[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, , Britannica to stop printing books

2012-03-21 Thread Robin McCain
This is an excellent idea - a kind of searchable sandbox where articles could eventually be promoted into the main site or simply used as in depth backing for a Wikipedia One article. It would need to have some high level sort mechanism to make it easier to access articles within a

Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, , Britannica to stop printing books

2012-03-15 Thread Robin McCain
On 3/15/2012 3:10 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Local events in western countries are pretty easy to cover within wikipedia's rules. A mix of local news and the local history mob usually sees that there are plenty of sources. On the other hand writing about Odek (Joseph

Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, Britannica to stop printing books

2012-03-14 Thread Robin McCain
Why did the articles in Brittania keep getting shorter? Because printing on paper costs money. Storage on the Internet is free by comparison. - So why do our editors insist on reducing what might be an interesting article down to something so brief it might as well be on paper in a book that

Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, Britannica to stop printing books

2012-03-14 Thread Robin McCain
I don't think it is pity to reduce an 800 word article down to under 200 words. Instead of something readable you end up either with a Who's Who entry - filled with insider abbreviations and obscure wording that must be decoded or something so bland it has no value to anyone intrested enough

[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions

2012-02-22 Thread Robin McCain
I think you have inadvertently hit upon something essential. Content has some relative value. Someone has always had to put energy into creating content. More importantly for our current discussion, someone has always had to make a decision to invest in the REPRODUCTION of content. Printing

Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions

2012-02-22 Thread Robin McCain
Well, I'm not an active academic, but I have been given to understand that the quality of the peer review process varies greatly. About 10 years back, I was briefly involved in an attempt to develop an online peer reviewed publications infrastructure. This was one of our concerns - is it

Re: [Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia

2012-02-19 Thread Robin McCain
On 2/19/2012 8:19 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Message: 4 Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:12:09 -0300 From: Sarahslimvir...@gmail.com To:mnemo...@gmail.com, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight'

[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Vendetta?

2011-12-16 Thread Robin McCain
Thank you all for your support. The editors involved stirred up the pot and learned something in the process. One of them had already been warned about deleting content just for the fun of it, so this was instructional for all. In looking through the threads, one of them found one of my

[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: Vendetta?

2011-12-15 Thread Robin McCain
It isn't so much about having my stuff edited as it is that there seems to be a mindset among en.wp editors that stuff needs to be deleted unless they personally think it is important. We have a virtually infinite space in which to write and add to the body of knowledge, so why act as though

[Foundation-l] Vendetta?

2011-12-14 Thread Robin McCain
Hmmm... do some of the editors have such a problem with entries that are in progress that they decide to propose them for deletion rather than attempt to support the efforts of the original author by adding to the content or make any effort to improve the article rather than remove it? Isn't

[Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment

2011-10-31 Thread Robin McCain
On 10/31/2011 6:01 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: On 31 October 2011 12:30, Oliver Keyesscire.fac...@gmail.com wrote: Not sure about that specific change, but one illustration might be the Article Feedback Tool, which contains a you know you can edit, right? thing.

Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 92, Issue 1

2011-10-31 Thread Robin McCain
On 10/31/2011 7:18 PM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: On 10/31/2011 10:09 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: Robin McCain, 31/10/2011 17:20: We must also remember that the wiki edit interface and markup can be a little intimidating to a newbie, so opening an edit window

Re: [Foundation-l] Public domain Mickey Mouse. At last.

2011-10-27 Thread Robin McCain
On 10/27/2011 6:43 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: On 26 October 2011 14:15, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: And apparently that's fine, if you are making a faithful reproduction of the image in its original context. ?But tagging an image PD does not imply you may

Re: [Foundation-l] Public domain Mickey Mouse. At last.

2011-10-25 Thread Robin McCain
On 10/25/2011 2:57 PM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: You've made quite a few incorrect assumptions there. Of course Commons editors should be deciding which images are PD. But when there is a dispute, it makes no sense for people who don't even know what a derivative work

Re: [Foundation-l] 6 reasons we're in another book-burning, period in history

2011-10-15 Thread Robin McCain
On 10/14/2011 9:17 PM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: However archiving is rather different from what we are dealing with which is more focused on books and other mass market material rather than say old planning application maps and minutes of the union of postal workers

[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: Dead Sea Scrolls

2011-10-04 Thread Robin McCain
On 10/4/2011 9:04 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: issue of originality. The Qimron case is completely irrelevant with regard to the copyright of the images. ?It is a case about the*text*. If WMF wants to copy*the text* of the scrolls, I don't think anyone is going

[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: Dead Sea Scrolls

2011-09-29 Thread Robin McCain
An entertaining discussion - let's see if I understand the essence of the thread... Facts: High resolution photos (of the Dead Sea Scrolls) were recently released under an Israeli copyright. (Obviously this does not constitute copyright of the scrolls themselves.) A great deal of technical and

Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

2011-08-17 Thread Robin McCain
mentions copyright infringement as a related issue to plagiarism... -Original Message- From: Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com To: foundation-l foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 7:43 pm Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues On 8/16/2011 2:50 PM, Wjhonson wrote

Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

2011-08-17 Thread Robin McCain
On 8/17/2011 9:20 AM, Wjhonson wrote: For plagiarism to cause injury you have to specify the type of injury in your suit. And then the case is not about laws about plagiarism per se, of which there are none, but laws about the type of injury you are claiming. For example unfair trade as in

Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

2011-08-17 Thread Robin McCain
of actual injury occurred. -Original Message- From: Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com To: Wjhonson wjhon...@aol.com Cc: foundation-l foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, Aug 17, 2011 9:44 am Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues On 8/17/2011 9:20 AM, Wjhonson wrote

Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

2011-08-17 Thread Robin McCain
. This is why we do the best due diligence we can BEFORE we use material. Rights specialists are cheap compared to the chance of litigation with teeth, however small. On 8/17/2011 2:00 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote: On 08/17/11 10:33 AM, Robin McCain wrote: As for litigation - I don't think anyone was going

Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 44

2011-08-16 Thread Robin McCain
On 8/16/2011 2:13 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: One suggestion for archiving would be to have a complete set of projects filed with the copyright office and other key depositories quarterly. This could also address a potential long-term copyright problem. This has less

[Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

2011-08-16 Thread Robin McCain
On 8/16/2011 5:00 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: A couple of months ago three admins of Aceh Wikipedia decided that it is not acceptable that they participate in the project which holds Muhammad depictions. By the project, they mean Wikimedia in general, including

Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

2011-08-16 Thread Robin McCain
On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your work.

Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

2011-08-16 Thread Robin McCain
but had no such protection under the 1790 law. It wasn't until the 1976 law that protection was extended to unpublished works. As such, the only litigation possible at that time would have been under the rules of plagiarism and such litigation was considered. -Original Message- From: Robin

Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

2011-08-15 Thread Robin McCain
Good point - risk management isn't just about technical disaster - geopolitical issues are actually a much greater long term risk On 8/15/2011 2:04 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: The primary value of a fork(s) is not financial or technical, but epistemological. We are the

Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

2011-08-12 Thread Robin McCain
Perhaps we might reflect on all the mistakes made by far older global NPOs - the Catholic Church and all the younger proselytizing churches are good examples.The mission has always been the dissemination of knowledge (of a specific sort), so it has experiences that might be helpful - what not

Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Incubator: An interactive, journey

2011-08-09 Thread Robin McCain
On 8/8/2011 6:24 PM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: fwiw, the Wikisource portal lists all languages, inc. the languages in the Wikisource incubator. http://www.wikisource.org/ That's actually a good shortcut and it appears amongst the Wikimedia buttons at the bottom of the

Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 13

2011-08-08 Thread Robin McCain
On 8/8/2011 12:41 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: The problem with Incubator: An interactive journey Written by geeks for geeks... If you are truly serious about enabling new languages dialects, it is almost mandatory to include a link at the very top level of

[Foundation-l] people are knowledge

2011-07-27 Thread Robin McCain
I've been following this with some interest and I think I'm beginning to see how this is like nesting dolls. In the kernel is the actual interview in the native language - the primary source(s) which is actually a video or audio recording. The next layer is the interviewers transcription

Re: [Foundation-l] They do make or break reputations

2011-07-16 Thread Robin McCain
Yes, there are big differences between IMDB and YouTube rightswise. IMDB requires that every submission be reviewed for accuracy and content before acceptance. They are trying to compete with Baseline and want to be seen as an equal - so they (perhaps overzealously even) require that new indie

Re: [Foundation-l] They do make or break reputations

2011-07-12 Thread Robin McCain
Why can't we setup a meta server sandbox that allows these experimental things to be rapidly activated in the sense of giving each a virtual server slice. That way there is room to play and if something takes off it can then be allocated some serious resources. The ones that die on the vine

[Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

2011-07-10 Thread Robin McCain
Back in the 1980's BBS sysops validated new users on some of the more abused dial-up BBS systems via snail mail. The person had to provide a real address in order to receive their login password - just as many systems use email addresses today. The big difference between these two mechanisms

Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 88, Issue 19

2011-07-09 Thread Robin McCain
If I might interject, it seems that the sole purpose of the snail mail described is to link a physical person to a login name in such a way that there is some accountability for one's actions that is acceptable to the organization. Is it really necessary to copy an identity document? Could a

Re: [Foundation-l] merge wikis

2011-07-02 Thread Robin McCain
It seems silly to proliferate so many wikis when many of them focus on related issues. It becomes the nightmare of having to visit the web site of every user group every few hours vs having all the new posts sent via email to one address so you save time. The real question to me seems to be