WikiEN-l December 2005

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192 participants
299 discussions

Fwd: [Wikimediauk-l] "Fair Use does not apply to DSM material or any other APA/APPI content." um, wtf?
by Sam Korn 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

I think David meant to send this to WikiEN-l, rather than WikimediaUK-l. -- Sam ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> Date: Dec 20, 2005 1:55 PM Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] "Fair Use does not apply to DSM material or any other APA/APPI content." um, wtf? To: wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org, foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org Below is from [[:en:WP:ANI]]. What on earth? How does "fair use" magically not apply? - d. DSM-IV-TR Copyright question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Narcissistic_personality_disorder There is a question being raised concerning whether the reproduction of DSM-IV-TR criteria on several articles without permission from the APA constitutes breach of copyright and whether the administration of Wikipedia could or should seek the relevant permissions or the removal of such text? Personally I should like to request the permissions be sought --82.195.137.125 19:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC) I have responded to this at the relevant talk page, and suggested that relevant quotations are within the bounds of fair use. Other eyes may be welcome on that issue. Dragons flight 21:20, 17 December 2005 (UTC) [Response re: DSM-IV-TR criteria (all identifiers removed, original forwarded to permissions(a)wikipedia.org): We are inclined to deny Wikipedia permission to use our content as we do not allow anyone to alter our material and we do not want our material posted online. I can assure you that we have complete rights to our material and Fair Use does not apply to DSM material or any other APA/APPI content. I find this a LITTLE bit scary in it's wider implications --82.195.137.125 05:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)] Also completely wrong. Of course it fucking applies. Perhaps they could work with the National Gallery on this one - David Gerard 12:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC) [Better idea David could you see your way to making your case to them (I have already made mine)? Here is contact page http://appi.org/permissions.cfx and post any results here? (repeating on your talk page). "Inclined" is, to my mind, a word that is still open to negotiation --82.195.137.125 13:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)] _______________________________________________ Wikimediauk-l mailing list Wikimediauk-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l -- Sam

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I just did another interview - Dublin NewsRadio 106, 2:20pm.
by David Gerard 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

Done at forty minutes' notice, courtesy of an email from Danny - sorry I didn't have time to let Irish readers of wikien-l know. I did the interview on my mobile in a stairwell, so it probably sounded like sh*te ... * Started with what we want to produce; I talked about the de: DVD, in its 3rd edition, and how we want to do that with en:. * Then issues of bios, defamation and Seigenthaler; I said that we catch errors when we spot them, but we've lately been working on actively fact-checking biographies of living people. * We can't keep a certain noise level of rubbish out, but we have lots of people who want to do good. * They crossed to Michael Earl who wrote the FT piece. He said how he'd edited the piece on his college to fix an error. * I said we want to put an encyclopedia in every schoolroom in Africa, paper or DVD, maybe on $100 laptops. * I finished that we're not a finished product but pretty good if you read critically. It seemed to go nicely. I acknowledged a weakness, that we had stuff to fix on living people's bios, the rest was a big ad for Wikipedia. And apparently I'm the UK Editor of Wikipedia. I didn't know I made *that* many edits ... I'm now really hoping someone captured the audio stream, or that it's retrievable at a later date! -d.

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Is it welcome to recal my case in waiting ?
by l'Omnivore Sobriquet 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

Messieurs-Dames, With no reaction since Friday, my case for block-lifting is now buried in the crowd of messages in WikiEN-l, and I'm wondering if the many people here still have it in mind. I'm pasting it below for an easier catch 'on the fly' by the interested wiki-admin, as it is to be found in my user Talk page as well (là : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:L%27Omnivore_Sobriquet .) The blocker was one Jayjg, who posted in wikien-l mere motivations, adressing a truncated version of my case, on 'points' that were indeed already adressed in the truncated part. (plus wild claims on the 'biographed''s behaviour.) That was Friday at 18:23 GMT, and it's pasted further below. Then one Sam Fentress (Asbestos) posted a comment somewhat favorable to my case, although furthering on the truncated version. Same Friday at 20:11 GMT, pasted further below. Then nothing, while I had finally my corrections posted here Saturday 14:27 GMT, which I paste at bottom although it doesn't add much, just saying to take my full text into account. I must stress also that I had received no warning whatsoever prior to the block., which is an 'infinite' block. In addition, I figure that I have no way of knowing whether the block is lifted, so I regularly hit some 'edit' button for a check. Do not resume imaginating 'fashions' about this, please. IP changes everytime, the last being 86.194.140.6 So here you are folks, I just wondered about the 'noisy silence' going on about my case here; in my view, it has been a fast misjugdment from one of yours, that could be settled swiftly. Yours, l'Omnivore Sobriquet ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// vendredi 16 décembre 2005 17:18 (i.e. 16:18 GMT) [WikiEN-l] My complaint about being blocked. My complaint about being blocked. Friday, 16 December 05 Messieurs, I would like to register here my full disagreement about being blocked from Wikipedia. This is unfair, and as I appreciate it, unjustified. My IP address is 83.205.136.21. My user name is "L'Omnivore Sobriquet", and on Wednesday 14th of Dec I got blocked at 22:03 (Wiki time), with the message : "Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Jayjg. The reason given is: revert sockpuppet" Moderator Jayjg replied to my call for justifications with the single line : "You appear to be a userid created solely for the purpose of reverting articles; that is what your edits consist of. Jay. " Today, I see to my dismay that a new 24hours blocking has been auto-generated. I'm writing here to argue my case: By the time of the 'block', my contributions to Wikipedia totalled to only. two. One last Sunday, one Wednesday. In no way this can be seen as a basis for a trend. Two occurrences cannot be held as statistical. I argue that my contributions, numbering to only two, simply didn't "consist of" any behavioural pattern. Mr Jayjg writes that I "appear" . "created solely for the purpose". based on a total of only two occurrences, hardly a basis for purpose guesses or appearance lectures. The line of Jayjg consists solely of his own guessings on invented trends. More so, trends and fashions, guessed or not, shouldn't come into play when it comes to Wikipedia editions or users' accesses. Denis Diderot boasted loud enough about it : encyclopaedias are not hair-dressers' salons. Hurt as any innocent blocked user should be, I acknowledge here challengeable Ancient Régîme ways, péroraisons, and short-lived privilege abuses. However if explanations for my sole pair of independent editions may help, to erase the wrongful impression of - 'award-winning' - Jayjg, here they are: Both related to the file titled "Israel Shamir" (actually, early on Sunday and before creating an account and logging in, I made an edit on American WW2 aircraft production, deleting post-war F-86 Sabre from the list, making a total of 3 contributions in all from my PC, and certainly not 'revert sockpuppetting'.) Both were reverts. After a lengthy read of the controversies in the correspondent 'talk' page, I viewed the introduction paragraph of 'JohD' as already demonstrated as superior to the version seemingly endlessly reverted-to by a couple of Wikipedians. Also, the behaviour of these few Wikipedians - Jayjg and Denis Diderot (??!!!) - had been exposed as being on the verge of vandalism, according to Wiki guidelines. My attitude has therefore been that 'the case is closed', that it's all well written and argued about in the talk page. There only remains to Wikipedia to let it show. My 'comments' just said that. A logical conclusion of the whole discussion page, as it reads. Therefore reverting was the minimal - yet justified - intervention, in order to let the hopefully virtuous Wikipedia process move on. So please do not be surprised, do not imagine hooliganism, if I simply feel very little need to invent some weak literature of mine and then to pour-in my low-key argumentation in endless talk pages, just to try to re-argue already well stated points. Hence the behaviour of those two first edits. "See talk" could have been a dryer comment for these. Impressions, however corrected, shouldn't come into argumentation here. But humans always appreciate ! Please 'unblock' me at once. l'Omnivore Sobriquet //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// from JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> vendredi 16 décembre 2005 19:22 >From: "l'Omnivore Sobriquet" <omnivore.sobriquet(a)wanadoo.fr> >My complaint about being blocked. > >Friday, 16 December 05 > > Messieurs, > >I would like to register here my full disagreement about being blocked from >Wikipedia. This is unfair, and as I appreciate it, unjustified. > >My IP address is 83.205.136.21. > >My user name is "L'Omnivore Sobriquet", and on Wednesday 14th of Dec I got >blocked at 22:03 (Wiki time), with the message : > > "Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Jayjg. >The reason given is: >revert sockpuppet" > >Moderator Jayjg replied to my call for justifications with the single line >: > > "You appear to be a userid created solely for the purpose of reverting >articles; that is what your edits consist of. > >Jay. " The userid made exactly two edits, both of them reverts of the same page, Israel Shamir. It made no contributions elsewhere, even to the Talk: page of the article in question, and certainly appeared to be a revert sockpuppet. Moreover, the subject of this article (Israel Shamir) has been consistently vandalizing it, in ways with which we have become all too familiar. He also appealed for friends of his to come and revert the article for him on a Yahoo group called Shamir readers: From: Israel Shamir <ishamir@...> Date: Sat Nov 26, 2005 12:12 pm Subject: Wiki ish314 Dear friend, if you have time, you may help to fight a small internet war over Wikipedia, a popular website with many links. Obviously it is as dominated by philosemites as any other media, and they consistently demonise me in the entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Shamir When I, or some friends correct their most blatant lies, they change it back in no time at all. Afterwards, they refer to their own lies as if it is an objective source. Everybody can add, remove and edit any entry in the Wiki. I call those who has available time to make an effort and to re-conquer the site from philosemites. Shamir Even if this editor is not a sockpuppet, I'm quite skeptical that this userid was created with Wikipedia's goals and policies in mind. Jay. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// from : Sam Fentress (Asbestos) <asbestos999(a)gmail.com> vendredi 16 décembre 2005 21:10 While I think it's quite likely that this user was recruited by Shamir, and also that he has edited before, I don't think one can say for sure whether he is a sock puppet -- you're better off having a developer check that. But as for blocking because he came to Wikipedia with an aim in mind... if we blocked every user who arrived at Wikipedia because of a bone to pick or a view to push, we'd be down the vast majority of our contributors. The only applicable policy is WP:NPOV, and you don't get blocked for a first offence under that. I wouldn't ever unblock without knowing the whole story, but I don't think I agree with this block's reasoning. Sam On 12/16/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote: [edited, same as above. l'O.S.] //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// from : l'Omnivore Sobriquet <omnivore.sobriquet(a)wanadoo.fr> vendredi 16 décembre 2005 21:46 Objet : Re: [WikiEN-l] My complaint about being blocked. Now you cancompare... hello, quick amendments: "It made no contributions elsewhere, even to the Talk: page of the article in question" This has been well explained in the following of my message, it is a fine wiki-ethical usage all along. This is a truncation you're reading, rely on full version instead. (posted here 40 minutes before Jay's, your time) "and certainly appeared to be a revert sockpuppet" It wasn't, and didn't appear as such then, as I explained in my message. Please don't resort to "it's our experience that..." kind of argument; we're not meant to guess. The number of possible logical cases of behavours identical to mine while not being a internet sockpuppet is so high that in 25000 years time one still wouldn't have digested it. That you are 'not used to forsee' such or such is of no importance, concerning the veracity of being a such said sockpuppet. It may change a bit for the explanation of Jay's behaviour yes, reacting to some 'well known pattern', well known by a particuliar 'Wikipedia' staff and time etc., but changes stricly nothing on whether it is actual sockpupetting, created solely for the... etc. "Moreover, the subject of this article (Israel Shamir) has been consistently vandalizing it" Not at all. See talk, see history; Shamir just intervened some three or five times if memory serves, weeks or months ago, civil and compliant at that. In fact we have one, possibly multiple, swift reverts from Jayjg and/or this Denis Diderot fame-seeker (shame-finder) without one word of an explanation, I repeat, without one word of explanation. "He also appealed for friends of his to come and revert the article for him on a Yahoo group called Shamir readers:" It makes no mention of reverts. "Even if this editor is not a sockpuppet, I'm quite skeptical that this userid was created with Wikipedia's goals and policies in mind. > Jay." Black magic again. I'm not wild-eyed by this all comrades, and Jay is not the devil incarnate. But I'm hurt and there should not be such a quasi-fetichist way for a wiki-reaction. So I'm waiting for good outcome, so I'm patient. l'Omnivore Sobriquet ----- Original Message ----- From: "JAY JG" <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> [edited, idem - l'O.S.]

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A newbie on article prefill templating
by David Gerard 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

me: "I have put forward the idea of a prefilled article template for new articles, instead of an empty edit box - show newbies what we expect from an article. Thoughts?" Malkin: "Actually, I think that's a great idea. It took a lot of work to figure out what needed to be there - jumping around to figure out how to add categories and sources, and that's with a fair amount of familiarity with what it should look like in the first place. A template would've been much easier to start from than an empty box." Look at User:Malkin's edits and you'll see how she slowly constructed the article. Prefill would have been just the thing to lead this newbie the right way. She did OK anyway, but it would have helped greatly and made the blank edit box a lot less intimidating. - d.

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Esquire article has been published
by David Gerard 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

http://www.smartmoney.com/esquire/index.cfm?Story=20051215wikipedia Presumably the print version is available soon or now. - d.

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And yet more fallout
by Michelle 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

We're getting more and more of these emails every day to the helpdesk -- everyone and their brother is screaming libel and demanding we delete everything remotely related to them, their brother and their pet pig once removed. Fun. Think it'll die down after a while or are we in for constant legal threats from now on? Jareth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jareth) -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [HelpDesk-l] Libelous communications Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:10:42 -0600 From: skip davis <emdavis(a)texas.net> Reply-To: Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects <helpdesk-l(a)Wikimedia.org> To: helpdesk-l(a)wikimedia.org Greetings! I am an attorney and I represent a young lady, an actress whose name is Maria Ford. I took a look at your website after Ms. Ford retained my firm to investigate and determine whether your operation (Wikimedia and Wikipedia) publicizes false and misleading, and/ or otherwise incorrect information regarding Ms. Ford. From our investigation, I have concluded that your website does indeed publish materially false information regarding Ms. Ford. Specifically: You publish an incorrect birthdate for Ms. Ford You publish other incorrect biographical information regarding Ms. Ford. Now that you know by my admonition to you above, that this information you publish is *patently false,* I hope that you will follow what I recommend as the simple resolution of this Libel situation: that you remove all reference to Ms. Ford from your website. If you persist and continue to patently publish false and misleading information that continues to be injurious to my client, then Ms. Ford will be forced to seek measures to enforce her rights against your libel, including any and all remedies available under both State and Federal laws. I attached an article from CNN.com that I am certain your legal department is aware. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/11/wikipedia.ap/index.html It is the holiday season, so I urge you to act in the spirit and do the right thing immediately. If however upon the New Year 2006 no action has been taken on your part, then we will be having a much different conversation immediately thereafter. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me. Major Edmund M. "Skip" Davis Attorney at Law PO Box 201123 Austin, TX 78720 Phone and Fax: 512.331.2828 _______________________________________________ HelpDesk-l mailing list HelpDesk-l(a)Wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Digital Universe
by Daniel R. Tobias 19 Dec '05

19 Dec '05

> On 12/19/05, Justin Cormack <justin(a)specialbusservice.com> wrote: > > > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/19/sanger_onlinepedia_with_experts/ > > > > Anyone know any more about this? This seems to be connected with the ManyOne project, which appears to be the combination of some sort of ISP services, a multimedia reference site to come, and a Web browser that is adapted from Mozilla. The browser is downloadable from their site now, but in a brief trial of it I didn't observe any obvious features setting it apart from the Mozilla suite it's adapted from. Its web site is hype- laden, reminiscent of the dot-com insanity of around 2000, with more enthusiasm than solid facts. Supposedly, their site will be more multimedia-enhanced than other reference sites, and their browser will be ideal for viewing it (somehow), but as of now there doesn't seem to be anything but promotional videos. -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] I just did another interview - Dublin NewsRadio 106, 2:20pm.
by David Gerard 19 Dec '05

19 Dec '05

Steve Bennett wrote: >> And apparently I'm the UK Editor of Wikipedia. I didn't know I made >> *that* many edits ... >Only the UK Editor? Pfft, I'm a global editor. As opposed, of course, to our many lunar editors. - d.

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Improve quality by reviewing all new articles
by Chris Owen 19 Dec '05

19 Dec '05

David Gerard wrote: > Jimmy Wales wrote: >(re: [[John Seigenthaler Sr.]]) >> Any good editor _with enough time_ who looks at an article >> about a living person which makes claims as transparently >> outlandish as these will know to remove those claims and >> insist on a source. It would have taken 15 seconds of >> googling to see that the claims were in no way supported by >> any obvious source. >Newpages patrol typically doesn't take or have the time to do >that. It's a firehose of slush-pile quality information. It's >about a first cull. It shouldn't be. Jimbo's point about the "failure mode" is absolutely right - at the moment we're letting in "a firehose of slush-pile quality information" which doesn't even meet basic standards (I'll come back to this point). Our "failure mode" right now is to let everything in and hope that someone improves the "slush-pile". What happens if they don't? We simply don't have enough time to make this happen. >> The Seigenthaler article didn't pass _any_ basic quality standards. >It passed *basic* ones, which is how it survived Newpages >patrol. Basic quality standards for Newpages means more or less >that's it's shaped enough like something that might be a >Wikipedia article not to shoot on sight. I don't know how you can argue that it met *any* standards other than that it was written in English. Let's consider what was wrong with it. It was an orphan article, with no wikilinks, no references, no formatting and hopelessly (actually maliciously) incorrect information. What was right with it? Ummm.... Note that in my original proposal I said that including references should be part of the basic criteria. I expressly didn't say that the article should be accurate in every regard. There's an important point here - it's simply not feasible to fact-check everything that goes into Wikipedia and nobody should fool themselves that this can be done. But the point about inaccurate information is that much of the time, it's something that someone has misremembered, it may be speculative or, as in the Siegenthaler case, it may simply have been made up. If the Siegenthaler article submitter had been required to reference his allegations about his subject, the article would probably never have been accepted into the main namespace in the first place. Insisting on referenced sources is the first and best line of defence against bad information. >What it would need is something like what someone else mooted, a >biography patrol. Which is a damn fine idea, I think. It might help with existing biographies, but it won't solve the problem for newly created ones and it won't do anything at all for all the new non-biographical articles (which is most of them). Your idea of a "prefilled" article template is a good one, and I think it should be implemented. But it won't make much difference if people are still free to create junk articles and we still rely on those articles being caught. You said earlier in your post that "Newpages patrol typically doesn't take or have the time to [check articles]." This is true - we have too few patrollers and too little time. Our method of checking new pages is effectively equivalent to random sampling; we're dipping into the firehose to see if what's coming through it is any good. This might work for an automated production line, but it's fundamentally the wrong model for a setup where each and every one of the products is "hand-made". You have to do quality control on each article, not on a representative sample. I think we have three variables here: the number of new articles, the number of patrollers and the time required to review each new article. We might be able to reduce the number of new articles a bit by requiring users to log in before creating them, but it doesn't seem to have made a great deal of difference so far. The number of patrollers is something we don't have any control over and it's never likely to keep pace with the demand anyway. The only variable we *can* really change substantially is the time we have in which to review articles. That's where the change in "failure mode" comes in. Right now, we have literally no time at all to review articles, because as soon as they're published they're in the namespace, and they scroll off the Newpages list within minutes or hours. Putting them in a review queue would give us all the time we needed to review them. It would also greatly reduce the attractiveness of submitting Siegenthaler-style hoaxes and "look Ma!"-type junk because such articles would have a very high chance of never getting into the public website in the first place. Right now we're getting a huge amount of similar junk because the submitters know that it'll be visible immediately. Take that away, and you take away a lot of the rationale for hoaxing/vandalising in the first place. One other point. People are understandably getting jittery about biographies because that's a point of legal vulnerability. But that's missing the point: we just don't have a problem with bad biographies, we have a problem with a broken process that lets in all kinds of bad information, not just biographies. Jimbo's experiment in stopping anonymous editors from creating new articles won't stop that, any more than your proposal of patrolling biographies. The underlying process needs to be fixed, not just a particular category of user privileges or content. - ChrisO ___________________________________________________________ NEW Yahoo! Cars - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online! http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/

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[Fwd: Getting Unblocked at Wikipedia]
by Jimmy Wales 19 Dec '05

19 Dec '05

Brian, I'm forwarding your email to the wikien-l group, and someone will be able to help you promptly. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Getting Unblocked at Wikipedia Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:22:09 -0800 From: Brian C <brianwc(a)ocf.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: or-talk(a)freehaven.net To: or-talk(a)freehaven.net Hi, I like to occasionally contribute to the Wikipedia. I also run a tor server. I do not want a Wikipedia username, and so I always just contribute anonymously. During the recent fracas about tor and Wikipedia, my static IP address from which I run my tor server was blocked for an "infinite" time period. I have since decided that until I get more than one static IP, I will only run my tor server in "middle-man" mode, so it is not presently possible that defacement of Wikipedia (or Slashdot, or the Gentoo Forums, etc.) is exiting from my IP address. I was able to email Slashdot and can login there again, and I don't presently contribute to the Gentoo Forums often enough to worry about it. However, I am finding it impossible to correct the Wikipedia block, because without a username the only way to contact an admin is to edit their "talk" page, but I am forbidden from editing any page because of the block. A vicious cycle. Does anyone have any experience with this such that they could direct me to an actual email address of a Wikipedia admin who could remove the block or otherwise advise me on how to proceed? Thanks. Brian

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WikiEN-l December 2005