subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RickK ?????

body:
Please. If you're trying to make this out as something nasty on the
part of Rick, you're barking up the wrong tree.

It was a funny error, which is why the section on Rick's talk page was
entitled "Teehee".

I suggest you actually read the edit before suggesting that it has
malicious intent and misrepresenting my post.

-- ambi

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 10:30:51 +0000, R E Broadley
<20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Well, I'm not the only one who understood, the person who left the
> original comment in his talk page
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7921955#Teehee]
> said "I don't know if you realised, but at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion>, you cut
> User:Vague Rant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vague_Rant>'s comment
> in half and declared that the first half of his comment was by an anon
> and was therefore not counted".
>
>
>
> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
>
> >> From: R E Broadley <20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
> >> Subject: [WikiEN-l] user RickK - vote rigging
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Someone else spotted RickK up to no good, and referred to the following
> >> on his talk page:-
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?
> >> title=Wikipedia%3AVotes_for_deletion%2FBlogsome&diff=7896162&oldid=7894
> >> 630
> >>
> >> The diff above is all by RickK in one edit, so I can't see how he can
> >> possibly claim he thought the vote was by an anonymous person.
> >
> >
> > Having reviewed the diff, I'm completely puzzled. I don't understand
> > what you think the problem is, and I don't understand how this is
> > "vote  rigging."
> >
> > --
> > Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> > "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> > Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> > Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Olve Utne

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yiddish flame-war -- seems unnecessary...

body:
Hello Mark W., Stirling N., John Lee, Ingrid Mazeltov & whoever else is
interested,

I fail to see why all this inflammatory language is necessary -- or
constructive.
Instead of commenting on each offensive remark, I would like to adress the
actual issue at hand -- the Yiddish Wikipedia.

I agree with Mark W. that one should be careful deleting stubs -- even when
these are really rudimentary. I agree with Stirling N. that the quoted
examples are very rudimentary indeed (but not in his language...) -- and I
prefer to refrain from commenting Ingrid M.'s rather loaded remark.

As for the problem with the Yiddish Wikipedia, my personal experience is
that it is hard to work with because of the problems with the user
interface. Maybe someone could take the job to translate a new version from
the Hebrew interface -- which has already dealt with most of the RTL issues
at hand here.

And then I suggest to be liberal along the way concerning how rudimentary
the stubs can be without being deleted.

Meanwhile, maybe we here on wikipedia-l can agree not to try to kill each
other verbally and/or otherwise....? :)

Friendly greetings from

Olve

At 21:17 28/11/2004 +0000, various people wrote:
>I am very sad that I have to report this, but Node is deleting stub
>articles  in the Yiddish wikipedia.

>To Node, I am asking you to stop dealing with languages you do not know.
>Let  the smaller language Wikipedias grow naturally, without interference
>from  non-speakers.

>I knew what the articles said just as much as you did.

>A page that says "_______ is a brother of [[________]]" and have the other
>article just link back, in addition to using incorrect orthography, is not
>even on the level of a stub, as is the case with an article simply saying
>"a singer".

>I think it's very interesting that you are so upset about me interfering
>in Wikipedias in languages I do not know and asking me to let them grow
>naturally when you yourself support proposals to lock inactive Wikipedias,
>far from letting them grow naturally.

>Your accusations are out of line Mr. Williamson. You owe the list an  apology.

>Agreed. Very out of line.

>What accusations are you talking about, exactly, anyways? If you tell me
>accusations are out of line, can you at least let me know which ones?

>If you aren't capable of understanding what you write, then you
>should  think more before writing it.

>So you are accusing me of something, but then are not willing to back it
>up with evidence?

>Stop trying to waste my time.

>You criticised someone Jewish, Mark, and for that hubris you'll pay.

>If you're not willing to substantiate a claim with evidence, but rather
>prefer to make it and then try to get out of it later by telling me to
>stop wasting your time, it's probably better if you don't do it in the
>first place.

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org


from_name: John Lee

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Problem in the Yiddish Wikipedia

body:
Agreed. Very out of line.

John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])

Stirling Newberry wrote:

>
> On Nov 28, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>> In addition, I have involved Refoyl Finkl, a native speaker and
>> computer scientist.
>>
>> I think it's very interesting that you are so upset about me
>> interfering in Wikipedias in languages I do not know and asking me to
>> let them grow naturally when you yourself support proposals to lock
>> inactive Wikipedias, far from letting them grow naturally.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>
> Your accusations are out of line Mr. Williamson. You owe the list an
> apology.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikitech-l] patches, CVS access, et cetera.

body:
In the same vein, I just posted a short feature patch adding an option
for users who want links to related keyword-clusters to show up
beneath article titles (links care of major search engines).  This can
be useful for fleshing out new articles.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=945

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 14:07:41 -0800, Dan Keshet <dkesh at channel1.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 3) [[m:Development tasks]] seems unloved.  The KDE project has a "junior jobs"
> concept where easy problems are prefixed with JJ: in bugzilla.  I would be
> interested in a similar project for Mediawiki.  I don't have time to do major
> things like database redesign or delta-compression, but if I could take a
> couple hours each week checking off simple bugs and free up time for core
> developers to work on the big issues I'd be willing to do that.

Strongly seconded.  I would also use such a list.

--
+sj+


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
As we become one of the central institutions of global culture, people
justifiably feel that their "take" on things ought to be included. Iridology
is Irismeister's thing. Despite our banning of Iridology for sustained POV
editing and edit warring over the matter we continue to have an article on
Iridology which begins as follows:

"'''Iridology''' is a form of [[alternative medicine]] in which patterns,
colors and other characteristics of stromal fibers of the [[Iris
(anatomy)|iris]] are examined for information about a patient's health.
Practitioners match their observations to ''iris charts'' which divide the
iris into many zones believed to correspond to specific parts of the [[human
body]]. Little scientific evidence exists confirming any such link between
the aspect of the iris and a patient's state of health."

What it doesn't say, as Irismeister would have it, is that iridology is the
best thing since sliced bread. He did not achieve his goal of dominating the
article with his viewpoint which, while represented, takes its place
alongside extensive criticisms. Now, as a professional iridologist, he has
filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Fred

> From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:45:26 +0000
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister
>
> I have no idea why Irismeister is sending this to me in particular.
> Forwarded without comment, hard as it was to resist.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Irismeister <danjipa at freemail.iris-ward.com>
> Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:54:56 GMT
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
> To: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>
>
> As per your choice of banning me for one year, and our "agreement"
> concerning such an unwise move, please find attached the text of my
> first legal action. This was started during the day of my ban. And the
> fronts of the huge legal battle that has started against your
> dictatorship are multiple and wide.
>
> Ten individual FTC Consumer Complaint Forms have been filed on behalf
> of prominent public figures nominally, against each of the offending
> sysops on the Wikipedia list.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom Overstepping

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:
> IIRC, the wording of that was slightly unclear; it was not what seemed be
> Lance6Wins's personal POV, which we noted was very similar to that Daniel
> Pipes's, that was the problem, but that he was apparently unable to prevent
> himself from inserting it in a non-NPOV manner in said articles.

Very very well said.

It is appropriate in these cases for the ArbCom to consider a "soft"
solution like this rather than a complete ban on all participation.  It
is important to recognize the following general principles:

1.  The ArbCom deals with behavioral issues, and not directly with
content issues.  When the behavioral issue is persistent bad POV
editing, then of course there is an interface to the content issue.
But it is the behavior which is the problem.

2.  The ArbCom can not and should not (and in my opinion has not ever)
attempted to subject certain points of view to extra restrictions.
There was some confusion about this in the case of LaRouche, but I
think this was an unfortunate wording and misinterpretation.

----

In the LaRouche case, the problem is that publications produced by
LaRouche and affiliated organizations are not suitable for routine
citation as ordinary documents in the same way as other documents.
This is not unique to LaRouche, of course, but is true of a wide
variety of pov publications.  The decision of how to handle this is
complex and not easily (nor properly) subject to a hard and fast rule,
but is rather a job for serious editors to undertake thoughtfully.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lars Alvik

body:
I don't see the problem as long as they accualy had a meaning in
Yiddish, i don't know Yiddish well (not at all infact), but what i have
gathered from your last mails is that they where stubs, not a reason
for deletion in itself. But i've also got the feeling that it's more to
this than you accualy tell.

And since everyone else is probably sick and tired of me feeding trolls
i should stop right now.

mvh.

Lars Alvik

P? 29. nov. 2004 kl. 04.26 skrev Mark Williamson:

> Ahh. Well, I don't see how exactly that is an accusation or what is
> wrong with it. Danny *has* supported such proposals. That is a fact,
> not an accusation. And locking a Wikipedia is obviously not letting it
> grow naturally, you can't edit it if it were locked.
>
> And this is no different from me blanking vandalism on other small
> Wikipedias. These articles are so short, not even substubs, not even
> complete sentences, that they are basically nothing more than
> vandalism.
>
> I do support minority language Wikipedias, but this does not mean I
> support vandalism and other such things, for example the recent events
> at ch.wikipedia (Chamorro), which are probably just about as bad this,
> with the difference that I don't speak Chamorro more than a couple of
> words, and my ability to understand it beyond Spanish loanwords is
> nil.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 22:02:47 +0100, Lars Alvik <lars at slappfisk.net>
> wrote:
>> "I think it's very interesting that you are so upset about me
>> interfering in Wikipedias in languages I do not know and asking me to
>> let them grow naturally when you yourself support proposals to lock
>> inactive Wikipedias, far from letting them grow naturally."
>>
>> I belive this is what's previously refered to. And i might add that i
>> think it's a little bit strange that you are deleting articles on
>> minority wikis when you are such a advocate of them.
>>
>> mvh.
>>
>> Lars Alvik
>>
>> P? 28. nov. 2004 kl. 21.54 skrev Mark Williamson:
>>
>>
>>
>>> So you are accusing me of something, but then are not willing to back
>>> it up with evidence?
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 15:50:38 -0500, Stirling Newberry
>>> <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 28, 2004, at 3:04 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What accusations are you talking about, exactly, anyways? If you
>>>>> tell
>>>>> me accusations are out of line, can you at least let me know which
>>>>> ones?
>>>>>
>>>>> Mark
>>>>
>>>> If you aren't capable of understanding what you write, then you
>>>> should
>>>> think more before writing it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>>
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: who's afraid of stupid newbies?

body:
On Nov 29, 2004, at 5:49 AM, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-29-11 at 13:36 +0000, Minty wrote:
>> "Learning PHP by example, with MediaWiki"
>
> /me spits out his coffee

Think of the children... won't anybody think of the children?!

In all seriousness, MediaWiki is not the prettiest or best PHP codebase
I've seen. It's also far from the worst, but this is small consolation
if you've ever lurked in comp.lang.php and seen the horrors people post
there. ;)

The web is full of PHP tutorials. There might even be some good ones
out there. The best way to get into PHP in my experience is to just
dive in.

The online manual at www.php.net is generally easy to search (at lest
for functions -- it can be harder to look up things like constants or
unusual keywords). The language itself will be pretty familiar to
someone who's dabbled in C-like languages or Perl. There are gotchas
(as there are in any language) which you're either going to stumble or
on someone more experienced is going to point out to you.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Database abstraction layer

body:
On Nov 29, 2004, at 5:38 AM, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> Why did we write our own database abstraction layer when there's one
> already in PEAR?

Most likely, the people writing it at the time weren't aware of the
existence of PEAR. IIRC PHP didn't ship with the base PEAR packages
until 4.3.0, which was released in December 2002, well over a year
after Magnus's development began, and nearly six months after Lee's
phase 3 overhaul went live on Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database abstraction layer

body:
Why did we write our own database abstraction layer when there's one
already in PEAR?

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: RC patrol and event hooks

body:
On Mon, 2004-29-11 at 16:52 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:

> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > My question: would anyone be freaked out if I migrated RC patrol to a
> > single module using event hooks? I'm not 100% sure it can be done, but I
> > think it would be a worthwhile exercise.
>
> After 1.4, or in a separate branch.

Why?

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Fallout

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ... please help me BEFORE i kill someone.

body:
> Robin Shannon wrote:
> > Howdy y'all,
> >
> > How do i do an interwiki link of a pic? For example if im working on
> > something in wikipedia and the image that i want is on commons i say
> > [[image:foo.png]] and all is peachy, but if im working on wikibooks
> > (for example) and i want an image from wikipedia
> > [[image:w:image:foo.png]] tells me there is a missing image, and all
> > is not peachy. Is there any way to do this, or do i have to put all
> > those images in commons first, and then use them from there, and IF
> > that is the case, is it correct wikiquette to deleate all the images
> > that i want to use off wikipedia (after i have moved them to commons),
> > so that the articles on wikipedia will then point to commons instead
> > of wikipedia or not?
>
> No, there's no way to do it without copying to commons as you suggest. I
> wouldn't recommend deleting existing images on other wikis, just copy.
> Unless there's a policy on commons that says otherwise.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

I would also recommend adding interwiki links to the image's page at other
wikis from the Commons - might be useful in the future (and also to easily
find out where the image is used, until it can be done automagically).

--
Ausir


body:
> I don't see the problem as long as they accualy had a meaning in
> Yiddish, i don't know Yiddish well (not at all infact), but what i have
> gathered from your last mails is that they where stubs, not a reason
> for deletion in itself. But i've also got the feeling that it's more to
> this than you accualy tell.

Well, I think that sub-substubs like "a singer" would also be deleted at
any other Wikipedia. ~~~~

--
Ausir


body:
On Mon, 2004-29-11 at 13:36 +0000, Minty wrote:

> "Learning PHP by example, with MediaWiki"

/me spits out his coffee

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with corporate propagandists

body:
Geoff Burling (geoff at agora.rdrop.com) [041129 06:36]:
> On Sat, 27 Nov 2004, Sean Barrett wrote:
> > Mark Pellegrini stated for the record:

> > > what is to stop them from starting large, organized astroturfing on
> > > Wikipedia?
> > > I think it would be a good idea to having some contigency plans in place
> > > should that happen.

> >  From the back of the bottle of contingency plans: "Revert, ban, repeat."

Internet users hate spam and *despise* spammers. As each of these ...
creatures ... is identified, I predict they will be rapidly dealt with
by natural immune response.

> Based on what I know of manipulating public perception, & the challenges of
> the Internet, I think we ought to look at our accumulated experience with
> another group: Scientology, & the related Wikipedia articles.
> I have stayed away from this topic, except for the occasional peak & the
> minor edit or two (I find typos & bad grammar in other people's writings
> far quicker than in my own). However, to my knowledge none of the
> Scientology-related articles have turned into the no-man's land that some
> of our fiercely disputed articles have become.
> I believe David Gerard has been monitoring the Scientology-related articles;
> perhaps David could offer some ideas of how to deal with possible
> astroturfing -- whether initiated by Microsoft or another corporation --
> based on his experience.

The Scientology articles were mostly started by Modemac or Chris Owen, who
have been around the Scientology vs the Net thing for years (much like you
or me, Geoff ;-) and so know it backwards.

The thing is that the articles are half-decent to very good because they
were written with good NPOV and references in the first place. Thus, there
was (a) a structure (b) a level of expectation set by that structure for
future additions to measure up to.

Not that they're anything like perfect or even Featured Article status, but
they're better than bad!

In the corporate case, obvious corporate hagiography will get a severe
NPOVing and egregious cases will be VFDed.

In the case that brought this up - [[Mozilla Firefox]] - the current
version is a hideous piece of open-source hagiography that needs a severe
NPOV of this sort.

- d.


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

body:
Cool idea. I'd be in.
Mark
--- Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to
> contribute but
> dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
>
> [[User:The bellman]]
> rjs
>
>
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun
> MacPherson
> <shaun_macpherson2001 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> >  --- Tim Starling
> <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Matt R wrote:
> > > >  --- Tim Starling wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
> > > Wikipedia would rather think
> > > >>of excuses, complain about the lack of
> progress
> > > and file bug reports.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia
> to
> > > suppose that if you identify a
> > > > problem that you can fix, then you have an
> > > obligation to fix it. Even if you
> > > > have the capability, there is no moral
> imperative
> > > for volunteers to do anything
> > > > at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem
> is
> > > already a positive
> > > > contribution, albeit a comparatively minor
> one. Of
> > > course, to grumble or whine
> > > > about a problem that you've identified is
> > > churlish, as you have no right to
> > > > expect that others fix things on your behalf.
> > > >
> > > > But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to
> the
> > > developers. I would quite
> > > > like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
> > > right now I prefer to spend my
> > > > time contributing to the content of articles
> --
> > > this is not an *excuse*; this
> > > > is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any
> such
> > > implication.
> > >
> > > I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to
> > > impress on everyone that
> > > Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're
> ever
> > > wondering why some
> > > feature hasn't been written yet, it's because
> > > there's been no-one around
> > > to write it. Most of the active developers seem
> to
> > > be more interested
> > > writing features for a general audience than for
> > > Wikimedia projects.
> > > There's more editors on the Old English
> Wikipedia
> > > than there are
> > > developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to
> help,
> > > and that's fine. I
> > > get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is
> there
> > > anyone? Every second
> > > Wikipedian seems to know a programming language.
> We
> > > just need, say, two
> > > or three developers willing to put in a few
> hours
> > > per week.
> > >
> > > -- Tim Starling
> >
> > I currently have some time on my hands and I'd
> love to
> > be able to learn how to contribute.  What do you
> need
> > exactly, only people who know PHP?
> >
> > I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn
> > from scratch :).  Hopefully there are other people
> who
> > want to learn, we can form a little group and go
> > though a few tutorials.  This way people who know
> PHP
> > could help multiple people at once learn saving
> time.
> > How long would you guess it take before a person
> would
> > learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
> >
> > ShaunMacPherson
> >
> >
>
______________________________________________________________________
> > Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
> jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au
>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this
> license, visit
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikitech-l] Non-ASCII characters in interwiki links, URLs, etc.

body:
> It detects the encoding on the incoming link and redirects
> transparently. Where's the problem?

Huh? Wow, I see, it works here in Firefox... Well, I tried it in Opera
and it _did not_ work. I don't know if the problem was Opera, some
proxy in-between, sunspots, PEBKAC, or whatever. I'll try it again
tonight.

-- puzzled [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics

body:
I have been thinking for several days about how to comment Erik mail.

Just as Erik, and many others, I see Wikipedia as having a very important political role, just as the encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert had.
Of course, bringing information to those who do not have access to information, to fight ignorance, obscurantism, superstition, manipulation, propaganda, give
people the tools to create their own opinion, to give them facts so as to defend their opinions, to allow them to make informed decisions, is political.

But this goes further.
Showing that we can work on a global project without being stopped by language issues is also political.
So is the fact of proving we can have thousand of people working constructively together with models oscillating between consensus and participative democracy.
So is the fact to demonstrate teaching is not an art restricted to experts, but that all of us have little bits of knowledge we can offer to the others. We are all worth something when it comes to teaching through Wikipedia.
Allowing people not to only rely on official TV and radio network for their information feed is also political.
So is to push people to read critically rather than blindly.
Showing that we can work together on the net in spite of disagreements leading to wars in real life is also political. We do not deny we have disagreements, we just learn to recognise we do not agree, and we learn to handle the differences.
And building a system which defense relies on letting doors open rather than building walls is indeed a very political act.
These are just examples, but there is no doubt in my mind we could change the world in more ways than just in providing knowledge.

All this to say that we do politics each time we click on the edit link. And I think there is more power in working on the projects so that they expand and improve, than in any signature at the bottom of a petition.

However, we do it gently. It is discreet. It is like a slow wave attacking a sand castle.
We prove things can happen and we show they are good.
This is more important than political advocacy or lobbying. We can change the things for better just by focusing on what we are doing *now*. And we can also just discuss with other people making things change.

I think getting WMF *directly* involved in political matters could possibly endanger our model, damage our image of neutrality, hence hurt our ability to raise funds for example or lead to censorship from some people currently ready to help our content to be widely available.
It could damage our non profit status, hence again our ability to raise funds.
It could upset some participants as well.

Some of the examples you cite Erik, do not seem to me to be problematicin the least, I think we could very well pursue some issues.
For example, fundraising meant to get used PCs with Linux and putting a Wikimedia Content Reader application on them does not appear to me to belong to political activism proper, and are very interesting ideas which several people have started to explore. I do not see how they could be problematic in any sense, and I would totally welcome a proposal from you for such a project in the coming months.

Other examples do appear much more potentially problematic to me, in particular quick actions for laws and such, which could be post validated.
I would say that anything controversial should not be quickly decided and post approved, but on the contrary, be met with much much care and slow building consensus.

Generally, I would recommand that we watch our steps. And generally, I think that it is neither Wikimedia Foundation, nor the local associations roles to get directly involved in political lobbyism, though some exceptions could naturally be considered ;-)

What is above reflects *my* opinion on political involvement.

The board discussed this topic on last sunday, and Angela will come with notes upon what our collective opinion and suggestions are, later in the week.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RickK ?????

body:
Let's not feed the trolls, the accusations speak for
themselves, and I don't think that there is much
danger of your reputation being tarnished by the diffs
preseneted.
Mark

--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> So what is your opinion of a newbie running to the
> mailing list and tattling for every thing I do, even
> when I explain to him what my reasons were and he
> doesn't come back with another discussion, but
> instead institues an RfC on me after supposedly
> having been around for maybe three or four days?
> Sounds like somebody who knows his way around
> Wikipedia a little too well for a newbie.
>
> RickK
>
> Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> Trolls seek to fire up people on some ruse, to get
> them to overreact
> and make complete asses of themselves in public.
>
> I don't know if Ed is a troll (and I'm not saying he
> is; it seems
> progressively unlikely to me that he is).
>
> Lemme however assume for a sec that RIck is right
> and that Ed is a
> troll:
> What Rick is doing is STILL remarkably unwise,
> because he's getting
> EXACTLY where a troll would want him to be.
> Besides, insulting (ie. wronging) a perceived or
> actual bad guy doesn't
> improve anything or anybody.
>
> Now assuming that Ed is not a troll:
> What Rick is doing is de-test-a-ble, because Rick is
> Assuming Bad Faith.
> No matter how strongly Rick may believe in his
> assessment of Ed:
> Strength of conviction is no substitute for sensible
> reasoning and due
> process.
>
> As a Wikipedian (even as a pretty dormant one), I
> expressly disapprove
> of this.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
> www.ropersonline.com
>
> On 28 Nov 2004, at 21:41, Rick wrote:
>
> > Go find something worthwhile to do. You are a
> pest. Like a gnat or a
> > yappy little dog.
> >
> > RickK
> >
> > R E Broadley <20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
> wrote:
> > Rebecca,
> >
> > I apologise for misrepresenting your post by not
> including the topic
> > title. It was not my intention to misrepresent it,
> and if this was an
> > honest mistake by RickK, than I apologise to RickK
> also. It might not
> > be
> > reckless editing, but I still consider it to be
> editing without due
> > care
> > and attention, of which I've spotted a lot of
> these from him recently.
> > If it were driving, he'd have lost his license by
> now.
> >
> > Ed
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia and Politics

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> ...
> In either case, the effort needed for the Wikimedia Foundation to get
> involved in any substantial kind of political activity would add
> considerable complexity to financial and accounting matters.

Yes, getting things under control under the current framework is the highest
priority.

> I'm not
> sure if our financial procedures are in a state to support this kind of
> change, although certainly they need to get there, regardless of how
> politically active we become.

Not yet - we have information flow and verification issues - but we are working
on it. I've been keeping the books off-line using the information I have but
don't want to publish that until I'm able to check some things with Jimbo (we
have both been a bit busy to do this part though; my schedule will open up in
January).

> However, the Foundation's mission as I
> understand it is education and the dissemination of information, and I
> think any political activity should be incidental to that mission.

I agree. But once the Foundation has found its feet and humming along nicely,
then I think we could explore the issue in more detail.

-- Daniel Mayer

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Database abstraction layer

body:
On Mon, 2004-29-11 at 16:34 +0200, Domas Mituzas wrote:

> PEAR DB abstraction layer handles separate API functions.
> MediaWiki DB abstraction layer handles separate API functions AND separate flavours, query syntax and methods.

PEAR's DB package has query-building tools.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Minty wrote:

>Sadly my PHP skills are rubbish, and I too don't have the time, so
>just throwing in a suggestion.  Another take on the same theme would
>be if someone like O'Reilly were to be interested, they might fund an
>estalished/star PHP hacker to write the book - which would for a brief
>window bring in some top-rated skills specifically focused on making
>the code easier/cleaner (not that I'm suggesting it ain't already
>...).
>
I too have no knowledge of PHP, but it seems to me that a good starting
point would be the Wikibooks project on PHP.  Supporting our own family
should be our first instinct.

Ec


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] protologisms in Wiktionary

body:
On Nov 29, 2004, at 6:52 AM, Andre Engels wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:40:39 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Disclaimer: I'm a moderate descriptivist, whereas it seems you might
>> be
>> at least a moderate prescriptivist (see [[en:prescription and
>> description]]).
>
> His arguments are very descriptivist in nature. The question is about
> what to describe.
>
>> I think we ought to document neologisms if they have been used by any
>> high-profile source (any major author, for example), or if they are
>> used
>> by any verifiable subculture.
>
> I disagree with the first at least. Some authors create neologisms
> almost as a hobby. A few of their words will catch on and get wider
> usage, most will not be used a second time even by themselves. We want
> the first group, not the second.

As someone who has coined a few words here and there, I have to say I
agree that "second use" is a good guideline, when someone else starts
citing a coinage, it is a sign that it has passed into circulation.

Basically, a reference work is needed for any word that would not be
defined in context - and authors are under the burden of defining
coinages or making it clear from context. The entry only needs to exist
once others start using, or questioning the use of, the word. In
counting citations, one of the best rules is the "hostile citation". As
soon as someone who does not agree with a concept uses a word, it is a
fairly good indication that the word has spread to the point where it
has been heard in use, if only so that someone is willing to attack
that use.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
How does he plan on getting your mailing addresses?

RickK

"James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
On Monday, November 29, 2004 11:45 AM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
wrote:

> I have no idea why Irismeister is sending this to me in particular.
> Forwarded without comment, hard as it was to resist.

[Snip Irismeister screed]

Welcome to the club; several of the Arbitration Committee, myself included,
have received similar^Walmost exactly identical such laughable nonsense. I'm
paying it no heed, howe'er, except to raise a brief smile.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>It may seem to you that en.wikipedia is totally devoid of this sort of
>systemic bias, but in fact no Wikipedia is.
>
>
This was not my argument---my argument was that systematic bias can be
minimized on Wikipedias which are in languages for which a diverse body
of speakers exists, but is unlikely to be minimized on Wikipedias in a
language spoken by only a small and homogenous group of people.  It may
not be eliminated on any, but it will be much less severe in languages
with more diverse speaker populations.

The current en Wikipedia does not have solely contributors from
English-speaking countries either---there are a large number of
English-as-a-second-language contributors who contribute valuable
information and viewpoints.  Our Beijing article has contributors from
Beijing; our Gdansk article has contributors from Gdansk; and so on.
This is very unlikely to happen in languages which are rarely learned as
second languages.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
I have no idea why Irismeister is sending this to me in particular.
Forwarded without comment, hard as it was to resist.

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Irismeister <danjipa at freemail.iris-ward.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:54:56 GMT
Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
To: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>

As per your choice of banning me for one year, and our "agreement"
concerning such an unwise move, please find attached the text of my
first legal action. This was started during the day of my ban. And the
fronts of the huge legal battle that has started against your
dictatorship are multiple and wide.

Ten individual FTC Consumer Complaint Forms have been filed on behalf
of prominent public figures nominally, against each of the offending
sysops on the Wikipedia list.

You'll find the scope of the problem by checking the legal records and
papers with an attorney of law of your choice, as per rn.ftc.gov
policies, or only by waiting patiently for legal papers coming in your
own physical mailbox. You will be informed individually and in due
time of your rights and of your "space of legal opportunity" with each
of the following move in the list.

Let us say, safely, that a lesson in modesty will be gently and
legally taught. You no longer have the opportunity to stop the legal
action because of your vote on my ban. Finally, a word of wisdom: let
us hope that, to the very least, you'll think twice before your next
movement as an admin, sysop, or only editor.

We are all real human beings, David, not products of your imagination :O)

Wikipedia.org, a product of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. promotes media
violence, violence as a mean to settle intellectual dispute, and
violence as a culture - notably in the form of libel, abuse of sysop
power, censorship and overt insults. Moreover,   Wikipedia.org, a
product of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. promotes disinformation,
pornography and disgraceful displays of pornographic images under
cover from arcane "company policies". Perhaps the long experience of
its founder, Mr Jimbo Wales, a former CEO of Bomis and a leader of
pornographic industry, explains such disgraceful, offensive company
policies. As an author, an editor, user and contributor, and a medical
doctor myself, I have repeteadly and publicly informed the founder,
sysops, administrators and editors of Wikipedia of their enormous
bias, media violence, promotion of disinformation, promotion of media
violence, libel and unjustified public insults - all to no avail. My
contributions have been censored, and traces!
 of public dispute have been wiped out. They are available as track
records in public repositories, at trusted third parties, complete
with the list, addresses and legal files and profiles of offenders.

Dr Dan J?pa, MD, PhD
Second irismeister,
danjipa at freemail.iris-ward.com


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Indeed - perhaps if they were full sentences (and in the case of the
two brothers, if they didn't simply link back to each other), it would
be OK.

In addition, this is 4 edits we're talking about here, they were not
against policy, when reverted by the original editor I did not
re-revert them, and when I was banned it was nearly 24 hours later.

Mark

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 08:46:24 +0100 (CET), Fallout <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > I don't see the problem as long as they accualy had a meaning in
> > Yiddish, i don't know Yiddish well (not at all infact), but what i have
> > gathered from your last mails is that they where stubs, not a reason
> > for deletion in itself. But i've also got the feeling that it's more to
> > this than you accualy tell.
>
> Well, I think that sub-substubs like "a singer" would also be deleted at
> any other Wikipedia. ~~~~
>
> --
> Ausir
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
The other thing here is that a large deal of these smaller Wikipedias
get entire articles or parts of articles by translating articles from
other Wikipedias, and that solves a large part of the problem.

Mark

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:00:16 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >It may seem to you that en.wikipedia is totally devoid of this sort of
> >systemic bias, but in fact no Wikipedia is.
> >
> >
> This was not my argument---my argument was that systematic bias can be
> minimized on Wikipedias which are in languages for which a diverse body
> of speakers exists, but is unlikely to be minimized on Wikipedias in a
> language spoken by only a small and homogenous group of people.  It may
> not be eliminated on any, but it will be much less severe in languages
> with more diverse speaker populations.
>
> The current en Wikipedia does not have solely contributors from
> English-speaking countries either---there are a large number of
> English-as-a-second-language contributors who contribute valuable
> information and viewpoints.  Our Beijing article has contributors from
> Beijing; our Gdansk article has contributors from Gdansk; and so on.
> This is very unlikely to happen in languages which are rarely learned as
> second languages.
>
>
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: R E Broadley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RickK ?????

body:
Rick,

As far as I am aware, I am still yet to receive any explanation from
you. I'll take your last sentence as a compliment - thanks.

Ed

Rick wrote:

>So what is your opinion of a newbie running to the mailing list and tattling for every thing I do, even when I explain to him what my reasons were and he doesn't come back with another discussion, but instead institues an RfC on me after supposedly having been around for maybe three or four days?  Sounds like somebody who knows his way around Wikipedia a little too well for a newbie.
>
>RickK
>
>Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>Trolls seek to fire up people on some ruse, to get them to overreact
>and make complete asses of themselves in public.
>
>I don't know if Ed is a troll (and I'm not saying he is; it seems
>progressively unlikely to me that he is).
>
>Lemme however assume for a sec that RIck is right and that Ed is a
>troll:
>What Rick is doing is STILL remarkably unwise, because he's getting
>EXACTLY where a troll would want him to be.
>Besides, insulting (ie. wronging) a perceived or actual bad guy doesn't
>improve anything or anybody.
>
>Now assuming that Ed is not a troll:
>What Rick is doing is de-test-a-ble, because Rick is Assuming Bad Faith.
>No matter how strongly Rick may believe in his assessment of Ed:
>Strength of conviction is no substitute for sensible reasoning and due
>process.
>
>As a Wikipedian (even as a pretty dormant one), I expressly disapprove
>of this.
>
>-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>www.ropersonline.com
>
>On 28 Nov 2004, at 21:41, Rick wrote:
>
>
>
>>Go find something worthwhile to do. You are a pest. Like a gnat or a
>>yappy little dog.
>>
>>RickK
>>
>>R E Broadley <20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>Rebecca,
>>
>>I apologise for misrepresenting your post by not including the topic
>>title. It was not my intention to misrepresent it, and if this was an
>>honest mistake by RickK, than I apologise to RickK also. It might not
>>be
>>reckless editing, but I still consider it to be editing without due
>>care
>>and attention, of which I've spotted a lot of these from him recently.
>>If it were driving, he'd have lost his license by now.
>>
>>Ed
>>
>>


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
On Monday, November 29, 2004 11:45 AM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
wrote:

> I have no idea why Irismeister is sending this to me in particular.
> Forwarded without comment, hard as it was to resist.

[Snip Irismeister screed]

Welcome to the club; several of the Arbitration Committee, myself included,
have received similar^Walmost exactly identical such laughable nonsense. I'm
paying it no heed, howe'er, except to raise a brief smile.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:40:39 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Disclaimer: I'm a moderate descriptivist, whereas it seems you might be
> at least a moderate prescriptivist (see [[en:prescription and
> description]]).

His arguments are very descriptivist in nature. The question is about
what to describe.

> I think we ought to document neologisms if they have been used by any
> high-profile source (any major author, for example), or if they are used
> by any verifiable subculture.

I disagree with the first at least. Some authors create neologisms
almost as a hobby. A few of their words will catch on and get wider
usage, most will not be used a second time even by themselves. We want
the first group, not the second.

> I do agree that if I coin a word and my
> friends use it, that doesn't count, so there has to be a judgment call
> somewhere.  A widespread neologism with specific connotations, like the
> phrase "teh sukc", ought to be documented, though.  Wikipedia's always
> has as one of its strengths that it gets articles on new concepts before
> almost anyone else, so it'd be a shame if Wiktionary didn't have similar
> advantages.

I don't think there's any disagreement about that. The disagreement
comes on the question on what is and what is not "widespread", on what
base this is decided and how the burden of proof is set.

> They can of course be discussed neutrally--mention if they're in other
> major dictionaries or not, who uses them and to what extent, etc.  But
> we're not the language police...

What makes you think we're pretending to be? I can easily put forward
that same argument from the other side: Deciding whether words exist
should be done by the users of the language, not by us. We should
include words because they are in widespread use, not because our
contributors like them.

Andre Engels


from_name: Minty

body:
It occured to me this would make an excellent O'Reilly/Wikibook and
kill two birds with one stone.

"Learning PHP by example, with MediaWiki"

You get the book, and a cover disk with a snapshot of the mediawiki
software.  It could be a "live" bootable cd, with everything setup and
running - or just a specific version of the code.

Then, run through the basics of PHP pointing people at specific
pages/code in mediawiki as an example.

The reader would learn about PHP, and get a fully functioning advanced
wiki for their own use.  Plus the knowledge to tweak it to their
needs.

Wikipedia would gain exposure, and if it was published, possibly some
revenue to fund other work.  Plus an easy way for developers to get
involved.

Sadly my PHP skills are rubbish, and I too don't have the time, so
just throwing in a suggestion.  Another take on the same theme would
be if someone like O'Reilly were to be interested, they might fund an
estalished/star PHP hacker to write the book - which would for a brief
window bring in some top-rated skills specifically focused on making
the code easier/cleaner (not that I'm suggesting it ain't already
...).


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] ... please help me BEFORE i kill someone.

body:
Howdy y'all,

How do i do an interwiki link of a pic? For example if im working on
something in wikipedia and the image that i want is on commons i say
[[image:foo.png]] and all is peachy, but if im working on wikibooks
(for example) and i want an image from wikipedia
[[image:w:image:foo.png]] tells me there is a missing image, and all
is not peachy. Is there any way to do this, or do i have to put all
those images in commons first, and then use them from there, and IF
that is the case, is it correct wikiquette to deleate all the images
that i want to use off wikipedia (after i have moved them to commons),
so that the articles on wikipedia will then point to commons instead
of wikipedia or not?

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Now, as a professional iridologist, he has filed a complaint with
> the Federal Trade Commission.

Just in case anyone is wondering: it is extremely unlikely that the
FTC will even bother to contact us.


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
I've has about ten in all over the past year, I got the last one, an
binned it as i did with all the others. ~~~~

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:47:42 -0000, James D. Forrester
<james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> On Monday, November 29, 2004 11:45 AM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
> wrote:
>
> > I have no idea why Irismeister is sending this to me in particular.
> > Forwarded without comment, hard as it was to resist.
>
> [Snip Irismeister screed]
>
> Welcome to the club; several of the Arbitration Committee, myself included,
> have received similar^Walmost exactly identical such laughable nonsense. I'm
> paying it no heed, howe'er, except to raise a brief smile.
>
> Yours,
> --
> James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
>
> Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
> IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database abstraction layer

body:
-----Original Message-----
> Why did we write our own database abstraction layer when there's one already in PEAR?

PEAR DB abstraction layer handles separate API functions.
MediaWiki DB abstraction layer handles separate API functions AND separate flavours, query syntax and methods.

Maybe it would be a great idea to separate our db api and run as separate PEAR/SF/whatever project ;-) *giggle*

Domas


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> Howdy y'all,
>
> How do i do an interwiki link of a pic? For example if im working on
> something in wikipedia and the image that i want is on commons i say
> [[image:foo.png]] and all is peachy, but if im working on wikibooks
> (for example) and i want an image from wikipedia
> [[image:w:image:foo.png]] tells me there is a missing image, and all
> is not peachy. Is there any way to do this, or do i have to put all
> those images in commons first, and then use them from there, and IF
> that is the case, is it correct wikiquette to deleate all the images
> that i want to use off wikipedia (after i have moved them to commons),
> so that the articles on wikipedia will then point to commons instead
> of wikipedia or not?

No, there's no way to do it without copying to commons as you suggest. I
wouldn't recommend deleting existing images on other wikis, just copy.
Unless there's a policy on commons that says otherwise.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> My question: would anyone be freaked out if I migrated RC patrol to a
> single module using event hooks? I'm not 100% sure it can be done, but I
> think it would be a worthwhile exercise.

After 1.4, or in a separate branch.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Fwd: Patch for mediawiki (img_auth.php)]

body:
This list eats attachments. I think bugzilla is the only place to
upload patches now (pasting into meta mucks up whitespace, and uploads
there are restricted by filetype).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] List_of_words_all_Wiktionaries_should_have

body:
Hi,

I?started such a list copying those already existing in Wikip?dia and removing
people and places names:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:List_of_words_all_Wiktionaries_should_have

Already in English, French, Hindi and Gujarati.
Obviously it's just a beginning.
Help wanted... :o)
especially for the list of verbs.

Best wishes,
Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
What is it Socrates said? "The opinion of the many is not important. It
is the opinion of the experts in their field which is important." -
Obviously he originally said this in Greek, but I did get a native Greek
speaker to translate the original sentence for me. It flows better in
Greek though.

Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of non-experts
in this field. The question remains: was the debate between experts and
experts, or experts and non-experts?

Rebroad

Fred Bauder wrote:

>As we become one of the central institutions of global culture, people
>justifiably feel that their "take" on things ought to be included. Iridology
>is Irismeister's thing. Despite our banning of Iridology for sustained POV
>editing and edit warring over the matter we continue to have an article on
>Iridology which begins as follows:
>
>"'''Iridology''' is a form of [[alternative medicine]] in which patterns,
>colors and other characteristics of stromal fibers of the [[Iris
>(anatomy)|iris]] are examined for information about a patient's health.
>Practitioners match their observations to ''iris charts'' which divide the
>iris into many zones believed to correspond to specific parts of the [[human
>body]]. Little scientific evidence exists confirming any such link between
>the aspect of the iris and a patient's state of health."
>
>What it doesn't say, as Irismeister would have it, is that iridology is the
>best thing since sliced bread. He did not achieve his goal of dominating the
>article with his viewpoint which, while represented, takes its place
>alongside extensive criticisms. Now, as a professional iridologist, he has
>filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
>
>Fred
>
>


from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
On 29 Nov 2004, at 08:46, Fallout wrote:

> Well, I think that sub-substubs like "a singer" would also be deleted
> at
> any other Wikipedia. ~~~~
>
> --
> Ausir

Are you sure?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme

;-)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Caroline Ewen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] de-sysoping/de-bureaucrating a user

body:
Hi,

I have a question: how do you take away the sysop&bureaucrat status from a
user ? After discussion on our Wiki, we all came to the conclusion that one
of our sysops who is a bureaucrat as well, should be removed (for those who
speak luxembourgish ->
http://lb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_Stamminet#Destitutioun_vum_Maradon
g )

Thanks

Caroline aka Bris?is from http://lb.wikipedia.org


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
OK, now I've got it. The problem was in a misconfigured proxy that
inserted a bogus Referer header (which is probably used by MediaWiki
to detect the need to redirect). So that for a request like that:

GET /wiki/V%E1clav_Havel HTTP/1.1
Host: cs.wikipedia.org
Referer: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%E1clav_Havel

comes a "HTTP/1.0 200 OK" response with the "page does not exist yet" contents.

After the proxy configuration was fixed, everything works fine.

Thanks for help,
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Gabriel Beecham

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Update request for Irish Wikipedia

body:
The LanguageGa.php file (at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LanguageGa.php) has
been in need of update for the past couple of months,
as not only are there corrections of spelling and
grammar but the Template and Category namespaces are
redefined. I have posted requests both here and at
Meta-Wiki before to have the live version of the file
synchronised with the newer version, but to no
success.

I know that Ga is not alone in requiring updates to
its localisations, and I know that developers' time is
like gold-dust (and that they're worth their weight in
the stuff), but it hasn't been taken well at
ga.wikipedia that alterations suggested months ago
still haven't been uploaded. (A number of the changes
could be made using the MediaWiki namespace, but their
number is so great that it would be preferable to have
the messages overwritten in one go if possible. And at
any rate there would still be the other php-only
changes to be made.)

On another matter, can someone tell me to what
MediaWiki messages the days and months were moved when
they were made MediaWiki messages a while ago?

Many thanks, as always.
---------
Gabriel Beecham
bureaucrat, ga.wikipedia/sysop, eo.wikipedia
m:User:Kwekubo

___________________________________________________________
Win a castle for NYE with your mates and Yahoo! Messenger
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
Robin Shannon stated for the record:

> pardon? wikiporn? I must be working in the wrong parts of the 'pedia.
> Or maybe its all so strange and kinky that i dont realise its a giant
> database of porn that im editing. Poor me, under the illusion that it
> was an encyclopedia.

/me prefers non-NPOV porn.

--
  Sean Barrett     | We must all make sacrifices, Pinky.
  sean at epoptic.com | You may be next. --The Brain


subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
R E Broadley stated for the record:

> What is it Socrates said? "The opinion of the many is not important. It
> is the opinion of the experts in their field which is important." -
> Obviously he originally said this in Greek, but I did get a native Greek
> speaker to translate the original sentence for me. It flows better in
> Greek though.

Just because something is said in Greek doesn't make it right.

> Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
> their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
> his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of non-experts
> in this field. The question remains: was the debate between experts and
> experts, or experts and non-experts?

The debate was between encyclopedists and a loon who explicitly refused
to comply with our rules.

--
  Sean Barrett     | We must all make sacrifices, Pinky.
  sean at epoptic.com | You may be next. --The Brain


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: MultiHosting from single source

body:
On Nov 29, 2004, at 10:41 PM, Jonah Bossewitch wrote:
[snip]
> This index.php combined with the include_path allows me to set up
> sandbox specific settings, instance specific settings, as well as
> server wide, global settings (in the LocalSettings and
> DefaultSettings).

There's no need to change index.php, this is what LocalSettings.php is
for. (Nor do we need more than one of it, as site-specific setup logic
happens under it and its includes.)

I guess it just seems a bit weird to have people tell us why they can't
use our software to run multiple sites off one set of source when
running multiple sites off one set of source is exactly what we do day
after day.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
R E Broadley wrote:

> What is it Socrates said? "The opinion of the many is not important.
> It is the opinion of the experts in their field which is important." -
> Obviously he originally said this in Greek, but I did get a native
> Greek speaker to translate the original sentence for me. It flows
> better in Greek though.
>
> Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
> their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
> his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of
> non-experts in this field. The question remains: was the debate
> between experts and experts, or experts and non-experts?

If we accept only the opinion of experts we end up putting ourselves
into an elitist box, and that strikes me as very un-wiki.  Ultimately,
the facts should speak for themselves without regard to who is
expressing them.

Proponents of mainstream "science" ofte go to great effort to discredit
ideas which appear contrary to their own, and in doing so can manage to
make themselves look even more foolish than the people whom they are
confronting..  It is not necessary to pepper an article through with
"they believe . . " or "the discredited idea that . . .", etc.  The
first burden of proof in a scientific concept rests with the
proponents.  If they fail to carry that burden then there is nothing
there for the opponents to disprove.  For many of these articles a
simple piece of boilerplate, perhaps as the second paragraph, should be
enough to satisfy NPOV.  It could read, "The subject of this article is
considered unproven by the wider scientific community.  Users relying on
the information in this article do so at their own risk."

Keeping things simple can save a lot of flames.
Ec


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

body:
I have been following this MultiHosting thread, as well as the hooks and
filters thread with great interest.

I think that one of the most crucial aspects of successfully integrating
open source solutions is treating the core distribution as "read only".
Mediawiki 1.3x makes it very difficult to adhere to this principle - it is
too tempting, (often irresistible ;-)), to modify the core distribution.

Performing in-place customizations makes upgrades very very difficult, and
worse, makes people's problem idiosyncratic (ruining most hope for support
from the community, or return contributions).

I think one of the primary design goals 1.4 and up should be designing
software that does not require, nor encourage, the direct modification of
the core distribution.

Pluggable auth, the proposed, the extensions and special file handling, and
especially the  hooks and filters proposal are steps in the right direction.

When it came to multiple hosting, I had a choice of following the mediawiki
setup, or the helpful suggestion of Mark Constable (Thanks!).  While the
mediawiki setup might ultimately provide ttw instance creation, it also
presents its own shortcomings.  Mark's suggestion, with a little
interpolation, allows for a great deal of flexibility.  It allows for the
creation of lightweight wiki instances that run off a common software
installation.  Likewise, its also makes it easier to manage the
customizations on the file system using standard version control tools, as
well as manage code from across development/staging/production environments.

I am not talking about treating the wiki as a cms or even development
platform, but if you want to do extensive customizations of the skins, or
involve more than one developer on a wiki project, this kind of control is
essential.

Here is the setup that I am currently using:

$SOFTWARE_HOME/<standard untarred mediawiki>

$INSTANCE_HOME/InstanceSettings.php
$INSTANCE_HOME/bootstrap.php
$INSTANCE_HOME/images/
$INSTANCE_HOME/includes/SkinMyCustomSkin.php
$INSTANCE_HOME/index.php
$INSTANCE_HOME/redirect.php
$INSTANCE_HOME/stylesheets/myCustomSkin
$INSTANCE_HOME/templates/

where index.php is:
-------------------
<?php
error_log(var_export($_REQUEST, true));

$wgRequestTime = microtime();
unset( $IP );
ini_set( "allow_url_fopen", 0 ); # For security...
if(!file_exists("./InstanceSettings.php")) {
  die( "You need to configure your sandbox before this wiki can work" );
}

define( "MEDIAWIKI", true );
require_once("./bootstrap.php");
require_once( "$SOFTWARE_HOME/LocalSettings.php" );
require_once( "./InstanceSettings.php" );
# inlcude our skin, so that we don't have to modify core code
require_once("SkinCCNMTL.php");

# mediawiki.php is the same as the original index.php, with the top few
lines c
ommented out
require 'mediawiki.php';

?>

redirect.php is a straight copy of the one in software_home (it needs to be
a copy, not a link, or the ./LocalSettings.php include will happen inside
the software_home directory, not the instance_home directory.

bootstrap.php is
-------------------
<?php
#
# this file definesthe environemnt specific paths and resources, per sandbox

$IP = $SOFTWARE_HOME = "/usr/local/share/sandboxes/common/mediawiki-src";
$INSTANCE_HOME = "/usr/local/share/sandboxes/jonah/uwpwiki";
$INSTANCE_URL_BASE = "http://wiki.columbia.edu:8080";
$INSTANCE_URL_PATH  = "/sb/jonah/mediawiki";

ini_set( "include_path",
".:$INSTANCE_HOME:$INSTANCE_HOME/includes:$INSTANCE_HO
ME/templates:$IP:$IP/includes:$IP/languages" );

?>

The only modification I needed to make in the core distro was copying
index.php -> mediawiki.php and commenting out the first ~15 lines (up until
requiring includes/Setup.php).

This index.php combined with the include_path allows me to set up sandbox
specific settings, instance specific settings, as well as server wide,
global settings (in the LocalSettings and DefaultSettings).

If the core mediawiki introduced a similar construct, I wouldn't even need
to modify the original index.php inside of software home.

I think this kind of structure would encourage people to use more OO
techniques such as extension (w/in your own instance's include path, which
is picked up before the software home one), and in general, keep folks away
from the core distribution.

Thanks for all your help.

Jonah


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Nov 29, 2004, at 2:14 PM, Jens Ropers wrote:

> On 29 Nov 2004, at 08:46, Fallout wrote:
>
>> Well, I think that sub-substubs like "a singer" would also be deleted
>> at
>> any other Wikipedia. ~~~~
>>
>> --
>> Ausir
>
> Are you sure?
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme
>
> ;-)
> \

the other solution to a sub-stub is to expand it. People who can't
expand a sub-stub because they are not language proficient should not
be deleting them. As well what is a "sub-stub" is community defined by
editors, and therefore should be left in each community to their own
understanding of the level of activity.

In short, if you can't fix it, you shouldn't be running around deleting
it.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [support@candidhosting.com: [candidhosting.com
	#115227] Install & Setup Gig Link]

body:
We probably need to discuss what we need.

----- Forwarded message from Candid Hosting Support <support at candidhosting.com> -----

From: "Candid Hosting Support" <support at candidhosting.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:40:21 -0500 (EST)
To: mmemmer at neutelligent.com, JWales at BOMIS.com
Subject: [candidhosting.com #115227] Install & Setup Gig Link for

Fiber has been ordered and I expect delivery this week, however I think
I may have made an error.  I assumed that it would be SC to SC fiber.
Please let me know the connector type you will have on your switch so I
may get the approperate cable and a spare.

----- End forwarded message -----

--
"La n?fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Opinion of the many?

body:
Can someone please ban the trolls? Please? I've got better things to
do with my time than read R.E. Broadley's attempts to needle RickK or
the rantings of some "iridologist" with a personality problem.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
Ah, but the field in question is diagnosis of disease, of which iridology is
just one approach. Almost all experts in diagnosis of disease dismiss
iridology.

Fred

> From: R E Broadley <20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 19:50:49 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?
>
> What is it Socrates said? "The opinion of the many is not important. It
> is the opinion of the experts in their field which is important." -
> Obviously he originally said this in Greek, but I did get a native Greek
> speaker to translate the original sentence for me. It flows better in
> Greek though.
>
> Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
> their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
> his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of non-experts
> in this field. The question remains: was the debate between experts and
> experts, or experts and non-experts?
>
> Rebroad
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> As we become one of the central institutions of global culture, people
>> justifiably feel that their "take" on things ought to be included. Iridology
>> is Irismeister's thing. Despite our banning of Iridology for sustained POV
>> editing and edit warring over the matter we continue to have an article on
>> Iridology which begins as follows:
>>
>> "'''Iridology''' is a form of [[alternative medicine]] in which patterns,
>> colors and other characteristics of stromal fibers of the [[Iris
>> (anatomy)|iris]] are examined for information about a patient's health.
>> Practitioners match their observations to ''iris charts'' which divide the
>> iris into many zones believed to correspond to specific parts of the [[human
>> body]]. Little scientific evidence exists confirming any such link between
>> the aspect of the iris and a patient's state of health."
>>
>> What it doesn't say, as Irismeister would have it, is that iridology is the
>> best thing since sliced bread. He did not achieve his goal of dominating the
>> article with his viewpoint which, while represented, takes its place
>> alongside extensive criticisms. Now, as a professional iridologist, he has
>> filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
ROFLMAO

Rebroad - take my advice - take a few minutes to read up on what you
talk about before you voice your opinion otherwise you risk being
thought a troll.

Theresa

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 19:50:49 +0000, R E Broadley
<20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> What is it Socrates said? "The opinion of the many is not important. It
> is the opinion of the experts in their field which is important." -
> Obviously he originally said this in Greek, but I did get a native Greek
> speaker to translate the original sentence for me. It flows better in
> Greek though.
>
> Why am I quoting this? What the professional iridologist an expert in
> their field? I don't know this either, but if he was, I would suggest
> his opinion should probably outweigh that of the majority of non-experts
> in this field. The question remains: was the debate between experts and
> experts, or experts and non-experts?
>
> Rebroad
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> >As we become one of the central institutions of global culture, people
> >justifiably feel that their "take" on things ought to be included. Iridology
> >is Irismeister's thing. Despite our banning of Iridology for sustained POV
> >editing and edit warring over the matter we continue to have an article on
> >Iridology which begins as follows:
> >
> >"'''Iridology''' is a form of [[alternative medicine]] in which patterns,
> >colors and other characteristics of stromal fibers of the [[Iris
> >(anatomy)|iris]] are examined for information about a patient's health.
> >Practitioners match their observations to ''iris charts'' which divide the
> >iris into many zones believed to correspond to specific parts of the [[human
> >body]]. Little scientific evidence exists confirming any such link between
> >the aspect of the iris and a patient's state of health."
> >
> >What it doesn't say, as Irismeister would have it, is that iridology is the
> >best thing since sliced bread. He did not achieve his goal of dominating the
> >article with his viewpoint which, while represented, takes its place
> >alongside extensive criticisms. Now, as a professional iridologist, he has
> >filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
> >
> >Fred
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Angela

body:
Caroline Ewen <caroline at web.lu> wrote:
> I have a question: how do you take away the sysop&bureaucrat status from a
> user ?

Requests for desysopping can be made at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Removal_of_access
since only stewards (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards ) can
carry out this task.

Angela.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
I predict this won't happen.  But I'm a notorious optimist, eh?

The reason I think it won't happen is that it would just be terribly
good press for us, and terribly bad press for them to get caught.

I do expect it from mom and pop operations with no good sense, but
large corporations are much more likely to be clueful enough to see
the impossibility of getting away with it.

--Jimbo


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> In the case that brought this up - [[Mozilla Firefox]] - the current
> version is a hideous piece of open-source hagiography that needs a severe
> NPOV of this sort.

:-)

Good catch.  As for me, I *love* Firefox, and I bet most of us do: so
this is where bias is likely to occur... areas where we are all in
such agreement anyway.

--Jimbo


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Opinion of the many?

body:
Probably not, but we don't need to feed them.
Mark

--- Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:

> Can someone please ban the trolls? Please? I've got
> better things to
> do with my time than read R.E. Broadley's attempts
> to needle RickK or
> the rantings of some "iridologist" with a
> personality problem.
>
> --Sheldon Rampton
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
> Moreover,   Wikipedia.org, a
> product of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. promotes disinformation,
> pornography and disgraceful displays of pornographic images under
> cover from arcane "company policies". Perhaps the long experience of
> its founder, Mr Jimbo Wales, a former CEO of Bomis and a leader of
> pornographic industry, explains such disgraceful, offensive company
> policies.

pardon? wikiporn? I must be working in the wrong parts of the 'pedia.
Or maybe its all so strange and kinky that i dont realise its a giant
database of porn that im editing. Poor me, under the illusion that it
was an encyclopedia.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database abstraction layer

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> Why did we write our own database abstraction layer when there's one
> already in PEAR?
>

Database abstraction is only a small part of what Database.php does.
PEAR has a couple of query-building functions -- a quoting function, for
instance. Our query-building functions are much better. Maybe we should
contribute what we have done to PEAR at some stage.

An interface to PEAR's DB module, or PHP's native dbx module, was in
fact the next Database subclass I wanted to write. It would be handy for
non-Wikimedia users.

You should think of Database.php as a query-building module rather than
a DB abstraction layer.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-29-11 at 16:52 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>
>>Evan Prodromou wrote:
>>
>>>My question: would anyone be freaked out if I migrated RC patrol to a
>>>single module using event hooks? I'm not 100% sure it can be done, but I
>>>think it would be a worthwhile exercise.
>>
>>After 1.4, or in a separate branch.
>
>
> Why?

Because we plan to have a 1.4 beta out within a few days. No more
experimental code for now, please. It's hard enough getting the existing
new features ready.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Encyclopediac standards

body:
On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 10:16:22AM +0900, wiki_tomos wrote:

> I recall that, on English Wikipedia, there was a list of songs whose lyrics do not contain the song title itself. On Japanese Wikipedia, there are some discussions if it is good to have lists of episode titles of TV programs.

At de: we have lists of lists and I fear even a list of lists of lists.
I can't remeber a discussion at de: about that but my suggestion would
be to move such lists to the category namespace, missing entries can
be put into the category description and viola, you have a cleaner
namespace.

> We already have entries on minor cartoonists, animation voice actors, female news casters, many fictional characters/weapons/places/events, etc. Isn't this going to tarnish our reputation and disappoint existing/potential academic-oriented participants, if not yet?

Bundle articles on the Star Wars characters and such. It's better to have
those in one article.
About minor cartoonists, find enough informations about them and you
can't delete them anymore.

> 1) What is the encyclopedia for in general, and Wikipedia for in specific?

An encyclopedia is for generally all knowledge. It's impossible to find
a clear line what to put into. At least we have to chance to collect more
knowledge cuz we have more space than any paper-encyclopedia.

> 2) The volume of TV, animation, and other leisure/entertainment related posts are quite large in Japanese Wikipedia.

And at de: we are strong in mathematics, informatique and news. Just don't
care, find people who know a lot about history and other weak topics and
invite them to write for wikipedia. And, don't hurry.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Encyclopediac standards

body:
Hi. I would like to know how different language-wikipedias are handling entries that are not necessarily "typically" encyclopediac.

I recall that, on English Wikipedia, there was a list of songs whose lyrics do not contain the song title itself. On Japanese Wikipedia, there are some discussions if it is good to have lists of episode titles of TV programs.

We already have entries on minor cartoonists, animation voice actors, female news casters, many fictional characters/weapons/places/events, etc. Isn't this going to tarnish our reputation and disappoint existing/potential academic-oriented participants, if not yet?

It has to do with, it seems, two major concerns.

1) What is the encyclopedia for in general, and Wikipedia for in specific?

2) The volume of TV, animation, and other leisure/entertainment related posts are quite large in Japanese Wikipedia.

This is not like an official inquiry from the Japanese Wikipedia community, but I personally thought if Wikipedians in other languages know some wise ways to handle them.

Also, please feel free to write in languages other than English, or point to past discussions or existing policy pages on your wikipedia. I personally cannot read them, but I think I can find someone's help at least on languages like de, fr, eo, es, ko, zh, ar, and some others. I personally would appreciate any information.

Thank you,

Tomos


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion of the many?

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Ah, but the field in question is diagnosis of disease, of which iridology is
>just one approach. Almost all experts in diagnosis of disease dismiss
>iridology.
>
>
This defining of fields is actually an interesting issue that is fairly
broad.  The one I'm particularly interested in is "mental illness".
According to some experts, this belongs within the field "philosophy of
mind"; according to other experts, it belongs within the field
"psychiatry"; and according to still other experts, it belongs within
the field "psychology".

I would caution in general being too rabidly in favor of the scientific
establishment (as represented by "experts"), as they seem to make quite
a lot of significant errors.  If Wikipedia had existed in the 19th
century, I would hope we would have covered the debate over racial
differences from all sides, rather than strongly taking the "racial
science" viewpoint and dismissing other viewpoints as "unscientific".  A
similar issue might have arisen in the 1930s, when the medical
establishment was firmly in favor of systematic forced sterilization of
"undesirables", but quite a lot of non-doctors were firmly against it
(the New England Journal of Medicine's editorial board even lamented
that the US was too religious to be as scientifically progressive as
Nazi Germany).

Of course, perhaps that was in the past and science is no longer biased,
but as a PhD student in a scientific field who sees the sort of politics
and shenanigans that go into deciding what papers get accepted for
publication in major journals and conferences, I wouldn't put money on it.

-Mark


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
The sanity of this  governmental agency is disputed.

-Snowspinner

On Nov 30, 2004, at 7:57 AM, James D. Forrester wrote:

> On Monday, November 29, 2004 18:44, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> [Snip]
>
>> How does he plan on getting your mailing addresses?
>>
>> RickK
>
> No idea, though there are several ways that I can think of (including
> what
> must surely be the most obvious, given that I have a domain). However,
> despite some odd decisions by some US courts, I somewhat doubt that
> the US
> Government's FTC branch's jurisdiction extends quite so far without
> some
> level of serious sanity checking.
>
> Yours,
> --
> James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
>
> Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
> IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: peter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on the main
page och any special page.

I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
and a good overview of all the topics would be great.

Any work done on this kind of feature?

     /Peter


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Problem in the Yiddish Wikipedia

body:
Two out of the four pages weren't even substubs. They were sub-sentences.

And this is four pages we're talking about, where the text was
restored within hours by the original editor, and when that happened I
did not revert it.

I'm beginning to wonder if you hold a grudge against me personally,
given the things you have said in private and public correspondence.

Mark

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 02:32:30 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Nov 29, 2004, at 2:14 PM, Jens Ropers wrote:
>
> > On 29 Nov 2004, at 08:46, Fallout wrote:
> >
> >> Well, I think that sub-substubs like "a singer" would also be deleted
> >> at
> >> any other Wikipedia. ~~~~
> >>
> >> --
> >> Ausir
> >
> > Are you sure?
> > http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085
> > http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme
> >
> > ;-)
> > \
>
> the other solution to a sub-stub is to expand it. People who can't
> expand a sub-stub because they are not language proficient should not
> be deleting them. As well what is a "sub-stub" is community defined by
> editors, and therefore should be left in each community to their own
> understanding of the level of activity.
>
> In short, if you can't fix it, you shouldn't be running around deleting
> it.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:17:35 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> >>After 1.4, or in a separate branch.
 >
> > Why?
>
> Because we plan to have a 1.4 beta out within a few days. No more
> experimental code for now, please. It's hard enough getting the existing
> new features ready.

Would it not therefore make sense to create a seperate branch for 1.4,
to seperate out the features that should be in that release? I'm
thinking not only about HEAD still being available for experiments
(like Evan's), but that certain features already committed will
probably want *backing out* of the code, as being too immature to
include in 1.4, or incomplete enough that their inclusion makes it
hard to stabilise the 1.4 beta. If they're still there in HEAD, they
can be added back in once they're a bit more stable, and potentially
still be part of the 1.4 release, or a point release shortly after.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
On Monday, November 29, 2004 18:44, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

[Snip]

> How does he plan on getting your mailing addresses?
>
> RickK

No idea, though there are several ways that I can think of (including what
must surely be the most obvious, given that I have a domain). However,
despite some odd decisions by some US courts, I somewhat doubt that the US
Government's FTC branch's jurisdiction extends quite so far without some
level of serious sanity checking.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
There are a number of differences here.

At the time that was written, fr.wikipedia was young, while it is not anymore.

Second of all, it is the sort of article which all languages should
have, and is timeless. It is more notable than Britney Spears, Yiddish
folk-heroes, and arguably more notable than "America", although that
one is debatable (Apples can be found in plenty of geographical
regions; America can only be found in the Western Hemisphere).

Third of all, it is a complete sentence. It is not simply "un fruit",
nor does it say "pommes sont un type de [[fruit]]" with [[Fruit]]
saying exclusively "Types de fruit: [[pomme]]s". (excuse my poor
French), nor does it say "Une pomme n'est pas une [[poire]]" with
[[Poire]] saying "Une poire n'est pas une [[pomme]]"

If the Britney Spears article said "???????? ??????? ?? ??
[[??????????? ???????|??????????? ?????]]" ("Britney Spears is a
[[popular singer]]") with an actual article of at least stub quality
at the "Popular Singer" page, it could reasonably be considered a
substub, but even if there was no article at "Popular Singer" I
probably wouldn'tve touched it, had it been an actual sentence.

The same thing goes for the America article. There was and is no text
at the article for continent, so a two-word article on America which
isn't even a full sentence cannot reasonably be considered a substub.

Mark

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 20:14:20 +0100, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2004, at 08:46, Fallout wrote:
>
> > Well, I think that sub-substubs like "a singer" would also be deleted
> > at
> > any other Wikipedia. ~~~~
> >
> > --
> > Ausir
>
> Are you sure?
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme
>
> ;-)
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>      www.ropersonline.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
On Tue, 2004-30-11 at 12:02 +0100, peter wrote:

>
> Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on the main
> page och any special page.
>
> I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
> and a good overview of all the topics would be great.
>
> Any work done on this kind of feature?

I don't think so.

You have a couple of options I can think of:

     1. Make a category tree, and have a "top" category. Include this
        top category on your Main Page as a template. That'd just give
        you an _index_ of all categories, though -- not a ToC.
     2. Do a Table of Contents by hand.
     3. Add an extension to do it.

G'luck,

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:38:47 +0000 (GMT), Gabriel Beecham
<gabriel_beecham at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
[snip]
> On another matter, can someone tell me to what
> MediaWiki messages the days and months were moved when
> they were made MediaWiki messages a while ago?

Have they?  I was under the impression this hadn't happened yet, as
when this was mentioned within the last month for another language
(Anglo-Saxon) the response was that day/month name updates would
require a language module update.

If day and month names have been moved into Mediawiki, I would hope
someone would mention it at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_languageXX.php_update.

Steve


body:
On Tue, 2004-30-11 at 09:11 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:

> You should think of Database.php as a query-building module rather than
> a DB abstraction layer.

But it's both.

I guess I'm mainly worried that this huge change was made without
considering other options. There wasn't any discussion on this list that
I can find, and the change isn't documented on meta, AFAICT. Publishing
design decisions can be a good way to avoid second-guessing by people
like me after the code is written.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:
> despite some odd decisions by some US courts, I somewhat doubt that the US
> Government's FTC branch's jurisdiction extends quite so far without some
> level of serious sanity checking.

Indeed, no, the FTC deals in market regulation. Any supposed wrongdoing
by a non-profit that engages in no trade or commerce to speak of would
be of interest primarily to the IRS and DOJ or state-level agencies.

Like myself, the FTC would probably be wondering what bizarre idea
Irismeister has of what the "T" in "FTC" stands for.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:02:22 +0100, peter <peter at wa.se> wrote:
>
>
> Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on the main
> page och any special page.
>
> I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
> and a good overview of all the topics would be great.
>
> Any work done on this kind of feature?

Put __TOC__ in the article text where you want it och observe the effect;)

>
>      /Peter
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Peter Andersson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:02:22 +0100, peter <peter at wa.se> wrote:
>
>>
>>Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on the main
>>page och any special page.
>>
>>I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
>>and a good overview of all the topics would be great.
>>
>>Any work done on this kind of feature?
>
>
> Put __TOC__ in the article text where you want it och observe the effect;)

Quite good, but not exactly what I was looking form. I want to be able
on the Main Page put in a complete index of all pages in the wiki like:

Main Page
	Main Page:About
	Main Page:What is this
Help
	Help:How to add and edit pages
	Help:Syntax

and so on...

      /PEter


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Language names capitalization

body:
Hi,

Someone mentioned the following links.?That's very useful.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2003-10/msg00046.html
http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/dropbox/C-sharp-LocaleNames.html

Yann
--
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http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
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