from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

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

Hi,

Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a ?crit :
>
> Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information.
> Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can
> use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is
> something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical
> reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.

This is something new to me.
Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable?
As well as pictures of the presidents of the US?
We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are
"? Pr?sidence de la R?publique. Documentation fran?aise".
cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php
Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?

Thanks,
Yann

- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAHMgGm4KYjQo0y9oRAngEAJ9U/VCrlPZDIqpQUesyTOUlDpaoqgCdGOAA
GORg260KssvXp0x8qJzibCU=
=7j1Y
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Displaying http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:*

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

Hi,

Le Saturday 31 January 2004 19:28, Karl Eichwalder a ?crit :
> You changed something.  Thus far thus good.  I guess it's simply a bug.
>
> If you click on a description page like
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Nuernberg-haus-theresien7-suedfassade-n-w
>.jpg the WP software displays the picture.  It isn't that userfriendly
> esp. if the image is large.

I second that.
Personally I would not display the picture on the description page.

> Displaying a thumbnail picture (300/200px) would be okay.  Please
> announce those change to this mailing list!

And yes, an announce would be nice.

Thanks,
Yann
- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAHMo2m4KYjQo0y9oRAi+3AKCMnFj1Mwn8G0vAreSq7feKZPYVWwCgm+xt
ELj8cQChDp6k7Wgc96Wc5uM=
=2CgN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

body:
Optim wrote:

>I was describing to someone how Wikipedia works:
>"anyone can edit" etc.
>
>He answered with this argument:
>"Wikipedia is the triumph of the average person!
>of the man in the street!)"
>
>(average meaning: not good, not bad, just OK)
>
>I asked "why?"
>
>His explanation:
>"Great brilliant works are built by individuals.
>Groups of people can only create average works.
>If someone writes something good in the wiki,
>other average persons will intervene with his/her
>work and turn it into an average work. If someone
>writes something bad in the wiki, the others will
>again turn it into something of average value.
>with your system (meaning: Wikipedia's system)
>you can be sure that you will never create
>something too bad but also never something too
>good. You can create only average articles."
>
>The idea behind his argument was that Wikipedia
>will be a good resource as long as it attracts
>good cotnributors. but it will soon become an
>average site/encyclopaedia because it allows
>anyone to join the project and edit, and most
>people are just average persons and not brilliant
>writers.
>
>Do you think it's true? and how can we answer
>this argument?
>
>--Optim
>
Does the argument really need answering?  That sort of normalising
influence is a fact of life that needn't be turned into a value
judgement.  I think the effect is much stronger on the poor articles
where the average person can see the article's weakness and bring it up
to his standards.  When that same person looks at a great article I find
it hard to see him inclined to touch the article.  Dumbing it down would
be a lot of hard work that could be beyond his capacities.  In any
event, the standards of the average Wikipedian are higher than the
standards in the general population. :-)   We begin by excluding
everybody who has not yet learned to turn on a computer.

The controversial articles should not be viewed as a factor in this.  As
hot as some of these debates may be, we are still only talking about a
small fraction of all the Wikipedia articles.

I would venture to guess that Optim's critic may have had some degree of
association with a university.  In some cases simplification of the
writing may be  desireable if we are to make things understandable to
the general population.  That motivation is certainly there in the
development of the Simple Wikipedia.  By making material that could only
be found in university libraries accessible to the general public we are
advancing the spread of knowledge.  There are also many people out there
who for whatever reason may not have had the opportunity or inclination
to succeed in a university setting who can be a valuable asset to
Wikipedia.  Some who can focus very well on a single topic and write
credibly may not have the determinationto maintain that focus over the
time needed to graduate from university.

Around 1900 many public libraries were established to make books and
knowledge available to a wider public.  Perhaps Jimbo may even some day
be revered as the Andrew Carnegie of the internet age. :-)
.
Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New machines

body:
On Feb 1, 2004, at 07:05, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> This card only supports RAID 0 or RAID 1.
>
> For our immediate purposes, which do we want?  Mirroring (safety) or
> striping (performance)?

Safety safety safety safety!

Oh, and safety.

> p.s.  In any event, is it reasonble to suppose that I need to do
> something hardware wise to setup striping?

I suppose... did they give you any manuals with these things? :)

(Did I mention safety?)

The only thing about RAID mirroring with those drives is the size of
the database; we haven't yet run the old revision compression so the db
might not quite fit on 36 GB. Once that's done is ought to, though, if
everything's dumped out of the db and dumped back in to a fresh InnoDB
table space file.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040201/c4f71ec4/attachment.pgp>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: why an average person would wish to ruin a	good
	article?

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Areas which are especially subject to academic politics which eventually
>skews the content of coursework. Generally these are areas which have
>overriding significance (in the eyes of academics) which require (in their
>eyes) that students be indoctrinated in a certain perspective. To give an
>egegious example, a Chinese history student on the mainland. But it goes
>beyond that sort of situation to include anyone who absorbs knowledge the
>content of which is subject to political process.
>
Another egregious example of indoctrination is the ritual recitation of
the Pledge of Allegiance in American schools.  If something like that is
repeated often enough it is bound to influence a person's outlook on
history.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Karl-
> You changed something.  Thus far thus good.  I guess it's simply a bug.

> If you click on a description page like
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Nuernberg-haus-theresien7-suedfassade-n-w.
> jpg the WP software displays the picture.  It isn't that userfriendly
> esp. if the image is large.

> In the past I used to add links to thumbnail like pictures, thus the
> user can decide on his own whether he wants to download the large
> picture or not.

It's a good thing that our image pages now behave as expected: click a
picture, get a larger version. But you are correct to point out that for
very large images, this makes quickly checking the description text more
difficult. This will become worse as we add more very-high-resolution
images, which we should given our goal to release a print version.

A better solution to the problem is to add a small (i)nfo icon next to the
magnifying glass which views the image page with a &showpicture=no
parameter, not displaying the zoomed version. In the long term, we may
also want to support two zoom levels for very large images.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
One idea I have is a ban for one day for each time the perp uses the words
"stupid", "trash" and "crap" to describe another's edit. This could add up
to a year or two for some of these folks.

Fred

> From: "Martin Harper" <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
> Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:52:35 -0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #4
>
> We've provisionally agreed on what rules will goven arbitration - IE, what
> people will
> be found guilty and innocent of:
>
> ----
> The arbitrators will judge cases according to the following guidelines, which
> they will
> apply with common sense and discretion, and an eye to the expectations of the
> community:
> 1) Established Wikipedia customs and common practices
> 2) Wikipedia's "laws": terms of use, submission standards, byelaws, general
> disclaimer, copyright license.
> 3) Sensible "Real world" laws
>
> Former decisions will not be binding on the arbitrators - rather, they intend
> to learn
> from experience.
> -----
>
> We've also decided to tweak the Jurisdiction rules based on your feedback, so
> that
> number four is now: "The arbitrators will primarily investigate interpersonal
> disputes"
>
> Next up, we discuss which solutions we shall apply. I favour putting
> troublesome
> people in a dungeon and torturing them, but there you are.
>
> -Martin
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Going back to December, 2003, just puts 172's version up. He has written
articles from a favorable point of view for several of these dictatorships.
What is happening is that someone has challenged his apologetic point of
view.

Fred

> From: Sascha Noyes <sascha at pantropy.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 14:24:25 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Alexander Lukashenko
>
> On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
>> Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
>> between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
>> I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
>> december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>
> Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd argue
> that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection policy.
>
> Best,
> Sascha Noyes
> --
> Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
> www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] New servers delivered!

body:
I ran memtester on all the new machines overnight, for about 20-21
hours, with no problems. I'm now running the VA-CTCS "cerebus" burn-in
tests.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/va-ctcs/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040201/6a87a3e9/attachment.pgp>


from_name: sannse

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: PROPOSED: Prohibition of alternate displayable
	usernames

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Optim a ?crit:
>
> > [[User:tillwe|Jimbo himself]] is bannable
> > behaviour because you pretend to be someone else.
> >
> > [[User:optim|till we *)]] is bannable behaviour:
> > it creates confusion until someone examines the
> > Page history. Some people may think that it was
> > me that posted the message.
>
> My....I am remembering the number of people that could be banned for
> similar offense in the past 2 years, and my mouth gap in amazement :-)
>
> Beginning by me :-(((((
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AAnt
>

Good point Anthere.  I think like all rules this would need common sense and
flexibility.  You signing as [[User:Anthere|Ant]] is obviously not intended
to mislead, me signing as [[User:Sannse|Anthere]] would be rather more
questionable, and me signing as [[User:Anthere|Anthere]] would be wrong.

Actually in the examples above someone signing as "Jimbo himself" would
probably be just a bit of obvious silliness and nothing to get worked up
about.

--sannse


from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Hi,
>
>Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a ?crit :
>
>
>>Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information.
>>Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can
>>use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is
>>something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical
>>reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
>>
>>
>
>This is something new to me.
>Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable?
>As well as pictures of the presidents of the US?
>We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are
>"? Pr?sidence de la R?publique. Documentation fran?aise".
>cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php
>Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
>
>Thanks,
>Yann
>
>
>
As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the same in France.

Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.

This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.

We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.

What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British contributors are cautious because the international nature of the project never seems to be considered.

Caroline (User:Secretlondon)


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: uploading non-recommended file formats broken

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Jan 31, 2004, at 04:45, Timwi wrote:
>
>>         # May contain harmful executables for Windows victims
>>
>>>         "exe", "scr", "dll", "msi", "vbs", "bat", "com", "pif" );
>>
>> You might want to add "cmd", "vxd", and "cpl" to the latter list.
>
> Jeez! Is there any file type that _isn't_ executable by default on
> Windows? :P

Well, out of those three, only "cmd" is "executable by double-click".

But the file format of libraries, drivers and everything is the same for
EXE, and so they are also executable. For example, "cpl" is a plug-in
for the Windows Control Panel, and so a CPL file in your Windows
directory would be executed when you open the Control Panel. Similarly,
VXD is a device driver, I think.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:

> What about links to other sections of the article. (eg.
> [[samearticle#References]] ?

Thanks! Fixed:

Index: phase3/includes/OutputPage.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/OutputPage.php,v
retrieving revision 1.79
diff -u -r1.79 OutputPage.php
--- phase3/includes/OutputPage.php	30 Jan 2004 17:07:50 -0000	1.79
+++ phase3/includes/OutputPage.php	1 Feb 2004 14:15:16 -0000
@@ -1054,6 +1054,11 @@
  				$s .= $sk->makeLink( $link, $text, "", $trail );
  */
  			}
+			if( $nt->getPrefixedText() == $wgTitle->getPrefixedText()
+			    and substr( $link, "#" ) == FALSE ) {
+				$s .= "<strong>" . $text . "</strong>" . $trail;
+				continue;
+			}
  			if( $ns == $media ) {
  				$s .= $sk->makeMediaLinkObj( $nt, $text ) . $trail;
  				$wgLinkCache->addImageLinkObj( $nt );


from_name: Anthere

body:
Optim a ?crit:

> [[User:tillwe|Jimbo himself]] is bannable
> behaviour because you pretend to be someone else.
>
> [[User:optim|till we *)]] is bannable behaviour:
> it creates confusion until someone examines the
> Page history. Some people may think that it was
> me that posted the message.

My....I am remembering the number of people that could be banned for
similar offense in the past 2 years, and my mouth gap in amazement :-)

Beginning by me :-(((((

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AAnt


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Alexander Lukashenko

body:
On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
> Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
> between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
> I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
> december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.

Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd argue
that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection policy.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Alexander Lukashenko

body:
From: "Sascha Noyes" <sascha at pantropy.net>
> On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
> > Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
> > between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
> > I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
> > december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>
> Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd argue
> that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection policy.

I tend to agree with Sascha Ant, the reality is that there is a lot of
propaganda
about Lukashenko floating around. He is a dictator, he did expell OSCE
representatives but there are a lot of people in Belarus and elsewhere
who might agree with other versions of "reality" and see him as a mostly
benevolent force. To write a really good article about this guy requires a
lot
of reserach and most of the versions of the article that I have seen are
pretty poor.
Better to leave the old version for now and deal with the disputes as it
will
likely take a while to resolve the issues between these contributors and
separate fact from fiction and propaganda which is coming from several
different
sources.

Alex756


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

body:
>>>>> "AR" == Alex R <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> writes:

    AR> Wikipedia copyright is so diluted anyway that it is
    AR> practically a grant into the public domain anyway.

I'm confused as to why it's "diluted". Because so many people have had
a hand in making the encyclopedia itself? Or each article?

    AR> I doubt that Wikipedia could really sue for individual
    AR> articles the damages are really minimal and even wholesale
    AR> copying by "forking" would probably be held to be almost
    AR> unenforceable because what are the real damages to Wikipedia?

Not to mention that I don't think Mediawiki holds copyright on much of
anything on any of the Wikimedia sites. It would have to be individual
authors that sue, AFAICT. Or perhaps Wikipedia could act as
"publisher" on behalf on anonymous authors.

By the way, do you have to show damages in order to get a court order
to stop distributing copyright-violating material? I was under the
impression that you didn't.

    AR> It allows free copying anyway with just some moral rights
    AR> notices that are not that enforceable in US law anyway;

My understand was that copyleft Free Software licenses were pretty
darn enforceable. Viz this article by Eben Moglen:

   http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-18-013-20-OP-LL

Do you think he's wrong? Or that Free Content is significantly
different from Free Software?

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

in_reply_to:
<87fzduh9u4.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	(Evan Prodromou's message of "Sun, 01 Feb 2004 14:35:15 -0500")

body:
>>>>> "EP" == Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> writes:

    EP> Not to mention that I don't think Mediawiki holds copyright on
    EP> much of anything on any of the Wikimedia sites.

s/Mediawiki/Wikimedia/

Jeez, gettin' sloppy.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

references:
<bvg8q6$1pf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<200401311153.04558.sascha@pantropy.net>
	<bvj1q5$dv6$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Now that I got the MediaWiki namespace to work on my installation, I
notice that my patch does not work for things inserted using {{msg:}}.
Please do not commit ;-) ... I'll work on it.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

references:
<bvg8q6$1pf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<200401311153.04558.sascha@pantropy.net>	<bvj1q5$dv6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bvj30m$fr8$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Here is the newest patch for the suggested change. I have
tested it thoroughly and it works perfectly now. (I've
learnt that strpos *is* different from substr ;-) )

Now, some more questions:
- Am I authorised to commit this change to CVS?
- Can someone put it on test.wikipedia.org then?
- How long until it will be put live on the real servers?

Thanks,
Timwi

Index: phase3/includes/OutputPage.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/OutputPage.php,v
retrieving revision 1.79
diff -u -r1.79 OutputPage.php
--- phase3/includes/OutputPage.php	30 Jan 2004 17:07:50 -0000	1.79
+++ phase3/includes/OutputPage.php	1 Feb 2004 14:45:44 -0000
@@ -1054,6 +1054,11 @@
  				$s .= $sk->makeLink( $link, $text, "", $trail );
  */
  			}
+            if( ( $nt->getPrefixedText() == $wgTitle->getPrefixedText() ) &&
+				( strpos( $link, "#" ) == FALSE ) ) {
+				$s .= "<strong>" . $text . "</strong>" . $trail;
+				continue;
+			}
  			if( $ns == $media ) {
  				$s .= $sk->makeMediaLinkObj( $nt, $text ) . $trail;
  				$wgLinkCache->addImageLinkObj( $nt );


from_name: Till Westermayer

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

Hi Optim,

>How could we distinguish malicious from
>non-malicious behaviour with a formulated policy
>(i.e. without human judgement) ?

why exactly do we need that? Why can't human jugdement and maybe the one
or other discussion be enough?

Till

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


from_name: Optim

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

body:
yes I agree with Caroline/Secretlondon, too.

I think it would be better to avoid fair use etc.
It's more safe.

--Optim

--- Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Caroline Ford a ?crit:
>
> many things I agree with
>
> but just, hi Caroline (I read the whole mail
> wondering who Caroline was) :-)
>
> > Yann Forget wrote:
> >
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a
> ?crit :
> >>
> >>
> >>> Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that
> is public information.
> >>> Just like the news is not really
> copyrightable. That is why you can
> >>> use pictures of famous people and famous
> events. Unless their is
> >>> something particularly creative about the
> photo there is just a
> >>> mechanical
> >>> reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of
> an old painting.
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> This is something new to me.
> >> Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11
> attacks are not copyrightable?
> >> As well as pictures of the presidents of the
> US?
> >> We have a problem with the pictures of the
> presidents of France which
> >> are "? Pr?sidence de la R?publique.
> Documentation fran?aise".
> >> cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php
> >> Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Yann
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > As always they are only talking about US
> copyright law. As far as I know
> > we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I
> imagine it will be the same in
> > France.
> > Telephone directories are copyrighted in the
> UK, for example.
> > This is why some of us are very unhappy about
> "fair use", as it means
> > that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK,
> or have a fork.
> >
> > We have no pictures of UK politicians for the
> same reason.
> >
> > What would be nice would be actual advice as
> to what _we_ can do. I
> > understand that German wikipedia has banned
> fair use images. I know that
> > most of what has been suggested is illegal
> here and that British
> > contributors are cautious because the
> international nature of the
> > project never seems to be considered.
> >
> > Caroline (User:Secretlondon)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


body:
my rationale is that small communities don't need
many policies and rules but large communities
tend to use them more because they need the
policies.

As wikipedia becomes more popular, we will face
new problems and new trollying behaviour that we
will need to fight. We can build the policy from
before so that we can be ready when the problem
arises. We already have ~200K articles. As we
grow, we may attract more troublemakers too.

unfortunately... in a large community it is
difficult not to use policies and rules.

the proposed prohibition is not meant to limit
individuality and personal creative expression
but to make the life difficult for people who may
use "masked" usernames as a means of creating
some confusion etc.

--Optim

--- Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Optim a ?crit:
> > yes we need flexibility.
> >
> > As I said the proposed prohibition seeks to
> > prevent malicious behaviour and not to make
> our
> > life difficult.
> >
> > many people "mask" their usernames but they
> don't
> > have malicious intention. Most of them use
> the
> > same "mask" all the time.
> >
> > If we can have a consensus that a policy
> > regarding "masked" usernames is needed, we
> can
> > start discussing the details and formulate
> the
> > policy so that it will be flexible and will
> not
> > make our life difficult.
> >
> > Also, nobody will be "prosecuted" until the
> > policy will be in effect. And of course the
> > policy should be well-formulated in order to
> > avoid misunderstandings and "prosecution" of
> > non-malicious users.
> >
> > How could we distinguish malicious from
> > non-malicious behaviour with a formulated
> policy
> > (i.e. without human judgement) ?
> >
> > --Optim
>
> I think that a policy here would be
> inappropriate. Common sense is
> appropriate. Please, do not turn Wikipedia in
> something worse that
> french administration. Too many policies, kill
> the policies that really
> matter :-)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] support for <span> tags

body:
Right now, we support <div> tags, but not <span> tags. I can't imagine
there is a legitimate security concern for disallowing <span> tags, and
supporting them would allow CSS-correct style changing mid-sentence.
(<div> tags put their contents into a new box, like a new paragraph)

Is this the intended behavior? If not, can it be fixed by a
configuration change or is it a code issue?

- David [[User:Nohat]]

PS I posted a bug a couple days ago about edit links, and it seems to be
pretty serious. The problem is if a section is commented out in an HTML
comment (<!-- -->) , then the counters for links and the edit section
code get out of sync, and when you click to edit a section, it takes you
to the wrong section. This is very confusing if a user inadvertently
clicks an edit section link on an affected page. At the very least, a
warning about this problem should listed somewhere.

Bug page:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=887680&group_id=34373&atid=411192

Example of an affected page:

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

Try clicking the [edit] link for the "Writing system" section


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

references:
<bvg8q6$1pf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<200401311153.04558.sascha@pantropy.net>	<bvj1q5$dv6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bvj30m$fr8$2@sea.gmane.org>	<bvj3mi$gu8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<pan.2004.02.01.14.58.39.178674@gabrielwicke.de>

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 14:49:39 +0000, Timwi wrote:
>
>>Here is the newest patch for the suggested change. I have
>>tested it thoroughly and it works perfectly now. (I've
>>learnt that strpos *is* different from substr ;-) )
>>
>>Now, some more questions:
>>- Am I authorised to commit this change to CVS?
>>- Can someone put it on test.wikipedia.org then?
>>- How long until it will be put live on the real servers?
>
> Current CVS HEAD is the live version, any new features should either wait
> or go into a separate branch until a new stable branch is cut. Having a
> joined devel branch again after the current freeze will simplify the
> test.wikipedia.org update. It's currently running my 'squid' branch.

Hm. Can you simplify this for someone who doesn't really know anything
about CVS branches? :-) What exactly do I have to type on the command
line to commit this change to the correct branch? Then what do I have to
do to get it up on test.wikipedia.org?

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] New servers delivered!

body:
Tomorrow morning I'll be taking all of them offline to run memtest86
for 24 hours.  Tuesday morning I'll put them back online and that'll
be our "seal of approval".  At that point, beta-testing the software
setup seems wise.

--Jimbo

Brion Vibber wrote:

> I ran memtester on all the new machines overnight, for about 20-21
> hours, with no problems. I'm now running the VA-CTCS "cerebus" burn-in
> tests.
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/va-ctcs/
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
On Sunday 01 February 2004 02:46 pm, Anthere wrote:
> Sascha Noyes a ?crit:
> > On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
> >>Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
> >>between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
> >>I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
> >>december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
> >
> > Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd
> > argue that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection
> > policy.
> >
> > Best,
> > Sascha Noyes
>
> I checked what was rule number 2. I saw it was "never protect if you
> have edited the page"
>
> I suppose you are trying to tell me now that I have broken rule number 2
> in reverting the article to a previous state while protecting it ?
>
> I never edited the article before I made that reversion.
> I am *absolutely* not interested by this article
> This morning I answered to a request of Adam Carr for mediation.
> Mav and I told him there were other steps before mediation.

It is correct that you were not involved in the dispute.  I just had a
knee-jerk reaction to seeing someone revert a page to a particular version,
and then protecting it. (Having seen 168.. do that on [[DNA]] just yesterday
- a dispute in which they were involved). For this I apologise.

>
> This evening, I saw no progress, only reversions going on.
> I thought in my innocence, that I could protect a page I had never
> edited once, since I saw Adam and 172 reverting it on turn.
> Bad move !
>
> Last time I protected a page, I was very coldly told I did wrong,
> because I protected the current version, and not the stable version.
> So, as a good girl, I am careful this time to protect the stable
> version, and to list the page in the protected pages
> And I did not do the right think again ???

I don't see anything on [[Wikipedia:Protection policy]] about reverting to a
"stable version" before protecting a page, so I don't see what the people
telling you to revert to a stable version would have based this on. I do,
however, see on the policy page that:

"In addition, admins should try to avoid favoring one version of the article
over another, unless of course, one version is trolling or vandalism in which
case you don't want to protect that version. However, it is best to let
someone else do the reversion to maintain some distance."

Which would seem to contradict what they told you.

>
> Want me to be very strongly honest here ?
>
> No, I won't, I might break a rule of basic politeness.

I don't have a problem with you expressing your honest opinion, and appreciate
the fact that you were obviously not concerned which version of the page
should be displayed, but rather that you wanted to end the reversion war.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&diff=2218064&oldid=2217811

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&diff=2218098&oldid=2218064

*Oppose - as a father and teacher Uwe spends too
much time on wikipedia anyway
[[User:Vikings|sailor]] 01:42, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)
''([[User:JamesDay]] notes that sailor is
[[User:Vikings]])''

and I ask:

why we need to run after them and note their
"username tricks" ?? why not just prohibit this
behaviour??

I didn't want to refer to certain examples at
first, so I was discussing from a theoretical
point of view.

Now whith this actual example, how do you think?

--Optim

--- Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> my rationale is that small communities don't
> need
> many policies and rules but large communities
> tend to use them more because they need the
> policies.
>
> As wikipedia becomes more popular, we will face
> new problems and new trollying behaviour that
> we
> will need to fight. We can build the policy
> from
> before so that we can be ready when the problem
> arises. We already have ~200K articles. As we
> grow, we may attract more troublemakers too.
>
> unfortunately... in a large community it is
> difficult not to use policies and rules.
>
> the proposed prohibition is not meant to limit
> individuality and personal creative expression
> but to make the life difficult for people who
> may
> use "masked" usernames as a means of creating
> some confusion etc.
>
> --Optim
>
>
> --- Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Optim a ?crit:
> > > yes we need flexibility.
> > >
> > > As I said the proposed prohibition seeks to
> > > prevent malicious behaviour and not to make
> > our
> > > life difficult.
> > >
> > > many people "mask" their usernames but they
> > don't
> > > have malicious intention. Most of them use
> > the
> > > same "mask" all the time.
> > >
> > > If we can have a consensus that a policy
> > > regarding "masked" usernames is needed, we
> > can
> > > start discussing the details and formulate
> > the
> > > policy so that it will be flexible and will
> > not
> > > make our life difficult.
> > >
> > > Also, nobody will be "prosecuted" until the
> > > policy will be in effect. And of course the
> > > policy should be well-formulated in order
> to
> > > avoid misunderstandings and "prosecution"
> of
> > > non-malicious users.
> > >
> > > How could we distinguish malicious from
> > > non-malicious behaviour with a formulated
> > policy
> > > (i.e. without human judgement) ?
> > >
> > > --Optim
> >
> > I think that a policy here would be
> > inappropriate. Common sense is
> > appropriate. Please, do not turn Wikipedia in
> > something worse that
> > french administration. Too many policies,
> kill
> > the policies that really
> > matter :-)
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building
> tool. Try it!
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

references:
<bvg8q6$1pf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<200401311153.04558.sascha@pantropy.net>
	<bvj1q5$dv6$1@sea.gmane.org> <bvj30m$fr8$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<bvj3mi$gu8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 14:49:39 +0000, Timwi wrote:

>
> Here is the newest patch for the suggested change. I have
> tested it thoroughly and it works perfectly now. (I've
> learnt that strpos *is* different from substr ;-) )
>
> Now, some more questions:
> - Am I authorised to commit this change to CVS?
> - Can someone put it on test.wikipedia.org then?
> - How long until it will be put live on the real servers?

Current CVS HEAD is the live version, any new features should either wait
or go into a separate branch until a new stable branch is cut. Having a
joined devel branch again after the current freeze will simplify the
test.wikipedia.org update. It's currently running my 'squid' branch.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: support for <span> tags

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> I don't think this would be desirable- all structural needs like
> empahsizing, indenting, lists,.. are provided as wiki markup, the styling
> should be done with a better system-wide stylesheet. Which styling options
> do you miss?

I'd like to be able to specify a specific large font size via something
like

    ʃ

on the page about that character (in the example, the esh character,
which is part of IPA), or to set one of the other font properties on a
page about say, font properties in CSS, like

    this is red text
    and this is blue text

which is the "correct" way to do it, as  tags have been deprecated
in HTML since 1997 (7 years!), as are things like <big> and ,
and yet these deprecated tags seem to be how such formatting is done on
Wikipedia right now.

   http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970708/appendix/changes.html
   (note this is the oldest spec in which  and  are
   deprecated, not the most recent version)

In fact, I would argue that Wikipedia policy should be towards
compliance with standards, and  and  tags should NOT be
allowed, as they are deprecated from the HTML spec (and not permitted at
all in XHTML).

Furthermore, we can already do stuff like this using
 tags, but
each time the style changes it makes a new paragraph. While I
wholeheartedly agree that we need more robust system-wide stylesheets,
but when we do, the correct way to apply such styles would be via a
 tag, as in

    Text in that style

or whatever. Perhaps there should be a wiki markup for  tags, but
there isn't one yet. We already allow non-wiki formatting via
 and
   and , and since  tags are the correct way to do
things that we now do via  tags, I don't see the harm in allowing
 tags.

- David [[User:Nohat]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New machines

body:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 07:05:07 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> For our immediate purposes, which do we want?  Mirroring (safety) or
> striping (performance)?

Safety i'd say. And as much ram as possible for speed.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New machines

body:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 07:05:07 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I'm thinking, but correct me if I'm wrong, that we can have one of the
> other machines run a replicator, giving us safety, and then we can do
> striping on this machine for performance.
>
> In the future, when geoffrin is healthy and is the primary, Jimbo the
> President of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. will call Jimbo the
> President of Bomis, Inc., and complain.  Jimbo is responsible
> for the error, so we'll make him pay for a new card!

Or would it be possible to get a proper card before doing more testing?
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spam Assassin

body:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 07:10:35 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> In my experience, SpamAssassin is only a partial solution, but I'm
> probably a very extreme case.  I get over 1,000 spams a day, and
> SpamAssassin catches only about half of them.  Most of the rest are
> caught by my own homemade "automatic whitelisting" thingy, but I still
> have to go through the "nowhitelist" folder by hand for now.

Did you try sa-learn? Enabling the all spam relay db lookups and Vipul's
Razor also helps a lot.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Displaying http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:*

body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> writes:

> I second that.
> Personally I would not display the picture on the description page.

Thanks, yes, but a small picture (300x225px) is acceptable.

> And yes, an announce would be nice.

;)

erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> It's a good thing that our image pages now behave as expected: click a
> picture, get a larger version.

Yes, from this POV the interface is okay.

> But you are correct to point out that for very large images, this
> makes quickly checking the description text more difficult. This will
> become worse as we add more very-high-resolution images, which we
> should given our goal to release a print version.

Yes, that's the point.

> A better solution to the problem is to add a small (i)nfo icon next to the
> magnifying glass which views the image page with a &showpicture=no
> parameter, not displaying the zoomed version.

IMO, the default setting should be &showpicture=small and I am not sure
whether there is enough space for both these icon, the magnifying glass
and the (i)nfo icon - maybe the magnifying glass is superfluous since
the user can click on the image to achieve the same goal.

> In the long term, we may also want to support two zoom levels for very
> large images.

Probably - as long as I am not connected via DSL I don't want to be
bombed with 24MB images.

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


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Erik wrote:
>A better solution to the problem is to add a small (i)nfo icon
>next to the magnifying glass which views the image page with
>a &showpicture=no parameter, not displaying the zoomed
>version. In the long term, we may also want to support two
>zoom levels for very large images.

Why not limit the width of any auto displayed image on an image description
page to a 600 pixel width and then place a zoom icon on that image if it in
fact is wider than 600 pixels? Clicking on the zoom icon will bring the user to
a page that /only/ displayed the image (current behavior of media links).

I would also like to see the ability to add captions to non-thumbnail images.
For example [[image:blah.jpg|right|300px|''This is a caption'']] does not
display ''This is a caption'' as a caption - it just renders it as alt text. I
understand why ''This is alt text'' in [[image:blah.jpg|''This is alt text'']]
cannot be displayed as caption for backwards compatibility reasons. But if
something like right|300px| is in there, then, IMO, anything after the last |
should be rendered as a caption.

Also, not being able to have links in captions is a bit annoying. But given the
implementation, I can understand why this would not be easy to do.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


body:
One more thing: Display any text on the image description page before
displaying the image. That will negate the concerns by some that large images
push the description down too far.

--mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


from_name: John C. Penta

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Harper <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Sunday, February 1, 2004 1:52 pm
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #4

> Next up, we discuss which solutions we shall apply. I favour
> putting troublesome
> people in a dungeon and torturing them, but there you are.

Can we eat them?

John
I get the legs!


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #4

body:
We've provisionally agreed on what rules will goven arbitration - IE, what people will
be found guilty and innocent of:

----
The arbitrators will judge cases according to the following guidelines, which they will
apply with common sense and discretion, and an eye to the expectations of the
community:
1) Established Wikipedia customs and common practices
2) Wikipedia's "laws": terms of use, submission standards, byelaws, general
disclaimer, copyright license.
3) Sensible "Real world" laws

Former decisions will not be binding on the arbitrators - rather, they intend to learn
from experience.
-----

We've also decided to tweak the Jurisdiction rules based on your feedback, so that
number four is now: "The arbitrators will primarily investigate interpersonal disputes"

Next up, we discuss which solutions we shall apply. I favour putting troublesome
people in a dungeon and torturing them, but there you are.

-Martin


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> # Files with these extensions will never be allowed as uploads.
>> $wgFileBlacklist = array(
>>         # HTML may contain cookie-stealing JavaScript and web bugs
>>         "html", "htm",
>>         # PHP scripts may execute arbitrary code on the server
>>         "php", "phtml", "php3", "php4", "phps",
>>         # Other types that may be interpreted by some servers
>>         "shtml", "jhtml", "pl", "py",
>>         # May contain harmful executables for Windows victims
>>         "exe", "scr", "dll", "msi", "vbs", "bat", "com", "pif" );
>
>
> You might want to add "cmd", "vxd", and "cpl" to the latter list.
>
> Timwi

adding .zip to the blacklist might not hurt, as it is frequently used to
smuggle Windows execuables through similar filters.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

body:
Yann Forget a ?crit:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
> Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a ?crit :
>
>>Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information.
>>Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can
>>use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is
>>something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical
>>reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
>
>
> This is something new to me.
> Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable?
> As well as pictures of the presidents of the US?
> We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are
> "? Pr?sidence de la R?publique. Documentation fran?aise".
> cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php
> Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
>
> Thanks,

I think we cannot. We do not have the same rights for public images.
Which is why there are regularly lawsuits for pictures taken from our
politicians or Steph de Monaco


subject: [WikiEN-l] Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.

[[User:Anthere|ant]] (worth a ban ?)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

body:
Caroline Ford a ?crit:

many things I agree with

but just, hi Caroline (I read the whole mail wondering who Caroline was) :-)

> Yann Forget wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a ?crit :
>>
>>
>>> Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information.
>>> Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can
>>> use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is
>>> something particularly creative about the photo there is just a
>>> mechanical
>>> reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
>>>
>>
>>
>> This is something new to me.
>> Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable?
>> As well as pictures of the presidents of the US?
>> We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which
>> are "? Pr?sidence de la R?publique. Documentation fran?aise".
>> cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php
>> Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Yann
>>
>>
>>
> As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I know
> we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the same in
> France.
> Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
> This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means
> that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
>
> We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
>
> What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I
> understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know that
> most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British
> contributors are cautious because the international nature of the
> project never seems to be considered.
>
> Caroline (User:Secretlondon)


body:
Optim a ?crit:
> yes we need flexibility.
>
> As I said the proposed prohibition seeks to
> prevent malicious behaviour and not to make our
> life difficult.
>
> many people "mask" their usernames but they don't
> have malicious intention. Most of them use the
> same "mask" all the time.
>
> If we can have a consensus that a policy
> regarding "masked" usernames is needed, we can
> start discussing the details and formulate the
> policy so that it will be flexible and will not
> make our life difficult.
>
> Also, nobody will be "prosecuted" until the
> policy will be in effect. And of course the
> policy should be well-formulated in order to
> avoid misunderstandings and "prosecution" of
> non-malicious users.
>
> How could we distinguish malicious from
> non-malicious behaviour with a formulated policy
> (i.e. without human judgement) ?
>
> --Optim

I think that a policy here would be inappropriate. Common sense is
appropriate. Please, do not turn Wikipedia in something worse that
french administration. Too many policies, kill the policies that really
matter :-)


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Sascha Noyes a ?crit:

> > Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd
argue
> > that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection
policy.
> >
> I checked what was rule number 2. I saw it was "never protect if you
> have edited the page"
>

Hi Anthere,

I think perhaps that Sascha wasn't accusing you of doing anything wrong. I
interpreted their comments as "it isn't that important which version you
protected it at (as hopefullly it will only be a temporary measure), it is
just good that neither you or anyone lese broke Rule 2".

I could be wrong but I think that was the intention.

Regards,

Andrew (Ams80)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid

body:
Gabriel and I have been testing the squid code; we've got Larousse set
up as a squid serving the test wiki at: http://larousse.wikimedia.org/

(Yes, with a "media")

Seems to be more or less working; we may set it up for en.wikipedia.org
soon if things seem well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040201/c8ea7f2e/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Nils Kehrein

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Here are the defaults for 'recommended' file formats and the blacklist:
> # Other types that may be interpreted by some servers
> "shtml", "jhtml", "pl", "py",

+ .cgi

 > # May contain harmful executables for Windows victims
 > "exe", "scr", "dll", "msi", "vbs", "bat", "com", "pif" );

+ .msi (executable MS Windows installation file)

Regards,
Nils.

--
Written by 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Sascha Noyes a ?crit:
> On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
>
>>Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
>>between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
>>I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
>>december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>
>
> Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd argue
> that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection policy.
>
> Best,
> Sascha Noyes

Sasha

Last time I protected a page on en, I was quite severely told that I had
broken a very important rule, which said "revert to the last stable
version" (I protected the last version).

Perhaps that rule is no more enforced.

I am always a train late in rules updates.

I fear I know not the rule number2.

I may have done another "boulette" :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Sascha Noyes a ?crit:
> On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
>
>>Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
>>between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
>>I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
>>december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>
>
> Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd argue
> that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection policy.
>
> Best,
> Sascha Noyes

I checked what was rule number 2. I saw it was "never protect if you
have edited the page"

I suppose you are trying to tell me now that I have broken rule number 2
in reverting the article to a previous state while protecting it ?

I never edited the article before I made that reversion.
I am *absolutely* not interested by this article
This morning I answered to a request of Adam Carr for mediation.
Mav and I told him there were other steps before mediation.

This evening, I saw no progress, only reversions going on.
I thought in my innocence, that I could protect a page I had never
edited once, since I saw Adam and 172 reverting it on turn.
Bad move !

Last time I protected a page, I was very coldly told I did wrong,
because I protected the current version, and not the stable version.
So, as a good girl, I am careful this time to protect the stable
version, and to list the page in the protected pages
And I did not do the right think again ???

Want me to be very strongly honest here ?

No, I won't, I might break a rule of basic politeness.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
Alex R. a ?crit:
> From: "Sascha Noyes" <sascha at pantropy.net>
>
>>On Sunday 01 February 2004 01:33 pm, Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>Could someone have a look at the conflict over Alexander Lukashenko,
>>>between Adam Carr and 172. And give their opinion ?
>>>I hardly dare to say it, but I reverted to a version that is anterior to
>>>december 2003, to insure it was "somehow" stable.
>>
>>Does it matter _that much_ which version a page is protected on? I'd argue
>>that it matters less than breaking rule # 2 of the page protection policy.
>
>
> I tend to agree with Sascha Ant, the reality is that there is a lot of
> propaganda
> about Lukashenko floating around. He is a dictator, he did expell OSCE
> representatives but there are a lot of people in Belarus and elsewhere
> who might agree with other versions of "reality" and see him as a mostly
> benevolent force. To write a really good article about this guy requires a
> lot
> of reserach and most of the versions of the article that I have seen are
> pretty poor.
> Better to leave the old version for now and deal with the disputes as it
> will
> likely take a while to resolve the issues between these contributors and
> separate fact from fiction and propaganda which is coming from several
> different
> sources.
>
> Alex756

Alex,

I was acting as a mediator. The mediator is not supposed to judge, nor
to arbitrate. I spent 10 minutes trying to respect a rule I was
criticized for not using another time. Now, not only was I wrong not to
know that this rule was not valid any more, but on top, I should have
decided what was the proper version as a neutral mediator ?

People, if you want help, please stop complaining each time someone
makes a move, that the move is incorrect. That is the *best* way to
discourage good willingness.

Seriously


from_name: Viajero

body:
On 02/01/04  at 06:52 PM, "Martin Harper"
<martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk> said:

> Next up, we discuss which solutions we shall apply.

I'd like to see temporary, article-level bans as one solution.

V.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:CrucifiedChrist

body:
User:CrucifiedChrist has decided to re-join us.  Can we do something to force him to change his name, please?

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040201/3acd13d4/attachment.htm


body:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 15:21:56 -0500, David Friedland wrote:

> Right now, we support <div> tags, but not <span> tags. I can't imagine
> there is a legitimate security concern for disallowing <span> tags, and
> supporting them would allow CSS-correct style changing mid-sentence.
> (<div> tags put their contents into a new box, like a new paragraph)
>
> Is this the intended behavior? If not, can it be fixed by a
> configuration change or is it a code issue?

I don't think this would be desirable- all structural needs like
empahsizing, indenting, lists,.. are provided as wiki markup, the styling
should be done with a better system-wide stylesheet. Which styling options
do you miss?

> PS I posted a bug a couple days ago about edit links, and it seems to be
> pretty serious. The problem is if a section is commented out in an HTML
> comment (<!-- -->) , then the counters for links and the edit section
> code get out of sync, and when you click to edit a section, it takes you
> to the wrong section. This is very confusing if a user inadvertently
> clicks an edit section link on an affected page. At the very least, a
> warning about this problem should listed somewhere.

Guess this is something important for a future 'reply' button for talk
pages as well.

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
Hello everyone --

This year, O'Reilly will be presenting the Open Source Convention here
is Portland, Oregon. Since travelling to it is a negligible task
(it's in downtown, & I usually commute further to work than there), I've
been considering making a presentation about Wikipedia at this year's
convention.

However, I can think of about a dozen people who know far more about
the goings-on at Wikipedia than me (e.g., Brion, Magnus, Mav, Ed Poor --
practically everyone on this mailling list), & I wanted to make sure that

1. No one is planning on making a similar presentation;

2. No one minds that I attempt to give what O'Reilly calls a "Session
Presentation" (it's a 90 minute talk) on Wikipedia.

Obviously, I'm not very familiar with the technical side of Wikipedia --
although the challenge of keeping one of the largest Wikiwiki sites up
& running is something that any talk needs to address. My intended emphasis
for this talk would be more on the social side -- as well as addressing
the perennial question, ``Can a distributed group of people write a
useable encyclopedia?" (FWIW, my honest answer to that question is yes.)

Just to be up front, I could receive an honorium for this presentation
(besides free admission to the conference), & as an unemployed contributor
I'll admit I could use the money, but I was planning on giving part of
the money to the Wikipedia Foundation.

More information about making presentations at OSCON is available at
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/

Geoff Burling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid

body:
On Feb 1, 2004, at 20:15, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Seems to be more or less working; we may set it up for
> en.wikipedia.org soon if things seem well.

We gave it a quick trial run, but squid crashes after a couple minutes
under that load (despite being able to shell out 390 pages per second
on a simple benchmark.)

Still looking into things...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040201/acec8e43/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Peter Danenberg

body:
> I'd like to be able to specify a specific large font size via something
> like
>
>    ʃ

I ended up turning  "back on" for WikiTeX since, whereas it's
hardly possible to predict the bottomline of image-rendered IPA, the
following is quite handy:

    <rend ling "c\'atura\.nga"/>

Best,
Peter


body:
>     [...]<rend ling "c\'atura\.nga"/>

Whoops:

    <rend tipa "c\'atura\.nga"/>

Peter


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
This sounds interesting.  I know nothing about the technical side either
and would not consider competing for podium space; I don't even know
whether the conference itself would interest me.

If enough people are interested this could serve as the excuse for a
get-together of Wikipedians, particularly the ones on the West coast.
 For me it's a leisurely 6-hour drive from Vancouver.  There was talk
about such things last year that never materialized.

Ec

Geoff Burling wrote:

>This year, O'Reilly will be presenting the Open Source Convention here
>is Portland, Oregon. Since travelling to it is a negligible task
>(it's in downtown, & I usually commute further to work than there), I've
>been considering making a presentation about Wikipedia at this year's
>convention.
>
>However, I can think of about a dozen people who know far more about
>the goings-on at Wikipedia than me (e.g., Brion, Magnus, Mav, Ed Poor --
>practically everyone on this mailling list), & I wanted to make sure that
>
>1. No one is planning on making a similar presentation;
>
>2. No one minds that I attempt to give what O'Reilly calls a "Session
>Presentation" (it's a 90 minute talk) on Wikipedia.
>
>Obviously, I'm not very familiar with the technical side of Wikipedia --
>although the challenge of keeping one of the largest Wikiwiki sites up
>& running is something that any talk needs to address. My intended emphasis
>for this talk would be more on the social side -- as well as addressing
>the perennial question, ``Can a distributed group of people write a
>useable encyclopedia?" (FWIW, my honest answer to that question is yes.)
>
>More information about making presentations at OSCON is available at
>http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

> As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I
> know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the
> same in France.
> Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
> This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means
> that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
>
> We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
>
> What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I
> understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know
> that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British
> contributors are cautious because the international nature of the
> project never seems to be considered.
>
> Caroline (User:Secretlondon)

Speaking only for myself, I regret that my discussion is overly oriented
to US copyright law, because that's the law I'm familiar with. When it
comes to the UK and others, the extent of my knowledge is having read
some of the applicable statutes. Do we have any barristers or solicitors
contributing who might be able to add their insight to the problem? With
better information, we could get an idea of potential liabilities and
not put all our eggs in the US-based "fair use" basket. For now, the
servers are physically in the US, and the foundation is incorporated in
the US, so any lawsuit would almost certainly be in US court using US
law. But we're talking about jurisdiction and choice of law issues here,
not just copyright law. And it means we need to be careful of the
implications of creating official chapters in other countries.

Not being able to host a UK mirror is a problem, but I for one have no
qualms about whether a group based in the UK can fork. For anyone who
exercises the *right* to fork, that only means they will not be subject
to any legal interference by Wikipedia; it doesn't protect them against
other legal consequences. We often focus on the GFDL as a license to
copy, but equally important is the accompanying disclaimer of
warranties. Specifically in this case, Wikipedia gives no warranty that
the material you copy won't infringe someone else's copyright. Anybody
who wants to, fork at your own risk, we'll neither stop you nor protect you.

On some of these scenarios, I'm curious as to the specifics. If
telephone directories are copyrightable, great, but maybe the copyright
doesn't prevent someone from independently collecting and publishing the
same information, or does it?

As for pictures of public figures, that's not really about copyright law
- a face is not itself a creative mode of expression, and taking a
picture is not making a copy (anyway, the person didn't create the face
themselves, so shouldn't any copyright belong to their parents, or maybe
the plastic surgeon?). We're really talking about the related issue of a
right of publicity. But there has to be some ability to use these
images, because the news media does, and of course paparazzi manage
somehow. I don't know what the basis is when applying non-US law, but if
other organizations can publish pictures of these people, there has to
be some way for Wikipedia to do so legally as well.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid

body:
On Feb 1, 2004, at 22:42, Brion Vibber wrote:
> We gave it a quick trial run, but squid crashes after a couple minutes
> under that load (despite being able to shell out 390 pages per second
> on a simple benchmark.)
>
> Still looking into things...

We downgraded to an earlier revision that sort of works (doesn't
crash!) but isn't caching things it really should be able to, like the
images and stylesheets.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040201/a0b613c3/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alexander Lukashenko

body:
My apologies for "advising" you how to go about protecting a page, when in
fact you were completely correct and I was completely incorrect. I hope you
take my word for the fact that it wasn't meant as an attack on you, but only
(wrongly!) pointing out the rules.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Troubles with MediaWiki namespace

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm trying to use the MediaWiki namespace on my new installation of
>> MediaWiki.
>>
>> Unfortunately, {{msg:Blah}} is being replaced by nothing (i.e. it is
>> just being removed) even though [[MediaWiki:Blah]] does contain text.
>>
>> What might the cause of this be?
>>
>> Thanks again for any help,
>> Timwi
>
> You need to put the following in LocalSettings.php:
> $wgUseDatabaseMessages = true;
> This could probably be called a bug.

Thanks for your help. The thread has progressed a bit further on the
mediawiki-l mailing list (sorry about posting this here when it really
belonged there; thanks to Angela for pointing out to me that there
exists this other mailing list). It seems that this option enables the
{{msg:}} functionality *AND* the use of the MediaWiki namespace for all
the user interface messages. I think those should be separate.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid

body:
On Feb 1, 2004, at 23:57, Brion Vibber wrote:
> We downgraded to an earlier revision that sort of works (doesn't
> crash!) but isn't caching things it really should be able to, like the
> images and stylesheets.

I recompiled the latest snapshot without ESI support and things seem to
work right so far. It's now caching the javascript, CSS, and images as
well as common page hits. Yay!

Hopefully as the cache grows it'll help take some load off.

Also, having working squids will make it easier to switch datacenters
once the new machines are up. While DNS updates propagate, the old
addresses can be squids that forward transparently to the new servers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040202/8a56f692/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:bvj1b6$d5m$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > On Jan 31, 2004, at 04:45, Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>         # May contain harmful executables for Windows victims
> >>
> >>>         "exe", "scr", "dll", "msi", "vbs", "bat", "com", "pif" );
> >>
> >> You might want to add "cmd", "vxd", and "cpl" to the latter list.
> >
> > Jeez! Is there any file type that _isn't_ executable by default on
> > Windows? :P
>
> Well, out of those three, only "cmd" is "executable by double-click".
>
> But the file format of libraries, drivers and everything is the same for
> EXE, and so they are also executable. For example, "cpl" is a plug-in
> for the Windows Control Panel, and so a CPL file in your Windows
> directory would be executed when you open the Control Panel. Similarly,
> VXD is a device driver, I think.

Any file can contain machine code. Files such as dll, vxd and cpl are only
dangerous if they are somehow downloaded in such a way as to overwrite
existing libraries. Far more dangerous are file formats which are executed
on double-click and can contain VBA macros: doc, xls, etc.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] 2 week warning for 500,
	000 article project-wide press release

body:
Last time I checked, our growth rate had us hitting the half million mark
sometime late this month or early next. Not so anymore due to apparent
increases in our rate of increase.

According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics#pl-zh we have
added ~40,000 articles in the last month. Since we apparently had 460,000
articles as of Feb 1 we should hit 500,000 in two weeks if we keep up the same
rate of growth (or stat drift - could somebody check to make sure that is not
the case?).

So everybody who was involved in creating their language version of
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia's_first_press_release should update
their version so that we can have a coordinated distribution. Again, the
non-English versions should be distributed a week before the English one to
smooth out the load if needed.

Hopefully we will already have migrated to the new server farm by then. We
already had to delay a project-wide press release a few times due to server
issues.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Alexa say - Wikipedia.org now gets more traffic than
	Slashdot.org

body:
Three month Wikipedia.org traffic rank average: 868 (trend up)
Three month Slashdot.org traffic rank average: 897 (trend down)

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=large&compare_sites=Slashdot.org&url=wikipedia.org#graph

This still isn't stable on a weekly basis (that is why the graph shows us so
close still).

However we probably passed them up a while ago given that the Alexa toolbar is
only available in English and well over half our articles are not in English.
Look at the very "low" amount of relative traffic we "get" from our de and fr
subdomains. That is obviously wrong.

But then I imagine a disproportionately large percentage of Slashdot readers
are likely not to install the toolbar either....

All fun and games really since we know their rank and our rank are wrong.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


list: textbook-l

from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject:
[Textbook-l] Rip-off 101: How The Textbook Industry Drive Up The
	Cost Of College Textbooks

body:
http://calpirg.org/CA.asp?id2=11987&id3=CA&

With student and faculty complaints about the price of college textbooks
on the rise, the California Student Public Interest Research Group
(CALPIRG), the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG)
and the OSPIRG Foundation conducted a survey of the most widely assigned
textbooks in the fall of 2003 at 10 public colleges and universities in
California and Oregon. Student volunteers and staff also interviewed 156
faculty and 521 students about the cost of textbooks and their
purchasing practices. Key findings from this survey include:

*) Textbooks are Expensive and Getting Even More Expensive

*) Textbook Publishers Add Bells and Whistles that Drive Up the Price of
Textbooks; Most Faculty Do Not Use These Materials

*) Textbook Publishers Put New Editions on the Market Frequently, Often
With Very Few Content Changes, Making the Less Expensive, Used Textbooks
Obsolete and Unavailable

*) Faculty and Students Support Alternatives That Lower Students? Costs,
Maintain Quality

*) Online Textbooks Hold Promise for Dramatically Lowering the Cost of
Textbooks

Full report:
http://calpirg.org/reports/textbookripoff.pdf  (PDF, 83 KB, 26p.)

Wouter
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Dit berichtdeel is digitaal ondertekend
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/attachments/20040202/670f9287/attachment.pgp


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New servers delivered!

body:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 15:28:12 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Tomorrow morning I'll be taking all of them offline to run memtest86
> for 24 hours.  Tuesday morning I'll put them back online and that'll
> be our "seal of approval".  At that point, beta-testing the software
> setup seems wise.

Please swap the memory before the test- the Squids need at least 3Gb,
better 4 to be fast (they should serve whole wikipedia from memory).
--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
Strike that - I miscalculated our projected increase in the rate we are
increasing. Even so that only adds a week or two.

--mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New servers delivered!

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> > Tomorrow morning I'll be taking all of them offline to run memtest86
> > for 24 hours.  Tuesday morning I'll put them back online and that'll
> > be our "seal of approval".  At that point, beta-testing the software
> > setup seems wise.
>
> Please swap the memory before the test- the Squids need at least 3Gb,
> better 4 to be fast (they should serve whole wikipedia from memory).

Yes, I will do this.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Virtual Punishment

body:
All sorts of VIRTUAL disciplines are available to use. The only barrier is
our creativity. On a mud I played on a character was converted to solid
stone, monolith race, and couldn't move. For example we could code a 60
second delay into any user's moves and put them on the sloth list.

Fred

> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:10:28 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #4
>
> In the Harry Potter books, the castle caretaker longed for the old days
> when they used to discipline students with torture. Hanged them by their
> thumbs, they did.
>
> This is virtually impossible for us ;-)
>
> Kindly ol' Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Mills, Billy

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poor, Edmund W [mailto:Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com]
> Sent: 30 January 2004 19:38
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] A request for prayers (for the new servers!)
>
>
> I would like to humbly request that we pray for God's
> blessing upon the
> new servers -- that they will work well and that they will
> serve all of
> humanity with accurate and useful knowledge.
>
> For those of you who do not believe in God, try this formula:
>
> "Oh, God, if there is a God..."
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed

I'll trust to science.

Billy Mills

DISCLAIMER: This message has been scanned by Norton Antivirus (using the
latest definitions) for all known Viruses.
The information in this message is confidential and is intended solely for
the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you
must not copy, distribute or use this email or the information contained in
it for any purpose other than to notify us. If you have received this
message in error, please notify the sender immediately, and delete this
email from your system. Thank you.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040202/2090c587/attachment.htm


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] A useful human relations perspective (re: Mediation)

body:
This comic strip illustrates the core problem which Mediation addresses:

http://www.unitedmedia.com/creators/onebighappy/archive/images/onebighap
py20040112199631.gif

Ed Poor


body:
In the Harry Potter books, the castle caretaker longed for the old days
when they used to discipline students with torture. Hanged them by their
thumbs, they did.

This is virtually impossible for us ;-)

Kindly ol' Uncle Ed


body:
Fred suggested:

> One idea I have is a ban for one day for each time the perp uses the
> words "stupid", "trash" and "crap" to describe another's edit. This
> could add up to a year or two for some of these folks.

I like the idea of short "time-out" bans. I suggested this a couple of
years ago. Also, it seemed to work fairly well the time Erik M.
(Eloquence) "banned" RK for just under 24 hours last year.

My experience is that time-outs work better than total bans. A ban is
like death or torture: it satisfies one party's desire for revenge, but
at a terrible cost (hint: think of how the other party feels, waking up
dead or maimed...)

Kindly Ol' Uncle Ed


from_name: Kelly Anderson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Assassin

body:
Email works on a store and forward protocol. SpamAssassin works on emails
in the store part of that mechanism. Unfortunately, email lists are simply
a forward multiple times immediately mechanism. Without the store portion,
SpamAssassin cannot be made to work in that way (unless it was somehow
integrated into the source code for the mail manager.) Now, everyone on the
list could install SpamAssassin on their own server, but that's not what
you were asking for. If I'm wrong about how SpamAssassin is working (or it
works in multiple ways) someone please correct me.

One solution I've used is to use Yahoo Groups email manager rather than
majordomo or similar. There is a web interface for approving or rejecting
messages from non-members. You can have as many moderators as you want (can
get) to approve or reject messages to the list. It's also easier for most
people to subscribe or unsubscribe through that interface than through the
interface you are currently using.

I understand the desire to use open source projects, but Yahoo Groups is
free, and it is very effective in helping to bring this sort of thing under
control. I used majordomo myself for about 4 years, and was very reluctant
to switch to Yahoo Groups, but I've never looked back.

-Kelly

At 05:02 PM 1/31/2004, you wrote:

>On Jan 31, 2004, at 15:48, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>>At 02:58 PM 1/31/2004, you wrote:
>>>Non-member posts are held for moderation. Most are spam, and easily
>>>discarded. However, some of the lists get quite a bit of spam and the
>>>admins don't want to sift through it all looking for the "help! i can't
>>>get X to work" message from someone who didn't subscribe yet.
>>
>>So why not just throw that all away? Just bounce it with a "you must join
>>the list to post" message? It's not all that big a deal for a human to
>>join a mailing list... much harder for a spammer's automated computer.
>
>We could for most of the lists. (And indeed, people get an automatic
>response that complains they aren't subscribed.)
>
>There's also a pseudo-list that's used as a contact address for the German
>Wikipedia, though. For that we _need_ to accept non-subscribed addresses.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Assassin

body:
I'm working on this problem Jimbo... keep in touch. :-)

-Kelly

At 08:10 AM 2/1/2004, you wrote:

>Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > Can we install Spam Assassin software on the wikien-l mailing list? How
> > about other mailing lists?
> >
> > Anthere and I have gotten tired of reading and deleting up to 30 daily
> > spam, spam, spam, ham, eggs and spam (hasn't got MUCH spam in it) every
> > day -- the joke gets old after a while.
>
>My understanding was that this list was configured to automatically
>reject messages that are not from subscribers.  I find that this
>change virtually eliminates all spam.  People who send a message
>without being subscribed will get a warning message explaining what
>happened, and they can figure out what to do from there.
>
>In my experience, SpamAssassin is only a partial solution, but I'm
>probably a very extreme case.  I get over 1,000 spams a day, and
>SpamAssassin catches only about half of them.  Most of the rest are
>caught by my own homemade "automatic whitelisting" thingy, but I still
>have to go through the "nowhitelist" folder by hand for now.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
At 02:12 PM 2/1/2004, you wrote:
>In fact, I would argue that Wikipedia policy should be towards compliance
>with standards, and <font> and <center> tags should NOT be allowed, as
>they are deprecated from the HTML spec (and not permitted at all in XHTML).

I would agree with this... but I thought one of the design principles here
was to keep it simple to edit, and provide consistent rendering. All the
non-wiki html stuff is useful in the right hands, but in the wrong hands
(which is a lot of hands) it just ends up making the Wiki look goofy with
various skins applied. Nobody doing weird html markup is going to check how
it looks with everyone's style sheet...

It would be interesting if you could personalize your own style sheet
rather than pick one of the three provided, maybe there's  a way to do this
already... but I don't know what it is.

The basic premise of the new XHTML type standards is that the style sheet
is king. Adding Div and Span tags with specific information in them goes
against the intent of these new standards. They support the old stuff only
for backwards compatibility (in a half sort of way).

-Kelly


body:
Timwi wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to use the MediaWiki namespace on my new installation of
> MediaWiki.
>
> Unfortunately, {{msg:Blah}} is being replaced by nothing (i.e. it is
> just being removed) even though [[MediaWiki:Blah]] does contain text.
>
> What might the cause of this be?
>
> Thanks again for any help,
> Timwi

You need to put the following in LocalSettings.php:

$wgUseDatabaseMessages = true;

This could probably be called a bug.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Protection rules (was: Alexander Lukashenko)

body:
The primary, over-arching rule is:

* Protect the page to prevent vandalism or stop an edit war.

(If that's not rule #1, it should be.)

It doesn't matter if I've edited before or not. Someone who wants
"their" version will always complain, anyway.

Another good rule is:

* After protecting a page, don't make any changes that make other
contributors feel you are taking advantage of your sysop rights.

I've made many edits to protected pages (like [[Silesia]]) which
(technically) violate some rule, I suppose. But I always ask people in
the Edit Summary or the Talk Page if they mind or not. And if someone
minds, I generally offer to undo my edit (just to be fair).

Uncle Ed


subject: [Wikitech-l] memory tests underway

body:
There is one very important quirk that I need to report.  The
dual opteron reports 4,096MB of ram, as expected.

However, the two Pentium IV servers with 4 physical gig of RAM in them
report only 3,584MB of RAM.  I fiddled with the chips to confirm that
each of them really is 1 Gig, and that's not it.  I also poked around
in the bios (in an uneducated manner), but saw nothing to fix.

Here's the setup...  I haven't yet physically labelled the machines
with their names.  This list starts with the Opteron and goes up in ip
numbers by one.

2U Opteron - 4 gig of ram
1 - 2
1 - 2
1 - 4
1 - 4
1 - 1
1 - 1
1 - 1
1 - 1

The idea is that for now, we'll have 2 squids, 2 webservers, and 1
database server.  The other 4 machines with 1 gig of ram could be
pressed into service with or without ram upgrades, or can be used
as-is for auxiliary services.  At least one is going to be the mail
server, and probably another will be the nameserver.

memtest86 will run overnight, and if (as I expect) all goes well, we
will be ready for production tomorrow.  If the machines can only
recognize 3.5GB of RAM instead of 4, that isn't a joyful thing, but
it really doesn't matter a LOT, I don't think.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spam Assassin

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Did you try sa-learn? Enabling the all spam relay db lookups and Vipul's
> Razor also helps a lot.

I haven't tried any learning, but I have enabled all the lookups and
Vipul's Razor.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggested change

references:
<bvg8q6$1pf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<200401311153.04558.sascha@pantropy.net>
	<bvj1q5$dv6$1@sea.gmane.org> <bvj30m$fr8$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<bvj3mi$gu8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<pan.2004.02.01.14.58.39.178674@gabrielwicke.de>
	<bvj5oc$j44$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Hm. Can you simplify this for someone who doesn't really know anything
> about CVS branches? :-) What exactly do I have to type on the command
> line to commit this change to the correct branch? Then what do I have to
> do to get it up on test.wikipedia.org?

I'd second this request.  I've taught myself PHP, and I'm itching
to start doing a little bit of development, but the next big thing
I need to learn is CVS.


subject: [Wikitech-l] New machines

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> I supposed you've forgotten linux has software RAID capability.  I assure
> you, no RAID card within your budget will outperform the system processors
> even under load.  While I generally recommend the use of hardware RAID,
> you don't have one of those in hand.  So, unless you're going to go buy
> one *right now*, software RAID will do. (you *are* making backups, right?)

O.k., that's a useful recommendation, even if I do feel like you're
yelling at me.  :-)

When I was at the colo this morning, I tried to setup the hardware
RAID for safety, safety, safety as encouraged by everyone, but I
failed.  The LSI setup utility told me that the version of the
firmware doesn't support RAID.  Since the card itself is alleged (by
the Internet) to support RAID, I'm guessing all I have to do is update
the firmware, but I figured I'd come back home and research that since
the machine is going to be running memtest86 overnight anyway.

RAID 5 via software RAID sounds better to me than straight mirroring
using the hardware RAID, because 36GB isn't very joyful for us.  3
36GB drives will give us 72GB-ish logical space on a RAID 5 array,
with safety as well.

I have not setup software RAID in some years, but presumably it isn't
hard?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Assassin

body:
Kelly Anderson wrote:
> One solution I've used is to use Yahoo Groups email manager rather than
> majordomo or similar. There is a web interface for approving or rejecting
> messages from non-members. You can have as many moderators as you want
> (can get) to approve or reject messages to the list.

Majordomo has both those features, and a lot more besides.

> I understand the desire to use open source projects, but Yahoo Groups is
> free, and it is very effective in helping to bring this sort of thing
> under control. I used majordomo myself for about 4 years, and was very
> reluctant to switch to Yahoo Groups, but I've never looked back.

I'd say that using Yahoo Groups is a cultural impossibility for us,
whatever the merits might or might not be.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] New machines

body:
On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Upon closer inspection, though, it looks like I've made a slight
>mistake.
>
>LSI 20320 1 Channel U320 SCSI Controller is what I ordered.
>
>http://www.lsilogic.com/products/ultra320_host_bus_adapters/lsi20320rb.html
>
>This card only supports RAID 0 or RAID 1.

As opposed to what other card?

I supposed you've forgotten linux has software RAID capability.  I assure
you, no RAID card within your budget will outperform the system processors
even under load.  While I generally recommend the use of hardware RAID,
you don't have one of those in hand.  So, unless you're going to go buy
one *right now*, software RAID will do. (you *are* making backups, right?)

--Ricky

PS: Hardware RAID isn't magic.  It can screw up your data too.  My DPT
    SmartRaid IV spewed all over it's array a few weeks ago.  The array
    was built several years ago.  I now get the fun task of rebuilding
    '/' from all the numbers in '/lost+found'.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is Jack a troll?

body:
I fired this shot across JackLynch's bow:
----
Jack,

If you can make Tannin so angry that he swears at you, I can't think of
anything but the probability that you are provoking him on purpose.
Maybe to test the new Mediation/Arbitration system? If not, my
apologies, but that's how it looks to me.

So, please try harder to be nice! :-)
----

Given the timing of his appearance, and the issues he focuses on, I
think it's more likely he's a sock puppet than a newbie.

Advice?

Ed Poor
One of many Wikipedia admins


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

references:
<001301c3e832$fb33a320$7cfea8c0@COMPAQAlex02>	<401D07D0.1070501@secretlondon.me.uk>	<shad41v0nt.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>	<200402021916.57353.mail@ulrich-fuchs.de>
	<sh1xpduy2j.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Ulrich Fuchs <mail at ulrich-fuchs.de> writes:
>
>>Our agreed policy is to have no fair use images,
>>
>Some of "us" disagree.  Of course, you must obey the law - but this
>does not mean we must make life easy for third party users (who often
>misuse WP's bandwidth for serving images, though).
>
It seems more sensible to let downstream users accept their own
responsibility for what they do based on their own circumstances,
notably the laws wherever they happen to be.

Ec


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] old

body:
Does the MediaWiki software simply store every old version (1, 2, 3,
...) side by side in the "old" database table, or is there some "diff"
involved in the stored format (like RCS does)?

Did any of this change between Phase II and Phase III?

Was it a non-issue or was there any (documented) design decision or
discussion of this?

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


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] old

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Does the MediaWiki software simply store every old version (1, 2, 3,
>...) side by side in the "old" database table, or is there some "diff"
>involved in the stored format (like RCS does)?
>
>Did any of this change between Phase II and Phase III?
>
>Was it a non-issue or was there any (documented) design decision or
>discussion of this?
>
>
AFAIK, it is still the same mechanism as in Phase II, but Brion works on
on-the-fly compression for the old texts, as the old table gets quite large.

Magnus


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] old

body:
On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 01:28:57PM +0100, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Does the MediaWiki software simply store every old version (1, 2, 3,
> ...) side by side in the "old" database table, or is there some "diff"
> involved in the stored format (like RCS does)?
>
> Did any of this change between Phase II and Phase III?
>
> Was it a non-issue or was there any (documented) design decision or
> discussion of this?

It just stores the old versions in both Phase II and Phase III.

And, of course, nobody discussed anything.


from_name: Carl Witty

subject: [Wikitech-l] New machines

body:
On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 07:05, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> In the future, when geoffrin is healthy and is the primary, Jimbo the
> President of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. will call Jimbo the
> President of Bomis, Inc., and complain.

I have an image of a man with a cell phone in each hand, one against
each ear...

Carl Witty


from_name: A

from_email: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jack

body:
So far the only evidence presented, that Jack Lynch is
a "troll", is that User:Tannin swears at him. All this
gossip and blacklisting is not helping the wikipedia
become a better place.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/


subject: [Wikitech-l] old

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> AFAIK, it is still the same mechanism as in Phase II, but Brion works on
> on-the-fly compression for the old texts, as the old table gets quite large.
>
> Magnus

The big win is not in compressing each individual version (version 6
of the article "London"), but in compressing the entire sequence of
versions for each article, since so much is common between version 6,
7, and 8 of the same article.

This optimization is what RCS does by storing the current text in full
and only the diffs that are needed to reproduce the next earlier
version.  Now, RCS has its roots in the 1970s and does this (1) in a
text file, and (2) in a long sequence of diffs, which makes it very
slow to extract version 1 of a text if the current version is 2314.
I think that some of the more modern version control systems (??
aegis, arch, bitkeeper, darcs, perforce, subversion, ??) play around
with hierarchical systems where every N:th version is stored in full.

Still, when restoring vandalism, version 6 and 8 might be identical,
so storing the two diffs (back and forth) would be less than optimal.
Further, when pieces of text are moved between two articles, the best
compression would have to consider the whole table.  Perhaps MySQL
(or the underlying filesystem) should implement the compression.

I don't know if any existing version control system uses a relational
database backend (MySQL, PostgreSQL, ...), but this would be an
interesting combination independent of Wikipedia, so perhaps it should
be develped as a generic component that can be used from Wikipedia as
well as from other applications.  Especially the way MediaWiki stores
the changelog in a searchable relational table is a great improvement
over primitive file-based systems such as RCS and CVS.

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