body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 10:42:44 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>I think the majority of Current Events editors would disagree. The
>page has been the place to highlight significant news events, and
>linking to articles related to them, largely regardless of article
>quality. In fact, consider it a good, timely way to fill in articles
>with relevant info.
>
>
Quoting policy point 4 from [[en:Wikipedia:In the news section on the
Main Page]]:

"The article must be updated to reflect the new information and a have a
recent date linked (but remember: Wikipedia is not a news report so
relatively small news items should not be put into articles; thus those
type of news items should not be displayed on the Main Page)."

This has been the policy for some time, but it seems to routinely go
ignored, which is a bad thing, IMO.  If I weren't a Wikipedian and came
to the site and saw a news article that caught my attention, but upon
clicking through found something a week out of date that didn't even
mention the news item in question, I wouldn't be very impressed.

It seems people often use the Current Events section of the main page as
more of a POV-pushing forum.  They see some news story they want to
advertise and list it, even if they don't want to take the time to write
an article about it.  I think at the very least forcing people to write
an article about what they want to advocate ought to be a prerequisite
(at least then we get an article out of the deal).

(I should note that many of the entries *have* been good, like the
recent US hurricanes.)

-Mark


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Despite growing pains,
	users hope for dominance of Wiktionary, Mediawiki

body:
Sj-
> Yesterday, the O'Reilly Network's Scott Hacker addressed the end-user
> experience of setting up and customizing a wiki (with some eloquent
> commentary by visitors at the end) :
> _Where's the Movable Type of the Wiki World?_    (
> http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/5794 )

> Hacker suggests the Wiki world needs its own elegant, soup-to-nuts
> wikiproject, comparing the chaos of wiki communities and documentation
> to that of the blogging world pre-Movable Type.  He shopped around for
> a wiki to use for an educational project (which was inspired by
> WikiPedia, retro camel caps and all), and finally settled on MediaWiki
> as the best choice.  Unfortunately, its "scattered and obtuse"
> documentation, "stupidly difficult" customizations, and lack of an
> off-wiki user manual,  left him cold.  He notes he'd be willing to pay
>  on the order of $100 for an actively developed, well-supported
> solution.

I'll use this as an opportunity to promote again the help effort on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents

This is really something every user can help with. There are now several
services which offer free print-on-demand books in the style Cafepress
offers t-shirts (in fact, Cafepress is one of them). So it should not be
too hard to create a printed manual for MediaWiki.

I wonder whether we need something like [[en:Wikipedia:Collaboration of
the Week]] for the whole Wikimedia community, where the current WMCOTW
would be visibly promoted on all projects. This could help in jumpstarting
things like translation, transwiki, new project proposals, embassies, etc.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Despite growing pains,
	users hope for dominance of Wiktionary, Mediawiki


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in The Guardian (London)

body:
It's pretty fantastic.

They trot out Dale Hoiberg again.  He seems to handle most of the
questions in this department.  I'd still like to see him as a WP
advisor
(a la http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_ideal_Wikipedia_board )...

The article online :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1335892,00.html

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:42:52 +0100, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Surprised no one has mentioned this so far - there is a very favourable
> story in today's Guardian newspaper, a two-page spread in its G2 features
> supplement : "How Wikipedia turned knowledge on its head".
>
> Charles


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikijunior - Wikispecies, Mk 2?

body:
I support what Angela said.

You should keep in mind that when a grant inquiry is made, we are not as
specific as to say "we would like money to create a new project doing
this and that". Actually, what I could come to fear would be that we
hesitate sending grant proposal, in fear of receiving money for a
project which would not be supported afterwards...

This said, I agree that grant requests should be more visible. The
problem is that basically, except for Danny who did a lot, the board and
Sj and Brian who accepted to help me, I think no one has made much
effort in the direction of grants (sorry if I missed someone).

When it turns that doing such work is not raising interest, one tend to
give up talking about it, and just manage alone.

For example, I recently sent an inquiry letter to National Geographic
and told one english editor working on the topic concerned. I had no
comment whatsoever (thank god, I had some feedback on fr :-)). Well,
next time, I do not think I will contact that user again if the inquiry
is accepted.

People motivation to have others involved can be seriously hurt by lack
of reaction.

I think that you are correct that grants should be discussed openly, but
this can only occur if there is feedback from the community.

As for wikijunior wikireaders having opposition or be largely considered
as a fork, I currently see no evidence.

Rebecca a ?crit:
> Of course we need money - but this was a specific grant for a project
> which, like Wikispecies, was not previously on the agenda, and if it
> had been discussed at all, had received negative responses. It's not a
> small thing, and would resemble a significant fork. So, considering
> this - and considering what Wikinews is currently going through - and
> Wikiversity will soon have to - in the aftermath of the Wikispecies
> fiasco, I'm a little bemused that this is being given the same
> treatment as was so controversial with Wikispecies.
>
> If Wikimedia is going to be applying for grants, it'd be nice to see,
> as happened with the NEH grant, discussions over whether we actually
> want to go for said grant, and if we are prepared to meet the
> conditions that that would entail. In that case, it was decided -
> largely by the community - that the proposal wouldn't go ahead - and
> that one didn't involve a considerable fork of the project.
>
> -- ambi
>
>
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 06:58:41 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I would like to perhaps make a comment on it, which I hope you will not
>>find rude.
>>
>>One of the mission of the board is to find money. This money is not
>>meant to party, it is meant to make the project work and proceed.
>>
>>One of the way we can do this is by going for grants.
>>
>>As such, some dedicated users who care for the project and want it to go
>>forward (in this case Danny, who is NOT a member of the board) are using
>>their free time and energy to ask for grants.
>>
>>Some foundation offered us money to us, for a project that many editors
>>found great. So, we accepted.
>>
>>Danny wrote a proposal here : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior
>>And invited people to register. And several people already gave their
>>support. As far as I can see, no one opposed. I do not even see your
>>opposition.
>>
>>You are most welcome to discuss the issue over there.
>>
>>Rebecca a ?crit:
>>
>>
>>
>>>The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
>>>accepted to found a Wikijunior project. Now, while I can understand
>>>that it wasn't entirely initiated by the board, being approached by an
>>>outside foundation at all, it seems that once again, it's been decided
>>>at a board-level, and there's going to be no discussion in the
>>>community as to whether we actually should have a Wikijunior project
>>>at all. If I remember correctly, this has been discussed many times
>>>before - and has not generally received a good response. Yet now I
>>>hear that it's going ahead anyway.
>>>
>>>I just hope that this isn't going to be a repeat of the Wikispecies
>>>saga. If we are going to fork the project,  it is not that hard to
>>>throw together a proposal, ala Wikinews - or at least publicly discuss
>>>the darn thing first.
>>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior
>>
>>
>>>-- ambi
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Has someone done a presentation on Wikipedia to a
	large group?

body:
http://www.wikiservice.at/upload/ChristopheDucamp/DocForum81.ppt

The original powerpoint.

Angela a ?crit:
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:18:33 -0400, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks....
>
>
> Some resources you might find helpful:
>
> An outline of the presentation Jimbo and I did in London earlier this
> year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/BBC_talk
>
> Notes from a presentation Anthere made (in French):
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/table_ronde
>
> Some of Jimbo's slides:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/BBC_talk_slides.
>
> The text of a short presentation written by User:Ppareit:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Presentation.
>
> Angela.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Viewing deleted pages (Kate's script)

body:
A script to allow users to view deleted pages has already been created.  It
is at http://download2.wikimedia.org/tools/view_deleted_article.

Kate asked Angela if she "could make it available to all users".  Angela
said no.

So, basically, the problem has been reduced to getting permission to use the
script.  Kate suggests that this should be done by applying to the Board
(since Angela is a member).  I left a note on Angela's talk page asking her
where I can go from here.

Anthony

> I'm not entirely sure how that interface works, and how it
> interacts with any non-deleted history, but if it works in a fairly
> sane way then it could presumably be extended to all logged in users.

> On a quick side-note to which, there's probably going to be a more
> flexible permissions system in the software soon, so it ought to be
> possible to assign this ability to a subset of users distinct from the
> subset assigned general "admin" privileges.


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent changes vs. What's New

body:
One problem is that "What's New" isn't accurate, because it's a list
of changes, most of the time to articles that already exist.
Therefore, they are not "new."

As for "portal," I agree the word portal should probably be
deprecated, in the same heap as "push media." :)

-Andrew

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:30:35 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Have a look at my wikis where I changed "Recent changes" to "What's New":
> http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org or http://jnana.wikinerds.org
>
> I suppose that Wikipedia should do the same because most web surfers are
> familiar with the "What's New" link but they may not clearly understand what
> "Recent changes" is about.
>
> Also, I think that the "Community portal" link could be just "Community".
> Shorter, simpler and less clutter.
>
> --
> NSK
> Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
> Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
> Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: Delirium

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Part of the reason people are reluctant to be very open about certain
>things is that discussions can become literally endless, with no goal
>being achieved. So what I believe we need are clear procedures how to get
>community input on issues and making decisions. I hope the Wikinews case
>can, in some ways, serve as a precedent when it comes to starting new
>projects.
>
>
I'm sure others disagree, but IMO it would be better if there were not a
particularly easy way to start new projects.  We so far have exactly one
highly successful project, from what I can tell---Wikipedia.  Wiktionary
has been languishing for years now in relative disuse (and in my brief
attempts to use it to look up words, doesn't have enough words in it to
be useful as a dictionary, driving me back to reference.com), Wikisource
is still getting off the ground and is fairly disorganized, and
Wikibooks has only in the last 6 months seen any books that are remotely
close to being reasonable books (and even the ones labeled with 4 blocks
as "complete" are still *far* short of book length and detail... we have
nothing on Wikibooks that can compete with a commercial textbook).  I'd
rather we spent some time working on these projects we already have
instead of spawning off still more projects, lest we become a
clearinghouse of ideas that were started but never really carried through.

To be clear, this isn't opposition to Wikinews---I think Wikinews is a
well-defined project with a clear group of users interested in working
on it and minimal overlap with other projects, but I think that would be
a good place to stop for now.  After starting Wikinews, and counting
Wikispecies, we'll have six projects---Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks,
Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikisource---of which only one, Wikipedia, is
really in a well-developed state.

-Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Slaves out of sync

body:
On Oct 26, 2004, at 2:24 PM, Ricky Beam wrote:
> Not exactly.  There is still one master database.  However, it is
> stored
> on an LVM (over hardware raid) volume.  With some slack space in the
> volume
> group, a stable snapshot can be made of the database on disk and then
> replicate it to a new slave.  At the the snapshot is created, begin
> a new binlog that can be applied once the copy is complete.
>
> Or am I just thinking crazy again?

The files on disk aren't guaranteed to be in a stable state unless the
server is cleanly shut down.

You could perhaps copy the entire snapshot to another machine, let it
replay the innoDB transaction logs to recover the innoDB tables, and
run a repair on the MyISAM tables, and then copy things from there, but
that sounds itchy to me.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Broken Browsers destroying interwiki links - automatic
	countermeasures?

body:
Hi,

it has come to my attention that certain Browsers seem to insert
question marks as a replacement for characters they don't support. If
one of these poor people is editing an article, it will end up in
breaking all non-latin characters.

This is one example.

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Kabbala&diff=2653437&oldid=2653424

I think that it is a almost-ever-true assumption that there are no
articles that are consisting of more than one question mark, if any.

So whenever an interwiki gets altered into [[he:????]], there has to be
something wrong.

a) Could an skilled wikipedian searach for a list of articles that
contain interwikis that are full of question marks?

b) could an even more skilled wikipedian think of a script that checks
article changes for this behavior and
	1. denies the article change
         2. cries for help
         3. informs the author that his browser should be seen as a
	     relict of a past millenium?

Breaking interwiki links and other non-latin characters is not cool.

Just say no to interwiki-breaking.

Thanks.

Mathias


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] gil Gibertese

body:
As I have added a new language to the list, I do like to notify you

Another user started adding languages so I now have Gibertese
as well,

I checked the code with the official ISO 639 list. If someone has
translations, I would be obliged. I have nl: en: fr:

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Broken Browsers destroying interwiki links -
	automatic countermeasures?

body:
Selon Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de>:

> Hi,
>
> it has come to my attention that certain Browsers seem to insert
> question marks as a replacement for characters they don't support. If
> one of these poor people is editing an article, it will end up in
> breaking all non-latin characters.
>
> This is one example.
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Kabbala&diff=2653437&oldid=2653424
>
>
> I think that it is a almost-ever-true assumption that there are no
> articles that are consisting of more than one question mark, if any.
>
> So whenever an interwiki gets altered into [[he:????]], there has to be
> something wrong.
>
> a) Could an skilled wikipedian searach for a list of articles that
> contain interwikis that are full of question marks?
>
> b) could an even more skilled wikipedian think of a script that checks
> article changes for this behavior and
> 	1. denies the article change
>          2. cries for help
>          3. informs the author that his browser should be seen as a
> 	     relict of a past millenium?
>
>
> Breaking interwiki links and other non-latin characters is not cool.
>
> Just say no to interwiki-breaking.
>

There is a new feature in the mediawiki CVS head.

That's now possible to compare the user's browser against a blacklist, and put a
warning if necessary before any article update. The default non unicode
compliant browser list is now almost emtpy, but I encourage anybody to submit
me new browser idents which cause problems.

Best regards

Kelson


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
You're never going to be able to correct for
stupidity. We don't delete all the other 'London'
articles just because we don't want someone to be
confused when they type in 'London' and get somewhere
in Canada.
Mark

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >Both mentalities are correct. In my opinion, the
> proper application to
> >Wikipedia is to put constraints on the complexity
> of individual entries but
> >not on the scope of the overall project.
> >
> >
> That makes sense to me.  The biggest problem with
> "non-notable" entries
> is when they're basically advertised/spammed onto
> notable entries as
> "see also" types of links, or even added to running
> text where they
> wouldn't normally be important enough to warrant a
> mention.  Orphaned or
> semi-orphaned non-notable things are relatively
> benign, so long as
> they're reasonably verifiable (which a lot of the
> stuff being deleted
> isn't).
>
> The biggest remaining problem is search, which could
> eventually be fixed
> by a weighted sort of search that trades off
> closeness of text matches
> with some sort of measure of notability/popularity,
> so that "Some guy's
> theory of physics that was verifiably published in
> an obscure book in
> 1933 but which absolutely nobody else agrees with or
> has even heard of"
> doesn't come up equally with our "real physics"
> articles, or even our
> "famous physics crackpot" articles.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
http://messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Despite growing pains,	users hope for dominance of
	Wiktionary, Mediawiki

body:
Sj wrote:

>U.Penn student Swarat Chaudhury, writing for India's venerable paper /
>The Statesman / , was more openly optimistic:
>http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=24&theme=&usrsess=1&id=58137
>
>"Wikipedia has spawned a sister project called Wiktionary
>(http://www.wiktionary.org), a collaborative multilingual dictionary
>with pronunciations, etymology and quotations. The grand ambition of
>these projects is nothing short of letting the demos beat the experts
>at their own game... Personally, I still rely on the OED most of the
>time, but I also look forward to a day when Wiktionary beats it hands
>down."
>
>
I just read it, and find it to be a charmingly written piece.  I would
caution many readers of the above extract to avoid the popular
interpretation of "demos".  His closing comment, "democratic in the
spirit of the world's largest democracy," seems to strike at the heart
of the Wiki world.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] NSK

body:
> Ah, you are reading and answering the list. Excellent! Now, what was your
> Wikipedia username again? I note you didn't answer this simple question
> previously. Do you in fact edit on Wikipedia at all?

I think I figured it out, but I see no reason why someone can't post to this
mailing list without giving his Wikipedia username.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> ..... We have the one highly
> successful project, and a second one coming along nicely in
> Wikisource. It's still got a long way to go, but it doesn't have the
> problems with disuse that Wiktionary and Wikibooks have. I do think we
> should concentrate on improving the ones we have, but some of these
> projects, such as Wikinews, are likely to be considerably easier to
> contribute to (as is the case with WP and WS), which would make them a
> more viable solution than some of our current projects.

I very much agree with the above.

</aol>

A big reason I think that Wikibooks and and Wiktionary have not taken off is
due to a lack of very important software features;

1) the ability to search within and easily create new pages for individual
books for Wikibooks
3) database support and cross-wiki templates for Wiktionary.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wiktionary-l] gil Gibertese

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> As I have added a new language to the list, I do like to notify you
>
> Another user started adding languages so I now have Gibertese as well,

Shouldn't that be Gilbertese?

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] MySQL

body:
The Jeremy Zawodny book?:)

Temporary table use by server, per second:

           total       on disk
Ariel      1.06         0.204
Suda       0.164        0.162
Bacon      0.13         0.13 (all)

So, temporary tables which use the disks aren't really that frequent.

Suda uses its smaller drive pair for temporary and log tables. The database servers have 6 hot swap bays. Taking one drive for temporary tables would cost two drives in the main array. I don't think it's worth doing. I do recall some discussion with Silicon Mechanics about an internal bay which can hold a SATA drive and adding a 36GB 10K RPM SATA drive for temporary tables might be worth doing. Or for Suda, the 36GB drive not currently in use. But they are infrequent enough that I'm not really worried.

All of the database servers have write buffering turned on and it makes a significant difference. All are ordered with battery backup. Possible exception is Bacon where I need to check to see if it has the battery and ask Jimbo to order that module (about US$100) if not.

The indexes are fair to good for most queries but not good enough for the special pages. I'm deliberately waiting on suggesting big changes there until after the next release of the software. Getting the schema changes for cur/old is far more important and I don't want to distract people from them. See the meta page. I plan to script the special page updates first to prove what is faster, then submit those scripted versions for PHP implementation for the live site. This will involve temporary tables and/or summary tables, to get perfect indexes and to avoid using long duration read queries on cur.

A few queries force the right index. Generally MySQL gets it right - only one case where it doesn't now. See the Querybane page for that one and for the queries which are problematic enough to need special handling. The cur/old schema change and search query deal with most.

One query which needs work is the category list. See link below which explains the problems with it. Needs a periodically generated summary table. Querycache can't currently do the job because it lacks a field for the initial limit value.

URLs:
Querybane: http://wp.wikidev.net/Querybane
Category list: http://wp.wikidev.net/Category_list_query


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Slaves out of sync

body:
Probably can't really use drives which are 18GB or smaller, unless you know of some cheap box to put manyb them in. Otherwise it may cost more for the box than the drives are worth in performance. I think we have three 18GB drives from Suda sitting on a shelf somewhere. Abosolute minimum total box capacity for any database work is 250GB but 400GB is better. Ariel is 210GB usable and has at most 40GB free with all but one master/binary log file deleted. Once we can split out search duty it will be possible to use smaller slaves - they can contain only cur and searchindex.

The recently ordered slaves have 438GB in 6 disk RAID 0, one about 73GB 10K SCSI, the other 73GB 10K SATA. Given Bacon's 7200RPM performance in RAID 10 compared to Suda at 10K SCSI it seems likely that the SATA will at least match the SCSI. RAID 0 because we just don't care if we lose all data on a slave now we have a fair number of them. Might buy a cold spare drive for each though...:)

For read only we switch to a different server and run it read only.

It would be possible to start a new log on the temporary master and apply those updates to the real master but those would inevitably cause badly garbled article history (at least, probably more pain than that) as people try to redo their edits based on the outdated information on this slave serving as a temporary master.

For LVM are you thinking of having all writes go to all database servers at the same time, instead of via replication? Sounds as though that's what you have in mind...


from_name: Rebecca

body:
Of course we need money - but this was a specific grant for a project
which, like Wikispecies, was not previously on the agenda, and if it
had been discussed at all, had received negative responses. It's not a
small thing, and would resemble a significant fork. So, considering
this - and considering what Wikinews is currently going through - and
Wikiversity will soon have to - in the aftermath of the Wikispecies
fiasco, I'm a little bemused that this is being given the same
treatment as was so controversial with Wikispecies.

If Wikimedia is going to be applying for grants, it'd be nice to see,
as happened with the NEH grant, discussions over whether we actually
want to go for said grant, and if we are prepared to meet the
conditions that that would entail. In that case, it was decided -
largely by the community - that the proposal wouldn't go ahead - and
that one didn't involve a considerable fork of the project.

-- ambi

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 06:58:41 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I would like to perhaps make a comment on it, which I hope you will not
> find rude.
>
> One of the mission of the board is to find money. This money is not
> meant to party, it is meant to make the project work and proceed.
>
> One of the way we can do this is by going for grants.
>
> As such, some dedicated users who care for the project and want it to go
> forward (in this case Danny, who is NOT a member of the board) are using
> their free time and energy to ask for grants.
>
> Some foundation offered us money to us, for a project that many editors
> found great. So, we accepted.
>
> Danny wrote a proposal here : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior
> And invited people to register. And several people already gave their
> support. As far as I can see, no one opposed. I do not even see your
> opposition.
>
> You are most welcome to discuss the issue over there.
>
> Rebecca a ?crit:
>
>
> > The minutes of the last board meeting suggested that money was being
> > accepted to found a Wikijunior project. Now, while I can understand
> > that it wasn't entirely initiated by the board, being approached by an
> > outside foundation at all, it seems that once again, it's been decided
> > at a board-level, and there's going to be no discussion in the
> > community as to whether we actually should have a Wikijunior project
> > at all. If I remember correctly, this has been discussed many times
> > before - and has not generally received a good response. Yet now I
> > hear that it's going ahead anyway.
> >
> > I just hope that this isn't going to be a repeat of the Wikispecies
> > saga. If we are going to fork the project,  it is not that hard to
> > throw together a proposal, ala Wikinews - or at least publicly discuss
> > the darn thing first.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior
>
> > -- ambi
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Slaves out of sync

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, user_Jamesday wrote:
>For LVM are you thinking of having all writes go to all database servers
>at the same time, instead of via replication? Sounds as though that's what
>you have in mind...

Not exactly.  There is still one master database.  However, it is stored
on an LVM (over hardware raid) volume.  With some slack space in the volume
group, a stable snapshot can be made of the database on disk and then
replicate it to a new slave.  At the the snapshot is created, begin
a new binlog that can be applied once the copy is complete.

Or am I just thinking crazy again?

--Ricky


subject: [Wikitech-l] How much does Wikimedia cost a day?

body:
Bandwidth about US$100 per day (assuming 40 megabits/s at US$80 per megabit/second average over a month)

Rack space about US$60 per day. Two racks at US$900 each.

Total for rack space and bandwidth would be US$0.11 per minute. During that minute the servers would deliver 640 requests per second, or about 60 requests per cent of recurring costs. 640 is the average requests per second for the last 12 days.

We've spent more than US$80,000 on hardware this year (about 78,000 from the main vendor in 10 months including the most recent order). Counting the main vendor only that's US$266 per day in hardware. As long as traffic continues to rise we'll need to keep buying more hardware to keep up. Hard to say when it will stop rising.

Total to handle being around the 200th most visited English language site according to Alexa is over US$436 per day or US$0.30 per minute. About 21 requests per cent including capital costs but that's misleading long term because eventually we will stop needing to buy so much hardware.


from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for mod_auth_kerb authentication

body:
Here is a patch to includes/User.php to allow password checking via a
remote webserver.  We're using it here to authenticate against our
Kerberos server via a connection to an apache vhost on localhost
running mod_auth_kerb, but I've generalized the code so it should work
against any webserver you specify.

To enable it, add something like the following to LocalSettings.php:

$wgRemotePasswordCheck = true;
$wgRemotePasswordServer = "localhost";
$wgRemotePasswordPort = 80;

Patch:

--- mediawiki-1.3.7/includes/User.php   Thu Sep 23 11:41:57 2004
+++ wiki-bioterm/includes/User.php      Tue Oct 26 17:32:04 2004
@@ -722,6 +722,7 @@

        # Check to see if the given clear-text password is one of the
accepted passwords
        function checkPassword( $password ) {
+               global $wgRemotePasswordCheck,
$wgRemotePasswordServer, $wgRemotePasswordPort;
                $this->loadFromDatabase();
                $ep = $this->encryptPassword( $password );
                if ( 0 == strcmp( $ep, $this->mPassword ) ) {
@@ -733,6 +734,24 @@
                        # Check for this with iconv
                        $cp1252hash = $this->encryptPassword( iconv(
'UTF-8', 'WINDOWS-1252', $password ) );
                        if ( 0 == strcmp( $cp1252hash, $this->mPassword ) ) {
+                               return true;
+                       }
+               }
+               if ( $wgRemotePasswordCheck ) {
+                       $lower = strtolower( $this->mName );
+                       $credentials = $lower . ":" . $password;
+                       $out = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n";
+                       $out .= "Host: $wgRemotePasswordServer\r\n";
+                       $out .= "Authorization: Basic " .
base64_encode($credentials) . "\r\n\r\n";
+                       $fp = fsockopen( $wgRemotePasswordServer,
$wgRemotePasswordPort, $errno, $errstr, 30 );
+                       if( !$fp ) {
+                               echo "$errstr ($errno)<br>";
+                       } else {
+                               fwrite( $fp, $out );
+                               $test = fgets( $fp, 128);
+                               fclose( $fp );
+                       }
+                       if( 0 == strcmp( $test, "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n" ) ) {
                                return true;
                        }
                }


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in The Guardian (London)

body:
Surprised no one has mentioned this so far - there is a very favourable
story in today's Guardian newspaper, a two-page spread in its G2 features
supplement : "How Wikipedia turned knowledge on its head".

Charles


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I would like to thank Danny for writing the Wikijunior grant application.
It is a project I am very interested in, because it fits so neatly into
our mission.

I would also like to thank Ambi for sharing her concerns, which I find
valid, and which I believe merit discussion.

Part of the reason people are reluctant to be very open about certain
things is that discussions can become literally endless, with no goal
being achieved. So what I believe we need are clear procedures how to get
community input on issues and making decisions. I hope the Wikinews case
can, in some ways, serve as a precedent when it comes to starting new
projects.

When it comes to matters where leaks would be dangerous, I think we should
try to find a wiki-like solution. One option would be a private wiki or
mailing list, where anyone can apply to become a member and existing
members decide, a la WP:RFA, whether the user is trusted enough or not.
New members have to swear a blood oath of secrecy and participate in
various special rites which involve hamsters. Joking aside, I think the
members could keep an eye on each other and try to determine when the
right point to go public has been reached. The existence of this place,
the procedure for joining and its purpose could be open and well known -
potential grant givers will understand why we are doing this.

The same place might also be home to a permanent log of the #wikimedia
channel, so that nothing gets lost among us.

This process is, by the way, very similar to the one that will be used for
the email ticket system, so maybe the rules could be identical. To prevent
it from turning into a cabal, these rules need to be fair and open.

Wikimedia is growing up, and at each step along the way we can decide
whether we will do things in the traditional, conservative way, or in a
more open, progressive away. I think whenever we are about to go for
something traditional, we should pause and reflect whether there might not
be a better option.

Now, I apologize if the cabal already exists, but it's your fault for not
inviting me in.

Regards,

Erik


body:
"Community Portal" describes what is there.
"Community" is just unnecessarily vague.

-- ambi

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:29:21 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> One problem is that "What's New" isn't accurate, because it's a list
> of changes, most of the time to articles that already exist.
> Therefore, they are not "new."
>
> As for "portal," I agree the word portal should probably be
> deprecated, in the same heap as "push media." :)
>
> -Andrew
>
>
>
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:30:35 +0300, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Have a look at my wikis where I changed "Recent changes" to "What's New":
> > http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org or http://jnana.wikinerds.org
> >
> > I suppose that Wikipedia should do the same because most web surfers are
> > familiar with the "What's New" link but they may not clearly understand what
> > "Recent changes" is about.
> >
> > Also, I think that the "Community portal" link could be just "Community".
> > Shorter, simpler and less clutter.
> >
> > --
> > NSK
> > Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
> > Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
> > Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Andrew Lih
> andrew.lih at gmail.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More anti-US bias in Current Events

body:
On 10/26/04 3:26 PM, "Sheldon Rampton" <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:

> Ed Poor wrote:
>
>> Today, the main page's current event box had this for its lead story:
>>
>>>  Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from an Iraqi site
>>>  meant for Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear program but never
>>>  secured by the U.S. military.
>>
>> It took me less than 5 minutes of googling to find the opposite POV:
>>
>>>  An NBC News crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the
>>> Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the
>>>  liberation of Iraq. According to NBC News, the HMX and RDX
>>>  explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
>>
>> So it is not accurate to assert that the explosives were "never
>> secured", as the US Democratic Party and its liberal media allies
>> complained.
>
> It took me less than 5 minutes of Googling to find a number of
> distortions in what Ed wrote:
>
Further extensively sourced detail is here:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

which Ed should read before he attacks the motives of others.

NBC News has essentially retracted the story Ed sources. Ed needs to
consider whether his reaction is affected by his own worldview.

This story was covered, before the New York Times, by the Nelson Report,
which is a highly influential and very non-partisan (but reality-based)
private newsletter on American foreign affairs.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
On 10/26/04 1:32 PM, "Nicholas Knight" <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:

> Mark Richards wrote:
>
>> encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because
>> (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
>
> *cough* I'm an American techie, and I very much disagree with some of
> the stuff that's getting deleted, thank you. I daresay experienced
> techies are probably among the least likely people to advocate
> deletionism, having an inherent predisposition toward being packrats and
> a great appreciation of the fact that modern technology renders concerns
> about storage space and related issues largely moot.

That description accurately describes some techies. Other techies have an
inherent predisposition toward being neat freaks and a great appreciation of
the fact that modern technology allows people to be completely disorganized
and can make effective, efficient communication and knowledge compilation
extremely difficult without proper constraints.

Let's just call it the sysadmin vs. the hacker mentality.

Both mentalities are correct. In my opinion, the proper application to
Wikipedia is to put constraints on the complexity of individual entries but
not on the scope of the overall project.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Both mentalities are correct. In my opinion, the proper application to
>Wikipedia is to put constraints on the complexity of individual entries but
>not on the scope of the overall project.
>
>
That makes sense to me.  The biggest problem with "non-notable" entries
is when they're basically advertised/spammed onto notable entries as
"see also" types of links, or even added to running text where they
wouldn't normally be important enough to warrant a mention.  Orphaned or
semi-orphaned non-notable things are relatively benign, so long as
they're reasonably verifiable (which a lot of the stuff being deleted
isn't).

The biggest remaining problem is search, which could eventually be fixed
by a weighted sort of search that trades off closeness of text matches
with some sort of measure of notability/popularity, so that "Some guy's
theory of physics that was verifiably published in an obscure book in
1933 but which absolutely nobody else agrees with or has even heard of"
doesn't come up equally with our "real physics" articles, or even our
"famous physics crackpot" articles.

-Mark


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Slaves out of sync

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:24:42 -0400 (EDT), Ricky Beam
<jfbeam at bluetronic.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, user_Jamesday wrote:
> >For LVM are you thinking of having all writes go to all database servers
> >at the same time, instead of via replication? Sounds as though that's what
> >you have in mind...
>
> Not exactly.  There is still one master database.  However, it is stored
> on an LVM (over hardware raid) volume.  With some slack space in the volume
> group, a stable snapshot can be made of the database on disk and then
> replicate it to a new slave.  At the the snapshot is created, begin
> a new binlog that can be applied once the copy is complete.

You would need a true transaction system for this to work right (i.e.
the last write has either been completely done or none at all), does
MySQL support this? Also, the slave(s) would then lag behind right?

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
Mark Richards wrote:

>You're never going to be able to correct for
>stupidity. We don't delete all the other 'London'
>articles just because we don't want someone to be
>confused when they type in 'London' and get somewhere
>in Canada.
>
>
This has nothing to do with stupidity, but usability.  If I type in
"London" and I get on the order of 500 results equally ranked, Wikipedia
will be a useless waste of space.

-Mark


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Drive-by deletion

body:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is
not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.

In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there
is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who are listing them
are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any
policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis. Democracy is always
unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how
come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important
articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course,
there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few,
there hasn't been any.)

It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists
argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted.
However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not
mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they
don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion.
If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and
leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt their existence) or
complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme
inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community couldn't care less
about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word
"green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly be livid. Delete all
school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an
article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an
article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.

The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line
with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the
community. They are the means to an end. Not an end in themselves.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Phil Sandifer wrote:

> I am not sure how to respond to this, beyond to note that you seem to
> be demonstrating comparable skill in reading my posts that you are in
> reading the deletion policy.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Oct 25, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
>
>> This is just pants.
>> It is clear that these are the reason for deletion,
>> not just some 'ideas to use as a springboard for your
>> deletion antics'.
>> Mark
>>
>> --- Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>> No. It is a list of "Problems that may require
>>> deletion." Nowhere on
>>> any deletion policy page, however, does it say that
>>> the list is meant
>>> to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy,
>>> which actually
>>> says "Blocking should not be used in any other
>>> circumstances." The
>>> deletion policy does not say that. The deletion
>>> guidelines for
>>> administrators say nothing about taking into account
>>> invalid reasons
>>> for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about
>>> invalid reasons for
>>> listing.
>>>
>>> You are citing policy that does not exist.
>>>
>>> If you want to change the rules, more power to you.
>>> If you want to
>>> engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
>>>
>>> But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
>>>
>>> -Snowspinner
>>> On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
>>>


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Rebecca wrote:
> In that case, it was decided - largely by the community - that the
> proposal wouldn't go ahead - and that one didn't involve a
> considerable fork of the project.

This is actually not accurate.  The NEH grant would have gone ahead,
except that we ran out of time.  We heard about it too late, and as it
was our first major grant proposal, there was a lot of background work
that needed to be done.

Each subsequent proposal is easier, because we have now formed the
groundwork to do these in a more efficient manner.

--Jimbo


body:
Rebecca wrote:
> However, the current proposal clearly mentions an online version,
> which would clearly be a fork.

I think we need to be a lot more careful with terminology.  Not every
new thing is a "fork".

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Shared source

body:
On Oct 26, 2004, at 6:35 PM, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> I'm maintaining my own branch of mediawiki, which is explicitly
> designed for such installations. It also fixes some hostname-/
> servername-bugs which prevented access behind a proxy or firewall.

Is this just the autodetection of $wgServer, or something else?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Rebecca wrote:
> No, you're right. It was dropped because people thought we weren't
> ready for it. There was no reason to outright oppose that one. Same
> difference.

No, this is still not correct.  The incomplete grant application was
not sent, because it was not complete in time.  It wasn't "dropped
because people thought we weren't ready for it" -- we made a valiant
effort but it was just too much in too little time.  It *will be*
applied for again next year.

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Censorship of Current Events

body:
Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> To make it worse, 10 minutes after I corrected the liberal bias in the
> Missing Explosives story some anonymous IP user deleted the entire day
> -- wiping out 1/2 hour of my work.
>
> How can we be accurate or neutral, with this sort of thing going on?
> When I've brought this up previously, people ask me to provide examples.
> I have. Today I've done so again.
>
> These are not isolated examples. And now on MediaWiki I find that
> someone wants to create news articles which CANNOT EVER BE EDITED AGAIN.
> Well, that would be nice if they are vetted for accuracy and neutrality
> first.

You raise an important point Ed.
Indeed, as the cunctator would say, npov does not really exist. It is an
ideal. We just try to reach it, and for this to happen, we need two things

* many editors
Because as much as we try, we have a natural bias due to our culture,
gender etc...;
and likely this will not even be enough to compensate a natural bias we
collectively have

* time
Because time is the only way for NPOV. Nearly all articles start biased
and it is only over time that they tend to neutralize. Tending the
article is the way. Allowing multiple edits over time is the way.

News, on the contrary of encyclopedic articles, thrive on speed.
A "news" one week old is of little interest (if not none at all). For it
to raise interest, it must be published as soon as possible. When the
event is occuring. Perhaps 1 hour later. Less than 24 hours is a
requirement.

Which mean wikinews articles will be published likely too soon before
being fully neutral.

Additional point is that many news are making us react. Most interesting
news are making us HOT, rarely neutral in our minds. Because, when we
report an event, this event is INTERESTING us, is INVOLVING us, is
making our HEART beat.

It is only after some weeks, or years, that we are able to approach
truth with a clearer mind.

If someone is not convinced, I will just say that in spring 2003, most
of my edits to the english wikipedia hot topic of the time (hmmmm,
something related to a UN vote, or a french president, or some huge
meetups in streets), were ANONYMOUS. Because there was so much heat
around. Because of the hate I perceived toward french people in talk
pages. Because of the hainous mails I got. Because of the wild
reversions of my feeble attempts to restore what we european perceived
as the truth.

Of course, some people were here to stick to npov. But that was tough.
That was a several weeks struggle.

Most of these articles are correct now. Even the anti-french sentiment
article is more acceptable.

But 18 months ago, it was bullshit of the best type. And these were
NEWS. And these were not sometimes no better than Fox.

Only time, and thinking, and digesting some tough events allowed these
news articles to reach balance.

I do not expect to believe in the NPOV of wikinews striking news. It
will perhaps be better than Fox. But neutral ? Ah !


body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
  I hope the Wikinews case
> can, in some ways, serve as a precedent when it comes to starting new
> projects.

Just a thought... I think setting up an approval voting limit at simple
majority to conclude a project is supported does not strike me as being
  a consensual decision.

I think we still need to think better how to start/decide new projects.


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com a ?crit:
> I myself am opposed to open discussion of this process. While this may sound un-wikilike, it is obvious to me that the discussion leading up to grant proposals will be done in a casual, informal style. Things may be said that we do not want the potential grant-givers to hear. If it is open to the kind of public debate that is typical of Wikipedia, we are seriously endangering our chances of receiving those grants.

You have a point here Danny.
Still, when grant requests are not publicly discussed, how can we hope
to involve more people in the process ?
Ideas ?


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
> I have not commented on this issue since that script was created, so
> the suggestion that I said you couldn't use it is not true. I don't
> see what this has to do with the board. All sysops can see deleted
> articles, and the board certainly doesn't go round approving all sysop
> applications. I'm getting fed up of everything people don't like being
> blamed on a board decision when no such decision was ever made. You
> get to see deleted articles by being a sysop and your application for
> that was rejected by the community, not the board.

Calm down, Angela.  I asked Kate about how to get access to the scripts, and
she said I had to talk to the board.  Here's the conversation from IRC:

<anthony> kate, what's this thing about kate's scripts?
<kturner> anthony?
<anthony> you said something about getting permission from the foundation to
run them
<kturner> I asked if I could make it available to all users.  The Board of
Directors told me not to
<kturner> so presumably it's up to them to give permission
<anthony> when you say the board told you not to, do you mean someone in
particular, or this was brought up at a board meeting?
<kturner> by 'told' i mean I said 'should i do this?' on irc and someone
said 'probably not'
<kturner> and since i don't care that much, i didn't
<anthony> no I'm just wondering who to talk to
<anthony> angela, apparently
<kturner> this was angela

I guess I was misinformed.

Anthony


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I'm sure others disagree, but IMO it would be better if there were not
> a particularly easy way to start new projects.  We so far have exactly
> one highly successful project, from what I can tell---Wikipedia.
> Wiktionary has been languishing for years now in relative disuse (and
> in my brief attempts to use it to look up words, doesn't have enough
> words in it to be useful as a dictionary, driving me back to
> reference.com), Wikisource is still getting off the ground and is
> fairly disorganized, and Wikibooks has only in the last 6 months seen
> any books that are remotely close to being reasonable books (and even
> the ones labeled with 4 blocks as "complete" are still *far* short of
> book length and detail... we have nothing on Wikibooks that can
> compete with a commercial textbook).  I'd rather we spent some time
> working on these projects we already have instead of spawning off
> still more projects, lest we become a clearinghouse of ideas that were
> started but never really carried through.
>
> To be clear, this isn't opposition to Wikinews---I think Wikinews is a
> well-defined project with a clear group of users interested in working
> on it and minimal overlap with other projects, but I think that would
> be a good place to stop for now.  After starting Wikinews, and
> counting Wikispecies, we'll have six projects---Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
> Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikisource---of which only one,
> Wikipedia, is really in a well-developed state.

Perhaps I shouldn't presume to speak on behalf of projects I have yet to
participate in, but the list seems to be missing Wikiquote, the
Wikimedia Commons, and the 9/11 Memorial wiki, at least two of which I
would consider more significant and more successful than the
controversial Wikispecies. Frankly, I wondered why there was so much
insistence on having Wikispecies when contributions stopped completely
after a few days, but now they seem to have started back up again.

I agree that we are close to tackling more projects than we can hope to
do well for now. Wikinews makes a persuasive case, and I see Wikijunior
(or whatever we call it) as being less a fork than a subproject of
Wikipedia, so I'm happy if they manage to go forward. But if we need
challenges, I would like to see us get serious about tackling other
types of media (starting with print), not just cast about for new
specialties in the one medium we've done well in so far.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: CVS 1.4 Sysop WITHOUT RIGHTS ????

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> I work with the recent CVS 1.4 - fresh installation, fresh database -
> but have NO ADMIN rights with the recent CVS version.
>
>   Special Page Admin List shows: (none)
>
> Is it due to the recent introduction of user_rights table ?
> But how to set up the rights and where to find the documentation about
> this new feature ?
>
> Who can assist ?

Hello,

Special:Listusers & Special:Listadmins are pending for rewrite . I am
still thinking about the new interface.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] NSK

body:
NSK wrote:

>Does it matter? I cannot understand why you ask this question. Are your
>mailing lists restricted only to your members? I don't think so, because it
>was very easy for me to register (if that's not the intended behaviour, you
>need to configure your Mailman installation).
>
>
There is certainly no prohibition or even active discouragement of
non-Wikipedian posting to the lists, but it's natural that your ideas
will be treated more skeptically than those of someone who is
demostrably familiar with the community.  Someone who comes in and
suggests many changes without being familiar with the way the system
currently works is quite a bit different than someone who suggests
changes after using the system extensively and determining that it has
some shortcomings.

-Mark


from_name: geni

body:
There is of course Special:Newpages what's new is far too similar.
Recent changes is really only of interest to those who are to a degree
already familiar with the wikipedia format so the name is not a
problem.

--
geni


body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Erik Moeller wrote:

> To be clear, this isn't opposition to Wikinews---I think Wikinews is a
> well-defined project with a clear group of users interested in working
> on it and minimal overlap with other projects, but I think that would be
> a good place to stop for now.  After starting Wikinews, and counting
> Wikispecies, we'll have six projects---Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks,
> Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikisource---of which only one, Wikipedia, is
> really in a well-developed state.
>
> -Mark

By the way, is it possible to cite people who are ready to get involved
*actively* in wikinews in the foreseen future ?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Viewing deleted pages (Kate's script)

body:
Is this script usage restricted to en, or is it working for all languages ?

If so, could other languages be made aware ?

Anthony DiPierro a ?crit:
> A script to allow users to view deleted pages has already been created.  It
> is at http://download2.wikimedia.org/tools/view_deleted_article.
>
> Kate asked Angela if she "could make it available to all users".  Angela
> said no.
>
> So, basically, the problem has been reduced to getting permission to use the
> script.  Kate suggests that this should be done by applying to the Board
> (since Angela is a member).  I left a note on Angela's talk page asking her
> where I can go from here.
>
> Anthony
>
>
>>I'm not entirely sure how that interface works, and how it
>>interacts with any non-deleted history, but if it works in a fairly
>>sane way then it could presumably be extended to all logged in users.
>
>
>>On a quick side-note to which, there's probably going to be a more
>>flexible permissions system in the software soon, so it ought to be
>>possible to assign this ability to a subset of users distinct from the
>>subset assigned general "admin" privileges.
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in The Guardian (London)

body:
> The article online :
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1335892,00.html

Also worth mentioning: the article was flagged on the front page of
the main paper (as can be seen at
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian20041026.jpg) and dominated the
cover of the G2 section (see
http://www.steinsky.me.uk/images/G2_wikipedia.jpg - I hope Steinsky
doesn't mind me referencing that here; he posted it on IRC earlier).
Pretty cool...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting history entries

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 15:34, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> There are too many gunslinger sysops in whose hands this tool would not
> be appropriate.

A very wise remark. It should be limited only to certain people, indeed. In my
case, it should be limited only to myself.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 09:29, Andrew Lih wrote:
> Therefore, they are not "new."

Even if a change occurs in an existing article, it may be the inclusion of a
new paragraph or new information.

However, you are right that in some cases "What's New" might not be accurate.
For example: spelling fixes.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] More anti-US bias in Current Events

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> Today, the main page's current event box had this for its lead story:
>
> > Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from an Iraqi site
> > meant for Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear program but never
> > secured by the U.S. military.
>
> It took me less than 5 minutes of googling to find the opposite POV:
>
> > An NBC News crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the
> > Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the
> > liberation of Iraq. According to NBC News, the HMX and RDX
> > explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
>
> So it is not accurate to assert that the explosives were "never
> secured", as the US Democratic Party and its liberal media allies
> complained.
>
Ed, in expressing the fact that you were offended by the expression of
one POV in Wikipedia, you have managed to unnecessarily offend me.

First, you insisted from this title that this POV is anti-U.S.
I could recount a long list of points that would prove that I am
undoubtedly a member of mainstream U.S. society by any measure -- but it
should be sufficient for me to state that I am a U.S. Citizen by both law
& fact to make that point irrefutable. And my opinion is that George W.
Bush has managed to wreak considerable damage to my country both
materially & in reputation, which has been compounded by his decision to
engage in an unnecessary war in Iraq has been incompetant.

I believe you have just stated that I am either hostile to my native
land or a traitor -- either implication I find offensive. I sincerely
hope that you spoke hastily in this election year, & you regret how you
express yourself.

Second, you could have made your point without opining about the Democratic
party or the "liberal media". Your assertion that the media in the U.S.
manifests a POV that is politically left of center (which is what I assume
you mean by calling it "liberal" -- the alternative would be to assume that
you are against the freedom of man, which is what the word "liberal"
originally meant) is again a POV. It is my opinion that the so-called
liberal media in the U.S. has in recent years been very kind to the Bush
administration with the occasional exception. You & I could then engage in
a heated disagreement over this point on this mailing list which would
distract one & all from your core concern about choosing articles for the
Main page based on quality.

Lastly, to prove something is slanted by finding a counterclaim on the
Internet unfortunately proves nothing. I could prove my point by finding
any number of detrimental claims about your faith & church on the Internet
with only a few minutes' work. Would that prove what your beliefs about
your faith is simply "just another POV", no better or worse than any
random assertion?

For many of us --including me -- this coming U.S. election has set our
tempers on edge. I have tried to be objective in making my contributions
about this matter, to the point I have bent over backwards. I only hope,
Ed, that you continue to do a better job concerning the goal of Wikipedia
than I have done.

Geoff


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 15:49, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> This is starting to look a little like spam.

So, public relations and cooperation among communities is spam?

Do you want me to stop posting on your mailing lists?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>I think we need to be a lot more careful with terminology.  Not every
>new thing is a "fork".
>
>
Well, insofar as it's a fork of the community's development effort---a
diversion of work that would otherwise go into one of the other
projects---it could be considered such.  Whether that's the case is
arguable, of course.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Preliminary Deletion

body:
This proposed policy ([[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]]) isn't probably
very well named, but it seems to have been well accepted, although I am
perturbed by the lack of discussion on the talk page despite being
advertised on the pump, community portal and RFC. Anyway, in case anyone
here hasn't read the proposal yet, please do.

I've drafted the proposed questions and answers for the poll already.
Can someone more experienced in these matters please double-check them
for compliance with the guidelines?

Also, comments/brickbats on the proposal would be very welcome,
especially from the inclusionist side (although you may be pleased to
hear RickK is of the opinion that this proposal won't change anything).

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Jakob Voss

body:
Hi,

Im am writing an article about Wikipedia/Wikimedia - can I write that it
needs around 10? a day for Wikimedia servers and traffics? A saw a
number during the 50.000$ campaing but I cannot remember.

Greetings,
   Jakob


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikijunior - Wikispecies, Mk 2?

body:
As far as I know, the Wikipedia Junior project would simply be to create booklets targeted at kids. Not for kids to write stuff for kids.

Take a look at www.brandnewplanet.ca/, the website for the Brand New Planet section of The Toronto Star newspaper. We'd end up with the most superficial nonsense you could ever find. Okay, there isn't too much content online, but some of the stuff in the paper is just sad.\

Nick

I've got this hunch that a (hypothetical) Wiki-kid-pedia would be of remarkably high philosophical and scientific quality, whereas a Teeniepedia would largely consist of "J45ON WINSCOTTLE ISA WANKARRR!!", "I LuV mArY JaNe." and "BENNIE {heart} SIMONE!!!" Maybe we should bar participation from anyone between ages 10 and 20?

---------------------------------
 ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation

body:
Well, NSK still hasn't responded to several people's queries as regards
his Wikipedia user identity.
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-October/031627.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-October/031640.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-October/031642.html

I don't think there's malice involved anywhere -- HOWEVER, strictly
PERSONALLY speaking, some of these posts rather oddly  remind me of
some [[Ryan Lackey]] interview I read ages ago.
(And no, I'm NOT  claiming to be an old pro myself -- I kinda consider
meself still a fairly new Wikipedian. Anyway. Let others be the judge
of my seniority.)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 26 Oct 2004, at 14:49, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> This is starting to look a little like spam.
> Ec
>
> NSK wrote:
>
>> Dear friends,
>>
>> I have some wikis that will soon host very interesting content,
>> including scientific topics.
>>
>> You have an Interwiki map at:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map
>>
>> I propose to have some form of cooperation by allowing our
>> communities to link to each other via easy interwiki links.
>>
>> If you like this idea please add my wikis to the Interwiki map and I
>> will update my own interwiki table to allow interwiki linking to the
>> English Wikipedia and perhaps other projects of Wikimedia.
>>
>> These are my wikis that can be added to your Interwiki map:
>> http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org and
>> http://jnana.wikinerds.org
>>
>> In the future Wikinerds.org will host much more wikis on scientific
>> and educational subjects so I think this kind of cooperation can be
>> beneficial for both communities.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l]
 CVS 1.4 Sysop WITHOUT RIGHTS ???? ug_user, ug_group = 1, 3(yes) ==>
 still cannot edit MediaWiki:pages

body:
>Installation isn't yet putting in all the right data for user groups.
>To make your user a sysop, do something like this:
>INSERT INTO user_groups (ug_user,ug_group) VALUES (1,3);Media
>where you would use the user_id and group_id values for the appropriate
>user and group. The default 'Sysops' group presently is id number 3.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I followed your advice, noticed some changes, but I still haven't the correct rights to edit MediaWiki:Pages .


from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Patch for mod_auth_kerb authentication

body:
Oops.. removed some debugging code.

Better patch:

--- mediawiki-1.3.7/includes/User.php   Thu Sep 23 11:41:57 2004
+++ wiki-bioterm/includes/User.php      Tue Oct 26 23:06:54 2004
@@ -722,6 +722,7 @@

        # Check to see if the given clear-text password is one of the
accepted passwords
        function checkPassword( $password ) {
+               global $wgRemotePasswordCheck,
$wgRemotePasswordServer, $wgRemotePasswordPort;
                $this->loadFromDatabase();
                $ep = $this->encryptPassword( $password );
                if ( 0 == strcmp( $ep, $this->mPassword ) ) {
@@ -733,6 +734,22 @@
                        # Check for this with iconv
                        $cp1252hash = $this->encryptPassword( iconv(
'UTF-8', 'WINDOWS-1252', $password ) );
                        if ( 0 == strcmp( $cp1252hash, $this->mPassword ) ) {
+                               return true;
+                       }
+               }
+               if ( $wgRemotePasswordCheck ) {
+                       $lower = strtolower( $this->mName );
+                       $credentials = $lower . ":" . $password;
+                       $out = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n";
+                       $out .= "Host: $wgRemotePasswordServer\r\n";
+                       $out .= "Authorization: Basic " .
base64_encode($credentials) . "\r\n\r\n";
+                       $fp = fsockopen( $wgRemotePasswordServer,
$wgRemotePasswordPort, $errno, $errstr, 30 );
+                       if( $fp ) {
+                               fwrite( $fp, $out );
+                               $test = fgets( $fp, 128);
+                               fclose( $fp );
+                       }
+                       if( 0 == strcmp( $test, "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n" ) ) {
                                return true;
                        }
                }


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject:
[WikiEN-l] NY Times partisan advocacy on Missing Explosives in
	Iraq

body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 07:44:45 -0700, Poor, Edmund W
<edmund.w.poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I think we should downgrade our estimation of the NY Times. They are not
> an objective news source: they mix straight reporting with
> editorializing.

If you expect to cite only "objective" news sources, it will be an
empty page. No credible news organization can ever claim to be
objective. One should evaluate it against the spectrum of other
sources, and determine whether it is fair and balanced.

In this I mean real fair and balanced, not Fox News's "Fair and Balanced."

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Angela

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> A script to allow users to view deleted pages has already been created.  It
> is at http://download2.wikimedia.org/tools/view_deleted_article.

I have not commented on this issue since that script was created, so
the suggestion that I said you couldn't use it is not true. I don't
see what this has to do with the board. All sysops can see deleted
articles, and the board certainly doesn't go round approving all sysop
applications. I'm getting fed up of everything people don't like being
blamed on a board decision when no such decision was ever made. You
get to see deleted articles by being a sysop and your application for
that was rejected by the community, not the board.

Angela, not on behalf of Wikimedia and not an official opinion.


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] NSK

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>Ah, you are reading and answering the list. Excellent! Now, what was your
>>Wikipedia username again? I note you didn't answer this simple question
>>previously. Do you in fact edit on Wikipedia at all?
>
>
> I think I figured it out, but I see no reason why someone can't post to this
> mailing list without giving his Wikipedia username.

I can't really think of any good reason why /not/ to give us the username.

I personally have no objection to someone who doesn't edit on wikipedia
contributing to this list - I'm sure there are many interested in
Wikipedia who choose not to edit but have good things to contribute to
the conversation here.  But if NSK /is/ an editor, what possible reason
could s/he have for not responding to the question?

--sannse


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Has someone done a presentation on Wikipedia to a
	large group?

body:
Hi,

I did some presentations in German (and got used to it ;-) - I am
collecting things like that at

http://wikipedia.de/Wikipedia:Vortr%C3%A4ge

Angela wrote:
>> I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for the McAuliffe
>> Conference and the NHAWLT Teachers' Conference in the coming
>> weeks....
>
> Some resources you might find helpful:
>
> An outline of the presentation Jimbo and I did in London earlier this
>  year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/BBC_talk
>
> Notes from a presentation Anthere made (in French):
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/table_ronde
>
> Some of Jimbo's slides:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/BBC_talk_slides.
>
> The text of a short presentation written by User:Ppareit:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Presentation.
>
> Angela.

I also created http://wikipedia.en/Wikipedia:Presentations

Greetings,
   Jakob


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikijunior - Wikispecies, Mk 2?

body:
> I think that you are correct that grants should be discussed openly, but
> this can only occur if there is feedback from the community.

I think these really need to be more broadly advertised. When an
attempt was made to collaboratively write the NEH proposal, it was on
the top of Recent Changes on en for days, if not weeks. It got some
attention - and subsequently the decision was made that it wouldn't be
a wise step to proceed. It'd be nice to have a central place to
announce these sort of things, also. I don't know if I'd be of much
use, but it'd be nice to know what's happening there.

> As for wikijunior wikireaders having opposition or be largely considered
> as a fork, I currently see no evidence.

If it's just going to be a WikiReader, then that's fine.

However, the current proposal clearly mentions an online version,
which would clearly be a fork. I'm not even necessarily opposed to
that, but if it's going to get higher priority than some (i.e.
Wikiversity, Wikimorial) which people have been pushing for for ages,
it would be nice to at least see some sort of discussion (ala
Wikinews) first.

-- ambi


body:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 10:42:44 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I think in many cases it's not really people deliberately doing this,
> but just not realizing what the main page section is for.  It's *not*
> for whatever is the most newsworthy item of the day, but for newsworthy
> items *on which we have the best articles*.

I think the majority of Current Events editors would disagree. The
page has been the place to highlight significant news events, and
linking to articles related to them, largely regardless of article
quality. In fact, consider it a good, timely way to fill in articles
with relevant info.

> I think a good general
> guideline is to not add anything to "in the news" unless you've
> personally edited the page you're linking to make sure it's up to date
> and contains a reasonable amount of relevant information.

I agree that it should be encouraged, but so far, I don't believe
there is any policy like this for Current Events links right now.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind these American geeks
deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the rest of Wikipedia
are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do geeks make up a
substantial amount in our community? Yes. However, the ratio of geeks to
non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.

While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most people would agree that
our goal of building an encyclopedia is not drastically hurt by the
deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually we will be able to
have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to serve our audience,
which does not appear to mind the lack of school articles much, if at
all. Currently, few people are really worried about school articles.
That may change in the future, but until it does, we must work with the
community, even if you think it's an unreasonable one.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Mark Richards wrote:

>The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care
>about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about
>a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon
>characters, I don't care about Indian villages.
>Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure
>varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies
>are out.
>
>The question is not 'are people within their "rights"'
>to delete things that don't interest them, but does it
>serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope
>encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because
>(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
>
>That's what really bothers me.
>
>Mark
>
>--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted
>>[[What Wikipedia is
>>not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by
>>any means.
>>
>>In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to
>>delete schools, there
>>is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who
>>are listing them
>>are acting within their rights, because schools
>>aren't covered by any
>>policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis.
>>Democracy is always
>>unfair to someone, but if there was a real
>>miscarriage of justice, how
>>come much of the community doesn't care we're
>>deleting oh so important
>>articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high
>>schools? (Of course,
>>there's the issue of whether there was true
>>consensus; in quite a few,
>>there hasn't been any.)
>>
>>It so happens that most people on VFD are
>>deletionists. Inclusionists
>>argue this is unfair as important articles are
>>unfairly deleted.
>>However, this calls to mind a recent post to this
>>list by, if I'm not
>>mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong
>>neutral" on these; they
>>don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am
>>of the same opinion.
>>If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd
>>either pack up and
>>leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt
>>their existence) or
>>complain. So far the only people complaining are
>>those from the extreme
>>inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community
>>couldn't care less
>>about the fate of school articles. Delete all
>>articles with the word
>>"green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly
>>be livid. Delete all
>>school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean,
>>would you delete an
>>article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep
>>schools?). Delete an
>>article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most
>>wouldn't and don't care.
>>
>>The community is fine with the current practice,
>>whether it's in line
>>with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist
>>to serve the
>>community. They are the means to an end. Not an end
>>in themselves.
>>
>>John Lee
>>([[User:Johnleemk]])
>>
>>
>>


from_name: Brian Peyton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Added things to navigation panel only appear sometimes

body:
In SkinPHPTal.php I added this in the section with the others:
$nav_urls['projects'] = array('href' =>
htmlspecialchars($this->makeI18nUrl('projects')));

And in xhtml_slim.pt I added this:

Projects

I also added the text "Projects" in MediaWiki:Projects.

On some pages, such as special pages, the item is there. And in most
content pages it's missing.  How do I fix this?

I'm running mediawiki 1.3.7


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
I won't touch the school issue anymore because it's so damn
controversial, but...

I'd like to note that any deficiency in information on locations on
Wikipedia does not stem from most deletionists. Even RickK votes to keep
articles on places, no matter how small in terms of area or population.
Rather, the problem stems from a lack of contributors from other countries.

Addressing issues such as deficiencies in several non-geek areas is
beyond the purview of any deletion debate (except, maybe on schools).
It's more of an issue about attracting non-geek contributors.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Nicholas Knight wrote:

> Mark Richards wrote:
>
>> You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths
>> and computing subjects more interesting than real
>> places.
>
>
> I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is making here, and add to
> it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online about technical
> subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to finding information
> about real places that aren't ultra-famous and other non-technical
> subjects.
>
> If I'm looking for information on a technical subject, I head to
> google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out to be hard to find
> (at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any useful information
> on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
>
> If I'm looking for information on a country or a person, I go straight
> to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me started, at least. If it
> had information on every local school in the world, it'd be even more
> useful.


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

> I learn little enough from this.  I wish we had more (any?) Americans able
> to explain US politics on the site, getting away from the partisan side.

You're going to find that so long as Ed Poor and others like him on both
sides of the political fence continue to be so aggressive, there will be
a shortage of moderates (and not-so-moderates like me that can fake it)
that are willing to work on political articles. It's simply not worth
the hassle.


subject: [Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation; NSK

body:
On Tuesday 26 October 2004 22:26, David Gerard wrote:
> what was your Wikipedia username again?

The reason I have not answered that question is because it was first asked by
a person who offended me ("as faulty as your logic", 23 October 2004).
Although I have ignored his e-mail address, thanks to your webarchive it came
to my attention that he repeats his attacks:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-October/031751.html

Please note that I am a bit touchy and any kind of personal attack is not
compatible with my culture and my education. I have no problem with people
who disagree with me, but I have zero tolerance for things who engage in
personal attacks.

That said, I also don't understand why I need to answer this question. Is it
some kind of policy in Wikipedia to say your user names in emails? I notice
many people post without mentioning their usernames and I wonder why you
picked me specifically.

> Do you in fact edit on Wikipedia at all?

Does it matter? I cannot understand why you ask this question. Are your
mailing lists restricted only to your members? I don't think so, because it
was very easy for me to register (if that's not the intended behaviour, you
need to configure your Mailman installation).

You can find me in many mailing lists or fora, including FSF-GNU/GNOME/CC/AMD,
and I am lurking on many other mailing lists and communities, while I have
also joined projects such as Drupal.org and OpenFormats.org and very soon I
will join KDE. Slashdot has published stories written by me (KDE/FSF's
WIWO...) and my karma there is Good. My university dissertation is on wikis.
I notice some people refer to me as "he/she" and I wonder whether they have
noticed who am I.

I was lurking here for some time before I decided to start posting, so I had
accumulated many possible suggestions and ideas about Wikipedia. Since I
decided to start posting, I started remembering whatever I had thought about
all that time, so perhaps some people disliked me because of the initial
quantity of my postings. Although I have already asked whether anybody wants
me to stop posting, nobody said something like that, so I understand that I
should be welcome here - but I still notice that some participants seem to
dislike me and I cannot understand why.

I don't really have enough time to edit much on Wikipedia. I have my own
projects and soon/hopefully will have my own nonprofit organisation. So,
although my community website now is still very new (just opened this August,
but already serving more than 65 thousand hits per month), it will certainly
become very known and important in the near future. My interests in the
Wikipedia community are mostly establishing public relations, helping each
other to improve our community policies and sharing software development tips
and practices. I mostly want communication with Wikipedia decision makers,
the Board and the development team, so that we can find ways to cooperate as
independent separate projects. So, I think it should be obvious that I
participate in your mailing lists as a representative of a friendly website
which seeks to have relations, cooperation and knowledge sharing with
Wikimedia. But if WMF does not wish to cooperate or thinks I am a
"competitor", then you can just say so and I will leave.

I suspect that some people may dislike me because I have my own wikis. Please
try to understand that I am not a "competitor" of Wikipedia. I have written
interesting articles under the GFDL that you can copy if you like (by
providing proper attribution under all the terms of GFDL - please include the
authors' names in the article). See for example this article of NerdyPC.org,
my knowledge base wiki on computer hardware and the Information Technology
industry: http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron - note the most
recent version under development is at
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Test:AMD_Opteron

Finally, I would like to know how we can implement interwiki links to each
other and whether WMF is interested in this kind of linking.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Interwiki Cooperation; NSK


subject: [WikiEN-l] NSK

body:
I sent this to the foundation list and CCed to WikiEN, but it was posted on
foundation-l twice. How can I avoid this behaviour?

----

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 22:26, David Gerard wrote:
> what was your Wikipedia username again?

The reason I have not answered that question is because it was first asked by
a person who offended me ("as faulty as your logic", 23 October 2004).
Although I have ignored his e-mail address, thanks to your webarchive it came
to my attention that he repeats his attacks:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-October/031751.html

Please note that I am a bit touchy and any kind of personal attack is not
compatible with my culture and my education. I have no problem with people
who disagree with me, but I have zero tolerance for things who engage in
personal attacks.

That said, I also don't understand why I need to answer this question. Is it
some kind of policy in Wikipedia to say your user names in emails? I notice
many people post without mentioning their usernames and I wonder why you
picked me specifically.

> Do you in fact edit on Wikipedia at all?

Does it matter? I cannot understand why you ask this question. Are your
mailing lists restricted only to your members? I don't think so, because it
was very easy for me to register (if that's not the intended behaviour, you
need to configure your Mailman installation).

You can find me in many mailing lists or fora, including FSF-GNU/GNOME/CC/AMD,
and I am lurking on many other mailing lists and communities, while I have
also joined projects such as Drupal.org and OpenFormats.org and very soon I
will join KDE. Slashdot has published stories written by me (KDE/FSF's
WIWO...) and my karma there is Good. My university dissertation is on wikis.
I notice some people refer to me as "he/she" and I wonder whether they have
noticed who am I.

I was lurking here for some time before I decided to start posting, so I had
accumulated many possible suggestions and ideas about Wikipedia. Since I
decided to start posting, I started remembering whatever I had thought about
all that time, so perhaps some people disliked me because of the initial
quantity of my postings. Although I have already asked whether anybody wants
me to stop posting, nobody said something like that, so I understand that I
should be welcome here - but I still notice that some participants seem to
dislike me and I cannot understand why.

I don't really have enough time to edit much on Wikipedia. I have my own
projects and soon/hopefully will have my own nonprofit organisation. So,
although my community website now is still very new (just opened this August,
but already serving more than 65 thousand hits per month), it will certainly
become very known and important in the near future. My interests in the
Wikipedia community are mostly establishing public relations, helping each
other to improve our community policies and sharing software development tips
and practices. I mostly want communication with Wikipedia decision makers,
the Board and the development team, so that we can find ways to cooperate as
independent separate projects. So, I think it should be obvious that I
participate in your mailing lists as a representative of a friendly website
which seeks to have relations, cooperation and knowledge sharing with
Wikimedia. But if WMF does not wish to cooperate or thinks I am a
"competitor", then you can just say so and I will leave.

I suspect that some people may dislike me because I have my own wikis. Please
try to understand that I am not a "competitor" of Wikipedia. I have written
interesting articles under the GFDL that you can copy if you like (by
providing proper attribution under all the terms of GFDL - please include the
authors' names in the article). See for example this article of NerdyPC.org,
my knowledge base wiki on computer hardware and the Information Technology
industry: http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron - note the most
recent version under development is at
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Test:AMD_Opteron

Finally, I would like to know how we can implement interwiki links to each
other and whether WMF is interested in this kind of linking.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion as POV

body:
It bothers me too, profoundly.  The need that some people have to delete
what they deem "unencyclopedic" is characteristically obsessive, even
after allowing for the behaviour to be in good faith.  When a stub whose
contents are trivial generates controversy that is completely out of
proportion with its size it suggests to me that maybe it would have been
better left alone.

John seems to ignore the fact that the term, "I don't care," is itself
ambiguous.  "I don't care about the topic," does not mean, "I don't care
if it's deleted."  If I say that I don't care about John's [[Allerton
High School]] it reflects that I probably never heard of it, or that
further information about it would have no effect whatsoever on my
life.  But I at least presume that it's probably real, and that being
real it must have had some number of students over the years to whom it
would have more significance.

In another current thread the question is posed about what to present
about Wikipedia to a conference of teachers.  One of the suggestions was
to have a live link, and let conference participants write something.  A
teacher could then bring that experience to a classroom, and generate a
classroom exercise, a hands on teaching moment.  We end up with the
Dartmouth (College not High School) experience where the students were
treated with incredible rudeness just because they did not meet
someone's inflated Point of View about what is encyclopedic.

People write best about what they know best.  One's high school is an
excellent starting place for a beginner, as would be other things in
one's own community.  A classroom activity could include having everyone
in the class write something, and then a week or so later having others
in the class review and edit that article for inaccuracies without
knowing which classmate was the original author.  They could even report
how  strangers had changed the article.  If all that that second wave of
students can report is that the article was deleted it will certainly
discourage further "useful" activity.

Do we want new people?

Ec

Mark Richards wrote:

>The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care
>about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about
>a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon
>characters, I don't care about Indian villages.
>Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure
>varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies
>are out.
>
>The question is not 'are people within their "rights"'
>to delete things that don't interest them, but does it
>serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope
>encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because
>(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
>
>That's what really bothers me.
>
>Mark
>
>--- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted
>>[[What Wikipedia is
>>not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by
>>any means.
>>
>>In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to
>>delete schools, there
>>is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who
>>are listing them
>>are acting within their rights, because schools
>>aren't covered by any
>>policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis.
>>Democracy is always
>>unfair to someone, but if there was a real
>>miscarriage of justice, how
>>come much of the community doesn't care we're
>>deleting oh so important
>>articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high
>>schools? (Of course,
>>there's the issue of whether there was true
>>consensus; in quite a few,
>>there hasn't been any.)
>>
>>It so happens that most people on VFD are
>>deletionists. Inclusionists
>>argue this is unfair as important articles are
>>unfairly deleted.
>>However, this calls to mind a recent post to this
>>list by, if I'm not
>>mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong
>>neutral" on these; they
>>don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am
>>of the same opinion.
>>If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd
>>either pack up and
>>leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt
>>their existence) or
>>complain. So far the only people complaining are
>>those from the extreme
>>inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community
>>couldn't care less
>>about the fate of school articles. Delete all
>>articles with the word
>>"green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly
>>be livid. Delete all
>>school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean,
>>would you delete an
>>article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep
>>schools?). Delete an
>>article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most
>>wouldn't and don't care.
>>
>>The community is fine with the current practice,
>>whether it's in line
>>with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist
>>to serve the
>>community. They are the means to an end. Not an end
>>in themselves.
>>
>>