from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Hi,

there's been some movement forward on the Single User Login (SUL) issue. I
ask the Board to review this mail carefully as this has significant long-
term implications and we need Board input to go ahead. I also ask other
developers to correct me if I misrepresent anything.

There are currently three competing strategies. Before I describe these
strategies, let me point out that one important consideration for any
system is scalability. That is, single login will be used on all existing
and future Wikimedia projects, and potentially even on non-Wikimedia sites
which we allow to participate in our system.

The three strategies are:

1) GLOBAL NAMESPACE, IMMEDIATE CONFLICT RESOLUTION

We try to move towards a single global user namespace for all Wikimedia
wikis. If a name is already taken in the global namespace, you have to
find one which isn't.

For the migration, any names which clearly belong to the same user are
combined into one. If passwords and email addresses are different, the
user can manually link together any accounts which belong to him by
providing the passwords.

For cases of true name conflicts between the existing wikis, there is a
resolution phase, where factors like seniority, use on multiple wikis vs.
a single one, etc., are weighed in - the "loser" has to choose a new
account name.

After the manual resolution phase, any remaining accounts are converted to
the new system automatically by making them unique, e.g. by adding a
number to the username. The transition is now complete. The old system no
longer exists.

2) GLOBAL NAMESPACE COEXISTING WITH LOCAL ONES, DEFERRED CONFLICT
RESOLUTION

As in 1), we migrate all existing accounts to the new global namespace
automatically if possible. New accounts are created in the global
namespace.

Where there are people sharing the same name, the accounts will not be
migrated to the global namespace but will stay in the local ones, which
will continue to coexist. These people can keep using their local IDs, or
create a new, different global identity.

The idea here is that resolving name conflicts is so complicated that we
simply defer the issue for now.

3) GLOBAL COMPUTER-READABLE ID, LOCAL HUMAN-READABLE NAMES

Every user has a global, numeric ID which is unique. But for each wiki,
they can have a different username. As in strategy 1), any clearly
identical accounts will be linked to a single GUID automatically, others
can be hooked up by providing the passwords.

Naming conflicts are not an issue in this system. Let's say I am Eloquence
on en: and de:, and there is another Eloquence on fr:. I get the global ID
1233, the fr: user gets the ID 28387. When I go to fr: and try to edit a
page, I get a prompt:

         The username you have chosen is already in use on this wiki.
         Please specify a new name:
         ____________________________________

         If this is your account and it has not been linked to your
         global ID yet, please provide the password:
         ___________________________________

If I go to another wiki with no user named Eloquence on it, however, the
local username "Eloquence" will be reserved for me the moment I edit it or
set my local prefs. This is because the system knows that "Eloquence" is
my preferred username, and will automatically try to create it for me when
I need it.  I can change the name later, if I want, and use different
names on different wikis.

- - - - -

The differences:

1) is very complex, and we may not find someone willing to deal with the
name conflict resolution issue and take the blame from annoyed users at
the same time. Naming conflicts will always be an issue in this scheme, as
e.g. all common first names will be taken, and any small wiki hooking up
with our SUL system would feel this impact. People can mutate these
usernames relatively easily to make them unique - Erik333 - and the system
can offer such mutations, but it's still a bit annoying.

2) is easiest to implement by avoiding the conflict issue. Brion has
expressed interest in coding this. It will annoy some people who can
choose between using their local name and keeping their attributions, or a
global one, and losing their attributions, at least until things like
linking up local accounts to a global one are implemented. It leads to
some ugliness in the system because we are in an "in-between" state for
now.

3) does not have the naming conflict problem. Both Jamesday and Kate have
expressed interest in implementing it. Jamesday also wants to write a more
detailed proposal on Meta about it. For the user, it is fairly straight-
forward -- existing accounts can be hooked up easily to the single login,
new names are picked only when necessary. It is somewhat vulnerable to
trolling, as someone could e.g. register the name Eloquence on a wiki
where I am not active, and use it for nefarious purposes. The system could
however make it fairly easy to find out that this is not the same person
(on the user page: "This user is active on the following wikis: .. under
these names: ..").

In any case, we want username changes to be a cheap operation, so that
anti-trolling policies should be easily enforcable.

The question for the Board is: Given that we have at least two, and
possibly three, implementations where there are volunteers, which one
should we choose? To me, this seems to be a matter that could be decided
by the Board; others have said that a poll will be necessary first. Either
way is fine with me - what does the Board say?

Regards,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Single login - decision 2004


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Reinhardt Wiewe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Delay of emails

body:
replaying to
>The mail server sometimes gets clogged up and stops delivering mail
>until it's restarted. We haven't quite figured out why yet.

Is there a IRC channel or an ICQ no to report if the mailserver is down?
I think that it is quite simple to detect this:
a) If you report a bug at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/ and will not be notified
b) if you canot login at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikibugs-l ...

Regards Reinhardt


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>My computer when seeing a .ogg-file, automatically assumes it's a
>sound file, and thus I cannot see this movie.
>
I've seen .ogm as a fairly common exception for "ogg with movie data",
with .ogg being reserved for Ogg Vorbis audio.  Not sure if Xiph has an
opinion on this, but it's becoming the de facto standard naming scheme
on the internets, because most people use Windows, and Windows needs
extensions to be different to associate them with different programs, so
overloading .ogg is problematic as long as ogg audio and ogg video are
handled by different players.

-Mark


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Delay of emails

body:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 05:05:24 +0100, Reinhardt Wiewe
<reinhardt.wiewe at lenauschule.de> wrote:
> >The mail server sometimes gets clogged up and stops delivering mail
> >until it's restarted. We haven't quite figured out why yet.
>
> Is there a IRC channel or an ICQ no to report if the mailserver is down?

irc.freenode.net #mediawiki is normally a good place.

Kate.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> there's been some movement forward on the Single User Login (SUL)
> issue.

I would prefer #3.

I think this is the solution with the least long term issues.

Only problem: Do you need your userid number to log in?

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Dori

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Single login - decision 2004

body:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:36:42 +0100, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> <snip>
> > The question for the Board is: Given that we have at least two, and
> > possibly three, implementations where there are volunteers, which one
> > should we choose? To me, this seems to be a matter that could be decided
> > by the Board; others have said that a poll will be necessary first. Either
> > way is fine with me - what does the Board say?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Erik
>
> Hello,
>
> Maybe we should analyse the usernames and try to get data about
> conflicting name. Maybe there is only a handful of conflict ?

Kate ran a query on just de and en and there were several thousand
conflicts (about 3000 or 4000 whose passwords and/or emails did not
match).

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


from_name: Lars Alvik

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [...] An honorable compromise and no: or nb:
	for Bokmaal?

body:
P? 12. nov. 2004 kl. 06.44 skrev <jneden at bellsouth.net>:

> Hi, everyone
>
> Thank you all for your intelligent comments. This has been a most
> interesting discussion.
>
> Ulf, I am glad to hear that I have as good of a grasp of the Norwegian
> language situation as I seem to. ;-) I started teaching myself
> "Norwegian" (bokm?l) between ages 13 and 14 (I actually have no idea
> when I really started learning; it just happened over time) and
> quickly came to understand the situation regarding Norwegian dialects.
>
> Lars (Alvik), you, like many bokm?l users, are indeed tired of
> nynorsk. However, a large percentage of the Norwegian population and
> the Norwegian community uses nynorsk exclusively in school and in
> their daily life. While you might prefer for everyone to use your form
> (bokm?l) and be done with it, you resent that nynorsk has equal status
> and you are required (in terms of your schooling) to use a form of the
> Norwegian language with which you are neither familiar nor explicitly
> comfortable. However, nynorsk users (people who GROW UP using nynorsk)
> have to do the same thing with bokm?l--and they are not necessarily
> happy about it. "Samnorsk" doesn't work because nobody wants to change
> that which they have grown up using or been forced to use, and, to a
> large degree, both sides of the nynorsk/bokm?l debate resent each
> other's encroaching presence in standardized language, especially if
> Norway were to shift to some "samnorsk" version. Nynorsk deserves its
> place, as does bokm?l, bu
>  t neither form is *the* Norwegian language, and that's a fact. There
> is no single "Norwegian" language form that's truly Norwegian--and if
> we were to find one to adopt, nynorsk would undoubtedly be it. It's
> really just a dialect spectrum with two standardized versions. There's
> nothing wrong with nynorsk or bokm?l, but they are different, and
> that's okay.

What? you make me sound like a languagenazi, i'm indeed not tired of
nynorsk, i'm tired of the _debate_, we have had the debate with
slightly changing theme over and over and over again, on no: that's. I
could spot one flaw, a lot of people speak a dialect that's apparantly
closer to nynorsk, but write in bokm?l. In some parts of norway
(Finnmark) there has been talk of ditching nynorsk from the schoolplan
(very few Finnmarkinger talks nynorsk), on the behalf of Samii and
finnish.

I don't want to wreck the nynorsk wiki, infact the wiki we're talking
about is predominantly on Bokm?l (some 90%+ of the articles).

> Ja, jeg forst?r bokm?l, men jeg snakker bedre engelsk, og wikipedia-l
> er p? engelsk. *shrug* ;-)
>
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>> To most non-Norwegians, and I think also for many Norwegians, the
>> concept of
>> the "Norwegian" language (written and spoken) is easy to understand
>> and unambigious.   [meaning that for most foreigners, Norwegian =
>> Bokm?l]
>
> Many people do equate bokm?l with "Norwegian," but I think that's
> purely because most non-Norwegians initially learn to understand the
> Norwegian dialects with absolutely no knowledge of the dialects of
> Norway. People should know, but it's rarely specified to foreigners.
> Eventually, they realize that there are two official Norwegian forms
> and don't even know WHICH form they use, because happenstance
> arbitrarily picked a form for them (likely bokm?l) and never explained
> that there are two equally acceptable Norwegian standards. Most
> foreigners really don't know of the bokm?l/nynorsk contrast, and
> "teach yourself Norwegian" publications are usually (but never
> explained to be) in bokm?l. We need to educate them. It's unfair to
> encourage people to think of bokm?l, one of two official standards, as
> *the* Norwegian language.

That's why we want to change the interwikicoding to "norsk (bokm?l)"
and "norsk (nynorsk)" (if nynorsk is willing to go along on the last
one).
The only problem is apparantly the language code no:.

> Ulf wrote:
>
>> My reply to both of these comments is (and I hope there are some Mac
>> or Linux
>> users on this list, or my point may be moot):
>
> [...]
>
>> When Bokm?l users or Nynorsk users pretend this, the other group is
>> just as upset
>> as amerindians are when third generation European Americans pretend
>> to have
>> monopoly on American heritage.
>
> Oh, your point strikes such a strong chord for me. I understand
> perfectly, for a variety of reasons. I am no Linux expert, but I have
> used Linux in the past and am currently suffering under Windows XP.
> More importantly, I am myself an American Indian. Additionally (and
> humorously!), in terms of my mother's family, I am a third-generation
> American, although I am really part of a long line of Americans over
> *millenia* (a NATIVE American!) :-). There are some fascinating things
> to talk about and explain here, regarding Native America and my own
> family, but I'll digress for sake of space.  My friend, there are
> three main things at work in regards to our "white" friends'
> perceptions:
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> "Token-Indianism" -- You are my little Indian. We ["white" people] own
> the Indians. "Today, many of *our* Indians live in poverty. We must
> help them [and we have no knowledge whatsoever about the past or about
> Native communities]." "My *Indian* friend says," etc. It's all about
> stereotypes, a "lesser evil" extension of colonialism, and ignorance.
>
> "Pan-Indianism" -- Indians are one big culture.
>
> AND... (drumroll)
>
> Colonialism (cultural genocide). My culture is better than your
> culture, and *we* (the foreigners) are the real American culture. And
> the lovely "noble savage" concept (a combination of colonialism and
> token-Indianism).
>
> I love statements from like the following from "all-American"
> middle-aged "white" women (or wannabes) with no knowledge of one
> Native culture, much less ALL Native cultures:
>
> "I went up to an Indian reservation and there weren't any real Indians
> there/there were just a bunch of Mexicans there (1)! Where did all our
> Indians (2) go?! This great culture (3) must be saved (4)!"
>
> (1) pan-Indianism + ignorance
> (2) token Indianism + colonialism + ignorance
> (3) Read "these noble savages."
> (4) First her ancestors decimate entire cultures. Then she has no clue
> about Native communities and is operating out of all the wrong motives
> (including the pure idiocy of finding "real Indians" to her liking).
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> Imagine the uproar in Scandinavia if everybody outside of Scandinavia
> thought that all Scandinavians were the same. In Norway alone,
> everybody would be freaking out from the village level to the fylker
> and onwards. And you know that Norwegians and other Scandinavians
> share so much in common but are very different.

Not really, a uproar? Norway, not likely?

> Now imagine the most diverse continent possible with hundreds and
> hundreds of distinct cultural *groups* (not to mention distinct
> cultures), nearly 100 language families, hundreds of languages and
> thousands of traditions that change from family to family. That's how
> insane pan-Indianism really is, and why I am not an "American Indian,"
> because an "American Indian" does not exist: it matters which people
> you come from. There was no "Indian" cohesion before Europeans set
> themselves down on our birthright.
>
> But back to Norwegian! ;-)
>
> You guys figure out what to do about no:. I agree with Ulf. Norway has
> a special lingual situation and the greater Norwegian language (the
> spectrum of dialects and the two official versions) *does* merit
> special treatment. It's rude to nynorsk users to act as if bokm?l is
> *the* Norwegian, and it's even worse if we ever want foreigners to
> understand the bokm?l/nynorsk contrast. In the best case, I am in
> favor of two specific Norwegian encyclopedia communities: nynorsk and
> bokm?l. I'll leave it to you all to figure out what you will do, but
> to be fairest to all parties, no: should probably serve as a redirect
> to nynorsk and bokm?l.

Bokm?l on no: or nb: that's the question we are debating, the debate
that we should include a nynorsk language wiki was over long ago.

> (I'm actually a bokm?l user, mainly, but I put nynorsk first when
> comparing them to go against the trend of thinking of bokm?l first.
> ^_^)
>
> Ha det bra!

Damit, your norwegian is probably better than my english :)

>
>  -- Jeremy Edenfield
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for Bokm?l?
>       (Stirling Newberry)
>    2. Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for Bokm?l? (Ulf
> Lunde)
>    3. Re: Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for Bokm?l?
>       (Lars Alvik)
>    4. Re: Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for Bokm?l?
>       (Lars Alvik)
>    5. Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for (Olve Utne)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> <reply>_______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Replacing the Encyclopedia Britannica? Wikipedia,
 a Collaboratively, Developed Copyleft Encyclopedia

body:
Replacing the Encyclopedia Britannica? Wikipedia, a Collaboratively
Developed Copyleft Encyclopedia
For: OSDDP
By: Sarah Mitchell
Mary Anne Robbins
Andrea Stover
Date: October 18, 2004

http://pw.english.purdue.edu/osddp/files/issues/WikipediaFinal%5B1%5D.pdf


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] IRC

body:
For me freenet is unavailable. I do not know where else to report it..
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
--- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 07:18:09 -0800 (PST), Christopher Mahan
> <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I would prefer #3.
> >
> > I think this is the solution with the least long term issues.
> >
> > Only problem: Do you need your userid number to log in?
>
> I think no. You login on some wiki, and use your login name and
> password from that specific wiki. Then the system connects that
> login
> name to a userid, and that userid would be stored in or connected
> to
> your cookie. At least that's how I envision things.
>
> Andre Engels

Scenario:

Person A is Joe on EN
Person B is Joe on FR

Person A has ID 123
Person B has ID 456

Person A goes to EN, logs in as Joe, and gets ID 123, then goes to
FR, and everythig is great.

While in FR, session times out. Person A, now in FR, tries to login
again, as Joe. Oops, not possible, user Joe has a different password
(because Joe on FR is really person B)

So you would have to go to the wiki that you originally registered
your username with in order to log in.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
> > But it's for your [or avid
> > clueless windows users'] own good.

How about allowing people to do what they want, including making
mistakes. It's what freedom is about.

As far as ogg and ogm and theora and all that stuff:

I agree in theory that this is the best, for licensing issue when
distributing the wikipedia, to have audio and video not formatted in
proprietary, patent-encumbered, or licensed codecs.

I also agree that the user should not have to jump through hoops.

I propose that both ogg/ogm files AND mpeg/mp3/whatever files be
available, online. Offsite CD/DVD dists should have only the ogg/ogm,
but those CDs and DVDs could also include viewers for the files.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] the AC needs people with free time and interest

body:
> Once someone does sort through it, and proposes something, the actual
> voting is comparatively unproblematic.  There have been occasions when
> voting has been too slow, but that can be dealt with by e.g. leaving
> nagging messages on peoples' talk pages.  The biggest and hardest to
> overcome delays are those where voting has simply never started, because
> nobody had the time or inclination to wade through the pile of evidence
> and accusations to distill a set of options to vote on in the first
> place.  How to solve that I don't really know.

It shouldn't be awfully hard. At the moment, we have less than half
the arbitrators prepared to do this - Fred, James, Mav, Jw and Raul. I
don't think I've missed anyone. The simple answer is that we need
another seven who are equally prepared to put in the time and get this
done.

-- ambi


from_name: Angela

body:
> The question for the Board is: Given that we have at least two, and
> possibly three, implementations where there are volunteers, which one
> should we choose? To me, this seems to be a matter that could be decided
> by the Board; others have said that a poll will be necessary first. Either
> way is fine with me - what does the Board say?

I don't feel this ought to be a board decision at the moment. I
suggest a non-binding poll of the community take place first. This can
be used to inform the developers and also to help to adjust the
current proposals for single-login. I'd rather the developer committee
came to a consensus about this issue, based on the results of the
poll, since it is them who have to create the single login feature.
There is little point in the board saying make it all magically work
for an option that is disliked by the community or not likely to be
coded.

Angela.


from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the AC needs people with free time and interest

body:
I'd just like to note a few more things on
arbitration, keeping it short, if I can.  I completely
agree with Mark's (Delirium's) comments.  It is a
ridiculously difficult thing to settle these disputes.
 Especially when people seem to have infinite free
time to dredge up everything a user has ever done
since their arrival at WP 2 years prior.  The claims
and counterclaims go on for ages.  Often-times this
evidence is not in a very user-friendly format.  It
takes ages to go through it all, and as a result I
often end up with poor impressions  of a case because
I've had to read it piecemeal over several days.  I
have no idea how to solve that.  The fact that this
task is mind-numbingly boring is not much relieved by
the general grumbling in the community (regardless of
how a case is decided, someone hates me, often
publically...and usually there are dozens more who
post to the mailing list that we're either
inconsistent or punitive or soft on trolls or trolls
ourselves or just too damn slow).  That, I think we
can solve in part.  But it will take a restoration of
trust, which is always difficult.

Ambi's comments are very generous to me -- the fact is
that I don't do the heavy lifting, so cut me from your
list, if you would.  I do what I can to offer the
occasional proposal, but I'd say that 95-98% of all
proposal making is the work of Fred, James F., and
Martin.  I try hard to keep up with cases and vote on
proposals once made (and occasionally offer a
counter-proposal), but the work of actually deciding a
reasonable consequence to propose is too great for me.
 I'll do my best to do more in this arena in the
coming weeks, but frankly it's a very tough task, and
I don't want the credit for it -- in the last 2-3
months, it's been the three people I mention above,
and my hat is off to all of them (Fred especially).
And I say this with no disrespect intended to my
fellow non-proposers -- I know all too well the
position we're in.

I won't comment on the rest of the AC proposals....all
of them have their advantages and drawbacks.  I do
want to clarify my remakrs about IRC, though.  I have
no problem with arbitrators using an IRC channel to
deliberate in simple ways (perhaps it would help in
the formulation of proposals).  I thought the proposal
had been to have the arbitration, complete with agreed
punishments, happening in real time on IRC.  That is
the possibility I cannot abide.  If the AC used IRC
merely as an official way of opening deliberations
(while still making proposals and leaving comments in
the open and public wiki, holding all voting there), I
could live with that more reasonably (though I would
still have issues with the speed of my connection, I
think -- but I'm not tech-savvy enough to be sure).

Thanks for reading yet another lengthy rambling -- I
am hopeful that the AC is getting onto the right
track, and I wish us all well in getting there.

James R. (Jwrosenzweig)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Technical difficulties?

body:
On Nov 12, 2004, at 9:56 AM, Christian_Lair at i2.com wrote:
> I'm installing MediaWiki for the first time. I ran into some problems
> with
> the install in which I had to set the MySQL root account to use the old
> password authentication method. I seem to have fixed that problem, but
> now
> I'm running into this:

If you only altered the root account, the newly created user for the
wiki will still be created with the new authentication method and
things will immediately fail.

The correct fix is to recompile PHP against the updated MySQL 4.1
libraries. You might also be able to set the MySQL server to use the
old authentication method for _all_ users all the time, but I haven't
tested this.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 11/11/04 4:41 PM, "Rebecca" <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Once someone does sort through it, and proposes something, the actual
>> voting is comparatively unproblematic.  There have been occasions when
>> voting has been too slow, but that can be dealt with by e.g. leaving
>> nagging messages on peoples' talk pages.  The biggest and hardest to
>> overcome delays are those where voting has simply never started, because
>> nobody had the time or inclination to wade through the pile of evidence
>> and accusations to distill a set of options to vote on in the first
>> place.  How to solve that I don't really know.
>
> It shouldn't be awfully hard. At the moment, we have less than half
> the arbitrators prepared to do this - Fred, James, Mav, Jw and Raul. I
> don't think I've missed anyone. The simple answer is that we need
> another seven who are equally prepared to put in the time and get this
> done.
>
My problem isn't the wading through the evidence. I actually enjoy that.
It's coming up with the list of "Findings of fact" and "principle" in the
proper form...I can handle a conversational analysis much more easily. I
think what I need to do is make a list of the findings of fact and principle
we've used previously. Maybe I'll do that right now.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Option 3 looks best to me. The trolling issue would be no worse than it is now.
One way to *improve* that potential issue would be to grandfather-in currently
conflicting names as proposed in option 3 but lock user names from now on.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> My problem isn't the wading through the evidence. I actually enjoy that.
> It's coming up with the list of "Findings of fact" and "principle" in the
> proper form...I can handle a conversational analysis much more easily.

Thus my proposal of using IRC to help formulate those items. Note: IRC would
just be used as a means to quickly chat with each other so we can bounce ideas
around. We would *not* vote on IRC or post anything official there. Just talk
and try to work things out. Everything official would still be posted on the
wiki (as well as longer format discussion when needed).

> I think what I need to do is make a list of the findings of fact and
principle
> we've used previously. Maybe I'll do that right now.

Yes - that would be very helpful (and something I've thought about doing
myself).

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
I too object to using Wikipedia as a means of advancing a proprietary
product which helps fund a competing product (En carta) and other
competing proprietary products.

If Microsoft wants to promote its proprietary solutions, that is, of
course, their business. However wiki should not be in the business of
encouraging Proprietary software, since, there is no telling when at a
later time that software will be altered to include spyware, new
licensing or platform restrictions, or other forms of restrictions of
use.

On Nov 12, 2004, at 10:58 AM, Andre Engels wrote:

>>> In the name of freedom, we
>>> are enforcing a non-standard format,
>>
>> On the contrary, we are enforcing STANDARD formats, and more, OPEN
>> STANDARD
>> formats. Don't confuse "standard" with "installed on most proprietary
>> overmarketed systems"; availability does not make it standard. It is
>> right
>> to note, that the standard formats are not yet as widespread, but do
>> not
>> mix these.
>
> I am not here to discuss semantics, and I readily admit to using a
> suboptimal term when saying "standard".


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
On Nov 12, 2004, at 11:28 AM, Andre Engels wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 03:03:58 +1100, David Gerard
> <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>> Andre Engels (andreengels at gmail.com) [041113 02:58]:
>>
>>> Yes, they match the definition. But there are other formats that
>>> match
>>> the definition just as well, but that you want to forbid because you
>>> prefer your free formats to formats that are free only in practice
>>> but
>>> not in theory and want to force your opinion upon me and others.
>>
>>
>> You've convinced me. I move we make data dumps only available in the
>> universal standard format, i.e. MS Word documents.
>
> Are you deliberately misunderstanding me, or am I just not being
> clear? I am not the one who is prescribing any formats. I want to
> _extend_ the allowed formats. I'm not in favor of converting material
> to any format I prefer, but in not converting material that comes in
> in such a format.
>

You've made yourself quite clear, which is why at least two people are
very angry with you, and object on moral grounds to what you are doing.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for Bokmål?

body:
In a previous posting, I wrote:
> Sorry, your Microsoft analogy doesn't help.

I should clarify this.  While Microsoft has a dominating position in
the desktop computing software market, this situation is too far from
the language situation in Norway to be a useful analogy.  Microsoft is
a single vendor with a marketing department, and there is no
corresponding agency (or conspiracy) behind the majority language in
Norway.

Bokm?l is today the name for the dominating written language in
Norway, but this name was not invented by the users of the same.
They themselves called it Norwegian, because they contrasted their
spelling to Danish, starting in the 1840s.  Only in the late 19th
century when Ivar Aasen's Landsm?l (country language, a synthesis of
dialects) had entered the scene, did the need arise for a name for the
other version, and in 1899 it was officially named Riksm?l (nation
language, as opposed to country language).  In 1929, Riksm?l was
renamed to Bokm?l (book language) and Landsm?l to Nynorsk (new
Norwegian), and today's Riksm?l is a classic form of Bokm?l.

It is estimated that 85 percent of Norwegians use Bokm?l today, and
the old popular movement for Landsm?l, once filled with hopes of
democratization and progress and higher education available to all,
appears somewhat like Esperanto.  I'm a great admirer of the Esperanto
movement, and they might have a better chance on the Internet than
anytime before.  But I write this message in English, because that way
I will reach more readers.  To most Bokm?l contributors to no:, it
has felt natural simply to call it "the Norwegian Wikipedia", because
it is neither in English nor Danish.  It might be a good idea to call
it "norsk (bokm?l)", but I'm surprised by the strong sentiments that
met me when I suggest the renaming of no: to nb: would be unnecessary.

There is an oppression component here, where the mere number of people
who prefer Bokm?l creates a problem for the brave Nynorsk minority.
For example, parents trying to teach their children Nynorsk might find
fewer choices of spelling training software for Nynorsk, or a daily
newspaper in Nynorsk might not be available for your town.  This
situation is similar to women entering professions with a male
dominance or for ethanol car owners trying to find a gas [sic!]
station where they can fill up ethanol.  Political correctness or
affirmative action can lead to titles such as "mailman" being changed
to "letter carrier" (a translation of the German/Scandinavian
Brieftr?ger/brevb?rare), but as far as I know gas/petrol stations
have not (yet) been renamed to fuel stations.

But this kind of perceived oppression is not a conspiracy.  Most
mailmen didn't chose a profession based on a desire to suppress women,
most gasoline drivers didn't actively chose to avoid ethanol or
diesel, and the majority of Norwegians don't hate Ivar Aasen, even
though they prefer to read and write in a language that resembles that
of the former Danish regime.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Christian_Lair at i2.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Technical difficulties?

body:
I'm installing MediaWiki for the first time. I ran into some problems with
the install in which I had to set the MySQL root account to use the old
password authentication method. I seem to have fixed that problem, but now
I'm running into this:

Checking environment...
      PHP 5.0.2: the MonoBook skin will be disabled due to an
      incompatibility between the PHPTAL template library and PHP 5. The
      wiki should function normally, but with the older look and feel.
      PHP server API is apache; ok, using pretty URLs (index.php/Page_Title
      )
      Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support.
      PHP is configured with no memory_limit.
      No zlib support.
      Couldn't find GD library or ImageMagick; image thumbnailing disabled.
      Installation directory: /data/local/apache-dso/htdocs/wiki
      Script URI path:
      Connected as root (automatic)
      Connected to database... 4.1.7-standard-log; enabling MySQL 4
      enhancements
      Created database wikidb
      Creating tables... done.
      Initializing data...
      Granting user permissions...
      Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and
      cannot contact the database server.

      The thing that I don't understand is that the installation was able
      to contact the server, it actually created the database and created
      the user. Am I missing something obvious here? I'm not that good with
      MySQL. Any help that anyone can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Christian Lair


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for
	Bokm?l?

body:
I am not a part of the problem either, and maybe I don't get all the points.

There are countries with more than one official language, and it seems to be
the case in Norwegia.

Is there "switzer" wikipedia for switzerland, which would use mixed german,
french and italian articles? I don't think there should be one.

If there would be a "Norwegian language" it would be right to have a
wikipedia for it. Reading the infos (mainly from [[norwegian language]]) it
seems that there is no such thing. There are languages used in Norwegia,
Nyorsk and Bokma~l and whatever, so they should have their own Wikipedia,
since they're different enough and official enough.

The "norwegian" wikipedia should cease to exist, and should be probably
replaced by a single page showing neat links to the respective languages
used in norwegia. Interlanguage links should be updated from no: to the
respective languages, and articles moved too, fixed or probably both.

Naturally I only tried to use logic and not emotions (it seems to be the
main driving force of this heated debate).

And usual general disclaimer apply: I may be wrong and clueless. Definitely
nosy.

Peter
[[user:grin]]


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
First off, I would strongly suggest that everyone
think a little more about the words they use and the
tone they set.

Second, if we are in fact wanting to force people to
use free open software, the most effective way to do
it would be to remove all the tweaks in the code/css
to accommodate IE. When people complain, insist that
they install a completely free and open browser. Of
course, we'd end up pissing-off more than half of our
user base, and Wikipedia would return to being "just
another web page." The point is that even though we
are in favor of free and open software, there are
other goals that we hold more important.

Personally, I did not join Wikipedia in order to
advance open source software. I'm much more interested
in making an encyclopedia that is accessible by all.
As I see it, that should be our first and most
important goal.

WARNING! LONG RANT TO FOLLOW

I'd also like to say a few words on behalf of the
"Windoze Lemmings" of the world. I use Windows,
currently Windows XP. My family has three computers,
all of them running XP. I also use IE on all the
systems. I am well aware that there are other browsers
out there, but I also have a life to live. I want to
keep those three computers as similar as possible, and
to keep them relatively close to "normal".

I don't do this because I am technology idiot. At the
company where I formerly for over 10 years, I
maintained over 20 computers, while also coding
software -- mostly for custom-built
microcontroller-based systems with no operating system
or with bare-bones real-time cores. I cut my teeth on
CPM, worked for years in DOS and RT-11, and made the
painful transitions from DOS to Win3.1 to Win95 to
Win98 to Win2000 to WinXP. I also spent some time
fiddling with AmigaDOS, and even have some (tiny)
exposure to whatever-it-is-they-call-the-OS on
IBM370's (can you say punched cards?).

I've never been a regular Mac user (in the early days
it was just to damn expensive), and I don't find any
compelling reason to switch to the Apple hardware and
OSX (or whatever).

I also understand that Linix is finally beginning to
be available in truly user-friendly forms. When I
looked into Redhat some 5 years ago (when people were
telling me it was really user friendly), I met with
nothing but frustration.

Sure, I'd love to stop shelling out too much cash to
Microsoft for its OS and everything else. I also cheer
whenever MS loses a lawsuit. But, when I use a
computer at the university, its WinXP. When my wife
goes to work, its WinXP. When my kids go to school,
its WinXP. It's going to take a hefty amount of
convincing for me to give up all my hard-won
experience and start using a defacto non-standard
system.

So, watch the name calling, OK? Lemmings (as you use
the word in "Windoze Lemmings") are creatures who
follow the leader without thinking. Every step on my
journey was taken knowing there were advantages and
disadvantages involved. You can question whether I
made the correct decisions, but don't suggest that I,
and all the rest of the Windows world, are following
without thought and without knowledge.

END OF RANT

Thanks, I just wanted to get all that off my chest.

Rich Holton (en:wikipedia:Rholton)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for Bokmål?

body:
P? 12. nov. 2004 kl. 11.55 skrev Lars Aronsson:

> In a previous posting, I wrote:
>> Sorry, your Microsoft analogy doesn't help.
>
> I should clarify this.  While Microsoft has a dominating position in
> the desktop computing software market, this situation is too far from
> the language situation in Norway to be a useful analogy.  Microsoft is
> a single vendor with a marketing department, and there is no
> corresponding agency (or conspiracy) behind the majority language in
> Norway.
>
> Bokm?l is today the name for the dominating written language in
> Norway, but this name was not invented by the users of the same.
> They themselves called it Norwegian, because they contrasted their
> spelling to Danish, starting in the 1840s.  Only in the late 19th
> century when Ivar Aasen's Landsm?l (country language, a synthesis of
> dialects) had entered the scene, did the need arise for a name for the
> other version, and in 1899 it was officially named Riksm?l (nation
> language, as opposed to country language).  In 1929, Riksm?l was
> renamed to Bokm?l (book language) and Landsm?l to Nynorsk (new
> Norwegian), and today's Riksm?l is a classic form of Bokm?l.
>
> It is estimated that 85 percent of Norwegians use Bokm?l today, and
> the old popular movement for Landsm?l, once filled with hopes of
> democratization and progress and higher education available to all,
> appears somewhat like Esperanto.  I'm a great admirer of the Esperanto
> movement, and they might have a better chance on the Internet than
> anytime before.  But I write this message in English, because that way
> I will reach more readers.  To most Bokm?l contributors to no:, it
> has felt natural simply to call it "the Norwegian Wikipedia", because
> it is neither in English nor Danish.  It might be a good idea to call
> it "norsk (bokm?l)", but I'm surprised by the strong sentiments that
> met me when I suggest the renaming of no: to nb: would be unnecessary.
>
> There is an oppression component here, where the mere number of people
> who prefer Bokm?l creates a problem for the brave Nynorsk minority.
> For example, parents trying to teach their children Nynorsk might find
> fewer choices of spelling training software for Nynorsk, or a daily
> newspaper in Nynorsk might not be available for your town.  This
> situation is similar to women entering professions with a male
> dominance or for ethanol car owners trying to find a gas [sic!]
> station where they can fill up ethanol.  Political correctness or
> affirmative action can lead to titles such as "mailman" being changed
> to "letter carrier" (a translation of the German/Scandinavian
> Brieftr?ger/brevb?rare), but as far as I know gas/petrol stations
> have not (yet) been renamed to fuel stations.
>
> But this kind of perceived oppression is not a conspiracy.  Most
> mailmen didn't chose a profession based on a desire to suppress women,
> most gasoline drivers didn't actively chose to avoid ethanol or
> diesel, and the majority of Norwegians don't hate Ivar Aasen, even
> though they prefer to read and write in a language that resembles that
> of the former Danish regime.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Hear! Hear! That's probably the best mail i've read in this debate.

mvh.

Lars Alvik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
Just some sidenotes.

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 01:19:01PM +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
> I still protest the policies on this point.

Fair enough.

> In the name of freedom, we
> are enforcing a non-standard format,

On the contrary, we are enforcing STANDARD formats, and more, OPEN STANDARD
formats. Don't confuse "standard" with "installed on most proprietary
overmarketed systems"; availability does not make it standard. It is right
to note, that the standard formats are not yet as widespread, but do not
mix these.

> giving people extra problems to
> just hear and see the sound files and videos on Wikipedia. Wikipedia
> should be there for the normal internet user, not just for tech-savy
> open-source-loving nerds.

While I see your point I disagree (as probably most of those who actually
shaped the policy this way). Many believes that Wikipedia is not just free
but have the mission of publicise freedom agains vendor locking. I believe
that if there is a generally available and useful free format replacing a
widespread, non-free, non-standards-compliant (and often simply illegally
obtained or used) format then a free and open project should press the users
a bit to obtain it and use it.

This way standard formats will become widespread formats as well: it is
going to be easier to install them, even easier to obtain and use them. This
way Wikipedia would serve the open/free community, the idealists (like me)
and itself, since people who use open formats are probably creating open
format files as well, which helps Wikipedia in the end.

I strongly disagree that these formats are, as you put it, for tech-savy
open-source-loving nerds. Codec installation is not a hard task even for a
windoze lemming, and downloading and running a player isn't really a tough
job either. My grandma probably would be able to do it if she were still
around, and she wasn't a tech-savvy nerd either.

Right now it requires EFFORT from the clueless end users. Installing windows
requires efforts from them, too. We have the possibility to make them use
their efforts for something useful, even if they are not aware of it, since
they probably wouldn't understand at all what it's all about. If they want
to use Wikipedia, they will familiarise themselves with the free tools.
Educate themselves. Became smarter. More open. In the end, free.

(And if Xiph can point out that "see! this is the STANDARD format which is
used even in the greatest project of our times: Wikipedia" then it could
help the development of these free formats, and make them eventually
universal. Wikipedia isn't "just another webpage" anymore.)

Amen.

:-)

> My computer when seeing a .ogg-file, automatically assumes it's a
> sound file, and thus I cannot see this movie. I know there are others
> who don't even have software for .ogg-soundfiles. We are much too
> strict on this point. What should bother us is not whether there are
> any patents on a certain format, but whether free software exists to
> play it. Where that is the case (for the most common platforms, or at
> the very least for Windows and Unix), rejecting files because their
> format is supposedly non-free is doing a disservice to our readers and
> writers with no actual advantage to compensate for it.

What do you expect, Windoze IS braindead, after all. But others mentioned
.ogm as a simple workaround (and widespread, if not standard, solution).

But the other points you made are perfectly clear: if there is free software
to create and play these formats, it "should bother us" if people don't use
them. That's what it's all about: vorbis and theora are open, free and
available, they match your definition, so we bother to make them used. To me
it sounds fair.

My point 3 paragraphs ago was exactly about that "actual advantage" and
"disservice" you mention: it is a service, and it have actual and very real
advantage. You may not see it since you may happen to be one of those who,
as I mentioned, doesn't understand or see the service others want to do for
you (or, actually, force down your throat :)). But it's for your [or avid
clueless windows users'] own good.

Peace,
Peter

ps: I can see clearly the cardio video. I didn't make any efforts, it seems
that my mplayer supports theora... but i'm a tech-savvy open-source nerd,
after all. :)


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
On Fri, 2004-12-11 at 19:28 +0100, Bram de Jong wrote:

> Bowsing both MediaWiki's code (nice) and phpBB's code (incredibly messy)

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I shudder to think of the quality of code in phpBB that would make
MediaWiki look organized by comparison.

Is it written by monkeys?

~ESP

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

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
<snip>
> The question for the Board is: Given that we have at least two, and
> possibly three, implementations where there are volunteers, which one
> should we choose? To me, this seems to be a matter that could be decided
> by the Board; others have said that a poll will be necessary first. Either
> way is fine with me - what does the Board say?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Hello,

Maybe we should analyse the usernames and try to get data about
conflicting name. Maybe there is only a handful of conflict ?

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

body:
Yes.

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:25:25 +0100, A. Decorte <klenje at adriacom.it> wrote:
> Hello, I'm the user (Klenje) who was quoted at the beginning in the request;
> I'm
> a friulian speaker, I'm active in italian wiki, and there are other friulian
> people like me outside in the net (don't forget that Friulian is spoken by more
> than half million people), therefore i think there is the chance for a decent
> friulian wikipedia to be created; I can show you several site in friulian, and
> if they aren't more, this is due to the policy of italian government which so
> far doesn't promote minorities within Italy. Friulian speakers share this
> problem with sardinian and sicilian ones, but in my opionion wikipedia could
> help changing this situation; the only risk in creating a friulian wiki is the
> possibility of vandalism, but every wiki is started from few users and there
> are
> many ways to prevent it.
> Regards
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] File Uploads: allow SVG, MIDI, etc

body:
On Nov 12, 2004, at 6:46 AM, Daniel Kinzler wrote:
> The fact that SVG, MIDI and other formats are blocked is getting
> really annoying. People complain about it over and over, and it's a
> bad situation also regarding the fact that the GFDL calls for the
> "transparent source" of a document.
>
> As I understand it those formats are blocked because MSIE interprets
> everything as HTML that *looks* like HTML. It was then stated that in
> order to circumvent this, a varifyer would have to be written for all
> formats. I do not understand why this is so, and I would like to
> suggest a simple solution:

We have a heuristic check which attempts to match MSIE's heuristic test
for HTML and rejects anything that matches. Hopefully it's good enough
for that, though there may be other dangerous formats that it attempts
to recognize, or other checks in the HTML heuristic which I might have
missed.

MSIE's MIME type "detection" (the process in which it throws away the
server's specified content-type information and pulls a new one out of
its butt in an unreliable, insecure manner) is partially documented
here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/moniker/overview/
appendix_a.asp

MIDI is probably safe. It doesn't seem to be in IE's internally
recognized list of types, so it shouldn't try to autodetect.

SVG is a more dangerous format; IIRC it explicitly allows for the use
of JavaScript. Would you mind testing the main SVG-supporting browsers
(particularly the Adobe SVG Viewer plug-in running in MSIE and Mozilla)
to ensure that JavaScript in a SVG file can't access cookies or hijack
the containing browser window?

> * when a file is uploaded, run "file -bi" against that file and
> remember the output, which is (a pretty good guess of) the mime-type
> of the file.

MediaWiki can't generally rely on 'file' since it's an external
program. It may not give consistent results on all platforms, and is
completely absent on some (such as Windows). It's also known to fail to
catch the MSIE holes, which can detect HTML on actual valid image
files.

> * have a map of mime-types-to-file-extensions. Look up the mime-type
> returned by file in that table. If it mismatches the file extension,
> warn about it and refuse to upload. Skip the test if the mime-type is
> not in the table.

For known image types, we already check that the detected image type
matches the extension.

> If we are concerned about viruses in general, why not run a virus
> scanner against every uploaded files? Uploads are not the frequent,
> CPU should be able to cope with that.

Mainly we're concerned about JavaScript session hijacking, but other
problems are a concern as well. Feel free to whip up a wrapper around
clamav or something, that might be useful...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:

>>In the name of freedom, we
>>are enforcing a non-standard format,
>>
>>
>
>On the contrary, we are enforcing STANDARD formats, and more, OPEN STANDARD
>formats. Don't confuse "standard" with "installed on most proprietary
>overmarketed systems"; availability does not make it standard. It is right
>to note, that the standard formats are not yet as widespread, but do not
>mix these.
>
>
I think you're misusing the term "standard".  Theora is certainly
"open", but it is not an "open standard", because it is not a standard
at all.  It is a product from the Xiph Foundation, which is not a
standards body of any sort, just an open source development
organization.  MPEG, by contrast, is an internationally recognized
standards body, but their standard has some patent encumberance.

I think we ought to distinguish between:
-- Fully proprietary, non-standard formats (WMV, etc.)
-- Open standards whose implementation may be problematic due to patents
(MPEG, AAC, etc.)
-- Non-standard but open and unencumbered formats (FLAC, Ogg, Theora, etc.)
-- Open standards with no patent encumberance (PNG, AIFF, etc.)

I don't think Theora falls in the last category, because there has been
no standardization process where various concerns and issues are hashed
out, just a unilateral implementation by Xiph.  Which I still fully
support, of course, but it's not the same sort of thing as PNG, which is
truly developed through a standards process.

The question for us, of course, is whether we should prefer both
standard and non-standard open source formats, and where to draw the line.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

body:
Hello all.

The fact that SVG, MIDI and other formats are blocked is getting really
annoying. People complain about it over and over, and it's a bad
situation also regarding the fact that the GFDL calls for the
"transparent source" of a document.

As I understand it those formats are blocked because MSIE interprets
everything as HTML that *looks* like HTML. It was then stated that in
order to circumvent this, a varifyer would have to be written for all
formats. I do not understand why this is so, and I would like to suggest
a simple solution:

* when a file is uploaded, run "file -bi" against that file and remember
the output, which is (a pretty good guess of) the mime-type of the file.
* if the mime type is "text/html", refuse the upload.
* if the mime type is a forbidden format (exe, etc), refuse the upload.

That should be enough. If you want to be picky about the files type,
also do the following:

* have a map of mime-types-to-file-extensions. Look up the mime-type
returned by file in that table. If it mismatches the file extension,
warn about it and refuse to upload. Skip the test if the mime-type is
not in the table.

If we are concerned about viruses in general, why not run a virus
scanner against every uploaded files? Uploads are not the frequent, CPU
should be able to cope with that.

BTW: may I also suggest to convert the file-extensions to lowercase in
the same step the " "-to-"_" conversion happens? That would be great...

Please excuse me if this was all a pile of rubbish based on a
misunderstanding - just point it out. Furthermore, i'm willing to write
a routine that does the above, or anything else neccessary, provided i
do not have to dig deep into the Mediawiki-code. Just tell me the specs
of the function, and i'll post it here.

--
Hompeage: http://brightbyte.de


from_name: Ulf Lunde

body:
Peter Gervai introduced a fresh and unbiased view "from the outside", which
is very interesting indeed!

Just to clarify a subtle point: The premise that there is no such thing as
a single Norwegian language, would require a very narrow-minded definition
of "language", I'm afraid.

Most Norwegians and most linguists would agree that there *is* a Norwegian
language, but there are different (equally valid) ways of *writing
down* this language.
The written forms are not *dialects*, because one cannot tell from the way
a Norwegian person *speaks*, which written form she prefers to use.
That preference depends partly on her upbringing, partly on her own choice.

Ulf Lunde


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] DRAFT: Single login poll

body:
On the basis of my earlier foundation-l message, I've created a draft poll
for the single login strategy issue:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_poll

Please feel free to improve it or suggest changes on the talk page. I
would like to avoid adding more than the listed 3 strategies unless there
are volunteers willing to implement them.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Rowan Collins

references:
<9KhXj9EhpVB@erik_moeller> <cn2aoq$qv7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d2f92e8b04111205326c55d3f2@mail.gmail.com>
	<6faf39c904111207342205597b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:34:34 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Kate ran a query on just de and en and there were several thousand
> > conflicts (about 3000 or 4000 whose passwords and/or emails did not
> > match).
>
> How many of those are 'real' though?

'Real' in what sense? In the sense of 2 active users actively using
the same name on different wikis, there is no sure way to tell until
we start telling people to migrate; but if there are as many as 4000
*potential* clashes just between these 2 wikis, it's pretty certain
even that's going to be no small number once you multiply up by the
several-hundred wikis we now have running...

> In fact, I alone
> could easily count as over 100 conflicts, with over 50 logins under
> the same name and at least 3 different email addresses.

And from a technical point of view, those are very real conflicts:
ones which software alone cannot merge. Sure, we could have a
publicity campaign immediately before/after the changeover (depending
on the exact details of transition) to persuade people like yourself
to manually remove such conflicts, but that is part of the process of
transition nonetheless, and the scale of it has an impact on how we
implement the transition.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Andre Engels

references:
<9KhXj9EhpVB@erik_moeller> <cn2aoq$qv7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d2f92e8b04111205326c55d3f2@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 07:32:09 -0600, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kate ran a query on just de and en and there were several thousand
> conflicts (about 3000 or 4000 whose passwords and/or emails did not
> match).

How many of those are 'real' though? If you look at passwords and/or
emails not matching, it means that those where one matches are also
counted as conflicts. I think we should not count matching emails with
different passwords as conflicts, and different emails with the same
password only if the password is the empty string. In fact, I alone
could easily count as over 100 conflicts, with over 50 logins under
the same name and at least 3 different email addresses.

Andre Engels


body:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 07:18:09 -0800 (PST), Christopher Mahan
<chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I would prefer #3.
>
> I think this is the solution with the least long term issues.
>
> Only problem: Do you need your userid number to log in?

I think no. You login on some wiki, and use your login name and
password from that specific wiki. Then the system connects that login
name to a userid, and that userid would be stored in or connected to
your cookie. At least that's how I envision things.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:54:04 +0100, peter <peter at wa.se> wrote:
> Any better ideas anyone?

Well, one thing that occurs to me that you could do a little bit
better/simpler is to just generate the appropriate login cookies,
rather than actually posting the login forms for both. The only thing
I'm not sure about there, though, is how PHP sessions work, and
whether you'd need to actually process those "properly", rather than

The other thing worth mentioning, in terms of longer term planning on
this topic, is that a "single login" system for multiple instances of
MediaWiki should be coming at some point. The exact details have yet
to be finalised, due to the problems of migrating the huge number of
existing users on all the Wikimedia projects (several hundred
different wikis, once you've counted every language version of each
project); but, eventually, it will probably lead to a user management
architecture that would be more amenable to this kind of hack.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Bram de Jong - MTG

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Hi everyone,

(Hi! First post here)

for a site I'm building I'm trying to use one generalised login system
for everything on the site (forum / wiki / ftp / ...). I was wondering
if anyone has done any work on joining phpBB and MediaWiki.

In a perfect world people would log into PhpBB and an account would be
made for MediaWiki with the same login/pass. Whenever a user logs into
the site, he should automatically be logged into MediaWiki.

So - has it been done? Google didn't really help me this time.

thanks a lot,

  - bram

--
ICMC 2005.......... http://www.icmc2005.org
MTG................ http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg
Smartelectronix.... http://www.smartelectronix.com
Musicdsp........... http://www.musicdsp.org

Telephone.......... +34 628 765 127


from_name: peter

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Bram de Jong - MTG wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> (Hi! First post here)
>
> for a site I'm building I'm trying to use one generalised login system
> for everything on the site (forum / wiki / ftp / ...). I was wondering
> if anyone has done any work on joining phpBB and MediaWiki.
>
> In a perfect world people would log into PhpBB and an account would be
> made for MediaWiki with the same login/pass. Whenever a user logs into
> the site, he should automatically be logged into MediaWiki.
>
> So - has it been done? Google didn't really help me this time.
>
>
> thanks a lot,
>
>
>  - bram
>

I asked the same question here a couple of days ago, no answer thoguh. I wanted
to join the PHPBB and MediaWiki together with one login just as you.

I found a quite ugly lite fix that did it though.

First I joined the together the usertables for phpbb and mediawiki. I used the
one for phpbb as I already have all my users there, and merged in all the
columns for mediawiki user-table.

Then I changed all the table and columns references in mediawiki to match phpbb
usertable and username and password column.

Half way there. Users from phpbb can now log in with the same details in my
wiki. New registrations will be directed to phpbb registration form. Luckily
mediawiki and phpb encrypt passwords the same way.

Here comes the ugly part.

Users login to the wiki, mediawiki valides the password, if correct the
information will be posted into the php-loginscript. Not good, not secure, not
stable, but it works. A lot of things could go wrong there.. and I wouldn't
recommend it.

I though I should try and make something better, but I hanv't yet. So I made a
fast easy hack.

Any better ideas anyone?

Peter Andersson
-------------------
peter at wa.se
http://wa.se


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
> > In the name of freedom, we
> > are enforcing a non-standard format,
>
> On the contrary, we are enforcing STANDARD formats, and more, OPEN STANDARD
> formats. Don't confuse "standard" with "installed on most proprietary
> overmarketed systems"; availability does not make it standard. It is right
> to note, that the standard formats are not yet as widespread, but do not
> mix these.

I am not here to discuss semantics, and I readily admit to using a
suboptimal term when saying "standard".

> I strongly disagree that these formats are, as you put it, for tech-savy
> open-source-loving nerds. Codec installation is not a hard task even for a
> windoze lemming, and downloading and running a player isn't really a tough
> job either. My grandma probably would be able to do it if she were still
> around, and she wasn't a tech-savvy nerd either.

Probably she could, probably I could too. Still, they need to do it.
When I go around the web, there's things to be downloaded here and
there. If I really want what is offered, I do so. Downloading and
installing something is not a lot of work. But getting a few seconds
of film is also not a large reward.

> Right now it requires EFFORT from the clueless end users. Installing windows
> requires efforts from them, too. We have the possibility to make them use
> their efforts for something useful, even if they are not aware of it, since
> they probably wouldn't understand at all what it's all about. If they want
> to use Wikipedia, they will familiarise themselves with the free tools.
> Educate themselves. Became smarter. More open. In the end, free.

Yippee! Now I can watch this movie from Wikipedia and I have this
*free* program on my computer to do so! I am glad that I'm not using
that other free program that I use to watch all those other sites,
because now I know that those who wrote that program either could
forbid others to do so, or could be forbidden by others to do so. What
a service!

I *hate* it when people tell me what to do and how to think.

> > My computer when seeing a .ogg-file, automatically assumes it's a
> > sound file, and thus I cannot see this movie. I know there are others
> > who don't even have software for .ogg-soundfiles. We are much too
> > strict on this point. What should bother us is not whether there are
> > any patents on a certain format, but whether free software exists to
> > play it. Where that is the case (for the most common platforms, or at
> > the very least for Windows and Unix), rejecting files because their
> > format is supposedly non-free is doing a disservice to our readers and
> > writers with no actual advantage to compensate for it.
>
> What do you expect, Windoze IS braindead, after all. But others mentioned
> .ogm as a simple workaround (and widespread, if not standard, solution).
>
> But the other points you made are perfectly clear: if there is free software
> to create and play these formats, it "should bother us" if people don't use
> them. That's what it's all about: vorbis and theora are open, free and
> available, they match your definition, so we bother to make them used. To me
> it sounds fair.

Yes, they match the definition. But there are other formats that match
the definition just as well, but that you want to forbid because you
prefer your free formats to formats that are free only in practice but
not in theory and want to force your opinion upon me and others.

> My point 3 paragraphs ago was exactly about that "actual advantage" and
> "disservice" you mention: it is a service, and it have actual and very real
> advantage. You may not see it since you may happen to be one of those who,
> as I mentioned, doesn't understand or see the service others want to do for
> you (or, actually, force down your throat :)). But it's for your [or avid
> clueless windows users'] own good.

Farewell.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Hello Peter,

> I asked the same question here a couple of days ago, no answer thoguh. I
> wanted to join the PHPBB and MediaWiki together with one login just as you.
> I found a quite ugly lite fix that did it though.
 >
> First I joined the together the usertables for phpbb and mediawiki. I
> used the one for phpbb as I already have all my users there, and merged
> in all the columns for mediawiki user-table.
>
> Then I changed all the table and columns references in mediawiki to
> match phpbb usertable and username and password column.
>
> Half way there. Users from phpbb can now log in with the same details in
> my wiki. New registrations will be directed to phpbb registration form.
> Luckily mediawiki and phpb encrypt passwords the same way.

Okay, that's all very neat! How do you generate the "missing bits" for
mediawiki? I'm not sure I like the hacking the mysql DB though - for
future compatibility that seems a bit... scary. I guess it would be
possible using database triggers, but... those don't exist yet in MySQL.

> Here comes the ugly part.
>
> Users login to the wiki, mediawiki valides the password, if correct the
> information will be posted into the php-loginscript. Not good, not
> secure, not stable, but it works. A lot of things could go wrong there..
> and I wouldn't recommend it.

Not sure I get this? What isn't secure about this?
Do their passwords get posted or something? I guess I don't know -yet-
how the wiki login works...

> I though I should try and make something better, but I hanv't yet. So I
> made a fast easy hack.

Well, I for one would love to help you with this - or at least do
something so I can use the same system. I mainly asked here because I
didn't want to re-invent the wheel.

  - bram

--
ICMC 2005.......... http://www.icmc2005.org
MTG................ http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg
Smartelectronix.... http://www.smartelectronix.com
Musicdsp........... http://www.musicdsp.org

Telephone.......... +34 628 765 127


from_name: A. Decorte

body:
Hello, I'm the user (Klenje) who was quoted at the beginning in the request;
I'm
a friulian speaker, I'm active in italian wiki, and there are other friulian
people like me outside in the net (don't forget that Friulian is spoken by more
than half million people), therefore i think there is the chance for a decent
friulian wikipedia to be created; I can show you several site in friulian, and
if they aren't more, this is due to the policy of italian government which so
far doesn't promote minorities within Italy. Friulian speakers share this
problem with sardinian and sicilian ones, but in my opionion wikipedia could
help changing this situation; the only risk in creating a friulian wiki is the
possibility of vandalism, but every wiki is started from few users and there
are
many ways to prevent it.
Regards


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Forbidden access to special export

body:
On Nov 12, 2004, at 3:55 PM, Stuart wrote:
> I'm getting HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden when tring to
> access the special export pages from my server
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/word)

Make sure you've set your user-agent string. Various generic defaults
are blocked to discourage abuse; you should always send a User-agent
header that identifies your software uniquely, preferably including a
URL so that site owners can contact you if your bot is causing
problems.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Video uploaded...

body:
On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 03:03:58 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Andre Engels (andreengels at gmail.com) [041113 02:58]:
>
> > Yes, they match the definition. But there are other formats that match
> > the definition just as well, but that you want to forbid because you
> > prefer your free formats to formats that are free only in practice but
> > not in theory and want to force your opinion upon me and others.
>
>
> You've convinced me. I move we make data dumps only available in the
> universal standard format, i.e. MS Word documents.

Are you deliberately misunderstanding me, or am I just not being
clear? I am not the one who is prescribing any formats. I want to
_extend_ the allowed formats. I'm not in favor of converting material
to any format I prefer, but in not converting material that comes in
in such a format.

Nor would I want to allow _all_ formats. Formats that are very rare
are not a good idea. Nor are formats that are hard or impossible to
read on some of the most common platforms, which would exclude at
least all recent versions of MS Word. All I'm asking is to take a
practical stand (availability on all applicable platforms for free, or
included with all normal software packets) rather than a legalese one
(no known patents).

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Bram de Jong - MTG wrote:
> Hello Peter,
>
>> I asked the same question here a couple of days ago, no answer thoguh.
>> I wanted to join the PHPBB and MediaWiki together with one login just
>> as you.
>> I found a quite ugly lite fix that did it though.
>
>  >
>
>> First I joined the together the usertables for phpbb and mediawiki. I
>> used the one for phpbb as I already have all my users there, and
>> merged in all the columns for mediawiki user-table.
>>
>> Then I changed all the table and columns references in mediawiki to
>> match phpbb usertable and username and password column.
>>
>> Half way there. Users from phpbb can now log in with the same details
>> in my wiki. New registrations will be directed to phpbb registration
>> form. Luckily mediawiki and phpb encrypt passwords the same way.
>
>
> Okay, that's all very neat! How do you generate the "missing bits" for
> mediawiki? I'm not sure I like the hacking the mysql DB though - for
> future compatibility that seems a bit... scary. I guess it would be
> possible using database triggers, but... those don't exist yet in MySQL.

Actually I havn't really added in the missing bits or mediawiki yet.. I guess I
will add some custom fields into the registration for phpbb and edit the
registratino scripts. Now when you mention it hanv't even investigated which
the "missing bits" really are.. if any.. so I feel kind of stupid now.

When you start hacking these things future upgrades are not possible. I would
run an update on my phpbb.. or actually I did work... at all. So my though it
now that if I do this now.. I'm pretty much stuck with the releases I got
installed. But of course, upgrades can be done manually with a little bit of
diff and patience... phpbb is pretty much ruined if you install any mods och
extensions..

>> Here comes the ugly part.
>>
>> Users login to the wiki, mediawiki valides the password, if correct
>> the information will be posted into the php-loginscript. Not good, not
>> secure, not stable, but it works. A lot of things could go wrong
>> there.. and I wouldn't recommend it.
>
>
> Not sure I get this? What isn't secure about this?
> Do their passwords get posted or something? I guess I don't know -yet-
> how the wiki login works...

I took an easy turn here and just posted the details along via GET, I did
encrypt the password first though and removed the encryption in the phpbb
login-script. That should be secure enough. Don't feel very confident about
this though, but it seems to work.

I would prefer to figure out the login-function in mediawiki and just include
that and run it in the phpbb-script, I hanv't quite figured it out though and
with all the path and includes it kind of confusing..

>> I though I should try and make something better, but I hanv't yet. So
>> I made a fast easy hack.
>
>
> Well, I for one would love to help you with this - or at least do
> something so I can use the same system. I mainly asked here because I
> didn't want to re-invent the wheel.

Let me know if you find something clever.

   /peter


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] was POV warriors generally; now Delayed Publish

references:
<20041106020926.2543.qmail@webmail03.mesa1.secureserver.net>
	<20041107154345.GC6188@wikia.com>
	<slrncotdrl.3ba.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>

body:
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 00:01:57 +0000, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 07:43:45 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >I don't have an exact solution for the goatse.cx case, though I think
> >the answer probably needs to be softer than "protect the article" when
> >the subject is both popular and rapidly changing.  I advocate the
> >development of some sort of "delayed publish" mechanism whereby edits
> >don't appear on the main url until some time has passed.
>
> That sounds a damn good idea.
>
> --
> "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
> people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
> (Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I've only recently been catching up with some mailing list posts. Has
anyone further investigated the delayed publish idea? To be honest, I
had naively not even considered such a scenario as described, yet have
been happily evangelising for Wikipedia to friends and family. I would
be appalled to have someone I know come back to me and say, "Well, I
visited that Wikipedia thing, and do you know what I found..."

As far as I'm concerned, I will certainly be curtailing my general
describing of Wikipedia as a nice happy place with fluffy bunnies.

Zoney
--
*~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:54:04 +0100, peter <peter at wa.se> wrote:
>
>>Any better ideas anyone?
>
>
> Well, one thing that occurs to me that you could do a little bit
> better/simpler is to just generate the appropriate login cookies,
> rather than actually posting the login forms for both. The only thing
> I'm not sure about there, though, is how PHP sessions work, and
> whether you'd need to actually process those "properly", rather than
>
> The other thing worth mentioning, in terms of longer term planning on
> this topic, is that a "single login" system for multiple instances of
> MediaWiki should be coming at some point. The exact details have yet
> to be finalised, due to the problems of migrating the huge number of
> existing users on all the Wikimedia projects (several hundred
> different wikis, once you've counted every language version of each
> project); but, eventually, it will probably lead to a user management
> architecture that would be more amenable to this kind of hack.
>

I had the same though, of actually just genrate the appropriate login cookies
and session variables. Sure that would have been easier. I don't know why I
didn't actually. I just took a random solution of the two. Maybe that would
have been just easier and better. Maybe I will redo it like that.

I might mention that this project of mine is very small, it is just a small
community for some people and at the moment I only have about 20 users, and
don't expept the number to grow, that doesn't excuse my simple hacks, but might
explain them.

About shared user management. The ideas of having one shared login system is
not that bad. We already see things like Microsoft Passport and Drupal and the
thought is not bad at all, but what we need would rather be a user management
framework with database, registration and login than a shared global database
that those systems use. That would be nice.

       /peter


from_name: Bram de Jong

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>Well, one thing that occurs to me that you could do a little bit
>better/simpler is to just generate the appropriate login cookies,
>rather than actually posting the login forms for both. The only thing
>I'm not sure about there, though, is how PHP sessions work, and
>whether you'd need to actually process those "properly", rather than
>
Bowsing both MediaWiki's code (nice) and phpBB's code (incredibly messy)
it looks like the easiest option is to just hack the phpBB code and add
the user to the the MediaWiki database when the account is created for
phpBB. It seems like this is the least intruisive as doing it the other
way around takes more work (phpBB has a zillion of user preferences).
The generation of session vars / cookies etc seems all a bit risky to me
- and I'm building a site which will be used by many people.

People will have to physicaly log in twice - but aw well...

Is there an easy way of preventing people to create logins in MediaWiki?

>The other thing worth mentioning, in terms of longer term planning on
>this topic, is that a "single login" system for multiple instances of
>MediaWiki should be coming at some point. The exact details have yet
>to be finalised, due to the problems of migrating the huge number of
>existing users on all the Wikimedia projects (several hundred
>different wikis, once you've counted every language version of each
>project); but, eventually, it will probably lead to a user management
>architecture that would be more amenable to this kind of hack.
>
>

Good to know MediaWiki is going towards a more generalized login system
(phpBB should too, I have about 5000 different phpBB logins), but I kind
of need it now.

Thanks for making my brain work!
If anyone has a better and clean idea on how to go about this - let me know.

 - bram

PS: yes, I know this will generate a mess if accounts are deleted and
things like that, but... oh well :-)


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Foundation-l] Is there room for a 4th option? (Re: Single login -
	decision 2004)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
[cut]
> The three strategies are:
[cut]

Those ideas are interesting but is there room for a other option?

I have a idea for a strategy that has some special benefits and 	of
course some drawbacks. I would like to know of my idea is feasible and
desirable.

(I think i have expressed this idea before but i do not remember the
responds)

The idea is to create the concept of a home-wiki. The user name is
expanded whit the language and name of the project.

My user name of the dutch Wikipedia is "walter".
The expanded user name would be "walter at nl.wikipedia.org".
My accounts on other wikimedia wikis can be renamed to the full user
name from my home-wiki.

When I edit on the dutch wikipedia (my home-wiki) is am known as user
"Walter".
When I go to a other Wikipedia I can login whit my full user name.
When I edit on the a other Wikipedia I am known whit the user name
"walter at nl".
When I go to a other non-Wikipedia Wikimedia project, like WikiQuote I
am know as user "walter at nl.wikipedia.org"

This the general idea.

The good part of this idea is that there are no naming conflicts. No
user will have to pick a new user name.

Also it is more fair. When you are a old user you can have a nice user
name. Like when you would have the emailadress tom at hotmail.com

But there can no other Tom besides you on all the wikis whit the central
login. The first user whit the name "Tom" on a new project must take a
user name like "Tom1978_" because the other are long taken.

Whit my idea new user on every project has a fair change to have a nice
name.

The bad part is the you have to pick a "home wiki". You have to make a
choice between all projects and languages and say, this is my wiki.
On all the other Wikis it will be clear that your a "foreigner" on that
wiki and form where you are.

I have not problem whit this and I do not think that most users would
have problems whit it. But some may have.

For those whit real problems whit it the could be provided whit a
neutral user name like "username at wikimedia.org"

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-12-11 at 19:28 +0100, Bram de Jong wrote:
>
>
>>Bowsing both MediaWiki's code (nice) and phpBB's code (incredibly messy)
>
>
> !!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> I shudder to think of the quality of code in phpBB that would make
> MediaWiki look organized by comparison.
>
> Is it written by monkeys?
>
> ~ESP

Possibly.
Some nice little helper monkeys.

Seriously, PHPBB is quite easy to understand and read. Pretty much
straight forward. MediaWikis a little more complicated. Do you really
think it is that bad?
  /peter


from_name: Registry - Vancouver University

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vancouver university

body:
It is utterly unfair to keep this USA Today reference
(and therefrom other-derived references) to Vancouver
University without acknowledging that USA Today
subsequently published a retraction letter.

Likuan Tham
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subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki + phpBB ?

body:
Bram de Jong wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
>
>> Well, one thing that occurs to me that you could do a little bit
>> better/simpler is to just generate the appropriate login cookies,
>> rather than actually posting the login forms for both. The only thing
>> I'm not sure about there, though, is how PHP sessions work, and
>> whether you'd need to actually process those "properly", rather than
>>
> Bowsing both MediaWiki's code (nice) and phpBB's code (incredibly messy)
> it looks like the easiest option is to just hack the phpBB code and add
> the user to the the MediaWiki database when the account is created for
> phpBB. It seems like this is the least intruisive as doing it the other
> way around takes more work (phpBB has a zillion of user preferences).
> The generation of session vars / cookies etc seems all a bit risky to me
> - and I'm building a site which will be used by many people.

Even though it seems like a bad idea to merge the two user-tables
together it was actually pretty straight forward and easily done. The
PHPBB-registration just have to be slightly modified to insert the extra
data need for MediaWiki (if any at all), and then just do some search
and replace-action in the wiki to change the table name. Seems like
better idea than to have double entries and memberships.

The login seems pretty ease. PHPBB uses cookies and MediaWiki uses
sessionsvariables. To each, one for user id and one for username. Both
have one extra for remembering the login for next session.

Setting them both should do the trick.

> People will have to physicaly log in twice - but aw well...
>
> Is there an easy way of preventing people to create logins in MediaWiki?

Just modify the skin and change all links to the registration on phpbb
and remove the form at the login-page. That should do the trick.

>> The other thing worth mentioning, in terms of longer term planning on
>> this topic, is that a "single login" system for multiple instances of
>> MediaWiki should be coming at some point. The exact details have yet
>> to be finalised, due to the problems of migrating the huge number of
>> existing users on all the Wikimedia projects (several hundred
>> different wikis, once you've counted every language version of each
>> project); but, eventually, it will probably lead to a user management
>> architecture that would be more amenable to this kind of hack.
>>
>>
>
> Good to know MediaWiki is going towards a more generalized login system
> (phpBB should too, I have about 5000 different phpBB logins), but I kind
> of need it now.
>
> Thanks for making my brain work!
> If anyone has a better and clean idea on how to go about this - let me
> know.
>
>
> - bram
>
> PS: yes, I know this will generate a mess if accounts are deleted and
> things like that, but... oh well :-)

      /peter


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speeding up arbitration

body:
(crossposted to Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration)

One of the largest complaints about arbitration is that it is too slow. In
an attempt to remedy this, the arbitration committee has decided to require
that '''all evidence''' on evidence pages be formatted chronologically, with
concise summaries of events and links to page diffs.
[[User:Raul654/Plautus]] should serve as an example. Evidence not formatted
this way may be summarily deleted.

The reasoning behind this is as follows - the slowest part of arbitration is
arbitrators trying to understand what happened in a dispute. All too often,
disputants do 'mental dumps' onto the evidence pages, making the job of
sorting it out extremely difficult and time consuming. This requirement
should serve to make this step it easier and faster.

--Mark


from_name: ilooy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] presentation on Wikipedia goes well!

body:
The first of the two conferences went quite well.
I only ran into a couple of problems and these
could perhaps be solved for the next conference.

It was held at Wentworth-by-the-Sea in Newcastle
NH, right next to Rye and Hampton Beach... the
place was gorgeous! And the facilities were awesome,
the AV folks there were very helpful in getting the
equipment all connected and very accomodating.

However the costs were pricey, an internet live
connect went for $150. A live AV support person
was $500 for the day... I didn't need an AV person
but even so, they were helpful anyway... no charge
for getting the connectors and making sure I was
ok to start the presentation, they were very helpful
indeed and very friendly!

All in all I presented on Friday and Saturday and
the headcount totals were over 100 educators,
school admins and staff from Northern New England
area.

The presentation on Wikipedia was well received...
the major objection, or should I say concern, is the
question that "how can Wikipedia content be
accurate without 'experts' writing the articles?"

My response is that the articles could be checked
against other online ecyclopedia content and thus
one could be reassured of the quality of content.
Also that there are safeguards like 'peer editing'
and 'npov' which help make the articles both
accurate and non-biased, or as much as a npov
objective can guarantee.

If there are other good points to counteract this
objection I'd be interested in putting this into the
next presentation... although for this next one
at McAuliffe Center Tech Conference I'll have a
fraction of the time I had at the NHAWLT presentation.

One of the problems I ran into was that I lost 'mousage',
I lost the mouse pointer, when I projected the laptop screen.
I used two different projectors and also tried an attached
USB mouse instead of the glidepoint.

But the instance of MediaWiki running
on the Linspire laptop was flawless of itself... a really
good example of how powerful and yet easy to use and
learn to edit the wiki engine is...

OpenOffice was very handy as a presentation tool.
I used the suggested presentation from French and
edited it and thinned it down for the time I had to
work with... I also used the screen shots of the
different language Wikipedias (that was done
around February)... And I incorporated the Alexa
charts to compare with Britannica, Groliers, Ecyclopedia.com
and refer.com so as to give some idea of Wikipedia's
growth and expansion.

I also briefly explained some of the other sister projects
and highlighted why the wiki software lends itself so
well to collaborative projects...

The next conference is in December.

With thanks to all who helped get me get MediaWiki
running on Linspire and also those that gave me
good suggestions on what to say during the presentation!

Best regards,
Jay Bowks
[[w:en:User:ILVI]]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:42:54 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> ilooy wrote:
>
>
> > Hi fellow Wikipedians,
> >
> > I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for
> > the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT
> > Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks
> > and was wondering if anyone else has done
> > a presentation to a large group... what features
> > would be good to highlight... and what seems
> > to work well with a group that has not heard
> > much about the project yet.
> >
> > If you have some ideas as to what might
> > be good points to bring out please let me
> > know. I appreciate any insights you may
> > offer on this subject.
> >
> > with sincere regards,
> > Jay B.
> > [[w:en:User:ILVI]]
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] presentation on Wikipedia goes well!


subject: [Foundation-l] Presentation on Wikipedia and the Foundation


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Galleries on Wikipedia vs. galleries on Wikimedia
	Commons

body:
Erik Moeller ti 2004/11/10 EP 04:35 sia-kong:

> In the future, I would also like it to be
> possible to dynamically include captions from the image description pages,
> so that when no caption is provided, and the image description page
> contains one, it is used.

Some images are largely self-explanatory, so I see this as an option
controlled by the requesting page, with an indicator on the description
page showing which of the requesting articles is "loading" the caption,
or at least if any article is using it.  It'd also require image
description pages be used in a more consistent fashion, unless there's
plan for some kind of tag or field to hold a formalized caption.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Mac OS X installation problem

body:
On Nov 12, 2004, at 10:44 PM, Matthew Trump wrote:
> I've running MediaWiki on Linux with no problems, with multiple
> trouble-free installations, and am doing my first installation on Mac
> OS X.
>
> I have Mac OSX 10.3.2 and am running MySQL 4.1. I already ran into
> the problem of having to set the root password the "old way" on
> MySQL, which allowed me to connect to the database server (the
> Mediawiki user guide was good on this point). However, it's now
> failing on this (see below, note tables were created by previous
> attempt). I was wondering if someone intimately familiar with the
> installation script could give a suggestion about how to proceed.

I'd recommend you recompile PHP; it should then be able to link against
the updated MySQL client libraries and be able to connect more
reliably. Mac OS X 10.3 ships with 4.3.2 which is a little old anyway;
the current PHP 4 release is 4.3.9 and there are a number of bug fixes.

You can get the original PHP installation's compile-time options (and
much more) by running a script like this:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>

You may need to explicitly pass --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql or
similar to get it to link against the MySQL 4.1 libraries if you
installed the binaries in /usr/local/mysql.

If you give the configure script --prefix=/usr/local you can avoid
overwriting the shipped PHP installation (or at least most of it); but
you should probably back up /etc/httpd and /usr/libexec/httpd first
just in case.

> Also the line states wikidb exists. In fact, when I check using the
> command line client, the wikidb does not in fact exist.

Well, that's an interesting twist. In order to get as far as it does,
it would have had to test for the existence of various tables and
fields in tables in the database... so you have a database *somewhere*.
:)

Can you confirm that you don't have two different MySQL daemons running
on the machine somehow, with different connection sockets?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l]
	Re: no or nb for Bokmal, or time to move to ISO 639-3?

body:
Brion Vibber ti 2004/11/10 EP 03:51 sia-kong:
> On Nov 10, 2004, at 5:05 AM, Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan) wrote:
>> In ISO 639-3 we will have
>> nor= {nob, nno}, Norweigian (so called macrolanguage code)
>> nob= Norweigian Bokmal
>> nno= Norweigian Nynorsk
>
>
> This doesn't really provide anything that ISO 639-1 doesn't already in
> no, nb, nn.

Utility aside, the "no" in ISO 639-1 may not be semantically identical
to "nor" in ISO 639-3.  Though how "no" has actually been used by
Norwegian users is probably more relevant.