LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006 12 17-23

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This is part of LSS, a mailing list summary service. It is a summary of foundation-l. Most posts whose authors are named have links to the full e-mail in the archive. However not every post is archived and the archive itself is so unstable that the urls will periodically be reassigned breaking the links in this summary. While edits to correct inaccuracies are welcome, changes to style or focus should first be discussed on the talk page. Decisions on whether to refer to people by their Wikipedia handle or their email name is arbitrary and may not be completely internally consistent. Some genders may be accidentally incorrect.Incorrect or not, this standard is used all around the net, for business or projects.

This issue covers (roughly) 2006 December 17-23

Threads

1. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]Brad Patrick announced that the fundraiser, despite some initial discrepancies in reporting, was now running smoothly. Further discussion on reporting, top donors, translation, and places to advertise the fundraising followed. One question of interest was the status of tax-deductibility of donations in various countries.
2. [11]Walter von Kalken noted that with his computer, loading large SVG images from Commons some people used to create maps for Wikipedia articles is not feasible, and asked that people uploading images to commons not upload things that would, in their use, stress reasonable computers. Responses ranged from "don't click on such images" to suggestions for warning templates for very large sizes and calls for technical change to prevent accidental problems by casual users.
3. [12]Shi Zhao noted that the Creative Commons updated their logos for commonly-used licenses, and asked copyright pages on WMF projects to follow suit.
4. [13]Jeff Merkey, noting that Jimbo had expressed concerns that his hosting of the 9/11 memorial wiki would give an impression of a partnership between Merkey's organisation and the Wikimedia Foundation, suggested that perhaps Wikia would be a better location for that wiki. Erik Möller and Jeff worked out some details of the phrasing on the click-through leading to Jeff's hosted copy.
5. [14]Milos Rancic reported on a meeting in Belgrade that drew a number of WMF people and led to a number of discussions and sharing of ideas between several projects.
6. [15]Brad Patrick gave an update on fundraising of a matching gift challenge.
7. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]Aphaia asserted that it was shameful that the English Wikipedia continues to routinely block accounts that have non-English characters in their username. This led to one of the longest discussions to date on foundation-l on this policy, its interaction with hopes for single sign-on (SSO), its reasoning, and the effects of both continuing and ending it. Various technical solutions were proposed to ease SSO while addressing some of the concerns leading to the policy, while others discussed issues of personal and community identity. Mindspillage [26]later summarised the discussion.
8. [27]Jon Harald Søby, noting that oversight capability was recently extended beyond the English Wikipedia, stated that a policy on grant of its use was necessary, and shared his ideas on how that might be done. Discussions on the need/use for oversight and types of trust leading to its grant followed.
9. [28]Polimerek noted that in a recent Polish edition of Newsweek there was a comparison between Larousse (a Polish scientific encyclopedia) and Wikipedia.
10. [29]Brion Vibber, commenting on escalating incivility on the language/SSO thread, posted a reminder that civility is a prerequisite to keeping the community running.