subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Abuse of blocking privileges

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> And again. Why do newbies keep posting this? How many people actually
>> fall for this? How many people actually read this and go "OMG we're
>> gonna lose a valuable contributor! Must unblock quick!!!"?
>
> Er, because they're *new*? They don't know what's come before.

Yes, but isn't that all the more reason to assume that we won't de-admin
two long-time trusted contributors just to save one contributor whom we
don't even know? I just don't get why so many newbies instantly think
that they're the most valuable Wikipedian ever born and that established
admins must leave to make room for them.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Usernames advertising websites

body:
blankfaze wrote:
> I have just noticed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GordonWattsDotCom ...
> It seems to me to be somewhat inappropriate to create a username advertising
> a personal website, but I didn't see anything in the Wikipedia username
> policy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username ) that says
> anything about adverts...

Hm, nobody has registered GoldenPalace.com yet. Oops! Too late ;-)


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

body:
On 5/9/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Lee Daniel Crocker-
> > I don't see how it's acceptable for us to agree to any conditions that
> > affect our prerogatives for software use.  We need to use whatever
> > software best suits our purposes.  WikiTeX is nice work, and we may
> > very well end up using it or something similar.
>
> Of course we're not going to install WikiTeX if we decide that there's a
> better option, but that seems unlikely. WikiTeX is one of the most
> requested features from our users. What has been holding up its setup
> are not criticisms of its functionality, but security considerations. As
> I see it, if we do this, the Board will ask Brion, as a paid Wikimedia
> employee, to assist Peter in the security review and evaluation of

Where do users log such feature requests?  I see four people have
voted for the relevant bug, which was filed six weeks ago:
  http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1792

I don't think the "paid Wikimedia employee" has much to do with this process.
Of course the person best positioned to judge security considerations may
indeed by SPARTA^B^B^B^Brion ...

> This makes it necessary for English language derived names like Wiktionary to
> be localized, which then leads to confusion when you go to a domain like
> pl.wiktionary.org and end up on a site called Wikis?ownik.

This is confusing?  Hopefully not, if you know any Polish!  The Red
Cross and similar orgs seem to do just fine with translations into
many languages.  So does Wikipedia, in fact.

SJ


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser (was Re: Longterm hosting strategy)

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>>like Reiserfs would probably speed it up, and also speed up access to
>>the rest of the metadata in the database which would become much
>>smaller.
>>
>>
>
>How about something like a version control system, subversion for
>example, I don't know how it would do speed wise for something like
>this but with that you'd get
>
>* Free version control ( as in we wouldn't have to write our own
>custom system to keep track of versions )
>* Versions stored as diffs
>
>It does have some drawbacks of course, for one it would be a central
>repository so it would suffer from the current problems of having a
>central database for wikitext, but there are distributed version
>control systems available ( arch, monotone ), something like this
>should at least be considered and tested too.
>
>
>
Using a VCS would actually be a step backwards. They are not designed
for enormously high rates of decentralized updates.

Traditional version control systems are all about centralization, and
have a model in which "files" "change" all the time, whilst attempting
to create a single global consistent state. This generates huge amounts
of admin and locking effort, and is very hard to scale. Wikipedia does
not need a single consistent global state, it only needs partial
consistency.

The fact that Wikipedia versions are immutable (and, as of 1.5, will all
have unique version IDs) completely eliminates the need for locking once
a version is written, and makes it easy to use a filesystem instead of a
database. ACID properties are then trivial except for the current "tip"
of the system state, for which metadata and locking can be handled by
the DB. For this reason, there's no need for a content management system
for the immutable content itself; the only things you have to track
versions of are the directories of pointers to versions, and the same
principle can be applied recursively if needed.

This is exactly the direction Linus Torvalds is moving in with git.
("Git" is a very fast and lightweight content-addressable version
management tool written by Linus Torvalds as an alternative to
conventional version control tools. not an insult).

In fact, the git approach of using SHA-1 hashes as "true" content IDs
has much to recommend it, as then there is no need even to use locking
to issue new version IDs, since they can be generated just by hashing
the source. This makes the git "filesystem" scalable over a huge number
of concurrent developers without any (realistic) chance of a clash; and
if two files do clash, you just add spaces to the end of the new file
until the clash goes away. Perhaps we should be looking at going in the
direction of git at the same time as we move the Wikitext out of the DB?

We can still use the git approach at the same time as doing the
block-compression trick, which eliminates the need for diffs at the same
time as maintaining robustness. Remember, diffs are cheap to manufacture
from decompressed text, and following diff-chains to recreate text is
expensive.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm software strategy

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 2005-05-09 at 12:43 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> A possible middle road is to rewrite the core wiki engine to a separate
>>> daemon, and adapt the existing PHP user interface to call into it for
>>> much of the backend work that actually touches data.
>>
>>
>>
>> That's the approach I'd favor.  The existing PHP code represents a lot
>> of good user-interface work for which PHP is perfectly suited.  The
>> underlying stuff could easily be split up into multiple daemons (say,
>> one for wikitext, one for images, one for equations,...) that could
>> feed the PHP front-end.
>>
>> This would also allow incremental development, since each of the daemons
>> could be written and attached indicidually without disturbing the rest
>> of the codebase.
>
>
> <nod>
>
>>> Our biggest, nastiest burden is with internal communications: the
>>> database changes too much. We have to wait on things getting sent,
>>> received, applied, and copied around, and lagging databases send
>>> everything into the toilet fast.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yep.  That's why I think the bulk of the text should be stored in a
>> plain filesystem, where those problems are already well-known and
>> solved, for the most part.  That would reduce the database to just
>> metadata, which would be much smaller and more efficient.
>
>
> Replication's still an issue with filesystems; it seems like every
> network filesystem a) sucks and b) is a SPOF, and every distributed
> filesystem a) sucks and b) sucks.
>
> This is one reason we've been talking about using an external object
> store rather than a filesystem. But a filesystem might work too; anyway
> that's a separate issue.
>
See my previous comments about Mr Torvald's lock-free "git" system. The
ideas behind this look ideal as a way of running an object store for
article versions, images and other BLOBs, and the whole linux-kernel
list are kicking the **** out of it as real-life beta-testers as we
speak. So far, no-one's found any show-stopping problems with this
radical approach to large-scale version management. (or rather, version
lack-of-management, since it more-or-less discards all previous wisdom
about version control).

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: DNS weirdness today?

body:
Timwi wrote:
>
> Whoa. So I'm not the only one.

Heheh. Just now I tried to bring up the block log with limit=500
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&user=&page=&limit=500&offset=0),
and I was redirected to a wonderful image, namely
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Roger-bacon-statue.jpg ...

This is even more exciting than the Random page feature! :))


subject: [WikiEN-l] "block" considered too harsh a word?

body:
As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the
Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw
quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.

A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to
something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can
sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm
"blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to
mean "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read
the entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.

Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm
wondering what everyone else here thinks?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

body:
Rebecca:

Your accusations are uncalled for. I will responed to the substantial
points of your letter.

> a project that I and others have been keen on for a
> long time has been already decided.

Nothing has been decided. It is not clear at all that Wikiversity (or
Wikisophia) will be launched, or what it will encompass. The procedure
for new projects requires board approval and a vote, none of which has
taken place.

> It depends what you're talking about. Myself and the others who've
> been pursuing this have a fair idea of how a tertiary-level system
> could work.  If you've got a way to expand it to primary and secondary
> education (without simply producing textbooks), I'm all ears.

This is what I'm currently exploring through an evaluation of existing
Learning Management Systems. The key question to me is what changes need
to be made to our software to support all types of learning and assessment.

> Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
> Wikisource and Wikibooks all make it reasonably clear from the title
> what the project is actually about. Where Wikiversity would follow
> this trend, "Wikisophia" is about as vague as you can get. It just
> screams "place to dump random stuff".

That's because, as I said, it is not at all clear what the scope of
Wikisophia will be, whether it will, for example, include original
research and publication, certification, summarization of certifications
into degrees, and so on. A name that is reasonable open-ended allows us
to explore the possibilities relatively freely.

> consult the community and put this through a vote.

I will proceed to do so.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Year 2025 bug

body:
This morning a bug was filed about some pages showing timestamps in the
year 2025:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2138

By the time I was awake and looked at them, there was no trace:
everything said 2005 as expected.

A few minutes ago somebody piped up on IRC about another one on
fr.wikinews, which I was able to confirm. I fixed that one item, and
recorded this fact in the server admin log
(http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log#11_May)

There are basically two ways this could happen: either some machine had
its clock incorrectly set to 2025 instead of 2005, and was subsequently
corrected, or there's a horrible mysterious bug that corrupts one
particular digit of the timestamp sometimes.

I can't find any trace of a machine with its clock incorrectly set now.
A few of the earlier machines (srv2-srv4) had their hardware clocks set
in the year 2003, but the live system clocks were correct on current
time. (I've synchronized the hardware clocks in the hopes they will boot
up right next time, too). If there was a machine with its hardware clock
set to 2025, it's either not listed in the Apache node group -- in which
case we have a rogue machine we can't account for and can't control
through the regular means -- or it was corrected and nobody recorded
this fact.

If we had a machine with correct hardware clock time that somehow got
the wrong system time temporarily, well who knows...

Does anybody know anything about this? Did anybody set, fix, or change a
clock? Did somebody correct the reported database entries without
telling anybody about it? If you did it, please give a whistle so I'll
be able to sleep at night again. :)

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

body:
If users can't be bothered to read the part of the message where it
says they've been blocked for just 24 hours, they're going to throw a
fit no matter what the word is. "Blocked" itself is a neutral word: it
accurately describes the fact that they can no longer edit.

This reminds me of the idea that some schools are now requiring their
teachers to grade papers in purple pens, because a red F apparently
distresses some students...

Sam
--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos

On 5/10/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the
> Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw
> quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.
>
> A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to
> something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can
> sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm
> "blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to
> mean "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read
> the entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.
>
> Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm
> wondering what everyone else here thinks?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos


from_name: Georg Jaehnig

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Our own IRC server

references:
<d5nupv$spe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f489347b050509113934576410@mail.gmail.com>
	<d5qgrt$qkl$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Hi,

2005/5/10, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>:
> Georg Jaehnig wrote:
> >
> > Is it possible to make a tar.gz file for every day and channel
> > available?
>
> What would such a file provide that the database dumps don't already
> provide?

A database dump is much bigger and not always up to date.
I image you could retrieve every day some data of potential vandalism
and check it. See http://www.apper.de/wiki for German Wikipedia.
And I think it is easier for some things to work with small logfiles
than with a 10 GB dump.

--
| Jorge | Nur lernen, was man will:
          http://www.sudbury.de


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] 'block' considered too harsh a word?

body:
Joseph Reagle said:
> On Tuesday 10 May 2005 12:16, Jim Redmond wrote:
>> Hmm... I can't come up with a single word that does better than
>> "block".  What about "administrative review"?  "Temporary leave"?
>> "Enforced hiatus"?
>
> Sabbatical, mini-WikiHoliday?

"Crushed by elephant" works for me.


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

body:
On 5/10/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Don't panic: We're still a long way from launching anything. I'm not
> going to push this until we have the server situation under control and
> the existing projects have stabilized a bit. Nevertheless, there's one
> issue that I'd like to resolve now, which is the naming of the project.

I'm panicking. Based on what you've announced below, it sounds like
this hijacking of a project that I and others have been keen on for a
long time has been already decided.

> Angela, Jimbo, Daniel Mayer and I agree that the name Wikiversity is
> problematic in that it ties the project very strongly to the idea of
> traditional universities. This may lead to certain expectations as to
> its structure and the services it will provide (e.g. faculties,
> degrees), but also limit the project in other ways, e.g., by being
> perceived primarily or only as an institution of teritary learning.

I've explained a number of ways this could work in the past. There's
basic models in both English and German. It's an excellent way to
expand what Wikimedia does into a whole new area, and boost Wikibooks
in the process - while also utilising the existing resource in
Wikipedia.

> I'd like us to look at ideas for primary and secondary education as
> well, and I don't want to run into a wall because the established people
> of the Wikiversity community will say "It's an electronic university,
> this doesn't belong here."

It depends what you're talking about. Myself and the others who've
been pursuing this have a fair idea of how a tertiary-level system
could work. If you've got a way to expand it to primary and secondary
education (without simply producing textbooks), I'm all ears.

> Angela suggested the name Wikisophia.org/.com, which is currently owned
> by Peter Danenberg (WikiTeX). I loved the idea immediately: the Greek
> sophia means "wisdom", but also has many other meanings in the area of
> learning. It is specific enough to be useful and vague enough to not
> limit the project very early in its nature or scope.

Excuse my terseness, but this is vile. Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
Wikisource and Wikibooks all make it reasonably clear from the title
what the project is actually about. Where Wikiversity would follow
this trend, "Wikisophia" is about as vague as you can get. It just
screams "place to dump random stuff".

> So, after discussing this in a small circle, I'd like to announce my
> intention to move the relevant pages on Meta and edit the summary to
> reflect the name change. This does not affect the existing efforts under
> the Wikibooks domain which use the "Wikiversity" label, but only any
> potential future eLearning/eTeaching project we intend to pursue.
> de.wikiversity.org could be renamed and moved to the new domain once it
> is owned by Wikimedia.

If you move the pages on meta, or change the summary, I'll move/revert
them back, until you actually consult the community and put this
through a vote. You've absolutely no business unilaterally pulling
this - or doing so without consulting anyone but the board. It also
seems pretty damned rich to suggest that it's not going to affect the
English version (which was never meant to be a part of Wikibooks -
it's still there as a beta of what a seperate project would look
like), while in the next sentence stating that you plan to hijack the
German version for your project.

I thought Wikispecies was a terrible idea, and so far, I think I've
been proved right. In terms of disaster ideas, though, this one well
and truly takes the cake.

-- ambi


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia


from_name: Mirco Nanni

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Web Logs for scientific research

body:
Dori wrote:
>>[Addendum: the sensible information in web logs is
>>essentially located in the "client IP" field ("who visited
>>that page"). However, for our research purposes such field
>>is not strictly needed as an encrypted version of it would
>>be enough, thus avoiding most of the privacy issues.]
>
> The problem is if you substitute the IP with a unique number, and you still
> show accesses to user pages, you can probably identify the logged in users.
> I'd be OK if the IPs were masked AND accesses to non-article namespace pages
> were not given out.

   Well, our objective is not to make web accesses public,
but to apply analysis techniques on them and possibly make
some selected results public (something like -- but a bit
more sophisticated and specific than -- the Webalizer system
which is now used to build the Wikipedia usage statistics).
   However, you are right, masking IPs does not solve
privacy problems once and for all. I agree with restricting
to web traffic relative to articles, discarding personal
pages and similar -- moreover, they are not very interesting
for our research purposes.

                      - Mirco

  ====================================
   http://ercolino.isti.cnr.it/mirco
  ====================================


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Anthere:

> Wikielearning might be a solution.
 > E-learning has the benefit of being a rather framed word at least...

Wikimedia has a history of coming up with confusing names, I'd like one
that will be correctly remembered and spelled for a change.
Wikielearning? Wikelearning? Wikilearning?

> *naming* should really be one of the *last* issue when thinking
 > to create a project.

I see it more in the middle, which is where we are with Wikiversity. As
you correctly say, the name can delineate what the project will be
about, as can a temporary name.

The problem with this project is that it can consist of many individual
components, but we cannot tell in advance which ones will be successful
and which ones will fail. For example, we may want to *experiment* with
the idea of using this framework to publish peer reviewed original
research. However, if this fails entirely, we will want to remove this
component and carry on regardless. It may very well turn out that we do
the best possible job at primary education, and completely suck at
tertiary learning -- again, we can choose to then narrow our focus. But
imagine a "Wikiversity" which *only* does primary education!

The current proposal at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity
(which was originally just a big discussion page before I refactored it)
is deliberately open about these goals. I'd like the process of
precisely defining the scope to be developed in practice rather than in
theory.

We are talking about an extremely ambitious project, and it is almost
certain that it will not succeed in all its goals. If we call ourselves
a "wiki university" already, then we set expectations, we limit the
framework, and we make it impossible to backpedal if we disappoint the
expectations set in the project, and its name.

That's why, to me, the time to choose the name has come. We need to
spend some more time on the definition, certainly, but I see technical
evaluation as the next priority.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no PD in France

body:
It seems so. Our exploitive techniques of forcing contributors to sign away
their rights are void in France, apparently.

Fred

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 18:32:16 -0400
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no PD in France
>
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>
>> Article L-131-5 even precises that if the author released his rights
>> but that he got more than 7/12 less than what he should have been
>> normally awarded, he can sue to get it.
>
> Does this mean that a French author can sue us for using work that he
> voluntarily contributed to Wikipedia?  Assuming the author's work has
> monetary value more than zero, then the zero we are paying him is by
> necessity more than 7/12 less than what it is really worth.  Are we
> legally different in this case than a commercial publisher who convinces
> someone to sign away his rights for much less than they're worth?
>
> Very odd...
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Roger Wesson

body:
How about 'suspended'?  Equally accurate and less terminal-sounding than
block.

Hi everyone, by the way.  As you might guess from my e-mail address, I am
User:Worldtraveller.

-----Original Message-----
From: Asbestos [mailto:asbestos999 at gmail.com]
Sent: 10 May 2005 17:29
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "block" considered too harsh a word?

If users can't be bothered to read the part of the message where it says
they've been blocked for just 24 hours, they're going to throw a fit no
matter what the word is. "Blocked" itself is a neutral word: it accurately
describes the fact that they can no longer edit.

This reminds me of the idea that some schools are now requiring their
teachers to grade papers in purple pens, because a red F apparently
distresses some students...

Sam
--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos

On 5/10/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the
Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw
quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.
>
> A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to
something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can
sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm
"blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to mean
"blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read the
entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.
>
> Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm
wondering what everyone else here thinks?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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

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On entering the GSi, this email was scanned for viruses by the Government
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Please see http://www.gsi.gov.uk/main/notices/information/gsi-003-2002.pdf
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In case of problems, please call your organisational IT helpdesk


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

body:
On 5/10/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Rebecca:
>
> Your accusations are uncalled for. I will responed to the substantial
> points of your letter.
>
> > a project that I and others have been keen on for a
> > long time has been already decided.
>
> Nothing has been decided. It is not clear at all that Wikiversity (or
> Wikisophia) will be launched, or what it will encompass. The procedure
> for new projects requires board approval and a vote, none of which has
> taken place.
>
> > It depends what you're talking about. Myself and the others who've
> > been pursuing this have a fair idea of how a tertiary-level system
> > could work.  If you've got a way to expand it to primary and secondary
> > education (without simply producing textbooks), I'm all ears.
>
> This is what I'm currently exploring through an evaluation of existing
> Learning Management Systems. The key question to me is what changes need
> to be made to our software to support all types of learning and assessment.

There is something I am not entirely understanding there. I have, for
one, no real clue as to what Wikiversity is all about, but Erik, are
you actually working/have worked on the launch/development of this
project before you discovered it existed not so long ago? (see a
previous thread on this list where you seemed to uncover the whole
concept all of sudden).

Why suddenly go through all these proposals and changes without
consulting the people who actually have been developping the project
in their own corner and own time, to find together a solution and
actually address the right community before launching any grand
community vote?

It is one thing to "launch" a project, it is altogether another to
make it live and make it sustainable, it seems to me that what Rebecca
has said is that having been a part of this project for a long time,
she does not exactly understand where and how suddenly we are talking
about changing the name and such. An understandable surprise.

It could also be that I have not understood a thing about what this
thread is all about.

This said, I very much agree with Rebecca that Wikisophia is way too
broad and does not actually bring anything. It akes me think of
something having to do with philosophy. I like the Wikademy idea. At
least it works in French. ;-)

Cheers,

--
Delphine
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia


from_name: Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon

subject: [Wikitech-l] [patch] Category headers change

body:
Tomer Chachamu <the.r3m0t at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I suggest that if there is only one heading (e.g. "B-O"), have
> no heading at all.

Done.  See <http://mt.brentdax.com/wiki/Category:Anna_Miller%27s> for
an example.

Michael Keppler <Michael.Keppler at gmx.de> wrote:
> I like that style very much as it seems to be very useful for smaller
> wikis. However, I also found a minor glitch in the system. If a grouped
> list of articles is split over two columns, then the group should be
> divided into two groups again instead of having the "continued" flag in
> the second column.

Ah, good point.  Fixed now.  The results are visible at
<http://mt.brentdax.com/wiki/Category:Chapters>, which would
previously had "0-6" at the top of the first column, and "0-6 cont."
at the top of the second.

Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> This will be very nice for alphabetic languages but maybe not so good
> for Chinese and Japanese. Also, some projects allow multiple languages
> in titles and it wouldn't make any sense to groups the "z" of one
> alphabet with the "a" of another.

Very true.  As a sop to those languages, I've modified it so that it
doesn't group characters in \W (which, thanks to the way UTF-8 is
constructed, basically means everything but ASCII alphanumerics.)  For
an example: <http://mt.brentdax.com/wiki/Category:Supporting_characters>

So other languages won't get the grouping, but at least they won't
have illogical grouping.  (And punctuation characters won't be grouped
in strange ways either.)

A better solution to this would be welcome, of course.

I'll submit a patch to Bugzilla once everyone seems happy with this,
and I'm convinced I can't make the code more elegant.

Thanks,
--
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brent at brentdax.com>
Perl and Parrot hacker


subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: a cross-local chapters list?

body:
This sounds like a helpful idea to keep on a back burner... for the
time being, there is not so much foundation-l traffic that it is a
burden.  Perhaps we could start by discussing these issues more on
this list; then people would know better whether they wanted to sign
up for the new list when it is formed.

For starters, it might be interesting to discuss how various
international organizations handle separate dues and memberships for
local, national, and international organizations.
The Special Libarian's Association, for example, has separate
membership, dues, and privileges by region and country.  These go
towards covering the costs of local meetings and conferences.

SJ

On 5/10/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> As local chapters tend to flourish here and there, I am thinking that
> it would be a good idea that we start a new mailing list (yeah, don't
> scream ;) ) something like wikichapters-l.
>
> The idea behind this would be:
> - Exchange of best practices (how to set up a local chapter, how it
> works, what it does, what works and what doesn't)
> - Common chapter projects (How can we work together to set up
> cross-language and cross-country projects)
>
> Why? for example, we have just been made aware of a very interesting
> European programme on the French mailing list (see
> http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/econtentplus/docs/programme/econtentplus_decision_en.pdf
> for more info), and this should be pursued by all European Chapters
> together.
>
> Sending that kind of information to separate language or chapter
> mailing list is good, so that debates can go on in a preferred
> language, but a "general" chapter list would allow to keep everybody
> who's interested in what goes on in different areas of the world
> informed at the same time.
>
> I am thinking of an open mailing list, where anyone interested in
> cross-cultural and cross-country projects can register, preferred
> language English, or at least partial translations in English of
> proposed projects/ideas etc.
>
> What do you think? Does is sound necessary? Or should everything be
> kept here on Foundation?
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Delphine
> ~notafish
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
Actually, "suspended" is a pretty good alternative, as it combines the
blocking and the temporary nature of the block into a single word. I
Iike Rholton's "suspension of voting *privileges*" as well.

Sam

--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos

On 5/10/05, Roger Wesson <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> How about 'suspended'?  Equally accurate and less terminal-sounding than
> block.
>
> Hi everyone, by the way.  As you might guess from my e-mail address, I am
> User:Worldtraveller.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Asbestos [mailto:asbestos999 at gmail.com]
> Sent: 10 May 2005 17:29
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "block" considered too harsh a word?
>
> If users can't be bothered to read the part of the message where it says
> they've been blocked for just 24 hours, they're going to throw a fit no
> matter what the word is. "Blocked" itself is a neutral word: it accurately
> describes the fact that they can no longer edit.
>
> This reminds me of the idea that some schools are now requiring their
> teachers to grade papers in purple pens, because a red F apparently
> distresses some students...
>
> Sam
> --
> Asbestos
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos
>
> On 5/10/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> > As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the
> Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw
> quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.
> >
> > A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to
> something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can
> sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm
> "blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to mean
> "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read the
> entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.
> >
> > Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm
> wondering what everyone else here thinks?
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET.
>
> On entering the GSi, this email was scanned for viruses by the Government
> Secure Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied exclusively by
> Energis in partnership with MessageLabs.
>
> Please see http://www.gsi.gov.uk/main/notices/information/gsi-003-2002.pdf
> for further details.
>
> In case of problems, please call your organisational IT helpdesk
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no PD in France

body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

> Article L-131-5 even precises that if the author released his rights
> but that he got more than 7/12 less than what he should have been
> normally awarded, he can sue to get it.

Does this mean that a French author can sue us for using work that he
voluntarily contributed to Wikipedia?  Assuming the author's work has
monetary value more than zero, then the zero we are paying him is by
necessity more than 7/12 less than what it is really worth.  Are we
legally different in this case than a commercial publisher who convinces
someone to sign away his rights for much less than they're worth?

Very odd...

-Mark


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] North Frisian wikipedia - arbitrary mention

body:
>I am under the impression that at least a couple of them are not
>elderly, and that there are definitely for example university
>professors who speak teh language fluently.
>
Yes, you're right. And I try very hard to find those younger ones. And a
scholar has also been found: Pyt Kramer, native Westlauwer Frisian speaker,
who a.o. composed a dictionary and maintains some sites on and in Seeltersk.
He is unfimiliar with the wiki nature but very willing to contribute, and he
has contacted in turn some native speakers. We have a lively correspondence.
I do need his expertise in my attempt to create a Seeltersk wikipedia.

>In addition, I was sure these people spoke German fluently. Why
>couldn't you start with a German interface, like the Bambara wikipedia
>started with a French interface?

Yes, you're right. They speak German fluently, and I'll use German files.
But don't forget I'm an informatics nitwit. Just need some time to get it
right. And once again, I need a lot of time and have some more things to do.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "block" considered too harsh a word?

body:
Let's make a contest for political talk :-)

I'd say... in comparison to the usual "you can edit !"

make it "you can not edit !" :-)

Ant

Timwi a ?crit:
>
> As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the
> Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw
> quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.
>
> A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to
> something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can
> sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm
> "blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to
> mean "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read
> the entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.
>
> Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm
> wondering what everyone else here thinks?


body:
On 5/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> David A. Desrosiers (desrod at gnu-designs.com) [050511 06:07]:
>
> > > Which would give us an answer to "who put this sentence in?" Which
> > > would be very helpful for collaborative editing, requesting
> > > references, etc.
>
> >       "...identifying plagarism..." ;)
>
> Well, yeah ;-) There's all sorts of things a per-line facility would help
> editors with in regard to the process of collaborative editing.
>
> I'm not sure "per-line" is the appropriate unit for Wikimedia work.
> "Per-word" might be interesting, if we have intrepid MediaWiki
> experimenters out there ;-)

I would guess that "per-sentence" or "per clause" is a good chunking size.
IBM's HistoryFlow uses per-sentence diffs, and they work rather well
for tracking how much of a given user's edits remain unchanged 100
edits down the line.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere:
>
>> Wikielearning might be a solution.
>
>  > E-learning has the benefit of being a rather framed word at least...
>
> Wikimedia has a history of coming up with confusing names, I'd like one
> that will be correctly remembered and spelled for a change.
> Wikielearning? Wikelearning? Wikilearning?

Wikiedu

>> *naming* should really be one of the *last* issue when thinking
>
>  > to create a project.
>
> I see it more in the middle, which is where we are with Wikiversity. As
> you correctly say, the name can delineate what the project will be
> about, as can a temporary name.
>
> The problem with this project is that it can consist of many individual
> components, but we cannot tell in advance which ones will be successful
> and which ones will fail. For example, we may want to *experiment* with
> the idea of using this framework to publish peer reviewed original
> research. However, if this fails entirely, we will want to remove this
> component and carry on regardless. It may very well turn out that we do
> the best possible job at primary education, and completely suck at
> tertiary learning -- again, we can choose to then narrow our focus. But
> imagine a "Wikiversity" which *only* does primary education!

First, thank you for the answer.

If it is a problem that the project is not well defined for now, let's
try to define it better rather than choosing an undefined fit-it-all name.

Example : I do not understand well why we should be confusing education
and research. While these two are often done by the same people (my
husband for example is both a researcher and a teacher), these two
fields not only are different but SHOULD be different.

I actually think it is a mistake that these two are done so much by the
same people, because it results in researchers focusing a lot on ...
research... or academic stuff while teaching. This result is teaching
most students things they will never use in everyday life. It might
expand their horizon, but teaching is not only about learning how
nuclear desintegration occur, but also a lot about practical things such
wiring a building, making a metal piece or how much fertilizer should be
applied on a field. As long as we confuse teaching and researching, we
will get students taught to be researchers, instead of being taught a
JOB. I wish that we do not fall in this trap ourselves.

> The current proposal at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity
> (which was originally just a big discussion page before I refactored it)
> is deliberately open about these goals. I'd like the process of
> precisely defining the scope to be developed in practice rather than in
> theory.
>
> We are talking about an extremely ambitious project, and it is almost
> certain that it will not succeed in all its goals. If we call ourselves
> a "wiki university" already, then we set expectations, we limit the
> framework, and we make it impossible to backpedal if we disappoint the
> expectations set in the project, and its name.
>
> That's why, to me, the time to choose the name has come. We need to
> spend some more time on the definition, certainly, but I see technical
> evaluation as the next priority.
>
> Erik

I still think defining the "scope" of a project is the first priority,
then defining the technical needs the second priority, then giving a
name (especially since it already has one) the third and last priority.

I am not certain I see very well how it places itself with wikibooks
either....

I am embarassed to see you use the term "we" so much, as if your words
defined the community, while the person you are interacting with is left
outside of the circle.

Note that I do not claim to be part of those who worked on wikiversity
since I never did :-) but I wish more of those currently working on the
topic, such as the spanish (who are no where mentionned here)
participate to the discussion as well.

But even though I never participated to it, I have both a teaching and a
researching experience, not counting a child raising experience. And I
am confused that we could set a project without more specifications.

I am not sure it is a good idea at all. For all I can see, setting up
wikinews with rather little defined guidelines was possibly not such a
good idea. Licence is still not decided. Policies on this are fluttery
actually and all projects do not seem to follow the same license... I
wish we try to be a little bit more consistent this time. At least, we
need to know more about what those involved think on the topic...

Last, I rejoin notafish question : why the hurry ? What happened that
requires that the project be renamed now ? What is the background of
this hurry ? Explain please.

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

body:
Delphine-

> There is something I am not entirely understanding there. I have, for
> one, no real clue as to what Wikiversity is all about

That is the main problem with the project, and has been from the start.
The current English Wikiversity subproject is organized in a
pseudo-namespace on Wikibooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity

There are various "School" pages, most of which are stubs, some of which
are vague collections of links to Wikibooks and Wikipedia, and very few
of which make real attempts to organize information in courses. Due to
the nature of (pseudo-)namespaces, information is strewn about: some is
in the article namespace, some is in the proper pseudo-namespace, and it
is very difficult to search the content properly. Categories are missing
almost entirely. The software needs of the project have never been
properly evaluated -- all that is used are standard blank wiki pages.

With such a broad scope, people have no idea what to put on those blank
pages, so everyone is putting something different there. And, as
expected, the project follows very strongly the models of traditional
universities, which is not necessarily what is appropriate to achieve
the desired goals.

Given this, it is quite bitterly ironic that Ambi refers to the possible
outcome of (re-)organizing the project as "disastrous"; it can hardly
get any worse than it is at the present time. Moving this mess of pages
to its own domain name is a recipe for failure.

To be sure, there is quite a bit of text that we can use, but the
current (English) Wikibooks-Wikiversity effort lacks the sort of
coherence and structure required to make meaningful progress. As I
noted, until the point I refactored the page, [[m:Wikiversity]] itself
was a very long, very chaotic discussion about the definition of the
project without any real conclusion. The English Wikiversity page
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Some_ideas_about_Wikiversity is a bit more
useful, but a long way from setting out any clear structure for
organizing the project.

Many people are very excited about the idea, but very few people agree
on what it actually means. The process of moving the project from a
subspace on Wikibooks to its own domain name, as an official Wikimedia
project, is the best possible opportunity to rethink Wikiversity, to
evaluate and prioritize its technical needs, to get the existing
eLearning community involved, to develop useful and consistent policies,
to define and pursue long term goals, and so on.

> Why suddenly go through all these proposals and changes without
> consulting the people who actually have been developping the project
> in their own corner and own time

There have been no "proposals and changes without consulting". I have
suggested changing the name of the project, and I have cross-posted this
suggestion to the relevant multi-language fora. This *is* a solicitation
of feedback from the existing Wikiversity community on the proposed name
change.

> to find together a solution and
> actually address the right community before launching any grand
> community vote?

Ambi was the one who called for a vote on the name. Nobody is talking
about a general community vote on the project yet.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

body:
On 10/05/05, Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brentdax at gmail.com> wrote:
> The attached patch (6KB, unified diff) against CategoryPage.php in
> MediaWiki 1.4.4 changes the way headings are inserted into category
> pages.
> [snip]
> A-B
> * Apple
> * Banana
> F
> * Food
> * Fruit
> M-T
> * Melon
> * Orange
> * Tangerine

Sounds very neat.

Anyway, please file it in Bugzilla.

Also, I suggest that if there is only one heading (e.g. "B-O"), have
no heading at all.


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia widget for new Macintosh OS release

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Fastfission wrote:
> On 5/7/05, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
>
>>Unfortunately, the WikityWidget only supports the CamelCase link
>>style, and I think Wikipedia's syntax is much more powerful and
>>flexible.
>>
>>It would be great if someone could develop a WikityWidget-like tool
>>that supports the Wikipedia syntax. I've been using a local
>>installation of MediaWiki on my laptop to keep various notes for my
>>personal use, but it would be easier to have the same functionality
>>available on my dashboard. Also, it would help to further popularize
>>the Wikipedia syntax, which I'd like to see become the basis for a
>>standard wiki syntax even outside of MediaWiki.
>
>
> No kidding. I find myself taking notes in text editors and separating
> new sections with =='s and bolding things with apostrophes. I think if
> someone made a robust and simple personal database creator of this
> sort -- which one could also store files in and categorically index --
> it would be a great boon to us all.
>
> I wonder how hard it would be? The most difficult time would be
> putting something together that did a good job of blending the coding
> and viewing aspects of it -- in a personal environment I think a
> program that made you "submit" a form would be tedious. You could get
> around it with simple tabs, I suppose, but it would be even more
> amazing if one could both apply and code  in Wiki syntax in realtime.
> Oh, but to dream...
>
> FF

Not sure how useful this could be, but I've just stumbled across
something that looks intersting:

StaticWiki (http://www.burgaud.com/staticwiki.html)

Unfortunately it only runs on Windows, and uses the Microsoft XML parser
:( But it's still in development, and if some of the Mediawiki people
chipped in... well, it could turn out to be quite useful.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

body:
Anthere:

> Example : I do not understand well why we should be confusing education
> and research. While these two are often done by the same people (my
> husband for example is both a researcher and a teacher), these two
> fields not only are different but SHOULD be different.
>
> I actually think it is a mistake that these two are done so much by the
> same people, because it results in researchers focusing a lot on ...
> research... or academic stuff while teaching. This result is teaching
> most students things they will never use in everyday life. It might
> expand their horizon, but teaching is not only about learning how
> nuclear desintegration occur, but also a lot about practical things such
> wiring a building, making a metal piece or how much fertilizer should be
> applied on a field. As long as we confuse teaching and researching, we
> will get students taught to be researchers, instead of being taught a
> JOB. I wish that we do not fall in this trap ourselves.

This is a fair point, but I see no reason why the two should be
confused, even if they happen within the same framework. As in real
life, Wikilearners should be given the opportunity to choose a career
path, whether it's theoretical or practical knowledge. I want to give
people a choice: Whether a 15-year-old wikilearner participates in
research on quantum computing or decides to pursue a career as a
carpenter should be up to them, and a framework which allows both has an
amazing potential. I don't think we need to set priorities for people,
they will do so themselves based on their living conditions, needs and
interests.

> I am not certain I see very well how it places itself with wikibooks
> either....

Good question. I believe that Wikibooks will be one of many resources
utilized by Wikisophia.

> I am not sure it is a good idea at all. For all I can see, setting up
> wikinews with rather little defined guidelines was possibly not such a
> good idea.

Little defined? Excuse me? Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource and
Wikibooks were set up basically ad hoc by a developer when they felt
like there was enough interest. Wikimedia Commons was the first project
with a proper project plan, and Wikinews was the only project ever
launched by Wikimedia which went through fully developed discussion,
definition and decision-making phases.

There was a mailing list proposal, a refinement process you participated
in, an FAQ, a mission statement, a policy thinktank page, a long
discussion, and a demo site, before the project was finally set up. If
this is "little defined", what is Wikispecies? If this is little
defined, then why did you complain at the time that the project was
defined *too much* in advance, and that guidelines should be removed
from the proposal?

I think Wikinews is the model Wikisophia should follow, with perhaps
more time given to the technical needs evaluation.

> Last, I rejoin notafish question : why the hurry ?

You are confusing a goal-oriented approach with hurry. There is no
hurry. There is, however, a grants proposal to the World Bank in the
works, and before we start seriously working on that, I'd like some
basics to be settled.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity


from_name: Andrew Rodland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsers

body:
Hello, all.

I'm posting here at the suggestion of ?var Bjarmason, who let me know about the
recent discussion here about the parser.

Recently I've been working on parsing wikitext for some projects of my own, and
because I think that a general-purpose parser is just a good thing to have. In
any case, I've made significant progress on a Perl implementation. I'll link to
the code below, but what I think is more interesting is the english. As far as
I can tell, it is possible to parse wikitext in a "single pass" fashion,  and
it's possible to do it quickly (more on that once I finish the last few
features I need to enable benchmarking). In fact, I believe that if one is
willing to forgo the TOC at the top, it's possible to parse and render
incrementally (though for various reasons that's probably not such a great
idea). With regard to
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ConsumeParseRenderVsMatchTransform my code
is of the "consume/parse/render" variety.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling on about it, and get to the point. At this point, I
doubt that my code is clean enough or useful enough for anyone else to make use
of it, but I'm mentioning it in case it provides any insight or grounds for
discussion, or in case anyone would like to base work off of it or make
suggestions.

The code is part of BerliOS project "wikioncd"; svn is at
svn://svn.berlios.de/wikioncd/trunk/wikioncd (the parser, with a temporary
driver, is in parser.pl); the ViewCVS for same is at
http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/wikioncd/trunk/wikioncd/ .

Cheers
Andrew


body:
blankfaze wrote:

> I have just noticed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GordonWattsDotCom ...
> It seems to me to be somewhat inappropriate to create a username advertising
> a personal website, but I didn't see anything in the Wikipedia username
> policy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username ) that says
> anything about adverts...

I think "not distruptive" should cover it. If it becomes disruptive,
then ask him to change it.


references:
<23477820.1115602976821.JavaMail.root@waldorf.psp.pas.earthlink.net>	<d5nvh2$u83$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d5oero$opv$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d5qja1$5at$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>> And again. Why do newbies keep posting this? How many people actually
>>> fall for this? How many people actually read this and go "OMG we're
>>> gonna lose a valuable contributor! Must unblock quick!!!"?
>>
>>
>> Er, because they're *new*? They don't know what's come before.
>
>
> Yes, but isn't that all the more reason to assume that we won't de-admin
> two long-time trusted contributors just to save one contributor whom we
> don't even know? I just don't get why so many newbies instantly think
> that they're the most valuable Wikipedian ever born and that established
> admins must leave to make room for them.

Given that we just topped 250,000 contributors, it is clear that the
proportion of newbies doing this (1 or 2 a month?) is vanishingly small,
its just that you notice them more.


from_name: Michael Keppler

body:
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon schrieb:
> The attached patch (6KB, unified diff) against CategoryPage.php in
> MediaWiki 1.4.4 changes the way headings are inserted into category
> pages.

I like that style very much as it seems to be very useful for smaller
wikis. However, I also found a minor glitch in the system. If a grouped
list of articles is split over two columns, then the group should be
divided into two groups again instead of having the "continued" flag in
the second column.
See http://mt.brentdax.com/wiki/Category:Supporting_characters for an
example in your wiki, where two groups B-M and S-Y would be more
intuitive than the group B-Y.

Ciao, Michael.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Link table updates (was Re: Longterm software strategy)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Somewhat different but worth mentioning is the updating of link tables
> on save: we've tended to flip-flop between deleting and rewriting all
> the rows, and ending up locking things during the save which turned
> ugly. Should make sure those are maintained cleanly, swiftly, and
> without too much pain.

Currently we're not locking, it's patched live to do a non-locking read
and then an incremental update. So the site keeps running, but
inconsistencies will inevitably be introduced.

The problem with locking reads turns out to be a bug in InnoDB. Well,
I'm calling it a bug anyway. The problem is that if you select all links
from a particular article for update, every link table row linking to
any of those pages is locked. So if one person is updating a stub,
nobody else can update a stub. This is easily repeatable in a controlled
situation with the following test. With two threads labelled T1 and T2:

T1> create table ltest (f int, t int, unique key (f,t), key t(t))
type=innodb;
T1> insert into ltest values (1,10),(2,10),(3,10);
T1> begin;
T1> select * from ltest where f=1 for update;

T2> begin;
T2> select * from ltest where f=2 for update;
(T2 waits for T1)

Last time I reported a locking problem to the MySQL bug tracker, I was
told that it wasn't a bug, and that I just needed to enable the
reassuringly-named innodb_locks_unsafe_for_binlog option. I'm happy to
concentrate on public ridicule if that's what they prefer.

The other problem was also related to link table updates. If you do
locking reads, you get many unnecessary deadlocks.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Deathphoenix

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050511 02:42]:
>
>
>>Joseph Reagle said:
>>
>>
>>>On Tuesday 10 May 2005 12:16, Jim Redmond wrote:
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>>>Hmm... I can't come up with a single word that does better than
>>>>"block".  What about "administrative review"?  "Temporary leave"?
>>>>"Enforced hiatus"?
>>>>
>>>>
>
>
>
>>>Sabbatical, mini-WikiHoliday?
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>"Crushed by elephant" works for me.
>>
>>
>
>
>Or, for those blocked from wikien-l, "crushed by autofellatio". Or was that
>the people who subscribe to the non-digest?
>
>
You've been a bad widdle editor, and you have to sit by the wall.


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no PD in France

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

Hi,

how do the CC people handle this?

Till

>Here it is:

>The article L-121-1 explains that moral rights are : "perp?tuel,
>inali?nable et imprescriptible", it lasts forever, they can't
>renounce to it and they can sue even years after a copyvio.

>And when talking about patrimonial rights, there are various
>provisions implying that the author cannot contribute his work to
>PD : L-122-7 precises very strong formalities for any release of
>his representation or reproduction rights, L-122-8 precises that
>authors possess a forever right to get 3% of any auction of their
>work and that they can't renounce to it.

>But more importantly, L-131-2 states that : "Les contrats de
>repr?sentation, d'?dition et de production audiovisuelle d?finis
>au pr?sent titre doivent ?tre constat?s par ?crit. Il en est de
>m?me des autorisations gratuites d'ex?cution" which means that any
>contract to sell their representation/edition rights must be a
>written one, even when they authorizes free use of their work !

>Article L-131-5 even precises that if the author released his
>rights but that he got more than 7/12 less than what he should
>have been normally awarded, he can sue to get it.

>etc. etc. etc.

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

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Hirschstra?e 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchlist: Making parts invisible

body:
On my Watchlist, I'd like to make some more part invisible using CSS;
unfortunately, IDs are missing or other attributes are missing, not to
mention the lack of proper block elements ;-(

"" has class="ns--1" - is this reserved for Watchlist pages only?
This is a part I don't need to see every time:

My watchlist

From Wikipedia

(for user "Keichwa")

	    (1498 pages watched not counting talk pages;
3333.33333333 total pages edited since cutoff;
checking watched pages for recent edits...
show and edit complete list.)

----

The amount of "total pages" is always a little bit strange.  "3333.3333
total pages"?!?

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
 > Anthere:
 >
 >> Example : I do not understand well why we should be confusing
 >> education and research. While these two are often done by the same
 >> people (my husband for example is both a researcher and a teacher),
 >> these two fields not only are different but SHOULD be different.
 >>
 >> I actually think it is a mistake that these two are done so much by
 >> the same people, because it results in researchers focusing a lot on
 >> ... research... or academic stuff while teaching. This result is
 >> teaching most students things they will never use in everyday life. It
 >> might expand their horizon, but teaching is not only about learning
 >> how nuclear desintegration occur, but also a lot about practical
 >> things such wiring a building, making a metal piece or how much
 >> fertilizer should be applied on a field. As long as we confuse
 >> teaching and researching, we will get students taught to be
 >> researchers, instead of being taught a JOB. I wish that we do not fall
 >> in this trap ourselves.
 >
 >
 > This is a fair point, but I see no reason why the two should be
 > confused, even if they happen within the same framework. As in real
 > life, Wikilearners should be given the opportunity to choose a career
 > path, whether it's theoretical or practical knowledge. I want to give
 > people a choice: Whether a 15-year-old wikilearner participates in
 > research on quantum computing or decides to pursue a career as a
 > carpenter should be up to them, and a framework which allows both has an
 > amazing potential. I don't think we need to set priorities for people,
 > they will do so themselves based on their living conditions, needs and
 > interests.

Hummm, I fear you absolutely did not understand my point.

Researchers have a special frame of mind and research requests some
abilities which are different from teaching. It is a different job.
While the researcher is deeply involved in his research, he tends to see
all things through this sort of filter, and lose the sense of reality
and of what would really be helpful for students in their future
professional life OUT of the research frame.

It may be that the french system relies more on academics than the
german system for you not to see what I mean. Possibly. I remember the
american system was much more practical

Or... I also realise this now, while I did not realise it when I just
finished my studies. Many things are clearer after a couple of years
working to earn one's bread. You get the sense of what was useful in
your education and of what was possibly fun, but not very helpful.

As for letting people the choice and letting them define their
priorities, if we get a big mix of research framework with education
one, I think we might just as well have left news in the current event
section of wikipedia.

 >> I am not certain I see very well how it places itself with wikibooks
 >> either....
 >
 >
 > Good question. I believe that Wikibooks will be one of many resources
 > utilized by Wikisophia.

Wikisophia ?

 >> I am not sure it is a good idea at all. For all I can see, setting up
 >> wikinews with rather little defined guidelines was possibly not such a
 >> good idea.
 >
 >
 > Little defined? Excuse me? Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource and
 > Wikibooks were set up basically ad hoc by a developer when they felt
 > like there was enough interest. Wikimedia Commons was the first project
 > with a proper project plan, and Wikinews was the only project ever
 > launched by Wikimedia which went through fully developed discussion,
 > definition and decision-making phases.

Then why are both wikicommons and wikinews still envased in copyright
issues ?

 > There was a mailing list proposal, a refinement process you participated
 > in, an FAQ, a mission statement, a policy thinktank page, a long
 > discussion, and a demo site, before the project was finally set up. If
 > this is "little defined", what is Wikispecies? If this is little
 > defined, then why did you complain at the time that the project was
 > defined *too much* in advance, and that guidelines should be removed
 > from the proposal?

Good point...
I *complained* mostly that guidelines given were not community build I
think... but good point.

 > I think Wikinews is the model Wikisophia should follow, with perhaps
 > more time given to the technical needs evaluation.

Wikisophia ?

 >> Last, I rejoin notafish question : why the hurry ?
 >
 >
 > You are confusing a goal-oriented approach with hurry. There is no
 > hurry. There is, however, a grants proposal to the World Bank in the
 > works, and before we start seriously working on that, I'd like some
 > basics to be settled.
 >
 > Erik

goal-oriented... indeed :-)

Bon, et ben on va attendre les commentaires depuis le pas de la porte.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> This is exactly the problem with the name "Wikiversity", it limits our
> thinking to what is there, when we are trying to create something
> fundamentally new. This is why I refuse to even use this name when
> discussing the project. I am not talking about a "wiki-university" here.
>
> In fact, what I would like to do is to really get to the bottom of
> these questions: What makes a good researcher? What makes a good
> teacher? How can we improve and assess people's ability to teach, or
> to research? How can we directly apply the latest results from
> didactical and pedagogical research to the teaching processes? How can
> we have meaningful feedback processes from learners to teachers to
> researches, and the other way?

I'd add one more: To what extent are wikis well suited to any of these
endeavors?

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject:
no PD in France (was: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence,
	and The Wisdom of Crowds)

body:
On 5/10/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> That is totally... strange.

Well, not really, I believe similar provisions are in many other law
systems. E.g. in Czechia, our Copyright Act reads:

Article 11:
(4) The author may not waive his personal rights; these rights are
non-transferable and become extinct on death of the author. The
provision of paragraph (5) shall not be affected.

(5) After the death of the author no other person may claim authorship
of the work; the work may be used only in a manner which does not
depreciate its value and, unless the work is an anonymous work, the
name of the author, if known, must be indicated. Protection may be
claimed by any of the author's kin 1); they shall maintain this
authorisation even after the passage of the term of economic rights to
copyright. Such protection may at any time be claimed also by the
legal entity associating authors or by the relevant collective
administrator of rights in accordance with this Act (Art. 97).

Article 26:
(1) Economic rights may not be waived by the author; such rights are
not transferable and are not subject to the execution of a ruling;
this provision shall not apply to claims arising from such economic
rights.

Article 46:
(2) The author may not grant authorisation to exercise the right to
use the work in a manner which has not been known at the time of the
conclusion of the agreement.

...etc. The point is IMHO (IANAL) to protect the author from being
coerced into an unprofitable agreement -- you know, you meet that
Hollywood agent, he offers you a "generic EULA" containing fifty pages
of petite text...etc. Not that I would think the law is correct;
especially from the viewpoint of free software/free content, it is
definitely close-minded.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
On Mr Wollmann

He has been repeatedly calling Terry on the matter of the kook
reference, but also about some links in wikipedia. He is saying
something about us linking to his copyrighted information. And he wants
this link removed.

I had a look and realised there was initially an article under his name,
where the problematic link probably was.

There is no legal ground related to us mentionning that a third party
elected him a kook; so this issue is irrelevant.

As for the link issue, I think it was the ones in his article and he may
not have noticed it is gone. I copied the content of the article for
Terry and he will write him and reassure him.

If there is another link problematic somewhere, he is the one to mention
where it is and which link is concerned.

Anthere

PS : just mentionning this in case there are further complains.

I also think, essentially, it is the english wikipedia editorial
decision to keep or not, a kook nomination, a link, a page on a person.
However, if the man decides to go further, it is the WMF business
though... and currently, Terry receives phone calls on the topic.

Phil Boswell a ?crit:
> <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4cc603b0505051626226b944d at mail.gmail.com...
>
>>On 5/5/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I would say anybody who posts to Usenet automatically becomes
>>>a "public figure"; you can hardly spew your thoughts and opinions
>>>into a million computers around the world, then try to claim
>>>"privacy". If you want to be private, start by keeping your
>>>mouth shut, eh?
>>>
>>
>>It's an interesting point, whether sitting in your own home typing
>>material onto the Web should in and of itself make you a public
>>figure. I'm not aware of any relevant case law. Using your real name
>>would certainly make it harder to argue that you'd intended to retain
>>your privacy.
>
>
> So adding your full name, address and contact details to the end of each and
> every post, as is Mr Wollmann's habit, would seem to fit this description:
> this guy has been doing his darndest to *become* a public figure for years.


from_name: Fredrik Johansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Longterm software strategy

body:
On 5/10/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> So don't tell me interpreted languages
> are getting faster, they're as slow as the day they were invented. If
> you need to execute large numbers of calls to short-running functions,
> you're sunk.

I've had some good experience with Python+Psyco. Psyco can deliver
excellent performance boosts for tight loops doing simple operations
on numbers and strings, and does a good job with function calls.

Using your example, I just timed incrementing an integer variable 10^9
times to 113 seconds with plain Python and 2.35 seconds with Psyco.

In the benchmarks at The Great Computer Language Shootout [1],
Python+Psyco is about 5x faster than PHP. It is within 1/10x the speed
of C/gcc for most benchmarks. (The worst case, n-body simulation, is
85 times slower than C. However, I tried a trivial optimization for
the inner loop and it got twice as fast :-)

[1] http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/great/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=psyco&lang2=php&sort=fullcpu

Fredrik


from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Link table updates (was Re: Longterm software
	strategy)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> The problem with locking reads turns out to be a bug in InnoDB. Well,
> I'm calling it a bug anyway.

I know this has been covered before, but if we are talking about
"longterm software strategy", I'd like to point out that PostgreSQL
is still totally free, has no locking issues, and now offers replication.
There are even some PG hackers lurking on this list (besides me) that
would be more than happy to help move things in that direction. :)

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200505100626
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iD8DBQFCgIyIvJuQZxSWSsgRAlyCAJ9jiqyMASFLnZ7axaaDnmzH7f4ZlQCgpJrV
fV9XHeyjKO0qRj/S5/G6uLk=
=JLCB
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parser (was Re: Longterm hosting strategy)

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> David A. Desrosiers (desrod at gnu-designs.com) [050511 06:07]:
>
>
>>>Which would give us an answer to "who put this sentence in?" Which
>>>would be very helpful for collaborative editing, requesting
>>>references, etc.
>
>
>>	"...identifying plagarism..." ;)
>
>
>
> Well, yeah ;-) There's all sorts of things a per-line facility would help
> editors with in regard to the process of collaborative editing.
>
> I'm not sure "per-line" is the appropriate unit for Wikimedia work.
> "Per-word" might be interesting, if we have intrepid MediaWiki
> experimenters out there ;-)

If we are going down this road, I should probably admit that some of the
words used in my contributions can be found in other works. I'm claiming
fair use.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Longterm hosting strategy

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Calling people "stupid" is not helping your credibility.

This is correct.  Fortunately, I have other means to build my
credibility.  The occasions when I find it necessary to clue list
members in on their attitude problems are rare, and I'm trying my
best to hold back and be constructive.

> Throwing suggestions about and discussing them helps

As long as the suggestions are not supported by running code, I
beg to disagree.  The constructive side is: go write the code,
then show how it works and how it could improves things.  It is a
killer argument.

It seems Wikipedia has had performance problems in the last days,
and we should expect a new flood of the usual "let's write it in
C++ instead" and "it would run faster with PostgreSQL".  We need
to tell this general cluelessness apart from actual experience.

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


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

>> I am under the impression that at least a couple of them are not
>> elderly, and that there are definitely for example university
>> professors who speak teh language fluently.
>>
> Yes, you're right. And I try very hard to find those younger ones. And
> a scholar has also been found: Pyt Kramer, native Westlauwer Frisian
> speaker, who a.o. composed a dictionary and maintains some sites on
> and in Seeltersk. He is unfimiliar with the wiki nature but very
> willing to contribute, and he has contacted in turn some native
> speakers. We have a lively correspondence. I do need his expertise in
> my attempt to create a Seeltersk wikipedia.

Hoi,
I read that Pyt Kramer wrote a dictionary in Seeltersk. I would be very
happy to host this wiktionary in the Ultimate Wiktionary. Would you
please introduce this idea to him or, could you introduce me to him??

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corrected (Wollmann)

body:
Anthere said:
> On Mr Wollmann
>
> He has been repeatedly calling Terry on the matter of the kook
> reference, but also about some links in wikipedia. He is saying
> something about us linking to his copyrighted information. And he wants
>  this link removed.
>
> I had a look and realised there was initially an article under his
> name,  where the problematic link probably was.

There was an article created mid-December, deleted 3 February after
someone listed it on VfD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Edmond_Wollmann


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
Clearly, it is not strange, it is the french vision of copyright :
author's rights... meant to protect authors from pressure of their
editors, etc.

It is not specially better or worse :) But it is different and it is
important to know it if you want to set up a good policy.

Le 10 mai 05, ? 21:48, Petr Kadlec a ?crit :

> On 5/10/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>> That is totally... strange.
>
> Well, not really, I believe similar provisions are in many other law
> systems. E.g. in Czechia, our Copyright Act reads:
>
> Article 11:
> (4) The author may not waive his personal rights; these rights are
> non-transferable and become extinct on death of the author. The
> provision of paragraph (5) shall not be affected.
>
> (5) After the death of the author no other person may claim authorship
> of the work; the work may be used only in a manner which does not
> depreciate its value and, unless the work is an anonymous work, the
> name of the author, if known, must be indicated. Protection may be
> claimed by any of the author's kin 1); they shall maintain this
> authorisation even after the passage of the term of economic rights to
> copyright. Such protection may at any time be claimed also by the
> legal entity associating authors or by the relevant collective
> administrator of rights in accordance with this Act (Art. 97).
>
> Article 26:
> (1) Economic rights may not be waived by the author; such rights are
> not transferable and are not subject to the execution of a ruling;
> this provision shall not apply to claims arising from such economic
> rights.
>
> Article 46:
> (2) The author may not grant authorisation to exercise the right to
> use the work in a manner which has not been known at the time of the
> conclusion of the agreement.
>
> ...etc. The point is IMHO (IANAL) to protect the author from being
> coerced into an unprofitable agreement -- you know, you meet that
> Hollywood agent, he offers you a "generic EULA" containing fifty pages
> of petite text...etc. Not that I would think the law is correct;
> especially from the viewpoint of free software/free content, it is
> definitely close-minded.
>
> -- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no PD in France

body:
Petr Kadlec wrote:

>...etc. The point is IMHO (IANAL) to protect the author from being
>coerced into an unprofitable agreement -- you know, you meet that
>Hollywood agent, he offers you a "generic EULA" containing fifty pages
>of petite text...etc. Not that I would think the law is correct;
>especially from the viewpoint of free software/free content, it is
>definitely close-minded.
>
Those laws were indeed written with in mind the individual author being
coerced by publishers into signing leonine agreements (see for instance
the push in the US to make musicians' work considered "work for hire").

I agree that the use of authors' right law for software is problematic
(afaik, in France at least, there are specific conditions for software -
for instance, software authors cannot exerce the withdrawal clauses that
authors of novels can).


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

body:
On Tuesday, May 10, 2005, at 11:12, Jean-Baptiste Soufron
<jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:

> Le 10 mai 05, ? 12:45, Anthere a ?crit :
>
> > I fear I must say the name wikiversity does speak much more
> > to me, and wikisophia is confusing. I am not very keen on
> > this name change.
>
> I agree with Anthere :)

Hmm. I rather liked someone's (whose?) suggestion of "Wikademy", which is
has the same contraction of the "Wiki" prefix to "Wik" that we have in
"Wiktionary", for example, but is strongly educationally-themed without
having too much of a Higher Education feel to it; indeed, it much more
stresses a Further Education bent which I think is the direction that the
project is heading towards... ?

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

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


body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Now, if a connection was being limited by TCP startup alone,
> this means that data would be delivered somewhere between four
> and ten times faster, and in particular that page-rendering
> would be able to start four to ten times as quickly. In
> practice, this is not the sole factor involved, so observed
> gains will not be as great as this, but they will certainly be
> very noticeable by users.

I disagree.  There might be other (political?) arguments for
different datacenters, but ping times in Western Europe is not one
of them.  You are talking about possible gains of .2 seconds or
less here. When "Wikipedia is slow", it is because each HTTP
request takes 5 or 6 seconds or more instead of 2 seconds.

According to Alexa, average response times for some websites are:

fast:
 0.7 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=mit.edu
 0.8 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=google.com
 1.0 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=susning.nu
 1.1 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=tu-berlin.de
 1.1 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=stanford.edu
average:
 1.6 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=yahoo.com
 1.9 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=wikipedia.org
 2.0 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=slashdot.org
 2.0 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=gutenberg.org
 2.0 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=heise.de
slow:
 2.8 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=amazon.com
 3.1 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=cnn.com
 3.1 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=wired.com
 3.4 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=nytimes.com
tired:
 4.8 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=techreview.com
 5.6 seconds http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=wikimedia.org

Note that TU-Berlin and Susning are in Europe, while Stanford and
Google are next door to Alexa.  Nobody is unhappy with the
performance of Slashdot or Wikipedia as long as the response time
is around 2 seconds.  MIT Technology Review has a remarkably slow
website for carrying the prestigeous MIT brand.  If Wikimedia's
(commons.wikimedia.org) average response time is actually 5.6
seconds, people should be complaining.  If ping times were to
blame, Wikimedia.org would be on the Moon.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no PD in France

body:
Well, I was part of the translation team of CC for France, and I
translated Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" in french...

and in fact it was quite easy to deal with CC since these contracts do
not require the author to renounce to its right, they propose him to
authorize a few uses in advance...

it's a completely different approach from releasing a work in PD

CC is now translated in french and adapted to french law... and it
works well :D

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Doctorant
CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr

Le 10 mai 05, ? 21:05, Till Westermayer a ?crit :

> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>
> Hi,
>
> how do the CC people handle this?
>
> Till
>
>> Here it is:
>
>> The article L-121-1 explains that moral rights are : "perp?tuel,
>> inali?nable et imprescriptible", it lasts forever, they can't
>> renounce to it and they can sue even years after a copyvio.
>
>> And when talking about patrimonial rights, there are various
>> provisions implying that the author cannot contribute his work to
>> PD : L-122-7 precises very strong formalities for any release of
>> his representation or reproduction rights, L-122-8 precises that
>> authors possess a forever right to get 3% of any auction of their
>> work and that they can't renounce to it.
>
>> But more importantly, L-131-2 states that : "Les contrats de
>> repr?sentation, d'?dition et de production audiovisuelle d?finis
>> au pr?sent titre doivent ?tre constat?s par ?crit. Il en est de
>> m?me des autorisations gratuites d'ex?cution" which means that any
>> contract to sell their representation/edition rights must be a
>> written one, even when they authorizes free use of their work !
>
>> Article L-131-5 even precises that if the author released his
>> rights but that he got more than 7/12 less than what he should
>> have been normally awarded, he can sue to get it.
>
>> etc. etc. etc.
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>  __ .
>  / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
> . .
>   . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
>   . Hirschstra?e 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
>   . . . . .
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
I agree with Anthere :)

Cordialement,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Doctorant
CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr

Le 10 mai 05, ? 12:45, Anthere a ?crit :

> Hi :-)
>
> I fear I must say the name wikiversity does speak much more to me, and
> wikisophia is confusing. I am not very keen on this name change.
>
> Ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: wiki at kopfrechnung.de

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Creation of Local Wiktionary mailing list for
	the	PORTUGUESE wiktionary...

body:
Hello List,

I have just created the Mailing List for the PT Wiktionary, the list is named:
"WiktionaryPT-l".

See for registration and more:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionarypt-l

Sincerly yours
Ronny Raschkowan
[U: Fire]

Zitat von Iuriatan Muniz <iuriatan at gmail.com>:

> Hello... I didn't find a explicit explanation of the procedure to open
> a local wiktionary mailing list... But the fact is we of the
> Portuguese wiktionary are in need of such a list...
>
> Who can create the list ??? I could be the responsible, or moderator,
> or whatever is necessary...
>
> If i'm writing to the wrong address, sorry... =(
>
> []'s
>                                        Iuri
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

body:
Anthere:
> Researchers have a special frame of mind and research requests some
> abilities which are different from teaching. It is a different job.
> While the researcher is deeply involved in his research, he tends to see
> all things through this sort of filter, and lose the sense of reality
> and of what would really be helpful for students in their future
> professional life OUT of the research frame.

I'm disinclined to agree with blanket statements like this, but the
biggest problem I see with your logic is that you seem to assume that we
have to model Wikisophia after traditional institutions if we combine
research and teaching under "one roof", and that researchers also have
to be teachers in such a framework.

This is exactly the problem with the name "Wikiversity", it limits our
thinking to what is there, when we are trying to create something
fundamentally new. This is why I refuse to even use this name when
discussing the project. I am not talking about a "wiki-university" here.

In fact, what I would like to do is to really get to the bottom of these
questions: What makes a good researcher? What makes a good teacher? How
can we improve and assess people's ability to teach, or to research? How
can we directly apply the latest results from didactical and pedagogical
research to the teaching processes? How can we have meaningful feedback
processes from learners to teachers to researches, and the other way?

Certainly, the process of communicating knowledge to a larger group of
people, whether in person or electronically, is always one which can
have creative and surprising outcomes. I want to build a model where
students can easily share ideas with people who are at the forefront of
research, while being taught by those who have a proven ability to do
so. We have to separate the discussion about *role selection* from the
discussion about what roles should be allowed within a single project.

Your analogy with "Current events" answers your own point: Research can
begin as a section of Wikisophia, we can experiment with it, and we can
assess how much sense it makes to develop this into its own separate
project.

>  > Little defined? Excuse me? Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource and
>  > Wikibooks were set up basically ad hoc by a developer when they felt
>  > like there was enough interest. Wikimedia Commons was the first project
>  > with a proper project plan, and Wikinews was the only project ever
>  > launched by Wikimedia which went through fully developed discussion,
>  > definition and decision-making phases.

> Then why are both wikicommons and wikinews still envased in copyright
> issues ?

"Envased" is not an English word, if you mean that both projects have
lacked planning and foresight when it comes to copyright issues, then I
would argue that the exact opposite is the case:
* Wikipedia violates its own license daily when content is copied from
page to page or from wiki to wiki, and much of our use of the GFDL rests
on often dubious interpretations
* Wikiquote's entire body of work consists of other people's words
offered as "free content"
* Wikisource offers public domain content under the GFDL
* Wiktionary and Wikispecies deal with short pieces of data, yet have an
overly complex license (which needs to be fully reproduced with each
copy), covering content whose copyrightability itself is open to debate.

In the case of Wikinews, we had the foresight to know that neither the
copyleft principle nor the complicated GFDL would necessarily be
desirable, so we chose to put the content in the public domain, allowing
us to easily make a decision about the license in the course of the
project. After a careful deliberation process, we now know that the
license we need (CC-WIKI-BY) doesn't even *exist* yet, so could not have
been chosen at the time the project was started.

The Wikimedia Commons was defined by me initially as a repository of
*free* content, with no exceptions for fair use or non-commercial use
content, and this decision, too, has proven to be very beneficial to the
project.

The community that has arisen on the Commons is probably more aware of
copyright issues than any other, systematic tagging of all content has
always been part of its policies, and in individual cases where the
situation is unclear (e.g. the Stock.xchng photos), legally qualified
people have guided the decision making process. People like Arnomane and
Duesentrieb have done a tremendous job to add as much metadata to images
as possible and to sort out copyvios.

That is not to say that everything is peachy -- the attribution from the
Commons to projects using its media, a complex technical issue, needs to
be resolved, as does the fair use issue on Wikinews. But generally, I
would say that both projects have led the debate about copyright and
licensing, informed by the experiences of the past.

Just because copyright on these two projects is talked about a lot
doesn't mean that they have a lot of problems; in fact, it means that
they have been the busiest *solving* problems, while there's been
virtually no progress on the issues with our existing projects listed above.

All best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Thoughts about a future board budget meeting (or
	budget board meeting ?)

body:
Hi Mav et al

I think the board should do a budget/financial meeting soon. The last one was done a trimester ago, so it is high time.

It seems to me we probably largely differed from our first trimester budget planning (but I may be wrong :-)). If so, I presume it will be due to the various hosting offers we got... In any cases, I think it would be most informative to see where we are going...

We need help from several of you to gather relevant information.

Mav
I have been wondering in the past few days if you could provide us an update on our financial situation ? Both general report (quick update on values) and later one of your nice quaterly report on the foundation website would be most welcome... I suppose you will answer me that you did not receive banking statements yet to do so... but I guess Terry could help there more than he could before.

Question for developers :
I'd like us to be informed on a non technical level of the future technical requirements to expect and possibly to be reminded how much we can expect from partners on this. Ie, how much is planned in the future to spend on servers, hosting and so on. I am sure you will answer it is tough to say, I know :-)
I also know Jimbo asked some related question not a long time ago. What did it boiled down to ? Do we have an idea of how much the tech side will cost in the coming months ?

Question for Danny and for those taking care of grants and prizes...
I think we have no grants planned right now (except for wikimania). Am I correct that we should not expect any income in the near future from that direction ?

The general idea would be to try to evaluate how long the money we have in the bank will last... and if we can envision spending some of it on more creative ways than servers :-)
Opinion on this topic ?

Also, depending on what is left, we must think of the time when the next fundraising will be reasonable to do. I suspect it is a bad idea to do it in summer... so, in short, do we need to plan something in june, or will we be able to last till september ?

Related question : if a fundraising is done before summer, will the french association be in time to be part of it ? Is it able to technically receive funds yet or not ?

Ant

PS : I must mention that we are currently stuck in a rather ridiculous situation. The french squids needs some RAM... this RAM can only be purchased in a few websites... which refuse american credit cards... so we are currently trying to have it bought by the german association... which legally is not really authorized to do this... so, either the french association quickly has cash to pay for such expenses, or the foundation should have a credit card in europe to take care of such matters... opinion ?

---------------------------------
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Thoughts about a future board budget meeting (or
	budget board meeting ?)


from_name: Zigger

subject: [Wikitech-l] DNS weirdness today?

body:
This has also been reported at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2121 .

-- Zigger

On 5/11/05, John Fader wrote:
> Twice today I've requested a page (in one case the search page) on
> en.wikipedia and ended up at some page in what I think is
> ja.wikipedia.
>
> I can't reproduce it reliably.  I can mail a screenshot, but it's not
> really useful for debugging.
>
> Perhaps we have a DNS (or squid) mixup ?
> ...