from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
> Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala
> site.  No one doubts this.  The question is: what's the most effective
> way to get there?
>
> Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic:
>
> "Few countries [snip] coffee planatations run wild."

These quotes all refer to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There
are two Congos these days, the one to which these quotes refer is the
one which was ruined by the notorious Mobutu Sese Seko. The other one
is the Republic of the Congo, with its capital at Brazzaville, which
wasn't ruled for half a century by a despot.

What _is_ the most effective way to get there?

Surely, not by having it so that the sole administrator is the user
with the worst Lingala out of the three?

> > I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
> > something should be done.
>
> How about letting the people who are working there continue their work,
> and let's make some kind of a concerted effort to get more help for
> them.  I wonder if we can't find a dozen or so academics who are fluent
> in Lingala and French (or Lingala and English).

Again, let's take a look at the people who are "working" there:

User:Bombo, lists himself as ln-0, likes to post articles in French,
has made almost no contributions that could even be argued to be
helping ln.wiki;
User:Moyogo, lists himself as ln-1, is responsible for most of the
interface but has made some significant good contributions with actual
Lingala;
User:Themalau, lists himself as ln-3, is responsible for the handful
of articles which are completely or mostly in Lingala, and is probably
the best contributor to that Wikipedia.

Which of these people is the one who so desparately needs the French
interface? Surely not Themalau, who seems to be able to read and write
satisfactory Lingala? Moyogo himself recently said on the Village pump
that the interface should be 100% Lingala, so it's surely not him.
Perhaps it is Bombo, who likes to copy articles verbatim from the
French and English Wikipedias?

Bombo himself said on one talkpage, and I quote, "je ne parle pas le lingala".

If anyone needs to use a French interface, remember that they can
choose it in their personal preferences, or even by adding something
to the end of each URL (uselang=fr).

> > 2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the
> > administrators stated that it's important that French is in the
> > interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in
> > mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to
> > speak pretty good Lingala.
>
> It should be left up to them to determine the best way forward, lacking
> some really compelling evidence that this is problematic.

"Up to them" -- it makes sense to leave such decisions up the local
community in most cases, but in cases like this, the local community
is little more qualified than are you or I -- Bombo, one of the three
active users, doesn't seem to know any Lingala at all. If he gets to
decide, why can't I? What if I start posting heaps of French articles,
does that mean that suddenly I get to help with the decision because
now I'm part of the community?

Neither Themalau nor Moyogo seem to be in favour of keeping the
etrefas bilingual, and they're the only two users with very good
Lingala.

Mark


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Re-FWD: [Wikinews-l] Wikinews Licensure Poll

body:
<blush> attachment scrubbing </blush>
----

The Wikinews Licensure Poll, which was delayed until 2000 UTC
September 6th, is currently open for voting. The poll is to learn the
community's opinion as to an appropriate copyright licensure for
Wikinews, to inform the Wikimedia Foundation Board as they consider
options for the project. The poll is located at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll

There are many options in the poll, including:

    * BSD license
    * CC-by 2.5
    * CC-by-sa 2.5
    * GFDL
    * Wikinews License v 0.1
    * Wikinews License v 0.2

As well there are options for various multilicensing options.

The poll is an open vote, meaning anyone may vote for as many options
as they feel would be appropriate, and community members may vote both
for or against options. Votes are being polled with Wikinews
contributors for/against, and other Wikimedians for/against, so there
can be a comparison of opinions if there is a difference.

Please take a moment to look at the options and give your opinion, to
help the board out in their considerations.

Amgine


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
> > I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
> > something should be done.
>
> Personally, I have little problems with the bilingual interface,
> although I would assume that it gets changed once the 'real' Lingala
> editors start getting to be the majority.

But, wouldn't it be better if it were monolingual, and people who need
to use French can select that in their user preferences? Obviously,
nobody at mi.wikipedia speaks better Maori than English, yet the
interface is not bilingual there -- it's all Maori.

Also, the "uselang" can be added to the end of URLs and the interface
will appear in that language.

> However, the articles that are in English or French seem to me to not
> be the intention of a Lingala Wikipedia. There may be one or two
> exceptions (perhaps some pages about the language itself?), and one
> could put a page there that one intends to translate, but that latter
> should also not be more than 1 or 2 pages per editor.
>
> I think the pages should be either removed, or replaced by stubs in
> Lingala, with perhaps a link to the English or French article for more
> information.
>

You mean interwiki liens? ;)

Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: new SVG locator maps mediawiki extension - update

body:
"Dschwen" <lists at schwen.de> wrote in message
news:200508120846.55438.lists at schwen.de...
> Quick example images:
> http://www.kellnerweg.de/wiki/images/dynamap/1b05858e22e706bf498a394e7932a176.png
> http://www.kellnerweg.de/wiki/images/dynamap/1b05858e22e706bf498a394e7932a176.svg
>
> Check the whole thing live:
> http://www.kellnerweg.de/wiki/index.php/Dynamap_Example
> (feel free to edit around)

Just a quick comment: I could view both of the individual images linked
above, but the actual wiki page simply contains a blue rectangle. The SVG
source displays fine, but nothing appears where the map should be :-(

I'm using IE6 (SP2) with Adobe SVG Viewer 3.1 (build 81). HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop

body:
On 9/8/05, MAURICE FRANK <megaknee at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> I challenge you to print this on en-Wikipedia's home
> page, so that no user can deny realising it nor claim
> that readers don't know it. This is so that nobody
> thereafter will have any basis go round arguing that
> you hide the way you work. So you'll be better off,
> won't you?

I come across a lot more people complaining about blind enforcement of
Wikipedia's rules without any common sense or flexibility than people
complaining about flexibility and consideration of the surrounding
circumstances.

There is judgement involved in almost every administrator action. For
instance, take a look at the Blocking Policy Page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy
This page is linked to from the Main Page via the Wikipedia
Introduction (which is where people go when they click "anyone can
edit").

"Sysops MAY, AT THEIR JUDGEMENT, block IP addresses whose users
vandalise Wikipedia."
"Sysops MAY, AT THEIR JUDGEMENT, block IP addresses or usernames that
disrupt the normal functioning of Wikipedia."
"According to our username policy, ... inappropriate usernames are not
allowed, and in certain circumstances, sysops MAY block accounts with
such usernames."
"Usernames that are designed to impersonate legitimate users MAY be
blocked immediately and indefinitely."
"[S]ysops MAY block on sight any bot that appears to be out of control."
"Blocks MAY be imposed in instances where threats have been made...."

And, to cap off all the examples of leeway for sysop discretion
hard-codified into the policy wording, there is this one:

"Blocks without policy basis
...
Though rare, there have been situations where a user has exhausted the
community's patience to the point where they find themselves blocked
even though there is, strictly speaking, no basis in policy for the
block. Administrators who block without policy basis should be sure
that there is exceptional, widespread community support for the
block."

So there sometimes doesn't even need to be a policy basis, so long as
there is a wide community consensus. This just reinforces that policy
is there to largely guide administrators in their roles.
Administrators can and do take actions outside of policy, and largely
these actions are highly uncontroversial and to the benefit of
Wikipedia. Administrators are often required to make judgement calls
in the exercise of their administrator actions, and I think Wikipedia
would be a worse place if administrators were required to blindly
adhere to the policy with no consideration of the surrounding
circumstances.

If we are still talking about Zoe's blocking of that user, then I
think the edits of that user quite clearly fall within "disruption of
Wikipedia", specifically "changing other users' signed comments". Note
that section does not say "*deliberately* changing other users' signed
comments".

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Donald Wong

subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing Special Page

body:
I am having some trouble running the sample Special Page despite
following the steps described, i.e. having included the file in
LocalSettings and making appropriate changes to names, etc.  Any
pointers on how to deal with this issue will be greatly appreciated.

The sample Special Page I'm referring to is at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Writing_a_new_special_page

After including the file in LocalSettings, I will get the following
error from PHP:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: includable() in
/var/www/mediawiki-1.4.9/extensions/ExampleSpecialPage.php on line 27

None of the SpecialPage files inside the include/ directory have the
includable() function so I just went ahead and commented it out, and
then I will receive the following error:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class specialpage in
mediawiki-1.4.9/includes/SpecialPage.php on line 101
which is referring to the class SpecialPage declaration.

The problem code section is

class ExampleSpecialPage extends SpecialPage {
     function ExampleSpecialPage() {
         SpecialPage::SpecialPage( 'ExampleSpecialPage' );
         $this->includable( true );
     }
...
}


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: technical issues management

body:
Kate wrote:
>>Looks like dev/sysadmin will have to look at both interfaces if they
>>want to get the full history of the problem.
>
> well, the idea is that only one person has to look at OTRS, and any
> other developers can see all current issues in bugzilla (via the Issues
> product).  the reason i used OTRS for that is to act as a 'filter'
> between users reporting problems, and extracting actual issues which
> need to be solved from that.

I fully understand the need for filtering issues but bugzilla got an
UNCONFIRMED status (actually disabled) that can probably be used for that.
Instead of using OTRS to filter new requests, we could search for bugs
in product 'Wikimedia Web' with status 'UNCONFIRMED'.

Then either the issue is:
- confirmed and a dev mark it as NEW, eventually correct the subgroup,
severity and priority
- the issue is resolved and dev resolve it as wontfix/worksforme/invalid.

Is there any software for mail <> bugzilla gateway ? That will allow us
to bypass OTRS entirely.

>>You can probably set up bugzilla to have several virtual admin teams
>>(dns, squids, apaches, hardware, kennisnet). All new messages could be
>>assigned to the issue manager with an 'unconfirmed' status he will then
>>give out the bug to one of the virtual teams that can then deal with the
>>problem.
>
> would each team be a mailing list?  i was thinking of an all-developers@
> list to assign bugs to by default (at the moment they're assigned to me,
> but that's not a very good solution).

New unconfirmed bugs should probably be assigned to an all-developers
mailing lists. But issues concerning squids (for example) should only
send notification to developers that actually manages or know about
squid. Same for dns, apaches, perlbal, database dumps etc..).

It's more an internal issues among developers, actually we are like a
big group supposed to manage everything when its not the case. Some devs
do not have root access, some do not know about DNS, some other know
only about squid (that last example is fictional).

I think the main issue is our organisation, we should stop acting as a
'wikidev' group and split in virtual teams instead. Then we can assign
issues to the virtual teams and give rights to those teams on servers.

A really simple and _fictional_ example:
 - devA got root access to manage database backup but don't know how DNS
work. It happens devA made some modification to DNS and made the site
for some unaccessible for sometime, he also crash squids from time to
time when trying stuff.
 - devB know alot about DNS but does not have root access, he doesnt
know about mysql.

Solution:
 - create a mysqldev group, remove devA root access and assign him in
mysqldev group
 - assign devB in dnsdev group.

Issues about dns will be moved from developer-all to the dnsdev team and
devB will receive notification when devA will receive nothing. Same for
mysql issues that will be sent only to devA and not to devB.

I really think we should get ride of the actual way of doing things (aka
wikidev for somestuff, root access to change configuration, and every
developers seen as the same big team). Your proposition is a good step
for that :)

>>Isn't what http://wp.wikidev.net/ is for ? Some troublechecking guide
>>would probably be useful.
>
> i was going to use wikidev for it, but i think it's more useful for that
> to go on bugzilla now.  of course, documenting things on wikidev is
> still a good idea ;-) (and the server admin log shouldn't go away).

Bugzilla should only be about solving issues. Documentation should
really be on a different tool unless bugzilla got a kind of faq-o-matic
pluging that could let us create documentation (but probably a mediawiki
installation such as wikidev is a better idea as you wrote).

If there is an interesting bug that can be later referenced, it should
be rewrote cleanly and added as a FAQ/HOW-TO on wikidev. That will let
developers enhance it later instead of adding comments in a bug report.
Example: developer willing to correct a comment will probably add a
comment like "comment #3 is wrong, use foobar instead", if its comment
#54, one dev will probably use the command in comment #3 before figuring
 its wrong).

> well.. if people want to report issues via IRC, it's fine, but i think
> the general attitude should be that if it's not sent to noc@, there's no
> guarantee it'll get fixed.  the user doesn't have to do that, of course
> - a developer who happens to be on IRC, or whatever, can open a new
> ticket.  i definitely don't want to start ignoring people trying to
> report problems, however they do it, since the idea of this is to make
> it _easier_, not _harder_...
Totally agree.

I will be out until monday or wednesday.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Portal namespace

body:
Hi,
We requested a new 'portal' namespace about one year ago but this came
to nothing. Some days ago, we discovered the English and German
Wikipedia are now using this namespace (sic!) so we requesting to be
able to do same [1]. The French word for portal is 'portail'.
Regards,

Aoineko

[1]
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/30_ao%C3%BBt_2005#Un_espace_de_nom_pour_nos_portails


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
Doro?y?ski Janusz wrote:
> However it means that declared and supported by wiki open
> content exist fully since 23rd June, now is limited.

No it doesn't, it means the complete opposite.

If we didn't want to produce working dumps for you to be able to get all
text, *THEN* we would still be making SQL dumps for you THAT DON'T WORK.
I like to think we're not complete idiots, so we're not doing that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Time spent in page rendering

body:
Evan Martin wrote:
> I've often wondered this, so this is a great opportunity to jump in.
> Why not cache prerendered versions of all pages?

We do. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
> I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> for deaf users and will be recruiting more.

There is no software to support such a thing at present.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/8/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
> How about a policy whereby VfDs that don't adequately explain why the
> nominator made it can be summarily deleted? If someone proposes deleting
> an article they should at least show that they put effort into
> determining whether deletion was warranted.

That certainly sounds just, especially in regards to those sad little
abbreviations. They don't really save much (if any) time and their only real
purpose seems to be to confuse people who aren't in on the lingo or to make
the nominator feel that they are part of some sort of special club. I say
this of course as a proud academic. ;-)

(On some pages, such as IFD, they make sense, since what they mean is posted
at the top of the page and most of the nominations are just procedural and
uncontested).

FF


from_name: Evan Martin

body:
On 9/8/05, Domas Mituzas <Domas.Mituzas at microlink.lt> wrote:
> > Why not cache prerendered versions of all pages?
>
> We have multiple caches.
> [explanation snipped]

Thanks for the explanation!
And with all of that, rendering is still the bottleneck?


list: textbook-l

from_name: Michael Monaghan

subject: [Textbook-l] multilingual support

body:
Hi,
I'm looking at trying to use WikiBooks at the enterprise level.

I'd like to be able to use WikiBooks in a multilingual doc development
environment.

However a major drawback I see is that, for example, in WikiBooks the entire
body contents of a page are stored in one database field. And there's no
obvious way to link translations together.
The main body of the page is all stored in one database field. Users can
enter HTML, wiki shorthand, regular text etc - there's no enforced structure
- an XML DTD etc - to the content. This again causes portability problems to
other apps etc.

There are similar problems in Wiktionary - but they are being addressed by
the "Ultimate Wiktionary" project.
Has anyone got any thoughts/solutions for this for WikiBooks?

thanks,
-mm


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will
> somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be
> the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and
> most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to
> a monolingual Lingala speaker.

What are the odds of a monolinqual Lingala speaker coming across the
site?  How do those odds compare with a bilingual French/Lingala speaker
coming across the site?

I don't know the answer, so this isn't a rhetorical question.

Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala
site.  No one doubts this.  The question is: what's the most effective
way to get there?

Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic:

"Few countries in the world have collapsed as disastrously by the
wayside -- regressed so starkly into preindustrial ruin - as Congo.
Once called Zaire, the nation was picked clean during three decades of
misrule by the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then gutted by more than six
years of anarchy and civil war.  Today Congo is the shell-shocked
colossus of central Africa - a country almost the size of Western Europe
that seems to have sleepwalked into some feverish dream of the
post-Apocalypse.
[...]
What words can be uttered about those roads? [The roads of in eastern
Congo]  Clogged with mud, strangled by bush, reduced in many cases to
absurd footpaths, they slither for hundreds of miles through a tropical
forest second in size only to the Amazon.  They span a landscape where
the 20th century has ebbed like a neap tide, leaving behind the detritus
of modernity: towns with trees growing from roofs, factories crumbling
like Mayan ruins, coffee planatations run wild."

> I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
> something should be done.

How about letting the people who are working there continue their work,
and let's make some kind of a concerted effort to get more help for
them.  I wonder if we can't find a dozen or so academics who are fluent
in Lingala and French (or Lingala and English).

If you can find them for me on the Internet, I will personally phone the
ones who speak English, and I'm sure Anthere or another French person
will be happy to phone the ones who speak French.

> 2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the
> administrators stated that it's important that French is in the
> interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in
> mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to
> speak pretty good Lingala.

It should be left up to them to determine the best way forward, lacking
some really compelling evidence that this is problematic.


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Donation drive stopped early with insufficient
	funds collected

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>The building of a coherent global network is a significant technical and
>>organizational challenge that many good people are working hard on,
>
> The German chapter has been in limbo for almost a year now as to how they can
> help globally. It has been my observation that the trustees of that chapter
> want to help globally but the issues relating to what can and can?t be done
> with that money outside of Germany has been a major reason why little has been
> done with that money outside that nation. Please correct me if I?m wrong.
>
> So I simply suggested that everybody consider setting aside the issues that
> have been stopping action for nearly a year. I did *not* suggest that any rash
> decisions be made or that things get decided unilaterally or randomly. But I
> did suggest that issues relating to legal ownership (a major bottleneck - in my
> observation - so far) can be worked out in due time. As is, the great majority
> of the money is just sitting there.

Contracts between chapters and the foundation can help - something we
are unfamiliar with because our community is based on trust but the
tax-and-legal network out there is based on written contracts. Contracts
beween organisations in different countries are complex anyway.

Greetings,
Jakob

P.S: In this message there is a hidden reminder about a contract
regarding logo and trademarks usage that Wikimedia Germany is awaiting
eagerly every day since weeks.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> According to the hardware orders page[1], a major bottleneck is page rendering.
>
> Does any phase of this stand out?  DB fetch?  Text parse?
> Request/Response bandwidth?
>
> I assume profiling on this has been done quite a lot...
>
> [1]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_ordered_August_30%2C_2005

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Profiling/20050822. I don't think I'd
call any of it a bottleneck, optimisation aimed at reducing average page
view time or CPU load is hard work. I suspect there are hotspots, but
not in our code, in the PHP VM. I think the best way to reduce page view
time at this stage would be to optimise that, or to produce a JIT compiler.

It's much easier to produce user-visible speed improvements by
concentrating on relatively rare but slow operations. These often
account for a similar amount of the average request time as do the
parser "hotspots". And they've often been neglected by past optimisation
work.

For example, I notice on the profiling results I posted above, the most
expensive database query is from oaiUpdatePage(). That's not a page view
query at all, it's a save query. It's a relatively new feature, and it
probably hasn't been examined in the optimisation context. It's
apparently adding 1750ms to save times, which is a huge amount, easily
user-visible.

Another similar possibility is to work on optimisation of pathological
page views, rather than typical page views. It's easy to construct a
page that takes more than 30s to render. I recently did some work on
pathological diffs and pathological image scaling, and in both cases
acheived a speedup on the order of 100x for the test case.

Optimisations such as these do reduce our costs, but they also improve
user experience -- disproportionately so, compared to a 5% reduction in
time for an already subjectively fast operation. They also improve
robustness -- something which adding more hardware cannot do.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
> > I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> > Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> > versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> > video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> > for deaf users and will be recruiting more.

I?m a bit confused
 What real benefit would there be for a hearing-impaired
person watching a video of an article being signed instead of them reading it?
I?m not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely ignorant on how sign language is
processed in the brain. Is the difference similar to watching TV vs reading a
book? One act is mostly passive (watching) and one is mostly active (reading).
If that is the case, then this idea makes sense. But if there really is not
much benefit between watching an article get signed vs reading the article,
then this is just a needless gimmick.

> There is no software to support such a thing at present.

Does anybody know if there is current software that can do this automatically?

-- mav

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


from_name: HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us

body:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
Harley Hamilton


subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

body:
I apologise to the list. I am the one responsible for these emails of
Skyring's reaching the mailing list despite him being banned from the
mailing list. I won't let it happen again.

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l mailing list administrator


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Those who know what they talk about should edit the article to make it
clear that it is notable and encyclopedic, if it is indeed so.
"Argument from authority" only goes so far on an anonymous wiki -- but
true authorities can provide evidence beyond themselves for what they
say.

FF

On 9/8/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> > When it comes to webcomics, it is extremely hard (for a non-insider)
> > to make a judgment between notable and non-notable, which is exactly
> > the point in having guidelines. I know this is elitist, but in these
> > matters an uninformed opinion is a potentially destructive one.
>
> That is why you should defer judgement to those who know what they talk about.
>
> --
> mvh Bj?rn
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> We're a top-50 website - having millions of random readers clicking a
>> "Rate
>> this article" tab and giving their perceptions is, to me, inherently
>> interesting.
>
> This is really interesting. How about something like, "Did you find
> what you were looking for?"

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/En_validation_topics

Just needs to be turned on...

Magnus
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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
I lolled.

Thanks Ray.

Mark

On 16/08/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >>Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala
> >>site.  No one doubts this.  The question is: what's the most effective
> >>way to get there?
> >>
> >>Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic:
> >>
> >>"Few countries [snip] coffee planatations run wild."
> >>
> >>
> >
> >These quotes all refer to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There
> >are two Congos these days, the one to which these quotes refer is the
> >one which was ruined by the notorious Mobutu Sese Seko. The other one
> >is the Republic of the Congo, with its capital at Brazzaville, which
> >wasn't ruled for half a century by a despot.
> >
> >What _is_ the most effective way to get there?
> >
> Air Gabon seems to have the cheapes one-way flights there out of London
> at ?292.00.
>
> I'm sure that ther3e are many connections that would get you from
> Phoenix to London.
>
> Ec
>
>

--
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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Assisting Google's language recognition?

body:
I was referring to
>Google in Your Language

Cheers,
/Alterego

On 9/7/05, Domas Mituzas <Domas.Mituzas at microlink.lt> wrote:
>
> Where is my LART...
>
> > This doesn't sound like the correct mailing list for that.
>
> This list is correct for any wikimedia operational tech issues. Hence the
> name, wiki tech.
>
> Domas
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reading articles

body:
Thanks. And, yes, "Spoken Wikipedia" is better name. I think we would
make some similar name on sr:.

On 9/8/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Milos,
>
> The project first gained traction with the German Wikipedians, and the
> English Wikipedia picked up the pace on the "Spoken Wikipedia."
> English has focused more on selected featured articles.
>
> See: [[en:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia]]
>
> I actually prefer the name Spoken Wikipedia, since Wikisound could be
> confused with a project for sound recordings in the future.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
>
> On 9/8/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On sr:, we are starting with reading articles. It can be interesting
> > to people who prefer to hear (not to read) articles, and, of course,
> > to blind people. We are starting with the list "Articles which all
> > Wikipedias should have" (or whatever is the name of that article).
> >
> > Did anyone start something similar (except Wikinews, of course)?
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>What's his username? I'd like to slap him with a cluestick. Er, I
>mean, ask him politely to use English in vfd nominations.
>
>
ComCat, though there's probably no need to beat him too vigorously if
he's been paying attention to his nominations - I explained my problem
with them when I cast my votes.

The string of "NN, D" nominations started here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2005_September_3#R.a.G.e


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] multilingual support

body:
Michael Monaghan wrote:

>Hi,
>I'm looking at trying to use WikiBooks at the enterprise level.
>
>I'd like to be able to use WikiBooks in a multilingual doc development
>environment.
>
>However a major drawback I see is that, for example, in WikiBooks the entire
>body contents of a page are stored in one database field. And there's no
>obvious way to link translations together.
>The main body of the page is all stored in one database field. Users can
>enter HTML, wiki shorthand, regular text etc - there's no enforced structure
>- an XML DTD etc - to the content. This again causes portability problems to
>other apps etc.
>
>There are similar problems in Wiktionary - but they are being addressed by
>the "Ultimate Wiktionary" project.
>Has anyone got any thoughts/solutions for this for WikiBooks?
>
>thanks,
>-mm
>
>
I'm glad to see a little bit of activity on this mailing list, so I want
to thank you for coming here to discuss this issue.

Some of what you are suggesting is a part of the "WikiData" extensions
to MediaWiki that have been proposed earlier, and is a part of the
larger "Ultimate Wiktionary" project.  Basically, having the ability to
directly access and set up database fields that can be edited in a
dynamic fashion.  There are a number of things that would benefit from
such a project.

One othing thing I've thought about is to try and come up with some
tools to help with the "annotated texts" that would be of a similar sort
of project.  In mideval times it was common to have not only
annotations, but annotations about the annotations.... sometimes as much
as four or five levels deep.  In the case of the Bible, it is strongly
suspected that some portions of those annotations actually ended up as a
part of the text itself due to copy errors.

As far as including translations with a text, but keeping them seperate
from editing, you have the ability to do transclusions through template
tags, which can provide at least some way to accomplish what you are
suggesting.  The only problem at the moment is that you can't do
transclusions across different wiki language editions.  Links between
different languages, however, are already present in MediaWiki to at
least assist in the translation if the linked modules are about the same
text.  I'm trying to help find a solution to the problem you present
with current tools rather than with trying to push the MediaWiki team
for any more features.  There are many features that are currently
"turned off" with MediaWiki software at the moment merely because of the
crushing impact of all of the Wikimedia users.  If we can get the server
bandwidth issues fixed, perhaps some of these features will be turned
back on in the future.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Brion Vibber
| Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 9:26 PM
/
| No you can't get SQL dumps. :)

:-(((

Bad or good but news. Well, now situation is more clear and
reasonable.

However it means that declared and supported by wiki open
content exist fully since 23rd June, now is limited.

/
| If you like you can use the mwdumper tool to convert the
XML dumps to
| local-import-friendly SQL instead of using importDump.php
/
| When it's a little more tested I'll make a public release
| package for it.

Ok.

Cheers, Janusz


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Jack Lynch wrote:
>
>> This thread is a very good argument for getting rid of VfD. The main
>> thing I (and everyone I know who reads it) like about the wikipedia is
>> the access to detailed information on absurdly obscure info. If
>> someone searches for a web comic, it instantly becomes notable and
>> encyclopedic. What are the deletionists thinking??? Wiki is not paper,
>> and if you keep deleting, it won't be anything special as far as
>> encyclopedias go, either.
>
> Amazingly, I'm in full agreement with Sam. :)
>
> Just the other day I stumbled across an article on VfD for which the
> entire text of the justification given for its nomination was:
>
> "NN, D"
>
> I'm hardly a newbie, but even for me it took a few minutes to figure
> out that "NN" meant non-notable. I checked the edit history of the
> editor who'd made the nomination and found about a dozen identical
> VfDs for other articles made at the same time. I voted "keep" on every
> last one of them because in my opinion the _nominations themselves_
> were not adequate. I didn't even bother reading the actual articles
> and for all I know based on the justification given the nominator
> hadn't read them either - he apparently didn't even bother to take the
> time to type out whole words. Got accused of violating WP:POINT, of
> course, but I completely stand by my actions.
>
> How about a policy whereby VfDs that don't adequately explain why the
> nominator made it can be summarily deleted? If someone proposes
> deleting an article they should at least show that they put effort
> into determining whether deletion was warranted.

Maybe they should be required to quote something from the article as
proof that they have read it.  Since many of these articles are stubs
anyway it should not put to much of a strain on their reading skills.

Ec


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikisqualking

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:
> I know that Skyring specialises in Wikistalking, but reading his
> preposterous edits, maybe we should have a new category for him -
> "Wikisqualking". It seems to be his new technique, endless complaints
> with himself as the victim, given that he cant stalk me right now on
> Wikipedia.
>

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

--
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subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimania 2006: City applications , a cheerful
	note

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

>On 08/09/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Or we can camp in the New Forest ;-).
>>
>>
>
>Now there's a plan :-D
>
>
If that's not available there's always the Hundred Acre Wood.

Ec


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
What's his username? I'd like to slap him with a cluestick. Er, I
mean, ask him politely to use English in vfd nominations.

On 9/8/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Jack Lynch wrote:
>
> >This thread is a very good argument for getting rid of VfD. The main
> >thing I (and everyone I know who reads it) like about the wikipedia is
> >the access to detailed information on absurdly obscure info. If
> >someone searches for a web comic, it instantly becomes notable and
> >encyclopedic. What are the deletionists thinking??? Wiki is not paper,
> >and if you keep deleting, it won't be anything special as far as
> >encyclopedias go, either.
> >
> >
> Amazingly, I'm in full agreement with Sam. :)
>
> Just the other day I stumbled across an article on VfD for which the
> entire text of the justification given for its nomination was:
>
> "NN, D"
>
> I'm hardly a newbie, but even for me it took a few minutes to figure out
> that "NN" meant non-notable. I checked the edit history of the editor
> who'd made the nomination and found about a dozen identical VfDs for
> other articles made at the same time. I voted "keep" on every last one
> of them because in my opinion the _nominations themselves_ were not
> adequate. I didn't even bother reading the actual articles and for all I
> know based on the justification given the nominator hadn't read them
> either - he apparently didn't even bother to take the time to type out
> whole words. Got accused of violating WP:POINT, of course, but I
> completely stand by my actions.
>
> How about a policy whereby VfDs that don't adequately explain why the
> nominator made it can be summarily deleted? If someone proposes deleting
> an article they should at least show that they put effort into
> determining whether deletion was warranted.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Another very favorable mention..

body:
Hi All,

     I thought members might like to read a very positive review of Wikipedia, as a news source:

http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml?duid=mtfh41618_2005-09-06_21-00-52_n06560870_newsml

                        As Ever,

                             Ruth Ifcher

--


from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Images dump

body:
Hi there...

Images dump which I downloaded from
http://download.wikimedia.org/images/wikipedia/en/ is not full.
Is it because of license for some images or another reason?

For example there are no *Tux.png, **Commons-logo.png, **
Wikiquote-logo-en.png **and Wikibooks-logo-en.png *for Linux article.

Thanks
Sergey


body:
That would be a bit silly.

English is spoken in quite a few countries: the US, Canada, the UK,
Australia, South Africa, India...

In these countries, there are several distinct signed languages used:

American Sign Language in the US and much of Canada
Maritime provinces signed language in Canada (I think??)
British Sign Language in the UK
Auslan in Australia
Indian Sign Language in India.

Now, would it be practical to include videos in every single one of
these with each article?

Also, based on responses to this thread as well as personal experience
elsewhere, it seems that the pioneering work of William Stokoe in sign
linguistics has not yet reached the general hearing public. The main
point of his research was that signed languages are fully developed
languages of their own, and are fully independent of spoken languages.

They are NOT alternative systems for representing spoken languages
(with the exception of a few signed languages constructed specifically
for that purpose, but none of which has native users)

Now, your question about most deaf people reading and writing English
is indeed a very valid one.

But then, it's also true that all Cornish speakers are bilingual in
English. So why do we have a Cornish Wikipedia? What about the Scots
Wikipedia? Why do we have a Catalan Wikipedia when nearly all Catalans
can read and write Spanish or French?

The simplest answer is that it is the native language for these
people. Reading an article in one's native language gives a deeper
level of comprehension than reading an article in a language learnt as
a foreign language.

However, in response to the main request, I'm not sure a video medium
is a good idea for a few reasons.

1) Video has high space and bandwidth requirements.
2) Interwiki links are impossible.
3) People may have a problem with the way a particular person signs.
It is impractical to upload many videos for the same article, as can
be done for the spoken Wikipedia projects.
4) Artificial generation of signed languages is easily implementable,
and requires much much much less server space and bandwidth -- the
data is stored as plain text, and the sign language is generated by a
virtual person as part of an external program (or perhaps a java
applet or something).

Bilingual medium also seems a bad idea for a few reasons.

1) Deaf people using ASL may have other languages as well. For
example, one's mother tongue may be Navajo, but for deaf Navajos, the
common sign language is ASL.
2) American Sign Language is used outside of the US, including
sometimes in countries where English is not widely spoken.

Mark

On 08/09/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be
> added to en wiki?
> And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries)
> read/write english?
>
> On 9/8/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
> >
> > I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> > Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> > versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> > video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> > for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
> > Harley Hamilton
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> signature
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

--
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ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Signed languages are completely independent of spoken languages.
American Sign Language does not directly correspond in grammar,
vocabulary, or syntax to spoken or written American English, so
watching an article in ASL would be nothing like listening to it
spoken.

Mark

On 08/09/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
> > > I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> > > Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> > > versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> > > video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> > > for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
>
> I'm a bit confused? What real benefit would there be for a hearing-impaired
> person watching a video of an article being signed instead of them reading it?
> I'm not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely ignorant on how sign language is
> processed in the brain. Is the difference similar to watching TV vs reading a
> book? One act is mostly passive (watching) and one is mostly active (reading).
> If that is the case, then this idea makes sense. But if there really is not
> much benefit between watching an article get signed vs reading the article,
> then this is just a needless gimmick.
>
> > There is no software to support such a thing at present.
>
> Does anybody know if there is current software that can do this automatically?
>
> -- mav
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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>

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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Dan Grey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimania 2006: City applications ,
	a cheerful note

body:
On 08/09/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>Or we can camp in the New Forest ;-).

Now there's a plan :-D

Dan


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
> I've often wondered this, so this is a great opportunity to jump in.
> Why not cache prerendered versions of all pages?  It would
> seem that the majority of hits are reads.  One approach I've
> seen elsewhere is to cache a page the first time it's loaded,
> and then have writes invalidate the cache.  (That way you're
> not caching pages nobody looks at.)

We have multiple caches. First of all, all pages are cached
by squids, and achieve >75% hitrates for anonymous users.
Cached objects are invalidated by HTCP CLR message sent
via multicast to our global squid deployment.

Using squid caching also provides us easy way to
bring lots of content closer to users, thus reducing page load
times dramatically for anons (and a bit for logged in users).

If we get possibilities to deploy caches in Australia and China,
that'd be awesome. Right now we're in search for Chinese and
Australian locations though (kind of 3 or even 1 server deployments
would save huge countries:)

We cannot cache pages for logged in users, as they can be
different, though, at some time we might achieve that... Though now,

There is also parser cache, which caches documents for
logged in users as well. We try to increase efficiency of that as well.

> One tricky part is that writes to page B can affect page A
> if page A has a link to B.  A reverse index of links would
> solve this, though I don't know how bit it'd be.

We have reverse index of links, and we use that for invalidating
both parser cache and squid cache objects.

Domas


from_name: Kevin Makice

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Research access to logs

body:
I don't know if this is still an open issue, but as someone who might ask
for such data, here's my two cents.
 I attend a design program at a research institution, which gives me an
interesting perspective of having to undergo the rigors of Human Subjects
Committee approval for research that ultimately informs the design and may
never result in a formal paper. What would be interesting to me is to be
able to analyze both the statistical frequency of edits and the type of edit
being performed. Since my interest is ultimately about what participants do
when involved in online communities, it would be important to be able to go
beyond the aggregate and be able to analyze the content with an eye on
producing personas. I would like to be able to say that User Type B
typically responds with Action Z when encountering User Type C, etc. That
isn't possible unless there is some way to view individual threads of
activity and qualitatively analyze the specific content.
 I have a MediaWiki-based experiment going on right now, which was approved
by my school's review board in July. I'm not going to get anywhere close to
Wikipedia size for members, so content analysis is going to be difficult but
significantly easier than a massive wiki project. I have a SQL script that I
run weekly to get some aggregate statistics and both user- and page-centric
data sets. I created the entire site with HSC approval and full disclosure
of how I plan to use the data (referring to users, if at all, by their
chosen usernames only). And if someone asks me for the data, I would be
required to follow HIPPA kinds of rules and allow all of the participants to
prevent having their information included.
 What would be very useful would be to have some pre-programmed export of
data that would provide this same information. The aggregate data shouldn't
be a big obstacle, but I would think there would have to be some way of
stripping out identification. Data-wise, that would be easy; assign a unique
ID in place of MW userID or username. Content-wise, it's not so easy; can
posted identity references and translated signature tags be masked? There
may also need to be some means of allowing members to opt out whenever
identity is involved.
 If the Powers the Be MediaWiki could resolve this by November, that would
be wonderful.I'll get my HSC forms in order and get in line for that data.
:)
 Kevin Makice


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Snowspinner (Snowspinner at gmail.com) [050906 06:07]:
>
> > is a fork. This is good people taking their ball and going home,
> > because of the toxic culture on VfD.
> > We blew this one.
>
> Tch! And I remember you ranting on IRC about how rude the inclusionists
> were on VFD and how the deletionists would never be so obnoxious ...
>
> Note, by the way, that the spurious deletion criteria for webcomics is a
> symptom of the spurious criterion of "notability". Which has repeatedly
> been rejected as policy.

Part of the problem is that we don't currently distinguish between
criteria which do not change and are not useful to anyone ("nonsense,
vandalism, or unverifiable statements,") and things which change over
time, or are useful to a small audience ("non-notable, needs massive
cleanup, or unencyclopedic").

Should we distinguish these, we could tell the rest of the world not
to index or give search-engine juice to the latter set of articles,
without deleting them.

There are dozens of small towns around the world setting up their own
local wiki projects to document every location and aspect of their
town.  I would like to see Wikipedia encourage that.  We shouldn't
have to fight over this month's notability standards to let them
create useful, verifiable, neutral information within Wikipedia,
rather than on a separate site that may not know anything about free
licenses or how to run a public wiki.

+SJ

> I move:
>
> 1. VFD or AFD or whatever it's called be shut down entirely. No article
>    deletion other than CSD, copyvios and similar. VFD is sufficiently
>    damaging that *nothing at all* would be better than it existing in
>    any present form.
> 2. A month to discuss new deletion mechanisms. 1 should get the keen
>    deletionists very interested indeed.
> 3. A vote. Nothing passes with under 75% support.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
++SJ


body:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be
added to en wiki?
And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries)
read/write english?

On 9/8/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
>
> I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
> Harley Hamilton
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
signature


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
> When it comes to webcomics, it is extremely hard (for a non-insider)
> to make a judgment between notable and non-notable, which is exactly
> the point in having guidelines. I know this is elitist, but in these
> matters an uninformed opinion is a potentially destructive one.

That is why you should defer judgement to those who know what they talk about.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>>Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala
>>site.  No one doubts this.  The question is: what's the most effective
>>way to get there?
>>
>>Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic:
>>
>>"Few countries [snip] coffee planatations run wild."
>>
>>
>
>These quotes all refer to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There
>are two Congos these days, the one to which these quotes refer is the
>one which was ruined by the notorious Mobutu Sese Seko. The other one
>is the Republic of the Congo, with its capital at Brazzaville, which
>wasn't ruled for half a century by a despot.
>
>What _is_ the most effective way to get there?
>
Air Gabon seems to have the cheapes one-way flights there out of London
at ?292.00.

I'm sure that ther3e are many connections that would get you from
Phoenix to London.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 08/09/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
>
> I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> for deaf users and will be recruiting more.

It strikes me that this might be more practical if it were done in a
similar way to the "Spoken Wikipedia" articles; rather than setting up
a new wikipedia, build it "in-line" to the existing English wiki.

If you're not aware of the Spoken Wikipedia project, it aims to add an
audio file to articles; these are linked through an information box on
the page, along with a note of which version of the page they came
from (so "audio file dated 15th June 2005") and can be downloaded by
users.

See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive for a
sample of what the page looks like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia
has more details; as Wikipedia handles sound and video files in much
the same way, this would be the most effective way of going about it.
I'm not sure if a new "bilingual Wikipedia" is really the best way to
handle this; the project would likely cope much better as part of the
larger en.wiki community.

Since video files are effectively impossible to edit in the same way
as text, any seperate wiki would end up having to do something like
this anyway; as such, you'd not really gain anything by not having the
thousands of regular English Wikipedia contributors not working on the
text versions of the articles.

That said, the addition of sign-language forms of articles is an
interesting idea; I would be delighted to see the option taking off,
though personally I'm unsure of the potential size of the audience. We
shall see.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: kyle

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Tampa Hardware Manager

body:
Greetings everyone. My name is Kyle and I would like to introduce myself
to the group. I am the new hardware manager for the Tampa servers. My
handle is Solar or SolarKennedy to catch me on IRC or email me at
kyle at xkyle.com if you need something done.

SolarKennedy


body:
On 08/09/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
> > I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> > Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
> > versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
> > video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource
> > for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
>
> There is no software to support such a thing at present.

Surely it would operate much as the various "spoken wikipedia"
projects do currently? Though, on reading [[m:Video policy]] I note
there are some technical limitations; the 2mb filesize cap would
probably come into play for a video of any length.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
While there is still currently a wide margin in favour of a separate
Cantonese Wikipedia (35-13), the new votes encouraged by Angela's
posting have followed a distinct pattern just as I predicted:

Those people who placed votes against the proposal since Angela's post
are all from areas where Mandarin is the local speech, with the
exception of "Truth" and "Fanghong" whose origins I was unable to
determine and Elian who is from Germany:

Zy26 -- Northeast China (Northern Mandarin)
Truth -- unknown
BenBenI -- Chengdu (Southern Mandarin)
Fanghong -- unknown
Alexcn -- Nanjing (Southern Mandarin/Northern Mandarin)
Kren -- Singapore, Beijing (Beijing is Northern Mandarin; Singapore's
Chinese are still a mostly Hokkien-, Teochew-, and Cantonese-speaking
population, but Mandarin has been "adopted" for many years now thanks
to the government liking to bedek kacang)

...whereas the origins of the more recent votes FOR the proposal are a
bit more diverse:

Millosh -- Serbia
E2m -- Portugal (or Brazil?)
Ffootballchu -- Hong Kong (Cantonese)
Oscar -- Netherlands (?)

Now, if we just count the votes of confirmed native Cantonese, Wu,
Minnan, or other non-Mandarin Sinitic varieties' speakers:

Support:
Pektiong (Minnan)
Chun-hian (Minnan)
Kaihsu (Minnan)
Bourquie (Cantonese)
Connie (Cantonese)
Eternal (Cantonese)
Jogloran (Cantonese)
Felix Wan (Wu)
Enochlau (Cantonese)
CantoneseWiki (Cantonese)
Ffootballchu (Cantonese)

Oppose:
Hello World (Cantonese)
Zektonic (Cantonese)
Crosstimer (Cantonese)
Jeromy~Yuyu (Cantonese)

That's still 11-4. And even if you only count Cantonese-speakers, you get 7-4.

What I'm worried about is that a busload of people from Beijing who
have never heard of Yueyu-baihuawen will pile on their "oppose" votes,
which as I noted before is a bit like allowing other Serbians to vote
on whether or not Kosovo should be independent, or allowing all
Indians and/or Pakistanis to vote on the future of Kashmir, or
allowing everybody in the world to vote for EU parliament or US
president.

Mark

On 05/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Some dialect of English" implies that Cantonese is merely a dialect of Chinese.
>
> Anyhow, if a Wikipedia in an English dialect were requested, and the
> person organising the vote sent private e-mails to all people claiming
> that to be their home dialect notifying them of the vote, those people
> would most likely vote "against" the creation of such a Wikipedia.
>
> Why should we leave the future of a Cantonese Wikipedia up to Mandarin
> speakers? That would be like not only letting (which is what we're
> already sort of doing by allowing non-speakers to vote), but actually
> ENCOURAGING all of Serbia to vote in a referendum on Kosovar
> independence, which is by no rational measure fair.
>
> Given the current results of the vote, and the fact that a huge
> portion of the people who voted are actually native Cantonese speakers
> (on both sides -- in fact,
>
> Mark
>
> On 05/09/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/5/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> > > I found our policy with regards to Chinese languages stranger and
> > > stranger. We do not do this if we open another Germanic or Romanic
> > > language pedia!
> >
> > It's not policy. There is no policy for creating new languages (just a
> > draft one at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>).
> > I was just giving my opinion, and I feel that the relevant communities
> > should be told about any language proposals, not only Sinetic ones. If
> > some dialect of English were proposed, it would be very unfair to try
> > to hide that from the existing English language communities within
> > Wikimedia.
> >
> > Angela.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

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


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
> Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be
> added to en wiki?
> And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries)
> read/write english?

Well, I suppose it'd be a good way of learning sign languages. And I
think it'd be better to just upload the videos to Commons and link to
them in Wikipedia articles like we link to spoken versions.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Request

body:
Are we to understand that you are an educator, who has
been caught up in a dispute due to an association with
your student's accounts?

A precursory look at your edits suggests that your
edits are reasonable (junior high school teacher?).
Continue to express yourself in a reasonable manner,
and things will sort themselves out. Arbcom reviews
matters presented to them -- thats what they do. Dont
take offense at the basic fact that disputes will
arise, and with experience you will learn to balance
your manner more in accord with our core principles.
Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia -- its also an
encyclopediastic culture.

SV

--- Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Greetings to everyone.
>
> My wikipedia name is Enviroknot. Up until a few days
> ago, I did not know why
> my time at Wikipedia was met with such hostility,
> persecution, and horrid
> conduct from plenty of users.
>
> A recent emailed admission by one A. Nony Mouse and
> subsequent contact over
> IRC have explained the situation to me. I was caught
> up in an experiment
> that this user conducted using hijacked systems
> (routers?), in an effort to
> root out problems in the behavior of certain
> wikipedia admins, which
> backfired and caused many users including myself to
> be falsely accused of
> being parts of that experiment.
>
> I never understood why I was included in a request
> for arbitration which had
> nothing to do with me, except that it seems to be a
> common theme in that
> users who were involved in any sort of conflict were
> inevitably accused of
> being part of this project.
>
> I believe if you look back at my edits themselves,
> instead of trying to lump
> them in with any conduct you can find, you will see
> me in a different light.
>
> For your convenience, here is the link.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Enviroknot
>
> I will be completely honest with you. Up until this
> point I had completely
> given up on Wikipedia, to the point of forbidding my
> students from citing it
> in their papers as I considered it a completely
> unreliable source. I had
> hoped to make it better, and if I have the chance I
> would do so.
>
> It is your choice whether you will behave in the
> good faith which you claim
> to exercise, or whether you will prove no better
> than a normal internet
> message board system.
>
> Cranston Snord, AKA Enviroknot
>
> P.S. No, it's not my real name, but as an untenured
> educator I do have to be
> careful.
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger!
> Download today - it's FREE!
>
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Cranston Snord

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Request

body:
Greetings to everyone.

My wikipedia name is Enviroknot. Up until a few days ago, I did not know why
my time at Wikipedia was met with such hostility, persecution, and horrid
conduct from plenty of users.

A recent emailed admission by one A. Nony Mouse and subsequent contact over
IRC have explained the situation to me. I was caught up in an experiment
that this user conducted using hijacked systems (routers?), in an effort to
root out problems in the behavior of certain wikipedia admins, which
backfired and caused many users including myself to be falsely accused of
being parts of that experiment.

I never understood why I was included in a request for arbitration which had
nothing to do with me, except that it seems to be a common theme in that
users who were involved in any sort of conflict were inevitably accused of
being part of this project.

I believe if you look back at my edits themselves, instead of trying to lump
them in with any conduct you can find, you will see me in a different light.

For your convenience, here is the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Enviroknot

I will be completely honest with you. Up until this point I had completely
given up on Wikipedia, to the point of forbidding my students from citing it
in their papers as I considered it a completely unreliable source. I had
hoped to make it better, and if I have the chance I would do so.

It is your choice whether you will behave in the good faith which you claim
to exercise, or whether you will prove no better than a normal internet
message board system.

Cranston Snord, AKA Enviroknot

P.S. No, it's not my real name, but as an untenured educator I do have to be
careful.

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


from_name: Dschwen

body:
> Just a quick comment: I could view both of the individual images linked
> above, but the actual wiki page simply contains a blue rectangle. The SVG
> source displays fine, but nothing appears where the map should be :-(
The coordinates for the map view were set to someplace without map-data in the
page-source. I was using the page for developing the extension and simply
forgot to leave it in a presentable state...
Please stay tuned for further updates soon (ESRI shape file support making a
huge amount of mapdata available).
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
>
>> I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
>> Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word
>> versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via
>> video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful
>> resource
>> for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
>
>
> There is no software to support such a thing at present.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Hoi,
I like to remind you that Kennisnet offered to host streaming content
for the WMF. We have not taken them up on that one yet because so far
*we* felt no need. When we want to investigate the possibilities of
hosting videos containing sign languages, it is something we should at
least investigate a but. I have cc-d Jan-Bart of Kennisnet and I also
copied Wolfgang Georgsdorf who spoke about Wikisign on Wikimania and
with whom I worked towards including signlanguages in the Ultimate
Wiktionary.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> Surely it would operate much as the various "spoken wikipedia"
> projects do currently? Though, on reading [[m:Video policy]] I note
> there are some technical limitations; the 2mb filesize cap would
> probably come into play for a video of any length.

I think Commons supports larger video files.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Request

body:
Mr. Snord:

ur funny

-Snowspinner

On Sep 8, 2005, at 10:37 PM, Cranston Snord wrote:

> Greetings to everyone.
>
> My wikipedia name is Enviroknot. Up until a few days ago, I did not
> know why my time at Wikipedia was met with such hostility,
> persecution, and horrid conduct from plenty of users.
>
> A recent emailed admission by one A. Nony Mouse and subsequent
> contact over IRC have explained the situation to me. I was caught
> up in an experiment that this user conducted using hijacked systems
> (routers?), in an effort to root out problems in the behavior of
> certain wikipedia admins, which backfired and caused many users
> including myself to be falsely accused of being parts of that
> experiment.
>
> I never understood why I was included in a request for arbitration
> which had nothing to do with me, except that it seems to be a
> common theme in that users who were involved in any sort of
> conflict were inevitably accused of being part of this project.
>
> I believe if you look back at my edits themselves, instead of
> trying to lump them in with any conduct you can find, you will see
> me in a different light.
>
> For your convenience, here is the link.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Enviroknot
>
> I will be completely honest with you. Up until this point I had
> completely given up on Wikipedia, to the point of forbidding my
> students from citing it in their papers as I considered it a
> completely unreliable source. I had hoped to make it better, and if
> I have the chance I would do so.
>
> It is your choice whether you will behave in the good faith which
> you claim to exercise, or whether you will prove no better than a
> normal internet message board system.
>
> Cranston Snord, AKA Enviroknot
>
> P.S. No, it's not my real name, but as an untenured educator I do
> have to be careful.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
> it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/
> direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kate

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Evan Martin wrote:
> > I've often wondered this, so this is a great opportunity to jump in.
> > Why not cache prerendered versions of all pages?

> We do. :)

... sort of.  i still want to use the file cache for this, i'm sure we
could massively reduce page render counts even over the normal parser
cache, not to mention the startup time for the wiki (Setup.php).

kate.


from_name: Caroline Ford

body:
This certainly isn't a gimmick. It's about the status/role of sign language
within deaf culture.

>From our article on deaf culture:

"Culturally deaf people do not look on deafness as a disability. There is a
simple explanation for this: within the community of deaf people, deafness
is not a disability but an asset in much the same way it is an asset to be a
Navajo within the Navajo tribe or Korean within the community of Koreans of
Los Angeles. In short, it is a distinction about language. Since the Navajo
or Korean view their language as no more than a social disability within the
larger majority culture, so do members of the signing deaf community. They
consider deafness a positive trait, because it is tightly connected to other
aspects of Deaf culture which they experience as positive. Deaf unity and
community is strong. The fact that deafness excludes deaf people from some
aspects of the hearing culture further reinforces cohesion within the
community."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture

A person with ASL as a native language may consider the addition of ASL to
English language Wikipedia to be a breach of NPOV (as well as a ignorance of
the fact that these are separate languages with their own grammars). Also
note that American sign language and British sign language are not mutually
comprehensible.

Caroline/Secretlondon

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer
Sent: 08 September 2005 23:20
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] new request for ASL/English wikipedia

--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
> > I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign
> > Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written
> > word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language
> > versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building
> > this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.

I'm a bit confused. What real benefit would there be for a hearing-impaired
person watching a video of an article being signed instead of them reading
it?
I'm not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely ignorant on how sign language is
processed in the brain. Is the difference similar to watching TV vs reading
a book? One act is mostly passive (watching) and one is mostly active
(reading).
If that is the case, then this idea makes sense. But if there really is not
much benefit between watching an article get signed vs reading the article,
then this is just a needless gimmick.

> There is no software to support such a thing at present.

Does anybody know if there is current software that can do this
automatically?

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
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from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikisqualking

body:
Guettarda wrote:
> On 9/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Tom Cadden wrote:
>>
>>>I know that Skyring specialises in Wikistalking, but reading his
>>>preposterous edits, maybe we should have a new category for him -
>>>"Wikisqualking". It seems to be his new technique, endless complaints
>>>with himself as the victim, given that he cant stalk me right now on
>>>Wikipedia.
>>>
>>
>>YHBT. YHL. HAND.
>
>
>
> Huh? (And no, I realise what the abbreviations mean)
>

Why bother inventing a new term when a perfectly good one (8 letters,
starts with T, ends in ING) already exists?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


body:
> A person with ASL as a native language may consider the addition of ASL to
> English language Wikipedia to be a breach of NPOV (as well as a ignorance of
> the fact that these are separate languages with their own grammars). Also
> note that American sign language and British sign language are not mutually
> comprehensible.
> Caroline/Secretlondon

Well, but if it consisted only of movies, it wouldn't really be a
wiki... if it had copies of English language articles, it would soon
become outdated (and would still be a English-language Wikipedia). As
for British and American sign languages, an article can contain links
to both if both are created (similar to spoken articles). Making it a
WikiProject inside English Wikipedia also means that more people will
notice that such project exists than if it was moved to a separate,
small wiki.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Profiling/20050822
> [...]
> It's much easier to produce user-visible speed improvements by
> concentrating on relatively rare but slow operations. These often

Good thinking, but your kind of profiling output doesn't support
this kind of optimization.  At susning.nu I have a log file that
reports slow spots and nothing but that.  If any page view takes
more than 10 seconds, an apology is added to the page footer.
It's very easy:

 sub TimeLog {
   my ($text) = @_;
   my $elapsed = time - $EntryTime;
   if ($elapsed > 10) {
      $SlownessExcuse = "
We are sorry "
	  . "that this page took so long to display.\n" .
	  . "If you have any questions about this, ...\n";
   }
   if ($trace || $elapsed > 4) {
      my $line = LogTime(time) . " $elapsed $EntryTime $text\n";
      open (OUT, ">>$LogDir/time_log");
      print OUT $line;
      close(OUT);
      $EntryTime = time unless $trace;	# reset to avoid repeated alarms
   }
 }

Then just sprinkle your code with calls to TimeLog("diff...").
As long as less than 4 seconds have passed since this request was
received, these calls cost so little that you can think of them as
comments to the source code.  If your "time_log" file grows fast,
optimize the most commonly called spots first.

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


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: legal paranoia (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list)

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > Bullocks. This is legal paranoia.
>
> I'm sorry, but acting carefully on advice from actual lawyers is not
> legal paranoia.

A legal team who was split on the issue. I suggested a very simple way to avoid
much of the potential issues; combine the lists. Thus my ?bullocks? statement
in regards to deletion instead of merger. Deletion followed by nothing (what
was done) is legal paranoia, while merger is a prudent compromise.

> Beyond that, of course I agree with the current concept of creating a
> generally researched list from many sources of topics which we don't
> have but should.

My point all along (IIRC, the first comment on the Encarta list talk page was
from me raising the merger issue).

-- mav

______________________________________________________
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
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from_name: DF

body:
Many of the lists were merged:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Hot

-DF

--- Daniel Mayer  <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > > Bullocks. This is legal paranoia.
> >
> > I'm sorry, but acting carefully on advice from
actual lawyers is not
> > legal paranoia.
>
> A legal team who was split on the issue. I
> suggested a very simple way to avoid much of the
> potential issues; combine the lists.  Thus
> my ?bullocks? statement in regards to deletion
> instead of merger. Deletion followed by nothing
> (what was done) is legal paranoia, while merger is
> a prudent compromise.
>
> > Beyond that, of course I agree with the current
concept of creating a
> > generally researched list from many sources of
topics which we don't
> > have but should.
>
> My point all along (IIRC, the first comment on the
> Encarta list talk page was from me raising the
> merger issue).
>
> -- mav


body:
--- DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Many of the lists were merged:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Hot

Yay! I hadn't noticed. Many thanks to Quadell who created this on 1 Sept. :)

-- mav

> -DF
>
> --- Daniel Mayer  <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > > > Bullocks. This is legal paranoia.
> > >
> > > I'm sorry, but acting carefully on advice from
> actual lawyers is not
> > > legal paranoia.
> >
> > A legal team who was split on the issue. I
> > suggested a very simple way to avoid much of the
> > potential issues; combine the lists.  Thus
> > my ?bullocks? statement in regards to deletion
> > instead of merger. Deletion followed by nothing
> > (what was done) is legal paranoia, while merger is
> > a prudent compromise.
> >
> > > Beyond that, of course I agree with the current
> concept of creating a
> > > generally researched list from many sources of
> topics which we don't
> > > have but should.
> >
> > My point all along (IIRC, the first comment on the
> > Encarta list talk page was from me raising the
> > merger issue).
> >
> > -- mav
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________________
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from_name: gediza at hotmail.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Stalker detection

body:
 Hi,
I know kates tool have a function counting "Distinct pages edited".
I was wondering if anyone has the time and will power to improve it a bit.

What I need is a tool comparing "Distinct pages edited" by usear A and B (if I can enter a date range, better). THis will be very usefull to find stalkers on wikipeda and hazardous users ;)

Thanks, Thats all I got for now.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Request

body:
"Cranston Snord" <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote
in message news:BAY108-F12269F3A8D82EC7495DB65D8980 at phx.gbl...
> My wikipedia name is Enviroknot. Up until a few days ago, I did not know
> why my time at Wikipedia was met with such hostility, persecution, and
> horrid conduct from plenty of users.

I'm not familiar with precise details either, but that ID is now
infamous---for whatever reason.

> A recent emailed admission by one A. Nony Mouse and subsequent contact
> over IRC have explained the situation to me. I was caught up in an
> experiment that this user conducted using hijacked systems (routers?), in
> an effort to root out problems in the behavior of certain wikipedia
> admins, which backfired and caused many users including myself to be
> falsely accused of being parts of that experiment.

If you were to read this person's messages to this list over the past few
months, you would hopefully begin to understand just how much bother they
have managed to stir up.

> I never understood why I was included in a request for arbitration which
> had nothing to do with me, except that it seems to be a common theme in
> that users who were involved in any sort of conflict were inevitably
> accused of being part of this project.

I recall numerous mentions of "Enviroknot sock-puppets". I will freely admit
to total cowardice in avoiding the situation to the best of my ability.

> I believe if you look back at my edits themselves, instead of trying to
> lump them in with any conduct you can find, you will see me in a different
> light.
> For your convenience, here is the link.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Enviroknot

OK, I'm looking. Which bits are supposed to be demonstrating your innocence?
What date ranges are you editing as opposed to someone else? Or are these
all you (if so you hardly come out covered in roses, so I'm assuming not)?

> I will be completely honest with you. Up until this point I had completely
> given up on Wikipedia, to the point of forbidding my students from citing
> it in their papers as I considered it a completely unreliable source. I
> had hoped to make it better, and if I have the chance I would do so.
> It is your choice whether you will behave in the good faith which you
> claim to exercise, or whether you will prove no better than a normal
> internet message board system.

OK, so you've issued your challenge. If we can keep talking in a sensible
and civilised fashion, we might be able to get somewhere.

> Cranston Snord, AKA Enviroknot
> P.S. No, it's not my real name, but as an untenured educator I do have to
> be careful.

I would strongly suggest that you select someone you think appropriately
trustworthy---Jimbo or Angela spring to mind, or possibly David Gerard as
the current custodian of the IP check thingamabob---and supply that person
with your correct identity, with proof, so that further spoofing of your
identity can be detected.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Tampa Hardware Manager

body:
Hello,

Jump into #wikimedia-tech on Freenode and say "hi" :)
Then we'll show a list of things to do... ;-D

(IRC is somewhat preferred medium for site operational issues)

Domas

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of kyle
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 3:41 AM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] New Tampa Hardware Manager

Greetings everyone. My name is Kyle and I would like to introduce myself to the group. I am the new hardware manager for the Tampa servers. My handle is Solar or SolarKennedy to catch me on IRC or email me at kyle at xkyle.com if you need something done.

SolarKennedy

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: new SVG locator maps mediawiki extension -
	update

body:
"Dschwen" <lists at schwen.de> wrote in message
news:200509082144.40232.lists at schwen.de...
>> Just a quick comment: I could view both of the individual images linked
>> above, but the actual wiki page simply contains a blue rectangle. The SVG
>> source displays fine, but nothing appears where the map should be :-(
> The coordinates for the map view were set to someplace without map-data in
> the
> page-source. I was using the page for developing the extension and simply
> forgot to leave it in a presentable state...
> Please stay tuned for further updates soon (ESRI shape file support making
> a
> huge amount of mapdata available).

Now *that* rocks!

One quick question: is it possible to configure so that only the dots are
clickable (rather than the captions also) to allow a user to distinguish
between close-together dots more easily?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/9/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> That happens. It rarely works however, because those who do not know
> are unwilling to change their vote or are "drive-by VfD-voters." That
> is, votes on an article then goes to the next one and votes again
> completely forgetting about the first article. Besides, with the
> VfD-scheme those who do know only have a few days to prove themselves.
> Which is not a lot of time if you have other things to do than edit an
> encyclopedia.

I don't know about frequencies, but I do agree that what you have
described happens. Personally I think it would be nice if there were
standards by which to request a re-vote. That is, a given voter could
say, "This article has been significantly changed since it was
originally nominated and the original nominating criteria may no
longer apply. I'd like to re-list this and see what happens." Maybe
one or two users could certify it or something like that. Of course
you'd want some restrictions on it so that people don't try to "game
the system" by re-listing and re-listing. Hmm. Anyway, just a passing
thought.

Of course, regardless, it is *still* up to those writing the articles
to make their notability clear when they write it. An argument from
authority is useless on an anonymous encyclopedia. If the topic really
is that notable, someone else will write the notable article at a
later point, one would think.

FF


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Brion Vibber
| Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 9:34 PM
/
| Doro?y?ski Janusz wrote:
| > However it means that declared and supported by wiki
open
| > content exist fully since 23rd June, now is limited.
|
| No it doesn't, it means the complete opposite.
|
| If we didn't want to produce working dumps for you to be
able
| to get all
| text, *THEN* we would still be making SQL dumps for you
THAT
| DON'T WORK.
| I like to think we're not complete idiots, so we're not
doing that.

Brion, I think we - me and you - don't want so heavy word
like "complete ..." :-)) . I don't think so.

Then - my technical skills are not so low that I can't
understand circumstances like effects of db inner structure
or dissipation of instances.  Look, after you explained
reasons I written short and accepting message "now situation
is more clear and reasonable". I understand, that growing
size of content, for example like images, doing no sense to
download for local wiki. And that isn't your malignity but
reality, I know. Etc., etc.

But ...
Fact 1. Since 23rd June anybody can downloaded whole content
(or text)
Fact 2. Past 23rd June anybody can download excerpt of whole
content (yes, yes, because are important technical reasons,
etc., and I accept them without any doubts)

But what it means is really personal POV. I say "limiting",
may be I'm not right, may be I am. But I have right to think
and right to have my opinion. Like everybody have right to
have. And you don't think that I means that you are
"complete ...", please. My thinks are totally opposite :-)

Well, I think we can close this matter, and you than writing
polemics can doing more pleasure thinks like writing scripts
(mwdumper for example :-)))

	Have nice day, best rgds, Janusz


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
> Those who know what they talk about should edit the article to make it
> clear that it is notable and encyclopedic, if it is indeed so.
> "Argument from authority" only goes so far on an anonymous wiki -- but
> true authorities can provide evidence beyond themselves for what they
> say.

That happens. It rarely works however, because those who do not know
are unwilling to change their vote or are "drive-by VfD-voters." That
is, votes on an article then goes to the next one and votes again
completely forgetting about the first article. Besides, with the
VfD-scheme those who do know only have a few days to prove themselves.
Which is not a lot of time if you have other things to do than edit an
encyclopedia.

PS. Top posting sucks.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Ros’ Haruo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
ASL is a completely different language from English. Comments like

 Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to
en wiki?
And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries)
read/write english? ? Phroziac
 ... the project would likely cope much better as part of the
larger en.wiki community. ? Andrew Gray

(these are just a couple of random selections, nothing against either poster
personally) could, I think, easily be taken as opposing the basic Wikipedian
principle of people's right to access to information in their own languages.
Yes, most people whose first and most fluent language is ASL have been
educated largely in English (depending on where and when they were schooled
this may have included deprecating ASL in favor of "Signed English" and
finger-spelling, and may or may not have included acquiring a high degree of
proficiency in lip-reading).
 Regardless of the technical means and organization of a signed Wikipedia, I
would encourage people discussing the matter not to use wordings that may
suggest that ASL is not a language in its own right, or that deaf people
have a less fundamental right to acquire knowledge through their own
languages than have hearing people.
 Haruo


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] One to watch

body:
I'd be grateful if a few people could add to their watchlist [[Anthony
Ludovici]], of interest to the far right.

Charles


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/9/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't know about frequencies, but I do agree that what you have
> described happens. Personally I think it would be nice if there were
> standards by which to request a re-vote. That is, a given voter could
> say, "This article has been significantly changed since it was
> originally nominated and the original nominating criteria may no
> longer apply. I'd like to re-list this and see what happens." Maybe
> one or two users could certify it or something like that. Of course
> you'd want some restrictions on it so that people don't try to "game
> the system" by re-listing and re-listing. Hmm. Anyway, just a passing
> thought.

If the article is being edited and re-edited, constantly being
improved enough to get certified by another user or two, I don't see
any problem at all with this type of gaming the system.  In fact, I
think we should strongly encourage that type of gaming the system.

> Of course, regardless, it is *still* up to those writing the articles
> to make their notability clear when they write it. An argument from
> authority is useless on an anonymous encyclopedia. If the topic really
> is that notable, someone else will write the notable article at a
> later point, one would think.

Stubs expand only if they exist.  This rhetorical "someone else"
seldom writes fully referenced and cited articles in one fell swoop.

The problem is that article authors have an investment in what they
write.  VfD voters usually have no investment whatsoever; when I've
called for the most basic of research of notability before voting
"delete", a three second Google search, I've been accused of making
personal attacks against delete voters.  VfD will always remain toxic,
especially to new users who aren't accustomed to it's climate, if we
cannot insist that delete voters put in at least some tiny effort into
research before voting.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused