subject: [Wikipedia-l] A few more commons ideas

body:
In my original proposal I suggested that images on the commons would have
to be referenced as

[[Image:co:Airplane.jpg]]

I realize now that this is not necessary. We can instead just use

[[Image:Airplane.jpg]]

If you would add this instruction on the English Wikipedia, and
Airplane.jpg exists locally, it would use that one. If it doesn't, but it
exists on the Commons server, it would use the remote version instead.

This makes the use of the Commons transparent. There should be links on
the image (really file) pages to quickly move files to and fro.

We can even provide this functionality for other MediaWiki sites, or wikis
which implement the necessary interface. Say you would type

[[Image:Paris-Metro.jpg]]

on Wikitravel; again, if the image exists locally, the local version is
displayed, if it does not, the remote version is downloaded and cached for
future use (compare timestamps when using cached commons images).

This would also make it relatively easy for a mirror to use our images
without downloading our entire collection of them. They would just have to
enable that option, and images would be transparently fetched (and
updated!) when needed.

As an additional advantage, we no longer need to worry about the fair use
issue. Sites which want to allow fair use would download a tarball of
these images generated from the files on the *local* wiki (e.g. English),
the others would only accept images that are stored on the commons server,
guaranteed to be under a free license.

The same principle could even be applied to articles. If you link to
[[Declaration of Independence]] from a Commons-connected wiki, and that
page does not exist, the wiki would fetch it from the Commons and enter it
into the edit box that is normally blanked (like Wikinfo's Wikipedia
import interface). You can then copy and paste content from there as
wikisource [*], or you can save it locally to get a copy of that page.

What would be really neat, of course, would be transparent transclusion of
articles from the Commons:

{{commons:Declaration of Indepdence>p2s1}}

becomes:

        We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
        equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
        unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
        pursuit of Happiness.

p2s1=paragraph 2, sentence 1 - this only works for pages which rarely
change, of course.

Look Alice, we're in Xanadu! Again, these segments could be stored locally
and compared with timestamps from the Commons on demand.

This is advanced stuff, but could certainly be entered into our roadmap.
Any wiki which would implement our interfaces could transclude material
when needed.

Regards,

Erik

[*] I actually typed "wikisource" without thinking, referring to wiki
source code, not to the Wikisource project. I think that illustrates my
point about the name being ambiguous nicely.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Proposal: commons.wikimedia.org

body:
Michael-
> Well, that image is where Creative Commons got the idea too, of course.
> But why invite confusion,

I don't think the name invites confusion. It would be quite ironic if the
name "commons" became proprietary because "Creative Commons" adopted it.
It is not desirable for the term "commons" to be merely associated with a
set of licenses, to become in effect a legalistic term, and I think Larry
Lessig would agree. It is much more desirable for the image of a commons
in the digital age to be firmly etched into the mind of the Internet
public as one of a set of content which may be freely used with limited or
no restrictions.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] "Log out" right above the "search field"

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> On Mar 20, 2004, at 10:45, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Mikhail Capone wrote:
>>
>>> Am I the only one who things that having the "log out" link right
>>> above the search field isn't the best UI decision?
>>
>>
>> I had never thought about it, and it's never been a problem for me.
>> Still, I can see where a person a person who has fine motor skill
>> difficulties could accidentally log out when try to place the cursor
>> in the search field.
>
>
> Gwicke is working on a new design, based vaguely on the layout for Plone:
> http://wiki.aulinx.de/Main_Page
>
> Please comment!

It seems very pratical. I like it.

-- Looxix


body:
Michael-
> Nor is it in any danger of that. Whether we use it or not, "commons"
> will always have plenty of other meanings and uses. But it's worth
> noting that if you Google the word, the Creative Commons site is the
> first hit.

Sure, because the Wikimedia Commons site does not exist yet.

>> It is much more desirable for the image of a commons
>> in the digital age to be firmly etched into the mind of the Internet
>> public as one of a set of content which may be freely used with limited or
>> no restrictions.

> I would think that the choice of name should serve the agenda of
> promoting the project, instead of having the project serve the agenda of
> promoting the name.

In this case, it will serve both.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: A

from_email: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
Re --
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-March/011856.html

*I would point out that you have not raised "any"
"circumstance" or "issue" on which you would like
mediation, and thus "refusal" is the only option open
to any and all mediators past, present or future.
**Utter nonsense. Is there not a year and a half long
history of "edit wars with Lir" -- do you think those
issues have just gone away? Face it, the committee is
refusing to mediate.

*I would suggest that you start small; try to impeach
a
specific mediator. Like me, for instance.
**How about you either mediate, or ask someone else to
take your place and mediate for you?

*Your perspicacity is awe-inspiring. For myself, I
never have had _any_ wish to "undertake the effort of
mediation".
**I know, that's the problem.

*Respectfully (barely),
**A flame is a flame no matter how much you try to
suger coat it. I'm sick of all this fake "wikilove",
who do you think you are fooling?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Printable version revamped

body:
I've checked in changes to skin/parser/output/stylesheets to rework the
"printable version". Instead of a separate rendering, printable mode
simply invokes the printable stylesheet.

Why's this good? Mainly because you don't need to click the "printable
version" link at all anymore! Just print the regular page view from
your browser, and it'll pick up the linked print stylesheet to remove
unnecessary UI elements, flatten wikilinks into plain text, and expand
embedded URL in external links.

The "printable version" link is still there, and it'll invoke the print
stylesheet for on-screen view as well if you feel like it. It otherwise
shouldn't change rendering; if we ever get the parser cache finished...

I've tested it successfully with Mozilla 1.7b, Opera 7.23/Win, Safari
1.2.1, and IE/Mac 5.2, and it mostly works with IE/Win 6.0 (see below).

There are a couple outstanding problems:
* In IE/Win, links in colored or underlined text will incorrectly
appear as plain black, since IE/Win doesn't understand the 'inherit'
value.
* The page title is not shown in Nostalgia skin printable view.
* Part of the footer is duplicated in the output and will be visible as
such in a styleless user agent (lynx, really old Netscape, etc).
* Some render options aren't totally handled right for printable, such
as ? brokenlinks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: ~~~~~ -> date/time

body:
Hi,

I have just committed a trivial change to Parser.php. We replace "~~~"
with [[User:Username|Username]], and "~~~~" with that, followed by the
date/time. Now, "~~~~~" inserts just the date/time, without the username.

I got the idea from
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:WikiMoney&diff=2852328&oldid=2852245

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Missing image

body:
On Mar 21, 2004, at 03:55, Magnus Manske wrote:
> On en, the file of Image:Margueritevalois.jpg is missing. I remember
> there was a problem with missing images before, but what's the status
> of that? Is the image really missing? Does anyone have a list of all
> the missing images?

For a few days in late January, I forget exactly (jan 24 - 28?).
Uploaded files for en during that period went to pliny, which then
developed disk errors and went belly-up.I was unable to get the files
off remotely, Jason was going to try after taking the machine out of
service.

Jason, did you ever get a chance to try to recover the files? They'll
be in subdirectories of /usr/local/apache/htdocs/en/upload...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New feature: ~~~~~ -> date/time

body:
Nick Reinking wrote:

>>May I submit that that is just too many ~s?
>>
>>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~, ~ ~~~~~.

!=/|- //|~#= !`.#// x/!-=- +?


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [WikiEN-l] the mediation committe is a failure

body:
On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 02:34, A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

    The mediation committee has refused to mediate in any
    circumstance or issue for which I am a participant.

Firstly, it should be noted that this sentence is factually accurate.

But so was the memorable claim by William Clinton:

"I did not have 'sexual relations' with that _woman_... ,Monica
Lewinsky!"

The problem with _your_ claim is not the word "is". Rather I would
emphasize the significate functions of the words "any" and "refuse"
in your claim.

Specifically, I would point out that you have not raised "any"
"circumstance" or "issue" on which you would like mediation, and
thus "refusal" is the only option open to any and all mediators
past, present or future. Should you wish to remedy that state, I
am confident that refusal will not subsist.

    What is the point of this committee, if it refuses to
    even attempt mediation with some of the supposedly
    more "mediationally-challenged" users?

Absolutely none. How happy a circumstance then, that this
state of affairs does not obtain!

    I think everyone on the mediation committee should be
    asked to resign, so that we can get some users who
    actually want to mediate and facilitate discussion.

Here, I would suggest that you start small; try to impeach a
specific mediator. Like me, for instance.

    It seems clear to me that these people only took the
    position because they saw it as a way of becoming
    "super-sysops" -- not because they really wanted to
    undertake the effort of mediation.

Your perspicacity is awe-inspiring. For myself, I never have had
_any_ wish to "undertake the effort of mediation". What I _do_
have, is the wish to do _anything_ that will aid in improving the
way that Wikipedia functions.

Respectfully (barely),

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

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from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A few more commons ideas

in_reply_to:
<95INrNqxpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "21 Mar
	2004 01:56:00 +0100")

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> p2s1=paragraph 2, sentence 1 - this only works for pages which rarely
> change, of course.

W3C's XPointer and XLink standards address such issues.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Kelly Anderson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Templates + parameters = metadata

body:
Using white space as a parsing token seems like a bad idea to me. Isn't
that why people hate "make" because of the requirement for the leading tab?

-Kelly

At 12:39 PM 3/20/2004, you wrote:
>Maybe a smarter syntax could be used that uses newlines intelligently:
>
>{{
>country
>name => Germany
>population => 82 million
>
>''(as of 2004)''
>}}


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: the mediation committe is a failure and my super
	recipe

body:
A [name omitted for privacy reasons] a ?crit:
> The mediation committee has refused to mediate in any
> circumstance or issue for which I am a participant.
> What is the point of this committee, if it refuses to
> even attempt mediation with some of the supposedly
> more "mediationally-challenged" users?

I agree you are a mediationally-challenged user, and I agree your
problem is one that is more about communication with others, rather than
pure arbitration...

So...here is what I basically said to you yesterday

Just as any wikipedian, mediators are all volunteers. They are not paid
to do the job. They do that nicely to help people, to help the
community, depending on their availability and level of energy.
There is no way they are gonna be forced into doing something they do
not feel like doing, or have no time to do.

We are not here only for mediation full time. As dedicated as we are, we
are also here on Wikipedia to have fun, to write articles just as any
editor, to talk with regular people who have no other problem than to
fix a poorly utf8 converted article (...), just perhaps to do things
that bring us a little bit more satisfaction, so that we can recharge
our batteries to serve you better afterwards.

So, give us a break please :-)

A few days ago, Brian Corr suggested he was willing to see your situation.

Now, I must say Lir, you are most welcome to support Brian as a
mediator, because Sam is not happy with his candidacy and wishes it to
be made invalid.
Perhaps, I could suggest you to take yourself your own hand, to head to
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_mediation

Then, put your name here (not on the board). And then say "Guys, I am
unhappy with my life on Wikipedia. I would like to talk to someone about
it. I know there is someone great I really trust, and feel like he is
being willing to help me, and that is really great. I would really like
that he helps me, I am convinced he will be the most appropriate person
to do so and I look forward to our interaction. Please Brian, give me a
  hand and a bit of your precious time."

Then, try to go to the point.
Do not forget he is human and has a life on his own.
Try to not exhaust him too quickly, we are not easily renewable natural
resources as you seem to think we are :-)

IF NOT

Regarding your request for us to refer you to arbitration, so that
arbitrators feel compelled...

As I already said as well, I do not think it is our job to refer people
to arbitration. It is either you, or an advocate.
I suggest that we would gladly say to arbitration "here is Lir, she is
in trouble, please take care of her"
But there is no way, we will spent our time to fight for you to have
your case made receivable by the committee. Because it is not our job.

So, I suggest you ask yourself, and when you do, I will add a note
there, mentionning that we could not find a level of understanding with you.

As for arbitration feeling compelled, well...just as well, these guys
are voluntaries. They also have a life on their own. On top of this,
currently,the one referring cases is Jimbo. So, do not forget to ask
Jimbo directly, or wait till they can take cases themselves.

> I think everyone on the mediation committee should be
> asked to resign, so that we can get some users who
> actually want to mediate and facilitate discussion. It
> seems clear to me that these people only took the
> position because they saw it as a way of becoming
> "super-sysops" -- not because they really wanted to
> undertake the effort of mediation.

I also remind that everyone is most welcome to help if he thinks he can,
  in any dispute. Though wikipedians are clearly more and more
specialised in their activity, I think mediation is really something no
one should hesitate to do.

As for my "super-sysop" activity, here is what I did this evening (well,
it is 7h21 am).
* I "super-soothed" my crying daughter after she was punished by her
father, and fell asleep in her 120 cm long bed for 3 hours. I feel like
a crumble cookie and have a neck pain now. That was my day mediation. By
my standards, it was a success since both disputants are now quietly
sleeping.
* I finally made my "super-recipe". Please visit and feel to dream over
my pastilla http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastilla. Cooking brings a lot
of relief for frustration Lir. I recommand to you our recettes du mois
for more http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recettes_du_mois
* I pestered against the "super-passage" in utf8, that was not entirely
successful. Fortunately, our non-entirely expandable resource Brion came
to the rescue
* I wandered a bit on the DNA, where *you* are in trouble,
"super-wondering" as each day, whether I should stay here a bit more, or
whether I should just leave you all 5 playing together for the months to
come.

Now, "super-anthere" goes to bed :-) Nite Lir


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal: commons.wikimedia.org

body:
On Mar 20, 2004, at 1:38 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>> On Friday, March 19, 2004, at 03:32 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>>> Daniel-
>>>
>>>> Wikibooks is already more than just textbooks - why can't
>>>> Wikisource be
>>>> about more than just text?
>>>
>>> It certainly can and should. Given the technical changes I've
>>> described
>>> that would be necessary to integrate this into the other projects,
>>> however, I would very much be in favor of also changing the name of
>>> the
>>> project, which is a minor change in comparison.
>>
>> Note that Wikisource is a very different project from the others.
>> We're not building an encyclopedia or a dictionary or any other kind
>> of book.  It's just a repository of anything GFDL.
>
> It's primarily a repository of public domain texts.  Although it is
> subject to GFDL rules, those texts form a very small part of its
> contents.  Non-text material is also very limited there.  It's only
> people seeking to dump embarasing material from Wikipedia that make it
> a "repository of anything GFDL"

Sorry, that was a combination mis-and-overstatement :).  I meant PD,
not GFDL,
and "repository of anything" is, you're right, going to far.

> Personally, just like Encyclopedia Brittanica is a major competitor of
> Wikipedia, I would see Wikisource as eventually becoming a competitor
> of Project Sourceberg.

I'll assume you mean Project Gutenberg. :)  I don't envision it
necessarily as
such, but I know others do, and I'm probably in the minority.

> Having all these other complications that others want to add from the
> outside would only make that goal more difficult.

Fair enough.  I obviously have seen Wikisource as something broader,
but I
understand better now.

> I don't see Peter's name among the registered users of Wikisource;
> I'll take that as a reflection of how much he knows what he's saying.

Actually, I *am* a registered user (Spikey), but it's true that I
haven't done
much over there, so your point is valid.

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Missing image

body:
On en, the file of Image:Margueritevalois.jpg is missing. I remember
there was a problem with missing images before, but what's the status of
that? Is the image really missing? Does anyone have a list of all the
missing images?

Magnus


from_name: Bjorn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Restaurans in New Haven, Connecticut

body:
> It's another thing to have a link or entry that does nothing more than
> promote the business. I removed an external link to a listing of a local
> chain of restaurants for that reason. From your description, Nunh-huh is
> doing nothing more than providing free advertising.

If enough people added enough advertisement to Wikipedia it would
cease to be advertisements. Because you would only stumbe upon the
advertisement if you went looking for restaurants in New Haven,
Connecticut, in which case you probably appreciated the info.

---------------------------------------------------
BIG MAC & C:O IS REALLY GOOD ON MCDONALDS!! EAT IT!
---------------------------------------------------

And with that little statement I've probably made an advertisement
that is much much more effective than whatever someone who added
something to New Haven, Connecticut could ever do unless he had
another advertiser who went on to make a really big fuss about it.

BL


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sysop queries disabled

body:
After another query bogged down the database for five minutes I have
disabled sysop SQL queries again. Please do not re-enable them until the
feature which is supposed to kill long queries is fixed.

Regards,

Erik


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: brian suda

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Database formats

body:
The Text Encoding Initiative Consortium has a very well developed XML DTD and
Schema for dictionaries, words, definitions, etc. I know one of the ideas for
the wiktionary redesign was simplicity, but this could be a good building block
for some of the back-end stuff, or even exporting some of the information out
to users.

[1] - http://www.tei-c.org/

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk


from_name: Ivo Köthnig

body:
Am Sonntag, 21. M?rz 2004 04:42 schrieb Timwi:
> Hi,
>
> I have just committed a trivial change to Parser.php. We replace "~~~"
> with [[User:Username|Username]], and "~~~~" with that, followed by the
> date/time. Now, "~~~~~" inserts just the date/time, without the username.

Could'nt we just make one substiturion vor [[User:Username|Username]] and one
vor date/time? If someone needs both he/she just has to combine both.

--Ivo K?thnig


references:
<c3hrmq$bqn$1@sea.gmane.org> <95ENlGcxpVB@erik_moeller>
	<6.0.0.22.2.20040321064846.0379d8f0@pop.acoin.com>

body:
On Mar 21, 2004, at 05:50, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> Using white space as a parsing token seems like a bad idea to me.
> Isn't that why people hate "make" because of the requirement for the
> leading tab?

People hate "make" because of the leading *tab*, which can't be told
apart from spaces at a glance and is automatically turned into spaces
by various operations.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] The Proxy blocker;
	important notice to all Wikipedias

body:
On Mar 21, 2004, at 14:03, Neil Harris wrote:
> A suggestion: instead of blocking auto-detected open proxies
> indefinitely, they should only be blocked for a limited period such as
> one week. This will mean that they will automatically drop out of the
> block list if they get fixed, but they will still only need re-testing
> at most once a week if not fixed. Otherwise, the block list may grow
> to be very long over time, making it awkward to manage, as almost all
> the entries on it will be permanently blocked proxies.

Agreed; I'm quite surprised it's listed as indefinite now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
> Gwicke is working on a new design

Nice.

Color constrasts can improve. Black on orange and light green on white
are bad choices.
Also green tabs are not spaced equally on MSIE 6.

Erik Zachte

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 02:17:51PM +0100, Ivo K?thnig wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 21. M?rz 2004 04:42 schrieb Timwi:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have just committed a trivial change to Parser.php. We replace "~~~"
> > with [[User:Username|Username]], and "~~~~" with that, followed by the
> > date/time. Now, "~~~~~" inserts just the date/time, without the username.
>
> Could'nt we just make one substiturion vor [[User:Username|Username]] and one
> vor date/time? If someone needs both he/she just has to combine both.
>
> --Ivo K?thnig

username + date/time is used much more often than just username or just date/time.
~~~ ~~~~~ weild really be broken from the UI point of view.


subject: [Wikitech-l] filecopyerror, why?

body:
On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 11:19:50AM +0100, M.Alberto wrote:
>  Could not copy file "" to
>   "/var/www/html/wiki/upload/f/f8/Appunti_non_lin.pdf".
>
> My installation is here : http://iperappunti.homeip.net
> The file is here :
> http://www.elet.polimi.it/upload/damore/appunti_non_lin.pdf
> Is it too large (2.5 mb)?
> Thank you.
I have found the solution. I have modified php.ini :
upload_max_filesize = 7M


from_name: The Centerfielder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: "Log out" right above the "search field"

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
[...]
> Gwicke is working on a new design, based vaguely on the layout for Plone:
> http://wiki.aulinx.de/Main_Page
>
> Please comment!

Very nice.  When will this be released?


from_name: Abigail Brady

subject: [Wikitech-l] Non-UTF8 characters in Special:Export

body:
On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 15:10, Stephan Walter wrote:
> when exporting a page by using /wiki/Special:Export/Blabla, there are
> some characters that won't be encoded correctly as UTF-8, for example
> \x0092 (single opening quote).
>
> For an example see
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/User:Lunchboxhero

Well, that would be because en is an ISO 8859-1 wiki, and 0x92 doesn't
mean "single opening quote" in ISO 8859-1.  (It does mean it in
Microsoft CP1252).  So its functioning as designed.

--
Abi


from_name: Stephan Walter

body:
Hi all,

when exporting a page by using /wiki/Special:Export/Blabla, there are
some characters that won't be encoded correctly as UTF-8, for example
\x0092 (single opening quote).

For an example see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/User:Lunchboxhero

(Note that this is not my user page)

Regards,
Stephan
--
http://cowww.epfl.ch/~swalter/


subject: [WikiEN-l] report

body:
On Mar 21, 2004, at 4:45 PM, jwales at bomis.com wrote:

> greetings
> <concert.pif>

*WORM ALERT*

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Force user to choose a licence when uploading data

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

>> What about {{msg:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}}, which takes an
>> "argument" (text following the tag)?  Perhaps a text field after
>> the license choice?

>My only concern about this approach is that most people don't
>understand anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a
>license under those circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would
>be nice if the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline
>of the implications of each choice.

This could also be done by making them Wikilinks, either to something
like [[Public Domain]], or to something like [[Wikipedia:Copyright
Police#Public Domain]].

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


body:
On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 17:25, Stephan Walter wrote:
> So IMHO there shouldn't be any non-UTF8 characters in the XML file.

Well, like they say, garbage in, garbage out...

--
Abi


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: An odd webpage - did Michael write it?

body:
--- Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Arwel Parry wrote:
> > Michael is still around. I was on meta about three
> days ago when he
> > turned up and I had an entertaining 20 minutes or
> so blocking half a
> > dozen users he created and clearing up the mess
> once I confirmed to my
> > satisfaction that it was him!
>
> Michael's obsession with Wikipedia defies reason.
> For 9 months, he has
> been adding information about several bands to
> Wikipedia, only to have
> it consistently and rapidly removed. First to the
> English wiki, then to
> meta, simple and even on es and pl using a machine
> translator. When he's
> not posting inaccurate information about bands, he's
> making fun of
> Hephaestos or other administrators. Ordinary
> wikipediholics like
> ourselves at least have something to show for our
> efforts. Will Michael
> eventually realise how much time he's wasting and do
> something useful
> with his life? Or will his obsession continue
> throughout adulthood? I
> don't know.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

I've suggested before that Michael may be retarded,
autistic or otherwise mentally-deficient.  Given the
amount of time he apparently spends on Wikipedia with
everything he does reverted in a matter of moments...
I can't see any ordinary person doing this for months
and months and months.  (I think it's been more than
nine months since I first blocked his IP address
before he ever signed in)

Tuf-Kat

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


body:
Abigail Brady wrote:
> Well, that would be because en is an ISO 8859-1 wiki, and 0x92 doesn't
> mean "single opening quote" in ISO 8859-1.  (It does mean it in
> Microsoft CP1252).  So its functioning as designed.

en may be an ISO-8859 wiki, but the XML header of the exported articles
says the XML is UTF-8:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<mediawiki version="0.1" xml:lang="en">
   <page>
....

So IMHO there shouldn't be any non-UTF8 characters in the XML file.

Regards,
Stephan

--
http://cowww.epfl.ch/~swalter/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Brief network outage

body:
We experienced some sort of network outage around 7:07-7:17pm (PST);
connections couldn't be opened to our subnet (including the power
controller). Tim had a shell remain open during this time, but nobody
else could connect...

Things seem back in order, but mysterious 10-minute network dropouts
kinda suck. :(

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Non-UTF8 characters in Special:Export

body:
Abigail Brady <morwen at evilmagic.org> writes:

> On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 17:25, Stephan Walter wrote:
>> So IMHO there shouldn't be any non-UTF8 characters in the XML file.
>
> Well, like they say, garbage in, garbage out...

No, concerning XML that's wrong.  Run a parser on the file you are
creating and if the parser signals an error take an appropriate action.

Of course, the problem is the wiki file format (maybe, you want to
address this issue?); this file format is such a pain to me that I'm
prepared tho leave the project some time soon.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vote: merge intlwiki-l and wikipedia-l

body:
I propose that wikipedia-l and intlwiki-l should be merged into one
(wikipedia-l). Please read my rationale, comment and vote on:

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

The proposal includes a new page on meta, [[m:Requests for permissions]],
to handle bureaucrat and adminship requests.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] The Proxy blocker; important notice
	to all Wikipedias

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Mar 20, 2004, at 11:29, Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
>> I have discovered there is now a robot active on I believe all
>> Wikipedias whit the name "Proxy blocker".
>>
>> It blocks automaticly all users who are using a open proxy server.
>>
>> It looks like a action form the English Wikipedia.
>
>
> Tim plugged this experimentally into the wiki in response to a massive
> spambot attack a few days ago that worked through open proxies. It's
> not a vigilante robot, but an automated part of the wiki that runs a
> check when a given IP address first makes an edit. (This should have
> been announced; if it wasn't, I hope Tim will remember to do so next
> time.)
>
> Of course if any wikis decide they don't want this, we'll be happy to
> disable it for you.
>
> I should point out that _proxies_ are not a problem, but _open
> proxies_ are often a serious security risk. They are usually simply
> misconfigured, and like open mail relays are taken advantage of by
> spammers and malware to disguise their attack vector. A proxy meant as
> a firewall but left completely open may also allow external attackers
> to get at internal servers which were intended to be better secured.
>
A suggestion: instead of blocking auto-detected open proxies
indefinitely, they should only be blocked for a limited period such as
one week. This will mean that they will automatically drop out of the
block list if they get fixed, but they will still only need re-testing
at most once a week if not fixed. Otherwise, the block list may grow to
be very long over time, making it awkward to manage, as almost all the
entries on it will be permanently blocked proxies.

-- Neil


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] The Proxy blocker;
	important notice   to all Wikipedias

body:
On Mar 21, 2004, at 20:31, Timwi wrote:
> Alternative suggestion: Keep the blocks themselves as "indefinite",
> but run an extra cron job in the background which goes through the
> list of IPs that were banned by ProxyBlocker and checks if they are
> still open proxies, and if not, lifts the ban.
>
> This way, you would prevent the following from happening: Suppose
> someone has a list of hundreds of open proxies. They can rotate
> through them, have them all banned in sequence, and by the time they
> get to the last, the ban on the first one will have expired again.

...and it's automatically blocked again when used. What's the problem?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Validator.w3.org

body:
I've poked an exception for the validator's bot into the squid's
user-agent blocking. Rejoice! Now we may again check the validity of
our markup.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: jwales at bomis.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] report

body:
greetings
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: The Proxy blocker;
	important notice to all Wikipedias

body:
On Mar 21, 2004, at 23:18, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> What code are you using to detect open proxies? Could you post it, or
> email it to me privately?

It should be in our CVS repository on sourceforge (head branch).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>To implement a proxy scanner/blocker was an idea I had in early February
>some time, when I saw simple vandals using anonymous proxies to evade
>bans.

What code are you using to detect open proxies? Could you post it, or
email it to me privately?

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Timwi

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> A suggestion: instead of blocking auto-detected open proxies
> indefinitely, they should only be blocked for a limited period such as
> one week. This will mean that they will automatically drop out of the
> block list if they get fixed, but they will still only need re-testing
> at most once a week if not fixed. Otherwise, the block list may grow to
> be very long over time, making it awkward to manage, as almost all the
> entries on it will be permanently blocked proxies.

Alternative suggestion: Keep the blocks themselves as "indefinite", but
run an extra cron job in the background which goes through the list of
IPs that were banned by ProxyBlocker and checks if they are still open
proxies, and if not, lifts the ban.

This way, you would prevent the following from happening: Suppose
someone has a list of hundreds of open proxies. They can rotate through
them, have them all banned in sequence, and by the time they get to the
last, the ban on the first one will have expired again.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
It seems that people want the article on the recent attacks in Madrid to
be at [[11 March, 2001 Madrid attacks]] rather than [[March 11, 2001
Madrid attacks]]. Myself, I don't care about the date format itself, but
I hate that this could create inconsistency with the [[September 11,
2004 attacks]].

Shouldn't we be consistent in this respect across at least one Wikipedia?


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The problem in this kind of situation arises when an editor sees no
> solution but to remove what he views to be offending material.  The
> person whose material is being removed understandably sees that removal
> as an offensive act.

I think that's right.  It's best, whenever possible, to think
creatively about what sort of olive branch might be offered to the
other person.  In this particular case, the joyful compromise seems to
have been to leave in "Louis' Lunch" which is undeniably of
encyclopedia importance, and to remove the others.

> Some people tend to view some of this local information as
> non-encyclopedic, but sometimes it is exactly what gives flavour to a
> place.  Even those of us who condemn the excesses of capitalism can
> recognize that certain commercial enterprises play an important social
> and cultural role in their respective communities.  If one were to
> extrapolate Rick's argument that the mention of the pizza restaurants
> constitutes advertising, then we should also delete the Disneyland
> article because it is effectively advertising for the theme park.
> Imagine the arguments if someone tried to delete that article.

Outside of one person who screamed at us in all caps and got booted
from the mailing list for it, I'm not sure that there's really a lot
of tension between "those who condemn the excesses of capitalism" and
"those who praise the freedom of the marketplace" (or whatever we
might call each side) _on this issue_.

I'd say that the real tension in this area might come from people with
a slightly different 'stylistic vision' of what sort of information
goes into an encyclopedia.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Rick wrote:
> My concern was not with some place that claims to have invented the
>hamburger: it was just that the original poster was adding
>off-the-cuff pizza places that, at least as far as was indicated in
>the article, had no particular significance except possibly to the
>poster.  To me, this is POV: "These are the places you should eat at,
>not any others."

Possibly it's POV, but I don't read it exactly that way.  I'd say that
the problem is not really POV here, but rather style and selectivity.
We could frame it as a POV dispute, but I don't think that the person
who wrote it really intended to slight anyone or advocate for
anything.

In a short article on New Haven, Connecticut, it doesn't make
stylistic sense to write about "On Route 4, there is a McDonald's
restaurant which was founded in 1987.  This restaurant, interestingly
enough, is part of a worldwide chain of very similar restaurants.  The
menu includes a variety of American-style fast food, including
primarily hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks.  In recent years,
the menu has been expanded to include more healthy alternatives, as
well."

That's just a parody of an encylcopedia article, if you see what I
mean.

However, that doesn't mean that extremely detailed information about
some restaurants in a given city couldn't be included in a sidebar
article.  There could be problems with verifiability, of course.  But
assuming those are taken care of, then even though some particular
information may not belong in a short introductory article, it might
be perfectly suitable for a broader article.

Imagine this, for example: "Fine dining in St. Petersburg, Florida".
Such an article could properly go into a great deal more detail than
the general St. Petersburg, Florida article, and since fine dining
establishments tend to receive press attention, it would likely be
possible to include external links so that people outside my city
would be able to confirm the information contained in the article.

And suppose someone wanted to write a really stupid and pointless
article "Fast food in St. Petersburg, Florida", including the silly
paragraph I wrote above.  And assume that the information could be
confirmed.

I say: so what?  Let's let them do it.  It's not a major problem,
since it's silly not many people will care to do it.  It won't be
well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
it.  I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
rule.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
Timwi wrote:
> It seems that people want the article on the recent attacks in Madrid to
> be at [[11 March, 2001 Madrid attacks]] rather than [[March 11, 2001
> Madrid attacks]]. Myself, I don't care about the date format itself, but
> I hate that this could create inconsistency with the [[September 11,
> 2004 attacks]].
>
> Shouldn't we be consistent in this respect across at least one Wikipedia?

Well, we Americans (er, I mean U.S. residents) being so imperialistic,
we have a long tradition on Wikipedia of forcing our conventions on
the rest of the world.  I'm joking of course.

In the tables for [[Montana]] (a state in the United States) and
[[Germany]] (the country in Europe), we learn that Montana is 381,156
km^2 and Germany 357,022 km^2.  To Americans such as myself, these
numbers have no intuitive meaning.  I know via conversion factors how
long a kilometer is, if I stop to think about it, but still the
numbers mean nothing.

This bugs me, but I consider that particular argument to have been
lost a long time ago, and with good reason I suppose.  (Although I
think in the case of km^2, it would be sensible to express both
numbers and not omit mi^2.)

As for the Madrid date, I express no opinion other than a fervent
desire that we not get too heated up about it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Help: namespace

body:
I checked a Help: namespace for en: into CVS.

As some of you may know, there is currently a user guide under development
on Meta. This user guide really belongs in its own namespace, which allows
us to easily export it and bundle it together with MediaWiki. It will also
be quite neat to have links like [[Help:Editing]], [[Help:Redirects]],
[[Help:Preferences]] etc.

However, I'm not sure where we should write the handbook. The problem is
internationalization. Meta is nominally multilingual, but it is a single
site. A single help: namespace on meta will only allow us to write one
language version.

Given the way the wikis are currently set up, without changing the
namespace system itself, I see no easy way to give Meta additional help:
namespaces in other languages without forking it from the common codebase.

So it seems to me that for reasons of internationalization, the handbook
should be written and maintained on the different language Wikipedias.
That also makes it easier to use interlanguage links, and to move existing
help page histories to the help namespace. The downside is that it is
illogical - the handbook is not specifically related to Wikipedia.

Are there any better ways to handle this within the current namespace
system?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

body:
I vote for 3.

RickK

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
Judy Inman inman at powerweb.net wrote:

> I was wondering if there is some way I could get a list
> of the people who died in the Spain Madrid terrorists
> attach on the trains. Thank You

I've started getting one or two inquiries like this, each week, and I'm
wondering how to handle them.

1. Approve the post, so it's passed on to the mailing list?

2. Reject the post with the default explanation:
"Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this
list."

3. Refer the person to some sort of Reference Desk on the
Wikipedia website?

Ed Poor
Wikien-l admin

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] [<>: A photo on Wikipedia]

body:
How should I respond to such inquiries?

I think we should have (and probably already do?) a page written in
everyday language that says

"So, you want to use some of our content... here is what you need to
do."

--Jimbo

----- Forwarded message from <> -----

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:08:43 +0100
To: jwales at bomis.com
Subject: A photo on Wikipedia

Dear Sirs,

there is a photo shown on a Wikipedia website, which my friends
would like to use in their publication:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EDSA_Revolution_pic1.jpg

The photo is authored by a  Joey de Vera.

Unfortunately basing on the information given on the website I am
not able to trace Mr de Vera on the Internet.

You are kindly requested to tell me whom should we contact
to get a necessary permission to use the photo in our publication?

At the moment I am writing unofficially on behalf of a small
editors in Krakow, Poland. I am doing so only to get preliminary
information on the subject. However, after having received it further
negotiation would be taken over by competent officials from the
edition.

Hoping to hear from you soon

..... ......
(Krakow, Poland)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] [<>: A photo on Wikipedia]

body:
My first impression was that this required an RTFM response, but when I
look at the picture I realize that it's a fair use picture.  The
question isn't silly anymore.  Although I'm on the end of the spectrum
that supports using fair use material, I believe that the person who
contributes fair use material still has a responsibility to cite his
sources.  That in turn depends on knowing what it means to cite sources.
 The contributor probably felt that mentioning Joey de Vera was enough,
but I think he fell short.  Citing a source means adding enough
information to allow the downstream user with adequate resources to
verify the facts and to exercise his own due dilligence.  Our Polish
user evidently wants to do this.  The picture in question was taken in
1986 in the Philippines.  A person who is skilled at searching the web
may be able to track this down, but even for him that could be hours of
work  It is not the responsibility of the community as a whole to do one
person's homework.

The contributor in this case, Seav,  remains active on Philippine
related topics; perhaps the problem should be put in his lap

Ec

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>How should I respond to such inquiries?
>
>I think we should have (and probably already do?) a page written in
>everyday language that says
>
>"So, you want to use some of our content... here is what you need to
>do."
>
>--Jimbo
>
>----- Forwarded message from <> -----
>
>Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:08:43 +0100
>To: jwales at bomis.com
>Subject: A photo on Wikipedia
>
>Dear Sirs,
>
>there is a photo shown on a Wikipedia website, which my friends
>would like to use in their publication:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EDSA_Revolution_pic1.jpg
>
>The photo is authored by a  Joey de Vera.
>
>Unfortunately basing on the information given on the website I am
>not able to trace Mr de Vera on the Internet.
>
>You are kindly requested to tell me whom should we contact
>to get a necessary permission to use the photo in our publication?
>
>At the moment I am writing unofficially on behalf of a small
>editors in Krakow, Poland. I am doing so only to get preliminary
>information on the subject. However, after having received it further
>negotiation would be taken over by competent officials from the
>edition.
>
>Hoping to hear from you soon
>


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Useful Page

body:
Maybe I missed the original announcement, or maybe I just don't poke
around Wikipedia beyond the narrow areas I'm preoccupied with, but
I just noticed that there is a page linked from [[Wikipedia:Community Portal]]
called [[Wikipedia:Goings-on]], which is consists of a running chronicle
of events that the interested Wikipedian would like to know: Featured
Articles & Pictures, changes to the Wikipedia code base (something I've
noticed that needs to be more visibly documented), polls, new sysops, &
highlights from the Wikien-l list. (Hopefuly, the same will be done for
the Wikitech & other Wiki mailing lists.)

It's definitely breaking down one of the walls that has inadvertently
created a sense of elitism on Wikipedia.

Geoff


list: textbook-l

from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [Textbook-l] Study help desk

body:
Yes but it's very early days yet. Look at the reference desk on wikipedia. That's used regularly now.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Tomer Chachamu [mailto:tomer at parity-bit.com]
Sent: 19 March 2004 22:04
To: textbook-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [Textbook-l] Study help desk

Hello! It's my first posting here :)

I think the "study help desk" should be removed from the left sidebar;
it is almost never used.

r3m0t
_______________________________________________
Textbook-l mailing list
Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Mar 21, 2004, at 20:31, Timwi wrote:
>
>> Alternative suggestion: Keep the blocks themselves as "indefinite",
>> but run an extra cron job in the background which goes through the
>> list of IPs that were banned by ProxyBlocker and checks if they are
>> still open proxies, and if not, lifts the ban.
>>
>> This way, you would prevent the following from happening: Suppose
>> someone has a list of hundreds of open proxies. They can rotate
>> through them, have them all banned in sequence, and by the time they
>> get to the last, the ban on the first one will have expired again.
>
> ...and it's automatically blocked again when used. What's the problem?

OK, maybe I'm not understanding quite right how this ProxyBlocker works.
Does it actually scan the IP address of all contributors prior to
accepting an edit? If so, doesn't that slow editing down considerably?

I thought it checked the IP later, so everyone could always make at
least one edit.

Timwi


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

body:
Judy Inman inman at powerweb.net wrote:

> I was wondering if there is some way I could get a list
> of the people who died in the Spain Madrid terrorists
> attach on the trains. Thank You

I've started getting one or two inquiries like this, each week, and I'm
wondering how to handle them.

1. Approve the post, so it's passed on to the mailing list?

2. Reject the post with the default explanation:
   "Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this
   list."

3. Refer the person to some sort of Reference Desk on the
   Wikipedia website?

Ed Poor
Wikien-l admin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Help: namespace

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> So it seems to me that for reasons of internationalization, the handbook
> should be written and maintained on the different language Wikipedias.
> That also makes it easier to use interlanguage links, and to move existing
> help page histories to the help namespace. The downside is that it is
> illogical - the handbook is not specifically related to Wikipedia.

Am I the only one left who thinks that in the medium-term, all
Wikipedias should be merged into a single database?

Once the MediaWiki software can handle multi-lingual wikis, we can
easily have a multi-lingual Wikipedia, a multi-lingual Wiktionary, and -
which would solve your problem - a multi-lingual Meta-Wiki.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Rick wrote:
>
>>My concern was not with some place that claims to have invented the
>>hamburger: it was just that the original poster was adding
>>off-the-cuff pizza places that, at least as far as was indicated in
>>the article, had no particular significance except possibly to the
>>poster.  To me, this is POV: "These are the places you should eat at,
>>not any others."
>>
>Possibly it's POV, but I don't read it exactly that way.  I'd say that
>the problem is not really POV here, but rather style and selectivity.
>We could frame it as a POV dispute, but I don't think that the person
>who wrote it really intended to slight anyone or advocate for
>anything.
>
Agreed, but for some POV is a too convenient bazooka for shooting down
other people's contributions.

>In a short article on New Haven, Connecticut, it doesn't make
>stylistic sense to write about "On Route 4, there is a McDonald's
>restaurant which was founded in 1987.  This restaurant, interestingly
>enough, is part of a worldwide chain of very similar restaurants.  The
>menu includes a variety of American-style fast food, including
>primarily hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks.  In recent years,
>the menu has been expanded to include more healthy alternatives, as
>well."
>
McDonald's is an interesting example.  They're ubiquitous.  If you've
seen one you've seen them all.  My guess is that there probably is one
in New Haven that is very near to these others.  It was not mentioned in
the article, but unless there was something special or unique about that
particular McDonald's -- why bother?

>And suppose someone wanted to write a really stupid and pointless
>article "Fast food in St. Petersburg, Florida", including the silly
>paragraph I wrote above.  And assume that the information could be
>confirmed.
>
I didn't see it as completely silly.

>I say: so what?  Let's let them do it.  It's not a major problem,
>since it's silly not many people will care to do it.  It won't be
>well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
>it.  I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
>make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
>examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
>rule.
>
I generally take this approach too.  Sometimes those who want to remove
these things remind me too much of a Dr. Strangelove who would go to any
extent to preserve bodily humors.

Ec

>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Making the world a better place

body:
Frequently people ask my advice on making Wikipedia a happier place to
work. Sometimes the answer can be found in the daily comics:

http://www.unitedmedia.com/creators/onebighappy/archive/images/onebighap
py2004032348581.gif

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>Even those of us who condemn the excesses of capitalism can
>>recognize that certain commercial enterprises play an important social
>>and cultural role in their respective communities.  If one were to
>>extrapolate Rick's argument that the mention of the pizza restaurants
>>constitutes advertising, then we should also delete the Disneyland
>>article because it is effectively advertising for the theme park.
>>Imagine the arguments if someone tried to delete that article.
>>
>Outside of one person who screamed at us in all caps and got booted
>from the mailing list for it, I'm not sure that there's really a lot
>of tension between "those who condemn the excesses of capitalism" and
>"those who praise the freedom of the marketplace" (or whatever we
>might call each side) _on this issue_.
>
Hmmm.  My point was more to the effect that there are many issues that
transcend the traditional left/right spectrum.  Whatever a person's
political beliefs, if he happens to spend enough time visiting New Haven
to promote his views, he will sooner or later need to find something to eat.

>I'd say that the real tension in this area might come from people with
>a slightly different 'stylistic vision' of what sort of information
>goes into an encyclopedia.
>
One of the great things about life in the Wiki lane is that there are
things about which left and right can find agreement.

Ec


from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
Date: Monday, March 22, 2004 9:04 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

> As for the Madrid date, I express no opinion other than a fervent
> desire that we not get too heated up about it.

Never mind that bull, can we at least use the right YEARS?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Judy Inman inman at powerweb.net wrote:
>
>>I was wondering if there is some way I could get a list
>>of the people who died in the Spain Madrid terrorists
>>attach on the trains. Thank You
>>
>I've started getting one or two inquiries like this, each week, and I'm
>wondering how to handle them.
>
>1. Approve the post, so it's passed on to the mailing list?
>
>2. Reject the post with the default explanation:
>   "Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this
>   list."
>
>3. Refer the person to some sort of Reference Desk on the
>   Wikipedia website?
>
Either 1 or 3 is a good choice.  2 strikes me as rude and evasive, and
for you to do that would be very Poor PR.

Pedro has given an answer and there is no need for him to apologize.

Using 1 does not put anyone under the obligation to answer.  If we can
be seen as willing to help people with queries of this sort it's all for
the better.  Fortunately, Pedro was able to give specific help, but even
making the suggestion that I would look for the information on the
Website for a Madrid newspaper is a friendly act.

Of course we need to recognize it when some kid is trying to get us to
do his homework.  I never even give my own son a straight answer when
he's trying to do that. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Redirect of wikipedia.nl does not work

body:
On Mar 22, 2004, at 06:56, Walter Vermeir wrote:
> The redirect of all traffic to *.wikipedia.nl to
>
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welkom_Wolkom_Moin
>
> ... does not work anymore since the 19th .

The DNS entry points to the old server, which has been taken offline.
Whoever controls that domain has to update it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: power structures

body:
Anthere wrote:
> May international wikipedias have a different power
> structure than the english one ?

It depends whether you mean a different technical power structure or a
different effective power structure. If you want, say, sysops to be able
to desysop and create sysops on fr, but on en you want another level of
power to handle that, then at the moment that is not possible. However,
a feature such as that is planned.

Specifically, I want to allow some set of users to configure the power
structure on their wiki, using the web UI.

Of course, you can always have a different effective power structure.
For example you could give all sysops on fr bureaucrat access, and leave
the developer tasks  to Shaihulud.

> Will all the stewards currently listed on meta have
> these powers over all wikipedias or just the english
> one ?

All. That's why there should only be a very small number of them. The
bulk of the administration should be local to each wiki. Everyone should
head down to meta and vote "oppose" on a few nominations.

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

> Do they need to have knowledge of sql queries and
> linux stuff ?

No.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] A Useful Page

body:
A small sidethought: Is there anywhere people could: A. Acquire the Wikipedia codebase (I really want to use it for a PBEM I GM, as a way for the multiple Co-GMs to collaboratively write game stuff), and B. Find a FAQ (Stuff like: So, how many PHP databases do we need, anyway?) for it?

If there is, it could be better marked.

John


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Michale may be 131

body:
The Anome has picked up something I missed.

The person who told us about the Best and Worst pages -
and there's a new page there now that takes a direct
poke at wikipedia ( http://www.bestandworst.com/pages/vote/vote-24143.html) - seem to be the same person who created
them.

See Jimbo's user page for details.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Intlwiki-l] Re: The Proxy blocker;
	important notice to all Wikipedias]

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
 > On Mar 20, 2004, at 11:29, Walter Vermeir wrote:
 >
 >> I have discovered there is now a robot active on I believe all
 >> Wikipedias whit the name "Proxy blocker".
 >>
 >> It blocks automaticly all users who are using a open proxy server.
 >>
 >> It looks like a action form the English Wikipedia.
 >
 >
 > Tim plugged this experimentally into the wiki in response to a massive
 > spambot attack a few days ago that worked through open proxies. It's not
 > a vigilante robot, but an automated part of the wiki that runs a check
 > when a given IP address first makes an edit. (This should have been
 > announced; if it wasn't, I hope Tim will remember to do so next time.)

To implement a proxy scanner/blocker was an idea I had in early February
some time, when I saw simple vandals using anonymous proxies to evade
bans. I raised the idea of systematically blocking anonymous proxies on
wikien-l in mid-February, under the subject "Anonymous proxies", to
discuss the ethical issues. Jimbo was behind the idea. I wasn't even
sure if I was going to write it at that stage, I just wanted to make
sure there was no reason I couldn't do it. But events in early March
inspired me to get on with it and quickly push it into service. I'm
sorry I forgot to announce it in the rush. I did mention it on IRC a few
times, and I wrote some documentation at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Proxy_blocker

Neil Harris wrote:
  > A suggestion: instead of blocking auto-detected open proxies
  > indefinitely, they should only be blocked for a limited period such as
  > one week.

Done.

-- Tim Starling


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Intlwiki-l] Re: The Proxy blocker; important notice
	to all Wikipedias]

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>
> To implement a proxy scanner/blocker was an idea I had in early February
> some time, when I saw simple vandals using anonymous proxies to evade
> bans. I raised the idea of systematically blocking anonymous proxies on
> wikien-l in mid-February, under the subject "Anonymous proxies", to
> discuss the ethical issues. Jimbo was behind the idea. I wasn't even
> sure if I was going to write it at that stage, I just wanted to make
> sure there was no reason I couldn't do it. But events in early March
> inspired me to get on with it and quickly push it into service. I'm
> sorry I forgot to announce it in the rush. I did mention it on IRC a few
> times, and I wrote some documentation at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Proxy_blocker
>
>
> Neil Harris wrote:
>  > A suggestion: instead of blocking auto-detected open proxies
>  > indefinitely, they should only be blocked for a limited period such as
>  > one week.
>
> Done.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
Can someone please unblock all the old "indefinite" blocked proxies, or
change their expiry date to 1 week, so that they will eventually
disappear from the block list?

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

body:
Option 3 sounds good to me

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W [mailto:Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com]
Sent: 22 March 2004 14:30
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

Judy Inman inman at powerweb.net wrote:

> I was wondering if there is some way I could get a list
> of the people who died in the Spain Madrid terrorists
> attach on the trains. Thank You

I've started getting one or two inquiries like this, each week, and I'm
wondering how to handle them.

1. Approve the post, so it's passed on to the mailing list?

2. Reject the post with the default explanation:
   "Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this
   list."

3. Refer the person to some sort of Reference Desk on the
   Wikipedia website?

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


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
The redirect of all traffic to *.wikipedia.nl to

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welkom_Wolkom_Moin

... does not work anymore since the 19th .

Please fix it.

It is now a new url.
The old url is
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welkom_Wolkom

... but point it now to the new please.

Walter


from_name: Diego Ojeda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Student Film

body:
Dear Wikipedia,

I am a Boston University student making a short film
on the events that have been surrounding the war in
Iraq. I, from Madrid, have become very interested in
making this film especially after the tragic events
which occurred last week in Madrid. I
would greatly appreciate if I were able to have access
and utilize any type of film footage that you may be
able to offer having to do with the war.

With my advanced thanks,

Diego Ojeda

diegoojeda00 at yahoo.com

Diego Ojeda
Napoli+Pictures
848 Brickell Ave Suite 1010
Miami, FL 33131
USA
Phone: 617-642-1966
FAX: 305-371-4642
e-mail: diegoojeda00 at yahoo.com


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

subject: [WikiEN-l] Madrid terrorists attach

body:
* Judy Inman <inman at powerweb.net> [2004-03-22]:
>
>    I  was wondering if there is some way I could get a list of the people
>    who  died  in  the Spain Madrid terrorists attach on the trains. Thank
>    You
>

That's the official provisional list:

http://www.madrid112.es/not00.asp?id=253

Pedro.

>
>
>    Judy Inman
>
>    [1]inman at powerweb.net
>
> References
>
>    1. mailto:inman at powerweb.net

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

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

body:
My apologies if I ought not to have answered here.

Pedro.

* KNOTT, T <tknott at qcl.org.uk> [2004-03-22]:
> Option 3 sounds good to me
>
> Theresa
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poor, Edmund W [mailto:Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com]
> Sent: 22 March 2004 14:30
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions
>
> Judy Inman inman at powerweb.net wrote:
>
> > I was wondering if there is some way I could get a list
> > of the people who died in the Spain Madrid terrorists
> > attach on the trains. Thank You
>
> I've started getting one or two inquiries like this, each week, and I'm
> wondering how to handle them.
>
> 1. Approve the post, so it's passed on to the mailing list?
>
> 2. Reject the post with the default explanation:
>    "Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this
>    list."
>
> 3. Refer the person to some sort of Reference Desk on the
>    Wikipedia website?
>
> Ed Poor
> Wikien-l admin
> _______________________________________________
> 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

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help: namespace

body:
Erik wrote:
>So it seems to me that for reasons of internationalization,
>the handbook should be written and maintained on the
>different language Wikipedias. That also makes it easier
>to use interlanguage links, and to move existing help page
>histories to the help namespace. The downside is that it is
>illogical - the handbook is not specifically related to Wikipedia.

What about the other Wikimedia projects (not to mention all the other
non-Wikimedia projects that use MediaWiki)? That is why I started the handbook
on Meta in the first place!

Would it be possible to have development on the handbook occur on Meta
MediaWiki pages (at least for English) and have those versions exported (via an
interwiki msg or something like it) to the various wikis' corresponding
help:namespace pages? Otherwise each project (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks,
Wikisource, Wikiquote, ...) will have a fork in the same language of the
handbook - not good. However, until Meta's interface gets internationalized,
non-English handbook development should happen on the non-English wikis, IMO.

That would mean that the English help:namespace pages would be protected with
an interwiki msg (or something similiar) on them pointing to the Meta versions
of those pages. The help namespace on the non-English wikis, however, would not
be protected and would have their content on those wikis' actual help:namespace
pages (and when Meta's interface gets internationalized, that content could be
moved to Meta).

We already export some Meta pages to the foundation's website and already have
the MediaWiki->{{msg}} export utility. So...

? Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, David Gerard wrote:

> On 03/22/04 13:54, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > I say: so what?  Let's let them do it.  It's not a major problem,
> > since it's silly not many people will care to do it.  It won't be
> > well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
> > it.  I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
> > make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
> > examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
> > rule.
>
>
> Another major point in favour of whatever local flavour is to be found
> is that it helps break up the endless monotonous articles with nothing
> but the blasted census data. Urgh.
>
Well, I've been trying to remedy that with at least the entries concerning
cites in the state of Oregon. (I'd say about 30-40% of those contain
more than just census material; the latest I've worked on was [[Jacksonville,
Oregon]], which now has details of an archeological excavation of the
now-gone Chinatown of this city.

And I could always start cribbing material from this book a friend gave me
several years ago: _Mysterious Places of the West_ by Salvatore M. Trento.
(I think of it as that book where the author never missed an excuse to
include one of his female "Student researchers" in his pictures. ;-) That
would broaden the scope of a few articles.

But more seriously, I am still concerned when any article about a town or
a city starts including a local business without an adequate explanation
for its importance. I don't know about anyone else on this mailling list,
but I have encountered on my business trips (back when I was employed &
actually made business trips) various books or pamphlets in my hotel room
that would mention how wonderful this or that local restaurant/tavern/store
or tourist trap was to visit. As I've said in the past, & I'll keep saying
until someone tells me to shut up, I don't think Wikipedia's place is to
be a mouthpiece for the Chambers of Commerce of countless thousands of
communities across the world. It's one thing to mention the drugstore in
Wall, South Dakota, & perhaps devote an article to it (I'll furnish an
explanation to anyone who doesn't understand this reference); it's another
thing for me to mention the drugstore 6 blocks to the east of my house.
One is arguably a cultural landmark; the other is just a business looking
to increase its sales.

Geoff


from_name: ollie razdow

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia is great

body:
thats all I wanted to say, really. hurray for free information. keep it
public!
I have used wikipedia to reference alot of things,from debussy to
transistors, and noam chomsky. it was all there. -o

_________________________________________________________________
Get reliable access on MSN 9 Dial-up. 3 months for the price of 1!
(Limited-time offer) http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: The Proxy blocker;
 important notice   to all Wikipedias]

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> Can someone please unblock all the old "indefinite" blocked proxies, or
> change their expiry date to 1 week, so that they will eventually
> disappear from the block list?

Yippie, I finally get to use the (un)block feature too. :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>Well, I've been trying to remedy that with at least the entries concerning
>cites in the state of Oregon. (I'd say about 30-40% of those contain
>more than just census material; the latest I've worked on was [[Jacksonville,
>Oregon]], which now has details of an archeological excavation of the
>now-gone Chinatown of this city.
>
Don't forget Fossil, Oregon which is the only place that I know of where
the local authorities actually encourage visitors to dig in its fossil beds.

>And I could always start cribbing material from this book a friend gave me
>several years ago: _Mysterious Places of the West_ by Salvatore M. Trento.
>(I think of it as that book where the author never missed an excuse to
>include one of his female "Student researchers" in his pictures. ;-) That
>would broaden the scope of a few articles.
>
Another good source of local things to write about is the AAA Tourbooks.

Ec


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] whatlinkshere and {{msg:xxx}}

body:
http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Speci%C3%A1lis:Whatlinkshere&target=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Leford%C3%ADtand%C3%B3

should list

http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Magyar_uralkod%C3%B3k_list%C3%A1ja

but it doesn't. Obviously it's because of the problem I already brought up
half a year ago about msg and linkback tables.

Is there a way to actually update the whatlinkshere tables? At least weekly
or so? It would be _extremely_ nice to have that in working order. It is not
a solution to "go and edit them once" since I cannot FIND them without the
whatlinkhere, and that's the purpose of the stuff anyway. :-)

Thanks,
[[user:grin]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Leave it to you to start making personal attacks.

RickK

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Rick wrote:
>
>>My concern was not with some place that claims to have invented the
>>hamburger: it was just that the original poster was adding
>>off-the-cuff pizza places that, at least as far as was indicated in
>>the article, had no particular significance except possibly to the
>>poster. To me, this is POV: "These are the places you should eat at,
>>not any others."
>>
>Possibly it's POV, but I don't read it exactly that way. I'd say that
>the problem is not really POV here, but rather style and selectivity.
>We could frame it as a POV dispute, but I don't think that the person
>who wrote it really intended to slight anyone or advocate for
>anything.
>
Agreed, but for some POV is a too convenient bazooka for shooting down
other people's contributions.

>In a short article on New Haven, Connecticut, it doesn't make
>stylistic sense to write about "On Route 4, there is a McDonald's
>restaurant which was founded in 1987. This restaurant, interestingly
>enough, is part of a worldwide chain of very similar restaurants. The
>menu includes a variety of American-style fast food, including
>primarily hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks. In recent years,
>the menu has been expanded to include more healthy alternatives, as
>well."
>
McDonald's is an interesting example. They're ubiquitous. If you've
seen one you've seen them all. My guess is that there probably is one
in New Haven that is very near to these others. It was not mentioned in
the article, but unless there was something special or unique about that
particular McDonald's -- why bother?

>And suppose someone wanted to write a really stupid and pointless
>article "Fast food in St. Petersburg, Florida", including the silly
>paragraph I wrote above. And assume that the information could be
>confirmed.
>
I didn't see it as completely silly.

>I say: so what? Let's let them do it. It's not a major problem,
>since it's silly not many people will care to do it. It won't be
>well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
>it. I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
>make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
>examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
>rule.
>
I generally take this approach too. Sometimes those who want to remove
these things remind me too much of a Dr. Strangelove who would go to any
extent to preserve bodily humors.

Ec

>

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mar 21, 2004, at 23:18, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>
>> What code are you using to detect open proxies? Could you post it, or
>> email it to me privately?
>
>
> It should be in our CVS repository on sourceforge (head branch).

Brion speaks the truth. EditPage::proxyCheck() forks one process for
each port to be scanned. The script to scan a single port is
proxy_check.php. The request is proxied and returned to
SpecialBlockme.php, which enters the block into the database. The code
is slightly out of date, the latest modifications were made straight to
the live version and haven't been committed to CVS yet .

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Why don't you just leave this up to normal editorial process, that is to
those folks who are familiar with the town. This may require a bit of
patience, as it may be a while with some towns before someone logs in and
adds, removes or refines this sort of material. With restaurants, as they
are somewhat ephemeral, one would expect folks to change this material
often. The smaller the town the larger the few businesses in them form and
reflect the character of the town.

Fred

> From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
> Reply-To: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 17:07:36 -0800 (PST)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]
>
> But more seriously, I am still concerned when any article about a town or
> a city starts including a local business without an adequate explanation
> for its importance. I don't know about anyone else on this mailling list,
> but I have encountered on my business trips (back when I was employed &
> actually made business trips) various books or pamphlets in my hotel room
> that would mention how wonderful this or that local restaurant/tavern/store
> or tourist trap was to visit. As I've said in the past, & I'll keep saying
> until someone tells me to shut up, I don't think Wikipedia's place is to
> be a mouthpiece for the Chambers of Commerce of countless thousands of
> communities across the world. It's one thing to mention the drugstore in
> Wall, South Dakota, & perhaps devote an article to it (I'll furnish an
> explanation to anyone who doesn't understand this reference); it's another
> thing for me to mention the drugstore 6 blocks to the east of my house.
> One is arguably a cultural landmark; the other is just a business looking
> to increase its sales.
>
> Geoff


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
On 03/22/04 13:54, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I say: so what?  Let's let them do it.  It's not a major problem,
> since it's silly not many people will care to do it.  It won't be
> well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
> it.  I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
> make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
> examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
> rule.

Another major point in favour of whatever local flavour is to be found
is that it helps break up the endless monotonous articles with nothing
but the blasted census data. Urgh.

- d.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Help: namespace

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Am I the only one left who thinks that in the medium-term, all
> Wikipedias should be merged into a single database?

Just imagine the SQL dump of *that* "old" table! ;-)


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Redirect of wikipedia.nl does not work

body:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:56:01 +0000, Walter Vermeir wrote:

> The redirect of all traffic to *.wikipedia.nl to
>
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welkom_Wolkom_Moin
>
> ... does not work anymore since the 19th .
>
> Please fix it.

The dns still points to larousse, but that's gone now. Whoever has access
to the dns settings for wikipedia.nl, the new ip's are 207.142.131.236 and
207.142.131.235 (two A records).
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Geoff Burling wrote:
>
> >Well, I've been trying to remedy that with at least the entries concerning
> >cites in the state of Oregon. (I'd say about 30-40% of those contain
> >more than just census material; the latest I've worked on was [[Jacksonville,
> >Oregon]], which now has details of an archeological excavation of the
> >now-gone Chinatown of this city.
> >
> Don't forget Fossil, Oregon which is the only place that I know of where
> the local authorities actually encourage visitors to dig in its fossil beds.

Well, I'm going to need to take a little time to verify that. IIRC, the
nearest fossil beds are U.S. National Monuments.
>
> >And I could always start cribbing material from this book a friend gave me
> >several years ago: _Mysterious Places of the West_ by Salvatore M. Trento.
> >(I think of it as that book where the author never missed an excuse to
> >include one of his female "Student researchers" in his pictures. ;-) That
> >would broaden the scope of a few articles.
> >
> Another good source of local things to write about is the AAA Tourbooks.
>
I've actually been using their magazine _Via_ to good effect. Not so much
as a source of information, but to remind myself of details to include in
Wikipedia, & verifying details that I tend to get wrong (e.g., misremembering
dates & places).

One of these days I'm gonna have to leave the early history of Christianity
alone long enough to write proper articles on Champoeg (where local
government for the Orgon Territories started, & the first state park),
& Neakahnie Mountain (where a legendary treasure is said to be buried,
but the curious carvings have been more plausibly explained as the work
of Sir Frnacis Drake).

And then there's the article on Wanker's Corner I'm sure the non-USonians
would enjoy reading. (The tavern there was quite popular with the Australian
tourists.)

Geoff


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
"Peter Gervai" <grin at tolna.net> schrieb:
>
> http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Speci%C3%A1lis:Whatlinkshere&target=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Leford%C3%ADtand%C3%B3
>
> should list
>
> http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Magyar_uralkod%C3%B3k_list%C3%A1ja
>
> but it doesn't. Obviously it's because of the problem I already brought up
> half a year ago about msg and linkback tables.
>
> Is there a way to actually update the whatlinkshere tables? At least weekly
> or so? It would be _extremely_ nice to have that in working order. It is not
> a solution to "go and edit them once" since I cannot FIND them without the
> whatlinkhere, and that's the purpose of the stuff anyway. :-)

I agree; I know one regular on nl: who has complained that he would like to go
through Deadendpages, but gave up on it because there are many redirects in
there...

Andre Engels


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
You've made my point.  Thank you!  :-)
Ec

Rick wrote:

> Leave it to you to start making personal attacks.
>
>
>
> RickK
>
> Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>     Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>     >Rick wrote:
>     >
>     >>My concern was not with some place that claims to have invented the
>     >>hamburger: it was just that the original poster was adding
>     >>off-the-cuff pizza places that, at least as far as was indicated in
>     >>the article, had no particular significance except possibly to the
>     >>poster. To me, this is POV: "These are the places you should eat at,
>     >>not any others."
>     >>
>     >Possibly it's POV, but I don't read it exactly that way. I'd say that
>     >the problem is not really POV here, but rather style and selectivity.
>     >We could frame it as a POV dispute, but I don't think that the person
>     >who wrote it really intended to slight anyone or advocate for
>     >anything.
>     >
>     Agreed, but for some POV is a too convenient bazooka for shooting
>     down
>     other people's contributions.
>
>
>     >I say: so what? Let's let them do it. It's not a major problem,
>     >since it's silly not many people will care to do it. It won't be
>     >well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see
>     >it. I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to
>     >make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case
>     >examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general
>     >rule.
>     >
>     I generally take this approach too. Sometimes those who want to
>     remove
>     these things remind me too much of a Dr. Strangelove who would go
>     to any
>     extent to preserve bodily humors.
>
>     Ec
>


from_name: Ivo Köthnig

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Help: namespace

references:
<95MOEgBSpVB@erik_moeller> <c3mbt5$fgl$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<405F2907.2000103@web.de>

body:
Am Montag, 22. M?rz 2004 18:57 schrieb Magnus Manske:
> Timwi wrote:
> > Am I the only one left who thinks that in the medium-term, all
> > Wikipedias should be merged into a single database?
>
> Just imagine the SQL dump of *that* "old" table! ;-)

It's big.. but what is the prolbem?

--Ivo K?thnig


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>Don't forget Fossil, Oregon which is the only place that I know of where
>>the local authorities actually encourage visitors to dig in its fossil beds.
>>
>Well, I'm going to need to take a little time to verify that. IIRC, the
>nearest fossil beds are U.S. National Monuments.
>
The John Day Fossil Beds National Monuments are in that area.  They're
really a series of disconnected sites, and there are other places around
there.  It just happens that this one happens to be right in the middle
of town behind the high school.  Most of what I found there was plant
fossils.  I can't remember for sure if there were any fish..

>>>And I could always start cribbing material from this book a friend gave me
>>>several years ago: _Mysterious Places of the West_ by Salvatore M. Trento.
>>>(I think of it as that book where the author never missed an excuse to
>>>include one of his female "Student researchers" in his pictures. ;-) That
>>>would broaden the scope of a few articles.
>>>
>>Another good source of local things to write about is the AAA Tourbooks.
>>
>One of these days I'm gonna have to leave the early history of Christianity
>alone long enough to write proper articles on Champoeg (where local
>government for the Orgon Territories started, & the first state park),
>& Neakahnie Mountain (where a legendary treasure is said to be buried,
>but the curious carvings have been more plausibly explained as the work
>of Sir Frnacis Drake).
>
>And then there's the article on Wanker's Corner I'm sure the non-USonians
>would enjoy reading. (The tavern there was quite popular with the Australian
>tourists.)
>
Sounds like a great place!  I'll keep an eye out.  I have tons of
material on US place names.  It didn't appear in a list of 19th century
Clackamas County post offices that I located, but I have some other
things that I can look at.

Ec


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Haven eateries, again

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>

> I think that's right.  It's best, whenever possible, to think
> creatively about what sort of olive branch might be offered to the
> other person.  In this particular case, the joyful compromise seems to
> have been to leave in "Louis' Lunch" which is undeniably of
> encyclopedia importance, and to remove the others.

I think the story is a bit more complicated. I'm just going to mention
some salient facts. I believe there was quite a bit of less-than-ideal
communication going on. I contributed to some of it, which I regret and
for which I apologize.

The original language, by an anon, was:

"New Haven has 2 claims of the worlds first. 1 being the Pizza and 2
being the Hamburger. For pizza there are 2 choices Sally's Pizza and
Pepe's Pizza. MBoth reside on Wooster St. And beleive you me, Its the
BEST pizza in the world. For burgers, there's Louis' Lunch, using old
fashiond vertical burners Louis willmake you a damn goor burger." [sic]

This was arguably POV (if "beleive you me" isn't POV I don't know what
is), and certainly needed editing. In my own view, its removal was
understandable, though possibly an over-reaction.

It was then reinserted by a non-anon in an improved form:

"New Haven is home of many homey eateries, including Louis' Lunch, a
restaurant that claims to have originated the hamburger: its vertical
burners, freshly-ground beef, and burgers on toast has long but orderly
queues ten deep at lunchtime. New Haven also boasts several pizza
places of distinction, notably Sally's Pizza and Pepe's Pizza, both on
Wooster St., and Frank's Pizza, offering chicken pizza and clam pizza.
Other spots catering to the college population include the Yankee
Doodle Coffee Shop."

There were then some cycles of removal and reinsertion. Somewhere along
the way the incorrect name (Sally's Pizza) was corrected to "Sally's
Apizza."

What I wish to note is that on the one hand, a) the removers, including
myself, didn't do much independent research to see whether the
establishments really had any claim to being notable. On the other
hand, b) the re-inserters didn't do much to explain _why_ the
establishments were notable. Some of the re-inserters simply appealed
to _their own_ authority.

Another thing that got lost in the shuffle is that even if the
reinserters were correct, simply naming an establishment carries very
little value to a reader who doesn't already know the establishment.

Since then, a number of points have come out. In addition to Louis'
Lunch claim to notability, Sally's Apizza was apparently a favorite
hangout of Garry Trudeau during his Yale years. Frank Sinatra also
patronized it. One of the reinserters has since noted that the Phantom
Gourmet website gave Sally's Apizza some kind of best-pizza (in the US)
award in 2001; the same website says "New Haven?s Wooster Street is to
pizza what Newcastle is to coal and Maine is to lobster. The two great
rivals are Frank Pepe?s and Sally?s Apizza." The site rated Pepe's as
having the best white-clam pizza.

Also, a claim mentioned by the original inserter that has gotten lost
in the various edits is that Pepe's Pizza claims to have introduced
pizza into the U.S. in 1925. (Or possibly, invented the "white pizza,"
I'm not quite sure which).

I'm not quite sure what counts as "notable enough" for inclusion, but
these all sound like legitimate local landmarks. I realize that every
town has restaurants with autographed pictures in them, but noting that
"thus-and-such famous person ate there" and "it won thus-and-such
national award" would, IMHO, go a long way to validating the inclusion
of a place.


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Mar 22, 2004, at 06:56, Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
>> The redirect of all traffic to *.wikipedia.nl to
>>
>> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welkom_Wolkom_Moin
>>
>> ... does not work anymore since the 19th .
>
>
> The DNS entry points to the old server, which has been taken offline.
> Whoever controls that domain has to update it.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Ok, I will take care of it.

Walter Vermeir


from_name: Eric Demolli

subject: [WikiEN-l] [<>: A photo on Wikipedia]

body:
It seems this publisher published some photography from  Joey de Vera :

RLI Gallery Systems, Inc.
3/F GLORIETTA 4, Artspace
Ayala Center, Makati City,
Metro Manila Philippines
Tel : (+632) 819 0631
Fax : (+632) 819 5769
E-mail : gallery at lietz.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 6:12 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [<>: A photo on Wikipedia]

> My first impression was that this required an RTFM response, but when I
> look at the picture I realize that it's a fair use picture.  The
> question isn't silly anymore.  Although I'm on the end of the spectrum
> that supports using fair use material, I believe that the person who
> contributes fair use material still has a responsibility to cite his
> sources.  That in turn depends on knowing what it means to cite sources.
>  The contributor probably felt that mentioning Joey de Vera was enough,
> but I think he fell short.  Citing a source means adding enough
> information to allow the downstream user with adequate resources to
> verify the facts and to exercise his own due dilligence.  Our Polish
> user evidently wants to do this.  The picture in question was taken in
> 1986 in the Philippines.  A person who is skilled at searching the web
> may be able to track this down, but even for him that could be hours of
> work  It is not the responsibility of the community as a whole to do one
> person's homework.
>
> The contributor in this case, Seav,  remains active on Philippine
> related topics; perhaps the problem should be put in his lap
>
> Ec
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >How should I respond to such inquiries?
> >
> >I think we should have (and probably already do?) a page written in
> >everyday language that says
> >
> >"So, you want to use some of our content... here is what you need to
> >do."
> >
> >--Jimbo
> >
> >----- Forwarded message from <> -----
> >
> >Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:08:43 +0100
> >To: jwales at bomis.com
> >Subject: A photo on Wikipedia
> >
> >Dear Sirs,
> >
> >there is a photo shown on a Wikipedia website, which my friends
> >would like to use in their publication:
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EDSA_Revolution_pic1.jpg
> >
> >The photo is authored by a  Joey de Vera.
> >
> >Unfortunately basing on the information given on the website I am
> >not able to trace Mr de Vera on the Internet.
> >
> >You are kindly requested to tell me whom should we contact
> >to get a necessary permission to use the photo in our publication?
> >
> >At the moment I am writing unofficially on behalf of a small
> >editors in Krakow, Poland. I am doing so only to get preliminary
> >information on the subject. However, after having received it further
> >negotiation would be taken over by competent officials from the
> >edition.
> >
> >Hoping to hear from you soon
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
Date: Monday, March 22, 2004 12:44 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [[New Haven, Connecticut]]

> Hmmm.  My point was more to the effect that there are many issues
> that
> transcend the traditional left/right spectrum.  Whatever a
> person's
> political beliefs, if he happens to spend enough time visiting New
> Haven
> to promote his views, he will sooner or later need to find
> something to eat.

This brings up a stupid thought: WikiFood?

No, not an edible Wikipedia (mmmmm...chocolate Wiki...)...I'm not sure what I mean. But it did sound cool when I thought up WikiFood...:-)

John