from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
Rather than simply most views, it might be a better idea to show which
articles are gaining the most popularity compared to their usual level
of activity and which are losing popularity. This will prevent
advertising the Hitler and Evolution type of articles. Google
Zeitgeist also does something like this.

-- Hippietrail.

On 5/3/05, Brian <reflection at gmail.com> wrote:
> alright...this one works...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hideminor=0&hideliu=0&hidebots=1&hidepatrolled=0&limit=1000000&from=20050503030902
>
> where the trailing digits are
>
> 2005   05         03    03       09   02
> YEAR MONTH DAY HOUR MIN SEC
>
> so just change the day to one less...browser beware...!
>
> /Alterego
>
> > Hm, testing it I got recent changes of the last 2 minutes.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Dovi Jacobs

subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship discussion (eclectic replies)

body:
Anthere wrote that free content is a MEANS towards and END, a goal:

"Our goal is collecting information, gathering it and making it available." There is no political goal.

Actually, I agree with you completely.

Yes, "free content" is an enforced policy *only* because it furthers the goal of making information available, not for political reasons, as good as they may or may not be.

An enforced policy regarding threats of censorship would also be for *exactly* the same reasons, and *not* for any specific political reasons (whatever our opinions may be): to further the goal of making information available.

Nothing more and nothing less.

The current *lack* of such a policy actually *hinders* Wikimedia from meeting that goal. Case in point: The current lack of collecting and gathering free news information and making it available in Chinese. In the future there may very well be many more similar examples this sort of thing from different quarters.

The time to put such a policy in place is now, not later.

The need for such a policy is no less than for the various rules that are enforced regarding "free content."

Re: Fruggo's comments about censorship - What I am suggesting has nothing to do with censorship (real or imagined) within the editing process of Wikimedia projects. It relates *only* to the fear of censorship from *outside* powers-that-be, which would hinder the development of projects. The point of the editing process it to build projects, not to hinder them; they cannot be built without it.

Re: Chad's point about a threat to the Chinese Wikipedia: This is a good point, but I already addressed it in my original post. Please read that and tell us all what you think.

Dovi

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
Joseph Reagle wrote:
> I don't feel as if I need to defend Surowiecki, and I don't understand your
> point, but I think he's made a useful contribution as your own example
> demonstrates.

I should point out that I like Surweicki's thesis just fine, it's just
that I'm not convinced that "swarm intelligence" is very helpful in
understanding how Wikipedia works -- in fact, it might be an impediment,
because it leads us away from thinking about how the community interacts
in a process of reasoned discourse.

But it's a very useful way of looking at the world in many cases.

--Jimbo


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] The Borders of Language Variety Tolerance

body:
Forwarded on Wouter's own request
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Also, the English word "consequent" does not have the meaning of the
>Dutch "consequent" as one of its meanings. The word you meant is
>"consistently".
>
>Andre Engels
>
Ok, thanks about that Andr?! Now you see why I contribute so little to en:.
I can't trust my English, being too poor. I'm happy if everyone understands
me, though...


from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: board elections

body:
Anthere, you are right: I would not want to organize an election, even
if I were not already terribly overcommitted.  :-)

It didn't sound to me as though Erik was suggesting this, however.
Different roles related to a big event do not need to officially (or
unofficially!) be on a team.  Just as with articles and wikiprojects,
people should be able to work effectively with the same event without
getting in eachother's way.

If the goal is to have people *among* the Election Officials who can
manage translations, then Aphaia (and Danny too) have long experience
with this.  If the goal is to have third parties managing
translations, in coordination with the officials or organically,
please consider my earlier suggestion.

As to me and Danny...

On 5/1/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I love very very very much both Sj and Danny, but know they both have
> not so easy relationships together.

You seem to be right about this, in one direction.  It is a daily
mystery to me.  I like Danny as a person, respect his opinions and
understanding of the world, and admire his energy and his work.  His
recent animosity towards me is completely baffling...  I don't know
what has changed since we were on good terms; and would like nothing
better than to find out.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: board elections


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: [bjc] World Summit Awards USA competition]

body:
Hmm, I wonder if we can think of any websites to nominate in the
e-culture, e-learning categories? ;-)  I haven't checked the website,
but these awards are given in 150 countries, so we have plenty of
opportunities to win a few dozen of them. ;-)

Maybe there is a global category.

--Jimbo

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [bjc] World Summit Awards USA competition
Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 09:15:44 -0400
From: Andy Carvin <acarvin at edc.org>
Reply-To: bjc at eon.law.harvard.edu
Organization: Center for Media & Community
To: bjc at eon.law.harvard.edu

Hi everyone,

I'd like to announce the official opening of the World Summit Awards USA
competition. The official digital content competition of the UN's World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which will take place in Tunis
this November, the World Summit Awards will hold competitions in more
than 150 countries around the globe. I'm serving as coordinator of the
USA competition.

We're seeking nominations for the best websites (including blogs) and
CD-ROMs from the USA in the following categories:

     e-business
     e-culture
     e-entertainment
     e-government
     e-health
     e-inclusion
     e-learning
     e-science

I've assembled a team of more than a dozen volunteers representing a
range of expertise in digital content. We will review the nominations
and select a winner in each category; the winner will then represent the
USA in the international competition.

To nominate a website or CD-ROM, please visit here:

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?id=93093

CD-ROMs should be mailed to:

Andy Carvin
EDC Center for Media & Community
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02458

Nominations must be received by May 30, 2005; winners will be announced
by July 1, 2005.

Please feel free to share the URL and extend an invitation to colleagues
to submit nominations for the competition.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at acarvin @ edc
.org. For more information about the competition and WSIS, please visit
here:

http://www.wsis-award.org
http://www.wsis.org

thanks,
ac

--
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.tsunami-info.org
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
-----------------------------------


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Foundation-l] REPOST: free speech and wikinews

body:
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 10:20:09PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> Anthere appears to have inserted her replies into Dovi's email without
> any indication of who is saying what. No doubt it's just a client issue,
> I don't mean to blame anyone. I just wanted to help out by reposting it
> in the right quotation style.
>

Thank you very much.  With the volume of email I get daily, most of it
important, I was actually not going to read that one because of the
extra time investment involved in separating the speakers' words.  I
appreciate the help you offered in that area as much as I appreciate the
effort Anthere put into composing the email in the first place.

That aside, I have my own comments to offer on the subject, now that
I've seen Anthere's response:

I actually agree more with Dovi than with Anthere, in terms of what has
been said.  I very much believe that without simply acting as though
free speech in the political sense, we cannot take advantage of free
speech in the "free content" sense to gain the benefits we seek for the
efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects.  However (yes, there's a
however):

The initial goal of this effort as a whole was distributing encyclopedic
knowledge to the world at large.  If a new Wikinews project might
interfere with the ability to get a Wikipedia into the hands of people
worldwide, I tend to think that the proposed Wikinews project's goals
must take a back seat to those of the already existing Wikipedia
project.  Even if you remove the distinction between Wikipedia and
Wikinews, the distinction between "already existing" and "proposed" must
be taken into account: it is my belief that we cannot in good conscience
take steps in the creation of a new project that we have reason to
believe will not only bring about its own failure but that of an already
existing project.  Balance that against my impression that the various
Wikipedias should take precedence over their sibling Wikinews projects,
and bake at 400 degrees for thirty-five minutes for a nice souffle.

Ahem.  What I'm trying to say is this:  We should definitely try to make
a Chinese Wikinews happen if we can do so without killing off the
Chinese Wikipedia, as well as itself, in the same effort.  Yes, stand up
for principle, but do so in a manner that doesn't kill the principle at
the same time.

This is just the opinion of one man.  Feel free to disagree.  Don't
attribute it to anyone else besides me without asking them first.  Have
a nice day.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 02:56:25PM -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Hmm, I wonder if we can think of any websites to nominate in the
> e-culture, e-learning categories? ;-)  I haven't checked the website,
> but these awards are given in 150 countries, so we have plenty of
> opportunities to win a few dozen of them. ;-)
>
> Maybe there is a global category.
>
> --Jimbo
>

>From the look of it, it's something like a Miss Universe pageant: each
nation narrows down its nominees to a national "winner" who goes on to
compete in the international . . . thingie . . . except that this has
categories.  That being the case, I think I'd really like to see several
Wikipedia projects from around the world end up "competing" against each
other in Tunis.  Could be fun.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Bots on the French Wiktionary

body:
Hi,

There have been bots adding interwiki links in the French Wiktionary and
adding links into redirects, which breaks them. Please don't do that.

Also, we would like that the links are added _at the end_ of the articles, not
at the beginning.

Thanks.

Yann

PS: We are going to import the Dictionary from the French Academy with a bot.
So about 33,000 articles or 14 MB?of text. For more information, see
http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionnaire:Dictionnaire_de_l'Acad?mie_fran?aise

I am also uploading a raw copy of it into Wikisource:
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_de_l'Acad?mie_fran?aise_(1932)

--
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


body:
Yes, that seems to be the ticket.  Happily, since Wikipedias are not
at all translations of one another, we could have such a face-off in
all seriousness.    SJ

On 5/3/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> >From the look of it, it's something like a Miss Universe pageant: each
> nation narrows down its nominees to a national "winner" who goes on to
> compete in the international . . . thingie . . . except that this has


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Critics & weak articles

body:
On 5/3/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> To clear this up: Currently,
> * for each revision
> * of each article,
> * each user
> can "rate" different properties.
>
> Once MediaWiki 1.5 is released, Jimbo wants to run this for a while to
> gather data how people rate things, then we decide on a final (meaning:
> this week:-) schema to handle the ratings.

This week?  Yikes!   SJ


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Borders of Language Variety Tolerance

body:
>You might want to try at meta-wikipedia first.
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/YOUR_LANG_CODE_HERE
>I've used the place for os-wikipedia once and I've also seen others using
>it.
>
>Sl. Ivanov

You're right. I am currently doing the same with the Seeltersk wikipedia.
But first of all I would like to figure out if such a request has any chance
at all.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Beeld en geluid met MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Critics & weak articles

body:
To clear this up: Currently,
* for each revision
* of each article,
* each user
can "rate" different properties.

Once MediaWiki 1.5 is released, Jimbo wants to run this for a while to
gather data how people rate things, then we decide on a final (meaning:
this week:-) schema to handle the ratings.

Magnus


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Hi Wouter,

There are no standards for determining what does and what doesn't get
a Wikipedia. If you are told to your face by Jimbo or the board or the
community or whatever that You Do Not At This Time Qualify For A
Wikipedia, the solution is to start your own off-site  "Wikipedia"
using a diffferent name, such as Seelterpedia or  whatever, and when
you reach perhaps 200 articles, bring the issue back and the official
position will probably change.

This is the process that happened with zh-min-nan (not sure if they
got an outright "you can't have one" message). People will always be
willing to reconsider when they see an article base of a reasonable
size.

Even if your request is "accepted", often it takes a while before it
is actually created (limited developer resources), but that too can
often be expidited by showing them that you really are ready to go.

And if there appears to be no consensus, start the off-site test, and
then when you reach between 100 and 500 articles, return, bring up
that fact, and people will probably reach a consensus

Mark

PS
On a side note... trojan pandas??

On 03/05/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >You might want to try at meta-wikipedia first.
> >http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/YOUR_LANG_CODE_HERE
> >I've used the place for os-wikipedia once and I've also seen others using
> >it.
> >
> >Sl. Ivanov
>
> You're right. I am currently doing the same with the Seeltersk wikipedia.
> But first of all I would like to figure out if such a request has any chance
> at all.
>
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Nieuw: Beeld en geluid met MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: V. Ivanov

body:
2005/5/3, Wouter Steenbeek:
> 3000 articles off line is too much, it is the fun of contributers,
> especially new ones, that their edits are immediately visible and accessible
> for anyone. But I will certainly try to find willing contributers first. On

You might want to try at meta-wikipedia first.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/YOUR_LANG_CODE_HERE
I've used the place for os-wikipedia once and I've also seen others using it.

Sl. Ivanov

--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 11:02:05PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Chad-
> >The initial goal of this effort as a whole was distributing encyclopedic
> >knowledge to the world at large.  If a new Wikinews project might
> >interfere with the ability to get a Wikipedia into the hands of people
> >worldwide, I tend to think that the proposed Wikinews project's goals
> >must take a back seat to those of the already existing Wikipedia
> >project.
>
> I find it very dubious that an NPOV Wikipedia can exist in the long term
> in an environment where an NPOV Wikinews cannot. Either it will be
> modified to suit the interests of the censors, or it will be censored.
>
> I am deliberately writing "an NPOV Wikipedia" and not "an NPOV
> encyclopedia." There is an important distinction. Unlike traditional
> paper encyclopedias, Wikipedia is, in fact, very good at dealing with
> current events -- so good that, in cases of major global events, it
> often provides much better background information than Wikinews itself.
> The Chinese Wikipedia has an "In the news" section on the frontpage just
> like the English one, and articles about current political issues are
> created as they happen.
>
> I do not disagree that Wikinews faces an increased risk, since it will
> cover everyday politics in much greater detail than Wikipedia does. I
> do, however, also believe that the integrity of our information is of
> paramount importance, and that the Chinese Wikipedia will face serious
> issues of integrity, if it does not already do so.
>
> In an environment dominated by fear, NPOV will be difficult to maintain.
> The peer dynamics may ensure conformity with the government's version of
> reality: "Don't write this -- you don't want all of Wikipedia to be
> censored!" Are we, as a community, sending the Chinese Wikipedians the
> signal that this is the *wrong* thing to do? That, if an NPOV
> presentation will be censored, then we must face that censorship? That
> it is important to stand up for this principle?

Hey, I'm not saying we should be timid about issues of NPOV integrity
and the like -- I'm just saying that, before launching a new project, we
should seriously consider whether it might endanger the already extant
projects.  Those already extant, and perhaps more important (to the
foundation), projects should in no way be limited by the new projects,
whether by the danger of unwanted attention they may draw or by any
impression that putting off such a project might be a direction toward
feaful caution.  My entire point is that the integrity of the Wikipedia
project must be maintained.

In any case, I'm not even advocating against the adoption and
institution of a Chinese Wikinews project.  I have nowhere near the
familiarity with the details of circumstances needed to make a useful
judgment.  I'm just advocating a little bit of attention to the very
real concerns that may arise in relation to its unintended effects on
the Chinese Wikipedia.

>
> By launching the Chinese Wikinews when there are enough interested
> participants, we could send this clear signal. We could let everyone
> know that the Wikimedia community is not driven by fear, but by a thirst
> for knowledge and a desire to share it. If the Chinese government wants
> to censor a community-driven project whose stated goal is a neutral
> presentation of the facts on any subject, then let it do so. And then
> let the Chinese people find out about it.

I'm really not of the opinion that sending any clear signals is anything
that we should be trying to do here.  The Wikimedia foundation can
certainly lead by example, but that should not be its goal or its aim.
The Wikimedia Foundation already has a purpose, and doesn't need
political advocacy to be added to that.  While others may well disagree
with me, I'm of the opinion that the "signal" we "send" should in no way
be a determining factor in any decisions made about what projects are
started and supported.

Much as I'd love to be a part of a revolutionary effort to bring
principles of liberty and free speech to the entire world, I don't think
that's what the Wikimedia Foundation should be.  In fact, I think it
does a much, much better job of doing just that by accident than it ever
could by design.  This is, in fact, one of the reasons that I believe so
strongly that Wikipedia is a Good Thing.

Rather than being "bold", as you suggest, I'd recommend that we simply
be "true" -- true to the purpose for which, and the principles on which,
Wikipedia was created.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
On 5/3/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Joseph Reagle wrote:
> > I don't feel as if I need to defend Surowiecki, and I don't understand your
> > point, but I think he's made a useful contribution as your own example
> > demonstrates.
>
> I should point out that I like Surweicki's thesis just fine, it's just
> that I'm not convinced that "swarm intelligence" is very helpful in
> understanding how Wikipedia works -- in fact, it might be an impediment,
> because it leads us away from thinking about how the community interacts
> in a process of reasoned discourse.

The idea that Wikipedia is basically a core group of dedicated editors
collaborating and reasoning together to build an encyclopedia, is very
appealing to me.  I used to think it was exactly right.  And since
most feedback I get or give on-wiki (including the bulk of policy and
meta-discussions) involve dedicated editors, it is hard to recognize
the effect, if any, of "swarm intelligence" on the project's
development.

However, thanks to a tool that lets me monitor Recentchanges in the
background while doing other work, I have listened to some 100,000
changes over the past few weeks; and paid more attention than usual to
new pages and edits by new users or anons.  I wonder how other
RC-watchers feel about this...

Currently, I imagine Wikipedia as a massive, active swarm
intelligence, supplemented by small roving groups of active editors
who admire consistency, elegance, and reasoned discourse.  (not unlike
certain models of how the brain works :)

The swarm does the bulk of the writing, especially finding and
providing current facts, starting new articles, and adding neglected
POVs.  The roving groups are sensitive to dozens of policy pages, and
implement them as they rove... they also take on large projects, one
at a time, and try to implement certain changes across thousands of
pages at once.

The swarm is constantly extending the frontiers of the project, and
also making uncoordinated changes to core popular pages; the
coordinated groups are more steadily expanding the scope of what they
cover, and integrating new content into it.  If you look only at
popular pages, the coordinated efforts drown out the rest.  If you
look at leaf pages (2000 new pages each day, half created by anons,
15% more by new users, most of which a week later have only been
significantly edited by their creator), the swarm efforts are very
noticable.

--
+sj+


body:
Sounds like a great business model.  "I will fund this project by
producing one nobel prize winner every decade..."  SJ

On 5/3/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050504 05:02]:
>
> > Hmm, I wonder if we can think of any websites to nominate in the
> > e-culture, e-learning categories? ;-)  I haven't checked the website,
> > but these awards are given in 150 countries, so we have plenty of
> > opportunities to win a few dozen of them. ;-)
> > Maybe there is a global category.
>
> What we need, right, is for the Nobel Foundation to create the Nobel Prize
> for General Knowledge.
>
> (Then Ram-man will probably win it.)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: Bjarte Sørensen

subject:
SV: [Wikipedia-l] Language policy agreement in
	theNorwegianWikipedia community

references:
<849f98ed05043020076bf5fbec@mail.gmail.com>
	<LPBBILNGBGLDMNMIEOOPAEGPCJAA.c-nybor@online.no>
	<849f98ed050503010565869b27@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 03/05/05, Mark Williamson wrote:
> People have been telling the new contributors about the Nynorsk
> Wikipedia, I hope? It would be a shame to have these people donate
> heaps of effort writing articles in Nynorsk for no: when they could be
> doing it at nn: where they would fit in better.

As long as somebody enters either nn: or no: via the main page, they
cannot really miss the existance of the other. For some months now, we
have, in order to encourage activity on both Norwegian wikipedias, had
the featured articles of the week from the other wikipedia displayed
on the main page, just below the local featured article. The two
Norwegian wikipedias enjoy an excellent diplomatic and productive
relationship, and there is a general feeling of encouragement of
"cross-Norwegian" activity

Indeed, both nn and no are also showing the featured articles of
Swedish and Danish on the main page, thus including all four major
written varieties of Scandinavian language. Also Danish Wikipedia has
followed suit by rotating through the other three wikipedias' featured
articles on a daily basis. Swedish Wikipedia is as of yet not doing
the same. The work of copying across templates (unfortunately one
cannot at this stage use templates from a different implementation of
MediaWiki) is helped by co-ordination through Skanwiki, the
Scandinavian meta-pages. There you can also find a common Scandinavian
Village Pump (Tinget), links to resources valuable to all Scandinavian
encyclopedists, and proposals for other activities that will encourage
activity across the language borders. If you're Scandinavian, and
wants to come by and see for yourself, your warmly welcomed to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skanwiki

Cheers,
Bjarte (:meta:User:BjarteSorensen)


references:
<849f98ed05043020076bf5fbec@mail.gmail.com>
	<LPBBILNGBGLDMNMIEOOPAEGPCJAA.c-nybor@online.no>
	<849f98ed050503010565869b27@mail.gmail.com>
	<20b10ab2050503012415da7332@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 03/05/05, Bjarte S?rensen <bjarte.sorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
> activity across the language borders. If you're Scandinavian, and
> wants to come by and see for yourself, your warmly welcomed to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skanwiki

And of course I want to extend my welcome to Skanwiki also to other
Scandinavian speakers, in Iceland, Greenland, Faeroe Islands and
Finland, as well as other parts of the world.

Regards,
Bjarte


body:
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 06:19:59PM -0400, Sj wrote:
> On 5/3/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Joseph Reagle wrote:
> > > I don't feel as if I need to defend Surowiecki, and I don't understand your
> > > point, but I think he's made a useful contribution as your own example
> > > demonstrates.
> >
> > I should point out that I like Surweicki's thesis just fine, it's just
> > that I'm not convinced that "swarm intelligence" is very helpful in
> > understanding how Wikipedia works -- in fact, it might be an impediment,
> > because it leads us away from thinking about how the community interacts
> > in a process of reasoned discourse.
>
> [snip]
>
> The swarm is constantly extending the frontiers of the project, and
> also making uncoordinated changes to core popular pages; the
> coordinated groups are more steadily expanding the scope of what they
> cover, and integrating new content into it.  If you look only at
> popular pages, the coordinated efforts drown out the rest.  If you
> look at leaf pages (2000 new pages each day, half created by anons,
> 15% more by new users, most of which a week later have only been
> significantly edited by their creator), the swarm efforts are very
> noticable.
>

I think that by characterizing it as a "swarm" you're missing the
central point -- that even when the "regulars" aren't involved, what's
going on is actually carefully composed edits by individuals who, though
a chaotic sort of collaboration, are building something as a team.
These are not insects contributing intelligence to a central thinking
process that produces good works.  Rather, individual works are created
by individual collaborators, and edited by others, producing a
collection of good works.  What we have here is more of a (finally sane)
peer review system than any swarm intelligence.

It's easy to lose sight of the individual contributions and start to
attribute advancements to collective phenomena when all you're using to
measure results is statistical data.  That's not a truly accurate
picture, however, of what's going on.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: committing to CVS

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Not wanting to spark a flamewar here or anything, but since you've been
> "perfectly honest" in a public forum, maybe I can take this opportunity
> to be perfectly honest publicly too. If you hand out such criticism, you
> should be able to take it too.
>
> I don't know much about the quality of your software changes, so I won't
> comment on that, but I'm afraid you're not exactly the best communicator
> either. I have always found it hard to get useful or necessary
> information from you, and often you reply to me with a snide or rude
> remark.

Granted. I'm not always as helpful or communicative as I should be, and
I do have a tendency to be rude or snippy at times. This is something
I'm trying to watch since I've ended up sort of in charge of this little
program of ours, but there's certainly room for improvement.

> I am quite concerned that, apparently, the MediaWiki developer team has
> become more bureaucratic and imperialistic since I last did any active
> development. I sure hope it's not going to end up like LiveJournal, with
> several volunteer developers offering their patches, but the Elite Club
> leaving them to rot on BugZilla, ignoring them completely.

I'd certainly like it not to be too bureaucratic. I know we've got a
number of patches open on our bugzilla that need to get reviewed and
either accepted or definitively rejected (or better yet, reworked as
drop-in extensions).

Here are currently marked open patches:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/shortcut/patches

and there are probably others that aren't marked with the patch keyword.

Please, please go through that list and review and either clean up or
advocate any that you want to make sure don't fall through the cracks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050503/5d8905f3/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
Lawrence Nyveen wrote:

>
> My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine,
> and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia contributors.

Hi Laurie,

I tried to focus on the facts, here are suggestions for correction:

*Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) has become

	s/wikipedia.com/wikipedia.org/

*With over 1.3 million articles

	s/1.3/1.7/
	according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm

*dwarfs the Encyclopedia Britannica

	s/Encyclopedia/Encyclop?dia/

*Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia

	s/Encyclopedia/Encyclop?dia/

*Two days after his critique appeared

	s/Two days after/The same day/
	according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander_Hamilton&diff=7477154&oldid=7476642

*Over thirty thousand people have written or edited articles so far

	Over 50 thousand accounts have been registered.
	The amount of individual people who edited
	(whithout having to log in) is assumed to be higher.
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm

*While an old-style encyclopedia has a minimum standard of grammar,
readability and fact-checking, Wikipedia has none

	Having standards is different from obeying them.
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_Tsunami

	This is a redirect. The proper address is
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Is the wiki syntax going anywhere?  Did somebody start work to
> standardize it?

There was a wiki markup standardization mailing list that started up a
while back, then died out. (At least I haven't gotten any mail from it
in months.) Last I remember, somebody made a big spreadsheet summarizing
the basic markup in various different wikis.

> Is anybody rethinking the difference between [[x]], [[x:y]],
> [[:x:y]], [[x|y]], [x:y], [x y], {{x|y}}, {{x|y=z}},
> {{x|y=[[z]]}}, and [[x|{{y}}]]?
>
> If we started over today, with today's experience but without
> today's legacy, would we make it similar or different?
>
> Would [[image:x]] be implemented as {{image|x}} instead?

I'm not sure, but I think I was the idiot who suggested the [[Image:x]]
syntax. It wouldn't have been so bad if we'd used [[File:x]] for the
file description page, a change we might yet make but haven't got around
to yet.

Making it more transclusion-looking instead of link-looking might be
logical in a holistic way.

> Would [http://url/ text] be replaced by [[http://url/ | text]]?
> Would that make "http:" and "isbn:" parallels to "image:" and
> "category:"?

I'd have preferred this for consistency, but we just inherited UseMod's
syntax here and stuck with it.

> What about making a scripting language for template definitions,
> so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost
> like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";

I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing
loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

> And what about <math></math>?

/me runs away screaming :)

> If I got this part of history right, the [[x]] syntax was
> introduced into the UseMod wiki software by Clifford Adams on
> request from the Wikipedia community early in 2001.  Before that
> all wikis used CamelCase to make links, and that option was still
> available in Wikipedia for most of 2001.

According to legend, there were other wikis at that time allowing some
form of free links, though UseMod may not have until then. I wasn't
there at the time so can't really say.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050503/f266ed33/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
Lawrence Nyveen wrote:

> Hey, all -
>
> Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article:
> http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm
>
> My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine,
> and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia contributors.

Lawrence,

I very much appreciate your openness and willingness to work with the
Wikipedia community. Whilst the article gets a lot of things right, I
think there are a few parts which could be improved:

Firstly, I believe that saying that Wikipedia lacks editorial standards
is wrong: in fact, we even have an extensive Manual of Style: see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style for the top-level
page of the manual. What you might find interesting about the Wikipedia
Manual of Style is that it, like almost everything else in Wikipedia,
was collaboratively written from the bottom up by editors concerned with
improving Wikipedia's uniformity and quality of style, rather than being
imposed top-down by authority.

Of course, not every article meets these standards, due to the open
access policy, but we have  a small army of copy editors who work hard
at improving the grammar, spelling, style and layout of articles to meet
those standards.

For example, we have many contributors whose skills in English are not
ideal, but can still add useful encyclopedic information. Their inputs
can then be copy edited by someone else (even if they are not expert in
the topic) into an article that is both informative and well-written.

The same applies to fact-checking. Many editors periodically review
articles in fields they know about, correcting details and removing
misinformation. The software supports "recent changes" "new articles"
and "watchlist" features to make this easier. The next version of the
software (coming soon) will have a new article-version rating system
which is intended to enable editors and readers to get feedback about
where Wikipedia is weak and strong.

Secondly,  "paraphrasing the Encyclop?dia Britannica" is very much
against the spirit (and letter) of Wikipedia's self-developed policies.
Whilst authors are encouraged to draw on existing sources and
references, plagiarism, direct or indirect, is severely frowned upon,
and direct copying is completely forbidden. Wherever possible, we are
trying to move towards citing primary sources, rather than other
encyclopedias. There is no negative desire to "destroy" other
encyclopedias; rather, there is a strong positive desire to create a new
kind of free encyclopedia that is intended one day to surpass the
achievements of previous works.

Finally, I think you might want to mention in more detail a key aspect
of the Wikipedia process, which is how the process of progressive
refinement works in practice. Here's how it works:

Although the original version of an article may be poor, it is likely to
be copyedited within minutes of creation by an experienced editor
watching the "recent changes" list. If it's drivel, it will rapidly be
deleted. If it's dubious, it will be put on a list of articles to be
either improved or voted to be deleted. Once it survives these early
stages, it is sure to eventually be read by someone who knows slightly
more than the original contributor, and will be just irritated enough to
improve it, however slightly. In some cases, this may involve a complete
rewrite, if the article is wrong enough. As time goes by, this improved
content will be read and edited by more and more people, and the article
will grow in size and quality. As the article becomes better, more
people will link to it, drawing in yet more readers, with progressively
greater expertise, who might previously have ignored it as being beneath
their interest. In this way, Wikipedia has a tendency to "suck in" not
only information into articles but also experts into the community, and
these new editors often go on to expand Wikipedia in other ways.

I hope this helps.

-- Neil


from_name: Joe Flowers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reloading WIKI database

body:
> In a similar vein to Joe's problem, is it just me, or does MySQL
> performance on Windows *really* suck?
>
> On my 3GHz athlon XP box, importing that cur table took around 26
> hours, whereas the same job on an inferior linux box took around 8.
> Similarly, the same SQL query to count the rows in the cur table takes
> 0.1 seconds on linux and 6 minutes on windows.
>
> Surely MySQL on windows can't be *this* bad?  Both MySQLs are running
> as default 4.x installations on otherwise unladen machines with ample
> RAM.  Does this match others' experiences?
>

I just read that I'm supposed to do

Set AutoCommit = off
...bunch of inserts....
Commit

and that it should help the performance, since autoCommit is currently 1.
I'll report back after I try it


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Redirect Pages: Text on them -> Text on article

body:
On Mon, 2005-05-02 at 21:56 -0400, Edward Z. Yang wrote:

> I do not think that one sentence articles are acceptable, and the
> current user guide suggests that redirects with possibilities should
> stay redirects with possibilities, not one sentence articles.

I wrote a lot of the guidelines, and I don't know what you're
talking about.  If you can point me to the specific guideline
you're thinking of, I'll take a look (and maybe clarify it).
Redirects should _only_ be used for things like alternate
spellings, where the correspondence is exactly 1-to-1.  If
there's any explaining to do, there should be article text to
do that explaining.  If that makes a very short article, sobeit.
The feature you suggest would add absolutely nothing to the
user experience that can't already be done by simple article
text, so why complicate things?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 18:56 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Is the wiki syntax going anywhere?  Did somebody start work to
> > standardize it?

I'm still working on it in back-burner mode, but it's a complex
problem.  I'll post something about the semantic model I've
worked up soon for comment.

> I'm not sure, but I think I was the idiot who suggested the [[Image:x]]
> syntax. It wouldn't have been so bad if we'd used [[File:x]] for the
> file description page, a change we might yet make but haven't got around
> to yet.

Actually, you can blame that one on me.  You may have indeed suggested
it, but I implemented it without knowing about such recommendations.
There were later suggestions to change it, but I didn't jump on board
with them right away, as I didn't then see it as a big problem.  Now
that the syntax has grown beyond recognition, it's a bigger issue.

> Making it more transclusion-looking instead of link-looking might be
> logical in a holistic way.

Agreed.

> > Would [http://url/ text] be replaced by [[http://url/ | text]]?
> > Would that make "http:" and "isbn:" parallels to "image:" and
> > "category:"?

I'd like to eliminate single-bracket links entirely.  There's no need
for a separate syntax, since the "http:" (or "ftp:", etc.) uniquely
identifies a link as being external.

> > What about making a scripting language for template definitions,
> > so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost
> > like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";

Ug.

> I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing
> loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

Yep.  And I'm wary of arbitrary transclusions.  Mybe limiting them to
template-space only would be a good idea as well.

> > And what about <math></math>?

I'd also like to eliminate all <tag>-type markup.  With math, there's
the natural alternative of "$$ stuff $$", just like the original TeX.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
I agree with the points Fred, Mathias, and Neil already made.

In addition:

     "Not only that but Wikipedia is setting a blistering pace with a
thousand new articles being added each day."

It's 3758 new per day over all (although it is 1048 per day for the
English version) as of the end of April.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm>

     "He added a few canny rules-of-order: Whenever someone edits an
article, a new version of the article is created and saved."

Revision histories are fairly standard in wiki software, so I wouldn't
say Jimmy added that. It was present, in a less useful form, in the
UseMod software which predates Wikipedia.

     "Despite meteoric growth, Wikipedia has remained an all-volunteer
outfit, financed by donations."

This isn't strictly true anymore. We do have two paid staff now -
Brion Vibber on development and server work, and Chad Perrin on
hardware work in the Florida colocation facility. Part of the funding
comes from grants, sponsorship, and paid-for services such as an OAI
feed. The majority of financing is still from donations though.

Angela.

--
Angela Beesley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] VfD needs to be internally wired

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

I was surfing Wikipedia the other day, and at one point, I had to use
VfD. My experience makes me shudder. But that's not my point.

In my opinion, the VfD is now beyond elegant implementation without
hardwired software help. As of now, Wikipedia:Vfd is simply a page with
lots of policy and lots of problems.

HERE ARE SOME INSTANCES OF THE DEBATE ON THE TALK PAGE:

Lotsofissues wrote:
> 1/4 MB load - This no longer make sense. This page should only
> contain links to individual day pages. Please voice your agreement

Litefantastic wrote:
> The VfD is so bogged down with junk articles that it's no longer
> possible to edit without extreme patience. When I started (Nov 2003)
> there was only about one-third the VfDing that there is today. I
> think the VfD page has simply become outmodled: it wasn't designed
> for this level of traffic.
>
> Since the WP is broken up in topics itself (Science, History,
> Culture, etc.) why ddoesn't someone break up the VfD so that it
> simply links to a bunch of VfD subpages, one for each major topic.
> Someone with regular access to broadband.
>
> The overall speed rate would go back up to something approaching
> usefulness, and the ease of use would suffer only slightly. We'd have
>  to fix all the VfD templates, too, but let's look at the positive
> aspects just now. For the sake of sanity.

True... but:

Rossami wrote:
> his gets suggested about once a quarter - and rejected every time. I
>  will again voice my unambiguous opposition. DO NOT STOP LISTING THE
>  ENTIRE WEEK. Users who don't like it now have lots of options. But
> some of us (many?) view it as a responsibility to follow the VfD
> discussions in order to see if new evidence has been presented which
>  should cause us to change a vote. The most efficient way I have to
> fulfill that obligation is to load the entire page (which admittedly
>  takes some time) and then use the find function to skim through the
>  list looking for my own username. Yes, other people have proposed
> other techniques. None of them work for me. Further, I think that it
>  is essential that at least some people do review the entire list in
>  order to identify common trends and patterns. Those observations are
>  used to propose policy changes, improve the instructions and
> generally benefit Wikipedia in all sorts of subtle ways.

And there are some proposed solutions:

- From Wikipedia:Categorized Deletion
> Otherwise, these category pages behave exactly like VfD currently
> does, with the same time limits, the same criteria for deletion or
> keeping, etc. However, they serve the purpose of bringing together
> similar (in terms of field of knowledge) entries on VfD. Essentially,
> these category pages are WikiProject pages, but used for
> standardization of deletion instead of standardization of page
> layouts.
>
> The majority of pages listed for deletion on VfD will still continue
> to go on the VfD page; only those pages fitting specific, narrow
> categories will be listed on the category VfD pages instead.

- From Wikipedia:Countdown Deletion
> Countdown deletion (CD) is intended to be an additional tool for
> deletion. It would not supplant or modify Wikipedia:Votes for
> deletion or Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion in any way, except
> for prohibiting VfD on an article already undergoing CD.

Yet none of these ideas address the fundamental problem. The first tries
to solve the problem by diverting entries from the page, while the
second tries to stop entries from getting to VfD in the first place. But
as volume increases, this will all but prove to be futile.

In my humble opinion, the fundamental problem is that Wiki pages were
never meant to support *this* sort of process. Talk pages are already a
stretch: they aren't exactly ideal. Workable, but not ideal.

VfD is simply a magnification of this problem. All we have is a wiki, a
bunch of templates, and a lot of policy.

It is time for software, the wiki, to lend a helping hand.

HOWEVER...

This path will not be without resistance and major road blocks. Many
things one must consider:

 * These policies are not set in stone. How do we create a software
solution that helps the process while not fixating the process on one
implementation. This leads to:
 * How do we implement this? What exactly will the software *do* in
order to help solve the problem?

Because any changes that would suggest some sort of rules are going to
be deeply frowned upon, here's what I'd propose.

VfD becomes divided into several sections that all tap into the same
"database" of VfD articles. This allows users to draw several versions
of the page, including:

 * All with all comments
 * All active debates with all comments on them
 * All with only links
 * Only links for all active debates
 * Only links for today

The process of adding VfDs to the database is ported to another
completely different page, with a detailed procedures for adding VfD,
and integrated checks to make sure the procedures are followed? (This
may not be a good idea, but it should be clear that you should be able
to Add without having to Read, and if you want to Casually browse, you
don't have to read everything).

This way, we:
 * Give something for everyone
 * Trim down the page for those who want it, and keep it that way for
those who don't (after all, there are some people who like have a
megabyte of information to browse)

The negative is:
 * This puts a greater strain on Wikipedia servers with the parsing and
output of these pages (which may require an entirely different sort of
caching system). It probably will come down to only a few possible ways
of viewing VfD to keep caching manageable.

Soooo...

*WHAT DO YOU THINK?*

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFCeCDBqTO+fYacSNoRAipUAJ99hkHKJc53NGG8gi0+fi4cHM1uCQCeNxdR
BFMUtc0SnZeroWQGeweLlPU=
=s0Ju
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Michael Keppler

body:
John Fader schrieb:
> On my 3GHz athlon XP box, importing that cur table took around 26
> hours, whereas the same job on an inferior linux box took around 8.
> Similarly, the same SQL query to count the rows in the cur table takes
> 0.1 seconds on linux and 6 minutes on windows.
>
> Surely MySQL on windows can't be *this* bad?  Both MySQLs are running
> as default 4.x installations on otherwise unladen machines with ample
> RAM.  Does this match others' experiences?

Not at all.

I just clocked the import of a 924 MB German cur table from March 22 on
my AMD64 3500+ 2GB workstation running Windows XP with MySQL 4.1.11, and
it took 5 minutes and 36 seconds.

But don't ask me what to configure in which way. I use a standard
ApacheFriends XAMPP installation and don't know if that differs from the
standard MySQL installation.

Ciao, Michael.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Redirect Pages: Text on them -> Text on article

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

Timwi wrote:
>> Although I'm a bit confused with your last paragraph: did you mean
>> that the redirect pages are a hack, or the way they are being stored
>> is a hack?
>
> The latter.

Urp. Maybe we should fix that first before we do anything about redirect
messages...

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFCeCi0qTO+fYacSNoRApgfAJ429zdP/1gfL9BWRf26up0xgfS7aACdFKx1
vAadqbe+CDKVKHR648P2Pl0=
=YUPe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Fruggo

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: foundation-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5

body:
Dovi Jacobs schreef:
> I suggest the following:
>
> Wikimedia is committed to free software and free content: All of our projects are provided "free as in beer" and licensed to be used freely (as in "free speech"). We are also committed to "free speech" in the traditional sense, namely that fear or threats of censorship will not be allowed to interfere with the development of any existing or proposed Wikimedia project."

If I understand you correctly, you say that Wikimedia projects
shouldn't be censored in any way. But isn't censorship a very
important part of (at least) Wikipedia? Since all POV remarks in
articles are consistently removed. We only allow NPOV contributions.
Isn't that censorship as well?

Sincerely,
Fruggo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: REPOST: free speech and wikinews

body:
Chad Perrin a ?crit:
> On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 10:20:09PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>Anthere appears to have inserted her replies into Dovi's email without
>>any indication of who is saying what. No doubt it's just a client issue,
>>I don't mean to blame anyone. I just wanted to help out by reposting it
>>in the right quotation style.
>>
>
>
> Thank you very much.  With the volume of email I get daily, most of it
> important, I was actually not going to read that one because of the
> extra time investment involved in separating the speakers' words.  I
> appreciate the help you offered in that area as much as I appreciate the
> effort Anthere put into composing the email in the first place.

I am sorry :-(
It was supposed to be indented... I know not why... it went away...

> This is just the opinion of one man.  Feel free to disagree.  Don't
> attribute it to anyone else besides me without asking them first.  Have
> a nice day.

I would like to similarly add that what I said is naturally my opinion
and not to be attributed to anyone else. In particular, it is certainly
not board opinion. I prefer to have an opinion rather than none, I also
prefer to voice it rather than not, but I try not to impose it on
anyone. I think that taking the stance suggested by Dovi... is a step
toward imposing the board view on community. I do not think we have such
a right. Sorry Dovi, but I prefer a board, which might sometimes appear
indecisive and very slow to take a decision, rather than a board which
take decisions for others or collect votes rather than letting the
opportunity to editors to find a consensus amongst themselves.

Even though I might on the principle agree with you :-)

Generally, I rather agree with what Chad just wrote

Well, I have one week to think about it :-)

Anthere


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Anthere appears to have inserted her replies into Dovi's email without
any indication of who is saying what. No doubt it's just a client issue,
I don't mean to blame anyone. I just wanted to help out by reposting it
in the right quotation style.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Subject: free speech and wikinews
Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 03:52:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Anthere

Dovi wrote:
> I want to express my gratitude for all of the thoughtful responses to
> my post yesterday ("Ogg Vorbis versus Chinese Wikinews"). I very much
> think the topic is an absolutely central one, and I guess I was
> bothered when it looked like it was just going to slide by and be
> ignored, or get a passive response of "let's see what the community
> does" (if anything).
>
> Of all the responses (they were all fascinating), the one I thought
> was exceptionally perceptive was that of Tim Starling. Tim was 100%
> right in the distinction he drew between "free speech" in its "free
> software" context, as used by Richard Stallman, versus its normal
> political meaning (e.g. in the context of the constitutions of many
> nations). As Tim pointed out, Stallman's usage is based upon an
> analogy to the political meaning, but they are not the same. I hadn't
> thought enough about the distinction beforehand.
>
> Tim writes that Wikimedia has always supported "free speech" as used
> in Stallman's analogy, but not "free speech" in its usual meaning.
> The question is whether this is completely true. It is true that
> endorsing the former meaning (Stallman's) does not *necessarily*
> imply endorsing the latter meaning. However, it is equally true that
> endorsing the former strongly suggests endorsing the latter as well,
> and many or most Wikimedia users probably assume that this is the
> case, and not wrongly. So it is a strong implication, but has never
> been made an explicit policy. What I suggest is that we formally
> honor the implication by making it explicit policy.

I tried to put down a bit on the topic here
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_and_free) as I wanted to clarify
those terms to those people not developers (such as me). The concept is
very much used by developers, but is not so well understood by others.

I actually got stuck with misunderstanding on the english article on
what [[free content]] mean... I would welcome your feedback on such
issues. Please do.

> Anthere thought that I suggested the board was actively opposed to
> Chinese Wikinews. I never meant that, and apologise if I was not
> clear. What I meant was exactly what Anthere wrote, namely that the
> board is waiting for a clearer community decision. And that attitude
> is exactly what I am suggesting be changed.
>
> I guess it is relevant pointing out that I have a personal
> relationship to this whole issue. In my real-life, over the past 6
> years, I have been privileged to work on educational and cultural
> programs side-by-side with extraordinary people (some of them known
> worldwide) who were persecuted by totalitarian regimes and stood up
> to them. All of these people agree on one thing, which is relevant to
> Anthere's points: When it comes to an environment where speech is
> repressed, one cannot talk about "the will of the community" in an
> ordinary sense. On the contrary, to just leave things up to the
> community in question *is by definition* to take a stance *against*
> those who want to express their views but cannot do so.

True.
But is our goal to explain governments what is wrong and where they
should change the way they set up things in their nation ?
I understand what you mean Dovi, and as an individual, I support it. I
am not sure every editor would be glad that the Foundation takes a
political position on the matter, so I do not feel the Foundation should
do it. Just my feeling. I am aware this is a highly contentious point
and that not all will agree with me.

It might be that wikinews in chinese IS important to create, but I do
not think this is the Foundation role to force its existence somehow
against some editors choice. I do not think it is the Foundation role to
take a stance against repression of speech. It is a bit tricky... but
there is at the same time a strong expectation that the Foundation
should not lead the project or impact in the way a project works... and
an expectation that we fix issues the communities do not fix themselves.

All with... generally speaking... extremely little feedback on what we
do (so, I really thank you for giving feedback on this topic).

I have all along the year wondered where was the limit of what community
expected from us. Taking political positions or not ? Taking care of
information distribution ourselves or focusing on helping the projects
to grow only ? Getting deeply involved in distribution in third world
countries thanks to grants or not ? Trying to stimulate release of
information under free licences by contacting govermental agencies for
example, or not ?

I have my own opinions. I try to listen to others opinions. I do not
hear so many :-(

> That is why this whole issue goes way beyond waiting for a clearer
> consensus from the community, and to the guts of what Wikimedia
> stands for.
>
> Do we really want "to make the sum total of human knowledge available
> for free"? If so, this implies doing so without making exceptions for
> languages or countries in which the expression of opinion is
> curtailed. So (to return to Tim) this is deeply implied by the
> current policies and self-image of Wikimedia. Let's make it explicit!
>
I do not define what we want to do as "to make the sum total of human
knowledge available for free"

What I think we try to do is "to make the sum of human knowledge
available to the largest number of people on Earth".

That makes a huge difference :-)

The information being free (as in free speech) or free (as in free beer)
is only a MEAN, not an END.
To give access to information to the largest number of guys, the
following can help
* help information to spread (through using a free licence)
* provide information for free (to reduce financial bottleneck)
* provide information in people mother language (to reduce misunderstanding)

Ideally, we should also work on plateform, since we today only provide
information through the net, to which not everyone has access to.

> I suggest the following:
>
> Wikimedia is committed to free software and free content: All of our
> projects are provided "free as in beer" and licensed to be used
> freely (as in "free speech"). We are also committed to "free speech"
> in the traditional sense, namely that fear or threats of censorship
> will not be allowed to interfere with the development of any existing
> or proposed Wikimedia project."
>
> In the future it might not just be China. There are many other
> contries in the world that do not allow a free press. Or it might be
> financial corporations. Adopting a clear policy on censorship now
> (beginning with Chinese Wikinews) will set things in the right
> direction for the future as well.
>
> Dovi

I am not sure how to express it exactly, but...
We are committed to free software and free content and gratis content in
particular because it helps our goal.
Most of us ALSO support free software, but it is not our "political goal".
Our goal is collecting information, gathering it and making it available.

I feel it is touchy to say this... but at the same time... when I read
the article defining [[free content]], when I see how few people mind it
being incorrect, or how few people understand and agree on what it
means... I feel the ground is much stronger when I focus on our goal
than on fluttery concepts :-)

There is a tiny difference here, but relevant. Imho.

In any cases, I appreciate very much your mails :-)

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


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Chad-
> The initial goal of this effort as a whole was distributing encyclopedic
> knowledge to the world at large.  If a new Wikinews project might
> interfere with the ability to get a Wikipedia into the hands of people
> worldwide, I tend to think that the proposed Wikinews project's goals
> must take a back seat to those of the already existing Wikipedia
> project.

I find it very dubious that an NPOV Wikipedia can exist in the long term
in an environment where an NPOV Wikinews cannot. Either it will be
modified to suit the interests of the censors, or it will be censored.

I am deliberately writing "an NPOV Wikipedia" and not "an NPOV
encyclopedia." There is an important distinction. Unlike traditional
paper encyclopedias, Wikipedia is, in fact, very good at dealing with
current events -- so good that, in cases of major global events, it
often provides much better background information than Wikinews itself.
The Chinese Wikipedia has an "In the news" section on the frontpage just
like the English one, and articles about current political issues are
created as they happen.

I do not disagree that Wikinews faces an increased risk, since it will
cover everyday politics in much greater detail than Wikipedia does. I
do, however, also believe that the integrity of our information is of
paramount importance, and that the Chinese Wikipedia will face serious
issues of integrity, if it does not already do so.

In an environment dominated by fear, NPOV will be difficult to maintain.
The peer dynamics may ensure conformity with the government's version of
reality: "Don't write this -- you don't want all of Wikipedia to be
censored!" Are we, as a community, sending the Chinese Wikipedians the
signal that this is the *wrong* thing to do? That, if an NPOV
presentation will be censored, then we must face that censorship? That
it is important to stand up for this principle?

By launching the Chinese Wikinews when there are enough interested
participants, we could send this clear signal. We could let everyone
know that the Wikimedia community is not driven by fear, but by a thirst
for knowledge and a desire to share it. If the Chinese government wants
to censor a community-driven project whose stated goal is a neutral
presentation of the facts on any subject, then let it do so. And then
let the Chinese people find out about it.

Be bold.

Erik


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
On 5/3/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 18:56 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > > Is the wiki syntax going anywhere?  Did somebody start work to
> > > standardize it?
>
> I'm still working on it in back-burner mode, but it's a complex
> problem.  I'll post something about the semantic model I've
> worked up soon for comment.

Is the goal really to get all wikis to use the same markup?

Perhaps a more obtainable goal would be to get all wikis to import
from and export to some lingua franca?


from_name: Timwi

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>
> Although I'm a bit confused with your last paragraph: did you mean
> that the redirect pages are a hack, or the way they are being stored
> is a hack?

The latter.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
Other than the things already mentioned, I only noticed one major thing.

That is: constant confusion of terms, ie saying "Wikipedia" when you
mean "English Wikipedia".

And using statistics for all language Wikipedias combined when in
practice the article is about the English Wikipedia (though
wikipedia.com will get you to an international portal) seems a bit
misleading.

There are not nearly 1 million articles in the English version: there
are around 500k in the English version, and the rest of the 1.3
million or whatever are made up by other Wikipedias.

The largest non-English Wikipedias are (in no particular order):

German
Japanese
Polish
Spanish
French

...

there are quite a few more large ones as well, such as Swedish, Dutch,
Italian, Ukrainian, and then there are plenty more in decreasing
orders of magnitude down to Wikipedias with 1 or 2 articles.

Examples:

1 or 2-article Wikipedias... not really worth visiting, though if you
want to you can try http://zu.wikipedia.org/ (Zulu Wikipedia). Most of
them are in African or Native American languages. It used to include
most of the languages of India, but there was a sudden surge and most
of them have grown to over 100 articles now, some over 1000.
60~70 article Wikipedias... the Maltese Wikipedia is a good example.
http://mt.wikipedia.org/
100~200 article Wikipedias... the Breton http://br.wikipedia.org/ and
Urdu http://ur.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedias are good examples here. Still
not really usable as an encyclopaedia, but getting there slowly (some
nice recent additions to the Breton Wikipedia include plenty of long,
detailed articles on linguistics topics)
200~500 article Wikipedias...  the Anglo-Saxon
http://ang.wikipedia.org/ and Aragonese http://an.wikipedia.org/ are
good examples.
500~700 articles... the Irish http://ga.wikipedia.org/ , Limburgish
http://li.wikipedia.org/ and Georgian (the country, not the state)
http://ka.wikipedia.org/ are good examples here.
700~1k articles... the Tagalog http://tl.wikipedia.org/ , Albanian
http://sq.wikipedia.org/ , and Sicilian http://scn.wikipedia.org/
Wikipedias are nice examples.
1k~2k articles... Belarusian http://be.wikipedia.org/ , W.Frisian
http://fy.wikipedia.org/ , Kurdish http://ku.wikipedia.org/ , Thai
http://th.wikipedia.org/ and Vietnamese http://vi.wikipedia.org/
2k~5k articles... Farsi http://fa.wikipedia.org/ , Turkish
http://tr.wikipedia.org/ , Greek http://el.wikipedia.org/ , Welsh
http://cy.wikipedia.org/ , Arabic http://ar.wikipedia.org/ , Bosnian
http://bs.wikipedia.org/ , Latin http://la.wikipedia.org/ , Icelandic
http://is.wikipedia.org/ , Malay http://ms.wikipedia.org/
5k~10k articles....Hungarian http://hu.wikipedia.org/ , Czech
http://cz.wikipedia.org/ , Korean http://ko.wikipedia.org/ , Slovak
http://sk.wikipedia.org/ , Croatian http://hr.wikipedia.org/
10k~20k articles... Romanian http://ro.wikipedia.org/ , Ukrainian
http://uk.wikipedia.org/ , Serbian http://sr.wikipedia.org/ , Slovene
http://sl.wikipedia.org/ , Catalan http://ca.wikipedia.org/ , Russian
http://ru.wikipedia.org/ , Finnish http://fi.wikipedia.org/ , Hebrew
http://he.wikipedia.org/
20k~30k... Bulgarian http://bg.wikipedia.org/ , Danish
http://da.wikipedia.org/ , Norwegian http://no.wikipedia.org/ ,
Chinese http://zh.wikipedia.org/
30k~50k... Portuguese http://pt.wikipedia.org/ , Spanish
http://es.wikipedia.org/ , Italian http://it.wikipedia.org/
50k~100k... Polish http://pl.wikipedia.org/ , Dutch
http://nl.wikipedia.org/ , Swedish http://sv.wikipedia.org/
100k~200k... Japanese http://ja.wikipedia.org/ , French http://fr.wikipedia.org/
200k~500k.... German http://de.wikipedia.org/
500k~600k.... English http://en.wikipedia.org/

Thus, at present, the English Wikipedia makes up for... a little less
than 1/3rd of all article count, I believe?

Mark

On 03/05/05, Lawrence Nyveen <nyveen at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Hey, all -
>
> Reader's Digest (Canada) plans to reprint a version of this article:
> http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm
>
> My job is to fact-check the article before it goes into the magazine,
> and to do that, I would like to talk with some Wikipedia
> contributors.  Anyone interested in helping me fact-check the article
> should contact me through e-mail.  A lot of the article is not base
> so much on strict facts but is rather the author's opinion on
> WIkipedia's place in the encyclopedia ecosystem, yet I still have to
> check that.  I need to report to my editors whether the author has
> defensible ideas.
>
> To do his, I wouldn't mind speaking to both avid contributors and
> those with criticisms.  Thanks in advance, all.
>
> (Jimmy - I would like to get in touch with you about this, since
> you're mentioned by name.  I left voicemail for Terry Foote on
> Friday, but I haven't heard back.)
>
> --
>
> Laurie Nyveen                                  nyveen at videotron.ca
> __________________________________________________________________
> Editor, Netsurfer Digest -   http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html
> "All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys."
>                               - Grandma Woody (Northern Exposure)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 23:22 -0500, Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> On 5/3/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> > I'm still working on it in back-burner mode, but it's a complex
> > problem.  I'll post something about the semantic model I've
> > worked up soon for comment.
>
> Is the goal really to get all wikis to use the same markup?

Speaking only for myself, I have no such goal.  I only care
about Wikipedia and the more general goal of getting its
information into the future in the most useful forms.   The
current trend toward feature creep in the software and the
lack of standardization are dangerous threats to that.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: committing to CVS

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Thomas Gries wrote:
>
>> If possible and and supported by you, I would like to ask, whether
>> I can apply for developers rights for committing changes for a
>> limited time.
>
> Tom, to be perfectly honest your patches require extensive review and
> correction and you have always had great difficulty communicating
> with the rest of the team.

Not wanting to spark a flamewar here or anything, but since you've been
"perfectly honest" in a public forum, maybe I can take this opportunity
to be perfectly honest publicly too. If you hand out such criticism, you
should be able to take it too.

I don't know much about the quality of your software changes, so I won't
comment on that, but I'm afraid you're not exactly the best communicator
either. I have always found it hard to get useful or necessary
information from you, and often you reply to me with a snide or rude remark.

I am quite concerned that, apparently, the MediaWiki developer team has
become more bureaucratic and imperialistic since I last did any active
development. I sure hope it's not going to end up like LiveJournal, with
several volunteer developers offering their patches, but the Elite Club
leaving them to rot on BugZilla, ignoring them completely.

> I would definitely not consider giving you CVS checkin rights at this
> time.

Please understand that this reply is *not* meant to imply that I am
disagreeing with or opposing (nor agreeing with or supporting) this
decision.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia Zeitgeist

body:
Georg Jaehnig wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on German Wikipedia we've got the idea to have a Wikipedia Zeitgeist.
> Like Google Zeitgeist [1] it would show the most popular articles -
> not the most viewed, but the most edited of a week.
>
> This feature would reveal, which are the current "hot" topics among
> the authors and where there might be edit wars.
>
> The easiest way to realize this would be a log of the IRC-channel
> #derc.wikipedia.

No, the easiest way to do this would be a simple SQL query. Something on
the lines of,

	SELECT c.cur_namespace, c.cur_title, COUNT(o.old_id) as edits
	FROM cur c, old o
	WHERE c.cur_stamp > DATEADD(DAY, -7, GETDATE())
	  AND o.old_stamp > DATEADD(DAY, -7, GETDATE())
	  AND c.cur_namespace = o.old_namespace
	  AND c.cur_title = o.old_title
	GROUP BY o.old_id
	ORDER BY edits DESC
	LIMIT 10

should retrieve the 10 most edited articles in the last week. Notice
that the "edits" count will be one off.

Disclaimer: I do not have a database to test this query on.

Timwi


body:
Chad Perrin:
> Rather than being "bold", as you suggest, I'd recommend that we simply
> be "true" -- true to the purpose for which, and the principles on which,
> Wikipedia was created.

Briefly:
- Can NPOV in the Chinese WP be respected under the conditions as they
are? If not, a principle on which Wikipedia was founded is already being
violated.
- Chinese WN is not being launched under the same conditions as other
WN. As such, an intervention has already been made. In any case, "you
cannot not communicate"; through action or inaction, you cannot avoid
sending a signal to the Chinese community. We have to carefully observe
what the effects of this signal are going to be.
- In general, a report from or survey of the Chinese Wikipedia community
on NPOV and censorship issues would be very helpful.

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: 1.5 upgrade test

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> * The updater ran for a few minutes shy of 10 hours. Most of that time
> was spent shuffling cur entries into the old table, where they
> eventually become plain old text entries. The pulling of revision data
> out of old (by now renamed to text) seemed to take a smaller portion of
> the time, but I foolishly didn't time the individual steps.

If this proves to be a problem, we could write an external storage class
for retrieving text from the cur table, similar to the stub objects for
concatenated gzip compression. That would at least reduce the size of
the required disk writes. The whole cur row may still need to be loaded
in order to construct the page table, such is the nature of MySQL. The
text could be moved to the text table while the wiki is read/write.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inquiry

body:
Lawrence Nyveen wrote:

> http://legadoassociates.com/wikipedi.htm

Near the beginning, the article says:

> Its success has attracted harsh criticism from predictable
> quarters. In an article published recently on
> TechCentralStation.com, Robert McHenry, former Editor-in-Chief
> of Encyclopedia Britannica disdainfully said that using
> Wikipedia was like visiting a public restroom.

Yes, McHenry did write this.  No, it did not come from
"predictable quarters".  What this article's author (and most
people) seem to miss is that McHenry is a *former* Britannica
editor-in-chief, who is *no longer* speaking for the old
encyclopedias.  Born in 1945, [[Robert McHenry]] left Britannica
in 1997 at age 52, hardly an old age retiree.  He has left that
building, for whatever reason, and is not likely to return. He is
now "out in the cold", free to write whatever he thinks.

The people currently working for established encyclopedias should
probably feel a threat from Wikipedia, but they are the least
likely to comment on its existence.  If you have an enemy, you
fight him, you don't smalltalk.  But I think McHenry's article was
an attempt to smalltalk the Wikipedia community.  His critique of
the [[Alexander Hamilton]] article was an all too obvious
give-away that only proved Wikipedia's willingness to improve.
Current Britannica employees would not help Wikipedia like that.

Larry Sanger is a similar but opposite out-in-the-cold case.  If
Sanger wrote a critique of paper encyclopedias, would you quote
him as someone representing Wikipedia?  Of course not.

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


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: free speech and wikinews

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Tim writes that Wikimedia has always supported "free speech" as used
> in Stallman's analogy, but not "free speech" in its usual meaning.
> The question is whether this is completely true. It is true that
> endorsing the former meaning (Stallman's) does not *necessarily*
> imply endorsing the latter meaning. However, it is equally true that
> endorsing the former strongly suggests endorsing the latter as well,
> and many or most Wikimedia users probably assume that this is the
> case, and not wrongly. So it is a strong implication, but has never
> been made an explicit policy. What I suggest is that we formally
> honor the implication by making it explicit policy.

Of course there is also censorship at Wikimedia. For instance we
regularly delete nonsense.

"Free speech" as used by Stallmann is coverd by GFDL but "Free speech"
in its usual meaning is (partly) implied by NPOV!

If there is a relevant number of people who want to set up Chinese
Wikinews and NPOV can be applied for Wikimedia projects as whole then it
does not matter if there is majority for or against Chinese Wikinews in
the community. Chinese News just have to be mentioned. If there is a
risk in doing so we have to risk it as well as in single articles where
unloved opinions are mentioned because of NPOV.

just my point of view,
Jakob


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
Is the wiki syntax going anywhere?  Did somebody start work to
standardize it?

Is anybody rethinking the difference between [[x]], [[x:y]],
[[:x:y]], [[x|y]], [x:y], [x y], {{x|y}}, {{x|y=z}},
{{x|y=[[z]]}}, and [[x|{{y}}]]?

If we started over today, with today's experience but without
today's legacy, would we make it similar or different?

Would [[image:x]] be implemented as {{image|x}} instead?
Would [http://url/ text] be replaced by [[http://url/ | text]]?
Would that make "http:" and "isbn:" parallels to "image:" and
"category:"?

What about making a scripting language for template definitions,
so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost
like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";

And what about <math></math>?

If I got this part of history right, the [[x]] syntax was
introduced into the UseMod wiki software by Clifford Adams on
request from the Wikipedia community early in 2001.  Before that
all wikis used CamelCase to make links, and that option was still
available in Wikipedia for most of 2001.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> > And what about <math></math>?
>
> /me runs away screaming :)

My users want to introduce <math> for the proofreading of scanned
books such as http://runeberg.org/tektid/1933m/0103.html at
Project Runeberg.  Should we copy Wikipedia's current syntax or
should we "do it right" instead?  And what would that be?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.4.4 released

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

MediaWiki 1.4.4 is a bugfix release for the 1.4 stable release series.

Some bugs in the installer/updater and refreshLinks maintenance script
were introduced in the last release and have been corrected.

== Changes from 1.4.3 ==

* (bug 725) Let dir="ltr" attribute work again in MonoBook on RTL languages
* (bug 2024) Skip JavaScript error for custom skins where .js message
not set
* (bug 2025) Updated Indonesian localization
* (bug 2039) Updated Lithuanian localization
* Don't die on PHP <4.3.0 when calling mysql_ping()
* Fix refreshLinks cleanup step on MySQL 3.x
* Fix breakage on rerunning the site_stats update
* Localized namespaces for csb

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=325088

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.4.4.tar.gz?download
MD5 checksum: 85553d464041e36b85939810d79f5bf4

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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

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

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCeMEcwRnhpk1wk44RAuXHAJ4w2k4pZ9nopOQU2M4IB8t7oDI3XwCfbC22
FjsQPU8hCVlGwRxrONsfCQs=
=jkua
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Critics & weak articles

body:
Magnus Manske (magnus.manske at web.de) [050504 00:54]:

> To clear this up: Currently,
> * for each revision
> * of each article,
> * each user
> can "rate" different properties.
> Once MediaWiki 1.5 is released, Jimbo wants to run this for a while to
> gather data how people rate things, then we decide on a final (meaning:
> this week:-) schema to handle the ratings.

I asked Brion to switch this on for test.leuksman.com last night and, er,
everything broke :-) So it's off again. But it would be good to have
whatever's missing back on so we can beat it around on the test wiki.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Critics & weak articles


body:
Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050504 05:02]:

> Hmm, I wonder if we can think of any websites to nominate in the
> e-culture, e-learning categories? ;-)  I haven't checked the website,
> but these awards are given in 150 countries, so we have plenty of
> opportunities to win a few dozen of them. ;-)
> Maybe there is a global category.

What we need, right, is for the Nobel Foundation to create the Nobel Prize
for General Knowledge.

(Then Ram-man will probably win it.)

- d.


body:
Fruggo (fruggo at gmail.com) [050504 05:55]:

> If I understand you correctly, you say that Wikimedia projects
> shouldn't be censored in any way. But isn't censorship a very
> important part of (at least) Wikipedia? Since all POV remarks in
> articles are consistently removed. We only allow NPOV contributions.
> Isn't that censorship as well?

I so need to write [[Crushing by autofellatio]] for Uncyclopedia.

- d.


from_name: Joseph Reagle

body:
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 18:19, Sj wrote:
> > I should point out that I like Surweicki's thesis just fine, it's just
> > that I'm not convinced that "swarm intelligence" is very helpful in
> > understanding how Wikipedia works -- in fact, it might be an
> > impediment, because it leads us away from thinking about how the
> > community interacts in a process of reasoned discourse.
>
> The idea that Wikipedia is basically a core group of dedicated editors
> collaborating and reasoning together to build an encyclopedia, is very
> appealing to me. ?I used to think it was exactly right. ?And since
> most feedback I get or give on-wiki (including the bulk of policy and
> meta-discussions) involve dedicated editors, it is hard to recognize
> the effect, if any, of "swarm intelligence" on the project's
> development.

First, I whole heartedly agree with Jimbo that any posited explanation that
fails to account for the dynamics and culture of good-willed interaction
has got it wrong. So in that sense, Surowieki is (perhaps) necessary but
(certainly) not sufficient.

Second, I'm not familiar with "swarm intelligence", but
it is reminiscent of "smart mobs" and while Rheinghold (2003) doesn't have a
very strong theory on that point (more of a provocative metaphor), he does
make heavy use of the phenomena Sj is speaking of: a pareto principle
(80/20) or power law curve of participation.

Power-law curves are all over the real world and net, and specifically, with
respect to participation -- rather than links, say, in the Blogosphere --
Adar and Huberman (2000) found 50% of the content on Gnutella is provided
by 1% of the users, O'Mahony and Ferraro (2003) found the curve in the
Debian dev key ring, Moon and Sproul (2002) on the Linux Kernel list,
Briggs et al. (1997) in group support systems, Krogh, Spaeth and Lakhani
(2003) in Freenet.

(The latter paper, "Community, joining, and specialization in open source
software innovation: a case study" is really very good, as should be
Lakhani's forthcoming thesis on the "Primacy of the Periphery." The trick
is not to assume that just because a minority does the largest portion of
the work, everyone else is unimportant. I like to compare them to the
submerged portion of the ice-berg. Periphery members can become core
members, they also can impart a momentum.)


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Wednesday 04 May 2005 03:56, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Is the wiki syntax going anywhere?  Did somebody start work to
> > standardize it?
 [snipabit]
> > What about making a scripting language for template definitions,
> > so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost
> > like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";
>
> I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing
> loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

But I would love to have at least default parameters:

	With the following template:

		{{{txt}}}

you always have to specify color and text, e.g. this doesn't work:

	{{color|txt=blue monday}}

Something like:

		{{{txt}}}

?

Simple expressions (like {{{size+4}}}) would also be good, for things
like:

		{{{txt}}}

It doesn't need to be a full-fetched scripting language, which would only
open a whole lot of can of ?berworms.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed May  4 09:28:00 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Yeah, baby, yeah!"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQnh6V3cLPEOTuEwVAQF6EQf7Bu9Y4WlJ1sA+U6aLYb5YdEz0dOXWv9sF
+OZpgml6hh+FQP91kJMKEWhctQmyss5bq5AD4vQ73mQYQcGsMr2w+nQoB0ItqO8y
ljTNZa3iuSQhbwE5jLbL2mewAgJVJdoxddSBAjdGz5SF/6Gb9gLm5qYPJTwtEXE8
+efKDqJ7kZQ5B+h0FXeHJ2n8X5Bz1zZq6iCdo2FvSRGVvdpSdH7zLQVi+36rb43Q
RHUdwV6gyJ8o5ORpqM6CXoV/iG9sEGKwIooNigBSfnFKT8tkJE2pO/YDcz7Vefh6
pJnuVSV9t6kyvJ2yzjukYS7hHgbdtCjkZ4S/MkTTbYV4eY9sJ47+SA==
=26QP
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
On 5/4/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Is the wiki syntax going anywhere?  Did somebody start work to
> standardize it?

Jimmy posted about this last month. See the thread which starts at
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-March/028452.html>
where he says Ross Mayfield of Socialtext
(<http://www.socialtext.net/mayfield/index.cgi?action=refcard>) is
also interested in a syntax standardization effort.

A comparison of syntax is at <http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:compare>.

The WikiMarkupStandard WorkingGroup mailing list is at
<http://www.freelists.org/list/wiki>. There were a few posts in March,
but the list is basically inactive.

A RFC from TikiWiki is at <http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=RFCWiki>.

Finally, MeatBallWiki has a page on this at
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiMarkupStandard>.

Angela.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Critics & weak articles

body:
David Gerard schrieb:

>I asked Brion to switch this on for test.leuksman.com last night and, er,
>everything broke :-) So it's off again. But it would be good to have
>whatever's missing back on so we can beat it around on the test wiki.
>
>
Strange... I just set up a brand-new test wiki from CVS HEAD, and
validation works just fine...

It is obviously turned off at the test site now, so I can't see what
*might* be wrong.

Maybe the database update malfunctioned. Brion, can you check that with
patch-validate.sql?

Thanks,
Magnus


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Alex Krupp wrote:
> Good point. Looks like I was a bit overambitious in my initial email.

A little but I think your main point, stated more cautiously, was that
the book is interesting and may relate to Wikipedia's development in
some interesting ways.

> Anyway, I didn't mean for my post to be offensive by putting words in
> the mouths of othhers, nor did I mean to imply that I believe all of
> what Surowiecki says is gospel truth. However, I did enjoy the book, I
> do think that it relates to Wikipedia (even though Jimbo disagrees), and
> it got me thinking more about the social dynamics of this project. On
> that basis I still recommend the book.

I should add that I also recommend the book, on the same basis.

I also recommend Friedrich Hayek's 1945 piece in the American Economic
Review titled "The Use of Knowledge in Society".  It has for a long time
been a cornerstone of my way of thinking about the world, and it has
significant relevance for my advocacy of openness and individual
initiative in our work on Wikipedia.

"Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on
the question under which of them we can expect that fuller use will be
made of the existing knowledge. This, in turn, depends on whether we are
more likely to succeeding putting at the disposal of a single central
authority all the knowledge which ought to be used but which is
initially dispersed among many different individuals, or in conveying to
the individuals such additional knowledge as they need in order to
enable them to dovetail their plans with those of others."

--Jimbo


body:
Sj wrote:
> The swarm does the bulk of the writing, especially finding and
> providing current facts, starting new articles, and adding neglected
> POVs.  The roving groups are sensitive to dozens of policy pages, and
> implement them as they rove... they also take on large projects, one
> at a time, and try to implement certain changes across thousands of
> pages at once.

"The swarm does the bukl of the writing..." hints at a testable hypothesis.

My own research indicates the opposite, but let me be perfectly NPOV
about my own research: it is completely amateurish and driven by my need
to make interesting public talks that get the world excited and thinking
about wikipedia. :-)  I can hardly be considered an unbiased scientific
researcher.

My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by logged
in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely
interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
trafficked articles, etc.

A deeper understanding of all these issues can have some interesting
implications for us in terms of understanding certain policy issues.

--Jimbo


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
>Hi Wouter,
>
>There are no standards for determining what does and what doesn't get
>a Wikipedia. If you are told to your face by Jimbo or the board or the
>community or whatever that You Do Not At This Time Qualify For A
>Wikipedia, the solution is to start your own off-site  "Wikipedia"
>using a diffferent name, such as Seelterpedia or  whatever, and when
>you reach perhaps 200 articles, bring the issue back and the official
>position will probably change.
>
>This is the process that happened with zh-min-nan (not sure if they
>got an outright "you can't have one" message). People will always be
>willing to reconsider when they see an article base of a reasonable
>size.
>
>Even if your request is "accepted", often it takes a while before it
>is actually created (limited developer resources), but that too can
>often be expidited by showing them that you really are ready to go.
>
>And if there appears to be no consensus, start the off-site test, and
>then when you reach between 100 and 500 articles, return, bring up
>that fact, and people will probably reach a consensus
>
>Mark
>

Thank you Mark, that's clear, then. Anyway I feel sure enough now to post
the requests on the requests page, and I will do my very best to attract
users. For I think they right in saying the number of users interested is
more important than the linguistic status of the variety-in-question.
Consider all those empty ore barely filled wikipedias coveringclearly
separate languages...

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger: altijd en overal beschikbaar http://webmessenger.msn.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki syntax

body:
Lars Aronsson:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>>And what about <math></math>?
>>
>>/me runs away screaming :)
>
>
> My users want to introduce <math> for the proofreading of scanned
> books such as http://runeberg.org/tektid/1933m/0103.html at
> Project Runeberg.  Should we copy Wikipedia's current syntax or
> should we "do it right" instead?  And what would that be?

I would contend that for extensions that call external programs to parse
some input and convert it into something else, an XML-like syntax is the
way to go. This was also the result of the discussions and vote we've
had about this one year ago:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extension_Syntax
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extension_Syntax/Voting

Wikitext is meant to replace complex or unnecessary HTML. When you start
making up funny symbols for every possible extension there could ever
be, you're replacing an intuitive, descriptive solution with a
complicated one.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
>
> "The swarm does the bukl of the writing..." hints at a testable
> hypothesis.
>
> My own research indicates the opposite, but let me be perfectly NPOV
> about my own research: it is completely amateurish and driven by my
> need
> to make interesting public talks that get the world excited and
> thinking
> about wikipedia. :-)  I can hardly be considered an unbiased scientific
> researcher.
>
> My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by
> logged
> in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely
> interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
> old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
> trafficked articles, etc.
>
> A deeper understanding of all these issues can have some interesting
> implications for us in terms of understanding certain policy issues.
>
> --Jimbo
> ________________________

A key number to make available is not just the number of edits, but the
size of the deltas. This would filter different editing styles - some
people are multiple edits in a session, others are one edit and then
perhaps a proof. This will also give an indication of who does the bulk
of the writing and who does the bulk of the editting and who does the
bulk of the proofing - which are separate catagories of contribution.
All of which are important - turning raw material into a formatted
article is a crucial part of the process - but they are different
activities.