subject: [WikiEN-l] Fuck article cited in Colorado court document


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia down

body:
Just in case you didn't already know, Wikipedia is down. Information is at:

http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Talk:Wikipedia_Status

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jeroen

subject: [Wikitech-l] European language wiki's to own server+database.

body:
Hello,

Proberly some of you will flame me, but I will take that for granted.

My idea is to combine all the European language wikipedia's (except english
and maybe spanish and portuguese) on one server and using one database,
located somewhere in Europe.

Here is why:

* We will not be depending on the US anymore.

- As this can be considered a political issue, it is mostly a technical
issue. Because when there are problems, we (Europeans) can solve this on
hours, people in the US are still at sleep. This also includes fixing
things on location.

- Also the performance will not be influenced by the English-language
wikipedia.

Problems:

* Finding a reliable server that is free and only for us.
* Finding European sysadmins for this server.

Which wikipedias:

# Basque (Euskara)
# Bosnian (Bosanski)
# Catalan (Catal?)
# Czech (?esk?)
# Danish (Dansk)
# Dutch (Nederlands)
# Esperanto
# Estonian (Eesti)
# Finnish (Suomi)
# French (Fran?ais)
# Frisian (Frysk)
# German (Deutsch)
# Hungarian (Magyar)
# Interlingua
# Irish (Gaeilge)
# Italian (Italiano)
# Latin (Latina)
# Latvian (Latvie?u)
# Lithuanian (Lietuvi?kai)
# Low Saxon (Neders?chsisch)
# Norwegian (Norsk)
# Polish (Polska)
(# Portuguese (Portugu?s) <<< Maybe not, because most speakers are living
outside Europe)
# Romanian (Rom?n?)
# Romanica
# Russian (???????)
# Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatska)
# Slovenian (Slovensko)
(# Spanish (Castellano) <<< Maybe not, because most speakers are living
outside Europe)
# Swedish (Svenska)
# Welsh (Cymraeg)

Cheers,

Jeroenvrp
nl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jeroen-
> Hello,

> Proberly some of you will flame me, but I will take that for granted.

> My idea is to combine all the European language wikipedia's (except english
> and maybe spanish and portuguese) on one server and using one database,
> located somewhere in Europe.

Crashes that are so hard that they require someone to do a fix on location
should be expected to take about 24 hours to fix -- that's normal and OK.
The present crash took about 7 hours to fix (we still don't know what
caused it), and it would have taken just a few minutes if I or Tim could
have done the reboot instead of waiting for Jimbo to wake up. Hopefully
Brion will be back soon as well.

Splitting up the wikis can cause the following problems:
* makes software updates harder -- we are trying to move towards a common
codebase
* makes it impossible to combine the different tables into a single
database, which would have various advantages
* makes it more difficult to combine at least user accounts and
interlanguage links into a single DB
* could lead to cultural split -- different power structures, different
policies etc.

Furthermore, Jimbo is in the process of finalizing the Wikimedia
Foundation, which will allow us to take donations. Given enough money, we
can improve our current setup. A reasonably redundant database setup with
replication should be more resistant to this kind of failure.

Realistically, with a decent setup, we don't need to split up our
databases -- it's the single point of failure (pliny) that is the problem,
not that the server is based in the US.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1249 - 14 msgs

body:
sgilbert-
> 1. Who can add to brilliant prose? Sysops? What makes me (for
> example) more qualified to judge brilliant prose about the spectrum
> of human knowledge?

Well, right now we are already using a process on En: whereby pages have
to meet with general approval before they are added to the page. See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Brilliant_prose_candidates
for details.

> 2. One of the great things about Wikipedia is that readers quickly
> become writers. If we were to use particular versions from article
> histories as stable articles, we'll need some way to allow readers
> to easily move into editing mode, i.e. an "Edit the current version of
> this article" link.

Yup, that's what I was thinking as well. Have a prominent notice on top of
the page:

"You are viewing a stable, certified revision of this article. Errors may
already be fixed in the [[latest unstable version]], which you can
[[edit]] directly."

> 3. The synthesis of the first two concerns: what happens when
> there are errors in the stable version? Mistakes can be corrected in
> the current version, but only sysops will be able to change which
> version is listed on the locked Brilliant Prose page.

Sifter would have the exact same problem. IMHO the best solution is to
give sysops some leeway to change the pointer to a new revision in case of
obvious corrections (linkfixes, spelling, uncontroversial factual changes
as per talk etc.), and to otherwise require a re-listing on the candidates
page.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageZh.php completed

body:
Sheng-
> Erik Moeller:

>>
>> Can you handle CVS? If so, we can give you CVS access so you can do
>> updates yourself.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Erik
>>
>>
> OK, thanks.

Uh, that is no response to my question. In which case I assume that the
response is "No".

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

body:
> I think what Ulrich is most worried about is he doesn't want a
> stable encyclopedia to be a fork. This can be easily avoid by puting
> a link to the current Wikipedia article on hte Nupedia version,
> labeled "Edit the latest version of this article".
>

Actually, that's not at all what I'm worried about.   ;-)

What I'm most worried about is that Wikipedia will lose contributors, because
most of them won't get a choice to decide what's in the "real" encyclopedia
and therefore lose interest. The closer (the more "officially") Nupedia is
associated with Wikipedia, the less interesting it will be to spend time for
Wikipedia, because everything one is doing there is just the "foreplay" for
the "real thing" Nupedia.

I admit that I have my personal problems with the Nupedia editing policy, and
the way authors are treated there as more or less irrelevant (because the
important persons aren't the authors, but the almighty editors). I once
offered two ready 2 page articles on "Sauna" and "Sherry" for the Nupedia
project. I got an awnser like this (I'm exaggerating here, to make my point
clear): "It's nice, thank you, but can you please strip it down to one
paragraph, then we will consider to put it in the editing process as soon as
we've found an editor suitable to the subject". Guess what? I never thought
of Nupedia any more, and I never heard of them, too. I doubt if Nupedia (if
revived and taking [[Sauna]] and [[Sherry]] from the Wikipedia will ever be
able to find someone (or even a group of people!) with a university degree in
either Saunology or Sherryology that is willing to work for free and will
"approve" those two articles.

But now back to the subject: Imagine what would happen if the title page of
Wikipedia wouldn't say any longer: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free
encyclopaedia", but instead:

"Welcome to Wikipedia, here you can upload articles that probably will go into
the free Nupedia encyclopaedia editing process some day if the people there
like it and have the right approved editors for your subject".

Again - If Nupedia wants to use Wikipedia articles (forking them or not) -
they're free to do it, the License perfectly allows for that. Just go ahead
and do it - there will be enough Wikipedia editors merging back the approved
articles to Wikipedia, both will profit from that. (However I'd like to see
how that's going to work with that silly GNU FDL requesting to cite all the
history. Merging a history from Nupedia and one from Wikipedia in the
Wikipedia talk page (where else?) must be fun!)

But I strongly oppose the Wikipedia *supporting* that in any further way. It's
like shooting ourselfs in the knee (is that a valid phrase in english?).
Apart from that, there are some problems at Wikipedia that should be adressed
by developers first (performance, searching, just two name a few.) I don't
see a reason why one should spend development time to make Wikipedia suit for
the Nupedia editing process.

Uli


list: wikien-l

from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Search function

body:
I found an article in desperate need of Wikification (& yes, it's an
article I have no sympathy for, but I'm finding it easy to resist the urge
to add the POV declaration "this topic is bullshit"), when I noticed I am
no longer able to type in a word & ask for a search.

What's up?

]a bit grumpy from the heat[
Geoff


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>Now, for some reason, against all of your advice, I have started to
>>program a Wiki, and by now it's already become a suitable basis for a
>>Phase-IV Wikipedia software, including a database schema.
>
> Acting against all advice is the hallmark of genius and madness.  :-)

That's... an interesting way to look at it :)

>>Should I continue with this?
>
> Sure, but be aware that it's a really big deal to ask people to
> totally switch.  We have a fair amount of built-up investment in what
> we're using, and while we should *of course* switch to something
> better, there's a lot to consider.

As I said before, I consider this an experiment and it is mainly for
myself to learn how to make an own website (which I've never done
before). If it's not going to be used, it's okay, it'll still have been
fun to make it.

> Do you have a public url for us to view the fruits of your labor?

Well, the only "fruit" I have so far is
http://www.lionking.org/~timwi/t/wikipedia/wikipedia-iv.html, which I
have mentioned earlier. (Notice that some of this may already be out of
date again.) I don't have a server to install my actual software on, and
besides, it can't do anything yet anyway (unfortunately I've been
distracted quite a bit the past few days).

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marking up cited verses

body:
In HTML, that's easy.  If you want to cite some sentences you will go
for "blockquote":

    Once upon a time, and it was a very good time, etc. pp.

And verses? Addin "br" elements should do:

    Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,

    Die fr?h sich einst dem tr?ben Blick gezeigt.

    Versuch ich wohl, euch diesmal festzuhalten?

    F?hl ich mein Herz noch jenem Wahn geneigt?

    Ihr dr?ngt euch zu! nun gut, so m?gt ihr walten,

    Wie ihr aus Dunst und Nebel um mich steigt;

    Mein Busen f?hlt sich jugendlich ersch?ttert

    Vom Zauberhauch, der euren Zug umwittert.

And wikipedia? http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis :

    :Wenn nicht mehr Zahlen und Figuren

    :Sind Schl?ssel aller Kreaturen,

    :Wenn die, so singen oder k?ssen

    :Mehr als die Tiefgelehrten wissen,

    :Wenn sich die Welt ins freie Leben

    :Und in die Welt wird zur?ckbegeben,

    :Wenn dann sich wieder Licht und Schatten

    :Zu echter Klarheit werden gatten

    :Und man in M?rchen und Gedichten

    :Erkennt die wahren Weltgeschichten,

    :Dann fliegt vor einem geheimen Wort

    :Das ganze verkehrte Wesen fort.

This will come out with way:

Wenn nicht mehr Zahlen und Figuren

Sind Schl?ssel aller Kreaturen,

    [...]

The horror.  Don't add empty
s for formatting purposes.  Don't
misuse broken(!) definition lists for formatting purposes.  Leaving out
"dt" renders the HTML code invalid.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Anonymous contributions are problematic when licensing changes are
needed. Wikipedia is big, but it will be a lot bigger in 10 years from
now, with a lot more anonymous contributions.

The need for a license changes (in the future) is not zero:
1) Copyright law itself changes regularly, so we can't look far in the
future and know what will be necessary then.
2) We don't know if FDL and CC-AT-SA are going to reach compatibility,
3) we don't know how a judge might rule if the "moral rights" in the
European copyright-system conflict with public domain or copyleft
licences.
4) The GNU licenses are english only, there is an internationalisation
effort at CC. In many countries terms of use of a product need to be
stated in the official languages of the country.

Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from
anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL? This
is not a vote against the FDL at all, but it would retain the
possibility of a license change in the future. Now, with each anonymous
contribution, a license change becomes more and more something of an
impossibility.

Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
in a free and open copyleft spirit.

For contributors that have an account with a valid emailadres, nothing
need to change. But if they loose interest, they should have the
possibility to easy transfer their copyrights the Wikimedia Foundation.

What dou you think?

Wouter Vanden Hove
www.open-education.org
www.opencursus.be

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 10:15:30PM +0200, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
>
> Anonymous contributions are problematic when licensing changes are
> needed. Wikipedia is big, but it will be a lot bigger in 10 years from
> now, with a lot more anonymous contributions.
>
> The need for a license changes (in the future) is not zero:
> 1) Copyright law itself changes regularly, so we can't look far in the
> future and know what will be necessary then.
> 2) We don't know if FDL and CC-AT-SA are going to reach compatibility,
> 3) we don't know how a judge might rule if the "moral rights" in the
> European copyright-system conflict with public domain or copyleft
> licences.
> 4) The GNU licenses are english only, there is an internationalisation
> effort at CC. In many countries terms of use of a product need to be
> stated in the official languages of the country.
>
>
> Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from
> anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL? This
> is not a vote against the FDL at all, but it would retain the
> possibility of a license change in the future. Now, with each anonymous
> contribution, a license change becomes more and more something of an
> impossibility.
>
> Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
> could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
> in a free and open copyleft spirit.
>
> For contributors that have an account with a valid emailadres, nothing
> need to change. But if they loose interest, they should have the
> possibility to easy transfer their copyrights the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> What dou you think?

Legally can't work, copyright transfer can't be done by "clicking",
and that's especially so if copyright owner is anonymous.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia database backup

body:
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 02:56:39PM -0400, Lightning wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >At http://download.wikipedia.org/ I noticed that:
> >
> >Last dump made: 2003-07-13 (15 days ago)
> >
> >If this had been a hard drive crash....
> >
> good point. How do backups work? is the server ever backed up, or just
> the datadumps and then kinda like "lets hope someone downloaded the db
> sup today"?
>
normally Brion is doing the backup. He dumps the database during a downtime
and burns the dump onto some CDs.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC not always rendering

body:
take http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem for example.

There are clearly more than one group of == =='s (section)

ive noticed that also TOC doesnt show up when there is only 1 section.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Timwi wrote:
>
>
>>Oh, *that* kind of profiling. I have done that with C++ applications
>>under Windows, but I never thought it'd be necessary for webserver
>>applications... Clearly, at least our *current* problem - and also the
>>[...] is database performance, not CPU usage.
>>
>>
>
>For ten years now, I've been working with performance issues in
>systems that use databases, and I've never found it to be so easy as
>you want it to appear.
>
>Believing that "the problem is database performance" all too often
>leads people to blindly buy new hardware or change database software
>(from Oracle to Sybase or from MySQL to Postgres), as if printing more
>money would solve any "shortage of money" sort of problem.  Instead, I
>think you have to look at *how* you *spend* the resources that you
>have got, and consider if you could spend them otherwise.  If,
>perhaps, you are wasting and could start to save.  As any economist
>can tell you, the first step is monitoring the current flow, to get an
>overview of what is going on.  This is what the profiling is about.
>It's not about CPU performance or database performance.  It is about
>locating the hole in the bucket.
>
>The resource that we've got to work with is the two to five seconds of
>patience that each user brings to www.wikipedia.org.  Before that time
>runs out, they should have their content delivered.  If we have a hole
>in our bucket, where all time runs out, we better plug that hole.
>If we make a single call to a database that takes seven seconds to
>respond, we better fix that call (or the database).  But if our code
>for every HTTP request makes seventy calls to a database that always
>responds in .1 seconds (if you think this example is unrealistic,
>you haven't been in the telecom industry), the entire HTTP transaction
>also takes a total of seven seconds, and we better fix our code to
>make fewer calls rather than put the blame on the poor database.
>
>It's about wallclock time, not CPU time.  And profiling is the way to
>go, if we want to do better than guess and pray.  So far, the
>Wikipedia developers have mostly been guessing and praying.
>
>I think the worst performance I ever saw from Wikipedia was in May
>2002.  You can dig up the thread from the archives of this list, e.g.
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-May/000344.html
>
>Right now, Wikipedia is flying and everybody is happy.
>

Very true. I've been looking at the code, trying to find the db calls
where I could optimize something. and trying to find bottle necks, but
its pretty hard. The current code is *really* confusing. variables are
often passed as globals rather than parameters which makes it horrible
to look through the code and find whats going on. However, if anyone
knows of any specific place where you get the feeling that smething is
beeing done in a suboptimal place, name the action and I'll try to
follow through and dig up the whats going on.

I sent a proposal on a way to bring Special:Longpages and
Special:Shortpages back, but nobody replied. The code is very basic, and
it was actually partially included in my proposal, but I recieved no
reasons why it would be a good idea, or bad idea. I'd love to hear
*something* about it from someone who knows db's and if my proposal is
feasible or just unneccessary clunk.

 Another fun think would be to log every query made to the test server
for say.. 500 page views or so along with a microtimestamp from the
begining to the end of the file. We could then properly analyze that
file and try to find the bottle necks and problematic query's. That
would be a great way to start optimization, by *finding* the problem
areas. Another nice stat to have would be a ratio of views to edits and
total views to watch list views.  That would help us find ou where the
change would make the most difference.

Lightning


subject: [Wikitech-l] New stable version committed/uploaded

body:
Hi,

I've committed a new version of the stable branch to CVS. This is mostly
identical to the current unstable version but does not contain Magnus'
incomplete Interlanguage Links or Category features (not even the
translation strings for it). I will update the English wiki to that
version ASAP, where it will run for a few days. If it works fine, the
other wikis will be updated as well.

I have also uploaded a tarball of that codebase to our SourceForge home:
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/phase3.tgz

I encourage all Wikipedia spin off projects to update to the new code.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Martin's rewriting of policy pages unilaterally

body:
You know, I've been contemplating whether it's really in my best interests to send
this email... ;-) Still, here goes:

I'm mildly amused that Eloquence has been criticised for adding a single sentence to
a single policy page... Let's see: policy pages I've made major changes to over the
last month or so: [[wikipedia:deletion policy]], [[wikipedia:protected page]],
[[Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers]], [[Wikipedia:Replies to common objections]],
[[Wikipedia:Patent nonsense]] - oh, and minor changes around the place. I've
generally been bold, and my copious screw-ups have been quickly caught and fixed.
So the process seems to work.

One of the things I disliked about h2g2 was that it could take months to fix
documentation bugs (that's not figurative: actual months. In one instance, it's been a
year since the problem was first reported, and it's still not fixed). On Wikipedia, it's a
matter of minutes, nay seconds. That's great - let's not lose that.

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper.


subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Op ma 28-07-2003, om 22:20 schreef Tomasz Wegrzanowski:
> Legally can't work, copyright transfer can't be done by "clicking",
> and that's especially so if copyright owner is anonymous.

This is what ordinary corporate websites do:
http://www.aol.com/copyright.adp
USER'S GRANT OF LIMITED LICENSE

By posting or submitting content to this site, you:
     1. grant America Online and its affiliates and licensees the right
        to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, distribute,
        have distributed, and promote the content in any form, anywhere
        and for any purpose; and
     2. warrant and represent that you own or otherwise control all of
        the rights to the content and that public posting and use of
        your content by America Online will not infringe or violate the
        rights of any third party.

Funny that they call it a limited license. :)

If copyright transfer is not possible, then at least a more liberal
licensing to the Wikimedia Foundation can be asked, upon which the
Wikimedia Foundation automatically decides to license the anonymous
contribution under the GFDL. But since the contribution was given more
liberally, the content could also be relicensed if necessary without
having to track the anonymous contributor or to remove his contribution
alltogether.

Wouter Vanden Hove
www.open-education.org
www.opencursus.be

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Textbook-l] Staff lounge

body:
I created a "Village pump"-type page for Wikibooks at:

http://textbook.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge

I've started the first string - please join the conversation during your next
prep period. :-)

--mav


subject: [Textbook-l] Eureka! Introducing WikiGroups

body:
This isn't exactly what we want (since only one index is allowed) but it may
give us some ideas (at the very least eliminate tendious hard coding of
naviagational links; which would have to be redone whenever a book is
reorganized).

As explained at http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/WikiGroup

They have an index; here for example

http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/DocumentationIndex

That is where they organize the different "WikiGroups" using a wiki-editable
index/TOC just like what Toby and I proposed.

Then, on one of the pages linked from the index you write:

%trail%<<|PmWiki.DocumentationIndex|>>

Which, for the WikiGroup page becomes;

<< WikiStructures | PmWiki.DocumentationIndex | Passwords >>

Now look at the index again;

http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/DocumentationIndex

Notice WikiGroup is in between WikiStructures and Passwords?

Killer.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Technical note: After some digging I found out that PmWiki is written in PHP
(just like our software) and it looks like it is also covered by the GNU GPL
(just like our software's license).

Check out:

http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/FilesAndDirectories

which has this line:

COPYING is a copy of the GNU General Public License.

-- mav


body:
Wow! The more I read in this website the more I like.

We have also discussed having hard copies of books. Well the pmWiki are
thinking about how to do just that:

http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/Development/WikiBooks

It looks like it would work (I would propose we use ps instead of pdf
though...).

--mav


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <3F256E73.2090601@chaos-productions.com>; from lightning@chaos-productions.com on Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 02:41:55PM -0400

body:
> which reminds m... Any status update on the wikimedia foundation?? I
> know as of know Its officially a non-profit, but still hasn't achieved
> IRS tax exempt status. So, where are we with that? Have the papers been
> filed, or not? And how many more steps do we have afterwards. It'd be
> nice to have an estimated time by when this could be done. Is it going
> to take a couple of weeks or a couple of months? Just curious, and eager
> to donate....

Alex is an attorney who does this kind of thing all the time, and he
is now advising me.  We chatted last week, and are scheduled to chat
again this week.  At that time, I'll be submitting to him the
completed application, by-laws, etc., for him to review and make
suggestions.  Also, I have to register with Florida and California as
a charity, etc. If I've done a good job, it'll be a matter of sending
the apps to the relevant agencies.

However, we can actually start accepting donations before that, he
tells me.  So I'm setting up a bank account and a merchant account and
a paypal account for all of that.

I would say within 2 weeks to 1 month, we'll be ready to do a press
release (to Slashdot, for example) and to have a pledge week or
something like that.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Oh, *that* kind of profiling. I have done that with C++ applications
> under Windows, but I never thought it'd be necessary for webserver
> applications... Clearly, at least our *current* problem - and also the
> [...] is database performance, not CPU usage.

For ten years now, I've been working with performance issues in
systems that use databases, and I've never found it to be so easy as
you want it to appear.

Believing that "the problem is database performance" all too often
leads people to blindly buy new hardware or change database software
(from Oracle to Sybase or from MySQL to Postgres), as if printing more
money would solve any "shortage of money" sort of problem.  Instead, I
think you have to look at *how* you *spend* the resources that you
have got, and consider if you could spend them otherwise.  If,
perhaps, you are wasting and could start to save.  As any economist
can tell you, the first step is monitoring the current flow, to get an
overview of what is going on.  This is what the profiling is about.
It's not about CPU performance or database performance.  It is about
locating the hole in the bucket.

The resource that we've got to work with is the two to five seconds of
patience that each user brings to www.wikipedia.org.  Before that time
runs out, they should have their content delivered.  If we have a hole
in our bucket, where all time runs out, we better plug that hole.
If we make a single call to a database that takes seven seconds to
respond, we better fix that call (or the database).  But if our code
for every HTTP request makes seventy calls to a database that always
responds in .1 seconds (if you think this example is unrealistic,
you haven't been in the telecom industry), the entire HTTP transaction
also takes a total of seven seconds, and we better fix our code to
make fewer calls rather than put the blame on the poor database.

It's about wallclock time, not CPU time.  And profiling is the way to
go, if we want to do better than guess and pray.  So far, the
Wikipedia developers have mostly been guessing and praying.

I think the worst performance I ever saw from Wikipedia was in May
2002.  You can dig up the thread from the archives of this list, e.g.
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-May/000344.html

Right now, Wikipedia is flying and everybody is happy.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Search function

body:
Geoff-
> I found an article in desperate need of Wikification (& yes, it's an
> article I have no sympathy for, but I'm finding it easy to resist the urge
> to add the POV declaration "this topic is bullshit"), when I noticed I am
> no longer able to type in a word & ask for a search.

> What's up?

When Pliny came back up the server was extremely slow. I checked the SQL
processlist and noticed lots of hanging search threads. I have no idea
what's wrong, but for the time being I've taken the title search out. "Go"
should still work as expected (when there's no match it performs a title
search). If the server runs fine for the next few hours I'll put the
search back in and see what happens.

I've also disabled sysop queries after some **** ran a query repeatedly
which would bog the whole db server down. I think they should stay
disabled until someone hacks a timeout into the function, and it will be
hard to convince me otherwise.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> I agree quite strongly. One reason behind susning.nu's impressive growth
> has been the excellent response time of your site. Viewing it almost makes
> me wish I spoke Swedish, just because it's so pleasant to browse. In fact,

In November and December 2002, many users jumped from susning.nu to
sv.wikipedia because of the licensing rules, leading to sv.wikipedia's
rise from 265 to 2650 articles in a month (and 11600 today).  That
jump would have been quite unthinkable before May 2002, when Wikipedia
was so painfully slow.

This shows that GNU FDL licensing rules can be important to attract
(certain, very active) users, but website performance is even more
important.  (The cynical example of Wernher von Braun comes to mind:
Having worked for the nazis is less of a problem if you are a leading
rocket scientist.)

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


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] RE: Eureka! Introducing WikiGroups

body:
Wow, what a cool-looking site. Where has this been hiding
all along ?

Mav: Why PS instead of PDF ? Is there a reader for it ? ( I
tried to download a PS document a while back and could not
figure out how to use it). I imagined that the textbook
pages could compile into one big HTML document ... what are
the advantages of each of these options (PS, PDF, HTML ?)
It seems like either big PDF or HTML documents can be
unwieldly. It seems sometimes like the world is lacking a
decent open-source word processing / printing file format.

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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:

>Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from
>anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL?

>Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
>could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
>in a free and open copyleft spirit.

This sounds like a very interesting idea!

If we do this, then the time pressure on licence issues reduces.
Should somebody come along that wants to combine Wikibooks
with a free project covered by a Creative Commons (or other) licence,
then we can look at that licence, decide that it's free, and OK it.
And should somebody come along that wants to contribute
material covered by a Creative Commons (or other) licence,
then we can look at that licence, decide that it's free, and OK that.

Now, we have to implement submission of copyleft material.
Given other posters' complaints that transfer of copyright is out,
and given that copyleft material must be tracked as such, I suggest:
* Tell contributors that submissions are licenced to Wikimedia
  with no restriction other than those listed below;
* State (as part of their giving us rights, so it's legally binding)
  that we will immediately distribute the material under the GNU FDL
  (which is exactly what we do when we put it up on the web site); and
* Give a radio button option to say that the material is:
  * Free for the submitter to transfer all rights to us; or
  * Free for the submitter to submit only under the GNU FDL.
In the latter case, we flag the material as GNU FDL-only,
so we won't accidentally redistribute it under a CC licence.
(Thus it's out of bounds for the first "should somebody" above.)
If somebody wants to give us submissions under some other copyleft
(which is the second "should somebody" above), then we can add buttons.

This plan still needs some work, but I'll let others point out its flaws,
thus encouraging them to simultaneously suggest fixes. ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: different open content licenses

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>The periodic table isn't covered by copyright anyway.
>>Most of our [[en:List of ...]] articles are similarly free;
>>there is no copyright on information, only creative work.
>>(IANAL, and it'd be interesting to ask one just how far that goes.)

>The table itself, no. But the particular table in Wikipedia has different
>colors for the series, a particular selection of which series to have, and
>different colors for the different states of each element - all that is
>creative work and is under copyright.

True enough -- but all that Karl needs is "the table itself".
So take it, Karl!  Strip out the colours and such if you like;
then put other notations in as you feel best.

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Anonymous contributions

body:
Toby wrote:
> Now, we have to implement submission of copyleft
> material.
> Given other posters' complaints that transfer of
> copyright is out,
> and given that copyleft material must be tracked as such,
> I suggest:
> * Tell contributors that submissions are licenced to
> Wikimedia
>   with no restriction other than those listed below;
> * State (as part of their giving us rights, so it's
> legally binding)
>   that we will immediately distribute the material under
> the GNU FDL
>   (which is exactly what we do when we put it up on the
> web site); and
> * Give a radio button option to say that the material is:
>   * Free for the submitter to transfer all rights to us;
> or
>   * Free for the submitter to submit only under the GNU
> FDL.
> In the latter case, we flag the material as GNU FDL-only,
> so we won't accidentally redistribute it under a CC
> licence.
> (Thus it's out of bounds for the first "should somebody"
> above.)
> If somebody wants to give us submissions under some other
> copyleft
> (which is the second "should somebody" above), then we
> can add buttons.

If this can be made to work from a technical standpoint it
sounds like a great solution to me. Default option is to
transfer rights to the Wikimedia foundation and a checkbox
if it is GNU FDL-only. But this just came into my head,
what about the times that someone copies (GNU-only) text
from the WP main site but does not flag it as such. Is
there any way to automate finding this (I think this was
previously discussed).

BTW, Anyone find the good link to the GNU FGL compatibility
with other creative licenses yet ?

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body:
Karl wrote:
>Why PS instead of PDF ?

PDF is one of the flagship file formats of Adobe - they allow people to create
pdfs fairly freely now but they could change that at any time. So we should
rely on a proprietary file format.

PS is a bit more open since its code wasn't locked down until fairly late in
its development (IIRC PDF is based on PS) and a bit of an unwanted step-child
since PDF came on the scene. It used to be much more common (remember "Print
to file" in Windows 3.x products? Those files where .ps) but now is just the
file that is sent to Post Script (PS) printers - it is hidden from users.

But then I'm working on just a vague recollection so I am probably missing
something or got something really wrong.

>Is there a reader for it ?

I can read it with software that comes standard in my Linux distro but Windows
users haven't been able to read PS with a default install for years, IIRC. I
was thinking more along the lines of actually *printing* the darn thing - if
people want an electric version they can visit our website.

But there are free html->pdf converters...

>It seems sometimes like the world is
>lacking a decent open-source word
>processing / printing file format.

I could hardly agree more - this is a huge omission.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
I wrote:
>So we should rely on a proprietary file format.

There should have been a "not" in there.

---mav


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [WikiEN-l] gfdl violation

body:
Please see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_con
tent

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Imran Ghory
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8.28
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] gfdl violation

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1049

Includes a copy and paste from,

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Staunton

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Software upgrade?

body:
Wow!  I'm noticing some major differences in the wikipedia today.  Is
there a place where I can see the additions made in the new version of
the software?

--
Michael Becker


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Search function

body:
I thought it ought to be mentioned that the lack of search capability
is not just annoying to editors, it reading of the encyclopedia for
study virtually impossible, expecially for someone new to the site.

Would it be possible to put the Google search box in as had been done
in the past?  I realize that's lame in comparison but it's better than
nothing.

-Hephaestos


body:
To save any developer the trouble of clicking around for
the download files for the wiki with the automatic
navigation we liked, here is the link:

http://www.pmichaud.com/pub/pmwiki/

And installation instructions:

http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/Installation

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subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

body:
What can we do to bring more attention to this project ?
Are there ways to get it registered in online directories
more quickly ? What about submitting it for a Slashdot
article ? (Should we wait until more work has been done
before we get it Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with
the announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)

--Karl

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC not always rendering

body:
Hunter-
> take http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem for example.
> There are clearly more than one group of == =='s (section)
> ive noticed that also TOC doesnt show up when there is only 1 section.

This is all intentional. The TOC only shows up on articles with more than
three sections. If a very long article doesn't have enough sections for it
to show up, add some :-). It is supposed to encourage good editing.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Search function

body:
John Robinson wrote:

> Would it be possible to put the Google search box in as had been done
> in the past?  I realize that's lame in comparison but it's better than
> nothing.

I'll second this suggestion. I've already given up on using the built-in
search for anything at all, and use site:wikipedia.org searches at
google whenever I want to find something.

Long-term this isn't an ideal solution though, because it searches all
namespaces.

-Mark


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV

body:
Lightning wrote:
>
> did you notice my msg about how to bring special:short and special:long

I have seen all three of them, and I would have replied to one of them
if I had an answer to give you.

With my suggested database structure, this would be easier because you
wouldn't need to add a new column to a table that already contains a
universe of data.

Timwi


from_name: S. Loisel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What a mess!

body:
Right now, this page is a horrible mangled corpse:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>which reminds m... Any status update on the wikimedia foundation?? I
>>know as of know Its officially a non-profit, but still hasn't achieved
>>IRS tax exempt status. So, where are we with that? Have the papers been
>>filed, or not? And how many more steps do we have afterwards. It'd be
>>nice to have an estimated time by when this could be done. Is it going
>>to take a couple of weeks or a couple of months? Just curious, and eager
>>to donate....
>>
>>
>
>Alex is an attorney who does this kind of thing all the time, and he
>is now advising me.  We chatted last week, and are scheduled to chat
>again this week.  At that time, I'll be submitting to him the
>completed application, by-laws, etc., for him to review and make
>suggestions.  Also, I have to register with Florida and California as
>a charity, etc. If I've done a good job, it'll be a matter of sending
>the apps to the relevant agencies.
>
>However, we can actually start accepting donations before that, he
>tells me.  So I'm setting up a bank account and a merchant account and
>a paypal account for all of that.
>
>I would say within 2 weeks to 1 month, we'll be ready to do a press
>release (to Slashdot, for example) and to have a pledge week or
>something like that.
>
>--Jimbo
>

Slick. Let us know when that's up and which one charges you a smaller
fee. Also, Are you going to put up a musicbrainz-style finances page? I
really like that about Music Brainz, I think it encourages people to
donate because they see exactly where the money they donate is going.
It's just a list people who donated either with ther name or no name or
a pseudonym if they want to and how much they donated as well as a list
of expenses and It's updated every day or so I would guess. I think that
kind of thing really helps the credibility of projects and makes people
more comfortable with donating their money.

Lightning


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

body:
Suggestion:

Speaking strictly from the perspective of the textbook project, it would be
best to do as many joint announcements with the California Open Soucre
Textbook Project www.opensourcetext.org as possible. This is more likely to
get everyone to sit up and take notice, as California is the "big enchilada"
on K-12, in terms of numbers, and the other states more often assume - or
are influenced by - the California frameworks.There has already been quite a
bit done in California to promote this (we've been Slashdotted, as well).

This way we will get maximum leverage in the press, and with people in state
bureaucracies, comercial publishing houses, politicians, etc., who are
watching (or will be, once we get this thing flying).

Of course, this isn't an absolute sina qua non, but everyone would benefit
to a greater degree than going it alone. Comments?

Also, although I make no assumptions about which state curiculum framework
will be applied to whatever curriculum area is going to be covered in this
project (whether, history, social studies, oe whatever [note: suggestions
have been made that keep math out of this for the time being because of
certain software limitations]), I'm hoping that a single framework will be
offered up as a model for the initial project. And, I suggest the California
framework for that because of what I said above.

Of course, pointers to other frameworks could be made, but I suggest focus
on one framework for the pilot, as that will get us the best results
possible, to prove our initial point...which is that a quality K-12 text can
be built within open source.


body:
Wouter wrote:
>Standard GNU/Linux have a few pdf-readers,
>like xpdf, kghostview, gv,ggv. KDE and
>OpenOffice can print to PDF. Many of these
>programs are GPL, so what could Adobe do about
>that?

The GPL is irrelevant here since Adobe holds the PDF
patents. This fact simply makes me feel uneasy - that
doesn't mean we shouldn't use HTML->PDF convertors
since obviously Adobe thinks its best interests are
served by trying to get as many people hooked on PDF
as possible (at least for the moment).

The worse thing that would happen is that we would
have to stop if Adobe suddenly did the same thing that
the MP3 people did and start the process of charging
licensing fees /after/ their file format was firmly
entrenched. IIRC their patent claims over PS are more
dubious and thus less enforceable (if not expired).
That makes me feel a bit less uneasy - a free
alternative (akin to Ogg Vorbis using the sound
example) would be great but isn't even close to being
a reality. It just would be a shame if we got hooked
on the pdf thing and also got stung.

--mav

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subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

body:
Karl-
> What can we do to bring more attention to this
> project ? Are there ways to get it registered in
> online directories more quickly ? What about
> submitting it for a Slashdot article ? (Should we
> wait until more work has been done before we get it
> Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with the
> announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)

In all due time. We are still working out /really/
basic things like license issues, name, software needs
and basic policies on what to even have in our
project.

For now, just search for open/free textbooks and email
their authors - hopefully some of them will decide to
continue development of their textbook here. I'm sure
others will grant us use of their textbooks under the
GNU FDL (for cases where their textbooks are not
already under that license).

But let's mainly concentrate on establishing the
basics first. We will get mentioned in the upcoming
Wikimedia Foundation press release, but we will be
mostly an aside until we actually have something
impressive to show off - such as our first feature
complete textbook.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

body:
This makes good sense

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 12:06 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

> Karl-
> > What can we do to bring more attention to this
> > project ? Are there ways to get it registered in
> > online directories more quickly ? What about
> > submitting it for a Slashdot article ? (Should we
> > wait until more work has been done before we get it
> > Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with the
> > announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)
>
> In all due time. We are still working out /really/
> basic things like license issues, name, software needs
> and basic policies on what to even have in our
> project.
>
> For now, just search for open/free textbooks and email
> their authors - hopefully some of them will decide to
> continue development of their textbook here. I'm sure
> others will grant us use of their textbooks under the
> GNU FDL (for cases where their textbooks are not
> already under that license).
>
> But let's mainly concentrate on establishing the
> basics first. We will get mentioned in the upcoming
> Wikimedia Foundation press release, but we will be
> mostly an aside until we actually have something
> impressive to show off - such as our first feature
> complete textbook.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> __________________________________
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> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Do we really need a Sifter project?

body:
sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>>But if you make small good edits in a separate Nupedia,
>>they won't find their way back to Wikipedia, which might or might
>>not be desirable...
>>
>
>Read mav's lips: No new no fork!
>
>Er, no new fork!
>
>If Nupedia participants edit the contents of an article, the edits take
>place on Wikipedia. Copyediting, corrections, re-wording all take
>place on Wikipedia.
>
My point must not have been clear enough.  Simply put, past
experience with large open-source projects says that some
forking and remerging is inevitable.  Insist that it won't
be necessary all you like, and maybe it won't be, but I
piped up because I saw an incorrect impression of today's
open-source projects being put forth as a process model.

Stan


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [WikiEN-l] gfdl violation

body:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1049

Includes a copy and paste from,

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Staunton

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny feeling the big hurt again...

body:
Pliny seems to be the cause of the current slowness, seems we're running
low on memory again, although I can't say for sure why this is the
case... (heavy swapping, low CPU util...)

   procs                      memory    swap          io     system         cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  sy  id
 1  2  0 899764  12580  28732 803580  12   0  2000   640  695  1139  23   3  74
 0  6  1 899772  10528  28464 803968 168   0  3916    48  881  1034  17   6  77
 2  2  0 899772  10496  28492 804196  68   0  2856   140  896  1038  25   4  71
 0  3  0 899772  12604  28500 801784  32 112  1652   504  968  1196  30   7  64
 0  8  1 899772  10556  28524 802788  72   0  2028   408  704  1141  23   4  73
 0  2  0 899772  10476  28532 802856 284   0  2552    72  821  1282  25   5  70
 1  3  0 899772  12560  28512 800812 392   0  2512   420  891  1175  10   3  87
 0  4  0 899772  10504  28532 802376 516   0  2852   160  789  1335  17   5  78
 0  7  1 899772  10512  28560 803440 464   0  1880   440  592   869  15   6  79
 0 15  3 899772  12100  28576 803244   0   0    52  1423  474 165275   1  11  88
 0  6  1 899772  11700  28592 803620  20   0   396   293  549 399667   8  61  31
 0  6  1 899772  12032  28624 805284  28   0  1704   792  621  1196  33   6  61
 2  5  0 899764  10652  28652 806576  68   0  1372   116  659   700   7   4  89
 1  5  0 899764  10552  28660 806728 148   0  1288   590  591   607   8   2  90
 0  5  1 899764  10468  28700 806896  68   0  1232   472  710   856   5   5  89
 0  1  0 899764  10536  28708 802908 128   4  2120   104  564   894  23   3  73
 4  6  2 899764  10488  28704 799480 144 136  1164   979  552   723  15   4  80
 0  3  0 899764  15916  28696 798008 308   0  1704   733  386   760  31   4  65

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Web of Trust (Wikipedia-l digest)

body:
Note* People, perhaps it would be a good idea to
change the subject header to something intelligible
when responding to/from a bulk-digest email. Thanks.
-----

>Schewek
>What about a 'web-of-trust'?

I kinda like the general idea of this, but have rarely
seen it implemented to its full potential. Either its
black and white or too superficial to mean anything.

This approach would probably best manifest itself as a
"temperature rating" for articles that is set by users
as they read (not edit) articles.  This rating can
then be used as a variable in a search/tour so that
users can get to what they want quicker.  The ratings
could be sliders set for various factors, most
prominently -- "quality, usefulness, completeness,
favorite" etc.  (Now it becomes clear how *subjective
these determinations are)

And since "perfection" is only the permanent and
unacheivable goal -- the God infinity which we use as
a reference point in our calculations and
factorizations  -- we can stipulate (in our thinking)
that this "perfection" is the common goal -- and that
true perfection is not to be achieved by being
classist about the approach. The more open the better,
and the is the more beautiful approach is the one that
is most minimal and least obstructive. Wiki101.

-S-

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Pizza Puzzle

body:
Evercat and Daniel Quinlan have collected evidence that PP and Lir are
identical, as I've already pointed out many weeks ago.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Evercat/PP

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: gfdl violation

body:
Imran Ghory wrote:
> http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1049
>
> Includes a copy and paste from,
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Staunton
But with the old typos already fixed in the Wikipedia on July 10 - see
ameteur. So our version is already better :-)


from_name: sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1252 - 13 msgs

body:
Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

> Actually, that's not at all what I'm worried about.   ;-)
>
> What I'm most worried about is that Wikipedia will lose contributors,
> because most of them won't get a choice to decide what's in the "real"
> encyclopedia and therefore lose interest. The closer (the more
> "officially") Nupedia is associated with Wikipedia, the less interesting
> it will be to spend time for Wikipedia, because everything one is doing
> there is just the "foreplay" for the "real thing" Nupedia.

Ok, got it. ;-)

> I admit that I have my personal problems with the Nupedia editing policy,
> and the way authors are treated there as more or less irrelevant (because
> the important persons aren't the authors, but the almighty editors). I
> once offered two ready 2 page articles on "Sauna" and "Sherry" for the
> Nupedia project. I got an awnser like this (I'm exaggerating here, to make
> my point clear): "It's nice, thank you, but can you please strip it down
> to one paragraph, then we will consider to put it in the editing process
> as soon as we've found an editor suitable to the subject".

Yes, there was some rule about having "brief versions" of all
articles, in order to cover breadth first, then depth.

> Guess what? I
> never thought of Nupedia any more, and I never heard of them, too. I doubt
> if Nupedia (if revived and taking [[Sauna]] and [[Sherry]] from the
> Wikipedia will ever be able to find someone (or even a group of people!)
> with a university degree in either Saunology or Sherryology that is
> willing to work for free and will "approve" those two articles.

That's one of my big problems with most ideas of expert reviewers.
Although most people advocating expert review deny equating
expertise with PhDs, it's quite difficult to divide up all the
knowledge we intend to cover into neat little topics with lead
reviewers. Who is an expert in long-haul trucking? In bread
making? Saunas? Probably not university professors.

> But now back to the subject: Imagine what would happen if the title page
> of Wikipedia wouldn't say any longer: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopaedia", but instead:
>
> "Welcome to Wikipedia, here you can upload articles that probably will go
> into the free Nupedia encyclopaedia editing process some day if the people
> there like it and have the right approved editors for your subject".

No one is proposing this. The "sifter" type proposal (being
championed by Daniel Mayer at the moment) involves no changes
whatsoever to Wikipedia. Whatever the expert reviewers are doing
with our articles, life for us Wikipedians doesn't change.

Erik's proposal is that Wikipedia itself produce a stable (i.e.
unchanging) version by linking to specific versions of an article in
its history. No editorial boards or major changes, save a protected
Brilliant Prose page.

> Again - If Nupedia wants to use Wikipedia articles (forking them
> or not) -
> they're free to do it, the License perfectly allows for that. Just go
> ahead and do it - there will be enough Wikipedia editors merging back the
> approved articles to Wikipedia, both will profit from that. (However I'd
> like to see how that's going to work with that silly GNU FDL requesting to
> cite all the history. Merging a history from Nupedia and one from
> Wikipedia in the Wikipedia talk page (where else?) must be fun!)

One of the nasty aspects of the GFDL. I often wish the Creative
Commons licenses were around when we started...

> But I strongly oppose the Wikipedia *supporting* that in any further way.
> It's like shooting ourselfs in the knee (is that a valid phrase in
> english?).

Very close. In English, we shoot ourselves in the foot. :)

> Apart from that, there are some problems at Wikipedia that
> should be adressed by developers first (performance, searching, just two
> name a few.) I don't see a reason why one should spend development time to
> make Wikipedia suit for the Nupedia editing process.

I completely agree that performance and searching should take
priority at this point. However, as I said above, no one is proposing
we modify Wikipedia for a Nupedia-type editing process.

Stephen G.
-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> But if you make small good edits in a separate Nupedia,
> they won't find their way back to Wikipedia, which might or might
> not be desirable...

Read mav's lips: No new no fork!

Er, no new fork!

If Nupedia participants edit the contents of an article, the edits take
place on Wikipedia. Copyediting, corrections, re-wording all take
place on Wikipedia.

I think the only editing that Nupedia should do separately from
Wikipedia is XML markup.

Stephen Gilbert
-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Table of contents example

body:
Erik asked for specific examples which need a "disable table of
contents" tag. Here's one:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page

"How to edit a page" has sections and subsections that are used
only to demonstrate the markup needed to create sections and
subsections. Thus, in the table of contents, we have

3. New Section
    3.1 Subsection
       3.1.1 Sub-subsection

For the record, I love the table of contents feature. It's very helpful
at [[Talk:Open Directory Project/Temp]].

Stephen Gilbert
-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org


body:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 10:28:49PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 02:27:30PM -0500, Nick Reinking wrote:
> > Pliny seems to be the cause of the current slowness, seems we're running
> > low on memory again, although I can't say for sure why this is the
> > case... (heavy swapping, low CPU util...)
> >
> >    procs                      memory    swap          io     system         cpu
> >  r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  sy  id
> >  1  2  0 899764  12580  28732 803580  12   0  2000   640  695  1139  23   3  74
> >  0  6  1 899772  10528  28464 803968 168   0  3916    48  881  1034  17   6  77
> >  2  2  0 899772  10496  28492 804196  68   0  2856   140  896  1038  25   4  71
> >  0  3  0 899772  12604  28500 801784  32 112  1652   504  968  1196  30   7  64
> >  0  8  1 899772  10556  28524 802788  72   0  2028   408  704  1141  23   4  73
> >  0  2  0 899772  10476  28532 802856 284   0  2552    72  821  1282  25   5  70
> >  1  3  0 899772  12560  28512 800812 392   0  2512   420  891  1175  10   3  87
> >  0  4  0 899772  10504  28532 802376 516   0  2852   160  789  1335  17   5  78
> >  0  7  1 899772  10512  28560 803440 464   0  1880   440  592   869  15   6  79
> >  0 15  3 899772  12100  28576 803244   0   0    52  1423  474 165275   1  11  88
> >  0  6  1 899772  11700  28592 803620  20   0   396   293  549 399667   8  61  31
> >  0  6  1 899772  12032  28624 805284  28   0  1704   792  621  1196  33   6  61
> >  2  5  0 899764  10652  28652 806576  68   0  1372   116  659   700   7   4  89
> >  1  5  0 899764  10552  28660 806728 148   0  1288   590  591   607   8   2  90
> >  0  5  1 899764  10468  28700 806896  68   0  1232   472  710   856   5   5  89
> >  0  1  0 899764  10536  28708 802908 128   4  2120   104  564   894  23   3  73
> >  4  6  2 899764  10488  28704 799480 144 136  1164   979  552   723  15   4  80
> >  0  3  0 899764  15916  28696 798008 308   0  1704   733  386   760  31   4  65
>
> Interesting enough, it's only si that is high, so pliny has to read data in
> since he can't cache it any longer, but doesn't have to swap it out.
>
> bi is also much higher than bo, the database can't keep all the necessary and
> requested data in memory.
>
> With which intervall are the above figures gathered?

That is at a one second interval.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: brion vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] FYI -- returning soon

body:
I'll be back home and returning to Wikipedia duty on August 1. Either that or lost somewhere in Sweden after being unable to make a train connection. We'll see...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
In your opinion, would an infusion of ram help?

If there's a programming problem that's chewing up the memory, then
of course, adding more won't solve the problem.  But if the size of the
db, traffic factors, etc., make it seem like this is just the latest
bottleneck, I will solve it very quickly.

We can probably order the ram and have Jason down there before the
week is out.

Nick Reinking wrote:

> Pliny seems to be the cause of the current slowness, seems we're running
> low on memory again, although I can't say for sure why this is the
> case... (heavy swapping, low CPU util...)
>
>    procs                      memory    swap          io     system         cpu
>  r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  sy  id
>  1  2  0 899764  12580  28732 803580  12   0  2000   640  695  1139  23   3  74
>  0  6  1 899772  10528  28464 803968 168   0  3916    48  881  1034  17   6  77
>  2  2  0 899772  10496  28492 804196  68   0  2856   140  896  1038  25   4  71
>  0  3  0 899772  12604  28500 801784  32 112  1652   504  968  1196  30   7  64
>  0  8  1 899772  10556  28524 802788  72   0  2028   408  704  1141  23   4  73
>  0  2  0 899772  10476  28532 802856 284   0  2552    72  821  1282  25   5  70
>  1  3  0 899772  12560  28512 800812 392   0  2512   420  891  1175  10   3  87
>  0  4  0 899772  10504  28532 802376 516   0  2852   160  789  1335  17   5  78
>  0  7  1 899772  10512  28560 803440 464   0  1880   440  592   869  15   6  79
>  0 15  3 899772  12100  28576 803244   0   0    52  1423  474 165275   1  11  88
>  0  6  1 899772  11700  28592 803620  20   0   396   293  549 399667   8  61  31
>  0  6  1 899772  12032  28624 805284  28   0  1704   792  621  1196  33   6  61
>  2  5  0 899764  10652  28652 806576  68   0  1372   116  659   700   7   4  89
>  1  5  0 899764  10552  28660 806728 148   0  1288   590  591   607   8   2  90
>  0  5  1 899764  10468  28700 806896  68   0  1232   472  710   856   5   5  89
>  0  1  0 899764  10536  28708 802908 128   4  2120   104  564   894  23   3  73
>  4  6  2 899764  10488  28704 799480 144 136  1164   979  552   723  15   4  80
>  0  3  0 899764  15916  28696 798008 308   0  1704   733  386   760  31   4  65
>
>
> --
> Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] hey Sanford

body:
What book are we going to start for you ? Do you just want
to pick one or a few and create links to them on the
textbook site, along with links to the specific frameworks
that they need to follow ? With maybe a brief bit of text
mentioning what the book is being built for, for those who
happen to stumble onto it ..

-- Karl

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from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

body:
Op di 29-07-2003, om 16:49 schreef Daniel Mayer:
> Karl wrote:
> >Why PS instead of PDF ?
>
> PDF is one of the flagship file formats of Adobe - they allow people to create
> pdfs fairly freely now but they could change that at any time. So we should
> rely on a proprietary file format.

Standard GNU/Linux have a few pdf-readers, like xpdf, kghostview,
gv,ggv. KDE and OpenOffice can print to PDF.
Many of these programs are GPL, so what could Adobe do about that?

Wouter
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from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikitech-l] another real TOC error?

body:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

1 Formalized algorithms
2 Implementing algorithms
1 Example
2 History
3 Classes of algorithms
4 See also
5 References

repeat numbers...

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subject: [Textbook-l] problems with PDF

body:
The one thing about PDF, whether or not Adobe suddenly
starts trying to extract payments for its use, is that it
seems to make my computer slow down, be a system hog, and
not be flexible at all in terms of printing at different
sizes or things like that, or of course modifying the
document. To me, a big HTML document, or just a text one,
might be more flexible for printing cuz I could just copy
and paste it to another program to print, or adjust the
size of the print in my browser and print from there.
Doesn't seem like there is a clear best solution though.

-- Karl

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 11:34:48PM +0800, b schewek wrote:
> > > 3. The synthesis of the first two concerns: what happens when
> > > there are errors in the stable version? Mistakes can be corrected in
> > > the current version, but only sysops will be able to change which
> > > version is listed on the locked Brilliant Prose page.
> >
> > Sifter would have the exact same problem. IMHO the best solution is to
> > give sysops some leeway to change the pointer to a new revision in case of
> > obvious corrections (linkfixes, spelling, uncontroversial factual changes
> > as per talk etc.), and to otherwise require a re-listing on the candidates
> > page.
>
> What about a 'web-of-trust', whereby /all/ registered users can 'approve' or 'reject'
> a version of an article, and every registered user can select any number of 'trusted
> registered users', and thereby articles appear 'approved', 'rejected' or 'undetermined',
> according to the settings of 'trusted users'.
>
> Then it is up to every individual to select the 'sifting agency', so to speak.

Approval is not transitive (I can think that X is sane, but maybe he's
opinion about Y being sane is different from mine) and is field-specific
(I can trust X about chemistry but not at all about anything related to,
say, history).


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
b-

> What about a 'web-of-trust', whereby /all/ registered users can 'approve' or
> 'reject' a version of an article, and every registered user can select any
> number of 'trusted registered users', and thereby articles appear
> 'approved', 'rejected' or 'undetermined', according to the settings of
> 'trusted users'.

Which brings us back to my original proposal from last year:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-October/001089.html

However, I increasingly see this kind of filtering as problematic. We
should strive towards a common NPOV, not towards different "views" of what
is a good article.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Search function

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Geoff-
>
>>I found an article in desperate need of Wikification (& yes, it's an
>>article I have no sympathy for, but I'm finding it easy to resist the urge
>>to add the POV declaration "this topic is bullshit"), when I noticed I am
>>no longer able to type in a word & ask for a search.
>
>
>>What's up?
>
>
> When Pliny came back up the server was extremely slow. I checked the SQL
> processlist and noticed lots of hanging search threads. I have no idea
> what's wrong, but for the time being I've taken the title search out. "Go"
> should still work as expected (when there's no match it performs a title
> search). If the server runs fine for the next few hours I'll put the
> search back in and see what happens.

It's a bit annoying when you want a title search but "go" wants to take
you to an article.

<whisper> Don't tell anyone, but you can still do a title search by
pressing enter in the search box </whisper>

> I've also disabled sysop queries after some **** ran a query repeatedly
> which would bog the whole db server down. I think they should stay
> disabled until someone hacks a timeout into the function, and it will be
> hard to convince me otherwise.

It's alright for you, you've got a developer account. I'm a mere sysop
:( Oh well, I can still just log into larousse and do queries from the
command line client.

You're quite right though. (there you go, I'm agreeing with you about
something). There appears to be a method for implementing timeouts at:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-unbuffered-query.php

Doesn't look too hard.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Geoffrey Thomas

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: morphophonics for wikipedia

body:
Tarquin saith:
>Everyone tries to invent their own phonetic system when they're in their
>teens. I did.
>But reinventing the wheel is generally a bad idea.
>if every dictionary & encyclopedia has its own system, then it is not
>transferable, and the reader has to relearn for each book they open.
>Let's stick to something that is universal: IPA / SAMPA.

I've seen IPA/SAMPA used in Wikipedia articles and didn't like it. The
former uses too many non-ASCII characters to make it easy enough to use
and the latter uses weird ASCII signs that make the word @n"rid at bl
[unreadable] and l33t-like for those who don't know the system.

The system used in practically every school dictionary I've seen
(except for Merriam-Webster's) is simple: prime mark after accented
syllable (doubled for two accents in one word), flipped e for
schwa, breve (curve) for short vowels, macron (line) for long vowels,
diaresis or circumflex for vowels of far and fur, line across th for
voiced and no line for unvoiced. This last one is the only thing not
representable in Unicode; everything else is sĭm'pəl ēnəf' for us to use.
(If those words came out garbled, either your mail client or mine doesn't
support Unicode. That was 73 12D 6D 27 70 259 6C 20 113 6E 259 66 27 hex.)

Even better is the limited letters-only system used in textbooks that aren't
dictionaries: complex words are repeated in identical-sounding imitations
(I-mi-TAY-shuns). If this latter system is formalized (FAR-muh-liyzd) it
may be simpler than SAMPA for those who don't have the time to learn it.

Geoffrey Thomas / jěf'rē t?'məs / JEF-ree TAH-muhs
geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com

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subject: [WikiEN-l] overdoing it with the [edit] tags

body:
Take a look at my box and see what you think.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevertigo/Sand_box

Im finding these edit tags poping up everywhere is
noying as heck. I just turned em off in the prefs --
maybe they should default to off, and then
maybe a __NOEDTAG__ feature for special cases might be
appropriate.

-S-

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subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

body:
Karl-
> What can we do to bring more attention to this project ?
> Are there ways to get it registered in online directories
> more quickly ? What about submitting it for a Slashdot
> article ? (Should we wait until more work has been done
> before we get it Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with
> the announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)

I think a big cool Wikimedia announcement would make sense:

* Wikimedia foundation takes donations
* Wikipedia reaches 150,000 articles
* New logo
* New spinoffs: Wikiquote, Wikibooks

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Chris Nash

subject: [WikiEN-l] Right Click Editing

body:
You can.  It is called "Enable section editing by right clicking
on section titles (JavaScript)"

----
Frecklefoot

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
> On Behalf Of Michael Becker
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 7:20 PM
> To: Wikitech-L at wikipedia.org
> Cc: wikien-l at wikipedia.org; wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Right Click Editing
>
> I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
> Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
> links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you
can
> turn off in the user preferences?
>
> --
> Michael Becker
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
While Tarquin's comment was a bit cheeky (what use
would he have had *then for it) -- and Dan's comment
earlier about professors knowing better than the rest
of us, so why bother (well?) -- represent the pinnacle
of interest in the subject...  Still -- wikipedia
might have an interest in attempting to
unify/formalize something on this. Maybe its time that

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_schema

But the whole notion of using English specific formats
is useless-- once again the see we tend to swim in is
an English-centered one.

And Ill take a look at any PHP or Perl pinyin
converters so that stuff like "pin:/wo3 bao4 you3/
SARS" gets turned in into properly accented vowels,
etc.

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from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pizza Puzzle

body:
> Evercat and Daniel Quinlan have collected evidence that PP and Lir
> are identical, as I've already pointed out many weeks ago.
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Evercat/PP
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Yeah. As well as editing the same articles in the same way, I can now
prove that they are both from the same US town of a mere 70,000
people. Quite a coincidence.

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] vandalism

body:
Could someone with developer access ban [[User:67.121.169.17 (Michael)]]
-- a logged-in user, not that IP.  He's maliciously moving around pages
and it's becoming increasingly difficult to clean up.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Table of contents example

body:
sgilbert-
> Erik asked for specific examples which need a "disable table of
> contents" tag.

Actually I saw a lot of pages that needed it once the feature went live.
Particularly timelines. __NOTOC__ works fine, though. More problematic is
the fact that section editing gets confused by headings within <nowiki>
tags. I'll try to sort that one out.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Installation Annoyances

body:
So, hi. I'm having some problems with installing Wikipedia.

Is it an unreasonable layout to do something like this?

      {Document Root}/wiki <- .phtml here
                     /upload <- nothing here (at first)
                     /style <- .css here

      /usr/local/share/php4 <- .php files here, except...

      /etc/wikipedia <- LocalSettings.php, Language*.php here

The docs seem to imply that this is a good setup, but the install.php
installer wants to write everything to $IP, which is apparently slang
for "where everything goes". Many of the libraries also have code
like:

        include_once ("$IP/SomeOther.php");

...kind of making it hard to move files around. Gar. I'm a long-time
Web developer, and short-time Wikipedia code user, and I'm pretty
unhappy with the idea of dropping _everything_ into the
externally-served "{Document Root}/wiki", especially files with
passwords and whatnot.

I also figure config files like LocalSettings.php or Language*.php
should be separated out to keep them from getting stomped on.

Anyways, I've got all that stuff working, and I'd like to know if I
can submit a patch that divides the installed files into Web stuff,
PHP libraries, and config files?

~ESP


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Right Click Editing

body:
I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you can
turn off in the user preferences?

--
Michael Becker


subject: [Wikitech-l] Right Click Editing


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Right Click Editing


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 05:28:13PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> In your opinion, would an infusion of ram help?
>
> If there's a programming problem that's chewing up the memory, then
> of course, adding more won't solve the problem.  But if the size of the
> db, traffic factors, etc., make it seem like this is just the latest
> bottleneck, I will solve it very quickly.
>
> We can probably order the ram and have Jason down there before the
> week is out.

That's what I would try first, it is probably the lowest hanging fruit.
Also, moving the webservers on pliny into larousse would probably also
help some (provided that larousse isn't terrible overloaded - it didn't
seem like it was...)

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Do we really need a Sifter project?

body:
Delirium wrote:
> So basically I think if we don't do it ourselves, somebody else will
> start sifting out "good articles" from Wikipedia.  I think we can do a
> better job of it though, and keep the results under the Wikipedia name.

No matter who does it, the resulting collection needs not only be even
in quality, but also well balanced.  It cannot be detailed on physics
and lack classic music.  (Unless it is an "encyclopedia of physics".)

I doubt that this will be achievable in the near time.  You are free
to prove me wrong, of course.

If thinking about this goal can lead to the identification of areas
where Wikipedia today lacks detail, that can be good enough, even if
the goal in itself isn't reached.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Right Click Editing

body:
Interesting, I didn't see this option earlier when I was pissed about it
not being there.  Thanks, it was just what I was looking for.

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Chris Nash
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9.35
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Right Click Editing

You can.  It is called "Enable section editing by right clicking on
section titles (JavaScript)"

----
Frecklefoot

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
> On Behalf Of Michael Becker
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 7:20 PM
> To: Wikitech-L at wikipedia.org
> Cc: wikien-l at wikipedia.org; wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Right Click Editing
>
> I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
> Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
> links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you
can
> turn off in the user preferences?
>
> --
> Michael Becker
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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


body:
Op di 29-07-2003, om 20:51 schreef Daniel Mayer:
> The GPL is irrelevant here since Adobe holds the PDF
> patents.

But GPL has clauses concerning patents. It demands a royalty-free
license for all. Even more, GNU Ghostscript is an official GNU-package,
and is downloadable from gnu.org. The FSF refuses to use gif-images on
their pages because of patents. So I cannot imagine they would apply
different standards concerning pdf.

http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/intro.html
Ghostscript has several main uses:
     1. Display a PostScript or PDF file (avoid killing trees).
     2. Convert a PostScript file to a PDF (or vice versa)

However, PDF is not an open standard because it is controlled by a
single vendor, and not some standards body. But unlike Word/doc, it is
fully documented.

Wouter
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC error

body:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_of_the_SARS_outbreak

TOC looks like that:
1 November 2002
2 February 2003
3 March 2003
4 April 2003
5 May 2003
6 June 2003
7 July 2003

Now it looks like day dates, while in fact these are
month dates. Some different formatting should be used,
for example:
1. November 2002
2. February 2003
3. March 2003
4. April 2003
5. May 2003
6. June 2003
7. July 2003
But these won't work in German ;)
So maybe to have TOC without numbers (unless numbered headers
are chosen in prefs) is the right solution.


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 02:27:30PM -0500, Nick Reinking wrote:
> Pliny seems to be the cause of the current slowness, seems we're running
> low on memory again, although I can't say for sure why this is the
> case... (heavy swapping, low CPU util...)
>
>    procs                      memory    swap          io     system         cpu
>  r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  sy  id
>  1  2  0 899764  12580  28732 803580  12   0  2000   640  695  1139  23   3  74
>  0  6  1 899772  10528  28464 803968 168   0  3916    48  881  1034  17   6  77
>  2  2  0 899772  10496  28492 804196  68   0  2856   140  896  1038  25   4  71
>  0  3  0 899772  12604  28500 801784  32 112  1652   504  968  1196  30   7  64
>  0  8  1 899772  10556  28524 802788  72   0  2028   408  704  1141  23   4  73
>  0  2  0 899772  10476  28532 802856 284   0  2552    72  821  1282  25   5  70
>  1  3  0 899772  12560  28512 800812 392   0  2512   420  891  1175  10   3  87
>  0  4  0 899772  10504  28532 802376 516   0  2852   160  789  1335  17   5  78
>  0  7  1 899772  10512  28560 803440 464   0  1880   440  592   869  15   6  79
>  0 15  3 899772  12100  28576 803244   0   0    52  1423  474 165275   1  11  88
>  0  6  1 899772  11700  28592 803620  20   0   396   293  549 399667   8  61  31
>  0  6  1 899772  12032  28624 805284  28   0  1704   792  621  1196  33   6  61
>  2  5  0 899764  10652  28652 806576  68   0  1372   116  659   700   7   4  89
>  1  5  0 899764  10552  28660 806728 148   0  1288   590  591   607   8   2  90
>  0  5  1 899764  10468  28700 806896  68   0  1232   472  710   856   5   5  89
>  0  1  0 899764  10536  28708 802908 128   4  2120   104  564   894  23   3  73
>  4  6  2 899764  10488  28704 799480 144 136  1164   979  552   723  15   4  80
>  0  3  0 899764  15916  28696 798008 308   0  1704   733  386   760  31   4  65

Interesting enough, it's only si that is high, so pliny has to read data in
since he can't cache it any longer, but doesn't have to swap it out.

bi is also much higher than bo, the database can't keep all the necessary and
requested data in memory.

With which intervall are the above figures gathered?

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: David Grant

subject: [WikiEN-l] About copyright violations

body:
Hey everyone,

I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include
something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if
you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to
provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the
original article..."  That is essence of what needs to be added to the
template for every Wikipedia article.  This is in order to stop the
ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.

I posted this today on the
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content
page.

"Jesus, there are two many websites out there in non-compliance. The
template for all pages needs to say explicitly what people are to do if
they wish to copy the text. I mean, here we are advertising "Wikipedia:
The Free Encylopedia" everywhere, and there is a link to GFDL at the
bottom of every wikipedia article. What is the average person to
think??? Of course they will assume they can just rip off the content.
If they have any knowledge of GFDL or GPL, they might think that they
can use it and modify it as long as they put it under the same license.
But how are they supposed to know that they have to link back to the
original article? We should stop the problem at the source and put
explicit instruction on EVERY SINGLE wikipedia article at the bottom or
top of the page so that when people are clicking and dragging their
mouse across the page they will see it. Or if they save the HTML, they
will also see it when they edit that hopefully. Who to talk to about
this? Just my two cents. I'll continue to help out sending letters and
such though, because I think it's a worthy cause. dave
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dgrant> 23:28, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)"

Please CC to david.grant at telus.net, or reply all...

--
David J. Grant
Masters Candidate
a-Si and Integrated Circuits Lab
University of Waterloo
Room DC2551A
519-888-4567 x2327
http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~djgrant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About copyright violations


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] hey Sanford

body:
Great question...

Jimmy and I agree that has something like history might be best because
current WP software is somewhat constrained when it comes to math symbols.

Also, there is a lot of content aavailable within WP that would nicely
leverage to history/social sciences. I'm going to make some inquiries in the
next few days about what year (9-12) history/social science text would be
optimal for a project pilot. In the meantime, here are some links to get
people acquainted with California frameworks (if you're not already).

This http://www.cde.ca.gov/cfir/912stmap.html is a good place to start, with
what California Frameworks call 'standards maps' for various topics.

For instance, here's (found within the above link)
http://www.cde.ca.gov/cfir/standardmap/hss10grsm.xls (or
http://www.cde.ca.gov/cfir/standardmap/hss10grsm.pdf) a 'standards map' for
10th grade History-Social Science; it's very straightforward as to content
requirements, with the blanks filled in by publishers as to what level of
mastery should be elicited by the content. BTW, I think the 'standards map'
is a nice tool that WP might be able to use. I assume it's public domain, as
it's government-created. In fact, I suggest using everything we can from the
frameworks site for this, and future WP K-12 projects. This is a group
within the California education system that does first-rate work.

In a WP project, there's no reason why all areas shouldn't ultimately point
towards mastery. This is another great advantage that open source has over
the current, constrained K-12 publishing model. Also note that publishers
are required to submit standards maps to LEA's (Local Education Agencies,
don't you just love all the needless jargon  ;)

I'll get back to the list within a few days with as much detail as I can
gather about just exactly what year (between grades 9-12) and what topical
areas, aside from math (or science) might be optimal.

Sanford

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Wick" <karlwick at yahoo.com>
To: "text" <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 5:29 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] hey Sanford

> What book are we going to start for you ? Do you just want
> to pick one or a few and create links to them on the
> textbook site, along with links to the specific frameworks
> that they need to follow ? With maybe a brief bit of text
> mentioning what the book is being built for, for those who
> happen to stumble onto it ..
>
> -- Karl
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


subject: [Textbook-l] hey Sanford

body:
Also, here's the primary California Curriculum Frameworks link
http://www.cde.ca.gov/cfir/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Wick" <karlwick at yahoo.com>
To: "text" <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 5:29 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] hey Sanford

> What book are we going to start for you ? Do you just want
> to pick one or a few and create links to them on the
> textbook site, along with links to the specific frameworks
> that they need to follow ? With maybe a brief bit of text
> mentioning what the book is being built for, for those who
> happen to stumble onto it ..
>
> -- Karl
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Karl Wick wrote in part:

>Mav: Why PS instead of PDF ? Is there a reader for it ? ( I
>tried to download a PS document a while back and could not
>figure out how to use it).

Search online for "Ghostview".
I installed this on Windows 95 years ago --
one assumes that it still works on XP! ^_^

The real purpose of PS, however, is to send it directly to your printer.
In the Unix world, at least, PS is still the standard format
in which to send typeset documents to a printer,
so I expect that most printers these days should support it.
Conceivably, publishing would be easiest in PS format.

>It seems sometimes like the world is lacking a
>decent open-source word processing / printing file format.

That's PostScript!  Well, mostly.
Adobe's patent claims on PS are very weak,
and they're not really interested in defending them,
since PDF is their baby these days.
Also for that reason, PS is unlikely to change later.
Since patents still expire in a reasonable time
and the PS spec is entirely publicly known,
it's quite unlikely that PS will ever stop working
(in the practical sense that we can't write a program for it).
And Ghostscript (a PS editor) is GPL software.

However, I don't see that we need to make a /choice/.
The source for our books will always be wiki markup.
We can convert that to any format that we like --
choosing whatever works best for our evolving purposes.

-- Toby


body:
Karl Wick wrote in part:

>Default option is to
>transfer rights to the Wikimedia foundation and a checkbox
>if it is GNU FDL-only.

I do think that we should prefer radio buttons.
We don't want somebody to forget to use the checkbox.
(And making the box start out checked can be confusing.)
With radio buttons, if they select neither option
(all rights to us, GNU FDL, CC BY-SA or whatever we might add later),
then an error message with big shouting red text can come up.
That avoids mistakes.

>But this just came into my head,
>what about the times that someone copies (GNU-only) text
>from the WP main site but does not flag it as such.

This is just like copying proprietary material to WP
and not flagging it as such (which flagging you can't do --
so it's just like copying proprietary material to WP, period).
This is a copyright infringement and should be treated as such --
although instead of deleting to fix it, we can flag.

>BTW, Anyone find the good link to the GNU FGL compatibility
>with other creative licenses yet ?

Nope!  Did it ever exist?

-- Toby


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Vicipaedia latina acting strange

body:
My apologies if someone already noticed this before, but there
seems to be some major bug in la.wikipedia.com at the moment.
Every link takes one back to the main page. I made a check, and
the other phase I wikipedias do not seem to have the same problem.

Andre Engels


subject: [Textbook-l] how to get attention

body:
>What can we do to bring more attention to this project ?
>Are there ways to get it registered in online directories
>more quickly ? What about submitting it for a Slashdot
>article ? (Should we wait until more work has been done
>before we get it Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with
>the announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)

There are still matters under active discussion
relating to Erik's 8 points and the licence to be used.
Not that we must resolve all of these before being Slashdotted,
but I for one would at least like to be certain
whether or not the Slashdotters will be submitting only under the GNU FDL.
Since I agree with mav that [[Chemistry:Licences]] has no legal force,
I suspect that you'd like to determine that too! ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: About copyright violations

body:
David Grant wrote in part:

>I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include
>something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if
>you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to
>provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the
>original article..."  That is essence of what needs to be added to the
>template for every Wikipedia article.  This is in order to stop the
>ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.

But they are /not/ required to link back to Wikipedia!
They're required to list up to 5 authors,
and linking back to Wikipedia is the easiest way to do that.
To avoid making people stop believing us, we must separate:
* You /must/ release your version under the GFDL; and
* We /advise/ you to link back to the original Wikipedia article.

More comments on the meta page (possibly, if I get to it),
about ideal wording and the like.  I do agree with you in general.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About copyright violations


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Right Click Editing

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Michael (Becker?) wrote:

>>I would just like to say, that I really hate the right-click editing.
>>Mostly because I can no longer right click on headings that are also
>>links to open them in a new page.  Could we make this a feature you can
>>turn off in the user preferences?

>First, it has long been our MoS policy that links in headings should be
>avoided.

A mere MoS policy, that may apply only to [[en:]] anyway,
shouldn't be enforced by the software in the default option.
Not that it's that simple, given your second point:

>Second, even if there are any, with a decent browser you can open them by
>middle- or ctrl+-left-clicking. Mozilla additionally supports type-ahead
>find and lets you navigate the links with [Tab]s.

But I have seen a couple occasions where links in headers were good.
(Rare, but existent.)  They should not break -- and they haven't broken,
but we should still be sensitive to that possibility when designing defaults.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Right Click Editing