I've just gone and removed semi-protections from about a dozen user
talk pages. All of them were targets of vandalism in the past,
generally due to their own anti-vandalism efforts. The pages included
pages of administrators.
For obvious reasons, anyone who is warning and blocking new users in
turn needs to be able to be contacted by these users with questions,
concerns, etc. Semi-protection must not be used in this fashion, and
I've removed the line supporting it from the semi-protection policy.
-Phil
With all the talk of Mr. Doolittle's article, I looked at it myself,
and can't help noticing that it begins with a "dab note" that this
particular Doolittle is *not* the doctor who talks to animals. Glad
*that*'s cleared up! (Gotta love Wikipedia...)
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
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"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
> If a tv show is released on DVD or has books published on them, they should
> probably be the preferred sources.
Low on my list of concerns, but, yes, a book reference should be good.
Don't anyone even think of touching "House MD" ...
Charles
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Phil Sandifer wrote
> On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
> > People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts";
> > however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are
> > generally extremely easy to source.
>
> A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to
> source obvious facts.
I agree that there are clearly better things to do.
If you apply for a patent, you may be opposed either with some 'prior art', or for 'obviousness', in other words that someone 'skilled in the art' could have come up with the idea, no sweat. These are different matters: i.e. a professional searcher for prior art may not come up with all the things that are obvious inventive steps.
I think this fact of legal life ought to give some pause to claims that the obvious is always documented. The underlying reason has often been discussed, for example in relation to AI. Combining things in pairs, even, throws up so many combinations. Consider the cab driver's problem, let us say in London. Cabbies are supposed to know routes from A to B, each chosen from thousands of locations. That's millions of routes, and _clearly_ to the expert cabbie (they pass an exam on this stuff) it is not because those are individually documented. The same principle may well apply to, oh, organic chemistry syntheses; the point is that it is in the nature of combinations.
I hear plenty of non-expert opinions on 'knowledge' here, but also some pretty basic naivety on these matters.
Charles
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My wording was a bit weak.
I meant to say:
My IP was blocked by Freakofnurture because my username was blocked and
the reason he gave was Encyclopedia Dramatica.
The rest of the post was correct.
Just had to clarify that.
- Nathan (nathanrdotcom)
I point out to the admins and loyal readers of this
list, something that should've been pointed out ages
ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=Us…
21:35, 28 August 2006 Freakofnurture (Talk | contribs)
blocked "74.104.100.26 (contribs)" with an expiry time
of 6 months (nathanrdotcom)
I was blocked by freakofnurture some months ago and
the only block reason given was "nathanrdotcom" (link
to the page on Encyclopedia Dramatica about me).
I remind everyone that external sites/pages should not
be used as block reasons. Real, actual reasons
(related to Wikipedia) should be used as block reasons
(example: "IP address of blocked user" would've been
acceptable)
I challenge someone to show Freakofnurture the error
of his ways, he can't just use any old block reason he
likes (whether he's partial to ED or not, this isn't
ED, this is Wikipedia and Wikipedia has rules and
guidelines, unlike ED).
(And who ever heard of blocking a dynamic IP for six
months anyway?)
Thanks, this needed to be said.
- Nathan (nathanrdotcom)
On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:26:46 +0100, Arwel Parry
<arwel(a)cartref.demon.co.uk> writes:
>I find it very frustrating trying to cite commonly known events.
>
>On [[FA Premier League]] someone {{fact}}ed the sentence "UEFA, European
>football's governing body, lifted the ban on English clubs playing in
>European competitions in 1990 and the Taylor Report on stadium safety
>standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to all-seater stadiums, was
>published in January of that year." What are they asking to be cited?
>UEFA lifting the ban can be checked by looking at any article on English
>clubs' participation in continental competitions. The Taylor Report is
>well known and referred to in any number of places on the web, but
>despite looking for hours on UK Government sites I've completely failed
>to find the original document. I eventually settled for citing the 1994
>order requiring certain stadia to be all-seater.
Have fixed that for you. Official reports are normally Command Papers
and all that is needed is the number which is prefixed by variations
on an abbreviation of 'Command' depending on the series (they run
from 1 to 9999 before adopting a new one). This one is Cmnd. 962.
I would say the canonical example of "Political correctness gone mad"
in the UK is the banning of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" which is referred to
as fact time after time, but remains purely apocryphal. Try to
{{fact}} that and you will run up against that old problem of proving
a negative. There are lots of references claiming it happened, though.
[[en:User:Fys]]
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david(a)election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd(a)westminster.gov.uk (council)
On 14 Oct 2006 at 23:12, "the wub" <thewub.wiki(a)googlemail.com>
wrote:
> So they explicitly state there is no copyright (rather than saying "public
> domain"), then go on to claim no commercial use is allowed.
> Something of a contradiction I think, but it seems pretty clear what the
> intention is. Such images would not be acceptable on Wikipedia (other than
> under fair use)
What it sounds like is that the Philippine government is creating a
separate type of intellectual property which is explicitly not
"copyright", but which still restricts the commercial (but not
noncommercial) use of the applicable material. Governments are
allowed to do such things by law (within whatever constraints their
constitution may make), but such laws apply only within their own
borders (unless extended elsewhere by treaty). Since, as far as I
know, there are no international treaties protecting non-copyrighted
governmental works that have use restrictions by national law (this
wouldn't fall under copyright treaties since it's not a copyright),
they would only be able to enforce this restriction within the
Philippines, and in the rest of the world the works would be entirely
public domain. (But I'm not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice.)
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
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The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
rational holds, the bible is banned book).
Could some people deal with this list?
Kim
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com
On 15 Oct 2006 at 10:23, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> No it isn't. It is prefectly normal to choose the interpretation that
> a) is legaly correct and b) keeps us safe.
Although, in this case, it's not actually "us" (the Wikimedia
Foundation or individual Wikipedians) who's at legal risk, but others
who use Wikipedia content in a commercial manner, as permitted by the
GFDL, but perhaps not by the Philippine law in question. They would
be the ones who got sued (if the Philippine courts can manage to get
jurisdiction over them), not the Wikimedia Foundation (which is
noncommercial and hence not subject to the legal restrictions) or the
individual editors (who aren't engaging in commercial activity
either, at least unless an entity like the infamous MyWikiBiz is
involved). Wikimedia/Wikipedia has, by its own choice, decided to
adopt a copyright policy that preserves the usability of its material
by others for commercial as well as noncommercial purposes, but
that's a voluntary decision not enforceable by law (unless there's
some explicit contractual obligation that has been incurred).
--
== 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/