from_name: Fastfission

references:
<QfhEY5TO+iwFFwM9@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<98dd099a0702030718tcae20bfud91154f7a1d57ba1@mail.gmail.com>
	<45C4F068.9070505@telus.net>

body:
On 2/3/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> I fully agree that this gives us more wiggle room, and I believe that we
> should be advocating for similar provisions in other countries as well.

Well we should try to be as compliant as is possible and as free as
possible. Of course. My response was not meant to be normative, just to
imply that at least in the US the operations of enforcing digital copyrights
work a bit differently and are, in a surprising way, a bit more sane in this
particular area.

True enough, but I think that whether their claim to copyright on a
> specific item is valid or pure buncombe is a different issue.  For the
> purpose of this thread I'm willing to concede that they do have a legal
> copyright as claimed.  This allows us to separate copyright validity
> from unscrupulous methods of enforcing copyrights.

I of course agree. I tried to infer that the comment was semi-tangential by
putting into parentheses.

FF


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Executive update

body:
Hoi,
I wish the board strength and wisdom. Taking up these added tasks must
be a burden given that there is already so much on your shoulders. I
wish Kat fun fending off all those who will try to find out what the
secret mission is that she and her cabal are embarking on..
Thanks,
    GerardN

Florence Devouard schreef:
> As just announced, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any executive director any more, until an ED is found (hopefully within 3-4 months). This raises some questions of organisation.
> To foster efficiency and channel communications, the board has agreed that the following staff members or contractants shall be reporting to the following people.
>
> For all office/administrative issues, staff (Barbara, Danny...) will report to Carolyn
> Carolyn (operations) will report to Florence
> Sandy (communication) will report to Florence
> Brad (legal) will report to Florence
> Danny (non administrative tasks, eg grants, special projects etc...) will report to Erik
> Brion/Mark/Tim (tech) will report to Jan-Bart
> Delphine (chapters) will report to Oscar
>
> Due to their background, Oscar and Michael (are and) will be very involved in financial and audit considerations.
> Jimbo is more focused on public relations and licenses discussions.
> Kat is spending time on various legal-related, licenses discussions and is in charge of an assignment not yet made public :-) (ahah! cabal!)
>
> Florence Devouard
> Chair of Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> Links
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027477.html (Announcement concerning the ED search firm)
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027269.html (explanation of the differences between CEO, COO and Board)
> *http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027478.html (Brad moving to GC job)
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027268.html (Announcement of Carolyn becoming COO)
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/026515.html (4 wishes for year 2007... including reorganisation and financial considerations)
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027171.html (Welcome to Sandy)
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027455.html (Welcome to chapter coordinator)
>
>


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN: [19729] trunk/extensions/inputbox/inputbox.php

body:
On 03/02/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Uh, it's a . . . new attribute in . . . um . . . XHTML 1.0.  Yes.
> Right.  *cough*

<i smell="bullshit">Sure it is.</i>

Rob Church


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Executive director

body:
On 2/3/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> I must advise caution, however, in regards to what the job is doing to
> the way you express yourself in English.  The clich?, "moving forward",
> has become a frequent feature in the speech of one person whom many of
> us would consider more prominent than he deserves.  I would hate to
> believe that including Bushisms in your writing was in any way intended
> to idolize that person. ;-)

"Brad Patrick's mission regarding working as interim ED has been accomplished."

"WMF will stay the course regarding its policies"

"Knowledge will greed us as liberators".


subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [19742] trunk/phase3

body:
On 03/02/07, hashar at svn.wikimedia.org <hashar at svn.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Revision: 19742
> Author:   hashar
> Date:     2007-02-03 13:47:53 -0800 (Sat, 03 Feb 2007)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> Fix #6844: Semantically correct tags for diffchanges (<ins> && <del>)
> Bumps wgStyleVersion to 55.
> Patch by Messi <messias+spam at gmail.com>

Won't wikidiff and wikidiff2 also need to be updated?

Rob Church


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-04

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19757).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

   1 previously failing test(s) now PASSING! :)
      * <references> after <gallery> (bug 6164)

  19 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * Gallery
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.

Passed 488 of 507 tests (96.25%)... 19 tests failed!


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 04/02/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/4/07, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:

> > I am wondering who Danny should report to ? Is it Erik or Carolyn or both ?

> If I may answer this, the way I read the announcement, Danny reports
> to Carolyn for office and administrative issues, and to Erik for his
> work on grants, special projects and other non-office things. Danny is
> effectively doing two jobs now!

I suppose that'll make a change down from what feels like four ...

- d.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Abigail Brady

subject: [WikiEN-l] Inclusion criteria of one category

body:
On 2/3/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Bryan Derksen wrote:
> >
> >> We could for example have [[Category:Cities in
> >> the United States]] and [[Category:Cities in the Pacific Ocean]]
> >>
> > Looking forward to global warming, are we? :-(
>
> I'm a Canadian in the depths of winter, so yes. :)
>
> (Not sure how else to phrase "cities located within the geographical
> boundaries of the Pacific Ocean" in a shorter manner, actually)

[[Category:Pacific Rim cities]]?

--
Abi


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
Florence Devouard wrote:
> As just announced, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any executive director any more, until an ED is found (hopefully within 3-4 months). This raises some questions of organisation.
> To foster efficiency and channel communications, the board has agreed that the following staff members or contractants shall be reporting to the following people.
>
> For all office/administrative issues, staff (Barbara, Danny...) will report to Carolyn
> Carolyn (operations) will report to Florence
> Sandy (communication) will report to Florence
> Brad (legal) will report to Florence
> Danny (non administrative tasks, eg grants, special projects etc...) will report to Erik
> Brion/Mark/Tim (tech) will report to Jan-Bart
> Delphine (chapters) will report to Oscar
>
<snip>

Hello Florence,

I am wondering who Danny should report to ? Is it Erik or Carolyn or both ?

Also, Brion is the Chief Technical Officer, maybe all technical staff
should report to him just like administrative staff reports to Carolyn ?

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Search

body:
On 03/02/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, is there some js hack to make wikisearches automaticly go to google?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Henrik/sandbox/google-search

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: Fwd: Wingchunpedia using derivative of
	Wikipedia logo

body:
I found a working email address in the end and the founder responded
to say it was a temporary logo and that the real one is being worked
on and will be installed before the release of the site.

Angela


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Liviu Andronic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

body:
On 2/1/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> Well, Berto lives in Ukraine, you live in Toulouse, France.

This is the point. It is my language, my country, my region - if you want.
Some things that are important to me. I come from there. While he - he came
in there.

--
Liviu


subject:
[Foundation-l] Comparison of new user welcome efforts across
	projects

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
<snip>
> I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a
> bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users
> who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give
> feedback on the message, which you can read here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log
<snip>

Maybe it could be a feature in MediaWiki. I am not sure we want to
create a dummy page each time a user create an account through.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
Liviu Andronic schreef:
> On 2/1/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
>
>> Well, Berto lives in Ukraine, you live in Toulouse, France.
>>
>
> This is the point. It is my language, my country, my region - if you want.
> Some things that are important to me. I come from there. While he - he came
> in there.
Hoi,
Would you not agree that because Berto lives in "your" country, a
country where you do not live, is in a better position to observe. Would
you not agree that as he chooses to live there he may know the people,
the country, the region and love them as well?
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cafepress store redesign

body:
Ben Yates wrote:
> I just redesigned the layout of the cafepress store --
> http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia .  Let me know what you think.

The edit link is cool ;-)

Some suggestions:
* Don't use the same formatting for links as for normal text. ("Store
newsletter" is text, "Jigsaw globe" in the same font and color is a
link, the same problem in the footer with "Where's My Stuff?" and
"recent orders".) Solution: Normal text in black and only links in blue.

* "Browse products", "Browse designs" and "Store newsletter" could be
placed outside the box as a headings like in Wikipedia, then you can use
the normal wikipedia dots as list bullets for the items instead of the
unfamiliar >>.

* a little bit more room between the cafepress header and the wikipedia
puzzle ball would be cool, maybe you could divide the areas just by a
fine grey line and leave the upper part white.

* if you move the "other wikimedia projects" right beside the "jigsaw
globe" you have two items of similar height in the first row. Walt
Whitman could be placed in the third row centered.

* "Copyright ? 1999-2007 CafePress.com. All rights reserved." - are the
contents of the site really copyright Cafepress? Might leave a wrong
impression about the copyright status of the things presented there.

Just my 2 cents.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
Hello,

Welcoming new users is a common community activity across many
Wikimedia wikis. The idea is usually to do at least some of the
following: give the user key links to core policies, an explanation of
syntax/technical help, make them feel part of the community, and give
them links to places to ask further questions.

Different projects can have different needs. For example, some
non-English projects give links (in English) to Embassy or Babel
pages, where they can ask questions in English rather than the
language of the project. Also, non-Wikipedia projects can perhaps
expect that most of their new users will be familiar with Wikipedia
first, and therefore tailor their welcome messages with the
expectation that the user already is familiar with the technical
aspects, and emphasise the difference in policies between their
project and Wikipedia.

Personalising the sign-up process is often not a priority for
projects, because only admins can edit MediaWiki pages, it is not easy
to locate which page should be changed to update which message, and it
tends to have been a long time since admins signed up/were new, so
they forget if it was a bad experience or what it was like.

I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a
bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users
who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give
feedback on the message, which you can read here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log

There was some concern people wouldn't like the impersonal method of
being welcomed by a bot, but one person even commented that it made
them feel part of the community! Some people said they would like to
appear automatically on the talk page without them even making edits).

The Commons welcome message is quite dense, but the links are useful
enough that an 'oldbie' could still find it very handy to keep around.
It has an emphasis on image-management-specific tools such as user's
Gallery, Commons Helper (transferring images from Wikipedia etc) and
how to get your own mistakes deleted. It also has 33 translations,
which is pretty fantastic.

Anyway, via this feedback, I recently became aware of Hungarian
Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Welcomecreation (this is the message that says
'you have successfully registered your account' -- your first contact
with the new user, in effect). See their changes:
http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AWelcomecreation&diff=825363&oldid=221779

I thought it was quite fantastic, and updated Commons' Welcomecreation
message in a similar fashion.

I also started looking at the MediaWiki:Welcomecreation and
Template:Welcome (or equiv.) messages for other wikis. You can see my
summry here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/welcome
(and you can complete some more if you feel like it, especially
mention if your project has a 'welcoming committee' equivalent)

It is quite interesting what different projects choose to emphasise.
ZH.wp, wikt (Chinese) explicitly highlight the GFDL. IT.wp has a red
warning against violating copyrights. PL.wp, wikt (Polish) both have
explicit links to IRC channels, so I guess it is an important tool for
them. JA.wp (Japanese) doesn't appear to have a template:Welcome (at
least it is not interwiki linked on the English one...surely they have
one???).

So this is just a bit of a message, to admins of various projects who
care about the impression that new users get, to have a look at these
pages on your project and see how they compare.

Here are my 'best ofs' so far:

MediaWiki:Welcomecreation:
FR.wp: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
HU.wp: http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation

Template:Welcome (or equiv.):
PL.wp: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szablon:Witaj2 nice screenshots to
explain things
EN.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:pediawelcome A little
combative, but does well to emphasise the differences between wp and
wikt
NL.wp: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Welkom Nice sidebar with
links to explanations of Wikipedia jargon (remember the jargon,
people???!)
ES.wp: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Bienvenido_usuario
Visually, the most impressive one.
ZH.wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:%E6%AC%A2%E8%BF%8E Pretty
and minimalist (possibly too minimalist, and thus easy to ignore,
though).

What are the hallmarks of bad welcome messages? (in my opinion--)
Too much dense text. Too much information. (Do they need to know how
many articles there are or when the project was founded? No.) Too many
links. (Consider: is it really vital that the user go read the article
on 'Wikipedia'? Probably not, so probably don't link it.) Irrelevant
links. (EN.wp links to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_development as 'How to
write a great article'. It's actually part of a series called 'The
path to a Featured Article'. Rather ambitious for a n00b who you
simultaneously presume doesn't even know how to sign their posts on
talk pages. Do all new users need a guide on inserting images into
articles? FR.wp thinks so, but I doubt it.)

What are the most common newbie errors you see people making? Remember
back, what was the frustrating gem that you spent hours searching to
find and wished someone had told you earlier? Are your users coming
from Wikipedia -- are you wasting precious screen real estate telling
them things they already know? Consider writing messages that cater to
separate audiences if appropriate.

Anyway that's all, I hope some people feel inspired to update their
welcome messages, and if you know of a project that has a particularly
nice welcome message I'd love to see it.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject:
[Foundation-l] Comparison of new user welcome efforts across
 projects

body:
Roberto Alfonso schreef:
> Just a thought:
>
> I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no
> problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and
> can understand several other languages although not well enough to
> write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few
> Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe
> users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for
> every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really
> help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple
> common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's
> noticeboard, etc).
>
> Not something we can solve at a "software" level, but at a "community" level.
>
> RB
Hoi,
There are at least 117 users called GerardM on the Wiktionaries alone.
The first important function for me is to find where the preferences are
and change the language of the user interface so that I am at least able
to navigate the wiki. This is the very minimum that should function for
all languages. Sadly it does not. This is however very much something
that with some organisation can be solved.

When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given
priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of
localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation
and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis
for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of
the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is
at the moment.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Ben Yates

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cafepress store redesign

body:
Ant: I'm using the WP namespace blue for the background, but I didn't
change any of the other colors.  Lucky coincidence. :)

Elian: Good suggestions; I'm not sure all of that stuff can be changed
(in particular the copyright notice), but I'll see.  (I rearranged the
front page, but I'm keeping Wikimedia at the bottom because those
items don't sell very well.)

On 2/3/07, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Ben Yates wrote:
> > I just redesigned the layout of the cafepress store --
> > http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia .  Let me know what you think.
>
> The edit link is cool ;-)
>
> Some suggestions:
> * Don't use the same formatting for links as for normal text. ("Store
> newsletter" is text, "Jigsaw globe" in the same font and color is a
> link, the same problem in the footer with "Where's My Stuff?" and
> "recent orders".) Solution: Normal text in black and only links in blue.
>
> * "Browse products", "Browse designs" and "Store newsletter" could be
> placed outside the box as a headings like in Wikipedia, then you can use
> the normal wikipedia dots as list bullets for the items instead of the
> unfamiliar >>.
>
> * a little bit more room between the cafepress header and the wikipedia
> puzzle ball would be cool, maybe you could divide the areas just by a
> fine grey line and leave the upper part white.
>
> * if you move the "other wikimedia projects" right beside the "jigsaw
> globe" you have two items of similar height in the first row. Walt
> Whitman could be placed in the third row centered.
>
> * "Copyright (c) 1999-2007 CafePress.com. All rights reserved." - are the
> contents of the site really copyright Cafepress? Might leave a wrong
> impression about the copyright status of the things presented there.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> greetings,
> elian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


from_name: Cool Cat

body:
I do not believe categorizing cities by geographic region is OK. Let me
explain

There are a lot of geographic regions intersecting with each other and
people wont be satisfied if we just use UN definitions. Not to mention,
there is almost always a disagreement in the boundaries of geographic
regions. If we use the UN and EU definitions alone countries like Cyprus
Turkey, Armenia, Georgia will be problematic to tag for instance. Is parts
of Texas really a part of [[Eastern United States]]? Then there is the
matter on how small geographic regions will we consider worthy of tagging...
Would middle east count? If so some cities will be tagged with oodles of
categories.

Lists would be better in this case too. [[Eastern United States]] article
for instance is somewhat a list (I would prefer to see two lists on that
page, one for "traditionally accepted" and another for "others", with proper
sourcing of course). Same goes for a [[List of Pacific Rim cities]].

   - Cool Cat

On 2/4/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> Abigail Brady wrote:
> > On 2/3/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >> (Not sure how else to phrase "cities located within the geographical
> >> boundaries of the Pacific Ocean" in a shorter manner, actually)
> >
> > [[Category:Pacific Rim cities]]?
>
> Honolulu isn't particularly near the rim, though, and most of the cities
> that are Pacific Rim are actually on continents.
>
> And it was just a quick hypothetical example I came up with to
> illustrate a more general point, too, so this is all kind of a
> digression. I don't actually want to create this category. My point was
> simply that one can have both region-based and political-based
> geographic categories existing in parallel.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Hello,

The fact that I do not live in "my" country does not mean that I do not live
with its realities. I'm concerned with these as much as anyone living in
there, as they touch my parents, family and friends - people dear to me. As
better a position he may be in for day-to-day observations, I'm quite suited
for periodical ones. Which may not necessarily be "worse", especially when
backed by previous, relatively recent, day-to-day ones. As for his feelings
- he would most definitely have some. Positive or negative. In either case,
he has no right to speak so easily over an issue deemed serious and
important by a group of people. Even under the widely accepted freedom of
speech right.

Regards,
Liviu

On 2/4/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Liviu Andronic schreef:
> > On 2/1/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
> >
> >> Well, Berto lives in Ukraine, you live in Toulouse, France.
> >>
> >
> > This is the point. It is my language, my country, my region - if you
> want.
> > Some things that are important to me. I come from there. While he - he
> came
> > in there.
> Hoi,
> Would you not agree that because Berto lives in "your" country, a
> country where you do not live, is in a better position to observe. Would
> you not agree that as he chooses to live there he may know the people,
> the country, the region and love them as well?
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Welcoming new users is a common community activity across many
>Wikimedia wikis. The idea is usually to do at least some of the
>following: give the user key links to core policies, an explanation of
>syntax/technical help, make them feel part of the community, and give
>them links to places to ask further questions.
>
>Different projects can have different needs. For example, some
>non-English projects give links (in English) to Embassy or Babel
>pages, where they can ask questions in English rather than the
>language of the project. Also, non-Wikipedia projects can perhaps
>expect that most of their new users will be familiar with Wikipedia
>first, and therefore tailor their welcome messages with the
>expectation that the user already is familiar with the technical
>aspects, and emphasise the difference in policies between their
>project and Wikipedia.
>
>
>
>cheers,
>Brianna
>user:pfctdayelise
>

There may have been a time when this was true for Wikibooks, but
increasingly I am finding individuals (at least on en.wikibooks) who are
coming into content development on Wikibooks first that have never been
involved with Wikipedia at all on any level.  One of the huge reasons
for this is some minor publicity that is happening in regards to
Wikibooks among educators and the broader educational community, and
because it is growing to become a substantial project in its own right.
 There have been recently several articles in magazines written for
educators who mention Wikibooks as an educational resource, and
Wikipedia is mentioned only as a footnote.

The user community on Wikibooks is growing in ways that even surprise
and astonish me from time to time.

BTW, just to plug something from Wikibooks, there is a Wikibook that you
might want to get involved with that has been addressing some of these
issues of project management from the viewpoint of a "sysop" on
Wikimedia projects:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Wikimedia_Administrator%27s_Handbook

This is essentially a new administrator's guide that we (the other
Wikibooks admins and I) have put together primarily for our own internal
training of new administrators, but we have written it with the
intention that it would be generally of use for other Wikimedia projects
and for other users of the MediaWiki software.  Some of your suggestions
that you have made here in this e-mail post I would like, with your
permission, to add to this handbook.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Berto 'd Sera

body:
Hi

>This is the point. It is my language, my country, my region - if you want.
>Some things that are important to me. I come from there. While he - he came
>in there.

No, I did not. I live in Kiev, not in Romania. Anyway, there is but one
problem in what you say: you keep confusing a language with a country. And
from WMF's POV they are 2 different things. Here it's WMF, it's WMF laws
working, not your own or the Romanian laws.

WMF will never tell Romania how its street signs should look like, Romania
cannot tell WMF how a wiki page should look like. Failure to understand this
is... the soviet encyclopedia. A place where, instead of being a SUBJECT for
classification, politics become the SOURCE of classification. It's fascism
in its purest form (whether red or black fascism it's absolutely
irrelevant).

You may not like this, okay, that's your right. Then download the software
it takes and make yourself an independent wiki. Because here pillars are
pillars and they cannot be discussed. Over.

I sometimes hate these pillars myself. That's why Wikipedia is not a
monopolist to my spare time and yes I do start my own projects. I have my
own stupid personality and I love to show it (as anyone else). Even in the
most extreme fashion. Fantastic, that's what forums are for, for example. Go
find yourself one and have fun. And when you are here either be a
wikipedian, or quit coming here at all.

It's called context (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context), I add a link in
case you have doubts on the meaning. The usual problem with dictatorships
and fundamentalism is that they do no understand what context is. They
cannot adapt, they are absolute in their essence. There's no such a thing as
a private space to them. EVERYTHING on earth must either be their way or
vanish. Ok, you are free to love that, yet the fact that one may love
Securitate does not make Securitate's ways acceptable to wikipedia.

WMF is WMF, you are yourself, it always was and it always shall be two
different things. Learn to live with this, as we all did.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Liviu Andronic
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 3:32 AM
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

On 2/1/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> Well, Berto lives in Ukraine, you live in Toulouse, France.

--
Liviu
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia futurology

body:
Sage Ross wrote:
> For your light amusement, my attempt at predicting what Wikipedia will
> be like in 5 years:
>
> http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-will-wikipedia-be-like-5-years.html

So if we call the "necessary" improvements N1-N6, and the "hoped-for"
improvements H1-H3: N2 and N4 have the Foundation's attention and will
probably be done soon. N1 and H2 have had some developer interest.
Probably not enough in the case of N1, due to competition from the
commercial search engines, although limited improvements are likely. N3 is
simple and just needs an interested developer. For N5 and N6 there's
Semantic MediaWiki, which has a strong developer community and may produce
something useful sooner or later. H3 has a great deal of demand behind it,
and several things in this area should be implemented within a month or
two. H1 has little demand or developer interest, so if you want it then
you'd better start lobbying.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Search

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 03/02/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Well, is there some js hack to make wikisearches automaticly go to google?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Henrik/sandbox/google-search
>

You might have a bit of trouble searching talk pages on de.wikipedia.org,
or AfD debates on en. Crawlers are blocked for both.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-03

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 2/3/07, brion at pobox.com <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>    2 previously passing test(s) now FAILING! :(
>>       * Gallery
>>       * <references> after <gallery> (bug 6164)
>
> That was me, but I doubt I can fix it properly, since parser tests
> don't work on Windows for some reason.

I run them on Windows, it works just fine. I use diff from UnxUtils.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] I go away for a few days and all this happens?

body:
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Thomas Dalton stated for the record:
>> Sum total of zero reports of it happening to anyone else and given the
>> number of people on this mailing list who use gmail that is somewhat
>> odd.
>
> And the amazing coincidence of the two accounts that got confused just
> happening to be involved in a conversation with eachother at the
> time...

And the complete lack of "Bob" on this list after the humiliation of
being outed.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.
 sean at epoptic.com | But this wasn't it. --Groucho Marx
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Brianna Laugher schreef:
> On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given
>> priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of
>> localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation
>> and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis
>> for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of
>> the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is
>> at the moment.
>>
>
> You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that
> welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something
> that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked
> from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of
> development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an
> administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a
> Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a
> Wikinotpedia welcome.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
Hoi,
You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first
place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will
be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result. It is all
very good that you want to point out why and where all the different
notice boards are but this too is something where you need localisation
to be effective at it. Remember there are some 250 languages that we aim
to support. Effectively that is the size of what you want to do.

When you make it more interesting by wanting to consider WikiNotPedia,
consider what to do for WikiNotMedia. You want some structure to the
messages because Wikipedia and Commons are at the moment the only
projects where you have communities for 250 languages.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics script on Swedish Wiktionary

body:
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StefanB wrote:
> On Swedish Wiktionarys common.js,
> http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js , is a script that
> takes the visitors IP-addresses and transforms it into a non-revertable
> number, and then sends it to an external private server that belongs to
> one if the administrators on Wiktionary. The script is used for
> statistics on visited articles.
>
> To me it seems like this kind of script is a violation of the privacy
> policy, since it is possible to get the IP-numbers of all visitors, even
> though it is not done in this case. I should also mention that a
> discussion was held before this script was activated and that no one
> objected to it.
>
> Are these kind of scripts allowed?

I would prefer we keep that sort of thing on the toolserver (thus to
some degree 'in the family') until everyone's happy with the stats we
can get out of the new logging framework Tim's put together (at which
point they should be removed entirely).

Admin's own server is better than sending off to a third party, but
still kinda uggy to my perspective.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] add comment when marking bugs INVALID

body:
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Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Marking people's bugs as INVALID is great, but do add a word why.
> Which bug? I mean in general. Customer relations principles still
> apply, paid staff or volunteer.

Well, it would probably help if you didn't flood the bug queue with
duplicates and vague issues every few days. ;)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Kurt Maxwell Weber

body:
On Sunday 04 February 2007 07:59, David Gerard wrote:
>
> This is transparent rubbish. Google told you no such thing.

You know this because...

--
Kurt Weber
<kmw at armory.com>


from_name: Anthere

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>
>>As just announced, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any executive director any more, until an ED is found (hopefully within 3-4 months). This raises some questions of organisation.
>>To foster efficiency and channel communications, the board has agreed that the following staff members or contractants shall be reporting to the following people.
>>
>>For all office/administrative issues, staff (Barbara, Danny...) will report to Carolyn
>>Carolyn (operations) will report to Florence
>>Sandy (communication) will report to Florence
>>Brad (legal) will report to Florence
>>Danny (non administrative tasks, eg grants, special projects etc...) will report to Erik
>>Brion/Mark/Tim (tech) will report to Jan-Bart
>>Delphine (chapters) will report to Oscar
>>
>
> <snip>
>
> Hello Florence,
>
> I am wondering who Danny should report to ? Is it Erik or Carolyn or both ?

Hi
Stephen and David are correct. Danny is involved in two very different
areas. So, for administrative/operations tasks, he reports to Carolyn,
and for others to Erik. So, both.

> Also, Brion is the Chief Technical Officer, maybe all technical staff
> should report to him just like administrative staff reports to Carolyn ?

I'll tell you three secrets, just do not repeat them.
First, we are beginning to oil the wheels to find someone to be the new
CTO in the long run.
Second, Mark, Brion etc... pretty much manage their own business between
themselves well. By large, Tim reports to Brion right now, and all is well.
Third, Brion is not a report man... he is Brion. On the tech side, the
most urgent things we can be facing in the next three months really, are
much more related to hardware, hosting, network, insurance, contracts...
in large part Mark realm (along with JeLuF, Domas, Rob etc...). Mark and
Jan-Bart know each other, they can even meet pretty easily (dutch people
are infesting the Foundation right now). I guess it would make no sense
to add any type of layer or intermediaries between them (ie, Brion). I
presume that a lot of their interactions will also be directly with Carolyn.
In any cases, they seem to be happy, and as long as it works...

> cheers,

ant


references:
<45C50565.9090207@anthere.org> <eq38ek$u2u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<eq468a$qhg$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
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Anthere wrote:
[snip]
> Second, Mark, Brion etc... pretty much manage their own business between
> themselves well. By large, Tim reports to Brion right now, and all is well.
> Third, Brion is not a report man... he is Brion. On the tech side, the
> most urgent things we can be facing in the next three months really, are
> much more related to hardware, hosting, network, insurance, contracts...
> in large part Mark realm (along with JeLuF, Domas, Rob etc...). Mark and
> Jan-Bart know each other, they can even meet pretty easily (dutch people
> are infesting the Foundation right now). I guess it would make no sense
> to add any type of layer or intermediaries between them (ie, Brion). I
> presume that a lot of their interactions will also be directly with Carolyn.
> In any cases, they seem to be happy, and as long as it works...

To summarize the tech situation:

* In theory I'm the lead, but we're a small team and generally operate
internally by consensus agreement. In reality I'm lead programmer far
more than I'm "CTO".

I happily defer to Mark or others on network & hardware issues where
they know better, and we have little need for a strict reporting
hierarchy at this time.

* We're going through Carolyn for operations issues (arranging any
necessary purchase orders, ensuring that bills are paid,
contracts/insurance dealt with etc)

Note that I'll be working from the main office from next month.

* Jan-Bart is our Board contact if and when needed.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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body:
Brianna Laugher schreef:
> On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Brianna Laugher schreef:
>>
>>> On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given
>>>> priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of
>>>> localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation
>>>> and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis
>>>> for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of
>>>> the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is
>>>> at the moment.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that
>>> welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something
>>> that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked
>>> from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of
>>> development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an
>>> administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a
>>> Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a
>>> Wikinotpedia welcome.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Brianna
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first
>> place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will
>> be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result.
>>
>
> What do you mean by this, "a language not supported"? I am only
> concerned with existing Wikimedia projects.
>
> or is your point that I only wrote my email in English? I don't
> apologise for that...
>
> I am not really clear about what your point is or was. Is it a
> criticism of me? Or the current Wikimedia community? or something
> else?
>
> regards,
> Brianna
Hoi,
It is fine that you write in English, no need to apologise. I am also
happy with what you aim to do. It is therefore something else.

There are several languages among them Marathi that are not supported
while there are projects in Marathi. The Marathi Wikipedia for instance
has 7566 articles according to the information on Meta. These languages
are not properly supported in MediaWiki because when a new project is
created, there is no place where the localisation is maintained. All
this maintenance is done in a haphazard way and you have to be aware off
and able to use the tools of the developers to do something about it.

Nikerabbit hosts a project called "BetaWiki" and this is where a lot of
localisation work was done for many languages. Special software was
written to manage this, it has been made a MediaWiki extension. We are
waiting for Brion to give it priority and accept it. Gangleri was the
man who did a lot of the work on the BetaWiki and he was absolutely
invaluable, while he was active he was one of the most relevant people
in the Wikimedia Foundation for the work that he did. At this moment in
time, we want to move the functionality of the "BetaWiki" and include
this in the Incubator. The policy of the language committee for new
languages is that without content in the Incubator there will be no new
project. This means that when people change the messages for a new
language they will immediately benefit; instant gratification.

The importance of this is that all messages can be maintained in the
Incubator and all projects will benefit when messages are maintained
there. The messages that are specific to one specific wiki will still be
maintained locally. These are very much the messages that you are
talking about. However, you cannot inform at this moment in time the
Marathi speaking people because no project supports Marathi except the
Marathi projects and each Marathi project has to maintain the messages
again and again. This is a major issue when starting up new projects. It
is a painful issue because it can be resolved. It is painful because
localisation effectively has no priority.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Recycle encyclopedias

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Now that we have Wikipedia, what are you going to do with your
> old printed encyclopedia?
>

Cross-check them to make sure we cover everything that they do, at
greater depth.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 2/4/07, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
>
> I am wondering who Danny should report to ? Is it Erik or Carolyn or both ?

If I may answer this, the way I read the announcement, Danny reports
to Carolyn for office and administrative issues, and to Erik for his
work on grants, special projects and other non-office things. Danny is
effectively doing two jobs now!

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 2/4/07, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Brad Patrick's mission regarding working as interim ED has been accomplished."
>
> "WMF will stay the course regarding its policies"
>
> "Knowledge will greed us as liberators".

There wasn't an "increase" in the number of board members recently,
there was a "surge".

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 2/4/07, brion at pobox.com <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>       * Gallery

Could someone using Linux fix this?  (I'm going to figure out how to
get parsertests to work on Windows one of these days . . .)


body:
On 2/4/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I run them on Windows, it works just fine. I use diff from UnxUtils.

Really?  I have a diff variant installed, but when I try to run the
tests, php.exe tries to reference a null pointer and dies.  It gets up
to "Running test Simple paragraph...".


body:
On 2/4/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I suppose that'll make a change down from what feels like four ...

Yes, apparently working the OFFICE is now one of the [[labours of Hercules]].

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
Brianna - this is a fabulous comparison you've been compiling, and a good
discussion to boot.  Thank you for focusing on it.

On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Brianna Laugher wrote:

> On 05/02/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>> There may have been a time when this was true for Wikibooks, but
>> increasingly I am finding individuals (at least on en.wikibooks) who are
>> coming into content development on Wikibooks first that have never been
>> involved with Wikipedia at all on any level.  One of the huge reasons
> That's awesome to hear, and will become more and more common I imagine.

Ditto; that's wonderful, and hopefully true for Wiktionary as well.

> 1. Brand new to wiki editing?
> Howto, Help, Be bold, sign talk pages, NPOV, copyright/license.
> 2. Familiar with a Wikimedia or MediaWiki wiki?
> Prominent link to a project page contrasting other Wikimedia projects
> with this one, link to Village pump equivalent.

Yes.

> about the EN.wp one which I have never much liked. At the moment, if I
> could overhaul its content, I would remove all references to the
> Manual of Style and FAs and 'Community', and just put a humungous link
> to a list of WikiProjects and invite the newbie to join one they are
> interested in. There is just so many of these things. They offer an

I like that; add links to a few portals and to Village Pumps as well,
since there too you can get instant feedback and advice.  And the early
user experience is very different if one is introduced immediately to AfD
and Deletion Review than if one is not; I don't know which is preferable.

> MediaWiki is set up by default to serve a medium-sized wiki rather than
> a small one, so when you start a new one, you spend a lot of time fixing
> redlinks that appear in system messages to pages like
> [[project:administrators]] and [[project:protected pages]]. And you are
> given a sidebar with a good half-dozen links that seem to need filling
> out, even though currently the discussion of your entire wiki could all
> take place on [[talk:main page]] for a good six months.

This is a really good point.  An effort to change the MWiki defaults so
that it starts out set up for a small project would be helpful for 95% of
wiki users.  Then you could toggle a site-wide size setting that will step
you through ways to update it to scale with a medium- and large-sized
project [more sidebar links, more and different specialized messages, more
organizational pages (a policy overview, a community overview, &c), more
optimization for handling load, storing images, specific options for
coping with spam].

> When you start, you don't even need welcome messages, because maybe
> all the people who join are people you personally invited anyway.

But you do need them very soon.

> Then it becomes part of the community: the expectation that all
> newbies should be welcomed, and looked after in this superficial way.

This is the cheerful stage of wiki growth.

> Then it becomes bureaucracy: the templates become overloaded with
> "essential" info, they divide and multiply in versions, and... I'm not
> sure what next.

When they start warning you, and edit pages lead off with all the things
you SHOULD NOT do... and people feel that scaring newbies away is good
because who needs all these contributors anyway if they're not going to
fight vandals?  This is the defensive stage of wiki growth.

> For sure, of course! And please do have a look at some of the nice
> designs I have highlighted at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/welcome :)

Which everyone should look at, on general principle.  Perhaps we need a
welcome message or wikibirthday notice for old-timers, which gets them to
look at pages like this one.

"Happy Second Anniversary as a wiki editor!  Please check out
   a) the following new policies          1) these meta-comparisons
   b) the following community pages       2) these cross-project efforts
   ...                                    ...
"

SJ


body:
On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Bence Damokos wrote:

> We should also look at how anonymous editors are greeted, and the
> conversion
> rate of IPs into Users of such greetings.

Some Wikidemia-project contributors have long wanted to run such an
experiment.  You might talk to en:User:Tobacman about running such a
study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tobacman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia
   (see 'Ongoing Studies' for ideas not yet implemented)

SJ

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Bence Damokos wrote:

> We should also look at how anonymous editors are greeted, and the conversion
> rate of IPs into Users of such greetings.
>
> Regards,
> Dami
> [[hu:User:Bdamokos]]
>
> On 2/4/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>>
>> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Welcoming new users is a common community activity across many
>>> Wikimedia wikis. The idea is usually to do at least some of the
>>> following: give the user key links to core policies, an explanation of
>>> syntax/technical help, make them feel part of the community, and give
>>> them links to places to ask further questions.
>>>
>>> Different projects can have different needs. For example, some
>>> non-English projects give links (in English) to Embassy or Babel
>>> pages, where they can ask questions in English rather than the
>>> language of the project. Also, non-Wikipedia projects can perhaps
>>> expect that most of their new users will be familiar with Wikipedia
>>> first, and therefore tailor their welcome messages with the
>>> expectation that the user already is familiar with the technical
>>> aspects, and emphasise the difference in policies between their
>>> project and Wikipedia.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Brianna
>>> user:pfctdayelise
>>>
>>
>> There may have been a time when this was true for Wikibooks, but
>> increasingly I am finding individuals (at least on en.wikibooks) who are
>> coming into content development on Wikibooks first that have never been
>> involved with Wikipedia at all on any level.  One of the huge reasons
>> for this is some minor publicity that is happening in regards to
>> Wikibooks among educators and the broader educational community, and
>> because it is growing to become a substantial project in its own right.
>> There have been recently several articles in magazines written for
>> educators who mention Wikibooks as an educational resource, and
>> Wikipedia is mentioned only as a footnote.
>>
>> The user community on Wikibooks is growing in ways that even surprise
>> and astonish me from time to time.
>>
>> BTW, just to plug something from Wikibooks, there is a Wikibook that you
>> might want to get involved with that has been addressing some of these
>> issues of project management from the viewpoint of a "sysop" on
>> Wikimedia projects:
>>
>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Wikimedia_Administrator%27s_Handbook
>>
>> This is essentially a new administrator's guide that we (the other
>> Wikibooks admins and I) have put together primarily for our own internal
>> training of new administrators, but we have written it with the
>> intention that it would be generally of use for other Wikimedia projects
>> and for other users of the MediaWiki software.  Some of your suggestions
>> that you have made here in this e-mail post I would like, with your
>> permission, to add to this handbook.
>>
>> --
>> Robert Scott Horning
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
On 2/4/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Probably a grey area, since if it really is an irreversible hash (at
> least, as far as we know the hash function to be so, and we all know
> how crap some hashes have proven to be), then it's not supposedly
> possible to arbitrarily obtain IP addresses.

Not really.  If it's just a single MD5 application, say, then four
billion applications to get a complete rainbow table would be simple.
If it's something such that a single application is slow enough to
take a couple of seconds on an average computer, you'd need to put a
bit more effort into cracking it (distributed computing via a large
botnet, say), but it would still be at least theoretically possible,
and slow enough to be distinctly annoying for the end user to boot.


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
Anthere wrote:
<snip>
> I'll tell you three secrets, just do not repeat them.
<snip>

Thanks for sharing the secrets with us :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation and domain squatting

body:
I tryed in the past to send messages related to squatting domain names to
the ORTS system (info at wikimedia.org) but I never received a reply. Now this
is also a trademark violation denunce.

Someone registered the domain names wikipedia.com.br [1],
wikimedia.com.br[2] and
wikipedia.wiki.br [3]. And now, someone has registered a trademark name
"Wikip?dia Distribui??o de Conte?do Ltda" [4].

[1] - https://registro.br/cgi-bin/nicbr/whois?qr=wikipedia.com.br

[2] - https://registro.br/cgi-bin/nicbr/whois?qr=wikimedia.com.br

[3] - https://registro.br/cgi-bin/nicbr/whois?qr=wikipedia.wiki.br

[4] - "Wikip?dia Distribui??o de Conte?do Ltda" is the owner of
wikipedia.com.br


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 03/02/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I "changed" email addresses because I was told that the database tables
> related to my account were beyond repair and had to be deleted. This was the
> whole cause of the "bob" incident, despite whatever sinister motives you
> want to try to read into a problem purely created by a data storage medium
> somewhere going bad.

This is transparent rubbish. Google told you no such thing.

Could people please stop responding to the obviously idiotic bits of
Parker's posts henceforth? Restraint. He's on thin ice as is, and is
only allowed on in the hope he'll earn his way back up to zero through
quality and thought-provoking posts.

- d.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 4 Feb 2007 at 16:06, "Thomas Dalton" <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > Sum total of zero reports of it happening to anyone else and given the
> > number of people on this mailing list who use gmail that is somewhat
> > odd.
>
> And the amazing coincidence of the two accounts that got confused just
> happening to be involved in a conversation with eachother at the
> time...

Not to mention that this mysterious database malfunction (I prefer
wardrobe malfunctions myself) somehow restored the correct header to
the message in the copy that went to Mr. Peters as part of his list
subscription, so that when he replied to it it had the proper
attribution line, while the copies that reached all other list
subscribers, the digest-mode version, and the web archives all
misattributed the original message to Peters.  This makes the JFK
assassination "magic bullet" theory seem highly believable in
comparison.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
On 2/4/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/02/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > Oh, great. I'm disabling Javascript for all Wikimedia sites. Are any of
> > the other wikis using this?
>
> Some, including, I believe, the English Wikipedia, are using a similar
> script, but the statistics get pushed to the toolserver.

I don't think that the enwiki script sends IPs, though.


from_name: Jim Hu

body:
On Feb 4, 2007, at 1:40 PM, Gurch wrote:

> StefanB wrote:
<snip/>
> Oh, great. I'm disabling Javascript for all Wikimedia sites. Are
> any of
> the other wikis using this?
>
> -Gurch
<snip/>
maybe I'm insufficiently paranoid, and I know I'm technically naive,
but what's the big deal?  What's the vuln from the user pov?

Jim Hu


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> On 03/02/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I "changed" email addresses because I was told that the database tables
>> related to my account were beyond repair and had to be deleted. This
>> was the
>> whole cause of the "bob" incident, despite whatever sinister motives you
>> want to try to read into a problem purely created by a data storage
>> medium
>> somewhere going bad.
>
> This is transparent rubbish. Google told you no such thing.

Note the passive voice, Parker never claimed that Google told him that.
It was probably "Bob" that told him. Of course, problems with the
"database tables" might cause loss of old messages or possibly other
quirky behavior, but if they've been deleted I see no reason why
somebody couldn't start over with the same email address as before.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.2 released

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

This is a bug-fix update that fixes some installation and other minor
issues with the 1.9.1 release as well as a security issue which was
introduced in the 1.9 branch.

JavaScript code which regenerated the "sortable tables" feature did
not properly sanitize input, leading to an HTML injection vulnerability.

* (bug 8774) Fix path for GNU FDL rights icon on new installs
* (bug 8819) Fix full path disclosure with skins dependencies
* (bug 4268) Fixed data-loss bug in compressOld batch text compression
  affecting pages which had null edits (move, protect, etc) as second
  edit in a batch group. Isolated and patched by Travis Derouin.
* Security fix for sortable tables JavaScript

All users of 1.9.x should upgrade.

Full release notes:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_9_2/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES

Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.9/mediawiki-1.9.2.tar.gz
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.9/mediawiki-1.9.2.patch

MD5 checksums:
c11aa0fd7ac10529606511913649a411  mediawiki-1.9.2.tar.gz
b08777601899686bf4e672766ee5e49e  mediawiki-1.9.2.patch

SHA-1 checksums:
2f63cba903444b0dc6559df29c57d1789c1284d1 mediawiki-1.9.2.tar.gz
dcb64452dbe7d7563264e3883c657e70aabaa1ac mediawiki-1.9.2.patch

PGP signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.9/mediawiki-1.9.2.tar.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.9/mediawiki-1.9.2.patch.sig

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
(Please subscribe to receive announcements of security updates.)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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

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

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFxm/1wRnhpk1wk44RAkIgAKCZcw0n3eDiadhJWVOhdozYushdvACgkncP
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Search

body:
Mark Ryan wrote:

>Google search wouldn't pick up orphans much either.
>
>We should be aiming to improve our inbuilt search, rather than going
>back to using Google by default (yes, we did have all searches going
>through Google or Yahoo! for a long time there). Google's search has a
>number of critical flaws like inability to search for punctuation and
>automatic spell correction where no such correction is desired.
>
>It would be nice to have boolean searching work on Wikipedia, but
>that's a topic for another mailing list entirely.
>
Boolean searching is only a part of it.  Editors can often need certain
types of search sophistication that may not be useful to the casual
reader, which is not to say that I would keep casual readers away from
it.  As one example, a Wiktionary editor might want to look through
Wikisource or Wikiquote to look for good examples of a word's usage, or
to develop a statistical analysis about the way an author uses his words.

Ec


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/4/07, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw at armory.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 04 February 2007 07:59, David Gerard wrote:
> >
> > This is transparent rubbish. Google told you no such thing.
>
> You know this because...
>

Sum total of zero reports of it happening to anyone else and given the
number of people on this mailing list who use gmail that is somewhat
odd.

--
geni


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> Sum total of zero reports of it happening to anyone else and given the
> number of people on this mailing list who use gmail that is somewhat
> odd.

And the amazing coincidence of the two accounts that got confused just
happening to be involved in a conversation with eachother at the
time...


from_name: Bence Damokos

body:
We should also look at how anonymous editors are greeted, and the conversion
rate of IPs into Users of such greetings.

Regards,
Dami
[[hu:User:Bdamokos]]

On 2/4/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>
> >Hello,
> >
> >Welcoming new users is a common community activity across many
> >Wikimedia wikis. The idea is usually to do at least some of the
> >following: give the user key links to core policies, an explanation of
> >syntax/technical help, make them feel part of the community, and give
> >them links to places to ask further questions.
> >
> >Different projects can have different needs. For example, some
> >non-English projects give links (in English) to Embassy or Babel
> >pages, where they can ask questions in English rather than the
> >language of the project. Also, non-Wikipedia projects can perhaps
> >expect that most of their new users will be familiar with Wikipedia
> >first, and therefore tailor their welcome messages with the
> >expectation that the user already is familiar with the technical
> >aspects, and emphasise the difference in policies between their
> >project and Wikipedia.
> >
> >
> >
> >cheers,
> >Brianna
> >user:pfctdayelise
> >
>
> There may have been a time when this was true for Wikibooks, but
> increasingly I am finding individuals (at least on en.wikibooks) who are
> coming into content development on Wikibooks first that have never been
> involved with Wikipedia at all on any level.  One of the huge reasons
> for this is some minor publicity that is happening in regards to
> Wikibooks among educators and the broader educational community, and
> because it is growing to become a substantial project in its own right.
> There have been recently several articles in magazines written for
> educators who mention Wikibooks as an educational resource, and
> Wikipedia is mentioned only as a footnote.
>
> The user community on Wikibooks is growing in ways that even surprise
> and astonish me from time to time.
>
> BTW, just to plug something from Wikibooks, there is a Wikibook that you
> might want to get involved with that has been addressing some of these
> issues of project management from the viewpoint of a "sysop" on
> Wikimedia projects:
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Wikimedia_Administrator%27s_Handbook
>
> This is essentially a new administrator's guide that we (the other
> Wikibooks admins and I) have put together primarily for our own internal
> training of new administrators, but we have written it with the
> intention that it would be generally of use for other Wikimedia projects
> and for other users of the MediaWiki software.  Some of your suggestions
> that you have made here in this e-mail post I would like, with your
> permission, to add to this handbook.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add "people"
>>to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose" votes. What
>>do you think?
>>
>>
>
>I don't see any panicking going on. People are just opposing,
>generally with valid reasons.
>
Did you read the comments?

"...Also without assuming bad faith I have to ask why people would be so
concerned with moving this category..- Moshe Constantine Hassan
Al-Silverburg"
"Strong Oppose per IZAK, frankly I'm shocked that this is even up for
discussion. ... -- Chabuk"
"Oppose. ... Share Chabuk's outrage that we're even voting on this. JFW"

Frankly I'm shocked that these kinds of personal attacks towards a
good-faith contributor are tolerated on Wikipedia, even if one of them
hilariously prefaced the attack with the phrase "without assuming bad
faith".

-Mark


body:
On 2/4/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2-As an example, everybody on this thread were taking the
> 'non-revertable IP' as granted.

I wasn't, but I didn't think of the "you're connecting anyway" angle,
which makes the point even better.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 04/02/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>
> >This will enable Brad to focus on developing the role of
> >General Counsel, and addressing a backlog of complex legal questions the
> >Foundation faces moving forward.
> >
> I need to congratulate you for the great efforts you have been making in
> letting the plebeians know what is going on.

I echo Ray's congratulations to Florence (these period updates really
are appreciated, even if they are not always much commented on), and
want to thank Brad for his work so far; he has only been polite and
friendly and helpful.

And how much I look forward to Brad addressing that backlog of complex
legal questions! :)

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


body:
On 04/02/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for bringing that up to our attention, it is indeed a forgotten
> place!. also thanks for that table, it should help. but as you said,
> simple welcoming message is essential concentrating on the most
> important aspects. and yes, yours are designed specifically for commons
> place as it seems. especially the 'how to' change language. another
> thing, you should include a semi-protected template in
> MediaWiki:Welcomecreation page. as I have seen, a lot of registered
> users can be creative and yields great results.

Interesting idea. I think I will do that, it should make translations
easier. Do you work in a project that does that a lot?
Although for this message in particular, I guess most registered users
still won't care much about it, since they only see it once. :)

cheers
Brianna


body:
On 04/02/07, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> <snip>
> > I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a
> > bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users
> > who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give
> > feedback on the message, which you can read here:
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log
> <snip>
>
> Maybe it could be a feature in MediaWiki. I am not sure we want to
> create a dummy page each time a user create an account through.

Yeah. We looked at the new user log and there were plenty of accounts
that were registered and then never used. Maybe they just wanted to
get rid of the site notice. ;) It seemed like a waste to welcome those
people who might never return, so we made it after one edit/upload.
Although, it only takes one, to make a mistake. :)

cheers
Brianna


from_name: StefanB

body:
On Swedish Wiktionarys common.js,
http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js , is a script that
takes the visitors IP-addresses and transforms it into a non-revertable
number, and then sends it to an external private server that belongs to
one if the administrators on Wiktionary. The script is used for
statistics on visited articles.

To me it seems like this kind of script is a violation of the privacy
policy, since it is possible to get the IP-numbers of all visitors, even
though it is not done in this case. I should also mention that a
discussion was held before this script was activated and that no one
objected to it.

Are these kind of scripts allowed?
--
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StefanB


body:
On 04/02/07, Roberto Alfonso <rpgrca at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a thought:
>
> I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no
> problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and
> can understand several other languages although not well enough to
> write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few
> Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe
> users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for
> every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really
> help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple
> common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's
> noticeboard, etc).

Yes. I think it would be a safe assumption that a person registering
an account, that doesn't speak the language of the project, MUST be a
Wikimedian doing routine things like interwiki.

For example FR.wp links from template:welcome to
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bistro_des_non-francophones/en
You can see on this page that they more or less assume the user is
familiar with Wikipedia. I think that is smart.
Compare to HU.wp's "welcome for non-speakers" -
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sablon:Welcome . IMO this should be
redone. If the user doesn't know enough Hungarian to comprehend a
welcome message, what is the point of giving them Village pump links?

Here is something that RTL wikis should take note of: non-speakers
would LOVE a link that gives some tips for editing in a RTL
environment. it can be really, really scary!

OK for Wikipedia, maybe we can create a universal "non-speaker's
welcome". It should be something like...

=============
Welcome to the X Wikipedia, Y!
* Put [[Wikipedia:Babel|]] boxes on your user page so others know how
well you can speak language X. You can put an interwiki link to your
English Wikipedia userpage by writing [[en:User:Y]].
* If you are updating interwiki links, please note that we
conventionally put the links [at the start|at the end] of the article
[before|after] the categories. You can put "updating interwiki links"
in X language in the edit summary by saying "...".
* If you notice vandalism, you can mark a page for speedy deletion by
putting {{...}}
* You can ask questions in your language at [[...]] or by contacting
someone in [[category:user languages]] (equiv.)
* A popular translator for X-to-English translation is [...]. Remember
that machine translations are only a rough guide :)
* Y is a RTL (right to left) language. This page [...] has advice on
editing in a RTL environment if you're not used to it. (if relevant)
=============

anything that's VITAL that I've missed? I think it should be
reasonably easy to gather translations for this and propogate it.

cheers,
Brianna


body:
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given
> priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of
> localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation
> and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis
> for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of
> the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is
> at the moment.

You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that
welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something
that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked
from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of
development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an
administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a
Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a
Wikinotpedia welcome.

cheers,
Brianna


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] got rid of permalink link

body:
On 04/02/07, Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org> wrote:
> In LocalSettings.php I do:
>
> function jidanni_less_skin_mess( $this, $nav_urls, $oldid, $revid ){
>     $nav_urls['permalink'] = false; #discourage permalinking on my site
> $wgHooks['SkinTemplateBuildNavUrlsNav_urlsAfterPermalink'][]='jidanni_less_skin_mess';
>
> Seems to work. Guess that's how to do it.

Er, good for you? We don't need to know about every thought you have
regarding our software, you know. Discouraging permanent linking might
be fine for you, but it's not really an issue for many other wikis.

Rob Church


body:
> I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add "people"
> to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose" votes. What
> do you think?

I don't see any panicking going on. People are just opposing,
generally with valid reasons. I understand why you proposed it, but by
the look of that discussion, it would seem the preferred consistency
would be achieved by removing "people" from all the categories where
it isn't necessary (so [[Category:Christian people]] becomes
[[Category:Christians]]), rather than adding "people" to the other
categories.


body:
On 04/02/07, StefanB <steffe62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Swedish Wiktionarys common.js,
> http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js , is a script that
> takes the visitors IP-addresses and transforms it into a non-revertable
> number, and then sends it to an external private server that belongs to
> one if the administrators on Wiktionary. The script is used for
> statistics on visited articles.
>
> To me it seems like this kind of script is a violation of the privacy
> policy, since it is possible to get the IP-numbers of all visitors, even
> though it is not done in this case. I should also mention that a
> discussion was held before this script was activated and that no one
> objected to it.
>
> Are these kind of scripts allowed?

Probably a grey area, since if it really is an irreversible hash (at
least, as far as we know the hash function to be so, and we all know
how crap some hashes have proven to be), then it's not supposedly
possible to arbitrarily obtain IP addresses.

On the other hand, I would agree with Brion about keeping it "within
the family", or under Wikimedia-affiliated control. Your community
should probably jump on it quickly, since it sets a wobbly precedent.

Rob Church


from_name: Cool Cat

subject: [WikiEN-l]  Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_2#Category:Jews

I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add "people"
to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose" votes. What
do you think?

    - Cool Cat


body:
So what do you guys think of the existing Kurdistan subcats following the
"country" pattern. See Subcats of [[Category:Kurdistan]] such as
[[Category:Cities in Kurdistan]] and etc

Should there be a mass cfd? If so would you mind initiating it?

   Cool Cat

On 2/4/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Abigail Brady wrote:
>
> >On 2/3/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>We could for example have [[Category:Cities in
> >>>>the United States]] and [[Category:Cities in the Pacific Ocean]]
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Looking forward to global warming, are we? :-(
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I'm a Canadian in the depths of winter, so yes. :)
> >>
> >>(Not sure how else to phrase "cities located within the geographical
> >>boundaries of the Pacific Ocean" in a shorter manner, actually)
> >>
> >>
> >[[Category:Pacific Rim cities]]?
> >
> Thanks, that's the one I was trying to think of.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 2/4/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > Well, it would probably help if you didn't flood the bug queue with
> > duplicates and vague issues every few days. ;)
>
> Where can one see this bug queue?

bugs.wikimedia.org


from_name: Gurch

body:
StefanB wrote:
> On Swedish Wiktionarys common.js,
> http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js , is a script that
> takes the visitors IP-addresses and transforms it into a non-revertable
> number, and then sends it to an external private server that belongs to
> one if the administrators on Wiktionary. The script is used for
> statistics on visited articles.
>
> To me it seems like this kind of script is a violation of the privacy
> policy, since it is possible to get the IP-numbers of all visitors, even
> though it is not done in this case. I should also mention that a
> discussion was held before this script was activated and that no one
> objected to it.
>
> Are these kind of scripts allowed?

Oh, great. I'm disabling Javascript for all Wikimedia sites. Are any of
the other wikis using this?

-Gurch


body:
> That would require renaming all nationality/ethnicity categories and not
> following the manual of style.

Well, no, it would require changing the manual of style...


body:
On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher schreef:
> > On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given
> >> priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of
> >> localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation
> >> and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis
> >> for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of
> >> the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is
> >> at the moment.
> >>
> >
> > You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that
> > welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something
> > that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked
> > from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of
> > development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an
> > administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a
> > Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a
> > Wikinotpedia welcome.
> >
> > cheers,
> > Brianna
> Hoi,
> You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first
> place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will
> be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result.

What do you mean by this, "a language not supported"? I am only
concerned with existing Wikimedia projects.

or is your point that I only wrote my email in English? I don't
apologise for that...

I am not really clear about what your point is or was. Is it a
criticism of me? Or the current Wikimedia community? or something
else?

regards,
Brianna


body:
On 04/02/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Oh, great. I'm disabling Javascript for all Wikimedia sites. Are any of
> the other wikis using this?

Some, including, I believe, the English Wikipedia, are using a similar
script, but the statistics get pushed to the toolserver.

Rob Church


from_name: Andrew Garrett

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to use MediaWiki API save or edit content

body:
Liang Chen <bigreat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I'm not sure whether it's actually implemented.

As Far As I'm Aware, submitting through API has not yet been implemented,
because some serious code refactoring is needed to implement it.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure about this, but I'm sure a bit of browsing on the
API page on meta will give you whatever info you need. Worse case scenario:
read the code.

Andrew Garrett
(werdna)


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Survey about paid editing

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>> I think it ought to be trialled. We're all making a lot of assumptions
>> about what would happen if paid editing were to occur. Why not do a
>> trial on a couple of articles, and monitor but not interfere with the
>> article over a period of a few months?
>
> It would be totally unacceptable to take the position that an article
> being worked on by a paid editor could not be edited by anyone else
> during that time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Steve, but I rather assumed "interfere" in this
context meant "block the editors who admit to being paid", not "allow
others to edit the article too".

Personally, I'm rather in favor of such an experiment.  It's not as if
it could possibly make things that much worse than they already are.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
That would require renaming all nationality/ethnicity categories and not
following the manual of style.
   - Cool Cat

On 2/4/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add
> "people"
> > to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose" votes.
> What
> > do you think?
>
> I don't see any panicking going on. People are just opposing,
> generally with valid reasons. I understand why you proposed it, but by
> the look of that discussion, it would seem the preferred consistency
> would be achieved by removing "people" from all the categories where
> it isn't necessary (so [[Category:Christian people]] becomes
> [[Category:Christians]]), rather than adding "people" to the other
> categories.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


references:
<eq50k1$5ri$1@sea.gmane.org> <45C628AB.20303@btinternet.com>
	<6BFD3B46-F5D5-4F1F-B213-B4EB6BFFE075@tamu.edu>

body:
On 04/02/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
> maybe I'm insufficiently paranoid, and I know I'm technically naive,
> but what's the big deal?  What's the vuln from the user pov?

Ohnoes, JavaScript and IP addresses and statistics and recording and
the sky is blue and fish in the sea and...<bang>

Probably none, but we're just a bit leery of it being out of our
domain of control.

Rob Church


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Search

body:
Google search wouldn't pick up orphans much either.

We should be aiming to improve our inbuilt search, rather than going
back to using Google by default (yes, we did have all searches going
through Google or Yahoo! for a long time there). Google's search has a
number of critical flaws like inability to search for punctuation and
automatic spell correction where no such correction is desired.

It would be nice to have boolean searching work on Wikipedia, but
that's a topic for another mailing list entirely.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Rob Church schreef:
> On 04/02/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>
>> maybe I'm insufficiently paranoid, and I know I'm technically naive,
>> but what's the big deal?  What's the vuln from the user pov?
>>
>
> Ohnoes, JavaScript and IP addresses and statistics and recording and
> the sky is blue and fish in the sea and...<bang>
>
> Probably none, but we're just a bit leery of it being out of our
> domain of control.
>
>
> Rob Church
Hoi,
God helps those that help themselves :)
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
> The user is sending the hash to the external server. Thus, the external
> server is connecting with the visitor, and *can get their IP*.

Yes, it's this I'm objecting to, the notion that by visiting a
Wikimedia-run website I am unknowingly sending requests to some guy's
PC. I have no problem with toolserver-based setups, such as that used on
the English Wikipedia.

-Gurch


from_name: Platonides

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 04/02/07, StefanB <steffe62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Swedish Wiktionarys common.js,
>> http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js , is a script that
>> takes the visitors IP-addresses and transforms it into a non-revertable
>> number, and then sends it to an external private server that belongs to
>> one if the administrators on Wiktionary. The script is used for
>> statistics on visited articles.
>>
>> To me it seems like this kind of script is a violation of the privacy
>> policy, since it is possible to get the IP-numbers of all visitors, even
>> though it is not done in this case.
'Is a violation since is possible but is not done' ??
I don't see where the violation is. Wikimedia servers *do* log the ip
addresses of editors, and when we arrage how, will treat visitors data too.

>> I should also mention that a discussion was held before this script was
>> activated and that no one objected to it.
If there were no objections, i don't have any objection either. You may
want to comment on
http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Integritetspolicy that visitors
ips are logged.

>> Are these kind of scripts allowed?
As far as the community is happy with it...

> On the other hand, I would agree with Brion about keeping it "within
> the family", or under Wikimedia-affiliated control. Your community
> should probably jump on it quickly, since it sets a wobbly precedent.

This is a matter of faith. If this admin is trustable, he won't do any
harm with that 'power' the data could give him. If not, he could misuse
it even if he were using the toolserver.
Using a WMF [Germany] Server shows it nicer, just as signed ActiveX. But
the risk is the same.[1]

 > Probably a grey area, since if it really is an irreversible hash (at
 > least, as far as we know the hash function to be so, and we all know
 > how crap some hashes have proven to be), then it's not supposedly
 > possible to arbitrarily obtain IP addresses.

Reversing the hash for a IP number would be quite easy. But it is not
neccesary to get the IP.
Why transform it into a 'non-revertable number'? This only make a false
sense of security.[2]
The user is sending the hash to the external server. Thus, the external
server is connecting with the visitor, and *can get their IP*.

I suggest moving
http://internetvision.se/dan/projekt/wikt/stats/sv-wikt.js to a wiki
page. It is simple javascript and doesn't need to be on the external
server. Having it on the wiki will have to changes: internetvision.se
will receive less queries (only for the real counts), and visitors won't
ask it unless it is visiting a countable page (almost all anyway).

1-Note that if it weren 't a private server of the admin, other people
could get this data apart of him.
2-As an example, everybody on this thread were taking the
'non-revertable IP' as granted.


body:
> "...Also without assuming bad faith I have to ask why people would be so
> concerned with moving this category..- Moshe Constantine Hassan
> Al-Silverburg"

I interpreted that as assuming bad faith against the opposers, not the
proposer. It's rather ambiguous.

> "Strong Oppose per IZAK, frankly I'm shocked that this is even up for
> discussion. ... -- Chabuk"
> "Oppose. ... Share Chabuk's outrage that we're even voting on this. JFW"

Agreed, those are baffling and offensive comments, and should result
in warnings to the commenters. However, they are just 2 people - the
vast majority of people commenting did so with no problems at all.


from_name: Roman Nosov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Minor database schema change

body:
Hi

I'm planning to add rev_parent_id column to revision table in order to
put revisions in a tree structure (using the Adjacency List Model).
This field is the key to rev_id in the same table. I've made
corrections to several files (take a look at
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/roman/trunk/phase3/maintenance/).
I need this patch for incremental diff (and blamemaps) however it
could be also used for example to render history as a tree (think
slashdot discussion).
Please cc your reply to my email: rnosov at gmail dot com

Best regards
Roman


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contradiction between guidelines

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>>Hi all,
>>  I just noticed this one. Whenever you have a date, like the 5th of
>>October, you're supposed to link it, so that the MediaWiki software
>>can reformat it according to the user's preferences: [[5 October]].
>>
>>However, you're never supposed to link *anything* in section headings.
>>
>>So is this page following the guidelines or breaking them?
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car
>>
>>
>It would be helpful if our "guidelines"/"policies" were set down in the
>same manner as IETF RFCs are, with the same uses of SHOULD, SHOULD NOT,
>MUST, MUST NOT, etc...
>
>"never" overrides "always", so "never link anything in section titles in
>articles" overrides "always link dates in articles".
>
Just because you want to invent that kind of rule in your own little
imagination doesn't mean that it's going to apply to anybody else.  If
you don't want to link from section headings nobody is going to force
you to do it.  Please don't disrespect others by saying that they can't.

Ec


body:
On 04/02/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > Well, it would probably help if you didn't flood the bug queue with
> > duplicates and vague issues every few days. ;)
>
> Where can one see this bug queue?

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org

There's a mailing list which most developers and other interested
parties are subscribed to that receives details of changes to bugs,
rather than having individual component owners. Bug spam and mass
posting of unhelpful bugs and comments shows up in our inboxes, and
can get irritating.

Rob Church


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [Wikitech-l] got rid of permalink link

body:
In LocalSettings.php I do:

function jidanni_less_skin_mess( $this, $nav_urls, $oldid, $revid ){
    $nav_urls['permalink'] = false; #discourage permalinking on my site
$wgHooks['SkinTemplateBuildNavUrlsNav_urlsAfterPermalink'][]='jidanni_less_skin_mess';

Seems to work. Guess that's how to do it.


body:
Marking people's bugs as INVALID is great, but do add a word why.
Which bug? I mean in general. Customer relations principles still
apply, paid staff or volunteer.


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Most cunningly disguised spam yet?

body:
On 02/02/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your personal attacks are futile. You will be moderated.

[reposted from list-subscribed address, this time]

Well, Mr. Grumpy, if you feel that I merit being put in the same
lockbox as the loony people who do stuff like make up personalities
and argue with them (and yet are allowed to continue posting), then
that's your call.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-05

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19781).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

   1 previously failing test(s) now PASSING! :)
      * Gallery

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.

Passed 489 of 507 tests (96.45%)... 18 tests failed!


body:
On 02/02/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> He IS on moderation, and if you continue to flame him, you will be too.

I'm so glad you informed us of this fact a few minutes after deciding
to tell the list that you've put me on moderation. Thanks for the fair
warning.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/