from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability

references:
<5.1.0.14.2.20051215135851.029e1da0@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
	<4439C601.7050109@telus.net>
	<687l32lhief7pqcpbdo98a6j0sppbulqrb@4ax.com>
	<443AFCFB.2040708@student.canberra.edu.au>
	<p34o325830kaobn2ek8oln4r9t7gqpbcsp@4ax.com>

body:
On 4/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 10:48:59 +1000, you wrote:
>
> >I had higher hopes for Stifle than *this*.
>
> Stifle is pretty good - not a process wonk, anyway.  I think it was
> Cyde who came up with the concept of a "cruft multiple" - a thousand
> hits on a 17th Century composer equates to notability, a hundred
> thousand on a sexual term equates to minor cruft.
> Guy (JzG)

We should have an age multiplier: three hits for a guy from 3000 years
ago = several hundred thousand hits for a garage band.

~maru


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> I just saw the de.wikipedia article about the pKB value, which:
> * looks like "PKB"
> * should look like "pKB"
> This looks pityful, and the note that it can't be shown otherwise for
> technical reasons doesn't really help the matter.
>
> I suggest the implementation of a new magic template:
>     {{DISPLAYTITLE|HTML-encoded title}}
> which will change the display of the title. I am aware that it would be
> a potential target for vandals, but hey, what on wikipedia isn't?
>
> I'd be willing to implement it if there's no major objection.

The Chinese Wikipedia actually has this already. The syntax is -{T|Title goes here}- . The intended
application is to change the display title depending on the selected language variant. For example,
the Chinese Wikipedia main page has this:

-{T|zh-cn:??;zh-tw:??;zh-hk:??;zh-sg:??}-

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Featured article deterioration

body:
Ben Greenberg wrote:
> Its simply naive to say that infinite edits means an infinitely good
> article.  If you dont believe that bad, non-vandalism edits take their toll
> on articles, I invite you to look at the Featured article review.  So many
> articles are ruined by people who simply aren't good at writing prose, and
> who enjoy adding useless factoids.  Articles quite often get worse-- if your
> idealism has you believing otherwise, please look at this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hip_hop_music&diff=41510779&oldid=36727078
>
> This should be a big wakeup call to anyone who thinks that the pure wiki
> system allows articles to get better indefinitely.  Unless we do something
> about it, wikipedia will simply be a place where articles get great then
> start to deteriorate.  I'm not suggesting stable versions, but surely...
> something needs to be done.
>
>

I tend to agree. One email that I remember handling on OTRS was someone
saying that they'd accidentally blanked one section of an article and
severely shortened another; the blanking had gone unnoticed for three
weeks before I fixed 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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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Dariusz Siedlecki wrote:
> I just wrote up a simple JavaScript code for the Polish (update, after
> 30 minutes of writing this email) and English Wikipedia. It changes
> the title (h1.firstHeading) to the name of the page which is the
> {{Restrictions}} (or similiar) template.
>
> Just check my JavaScript:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Datrio/monobook.js
>
> And here's an example (after moving the JS to your own monobook.js):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Music_Store
>
> If anyone wants to copy it, feel free to do it.
>
Cool! It even works with HTML tags! Why don't we scrap my hack and use
this in the default JavaScript? Seriously!

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> Does it allow for HTML to be rendered in the title?
>>
>
> Hopefully not, that would be unsafe.
>
Not if it runs though the parser, which my hack does.
>
>> More importantly, could it be changed to use the more "wiki standards"
>> (if there is such a thing) {{T|Title}} style?
>>
>
> The language converter has its own syntax, because there was a need for compact representation of
> characters in different scripts, the simplest of which is literal escaping, e.g. "???8?-{?}-".
> I don't think changing it would be the right way to go, rather we could add a more verbose synonym
> to support this quite different application.
>
> That is to say, assuming we support it at all. Like Brion, I'd rather maintain the ability to create
> links by copying and pasting from the H1 element. The only alternative appears to be to copy the URL
> and fix the underscores, which is tedious. Even more tedious when the title contains non-ASCII
> characters and you haven't got a browser which decodes URL escaping for you.
>
> We could conceivably allow freeform titles, but offer the canonical title as a subtitle or footer
> element. Would that be an acceptable balance between usability for editors and presentation quality?
>
My hack does that (header). The JavaScript from User:Datrio doesn't, but
probably could be expanded.

Magnus


from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Finding non-Wikipedia sources (was: Re: Real-time
	mirrors as a net revenue _source_?)

body:
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> >Will the average user be able to find
> > independent information in the search engines, which didn't come from Wikpedia?
>
> It's already tricky sometimes. Specifying "-wikipedia" is the only way
> I know to do that, and that's obviously useless if you're looking for
> information *about* Wikipedia. For example, how would you find sources
> about the Seigenthaler controversy that wasn't published in WP itself?
>
> Steve

It's for exactly this problem that I started this off a while back,
but it hasn't become widely-known yet, it seems:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mirror_filter

---


from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fw: Where the hell is the donation form? (was Re:
	Outage)

body:
> Presenting tens of thousands of people with a donation link that WE KNOW
> WILL NOT WORK WHEN THE
> MESSAGE IS DISPLAYED not only looks stupid, but is preventing many
> thousands of potential
> donations.

 Maybe the linked donation form could be at mediazilla's server? Bugzilla
was
 working fine during the outage...


from_name: Mikkerpikker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Current political status is really somewhat of an irrelevant topic.
> What about 20 years ago, when Georgia was simply part of the USSR?
> Georgia wasn't "a country" then, but it was largely the same place.
>
> Here's the objective metrics:
>
> Total GDP, Per-Capita GDP, Population, Foreign Trade, Land Area, No.
> of Wiki-Links: The US State
> Sovereignty, membership in int. organizations: The Nation
>
> Now, this Wikipedia is written in English. (Arguments about African
> customers are irrelevant, as organizational style will change in a
> translation to an African language). There are 8 million people in
> Georgia (the state), almost all of whom speak English. There are 300
> million people in the United States, likewise. Georgia (the country)
> is not an English-speaking country.
>
> There are 380 million people who speak English as a first language.
> Some 79% of English-speakers are thus Americans. Now, assuming that
> British, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, et. al. are all more
> interested in the country than the state, they only make up some 21%
> of the English-speaking population. You're asking to inconvenience
> 4/5 of the potential user base for en. out of the belief that
> sovereignty and membership in international organizations not only
> outweigh all other considerations, but overwhelm it so much that the
> default page should not be a disambiguation page.
>
> That's anti-Americanism.

And why, exactly, do only first-language English speakers "count"?
What about the 1 billion+ second/third/etc. English language speakers?
I remember reading somewhere that there are more English speakers in
China than in the US.... and 300m over 1.3b is a lot less that 4/5ths.


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
On 4/11/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > That is to say, assuming we support it at all. Like Brion, I'd rather maintain the ability to create
> > links by copying and pasting from the H1 element. The only alternative appears to be to copy the URL
> > and fix the underscores, which is tedious. Even more tedious when the title contains non-ASCII
> > characters and you haven't got a browser which decodes URL escaping for you.
> >
> > We could conceivably allow freeform titles, but offer the canonical title as a subtitle or footer
> > element. Would that be an acceptable balance between usability for editors and presentation quality?
> >
> My hack does that (header). The JavaScript from User:Datrio doesn't, but
> probably could be expanded.

If I understand correctly, that's simple - just copy the content of
h1.firstHeading to div#contentSub, before substituting it for the
correct title.

There probably are a few flaws in my idea, as I wrote it in the
simpliest way possible, but they shouldn't be too hard to fix. The
only one I found so far, is that during editing you'll get the normal
title, not the correct one. That'll be harder ro change, but - still
possible.

My JavaScript is good in the way of accessibility - it just
substitutes the h1 element, without changing the URL, or anything
else. It's good for browsing Wikipedia - if someone would want to
enter the URL of it into the browser, his browser would (probably) not
support it.

Still, it's not that much our problem. I think the most we can do is
substitute h1 with the correct title from the {{Title Restrictions}}
template, or similiar.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz Siedlecki


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] LS Studio and pro-pedophilia pov

body:
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 11:56:46 -0500, you wrote:

>First, remove all unverifiable statements from the article.  Insist
>firmly on the talk page that nothing goes back into the article without
>a solid site to a mainstream publication.
>Second, after a couple of weeks of demonstrating that there is therefore
>nothing to be said, AfD would be appropriate and likely to succeed.

You forget - this is a sex-related article.  On AfD, the fact that it
scores thousands of Google hits will mean that it is "notable" and
therefore it will be kept.  The lack of content will be swiftly
reverted by reference to those Google hits.

That's what happened to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_steamer
anyway.  We now have all the "popular culture" cruft back in there,
and still absolutely no reliable sources.  Unless you count the entry
in the online dictionary of sex added by the well-known and trusted
user "Anonymous", which some people apparently do.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] How does this prove voting is evil?

body:
On Apr 11, 2006, at 8:42 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

>> I think Daniel really meant a different word than 'unknown'.
>> Georgia-the-SSR was rarely MENTIONED, and if it was, it was rare for
>> it to be mentioned in non-specialist circles outside a little
>> piece of
>> trivia about Stalin's birthplace.
>
> Yes, but the same is true of Georgia the US state, so that doesn't get
> us anywhere.

Actually it gets us someplace very useful: to the conclusion that
Georgia the state and Georgia the country are close enough to equal
that [[Georgia]] should be the disambiguation page.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 04:03:13 +0100, you wrote:

>> So true.  And what the hell are we doing with a [[list of YTMND
>> fads]]?

>It gives us a useful way of removeing all the individual articles.

This pisses me off, actually.  We deleted the uncited list of obscure
sexual terms (read: juvenile protologisms) and now we have a whole
series of equally uncited articles on each one, which can't be deleted
because that would be "censorship" and because they are on Teh
Intarwebs, so it must be true.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability

body:
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 10:48:59 +1000, you wrote:

>I had higher hopes for Stifle than *this*.

Stifle is pretty good - not a process wonk, anyway.  I think it was
Cyde who came up with the concept of a "cruft multiple" - a thousand
hits on a 17th Century composer equates to notability, a hundred
thousand on a sexual term equates to minor cruft.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite Block

body:
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:07:43 +0800, you wrote:

>Four other editors (three admins, one user) have all concurred with an indef
>block so far.

Make that five, and FWIW I'm an admin too.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> How else, my friend, are people supposed to read the English
> Wikipedia? If we ever get around to translating en. articles to the
> other language wikis, we can reorganize them there. I'm sure in the
> Russian Wikipedia, the country has priority over the state.

There are a massive number of people in the world who are not "English
speakers", but can certainly read it. Hell, I work with lots of them.
English is almost certainly the most understood language in the world,
if not the most spoken as a first language.

I'm also taking a guess here, but I suspect that for some languages,
your best bet to get information would be to use machine translation
of EN Wikipedia. I'm not totally positive though, because the
languages that have machine translation on google are probably our
best Wikipedias as well (German, Spanish, French...) but maybe
Portuguese or something.

Damn I wish we had some more stats :) Especially readership stats, if
my hunch that there are silent masses reading Wikipedia from other
countries without contributing much, is correct.

Steve


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image deletion

body:
On 4/11/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/04/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Off-the-cuff remark: Why not upload a new version of the image which
> > > is totally blank, and protect it with a note saying that if no
> > > consensus is gained to undelete the image in a month, it should then
> > > be permanently deleted?
> >
> > Volume.  Approximately 1,500 images are deleted every day.  It's a
> > slow enough process when the image is already orphaned, and clearly
> > meets the requirements for deletion.  Adding "blank, protect, and
> > check back in a month" will just make things that much slower.
> >
> > (speaking of images, [[Category:Orphaned fairuse images]] has a
> > backlog of roughly 1800 items right now)
>
> Of which 1600 have been marked for more than a week - admins, please!
>
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/report_orphan_fair_use.py
>

I would but funny things happen when I delete images. I think it is
something to do with the classic skin.

--
geni


from_name: Michael Jennings

subject:
[WikiEN-l] FYI: Daily Record: Wikipedia site filled with
	majormistakes

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f1c3529e0604110433j2b55a7e1kbdb534919feea969 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 4/11/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > To me, it's another example of Wikipedia being perceived as something
>> > which it is not, which is basically our fault. The two biggest
>> > misconceptions here are:
>> > a) that Wikipedia is an "encyclopaedia" with fact checking and
>> > editorial standards against publishing anything that is not known to
>> > be true
>>
>> Er, that's not a misconception! Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, we do have fact checking, and we do have editorial standards. The
verifiability policy is a mechanism to ensure we publish trustworthy information. And that's exactly why Boroson's addition was
removed. If he had any insight, he would have commended Wikipedia for asking for sources, rather than taking him (an anonymous
editor) at his word.
>
> Ok, "fact checking and editorial standards applied *before* publish anything"...
>
> Steve
>
Warren Boroson's corrected contribution is restored.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Barry_Goldwater#Libel_and_sanity
His name is spelled wrong, however.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The very fact that there is disagreement among sensible contributors
> says that neither page should be primary.

There, I disagree. If the sensible contributors are not representative
of whatever they should be reperesentative of, then their disagreement
isn't useful.

>  One page should occupy the primary name only when there is broad consensus that it should.

Hmmm...well I haven't had much experience determining such things for
big important pages like these, but my experience with smaller ones
has mostly been that one person makes a sensible argument, doesn't get
much response, and just moves it. :)

> I'm very glad, by the way, that the existance of the "City, State"
> convention among Americans means that we avoid many disambiguation
> battles over their names.

Oh, good point. That's an area which is definitely in dynamic tension
though - should names be as simple as possible (eg, taking just the
name of the suburb or city or whatever, if there is no ambiguity), or
as consistent as possible (*all* suburbs in a given country should be
disambigged) etc.

>
> I agree that one should read [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering
> systemic bias]] and its subpages, and think about it.  (BTW, don't you
> hate all those TLAs you have to look up?) However, I think in this

Kind of, but they're easier to remember than getting the
capitalisation right, and for some reason I find
"Wikipedia:WikiProject" particularly difficult. Too bad we don't have
consistent semishortcuts of the form "wp:countering systemic bias"
(all lower case, wp: on the front). Or even an actual wikiproject:
namespace.

> case a disambiguation page is the correct thing to counter systemic
> bias; assuming what someone wants when they link or search to
> [[Georgia]] is a strong bias in itself, when both the state and the
> country are commonly referred to by different populations without
> qualifiers.

Perhaps what irks me is that there are 200 countries on the planet. 1
of them definitely refers to Georgia, the state, without qualifiers.
Some small number may also do so. Then there's probably a large number
of people who would qualify the state, or explain the country. And to
people who hadn't heard of either, no one is going to assume that "My
Aunt was born in Georgia" would be a US state. And at the other end,
there must be several dozen (not necessarily English-speaking) for
whom Georgia is definitely a country and nothing else.

I understand the comments about populations, economics etc, but I'm
not sure it's totally relevant. Hopefully I'll come up with some good
counter examples or something.

Lastly...is there any chance we could place hit counters on Georgia
(country) and Georgia (state) just for the amusement factor?  Even if
we had to do it the 1997 way with little digits ticking over? Actually
ideally what you want is the number of clicks on the Georgia (country)
link out of [[Georgia]], and the same for the state. Then you're
counting the number of people who hit Wikipedia on the disambig page,
then tell you what they were really looking for.

Steve


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy clarification: Undue weight (example)

body:
2006/4/11, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk>:
> For those that are interested, as an example of an article where I
> feel that significant material is being excluded on the grounds of
> undue weight (and other pretenses), I would point people to an
> article on "The Galaxy rotation problem".
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_problem
>
>
> A request for comments appears
> at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Galaxy_rotation_problem (see
> the section RfC: The Galaxy rotation problem: Alternative theories).
>
> I had already suggested text (see link in RfC introduction) that was
> subsequently removed. Verification can be found in the following
> subsection, Results.
>
> This is typical of many articles where "alternative views" are being
> completely removed.

And rightly so. It's a small minority position, and has its own
article. The correct way to handle it in such a more general article
would be to have a one-line statement that plasma cosmology would
solve the problem, and lead people who would like to know more about
the subject to the plasma cosmology page. This is exactly the kind of
thing that undue weight is talking about.

It's very simple: If you get a consensus against you, it probably
means that you are wrong. You cannot push your own POV just by writing
about it in an NPOV way.

I think your example is a good example of why I oppose to those who
say that anything for which there are citations should be included.
Wikipedia is not a soapbox for people pushing theories. And arguing
that your statements are perfectly NPOV and referenced is simply
barking up the wrong tree. There's no reason to put the material where
you want to put it.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Application of the {{pd-art}} tag

body:
Pretty much. But if scanning things gives you a copyright claim, that's the
way it would work. This is one of the reasons I have little respect for
archivists/museums who are afraid of losing revenue because of this; the
alternative implications for copyright law and cultural material are
absolutely bonkers and positively short-sighted. It's not my problem that
their past revenue models were based on bad legal models.

But fortunately there's nothing in US precedent to make us think it is going
in that direction.

FF

On 4/11/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > However, we should certainly keep track of any image we use under the
> > assumptions of Bridgeman v. Corel, so that if the law or precedent
> > changes we can re-evaluate them.
>
> In other words, basically every public-domain image except PD-self and
> some PD-USGov.
>
> --
> 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: Ian Tresman

body:
>And rightly so. It's a small minority position, and has its own
>article. The correct way to handle it in such a more general article
>would be to have a one-line statement that plasma cosmology would
>solve the problem, and lead people who would like to know more about
>the subject to the plasma cosmology page. This is exactly the kind of
>thing that undue weight is talking about.

I agree, except that the one line has been COMPLETELY removed, so
that people can not find out if the theory exists.

>It's very simple: If you get a consensus against you, it probably
>means that you are wrong. You cannot push your own POV just by writing
>about it in an NPOV way.

Verifiable information is NOT "my" point of view, so I can't push it
as my own. Otherwise removing verifiable information would be
construed as the opposing POV, and neither are acceptable.

>I think your example is a good example of why I oppose to those who
>say that anything for which there are citations should be included.
>Wikipedia is not a soapbox for people pushing theories.

Surely behind every theory is someone "pushing"? Isn't an editor's
job merely to describe what they are?

>And arguing
>that your statements are perfectly NPOV and referenced is simply
>barking up the wrong tree. There's no reason to put the material where
>you want to put it.

Where else should I expect to find out about the existence of such
theories, if I hadn't heard about it before?

A line or two mentioning that there is an alternative theory, and a
very brief summary is not unreasonable.

Regards,
Ian Tresman


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Back to the Georgia issue: suppose someone in the former Soviet
> territory is trying to learn English, they have internet access, and
> they look up their home country in the English Lanuage Wikipedia.
> Imagine their horror when they find that their glorious homeland has
> been usurped by some two-bit swamp on the East Coast of the United
> States...

Is the goal of Wikipedia naming conventions to make people feel good about
themselves, or to help them find the article they are looking for? I think
our hypothetical Georgian will find some way to cope, whatever the case may
be.

FF


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 11/04/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >   Just came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Georgia . It is
> > obvious beyond words to me that [[Georgia]] should be the country, and
> > the US state should be at something like [[Georgia (US State)]].
> > However, an ongoing poll evenly ties between that, and keeping Georgia
> > is a disambiguation page.
> >
> > I find this sad. :(
>
> [[Macedonia]]
>
> Should it point to the Greek administrative region, the modern
> country, the ancient kingdom, or the geographic region?

Redirect to [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]]?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> Now, this Wikipedia is written in English. (Arguments about African
> customers are irrelevant, as organizational style will change in a
> translation to an African language). There are 8 million people in
> Georgia (the state), almost all of whom speak English. There are 300
> million people in the United States, likewise. Georgia (the country)
> is not an English-speaking country.
>

And not to get on Georgia (the country's) bad side, but the state of Georgia
actually has almost twice as many people living in it as the country does.

Which means that if someone says "My grandmother was born in Georgia", in
English, and without any other context, you probably are correct in assuming
they mean the U.S. state and not the country, just based on the numbers
alone.

If one does a Google search for "Georgia", it is not until one finds the CIA
World Factbook page, the seventh down on the page, that one sees anything
about the country. It is not until the fourth page of results that one finds
another page relating to the country -- the Wikipedia article on it. I know
Google is not the most reliable indicator for these sorts of things, but it
seems pretty clear what the English term most often refers to on these here
internets.

FF


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>John Lee wrote:
>
>
>>I've never set foot in the US and I've still seen and heard more
>>references to Georgia the state than Georgia the country in my entire
>>life. I think making [[Georgia]] a disambig is a good compromise.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Stalin was from Georgia...
>
>
Well, I don't discuss Stalin's place of birth on a regular basis. :p

John


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy clarification: Undue weight

body:
> > In my opinion this IS undue weight. Giving small minority opinions on
> > general pages is in my opinion undue weight to those opinions.
>
>No, it's what google will do for the reader, if we do not do it ourselves.
>But ten again, I'm speaking about a link, not about a full-fledged text
>about all possible details. Something usual paper edition do with their "see
>also" annotations. We simply suggest the existence of related information.
>Then, info lists also do have an internal order, just as a search will give
>you a percent of subject relevance. I do not see any problem in having a
>jump-box stating three sections like
>*related info
>*minority views
>*odd things
>
> > That
> > this is best resolved not by removing the material altogether but
> > moving it to the minority's page does not mean it was out of context
> > on the subject page - just that it gave undue weight by being there.
>
>Once again, we do exactly the same thing. The main principle should be text
>readability. If the text is readable and can carry a basic and clear
>information level, then it's okay. Jump tables will help the reader towards
>more clear texts, depending on his needs/likings.

Here here. Undue weight is about giving disproportionate information
about a minority view, not about excluding it completely.

Regards,
Ian Tresman


from_name: Molu Bosu Palit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:17:01 -0700, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

>They will presumably read Wikipedia in their first language. It's
>rather imperialist of us to presume that they should read the English
>language Wikipedia just because it's difficult for us to do
>translations--more imperialist, I dare say, than having [[Georgia]]
>as a disambiguation page.

  Your presumption is obviously wrong. My mother toungue is Bengali and Google offers its interface in Bengali, but I use the English interface because the Bengali version is of such a low quality. Similarly, the ENglish wikipedia is far better than Wikipedias in even those languages we do have a sizable one, so people will read it in English.

  Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users? Do we seek to be usable for the global population or for the American population? It seems from previous discussions that there's no consensus on this issue.

  Molu

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2?/min or less.


body:
On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can legally scan any image in the book and place it on Wikipedia.  I
> do not need to assume the validity of Bridgeman v. Corel in order to
> do so.

Perhaps but you do need to in order to tag it correctly.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> We make the primary name a disambiguation page if one use of a name
> does not completely overwhelm the other uses of the name.  In the case
> of Georgia, neither does - plenty of people will say 'Georgia' and
> mean the nation, and plenty more will say 'Georgia' and mean the
> state.

Hmm, depends which people, doesn't it.

I do note with interest from the naming conventions guideline "Names
of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors;
and for a general audience over specialists."

So I'm glad that what I was saying about readers wasn't totally off the mark.

Also, the established principle is apparently: "Generally, article
naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers
would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity,
while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and
second nature."

(which doesn't really add much to this debate, other than to show how
incredibly useful that [[template:policy in a nutshell]] is)

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-04-12

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

A database error has occurred
Query: SELECT  ll_lang,ll_title  FROM `parsertest_langlinks`  WHERE ll_from = '1'  FOR UPDATE
Function: LinksUpdate::getExistingInterlangs
Error: 1146 Table 'fiveralpha.parsertest_langlinks' doesn't exist (localhost)

Backtrace:
GlobalFunctions.php line 602 calls wfBacktrace()
Database.php line 473 calls wfDebugDieBacktrace()
Database.php line 419 calls Database::reportQueryError()
Database.php line 818 calls Database::query()
LinksUpdate.php line 535 calls Database::select()
LinksUpdate.php line 108 calls LinksUpdate::getExistingInterlangs()
LinksUpdate.php line 80 calls LinksUpdate::doIncrementalUpdate()
Article.php line 2272 calls LinksUpdate::doUpdate()
Article.php line 1246 calls Article::editUpdates()
parserTests.inc line 666 calls Article::insertNewArticle()
parserTests.inc line 144 calls ParserTest::addArticle()
parserTests.php line 54 calls ParserTest::runTestsFromFile()

<!-- Served by leuksman.com in 0.737 secs. -->


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Subversion web log of last X commits?

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Is there some way to reliably get a log of what's changed recently in
> the main tree through the web interface to Subversion?

I'm not sure offhand about finagling things out of ViewVC, but commit messages
are sent to a read-only mailing list:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-cvs/

Maybe we should rename it soon. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image deletion

body:
On 11 Apr 2006, at 12:42, Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> Of which 1600 have been marked for more than a week - admins, please!
>
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/report_orphan_fair_use.py

And they are such a load of rubbish too. We need to stop this stuff
from being uploaded. Maybe we should allow non-admins to delete
images...

Off to delete some more.

Justinc


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

> No need to specify the exact techniques used by the
> Egyptians (at least, not in this context, as a part of the pyramid
> article it would be very welcome to me), or the exact location where
> the aforementioned gravures have been found and what exactly they
> show. Report on the arguments, don't argue them.

LOL we are actually saying the very same thing. But with a different wording
:) See how difficult it gets, when we move from real examples to "politics"?
This is way policies are always at a loss, when one begins to discuss them.
They are so abstract that it's easy to think of whatever in the world. In
reality, we end up doing the very same thing: putting infos on different
articles and have the readers somehow informed of how they can get a deeper
information level on the subject, if they need it.

> In my opinion this IS undue weight. Giving small minority opinions on
> general pages is in my opinion undue weight to those opinions.

No, it's what google will do for the reader, if we do not do it ourselves.
But ten again, I'm speaking about a link, not about a full-fledged text
about all possible details. Something usual paper edition do with their "see
also" annotations. We simply suggest the existence of related information.
Then, info lists also do have an internal order, just as a search will give
you a percent of subject relevance. I do not see any problem in having a
jump-box stating three sections like
*related info
*minority views
*odd things

> That
> this is best resolved not by removing the material altogether but
> moving it to the minority's page does not mean it was out of context
> on the subject page - just that it gave undue weight by being there.

Once again, we do exactly the same thing. The main principle should be text
readability. If the text is readable and can carry a basic and clear
information level, then it's okay. Jump tables will help the reader towards
more clear texts, depending on his needs/likings.

B?rto


subject: [Wikitech-l] Mediawiki licenses

body:
Felipe Pablos wrote:
> Hi, my name is Felipe Pablos, and I build a license extension for mediawiki
> 1.4.7. Now I have seen that Wikimedia Commons has a license extension quite
> similar to the one i developed. I have time problems to adapt my extension
> to new versions of mediawiki, but i would be great if the commons license
> extension were available and configurable. Could some one tell me where is
> the code of Commons' licenses if it is available?

It's not an extension, it's built-in.

Add the scary structured data to [[MediaWiki:Licenses]].

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: James D. Forrester

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

Fastfission wrote:

> Well, the UK is a place in particular where the issue raised in
> Bridgman v. Corel has not been ironed out one way or another.

Hmm. Possibly. The relevant sections [0] of the CDPA[1] are quite
clear[2], so the question is whether they are applicable:

| 1. (1) Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with
|        this Part in the following descriptions of work?
|
|        (a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,

[...]

| 4. (1) In this Part "artistic work" means?
|
|        (a) a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage,
|            irrespective of artistic quality,
  [...]
|        (c) a work of artistic craftsmanship.

It is, AIUI, this last part, s. 4(1)(c), that museums claim mean that
anyone taking a photograph of a painting (or whatever) has used his
"artistic craftsmanship" to do so; the "mechanical reproduction"
argument of Bridgman v. Corel could arguably be discounted by the
reference to it being "irrespective of artistic quality" - a perfect
reproduction has on its own no artistic quality to speak of, merely that
of the original (which is probably quite high, or the photographer
wouldn't have bothered, Ms. Tracey Emin's oeuvre aside[3]).

[0] - Sections under Crown Copyright, reproduced under s.29 (or perhaps
      s.30, if one were to be kind about the worth of my words).
[1] - That is, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:
      http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_1.htm.
[2] - Well, they are to my eye, though perhaps I'm a tad odd. OK, make
      that "very odd". :-)
[3] - My apologies (and deepest sympathies) to any fans of Ms. Emin.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> So we translate en. articles into other languages--and deal with the
> issues of non-English speakers *then*. You denounce people for being
> arrogant Americans because they want [[Georgia]] to be a
> disambiguation page, but then you suggest that non-English speakers
> should read Wikipedia through *machine translations of the English
> edition*!?

Hi Philip,
  I don't think I denounced any arrogant Americans. And if I did, I'm
not sure what double standard would be committed by suggesting to a
speaker of some non-Wikipedia-fied language that he read the English
Wikipedia, rather than wandering in the ignorant wilderness.

But that's ok.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Macedonia]]
>
> Should it point to the Greek administrative region, the modern
> country, the ancient kingdom, or the geographic region?

You were probably asking me. I answer: The country.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Interestingly, this is the same way I feel about your comments about
> sovereignty. Sovereignty is a political fiction--population is a
> reality.

A very encyclopaedic kind of political fiction.

Steve


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> To continue to be a complete pain in the arse, I would have to ask
> what you mean by "consensus on this issue". Who was asked? If you
> asked a group of Australians whether Wikipedia should be biased
> towards Australia or be unbiased, I'm not sure we would come up with
> "consensus" either.

While I see your point, I'm not sure if 'consensus' as you specify it
here is possible to achieve or even possible to know.  I'm also not
sure if it has much practical purpose.

In effect, you're wondering if consensus should be defined as the
consensus of humanity as a whole, rather than interested Wikipedians.
(am I right?)

Unfortunately, you don't have humanity as a whole chiming in.  We work
with what we have, which is Wikipedians plus our insights into the
needs of our users, such as they are.

-Matt


from_name: europanto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
If you say "Ich anderen than cioccolato mas bonbons prefer" no one will
understand either.

I suppose you've heard of that ? : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Anyway, I'm not the one supposed to be here talking about Europanto. It's
not my "r?le".

smh
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Europanto-t1056989.html#a3877486
Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Drini drini wrote:

>Another example in case:
>[[Image:Milaria Scotia Regium 1595.jpg]]
>the website license from where ti was taken specifically states you have to
>ask for a license, it got released "for educational non commercia purposes"
>(so it should be deleted per Jimbo's rule from last year), it's not being
>used on an article, yet IFD and WP:CP  said the image should stay (due to
>PD-art)
>
Putting such notices is often meaningless.  Wheteher somethng is
copyright or not has nothing to do with the notices except when those
notices would make the material more free than it otherwise would have been.

Ec


body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 4/11/06, Mak <makwik at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>According to a number of librarians I've spoken with, a number of US Museums
>>and libraries would differ with you on that.
>>
>>
>If the work is out of copyright, they can only do that by requiring
>agreement to a legally valid and binding contract before letting you
>see the work.  This is the case worldwide, in most cases.  Nations
>differ as to whether an accurate 2D copy is itself copyrightable, but
>my understanding of the law is that once something is out of
>copyright, it can be legally copied unless you sign a contract stating
>you won't.
>
>If an 'unauthorised' copy is made, the issue is almost entirely one of
>contract law, not copyright law.
>
>I'm uncertain of what the legal position is if the owner of a work
>insists that "since we require everyone accessing this work to agree
>to a contract, this copy must be illegal" but fails to identify who
>was in breach of their contract and thus prove the breach of contract.
>
There is also a question of how binding a contract is on third parties.
If you break your contract by passing the image to someone else to
publish, only you are in breach of contract.

Ec


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On Apr 11, 2006, at 11:31 PM, Molu Bosu Palit wrote:

> Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of
> WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is
> this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes
> of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users?

Systematic bias is not at issue here. Systematic bias is the tendency
to fail at NPOV or comprehensiveness due to the knowledge set of our
contributors. This is not a content issue--this is an organizational
issue. Issue should be organized for the greatest convenience for the
greatest number of consumers.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
rolling auf le pavamiento riendo !

smh
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Europanto-t1056989.html#a3878627
Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOClimit

body:
They do on en:  don't know about others.

On 4/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> {{TOCright}} exists? I am pleasantly stunned.
>
> Steve
>
> On 4/12/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >...
> > > And honestly, we have to stop worrying about whether edit wars will
> > > break out every time we propose a new feature :)
> > >
> > > PS Magnus, {{LIMITTOC|3}} would be fine - for a minute there I thought
> > > you were telling me about an existing feature and I got all excited :)
> > >
> > I'd prefer {{TOClimit|3}} to match existing documentation for {{TOCleft}}
> > and {{TOCright}}, that will make it easier for folks to remember.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Tim Starling schrieb:
>
>>Magnus Manske wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I just saw the de.wikipedia article about the pKB value, which:
>>>* looks like "PKB"
>>>* should look like "pKB"
>>>This looks pityful, and the note that it can't be shown otherwise for
>>>technical reasons doesn't really help the matter.
>>>
>>>I suggest the implementation of a new magic template:
>>>    {{DISPLAYTITLE|HTML-encoded title}}
>>>which will change the display of the title. I am aware that it would be
>>>a potential target for vandals, but hey, what on wikipedia isn't?
>>>
>>>I'd be willing to implement it if there's no major objection.
>>>
>>
>>The Chinese Wikipedia actually has this already. The syntax is -{T|Title goes here}- . The intended
>>application is to change the display title depending on the selected language variant. For example,
>>the Chinese Wikipedia main page has this:
>>
>>-{T|zh-cn:??;zh-tw:??;zh-hk:??;zh-sg:??}-
>>
>
> Is this an extension, or in the main code already?

It's in LanguageConverter.php.

>Could it be tweaked
> to work without "en:"?

It works without the language code already.

>Does it allow for HTML to be rendered in the title?

Hopefully not, that would be unsafe.

> More importantly, could it be changed to use the more "wiki standards"
> (if there is such a thing) {{T|Title}} style?

The language converter has its own syntax, because there was a need for compact representation of
characters in different scripts, the simplest of which is literal escaping, e.g. "???8?-{?}-".
I don't think changing it would be the right way to go, rather we could add a more verbose synonym
to support this quite different application.

That is to say, assuming we support it at all. Like Brion, I'd rather maintain the ability to create
links by copying and pasting from the H1 element. The only alternative appears to be to copy the URL
and fix the underscores, which is tedious. Even more tedious when the title contains non-ASCII
characters and you haven't got a browser which decodes URL escaping for you.

We could conceivably allow freeform titles, but offer the canonical title as a subtitle or footer
element. Would that be an acceptable balance between usability for editors and presentation quality?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think Daniel really meant a different word than 'unknown'.
> Georgia-the-SSR was rarely MENTIONED, and if it was, it was rare for
> it to be mentioned in non-specialist circles outside a little piece of
> trivia about Stalin's birthplace.

Yes, but the same is true of Georgia the US state, so that doesn't get
us anywhere.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brian Anderton

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews IOTM for April- Time & date

body:
I'm pleased to announce that Ethan Zuckermant has accepted a request
for an Interview with Wikinews.

We will be doing research and developing questions at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Interview_of_the_month/April_2006_Questions

Time and date: 1900 UTC, 28th April

Suggestions are being taken for May, please make your May suggestions
now. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Interview_of_the_month )

Brian


list: wikimedia-l


body:
geni wrote:

>On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I can legally scan any image in the book and place it on Wikipedia.  I
>>do not need to assume the validity of Bridgeman v. Corel in order to
>>do so.
>>
>>
>Perhaps but you do need to in order to tag it correctly.
>
But what can legally be done according to copyright law and Wikipedia
tagging are separate issues.

Ec


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Toolserver-l] account activity review
	[IMPORTANT]

body:
I had several emails in my inbox this morning because my tools were
returning incorrect data.

It appears that about 6 hours ago enwiki, and only enwiki, stopped
replicating. I now see that the Wikimedia developers have moved enwiki
to its own cluster without warning or coordination. Not like they'd
have anyone to warn: If I can't contact someone with authority, no
doubt that they are unable as well.

Based on the prior track record I expect this to never be fixed, just
as text replication was never fixed and the replication of the asia
cluster wikis was never fixed.

Toolserver had become mostly useless for many of my projects without
high speed text access, now it is almost completely useless for all of
my projects... and I'm tired of catching flack for the unreliability
of the server. People have depended on the tools I provided, but are
constantly let down by the unreliability of the service.

When I was granted access and when I spent many hours writing software
I had an expectation that someone would be at least trying to maintain
the system. I never expected that it would be ignored, that my work
would go to waste, and that if I offered to do the work I too would be
ignored. When I provided tools that allowed enwiki users to adjust
their processes and work more effectively, I believed that they could
rely on these tools working most of the time. I understand now that I
was mistaken.

I am tired of wasting my time.

Because I can't even expect the nonexistent toolserver administration
to perform the trivial action of turning off my account, I have
deleted my ssh authorized key... thus my account is effectively
disabled.  So don't worry, you can go on doing nothing.

On 4/10/06, kate at zedler.knams.wikimedia.org
<kate at zedler.knams.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> hello,
>
> the account expiration date was originally scheduled for April 1st, but has
> been extended to May 1st.  on this date, all accounts will expire (and no
> longer be usable) except those which have had the expiration date extended.
>
> if you have an account, and you would like to keep it:
>  - if you have one or more working projects, please describe these (preferably
>    with examples, URLs, etc.)
>  - if you do not yet have anything ready (particularly if you're a new user),
>    please describe what you intend to work on.  a rough estimate of when you
>    expect it to be ready would be useful.  if some issue is holding you up
>    (e.g. lack of text access), please mention that.
>
> if you no longer wish to use your account, please say so.
>
> this information should be mailed to <dab at daniel.baur4.info> and cc'd to
> <zedler-admins at wikimedia.org>.  (there's no particular deadline, but if you
> wait until one day before the expiration, you might find that your account
> expires because no-one managed to look at it yet...)


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Toolserver-l] account activity review [IMPORTANT]


body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>E.g. I have a copy of the 1922 Locomotive Cyclopedia of American
>Practice.  Being published and printed in 1922, it is now out of
>copyright in the US - not only the original work being out of
>copyright, but any possible new copyright created by making the copy,
>since the copy I own is itself old enough to be independently out of
>copyright.
>
>I can legally scan any image in the book and place it on Wikipedia.  I
>do not need to assume the validity of Bridgeman v. Corel in order to
>do so.
>
>If Bridgeman v. Corel is overturned, then I can still copy MY copy of
>the book, but I cannot take someone else's scans from their website
>and use those.
>
If the original image was in the public domain there is nothing wrong
about your using someone else's scan of the image.  That other person's
scan of a public domain work is not copyrightable.

Ec


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Fastfission wrote:
>
>
>>Since Bridgeman v. Corel currently IS the law (whether the archivists
>>like it or not) and has BEEN the law for the past six years, I think
>>we shouldn't be too worried about using it. In any event, if something
>>horrible happened which changed the legal situation we can always go
>>back over the images tagged as such and delete them.
>>
>>
>While I am of course sympathetic, it bears repeating that Bridgeman v.
>Corel is *not* binding authority, as it was merely a district court case.
>
It may not be binding outside of that district or on any higher court
but it is influential as long as no contrary decision has been issued.
As someone else has noted it has not been appealed, and that may very
well be because the losers in the district court were convinced that
such an appeal would get nowhere.  Saying that is was "merely" a
district court case does not mean that we cannot rely on it to some extent.

Ec


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
At 17:20 +0200 10/4/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>Hi all,
>   Just came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Georgia . It is
>obvious beyond words to me that [[Georgia]] should be the country, and
>the US state should be at something like [[Georgia (US State)]].
>However, an ongoing poll evenly ties between that, and keeping Georgia
>is a disambiguation page.
>
>I find this sad. :(
>
>Steve

Indeed. Meanwhile, over on the Commons...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates#Delisting_candidates

http://tinyurl.co.uk/8cfk

Delisting candidates that were voted to "Featured Picture" status by
voting again?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
At 11:49 -0700 10/4/06, Matt Brown wrote:
>On 4/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Ohh, come on, there's a huge difference between Georgia the Country
>>  and Georgia the State. Georgia is a WHOLE country. Like, bigass, we
>>  got troups, "why don't we take this outside, former Soviet
>>  country-style", international trade, country.
>>
>>  Disambigging those two would be like disambigging "Paris" to separate
>>  "Paris, Texas" and "Paris, France". This is the worst kind of
>>  US-centrism.
>
>(English) Wikipedia does not decide such things by a taxonomic
>classification of importance.
>
>It decides it by the purely practical matter of seeing if one usage so
>outweighs other usages that it deserves the primary topic.  Among
>users of the English language, the US State is referred to at least as
>often as the nation.
>
>Probably, in fact, more so, but that's not important.  What matters
>from the point of view of primary topic disambiguation is whether one
>use of a word OVERWHELMS other uses.  In the case of 'Georgia', this
>test is failed both ways.  Neither the state nor the nation so
>overwhelms the word that either should have the primary topic.
>
>A quick look at the Wikipedia articles tells us that Georgia the state
>has a significantly greater population than Georgia the nation,
>besides ... which just shows the futility of basing this on
>'importance', because in many cases it will be impossible to reach
>agreement.
>
>-Matt

Therein lies the rub. Disambiguation would disappear if we verified links.

[[Georgia]] should not exist at all (apart from the disambiguation
page), but [[Georgia, State (US)]] and [[Georgia, Country]] would be
extant nodes, to which we would link, viz.

[[Georgia State (US)|Georgia]]
[[Georgia Country |Georgia]]

Many peoples names are richer examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wilson_%28disambiguation%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_ambiguous_human_names

And so

[[Richard L. Wilson (journalist)|Richard Wilson]]
[[Richard Wilson, Sculptor |Richard Wilson]]

would be correct links.

But [[Richard Wilson]] would not be a biography page; it would be a
disambiguation page only.

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Felipe Pablos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mediawiki licenses

body:
Hi, my name is Felipe Pablos, and I build a license extension for mediawiki
1.4.7. Now I have seen that Wikimedia Commons has a license extension quite
similar to the one i developed. I have time problems to adapt my extension
to new versions of mediawiki, but i would be great if the commons license
extension were available and configurable. Could some one tell me where is
the code of Commons' licenses if it is available?

Thanks


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
At 12:00 +0200 11/4/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 4/11/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  > Yes, this IS english-speaker-centric, but the very fact of writing an
>>  > encylopedia in English is already deciding to do that.
>>
>>  Thank you.  This is a beautiful way of expressing something I've been
>>  thinking about for some while.
>
>Can you elaborate? Perhaps we should decide if we really want this
>bias, or not? [[WP:CSB]] thinks we don't.
>
>Question: To use Jimbo's well-worn poor African once again, what does
>he expect? Georgia the country, or Georgia the state? Does he care
>that most Wikipedians are American, British, Canadian, etc? Should he
>just grateful for whatever information he can get, regardless of whose
>biases, interests and prejudices it reflects? Should he not be
>concerned if, when he looks up Zaire, he comes up with a suburb in
>Arizona?
>
>I did not raise this issue to bash Americans. Nor would I have a
>complaint if a state in the US were disambig'ed with a terristory in
>Pakistan. But for a mere state in the US to be considered somehow
>"equal" in importance, interest, searchability as a *country* just
>seems wrong. I'm really having trouble putting into words exactly why
>I feel that way, so I'll leave it for a bit and come back to it.
>
>[[WP:CSB]] really is worth a read.
>
>Steve

And also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_%28disambiguation%29

:-)

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
At 10:56 -0700 11/4/06, Matt Brown wrote:
>On 4/11/06, Mikkerpikker <mikkerpikker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  And I donnu, but the state of Georgia doesn't have a vote at the UN
>>  General Assembly, nor is it a member of the WTO, nor is it sovereign,
>>  nor is it... My personal view is Georgia (country) should be the main
>>  article and that we're seeing some clear US-centrism in elevating some
>>  random sub-national entity to the level of a sovereign state.
>
>Once again, you are assuming that Wikipedia's naming convention should
>be by some taxonomic scheme of importance.
>
>That isn't how it works.
>
>We make the primary name a disambiguation page if one use of a name
>does not completely overwhelm the other uses of the name.  In the case
>of Georgia, neither does - plenty of people will say 'Georgia' and
>mean the nation, and plenty more will say 'Georgia' and mean the
>state.
>
>-Matt

I made that suggestion is recent communication to this august email
group. My idea is that there is never a primary page. All edits must
check for the correct person, place, etc.

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> And not the kingdom that at one time controlled the entire civilized world?

I would have a preference for currently existing
objects/countries/people taking precedence. But only a preference. And
it could certainly be because where I come from, Macedonia the country
is fairly frequently in the news...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> If one does a Google search for "Georgia", it is not until one finds the CIA
> World Factbook page, the seventh down on the page, that one sees anything
> about the country. It is not until the fourth page of results that one finds
> another page relating to the country -- the Wikipedia article on it. I know
> Google is not the most reliable indicator for these sorts of things, but it
> seems pretty clear what the English term most often refers to on these here
> internets.

I don't suppose you were using the American Google by any chance were you? :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Molu Bosu Palit <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users? Do we seek to be usable for the global population or for the American population? It seems from previous discussions that there's no consensus on this issue.

To continue to be a complete pain in the arse, I would have to ask
what you mean by "consensus on this issue". Who was asked? If you
asked a group of Australians whether Wikipedia should be biased
towards Australia or be unbiased, I'm not sure we would come up with
"consensus" either.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> It's not that. It's that the onus shouldn't be on the reader to
> translate en. for himself: the onus is on us to translate en. for him.

Sure. But that's taking a while. In the meantime...

Steve


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] enwiki split

body:
Hello,

> The English Wikipedia database has now been moved to its own
> dedicated server cluster. The master is
> db3, the slaves are db4 and ariel. This was done to reduce write
> load and improve cache efficiency.
> Commons is not replicated to the new cluster, instead we've set up
> a system based on "query groups"
> to send commons reads to the main cluster.

There're several implications/issues right now.

Only 3 servers are in enwiki pool at the moment, we'll see if, how
and when it needs to be expanded :) (at least now we've got to deal
with tens of gigabytes rather than hundreds of gigs ;-)

Toolserver replication is surely broken. Sorry!

No cross-db queries should be considered. Commonswiki database is no
longer replicated to enwiki-only servers.

BTW, we still have an option to split enwiki load into task-based
ones, so that we could have even more scalability with our current 10k
$-grade db servers.  =) But it will take a while to reach that.

BR,
Domas


subject: [Wikitech-l] TOClimit

body:
{{TOCright}} exists? I am pleasantly stunned.

Steve

On 4/12/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >...
> > And honestly, we have to stop worrying about whether edit wars will
> > break out every time we propose a new feature :)
> >
> > PS Magnus, {{LIMITTOC|3}} would be fine - for a minute there I thought
> > you were telling me about an existing feature and I got all excited :)
> >
> I'd prefer {{TOClimit|3}} to match existing documentation for {{TOCleft}}
> and {{TOCright}}, that will make it easier for folks to remember.


body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Fastfission wrote:
>
>
>>Well, the UK is a place in particular where the issue raised in
>>Bridgman v. Corel has not been ironed out one way or another.
>>
>>
>Hmm. Possibly. The relevant sections [0] of the CDPA[1] are quite
>clear[2], so the question is whether they are applicable:
>
>| 1. (1) Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with
>|        this Part in the following descriptions of work?
>|
>|        (a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,
>
>[...]
>
>| 4. (1) In this Part "artistic work" means?
>|
>|        (a) a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage,
>|            irrespective of artistic quality,
>  [...]
>|        (c) a work of artistic craftsmanship.
>
>It is, AIUI, this last part, s. 4(1)(c), that museums claim mean that
>anyone taking a photograph of a painting (or whatever) has used his
>"artistic craftsmanship" to do so; the "mechanical reproduction"
>argument of Bridgman v. Corel could arguably be discounted by the
>reference to it being "irrespective of artistic quality" - a perfect
>reproduction has on its own no artistic quality to speak of, merely that
>of the original (which is probably quite high, or the photographer
>wouldn't have bothered, Ms. Tracey Emin's oeuvre aside[3]).
>
>[0] - Sections under Crown Copyright, reproduced under s.29 (or perhaps
>      s.30, if one were to be kind about the worth of my words).
>[1] - That is, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:
>      http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_1.htm.
>[2] - Well, they are to my eye, though perhaps I'm a tad odd. OK, make
>      that "very odd". :-)
>[3] - My apologies (and deepest sympathies) to any fans of Ms. Emin.
>
>
My apologies for not being familiar with Ms. Emin.

The way I would read "irrespective of artistic quality" it is to protect
even bad artists.  This allows the drawings of a 3-year old to be
protected, and prevents the argument that something is not good enough
to be protected.  An interesting case would be over copyrights on the
paintings by the elephants in the San Diego Zoo.  Would an elephant be
capable of exercising artistic craftsmanship?

The fact that the Bridgeman v. Corel situation has not been ironed out
in Britain cannot be taken as support for either side of the argument.
Subsection 4(c) at first strikes me as a redundancy unless it can be
taken to apply prospectively to other formats that are not specified in
(a) or (b).  I think that any photograph that we may be considering
would pass the test in section 4, but it must still pass the originality
test specified in paragraph 1(1)(a).

BTW does this copy of the Act include amendments since 1988?  I see that
it still shows copyright duration as being life + 50.  Why have I
misunderstood that it would be life + 70?

In any event given the fuss that the museums of Britain have been making
over this issue, it is amazing that there would be no British court
decision on this.  It would, of course, be up to them to initiate any
infringement procedings.  In the absence of such proceedings they have
an infinite capacity to roar like paper tigers for as long as people are
willing to take that roar seriously.  Unfortunately, as Wikipedia gets
bigger it becomes less courageous in taking on these ruffians, because
it has assets that it could lose.  It would be helpful to have a
litigation-proofed organization that operates at arms length to
Wikipedia, and that could openly inspire the museums into taking legal
action.

Ec


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
> If you say "Ich anderen than cioccolato mas bonbons prefer" no one will
> understand either.

Actually, I did understand it.

--
Ausir


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> Many peoples names are richer examples.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wilson_%28disambiguation%29
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_ambiguous_human_names

Yep. I'd never heard of the American [[Jack Thomspon]] until the
recent controversy on Wikipedia. Then again, I doubt most Americans
have heard of the Australian [[Jack Thomspon (actor)]].

Steve


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
G'day Phil,

> On Apr 11, 2006, at 10:02 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>If the Americans had done the right thing and called it New Georgia to
>>follow the pattern that was started with Hampshire, York and Jersey we
>>wouldn't be having this problem.  Nobody complains about the name
>>South
>>Georgia except perhaps the Argentinians.
>
> Georgia wasn't named after the country of Georgia, it was named after
> King George II.

George II ... that's the one who *isn't* The British Tyrant, right?

(Congratulations on recognising additional Georges, old boy.)

--
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: 268.4.1/308 - Release Date: 11/04/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
G'day Mark,

> On 4/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 4/11/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>[[Macedonia]]
>>>
>>>Should it point to the Greek administrative region, the modern
>>>country, the ancient kingdom, or the geographic region?
>>
>>You were probably asking me. I answer: The country.
>
> And not the kingdom that at one time controlled the entire civilized world?

[[Rome]].

C'mon.

--
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: 268.4.1/308 - Release Date: 11/04/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Imagine, for example that instead of a 60-60 on the poll, the result
> had been 40-80. Or, it had been advertised on other Wikipedias (as if
> it mattered that much). Or something.

Which is why I believe my personal policy of "if there's any
controversy at all, make the primary name a disambiguation page"  is
the correct one.  Otherwise, we are choosing a bias to agree with;
we're telling one bunch of people "Your bias that your one is the more
important is correct" and the other bunch of people "Your bias that
your one is the more important is WRONG".  I think that's a poor
message to be sending and goes against the Neutral Point of View
policy.

There are all kinds of ways that article names can convey a bias, but
this is one that we're better off avoiding.  And I think quoting the
NPOV principle in these cases is the way to go, and to emphasise that
putting all articles at an equal footing is NOT saying they're equal:
it's saying that Wikipedia does not, as editorial policy, take sides
on that dispute.

-Matt


body:
On 4/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
> >If Bridgeman v. Corel is overturned, then I can still copy MY copy of
> >the book, but I cannot take someone else's scans from their website
> >and use those.
> >
> If the original image was in the public domain there is nothing wrong
> about your using someone else's scan of the image.  That other person's
> scan of a public domain work is not copyrightable.

Ah, you're missing the point, or rather the IF statement that the rest
of the sentence depends on.  I personally believe the decision in
Bridgeman v. Corel is correct and that a scan, photograph, or other
"slavish copy" of 2-dimensional artwork does not create new copyright.

/However/, I was discussing the case IF Bridgeman v. Corel was
overturned and, say, Supreme Court precedent is set that even such a
slavish copy creates copyright, THEN you can't use other peoples'
scans without permission.

-Matt


from_name: Robert Rapplean

subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
Thanks, Gerard.  I took a look at the tool you mentioned.  I'm sure that it
would be very effective in encouraging multi-directional free form
discussion.  It looks extremely flexible.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't solve the problems that I'm trying to address.
Not on its own, anyway.  The consensus engine I designed is specifically
targeted towards limiting people's ability to "worm away" from an argument
that heads in a direction that's uncomfortable for them.  They either have
to counter their opponent's evidence, admit defeat, or resign the argument.
I personally think that it's terribly unfortunate that I have to use the
term "admit defeat" when refering to someone who has been presented with
adequate information to change their mind, but that's the way the majority
of arguers on the web think.

In order to do this, every person needs to be able to make one solid
statement of opinion on each issue presented.  These statements act as an
achor and focal point for all evidence to be presented for and against the
issue.  As an argument matures, these arguments will change.  However, and
this is a big however, each author must have ownership of their opinion.
It's acceptable to allow others to add suplementary opinions, but I'm
banking on the idea that the highest ranked opinion for a specific viewpoint
will take into account all other opinions both for and against.  Whether
they do or don't, these suplemental opinions will be displayed below the
highest rank, also for consideration.  In this way, we avoid the editing
wars that make Wikipedia such unfirm ground.

I do have plans to incorporate many of the features in LiquidThreads in the
"forum" section of the CE.  It's important to be able to follow people's
train of thought, and a lot of that helps.  Much of it, in fact, has been
included in various blog formats that I've seen, and even in various email
clients.  I also intend to include a new design for popularity ranking
system (tentatively refered to as "half-life popularity ranking) for both
posts in the forum and for individuals.  As evidenced on Slashdot, this
produces a very effective pre-sifting of content.

Again, thanks for showing me this, Gerard.  I always enjoy seeing what
others are doing in this direction.

-Robert Rapplean

On 4/6/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> This message is late in the already long line of messages on this
> subject. I do not know if Robert looked at LiquidThreads.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads It may seem like an old
> article, it is around since 2004, but the likelihood of it being
> developed is better than 90% at this time. If you are looking for a tool
> for more structured debate, have a look and if you have questions of
> remarks please let them be known.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 4/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
> >I'm uncertain of what the legal position is if the owner of a work
> >insists that "since we require everyone accessing this work to agree
> >to a contract, this copy must be illegal" but fails to identify who
> >was in breach of their contract and thus prove the breach of contract.
> >
> There is also a question of how binding a contract is on third parties.
> If you break your contract by passing the image to someone else to
> publish, only you are in breach of contract.

Indeed.  There are some instances in law when third parties are
brought into a suit and ordered to stop, and others where they're not.
 Although I've read extensively on the subjects of copyright, patent,
trademark and trade secret law, I am not a lawyer and have little
knowledge of contracts law, and thus what the likely outcome there is.

-Matt


from_name: Marek Najmajer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
me too!

/marqoz

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pawel Dembowski" <fallout at lexx.eu.org>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

>> If you say "Ich anderen than cioccolato mas bonbons prefer" no one will
>> understand either.
>
> Actually, I did understand it.
>
> --
> Ausir
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Tels wrote:
> How do you determine whether the parser currently runs for action=view or
> action=preview etc?

You don't. :)

The parser does not (or should not!) know anything about the outside environment.

> I would like to generate different output depending on whether my
> extension code is triggered for a preview, or for a save.

Please don't. Among other things, this defeats the purpose of a preview.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>> 3) It may have effect in places it shouldn't.
>>
>> Previews, background rendering, display of message chunks inside a special page,
>> etc might run the parser at many times other than a page view. This could lead
>> to inappropriate overwriting of the special page's title information.
>>
>> An immediate example is that the "Editing XYZ" message gets overwritten entirely
>> when previewing.
>>
> I've limited it to "$action == 'view'". That leaves some special pages.
> I'll write a workaround.

That's still extremely wrong. You should not attempt to divine anything about or
affect the outside environment from the parser.

In many cases rendering for future views happens at save time. It might also
happen from a command-line maintenance script or other background job.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] &action=edit??

body:
Birger wrote:
> 2006/4/12, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com>:
>> Without the "action=edit" part, MediaWiki will attempt to view the
>> article; this is the default action. When in this mode, the "preload"
>> parameter is ignored; it means nothing to the code, and the value
>> won't even be checked.
>
>
> Is there a possibility to change this, so that the "preload" parameter is
> not ignored without the "action=edit" part being present?

The "preload" parameter is *meaningless* when anything other than editing is
going on.

So, no. That's not possible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/12/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Systematic bias is not at issue here. Systematic bias is the tendency
> to fail at NPOV or comprehensiveness due to the knowledge set of our
> contributors. This is not a content issue--this is an organizational
> issue. Content should be organized for the greatest convenience for the
> greatest number of consumers.

Would you brook any exception to that? Would you go as far as putting
an entry under a misspelling if most consumers thought that was the
correct spelling?

Steve


body:
On 4/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> That's what happened to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_steamer
> anyway.  We now have all the "popular culture" cruft back in there,
> and still absolutely no reliable sources.  Unless you count the entry
> in the online dictionary of sex added by the well-known and trusted
> user "Anonymous", which some people apparently do.

In that case, what seems appropriate is moving the content into some
other article. There is clearly not enough verifiable information to
write a whole article, yet the topic is notable. No problem - make a
brief mention in another article.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> This pisses me off, actually.  We deleted the uncited list of obscure
> sexual terms (read: juvenile protologisms) and now we have a whole
> series of equally uncited articles on each one, which can't be deleted
> because that would be "censorship" and because they are on Teh
> Intarwebs, so it must be true.

Can't the article be phrased just as you put it. "These are found on
[[teh interweb]], but are likely to be [[urban legend]]s." Urban
legends can be notable too...

Steve


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOClimit

body:
on fr: too

g.

On 4/12/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> They do on en:  don't know about others.
>
> On 4/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > {{TOCright}} exists? I am pleasantly stunned.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > On 4/12/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > On 4/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >...
> > > > And honestly, we have to stop worrying about whether edit wars will
> > > > break out every time we propose a new feature :)
> > > >
> > > > PS Magnus, {{LIMITTOC|3}} would be fine - for a minute there I
> thought
> > > > you were telling me about an existing feature and I got all excited
> :)
> > > >
> > > I'd prefer {{TOClimit|3}} to match existing documentation for
> {{TOCleft}}
> > > and {{TOCright}}, that will make it easier for folks to remember.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Guillom
"Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom


from_name: Laurence Soixante-sept

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article about Wikipedia and the Bogdanov affair

body:
Hi,

  I have just written and published an article about Wikipedia on my web site (www.bogdanov.ch), more precisely about the circumstances in which I have been banned by trying to take part to the article "Bogdanov Affair".

  My article is entitled "Wikipedia et l'affaire Bogdanov : "encyclop?die libre" ou dictature virtuelle ?", which means : "Wikipedia and the Bogdanov affair : "free encyclopedia" or virtual dictatorship ?". It is in french... sorry, I cannot translate it by myself !

  I just hope I will not be censored by the moderators as I habe been by the Arbitrators on Wikipedia ! ;-)

  Laurence67 (talk page)

---------------------------------
 Faites de Yahoo! votre page d'accueil sur le web pour retrouver directement vos services pr?f?r?s : v?rifiez vos nouveaux mails, lancez vos recherches et suivez l'actualit? en temps r?el. Cliquez ici.


list: commons-l

from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Meta templates in other languages

body:
Ok thanks.

Brion Vibber skrev: Fredrik Josefsson wrote:
> We have been requested not to use meta templates. But
> they are used on the Commons a lot for other language.
> In the template Copyvio there's even two meta
> templates (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyvio ) .

There is absolutely nothing wrong with simple nested templates. The only problem
they ever had was updating properly when the nested templates are edited, and
that problem has been resolved.

> 1. Question: Is this really detremental for the server
> performance?

No.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l at wikimedia.org
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from_name: Russell Blackford

subject: [WikiEN-l] Omnipotence paradox

body:
Nice example of an article that has gone backwards, but the main thing it needed IMHO was the deletion of one large chunk of speculation in the popular culture section. I've made that deletion and copied the material, with an accompanying note,  on the talk page. I'll leave it to others to decide whether the image in that same section should be deleted. The rest of the pop culture stuff seems legit at first glance, even if it's understandably tiresome to some when serious articles drift in that direction.

The material that has gone missing from the earlier "good" version was a lot of stuff about Wittgenstein under the heading "Semantics". I think that whoever deleted it had a point. Perhaps it should be put back, but it really does seem of marginal relevance, so I have not done so at this stage. I'd have been more impressed by it if someone had found a passage where Wittgenstein specifically discusses the paradox.

It seems to me that this example does show how articles can deteriorate, at least in the short term, but there are also methods of addressing it when it happens.

Russell Blackford

www.russellblackford.com


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISPLAYTITLE

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
>
>
> 1) It breaks template inclusions.
>
> This *should* include a template:
> {{My template|value}}
>
> but instead it sets the display title to "value".
>
My bad, fixed.
>
> 2) Most of the time it won't have any effect.
>
> For some reason it's trying to set $wgOut's global title setting from the parser.
>
> Most page views come from the parser cache -- the parser *does not run* at the
> time when the user comes to look at it. It ran on a previous view, or when the
> page was saved, and any ephemeral changes to $wgOut have long ago vanished.
>
> To be useful at all, it would have to save the value into the ParserOutput
> object, and it would have to be retrieved from that output object (either
> immediately-rendered or from the cache) at display time.
>
I'll work on that.
>
> 3) It may have effect in places it shouldn't.
>
> Previews, background rendering, display of message chunks inside a special page,
> etc might run the parser at many times other than a page view. This could lead
> to inappropriate overwriting of the special page's title information.
>
> An immediate example is that the "Editing XYZ" message gets overwritten entirely
> when previewing.
>
I've limited it to "$action == 'view'". That leaves some special pages.
I'll write a workaround.
>
> Also I noticed a few weird bits in the code, such as this:
>   $st .= str_replace ( "$1", $t, wfMsg('displaytitle') );
>
> We removed this awkward construct a couple years ago, letting wfMsg() and
> friends accept parameters for replacements instead. It's generally much cleaner
> and more legible.
>
We have sooo many goodies nowadays, I keep forgetting... ;-)
Anyway, fixed.

Magnus

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from_name: Fastfission

body:
And we are hardly the only people out there to rely upon it or its
basic premises. There are far bigger fish with far bigger stakes than
us who rely on it (Corel as a case in point), and who would be far
bigger targets for legal litigation (since they actually derive
revenue from it). I would be wary about interpretations which diverge
beyond the actual subject matter ruled on in Bridgeman (i.e., I would
NOT assume it applied for stained-glass windows, because the element
of lighting would be a major creativity issue in that case, despite
their two-dimensionality), but since half a decade has passed without
appeal or contrary rulings I don't think we have any strong need to be
afraid, yet. But again, I'm not a lawyer.

FF

On 4/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Fastfission wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Since Bridgeman v. Corel currently IS the law (whether the archivists
> >>like it or not) and has BEEN the law for the past six years, I think
> >>we shouldn't be too worried about using it. In any event, if something
> >>horrible happened which changed the legal situation we can always go
> >>back over the images tagged as such and delete them.
> >>
> >>
> >While I am of course sympathetic, it bears repeating that Bridgeman v.
> >Corel is *not* binding authority, as it was merely a district court case.
> >
> It may not be binding outside of that district or on any higher court
> but it is influential as long as no contrary decision has been issued.
> As someone else has noted it has not been appealed, and that may very
> well be because the losers in the district court were convinced that
> such an appeal would get nowhere.  Saying that is was "merely" a
> district court case does not mean that we cannot rely on it to some extent.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Why voting *is* evil

body:
G'day Fastfission,

> And not to get on Georgia (the country's) bad side, but the state of Georgia
> actually has almost twice as many people living in it as the country does.
>
> Which means that if someone says "My grandmother was born in Georgia", in
> English, and without any other context, you probably are correct in assuming
> they mean the U.S. state and not the country, just based on the numbers
> alone.

Err ... maybe in America (I have noticed Americans don't seem to see the
need to specify nationality, presumably because anyone important is from
the USA).

If an Australian said "my grandmother was born in Georgia", they would
usually mean the country.  Otherwise, they'd say "my grandmother was
born in Georgia ... you know, in America".

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

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.1/308 - Release Date: 11/04/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

body:
On 4/11/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> Err ... maybe in America (I have noticed Americans don't seem to see the
> need to specify nationality, presumably because anyone important is from
> the USA).
>
> If an Australian said "my grandmother was born in Georgia", they would
> usually mean the country.  Otherwise, they'd say "my grandmother was
> born in Georgia ... you know, in America".

I'm just saying in terms of the likelihood of somebody speaking
English who said they were born in "Georgia". The odds are just
statistically higher that somebody saying that, knowing nothing else
about the context in which it was said, were born in the US state than
in the Eastern European country. I of course don't mean that to be
much of a convincing argument, but it was something which occurred to
me in response to an earlier comment.

FF


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
Hi All,

Is there some way to reliably get a log of what's changed recently in
the main tree through the web interface to Subversion?

I'm trying this URL:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/?view=log
... however more often than not it keeps timing out; but when it
succeeds, it gives me the history all the way back to April 2003 (a
huge log that is around 3.6 MB in size).

Is there for example some way to say "only show the last 50/100/200
commits", which presumably would avoid the timeout?

I had a look at:
http://www.viewvc.org/url-reference.html#log-view
... but I couldn't see a suitable magic incantation, so I'm suspecting
it may not be possible, but if anyone knows different please let me
know.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] &action=edit??

body:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{{Link}}}|preload={{{Preload}}}&action=edit}}

1) When I do not put "&action=edit"  in the code,  the preload-parameter
does not seem to work. Can someone explain why in this code the "
&action=edit" MUST be there in order for the preload-parameter to be passed?

2) Where in the MediaWiki source code is it possible to adapt "action=edit"?

Thanks!


body:
I've wondered what the best way is to deal with this sort of thing.
One might be to make FA status awarded to specific versions of the
article in a more direct way -- i.e. the FA template on the talk page
could link directly to the version which was voted to be featured, to
make comparisons with the current article easier.

Another is a better way of detecting bad edits. I've seen a lot of
really bad content sneak into high-visibility and highly-watched
articles because of the following pattern:

1. Editor X vandalizes an article once
2. Editor Y vandalizes the article three times
3. Admin Z reverts Editor Y, does not look at the edit of Editor X

This is especially prevalent when there is a small spate of vandalism.
I try to make sure I always check the current version against
something further down the page,  but it's hard to remember to do in
all cases. Perhaps if it was easier (i.e., with a single click and
without any looking at the history) to see the diff for the edits done
by the most recent five users (sorting it by user rather than edit
would make it easier to avoid skipping single bad edits)? Maybe if
there was a regularized system of evaluating many edits at a time and
screening them for problematic content? Maybe we need to find ways to
get around seeing histories as collections of single edits and rather
as clusters of edits? I don't exactly know. I'm just speculating
wildly here and not proposing anything concrete.

I don't think anyone thinks the wiki system is flawless in any
respect, or that infinite edits means an infinitely good article.
There are benefits and detriments, and a good working-philosophy is to
try and focus on ways in which can -- utilizing social, technological,
and other approaches -- try and boost the strengths of the positive
aspects and get around the negative ones. It's no more destined to
succeed than it is doomed to fail.

FF

On 4/11/06, Ben Greenberg <bengreenb at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Its simply naive to say that infinite edits means an infinitely good
> article.  If you dont believe that bad, non-vandalism edits take their toll
> on articles, I invite you to look at the Featured article review.  So many
> articles are ruined by people who simply aren't good at writing prose, and
> who enjoy adding useless factoids.  Articles quite often get worse-- if your
> idealism has you believing otherwise, please look at this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hip_hop_music&diff=41510779&oldid=36727078
>
> This should be a big wakeup call to anyone who thinks that the pure wiki
> system allows articles to get better indefinitely.  Unless we do something
> about it, wikipedia will simply be a place where articles get great then
> start to deteriorate.  I'm not suggesting stable versions, but surely...
> something needs to be done.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>