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    <title>Gmane</title>
    <url>http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png</url>
    <link>http://gmane.org</link>
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  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105631">
    <title>Fw: Subscription Payment Failed</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105631</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hey! What? You guys don't want my money?

~ Eli Friedman

------Original Message------
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Subject: Subscription Payment Failed
Sent: Feb 8, 2010 10:12

Hello Eli Friedman,

Your subscription payment to Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. for Monthly donation failed on Feb 8, 2010 because of problems with Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.'s payment receiving preferences.
We will try to make this subscription payment again on Feb 13, 2010.

Please log in to your PayPal account or contact Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. for more information.


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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>elipongo&lt; at &gt;gmail.com</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-02-08T17:23:55</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105614">
    <title>Images that are PD in their country of origin</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105614</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Can anyone help with an authoritative opinion about this? The doubts about
it are causing problems on a number of articles, including during featured
article reviews.

Where an image is in the public domain in its country of origin, and that
country is not the U.S., I believe we still have to show that it is PD in
the U.S. before we can use it, because the Foundation's servers are in the
U.S.. There seem to be widely differing views on this, even among
Wikipedians who seem knowledgeable about images. Some people say that if the
image was not copyrighted in its country of origin on January 1, 1996, it is
regarded as PD in the U.S., and may be uploaded to the Commons and used on
Wikipedia as PD. This is according to the [[Uruguay Round Agreements Act]].
Others are saying no, this *may* mean they are in the public domain, but
their status as such is not secure.

So my first question is: if an image was regarded as in the public domain on
January 1, 1996 in its (non-U.S.) country of origin, is there a consensus as
to whether we are allowed to use it on Wikipedia as a PD image? If so, what
is the correct tag to use?

My second question: for images that are in the public domain in their
(non-U.S.) country of origin, but were not PD in that country as of January
1, 1996, is there any way we can use them apart from claiming fair use?

Sarah
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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>SlimVirgin</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-02-07T14:29:23</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105613">
    <title>Living People Task Force is launching Monday</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105613</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hello, all.

The Living People task force begins work Monday with part one, board
recommendations and proposal.  This will run for two months, with the second
half beginning in April on community focus.

This is a global project, and we highly encourage active global
participation in discussion.

More information can be found here: &amp;lt;
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People&amp;gt;.

We hope to see you all there, and everyone have a good weekend.

~Keegan

&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Keegan Paul</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-02-06T18:33:11</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105608">
    <title>Strategic Planning Office Hours</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105608</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hi everyone,

The next strategic planning office hours are:

Wednesday, 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is:
-Tuesday (8-9pm PST)
-Tuesday (11pm-12am EST)

There has been a lot of tremendous work on the strategy wiki the past
few months, and Task Forces are finishing up their work.
Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's
happened as well as the work to come.

As always, you can access the chat by going to
https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
security warning. It's fine. More details at:

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours

Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation

philippe&amp;lt; at &amp;gt;wikimedia.org

mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)

Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Philippe Beaudette</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-02-02T19:00:17</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105605">
    <title>Learned Hand Article</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105605</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Congratulations to all who put together the Learned Hand article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_Hand). From the Article through its
Talk Pages - an excellent example of true collaboration. A great read!

Marc Riddell


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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Marc Riddell</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-02-02T17:16:04</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105597">
    <title>Living Person Task Force is starting up</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105597</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hey, folks.

The Living Person task force should get rolling mid-week, we're finalizing
the core and last plans (&amp;lt;
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_Persons&amp;gt;)

We hope to hold weekly public meetings on IRC with the entire Wikimedia
community, and we will be publishing the logs on strategy.

I'm tossing together an informal "what do you care to see?" meeting at 3:00
UTC, 1 Feb, six hours from this post.  I'll be keeping this list updated
with meeting times, it should be at that time weekly I think.  That's open
to tweaking as well.

Take care.

~Keegan

&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Keegan Paul</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-31T21:05:45</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105596">
    <title>Related places tool</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105596</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hi all,

just toolspamming my latest...

I read the announcement for "Britain Loves Wikipedia", was sad to find
no museum in or immediately around my place participates, and tried to
look for the nearest one. Harder than it sounds, if you're not very
familiar with British geography.

So I wrote a tool to show all "related" places.

First, you need a wikipedia page that links to all the objects you are
potentially interested in. I quickly made [1].
Then, go to my new tool [2] and enter that location there. Click on the button.
Then, you get a link to a google maps page (shortened at [3]).

Which is when I realized there is potential for more. Wanna see places
important to The Beatles? Go [4]!

Enjoy!

Magnus

P.S.: I couldn't quickly figure out how to do the same for
openstreetmaps. If anyone could point me to that...

P.P.S.: Yes, using backlinks are an option as well. Is there interest in that?

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/BLW
[2] http://toolserver.org/~magnus/related_places.php
[3] http://tinyurl.com/ycncg2f
[4] http://tinyurl.com/y92rgo2

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Magnus Manske</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-31T17:11:20</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105589">
    <title>Virtual Revolution (BBC)</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105589</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;The first of four films has just been screened - this is a documentary 
series by Aleks Krotowski for 20 years of the Web.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/

is the website, with footage from the interviews.

Charles


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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Charles Matthews</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-30T21:43:14</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105586">
    <title>Wikipedia in popular culture</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105586</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;http://twitter.com/alisonclement/status/8421314259

"Yesterday I asked one of my students if she knew what an encyclopedia
is, and she said, Is it something like Wikipedia?"


- d.

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>David Gerard</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-30T19:58:16</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105577">
    <title>Announcing: Britain Loves Wikipedia</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105577</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hi all,

In case you haven't heard already, "Britain Loves Wikipedia", a free  
photography scavenger hunt following on from Wiki Loves Art et al.,  
will be taking place in 21 museums and archives across the UK  
throughout February, and is launching on Sunday at the Victoria and  
Albert Museum! Full details are now up on the WMUK blog, at:

http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2010/01/britain-loves-wikipedia/

and also the Britain Loves Wikipedia website at:

http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/

Thanks,
Mike Peel
Wikimedia UK

PS: Apologies if you're not in the UK...

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Michael Peel</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-28T23:05:33</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105572">
    <title>In defence of the minor edit</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105572</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;I'm afraid I have to disagree with David Goodman's final paragraph
calling for an end to minor improvements to articles. I have done many
thousands of such minor edits in my time, tasks such as going through
all the articles with the word preformed and changing almost all to
performed. That has resulted in my making minor improvements to many
articles which I care nothing about and don't read more than the
paragraph or sentence that I fix, other times I find an article
interesting, read the whole thing and perhaps come across something
else I can correct. I believe that on the whole what I do is useful,
and I enjoy doing it. If I was paid to systematically go through
wikipedia articles checking each whole article completely and fixing
the errors I find, I am pretty sure the total improvement to Wikipedia
I would make would be less per hour than my contributions as a
volunteer, and of course there is the little matter of cost. Enabling
volunteers to improve the bits of Wikipedia that they volunteer to do
is much more cost effective than employing people and telling them
what to work on.

WereSpielChequers


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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>WereSpielChequers</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-28T13:19:55</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105554">
    <title>Range Contribs tool; anti-vandal software;anon IPs' User-Agents; the netblocks that vandalize the most; etc.</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105554</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Hi all,

I was curious about a vandalistic edit[1]:  the logged-out vandal, who uses a
US-based home broadband ISP[2][3], has made only one edit:  the vandalistic edit
I mentioned.  The edit was made two days ago.  I reverted it, then tried using
Soxred93's useful Range Contributions tool[4] to see if any of the 255 IP
addresses closest to the vandal's IP had ever made any other edits.  Nope.[5] 
In fact, not even any of the closest 131072 have done so.[6]  But when I
expanded my search to the closest 262144, I found lots of edits over the past
few weeks, made by a variety of IPs.  I looked at the first seven.  One was
vandalism:  an edit[7] to [[Patrick Stump]].  Someone else has since reverted
it.  It was made by another user from the same ISP.[8]  I am just curious:

A)  Did I go too far when I did all the research I described above?  Do you
yourself often use the Range Contributions tool[4] for looking at vandals' ISPs'
contributions?

B)  What do you think are the chances that the same person made both the
first[1] and the second[7] vandalistic edits?  The IP addresses' binary
representations are quite different.

C)  Why did no anti-vandalism software automatically revert either edit?

D)  When I look at the history[9] of [[Patrick Stump]], I see that there were
fourteen edits between 06:51 and 07:03, most vandalism.  Yet the vandalistic
edits come from a variety of IP addresses and usernames.  The IP addresses
differ widely from each other.  Why is this?

E)  When comparing two vandals' edits in other situations, is there any quick
way for editors to find out both IPs' hostnames, User-Agents, Accept-Charset
strings, Accept-Language strings, screen resolutions, and/or IP geolocation
results?  I do very little vandalism removal, so I myself am not sure.

F)  Which netblocks do the most vandalism and the least useful editing?  Which
cities?  Which entire countries?  Should those netblocks, cities, and countries
be forced to log in before editing?

G)  Wouldn't it be cool if some web browsers or ISPs would tell Wikipedia what a
contributor's PPPoE username was whenever the contributor made an edit?

If you reply to only one of A), B), C), D), E), F), or G) then please use a
different subject line than I used.  And add a "(was: ...)" tag at the end of
the subject line.  That way, it'll be easier for others to follow just the parts
of the discussion that they want to follow.

Kind regards,
--[[User:Unforgettableid]]

^  [1]. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fetus_in_fetu&amp;amp;diff=prev&amp;amp;oldid=339770615
^  [2].  http://toolserver.org/~chm/whois.php?ip=174.105.248.31
^  [3].  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Runner_High_Speed_Online
^  [4].  http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/rangecontribs/
^  [5]. 
http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/rangecontribs/index.php?type=range&amp;amp;ips=174.105.248.31/8&amp;amp;limit=100
^  [6]. 
http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/rangecontribs/index.php?type=range&amp;amp;ips=174.105.248.31/15&amp;amp;limit=100
^  [7]. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patrick_Stump&amp;amp;diff=prev&amp;amp;oldid=339703861
^  [8].  http://toolserver.org/~chm/whois.php?ip=174.106.99.246
^  [9].  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patrick_Stump&amp;amp;action=history


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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Unforgettableid</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-27T06:40:50</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105524">
    <title>Time heals all wounds</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105524</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;One from the archives:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Everyking_6
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User_talk:Everyking#Congratulations
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Former_administrators&amp;amp;curid=21026701&amp;amp;diff=340034766&amp;amp;oldid=339578680

&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Gwern Branwen</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-26T00:53:14</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105520">
    <title>"Hungry for New Content,Google Tries to Grow Its Own in Africa"</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105520</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/technology/25link.html

"But Google can do something that cowboys can’t: create more real
estate. The company is sponsoring a contest to encourage students in
Tanzania and Kenya to create articles for the Swahili version of
Wikipedia, mainly by translating them from the English Wikipedia. The
winners are to be announced Friday, with prizes including a laptop, a
wireless modem, cellphones and Google gear.

So far the contest, Google says, has added more than 900 articles from
more than 800 contributors.

“Our algorithms are primed and ready to give you the answer you are
looking for, but the pipeline of information just isn’t there,” said
Gabriel Stricker, Google’s spokesman on search issues. “The challenge
for searches in many languages for us no longer is search quality. Our
ability to get the right answer is hindered by the lack of quality and
lack of quantity of material on the Internet.”

Sitting in a Google cafeteria, Mr. Stricker outlined all the ways
information eludes the search engine — wrong language, not digitized,
too recent, doesn’t exist but should. Feeding the maw is clearly an
obsession of Google’s. After all, the search engine’s
comprehensiveness is an edge against a new, well-financed competitor,
Bing from Microsoft.

In e-mail interviews, two of the finalists in the Swahili contest said
the arrival of Google on their campuses changed them from passive
users of Wikipedia to active contributors. Still, they expressed mixed
feelings about receiving material rewards for sharing knowledge.

One of the finalists, Jacob Kipkoech, a 21-year-old from the Rift
Valley of Kenya who is studying software engineering at Kenyatta
University in Nairobi, has created 17 articles so far that were given
points. Among the topics were water conservation, Al Qaeda and
afforestation, the process of creating forests.

“Wikipedia has been a good online research base for me,” he wrote,
“and this was a way I could make it possible for people who can’t use
English to benefit from it as well.”

Another finalist, Daniel Kimani, also 21, is studying for a degree in
business information technology at Strathmore University in Kenya. He
said that contests were an effective way to attract contributors but
that “bribing,” or paying per article, “is not good at all because it
will be very unfair to pay some people and others are not paid.”

“I believe in Wikipedia,” he said, “since it is the only free source
of information in this world.”

Swahili, because it is a second language for as many as 100 million
people in East Africa, is thought to be one of the only ways to reach
a mass audience of readers and contributors in the region. The Swahili
Wikipedia still has a long way to go, however, with only 16,000
articles and nearly 5,000 users. (Even a relatively obscure language
like Albanian has 25,000 articles and more than 17,000 contributors.)

Mr. Kimani and Mr. Kipkoech represent one of the challenges for
creating material in African languages. The people best equipped to
write in Swahili, or Kiswahili as it is sometimes known, are
multilingual university students. And yet Mr. Kimani wrote that he
used “the English version more than Kiswahili since most of my school
work is in English.”

Translation could be the key to bringing more material to non-English
speakers. It is the local knowledge that is vital from these Kenyan
contributors, the thinking goes, assuming that Swahili-English
translation tools improve.

Mr. Kimani wrote one entry in English and Swahili about drug use in
Mombasa, the second-largest city in Kenya. It says that the “youth in
this area strongly believe that use of bhang or any other narcotic
drug could prevent one from suffering from ghosts attacks.”

Now the article lives in English and Swahili, although the English
Wikipedia editors have asked for citations and threatened to remove
it."

&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Gwern Branwen</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-25T16:07:55</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105517">
    <title>List of the deleted articles (was: Administrator coup /mass deletions)</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105517</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Apoc2400/Deletion_list
Deletions by five admins, not containing PROD nominations. My impression is
that the notability varies from borderline to medium to quite high, with
most in the middle. Completely non-notable people just don't stay for years.
I have been able to find sources for 90% of the deleted articles I have
tried to restore, and perhaps 80% would pass an ordinary AfD. Among them are
former prime ministers, many former cabinet of smaller countries, national
legislature members and of course a lot of athletes and artists from
non-English countries of varying notability.

The meme that unsourced articles are pure crap is just wrong. Some are quite
well written, but by someone who didn't know (or care?) about our sourcing
requirements.
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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Apoc 2400</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-25T01:21:56</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105515">
    <title>Removing unsourced information</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105515</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;It is commonly said that anyone can remove unsourced information, and that
the burden lies on the editor who wants to include information to provide a
source. I have always taken this to mean that if I think something is wrong
or otherwise does not belong in the article, then I can remove it at will if
there is no source. I did not take it to mean that I could go from article
to article and remove any sentence without a source, for no other reason
than being unsourced. The exception of course if contentious material about
living people, which should be removed right away if unsourced. Am I correct
here? Has the interpretation changed recently?

The question came up of course because of the recent discussions about
unsourced BLPs. While at first it was about BLP articles with no sources, it
seems that some wants to expand it to every sentence in a BLP that does not
have a source. Are we aware that this would probably mean removing well over
half of the information about living people on Wikipedia? I know there are
some who think it is fundamentally immoral to even have openly editable
articles on living people, but how far is Wikipedia willing to go to please
them?
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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Apoc 2400</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-25T00:29:06</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105513">
    <title>Save a BLP</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105513</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;IMHO a lot of the problems with unsourced BLP would go away if it were
easier to find sources.

So, I did what I always do: Write a tool :-)

To get a random article from [[Category:BLP articles lacking sources]]:
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/save_a_blp.php

To get a specific page:
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/save_a_blp.php?page=Elvan_Abeylegesse

The tool shows you additional information on the right side of the page:
* small google search window
* list of existing external links
* list of external URLs in interwiki-linked pages

I thought about including external URLs from images used on the page,
but that would probably just introduce more noise.

If you have an idea of what else to show, you know where I live...

Cheers,
Magnus

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Magnus Manske</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-24T20:57:15</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105474">
    <title>Custom Google search engines for finding RSs for subjectareas</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105474</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;So, on a lighter note, I recently got sick &amp;amp; tired of running site:
search after site: -wiki search in Google, and began looking for some
way to automate it.

I discovered that one can make a 'custom' Google search:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Google_Co-op

It allows one essentially to tell Google to increase the score of any
hits in certain domains, and blacklist other domains. It has a number
of neat features - for example, I can tell it to blacklist any domain
on https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/All
. You might think that a parameter like '-wiki' or '-wikipedia' would
do the same thing, but alas!

In particular, I've created a CSE focused on anime &amp;amp; manga  topics:
http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=009114923999563836576:1eorkzz2gp4

I started with all the links listed in
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anime_and_manga/Online_reliable_sources
and then began running searches on random topics and pruning based on
that - chucking sites into the blacklist sinbin, or finding good sites
omitted from the list and adding them to the whitelist. At last count,
I had 200 sites on the nice list and 311 on the naughty list (but this
counts things like the Mirrors page as a single link, though they ban
dozens or hundreds of sites).

The results are *much* better. To take my most recent use, finding
material on [[Amanchu!]] for its AFD
(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Amanchu!),
compare the regular Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=amanchu

with the CSE search:
htp://www.google.com/cse?cx=009114923999563836576%3A1eorkzz2gp4&amp;amp;q=amanchu

All the blogs &amp;amp; scanlations &amp;amp; forums in the former are great for
someone who just wants to read _Amanchu!_, but for a Wikipedian? It's
terrible. Notice that the ANN launch article, which is apparently the
most substantive English coverage in a RS*, is the first hit in the
CSE but the fifth in the regular Google search, and you can keep
scrolling down and find mostly chaff. And the weekly sales ranking
that puts _Amanchu!_ at #8 nationally, that shows up in the first page
in the CSE? I've no idea where it is in the regular Google hits.

Or take a critical classic: _The Wings of Honneamise_
(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Royal_Space_Force:_The_Wings_of_Honn%C3%AAamise).

Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=wings%20of%20honneamise
CSE:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=009114923999563836576%3A1eorkzz2gp4&amp;amp;q=wings+of+honneamise

Google has on its first page WP, IMDb, Amazon, video links, Tucows
(!), ads, and just 2 reviews a Wikipedian might find useful.

CSE has 9 or 10 good review sources from respectable publications like
Ex.org or the New York Times, and even the questionable hits like
RottenTomatoes have their good points - RT would lead one to the
famous critic Roger Ebert's *very* flattering review of _Wings of
Honneamise_. And it'll take you straight to Ebert's review on page 2,
whereas in regular Google search, you have to go to page 7 or 8.

Further examples can be multiplied, but I hope this shows that CSEs
can be very useful for finding online sources; I'm sure it would work
as well for other subject-areas!

(And since I can't let recent events go, I'll mar my little essay with
a final remark: *this* is the sort of thing that will lessen issues
like BLPs - not fanaticism like "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui
sunt eius".)

* Unsurprising, really. _Amanchu!_ is Japanese only and likely will
stay that way for years; even the anime media can be very
language-parochial.

&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Gwern Branwen</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-22T17:00:46</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105471">
    <title>Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of livingpeople</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105471</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;Re [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people]]

The sad thing about the current deletion spree is that it started only
a fortnight after DASHBot started gently chiding authors about their
supposedly unsourced BLP contributions.  I think the next logical step
would be to have a similar bot inform wiki projects about unsourced
BLPs relevant to that project. The preceding step should have been to
change our article creation processes to require sources for all new
BLPs......

The risks of the current approach are that some contributors may be
lost to the project,  a whole bunch of  poorly sourced BLPs will be
hastily brought to a standard that will keep them safe for a few more
years, lots of good if poorly sourced material will be lost,  and some
really damaging stuff will slip through the net because so much
attention is currently focussed on low traffic mostly harmless bios.
There will be really  damaging stuff on the pedia that we won't find
for months and I bet much of it will be in articles that at least
appear to be sourced.

Anyone who wants an example of a non BLP vandalism worse than anything
I've seen found in these old bios is welcome to ask me at the next
London meetup - which should be on the 14th Feb.

WereSpielChequers

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>WereSpielChequers</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-22T14:49:34</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105430">
    <title>Free data (UK government)</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105430</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/public_data_free_at_last.html

Looks interesting. Are there tie-ups with Wikipedia or Wikimedia applications?

Carcharoth

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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Carcharoth</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-21T16:54:06</dc:date>
  </item>
  <item rdf:about="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105422">
    <title>Administrator coup / mass deletions</title>
    <link>http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/105422</link>
    <description>&lt;pre&gt;

Unfortunately, at least one arbitrator is part of the group.
"Civil disobedience is often necessary." --User:Cool Hand Luke
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&lt;/pre&gt;</description>
    <dc:creator>Apoc 2400</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2010-01-21T02:01:05</dc:date>
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  <textinput rdf:about="http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english">
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    <description>Search the mailing list at Gmane</description>
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