Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Copyright problems of images from India

2011-05-10 Thread Thomas Morton
Citzenship and where the photo was taken is important *IF* the work is unpublished. In this case the applicable copyright depends on these things. On the other hand, wherever it was taken and no matter who took it, if the image has been published in a jurisdiction then it is subject to copyright

Re: [Foundation-l] User talk page email notification

2011-05-14 Thread Thomas Morton
Yep. Same here. Tom Morton On 14 May 2011, at 15:59, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 8:38 AM, Orionist orion@gmail.com wrote: What is the default position by the way? I checked my preferences on enwiki and the box was checked, so I would assume the

Re: [Foundation-l] User talk page email notification

2011-05-16 Thread Thomas Morton
This causes a little confusion today :) when it was mistook for an email message from a bot (which had edited the users talk page and cause the notification). (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Question_about_Suggest_a_Bot ) Did anyone announce

Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Commons as an art gallery?

2011-05-16 Thread Thomas Morton
Ah... this is one of those perennial issues that is unlikely to be solved this time around. I think casting this a gender issue is incorrect; certainly amongst my group of friends those who would not appreciate the image are fairly evenly split between male/female. I think most rational adults

Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Commons as an art gallery?

2011-05-16 Thread Thomas Morton
. Given Niabot's user page loudly railing against Commons being censored, I'd say the issue is less art and more lets see who we can shock and/or piss off. -Dan On May 16, 2011, at 4:30 PM, Thomas Morton wrote: Ah... this is one of those perennial issues that is unlikely to be solved this time

Re: [Foundation-l] Very slow load time for the last few days

2011-05-18 Thread Thomas Morton
en.wiki just slowed to a crawl and is now errored out. It has been going from normal to treacle slow all day. Tom On 18 May 2011 19:20, Sarah slimvir...@gmail.com wrote: The English Wikipedia has been experiencing painfully slow load times over the last few days, and lots of error messages

Re: [Foundation-l] Very slow load time for the last few days

2011-05-18 Thread Thomas Morton
the tech team if they were related, they didn't think so. Maybe, its a co-incidence, but did anyone notice if the slowness increased when email notifications were turned on? Theo On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:52 PM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: en.wiki just slowed

Re: [Foundation-l] Very slow load time for the last few days

2011-05-18 Thread Thomas Morton
Yeh, that was when it was turned on. So maybe :) On 18 May 2011 19:27, Sarah slimvir...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 12:24, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: I had problems with load times and time-outs, ever since the email notification was turned on. I asked the tech team if

Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use

2011-05-19 Thread Thomas Morton
A way to tie clicking hide to an *account* rather than just by storing it as a local cookie would also be a good move. Tom / ErrantX On 19 May 2011 10:36, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: church.of.emacs.ml, 19/05/2011 10:52: There are several ways of minimizing negative

Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use

2011-05-19 Thread Thomas Morton
I think using images for the POTY competition is also justifiable, :) given the context. But, yes, images need to be considered carefully. As I recently mentioned on Meta - we could really do with some reasearch into the effectiveness of different sized images as compared to text for click

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
They won't. Most reputable news sources are not interested in kiss and tell and there are other ones that are in place for really rather good reasons to the point where breaking them would probably get you sued for libel under even US law Heh, what news do you read! Then, of course, the

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
On 20 May 2011 21:21, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: They won't. Most reputable news sources are not interested in kiss and tell and there are other ones that are in place for really rather good reasons to the point where breaking them would probably get you sued for libel

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
Huh? Why? Tom Morton On 20 May 2011, at 23:00, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 May 2011 22:47, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Please mail User:Oversight with any such instance you are aware of. That's not actually legal. -- geni

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
Ah. No thats not accurate. Fortunately even the British courts can't stamp On private communication. The injunction is on publishing the info. Telling your mates down the pub is fine. Tom Morton On 20 May 2011, at 23:08, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 May 2011 18:02, Fred Bauder

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
Also; hard to see anyone suing you for communicating the info for the purposes of supressing it :-) Tom Morton On 20 May 2011, at 23:08, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 May 2011 18:02, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: On 20 May 2011 22:47, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
It's not publishing the info. It's fine. The point is to stifle mass media. Tom Morton On 20 May 2011, at 23:28, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 May 2011 23:13, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: Ah. No thats not accurate. Fortunately even the British courts can't stamp

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-20 Thread Thomas Morton
to be concerned about. But not on a personal level. (IANAL; my interest in law is academic, but I have the good fortune to work alongside a pile of lawyers, civil and criminal) Tom On 20 May 2011 23:34, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 May 2011 23:33, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-21 Thread Thomas Morton
Our BLP policy is pretty solid, and the editors that enforce it are pretty good at keeping out the crap :) We can always improve it, of course. And there are never enough BLP editors. (There are probably about 5 or 6 that specialise heavily in such content). Most of the outstanding issues are

Re: [Foundation-l] Stalking on Wikipedia

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
Has anyone notified SD about this discussion? Pretty much essential given the allegations made by Dror K (which are clearly unfounded, but may be damaging). Tom ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:

Re: [Foundation-l] Stalking on Wikipedia

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
Supreme Deliciousness, whose actions are being discussed... I noted that he hadn't been told so dropped him a note as common courtesy. Tom On 22 May 2011 11:58, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: 2011/5/22 Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com: Has anyone notified SD

Re: [Foundation-l] Stalking on Wikipedia

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
Yeh :-) sorry about that Tom On 22 May 2011, at 12:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: 2011/5/22 Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com: Supreme Deliciousness, whose actions are being discussed... I noted that he hadn't been told so dropped him a note as common

Re: [Foundation-l] Stalking on Wikipedia

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Supreme_Deliciousnessdiff=nextoldid=430329545 Dror K בתאריך 22/05/11 14:00, ציטוט Thomas Morton: Supreme Deliciousness, whose actions are being discussed... I noted that he hadn't been told so dropped him a note as common courtesy

Re: [Foundation-l] No rights to participate

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
to do that is incorrect, because WP is a private website. If the consensus of the community is to ban you from the project, even under spurious grounds, there is nothing to stop them from doing so. Tom On 22 May 2011 16:19, Pronoein prono...@gmail.com wrote: Le 22/05/2011 10:54, Thomas Morton

Re: [Foundation-l] No rights to participate

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
I'm note sure I understand... Wikipedia is privately owned by the foundation. There is no real definition of public website, but I suppose a government website would be publicly owned (although that raises an interesting question as to your rights to access/contribute to such a website). The

Re: [Foundation-l] No rights to participate

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
As it is the community does regulate it in that way. No. People are banned or restricted all the time. The point of WP:FREESPEECH is to point out that those bannings can't be contested under the premise that the banned party has a right to edit. Yes, the community does regulate it this way.

Re: [Foundation-l] 1.3 billion of humans don't have Wikipedia in their native language

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
An interesting aside on this would be... What is the quality of the foreign-language Wiki's that currently exist. For example; the articles in my specific technical topic area have a few foreign language equivalents. Most are two or three lines. It would be interesting to see this question

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
my personal interpretation is that BLP failings were more likely to be seen and more likely to cause some kind of real or perceived harm, leading to a greater response rate. I suppose that if your a notable figure... you probably take a look to see if a Wikipedia article exists... and even

Re: [Foundation-l] 1.3 billion of humans don't have Wikipedia in their native language

2011-05-22 Thread Thomas Morton
encyclopaedia. Just theorizing on a related topic :) Tom On 22 May 2011 22:18, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On 05/22/2011 06:41 PM, Thomas Morton wrote: An interesting aside on this would be... What is the quality of the foreign-language Wiki's that currently exist. For example

Re: [Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

2011-05-23 Thread Thomas Morton
I'm not so sure. As much as living persons have a history of raising/catching important errors in their articles, they also take exception to negative material. I had one rather protracted issue with a BLP where the individual feels he has been attacked by other parties and the media for a number

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-24 Thread Thomas Morton
So, just a quick thought for future reference - during maintenance is it possible in future to update the error message to explain that maintenance is ongoing? Seeing as how widely WMF projects are used by a non-technical project the current MySQL connection error I am seeing on Commons is just

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
I think it's reasonable (and indeed standard) to deploy some sort of downtime maintenance error message. If that requires improving the error handling code to catch a wider variety of errors and push people to the error message page then I understand the time issues :). If the short term

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Austin, That's interesting, what was the wording for the maintenance message? I only ever saw the default our servers are experiencing a technical problem error page. Tom On 25 May 2011 10:53, Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:32 AM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote:

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: That's interesting, what was the wording for the maintenance message? I only ever saw the default our servers are experiencing a technical problem error page. I could be misremembering

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Huh? The downtime was expected during 13:00 and 14:00 UTC, or at least there was an email warning of such things the day before... hardly unplanned or unknown. Tom On 25 May 2011 11:12, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com wrote: As you can see it refers to some unknown error. In this case

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
The maintenance was planned, downtime was noted as possible. An error message that reflects that seems, frankly, a good idea. The response to what I thought to be a helpful suggestion in improving communication with readership has been... incredibly disappointing. I wish I hadn't bothered. :( I

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
If we knew what would fail to put an appropriate error message there, we'd probably fix the problem beforehand. :-) That's... completely missing the point. Yes the specific errors faced were unexpected or unforseen, BUT they were a* direct result* of the maintenance between 13:00 and 14:00. I am

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
to mention the planned maintenance and the timeframes. Sorry for the confusion! Tom On 25 May 2011 08:15, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 24/05/11 23:32, Thomas Morton wrote: So, just a quick thought for future reference - during maintenance is it possible in future to update

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Maybe we can replace the IRC link in the Squid error message with a link to the WatchMouse page @Tim; that seems a good idea. @Domas, I'm afraid you don't seem to have understood the premise of my suggestion.. which is fine. But one fallacy is worth responding to: You have some annoying users,

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Tim, Great, thanks for that. Seeing as it was me that raise this ;) I guess it's only right I take up the gauntlet, so will try and find time later to propose something. Tom On 25 May 2011 13:48, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 25/05/11 21:19, MZMcBride wrote: Tim Starling

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Just conceptualising... I haven't played with Squid for a while (so am rusty) but the simplest solution would probably be to catch all PHP errors somewhere in the Mediawiki code and return a 500 status error code. Then get Squid to map that to the static error page. On the other hand throwing a

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Is the Squid configuration the foundation employs available publicly somewhere (I'm scanning the SVN and not seeing it..)? Because I don't mind having a look and filing a specific bugzilla correction with various bits of code changes. It's about time I refreshed my Squid knowledge :) Tom On 25

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
of these things against us! We're just trying to contribute where we can. :) Tom On 25 May 2011 15:26, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 26/05/11 00:05, Thomas Morton wrote: Is the Squid configuration the foundation employs available publicly somewhere (I'm scanning the SVN

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects ...

2011-05-25 Thread Thomas Morton
Let's just drop it :) I'm not sure where things went so south but I take full responsibility. I've pinged Tim off-list about contributing my own time to work on the error page matter - which I think is only fair enough given that I raised it. And sorry for any offence caused to the ops team by my

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

2011-05-26 Thread Thomas Morton
I'm pretty sure there was a site notice; I recall seeing one anyway :) Tom On 26 May 2011 09:09, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Milos Rancic, 26/05/2011 09:57: Site notice for a week before the maintenance would be useful, too. We communicate with our users via web site,

Re: [Foundation-l] About Wikiepdia.org

2011-06-01 Thread Thomas Morton
Unfortunately this is the side effect of running a big website; people register the typos and put up spam sites under them. There are ways to seize or recover the domains, but it can be a pain. Tom On 1 June 2011 14:01, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote: Endorse Foundation action on this obvious

Re: [Foundation-l] OTRS

2011-06-02 Thread Thomas Morton
The privacy policy does not preclude releasing private emails, and even writes in specific exceptions. When raised on en.wiki in relation to releasing CheckUser information (in that case linking an IP to an account) I thought the response there said it best; that not linking IP's to accounts was

Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

2011-06-03 Thread Thomas Morton
This is somewhat off-topic but.. Whilst that is a somewhat glib view of the smaller projects :P it's not entirely inaccurate. By virtue of being smaller and starved of editors it is a lot easier to gain permissions at those projects. In fact, if one of us (established editors) was banned from

Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

2011-06-03 Thread Thomas Morton
Given the situation can we not be clear on the details of this? I have various views on the matter, but all of them really depend on what exactly this person did. As with all such matters I see no reason why discussion of the details cannot be conducted visibly, and if provided with the adequate

Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

2011-06-03 Thread Thomas Morton
: On 4 June 2011 01:10, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: Given the situation can we not be clear on the details of this? I have various views on the matter, but all of them really depend on what exactly this person did. As with all such matters I see no reason why

Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

2011-06-03 Thread Thomas Morton
] On Behalf Of Thomas Morton Sent: 04 June 2011 01:41 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister? Not at all! That would be bad, and misses the point - I don't care at all who he is in meat space. But consider me unable to pick apart the million

Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

2011-06-03 Thread Thomas Morton
, either by one or more stewards or by the Office acting as such. Newyorkbrad On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:21 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 3 June 2011 22:03, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: Hmm, assuming that el-Reg article is the full extent of the issue

Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email

2011-06-10 Thread Thomas Morton
Perhaps. Although with that said nearly 1000 people have voted today - compared to between 100-200 on the previous days (excepting the 29th, first day, which had about 600-800). So it's a case of; is the risk worth the reward? Tom On 10 June 2011 22:19, Sarah slimvir...@gmail.com wrote: On

Re: [Foundation-l] Election results?

2011-06-17 Thread Thomas Morton
Latest update from the election officials: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ABoard_elections%2F2011action=historysubmitdiff=2667116oldid=2666426 * * Tom * * On 17 June 2011 12:53, Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com wrote: It's now the afternoon of the 17th (UTC), and this list—of

[Foundation-l] EFF Bitcoins

2011-06-21 Thread Thomas Morton
As a follow up to the discussion about Bitcoins (during the board elections) accepting them as donations... I thought this article by the EFF explaining why they no longer accept BC sets out some interesting arguments: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin Tom

Re: [Foundation-l] EFF Bitcoins

2011-06-21 Thread Thomas Morton
here. Just in case BTC's were every logistically on the table... this should all be taken under consideration :) Tom On 21 June 2011 14:37, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On 06/21/2011 09:11 AM, Thomas Morton wrote: As a follow up to the discussion about Bitcoins (during the board

Re: [Foundation-l] content ownership in different projects

2011-06-21 Thread Thomas Morton
A fair comparision, though as with Wikipedia editions I think this varies by language. Even on en.wiki it is not always like that. The major contributors to featured articles ate generally allowed more leeway on content ownership. That's written into th guideline. Tom

Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Thomas Morton
On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn juergen.f...@gmx.de wrote: Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy: if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know Wikipedia but not Wikimedia. The most simple and reasonable way is to use the famous brand, not to invest in Wikimedia.

Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Thomas Morton
Wikinews is too dynamic and has it's own set of problems to merge easily. It could be done though if given it's own namespace, and Wikipedia would definitely benefit. +1 In the topic area I work there are a lot of contributors writing content that is vastly more suited to Wikinews. A News:

Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

2011-07-10 Thread Thomas Morton
This a serious and urgent problem; and the foundation need to look into it quickly. In no circumstances should Wikipedia users be receiving copies of other people's identity documents - it is a privacy nightmare! Tom On 10 July 2011 11:03, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 July 2011

Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

2011-07-10 Thread Thomas Morton
Just to be clear: the alternative situation was, and would probably be, that people who currently can choose to use this clause, would simply be blocked forever without a way of getting unblocked. That's the approach most projects take... and anyway copies of identity documents don't prove

Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

2011-07-10 Thread Thomas Morton
Seem to work though. Does it? Where is the evidence for this? I'm not being hasty in forming a firm judgement here - other than to say it doesn't, on the face of it, seem like a good idea for a project to be doing this. And if the details of the handling of private data is well outlined and

Re: [Foundation-l] Black market science

2011-07-12 Thread Thomas Morton
On the other hand, PLoS (plos.org - the public library of science) is a great journal publisher that reviews and publishes scientific work under a free license. [They impose even fewer restrictions on reuse than Wikimedia, using CC-BY, which is a more appropriate license in my opinion for

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

2011-07-12 Thread Thomas Morton
Go back to the more transparent rationale that copyright infringement rests solely upon the person who uploaded the copyrighted item, not on people who merely link to it. That would allow us to link to YouTube videos for example (not host them, just link to them). Why read an article on

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

2011-07-12 Thread Thomas Morton
Again you are referring to the hosting or presentation of non-free content and I am not. I am not referring to the DISPLAY of videos within Wikipedia. Only the LINKING of videos from Wikipedia. No, I realise that is what you are referring to - and I don't honestly see any huge value to

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

2011-07-12 Thread Thomas Morton
I'll go further-- provided we can do so cheaply, I want new projects that are like the ridiculous early failures of flight. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7OJvv4LG9M]. I want to hear about a new WMF project and it's policy, think That's crazy-- that's never gonna get off the ground, and

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

2011-07-12 Thread Thomas Morton
If you don't see the significant value in including video content, then I would suggest that you don't see the significant value in including photographic content either. I would suggest that's an outdated value system. You're simply extending my argument too far there, which is just bad

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

2011-07-12 Thread Thomas Morton
The point is, the copyright police have taken a fear (of something which has never occurred in actual law), and made it a point of battle. This is, I think, the wrong forum for our disagreement. I mostly rose to your nasty casting of copyright police, which was a mistake. Sorry to everyone

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

2011-07-13 Thread Thomas Morton
Where is that policy and discussion? In terms of en.wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ELNEVERhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ELNEVER#Restrictions_on_linking That is the main restriction against external linking which makes an extremely strong (even for WP policy)

Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation

2011-07-14 Thread Thomas Morton
Good :) I'm glad I am reading your ideas right. As for the name-- this looks like a job for experts. Perhaps - though with that said when I am programming it is often my only-slightly-technically minded work colleages who come up with ideas for the most effective solution. We could

Re: [Foundation-l] Start questions and answers site within Wikimedia

2011-07-21 Thread Thomas Morton
There was a push to launch a stackexchange site relating to Wikipedia a few months back. It's currently in the commitment phase - needing people to commit to seeding it. SE is a proven QA platform; so worth considering. Tom Morton On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:00, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:

Re: [Foundation-l] Start questions and answers site within Wikimedia

2011-07-21 Thread Thomas Morton
Is it really that much load on Wikimedia sysops to install a (very simple) script like OSQA? For the value added it would pay itself quickly off. But this goes down to resource allocations and innovation potential at the Foundation, which I can not understand most of the time... It's simpler

Re: [Foundation-l] Start questions and answers site within Wikimedia

2011-07-21 Thread Thomas Morton
but I won't belabour the point :) Actually I will make one more comment (sorry) :) because I do actually have sound reasoning behind my suggestion beyond just it's better, and it is only right I lay them out. (I've maintained/operated/implemented a number of QA sites for small communities

Re: [Foundation-l] Start questions and answers site within Wikimedia

2011-07-22 Thread Thomas Morton
This results from point #3. We do not want to depend on 3rd party in terms of content security and reliability Not to be glib of course... but you mean like we depend on the commercial hosts/datacenters and top tier connectivity. I do think this point needs stressing though... going your

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-27 Thread Thomas Morton
This is a really interesting and thoughtfully complete project. As an editor I am cautious of how well these could be used as citations without falling afoul of original research. The first problem I see is that presentation becomes difficult: Interviews with members of the Sk8r tribe in 2011

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-27 Thread Thomas Morton
Also, the escope of this project is much more important for the projects on these languages, and for speakers of these languages, rather than the English Wikipedia or its readers. I partially disagree. Certainly it is very important from the perspective of providing material about the native

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-27 Thread Thomas Morton
How about Brazilian caldo de sururu, which is missing on en.wiki (and also on pt.wiki)? It's surely a lack for pt.wiki, but maybe not for en.wiki, Perhaps this is the fundamental difference in our views; because I consider that a lack on *any language Wikipedia* whether pt, en, de, fr

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-27 Thread Thomas Morton
All sources can be cited without falling afoul of original research Original research only covers claims without sources at all, or claims made from yourself as the source. Any source, including citing to a video interviews, is never original research. Ideally of course, yes. However it is

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-27 Thread Thomas Morton
David how is an exact quote a summary or interpretation? An exact quote, backed up by the actual audio track is... exact. You are not summarizing it, and you are not interpreting it either. You are presenting it. The point David is making is that you are selecting material to quote and add.

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-29 Thread Thomas Morton
Here's essays from Tom Morris (another philosopher): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris/The_Reliability_Delusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris/The_Definition_Delusion While some editors do tend to argue binary options over sources, in general this is not the case

Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

2011-07-29 Thread Thomas Morton
For what it is worth I think this approach exists on en.wiki on the premise that by using foreign sources with no independent translation available: a) It makes it easier to push a POV or miss-interpretation via that source (because other editors are generally not able to understand it) b)

Re: [Foundation-l] a funny story about wikipedia's strange power

2011-08-23 Thread Thomas Morton
I myself work for [[The_Ministry_of_Silly_Walks]] David, you win ONE INTERNETS :) Tom ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] a funny story about wikipedia's strange power

2011-08-24 Thread Thomas Morton
No way, it's just resting! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] AbuseFilter to be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis by default today

2011-08-24 Thread Thomas Morton
Let me rephrase in a slightly less trollish manner. Admins should never be given powers over content. Perhaps fittingly, the abuse filter has been active on English Wikipedia for some time. And even better, it is not a sysop group right. Instead it has its own group. If you are volunteering

Re: [Foundation-l] AbuseFilter to be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis by default today

2011-08-24 Thread Thomas Morton
On 24 August 2011 18:12, Wjhonson wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Give me permission. I am volunteering to head up the abuse filter team. Thomas don't mistake my point for some other point. I am not suggesting that admins AS EDITORS should veer away from content creation, but rather that admins

Re: [Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

2011-09-06 Thread Thomas Morton
n 6 September 2011 12:49, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:32, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: While I agree this isn't a good situation to be in, I'm not sure what the alternative is. The reviewers need to be able to understand the sources and

Re: [Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

2011-09-06 Thread Thomas Morton
On 6 September 2011 13:54, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.comwrote: But as Tom say, online media has quickly found that the traditional editorial process doesn't work so well on the internet. On the other

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-06 Thread Thomas Morton
On 6 September 2011 13:56, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 14:33, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: Personally, I think the filter will be mostly harmless, and that it's not worth the effort to rail against it. It will be useful for PR -- it will

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-06 Thread Thomas Morton
First, I actually don't oppose to the filter per se. There is significant difference between what Jimmy did in May 2010 and this filter. From the point of freedom of information, that's not an issue. I was even thinking to support image filter inclusion; just to finish with that; but

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-06 Thread Thomas Morton
The *first* instance to be asked about such thing are editors, not readers. I mean, the first question is Do *we* want it?. Readers opinion could be one of the arguments in discussion; likely one of the most important ones; but decision should be on editors. And Board should act in

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-06 Thread Thomas Morton
I oppose any form of reader/editor dichotomy in the strongest possible way. And yet speak in support of the current system - which makes no effort to listen readers... it enforces a dichotomy of its own! A wiki operates on the premise that all readers are editors, and all editors are

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikinews-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
Wikipedia *still* does not enforce their not a news site policy, and it is an utter waste of time bringing such up; numerous selfish Wikipedians reject efforts to direct news-writing efforts to Wikinews. I neither know, nor care, if this is because they're incapable of writing to the high

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikinews-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
See item #3 in this Signpost re. death of Osama bin Laden. We nailed it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-05-09/News_and_notes Wikipedia seems to get a lot of hits when it keeps up with the news. I think it reflects well on the project and has a bit of a wow!

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikinews-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
Does anyone want to argue for a policy that says Wikipedia does not record events until they are x days/months old? Yes, this would solve a large number of problems (not least resolving the historical significance issue). If the lifecycle of an article that involves current news is: Stable

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
The idea of offering imagine filters on WMF project is much more controversial than it is on other internet websites. So, I I think that it is fair to suggest that we examine why we are having conflicts over this topic when other website don't. One possible reason is that our base of

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
Agreed. And one of the most important aspects to acknowledge is the infeasibility of labeling/grouping images based on what we believe people will want to filter. I confess to not being on top of the exact mechanics of this proposal... but why can we not be using normal categories? Ok so

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
Thus, to use categories for an image filtering system would indeed require constructing a category for the specific purpose of exclusion. Big ALA actually, that *is* censorship alarm goes off. This is true, and I agree. but... * The category system is constructed of minute subcategories,

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
On 7 September 2011 15:58, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 September 2011 15:55, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: Obviously given the complexity of the category tree system any such engineering wouldn't be infallible - but you could match it to most use cases

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
I'm not looking forward to the possibility that every picture is going to be surrounded by filter-cruft. I don't really want pictures of planets, plants, fonts, colours and anything else that's universally inoffensive being accompanied with buttons. I hope there's a more elegant solution but

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
It is very hard to cater for someone when you are not engaged with them in conversation. Any attempts to do so are doomed to make an ASS of U and ME (ASSUME). It is hard, sure; most users/consumers don't engage - which is why a whole industry has grown around finding out what they want and

Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

2011-09-07 Thread Thomas Morton
On 7 Sep 2011, at 23:04, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Thomas Morton wrote: This is largely an engineering problem; and it can probably be overcome with some architecture work. As we are going to be implementing a major new feature *anyway* it's not something to reject outright, I think

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