subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'

body:
That would scare some people away because of its use in communism.  Most
people are just stuck in Mccarthyism.

>I suggest maybe "Comrade:name" or com: for short...

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
After trying MySQL 4.0, I also want to try implementing a
rendered page cache. Using the test suite, I investigated
the issues involved and found the following: All 12
combinations of Skin and quickbar don't affect article
content (well, Nostalgia skin eliminates the page title, but
we can define "content" around that). Likewise, other
options can be worked around. The problematic ones are auto
header numbering and question-mark links.

I think I can probably work around header numbering by
always including them, putting them in a <span> and setting
the visibility in CSS. That will have the side-effect that
old non-CSS browsers will always get numbered headings
whether they want them or not. I can live with that.

The "?" links are another matter: I can't think of a clean
way to offer both options; i.e., links on the whole word
with some style, or links only around the "?". How much
screaming do you think would take place if we simply
eliminated the "?" links, and just made two link style
options (one sedate and one loud)?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google search; donations/grants (was: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #212 - 14 msgs)

body:
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 09:53:34AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>    2. There needs to be a refund mechanism for banned people who
> somehow believe that their donation gives them a protection against banning.

Wrong solution, I think; the better solution is to make sure it's
clear that all donations are no-strings. Otherwise somebody might
make a large donation, and then later threaten to demand a
refund.

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
In the spirit of [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]] and in honor of Cungcator ("you
and JD a consensus do not make") rather monolithic view of the article
(considering Axel now endorsed its deletion... ) I have penned [[Death to
Kikes]], an informative article about kikes... and soon to come:

[[Camel Niggers]],  [[Cunt Conspiracy]]... you name it...


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article count: Vote result

body:
> On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>> Erik Moeller wrote:
>>>     Secrecy is necessary for real world votes, but here we can
>>> afford some openness. It's the wiki way.
>>
>> One reason secrecy is important in real world political voting is the
>> possibility of backlash against those who vote on the losing side.
>> That's not really possible here.  The winners can't round up the
>> losers into concentration camps.

> It depends... What about the next vote being to ban the losers from all
> Wikipedias except the Russian one?

Well, what about a "nearly unanimous consensus" to do that (decided by
Jimbo)?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Google search; donations/grants

body:
> I don't think asking for donations is the way to go once a non-profit
> is in place. The US is full of foundations that are happy to throw
> money at half-baked proposals vaguely related to education. Pretty much
> every billionaire sets up a foundation like that. You just write a
> grant proposal and wait for the money to come in. Lots of people in
> academia make their living that way. And we are talking at least an
> order of magnitude higher than your figure above.

Sure, and Jimbo hasn't even ruled out the possibility of taking government
money, although he snapped when I mentioned the EU ;-). We should explore
all reasonable opportunities. Web donations have the advantage of getting
us a quick money fix, if that's what's needed.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Current events and Indymedia

body:
--- Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The texts which I write are signed.
> The one you commented on the talk page is from
> Athyvement (I think).
> Actually, I didn't write a single word on this page.
>
> Yann

hello Yann

I "totally" agree you wrote nothing on that page.

But, "you" removed the text, do we agree on that ?

And, "you" asked that facts were backed up, do we
agree on that ?

So, please, explain which facts you want backed up.

If not, I will put back all that paragraph in the
article (with slight editing :-)). It doesnot appear
to me right that you remove a whole bunch of facts, on
behalf they need to be backed up, without at least
pointing out to these you disagree with.

There is a minimum of trust to offer other
contributors. We don't ask every contributor to
provide "proof" links for each edit they make.

Or am I totally wrong, and we should ?

ps : Sorry I was not loggued in, my session keeps
disconnecting these days :-( Dunno why.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, The Cunctator wrote:
> I similarly much prefer the question-mark links.
>
> I'm always suspicious of interface changes that are "necessitated" by
> technical difficulties. Laziness is a virtue of the programmer, but so
> is hubris.

Hubris is a virtue now? All right! :)

> If worse comes to worst, we could always cache two versions.

I don't think it would be worth caching two versions. The vast majority of
visits are going to be from anons or users who are on the default
preferences, so that's the case to optimize for; the performance hit of
maintaining two sets of caches pages may well be more than the performance
hit of always regenerating pages for the minority option group.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>  OK, the question marks have to stay. Mybe we can tighten up that
> awful HTML code a bit.

It should be possible to squeeze it all into a single , something like:

    [
    Page title
    ]
    ?

(Whitespace is for illustrative purposes only. A couple bytes could be
saved with shorter class names, of course...)

// Redlinks
a.newlink .edge,
a.newlink .q  { display: none }
a.newlink .text { color: red }

// ? links
a.newlink .edge,
a.newlink .text { font-style: normal; font-color: inherit }

Might need some more tweaking to make the text color inherit properly,
but i think the html markup would be okay.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > There's also the stub detector. Difficult to CSSize that, as the threshold
> > is user-selected. Simplest to disable caching for the rare users who use
> > it.
>
> What does that do again?

Links to pages sized under the threshold are specially marked (I think an
exclamation point in ?-mode, and a dark red in red links mode). Since
sizes can change more frequently than existence, and the threshold is a
user option, there's not a good way to cache it.

Hmm, maybe give each link its own id and then generate up-to-the-minute
CSS? Blecch.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
> (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
>
> We had this working on phase 2. Something like:
>
> [
> Page title
> ]?

Ick.  I wouldn't want to add that much overhead on each link; it seems
OK to do it for numbered headings, but not for links.  I'm really quite
tempted to just eliminate the "?" links, and I'm really curious if they
are liked enough to justify them.

> There are of course other options that affect content, particularly the
> TeX-related selections.

Yeah, that's a tough one too, but it's only on a small number of
pages, so even if it makes those pages uncacheable, we'll probably
still benefit from the cache.  And I'm not sure we can't work around
or eliminate some of those options as well.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: <abbr>

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> This is a sensible position.  I would tend to make such changes in most
> cases, but I would hope that eventually each of them does have an
> article on Wiktionary.  Of the given examples, I tend to leave "kg" and
> "etc." alone, I have mixed feelings about "i.e." where most English
> speakers would understand "id est" even less,

Because of which I tend to turn it into "that is"

> and I don't know what
> "a.o." means.  I have to guess that it means "change it".

"amongst others" or "and others"

Andre Engels


body:
On 18 Mar 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> These are my thoughts for now -- please add yours.

In my opinion, the voting period should be lengthened to AT LEAST 1 week.
I wanted to put a message on WikipediaNL, notifying people of the vote, but
I forgot it at first, and then it wasn't necessary anymore as the voting
period had already ended.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
I realize after the fact, what a terrible choice [[Death to Kikes]] was for
an article... I vote that we delete it along with [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]],
and write up simple formal policy that limits the use of ethnic, racial, or
hate slurs in article titles to general and topical ones. I apologise for
this error, and trust that we can come closer to understanding what
collegiality and cooperation mean, particularly in debates where issues of
consistency and respect are involved.  -Steven Vertigo

> In the spirit of [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]] and in honor of Cungcator ("you
> and JD a consensus do not make") rather monolithic view of the article
> (considering Axel now endorsed its deletion... ) I have penned [[Death to
> Kikes]], an informative article about kikes... and soon to come:
>
> [[Camel Niggers]],  [[Cunt Conspiracy]]... you name it...
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:RachelCorrie

body:
> Whoever it is, should just put their resources on Metawikipedia (no hold
> barred there).

Please let's avoid the attitude of "Everything goes on Meta". That's what
drove users like Spartacus to place tons of idiosyncratic rants there
which made the RC unusable and the site structure confusing.

Wikipedia users are free to create user pages. We are fairly relaxed as
far as content is concerned, as long as it doesn't clutter RC, is overly
offensive or takes too much disk space. But if "RachelCorrie" isn't an
actual Wikipedia user, I think she should move her content somewhere else.

Meta, however, is for material related to Wikipedia's mission and purpose
-- software, philosophy, policy etc. User pages there can be used to
provide an international user page or a redirect to one, but should not be
considered dumps for all kinds of personal material. If it relates to
Wikipedia, fine.

We need to keep Meta clean just like the normal Wikipedia. It serves
important purposes.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Michel Mouly

subject: [Wikitech-l] Attempt to set up a local wiki from scratch

body:
For some project with some friends, I've looked for some time for
a way to build some text in common. Wikis answer the questions,
and I tried to build from scratch a local wiki, using wikipedia's
scripts.

Let me clarify that up to yesterday morning I had no experience
with http servers, php, mysql, or wikipedia's scripts. OK, that's
quite arrogant (or courageous, or plain dumb) to try to jump so
high from so low, please be kind with me... Moreover I use a not
so young PC (Pentium III 450 MHz)...

I must say that things went quite well! I managed to get all what
I wanted (I can browse the base and modify pages), which is
positively surprising. Most of the hurdles were negotiated with
the various help and doc files, and looking in the php scripts.

In the process I noticed a few things, and it remains a malfunction with page modifications.

Before going further, here follows the bare bones of what I tried
to set up:

OS : ms windows me (no comment, please)

browser : ms ie 5.50...

server : xitami (could'nt manage to install ms PWS - might not be
possible on win me -, and couldn't find a simple install of
apache...) no pb at all, neither installing or running.

php: version 4.2.3 for win32; some pb's, solved by tinkering in
php.ini, in particular, set with cgi redirect off

mysql : 3.25.55 for windows; no pb at all, neither installing or
running

wikipedia : the last versions of the files found on source forge,
loaded one by one (how to dump the CVS??)

Points to note:

a) The script createdb.php fails if there is already a db. This is
due to lack of deletion of table user_newtalk in buildTables.inc

b) The database as obtained starting with an empty directory and
running the script createdb.php is such that the search function
always answers that it found nothing.

Running rebuildindex.php corrects that. May be this is the normal
policy, and rebuildindex.php must be run regularly??

c) I loaded the current state of the french articles (smaller than
the english, and I'm french btw). There again, basic functions
runs correctly except for the search.

I tried to run rebuildindex.php, but it aborts, seemingly some
timer in the server (message is an overload indication). Is there
any way to do that without invoking the server? For instance, a
MySQL script would be handy!

d) When I edit a page, the submit yields a blank page after a long
time. Likely to be a pb in the php scripts, but this seems beyond
my competence.

e) After a submit on a new page, I can see the modification only
after deleting the IE cache and recalling wiki.phtml. I set the
browser to checking most recent version at each page download, but
the behaviour is the same.

Thanks in advance for any help!

This being said, congratulations to all of you (and also Xitami,
php and MySQL). It is quite impressive that the code and docs
allowed me with my limited experience to go so far in so little
time!

M. Mouly


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
> (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
>
> Another odd option is "show hoverbox over wiki links". IIRC, unchecking
> this will remove the 'title' attributes from the <a href>s. I don't know
> if that's something that can be done by CSS... I also don't know if anyone
> uses or wants the option.

I see no reason not to remove that option (and always have the hover box,
not always remove it).

> There's also the stub detector. Difficult to CSSize that, as the threshold
> is user-selected. Simplest to disable caching for the rare users who use
> it.

What does that do again?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
> (The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com>):
>
> I similarly much prefer the question-mark links.
>
> I'm always suspicious of interface changes that are "necessitated" by
> technical difficulties. Laziness is a virtue of the programmer, but so
> is hubris. If worse comes to worst, we could always cache two versions.

Well, that makes me pretty damned virtuous :-)  OK, the question
marks have to stay. Mybe we can tighten up that awful HTML code a bit.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Article count: Vote result

body:
On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:

> I didn't get a chance to vote, BTW - I remembered about the poll twice -
> once I spent 10 minutes trying to find the page, by which time Wikipedia
> became unresponsive, and the second time happened to be during last night's
> outage. (reminder messages with the URL would ahve been a very good idea -
> in fact, a mailing to every registered user with the URL of the page would
> have been even better.

We can do like in Florida, count the absentee ballots postmarked after the
election. :)

-- Daniel


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] index

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>>Maybe we should make an alphabetical index to replace the seach engine. It
>>would take much less computing power.  The index would be searchable to find
>>the right section (but not the right article) and look sort of like the list
>>of all articles page, but all redirect pages and stubs would show up, but
>>not the talk pages.  Would that work?
>>
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001299.html
>
I remember that discussion.  Of course it depended on knowing what the
n'th article was.  In Wiktionary at [[By Alphabetical Order]], I've
thought of this.  The question that comes from this, given that the
entire body is an ordered list, is there a formula that will produce the
title of the n'th article in the list of all pages?

Eclecticology


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 20:32, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > > (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
> > > [
> > > Page title
> > > ]?
> >
> > Ick.  I wouldn't want to add that much overhead on each link; it seems
> > OK to do it for numbered headings, but not for links.  I'm really quite
> > tempted to just eliminate the "?" links, and I'm really curious if they
> > are liked enough to justify them.
>
> The Dutch folks explicitly requested that question links be retained as
> the default there. There may be some resistance.

I similarly much prefer the question-mark links.

I'm always suspicious of interface changes that are "necessitated" by
technical difficulties. Laziness is a virtue of the programmer, but so
is hubris. If worse comes to worst, we could always cache two versions.


from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google

body:
When I tried a search in wikipedia-google I recieved :

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=ISO_8601&printable=yes

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Userlogin&returnto=ISO_8601

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=ISO_8601&action=edit

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=ISO_8601&action=history

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:ISO_8601 -

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=ISO_8601

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Userlogin&returnto=Talk:ISO_8601

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Talk:ISO_8601

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:ISO_8601&printable=yes

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:ISO_8601&action=history

www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:ISO_8601&action=edit

And so on. So, I recieve a lot of rubish ( if I desiree go to the talk page, I would press the talk link in the ISO 8601 article page.

Is there a way to hide this pages in the results, because they are parts of the same ISO 8601 main page ???.

Afortunatelly, there is only an article with the strings ISO 8601. What would happen if it would be in more than one ??. How much rubbish would I  go through ??.

Really, I love the separation between search results in the page tittles and in the content. Can we obtain if from Google ???.

Regards.


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

The texts which I write are signed.
The one you commented on the talk page is from Athyvement (I think).
Actually, I didn't write a single word on this page.

Yann

--
http://www.forget-me.net
Alternatives sur le Net
http://keys.indymedia.org/showkey.py?key=0A34CBDA
gpg --keyserver keys.indymedia.org --recv-key 0A34CBDA


subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 21:37, Stevertigo wrote:
> In the spirit of [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]] and in honor of Cungcator ("you
> and JD a consensus do not make") rather monolithic view of the article
> (considering Axel now endorsed its deletion... ) I have penned [[Death to
> Kikes]], an informative article about kikes... and soon to come:
>
> [[Camel Niggers]],  [[Cunt Conspiracy]]... you name it...
>
Cungcator?


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] legal threat in eo wikipedia! / legxa minaco en la eo-Vikipedio

body:
On Sat, Mar 15, 2003 at 11:09:07PM +0100, Chuck Smith wrote:
>Rough translation: "I propose that the user
>130.192.202.25 be banned.  He has already changed
>articles which delete any kind of mention of a
>critical side in the articles on Perla Martinelli and
>Giorgio Silfer, although a neutral biography should
>present every POV.  Today, he even threated legal
>process because of a small mention of the work by
>Camacho, The Master and Martinelli, although public
>reactions against a person - the same as public
>support - are an important part of a biography.
>People who purposefully and continually threaten the
>cooperation and freedom of the Wikipedia must be
>banned."
>
>So, I need legal advice.  Jimbo, should I give
>Kricxjo's name and address to Silfer?  Should I
>temporarily remove the critique from the biography
>until the legal problem is solved?  Please reply
>ASAP... and CC: your reply to my personal address as
>well, msochuck at yahoo.com.

Just as I prophesied.  As an outsider, all I can do now is say "I told
you so."  The Wikipedia has systemic flaws that leave it vulnerable to
this sort of attack.  For easier to call the messenger an "anti-Semite"
than deal with ones own failings.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Saving bandwidth: random pages

body:
This has probably been suggested before, but just in case: the "random
page" function (as we all know) produces gadzillions of entries on
two-horse towns in the USA. Surfing for a random page, as a result, is
slow and frustrating, practically unusable if you are on dialup. But it
must involve a bit of server load too, dishing up all those pages which
most people are not interested in and causing them to hit another
random page, and another, and another. (Or give up and go elsewhere, of
course.)

I guess that it would be a non-trivial task to fix the page-selection
process to leave the little towns out, but (as a temporary hack),
perhaps the random page function could ignore all entries that have a
comma in the title. That would come somewhere within cooee of the
desired result and might be easy to implement. Obviously, it would need
to be a user-selectable option rather than a compulsory-for-all-users
one.

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
list at redhill.net.au


body:
On Sat, Mar 15, 2003 at 03:18:01PM -0800, Stevertigo wrote:
>This is all just my opinion - from the POV of detachment from the potential
>liability of being sued by some jackass. But WikiP cant logically be held
>liable for issues of slander... or at least fear of a suit should not be
>a'feard. ( [Wikipedia Talk:Slander and Libel] ) -Stevertigo

Actually, the only logical (from a legal POV) position is that Wikipedia
*IS* liable for what is written on it's pages, unless the individual
Wikipedian steps forward with his identity to take the legal liability.

There is an old legal standard, that one should be able to face his
accuser. Sadly, the systemic flaws in the Wikipedia will lead it into
direct contact with the legal system.  The legal system has a lot more
clout than the Wikipedia administration does. Such entanglement is
inevitable.  If the wikipedia were to fix itself, instead of being a
propaganda mouthpeice for a few elite groups, it would stand a much
better chance of making the "common carrier" argument that the telcos
use.  To make that argument though, all users will have to be
identified, or stand by and see their contributions deleted if they
offend a litigious person.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Jesse Alter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Medical Disclaimer

body:
I was checking out [[Hepatitis_B]] and noted a prominent disclaimer in
red text:

*DISCLAIMER*

    Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
    only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
    professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
    health-related decisions.

Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles? Do we
even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be somewhere else, like
on the front page, and not on each article we have. I can only imagine
seeing the big red disclaimer on [[Food Poisoning]],
[[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]], and [[Chiropractic
medicine]] :-P

I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the Hepatitis articles
but decided I should get a consensus here, first.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The dangers of bots, and robustness of the system

body:
Yet another reason why bots should always be cleared: the bot
from 12.246.100.201 that stomped on about 30 pages just now was me.
Even well-intentioned bots can cause significant damage if not
treated with care. This one was my Wiki software test suite, which
was supposed to be testing a new installation of the software on a
machine on my local LAN, not the live Wiki.

Anyway, another observation: after stopping it, I came to fix
the damage, and _I couldn't edit fast enough to catch up to the
other Wikipedians who had already reverted all my damage_.
It's nice to know the system is robust enough to recover from
damage done even by its own developers. :-)

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] Medical Disclaimer

body:
Jesse Alter wrote:

> *DISCLAIMER*
>
>    Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
>    only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
>    professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
>    health-related decisions.
>
> Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles? Do
> we even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be somewhere else,
> like on the front page, and not on each article we have. I can only
> imagine seeing the big red disclaimer on [[Food Poisoning]],
> [[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]], and [[Chiropractic
> medicine]] :-P
>
> I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the Hepatitis
> articles but decided I should get a consensus here, first.

The disclaimer is in the right place.  It would be useless on the front
page.  A person who has reached the hepatitis article from a Google
search, may not even know that the front page exists.  There are always
individuals in the general public whoce capacity for stupidity is
absolutely brilliant. :-D

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] Disk activity

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 01:12, Neil Harris wrote:
> I've been trying to profile the system to find the bottleneck.

It's those damn users! Server was running *just fine* until people tried
to use it. ;)

> Some simple disk monitoring showed very high levels of disk activity,
> both read and write, yesterday.  This is surprising, as the site should
> be able to run mostly out of memory, except for writes to update the
> database when pages are edited.

Mysql's key buffer is only 384M. (Much more than that with our current
setup and we'd be in much bigger danger of thrashing the swap.)

> * Can someone who knows the code tell me whether there is much use of
> intermediate files in the Wikipedia software?

Session management involves temporary files in some way, I don't know if
they're written frequently. Everything has log files of course which are
written out constantly -- Apache and the wiki software each write a line
of log for every page fetched. Mysql's binary log makes a note of every
update, insert, and delete. Every page view increments the page view
counter in the stats table (a single row, very small, very fast). The
Innodb transaction log file is too small and is probably flushing more
often than it needs to (I had troubles when I tried to set it larger --
it told me it was the wrong size, naturally, and refuse to ran!)

That's several writes per page fetch; at circa 4 pages per second I'd
expect on the order of 20-50 writes per second. 250 does sound a little
high...

> * Can someone who knows the hardware tell me how many drives are in the
> RAID, and what RAID level is used?

As far as Linux can see, there is a single drive, an IBM DDYS-T36950N
(36704 MB). The SCSI channel is in 160 MB/sec mode (card is an Adaptec
AIC-7899). If there's any RAID, I don't know about it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> The "?" links are another matter: I can't think of a clean
> way to offer both options; i.e., links on the whole word
> with some style, or links only around the "?". How much
> screaming do you think would take place if we simply
> eliminated the "?" links, and just made two link style
> options (one sedate and one loud)?

If the benefit will be substantial, and I think it will, I think this
is a cost we can live with.

I haven't seen a ? link in a long time, and I no longer miss them.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The Dutch folks explicitly requested that question links be retained as
> the default there. There may be some resistance.

Perhaps that resistance will fade quickly if they perceive it as a
tradeoff between this relatively minor style feature versus
performance.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:RachelCorrie

in_reply_to: <3E7768B6.4060901@snacksoft.com>; from jesse@snacksoft.com on Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 01:43:02PM -0500

body:
Jesse Alter wrote:
> Well, actually, I'd like to (posthumously) withdraw my objection to
> Lir's banning. I've found through conversation with Lir that they ARE
> posting as Susan Mason, and they are making personal attacks on people
> and they're lacking a uhh...cooperative spirit.

Then Susan Mason is banned, too.

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The dangers of bots, and robustness of the system

body:
On Tuesday 18 March 2003 11:55 pm, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Yet another reason why bots should always be cleared: the bot
> from 12.246.100.201 that stomped on about 30 pages just now was me.
> Even well-intentioned bots can cause significant damage if not
> treated with care. This one was my Wiki software test suite, which
> was supposed to be testing a new installation of the software on a
> machine on my local LAN, not the live Wiki.

Hi Lee! So that was you eh?

> Anyway, another observation: after stopping it, I came to fix
> the damage, and _I couldn't edit fast enough to catch up to the
> other Wikipedians who had already reverted all my damage_.
> It's nice to know the system is robust enough to recover from
> damage done even by its own developers. :-)

Yeah, I had the same "problem" after the first hour of the MIT vandal attack:
In order to preserve my sanity I was trying to edit articles for a few
minutes between rolling back the vandal's edits en masse. But by the time I
got to the rolling back part I found that much of the vandal's damage had
already been fixed by regular users.

I also found that the rollback feature can cause trouble in these situations
since it blindly reverts the top edit and doesn't track /who/ made the top
edit. So on a couple dozen occasions that night I accidently resurrected the
vandal's edits because because somebody else had reverted the article a
second before I hit "rollback."

So after a while I felt like I was starting to get in the way especially after
about an hour into the attack when the "immune system" of Wikipedia was fully
primed and my Admin powers became largely irrelevant (and in fact a bit
counterproductive).

Wikimmunity at its best I say (a smarter rollback and the ability to block
logged-in vandals via IP address would be still be nice though...).

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 13]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Medical Disclaimer

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Jesse Alter wrote:
>
>> *DISCLAIMER*
>>
>>    Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
>>    only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
>>    professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
>>    health-related decisions.
>>
>> Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles? Do
>> we even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be somewhere
>> else, like on the front page, and not on each article we have. I can
>> only imagine seeing the big red disclaimer on [[Food Poisoning]],
>> [[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]], and [[Chiropractic
>> medicine]] :-P
>>
>> I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the Hepatitis
>> articles but decided I should get a consensus here, first.
>
>
> The disclaimer is in the right place.  It would be useless on the
> front page.  A person who has reached the hepatitis article from a
> Google search, may not even know that the front page exists.  There
> are always individuals in the general public whoce capacity for
> stupidity is absolutely brilliant. :-D
>
> Eclecticology

Should I add the disclaimer to other articles related to medicine?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Off today

body:
My wife and little girl are feeling ill today with a cold, so I'm
going to be taking off work to help out.  I'm already a little behind
in wikipedia email, so I'll probably be slow for a few days as I dig
out.

We're getting a new (second) machine for wikipedia -- the parts have
been ordered and are being shipped to Jason, and then at some point
soon, he'll drive down to San Diego to install everything.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Off today


subject: [WikiEN-l] Disclaimers (was Medical Disclaimer)

body:
Eclecticology wrote:
>Jesse Alter wrote:
>
>> *DISCLAIMER*
>>
>>    Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
>>    only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
>>    professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
>>    health-related decisions.
>>
>> Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles?
>> Do we even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be
>> somewhere else, like on the front page, and not on each article
>> we have. I can only imagine seeing the big red disclaimer on
>> [[Food Poisoning]], [[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]],
>> and [[Chiropractic medicine]] :-P
>>
>> I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the
>> Hepatitis articles but decided I should get a consensus
>>here, first.
>
>The disclaimer is in the right place.

I disagree. We should have one page on Wikipedia that has all our disclaimers
on it and this page should be linked from the non-editable bottom area on
each page (in the same way as [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] is linked from every
page). This is standard practice for large web sites.

There are at least several different disclaimers floating around Wikipedia
that we should consolidate into one page. We should also add a legal
disclaimer to the mix.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 14]]


body:
Don?t worry. Only to stop replies directed to me.

All the best.
-----
http://www.journeytoforever.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 12:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] legal threat in eo wikipedia! - Apology to Pedro

Pedro M.V. wrote:

>Hey, I didn?t write it !!!------->>>
>
>>Pedro M.V. wrote:
>>
>>>But, he is quite stupid : it is fairly easy to find Brion's coordinates
>>>without problem (google and whois are your friend for those who know how
>>>to use them).
>>>
>>Brion and Chuck may be easy to find, but that may not be the case for
>>Kricxjo.
>>
My apoplogies if my cutting excess material from the message ended up
with the wrong person appearing responsible for the quote.

Ec

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New bug concerning lists

references:
<shy93dajmq.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de> <8i0WrKxCpVB@erik_moeller>
	<20030319013142.GC25123@math-rs-n01.ucr.edu>

body:
Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> writes:

> because I encourage semantic interpretations of the breaks.
>
> ^_^

And some editor even add <br> elements at the end of semantical
entities ;-(

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Can't log in to Meta

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>>While we are discussing log-ins, what is the expiry time for keeping logged
>>in status?

Don't know why, but I'm usually logged in over some days/week. Ok, I'm
using Wikipedia with the 'all features you can get browser'TM (cookies,
passwords), maybe this helps.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Medical Disclaimer

body:
Sure, and we should make up a legal disclaimer too.

Fred

> From: Jesse Alter <jesse at snacksoft.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 04:35:38 -0500
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Medical Disclaimer
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Jesse Alter wrote:
>>
>>> *DISCLAIMER*
>>>
>>> Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
>>> only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
>>> professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
>>> health-related decisions.
>>>
>>> Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles? Do
>>> we even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be somewhere
>>> else, like on the front page, and not on each article we have. I can
>>> only imagine seeing the big red disclaimer on [[Food Poisoning]],
>>> [[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]], and [[Chiropractic
>>> medicine]] :-P
>>>
>>> I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the Hepatitis
>>> articles but decided I should get a consensus here, first.
>>
>>
>> The disclaimer is in the right place.  It would be useless on the
>> front page.  A person who has reached the hepatitis article from a
>> Google search, may not even know that the front page exists.  There
>> are always individuals in the general public whoce capacity for
>> stupidity is absolutely brilliant. :-D
>>
>> Eclecticology
>
> Should I add the disclaimer to other articles related to medicine?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
We need to effectively communicate a disclaimer to our readers when
appropriate, not hide it in a footnote. Please see what we have done at
[[chiropractic medicine]]. That is how to communicate an effective
disclaimer.

Fred

> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 05:06:37 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Disclaimers (was Medical Disclaimer)
>
> Eclecticology wrote:
>> Jesse Alter wrote:
>>
>>> *DISCLAIMER*
>>>
>>> Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
>>> only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
>>> professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
>>> health-related decisions.
>>>
>>> Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles?
>>> Do we even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be
>>> somewhere else, like on the front page, and not on each article
>>> we have. I can only imagine seeing the big red disclaimer on
>>> [[Food Poisoning]], [[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]],
>>> and [[Chiropractic medicine]] :-P
>>>
>>> I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the
>>> Hepatitis articles but decided I should get a consensus
>>> here, first.
>>
>> The disclaimer is in the right place.
>
> I disagree. We should have one page on Wikipedia that has all our disclaimers
> on it and this page should be linked from the non-editable bottom area on
> each page (in the same way as [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] is linked from every
> page). This is standard practice for large web sites.
>
> There are at least several different disclaimers floating around Wikipedia
> that we should consolidate into one page. We should also add a legal
> disclaimer to the mix.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> WikiKarma
> The usual at [[March 14]]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> writes:
>> because I encourage semantic interpretations of the breaks.
> And some editor even add <br> elements at the end of semantical
> entities ;-(

The world is a bad place, lets get back to LaTeX, it's usually doing
what I want and it can handle even Karl's and Toby's wishes. You can
even use emacs to edit it's files ;)

Smurf
--
This host is vim powered.
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'

body:
I like the terminology user.

Because I feel it is also possible to benefit from
having an account as a *reader* only (so... as a
user...)

(mostly for the watch list - especially in those times
of painful research through google)

A simple reader would maybe not have the compulsion of
creating an account if it is named "editor".

And in truth, following one's watch list is truely
addictive

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Editor
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "Stevertigo" <stevertigo at attbi.com>
> > Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 23:32:34 -0800
> > To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'
> >
> > Doesnt it sound well... anti-collegial, ...
> >
> > I suggest maybe "Comrade:name" or com: for
> short...
> >
> > of editor: or ed: for short... or contributor...
> cont: for short...
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:12:11 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
<lee at piclab.com> wrote:

>> (Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com>):
>> > I endorse this result.
>>
>> This sounds kinda like the CIA putting its stamp of approval on a third
>> world election... ;)
>
> ...except that Jimbo probably didn't engineer the result he's
> endorsing.
>
If the US was a third world country it's last presidential election would
have been re-run with UN supervisors! :-)

I didn't get a chance to vote, BTW - I remembered about the poll twice -
once I spent 10 minutes trying to find the page, by which time Wikipedia
became unresponsive, and the second time happened to be during last night's
outage. (reminder messages with the URL would ahve been a very good idea -
in fact, a mailing to every registered user with the URL of the page would
have been even better.

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: abhio at vsnl.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] a suggestion

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20030319/916f2790/attachment.diff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta Wikipedia says I don't exist!

body:
Having gone (too late) to the voting page I find that I can't log in.
It works okay on the main page (apart from the usual problem of not being
persistent enough).
--
Richard Grevers
Christchurch, NZ.


subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 10:48, Anthere wrote:
> > I like the terminology user.
> >
> > Because I feel it is also possible to benefit from
> > having an account as a *reader* only (so... as a
> > user...)
> >
> > (mostly for the watch list - especially in those
> times
> > of painful research through google)
> >
> > A simple reader would maybe not have the
> compulsion of
> > creating an account if it is named "editor".
> >
> I have to say here that I'm in disagreement.
>
> "user" connotes a producer-consumer relationship (I
> create, you use; I
> sell, you buy; I produce, you consume) in its
> standard computer-lingo
> meaning ("lusers" vs "hackers" or "coders"),
> compounded by its
> association with the more common usage as shorthand
> for "drug user".

quite true

> Wherease "editor" connotes stewardship, power,
> collaboration (because to
> edit you need to build on someone else's work)--and
> therefore some
> responsibility, yes. But is that so bad? We want
> participants in
> Wikipedia to feel a sense of stewardship, power,
> collaboration, and
> responsibility.

Also true
but 'editor' excludes 'reader' in its meaning. I think
it wrong.

 > "contributor" is similarly a better word than
> "user", if you really
> dislike "editor".

Contributor is the best of the three, as anyone can
contribute in reading, or writing, or commenting, or
developing the soft, or raising money...

strong point of 'user' : it's short and easy to write
:-)

Une contributrice

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>And some editor even add
 elements at the end of semantical
>entities ;-(

Valid on a web page for, say, poetry.

Of course, Wikipedia doesn't include poetry, except in quotations,
where we use : at the beginning of the line instead:

====
: Roses are red;
: Violets are blue;
: An I for an I,
: and a II for a II.
====

Of course, this doesn't work if the line breaks don't tell you
that the : line has ended.

And Project Sourceberg *does* include unquoted poetry:

====
Roses are red;

Violets are blue;

An I for an I,

and a II for a II.
====

(The semantic line breaks that I use in my emails are of course inappropriate
when the line length may be nothing like the 80 column email standard
that my emails are written to reflect.)

-- Toby


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
4) Deadlines and limits on options must be even more
strictly enforced.
The deadline for proposing options should be longer,
but options should be discussed more carefully.

In any case, we should try consensus finding first.
These are my thoughts for now -- please add yours.
Regards,
Erik

Less than 48 hours to set options, discuss options,
formalize options, in 40 languages, is not enough.
Especially when the server is basically down during
most wake hours. In the end, unless a lot of bantering
noise is done, only a couple of people from each
language participate, and these latter don't
necessarily represent the widest view on their
wikipedia.

PS : I am glad at least the [[]] was voted as a restriction.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thanks are not enough *sniff, choke, sob*

body:
On behalf of all us Wiki-addicts, I thank you heartily for devoting so much time, energy and money to the Wikipedia project. We can never repay your great generosity.

...except maybe by being good Wikicitizens and contributing well-researched, neutral articles!

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
[snip]
We're getting a new (second) machine for wikipedia -- the parts have
been ordered and are being shipped to Jason, and then at some point
soon, he'll drive down to San Diego to install everything.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
>In the spirit of [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]] and in honor of Cungcator ("you
>and JD a consensus do not make") rather monolithic view of the article
>(considering Axel now endorsed its deletion... ) I have penned [[Death to
>Kikes]], an informative article about kikes... and soon to come:

Shouldn't that be [[Death to Kikes slogan]]?
And shouldn't the article be about the slogan, not about Jews?
To be analogous to the AKFD case, that is.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason banned (was: User:RachelCorrie)

body:
Any last words, before I disable the Susan Mason account, anybody?

Susan/Lir/Adam, do you have anything to say to the community?

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:48 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:RachelCorrie

Jesse Alter wrote:
> Well, actually, I'd like to (posthumously) withdraw my objection to
> Lir's banning. I've found through conversation with Lir that they ARE
> posting as Susan Mason, and they are making personal attacks on people
> and they're lacking a uhh...cooperative spirit.

Then Susan Mason is banned, too.

--Jimbo


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Medical Disclaimer

body:
On 19-03-2003, Jesse Alter wrote thusly :
> I was checking out [[Hepatitis_B]] and noted a prominent disclaimer in
> red text:
>
> *DISCLAIMER*
>
>    Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use
>    only. The information is in most cases not reviewed by
>    professionals. You are advised to contact your doctor for
>    health-related decisions.
>
>
> Should we be adding disclaimers like that to most of the articles? Do we
> even need a disclaimer? If so, I think it should be somewhere else, like
> on the front page, and not on each article we have. I can only imagine
> seeing the big red disclaimer on [[Food Poisoning]],
> [[Peyronie_disease]], [[Gingivitis]], [[Cancer]], and [[Chiropractic
> medicine]] :-P
>
> I thought of removing the disclaimer from each of the Hepatitis articles
> but decided I should get a consensus here, first.

Jesse and all,

This is just the question whether Wikipedia is meant to be a reliable
reference source.

If not, it should be clearly stated that _no_ information is meant to be
taken seriously.
If yes, we must be prepared to be responsible for what we write here.
We cannot be sure that someone wouldn't take some misguided action reading
some joke put in by a vandal (even accessible for a short time to
readers).
Wikipedia could be available in print and all reliable printed sources give
such disclaimers. Not only to be on the safe side legally but to be
responsible to their readers.

Let's see to it that Wikipedia is not a health hazard.

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disk activity

body:
I've been trying to profile the system to find the bottleneck.

Some simple disk monitoring showed very high levels of disk activity,
both read and write, yesterday.  This is surprising, as the site should
be able to run mostly out of memory, except for writes to update the
database when pages are edited.

Rates were around 250 reads/second and 250 writes/second.

Disk heads and spins are a very scarce resource, and contention on them
will make any existing database locking problems far worse.  I've got a
couple of questions which might help me:

* Can someone who knows the code tell me whether there is much use of
intermediate files in the Wikipedia software?

* Can someone who knows the hardware tell me how many drives are in the
RAID, and what RAID level is used?

Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: <abbr>

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:27:35 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
<lee at piclab.com> wrote:

>> (Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>):
>> Andre Engels wrote:
>>
>> >I don't agree that there should be an article on each such
>> abbreviation;
>> >however, if there is no article, one should just write out the
>> abbrevation
>> >in almost all cases. I tend to write out abbreviations like "etc.",
>> "i.e."
>> >and "a.o." whenever they occur in an article I am editing.
>> >
>> This is a sensible position.  I would tend to make such changes in most
>> cases, but I would hope that eventually each of them does have an
>> article on Wiktionary.  Of the given examples, I tend to leave "kg" and
>> "etc." alone, I have mixed feelings about "i.e." where most English
>> speakers would understand "id est" even less, and I don't know what
>> "a.o." means.  I have to guess that it means "change it".
>
> I never use abbreviations when they can be avoided. I also write out
> "that is" and "for example" and even "and so on"; we are not constrained
> by the size limits of paper here.  I suppose measurement units are hard
> to avoid though, but even there I'd write "kilogram" if it was just an
> isolated use in an otherwise non-technical article.
>
Well, in the page that prompted this: [[Marine Corps Memorial Statue]] I
was wanting to expand the abbreviations Sgt. Cpl. and Pfc. The latter
occured in front of four names, and I don't think we'd want to see
"Private, First class" written in full four times. I don't think we'll have
an article on it any-time soon, either. Also, does anyone know what PhM.
expands to as a U.S. Naval rank?

--
Richard Grevers


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Disk activity

body:
An update: today's figures are more like 80 to 160 total disk ops per
second: and performance is _much_ better. (I suspect my old figures may
have been overstated by a factor of 2, as well... but I can't be sure,
as they were done using pen and paper methods.)

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Can't log in to Meta

body:
The Meta-wikipedia says I don't exist, yet my login name is working fine on
most pages.

(Moderator, please kill the earlier variant of this message that I made
from the wrong email address @dramatic.co.nz !)
--
Richard Grevers


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Disclaimers (was Medical Disclaimer)

body:
On Wednesday 19 March 2003 09:26 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> We need to effectively communicate a disclaimer to our readers when
> appropriate, not hide it in a footnote. Please see what we have done at
> [[chiropractic medicine]]. That is how to communicate an effective
> disclaimer.
>
> Fred

Again, I disagree - it is really bad database design to have the same text on
hundreds of different pages. That just makes it more difficult to maintain
and places some type of onus on our contributors to write and insert them.

-- mav


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 03:42, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > The Dutch folks explicitly requested that question links be retained as
> > the default there. There may be some resistance.
>
> Perhaps that resistance will fade quickly if they perceive it as a
> tradeoff between this relatively minor style feature versus
> performance.

It's just a few bytes, which we could resoundingly make up for by
dropping the full hostname from the URLs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Off today

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 04:47, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> My wife and little girl are feeling ill today with a cold, so I'm
> going to be taking off work to help out.  I'm already a little behind
> in wikipedia email, so I'll probably be slow for a few days as I dig
> out.

:(

> We're getting a new (second) machine for wikipedia -- the parts have
> been ordered and are being shipped to Jason, and then at some point
> soon, he'll drive down to San Diego to install everything.

:)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: The dangers of bots, and robustness of the
	system

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 08:43, tarquin wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >I also found that the rollback feature can cause trouble in these situations
> >since it blindly reverts the top edit and doesn't track /who/ made the top
> >edit.
> >
> I have had seen this too.
> this is an important bug -- has it been submitted to the Authorities?

Known problem. This and a number of things (such as page deletion) need
to better protected against race conditions (ie, where the page is
changed in between the time a human decides that it's appropriate to
perform the operation and the time that the software receives the
request). This should be relatively simple by throwing in a copy of the
timestamp to check against the current page.

It hasn't been a big priority though as these are all reversible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
At 08:26 PM 3/18/03 -0800, you wrote:
>I realize after the fact, what a terrible choice [[Death to Kikes]] was for
>an article... I vote that we delete it along with [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]],
>and write up simple formal policy that limits the use of ethnic, racial, or
>hate slurs in article titles to general and topical ones. I apologise for
>this error, and trust that we can come closer to understanding what
>collegiality and cooperation mean, particularly in debates where issues of
>consistency and respect are involved.  -Steven Vertigo

How about an apology for your anti-Semitism and blatant trolling, Steve?
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Annual or semi-annual conference

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 09:27, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Jimbo wrote:
> << I am fond of the idea of an annual or semi-annual conference, held at
> different places around the world (for convenience for different
> people) to promote wikipedia _community_. >>

Also, as a reminder, a few of us Esperanto Wikipedians will be at the
Esperanto cxe Interreto conference in Boston next month: April 19-26.
Other Wikipedians interested in having a little meet while there are
people in town, please contact Chuck Smith (msochuck at yahoo.com); he's
one of the organizers of the event so knows the schedule better than I.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Medical Disclaimer

body:
On Wednesday 19 March 2003 09:26 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> Jesse and all,
>
> This is just the question whether Wikipedia is meant to be a reliable
> reference source.
>
> If not, it should be clearly stated that _no_ information is meant to be
> taken seriously.
> If yes, we must be prepared to be responsible for what we write here.
> We cannot be sure that someone wouldn't take some misguided action reading
> some joke put in by a vandal (even accessible for a short time to
> readers).
> Wikipedia could be available in print and all reliable printed sources give
> such disclaimers. Not only to be on the safe side legally but to be
> responsible to their readers.
>
> Let's see to it that Wikipedia is not a health hazard.
>
> Regards,
> Kpjas.

I agree - Wikipedia is in constant development by volunteers and has many
rough edges. Therefore a blanket disclaimer linked from the the same place as
our copyright notice is, is needed for all articles. This would also be
needed for a sifter version too - otherwise our editors or the Foundation can
be held liable if somebody uses an article to their detriment (even if that
detriment is getting an F on a test or blowing up your lab).

Using Wikipedia is like installing pre-beta software on your computer. So we
should communicate this fact to people and also mention that because we are a
wiki /they/ are also responsible for the accuracy of articles they read (if
they find a mistake then they should fix it right away and not become
indigent about it).

So this problem isn't unique to medical articles.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 15]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the term 'USER'

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 16:41:54 -0500, Vicki Rosenzweig
<vr at redbird.org> wrote:

> The advantage of the term "USER" is precisely that it's inclusive: it
> doesn't draw a sharp line between the people who spend too much of
> our time writing for the Wikipedia, those who do a few articles on things
> they care about, and those who come here looking for information on
> something specific.
>
> It also emphasizes that *the purpose of Wikipedia is to be a usable
> encyclopedia.* That I enjoy editing it is good, because it supports that
> goal: but the purpose is for Wikipedia to be *used* as a source of
> information.

*what she said* :-)

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>I'd be interested to know what these alleged "personal attacks" and lack
>of "cooperative spirit" are. I haven't checked every single one of Susan
>Mason's edits, but I have looked at quite a few, and most have looked
>fairly useful to me. I've seen far worse personal attacks made *against*
>Susan Mason than by her, and furthermore more of a cooperative spirit in
>her lately than in some of those who have attacked her. Shall I name names
>and recommend *them* for banning?
>
>(Incidentally, if Susan Mason is Lir, then I understand that she's really
>been banned all along, so none of this is relevant; I am speaking only of
>the edits under the name "Susan Mason", viewed without prejudice.)
>
>Oliver
>
>P.S. - Yes, I know Lir was a "he", but I can't be bothered about correctly
>gendered pronouns at the moment...
>
>On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>>Any last words, before I disable the Susan Mason account, anybody?
>>
Although I have not spent a lot of time on the "hot" issues, I become
more than a little annoyed with the perpetual obsessive sniping over Lir
and his/her several reincarnations.  These often seem founded on the
principle that if you barely suspect that Lir is involved then a
presumption of guilt must apply.  There is absolutely no room for Lir to
redeem himself, no matter how much he tries.

There are obviously steps that need to be taken when someone is banned
for cause, but exposing the entire community to this perpetual whining
when someone's sacred POV has been violated is not one of them.  I very
much agree with Oliver.

As to the User:RachelCorrie affair, whether or not that user is Lir, he
or she has done very little beyond that user page.  Obviously someone
had to vent feelings of outrage over that death.  Let's not have her
opponents expand it to be more of an issue than it is.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'

body:
The Cunctator wrote in part:

>"user" connotes a producer-consumer relationship.

>Whereas "editor" connotes stewardship, power, collaboration.

This may be the source of the conflict between the two groups.
Because to me, "user" has no such unempowered connotation.
As a user (not sysadmin) of the Unix system here at school,
I expect (and get) input into how the system is run
(requesting installations, reporting problems, etc --
and yes, even fixing things myself when I know how).

-- Toby


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
**(AKFD VF Deletion text attached)
>>Vicki: How about an apology for your anti-Semitism and blatant trolling,
Steve?

Youre calling me a racist Vicki? Race is a non-issue to me. Ill apologise
for my racism, when you apologise for the apparent cultural self-centrism
that caused you to miss the *point* entirely.

>>Toby:  Shouldn't that be [[Death to Kikes slogan]]?
And shouldn't the article be about the slogan, not about Jews? To be
analogous to the AKFD case, that is.

Ah youre right... I forgot the 'little quotes'  - ask Vicki what she
thinks.. The point is that neither should be there; your failure to stand up
for consistent principle, not to mention, get the point.. is invitation to a
whole can of worms you all don't want to go into. Its up to you to express
intelligent thought here, and not fall back on the lasseiz faire doctrine of
"document everything".. If you look at the AKFD talk pages... and the Votes
for deletion.. There was consensus reached as far as how to handle the
material... Only Cungcator and Axel pushed it forth...And Axel backed off...
After deleting the page, Cuncator took it upon himself to revive the
redirect to article status... the Deletion page was cleared by Mav simply
for size issues... The point is that Cunk has been completely monolithic on
this... and people out of some nonsense lack of desire to make a principled
stand have allowed this to fester.. and I think James's rather substantive
contributions are dwindling, out of a lack of interest, due to a lack of
consistency in treatment. Cuncators Sysop status is directly at odds with
his heavy handed behaviour regarding this page - contradiction Jim's notions
that sysops stay neutral.  Dont expect the answer to come from the top...
Jim stays neutral because hes hoping people can find resolutions on their
own...  You comprende, Victoria? -SV

I respectfully disagree with the honorable member's position. Zoe brought
the issue to Jimbo's attention and to the mailing list, so there is much
discussion and a resolution to be found in due course. --The Cunctator

>From Talk:Anti-Gay slogan:
>>Cuncator::I respectfully disagree with the honorable member's position.
Zoe brought the issue to Jimbo's attention and to the mailing list, so there
is much discussion and a resolution to be found in due course.
>>James::No. Another falsehood. There was a discussion and a solution which
Cunctator deliberately destroyed by (a) renaming the page after most people
had agreed on a replacement name suggested by Stevertigo and were adding to
its contents, (b) creating a dodgy replacement POV article so that the page
could not be restored to its agreed location. Zoe and everyone else isn't
looking for a discussion - there was one. And a solution. They are
complaining about Cunctator's outrageous and deliberate scrapping of the
agreed solution so he can use his 'pet name', one which Jimbo has suggested
is in clear breach of Wiki naming conventions.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'

body:
> Contributor is the best of the three, as anyone can
> contribute in reading, or writing, or commenting, or
> developing the soft, or raising money...

"Cont" for short? Too much like c*nt..
How about "Trib:"

And the mascot can be a Tribble :)

Not that this is going anywhere.... -SV


subject: [WikiEN-l] Slogan policy (was: DTK article)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>We need a policy on "titles of articles about slogans".
>
>Most of us would probably agree that the slogan itself should not be the title of the article:
>
>* [[AIDS Kills Fags Dead]] <= not a good title
>
>How about some convention like "Slogan: XYZ" or "The slogan: 'XYZ'", as in:
>* [[Slogan: Death to Moonies]]
>* [[The slogan: Moonies stink]]
>
I support inserting the word "slogan" in such situations; whether we
like them or not we can't ignore the plain fact that such slogans do
exist.  Putting "slogan at the end of the title such as in the suggested
[[Death to Kikes slogan]] would not be as effective.  The point which
the title must make is that it is a slogan, and it is being quoted.
 Adding "The" at the beginning serves no purpose, and only makes the
title uselessly longer.  Some slogans can already be too long.  I'm not
sure whether a colon is the proper punctuation, but that is a relatively
minor point.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Can't log in to Meta

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:17:45 -0800 (PST), Brion Vibber
<vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> The Meta-wikipedia says I don't exist, yet my login name is working fine
>> on
>> most pages.
>
> Before we go further: you are aware that each wiki has a separate user
> database, and that you have to create the username separately on each
> wiki, right? Have you ever logged in on meta.wikipedia.org before? Did
> you
> create an account there?
>
I wasn't aware of that, because I'm not aware of it being stated clearly
anywhere (the login page would be a good place!). Is that why there are no
links from the english wiki to meta.wikipedia.org?

This raises another question: What provision is there to prevent someone
else grabbing my wikipedia.en username on the meta wiki and appearing to be
me? Or to prevent me registering as, say, Susan Mason on meta?

(Richard - off to create an account before anyone gets ideas!)

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] the term 'USER'

body:
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 10:48, Anthere wrote:
> I like the terminology user.
>
> Because I feel it is also possible to benefit from
> having an account as a *reader* only (so... as a
> user...)
>
> (mostly for the watch list - especially in those times
> of painful research through google)
>
> A simple reader would maybe not have the compulsion of
> creating an account if it is named "editor".
>
I have to say here that I'm in disagreement.

"user" connotes a producer-consumer relationship (I create, you use; I
sell, you buy; I produce, you consume) in its standard computer-lingo
meaning ("lusers" vs "hackers" or "coders"), compounded by its
association with the more common usage as shorthand for "drug user".

Wherease "editor" connotes stewardship, power, collaboration (because to
edit you need to build on someone else's work)--and therefore some
responsibility, yes. But is that so bad? We want participants in
Wikipedia to feel a sense of stewardship, power, collaboration, and
responsibility.

"contributor" is similarly a better word than "user", if you really
dislike "editor".


body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:40:19 -0800 (PST), Brion Vibber
<vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:17:45 -0800 (PST), Brion Vibber
>> > Before we go further: you are aware that each wiki has a separate user
>> > database, and that you have to create the username separately on each
>> > wiki, right? Have you ever logged in on meta.wikipedia.org before? Did
>> > you create an account there?
>> >
>> I wasn't aware of that, because I'm not aware of it being stated clearly
>> anywhere (the login page would be a good place!).
>
> I'll add a note.
>
>> Is that why there are no
>> links from the english wiki to meta.wikipedia.org?
>
> I'm not quite sure what you mean -- there are numerous links to meta from
> the main page, recentchanges, and various other places.
>
>> This raises another question: What provision is there to prevent someone
>> else grabbing my wikipedia.en username on the meta wiki and appearing to
>> be
>> me? Or to prevent me registering as, say, Susan Mason on meta?
>
> The same thing that prevents someone else from grabbing your wikipedia.en
> username on slashdot.org or yahoo.com: politeness and/or lack of interest
> in doing so.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

--
Richard Grevers


body:
> I support inserting the word "slogan" in such situations; >whether we
like them or not we can't ignore the plain fact that >such slogans do
exist.

Well what about Vicki's assertion that [[DTK is anti-Semitic?
Im afraid just sticking "slogan" on the end of something doesnt cut it..
because it wouldnt "cut it" in all cases... nor could all potential
"slogans" be researched adequately enough to discern articles about
"slogans" from "articles" that are completely bogus... I agree with Ed that
slogans not be the titles... but Ill add that they shouldnt be *in the
titles... because how much material can there be in the scope of a
hate-speech slogan....

Using Vicki's example of anti-Semitism... there are dozens of articles of
various categories of it (or alleged it), .. none of them are *named after
language used in the "hate context" - they are general and include context
far more substantive (half the time) than the fact that a hair-band singer
once wore a shirt with this slogan on it...  The notion of every slogan
being worthy of an article is nonsense... and lets be further consistent:
When I first joined, articles about a single phrases or euphemisms would be
knocked off like ducks at a carnival shootout... And how does anything Ed or
Ray wrote absolve Cuncator of his poor behaviour...

As for my anti-Semitism... Im guess I'm in a good company with Chomsky,
Avnery,  and countless other paragons of intellect and truthspeak.. not to
mention Jesus... all Jews, by the way..  Read attachment: As for not reading
my mind... We would have to be on the same *page for that to be true...  -SV


body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:40:19 -0800 (PST), Brion Vibber
<vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:

>> I wasn't aware of that, because I'm not aware of it being stated clearly
>> anywhere (the login page would be a good place!).
>
> I'll add a note.

Thanks!
>
>> Is that why there are no
>> links from the english wiki to meta.wikipedia.org?
>
> I'm not quite sure what you mean -- there are numerous links to meta from
> the main page, recentchanges, and various other places.

It took 30 seconds but I found it (the main page is rather, um, link rich)
>
>> This raises another question: What provision is there to prevent someone
>> else grabbing my wikipedia.en username on the meta wiki and appearing to
>> be
>> me? Or to prevent me registering as, say, Susan Mason on meta?
>
> The same thing that prevents someone else from grabbing your wikipedia.en
> username on slashdot.org or yahoo.com: politeness and/or lack of interest
> in doing so.
>
But I would never expect the latter with other sites. However, the
separation between wikis is not at all evident to the newcomer. Indeed, my
first assumption was of a single user database across all wikipedia
entities.

While we are discussing log-ins, what is the expiry time for keeping logged
in status? It seems to be rather short - only an hour or so. While I don't
necessarily want to use cross-session cookies, it would be nice to stay
logged in for an entire browser session. Sometimes I find that I have
edited an article anonymously because my login has expired in the meantime.
One option could be to default to session-long logins but to have a
checkbox "this is a public computer" which would introduce a 30 or 60
minute limit.

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
> (Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>):
>
> I think we can improve the speed of rendering/parsing a page enough
> so caching won't be necessary

I agree, but it's something that's easy to test with the new
suite, so if it works well, we can use it.

> 1. Enhanced parser, probably in C++ (working on it)

Waste of time. Parsing is clearly not a significant factor in
the present CPU load, and even one written in C would spend most
of its time looking up links in the database just as the PHP
code does. And the overhead of linking the two would wipe out
any savings.

> 2. Caching of the "known-to-be-existing" links in a single field
> (separated with "\n", probably) in the cur table. That will greatly
> reduce the number of database queries for the link table(s)

Caching known links in groups is indeed someting I will try, but
in their own table to reduce lock contention. Another thing I want
to look into is caching link lookups in a separate process outside
the page rendering, so the cache can be persistent across pages.
But first on the list in MySQL 4.0.12. I've already got the testing
setup working now--one machine on my LAN running the software and
another running the test suite--so I can start timing changes like
that. I still want to add another few days worth of code to the
tests though.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] Slogan policy

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>I support inserting the word "slogan" in such situations; whether we
>like them or not we can't ignore the plain fact that such slogans do
>exist.  Putting "slogan at the end of the title such as in the suggested
>[[Death to Kikes slogan]] would not be as effective.  The point which
>the title must make is that it is a slogan, and it is being quoted.
>Adding "The" at the beginning serves no purpose, and only makes the
>title uselessly longer.  Some slogans can already be too long.  I'm not
>sure whether a colon is the proper punctuation, but that is a relatively
>minor point.

For punctuation, I'd suggest [[Slogan "Power to the People"]],
or perhaps [[Slogan 'Power to the People']].
But most slogans probably don't need their own articles;
"Power to the People" and "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" are so well known
that they may be exceptions.

-- Toby


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Current events and Indymedia

body:
Hi,

I will do some investigations on this and get back.
Yann

Le Mercredi 19 Mars 2003 04:04, Anthere a ?crit :

> And, "you" asked that facts were backed up, do we
> agree on that ?
>
> So, please, explain which facts you want backed up.
>
> If not, I will put back all that paragraph in the
> article (with slight editing :-)). It doesnot appear
> to me right that you remove a whole bunch of facts, on
> behalf they need to be backed up, without at least
> pointing out to these you disagree with.

--
http://www.forget-me.net
Alternatives sur le Net
http://keys.indymedia.org/showkey.py?key=0A34CBDA
gpg --keyserver keys.indymedia.org --recv-key 0A34CBDA


body:
If we hold the conference in New York City, I can arrange
space at the New Yorker Hotel, which one block away from
Penn Station. If you're coming by train, Penn Station is
probably more convenient than Grand Central.

Depending on the number of people, I can get a banquet
room (holds up to 200 people) or just a friend's
conference room (up to 20 people). Either way, there
will be plenty of Internet bandwidth to go around!

Let's make it happen, people!

Uncle Ed

Jimbo wrote:

<< I am fond of the idea of an annual or semi-annual conference, held at
different places around the world (for convenience for different
people) to promote wikipedia _community_.

[snip]

Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia >>


body:
We need a policy on "titles of articles about slogans".

Most of us would probably agree that the slogan itself should not be the title of the article:

* [[AIDS Kills Fags Dead]] <= not a good title

How about some convention like "Slogan: XYZ" or "The slogan: 'XYZ'", as in:
* [[Slogan: Death to Moonies]]
* [[The slogan: Moonies stink]]

(Note that I used a slang word for own church in what I hope are two entirely imaginary slogans.)

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Toby Bartels [mailto:toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 11:58 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

>In the spirit of [[Aids Kills Fags Dead]] and in honor of Cungcator ("you
>and JD a consensus do not make") rather monolithic view of the article
>(considering Axel now endorsed its deletion... ) I have penned [[Death to
>Kikes]], an informative article about kikes... and soon to come:

Shouldn't that be [[Death to Kikes slogan]]?
And shouldn't the article be about the slogan, not about Jews?
To be analogous to the AKFD case, that is.

-- Toby


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
>
>>The "?" links are another matter: I can't think of a clean
>>way to offer both options; i.e., links on the whole word
>>with some style, or links only around the "?". How much
>>screaming do you think would take place if we simply
>>eliminated the "?" links, and just made two link style
>>options (one sedate and one loud)?
>>
>>
>
>If the benefit will be substantial, and I think it will, I think this
>is a cost we can live with.
>
I think we can improve the speed of rendering/parsing a page enough so
caching won't be necessary
1. Enhanced parser, probably in C++ (working on it)
2. Caching of the "known-to-be-existing" links in a single field
(separated with "\n", probably) in the cur table. That will greatly
reduce the number of database queries for the link table(s)

>I haven't seen a ? link in a long time, and I no longer miss them.
>
>
I don't either ;-)

Magnus


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 01:16:25PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >
> >
> >>The "?" links are another matter: I can't think of a clean
> >>way to offer both options; i.e., links on the whole word
> >>with some style, or links only around the "?". How much
> >>screaming do you think would take place if we simply
> >>eliminated the "?" links, and just made two link style
> >>options (one sedate and one loud)?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If the benefit will be substantial, and I think it will, I think this
> >is a cost we can live with.
> >
> I think we can improve the speed of rendering/parsing a page enough so
> caching won't be necessary
> 1. Enhanced parser, probably in C++ (working on it)
> 2. Caching of the "known-to-be-existing" links in a single field
> (separated with "\n", probably) in the cur table. That will greatly
> reduce the number of database queries for the link table(s)
>
> >I haven't seen a ? link in a long time, and I no longer miss them.
> >
> >
> I don't either ;-)

We could use 2 phase rendering:
	phase 1			  phase 2
source    ->	 cachable version   ->	  uncachable version

So phase 2 will do TeX and those links which were broken at phase 1,
and the rest will be done in phase 1.

It could significantly improve performance at no cost in interface.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Slogan policy

body:
Okay, I just wrote and submitted a first draft of [[Slogan:Power to the People]] to the Wikipedia.

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Saintonge [mailto:saintonge at telus.net]

I support inserting the word "slogan" in such situations; whether we
like them or not we can't ignore the plain fact that such slogans do
exist.  Putting "slogan at the end of the title such as in the suggested
[[Death to Kikes slogan]] would not be as effective.  The point which
the title must make is that it is a slogan, and it is being quoted.
 Adding "The" at the beginning serves no purpose, and only makes the
title uselessly longer.  Some slogans can already be too long.  I'm not
sure whether a colon is the proper punctuation, but that is a relatively
minor point.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] Login technologies (was: Can't log in to Meta)

body:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 16:17:06 -0800 (PST), Brion Vibber
<vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:

 (narrowed to wikitech-l)

>
> Our whole login/cookie system is crying out for improvement. I've never
> messed with it much because I'm not 100% sure how it works. ;)
>
> We partially use PHP's session management, and we also set some other
> cookies. I don't know what the default timeouts are. PHP session cookies
> are IMHO problematic, because it asks to set a cookie *the first time you
> touch the site*. I'm sure I'm not the only one who blocks all cookies by
> default unless I'm deliberately logging in to a site; and we do not
> gracefully handle the case where someone tries to log in with cookies
> disabled.
>
PHP session
> stuff has some funky link munging, but a) we prevent them from being put
> in on most pages by using absolute URLs, and b) with our current url
> rewriting configuration the information would be lost in most cases.  And
> c) putting session information into URLs is *serious* bad mojo, with
> great
> possibilities for session hijacking.)
>

>
Thanks for the detailed explanation Brion.
Alas, I develop Miva/Dbase rather than PHP/SQL (terminology nearly got me
there - In my last project I would say we ran 35 databases, whereas in SQL
it would probably have been one database with 35 tables)

I share your pain regarding maintaining session state without cookies. Miva
also has a sessionid which is unique to IP number and browser and which
persists if you allow its cookie. The only way I can see of doing it
without cookies is to MD5 the IP address when a user without cookies logs
in. You could pass that in an URL and revalidate it against the IP number
on each page, but for a site like Wikipedia that's an awful lot of 32-
character strings to serve with each page!
--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
One has a duty to warn, in prominently displayed bold red type...

Fred

> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 09:40:03 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Disclaimers (was Medical Disclaimer)
>
> On Wednesday 19 March 2003 09:26 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
>> We need to effectively communicate a disclaimer to our readers when
>> appropriate, not hide it in a footnote. Please see what we have done at
>> [[chiropractic medicine]]. That is how to communicate an effective
>> disclaimer.
>>
>> Fred
>
> Again, I disagree - it is really bad database design to have the same text on
> hundreds of different pages. That just makes it more difficult to maintain
> and places some type of onus on our contributors to write and insert them.
>
> -- mav
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] DTK article

body:
At 10:24 AM 3/19/03 -0800, you wrote:
>**(AKFD VF Deletion text attached)
> >>Vicki: How about an apology for your anti-Semitism and blatant trolling,
>Steve?
>
>Youre calling me a racist Vicki? Race is a non-issue to me. Ill apologise
>for my racism, when you apologise for the apparent cultural self-centrism
>that caused you to miss the *point* entirely.

You posted anti-Semitic material, and when called on it, instead of
apologizing,
you claim I missed the point. When you communicate stupidly, it is not the
reader's fault that she cannot read your mind.

Also, my name is not Victoria, it is Vicki.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chill, dude!

body:
Steve,

Please stop teasing Vicki. And stop demanding an apology. Vicki is the least offensive person on this mailing list.

If there's a crucial point that needs explaining, then simply clarify it. All these personal asides are very distracting to the issue at hand, which is, um, that is to say, hey, what *IS* the issue here, anyway?

Uncle Ed


body:
No, Daniel. Thats not what it says. Ask someone to interpret it for you
before you make insinuations that you should regret..-SV

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <name12323 at hotmail.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 1:58 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Slogan policy (was: DTK article)

> Did you just say you hate all jews?!
>
> >As for my anti-Semitism... Im guess I'm in a good company with Chomsky,
> >Avnery,  and countless other paragons of intellect and truthspeak.. not
to
> >mention Jesus... all Jews, by the way..  Read attachment: As for not
> >reading
> >my mind... We would have to be on the same *page for that to be true...
> >-SV
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Should we make some sort of signup list?

We should. Here's a start:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_meetup

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Oliver Pereira

body:
Hello,

I'd be interested to know what these alleged "personal attacks" and lack
of "cooperative spirit" are. I haven't checked every single one of Susan
Mason's edits, but I have looked at quite a few, and most have looked
fairly useful to me. I've seen far worse personal attacks made *against*
Susan Mason than by her, and furthermore more of a cooperative spirit in
her lately than in some of those who have attacked her. Shall I name names
and recommend *them* for banning?

(Incidentally, if Susan Mason is Lir, then I understand that she's really
been banned all along, so none of this is relevant; I am speaking only of
the edits under the name "Susan Mason", viewed without prejudice.)

Oliver

P.S. - Yes, I know Lir was a "he", but I can't be bothered about correctly
gendered pronouns at the moment...

On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Any last words, before I disable the Susan Mason account, anybody?
>
> Susan/Lir/Adam, do you have anything to say to the community?
>
> Uncle Ed
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:48 AM
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:RachelCorrie
>
>
> Jesse Alter wrote:
> > Well, actually, I'd like to (posthumously) withdraw my objection to
> > Lir's banning. I've found through conversation with Lir that they ARE
> > posting as Susan Mason, and they are making personal attacks on people
> > and they're lacking a uhh...cooperative spirit.
>
> Then Susan Mason is banned, too.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [WikiEN-l] LittleDan's question

body:
> He just did ask. C'mon, Steve, be nice to the kid, and answer his
question.
Ok, Ed... but you really mean YOUR question dont you? Lets get that
straight...
Daniel, the term anti-Semite, to me is the same as calling someone a
racist... I said I was in good company with Chomsky, Avnery, and Jesus.. All
three are or were Jews... Now aside from this being self-flattering... I
consider it an honor to be condemned as an 'anti-Semite', if it means I am
in their good company. :)

(This is all completely off the subject of the AKFD article by the way - I
feel like im teaching reason and semantic logic to Adult-ed students here...
But this goes to show how sucessful some people are at shifting the debate,
by calling someone a "racist.")

But, Dan, its not right to call someone a *racist, if they are not a
*racist, now is it? Add to this the fact that Jews these days call other
Jews anti-Jewish? (anti-Semite)Does this make sense? Can a Black man say :
"This man is racist against black people"  if the person hes talking about
is Black too? What if this is done over and over again.. like the story of
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"... The name "anti-Semite is thrown around an awful
lot these days, and at Jews as well!  What does it mean then to be called an
anti-Semite? It means nothing... Its slander. Propaganda of insults. Thats
all. In fact, if you read some more about it, then you can see that the term
"anti-Semite" and its use to smear people has a substantial history - and it
has little or nothing to do with disliking Jews. I know youre only 13 Dan...
theres a lot to absorb, but one thing you can get from all this is how
childish adults can be, and for Vicki to call my remarks anti-Semitic is a
cheap shot and slanderous... for you to repeat her remarks Dan, is simply
confusion... and quite forgivable. Theres a lot of tricky business to sort
out. Read this page out of Chomsky's 'Necessary Illusions' on all the
disingenuous name-calling:  http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-c10-s20.html


body:
> He asked you a *question*, in the name of all that's holy. Have you
> considered the merits of restating what you meant, when it's unclear,
instead
> of being condescending to everyone else?

Well, I just did. And now maybe you can answer mine, Vicki:

From: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030317/168/3jger.html

...Settlers in Kiryat Arba also marked Monday the 9th anniversary of an
attack by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish doctor and a Kiryat Arba settler who
killed 29 Palestinian worshippers in a 1994 shooting attack. (AP Photo/
Ariel Schalit)

In a Mosque, I might add. Is this anti-Arabist? -SV


body:
Please see the following articles. I wrote the first three, then renamed the last to conform to my proposed naming convention of [[Slogan:XYZ]].

* [[Slogan:Power to the people]]
* [[Slogan:Better dead than Red]]
* [[Slogan:Kills Bugs Dead]]
* [[Slogan:AIDS Kills Fags Dead]]

Uncle Ed


body:
At 11:47 AM 3/19/03 -0800, Stevertigo wrote:

> > I support inserting the word "slogan" in such situations; >whether we
>like them or not we can't ignore the plain fact that >such slogans do
>exist.
>
>Well what about Vicki's assertion that [[DTK is anti-Semitic?
>Im afraid just sticking "slogan" on the end of something doesnt cut it..
>because it wouldnt "cut it" in all cases... nor could all potential
>"slogans" be researched adequately enough to discern articles about
>"slogans" from "articles" that are completely bogus... I agree with Ed that
>slogans not be the titles... but Ill add that they shouldnt be *in the
>titles... because how much material can there be in the scope of a
>hate-speech slogan....

Okay, so why did you do it?

>As for my anti-Semitism... Im guess I'm in a good company with Chomsky,
>Avnery,  and countless other paragons of intellect and truthspeak.. not to
>mention Jesus... all Jews, by the way..

As far as I know, Jesus never shouted "Death to kikes" let alone refused
to apologize for doing so.

>  Read attachment:

Sorry, I don't open attachments I don't actively need (e.g., expected
files for paid work), because of the risk of viruses.

>As for not reading
>my mind... We would have to be on the same *page for that to be true...

Which is exactly why you, and I, and all of us need to do our best to
communicate clearly.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Slogan policy

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>Stevertigo wrote:

>>As for my anti-Semitism... Im guess I'm in a good company with Chomsky,
>>Avnery,  and countless other paragons of intellect and truthspeak.. not to
>>mention Jesus... all Jews, by the way..  Read attachment: As for not reading
>>my mind... We would have to be on the same *page for that to be true...

>Did you just say you hate all jews?!

No, he said that Chomsky, Avnery, and Jesus are all Jews.
They've also all been accused of anti-Semitism,
and I guess that he has a high opinion of them all,
so he considers himself in good company.

Hth

-- Toby