from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.4beta5 released (SECURITY)

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

MediaWiki 1.4beta5 is a security and bug fix release for the 1.4 beta
series. Previous MediaWiki 1.4 beta releases include an input
validation error which could lead to execution of arbitrary PHP code on
the server.

All users of 1.4 beta releases are strongly urged to upgrade to
1.4beta5 immediately. The 1.3.x stable release series is not affected
by this problem.

Beta 5 additionally fixes a number of non-security-related bugs, and
requires one minor database change. If upgrading from a previous beta,
see the file UPGRADE in the release archive for instructions.

Bugs fixed in beta 5:

* (bug 1124) Fix ImageGallery XHTML compliance
* (bug 1186) news: in the middle of a word
* (bug 1283) Use underlining and borders to highlight
additions/deletions
   in diff-view
* Use user's local timezone in Special:Log display
* Show filename for images in gallery by default (restore beta 3
behaviour)
* (bug 1201) Double-escaping in brokenlinks, imagelinks, categorylinks,
searchindex
* When using squid reverse proxy, cache the redirect to the Main_Page
* (bug 1302) Fix Norwegian language file
* (bug 1205) Fix broken article saving in PHP 5.1
* (bug 1206) Implement CURRENTWEEK and CURRENTDOW magic keyword (will
give
   number of the week and number of the day).
* (bug 1204) Blocks do not expire automatically
* (bug 1184) expiry time of indefinite blocks shown as the current time
* (bug 1317) Fix external links in image captions
* (bug 1084) Fix logo not rendering centrally in IE
* (bug 288) Fix tabs wrapping in IE6
* (bug 119) Fix full-width tabs with RTL text in IE
* (bug 1323) Fix logo rendering off-screen in IE with RTL language
* Show "block" link in Special:Recentchanges for logged in users, too,
if
   wgUserSysopBans is true.
* (bug 1326) Use content language for '1movedto2' in edit history
* zh: Fix warning when HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE is not set
* zh: Fix double conversion for zh-sg and zh-hk
* (bug 1132) Fix concatenation of link lists in refreshLinks
* (bug 1101) Fix memory leak in refreshLinks
* (bug 1339) Fix order of @imports in Cologne Blue CSS
* Don't try to create links without namespaces ([[Category:]] link bug)
* Memcached data compression fixes
* Several valid XHTML fixes
* (bug 624) Fix IE freezing rendering whilst waiting for CSS with
MonoBook
* (bug 211) Fix tabbed preferences with XHTML MIME type
* Fix for script execution vulnerability.

Due to a temporary problem with SourceForge's file release system, this
release is currently hosted on Wikimedia's servers instead of the usual
location.

Release notes:
http://zwinger.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/RELEASE-NOTES

Download:
http://zwinger.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/mediawiki-1.4beta5.tar.gz
MD5 checksum: 11342e291b5af4e8d4668ad5c3a6d171
SHA1 checksum: 23178fdba265083186c6475a0c3d0ea4d2e06ae0

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Signpost's second issue published

body:
Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't keep
repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling out and
people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to let
everyone know that the second issue of our new community newspaper, the
Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

--Michael Snow


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't keep
> repeating it in future weeks.

Perhaps a wikien-announce mailing list is in order for things like this
as well as maintenance alerts and other significant announcements?


from_name: Cool Hand Luke

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
This seems odd to me. When I block myself, I'm not able to edit
without being unblocked. Although Everyking was unblocked by Ambi at
10:39, 16 Jan, he should not have been able to edit after RickK
reapplied the block at 01:14, 17 Jan, yet he still edits.

I'm not sure how this is possible. Is this another block bug in the
new software, or am I missing something?

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:10:20 -0800 (PST), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I blocked Everyking for 24 hours because he had made 4 reverts to the [[Pieces of Me]] article in 24 hours.  But since he is an admin, he continues to edit.  Is there something we can do about this?
>
> RickK
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] images on commons and gfdl

body:
Hello,

Not sure exactly where to write about this.

I may have not understood something very well, if not, please explain to me.

When someone upload an image to wikicommons and place it under gfdl license, I would tend to say that re-using this image would have to follow gfdl license. We know that we do not respect well gfdl license for text, since it is very difficult to follow all authors, but for an image, it should not be a lot of problem to respect it, since there is only one author, the one who took the picture.

So, normally, to follow gfdl license, when we use the image we should 1) mention the gfdl and 2) mention the author, no ? So that anyone reusing the image would be able to follow the gfdl in turn.

What bugs me is that if I upload a picture to say the french wikipedia, it is written in the image comment that I took the picture, so I am granted the authorship of my work, and anyone using the image could either mention wikipedia or myself. But at least, he has the information available. Besides, the reader can see a description of the image.

When I upload an image on wikicommons, I can write this information over there, but this information is no more directly available to the guy using the information.

The author name is not mentionned, nor is the description. On some wikipedias, there is a sort of mention toward the description page, but to be fair, the link is not frankly visible.

Look on the english wikipedia :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ThoraThora1.JPG

Practically, if a reader comes around and want to use the picture, I am ready to say that in at least 50% of the case, either he will not see the link, or he will not care and just take the picture.

I would be glad that template makes it more obvious where the author and the description of the image is.

In other less completed wikipedias, there is no template at all. So, in effect, my authorship is gone and I cannot even complain to the guy using the picture, since he just has no idea who the author is.

http://ht.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hoggar5.jpg

I took that picture and in this case, display of the picture is to my opinion a sort of "violation" of the contract between wikipedias and its authors. Would it be possible that a standard template is set, and mandatory for any picture resources used from commons, so that even if this template is not locally translated, a basic template redirects to the proper LICENSE TERMS and information ?

Finally, I think it a bit embarassing that when I upload to commons, I have no more choice of languages. Perhaps I did not find it yet :-) Is there a way to make a comment both in french and english ? Would not it be nice that the software recognise this, and displays the french comment on the french speaking projects, while it would display the english comment by default on all other projects ?

I think this is important. I was beginning to upload many pictures on wikicommons to share them. Still, I am a bit bugged to discover that doing so sorta ripped informations which should be mandatory, imho, below the image itself.

What is people opinion on this ?

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 The all-new My Yahoo! ? What will yours do?


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
> I hope Rick can be more specific with his evidence, but I've provided
> links to discussion on Everyking's block evasion in my request. I'm
> going to try dig up some diffs now.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])

Well, again, I'm not sure this is evasion. He does not seem to have
unlblocked himself (Ambi unblocked him yesterday). It doesn't seem
that he's abused his admin powers to further his Ashlee Simpson
agenda. Although it's interesting he can still revert, he hasn't
reverted Simpson articles since Rick's 24 hour block..


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:

>Why, what is wrong with having "people dedendent on the Foundation for
>a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
>a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
>it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
>do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.
>
>
>
>
>>On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
>>>six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
>>>avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
>>>source of income.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
If anybody is interested, another FOSS project that has been paying cash
for doing development in this fashion is the Freenet Project
(http://freenet.sourceforge.net/).  There are some projects that have
"gone commercial" that perhaps could be compared as well, but the point
here is that Wikipedia is growing to the point that having some sort of
professional staff might just be necessary.

I think you can set some guidelines down on who would be elegible for
recieving these funds, including perhaps a requirement that the
developer must have been doing volunteer development work for a given
number of months, nominated by the other developers, or "hired" by the
community in some fashion that has widespread approval that the
individual getting the contract really is worthy of getting paid.
 Basically, this is "one of us" that is very good at what they are
doing, and already working with the volunteer developers.  Sometimes
this relationship may change with money being involved, but if they
already have good relationship with the other developers before they are
hired, I don't think this would change.  It would be a major mistake to
hire from outside of the group of volunteer developers if you intend to
keep the volunteer community together.

As an example, IMHO, of how volunteers have been pushed into a
second-class category under professional staff, I would give the Open
Directory Project (dmoz.org) as an example.  This is to show what can go
wrong if professional staff doesn't listen to the community.  I have
been a volunteer editor there for almost five years now, and for awhile
there was a huge influx of volunteer "editors" who helped to sift
through web links and edit the descriptions, and create category
classifications to organize the internet.  On the whole a rather
ambitious project, and something that I would still like to stay
associated with.

I became a regional editor or a rather large category, and frankly it
was enough to keep me busy just keeping up with all of the work that I
was going through.  The problem I was encountering was that the
professional staff was not really "one of us", and often ran roughshod
over the volunteers, including me.  I would see changes even to the
portion of the ODP that I was responsible for, with no explaination or
warning that changes were even going to be made.  When I would disagree
with the changes, I would be publically ridiculed as not understanding
what was going on, even if other volunteer editors would agree with my
viewpoint.  Finally, I was going through huge turnover of volunteers who
were assisting me in sub-categories "under" the one I was working on.  I
just stopped working on the project for a few months, in part over my
disgust over what has been going on, and in part due to the fact that
I've had life come up and bite me so I can't put the hours into
volunteer work like I've done in the past.  In short, I've been locked
out as a volunteer editor now.  Yes, I could reapply, but at this point
it is a barrier where I am not sure if I will ever be associated with
the Open Directory Project again.

Wikipedia is in a similar position where it is growing in huge numbers,
seemingly without end.  It also has, for the primary purpose of what it
does, a relatively low barrier to entry for somebody new to come in and
join in the work.  From my experience with the Open Directory Project, I
can also point to a time when this growth will end in terms of gaining
new people to write articles.  I've also been involved in other
volunteer organizations (political, social, and youth groups) and the
need to keep the volunteers happy should never be underestimated.  The
fickle thing about volunteers is that if they don't like what is going
on, they will leave quietly... often without the leaders or those "at
the top" even being able to percieve that there is a problem.  If you
hire somebody in any role (developer, PR work, accounting, etc.), you
have to make sure that individual is committed to the goals of the
organization, and if possible would be a volunteer if they would not get
paid for their work.  This is true for Wikipedia as it is for the Red Cross.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How Wikipedia behaves under heavy load

body:
My personal observations/superstitions, which are NOT based on any
technical insight. My mental model is that different Wikipedia
operations require different capabilities, and perhaps in some cases
different servers, and therefore degrade differently on heavy load.

a) For some reason, reloading a page after saving an edit is one of the
LEAST reliable operations and quickly degrades under load. The failure
can take three different forms. The most common is that the browser
times out. Lately, a very common one has been an error message saying
the database is not available. A third form is that the supposedly
edited page was reloaded, but shows the original text rather than the
edited text.

In ALL THREE cases, there's much better than a 50% chance that the edit
actually took place.

In ALL THREE cases, the most sensible thing to do is save the edited
Wiki-marked-up text of the whole article somewhere locally, wait about
five minutes, then try to view the page and see whether the edit took.

b) A very common symptom under heavy load is that actions "take," but
do not become "visible" for many minutes. For example, when preferences
change spontaneously (an infuriating thing which hits me about every
two weeks) and I change them back, my changes USUALLY take effect--but
do not become visible for many minutes afterwards. Until I discovered
this, I was utterly baffled because I would keep trying various things
to "fix" the problem, every possible combination of clearing caches I
could think of and when the changes took several minutes later I had
tried several other things and naturally assumed that it was the last
thing I'd tried, rather than the first.

c) For reasons that baffle me, the "Go" button creates some kind of
search string and does some kind of search. Under heavy load, all
search operations degrade. This means that manually typing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar

is much more reliable in retrieving the Foobar article than typing
"Foobar" into the search box and pressing "Go."

When things are slow, I usually copy the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
text out of the address box for handy pasting in later.

d) I am trying to learn to welcome the slowdowns as nature's way of
reminding me that I'm spending way too much time on Wikipedia. Of
course, the most infuriating situations are the ones when I MEAN to say
"this article should definitely not be," press SAVE, see that I
accidentally typed "this article should definitely be", press EDIT, fix
it, and get a database error. In these situations, I console myself
with the thought that nobody really cares that much about my opinion.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed

body:
Slim writes:
> One of the problems with 3RR-policy enforcement
> is that admins are supposed to treat equally the
> editor who is inserting an unreferenced,
> unsubstantiated claim, and the editor who is
> trying to get rid of that claim. One is violating
> [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] policy, while the other
> is trying to enforce it. Yet both are blocked.
> If the editor trying to enforce policy isn't allowed
> to violate 3RR, then s/he must go through dispute
> resolution; put up an RfC (which rarely brings
> useful results); or apply for mediation (which
> can take months to arrange). Meanwhile the
> nonsense sits there for 24 hours; then maybe
> there's another brief flurry of reverts, then it
> sits there for another 24 hours; and this can go
> on for weeks, until the less determined editor backs off.
> If the process takes priority over the product,
> that's fine.

Right - and the process should never take precedence over
the product. We must remember that the goal of Wikipedia is
to produce a trusted, accurate, free encyclopedia.  The
goal has never been to make a list of rules to blindly
follow for their own sake.

That's why we have group discussions, and don't enforce
policy with 'bots.

> But if it's the production of an accurate encylopedia
> that is the priority, then this is not fine.
> Surely, for this reason, when looking at 3RR
> violations, admins should be allowed to take into
> account who was violating Wikipedia's editorial
> content policies and who was trying to preserve them.

Thank you for putting into words what I was hoping someone
would say. I agree wholeheartedly.  Some people make 3+
reverts (effectively a fourth or more reverts) in order to
damage Wikipedia, or to blatantly violate our NPOV policy.
Long-time trusted Wikipedia contributors on occasions have
to fix this damage, which sometimes requires reverts.
Blindly following the 3RR policy without taking context
into account is not sensible; it gives an edge to vandals
and POV-pushers.

If our goal is to create an accurate encyclopedia, then we
are obligated to use some common sense in deciding when to
punish someone for violating the 3RR rule...or when to say
"Good job, you stopped this damage, and now the calvary can
come in and prevent further damage from the person you are
dealing with."

Smoddy writes:
> If an editor has reverted a page three times in a 24 hour
> period, with the exception of **blatant** vandalism, they

> should be blocked. Period. This ensures even-handedness.

No, this does not ensure even-handedness. It only ensures
that trouble-makers are given a way to effectively cause
enough trouble to ban or block geunine and trusted
contributors.  Blindly following rules for the sake of
following rules is an anathema to every legal and
rule-based system in the world, whether political,
religious or technical. We should not be
Wikipedia-fundamentalists.  Surely Slim is correct in
saying that we need to allow common-sense, at least on
occasion.

Sincerely,

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:15:11 +0100, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
> have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).
>
> Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
> don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.

Sure, but the situation with the commons _is_ different.  You have to
follow _two_ links to find the GFDL: one to the image page on the
Commons, and another to find the link.  The real problem, however, is
that the license information is not even _mentioned_ on the
language-specific page.  For example, see:

http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg

As well, the image page on the Commons is likely to be in English,
which makes it difficult for non-English speakers.  The obvious
solution is to translate the license information on each of the
language-specific pages from whatever is used on the Commons to the
given language.  But an automated solution would be preferable:
perhaps a template which depends somehow on variables set by
user-specific language settings.

Steve


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
NPOV only applies in article space, not in Talk: Wikipedia: etc.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Jeff Cook

body:
I think it's okay to run on Wikipedia. Not EVERYTHING has to be NPOV.
A newspaper is acceptable, I think. But nothing's stopping you from
adding to or editing it.

:)
-cookiecaper.

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:40:06 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> >Michael Snow said:
> >
> >
> >>Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't
> >>keep  repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling
> >>out and  people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to
> >>let  everyone know that the second issue of our new community
> >>newspaper, the  Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
> >>
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >Why is this running in Wikipedia?  The first issue was perfectly
> >acceptable as newspaper reporting, but very far from NPOV.  The article
> >about the QuakeWatch affair was full of speculation and innuendo, for
> >instance.
> >I'd appreciate a newspaper, but running this one in Wikispace doesn't seem
> >right to me.
> >
> >
> Considering the first issue was done up entirely by one person...as this
> becomes a community endeavour, we can expect individual POVs to dominate
> less.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Foundation-l] Continued concern with performance

body:
We are now well into the fourth day since I originally expressed my
concern about the performance issues on en.wikipedia. While the
situation may have improved a bit, and some of the ugliest error
messages seem to be reduced, the situation is still far from being
resolved.

Attempting to do any useful work on Wikipedia has become futile.
Article view time has become sporadic, and frequently very bad to
intolerable. For any site other than Wikipedia, I would never know that
the site was working at all, since I would fairly quickly write it off
as "down".

I am committed to Wikipedia and its objectives. I will tolerate these
performance delays. But I believe that there must be many who will not
tolerate them, and will write-off Wikipedia. Is this what we want?

While it appears that the developers are very busy attempting to solve
the technical issues, there seems to be little actual progress. How
long will we allow this situation to continue without attempting
solutions of a different sort? A good operational definition of
insanity is "continuing the same actions expecting different results."

If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve the
issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to focus on
this problem and resolve it.

We owe our developers great thanks, appreciation, and respect. But a
big part of that lies in recognizing when we are expecting them to
accomplish what is impossible. Given their restrictions on time,
resources, and skill, are we asking them to do the impossible?

With respect, concern, and frustration

Rich Holton
(en.Wikipedia:User:Rholton)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Database locked

body:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050117 10:56]:

> Why is the database locked, and for how long?  Where was it announced that this would take place?  Why doesn't the message tell us when it will be back in usable form?

00:30 UTC at least for database defragmenting. The message shows in
Monobook, but I don't see it in Classic, which leads me to guess you too
are using the One True Skin.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning (robert_horning at netzero.net) [050117 22:56]:
>
>
>>  I've also been involved in other
>>volunteer organizations (political, social, and youth groups) and the
>>need to keep the volunteers happy should never be underestimated.  The
>>fickle thing about volunteers is that if they don't like what is going
>>on, they will leave quietly... often without the leaders or those "at
>>the top" even being able to percieve that there is a problem.  If you
>>hire somebody in any role (developer, PR work, accounting, etc.), you
>>have to make sure that individual is committed to the goals of the
>>organization, and if possible would be a volunteer if they would not get
>>paid for their work.  This is true for Wikipedia as it is for the Red Cross.
>>
>>
>I have considerable experience in managing volunteers (both as a volunteer
>and being paid to manage them). One question I'd like a better answer to is
>how to keep volunteers from each others' throats better ... en: is large
>enough to be qualitatively different from any other wiki, anywhere, ever.
>
:-D Let's face it, we're in uncharted territory.  The number of
volunteers is huge, and each one has considerably more power than a
volunteer in most much smaller organizations.  Many have strongly
opposing (usually sincere) views of what is right, and are totally
convinced that any other position is idiotic. Even our management
philosophies are radically different, running the entire range from
laissez-faire permissiveness to literal totalitarian strictness.

With apologies for this note of pessimism -- Good luck!

Ec


list: wikitech-l

subject:
[Wikitech-l] HowTo: different authentification scheme for
	MediaWiki users

body:
On Jan 17, 2005, at 4:46 AM, Joannes Vermorel wrote:
> - the authentification scheme of MediaWiki will have to be modified.
> The
> idea is somehow to delegate the authentification task to Pserv (also
> handling the case where a MediaWiki account needs to be created).

1.4 has an experimental authentication plugin system for precisely this
kind of thing. Create a child class of AuthPlugin (see AuthPlugin.php)
and override some methods. Set $wgAuth to an instance of this class.

It's not well documented as it's new and experimental and no one's
really _used_ it at this point. It may need further work to really do
what's necessary.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robin Shannon wrote:

>Why, what is wrong with having "people dependent on the Foundation for
>a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
>a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
>it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
>do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.
>
>On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:49:26 -0800, Scott Nelson <scott at penguinstorm.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>>After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
>>>six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
>>>avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
>>>source of income.
>>>
If you are looking at this from a strictly logical mechanistic
perspective, you are of course right.  Certain efficiences are a normal
by-product of system experience.  This all presupposes that the employee
has a very free hand in the decisions that he must make, and that his
orders come from a single responsible source.

Wikipedia is as much a human environment as it is a technical one.  Not
every member of a human environment is tolerant of being told by some
Vulcan that he is not being logical.  Persons making decisions that will
have long-term effects on the community need to retain the confidence of
the community on a continuing basis.  Since the majority of us are
clueless about the functioning of the underlying software we are content
to let the developers "do their thing", and to content ourselves with an
accasional whine about a bug in the system or a fantastic
"Wouldn't-it-be-great-if..." comment.  Beyond that we will keep quiet
about the software unless our activities are seriously cramped.

At the same time the employee will be under pressure to produce, even if
that pressure only comes from within himself.  Contracts to perform
specific pre-determined tasks that have already been approved by the
community will allow the person to focus on the task at hand, without
the need to schmooz for the purpose of continuing his employment beyond
the contract period.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why, what is wrong with having "people dedendent on the Foundation for
> a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
> a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
> it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
> do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.

In practice such a person would almost certainly get his/her contract renewed
each time. The contract term for each renewal would also likely get longer and
longer as we obtain more and more secure funding sources. In time we may even
be in a position to have real employees with benefits.

-- mav

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


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: ModRewrite problem; seeking advice

body:
>First, update your code to the current 1.3.9 if you haven't already.

OK, I did, but things still aren't working.

My .htaccess file reads as follows:

# Don't rewrite requests for files in subdirectories,
# PHP files, HTTP error documents, favicon.ico, or robots.txt
# RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(stylesheets|images|skins)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(redirect|texvc|index).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

# Rewrite http://www.sourcewatch.org/article properly
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L,QSA]

I get an infinite redirect loop with the following in LocalSettings.php:

$wgSitename         = "SourceWatch";
$wgServer           = "http://www.sourcewatch.org";
$wgScriptPath       = "";
$wgScript           = "$wgScriptPath/index.php";
$wgRedirectScript   = '$wgScriptPath/redirect.php';
$wgStyleSheetPath   = '$wgScriptPath/stylesheets';
$wgUploadPath       = '$wgScriptPath/images';
$wgLogo             = "{$wgUploadPath}/wiki.png";
$wgMathPath         = "{$wgUploadPath}/math";
$wgArticlePath      = "$wgScriptPath/$1";
$wgStylePath        = "$wgScriptPath/stylesheets";
My site works (but with ugly URLs) if I replace wgArticlePath with
the following:

$wgArticlePath      = "$wgScript?title=$1";

I get the same results when I change the RewriteRule in .htaccess to:

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]

Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? I've been chasing this problem
in circles now for several hours.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Rick

body:
Add it to your Watchlist.  :)

RickK

Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
Please continue to announce it, else ill forget to read it.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 02:19:45 -0800, Michael Snow
wrote:
> Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't keep
> repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling out and
> people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to let
> everyone know that the second issue of our new community newspaper, the
> Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
>
> --Michael Snow

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Robin Shannon wrote:
>
>> Why, what is wrong with having "people dedendent on the Foundation for
>> a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
>> a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
>> it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
>> do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.
>>
>>> On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>
>>>> After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
>>>> six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
>>>> avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
>>>> source of income.
>>>
>> If anybody is interested, another FOSS project that has been paying
>> cash for doing development in this fashion is the Freenet Project
>> (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/).  There are some projects that have
>> "gone commercial" that perhaps could be compared as well, but the
>> point here is that Wikipedia is growing to the point that having some
>> sort of professional staff might just be necessary.
>
> I think you can set some guidelines down on who would be elegible for
> recieving these funds, including perhaps a requirement that the
> developer must have been doing volunteer development work for a given
> number of months, nominated by the other developers, or "hired" by the
> community in some fashion that has widespread approval that the
> individual getting the contract really is worthy of getting paid.
> Basically, this is "one of us" that is very good at what they are
> doing, and already working with the volunteer developers.  Sometimes
> this relationship may change with money being involved, but if they
> already have good relationship with the other developers before they
> are hired, I don't think this would change.  It would be a major
> mistake to hire from outside of the group of volunteer developers if
> you intend to keep the volunteer community together.
>
> As an example, IMHO, of how volunteers have been pushed into a
> second-class category under professional staff, I would give the Open
> Directory Project (dmoz.org) as an example.  This is to show what can
> go wrong if professional staff doesn't listen to the community.  I
> have been a volunteer editor there for almost five years now, and for
> awhile there was a huge influx of volunteer "editors" who helped to
> sift through web links and edit the descriptions, and create category
> classifications to organize the internet.  On the whole a rather
> ambitious project, and something that I would still like to stay
> associated with.
> I became a regional editor or a rather large category, and frankly it
> was enough to keep me busy just keeping up with all of the work that I
> was going through.  The problem I was encountering was that the
> professional staff was not really "one of us", and often ran roughshod
> over the volunteers, including me.  I would see changes even to the
> portion of the ODP that I was responsible for, with no explaination or
> warning that changes were even going to be made.  When I would
> disagree with the changes, I would be publically ridiculed as not
> understanding what was going on, even if other volunteer editors would
> agree with my viewpoint.  Finally, I was going through huge turnover
> of volunteers who were assisting me in sub-categories "under" the one
> I was working on.  I just stopped working on the project for a few
> months, in part over my disgust over what has been going on, and in
> part due to the fact that I've had life come up and bite me so I can't
> put the hours into volunteer work like I've done in the past.  In
> short, I've been locked out as a volunteer editor now.  Yes, I could
> reapply, but at this point it is a barrier where I am not sure if I
> will ever be associated with the Open Directory Project again.
>
> Wikipedia is in a similar position where it is growing in huge
> numbers, seemingly without end.  It also has, for the primary purpose
> of what it does, a relatively low barrier to entry for somebody new to
> come in and join in the work.  From my experience with the Open
> Directory Project, I can also point to a time when this growth will
> end in terms of gaining new people to write articles.  I've also been
> involved in other volunteer organizations (political, social, and
> youth groups) and the need to keep the volunteers happy should never
> be underestimated.  The fickle thing about volunteers is that if they
> don't like what is going on, they will leave quietly... often without
> the leaders or those "at the top" even being able to percieve that
> there is a problem.  If you hire somebody in any role (developer, PR
> work, accounting, etc.), you have to make sure that individual is
> committed to the goals of the organization, and if possible would be a
> volunteer if they would not get paid for their work.  This is true for
> Wikipedia as it is for the Red Cross.

Your observations are important, and reflect the reality of
organizations that depend significantly on the work of volunteers.
There is a tremendous difference between all volunteer environments, and
those with regular employees.  At the same time their is evident need
that some tasks MUST be done by someone who must go beyond what we can
expect of the most competent of our volunteers.  When I go on long road
trips I make a point of detouring to see small town museums.  I've seen
two types with significant differences.  One is owned and significantly
funded by senior governments which then hires people to do the day to
day management.  Everything on display is well-organized and documented;
the facility is well-maintained and free of safety hazards; it is clean
to the point of sterility. Contrast that with a privately owned museum
with minimal support from public funds.  The exhibits are chaos and
clutter with minimal documentation, buildings are often run-down
fire-hazards; one wonders what else is breeding in the exhibits besides
interest.  A commercial parallel to this situation might be between the
highly structured 7-11 operation and the mom-and-pop convenience store.

Full time employees profoundly alter the nature of an organization.  It
begins to put the needs of the employees above the needs of its
mission.  It becomes caught up in a succession of statutory obligations
regarding the treatment of employees.  The employees are there "all the
time", and consequently become more familiar with the operation than the
volunteers, a point which can be used as evidence to support their way
of doing things.  Funding decisions become dominated by making sure that
there is enough in the pot to pay salaries.

If the wiki way implies promoting the right to edit as fundamental to
academic freedom of the entire population, we also need to examine
closely those other social structures that can have a bearing on that
right.

Ec


from_name: Joannes Vermorel

subject:
[Wikitech-l] HowTo: different authentification scheme for MediaWiki
	users

body:
Hi everyone,

I am having currently to manage a big project that will relies on MediaWiki.
Basically I have a linux server (let's call it Pserv for Primary) with many
people having an account on it and those people will be the 'wiki' users.
For security reasons (PHP), mediawiki lies on a different machine (let's
call it Wserv for Wiki).

The project requires the wiki modifications to be restricted to the people
having an unix account on Pserv, and all modification should be
systematically authentified with the Pserv login. If an account is erased on
Pserv, then the associated user should not be able to modify the wiki on
Wserv any more.

Some thoughts:
- there are a lot of people (several thousands) to handle. Dupplicating on
Wserv the user management already done for Pserv is not a reasonnable
option.
- the authentification scheme of MediaWiki will have to be modified. The
idea is somehow to delegate the authentification task to Pserv (also
handling the case where a MediaWiki account needs to be created).

Question: how do I achieve that? Has anyone any experience with such a
situation?

Joann?s


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
> Ah, so does this mean that all of the activities by Everyking that have
> appeared in the edit lists since his blocking actually constituted
> legitimate rollbacks?
>

It appears that way. The rollbacks are furthermore not related to
Ashlee Simpson, so I don't see this as an abuse. Most roll back
straightforward vandalism which I think is admirable under the
circumstances.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
Firstly, just to add my enthusiasm for this
development - I think it's great.

Also (and pardon me if I've missed it) but will there
be a catalogue of sorts to see "back issues" in order
to retrieve articles in the future? I notice that the
old page has been replaced with the new one - will one
have to access back issues through the history page?
[[User:gbog]] has already made a similar point on the
talk page.

But thanks again,

Cormac [[User:Cormaggio]]

___________________________________________________________
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
> However good your intentions, if you don't strictly abide by the rule,
> you must take the punishment.  If you break the 3RR, you break policy.
>  If we apply the rules one way for some people and another for others,
> chaos will ensue. If we apply policy objectively, then no-one can make
> accusations of favoritism.
>
> Smoddy

Absolutely. If your edits really are the editorially correct thing for
the article, it should be no problem to get someone else to revert
with you. Thus only the allegedly irrational party of an edit war will
break the 3RR, but not the supposedly NPOV editors do. Applying the
3RR to individuals and not "versions" is a kind of built-in safety in
my opinion.

Already people make excuses for breaking the rule, and I don't think
we should legitimize them.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Michael Snow said:
> Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't
> keep  repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling
> out and  people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to
> let  everyone know that the second issue of our new community
> newspaper, the  Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
>
Why is this running in Wikipedia?  The first issue was perfectly
acceptable as newspaper reporting, but very far from NPOV.  The article
about the QuakeWatch affair was full of speculation and innuendo, for
instance.
I'd appreciate a newspaper, but running this one in Wikispace doesn't seem
right to me.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:17:47 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> > Slim writes:
> >> One of the problems with 3RR-policy enforcement
> >> is that admins are supposed to treat equally the
> >> editor who is inserting an unreferenced,
> >> unsubstantiated claim, and the editor who is
> >> trying to get rid of that claim.
> >> One is violating
> >> [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] policy, while the other
> >> is trying to enforce it.
>
> Bad example.  [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] is a content guideline, not a
> policy.

Tony, [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] may only be a guideline, but it's
inextricably linked to [[Wikipedia:No original research]], which is
policy, because the only way you can show that an edit isn't original
research is to produce a reputable source.

Some of the editors writing in this thread seem to believe there are
teams of editors willing to delete original research wherever they
find it, so that no editor is ever left isolated dealing with a POV
pusher who's inserting nonsense. That just isn't true, and while I
agree with that 24 hours is not a long time for one error to exist on
Wikipedia, we're not talking about one error, or one 24-hour period,
but multiples of both.

Maybe it would be a good idea to form a team of "no original research"
checkers who have the right to violate 3RR, and on whom any editor
could call for help in the case of a revert war triggered by an editor
adding unreferenced claims. The job of this team would be to ask for a
reference and then to determine whether the reference offered was a
reputable one. If not, the team would have the right to keep reverting
until the POV pusher got fed up.

Slim


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:05:51 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> Apparently you can still do rollbacks when unblocked.

Blocking only blocks you from editing, not from using any admin
powers. You can still rollback, delete, undelete and block users when
you are blocked.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
Angela said:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:05:51 +1100, David Gerard
> <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>> Apparently you can still do rollbacks when unblocked.
>
> Blocking only blocks you from editing, not from using any admin
> powers. You can still rollback, delete, undelete and block users when
> you are blocked.
>
Ah, so does this mean that all of the activities by Everyking that have
appeared in the edit lists since his blocking actually constituted
legitimate rollbacks?


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>Cool Hand Luke wrote:
>
>Absolutely. If your edits really are the editorially correct thing for
>the article, it should be no problem to get someone else to revert
>with you. Thus only the allegedly irrational party of an edit war will
>break the 3RR, but not the supposedly NPOV editors do.

Unless, of course, it's one of the many thousands of Wikipedia articles that
are not watched by any other active editors, in which case it's just you
against the other editor.  I supposed you could take the issue to
Wikipedia:RFC, where the conflict could be ignored just as most other
article content conflicts are ignored.

Jay.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: performance

body:
Nick Triantos wrote:
> Just an FYI.. I only have ~130 users on my intranet MW install.  I made
> an article that I thought would be useful, so I emailed it out to a wide
> audience, and ended up slashdotting my own wiki server.  I didn't get
> that many hits, I don't think, but each one was trying to render that
> same page, and it ended up filling memory and the paging file.  I
> installed Squid shortly after that.
>

Squid is great for the slashdot effect. If all the requests are for a
small set of pages (fitting in RAM), a single low-end server running
squid can fill a 100 Mbps link. As long as your upstream network can
handle that bandwidth, you can keep a very large flash crowd happy.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Anthere schrieb:

>Hello,
>
>Not sure exactly where to write about this.
>
>I may have not understood something very well, if not, please explain to me.
>
>When someone upload an image to wikicommons and place it under gfdl license, I would tend to say that re-using this image would have to follow gfdl license. We know that we do not respect well gfdl license for text, since it is very difficult to follow all authors, but for an image, it should not be a lot of problem to respect it, since there is only one author, the one who took the picture.
>
>So, normally, to follow gfdl license, when we use the image we should 1) mention the gfdl and 2) mention the author, no ? So that anyone reusing the image would be able to follow the gfdl in turn.
>
>What bugs me is that if I upload a picture to say the french wikipedia, it is written in the image comment that I took the picture, so I am granted the authorship of my work, and anyone using the image could either mention wikipedia or myself. But at least, he has the information available. Besides, the reader can see a description of the image.
>
>When I upload an image on wikicommons, I can write this information over there, but this information is no more directly available to the guy using the information.
>
>
Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).

Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.

Magnus


body:
Robert said:
> Slim writes:
>> One of the problems with 3RR-policy enforcement
>> is that admins are supposed to treat equally the
>> editor who is inserting an unreferenced,
>> unsubstantiated claim, and the editor who is
>> trying to get rid of that claim.

Seems reasonable.

>> One is violating
>> [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] policy, while the other
>> is trying to enforce it.

Bad example.  [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] is a content guideline, not a
policy.  Besides, this kind of thing should be worked out on the talk
page, not by engaging in an edit war.  To spell it out: even if someone is
(short of outright vandalism) disobeying policy, the first thing to do is
have a word with him about what he's doing.  Edit warring is wrong even if
you know you're right.
>> Yet both are blocked.

Good.  I believe that is how the 3RR blocks are intended to work.

>> If the editor trying to enforce policy isn't allowed
>> to violate 3RR, then s/he must go through dispute
>> resolution; put up an RfC (which rarely brings
>> useful results); or apply for mediation (which
>> can take months to arrange).

Or alternatively just tell the other editor what the problem is.

>> Meanwhile the nonsense sits there for 24 hours;

Twenty-four whole hours!  Horrors!  There are uncited statements in nearly
every article on Wikipedia, some of which have been in for over a year.
If something is unsourced, search for a source and add it. If something is
nonsense and the original editor doesn't see it that way, someone else
will come along and fix it.  If they don't, just put a note on a friend's
talk page and ask them to have a look at it.  There is no excuse for
revert warring.


from_name: Pedro Fayolle

body:
I don't know if anyone has ever suggested this before, but couldn't
the software be adapted to lay a larger responsability on the client?
I'm not saying this would be a trivial instant solution, but as far as
I can tell it could make a huge difference in the long run.

Just for a start, imagine the possibilities of having a JavaScript
wikicode parser. Preview pages could be created on the fly without the
need for a page reload. Pages could be sent to the client in raw
wikicode state (processing only message inclusions) and parsed
afterwards by the client, they could even be switched to edit mode
without sending a new request. Having such a feature implemented would
for sure reduce the load on the servers.

I don't have much experience with JavaScript and the DOM, but I'll
begin doing some experiments this week on my free time. I have seen
XML parsers written in JS, so a wikicode parser shouldn't be that hard
to make, or it should be at least possible.

I know the common objections to an idea like this: it depends on
JS-enabled browsers and also some JS interpreters might not work the
same as others. This should not be seen as a replacement for the
server-side processor, just an off-by-default alternative. If it were
there and it was proven to be useful and to relieve the servers I bet
most caring users would give it a shot.

Just my 2 cents. By the way, forgive my broken English.

-Pedro Fayolle

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:48:01 -0800 (PST), Rich Holton
<rich_holton at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We are now well into the fourth day since I originally expressed my
> concern about the performance issues on en.wikipedia. While the
> situation may have improved a bit, and some of the ugliest error
> messages seem to be reduced, the situation is still far from being
> resolved.
>
> Attempting to do any useful work on Wikipedia has become futile.
> Article view time has become sporadic, and frequently very bad to
> intolerable. For any site other than Wikipedia, I would never know that
> the site was working at all, since I would fairly quickly write it off
> as "down".
>
> I am committed to Wikipedia and its objectives. I will tolerate these
> performance delays. But I believe that there must be many who will not
> tolerate them, and will write-off Wikipedia. Is this what we want?
>
> While it appears that the developers are very busy attempting to solve
> the technical issues, there seems to be little actual progress. How
> long will we allow this situation to continue without attempting
> solutions of a different sort? A good operational definition of
> insanity is "continuing the same actions expecting different results."
>
> If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve the
> issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to focus on
> this problem and resolve it.
>
> We owe our developers great thanks, appreciation, and respect. But a
> big part of that lies in recognizing when we are expecting them to
> accomplish what is impossible. Given their restrictions on time,
> resources, and skill, are we asking them to do the impossible?
>
> With respect, concern, and frustration
>
> Rich Holton
> (en.Wikipedia:User:Rholton)
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
> http://my.yahoo.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote

> Bad example.  [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] is a content guideline, not a
> policy.  Besides, this kind of thing should be worked out on the talk
> page, not by engaging in an edit war.  To spell it out: even if someone is
> (short of outright vandalism) disobeying policy, the first thing to do is
> have a word with him about what he's doing.  Edit warring is wrong even if
> you know you're right.

> >> Yet both are blocked.
>
> Good.  I believe that is how the 3RR blocks are intended to work.

Not to sound unnecessarily hostile.  But it does often seem to me that RK
argues as if putting down markers for some future edit war.  Tony rightly
argues that we have a policy, which has very general support in its current
form.  It encourages a patient, measured approach.  Trying to shade it in
favour of the marginally-less-unreasonable party in an edit war is not
something I'd support.

Charles


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
Rick wrote:

>I blocked Everyking for 24 hours because he had made 4 reverts to the [[Pieces of Me]] article in 24 hours.  But since he is an admin, he continues to edit.  Is there something we can do about this?
>
>RickK
>
>
>
Isn't that block evasion? His block time should be restarted, according
to policy, from the time he last made an edit.

Disclaimer: I have been deeply involved in a dispute between Everyking,
myself, and several other users relating to [[Ashlee Simpson]] articles,
that has gone to arbitration. Heed my advice at your own risk.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: minor issue, but still a npov warning

body:
Anthere wrote:
>
> Some already ponctually corrected a couple of things.
> But generally, they do not believe in Wikipedia neutrality though they
> see the efforts to try to be neutral.
> You may not expect french people who really write a bad english to go
> correct all what is biaised in the english wikipedia.
>
> This is a good question : why did not they fix it ?
>
> It took me three months to dare edit the english wikipedia after I met
> it. I feared criticism of my english like hell; And still fear it very
> much, as there are regularly unpleasant comments made about it.
> Recently, I had to block 2 times an editor who was being extremely rude
> with non english people on meta. A place where international people ARE
> welcome. When editors rudely handle non english in a place such as meta,
> you might guess how nice these editors can be on the english wikipedia
> itself.
>
> Amongst french people, I am generally considered quite good in english.
> Still, editing in good english is difficult for me and takes a lot of
> time. Arguments which start on talk page and last dozens and dozens of
> screens put me off. It takes too much time to read it all and try to
> understand it all.
>
> Many french scientists read english, because nearly all science is in
> english, so of course, it is their main source of information. But most
> french scientists do not manage english well enough to become editors.
>
> It needs courage you may not realise. It needs efforts, and it needs to
> overcome the comment of some people who do not think we belong there.
>
> So, they look at the article, they may correct a typo, but do not go any
> further.

Anthere,

If you find people being rude to non-English people I think you need to
let an admin know so we can leave a message on their talk page warning
them not to make personal attacks. I have personally never seen this,
but if I did the used doing this would get a stern warning from me.

Ta bu shi da yu


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Concern with performance issues

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
>
>> :-D Let's face it, we're in uncharted territory.  The number of
>> volunteers is huge, and each one has considerably more power than a
>> volunteer in most much smaller organizations.  Many have strongly
>> opposing (usually sincere) views of what is right, and are totally
>> convinced that any other position is idiotic. Even our management
>> philosophies are radically different, running the entire range from
>> laissez-faire permissiveness to literal totalitarian strictness.
>>
>> With apologies for this note of pessimism -- Good luck!
>>
>> Ec
>
> Hmmm, this raise a immediate comment.
>
> I am supportive of hiring someone to help, in particular to do all the
> admin basic and boring work as well as helping on site in Florida.
> This would relieve both Jimbo who, ihmo, can help more in other areas,
> and relieve current developers from day to day work and let them focus
> on improving the whole system.

Yes, like promotion, speaking engagenents, visiting local groups, and
all those other corporate executive duties.  The travel involved is
incompatible with the need to have someone available close by to respond
to emergencies.  I don't disagree with the needs assessment, which seems
to focus on the hardware rather than the software end of things.

> I have been wondering if it was a better idea in the long run of
> hiring current developers or total or need total strangers to the
> community. I am undecided on this. But one thing appearing obvious and
> potentially problematic to me would be that the employed would have to
> follow a lot the community opinion, ie opinion of non employed. I am
> curious to see that admitedly :-)

The community policy pressures are likely to be less on hardware
maintenance than on software development.  The sign of a good job on the
hardware end may come when nobody notices him and everything runs
smoothly.  The other issue about hardware maintenance is whether it
requires a full time person or someone who comes in maybe once a week
for routine maintenance, and is otherwise on call.  For such a hardware
based position being available may be more important than community
involvement.

For software specific duties it may be more important to draw from
community members who already understand the wiki process.  They need to
be diplomatic and thick-skinned at the same time.  Short term contract
based hiring may be more important here, if they are ever to be
re-integrated in the general volunteer community after the contract is
finished.

Ec


from_name: Andrew

subject: [Wikitech-l] EasyTimeline configuration in MediaWiki

body:
Hello all,
I've had difficulty enabling EasyTimeline in MediaWiki.

It is on Windows Server 2003 with The Saint WAMP.

It appears to be activated, but I get the following error:

Timeline error: Executable not found. Command line was: "D:\Program
Files\TSW\Apache2\perl\bin\perl.exe" "D:\Program
Files\TSW\Apache2\htdocs\mediawiki\extensions\timeline\EasyTimeline.pl" -i
"D:\Program
Files\TSW\Apache2\htdocs\mediawiki\images\timeline\ |
d12a83ed39e720e3d4eb41241afdef3d"

 -m -P "D:\Program Files\TSW\Apache2\bin\pl.exe" -T "D:\Program
Files\TSW\Apache2\htdocs\mediawiki\images\tmp" -A "/mediawiki/index.php/$1"

I'm a rank beginner with this stuff and I've found the whole forward slash
back slash thing difficult to navigate on the Windows system. I don't think
the scripts handle it seamlessly.

I've tweaked the scripts to try to get it to work, but I always get this
error - not surprising since it appears to be a catch all error message when
the command line returns "".
I eventually found the EasyTimeline.pl v1.12 and Timeline.php 1.7 in CVS.

Any hints on where I might have made a misstep would be greatly
appreciated...

For what it's worth, here's a snippet from the Timeline.php script as it
stands:

if ( ! ( file_exists( $fname.".png" ) || file_exists( $fname.".err" ) ) )
 {
  $handle = fopen($fname, "w");
  fwrite($handle, $timelinesrc);
  fclose($handle);

  $cmdline = wfEscapeShellArg( $wgTimelineSettings->perlCommand,
"D:\\Program
Files\\TSW\\Apache2\\htdocs\\mediawiki\\extensions\\timeline\\EasyTimeline.pl")
.
    " -i " . wfEscapeShellArg( $fname ) . " -m -P " . wfEscapeShellArg(
$wgTimelineSettings->ploticusCommand ) .
    " -T " . wfEscapeShellArg( $wgTmpDirectory ) . " -A " .
wfEscapeShellArg( $wgArticlePath );

  $ret = `{$cmdline}`;

  unlink($fname);

  if ( $ret == "" ) {
   // Message not localized, only relevant during install
   return "
<tt>Timeline error: Executable not found. Command
line was: {$cmdline}</tt>
";
  }

Cheers,
Andrew


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
Rick wrote:

>But how do we enforce it, short of getting his adminship revoked?
>
>RickK
>
>
He's the subject of an arbitration case and a proposed temporary
injunction. Post the evidence (and make a request for a temp
injunction), and the arbcom will take care of the rest.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
> > Tony, [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] may only be a guideline, but it's
> > inextricably linked to [[Wikipedia:No original research]], which is
> > policy, because the only way you can show that an edit isn't original
> > research is to produce a reputable source.
>
>Doesn't that get back to over-interpreting 'original research'?  Which was
>discussed at length here, a while ago.  I distrust statements of this kind,
>on principle.  Anyway it is a poor description of what goes on. A one-line
>deduction from known facts is obviously not 'original research', whether or
>not you can cite someone else having already done it.  Such things are the
>small change of doing the research for an article.  (Obviously if I read
>that A is the son of B, I deduce that B is the parent of A; put a few such
>trivial moves together and you get conclusions which are possibly novel.)

It's easy to make this kind of argument when citing trivial facts.  However,
most of the original research inserted in these articles is more on the
order of "George Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq, but he lied to the American public and invaded anyway, in order to
finish the job his father started, and to restore his family honor".

Jay.


from_name: Dieter Menne

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cleanup old revision script for MediaWiki 1.5

body:
In case someone like me should have played so much with the alpha 1.5
version,
here is a quick and dirty script to remove all old revisions.
!!! This is a developer tool, don't use it on your precious parts, and make
a backup before you use it !!!
It's probably rather safe on the first time you run it, because, backups are
made, but on the second run, if something goes wrong, data loss might occur.

Dieter Menne
dieter.menne at menne-biomed.de

-- Script to cleanup all revision in MediaWiki 1.5 alpha (not for earlier
version)
-- This is quick and dirty, but all original table are preserver with _old
-- If everything works as request, you can delete the xx_old tables created
-- by this script.
-- Only tested once, don't try it with your database without making a
-- backup first
-- dieter.menne at menne-biomed.de
-- This script does not use nested queries, it should work with MySql 4.0

 CREATE  TABLE  `mw_text1` (  `old_id` int( 8  ) unsigned NOT  NULL
AUTO_INCREMENT ,
 `old_namespace` tinyint( 2  ) unsigned NOT  NULL default  '0',
 `old_title` varchar( 255  ) binary NOT  NULL default  '',
 `old_text` mediumtext NOT  NULL ,
 `old_comment` tinyblob NOT  NULL ,
 `old_user` int( 5  ) unsigned NOT  NULL default  '0',
 `old_user_text` varchar( 255  ) binary NOT  NULL default  '',
 `old_timestamp` varchar( 14  ) binary NOT  NULL default  '',
 `old_minor_edit` tinyint( 1  )  NOT  NULL default  '0',
 `old_flags` tinyblob NOT  NULL ,
 `inverse_timestamp` varchar( 14  ) binary NOT  NULL default  '',
 PRIMARY  KEY (  `old_id`  ) ,
 KEY  `old_timestamp` (  `old_timestamp`  ) ,
 KEY  `name_title_timestamp` (  `old_namespace` ,  `old_title` ,
`inverse_timestamp`  ) ,
 KEY  `user_timestamp` (  `old_user` ,  `inverse_timestamp`  ) ,
 KEY  `usertext_timestamp` (  `old_user_text` ,  `inverse_timestamp`  )  )
TYPE  =  MYISAM ;

-- Table with latest changes
CREATE TABLE `latest` (
`latest_id` INT NOT NULL
);

-- get unique
insert into latest
select old_id from mw_text
  left outer join mw_page
    on old_id=page_latest
where page_latest is not NULL;

-- Copy unique into text1
insert into mw_text1 (
select mw_text1.* from mw_text
join latest
on latest_id=old_id);

CREATE TABLE `mw_revision1` (
`rev_id` int( 8 ) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
`rev_page` int( 8 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rev_comment` tinyblob NOT NULL ,
`rev_user` int( 5 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rev_user_text` varchar( 255 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rev_timestamp` varchar( 14 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rev_minor_edit` tinyint( 1 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`inverse_timestamp` varchar( 14 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY ( `rev_page` , `rev_id` ) ,
UNIQUE KEY `rev_id` ( `rev_id` ) ,
KEY `rev_timestamp` ( `rev_timestamp` ) ,
KEY `page_timestamp` ( `rev_page` , `inverse_timestamp` ) ,
KEY `user_timestamp` ( `rev_user` , `inverse_timestamp` ) ,
KEY `usertext_timestamp` ( `rev_user_text` , `inverse_timestamp` )
) TYPE = MYISAM ;

-- Copy most recent revisions
insert into mw_revision1 (
select mw_revision.* from mw_revision
join latest
on latest_id=rev_id);

--- Remove list of recent changes, we first make a copy and the
-- truncate the original. This could have been made easier without the
-- copy, but I wanted to play safe.
CREATE TABLE `mw_recentchanges_old` (
`rc_id` int( 8 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
`rc_timestamp` varchar( 14 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rc_cur_time` varchar( 14 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rc_user` int( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_user_text` varchar( 255 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rc_namespace` tinyint( 3 ) NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_title` varchar( 255 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rc_comment` varchar( 255 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rc_minor` tinyint( 3 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_bot` tinyint( 3 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_new` tinyint( 3 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_cur_id` int( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_this_oldid` int( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_last_oldid` int( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_type` tinyint( 3 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_moved_to_ns` tinyint( 3 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_moved_to_title` varchar( 255 ) binary NOT NULL default '',
`rc_patrolled` tinyint( 3 ) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`rc_ip` varchar( 15 ) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY ( `rc_id` ) ,
KEY `rc_timestamp` ( `rc_timestamp` ) ,
KEY `rc_namespace_title` ( `rc_namespace` , `rc_title` ) ,
KEY `rc_cur_id` ( `rc_cur_id` ) ,
KEY `new_name_timestamp` ( `rc_new` , `rc_namespace` , `rc_timestamp` ) ,
KEY `rc_ip` ( `rc_ip` )
) TYPE = MYISAM ;

-- Copy into database
INSERT INTO `mw_recentchanges_old`
SELECT *
FROM `mw_recentchanges` ;
-- Remove date from original
TRUNCATE TABLE mw_recentchanges;

--- Swap table names
ALTER TABLE `mw_revision` RENAME `mw_revision_old` ;
ALTER TABLE `mw_text` RENAME `mw_text_old` ;
ALTER TABLE `mw_text1` RENAME `mw_text` ;
ALTER TABLE `mw_revision1` RENAME `mw_revision` ;
-- We don't need the latest any more
DROP Table latest;


body:
> > Some of the editors writing in this thread seem to believe there are
> > teams of editors willing to delete original research wherever they find
> > it, so that no editor is ever left isolated dealing with a POV pusher
> > who's inserting nonsense. That just isn't true
>
>I assure you that it is.  Any time you spot a POV pusher filling an
>article with unverifiable tripe, just leave a message at [[User talk:
>Tony Sidaway]] and you and I, we'll be that team.  If there are two of
>them, we'll get a third guy; and that way there's no way anybody will
>have to breach 3RR.

Unless you're on vaction or something.  I think systemic fixes are far more
reliable than "don't worry, I'll make sure this doesn't happen" assurances.

Jay.


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
If you make four reverts in 24 hours, you break the 3RR.  To quote [[WP:3RR]]:

"In the cases where multiple parties violate the rule, sysops should
treat all sides equally."

However good your intentions, if you don't strictly abide by the rule,
you must take the punishment.  If you break the 3RR, you break policy.
 If we apply the rules one way for some people and another for others,
chaos will ensue. If we apply policy objectively, then no-one can make
accusations of favoritism.

Smoddy

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:35:36 -0000, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote
>
> > Bad example.  [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] is a content guideline, not a
> > policy.  Besides, this kind of thing should be worked out on the talk
> > page, not by engaging in an edit war.  To spell it out: even if someone is
> > (short of outright vandalism) disobeying policy, the first thing to do is
> > have a word with him about what he's doing.  Edit warring is wrong even if
> > you know you're right.
>
> > >> Yet both are blocked.
> >
> > Good.  I believe that is how the 3RR blocks are intended to work.
>
> Not to sound unnecessarily hostile.  But it does often seem to me that RK
> argues as if putting down markers for some future edit war.  Tony rightly
> argues that we have a policy, which has very general support in its current
> form.  It encourages a patient, measured approach.  Trying to shade it in
> favour of the marginally-less-unreasonable party in an edit war is not
> something I'd support.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050117 19:10]:
>
>
>
>>I blocked Everyking for 24 hours because he had made 4 reverts to the [[Pieces of Me]] article in 24 hours.  But since he is an admin, he continues to edit.  Is there something we can do about this?
>>
>>
>
>
>Everyking is currently in arbitration. This strikes me as relevant for the
>evidence page. If someone could do this, most detailed evidence possible
>please.
>
>
>- d.
>
>
I have posted a request for a stronger temporary injunction than the one
proposed by Grunt for two reasons:

    * Everyking has already voluntarily limited himself to one revert
      per day on Autobiography and its subarticles (see
      [[User:Everyking/Agreement]])
    * Everyking abuses his sysop powers to evade his block

I hope Rick can be more specific with his evidence, but I've provided
links to discussion on Everyking's block evasion in my request. I'm
going to try dig up some diffs now.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: cookiecaper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a new project - Wikibuilder

body:
So, architecture? Other things too (i.e. small-scale carpentry)?

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:50:18 +0000, Christiaan Briggs
<christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
> Wikibuilder - a knowledge base covering the design and construction of
> the built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.
>
> Project proposal page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibuilder
>
> See also:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects
>
> == Basic idea ==
>
> To create a knowledge base covering the design and construction of the
> built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.
>
> == Scope ==
>
> Much, if not most, of the information could be presented as text (and
> could start off as just that), but text presents profound and obvious
> limits for describing the built environment, so much of the information
> would be pictorial. With the drawing expertise of designers and
> draughtspeople around the world who are intimate with CAD (computer
> aided draughting) there should be no shortage of people to get the ball
> rolling.
>
> There are currently efforts going on in the graphics and architecture
> industries to standardise pictorial file formats (see links below) and
> the main topic of initial discussion on Wikibuilder may well revolve
> around the kind of file formats to use for presenting and distributing
> sketch, 2D, 3D and other kinds of pictorial information. Carrying on
> from this might be discussion on graphical styles and style
> standardisation.
>
> There are a few open-content repository-type websites around for
> sharing building details, et cetera, but most of them are woeful and
> narrowly focused on CAD technicians looking for details to use at work.
> There're a myriad of websites dotted around the internet offering
> information on design but this is extremely fragmented.
>
> == Why? ==
>
> Ever since we as a species started manipulating our environment we have
> built a vast knowledge of designing and constructing the built
> environment. This knowledge belongs to everyone, but much of it is is
> locked away in people's heads with no easy way to share such
> information except for books (usually expensive ones) and
> apprenticeship. A wiki focused on the built environment could help
> unlock this knowledge and make it accessible to vast numbers of people
> (builders, designers, inventors, diy'ers, knowledge lovers) who could
> put it to use and continue to build on it in a open way. A wiki could
> also help the push for open standards in the presentation of pictorial
> information via the internet.
>
> Kind regards,
> Christiaan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RFC has worked for me in content disputes

body:
> From: "JAY JG" <jayjg at hotmail.com>
>  I supposed you could take the issue to
> Wikipedia:RFC, where the conflict could be ignored just as most other
> article content conflicts are ignored.

I've taken article conflicts to RFC two or three times. Each time I've
gotten two or three helpful responses, that were quite useful in
resolving the conflict. Your mileage apparently varies....

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


list: textbook-l

from_name: Manuel GR

subject: [Textbook-l] Why Wikibooks projects are not using subpages?

body:
El mar, 18-01-2005 a las 18:14, Karl Wick escribi?:
> Is the feature turned-on for userpages but off for the main
> wiki? I think this would be a great feature to enable on
> Wikibooks if it is not currently enabled.

Yes, the subpages are disable for the main namespace and enabled for the
Wikibooks: and User: spaces. The point is that they could be easily
enabled by software reconfiguration. Since they were considered bad for
Wikipedia, they are disabled in its offspring projects (except Meta).
Maybe nobody realized that they would be very useful for Wikibooks.

We have to convince the developers to enable them, so register an
account on Mediazilla and vote at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1353

Regards.
--
Manuel.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
> have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).
>
> Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
> don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.

With all due respect that is *exactly* what the image description page is for.
Adding another click breaks this convention and is the *very* reason why I have
not uploaded a single image from my large en.wikipedia image archive to the
commons yet.

So instead of dismissing Anthere's concern by declaring this a feature, please
instead consider this to be a bug that needs to be eventually addressed. IIRC,
Erik has already lamented about this and I therefore thought it was on
somebody's todo list.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050117 19:10]:

> I blocked Everyking for 24 hours because he had made 4 reverts to the [[Pieces of Me]] article in 24 hours.  But since he is an admin, he continues to edit.  Is there something we can do about this?

Everyking is currently in arbitration. This strikes me as relevant for the
evidence page. If someone could do this, most detailed evidence possible
please.

- d.


from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
Why, what is wrong with having "people dedendent on the Foundation for
a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:49:26 -0800, Scott Nelson <scott at penguinstorm.com> wrote:
> On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
> > six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
> > avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
> > source of income.

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: images on commons and gfdl

body:
Magnus Manske a ?crit:
> Anthere schrieb:
>
>> Hello,
>> Not sure exactly where to write about this.
>>
>> I may have not understood something very well, if not, please explain
>> to me.
>>
>> When someone upload an image to wikicommons and place it under gfdl
>> license, I would tend to say that re-using this image would have to
>> follow gfdl license. We know that we do not respect well gfdl license
>> for text, since it is very difficult to follow all authors, but for an
>> image, it should not be a lot of problem to respect it, since there is
>> only one author, the one who took the picture.
>>
>> So, normally, to follow gfdl license, when we use the image we should
>> 1) mention the gfdl and 2) mention the author, no ? So that anyone
>> reusing the image would be able to follow the gfdl in turn.
>>
>> What bugs me is that if I upload a picture to say the french
>> wikipedia, it is written in the image comment that I took the picture,
>> so I am granted the authorship of my work, and anyone using the image
>> could either mention wikipedia or myself. But at least, he has the
>> information available. Besides, the reader can see a description of
>> the image.
>>
>> When I upload an image on wikicommons, I can write this information
>> over there, but this information is no more directly available to the
>> guy using the information.
>>
>>
> Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
> have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).

Possibly. But it is not because we poorly respect the GFDL on articles
(where it is hard to respect it) that we should poorly respect it, if
none at all on images.

Between the moment you see an image and the moment you see the
description, there are at least two links (at best). I think it is not good.

> Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
> don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.
>
> Magnus

Well, on the case of the ht wikipedia, even with the best of intention,
no one could see the license and no one could cite the source.

In effect, that means that Wikipedia is not respecting the  sort of
contract it has with the editor. Somehow, we agree to give our work
under a certain license, but in exchange, we could expect that at least
within Wikimedia project the license will be respected. And it is not.

Somehow, how could we complain that others do not respect the gfdl when
we do not respect it either ?

Hence my suggestion for an automatic and mandatory message leading to
the right description on commons and hence my suggestion that the
description is also available on local projects.


from_name: Jeff Cook

subject: [WikiEN-l] Database lock.

body:
The database is locked again. The time is 9:54 P.M. CST (GMT -6). This
is fine, but database locks give me jitters because of recent talk
about locking for up to twenty-four hours. This would not be a
favorable circumstance and I am worried about it. Are we going to have
some warning before that big lockdown takes place? I think we should.
:)

--
Jeff "cookiecaper" Cook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cookiecaper
:)


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Continued concern with performance

body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> Rich Holton wrote:
> > While it appears that the developers are very busy attempting to
> > solve the technical issues, there seems to be little actual
> progress.
> >  How long will we allow this situation to continue without
> attempting
> >  solutions of a different sort? A good operational definition of
> > insanity is "continuing the same actions expecting different
> > results."
>
> At this stage, I think we just need more hardware. I think we've
> solved
> the major system administration problems. Software development will
> continue with optimisation work but that's a long term goal even with
> hired help. You could try using the site in off-peak times, it works
> very well then. More hardware is on order.
>
I have and will continue to use Wikipedia at off-peak hours. Of course,
this is at best a work-around, not a solution.

> > If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve
> > the issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to
> > focus on this problem and resolve it.
>
> What problem? You don't even understand what the problem is. I've
> repeatedly given my informed opinion on what is needed, and it
> doesn't
> involve hiring consultants at a rate of $100/hr. Long term work on
> optimisation is needed. JamesDay, our database optimisation
> specialist,
> can give you a list of features as long as your arm that would
> improve
> performance. I've tried and mostly failed to get people interested in
>
> writing such things. Hardware is needed, and rapid hardware repair is
>
> needed.
>
Thanks for setting me straight on where the problem lies. One of the
real challenges is staying current with what progress has been made. In
my own defense, there is a prominent link at the top of the technical
section of the Village Pump that leads to a Live Journal article
stating emphatically that the problem is not hardware. Apparently this
is out of date. Is there a better way to stay informed that I should
know about?

> More system administrators are needed. My interest is in programming,
>
> but I end up spending most of my time on Linux system administration,
>
> because there's nobody else around to do it. Understand that Linux is
> an
> operating system I had *never even used* before I started on
> Wikipedia.
> I had to pick it up as I went along. It's a bizarre, flawed, buggy
> operating system which I only use because I'm forced to.
>

Knowing your path to becoming a competent system administrator gives me
some hope for myself, as I would have to go through a  learning curve
similar to yours. Of course, even if I and a hundred others were to
begin that learning curve now, it would not solve any immediate
problems.

> Paid system administration help may be an option, but the first
> priority
> for paid help should be hardware maintenance, since there are no
> volunteers in that field, and a small amount of time spent will make
> a
> big difference.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

My greatest concern is that there are continuing performance issues
with little apparent progress over an extended period. Without
hesitation I presume that we have good people volunteering their time
and working hard to resolve these issues.

Sometimes it is necessary for an organization to consider the
possibility that internal resources are not sufficient to address an
immediate need. Wikipedia has come a long way relying almost entirely
on volunteer workers. I do not believe this can continue indefinitely.

With humble respect,

Rich Holton
(en.Wikipedia:User:Rholton)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: allow xml tags: a first approach

references:
<41E81DAF.1020604@laposte.net>	<20050115093206.GE14867@jeluf.mine.nu>	<shwtuekiod.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9f02ca4c050115081370ba19f1@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Hi,

I almost fully agree with Rowan but I also like some more semantic
markup, so I introduced some techniques in the German Wikipedia with
different goals:

Bewertungsbausteine - stamps to judge articles
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bewertungsbausteine

Datenbanklinks - links to other databases
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenbanklinks

Personendaten - metadata for articles on people
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Personendaten

You can do a lot with Templates if you describe them well because no
average author understands them.

>>In 'de' they just invented an invisible "personendaten" box...
>
> Again, you've lost me; for what purpose did they create this "box", in
> what sense is it "invisible", and how would XML/"a proper markup
> language" deal with the same issue?

'Personendaten' (personal data) contain machine-readable metadata on
people. They are normally invisible through CSS so you have to switch
them on in your Monobook.css (I'd like an easier way to do this) but you
see them in article source. Karl already cited an example. Here is an
english one:

{{Person|
  NAME=Magellan, Ferdinand
|ALTERNATIVE_NAMES=Fern?o de Magalh?es (Portuguese), Fernando de
Magallanes (Spanish)
|SHORT_DESCRIPTION=sea explorer
|BIRTH=Spring 1480
|BIRTH_IN=Vila Real, Tr?s-os-Montes, Portugal
|DEATH=April 27, 1521
|DEATH_IN=Mactan Island]], Cebu, Philippines
}}

The data should be moved to a seperate metadata page with all the other
metadata stuff.

greetings,
Jakob


subject: [WikiEN-l] Signpost's second issue published

body:
Please continue to announce it, else ill forget to read it.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 02:19:45 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't keep
> repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling out and
> people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to let
> everyone know that the second issue of our new community newspaper, the
> Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
>
> --Michael Snow

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
ht.wikipedia has a grand total of 0 images, and its number of articles
is SO negligible that gfdl probably isn't much of a concern, plus the
fact that none of them are linked from the mainpage (see for example
http://ht.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominikani or
http://ht.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayiti - reasonably good articles, but
neither is linked from the mainpage).

However, GFDL information SHOULD be added by a competent editor in the
target language (ie, not in French), and if that is not possible then
perhaps a secondary language is acceptable.

But the chances that somebody will steal content from such a small
Wikipedia are infintessimally small, and even so not all editors are
likely to even KNOW that their submissions are by default licensed
under the GFDL (this requires a working knowledge of English, as
opposed to the basic knowledge of English nessecary for editing pages
in general).

Mark

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:50:51 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Magnus Manske a ?crit:
> > Anthere schrieb:
> >
> >> Hello,
> >> Not sure exactly where to write about this.
> >>
> >> I may have not understood something very well, if not, please explain
> >> to me.
> >>
> >> When someone upload an image to wikicommons and place it under gfdl
> >> license, I would tend to say that re-using this image would have to
> >> follow gfdl license. We know that we do not respect well gfdl license
> >> for text, since it is very difficult to follow all authors, but for an
> >> image, it should not be a lot of problem to respect it, since there is
> >> only one author, the one who took the picture.
> >>
> >> So, normally, to follow gfdl license, when we use the image we should
> >> 1) mention the gfdl and 2) mention the author, no ? So that anyone
> >> reusing the image would be able to follow the gfdl in turn.
> >>
> >> What bugs me is that if I upload a picture to say the french
> >> wikipedia, it is written in the image comment that I took the picture,
> >> so I am granted the authorship of my work, and anyone using the image
> >> could either mention wikipedia or myself. But at least, he has the
> >> information available. Besides, the reader can see a description of
> >> the image.
> >>
> >> When I upload an image on wikicommons, I can write this information
> >> over there, but this information is no more directly available to the
> >> guy using the information.
> >>
> >>
> > Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
> > have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).
>
> Possibly. But it is not because we poorly respect the GFDL on articles
> (where it is hard to respect it) that we should poorly respect it, if
> none at all on images.
>
> Between the moment you see an image and the moment you see the
> description, there are at least two links (at best). I think it is not good.
>
>
> > Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
> > don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.
> >
> > Magnus
>
> Well, on the case of the ht wikipedia, even with the best of intention,
> no one could see the license and no one could cite the source.
>
> In effect, that means that Wikipedia is not respecting the  sort of
> contract it has with the editor. Somehow, we agree to give our work
> under a certain license, but in exchange, we could expect that at least
> within Wikimedia project the license will be respected. And it is not.
>
> Somehow, how could we complain that others do not respect the gfdl when
> we do not respect it either ?
>
> Hence my suggestion for an automatic and mandatory message leading to
> the right description on commons and hence my suggestion that the
> description is also available on local projects.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Signpost's second issue published

body:
do not forget to remind us from time to time though :-)

Ant

Michael Snow a ?crit:
> Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't keep
> repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling out and
> people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to let
> everyone know that the second issue of our new community newspaper, the
> Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
>
> --Michael Snow


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal - Wikibuilder

body:
Wikibuilder - a knowledge base covering the design and construction of
the built environment

Project proposal page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibuilder

See also:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects

== Basic idea ==

To create a knowledge base covering the design and construction of the
built environment.

== Scope ==

Much, if not most, of the information could be presented as text (and
could start off as just that), but text presents profound and obvious
limits for describing the built environment, so much of the information
would be pictorial. With the drawing expertise of designers and
draughtspeople around the world who are intimate with CAD (computer
aided draughting) there should be no shortage of people to get the ball
rolling.

There are currently efforts going on in the graphics and architecture
industries to standardise pictorial file formats (see links below) and
the main topic of initial discussion on Wikibuilder may well revolve
around the kind of file formats to use for presenting and distributing
sketch, 2D, 3D and other kinds of pictorial information. Carrying on
from this might be discussion on graphical styles and style
standardisation.

There are a few open-content repository-type websites around for
sharing building details, et cetera, but most of them are woeful and
narrowly focused on CAD technicians looking for details to use at work.
There're a myriad of websites dotted around the internet offering
information on design but this is extremely fragmented.
[edit]

== Why? ==

Ever since we as a species started manipulating our environment we have
built a vast knowledge of designing and constructing the built
environment. This knowledge belongs to everyone, but much of it is is
locked away in people's heads with no easy way to share such
information except for books (usually expensive ones) and
apprenticeship. A wiki focused on the built environment could help
unlock this knowledge and make it accessible to vast numbers of people
(builders, designers, inventors, diy'ers, knowledge lovers) who could
put it to use and continue to build on it in a open way. A wiki could
also help the push for open standards in the presentation of pictorial
information via the internet.

Kind regards,
Christiaan


body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> David Gerard wrote:

> :-D Let's face it, we're in uncharted territory.  The number of
> volunteers is huge, and each one has considerably more power than a
> volunteer in most much smaller organizations.  Many have strongly
> opposing (usually sincere) views of what is right, and are totally
> convinced that any other position is idiotic. Even our management
> philosophies are radically different, running the entire range from
> laissez-faire permissiveness to literal totalitarian strictness.
>
> With apologies for this note of pessimism -- Good luck!
>
> Ec

Hmmm, this raise a immediate comment.

I am supportive of hiring someone to help, in particular to do all the
admin basic and boring work as well as helping on site in Florida. This
would relieve both Jimbo who, ihmo, can help more in other areas, and
relieve current developers from day to day work and let them focus on
improving the whole system.

I have been wondering if it was a better idea in the long run of hiring
current developers or total or need total strangers to the community. I
am undecided on this. But one thing appearing obvious and potentially
problematic to me would be that the employed would have to follow a lot
the community opinion, ie opinion of non employed. I am curious to see
that admitedly :-)

Aside from this point, a little precision :

No developer is currently employed by the Foundation. Yet.
Jimbo has been doing some interviews in that sense.

Ant