body:
That sounds pretty good - I'd love to help with medieval history, you'd
definitely need at least an ?lfred ?e Great article!

>From: "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
>Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English
>Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 20:27:25 -0400
>
>Hey Adam,
>	Thanks for the help and kinds words - these are all very good and
>important questions.
>
>As for types of articles, I (myself as a writer/contributor to the AS
wiki)
>would like to start out with simple fact-based articles, perhaps the
ones
>listed on the "100 articles every wiki should have."  I would
hope that
>people would contribute articles, either Pokemon, Mario, News,
Biography,
>whatever.  I have no doubt someone will want to write Anglo-Saxon
related
>articles, but I'd rather do modern history, some biographies, biology,
>technology, etc.  If you'd like to write the Pokemon article, feel free!
  Ic
>wille ??t s?on, gif ?u ??t wille wr?tan.  There are people who can
>contribute readily on the Forum for Old English mailing list, English-L
>mailing list, and Old English Made Easy mailing list.
>
>The form of the language would be early West Saxon, as used in the Clark
>Hall Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, without the syncopation of endings
in
>verbs (a more formal syntactic convention).
>
>The groups are above mentioned, as well as other groups that can be
found
>with a google search. There is already a terminology page for the
technology
>terms, as well as many biology and other terms native to the language.
As
>Icelandic has created new uses for old words, I'm sure Old English can
do
>the same (How about an article about a circulwyrde or the symantec
fyrweall
>rungestreon, or ?? Nipponiscan l?ode (the Japanese people)?).
>
>Does that help?
>
>James
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
>[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Adam Bishop
>Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 5:22 PM
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English
>
>I think an Old English Wikipedia sounds interesting (although I don't
know
>very much OE myself), and now that you are also discussing Latin, I
wanted
>to point out a few problems you might encounter (I am an admin on the
Latin
>Wikipedia):
>
>Most importantly, you should start off by making some guidelines about
what
>should and should not be included.  The Latin wikipedia is pretty old
and
>only recently has there been a concerted effort to give it some
direction -
>I think any new wikipedia in a dead language would benefit from having
the
>rules first.
>
>For example, you would (I assume) want to have articles about
Anglo-Saxon
>related topics, but will people also want to write about unrelated
subjects?
>
>   Will the stereotypical Pokemon article be allowed?
>
>What form of the language will you use?  For Latin, I think we try to be
as
>classical as possible, although there is some medieval and neo-Latin
there
>too.  As far as I understand, the 9th century Wessex dialect is the most
>attested form of Anglo-Saxon, right?  Would you accept alternate
>spelling/grammar found in other dialects (Northumbrian, perhaps)?
>
>(As a side note, you would probably also want to specifically state that
Old
>English is not the same as "ye olde English", nor is it
Chaucerian or
>Shakespearian English, as has been mentioned already.)
>
>Are there groups who still use Old English, from whom you can draw
either
>contributors or information on where to begin?  Is there any information
on
>how to use OE words for modern concepts? For Latin it is fairly easy to
find
>Neo-Latin terms, but what if you want to write about Japan, for example,
in
>OE? I guess my point is, can OE still be used in a meaningful way, or
will
>you be limited by existing vocabulary?
>
>I hope these questions/suggestions help, and I hope I can contribute
when it
>is created!
>
>Adam Bishop
>
>
>&gt;From: Pierre Abbat &lt;phma at phma.hn.org&gt;
>&gt;Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>&gt;To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>&gt;Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English
>&gt;Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 15:40:55 -0400 &gt; &gt;On
Thursday 05 August 2004
>10:48, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>&gt; &gt; &quot;James R. Johnson&quot;
&lt;modean52 at comcast.net&gt; writes:
>&gt; &gt; &gt; I guess it's like Latin in being a dead
language, but just as
>&gt; &gt; &gt; deserving of a Wiki.
>&gt; &gt;
>&gt; &gt; Encyclopedia writer should try to get the facts right
before
>posting.
>&gt; &gt; Latin is still in use (and it was never dead).  And,
more
>important, &gt; &gt; Latin something like a sleeping lingua
franca.
>&gt;
>&gt;&quot;Dead&quot; referring to a language means
&quot;having no native
>speakers&quot;. Unlike Manx, &gt;which died with its last native
speaker
>(but is still in use), Latin died &gt;(but remained in use) when its
>descendants differentiated sufficiently that &gt;none of them was
Latin,
>which can't be pinpointed as precisely.
>&gt;
>&gt;phma
>&gt;--
>&gt;li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa
>&gt;_______________________________________________
>&gt;Wikipedia-l mailing list
>&gt;Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>&gt;http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Designer Mail isn't just fun to send, it's fun to receive. Use special
>stationery, fonts and colors.
>http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=htt
>p://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines
>   Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN? Premium right now and get the
>first two months FREE*.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
MSN? Calendar keeps you organized and takes the effort out of scheduling
get-togethers.
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines
  Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN? Premium right now and get the
first two months FREE*.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Kai F. Lahmann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

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

Am Freedag 06 August 2004 15:43 schrieb Jan Hidders:
> I wasn't suggesting
> that MathML should become the default output. All I want is that the
> people who ask for MathML in their user preferences actually get it.

ah, ok - but doesn't change the point, that I don't think, many people will
ask.

- --
Kai F. Lahmann

1zu160-Bahner
http://www.1zu160.net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBE9E4Nx16d/gd8cIRAjU6AJ99JIIFpeoh3EeTsCoDBuJhx4t8ugCeLEdL
CFCC8n4UZ94v2Yq7LxQNt+c=
=cF1t
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Status of MathML support

body:
Hmm. Lets see, substituting <math> for $$ would save you a total of 9
characters typed per math instance.  now, lets think about this in a
reasonable manner. <math> is not THAT long, its intuitive and self
explanatory, its really not THAT terrible.

you have probably typed a couple of tens of thousands of keystrokes
arguing about this issue in the last year or so. Think about all the
<math>s you could have typed.  really, lets not be overly lazy. 9 extra
characters typed is not the end of the world; especially when you can
just copy and paste the tags if you are using more than one instance of
them in the same article.  I just don't see why this is such a problem
sometimes... i mean, are people really THAT lazy that when editing an
encyclopedic article they will become infuriated by having to type an
extra 9 characters to make a math equation look pretty?

Lightning

On Aug 6, 2004, at 5:27 PM, Timwi wrote:

> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> However, I think a neat solution might be to add a special tag for
>> articles, called something like __MATH$__, which would "turn on"
>> interpretation of $ as a toggle for <math>
>
> I think a much better idea would be to use a less conflicting syntax,
> e.g. $$...$$ or (which I proposed months ago) [!...!].
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes Parser.php,1.224,1.225

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> + 		global $fixLbug ;
> + 		if ( $fixLbug ) $text = preg_replace ( '/(l|L)\'/' , '\\1'' , $text ) ;

This is ... interesting.

Please may I point out that this solution is extremely hacky? This is
easy to break (read: it's going to yield more bugreports of a very
similar kind). It's also not very efficient, CPU-wise.

Better patch coming up.

Timwi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> Is:
>>> "Blah blah sold it for $100,000, making a $50 profit."
>>> equivalent to:
>>> "Blah blah sold it for <math>100,000, making a </math> profit."
>>
> I'm asking a simple question about compatibility of a proposed syntax
> change with existing text. If you can't answer it, please just leave it
> for someone who is interested.

You are jumping to conclusions like a kangaroo. Nobody has ever proposed
$...$ for MediaWiki (unless I missed it, but it wasn't me). My proposal
was to introduce something shorter and easier than <math>...</math>. You
pretty well know that there are millions of potential alternatives that
are better than $...$ and still shorter and easier than
<math>...</math>. Arguing against $...$ (which, again, I have not
proposed for MediaWiki) is no-where near arguing in favour of
<math>...</math>.

Timwi


from_name: Jeff Warnica

body:
On Fri, 2004-06-08 at 22:27 +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
> > However, I think a neat solution might be to add a special tag for
> > articles, called something like __MATH$__, which would "turn on"
> > interpretation of $ as a toggle for <math>
>
> I think a much better idea would be to use a less conflicting syntax,
> e.g. $$...$$ or (which I proposed months ago) [!...!].

If I can jump in here: are we talking about how wikipedia would _store_
that tag, or just a preprocessor-ish macro? If the later, if people want
that, they can just cut and paste in from there favourite text editor
that has tag completion.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LanguageCs.php again

references:
<4110D644.18628.D104B3@localhost> <ceqi5t$neo$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ceqk2c$s5k$1@sea.gmane.org> <ceql4o$ub8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 01:33:55PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
>
> >Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>$wgMonthAbbreviationsXX has been obsoleted. The month abbreviations
> >>are now regular messages (thanks loads to Jens Frank for that). If the
> >>date formats of your language never use the abbreviated month names,
> >>you're set. Otherwise, use the MediaWiki namespace to change them.
> >
> >Awesome.  But this isn't yet live, is it?  I looked in
> >Template:All_system_messages.
>
> Oh, sorry. Yes, you're right, it might not be live yet.

It's scheduled for release 1.4.

	JeLuF


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Jan Hidders wrote:
>>
>>> Timwi wrote:
>>>
>>>> I see your point, and it's a good point, but what's currently
>>>> stopping me from inserting <math> everywhere is that it's hard to
>>>> type and hard to read. If we had something easy and simple, like
>>>> LaTeX's $, that would make all the difference.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I certainly agree that it would make a difference. But do you think
>>> changing the mark-up is a realistic option? Or even adding an extra
>>> shorter notation?
>>
>>
>>
>> It is only unrealistic in the sense that most of the Wikipedia
>> community is against it (as evidenced by a poll held some time ago).
>> Their reasoning I've never understood.
>
>
> Is:
>
> "Blah blah sold it for $100,000, making a $50 profit."
>
> equivalent to:
>
> "Blah blah sold it for <math>100,000, making a </math> profit."
>

I agree that allowing the $ notation for <math> is a bad idea in
general, for the reason given above.

However, I think a neat solution might be to add a special tag for
articles, called something like __MATH$__, which would "turn on"
interpretation of $ as a toggle for <math>, allowing notation such as
$x$, $f(x)$ and $\frac x y$ in articles with these tags. Literal dollar
signs in these articles could be done using TeX or HTML entities, where
needed.

All other articles would treat $ as a literal dollar sign, as normal.

-- Neil


body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> However, I think a neat solution might be to add a special tag for
> articles, called something like __MATH$__, which would "turn on"
> interpretation of $ as a toggle for <math>

I think a much better idea would be to use a less conflicting syntax,
e.g. $$...$$ or (which I proposed months ago) [!...!].

Timwi


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
Sj wrote:

> I would love to see a simple "pick your language" portal, a la
> http://www.easyjet.com/ .  Then /wiki/en/Home or /wiki/de/Home,

This is the best portal page I have seen yet;
http://europa.eu.int/

Clean. No flags, no menu that is flying around, language code + native text

Works also very well whit lynx

This is also not bad http://www.esperanto.net/ but Europa.eu.int is better.

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Azerbaijan and Iran related articles

body:
On 08/06/04 11:46, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:

> Ah, I forgot. Some of the articles are [[Azerbaijan]], [[Azerbaijan
> (disambiguation)]], [[History of Azerbaijan]], [[South Azerbaijan]],
> [[Azerbaijanis]], [[Azerbaijani language]], [[Aran (Azerbaijan)]],
> [[Shervan]], and [[Persian language]]. Some of these I can't revert
> anymore because of the three reverts policy.

These articles are indeed under current attack from a variety of anon
IPs and could do with a close eye at present.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:
> On Friday 06 August 2004 20:39, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>Jan Hidders wrote:
>>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>>>But, unless the wiki is switched into XHTML
>>>>mime type mode it won't render as MathML in Mozilla anyway.
>>>
>>>Ok. I assume that this is not set for the English Wikipedia, right?
>>>Would there be a problem if you did? I'm just asking to see if there are
>>>other problems that keep Wikipedia from generating MathML.
>>
>>It would completely break Internet Explorer and would cause some pages
>>to refuse to load in other browsers (those that are not 100% pure XML).
>>Not quite ready for prime time yet. :)
>
> Sorry for being unclear. What I wanted to know  was if there was a reason that
> it is not set when a user selects the MathML preference. The way you
> formulated it sounded as if this can only be set once for the whole wiki and
> is then fixed for all returned pages. You can probably see why that would
> worry me. :-)

Well exactly -- it's currently a global setting.

Hypothetically it could perhaps be made per-user, but if you turn it on
you may never be able to turn it off again because the entire wiki is
shown as "XML error".

Things that need to be corrected before this is feasable:
* Detect Internet Explorer and try to be friendly to it
* Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from the wikitext parser, no
matter what input is given
* Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from the MediaWiki:-namespace
messages, no matter what input is given
* Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from all special pages, page
templates, and features, including under typical error conditions.

-- 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/20040807/9c2fb19f/attachment.pgp>


body:
Lightning wrote:

> you have probably typed a couple of tens of thousands of keystrokes
> arguing about this issue in the last year or so. Think about all the
> <math>s you could have typed.  really, lets not be overly lazy.

You don't *have* to like the idea, you know. No reason to attack me for
being "lazy" when I am suggesting something I genuinely perceive as an
improvement.

You have only taken one issue (the length) into account.  Issues that
you have entirely disregarded include the awkwardness ("<" followed by
"/" is quite hard to type) and the readability for non-HTML-savvy users
(how are they supposed to know that the slash signifies "end"?).

However, since this discussion is entirely futile and pointless, this
will be my last posting on the matter.

Timwi


body:
On Aug 6, 2004, at 9:27 PM, Timwi wrote:

> Lightning wrote:
>
>> you have probably typed a couple of tens of thousands of keystrokes
>> arguing about this issue in the last year or so. Think about all the
>> <math>s you could have typed.  really, lets not be overly lazy.
>
> You don't *have* to like the idea, you know. No reason to attack me
> for being "lazy" when I am suggesting something I genuinely perceive
> as an improvement.
>
> You have only taken one issue (the length) into account.  Issues that
> you have entirely disregarded include the awkwardness ("<" followed by
> "/" is quite hard to type) and the readability for non-HTML-savvy
> users (how are they supposed to know that the slash signifies "end"?).
>
> However, since this discussion is entirely futile and pointless, this
> will be my last posting on the matter.
>

it wasn't an attack, just an observation. i guess it might be bit
awkward, but i felt it to be pretty intuitive. i just don't feel like
it's enough of an inconvenience as to discourage contributors and i
found it pretty easy to remember. but i agree.. i this is useless since
the vote has closed, I just wanted to clear up my point and what I
actually meant.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English

body:
Kaixo!

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 05:22:24PM -0400, Adam Bishop wrote:

> Most importantly, you should start off by making some guidelines about what
> should and should not be included.  The Latin wikipedia is pretty old and
> only recently has there been a concerted effort to give it some direction -
> I think any new wikipedia in a dead language would benefit from having the
> rules first.

Not dead languages, but languages with a small speaking community.
While for some languages there are hundreds of thousands of articles;
for languages with much smaller communities it isn't realist to hope
to achieve such amount in a near future, so giving some focus could
help to have some completness on that focussed area.

> For example, you would (I assume) want to have articles about Anglo-Saxon
> related topics, but will people also want to write about unrelated
> subjects? Will the stereotypical Pokemon article be allowed?

Of course it must be allowed; if not, then it shouldn't be a wikipedia
but a different project (like wikibook).
Not focused doesn't mean forbidden.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20040807/a9ffb056/attachment.pgp


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Quoting, dashes, and HTML entities

body:
Eric Pierce wrote:

> Also, there's some ongoing disagreement about
> "correct" quote usage: several users like to replace
> standard ASCII apostrophes with their lsquo/rsquo HTML
> counterparts, which seriously uglifies the wikitext.

Of course this has been discussed before, but the reason nothing has
been done about it is that the issue almost automatically solves itself
when the English Wikipedia (and all other remaining Latin-1 wikis)
finally switches to UTF-8. Once that is done, we can introduce some code
that will replace all HTML entities with their real Unicode character
upon saving. Then people can use — and ‘ as much as they
want; they will get the character they want, but they won't uglify the
wikitext. Thus, introducing an extra wiki syntax like ""this"" now would
be quiute redundant later.

The reason the patch for "--" was reverted is that some people
apparently like to use several dashes in the wiki syntax for table rows,
and this broke it. Myself, I don't really get it; one dash is way enough...

Timwi


from_name: Ronen Abravanel

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Babylon,
	part 3 or so /wikipedia content used by babylon.com

body:
On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 10:56:37 +0200, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A guy from the German Babylon company just called me back and he said
> that they were just given the order by the headquarter to send out this
> press release.

What press release?

>
> He asked me to send an email to him regarding my questions to a
> transparent copy.

Of what?

>
> I think it's better that the English folks or our wikipedians in Israel
> are contacting the HQ.
>
> Babylon Ltd. Headquarters
>
> 10 Hataasiya Street
> Or-Yehuda, 60212
> Israel
> Tel: Int +972 (3) 538-2111
> Fax: Int +972 (3) 533-4080
>
> Thanks,
> Mathias

Sorry for the questions, But I can't find any reference to Babylon In
my local mailbox nor in the past few mounts Archive.

-Ronen.


from_name: David Wilson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Press inquiry: South China Morning Post (scmp.com)

body:
Hi Jimmy, expect you're sick of speaking to reporters but I'd really
appreciate a quote from you for my SCMP tech column Technopedia. Only
seems fair as I steal from the Big W all the time. Could you say what
it offers that Encarta and Britannica don't please?

David Wilson

350 Lyons Road
Russell Lea [nr Five Dock]
Sydney, NSW
Australia
+61 [0]2 9712 7616
+61 [0]41 456 87 67


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
On Friday 06 August 2004 20:39, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
> > Brion Vibber wrote:
> >> Only like one or two tiny things are done; simple equations like
> >> "y = x + 2" should work. But, unless the wiki is switched into XHTML
> >> mime type mode it won't render as MathML in Mozilla anyway.
> >
> > Ok. I assume that this is not set for the English Wikipedia, right?
> > Would there be a problem if you did? I'm just asking to see if there are
> > other problems that keep Wikipedia from generating MathML.
>
> It would completely break Internet Explorer and would cause some pages
> to refuse to load in other browsers (those that are not 100% pure XML).
> Not quite ready for prime time yet. :)

Sorry for being unclear. What I wanted to know  was if there was a reason that
it is not set when a user selects the MathML preference. The way you
formulated it sounded as if this can only be set once for the whole wiki and
is then fixed for all returned pages. You can probably see why that would
worry me. :-)

> > I also checked if my sourceforge account still works, and it does, and
> > it even seems I'm still listed as one of the developers of Wikimedia.
> >
> > :-)  So would it be Ok with the main developers if I had a go at this? I
> > cannot promise anything soon because it's been a while and I don't even
> > have a running system at home anymore, but it looks very much like a fun
> > (relatively little) project to me.
>
> Awesome, please do!

Yay! I'm on it.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Alt-A keybinding considered dangerous

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

> When editing a page of the wikipedia namespace in the monobook skin,
> the key Alt-A is bound to "View Project page". This is not a good
> idea: most browsers bind Alt-A to "Select All", and arguably that's a
> much more common action when editing an article, and certainly the one
> the user expects. In fact, "View Project page" is almost non-sensical
> in that situation, while "Select All" in order to copy the article
> text into an editor is standard.
>
> While I personally like monobook a lot, I would generally question the
> design decision to override the browser's and operating system's key
> bindings and associate them with site actions. Most users expect key
> bindings to be specific to the application or the operating system,
> not to the currently visited site. Furthermore, some key bindings,
> such as Alt-D for the very rare "Delete article" action, clearly do
> more harm than good. At the very least, key bindings should be
> configurable in the preferences and switched off by default.

In a similar vein, when I want to create a link to an article
(especially one with a long title) I like to click and drag across the
title, right click, and use the copy function from my browser to put it
on the clipboard.  I can then paste this where I want it without the
fear that I may be introducing a new typo.  If I try this in Wikipedia
(but not in Wiktionary or Wikisource) I get taken to an edit page.  In
my preference I have the option for section editing on right click
turned off, but that does not seem to have any effect on the article title.

We all develop ways of working with the hardware and operating systems
that we have which may be quite different from each other.  It is a
problem when a program does these things differently from averything
else.  I never or rarely use key bindings, to do so I would need to
remember then.  On the rare occasions where I try I'm remembering
something from the DOS days which now works differently in Windows.

Ec


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia-logo merchandise: yawn

body:
>> I agree - CafePress is expensive. But as you state, there really
>> aren't any
>> known good alternatives that are cheaper.
>
> Random thought- you think ThinkGeek would be interested in some sort
> of a deal?

I don't see any point in worrying about it or trying to optimize
anything.

If the point is to create public awareness of Wikipedia, its presence
on the Internet (and frequency of appearance in Google search results)
is probably a (pause for serious numeric estimation) million times more
effective than wearing T-shirts. If the point is to support Wikipedia,
why on earth would I buy a $20 T-shirt worth $10 in order to give
Wikipedia $5, as opposed to a) donating $20 via PayPal (same cost to
me, four times the benefit to WIkipedia) or b) donating $5 via PayPal
(same benefit to Wikipedia, one quarter the cost to me)?

The only reason for having Wikipedia-logo merchandise is as a service
to those who actually _want_ to wear Wikipedia on their sleeve, as it
were. Cafepress serves that function adequately.

Wiki-merchandise will never be a significant factor in Wikipedia's
financing unless there is a major diversion of someone's time and
attention from encyclopedia-building to merchandise creation and
marketing.

(But what do I know? I was raised by a mom who never allowed
advertising within the sphere of her personal space. No containers of
cream were ever placed on the table; the cream was always poured first
into a pitcher. The idea of staring at Elsie, the Borden cow on the
breakfast table was anathema to her. No bumper stickers on the Smith
family car!)

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 1915 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040807/e42018a8/attachment.bin


body:
On Saturday 07 August 2004 08:10, Tim Starling wrote:
> Eric Pierce wrote:
> > Apologies if this has been brought up before, but I am
> > curious about the status of automatic replacement of
> > dashes in the wikitext (in particular -- and ---) with
> > HTML-entity versions that many users seem to like so
> > much (ndash and mdash). I noticed that a while back
> > (February 2004) such a conversion was implemented, but
> > apparently reverted due to undesirable breakage. Any
> > way it could be reinstated? I may look into it once I
> > get familiar with the code.
>
> That conversion consisted of two lines of code:
>
> $text = str_replace( "---", "—", $text );
> $text = str_replace( "--", "–", $text );
>
> These were inserted near the start of the wikitext->HTML transformation.
> The biggest problem in my mind was that it breaks links. Perhaps the way
> to avoid this would be to act on HTML instead of wikitext, and to only
> replace dashes which occur outside HTML tags.

How about only doing this replacement if the dashes are immediately preceded
and followed by whitespace/newline? Simple rule, easy to understand, easy to
implement, doesn't break URLs.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Possible exception to "1923 is OK" rule

body:
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> The EU generally follows a life plus 70 rule.  For quick reference I
> use
> the site http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html#whatpd

Thanks for reminding me of that link. When I was at the Boston meetup,
I mentioned to JamesDay that the UPenn site had a reference to a very
obscure possible exception to the 1923 rule, and that was it, or more
specifically

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/c-fineprint.html

It says that _possibly_ a work published within the juridiction of the
Ninth Circuit Court _might_ still be under copyright if a) The work was
first published on or after July 1, 1909 _and_ b) The work was never
published prior to 1923 with a copyright notice recognized by the US
_and_ c) The work was never published prior to 1923 in the United
States and maybe also d) the work had to be in a language other than
English.

Just in case anyone thought there were _any_ simple rules about
copyright law.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Babylon,	part 3 or so /wikipedia content used by
	babylon.com

body:
Ronen Abravanel schrieb:

>
> Sorry for the questions, But I can't find any reference to Babylon In
> my local mailbox nor in the past few mounts Archive.

Hi Ronen.

Sorry, I just noticed that I sent this email to the wrong list. The
intention was to send it to wikipedia-l. Sorry for any confusion I may
have caused.

Mathias


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia-logo merchandise: yarn

body:
Someone could print them out themselves. If they had
the space, the foundation could supply them the
equipment to do the work, get the wholesale t-shirts
delivered, and they could ship them out, based on
orders taken on a special registration page at meta.

Or would that be too much like the wiki way? :)

S

--- "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> >> I agree - CafePress is expensive. But as you
> state, there really
> >> aren't any
> >> known good alternatives that are cheaper.
> >
> > Random thought- you think ThinkGeek would be
> interested in some sort
> > of a deal?
>
> I don't see any point in worrying about it or trying
> to optimize
> anything.
>
> If the point is to create public awareness of
> Wikipedia, its presence
> on the Internet (and frequency of appearance in
> Google search results)
> is probably a (pause for serious numeric estimation)
> million times more
> effective than wearing T-shirts. If the point is to
> support Wikipedia,
> why on earth would I buy a $20 T-shirt worth $10 in
> order to give
> Wikipedia $5, as opposed to a) donating $20 via
> PayPal (same cost to
> me, four times the benefit to WIkipedia) or b)
> donating $5 via PayPal
> (same benefit to Wikipedia, one quarter the cost to
> me)?
>
> The only reason for having Wikipedia-logo
> merchandise is as a service
> to those who actually _want_ to wear Wikipedia on
> their sleeve, as it
> were. Cafepress serves that function adequately.
>
> Wiki-merchandise will never be a significant factor
> in Wikipedia's
> financing unless there is a major diversion of
> someone's time and
> attention from encyclopedia-building to merchandise
> creation and
> marketing.
>
> (But what do I know? I was raised by a mom who never
> allowed
> advertising within the sphere of her personal space.
> No containers of
> cream were ever placed on the table; the cream was
> always poured first
> into a pitcher. The idea of staring at Elsie, the
> Borden cow on the
> breakfast table was anathema to her. No bumper
> stickers on the Smith
> family car!)
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is
> now back in print!
> Sample chapter at
> http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
>
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

>>> I agree - CafePress is expensive. But as you state, there really
>>> aren't any
>>> known good alternatives that are cheaper.
>>
>>
>> Random thought- you think ThinkGeek would be interested in some sort
>> of a deal?
>
>
> I don't see any point in worrying about it or trying to optimize
> anything.

Indeed the difference isn't worthit unless the sales volume is really high.

> If the point is to create public awareness of Wikipedia, its presence
> on the Internet (and frequency of appearance in Google search results)
> is probably a (pause for serious numeric estimation) million times
> more effective than wearing T-shirts. If the point is to support
> Wikipedia, why on earth would I buy a $20 T-shirt worth $10 in order
> to give Wikipedia $5, as opposed to a) donating $20 via PayPal (same
> cost to me, four times the benefit to WIkipedia) or b) donating $5 via
> PayPal (same benefit to Wikipedia, one quarter the cost to me)?

One needs to consider the reasons why a person would buy such an item.
Most of the time it would show an existing committment.  There are times
and places where the advertising value would be there.  If I gave a WP
mug to the librarian at my son's school I might get a certain message
across. :-)

IIRC PayPal fees are 30c. + 3%.  Thus to send $1.00 it costs 33c; to
send $10.00 it costs 60c.for the merchan

> (But what do I know? I was raised by a mom who never allowed
> advertising within the sphere of her personal space. No containers of
> cream were ever placed on the table; the cream was always poured first
> into a pitcher. The idea of staring at Elsie, the Borden cow on the
> breakfast table was anathema to her. No bumper stickers on the Smith
> family car!)

She must have been a stay-at-home mom to be doing this. :-)

Before he became a teenager my son tended to be the first family member
up in the morning.  When he was a very young pre-schooler a full 4-litre
milk jug was too much for him to handle so enough milk would be put into
a small pitcher so that he could have his morning cereal.  Perhaps the
cereal itself was put into a bowl the night before.  (Parents remember
such things.)  As some kids grow up they fix their own breakfasts, and
cereal boxes become the best read literature in the house.

Ec


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
When editing a page of the wikipedia namespace in the monobook skin, the
key Alt-A is bound to "View Project page". This is not a good idea: most
browsers bind Alt-A to "Select All", and arguably that's a much more
common action when editing an article, and certainly the one the user
expects. In fact, "View Project page" is almost non-sensical in that
situation, while "Select All" in order to copy the article text into an
editor is standard.

While I personally like monobook a lot, I would generally question the
design decision to override the browser's and operating system's key
bindings and associate them with site actions. Most users expect key
bindings to be specific to the application or the operating system, not
to the currently visited site. Furthermore, some key bindings, such as
Alt-D for the very rare "Delete article" action, clearly do more harm
than good. At the very least, key bindings should be configurable in the
preferences and switched off by default.

Cheers,
   Axel


from_name: Philippe Elie

body:
On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 at 04:57 +0000, Timwi wrote:

> Eric Pierce wrote:
>
> >Also, there's some ongoing disagreement about
> >"correct" quote usage: several users like to replace
> >standard ASCII apostrophes with their lsquo/rsquo HTML
> >counterparts, which seriously uglifies the wikitext.
>
> Of course this has been discussed before, but the reason nothing has
> been done about it is that the issue almost automatically solves itself
> when the English Wikipedia (and all other remaining Latin-1 wikis)
> finally switches to UTF-8. Once that is done, we can introduce some code
> that will replace all HTML entities with their real Unicode character
> upon saving. Then people can use — and ‘ as much as they
> want; they will get the character they want, but they won't uglify the
> wikitext. Thus, introducing an extra wiki syntax like ""this"" now would
> be quiute redundant later.
>
> The reason the patch for "--" was reverted is that some people
> apparently like to use several dashes in the wiki syntax for table rows,
> and this broke it. Myself, I don't really get it; one dash is way enough...

if you mean :

{|
|-----

it comes from the python bot, then people learn this syntax from the
numerous example in code. I used this syntax a few month before noticing
it wasn't necessary. It improves a bit readability of table too.

phe


body:
PS-BTW: I do agree that Paul, David, etc. should get a
profit percentage for their work on products bearing
that logo, which the foundation or its agents may
sell. Contracted, small, reasonable sharing not only
puts Cheetos in the mouths of hardworking Wikipians,
but it ought be good karma too.

S

> Someone could print them out themselves. If they had
> the space, the foundation could supply them the
> equipment to do the work, get the wholesale t-shirts
> delivered, and they could ship them out, based on
> orders taken on a special registration page at meta.
>
> Or would that be too much like the wiki way? :)
>
> S
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
On Saturday 07 August 2004 10:36, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
> >
> > Sorry for being unclear. What I wanted to know  was if there was a reason
> > that it is not set when a user selects the MathML preference. [...]
>
> Well exactly -- it's currently a global setting.
>
> Hypothetically it could perhaps be made per-user, but if you turn it on
> you may never be able to turn it off again because the entire wiki is
> shown as "XML error".
>
> Things that need to be corrected before this is feasable:
> * Detect Internet Explorer and try to be friendly to it
> * Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from the wikitext parser, no
> matter what input is given
> * Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from the MediaWiki:-namespace
> messages, no matter what input is given
> * Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from all special pages, page
> templates, and features, including under typical error conditions.

Ouch. I understand and I don't see that happening without some major
architectural changes. So the bottom-line is that MathML is not going on-air
in the foreseeable future, right? I assume you understand that this dampens
my enthousiasm to invest time in that. So for now I will leave it as it is,
but if you ever need it fixed, you know where to find me. :-)

-- Jan Hidders


body:
Whotsis "Ninth Circuit" you write of?  Is that in East
Riding of Yorkshire?

Stevertigo OBE,KBE,CPA

--- "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> It says that _possibly_ a work published within the
> juridiction of the
> Ninth Circuit Court _might_ still be under copyright
> if a) The work was
> first published on or after July 1, 1909 _and_ b)
> The work was never
> published prior to 1923 with a copyright notice
> recognized by the US
> _and_ c) The work was never published prior to 1923
> in the United
> States and maybe also d) the work had to be in a
> language other than
> English.
>
> Just in case anyone thought there were _any_ simple
> rules about
> copyright law.

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


body:
How about just protecting them, use a very condensed
version of the {{protected}} banner, (its just too
much text and graphics people) and make people work on
a proxy draft instead?

S

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> On 08/06/04 11:46, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
>
> > Ah, I forgot. Some of the articles are
> [[Azerbaijan]], [[Azerbaijan
> > (disambiguation)]], [[History of Azerbaijan]],
> [[South Azerbaijan]],
> > [[Azerbaijanis]], [[Azerbaijani language]], [[Aran
> (Azerbaijan)]],
> > [[Shervan]], and [[Persian language]]. Some of
> these I can't revert
> > anymore because of the three reverts policy.
>
>
> These articles are indeed under current attack from
> a variety of anon
> IPs and could do with a close eye at present.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> * Always, *always* produce valid XHTML from the wikitext parser, no
> matter what input is given

Oh ... Okay :-)

(This is quite interesting: I hadn't thought of this when I wrote my
patch yesterday.  However, as soon as I read this line, I realised that
my yesterday's patch does not produce valid XHTML.)

Timwi


body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

> How about only doing this replacement if the dashes are immediately preceded
> and followed by whitespace/newline? Simple rule, easy to understand, easy to
> implement, doesn't break URLs.

Yes, simple rule, but one that would probably discriminate against many
languages.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-A keybinding considered dangerous

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

> When editing a page of the wikipedia namespace in the monobook skin, the
> key Alt-A is bound to "View Project page".

It should have been changed to Alt-C. All other namespaces had Alt-C, so
I have changed it for the Wikipedia namespace too.

Please refresh the relevant file, or clear your browser's cache, for the
change to take effect on your computer.

Timwi


from_name: Krzysztof Kowalczyk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 23:48:31 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> Compressing 2.5 GB of images you won't gain anything. And compressing the
> html files will make them less easy to browse. Likely an installer would
> be needed.

You're right about images but you can compress text at least in half.
I agree that in that case producing a DVD with WikiPedia content isn't
as easy as just dumping the content into static html files but I would
think that to offer a decent product one would have to create a
specialized viewer anyway.

For one, browsing static html with built-in web browser makes it
impossible to do search (either normal or full-text) which is quite a
big problem.

Once you start going down the "standalone browser" road, adding on-the
fly decompression of data is quite easy (compared to all other stuff
that would likely need to be done).

Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info


from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] skinning mediawiki

body:
hey all,

Is there a FAQ or recipe book for skinning mediawiki? I like its general
layout, but would like to frame it and change its colorschemes, fonts and
tabbing scheme.

Thanks much for any pointers,

Ed


from_name: Jeremy J. Shapiro

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Request for volunteers to ber interviewed for
	research project

body:
Volunteers needed for research study on the experience of the regular use
of several information and communication technologies for daily-life
activities, such as work, personal and family communication, social
networking, and leisure activities. The study is designed to look at the
multiple worlds many of us now deal with as a regular part of our daily
lives. Participation in the study involves one or two in-person or phone
interviews, lasting from one and a half to two hours each, conducted by a
researcher affiliated with Fielding Graduate Institute
(<http://www.fielding.edu/>www.fielding.edu ). To qualify, you must be over
18 years old and use at least two Internet applications (e-mail, the Web,
on-line bulletin boards or discussion spaces, mailing lists/listserv's or
newsgroups, access to news, instant messaging, chat rooms, webcam), at
least one other computer application (e.g. word-processing, spreadsheet,
database), and the telephone and/or phone-based text messaging on a daily
or nearly daily basis as a major part of your work and personal activities,
and you must have been doing so for at least six months. For an in-person
interview (preferred but not essential), you should also live in or near
New York City; Providence, Rhode Island, or Portland, Oregon, which is
where the researchers are located. For a phone interview, you should live
in the continental United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Hong
Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, or Australia. Upon completion, this study will
be available to any interviewee who expresses an interest in it. There is
no remuneration for participating in the study. If you are interested,
email internetresearch at fielding.edu.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Eric Pierce wrote:
> Apologies if this has been brought up before, but I am
> curious about the status of automatic replacement of
> dashes in the wikitext (in particular -- and ---) with
> HTML-entity versions that many users seem to like so
> much (ndash and mdash). I noticed that a while back
> (February 2004) such a conversion was implemented, but
> apparently reverted due to undesirable breakage. Any
> way it could be reinstated? I may look into it once I
> get familiar with the code.

That conversion consisted of two lines of code:

$text = str_replace( "---", "—", $text );
$text = str_replace( "--", "–", $text );

These were inserted near the start of the wikitext->HTML transformation.
The biggest problem in my mind was that it breaks links. Perhaps the way
to avoid this would be to act on HTML instead of wikitext, and to only
replace dashes which occur outside HTML tags.

The current status is that I have other things to do and nobody else has
volunteered.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>>> So now a "complete" edition is impossible even with a DVD. A selection
>>> process must be used, or at least images should be used with moderation
>>> :-)
>>
>> heard of compression?
>
> And double-layered? (8,5Gb) Also blue-ray is comming soon. (25Gb)

These have the disadvantage that consumer-available burners generally
only support single-layered, up to 4.5GB-ish.

Anyway, after removing the non-redistributable copyrighted trash I'm
sure that the total filesize will be much reduced.

-- 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/20040807/305a18b6/attachment.pgp>


from_name: mbecker

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues...walking on thin ice

body:
I've been gone for several months, so bare with me if I am bringing up old news...
I recently came across a copyrighted image on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TrangBang.jpg
Now, last I knew, our terms of use specifically prohibited uploading copyrighted material without the copyright holder?s permission. It appears some users think this should be allowed under fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:TrangBang.jpg. I'm not to sure about that. In any case, I've put the image up for deletion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Image:TrangBang.jpg
Apparently this is not an isolated incident though. As User:172 said "This picture is one of hundreds posted on Wikipedia of similar fair use status." Also, I've found that fair use has crept its way into our copyright page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Fair_use_materials_and_special_requirements
This does concern me considerably considering the legal status of such images seems to be unclear. You can also find more information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use

Again, I've been gone for quite a while. Has there been a consensus by the community that we should start using copyrighted material in wikipedia? Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees? Also, how do we ensure that it is clear that these images are not reproducible under the GFDL? I think, that we are walking on thin ice when we start including copyrighted material in wikipedia. Does it really add enough to put the whole project at risk? Is the foundation willing to pursue lawsuits against them for violating copyright law? If we decide to indeed allow the upload of copyrighted material under "fair use" who determines that it is fair use? It's only going to get harder to make sure we aren't breaking the law once we open this door.

I think we have to ask ourselves a couple questions here:
1. Are we breaking copyright law?
2. Is it worth making wikipedia less free to include copyrighted material?
3. Is the wikimedia foundation willing to incur legal fees to fight cases against it for copyright violation

I for one don't think that the benefit we get from including copyrighted material balances the risks involved, or what we loose in freedom of use.

I could be way off base here, but this is just my 2 cents.

--
Michael Becker


body:
Someone will sue somewhere. Someone will win
somewhere. Either Wikimedia will say "we are an
American NPO - we exist under the American
(self-lauditory, self-preserving, self-centered)
protectionist system. Exactly how many nukes do *you
have?" If that somewhere is the USA, and free speech,
public good, and fair use are slapped down in the name
of tyrannical property and human puppetry, then WP
must go underground: Imagine a decentralized
peer-to-peer network that exchanges article edits, run
on light clients on any number of systems around the
world... Anyway, thats for later.

For now, the good that the project provides outweighs
almost any claim of "damages," and like Ray said,
(typed rather) judgements are made on a case by case
basis and are unsually limited to profits. Who poses a
danger? What philosophical grounds are they standing
on? What claim to property do they have that trancends
fair use? What would be the harm in a lost verdict?
Win-win all around, IMHO.

ReLaX.

S

--- mbecker <mbecker at jumpingjackweb.com> wrote:

> Again, I've been gone for quite a while. Has there
> been a consensus by the community that we should
> start using copyrighted material in wikipedia? Even
> if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright
> holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and
> incurring a great deal of legal fees?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Gabriel Beecham

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Update request for LanguageGa.php

body:
Hello all,

A major revision of LanguageGa.php has been uploaded
onto Meta, at the page of the same name - could a
developer update it?

Thanks.

-- Kwekubo / Gabriel Beecham

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright issues...walking on thin ice

body:
Angela:
> > The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it
> and claimed it was
> > fair use, not with the Foundation.

That may be the letter of the law interpretation, but
for "the foundation" to make a policy of deflecting
all such responsibility to its contributors, would
only bode well for any competing project that chose to
show a little more philosophical and legal backbone.
Pioneering projects need to be pioneering, not
capitulating or betraying to their own supporters,
especially if the mistakes are honest ones in the
realm of intel property. In any case, the inclusion of
material is a community decision, and so the
foundation as a facilitator for the violation, (by an
implied community decision) is legally responsible.
Does going apenuts with compliance paranoia to a
particular legal system comply with the larger goals
of being globally accessible and philosophically
equitable? I.D.T.S...

What exactly constitutes a "community 'decision'" when
anything can be changed anytime, is wobbly.

S

--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Angela_ wrote:
>
> >>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the
> copyright holders from suing the wikimedia
> foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal
> fees?
> >
> > The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it
> and claimed it was
> > fair use, not with the Foundation.
>
> That's interesting. This is the first time I hear
> this (but I haven't
> followed the discussion very much, either).  So what
> are you going to do
> if the uploader is an anonymous IP address?
>
> >>Is the foundation willing to pursue lawsuits
> against them for violating copyright law?
> >
> > If an image really is fair use, it is not
> violating copyright law.
>
> At least not in the U.S.
>
> > The German Wikipedia have a policy which disallows
> fair use completely.
>
> Which is reasonable, seeing as most of the users of
> the German-language
> content are going to be German, Swiss, Austrian or
> possibly
> Luxembourgian, and those countries don't have a
> "fair use" law.
>
> > We are protected to some extent by the [[Online
> Copyright Infringement
> > Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the
> images down if someone
> > sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we
> would avoid legal risk
> > that way.
>
> Again, this is interesting.  I didn't know there was
> an extra Act for
> this.  This begs the question would other countries
> have a similar law.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nationalist POV-pushing on Wikpedia: what to do? (was
	Azerbaijan and Iran related articles)

body:
Right, well then whats needed is a kind of "huddle"
or "quick conference" for deciding to ban "POV
vandals," ie. 'people who are for one reason or
another refusing to comply with NPOV and Civility.'
(Part of being "civil" is also talking and discussing,
right?)

If they also violated NoInsults, there woundnt need to
be any discussion at all before they would be blocked,
would there? So theres a good line there to work with.

S

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> S.Vertigo (sewev at yahoo.com) [040808 05:43]:
>
> > How about just protecting them, use a very
> condensed
> > version of the {{protected}} banner, (its just too
> > much text and graphics people) and make people
> work on
> > a proxy draft instead?
>
>
> Hasn't worked - the anons don't talk, they just
> revert. Protecting one page
> for a month did nothing - they just came back when
> it was unprotected and
> started over.
>
> Nationalist POV pushing is becoming a real problem
> on Wikipedia.
> Particularly in cases where it appears
> semi-official, as with these cases
> and with User:Levzur on Georgia-related articles. I
> suspect a series of AC
> rulings as we go isn't really the best way to
> approach the problem. What
> can we do abouthis sort of thing? Gdansk/Danzig is
> just the tip of it.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Claudio V

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
You can always just buy a USB2.0 external drive where
you can not only host the cur table but also the old
table which would make it the complete English
Wikipedia

Claudio

 --- Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>
> Someone may be interested in knowing that the
> English wikipedia is now
> bigger than a DVD: an ISO image I made including all
> images and all
> articles as html files weighted in at 4,707 MB, when
> a standard DVD-R is
> only 4,480 MB or so.
>
> So now a "complete" edition is impossible even with
> a DVD. A selection
> process must be used, or at least images should be
> used with moderation
> :-)
>
> Alfio

______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nationalist POV-pushing on Wikpedia: what to do?
	(was Azerbaijan and Iran related articles)

body:
What am I, the answer man?

S

--- Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:

> Something like, say, good old Wikipedia:Quickpolls
> (now defunct)? What's your scheme to prevent abuse
of
> the system?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Stephen Adair

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040807/8594ed52/attachment.diff


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Angela_ wrote:

>On Sat,  7 Aug 2004 18:44:52 -0400, mbecker wrote:
>
>
>>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees?
>>
>>
>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>
Even if the Foundation would ultimately prevail on the merits, it's
still correct that the copyright holders can sue, and can force us to
incur serious legal fees. Also, the publisher can be liable for
copyright infringements, so I think it's inaccurate to suggest that
there's no legal risk to the Foundation. More correct is Angela's later
statement that OCILLA protects us to some extent.

And even then, the statement can only possibly be correct for online
publication. Print or DVD versions are an entirely different matter. For
those, we have no such protection, and the fact that some other party
(the original uploader) is also guilty of infringement helps the
Foundation not at all.

>>Also, how do we ensure that it is clear that these images are not reproducible under the GFDL?
>>
>>
>It is generally believed that fair use images are compatible with the
>GFDL. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Do_fair_use_images_violate_the_GFDL%3F
>
This depends on how you look at the question. If you ask whether fair
use material can be mixed with GFDL material, that's one question. If
you ask whether fair use content can be licensed directly under the
GFDL, that's rather different. Apparently our official position is that
images are the former, but it's not one I'm very comfortable with.

>We are protected to some extent by the [[Online Copyright Infringement
>Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the images down if someone
>sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we would avoid legal risk
>that way.
>
I would say reduce rather than avoid, but maybe I'm being too technical.

--Michael Snow
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040807/2379bfe7/attachment.htm


body:
Angela_ wrote:

>On Sat,  7 Aug 2004 18:44:52 -0400, mbecker wrote:
>
>
>>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees?
>>
>>
>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>
Even if the Foundation would ultimately prevail on the merits, it's
still correct that the copyright holders can sue, and can force us to
incur serious legal fees. Also, the publisher can be liable for
copyright infringements, so I think it's inaccurate to suggest that
there's no legal risk to the Foundation. More correct is Angela's later
statement that OCILLA protects us to some extent.

And even then, the statement can only possibly be correct for online
publication. Print or DVD versions are an entirely different matter. For
those, we have no such protection, and the fact that some other party
(the original uploader) is also guilty of infringement helps the
Foundation not at all.

>>Also, how do we ensure that it is clear that these images are not reproducible under the GFDL?
>>
>>
>It is generally believed that fair use images are compatible with the
>GFDL. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Do_fair_use_images_violate_the_GFDL%3F
>
This depends on how you look at the question. If you ask whether fair
use material can be mixed with GFDL material, that's one question. If
you ask whether fair use content can be licensed directly under the
GFDL, that's rather different. Apparently our official position is that
images are the former, but it's not one I'm very comfortable with.

>We are protected to some extent by the [[Online Copyright Infringement
>Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the images down if someone
>sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we would avoid legal risk
>that way.
>
I would say reduce rather than avoid, but maybe I'm being too technical.

--Michael Snow
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040807/2379bfe7/attachment-0001.htm


body:
Angela_ wrote:

>On Sat,  7 Aug 2004 18:44:52 -0400, mbecker wrote:
>
>
>>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees?
>>
>>
>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>
Even if the Foundation would ultimately prevail on the merits, it's
still correct that the copyright holders can sue, and can force us to
incur serious legal fees. Also, the publisher can be liable for
copyright infringements, so I think it's inaccurate to suggest that
there's no legal risk to the Foundation. More correct is Angela's later
statement that OCILLA protects us to some extent.

And even then, the statement can only possibly be correct for online
publication. Print or DVD versions are an entirely different matter. For
those, we have no such protection, and the fact that some other party
(the original uploader) is also guilty of infringement helps the
Foundation not at all.

>>Also, how do we ensure that it is clear that these images are not reproducible under the GFDL?
>>
>>
>It is generally believed that fair use images are compatible with the
>GFDL. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Do_fair_use_images_violate_the_GFDL%3F
>
This depends on how you look at the question. If you ask whether fair
use material can be mixed with GFDL material, that's one question. If
you ask whether fair use content can be licensed directly under the
GFDL, that's rather different. Apparently our official position is that
images are the former, but it's not one I'm very comfortable with.

>We are protected to some extent by the [[Online Copyright Infringement
>Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the images down if someone
>sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we would avoid legal risk
>that way.
>
I would say reduce rather than avoid, but maybe I'm being too technical.

--Michael Snow
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040807/2379bfe7/attachment.html>


body:
Angela_ wrote:

>On Sat,  7 Aug 2004 18:44:52 -0400, mbecker wrote:
>
>
>>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees?
>>
>>
>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>
Even if the Foundation would ultimately prevail on the merits, it's
still correct that the copyright holders can sue, and can force us to
incur serious legal fees. Also, the publisher can be liable for
copyright infringements, so I think it's inaccurate to suggest that
there's no legal risk to the Foundation. More correct is Angela's later
statement that OCILLA protects us to some extent.

And even then, the statement can only possibly be correct for online
publication. Print or DVD versions are an entirely different matter. For
those, we have no such protection, and the fact that some other party
(the original uploader) is also guilty of infringement helps the
Foundation not at all.

>>Also, how do we ensure that it is clear that these images are not reproducible under the GFDL?
>>
>>
>It is generally believed that fair use images are compatible with the
>GFDL. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Do_fair_use_images_violate_the_GFDL%3F
>
This depends on how you look at the question. If you ask whether fair
use material can be mixed with GFDL material, that's one question. If
you ask whether fair use content can be licensed directly under the
GFDL, that's rather different. Apparently our official position is that
images are the former, but it's not one I'm very comfortable with.

>We are protected to some extent by the [[Online Copyright Infringement
>Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the images down if someone
>sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we would avoid legal risk
>that way.
>
I would say reduce rather than avoid, but maybe I'm being too technical.

--Michael Snow
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040807/2379bfe7/attachment-0001.html>


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
Someone may be interested in knowing that the English wikipedia is now
bigger than a DVD: an ISO image I made including all images and all
articles as html files weighted in at 4,707 MB, when a standard DVD-R is
only 4,480 MB or so.

So now a "complete" edition is impossible even with a DVD. A selection
process must be used, or at least images should be used with moderation
:-)

Alfio


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 23:25:31 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>
> Someone may be interested in knowing that the English wikipedia is now
> bigger than a DVD: an ISO image I made including all images and all
> articles as html files weighted in at 4,707 MB, when a standard DVD-R is
> only 4,480 MB or so.
>
> So now a "complete" edition is impossible even with a DVD. A selection
> process must be used, or at least images should be used with moderation
> :-)
heard of compression?
>
> Alfio
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
S.Vertigo wrote:

>Angela:
>
>
>>>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>>>
>>>
>>>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>>>
>>>
>
>That may be the letter of the law interpretation, but
>for "the foundation" to make a policy of deflecting
>all such responsibility to its contributors, would
>only bode well for any competing project that chose to
>show a little more philosophical and legal backbone.
>Pioneering projects need to be pioneering, not
>capitulating or betraying to their own supporters,
>especially if the mistakes are honest ones in the
>realm of intel property. In any case, the inclusion of
>material is a community decision, and so the
>foundation as a facilitator for the violation, (by an
>implied community decision) is legally responsible.
>Does going apenuts with compliance paranoia to a
>particular legal system comply with the larger goals
>of being globally accessible and philosophically
>equitable? I.D.T.S...
>
>What exactly constitutes a "community 'decision'" when
>anything can be changed anytime, is wobbly.
>
I too thought that the response was peculiar.  Passing the buck onto
some na?ve individual who may not understand copyright law at all evades
responsibility.  The argument is even less tenable when we don't even
know the legal identity of the contributor.

Collective responsibility and collective courage are the head and tail
of the same coin.  If you flip that coin and it consistently lands the
same way you have a biased coin.  Collective responsibility means that
we stop people from uploading blatant copyright violations.  With
collective courage we are able to give the contributor the benefit of
the doubt.  We give him an opportunity to argue his case in the context
of copyright law, and if he makes a convincing case we accept his
material with eyes wide open.  This does not mean that we won't review
our decision if it is seriously challenged by a duly interested party,
nor does it mean that we will goo to the wall with the decision
Sometimes we need to say, "This material may still be copyright, but
it's 30 years old, the publisher went bankrupt 25 years ago, and the
writer or photographer died 20 years ago without a family and without
mentioning copyrights in his will.  Maybe we should take a chance."

Ec


from_name: Fennec Foxen

body:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 20:21:44 -0700 (PDT), S.Vertigo <sewev at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Right, well then whats needed is a kind of "huddle"
> or "quick conference" for deciding to ban "POV
> vandals," ie. 'people who are for one reason or
> another refusing to comply with NPOV and Civility.'
> (Part of being "civil" is also talking and discussing,
> right?)

Something like, say, good old Wikipedia:Quickpolls (now defunct)?
What's your scheme to prevent abuse of the system?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>heard of compression?

Compressing 2.5 GB of images you won't gain anything. And compressing the
html files will make them less easy to browse. Likely an installer would
be needed.

Alfio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia exceeds DVD size

body:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:

>On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 23:48:31 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
><puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>> Compressing 2.5 GB of images you won't gain anything. And compressing the
>> html files will make them less easy to browse. Likely an installer would
>> be needed.
>
>You're right about images but you can compress text at least in half.
>I agree that in that case producing a DVD with WikiPedia content isn't
>as easy as just dumping the content into static html files but I would
>think that to offer a decent product one would have to create a
>specialized viewer anyway.
>
>For one, browsing static html with built-in web browser makes it
>impossible to do search (either normal or full-text) which is quite a
>big problem.
>
>Once you start going down the "standalone browser" road, adding on-the
>fly decompression of data is quite easy (compared to all other stuff
>that would likely need to be done).

Of course all kinds of tricks may be used. I was just saying the "more
than a DVD" as an interesting curiosity.

Alfio


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bughunt day 6

body:
We now stand at 139 open bugs out of 1110 total, on schedule 15 bugs
down from yesterday.

Tomorrow is day six of the bughunt week, with a target of 139 - 15 = 124
open bugs.

-- 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/20040808/ad0898f6/attachment.pgp>


body:
On Sat,  7 Aug 2004 18:44:52 -0400, mbecker wrote:

> I've put the image up for deletion here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Image:TrangBang.jpg

Votes for deletion has expanded since you were last here. There is now
[[Wikipedia:Images for deletion]] and [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]]
(which is where copyright-violating images should go to be deleted).

> Apparently this is not an isolated incident though.

No, there are hundreds of them. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_images

> Again, I've been gone for quite a while. Has there been a consensus by the community that we should start using copyrighted material in wikipedia?

There is not a complete consensus over whether we should allow fair use images.

> Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees?

The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
fair use, not with the Foundation.

> Also, how do we ensure that it is clear that these images are not reproducible under the GFDL?

It is generally believed that fair use images are compatible with the
GFDL. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Do_fair_use_images_violate_the_GFDL%3F

> Is the foundation willing to pursue lawsuits against them for violating copyright law?

If an image really is fair use, it is not violating copyright law.

> If we decide to indeed allow the upload of copyrighted material under "fair use" who determines that it is fair use?

The person who uploads the image should do that before they upload it.

> 1. Are we breaking copyright law?

If the images are fair use, then we are not.

> 2. Is it worth making wikipedia less free to include copyrighted material?

There is a lack of agreement over this. The German Wikipedia have a
policy which disallows fair use completely.

> 3. Is the wikimedia foundation willing to incur legal fees to fight cases against it for copyright violation

We are protected to some extent by the [[Online Copyright Infringement
Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the images down if someone
sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we would avoid legal risk
that way.

Angela.


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>>So now a "complete" edition is impossible even with a DVD. A selection
>>process must be used, or at least images should be used with moderation
>>:-)
>
> heard of compression?
>
>>Alfio

And double-layered? (8,5Gb) Also blue-ray is comming soon. (25Gb)

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city

body:
--- Stephen Adair <SWAdair at computermail.net> wrote:
> ...
> I think 200 bytes is a reasonable lower limit.  Under 200 bytes gets you a
> message about needing more substance (or some more tactful word) before an
> article can be created, along with a link to the sandbox for those who want
> to practice editing.

This sounds like a good idea. Another idea would be to not allow anons to
create new articles (editing existing articles would still be allowed). They
would get a message after following a red link that invites them to create a
user account so that they can create a new page (and list some advantages of
being a logged-in editor).

With 300K+ articles I think we should start more concerted efforts to encourage
expanding the articles we already have and somewhat de-emphasize the creation
of new articles (esp stubs).

> There are so many people, most of them well-intentioned, posting unuseable
> content to the Wikipedia, and so few dedicated regulars trying to clean up
> after them.  We're being deluged with fluff, and we don't have to be.  I
> think a reasonable minimum byte count would reduce the workload of those
> trying to maintain the Wikipedia, while simultaneously improving the quality
> of the articles.

What we really need is a way to remove articles checked x number of times by x
user type (non-new users or Admins) from RC, newpages and similar special
pages. Much duplicated effort occurs as-is, making the problem seem worse than
it should be.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


from_name: Timwi

body:
Angela_ wrote:

>>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees?
>
> The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
> fair use, not with the Foundation.

That's interesting. This is the first time I hear this (but I haven't
followed the discussion very much, either).  So what are you going to do
if the uploader is an anonymous IP address?

>>Is the foundation willing to pursue lawsuits against them for violating copyright law?
>
> If an image really is fair use, it is not violating copyright law.

At least not in the U.S.

> The German Wikipedia have a policy which disallows fair use completely.

Which is reasonable, seeing as most of the users of the German-language
content are going to be German, Swiss, Austrian or possibly
Luxembourgian, and those countries don't have a "fair use" law.

> We are protected to some extent by the [[Online Copyright Infringement
> Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the images down if someone
> sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we would avoid legal risk
> that way.

Again, this is interesting.  I didn't know there was an extra Act for
this.  This begs the question would other countries have a similar law.

Timwi


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-B

references:
<pan.2004.06.08.12.30.14.532128@arvin.dk>
	<ca4qvk$jsu$1@sea.gmane.org> <shu0xlhq8p.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<1086800687.1588.16.camel@venus> <shsmcr7ve5.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<shk6y2pqws.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de> <1087815572.1641.0.camel@venus>

body:
Gabriel Wicke <lists at wikidev.net> writes:

> On Sun, 2004-06-20 at 10:36 +0200, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>> > Gabriel Wicke <lists at wikidev.net> writes:
>> >
>> >> To switch them off, drop
>> >>
>> >> ta = false;
>> >>
>> >> in your monobook.js.

> Works fine for me with Firefox, did you reload after changing monobook.
> js?

It works for Alt-B, but Alt-F still does not work.

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city

body:
Why don't you just leave stubs alone and let them develop into articles
through a natural process?

Fred

> From: Stephen Adair <SWAdair at computermail.net>
> Reply-To: SWAdair at computermail.net, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 22:03:54 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city
>
> I can't get any work done.  It seems all I ever do is patrol New Pages.  I
> can't count the number of times I've typed an edit summary of "Speedy Delete
> tag -- obvious test page."  I'm all for stubs becoming short articles becoming
> articles to be proud of, but can't we at least place a lower limit on the byte
> count allowed for new articles?
>
> I think 200 bytes is a reasonable lower limit.  Under 200 bytes gets you a
> message about needing more substance (or some more tactful word) before an
> article can be created, along with a link to the sandbox for those who want to
> practice editing.
>
> That would eliminate almost all tests in the article space and increase the
> likelihood that an article has at least some useable context to it.  It would
> also decrease the number of dicdefs posted, making it more likely that the
> original author expands it, if possible.
>
> There are so many people, most of them well-intentioned, posting unuseable
> content to the Wikipedia, and so few dedicated regulars trying to clean up
> after them.  We're being deluged with fluff, and we don't have to be.  I think
> a reasonable minimum byte count would reduce the workload of those trying to
> maintain the Wikipedia, while simultaneously improving the quality of the
> articles.
>
> Anyone who is really interested in a topic will write more than 200 bytes
> without being told they need to.  Well over 99% of all tests in the article
> space are far less than 200 bytes.  Most dicdefs are under 200 bytes.  Many
> Candidates for Speedy Deletion are under 200 bytes.  I love the Wikipedia, but
> I strongly dislike the *unnecessary* workload.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> Stephen W. Adair
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city

body:
We don't need this. Cleanup is way overrated as compared to the athmosphere
of freedom and participation which a wiki fosters.

Fred

> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 01:57:43 -0700 (PDT)
> To: SWAdair at computermail.net, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city
>
> This sounds like a good idea. Another idea would be to not allow anons to
> create new articles (editing existing articles would still be allowed). They
> would get a message after following a red link that invites them to create a
> user account so that they can create a new page (and list some advantages of
> being a logged-in editor).
>
> With 300K+ articles I think we should start more concerted efforts to
> encourage
> expanding the articles we already have and somewhat de-emphasize the creation
> of new articles (esp stubs).


from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Azerbaijan and Iran related articles

body:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 12:42:12 -0700 (PDT), S.Vertigo <sewev at yahoo.com> wrote:
> How about just protecting them, use a very condensed
> version of the {{protected}} banner, (its just too
> much text and graphics people) and make people work on
> a proxy draft instead?

That has already been tried, to no effect. Some of the above articles
were protected for two weeks (a few for more than a month), but the
anonymous users started their reverts very early after they were
unprotected.

We (me and [[User:Refdoc]], mainly) also tried to act in the NPOV way,
finding how hard it ethically is to include some complete nonsense in
an encyclopedic article, but doing it finally. But even when the
anonymous users' opinions were included in the articles, they went and
removed the other POVs or the objections to their own POVs, and
reverted to the earlier wordings of themselves (also removing wiki
links and boldfacing many many phrases).

We could not make them talk much either. Instead of talking on topic,
they were either blaming people, or were being called names (by, for
example, [[User:K1]]).

Anyway, let's hope this is history, and we can get [[History of
Azerbaijan]] in shape again...

Really appreciating any kind of advice,
[[User:Roozbeh]]


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I too thought that the response was peculiar.
> Passing the buck onto
> some na?ve individual who may not understand
> copyright law at all evades
> responsibility.

Its understandable. Official positions not only must
remain uncolored, but also moderately defensive of the
institution. Any offical doctrine is going to draw a
sharp and non-intuitive line, unless dealing with
specific cases. Language is just codewords, and
paradoxically enough, private discussion can be more
open.

> Sometimes we need to say, "This material may still
> be copyright, but
> it's 30 years old, the publisher went bankrupt 25
> years ago, and the
> writer or photographer died 20 years ago without a
> family and without
> mentioning copyrights in his will.  Maybe we should
> take a chance."

I dont think that its remotely this conditional. Alex
made it clear that it's all pretty unclear as to how a
case could come down. The most touchy aspects are all
very general and current issues for law, not at all
particular to WP. To stick-neck-out or
not-stick-neck-out; that is the question. And this is
in degrees: the *degree of caution expressed (in
direct proportion to the number of nuts invested)
versus the degree to which such caution is
{{{understood}}} to stifle the goal of development.
The balanced and cautious community decision led to
the well understood and vigilant requirement for
attribution. This is good enough IMNSHO.

S

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


body:
--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> I'm going to say something EXTREMELY unpopular...
> U.S. nationalist POV, that is.

How "EXTREMELY" unpopular can what youve got to say
be, (??) when your dealing with only 6% of the world's
population? :)

> I've seen an article where it was disputed that the
> warfare use of
> napalm constituted chemical warfare, and where the
> caption to a famous
> picture showing the consequences of a U.S. napalm
> attack was changed --
> the contributor simply disputed whether the U.S. had
> been responsible for the Vietnam napalm attack.

Sorry, that particular war is not open for discussion
until the year 2030, or else after 99.7 percent of the
'baby boom' generation has passed on, whichever is
longer. You are free to discuss *other wars, and any
related photographs all you want. Myself I'm hot on
the trail of some silver gelatin prints of the
American Revolutionary War.

S

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Cleanup is way overrated as compared to the
> atmosphere of freedom and participation which a wiki
> fosters.

It was a compromise alternative to outright
deletionism, LOL. I kind of like the idea of just
using the category alone, but The 'category' namespace
should be left to encyclopedic content only. Maybe a
'meta' namespace category track would be cool for the
other stuff.

> Why don't you just leave stubs alone and let them
> develop into articles
> through a natural process?

Bah! By what "natural process" does one expect to
simply set up an article about something, and it
develop? Will people just come along and edit it
themselves? LOL. I dont *think, so...

S

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: David Gerard

body:
S.Vertigo (sewev at yahoo.com) [040808 05:43]:

> How about just protecting them, use a very condensed
> version of the {{protected}} banner, (its just too
> much text and graphics people) and make people work on
> a proxy draft instead?

Hasn't worked - the anons don't talk, they just revert. Protecting one page
for a month did nothing - they just came back when it was unprotected and
started over.

Nationalist POV pushing is becoming a real problem on Wikipedia.
Particularly in cases where it appears semi-official, as with these cases
and with User:Levzur on Georgia-related articles. I suspect a series of AC
rulings as we go isn't really the best way to approach the problem. What
can we do abouthis sort of thing? Gdansk/Danzig is just the tip of it.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city

body:
Well, look at [[Tucson, Arizona]. Not much there yet, but it grew from "A
large city in southern [[Arizona]]." See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Tucson%2C_Arizona&oldid=96407

Fred

> From: "S.Vertigo" <sewev at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 08:22:14 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sub-stub city
>
>
> --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> Cleanup is way overrated as compared to the
>> atmosphere of freedom and participation which a wiki
>> fosters.
>
> It was a compromise alternative to outright
> deletionism, LOL. I kind of like the idea of just
> using the category alone, but The 'category' namespace
> should be left to encyclopedic content only. Maybe a
> 'meta' namespace category track would be cool for the
> other stuff.
>
>> Why don't you just leave stubs alone and let them
>> develop into articles
>> through a natural process?
>
> Bah! By what "natural process" does one expect to
> simply set up an article about something, and it
> develop? Will people just come along and edit it
> themselves? LOL. I dont *think, so...
>
> S
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Rick

body:
Yawn.  Typical usual boring anti-American rant.  Get over it.

RickK

Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
IMHO nationalist POV has been a problem on Wikipedia for a LOOONG time:
U.S. nationalist POV, that is.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040808/bd8005f2/attachment.htm


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Peh-oe-ji on minnan.wikipedia.org

body:
(I'm sorry for the lengthy response below, but I felt it was necessary
to supply some historical context in response to a lengthy criticism of
how a Wikipedia should be named.  Neither the language/dialect nor the
Wikipedia, as productive as it has been, is not well-known, particularly
to Anglo/European editors.)

Tim Starling wrote:

 > Contrary to what Shizhao said, it seems that the Peh-oe-ji orthography,
 > as seen on minnan.wikipedia.org, is not even representative of
 > Taiwanese, let alone Min Nan. In fact it is only used by a small
 > minority.

Of course the Peh-oe-ji (hereafter POJ) orthography is used by a "small
minority".  This is in large part due to the fact that Min Nan
everywhere is historically not a written language.  In fact historically
the vast majority of Min Nan speakers were illiterate.  Those elite who
could afford to read and write primarily did so in Classical Chinese,
albeit pronounced in Literary Min Nan (a form of Vulgar Classical
Chinese, if you will).  But there were piecemeal and largely
non-cumulative attempts to write down the speech, though nothing
systematic has come out of it.  Historically.

More recent development:  In the early part of the 19th century US and
later British missionaries started to proselytize in Min Nan speaking
regions, starting from the large "expatriate" communities in Southeast
Asia, then Amoy (Xiamen), Shantou, eventually Formosa (Taiwan).  The
orthography used was thus not limited to the Taiwanese population.  (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Van_Nest_Talmage.  I wrote this but
feel free to check the sources.)  Now of course, as you can imagine, its
usage was at first limited only to the Min Nan-speaking Christian
population, which had always been small, but the variety of works in
this corpus was much broader, and not all of a blatantly religious
nature, than anything that had been written in any other scripts
including Chinese characters, to this day.  Since the end of martial law
in Taiwan, school children are no longer punished for speaking Min Nan
and although no authority in Min Nan-speaking region anywhere has
regulated how Min Nan *ought* to be written, in Taiwan POJ is taught.
This could be misconstrued as evidence that POJ is intrinsically
"Taiwanese" but that's simply not so.

Also see my previous response to your contention that "[the POJ] writing
there [i.e. minnan.wikipedia.org] is thus not representative of min-nan
generally":

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011024.html

I quote:
"To keep discussion short I'll just say, for now, that most variants of
Minnan are generally and historically *not* written and when written,
generally without reference to a standard (lots of words written
inconsistently).  The genra have also been limited to songs and other
poetic forms.  So it's difficult to talk about representativeness in
that context.  The current Minnan Wikipedia *is* the "state of the art"
to the extent that Minnan has been written and read historically."

 >Now I have every respect for the goals of those who promote
 > Peh-oe-ji, but I don't think Wikipedia should assign subdomains which
 > support one political viewpoint over another.

Now I am puzzled by your assertion that using the Peh-oe-ji orthography
to write Min Nan constitutes a "political viewpoint".  Which viewpoint
is that?  A Christian viewpoint?  A Taiwan-centric Min Nan viewpoint?  A
pro-alphabet, anti-character viewpoint?

I will say for now that people use the orthography for many reasons.
Many like the fact that they are able to write in a consistent manner in
an orthography attested by a century-and-half of works.  Many are
Taoist, Buddhist, atheists, etc.  (I am certainly not Christain in case
you are wondering -- not that this should be relevant.)  If some people
would like to politicize a writing system, well, they are feel to do so
but that does not necessarily mean their viewpoint has wide currency.

 > Currently the predominant form of writing in Taiwan is "Traditional
 > Chinese", given the code zh-tw. Writing of this form is commonly used on
 > zh.wikipedia.org.

Traditional Chinese has been widely taught in Taiwan's educational
system since the end of WWII, for the purpose of writing the (de facto)
official Mandarin language (or dialect, if you will).  The ISO code
zh-tw specifies the regional variety of the "zh language", which is
generally interpreted as meaning Mandarin.

But since the Taiwanese are a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society, how
official Mandarin is written does not dictate how other native languages
must be written.  The Government certainly does not prescribe that Min
Nan in Taiwan should be written in Chinese characters.

 >The Taiwanese people who write in zh.wikipedia.org
 > speak the exact same language as those who write on
 > minnan.wikipedia.org. That language is a form of Min Nan, referred to in
 > Taiwan as Ho-lo-oe.

Note that Min Nan is not the native language of every Taiwanese and
therefore only some Taiwanese speak Min Nan.  Other people who are not
Taiwanese also speak some form of Min Nan.  When those Min Nan speakers
(regardless of nationality) participate in an xx-language Wikipedia,
they use whatever the dominant writing system is.  Thus they do not
attempt to, for example, write Japanese in Roumaji (romanization) in
ja.wikipedia.org.

Nor is every editor in minnan.wikipedia.org Taiwanese.  We also have
editors from Amoy, PRC.

I hope you would not try to confuse the issue by implying that since
Mandarin speakers write Mandarin in Chinese characters, that they
therefore necessarily must write Min Nan similarly.  It should not be
difficult to understand that related languages, for historical reasons,
may well be treated to different scripts.  I need not cite the many
examples in this category (but I will if requested).

 > Based on the information I have now, I would like to move
 > minnan.wikipedia.org to peh-oe-ji.wikipedia.org. I'm expecting
 > objections to this from the users of that wiki, who seem to be keen
 > promoters of the Peh-oe-ji orthography. All the same, I'd like to hear
 > any comments or objections anyone has.

In June 2004 you very nicely asked:

 > > How about minnan.wikipedia.org? It's shorter, doesn't conflict with
 > > anything, and is easy to remember.
 > >
 > > -- Tim Starling

(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-June/010377.html)

But to the surprise of several Min Nan editors, you went ahead without
waiting for any feedback, even though you appeared to invite it in a
non-rhetorical fashion.  Given this experience I have concluded that I,
as a Min Nan editor, is powerless to influence whatever you believe,
rightly or wrongly, to be the best course of action.  I trust your
judgement as a developer but I am not convinced by your arguments to the
effect that  the Minnan Wikipedia, as written, is somehow unrepresentive
(even "unauthentic"?).  You are of course free to conduct further
research and show Min Nan editors works that you regard as representive
of Min Nan (or Min Nan Taiwanese) writing.

~~~~


body:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:

> Neither the language/dialect nor the
> Wikipedia, as productive as it has been, is not well-known

Oops, I meant "well-known".