from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A WikiJamSession Fantasy

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>Another way to do it is a la Critical Mass - everybody just show
>>up and overrun the library. That will get some publicity too. :-)
>>
>
>Well, I wouldn't recommend that, exactly.  :-) But it might be
>sensible to drop the idea of doing it when the library would otherwise
>be closed, since that seemed to be the primary "red flag" of
>objection.
>
>My guess is that if a library is open to the public, they can't really
>say "no" to a ton of people showing up during regular business hours,
>but of course we're kind and thoughtful wikilove people, so we would
>prefer to schedule this with the library in advance so that they can
>be sure to have "all hands on deck", as well as possibly providing us
>with some space.
>
Thinking about it some more (instead of working, ahem), it might
work better to start small - organize as regular sessions with 10-20
people, which requires nothing from the library, but still gives you
synergy from the f2f discussion. If the idea catches on and the
sessions get larger, the librarians will by then be familiar with WP
and how the sessions work (by the complete unshelving of the reference
section every Tuesday night, if nothing else :-) ), and will likely
come up with their own ideas of how to be of assistance.

There could be some interesting specializations with this; for
instance, one person to run to the stacks and find the books with the
needed factoids, another to check articles against books, and a third
to type in the bibliographical details about the books used. Our
computerphobic friends might especially appreciate the opportunity
to participate without needing to be a speed typist.

Stan


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Pierre Hentges

subject: [WikiEN-l] page protection policy

body:
SV is right that the current policy on page protection
isn't great. Pages are often protected for a long time
without any progress on the actual conflict. For example
[[anti-American sentiment]] has been protected for nearly
two weeks without VV and GBWR making the slightest effort
to resolve their dispute, despite me trying to help. It's
very frustrating for everybody else. The current policy
just isn't conducive to conlict resolution.

SV's proposal is interesting but I think there are
drawbacks: quite substantial changes are required, admins
workload will go up ; there is no justification for the
assumption that admins can deal with edit conflicts better
than common Wikipedians

I'd like to make an alternative proposal for dealing with
page protection:

1) in case of an edit war the page in question is protected
as before. Then the following steps are taken:
2) the admin who protected the page makes a list (on the
talk page) of the editors involved in the edit conflict ;
3) the named editors each outline their view of the
disagreement (talk page) ;
4) the named editors (with the help of fellow Wikipedians
if this is helpful) try to hammer out a compromise ;
5) if no compromise can be found within a week, this is
taken as proof that they are unable to resolve their
conflict. Therefore the page is unprotected but the listed
editors are banned from editing the article in question for
a period of, say, a month. Editors that were not involved
in the edit conflict can edit the article and get a chance
to deal with the controversial points ;
6) Since this system could be abused by people who raise
spurious conflicts just to get other editors banned from an
article, there is need for a further step: if one of the
editors feels their opponent is acting in bad faith, they
can ask for a vote on this, and if there is a consensus
(say 3/4) then their ban is lifted.

pros:
=====
1) nobody wants to get banned from an article they are
interested in, therefore Wikipedians will try to avoid edit
wars ; willingness to compromise and to be civil will
increase ;
2) a more formal way of dealing with edit conflicts ;
3) no big changes required (software, new sysop roles
etc.) ;
4) Wikipedians who avoid edit wars don't get shut out of
protected articles for long periods ;
5) the workload of admins stays the same

cons:
=====
1) protection policy change
2) ??

I'll copy this to the PPP draft page.

pir

On Friday 23 July 2004 12:04,
wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:14:11 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "S. Vertigo" <sewev at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Protected page policy rethuk
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID:
<20040723051411.84168.qmail at web90005.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> ...Wikipedia RC seems to be zipping by quite fast
> lately. (Its already impossible to just scan RC as a
> way to catch up; Im actually using my watchlist for
> the first time...) But it seems that with the
> controversial set, its time for a rethinking of the
> protected page policy, and Ive written some basic
> stuff here
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_page/Draft]]
>
> Basically, my idea calls for sort of dance steps to
> how to deal with contested articles. Essentially,
> allowing certain sysops to act according to formal
> roles with respect to each contested article, and to
> have those articles be protected in degrees, based on
> what the situation calls for. Protection is
> degree-less, but sysops can and should act responsibly
> to continue developing articles in accordance with the
> concerns of the partisans. Because any disputes about
> who can act in each role are an abstract issue from
> the article, they can be dealt with judiciously as a
> separate dispute by moderates not interested in
> getting mud thrown at them. With templates and
> categories, this can be more quickly done.
>
> Of course, this would mean that sysopdom does have
> some responsibility and privelige for which they would
> be more accountable, but this is weighed against the
> need to have controversial articles not be such black
> holes on Wikipedia.

--
+++ GMX DSL-Tarife 3 Monate gratis* +++ Nur bis 25.7.2004 +++
Bis 24.000 MB oder 300 Freistunden inkl. http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jeremy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Feed Validator for Atoms

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Timwi wrote:

> Micha?l P. wrote:
>
>> Has someone a suggestion about how-to produce a good Id element?
>
> If it only needs to be unique and is not subject to any other constraints,
> wouldn't the curid resp. oldid plus the date/time of the revision be enough?

 	This should help:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id

--jeremy


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ronny Raschkowan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l]
	Communication, being up-to-date and Mailing List issue

body:
Hello!

When i talked yesterday on IRC with another wikipedian, we had both the
same opinion that there's a problem with the communication, and staying
up-to-date.

The problem is that people don't know for example, a feature had been
enabled or similar (high priority?) news concerning Wikimedia. Also,
most Wikis aren't up to date: They don't know for example, that it is
also possible to block logged in people using the IP - Ban interface.
Another problem is, that Wikis also couldn't know where they have to do
requests like: Request for Permission, for switching the logo path, for
queries, for updating a LanguageXX.php. Possibly they don't know there
are IRC Channels and Mailing Lists, too. I would purpose two possible
ways to change that, but feel free to purpose other ways :)

1) "Reactivating" the Announce-l Mailinglist. As far, as there are a lot
of changed going on, (creation of language specific wikibooks, quote for
  example), it'd be a good idea to have this ML working, as far as
people could post the announces there and people interested in the
changes could suscribe to that list and get informed.

2) Creating a new Special page for all wikis (or similar), called
"Useful_Links" or similar ( I haven't found a good title yet ;) ).
People could read there where they can found the IRC Chat, where they
can found specific mailing lists, and where they can post request (for
permission, logo, query, etc), (Embassies?), etc. As far, people would
have a good reference page and would fastly find a way where  they can
report a problem to the community, request and communicate within the
community and with other users.

These are just ideas how to do that. If you have another idea, feel free
to add it :).

--

Important issue about the mailing lists:

Are there regular contributors of zh: (!), ar:, ta:, sv: (!), da: (!),
and pl: who would be interested to do list administrationsfor on of the
language specific mailing lists for their wikis? I would expain them
what and how to do. Please contact me at fire at kopfrechnung.de if you
are interested, thanks!

Sincerly yours,
Ronny


from_name: "Michaël P."

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feed Validator for Atoms

body:
Hi,

By default, the atoms feed produced by wikipedia is not valid:
http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmeta.wikimedia.org%2Fw%2Fwiki.phtml%3Ftitle%3DSpecial%3ARecentchanges%26feed%3Datom

There are 3 errors.

The first one, "missing of namespace", is easy to fixed.
'xmlns="http://purl.org/atom/ns#"' must be add to the "feed"
element printed by outHeader method of the AtomFeed class (line
153 of the 1.3beta5 version of wikipedia).

The second one, "Undefined entry element: comment" seems to be a
bug of the validator: Comments are not elements.

The last one is more complexe. In an atom feed, each entry must
have an id. This id must identify the entry:
http://www.mnot.net/drafts/draft-nottingham-atom-format-02.html#rfc.section.4.13.5

Has someone a suggestion about how-to produce a good Id element?

--
Micha?l P.
gpg:        D4C8 F73D A000 71C7 44EF  27E6 8982 4991 7126 3CE3


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Duplicate article titles in cur database, how come?

body:
I found about ten occurences of duplicate article titles in the nl: cur db
while processing dump.
Two consecutive entries with exactly the same title field, both namespace 0.
See three examples (article text omitted, was entirely different between the
two versions).

Is there an explanation for this?

Erik Zachte

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

(71024,0,'Apollo_13','...Article..','',0,'217.120.200.115','20040708215420',
'',0,0,0,1,0.114801676066,'79959291784579','20040708215420')
(71025,0,'Apollo_13','...Article
2..','cat',97,'Ellywa','20040710183320','',0,0,1,0,0.641321313866,'799592898
16679','20040710183320')

(57077,0,'Tricolore','...Article..','',4164,'Maartentje','20040428161440',''
,0,0,0,1,0.799059053324,'79959571838559','20040706200656')
(57078,0,'Tricolore','...Article
2..','',3503,'K?nsterle','20040713135539','',0,0,1,0,0.464381295007,'7995928
6864460','20040713135539'),(57079,6,'Tricolore_image.png','Tricolore','Trico
lore',4164,'Maartentje','20040428161536','',0,0,0,1,0,'79959571838463','2004
0713135540')

(57473,0,'Amiga','...Article..','Amiga
OS',4198,'Linuxfan','20040429191859','',0,0,0,1,0.053266451719,'799595708081
40','20040429191859')
(57474,0,'Amiga','...Article
2..','',0,'217.85.143.242','20040628194955','',0,0,0,0,0.354067844038,'79959
371805044','20040628194955')


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] featuring non-free images

body:
> Regardless of his actions they raise a good question, arent we giving
> an article some kind of gold standard by featuring it and havent
> fair-use images been tolerated rather then accepted?

But don't you see, Raul has deemed fair use acceptable for the main page,
and whatever he says goes.  Yes, nowadays he's supposed to give an
alternative, but if he wants that can contain a non-free image too!


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993

body:
Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:12:04 -0700, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> >Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as
> >terribly one-sided.  The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this
> >conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his
> >opponents are consistently positive.  The reality is much more
> >complex.
> >
> >It is unusual for  a featured article to be so problematic.
> >
> And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This
> is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross
> misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted
> it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just
> revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I
> finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all
> out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana.
>
> Even so, I still worry that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will
> hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.
>
> Stan
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Paper Wikipedia 1.0: a modest rant^W proposal

body:
I've been thinking about it and reading and researching about it and
talking incessantly on IRC about it and writing on the lists about it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/1.0

This sets out a concise action plan for a paper Wikipedia 1.0, letting
the wiki do the work. It sets out milestones and what is needed for
them.

The main prerequisite is a rating system, the consensus for which,
over the past year, seems to have approached: rate article versions on
four or five parameters, with either a yes/no, a scale of 0-4 or a
scale of 0-10.

The key points:
* Let the wiki do the work. Harness dilettantism.
* Every action must benefit the live web version.

Please be merciless.

(btw: should this be discussed on wikien-l or wikipedia-l? I've sent
this to both places.)

- d.


from_name: Sj

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Communication,
	being up-to-date and Mailing List issue

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 16:48:23 +0200, Ronny Raschkowan
<ronny at kopfrechnung.de> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> When i talked yesterday on IRC with another wikipedian, we had both the
> same opinion that there's a problem with the communication, and staying
< up-to-date...  (high priority?) news concerning Wikimedia.

Hi Fire, thanks for posting this.  It /is/ sometimes hard to track
high-priority news
and changes, including changes in where devs/editors hang out, how to
get things
done, and how to be most effective as a contributor.

> Another problem is, that Wikis also couldn't know where they have to do
> requests like: Request for Permission, for switching the logo path, for
> queries, for updating a LanguageXX.php. Possibly they don't know there
> are IRC Channels and Mailing Lists, too.

Or, even if they know they exist, they don't know how important these
channels are.

As for your suggestions:

1) Announcement mailing list

We should definitely set up / reactivate an announcement mailing list that is
read-only (restricted posting; one could suggest items for the next
announcement,
but couldn't respond to an announcement via the same list.) and low-traffic
(one or two announcements a week, save for rare circumstances).  I want to
be able to subscribe to a list that I automatically flag as 'urgent' when new
mail comes in.

2)  A special page for coordination & communication

This sound as though it would make a better meta: page, with translations
into many languages, than a Special: page on each wiki.  I think such
a page should link to each of the tasks one can accomplish on Meta: and
IRC and mailing lists... and then link to something like [[m:All
Wikimedia projects]].

[[m:All Wikimedia projects]] would in turn contain the kind of
information currently
on  [[m:Wikipedia languages]] and [[m:Embassy]] and [[m:Administrators
of various
Wikipedias]], in tabular form.  This extended project-list would
include links to the
main community pages, and the active contacts, for each local project.
 Elian has
been talking about what such a page might look like...

3) Announcement translation and multilingualism

Let's say there are X languages interested in keeping up with/translating all
announcements, perhaps having their own language-specific mailing list.

Instead of setting up announcement mailing lists in every language, which
might involve delays for a moderated list, how about having very brief
announcement emails, with a minimal bit of text and a link to a multilingual
announcement page on meta:; the blurb would be translated into all X langs
in the email (and if translators for one of those langs were unavailable for an
urgent announcement, every interested recipient would at least know right
away that something was going on).

The [[m:Announcements]] page could just be a reverse-chronological list of new
announcements, translated into as many languages as possible (more than
just X; contributors in other langs would more sporadically come and translate
the page).

Discussions of new proposed announcements, and translations of the email
blurbs, could take place on [[m:Talk:Announcements]], where some community
consensus  could be reached before adding non-urgent announcements to
the list.

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


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chinese Wikipedia get together in Beijing

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:40:48 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Following in the footsteps of successful European Wikimeetups...
>
> The first organized meeting of Chinese Wikipedians will be happening
> in Beijing this weekend, on Sunday.  Thanks to User:Mountain for
> helping to organize this.

Maybe this is an uneducated question, but does this have any potential
for trouble? Could it get any of the people coming to the meeting in
hot waters due to the "controversial" nature of the Wikipedia project?

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


body:
Hi Fire, thanks for posting about this.

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 16:48:23 +0200, Ronny Raschkowan
<ronny at kopfrechnung.de> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> When i talked yesterday on IRC with another wikipedian, we had both the
> same opinion that there's a problem with the communication, and staying
< up-to-date...  (high priority?) news concerning Wikimedia.

It /is/ sometimes hard to track high-priority news
and changes, including changes in where devs/editors hang out, how to
get things
done, and how to be most effective as a contributor.

> Another problem is, that Wikis also couldn't know where they have to do
> requests like: Request for Permission, for switching the logo path, for
> queries, for updating a LanguageXX.php. Possibly they don't know there
> are IRC Channels and Mailing Lists, too.

Or, even if they know they exist, they don't know how important these
channels are.

As for your suggestions:

1) Announcement mailing list

We should definitely set up / reactivate an announcement mailing list that is
read-only (restricted posting; one could suggest items for the next
announcement,
but couldn't respond to an announcement via the same list.) and low-traffic
(one or two announcements a week, save for rare circumstances).  I want to
be able to subscribe to a list that I automatically flag as 'urgent' when new
mail comes in.

2)  A special page for coordination & communication

This sound as though it would make a better meta: page, with translations
into many languages, than a Special: page on each wiki.  I think such
a page should link to each of the tasks one can accomplish on Meta: and
IRC and mailing lists... and then link to something like [[m:All
Wikimedia projects]].

[[m:All Wikimedia projects]] would in turn contain the kind of
information currently
on  [[m:Wikipedia languages]] and [[m:Embassy]] and [[m:Administrators
of various
Wikipedias]], in tabular form.  This extended project-list would
include links to the
main community pages, and the active contacts, for each local project.
 Elian has
been talking about what such a page might look like...

3) Announcement translation and multilingualism

Let's say there are X languages interested in keeping up with/translating all
announcements, perhaps having their own language-specific mailing list.

Instead of setting up announcement mailing lists in every language, which
might involve delays for a moderated list, how about having very brief
announcement emails, with a minimal bit of text and a link to a multilingual
announcement page on meta:; the blurb would be translated into all X langs
in the email (and if translators for one of those langs were unavailable for an
urgent announcement, every interested recipient would at least know right
away that something was going on).

The [[m:Announcements]] page could just be a reverse-chronological list of new
announcements, translated into as many languages as possible (more than
just X; contributors in other langs would more sporadically come and translate
the page).

Discussions of new proposed announcements, and translations of the email
blurbs, could take place on [[m:Talk:Announcements]], where some community
consensus  could be reached before adding non-urgent announcements to
the list.

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


body:
Correction, I found 55 occurences of duplicate titles instead of 10.

Article 'Cycloongroep' even occurs 7 times in records 71068-71074

Erik Zachte


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] featuring non-free images

body:
The main page is subject to the same rules as the rest of Wikipedia. It's
also subject to this wonderful stuff called "Common sense"

The policy is quite simple. Where we can, we use free images. Where
we can't, we're willing to use fair use images. Now, generally, we like the
main page to set a good example, so we try hard to avoid fair use images
there. But don't confuse discouraged with prohibited.

If we should happen to have a fair use image on the main page (ala,
[[Jim Henson]]) and you know of a free alternative, by all means replace
it. However, our policy does *NOT* give you license to start an edit war
on the main page, or vandalize it by overwrite the image with a blank one
just because you don't like fair use.

See? Common sense.

--Mark.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Paper Wikipedia 1.0: a modest rant^W proposal


body:
:-(  How frustrating.  Please excuse the redundant messages!
Gmail has been failing to refresh for a little while, and kept giving
me "server
is busy, please try again in a few minutes" messages when I tried to resend
that message... but it seems that all three copies went through.

>sj<


from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Plain text of page?

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Karlheinz Toni wrote:
>
>> what possibilities do I have to get the plain text of a page?
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=raw
> if you want the "correct" but uncommon and usually unsupported
> content-type of text/x-wiki; or
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=raw&ctype=text/css
>
> if you want the "hacky" but more useful text/css which makes it
> display as plain text in browsers.

Speaking of which (don't want to start a new thread for this), is there
any way to retrieve only the status of a page? Meaning, "0" if it
doesn't exist, "1" if it does or an URL if it's a redirect -- I guess
that would be the logical way to do it. I think it would be nice to have
for automated quick searches.

--Gutza


body:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 05:47:04 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1) Announcement mailing list
> > 2) A special page for coordination & communication
> > 3) Announcement translation and multilingualism
>
> Related to this, just want to make sure everyone knows about these two
> pages for announcements and goings-on.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Goings-on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on

Not to mention the other sidebar-linked page, Wikimedia News!

Goings-on is the kind of overview page that might list a few News items and the
most recent Announcements, but also lists a lot of other passing events and
discussions on meta: and on specific projects.  Very friendly, widely useful.

Announcements about major fundraising drives (we need the following
translated in the next 12 hours), server downtime, critical votes or deadlines,
or widespread changes in functionality, would be appropriate for a dedicated
announcement-list.

Re: Anthere's idea of having a "New announcement" blip similar to the "You
have new messages" blip at the top of every page -- we could potentially
trigger such a blip on non-minor edits to such an Announcements page.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] more questions

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:58:50 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> Regardless of his actions they raise a good question, arent we giving
> an article some kind of gold standard by featuring it and havent
> fair-use images been tolerated rather then accepted?

It would be nice to have an informal policy not to use fair-use
pictures for the main page
blurb -- if you really want to feature an article with no GFDL/PD
images, you could do
so without an image (I don't remember why not having a thumbnail for a main page
blurb is anathema to some).

>sj<


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bad information

body:
You seem to be looking at a rather old version - as far as I can see this
was only on the page for a couple of hours a couple of weeks ago. (Actually
on the 6th of July, a day when it would have been linked from the front
page)

Perhaps you are looking at a mirror site rather than Wikipedia itself?  They
are frequently out of date.

And remember - Wikipedia is a wiki.  So  if you find any errors you can edit
the page yourself to fix them.

Regards

sannse

----- Original Message -----
From: "Milan Selingr" <selingr at email.cz>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 11:52 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Bad information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_6#Deaths :
July 6
Deaths
  a.. 1189 - Henry II of England
  b.. 1249 - Alexander II of Scotland
  c.. 1415 - Jan Hus, reformer (burned for heresy)
  d.. 1476 - Regiomantus, astronomer and mathematician
  e.. 1535 - Sir Thomas More, writer and philosopher (executed for treason)
  f.. 1553 - Edward VI, king of England
  g.. 1762 - Peter III, tsar of Russia (murdered)
  h.. 1893 - Guy de Maupassant (Henry-Ren?-Albert-Guy de Maupassant), author
  i.. 1916 - Odilon Redon, painter
  j.. 1932 - Kenneth Grahame, author (The Wind in the Willows)
  k.. 1962 - William Faulkner, novelist
  l.. 1971 - Louis Armstrong, jazz musician
  m.. 1973 - Otto Klemperer, conductor
  n.. 1998 - Roy Rogers, cowboy actor, singer
  o.. 1999 - Joaquin Rodrigo, composer
  p.. 2004 - Bill Clinton, former US President !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Incorrect information.
Selingr

---
Odchoz? zpr?va neobsahuje viry.
Zkontrolov?no antivirov?m syst?mem AVG (http://www.grisoft.cz).
Verze: 6.0.716 / Virov? b?ze: 472 - datum vyd?n?: 5.7.2004

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

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


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special elections for Arbitration Committee

body:
I would be happy to help out with the elections
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Researching a new Wikien-l mailing list admin.

body:
Hello!

As far as Jeronim is no longer admin of the list, i would like to know
if there is another person who would like to keep up the list and
administrate it.

I would of course explain the things what a list administrator should do
to the user(s?) interested in it. The main -  activity is spam-deletion
though..

Volunteers? :)

Sincerly yours,
Fire


body:
Not interested, but i think you might get a better response if you
specifiy here just what the admin needs to do.

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 18:53:20 +0200, Ronny Raschkowan
<ronny at kopfrechnung.de> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> As far as Jeronim is no longer admin of the list, i would like to know
> if there is another person who would like to keep up the list and
> administrate it.
>
> I would of course explain the things what a list administrator should do
> to the user(s?) interested in it. The main -  activity is spam-deletion
> though..
>
> Volunteers? :)
>
> Sincerly yours,
> Fire
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A WikiJamSession Fantasy

body:
I love the idea of having a weekend where people get together to
finalize the articles for a print edition. I sent off a few emails to
libraries in Birmingham (Birmingham being a more central location than
London, and considerably cheaper) just to get an idea of whether it
would be possible and the only response I've had so far was not
positive. The email below was from the University of Birmingham.
Perhaps finding libraries that have large rooms available that we
could use during normal library opening hours would be better than
hoping to have whole libraries to ourselves?

> On enquiry to a more senior member of staff the reply is that we would
> not be able to provide the facilities for this. This building is open
> all days except Sundays and our computing facilities are restricted for
> use by members of the University of Birmingham. If we were to open the
> building for you we would need to employ both security and IT staff to
> support you and this would be very difficult. Please check the
> University home page wwww.bham.ac.uk for details of conference
> facilities if this could be of help.

Angela.


from_name: blankfaze

subject: [WikiEN-l] more questions

body:
> It would be nice to have an informal policy not to use fair-use
> pictures for the main page
> blurb

I disagree.  I don't see the problem in having the occasional fair use
picture on the main page, if there isn't an alternative.
The problem with having imageless features is that it just makes the
main page look dull, and... unillustrated!


subject:
[WikiEN-l] A list of speakers of language v.s. number of articles
	on that wikipedia.

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:10:34 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:

> articles on wiki x / speakers of language x = articles per person.

It would be neat to update those stats.  We could even add such a page
to EZ's wikistats;
  {articles | users} per million  {native speakers | speakers |
internet users} ,
where 'interenet users by language' is defined however existing
censuses define it...

<sj>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special:AskSQL

body:
Sj wrote:
> I second this request.   especially if you can enable a remote "kill
> this request" feature
> accessible to the same people, for requests that hang...

I don't want to enable that feature again or try to enhance it, I'll
just come under attack from Erik yet again.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dev request re rollback

body:
On 07/23/04 13:33, Timwi wrote:
> zero 0000 wrote:

>> David's idea [of adding a textbox for an edit summary to the
>> "rollback" feature] is something I decide (but never get around) to ask
>> for every time I use the rollback feature.  It would make the
>> feature much more flexible and also make us sysops look a bit less
>> like a lot of cold bastards who can't be bothered explaining why they
>> are reverting something.  So I would like to ask the developers to
>> please consider this.  Thanks muchly.

> While I sympathise with your thinking, from a development point of view
> it seems redundant. If you want an edit summary field, you can always
> revert the non-sysop way. The rollback link is so powerful because it is
> just that -- a link -- and because such a link can be placed in lots of
> places (recent changes, user contribs, diffs, etc.). Text boxes for an
> edit summary would clutter up all these pages, or you would have an
> extra pageview for the text box, which defeats the purpose of the quick
> & easy rollback link, and you might just as well use the non-sysop way.

Er. You are indeed correct.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A WikiJamSession Fantasy

body:
Angela_ wrote:

> I love the idea of having a weekend where people get together to
> finalize the articles for a print edition. I sent off a few emails to
> libraries in Birmingham (Birmingham being a more central location than
> London, and considerably cheaper) just to get an idea of whether it
> would be possible and the only response I've had so far was not
> positive. The email below was from the University of Birmingham.
> Perhaps finding libraries that have large rooms available that we
> could use during normal library opening hours would be better than
> hoping to have whole libraries to ourselves?

If we were looking for a WikiJam in Britain, I concur that Birmingham
would be an excellent location.

In fact, if we broaden our location beyond libraries a little,
Birmingham has perhaps the perfect location - the National Exhibition
Centre - it is the largest such conference centre in Europe and can
accommodate tens, 100s, 1000s or 10000s of people as we require. Of
course internet facilities of the type we would want could be available.

It is virtually on top of [[Birmingham international railway station]],
which is well connected to the rest of the country.

It is also virtually on top of the centre of the country's motorway
(freeway) network.

It is also virtually on top of [[Birmingham international airport]],
which is now well-connected to the rest of the country, Europe and the
eastside of the States.

Because it is a massive exhibition centre it has lots of relevatively
affordable accommodation if you go at the right time (those of you
who've been to Vegas will know how wildly accommodation prices can vary
in conference season). In any case it would be way way less (less than
half) of London.

Admittedly there would be hurdles in terms of getting a good deal in
return for good publicity from the Centre compared with a friendly
libary.... but given Angela's comments, and because of its advantages,
it is certainly worth bearing in mind.

Pete/Pcb21
(originally from the area :)


from_name: Henning Heitkötter

body:
Erik Zachte schrieb:

>I found about ten occurences of duplicate article titles in the nl: cur db
>while processing dump.
>Two consecutive entries with exactly the same title field, both namespace 0.
>See three examples (article text omitted, was entirely different between the
>two versions).
>
>Is there an explanation for this?
>
>
I've noticed that some time ago on the German Wikipedia, too. I discussed it with JeLuF on #de.wikipedia, and our explanation - IIRC - was the following:
If someone is impatient and clicks several times on "save" while creating a new article, this article will be stored several times in the cur_table.

Henning.H
--[[de:Benutzer:HenHei]]


body:
Henning Heitk?tter schrieb:

> Erik Zachte schrieb:
>
>> I found about ten occurences of duplicate article titles in the nl:
>> cur db
>> while processing dump.
>> Two consecutive entries with exactly the same title field, both
>> namespace 0.
>> See three examples (article text omitted, was entirely different
>> between the
>> two versions).
>>
>> Is there an explanation for this?
>>
>>
> I've noticed that some time ago on the German Wikipedia, too. I
> discussed it with JeLuF on #de.wikipedia, and our explanation - IIRC -
> was the following:
> If someone is impatient and clicks several times on "save" while
> creating a new article, this article will be stored several times in
> the cur_table.

Sorry, I forgot to add:
"But that's not an explaination for duplicate articles with different
text. At least, in my opinion..."


list: foundation-l

from_name: Dietrich von Hase

subject:
[Foundation-l] fund drive update - why was the message	removed
	from en.wikipedia?

body:
Hi,

>
>How about this:
>* Change the color of the "Donations" sidebar link, and bold it
>* Add a short, sweet note, perhaps at the bottom:  "Please help keep
>this site running!
>     <link>'''Contribute'''</link> to the <link>Wikimedia Foundation</link>.
>
>
I really support the second suggestion to put a permanent Teaser as a
bottom line - after the copyright notice and set apart clearly from it.
The message of this Teaser could be changed in time.

I suggest to put such a small teaser notice on every page, on every
article of Wikipedia and I would like to make some comments on it,
because I think I have some experience here since 1996:

1) All who discuss the fundraising issue on this list should feel a deep
responsability for the thousands of authors and millions of users of
Wikipedia. Users, Authors and Admins have the right that we discussing
the flow of money for Wikipedia make the right decisions to guarantee:

* the best technical environment for user have easy and fast access 24
hours a day
* the same for all the authors and admins giving their free time for
publishing and maintenance

Bad technical performance in the past due to hardware issues should
therefore never happen again. As the numbers of users, authors, traffic,
etc. grows exponentially, there is a need of exponential growth of
hardware, housing space, traffic and therefore also a need of
exponential growth of funding. Funding needs - as have been shown here -
can be quite precisely projected out of past growth statistics. And - as
there is the responsability towards the users and knowledge workers
contributing to Wikipedia - there should be always some money on the
bank as a special case reserve fund and not a living on a nearly blank
purse. At the same time money from donations should be spent as
economically as possible to meet the responsability towards the people
donating funds.

2) The fund raising issue should therefore be split between:

a) a constant funding for constant needs with respect to the growth rate
of Wikipedia, hardware needs etc. This need of constant funding should
not be met by special calls "we have problems, please give us some
money", but by a constant, better publication of this funding issue on
the websites leading to constant flows of money meeting the constand
needs of growing Wikipedia & Co.

b) special funding calls for new, special projects as special funding
events to start new projects, etc.

3) Establishment of a constant funding scheme

The constant funding must be a scheme guaranteeing that the incoming
money growth rate meets the growth rate of Wikipedia. As this growth
rate is caused by the number of visitors, pages viewed etc. we need a
mechanism that a doubling of visitors, page views at least leads to a
doubling of the funding, etc.

It is evident, that the present link for donations on the upper left on
Wikipedia is not enough to guarantee this relation of more visitors fund
enough for more hardware etc. It is clearly to weak for this at the
moment. I suppose this could be quite easily solved if we put more ideas
together here. My suggestions:

a) Put a teaser as proposed above

"Add a short, sweet note, perhaps at the bottom:  "Please help keep
this site running!
 <link>'''Contribute'''</link> to the <link>Wikimedia Foundation</link>."

on the end of each article, not only on the homepage. A Website like
Wikipedia is like an Ants heap, millions of people are coming in by
hundredthousands of entry pages and leave them by other or same
hundredthousends of doors. We tend to see Websites from the homepage
point of view, thats how the website makers see it. But in reality only
a small percentage of people ever see the homepage. Therefore it is
advisable to put a message on every page, but to put it at the end of
the page so it does not disturb people in their reading.  When people
arrive by reading at the end of the page then you most probably have
those people who liked what they read. That means you have most probably
also those people who are more likely to donate then others, who stop
reading after the first lines.

b) Adapt the FSF funding idea - recommend people to buy their books over
Wikipedia affiliate links -

The ISBN numbers on Wikipedia lead to the page where you find different
options for finding the books including online bookshops. If Wikimedia
would register at Amazon, Barns & Nobles and other online bookshops and
change the present links on this page to affiliate links, there would be
also a constant flow of money for the foundation without any
advertising, without changing anything from non commercial to
commercial. Only the links have changed, not the page and the online
bookshops themselves. I hope you get what I mean - do not change any
text here in order to get funds, just keep it free of greed ;-) but
offer them as affiliate partner links like FSF seems to do it.

On the funding information pages one could also inform every reader that
he can make a donation automatically if he is buying book, media etc.
anyway but chooses a link via the wikipedia links for online bookshops
on the general information page about where to find books. I think that
many people would be happy to buy their books knowing that Wikimedia
gets a funding by doing this and they do not have any trouble in
transferring money to the foundations, credit cards, Pay Pal etc. and
they even do not pay more then they would do otherwise.

I think that Jimbo made a good point in his last e-mail suggesting that
different options should be tested and what will be the results. Its my
own experience with the internet - it is much better to do small tests
and if it works go that way further on, if it does not work just leave
it again.  It saves much time of discussions what will happen when -
you mostly just don't really know it before testing.

4) Save the funding calls for special occasions

As already said, my feeling is that special calls for funding should be
left for special occasions, special project ideas etc. But not for
constant money needs like hardware etc. I am  confident, that this money
needed for all normal operations will be received with ease by just
implementing a charming, also alterating bottom line donation message on
every page plus affiliate links for bookshops which are mentioned anyhow
on the page.

just my 2 cents

Dietrich
hase at akademie.de


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Plain text of page?

body:
Gutza wrote:

> Speaking of which (don't want to start a new thread for this), is there
> any way to retrieve only the status of a page? Meaning, "0" if it
> doesn't exist, "1" if it does or an URL if it's a redirect -- I guess
> that would be the logical way to do it. I think it would be nice to have
> for automated quick searches.

Well, if you try this with a non-existent page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nonexistantpage&action=raw&ctype=text/css

you get "". Not the most professional of ways
of saying "this page doesn't exist", but since it's unlikely to be the
body of a real article, I suppose you can use this.

Redirects are ridiculously easy to parse with a regular expression.

Timwi


body:
Micha?l P. wrote:

> Has someone a suggestion about how-to produce a good Id element?

If it only needs to be unique and is not subject to any other
constraints, wouldn't the curid resp. oldid plus the date/time of the
revision be enough?


from_name: Rebecca Leighton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Arbitration Committee Elections (11th and 12th spots)?

body:
On the Arbitration Committee talk page, Michael Snow pointed out that
there's two unfilled places on the Committee, due to
resignations/places not being taken up in the first place, and
suggested that elections for these be held.

In my opinion, particularly considering the slow rate of proceedings
of late, and that we are now down to seven active arbitrators (two
away, one inactive, as well as these two spots), it would be wise to
attempt to fill these.

-- ambi


subject: [WikiEN-l] a proposal: wikigenealogy

body:
Hi Sean.  See also [[m:Wikifamily]] and its siblings for a more
general concept for a
genealogy project.  For the devs: would it be possible to try setting
up another db for
testing this project idea out?  There seem to be a number of
interested parties.  It
could start out as a normal wiki -- with sean's layout ideas
implemented as crude
templates -- and as a place to gather gen. information and discuss how
that project
could develop in more detail.

~~sj~~

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 13:13:41 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> sean.clarke at guardian.co.uk wrote:
> >I've long wished there were a genealogical database of European monarchs
> >etc, where for instance Charlemagne exists as an entry with his wives
> >listed in one column, his sons in another, his daughters in another, his
> >known mistresses in another and his mother and father in two more.
> >
> >as it grew (wikistyle) you could then see things like: all male descendants
> >of Charlemagne (or whoever) or choose to display the information in all
> >sorts of ways.
> >
> >but I don't know a) how to do it or b) if wikipedia is the right place for
> >it


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Universities tend to be a little more standoffish about this sort of
> thing; faculty and students are focused on their studies, and the
> unwashed masses of the general public 1/2 :-) are an unwelcome
> distraction.

Would it help if one of the Wikipedians is a student of the University
in question, and the session is done this summer before the beginning of
the next term?

If so, then August/September in Cambridge would be a possibility. :-)

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Plain text of page?

references:
<20040723125203.D4C591791B@mailrelay1.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>	<cdr3kv$ber$2@sea.gmane.org>	<410127FC.2070000@moongate.ro>	<cdrru6$dvn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<41018310.3070508@hooft.net>

body:
Rob Hooft wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Redirects are ridiculously easy to parse with a regular expression.
>
> Don't forget that the "#redirect" string can be translated, and is
> translated in the cy: wikipedia to "#ail-cyfeirio". The regular
> expression is a little more complicated than you might think at first
> sight....

Not really. As far as I understand it, all redirects satisfy
/^\s*#\S+\s*:?\s*\[\[([^\]]+)\]\]\s*$/s.

Obviously I'm aware that this can catch non-redirects, but it would have
to be a really weird article, and in fact one that probably should be a
redirect anyway.

Timwi


from_name: Ronny Raschkowan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] nl: Wikipedia asking to use a colored logo

body:
Hello.

When accomplishing the requests for switching the logo path, i had to
change it for nl:, but i considered that there was a colored Wiki.png.
The votes on Meta concerning this were 15 for the new logo, 9 against
and 1 abstain.

Do we now accept colored logos or not?
Do 15 vs. 9 voted are enough?

Sincerly yours,
Fire


from_name: Magnus Manske

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNAEAPCJAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>	<41015C43.2010103@web.de>
	<41015D3F.20803@web.de>

body:
Henning Heitk?tter wrote:

> Henning Heitk?tter schrieb:
>
>> Erik Zachte schrieb:
>>
>>> I found about ten occurences of duplicate article titles in the nl:
>>> cur db
>>> while processing dump.
>>> Two consecutive entries with exactly the same title field, both
>>> namespace 0.
>>> See three examples (article text omitted, was entirely different
>>> between the
>>> two versions).
>>>
>>> Is there an explanation for this?
>>>
>>>
>> I've noticed that some time ago on the German Wikipedia, too. I
>> discussed it with JeLuF on #de.wikipedia, and our explanation - IIRC
>> - was the following:
>> If someone is impatient and clicks several times on "save" while
>> creating a new article, this article will be stored several times in
>> the cur_table.
>
>
> Sorry, I forgot to add:
> "But that's not an explaination for duplicate articles with different
> text. At least, in my opinion..."

If only one of these gets edited later on, or both are edited on a
random basis, might explain it.


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>Would it help if one of the Wikipedians is a student of the University
>>in question, and the session is done this summer before the beginning of
>>the next term?
>>
>>If so, then August/September in Cambridge would be a possibility. :-)
>
> I was really thinking of next summer, because I don't think we can
> reasonably expect to have an article approval process in place until
> then.

Well, maybe I skimmed over this whole proposal and its thread too much,
but I thought in this thread we're talking about Wikipedians visiting a
library to collect information to beef up some articles. As far as I can
see, they can do this without an approval process. The articles beefed
up this way can still be approved a year later, if the process is in
place by then. It is also still possible to organise another
WikiJamSession a year later.

But then again, it was just a suggestion.

Timwi


from_name: Rob Hooft

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Patent nonsense proposal

references:
<1090466195.d66a863cuser_Jamesday@myrealbox.com>	<40FF714E.5060609@moongate.ro>	<cdod61$gsr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40FFCEE4.7080207@moongate.ro>
	<3406cd4e0407220826247d39d8@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Fennec Foxen wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:27:48 +0300, Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro> wrote:
>
>>That's true, but it can happily replace GIF's, it's actually smaller if
>>compared on par (8-bit images).
>
>
> Yes. Both PNG and GIF are lossless, and you can convert between them
> until the [[You have two cows|cows]] come home

Yuck: the misconception that GIF is lossless was common when JPEG just
came out. You are right that recoding GIF's ad infinitum does not lose
more and more information every time, but encoding to GIF for the first
time loses 16 out of 24 bitplanes of information. GIF is a colormapped
format accommodating at most 256 colors.

Rob


body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:12:06 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Well, maybe I skimmed over this whole proposal and its thread too much,
> but I thought in this thread we're talking about Wikipedians visiting a
> library to collect information to beef up some articles. As far as I can
> see, they can do this without an approval process. The articles beefed
> up this way can still be approved a year later, if the process is in
> place by then. It is also still possible to organise another
> WikiJamSession a year later.

I agree a WikiJamSession a year earlier just to work on articles
rather than to approve them would be a good idea. It would help with
the planning for the session the following year, and make sure that
for the final print drive, we know what we're doing as we'd have found
out a year earlier how the event went and how it could be improved,
making the final drive to print go more smoothly. A WikiJamSession
this summer might also be a good place to start advertising the drive
to 1.0, which will happening over the course of the next year, and get
people motivated to work on it.

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Plain text of page?

references:
<20040723125203.D4C591791B@mailrelay1.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>	<cdr3kv$ber$2@sea.gmane.org>	<410127FC.2070000@moongate.ro>
	<cdrru6$dvn$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Redirects are ridiculously easy to parse with a regular expression.

Don't forget that the "#redirect" string can be translated, and is
translated in the cy: wikipedia to "#ail-cyfeirio". The regular
expression is a little more complicated than you might think at first
sight....

Regards,

Rob Hooft


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: nl: Wikipedia asking to use a colored logo ->
	Stop!

body:
Ronny Raschkowan wrote:
> Hello.
>
> When accomplishing the requests for switching the logo path, i had to
> change it for nl:, but i considered that there was a colored Wiki.png.
> The votes on Meta concerning this were 15 for the new logo, 9 against
> and 1 abstain.
>
> Do we now accept colored logos or not?
> Do 15 vs. 9 voted are enough?
>
> Sincerly yours,
> Fire

This a misunderstanding. WikipediaNL is *not* asking for the colored
wikipedia-logo.

1: I ([[nl:gebruiker:walter]]) have requested to activated the option
for WikipediaNL to change to logo by use of uploading the file
"Wiki.png" after not objection about this by the community.

2: I have received a noticed form user Angela to protect the file
wiki.png first.
( http://nl.wikiquote.org/wiki/Overleg_gebruiker:Walter )

3: I have noticed that the file Wiki.png was not the correct logo and
have changed it to the Nohat-style logo at 23 jul 2004 11:10  .

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:Wiki.png

4: ... and have done the protection.

After your posting about the "nl: Wikipedia asking to use a colored logo
" thing on WikipediaNL I have checked again the wiki.png file. I noticed
it to be again the colored version. But after several times reloading it
changed to the Nohat-style logo. I suppose I and you where looking at
the suiqd version of it.

So WikipediaNL is not asking for the to use a colored logo.
I am not asking for the to use a colored logo.

Please use my talk page/[[nl:wikipedia:De kroeg]] and not wikipedia-l

--
[[wikipedia:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Some messages in the MediaWiki namespace should be
	merged

body:
This is just one of many, but MediaWiki:Historywarning and
MediaWiki:History need to be merged, they each contain:

MediaWiki:Historywarning = Warning: The page you are about to delete
has a history:
MediaWiki:History = Page history

And when this is put together in the rendered page it looks like this:
"Warning: The page you are about to delete has a history: Page history"

Since it is already split for me i have no option to put "Page
history" in the middle, or first, it has to be in the center, this
just doesn't work in all languages without making the sentences sound
very awkward.

Another message which is split like this is MediaWiki:Previewnote and
MediaWiki:Note


subject: [Wikitech-l] suspicious article

body:
It's a script that "crapflood[s] the fucking shit out of a Slashcode
site", it is actually historically significant because there was quite
an uproar about it at the time, and the project got deleted off
sourceforge ( the same people who own slashdot). Though hosting it on
source might not proove good for the project.

I dont think that it can flood slashdot sites anymore, they must have
fixed the voulnerability after the initial relese.

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:14:28 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Could someone please look at http://wikisource.org/wiki/Shitstorm .  I
> don't have the technical expertise to evaluate what User:Goat-see (a
> suspicious name?) has done, but it looks like a program for sending out
> some kind of vandalism or virus on a large scale.  If so, we need to
> consider what to do with this kind of thing, but first I would like a
> more informed opinion of just what that piece of source code does.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

> Ronny Raschkowan wrote:
>
>> Hello.
>>
>> When accomplishing the requests for switching the logo path, i had to
>> change it for nl:, but i considered that there was a colored Wiki.png.
>> The votes on Meta concerning this were 15 for the new logo, 9 against
>> and 1 abstain.
>>
>> Do we now accept colored logos or not?
>> Do 15 vs. 9 voted are enough?
>>
>> Sincerly yours,
>> Fire
>
>
> This a misunderstanding. WikipediaNL is *not* asking for the colored
> wikipedia-logo.
>
> 1: I ([[nl:gebruiker:walter]]) have requested to activated the option
> for WikipediaNL to change to logo by use of uploading the file
> "Wiki.png" after not objection about this by the community.
>
> 2: I have received a noticed form user Angela to protect the file
> wiki.png first.
> ( http://nl.wikiquote.org/wiki/Overleg_gebruiker:Walter )
>
> 3: I have noticed that the file Wiki.png was not the correct logo and
> have changed it to the Nohat-style logo at 23 jul 2004 11:10  .
>
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:Wiki.png
>
> 4: ... and have done the protection.
>
>
> After your posting about the "nl: Wikipedia asking to use a colored logo
> " thing on WikipediaNL I have checked again the wiki.png file. I noticed
> it to be again the colored version. But after several times reloading it
> changed to the Nohat-style logo. I suppose I and you where looking at
> the suiqd version of it.
>
> So WikipediaNL is not asking for the to use a colored logo.
> I am not asking for the to use a colored logo.
>
> Please use my talk page/[[nl:wikipedia:De kroeg]] and not wikipedia-l
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Hello.

Yes, I am sorry, I had the Wiki.png coloured in the cache, from
yesterday, though you uploaded the nohat - logo at 11am today.

I used that list because I thought you would want to have the coloured
one, and wanted to ask how the policy was. I think this is the best list
to ask for that issue.
The problem was that there was another one -  But as far as you uploaded
the right logo, the misunderstanding is clarified now - I am sorry  - My
evil cache is a lier :-)

Sincerly yours,
Fire


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] suspicious article

body:
Sj wrote:

>On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:54:21 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
><avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>It's a script that "crapflood[s] the fucking shit out of a Slashcode
>>site", it is actually historically significant because there was quite
>>an uproar about it at the time, and the project got deleted off
>>
>>
>
>That sounds as though it might be worthy of a stubby reference in WP...
>not the kind of source material Wikisource should be accepting with no
>discussion or preamble (is it referenced by any other WM project? not on
>ENWP, afaict).  I blanked the page for now.  What's the process for handling
>inappropriate wikisource content?
>
Before I made an issue of it at Wikisource, I wanted to bring it here to
the Wikitech list to make sure that it was what I thought it was.
Simply deleting something that I did not understand on a technical level
would have been inappropriate.  This is a recent article and an orphan,
and would only have been found by chance.  Had the contributor used a
more normal title and user name I might never have noticed since I never
go into this segment where I understand very little of the code.  This
kind of problem is fortunately not common at Wikisource, but the
incident will certainly be raised on the Scriptorium now that I know
better what it is.

Ec


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikitech-l] suspicious article

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:54:21 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a script that "crapflood[s] the fucking shit out of a Slashcode
> site", it is actually historically significant because there was quite
> an uproar about it at the time, and the project got deleted off

That sounds as though it might be worthy of a stubby reference in WP...
not the kind of source material Wikisource should be accepting with no
discussion or preamble (is it referenced by any other WM project? not on
ENWP, afaict).  I blanked the page for now.  What's the process for handling
inappropriate wikisource content?

>sj<


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patent nonsense proposal

body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:09:32 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Sj wrote:
> > I think the decision re: media standards, and the decision re: fair
> > use images, are closely related.
>
> Only in the sense that they fall under the general heading of "how can
> we best create a GNU-free encyclopedia?"
>
> The key difference is that fair use is a perfectly legitimate
> copyright doctrine which ought to be expanded considerably.
>
> The situation with patents is quite different.

Fair enough.

> > If people are strongly against allowing any encumbered content in
> > the public view of the projects, perhaps we could have a special
> > holding area for uploaded content which does not meet high standards
> > of free-formatting, but could be converted -- providing for a way to
> > indicate via links? that such content exists in association with a
> > page -- rather than disallowing it altogether.
>
> I have no objection to something like this.  There is no harm that I
> can think of in empowering people to use legal means (but not
> necessarily _GNU free_ means, if that's impossible) to help others
> have free content.

Great.  Perhaps we could use the same holding area for images and other
media with "unknown" copyright status, and with possible-copyvio texts.
Though each class of item requires a different kind of effort to convert it
(where possible) to a valid WM entry, all are being quarantined because
the purity of their freedom is in doubt.

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


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, Sj wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:35:17 -0700 (PDT), Geoffrey Burling
> <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> > > Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
>
> True.  See what you think of the current revision.
>
> > What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have
> > passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved
> > as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history
>
> What's that?   Checking the featured log quickly brought up the history; search
> for "Russian".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log

Okay, once I found _page_, I was able to backtrack & figure out just how to
find information like this in the future.

I may have been on Wikipedia for quite a while, but I find its structure --
specifically its interface & how meta-discussions are laid out -- keep
changing. I tend to keep to my own parts due to lack of time, & whenever I
take a moment to look around at the wider picture, I feel as if I've
just started scratching the surface of Wikipedia.

There's enough going on not only in terms of conversations, but in developing
new tools, user & contributor helps, & other such activities that for every
hour I spend contributing to the actual text, I should spend another hour
combing thru all of the other anicilliary pages to stay informed.

And then there's abundance of contributors: not only have I found people
writing articles I have been struggling to get to myself (& sometimes better
than I could do), but sometimes finishing projects that I've only just
begun. (It can be frustrating working from a dialup connection.)

But back to my experience attempting to research what happened with this
article. Since I didn't see the link to [[Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log]], I went back the original article, looking for some sign that
someone had added or removed the tag {{fac}}, which showed it was a
Featured article candidate. had I seen that tag, I would have gone back &
looked harder for that link, or some sign that there had been a discussion.

My point is that, for me at least, the interface failed to help me find what
I was looking for in 10 to 15 minutes of searching. While I admit that my
technique for doing my research could have been better, it would be a great
help if there was more documentation on how to find these things. (And
hopefully the system didn't change too greatly to frustrate attempts to
keep it up to date.)
>
> It's worth noting that most commenters recognized its NPOV
> problems at the time, but were content to feature it anyway.  Another reason
> to encourage further serious editing and improvements to FA articles before
> showcasing them on the main page... perhaps 24 hours' notice is not enough.
> I like the way Featured Pictures are decided on a week in advance.
>
Once I found the discussion, I could then compare the article history, & I
could see that there were some attempts to adjust the POV language in the
article. (And I also noticed one particularly uninformative comment to one
minor change.)

Geoff


body:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:35:17 -0700 (PDT), Geoffrey Burling
<llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> > Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.

True.  See what you think of the current revision.

> What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have
> passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved
> as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history

What's that?   Checking the featured log quickly brought up the history; search
for "Russian".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log

It's worth noting that most commenters recognized its NPOV
problems at the time, but were content to feature it anyway.  Another reason
to encourage further serious editing and improvements to FA articles before
showcasing them on the main page... perhaps 24 hours' notice is not enough.
I like the way Featured Pictures are decided on a week in advance.

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Russian constitutional crisis of 1993

body:
Geoffrey Burling wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
>
>>Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
>>
>>On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:12:04 -0700, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as
>>>>terribly one-sided.  The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this
>>>>conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his
>>>>opponents are consistently positive.  The reality is much more
>>>>complex.
>>>>
>>>>It is unusual for  a featured article to be so problematic.
>>>>
>>>
>>>And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This
>>>is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross
>>>misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted
>>>it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just
>>>revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I
>>>finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all
>>>out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana.
>>>
>>>Even so, I still worry that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will
>>>hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.
>>>
>>
> What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have
> passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved
> as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history
> pages of both the [[Wikipedia: Candidates for Featured Articles]] & the
> page in question, but one would think it would be that hard to find some
> trace of a discussion & approval.
>
> Can someone supply a link to the nomination for this page, or otherwise
> explain how it gained featured status?
>
> Geoff

Ahah ! a cabal to destabilize Wikipedia ? :-)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Arbitration Committee Elections (11th and 12th
	spots)?

body:
Sorry, but this is not the right mailing list.

Anthere (feeling in a day where things should be just at their right place)

Rebecca Leighton wrote:
> On the Arbitration Committee talk page, Michael Snow pointed out that
> there's two unfilled places on the Committee, due to
> resignations/places not being taken up in the first place, and
> suggested that elections for these be held.
>
> In my opinion, particularly considering the slow rate of proceedings
> of late, and that we are now down to seven active arbitrators (two
> away, one inactive, as well as these two spots), it would be wise to
> attempt to fill these.
>
> -- ambi


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Communication,
	being up-to-date and Mailing List issue

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
>>1) Announcement mailing list
>>2)  A special page for coordination & communication
>>3) Announcement translation and multilingualism
>
>
> Related to this, just want to make sure everyone knows about these two
> pages for announcements and goings-on.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Goings-on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

Related to this, I wanted to be sure anyone knew that these also existed
in other languages, and that everyone is FREE and WELCOME to cross
information between all of these.

ant


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>> Universities tend to be a little more standoffish about this sort of
>>> thing; faculty and students are focused on their studies, and the
>>> unwashed masses of the general public 1/2 :-) are an unwelcome
>>> distraction.
>>
>> Would it help if one of the Wikipedians is a student of the University
>> in question, and the session is done this summer before the beginning
>> of the next term?
>
> If said student was the child of a top donor, perhaps. :-) Not to be
> too cynical, but students are pretty low in the academic hierarchy.
> I think it would take a dean or full professor who was a WP enthusiast
> to have sufficient pull to arrange to commandeer part of the
> university's library - we have some academics on this list, perhaps
> they could weigh in on what they think they could arrange at their
> own institutions.

I see. Well, I suppose I wasn't actually thinking of trying to arrange
anything with the library beforehand. The [[Cambridge University
Library]] is huge -- I'm pretty sure a few hundred unexpected visitors
won't disrupt everyday happenings enough to be thrown out. Especially
not at this time of year, before the beginning of the next term, where
the library is as good as empty. That's why I mentioned that.

Timwi


body:
Anthere wrote:

[about the arbitration committee]
> Sorry, but this is not the right mailing list.

It would have been nice if you had pointed out what mailing list would
have been the correct one. I don't know (wikien-l perhaps?), so it is
possible that Rebecca doesn't know either.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HP Hardware donation

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> http://www.dhl.fr/ - DHL France
> http://www.fedex.com/fr/ - FedEx France in French
> http://www.fedex.com/fr_english/ - FedEx France in English
>

Thanks a lot Evar :-)

It seems that fedex is only making boat shipping above 70 kg.
By plane, 50 kg is 500 euros.

I found nothing about boat shipping by dhl, by air is roughly 500 as well.

I thought of trying to call these guys, then I made a check list of what
I did not know, and what I did know.

I do not know
1. The adress the server will leave
2. The adress where the server should be delivered
3. The weight of the server, as well as dimensions
4. The estimate cost for insurrance and such

I concluded I would not call them.

What about the italian option ?

I hope someone else is able to help Med, for he is leaving his
appartment on the 5th of august. So, the issue should be solved by then :-(


body:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 01:58:58 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> [about the arbitration committee]
> > Sorry, but this is not the right mailing list.
>>> It would have been nice if you had pointed out what mailing list would
>>> have been the correct one. I don't know (wikien-l perhaps?), so it is
>>> possible that Rebecca doesn't know either.

Wikien-l (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l) is for
non-technical issues relating only to the English Wikipedia.
(Technical matters would go to wikitech-l.)

This list (Wikipedia-l) is for issues concerning more than one
Wikipedia, but not concerning the sister-projects. (Cross-project
discussions can go to foundation-l).

The Arbitration Committee exists only on the English Wikipedia, so
you'd discuss that on wikien-l.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mailing_lists.

Hope that helps.

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Article validation

body:
Somehow I missed this email when it first came in...

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 11:55:37 +0200, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Of course, I can add a text field. I take it a summary-like field
> (VARCHAR 255) would be sufficient?

Absolutely sufficient.  Thank you!   +sj+

> Sj wrote:
>
> >Hi, Mangus!  This is good news.  Would it be possible not to name
> >this table "validate", if this is all it will contain, and instead something
> >like "article_votes"? Otherwise, could there also be a text field
> >associated with each vote?
> >
> > I hold out hope that a validation table will be associated with some
> >form of 'validation' which associates a text field with each
> >"validation"/"review"
> >(perhaps a numerical vote like this; perhaps distinct from such votes).
> >
> >--Sj--


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
You have made it abundantly clear that other editors are definitely not
welcome. Thus the sorry state of our articles in this area. I know your
interpretation of the "Russian constitutional crisis of 1993" is not to be
trusted. Yet I wonder what did happen... Not much chance I'll be able to
find out by consulting Wikipedia any time soon.

Fred

> From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 06:41:52 +0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 (some responses)
>
> And I sincerely hope that this does get other users into the fold on recent
> Russian history. Our articles in this area are very underdeveloped and I'm
> not getting very far very fast being virtually the only one making
> substantial contributions to them.
>
> -172


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chinese Wikipedia get together in Beijing

body:
Timwi, the Wikipedia is now completely accessible from China.  The
access was gradually reinsated a few weeks into June.

As is the case with these type of stories, the block gets lots of
fanfare, the lifting usually does not.  Also typical is that there was
no official explanation for why the block was put in or lifted.  Here
is the article and quote by Jimbo which helps explain some of this:
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1350

-Andrew

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:44:52 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Andrew Lih wrote:
>
> > The first organized meeting of Chinese Wikipedians will be happening
> > in Beijing this weekend, on Sunday.  Thanks to User:Mountain for
> > helping to organize this.
>
> Is the whole thing with Wikipedia being blocked in China over now? Is it
> completely accessible for everyone again? And how big are the chances of
> this happening again?
>
> These are just questions out of curiosity.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
University of Hong Kong
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Communication,
	being up-to-date and Mailing List issue

body:
> 1) Announcement mailing list
> 2)  A special page for coordination & communication
> 3) Announcement translation and multilingualism

Related to this, just want to make sure everyone knows about these two
pages for announcements and goings-on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Goings-on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 (some responses)

body:
Stan Shebs shebs at apple.com wrote:

And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This
is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross
misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted
it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just
revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I
finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all
out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana. Even so, I still worry
that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will
hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.

None of the sources are "socialist" by any stretch of the imagination. Go
check them. All of them fall with in the mainstream of the academic
literature, in the mainstream of Western political science and Russia
studies, which you'll find is quite often far harder on Yeltsin than this
article. (see, e.g., the analyses of democratization inspired by Guillermo
O'Donnell's "delegative democracy").

All fair minded users will recognize that Stan Shebs, along with Fred
Bauder, have been haplessly sniping at me for over a year and a half. As
usual, not one iota's worth of evidence is offered, but Stan launches into
the ad hominem bluster. This will be my final comment to them regarding this
issue. This time I will not overreact to Stan's defamation. His unwarranted
(and confused) personal attacks are a dishonor only to him, not to me.

I will discuss this, though, with a user demonstrating good faith and a
satisfactory command of the facts. To quickly address some of the other
charges of bias, perhaps some of the others are confusing the 10/93 crisis
with the August 1991 coup, which was a hard-line Communist coup attempt. If
that's the case, I suggest they do some more reading; these two incidents,
though separated by only a couple of years, were quite distinct.

And I sincerely hope that this does get other users into the fold on recent
Russian history. Our articles in this area are very underdeveloped and I'm
not getting very far very fast being virtually the only one making
substantial contributions to them.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
Overwhelmed by debt? Find out how to ?Dig Yourself Out of Debt? from MSN
Money. http://special.msn.com/money/0407debt.armx


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chinese Wikipedia get together in Beijing

body:
Unlikely. It is an meeting of folks who met on the Internet, so as
long as it is nothing politically motivated, it's fine. OTOH, if you
don't hear from me by Wednesday, call my lawyer. :)

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:32:04 -0500, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:40:48 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Following in the footsteps of successful European Wikimeetups...
> >
> > The first organized meeting of Chinese Wikipedians will be happening
> > in Beijing this weekend, on Sunday.  Thanks to User:Mountain for
> > helping to organize this.
>
> Maybe this is an uneducated question, but does this have any potential
> for trouble? Could it get any of the people coming to the meeting in
> hot waters due to the "controversial" nature of the Wikipedia project?
>
> --
> [[en:User:Dori]]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 (elaborating on my
	response)

body:
Earlier I wrote:

"All of [my sources on recent Russian history] fall with in the mainstream
of the academic literature, in the mainstream of Western political science
and Russia studies..." [This was in response to Stan Shebs, stating the
following in reference to my work: "I... worry that the unabashed socialist
viewpoint will hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder."]

The following is a list of some of the authors I've cited in my work on
post-Soviet Russia on Wikipedia: Anders ?slund, Stephen Cohen, Marshall
Goldman, Juan Linz, Branko Milanovic, Sheila M. Puffer, Henry S. Rowen,
Pekka Sutela, Joseph Stiglitz, Ray Taras, Stephen White, Charles Wolf.
[Perhaps Stiglitz and Cohen can be accused of social democracy and
neo-Keynesianism-- how sinister indeed-- but Anders ?slund offers some
balance from the "Washington Consensus" (BTW, this is quite a pro-market,
pro-Western mix next to general public opinion in Russia right now, and even
some of Vladimir Putin's statements in the past few years. And oddly enough,
I'm being accused of "socialist bias." If anything, it's probably the other
way around.)

I invite anyone interested to do some research in order to see for
himself/herself how absurd some of the attacks on my credibility have been.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Skin.php, 1.234,
	1.235

body:
Peter Danenberg wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 03:39:55PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
>>Those CVS commit messages are totally useless if the text editor
>>adds or removes whitespace all over the file.
>
>      Speaking of which: does wiki policy on indentation pro-
> vide tab=8?

Sane people use 4-space tabs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: National Alliance article (was Communist
	Censorship)

body:
On Friday 23 July 2004 15:23, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> One thing I discovered in my conversations with Paul Vogel is that
> they prefer to be called "white separatists".  I think we can safely
> use that terminology as well, because it's more accurate.
>
> <POV>
> If they think that "white supremacist" is a pejorative insult, whereas
> "white separatist" is a delightful explanation of their terribly
> enlightened ideals, well, the joke is on them.  They still sound like
> morons to me.
> </POV>

Don't these two terms describe two different groups?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993

body:
On Friday 23 July 2004 15:52, blankfaze wrote:
> > Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as
> > terribly one-sided.  The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this
> > conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his
> > opponents are consistently positive.  The reality is much more
> > complex.
>
> I noticed that too, Jimbo.  I was copyediting it yesterday and noticed
> that it's pretty much demonising Yeltsin the whole way through.  I
> would have tried to NPOV it, but I really don't know too much about
> the subject.  Maybe in the future we should put together an NPOV crew
> to check featured articles...

I've read the article and I don't see how does it demonise Yeltsin. The only
(possible) problem I see is that some statements are definitive (...this was
unconstitutional...) but, if they are widely accepted, possibly even admitted
by Yeltsin, even that is OK.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "The Register" is making fun of us

body:
On Friday 23 July 2004 22:56, Stan Shebs wrote:
> Rick wrote:
> >http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/23/wiki_fiddlers_big_book/
> >RickK
>
> Heh heh. Brings to mind the old political advice "Never start a fight
> with someone who buys ink by the gallon" (for you young'uns, "blogs
> for a living" might be a more meaningful equivalent :-) ).

In other words, how's our article about The Register doing? :>


from_name: Dori

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Skin.php,
	1.234, 1.235

references:
<E1BoMPp-00077n-ES@sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net>
	<20040724133954.GA27180@jeluf.mine.nu>
	<20040724143212.GA8820@localhost.localdomain>

body:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 16:32:12 +0200, Peter Danenberg
<danenberg at mitdasein.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 03:39:55PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> > Those CVS commit messages are totally useless if the text editor
> > adds or removes whitespace all over the file.
>
>
>      Speaking of which: does wiki policy on indentation pro-
> vide tab=8?
>
>      Best, Peter

8? You must not use indentation much or you have a huge screen. I
personally prefer actual tab characters, and I set my editor to
display tabs as 2 spaces.

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


body:
On Friday 23 July 2004 23:20, Rob Hooft wrote:
> Yuck: the misconception that GIF is lossless was common when JPEG just
> came out. You are right that recoding GIF's ad infinitum does not lose
> more and more information every time, but encoding to GIF for the first
> time loses 16 out of 24 bitplanes of information. GIF is a colormapped
> format accommodating at most 256 colors.

Well, sometimes there are no 24 bitplanes of information.


from_name: Dr Jipa

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cacocracy

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040724/3674d3e2/attachment.diff


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image resizing questions...

body:
On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 05:04:35PM +1000, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> A couple of image-related questions...
>
> 1. Magnus mentioned that he has added code to CVS that lets you do
>  [[Image:blah.jpg|thumb=blah_manually_thumbnailed.jpg]]
>
> Has that gone live on the Wikipedia?

No.

> 2. How best should the
> Wikipedia deal with convenient viewing of multi-megapixel images like
> the image on the following page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Library_of_Victoria
>
> Seeing we want the ability to make printed material out of Wikipedia
> content, uploading full-resolution images is IMO the way to do it.
> However, such images currently break the image description page.
>
> Should the image description page automatically resize images larger
> than screen width and have a link to download the full image?  Would
> such a feature be enough to deal with the problem?   Would the automatic
> resizing from "really big" to "screen size" cause the same kind of image
> quality issues that Tannin mentioned with  thumbnailing?

Similar, but due to the bigger size of the "screen size" images, this would
be as obvious than for the very small thumbs.

How big is "screen size"? 600px width? 800px?

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: S. Vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] page protection policy

body:
Ive done a little more thinking on it; its funny that
most of these mechanisms are in place, but the
disconnect is still there with highly controversial
issues, among percieved partisan editors. Mediation is
besides the point: Its like having to go to
psychiatric counseling to fix something wrong with
your car. Others have complained about the problems
with the rigid tie-your-hands WP:PP policy.

The solution seems simple enough: allow "moderation"
to refer to the first-step process by which articles
are moderated by a pair of chosen sysops. Rather than
let things blow out of control so much, and have 1-2
talk pages filled before things get unprotected and
continued, let the two sysops edit the protected
article under a short unobtrusive {{moderatoredit}}
banner. This kind of thing was done lots of times
before, but the PP policy restricted it to a large
degree such that "editing the protected page" is
taboo.

The idea of banning people from the pages for a time
is controversial, and I certainly dont think that a
month should be necessary - we already protect pages
long enough for people to just get tired of it - the
point is to speed things up. Id like to see 1.
obligatory immediate protections, even by sysops
involved in a dispute - so that business between 172
and whats his name on Adolf Hitler and something else
doesnt happen. After that, limiting edits to 2 chosen
moderators for a couple of days should air most of the
 concerns. The few problem users (including sysops)
who overreact, revert, etc can face sanction - though
this is an extra detail best left to the largely well
functioning mediation and arbitration processes.

-S

--- Pierre Hentges <pyropir at gmx.net> wrote:
> SV is right that the current policy on page
> protection
> isn't great. Pages are often protected for a long
> time
> without any progress on the actual conflict. For
> example
> [[anti-American sentiment]] has been protected for
> nearly
> two weeks without VV and GBWR making the slightest
> effort
> to resolve their dispute, despite me trying to help.
> It's
> very frustrating for everybody else. The current
> policy
> just isn't conducive to conlict resolution.
>
> SV's proposal is interesting but I think there are
> drawbacks: quite substantial changes are required,
> admins
> workload will go up ; there is no justification for
> the
> assumption that admins can deal with edit conflicts
> better
> than common Wikipedians
>
> I'd like to make an alternative proposal for dealing
> with
> page protection:
>
> 1) in case of an edit war the page in question is
> protected
> as before. Then the following steps are taken:
> 2) the admin who protected the page makes a list (on
> the
> talk page) of the editors involved in the edit
> conflict ;
> 3) the named editors each outline their view of the
> disagreement (talk page) ;
> 4) the named editors (with the help of fellow
> Wikipedians
> if this is helpful) try to hammer out a compromise ;
>
> 5) if no compromise can be found within a week, this
> is
> taken as proof that they are unable to resolve their
>
> conflict. Therefore the page is unprotected but the
> listed
> editors are banned from editing the article in
> question for
> a period of, say, a month. Editors that were not
> involved
> in the edit conflict can edit the article and get a
> chance
> to deal with the controversial points ;
> 6) Since this system could be abused by people who
> raise
> spurious conflicts just to get other editors banned
> from an
> article, there is need for a further step: if one of
> the
> editors feels their opponent is acting in bad faith,
> they
> can ask for a vote on this, and if there is a
> consensus
> (say 3/4) then their ban is lifted.
>
> pros:
> =====
> 1) nobody wants to get banned from an article they
> are
> interested in, therefore Wikipedians will try to
> avoid edit
> wars ; willingness to compromise and to be civil
> will
> increase ;
> 2) a more formal way of dealing with edit conflicts
> ;
> 3) no big changes required (software, new sysop
> roles
> etc.) ;
> 4) Wikipedians who avoid edit wars don't get shut
> out of
> protected articles for long periods ;
> 5) the workload of admins stays the same
>
> cons:
> =====
> 1) protection policy change
> 2) ??
>
> I'll copy this to the PPP draft page.
>
> pir
>
> On Friday 23 July 2004 12:04,
> wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> > Message: 6
> > Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:14:11 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: "S. Vertigo" <sewev at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Protected page policy rethuk
> > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Message-ID:
>
<20040723051411.84168.qmail at web90005.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> >
> > ...Wikipedia RC seems to be zipping by quite fast
> > lately. (Its already impossible to just scan RC as
> a
> > way to catch up; Im actually using my watchlist
> for
> > the first time...) But it seems that with the
> > controversial set, its time for a rethinking of
> the
> > protected page policy, and Ive written some basic
> > stuff here
> >
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_page/Draft]]
>
> >
> > Basically, my idea calls for sort of dance steps
> to
> > how to deal with contested articles. Essentially,
> > allowing certain sysops to act according to formal
>
> > roles with respect to each contested article, and
> to
> > have those articles be protected in degrees, based
> on
> > what the situation calls for. Protection is
> > degree-less, but sysops can and should act
> responsibly
> > to continue developing articles in accordance with
> the
> > concerns of the partisans. Because any disputes
> about
> > who can act in each role are an abstract issue
> from
> > the article, they can be dealt with judiciously as
> a
> > separate dispute by moderates not interested in
> > getting mud thrown at them. With templates and
> > categories, this can be more quickly done.
> >
> > Of course, this would mean that sysopdom does have
>
> > some responsibility and privelige for which they
> would
> > be more accountable, but this is weighed against
> the
> > need to have controversial articles not be such
> black
> > holes on Wikipedia.
>
>
> --
> +++ GMX DSL-Tarife 3 Monate gratis* +++ Nur bis
> 25.7.2004 +++
> Bis 24.000 MB oder 300 Freistunden inkl.
> http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
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body:
Timwi wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> [about the arbitration committee]
>
>> Sorry, but this is not the right mailing list.
>
>
> It would have been nice if you had pointed out what mailing list would
> have been the correct one. I don't know (wikien-l perhaps?), so it is
> possible that Rebecca doesn't know either.
>
> Timwi

Believe it or not, I did it. I changed the headings of the gmane message
to forward the mail to wikien.

I made a forward to, instead of a reply to, and put in the forward, the
en list adress.

Conclusion is : it did not work.

Ah ! Technnique !
I go try to make another attempt.


body:
> Ah ! Technnique !
> I go try to make another attempt.

conclusion, does not work.


subject: [WikiEN-l] page protection policy

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Con for your otherwise good proposal:
> * More bureaucracy. See [[m:instruction creep]] -

Not if its just reinstituting the basic common sense
approach that was common before the newer absolutist
protection policy.

> the people causing
> the problem won't read the instructions either, or
> we wouldn't have
> had the problem in the first place.

Which is why a moderation process should be an
alternate to the existing one trick pony {{protected}}
policy.

> One thing I've been wishing for lately is some way
> for third parties
> to drag edit warriors to mediation.

Right. Mediation (aka "group therapy") is completely
besides the point of dealing with the article in the
short term.

> took a *lot* of dragging. And we appear to have a
> shortage of
> mediators ... (This is me not volunteering!)

Any sysop could and should be a moderator for an
article - but by claiming the role, they have some
*responsibility to follow process and deal with the
concerns, in addition to the *privelige of editing the
protected article. Plus that {{protected}} message is
just too unnecesarily big...

S

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special:AskSQL

references:
<1370636.4qQF7LjVUm@mobil.md-d.org>	<742dfd0604072219506ab3e3e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<cdqm2a$bsf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Sj wrote:
>
>> I second this request.   especially if you can enable a remote "kill
>> this request" feature
>> accessible to the same people, for requests that hang...
>
>
> I don't want to enable that feature again or try to enhance it, I'll
> just come under attack from Erik yet again.

Sorry, that was a silly thing to say. Consider this a retraction. Of
course I'll enable your feature.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Bad HTML:

in_reply_to:
<shsmbuqpi8.fsf_-_@tux.gnu.franken.de> (Karl Eichwalder's message
	of "Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:53:51 +0200")

body:
Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de> writes:

> Please stop generating sequences as follows
> (<URL:http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin>):
>
>

>

>
> If vertical whitespace is required (why?), use CSS properties.
> Unfortunately, browsers do not treat those sequences as empty...

FYI: This annoying bug is still visible :-(

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


from_name: Yann Forget

subject:
[Wikipedia-l]  Communication,
	being up-to-date and Mailing List issue

body:
Hi Fire,

Le Friday 23 July 2004 16:48, Ronny Raschkowan a ?crit :
> Hello!
>
> When i talked yesterday on IRC with another wikipedian, we had both the
> same opinion that there's a problem with the communication, and staying
> up-to-date.
>
> The problem is that people don't know for example, a feature had been
> enabled or similar (high priority?) news concerning Wikimedia. Also,
> most Wikis aren't up to date: They don't know for example, that it is
> also possible to block logged in people using the IP - Ban interface.
> Another problem is, that Wikis also couldn't know where they have to do
> requests like: Request for Permission, for switching the logo path, for
> queries, for updating a LanguageXX.php. Possibly they don't know there
> are IRC Channels and Mailing Lists, too. I would purpose two possible
> ways to change that, but feel free to purpose other ways :)
>
> 1) "Reactivating" the Announce-l Mailinglist. As far, as there are a lot
> of changed going on, (creation of language specific wikibooks, quote for
>   example), it'd be a good idea to have this ML working, as far as
> people could post the announces there and people interested in the
> changes could suscribe to that list and get informed.
>
> 2) Creating a new Special page for all wikis (or similar), called
> "Useful_Links" or similar ( I haven't found a good title yet ;) ).
> People could read there where they can found the IRC Chat, where they
> can found specific mailing lists, and where they can post request (for
> permission, logo, query, etc), (Embassies?), etc. As far, people would
> have a good reference page and would fastly find a way where  they can
> report a problem to the community, request and communicate within the
> community and with other users.

The problem is not to create new places because people won't come there more
than they do now. It is to bring the information where they are and where
they look for it. So there is no miracle solution.

> Sincerly yours,
> Ronny

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
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http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux