This is a copyright issue. It's stupid, no doubt about that, but the outdated copyright laws are to blame in this case, not Wikipedia.
Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter: "If the original artwork remains in copyright a license from the artist is nearly always needed. Mere physical ownership of an original artwork such as a sculpture does not confer ownership of the copyright: that remains with the artist.
In some countries a 3D artwork that is permanently located in a public place can be photographed and the image uploaded without the artist's permission: See Commons:Freedom of panorama."
I left out a bit didn't think it would become an issue, I called the head of the library and got permission to use it, but we both felt a bit odd as there wasn't a
need to. It's a statue and a statue is free game - but I got all of the permissions.
The head of the library can give permission all he wants, he doesn't own to copyright to the statue, the artist does (even if the object itself was donated), so his permission is pretty insignificant. Even if he did own the copyright, since stuff on Wikipedia must be freely licensed, he should have released it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or compatible.
Copyright is a pain, and terribly convoluted and complicated to do right, but a basic value of Wikipedia. As simple as possible turns out to still be surprisingly complicated
..reading anything on wikipedia that is wrong, and then correct it, immediately gets reverted. So I wouldn't trust this at all. It's a shame that sheeple believe a lot of the tripe on there.
If you have examples for me, I'll make sure to fix it, and set blind reverters straight.
keeping backend changes backwards compatible (a newer version of MediaWiki should still be able to parse the entire history of an article) is a massive massive undertaking, way larger than this visual editor - and that already took way too long. That said, there has been talk of a hypothetical MediaWiki 2.0. I won't say it's vaporware on forehand, but if it does get serious, it's going to take a long time to deliver. And than it will be just as long before all current templates have been migrated. And then all articles using those templates must be updated.
You're still right in principle though.
[snip]For example, the ref button is pretty useless... But a ref drop-down, with sub-options like "Book" "Web" "Magazine" etc., would be far more useful. Of course if they could make a pop-up form, with fields for all those values, and automagically guessing which type of ref you've input, and which template is best, would be far better still.
The problem with this is that the VisualEditor software is a general purpose part of the MediaWiki software, and that those templates are templates used locally on the English Wikipedia, and the VisualEditor doesn't have any knowledge of them (and it shouldn't. If you run your home wiki on MediaWiki, why would you want it to know about the templates used for citations on the English Wikipedia?). I really can't quickly think of a good solution to this.
Disclaimer: I am a Wikipedia admin, and my view may be colored
I have a view issues with your analysis here.
I can give you an example. There was what seemed to be to be an outlandishly strange interpretation of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" included in the song's page. I joined a discussion in the comments (not in the page proper!) advocating removing it. Turns out, it was added by a wikiadmin and he liked the pseudo-intellectual veneer it added,
How do you know his motivations?
so, rather than admit he's super-outvoted in the comments page, he accuses me of running sockpuppets (because, of course, there's no way multiple people could think he's wrong!). I had to write a responses defending myself.
yeah, not so pretty. While I understand his feeling there might be something fishy going on there (in most cases where an issue is brought up, and new editors show up to join the discussion, there is either sockpuppetry going on, or recruitment of people to join the discussion to support a particular point of view off wiki), I wouldn't have given some more consideration to the decent chance that while it raises some yellow flags, an SPI wasn't immediately needed, especially since there had been 3 months between the start of the thread and your comments. In this case, you said you didn't, there was no further evidence, and this case was closed. I particularly dislike the way he claims it can't be a content dispute because the has been peer-reviewed though, I don't know if that held back in 2009, but it certainly wouldn't now (the SPI is here by the way if anyone wonders).
The "case" against me stalled for lack of evidence, but it was never officially dismissed and can be reopened.
I understand the distress here. To explain, Wikipedia is very very conservative in accessing possibly identifying information, and we consider the data used in these cases just that. Because there wasn't really any evidence that you were the same people, no check was run to protect the privacy of you and of Annie.barber. I understand how this can feel as the case being left open and could be picked up again at any time, particularly in the light of the comment 'Lack of evidence has led this case to languish; closing this case without prejudice against the opening of a new one if further evidence should present.', but this should actually be read as 'We're not going to dig up possibly identifying information when there is really no evidence. Come back when you have something more solid'. Rather then 'you're off the hook for now but we're keeping an eye on you'.
The discussion thread ended with Annie.barber saying
My final conclusion on the matter, after reading the entire article slowly and carefully with a refreshed mind is as follows: Some of what Whitely and Periano are cited as saying is perfectly objective and belongs exactly where it's at. However, some parts are very objective and would be better suited in a separate section where they would better complement each other, anyway. If need be, I'll pull aside the statements that are overly interpretive and compose a proposition for a new section, but I won't have time until after school starts back if I want to do a good job writing it. Annie.barber (talk) 5:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
which was uncontested. This was never done by that editor though (or you). I doubt it would have raised much dust if it had been.
Since then, I've mostly stuck to typo-fixing, because, frankly, improving wikipedia isn't worth that sort of time and aggravation.
Well, I'm glad you're at least still helping out with that stuff. I can see how that has been an aggravating experience. On the other hand, I want to stress that although an SPI was opened, it was pretty much dismissed as having a complete lack of evidence,
Management has reached the conclusion that there isn't a management problem.
As a long-time contributor and administrator I am painfully aware how we are screwing up the experience for new editors. This is ironically possibly due to our culture of self-empowerment: we give too little feedback for moderately experienced Wikipedians who decide to lay down the law for new Wikipedians. We let them discourage newcomers, because probably mean well in their endevour to keep Wikipedia clean, and the line between the right thing and not the right thing in practice is often blurry. Much of this problem comes from relatively new Wikipedians, who are seen by complete newcomers as authority figures because they act as such, without the new editor realising that there really are no authority figures ( if anyone ever uses the phrase 'will report you to the admins' you know they are full off it, and have no clue how Wikipedia works).
While our editing model and attitude certainly needs improvement, the visual editor is at least a step in the right direction. Fixing the problem posed by the arcane invocations that make up MediaWiki WikiText and templates by using a visual editor is a good thing, and shouldn't be blocked because we have behavioural problems within our community.
And over here in Debian land we just type apt-get install build-essential.
And then you have GCC, Make and an outdated version of EGlibC. I'll admit that is easier than on windows, but getting the same stuff on windows isn't exactly involved either. Comparing that to an MSDN subscription is - regardless what you think of it's price - quite silly.
Aha, but then you are assuming the.NET runtime actually executes the IL, and doesn't wrap it in an abstraction layer of evil, webcam spying, password stealing, voting machine hacking and bitcoin mining. You sheeple are so gullible.
No, but generally speaking you cannot enter a contract with a minor, which is probably the legal issue. Age of majority is variable, but in California that is 18 ys old.
Not quite, but close enough
They should find a way around it,
yes
but they can't just give it to him.
That's the thing: They can just give it to him. No contract required. Just direct debit.
The longer I think about it, the likelier I find it that time is in fact an emerging statistical behaviour equal to the entropy arrow of time. That would allow for local statistical reversal of time, and balances out any difficulties of cause and effect, where the difference between cause and effect is defined as effect having a higher entropy than cause. I have a nagging feeling a lot of things may be involved in this (even P ?= NP can maybe seen as a form of this, where an unsolved problem describes a system with the same energy as a solved problem, but the unsolved problem has higher entropy). Unfortunately, I lack the rigor to properly work something out. Feel free to downvote based on crackpottery.
Or how about we all just drop Java since it's terrible and the cause of too many security problems?
Java on the browser very much corresponds to the cliche of the horribly misshapen monster moaning "please... kill me". Java - or at least the JVM - outside the browser seems to be doing fine. Scala, Clojure and Groovy are thriving, and starting to get mature, Kotlin is hot. Java frameworks are doing really well in webframework performance. The JVM might be in better shape than ever at the moment.
Well, they provided a citation for it. Bush said it during a televised address to a Joint Session of Congress on September 20th, 2001:
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
Of course, if you'd looked at the reference provided you'd already know this.
Of course, if you'd referenced the citation directly instead of referencing Wikipedia which references the citation, it would have been clear from the outset where the information came from
They say that yelling "fire" is a crowded threater doesn't qualify as free speech. People can get hurt if you do that. It's not funny and accomplishes nothing useful. So why is yelling "bomb" in an airport any better?
It isn't, and that kind of behavior should be punishable, I don't think many people disagree with that. Saying something like "Did you think there was a bomb in there or something" to the TSA is not actually the equivalent of yelling "bomb" though.
I have a very similar sense of humor, and could see saying something like this. But not at airport. And not at the TSA. I don't know if people just lack the common sense or the social skills to realize this is not the right place or time. And it sounds like in most cases they get checked 'just in case' but nothing too over the top. If someone was charged for making a bad joke, then I'd be complaining that the TSA was over the top as well.
Don't you recognise that it is a problem you can't make these kind of jokes at an airport or at the TSA? Yes, it's probably a bad idea to do this. But it is ridiculous that it is a bad idea.
6oz of liquid? That's even worse than having a bomb!
5oz of liquid is ok. But only in a terrorist-proof plastic bag.
2 gallons of liquid is also OK. But only if you drink it. I don't know much about toxicity and explosives, but I'm pretty sure there must be at least some liquid explosives that will not kill you until airborne.
It's not that they have any obligation to continue anything, it is just that people start to avoid google products they may become dependent on, because their services have a good chance of disappearing. I use Google Reader a lot. It sucks that it's going to disappear. Google is in their full right to make it disappear, but it sucks. Now google is introducing Keep. I'm not going to use it, because it might disappear on me, when I have become (sort of) reliant on it. With this policy, google is hurting itself, because people become weary of adopting google products in their daily routine.
Actually, I prefer the logic separation between a subroutine (that modifies state, and doesn't return a value) and a method call, that shouldn't modify state and does return a value. Obviously, many method calls do modify state, and sometimes that is even useful, but being able to declare the difference is a win IMO
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This is a copyright issue. It's stupid, no doubt about that, but the outdated copyright laws are to blame in this case, not Wikipedia.
Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter: "If the original artwork remains in copyright a license from the artist is nearly always needed. Mere physical ownership of an original artwork such as a sculpture does not confer ownership of the copyright: that remains with the artist. In some countries a 3D artwork that is permanently located in a public place can be photographed and the image uploaded without the artist's permission: See Commons:Freedom of panorama."
Commons:Freedom of panorama#United States: "Artworks and sculptures: not OK."
I left out a bit didn't think it would become an issue, I called the head of the library and got permission to use it, but we both felt a bit odd as there wasn't a need to. It's a statue and a statue is free game - but I got all of the permissions.
The head of the library can give permission all he wants, he doesn't own to copyright to the statue, the artist does (even if the object itself was donated), so his permission is pretty insignificant. Even if he did own the copyright, since stuff on Wikipedia must be freely licensed, he should have released it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or compatible. Copyright is a pain, and terribly convoluted and complicated to do right, but a basic value of Wikipedia. As simple as possible turns out to still be surprisingly complicated
..reading anything on wikipedia that is wrong, and then correct it, immediately gets reverted. So I wouldn't trust this at all. It's a shame that sheeple believe a lot of the tripe on there.
If you have examples for me, I'll make sure to fix it, and set blind reverters straight.
keeping backend changes backwards compatible (a newer version of MediaWiki should still be able to parse the entire history of an article) is a massive massive undertaking, way larger than this visual editor - and that already took way too long. That said, there has been talk of a hypothetical MediaWiki 2.0. I won't say it's vaporware on forehand, but if it does get serious, it's going to take a long time to deliver. And than it will be just as long before all current templates have been migrated. And then all articles using those templates must be updated. You're still right in principle though.
[snip]For example, the ref button is pretty useless... But a ref drop-down, with sub-options like "Book" "Web" "Magazine" etc., would be far more useful. Of course if they could make a pop-up form, with fields for all those values, and automagically guessing which type of ref you've input, and which template is best, would be far better still.
The problem with this is that the VisualEditor software is a general purpose part of the MediaWiki software, and that those templates are templates used locally on the English Wikipedia, and the VisualEditor doesn't have any knowledge of them (and it shouldn't. If you run your home wiki on MediaWiki, why would you want it to know about the templates used for citations on the English Wikipedia?). I really can't quickly think of a good solution to this.
I have a view issues with your analysis here.
I can give you an example. There was what seemed to be to be an outlandishly strange interpretation of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" included in the song's page. I joined a discussion in the comments (not in the page proper!) advocating removing it. Turns out, it was added by a wikiadmin and he liked the pseudo-intellectual veneer it added,
How do you know his motivations?
so, rather than admit he's super-outvoted in the comments page, he accuses me of running sockpuppets (because, of course, there's no way multiple people could think he's wrong!). I had to write a responses defending myself.
yeah, not so pretty. While I understand his feeling there might be something fishy going on there (in most cases where an issue is brought up, and new editors show up to join the discussion, there is either sockpuppetry going on, or recruitment of people to join the discussion to support a particular point of view off wiki), I wouldn't have given some more consideration to the decent chance that while it raises some yellow flags, an SPI wasn't immediately needed, especially since there had been 3 months between the start of the thread and your comments. In this case, you said you didn't, there was no further evidence, and this case was closed. I particularly dislike the way he claims it can't be a content dispute because the has been peer-reviewed though, I don't know if that held back in 2009, but it certainly wouldn't now (the SPI is here by the way if anyone wonders).
The "case" against me stalled for lack of evidence, but it was never officially dismissed and can be reopened.
I understand the distress here. To explain, Wikipedia is very very conservative in accessing possibly identifying information, and we consider the data used in these cases just that. Because there wasn't really any evidence that you were the same people, no check was run to protect the privacy of you and of Annie.barber. I understand how this can feel as the case being left open and could be picked up again at any time, particularly in the light of the comment 'Lack of evidence has led this case to languish; closing this case without prejudice against the opening of a new one if further evidence should present.', but this should actually be read as 'We're not going to dig up possibly identifying information when there is really no evidence. Come back when you have something more solid'. Rather then 'you're off the hook for now but we're keeping an eye on you'.
The discussion thread ended with Annie.barber saying
My final conclusion on the matter, after reading the entire article slowly and carefully with a refreshed mind is as follows: Some of what Whitely and Periano are cited as saying is perfectly objective and belongs exactly where it's at. However, some parts are very objective and would be better suited in a separate section where they would better complement each other, anyway. If need be, I'll pull aside the statements that are overly interpretive and compose a proposition for a new section, but I won't have time until after school starts back if I want to do a good job writing it. Annie.barber (talk) 5:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
which was uncontested. This was never done by that editor though (or you). I doubt it would have raised much dust if it had been.
Since then, I've mostly stuck to typo-fixing, because, frankly, improving wikipedia isn't worth that sort of time and aggravation.
Well, I'm glad you're at least still helping out with that stuff. I can see how that has been an aggravating experience. On the other hand, I want to stress that although an SPI was opened, it was pretty much dismissed as having a complete lack of evidence,
Management has reached the conclusion that there isn't a management problem.
As a long-time contributor and administrator I am painfully aware how we are screwing up the experience for new editors. This is ironically possibly due to our culture of self-empowerment: we give too little feedback for moderately experienced Wikipedians who decide to lay down the law for new Wikipedians. We let them discourage newcomers, because probably mean well in their endevour to keep Wikipedia clean, and the line between the right thing and not the right thing in practice is often blurry. Much of this problem comes from relatively new Wikipedians, who are seen by complete newcomers as authority figures because they act as such, without the new editor realising that there really are no authority figures ( if anyone ever uses the phrase 'will report you to the admins' you know they are full off it, and have no clue how Wikipedia works). While our editing model and attitude certainly needs improvement, the visual editor is at least a step in the right direction. Fixing the problem posed by the arcane invocations that make up MediaWiki WikiText and templates by using a visual editor is a good thing, and shouldn't be blocked because we have behavioural problems within our community.
And over here in Debian land we just type apt-get install build-essential.
And then you have GCC, Make and an outdated version of EGlibC. I'll admit that is easier than on windows, but getting the same stuff on windows isn't exactly involved either. Comparing that to an MSDN subscription is - regardless what you think of it's price - quite silly.
Aha, but then you are assuming the .NET runtime actually executes the IL, and doesn't wrap it in an abstraction layer of evil, webcam spying, password stealing, voting machine hacking and bitcoin mining. You sheeple are so gullible.
Bismuth is very slightly radioactive, not sure I'd trust memory that is generating it's own bit-rot via alpha decay.
For very slight values of radioactive. It's half-life time is ~10^20 years. I think I can we can have enough error correction bits to deal with that.
And sentences like "who hit who"
Obviously, the first baseman hit Who.
What? Why is he hitting himself?
No, but generally speaking you cannot enter a contract with a minor, which is probably the legal issue. Age of majority is variable, but in California that is 18 ys old.
Not quite, but close enough
They should find a way around it,
yes
but they can't just give it to him.
That's the thing: They can just give it to him. No contract required. Just direct debit.
The longer I think about it, the likelier I find it that time is in fact an emerging statistical behaviour equal to the entropy arrow of time. That would allow for local statistical reversal of time, and balances out any difficulties of cause and effect, where the difference between cause and effect is defined as effect having a higher entropy than cause. I have a nagging feeling a lot of things may be involved in this (even P ?= NP can maybe seen as a form of this, where an unsolved problem describes a system with the same energy as a solved problem, but the unsolved problem has higher entropy). Unfortunately, I lack the rigor to properly work something out. Feel free to downvote based on crackpottery.
Or how about we all just drop Java since it's terrible and the cause of too many security problems?
Java on the browser very much corresponds to the cliche of the horribly misshapen monster moaning "please... kill me". Java - or at least the JVM - outside the browser seems to be doing fine. Scala, Clojure and Groovy are thriving, and starting to get mature, Kotlin is hot. Java frameworks are doing really well in webframework performance. The JVM might be in better shape than ever at the moment.
That's assuming that java will not have two critical patch updates on the same day. On the one hand, that sounds reasonable. On the other...
Don't fix it. Once it starts causing problems and you see no upside in maintaining, remove it. Easy as that.
Oh, it must be true then.
Well, they provided a citation for it. Bush said it during a televised address to a Joint Session of Congress on September 20th, 2001:
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
Of course, if you'd looked at the reference provided you'd already know this.
Of course, if you'd referenced the citation directly instead of referencing Wikipedia which references the citation, it would have been clear from the outset where the information came from
They say that yelling "fire" is a crowded threater doesn't qualify as free speech. People can get hurt if you do that. It's not funny and accomplishes nothing useful. So why is yelling "bomb" in an airport any better?
It isn't, and that kind of behavior should be punishable, I don't think many people disagree with that. Saying something like "Did you think there was a bomb in there or something" to the TSA is not actually the equivalent of yelling "bomb" though.
I have a very similar sense of humor, and could see saying something like this. But not at airport. And not at the TSA. I don't know if people just lack the common sense or the social skills to realize this is not the right place or time. And it sounds like in most cases they get checked 'just in case' but nothing too over the top. If someone was charged for making a bad joke, then I'd be complaining that the TSA was over the top as well.
Don't you recognise that it is a problem you can't make these kind of jokes at an airport or at the TSA? Yes, it's probably a bad idea to do this. But it is ridiculous that it is a bad idea.
"I'm no Bush fan, but I don't think he ever said that."
There's a wikipedia page about that sentence from him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You're_either_with_us,_or_against_us
Oh, it must be true then.
6oz of liquid? That's even worse than having a bomb!
5oz of liquid is ok. But only in a terrorist-proof plastic bag. 2 gallons of liquid is also OK. But only if you drink it. I don't know much about toxicity and explosives, but I'm pretty sure there must be at least some liquid explosives that will not kill you until airborne.
It's not that they have any obligation to continue anything, it is just that people start to avoid google products they may become dependent on, because their services have a good chance of disappearing. I use Google Reader a lot. It sucks that it's going to disappear. Google is in their full right to make it disappear, but it sucks. Now google is introducing Keep. I'm not going to use it, because it might disappear on me, when I have become (sort of) reliant on it. With this policy, google is hurting itself, because people become weary of adopting google products in their daily routine.
Isn't that what being a programmer is all about?
Just like my double-ROT13 encryption on this message!
Typing in all caps is considered shouting, please refrain from it. Also, ROT13 is traditionally capitalised.
And counting. Wake me up when http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ hits under 20.
Actually, I prefer the logic separation between a subroutine (that modifies state, and doesn't return a value) and a method call, that shouldn't modify state and does return a value. Obviously, many method calls do modify state, and sometimes that is even useful, but being able to declare the difference is a win IMO