from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses

body:
I already sent this mail five hours ago, but it seems to have gotten lost somewhere.

Erik Moeller schrieb:

 > Again, we could use a certain amount of money from the Prix Ars  Electronica
funds for a first test drive (I'd suggest $2000). If it turns  out that such a
bounty system does more harm than good, we can always stop  doing it. It is
unlikely that a single experiment will have devastating  effects, but it is
quite possible that it will lead the way toward a  complementary development
process.

Before starting a test drive we need a way to measure the harm done. The problem
is that the psychological effects might take time. Maybe it'll take half a year
before we realize that most programmers are waiting for new bounties before
starting the dirty programming work, and only very few are still working for
free, but only because they need this or that feature for their own wiki
installation.

I'm not against a bounty system, just a bit skeptic. I fear that after the first
test drive the people in favor of it will point to the tasks done and the
skeptics will just have their premonition but no way to prove it.

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: De-capitalisation-isation

body:
Timwi wrote:

> last time we discussed this, I think there was consensus to switch the
> English Wiktionary to make it stop capitalising article titles, right?

Guys! Please keep this on the mailing list, and don't reply to me
personally. Thanks!

(Maybe the mailing list administrator should set a Reply-To header?)

Brion wrote:

> This idea relies on the existence of the script for step (2). :)

The idea was that I would write it. (Where else would my involvement in
this be? :-p)

> Note that there may be an effect on usernames

I'll leave the usernames capitalised, I guess.

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Whatever process we choose will require some manual fix-up.  The
> process that you suggest is as good as any.

My suggestion will require significantly less manual fix-up than moving
400,000 articles to lower-case versions manually.

> How can we show capitalization when a linked word begins a sentence?

The same way as everywhere else, [[until|Until]].

> Is there some way to integrate upper cased, lower cased and accented
> characters in generated lists?

I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by this.

> I don't remember it being a consensus at all. I seem
> to recall some being quite opposed to it.

Really? Can you provide links? I only remember people emphasising that
they don't mind because they think the current work-around work
perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how anyone can seriously be
opposed to having a dictionary with correct spellings. :/

Timwi


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chinese government lift the ban partly

body:
Didn't realize the news might not have gotten to everyone, but the
Chinese Wikipedia is now generally accessible from all China,
according to folks we have heard from.  DNS and all is fine, no need
to use IP numbers directly.

A spot check using a proxy server within the PRC shows both ZH and EN
acessible right now.

Also, some great quotes from Jimbo on this:
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1350

There is also a new wikizh-l mailing list, in case anyone is
interested.  May be lots of posts in Chinese only:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikizh-l

-Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 11:44:38 +0200, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Anthere wrote:
>
> > These are very good news :-)
> >
> > yuanml wrote:
> > > After we had sent the application to our government, today my ISP told me that
> > > the IP address 207.142.131.235, 207.142.131.236, 207.142.131.245, 207.142.131.246,
> > > 207.142.131.247, 207.142.131.248 can be access from Mainland China now.
> > >
> > > I try it later, and I found that: all Wikipedia project except Chinese Wikipedia
> > > can be access on my computer now
>
> While progress has been made, we are still not out of the woods.
>
> Please can our chinese colleagues keep us posted on access to the Chinese
> Wikipedia, even if the notice states that nothing has changed.
>
> Cheers,    Andy!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

references:
<cb7je6$5jm$1@sea.gmane.org> <cb9p02$947$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<opr90flfny2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:07:02 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>> I don't remember it being a consensus at all. I seem
>>> to recall some being quite opposed to it.
>>
>>
>> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember people emphasising
>> that  they don't mind because they think the current work-around
>> work  perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how anyone can
>> seriously be  opposed to having a dictionary with correct spellings. :/
>
>
> I disagreed,
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000018.html
> Polyglot said it could be done but he would vote against it also:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000020.html
>
> By the way, how does search handle the existence of pages differing
> by  capitalization?  If someone searches for <greek> (v. [1]), which
> doesn't  exist, are they sent to <Greek>, which does? ... Are users
> who are used to  case-insensitive search, or don't know the proper
> capitalization of the  word, sent to <greek> when it is made, when
> they might have wanted <Greek>  better?  Will every word where
> capitalization is semantic have to be made  into a disambiguation page?
>
>
> I would *much* prefer that pages, instead of being case-sensitive, be
> case-insensitive (even more than they are now, perhaps), with the
> page  title in title case, and the regular capitalization indicated
> inline, as  is now normally done.
>
>
>
>     *Muke!
> [1] "to fill a template with nonsense text, so that form and not
> content  can be focused on"


list: wikien-l

from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Terms of use

body:
> As a practical matter, what difference will this make?

These specific terms would free us to be more relaxed about our page histories
(copyvio, etc), and more relaxed about stuff covered by our disclaimers (legal, financial,
medical advice, etx). To the extent that paranoia over such matters is a hindrance, this
is useful.

They also pave the way for additions with other benefits, notably improving our GFDL
position so that both we and our redistributors are on more solid ground. That's a very
real benefit, and goes to the heart of our "free encyclopedia" mission.

> Someone please proof-read it before making it official. :/

Someones did. Someones else then edited it. Try the page history.

> If there are no objections, I intend to add a notice to the terms of
> use page stating that it is not official policy.

I reverted to proposal status, given the comments of Tim and Angela, pending a
response to Angela's email. Oh well, you have to try, eh? In the meantime, I'm grateful
to Tim's [[MediaWiki:History copyright]] fix.

-Martin


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Categories in 1.3beta

references:
<opr9x2gpabv3cvyb@hause.local>
	<40D741BF.6010507@pobox.com>	<cb7kdj$hfa$1@sea.gmane.org>	<20040621214913.GA23811@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>	<40D7723F.2070507@telus.net>
	<shhdt48cdg.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>	<cba0hc$tm2$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<sh659j8i4a.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
>
>
>>You are suggesting we sort by first name?
>>
>>
>Yes.
>
>
>>How are people supposed to find a celebrity if they only know their
>>surname (which is more common than knowing only their first name)?
>>
>>
>
>A full text retrivial system would surely help.
>
Certainly, but designing for what you don't have is not always
productive.  Meanwhile, as we are holding our breath . . .

>The (western) concept of first and surname is just one system and often
>it is pretty obscure.  In some countries the "van", "de", "von",
>etc. predicates are part of the surname (prefix, suffix?), in other
>countries they are an appendix to the first name.
>
Prefix. (A suffix comes at the end of the name; as in the feminine
Petrova.)  The prefixes will always be a problem.  If we aren't sure
between Beethoven and von Beethoven, how will the user know that he
should look it up under Ludwig.

Medieval names will continue to be listed under the "first" name, but
that's because they didn't use family names then.

>The surname often changes - tell me the surname of Ludwig Tieck's sister
>;)  Okay, men an women devoted to a religious life tend to change
>their name as well - but they give up on their old name completely.
>
The custom varies.  In practice we use the name by which they became famous

>Esp. since we are an online-medium we are free to ignore the "official"
>writing system.  Readers can find the info easily (even if they are
>forced to use an external search engine).
>
Using you as an example Eichwalder gave me 22,000 Google hits, Karl gave
me 10,000,000 hits.  If I want to find you I'm not going to start by
searching for Karl.  Maybe the "online medium" you are thinking of is a
fortune teller. :-)

Ec


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>> I'll leave the usernames capitalised, I guess.
>
> You'll also have to ensure that new usernames remain capitalized.

This is not already done? So it is possible to have "Brion" and "brion"
be different accounts on, say, Toki Pona (where capitalisation is turned
off)?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text Search

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Camille Constans wrote:
>
>> As Ariel is now in production, I enabled full text search on all
>> wikis. I tryed to load balance search to Ariel, Tim could you check
>> it when you have some spare time.
>>
>> Another pb, the script to rebuild the index doesnt seem to work, so
>> search is often empty. Of course each time you're making an edit, the
>> search is updated :) So you only have to edit all articles (joke)
>
>
> Search without the index is pretty useless, so I've disabled it again
> until the script is fixed up and run. I might get to it tonight if no
> one else does, but i might not.
>
> Also, somebody broke searching inserting load balancer stuff (missing
> global). I think I fixed the local copy, but it's not committed or
> anything...

Would it ease system stress if full text search were limited to
logged-in users?

Registered users should know better.  True newbies won't know what
they're missing. :-)

Ec


from_name: Thomas Jost

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Theora bitstream frozen...

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

Brion Vibber a ?crit :
| Is XviD legal in the US? My understanding is that it's an MPEG-4 codec,
| and that there are patents covering fundamental parts of that standard.
| [IANAL] Surprisingly, this isn't mentioned in the FAQ though talk about
| it appears in their devel list archives.
|
| I think we'd want some clarification on this before declaring our
| support for it.

You're right, I didn't think about this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XviD:
Because of patent laws, XviD 0.9.x
versions were not licensed to people/firms in countries where these type
of Patents do apply (eg: US or Japan). With the 1.0.x releases, a plain
GNU GPLv2 License is used, no explicit Geographical restriction is
added. However the legal usage of XviD is still implicitly ruled by
user/firm local laws.

In Europe it's still legal (software patents are forbidden... but there
will be new laws about them soon), but I didn't know it wasn't in the US.

Well... I'll have a look on Theora, then ;-)

MagicTom
[[fr:Utilisateur:MagicTom]]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFA2Glq8qG/0bshvCcRAvWXAJ9KFk/tMTilAbJfoHXy1PgBEhUMMwCghoax
84jDRZHkYr8u8iB12YFUin0=
=7UkA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [Wikipedia-l] zh.wikipedia.org - having a single unified portal

body:
I don't want to get into the debate, but just FYI, such a convertor is
considered impossible by many experts. By impossible, I mean
impossible in the level of a perfect German to English to German
machine translation software. Refer to Unicode mailing list and its
archives for more details.

roozbeh

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 14:33:09 +0000, Ian Mackinnon
<ianm2000uk at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Also, from what I've been told, some people are currently working on some
> kind of conversion tool that will enable the automatic interchangeable
> conversion between Simplified vs Traditional script. Because of this I have
> decided to stop or try to engage as little as possible in updating articles
> as until the implementation of the conversion tool is in effect on
> zh.wikipedia.org


list: foundation-l

from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Foundation-l] A Challenge: Sending Angela to gay Paree!

body:
jheiskan at welho.com wrote:
> I think the ultimate decision whether Angela goes to Paris or not, should be
> left up to her. Things might be different if the meeting were non-voluntary.
>
> However; to help her make up her mind, I hereby pledge to send an International
> Money-Order to the Foundation in the sum of the prize of two six-packs. (which
> In my local store totals up to 13.80 Euros) I will ONLY send this if she attends
> the Paris meet, and pledges to physically hug me, if and when we ever meet in
> person.
>
> Is there any other person to step up to the plate and similarly pledge the prize
> of two local six-packs in this good cause?
>
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon)

Excellent idea!

I find all these discussion really ridicoulous and I also think that
it is important that Angela can meet Anthere and Jimbo at Paris.

I offer 50EUR to the fondation to cover her travel if she attend the meet
and without other condition :-)

-- Looxix


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Categories in 1.3beta

references:
<opr9x2gpabv3cvyb@hause.local> <40D7723F.2070507@telus.net>
	<shhdt48cdg.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Tuesday 22 June 2004 06:06, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:
> > Some people may very well consider "Einstein, Albert" to be ugly, but
> > it's not grammatically incorrect.  There are languages (like Hungarian)
> > where it's considered normal.
>
> No, in Hungarian it is "Einstein Albert".
>
> Sorting by family or last name by default and switching the sequence of
> the parts of the name is a western stupidity.  Stay away from it and
> lot a lot artificial problems disappear.

How do you mean western stupidity? We on east are doing it as well!


from_name: Denni

subject: [Foundation-l] Re. the point being missed...

body:
Corey Burger wrote:

I think the point being missed here is that the board is NOT going to
run
Wikipedia or any other project. They are there to make it easier to run
the project, primarily by getting funding for us, coorinating people and

hardware, etc. The actual job of writing the
encyclopedia/dictionary/etc.
will still be where it needs to be, in the hands of the users.

Indeed. And if the opportunity of meeting face-to-face and sharing some
physical space and common experiences (even if only staggering back to
the hotel too drunk to stay on the sidewalk) helps them to do THAT job
better, then I'm willing to part with a few bucks. My promise is to
double my promise.

Anthere, I can relate. I live 15 km from one of the major entry points
to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I was able to afford to make a real
trip in only once this past year, because a friend helped out. It sucks
not being able to appreciate what your own country has to offer. So. If
Angela decides to go, ten bucks. If Anthere can go, ten bucks. If
neither decides to go, I'm going to spend the 20 bucks for gas and a
Parks admission and soothe my soul in the Rockies for a day.

Denni
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body:
Corey Burger wrote:

I think the point being missed here is that the board is NOT going to
run
Wikipedia or any other project. They are there to make it easier to run
the project, primarily by getting funding for us, coorinating people and

hardware, etc. The actual job of writing the
encyclopedia/dictionary/etc.
will still be where it needs to be, in the hands of the users.

Indeed. And if the opportunity of meeting face-to-face and sharing some
physical space and common experiences (even if only staggering back to
the hotel too drunk to stay on the sidewalk) helps them to do THAT job
better, then I'm willing to part with a few bucks. My promise is to
double my promise.

Anthere, I can relate. I live 15 km from one of the major entry points
to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I was able to afford to make a real
trip in only once this past year, because a friend helped out. It sucks
not being able to appreciate what your own country has to offer. So. If
Angela decides to go, ten bucks. If Anthere can go, ten bucks. If
neither decides to go, I'm going to spend the 20 bucks for gas and a
Parks admission and soothe my soul in the Rockies for a day.

Denni
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body:
Corey Burger wrote:

I think the point being missed here is that the board is NOT going to
run
Wikipedia or any other project. They are there to make it easier to run
the project, primarily by getting funding for us, coorinating people and

hardware, etc. The actual job of writing the
encyclopedia/dictionary/etc.
will still be where it needs to be, in the hands of the users.

Indeed. And if the opportunity of meeting face-to-face and sharing some
physical space and common experiences (even if only staggering back to
the hotel too drunk to stay on the sidewalk) helps them to do THAT job
better, then I'm willing to part with a few bucks. My promise is to
double my promise.

Anthere, I can relate. I live 15 km from one of the major entry points
to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I was able to afford to make a real
trip in only once this past year, because a friend helped out. It sucks
not being able to appreciate what your own country has to offer. So. If
Angela decides to go, ten bucks. If Anthere can go, ten bucks. If
neither decides to go, I'm going to spend the 20 bucks for gas and a
Parks admission and soothe my soul in the Rockies for a day.

Denni
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body:
Corey Burger wrote:

I think the point being missed here is that the board is NOT going to
run
Wikipedia or any other project. They are there to make it easier to run
the project, primarily by getting funding for us, coorinating people and

hardware, etc. The actual job of writing the
encyclopedia/dictionary/etc.
will still be where it needs to be, in the hands of the users.

Indeed. And if the opportunity of meeting face-to-face and sharing some
physical space and common experiences (even if only staggering back to
the hotel too drunk to stay on the sidewalk) helps them to do THAT job
better, then I'm willing to part with a few bucks. My promise is to
double my promise.

Anthere, I can relate. I live 15 km from one of the major entry points
to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I was able to afford to make a real
trip in only once this past year, because a friend helped out. It sucks
not being able to appreciate what your own country has to offer. So. If
Angela decides to go, ten bucks. If Anthere can go, ten bucks. If
neither decides to go, I'm going to spend the 20 bucks for gas and a
Parks admission and soothe my soul in the Rockies for a day.

Denni
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subject: [WikiEN-l] thought for the day

body:
Post the list on an eMail to yourself.  Then when you get to SF go to an
Internet Cafe where you can download and print your eMail. :-)
Avoid wearing a trench-coat, wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses when you
visit the cafe.
Ec

Finlay McWalter wrote:

> Thought for the day
> -------------------
>
> For the former half of next month, I'm eschewing the leaden skies of
> my dank scots homeland for the sunny climes of the SF Bay Area and
> (briefly) NYC.
>
> Ever the dilligent photowikipedian, I sat tonight and looked for
> articles in the en: wiki in those geographical areas that need a basic
> photo but don't have one.  I wrote out a list.
>
> Uh-oh.
>
> I'd like to posit "McWalter's 14th law":
>
>   All wikipedia photo-todo-lists read _exactly_ like terrorist
>   (oops, sorry, militant) hitlists.
>
> Bridges, airports, subways systems, landmarks, public buildings.  I
> can't cross an international border with this list - I'll end up at
> GTMO  for sure.
>
> So if I end up on Missing Wikipedians, you'll know why.
> Later,
> FIn
>


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Templates

body:
In a message dated 6/22/2004 10:47:01 AM Eastern Standard Time,
kelvsyc at shaw.ca writes:
Is this idea a good one...?
I like it.

Danny
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: UTF-8 on English Wikipedia?

body:
On Monday 21 June 2004 17:42, Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >> Quick, dirty, and it seems to work. I know that buffering is slow, but
> >> this would only be a temporary solution. When hairs on your head
> >> settle down, let's talk about it  :)
> >
> > That won't work, as you have to be able to link from one page to
> > another. Title management, pulling things from the database, and case
> > folding are all dependent on the character set, long before we output
> > anything.
>
> If I understood him right, his suggestion was to take the server down
> briefly to convert everything but 'old' to UTF-8 atomically. In
> particular, this would convert 'cur', and we can use UTF-8 for
> everything including title management and case folding.

Well, no, I suggested that articles are converted one at a time, both cur and
old; each article should be protected from editing during the conversion.

Pulling things from the database is not a problem, database will be happy to
think that it is still pulling ISO-8859-1 and won't even notice the change.

Title management and case folding could pose a a problem, solution for it
would be not to convert articles which link to articles which have high
characters in their titles. I don't think there's so many of them.

And when everything is done, convert titles, and rest of the articles.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Link table corruption due to templates (was Re:
 Setting up for the Greek language)

references:
<40CD966B.70105@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<40CFECA5.4000702@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<cb6vr0$vff$2@sea.gmane.org>	<40D70F19.3080409@hackish.org>	<cb7jtj$gnn$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40D7551C.5000701@hackish.org>	<cb83dc$drf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40D7AE94.5080909@hotmail.com>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>> OK. Next idea:
>>
>> (1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Ioun?ou",
>>     so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site.
>> (2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the
>>     nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Ioun?ou]] would
>>     contain "Io?nios".
>> (3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}
>>     write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
>
> Putting variables in links or template names causes link table
> corruption. We should have left it disabled.

Can't you put in a little "if" at the right spot that will prevent these
tags from adding anything to the links table? Yes, we'll have a missing
line in "What links here", but at least the links table will stop
getting corrupted.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Categories in 1.3beta

references:
<opr9x2gpabv3cvyb@hause.local>
	<40D741BF.6010507@pobox.com>	<cb7kdj$hfa$1@sea.gmane.org>	<20040621214913.GA23811@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>	<40D7723F.2070507@telus.net>
	<shhdt48cdg.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Sorting by family or last name by default and switching the sequence of
> the parts of the name is a western stupidity.  Stay away from it and
> lot a lot artificial problems disappear.

You are suggesting we sort by first name?

How are people supposed to find a celebrity if they only know their
surname (which is more common than knowing only their first name)?

Timwi


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Ariel as a slow query server

body:
I wrote some code for DB load balancing back in January, but we haven't
had a slave server to test it on until now. I'm happy to announce that
it's now running.

Ariel is being used as a slow query server. Currently, it is handling
watchlist queries and miser mode queries (although only with the magic
parameter). Selecting which queries to send to Ariel is currently
ad-hoc, but something more permanent should find its way into CVS in the
next week or two.

The obvious application for this is enabling full-text search. However
we still need to rebuild the searchindex table.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: A Challenge: Sending Angela to gay Paree!

body:
I have just donated US $10 via PayPal (seems to be the going rate) for the
express purpose of sending Angela to Paris.

Danny
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body:
I have just donated US $10 via PayPal (seems to be the going rate) for the
express purpose of sending Angela to Paris.

Danny
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body:
I have just donated US $10 via PayPal (seems to be the going rate) for the
express purpose of sending Angela to Paris.

Danny
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body:
I have just donated US $10 via PayPal (seems to be the going rate) for the
express purpose of sending Angela to Paris.

Danny
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Bounties and expenses

body:
Peter Bartlett wrote:

> There may very well be in truth in this. However whatever the arguments in
> favour of the trustees meeting, wouldn't these same arguments be equally
> applicable to the developers meeting, say? The developers at least have a
> long and proven track record. So far the board has not had the chance to
> prove its worth above the old, board-less, way at all - thus we are being
> asked to take on trust that such a use of funds would be a best use. Perhaps
> it's a shame that a certain amount of that required trust has already been
> used by the refusal to publish the election results, despite explicit
> (albeit informal) assurances to the contrary before and during the
> elections.

I think that in my 2 years and a half participation to Wikipedia, I have
left just as long and as provable track record of what I could do than
any developer here. The main differences are probably that most of what
I did was on the french wikipedia and on meta, two places where I met
you very little :-) Second difference is probably that we just have
never met on any project. Third difference is that a lot of what I did
has to do with organisation and people bridging, which is much less
likely to be noticeable than a software improvement.

Once again, and I will repeat something I told privately to Mark
yesterday as well : this whole project is based on trust and on
volunteer work. Once we begin talking about money, the highest risk is
that we begin comparing value of people so as to justify that some are
*better* and *more important* than others. This is very very bad, and it
is auto-destruction to proceed in this direction. I please ask you not
to do that.

We are all necessary here, whether we are developing the software,
maintaining the hardware, writing articles, fixing typos, improving
style, organising the date, cleaning up the dirt, chasing vandals,
writing press release, finding funds, leading decision or on the
contrary playing the devil advocate so that no hasty decision is taken.

We are all necessary. Any single step missing is likely to be a
disaster. So, if steps are slightly broken, perhaps like the software,
then we should fix that step. That does not mean that step is more
important that the other steps. This is just the broken one, at that
moment. You still need the full stair to go up.

It would be nice, not to criticize or belittle some people, just because
you want to promote the importance of other people. It has nothing to
do. All are good and important. Some are just missing, and if they are
missing, finding ways to stimulate their activity is the right way.
So, paying developers.... why not. I am sure it is also controversial
among some of us. But I see it as a possibility. But, I really would
like that "in an attempt to convince people that developers are
necessary, the way to promote this is to misconsider the importance of
the other ones".

Doing this is likely to hurt wikipedia human tissue *real* bad. It will
bring zizany among us. Discord.

I also would like that a bit of trust is offered to Angel and I, per
default, for the work we have both been doing for many many months now.

> Further Jimbo and Angela and Jimbo and Ant have already met. Thus it is only
> Ant and Angela who don't have a face to put words too. As these two trustees
> are much closer geographically, there is more scope for taking time and
> waiting for the most cost-effective opportunity for them to meet.
>
> Pete/Pcb21

The only two wikipedians I have ever met are called Yann Forget and
Alain Caraco. I met them in a meeting I went to, to present Wikipedia in
France. I did that travel *on my own expenses* entirely.
Yann and Alain are both french people; and they are the only wikipedians
I have met face to face.

I think I know better than you Pete, who I have met in my life, and
apart than in dream, I have never met Jimbo.

I will go to Paris on my own money to meet with french wikipedians and
Jimbo for the first time ever (but for Yann).

I am not a wealthy person. I will perhaps manage to pay a couple of
trips in France this year. However, I do not plan to get out of France
on my family money, and I will certainly not go to London to meet Angela.

And I prefer to go to Paris with my money now to meet Jimbo, because my
income will never allow me to go to Florida to do so later in the year.


subject: [Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses

body:
Delirium wrote:
> I disagree with this---meeting with a tiny fraction of the Wikimedia
> community and making decisions at such meetings is detrimental to the
> project.  Real work and decision-making should be done online, in
> public, where everyone can participate.  If people want to socialize in
> person, that's fine, but we shouldn't be making decisions at meetings
> either behind closed doors or at which only a small fraction of
> Wikimedians are present.

I think you may have not understood what a board exactly is.


subject: [Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Corporate sponsorship of
	Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:
> [crossposted from a discussion that originated on wikiEN-l]
>
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>> well, this is very unfortunate for you, because Angela and I will
>>> strongly favor use of multilingual meta over mailing lists.
>>
>>
>>
>> I do think we've had a vote on this on en:, which also contained about
>> five pages of arguments back and forth on both sides, as it came up on
>> the Village Pump about 5 or 6 separate times, but I can't seem to find
>> where it got moved to.  Links, anyone?
>
>
> I found it: several separate discussions are archived on [[en:Wikipedia
> talk:Mailing lists]].
>
> The votes were mostly inconclusive...
>
> Question: Should we have meta-discussions on:
> * mailing lists?  9 yes, 12 no, 3 neutral
> * web forums (boards.wikimedia.org)? 2 yes, 11 no, 5 neutral
> * the Wikimedia wiki (meta.wikimedia.org)? 12 yes, 9 no, 2 neutral
> * on Wikipedia itself (en.wikipedia.org for en: discussions)? 4 yes, 6
> no, 7 neutral
>
> Of course, these are more like straw polls than a real vote, so can't be
> said to be conclusive, even if they had shown a strong preference one
> way or another, which they don't.  But clearly people are fairly
> strongly divided on the issue.  Allowing simultaneous wiki and email
> discussion is probably next to impossible as a compromise, but if the
> pro-wiki-discussion people would be willing to compromise on some
> web-based discussion interface other than a wiki, probably a gateway of
> some sort could be set up to allow posting and reading by either email
> or web, depending on personal preference.  gmane does some of this now,
> but perhaps some better web-email gateway interface is possible.
>
> -Mark

Yes. Well, then, find us a way to discuss
*where the content will be under gfdl,
*where refactoring is possible,
*where translation to support multilingualism is possible (or at least
refactoring to make it more readable to non english speakers)
*and where easy linkage to summary can be done and used on all wikis.

When a solution is found, we will consider the option. Meanwhile, it is
easiest on meta.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Adminship as a reward

body:
hcheney wrote:
> Recently, a user was nominated for adminship because
> thought " . . he needs to be rewarded for all the hard
> work and dedication."  href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&diff=4060639&oldid=4060350">[1]
>
> Though the user in question was very well qualified
> for adminship, I am disturbed by the trend that
> adminship is some sort of "reward" or "vote of
> confidence" in the name of the community, however, in
> reality adminship is a vote of confidence and reward
> for making a great deal of edits and behaving well in
> the process.
>
> I propose that the community start issuing awards of
> merit to users that will be voted upon by the
> community over a period of a week. Some of the ideas I
> kicked around were...
>
> the Wikipedia Peace Prize - for users who have
> worked to resolve conflict in the community.
>
> the Gutenberg Award - for users that have
> extensively improved the main-namespace content of
> Wikipedia
>
> As such, we will be able to stroke the egos (and
> hard-working motivation) of users, while seperating
> adminship from the equation. I hope that in such a
> situation, the community will finally be able to give
> certain users a resounding vote of confidence when
> adminship would be inappropriate.
>
> --H. Cheney

I think these are nice ideas :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fuzzy Bunny Awards

body:
Timwi wrote:

(1) The reasons Rick already mentioned.
(2) WikiMoney didn't work either.
(3) People will start doing certain things (e.g. make loads of trivial
     edits to the article namespace) *just* to get (one of) these
awards,
     and then genuinely think they are entitled to (one of) these
awards.
(4) Community recognition works best when it is not measurable. I can
     say with certainty that Anthere is more popular on Wikipedia than a

     vandal, but I can't rank her with other people. If she were awarded

     a "Wikipedia peace prize" and, say, Angela wasn't, then this would
     create an artificial (and deceptive) ranking between them.

My thoughts:
(1) The competitive will always be with us. They will always vie for all
the prizes. That does not mean we should stop giving them. It will be
very difficult to compete for the "Least Competitive Wikipedian" award.
And the more prizes the merrier. It is very nearly as easy to fool
adults as it is to fool children, and even when knowingly fooled, both
adults and children still value the recognition, except for the
occasional curmudgeon who is offended by any recognition of any sort.
(2) WikiMoney was patent nonsense. It served as a medium of exchange
for, um, well, errrrr...help me out here. Because "red" didn't work
doesn't mean "47" won't either, if I'm not making too dense a point.
(3) It's not hard to spot trivial edits by those who (like me) check
edits, and I'm sure it will be no harder for those who count them.
People who make a zillion trivial edits with the expectation of a pat on
the back need a reality check more than a reward. My guess is that a
goodly percentage of them will fall under topic (1), and know perfectly
well what they're doing, and why they should get a poke in the butt with
a sharp stick instead of a lovely PDF they can print & hang.
(4) Always. This month's number is "3". We deem three people worthy for
nicest Wikipedia:Faces faces. The fuzzy bunny award goes back to its
perpetual holder, Anthere.
(5) It is always easier to not say something nice than to say something
nice. It is always easier to not reward than to reward. It is always
almost as much fun when someone you like gets recognition as when you do
yourself. We are a community, so let's reward each other just for being
here. I give you all the Participant of the Month Award for taking the
time to be on the mailing list and not just an editor. You rock!!

Denni

--
?"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not
to be sneezed at." --George Will, on hyphen use
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Visit my Wikipedia user page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3ADwindrim
Do you ICQ? I do - 276534369 Magpie

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from_name: sannse

body:
> Excellent idea!
>
> I find all these discussion really ridicoulous and I also think that
> it is important that Angela can meet Anthere and Jimbo at Paris.
>
> I offer 50EUR to the fondation to cover her travel if she attend the meet
> and without other condition :-)
>
> -- Looxix
>

I pledge 10GBP to the "get Angela to Paris" fund

(can't afford much at the moment - I'm going on the every little bit
principle)

Should I use PayPal now? or does this need to be separate somehow?

--sannse

Angela - If Cimon tries to collect on that hug - kick 'im in the goolies and
run for it ;-P


body:
Why do so many people work with the flawed assumption that since there
is a way to spend money on X, it precludes spending it on Y?  Does
your company or household work that way, that is, spending money in a
strict serial manner?

On Jimbo's first ever trip to Europe, he and Anthere will be less than
300 miles from Angela.  We would be foolish to be so stingy as to
hinder them from initiating this new phase in Wikimedia Foundation's
development. Very foolish.

-Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:34:18 +0100, Peter Bartlett <pcb21 at btconnect.com> wrote:
>
> There may very well be in truth in this. However whatever the arguments in
> favour of the trustees meeting, wouldn't these same arguments be equally
> applicable to the developers meeting, say? The developers at least have a
> long and proven track record. So far the board has not had the chance to
> prove its worth above the old, board-less, way at all - thus we are being
> asked to take on trust that such a use of funds would be a best use. Perhaps
> it's a shame that a certain amount of that required trust has already been
> used by the refusal to publish the election results, despite explicit
> (albeit informal) assurances to the contrary before and during the
> elections.
>
> Further Jimbo and Angela and Jimbo and Ant have already met. Thus it is only
> Ant and Angela who don't have a face to put words too. As these two trustees
> are much closer geographically, there is more scope for taking time and
> waiting for the most cost-effective opportunity for them to meet.
>
> Pete/Pcb21
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Categories in 1.3beta

in_reply_to:
<cba0hc$tm2$2@sea.gmane.org> (timwi@gmx.net's message of "Tue, 22
	Jun 2004 20:15:43 +0100")

references:
<opr9x2gpabv3cvyb@hause.local> <40D741BF.6010507@pobox.com>
	<cb7kdj$hfa$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20040621214913.GA23811@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40D7723F.2070507@telus.net> <shhdt48cdg.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<cba0hc$tm2$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

> You are suggesting we sort by first name?

Yes.

> How are people supposed to find a celebrity if they only know their
> surname (which is more common than knowing only their first name)?

A full text retrivial system would surely help.

The (western) concept of first and surname is just one system and often
it is pretty obscure.  In some countries the "van", "de", "von",
etc. predicates are part of the surname (prefix, suffix?), in other
countries they are an appendix to the first name.

The surname often changes - tell me the surname of Ludwig Tieck's sister
;)  Okay, men an women devoted to a religious life tend to change
their name as well - but they give up on their old name completely.

Esp. since we are an online-medium we are free to ignore the "official"
writing system.  Readers can find the info easily (even if they are
forced to use an external search engine).

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


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text Search

body:
As Ariel is now in production, I enabled full text search on all wikis. I tryed to load balance search to Ariel, Tim could you check it when you have some spare time.

Another pb, the script to rebuild the index doesnt seem to work, so search is often empty. Of course each time you're making an edit, the search is updated :) So you only have to edit all articles (joke)

Shaihulud


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] late 19th century polish railway system

body:
Kntjhnsnj at aol.com wrote:

> Need help! I am looking for information on railway systems from
> Poznan, Poland to Antwerp, Belgium by train. My Grandfather traveled
> one of these routes in 1892 when he was 21 years old. He went by
> boat, SS Pennsylvania, on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I do not
> believe he had any connection through the Benelux countries, but I
> am not sure? Thanx. K. Johnson.

It is outside the scope of wikipedia-l to answer this kind of
question, but it sure is an interesting one.  On maps from 1892 the
railroads go all over the Ruhr and surrounding area, making it
impossible to tell which one was used.  It could have been Berlin,
Hanover, Cologne, Aachen, Brussels to Antwerp.  Going from Hanover
over Osnabr?ck, M?nster, Wesel, and either Venlo or Tilburg to Antwerp
is a straighter line on the map, but requires the crossing into
Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands. You probably have to find old
timetables, or contact some German railroad museum.  Are you even sure
your grandfather went by train all the way?  Taking the train from
Posen via Berlin to Hamburg or Bremen and a steam ship along the coast
to Antwerp might be one alternative.

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


from_name: Finlay McWalter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Full text Search

body:
Camille Constans wrote:
> As Ariel is now in production, I enabled full text search on all wikis. I tryed to load balance search to Ariel, Tim could you check it when you have some spare time.

Subsequently, the search box now returns an entirely empty page.
Verified using firefox and opera, and is the case for (at least) en, de,
fr, and es (I didn't try any others).

FIn

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
W.Finlay McWalter   [[User:Finlay McWalter]]   http://www.mcwalter.org
"With the thoughts you'd be thinkin', You could be another Lincoln..."


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] thought for the day

body:
I let it slip on IRC that I was going to DC for a day (tomorrow, in fact), and a bunch of people took the liberty of preparing a list for me -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Washington_pictures

So, when The Man (tm) raids my place, I'll have deniability :)

Finlay - I'll see you in Guantanamo. And just to make sure the NSA reads this: Allah Iraq bomb infidels President Bush Al Qaeda

--Mark

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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Ariel as a slow query server

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> I wrote some code for DB load balancing back in January, but we haven't
> had a slave server to test it on until now. I'm happy to announce that
> it's now running.

Whoo hoo!

Apparently all our lovely maintenance pages are working again!

Orphaned pages!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages

Dead-ends!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Deadendpages

Double-redirects!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=doubleredirects

Broken redirects!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=brokenredirects

Misspellings!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings

And, most importantly ...

Wanted pages !!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Wantedpages

OK, admittedly, that last one doesn't work right: It lists [[Wikipedia]]
as well as many others which already exist...

Oh, and this one is also not working right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=disambiguations
I get the error message "wfSpecialDisambiguation is broken. Link tables
have changed..." Someone wanna fix? :)

Greetings!
Timwi


from_name: Peter Bartlett

body:
>I think I know better than you Pete, who I have met in my life, and
>apart than in dream, I have never met Jimbo.

This is an obvious and serious mistake on my part. Please accept my
apologies - I got the wrong end of the stick of an IRC discussion. Perhaps
if the discussion had been face-to-face I wouldn't have made such a facile
error! :).

I will endeavour to respond to the rest of your email when it is isn't just
after pub closing time!

Pete


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Oh, having a board is fine, so long as it only handles unimportant
> things.  We decided to have a board initially not because anyone thought
> it was a good idea, but because the State of Florida requires
> non-profits to have boards of trustees consisting of five or more
> people.  For one reason or another, Jimbo decided it would be a good
> show of community participation and democratic fuzziness and whatnot if
> we elected two of these five members, and so we did.

Yeah - unimportant things such as making sure we have servers and they keep
running. Unimportant things such as setting up chapters and other outreach
efforts. Unimportant things like creating a CD/printed version. Unimportant
things such as hiring an on-site server admin. Utterly unimportant things such
as having representative members with the ability to help make this all happen.
Sure - all very unimportant. "Democratic fuzziness" ?? What are you smoking?

> ...
> I don't see how they will be open and inclusive unless the Foundation is
> prepared to pay for hundreds of Wikipedians to attend them.  If they
> involve only a minutely small percentage of the users, then they are
> worse than no meeting at all, and bias decision-making towards those
> with the resources to attend.

Have you been listening? My idea is to have quarterly meetings in different
parts of the world that will hosted by a different Wikimedia chapter each time.
The trustees thus come to the users. Our elected representatives and Jimbo
should be there. The meetings will also be conducted in *real time* online via
audio/video streaming (which can be had fairly cheaply nowadays).

> Wikipedia is indeed a social and collaborative system, but it takes
> place online, on a large scale.

So I guess you are against the idea of Wikimedia chapters as well.

> If the Foundation can come up with
> funding so that any significant subset of its users can meet somewhere,
> or even any significant subset of one of its language encyclopedias can
> meet, I would not object to that.  However, so far there have been no
> proposals for that, only proposals for small cliques of users to meet,
> which I feel is detrimental to the project on a whole.  All important
> work should take place online, in public, with as full participation as
> possible, not take place behind closed doors and then reported after the
> fact.

'Cliques' - can you be more offensive? The meetings *will* be very public (see
above). Why would you assume anything else? You are making the improper
conclusion that real world = closed door.

> As for other comments on travel reimbursements as a good thing, one of
> them even cited EU-funded projects, which are pretty notorious for being
> full of wasteful perks (http://www.iht.com/articles/521419.html among
> thousands of related articles).

Perks my ass - having the elected trustees visit the people they represent
while at the same time conducting quarterly meetings are all very important.
Only so much can be done online and with computers - the human element is not
present and thus a great deal of communication is lost.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses


body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:07:02 +0100, Timwi
> <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember people emphasising
>> that  they don't mind because they think the current work-around work
>> perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how anyone can seriously be
>> opposed to having a dictionary with correct spellings. :/
>
> I disagreed,
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000018.html
> Polyglot said it could be done but he would vote against it also:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000020.html

I'm sorry, but I can't extract any arguments against this change from
either of the two e-mails, only vague fears of something going wrong,
and a description of why the current ugly workaround "works". The only
relevant thing I can see is your comment that "having separately-cased
forms of words on different pages might overemphasize the difference
between some senses of a word"; but this, too, is not an argument
against the switch, only an argument against having two pages for
Cynosure. Surely you can put that on one page ([[cynosure]] perhaps) and
have the other be a redirect. This definitely does *not* apply to things
like [[Kind]].

But anyway ... this doesn't matter. I suppose we should have a vote,
then. I'll set one up on meta:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_Wiktionary_case-sensitivity_vote

> By the way, how does search handle the existence of pages differing by
> capitalization?  If someone searches for <greek> (v. [1]), which
> doesn't  exist, are they sent to <Greek>, which does?

This is irrelevant here, because the same question already applies to
multiple-word titles.

> Are users who
> are used to case-insensitive search, or don't know the proper
> capitalization of the  word, sent to <greek> when it is made, when they
> might have wanted <Greek> better?

Of course they are, but I sure hope that [[greek]] will contain a link
to [[Greek]]. This is not an issue relating to the change I'm advocating
here; this is a more general concern with the contents which is to be
solved separately.

> Will every word where capitalization
> is semantic have to be made  into a disambiguation page?

Huh?

> I would *much* prefer that pages, instead of being case-sensitive, be
> case-insensitive (even more than they are now, perhaps), with the page
> title in title case, and the regular capitalization indicated inline,
> as is now normally done.

Are you sure you're not just saying that because you're afraid of
unforeseen consequences, or because you're simply used to the way it
works now? I seriously don't think anyone would want to turn
case-insensitivity on if we had started case-sensitively right from the
start.

Timwi


from_name: John Pozniak

subject: [WikiEN-l] thought for the day

body:
Finlay,

When you come to SF, be sure to bring some warm
clothes.  The high temp for about half the days you'll
be there will probibly be about 20 - 25 ?C. San
Francisco merchants sell more sweatshirts in July than
any other month during the year.  If you're not going
to be in San Francisco itself, be prepared for warmer
temperatures; highs above 35? are not uncommon in
Livermore or Gilroy.

If you're going to be in San Jose, many of the
articles relating to the city and it's attractions
need pictures.

John Pozniak (Gentgeen)


subject: [WikiEN-l] thought for the day

body:
Thought for the day
-------------------

For the former half of next month, I'm eschewing the leaden skies of my
dank scots homeland for the sunny climes of the SF Bay Area and
(briefly) NYC.

Ever the dilligent photowikipedian, I sat tonight and looked for
articles in the en: wiki in those geographical areas that need a basic
photo but don't have one.  I wrote out a list.

Uh-oh.

I'd like to posit "McWalter's 14th law":

   All wikipedia photo-todo-lists read _exactly_ like terrorist
   (oops, sorry, militant) hitlists.

Bridges, airports, subways systems, landmarks, public buildings.  I
can't cross an international border with this list - I'll end up at GTMO
  for sure.

So if I end up on Missing Wikipedians, you'll know why.
Later,
FIn

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
W.Finlay McWalter   [[User:Finlay McWalter]]   http://www.mcwalter.org
"With the thoughts you'd be thinkin', You could be another Lincoln..."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Adminship as a reward

body:
hcheney wrote:

> I propose that the community start issuing awards of
> merit to users that will be voted upon by the
> community over a period of a week. Some of the ideas I
> kicked around were...
>
> the Wikipedia Peace Prize - for users who have
> worked to resolve conflict in the community.
>
> the Gutenberg Award - for users that have
> extensively improved the main-namespace content of
> Wikipedia

The idea is quite nice and innovative, but I really don't think it'll
work, for several reasons:

(1) The reasons Rick already mentioned.
(2) WikiMoney didn't work either.
(3) People will start doing certain things (e.g. make loads of trivial
     edits to the article namespace) *just* to get (one of) these awards,
     and then genuinely think they are entitled to (one of) these awards.
(4) Community recognition works best when it is not measurable. I can
     say with certainty that Anthere is more popular on Wikipedia than a
     vandal, but I can't rank her with other people. If she were awarded
     a "Wikipedia peace prize" and, say, Angela wasn't, then this would
     create an artificial (and deceptive) ranking between them.

Timwi


body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 03:33:44AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
>>Ogg Vorbis has taken off quite remarkably.
>
> No it hasn't. It is almost unheard of outside the linux world.

Oh really? I didn't know I was even remotely anywhere near the "linux
world".


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Theora and video policy...

body:
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:

>The choice is Theora or nothing.
>
>
That's only the case if we're GNU-style ideologues.  There are, of
course, other video formats that work, which millions of people use
daily, and which we could easily start using tomorrow.  Indeed, some of
them, notably MPEG, have large bodies of existing public-domain video
available from various public archives, which would only be usable at a
significant reduction in quality if we transcoded it to Theora.

Personally I prefer Theora once the tools are available, but I don't see
it as a "Theora or nothing" choice.  It's "between Theora and MPEG, MPEG
currently is far superior, but in the future I would lean slightly
towards Theora if support for it were good."

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Templates

body:
kelvSYC wrote:

> What I'd like to see is subpages fulfilling that purpose.  Given
> [[Template:foo]] with contents {{{bar}}}, What I'd like to see is for
> MediaWiki to, when instantiated without specifying what {{{bar}}} should
> be:
>
> - first check if [[Template:foo/bar]] exists (yes, this would mean that
> forward slashes can't be part of a template name...) and replace
> {{{bar}}} with the contents if it does

This is a very bad idea, performance-wise. It is *much* more feasible to
introduce a "default value" syntax:

	{{{variablename|defaultvalue}}}

This way everything is in one place (one page in the Template namespace)
and there is no extra database query involved which would only serve to
slow everything down.

Oh, and... the current behaviour that {{{bar}}} is replaced with
{<contents of [[bar]]>} if "bar" isn't defined is a bug, or it should be
considered one. {{{bar}}} should be a syntactical element that is
logically different and independent of {{blah}}. But that's my personal
opinion.

Timwi


from_name: Mark Orton

subject: [Wiktionary-l] De-capitalisation-isation

body:
Timwi wrote:
> The idea is to
> (1) flip the switch (so [[blah]] and [[Blah]] become separate articles)
> (2) run a script that renames every page to be lower-case, except for
>     those pages that contain their own title in capitalised spelling
> (3) create a list of those pages that weren't moved, so we can fix them
>     manually (for example, [[Kind]] will need to be split into two).

(4) create a list of those pages that link to a capitalised word, so
    we can check them manually to see if the link should be piped to
    the non-capital version.

-Mark-


references:
<40CD966B.70105@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<40CFECA5.4000702@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<cb6vr0$vff$2@sea.gmane.org>	<40D70F19.3080409@hackish.org>	<cb7jtj$gnn$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40D7551C.5000701@hackish.org>	<cb83dc$drf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40D7AE94.5080909@hotmail.com>	<cba0ai$tm2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40D8E525.90609@hotmail.com>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Can't you put in a little "if" at the right spot that will prevent
>> these tags from adding anything to the links table? Yes, we'll have a
>> missing line in "What links here", but at least the links table will
>> stop getting corrupted.
>
> Last time I checked, you had CVS access.

CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote: > Timwi wrote:
>
> > last time we discussed this, I think there was
> > consensus to switch the English Wiktionary to make
> > it stop capitalising article titles, right?
>
> Guys! Please keep this on the mailing list, and
> don't reply to me personally. Thanks!

Sorry I'm so used to mailing lists having the Reply-To
set that I didn't notice.

> Brion wrote:
>
> > This idea relies on the existence of the script
> > for step (2). :)
>
> The idea was that I would write it. (Where else
> would my involvement in this be? :-p)
>
> > Note that there may be an effect on usernames
>
> I'll leave the usernames capitalised, I guess.
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > Whatever process we choose will require some
> > manual fix-up.  The process that you suggest is as
> > good as any.
>
> My suggestion will require significantly less manual
> fix-up than moving 400,000 articles to lower-case
> versions manually.
>
> > How can we show capitalization when a linked word
> > begins a sentence?
>
> The same way as everywhere else, [[until|Until]].
>
> > Is there some way to integrate upper cased, lower
> > cased and accented characters in generated lists?
>
> I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by this.

I think he means that there are times when
case-folding
is very handy. Though I'm not sure exactly his context
and he's also talking about accent-folding - which is
not possible without lots of messy hacking.

> > I don't remember it being a consensus at all. I
> > seem to recall some being quite opposed to it.
>
> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember
> people emphasising that they don't mind because they
> think the current work-around work perfectly for
> them.

I seem to remember Polyglot being opposed, probably in
the Beer Parlour. Not all of us are subscribed to this
list. I stayed off because I had no space in my email
account for mailing lists until a few days ago (Thanks
Yahoo!).

> I seriously don't see how anyone can seriously
> be opposed to having a dictionary with correct
> spellings. :/

Now this statement is pure rhetoric. I'm in favour of
correct spellings and I'm sure everybody is. But
there's more than one way to solve a problem and I'd
like everybody to think this through and consider all
possible ways to fix it before jumping in and making
major changes.

The choices:
1. Case fold first letter only to uppercase. (current)
2. Case fold nothing. (Timwi)
3. Case fold all letters to lowercase. (Hippietrail)
4. A new directive to supply a prominent "Headword".
(Hippietrail)

Against 1:
 * Headwords are prominently displayed uppercase when
   most should be lowercase.
 * Words which differ only by the case of the first
   letter must share a page. (common nouns vs. proper
   nouns)
 * Words which differ only by case the case of
   subsequent letters must be on separate pages.
   (abbrevations & acronyms)
Against 2:
 * People are going to add duplicates thinking their
   word is not in the dictionary.
 * Quite a large number of entries will have to be
   changed back to uppercase after the script is run.
 * Words which differ only by case of any letter must
   be on separate pages. (proper nouns vs. common
nouns
   vs. abbrevations & acronyms)
Against 3:
 * All headwords would be prominently displayed
   lowercase when some should be uppercase.
 * Quite a large number of entries will have to be
   changed back to uppercase after the script is run.
 * Words which differ only by the case of any letter
   must share a page.

4. Is special. It can be implemented with or without
   any of the others. It will solve one issue nicely
   but I feel there are really two issues.

Issue 1
 Prominently displayed headwords are misleading
 because they are also the name of the article.

 Because the name of the article is currently always
 uppercase, all the headings generated by the Wiki
 software are in uppercase - which is very
 unprofessional for a dictionary. (This is why
 Polyglot started doing manual headwords below the
 part-of-speech section)

Issue 2
 What should and should not be on the same page.

 Currently we case-fold the first letter which means
 "bob" and "Bob" are both on a page titled "Bob"
 but
 "us" and "US" are on separate pages titled "Us" and
 "US"

I've read some peoples' opinions that they would
prefer one entry per page but this is never going to
work because of homographs anyway.
Another issue is other languages. In some languages,
certain diacritics (accents) are optional. Arabic,
Hebrew, and Latin spring to mind. Some languages have
marks which dictionaries use to show stress, which are
not used elsewhere. Japanese and Russian are examples.

If we rely on the article name to be the headword,
these will never fit. Using Polyglot's system they
fit in perfectly. Words which differ only in case,
optional diacritics, or stress marks can all be on one
page.

Conclusion:
I am in favour of showing correct spelling, case, and
diacritical marks for all entries.

I am in favour of words which differ only in minor
ways
sharing a single page.

If we can break the connection between the name of the
page and the headword, we won't have to see "PH" in
big
embarassing letters at the top of the article on "pH".

Having a directive which allows us to set the title to
"pH" is one way.
Having Wiktionary simply not display the page title,
and instead rely on "Polyglot-style" headwords alone
is another. In fact this may even possible just by
changing the stylesheet.

Let the discussion proceed...

Hippietrail.

> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

=====
http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl    http://www.abisource.com

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Rowan Collins [IMSoP]

references:
<40CD966B.70105@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<40CFECA5.4000702@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<cb6vr0$vff$2@sea.gmane.org>	<40D70F19.3080409@hackish.org>	<cb7jtj$gnn$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40D7551C.5000701@hackish.org>	<cb83dc$drf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40D7AE94.5080909@hotmail.com>	<cba0ai$tm2$1@sea.gmane.org>	<40D8E525.90609@hotmail.com>	<cbapql$d7a$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40D8F480.8020305@hotmail.com>

body:
>>> Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
>>
>>
>>
>> CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
>
>
> Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either
> become an expert or to even get thing in question done.

This is silly. Why don't we just back up 4 posts, and where it says "Can't you put in a little..."
do s/you/we/ - or perhaps s/you/one/ which is probably more-or-less what was meant in the first place.

Tim W asks for advice; Tim S says he doesn't know; one, the other, both, or someone else, goes away
and tries it.

Problem solved.

--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]


body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote: > Muke Tever wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:07:02 +0100, Timwi
> > <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember
> >> people emphasising that they don't mind because
> >> they think the current work-around work
> >> perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how
> >> anyone can seriously be opposed to having a
> >> dictionary with correct spellings. :/
> >
> > I disagreed,
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000018.html
> > Polyglot said it could be done but he would vote
> > against it also:
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000020.html
>
> I'm sorry, but I can't extract any arguments against
> this change from either of the two e-mails, only
> vague fears of something going wrong, and a
> description of why the current ugly workaround
> "works".

"ugly" is NPOV. Please explain what is ugly about it
and what is not ugly about your proposed fix.

> The only relevant thing I can see is your comment
> that "having separately-cased forms of words on
> different pages might overemphasize the difference
> between some senses of a word"; but this, too, is
> not an argument against the switch, only an argument
> against having two pages for Cynosure. Surely you
> can put that on one page ([[cynosure]] perhaps) and
> have the other be a redirect. This definitely does
> *not* apply to things like [[Kind]].

Now that would be a mess. If we had case sensitivity
but no system of what went where. If we do opt for
case sensitivity, we must not put uppercase
definitions
on lowercase pages sometimes when we feel like it.

Also, redirects are and should be far rarer on
Wiktionary since there are often enough words in some
language which belongs where the redirect would be.

> But anyway ... this doesn't matter. I suppose we
> should have a vote, then. I'll set one up on meta:
>
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_Wiktionary_case-sensitivity_vote

That page is NPOV, misleading, and ambiguous. Please
try to fix it up. I've commented on the page.

> > By the way, how does search handle the existence
> > of pages differing by capitalization?  If someone
> > searches for <greek> (v. [1]), which doesn't
> > exist, are they sent to <Greek>, which does?
>
> This is irrelevant here, because the same question
> already applies to multiple-word titles.

Currently, the built-in search is always turned off so
we get Google's search heuristics by defacto...
So I can't test this.

> > Are users who are used to case-insensitive search,
> > or don't know the proper capitalization of the
> > word, sent to <greek> when it is made, when they
> > might have wanted <Greek> better?
>
> Of course they are, but I sure hope that [[greek]]
> will contain a link to [[Greek]]. This is not an
> issue relating to the change I'm advocating here;
> this is a more general concern with the contents
> which is to be solved separately.

And what about for words which don't exist yet? Or
exist in one case but not both? My feeling is the user
should be directed to whichever exists if there is
only
one, given a choice if there is more than one, and
given an opportunity to give the preferred case when
making a new entry.

> > Will every word where capitalization
> > is semantic have to be made  into a disambiguation
> > page?
>
> Huh?
>
> > I would *much* prefer that pages, instead of being
> > case-sensitive, be case-insensitive (even more
> > than they are now, perhaps), with the page title
> > in title case, and the regular capitalization
> > indicated inline, as is now normally done.

I very much agree. I would go further and even
suppress
the page title, make it overrideable with a directive,
or have it commented with "Page title: xxx" so it
looks
less like the headword itself.

> Are you sure you're not just saying that because
> you're afraid of unforeseen consequences, or because
> you're simply used to the way it works now?
> I seriously don't think anyone would want to turn
> case-insensitivity on if we had started
> case-sensitively right from the start.

Umm... turn it on if it was already on?

Hippietrail.

> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] thought for the day

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Post the list on an eMail to yourself.  Then when you get to SF go
> to an
> Internet Cafe where you can download and print your eMail. :-)
> Avoid wearing a trench-coat, wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses when
> you
> visit the cafe.
> Ec

Better yet:
Put the list on your wikipedia userpage. You don't even need to log
in to get it. You'd have to log in to your email account.

If it's raining, you can wear the trenchcoat and hat. But not the
sunglasses.

I wouldn't be worried about the Homeland Security (NSA/FBI/CIA)
reading your mail in particular. They probably have resources/people
already dedicated to scouring the W.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
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from_name: cookfire

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:07:02 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>> I don't remember it being a consensus at all. I seem
>>> to recall some being quite opposed to it.
>>
>>
>> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember people emphasising
>> that  they don't mind because they think the current work-around
>> work  perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how anyone can
>> seriously be  opposed to having a dictionary with correct spellings. :/
>
>
> I disagreed,
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000018.html
> Polyglot said it could be done but he would vote against it also:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000020.html

I initially opposed the idea since we had come up with a workaround.
After some more thought and reading the opinion of others on Wiktionary
EN, I changed my mind and now I'm convinced proper capitalisation is
indeed crucial for a dictionary project. I came up with the workaround
after asking a developer whether it would be possible to have proper
capitalisation. The answer back then was that it wouldn't be possible,
so we learned how to live and cope with it. Now that there is a
willingness to change it, I think it is a blessing.

Polyglot


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] thought for the day

body:
We could do with some more photos and commentry on the
inside of GTMO!
Mark

--- Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
> I let it slip on IRC that I was going to DC for a
> day (tomorrow, in fact), and a bunch of people took
> the liberty of preparing a list for me --
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Washington_pictures
>
> So, when The Man (tm) raids my place, I'll have
> deniability :)
>
> Finlay - I'll see you in Guantanamo. And just to
> make sure the NSA reads this: Allah Iraq bomb
> infidels President Bush Al Qaeda
>
> --Mark
>
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
--- cookfire <cookfire at softhome.net> wrote: > Muke
Tever wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:07:02 +0100, Timwi
> <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >>> I don't remember it being a consensus at all. I
> >>> seem to recall some being quite opposed to it.
> >>
> >>
> >> Really? Can you provide links? I only remember
> >> people emphasising that  they don't mind because
> >> they think the current work-around work
> >> perfectly for them. I seriously don't see how
> >> anyone can seriously be  opposed to having a
> >> dictionary with correct spellings. :/
> >
> > I disagreed,
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000018.html
> > Polyglot said it could be done but he would vote
> against it also:
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wiktionary-l/2004-May/000020.html
>
> I initially opposed the idea since we had come up
> with a workaround. After some more thought and
> reading the opinion of others on Wiktionary EN, I
> changed my mind and now I'm convinced proper
> capitalisation is indeed crucial for a dictionary
> project.

I'm also convinced proper capitalisation is crucial
for
a dictionary project. But I'm not convinced Timwi's
solution is the best way to go about it.

Hippietrail.

> I came up with the workaround after asking a
> developer whether it would be possible to have
> proper capitalisation. The answer back then was that
> it wouldn't be possible, so we learned how to live
> and cope with it. Now that there is a willingness to
> change it, I think it is a blessing.
>
> Polyglot
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Numeric standards considered harmful?

body:
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 19:06:58 -0700 (PDT), Geoff Burling
<llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> I'd favor a minimum of votes to make someone a sysop -- say 2% of the
> total number of active contributors (however that could be calculated).
> I say that knowing that I was granted sysophood with only 3 votes once
> upon a time, & probably only because (IIRC) Mav spoke up for me. Being a
> sysop requires some minimum number of references/votes of confidence.

How would that be calculated?

Given the amount of attention paid to WP:RFA, I'd say that there's
little risk of candidates going unnoticed and slipping into the
system.


from_name: Trocheris Yann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Breton Wikipedia

body:
Hi

I could not find more than a home page when I tried to start working on the breton wikipedia
I'd rather propose to start a new blank one

Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
Hi all,
It seems Breton Wikipedia was lost during the big crash (few weeks ago).
If I didn't misunderstand, a version may be on a hard disk backup (80Go) but
it's would be long and hard to try to retrieve it.
My questions are:
1) Does someone have a local backup of Breton Wikipedia?
2) Does someone know how many pages there were on this Wikipedia?
If there were only few pages it's perhaps faster to set a new Wikipedia
rather than try to retrieve old one.
Thanks for help.

Aoineko

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Adminship as a reward

body:
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 14:34:12 -0400, moink <theresa.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >I REALLY dislike this idea.  And it has nothing to do with my
> acknowledgement that I would >never get one.  This sounds like nothing
> but a popularity contest that could lead to hurt feelings >and
> facionalism.
>
> Hmmm good point.  My first thought was that this would spread
> happiness and sunshine around but if it's competitive, well, it may
> bring out the darker parts of people.  So sad that we have to evaluate
> it that way.

Even the simple Barnstar was readily abused by trolls and the
misguided (cf. User:Plato's treatment of the page User:Bird).


body:
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 02:16:35 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 03:33:44AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> >>Ogg Vorbis has taken off quite remarkably.
> > No it hasn't. It is almost unheard of outside the linux world.
> Oh really? I didn't know I was even remotely anywhere near the "linux
> world".

I will note that many informal web broadcasting groups (Internet
radio, some stations more legitimate and concerned about copyrights
than others) adore Ogg Vorbis for its superior quality at the same or
similar bitrates.


from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: De-capitalisation-isation

body:
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:40:52 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> This is *only* about *removing that technological restriction*.

No, this is also about:

> (2) run a script that renames every page to be lower-case, except for
>    those pages that contain their own title in capitalised spelling

Which I don't agree with.

I don't mind being _able_ to create pages with initially-lower-case
titles.  You want this to be the default and the standard, which is a
separate issue entirely.

	*Muke!
--
http://frath.net/  (my website)
http://kohath.livejournal.com/
http://kohath.deviantart.com/

http://wiki.frath.net/ (conlangs and concultures)


from_name: bcorr at neaction.org

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Adminship as a reward

body:
Timwi wrote
>
> hcheney wrote:
>
> > I propose that the community start issuing awards of
> > merit to users that will be voted upon by the
> > community over a period of a week. Some of the ideas I
> > kicked around were...
> >
> > the Wikipedia Peace Prize - for users who have
> > worked to resolve conflict in the community.
> >
> > the Gutenberg Award - for users that have
> > extensively improved the main-namespace content of
> > Wikipedia
>
> The idea is quite nice and innovative, but I really don't think it'll
> work, for several reasons:
>
> (1) The reasons Rick already mentioned.
> (2) WikiMoney didn't work either.
> (3) People will start doing certain things (e.g. make loads of trivial
>      edits to the article namespace) *just* to get (one of) these awards,
>      and then genuinely think they are entitled to (one of) these awards.
> (4) Community recognition works best when it is not measurable. I can
>      say with certainty that Anthere is more popular on Wikipedia than a
>      vandal, but I can't rank her with other people. If she were awarded
>      a "Wikipedia peace prize" and, say, Angela wasn't, then this would
>      create an artificial (and deceptive) ranking between them.
>
> Timwi

I think Timwi is generally right, but to go back to the beginning of this
thread, I think that Meatball's pages "Reward Reputation," "Open Process,"
and "Us and Them"  have very good things to say about this topic. Rather than
go on about my own opinions I'll just refer people there:

<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RewardReputation>
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?UsAndThem>
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?OpenProcess>

Thanks,
Brian (BCorr)


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Long pages

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Other lists ([[List of astronomical topics
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_topics>]], as an
> example) can be restructured into the category system, while leaving
> unwritten topics.

Since those kinds of lists are essentially pre-category attempts to
make categories, I think it's worth using them like we do "list of
encyclopedia topics" - remove topics as they are categorized, provide
a link to the category at the top of the list as a hint about where
the rest of the list went. Seems like these lists could become a
better per-area substitute for the requested articles page, since the
lists of topics will tend to become a list of unwritten articles
that somebody thinks are needed.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Long pages

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote
>
>
>>Since those kinds of lists are essentially pre-category attempts to
>>make categories, I think it's worth using them like we do "list of
>>encyclopedia topics" - remove topics as they are categorized, provide
>>a link to the category at the top of the list as a hint about where
>>the rest of the list went.
>>
>
>Well, again, I want to enter a protest here.  In particular, I think there
>should be a very compelling reason, before encouraging anyone to remove any
>link from any list.
>
The topics lists are not annotated, so they include no information not
available with a category listing. They are handy for tracking with
"related changes", which categories ought to be able to do, and don't
seem to now. But if that's added, then the compelling reason is that
the lists of topics have to be maintained manually, are error-prone,
and offer no subcategorization ability.

Stan


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Link table corruption due to templates (was
	Re: Setting up for the Greek language)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>> Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
>>
>> CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
>
> Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either
> become an expert or to even get thing in question done.

A great comment!  With a much wider application than for life on the Wiki.

Ec


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Breton Wikipedia

body:
Hi all,
It seems Breton Wikipedia was lost during the big crash (few weeks ago).
If I didn't misunderstand, a version may be on a hard disk backup (80Go) but
it's would be long and hard to try to retrieve it.
My questions are:
1) Does someone have a local backup of Breton Wikipedia?
2) Does someone know how many pages there were on this Wikipedia?
If there were only few pages it's perhaps faster to set a new Wikipedia
rather than try to retrieve old one.
Thanks for help.

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] Breton Wikipedia


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> flip the switch (so [[blah]] and [[Blah]] become separate articles)
>
>
> Hi all.
>
> It seems that I have made a number of wrong assumptions when I started
> all of this.
>
> Firstly, I assumed that just about everyone would agree to want to
> have article titles lower-case if that is how the word is spelt. I am
> indescribably surprised that this is not the case, but oh well, that's
> wiki-democracy I guess.

It seems like a no-brainer to me too; it was a mess trying to do
German words.

Stan


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] face to face and bodiless

body:
Peter Bartlett wrote:
> >>I think I know better than you Pete, who I have
met in my life, and
>>apart than in dream, I have never met Jimbo.
> > > This is an obvious and serious mistake on my
part. Please accept my
> apologies - I got the wrong end of the stick of an
IRC discussion.
Perhaps
> if the discussion had been face-to-face I wouldn't
have made such a
facile
> error! :).
> > I will endeavour to respond to the rest of your
email when it is
isn't just
> after pub closing time!
> > Pete

I wonder if in a couple of years, when we all have
very good internet
lines, we might not discuss on irc with camera
displaying each other
faces or perhaps even disambodied corpses floating in
the living room
:-)

That might not be so fun actually. I just got home
today with new
glasses, so I look decent again. I broke the other
ones about 3 weeks
ago, and have been looking like a nerd with my
self-repaired glasses
meanwhile :-)

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subject: [Foundation-l] my reimbursement :-)

body:
Denni wrote:

> Anthere, I can relate. I live 15 km from one of the
major entry
points
> to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I was able to
afford to make a real
> trip in only once this past year, because a friend
helped out. It
sucks
> not being able to appreciate what your own country
has to offer. So.
If
> Angela decides to go, ten bucks. If Anthere can go,
ten bucks. If
> neither decides to go, I'm going to spend the 20
bucks for gas and a
> Parks admission and soothe my soul in the Rockies
for a day.

Keep my bucks for a camping week end. Take pictures of
flowers while on
it. Upload the nicest on my user page on en. That will
make it for my
happiness :-)

------

In case... yes, I break all threads. I know.
My gname system is broken, and all my mails to
foundation-l are sent by default to the old wikipedia
legal mailing list. And come back in return :-(((

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subject: [Foundation-l] my reimbursement :-)


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] replication errors on ariel

body:
Ariel is reporting many errors of this kind:

           Last_error: query partially completed on the master (error on master: 1053) and was aborted. There is a chance that your master is inconsistent at this point. If you are sure that your master is ok, run this query manually on the slave and then restart the slave with SET GLOBAL SQL_SLAVE_SKIP_COUNTER=1; START SLAVE; . Query: 'REPLACE DELAYED INTO searchindex (si_page,si_title,si_text) VALUES (87848,'altenberg','  altenberg  ist der name der orte altenberg sachsen altenberg bergisches land als ortsteil der gemeinde odenthal mit dem altenberger dom und dem 1931 er???ffneten m???rchenwald altenberg linz begriffskl???rung kategorie begriffskl???rung en altenberg ')'

I step forward using
 SET GLOBAL SQL_SLAVE_SKIP_COUNTER=1; START SLAVE;
but new errors happen all the time.

JeLuF


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] zh.wikipedia.org - having a single unified portal

body:
Delirium provides a good reference - yes, something we can agree on! :)

However, I'd take issue with the convertor being considered
"impossible by many experts."  If a human being, with expert
knowledge, can map it across, certainly it is not in the domain of
"impossible" tasks.

In fact, ZH Wikipedia could be a leader in the development of such a
system, and create a modular open source solution for others to use
too. The "power of many" can certainly be seen in this task, which has
a variety of special cases for mapping based on context.  The mapping
system itself could be run like a wiki, so people can contribute and
alter the rules as needed, as colloquial grammar and usage changes
with time.

The challenge now is getting enough critical mass and developers for ZH.

-Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 10:50:04 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
>
> >I don't want to get into the debate, but just FYI, such a convertor is
> >considered impossible by many experts. By impossible, I mean
> >impossible in the level of a perfect German to English to German
> >machine translation software. Refer to Unicode mailing list and its
> >archives for more details.
> >
> >
> Just to provide some more concrete points of reference:
>
> Jack Halpern and Jouni Kerman. "The Pitfalls and Complexities of Chinese
> to Chinese Conversion". Proceedings of the 14th International Unicode
> Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, March 1999.
> [http://www.basistech.com/papers/chinese/c2c.html]
>
> The biggest issue seems to be that certain simplified characters map to
> one of multiple traditional characters, depending on context.  Thus a
> translator has to know the context, which requires solution of some
> fairly daunting natural-language processing problems.  Conversion from
> traditional to simplified seems to be much easier, as it typically
> collapses the total number of characters used.
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Corey Burger

body:
To seek consensus on the topic of covering Angela and Anthere's travel
expenses, I have created a meta page and have added a link from the en and simple wikipedias on
their http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_vote_poll. Please not the
preamble at the top of the page.

Corey Burger aka Burgundavia


subject: [Foundation-l] Hierarchical top-down control and co

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I know what a board is, but I disagree that we
should have one
running
> significant parts of Wikimedia projects.
Hierarchical top-down
control
> is the exact opposite of the wiki way of doing
things.
> > We do of course need a board for legal reasons,
and the board may
need
> to make some decisions.  But it should not be
running the project,
and
> when it does make decisions, it should do so as
openly and publicly
as
> possible, in consultation with the normal
consensus-based method of
> decision-making we use.
> > -Mark

I see that you are worried. I am not really sure why.
You are currently worried that things *might* happen.
Perhaps could you explain what exactly is worrying you
?

In the past few days, you mentionned, lack of
efficiency, waste, corruption, hierarchical top-down
control and such.

I think you should show a little more trust in us, and
in the whole process.

The board is not here to decide how the projects
should be run, except for basic respect of a couple of
rules (respect of NPOV rules, respect of copyrights,
respect of other people and openness). Except when
these
rules are broken AND the local community does not
succeed to fix the issue, I do not think the board
should be implicated in any project management.

The board is not here either to do everything instead
of you.

The goals of the projects are
* gather knowledge
* then make it available to use and reuse
* to the highest number of people on the Earth

The role of the board is essentially to *help* this to
happen.

We should primarily focus on finding money, and insure
that at any time, we have enough money so that the
information is readable, is editable
and may be distributed to suit that goal : highest
number of people (which implies, many languages and
availability of information for those without net
access).

I invite you to join the fuzzy buzy noisy happenings
on meta, so you can feel involved. And mostly to feel
that this is not happening in other places, by other
people, people you do not know, people who are out of
your control, which might be scary.

First, there are many people getting involved in board
issues. They are setting pages to outline what the
board should do, where we should turn our attention
first, explaining how they could help, what we should
not forget etc... And this is good. Because that allow
us to know exactly where the concerns are. Angela and
I are not deciding alone what we should do or not do,
according to our own perception of the situation.
We are not gonna do things behind doors. On the
contrary, participants are leaders in saying what they
think is important and should be done first so that
the project can proceed smoothly. At the same time,
they
indicate where they feel like helping, and they will
be motor in what they will do.

I think anyone who feels left out, who fears the board
will now decides everything, will spend all the cash
to go on holidays, or whatever ***should*** join meta
and participate in setting all this, should get
involved in one of the working group. There is plenty
to do. Your help is welcome
- in the development team (in particular for the
development of these features, or helping us know at
any time what the money needs are)
- to help set a decent budget (accountants welcome)
- to help organise the membership dues system (both
from a legal and technical perspective)
- to help raising funds (we need proposals and help to
write the proposals)
- to help with all legal issues (from copyrights to
privacy issues, there is really plenty to do)
- to help with all press contact related issues (such
as setting press release, interviews, and such)
- and more...

2 people won't do this alone, right ? We will
participate, but mostly, we wish that this is done,
and is done well. And if it is not done, we will try
to call for help so that this is done :-) And if we do
not
think of doing something, then it is your role to tell
us it is important.

The one thing I can say : the one who does nothing but
just whines that decisions are taken without him or
*could* PERHAPS be taken without him, is responsible
of that situation.
Wikipedia is just this : it gives you the ability to
act yourself, this is so great, so take that chance
:-)

That is my last comment on the topic.

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