aside from ethical concerns, what
>>>>prevents you from doing this?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>At work or on Wikipedia?
>>>
>>>At work, I would risk being fired, sued, and possibly prosecuted.
>>>
>>>On Wikipedia?  It would be wrong.  It would also be breaking several
>>>promises I've made.
>>
>>
>>As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
>>information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
>>a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
>>checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?
>
>
> The situation is not reasonably similar; it's not even remotely similar.
>
> Disclosure of the information I handle at work would immediately and
> directly endanger lives and damage national security, and I am rather
> well paid for accepting the responsibility.
>
> Disclosure of a Wikipedian's IP address can only lead to harm through
> tortuous chains of unlikely happenstance, and the privilege of
> contributing to Wikipedia's success is not sufficient compensation to
> persuade me to accept the possibility of a prison term.

In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
not a very good approach of the tool.

Aside from this point, the question of what would happen if Sean or
Kelly or anyone with the tool would release private information to the
public is a good question.

They would lose access to the tool certainly. Very likely, they would
lose position at the arbcom. Aside from this, I suppose that anyone
having private information released by a person without a good reason
(such as protecting our network) have the opportunity to sue Sean, Kelly
or whoever on top of suing the Foundation.

Maybe a question to ask a lawyer ?

Ant


body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>>You mean, anyone who doesn't sign a legal document promising to pay a
>>>notable penalty if the Foundation decides they've broken the privacy
>>>policy should not be allowed access to the data? That sounds like a
>>>great idea. We'll have an all-paid sysadmin team before you know it,
>>>because every volunteer will get up and *leave*. Did that bit occur to
>>>you?
>>
>>
>>Of course it did. The consequences of it don't matter. What matters is
>>that we treat personal information with the respect it deserves.
>>
>>I imagine there are alternative possibilities to the one you suggested.
>>
>
>
> What, give Board Members sole access to it, and let *them* get sacked?

Board members are no more paid than arbitrators :-)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] <link> elements for interlanguage link information

body:
Evan Martin wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
>
>> I think it'd be useful for most multilingual MediaWiki installations
>> that use interlanguage links to have such hidden <link> elements. <link>
>> elements aren't rendered in most browsers (Mozilla 1.5+, I think, will
>> show links in a menu on the toolbar), but as mentioned they do provide
>> some guidance to bots and spiders.
>>
>> The downside is that they still take up network bandwidth, and for
>> oft-interwikied pages on big sites (e.g. Wikipedia) this section could
>> run to the 5-10kB size range. (My off-the-cuff estimate for, say,
>> articles where each <link> is about 100B, and  there are 50-100
>> interwiki links.)
>>
>
> What problem is this change trying to fix?  I'm not sure I see the
> pros outweighing the cons...
>
>
A possible point in favour: using rel="alternate" together with the
hreflang attribute in <link> elements (as per
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.3, section
12.3.3) might help search engines make smarter decisions about indexing
Wikipedia content, thus increasing the relevance and availability of
Wikipedia content in Web searches made by the general public.

-- Neil
>
>


from_name: Jack Lynch

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

body:
VERY good questions and comments Anthere, thank you.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Chris Jenkinson stated for the record:
> >
> >
> >>Kelly Martin wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 11/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>What would happen if either of you (Kelly or Sean) disclosed private
> >>>>information into the public domain? Aside from ethical concerns, what
> >>>>prevents you from doing this?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>At work or on Wikipedia?
> >>>
> >>>At work, I would risk being fired, sued, and possibly prosecuted.
> >>>
> >>>On Wikipedia?  It would be wrong.  It would also be breaking several
> >>>promises I've made.
> >>
> >>
> >>As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
> >>information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
> >>a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
> >>checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?
> >
> >
> > The situation is not reasonably similar; it's not even remotely similar.
> >
> > Disclosure of the information I handle at work would immediately and
> > directly endanger lives and damage national security, and I am rather
> > well paid for accepting the responsibility.
> >
> > Disclosure of a Wikipedian's IP address can only lead to harm through
> > tortuous chains of unlikely happenstance, and the privilege of
> > contributing to Wikipedia's success is not sufficient compensation to
> > persuade me to accept the possibility of a prison term.
>
> In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
> government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
> prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
> those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
> the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
> in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
> receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
> think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
> not a very good approach of the tool.
>
> Aside from this point, the question of what would happen if Sean or
> Kelly or anyone with the tool would release private information to the
> public is a good question.
>
> They would lose access to the tool certainly. Very likely, they would
> lose position at the arbcom. Aside from this, I suppose that anyone
> having private information released by a person without a good reason
> (such as protecting our network) have the opportunity to sue Sean, Kelly
> or whoever on top of suing the Foundation.
>
> Maybe a question to ask a lawyer ?
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: [HelpDesk-l] print version collaboration]

body:
This isn't the only one of these; there have been several others about
CD and print versions...

Quick! How long before 1.0 is available???

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[HelpDesk-l] print version collaboration
Date: 	Wed, 2 Nov 2005 07:23:02 -0500
From: 	Jason Barkeloo <jbarkeloo at somaticdigital.com>
Reply-To: 	Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects
<helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org>
To: 	helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org

I am interested in discussing a collaboration on the print version of
Wikipedia.

We recently developed a technology that enables the reader to press the
regular printed pages and connect to digital content.  This is
particularly well suited for enabling the blind who use Braille, the
motor-impaired who use pointers and stylus', and it enables the
presentation of multi-modal content (like ASL, sub-caption, audio, etc.).

This technology, called the touch user interface (TUI) technology works
with optical media, web-based media, etc.

Because the paper becomes a conduit to content, doing it in
non-alphabetic languages helps those without keyboarding skills or a
keyboard in their language, able to access digital content.

There are some videos of the technology in use by a 7-year old at:

http://somaticdigital.com/products/

Cheers,
jb

Jason E. Barkeloo
President
Somatic Digital, LLC
http://somaticdigital.com
t:  513.225.8765
f:  206.666.4856
6522 Waldorf Place
Cincinnati, OH  45230

--
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: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty"

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/14/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Forks are not intrinsically evil; as I've always understood it, the ability
>>to produce forks is supposed to be one of the _strengths_ of the GFDL and
>>other free licenses.
>>
>>
>Except that GFDL and CC tend not to interchangerble.
>
>
If it's not GFDL, then it is by definition not a fork of Wikipedia
content. Either that or it's a violation of the license.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: cluster monitoring

references:
<dl09q7$jne$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4374EF03.6020302@nedworks.org>	<dl7gmk$s7f$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43776C59.8040907@nedworks.org>

body:
Mark Bergsma wrote:
<snip>
>>Can we start installing snmpd on all servers to at least get some basic
>>data ? :o)
>
> That's exactly the same data ganglia is currently monitoring, so I don't
> really see the point...

So lets write ganglia scripts :o)

If we want to monitor every minute 15 services, we will have to telnet
the gmetad every 2 seconds. We could build a caching system though:

Check gmetad, cache the result for one minute, the have the nagios
plugins grep the cache instead of telneting gmetad.

I think i have an idea about how to handle that.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: cluster monitoring

references:
<dl09q7$jne$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4374EF03.6020302@nedworks.org>	<dl7gmk$s7f$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43774803.8040708@fas.harvard.edu>

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
> It's basically the same thing with ganglia metrics.

Good! Now I am RTFM :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: <link> elements for interlanguage link information

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I was pointed to this section of the HTML 4.0 spec ("Notes on helping
> search engines index your Web site") at W3C recently:
>
>         http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
>
> I was specifically interested in this section, which I quote in full:
>
>         Specify language variants of this document
>
>                 If you have prepared translations of this document into
>                 other languages, you should use the LINK element to
>                 reference these.

Would be good if articles on the different projects were translations.
Most of the time, although they are about the same subject, the articles
are differents.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
On 11/14/05, Evan Martin <evanm at google.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> > I think it'd be useful for most multilingual MediaWiki installations
> > that use interlanguage links to have such hidden <link> elements. <link>
> > elements aren't rendered in most browsers (Mozilla 1.5+, I think, will
> > show links in a menu on the toolbar), but as mentioned they do provide
> > some guidance to bots and spiders.
> >
> > The downside is that they still take up network bandwidth, and for
> > oft-interwikied pages on big sites (e.g. Wikipedia) this section could
> > run to the 5-10kB size range. (My off-the-cuff estimate for, say,
> > articles where each <link> is about 100B, and  there are 50-100
> > interwiki links.)
>
> What problem is this change trying to fix?  I'm not sure I see the
> pros outweighing the cons...

This would properly mark the document as avalible in multiple
languages if you consider something that might not be a straight
translation as an alternate version of the document. This would not
"fix" anything but improve the document by providing proper metadata
as reccomended in the specification.


body:
On 11/14/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
> > A possible point in favour: using rel="alternate" together with the hreflang
> > attribute in <link> elements (as per
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.3, section 12.3.3)
> > might help search engines make smarter decisions about indexing Wikipedia
> > content, thus increasing the relevance and availability of Wikipedia content
> > in Web searches made by the general public.
>
> That's an interesting statement.  What evidence do you have to
> support it?  Can you name any search engines that actually look at
> this information?

Regardless of what search engiles do with it it would provide
information to user agents that the document is avalible in an
alternate language.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Language

body:
Hi,

I think the success of this proposal depends on you being able to prove two
things:

1) that Andalusian is different from Spanish to the extent that it isn't
fully mutually-intelligible
2) that it is recognised as a language, either by the Andalusian Community
Government, by ISO, by Ethnologue, or even by certain interest groups. This
point is most important - I think the dialect vs language debate is
basically about which languages are fixed and which aren't. Dialects
generally don't tend to be standardised and recognised, whereas languages
are. It's one think to attempt to construct a Wikipedia in a language that
isn't recognised and that has no standard form, and another to write a
Wikipedia in a minority language that actually has some backing. That the
difference, for example, between proposals like, say, Ripurian, and Voro or
Samogitian. While none of those are recognised by ISO and Ethnologue, Voro
and Samogitian have standard forms, have publications in those languages,
and have interest groups that promote the languages. Ripurian doesn't have
any of those. Does Andalusian?

Unfortunately, there is still no proper Wikipedia article about the
language, and no Ethnologue code. It is actually very difficult to get an
ISO code without a language having an Ethnologue code. Ethnologue classifies
it as a dialect.

Other than that, good luck with the proposal!

On 11/14/05, Manuel Miguel Aranda Ruiz <aranda_ruiz at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I think that Omar means that Asturian derives from old-leon?s, and
> spanisch
> from old-castilian, any way I m not sure if he really wanted to say that.
>
> Well we have to add that Andalusian derives as well from the dialects
> spoken
> in the mooslem Spain, those dialects derive from latin as well as
> old-leon?s, ols-castilian etc....
>
> Ciao.
>
>
 #A0C6E5
> 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px'> style='FONT-SIZE:11px;FONT-FAMILY:tahoma,sans-serif'>
 size=1>
> From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
Reply-To:
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
To:
> wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New
> Language
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:55:52 +0000
>Omar
> Alvarez wrote:
>>>And Aragonese or Asturian are not more
> different from castilian as
>>>andalusian, they were it in the
> past, but not today.
>>
>>That's not true. First of all,
> Aragonose and Asturian are not
>>dialects
>>from spanish,
> they derive directly from latin.
>
>Uhm... whether you consider
> them a dialect of Spanish or not is
>pretty much independent of
> whether it derives from Latin or not. All
>Romance
> languages/dialects/whatever derive from Latin, including
>Spanish,
> Asturian and
>
> Andalusian.
>
>Timwi
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l
> mailing
> list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Charla con tus amigos en l?nea mediante MSN Messenger:
> http://messenger.latam.msn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] HTML

body:
Heippa Pentti,

You can just cut and paste the HTML file in the article
and then upload the pictures.

The only thing is - HTML is very complex and hard to edit,
which is why Wikipedia uses a separate syntax.

It all depends on the level of formatting you have. If it's complex
formatting, it will be hard to convert to the Wikipedia syntax.

As to pictures, the Wikipedia image syntax is the only one
that works. You can link images by placing the following code:

[[Image:NameofFileUploadedtoWikipedia.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Caption]]

Thanks,

Ronline

On 11/14/05, Pentti Mannonen <pentti.mannonen at kolumbus.fi> wrote:
>
> How to include my already made html file witm pictures in Wikipedia
> without retyping it.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> ABCD wrote:
> > Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
> > are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
> > although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
> > something be done about this?
> >
>
[snipping several suggestions]
>
> Read http://rinkworks.com/stupid/ for a laugh and resign ourselves to
> the fact that no matter what we do, some people will NEVER "get it"?
>
I've spent two years doing phone support, & I can attest that you are
closer to the truth than you might think.

One of my fellow workers did support for Berkley Software's AfterDark
screensaver program for the Mac. One day he had to vent about the
people who called for assistance. "The instructions are on a 5x7 card!
The Mac is the most user-friendly interface ever invented! How the #$%@!!
do people manage to get it wrong?"

I could tell a lot of stories like this, but most of the true tales
aren't funny, & most of the funny ones I sometimes suspect aren't true.

Geoff


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I disagree with you Carbonite.
>
> And probably do all those who ever risked anything precious to support
> freedom.
>
> In memory of all those who became unofficial soldiers to liberate their
> country from a hostile invador.
> In memory of those who risked their lives to hide jews in their caves
> during WWII.
> In memory of women who were burned as witches for saving poor girls from
> an unwanted pregnancy.
> In memory of dissidents who lost their lives to ask for independance.
> In memory of journalists who died covering a war to provide *you* with
> information.
> In memory of encyclopedists who were exiled or put in jail for trying to
> publish enlightned encyclopedia de Diderot.
>
> Some people put the public good over their own private well-being. We
> have nothing to criticize, because if noone had done this in our
> countries, we would not savor our current freedom. The best we can do is
> at least to protect them to the best of our abilities.
>
> Ant

I think Carbonite's point was not to degrade the worthy efforts of
these people but to say that Wikipedia is not the forum for making
these points.  This is his viewpoint, and as such he is perfectly
entitled to it.  I disagree with him; I think anyone who edits under
these circumstances should know the inherent dangers of this.  I don't
think these dangers are any more relevant on this website, though,
than any other, especially considering the high level of scrutiny
placed upon the shoulders of these people.

Sam


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] How did this happen (comixpedia??)

body:
On Nov 14, 2005, at 5:28 PM, geni wrote:
>
> I think things were largely worked out at
> [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Webcomics]] which would logicaly be the place
> where people who really care about this topic end up.
>

Actually, what happened at WikiProject Webcomics is that the people
who drove away the contributors proceeded to get into a pissing match
and tried to write the guidelines in such a way as to render a comic
which had survived an AfD not a week before to be deletable,
community consensus on the AfD be damned.

-Snowspinner


body:
On 11/14/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> Forks are not intrinsically evil; as I've always understood it, the ability
> to produce forks is supposed to be one of the _strengths_ of the GFDL and
> other free licenses.

The best thing being, of course, that we can have the stuff back when
they're done with it. ;=)

Sam


body:
On Nov 14, 2005, at 9:29 PM, Bryan Derksen wrote:

>>
> This is an unsupported assertion. We can include every hamlet and
> township in the US, every sportsperson to play professionally,
> every ship in the navy, and every music album published by a record
> label. Why not every webcomic? A few thousand articles will vanish
> like a drop into the sea of Wikipedia if you're not interested in
> the subject.

The usual answer is "it makes us look silly."

Personally, I think being a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
makes us look silly, and we've more than risen above that.

-Phil


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/14/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> Forks are not intrinsically evil; as I've always understood it, the ability
> to produce forks is supposed to be one of the _strengths_ of the GFDL and
> other free licenses.

Except that GFDL and CC tend not to interchangerble.

--
geni


body:
On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We'll try hard to have the log server crash inadvertently if needed...
>
> you know... volunteers... such amateurs... :-)

Every cloud...

Sam


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 11/14/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> I agree that there is a lot to be gained by rewarding people for original
> work.  Still, I think each case should probably be decided on its own
> merits, case by case. I can imagine a case where there was a free image
> available, and also a clearly superior fair use image where the fair use
> issue was not in doubt. In that case, I would find it hard to justify using
> an inferior free image simply because it was free? I know this runs counter
> to pure open-source thinking, but I keep thinking our primary goal is to
> make the best encyclopedia possible, and if that means occasionally favoring
> fair use to free images, then I don't see a problem. But if the images are
> even roughly equivalent in quality, certainly the free should win out.

I believe the usual wording is that free images should be preferred
whenever they are "adequate" replacements -- it's a bit loose, but I
have always thought that it means that as long as the free image is
not "inadequate" (that is, it simply fails both informationally and
stylistically) it should be preferred over a non-free one, even if the
latter is in many respects a better image on the whole.

Just because copyrighted images by full-time photographers with
complete access and advanced materials are "superior" does not mean
they should be preferred; they are contradictory to a major purpose of
this project, do not encourage people to make free media, and put us
unnecessarily in a legally questionable situation on top of that. If
the free alternative is good enough to serve the purpose of an
encyclopedia article, it gains preference, on account of its
free-ness. In my view. It is important to reward the finding/creation
of free content and to avoid wherever possible the reliance upon
non-free content.

FF


body:
On 11/14/05, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure, but wikipedia succeeds where forks like Wikinfo didn't (What's
> Wikinfo? Exactly.) for the same reason that betamax and Ebay's competitors
> failed: the more people use a particular format or site, the more useful
> that site becomes, the more people want to use it.
>
> Why shouldn't Wikipedia have an exhaustive entry on the Heavy Metal Umlaut?
> It's not like it's taking up space that we can't spare; hard drives are
> cheap.
>
> There might be a time when forks will work well, but that'll be several
> years from now, when the user base is much bigger and there are better
> sofware interfaces and visualizations to sort through the differences
> between the forks.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page

I think that dissproves your claim.

--
geni


body:
On Nov 14, 2005, at 8:51 PM, geni wrote:

> On 11/15/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Actually, what happened at WikiProject Webcomics is that the people
>> who drove away the contributors proceeded to get into a pissing match
>> and tried to write the guidelines in such a way as to render a comic
>> which had survived an AfD not a week before to be deletable,
>> community consensus on the AfD be damned.
>>
>> -Snowspinner
>
> AfD represents community consensus? Even I don't think the system is
> that flawless.
>

In this case, the AfD had substantially more people weighing in on it
than the guidelines.

Which tells you something about policy formation these days.

-Phil


body:
On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page
>
> I think that dissproves your claim.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but what claim did it disprove and how?

Sam


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Assumptions about westerners

body:
Mark, I was very angry while I was thinking that you are much older
then you are. But, when I realize what was me in your age, I can say
that you have great advantage to become a good and qualitative person
in the future. You are an important member of Wikipedian community,
you are working a lot and with good faith and I am sure that you would
become just more and more important community member through the time.

In the most of my emails your behaviour was just an example which I
used to show others what is wrong in community. I don't think that you
are a dangerous person (as I thought while I was thinking that you are
much older), but older persons who are better organized then you can
be real thereat to the community.

The idea about Wikipedian community is to grow up and to be
independent of Jimbo's power to decide what is right in the moment
when community doesn't have any response. Community should grow up and
I am talking about this. I could send an email to Jimbo with the words
"Jimbo, please stop the parody about Zlatiborian!", but this is not
the right way for solving problems. Because the problem would not be
to have Zlatiborian Wikipedia, the problem would be to have a number
of tries of making non-existing language Wikipedias. And this is the
matter of community, not the matter of constant Jimbo's decisions.

On 11/14/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Your mails sound good in theory at a number of occassions.
> But your theories are often impossible realities.

Maybe I am asking too much, but I would try it :)

And I would use Mark as an example once again, but, Mark, this is not
about you personally.

When Mark says: "This has to be done in this way and it should produce that",

1. "This has to be done" means that Mark is young;
2. "in this way" means that he has "colonialist arrogance"; and
3. "it should produce that" means that Mark is Westerner.

(To be clear: A lot of other cultures are also aggressive such Western
is. But, I am not now talking to Aztecks nor to Hutus nor to
Balkanians. I am talking now on the list where Westerners are great
majority for sure.)

The third part is Walters "sounds good in theory", too :)

What about people who don't want the same as Westerners want?

So, all of us should think a lot before any step made from the power
position. This power can be factual, but it can be "social", too.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please Moderate Your Moderators

body:
Danny has been informed of your message.

On 11/14/05, Jacob Kingston <joshuasdad7474 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Wikipedia Administrators,
>
> I do not appreciate the comments made towards my son earlier this evening while he was trying to create a new page on your site.  He is doing a project for his fifth grade art class and wanted to put some of his information on your website.  I am not entirely sure what happened because one of your administrators blocked our computers e-mail address and said my son was being a "pain in the ass".  This language is far from acceptable, especially since the boy is so young.  I could not create a profile, as that was what I was prompted to do, I assume because of the block placed on our "IP address".  I would however like this "danny" to at least apologize to my son, the block can stay if it was placed for a reason, but certainly there is no acceptable reasoning behind calling a fifth grader a pain in the ass.  I expect to hear from your staff promptly on this matter.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jacob Kingston
>
> PS Here is part of what my screen showed my son:
>
> Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Danny.
> The reason given is:
> pain in the ass
> You can email Danny or one of the other administrators to discuss the block. You may also edit your user talk page if you wish. If you believe that our blocking policy was violated, you may discuss the block publicly on the WikiEN-l mailing list. Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a Wikipedia account and a valid email address registered in your user preferences.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>  Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page
> >
> > I think that dissproves your claim.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but what claim did it disprove and how?
>
> Sam

Memory alpha appears to be working quite well. Comixpedia may or may
not take off.

For those that don't like NPOV there is:

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Main_Page

--
geni


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> A possible point in favour: using rel="alternate" together with the hreflang
> attribute in <link> elements (as per
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.3, section 12.3.3)
> might help search engines make smarter decisions about indexing Wikipedia
> content, thus increasing the relevance and availability of Wikipedia content
> in Web searches made by the general public.

That's an interesting statement.  What evidence do you have to
support it?  Can you name any search engines that actually look at
this information?

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


body:
Carbonite wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
>>government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
>>prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
>>those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
>>the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
>>in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
>>receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
>>think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
>>not a very good approach of the tool.
>
>
>  If someone's life or family is endangered by editing Wikipedia, they should
> immediately stop. Seriously, if a user is in a situation where they'll lose
> their job, freedom or life because of what they contribute to a website,
> they need to take responsibility for themselves and cease all editing. Of
> course we need to protect the privacy of all editors, and I fully support
> removal of checkuser access for anyone who misuses the tool. However,
> ultimately it up to the every user to ensure they're not putting themselves
> at risk.
>  Carbonite

I disagree with you Carbonite.

And probably do all those who ever risked anything precious to support
freedom.

In memory of all those who became unofficial soldiers to liberate their
country from a hostile invador.
In memory of those who risked their lives to hide jews in their caves
during WWII.
In memory of women who were burned as witches for saving poor girls from
an unwanted pregnancy.
In memory of dissidents who lost their lives to ask for independance.
In memory of journalists who died covering a war to provide *you* with
information.
In memory of encyclopedists who were exiled or put in jail for trying to
publish enlightned encyclopedia de Diderot.

Some people put the public good over their own private well-being. We
have nothing to criticize, because if noone had done this in our
countries, we would not savor our current freedom. The best we can do is
at least to protect them to the best of our abilities.

Ant


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is a bad encyclopedia an encyclopedia at all?

body:
> No the primary goal is to make a free encyclopaedia. It will be the
> best one
> as a byproduct.

I think that by definition an encyclop[a]edia _needs_ to be pretty
good, or what good is it? If making a _good_ encyclopedia is only a
byproduct, we will find in the end that we do not have an
encyclopedia at all.

As Lewis Carroll observed, a stopped clock is right twice a day, but
unless you know _when_ it is right that does not help you. An
encyclopedia that is 90% accurate is not really an encyclopedia.

Behold, this set of aeronautical charts:

They are surprisingly accurate. The inaccurate parts aren't really a
problem. You can usually tell which they are from their sketchy,
sloppy look. And you probably aren't going to the places that are
inaccurate, anyway. The places people go to a _lot_ tend to be quite
accurate.

The level of detail does vary. Some old-fashioned people think it's
important for traditional maps to have good coverage of JFK Airport,
and our coverage of JFK is, well, a little embarrassing. On the other
hand, our coverage of Walt Disney World and Branson, Missouri is far
better than any commercial set of charts.

We have very good coverage of Atlantis, and a very clear legend next
to it indicating that some people think it exists and some think it
does not.

By the way, be very careful about flying into Gda?sk.

On my next flight, I hope my pilot will not be using these maps.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Anthere

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>In case you are not aware of it, Yahoo recently helped the chinese
>>>government to uncover a chinese "dissident" and this lead the guy to
>>>prison. Have no doubts that some of our participants, in particular
>>>those from certain regions, or those participating to wikinews, are at
>>>the same amount of risk. *You* could yourself directly endanger a life
>>>in giving private information. I hope that in spite that you do not
>>>receive a sufficient financial compensation, you will be careful. I
>>>think feeling less responsability due to the fact you are not paid is
>>>not a very good approach of the tool.
>>
>> If someone's life or family is endangered by editing Wikipedia, they should
>>immediately stop. Seriously, if a user is in a situation where they'll lose
>>their job, freedom or life because of what they contribute to a website,
>>they need to take responsibility for themselves and cease all editing. Of
>>course we need to protect the privacy of all editors, and I fully support
>>removal of checkuser access for anyone who misuses the tool. However,
>>ultimately it up to the every user to ensure they're not putting themselves
>>at risk.
>
>
> Indeed.  While those of us who use checkuser are aware of the
> potential for either financial or personal injury to those who edit
> Wikipedia when they ought not be, and will endeavor to protect the
> privacy of such people, the onus on those who violate either
> employment agreements or local legal authorities by editing Wikipedia
> when they ought not be falls on them, and not on us.
>
> Kelly

Yes ?

I think that if one chinese editor edit the english article on say...
Tien An Men events, and a request comes from a chinese governement
official saying you should provide private information about the editor,
for the motive that talking about such a topic is violating their local
laws, I will consider that any checkuser providing liberally such an
information without first checking with the Foundation and its legal
counselling, will be a violation of the tool use and of the trust put in
the check user.

The argument that this chinese user knew he was at known risk for
editing such an article and is fully responsable of being jailed, will
not be an argument for me. Knowing that we are at risk should not lead
us to censor ourselves in fear that some allegedly trusted editors on
wikipedia could at any time lead us to jail. When someone gets in jail
because he did not respected local laws which are fully against freedom,
the responsibility is shared between himself and the person who
denounced him.

Ant


from_name: Brown, Darin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How did this happen (comixpedia??)

body:
Geni wrote:

>Can you verify all the claims in them.

Here we do run into an issue which esp. tricky in this particular case. By
its very nature, webcomics and the webcomics community are going to eschew
the more traditional verification mechanisms, most esp. those found in
print. Of course -- the entire phenomenon itself is based around the
internet. The entire *community* itself, its own internal verification
procedures, its own internal conditions upon which it deems verification
necessary, are non-traditional. It is disingenuous to hold it accountable to
similar verification procedures as say, mathematics or physics. You are not
going to find thousands of references to webcomix in the academic
literature. And it will be very difficult to find many in print. The fact
is, the phenomenon of webcomix itself is highly radical and raises serious
issues about the nature of verification itself.

For example, simply applying the "website notability" requirements to
webcomix is absurd. There is a fundamental difference between websites which
serve as fronts to organisations, or which provide specific services to
users and contributors, and to websites where the internet itself is the
medium of being. Webcomix websites are not "reflectors" of external
interest. They are the substance itself. You would never consider
discounting a book as being unencyclopedic simply because it had low sales.
There are numerous examples of books with low sales that had enormous
influence. There are too many other important factors to consider.
Similarly, a webcomix website cannot be assessed solely on "sales".

To be upfront, I don't understand how forks should be necessary at all.
Exposition is either encyclopedic or it is not. If it is encyclopedic, it
belongs in wikipedia under a suitable wikiproject. If it is not, then it is
something else, which should go on elsewhere. Now, it's true, people may
legitimately disagree on whether a *particular* webcomic is notable enough
to merit an article, but this is not the issue. If comixpedia.org wants to
delete notability from their requirements, that is their right, but it is
inaccurate IMO to then claim that they are a *fork* of wikipedia. It is
inaccurate to claim their exposition is encyclopedic. What they will be
doing then is great and wonderful, but not encyclopedic. By dropping one of
the major tenets of article inclusion, they are by definition creating
something new.

Another thing that bothers me is that the "fork" was clearly hostile and not
a mutually satisfying event. I am not so much disturbed that people felt a
need to create something new, where notability was not a criteria. Rather, I
am disturbed that such a creation came about amidst a tangible amount of
rancor, ill will, bad faith, lack of communication and compromise. It is
clear by looking at the histories of several AfD's for just a few hours that
many people who were not experts on the topic, and hardly cared or were even
interested in the topic, expended so much time and energy in telling people
who *were* experts and interested people how they should police themselves.
Alexa and Google rankings are useful criteria *when used in combination with
expert judgment and informed community knowledge*, but when they are used by
people who obviously don't give a damn about the topic they're policing,
it's a disaster.

>No some comics. We have fairly well worked out inclusion standards for
comics

And who is carrying out these standards? Those who are knowledgeable? Or
those with a bone to pick? I have seen a lot of evidence that the latter
have had disproportionate sway.

>It [1000 forks] will happen. I hope it does.

You missed my point, which obviously went way over your head. I was being
*ironic*. We already have a thousand forks! They're called wikiprojects. If
non-notability is dropped, and a new wiki started, that is something new,
but it is not encyclopedic. It is not a "fork".

>I think things were largely worked out at
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Webcomics]] which would logicaly be the place
where people who really care about this topic end up.

My ironic observation would be that at AfD, lots of people work on deletions
who obviously don't give a damn about a particular subject. While I realise
AfD plays an important role in regulating content and enforcing standards,
and the the wiki would fall apart without it, I am a bit, let's say,
skeptical about the motives of people who seem to do almost nothing but work
at AfD.

What's to stop people who don't give a damn about baseball from deciding
what players are "notable"? What's to stop people who don't give a damn
about chess from deciding what famous games are "notable"? What's to stop
people who don't give a damn about music from deciding which individual
piano concertos are "notable"? What's to stop people who don't give a damn
about math from deciding what theorems are "notable"? None of these things
can be determined solely by google rankings or alexa rankings. For example,
the fact a pitcher has only been in the majors 2 years and has a career ERA
of 5.90 is far more compelling argument for deletion based on NN than google
ranks. Barring some specific incident (newsstory, etc.)

Here's a prefect example of what I'm talking about: "'notable within the
webcomic community' and 'notable in the context of wikipedia' are two
different things." (from User:SCZen/Webcomics) What baloney! Of course, no
single individual should be able to decide notability, but certainly on any
subject, the decision of notability should come from the community involved
in that subject itself, no matter how small the community. Who else is
better to decide? Those who don't give a damn? The Lindemann-Weierstrass
theorem is not "notable in the context of wikipedia", in the sense that
hardly anyone outside of specialists takes note of it, but within number
theory circles, it is highly notable. You will get a very low google rank
(224 unique hits) for it, and anyone outside of math, and even possibly
outside of number theory, will have great difficulty verifying its
notability, without directly consulting experts, as it would be almost
impossible for someone else to attempt to consult the literature to
determine this notability. (It would appear indistinguishable to the
untrained eye from thousands upon thousands of other results in the
literature or even textbooks.) By the usual "arguments" used at AfD, where
people ignorant of a subject rely uncritically on google hits, it would get
speedy deleted. But of course, no one dares do that, as they are petrified
to comment on mathematical topics.

darin


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
 The rule is explicit.  The way it should be enterpreted in this case
is not.  The most common English name should be used.  Some people
consider C?te d'Ivoire more common, some consider Ivory Coast more
common.  If you stopped seeing things as black-or-white,
right-or-wrong, you might find this whole issue easier to deal with.
Both are acceptable, and the amount of debate this *minor* issue has
had is absurd.
 Wrong. In world usage in English, a review of sources shows that Ivory Coast is used everywhere. Cote d'Ivoire is used occasionally, in most cases purely in diplomatic texts. It is a black and white issue. The MoS say to use the most common name by a mile is Ivory Coast. For example, the US uses Cote d'Ivoire more than most. A review of 20 sources - governmental, media, reportage, NGOs - put usage as 75:25 (75 Ivory Coast, 25 Cote d'Ivoire). And that is in English a highpoint of usage. Other states' usage is 100:0  Ivory Coast vs Cote d'Ivoire.

 What is happening is perfectly simple. Some French language users wish to use a lesser known name as the article name, the version version, in breach of the MoS requirement that the most common name used by English users be used to keep a French name in preference to the actually more widely used name. It is the equivalent of if a lot of German speakers voted to ensure that the Germany page was at [[Deutchland]], if a lot of Italian speakers voted to put Italy at [[Italia]], or if Ulster Scots users speakers used their numbers to put Northern Ireland at [[Northinn Airlinn]].

 Language should be irrelevant to the debate. Under the MoS the only criteria is ''most commonly used". Some users seem to be saying 'to tell with the MoS, lets push our language". That is an abuse of WP.

 Thom

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Model Search  - Could you be the next catwalk superstar? Check out the competition now


body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> I think Carbonite's point was not to degrade the worthy efforts of
> these people but to say that Wikipedia is not the forum for making
> these points.  This is his viewpoint, and as such he is perfectly
> entitled to it.  I disagree with him; I think anyone who edits under
> these circumstances should know the inherent dangers of this.  I don't
> think these dangers are any more relevant on this website, though,
> than any other, especially considering the high level of scrutiny
> placed upon the shoulders of these people.
>
> Sam

We'll try hard to have the log server crash inadvertently if needed...

you know... volunteers... such amateurs... :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Of Pokemon and baseball

body:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2005, Andrew Gray wrote:

> Incidentally, today's rather demoralising AfD: [[Wikipedia:Articles
> for deletion/Surviving veterans of the First World War]]. Nominated on
> _Sunday the 13th of November_. Oh, the timing.
>
That beats my latest encounter with the AfD Zone: consider a group
of articles cut-n-pasted from man pages that are part of the Debian
distro of Linux, nominated for deletion. While some of the reasons
offered for deletion were plausible, the nominator also added
that these articles were suitable candidates because they were
"copyright violations".

Maybe I'm just dense, but at least 2 other people agreed that they
were copyright violations, and not one bothered to explain how they
came to this counterintuitive conclusion. When I pressed for an
explanation, a terse reply pointed me to a section of a Wikipedia
article where it was stated that GPL was incompatible with GFDL. (No
explanation, just a bare statement.)

Last summer when I was at OSCON, I met the guy at the Free Software
Foundation who handles the legal questions about the GPL & GFDL.
If I ever find his business card, I will email him to see if the
hairs were split correctly in this case.

Geoff


body:
I am forced to laugh that you reply to my email asking you not to talk
in black and white with the sentence "Wrong."  I am only asking you to
have a litte more respect for the other users who differ in their
opinion to you.

Also, don't fall into the trap of thinking that statistics prove your
point.  They don't.  They support it.

In my opinion, C?te d'Ivoire is more common.  In your opinion, Ivory
Coast is more common.  I respect your right to your opinion, and I
don't label you "wrong" because I happen to differ.

I only ask you afford me the same courtesy.

Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: opinions

body:
Geni said:

> That is your opinion. There are of course many opinions the majority
of the population don't respect. for example the opinion that starlin
was an all round good guy would not be widely respected. Once you move
away from the absolute position it simply becomes a question of where
to draw the line.

Yes, and of course, you have the ultimate moral authority on that.

Isn't there some saying, the most reliable way to tell if someone has lost
an argument is how by soon they start invoking the Holocaust or Stalin??

darin


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I find Anthere's statements on this thread heroic, and I fully intend
to support her for re-election to the wiki-media board, when and if
such an event may occur. She has said a great many things I wanted to
hear, or would have said in her place. Thank you, Anthere.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > We'll try hard to have the log server crash inadvertently if needed...
> >
> > you know... volunteers... such amateurs... :-)
>
> Every cloud...
>
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>While there are textbooks on Wikibooks, it is far more than that if you
>>have paid attention to the community there at all. Wikibooks is about
>>non-fiction books, and that takes many very unique forms.
>>
>>
>
>And Wikijunior is certainly a non-fiction book. Since you keep on repeating the
>same rants I?m going to ignore your future posts on this topic. You?ve been
>heard.
>
>-- mav
>
>
Who is repeating here? Yes, I hope my point has been heard. And thank
you for at least replying. Wikipedia is also a non-fiction book, however.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On 14/11/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Oh common that is crazy and you know it. It is very simple. What you in

If I knew it were crazy, do you think I'd waste my time writing it? Or
perhaps I have some strange ulterior motive in writing "crazy" things?

> Midwest USA feel is the truth and is the right way of handling things

Arizona is not in the midwest. Arizona is in the southwest. The
midwest is a very different region. Many things about the Southwest
make it differnet -- demographics, linguistic diversity, climate,
physical geography. My impression of the midwest (though not a correct
one) is that it's just one big prarieland. I think a widespread
impression of the Southwest is that it's just one big desert (not true
either).

The Midwest means states east of New Mexico and west of, say,
Kentucky. I think. See, if I say something I'm unsure of, I make a
note of it so people will know that.

> ....... somebody in Mexico might frown upon. Even people in the UK might
> frown upon it. You should learn that not everybody on this earth thinks
> alike nor is raised alike nor considers the same things truths that you
> consider truths ..... that is a simple fact of life. Learn to life with

This is quite obvious. You continue to act as if you have complete and
total insight into my mind. You seem to think you know which things I
know, and which things I don't. I would say that I know quite a bit
more about cultural diversity than you think.

I'm willing to bet that you think cannibalism is inherently wrong in
most situations. Well, I don't. You may well think the same thing
about incest. I don't. I believe that these taboos in most Western
cultures are by no means universal -- they are considered OK things to
do in some cultures, and I accept that.

Cultural imperialism is wanting to impose your values on other
cultures, such as forbidding a culture that practices cannibalism or
ritual human sacrifice from doing these things because you say they
are wrong.

How emotions are expressed, what is OK for different people to do, how
people should act in different situations, and the expected reaction
to certain stimuli varies from culture to culture.

This is because each culture to a certain extent shares a collective
experience. You, being from the Netherlands, are influenced by
experiences that I never had due to my cultural background. This
effects every single one of our opinions, decisions, and actions.

I am not ignorant of this fact.

> it instead of keeping on telling people that you are right all the time
> and people should listen to you. You simply didn't get the point of my

Please quote where I told somebody that I was right and they should
listen to me.

> previous email it was not just about that issue it was a general
> tendency which I addressed. Since I am not a native USA-English speaker
> I blame it on my insufficient grasp of using the USA-English language in
> an email to convince you of my point.

Or, maybe I just disagree with you... you're being a hypocrite of
sorts here. Your entire thinking here seems to be that I'm
bad/wrong/should be boycotted/whatever because I don't accept that
people can disagree with me... and yet, when I disagree with you, you
blame it on your poor mastery of English. Well, I understand what
you're saying perfectly, I think, but I still feel it's shallow and
presumptive of things you can't possibly know (what I'm thinking, for
example).

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> In my opinion, C?te d'Ivoire is more common.  In your opinion, Ivory
> Coast is more common.  I respect your right to your opinion, and I
> don't label you "wrong" because I happen to differ.

You have the right to your own opinion. You do not have the right to
your own facts. In this case every properly conducted survey has
turned up ivory coast as more common.

--
geni


body:
On 11/14/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:

> Wow, I was totally unaware of this happening. After browsing around
> "comixpedia" for an hour or so, I have to admit I'm totally mystified and
> agree with David. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about the
> articles at this "comixpedia" site to differentiate them from any number of
> articles at other places, except that certain people seemed to think certain
> articles weren't "notable".

Can you verify all the claims in them.

>But really, come on, less than 1,000 articles,
> yeah that's *real* threatening. It's *1/10th of 1%* of wikipedia articles.
> And a large number of these are copies of Wikipedia articles, and a large
> number of the remaining are actually far from stubs, and many contain some
> interesting information.
Can it be verifed?

> What next, every time some people get in their head
> that there are too many stubs on a subject, we'll just banish them to a
> fork? Moreover, the move to the fork sets up an artificial barrier to
> linking to other topics on wikipedia.  One of the joys I have found about
> the project is the ability to begin at one article, and gradually move on to
> interesting articles in other areas simply by clicking on interesting links
> 3 or 4 times. It gives a sense of connection and inter-relatedness. The
> impression given here is that "comics" are somehow beyond the pale of
> acknowledgement and have to be banished in exile.

No some comics. We have fairly well worked out inclusion standards for comics

> Am I just really missing something?? How did this happen? I have a Jonathan
> Swift suggestion: Why don't we just create 1,000 different forks -- let's
> have a math fork, a physics fork, a chess fork, a baseball fork. We'll call
> them "mathpedia", "physicspedia", "chessipedia", and "baseballpedia", they
> can all have different webpages, different admins, different statistics,
> different everything. And they can all link to each other via external
> links. That's a great idea.

It will happen. I hope it does.

>
> BTW, I wonder how many people feel the way I do, but never registered their
> opinion simply because they weren't even *aware* a debate was going on.  (I
> do remember some posts about webcomics, but I never caught on that an entire
> fork was being created. And besides, what about people who don't keep up
> with this discussion list??

I think things were largely worked out at
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Webcomics]] which would logicaly be the place
where people who really care about this topic end up.

--
geni


body:
On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I agree---I don't necessarily think a million Pokemon pages are the most
> useful thing on Wikipedia, but I don't see why it *hurts* anything to
> have them either.

Considering the world wide profile of pokemon I think your example sucks.

> I do think a lot of the reason for specialized
> encyclopedias doesn't apply to Wikipedia: 1) They tend to be produced by
> different, specialized companies; and 2) They have space constraints.
> Wikiprojects can mimic (1) without actually forking, and (2) doesn't apply.
>
> -Mark

Forks allow people with a common interest to work quitely on a project
sorounded only by those who share their interests. For some this
enviroment may be more productive.

--
geni


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] 9 out of 10 Nigerian Spammers agree...

body:
... the correct name is C?te d'Ivoire!

(Posted to helpdesk-l)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [HelpDesk-l] Reply
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:17:11 +0100 (GMT+01:00)
From: coul_aboul at virgilio.it <coul_aboul at virgilio.it>
Reply-To: coul_aboul at virgilio.it <coul_aboul at virgilio.it>,
helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

>From Mr coul aboulaye

Emmagency call

With sorrow I wrote you this
message,Being the only son of my father late chief
ciss? aboulaye from
Cote 'd'Ivoire. My father was a Cocoa Merchant in
Cote'd'Ivoire before
his untimely death.After his business trip to Abidjan Cote
d'Ivoire, to
negotiate on a Cocoa business, a week after he came back from
Abidjan,
he was poisoned by unknown people and was rushed to a
hospital where
he died after five days in hospital.

<snip rest of spam>

--
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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body:
On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have the right to your own opinion. You do not have the right to
> your own facts. In this case every properly conducted survey has
> turned up ivory coast as more common.

Yet more people trying to paint the world in black and white.  All I
asked for is to be allowed to state my opinion without being labelled
"wrong" for it.  There are some opinions which are wholly wrong, but
they are few and far between, so I would request that all people have
the courtesy to respect that, and, furthermore, _be polite_.

This mailing list has become (has always been?) a place where trolls
come to announce their grievances.  Thus it is always a place where
civility sometimes doesn't reign supreme.  That is no good reason for
experienced and respected Wikipedians to forget civility and make this
list a very unpleasant place to be indeed.

Sam


body:
Carbonite wrote:

>  I think perhaps we're getting a little melodramatic here. I was under the
> impression that we're here to write an encyclopedia, not fight oppression.
> If the former happens to lead to the latter, that's a great bonus. My point
> was that it's up to the user to protect himself. If a slip of an IP address
> will likely lead to harsh punishment, the risk of editing is almost
> certainly too high. I'm NOT saying that we should be careless and expose IP
> addresses, but to treat this as a matter of life and death is unnecessary
> rhetoric.
>  Carbonite

When I joined Wikipedia, I had the opportunity to protect myself. I used
  anonymous proxies. I edited, under these proxies, on certain topics
which could lead to me certainly have professional problems.
One thing I appreciated is that ips were visible, even for logged in
users. So, anytime, I could check which information was registered about me.

When use of anonymous proxies was not possible any more, I stopped
putting certain type of information entirely. I regretted that very
much, but there was no possibility for myself to protect myself anymore.

I think some of the information I could have put on sites such as
wikinews would have been worth. But I do not feel like fighting big firm
lobbies.

oh... and read this http://soufron.typhon.net/article.php3?id_article=71

Ant


body:
On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You have the right to your own opinion. You do not have the right to
> > your own facts. In this case every properly conducted survey has
> > turned up ivory coast as more common.
>
> Yet more people trying to paint the world in black and white.  All I
> asked for is to be allowed to state my opinion without being labelled
> "wrong" for it.  There are some opinions which are wholly wrong, but
> they are few and far between, so I would request that all people have
> the courtesy to respect that, and, furthermore, _be polite_.
>
> This mailing list has become (has always been?) a place where trolls
> come to announce their grievances.  Thus it is always a place where
> civility sometimes doesn't reign supreme.  That is no good reason for
> experienced and respected Wikipedians to forget civility and make this
> list a very unpleasant place to be indeed.
>
> Sam

You appear to think that respecting you means that I have to respect
your opinions. This is not the case.

--
geni


body:
On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I agree---I don't necessarily think a million Pokemon pages are the most
> >>useful thing on Wikipedia, but I don't see why it *hurts* anything to
> >>have them either.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Considering the world wide profile of pokemon I think your example sucks.
> >
> >
> But there is no requirement on Wikipedia that there be a "world wide
> profile" for our topics.  Plenty of our topics, especially on scientific
> subjects, are interesting only to a handful of specialists.  There's no
> reason not to have these.
>
> -Mark

Sure but they are a walkover to verify for the most part.

--
geni


body:
On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> You appear to think that respecting you means that I have to respect
> your opinions. This is not the case.

Sometimes it pays to say "hmm, I disagree with that.  Nevertheless, I
can see where he/she/(insert appropriate pronoun here) is coming from,
so I'll respect his/her/(ditto) opinion.  Maybe that will make people
more keen to respect mine."

If you want people to respect you, respect them.  If you want people
to respect your opinions, respect theirs.

Civility is not really that hard, and would make many people much happier.

Sam


from_name: Brandon Cordy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: FW: Billboard chart data licensing

body:
Hi, all. I'm a Wikipedia editor who uses the login "FuriousFreddy". There
were some questions raised over the legality of the inclusion of data from
the American Billboard music charts, since the company that owns Billboard
(VNU Media) claims copyright and ownership of the chart information. I sent
them an email several weeks ago...and they finally got back to answering it.

What does this mean for the Wikipedia music articles which include Billboard
charts?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brandon Cordy <brandon at brandoncordy.com>
Date: Nov 14, 2005 7:26 AM
Subject: FW: Billboard chart data licensing
To: b.touch at gmail.com

-----Original Message-----
*From:* Sam Bell [mailto:SBell at vnuemedia.com]
*Sent:* Sunday, November 13, 2005 1:00 PM
*To:* Brandon Cordy
*Cc:* brandon at brandoncordy.com; Ben French
*Subject:* Re: Billboard chart data licensing

Brandon,

Thanks for reaching out to me - much appreciated. Use of Billboard
intellectual property does require a license and we would be happy to
discuss how to go about obtaining one. I am copying Ben French on this email
- he will touch base on Monday to discuss further.

Cheers

Sam
...................................................
sam bell
director, business development
vnu emedia, inc.
770 broadway
new york, ny 10003
p. 646-654-5522
f. 646-654-5589
http://www.vnubusinessmedia.com

  *"Brandon Cordy" <brandon at brandoncordy.com>*

10/24/2005 04:53 PM

To

sbell at billboard.com

cc

brandon at brandoncordy.com

Subject

Billboard chart data licensing

Dear Mr. Bell,

I am not sure if I have the correct department, but I am writing to
enquire about the licensing of Billboard chart data for use at the
English version of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia
(en.wikipedia.org <http://en.wikipedia.org>). Currently, Wikipedia uses a
significant amount of
data from Billboard records and charts, and I was concerned, after
seeing the disclaimer at napster.com <http://napster.com> ("Billboard chart
information may
not be published, broadcast, displayed or redistributed without the
prior written agreement of VNU eMedia, Inc.") that we may not be in
compliance with your usage policies. Are we allowed, as a non-profit
informational resource, to use Billboard chart data, and, if so, is
there any limit to the amounts we may use (in recent months, several
persons have begun adding data from every Billboard chart in relation to
a particular song)?

If it is found that we should not include any or most Billboard chart
data, it will be removed expeditiously and without question. I
personally do not represent, neither am I associated with, the Wikimedia
Foundation in any way; I am inquiring out of courtesy. If I have
contacted the wrong department, if you could please foward my inquiry to
the correct one, I would be very grateful. Thank you for your assistance.

Regards,

Brandon Cordy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
Peter Shaw wrote:
<snip>
> or <Standard Mac Browser>
>

Safari. But don't forget all the Linux web browsers! Konquerer etc.

--
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] Deletionitis

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>>They usually do it without
>>even informing the creators of the work of their
>>proposed deletion
>
>
>
> I suggested on AFD talk that when nominating an article for deletion,
> you contact the creator. They decided this was too much like effort.
>
> (This was after I wrote [[Danese Cooper]] and it survived deletion
> while I wasn't looking. A classic case of "delete because I'm ignorant
> of the subject.")
>
>

Sounds like something out of the Hitchhikers Guide...

>
>>and go ballistic if their
>>pseudo-policy is questioned.
>
>
>
> This is readily apparent too.
>
> Oh, wikien-l is apparently enemy territory of AFD now for discussing
> the matter. Assume Bad Faith!
>

Today in Wikipedia land: the mop-with-flamethrowers take on the
mop-with-M16s...

--
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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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>
>
>>As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
>>information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
>>a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
>>checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?
>
>
>
> What, like all the devs, you mean? The volunteer sysadmins? I'd weigh
> up the possibility they'd say "buggre alle this" and just walk. Don't
> let me hold you back from this excellent and cautious idea, though.
>
> Would anyone favour the idea of me just handing back the CheckUser
> bit? I'm this >< close.
>
>

No! We need you! You're sane! You know network stuff!

--
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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body:
On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you want people to respect you, respect them.  If you want people
> to respect your opinions, respect theirs.

That is not the reason I want people to respect my opinions. I want
people to respect them because they are logical and firmly grounded in
evidence. I respect people not because I want them to respect me back
but because my system of ethics does not allow me to do otherwise.

--
geni


body:
On 11/14/05, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, I stand corrected. But I do think instances like Star Trek, which have a
> huge obsessed fan base, are the exception rather than the rule.

In time things with smaller fan bases will be able to take off. Have a
look around wikicites sometime some of it makes interesting reading.

--
geni


body:
Oh for goodness' sake.  This conversation does neither of us any
credit.  I wish you a good night.

Sam

On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you want people to respect you, respect them.  If you want people
> > to respect your opinions, respect theirs.
>
> That is not the reason I want people to respect my opinions. I want
> people to respect them because they are logical and firmly grounded in
> evidence. I respect people not because I want them to respect me back
> but because my system of ethics does not allow me to do otherwise.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 11/14/05, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I don't think the star trek and kos wikis are technically forks, even
> if they do use mediawiki.

This is correct. Makeing a true fork is a sucidle move for a startup
wiki since the number of articles that already exist is overwelming.

--
geni


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

body:
Autymn D.C. wrote:
<snip>
> On 11 Nov 2005, at 18.59, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> Autymn D.C. wrote:
>> <snip screed about english being polluted>
>>
>>> What in specific haven't I proven?
>>>
>>> -Aut
>>> 1^2 = -1^2
>>> (1^2)^.5 =^.5 (-1^2)^.5
>>> ?1 :: ?-1
>>> ?1 = ?1; ?-1 = ?-1
>>
>>
>> Since you've just tried to prove that +1 = -1, I think we can safely
>> assume that your banning was in good order. If you want to write in some
>> language that isn't english, go do it somewhere other than the English
>> Wikipedia.
>
>
> /You/ are a troll, and your email is meaningless, having nothing to do
> with the argument to this point.  It's the opposite of what I was
> doing.  I have to deal with illiterates and mindlesses every day over
> the internet, who criticize and badmouth others and me because they
> can't see how /they/ slipped up.  They, like you, can't support any of
> their attacks, and they use a host of fallacies to defend themselves
> whilst doing nothing to expose  whatever wrongness was in the claim.
> And often the victims get punished, but /they/ don't; they get to keep
> running around thinking that they got the best.  And no one watching is
> the more competent to switch back the harm.
>

By your own admission: YHBT. YHL. HAND.

--
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] Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

body:
M. Creidieki Crouch wrote:
> David,
>
> I appreciate your comments.  It's quite possible that you're right,
> and that having these logs available would be more trouble than it's
> worth.
>
>
>>A. 1. It would be a gross and blatant violation of the privacy policy.
>>Note that your privacy is not being breached by having a developer or
>>a checkuseruser look up your IP, but only by it being revealed.
>
>
> I wasn't suggesting that the *result* of the check be available on the
> public log.  Simply the admin's username, the user who was checked,
> the timestamp, and the admin's stated reason.
>
>
>>2.  it would be utterly poisonous to the community. Merely being
>>checked on would be seen as a black mark (c.f. geni's attacks on Kelly
>>Martin's character in this thread).
>
>
> I think that this danger would be minimized if the admin explained the
> reason for the check, ideally with a link to something that would be
> considered "reasonable evidence".
>
>
<snip>

It's called McCarthyism. The knowledge that one has been accused is
enough to damage one's reputation irrepairably.

--
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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body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>>Would anyone favour the idea of me just handing back the CheckUser
>>>bit? I'm this >< close.
>>
>>No! We need you! You're sane! You know network stuff!
>>
>
> Is that honestly the nicest thing you can think of to say about David
> -- that he's sane? Mind you, on Wikipedia, that counts for a lot.
>

He was talking about giving up the CheckUser capability, not leaving
Wikipedia.

--
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: Neil Harris

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>> A possible point in favour: using rel="alternate" together with the hreflang
>> attribute in <link> elements (as per
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.3, section 12.3.3)
>> might help search engines make smarter decisions about indexing Wikipedia
>> content, thus increasing the relevance and availability of Wikipedia content
>> in Web searches made by the general public.
>>
>
> That's an interesting statement.  What evidence do you have to
> support it?  Can you name any search engines that actually look at
> this information?
>
I think it's a chicken-and-egg problem, a case of "if you build it, they
will come."

Although I do not know of any search engine that uses this information,
on the other hand, it's hard to prove a negative. Google, in particular,
are highly ingenious in using every scrap of information they can glean
from analyzing web pages, and feeding it to their machine-learning
pattern-matching engines. Certainly, unless that information is present,
they will certainly not be able to use it, even in theory.

I think that encoding the metadata statement "this other page is an
alternative to this page, in the following language" in a standardized
machine-readable form is quite likely to be useful, possibly in
unanticipated ways.

Indeed, the application of this link tag to Wikipedia is a clear case
where both of the normal objections voiced to the hreflang attribute (no
control of linked-to content, what about Accept-Lang) clearly do not apply.

It's simple to implement, clearly cannot do any harm to Wikipedia's
content, and it might do some good; whether it is worth the additional
load on Wikipedia's bandwidth and servers is another matter.

-- Neil


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Copy pages from Wikipedia/Wiktionary for use on
 giveway CD (presentation in Cracow)

body:
Hi, I need to create a giveaway CD where I would like to include some
articles that are tranlsated in various languages. I have to give a
presentation on wiki projects during a translator's conference.

Now I tried to download some pages with HTTrack, but it just does not
work. Is there a way to download specific pages and have them update
every now and then since I suppose from now on it will happen more often
to have to provide some single example pages.

I know I could do this with IE using the "offline browsing" utility,
well I use Firefox ... and I am not very keen on doing things with IE.

Has someone an idea how I could achieve this?

Thanks!

Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Copy pages from Wikipedia/Wiktionary for use on
 giveway CD (presentation in Cracow)


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

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Carbonite wrote:
>
>>  I think perhaps we're getting a little melodramatic here. I was under
>> the
>> impression that we're here to write an encyclopedia, not fight
>> oppression.
>> If the former happens to lead to the latter, that's a great bonus. My
>> point
>> was that it's up to the user to protect himself. If a slip of an IP
>> address
>> will likely lead to harsh punishment, the risk of editing is almost
>> certainly too high. I'm NOT saying that we should be careless and
>> expose IP
>> addresses, but to treat this as a matter of life and death is unnecessary
>> rhetoric.
>>  Carbonite
>
>
> When I joined Wikipedia, I had the opportunity to protect myself. I used
>  anonymous proxies. I edited, under these proxies, on certain topics
> which could lead to me certainly have professional problems.
> One thing I appreciated is that ips were visible, even for logged in
> users. So, anytime, I could check which information was registered about
> me.
>
> When use of anonymous proxies was not possible any more, I stopped
> putting certain type of information entirely. I regretted that very
> much, but there was no possibility for myself to protect myself anymore.
>
> I think some of the information I could have put on sites such as
> wikinews would have been worth. But I do not feel like fighting big firm
> lobbies.
>
> oh... and read this http://soufron.typhon.net/article.php3?id_article=71
>
> Ant

Oh, thinking about it... I do not have any such fears any more now.

I should be doing my last day at my job tomorrow.

I started this job in august 2000. Joined Wikipedia in february 2002. I
have run like crazy between my job, my two kids, my husband and
Wikip?dia for nearly 4 years. I am quite happy to take a break for the
next few months, have real nights of sleep, be on holidays for real,
have time to take the time to do nothing... I feel like I have lived 10
years in 4 years.

4 years ago, I was very afraid of having my real name, or any private
information known about me. I never connected myself to Wikipedia from
my job. I think my husband did not discover about Wikipedia until at
least a full year working on it...

It was a huge step to take 18 months ago, to give my real name for the
board elections. For the last 18 months, I also feared that my employer
would discover about my second life at wikipedia (and understand why I
was falling asleep during afternoon meetings). He never did. Several
employees did see press stuff, but not my boss. He never saw anything.

This week is a sort of turn in life for me. My firm is bankrupt and
likely will be closed by legal judgement on this friday. All the
contracts I had ongoing will stop within an hour. And will never be
finished by anyone. Then, I should receive a letter firing me at the end
of the month. I have not been paid since september anyway.

This is a very strange feeling. This is just why I wanted to share it
with you. Most of you do not see what we are doing on the board and what
it sometimes imply. Just people far away. Not people you know much about.

So, here I am. I am 37 years old. I am a volunteer just like you. I have
two kids. I lost a baby in spring. I will have a fourth kid, hopefully
early 2006. I am losing my job this week. And I am glad to be
participating to Wikipedia (even if sometimes, it is a burden...). It is
a good life overall :-)

eh !


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 14 Nov 2005, at 19:12, Brown, Darin wrote:
> I agree that there is a lot to be gained by rewarding people for
> original
> work.  Still, I think each case should probably be decided on its own
> merits, case by case. I can imagine a case where there was a free
> image
> available, and also a clearly superior fair use image where the
> fair use
> issue was not in doubt. In that case, I would find it hard to
> justify using
> an inferior free image simply because it was free? I know this runs
> counter
> to pure open-source thinking, but I keep thinking our primary goal
> is to
> make the best encyclopedia possible, and if that means occasionally
> favoring
> fair use to free images, then I don't see a problem. But if the
> images are
> even roughly equivalent in quality, certainly the free should win out.

No the primary goal is to make a free encyclopaedia. It will be the
best one
as a byproduct.

And the aim is not to finish the encyclopaedia next week it is to
build a
structure that will create an encyclopaedia, and non free content as
Jimbo
said detracts from that structure by discouraging the creation of free
content and hence a free encyclopaedia.

You are of course free to fork wikipedia, within the license terms
and try
to make a better non free version. For example you could pay to license
good images for it.

Justinc


body:
We simply can't include every webcomic in the world. To avoid people
using Wikipedia as a promotional vehicle we have to use inclusion
guidelines to keep in stuff that deserves an article - highly popular
(verifiably so) webcomics with a not so small run - and stuff that
doesn't deserve an article - your average Joe site with 4 comics, a
dead forum and no Google or Alexa rank because they don't have
visitors.

Of course, Google and Alexa aren't everything, but if those can't be
gauged to determine a comic's audience, we need the author to provide
the information by other means. If the audience can't be verified it
doesn't belong on Wikipedia.

We don't include unremarkable people, forums or ads for businesses.
Webcomics should be no different.

How popular a comic needs to be and how many visitors it needs to
attract is, of course, up for discussion.

----

Example: We had several webcomics with bad Alexa ranking and dead
forums. Someone complained that the forum recently moved. How are we
supposed to know if they don't tell it or provide sources for the
article. Any edit window asks people to cite sources, yet people fail
to do so far too often...

--Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: [HelpDesk-l] Moving pages and how to control this]

body:
Page move vandalism help request. This is going to wikipedia-l and
wikien-l; hope someone can help...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[HelpDesk-l] Moving pages and how to control this
Date: 	Fri, 28 Oct 2005 13:23:25 +0100 (BST)
From: 	Muriel Gottrop <gottrop at yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: 	helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org
To: 	helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org

Dear all,
lets see if anyone can help me (us, since i'm speaking for the wiki.pt)...

Recently we are having problems with a user who finds very funny to
create successive accounts with the purpose of moving pages around in a
most irritating way. This is very unsual for the wiki.pt, where
mass-vandalism problems are fortunately rare. We are aware, however,
that they will increase in the future and this kind of incident will
repeat itself. We talked about this thing in the Esplanada (the pt
village pump) and agreed to start a serious discussion about limiting
the [page move] function, as already happens in the english wikipedia.

So, how can we limit new users from moving pages and in what terms? Can
we decide a fixed number of editions from which the user can move pages?
How does this work??
//
Thanks in advance, muriel at pt <mailto:muriel at pt>
//

--
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:
[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: [HelpDesk-l] Moving pages and how to control
	this]

body:
Page move vandalism help request. This is going to wikipedia-l and
wikien-l; hope someone can help...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[HelpDesk-l] Moving pages and how to control this
Date: 	Fri, 28 Oct 2005 13:23:25 +0100 (BST)
From: 	Muriel Gottrop <gottrop at yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: 	helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org
To: 	helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org

Dear all,
lets see if anyone can help me (us, since i'm speaking for the wiki.pt)...

Recently we are having problems with a user who finds very funny to
create successive accounts with the purpose of moving pages around in a
most irritating way. This is very unsual for the wiki.pt, where
mass-vandalism problems are fortunately rare. We are aware, however,
that they will increase in the future and this kind of incident will
repeat itself. We talked about this thing in the Esplanada (the pt
village pump) and agreed to start a serious discussion about limiting
the [page move] function, as already happens in the english wikipedia.

So, how can we limit new users from moving pages and in what terms? Can
we decide a fixed number of editions from which the user can move pages?
How does this work??
//
Thanks in advance, muriel at pt <mailto:muriel at pt>
//

--
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: "Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty"

body:
Problem 1: I think one of the worst problems with this is that
"obsessed fans" think every single bit of trivia needs to be covered
in its own article. Wikipedia works best of its information is
structured and thus put in larger articles with context.

Problem 2: People try to slip in self-promotion and advertising for
bands, forums, books and scores of other things which either cannot be
expanded into a full article or are simply not encyclopedic material.

Problem 3: People get problem 1 and 2 mixed up. Not every trivial
detail needs deletion, a lot can be merged or put in a sister project.

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of facts, so not every
single bit of information gets in. We are first and formost an
encyclopedia, not a data dump.

--Mgm


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Of Pokemon and baseball

body:
On 15/11/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Practically _every_ topic can have "-cruft" appended to the end if you
> ask the right person. I once saw a VfD for a transuranic element's
> article with the justification given that the subject was "sciencecruft". :)

There were about six of those, all with exactly the same "rationale" -
'doesn't exist yet, fictional", or something along those lines. As all
bar one had actually been synthesized, and the only rationale behind
selecting them seemed to be picking the ones that IUPAC hadn't named
yet (the one given a formal name in the previous year was left alone),
it did seem to be one of those "My pet topic has been nominated for
deletion so I will nominate lots of junk" spats VfD had occasionally.
I did smile at "sciencecruft", though, once I'd yelled a bit at the
nominator :-)

Incidentally, today's rather demoralising AfD: [[Wikipedia:Articles
for deletion/Surviving veterans of the First World War]]. Nominated on
_Sunday the 13th of November_. Oh, the timing.

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


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

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> You mean, anyone who doesn't sign a legal document promising to pay a
>> notable penalty if the Foundation decides they've broken the privacy
>> policy should not be allowed access to the data? That sounds like a
>> great idea. We'll have an all-paid sysadmin team before you know it,
>> because every volunteer will get up and *leave*. Did that bit occur to
>> you?
>
>
> Of course it did. The consequences of it don't matter. What matters is
> that we treat personal information with the respect it deserves.
>
> I imagine there are alternative possibilities to the one you suggested.
>

What, give Board Members sole access to it, and let *them* get sacked?

--
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] Markup; html

body:
Where is the documentation for the markup changes that suddenly
arrived without
me knowing? </div> seems to be redundant now and other stuff, and I
need to fix
some stuff.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Markup; html

body:
On 15/11/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> Where is the documentation for the markup changes that suddenly
> arrived without
> me knowing? </div> seems to be redundant now and other stuff, and I
> need to fix
> some stuff.

"The developers on IRC said it's an older HTML validator which runs
when the HTML Tidy is disabled. It seems to not only close the table
prematurely, but also escape all table markup outside a table." -
cesarb, on WP:HD

My (limited) understanding so far is that the existing html code
decided that a Monday evening was a really, really, good time to
explode. So it did.

In order to get the site running again an older version of the html
parser was put in place, one which is less tolerant of sloppy coding
(some discussion pages are hideous!) and also slightly less capable. I
am unaware what the current status of this is, but presumably someone
is working on reinstating the old one - it wasn't a deliberate choice
to change over to a new piece of code, though.

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


body:
On 15/11/05, Taco Deposit <tacodeposit at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > [Memory Alpha] is under an incompatible license, which should mean that none of
> > the content in MA was even taken from Wikipedia.
>
> I was browsing Memory Alpha today and read the notice "The main text
> of this synopsis is based on the corresponding Wikipedia article" at
> the bottom of http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Conspiracy.
>
> But I don't know whether "based on" means "taken from" or not

Checking the histories, the originals were the same through the
cunning contrivance of the original author of the text having added it
to Wikipedia, and then about a week or two later to Memory Alpha.

This is, of course, perfectly legitimate; I can put something on
Wikipedia which is entirely my own work, thus licensing it under the
GFDL, and then publish another version somewhere else under a
different license; they're not AIUI exclusive.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Markup; html

body:
On 15 Nov 2005, at 01:07, Andrew Gray wrote:

> On 15/11/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>>
>> Where is the documentation for the markup changes that suddenly
>> arrived without
>> me knowing? </div> seems to be redundant now and other stuff, and I
>> need to fix
>> some stuff.
>
> "The developers on IRC said it's an older HTML validator which runs
> when the HTML Tidy is disabled. It seems to not only close the table
> prematurely, but also escape all table markup outside a table." -
> cesarb, on WP:HD
>
> My (limited) understanding so far is that the existing html code
> decided that a Monday evening was a really, really, good time to
> explode. So it did.
>
> In order to get the site running again an older version of the html
> parser was put in place, one which is less tolerant of sloppy coding
> (some discussion pages are hideous!) and also slightly less capable. I
> am unaware what the current status of this is, but presumably someone
> is working on reinstating the old one - it wasn't a deliberate choice
> to change over to a new piece of code, though.

Hmm, well can the person who broke it write a decent article on
[[HTML Tidy]]
as penance if they are going to link from WP:HD.

So you are saying that everything that is broken is actually wrongly
coded?
A good chance to fix it I suppose, If I actually understood how it
all worked
but its rather late in my timezone so I might wait and see what
happens in
the morning.

Justinc