from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
Moin,

On Monday 27 March 2006 19:42, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 12:27:32PM -0500, Ivan Krstic wrote:
> > Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> > > Well, there's always
> > > <http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/wikify>.
> >
> > The OP asked about implementations for MediaWiki, although Kate's
> > tool is useful for seeing just how pointless such a feature is on a
> > large-scale wiki.
> That was very nicely put, Ivan.  :-)

I think what Ivan wanted to write was:

[[The]] [[OP]] asked [[about]] implementations [[for]] [[MediaWiki]],
[[although]] Kate's tool is useful [[for]] [[seeing]] [[just]] [[how]]
pointless such [[a]] [[feature]] [[is]] [[on]] a large-scale [[wiki.]]

Courtesy of the aforementioned link :)

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Mon Mar 27 19:48:38 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Duke Nukem Forever will come out before Unreal 2." - George Broussard,
 2001 (http://tinyurl.com/6m8nh)

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original Research

body:
Hi,
One question I have had: what if the author gives you permission to
copy an entire email somewhere, including email address? That seems to
me to be pretty verifiable, unless someone accuses you of fabricating
the entire thing. The only question is where to put the email -
WikiSource?

Steve

On 3/27/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch at rdrop.com> wrote:
> Personal communications are often permitted as legit citations in journal
> articles because (1) the author's reputation is on the line, & (2)
> chances that someone has contacted the individual quoted to verify that
> the quotation is accurate are in proportion to the reputaition of the
> journal. (For example, _The New Yorker_ will almost always fact-check;
> the _Weekly World News_ never bothers for obvious reasons.) For
> Wikipedia's purposes, if informaiton in a personal communication is
> important, it will eventually see print -- & then we can use it.
>
>
> Geoff
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Gbely Raymond wrote:
>
>>  Is there any implmentation of automatic linking page for mediawiki ?
>
> Not an official one.
>
>>  like know if it'll be possible to have this functionality on wikimedia
>
> No, it will not.

Well, there's always <http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/wikify>.

Not that I'd recommend it for any serious use.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l]  How to get around AOL proxies?

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> Neil Harris wrote:
>>
>>> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>>
>>>> If that really works, couldn't we just make AOL users _edit_ over SSL?
>>>> Have http links with action=edit (or action=submit) redirect to an https
>>>> URL if fetched from an AOL proxy.
>>>>
>>>> This would break talk message notification for unregistered AOL users,
>>>> but I suppose we could use a cookie for that.  After all, talk pages are
>>>> public, so there's no security issue even if someone fakes the cookie.
>>>>
>>> Now, that's an *excellent* idea.
>>>
>>> 1 the SSL overhead will be low, because edits are a tiny fraction of the
>>> overall traffic
>>> 2 If we only SSL the form submission, this limits the SSL overhead even
>>> further.
>>> 3 AOL browsing will still be proxied, so page-view load will not increase
>>> 4 AOL _browsing_ will still be completely anonymous
>>> 5 AOL IP editors will still be as anonymous as any other IP editors
>>> 6 Dynamic IP assignment should not be any more or less of a problem than
>>> with other ISPs
>>>
>>> Are there any reasons why this should not work? Perhaps this could be
>>> the solution for all non-XFF-friendly ISPs?
>>>
>
> It won't work for all of them, since some may tunnel SSL traffic through
> the proxy as well.  There's very little we can do in that case without
> help from the user, and possibly not even then.
>
> (From a technical viewpoint, the hardest situation is not a proxy, but a
> large number of users on RFC-1918 addresses behind a single NAT router.
>   There's no way we can discover their internal IP address, and even if
> we could, it'd be all but useless to us.)
>
>
I agree: NAT, or transparent proxying without XFF is the worst case.
However, I suspect that AOL users _do_ in general get assigned real
routable IP addresses, it's just that their web traffic goes by default
through transparent proxies.

The AOL FAQ for this (at http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html) says:

"AOL members are assigned a dynamic IP address that is used for all
requests not handled by the AOL proxy system. These IP addresses can be
used to identify AOL members making requests to your site."

How about doing SSL via a non-standard port, which will miss the proxies
_if_ the transparent proxying simply uses packet filtering at the
network side to detect proxyable traffic?

For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org:32//w/index.php?title=Example article&action=submit

(32 being an officially unassigned port number)

Come to that, if they're just packet-filtering off the proxyable
traffic, we may not even need to bother with the https: -- just use a
non-standard port number for _all_ form submissions from AOL members,
and set a cookie with that address so they can see their messages.

Of course, we can theorize forever about what AOL's network does or does
not do... some actual experiments would be likely to find out what the
actual state of affairs is.

Incidentally, if you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/, you get a slightly
surprising result...

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l]   How to get around AOL proxies?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
	wishes to become a wiki project

body:
On 3/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/06, Benjamin Webb <bjwebb67 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Even though your e-mail could be seen as critisising me, I greatly
> > appreciate it. Any feedback at all is useful for me. You mentioned having an
> > opinion poll. Could I start that now? The proposal has been on meta for a
> > week.
>
> The policy for new projects states that projects must be discussed for
> "at least a month" before a poll is taken:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy

Also, I would like to add such poll concerning with the Foundation
level should be grobal, hence multilingual.

With exceptions like Wikimedia Commons which is needed to be kept as
unscattered, I have no reason to support any monolingual project as
Wikimedia ones, specially after haven seen Wikispecies and its two
years inactivity. Currently, I have found only English speakers showed
interest to the suggestion and it brought me if our grobal community
has interested in the idea now discussed.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Personally, I'd rather it be an either/or choice. I don't want to help
people enforce arbitrary limits on knowledge (if you don't think it is
arbitrary, consider the difference in which a partially-exposed female
breast is considered on American television in comparison to images of
gratuitous violence). I think the principle stands whether it is
pornography or subversive politics, whether the censor is a school
board in Ohio or the Ayatollah.

Practically all great works of knowledge have been at one point
officially banned, including the granddaddy of encyclopedias, the
Encyclopedie. We should expect to be controversial to the point of
being blacklisted by some people, no matter how we try to bend
backwards to accommodate. Let's not start down that path unless we
have to.

FF

On 3/26/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Mar 26, 2006, at 4:35 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>
> > Look we've been sown this path many times before, and it's never
> > gotten us anywhere, infact, all it's done is make people fight and
> > occasionally force good contributors out because of the hostile mood
> > of the discussion (Wikipedians for decency/encyclopedic merit and
> > WP:TOBY for instance). The fact is, far too many wikipedians think
> > that this kind of censorship is wrong, so you'll NEVER get consensus
> > on it. This is a discussion that should be killed before it has any
> > chance to do more harm.
>
> This has nothing to do with censoring Wikipedia. This is about
> tagging content so schools (for instance) and filtering software used
> by schools can discriminate between Wikipedia articles. Or would you
> rather Wikipedia be inaccessible in schools and libraries?
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
Not relevant, unless the chat room is located in England and Wales. Say
(for example) a Wikipedia user in Scotland posting a defamatory (slander
and libel are rolled into a single delict [tort] in Scotland -
defamation) statement to Wikipedia, whose servers are located in
Florida. The England & Wales courts wouldn't have jurisdiction over
this. Who WOULD is a question that hasn't really been solved to my
knowledge, but it would EITHER be the Scottish courts or the Florida
courts - or potentially the pursuer [plaintiff] could have the choice of
where to sue, but the England and Wales courts would in either case be
out of the equation - regardless of the fact that the defender has
assets in England & Wales, the 'wrong' occured either in Scotland or in
Florida - unless the posting was to a chatroom in England & Wales but
that is not the case with Wikipedia.

Cynical

geni wrote:
> On 3/27/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> This does NOT apply to UK editors - the decisions of the High Court of
>> England and Wales are only binding in (strangely enough) England and
>> Wales. This decision does not alter the position in the rest of the UK
>> (ie Northern Ireland, and Scotland, both of whom have separate courts
>> from England and Wales)
>>
>> Cynical
>>
>
> Even if you live in scotland there is a fair chance that you have
> assets in england and wales . Of course if you don't have any assets
> you don't need to worry anyway.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original Research

body:
To meet verifiability requirements the email would probably have to be
signed with a verified S/MIME certificate issued by a well-known
certification authority such as VeriSign (NOT Verisign's 'community
certificates' program or whatever the hell its called, that is not even
verified) otherwise it would be laughably easy to fake

Cynical

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi,
> One question I have had: what if the author gives you permission to
> copy an entire email somewhere, including email address? That seems to
> me to be pretty verifiable, unless someone accuses you of fabricating
> the entire thing. The only question is where to put the email -
> WikiSource?
>
> Steve
>
> On 3/27/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch at rdrop.com> wrote:
>
>> Personal communications are often permitted as legit citations in journal
>> articles because (1) the author's reputation is on the line, & (2)
>> chances that someone has contacted the individual quoted to verify that
>> the quotation is accurate are in proportion to the reputaition of the
>> journal. (For example, _The New Yorker_ will almost always fact-check;
>> the _Weekly World News_ never bothers for obvious reasons.) For
>> Wikipedia's purposes, if informaiton in a personal communication is
>> important, it will eventually see print -- & then we can use it.
>>
>>
>> Geoff
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
There is an 'artistic' tag - so the Michelangelo's David image would be
tagged as 'images of naked buttocks' and 'this material appears in an
artistic context'

Cynical

Mark Wagner wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/27/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David
>>>>>
>>>>> Does this one contain naked buttocks:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg
>>>>>
>>>> What would most internet filtering software packages say?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> No idea. Who cares? If we want to do this we would want to do a reasonable job.
>>>
>> Well, if the idea of tagging is to work with internet filtering
>> packages, as I presume it is, finding out what works best with them
>> would not be a bad idea in the slightest.
>>
>
> The last time I looked into this, what works best with internet
> filtering packages is broad-brush yes-or-no labeling designed to keep
> kids away from pornography and other subjects that could lead to
> awkward questions.  In short, we could reasonably use it to keep kids
> away from Wikipedia entirely, or for the better software, [[List of
> sex positions]], but it can't provide the fine control to selectively
> block one or the other of (note: neither image particularly work-safe)
> [[Image:Human-woman.png]] and [[Image:Mass Grave Bergen Belsen May
> 1945.jpg]].
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 3/26/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>What on earth does 'a large portion' mean anyway?
>
>
> It means that Britannica is trolling. Don't feed them.
>

Can we accuse them of having a (insert currently unpopular POV) bias?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Writing rationales (was: Next step in "fair use"
	cleanup?)

body:
Quoting Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>:

> Is it required that the original uploader provide the
> fair use rationale, or can someone else?  If we require the original
> uploader, that might be a problem.  If you're not the original
> uploader, but provide a rationale, are you thereby assuming
> responsibility for a copyright lawsuit?
>

  I have written rationales for images I haven't uploaded.  The rationales
specify which articles they pertain to.  I feel pretty comfortable writing a
rationale for an album cover image that specifies it is to be used in the
article about the album regardless of whether or not I uploaded it.

  Jkelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Next step in "fair use" cleanup?

body:
  Stan,

> What I think would work is to put images with not a single word of
> rationale on the 7-day clock, while putting up poorly-worded rationales
> into a category that will get further review. Ultimately I would like
> to see all fair-use rationales come from a list of approved texts;
> if an image doesn't fit any of the pre-approved rationales, then we
> require it to be thrown out. We'll forego some images that might have
> new and creative justifications, but win overall by not having to have
> endless heated debates over fine points of rationale wording.

  Yes, I think that this would be a good way to go.

       Jkelly


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
David Alexander Russell wrote:

>The facts WOULD NOT BE CHANGED - all it would do is say to a user  'OK,
>this page contains this type of content, do you still want to look at it?'
>
>Cynical
>
>
Wasn't that the crux of [[WP:TOBY]], which failed miserably?

John


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] external link checker

body:
The first bit (externallinks table) is in the software; Tim Starling
added it for use with anti-spam features &c. The second bit hasn't
been done.

Rob Church

On 27/03/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Did anybody implement in MediaWiki a link rot checker for external
> links?  Here is a theory for how it could work:
>
> When a new page is saved and the parser detects a "http:" pattern,
> the external link is stored in a separate database table, with a
> pointer to the wiki page where it was harvested.  At regular
> intervals, all external links are tried (HTTP GET) by a background
> process and the success or failure rate is recorded.  If a link
> becomes unavailabe (HTTP ERROR) during three consequtive fetch
> attempts, it gets listed on a special page of possibly broken
> external links.  Broken links from the same website could be
> grouped together.  Maybe the whole site is broken, has moved or
> has been internally reorganized.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/26/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh. I don't think so.  That presents a challenge to posters of obscenities
>>and unacceptable images.  Since we cannot prevent such postings, it is all
>>rather futile  to make claims we are in no position to give any kind of
>>warranty for.
>
>
> Sorry, I'm not talking about shock images, but rather, porn stars,
> anatomy and so forth.
>

Oh wow. Naked bits of bodies need to be censored, eh? Perhaps we should
just remove this evil "eee-vo-lushion" thing while we're at it?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [Wikitech-l] new users login with email verification

body:
1. This request would get a wider audience from mediawiki-l
2. The request is a little ambiguous

Rob Church

On 27/03/06, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> hello community
>
> does anyone have hints how to implement a login with email verification
> for new users?
>
> thx, heinz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] external link checker

body:
Did anybody implement in MediaWiki a link rot checker for external
links?  Here is a theory for how it could work:

When a new page is saved and the parser detects a "http:" pattern,
the external link is stored in a separate database table, with a
pointer to the wiki page where it was harvested.  At regular
intervals, all external links are tried (HTTP GET) by a background
process and the success or failure rate is recorded.  If a link
becomes unavailabe (HTTP ERROR) during three consequtive fetch
attempts, it gets listed on a special page of possibly broken
external links.  Broken links from the same website could be
grouped together.  Maybe the whole site is broken, has moved or
has been internally reorganized.

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


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original Research

body:
On 3/27/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> To meet verifiability requirements the email would probably have to be
> signed with a verified S/MIME certificate issued by a well-known
> certification authority such as VeriSign (NOT Verisign's 'community
> certificates' program or whatever the hell its called, that is not even
> verified) otherwise it would be laughably easy to fake

I agree here, but I think you're getting application of the
requirement of verifiability mixed up.  Verifiability in the context
of Wikipedia applies to facts in the article.  It means that a given
fact must be independently verifiable.  Verifiability of references is
another matter.  We can include references that are not particularly
verifiable (for instance, the accounts of Alexander's exploits,
portrayed by the sympathetic tame historians of his entourage and
others, are discussed at length in the article on Alexander the Great.
 They're certainly not particularly reliable, and not remotely
verifiable, so we depend very much on the consensus of modern
historians who have studied the material in depth.

The trouble with a personal communication is that it's personal.  If
you phone someone at a college and he tells you something about the
college history, ask him if the college records verify the fact, and
if so, have they been archived at the Bodleian or the British Library
or somewhere.  At least then you can cite the college records and
someone can pop down to the library and have a look.  Even centuries
after the original records go out of print, get lost, are destroyed by
fire or whatever.   If someone hasn't taken the trouble to write a
history of the institution in question, then this would be one way to
use word-of-mouth to provide a concrete, though still not reliable,
reference.  By which I mean that you could pop up to the British
Library and ask to see the work, but it might still not be a reliable
source.

Enough for you to say something like "the school's history (citation)
claims that Guido Fawkes later executed for his involvement in the
Gunpowder Plot,  attended the school for two terms but was expelled
for playing with matches."

So if possible, use a personal communication not as a reference, but a
source of information to produce something that may be of use.

You'd then cite the original reference, and tag it something like
"reference in need of verification."  The reference, or the tag, can
be removed when the necessary check is performed.  Hopefully before
some latterday Guido gets twitchy with the matches in the library.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh wow. Naked bits of bodies need to be censored, eh?
>
>
> Sure, especially if the person looking is 12 and is using school equipment.
>
>
>>Perhaps we should just remove this evil "eee-vo-lushion" thing while
>
> we're at it?
>
> Sure, especially if the person looking is 12, and is using school
> equipment in Kansas.
>

It occurs to me that we should block all schools then.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Heinz

body:
hello community

does anyone have hints how to implement a login with email verification
for new users?

thx, heinz


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
On 3/27/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> Not relevant, unless the chat room is located in England and Wales. Say
> (for example) a Wikipedia user in Scotland posting a defamatory (slander
> and libel are rolled into a single delict [tort] in Scotland -
> defamation) statement to Wikipedia, whose servers are located in
> Florida. The England & Wales courts wouldn't have jurisdiction over
> this. Who WOULD is a question that hasn't really been solved to my
> knowledge, but it would EITHER be the Scottish courts or the Florida
> courts - or potentially the pursuer [plaintiff] could have the choice of
> where to sue, but the England and Wales courts would in either case be
> out of the equation - regardless of the fact that the defender has
> assets in England & Wales, the 'wrong' occured either in Scotland or in
> Florida - unless the posting was to a chatroom in England & Wales but
> that is not the case with Wikipedia.
>
> Cynical
>

Probably not. Lewis v king rather kicked that one apart since the
court regarded it as being published in England and Wales since it
could be accessed from there.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] A Solution to the Image Problem

body:
On 3/27/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear uploader: If this image is from the web, please provide the URL to that
> > image.
> >
> > Bingo, instant image verification (and likely, instant copyvio
> > verification).
>
> Except that as soon as the image is tagged as {{imagevio}}, someone'll
> suggest that the image can be used as long as it's tagged {{fair
> use}}.  It's quite difficult to get rid of sourced, tagged images.
>

Orphan them.

--
geni


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> While I can't be sure that Encarta was specifically responsible for
> this, in principal that's what happened. For Britannica, Encarta was the
> first shoe to drop, and Wikipedia was the second.  Among other general
> encyclopedias there were Collier's, Funk and Wagnalls

... Encarta *is* Funk and Wagnalls. MS bought the content and
refurbished it a little bit. Their consideration was that F&W's image
and band name was not that important, so "Encarta" was created as a MS
brand name.

Except for the Dutch Encarta, all other versions stem from this.


subject: [Wikitech-l] external link checker

body:
Moin,

On Monday 27 March 2006 21:58, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> We already store the external links.
>
> Even before we did that I did a lot of processing with them.
>
> On enwiki A good number are rotted, yes, but far more have been
> replaced with (or always were) spam or spam-like content.
>
> There is an absolutely insane number of them on the large wikis, it's
> a tough problem.

But for a small internal wiki I could see a very usefull application of a
link-checker.

Is there a way to get the links to an external app? maybe like an new
special page or extension?

best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Mon Mar 27 23:58:21 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should
 they care about it?" -- Thomas Hesse, President of Sony BMG's global
 digital business division, 2005.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
On 3/27/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> See, to me if the narrative is unverifiable, then it's not allowable per
> [[WP:V]].  Novel, to me, indicates new.

New means new, novel means novel. Or more specifically, "different,
original, creative" etc. As I argued earlier, arranging events in
chronological order is not different, original, or creative. But it
could be "new" if no one had actually published such a chronology.
Arguing causalities, attempting to draw inferences or patterns "Most
of the events in Smith's life revolved around prostitutes" etc, would
be novel.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
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Hash: SHA1

That's interesting to note - although I would suspect/hope (I haven't
read the case, I'll dig it up on Westlaw [strike]tomorrow[/strike]
later this morning) that the basis for this was that the plaintiff was
located in England and Wales, and therefore the 'harm' (ie the
plaintiff's damaged reputation) occured there.

Cynical

geni wrote:
> On 3/27/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>> Not relevant, unless the chat room is located in England and Wales. Say
>> (for example) a Wikipedia user in Scotland posting a defamatory (slander
>> and libel are rolled into a single delict [tort] in Scotland -
>> defamation) statement to Wikipedia, whose servers are located in
>> Florida. The England & Wales courts wouldn't have jurisdiction over
>> this. Who WOULD is a question that hasn't really been solved to my
>> knowledge, but it would EITHER be the Scottish courts or the Florida
>> courts - or potentially the pursuer [plaintiff] could have the choice of
>> where to sue, but the England and Wales courts would in either case be
>> out of the equation - regardless of the fact that the defender has
>> assets in England & Wales, the 'wrong' occured either in Scotland or in
>> Florida - unless the posting was to a chatroom in England & Wales but
>> that is not the case with Wikipedia.
>>
>> Cynical
>>
>
> Probably not. Lewis v king rather kicked that one apart since the
> court regarded it as being published in England and Wales since it
> could be accessed from there.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I would take it one step further, and say that schools have a
> responsibility to show kids how to protect themselves on line.  The
> parents who go too far in hiding this sort of thing from their kids may
> just be breeding the next generation of victims.

That's an interesting point, but not one Wikipedia should be
proclaiming. "Wikipedia, where kids get to deal with porn first-hand!"

(pun, ugh, intended...)

Steve


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
G'day Phil,

> On Mar 27, 2006, at 4:41 AM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> It occurs to me that we should block all schools then.
>
> Clearly this is the most rational policy for an educational website.

Students able to learn, but not teach (about penis piercings and stuff
being ON WHEELS)?  Somehow this doesn't strike me as a grave injustice.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.2/293 - Release Date: 26/03/2006


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 10:59:56AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
>   I have to say, I find some of these objections a bit spurious.

Thanks for your response.  I think some of my points may have not been
as clear as I hoped, since some of your responses are responding to
things I didn't actually say.  Please allow me to clarify:

> On 3/27/06, Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:
> > NPOV.1 -- Rating schemes are designed to reflect the opinions of those
> >           who object to sexual content (and a few other categories).
> >           They fail to represent the views of those who are tolerant of
> >           that content, but object to different content.
>
> Well, no one's proposing censorship of religious views.

Right!  That means your censorship proposal fails to represent the
views of people who _do_ want religious censorship.  That means it's
non-neutral:  it represents only one POV about what should be censored
(the anti-sex view) and not another (the anti-blasphemy view).

> > NPOV.2 -- Grading any particular content on a rating scale is itself a
> >           matter of opinion.  It involves making a judgment call on how
> >           "bad" or "explicit" an image or a paragraph is.
>
> I think that's a problem that has been well and truly solved by many
> censorship bodies world wide. Whether nipples are exposed or not is
> not particular subjective.

Right!  Each of those censorship bodies expresses particular views
about what is "bad" or "explicit".  Those groups are not bound by an
NPOV policy; indeed, they are frequently commercial firms hired for the
purpose of enforcing particular religious and moral points of view.

However, Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral.  It isn't up to us to say
that nipples are "explicit" and elbows are not.

> > Second, they are in violation of our policy against self-censorship, and
> > the underlying _reason_ we don't want self-censorship:  it would produce
> > a worse encyclopedia.
>
> Our policy against self censorship is not a core policy. There's
> therefore no reason not to change it if we had the means.

Our policy against self-censorship is still a consensus policy, though.
Censorship proposals (such as [[WP:TOBY]]) have been consistently and
roundly rejected.

> > CENS.1 -- The only real proposed purpose of these rating systems is to
> >           enable censorship of Wikipedia.  Since Wikipedia has a policy
> >           against self-censorship (see [[WP:NOT]]), adding material to
> >           Wikipedia articles for the purpose of getting those articles
> >           censored is against the rules.
>
> You're saying that if we could rate articles to say they have certain
> offensive material, then people would deliberately add offensive
> material to more articles to avoid people seeing them? Assume good
> faith, n'est-ce pas?

(I wasn't sure if this point was too subtle.  I guess it was.)

The "material" I was referring to was censorship tags.  Adding those
tags to Wikipedia articles, for the purpose of getting those articles
censored, is against the policy that Wikipedia doesn't do censorship.

> > CENS.2 -- Writers want their work to be read.  Any censorship system
> >           will tend to discourage people from writing on the censored
> >           topics.  If sex is censored, our coverage on sexual topics
> >           will become relatively worse.  (And I don't mean porn; I mean
> >           anatomy and sexual behavior.)
>
> Writers will be discouraged from writing on topics which people don't
> want to read?

No.  Writers will be discouraged from writing on topics which won't be
seen because of censorship measures.

> The coverage of [[pornography]] will be worse because now children
> won't be reading it? (or writing it???) I don't understand this
> argument.

No.  The coverage of [[sex]] and [[breast cancer]] and [[testicle]] and
[[abortion]] and [[mastectomy]] and [[Playboy magazine]] and [[nude]]
will be worse because people will be less interested in writing if they
think the audience is smaller.

Or, to pick another popular censorship topic -- violence -- the coverage
of [[war]] and [[murder]] and [[AK-47]] and [[crushing by elephant]] and
[[electrocution]] and [[Quake III Arena]] and [[terrorism]] will be
worse, because people will be less interested in writing if they think
the audience is smaller.

People write to be read.  The effect of censorship measures is to reduce
the size of the audience.  (If a "censorship" measure does not prevent
anyone from reading the "censored" material, then it is _ineffective_.)
If the audience size is reduced, then the incentive to write is reduced.

People will also be less interested in writing if they are made to feel
_unwelcome_ by measures that label their work as suitable for censoring.
But that leads into the next objection ...

> > PERS.1 -- Giving something a high rating on a censorship system comes
> >           across as saying that it is unworthy (or less worthy) of being
> >           read.  Usually, this means it is wicked or harmful or the
> >           like.  Claims that a work should be censored are almost always
> >           linked to claims that the writer is immoral.  If your work is
> >           smut, then you are a smutmonger; if your work is blasphemy,
> >           you are a blasphemer.  These are personal attacks; we must not
> >           make them.
>
> Ok, labelling [[penis]] "graphic images and description of sexual
> anatomy" amounts to a personal attack on the contributors of that
> article? You've totally lost me.

No.  Labelling it as "unsuitable for reading" amounts to a personal
attack on the contributors.  Any time you enable censorship of
particular material, you are making a claim that it is unfit to be read.

In order to be effective, a censorship measure must actually accomplish
censorship -- that is, it must stop someone from reading the material
censored.

If you were to label my work in such a way that enables censorship
measures, then you would be making an implicit value judgment that my
work _should_ be censored; that the world is better off if my work is
censored than if it is not.  You would be saying that people need to be
protected from my work; that it will harm them or corrupt them; in
effect, that I have done something dangerous (or at least negligent) by
writing it in the first place ... or indeed, that I _am_ something
dangerous for _wanting_ to write about it.  These statements would be
attacks upon my character, and as such in violation of [[WP:NPA]].

To put it another way:  Why do we have a rule against personal attacks?
Because personal attacks make people feel less welcome and less willing
to collaborate.  Calling someone's work smutty or harmful to minors will
have that very same effect.

> >           PERS.2 == "Marking my work for censorship is picking a fight."
>
> How bizzarre.

Not really.  How would you like it if someone went around to _your_
contributions and marked them up in ways you found insulting and
derogatory?  That would be a bad thing, and nobody should do it.  It
would be disrespectful of you as a contributor, and it would also be a
violation of Wikipedia policy.


body:
mediawiki-l is a mailing list for users of the MediaWiki software, a
lot of whom are used to responding to requests for extensions or
hacking advice; this list is more suited to those involved
with/interested in the MediaWiki implementation (not to mention the
servers and other tech. stuff) Wikimedia adopts.

Rob Church

On 28/03/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 09:38:30PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > 1. This request would get a wider audience from mediawiki-l
>
> Could you draw the distinctions between that and wikitech a little more
> finely?  I didn't realize that mediawiki-l existed, but clearly, it's
> still software related, rather than project-.
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
> Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
> Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
> St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274
>
>      A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>      Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>
>      A: Top-posting.
>      Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems on block ip user in Chinese Wikipedia

body:
It's not just a plan, it's in use.

However, if they set up the XFF, a developer will have to add them to
the list of proxies which use XFF before it will work, so you'll have
to send another mail after they fix it up.

Mark

On 28/03/06, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for another stupid question since I dose not read this list often.
>
> I noticed that the XFF page was created by Tim Starling several days
> ago. So is the XFF just a plan, or it have been put to use? If it is a
> plan, how about the progress and who should we contact with?
>
> Thanks again.
>
> On 3/28/06, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But they use Apache 1.3 to redirect request.
> > Could you please teach us how to config Apache 1.3 with XFF?
> >
> > Thanks a lot.
> >
> > On 3/28/06, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, mingli yuan wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi, buddies. The Chinese Wikimedia users need some technical help from
> > > > the developers at the Foundation.
> > >
> > > Can you read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project ?
> > >
> > > If the proxy is properly configured, it will solve your problems.
> > >
> > > Cheers,     Andy!
> > >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/28/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> They have nothing to worry about from us until we can start producing
> printed single volumes.

That would be the general idea of the Wikijunior project. We are still
looking for an expert in dead tree technology for the final phase.

--
geni


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
> > > > He is not assuming that. He is assuming that you have done your homework.
> > > >
> > > > $ whois 169.244.143.115
> > > >
> > > > OrgName:    Maine Libraries/Dept. of Education
> > > BJ?rn, if communicating on this list in a civil way is too hard for
> > > you, I suggest you leave the whole communication business to someone
> > > else.
> > Jayjg, what a stunningly insightful remark, I'm amazed. However, I
> > think you are wrong. If communicating on this list in a civil way was
> > too hard for me, I believe I would have told you to "Fuck off" or
> > maybe "Go fuck yourself." Since that is not the case, communicating in
> > a civil way is obviously not too hard for me.
> If you imagine that civility consists of refraining from telling
> someone to "go fuck themselves", then there's little I can say.

I'm more interested in discussing why it is a customary condoned
practice for admins to block IP:s when they have no idea how many
people their block might effect and when they haven't even done the
most basic checkup (whois). I think that it would be good if those
that do it is told that it is unacceptable and irresponsible.
Discussions about my character does not belong on this mailing list,
you can instead use my email address if you wish to go on.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Essjay

body:
Perhaps a bit of a tangent, but I believe some AOL users have discovered
a separate range (172-something, I believe) which is semi-static (at
least, static for a single session, rather than changing in whatever way
the others do) that can be utilized by avoiding the AOL browser, and
instead using an "after-market" package (like Firefox, I assume). I'm
sure we could find a description by searching en.wiki

Essjay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/

Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> How about doing SSL via a non-standard port, which will miss the proxies
>> _if_ the transparent proxying simply uses packet filtering at the
>> network side to detect proxyable traffic?
>>
>
>  From reading between the lines, it seems AOL does _not_ use packet
> filtering; they've just configured their standard browser to use their
> proxies by default.  This means that:
>
> * Installing a different browser bypasses the proxies.
>
> * HTTPS bypasses the proxies.
>
> * Changing the browser configuration _might_ bypass the proxies (unless
> they've locked it down somehow; I don't really know).
>
> * Using a nonstandard port for HTTP does _not_ bypass the proxies.
>
>


body:
Sorry, I don't speak tech very well, so I didn't catch that it was the
same. (I caught the part about using a different browser, that's what
reminded me, but the HTTPS part lost me.) : - )

Anywho, great minds and all that....

Essjay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/

Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Essjay wrote:
>
>> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>
>>> From reading between the lines, it seems AOL does _not_ use packet
>>> filtering; they've just configured their standard browser to use their
>>> proxies by default.  This means that:
>>>
>>> * Installing a different browser bypasses the proxies.
>>> * HTTPS bypasses the proxies.
>>> * Changing the browser configuration _might_ bypass the proxies (unless
>>> they've locked it down somehow; I don't really know).
>>> * Using a nonstandard port for HTTP does _not_ bypass the proxies.
>>>
>> Perhaps a bit of a tangent, but I believe some AOL users have discovered
>> a separate range (172-something, I believe) which is semi-static (at
>> least, static for a single session, rather than changing in whatever way
>> the others do) that can be utilized by avoiding the AOL browser, and
>> instead using an "after-market" package (like Firefox, I assume). I'm
>> sure we could find a description by searching en.wiki
>>
>
> That's what I wrote above, didn't I?  Specifically, the ranges are
> listed at <http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html>.
>
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original Research

body:
On 3/27/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> To meet verifiability requirements the email would probably have to be
> signed with a verified S/MIME certificate issued by a well-known
> certification authority such as VeriSign (NOT Verisign's 'community
> certificates' program or whatever the hell its called, that is not even
> verified) otherwise it would be laughably easy to fake

That seems a little extreme, considering that for any other reference,
we don't require *any* form of proof whatsoever. People can simply
make up a book, and say that page 38 proves their point beyond doubt.

Simply including the person's email address seems perfectly verifiable
to me. You write to them and say "Did you really say this?"

Note also that I'm applying this specifically to the "Stephen Hawking
now rejects his own theory" scenario.

Steve


body:
Rob Church schrieb:
> mediawiki-l is a mailing list for users of the MediaWiki software, a
> lot of whom are used to responding to requests for extensions or
> hacking advice; this list is more suited to those involved
> with/interested in the MediaWiki implementation (not to mention the
> servers and other tech. stuff) Wikimedia adopts.
>
>

i know rob, but my mail did'nt get posted there. an i tried it twice.
do'nt know why it did'nt work.

heinz


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

body:
Alex Schenck wrote:

>Okay, apparently, we have a few problems here.
>
>Despite praise from various sources, several other Meta people have
>complained that this project is doing more harm than good. While I of course
>completely disagree with that notion, I feel that I ought to let out some
>steam.
>
>Meta right now is horrible. Really, it is. People need to stop kidding
>themselves and understand that the way that it is in right now is akin to a
>trash heap. Sure, there are some good things on Meta, but the vast majority
>is unorganized rubbish that could probably be put away in an archive and
>forgotten about until cyber-archaeologists come along and sift through it
>and thing that they're artifacts. I mean, come on. Sure, this place has a
>lot of history of Wikimedia, but if things need to be kept, why can't they
>be kept in a more orderly fashion?
>
>
While I would agree that the content of Meta is horribly disorganized, I
fail to see why all of the stuff you are complaining about has to be
deleted?  Why not simply reorganize everything and allow some method of
trying to find the content and properly categorize the content?

Also, Meta is hardly a ghost Wiki by any stretch of the imagination.  If
you look up the stats on Alexa:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=p&q=&url=meta.wikimedia.org

you will discover that it comprises over 26% of all internet traffic
going to all websites under the top level wikimedia.org domain.  From
that it shows that Meta would be in the top 50 wikimedia websites overall.

according to [[meta:Table_of_Wikimedia_Projects_by_Size]] meta comes in
at site #72 for all wikimedia projects.

Neither of those numbers are something to sneer at, and shows why meta
is certainly one of the major players among wikimedia websites from this
criteria alone.

What meta needs is a good reorganization, not a wholesale mission change.

I will agree that there is a tendancy to dump some stuff on Meta that
doesn't quite fit on any other Wikimedia project, such as the wikimania
proceedings that are on Meta at the moment.  Admins on meta have been
justifiably concerned when many other projects dump stuff on them in
this manner, and I appreciate that sentiment.

On the other hand, there are many seemingly random pages that were
started on Meta because they were in fact a meta-discussion about the
role and future of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.  Isn't that
precisely what meta is all about?  Those are the pages that especially
need to be reorganized and linked, not discarded.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 01:05:33AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> mediawiki-l is a mailing list for users of the MediaWiki software, a
> lot of whom are used to responding to requests for extensions or
> hacking advice; this list is more suited to those involved
> with/interested in the MediaWiki implementation (not to mention the
> servers and other tech. stuff) Wikimedia adopts.

I'm going to have to go back and look at the mailman pages.

I'd rather thought this was the general -dev list.  Oops. :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Zordsdavini iz Litvy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PMS Upload denied

body:
Hello,

The same thing is with bat-smg :( Can somebody to fix it. Very thanks

Arns

2006/3/27, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
>
> Berto wrote:
> > On pms we get a "The upload directory (/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/pms) is
> not
> > writable by the webserver. " error on uploads. Is it normal?
>
> Directory was missing, should work now.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>

--
Ok^ ek^ besla ikv Olmok Vzauep^evk
:)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 3/28/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >>They have nothing to worry about from us until we can start producing
> >>printed single volumes.
> >
> >
> > That would be the general idea of the Wikijunior project. We are still
> > looking for an expert in dead tree technology for the final phase.
> >
>
> *points at de:*

I though they had halted the dead tree project for now?

--
geni


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day (Johntex)

body:
John Tex wrote

> Censorship is a scare word that does not accurately describe the internal
> debate over images.  If hte government tells us not to print something,
> that
> is censorship.   If we decide not to print somethin because of our own
> editorial standards, that is not censorship.

But it could be described as self-censorship - depending on what 'editorial
standards' we are talking about.

> If we want Wikipedia to be taken seriously, and to be used as widely as
> possible, then we need to hold ourselves to decent editorial standards.

It is taken seriously.  It is used so widely that the servers are constantly
groaning.

> That might mean taking some very small steps such as putting some content
> behind a spoiler-like warning.  This way, people know that reading the
> text
> of articles will be school/work-safe, and they can make an informed
> decision
> to view the images so-tagged.

It absolutely will not do that.  For several reasons.

(i) Once you start on a list of things that might offend someone, you never
end, as this thread will no doubt demonstrate.
(ii) The article could be edited in the next five minutes, to become
not-schoolwork-safe.

The only way to do the suggested kid-safe thing is a fork or a distro on
CD-ROM (say) that has been checked for obvious no-nos.

We absolutely cannot take on ourselves parental/teacher style responsibility
for the content of a live wiki.  Or of all outgoing links.  No way can one
give 'protection of minors' warranties.  I don't see this is going to
change.  We have this in common with the rest of the Web.

Charles.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
On 3/26/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > It's 169.244.143.115. Blocking that blocks every public computer in the
> > > > whole state, apparently.
> > > >
> > > > Four months just seems excessive. I thought there was a maximum length
> > > > for blocks on IP's that are shared, like by public libraries and schools.
> > >
> > > You assume we're omniscient.  We're not.  There's no way for us to know
> > > whether any given IP is used by a single user or by an entire state.
> > > You're the first person who's informed us of this.
> >
> > He is not assuming that. He is assuming that you have done your homework.
> >
> > $ whois 169.244.143.115
> >
> > OrgName:    Maine Libraries/Dept. of Education
> > ....
> >
> > If that is to hard for you, I suggest you leave the whole blocking
> > business to someone else.
>
> BJ?rn, if communicating on this list in a civil way is too hard for
> you, I suggest you leave the whole communication business to someone
> else.
>
Bjorn's comment was perhaps a little sarcastic, but Ben's response
merited such a comment -- it probably should be standard practice to
whois IPs before we put blocks up.


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
On 3/27/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jayjg, what a stunningly insightful remark, I'm amazed. However, I
> think you are wrong. If communicating on this list in a civil way was
> too hard for me, I believe I would have told you to "Fuck off" or
> maybe "Go fuck yourself." Since that is not the case, communicating in
> a civil way is obviously not too hard for me.

I also think your tone in this thread is completely inappropriate.

Ryan


body:
Anthere wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>>I will agree that there is a tendancy to dump some stuff on Meta that
>>doesn't quite fit on any other Wikimedia project, such as the wikimania
>>proceedings that are on Meta at the moment.  Admins on meta have been
>>justifiably concerned when many other projects dump stuff on them in
>>this manner, and I appreciate that sentiment.
>>
>>
>Hello,
>
>By the way, where is the discussion about the test wiki for new
>languages start up ?
>
>Ant
>
>
What about simply starting up a bunch of test wikis called test.*.org
for all of the projects to hold content for new languages proposals
instead?  Or perhaps the general "seed wiki" to hold content like this?

I wasn't aware of any thread about this issue before now.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Alex Schenck

body:
Okay, apparently, we have a few problems here.

Despite praise from various sources, several other Meta people have
complained that this project is doing more harm than good. While I of course
completely disagree with that notion, I feel that I ought to let out some
steam.

Meta right now is horrible. Really, it is. People need to stop kidding
themselves and understand that the way that it is in right now is akin to a
trash heap. Sure, there are some good things on Meta, but the vast majority
is unorganized rubbish that could probably be put away in an archive and
forgotten about until cyber-archaeologists come along and sift through it
and thing that they're artifacts. I mean, come on. Sure, this place has a
lot of history of Wikimedia, but if things need to be kept, why can't they
be kept in a more orderly fashion?

Another thing: people have been complaining about speedy deletions and that
they violate Meta policy. Can I be brutally honest? Meta is a ghost wiki and
the policies aren't nearly as important as they are on local projects. When
people start complaining that deletion of unused images such as pornography
is out of process, I cringe. No one is going to miss some of these things.

I understand that some people have objected to some things which I have
deleted. However, those things can get restored, and besides, any project
which requires a massive overhaul will experience errors.

Frankly, I've got better things to do than completely overhaul Meta. I'm
doing this for the greater good of Wikimedia's projects. People are afraid
to touch Meta because it is a massive unorganized heap. I'm trying to change
that, and I've gotten a go-ahead from the top. If people are going to
complain that a policy on a nearly abandoned wiki is not followed over
getting things, you know... accomplished (gee, what a thought), then why am
I and thirteen other editors (two of which have decided to quit the project)
wasting our time like this?

For the meantime, I will continue this project, but I would like to propose
a solution: an archive wiki of Meta. Move *everything* on Meta over to this
archive. Start fresh. The archive will contain all things that Meta used to
have, so nothing will just disappear, and someone else can go through the
archive if they really feel like it and find whatever they're looking for. I
promise I won't touch that archive. Plus, anything that is current can be
kept on Meta as is. Let Meta be useful again instead of a depository of crap
dotted with worthwhile discussions and essays.

--Alex


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

body:
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, mingli yuan wrote:

> Hi, buddies. The Chinese Wikimedia users need some technical help from
> the developers at the Foundation.

Can you read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project ?

If the proxy is properly configured, it will solve your problems.

Cheers,     Andy!


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 3/28/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> For some values of knowledge.  I don't really see the merit in copying
> and pasting the one-sentence "biography" of a minor porn actor from a
> website which already acts as a repository for such crap if one were
> needed.

For me, it's no worse than the equivalent from IMDB for minor bit-part
non-porn actors.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
G'day Phil,

> On Mar 27, 2006, at 8:14 AM, jayjg wrote:
>
>>I would imagine it would have implications for all countries with
>>legal
>>systems based on British Common Law, which I would think would look
>>at  the
>>ruling in this case when deciding similar cases.
>
> It would depend--the American legal system is based on English common
> law, but American courts rarely, if ever, take into account English
> court precedents after the colonial period. Commonwealth countries
> may still take into account contemporary English precedents, however.

AIUI, that's due to bog-standard insecurity --- "we can't let those
dirty forners tell us what to do!"

The Australian High Court recently (well, fifteen years ago ...) looked
to Zimbabwe and Canada (IIRC) for guidance.  I believe the argument goes
something like: "our law was the same up until X date, therefore ---
barring decisions that drastically change this area of law --- we're
likely to be expected to come to similar conclusions".

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.2/294 - Release Date: 27/03/2006


from_name: michael_irwin at verizon.net

subject: [Foundation-l] Problems on block ip user in Chinese Wikipedia

body:
mingli yuan wrote:

> Basically, we would like to have
>users' real IP (IP used to access CNBlog proxy) displayed and logged
>at Wikimedia.
>
>
>
>
>
Would this not raise concern that it makes it easy for governmental
authorities to trace and persecute individual users?

At the moment when I am careless regarding logins, my IP address is
logged instead of my user handle.  This is not a concern for me at the
moment because I live in the U.S. and enjoy rather large protections
regarding U.S. Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom to
assemble and associate.

While some cracks in these vaunted rights and freedoms have appeared for
Islamic or Arabic citizens as an expediency of war, a restoring backlash
seems to be building adequate to keep my personal risks from online
participation low enough to incurr for the moment.

How would you propose that we warn new Chinese users adequately that
anything they post to a Wikimedia site can be used against them by
agents of their government?

Would such warnings incurr any liability to the Wikimedia Foundation or
its users from the more militant factions of the Chinese Government?

Personally I have no intentions of traveling to China anytime soon but
other peoples who participate in our online communities may have
different plans for the near or far future.   It would be extremely
disruptive to have a Wikimania conducted in Beijing impacted by the
highly televised arrest and show trial of vocal care free Wikimanians
not protected by the armed forces of the United States of America.

regards,
lazyquasar


body:
I think you may have misunderstood me, so as to clarify:

* I think no article should be created by copying-and-pasting a
biographical stub paragraph from another website
* I tend towards inclusionism so long as there's sufficient
biographical info available to verify and there's an indication that
the person has done something somewhat notable (my standards are very
low there)

I'd support having a verifiable stub on both the porn actress and the
b-movie actor.

-Matt


from_name: John Tex

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day (Johntex) (charles
	matthews) (Johntex)

body:
Charles Mathews wrote:
>I would call it a complete change from five years of getting the
>encyclopedia written.  It bears repetition: the mission is to get the
>encyclopedia written, the free NPOV encyclopedia.  Not to try to gather
>plaudits from classroom teachers.  It's an old discussion here: GFDL
>means_someone else_ can perfectly well make the fork that is more
child-safe.

I disagree that the goal is to get an encyclopedia written.  The goal is to
produce an encyclopedia that is as useful as possible to the biggest set of
people possible.  Taking small steps to make the reference more usable in
schools and work-places is consistent with that goal.

Deciding which images might deserve a spoiler warning is no more a violation
of NPOV than deciding what fact is important enough to include, or deciding
what reference is worthy enough to cite.  All of these are judgement calls.
We will continue to debate them for as long as the project is editable, no
doubt.

- Johntex


from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirects?

body:
Hi!

Someone from IP 69.232.157.175 came and put a a redirection to the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmontese_language page in our (pms) main
page and in my user page.
* The Main Page was later restored by a user with IP 193.191.7.46
* My user page still carries the redirection (which is hiding the original
text)

Now, this hardly looks like vandalism, it might rather mean that someone
tried to do something (in the meantime, the piedmontese edition has been
signalled on the english article quoted).

Now I wonder, do we need to keep that redirection, and why? Can't seem to
find an explanation in the help texts...
B?rto
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> How about doing SSL via a non-standard port, which will miss the proxies
> _if_ the transparent proxying simply uses packet filtering at the
> network side to detect proxyable traffic?
>
> For example:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org:32//w/index.php?title=Example article&action=submit
>
> (32 being an officially unassigned port number)

How about we worry about that when we actually see such a case?

> Come to that, if they're just packet-filtering off the proxyable
> traffic, we may not even need to bother with the https: -- just use a
> non-standard port number for _all_ form submissions from AOL members,
> and set a cookie with that address so they can see their messages.

I tried that already, I sent an AOL user to my webserver on port 81, the request came via the proxy.
I assume traffic is marked proxyable by the AOL client. Either that or 81 is filtered in the same
way as 80, I didn't try it with a random port.

> Of course, we can theorize forever about what AOL's network does or does
> not do... some actual experiments would be likely to find out what the
> actual state of affairs is.

I seem to be ahead of you here. SSL works, HTTP port 81 doesn't.

> Incidentally, if you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/, you get a slightly
> surprising result...

Connection refused? Is that surprising?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] How to get around AOL proxies?

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
>>looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
>>redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
>>IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
>>return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.
>>
>>This would mean requiring that AOL users log in before edit. Sad, but more open than many proposed
>>solutions.
>
>
> While we're at it, why not have everyone sign in securely? If the
> technology is in place to allow this, we should take advantage of it.

...that was the general idea. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spambot attacking GeoWiki test wiki

body:
Who is responsible for the Wiki at yf1019.yaseo.wikimedia.org? That one
has been filled with many spamlinks, including the current "gayholmes"
massive spambot run. Why does that wiki not use the antispam list from
meta? Who is the resonsible admin there? I have just cleaned all the
spam I could find, but as the bots keep running there needs to be some
more permanent action.

[[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Polish Wikimedia meetup

body:
Congrats for Polish meeting, Polimerek,
send my greeting and kisses to all. I don't forget your help on
Wikimania translation last year.

Well, you perhaps don't bother if I ask you to inform wiki-pl, "How to
deal with Poles" has been on Meta:RFD three times AFAIK?

Personally I think it is only a matter between PL community and meta
one, and strongly doubted the proper topic on foundation-l, but I
haven't seen any Poles (sic)  on the current poll, so all of you HTDWP
enthus have a right to know it assumedly.

===
More seriously, it might be benefical for us to set a policy how to
deal essays (and humors) like above, a certain community or group of
editors thinks brasphamous / racism / whatever but another community
is well pleased, specially in case the happy one is the people
targetted by such "abuse". Thoughts?

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] Polish Wikimedia meetup


body:
On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> It is taken seriously.  It is used so widely that the servers are constantly
> groaning.

Widely is not the same thing as seriously. Spam (the meat) sells well.
Does anyone take it seriously?

> It absolutely will not do that.  For several reasons.
>
> (i) Once you start on a list of things that might offend someone, you never
> end, as this thread will no doubt demonstrate.

This is one of those arguments I really dislike. "If we try and
improve things, people will want us to improve them even more, and it
will never end!"

> (ii) The article could be edited in the next five minutes, to become
> not-schoolwork-safe.
>
> The only way to do the suggested kid-safe thing is a fork or a distro on
> CD-ROM (say) that has been checked for obvious no-nos.

Look at it the other way. Don't label a page kid safe. Label it *not
kid-safe*. Then if someone edits the pornographic article to remove
all the porn, then no harm is done. We shouldn't (can't, really) make
any guarantees that no kids will be shocked, but hopefully in time,
people can draw their own conclusions about the level of risk. At the
moment, the risk is high, because a user can easily stumble on
[[autofellatio]] or whatever. If all those pages are tagged correctly,
then the only risk is that someone sticks tubgirl on [[GWB]] for 2
minutes - a substantially lower risk.

> We absolutely cannot take on ourselves parental/teacher style responsibility
> for the content of a live wiki.  Or of all outgoing links.  No way can one
> give 'protection of minors' warranties.  I don't see this is going to
> change.  We have this in common with the rest of the Web.

You're right. No warranties. But warnings, and the option to "opt out"
with suitable software. Just like with every other site of which "a
fairly large portion is pornographic". :)

Steve


body:
I read it as "this is what you have to do to avoid being
proxyblocked". The "plan" is to get everyone doing that.

Steve

On 3/28/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not just a plan, it's in use.
>
> However, if they set up the XFF, a developer will have to add them to
> the list of proxies which use XFF before it will work, so you'll have
> to send another mail after they fix it up.
>
> Mark
>
> On 28/03/06, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sorry for another stupid question since I dose not read this list often.
> >
> > I noticed that the XFF page was created by Tim Starling several days
> > ago. So is the XFF just a plan, or it have been put to use? If it is a
> > plan, how about the progress and who should we contact with?
> >
> > Thanks again.
> >
> > On 3/28/06, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > But they use Apache 1.3 to redirect request.
> > > Could you please teach us how to config Apache 1.3 with XFF?
> > >
> > > Thanks a lot.
> > >
> > > On 3/28/06, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, mingli yuan wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hi, buddies. The Chinese Wikimedia users need some technical help from
> > > > > the developers at the Foundation.
> > > >
> > > > Can you read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project ?
> > > >
> > > > If the proxy is properly configured, it will solve your problems.
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,     Andy!
> > > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
On 3/28/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anyone want to drop this, sometime about now?
>
> Steve

Yes, let's.

Ryan


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
>
> How about doing SSL via a non-standard port, which will miss the proxies
> _if_ the transparent proxying simply uses packet filtering at the
> network side to detect proxyable traffic?

 From reading between the lines, it seems AOL does _not_ use packet
filtering; they've just configured their standard browser to use their
proxies by default.  This means that:

* Installing a different browser bypasses the proxies.

* HTTPS bypasses the proxies.

* Changing the browser configuration _might_ bypass the proxies (unless
they've locked it down somehow; I don't really know).

* Using a nonstandard port for HTTP does _not_ bypass the proxies.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Birger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hierarchical navigation bar? - part of the answer

body:
A hierarchical navigation bar can be implemented by changing code in
monobook.php (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Customization#How_do_I_add_an_editable_Left_Menu.3F).
Unfortunately this only works in case $wgUseDatabaseMessages in
defaultsettings.php is set to "true".

In my case, this variable is set to false, in order to be able to use
another language (Dutch instead of English) in our wiki. BUT by
setting $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false,
the mediawiki-namespace (into which the navigation bar has to be changed) is
not read anymore.

To change the content of the navigation bar, I had to adapt the
language.phpfile:

'sidebar' => '
* navigation
** mainpage|mainpage
** portal-url|portal
** currentevents-url|currentevents
** recentchanges-url|recentchanges
** randompage-url|randompage
** helppage|help
* Cases
** Businesscase|Business
** Technicalcase|Technical
',

but i cannot implement a hierarchical menu by changing e.g. **
Technicalcase|Technical  into *** Technicalcase|Technical. Does anyone know
how to solve this problem so that I can implement a hierarchical menu
while $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false?
Do I have to change code in the language.php file or in the monobook.phpfile?

Thanks in advance!
Birger

2006/3/24, Jama Poulsen <jama at debianlinux.net>:
>
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 10:05:57AM +0100, Birger wrote:
> > Does anyone know whether it is possible to implement a hierarchical
> > navigation bar in Mediawiki like e.g.:
> >
> > * CASES
> > ** BUSINESSCASES-URL | BUSINESSCASES
> > *** BCASE1-URL | CASE1
> > *** BCASE2-URL | CASE2
> > ** TECHNICALCASES-URL | TECHNICALCASES
> > *** TCASE1-URL | CASE1
> > *** TCASE2-URL | CASE2
>
> I think it would be easiest to just edit the skin files (eg.
> /wiki/skins/MonoBook.php) with some extra CSS and/or JS that implements
> such a structure.
>
> Doing this dynamically (from the Wiki text) isn't so easy in the MW
> interface.
>
> Jama Poulsen
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Matt wrote:
> On 3/28/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> I don't really see the merit in copying and pasting the one-sentence
>> "biography" of a minor porn actor from a website which already acts as
>> a repository for such crap if one were needed.
>
> For me, it's no worse than the equivalent from IMDB for minor bit-part
> non-porn actors.

On the one hand I agree with you both.  But on the other hand
(this is me being a handwringing fence-sitter :-) ) there can be
quite a bit of value in having all the world's information *all
in one place*.  Wikipedia is already replacing google for certain
kinds of searches for me -- rather than doing a google search and
then picking which of the first ten hits is likely to best tell
me what I want, I'll cut to the chase and do the same search in
one of my always-open Wikipedia windows instead.

(But with that said, I'm certainly not trying to condone
the irreverent copying of any information, bulk or trivial,
mainstream or borderline, from other websites into Wikipedia.)


body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> Widely is not the same thing as seriously. Spam (the meat) sells well.
> Does anyone take it seriously?

WP is quoted by top-quality media sources. That's being taken seriously.

>> It absolutely will not do that.  For several reasons.
>>
>> (i) Once you start on a list of things that might offend someone, you
>> never
>> end, as this thread will no doubt demonstrate.
>
> This is one of those arguments I really dislike. "If we try and
> improve things, people will want us to improve them even more, and it
> will never end!"

Well, you are leaping to the conclusion that a subtraction (to appease some
group offended) is an improvement.

> Look at it the other way. Don't label a page kid safe. Label it *not
> kid-safe*. Then if someone edits the pornographic article to remove
> all the porn, then no harm is done. We shouldn't (can't, really) make
> any guarantees that no kids will be shocked, but hopefully in time,
> people can draw their own conclusions about the level of risk.

More assumptions.  I think parents are more likely to be 'shocked' than
kids; especially those naive about what one can google for.

>At the
> moment, the risk is high, because a user can easily stumble on
> [[autofellatio]] or whatever.

Not that high, clicking Random Page.  High enough, if you look in the
sexological categories.

>If all those pages are tagged correctly,
> then the only risk is that someone sticks tubgirl on [[GWB]] for 2
> minutes - a substantially lower risk.

'Only risk'; I think you forget how many sites WP links to. I think you
forget that interwiki links may (within Wikipedia) take one to pages not
subject to any scrutiny by us, the English Wikipedia.

>> We absolutely cannot take on ourselves parental/teacher style
>> responsibility
>> for the content of a live wiki.  Or of all outgoing links.  No way can
>> one
>> give 'protection of minors' warranties.  I don't see this is going to
>> change.  We have this in common with the rest of the Web.
>
> You're right. No warranties. But warnings, and the option to "opt out"
> with suitable software. Just like with every other site of which "a
> fairly large portion is pornographic". :)

A fairly small proportion of WP is 'explicit', and little is pornographic.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
G'day Phil,

> On Mar 27, 2006, at 5:26 PM, Mark Gallagher wrote:
>> G'day Phil,
>>> It would depend--the American legal system is based on English common
>>> law, but American courts rarely, if ever, take into account English
>>> court precedents after the colonial period. Commonwealth countries
>>> may still take into account contemporary English precedents, however.
>>
>> AIUI, that's due to bog-standard insecurity --- "we can't let those
>> dirty forners tell us what to do!"
>>
>> The Australian High Court recently (well, fifteen years ago ...)  looked
>> to Zimbabwe and Canada (IIRC) for guidance.  I believe the argument  goes
>> something like: "our law was the same up until X date, therefore ---
>> barring decisions that drastically change this area of law --- we're
>> likely to be expected to come to similar conclusions".
>
> The United States went to war twice to ensure that the English  weren't
> in charge of our laws. Other former colonies don't seem to  appreciate
> that :)

Heh, fair point.

(In 2001, the Govt ran an ad campaign: "Our nation was started with a
treaty, *not* a war", or words to that effect, to say that while
Federation may not have been as glamarous as the American Revolution, it
didn't cost as many lives, and also everyone got free "I attended the
Constitutional Convention of 189mumble" souvenir mugs.  I've often
wondered how Americans would feel about this campaign.)

> Do the Commonwealth nations grant to English rulings stare decisis
> standing as court precedents, or do they simply look to them for  guidance?

I only know about Australian law (and even then, it was an elective
subject for just four semesters :)), but I assume the other Cth
countries follow similar procedures.

Precedent theoretically applies up until Federation, colony court
decisions notwithstanding.  A case decided after Federation would not be
binding on Australian courts, however, since our courts share a common
background with, say, Scottish courts, their reasoning can be used for
guidance.  For example, /Donoghue v. Stevenson/, the landmark case that
established the tort of negligence, was introduced to Australia in the
case /mumble/, and didn't just apply off its own bat.  Other Cth
countries had similar cases for introducing negligence, where /D&S/ was
referred to, but taken up because it was a good idea and something that
followed from our shared legal system, not because it was binding.

I don't know how America got negligence; all my lecturer said was
"America did its own crazy thing", so ...

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.2/294 - Release Date: 27/03/2006


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 28/03/06, Birger <bweynants at gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> but i cannot implement a hierarchical menu by changing e.g. **
> Technicalcase|Technical  into *** Technicalcase|Technical. Does anyone know
> how to solve this problem so that I can implement a hierarchical menu
> while $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false?
> Do I have to change code in the language.php file or in the monobook.phpfile?

You'll need to edit the skin so it renders the sidebar in the manner
desired; this means altering the correct skin file depending upon the
skin in use. The default skin is Monobook, but be aware that users can
select another in their preferences.

Rob Church


body:
Essjay wrote:
> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>
>> From reading between the lines, it seems AOL does _not_ use packet
>>filtering; they've just configured their standard browser to use their
>>proxies by default.  This means that:
>>
>>* Installing a different browser bypasses the proxies.
>>* HTTPS bypasses the proxies.
>>* Changing the browser configuration _might_ bypass the proxies (unless
>>they've locked it down somehow; I don't really know).
>>* Using a nonstandard port for HTTP does _not_ bypass the proxies.
>
> Perhaps a bit of a tangent, but I believe some AOL users have discovered
> a separate range (172-something, I believe) which is semi-static (at
> least, static for a single session, rather than changing in whatever way
> the others do) that can be utilized by avoiding the AOL browser, and
> instead using an "after-market" package (like Firefox, I assume). I'm
> sure we could find a description by searching en.wiki

That's what I wrote above, didn't I?  Specifically, the ranges are
listed at <http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html>.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [WikiEN-l] CBS evening news

body:
"online upstart". Like that's a bad thing. And Britannica's rep's
comment making it sound like a foregone conclusion that Wikipedia is
worse than EB. lol.

-Hermione1980

--- Andrea Forte <andrea.forte at gmail.com> wrote:

> those of you on the east coast, CBS news is about to air a thing on
> the EB/Wikipedia debate. :-) I'm sure it will be available all over
> the internet within the hour anyhow.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: mingli yuan

body:
Hi, buddies. The Chinese Wikimedia users need some technical help from
the developers at the Foundation.

As everyone here believes, the government of P.R. China has blocked
access to all Wikimedia sites using its "Great Firewall"; Wikimedia
contributors and users in Mainland China have to use proxies to visit
Wikimedia sites. However, most of these proxies are unstable, so
CNBlog.org (a famous and prominent advocacy of blogosphere in China
operated by Social Brian Foundation, which hosted the First Chinese
Blogger Conference last year) has setup a stable proxy for Chinese
users.

With this service, Mainland Chinese users can access Chinese Wikipedia
using http://wikipedia.cnblog.org, and Chinese Wikinews using
http://wikinews.cnblog.org. There are over 16,000 visits and over
110,000 page requests per day this month. CNBlog.org has been very
helpful to Chinese users, and it is planning to expand its proxy
service to cover all Chinese Wikimedia projects, which is really great
news.

Unfortunately, Chinese Wikimedia administrators are frowned upon an
issue that came up recently: lots of vandalism is done using the
CNBlog proxy. Currently, the IP of the CNBlog proxy is displayed and
logged in edit history on Wikimedia. If an administrator blocks this
IP (CNBlog proxy), all Mainland Chinese users who are using CNBlog
proxy, either logged-in or not, will be blocked as well and not be
able to contribute.

Some Chinese Wikipedians discussed this issue with CNBlog.org, and we
believe that a technical solution should be feasible. We also
discussed some technical details, and I will send another e-mail to
wikitech-l regarding the details. Basically, we would like to have
users' real IP (IP used to access CNBlog proxy) displayed and logged
at Wikimedia.

We send this e-mail to here on behalf of many Chinese users. We hope
to have kind attention and help from the Foundation. Thank you very
much.

[[User:Shizhao]]
[[User:R.O.C]]
[[User:Yongxinge]]
[[User:Mountain]]


body:
> You'll need to edit the skin so it renders the sidebar in the manner
> desired;

I tried to edit the skin, but the problem is that I cannot refer to a
navigation-layout-page I made in the mediawiki-namespace (because I had to
set $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false). I think the solutions lies in referring
to a navigation-layout-page that is not in the mediawiki-namespace, but I
don't know how to do that. The explanation given on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Layout_customization#How_do_I_add_an_editable_Left_Menu.3Fdoes
only point out a solution in case
$wgUseDatabaseMessages=true....

2006/3/28, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com>:
>
> On 28/03/06, Birger <bweynants at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
> > but i cannot implement a hierarchical menu by changing e.g. **
> > Technicalcase|Technical  into *** Technicalcase|Technical. Does anyone
> know
> > how to solve this problem so that I can implement a hierarchical menu
> > while $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false?
> > Do I have to change code in the language.php file or in the
> monobook.phpfile?
>
> You'll need to edit the skin so it renders the sidebar in the manner
> desired; this means altering the correct skin file depending upon the
> skin in use. The default skin is Monobook, but be aware that users can
> select another in their preferences.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: wilinckx

body:
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:36:08 +0200
Birger <bweynants at gmail.com> wrote:

> A hierarchical navigation bar can be implemented by changing code in
> monobook.php (
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Customization#How_do_I_add_an_editable_Left_Menu.3F).
> Unfortunately this only works in case $wgUseDatabaseMessages in
> defaultsettings.php is set to "true".
>
> In my case, this variable is set to false, in order to be able to use
> another language (Dutch instead of English) in our wiki. BUT by
> setting $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false,
> the mediawiki-namespace (into which the navigation bar has to be changed) is
> not read anymore.
>
> To change the content of the navigation bar, I had to adapt the
> language.phpfile:
>
> 'sidebar' => '
> * navigation
> ** mainpage|mainpage
> ** portal-url|portal
> ** currentevents-url|currentevents
> ** recentchanges-url|recentchanges
> ** randompage-url|randompage
> ** helppage|help
> * Cases
> ** Businesscase|Business
> ** Technicalcase|Technical
> ',
>
> but i cannot implement a hierarchical menu by changing e.g. **
> Technicalcase|Technical  into *** Technicalcase|Technical. Does anyone know
> how to solve this problem so that I can implement a hierarchical menu
> while $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false?
> Do I have to change code in the language.php file or in the monobook.phpfile?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Birger

If you're using $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false, MediaWiki just gets his
messages from Language.php and (in your case) LanguageNl.php.  So if you
want to change the messages, you can just edit these files.
In this case you need to edit the message "Sidebar".  Because you're not
using database-messages, you can just edit this message in Language.php.

The hack at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Customization#How_do_I_add_an_editable_Left_Menu.3F
does not care where the messages come from.  If the messages come from
the database or from the Language??.php files, both cases work.  But only
if you've applied the hack of course.

> In my case, this variable is set to false, in order to be able to use
> another language (Dutch instead of English) in our wiki.
Hint: To fill the database with Dutch messages instead of English
messages, you can run maintainance/rebuildMessages.php.   (keep in mind
this does not change the language preferences of the user (every user can
set in his/her preferences his/her prefered language, so it's best to
test such things as anonymous user).
You don't have to, you can just continue using Language??.php files.  It
makes MediaWiki faster.

Succes,
Wilinckx.

--


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> WP is quoted by top-quality media sources. That's being taken seriously.
>
> That's called living dangerously :)
>
>> Well, you are leaping to the conclusion that a subtraction (to appease
>> some
>> group offended) is an improvement.
>
> Yes, I am leaping to the conclusion that making Wikipedia an
> attractive resource for teachers for use with kids is an improvement.
> What would you call it?

I would call it a complete change from five years of getting the
encyclopedia written.  It bears repetition: the mission is to get the
encyclopedia written, the free NPOV encyclopedia.  Not to try to gather
plaudits from classroom teachers.  It's an old discussion here: GFDL means
_someone else_ can perfectly well make the fork that is more child-safe.

>> More assumptions.  I think parents are more likely to be 'shocked' than
>> kids; especially those naive about what one can google for.
>
> Yep. And what do parents do when they're shocked by something their
> kid saw on Wikipedia? Anything pleasant, useful, or beneficial to the
> Wikipedia project?

With any luck, they revise their views on the Internet as a whole.  The
place is not 'safe for minors'.  I don't know where they might have got the
idea that it is.

> That's a lower risk, to me. I think it's significantly less likely
> that a person would stumble onto a pornographic site by clicking
> interwiki links. Hell, the chances of your "average" English speaker
> clicking on an interwiki link at all are fairly remote, let alone one
> that took them from a "safe" page to an "unsafe" one.

It's good to know that the fine old tradition of monolingual Anglo-Saxons is
in such good shape.

But the whole concept of a 'safe' Wikipedia is just crocked.  What we have
is 'knowledge wants to be free', and a few semi-permeable membrances put up
on the wiki will not suffice to counter the osmotic pressure.

Charles


body:
But they use Apache 1.3 to redirect request.
Could you please teach us how to config Apache 1.3 with XFF?

Thanks a lot.

On 3/28/06, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, mingli yuan wrote:
>
> > Hi, buddies. The Chinese Wikimedia users need some technical help from
> > the developers at the Foundation.
>
> Can you read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project ?
>
> If the proxy is properly configured, it will solve your problems.
>
> Cheers,     Andy!
>


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 3/28/06, michael_irwin at verizon.net <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Personally I have no intentions of traveling to China anytime soon but
> other peoples who participate in our online communities may have
> different plans for the near or far future.   It would be extremely
> disruptive to have a Wikimania conducted in Beijing impacted by the
> highly televised arrest and show trial of vocal care free Wikimanians
> not protected by the armed forces of the United States of America.

That's just an argument for not having Wikimania in Beijing, then.  In
any case, if the Chinese authorities become upset enough with
Wikimedia to risk the PR backlash that would come from arresting
tourists, it presumably won't be because of mildly-worded warnings on
the site.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> WP is quoted by top-quality media sources. That's being taken seriously.

That's called living dangerously :)

> Well, you are leaping to the conclusion that a subtraction (to appease some
> group offended) is an improvement.

Yes, I am leaping to the conclusion that making Wikipedia an
attractive resource for teachers for use with kids is an improvement.
What would you call it?

> More assumptions.  I think parents are more likely to be 'shocked' than
> kids; especially those naive about what one can google for.

Yep. And what do parents do when they're shocked by something their
kid saw on Wikipedia? Anything pleasant, useful, or beneficial to the
Wikipedia project?

> Not that high, clicking Random Page.  High enough, if you look in the
> sexological categories.

Even higher if you type "sex" into the search box, which most kids
probably at some time or another. I agree with your point about the
random page though (Britannica was way off the mark with "large
proportion").

> 'Only risk'; I think you forget how many sites WP links to. I think you
> forget that interwiki links may (within Wikipedia) take one to pages not
> subject to any scrutiny by us, the English Wikipedia.

That's a lower risk, to me. I think it's significantly less likely
that a person would stumble onto a pornographic site by clicking
interwiki links. Hell, the chances of your "average" English speaker
clicking on an interwiki link at all are fairly remote, let alone one
that took them from a "safe" page to an "unsafe" one.

> > You're right. No warranties. But warnings, and the option to "opt out"
> > with suitable software. Just like with every other site of which "a
> > fairly large portion is pornographic". :)
>
> A fairly small proportion of WP is 'explicit', and little is pornographic.

I know that, and you know that. "They" don't though.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
Anyone want to drop this, sometime about now?

Steve


body:
Sorry for another stupid question since I dose not read this list often.

I noticed that the XFF page was created by Tim Starling several days
ago. So is the XFF just a plan, or it have been put to use? If it is a
plan, how about the progress and who should we contact with?

Thanks again.

On 3/28/06, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> But they use Apache 1.3 to redirect request.
> Could you please teach us how to config Apache 1.3 with XFF?
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> On 3/28/06, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, mingli yuan wrote:
> >
> > > Hi, buddies. The Chinese Wikimedia users need some technical help from
> > > the developers at the Foundation.
> >
> > Can you read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project ?
> >
> > If the proxy is properly configured, it will solve your problems.
> >
> > Cheers,     Andy!
> >
>