WikiEN-l October 2006

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135 participants
206 discussions

Semi-Protecting User Talk Pages
by Phil Sandifer 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] John Doolittle
by Daniel R. Tobias 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

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/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

"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 ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

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Re: [WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

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 ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Freakofnurture
by Nathan - Mailing Lists Account 16 Oct '06

16 Oct '06

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)

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Freakofnurture.
by Nathan 16 Oct '06

16 Oct '06

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)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}
by David Boothroyd 16 Oct '06

16 Oct '06

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)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Public Domain and Non-Commercial at the same time
by Daniel R. Tobias 16 Oct '06

16 Oct '06

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/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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List of banned books
by Kim van der Linde 15 Oct '06

15 Oct '06

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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Public Domain and Non-Commercial at the same time
by Daniel R. Tobias 15 Oct '06

15 Oct '06

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/

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WikiEN-l October 2006