Wikimedia-l September 2008

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

124 participants
81 discussions

Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Poetlister sockfarm nailed
by David Gerard 15 Sep '08

15 Sep '08

2008/9/14 Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman(a)hotmail.co.uk>: > Another good point. It's really a syndrome of "en's younger brothers" mentality. Said syndrome is usually marked by far more relaxed discipline than on en, and considerable antipathy towards en people who dare suggest that en standards might actually be better. > This mentality, as I read it, is how Poetlister got a foot in the door at WQ: how the accounts there still aren't all banned and retain most privileges, how an attempt to merely tag them as socks based on FT2's meta report got reverted, and it also explains this thread: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ANI#admin_abuse:_block_on_wikitionary > Personally, I think some chips need to come off shoulders here. There needs to be greater cross-project cooperation, not pointless hostility for the sake of it. The en:wq problem is fundamentally Aphaia enabling Poetlister's activities there, apparently due to resentment of en:wp or something. I think a detailed explanation from her is in order at this time. - d.

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[Foundation-l] Autocreated global accounts (was: [Wikitech-l] $wgCentralAuthAutoNew=true)
by Chad 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

Just wanted to let the wider community (who don't necessarily follow wikitech-l) know about this. -Chad ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 2:14 AM Subject: [Wikitech-l] $wgCentralAuthAutoNew=true To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org $wgCentralAuthAutoNew is now enabled, which means new accounts created in the usual way automatically become global accounts, they don't need to manually merge. -- Tim Starling _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Poetlister sockfarm nailed
by David Gerard 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

2008/9/14 Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer(a)googlemail.com>: > On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Christiano Moreschi < > moreschiwikiman(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >> David Gerard wrote: >>> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#Statement_on_use_of_so… >>>Crum375? How interesting. >> The Crum375 on wikiquote. Not the Crum375 on en. > For some reason the wikiquote impostor Crum375 has not yet been renamed > despite now being admitted as a bad faith creation. There are few things on > Wikimedia projects which are utterly inexplicable but this is certainly one > of them. Aphaia has refused to support such repeatedly, despite many requests, and recently flounced off the comcom after people refused to tolerate her supporting Poetlister's activities on en:wq on the checkuser list. (I don't see the link either.) It is entirely unclear what she gains from such, and I - and the rest of us who've been attempting to nail this vastly abusive cross-project sockmaster for about two years - look forward to a detailed explanation in the light of the above. - d. - d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] PD-art and official "position of the WMF"
by Patricia Rodrigues 13 Sep '08

13 Sep '08

Forwarding to foundation-l, I forgot it the first time. --- On Thu, 21/8/08, Patricia Rodrigues <snooze210904(a)yahoo.se> wrote: From: Patricia Rodrigues <snooze210904(a)yahoo.se> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] PD-art and official "position of the WMF" To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Thursday, 21 August, 2008, 5:55 PM Dear everyone, According to the Wikimedia Foundation's values (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values), "An essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by the entire human community. We believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse." Indeed, one of the milestones achieved by Wikimedia was the approval of the resolution about licensing policy across projects (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy), setting up restrictions about how EDPs are to be implemented, and which legislations should be respected when writing up such EDPs. This is appliable to all projects except Commons, which is expressively forbidden to have such a thing as an EDP - because EDPs are for non-free content, and Wikimedia Commons is supposed to host only free content (free defined as in http://freedomdefined.org/Definition). In practice, things are a little bit different. Projects here and there have been setting up EDPs, and although there is no visible record of this (as far as I know), hopefully all these EDPs have been set up in accordance to this licensing resolution. I do not if such is supervised, but that is not really what I'd like to talk about today. What I hopefully can point out today is that Commons is also not complying to the Four Freedoms, in light of its own licensing policy, which is the centerpiece of the project (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing). We have several inconsistencies in our "subpolicies", but the biggest one has just been introduced: the modification to {{PD-Art}} that has been the topic for this thread. The new wording on this template reflects a position of the community in light of opinions/positions of WMF staff members, and goes to the point of considering this an official position of the WMF. So if you don't mind, I'd like to pose some questions: *Is the official position of the WMF to consider only US copyright in what concerns content to be hosted in any Wikimedia project? **If the answer is yes, is Commons included? **If the answer is no, which copyrights should we consider to host content? Please specify the situation for Wikimedia Commons too. *Is any WMF staff member entitled to give a "position" in behalf of the Board in a way that condones (even incites?) breaking the law outside of the US, in the sake of lobbying for Free Content/Licensing? *Are the positions/opinions given by Erik and Mike to be considered for the National Portrait Gallery/UK copyright law only, or for any legislation that has similar/equivalent problems, such as the Swedish one? *Finally: if we are to consider US copyright only in this specific (PD-Art) matter, but non-US admins are required by some authority in their own country to take down any media that is copyrighted in that country, should admins defy the local authorities or the new Commons licensing? I believe that if we start allowing exceptions of this kind, Commons does not fulfill its role as a media repository that is indeed free to reuse, and its existence is not making much sense. So I would like to know what is the future of this project, and whether it is more feasible to have local uploads everywhere else, tightly regulated with a legislation, whichever that may be, instead of a central repository of "more or less free stuff, it sort of depends, you know". Thank you for your time. Patrícia Rodrigues Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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[Foundation-l] Identifying people with access to private information
by Al Tally 13 Sep '08

13 Sep '08

Hi, I've started a thread on Meta-wiki, regarding issues on the subject of identifying people with access to private information, and would appreciate comments/insight. Thanks! -- Alex (User:Majorly)

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[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese
by Ting Chen 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

Hi folks, since its creation I wondered why this happend. Why is there a classical chinese Wikipedia? This language has no native speakers and is not used by any relitious or official institution as official language. Greetings Ting

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[Foundation-l] Jeff Merkey Fiasco on English Wikipedia
by jmerkey＠wolfmountaingroup.com 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

Wikimedia, I am writing this because I am more than a little tired of the antics on Wikipedia. I was notified several weeks ago someone from Wikipedia called an OEM vendor who sells hardware for Wolf Mountain Group and Omega 8 attempting to obtain personal information about me, and then harassed the owner of this computer equipment supplier on the phone for editing on Wikipedia. This person claimed to be with the English Wikipedia. I reviewed the site today after receiving emails from people on the site to the effect a witch court of some sort has convened and banned me. Well, who cares. Wikipedia is nothing more than an internet ant farm scam and I never could care less. What is disturbing to me if people are calling on the phone myself and apparently other users and harassing them. I want it stopped -- and I mean it. This is your final warning. Jeff

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiquote
by Geoffrey Plourde 11 Sep '08

11 Sep '08

I am unable to figure out what the big deal is with having fair use quotes and how it affects the Foundation. Quotes are quotes are quotes. No one is ever going to be able to sue us for quoting them. If it is from a copyrighted work, I should think that the material will gain more publicity from being quoted. Also, this is an area that should be left up to the Wikiquote community. The communities determine, under their EDPs, how much fair use stuff they want. It is not for the Foundation or this mailing list to second guess them. Geoffrey ----- Original Message ---- From: Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 3:48:52 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiquote On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 5:58 PM, mike.lifeguard <mike.lifeguard(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>I personally cannot imagine an US court accepting these number >>as "fair use" and I cannot see any educational use of these quotations >>legitimating an exception from our policy. > > I'm afraid I don't understand how we reconcile the principle that WMF is > supposed to provide freely-licensed content, and the Wikiquote project is > apparently chock-full of so-called fair use. This is far worse than simply > incorporating fair use media (which is not permitted on many projects for > principled reasons). I can understand a Wikiquote containing quotes which > have fallen out of copyright and I think such a project would be wonderful. > But using fair use to compile quotes seems to me to be a bad idea regardless > of how many there are. So whether a court would accept a fair use defence is > rather immaterial to me - I am more concerned with the principle of having > an entire article/page of solely fair use content. For a WMF project, this > seems nonsensical. > > Mike > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > Exactly. While there is certainly merit in collecting free quotes (mostly from the public domain), it makes no sense that such blanket fair use would be seen as acceptable to the core mission of providing _free_ content. We have a policy to limit fair use media, why not one for text? -Chad _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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[Foundation-l] Wikiquote
by Klaus Graf 11 Sep '08

11 Sep '08

The Village Pump discussion http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Village_pump#Copyright_guidelines_fo… shows that en Wikiquote hasn't really understood that the massive copyright violations and the violation of the WMF licensing policy restricting the EDP media to a minimum cannot be tolerated longer. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Seinfeld has 1000+ quotes. In the future a limit of 5 quotes per episode is planned. Let aside the unsorted quotes the result would be that the article would have 180 x 5 = 900 quotes. I personally cannot imagine an US court accepting these number as "fair use" and I cannot see any educational use of these quotations legitimating an exception from our policy. Here is an interesting Quote (with educational value): "A company published a book of trivia questions about the events and characters of the "Seinfeld" television series. The book included questions based upon events and characters in 84 "Seinfeld" episodes and used actual dialogue from the show in 41 of the book's questions. Important factors: As in the "Twin Peaks" case, the book affected the owner's right to make derivative "Seinfeld" works such as trivia books. ( Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publ. Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998).)" I would like to ask WMF board and its lawyer to give legal advice to the en WQ project. Klaus Graf

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiquote
by Mike Godwin 10 Sep '08

10 Sep '08

John Vandenberg writes: >> I'm not aware of any DMCA notices regarding Seinfeld >> quotations on Wikiquote. > > Has there been any DMCA notices regarding any set of fair-use quotes > on Wikiquote? Not at all during my tenure at Wikimedia Foundation, and not to my knowledge at any point prior to my tenure. --Mike

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Wikimedia-l September 2008