from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
I'm not sure if what Tim said applies to conlangs as well, would you
provide server space for conlangs?

Obviously Tim is willing to create Wikipedias for deadlangs so long as
they... well, you know; although he hasn't done so yet, but I'm not
sure that applies to conlangs.

--node

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 21:06:36 -0400, Anthony DiPierro
<anthony_dipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > The first and probably best would be to go to Wikipedia forks such as
> > Wikinfo and mcfly (ok, maybe not mcfly) and tell them how the folks at
> > the Wikimedia organisation are... well,   describe your plight. Some
> > forks really hate the Wikimedia foundation and will feel very sorry
> > for you and assist you with such a project, whereas others seem to be
> > meant more to augment Wikipedia and their users still contribute to
> > Wikipedia on a regular basis.
>
> > best,
> > node
>
> If someone is serious about setting up a wiki and willing to help me figure
> out the technical details I'd be willing to provide the server space.  But
> apparently Tim Starling is already willing to do this on Wikimedia's
> servers...
>
> > In fact, I'll happily create
> > any wiki if the potential contributors agree in advance to use a
> > language file which is already mature, and that you refrain from
> > requesting interface customisations which require developer attention.
>
> >  -- Tim Starling
>
> I'd like to create a wiki for for geographical information.  I've registered
> wikiteer.org.  Can we set it up?
>
> Anthony
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
> The first and probably best would be to go to Wikipedia forks such as
> Wikinfo and mcfly (ok, maybe not mcfly) and tell them how the folks at
> the Wikimedia organisation are... well,   describe your plight. Some
> forks really hate the Wikimedia foundation and will feel very sorry
> for you and assist you with such a project, whereas others seem to be
> meant more to augment Wikipedia and their users still contribute to
> Wikipedia on a regular basis.

> best,
> node

If someone is serious about setting up a wiki and willing to help me figure
out the technical details I'd be willing to provide the server space.  But
apparently Tim Starling is already willing to do this on Wikimedia's
servers...

> In fact, I'll happily create
> any wiki if the potential contributors agree in advance to use a
> language file which is already mature, and that you refrain from
> requesting interface customisations which require developer attention.

>  -- Tim Starling

I'd like to create a wiki for for geographical information.  I've registered
wikiteer.org.  Can we set it up?

Anthony


from_name: Walter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China Block Lifted?

body:
I am in Qingdao, Shandong Province.  The site was seemingly blocked for
me for the last day or two but is now accessible.  Perhaps the block has
been lifted like last time.

- User:Pratyeka


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Quick thoughts on fundraising

body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I just wanted to add that I like all of Erik's ideas. One more thing I would
> like to see is how much we are earning in subscriptions, so that we can
> expect income monthly. Have we passed $1000 a month yet? $5,000?

Only 45 subscriptions set-up so far (linking contributing membership to that
and sending people wampum - t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, etc - for donating at
certain levels will increase that).

Counting both monthly and yearly/12 we can expect to gross:

257.50 US dollars per month
+
26 pounds (46.92 USD) per month
+
52 euro (63.82 USD) per month
=
373.24 USD per month*

*PayPal data only (I'm not sure if Moneybookers allows for subscription
payments...).

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

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list: wikimedia-l


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> [many good things]

With the exception of the idea of paying a grant admin (which is a role I would
like to see us try to have done via volunteer time - at least for now -
temporary consultant work is OK though), I really can't recall a single thing
you suggested that I don't agree with. In fact I would very much so like to see
most of it happen.

The real big issue now is that somebody is going to have to code a bot to fetch
and parse the PayPal data. A mechanism would also need to be added to the bot
whereby Moneybookers and mail donation could be periodically added to the
totals via human input (I'm not aware of a read only account access option for
Moneybookers and I would never trust full access to any of our accounts to a
bot).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS - could you add your ideas to [[m:fundraising ideas]]?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas

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from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

body:
Anglo-Saxon as a group is ready to get the go-ahead, just waiting for the
domain to be set-up.  Articles would come quite quickly.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 10:59 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

I'm not sure if what Tim said applies to conlangs as well, would you
provide server space for conlangs?

Obviously Tim is willing to create Wikipedias for deadlangs so long as
they... well, you know; although he hasn't done so yet, but I'm not
sure that applies to conlangs.

--node

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 21:06:36 -0400, Anthony DiPierro
<anthony_dipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > The first and probably best would be to go to Wikipedia forks such as
> > Wikinfo and mcfly (ok, maybe not mcfly) and tell them how the folks at
> > the Wikimedia organisation are... well,   describe your plight. Some
> > forks really hate the Wikimedia foundation and will feel very sorry
> > for you and assist you with such a project, whereas others seem to be
> > meant more to augment Wikipedia and their users still contribute to
> > Wikipedia on a regular basis.
>
> > best,
> > node
>
> If someone is serious about setting up a wiki and willing to help me
figure
> out the technical details I'd be willing to provide the server space.  But
> apparently Tim Starling is already willing to do this on Wikimedia's
> servers...
>
> > In fact, I'll happily create
> > any wiki if the potential contributors agree in advance to use a
> > language file which is already mature, and that you refrain from
> > requesting interface customisations which require developer attention.
>
> >  -- Tim Starling
>
> I'd like to create a wiki for for geographical information.  I've
registered
> wikiteer.org.  Can we set it up?
>
> Anthony
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipedia  in China

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> ...
> Let them censor us instead of being their fig leaf. What a great way for
> them to prove the point that they're not interested even in neutral
> content, only in propaganda. Then let's use our collective intelligence to
> dig a way through the Great Firewall.

Are we not doing that already by allowing anybody to re-use our content? Unless
they created the biggest whitelist is history, I don't think they could find
all our mirrors and block each one.

-- mav

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
Hoi,
I have been working really hard checking the 4800 words that are in
nl:wiktionary and converting them to undercase when needed. This is a
big task because the nl:wiktionary has grown quite a lot. I am thankfull
that we have to do this now and not a few thousand words later. As I got
bored and wanted to do something else as well, I have created a
soundfile called nl-Nederlands.ogg. I created this using Audacity which
was recommended to me (thanks :) ).

Audacity saved it for me as an ogg file and I have uploaded it to
nl:wiktionary. To my amazement, it identified itself as
*afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg* (afbeelding means image). I expected that
I would be able to hear it, but I get a message telling me that the
operating system does not know what to do with the format. I installed
the real player it does not know what to do with it, I tried the Windows
thingie, same fiasco.

I had a look at META to see if I could find anything about .ogg files;
nothing. So, I had to be "adventurous" (I hate being adventurous) and
found that a Media player called "Ashampoo" could do the trick where the
conventional stuff fails miserably. It does indeed not only play ogg files.

The listening part of the file in wiktionary is a joke. It does say
Afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg
<http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg> and when
you click it, you get a details screen while I expect to hear something,
On this screen it is not immediately obvious what to do but there is an
nl-Nederlands.ogg It
<http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg> text. When
you press this, you finally get to hear a word; the pronounciation of
"Nederlands" spoken by me.

The reason why I use so many words is, because .ogg files are the
recommended sound files. I expect that when you select one it will not
say image but *sound*, and when I press it, that it will try to let me
hear something. After this I wanted to check what it does with .wav
files but, they are not allowed anymore :(

An other issue is that sound files are worthwhile resources for
wiktionaries; how better to demonstrate pronounciation ?? When a naming
convention is used like xx-word where xx is the ISO 639 code and word,
well the word, you will get thousands of files. It would be really good
if COMMONS was the place where these sound files are uploaded to.

Questions:
* How can I make the .ogg file execute immediately (without a detail
screen) ?
*When can I upload sound files to COMMONS so that every wiktionary can
share this and similar resources ?
<http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg>* What can
we do to make it easier for people to use .ogg ? Having loads of them
helps as well !!

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Sound files


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia  in China

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> Oh, yes, he does! You just havn't tangled with him before. However
> in the
> context of this discussion I took his suggestion as made in good
> faith as a
> way to maintain access to Wikipedia in China.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> > Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 02:45:12 -0700
> > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia  in China
> >
> > Christopher Mahan wrote:
> >> Yes, if every other article is about failure of this and
> breakdown of
> >> that, with Falung and Commies and Free Tibet all over the place,
> I
> >> would shut it down too.
> >
> > Surely you don't mean that.
> >
> > --Jimbo

First, Jimbo, I lived in France, and hold french citizenship. France
and China have much better relationships with each other than america
dreams of. My ant worked for a company that sold nuclear reactors to
china in 1982.

Were a bunch or rubbish be written about a great (not perfect)
country on an purportedly international, NPOV encyclopedia, and
people were adamant that it was the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, I would feel ashamed and pull the plug myself,
hiding away and hoping people would forget my name.

I personally know two mainland chinese. Both are highly educated,
cultured, calm and reliable people. I like them much better than some
of my american friends. Their country has few true friends, and
they've beasically been pulling themselves by their bootstraps for
the last 50 years.

The chinese government has realized many years ago that hardline
communism is a dead-end. Yet they also know that if they don't
present a unified front, a unified face, the world will walk all over
them. So they are tought. They appear tough. They want people to
think them tough.

Remember that if PyongYang's nukes can reach Tokyo, they can reach
Beijing. The chinese know this, and they're flexing their muscles
there too.

China is a very large country with 20% of the world's people. They
don't give a damn about our little competition with Brittanica. They
don't give a damn about Wikipedia. They are fighting prejudice, fear,
and misunderstanding on a grander scale, at the UN, in the WTO, and
off their coast, with jetfighters.

They do not want to play hardball with us. They have bigger fish to
fry. But if we start interfering with their plans for bringing china
in the 21st century as a world power and player on an equal footing
with the US and Europe, they will cut us off. And I would agree with
them.

All I know is that if Wikipedia is fair and balanced, showing in
thousands of articles the true face of china today, then the Chinese
government will find no reason to block us, and in fact may
participate.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I just wanted to add that I like all of Erik's ideas. One more thing I would
like to see is how much we are earning in subscriptions, so that we can expect
income monthly. Have we passed $1000 a month yet? $5,000?

Danny


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia  in China

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > Like I said, no article.
> >
> > We're building an encyclopedia, not an activist website.
>
> "Having no article" in order to pander to censorship is activism of
> the worst kind...

I agree with you. If it is to pander to censorship.

However, it is for balance.

If you opened a book about French history, and the entire book was
about the french atrocities in Algeria in the 50's, then the book
would be biased, because if didn't mention the rest of the 1600 years
and the contributions of countless millions.
If the book's title was: "French atrocities in Algeria", it would be
apropos. But if the book's title was "The History of France" then
that would be wrong, no matter how correct the content was itself.

I hope you understand what I'm getting at.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Sep 25, 2004, at 2:45 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> * How can I make the .ogg file execute immediately (without a detail
>> screen) ?
>
>
> [[media:foobar.ogg]]
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Thanks,
    :)
       GerardM


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki database system

body:
Magnus-
> Completely ignoring the progress on the according meta page, I went
> ahead and created a database feature for the wiki.

That's fine, it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere for the next couple
of months or so anyway. So thanks a lot for taking the time to code this
up and giving us something to chew on. You're aiming for another Magnus
Manske day, aren't you? ;-)

The system works nicely as a proof of concept, but I am wary of using it
as something to build upon, for these reasons:

1) I would like the data tables to be integrated with the new database
scheme, so that regular wiki pages are just another type of data, and new
fields can easily be attached to them.

Treating data as an afterthought will make integration with key wiki
concepts like page histories, diffs, recent changes, watchlists, and so
forth harder. Having a single Data: namespace also strikes me as too
limited. And of course if we intend to make it possible to manage multiple
languages in one database, Wikidata should be no exception to that rule
and use the same conventions as other pages.

My current thinking is that wikidata.org will be used for general
databases that are of possible use to multiple Wikimedia sites, but that
individual Wikimedia sites like Wiktionary may want to make use of some
Wikidata functionality to "enrich" their content. Our software should
allow both, by having editable field definitions for each namespace.

The subdomain setup as proposed on Meta should not be taken to indicate
that these should indeed be separate wiki installations. With that I
merely wish to express that we should try to group related purposes, so
that we can get filtered RC, watchlists etc. But that grouping may perhaps
best happen on an individual user level, with a reasonable set of default
groups presented to anons. Again, this shows the importance of integrating
this into our general database scheme, as filtering and aggregation are
much-requested features for RC, watchlists etc. in general.

2) Your present model does not allow for relations between data, which is
essential for anything but the simplest of use cases. Right now you
basically hardcode these relations into the data model using the
"dropdown" declaration (in your example, the movie's color). Where this
isn't possible, you use simple multiline fields (in your example, the
actors). This of course makes it very hard to do proper queries, updates
etc.

3) Storing everything in MEDIUMTEXT fields is probably not a good idea,
but I'd like to do some benchmarks on that. I'm particularly concerned
about queries - our indexing options with BLOBs are very limited, and our
problems with the MySQL FULLTEXT indexing over the years have shown that
this may not be the most reliable thing to do. This is why in the
[[m:Wikidata]] scheme I proposed a limited set of data-* tables for
different types.

- - - - - - -

All the big stuff that is happening right now makes me think that we
should probably start branching towards a "phase 4" (V2.0) soon, while
also kicking out a 1.4 and stabilizing it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata task for a non-developer

body:
If you're interested in the Wikidata project but you can't directly
contribute in terms of code, you can help with some research:
http://kendra.org.uk/
http://dev1.kendra.org.uk/

These people are doing something very similar, i.e. building free-form
databases using a wiki-like model (see the second link).

We need to know:
1) What exactly are Kendra's capabilities?
2) Is there potential for cooperation between Kendra and Wikimedia?

If you want to research this, please respond to this message so that
there's no needless duplication of effort. You could use
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kendra_evaluation
to chronicle your findings.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipedia  in China

body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> On 24 Sep 2004, at 03:01, Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
> > I also think that having chinese and non-western editors on w is a
> > great advantage to us, because it demonstrates our commitment to
> > NPOV.
> >
> > I also agree that the W will outlive just about all current
> > governments, and may even be instrumental in their changing for the
> > better.
>
> Please don't abbreviate the Wikipedia as "W".
> Please use "WP" instead.

Hm. May be a problem once WikiPeople is set up. :)

-- mav

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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Sunday 26 September 2004 01:15, Erik Moeller wrote:
> If you're interested in the Wikidata project but you can't directly
> contribute in terms of code, you can help with some research:
> http://kendra.org.uk/
> http://dev1.kendra.org.uk/
>
> These people are doing something very similar, i.e. building free-form
> databases using a wiki-like model (see the second link).
>
> We need to know:
> 1) What exactly are Kendra's capabilities?
> 2) Is there potential for cooperation between Kendra and Wikimedia?
>
> If you want to research this, please respond to this message so that
> there's no needless duplication of effort. You could use
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kendra_evaluation
> to chronicle your findings.

I couldn't find anything on that page, so I'm posting here. I hereby release
this e-mail under GFDL so anyone can use it to start a page on Meta or
anywhere else.

Capabilities... uhh. It lets you freely edit pages. Pages may contain ordinary
text, links, in the form of [[link]], what I'll call equivalences, in the
form of [[key = value]], and what I'll call definitions, in the form of
[[key; value]].

The equivalences let you set property of a page. Currently defined properties
are:

is_a
has_property
has_range
has_option

See http://dev1.kendra.org.uk/kendrabase/semantic_property for more info on
this. Most example pages have an "is a" property while some have and some
don't have more properties. AFAICT, you can think of properties as about
table column definitions.

Their examples start with an ontology:

music_ontology:
----
[[is a = ontology]]

This is the bare bones of an ontology for [[music]]:

* [[album]]
* [[song performance]]
* [[artist]]
* [[track]]
----

What's an ontology for I can't tell. You can make something similar to a table
definition:

album:
----
[[is a = musical work]]

* [[has property = album title]] -- ''not sure what this means''
* [[has property = artist]]
* [[has property = year]]
* [[has property = publisher]]
* [[has property = song performance]]
----

Each of these properties is defined on own page. I like this idea, though I
see a lot of potential for naming conflicts here. Few examples:

artist:
----
[[is a = human being]]
----

year:
----
[[has range = integers]]

*[[has option = 2000]]
*[[has option = 2001]]
*[[has option = 2002]]
*[[has option = 2003]]
*[[has option = 2004]]
*[[has option = 2005]]
*[[has option = 2006]]
----

Kendra will let you easily define a query, for example see
http://dev1.kendra.org.uk/cgi-bin/bootstrap.sh?action=query&title=album. I
don't see a way to easily link to a query or include it into an article.

Finally, an example of actual data:

yes again:
----
[[is a; album]]

*[[album_title; yes_again]]
*[[artist; yes]]
*[[publisher; huge_records_co]]
*[[year; 2000]]
----


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia  in China

body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 3:05 AM, Christopher Mahan wrote:

>
> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>> Like I said, no article.
>>>
>>> We're building an encyclopedia, not an activist website.
>>
>> "Having no article" in order to pander to censorship is activism of
>> the worst kind...
>
> I agree with you. If it is to pander to censorship.
>
> However, it is for balance.
>
> If you opened a book about French history, and the entire book was
> about the french atrocities in Algeria in the 50's, then the book
> would be biased, because if didn't mention the rest of the 1600 years
> and the contributions of countless millions.
> If the book's title was: "French atrocities in Algeria", it would be
> apropos. But if the book's title was "The History of France" then
> that would be wrong, no matter how correct the content was itself.
>
> I hope you understand what I'm getting at.
>

It might be gauche to point this out, but the long digression on the
state of the Chinese government isn't relevant to the present question.
The present question is not "what would I do if I were in the shoes of
someone deciding which sites to censor?" But "what do we do to deal
with present attempts to censor wikipedia."

If you feel that there are articles that need balancing, then by all
means, balance them - it is part of the  work we do here, balancing
articles, particularly those that have been tilted by common, but
narrow, points of view.

However, that is beside the point, in that many of the entities that
decide, or will decide in the future, to censor Wikipedia will not care
about the process, but about whether the bottom line meets their needs.
This means that wiki will often be censored even, or perhaps
especially, when there are POVs documented in an article which upset
various holders of the status quo.

This kind of POV processing isn't what will respond to the situation,
without some feedback mechanism, we could be altering information that
has nothing to do with why wikipedia is being blocked. Anyone who has
dealt with the decision to make secret or classify information knows
that often information is not classified for reasons that are rational
to the outside world. Censoring and blocking is the same way. Articles
on websites are censored or blocked, as often as not, based on
algorythms: banning all sites that contain certain percentages of
certain words. For all anyone here knows, wiki was blocked by a
program, and then later unblocked by a human being who realized that
the block was not appropriate.

Until there is some data - which can only be acquired by opening lines
into the PRC - this discussion is a reflection about how people feel
about China, and not about how to make sure that wiki is accessible to
its user base, who are the people who we should be more focused on.


from_name: Jiong Sheng

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in China

body:
Is this a humiliation or prejudice against all Chinese? A bunch of
robbers? If you have no understanding of real China, and only got all
your false impressions of China from newspapers or magazines, then you
better shut up.

Look back on history, though China had the most powerful navy and army
since the 10th century, we did not want to conquer the whole world.
Only the whites would go all around the world robbing and killing.

Prosperity of China is indeed great. At least we would not turn into
another superpower that invades another country thousands of miles
away.

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 06:27:02 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Perhaps today a wayward Chinese soldier would be tempted by a Blackberry. I
> think the prosperity of China is great. Live long and prosper...
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "yuanml" <yuanml at pku.org.cn>
> > Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 12:28:24 +0800
> > To: "wikipedia-l" <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
> > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in China
>
>
> >
> > To Fred Bauder:
> >> There have been instances where Chinese troops have been undisciplined.
> >> All it proves is that people who have been desperately poor
> >> all their lives were tempted by wristwatches and ballpoint pens.
> >
> > Do you know what you said is things about 20 years ago when I'm only a child?
> > Do you know China have the most cell-phone users in the world now?
> > Do you know China have ten million broadband Internet users,
> > just after USA, Japan and Korea, and will surpass Korea soon?
> > Yes, we are a developing country, but we are developing fast.
> >
> > I have to say that the mailing list now is full of bias on China.
> >
> > About Tibet problem, I provide some history issue
> > to reflect the common opinion in China.
> > Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama must be approved their identity
> > by the central government since Qing dynasty hundreds years ago.
> > Just in 1910s when China was very weak,
> > there was a movment to divided Tibet from China.
> > Great British took some part in the issue,
> > And we dislike the colonialism role of Great British.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Now, one might make an argument that unobtrusive ads are preferable over
>frequent obtrusive donation campaigns. Right now I have no strong opinion
>either way, but based on the data available to me, I believe that a high-
>profile fundraising campaign could be over fairly quickly with high
>returns.
>
>
I can't make any claims to be a representative user, but I personally
find these sorts of things *really* annoying.  When I'm trying to read
an encyclopedia article, I don't want a "give us money!" link at the
top, especially one with exclamation marks in it!  If it were some sort
of big bar thing, that'd be so much the worse, especially since it
doesn't go away when I actually *do* give money.  Letting me hide them
would be nice.

I also think if these things become a regular occurance, you're going to
see the donations rate get lower each time.  People are wiling to donate
rapidly for exceptional circumstances (like the k5 fundraiser, or the
first Wikimedia fundraiser), but using them as a normal revenue stream
doesn't sound that promising, imo, since it makes it sound like we're
perpetually doing "emergency" fundraising, which starts to sound like
"crying wolf" after a while.

-Mark


body:
Donations are still coming in, but not at a very high rate. We can
probably make the $50K goal, but we should still consider how to make our
fundraising campaign more effective.

One as of yet unanswered question is how many subscriptions we will get
because of this campaign, which may well play a substantial role in
supporting us in the long run. However, from cursory checks, the
subscription rate appeared to be fairly low.

I have studied online fundraising campaigns a bit. Here are some quick
thoughts. Some of these things can be done right now, some require
technical changes.

1) Real-time updates. We now do manual updates within regular intervals,
which is good, but real-time updates generate TV-like excitement.
Kuro5hin.org raised $35K in a few days using a realtime-updated progress-
bar shown on every change. (K5 is much, much smaller than we are, but of
course there's the added novelty effect when they did it.) This can be
combined with..

2) Immediately visible donation comments, increasing the community feel.

3) Progress-meter and PayPal link must be visible on every page, not just
a separate page, i.e. like this:

   [====================          ] $50K                Last 5 comments
                                                        Wikipedia rocks!
   Donate [10 ] [^ EUR] [ via PayPal ] [Go]             Keep it coming ..
                                                        ...

(You are using a non-proportional email font, right?) Note that this
example includes all the form elements to make a donation with one click,
with a reasonable value prefilled into the entry field. This is essential
- click-through forms result in hesitation and second thoughts, and then
there is the essential laziness of the web surfing process. Also, people
like to click on buttons.

This will take up a fair bit of screen estate, which is annoying, but I
consider it necessary. We can still support turning it off via CSS, but
for the duration of the campaign, we really need to grab people's
attention.

For extra funkiness, one could us something like mod_pubsub:
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/
to do actual *real-time* real-time updates, i.e. the bar moves and
comments come in even as you stay on one page. This would probably be best
reserved for a separate fundraising page, though.

4) Make the form/progressbar available to external sites - if we have
real-time updates, we should try to make it reasonably easy to include a
graphical bar + donation form elements in your blog, on your personal
homepage etc. This way we can get the whole blogosphere involved in the
fundraising process.

5) Surprises - to keep the campaign exciting, surprises could be unveiled
at certain milestones: articles, images, links, anything. Or maybe a "Meet
the Wikimedians" series where different Wikimedia users are introduced
every $1000. I'm sure we can come up with lots of ideas.

Effectively, the fundraising camapign itself has to be so interesting that
people will want to check it at least once daily, if not multiple times.
This worked very well for the Dean campaign where they had an ongoing blog
that tied directly into the fundraisers.

6) E-mail - the Dean campaign also used a huge list of email addresses for
fundraising alerts. This of course has to be strictly opt-in, but could
have an additional outreach effect.

I'm reluctant to propose other mechanisms used by the Dean campaign, such
as affiliate donation boxes on user pages, because I don't think we should
target the Wikimedia contributor community too much.

---
Caveat:

We are in the position where the people who *should* support us often
don't know who we are. They may only have a vague idea what Wikipedia is
based on reading Wikipedia articles from various mirrors and occasionally
from our site - they may consider us equivalentto fact-index.com,
thefreedictionary.com etc. They may be just as willing to donate to these
sites as to us.

The people who are most targeted by any fundraising campaign are
unfortunately our regular contributors, because they generate many
pageviews. How to solve this dilemma? Ideas:

* Give signed in users a convenient [hide] link for obnoxious fundraising
headers
* Raise awareness of the Wikipedia brand by
 - more strictly enforcing the GFDL
 - petitioning Google (first privately, then publicly) to give us better
treatment, since we are the original source
 - creating an official Wikimedia affiliate program for mirrors, which
would include some logos etc. to make people more aware that articles are
from Wikipedia -- in return, give member sites easier ways to update their
database

---

Technical notes:

Real-time stuff of course makes caching harder. However, using Edge Side
Includes (ESI), we should be able to mark-up only the relevant part of the
page as dynamic, and cache the rest.

Existing code:
This Drupal module contains some PHP code on PayPal IPN handling that may
be useful: http://drupal.org/project/paypal_framework

- - - - - - - -

Now, one might make an argument that unobtrusive ads are preferable over
frequent obtrusive donation campaigns. Right now I have no strong opinion
either way, but based on the data available to me, I believe that a high-
profile fundraising campaign could be over fairly quickly with high
returns.

One big problem this year is of course that it's a hotly contested US
election, so many Americans have given hundreds of dollars already and
don't have much money to spare for things like Wikimedia. We should
consider this a good thing, because we need to put our donation model to
the test properly, and this is a good opportunity to do so.

Oh, and we of course need to still go for the big money in the form of
institutional grants and corporate donations. The collaborative volunteer
model may not be good enough here - it's fairly meticulous work where it's
often a good idea to have one person on the job. Paying someone a couple
grand to do this properly may provide huge returns that make our $50K
campaign pale in comparison.

Apologies if I've missed previous discussions on these matters - as ever
so often, I'm just throwing ideas out there in the hope of contributing to
finding better solutions.

A final suggestion that Anthere should like: I believe that after the
fundraising campaign, we should do an international poll among Wikimedians
to figure out
- why they donated, if they did
- why they didn't donate, if they didn't
- whether they told anyone else about the campaign
etc.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia  in China

body:
Ok, granted, ''you'' may not have talked specifically about napalm.

''I'' however -- after this email
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-September/
>> 017502.html
-- I still expect word from Delirium that he has seen the film.

Because as I pointed out in this email
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-September/
>> 017508.html
Delirium has rudely insulted me and called me an "idiot".

_I find being called an "idiot" on a mailing list quite unacceptable._

I have made it clear to Delirium what he needs to do to make up for
defiling me in public. My demands are ''easily'' accomplishable and I
have a right to expect of a person who has slurred me for no good
reason to make reasonable amends. In that sense, discussions of another
PDF or non-napalm F9/11 issues are off-topic to me.
If Delirium is a man of honor he will make said amends and then we can
consider both our names cleared, forget about the matter and continue
collaborating in good faith. The ball is in his court.

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

On 25 Sep 2004, at 19:59, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I wasn't concerned specifically about napalm.  It's just one evil
> weapon among others.  Fahrenheit 9/11 is about more than just napalm.
> Ec
>
> Jens Ropers wrote:
>
>> Huh?
>> There's no mention of napalm in there at all AFAICT?
>> I'm not saying it's a bad document, it's just not at all about the
>> napalm issue.
>>
>> -- ropers
>>
>> On 25 Sep 2004, at 08:40, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Jens Ropers wrote:
>>>
>>>> No, I don't want you to apologize for publicly insulting me. I want
>>>> you  to do something else instead:
>>>> Watch a film that actually contains footage of a U.S. soldier
>>>> mentioning napalm use in Iraq and shows actual napalm inflicted
>>>> wounds.  Watch Fahrenheit 9/11 and I'll be happy to call it quits
>>>> between us.
>>>
>>> Or if you want something with less showmanship than what Moore tends
>>> to exhibit try
>>> http://csis.org/features/040922_IraqiMinisterVisit.pdf for an
>>> analysis of the current situation in Iraq.
>>>
>>> Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in China

body:
'Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government
owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To
destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between
corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship
of the day.' - Theodore Roosevelt, 19 April 1906

> From: Jiong Sheng <sheng.jiong at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Jiong Sheng <sheng.jiong at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 03:57:40 +0000
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in China
>
> Is this a humiliation or prejudice against all Chinese? A bunch of
> robbers? If you have no understanding of real China, and only got all
> your false impressions of China from newspapers or magazines, then you
> better shut up.
>
> Look back on history, though China had the most powerful navy and army
> since the 10th century, we did not want to conquer the whole world.
> Only the whites would go all around the world robbing and killing.
>
> Prosperity of China is indeed great. At least we would not turn into
> another superpower that invades another country thousands of miles
> away.
>
>
> On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 06:27:02 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> Perhaps today a wayward Chinese soldier would be tempted by a Blackberry. I
>> think the prosperity of China is great. Live long and prosper...
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>> From: "yuanml" <yuanml at pku.org.cn>
>>> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 12:28:24 +0800
>>> To: "wikipedia-l" <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
>>> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in China
>>
>>
>>>
>>> To Fred Bauder:
>>>> There have been instances where Chinese troops have been undisciplined.
>>>> All it proves is that people who have been desperately poor
>>>> all their lives were tempted by wristwatches and ballpoint pens.
>>>
>>> Do you know what you said is things about 20 years ago when I'm only a
>>> child?
>>> Do you know China have the most cell-phone users in the world now?
>>> Do you know China have ten million broadband Internet users,
>>> just after USA, Japan and Korea, and will surpass Korea soon?
>>> Yes, we are a developing country, but we are developing fast.
>>>
>>> I have to say that the mailing list now is full of bias on China.
>>>
>>> About Tibet problem, I provide some history issue
>>> to reflect the common opinion in China.
>>> Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama must be approved their identity
>>> by the central government since Qing dynasty hundreds years ago.
>>> Just in 1910s when China was very weak,
>>> there was a movment to divided Tibet from China.
>>> Great British took some part in the issue,
>>> And we dislike the colonialism role of Great British.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] China conclusions

body:
I'd like to invite all parties to close this particular thread as it is
devolving into a flamewar. I think no Chinese user is happy about being
censored, and that is what matters for the case at hand. I apologize for
partially igniting this flamewar by calling the Chinese government
fascist. This is my personal belief, and it does not contribute usefully
to the discussion.

Given Jimbo's clear statement on the matter, I hope we can all agree on
the following two things:

1) The content on the Chinese Wikipedia will not be censored or edited in
violation of NPOV. All sides to any issue are to be presented fairly and
neutrally, with or without the threat of government censorship.
Wikipedia's policies are not subject to change as a result of
intimidation.

2) Editors of the Chinese Wikipedia will work with the responsible
institutions to get the ban lifted under these conditions, and *only*
under these conditions.

Now, if 2) fails, I hope we can talk about what other options we have.
Actively aiding Chinese users to circumvent such censorship is, at least
to me, not out of the question. But for the time being, I would suggest to
Chinese Wikipedians to form an action group specifically for the purpose
of dealing with the issue of government censorship cautiously.

Does such a group already exist? If not, perhaps we can help by setting up
a mailing list for the purpose - if such a list is accessed through
Hotmail etc., it should be available regardless of whether Wikipedia
itself is censored. Alternatively, it could be set up on a third party
server.

The important thing to remember is that we are all on the same side, that
we believe in creating a neutral encyclopedia, and that we oppose
censorship of our work. Let's take strength from our shared values instead
of wasting time and energy on our personal and political differences.

WikiLove,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chinese Wikipedia

body:
I.
On 26 Sep 2004, at 06:51, Craig Franklin wrote:

> No matter what their other economic successes
> (...),
> these things will forever overshadow it.

Sorry to say it, but I consider that cultural defeatism.
Especially the "will _forever_ overshadow" bit.

OUW GAWD, OUW GAWD. TEH WOARLD EEZ DOOMED.
It's going to hell in a handbasket and things ain't NEVER gonna get
better.
OH PUH-LEEZE.  ;-D

NB:
PERPETUALLY denying your fellow human beings the chance to be full
equals is not healthy. You may want to reconsider this point.

II.
How much do you know about the Chinese government?
Are you aware that many, many Chinese "ordinary Joes" are government
officials? From low-low levels right through to the top? Are they all
"irrevocably evil pedophile child-eaters"? And what do you propose?
Burning a quarter of China's working population at the stake? (Number
is made up for the sake of rhetoric, but you're getting my drift.)
"The Chinese government" is a widespread community thing. (And yes,
there is an etymological relation between "communism" and "community"
-- think of that what you will.) Yes, we regret the deaths on Tiananmen
Square. Believe it or not, many, many people ''of the Chinese
government'' regret them, too. But how much do you really know about
this--honestly? Have you actually talked to people who were there?
Because a friend of mine was. And no, your wholesale damnation of a
group of humans that conveniently doesn't include yourself is not the
answer.

III.
You may want to make it clear that you were referring to Ireland (you
were, right?) as regards "sitting on your island". Because otherwise
people will get confused because of your Australian address. Speaking
of Ireland, I was in Dublin--resident in Dublin--when the first ever
foreigner to die from a racist attack was killed in Ireland: It was a
Chinese person. Yes, I too still love Ireland but you nevertheless may
want to exercise a tad bit more healthy restraint. Being openly
disrespectful will just make you temporarily feel better because of the
venting opportunity but it will make a lot of our Chinese contributors
feel a lot worse -- and needlessly antagonize people and not help
anybody.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
On 25 Sep 2004, at 23:45, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> <snip interesting ogg-related stuff>
>

Gerard --
Apologies in case I'm not telling you anything new.

IMHO the story of the .ogg sound format qualifies as a classical Greek
tragedy.
Maybe it will get better in the future, but at present it's best
described as [[snafu]].

The .ogg sound format was a very noble attempt -- driven by the desire
to create an entirely free, high performance audio codec.
(MP3 by comparison is not at all free as there are patents/license fees
to the Fraunhofer institute involved.)
The problem is that many months and years on, about all mainstream
audio players still don't friggin support .ogg -- so well over 90% of
desktop users don't do .ogg, don't know .ogg and can't be 4rsed to
learn about .ogg.

The situation may improve as there is a plugin available (not installed
by default) that can make QuickTime play .ogg and Real have started to
embrace .ogg.
Also, it's possible that the main codec pushers locking horns over
Real, WMA and AAC coupled with the public's distaste for getting DRM
LindaLovelaced on them may help .ogg adoption.

But let's face it: it doesn't look too good so far and -- call me a
gutless turncoat if you must -- I'll switch over to ogg when there is
actual music available in it. Try googling for an ogg file. See what I
mean? You'd likely find that you have to use a P2P program (which many
users don't even know much about and are scared away from using thanks
to RIAA FUD) to actually *FIND* ogg files on the 'Net.

For these above reasons, I say IF we keep insisting on "ogg only" (and
I really doubt that that's a good idea), again IF we insist on "ogg
only", then AT LEAST we should make it VERY clear and painfully obvious
to our users how to get these bleedin ogg thingies to play:

SHORT, SIMPLE and SUFFICIENT links and help pages, w/ a link to only
ONE player per platform -- the most user friendly one.
(cf. Buridan's ass:
http://www.cenius.net/refer/display.php?ArticleID=buridansass (yeah, I
should have improved our WP article, which is shite, but I could not be
4rsed (no pun intended)))

(NB: People are becoming less and less ready to install a plugin "just
for one website". Sometimes not even ABLE to install, as w/ desktop
lockdowns in a corporate environment.)

Then again, as we're not actually in the business of writing audio
encoding software, we might just as well put up with reality and allow
mp3 uploads.

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Editorial purposes only" images

body:
I'm not sure what the right long-term decision is, but we should allow
such images to be uploaded and at least kept in quarantine, while
deciding on a long-term policy.

+sj+

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:58:36 -0700, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some sources of photographs are available under "editorial purposes
> only" licenses, often with an explicit "Not for use in advertising."
> An example is photographs from the United Nations.


from_name: Jo

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Sound files

body:
Hi Gerard,

I added sound to this page as well. On Linux it plays automatically, but
way too fast. (I recorded it on Windows and then I converted it, if I
remember well)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/What%27s_your_name%3F

Can you hear it correctly (on Windows)?

Jo


from_name: Nick Triantos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where are the upcoming schema changes discussed?

body:
Is there somewhere that design decisions for the new database schema are
being discussed?  I asked about sub-wikis back in mid-Sept, but none of
the responses really match the feature I'm looking for, as far as I can
tell.  I think it's worth architecting something into the new schema to
accommodate this feature, even if wikipedia only uses one main wiki.

Basically, what I'd like is a way to classify pages into the main wiki
and sub-wikis, and then be able to limit search results based on
sub-wiki, and maybe eventually limit access controls based on sub-wikis
(e.g. [[User:Foo]] is a sysop for sub-wiki 'Science', [[User:Bar]] is a
sysop for sub-wiki 'History', etc.)

I'm happy to do some of the coding toward this effort, but I'm new
enough to this wiki community that I don't know where these kinds of
issues are discussed.

thanks!
-Nick

Kate Turner wrote:

>I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.  There
>should ideally be no problems, but it's quite possible it will end up
>corrupting your database, deleting articles or their histories, or
>doing other bad things. There will almost certainly be minor bugs.
>
>If you have anything important in a 1.4 version database, you MUST
>backup your database before updating or you WILL lose it!
>
>You have been warned.
>
>Kate.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Sound files

body:
Jo wrote:

> Hi Gerard,
>
> I added sound to this page as well. On Linux it plays automatically,
> but way too fast. (I recorded it on Windows and then I converted it,
> if I remember well)
>
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/What%27s_your_name%3F
>
> Can you hear it correctly (on Windows)?
>
> Jo

It sounds good on Windhoos.. I will place all sounds under the
{{-pron-}} template  (which should translate itself to "Uitspraak" or
"Pronounciation"). By having these fixed places, the nl:wiktionary sets
itself up to be easily migrated into a database format.

I am currently checking the capitalisation and I have done the
HIJKLMNOPQR U - I am working on the S at the moment. One of the things
that is  noticable is that some words for languages are capitalised and
others are not in the same language. I would think that there would be a
rule that all names for languages are capitalised (like en: and nl:) or
not (like fr: fi: it:).

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
Hi,

Le Sunday 26 September 2004 09:00, Gerard Meijssen a ?crit :
> Jo wrote:
> > Hi Gerard,
> >
> > I added sound to this page as well. On Linux it plays automatically,
> > but way too fast. (I recorded it on Windows and then I converted it,
> > if I remember well)
> >
> > http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/What%27s_your_name%3F
> >
> > Can you hear it correctly (on Windows)?

No problem to listen to this on Linux with Kplayer as well as the .ogg file
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg. I think any sound
software can be used on Linux, they all support OGG as a standard.

> > Jo

IMO, it's just a matter of providing the right plug-in with the information
how to install it if needed. I don't want MP3 files in Wikimedia projects.

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Sound files


body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Thanks for the information. I think we should spend more effort on getting
> those monthly donations, which will be very useful to maintaining the running
costs.

I completely agree.

>Can we, in this final week of the fundraising drive, set a
> goal, even minimal, of $1,000 per month?

I think we should first directly link donations to contributing membership and
set up ways for donors, if they don't opt out, to receive wampum if they donate
at certain levels.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I can't make any claims to be a representative user, but I personally
> find these sorts of things *really* annoying.  When I'm trying to read
> an encyclopedia article, I don't want a "give us money!" link at the
> top, especially one with exclamation marks in it!  If it were some sort
> of big bar thing, that'd be so much the worse, especially since it
> doesn't go away when I actually *do* give money.  Letting me hide them
> would be nice.

Slashdot allows subscribers to turn off advertisements. Perhaps we could do the
same thing except for donation notices? A skyscrapper donation button might
work best since it allows the article content to be higher. I still am not
gun-ho for such a thing, but I would not oppose it.

> I also think if these things become a regular occurance, you're going to
> see the donations rate get lower each time.  People are wiling to donate
> rapidly for exceptional circumstances (like the k5 fundraiser, or the
> first Wikimedia fundraiser), but using them as a normal revenue stream
> doesn't sound that promising, imo, since it makes it sound like we're
> perpetually doing "emergency" fundraising, which starts to sound like
> "crying wolf" after a while.

Non-profits very regularly have fund drives and very regularly bring in
millions of dollars. The National Public Radio Station in my area brings in
over a million dollars from listeners each year and their listenership is much
less than our readership. So I don't see any logic in your statement.

This is also *not* emergency funding. We are starting to move away from that
and move toward a more regular fund drive cycle (I would like one each quarter
in order to more cleanly meet budgetary goals - which will also be tracked by
quarter).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipeople

body:
--- Kiss All <kissall at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't see the necessity for a separate project for people in wiki.
> The existing user page is quite enough. We may add a new page
> gathering the user information better.

User pages for dead people? You can't build a genealogy database from that! :)

--mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipeople


body:
Thanks for the information. I think we should spend more effort on getting
those monthly donations, which will be very useful to maintaining the running
costs. Can we, in this final week of the fundraising drive, set a goal, even
minimal, of $1,000 per month?

Danny


from_name: Kiss All

subject: [Wikitech-l] The installation of media wiki under windows is updated

body:
If you are interested, Goto
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows#The_Fastest_and_Easiest_install_method

Refine it as you wish. Thanks.

--
Be good....


from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipedia  in China

body:
DM> Are we not doing that already by allowing anybody to re-use our content? Unless
DM> they created the biggest whitelist is history, I don't think they could find
DM> all our mirrors and block each one.
DM> -- mav

But it does not allow our Chinese contributors to edit articles... And
I don't think we have Chinese mirrors...

--
Ausir
mailto:fallout at lexx.eu.org
http://fallout.scifi.pl
ICQ 41090834 GG 2730728


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipeople

body:
I don't see the necessity for a separate project for people in wiki.
The existing user page is quite enough. We may add a new page
gathering the user information better.

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 17:28:56 -0400, Anthony DiPierro
<anthonydipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Well, here are my answers re wikipeople.
>
> 1 Should this project exist?
> If there are people who want it, I don't see why not.
>
> 2 Should the current Sep11 wiki articles be moved here?
> This is a question which should be determined by the people who use the
> wiki.
>
> 3 Should the Sep11 wiki be removed and redirected to Wikipeople?
> That should be up to the people who use the sep11 wiki.
>
> 4 Should the creation of this project wait until a Wikidata structure
> exists?
> I've never heard of Wikidata, so no.
>
> 5 Should Wikidata be a project that can hold both Wikipeople and
> Wikispecies?
> Definitely not.  Wikispecies and Wikipeople are completely different
> projects created for completely different reasons.  Wikispecies is supposed
> to be a language neutral subset of Wikipedia.  Wikipeople is largely
> supposed to be for information not in Wikipedia.
>
> 6 Should this be a project in its own right with no links to Sep11 wiki or
> Wikispecies?
> Certainly.
>
> 7 Which domain should be used?
> If we own wikipeople.org, that would be the best.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Be good....


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipeople


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China flamewar officially cancelled

body:
Please, no more.

I'm finding it harder and harder to find _wikipedia_ signal on this
list, because of all of the _political_ noise.  Let's please just all
absolutely refuse to discuss matters of a general political nature,
and stick specifically to wikipedia.

--Jimbo

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] HEADS UP: major database schema change in 1.4

body:
On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 10:42, Kate Turner wrote:
> I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.

Who are you?

What change?

Why aren't these things discussed on-list or on meta:?

~ESP

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] The installation of media wiki under windows is
	updated

body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 9:58 AM, Kiss All wrote:
> If you are interested, Goto
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
> Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows#The_Fastest_and_Easiest_install_method
>
> Refine it as you wish. Thanks.

It would be helpful if whoever did those texvc tweaks could submit a
patch to the sources which would do the right thing automatically.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 11:13 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Kate-
>> I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.
>
> Shouldn't we wait with major schema changes until REL1_4 is branched?

I've backed out the change until we have a better idea of the upgrade
cost. Unless it's surprisingly small I'd much prefer to push it back to
post-1.4 and get 1.4 wrapped up soon.

>  IMHO
> major schema changes justify a major version number change, i.e.
> 1.4->2.0.
> Brion?

(shrug)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 1:13 PM, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 08:13:00PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Kate-
>>> I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.
>>
>> Shouldn't we wait with major schema changes until REL1_4 is branched?
>> IMHO
>> major schema changes justify a major version number change, i.e.
>> 1.4->2.0.
>
> We shouldn't wait. Waiting will just increase the costs of changes.
> The change is needed, as the previous code was very expensive for
> page moves. They have been used several times to kill the wiki.

When you come up with a better transition, we'll see.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 1:23 PM, Kate Turner wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:20:16 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
> wrote:
>> On Sep 26, 2004, at 1:13 PM, Jens Frank wrote:
>>> We shouldn't wait. Waiting will just increase the costs of changes.
>>> The change is needed, as the previous code was very expensive for
>>> page moves. They have been used several times to kill the wiki.
>>
>> When you come up with a better transition, we'll see.
>
> It isn't a case of better transition.  If you can find a better
> transition,
> excellent.  If not, it _still_ has to be done.  Not doing it is not an
> option.

I suppose you mean to say it's not a _good_ option. It's not a good
option, but neither is spending much longer in downtime than we need
to. We have an obligation to *keep things running smoothly*; this is
why we've volunteered and this is why Jimmy & the foundation allow us
to play on their expensive equipment which serves an increasingly high
profile FOSS & open content project.

What concerns me is that this was checked in with no discussion and
with no estimates done of how disruptive the upgrade would be, despite
this issue having been discussed before.

A possible alternative which has been brought up before is to avoid
changing the structure of the old table, rather pullings its
non-textual data out to a separate table and continuing to use the old
table (unaltered) as a store for old_text. This avoids copying around
the most data and should in theory be faster.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 1:55 PM, Andre Engels wrote:
>> *When can I upload sound files to COMMONS so that every wiktionary
>> can share this and similar resources ?
>> <http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Afbeelding:nl-Nederlands.ogg>
>
> It should be possible already; isn't it?

You can in fact upload files there, but afaik you'll need to use a URL
link rather than some spiffy interwiki media: link which wouldn't
currently work.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Craig Franklin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Scr?obh Jiong Sheng:

>Is this a humiliation or prejudice against all Chinese? A bunch of
>robbers? If you have no understanding of real China, and only got all
>your false impressions of China from newspapers or magazines, then you
>better shut up.
>
>Look back on history, though China had the most powerful navy and army
>since the 10th century, we did not want to conquer the whole world.
>Only the whites would go all around the world robbing and killing.

Yup.  I'm white, and my people back in the tenth century were most certainly
going about the world looting and robbing every poor non-white nation that
we could get our hands on.

Except, whoops, no we didn't, we just sat on our island and eventually got
conquered by the British.  Thanks for putting us all in the one basket
though!

Also, the status of Tibet 100 years ago is irrelevant.  What matters is that
right now, the PRC (not "the Chinese") are embarking on a campaign of
repression against the Tibetan people and way of life, including but not
limited to, acts of violence, ethnic cleansing, and trying to breed out the
natives.  At the same time, they pursue blustery threats against the
democratically elected government of Taiwan, they set up quasi-democracies
in Hong Kong and Macau, and unfortunate things happen to people who express
opposition to their rule.  No matter what their other economic successes
(and I do agree, the economic growth in China recently has been phenomenal),
these things will forever overshadow it.

None of this is criticism of the "Chinese" as a people - it's criticism of
the Chinese government as an institution, and I don't think that Wikipedia
give in to the demands of such a bunch of thugs and brutes.  Free, unbiased
information is a threat to the Chinese government, and it's understandable,
if disappointing that they want to attempt to smother it.  I reject strongly
the implication that we should try to satiate them, however.  The people of
China really deserve better than us becoming another mouthpiece of the PRC
government, masquerading as a source of unbiased information.

Regards,
- Craig Franklin

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


from_name: Kate Turner

body:
I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.  There
should ideally be no problems, but it's quite possible it will end up
corrupting your database, deleting articles or their histories, or
doing other bad things. There will almost certainly be minor bugs.

If you have anything important in a 1.4 version database, you MUST
backup your database before updating or you WILL lose it!

You have been warned.

Kate.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 08:24:56 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> On 25 Sep 2004, at 23:45, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> > <snip interesting ogg-related stuff>
> >
>
> Gerard --
> Apologies in case I'm not telling you anything new.
>
> IMHO the story of the .ogg sound format qualifies as a classical Greek
> tragedy.
> Maybe it will get better in the future, but at present it's best
> described as [[snafu]].
>
> The .ogg sound format was a very noble attempt -- driven by the desire
> to create an entirely free, high performance audio codec.
> (MP3 by comparison is not at all free as there are patents/license fees
> to the Fraunhofer institute involved.)
> The problem is that many months and years on, about all mainstream
> audio players still don't friggin support .ogg -- so well over 90% of
> desktop users don't do .ogg, don't know .ogg and can't be 4rsed to
> learn about .ogg.
>
> The situation may improve as there is a plugin available (not installed
> by default) that can make QuickTime play .ogg and Real have started to
> embrace .ogg.
> Also, it's possible that the main codec pushers locking horns over
> Real, WMA and AAC coupled with the public's distaste for getting DRM
> LindaLovelaced on them may help .ogg adoption.
>
> But let's face it: it doesn't look too good so far and -- call me a
> gutless turncoat if you must -- I'll switch over to ogg when there is
> actual music available in it. Try googling for an ogg file. See what I
> mean? You'd likely find that you have to use a P2P program (which many
> users don't even know much about and are scared away from using thanks
> to RIAA FUD) to actually *FIND* ogg files on the 'Net.
It appers you havent even tried doing so yourself:
http://www.google.com/search?q=http+filetype%3Aogg
> For these above reasons, I say IF we keep insisting on "ogg only" (and
> I really doubt that that's a good idea), again IF we insist on "ogg
> only", then AT LEAST we should make it VERY clear and painfully obvious
> to our users how to get these bleedin ogg thingies to play:
>
> SHORT, SIMPLE and SUFFICIENT links and help pages, w/ a link to only
> ONE player per platform -- the most user friendly one.
> (cf. Buridan's ass:
> http://www.cenius.net/refer/display.php?ArticleID=buridansass (yeah, I
> should have improved our WP article, which is shite, but I could not be
> 4rsed (no pun intended)))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound <- we have that.
>
> (NB: People are becoming less and less ready to install a plugin "just
> for one website". Sometimes not even ABLE to install, as w/ desktop
> lockdowns in a corporate environment.)
>
> Then again, as we're not actually in the business of writing audio
> encoding software, we might just as well put up with reality and allow
> mp3 uploads.
This has already been discussed at great length both on wikien and on
wikipedia talk:sound, and the overwhelming consensus was not to use
none-free formats which would possibly lock us into proprietery
software.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>      www.ropersonline.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] AP on Wikis

body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 2:14 PM, Stirling Newberry wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Sharing-Knowledge-
> Online.html

Registration required. Can you provide a link from a non-evil source
please?

Can you imagine if we required Wikipedia *readers* to provide their
gender, age, zip code, household income range, industry, job title, and
job function?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote on wikitech-l:

>This has already been discussed at great length both on wikien and on
>wikipedia talk:sound, and the overwhelming consensus was not to use
>none-free formats which would possibly lock us into proprietery
>software.
>
It is nice to see that things are discussed on wikien and on wikipedia,
it is also nice that some sort of consensus was reached. I hope you can
agree with me on two points.

* Not everyone discusses on wikien and en:wikipedia.
* If such a consensus does not result in some good explanations on how
to use .ogg files it is empty talk.

I care little for people's opinion when they do not back it up with
walking their talk. When people are to use .ogg in stead of .wav files
or whatever, I expect that it must be simple to use this format. When it
is not, it is astounding that I fail to find an "howto use sound" in
wikipedia. Apparently the great moral issues are more important than the
practicalities.

I really appreciate it when a message can be as informative as "use
media". Thanks again Brion :).

I am aware that Jimbo does want us to use .ogg files that is why I went
this route. The reasons why are good enough for ME. But I think the
explantions in wikimedia on how and why we use .ogg files really suck. I
also think that we can do better. When we are going to upload thousants
of pronounciations using .ogg files, we create a standard. This will be
a wobly standard when we do not help our users with some easy
explanations on how to listen to it. We will not get all these .ogg
files when we do not find people to record their pronounciations and
explain how to record .ogg files.

So far I have only learned about ashampoo and audacity. There are
perhaps better tools, I am convinced that there are people on the list
that do know better than me.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Sound files


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] AP on Wikis

body:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Sharing-Knowledge-
Online.html


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:13:43 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote on wikitech-l:
>
> >This has already been discussed at great length both on wikien and on
> >wikipedia talk:sound, and the overwhelming consensus was not to use
> >none-free formats which would possibly lock us into proprietery
> >software.
> >
> It is nice to see that things are discussed on wikien and on wikipedia,
> it is also nice that some sort of consensus was reached. I hope you can
> agree with me on two points.
>
> * Not everyone discusses on wikien and en:wikipedia.
Yes, however it was announced:
* On the main mailing list
* On the Village Pump
* On the community portal
> * If such a consensus does not result in some good explanations on how
> to use .ogg files it is empty talk.
I have already pointed you to Wikipeda:Sound, read especially
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound#Ogg_playback for
instructions on how to playback Ogg Vorbis files and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound#Ogg_encoding for how to
encode them, does this explanation not suffice you?
>
> I care little for people's opinion when they do not back it up with
> walking their talk. When people are to use .ogg in stead of .wav files
> or whatever, I expect that it must be simple to use this format. When it
> is not, it is astounding that I fail to find an "howto use sound" in
> wikipedia. Apparently the great moral issues are more important than the
> practicalities.
>
> I really appreciate it when a message can be as informative as "use
> media". Thanks again Brion :).
>
> I am aware that Jimbo does want us to use .ogg files that is why I went
> this route. The reasons why are good enough for ME. But I think the
> explantions in wikimedia on how and why we use .ogg files really suck. I
> also think that we can do better. When we are going to upload thousants
> of pronounciations using .ogg files, we create a standard. This will be
> a wobly standard when we do not help our users with some easy
> explanations on how to listen to it. We will not get all these .ogg
> files when we do not find people to record their pronounciations and
> explain how to record .ogg files.
Granted *why* is not covered so well on Wikipedia:Sound, however it is
a wiki, you can add it or leave a note on the talk page saying what is
ill-explained.
>
> So far I have only learned about ashampoo and audacity. There are
> perhaps better tools, I am convinced that there are people on the list
> that do know better than me.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
Your reply style makes it very difficult to find what you write, and this
is probably why Gerard missed the link. Please leave an empty line or two
before and after your reply when it's in the middle of the previous post.

Alfio

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:13:43 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
><gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote on wikitech-l:
>>
>> >This has already been discussed at great length both on wikien and on
>> >wikipedia talk:sound, and the overwhelming consensus was not to use
>> >none-free formats which would possibly lock us into proprietery
>> >software.
>> >
>> It is nice to see that things are discussed on wikien and on wikipedia,
>> it is also nice that some sort of consensus was reached. I hope you can
>> agree with me on two points.
>>
>> * Not everyone discusses on wikien and en:wikipedia.
>Yes, however it was announced:
>* On the main mailing list
>* On the Village Pump
>* On the community portal
>> * If such a consensus does not result in some good explanations on how
>> to use .ogg files it is empty talk.
>I have already pointed you to Wikipeda:Sound, read especially
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound#Ogg_playback for
>instructions on how to playback Ogg Vorbis files and
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound#Ogg_encoding for how to
>encode them, does this explanation not suffice you?
>>
>> I care little for people's opinion when they do not back it up with
>> walking their talk. When people are to use .ogg in stead of .wav files
>> or whatever, I expect that it must be simple to use this format. When it
>> is not, it is astounding that I fail to find an "howto use sound" in
>> wikipedia. Apparently the great moral issues are more important than the
>> practicalities.
>>
>> I really appreciate it when a message can be as informative as "use
>> media". Thanks again Brion :).
>>
>> I am aware that Jimbo does want us to use .ogg files that is why I went
>> this route. The reasons why are good enough for ME. But I think the
>> explantions in wikimedia on how and why we use .ogg files really suck. I
>> also think that we can do better. When we are going to upload thousants
>> of pronounciations using .ogg files, we create a standard. This will be
>> a wobly standard when we do not help our users with some easy
>> explanations on how to listen to it. We will not get all these .ogg
>> files when we do not find people to record their pronounciations and
>> explain how to record .ogg files.
>Granted *why* is not covered so well on Wikipedia:Sound, however it is
>a wiki, you can add it or leave a note on the talk page saying what is
>ill-explained.
>>
>> So far I have only learned about ashampoo and audacity. There are
>> perhaps better tools, I am convinced that there are people on the list
>> that do know better than me.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Sound files

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> I am currently checking the capitalisation and I have done the
> HIJKLMNOPQR U - I am working on the S at the moment. One of the things
> that is  noticable is that some words for languages are capitalised
> and others are not in the same language. I would think that there
> would be a rule that all names for languages are capitalised (like en:
> and nl:) or not (like fr: fi: it:).

The English tendency is certainly to capitalize the language or national
name when there is a clear connection, but one would still have an
"english horn", "franch safe" and "chinese cabbage".  The rule in this
regard is unstable.

Ec


body:
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:48:11 -0400, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 10:42, Kate Turner wrote:
> > I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.
> What change?

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-cvs/2004-September/004069.html
old_namespace and old_title are no longer in the old table.

> Why aren't these things discussed on-list or on meta:?

Is there a problem with the change that needs to be discussed?

> ~ESP

Kate.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sound files

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

> Yes, however it was announced:
>
>* On the main mailing list
>* On the Village Pump
>* On the community portal
>
>
>>* If such a consensus does not result in some good explanations on how
>>to use .ogg files it is empty talk.
>>
>>
>I have already pointed you to Wikipeda:Sound, read especially
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound#Ogg_playback for
>instructions on how to playback Ogg Vorbis files and
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound#Ogg_encoding for how to
>encode them, does this explanation not suffice you?
>
>
Those links are only meaningful to an experienced Wikipedian.  They are
of absolutely no use to a casual visitor who may just want to hear how a
word on Wiktionary is pronounced.  A link would need to be placed on
each and every page that has a .ogg file on it, much as is done at sites
that have .pdf files.

Communicating these issues can be a big problem.  I know about it
because I subscribe to this mailing list.  I rarely visit the other two
sites.  How was it discussed among your Icelandic colleagues?

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Kate-
> I'm about to commit a major change to the 'old' table in HEAD.

Shouldn't we wait with major schema changes until REL1_4 is branched? IMHO
major schema changes justify a major version number change, i.e. 1.4->2.0.
Brion?


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Quick thoughts on fundraising

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Only 45 subscriptions set-up so far (linking contributing membership to that
>and sending people wampum - t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, etc - for donating at
>certain levels will increase that).
>
>Counting both monthly and yearly/12 we can expect to gross:
>
>373.24 USD per month*
>
This is actually already a solid accomplishment - that total is almost
as much as what total monthly donations amounted to earlier this year,
when fundraising was at its lowest ebb. Naturally, I hope this will
continue to increase.

--Michael Snow


from_name: zhengzhu

subject: [Wikitech-l] UI language switching

body:
The basic functionality of switching the UI language is in CVS HEAD. I
see test.wp is already running it, so please take a look.

The current implementation is largely suggested by Tim Starling (at
least I heard it from him...): We explicitly separate the UI language
and the content language, and create two language objects: wgContLang
and wgLang. wgLang is for the UI and wgContLang is for the content.
The original wfMsg* functions will specifically fetch message for the
UI, and wfMsgForContent() and wfMsgNoDBForContent() should be used for
content.

Only messages of the content language (and supported variants, such as
zh-cn and zh-tw for zh) are stored in the MediaWiki: namespace. All
message keys are suffixed by the language code in the namespace. For
example, 'mainpage' will be 'mainpage/en' in the en site, and
'mainpage/fr' in the fr site, etc. This is mainly for the purpose of
supporting multiple variants (e.g. zh-tw and zh-cn) in the namespace.

Right now the UI language option is only accessible for registered
users through the preference page. I think we should also place a
selection box somewhere in the mainpage for anonymous users so they
can choose the UI language as well.

--
zhengzhu


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Scr?obh Jens Ropers:

> Sorry to say it, but I consider that cultural defeatism.

Really?  If Hu Jintao calls elections, and releases the thousands of Falun
Gong practitioners languishing in PRC jails, then maybe we can start talking
about his "achievements".  Until then, the PRC is just another communist
dictatorship backed by the military, and not the sort of people that those
of us enjoying living in liberal democratic countries should be defending.
And like all dictatorships, the PRC has correctly recognised the free flow
of information across the Internet as a threat to their dominance.  Now, the
people of China can access information from beyond the country, from beyond
state-controlled media outlets, and make up their own minds as to whether
they like living under undemocratic communist rule, or whether they want
something else.  I presume that there's some metaphorical pant-wetting going
on in the upper reaches of Chinese Communist Party over the sort of
information coming in through the Internet.

Now, Wikipedia isn't going to cause the masses in China to rise up against
the Party, and start their own democracy.  But, enough little streams of
information like Wikipedia could be enough to erode the foundation of the
more oppressive elements of the government, and allow the Chinese people to
change their country to somewhere where they can freely speak their mind,
where they can freely practice their religion, and have an equal say in who
their leaders are.  I think we owe it to the Chinese people, to at least
help to give them that choice (and hey, if in a free election, they choose
the Communist party - then all the more power to them).  Which is why we
shouldn't give a hoot what the PRC government thinks is "acceptable" in
terms of the content on :zh.

> II.  How much do you know about the Chinese government?
> Are you aware that many, many Chinese "ordinary Joes" are government
> officials?

I'm an Australian government official - but does that change anything?  My
government still does some dreadful things - and the fact that lots of us
work for it is irrelevant.  Power is concentrated in the hands of a
privileged few in the Chinese government - the influence of these "everyday
Chinese Joes" that you speak of, who are members of the Party, is absolutely
squat.

Here are some links that you may enjoy, on the very people that you are
defending:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong

> III.
> You may want to make it clear that you were referring to Ireland (you
> were, right?) as regards "sitting on your island".

I was referring to the Isle of Man, actually (although I do love Ireland,
and I'm active on :ga).  And again, I have nothing against the Chinese
people, race, or whatever - my animosity is towards those senior members of
the Chinese Communist Party who deny the Chinese people the basic freedoms
that I enjoy every day.  I also take extreme offence to the implication that
because I'm white, I'm somehow responsible for the colonial adventures of
certain European countries, despite the fact that my ancestry doesn't come
from any of those countries, and despite the fact that we got conquered as
well.  Mr Sheng stating that "Only the whites would go all around the world
robbing and killing." is as ludicrous and offensive as someone saying "Every
Asian person is responsible for the current human rights disaster in
mainland China".

In any case, Erik Moeller is quite correct when he says that this is not the
place to conduct this discussion.  If you, or anyone else on the list, cares
to discuss this further, I suggest that we find somewhere else to do it, and
let everyone else on this list get on with their business.  This will be my
last word on the matter on this list.

Regards,
- Craig Franklin

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I'd rather it let me turn them off regardless of subscription
> status---if I subscribe it will be a voluntary donation to help
> Wikimedia because I feel it deserves my money.  Trying to annoy me into
> giving money is irritating, because I'm *already* donating my time to
> help create this encyclopedia.  If I want to donate money as well, or
> don't want to, that's my business, but it's certainly not money
> Wikimedia "deserves", given that they're not paying me for my content.

We recognize voluntary active members as valid and full members of the
Wikimedia Foundation. So letting them turn off the notice as well is fine, IMO.
It it the *readers* who should pay the great majority of the bills since, as
you rightly state, editors already contribute.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hmmmmm. We tried to adress this issue by translating many of the
> donation pages. I am not sure it is a good idea to consider this a *big*
> issue, because I am not sure it is a good idea to make it clear that
> most donations are US ones.
>
> Perhaps Mav could clarify this ?

USD still makes up about 60% of all donations. After the fund drive is over
I'll take a look to see what percentage of USD donors actually live in the U.S.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising/breakdown_by_currency

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


body:
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:20:16 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sep 26, 2004, at 1:13 PM, Jens Frank wrote:
> > We shouldn't wait. Waiting will just increase the costs of changes.
> > The change is needed, as the previous code was very expensive for
> > page moves. They have been used several times to kill the wiki.
>
> When you come up with a better transition, we'll see.

It isn't a case of better transition.  If you can find a better transition,
excellent.  If not, it _still_ has to be done.  Not doing it is not an option.

> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Kate.


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Diderot 0.1 - First alpha release available on
	sourceforge.net

body:
> Any chance of a Linux version?

That always seems to be a popular reply to any program release :-)

I'l download when the proggys complete, nice job!

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 22:33:01 +0100, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:02:02 +0200, nospam at mussenbrock.de <nospam at mussenbrock.de> wrote:
> >
> >The first 0.1 alpha release for the Diderot wikiwriter has been released
> >today:
> >
> >http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiwriter
>
> Any chance of a Linux version?
>
> --
> "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
> people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
> (Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Zero0000 has blocked Lance6Wins....apparently
	contray to Blocking policy

body:
Anyone can make a harmless mistake, and Zero has clearly blown this
issue out of all proportians. Is it really worth making all this fuss
over something as silly as 'where did this quote come from'

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 20:32:04 -0500, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Well, there's IRC.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
>
>
> On Sep 21, 2004, at 5:46 PM, Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
> >
> > --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> A safe course of action for Zero would have been to consult with
> >> other
> >> sysops, and have someone else do it if it was within the rules of
> >> blocking.
> >
> > Is there a utility to find out who the other sysops are that are
> > logged in and active at any point in time, so that in the event
> > described above, it would be relatively easy to get a couple sysops
> > involved before the situation get out of hand?
> >
> >
> >
> > =====
> > Chris Mahan
> > 818.943.1850 cell
> > chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> > chris.mahan at gmail.com
> > http://www.christophermahan.com/
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
> > http://vote.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


from_name: Delirium

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I can't make any claims to be a representative user, but I personally
>>find these sorts of things *really* annoying.  When I'm trying to read
>>an encyclopedia article, I don't want a "give us money!" link at the
>>top, especially one with exclamation marks in it!  If it were some sort
>>of big bar thing, that'd be so much the worse, especially since it
>>doesn't go away when I actually *do* give money.  Letting me hide them
>>would be nice.
>>
>>
>
>Slashdot allows subscribers to turn off advertisements. Perhaps we could do the same thing except for donation notices?
>
I'd rather it let me turn them off regardless of subscription
status---if I subscribe it will be a voluntary donation to help
Wikimedia because I feel it deserves my money.  Trying to annoy me into
giving money is irritating, because I'm *already* donating my time to
help create this encyclopedia.  If I want to donate money as well, or
don't want to, that's my business, but it's certainly not money
Wikimedia "deserves", given that they're not paying me for my content.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

body:
On Sep 26, 2004, at 9:05 PM, shantanu oak wrote:
> What are the implied rules of creating hyperlinks?
[snip]
> But I completely fail to understand why certain words are hyperlinked.
> For e.g. in the following para why does the date January 27 is linked?

It's linked because someone put brackets around the text. This is
explicit, not implicit, linking.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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