[Foundation-l] Fwd: Copyright problems of images from India

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

I am forwarding the below mail on behalf of a Malayalam wikipedian who is
very active in Wikimedia Commons.

Of late it is becoming very difficult for many Wikimedians from India to
contribute to Wikimedia Commons especially if they are uploading historical
images which are in PD.  We are facing lot of issues (and many a times
unnecessary controversies also) with the historic images in PD, images of
wall paintings and statues, and so on. Please see the below mail in which
Sreejith citing various examples.

It is almost impossible for the uploaders from India to show proof of the
century old images of  Hindu Gods and Goddesses. The current policies of
Commons are not permitting many of the PD images from India citing all sorts
of policies which might be relevant only in the western world. With these
type of policies we are going to have serious issues when we try to go for
GLAM type events.

But I also do not know the solution for this issue. Requesting constructive
discussion.


Shiju Alex



-- Forwarded message --
From: Sreejith K. 
Date: Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:03 PM
Subject: Copyright problems of images from India
To: Shiju Alex 


Shiju,

As you might be aware already, we are having trouble keeping historical
images about India in Wikimedia commons. This pertains mostly to images
about Hindu gods and people who died before 1947.

Please see the below examples:

   - File:Narayana
Guru.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Narayana_Guru.jpg> -
   This is the image of Sree Narayana
Guru<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narayana_Guru>,
   a Hindu saint, social reformer and is even considered a god by certain
   castes in Kerala. This image has been tagged as an image with No source.
   Narayana Guru expired in 1928 and considering the conditions in which India
   was in during that period and before, it is very difficult to get an image
   source online. Most active Wikipedians does not have access or information
   on how old the image is or where a source of it can be found. Any photograph
   published before 1941 in India is in public domain as per Indian copyright
   act. Common sense says that this image meets this criteria because the
   person was long lead before 1941, but we still need proof of the first
   publishing date. Deleting this image on grounds that no source could be
   found will only reduce the informative values of all the articles which this
   image is included in.
   - File:Aravana.JPG: This image has already been deleted, but you can see
   the amount of discussion that went in before deleting it. See
Commons:Deletion
   
requests/File:Aravana.JPG<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aravana.JPG>.
   (An almost similar image can be found
here<http://www.flickr.com/photos/anoopp/5706721852/in/photostream/>.)This
   image as put for deletion because it had the image of Swami
Ayyappan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Ayyappan>in it. Ayyappan,
a popular god of Kerala, has his image circulated
   everywhere on the plant with no proof of copyrights. It makes sense to
   believe that this image is not eligible for copyright because
   Hindu deities are all common property, but again, Commons need proof that
   the image is in public domain. This is the same case with all Hindu
   gods/goddesses. The images can only be kept in Commons if the uploader can
   provide proof that the images are in public domain.
   - File:Kottarathil
sankunni.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kottarathil_sankunni.jpg>:
   This is a picture of Kottarathil
Sankunni<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kottarathil_Sankunni>,
   the author of the famous book
Aithiyamaala<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aithihyamala>.
   Kottarathil Sankunni died in 1937 and so it makes sense to believe that this
   image was created on or before 1937 and thus falls in Public Domain. But
   some people in Commons is refusing to believe that and is asking for proof.
   Now it becomes the responsibility of the uploader to show proof that this
   image was published 60 years before today. The editor who nominated the
   image for deletion is on the safer side because it is not his responsibility
   to prove that the image is a copyright violation. So long story short,
   anyone can nominate any image for copyright violation and it becomes the
   uploaders responsibility to prove that its not. The deletion nomination need
   not be accompanied with a reason for disbelief.
   - File:Anoop
Menon.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anoop_Menon.jpg>:
   This is the picture of Anoop
Menon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoop_Menon>,
   a popular actor from Kerala. A discussion is going on about the uploaders
   credibility whether he is the original photographer of this image. Please
   see File talk:Anoop
Menon.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Anoop_Menon.jpg>.
   The reason for doubting the upl

[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikimediaindia-l] PDF rendering of Indian language wiki pages

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

The following mail is about a PDF rendering solution for non-Latin scripts
which is under development. One of the main reason for developing this tool
is that the current *Download to PDF* option (available in the sidebar of
wiki) is useless for Indic language scripts (current Download to PDF
solution might not be useful for all the non-Latin scripts)

I am sharing this here since the below PDF rendering solution is
applicable to all the scripts (not only Indic langauge/non-latin scripts).
Please mail your feedback/comment to santhosh.thottin...@gmail.com.

The solution is not limited to wiki. But surely wiki users will be one of
the major cosumers.

Please see the below mail thread for details.

Thanks
Shiju


-- Forwarded message --
From: Santhosh Thottingal 
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:36 PM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] PDF rendering of Indian language wiki pages
To: "Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia." <
wikimediaindi...@lists.wikimedia.org>


Hi,
We are working on a Complex script PDF rendering library named
PyPDFLib(https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pypdflib/). One of its
test case (or use case) is to render a wiki page in complex script(any
Indian Language) to PDF. Currently PDF export feature is not
available(not working) for Indian language wiki projects because of
technical incapability of Python Reportlab library.

Just wanted to give an early preview of this software library through
an online interface : http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render
You can try with a Wikipedia page in your language and verify the generated
PDF.
You can also access this using this URL
http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render?wiki=http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/இலங்கை
(replace that wiki URL with other page addresses too - any Ianguage -
not limited to Indian languages)

There are lot of items not implemented, but your feedback is requested
on the current version.
The library uses Pango for text rendering and Cairo for graphics and
PDF features.

ps: Don't get surprised if you get a 500 Error page for the random
page you are trying. Just try another wiki page ;)

Thanks
Santhosh Thottingal
http://thottingal.in

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Re: [Foundation-l] External links to PHP scripts

[Alex]

On 10/11/2010 12:48 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> I stumbled upon a link on the Talk Page of Henry Fonda (which I removed) 
> which directs the reader to a page that contains a PHP script.
> 
> That idea disturbs me, I think it should be, but I'm not sure it is, 
> against policy.
> 
> Do we have a policy that forbids or at least discourages the use of links 
> to pages with embedded scripts?
> 

Such a policy would prohibit linking to most of the internet. PHP is a
very common language to make websites with; its what MediaWiki is
written in. PHP is executed server-side, so its not inherently more
dangerous than plain HTML, at least not significantly so to the extent
that we should avoid linking to a page on the sole basis that it uses
PHP. Its files that are executed client-side, outside of the browser
like exe and zip files that we need to be concerned about.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Increasing the number of new accounts who actually edit

[Alex]

On 9/22/2010 3:55 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Did you know that less than a third of the users who create an account on
> English Wikipedia make even *one* edit afterwards? Two-thirds of all new
> accounts never edit! Interestingly, this percentage vary very much from
> language version to language version.
> 
> Now, the question is not: "what can we do about it?" We know plenty of
> things that we *could* do. The question is this: "what are the easiest
> levers to push that increase the numbers?"
> 
> We have a couple of ideas (they are presented on the Outreach wiki, at
> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project),
> but we need your help! Here are three easy things that you can do:
> 
> 1. Offer ideas
> 2. Sign up to help with the project
> 3. Spread the word. Do you know anybody who would want to be interested in
> helping out? Pass this message on.
> 

Personally, I think you're starting too far back on the issue. We have
plenty of people who create accounts, edit, then stop almost
immediately. Among people who do make an edit, the enwiki retention rate
a few months later is 1-2%. I think we should try to improve that first.
One concern on the English Wikipedia is the rather impersonal way that
new users are handled - everything is bots and template messages. Simply
increasing the volume of new accounts will only exacerbate that problem.

Just very recently, for a completely unrelated discussion, I complied
some statistics for the English Wikipedia (though it could be run for
any project) about users' first edits and editor retention. The full
results are at [1], the summary is:

* Users who create an article are much more likely to leave the project
if their article is deleted. 1 in ~160 will stay if their article is
deleted while 1 in ~22 will stay otherwise
* Our main source of regular users is not users who start by creating an
article.
* Users who start by editing an existing page outnumber article
creators by 3:1
* Users who start by editing an existing article are far less likely
to have their first edits deleted (and therefore are far more likely to
stay)
* From the users analyzed, we got fewer than 200 regular users from
those who created articles (1.3% retention), we got more than 900 from
users who edited existing pages (2.5% retention)
* A significant number of regular users (24%) get their start outside of
mainspace.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mr.Z-man/newusers

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?

[Shiju Alex]

e a perpetual work in progress, that does not mean we need to be
> guinea-pigs of some careless experiments. So, our stance is, "Thanks,
> but NO Thanks!". Unless, of course, they can put enough commitment
> into the translations and fix mistakes.
>
> We welcome automation in translation, but not at the expense of
> introducing incorrect and messy content on wikipedia. We'd rather stay
> small and hand-craft than allow an experimental tool and unskilled
> paid translators creating a big mess.
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Ragib (User:Ragib on en and bn)
>
> --
> Ragib Hasan, Ph.D
> NSF Computing Innovation Fellow and
> Assistant Research Scientist
>
> Dept of Computer Science
> Johns Hopkins University
> 3400 N Charles Street
> Baltimore, MD 21218
>
> Website:
> http://www.ragibhasan.com
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:12 AM, Shiju Alex 
> wrote:
> > Hello All,
> >
> > Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the
> > translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias.
> The
> > foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not
> sure
> > whether any one is interested to consult the respective language
> community
> > to know their views.
> >
> > As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised
> > their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other
> > communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active
> community
> > in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is
> no
> > response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some
> native
> > speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that
> wikipedia?
> >
> > Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community
> to
> > create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of
> > companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages?
> >
> > One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is
> > that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the
> language*.That
> > might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for
> > Wikipedia.
> >
> > As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, (
> > http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google
> > translation of wikipedia articles:
> >
> >   - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article
> >   - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis
> >   - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia
> >
> > The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google
> > translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working
> example
> > of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in
> > English used google translator to communicate with us. :)
> >
> > Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will
> affect
> > the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we
> expect
> > them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day.
> When
> > all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can
> expect
> > any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is
> > killing the growth of an active wiki community.
> >
> > Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively.
> But
> > only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many
> > Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in
> > their wiki*.
> >
> > I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point.
> > But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin
> scripts*)
> > to view the status of google translation project.  Loads of junk articles
> > are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these
> > articles is the edit by its creator and the  inter language wiki bots.
> >
> > This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the
> points
> > raised by a Swahali
> > Wikipedian<
> http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-the-swahili-wikipedia/
> >.
> > Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some
> > other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the
> > community growth.
> >
> > So what is the solution for this? Can we take less

Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation

[Shiju Alex]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Mark Williamson  wrote:

>
> 4) Include a list of most needed articles for people to create, rather
> than random articles that will be of little use to local readers. Some
> articles, such as those on local topics, have the added benefit of
> encouraging more edits and community participation since they tend to
> generate more interest from speakers of a language in my experience.
>
>
This list will automatically come if Google engage the wiki community for
their project for a particular language. But for some wikipedias there is no
active wiki community. So how this issue can be solved?

Selection of the articles for translation is an important part for this
project. Definitely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles is
a good choice for this. Community might also be interested in some other
important articles (important with respect to the social/ cultural/geography
of the speakers of that language). So engaging local wiki community is most
important

 ~Shiju
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Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Google Translator Toolkit is particularly problematic because it
> messes up the existing article formatting (one example, it messes up
> internal links by putting punctuation marks before double brackets
> when they should be after) and it includes incompatible formatting
> such as redlinked templates. It also doesn't help that many editors
> don't stick around to fix their articles afterwards.
>


Yes this is one of the main issue of *Google Translator Tool Kit* (GTTK).
There are many points raised by Ravi regarding GTTK in his presentation at
WikiMania. http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs

Not all wikipedias work/create articles in the same way as English Wikipedia
or some other big wikipedias does. Many of the active wiki communities does
not like the word-to-word translation of the English Wikipedia articles. But
that doesn't mean that while developing an article, they won't refer English
Wikipedia. English wikipedia article is their first point of reference most
of the time. The problem starts when some one start forcing English
Wikipedia articles in a language wikipedia. Here it is Google, using the
Google Translate Tool Kit (GTTK) .

Most of the active wiki communities (especially non-Latin wikis) are not
interested in the word-to-word translation of the English Wikipedia
articles. Also many of them are not willing to to go through the big
articles (with lot of issues) created using GTTK and rewrite the entire
article to bring it to the wiki style. They will better prefer to start the
article from the scratch.

One of the main issue is that the Google/Google translators are not
communicating with the wiki community (of each language) before they start
the project in a wikipedia. For example, Tamil wikipedia community came to
know about Google efforts only 6 months after they started the project in
that wiki.

Wiki communities like the biological growth of the wikipedia articles in
their wiki. Why English Wikipedia did not start building wikipedia articles
using *Encyclopedia Britannica 1911* edition which was available in the
public domain?

Personally, I am not against GTTK or against Google. At least this effort is
good for the online version of a language (even if some argue that it is not
good for wikipedia). But this effort needs to be executed in a different way
so that wikipedia of that language will benefit from it. Some of the
solutions that are coming to my mind:

   1. Ban the project of Google as done by the Bengali wiki community (Bad
   solution, and I am personally against this solution)
   2. Ask Google to engage wiki community (As happened in the case of Tamil)
   to find out a working solution. But if there is no active wiki community
   what Google can do.  But does this mean that Google can continue with the
   project as they want? (Very difficult solution if there is no active wiki
   community)
   3. Find some other solution. For example, Is it possible to upload the
   translated articles in a separate name space, for example, Google: Let the
   community decides what needs to be taken to the main/article namespace.
   4. .

If some solution is not found soon, Google's effort is going to create
problem in many language wikipedias. The worst result of this effort would
be the rift between the wiki community and the Google translators (speakers
of the same language) :(

Shiju

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:39 AM, Mark Williamson  wrote:

> Shiju Alex,
>
> Stevertigo is just one en.wikipedian.
>
> As far as using exact copies goes, I don't know about the policy at
> your home wiki, but in many Wikipedias this sort of back-and-forth
> translation and trading and sharing of articles has been going on
> since day one, not just with English but with other languages as well.
> If I see a good article on any Wikipedia in a language I understand
> that is lacking in another, I'll happily translate it. I have never
> seen this cause problems provided I use proper spelling and grammar
> and do not use templates or images that leave red links.
>
> I started out at en.wp in 2001, so I don't think it's unreasonable to
> call myself an English Wikipedian (although I'd prefer to think of
> myself as an international Wikipedian, with lots of edits at wikis
> such as Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Navajo, Haitian and Moldovan). I am
> not at all in favor of pushing any sort of articles on anybody, if a
> community discusses and reaches consensus to disallow translations
> (even ones made by humans, including professionals), that is
> absolutely their right, although I don't think it's wise to disallow
> people from using material from other Wikipedias.
>
> Google Translator Toolkit is particularly problematic because it
> messes up the existing article formatting (one example, it messes up
> internal lin

Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation

[Shiju Alex]

>
> really? It's a) not
> particularly well-written, mostly and b) referenced overwhelmingly to
>
>> English-language sources, most of which are, you guessed it.. Western in
>>
> nature.
>

Very much true. Now English Wikipedians want some one to translate and use
the exact copy of en:wp in all other language wikipedias. And they have the
support of Google for that.






On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 5:52 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:

> "The idea is that most of en.wp's articles are well-enough written, and
> written in accord with NPOV to a sufficient degree to overcome any
> such criticism of 'imperial encyclopedism.' - really? It's a) not
> particularly well-written, mostly and b) referenced overwhelmingly to
> English-language sources, most of which are, you guessed it.. Western in
> nature.
>
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 3:43 AM, stevertigo  wrote:
>
> > Mark Williamson  wrote:
> > > I would like to add to this that I think the worst part of this idea
> > > is the assumption that other languages should take articles from
> > > en.wp.
> >
> > The idea is that most of en.wp's articles are well-enough written, and
> > written in accord with NPOV to a sufficient degree to overcome any
> > such criticism of 'imperial encyclopedism.'
> >
> > Mark Williamson  wrote:
> > > Nobody's arguing here that language and culture have no relationship.
> > > What I'm saying is that language does not equal culture. Many people
> > > speak French who are not part of the culture of France, for example
> > > the cities of Libreville and Abidjan in Africa.
> >
> > Africa is an unusual case given that it was so linguistically diverse
> > to begin with, and that its even moreso in the post-colonial era, when
> > Arabic, French, English, and Dutch remain prominent marks of
> > imperialistic influence.
> >
> > Ray Saintonge  wrote:
> > > This is well suited for the dustbin of terrible ideas.  It ranks right
> > > up there with the notion that the European colonization of Africa was
> > > for the sole purpose of civilizing the savages.
> >
> > This is the 'encyclopedic imperialism' counterargument. I thought I'd
> > throw it out there. As Bendt noted above, Google has already been
> > working on it for two years and has had both success and failure. It
> > bears mentioning that their tools have been improving quite steadily.
> > A simple test such as /English -> Arabic -> English/ will show that.
> >
> > Note that colonialism isnt the issue. It still remains for example a
> > high priority to teach English in Africa, for the simple reason that
> > language is almost entirely a tool for communication, and English is
> > quite good for that purpose.  Its notable that the smaller colonial
> > powers such as the French were never going to be successful at
> > linguistic imperialism in Africa, for the simple reason that French
> > has not actually been the lingua franca for a long time now.
> >
> > > Key to the growth of Wikipedias in minority languages is respect for
> the
> > > cultures that they encompass, not flooding them with the First-World
> > > Point of View.  What might be a Neutral Point of View on the English
> > > Wikipedia is limited by the contributions of English writers.  Those
> who
> > > do not understand English may arrive at a different neutrality.  We
> have
> > > not yet arrived at a Metapedia that would synthesize a single
> neutrality
> > > from all projects.
> >
> > I strongly disagree. Neutral point of view has worked on en.wp because
> > its a universalist concept. The cases where other language wikis
> > reject English content appear to come due to POV, and thus a violation
> > of NPOV, not because - as you seem to suggest - the POV in such
> > countries must be considered "NPOV."
> >
> > Casey Brown  wrote:
> > > I'm surprised to hear that coming from someone who I thought to be a
> > > student of languages.  I think you might want to read an
> > > article from today's Wall Street Journal, about how language
> > > influences culture (and, one would extrapolate, Wikipedia articles).
> >
> > I had just a few days ago read Boroditsky's piece in Edge, and it
> > covers a lot of interesting little bits of evidence. As Mark was
> > saying, linguistic relativity (or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) has been
> > around for most of a century, and its wider conjectures were strongly
> > contradicted by Chomsky et al. Yes there is compelling evidence that
> > language does "channel" certain kinds of thought, but this should not
> > be overstated. Like in other sciences, linguistics can sometimes make
> > the mistake of making *qualitative judgments based on a field of
> > *quantitative evidence.  This was essentially important back in the
> > 40s and 50s when people were still putting down certain
> > quasi-scientific conjectures from the late 1800s.
> >
> > Still there are cultures which claim their languages to be superior in
> > certain ways simply because they are more sonorous or emotive, or
> > otherwise expressive, and that's 

[Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?

[Shiju Alex]

Hello All,

Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the
translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The
foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure
whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community
to know their views.

As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised
their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other
communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community
in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no
response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native
speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia?

Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to
create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of
companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages?

One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is
that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That
might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for
Wikipedia.

As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, (
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google
translation of wikipedia articles:

   - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article
   - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis
   - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia

The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google
translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example
of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in
English used google translator to communicate with us. :)

Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect
the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we expect
them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When
all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect
any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is
killing the growth of an active wiki community.

Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But
only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many
Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in
their wiki*.

I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point.
But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin scripts*)
to view the status of google translation project.  Loads of junk articles
are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these
articles is the edit by its creator and the  inter language wiki bots.

This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points
raised by a Swahali
Wikipedian<http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-the-swahili-wikipedia/>.
Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some
other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the
community growth.

So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from
Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service
effectively or continue with the current article creation process.

One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open
source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow.

Regards

Shiju Alex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex
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Re: [Foundation-l] small Wikipedia projects - follow-up to Jimmy Wales' talk

[Shiju Alex]

Hi Amir,

As you might know Malayalam is not a big language. It has roughly 30 million
speakers. There are some efforts from Malayalam Wikipedia community to reach
to public. Here are some

1. Our wikipedia CD - read the story here -
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/creating-malayalam-wikipedia-cd/
2. Distribution of the above CD to 60,000 teachers of kerala. Read the story
here -
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/07/malayalamwikipedia-success-story.html
3. http://schoolwiki.in A wiki run by the i...@school
department  of Kerala. This wiki is used for
creating the database of all the schools of Kerala and the article about
each school is maintained by the children of the respective schools.
Malayalam Wiki community have helped the IT department Government to setup
this wiki. Many school children in Kerala is aware about the wiki software,
wiki editing, and Malayalam typing due to the efforts by i...@school.

And many more initiatives are going to come in the next few months.


Shiju

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote
> about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias
> in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small"
> anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
>
> Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts
> to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is
> the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia".
> They are very inspiring, but very small.
>
> Were there any people that, for example, worked with schools that
> function in underprivileged languages and tried to teach students
> there to write Wikipedia articles in their language? If there were,
> can i read, hear or watch their experiences anywhere?
>
> --
> אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam

[Shiju Alex]

Yes. This is true. Many messages are marked as spam during the past few
days.

I got this message also from the SPAM folder.




On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:51 PM, Daniel ~ Leinad wrote:

> 2010/6/17 Ryan Lomonaco :
> > A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam
> for
> > the past five days or so.  It sounds like this is affecting other
> Wikimedia
>
> I've noticed the same problem with Gmail ;/
>
> In last days I have to check very carefully spam folder.
>
> --
> Leinad
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement

[Shiju Alex]

This topic came up while we were discussing about Google's translation
effort. Google/Google employees are using Google tool kit to translate
English Wikipedia articles to many of the Indic language Wikipedias.


We are definitely more interested if Google translates these user required
articles than translating  the English wiki articles about all the american
pop stars (For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga). Now the
issue is, we don't have such list to give to Google/Google employees.





On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 5:56 AM, Mark Williamson  wrote:

> +1. This would be a SUPER useful tool for all Wikis.
> -m.
>
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Shiju Alex 
> wrote:
> > Recently I had a discussion with one of my fellow Malayalam wikipedian (
> > http://ml.wikipedia.org) about the creation of new articles in small
> > wikipedias like ours. He is one the few users who is keen on creating new
> > articles *based on the requirement of our readers*. (Of course we have
> many
> > people who only reads our wiki)
> >
> > During discussion he raised this interesting point:
> >
> > Some feature is required in the MediaWiki software that enable us to see
> a
> > list of keywords used most frequently by the users to search for
> non-exist
> > articles. If we get such a list then some users like him can concentrate
> on
> > creating articles using that key words.
> >
> > Of course, I know that this feature may not be helpful for big wikis like
> > English. But for small wikis (especially small non-Latin language wikis),
> > this will be of great help. It is almost like* creating wiki articles
> based
> > on user requirement*.
> >
> >
> > I would like to know your opinion regarding the same.
> >
> >
> > Shiju
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[Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement

[Shiju Alex]

Recently I had a discussion with one of my fellow Malayalam wikipedian (
http://ml.wikipedia.org) about the creation of new articles in small
wikipedias like ours. He is one the few users who is keen on creating new
articles *based on the requirement of our readers*. (Of course we have many
people who only reads our wiki)

During discussion he raised this interesting point:

Some feature is required in the MediaWiki software that enable us to see a
list of keywords used most frequently by the users to search for non-exist
articles. If we get such a list then some users like him can concentrate on
creating articles using that key words.

Of course, I know that this feature may not be helpful for big wikis like
English. But for small wikis (especially small non-Latin language wikis),
this will be of great help. It is almost like* creating wiki articles based
on user requirement*.


I would like to know your opinion regarding the same.


Shiju
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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: change of registered TMs in Persian wikipedia

[Shiju Alex]

The best option according to us (Malayalam Wikipedians -
http://ml.wikipedia.org) is to use the second option for the article titles
. That is, transliterate the keyword to your language.

There is no copyright issue attached with that, I suppose. We do that
throughout our daily life. For example, local language News Paper, TV
reports, and so on.


According to me translating (third option) the book name,film name, or
company name and so on is a bad idea from Encyclopedic point of view. You
can have translated articlke titels if there is a translated version of the
book/film available in your language.

For example, in malayalam wikipedia we have an article about Imitation of
the Christ .
In this article, the information about the original book is provided. Please
note that the article title is the transliteration of the original title of
the book.

We also have another article for the translated version of this book (
ക്രിസ്തുദേവാനുകരണം)
to Malayalam. This article provides information about the translated version
of the original book.

Hope this helps.


Shiju





On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 7:09 AM, Ryan Lomonaco wrote:

> Forwarded on behalf of a non-list-member.
>
> The question pertains to translation of trademarks within articles; to my
> knowledge, there's nothing wrong with us doing so, and I think this is done
> in many Wikipedias.  But I'll defer to the list on this question.
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Amir sarabadani 
> Date: Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 3:58 PM
> Subject: change of registered TMs in Persian wikipedia
> To: foundation-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Hello,
> I'm one of Persian wikipedia users.for making pages same name of
> trademarks (e.g. films ,games.etc.) we have several choices:
> 1-we use  same name and same alphabetical with trademark(e.g.
> Google-->Google)
> 2-we same name but Persian Script(e.g. Call of duty-->کال آو دیوتی/KAL
> AV DIUTI/)
> 3-we translate it(Prince of Persian-->شاهزاده ایرانی /SHAHZADE IRANI
> means Prince of Persia)
> Users of Persian wikipedia (with consequence) use third way usually
> but I think change of trademarks is crime and maybe create legal
> problem for the Foundation
>
> Please tell us what we do or maybe i think wrong please tell me.
> Thanks and best wishes
> --
> Amir
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Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

[Alex]

On 5/23/2010 8:40 PM, William Pietri wrote:
> On 05/23/2010 02:13 PM, David Levy wrote:
>> James Alexander wrote:
>>
>>> That is basically exactly how I see it, most times you "double check"
>>> something you are only the 2nd person because the first check is done by the
>>> original author. We assume good faith, we assume that they are putting
>>> legitimate and correct information into the article and checked to make sure
>>> it didn't break any policies, it's just that because of problems on that
>>> page we wanted to have someone double check.
>>>  
>> That's a good attitude, but such an interpretation is far from
>> intuitive.  Our goal is to select a name that stands on its own as an
>> unambiguous description, not one that requires background knowledge of
>> our philosophies.
>>
>> I'll also point out that one of the English Wikipedia's most important
>> policies is "ignore all rules," a major component of which is the
>> principle that users needn't familiarize themselves with our policies
>> (let alone "check to make sure" they aren't breaking them) before
>> editing.
>>
> 
> Allow me to quote the whole policy: "If a rule prevents you from 
> improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." That implies, in my view 
> correctly, that the person editing is presumed to set out with the 
> intention of making the encyclopedia better.
> 
> I think that fits in nicely with James Alexander's view: we can and 
> should assume that most editors have already checked their work. Not 
> against the minutiae of our rules, but against their own intent, and 
> their understanding of what constitutes an improvement to Wikipedia.
> 
> Given that, I think double-check fits in fine, both in a very literal 
> sense and in the colloquial one. I ask people to double-check my work 
> all the time, with the implied first check always being my own.
> 

We can assume most, but we cannot assume all. It is the ones that don't
that we're especially concerned about. So, the revisions that get
"double checked" are mostly the ones that don't actually need it. The
intentionally bad edits are only getting a single check.

And of course, this raises the question, if we're assuming that most
editors are checking their work and are trying to improve the
encyclopedia, why do we need to double check their work? We wouldn't
call the system "Second guess", but that's kind of what this explanation
sounds like.

-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

[Alex]

On 5/23/2010 1:58 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
> tbh, I'm very fond of "Double check".  It seems to imply exactly what  
> we want: the edit isn't being accepted automatically, nor rejected,  
> but simply getting a second look.  It's fairly neutral in tone, and  
> understandable to the average person.

Except unless we consider the initial edit to be the first check, its
not correct. Only one person independent from the editor is reviewing
each edit.

-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now

[Alex]

On 5/8/2010 9:08 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> 
> Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore 
> pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies.
> 
> I'm taking the day off from deleting, both today and tomorrow, but I do 
> encourage people to continue deleting the most extreme stuff.
> 
> But as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) there is not 
> nearly the time pressure that there was.  I'm shifting into a slower mode.
> 
> We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography 
> and doing nothing about it.  Now, the correct storyline is that we are 
> cleaning up.  I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way 
> it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen.
> 
> Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible 
> policy discussion.
> 
> 

The correct story line now is that Wikimedia is purging historical works
by notable artists and bending due to pressure from American
conservative "media." Outside of Fox news, I've yet to see any pickup of
this by any significant media outlet.[1]

The way I see it, with the rushed and ham-fisted way this was done,
we'll be lucky if it doesn't completely backfire on us and the
non-conservative media doesn't make it look like we're burning books or
that they misconstrue it and assume we've adopted some sort of outright
no-nudity policy.

[1] http://bit.ly/d8y5vy

-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: wiki-based troubleshooting

[Alex]

On 5/4/2010 5:16 PM, Yao Ziyuan wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>>
>>> We definitely do not want to be giving medical advice to people. If
>>> you get that wrong, people die. Medical advice should be got by going
>>> to the doctors. Can you give another example of what your idea could
> 
> Yes, medical troubleshooting is both extremely useful and extremely
> sensitive, and that's why I said "Like Wikipedia, WikiTroubleshooting
> should cite credible references." We could put a warning and a
> disclaimer on every medical troubleshooting page telling the visitor
> to check cited references and other sources before adopting any
> advice.

A disclaimer would probably shield us from lawsuits, but there would
still be a lot of ethical issues in "the free medical advice anyone can
edit" (since we know most people won't check sources, especially print
sources). Setting aside the issues of vandalism, even a good intentioned
edit by someone who doesn't have adequate medical training could cause
problems if they misread a source or use a source that isn't as reliable
as they think. A lot higher standard for "reliable" would be needed for
something like that.

> How can a wiki implement a troubleshooting wizard? A wizard is a set
> of pages. Each page assumes you have specified certain symptoms (e.g.
> symptom1, symptom3, symptom5) of your problem and asks you a question
> to specify a new symptom (e.g. symptom10); then it redirects you to a
> next page that assumes you have specified symptoms 1, 3, 5 and 10 and
> asks you yet another question or shows you possible causes and
> solutions for the symptoms you have specified so far (1, 3, 5, 10).
> 
> Therefore they're just static HTML pages where each page can link to
> one or more "next pages". This is exactly what a wiki can do.

The main issue I can see (other than that for medical advice and the
like), is that troubleshooters don't lend themselves as well to
incremental building. A Wikipedia article with only a few sentences or a
Wikibook with only a couple chapters are still slightly useful. A
troubleshooter with only a couple steps is much less so.

Say you have a troubleshooter for a printer not working:
1. Is the printer plugged in and on?
Yes
2. Is there paper loaded?
Yes
3. Sorry, that's all this troubleshooter can help you with for now.

-- 
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[Foundation-l] Chris Clayton

[Alex "Mr.Z-man"]

http://www.roulette-casino-en-ligne.com/home.php

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Re: [Foundation-l] �lliam Pietri: Where is Flagge dRevisions?

[Alex]

The English Wikipedia isn't asking for a total rewrite of the extension.
FlaggedRevs was always (at least since it was first deployed) highly
customizable. I believe the "Flagged Protection" feature was able to be
implemented, or very close to it, at the time the proposal was
finalized. Supposedly the changes being made now are mostly UI and
workflow changes to make it easier to use or something like that. (Why
this wasn't done before it was deployed on dewiki or anywhere else, I
don't know)

Its not like enwiki deciding to use FlaggedRevs was a total surprise.
Erik had always assumed that enwiki would get it eventually, why did the
foundation wait until 6 months /after/ enwiki requested it to hire
people to work on this?

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

On 3/1/2010 7:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> One of the things developers are not necessarily good at is communication as
> in keeping everyone up to date. With the many channels secret and not so
> secret. With the ferocity that many say typify the mailing lists, it is no
> wonder that we hear few if any updates.
> 
> In my opinion the reason why the English language Wikipedia does not have
> Flagged Revisions already is because they did not want the fully functional
> Flagged Revisions that is used for some years now on the German language
> Wikipedia. Wanting something different is its prerogative but it does not
> follow that it is easy or quick. Remember the 80/20 rule and remember that
> the special wishes makes the software more complicated.
> 
> The English language Wikipedia is also spoiled because it gets the things
> programmed. When you consider that many of the issues with RTL languages and
> font issues like with the Malayalam language get hardly the attention they
> require, it is rather obvious that tantrums prevent information becoming
> available on the public mailinglists.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> On 1 March 2010 13:18, Casey Brown  wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Aphaia  wrote:
>>> Not a sarcasm, but I would like to point out SUL, single user login
>>> took years to implement to the project wikis, and we even called once
>>> it "Godot". FlaggedRevs implementation also - it took years to
>>> realize. Months are relatively shorter, and I hope you guys could wait
>>> for in a less pain.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, but no one was contracted for work on SUL.  People are being paid
>> to work on *just* FlaggedRevs, it's not something that the tech team
>> has to fit into their time to develop.
>>
>> --
>> Casey Brown
>> Cbrown1023
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardner, Erik Möller , Wi lliam Pietri: Where is FlaggedRevisions?

[Alex]

On 2/28/2010 10:32 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
> William Pietri wrote:
>> As soon as that's ready, I will be very excited to put up test versions
>> of both the English Wikipedia and the German one, so that the community
>> can test, give feedback, and opine on whether it's ready to go.
> 
> When might that be? Is there a specific deadline? If not, why? And if there
> is a deadline and it slips by yet again, what's the consequence to those
> running the project?
> 

I second this. Are William and Howie just under contract indefinitely
until FlaggedRevs is finally "ready"? Who are they responsible to, and
why is that person apparently not giving them any sort of priorities
(like, creating a plan or a deadline)?

Why is there such little transparency in this whole process? Rather than
use the normal bug tracker that all other MediaWiki developers use and
that the community is used to, they're using some entirely separate one,
hosted on a 3rd party website. As far as I can tell, there's only been
one unprompted communication with the community regarding this - the
techblog post in January that had little new information.

Its been more than 4 months, and we haven't been able to get even a
vague timeline yet. IMO, setting a deadline, missing it, and explaining
why it was missed is better than not setting a deadline until you know
you can meet it (which kind of defeats the purpose of setting it).

-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project

[Alex]

I wonder which would be harder, trying to start the first new project in
years, or trying to get the English Wikipedia to make a significant
policy change?

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)


On 2/27/2010 12:40 PM, David Goodman wrote:
> WP contains many of  the essential elements  of an almanac already, and
> could very easily cover all the rest-- it doesn't take a new project, just a
> relaxation of some of the self-imposed strictures.  Relaxing, without
> eliminating , NOT NEWS ,  NOT DIRECTORY, and   NOT INDISCRIMINATE . there's
> only one point that would need actual removal:  NOT INDISCRIMINATE point 3,
> Excessive listing of statistics.
> 
> The basic change could be accomplished by doing just that one
> deletion--there is not need for another project, or even another space for
> data.
> 
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Casey Brown  wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Tyler  wrote:
>>>  I was just wondering, how would you like to start an almanac, guys? That
>> would be neat, a wiki almanac.
>>>
>>
>> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects> :-)
>>
>> --
>> Casey Brown
>> Cbrown1023
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Frequency of Seeing Bad Versions - now with traffic data

[Alex]

Anthony wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Thomas Dalton 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I would put money on a significant majority of reverts being
>>> reverts of vandalism rather than BRD reverts, it may not be an
>>> overwhelming majority, though.
>>
>> I don't know about that, though I won't take the other end of the bet.
>>  Have you done much editing while not logged in?  If so, I think you have to
>> admit that it's quite common to find yourself reverted for things which are
>> not properly classified as vandalism.
>>
> 
> Just going through recent changes looking for "rv" (which is not the only
> thing detected by Robert's software, and is probably the most likely to be
> actual vandalism)...
> 

Most vandalism reversion on enwiki (I believe) is done with automated
tools and/or rollback rather than manual reversion.

They typically leave more detailed summaries:
"Reverted N edits by X identified as vandalism to last revision by Y"
"Reverted edits by X (talk) to last version by Y"

-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] How much of Wikipedia is vandalized? 0.4% of Articles

[Alex]

Robert Rohde wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have a nice comprehensive set of page traffic aggregated
> at say a month level?  The raw data used by stats.grok.se, etc. is
> binned hourly which opens one up to issues of short-term fluctuations,
> but I'm not at all interested in downloading 35 GB of hourly files
> just to construct my own long-term averages.
> 

I don't have every article, but I have the data for July 09 for ~600,000
pages on enwiki (mostly articles). It also has the hit counts for
redirects aggregated with the article, not sure if that would be more or
less useful for you. Let me know if you want it, its in a MySQL table on
the toolserver right now.

-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal for Wikimedia Weather

[Alex]

Tris Thomas wrote:
> Dear All,
> I don't know whether this has been discussed before, apologies if it has.
> 
> I'm interested in people's thoughts on a new Wikimedia project-maybe 
> WikiWeather, which basically would do what it says on the tin.  Along 
> with importing national weather from other sources(especially to begin 
> with), contributors could then put their weather where they are.  This 
> could evolve into many contributors giving very localised weather 
> forecasts worldwide, which could be used by many of the other projects 
> and anybody else.
> 
> Would people be interested in this proposal/have any thoughts on it?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Wikinews User Page <http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Tristan%20Thomas>

Except for forecasts (though it might be interesting to see how wiki
users compare to professional meteorologists), weather is mostly just
data, so computers can generally provide it better than people.

The only way I could see this as possibly being better than existing
services would be if it was set up so that people who had home weather
stations that could connect to a computer could automatically update the
site.

But A) that kind of equipment is expensive (at minimum ~$100 USD for
something that only records temperature) and B) it wouldn't really be a
wiki as the majority of the content would be automatically updated. Only
the forecasts would be human-produced.

Though you'd start to run into the principle of diminishing returns with
that - how much better is a weather report from 2 miles away versus 5
miles away? After a point, it just becomes redundant. And of course we'd
still have to rely on the weather services for things like radar and
satellite images.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[Alex]

effe iets anders wrote:
> 2009/6/5 Peter Gervai 
> 
>> 
>> The stats (which have, by surprise, a dedicated domain under th hu
>> wikipedia domain) runs on a dedicated server, with nothing else on it.
>> Its sole purpose to gather and publish the stats. Basically nobody
>> have permission to log in the servers but me, and I since I happen to
>> be checkuser as well it wouldn't even be ntertaining to read it, even
>> if it wasn't big enough making this useless. I happen to be the one
>> who have created the Hungarian checkuser policy, which is, as far as I
>> know, the strictest one in WMF projects, and it's no joke, and I
>> intend to follow it. (And those who are unfamiliar with me, I happen
>> to be the founder of huwp as well, apart from my job in computer
>> security.)
>> 
>>
> 
> Just a remark on the checkuser argument. Checkuser actions and checks are
> logged, and can be double checked by other checkusers and stewards. This
> server can not. I can imagine that this would pose a problem.
> 

Checkuser also only stores the data for a known period of time (3
months) and, with the fairly recent exception of user->user email, only
records actions that are publicly logged by MediaWiki (edits and other
logged actions), not individual pageviews.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[Alex]

John at Darkstar wrote:
> 
> Alex skrev:
>> John at Darkstar wrote:
>>>> Hmm? There's no reason to do anything like that. The AbuseFilter would
>>>> just prevent sitewide JS pages from being saved with the particular URLs
>>>> or a particular code block in them. It'll stop the well-meaning but
>>>> misguided admins. Short of restricting site JS to the point of
>>>> uselessness, you'll never be able to stop determined abusers.
>>>>
>>> A very typical code fragment to make a stat url is something like
>>>
>>> document.write('');
>>>
>>> - server is some kind of external url
>>> - digest is just some random garbage to bypass caching
>>>
>>> This kind of code exists in so many variants that it is very difficult
>>> to say anything about how it may be implemented. Often it will not use a
>>> document.write on systems like Wikipedia but instead use createElement()
>>> Very often someone claims that the definition of "server" will be
>>> complete and may be used to identify the external server sufficiently.
>>> That is not a valid claim as many such sites can be referred for other
>>> purposes. 
>> Other purposes that have valid uses loading 3rd party content on a
>> Wikimedia wiki? Like what?
> 
> If you don't trust other sites you also has to accept that you can't
> trust ant kind of «toolserver» where you don't have complete control.
> That opens a lot of problems

Its not just a matter of trust, its a matter of use. Why would people be
loading content from or linking to servers used to collect website stats
in the sitewide JS on a Wikimedia wiki?

>>> Note also that the number of urls will be huge as this type of
>>> service is very popular, not to say that anyone that want may set up a
>>> special stat aggregator on an otherwise unknown domain.
>>>
>>> Basically, simple regexps are not sufficient for detecting this kind of
>>> code.
>> I don't think I said it would be perfect, the idea isn't to 100% prevent
>> it, just to try to stop the most obvious cases like Google analytics.
> 
> Its not that it won't be perfect, it simply will not work.

And anything more complex would likely be too complicated and/or too
inefficient to be worthwhile.

> John
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[Alex]

John at Darkstar wrote:
>> Hmm? There's no reason to do anything like that. The AbuseFilter would
>> just prevent sitewide JS pages from being saved with the particular URLs
>> or a particular code block in them. It'll stop the well-meaning but
>> misguided admins. Short of restricting site JS to the point of
>> uselessness, you'll never be able to stop determined abusers.
>>
> 
> A very typical code fragment to make a stat url is something like
> 
> document.write('');
> 
> - server is some kind of external url
> - digest is just some random garbage to bypass caching
> 
> This kind of code exists in so many variants that it is very difficult
> to say anything about how it may be implemented. Often it will not use a
> document.write on systems like Wikipedia but instead use createElement()
> Very often someone claims that the definition of "server" will be
> complete and may be used to identify the external server sufficiently.
> That is not a valid claim as many such sites can be referred for other
> purposes. 

Other purposes that have valid uses loading 3rd party content on a
Wikimedia wiki? Like what?

> Note also that the number of urls will be huge as this type of
> service is very popular, not to say that anyone that want may set up a
> special stat aggregator on an otherwise unknown domain.
> 
> Basically, simple regexps are not sufficient for detecting this kind of
> code.

I don't think I said it would be perfect, the idea isn't to 100% prevent
it, just to try to stop the most obvious cases like Google analytics.

> Otherwise, take a look at Simetricals earlier post.
> 
> John
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[Alex]

John at Darkstar wrote:
>> One idea is the proposal to install the AbuseFilter in a global mode,
>> i.e. rules loaded at Meta that apply everywhere.  If that were done
>> (and there are some arguments about whether it is a good idea), then
>> it could be used to block these types of URLs from being installed,
>> even by admins.
> 
> Identifying client side generated urls from server side opens up a whole
> lot of problems of its own. Basically you need a script that runs in a
> hostile environment and reports back to a server when a whole series of
> urls are injected from code loaded from some sources (mediawiki-space)
> but not from other sources user space), still code loaded from user
> space through call to mediawiki space should be allowed. Add to this
> that your url identifying code has to run after a script has generated
> the url and before it do any cleanup. The url verification can't just
> say that a url is hostile, it has to check it somehow, and that leads to
> reporting of the url - if the reporting code still executes at that
> moment. Urk...
> 

Hmm? There's no reason to do anything like that. The AbuseFilter would
just prevent sitewide JS pages from being saved with the particular URLs
or a particular code block in them. It'll stop the well-meaning but
misguided admins. Short of restricting site JS to the point of
uselessness, you'll never be able to stop determined abusers.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[Alex]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:
> Installing Google Analytics, even for our own purposes, is a bad idea.  
> For one, it creates a link to google that is not necessarily what we  
> want; it would be a big target for people to try and hack, and it  
> presents tempting security risks on Google's end.  Not to mention, as  
> far as I know the program is proprietary.
> 
> If we're going to do something like this, it should be open source,  
> and it should something that we can internally install and monitor  
> without external options. That is, again, assuming we do something  
> like that. That's not a foregone presumption. I'm not convinced that  
> we need to be tracking user behavior at this point in time, or that  
> the tradeoffs for doing so are worth any benefits, or that doing so is  
> in furtherance of our mission.
> 

The plain pageview stats are already available.
Erik Zachte has been doing some work on other stats.
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/VisitorsSampledLogRequests.htm>

If I were to compile a wishlist of stats things:

1. stats.grok.se data for non-Wikipedia projects
2. A better interface for stats.wikimedia.org - There's a lot of data
there, but it can be hard to find it and its not very publicized. The
only reason I knew about the link above is because someone pointed it
out to me once and I bookmarked it.
3. Pageview stats at <http://dammit.lt/wikistats/> in files based on
projects. It would be a lot easier for people at the West Flemish
Wikipedia to analyze statistics themselves if they didn't have to
download tons of data they don't need.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Alex]

David Goodman wrote:
> That is like saying, . Why should i backup my computer now, when there
> will be high capacity media in a few years, or when the next version
> of the OS will do it automatically.
> 
> or, more closely,
> why should a books scanning project even be bothered with now. In
> future generation we might well have scanners that will do it much
> more efficiently without opening the books.
> 

Because hard drive failure is far more likely than civilization
collapsing or all computers ceasing to work or exist at the same time.
Wikimedia has backups and redundancy; just not in a non-electronic form
designed to survive 1000 years/nuclear war/asteroid impact/etc.

This is somewhat the opposite of book scanning. With book scanning,
you're taking something that may only be available to a handful of
people and allowing many more people to access it by creating
distributable electronic copies. With the proposals here, we'd be taking
something that's already available to everyone electronically and
etching it onto metal plates, engraving in stone, etc. and presumably
locking it in a bomb shelter somewhere, so the benefits/costs aren't the
same.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Cross-wiki articles

[Alex]

Yoni Weiden wrote:
> The question is - shouldn't there be one set of standards for all
> Wikipedias? I think it is "unfair" that I can read about Simpsons episodes
> in the English Wikipedia, while those how speak Hebrew cannot.
> 

Such a policy would have had to be decided several years ago. At this
point, even the best compromise proposal would likely mean major changes
for some projects. And on the largest projects, even a small change to
the primary inclusion guideline would likely have a big impact.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[Alex]

Michael Bimmler wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Alex  wrote:
>> Anthony wrote:
>>> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Domas Mituzas wrote:
>>>
>>>> Actually, I'd be happy if you were right (and you probably are!) - it
>>>> shows, that lots of people had the motivation to come to this
>>>> "excursion".
>>>
>>> But yet you can't classify it as "leisure"?
>> It may not be for the board members, but I imagine for the volunteer
>> developers and other community members who had few or no real
>> commitments it was.
>>
>>
> 
> I'm not sure why you regard the commitments a chapter board member has
> towards his/her chapter as less real or less serious than the
> commitments a WMF board member or staff employee has towards the WMF.
> Really, this was not a wiki-meetup...
> 

I'm not sure why you feel the need to read more into my comment than was
there. It was a short comment, so I thought a short reply would be
adequate. My apologies for not researching and specifically mentioning
every group that was at the event.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[Alex]

Anthony wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Domas Mituzas wrote:
> 
>> Actually, I'd be happy if you were right (and you probably are!) - it
>> shows, that lots of people had the motivation to come to this
>> "excursion".
> 
> 
> But yet you can't classify it as "leisure"?

It may not be for the board members, but I imagine for the volunteer
developers and other community members who had few or no real
commitments it was.

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Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2

[Alex]

Nathan wrote:
> CC'd this to Foundation-l.
> 
> There is a poll currently on the English Wikipedia to implement a version of
> FlaggedRevisions. The poll was introduced left into the vacuum which
> remained after the first poll failed to result in concrete action. At the
> close of poll #1, Jimmy indicated that he thought it had passed and should
> result in an FR implementation. When he received some protest, he announced
> that he would shortly unveil a new compromise proposal.
> 
> While I'm sure he had the best of intentions, this proposal hasn't
> materialized and the result has been limbo. Into the limbo rides another
> proposal, this one masquerading as the hoped for compromise. Unfortunately,
> it isn't - at least, not in the sense that it is a middle ground between
> those who want FR implemented and those who oppose it. What it does do is
> compromise, as in fundamentally weaken, the concept of FR and the effort to
> improve our handling of BLPs.
> 
> The proposed implementation introduces all the bureaucracy and effort of
> FlaggedRevisions, with few of the benefits. FlaggedProtection, similar to
> semi-protection, can be placed on any article. In some instances,
> FlaggedProtection is identical to normal full protection - only, it still
> allows edit wars on unsighted versions (woohoo). Patrolled revisions are
> passive - you can patrol them, but doing so won't impact what the general
> reader will see. It gives us the huge and useless backlog which is exactly
> what we should not want, and exactly what the opposition has predicted. The
> only likely result is that inertia will prevent any further FR
> implementation, and we'll be stuck with a substitute that grants no real
> benefit.
> 
> What I would like to see, and what I have been hoping to see, is either
> implementation of the prior proposal (taking a form similar to that used by
> de.wp) or actual proposal of a true compromise version. The current poll
> asks us to just give up.
> 

How is it not a compromise? Its a version that most of the supporters
still support and that many of the opposers now support. Compromise
involves both sides making concessions, not repeatedly proposing the
same thing in hopes of a different outcome. So far it has far more
community support than the previous proposed version (which had what?
60% support?).

I'm getting really mad at the people opposing every version of
FlaggedRevs that doesn't provide some ultimate level of protection for
BLPs. If you want something that helps BLPs, PROPOSE SOMETHING! Sitting
around and opposing everything in favor of some non-existent system is
unhelpful and basically saying that articles are worthless unless they
are BLPs. The proposed system can potentially help some articles, while
this un-proposed system that will be a magic bullet for the BLP problem
currently helps nothing, because it doesn't exist.

I agree that patrolled revisions have a high likelihood of failing. Its
too bad we aren't proposing to use it as a trial instead, so if they
don't work, we can come up with a different system. Oh, wait...

If FlaggedProtection results in a manageable system, then we can
consider expanding it to more articles than the current policy would
allow. Enwiki is big and slow; expecting it to do some massive, visible
change over hundreds of thousands of articles all at once is rather
unrealistic. Several months ago, I told Erik on this list that enwiki
would never be able to get consensus for FR, it looks like I'm wrong
about that. Perhaps there's some hope left after all.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[Alex]

Bence Damokos wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Robert Rohde  wrote:
> 
>> Just so everyone is clear:
>>
>> 1) The abuse log is public.  Anyone, including completely anonymous
>> IPs, can read the log.
>>
>> 2) The information in the log is either a) already publicly available
>> by other means, or b) would have been made public had the edit been
>> completed.  So abuse logging doesn't release any new information that
>> wouldn't have been available had the edit been completed.  (Some of
>> the information it does release, such as User ID number and time of
>> email address confirmation, is extremely obscure though.  While
>> "public" in the sense that it could be located by the public, some of
>> the things in the log would be challenging to find otherwise.)
> 
> 
> Is it a wild assumption on the part of an editor, that after he has been
> warned for an "abuse" and not pursued it (by forcing a save if the "save"
> button is available) to assume that his action was lost, and thus possibly
> surprising to see it publicly logged?
> 
> In my opinion pressing the preview button and then not saving is a similar
> use case as being warned by the abuse filter and not saving -- you should
> not expect the lost edit in either case to be publicly available. I think at
> the least the abuse warning should make it clear that the action and <*x,y,z
> data of the user> * were publicly logged.

Except his assumption when clicking save, before ever seeing the abuse
filter warning, was that his edit would be publicly viewable
immediately. Unless the user was purposely intending to do something
that he knew would be disallowed by the abuse filter, he was fully
intending for whatever he wrote to be made public.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[Alex]

Chad wrote:
> 
> While working with OTRS, I actually sent several articles through AfD. And I
> typically didn't announce that it was an OTRS thing, so as to let the 
> community
> judge the article on its own merits. This would actually be a decent policy to
> follow: encourage OTRS respondents to send the marginally notable through
> the normal AfD process (like any other) and allow those in the community
> more equipped to deal with deletion/BLP issues handle it.
> 

This assumes that both of those groups are the same. Many people
involved in the deletion processes are rather unconcerned with BLP
issues (or things like sourcing and NPOV, as long as its notable), and
many people concerned about BLPs don't involve themselves in the
deletion process.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF

[Alex]

I'm criticizing the switch from "Wikia leasing office space to WMF" to
"Is the CIA evil?" I just responded to the most recent email in my
inbox; I thought that would be more appropriate than responding to all
17 CIA/NSA-related emails. I was not criticizing you in particular.

The topic of this thread is "Wikia leasing office space to WMF," that
should be rather clear from the subject. And the topic of the list is
"Wikimedia related issues." Its almost on topic for the list (MediaWiki
is at least mentioned occasionally), its certainly not at all related to
the topic of the thread.

Brian wrote:
> It was a clear factual error which I corrected. If you aren't going to
> criticize the original comment you have no basis for criticizing the
> correction.
> At any rate, what exactly is the topic of this thread, in your opinion?
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Alex  wrote:
> 
>> Brian wrote:
>>>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure
>>> PHP is an interpreted language. Surely you wouldn't use someone elses
>> byte
>>> code.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Platonides 
>> wrote:
>>>> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>>>> Given that we know that NSA conducts massive illegal spying operations,
>>>> there
>>>>> is possibility that selinux is altered in a fashion that will make it
>>>> easier
>>>>> for NSA to spy on selinux' users. I don't know what are CIA's
>>>> contributions
>>>>> to MediaWiki, but unless it is trivial to review them, I would not
>> accept
>>>>> them.
>>>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure. You could
>>>> very well be suspicious about it. But we're talking about open source.
>>>> They would be providing the changes, which are to be reviewed, like any
>>>> other code, or perhaps even more, due to coming from the CIA.
>>>>
>>>> Take into account that CIA and NSA need good software, too. So if they
>>>> add a backdoor, they would need to add it *and* at the same time make it
>>>> easy to protect from it, as they wouldn't want their own systems spied
>>>> by their own rootkit (and someone will end up forgetting to apply it).
>>>>
>>>> Instead, contributing good fixes, make everything easier.
>>>>
>>>> OTOH I encourage you to review selinux. That would make a great heading
>>>> 'Nikola Smolenski discovers NSA backdoor on Linux code'
>>>>
>> This is getting rather off-topic, especially for this thread, and
>> possibly for the list as well.
>>
>> --
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>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF

[Alex]

Brian wrote:
>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure
> PHP is an interpreted language. Surely you wouldn't use someone elses byte
> code.
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Platonides  wrote:
> 
>> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>> Given that we know that NSA conducts massive illegal spying operations,
>> there
>>> is possibility that selinux is altered in a fashion that will make it
>> easier
>>> for NSA to spy on selinux' users. I don't know what are CIA's
>> contributions
>>> to MediaWiki, but unless it is trivial to review them, I would not accept
>>> them.
>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure. You could
>> very well be suspicious about it. But we're talking about open source.
>> They would be providing the changes, which are to be reviewed, like any
>> other code, or perhaps even more, due to coming from the CIA.
>>
>> Take into account that CIA and NSA need good software, too. So if they
>> add a backdoor, they would need to add it *and* at the same time make it
>> easy to protect from it, as they wouldn't want their own systems spied
>> by their own rootkit (and someone will end up forgetting to apply it).
>>
>> Instead, contributing good fixes, make everything easier.
>>
>> OTOH I encourage you to review selinux. That would make a great heading
>> 'Nikola Smolenski discovers NSA backdoor on Linux code'
>>

This is getting rather off-topic, especially for this thread, and
possibly for the list as well.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Alex]

Brian wrote:
> Chad,
> 
> What more would you like me to do, specifically? I have attended the
> conferences, I am aware of the MediaWiki development process and I am
> pointing towards high-quality code that meets every possible standard the
> community could reasonably ask. The most important of those standards is
> that the design was very well thought out and presented to the community
> over a period of years. At the same time many features which have come to be
> known as mainstays of Wikipedia have been snuck into the source code with
> far less effort.
> 
> In this discussion I have expressed feelings I have had for years, and now
> that there is money on the table, I believe it is time we got to the heart
> of the issue. I am pointing to the MediaWiki development process being
> broken as a core part of that issue.
> 
> I reject many of the excuses that have been presented. For example:
> 
>- Developers didn't have the time
> 
> When one considers the period of years that we are talking about this
> certainly appears to be false.

There's currently over 3000 open bugs with dozens being added very week,
many have been sitting for years. We currently have 2 developers who are
tasked with reviewing basically every change to MediaWiki core and
extensions currently used by Wikimedia. They also have to review
extensions requested by various projects as well as core features that
are disabled pending further review. They also do server admin work and
add new committers. Brion also oversees new technical hiring and Tim
handles releases of new versions. They also manage to find time to some
substanital coding work themselves.

Most of the rest of the developers are volunteers.

>- Users were already doing this, so we just made it easier for them
> 
> This is patently false - that particular advanced users are doing something
> *does not imply consensus.* Before ParserFunctions were implemented
> consensus should have been checked. Specifically, I believe a design should
> have been presented at Wikimania so that everyone had a chance to evaluate
> them. My experience has been that the community looks down on templates.
> That these templates were hurting the servers is a great opportunity to ask
> the community what the best solution is. Was the best solution to ingrain
> templates into Wikipedia by making them even easier to use, or to remove
> them altogether in favor of some alternate technology? That discussion was
> simply not had. And ParserFunctions is just one such example.

400 people went to Wikimania 2006 (according to the Wikipedia article),
I would hardly call that "everyone." If something is hurting the
servers, we probably can't spend half a year or so having people submit
proposals and vote on things. Template writers were using inefficient
conditionals, so efficient conditionals were implemented. I can't say
I've witnessed this general disdain for templates that you claim, is
there some evidence for this?


>- Show us the code - why don't you just fix the problem?
> 
> I do not consider writing code to be an impediment to design and process
> discussions. Furthermore, it would be suggested that I implement the code as
> an extension so that it might be ignored by the core developers along with
> every other extension. Lastly, the code has already been written. If it is
> not production-ready it is at the very least an excellent demo. This is also
> related to the 'Developers didn't have the time' issue. I fully believe that
> the core developers could reimplement various extensions in a scalable
> manner in relatively short order - they are, after all, crack php coders.
> The real problem is that they do not have the incentive. They have been
> given the keys and the community has not been given a voice. When a
> community member writes code to help MediaWiki, its put into the archives of
> extensions and quickly made obsolete by changes to core MediaWiki code.

Most extensions are ignored because they are written, /possibly/
documented on mediawiki.org or some random external site, then never
mentioned or touched. If people want to get their extensions
implemented, they should propose them to the community, then if the
community wants it, the core developers will have an incentive to review
and possibly improve them.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Alex]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 12:28 PM, geni  wrote:
>> How well do those concepts stand up when you have a lot of people
>> copying and pasting code they don't really understand (writing an
>> infobox from scratch is hard modifying an existing one less so)?
> 
> Pretty well, I suspect.  Of course, real languages are less tolerant
> of error than templates (even PHP makes syntax errors fatal), but I
> don't think the bar to entry would be huge.  You might also get more
> real programmers willing to deal with complex templates instead of
> avoiding them like the plague because the language is so hideous, as I
> at least currently do.
> 

If we have things like functions and libraries, it may actually do
better than the current system. It would be easier to just have one main
template that contains most of the more complex code, subtemplates would
just include the main template and call the necessary functions and
there'd be less need for copy/pasting. This is already done to a certain
extent with "meta-templates," but they aren't quite as versatile as they
could potentially be with a real programming language.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Alex]

Brian wrote:
> I believe it is possible to expand the parser functions in place in a
> non-destructive way. There are always edge cases of course.
> But if it is not possible, it is a clear violation of a core wiki principle
> - that all changes be easily revertible.
> 

ParserFunctions was checked into SVN in April 2006, presumably enabled
around the same time. Its had nearly 3 years for ParserFunctions to
integrate themselves into wikitext. By expanding them in place, you're
going to be replacing the infobox syntax in articles with table syntax,
hardly an improvement. To use a real example:
{{Infobox Mountain
| Name = Mount Blackmore
| Elevation = 10,154 feet (3,094 m)
| Location = [[Montana]], [[United States|USA]]
| Range = [[Gallatin Range]]
| Coordinates = {{coord|45|26|40|N|111|00|10|W|type:mountain_region:US}}
| Topographic map = [[United States Geological Survey|USGS]] Mount Blackmore
| Easiest route= Hike
}}

would be replaced by something like:

{| cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" class="infobox geography vcard"
style="border:1px solid #66; float:right; clear:right;
margin-left:0.75em; margin-top:0.75em; margin-bottom:0.75em;
background:#ff; width:305px; font-size:95%;"
|- class="fn org"
! style="text-align:center; background:#e7dcc3; font-size:110%;"
colspan="2"| Mount Blackmore
|-
|- class="note"
| style="border-top:1px solid #66; border-right:1px solid #66;
background:#e7dcc3; width:85px;" | [[Summit (topography)|Elevation]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #66; width:220px;" | 10,154 feet (3,094 m)
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #66; border-right:1px solid #66;
background:#e7dcc3;" | Location
| class="label" style="border-top:1px solid #66;" | [[Montana]],
[[United States|USA]]
|-
| class="note" style="border-top:1px solid #66; border-right:1px
solid #66; background:#e7dcc3;" | [[Mountain range|Range]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #66;" | [[Gallatin Range]]
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #66; border-right:1px solid #66;
background:#e7dcc3;" | [[Geographic coordinate system|Coordinates]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #66;" |
{{coord|45|26|40|N|111|00|10|W|type:mountain_region:US}}
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #66; border-right:1px solid #66;
background:#e7dcc3;" | [[Topographic map|Topo map]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #66;" | [[United States Geological
Survey|USGS]] Mount Blackmore
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #66; border-right:1px solid #66;
background:#e7dcc3;" | Easiest [[Climbing route|route]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #66;" | Hike
|-
|}

I'm not making this up. I picked a random, small infobox from an article
on Special:Random, and expanded it with Special:ExpandTemplates. Like
them or not, ParserFunctions do a pretty good job of hiding complex
wikitext from the average user, by putting it all in the templates.
Without them, you have to A) put the tables directly into articles,
which is a lot worse looking than using an infobox, B) Use the infoboxes
and show all the unused fields as blank (which is ugly to the readers as
well), C) Go back to using the pre-ParserFunctions template hacks, or D)
Replace all the infoboxes with SMW.

Of course, infoboxes aren't the only use of ParserFunctions in
templates. They're used in all of the "maintenance templates" like
{{cleanup}} on enwiki, I would bet there's at least one template that
uses a ParserFunction on 75% or more of all the articles on enwiki. Most
could be substituted a lot easier than the infoboxes, but the question
is, why? Why make the wikitext in articles harder to edit by forcing
templates to be replaced by tables? Why make the job of template-coders
harder by making it so templates can't be as useful? Rather than 1
infobox that works for all types of settlements, we'd have to have
thousands, an infobox that works for a major Chinese city wouldn't work
for a small town in America.

Are you saying that we should be able to revert the software to any
given revision and expect it to work fine? If we made sure every single
software change was fully backwards compatible, you could bet MediaWiki
would have far fewer features and a lot more bugs than it does now.

All changes are easily revertible in the short term. When changes exist
for years, causing thousands of other changes as a result, how to revert
them gets rather difficult (the same is somewhat true of edits to
articles as well). You're proposing we install Semantic MediaWiki and
rewrite the Parser in a way that will likely not be fully backwards
compatible. Neither of these changes will be easily revertible once
deployed, especially after 2+ years.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Alex]

Brian wrote:
> Mark,
> Keep in mind regarding my Semantic drum beating that I am not a developer of
> Semantic Mediawiki or Semantic Forms. I am just a user, and as Erik put it,
> an advocate.
> 
> That said, I believe these two extensions together solve the problem you are
> talking about. And for whatever reason, the developers of MediaWiki are
> willing to create new complicated syntax, but not new interfaces.
> 
> In your assessment, do these extensions solve the interface extensibility
> problem you describe?
> 
> To the list,
> 
> Regarding development process, why weren't a variety of sophisticated
> solutions, in addition to ParserFunctions, thoroughly considered before they
> were enabled on the English Wikipedia?
> 
> Should ParserFunctions be reverted (a simple procedure by my estimate, which
> is a good thing) based solely on the fact that they are the most clear
> violation of Jimbo's principle that I am aware of?
> 

A simple procedure? Yes, disabling the extension would be rather simple,
repairing the thousands of templates that would be broken in the
process, not so much.

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Re: [Foundation-l] transparency or translucency?

[Alex]

James Rigg wrote:
> This 'principle':
> 
> "The mailing list will remain open, well-advertised, and will be
> regarded as the place for meta-discussions about the nature of
> Wikipedia."
> 
> does seem to be referring to not just content, but also the running of
> Wikipedia. But the 'private' mailing lists which now exist seem to be
> a departure from this.
> 

As has been said, certain things require privacy, if not by law, by
common sense or courtesy. Obviously things like CheckUser data can't be
discussed in public and making things like emails to OTRS and
oversight-l public would greatly reduce their usefulness to the projects.

The biggest departure from that principle is that most of the day-to-day
running isn't done on the mailing lists, mostly everything at the
project-level is done on-wiki on discussion pages.

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Re: [Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

[Alex]

geni wrote:
> 2009/1/10 Anthony :
>>  It isn't clear what it means.
>> There seems to be a belief that it can be interpreted to only require
>> attribution of 5 authors, and I don't like that at all.
> 
> The word "five" doesn't appear in the license and "5" only appears in
> a section name and one reference to the section.
> 
> There might be a way to use one of the clauses to do this but it would
> be darn hard and the foundation has made statements that it won't use
> the relevant clause.
> 

Its actually the GFDL that has the "5 principle authors" thing, section 4.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remembering the People (was Fundraiser update)

[Alex]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 1/8/09 11:02 PM, Alex at mrzmanw...@gmail.com wrote:
>> And how is the foundation supposed to resolve this? Counsel people into
>> changing their opinions? Ban people who appear to be suppressing
>> criticism? Forcibly change policies? Act as proxies for people afraid of
>> criticism? I'm struggling to think of anything that could be done on a
>> foundation level that would be effective here.
>>
>>
> Alex, your hostile attitude in both your responses prove my second point.
> You, and attitudes like this, are a part of the problem.

And your attitude illustrates the problem with many (not all) of the
"critics" and "dissenters." Rather than reply to my points or explain
your ideas further when questioned, you choose to attack me. Those
weren't rhetorical questions. I really was curious as to what you were
suggesting.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remembering the People (was Fundraiser update)

[Alex]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 1/8/09 9:20 PM, Erik Moeller at e...@wikimedia.org wrote:
> 
>> 2009/1/8 Marc Riddell :
>>> This is pure unsubstantiated rhetoric. There are real-life, real-time
>>> problems - serious problems - that directly involve the people occurring in
>>> the English Wikipedia for example. Where is your help?
>> Marc, can you give examples of what kind of help you'd like to see?
> 
> Yes, Erik, I can. Just two for now, it's been a long day for me and I still
> have tomorrow's sessions to prepare for.
> 
> * A person at the Foundation level who has true, sensitive inter-personal as
> well a inter-group skills, and who would keep a close eye on the Project
> looking for impasses when they arise. The person would need to be objective
> and lobby-resistant ;-). This would be the person of absolute last resort in
> settling community-confounding problems.

Why are local ArbComs insufficient for this? If the community is unable
to resolve the dispute, I highly doubt someone who's a relative outsider
stepping in the middle would be able to unless they just issue an
official, non-negotiable edict.

> *This is more of a cultural issue: I would like to see the more established
> members of the community be more open to criticism and dissent from within
> the community. As it is now that tolerance is extremely low. I'm not talking
> about me; I'm an old Berkeley war horse and have been called things I had to
> look up :-). But I have gotten private emails from persons in the community
> with legitimate beefs, along with some good ideas for change, but are very
> reluctant to voice them because of how they believe they will be received.
> 

And how is the foundation supposed to resolve this? Counsel people into
changing their opinions? Ban people who appear to be suppressing
criticism? Forcibly change policies? Act as proxies for people afraid of
criticism? I'm struggling to think of anything that could be done on a
foundation level that would be effective here.


Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

[Alex]

Anthony wrote:
> There are very few offline reusers of Wikipedia content.  I know of none
> that are using more than de minimis portions of my content without
> attributing me.  If you know of any, please, tell me who they are, and I'll
> send a cease and desist to them.
> 
> This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline
> reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing
> one or more URLs.  In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have
> taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch.
> The WMF condoning and facilitating such behavior is absolutely unacceptable,
> no matter how many people "vote" to do so.
> 

This is a bad thing? Whatever happened to that "spreading free content"
goal we had? Or does that only apply on the internet?

There probably aren't many offline reusers because they're either
entirely non-compliant and we have no idea that they exist or they want
to be compliant, read the terms of the GFDL, and decide not to bother
with our content.
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Re: [Foundation-l] and what if...

[Alex]

Anthony wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 
>>>>> "They" didn't block editing.  "You" did.
>>>> Technically, yes, but they made it impossible for us to do anything
>> else.
>>> I think at this point you have to describe what you mean by "block
>> editing",
>>> then.
>> I think we all know what "block editing" means. It's when you go to
>> Special:BlockIP and make it impossible for someone to edit.
> 
> 
> There are many different options when going to Special:BlockIP.  Personally
> I wouldn't consider all of them to consist of "blocked editing" - one I'd
> refer to as "restrict editing to logged in users".

Don't try to make it sound more complicated than it is. There's many
different options, but as far as the actual block goes, when blocking an
IP, there's 2. You can block all editing from the IP or you can block
editing from non-logged-in users. The other options, like account
creation block, or blocking from editing the user talk page are just
"added on" to the main block, which is the block from editing.

> Well, I guess technically it's pseudonymity. The important thing is
>> that you can't (easily) link the IP address to a person in real life.
> 
> 
> And what good does that provide?  Seriously, how is that useful?  Why should
> Wikipedia allow anonymous contributions in the first place?  Don't say it
> has something to do with the government, because the government can easily
> link IP addresses to people in real life anyway, barring the use of a system
> like Tor, which Wikipedia doesn't support anyway.

What do you mean "what good?" I really don't understand. Your argument
about "usefulness" really seems to have nothing to do with what Thomas
was talking about, which is simply that its not perfect anonymity. I
don't think he was arguing that we should have perfect anonymity, though
he can correct me if I'm wrong.

Good for wiki administration? It makes an easy way to track and block
vandals without having to learn an arbitrary system that's meaningless
outside the wiki (unlike IP addresses).

Good for users? Unless they are one of the tiny percent of people with a
static IP that's actually linked to their real-life identity, it
provides decent privacy. At most, someone who doesn't have access to ISP
records couldn't determine any more than their general location. While
its not perfect anonymity, being able to narrow down the identity of
someone to "someone in a general geographical area" isn't particularly
helpful in determining their identity.

I don't see what "the government" (which government?) would have
anything to do with it at all.

> And if it really is a goal to allow this, there are blind token systems that
> can do it right.

You've not established why we actually need to change the whole system.
This would actually make vandalism/spam control harder. If the system is
truly anonymous, we would be unable to determine whether 2 vandals are
really the same person because we couldn't see if they are on the same
IP range.

The "goal" is to allow anyone to edit without having to do anything more
than editing a page. Using IP addresses mostly achieves that, except
when a country like China blocks all access (which a token system
wouldn't fix). I don't how see perfect anonymity is part of that goal,
or even necessarily desirable.

> (Well, actually, the important thing is that you don't need to go
>> through the (minimal) hassle of registering an account - I doubt the
>> proportion of anons that consciously prefer to go by an IP address is
>> very high - they are less private than accounts.)
>>
> 
> I'd say it's long past the point where the (minimal) saved hassle is worth
> the trouble.

What trouble? The vast majority of helpful anon edits I've seen are from
anons who make 1 or 2 edits then may never edit again. They go on with
their business, we go on with ours, no one is "troubled."

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Re: [Foundation-l] Site notice suggestion needed.

[Alex]

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 2:52 PM, effe iets anders
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm
>>>
>>> More then 10 billion page views per month... (or 3900 page views per second)
>> 24 hour average HTTP request rate is 46347. So thats 120,131,424,000
>> HTTP requests per month. I have a hard time believing that we're
>> averaging more than 12 HTTP requests per page view on average. I think
>> something is inaccurate, and I think the HTTP request rate the more
>> trustworthy number.
> 
> Sounds on the right order of magnitude to me. I just tried a full-reload
> on a random short article with no images:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._Harlan
> 
> which totaled 25 HTTP requests (including the fundraiser notice banner):
> 
> 1 HTML page
> 3 static style sheets
> 3 dynamic style sheets
> 4 static JavaScripts
> 2 dynamic JavaScripts
> 1 fundraising banner JS
> 3 fundraising banner images
> 8 UI images (logo, background, icons)
> 
> If you hit multiple pages, more of those will be cached, but you'll end
> up loading additional images as well.
> 
> At some point we'll probably do some more consolidation on the CSS and
> JS files that get loaded most frequently to reduce the number of server
> round-trips on a first hit.
> 
> -- brion

Based on Domas's pageview stats[1] for the past 14 days (11/21 - 12/04)
we get an average of 4112 pageviews per second, 4.9 billion total views
for the 2 week period. The results per day are available at [2].

Out of curiosity, I also checked the 3 days around the recent US
election day (11/03 - 11/05), the average views per second was 4599, an
additional 42 million pageviews per day on average (though that's
somewhat misleading, as that range is only weekdays and the number of
pageviews tends to decrease significantly on weekends)

[1] <http://dammit.lt/wikistats/> Caution: fairly large page
[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mr.Z-man/views>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Site notice suggestion needed.

[Alex]

Chad wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Pharos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> 
>> "2,434 articles on people born in 1908"
>>
>> Ha!
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1908_births
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>>
>>
> "347 articles on internet memes"
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_memes
> 

90 free lolcats:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lolcats

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Re: [Foundation-l] Site notice suggestion needed.

[Alex]

effe iets anders wrote:
> What about the total number of edits? Does anyone know that number? And I
> mean for *all* language versions together. Assuming an avg 10 edits/article:
> 
> 110 million edits
> to write 11 million articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics gives 268 million+ for
enwiki alone, but I agree that would be a good one.

The number of page views per second might also be interesting. I believe
the number of total server requests per second average is something like
55,000, though that includes images, stylesheets, etc. I'm not sure how
it translates into actual pageviews. Special:Search on enwiki alone gets
about 240 hits/s at peak time.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Handholding for new articles (Was: Re: 80% of our projects are failing)

[Alex]

David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/12/5 Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 
>> This [1] is the sort of thing I'm thinking about. David, has this been
>> proposed, discussed, modeled and rejected in the past? (It seems like it
>> must have, for something that is pretty common around the web).
>> [1]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Add_an_article_-_basic.JPG
> 
> 
> Not that I know of. A preloaded text box would do much the same job, I
> expect. Note how I don't say anything about format of references, etc
> - just enter the content.

The article wizard on en.wp that Greg linked a while ago (which has been
 in a state of under-construction-ness for some time now) and a version
of which the Slovenian Wikipedia uses does this. It doesn't force people
to use the wizard (the Slovenian one just suggests people use it, an
en.wp version would likely do the same) but it does give the option.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Wikipedia%3AArticle+wizard%2Fcompany%2Fpreload&editintro=Wikipedia%3AArticle+wizard%2Fcompany%2Fintro&title=Test1234>
is an example of the enwiki one, the Slovenian one is
<http://sl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Wikipedija%3ANapi%C5%A1i+%C4%8Dlanek%2Fpodjetje%2Fpreload&editintro=Wikipedija%3ANapi%C5%A1i_%C4%8Dlanek%2Feditintro&title=Test1234>
- it even provides example article text.

> Unfortunately, getting community consensus for any change whatsoever
> on en:wp is all but impossible these days. Happenstance conditions are
> treated as rock-solid intention.
> 

As long as its optional, people probably won't mind that much.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Usability grant

[Alex]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:02 AM, Michael Snow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snip]
>> improve the MediaWiki software and the experience for new contributors.
>> Not that this is a direct result of recent discussions here, plenty of
>> people have mentioned the issue before, including Delphine as Ting
> [snip]
> 
> Sadly most of the discussions on these lists run on without mention of
> the efforts that have come before, in this case see:
> http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard
> 
> When people discuss enhancements it seems that it is taboo to discuss
> the question of what happens when the communities reject these
> efforts.
> 
> Too often we blame technical issues as limiting factors for usability
> when with a little creativity a 90% solution is available without
> waiting for inflexible technical solutions which never seem to come.
> Unfortunately, interest, project politics, and other social factors
> are ready to stand in the way of progress even when there are no
> technical roadblocks at all.

Note also that the Slovenian Wikipedia has an adaptation of this[1] that
they link to from the message shown when creating a new article[2] (the
second line of the message).

[1] <http://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Napi%C5%A1i_%C4%8Dlanek>
[2] <http://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Newarticletext>

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Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing

[Alex]

I don't see why it matters. As long as there's /some/ content, there's
content that can be poor quality. If anything, a wiki with virtually no
community is more susceptible to quality problems. If someone
intentionally inserts misinformation or libel into an article on the
English Wikipedia, it will likely be reverted in minutes, if not
seconds. If someone does that on a small wiki with no active users, how
long is it going to take to be removed? It might not show up in the top
of Google search results, but its still a quality problem.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> I wish for 80% of our projects to have the same problems as our bigger
> projects. It would be cool that we could compare the quality issues of the
> Xhosa Wikipedia or any of the bottom 80%. It takes content in order to talk
> about quality. The content is not there and consequently quality is not an
> issue.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> 2008/11/30 Yaroslav M. Blanter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
>> Actually, the quality is a serious problem of all projects including
>> en.wp. I thought it is obvious for everybody, but if not, I can provide
>> more detail.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Yaroslav
>>
>>> Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and
>>> definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about
>>> our
>>> little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support
>>> them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
>>

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Re: [Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects

[Alex]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> The proposal is for ASL to be written in SignWriting. This has the added
> benefit that whatever is actually written can also be edited in our wiki
> style. The problem with video  is that you cannot change it and consequently
> it is not really Wiki.
> 
> Steve Slevinsky is working on an extension that will allow for the writing
> of any sign languages using SignWriting. I understand that he is even
> cosidering another skin.. This will allow for much of the user interface to
> be localised.
> Thanks,
>GerardM

That's great, but how do we integrate it into other projects? Are we
going to use the extension on every single project just for the purpose
of interwiki links (it might have a little more use on commons and
meta), or will there just not be interwiki links from projects to a
SignWriting wiki?

An extension to have a wiki that uses SignWriting instead of a normal
script is one thing, getting it to work well with projects that are in a
normal script - interwiki links, CentralAuth, etc. - seems like it would
be a lot more difficult.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Have you dealt with this yet? If so,how?

[Alex]

Foundation-l list admin wrote:
> (2nd try, hope it isn't a duplicate)
> 
> 
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: dee dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 5:06 PM
> Subject: Have you dealt with this yet? If so,how?
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 2: In addition, this section of
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHECKUSER
> 
> "Privacy violation?
> 
>* If you feel that a checkuser has led to a violation of the
> Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy regarding yourself, please refer
> the case to the Ombudsman commission."
> 
> is something I find to be quite Orwellian. How can someone report a
> privacy violation if they do not know that checkuser has been used on
> them?
> 

Based on my reading of the privacy policy[1], specifically:
"When using a pseudonym, your IP address will not be available to the
public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by
you or by another user with the same IP address. In all cases, your IP
address will be stored on the wiki servers and can be seen by
Wikimedia's server administrators and by users who have been granted
"CheckUser" access. Your IP address, and its connection to any usernames
that share it may be released under certain circumstances (see below)."

a checkuser using the checkuser tool, on its own, cannot be a privacy
policy violation, it cannot become one until they release some or all of
the data to people who would not normally have access to it.

It may be a violation of the Checkuser policy[2], as it says "There must
be a valid reason to check a user." but the checkuser policy seems to
agree with my interpretation of the privacy policy:
"On Wikimedia projects, privacy policy considerations are of tremendous
importance. Unless someone is violating policy with their actions (e.g.
massive bot vandalism or spam) and revealing information about them is
necessary to stop the disruption, it is a violation of the privacy
policy to reveal their IP, whereabouts, or other information sufficient
to identify them, unless they have already revealed this information
themselves on the project."

Nowhere does it says its a violation of the privacy policy simply to do
the check.

[1] <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy>
[2] <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser>

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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