from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] This is NOT a religious encyclopedia; we do not
	push religious beliefs.

body:
I really don't know how to resolve this problem which I see as being quite
difficult to resolve.

For example, I believe (without doing a lot of research on the question)
there is no evidence from Egyptian sources of the existence of Moses, or
Joseph either.

How do we deal with this and what significance does it have?

Actually the language from our article, [[Moses]], deals with this quite
eloquently, "If he is a historical figure, he may have lived between the
18th century BCE and the 13th century BCE.

According to the Hebrew Bible, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. He
received and recorded the will of God on Mount Sinai."

My own solution to this sort of thing is to take the viewpoint, to a certain
extent, of those who have faith. Taking the lead from the Moses article
there may be occasion for many uses of the language, "According to..."

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 05:53:02 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] This is NOT a religious encyclopedia; we do not push
> religious beliefs.
>
> Fred Bauder responds to SLR's discussion on NPOV:
>> Big problem here though. For example, if you apply this
>> to Judaism, you are taking the Reform Judaism position.
>
> Fred, are you joking? We are NOT a fundamentalist religious
> encycloepdia. We are NOT here to push the Orthodox Jewish
> view of history, ethics and the Bible in our articles.
> Similarly, we are NOT here to push the Fundamentalist
> Christian or Muslim views of history, ethics and the Bible
> in our articles.
>
>> From day one fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims
> have swammped our talk pages claiming about imaginary bias
> in Wikipedia, because we use history instead of blindly
> accepting their POV as factual. And fortunately, the great
> majority of us have reverted their partisan POV edits, and
> restored Wikipedia articles to be in line with our NPOV
> policy.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: How could information flow ?

body:
Angela wrote:
> > The message did have an [edit] link...

Anthere wrote:
> There is no [edit] link...

Sorry, I should have been clearer. The [edit] link only appears until
it is edited. After that, the message is saved to
[[MediaWiki:Fundraising notice]] and won't include an edit link unless
the person who edited it added such a link. I've now explained this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Fundraising_site_notice.

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly
	slowed - uh, no

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > I won't be surprised if Google comes to us in a years time trying to
> > push us into having Google ads.
>
> You seem to be hinting with the word "push" that they would compromise
> their editorial integrity in exchange for the opportunity to show ads.
> I think that is extraordinarily unlikely.  They are good people.

No, that is not what I meant at all. I was hinting that they would like to have
us as a partner so they could generate more ad revenue. There is nothing wrong
with that, BTW. It would just be a measure of how much traffic we have. Many
advertisers will see us as a very tempting target in a years time.

That's all.

-- Daniel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
O.k., good!  That makes sense.  :-)

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > > I won't be surprised if Google comes to us in a years time trying to
> > > push us into having Google ads.
> >
> > You seem to be hinting with the word "push" that they would compromise
> > their editorial integrity in exchange for the opportunity to show ads.
> > I think that is extraordinarily unlikely.  They are good people.
>
> No, that is not what I meant at all. I was hinting that they would like to have
> us as a partner so they could generate more ad revenue. There is nothing wrong
> with that, BTW. It would just be a measure of how much traffic we have. Many
> advertisers will see us as a very tempting target in a years time.
>
> That's all.
>
> -- Daniel
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly slowed

body:
--- Richard Gallagher <rbg at cvm.co.nz> wrote:
> I'm with Pete in the view that Wikipedia overall is growing very slowly at
> the moment and has been since February/March this year.  The big jump in
> hits seems to have  occurred in the last week (week 22) of May 2004.  See
> the monthly and yearly charts at
> http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits.html
>
> Now this big jump coincides with the upgrade to monobook.  Looking at the
> chart you will see the traffic ramps up over the space of about a week or
> so, this corresponds with the piecemeal fashion that the different languages
> were upgraded to monobook in the last day on May.
>
> Before monobook each page load without graphics caused four hits - the page
> itself, the logo graphic, a style sheet and a javascript file.  With
> monobook this number has increased the exact number depends on the browser
> configuration.  But will include several stylesheets, one or two javascript
> files, the logo image, the background image, the user icon, the list item
> icon, the gfdl and media wiki logos.

This is all very useful info. Thank you. However I made the error in calling
page requests hits. These are the data I've been using for the model:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesUsagePageRequest.htm

I would like to know just how much those extra page requests actually impact
the servers. They must have some performance effect, otherwise there would be
no need to buy anything but replacement servers at this point (seeing that
visits are actually a bit down).

It could be that about the same number of people are using us far more heavily,
or that the stats have drifted for some reason related to the upgrade and are
thus screwing with the model.

> As for the Webalizer "pages" statistic, I believe that some non-pages are
> incorrectly being counted as pages.  But without analysing Webalizers
> configuration and the log files themselves I can't say for sure what exactly
> is happening.

If somebody could do that, then that would help a great deal with forecasting.

-- Daniel

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Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alex Hottenstein

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
Goodmorning all-

I am new to the Wikipedia mailing list, but have spent the last few
days researching an idea, and it was suggested to me that I might
receive some further insight or assistance by bringing it to all of
you:

I have been involved with technology for several years now, and have
come to believe very strongly in the potential power of developing web
interfaces for cell
phone technology. I have spent some time both personal and
professional researching this market, and understanding that more and
more cell phones come equipped with the ability to access the
Internet, and that cell phones are now in service even in some of the
remote corners of the world. It occurs to me that Wikipedia could
possibly be the ultimate extension of this technology, and would
require very little effort on our side or the side of the cell phone
user to integrate.

Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the
Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be
given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the
site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.

I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering,
but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very
interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming
involved in the project.

I would like to hear the ideas or suggestions of all, I already have
constructed ideas for Phase 1 and 2 of the project, and would be more
then happy to share them if there is any further interest.

Thank you all for your time
- Alex Hottenstein


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
> <>One critical difference for WAP phone browsing is that many phones
> have extremely small page size limits; a maximum of 1397 bytes.of
> compressed content per page in order to work with currently fielded
> devices. So Wikipedia pages will need to be chopped up into right-size
> chunks, and an effective navigation interface provided to move through
> these. Fortunately we already have hierarchical subheadings and
> paragraph breaks, so these can be used to "paginate" the WAP data
> cleanly, rather than breaking it on arbitary boundaries.

The issue is rendered moot by the fact that WAP is effectively dead.
XHTML and CSS have supplanted it, offering easier (and more widespread)
implementation with very little additional overhead.  (In fact, I don't
remember seeing a WAP browser that wasn't on a five-year-old,
four-line-display Nokia.)

Wikipedia's XHTML source is hardly ideal, but it works.  The lightweight
skins make it perfectly suitable for the kind of dynamic interaction we
would ask from it with WAP, and for a more tailored interface there's
always TomeRaider.

> -- Neil

--
Austin D. Hair <austin at austinhair.org>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Callidus
http://www.austinhair.org/
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly slowed

body:
Thanks for the reply Jimmy.

I can imagine how it is very important to get the figures right, and
with all the different data we are seeing, the maxim "lies, damn lies
and statistics" never seemed truer!

1) I absolutely agree that I shouldn't have concentrated only en.
Overall growth is higher than en growth

2) I would like to be able to trust the webalizers stats more. The
figures seem do seem to be a bit all over the place. The following
annualized figures show the different growth rates for the different
statistics from February to July

By hits: 999% annually
By files: 1095% annually
By pages: 257% annually
By visits: 9% annually

The same figures from March to July

By hits: 1049% annually
By files: 996% annually
By pages: 860% annually
By visits: -6% annually

I do not know how to reconcile the hits/files/pages with the visits
figures. I guess you covered that with your chat with the developers
yesterday?

Over the same period of time, the number of active wikipedians (i.e.
wikipedians making 5 edits or more) is, as we agree, roughly stable
(since the huge jump at the end of February). ''If'' we make the
assumption that no. of wikipedians is constantly proportional to the
number of visitors, then these growth rates (>800%) can not be true. Now
it stands to reason that over time, as the encyclopedias mature, the
visitor to editor ratio should increase. But by that much? By instincts
say no.

Alexa has problems to be sure. Looking at a spread of sites, it appears
that virtually all English language sites are going down, at the expense
of a mix of sino-japanese sites. This is likely to reflect how the alexa
toolbar is distributed more than anything else. In that sense WP may be
doing extremely by staying more or less constant for the last three or
four months (that does appear to be the case even taking into logarithms
- the +86 appears to be the change in the last three months average
against the previous three months - i.e. comparing Jan-March to
April-June which seems ok), WP is "swimming against the tide" and doing
well.

Key conclusion: We still have growth, it is rapid, it is still limited
by server capacity more than a limit to natural demand. However the 90%
per quarter (1300% per year) estimate seems too excessive.

Pete

p.s. I agree with the other posters that it is great (in one sense) that
the mirrors are "shouldering the burden". Would "360 million pageviews
per month, probably at least half a billion when other users of our free
content are taken into account, extremely confident it will be a billion
by Christmas" be snappy enough for journalists?

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Pete, I think you're not reading the evidence correctly, but I think
> that we need to make sure we get this right.  Forecasting the future
> is tricky enough, and we can only do it well if we understand the
> past.
>
> So I invite real scrutiny of all these numbers, because I really need
> to know the right answer.
>
>
>>1) The Webalizer pages: (http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/)
>
>
> Look at pageviews per day...
> February 2004 3.01 million
> June 2004, 5.28 million
>
> For the intervening months, there are significant problems with the
> averages due to some missing data.  (For example, several days in
> April are in the dataset and part of the denominator but clearly have
> missing data, for example showing 94 pageviews in a day.)
>
> Additionally, it is a very big mistake when talking about growth to
> focus solely on en.  En is not the fastest growing wikipedia, in terms
> of traffic percentages.
>
> You can see the growth better here:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesUsagePageRequest.htm
>
> Notice in particular the dramatic spike in June which is continuing
> unabated into July.  This spike, I believe, corresponds with the
> acquisition of new servers.
>
>
>>2) The Wikipedia Statistics pages
>>(http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm)
>
>
> A better page (to get the global perspective) is here:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansNew.htm
>
> It does seem true that the number of new wikipedians peaked in March,
> but notice the big spike in de.wikipedia which distorts the statistic
> to some degree.  en has experienced similar spikes before, and the
> subsequent decline after a spike was not indicative of the long term
> trend, which continues generally to be strongly positive.
>
>
>>3) Alexa
>>
>>- see the following graph
>>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=large&compare_sites=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#graph
>>which shows Wikipedia has not grown in the last four/five months.
>
>
> Given that we know traffic has more than doubled in that time frame, this bears taking a closer look.
>
> I think this picture is more informative:
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#graph
>
> Here, you have to remember that the chart is logarithmic, *and* that
> increases in rank require different increases in traffic as different
> scales.  That is, to go from #10,000 to #1,000 is less of an
> achievement than to go from #1,000 to #100.  (Almost any website can
> spike into the top 1,000 if it gets press coverage of the right sort.)
>
> Look at that picture and recognize that if we blipped up to #1, it
> would look like a minor blip, due to the logarithmic nature of the
> chart.
>
> Alexa shows our 3 mos change as being +86 (in rank), and since we are
> already in the ballpark of 600, that representents a substantial
> traffic increase.
>
> And finally, Alexa numbers are fun to look at, but they do not
> accurately represent real traffic numbers.  If you look up Bomis on
> there, you'll see a precipitous decline -- but from our perspective
> (at Bomis), traffic was stable for that same time period.  (Of course
> being stable while everyone else is growing is one possible
> explanation, but another explanation is that Alexa stats are
> questionable anyway.)
>
> After a chat with the developers yesterday, I'm comfortable (for now)
> with the number of 360 million pageviews per month.  If that's wrong,
> I need to know soon, because I'm going to say that number in public.
>
> --Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Paul Fierro

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Changing upload limit

body:
> I have searched through Wikipedia and Meta for the last hour or so and
> can't find it: - how do you change the upload limit of 2 MB?

See upload_max_filesize in your php.ini.

Paul


from_name: Richards,Michael

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing upload limit

body:
I have searched through Wikipedia and Meta for the last hour or so and can't find it:
- how do you change the upload limit of 2 MB?

I assume it is in LocalSettings.php or somewhere, but I couldn't find it there either.

-- Michael Richards

PS This is for Gartnerpedia, our in-house Mediawiki installation


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Memcached rearrangement

references:
<cd56vn$4u4$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cd5skq$kkh$3@sea.gmane.org>	<cd69e9$qfm$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cd70kn$n72$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> I can rant all day about problems with memcached, both in the clients
>> and in the server.
>
>
> Have you considered reporting the problems with the server "upstream"?

They already know about them. Brad keeps saying on the ML he's going to
fix this or that, but no significant work has been done on it in the
last 6 months.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] And now a bit of fun...

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>This was cute.
>
>In 1966, John Lennon caused a bit of a stir by saying that the Beatles
>were "more popular than Jesus".  I'm not an international rock star,
>so hopefully no one will notice if I post this link:
>
>http://www.googlefight.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl?q1=Wikipedia&q2=Jesus&B1=Make+a+fight%21&compare=1&langue=us
>and this one:
>http://www.googlefight.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl?q1=Wikipedia&q2=Beatles&B1=Make+a+fight%21&compare=1&langue=us
>
>Beatles 5,560,000
>Jesus   5,190,000
>
>Beatles plus Jesus total: 10,750,000
>
>Wikipedia by itself: 11,200,000
>
>Roll over, John Lennon, Wikipedia is more popular than Jesus and the
>Beatles combined.
>
 From George Harrison:

> My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was
> to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not
> offended by "Hallelujah," and by the time it gets to "Hare Krishna,"
> they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already
> singing along "Hallelujah," to kind of lull them into a sense of false
> security. And then suddenly it turns into "Hare Krishna," and they
> will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they
> will think, "Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna!"

See http://www.mantra-meditation.com/my-sweet-lord.html  for the full text.

When you consider it "Wikipedia" could be substituted prosodically for
"Hallelujah" or "Hare Krishna". :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] And now a bit of fun...

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

> "Klaus Holoch" is the spokesman of Brockhaus (English audience: please
> read "Britannica" with such well thought quotes like
>
> "Brockhaus is providing verified knowledge on which you can rely on at
> 100 per cent." This is not the case at wikipedia, he claims. Because
> of this, you can't compare Wikipedia with Brockhaus"
>
> Okay, here's the new part:
>
> google for "Klaus Holoch": 220 hits
> google for "Klaus Holoch" wikipedia: 115
>
> (Last week, there was a news agency-dispatch from dpa about wikipedia
> and it contained this statement from Holoch, this has resulted in some
> increase of google result numbers. This is the first time with more
> than 50% wikipedia-related pages when searching for his name only)

This only proves that bad publicity is often very good as long as the
name is spelled correctly.  The key words in his statement are "You
can't compare..."  What could possibly present a greater inspiration to
making such a comparison.

Ec


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Greek language

references:
<MBBBLIMAPBLHAONGBNNFOEEKCFAA.naftali@pelesoft.co.il>	<40D82480.7000109@cs.ucy.ac.cy>
	<40F79E84.80608@cs.ucy.ac.cy>

body:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:

> I sent this one some time ago. While we all appreciate the many time
> consuming tasks involved in taking care of the software .....

I've checked in the file for you. Lacking the necessary access, I'm
afraid that's all I can do.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems with the search function at Rev. 1.2.6

body:
Wiki WIKI wrote:
> Hi Brion,
>
> thanks for your advise. Unfortunately I do not have any access to my
> MySQL settings. Is there any other way to fix the problem?

No, there is no other way at all whatsoever. Contact your system
administrator.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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references:
<cd56vn$4u4$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cd5skq$kkh$3@sea.gmane.org>	<cd69e9$qfm$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cd70kn$n72$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cd7a3a$ihd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>> Have you considered reporting the problems with the server "upstream"?
>
> They already know about them. Brad keeps saying on the ML he's going to
> fix this or that, but no significant work has been done on it in the
> last 6 months.

I hate to say it, but memcached _is_ *cough* open source *cough*. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Relative loading times across languages

body:
I did a profiling run of fr versus en, at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Profiling/En_versus_fr

Note that the total times are skewed by a single slow query recorded on
fr. The specific functions provide a better comparison.

Brion Vibber wrote:
> fr might in fact be very slightly slower than en since it loads a second
> language file and the UTF-8 support functions & data. (This will be
> mostly eliminated once en converts to UTF-8 someday.)

The second language file would show up in Setup.php-language, and indeed
it does: 2.05ms for en versus 27ms for fr. I think the ucfirst function
would show up in Title::secureAndSplit(): 790us each for fr versus 250us
for en. However that's not a very big effect, and in fact the overall
Article::view() time for fr is faster than that for en: 146ms versus
110ms. I'm not sure exactly where that discrepancy comes from. This was
taken in an off-peak period.

>
> However all speed is extremely variable on these wikis, and depends on
> the load of the servers, how much you've got cached, whether you're
> logged in, whether the page is cached in the parser cache, the
> complexity of the pages involved, whether there are templates, whether
> the templates are cached, whether you have new messages, whether there's
> a site message, whether your user data's cached, and the phase of the
> moon. The absolute speed difference will be *dwarfed* by the hit-to-hit
> variations.

It's important that we serve the non-en wikis consistently faster than
en, and I'd welcome any technical suggestions on how to do this. This is
because when fr is faster than en, it's because developers only care
about en and the other languages are just along for the ride. Never mind
the fact that 11 out of the 17 people with shell access are from Europe,
as are almost all of the regular CVS committers. When fr is faster than
en, it's because en is bigger than fr and therefore harder to serve.

Perhaps this would do the trick:

if ( $wgLanguageCode == "en" ) {
	sleep(1);
}

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andreas Kasenides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Greek language

body:
I sent this one some time ago. While we all appreciate the many time
consuming
task sinvolved in taking care of the software .....
........
Could one of the developers, please, take up this task and load the
modified month names
and abbreviations as it is described below? This will help a lot in
making a calendar of events,
anniversaries etc. in Greek.
Thanks
Andreas

Andreas Kasenides wrote:

>>Delirium wrote:
>>>/ Timwi wrote:
>>/>/
>>/>>/ Delirium wrote:
>>/>>/
>>/>>>/ There may be cases I'm not covering, but for the one I can
>>/>>>/ immediately see in the interface, the issue is that "day month" type
>>/>>>/ dates use the possessive form of the month name, while month names
>>/>>>/ used by themselves use a simple noun form.
>>/>>/
>>/>>/ [... etc. ...  'Maios' vs. '5h Maiou']
>>/>>/
>>/>>/ Ah-ha. I kind of thought so. So why don't you just do this:
>>/>>/
>>/>>/ - Set the month name to "Maio"
>>/>>/ - In a sentence like "{{MONTHNAME}} is nice", write "{{MONTHNAME}}s
>>/>>/ estis bioutiphulos"
>>/>>/ - Set the date format to "{{DAY}} {{MONTHNAME}}u {{YEAR}}"
>>/>>/ http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>/>/
>>/>/ Well, unfortunately one part I had left out were the accents, which
>>/>/ shift when the word becomes possessive.  To take the example from
>>/>/ Andreas's email, the simple noun form of June is "Io?nios", whereas the
>>/>/ possessive form is "Ioun?ou".  So it would really need a separate
>>/>/ {{MONTHNAMEPOSSESSIVE}} or something of that sort.
>>/
>>OK. Next idea:
>>
>>(1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Ioun?ou",
>>     so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site.
>>(2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the
>>     nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Ioun?ou]] would
>>     contain "Io?nios".
>>(3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}
>>     write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
>>
>>How's that?
>>Timwi
>>
> Sorry for not responding earlier on this (since I started it). It
> seems that
> something went wrong with my delivery of list messages and I had to
> look into
> the Web archives. Anyway:
>
> Concerning the Greek names for months and the way they work you can
> look in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection for nice explanation and
> reference.
> I believe the above suggestion by Timwi seems to solve the problem. Of
> course
> somebody needs to remember what we are doing here so that in the
> future it
> stays that way.
>
> So the possessive case of Greek months along with their abbreviation,
> after the comma,
> are (please keep the dots in abbreviations, it looks much better in
> Greek):
>
> ??????????, ???.
> ???????????, ????.
> ???????, ????.
> ????????, ???.
> ?????, ?????
> ???????, ????.
> ???????, ????.
> ?????????, ???.
> ???????????, ????.
> ?????????, ???.
> ?????????, ?????.
> ??????????, ???.
>
> I also attach a UTF-8 txt file with the above.
> Now somebody needs to load all these.
> Thanx
> Andreas
> =========================
>
> e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
> <mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
>
> (replace the _at_ above with @)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
--

Andreas Kasenides
e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
<mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
(replace the _at_ above with @)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Waiting for 1.0

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Since Jimbo has announced the "move to 1.0" some month ago, not much
> has happened. Meanwhile, the tone of the press concerning wikipedia
> seems to be slowly drifting from "interesting, lots of potential" to
> "source of unreliable information". There's the "single printed
> volume" deal waiting in the wings, and Mandrake Linux would be
> interested in a wikipedia-on-DVD.
>
> Since there seems to be long-standing consensus that wikipedia needs
> some form of review (as an additional option, *not* as a replacement
> for the wiki way!), I would very much like the discussion about the
> "how" to start again, and to reach a clonclusion this time, for a
> change :-)

Hmm! "Clonclusion" = "conclusion" or "clone-clusion". :-)

> It seems to me that most of you would agree to a method similar to this:
> * A (logged-in) user can approve a single version of an article.
> * At least two approvals are needed for the "wikipedia seal of
> approval" :-)

I really don't see approvals as being the serious bottleneck.  The
difficulty seems to be in transition between talking about something and
doing something about it.

> Now, the rapid change of wikipedia articles unveils this problem:
> * Does the second approval need to be for the *same version* as the
> first, or can it be for a later one, which then gets the "seal of
> approval"?

It should be essentially for the same one, except for corrections of
minor spelling errors or typos.

> Also, given the different goals of an approval system, should there be
> * one approval only
> * one approval for "web version", one for "CD-ROM version", one for
> "printed version (single volume)", one for "printed version (30
> voulmes)", etc.

The existing Wikipedia should be the "web version".
The same approval should cover the CD-ROM and single volume versions.
We should not be giving serious consideration to the 30 volume version
until we have developed experience with the single volume version

> Also, should there be
> * yes/no approval(s)
> * or rather a rating (0-9 or something)

The numerical rating has much merit. and an average rating can be
generated as a composite of these.

Making the 1.0 "print ready" requires making some tough choices based on
more than a higgledy-piggledy random assortment of approved articles.  I
start from the premise that a 1.0 will eventually be followed by a 2.0.
That means that we don't need to expect perfection in 1.0, nor do we
need to cover absolutely every subject in Wikipedia, even if we already
have some excellent articles in a subject.  We would put our best foot
forward by starting with those subject areas that are our best.

We probably also need a timetable for getting 1.0 out, and deadlines
that need to be met.  Perhaps we need a production oriented 1.0
committee, that can be decisive in its actions.  A subsequent 1.1
committee (perhaps with different members) will be there in the wings
for the next step.

Ec


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>This is
> because when fr is faster than en, it's because developers only care

Obviously should have read "when en is faster than fr"

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] And now a bit of fun...

body:
Hi,

Le Friday 16 July 2004 07:30, kelvSYC a ?crit :
> Here's a very unscientific and informal gauge of how great Wikipedia
> has become compared to other encyclopedias: the Google fight
> (www.googlefight.com).  It simply compares Google hits and displays it
> in a rather humorous format.
>
> Wikipedia - 11,200,000
>
> Encyclopedia Britannica - 1,670,000
> Encyclopaedia Britannica - 1,420,000
> Encyclop?dia Britannica - 803
>
> Encyclopedia Americana - 94,700
> Encyclopaedia Americana - 11,500
> Encyclop?dia Americana - 88

This is not very fair :

Britannica gets 14 400 000 results
Americana gets 3 340 000 results

Yann

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


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories for images?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 19:57:42 -0400 (EDT), Matthew Trump
<wikipedia at decumanus.com> wrote:
> I think this would work up to a point. Invoking categorization of
> images *only* through article categories would not perhaps not bring
> into a account the ontological hierachies that exists for images. For
> examples, historical U.S. maps could be within [[Category:U.S.
> history]], but they could also be collected under an image-related
> category of all historical maps, which is a subcategory of all maps.

In this example, "US maps" would be a useful category, under both
"US History" and "Historical maps".  That is true both for images of
such maps and for articles about them...  another example?

> I like Timwi's idea of [[Category:Image:xxxxx]]. Some coding to
> produce thumbnails in these categories might not be too strenuous.

Duplicating existing namespace distinctions under categories, like
database denormalization, is asking for data corruption.  Then people
can more insert articles into image categories and vice-versa...
despite the naming convention.  On the coding side, I don't think
there would be much difference b/t making thumbnails for 'image categories'
and making them for the 'image section' within a category.

>sj<


subject: [Wikitech-l] Site notice

body:
Please may I humbly ask for the <center> and the <font> tag to be
removed from the site notice, and the desired effect to be achieved with
CSS instead?

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones - see kwickee.com as well

body:
I had not seen the http://www.kwickee.com site, but it does prove that
there is movement toward doing more and more things on cell phones. I
do not know that it is actually what I am hoping that we can achieve
however.

Wikipedia is perfect for this type of endeavor simply because all the
information on it is free, and saved in a centralized, basic standard
(I am assuming) all of which should be able to easily be pulled into
whatever cell phone form we would need to use.

I am not looking for some complex site with user interaction, only one
which allows the user to punch in a keyword, get search return
results, and then see the article (obviously broken down screen by
screen). This would not need to be complex, and there are few to no
security issues that I can think of if we make this read-only.

Wikipedia can gain greatly from the concept that this would push.
Publicly available information accessibly anywhere that a Internet
enabled cell phone is accessible. Would it be 100% useful in the first
phase? probably not. But, it could (and I believe) should be done.

Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of
determining actual product movements?

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:20:45 +0000, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
>
> > Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the
> > Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be
> > given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the
> > site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.
> > I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering,
> > but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very
> > interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming
> > involved in the project.
>
> You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
>
> This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you
> seen this?
>
>     http://www.kwickee.com
>
> Have a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing
> documents.
>
> It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for
> mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis.
> "The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are
> predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest
> to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk
> of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds.
> It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee
> website - taking full advantage of the special features and
> subscription services."
>
> (i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com
> marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)
>
> I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market
> uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite
> able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS,
> let's say.
>
> They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing
> (from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):
>
> "How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised?
> A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of
> launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising
> in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet.
> The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three
> Advertising & Data Marketing Agency."
> "How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?"
> "There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets
> capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an
> Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."
>
> Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business
> that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely
> to work.
>
> We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia
> look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic
> function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an
> intro) and just send that on request?
>
> (This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)
>
> - David.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Forming an action plan for 1.0

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> * Various lists of what *should* be in a single-volume encyclopedia.
>>   Completing these lists would be a fine program for volunteer
>>   recruitment, by the way.
>
>
> Did someone start such a list? If so, please give me a link...
>
> According to
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0852298323/002-7007605-8700056?v=glance
>
> the concise Britannica contains ~28000 articles, which could be a
> number to aim for.
> Selecting the topics could be eased by using the category system.

That makes me a little nervous - we already have a problem with people
who agglomerate more and more text into longer and longer "articles"
instead of using hyperlinks to make things more readable. Marking an
article as one of the "chosen" will just incentivize to do even more
of that. I think you'd need some kind of cutoff mark in articles
(which has been discussed previously), plus some kind of daily query
that budgets by words rather than article count. If for instance
someone add a sentence to [[tuna]] and thereby exceeds the 100Kword
limit for science topics, whip out the list of longest science articles
and start fighting about what to cut. :-)

It also occurs to me that these would be categories that you would
not want displayed by default...

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Changing upload limit

body:
Richards,Michael wrote:

> - how do you change the upload limit of 2 MB?

Is there such a limit? From reading the source code, it seems there is
only a warning if a file is large, not a definite limit.

Correspondingly, the variable is called $wgUploadSizeWarning, and is set
to 150000 (150 KB) in DefaultSettings.php.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Site notice

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:14:14 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Please may I humbly ask for the <center> and the <font> tag to be
> removed from the site notice, and the desired effect to be achieved with
> CSS instead?

There's no need to humbly ask as the text of the message can be edited
at [[MediaWiki:Fundraising notice]] and the style of it at
[[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]].

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_site_notice for details
about the message.

Angela


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Site notice

body:
Angela_ wrote:

> There's no need to humbly ask as the text of the message can be edited
> at [[MediaWiki:Fundraising notice]]

Aaaah! At last! Yippie!

I don't think this was announced on any mailing list, or was it? I might
have missed it, of course. :)

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: And now a bit of fun...

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

> "Klaus Holoch" is the spokesman of Brockhaus (English audience: please
> read "Britannica" with such well thought quotes like
>
> ""Die Brockhaus-Enzyklop?die bietet gepr?ftes Wissen, auf das man sich
> hundertprozentig verlassen kann." Dies sei bei Wikipedia keinesfalls so,
> behauptet er. Deshalb k?nne man Wikipedia nicht mit Brockhaus vergleichen."

Is this the same chap that called Wikipedia an enterprise? :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes SkinPHPTal.php,1.84,1.85

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Update of /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes
> In directory sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv2125/includes
>
> Modified Files:
> 	SkinPHPTal.php
> Log Message:
> Little bugfix in user CSS preview

I apologise for this mammoth patch that was almost only whitespace
changes. The real change was this (line 541):

-                                       $this->usercss = '@import
"'.$this->makeUrl('-','action=raw
&gen=css&smaxage=0&maxage=0').');'."\n";
+                                       $this->usercss = '@import
"'.$this->makeUrl('-','action=raw
&gen=css&smaxage=0&maxage=0').'";'."\n";


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
On Friday, July 16, 2004 4:06 PM
Alex Hottenstein <ahottenstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering,
> but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very
> interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming
> involved in the project.
>
> I would like to hear the ideas or suggestions of all, I already have
> constructed ideas for Phase 1 and 2 of the project, and would be more
> then happy to share them if there is any further interest.

There is already a page on meta about a mobile version of Wikipedia.
This might be a good place to post your ideas:

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

--Arne (akl)


body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

> However, Klaus Holoch was the same "chap" that took the opportunity to
> have a 45 minutes-discussion on WDR state radio-5 with Magnus Manske
> about the ownership of knowledge.

Oooh! Does there exist a recording of that?


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] And now a bit of fun...

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales schrieb:

> Roll over, John Lennon, Wikipedia is more popular than Jesus and the
> Beatles combined.

speaking of fun, we're getting close to the bizarre area of the Internet:

"Klaus Holoch" is the spokesman of Brockhaus (English audience: please
read "Britannica" with such well thought quotes like

""Die Brockhaus-Enzyklop?die bietet gepr?ftes Wissen, auf das man sich
hundertprozentig verlassen kann." Dies sei bei Wikipedia keinesfalls so,
behauptet er. Deshalb k?nne man Wikipedia nicht mit Brockhaus vergleichen."

"Brockhaus is providing verified knowledge on which you can rely on at
100 per cent." This is not the case at wikipedia, he claims. Because of
this, you can't compare Wikipedia with Brockhaus"

(I might have mentioned it before)

Okay, here's the new part:

google for "Klaus Holoch": 220 hits
google for "Klaus Holoch" wikipedia: 115

(Last week, there was a news agency-dispatch from dpa about wikipedia
and it contained this statement from Holoch, this has resulted in some
increase of google result numbers. This is the first time with more than
50% wikipedia-related pages when searching for his name only)

Jimmy, you might consider to appoint him as the honoris causa
PR-volunteer of the German wikipedia project. After all, according to
the omniscient web/google, his work is more connected to wikipedia than
to his employer.

Mathias


from_name: Michael Diederich

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Changing upload limit

body:
<begin name="Richards,Michael" date="Friday 16 July 2004 16:41"/>

> I have searched through Wikipedia and Meta for the last hour or so and
> can't find it: - how do you change the upload limit of 2 MB?

php has an limit of 2 MB - IMO it is not possible to change.

Best regards,

da didi
--
===========================================================================
Gentoo Linux:                   Gentoo Base System version 1.5.1
kernel-2.6.7            Pentium III (Coppermine)
===========================================================================


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
Arne Klempert wrote:

>On Friday, July 16, 2004 4:06 PM
>Alex Hottenstein <ahottenstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering,
>>but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very
>>interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming
>>involved in the project.
>>
>>I would like to hear the ideas or suggestions of all, I already have
>>constructed ideas for Phase 1 and 2 of the project, and would be more
>>then happy to share them if there is any further interest.
>>
>>
>
>There is already a page on meta about a mobile version of Wikipedia.
>This might be a good place to post your ideas:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
>
>
>--Arne (akl)
>
>
>
<>One critical difference for WAP phone browsing is that many phones
have extremely small page size limits; a maximum of 1397 bytes.of
compressed content per page in order to work with currently fielded
devices. So Wikipedia pages will need to be chopped up into right-size
chunks, and an effective navigation interface provided to move through
these. Fortunately we already have hierarchical subheadings and
paragraph breaks, so these can be used to "paginate" the WAP data
cleanly, rather than breaking it on arbitary boundaries.

-- Neil


body:
Timwi schrieb:

> Is this the same chap that called Wikipedia an enterprise? :)

close :).

That was the editor of wissen.de (they still claim to be Europe's
largest free knowledge base which I consider this anachronistic).

However, Klaus Holoch was the same "chap" that took the opportunity to
have a 45 minutes-discussion on WDR state radio-5 with Magnus Manske
about the ownership of knowledge.

And he was the same chap who asked for "peaceful coexistence" with
wikipedia, according to Deutsche Welle TV.

"Ich denke, dass "Wikipedia" sich weiter entwickeln wird und seinen
Platz findet. Aber ich bin auch ganz sicher, dass "Brockhaus.de"
erfolgreich sein wird und dass wir uns dann sch?n nebeneinander bewegen.""
http://www.dw-world.de/german/0,,1606_A_1128716_1_A,00.html

Interestingly, he mentions brockhaus.de and not their
B2C-eContent-ePayment-eOutsource thing xipolis.net.

This could still be fun, depending on your sense of humor:

http://www.suse.de/cgi-bin/print_page_www.pl?NPSPath=/webredesign/htdocs/en/company/customer_references/xipolis.html


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The GNU diction package

body:
I've just noticed the GNU diction package, which applies a number of
"figure of merit" measures to text. Although the figures it generates
are of debatable usefulness, it might be an interesting experiment to
run it on a Wikipedia dump

Some questions:
* Do the various readability scores rise as articles are revised?
* Would it be worth creating special pages to find the best/worst
articles by reading score, so they can be copyedited, or checked to see
if they are suitable for being featured articles?

-- Neil


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Alex Hottenstein wrote:

> Goodmorning all-

Wherever you may be ..

> Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the
> Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be
> given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the
> site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.

On comp.sys.palmtops.pilot, "Mat Ripley" <mat at proporta.com.remove> wrote :-

: Date: Friday, July 16 2004, 03:26:28 PM SAST
: [1] Re: Encyclopedias for Palm
:
: Hi
:
: We are currently in the final stages of TR3 for Palm and Windows. Both
: should be out in beta next week. There is still lots of polishing to be done
: but yes, the palm version will be able to hold the entire Wikipedia in one
: file. We have had to do some pretty new stuff to make this possible but it
: looks like we will have it done.
:
: As well as ultra large file support, TomeRaider 3 will have zillions of new
: features (Images, categories, filters, search acceleration.....)  It is a
: total rewrite two years in the making, and we hope it will be as ground
: breaking as the original TomeRaiders were all those years ago.
:
: If you would like to be  a beta tester for the Palm or the Windows version
: then drop us an email at the normal Proporta software address.
:
: Regards,
:
: Mat
:
Cheers,   Andy!

http://www.wizzy.org.za/article/articlestatic/23/1/2/


body:
Timwi schrieb:

> Oooh! Does there exist a recording of that?

yes, I haven't done a transscript yet and I still plan to translate it.
The non-German speaking audience could find it interesting...

there is - due to the copy-unright-  no public url for that file.


from_name: Matthew Trump

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories for images?

body:
You misunderstood. [[Category:Image:XXXX]] not a separate database
namespace but can be done completely within the existing coding. It
is purely a convention There is no additional namespace, simply a
convention for images. Personally I tend to prefer separate
categories for images because it is what I personally would expect,
if I were looking for images. Yes, images *could* be placed within
existing categories with articles, but overall I think a segragation
is cleaner and more flexible overall.

Sj said:
> On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 19:57:42 -0400 (EDT), Matthew Trump
> <wikipedia at decumanus.com> wrote:
>> I think this would work up to a point. Invoking categorization of
>> images *only* through article categories would not perhaps not
>> bring
>> into a account the ontological hierachies that exists for images.
>> For
>> examples, historical U.S. maps could be within [[Category:U.S.
>> history]], but they could also be collected under an image-related
>> category of all historical maps, which is a subcategory of all
>> maps.
>
> In this example, "US maps" would be a useful category, under both
> "US History" and "Historical maps".  That is true both for images of
> such maps and for articles about them...  another example?
>
>
>> I like Timwi's idea of [[Category:Image:xxxxx]]. Some coding to
>> produce thumbnails in these categories might not be too strenuous.
>
> Duplicating existing namespace distinctions under categories, like
> database denormalization, is asking for data corruption.  Then people
> can more insert articles into image categories and vice-versa...
> despite the naming convention.  On the coding side, I don't think
> there would be much difference b/t making thumbnails for 'image
> categories'
> and making them for the 'image section' within a category.
>
>>sj<
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

> Also so fun numbers;
>
> http://mycroft.mozdev.org/top30.html
>
> The stats of the most popular search plugin for Mozilla.
>
> Top 30 place 8 for wikipedia and going UP
>
> Current top 10;
> http://mycroft.mozdev.org/index.html
>
> 5th place
>
> I hope somebody is maintaining those plugins.

I submitted a version for the Minnan Wikipedia a while ago.  The ones
I've tried (en, ja) work fine now that full-text search is working.
Btw, I find it annoying and problematic that Mycroft uses national flags
to represent languages.

~~~~


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:

> Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the
> Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be
> given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the
> site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.
> I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering,
> but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very
> interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming
> involved in the project.

You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain

This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you
seen this?

     http://www.kwickee.com

Have a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing
documents.

It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for
mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis.
"The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are
predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest
to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk
of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds.
It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee
website - taking full advantage of the special features and
subscription services."

(i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com
marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)

I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market
uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite
able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS,
let's say.

They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing
(from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):

"How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised?
A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of
launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising
in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet.
The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three
Advertising & Data Marketing Agency."
"How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?"
"There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets
capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an
Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."

Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business
that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely
to work.

We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia
look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic
function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an
intro) and just send that on request?

(This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)

- David.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
On 07/16/04 16:31, Neil Harris wrote:

> One critical difference for WAP phone browsing is that many phones
> have extremely small page size limits; a maximum of 1397 bytes.of
> compressed content per page in order to work with currently fielded
> devices. So Wikipedia pages will need to be chopped up into right-size
> chunks, and an effective navigation interface provided to move through
> these. Fortunately we already have hierarchical subheadings and
> paragraph breaks, so these can be used to "paginate" the WAP data
> cleanly, rather than breaking it on arbitary boundaries.

I don't know that WAP is actually that important to consider. Mobile
phones are rapidly advancing technology that customers regard as
disposable, i.e. get a new phone every year or two for new features.
How are the numbers for WAP versus GPRS, i.e. proper Internet on
Opera or (soon) mini-Mozilla?

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The GNU diction package

body:
On 07/16/04 16:45, Neil Harris wrote:

> I've just noticed the GNU diction package, which applies a number of
> "figure of merit" measures to text. Although the figures it generates
> are of debatable usefulness, it might be an interesting experiment to
> run it on a Wikipedia dump
> Some questions:
> * Do the various readability scores rise as articles are revised?
> * Would it be worth creating special pages to find the best/worst
> articles by reading score, so they can be copyedited, or checked to see
> if they are suitable for being featured articles?

I don't know, but if there's a Web gateway where you can measure any
text you paste into a text box, there's a few fans of grammatical
overcomplexity on Wikipedia it would be useful for beating over the
head ...

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Waiting for 1.0

body:
On 07/16/04 18:24, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Since there seems to be long-standing consensus that wikipedia needs
> some form of review (as an additional option, *not* as a replacement for
> the wiki way!), I would very much like the discussion about the "how" to
> start again, and to reach a clonclusion this time, for a change :-)

[[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]] has been getting busier and
is turning out a little more than one article a day at present. These
are articles that theoretically meet the standard of
[[Wikipedia:What is a featured article]] (rather than, say,
[[Wikipedia:The perfect article]] and are voted to being on
[[Wikipedia:Featured articles]] over the course of a week's straw-polls,
feedback and improvement. These are the pool of articles that Raul654
draws the Main Page feature from.

If you're looking for a checklist for reviewing an article,
[[Wikipedia:What is a featured article]] gives the sort of standard
that just about any article should aspire to. Could be useful?

- d.


from_name: Wiki WIKI

body:
Hi Brion,

thanks for your advise. Unfortunately I do not have any access to my MySQL settings. Is there any other way to fix the problem?

Thanks for your kind advise and best regards

Michael

--- Urspr?ngliche Nachricht ---
Von: brion at pobox.com
An: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
Betreff: Re: [Wikitech-l] Problems with the search function at Rev. 1.2.6

> Wiki WIKI wrote:
> > I am using MediaWiki Rev. 1.2.6 and I am facing troubles with the search function.
> > Strings with less than 4 characters are not searchable, however I set the parameter
> > in the DefaultSettings.php.
> >
> > I have set the $wgDBminWordLen = 2 and ran rebuildtextindex.php but no change.
>
> You need to configure MySQL's fulltext index to change the default
> minimum word length; $wgDBminWordLen should match that setting. Please
> see the documentation on mysql.com.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>

_____________________________________________________
Powered by Diabetes-Kids Mail - www.diabetes-kids.de

Bei Missbrauch unseres Webmail Services schreibt bitte an abuse at diabetes-kids.de


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Waiting for 1.0

body:
At 12:31 PM 7/16/2004 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>Magnus Manske wrote:
>>Now, the rapid change of wikipedia articles unveils this problem:
>>* Does the second approval need to be for the *same version* as the
>>first, or can it be for a later one, which then gets the "seal of approval"?
>
>It should be essentially for the same one, except for corrections of minor
>spelling errors or typos.

Users who approve a version of an article would likely watchlist it, so it
doesn't seem like a major imposition to require them to review newer edits
and give approval to newer versions if need be. Perhaps even have the
software create a sort of parallel specialized watchlist that shows
articles you've approved in the past that have had edits performed on them
since then, both to make sure one doesn't forget to watchlist them and to
make sure one's regular watchlist doesn't become cluttered.

>>Also, should there be
>>* yes/no approval(s)
>>* or rather a rating (0-9 or something)
>
>The numerical rating has much merit. and an average rating can be
>generated as a composite of these.

Users should only have the yes/no option, IMO, since including or excluding
an article is an all-or-nothing proposition. Combining multiple users'
ratings into a more fine-grained number could be handy, though, showing
whether the approval is controversial at a glance. The details of this
rating system will no doubt be the subject of endless bickering, which I
look forward to seeing the end result of. :)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Waiting for 1.0

body:
Since Jimbo has announced the "move to 1.0" some month ago, not much has
happened. Meanwhile, the tone of the press concerning wikipedia seems to
be slowly drifting from "interesting, lots of potential" to "source of
unreliable information". There's the "single printed volume" deal
waiting in the wings, and Mandrake Linux would be interested in a
wikipedia-on-DVD.

Since there seems to be long-standing consensus that wikipedia needs
some form of review (as an additional option, *not* as a replacement for
the wiki way!), I would very much like the discussion about the "how" to
start again, and to reach a clonclusion this time, for a change :-)

It seems to me that most of you would agree to a method similar to this:
* A (logged-in) user can approve a single version of an article.
* At least two approvals are needed for the "wikipedia seal of approval" :-)

Now, the rapid change of wikipedia articles unveils this problem:
* Does the second approval need to be for the *same version* as the
first, or can it be for a later one, which then gets the "seal of approval"?

Also, given the different goals of an approval system, should there be
* one approval only
* one approval for "web version", one for "CD-ROM version", one for
"printed version (single volume)", one for "printed version (30
voulmes)", etc.

Also, should there be
* yes/no approval(s)
* or rather a rating (0-9 or something)

For the record, my opionion to these:
* approvals need *not* to be on the same version, but a "disapproval"
could invalidate any prior approvals
* one approval (we can sort out bot articles/extremely long ones later)
* no rating (either it is a good one or not).

Magnus


from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Can't seem to move pages in fr:

body:
This might not be the right place to put it, but my preference is for
speaking English.

Anyways, I can't seem to move pages on fr - whenever I try to move one,
it says that I have to log in first, even though I'm already logged in.
  Relogging-in does not make a difference.


body:
On 07/16/04 19:31, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> We probably also need a timetable for getting 1.0 out, and deadlines
> that need to be met.  Perhaps we need a production oriented 1.0
> committee, that can be decisive in its actions.  A subsequent 1.1
> committee (perhaps with different members) will be there in the wings
> for the next step.

Before we get a committee, we need a plan. Then, instead of a
committee, we can have a commando action group ;-)

What do we have so far?

* Jimbo's statement that he doesn't want a fork from the current
   content, except at the very last stage before preparing for print.
* Various plans for rating articles or versions of articles.
   (For edit war hot spots, expect vote spamming.)
* Various lists of what *should* be in a single-volume encyclopedia.
   Completing these lists would be a fine program for volunteer
   recruitment, by the way.
* A lot of articles with images that are fair-use, permission-granted,
   non-profit or of other non-free status to be cleared and replaced
   where at all feasible.
* An interested publisher, one who actually gets it, waiting in the
   wings. (Jimbo, you said their name in London - is it still under
   wraps?) We need to know what they require from us, so we know what
   to aim for.

Anything important I've missed? Add it and we'll have the broad form
of our action plan. Then it's a Simple Matter Of Volunteer Motivation.
And we have a lot of experience at that.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Classic skin css location?

body:
Timwi quite rightly reverted my changes to the funding message,
wherein I put <center> and <i> tags on it. He pointed out the
right place to do this is in the CSS.

Er ... where is the Classic CSS?

- d.


from_name: Timwi

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Beatles     5,560,000
> Jesus       5,190,000
> Wikipedia  11,200,000

Where does googlefight.com get these numbers from? If I just google for
these words, I get:

Beatles     5,390,000
Jesus      22,700,000
Wikipedia  10,900,000

According to that, Wikipedia is twice as popular as the Beatles, but
still way behind Jesus. :-p

Timwi


from_name: Vina Wang

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Help - blocked IP still posting to Chinese Wiki

body:
There is an user with a particular IP address that is posting the same inflamatory and derogatory page on Mao Zedong over and over again.  I have blocked the IP, but the posts kept on coming.

What do I do now?

The IP address is 81.48.83.54.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

-Vina


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Classic skin css location?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Timwi quite rightly reverted my changes to the funding message,
> wherein I put <center> and <i> tags on it. He pointed out the
> right place to do this is in the CSS.
>
> Er ... where is the Classic CSS?

I looked at the source code, and apparently there isn't one. I've added
the capability, and when this code goes live, you'll be able to specify
CSS for the Classic skin at [[MediaWiki:Standard.css]]. (It's not my
fault it's called "Standard" instead of "Classic".)

Timwi


body:
On 07/16/04 20:52, Timwi wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

>> Timwi quite rightly reverted my changes to the funding message,
>> wherein I put <center> and <i> tags on it. He pointed out the
>> right place to do this is in the CSS.
>> Er ... where is the Classic CSS?

> I looked at the source code, and apparently there isn't one. I've added
> the capability, and when this code goes live, you'll be able to specify
> CSS for the Classic skin at [[MediaWiki:Standard.css]]. (It's not my
> fault it's called "Standard" instead of "Classic".)

I fully support it being regarded as "standard" ;-)

- d.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Waiting for 1.0

body:
Hi Magnus

See also a discussion about that :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation

I would be very happy to see this topic being in discussion again ;-)

Magnus Manske wrote:
> Since Jimbo has announced the "move to 1.0" some month ago, not much has
> happened. Meanwhile, the tone of the press concerning wikipedia seems to
> be slowly drifting from "interesting, lots of potential" to "source of
> unreliable information". There's the "single printed volume" deal
> waiting in the wings, and Mandrake Linux would be interested in a
> wikipedia-on-DVD.
>
> Since there seems to be long-standing consensus that wikipedia needs
> some form of review (as an additional option, *not* as a replacement for
> the wiki way!), I would very much like the discussion about the "how" to
> start again, and to reach a clonclusion this time, for a change :-)
>
> It seems to me that most of you would agree to a method similar to this:
> * A (logged-in) user can approve a single version of an article.
> * At least two approvals are needed for the "wikipedia seal of approval" :-)
>
> Now, the rapid change of wikipedia articles unveils this problem:
> * Does the second approval need to be for the *same version* as the
> first, or can it be for a later one, which then gets the "seal of approval"?
>
> Also, given the different goals of an approval system, should there be
> * one approval only
> * one approval for "web version", one for "CD-ROM version", one for
> "printed version (single volume)", one for "printed version (30
> voulmes)", etc.
>
> Also, should there be
> * yes/no approval(s)
> * or rather a rating (0-9 or something)
>
>
> For the record, my opionion to these:
> * approvals need *not* to be on the same version, but a "disapproval"
> could invalidate any prior approvals
> * one approval (we can sort out bot articles/extremely long ones later)
> * no rating (either it is a good one or not).
>
> Magnus


body:
On 07/16/04 20:44, David Gerard wrote:

> * Jimbo's statement that he doesn't want a fork from the current
>   content, except at the very last stage before preparing for print.
> * Various plans for rating articles or versions of articles.
>   (For edit war hot spots, expect vote spamming.)
> * Various lists of what *should* be in a single-volume encyclopedia.
>   Completing these lists would be a fine program for volunteer
>   recruitment, by the way.
> * A lot of articles with images that are fair-use, permission-granted,
>   non-profit or of other non-free status to be cleared and replaced
>   where at all feasible.
> * An interested publisher, one who actually gets it, waiting in the
>   wings. (Jimbo, you said their name in London - is it still under
>   wraps?) We need to know what they require from us, so we know what
>   to aim for.

* [[Wikipedia:News style]] article intros wherever reasonable. Considering
that in a lot of cases, those are going to become the article.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Cell Phones

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:53:16 -0400, Alex Hottenstein
<ahottenstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of
> determining actual product movements?

In theory, the Wikimedia Board
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees) are, but in
practice, it's up to the users interested in a new project to organise
it. It depends what you think you need to start off such a project. If
you need money, then you would need the board's assistance with this.
However, if you simply need a new sub-domain, like
mobile.wikipedia.org or whatever, then this can be requested on Meta
at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_projects assuming
there has been little or no objection to it.

The guidelines that exist for starting a new language Wikipedia might
help, although won't be completely relevant:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia.

If you are only at the stage where you want to be discussing this new
project idea with other interested people, a page on Meta will be the
best place to start documenting your proposal. You can advertise the
idea to get more people interested at places like
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on.

Talking to some of the developers about this idea might be useful. If
you use IRC, drop into #mediawiki on freenode. If not, Tim Starling
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling) is Wikimedia's
Developer Liaison and should be able to point you in the right
direction.

Hope that helps.

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] GEO mode

body:
FYI, I have just commited a preliminary version of a GEO mode (location
management, if you will) to CVS HEAD. You will have to set
"$wgUseGeoMode = true ;" in LocalSettings for that to work.

Currently, it does not do *that* much: It uses the ISBN mechanism, but
with the GEO keyword, like "GEO 1.22.33:-4.55.66". This is converted to
a link to a "SpecialGeo" page, which currently only shows a link to the
according MapQuest page.

As a special option, I hard-coded a regular expression
search-and-replace that will work on the RamBot articles (like
"38°30'10" North, 90°38'42" West"); coordinates on these pages
will thus be linked likewise.

At the moment, it does *not* store the coordinates/article data pair in
a special database table, which will be required for "real" functions,
like "what's near this location". I might implement that later, unless
someone beats me to it (hint! :-)

Magnus


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Also so fun numbers;

http://mycroft.mozdev.org/top30.html

The stats of the most popular search plugin for Mozilla.

Top 30 place 8 for wikipedia and going UP

Current top 10;
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/index.html

5th place

I hope somebody is maintaining those plugins.

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia PUNT be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Richard Gallagher

body:
On 15 Jul 2004 at 8:09, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Pete, I think you're not reading the evidence correctly, but I think
> that we need to make sure we get this right.  Forecasting the future
> is tricky enough, and we can only do it well if we understand the
> past.
>
> So I invite real scrutiny of all these numbers, because I really need
> to know the right answer.
>
> > 1) The Webalizer pages: (http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/)
>
> Look at pageviews per day...
> February 2004 3.01 million
> June 2004, 5.28 million
>
> For the intervening months, there are significant problems with the
> averages due to some missing data.  (For example, several days in
> April are in the dataset and part of the denominator but clearly have
> missing data, for example showing 94 pageviews in a day.)
[snip]
> Notice in particular the dramatic spike in June which is continuing
> unabated into July.  This spike, I believe, corresponds with the
> acquisition of new servers.

I'm with Pete in the view that Wikipedia overall is growing very slowly at the moment
and has been since February/March this year.  The big jump in hits seems to have
occurred in the last week (week 22) of May 2004.  See the monthly and yearly charts at
http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits.html

Now this big jump coincides with the upgrade to monobook.  Looking at the chart you
will see the traffic ramps up over the space of about a week or so, this corresponds with
the piecemeal fashion that the different languages were upgraded to monobook in the
last day on May.

Before monobook each page load without graphics caused four hits - the page itself,
the logo graphic, a style sheet and a javascript file.  With monobook this number has
increased the exact number depends on the browser configuration.  But will include
several stylesheets, one or two javascript files, the logo image, the background image,
the user icon, the list item icon, the gfdl and media wiki logos.

Just as a test loading the main page on English Wikipedia under Internet Explorer 6.0
results in 24 hits to the server.   Now of course some client side caching will occur so it
will not a have a massive effect on the stats, but I still believe it would be big enough to
account for the 2 to 3 times increase that happened.

I believe the actual number of visits to Wikipedia since about March has stayed the
same or grown very little.  Since June both the Webalizer and cache stats are very flat
except for the standard weekly cycle (low weekend, high mid week).

As for the Webalizer "pages" statistic, I believe that some non-pages are incorrectly
being counted as pages.  But without analysing Webalizers configuration and the log
files themselves I can't say for sure what exactly is happening.

Richard


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> * Various lists of what *should* be in a single-volume encyclopedia.
>   Completing these lists would be a fine program for volunteer
>   recruitment, by the way.

Did someone start such a list? If so, please give me a link...

According to

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0852298323/002-7007605-8700056?v=glance
the concise Britannica contains ~28000 articles, which could be a number
to aim for.
Selecting the topics could be eased by using the category system.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The GNU diction package

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:25:05 +0000, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> I don't know, but if there's a Web gateway where you can measure any
> text you paste into a text box, there's a few fans of grammatical
> overcomplexity on Wikipedia it would be useful for beating over the
> head ...

There are a few of these around. The one I use it at
http://resources.aellalei.com/writer/sample.html and provides a Flesch
Reading Ease,  Fog Scale Level and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level for any
text pasted in. It's only suitable for individual articles though. It
wouldn't be the best option for a large scale analysis.

Angela.


body:
I've seen similar problem when I was using a particular popup ad blocker (I don't remembre which anymore).  You can try my method of getting around it and see if it works.

I logged in with the firewall turned on, it shows that I'm logged in, except when I try to edit pages.  The only way that I got around it was to log out, log in with the same cookie between session checked, then turned the firewall back on.

-Vina
-----Original Message-----
From: kelvSYC <kelvsyc at shaw.ca>
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 20:33:04 -0600
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Can't seem to move pages in fr:

This might not be the right place to put it, but my preference is for
speaking English.

Anyways, I can't seem to move pages on fr - whenever I try to move one,
it says that I have to log in first, even though I'm already logged in.
  Relogging-in does not make a difference.

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


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Should MP3 files be allowed on wikipedia - Current
	ongoing discussion.

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> There is an ongoing discussion whether MP3 files should be allowed on
> Wikipeda, check it out -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Sound#MP3_on_Wikipedia

To me, this is a very simple question. If a file format can't be read
with free software, then we must not use it. If a file format can be
read with free software, but can't be created with free software, then
we should strongly discourage the use. Notice that the GIF patent
threat was to creators of software like The Gimp (to make the files)
rather than to creators of software like Mozilla (to read the
files). The situation with MP3 is, as I understand it, much
worse. Here the threat is to both encoders and decoders. Therefore we
must not use MP3 files.

It is important to undertsand that the issue of convenience is at the
heart of our fight for freedom. People continue to use proprietary
formats and proprietary software because they perceive it as being
more convenient. One of the most important things that we can do is to
illustrate that proprietary formats are actually inconvenient, so long
as some people choose to use formats that are free. And if we at
Wikipedia do our small part to get people to download and install a
proper free decoder (this will generally just be a codec in a player)
so that we make the free Ogg Vorbis format as convenient as the
proprietary format, we will have achieved something important.

--Jimbo


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly
	slowed - uh, no

body: ceci est le test 5


body: ceci est le test 5


body: test 6


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
There is an ongoing discussion whether MP3 files should be allowed on
Wikipeda, check it out -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Sound#MP3_on_Wikipedia


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV, history and religion. Its coming together.

body:
Fred Bauder writes:
> really don't know how to resolve this problem which I see
> as being quite difficult to resolve. For example, I
believe
> (without doing a lot of research on the question) there
> is no evidence from Egyptian sources of the existence of
> Moses, or Joseph either. How do we deal with this and
> what significance does it have?

This is an excellent question, important for Wikipedia to
deal with. (This issue itself is important, but by
extension, covers many related issues.)

I agree with your solution. We use NPOV phrasing to discuss
this problem, in the way you suggest.

Below I offer my ideas for an addition to the NPOV article,
and I would like you (Fred), Steve Rubenstein, and others
to respond. If you are responding about Wikipedia NPOV
policy vis-a-vis history, I guess your reply should be sent
here (to the Wiki-En list). If your reply is specific to
that of the Hebrew Bible and history, then I guess you
should reply to: [[Talk:The Bible and history]]

> rest of Fred's message deleted to save space; I agree
with him.

Here is my proposed text, for use in Wikipedia:WikiProject
articles on religion, and perhaps in the NPOV article
itself.

* Wikipedia's [[NPOV]] policy often means multiple points
of view. This means providing not only the points of view
of different groups today, but different groups in the
past.

*Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important task for
articles is to explain things. In the case of human beliefs
and practices, explanation encompasses not only what
motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and practices,
but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be
and took shape.

*Wikipedia articles on history and religion draw from a
religion's sacred texts. But Wikipedia articles on history
and religion also draw from modern archaeological,
historical and scientific sources

*Many adherents of a religion will object to a critical
historical treatments, claiming that this discriminates
against their religious beliefs. They would prefer that the
articles describe their faith as they see it, which is from
an ahistorical perspective (e.g. the way things are is the
way things have always been; any differences are from
heretical sects that don't represent the real religion.)
This point of view must also be mentioned, yet note that
there is no contradiction. NPOV policy means that we say
that Group A says one thing for somesuch reasons, while
group B says another thing for other reasons.

*A note on using the term "fundamentalism". Please see the
article on [[fundamentalism]] for the technical definition
of this term. This word is used in articles on religion,
but should only be used in one its technical senses. We
should take care to explain what we mean by this term so
(a) as not to cause unnecessary offense, and (b) so as not
to mislead the reader (most people being unaware of how
this word should be used.) We should not use this term as a
pejorative phrase.

Shalom,

Robert (RK)

=====
"No one is poor except he who lacks knowledge....A person who has knowledge has everything.  A person who lacks knowledge, what has he? Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack?  [Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim, 41a]

__________________________________
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http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/


body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 20:33:04 -0600, kelvSYC <kelvsyc at shaw.ca> wrote:
> This might not be the right place to put it, but my preference is for
> speaking English.
>
> Anyways, I can't seem to move pages on fr - whenever I try to move one,
> it says that I have to log in first, even though I'm already logged in.
>   Relogging-in does not make a difference.

This may have been the result of a temporary anti-vandalism measure
which was switched on. It has now been switched off, so you should be
able to move pages again, assuming that was the thing preventing you
moving pages in the first place.

Angela.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikiquote now has subdomains

body:
> Wikiquote now has specific-language subdomains. Instead of creating
> wikis for all 150 languages, I made a system where wikis are only
> created when they're wanted. To save time during maintenance
> operations,
> it should now be possible to delete unused Wiktionaries and even
> Wikipedias until they are required.
>
> Similar conversion of Wikibooks should be a fairly simple thing, I'm
> now
> just waiting for community approval. We can't put subdomains under
> wikisource.org because the domain name doesn't point to the right
> place.
> It's owned by Mav and points to a redirect server, redirecting to
> quote.wikipedia.org.

So, in terms of wikimarkup, you could use something like [[quote:Main
Page]] to link to Wikiquote's main page from a Wikipedia or Wiktionary?
  What about [[books:Main Page]] or [[source:Main Page]]?


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] This is NOT a religious encyclopedia;
	we do not push religious beliefs.

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 07:59:26 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> My own solution to this sort of thing is to take the viewpoint, to a certain
> extent, of those who have faith. Taking the lead from the Moses article
> there may be occasion for many uses of the language, "According to..."

"According to..." - now there is language which is very seldom POV. :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Site notice

references:
<cd8kbv$ub8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8b722b8004071608091fb44acc@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd8rbr$hqh$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:13:38 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I don't think this was announced on any mailing list, or was it? I might
> have missed it, of course. :)

Well, there was a tempest in a teapot on one of the lists when the
site fundraising notice, intended only for en:, got unintentionally
stuck on all wikis. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories for images?

body:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 18:07:52 -0400 (EDT), Matthew Trump
<wikipedia at decumanus.com> wrote:
> You misunderstood. [[Category:Image:XXXX]] not a separate database
> namespace but can be done completely within the existing coding. It
> is purely a convention
Actually, perhaps you misunderstand (must be the database lingo,
"denormalization" and all that :).  This is exactly what he's talking
about in his post. I believe he wishes to say that if there are to be
categories for images only, they should be *enforced* as categories
for images only. Otherwise, you're eventually get people who "insert
articles into image categories and vice-versa..."

His solution is an image *section* in existing categories, rather than
additional categories for images.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Waiting for 1.0

body:
On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 15:13:18 +0100, Neil Harris
<usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> I think the key thing is to keep as much raw data as possible, so we can
> work out the best selection criteria once we have the data in hand.
> Number of votes, and spread of vote values will be quite informative:
> again, another reason for having a multi-valued selection.

If you get down to that level, you could adjust for individual user's
voting prefrences. Normalize them somehow. ;)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories for images?

body:
Well perhaps I did misunderstand. I work with databases for a living,
but I didn't pick up on that as corruption :) I think both solutions
could work. However, I'm not convinced that we would need to enforce
things like that. I think users are intelligent enough to make the
distinction, providing the convention is made clear enough. I think
both solutions could work. I tend to favor separate categories
because that would be my personal expectation.

Fennec Foxen said:
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 18:07:52 -0400 (EDT), Matthew Trump
> <wikipedia at decumanus.com> wrote:
>> You misunderstood. [[Category:Image:XXXX]] not a separate database
>> namespace but can be done completely within the existing coding. It
>> is purely a convention
> Actually, perhaps you misunderstand (must be the database lingo,
> "denormalization" and all that :).  This is exactly what he's talking
> about in his post. I believe he wishes to say that if there are to be
> categories for images only, they should be *enforced* as categories
> for images only. Otherwise, you're eventually get people who "insert
> articles into image categories and vice-versa..."
>
> His solution is an image *section* in existing categories, rather
> than
> additional categories for images.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing upload limit

body:
On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 10:41:42AM -0400, Richards,Michael wrote:
> I have searched through Wikipedia and Meta for the last hour or so and can't find it:
> - how do you change the upload limit of 2 MB?
>
> I assume it is in LocalSettings.php or somewhere, but I couldn't find it there either.
>
> -- Michael Richards
>
> PS This is for Gartnerpedia, our in-house Mediawiki installation

Look into your PHP settings, there's a hard limit for POST file upload:
upload_max_filesize = 2M

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories for images?

body:
On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 10:39:01 -0400, Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... if there are to be categories for images only, they should be
< *enforced* as categories for images only. Otherwise, you'll
> eventually get people who "insert articles into image categories
> and vice-versa..."

Yes, thanks Fennec.  That's exactly what I meant.  Dec, I think
everything you want can be accomplished via changing the way
categories are displayed; perhaps even listing images of maps
as "Category:Image:Maps" as the section-header for images on
the "Category:Maps" page (and redirecting the category-image-maps
page to the cat-maps page) -- but internally separating Map-cat
entries into Image and non-Image based on their namespace,
not on the user-defined cat.

<sj>


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
While contributing content to the text articles would be tough on a
cell phone keypad, there are ways to make cell users useful
contributors - photos.

Dpreview just had an item about a 3 megapixel camera/phone, and many
new phones now have 1 megapixel cameras. It would be nice to make it
easy for folks to submit photos via mobile means for articles. This
might be part of a larger effort to make the whole photo submission
process more friendly.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0407/04071202samsungsph2300.asp

- User:Fuzheado

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:53:16 -0400, Alex Hottenstein
<ahottenstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> I had not seen the http://www.kwickee.com site, but it does prove that
> there is movement toward doing more and more things on cell phones. I
> do not know that it is actually what I am hoping that we can achieve
> however.
>
> Wikipedia is perfect for this type of endeavor simply because all the
> information on it is free, and saved in a centralized, basic standard
> (I am assuming) all of which should be able to easily be pulled into
> whatever cell phone form we would need to use.
>
> I am not looking for some complex site with user interaction, only one
> which allows the user to punch in a keyword, get search return
> results, and then see the article (obviously broken down screen by
> screen). This would not need to be complex, and there are few to no
> security issues that I can think of if we make this read-only.
>
> Wikipedia can gain greatly from the concept that this would push.
> Publicly available information accessibly anywhere that a Internet
> enabled cell phone is accessible. Would it be 100% useful in the first
> phase? probably not. But, it could (and I believe) should be done.
>
> Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of
> determining actual product movements?
>
>
>
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:20:45 +0000, David Gerard
> <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
> >
> > > Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the
> > > Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be
> > > given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the
> > > site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.
> > > I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering,
> > > but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very
> > > interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming
> > > involved in the project.
> >
> > You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
> >
> > This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you
> > seen this?
> >
> >     http://www.kwickee.com
> >
> > Have a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing
> > documents.
> >
> > It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for
> > mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis.
> > "The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are
> > predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest
> > to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk
> > of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds.
> > It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee
> > website - taking full advantage of the special features and
> > subscription services."
> >
> > (i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com
> > marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)
> >
> > I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market
> > uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite
> > able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS,
> > let's say.
> >
> > They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing
> > (from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):
> >
> > "How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised?
> > A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of
> > launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising
> > in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet.
> > The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three
> > Advertising & Data Marketing Agency."
> > "How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?"
> > "There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets
> > capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an
> > Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."
> >
> > Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business
> > that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely
> > to work.
> >
> > We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia
> > look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic
> > function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an
> > intro) and just send that on request?
> >
> > (This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)
> >
> > - David.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
University of Hong Kong
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Forming an action plan for 1.0

body:
I just wanted to point out that when users were asked what they think is
the most important thing programmers should be working on, only 4 out of
36, or 11% said formal review and distribution. The results in detail were:

Quality: 17
Screening for vandalism, with better watchlists, more configurable
contributions pages and RC, etc. Features for organised patrol, marking
edits as checked.

Performance: 12
Full text search, regularly updated special pages, response time,
avoiding error messages in peak times, scalability. Working on
performance keeps hardware costs down.

Syntax and rendering: 2
Templates with parameters that actually work, new kinds of data e.g.
chemical structural formulas, chess, music, etc., browser compatibility,
WAP access.

Distribution: 4
Formal review, CDs, DVDs, print, static HTML dumps.

User rights: 1
Partial bans on users, e.g. from namespaces or given sets of articles,
or number of edits per day. Alternative methods for sysopping and
desysopping. Dangerous actions by quorum or consensus. Partial page
protection, using file replacement or similar. Automated sock puppet
checks. Trust metrics.

Note that the results were likely skewed towards quality, since the poll
was advertised in a village pump discussion on quality features.

-- Tim Starling