User talk:Jdforrester/Old Archive 4

This is an archive of my talk page, the current version of which is located here.

Note that I am likely to reformat, delete, or otherwise alter what appears here...

*Please* put Arbitration matters here

LaRouche comment

I would like to call your attention to the following, which indicates that Adam Carr has resumed his campaign of personal attacks, in defiance of the Arbitration Committee rulings:

"I have no objection to Snowspinner or some other User not previously involved attempting to write a compromise or composite article incorporating elements of the pro-LaRouche and anti-LaRouche articles. I am not optimistic of their chances of success (it will be like trying to write an article on evolution by merging a Darwinian article and a creationist article), but I am willing to wait and see what they come up with. I am emphatically not willing that Herschelkrustofsky should be the person to undertake this task, since he is not only a LaRouche cult member and thus a partisan in this controversy, but also a proved and notorious liar and slanderer. Anything he writes will be just another attempt to wheedle his lying LaRouche garbage into Wikipedia and will be immediately reverted. Adam 11:51, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)" (from Talk:Political_views_of_Lyndon_LaRouche#The_Basic_Version

--Herschelkrustofsky 15:11, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I confess, I find this troubling as well, even as I increasingly find myself on the side of believing LaRouche to be a nutjob. In the absence of a ruling that Herschel is not allowed to edit Lyndon LaRouche related articles, or that his editing is to be curbed, there exists no rationale for a revert-on-sight policy, and, in fact, Adam's insistence on holding one will many any resolution to the long-standing edit wars on this page impossible. Snowspinner 15:20, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)


Proposed Turrican vs. VerrVerily Arbitration case

James, Turrican continues to wage a guerrilla campaign from various anonymous IP addresses (see comments on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Turrican and VeryVerily for some discussion of the problem). He continues inserting POV material and calling VV a "Nazi Bastard" [1]. I have blocked him for 24 hours in the past, but he continues to shift IP addresses. As this matter was taken up by Arbcom, but nothing has been decided, I'd appreciate some kind of indication as to what action against Turrican would or would not be appropriate. Mackensen 19:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As you can see from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Turrican and VeryVerily, it has not been accepted as a case (yet, possibly); also, I feel that it would be inappropriate as an Arbitrator for me to suggest what you action you should take. Sorry.
James F. (talk) 19:42, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A general note to Arbitrators

Hello -- I'm writing this once but it's addressed to each of you, my colleagues. :-) I don't know if anyone's noticed, but we are under increasing criticism from Wikipedians because we are slow in judgment -- indeed, we have cases that were accepted 3 months ago still languishing in voting paralysis. I'm not writing this to necessarily chastise you -- two or three of you are ahead of me in keeping up with things, I know! But I see many pages where I and a few others have considered, proposed, and voted -- we are waiting for the rest of you. Please do so soon. If you are too busy to be on the AC (I often feel that way myself), perhaps it is time for new elections, but until that happens, I urge you to vote. We have a few tireless arbitrators doing a lot of work crafting some good proposals, but they're not getting attention, and the community grows restless. I hope we can ease some of the grumbling. I apologize for the impersonal message, and again, I'm not no a high horse here. I do think it's time for action, though. Leave me a note if you have any quarrel with my comments here -- I meant them well. See you at WP:RFAr... Jwrosenzweig 22:46, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

172 case

Please consider the changes in Martin's votes [2] along with the comments on Martin's page by UninvitedCompany [3] Also, before the case closes, please consider my own response at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/172/Proposed decision. This is the first time that I have responded to the committee in length. Thanks again. 172 07:58, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Complaints about Arbitrators

How can I file a complaint of misconduct against an arbitrator? There are at least three who should be defrocked for abuse of power. Please let me know how I can initiate a complaint. Shorne 19:34, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There isn't a fixed way of dealing with this, but I don't think that the Committee really has the power to divest one of its members of Arbitrator status, so I think that you should make an appeal direct to the Board (or Jimbo).
Yours,
James F. (talk) 19:47, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry for not seeing your reply; I thought you meant that it was moved to another page. Shorne 20:55, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please ban VeryVerily

Please ban VeryVerily. In violation of the injunction issued by the arbitrators, he has reverted List of U.S. foreign interventions since 1945 three times in the past twenty-four hours. (The last time was also a violation of policy, for he added "twoversions" after restoring his own version.) Shorne 20:28, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re: Votes for arbitration

Dear James, my apologies for accidentally blundering onto the "Requests for arbitration" page with comments I was not entitled to put there. In my defence I can only say that I had been asked to comment there (a message sent to my User Talk page requested I do so), andI misunderstood the title of the pages. I had assumed that "Requests" meant that 'ordinary' Wikipedians were requesting that a page go on to a further stage where it would be looked at by administrators - the page title didn't suggest to me that it was final vote on arbitration. Sorry again, Grutness 18:47, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely no problem whatsoever. Don't worry about it.
James F. (talk) 05:33, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Other discussion elements

Constitutional question

People frequently talk about policy initiatives "failing", but there is really no clearly defined standard for what constitutes a policy initiative failing or succeeding. For exampe, Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks is generally considered to have failed, given that the vote was 36-26-5.

It occurs to me that under the terms of Wikipedia:Arbitration policy the Arbcom necessarily makes a judgment on what is or is not valid policy. This is directly inherited from the ambiguity on this point that I faced when I was doing the job of banning. And it has, to some degree, served us well, insofar as policy was not and is not fully codified in many areas.

In practice, the convention may be growing tired. There is widespread agreement that formulating or refining policy to deal with trolls or whatever takes too long. Perhaps we need to think about what would be required to specify more clearly just how valid policy can arise, so that we can more explicitly tweak the threshold of success and failure.

I don't think we need a legislature, because the body of self-selected policy-interested editors seems valid enough for that purpose for now. But we do need is a bit more clarity about what that body of voters is actually capable of, of what the arbcom (and I) will agree to. If a proposed policy gets 73% approval, is it policy? 80%? 60%? 60% with at least 25 yes votes?

At this rate, of course, we're going to be forced to add Wikipedia to the list of micronations, ha ha. Jimbo Wales 01:37, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Whitespace on IPU

I was trying to get rid of the extra space on the bottom of the page, as merely a formatting concern, and I couldn't get it to work. –Andre (talk) 00:38, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But it doesn't work, and it's bad form to edit a temporarily protected page at all.
Standard is to split categories and interwikis each out onto their own line.
James F. (talk) 00:49, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Strand

Hi James. I saw your comment from a few months ago on Talk:Strand, London. I agree with you that it should be at The Strand. Just because that's what it says on my Monopoly board. I actually grew up on a street named The Strand here in Perth. Dingy hole it was. Anyway, would you like me to move it? - Mark 08:19, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Predecesor templates

elements cross-posted

Revert; using templates like this is a bad idea (prevents pre-parsing & optimisation)

No it doesn't. If you can't do this then you're doing something wrong.

and "throne" is wrong, anyway

Please. If you really care about the name of the template move it, but I don't see a problem with using the term "throne"

please do';t switch ndashes for hyphens

Why?

PeerNavBox does the same thing for single

And this isn't single. There needs to be a solution to standardise these templates, and until there is some sort of if...then or looping feature in templates this is the only way to do it.

anthony (see warning) 16:01, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pre-parsing
It's nothing to do with me, just what some of the developers have complained about. And it self-evidently does prevent optimisation through parsing of objects before being included.
Throne
My point was that, if this is to be used, far more often it will be used for titles and offices in general than for thrones specifically (example: those of the United Kingdom have approximately two hundred offices, several hundred titles, and five thrones).
Dashes
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes).
PeerNavBox
Indeed, it does work, and thus inventing and using new replacements (Template:Succession) seems pointless.
In short, I think an extensible template system is what we should lobby the devs to write, and then use; beforehand, I think that if you're going to invent a new standard, you should at least do it for one that is suitably extensible (years of office? sub-/ super- office that was the previous or suceeding holder's?)
Also, you reverted, where as I fixed. Please don't revert people's useful changes.
James F. (talk) 16:13, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Pre-parsing : It's nothing to do with me, just what some of the developers have complained about. And it self-evidently does prevent optimisation through parsing of objects before being included. I've spoken with Timwi about this, and he plans to fix this in the future. Taxoboxes, for instance, already use this.
Throne : My point was that, if this is to be used, far more often it will be used for titles and offices in general than for thrones specifically (example: those of the United Kingdom have approximately two hundred offices, several hundred titles, and five thrones). Throne is the term used in template:succession.
Dashes : See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes). K.
Also, you reverted, where as I fixed. Please don't revert people's useful changes. No, you reverted, while I fixed. There were unclosed bold tags in the original before my fixes.

anthony (see warning) 16:17, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

See [4] - the only thing you kept from my changes were the ndashes, whereas I made other changes to spaceing. Also, I see no unclosed bold tag fixing in [5]. How's it now?
James F. (talk) 16:22, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
"'''[[Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin|The Lord Godolphin]]" looks like an unclosed bold tag to me. anthony (see warning) 16:24, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I would debate that the definition of the verb "fix" includes removing, but point taken. Sorry.
James F. (talk) 16:31, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Dashes : See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes). My understanding of this is that it doesn't really matter which one we use. anthony (see warning) 16:23, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
N-dashes should be used for date ranges; it's more that it's not hugely important that we use the right ones, yet, as eventually we hope to get some semi-intelligent code to do it, but that's more that you shouldn't go out of your way to use proper dashes, rather than that you should change either t'other arbitrarily. Emsworth (and others, but mainly he) did a great deal of work altering a great many of them to use n-dashes just recently.
James F. (talk) 16:34, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Fair enough. I happened to be editing that section anyway so I made the change to the format which is used in the vast majority of the rest of the encyclopedia. But now that I've read that manual of style entry, I won't do it any more. anthony (see warning) 16:43, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just wanted to point out that I didn't invent Template:Succession. It was pointed to me by Adam Bishop. However, Template:PeerNavbox seems to be more heavily used, so I'll use that one in the future. anthony (see warning) 16:43, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, actually it seems that Template:PeerNavbox bolds the title, which makes it unusable in situations where the year needs to be kept unbolded. anthony (see warning) 16:47, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Indeed; I didn't suggest that it was without fault, merely that re-inventing the wheel seemed a little odd, and the obvious implicit invitation to fix it ;-)
Emboldening the "Preceded by:" bits is just wrong, however.
Maybe I'll do some fiddling...
James F. (talk) 18:23, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Kenneth Alan

What is happening with regard to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Kenneth Alan? It's been nearly a month. Mintguy (T) 17:30, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

British Secretaries of State

If you could direct your attention to Category talk:British Secretaries of State, you'll see that I'm trying to figure out the best way to split this up based on the different offices involved. Your input would be appreciated. john k 06:27, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Huh?

I didn't remove any verified information. -- Gregg 11:55, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Resignation from the British House of Commons for my proposal to do away with these misleading additions. Dbiv 22:11, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:UK Wikipedians' notice board

Hi James how are you? User:Francs2000 has created the above page and invited a number of British people to join. I can't see an invitation to you on your talk page so just in case he missed you out, I'd like to formally invite you to join (or at least add it to your watchlist) Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 10:26, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Home Nations

Are you certain that the phrase "Home Nations" is "often used in the national BBC news broadcasts"? I watch BBC News and Channel4 news religiously and don't recall it being used except as it relates to sports. Is it possible you are thinking of regional BBC news broadcasts? AlistairMcMillan 22:23, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm pretty sure it's the national broadcasts. It's normally only used in the sport section, though, so you might tune out of those parts (I know that I often do...).
James F. (talk) 22:34, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Business cards

Hi James. Are the cards you designed for the board still available online? I tried at the address you gave me before but it was not loading. Thanks. Angela. 00:15, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

> Should I make up the full cards to Postscript files, or do you want to, and I'll just send you the former...? And whither?
I'm not sure I'd know how to do that, so I guess the former. :) Since it's Jimbo who will be printing them, it might be best to send whatever to him instead. Thanks for your work on them. Angela. 17:33, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

It might be best to put it on hold for now. I don't have a printer, Anthere can't open the files and Jimbo has the wrong sized paper. :) Angela. 02:55, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)


"Template-style transclusion"

elements cross-posted

Hi, James, I happened to be reading the Talk page for Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and came across your comment about a table, that "perhaps we could spin it off into a sub-page for template-style transclusion, if you're worried about Wikitax page length issues". I'm working on John Vanbrugh, and we're getting very worried about page length over there. Could you please explain what you were talking about, so I can figure out if it's something that could help us? Explaining such matters to me may be a bit of a job, I'm afraid (have to warn you that I don't understand "template-style", I don't understand "transclusion", and I don't understand "Wikitax"), but if you're up for it, I'd appreciate it very much.--Bishonen 17:33, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What I meant by "perhaps we could spin it off into a sub-page for template-style transclusion, if you're worried about Wikitax page length issues", and more specifically, by "template-style transclusion", is using, in the same way that we use templates, something like {{included template}}; the content of the referenced template is 'transcluded', or automatically put in the middle of the article with the above tag. For example, {{:Main Page}} would include a copy of the Main Page in the page you put it in. "Wikitax" is just a (but perhaps not the) name for the set of codes that we use in the MediaWiki software, like '' and [[.
In the case of John Vanbrugh, however, I don't think that this type of hiding of the content is a particularly good idea, as there is no large single block of content that is unlikely to want to be edited much, unlike on the PM article with the list of former PMs; a better tactic would be to do the much more standard Wikipedia method, where larger sections are summarised and the bulk of the content is spun off into another page (for example, John Vanbrugh as a playwright and John Vanbrugh as an architect, or perhaps something rather better-named).
Yours,
James F. (talk) 11:32, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Thanks very much for the elucidation and the suggestions, we'll think about them. Dividing John Vanbrugh into John Vanbrugh as a playwright etc. does feel to me a bit like sawing a chair in half and trying to get comfortable on one of the two-legged appurtenances created. I guess you get funny like that when you've worked a lot on a page, and we'll certainly have to weigh the options. As long as I'm anyway bothering you, could I ask if I've got it right that the images load from somewhere else, and so don't add any page size to speak of? (I realize that too many or too big images would still add load time and be a bother to people on dial-up.)--Bishonen 13:08, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well, looking at John Vanbrugh, I think that you're right in that it really does need shortening, but, for example, the section on his "early life" alone could probably be easliy expanded by another few thousand words, if one felt the inclination. Part of the difficulty of being an editor is showing editorial discretion, and knowing what to cut. Thankfully, this being online, we can keep the "deleted" stuff, in another article, but if we show no judgement, eventually the article will be less useable, and so less good.
It's a horrible thing to do, to butcher one's baby article, but... ;-)
James F. (talk) 14:04, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, James, you're absolutely right that there is no large single block of content that is unlikely to want to be edited much on John Vanbrugh, but at least there is a small one: the timeline. I just transcluded it by following your instructions and saved a couple of kilobytes, better than nothing. I'm delighted to have this surprising new skill, thank you very much! :-)--Bishonen 03:06, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hello, again, James, re. your comment above about article length and editorial discretion: well, I agree with you, and had in fact started working on summarizing parts of the main article and spinning off sub-articles, but to my surprise there has now been so much support on WP:FAC for keeping John Vanbrugh just the way it is that I've changed my mind! I realize I may regret it in future. On the other hand, it also sounds a bit as if the 32 kb limit could become a 64 kb limit in the future (compare the FAC talk page, where the case of John Vanbrugh is being discussed), and then I would regret having dismembered my article. [--Bishonen 21:51, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)]

Imdb

I don't think using template to put a link such a good idea at all. I have a lot to say why I think so but I am more curious about the consensus. I am afraid we are probably not going to agree over this matter. This means eventually, we are going to have some policy or votes or whatever. So can you tell me what is going on? Things like pointers to discussion that might have taken place in the past would be nice. The other day, I put a comment at Template_talk:Imdb but I couldn't get a reply. Havn't you notice it? If I sounded upset or negative to you, I am sorry. I don't meant that at all. -- Taku 04:33, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Queen James

Please monitor the James I of England page and its talk page.

Signiatures

Anyway, I appreciate your info and points very much, and could I ask you about SCD, something completely different? I've always wanted to have a signature with a direct link to my Talk page in it, the way you do, but I don't know how to achieve it. Could you tell me the secret code, please?--Bishonen 21:51, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On Special:Preferences, where it says "Your nickname (for signiatures)", I have:
James F.]] [[User_talk:Jdforrester|(talk)
... so, for you, you might want:
Bishonen]] [[User_talk:Bishonen|(talk)
... or something similar.
HTH.
James F. (talk) 11:49, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ahaaaaaaa! Ah. Great. Thanks a lot, James!--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 14:56, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No problem. :-)
James F. (talk) 20:35, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

House System

Thanks for doing all that housekeeping work on the House System page :) Adambisset 16:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No problem.
James F. (talk) 19:01, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Moved, replied"?

What do you mean? Where is the reply? Shorne 20:40, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Where it was moved to, in the clearly marked "Arbitration" section.
James F. (talk) 20:42, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Palladian window

Thanks for moving the palladian link to Palladian Architecture Its been a thorn in my side for ages, there has been endless discussion about Palladian window in my view it wanted incorporating into Palladian Architecture, but its creator User:Doops felt otherwise, so to avoid an edit war, its been left where it is, and there is a section on Palladian Windows at Palladian Architecture. Giano 13:15, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Tony Blair

cross-posted

Hi, James.

Why did you change the customary terms ("first term", "second term") to the clumsy and inaccurate (1 government, 2 terms) "first government" / "second government"? Glance at the article for confirmation of the correct locution. Or do a trivial Google search: 123 v 887.

As for your invocation of the MoS as an endorsement of your dash reversion, you're mistaken. While both dashes and hyphens are considered acceptable, hyphens are the de facto Wikipedia standard. Moreover, both were originally hyphens:

Evolving language and the decreased reliance on print world conventions have led to the hyphen becoming an acceptable replacement for other dashes. Where hyphens have been used in place of other dashes, you are discouraged from changing these, in the same way that changing spelling forms is discouraged. (See #Usage and spelling). [6]

See Also

chocolateboy 14:29, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As has been explain countless times before, on TB, MT, PMotUK, and others, Prime Ministers do not have "terms" stemming from General Elections. Margaret Thatcher only had one term. Tony Blair only had one term. The use of the word "term" is wrong and inaccurate, and highly misleading. See Prime Minister of the United Kingdom#Term, if you really want a reference.
As for dashes, a combination of MoS policy and standard practice on Wikipedia is that it is fine to start with either hyphens or dashes, as one prefers, and to convert from hyphens to dashes if you wish to do so, but is certainly not fine to perform destructive conversion of specific dashes into non-specific hyphens.
James F. (talk) 15:25, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
P.S. I see from a glance at the policy pages that you quoted at me that you have, in fact, not made any edits to them, and yet speak to others in sinister terms of a "vocal minority" of people who are evidently dark forces fighting against the army of the light, seemingly valiantly led by you. This characterisations are rather unhelpful.
James F. (talk) 15:57, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I responded to your postscriptum here.
It hasn't been explained "countless times". There's one reference to "term of office" on the Blair talk page, but that is not the disputed term. Moreover, your argument is plainly contradicted by the article itself:
*A significant achievement of Blair's first term
*Blair's first term saw an extensive programme of constitutional reform
*Blair became the first Labour Prime Minister to win a full second term
*During his second term Blair has increasingly become the target for protests
*he also declared that he would seek a third term
Furthermore it is contradicted by the Margaret Thatcher article, which trumpets the very headings you have capriciously censored in the Blair article:
*First term as Prime Minister
*Second term as Prime Minister
*Third term as Prime Minister
In addition to:
*In her first term
*In the second term
*During the second term
*the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to serve for three consecutive terms
There are two references to "terms" in the Thatcher talk pages. One is an unanswered question. The other clearly demonstrates the fact that "First Government", "Second Government" &c. are wildly inaccurate.
As for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom article, I fail to see its relevance to your argument. Quite the contrary:
*The term of a Prime Minister is linked to the term of Members of the House of Commons. Parliament has a maximum term of five years
It furthermore goes on to use the term in the way that you have unilaterally deprecated:
#By convention, the Prime Minister also holds the office of First Lord of the Treasury.
#Robert Gascoyne-Cecil [ ... ] only served as First Lord for a short part of his second term [ as Prime Minister ]
The fact that hands have only been "kissed" once in Tony Blair's tenure does not change the fact that he and his government are serving their "historic" second term [7], something Blair himself would be the first to acknowledge:
*in our first term we recovered the credibility to govern
*I do not just want an historic third term
&c.
As for the dash question:
a combination of MoS policy and standard practice
I've exhaustively surveyed and listed the Manual of Style guidelines on this subject, as you'll see if you glance at the links I provided. You've provided no such citations. In addition, I've gone to painful lengths to document the real "standard practice" on Wikipedia here. You've - conspicuously - made no such effort. As for your assertion that it is "certainly not fine to perform destructive conversion of specific dashes into non-specific hyphens" - where is this prohibition propounded?
chocolateboy 18:03, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If I might be so bold, I should like to comment on the use of the term "term." A Prime Minister's term begins with appointment, and ends with resignation or dismissal: a general election has no effect whatsoever. Hence, Blair has so far served only one term. I notice that Chocolateboy has quoted some of the words I have written in the article Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in his defence. I feel compelled to point out that the statement "Robert Gascoyne-Cecil [ ... ] only served as First Lord for a short part of his second term" is misapplied above by Chocolateboy. This does not prove that it is correct to use "second term" insofar as Tony Blair is concerned. The second term referred to in the quotation came some months after the first: Lord Salisbury was appointed, dismissed, and then, after some months, appointed again. -- Emsworth 23:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Indeed; I have (since Chocolateboy posted this) purged JM, MT, TB, and PMotUK of all inccorect references to "term" to mean the period of a Prime Minister's holding of office between general elections, and Proteus has put a nice clear note to this effect at the top of the talk page of PMotUK.
James F. (talk) 23:57, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Emsworth: thanks for clarifying the Lord Salisbury example. I've responded to your other points here. chocolateboy 09:17, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikinews demo up and running

Hi!

I'm writing to let you know that the Wikimedia Board of Trustees has approved the first stage of the Wikinews project. There's now a fully operational English demo site at demo.wikinews.org. This will be used for experimenting with various review models and basic policies before the site is launched officially in about a week. demo.wikinews.org will become the English version later.

You voted for the Wikinews project, so I'm asking for your participation now. Everything is open, nothing is final. What Wikinews will and can be depends in large part on you. There already is a global Wikinews mailing list for discussing the project. If you are interested at all, please subscribe -- coordination is of key importance. There's also an IRC channel #wikinews on irc.freenode.net. Realtime discussion can help to polish up articles.

If you're looking for something to do, check out the articles in development and articles in review. Or start a new story in the Wikinews workspace, or ignore the proposed review system - it's up to you. I hope you'll join us soon in this exciting experiment.--Eloquence* 01:59, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Arbitration Elections

You may remember that I coordinated the previous two elections, for the board, and for the arbitration committee. I am willing to coordinate this election as well, and have asked Elian to assist. However, we would like to have the support of the candidates to do this. Do you support us coordinating the election? My policy is to be entirely neutral, and to ensure this, I will not be voting myself (I didn't vote in previous elections either). All results will be announced following the final count. Please answer on my talk page. Danny 01:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

County images

There have been references to the U.S. County maps which were based on the public domain maps (courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin), modified to show counties. In these references, it has been suggested that you may have created all or some of them. The reason I ask is because they have been released under the GFDL and I was wondering if we could dual-license them into the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (or public domain if preferred) (See: Wikipedia:Multi-licensing) so that the city articles can be available under other licenses (for instance, to share with WikiTravel). The U.S. city dot project has been using the county maps as a source, so they necessarily fall under the GFDL as it currently stands. I've also been asking people if they want to dual-license all of their Wikipedia edits. I don't know your feelings on licensing to something other than the GFDL, so I thought I'd ask. It is simple to add a template to your user page acknowledging your desire to multi-license. Just thought I'd ask to see if you'd be willing to do this. -- Ram-Man 04:05, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

I hereby retrospectively release all image uploads of mine under Creative Commons Attribution licence, version 2.0, commonly known as "cc-by-2.0".
HTH.
James F. (talk) 05:31, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Would you consent to releasing them under the cc-by-sa-1.0 and cc-by-sa-2.0? These are the licenses that User:Wapcaplet has released under, and they need to match since I don't know who did what. Once you've consented, I will have the rambot update the 3,000 county image articles to add the additional license information. Thanks! -- Ram-Man 18:53, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I suppose, though I'd prefer non-SA if Wapcaplet is happy with that.
James F. (talk) 22:15, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In discussions with him, he seems pretty flexible for the reason that these images are not likely to be taken and misused by others due to what they are. The reason for CC-by-sa v.1.0 and 2.0 is because it makes them more widely usable. As far as I am concerned, the more licenses the better, but most people like the SA licenses and it allows use with WikiTravel, which uses the CC-by-sa license. I can ask him if he'd use the non-SA license as well, but I'd still prefer if you'd release them under the CC-by-sa also. Update: I talked to Wapcaplet and he has licensed all of his pictures using the {{MultiLicenseWithCC-By-All}} template, which uses all of the CC-by* 2.0 licenses and the CC-by-sa v.1.0 (which is what WikiTravel uses). -- Ram-Man 01:19, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
I disagree; a CC-by document is useable in any CC-by-* -licensed document. All SA does is restrict people who use it to use the same licence for their derivative works - it is certainly not more widely useable, but instead is less so, surely?
James F. (talk) 22:18, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
To use a CC-by document within a CC-by-sa, one must of course give attribution which would happen anyway, but the problem lies with the licensing of the derivative work (the combined document). It must be released with multiple licenses, because while the CC-by license does not require share-alike in the derivative work, the CC-by document CANNOT be licensed under the CC-by-sa, because that would restrict the document more than the author intended, thus in violation of the text of the license. But if someone is using a CC-by-sa document, the CC-by-sa requires that a derivative work be licensed under the CC-by-sa. So if we would try to add a CC-by document to a CC-by-sa document, we would be required under the CC-by-sa to release the entire derivative work under the CC-by-sa, but we can't do that for the reason above. Because of this, the CC-by and CC-by-sa are incompatible. This is why many people have agreed to multi-license under more than one licensing term. It isn't that the CC-by would mind being in a CC-by-sa document, it is that the CC-by-sa document can't live under its terms by relicensing the CC-by document to CC-by-sa. -- Ram-Man 23:05, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Endorsement

Greetings, Jdforrester. You have my endorsement for Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004, and you have therefore earned the Quadell seal of approval. Feel free to use this image, or not, as you like. (You won't hurt my feelings if you don't.) – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 04:58, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Umm... thank you! Hopefully yours won't be the only vote I accrue! ;-)
James F. (talk) 13:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)