from_name: N.T. Riche

body:
Yes, I agree there is an American Bias however I still think our policies in place are good enough to correct it

User:Plato.

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Cassini Huygens is today the most updated article on the net.
Congratulations.

------

This said, just a comment.

During months, the Cassini-Huygens mission was only on ONE article,
called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens.

The Huygens probe article was JUST a redirect.
It obviously did not need an article. The content about the probe (only
european) could very well be under an article about the craftship
(american european, with of course, american name first).

When the Huygens page was created, it was immediately made a redirect,
with the argument : redirecting to Cassini probe, since Huygens is
basically a subsystem of it.

Sorry, there is no such thing that as a Cassini probe. There is a
Huygens probe.

And the Huygens probe landed, NOT the "Cassini" probe.

Only yesterday, the article was split and the real probe authorized to
have an existence on its own.
It was not because it was a unit in itself, it was MERELY because the
Cassini page was too big.

I forgot, a good part of the Huygens article was about its critical
flaw. The good points were in the Cassini article.

The images of the landing were not on Huygens article, they were on
Cassini article

-------

It does not matter ?

Well, I think it does.

It makes far too much light on the american part of a project and forget
the other involved. For me, it is the perfect example of how bias is
lightly, oh ever so lightly, included in some articles.

Without probably anyone noticing.

I am sure it was not done on purpose at all. This is just a view of
things so different between one culture and another.

For european, this is a joint project but a european success.

For american, according to what is implied by the article division, it
is basically an american (and a bit european) success.

--------

Does it matter really ?

Well, I think it does.

Go on google, and look at "Cassini-Huygens landing site".
Look at results, Wikipedia IS there.

now, look at "Huygens landing site"
Look at results, right, Wikipedia is not in the first page.
Only on the second, and only for Cassini.

This is very very small thing ?
I do not think so. Most people look at the first search page. They do
not go further.

It is Huygens which landed. Not Cassini.
One look for a european probe and finds only an american mission.

--------

The articles are great. But the bias is there. Google has it more true
than us.

Anthere

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

---------------------------------
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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization for Lojban

body:
On Friday 14 January 2005 22:53, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Dates and times occur in three types:
> * date only (year/month/day given in some particular format)
> * time only (hour and seconds)
> * date and time together
>
> (I don't think we actually use the day of the week for anything.)
>
> Each is formatted by a method of the Language object (time(), date(),
> timeanddate()), which can be overridden in the child class for a
> particular language.
>
> Usually they occur as headers (dates on Special:Recentchanges) or as
> part of a table (times on Special:Recentchanges, date+time on history
> list, etc). They may appear in a sentence only in a couple of places I
> think, such as "Show new changes starting from 19:43, Jan 14, 2005",
> though you could modify those messages to some more appropriate form if
> necessary.

Is it possible to set the date format in preferences? For different formats in
different contexts, can I define a new method of the Language object?

> > *Initial capitalization does not exist. Capitalization indicates
> > stress.
> > If you'd like to help me with this, please let me know.
>
> I added the $wgCapitalLinks option some time ago to disable forced
> title capitalization for languages such as lojban (though it's also
> gotten used on several of the Wiktionaries simply to enforce lowercase
> page titles for definitions). If there's anything else necessary to
> support this, we'll need more detail. :)

That should work, but I don't see wgCapitalLinks in the files I have, which
are:
Language.php     LanguageDe.php  LanguageJbo.php
Language1.3.php  LanguageFr.php  LanguageJbo1.3.php
So I tried to do it by modifying ucfirst and lcfirst.

Can you install the language file so that I can see what it's doing?

phma
--
Maintenant, j'ai besoin d'une loupe pour trouver mes lunettes!
	-Les Perles de la m?decine


list: wikien-l

from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] minor issue, but still a npov warning

body:
At 11:40 PM 1/14/2005 +0100, Anthere wrote:
>For european, this is a joint project but a european success.
>
>For american, according to what is implied by the article division, it is
>basically an american (and a bit european) success.

I'm the one who created the original redirect from [[Huygens probe]] to
Cassini. Back when I did that, the Cassini article was located at [[Cassini
probe]] so that's where I redirected it to. Also, the article itself was at
the time just a mildly-modified version of material I had copied directly
from http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1997-061A and
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ - both of them NASA websites, so naturally with
an American perspective on things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cassini-Huygens&oldid=2550496 for
those interested in seeing the article as it was at the time.

I'm also the one who split the Huygens section off into its own article
again a couple days back. Article size was the reason why I split it off
when I did, so that's why I put it in the edit summary. There are other
perfectly valid reasons to split the article, and if someone had split it
up based on those other reasons I'd expect those other reasons to be in the
edit summary instead. I don't see why it makes a difference, since we both
agree that it should be split.

I'm Canadian, BTW, which means I'm half European and half American but will
deny being either. :)

>Go on google, and look at "Cassini-Huygens landing site".
>Look at results, Wikipedia IS there.
>
>now, look at "Huygens landing site"
>Look at results, right, Wikipedia is not in the first page.
>Only on the second, and only for Cassini.

Google doesn't update its rankings instantaneously, so splitting the
article won't have an effect for a while yet. You could have split it
earlier if you wanted, I don't disagree with your reasoning and would have
supported it if I'd noticed you doing it back then.


from_name: Anthere

body:
Cassini Huygens is today the most updated article on the net.
Congratulations.

------

This said, just a comment.

During months, the Cassini-Huygens mission was only on ONE article,
called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens.

The Huygens probe article was JUST a redirect.
It obviously did not need an article. The content about the probe (only
european) could very well be under an article about the craftship
(american european, with of course, american name first).

When the Huygens page was created, it was immediately made a redirect,
with the argument : redirecting to Cassini probe, since Huygens is
basically a subsystem of it.

Sorry, there is no such thing that as a Cassini probe. There is a
Huygens probe.

And the Huygens probe landed, NOT the "Cassini" probe.

Only yesterday, the article was split and the real probe authorized to
have an existence on its own.
It was not because it was a unit in itself, it was MERELY because the
Cassini page was too big.

I forgot, a good part of the Huygens article was about its critical
flaw. The good points were in the Cassini article.

The images of the landing were not on Huygens article, they were on
Cassini article

-------

It does not matter ?

Well, I think it does.

It makes far too much light on the american part of a project and forget
the other involved. For me, it is the perfect example of how bias is
lightly, oh ever so lightly, included in some articles.

Without probably anyone noticing.

I am sure it was not done on purpose at all. This is just a view of
things so different between one culture and another.

For european, this is a joint project but a european success.

For american, according to what is implied by the article division, it
is basically an american (and a bit european) success.

--------

Does it matter really ?

Well, I think it does.

Go on google, and look at "Cassini-Huygens landing site".
Look at results, Wikipedia IS there.

now, look at "Huygens landing site"
Look at results, right, Wikipedia is not in the first page.
Only on the second, and only for Cassini.

This is very very small thing ?
I do not think so. Most people look at the first search page. They do
not go further.

It is Huygens which landed. Not Cassini.
One look for a european probe and finds only an american mission.

--------

The articles are great. But the bias is there. Google has it more true
than us.

Anthere


subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates

body:
Thanks Brion,

Slight problem: I can't find any reference to "initial_textarea" nor
"initial textarea" where exactly should I be looking?

I'm running 1.4beta4 could it have been renamed or am I just being
dim? (it's friday, it's late, I'm tired - so it's probably me)

>On Jan 14, 2005, at 12:21 PM, paul at immediart.com wrote:
>> Is it possible to put headings into the edit window of a new page?

>Sure, just hack the code to populate the initial textarea.

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Variables Error

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 11:50 PM, NSK wrote:
> I have placed this in my LocalSettings.php:
>
> $wgSiteNotice = "{{msg:A1}}";
>
> In the wiki there is a [[Template:A1]] page which contains:
>
> Go to "[http://externalsite/{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}} {{PAGENAME}}]".
>
> The result of the above is that NAMESPACE gets replaced by Special and
> PAGENAMEE gets replaced by Error, just like PAGENAME, regardless of
> the page
> I am looking in my wiki. So the result is that I always get
> Special:Error. If
> I remove {{NAMESPACE}} I just get Error.

The site notice text is parsed to WikiText before the local page title
is established.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: "江瑋平(Roberto)"

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Propose to set up a Cantonese Wikipedia

body:
Hello there (to David Chang and other proponents speaking Cantonese mostly),

After the d?tente of these days (the main focus has seemed to be drawn
to the main page of Wikipedia...) --- and I have read most of the
discussions exchanged here --- I wonder if you guys are considering how
to build up this Cantonese version. Do you have some clear plans of
which pages to be written in the first place, and how many committed
contributors are there going to be in the beginning? I'm asking this
just being conserning, because although there has been numerous messages
for or against its establishment, I myself would quite support it. I
think that except discussing about "yes, we need it" or "no, it's
abundant", maybe some concrete plan is desirable? How are you going to
write Cantonese, by which romanization program(s); autoconversion
mechanism needed or not; totally with hanzi or a mix-up with roman
letters? I'm fond of encouraging producing texts of knowledge in
"dialects" (to me, they're really languages unintelligeable with others
just as fit as Catal?n is), and hoping that maybe following Cantonese
version, there would be a Hakka version (which is spoken by 12% of the
population, but quite needs promoting in Taiwan). So I care much about
how your issue is ongoing here:)

P. S. This is my first time using this mailing list system, and any
toleration of my unintended mistakes is pleaded.

Sincerely,

Hrodeberht von MilchFlasche.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: minor issue, but still a npov warning

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Till yesterday, the information on landing and on the probe was
> entirely in the mission article. Even today, most of the information
> was still in the mission article, not on the landing one. To such a
> point there is currently no wikipedia reference on the net about the
> landing article. Wikipedia reference is on the mission article.

Why would that be the right thing to do?  The landing is merely one part
if the mission---The [[Apollo 11]] page, by comparison, doesn't have one
article on the trip *to* the moon, and a separate article on the moon
landing.  There's one article on the entire mission, trip and landing,
and then separate articles on the equipment, like the lunar module.  So,
here, the landing should be in [[Cassini-Huygens]], unless we're talking
about detailed information about how the landing was carried out by the
probe or something like that.

I don't see how this is American bias, either.  The European Space
Agency's own website containing the pictures of the landing has a title
of "Cassini-Huygens", and is located here:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html

The ESA's gallery with the pictures is entitled "Cassini-Huygens images"
(left sidebar on the above site).

I just don't see *anyone*, including the ESA, using "Huygens" as a
separate name for the landing, only as the name of the piece of
equipment.  So it would seem reasonable that we use the name that both
NASA and the ESA use, which is "Cassini-Huygens".

-Mark


from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
"csherlock at ljh.com.au" <csherlock at ljh.com.au> wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
>
> Well, yeah.
>
> One point to remember about 3RR: if you get as far as *three* reverts in 24
> hours, something's badly wrong. Allowing three reverts in 24 hours is one
> of the things Wikipedia allows but does not condone.
>
>
> - d.

Exactly. I think we need to step back a moment and understand WHY the
3RR has been created. It was created to stop those who won't edit via
consensus and thus stop all progress on articles. I'd suggest we be a
little less legalistic about it and look at each editor on a
case-by-case basis.

TBSDY

I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its "simplicity" in that when a breach is committed there is no doubt? No sooner had the ink dried on that policy update that such a breach could lead to a 24 hour block than some of the more "imaginative" sysops were proposing to "interpret" the intention of  a specific editor and demanding the power to block at will based on their personal interpretation.

There is a need to indeed keep it simple or severely restrict who may block through their personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of what another person is thinking.

Regards

Robert

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.


from_name: Todd Smith

subject: [Wikitech-l] Higher quality math symbols

body:
Is there a way I can download .ps quality math fonts to use with my
website?

-Thanks
www.exampleproblems.com

-----------------------
Todd Smith
Mathematics - UCF
tbsmith at mail.ucf.edu


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright, images and the voicing of doubt

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Matt Brown (morven at gmail.com) [050115 08:32]:
>
>
>>Have you noticed, by the way, that the current trend on image
>>copyright is NOT 'assume good faith' on Wikipedia?  We no longer
>>assume that reading a statement and clicking yes to agree is
>>sufficient -- we require people to justify.
>>
>>
>That would be bitter experience with idjits who pull an image off the front
>page of their hero's website and put it on Wikipedia as 'public domain'.
>Or 'fair use' with no justification and a barrage of flames if one dares
>question them.
>
When someone's reply on a copyright question seems founded on ignorance
I'm more inclined to put on an asbestos suit and take a hard line.
Although I believe in a very liberal approach to copyright, such a
stance still needs to be based on facts.instead of wishful thinking.

Ec


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] ModRewrite problem; seeking advice

body:
I'm trying to set up our MediaWiki site to use clean URLs and have
run into a snag. My pages take a long time to load and kick out a
couple of error messages that say "too many HTTP redirects" for the
following URLs:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fcss&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=css&oldid=0

http://www.sourcewatch.org/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0

It appears that these URLs are being generated somehow by the lines
in xhtml_slim.pt which read as follows:

     <script type="text/javascript" tal:attributes="src jsvarurl"></script>
and:

     <style tal:condition="usercss" type="text/css">/*<![CDATA[*/
${usercss} /*]]>*/</style>     <script tal:condition="userjs"
type="text/javascript" tal:attributes="src userjs"></script><script
tal:condition="userjsprev"
type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/${userjsprev}/*]]>*/</script>
When I delete these lines, the error messages stop.

I've reviewed the MediaWiki page on rewrite rules and am wondering if
my problem has to do with the ampescape patch that it says is needed
for Apache. I haven't tried installing the patch and don't know if
I'll be able to. (The patch says it's for Apache 1.3.26, whereas I
have 1.3.29. Also, I don't know if my web host will agree to install
the patch.)

I'm guessing that if I can't patch Apache, I can get away with
deleting the lines above from xhtml_slim.pt, and everything will work
except that (1) users won't be able to customize their javascript and
css, and (2) ampersands won't work in page titles. Is this correct?

The current rewrite rules in my .htaccess file are as follows:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(stylesheets|images)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(redirect|texvc|index).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

# Rewrite http://www.sourcewatch.org/article properly
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]

Can someone tell me what I need to do?

Regards,
Sheldon Rampton


body:
What you describe as an ideal and fair situation was exactly what was
NOT done. And exactly what I comment on.

Till yesterday, the information on landing and on the probe was entirely
in the mission article. Even today, most of the information was still in
the mission article, not on the landing one. To such a point there is
currently no wikipedia reference on the net about the landing article.
Wikipedia reference is on the mission article.

What you explain makes sense.
It was not what was done.

There is no "mistake". The content is correct.
There is only a light, very light, direction given to information and
which information is displayed more proeminently.

Delirium a ?crit:
> Generally our articles on missions are on the missions themselves, their
> planning, accomplishments, and so on, with separate articles on the
> components describing the functioning of the components themselves.  For
> example, the information on the first moon landing is on [[Apollo 11]],
> the name of the mission, while [[Apollo Lunar Module]], the craft that
> actually performed the landing, is an article on the craft itself (which
> of course does mention that it landed on the moon, but is not the
> primary article about the moon landing).
>
> It seems to make sense, along similar lines, to have [[Cassini-Huygens]]
> be the article about the mission, which was planned and executed largely
> as a joint mission, and then separate articles about [[Cassini]] and
> [[Huygens]] describing the detailed information about the craft.  After
> all, there was no "Huygens mission" or "Cassini mission", but a
> "Cassini-Huygens mission" that used both craft.  Huygens and Cassini
> themselves are merely pieces of equipment.
>
> -Mark


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Happy Wikipedia Day!

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

Wikipedia went live four years ago today, on January 15, 2001.

Amazingly, this crazy project we've gotten ourselves into is still on
the web, not _completely_ filled with Pok?mon stubs and crackpot rants,
and even remains free of advertisements, supported by donations and a
lot of hard work.

Presented for your pleasure:
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/

This is a dump of the English Wikipedia page database from December 20,
2001 -- the oldest complete copy I was able to find. It's actually
running on the current MediaWiki software, so as a conversion necessity
some pages have been altered to make links work correctly. (Due to
limitations in the original conversion script, this version may
actually contain some data which is missing or corrupted in the main
database history on en.wikipedia.org.)

You can find even older, though more fragmentary, bits of Ancient
Wikipedia using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010331173908/http://www.wikipedia.com/

Happy Editing, everybody!

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Happy Wikipedia Day!


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Happy Wikipedia Day!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Happy Wikipedia Day!


body:
Stan Shebs a ?crit:

> I think you're working a bit too hard to find bias here. The
> Huygens probe had 1/2 of the original article created 2.5 years
> ago, and sizewise would have been fine to split even then, but
> somehow not one of 600+ million Europeans could be bothered
> to make the split, or to propose it on the talk page.

No, I am not working too hard.
I am trying to report a reality, that you may perceive as "too hard to
find bias"

However, what *really* is a measurement is the perception of our readers.

Right ?

Okay, this was reported to me by some french scientists.
They know Wikipedia, and are often impressed by it.
They were VERY impressed by the articles themselves. As I said, this was
the most informative place aside from the couple of scientific reporting
place. So, WE were a hit.

They were amused however, of that situation.
They are in no way anti-american, but they laughed at our non bias
policy in this case.

They know about the neutrality policy and are aware of how hard it is.
The neutrality in this case, the so-called neutral report make them
laugh their head of.

You may perceive this as "hard work", now, what I say is that these guys
are our readers.
If we want to be perceived reasonably neutral, we just have to pay
attention to this type of details.

That's all what I would like to say.
Consider it crap if you wish.

> The "bias" is that we work on what interests us. I've been
> digging figures of European history out of 1911EB lately,
> and half the time it's the first information about these
> in any language WP. We're just perennially short of people
> to do all the things we would like to get done.
>
> Stan


body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050115 12:01]:
>
>
>>What you describe as an ideal and fair situation was exactly what was
>>NOT done. And exactly what I comment on.
>>Till yesterday, the information on landing and on the probe was entirely
>>in the mission article. Even today, most of the information was still in
>>the mission article, not on the landing one. To such a point there is
>>currently no wikipedia reference on the net about the landing article.
>>Wikipedia reference is on the mission article.
>>What you explain makes sense.
>>It was not what was done.
>
>
>
> er, {{sofixit}}?
>
>
> - d.

Funny...

Yeah, I fixed it.

But my friends lost a bit of faith in our so called neutrality policy.

You have to realise that many europeans were looking for news this
evening. And many found our article I suppose.
They are not editors. They did not fix it. They just *saw* a situation
that appeared biaised to them. They were impressed by the report. They
were not impressed by the neutrality.


from_name: b schewek

subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates

body:
>
> Hi,
>
> Is it possible to put headings into the edit window of a new page?
>
> So when someone creates a new page the form is already populated with
> some headings and notes rather than just a blank page?
>
> They don't have to be fixed - of course users should be able to delete
> them if they want... but it would be useful for my wiki to encourage
> users to use the same basic structure for new pages.
>
> Any tips or suggestions would be very welcome.
>
> PaulY

An extension to this suggestion:
Templates make sense in the context of categories.
One could associate tamplates to categories,
and offer for a new article the list of categories
that have templates.
-- Schewek

--
______________________________________________
Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org
This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox.

Powered by Outblaze


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MySQL 4.1

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

NSK wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 work with MySQL 4.1.8?

Yes. You might need to recompile php-mysql library.

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [050115 06:11]:
> Magnus Manske wrote:

> >For those of you interested in automatic map generation for MediaWiki,
> >check out the very first screenshot of my emerging "geo" software:
> >   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo

> This question makes me regret that I don't have the technical skills to
> develop my own vision of a map project that would be subject to the
> principles of wiki editing, notably that anybody can edit any map. Thus:
    [...]
> discussion of this topic so far, it's that it has been infected by a lot
> of in-the-box kind of thinking.  A map project has a far greater
> potential if we look at it from the ground up, and avoid the more
> limited popular focus on the role of maps.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is trying to put together an open-content map
for the UK. (Whereas US maps are public domain, UK ones are all owned by
Ordnance Survey.) They might be quite interested. (They gave a presentation
at Dorkbot London and used Wikipedia as their proof of concept ;-)

(Dorkbot: "Poeple doing strange things with electricity":
http://www.dorkbot.org/)

- d.


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] MySQL 4.1

body:
Hi,

Does MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 work with MySQL 4.1.8?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h 1m,
> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the piss?"
> test.

Last I checked, admins had no special authority to decide Wikipedia
policy, and admin consensus was irrelivant next to community consensus.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

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

> Robert Brookes (the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com)
> [050115 20:22]:
>
> > I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its
> "simplicity" in that when a breach is committed
> there is no doubt? No sooner had the ink dried on
> that policy update that such a breach could lead to
> a 24 hour block than some of the more "imaginative"
> sysops were proposing to "interpret" the intention
> of  a specific editor and demanding the power to
> block at will based on their personal
> interpretation.
> > There is a need to indeed keep it simple or
> severely restrict who may block through their
> personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of
> what another person is thinking.
>
>
> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on
> this one, that you
> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to
> four reverts in 24h 1m,
> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this
> person taking the piss?"
> test.
>
> Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet
> democracy. It's a
> project to write an encyclopedia.
>
>
> - d.
>

What on earth are you going on about?

__________________________________
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Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
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from_name: David E. Hollingsworth

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Robert Brookes <the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com> writes:

> What on earth are you going on about?

He's saying that violations of the spirit of the rule are still
violations.

  --deh!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> While the community as a whole does make Wikipedia policy, gaming the system
> by engaging in actions which technically break no explicit rule while
> engaging in a pattern of behavior which violates broad Wikipedia policies
> may meet with a common sense reaction by administrators. If you take the
> matter to arbitration you may find the Arbcom awarding a commendation to the
> administrator and a lengthy ban to you.

My point was directed strictly at the notion that admin consensus is
anything special. This has nothing at all to do with whether violations
of the spirit of the law are actionable (a discussion in which I have,
as far as I can remember, never expressed any particular point of view).


body:
Matt Brown (morven at gmail.com) [050115 08:32]:

> Have you noticed, by the way, that the current trend on image
> copyright is NOT 'assume good faith' on Wikipedia?  We no longer
> assume that reading a statement and clicking yes to agree is
> sufficient -- we require people to justify.

That would be bitter experience with idjits who pull an image off the front
page of their hero's website and put it on Wikipedia as 'public domain'.
Or 'fair use' with no justification and a barrage of flames if one dares
question them.

- d.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
While the community as a whole does make Wikipedia policy, gaming the system
by engaging in actions which technically break no explicit rule while
engaging in a pattern of behavior which violates broad Wikipedia policies
may meet with a common sense reaction by administrators. If you take the
matter to arbitration you may find the Arbcom awarding a commendation to the
administrator and a lengthy ban to you.

Edit warring, failure to communicate with other editors about controversial
edits and repeated violations of NPOV policy will weigh much heavier in the
scale than the minor technical violations of blocking policy.

Fred

> From: Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:09:33 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.
>
> David Gerard wrote:
>> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
>> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h 1m,
>> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the piss?"
>> test.
>
> Last I checked, admins had no special authority to decide Wikipedia
> policy, and admin consensus was irrelevant next to community consensus.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Time Zone using 24-hour clock instead of number of
	hours

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:42:13 +0530, Rohan Sharma
> <gates.plusplus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On the message-changing: I don't know, I take it this that has not
>>been a common issue?
>
>
> Well, as you said in your original mail, there aren't many places in
> the world which *require* anything other than a number of hours. I've
> certainly never come across anyone else *mentionning* the
> problem/confusion, but it's hard to tell how many people will have
> shrugged and assumed it's not possible.

I've long noticed that when websites let you choose a UTC offset,
there's frequently no provision for going in anything other than
one-hour increments. I'd imagine that Newfies and the like may be prone
to assuming they can't enter something other than a number of hours,
especially when the text on the page implies they can't.

> Since it *is* possible, though, and since, according to Tim, you can
> enter "1.5", which is still a "number of hours", I'd say it's not
> exactly a high priority to change the message.

Unless you're a programmer, you're unlikely to think of "1.5" when told
"a number of hours", especially if you're used to dealing with
poorly-written and <somecountry>-specific software that breaks if you
treat it as remotely intelligent (see also: most web applications).

I think the message should be changed to "amount of time (hh:mm)", which
is both more correct and more explicit.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Aadmin consensus amounts to customary practice which the Arbcom will take
> into consideration.

Maybe I'm all alone here, but I see "admin consensus" and "customary
practice" as two entirely different things, even if they happen to agree
on an issue. Something doesn't have to be customary practice in order
for admins to come to a consensus on it, nor does admin consensus have
to be in agreement with customary practice.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
--- Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > Aadmin consensus amounts to customary practice
> which the Arbcom will take
> > into consideration.
>
> Maybe I'm all alone here, but I see "admin
> consensus" and "customary
> practice" as two entirely different things, even if
> they happen to agree
> on an issue. Something doesn't have to be customary
> practice in order
> for admins to come to a consensus on it, nor does
> admin consensus have
> to be in agreement with customary practice.
>

And neither does admin practice seem to be dictated by policy.

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
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body:
Matt Brown (morven at gmail.com) [050115 08:40]:

> > That would be bitter experience with idjits who pull an image off the front
> > page of their hero's website and put it on Wikipedia as 'public domain'.
> > Or 'fair use' with no justification and a barrage of flames if one dares
> > question them.

> Ah, the 'Fair Use' definition of 'That's not fair, I wanna use it!'

Check [[Talk:Keith Richards]] for a recent example of my experience.
Canadian law?! If anyone else cares to try to achieve communication ...

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Aadmin consensus amounts to customary practice which the Arbcom will take
into consideration.

Fred

> From: Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:17:02 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> While the community as a whole does make Wikipedia policy, gaming the system
>> by engaging in actions which technically break no explicit rule while
>> engaging in a pattern of behavior which violates broad Wikipedia policies
>> may meet with a common sense reaction by administrators. If you take the
>> matter to arbitration you may find the Arbcom awarding a commendation to the
>> administrator and a lengthy ban to you.
>
> My point was directed strictly at the notion that admin consensus is
> anything special. This has nothing at all to do with whether violations
> of the spirit of the law are actionable (a discussion in which I have,
> as far as I can remember, never expressed any particular point of view).
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Variables Error

body:
Hi,

I have placed this in my LocalSettings.php:

$wgSiteNotice = "{{msg:A1}}";

In the wiki there is a [[Template:A1]] page which contains:

Go to "[http://externalsite/{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}} {{PAGENAME}}]".

The result of the above is that NAMESPACE gets replaced by Special and
PAGENAMEE gets replaced by Error, just like PAGENAME, regardless of the page
I am looking in my wiki. So the result is that I always get Special:Error. If
I remove {{NAMESPACE}} I just get Error.

I use mediawiki1.4beta4, unmodified.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site (NSK)

body:
On Thursday 13 January 2005 22:06, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Agreed fully.

Regarding my link in [[Homo floresiensis]] I have to say that:

I included the link there believing that my report was containing more
information. I believed that it would be beneficial for the reader to read my
report, after having seen the Wikipedia article and the other external links
in it. Of course there was a promotional interest in my action, but I am sure
that it was not spamming (and so my email is not a confession to spamming - I
strongly support my position that spamming and selflinking are very different
things and should be treated differently). I wanted to help the reader learn
more about Floresiensis, but also to help my site grow. My philosophy is to
"help myself by helping others" but a spammer simply believes that he should
help only himself and screw up all the other people. It's very different.

I must admit that when I included my link there, I had no time to read in
detail the Wikipedia article and all the external links in it.

Now I had a check and found that, although my report is informational and
beneficial to the reader who learns about Floresiensis for the first time, it
contains very little information which is not already present in the
Wikipedia article and the other external links. Actually, after reading them,
I found that my report is a bit smallish and I must improve it.

Additionally, after the suggestion of a user in the Talk: page, I had a very
careful read of the "What Wikipedia Is Not" page. This important information,
combined with my realisation above, made me to change my opinion on my link.
I now believe that the readers of the Wikipedia article and its external
links would not find any significant additional information in my current
report, and I myself recommend that the link to my present report is not
truly needed there; it would be redundant to include it since more
information is already contained in the Wikipedia article and its external
links which include sources like BBC, National Geographic, University of New
England, and Nature. I thought deeply about this issue and found that
Wikipedia, which tries to be an encyclopedia, would better avoid links with
redundant information. Although I personally it is generally a good idea to
have many links in a wiki, and I still maintain that the characterisation of
my link as spam was not correct, I agree that in your vision of being an
encyclopedia placing too many external links is not always a good idea.

Having said all that, I would like to inform you that I will not place any
more external links to my site in Wikipedia articles, without prior
discussion in talk pages or this mailing list and the agreement of other
Wikipedians or admins. An exception to this is when a Wikipedia article
contains material from my site, such as [[zsync]] (contributed by me and
relicensed from CC to GFDL for your use).

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Concern with performance issues

body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

>
> The cheap way to get more hardware is to fix the ~7 machines that are
> currently broken and under warranty. Setting up new machines is a
> significant time cost to the system administrator team, it would be
> better if the existing machines were fixed and put back into service
> as
> soon as possible after breaking. The cluster configuration changes
> constantly, if a machine is out of action for long enough,
> reconfiguring
> it to match the rest of the cluster becomes as hard as adding a new
> machine.
>
> There's not much any of us can do to get machines fixed besides
> hassle
> Jimbo.
>
> I'm told 10 machines were ordered yesterday, that will help. Here are
>
> the details:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_ordered_January_2005
>

Perhaps it's time for us to consider on-site service as part of the
warranty package. It is truly dismaying to see that we are ordering 10
new machines when we have ~7 under warranty that need to be repaired.

-Rich Holton
(en.wikipedia:user:Rholton)

__________________________________
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Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
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from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
One of the problems with 3RR-policy enforcement is that admins are
supposed to treat equally the editor who is inserting an unreferenced,
unsubstantiated claim, and the editor who is trying to get rid of that
claim. One is violating [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] policy, while the
other is trying to enforce it. Yet both are blocked.

If the editor trying to enforce policy isn't allowed to violate 3RR,
then s/he must go through dispute resolution; put up an RfC (which
rarely brings useful results); or apply for mediation (which can take
months to arrange). Meanwhile the nonsense sits there for 24 hours;
then maybe there's another brief flurry of reverts, then it sits there
for another 24 hours; and this can go on for weeks, until the less
determined editor backs off.

If the process takes priority over the product, that's fine. But if
it's the production of an accurate encylopedia that is the priority,
then this is not fine.

Surely, for this reason, when looking at 3RR violations, admins should
be allowed to take into account who was violating Wikipedia's
editorial content policies and who was trying to preserve them.

Slim


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] allow xml tags: a first approach

body:
On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 08:29:51PM +0100, f-x.p at laposte.net wrote:
> Hello,
>
> A wiki is probably the best way to share documents and informations...
> why not **structured** informations, like xml ?

Because XML is for computer communication, not for humans.

JeLuF


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Anthere wrote:

>
>
> Stan Shebs a ?crit:
>
>> I think you're working a bit too hard to find bias here. The
>> Huygens probe had 1/2 of the original article created 2.5 years
>> ago, and sizewise would have been fine to split even then, but
>> somehow not one of 600+ million Europeans could be bothered
>> to make the split, or to propose it on the talk page.
>
>
> No, I am not working too hard.
> I am trying to report a reality, that you may perceive as "too hard to
> find bias"
>
> However, what *really* is a measurement is the perception of our readers.
>
> Right ?
>
> Okay, this was reported to me by some french scientists.
> They know Wikipedia, and are often impressed by it.
> They were VERY impressed by the articles themselves. As I said, this
> was the most informative place aside from the couple of scientific
> reporting place. So, WE were a hit.
>
> They were amused however, of that situation.
> They are in no way anti-american, but they laughed at our non bias
> policy in this case.
>
> They know about the neutrality policy and are aware of how hard it is.
> The neutrality in this case, the so-called neutral report make them
> laugh their head of.

And you corrected them on this, right? This is absolutely nothing
to do with NPOV, and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
that they're biased and not doing anything about it. What you
report fits exactly into the worst stereotypes of the French;
sneering at other people's work, but not taking any responsibility
for having let this perceived problem go unmentioned for years.
You said these scientists "know Wikipedia"; did you ask them why
they didn't do anything about it themselves?

I also note for instance that (as of several hours ago) the
French wikipedia had a single article with Huygens as the second
half. Are we supposed to take that to mean the Europeans are
biased against themselves?

There are enough real problems making WP unbiased and neutral;
by taking a trivial point of organization never before discussed
anywhere, and holding it up as something that matters, you're
undercutting all the editors who put in real research and real
discussion time on the issues that are genuinely important. Why
should I bother spending two hours in the library to research
a substantive question, when you're telling the world that WP
is biased because some frontpage article doesn't cater enough to
nationalistic pride?

The whole attitude really troubles me. I've put in a lot of WP
time over the past two years, and now it feels like it doesn't
matter.

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Variables Error

body:
On Saturday 15 January 2005 10:10, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The site notice text is parsed to WikiText before the local page title
> is established.

Shouldn't this be fixed in 1.4?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Copyright, images and the voicing of doubt

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Delirium wrote:
>>
>>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>
>>>> Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for
>>>> taking action on a copyright violation.  If something has been on
>>>> the site for at least three years it is probably safe to keep.  The
>>>> argument that continuing availability may result in new limitation
>>>> periods can probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.
>>>
>>> However, republishing in another medium, such as publishing a print
>>> edition of Wikipedia, probably would easily restart the limitation
>>> period.
>>
>> That's debateable.  With GFDL the history of the material should be
>> traceable.  A fairly recent case involving laches went against the
>> Church of Scientology because they had delayed the enforcement of
>> their rights.  This was despite the fact that the limitation period
>> had not yet expired when they started their action.
>
> Two points are worth noting here. First of all, in case it's not
> clear, the doctrine of laches can only apply if the plaintiff knows
> about the infringement and fails to complain. If, as is very likely, a
> copyright holder did not know about infringing material on Wikipedia,
> then laches would not prevent a claim based on the continuing
> availability of the material within the statute of limitations.
>
> Second of all, if the Scientology case Ec alludes to is the New Era
> Publications v. Henry Holt case that I've read, I should mention that
> laches was only applied to deny an injunction against publication. It
> did not prevent a remedy for monetary damages.
>
> So the notion he suggests, that anything that's been on Wikipedia for
> at least three years is safe to keep forevermore, probably should not
> be used as a "rule of thumb" for copyright problems.

I agree that laches in that case was applied to prevent injunctive
relief, and that a lot has happened since 1989:  notably the spread of
the on-line world.  Invoking laches before the expiry of the limitation
period would not be my choice of a first line of defence.  One thing
that is certainly not clear is when the limitation clock starts
running.  In the world of the printed book continuously renewed
availability is not an option; time must elapse between one edition and
the next.  Laches can probably be invoked to prevent the extension of
the limitation period beyond three years as long as an unbroken thread
can be traced from the original allegedly infringing act to the act that
is used as a basis for action.  The limitation period can probably be
viewed as the time within which the person should have known about the
infringement.

The copyright owner should have a duty of due dilligence which duty
might be satisfied simply enough by periodic Google searches using key
phrases in his text.  Something like keeping dated records of negative
search results might be sufficient to establish lack of knowledge.  If
there were positive results, and he did nothing about any of them
(including ones unrelated to Wikipedia, and our downstream users who
have failed to trace their source as required by the GFDL) then invoking
laches after the initial three year period would be a possibility.
"Doing something" may be as simple as sending an informal request to
have the material removed from the offending website.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
It is by their customary practices that administrators show adiministrative
consensus.

Fred

> From: Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:45:36 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Aadmin consensus amounts to customary practice which the Arbcom will take
>> into consideration.
>
> Maybe I'm all alone here, but I see "admin consensus" and "customary
> practice" as two entirely different things, even if they happen to agree
> on an issue. Something doesn't have to be customary practice in order
> for admins to come to a consensus on it, nor does admin consensus have
> to be in agreement with customary practice.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
It is and when it departs from that policy to a marked degree,
administrators are subject to discipline the same as anyone else. However
people who try to solve problems will be cut some slack, while people who
constantly cause problems will receive closer scrutiny.

Fred

> From: Robert Brookes <the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:56:03 -0800 (PST)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.
>
>
> --- Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>> Aadmin consensus amounts to customary practice
>> which the Arbcom will take
>>> into consideration.
>>
>> Maybe I'm all alone here, but I see "admin
>> consensus" and "customary
>> practice" as two entirely different things, even if
>> they happen to agree
>> on an issue. Something doesn't have to be customary
>> practice in order
>> for admins to come to a consensus on it, nor does
>> admin consensus have
>> to be in agreement with customary practice.
>>
>
> And neither does admin practice seem to be dictated by policy.
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
No, four times.

Fred

> From: Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:35:21 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.
>
> If an editor has reverted a page three times in a 24 hour period, with
> the exception of **blatant** vandalism, they should be blocked.
> Period.


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:01:13 +0530, Rohan Sharma
<gates.plusplus at gmail.com> wrote:
> Living in one of the two time zones where the time from UTC cannot be
> expressed only in hours, I've experienced a minor inconvenience. Is
> there any way this problem can be fixed? Or am I just being ignorant?

Um, entering an offset of "-01:30" (for example) seems to work for me.
What is the problem, exactly? Perhaps you misinterpretted the message
"Enter the number of hours..." to mean that the minutes section of the
edit box should always be ":00"?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:28:58 +0530, Rohan Sharma
<gates.plusplus at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't try that with the colon :).

Well, I saw the colon was there already, so assumed I could put
something after it. Perhaps the message should be changed to
"...number of hours and minutes..." to make this clear to those less
prone to experimentation than myself?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Not really.  I, personally, tend to revert back to the version that the article was at prior to the revert war.

RickK

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
Smoddy, clear cases of vandalism aside, admins are not allowed to
choose which version of the page to protect. They are meant to protect
the latest version.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.


body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050115 12:01]:

> What you describe as an ideal and fair situation was exactly what was
> NOT done. And exactly what I comment on.
> Till yesterday, the information on landing and on the probe was entirely
> in the mission article. Even today, most of the information was still in
> the mission article, not on the landing one. To such a point there is
> currently no wikipedia reference on the net about the landing article.
> Wikipedia reference is on the mission article.
> What you explain makes sense.
> It was not what was done.

er, {{sofixit}}?

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HEAD Patch: Fix config/index.php

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

Andrew Miller wrote:
> Hi,
> This is my first contribution to WikiMedia, so please forgive me(and
> tell me what to do in the future) if this is the wrong list for patches,
> or I have not correctly followed your coding style conventions.

Hello Andrew,

You should probably send patch for mediawiki in mediawiki-l :o)

I commited in HEAD and REL1_4 your hunks for:
 * config/index.php : accessing group private propriety directly and the
   wgWhitelistRead thing.
 * Group.php : additional check for $dbr status

> The patch makes config/index.php work out of the box(before it failed
> with a database error). To get this to work, I had to make
> LoadBalancer.php honour $wgUseDatabaseMessages = false(the code is only
> run if the database connection has already failed, so there is no
> slowdown except in error situations). I also had to modify User.php so
> that a wgDebugDieBacktrace is not called when $wgUseDatabaseMessages =
> false. Again, this does not affect the "usual" path of execution. I
> added a $dbr == null check in Group.php, this does affect the usual path
> of execution, but is probably a check we should have anyway.
>
> I also fixed some old and/or unnecessary code in config/index.php
>
> Patch follows(-rbud options):

I did not apply the $wgCommandLineMode = true in index.php cause it's
not true :o)  Need to find another way to use that :o)

> Index: config/index.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/config/index.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.89
> diff -b -u -d -r1.89 index.php
> --- config/index.php    28 Dec 2004 14:49:41 -0000    1.89
> +++ config/index.php    15 Jan 2005 00:17:12 -0000
> @@ -405,7 +405,6 @@
>          $wgDBadminuser = "root";
>          $wgDBadminpassword = $conf->RootPW;
>          $wgDBprefix = $conf->DBprefix;
> -        $wgCommandLineMode = true;
>          $wgUseDatabaseMessages = false;    /* FIXME: For database
> failure */
>          require_once( "includes/Setup.php" );
>          chdir( "config" );
<snip hunks applied>

I did not apply the other parts concerning $wgUseDatabaseMessages cause
I am too tired right now to check them and don't really understand them
:o)  Will have a look at them later if nobody did it.
<snip $wgUseDatabaseMessages>

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: allow xml tags: a first approach

body:
Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> writes:

> Because XML is for computer communication, not for humans.

That's why XML editors exist.  The sooner we switch to a standard markup
language, the better.  WP's markup is proprietary and very hackish.
With a proper markup language it would not be necessary to change ''' ->
'' -> " -> ''' -> ? -> '' -> ? -> " all the time; you would simply write
<obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> and you are done.  Once and for all.  That's
only one example.

In 'de' they just invented an invisible "personendaten" box...

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Smoddy, clear cases of vandalism aside, admins are not allowed to
choose which version of the page to protect. They are meant to protect
the latest version.

Suppose you find a page that contains a serious, unreferenced claim
that seems to be false, and which is making the article look stupid.
You revert to an earlier version ( your revert #1), and you ask for a
reputable source (a citation) on the Talk page. Another editor reverts
back to the unreferenced claim (his revert #1) and doesn't respond on
Talk. You revert again (your revert #2), and you ask again for a
citation. The other editor reverts again (his revert #2) and ignores
your request on Talk. You revert once more (your revert #3) and you
beg for discussion on Talk. He ignores you and reverts again (his
revert #3).

At that point, you're stuck and so is Wikipedia. If you ask for page
protection, the admins will have to protect the unreferenced claim
version. If you revert again, you'll be blocked. If you risk it
anyway, and the other editor responds in kind, you'll both be blocked.

The 3RR violation rule is an attempt to be neutral between versions
and between editors. The rule therefore ignores quality of content and
quality of editors. The editor who is trying to write a high-quality
article is treated the same as the editor who is editing with a
reckless disregard for the truth. That is unfair, and it is damaging
to Wikipedia.

Slim

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:35:21 +0000, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is, of course, up to that admin
> to make the decision about which version to protect, which could
> potentially be a problem.


from_name: Andrew Miller

subject: [Wikitech-l] HEAD Patch: Fix config/index.php

body:
Hi,
This is my first contribution to WikiMedia, so please forgive me(and
tell me what to do in the future) if this is the wrong list for patches,
or I have not correctly followed your coding style conventions.

The patch makes config/index.php work out of the box(before it failed
with a database error). To get this to work, I had to make
LoadBalancer.php honour $wgUseDatabaseMessages = false(the code is only
run if the database connection has already failed, so there is no
slowdown except in error situations). I also had to modify User.php so
that a wgDebugDieBacktrace is not called when $wgUseDatabaseMessages =
false. Again, this does not affect the "usual" path of execution. I
added a $dbr == null check in Group.php, this does affect the usual path
of execution, but is probably a check we should have anyway.

I also fixed some old and/or unnecessary code in config/index.php

Patch follows(-rbud options):
cvs diff: Diffing config
Index: config/index.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/config/index.php,v
retrieving revision 1.89
diff -b -u -d -r1.89 index.php
--- config/index.php    28 Dec 2004 14:49:41 -0000    1.89
+++ config/index.php    15 Jan 2005 00:17:12 -0000
@@ -405,7 +405,6 @@
         $wgDBadminuser = "root";
         $wgDBadminpassword = $conf->RootPW;
         $wgDBprefix = $conf->DBprefix;
-        $wgCommandLineMode = true;
         $wgUseDatabaseMessages = false;    /* FIXME: For database
failure */
         require_once( "includes/Setup.php" );
         chdir( "config" );
@@ -414,7 +413,7 @@

         $wgTitle = Title::newFromText( "Installation script" );
         $wgDatabase = Database::newFromParams( $wgDBserver, "root",
$conf->RootPW, "", 1 );
-        $wgDatabase->mIgnoreErrors = true;
+        $wgDatabase->ignoreErrors(true);

         @$myver = mysql_get_server_info( $wgDatabase->mConn );
         if( $myver ) {
@@ -436,7 +435,7 @@
                     $wgDBadminpassword = $wgDBpassword;
                     $wgDatabase = Database::newFromParams( $wgDBserver,
$wgDBuser, $wgDBpassword, "", 1 );
                     $wgDatabase->isOpen();
-                    $wgDatabase->mIgnoreErrors = true;
+                                        $wgDatabase->ignoreErrors(true);
                     @$myver = mysql_get_server_info( $wgDatabase->mConn );
                     if( !$myver ) {
                         $errs["DBuser"] = "Check name/pass";
@@ -1104,6 +1103,9 @@

 \$wgProxyKey = \"$proxyKey\";

+# The whitelist
+\$wgWhitelistRead = array(\"Special:Userlogin\");
+
 ## Default skin: you can change the default skin. Use the internal symbolic
 ## names, ie 'standard', 'nostalgia', 'cologneblue', 'monobook':
 # \$wgDefaultSkin = 'monobook';
cvs diff: Diffing docs
cvs diff: Diffing docs/html
cvs diff: Diffing docs/php-memcached
cvs diff: Diffing extensions
cvs diff: Diffing images
cvs diff: Diffing includes
Index: includes/Group.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Group.php,v
retrieving revision 1.2
diff -b -u -d -r1.2 Group.php
--- includes/Group.php    24 Oct 2004 22:02:02 -0000    1.2
+++ includes/Group.php    15 Jan 2005 00:17:24 -0000
@@ -131,6 +131,8 @@
     function nameFromId($id) {
         $fname = 'Group::nameFromId';
         $dbr =& wfGetDB( DB_SLAVE );
+        if ($dbr == null)
+            return;
         $r = $dbr->selectRow( 'group', array( 'group_name' ), array(
'group_id' => $id ), $fname );

         if($r === false) {
Index: includes/LoadBalancer.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/LoadBalancer.php,v
retrieving revision 1.17
diff -b -u -d -r1.17 LoadBalancer.php
--- includes/LoadBalancer.php    6 Dec 2004 01:14:53 -0000    1.17
+++ includes/LoadBalancer.php    15 Jan 2005 00:17:31 -0000
@@ -320,8 +320,11 @@

     function reportConnectionError( &$conn )
     {
+        global $wgUseDatabaseMessages;
         $fname = 'LoadBalancer::reportConnectionError';
         wfProfileIn( $fname );
+        if (!$wgUseDatabaseMessages)
+            return;
         # Prevent infinite recursion

         static $reporting = false;
Index: includes/User.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/User.php,v
retrieving revision 1.114
diff -b -u -d -r1.114 User.php
--- includes/User.php    8 Jan 2005 09:17:33 -0000    1.114
+++ includes/User.php    15 Jan 2005 00:17:36 -0000
@@ -379,7 +379,7 @@
      * Load a user from the database
      */
     function loadFromDatabase() {
-        global $wgCommandLineMode, $wgAnonGroupId, $wgLoggedInGroupId;
+        global $wgCommandLineMode, $wgAnonGroupId, $wgLoggedInGroupId,
$wgUseDatabaseMessages;
         $fname = "User::loadFromDatabase";

         # Counter-intuitive, breaks various things, use
User::setLoaded() if you want to suppress
@@ -397,9 +397,15 @@
             /** Get rights */
             $anong = Group::newFromId($wgAnonGroupId);
             if (!$anong)
-                wfDebugDieBacktrace("Please update your database schema "
-                    ."and populate initial group data from "
-                    ."maintenance/archives patches");
+                        {
+                if ($wgUseDatabaseMessages)
+                    wfDebugDieBacktrace(
+                        "Please update your database ".
+                        "schema and populate initial ".
+                        "group data from maintenance/".
+                        "archives patches");
+                return;
+                        }
             $anong->loadFromDatabase();
             $this->mRights = explode(',', $anong->getRights());
             $this->mDataLoaded = true;


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
>
> We are all biased, and little can be done about
> this.
>

Communication is the only way, but by its nature tends
to hurt people's feelings in cases like this. I
applaud your courage, Anthere for raising the subject.

>
> They were amused however, of that situation.
> They are in no way anti-American, but they laughed
at > our non bias policy in this case.
>

This hurts my feelings. Huygens is about 20% of the
Cassini-Huygens mission, and has been well represented
in the English article (going back to before the
spacecraft and article separation).

> What you report fits exactly into the worst
>stereotypes of
> the French; sneering at other people's work, but
> not taking any responsibility for having let this
> perceived problem go unmentioned for years.
>

Language like this is not helpfull, Stan.

>  nationalistic pride?

Not always a bad thing, now is the time to applaud
Europe's fantastic success; space craft seperation,
deploying multiple parachutes, ejecting heat shields,
and functioning instruments working flawlessly after
billions of miles and years of cryogenic hibernation.
Well done, Europe, ESA and ASI!

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Rohan Sharma

subject: [WikiEN-l] Time Zone using 24-hour clock instead of number of hours

body:
Living in one of the two time zones where the time from UTC cannot be
expressed only in hours, I've experienced a minor inconvenience. Is
there any way this problem can be fixed? Or am I just being ignorant?


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] ModRewrite problem; seeking advice

body:
Oops...I just realized that I accidentally posted the message below
to wikien-l. I'm reposting it here in the hope that someone can help
me out.

I'm trying to set up our MediaWiki site to use clean URLs and have
run into a snag. My pages take a long time to load and kick out a
couple of error messages that say "too many HTTP redirects" for the
following URLs:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fcss&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=css&oldid=0

http://www.sourcewatch.org/-?action=raw&ctype=text%2Fjavascript&smaxage=18000&maxage=18000&gen=js&oldid=0

It appears that these URLs are being generated somehow by the lines
in xhtml_slim.pt which read as follows:

     <script type="text/javascript" tal:attributes="src jsvarurl"></script>
and:

     <style tal:condition="usercss" type="text/css">/*<![CDATA[*/
${usercss} /*]]>*/</style>     <script tal:condition="userjs"
type="text/javascript" tal:attributes="src userjs"></script><script
tal:condition="userjsprev"
type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/${userjsprev}/*]]>*/</script>
When I delete these lines, the error messages stop.

I've reviewed the MediaWiki page on rewrite rules and am wondering if
my problem has to do with the ampescape patch that it says is needed
for Apache. I haven't tried installing the patch and don't know if
I'll be able to. (The patch says it's for Apache 1.3.26, whereas I
have 1.3.29. Also, I don't know if my web host will agree to install
the patch.)

I'm guessing that if I can't patch Apache, I can get away with
deleting the lines above from xhtml_slim.pt, and everything will work
except that (1) users won't be able to customize their javascript and
css, and (2) ampersands won't work in page titles. Is this correct?

The current rewrite rules in my .htaccess file are as follows:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(stylesheets|images)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(redirect|texvc|index).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

# Rewrite http://www.sourcewatch.org/article properly
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]

Can someone tell me what I need to do?

Regards,
Sheldon Rampton


body:
On Saturday 15 January 2005 14:05, Rowan Collins wrote:
> "...number of hours and minutes..."

Amount of time.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


body:
--- Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net>
wrote:

> On 15 Jan 2005, at 9:41 pm, Puddl Duk wrote:
>
> >> We are all biased, and little can be done about
> this.
> >
> > Communication is the only way
>
> That and systematically recruiting certain people so
> as to balance the
> demographics.
>
> Christiaan
>
Yes, and we need to work together and give eachother
feed back, directly or indirectly. being nice helps
too. being mean is usually counter productive.

'Point of views' in one's mind are shaped with
communal information.

Communication is the only way to approach a common reality.

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


body:
--- Puddl Duk <puddlduk at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> --- Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net>
> wrote:
>
> > On 15 Jan 2005, at 9:41 pm, Puddl Duk wrote:
> >
> > >> We are all biased, and little can be done about
> > this.
> > >
> > > Communication is the only way
> >
> > That and systematically recruiting certain people
> so
> > as to balance the
> > demographics.
> >
> > Christiaan
> >
> Yes, and we need to work together and give eachother
> feed back, directly or indirectly. being nice helps
> too. being mean is usually counter productive.
>
> 'Point of views' in one's mind are shaped with
> communal information.
>
> Communication is the only way to approach a common
> reality.
>

'Balanced' demographics will lead to different points
of views, but what should that balance be?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Jan 15, 2005, at 12:07 PM, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Oops...I just realized that I accidentally posted the message below to
> wikien-l. I'm reposting it here in the hope that someone can help me
> out.
>
> I'm trying to set up our MediaWiki site to use clean URLs and have run
> into a snag. My pages take a long time to load and kick out a couple
> of error messages that say "too many HTTP redirects" for the following
> URLs:

First, update your code to the current 1.3.9 if you haven't already.

Your Special:Version indicates 1.3.7, which doesn't contain the fix for
generating correct URLs when $wgScriptPath is "" for a root-level wiki;
this leads to an infinite redirect loop due to the security checks for
a severe Internet Explorer bug which would allow for JavaScript attacks
which could at a minimum compromise user account information (this has
been discussed elsewhere on the lists, including recently on
mediawiki-l).

With the additional fix (added in 1.3.8) the URLs generated will be in
the form /index.php?title=-&raw=..... and should not loop unless you
have some other weird problem.

1.3.8 and 1.3.9 fix additional potential security problems with
uploads, so if you have uploads enabled you should have upgraded a long
time ago.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
There is a new initiative regarding software patents with the name "Thank you,
Poland!" at http://www.thankpoland.info . There are banners you can use at
http://www.thankpoland.info/banners.html . RMS' FSF/GNU already supports the
initiative by displaying a banner at http://www.gnu.org . My site also
supports "Thank you, Poland!". I suggest that you should also do that, by
placing their banner on your main page.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Time Zone using 24-hour clock instead of number of
	hours

body:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 01:39:19 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
> > On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:28:58 +0530, Rohan Sharma
> > <gates.plusplus at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I didn't try that with the colon :).
> >
> >
> > Well, I saw the colon was there already, so assumed I could put
> > something after it. Perhaps the message should be changed to
> > "...number of hours and minutes..." to make this clear to those less
> > prone to experimentation than myself?
> >
>
> You can also use a decimal point, e.g. -1.5. It used to be that you
> could only enter an integer, but I fixed that about a year ago. Changing
> messages is a hassle, it's never going to get changed in all the other
> languages unless you go to a lot of trouble.

Actually once messages are changed in English they tend to propagate
through the rest of the languages.

> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] performance

body:
On Jan 15, 2005, at 2:54 PM, NSK wrote:
> MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 are very slow and uses too many CPU
> cycles and
> memory compared to other wikis. The database schema, as I see it,
> seems to be
> inefficient. Are there any changes planned for 1.4 final to increase
> performance?

The database schema is inefficient, but that has little to do with CPU
cycles or memory. 1.5 makes major changes to the schema.

Major changes prior to 1.4 are not expected as we're long since in the
final beta cycle; 1.4 is already twice as fast as 1.3 for many requests
(see http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.4_benchmarks) and
enables the parser cache by default which reduces most page view times
to the minimum.

Memory usage is primarily from PHP's overhead in loading the script
files. CPU usage without a PHP opcode cache is primarily from PHP's
overhead in compiling the script files. With a PHP opcode cache, CPU
usage is divided among several things, and there is ongoing work to
reduce this. Nonspecific "it's slow" comments do very little productive
help in this regard.

If MediaWiki does not suit your needs compared to other wikis, please
feel free to use other wikis instead. We aren't going to feel bad, and
we didn't lose a sale.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Hi Jiang (or is it Cantonese reading, Gong?),

I think the best option is to use honzi, for multiple reasons, but
including where nessecary "chorfans" (this nessecitates the use of
unicode).

I think actually that a Wikipedia in Hakka is more feasible because
there are more people (in Taiwan mostly) advocating writing Hakka in
roman letters totally, like people sometimes do now for Minnan (see
the Minnan Wikipedia), and having totally separate literature for it.

But what is most interesting here is that the SMS (Second most spoken)
Chinese is Wu rather than Cantonese (3rd) or Minnan (4th), but that it
is paid less attention as a separate language because it is spoken not
largely in an overseas community like Hongkong/Macao or Taiwan, with
the exception of Singapore/Malaysia but even there it is small: most
of its speakers are in Shanghai and there is only one movie in it,
only a couple of books (mostly old), most publication or broadcast in
it is forbidden or discouraged by government, and only music in it is
Shanghai opera style and "punk" music which uses Wu as a way to "give
the finger" to the establishment in a subtle way (that is not likely
to get them arrested).

Mark

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 01:10:08 +0800, "???(Roberto)" <robertus at ebtnet.net> wrote:
> Hello there (to David Chang and other proponents speaking Cantonese mostly),
>
> After the d?tente of these days (the main focus has seemed to be drawn
> to the main page of Wikipedia...) --- and I have read most of the
> discussions exchanged here --- I wonder if you guys are considering how
> to build up this Cantonese version. Do you have some clear plans of
> which pages to be written in the first place, and how many committed
> contributors are there going to be in the beginning? I'm asking this
> just being conserning, because although there has been numerous messages
> for or against its establishment, I myself would quite support it. I
> think that except discussing about "yes, we need it" or "no, it's
> abundant", maybe some concrete plan is desirable? How are you going to
> write Cantonese, by which romanization program(s); autoconversion
> mechanism needed or not; totally with hanzi or a mix-up with roman
> letters? I'm fond of encouraging producing texts of knowledge in
> "dialects" (to me, they're really languages unintelligeable with others
> just as fit as Catal?n is), and hoping that maybe following Cantonese
> version, there would be a Hakka version (which is spoken by 12% of the
> population, but quite needs promoting in Taiwan). So I care much about
> how your issue is ongoing here:)
>
> P. S. This is my first time using this mailing list system, and any
> toleration of my unintended mistakes is pleaded.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Hrodeberht von MilchFlasche.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Portal source

body:
I don't recall advocating the poll expiring Jan 20 in its current
form, in fact if anything I remember protesting its creation.

Mark

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 06:57:49 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Angela (beesley at gmail.com) [050116 05:49]:
>
> > See
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template (protected)
> > and
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_portal (editable)
>
> > There is also a poll at
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal which
> > ends on January 20.
>
>
> Did node really not bother voting in a poll on a view he spent (est.) 25kb
> advocating?
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


references:
<41E81DAF.1020604@laposte.net>
	<20050115093206.GE14867@jeluf.mine.nu>
	<shwtuekiod.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:58:42 +0100, Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de> wrote:
> That's why XML editors exist.  The sooner we switch to a standard markup
> language, the better.  WP's markup is proprietary and very hackish.

WP's markup - or rather MediaWiki's - is a variant of the original
WikiWikiWeb's, and was designed with ease of editting (by humans) at
the very top of the agenda. There have been moves to create a
standardised wiki markup - which would in no way resemble
machine-friendly formats like XML, since the aim would still be
human-friendliness  - see, for example,
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiMarkupStandard But for now,
yes, it's "proprietary" to the extent that it is not developed in
co-ordination with any outside body.

As for "hackish", though, I'm not sure I agree: the *syntax* is
perfectly good at doing what it does - which is to say, it allows
people to describe the formatting they require of a piece of text.
What's hackish is MediaWiki's *implementation* of that formatting -
the parser which isn't a parser - being as it is based on a range of
context-unaware text manipulations which continually interact in
unexpected and undesired ways, violating users' assumptions about the
syntax. The almost-developed flex/bison wiki-text parser (which
outputs, being intended for computer use, XML) demonstrates that the
syntax itself is amenable to far less hackish processing.

> With a proper markup language it would not be necessary to change ''' ->
> '' -> " -> ''' -> ? -> '' -> ? -> " all the time; you would simply write
> <obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> and you are done.  Once and for all.  That's
> only one example.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what that example refers to. Are you
meaning that wiki syntax could magically morph to suit a different
language, with different formatting conventions, so people could
copy-and-paste from one wiki to another? Or are you just saying that
the markup should be more *semantic* (I don't see anything less
"proper" about marking up what things look like; this is the way
people view data), and the example is some debate about what
formatting to use in a particular case?

I think the key problem with semantic markup is that in order to have
any advantage, it has to be both very rich and very standardised -
e.g. you'd need to have a way of saying "this text is the name of a
film", and people would need to know that this was "<movie>" and not
"<film>" (or "<movietitle>" or "<filmtitle>", or any number of other
possibilities). If you were to impose such a scheme on something like
Wikipedia, you'd just create a tremendous learning curve.

Obviously, semantic *representation* is good, and in some cases (such
as Wiktionary, or the oft-mooted
"Wikipeople"/"Wikibiography"/"WikiFamilyTree" ideas) I have my doubts
as to whether a wiki really is the best way to go, simply because
editting a block of text that describes its own semantic status is
rather daunting for most people. Hence, as you say, XML editors - and
more specifically, hence sites like IMDb that have subject-specific
structure hard-coded into the software and the interface (if you edit
a listing in IMDb, you never *see* the underlying representation, and
the structure is defined for you so you don't need to).

> In 'de' they just invented an invisible "personendaten" box...

Again, you've lost me; for what purpose did they create this "box", in
what sense is it "invisible", and how would XML/"a proper markup
language" deal with the same issue?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
DEVELOPERS perhaps, but what about execs of software companies raking
in gazillions a year from software patents?

Also, while there may be no specific rule regarding POV displays
outside of articles, I do think we should try to limit ourselves to
things that will not be disputed by any Wikipedians. Thus, I will not
advocate to put up a site notice with my views if you don't do the
same thing for your views (although I don't like software patents
either).

Mark

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:03:09 +0100, Hynek Hanke <hanke at brailcom.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 11:04:16PM +0100, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
> > >> Have you heard of [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]]?
> > N> How is NPOV applied on this issue?
> > Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.
>
> Nearly everything is POV then. According to a survey led
> by the European Comission itself, 98.5% of developers
> who participated think software patents are bad.
>
> But I agree it's not appropriate to put the Thank you
> poland letter on Wikipedia, the reason being rather that
> Wikipedia shouldn't participate in political issues
> than (N)POV
>
> With Regards,
> Hynek
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:42:13 +0530, Rohan Sharma
<gates.plusplus at gmail.com> wrote:
> On the message-changing: I don't know, I take it this that has not
> been a common issue?

Well, as you said in your original mail, there aren't many places in
the world which *require* anything other than a number of hours. I've
certainly never come across anyone else *mentionning* the
problem/confusion, but it's hard to tell how many people will have
shrugged and assumed it's not possible.

Since it *is* possible, though, and since, according to Tim, you can
enter "1.5", which is still a "number of hours", I'd say it's not
exactly a high priority to change the message.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


references:
<41E81DAF.1020604@laposte.net>
	<20050115093206.GE14867@jeluf.mine.nu>
	<shwtuekiod.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9f02ca4c050115081370ba19f1@mail.gmail.com>

body:
I'd just like to apologise if my previous message about XML vs wiki
markup came across as a bit of a rant - I'm just not in a very
friendly mood today :(

Sorry.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thank you, Poland!

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

NSK wrote:
> There is a new initiative regarding software patents with the name
> "Thank you, Poland!" at http://www.thankpoland.info . There are
> banners you can use at http://www.thankpoland.info/banners.html .
> RMS' FSF/GNU already supports the initiative by displaying a banner
> at http://www.gnu.org . My site also supports "Thank you, Poland!". I
> suggest that you should also do that, by placing their banner on your
> main page.

Hello,

I personally like the idea, I even proposed to put a "get firefox" icon
on every page :o)

One trouble is that we need NPOV and this is maybe too european centric.

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFB6ToepmyHQ2O4INERAsyCAJ4k8Lt99REYatB05surTGCYT94qhgCg7vnR
bm4lFGUCFABYPs2UuiMokc0=
=rXry
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body:
> ... certain demographics are
> disproportionately
> represented and that there are things we can do to
> counter this.
>
> Christiaan
>

Does that include making post sumaries like;

"(rv, put it this way they've been around in peace for
a '''lot''' longer than your petulant menace of a
country)"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iraqi_resistance&action=history

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
Heh... we should have a site notice that says "Some people say
software patents are bad and say "thankyou poland!", and some people
say software patents are good and do not say "thankyou poland!", and
some people prefer to abstain from the discussion."

Mark

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:23:15 +0000, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 00:52:19 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> > On Sunday 16 January 2005 00:04, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
> > > Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.
> >
> > Not saying that software patents are bad is a POV.
>
> No, saying that software patents *aren't* bad is a POV; not saying
> either is an *omission*; saying that there are people who believe both
> is NPOV.
>
> If there were no article stating the case against software patents,
> *but there was one mentionning their advantages*, that would
> constitute a POV by omission.
>
> But if not putting something *on the main page* constitutes declaring
> a POV for one side of the argument (which side?), then we're putting
> out a lot of points of view right now, because I don't see every
> debate in the world mentionned on Wikipedia's front page. [I wonder
> which side of the abortion debate we're supporting by advertising
> neither the "Right to life" nor the "Right to choose"...]
>
> OK, so this is all a bit pedantic, but given that Wikimedia *isn't* a
> political advocacy Foundation - and in many ways strives to be the
> opposite - any exception to its normal neutrality would have to be
> considered very carefully indeed.
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Large-scale vandalism of fj.wikipedia

body:
Just letting people know as soon as I noticed it,

Somebody has conducted large-scale vandalism on fj.wikipedia using an IP.

See for example http://fj.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat (may not be
suitable for work or school).

Mark


subject:
[Wikitech-l] HEAD patch: Search for keywords in title on
	Special:Wantedpages

body:
As requested in MediaZilla bug 6, this patch allows for wanted pages to
be filtered by keyword.

Could someone please review and/or commit this.

Thanks,
Andrew

Index: includes/SpecialWantedpages.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/SpecialWantedpages.php,v
retrieving revision 1.17
diff -b -u -d -r1.17 SpecialWantedpages.php
--- includes/SpecialWantedpages.php    13 Nov 2004 20:40:28 -0000    1.17
+++ includes/SpecialWantedpages.php    15 Jan 2005 04:20:52 -0000
@@ -16,16 +16,38 @@
  * @subpackage SpecialPage
  */
 class WantedPagesPage extends QueryPage {
+    var $mUseQuery, $mSearchQuery;
+
+    function WantedPagesPage()
+    {
+        global $wgRequest;
+        $this->mSearchQuery = trim($wgRequest->getVal('query', ''));
+        $this->mUseQuery = ($this->mSearchQuery != "") &&
+            !$wgRequest->getBool('ignoreSearch');
+    }

     function getName() {
         return 'Wantedpages';
     }

     function isExpensive() {
-        return true;
+        /* If we can't cache it, consider it inexpensive... */
+        return !$this->mUseQuery;
     }
     function isSyndicated() { return false; }

+    function getPageHeader() {
+        $safeText = htmlspecialchars($this->mSearchQuery);
+        return "<form method=\"post\">" . wfMsg('search') . ":
+                <input type=\"text\" name=\"query\" value=\"$safeText\" />
+                <input type=\"submit\" value=\"" .
+                wfMsg('allpagessubmit') . "\" />
+                <input type=\"submit\" name=\"ignoreSearch\" value=\"" .
+                wfMsg('allpages') . "\" />
+            </form></p>
+";
+    }
+
     function getSQL() {
         $dbr =& wfGetDB( DB_SLAVE );
         $brokenlinks = $dbr->tableName( 'brokenlinks' );
@@ -33,12 +55,23 @@
         # We cheat and return the full-text from bl_to in the title.
         # In the future, a pre-parsed name will be available.
         $agrvalue=$dbr->aggregateValue('COUNT(DISTINCT bl_from)');
-        return
-            "SELECT 'Wantedpages' as type,
+        $restriction = "";
+        if ($this->mUseQuery)
+        {
+            $escapedSearch = strtolower($this->mSearchQuery);
+            $escapedSearch = str_replace(" ", "_", $escapedSearch);
+            $escapedSearch = str_replace("\\", "\\\\", $escapedSearch);
+            $escapedSearch = str_replace('%', "\\%", $escapedSearch);
+            $escapedSearch = str_replace('_', "\\_", $escapedSearch);
+            $escapedSearch = $dbr->addQuotes("%$escapedSearch%");
+            $restriction .= "WHERE lower(bl_to) LIKE $escapedSearch";
+        }
+        return "SELECT 'Wantedpages' as type,
                     0 as namespace,
                     bl_to as title,
                     COUNT(DISTINCT bl_from) as value
             FROM $brokenlinks
+            $restriction
             GROUP BY bl_to
             HAVING $agrvalue > 1
             ORDER BY $agrvalue ".
@@ -63,6 +96,7 @@

         return "{$plink} ({$nlink})";
     }
+
 }

 /**


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
The solution should be to contact an admin not involved in the dispute
and ask them to protect the page.  Then discussion can take place to
ensure that vandalism is stopped.  It is, of course, up to that admin
to make the decision about which version to protect, which could
potentially be a problem.  However, the admin should be able to use
their judgement to give a sensible temporary solution - that should be
one of the criterie for their selection.

If an editor has reverted a page three times in a 24 hour period, with
the exception of **blatant** vandalism, they should be blocked.
Period.  This ensures even-handedness.

If, once a matter has been discussed and a solution reached, the
change is made again, I would define this as vandalism.  Thus it can
be reverted and, situation dependant, the user blocked if necessary.

Smoddy

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:19:33 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the problems with 3RR-policy enforcement is that admins are
> supposed to treat equally the editor who is inserting an unreferenced,
> unsubstantiated claim, and the editor who is trying to get rid of that
> claim. One is violating [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] policy, while the
> other is trying to enforce it. Yet both are blocked.
>
> If the editor trying to enforce policy isn't allowed to violate 3RR,
> then s/he must go through dispute resolution; put up an RfC (which
> rarely brings useful results); or apply for mediation (which can take
> months to arrange). Meanwhile the nonsense sits there for 24 hours;
> then maybe there's another brief flurry of reverts, then it sits there
> for another 24 hours; and this can go on for weeks, until the less
> determined editor backs off.
>
> If the process takes priority over the product, that's fine. But if
> it's the production of an accurate encylopedia that is the priority,
> then this is not fine.
>
> Surely, for this reason, when looking at 3RR violations, admins should
> be allowed to take into account who was violating Wikipedia's
> editorial content policies and who was trying to preserve them.
>
> Slim
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>