Wikipedia-l September 2003

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

72 participants
162 discussions

by Constans, Camille (C.C.)

> Daniel Mayer wrote: > > > It is important for our developers to have complete access > to the servers that > > Wikimedia projects run on. Otherwise outages will be > significantly longer and > > we would not have any way to fix things ourselves when it > is the server that > > is the problem. Read only mirrors are a very real > possibility but in order to > > get that to work we need somebody to code the > functionality. Jimbo supports > > the idea of read only mirrors but somebody has to code that > to make it happen > > in a near real time and seemless way. Any volunteers? > > Me, me! :) > > I've started working on DB replication. We should be able to set up a > remote slave server once I'm done. The MySQL manual says you can even > have slave servers connecting over a modem, just dialling up > occasionally to get the latest updates. So having one in a different > city or something shouldn't be a problem. There might be a > few UI issues > to sort out. I guess we'd have to set up a method of > mirroring images > too. Sorry for my newbies question, but there's something i dont understand. Many web site around the world have only one DB server and many load balancing web server. Slashdot for example IIRC. Ok it must be a quadri processor... but it's very fast ! I'm not really sure, that pliny is the bottleneck. The Larousse server is a piii866, it's a bit short for what we want to do I think. I hope the next upgrade will improve Larousse, then we'll can move other wikis to it. And we'll see if Pliny is really the bottleneck. My 2 cents

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Intlwiki-l] 300,000 draws near...

by Brion Vibber

On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 22:56, Daniel Mayer wrote: > >5) Either revive Nupedia.org (the website) or remove > >all mention of it from the Wikimedia.org page. > > Unless we started a new project called the TV ClubHouse without my noticing, I > think we have a cyber squatter at http://www.nupedia.org/ now. Mav, that's one of Bomis.com's sites. (See the Bomis.com logo in the sidebar?) It's apparently the one thing running on that server that's up right now, and the virtual host mappings aren't straightened out yet. Whatever its future, I've removed Nupedia from the wikimedia.org front page since the link is still dead. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

20 years, 6 months

[Intlwiki-l] 300,000 draws near...

by Daniel Mayer

Update: I now propose a press release distribution date of Wednesday October 1. Hopefully the servers will be upgraded by then. If not we could wait until 3rd or the 6th for the non-English distribution (whatever day is chosen, the English version will follow one week after). I wrote before: >Things that, IMO, have to be done before we distribute >the press release: > >1) http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/6/68/Fundraising.html >needs to be finalized by the community and approved by >Jimbo. It really isn't "finalized" or "approved" but it is done. Thanks Alex! >2) Fundraising.html needs to be displayed at >http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising/ Done. Thanks Brion! >3) http://wikiquote.org and http://wikiquote.com need >to be forwarded to http://quote.wikipedia.org Still waiting for Jason.... >4) A minimal webpage needs to be created for the >Wikimedia Foundation and displayed at >http://wikimediafoundation.org It's ugly and a bit sad, but it does exist. >(http://wikimedia.org should continue to be a >portal to the different Wikimedia projects; the only change that is needed is a link to the foundation's website). Things that would be real nice but not absolutely necessary, IMO: 1) Upgrade Pliny (our webserver) and Larousse (our database server). I'm tempted to move this item up... 2) Translated/different language versions of Fundraising.html created. 3) Move Wikibooks to http://wikibooks.org 4) Move Wikiquote to http://wikiquote.org 5) Either revive Nupedia.org (the website) or remove all mention of it from the Wikimedia.org page. We will still have to decide what to do with this comatose project. But not today.

20 years, 6 months

Re: Fair use and inline links

by Anthere

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use (Alex, Brion et > Tarquin) > Brion Vibber wrote: > > And remember, folks, *no picture* is much better > than a picture we can't > > redistribute. If you didn't make it with your own > hands or scan it from > > a piece of paper older than 1924, and it doesn't > have a "public domain" > > or "GNU Free Documentation License" note on it, > think twice. > > I agree completely with this sentiment. I think we > should not be > pushing any boundaries with respect to fair use, > because of the > redistribution issue. > > As Alex has been patiently teaching us, fair use is > a defense, a > defense that depends on the use, and for that > reason, and because of > our interest in free redistribution, we should take > care that when we > do rely on fair use, we do so in such a way that > almost anyone could > rely on a fair use defense for any plausible re-use > of our content. > > To take the easiest possible example, a quote of a > few sentences of a > copyrighted novel in an article about the author of > that novel. This > is fair use for us, and it's also going to be fair > use for just about > any plausible re-use of our content. Thanks for revoicing this again Jimbo. That is a point that was raised again a couple of days ago on the fr wiki (I mean...what your position was on the topic, and the level of risk wikimedia was ready to accept) > > It was disabled on the English wikipedia, as > that's where abuses were > > occuring (quite frequently). In any case I would > _discourage_ such > > linking. And there have been enough crazy court > decisions over 'deep > > linking' and such that I wouldn't rely on "it's > just a link to another > > site, we're not _copying it_" for an image > embedded into a web page. > > (IANAL) > > Yes, and it's pretty rude to the other webmaster. > People often refer > to it as 'stealing bandwidth', which may be an > overly bold claim, but > still, it's not good etiquette to embed an image in > that way. Loo run a query to list all the inline links. There were quite a bunch. There were also a certain nomber of inline links made from the other wikipedia sites, especially meta. This is probably due to the fact it is a bit painful to "tranfer" a pict from one wikipedia to another, and for some resources (such as flags) it make sense to have a common source of images, not to copy and copy again from the others wikipedias. I would like to support making impossible to make some inline links on all wikipedias; not english only. I understood the en took that decision because of goatce.However, as you say, it is not nice for the webmaster and the other web site. Besides, the link may die. Plus, the reader does not know whether he may benefit the ressource. He might come to believe he can just copy the image, and that one be GFDL. It is misleading and dangerous to other one. Finally, Alex and http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_v._Arriba_Soft_Corporation indicated that it was not necessarily a good idea to use this type of linkage. Anthere __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use (Alex, Brion et Tarquin)

by Anthere

From: "Alex T." <alex756(a)nyc.rr.com> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use >> Could anyone knowledgable help us here ? >I volunteer to try, but remember this is not legal advice >even though IAAL. >There is a page on fair use in the English Wikipedia >http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use >[snip] >Alex756 Ok. I will read all that carefully, consider options and try to write down something decent on the topic. Thanks a lot for the detailed answer Alex ------------------------------ From: Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use >>On Sun, 2003-09-14 at 17:18, Anthere wrote: >> Could anyone explain to us what is fair use for images >> ? >>[snip] >> As a second point, I would like to know precisely why >> DW was hard banned. >Just to provide context for those who haven't been following the French >Wikipedia; DW/Black Widow/Ron Davis/Elliot/Olga Biteyerkokoff/Jacques >Delson/ChuckM/Joe Canuck/Sue Michael Canuck has been contributing under >the username JacquesD there. >(Or at least, someone in the same town with the same ISP, using a >similar name to one of the earlier pseudos, working in the same >subjects, and making the same noises about copyright and >"discrimination". Doesn't the game get old after a while?) >-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) Yes, the game is getting old. But it is not the first time english problematic users spill on the french wikipedia as well. Except we are never sure really problematic users are one or two. The main issue here is not so much whether JacquesD is a ban user, but that indeed there is no policy as regards fair use of images on the french wiki. And JacquesD makes two good points : He is uploading images which he claims are fair use. *Some of his images have been deleted for not fitting with the GFDL. Fine. But these images were copies from the english wikipedia. If these images are ok on the english, why should they be rejected on the french ? I do not say it is good or bad that we follow the same rules, I just say it should be clearer. *Some of his images have been deleted for not fitting with the GFDL. Fine. But other french editors appear to upload same type of images (for example, recent picts of actors). If these editors images are ok, why should JacquesD images be wrong ? Another editor, labelled problematic by some, uploaded questionable image, which appear to me to be able to fit the fair use condition. This one was deleted as well. Aside from soft appeal to force practiced by JacquesD, and fair tries of flatteries ;-), I agree with him the case is not clear and appear slightly discriminatory :-) There is a strong tendency to consider that one has cried wolf (in this case Panoramix), wolf it is. And that even though good contributor, a so-called wolf has less rights than others. ------------- Brion. A technical question. JacquesD mentions that the two pictures we have of Kissinger (pictures that I find POV, so that are gonna be deleted after the case is solved anyway) are of dubious copyright. Hence, he delinked them. The link has been replaced (then removed again) upon the reason it came from es.wikipedia (apparently, coming from another wikipedia is *enough* to be declared "cp correct*. But when I go on w.es.kissinger, I see an image...which is not an internal image, but rather an external link to another web site (but is displayed in wikipedia frame as well). I might be wrong, but I thought this has been forbidden/made-impossible because of the famous (and well remembered by old timers :-)) goatxe image ? No ? Something escaped me ? ------------------ Brion. Another point. It is interesting you mention that JacquesD has the same ISP, and connect from the same town than DWs. Though it is clear this user has similar patterns than them (but this could be used to make believe he is them), I came to the conclusion that he was not them, based on synthax comparisons with Joe Canuck. Your comment kinda threatens my inner convictions :-) In any case, I do not see any reason for JacquesD to be banned. ------------------------------ From: tarquin <tarquin(a)planetunreal.com> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use Anthere wrote: >>Could anyone explain to us what is fair use for images >>? Tarquin >c'est horriblement compliqu�. >la meilleure chose a faire c'est de: >1. vivre sans l'image en question -- trouver une alternative >2. si c'est indispensable, marquer que c'est "fair use" sur la page >description image. Mentionning it is fair use as Alex explained seems a good idea to me. Why isnot the english wikipedia doing this as well ? That is tough, as wikipedians copy images from one wikipedias from another, as if just the fact it came from another wiki was *proof* the image is public domain. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

20 years, 6 months

Performance hacks

by Brion Vibber

I've temporarily disabled talk page notification for IP addresses that aren't logged in, as this dumps an extra database query for every single hit. If it doesn't make a big difference, it'll get turned back on shortly. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use

by Merritt L. Perkins

I am confused by the discussions of, Fair Use. What does the term mean? What are they talking about? If I describe an automobile as A motor vehicle for transporting people." you know that it is not an advertising sign or some kind of computer program. You can proceed to add more details. Does Fair Use mean the use that a program is intended for; the use that a person can properly make of a program? What does the acronym GFDL stand for? This was dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Preferred and read by Jennifer. Merritt L. Perkins

20 years, 6 months

wikimedia email addresses

by Daniel Mayer

Tarquin wrote: >is there any word on getting these set up? I set-up maveric149(a)wikimedia.org as an email forward to maveric149(a)yahoo.com for myself back when I had access to the interface to manage that domain. If I still did then I would setup a email forward for you and any other wikimedian that wanted one. It works fine, BTW. >I just added my email to the >http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia%27s_first_press_release >page, and it struck me that it would be convenient if press contacts >there were of the form tarquin(a)wikimedia.org and so on. I already suggested that Jimbo should use a wikimedia.org or better, wikimediafoundation.org email address for the press release. An email forward to his Bomis email address is all that would be needed. I don't think having a full blown email service is in our mandate but it might be a neat thing to give to people who donate more than a certain amount of money per year. @wikimediafoundation.org, however, should be reserved for current and former officers/board members of the foundation, IMO. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

by Merritt L. Perkins

Server Please feel free to use what I wrote about servers in any way you like. If you want to use it in am Encyclopedia article it needs to be edited to remove the first person references and written in the third person. Allowance needs to be made for the fact that the Encyclopedia will be read as some indefinite time in the future. I tried to write this as an introductory explanation of what servers are and what they do. It would seem silly to a person who spends all day working with servers but most computer users understand little about servers. You may find information about servers in howstuffworks on the Internet. Most people who work with computers don't know much about electronics. They would not know what I was talking about if I described a circuit board using an LM3900N quad comparator which could choose which one of 4 outposts to actuate depending on the value of the resistor connected to the input. They would not know anything about operational amplifiers. They would not know that LM stands for linear monolithic or what that means. I am a life member of IEEE, a life member of Computer Society, and subscribe to Dr. Dobbs Journal but most people never heard of them. They give me access to a vast amount of technical information but I have made little use of it. When I get the time. I would like to write Encyclopedia articles on many subjects: Rose of Sharon, Jesse Ramsden, Queen Christiana of Sweden, Count Rumsford, William Strutt, vitamin B12, screws and a long list of other subjects. I would need to look and see what is already in the Encyclopedia. I started collecting information about vitamin B12 after I was diagnosed as having pernicious anemia, which is easily treated. Merritt L. Perkins

20 years, 6 months

wikimedia email addresses

by tarquin

is there any word on getting these set up? I just added my email to the http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia%27s_first_press_release page, and it struck me that it would be convenient if press contacts there were of the form tarquin(a)wikimedia.org and so on.

20 years, 6 months

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Wikipedia-l September 2003