from_name: Redvers @ the Wikipedia

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Example of a user who should have been banned a
	long	time ago

body:
From: Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we have a way where we can scan talk pages for
> such warnings and
> come up with a record of those with 20+? I know
> AmiDaniel's
> vandalproof can look for warnings, and I'm sure
> there could be a
> similar function implemented.

I'm pretty sure it would mostly find IPs, which would
be meaningless for most pre-planned blocking, as we
would be unable to assess which were static and which
were dynamic in the same way we generally are now.

I personally like the idea of blocking the lot of them
and separating the sheep from the goats at our
leisure, but this is a *wiki* and we don't and can't
have this luxury. The benefits of having it outweigh
the problems we would have, except in one vital way:
we don't have enough excellent editors. If we prevent
en masse the the chaff, we will always catch some
wheat. And I speak as someone who has never, not even
once, not even by accident, edited without logging in.

There may be a couple, or a dozen, or even a thousand
account-holding editors who have had a set of repeated
warnings for various disruptions and could therefore
be streamed out by a bot. But then any sensible
blocking admin would check the talk page before
blocking anyway (and shame on both those that don't,
and those editors who complain if they do: which
someone did to me recently!) and see them and act
accordingly.

If the talk page has been blanked, a human editor
would check the history (one hopes). A bot could not
be expected to do so without making mistakes.

Certainly, a bot can't spot idiotic warnings from
trolls, which a qualified eye can, and generally does
- again I speak as someone who has suffered from mad
complaints from trolling users. And a bot can't spot
an idiot user who suddenly has touched the clue stick
and wised up, something a human /can/ do.

No. Bots have their place on Wikipedia, and I wouldn't
want to be without them. But no bot can substitute for
human intuition and judgment. Where such talents are
required, humans must be the ones to act.

-> REDVERS

___________________________________________________________
All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
A thousand? I can guarantee a whole lot more than 1000. How about I
build a prototype site to handle the petition where people can
register their Wikipedia username as someone supporting the petition?
It wouldn't be too hard, and if we can find hosting with reasonable
database space, we can build it, post about it on village pump /
community portal / whatever else. I bet we can get 10000 in a matter
of weeks.

On 9/12/06, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia users
> > sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any ideas?
> >
> Having all wikipedia users would be near-impossible, but I think it would be
> possible to drum up a thousand or so.
>
> Just about every time I've typed "wikipedia" wrong, i get a parked
> domain.... so it is an annoying problem, but is it worth the trouble?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Oh, and a google i'm feeling lucky for 'wikpedia' returns [[Bruno
Bettelheim]] :)

On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> A thousand? I can guarantee a whole lot more than 1000. How about I
> build a prototype site to handle the petition where people can
> register their Wikipedia username as someone supporting the petition?
> It wouldn't be too hard, and if we can find hosting with reasonable
> database space, we can build it, post about it on village pump /
> community portal / whatever else. I bet we can get 10000 in a matter
> of weeks.
>
> On 9/12/06, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia users
> > > sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any ideas?
> > >
> > Having all wikipedia users would be near-impossible, but I think it would be
> > possible to drum up a thousand or so.
> >
> > Just about every time I've typed "wikipedia" wrong, i get a parked
> > domain.... so it is an annoying problem, but is it worth the trouble?
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
"Ray Saintonge" wrote:
> At what point do we become subject to the law of diminishing returns?
> The possible variations on our different wikinames, national domains and
> undotted language codes could rapidly get completely out of hand.
>
> If a person cybersquats one of these names with malicious intent it's
> hard to imagine that he will be impressed by a petition with 1,000
> signatures.  Even when we manage to wrest one of these names away there
> comes a point where the cumulative burden of keeping all these names
> protected is just not cost effective.
>
> Ec

Even worse, i'd warn you that this can attract more people to cybersquatting
our domains, as we will be publicising this subject.


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> borderline cases.  If someone can bring forward evidence of clearly worthy
> articles failing (or conversely, of seriously troubled articles passing),
> please do so, but until such evidence is presented I don't find broad
> assertions like this particularly convincing.

I don't have hard evidence, but after four FACs I have no intention of
even trying any more. It's far, far too much effort for something that
doesn't seem to make the article that much better to me. If I wanted
to make better articles I'd just work my way through the FAC checklist
to my personal satisfaction and not bother running the gauntlet. Peer
Review is actually helpful but doesn't have people demanding
shrubberies.

(Possibly you will tell me it's gotten better since last year. I will
of course want evidence ;-p )

So when a writer's done their best to meet the criteria on the FAC
checklist (except maybe the vague and subjective 'exceptional' one),
is there a mechanism that will not feel like too much bloody work for
little gain?

- d.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Last minute media alert: Wikimedia on
 ABC's	Nightline tonight

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>US Wikimedians (and anyone who can get ABC): there will be a story
>about Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline tonight; those who were at
>Wikimania may remember seeing them filming. No, I don't know the focus
>of the story, but I'd be surprised if it were entirely rosy, given the
>show's usual fare. Check your local listings...
>
>(I was one of many interviewed for it and have no idea what they'll use.)
>
>-Kat
>who has to go find a TV set now
>
>
>
They started off "The Know-it-Alls and Can They be Believed".

Cynthia McFadden implies Wikipedia is "not serious", but "Wikipedia is
becoming a force" was a strong message.

They only claimed it supports "nine other languages".

"Glaring shortcomings" were emphasized and "Wikiality", Wales rebounded
majestically (except he ground his teeth when it was mentioned
ABC news did not consider it reliable).

4.3 seconds of coverage of Kat, but she did great.

Overall was VERY positive tone and coverage. There's no such thing as
bad publicity.

Jeff


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Logos continued, now with a WiktionaryZ edge.

body:
Hoi,
WiktionaryZ is not Wiktionary. It is a different project. The first logo
we had had more with Wikidata to do than with WiktionaryZ. So when this
proposal was made for a new logo, it was a easily better than the one
before. I was amused and touched that someone could come up with the
slogan: "WiktionaryZ, light in the darkness". Given that we are
pre-alpha and see a light at the end of the tunnel, I thought it was apt
for where we are. Our "International Beer Parlour" is called that way
because we wanted to emphasise that we ARE international, a beer parlour
is certainly a few steps up the ladder from a "kroeg". A kroeg is the
name of the place where the Dutch have their palavers. We also have a
place where we discuss bugs.. the "Insect room"..

WiktionaryZ is doing really well, it improves visibly, this week alone
we have had the first versioning: we now have history with our edits. We
have some experimental queries.. We have a new tool that allows
bureaucrats to add new languages.. We have added Mandarin, Min Nan,
Turkish, Latvian, English (United Kingdom), Persian and some more..

When you want to check WiktionaryZ out, you are welcome at
http://wiktionaryz.org.. add your Babel templates, read the articles on
the DefinedMeaning and we are happy to give you edit rights.. You can
also find us on IRC at #wiktionaryz.

Thanks,
     GerardM

Nicholas Moreau wrote:
> Oh gawd. Shouldn't WiktionaryZ's logo be similar to that of Wiktionary? Why
> does:
>
> http://wiktionaryz.org/new_logo
>
> even exist?
>
> Nick
>
> BTW, they call the village pump the "International Beer Parlour".
>
>
>
> On 9/12/06, foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org <
> foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Message: 7
>> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:55:17 +0200
>> From: "Erik Moeller" <eloquence at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests
>> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>> Message-ID:
>>         <b80736c80609120755l56081d44g3c8461eb31d5268f at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> On 9/12/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Familiarity in that case is dull.
>>>
>> I agree with Delphine here. The one exception I would make is the
>> Commons logo, since it has such a strong connection to Wikimedia as a
>> whole. However, I find the Wikispecies logo disappointingly mundane,
>> and cringed when I saw a "lamp of knowledge" design for Wikiversity in
>> the Wikimedia colors.
>>
>> Unfortunately, without divine intervention, the trend towards dull
>> logos seems unstoppable. Which will leave us with an inconsistent
>> mess, as usual. ;-)
>>
>> WiktionaryZ, by the way, has its own unique logo design:
>> http://wiktionaryz.org/
>>
>> Look, it even has a lens flare effect!  ;-)
>>
>> --
>> Peace & Love,
>> Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Felipe Sanches

subject: [Wikitech-l] Java applets for Wikiversity

body:
> because I can *not* draw a simple,
> arbitrary length arrow in JS without coding the actual rendering of the
> lines pixel by pixel. This is very underwhelming, so say the least!!
>
> If anybody knows differently, please educate me! But JS is just not
> appropriate for drawing any complex geometrical forms, like a "lab
> course" at Wikiversity will need.

once I have used a mediawiki extension that allows us to embed svg
files in the wikitext  inside a <svg></svg> tag. It allows you to
dinamically manipulate vectorial elements through javascript, which is
enabled inside the svg, even if mediawiki is (as it is by default)
blocking javascript on the page. I mean, inside the svg, javascript is
always allowed.

This can be used with svg enabled browsers to draw moving arrows,
rectangles, elipses, etc. (Firefox 1.5+ supports SVG, and IE needs a
plugin for that)

Juca


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > So when a writer's done their best to meet the criteria on the FAC
> > checklist (except maybe the vague and subjective 'exceptional' one),
> > is there a mechanism that will not feel like too much bloody work for
> > little gain?

> Might not an alternative be increasing the gain, rather than
> decreasing the work? ;-)

Oh, definitely. But basically, if I'm going to put in a FAC's worth of
work, I want to know what's in it for the article, or for me
bothering.

Good Articles was supposed to be a lightweight alternative, but
conspicuously isn't. So, same problem: what's in it for the article,
or for me bothering? The FA or GA mark is nice but doesn't seem to
justify the ridiculous slog.

To reach 100,000 FAs or GAs - at which point we could in fact look
Britannica in the eye on quality - will take a parallel process that
isn't turned into stupid amounts of effort for little or no reward.

- d.

- d.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> To reach 100,000 FAs or GAs - at which point we could in fact look
> Britannica in the eye on quality - will take a parallel process that
> isn't turned into stupid amounts of effort for little or no reward.
>
>
> - d.

Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
of it's good enough articles.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > To reach 100,000 FAs or GAs - at which point we could in fact look
> > Britannica in the eye on quality - will take a parallel process that
> > isn't turned into stupid amounts of effort for little or no reward.

> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> of it's good enough articles.

Yes, but because our servers are already melting hardly means it's
time to stop bothering.

- d.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> of it's good enough articles.

Alexa ratings are not everything.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> > of it's good enough articles.
> Alexa ratings are not everything.

Indeed. They're not even the topic of this discussion.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> > of it's good enough articles.

> True.  But being respectable is not really the same thing as being
> popular; and I was under the impression that the former was a more
> practical concern for us than the latter.

Fairly obviously, our real popularity comes from the social networking
possibilities of our userboxes.

Oh sorry, they were last year's thing. What's this year's? I forget.

- d.


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Last minute media alert: Wikimedia on ABC's
	Nightline tonight

body:
>From the program:

"1.3 million articles, and that's just the English version. Wikipedia
comes in 9 other languages."

-- nyenyec

On 9/12/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > US Wikimedians (and anyone who can get ABC): there will be a story
> > about Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline tonight;
>
>
> Then it's a shame I am boycotting ABC... I hope their "news" is more
> accurate than their docudramas
>
> those who were at
> > Wikimania may remember seeing them filming. No, I don't know the focus
> > of the story, but I'd be surprised if it were entirely rosy, given the
> > show's usual fare. Check your local listings...
> >
> > (I was one of many interviewed for it and have no idea what they'll use.)
> >
> > -Kat
> > who has to go find a TV set now
> >
> > --
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
> > mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
> > The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
> > -- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject:
[WikiEN-l] WikiPrint service - Could we make it easy to print
	out a selected category of Wikipedia for libraries etc.?

body:
There's already a site that does something like this, though I dont think
it's for institutions, more for private use.  See http://pediapress.com/

On 9/12/06, jasonspiro4 <jasonspiro4+news at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Huge libraries (large / U.S. Ivy League universities' libraries, public
> libraries in world-class cities, Library of Congress, etc.) spend
> unbelievable
> amounts of money on buying books and magazines every year. Books and
> magazines
> are great, but there are certain subjects with no relevant books or
> magazine
> articles available. Example: TV. For any popular TV show, Wikipedia has a
> main
> article and numerous subarticles on characters, episodes, and so on. For
> some
> subjects, Wikipedia is truly the best choice for information.
>
> I propose we band together and start a WikiPrint service. We could somehow
> make
> it easy for schools, corporations and libraries to print out subsets of
> Wikipedia: e.g. if they want a PDF of a whole category to send to an
> online
> print-on-demand shop, we compile the PDF for them, add a nice cover page
> etc.,
> and send it to the shop for them if they like. They would pay us for the
> service.
>
> I am not sure if this would be a for-profit service or a free service (e.g
> .
> part of the WikiPress system). For-profit would mean we would be able to
> promote ourselves more and we would be more motivated to do well.
>
> Would this be a useful / popular service? What kinds of customers would
> come to
> us? For example, a question for you librarians among us: would libraries
> be
> interested in such a service?
>
> Jason Spiro
> Computer programming student and Wikipedian
> Toronto, Canada
>
> --
> Jason Spiro: computer consulting with a smile.
> I also do computer training and spyware removal for homes and businesses.
> Call or email for a FREE 5-minute consultation. Satisfaction guaranteed.
> jasonspiro4 at gmail.com / 416-781-5938 / Skype ID: jasonspiro
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-13

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> > > of it's good enough articles.
> > Alexa ratings are not everything.
>
>
> Indeed. They're not even the topic of this discussion.
>
>
> - d.

They do however illustrate the conflict between providing what people
want (more articles on sex and pro wrestling apparently) and creating
what we believe should exist.

We've comparisons with Britannica are difficult because we are
different things. They work from the top down. We work from the bottom
up. They are to a large degree a general education. We are tending to
head towards the sum of all knowledge.

The sum of all knowledge. Before Wikipedia did anyone really think
what that meant?

Of the various Si-fi encyclopaedias they mostly appear to historic
encyclopaedias with expansions made for advances in science and the
discovery of new planets. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does
well in terms of realising there are areas of knowledge not normally
covered by such works but is of course famously light in it's coverage
of certain areas. Star trek's Memory Alpha does fairly well but it
apparently misses geography and some other areas (incidentally
[[Category:Fictional encyclopedias]] is seriously bare).

I don't think we really understand. And article on every school in
Africa? An article on every village in India?

Comparisons with Britannica are of limited use because we are not
doing what they are doing. We are doing something that has never been
done before.

--
geni


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] draft of WikiCreole 0.1 available for comment

body:
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:fbad4e140609120944j4ba1fa90xc002f99d56ad512f at mail.gmail.com...
> On 12/09/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > Thus, even in wiki syntax, a specification must define what constitutes
> > "valid" markup, and then define the behaviour for that valid mark-up.
>
> I think you are completely and utterly wrong on this. Every
> combination of wikitext has to be able to do something, because it is
> a *language*.

As Timwi says, the language specification needs to specify what is valid and
how those valid constructs should be interpreted.

The wiki engine needs to be able to handle all input that is given to it and
interpret the defined constructs according to the language definition.  It
may handle undefined constructs in any way it likes (though it should be
consistent within itself: same input = same output).

The same is true in English.  The sentence "I FEELING HAPPY" is invalid
English, according to the language, but would be understood by an English
speaker (the interpreter):

The markup "
This is bold
" is invalid HTML, but would be understood
by a web browser.

Note that in both of these examples there is some ambiguity in how the
invalid phrase could be interpreted (am I feeling one of the seven dwarves?)
but that the correct interpretation is also the most likely, so the
interpreter is able to guess. This is why 'pigeon english' or 'tag soup',
despite being technically incorrect, are usable in practice.

However, it is incorrect to assume that a language must be unambiguous.  For
example if I say 'I hate annoying people', do I dislike making people
annoyed, or do I dislike people who irritate me?

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Lorenzarius

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Hi all, there's a small list here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names#Typosquatted

Such a list definitely deserves its own page though.

On 9/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The only real way to find the problem domains would be to go out and search
> > for them manually I think. Maybe just a wiki list which people can add to?
>
>
> Sounds reasonable. Is it possible to search domain space, regexp or iteratively?
>
> Whatever happens - people shouldn't act on dodgy domains without
> Brad's say so. Vigilanteing would be a bad idea.

--
Larry Lo
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
Tel: +852 95825791


subject:
[WikiEN-l] 100,
	000 FAs as an achievable goal with a plan (was Contest and quality)

body:
On 13/09/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > We've comparisons with Britannica are difficult because we are
> > different things. They work from the top down. We work from the bottom
> > up. They are to a large degree a general education. We are tending to
> > head towards the sum of all knowledge.
> > The sum of all knowledge. Before Wikipedia did anyone really think
> > what that meant?

I pictured the entire non-fiction section of a library. How many
articles would that be? (I assume we'd split that across projects.)

> > Comparisons with Britannica are of limited use because we are not
> > doing what they are doing. We are doing something that has never been
> > done before.

Yep. I'm not sure Britannica get that.

I don't particularly want to destroy Britannica (though it's been
losing money for how many years) - that will be a completely
unintended side effect.

(May I say, by the way, I really like it when you answer with several
paragraphs instead of a one-liner. Do please continue.)

> While we not be able to necessarily make a comparison on the basis of
> content inclusion, there is still something to be said for establishing a
> reputation for quality on the order of Britannica. I think that was more
> what was intended than a comment on what articles are included.

I think the concept of a core area of coverage is valid. The FA
process clearly doesn't work for this so far - out of a thousand
articles, most are weird specialist things.

> Theoretically, every article on Wikipedia should be able to be brought to
> the level of featured article.

It's such a pity this is as unlikely to be recognised by GA as it is by FA.

> That goal (and the goal of even 100,000 FAs)

Now, that's I think what we need to quantify. Just what is that dream?

100,000 FAs. That means 100,000 articles that meet the FA criteria:

* It is well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable.
* It complies with the standards set out in the manual of style and
relevant WikiProjects, including:
   (a) a concise lead section that summarizes the entire topic and
prepares the reader for the higher level of detail in the subsequent
sections;
   (b) a proper system of hierarchical headings; and
   (c) a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents (see section help).
* It has images where appropriate, with succinct captions and
acceptable copyright status; however, including images is not a
prerequisite for a featured article.
* It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic
without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

[Note that some of these are factually inaccurate - you won't get
through FAC without images (who was commenting that they could always
tell a Featured Article by a pointless image?), for example.]

Do we want 100,000 of the above? Are all of these what we want our
articles to be? (Are these criteria what we're actually aiming for or
has the above list been subtly warped by the FAC process over the past
couple of years?)

Let's assume we have a list of criteria pretty close to the above. How
many editor-hours does it take to get an article up to that standard?
(Assume you're a clueful editor who can both research and write well,
and think you can at least give your own article a usable initial
assessment on this checklist.)

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] WikiPrint service - Could we make it easy to print out a
	selected category of Wikipedia for libraries etc.?

body:
Hi all,

Huge libraries (large / U.S. Ivy League universities' libraries, public
libraries in world-class cities, Library of Congress, etc.) spend unbelievable
amounts of money on buying books and magazines every year. Books and magazines
are great, but there are certain subjects with no relevant books or magazine
articles available. Example: TV. For any popular TV show, Wikipedia has a main
article and numerous subarticles on characters, episodes, and so on. For some
subjects, Wikipedia is truly the best choice for information.

I propose we band together and start a WikiPrint service. We could somehow make
it easy for schools, corporations and libraries to print out subsets of
Wikipedia: e.g. if they want a PDF of a whole category to send to an online
print-on-demand shop, we compile the PDF for them, add a nice cover page etc.,
and send it to the shop for them if they like. They would pay us for the
service.

I am not sure if this would be a for-profit service or a free service (e.g.
part of the WikiPress system). For-profit would mean we would be able to
promote ourselves more and we would be more motivated to do well.

Would this be a useful / popular service? What kinds of customers would come to
us? For example, a question for you librarians among us: would libraries be
interested in such a service?

Jason Spiro
Computer programming student and Wikipedian
Toronto, Canada

--
Jason Spiro: computer consulting with a smile.
I also do computer training and spyware removal for homes and businesses.
Call or email for a FREE 5-minute consultation. Satisfaction guaranteed.
jasonspiro4 at gmail.com / 416-781-5938 / Skype ID: jasonspiro


body:
Oh - and when I speak of 100,000 Featured Articles, I quite definitely
don't mean articles that run the gauntlet of FAC as it presently
stands. I just read all of this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates

That's just from the last month. Note the excellent start, where
someone complaining about the idiocy of the process is told to go away
and learn to write ... and has to point out to the objectors that he'd
just scored a couple of FAs.

Any process that promotes this much bile and vitriol is fundamentally
damaging to Wikipedia's community operation and in need of severe
process-culling for sheer poisonousness.

Perhaps from the Arbitration Committee. If only one of them was the
Featured Articles Director ...

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 9/13/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> It violates the KISS principle. That means humans have now to match/balance
> * on a line to find out whether a leading * will make a list, or something
> bold etc. Ugh.

They would have to balance *double* asterisks only.  The assumption is
that these will virtually never occur except when intended to be
markup.  Since bolding markup is normally used in matched pairs,
there's not really any problem except if someone habitually fails to
close their bold markup, and unclosed bold markup probably shouldn't
render as bold altogether (to force people to match asterisks *all*
the time so they don't get confused when it doesn't work at the
beginning of a line).


subject:
[Wikitech-l] importDump.php error,
	WikiRevision given a null title in import.

body:
On 9/13/06, Noah Spurrier <noah at noah.org> wrote:
> I edited includes/DefaultSettings.php

Don't edit DefaultSettings.  It's called "default" for a reason.  Any
changes you make will be overwritten if/when you upgrade.  Add the
line to LocalSettings--that's what it's for.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
>> of it's good enough articles.
>>
>
> True.  But being respectable is not really the same thing as being
> popular; and I was under the impression that the former was a more
> practical concern for us than the latter.
>

I'd personally be more interested in being *useful*, which is an
eminently practical concern.  From that perspective, a lot of different
things are important.  Having "good enough" articles on as wide a range
of subjects as possible is definitely high up on the list---we provide
information that is difficult to come by otherwise.  Having very good
articles, especially on frequently-consulted topics or topics where
errors would be more problematic (biographies; national/ethnic disputes;
technical subjects) is another important consideration.  More to the
point, it's quite helpful to allow a reader to quickly identify how good
we think an article is.

It's not clear to me what role, if any, the GA/FA process plays in any
of these concerns.  It doesn't tell a reader which articles are good,
because it rates articles as a whole rather than revisions---FA status
provides no guarantee that the current article is any better than a
similar-looking non-FA article.  It appears to provide only a moderate
and highly beaurocratic method of encouraging article improvement in the
first place.  On the whole I'd say I personally never pay attention to
whether an article is "featured", and I don't know anyone else who does
either.  It simply doesn't solve any of the practical problems that come
up when reading Wikipedia.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Squatted_Wikimedia_domains

I just copied the list from [[m:Domain names]], could tidy up the format more.

On 9/13/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about starting a list on Meta, then putting a call out on "Goings-on"?
>
> Andrew Archer
>
> On 12/09/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all, there's a small list here
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names#Typosquatted
> >
> > Such a list definitely deserves its own page though.
> >
> > On 9/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > The only real way to find the problem domains would be to go out and
> > search
> > > > for them manually I think. Maybe just a wiki list which people can add
> > to?
> > >
> > >
> > > Sounds reasonable. Is it possible to search domain space, regexp or
> > iteratively?
> > >
> > > Whatever happens - people shouldn't act on dodgy domains without
> > > Brad's say so. Vigilanteing would be a bad idea.
> >
> > --
> > Larry Lo
> > http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> > Tel: +852 95825791
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Larry Lo
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
Tel: +852 95825791


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
On 9/13/06, Aerik <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> It's not exponential actually (because we're only taking distinct *unordered*
> calculations), after a bunch of research I found out that the number of
> intersections is calculated in math-speak as "n choose k" (see
> http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BinomialCoefficient.html) and the way to calculate
> it (for each k value, which is the number of intersecting categories) is
> n!/((n-k)!k!).

Erk, you're right.  I was too hasty.  It's O(n choose k), but it's
easily provable that that's the same as O(n^k), which is of course
very slow for even smallish k's (although not ridiculously so like
exponentials).  On the other hand, if *n* remains small, say ten or
whatever, then it's not such a major issue, I suppose.

> So, if we had a histogram of categories for
> wikipedia, we could predict quite accurately how many non-empty intersections
> there would be.  I'd guess between 11 and 25 million.  What's the retrieval time
> for a simple select query against 25 million records?

Looking at it that way, I'll grant that you're probably about on
target with your estimate, give or take some.  Of course, that will
increase database size what, tenfold?  We only have a couple million
pages.

> Yeah, but that's the exact same problem - how does a full text search / tagging
> engine do it?  It's facing the same issues we're talking about.  The only think
> I can think of is they are using a completely different data structure (and that
> would be?) and/or a faster (compiled?) language.

They're definitely using a totally different data structure.  They
just index every word, I assume in a hash table or something.  I'm
pretty sure they don't store all the intersections, but presumably
however they handle that it's fast enough to be workable.

One-second delays are fairly typical for Wikipedia searches, and I
would expect the category list to be somewhat faster, since it's much
smaller.  (Even the largest categories are substantially smaller than
the number of pages that contain some indexed words, like "all"
[545,636 pages] or "not" [755,149 pages], and there are more of the
latter than the former.)

Faster language isn't really relevant, since the slowdown is on the
database side, not the PHP side.  You can bet that MySQL is written in
a compiled language.


body:
On 9/13/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be ideal is if we could establish a content-area (i.e.,
> WikiProject) peer review as a prerequisite for the purposes of content (esp.
> for technical articles) then have it go to a "Brilliant Prose Committee" of
> qualified persons (e.g., people with actual degrees or a lot of experience)
> to evaluate the writing style, the readibility, the grammar, etc. But that
> borders on instruction creep and would be strongly opposed as it creates an
> elite class distinction and would knock out all the lovely people who derive
> meaning in life from firing torpedoes at FACs.
>
> Carl

You have suggested a committee. Generaly that isn't a good sign.
--
geni


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Hi, Jimmy Wales,
	please estabish the board of inspectors to investigate admins.

body:
The racism and ultranationalism of the likes of you are not to be tolerated.

People will not lose priveleges on any Wikipedia because of their
heritage or national background. Whether or not somebody has "pure
Japanese heritage" (which is a very complex ideal in and of itself,
given the history of Japan and the fact that the modern Japanese
nation-state was founded by the conquering of many different nations
speaking different languages with different-looking people and
amalgamating over centuries, why not let new immigrants add to the
mix?) is totally irrelevant on Wikipedia.

Really, honestly, one of the main tenets of debates on Wikipedia is:

Respond to the ARGUMENT, not the PERSON. National origin is not
relevant, despite what racists such as you will say.

And historically the Japanese nation-state has robbed many independent
nations of their dignity, their culture, and finally their languages,
starting centuries ago with such "barbarians" including Hayato,
so-called "Kumaso", "Tutigumo" (these are racist names already, but we
do nnot have beter names for them), and more recently with
colonialisation and attempted assimilation of the Ryukyu Islanders,
the Utari (Aynu), and even entire nation of Korea and aboriginal
people of Taiwan and pacific. This is not a "peaceful" spirit. You may
say it is in your Past, but it is not, Japanese nation-state continues
to pursue policies favouring the destruction of remaining minority
populations, forcing them to become "Japanese" against their wishes.

So it is unreasonable to speak of a single Japanese ethnicity. Even
"Wajin" (that is, Japanese nationals excluding Chinese, Koreans, Bonin
Islanders aka "White Japanese", Ainu, Ryukyuans, and recent immigrant
descendants from the past century) are an amalgamy of diverse peoples.
And do not forget that ultimately the origin of the Japanese language
is shared with the original language of Baekje, a Korean kingdom, and
Japanese imperial family is probably descended from Baekje.

Mark Williamson

On 11/09/06, Peter Rocky7 <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I only suggest that Each Wikipedia, first of all, English Wikipedia needs to
> have the administration of justice, this is, the board of inspectors to
> investigate whether the behaviors of admins are appropriate or not.
>
> This organization, of course, must be independent from all admins.
>
> In mature democrratic countries, as you know, the prosecutors and the judges
> are independent from each other.
> In Wikipedias, however, all admins have been doing the role of prosecutors
> and the role of the judges and the role of general editors at the same time.
> I think, this system cannot help making almost admins unreliable dictators
> and increasing various vandalisms including the admin's vandalism.
>
> So I think each Wikipedia, especially English Wikipedia, needs the board of
> Inspectors independent from all admins as soon as possible
> and the board of inspectors should remove inappropriate admins as soon as
> possible.
> This is the best way because it is the most possible and the most reasonable
> method.
> I think true Wikipedians are expected to make Wikipedias evolve to
> respective Wikipedias.
>
> Clearly English Wikipedia are holding terribly selfish admins because some
> of them rejected this suggestion to be released, read, and talked on the
> mailing list <WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org>.
>
> Please don't be afraid if you are a good admin. In order to defend good
> admins, there should be another court composed of the independent agents.
> This court would be like "the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution".
>
> Respect, and you are ordinarily respected among the mature democratic
> people.
> This principle, however, cannot be used to Chinese, Koreans, Russians, etc.
> If you respect them, they get arrogant forever as if they are the absolute
> authorities.
>
>
> Even on English Wikipedia, the most important official policy
> [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] is often ignored by the admins themselves
> when the article is treating the problems that the admins want a victory on
> their own belief.
>
> The articles involving territorial problems, political problems, hystorical
> problems, gender problems, etc. are quite dangerous for good admins and
> neutral superior editors
> because bad admins have been waiting to revert the articles and block their
> "enemies" permanently.
>
> Bad admins are supposed to become admins in order to get a virtual victory
> on their belief in Wikipedia.
>
> In other words we can know very easily whether a admin is a good admin or
> not in such cases.
>
> Even in the articles of English Wikipedia, if they are having international
> territorial problems,
> the invasive side wins and the invaded side loses
> as if English Wikipedia recommends all the human beings(nations) to invade
> other country
> and make the regions under their administration.
> See [[Kuril Islands dispute]], [[Dokdo]], etc. It's internationally unfair
> and quite dangerous and terribly against the international peace and other
> spirits of UN.
>
> I have thought, "The admins of English Wikipedia hope WW3 and become the
> enemy of the world?"
>
> Such a bias by the admins and other editors put the peaceful Wikipedians who
> respect [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] in an embarrassing position and make some of them
> "enemies".
>
> Since 1945 what merit is there to please the invasive peoples of invasive
> nations like Russians, Koreans, Chinese, etc?
>
> Clearly American, British, Australian,,,,, and Japanese Wikipedians have
> only demerits
> if they(we) are on invasive side
> because their(our) mature democratic countries have already denied getting a
> new territory by invasive selfish war.
>
> I think there is few persons in the world who have thought Americans are
> going to take Iraq as a new territory of US.
> US, UK, Americans, British, and English(the language) are so respected in
> the world!
> If not, all nations in the world already attacked US, UK and Israel
> completely.
>
> English Wikipedia has the same problems.
> The foresight of Jimmy Wales, the history of Wikipedia and English(language)
> are so much respected, but how about admins of English Wikipedia?
> They are respected?
> The system and its policies they made are deemed reasonable and comfortable?
>
> For example, the official policy of three times revert seems to be a wicked
> trap made by the admins.
> Admins can revert, revert, revert, revert, revert,..., permanently, but a
> Wikipedian who is not a admin is blocked for a long time just because he
> imitates the admins' behaviors only three times.
>
> Why the admins of English Wikipedia are imitating the worst part of Bush's
> America?
>
> I think everyone including German admins knows that
> English Wikipedia should show and prevail the comfortable and reasonable
> model of Wikipedia
> to other language's Wikipedians. But not yet. No sign.
>
> Probably the admins of German Wikipedia could not wait the evolution of
> English Wikipedia
> and take the worst method that insists :
> "We are (I am?) the God! We need not and cannot respect any editors any more
> except ourselves.
> We (can) know exactly all things in the world, so, we can release all the
> articles correctly."
>
> Probably they have been getting more and more contempt because of their
> fascism and ignorance.
>
> I have already seen this again and again in Japanese Wikipedia.
>
> In Japanese Wikipedia almost real Japanese editors have given up
> to make the administration of Japanese Wikipedia reasonable and comfortable
> because the admins, including their sockpuppets, are terribly crazy
> Korean(or Chinese) fascists
> who are not able to use Japanese correctly and exactly and rejecting all
> meaningful conversations
> just because such meaningful conversations are disadvantage for them. They
> call those meaningful conversations "personal attacks".
>
> Please make a clear definition of "personal attack", or abandon the policy
> of prohibiting "personal attack" because fascism admins and the admins who
> are similar to fascists cannot understand the meaning of "personal attack"
> and abuse "personal attack" in order to defend the selfish admins themselves
> and block innocent Wikipedians.
>
> So there is no "community", no "consensus", and no meaningful
> "conversations" in Japanese Wikipedia including its mailing list,
> though admins insist as if there are.
> It is very clear that the admins always reject meaningful conversations
> anywhere including the mailing list.
>
> The admins of English Wikipedia have the same tendency.
>
> The admins themselves make it impossible to occur real "conversation", real
> "community" and real "consensus".
> This is already famous truth in Japan, so,  even Jimmy Wales .
>
> I have to ask :
> Who left the first important adminship of Japanese Wikipedia to
> [[:ja:User:Suisui]](=[[:ja:User:KMT]], etc.),
> [[:ja:User:Tietew]](=[[:ja:User:Aphaia]], [[:ja:User:????]], etc.), and
> so on?
>
> Please remove all of them from Japanese Wikipedia
> and leave "the first important adminship of Japanese Wikipedia" to
> responsible pure Japanese
> who are born and have been living in Japan from his/her ancestors, whose
> ancestors are not Koreans or Chinese.
>
> And/Or, I hope English Wikipedia show the better model of Wikipedia as soon
> as possible.
> It's the easiest because it is obvious that English Wikipedia has good
> admins and good Wikipedians more than any other Wikipedias.
>
> So, I think :
> First of all, English Wikipedia needs the board of inspectors to investigate
> and remove inappropriate admins and right the wrong made by admins.
> Second, English Wikipedia make the system where the inspector(judge) cannot
> be the admin(prosecutor) forever and the admin cannot be the inspector
> forever.
> Third, let other Wikipedias imitate English Wikipedia.
>
> The composition of "admins vs ordinary Wikipedians" is not good.
> The composition of "ordinary Wikipedians vs admins vs inspectors" is much
> better.
>
> The admins investigate all the editors and all the articles and administrate
> Wikipedia.
> The  inspectors investigate the behaviors of admins and receive all kind of
> criticisms of the admins even if those criticism are called "personal
> attack" by the admins themselves.
> It is very clear that blocking made by a admin(admins) is the heaviest
> "personal attack"
> and reverting made by a admin(admins) is the second heaviest "personal
> attack".
> To insist "Those admins are wrong because xxxxxx" or "He is inappropriate
> for adminship because xxxxx" is never "personal attack", just judgement or
> criticism.
> Therefore admins have no rights to accuse anyone by the term "personal
> attack".
>
>
> I hope wise Wikipedians create the independent organization to judge admins
> in English Wikipedia.
> That is needed by ordinary Wikipedians of other language's because they
> can't or wouldn't become a admin.
> Please show the American's and/or British superior humanity and excellent
> wisdom.
> It is because many articles of English Wikipedia, including Wikipedia's
> policies, have been translated into other languages' .
>
> Thank you. Thank you for my broken English.
>
> Rocky7
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get real-time traffic reports with Windows Live Local Search
> http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=42.336065~-109.392273&style=r&lvl=4&scene=3712634&trfc=1
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: david chapman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam: How to delete all users with no edits

body:
HeinzJ <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:  THX Rotem Liss, that was what i where looking for.

heinzJ

Rotem Liss schrieb:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> HeinzJ wrote:
>> At the moment we have a spam-problem. People or PCs are adding dayly
>> users with no edits. Mostly they look like TheUserViagra with the Email
>> TheUserViagra at someGMX.net
>>
>> I would like to delete all users with no edits before updating to
>> mediawiki 1.71 and adding a CAPTCHA into the add new user dialog.
>>
>> Who have some Ideas?
>>
>> - SQL clauses
>> - ....
>>
>>
>> THX, HeinzJ
>>
>
> Run the maintenance script maintenance/removeUnusedAccounts.php.
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mandriva - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFE/vKuqahN/0dU8mcRAsIBAKCaZGcXb96mXok2u4GskoZpfknKjgCdEsX9
> U8mJMXTpWMJR2tWBamIuzZ4=
> =cXQs
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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

---------------------------------
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body:
HeinzJ <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:   THX Rotem Liss, that was what i where looking for.

heinzJ

Rotem Liss schrieb:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> HeinzJ wrote:
>> At the moment we have a spam-problem. People or PCs are adding dayly
>> users with no edits. Mostly they look like TheUserViagra with the Email
>> TheUserViagra at someGMX.net
>>
>> I would like to delete all users with no edits before updating to
>> mediawiki 1.71 and adding a CAPTCHA into the add new user dialog.
>>
>> Who have some Ideas?
>>
>> - SQL clauses
>> - ....
>>
>>
>> THX, HeinzJ
>>
>
> Run the maintenance script maintenance/removeUnusedAccounts.php.
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mandriva - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFE/vKuqahN/0dU8mcRAsIBAKCaZGcXb96mXok2u4GskoZpfknKjgCdEsX9
> U8mJMXTpWMJR2tWBamIuzZ4=
> =cXQs
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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

---------------------------------
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls.  Great rates starting at 1?/min.


from_name: Jacky PB

body:
> Respond to the ARGUMENT, not the PERSON. National
> origin is not
> relevant, despite what racists such as you will say.

Nice speech, but have *you* not said of many others
that their oppinion is not relevant because of *their*
ethnic origin?

Yeah, fight against racism is a good propaganda
argument as long as you use it, and not the other.
Cool!

Dpotop

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


from_name: Aerik

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at ...> writes:

>
> On 9/12/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at ...> wrote:
> > So, *if* throwing sql at the existing table is too slow (and it looks like
> > it probably is), then the next alternative is to create records for the
> > intersections themselves, so the retrieval query is a simple one.
>
> Common queries would need to be stored and maintained separately, yes.
>  This is fine and dandy as long as no one tries exotic intersections,
> it wouldn't be too much more load than the current system, but that's
> an empirical question whose answer is unknown and can't be assumed.

Well, I'm actually proposing to write all the non-empty interesections (up to
some limit) into the database *IF* throwing sql at the existing structure is too
inefficient.  These would be written when a page is saved (perhaps only if the
categories in the page have changed?)

> > So you can see that the number of combinations would get to be quite a lot.
> > I would propose writing them into the categorylinks table
>
> Wait, write an *exponential* number of combinations into the
> categorylinks table?  Even a thousand categories (and Wikipedia has
> far more) would work out to a *googol cubed* different combinations.
> Not only is there not enough memory and disk space on the planet to
> store that, there aren't that many *particles in the universe*.
>
> Am I misunderstanding you?  Maybe only non-empty category
> intersections?  That requires slightly more thought as to scalability.
>  If you have a million pages, and each has two random categories,
> there can be a maximum of a million intersections (if no two pages
> have the same two categories).  If you bump that up to three
> categories, however, the maximum possible number is three million;
> four is six million, etc.  It's O(m*2^n), or linear-exponential time.
> That's also far too high to be acceptable, unless you can guarantee
> that n remains very small (which you can't).

It's not exponential actually (because we're only taking distinct *unordered*
calculations), after a bunch of research I found out that the number of
intersections is calculated in math-speak as "n choose k" (see
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BinomialCoefficient.html) and the way to calculate
it (for each k value, which is the number of intersecting categories) is
n!/((n-k)!k!).  So for our purposes, I did a quick sampling of 10 English
Wikipedia pages, and got an average of 3.8 categories per page.  Let's round up
and say 4.  If we want to store intersections (with a limit of 4 intersecting
categories), it would be the sum of the little equation for values of k=2, k=3,
and k=4 (and n=4).  This is 11 intersections, in addition to the single
categories we're already storing.

If the page has 5 categories, the numbers go up, and instead of 11 we'd have to
store 25 categories.  (By corollary, we are doing 11 or 25 extra INSERT
statements, respectively...) So, if we had a histogram of categories for
wikipedia, we could predict quite accurately how many non-empty intersections
there would be.  I'd guess between 11 and 25 million.  What's the retrieval time
for a simple select query against 25 million records?

> Basically, the most practical solution in SQL would probably be to
> pick the ten thousand or hundred thousand or million most-visited
> intersections and maintain them as virtual categories, so they can be
> retrieved in the same time as normal categories.  The only question is
> what percentage of queries this will deal with, which (as I said) is
> unknown at this point.  Domas seemed rather skeptical of the
> efficiency of even this scheme, and given your benchmarks in a much
> smaller wiki his skepticism seems quite warranted.

I suppose we could come up with some scheme to do this - cache intersections for
a period of time, then keep the ones that are popular... The only thing is, by
definition, this would be at query time, and it would take some figure around
(probably greater than) 2 tenths of a second for each one, until it is cached.
Perhaps that's the way to do it - launch it as a beta feature, fill up the
cache, then release it fully.

> Brion's idea of a full-text search seems to be the way to go at this
> point, at least to me.  After all, searching for "apple pie" does
> nothing but give you the intersection of articles containing the words
> "apple" and "pie", and we already do that, so it can't be
> overwhelmingly expensive, I suppose.  (But a disclaimer: I am not, in
> fact, particularly knowledgeable in *any* of this stuff.)
>
> On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at ...> wrote:
> > Well, yes ... How does other software with arbitrary tags do it?
>
> And that's a complementary way to go.
>

Yeah, but that's the exact same problem - how does a full text search / tagging
engine do it?  It's facing the same issues we're talking about.  The only think
I can think of is they are using a completely different data structure (and that
would be?) and/or a faster (compiled?) language.

Best Regards,
Aerik

P.S.  Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to leave everything in context.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
On 9/13/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> On another bent to the topic, could I ask the board to pass a resolution
> regarding replacement logos saying:
>
>    1. At least five of top ten contributing languages must agree the logo
>    should be changed.
>    2. If this is satisfied, the Board and/or Communications Committee
>    must agree in principal that a logo change would be timely, acceptable and
>    warranted.
>    3. Logo competitions must be structured from the beginning by
>    independent Wikimedians, as the board elections are.

I've put this on the Board wiki, though I think it may be more useful
to expand it so the resolution is applicable to new projects
(wikiversity, incubator) as well and those won't have 10 languages by
the time they want a logo.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > To reach 100,000 FAs or GAs - at which point we could in fact look
> > Britannica in the eye on quality - will take a parallel process that
> > isn't turned into stupid amounts of effort for little or no reward.
>
> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> of it's good enough articles.

Since when was did being "popular" become a goal of the project?

(I used scare quotes around popular because I don't think I've ever
seen data that suggests that we're the most popular resource in any
way other than web traffic.  ... and if you think that webtraffic is a
good metric, pause for a moment and consider that MySpace whoops our
ass in that regard.)


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
On 9/13/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> As per Angela's comment, that the resolution should apply to new projects,
> I'm not sure why that would be needed. New projects need logos, this
> proposal was to stunt the amount of //replacement// logos.

But points 2 and 3 may make sense for logos in general, and if there's
going to be a policy, why not have it apply to all logos?

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> They do however illustrate the conflict between providing what people
> want (more articles on sex and pro wrestling apparently) and creating
> what we believe should exist.
[snip]

I'm going to take down the wikicharts tool if I continue to see it
used incorrectly to argument stupid arguments.

First of all, the tool is not accurate enough to actually provide the
relative ranking of the articles due to the low sampling rate and ease
of spoofing. It merely provides a list of top articles and a
suggestion of their possible relative rankings.

Secondly, we are not provided with any of another important metrics.
For example, if a person googles for "penis anal fisting rectum
succubus" they'll get [[Anal Sex]] and be counted as any other reader,
but I'd be willing to bet good money that 9 out of 10 look at the page
for all of 5 seconds before realizing that this is not the hardcore
porno they were looking for and they hit the back button. ... We don't
know how long people stay, we don't know how they arrived, we don't
know if they read anything else.. we don't know if they found what
they were looking for....

The fact of the matter is quite simply that we don't know much, and we
certainly can't say from the data we have that we have any clue about
what people want.

... and I don't think thats a big deal. Nothing about creating a free
content encyclopedia or freeing the knowledge of the world requires
that we be the number one destination for the news of the day.


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Tuesday 12 September 2006 23:27, Simetrical wrote:
[snip]
> Another syntax cleanup proposal also suggested this dual use for *,
> and their solution was to evaluate bolding from right to left on a
> per-line basis, and any remaining asterisks on the left could become
> bulleted lists.  So
>
> A ** test** to ** see
> **what ** bold *
> and lists does ** *** **
> **  test ** end **
>
> Would probably become
>
> A **test to  see
> what  bold *
> and lists does ** *
>

 test  end

>
> That behavior might not be desirable, but the general idea of
> "interpret matched initial double asterisk as bold, unmatched as list"
> is a good one.

It violates the KISS principle. That means humans have now to match/balance
* on a line to find out whether a leading * will make a list, or something
bold etc. Ugh.

Best wishes,

Tels
- --
 Signed on Wed Sep 13 06:55:44 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "MY CAUSE IS JUST... MY WILL IS STRONG... AND MY GUN IS VERY VERY
 LARGE!" - The Doom Guy

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from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Marketers on Wikipedia

body:
On 9/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 13/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > My heart bleeds for them. Really.
> >
> http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7BA449A54F-8662-4100-A268-B34BBADC2D11%7D&keyword=

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7BA449A54F-8662-4100-A268-B34BBADC2D11%7D&keyword=

"Companies are wasting some of the millions of dollars spent each year to
improve their visibility and ranking in search engines such as Google and
Yahoo"

"Wikipedia should carve out an area on each page where brand managers can
respond in an official capacity." - we do - it's called the Talk page

http://adage.com/article.php?article_id=111747

"the Wikipedia open-source phenomenon looms large right where companies are
increasingly spending billions of dollars to jockey for position: on
search-engine results pages."

Forgive my ignorance, but how do you spend billions on search engine
optimisation?  Who's ripping off these companies?  In any case, doesn't
Google improve its search algorithms as people get better at fooling them?

If you have millions to spend on something like that, why not spend it on
making your website more useful and attractive?  Or maybe make it easier to
find the things you want?  For a company with physical stores, the main
reason I visit their websites is to check the hours on a local store, or to
find a local store.  That generally takes hunting around the small print,
and then clicking a couple times.  And that after waiting for all the flashy
animation to load...and I have about as fast a connection as any average
person.

Wikipedia is more useful for getting basic information about companies.  If
you don't want your customers seeing the good and the bad, one would think
the place to start is on their own websites... but no, they want to spend
their money fooling search engine algorithms.  Are all companies run by
idiots, or just most of them?


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> That goal (and the goal of even 100,000 FAs)
> may mean that articles which could not be brought to FA level on their own
> need to be merged (e.g., a single, comprehensive article on multiple schools
> instead of a stub for each individual article)

I'm not sure I agree.  Some articles are going to be short simply
because there is not much known or notable about the topic to say.  It
still helps readers in many cases for the article to be separate if
it's a topic that's singular and not easily merged with others.  I'm
not against merging in most cases, but I'm against one-size-fits-all.

-Matt


body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the concept of a core area of coverage is valid. The FA
> process clearly doesn't work for this so far - out of a thousand
> articles, most are weird specialist things.

That's because it's easier to get FA status with that kind of article.
 Comprehensiveness is easier.  There's likely to be only one major
editor on the article, with no controversy.  FAC regulars are likely
to have less ability to stick their oar in since they're not a
specialist on the subject in question.

In general, FAC isn't the way to go (without a repointing of mission)
because FAC is trying to identify exceptional articles, not raise
article quality overall.  IOW, if the overall quality of the
encyclopedia increases, it's likely that FAC will become even pickier
so that their criteria only pass the same proportion.

-Matt


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I'd personally be more interested in being *useful*, which is an
> eminently practical concern.  From that perspective, a lot of different
> things are important.  Having "good enough" articles on as wide a range
> of subjects as possible is definitely high up on the list---we provide
> information that is difficult to come by otherwise.  Having very good
> articles, especially on frequently-consulted topics or topics where
> errors would be more problematic (biographies; national/ethnic disputes;
> technical subjects) is another important consideration.  More to the
> point, it's quite helpful to allow a reader to quickly identify how good
> we think an article is.
>
> It's not clear to me what role, if any, the GA/FA process plays in any
> of these concerns.  It doesn't tell a reader which articles are good,
> because it rates articles as a whole rather than revisions---FA status
> provides no guarantee that the current article is any better than a
> similar-looking non-FA article.  It appears to provide only a moderate
> and highly beaurocratic method of encouraging article improvement in the
> first place.  On the whole I'd say I personally never pay attention to
> whether an article is "featured", and I don't know anyone else who does
> either.  It simply doesn't solve any of the practical problems that come
> up when reading Wikipedia.
>
I suggested the concept of "good articles" long before it happened,
but I envisioned something somewhat different.  Overall I think it is
fairly well implemented, though.  The criteria are fairly objective
and the process is fairly simple.  I don't really like the fact that
there's a central page, as it unnecessarily increases the process, but
it's not too bad as the instructions are still fairly easy to follow.
One big difference is that I had suggested nominating a particular
revision as a good article.

The only real problem I see with "good articles", in practice, is that
the process doesn't seem to have been adopted.  I guess this is in
part because it's not as fun of a game as the "featured articles"
process.

For whatever reason though, you're right.  Good articles doesn't seem
to be very useful at the moment.


body:
On 9/12/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The underlying issue is that the FA process is wearing two different
> hats.  It's based on criteria that people want to use as a checklist
> for *all* articles -- hence the idea of having 100,000 FAs -- but at
> the same time fills the role of selecting our "very best work" (with
> all the prestige implicit is that) and serving as pretty much the only
> formal recognition for articles available in Wikipedia.
>
That's an excellent point, and maybe the time has come to admit that
the FA process *doesn't* apply to every article.  Taking the FA
process out of the whole grading scheme might just get more people to
work on an actual checklist.

Of course this brings up the question of whether or not a checklist is
what we want?

Anthony


from_name: theProject

body:
On 9/13/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Respond to the ARGUMENT, not the PERSON. National
> > origin is not
> > relevant, despite what racists such as you will say.
>
> Nice speech, but have *you* not said of many others
> that their oppinion is not relevant because of *their*
> ethnic origin?
>
> Yeah, fight against racism is a good propaganda
> argument as long as you use it, and not the other.
> Cool!
>
> Dpotop
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

The fact that node ue is making this argument changes nothing. I could make
the same argument and I would hope nobody would call me a racist.

--
theProject


from_name: niht-hræfn

body:
On Sep 13, 2006, at 8:33, David Gerard wrote:

> On 13/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/13/06, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> "1.3 million articles, and that's just the English version.
>>> Wikipedia
>>> comes in 9 other languages."
>
>> How do they get ideas like that?
>
>
> www.wikipedia.org features TEN LANGUAGES AROUND THE WORLD! ... and the
> others are obviously invisible.
>
> - d.

Don't you mean www.wikipedia.com ? :D

Keitei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 13/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> > What would be ideal is if we could establish a content-area (i.e.,
> > WikiProject) peer review as a prerequisite for the purposes of content (esp.
> > for technical articles) then have it go to a "Brilliant Prose Committee" of
> > qualified persons (e.g., people with actual degrees or a lot of experience)
> > to evaluate the writing style, the readibility, the grammar, etc. But that
> > borders on instruction creep and would be strongly opposed as it creates an
> > elite class distinction and would knock out all the lovely people who derive
> > meaning in life from firing torpedoes at FACs.

> You have suggested a committee. Generaly that isn't a good sign.

In particular, a committee won't scale to 100,000. What will?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 13/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > Oh sorry, they were last year's thing. What's this year's? I forget.

> Worshipping process.

*Still*? That one's been in the charts for *ages*. Must be some
exciting *new* bad ideas out there.

- d.


body:
On 13/09/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:

> They would have to balance *double* asterisks only.  The assumption is
> that these will virtually never occur except when intended to be
> markup.  Since bolding markup is normally used in matched pairs,
> there's not really any problem except if someone habitually fails to
> close their bold markup, and unclosed bold markup probably shouldn't
> render as bold altogether (to force people to match asterisks *all*
> the time so they don't get confused when it doesn't work at the
> beginning of a line).

This brings to mind a co-worker's annoyance with MoinMoin's table
syntax - where if you don't put everything all on one ridiculously
long line, it doesn't work (or so he says). Will you be required to
put everything on one ridiculously long line if you want to bold a
paragraph?

- d.


from_name: HeinzJ

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How to import languageXX.php-files into db /
	Spezial:Allmessages

body:
>> $wgLanguageCode     = 'en';

I did that first.
After a while it worked. But i dont know why!

And still some messages are in german language and
on some buttons (e.g. Search) there is nothing now.

Heinz

Timwi schrieb:
> HeinzJ wrote:
>> THX, Jimmy
>>
>> I tried it (again and again) ...
>> .... but i still have all messages in German
>
> Set
>
> $wgLanguageCode     = 'en';
>
> in LocalSettings.php.
>
> Timwi


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can anything be done about Deletion Review?

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 9/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Oh, and thanks to people claiming the "DRV doesn't have a snowball's
>>> chance in hell of being deleted" (despite the fact that several people
>>> were strongly in favour), I've now created the proposed policy of
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_Undeletion for your
>>> perusal.
>> Well, it arguably didn't, regrettable as that is.
>>
>> Possible workable split: DRV for strict process review; AFU for merit
>> undeletion.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Wikipedia:Deletion_review
>

This too was closed OUT OF PROCESS.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 12/09/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
>>> of it's good enough articles.
>
>> True.  But being respectable is not really the same thing as being
>> popular; and I was under the impression that the former was a more
>> practical concern for us than the latter.
>
>
> Fairly obviously, our real popularity comes from the social networking
> possibilities of our userboxes.
>
> Oh sorry, they were last year's thing. What's this year's? I forget.
>

Worshipping process.

--
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: Stephen Streater

body:
On 13 Sep 2006, at 03:10, geni wrote:

> On 9/13/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What would be ideal is if we could establish a content-area (i.e.,
>> WikiProject) peer review as a prerequisite for the purposes of
>> content (esp.
>> for technical articles) then have it go to a "Brilliant Prose
>> Committee" of
>> qualified persons (e.g., people with actual degrees or a lot of
>> experience)
>> to evaluate the writing style, the readibility, the grammar, etc.
>> But that
>> borders on instruction creep and would be strongly opposed as it
>> creates an
>> elite class distinction and would knock out all the lovely people
>> who derive
>> meaning in life from firing torpedoes at FACs.
>>
>> Carl
>
> You have suggested a committee. Generaly that isn't a good sign.

It's easy to neutralise this suggestion:
suggest a committee to discuss whether to have a committee.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about "External links"

body:
On 10 Sep 2006, at 14:14, Andrew Gray wrote:

> On 08/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks
>>> per day, on
>>> average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the
>>> "External
>>> links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that
>>> it's
>>> somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a
>>> [[Fermi
>>> problem]].
>>>
>>
>> Depends on the article they are on but I've seen over 100 claimed
>> on SEO forums.
>
> [checks local logs]
>
> I have a copy of my thesis linked from two pages (it's stunningly
> boring, but it's a source for a lot of one and a footnoted cite in
> another), and a third locally-hosted page is linked as a source in a
> particuarly obscure article.
>
> Between them, they're getting anywhere from one visit per day to two a
> week, on average. I can't comment on "external links" sites generally.

I'm working on a free Java video player for Wikipedia.
As part of my research, I (controversially - see my
recent RfA for details) added some article-relevant
externally linked Java videos. These link to specific
videos rather to a normal website, so the stats may
be atypical of traditional external links.

Overall, these videos had thousands of views. I can
make the statistics available, either generally or to
trusted Wikipedians alone, if people are interested.

Some time ago, I uploaded some of the most popular
in OGG format to Wikimedia Commons with a free
licence, so you can see the sort of content there:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Medical.ogg - for the
Childbirth article
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bungy.ogg - for the Bungy
jumping and Tsitsikamma articles
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:9x9_Go.ogg - for the Go
article [I have an updated version of this as suggested by one of the
players]

I have many more, but have been asked to
stop uploading new videos for the time being.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 13/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> With FA nominations often missing out on basic criteria (at least the last
> time I checked in there), rules are apparently needed. It stops additional
> work in de-featuring work that should not be featured to begin with if
> criteria are too lax.

Yeah. But it's gotta be more of a checklist and a general Request For
Shrubbery Demands.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 13/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> > With FA nominations often missing out on basic criteria (at least the last
> > time I checked in there), rules are apparently needed. It stops additional
> > work in de-featuring work that should not be featured to begin with if
> > criteria are too lax.

> Yeah. But it's gotta be more of a checklist and a general Request For
> Shrubbery Demands.

... and *less of* a general Request For [[Shrubbery]] Demands.

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] php5 maintainance/rebuildMessages.php --rebuild -
	Errors

body:
when running

   php5 maintenance/rebuildMessages.php rebuild
   /srv/www/htdocs/wiki/languages/Messages.php

i get this Error

   PHP Notice:  unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 96449 bytes in
   /srv/www/htdocs/giswiki/en/maintenance/InitialiseMessages.inc on line
   232

HeinzJ


from_name: Andreas

body:
Juca,
  thanks for the input! Interesting idea to use JS within SVG.
  For now, I will pursue the JAVA applet route, since it still seems to
be most natural way to address the issue of interactive labs. If the
related management issues regarding security and availability of applets
in browsers are insurmountable, we should explore your suggestion.

  To address these issues, I worked on a 'strawman' framework and
policies by starting a SourceForge project. It contains a simple JAVA
source tree for a single applet and some documents to start the
discussion on management. I still want to write up the proposal on how
to integrate applets into Wikiversity lessons, using a wiki markup
similar to images. Something like
[[Applet:pendulum.jar|class=PendulumApplet|StripChart=Yes]] that is
'transformed' to <Applet/> HTML with matching arguments and parameters.

  If you are interested, look at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/labsatwiki/ . Again, all this is in the
*planning* phase, so please chime in.

  Andreas =:-)

Felipe Sanches wrote:
>> because I can *not* draw a simple,
>> arbitrary length arrow in JS without coding the actual rendering of the
>> lines pixel by pixel. This is very underwhelming, so say the least!!
>>
>> If anybody knows differently, please educate me! But JS is just not
>> appropriate for drawing any complex geometrical forms, like a "lab
>> course" at Wikiversity will need.
>>
>
> once I have used a mediawiki extension that allows us to embed svg
> files in the wikitext  inside a <svg></svg> tag. It allows you to
> dinamically manipulate vectorial elements through javascript, which is
> enabled inside the svg, even if mediawiki is (as it is by default)
> blocking javascript on the page. I mean, inside the svg, javascript is
> always allowed.
>
> This can be used with svg enabled browsers to draw moving arrows,
> rectangles, elipses, etc. (Firefox 1.5+ supports SVG, and IE needs a
> plugin for that)
>
> Juca
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikilinked dates in ISO-format and anon users

body:
[Yes, a date linking thread again (feel free to hate me ;-)]

Consensus about the date linking/not-linking issue is dominated by users
that do have a login and can choose their date display format
preferences. And I guess on en.wikipedia.org, a lot of users choose a
format which is *not* the ISO-format (some hard statistics would be
welcomed).

I fear this is to the detriment of anonymous users - the vast majority
of our readers.

On en, it seems to be quite popular and handy to enter dates in
ISO-format (Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_web)

The "default date display preference" for anons for wikilinked dates
entered in ISO-format is currently simply the ISO-format (no format
tweaking is done).

Could/should the displayed date format of wikilinked dates that are
entered in ISO-format be changed such that anons do get the same date
display format that is used to show - let's say - date entries from the
history of a page in a given wiki?

(I strongly assume the format of the date entries of the history of a
page is configurable somewhere per wiki).

--Liuglem


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ... and I don't think thats a big deal. Nothing about creating a free
> > content encyclopedia or freeing the knowledge of the world requires
> > that we be the number one destination for the news of the day.
>
> Perhaps but where else would you suggest that people should have got
> information on Pope Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005

I can answer this two ways.. Both are true representations of my
position on this subject.

First the general answer:   It's great that we can be prompt and that
people can use us for information on recent events. I've never
suggested we stop that... I only stated that fulfilling that need
simply isn't the purpose of Wikipedia.

and then the 'specific to this case' answer:  They can read about it
from the same places *we* did.  Many of our articles (esp current
events) are simply sourced from web-available resources.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 13/09/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm going to take down the wikicharts tool if I continue to see it
> used incorrectly to argument stupid arguments.

Noooooooooooooooooo! (please)

> First of all, the tool is not accurate enough to actually provide the
> relative ranking of the articles due to the low sampling rate and ease
> of spoofing. It merely provides a list of top articles and a
> suggestion of their possible relative rankings.
> Secondly, we are not provided with any of another important metrics.
> For example, if a person googles for "penis anal fisting rectum
> succubus" they'll get [[Anal Sex]] and be counted as any other reader,
> but I'd be willing to bet good money that 9 out of 10 look at the page
> for all of 5 seconds before realizing that this is not the hardcore
> porno they were looking for and they hit the back button. ... We don't
> know how long people stay, we don't know how they arrived, we don't
> know if they read anything else.. we don't know if they found what
> they were looking for....
> The fact of the matter is quite simply that we don't know much, and we
> certainly can't say from the data we have that we have any clue about
> what people want.

The charts page could do with a note to this effect.

> ... and I don't think thats a big deal. Nothing about creating a free
> content encyclopedia or freeing the knowledge of the world requires
> that we be the number one destination for the news of the day.

Indeed. I really feel our popularity right now is not good for us at
all - look at the gross immediatism fostered by BLP, and apparently
serious proposals to gut all living bios because Wikipedia is too
popular. This directly hampers our efforts to actually write a good
encyclopedia for tomorrow as well as today.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/13/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That goal (and the goal of even 100,000 FAs)
> > may mean that articles which could not be brought to FA level on their own
> > need to be merged (e.g., a single, comprehensive article on multiple schools
> > instead of a stub for each individual article)
>
> I'm not sure I agree.  Some articles are going to be short simply
> because there is not much known or notable about the topic to say.  It
> still helps readers in many cases for the article to be separate if
> it's a topic that's singular and not easily merged with others.  I'm
> not against merging in most cases, but I'm against one-size-fits-all.

To be a featured article an article should be reasonably complete for
the level of coverage we provide... but that doesn't require it to be
long.

I've heard that there is a trend on FAC is to encourage the creation
of very long articles... even, perhaps, where really long is
inappropriate. If this is the case then it's a cause to improve the FA
process, not a cause to back away from making more articles
featurable.


body:
On 13/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we first need to finetune the quality of such articles. Sure,
> for every TV show, wikipedia has an article. But many (if not most)
> articles are stubs, they are subject to vandalism and lack references.
> First we need to bring them up to, say, good article status.

The infrastructure for the printed wikireaders described here is a
separate issue from the article content - there's no reason to wait on
it.

I think having a printed copy of an article to hand will show its
flaws quite glaringly and lead to improved articles directly ;-) It
will be particularly nice if this is per-category.

- d.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 9/13/06, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From the program:
>
> "1.3 million articles, and that's just the English version. Wikipedia
> comes in 9 other languages."
>
> -- nyenyec

How do they get ideas like that? I just read a question on the help desk
from someone who wanted to know which encyclopedia an article came from, as
if "the free encyclopedia" means copying copyrighted material and offering
it up for free.

:(

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
COTW and AID were merged? Obviously not well published because it took this
message for me to notice. Where was this discussed?

On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Frankly I agree with you. I've always been annoyed that the current
> maintenance collaboration is to create articles that have been
> requested for over a year. Articles are constantly requested, yet
> there are always requests being filled. So what do we do with the
> requests we cannot fill? I propose:
> 1. Article requests be cleaned up very thoroughly, with entries
> deleted if they can't be filled adequately or should not be on
> Wikipedia
> 2. Focus of experienced editor efforts be on clearing out merger
> backlogs, voting per specific policies in AfDs, clearing out speedy
> backlogs (sysops, obviously) and the like.
> 3. Attention be paid to the cleanup taskforce and wikification backlogs.
> That way we can increase the quality of the encyclopedia. It would be
> good if unneccessary stub articles (careful attention should be paid
> to whether or not the article should be deleted, but either way
> [[Wikipedia:Articles for undeletion]] will pile up with incidents)
> could be cleared out, and vandal fighting tools spread to the masses
> (every CVU member should know about Lupin's tool or VP/VP2/VS/MWT, for
> instance).
>
> You mention that we should aim for 100,000 featured articles. I assume
> [[WP:ARCAID]] (merger of [[WP:COTW]] and [[WP:AID]] for those who
> weren't informed) will help, however I propose it be expanded so that
> there is more advertising of the ARCAID around Wikipedia and
> experienced editors are encouraged to contribute. I'm not aware of
> other broad attempts to improve the quality of articles (by broad I
> mean broad, so SCOTW and the like do not count)
>
> How about we start a wikiproject for the cleanup taskforce? I've
> already established one for the wikification taskforce, it has worked
> very well and the wikification backlog is being cleared out quicker
> every day. A formalisation of the process in a wikiproject would
> encourage people to join in, not only to cleanup articles, but to
> assist in other measures like publicity for the cause which could
> eventually lead in many more people helping out.
>
> And then we could have bureaucrats force 1FA upon RFAs :)
>
> As for your competition, I suggest you give the winner the chance to
> donate $100 to Wikimedia instead, its an option I'd personally prefer.
>
> -- Akash/Draicone
>
> On 9/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > The following is a modified version of an announcement I posted on
> Recent
> > Changes:
> >
> > Times have changed in Wikipedia. Once, our goal was to cover as much as
> > possible, to reach a million articles, to be the biggest encyclopedia in
> the
> > world. As Jimbo said in his talk at Wikimania, we have to start changing
> the
> > focus from quantity to quality. We have to make sure that the key
> articles that
> > we do have are as good as possible. Rather than getting another million
> > articles, I believe that we need 100,000 more Feature-quality articles.
> >
> > Some numbers that were run yesterday show that we have over
> 230,000  without
> > any sources whatsoever. That's almost 20 percent of our total articles
> > without any sources. Even if we were to provide sources for 15 of these
> articles  an
> > hour, it would take upward of two years to cover them all ? and this
> does not
> >  include articles which are inadequately sourced or which contain
> spurious
> > information, which raise this number by several orders of magnitude.
> >
> > Before suggesting that these are all stubs, I invite you to look at some
> > examples: [[Amethyst]], [[Alto saxophone]], [[Alexander I of Russia]]
> (who
> > fought against Napoleon), [[Italian literature]], etc., etc., etc.
> These  articles
> > are the mainstay of a quality encyclopedia.
> >
> > This means is that there is a lot of work ahead of us. It is time to
> shift
> > the focus. I therefore propose two solutions:
> >
> > 1. The field "Requests" on "Recent Changes" be changed to
> "Requested  feature
> > articles." Instead of asking people to create brand new article,
> the  focus
> > should be on improving existing articles.
> >
> > 2. Regular contests should be held to promote article improvement. To
> that
> > end, I will donate $100 in books and media from Amazon to the person who
> most
> > improves an unsourced article related to history or selected from
> > [[Wikipedia:Vital articles]]. The contest will end on October 7. A panel
> of  judges will
> > be selected to decide on the entries. For more information about  what
> > constitutes an "unsourced article" please contact me. For
> historical  reasons, this
> > will be known as "Danny's third contest."
> >
> > I hope to see as many people participating in this contest as
> participated
> > in the previous two.
> >
> > Danny
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
With FA nominations often missing out on basic criteria (at least the last
time I checked in there), rules are apparently needed. It stops additional
work in de-featuring work that should not be featured to begin with if
criteria are too lax.

Mgm

On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > we do have are as good as possible. Rather than getting another
> million
> > > articles, I believe that we need 100,000 more Feature-quality
> articles.
>
> > Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as
> > ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores:
> > standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied. Good Articles
> > itself has turned into a mockery of FAC.
>
>
> Raul as Featured Articles Dictator might apply the cattleprod enema a
> bit more thoroughly. If FAC has gone off into one of those weird
> genetic drift zone of ten people agreeing to 'consensus' that drives
> others out and fails to serve Wikipedia, and if GA has done the same
> (considering GA was supposed to be the process-light parallel to
> unclog FAC), then burning it down and building something that actually
> gets back to the really quite short and reasonable FA criteria might
> be well in order.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Marketers on Wikipedia

body:
On 13/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> My heart bleeds for them. Really.
> http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7BA449A54F-8662-4100-A268-B34BBADC2D11%7D&keyword=

And more: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060912-084125

Editors should watch carefully both for company shills and for
unduly-weighted criticism.

- d.


from_name: Nathaniel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> To be a featured article an article should be reasonably complete for
> the level of coverage we provide... but that doesn't require it to be
> long.
>
> I've heard that there is a trend on FAC is to encourage the creation
> of very long articles... even, perhaps, where really long is
> inappropriate. If this is the case then it's a cause to improve the FA
> process, not a cause to back away from making more articles
> featurable.

In my experience I haven't seen this--my most recent FA has only about 10k
of prose, and more often than the converse, people object because articles
are too long (more than 30-40k of prose).

Nathaniel