body:
Erik wrote:
>Right now, many people do not use the Wikipedia software
>because they think it is too tailor made for an encyclopedia.
>That's true in some respects (we do not make it easy enough
>to change all the Wikipedia-specific strings), but we are
>becoming more general as our spinoff projects prove, and I
>hate to see interesting projects use inferior software like
>TWiki because it has better marketing.

I agree.

Marketing of the software is needed so that we can expand the user/developer
base of the software. For that we need a real name. MediaWiki is the best
name suggestion so far; Phase III is a crappy generic name that nobody uses
outside of Wikipedia. PediaWiki is a no starter because the software is being
used in many non-encyclopedia contexts. MediaWiki is also a play on the name
Wikimedia and is thus associable with the Foundation (which itself is not any
specific project but a family of different projects using the same software
in different contexts). Thus the name MediaWiki is not married to any one
context while making it very clear that it is developed by Wikimedia.

We get clear credit and a larger user/developer base. I see only positives
with the name change.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] good news/bad news

body:
Jason Richey wrote:

>Good news:
>
>I went to see the servers this evening, after a trip to Fry's.  I
>bought a new hard drive (36 Gig U320 SCSI 80-pin) for Pliny's DB and 1
>more Gig of RAM for Larousse (that's the best Fry's could do).
>
Yay!

>Bad news:
>
>Only the RAM got installed.  It turns out that the setup in Pliny
>(unlike every other server in our cage) uses 68-pin SCSI drives.  So,
>my purchase was incorrect.
>
D'oh! Well, hey, more disk space for another machine, no?

>Summary:
>
>Larousse has 2 Gig of RAM (PC133 SDRAM), 1 Gig more than before.
>
Yay!

(BTW, search was broken on English wikipedia for the last 45 minutes
because I forgot to put its temporary mysql installation into the
startup scripts so it didn't come up during reboot.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
JFrost8401 at aol.com wrote:

> I'm all in favour of the new watchlist, despite having had to cut down
> from 1600 items (and that's without automatic).
>
> Previously my watchlist timed out after about 8 am, so I could only
> view it once a day. Now it works every time. Thank you Brion

You're welcome, Jim.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: disappearing/reappearing column-side notes

body:
Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
>We can easily use the same (or almost the same) code for
>hiding/showing sidenotes as we already do for hiding/showing
>the table of contents. I made a sample at
>
>  http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a2/Sidenote.html

Sweet! But please make "show" the default and the markup can simply be <note>
text</note>. Of course our more pressing need is to enable WikiGroup-type
functionality so that the same module can be used in several different books
and simply changing the Start/Index page changes the organization of the
book.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Retard

body:
I wrote on [[Talk: User:Retard]] and [[Wikipedia:Problem users]] that the name User:Retard is offensive.  No one has done anything about it.  There is a policy about allowing offensive User names.  Can we do something about this?

RickK

---------------------------------
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Phase III name change to MediaWiki and separate press releases

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Ray-
>
>>No.  We aren't '''going''' non-profit; we always have been.  What
>>exactly does saying that we are going non-profit accomplish?
>>
>We can take donations. And this is the most essential and important part
>of our press release. It's not like we need the publicity -- we need the
>money. That's no platitude, it is a simple truth: we cannot grow if we
>cannot afford to expand our servers. The biggest danger to Wikipedia/
>Wikimedia at present is that large numbers of good contributors will be
>scared away by continued blackouts and system slowness. Fixing this is our
>*top* priority. That is why we must emphasize that Wikimedia is now able
>to take tax-deductible donations, but we have to package it nicely and put
>most of the donation info on a dedicated page.
>
Being registered as a "non-profit" organization is not what makes it
possible to take donations.  Any organization with a bank account can do
that.  Freely given donations with no obligation to deliver a product
are capital in nature, and as such are not taxable income of the
organization.  Only business and investment income would be taxable.
 Given that expenses are bound to exceed business income, taxes are not
a realistic worry.

The tax deductibility is only meningful for those people liable for US
income taxes.  Most donations to a foreign charitable organization are
not taxable here in Canada.  Are you saying that they are deductible in
Germany?  Even for the US the tax benefit to all but the biggest donors
is much bigger than the hype.  Unless a person is itemizing deductions
(which most often means is paying big mortgage interest) there will be
no benefit at all to the charitable deduction.  Tax deductibility of
charitable donations and nice packages are little more that hype and fluff.

Maybe we do "need the money", but your only guessing.  We all know that
it was not long ago that Jimmy added the second machine, and that there
is already talk of needing a further hard drive.  I can also extrapolate
from that that demand in the forseeable future is likely to grow
exponentially.  But that's not the same as knowing the need.  For that
we need a budget and a business plan that will be as open to discussion
as any Wikipedia article.

The biggest danger to Wikimedia is not that we will lose big
contributors, but that we will lose our way.  My "top" priority is not
in fixing the system slowness, important as that may be.  My "top"
priority is in uncompromisingly maintaining the philosophical principles
that Wikipedia was based on.  Sometimes I even get to feeling that it is
my ONLY reason for supporting the current benevolent dictatorship.  My
confidence that a more democratic organization would safeguard those
principles and be fiscally responsible is very low.

>Therein lies the true art of publicity -- get people to give you money
>while still keeping them interested. Granted, the non-profit part is not
>very appealing as a headline. Nor is the 300K milestone, though. "Yawn,
>Wikipedia has another X articles milestone. Dump it." That's really
>getting old fast.
>
Let's not confuse art and artifice.  The world of publicity is not
exactly the most trustworthy.  It should be used sparingly.  Wikipedia's
progress thus far has been with amazingly little publicity.  There is
much significance to that; maybe it just makes us more trustworthy. :-)

Perhaps you're right about the X articles milestone.  It can be a yawner.

>Beyond that, we have to make people familiar with Wikimedia itself, to put
>that organization in the foreground instead of Wikipedia, to the benefit
>of our sister projects. Wikimedia is still unknown to virtually everyone
>except Wikipedia insiders. Everyone who reads our press release must get
>that name hammered into their brain. Wikimedia must be as well-known as
>McDonald's, as popular as Google, as erotic as Lucy Liu in a black thong,
>with an oiled body glistening in the heat, flashing a smile at you as she
>turns her luscious body away ... er, sorry, got carried away there.
>
This made me think of the Charles Schulz Lucy who also flashed a smile
as she turned her body away along with the football that Charlie Brown
was about to kick.

I feel no need to bring Wikimedia so quickly to the forefront.  Let's
let it find its own level of importance.  I interpret Wikimedia as a
kind of holding corporation for the various projects.  A person wanting
to give to Wikipedia would be advised to issue his check to Wikimedia,
but our bank would be advised of the various project names to ensure
that any reasonably recognizable check would go to the right account.
 Many of our contributors may be interested only in one project.  That's
fine.  As much as we may welcome participation in our corporate
structure, we aren't about to force them into it.

>As for the other projects, aside from server problems, an influx of new
>people has never been a problem for Wikipedia, so it will not be a problem
>for these projects either. Don't be afraid of being popular.
>
I'm not afraid of popularity, only of how popularity changes people and
their organizations.

Eclecticology


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Retard

body:
At 12:50 AM 8/9/2003, you wrote:
>Rick-
> > I wrote on [[Talk: User:Retard]] and [[Wikipedia:Problem users]] that the
> > name User:Retard is offensive.  No one has done anything about
> it.  There is
> > a policy about allowing offensive User names.  Can we do something about
> > this?
>
>You already did -- you left a message on the user's talk page. There's no
>need to call out the police forces whenever there's some sign of potential
>conflict, because doing so makes it more likely that the potential becomes
>a reality. Let's wait and see how our retarded friend reacts before
>jumping to any conclusion. He may have chosen the name in an act of self-
>deprecating irony.
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik

I'll go out on a limb and just assume that the user himself/herself is not
actually retarded, either mentally or physically?

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Ray-
>
>>>Alas, some of these wretched souls have ended up with rather large
>>>watchlists due to my "Watch articles by default" feature, so the 1 hour
>>>cutoff on large watchlists threatens their salvation.
>>>
>>I often wondered about the wisdom of that feature.
>>
>
>We could add an "Ignore watch request
>if edit is minor" option that is evaluated post-save, but that may be too
>confusing and would probably only end up being used by 4 people total, who
>activated it by accident and then leave a question on the Pump about
>mysterious watchlist behavior.
>
>I intend to add an additional option that allows you to only watch newly
>created articles by default. Expiring watchlist entries after a certain
>default period (unless you make an edit in that period) may also help (but
>also has some screwup potential).
>
I would still prefer eliminating the "Watch articles by default" feature
altogether.

I don't like the idea of automatically expiring watchlist item.  The
oldest one on my 115 item watchlist (other than talk pages) is from
February 11.  My list includes a number of things that I would like to
get back to if I ever have the time away from the mailing lists :-)

Eclecticology


from_name: JFrost8401 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
I'm all in favour of the new watchlist, despite having had to cut down from
1600 items (and that's without automatic).

Previously my watchlist timed out after about 8 am, so I could only view it
once a day. Now it works every time. Thank you Brion

Jim Frost
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Retard

body:
At 02:41 AM 8/9/2003, you wrote:
>Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
>>I'll go out on a limb and just assume that the user himself/herself is
>>not actually retarded, either mentally or physically?
>not necessarily.
>we do have several wikipedians with disabilities.

*sigh* No, I didn't mean that, by default, I assume that any Wikipedian is
not disabled, but simply that the name chosen by this user was /intended/
to be either "funny" or offensive, and probably /not/ intended to be
self-descriptive. I'm making no judgement on the likelihood of a disability
in a random Wikipedian, but theorizing on the behavior of a random internet
user.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
>I've set the default cutoff to one hour

That is driving me MAD!!! WHY??? The only reason I use my watchlist is when
I log on after being off for 10 of 15 hours to see what pages I am
interested in have been worked on in my absence by others. Instead I end up
being told what was worked on in the last hour, which I can see from the
blooming Recent Changes anyway! I end up having to do a second watchlist
search having reset the perameters. An hour-long search is worse than
useless.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 06:26:42PM -0700, Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
> Karl Wick saith:
> > Here is a technical question: in the same way that the
> > table of contents feature can be opened and collapsed with
> > a click  apparently wihout reloading the whole page (which
> > IMHO is a very cool feature !), could we have collapseable
> > notes for the edge of a document ?
>
> We can easily use the same (or almost the same) code for hiding/showing
> sidenotes as we already do for hiding/showing the table of contents.
> I made a sample at
>
>   http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a2/Sidenote.html
>
> with JavaScript code based on the wikibits.js ToC code. The changes
> are to allow the ToC/note functions to operate on any ID, not tocinside,
> and for the default to be hidden notes.

Hold on a second. Such a default makes sidenotes completely unavailable for
text browsers, not ? Please make sure your code also works with Javascript turned off.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Memcached

body:
Brion-
> At the moment we don't exactly have a lot of free memory floating around

Larousse seems to still have about 400 megs free, pliny 885, that is, used
by Linux for caching, but Linux always grabs as much as it gets for
caching -- that doesn't mean it has any substantial effect. For example, I
have 640 MB of RAM, "free" tells me that 620 are used -- but minus
buffers/cache, only about 200 MB are used.

Using an application-optimized cache like memcached would be orders of
magnitude more efficient than relying on Linux' kernel-based caching.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Daniel-
> Hm. Kat suggested that only one big item should be on each press release, so
> maybe we can have a separate press release announcing the name change and
> talking about the software itself?

I disagree with this. But I think that the 300K milestone should not be
the headline of the press release -- just mentioned in the first
paragraph. The headline should be something like "Wikipedia goes non-
profit, launches new projects".

Regards,

Erik


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
Erik writes:

>Expiring watchlist entries after a certain
>default period (unless you make an edit in that
>period) may also help (but also has some screwup
>potential).

It does, yes.  Some of the articles I watch are
infrequently edited, but if someone comes along and
vandalizes them or inserts blatant POV, I want to be
sure to see it.  As far as the vandalism goes, it may
come as a shock to some, but not every vandalism is
caught--I recently found a country page that had been
vandalized nearly two months earlier.

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
I agree with Erik that the biggest need is for more capacity... and I'm wary
of sending out 3 or so press releases. It reaches the point where people
don't care about any of them individually, so don't bother with any of them.

--Jake
jnelson at soncom.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
james-

>> I've set the default cutoff to one hour

> That is driving me MAD!!! WHY??? The only reason I use my watchlist is when
> I log on after being off for 10 of 15 hours to see what pages I am
> interested in have been worked on in my absence by others. Instead I end up
> being told what was worked on in the last hour, which I can see from the
> blooming Recent Changes anyway! I end up having to do a second watchlist
> search having reset the perameters. An hour-long search is worse than
> useless.

I agree, the 1 hour default is kind of silly. We really need to find a
solution that allows watching thousands of articles without delay. Since
Brion is an avid watchlist user himself I'm sure he'll optimize it some
more, but if not, I'll try to see what I can do.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
Brion-
> Because it's MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than a longer cutoff, and
> it's fairly convenient to click now and again during the course of a day.

Rumor has it that there are actually people who use Wikipedia only for a
limited time each day; in fact, I have heard (as of yet entirely
unsubstantiated) claims that some people do not even use Wikipedia each
and every day. Advances in Wikipedia technology will surely contribute to
the assimilation of these unfortunates (recent Star Trek episodes
highlighted some possible uses for nanotechnology in particular).

Alas, some of these wretched souls have ended up with rather large
watchlists due to my "Watch articles by default" feature, so the 1 hour
cutoff on large watchlists threatens their salvation. If we seek to make
them part of our collective, we must accommodate their strange ways, for
otherwise they may be so frustrated by the given behavior that they will
consult our universe-encompassing compendium even less frequently.

Remember, until we can forcefully integrate all of humanity into the
Wikipedia neverous systems, we have to come up with wacky reasons for
people to join on their own accord.

Report prepared by
Wiki-Drone #52


body:
Erik wrote:
>....
>As we become more popular, inevitably, these same
>problematic suggestions and others will be made more
>often. But we're a large community, with many thoughtful
>members like yourself who are aware of the problems,
>and I just don't see us doing anything stupid just because
>we become larger.
>....

I agree.

What I've noticed is that as we get more and more contributors we get more and
more eyeballs checking each edit. So even though the number of bad edits has
increased greatly (which is alarming to some), their percentage of the total
has not changed and IMO has gone down over time. So far this has scaled
really well.

The only problem times are when we are being hit hard due to media exposure.
Then the number of Anon edits increases dramatically; most are good to great
edits but a certain percentage are bad; all have to be checked anyway which
is taxing on old hands (thus the need for the Fire Dept). But after a day or
two things settle down and we get a new group of user accounts and a certain
percentage of these become old hands in no time and Wikipedia is all the
better due to new talent and energy. This also seems to scale very well.

Well-timed and prepared-for media exposure is an investment that pays great
dividends. We should not be afraid of it (esp now that the Foundation can
take donations; we should also seek tax-exempt status in other nations too -
every bit helps).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l digest, Vol 1 #684 - 17 msgs

body:
Geoffrey-
> And MediaWiki intuitively sounds like software for editable multimedia -

We allow embedding all kinds of files using image: and media: links. We
support LaTeX formulas, and SVG support is planned (which could quite
possibly allow collaborative editing of SVG files). We would be really
multimedia compliant if we added support for GNU Lilypond, as has been
suggested in the past, but there don't seem to be enough music buffs to
pull it off. Furthermore, it is one of my design goals to make image
embedding as simple as possible, but even now our image handling has
features which other wikis lack (such as reverting and restoring specific
revisions of an image).

Wikipedia itself has all types of media (except for videos, I think).
Aside from that, the term "media" can be interpreted in many ways -- I
interpret it more as a means of communicating ideas and concepts than a
specific *form* of media. In other words, MediaWiki is about turning wikis
into effective media. And there are yet more interpretations: MediaWiki is
"middleware" between the database and the wiki-application for which it is
used. MediaWiki is mediocre. MediaWiki can be used to calculate medians.
MediaWiki has been featured in many media reports. MediaWiki is better for
information storage than floppy disks. MediumWiki allows you to
communicate with dead spirits.

> Why do we need to _rename_ Phase III?

Because Phase IV is still a while away, or may not happen at all (we may
stick to making incremental improvements to this codebase), and because we
need to advertise our software in a way that appeals to people beyond our
current image as an encyclopedia project. "Phase III" is a crappy
designation, so people just refer to it as "the Wikipedia software" (822
hits on Google) as opposed to "Wikipedia Phase III" (55 hits).

Right now, many people do not use the Wikipedia software because they
think it is too tailor made for an encyclopedia. That's true in some
respects (we do not make it easy enough to change all the Wikipedia-
specific strings), but we are becoming more general as our spinoff
projects prove, and I hate to see interesting projects use inferior
software like TWiki because it has better marketing.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Ray-
> No.  We aren't '''going''' non-profit; we always have been.  What
> exactly does saying that we are going non-profit accomplish?

We can take donations. And this is the most essential and important part
of our press release. It's not like we need the publicity -- we need the
money. That's no platitude, it is a simple truth: we cannot grow if we
cannot afford to expand our servers. The biggest danger to Wikipedia/
Wikimedia at present is that large numbers of good contributors will be
scared away by continued blackouts and system slowness. Fixing this is our
*top* priority. That is why we must emphasize that Wikimedia is now able
to take tax-deductible donations, but we have to package it nicely and put
most of the donation info on a dedicated page.

Therein lies the true art of publicity -- get people to give you money
while still keeping them interested. Granted, the non-profit part is not
very appealing as a headline. Nor is the 300K milestone, though. "Yawn,
Wikipedia has another X articles milestone. Dump it." That's really
getting old fast.

Beyond that, we have to make people familiar with Wikimedia itself, to put
that organization in the foreground instead of Wikipedia, to the benefit
of our sister projects. Wikimedia is still unknown to virtually everyone
except Wikipedia insiders. Everyone who reads our press release must get
that name hammered into their brain. Wikimedia must be as well-known as
McDonald's, as popular as Google, as erotic as Lucy Liu in a black thong,
with an oiled body glistening in the heat, flashing a smile at you as she
turns her luscious body away ... er, sorry, got carried away there.

As for the other projects, aside from server problems, an influx of new
people has never been a problem for Wikipedia, so it will not be a problem
for these projects either. Don't be afraid of being popular.

By the way, the milestone is 300K, not 250K. We have already passed the
250K milestone.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Catherine Munro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
Would it be difficult to have two options at the bottom of the
page:  "Watch this article forever", and "Watch this article for two weeks"?

Catherine

> >Expiring watchlist entries after a certain
> >default period (unless you make an edit in that
> >period) may also help (but also has some screwup
> >potential).
>
>It does, yes.  Some of the articles I watch are
>infrequently edited, but if someone comes along and
>vandalizes them or inserts blatant POV, I want to be
>sure to see it.  As far as the vandalism goes, it may
>come as a shock to some, but not every vandalism is
>caught--I recently found a country page that had been
>vandalized nearly two months earlier.
>
>kq


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
Ray-
>> Alas, some of these wretched souls have ended up with rather large
>> watchlists due to my "Watch articles by default" feature, so the 1 hour
>> cutoff on large watchlists threatens their salvation.

> I often wondered about the wisdom of that feature.

Unfortunately there's no easy way to make this the default only for non-
minor edits, since we obviously don't know if the edit is minor until it
is made (some JavaScript magic could be used, but that, too, is non-
trivial, since we don't want the box to be unchecked if a minor edit is
made to an already watched article). We could add an "Ignore watch request
if edit is minor" option that is evaluated post-save, but that may be too
confusing and would probably only end up being used by 4 people total, who
activated it by accident and then leave a question on the Pump about
mysterious watchlist behavior.

I intend to add an additional option that allows you to only watch newly
created articles by default. Expiring watchlist entries after a certain
default period (unless you make an edit in that period) may also help (but
also has some screwup potential).

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Karl Wick

body:
Very cool !
-Karl

--- Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a2/Sidenote.html

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Retard

body:
Rick-
> I wrote on [[Talk: User:Retard]] and [[Wikipedia:Problem users]] that the
> name User:Retard is offensive.  No one has done anything about it.  There is
> a policy about allowing offensive User names.  Can we do something about
> this?

You already did -- you left a message on the user's talk page. There's no
need to call out the police forces whenever there's some sign of potential
conflict, because doing so makes it more likely that the potential becomes
a reality. Let's wait and see how our retarded friend reacts before
jumping to any conclusion. He may have chosen the name in an act of self-
deprecating irony.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
At 04:31 AM 8/9/03 -0700, you wrote:
>Erik writes:
>
> >Expiring watchlist entries after a certain
> >default period (unless you make an edit in that
> >period) may also help (but also has some screwup
> >potential).
>
>It does, yes.  Some of the articles I watch are
>infrequently edited, but if someone comes along and
>vandalizes them or inserts blatant POV, I want to be
>sure to see it.  As far as the vandalism goes, it may
>come as a shock to some, but not every vandalism is
>caught--I recently found a country page that had been
>vandalized nearly two months earlier.

I'm probably going to keep watching [[Zoo]] indefinitely, to
see what else of interest is added and make copyediting
passes after people add information. I'm sure I'm not the
only person who uses the watchlist this way.

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


from_name: Chong Yidong

subject: [WikiEN-l] Emacs mode for editing wikipedia articles

body:
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from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: CSS

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
>> tarquin wrote
>>
>>> After *that*, I'll see about slowly tweaking the current skin.
>>> We need to look a bit smarter in time for the 300k article
>>> announcement.
>>
>> The current default skin gives to non-technical visitors a bad
>> impression. The find it looks old and not proffesional.
>>
> But we're not professional!  Let's not pretend that we are.  A bit of
> amateurish isn't bad if it leaves people with the feeling that we are
> closer to the non-technical person's level of computer understanding.
> We want people to contribute without being blinded by glitz. The
> contents are far more important than the skin.
>

Yes!
But I want people to be blinded by *neither* 1) glitz nor 2) yucky skins
with too many techy-looking links
My aim for the default skin is simplicity and clarity.


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: <wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2003 8:08 AM
Subject: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #577 - 16 msgs

> Send WikiEN-l mailing list submissions to
> wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of WikiEN-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Easter Bradford (Jimmy Wales)
>    2. Re: Wikipedia Shepherds (Daniel Ehrenberg)
>    3. Re: Easter Bradford (Christopher Mahan)
>    4. Re: Wikipedia Shepherds (Toby Bartels)
>    5. Re: I give up (Toby Bartels)
>    6. Re: Easter Bradford (Steve Vertigo)
>    7. Re: Watchlist (james duffy)
>    8. Re: Watchlist (Erik Moeller)
>    9. Re: Watchlist (Steve Vertigo)
>   10. Re: Watchlist (Brion Vibber)
>   11. Re: Watchlist (Erik Moeller)
>   12. Re: Watchlist (Brion Vibber)
>   13. Re: Watchlist (Ray Saintonge)
>   14. Re: Watchlist (JFrost8401 at aol.com)
>   15. Re: Watchlist (Brion Vibber)
>   16. Re: Watchlist (Erik Moeller)
>
> --__--__--
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 07:24:55 -0700
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> Graham Burnett wrote:
> > Someone with an axe to grind keeps inserting POV stuff into
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bradford and accusing anyone who
makes
> > any changes/reverts of being a 'liar'. Personally I've never even heard
of
> > Easter Bradford, but could somebody else cast an eye on this before I
get
> > drawn into an edit war about something I couldn't even care less about?
>
> I would say that the bulk of that entry fails the confirmability test.
> It does appear that someone with an axe to grind is doubting the
> veracity of the information given, and without some independent
> sources, my feeling is that the article should be removed or at least
> cut back to a stub of confirmable information.
>
> I just said the same thing on the talk page, and probably this
> discussion can just continue there, as there's not really a policy
> issue just yet.  Policy nerds such as myself should take note of this
> as a good example for future discussions of people editing articles
> about themselves.
>
> My general feeling is that it is almost always a social faux pas to
> write an article about yourself.  It's nearly always a faux pas to
> even edit such an article, although if someone else wrote an entry
> about you (and I'm not talking about a buddy that you put up to it!)
> I suppose it wouldn't be horrible to step in and correct factual
> errors.
>
> To me there's a certain unsavory braggadocio involved in proclaiming
> oneself to be worthy of an encyclopedia article.
>
> --Jimbo

Hi Jimbo- I have to say that when I first noticed the page I had no idea
that Easter Bradford was a wiki contributor, I'd never heard of him, I just
noticed POV and potentially libelous material was on the page and edited it
to make it less POV and libelous. It wasn't until a little later that it
become clear that there were actually two people engaged in an edit war (or
more like a cat fight!) on the page, and it was me who protected it,
although I realied with hindsight that perhaps this was a wiki faux pas as I
had actually been involved in editing. It was even later that  I realised
Easter Bradford was in fact a wiki contributor, and was probably one of the
parties in the edit war.

I'm tempted to revert the page back to the last edit by a 'trusted person'
(ie, logged in contributor apart from myself), which, IIRC, was camembert.
However being the person who for better or worse locked the page, it might
be better if somebody else did that?

I really don't have an interest in the page one way or the other though in
terms of it's content apart from that it conforms to wiki standards, (NPOV,
not libelous, accurate, etc, etc)

Cheers Graham (Quercus robur)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Retard

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> I'll go out on a limb and just assume that the user himself/herself is
> not actually retarded, either mentally or physically?
>
not necessarily.
we do have several wikipedians with disabilities.


from_name: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] Memcached

body:
I love memcacheD. It's just plain cool. It and wikipedia would go great with
a dual G5 1.2Ghz X-Serve with 4GB RAM don't you think? Ahhhh dreams.
With some beefed up hardware and the break that memcached would give the DB
we might be able to start turning on things like special pages and
maintenance pages again, not to mention the search. If wikipedia ever got
really huge and had a bank acct with lots of money i think one of those
google search appliances would be really slick. Those features like spelling
suggestions and matching mispeelings make all the difference some times.

Is it just me or does it seem just like yesterday when hard drives were
still measured in megabytes, ram ammounts rarely went into double digits and
processor speeds were measured in double digit megahertz?

--------- Original message --------
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: "wikitech-l at wikipedia.org" <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Memcached
Date: 08-09-03 02:13

Brion-
> At the moment we don't exactly have a lot of free memory floating around

Larousse seems to still have about 400 megs free, pliny 885, that is, used
by Linux for caching, but Linux always grabs as much as it gets for
caching -- that doesn't mean it has any substantial effect. For example, I
have 640 MB of RAM, "free" tells me that 620 are used -- but minus
buffers/cache, only about 200 MB are used.

Using an application-optimized cache like memcached would be orders of
magnitude more efficient than relying on Linux' kernel-based caching.

Regards,

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

________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Whitelist mode for article viewing

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I think we all know that when a programmer says 1 week,
>it means 2, and when a programmer says 70 lines of code, it really
>means 140!  :-)
>
>For awhile, I tried to defeat this mysterious law of nature by doubling
>my own estimates before I told anyone.  Didn't help, because it still is
>true that whatever you promise someone, the actuality is twice as bad!
>
>If I think "this will take a week" and so double it and promise it in
>two weeks, then it takes 4.
>
>;-)
>
Then there is the other tactic:  If you think that something will take a
week, promise it in three days.  If you think it will take 70 lines of
code promise 35.  Of course, no matter what you do, your credibility
will be in question.   ;-)

In the same class of laws of human nature, if you need a quorum for a
meeting at 8:00 p.m. announce the starting time for that meeting as a
half-hour earlier.. :-)

Ec


from_name: Steve Vertigo

subject: [Wikitech-l] userid in cookies

body:
Might it be a good idea to conceal (make hash/
otherwise encrypt) the username in a cookie?

-S-

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body:
Im sure that would be awesome. :)
Xiao Xin
-S-
--- Chong Yidong <cyd at stupidchicken.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've written an Emacs major-mode for editing
> Wikipedia articles
> offline. It currently only does syntax highlighting,
> a la the vim
> syntax file in [[Wikipedia:Syntax highlighting]]. I
> am planning to add
> some convenience functions.
>
> The major-mode is attached, in the hope that people
> will find it
> useful even at this early stage of development.
> You'll have to place
> it in your load-path, and possibly modify
> auto-mode-alist if you want
> to associate it with a file type.
>
> As per the convention for Emacs packages, I have
> placed it under the
> GNU GPL. Should I upload it to the Wikipedia?
>
>

> ATTACHMENT part 2 application/emacs-lisp
>
> -- Yidong
>

__________________________________
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

in_reply_to: <20030809021645.58827.qmail@web11506.mail.yahoo.com>; from utilitymuffinresearch@yahoo.com on Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 07:16:45PM -0700

body:
Steve Vertigo wrote:
>  Is there a distinction being made as far as calber
> /rank in society, etc.. goes?

I'm not sure what you mean here, so I'll answer 'yes' and 'no'.

"No", not in the sense that we're making any global existential
comment on the value of any particular human life by including or
excluding them.  That's not something that Wikipedia can or should do.

But "yes" in the sense that by insisting that we stick to confirmable
information, we do exclude a lot of true facts about individual people
who happen to have not made a wide impact on the world.  I could write
a true biography of my grandmother, or a complete load of hogwash, and
virtually no one could edit the article to correct factual errors,
bias, etc.

So the point is that we aren't saying that making a wide impact on the
world makes anyone more important or more valuable -- even if that's
true, it isn't a claim for _Wikipedia_ to make.  All we are saying is
that we're constrained to be encyclopedic, which means, in part, that
all of our information is confirmable.

> It seems that there can legitimately be a rule that says you cant
> be both a contributor and a feature, but is this enforceable?

I think that having such a rule as a general social custom is a good
idea, but in terms of having it as a formal policy, I don't think so.

One reason is that I can easily imagine that lots of people who do or
might work on Wikipedia are worthy of a biographical entry.  Anyone
who has published a book could ostensibly be worthy of a biographical
entry based on that fact alone.

Some current good friends of Wikipedia *are* famous people, worthy of
articles... For example, suppose Richard Stallman drops by to clarify
a page on the gnu project or the free software foundation?  Suppose
Larry Lessig wants to work on an article about the history of
copyright law?  We should welcome that, and not decide to delete the
encyclopedia articles about them on that basis alone.

In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel Peace Prize and
the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of old Milli Vanilli
classics, I will permit an article about me.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
Ray-
> I would still prefer eliminating the "Watch articles by default" feature
> altogether.

About 450 users on the English Wikipedia seem to disagree with you, since
they have enabled the option.

> I don't like the idea of automatically expiring watchlist item.

It would not be mandatory and possibly namespace-specific.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Retard

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 02:41 AM 8/9/2003, you wrote:
>
>> Dante Alighieri wrote:
>>
>>> I'll go out on a limb and just assume that the user himself/herself
>>> is not actually retarded, either mentally or physically?
>>
>> not necessarily.
>> we do have several wikipedians with disabilities.
>
>
> *sigh* No, I didn't mean that, by default, I assume that any
> Wikipedian is not disabled, but simply that the name chosen by this
> user was /intended/ to be either "funny" or offensive, and probably
> /not/ intended to be self-descriptive. I'm making no judgement on the
> likelihood of a disability in a random Wikipedian, but theorizing on
> the behavior of a random internet user.

Fair point.
I think at any rate, others may find it offensive.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
> "Benevolent dictator" Jimbo wrote:
>In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel
> Peace Prize and
> the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of
> old Milli Vanilli
> classics, I will permit an article about me.
>
> --Jimbo

We all eagerly await the day.

;)
-S-

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body:
Ray-
> Being registered as a "non-profit" organization is not what makes it
> possible to take donations.

I am fully aware of that and am not too impressed with tax-deductibility
either (though I can see that it would come in handy for larger
donations). However, Jimbo has always stated that he only wants to start
taking donations "when the foundation is set up". Thus the time to take
donations has come now.

> Maybe we do "need the money", but your only guessing.

As a developer highly involved with the problems I would say that my guess
is more educated than yours. I know the specifications and load of our
current servers and I know that we need at least 1 or 2 new servers to
appropriately handle the present amount of usage. Even software problems
can be addressed more quickly by actually paying developers. And believe
me, if we get more money than we "need" I have plenty of ideas on how to
use it productively. Money is good. It keeps things flowing.

> The biggest danger to Wikimedia is not that we will lose big
> contributors, but that we will lose our way.  My "top" priority is not
> in fixing the system slowness, important as that may be.  My "top"
> priority is in uncompromisingly maintaining the philosophical principles
> that Wikipedia was based on.

We talk about "maintaining the philosophical principles that Wikipedia was
based on" every frelling week. Whenever a sysop or a developer does
something marginally controversial, we're already on the road to a wiki
police state. Whenever someone does not immediately get their wish, or is
ignored, they complain about class warfare among different users. Yes, I'm
exaggerating, but I have never seen a project that is as paranoid about
its philosophy as Wikipedia. I have seen communities deteriorate into
feudalism, and I see no evidence whatsoever of Wikipedia being in any way
philosophically endangered. Our philosophical principles have been
expanded and refined, but no substantial principle has ever been discarded
in our 2 1/2+ year history.

Paranoia about newbies not respecting NPOV or other policies is absolutely
unjustified. NPOV is *not* difficult, it's just that *everyone* is a
newbie at some point and has to learn the house rules. That's what the
oldtimers are for, and it works well. When someone joins wiki, they get a
welcome message a few minutes later, and their edits are observed
carefully. Soon they will find notifications like "Your edit of .. was not
neutral. Please see our NPOV policy for details .." It has worked this way
since we started, and it works well.

The only principle I see violated often even by old hands is WikiLove. But
that is to be expected, and if anything, many of us have learned self-
discipline in the last months. There may be ways to increase our
WikiLoveQuotient, but I don't think we're doing too badly.

If you want to worry, worry. But I think your concerns are completely
groundless in the absence of any real world example that would justify
them. While we should guard our philosophy, we should also avoid being
paralyzed by it.

>   Sometimes I even get to feeling that it is
> my ONLY reason for supporting the current benevolent dictatorship.

When and what was the last decision by Jimbo? Ban Palestinian Liberator,
an obvious vandal who could have been banned by a developer even without
Jimbo's approval? And that was not even enforced through software. Jimbo
is a moral leader more than anything else. Yes, he does in a way safeguard
our principles, but it's not like Wikipedians are just waiting for an
opportunity to dump NPOV, or to replace our present system of consensus
seeking with arbitrary deletion power, and so on. The only un-wiki idea
I've seen recently was the proposal to protect pages at a certain point,
and that was dead on arrival.

> Let's not confuse art and artifice.  The world of publicity is not
> exactly the most trustworthy.  It should be used sparingly.

That's exactly why I think our press release should summarize some of the
Big Things that have happened in the last months.

> I feel no need to bring Wikimedia so quickly to the forefront.

Then maybe you should not participate in the authoring of a *Wikimedia*
press release.

> I'm not afraid of popularity, only of how popularity changes people and
> their organizations.

Same difference. Look, the next time someone proposes an adult filter for
the 'pedia because it has become so popular that schools have taken
notice, I'll be here to defend freedom of information. The next time
someone says we need to ban anons because we can't handle their number of
edits I'll be here to offer alternatives. The next time someone says we
should just add advertising to all pages I'll be here to dismiss that idea
in a patronizing manner. As we become more popular, inevitably, these same
problematic suggestions and others will be made more often. But we're a
large community, with many thoughtful members like yourself who are aware
of the problems, and I just don't see us doing anything stupid just
because we become larger.

Let's compare Wikipedia to a corporation. And we all know that
corporations don't become irresponsible simply because they get wealthier,
more powerful, have to listen their customers less and can engage in shady
business practices without being punished. Umm .. well, OK, maybe that's a
bad analogy. But the thing is, on Wikipedia we all control one another.
And that's the best safeguard there is.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Geoffrey Thomas

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: disappearing/reappearing column side-notes

body:
Brion Vibber saith:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 06:26:42PM -0700, Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
> > > ...and for the default to be hidden notes.
> > Hold on a second. Such a default makes sidenotes completely unavailable for
> > text browsers, not ?
> Or any browser that knows CSS but not JavaScript (or has JavaScript
> disabled!).
>
> Simplest way around that is to do the hiding in the page's onLoad event
> handler; the JavaScript-less or CSS-less will see the things always,
> which is probably better than never.

Only in CSS but not JS browsers; it shows in text (non-CSS) browsers.

(Currently in Mozilla 1.4 with JavaScript disabled, the sidenote is hidden as an
annoyingly tiny purple box. Currently in Lynx 2.8.4 (or whatever came
with Cygwin) the text appears and is not delimited as a sidenote at all - it
appears as another paragraph. How do you mark this up to be set off as a
sidenote in Lynx?)

Code changes:
Changed showNoteToggle() to make "show" the default, but immediately call
toggleNote(). We can't use onLoad because a single page can have many notes
on it. In Mozilla without JS this shows the note without the showlink;
with JS it works the same as before. Also moved width:300px to a class
(.notetext).

This means that the default for scripted browsers is hidden - this is
what we want, right?

tocWas is a single global, and I presume the purpose of it was to keep
display: list-item, inline, block, etc. info. It seems to work when both
notes have the same display, but for good measure there's now an array
notesWere, indexed by ID.

How to put this in Wikipedia:
In wikibits.js add the Note functions - or better yet replace the Toc
functions with them, passing "tocinside" as the ID. Add the note
classes to the style sheet. Parse <note>text</note> as

  text

where xx could be, say, note0, note1, note2... The valign-ment is
necessary to keep the [Hide] link from jumping from top to middle.

I made updates on my local copy,

  http://geoffrey.homeip.net:8080/sidenote.html

The uploaded sample, [[Image:Sidenote.html]] or

  http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a2/Sidenote.html

was not intentionally updated yet, but it seems to be the new
version (I don't know how or why). The new version has two sidenotes.

=====
-Geoffrey Thomas
geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com

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from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikitech-l] Name "MediaWiki" already used months ago by Indimedia.org

body:
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
 Erik wrote:
 >Right now, many people do not use the Wikipedia software
 >because they think it is too tailor made for an encyclopedia.
 >That's true in some respects (we do not make it easy enough
 >to change all the Wikipedia-specific strings), but we are
 >becoming more general as our spinoff projects prove, and I
 >hate to see interesting projects use inferior software like
 >TWiki because it has better marketing.

Hey,
Checking Google brought out this conversation below.
It seams the Indymedia.org people were already thinking
of the name "MediaWiki" almost a year ago. (read below).
Since,
Jay B.

(for the source of the quote below see:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech-coord/2002-November.txt )

--- Quote ---


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Geoffrey Thomas wrote:

>Brion Vibber saith:
>
>
>>Or any browser that knows CSS but not JavaScript (or has JavaScript
>>disabled!).
>>
>>
>Only in CSS but not JS browsers; it shows in text (non-CSS) browsers.
>
Right; read a silent "rather" between "Or" and "any".

>Currently in Lynx 2.8.4 (or whatever came
>with Cygwin) the text appears and is not delimited as a sidenote at all - it
>appears as another paragraph. How do you mark this up to be set off as a
>sidenote in Lynx?)
>
Stick it in brackets or something, which can either become part of its
normal display, or hidden by CSS so shown only for the primitives like
Lynx. Making it italic or something may also help by setting it off in a
different brightness/color or underline or some other hideous text effect.

>Code changes:
>Changed showNoteToggle() to make "show" the default, but immediately call
>toggleNote(). We can't use onLoad because a single page can have many notes
>on it.
>
JavaScript has a miraculous thing called a "for loop". You may have
heard of it. :)

>This means that the default for scripted browsers is hidden - this is
>what we want, right?
>
I'd rather see them, generally.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] userid in cookies

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 10:57:51AM -0700, Steve Vertigo wrote:
>
>
>>Might it be a good idea to conceal (make hash/
>>otherwise encrypt) the username in a cookie?
>>
>>
>What for?
>
So that people trying to figure out what the cookies on their own
computer are for will have the truth hidden from them?

I don't see the point of that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] definition lists

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

> But do text browsers actually indent blockquotes, or do they use
> colour to distinguish them such as they do for B, I, EM and STRONG?

lynx renders blockquotes indented two extra columns:

this is text

a blockquote

this is text

as

   this is text

     a blockquote

   this is text

> I think some graphic browsers Italicize a blockquote, and some screen
> readers might change voice.

That's why we have style sheets. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
When I was pruning my watchlist I came across several pages that no longer
existed.  Could these be removed from the watchlist automatically?  Or do
they make no difference anyway?

It would also be useful if there were some sort of notification that a page
on watch had been deleted.

Regards

sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
sannse wrote:

>When I was pruning my watchlist I came across several pages that no longer
>existed.  Could these be removed from the watchlist automatically?  Or do
>they make no difference anyway?
>
>It would also be useful if there were some sort of notification that a page
>on watch had been deleted.
>
>
>
I found many redirects.
A "purge all redirects from my watchlist" comment might be useful.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
tarquin wrote:

>
>
> sannse wrote:
>
>> When I was pruning my watchlist I came across several pages that no
>> longer
>> existed.  Could these be removed from the watchlist automatically?
>> Or do
>> they make no difference anyway?
>>
>> It would also be useful if there were some sort of notification that
>> a page
>> on watch had been deleted.
>>
>>
>>
> I found many redirects.
> A "purge all redirects from my watchlist" ***command*** might be useful.

sorry. bad typing :(


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes from (date) and older

body:
This is a feature previously discussed.
Summary of changes:

* new links at the foot of RC page: "view previous 50 | 100 | 250 edits"
* new item in the URL string for an "up to" date analogous to the "from"
date, eg "&upto=20030809172202"

Advantages
* obsessives like Mav and me could see a whole day of changes in small
chunks: get 250, check them, get the previous 250, check them, etc
* doing the above is quicker for the user, since we're not having to
download a single 1Mb+ page
* might be better for the server to do it this way too!
* we could remove the "500" link, since people can get the same
informationg in 2 batches of 250 -- might also be better for the server

Coding
 From by poor reading of the php, we need an extra block in function
wfSpecialRecentchanges()
I made a rough start and got as far as this:

    /* Cut-from -- show N edits from a specified time and older
    need an $upto value in the query string */
    if(preg_match('/^[0-9]{14}$/', $to)) {
        $cutfrom = "AND rc_timestamp < '{$upto}'";

(but it's probably complete bunkum!!!!!!!)

Is there anyone who can take this mini-project on?


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] American nationality

body:
User Wik is intent on trying to claim that people from the United States are "U.S.", not "American".   I have backed off on almost every argument that I've been involved in since I came to Wikipedia, but I can't see backing off on this. It is offensive to me to have my nationality minimized like this, as if I don't have the right to call myself what I feel I am.  "U.S." is not the correct term to use to describe people and institutions of the United States.

RickK

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: wikidown spam...

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:3F30BFC1.5070602 at pobox.com...
> The wikidown address has been getting spam in the last few days... I
> don't know if Lee still has it forwarding to his beeper, but that could
> be awful annoying. :P
>
> Suggestions?

I suggest doing away with the whole notification by email thing, and doing
the following:

* Construct a register of developers, with names, phone numbers, time zones,
degree of server access (wikidev, root or physical) and availability. A few
phrases in German might also be handy, like "hello can I speak to Magnus"
for example.
* Distribute the register to the developers, and a small number of trusted
wikipediholics, strategically located in various time zones.
* When Wikipedia goes down, there's a 99.99% probablilty that one of the
wikipediholics will be online. Come to think of it, if you just gave it to
Mav you'd have a 90% chance but we may as well be safe ;)
* The wikipediholics go to openfacts.berlios.de for coordination. They wait
a few minutes, and if no developer comes to assure them that the problem is
under control, they start ringing developers, starting with people who are
both awake and have root access.

We have had a number of crashes recently where the down-time has been
extended from minutes to hours due to the lack of someone with the
appropriate access on the scene. I think it's time we had a method to ensure
that there is someone available to fix problems 24 hours a day.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau> (add punctuation to email)


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] CSS Design Question

body:
So, is there a good reason that the default CSS for stub links is to
take out the underlines? I don't get it, and after some complaints I
reenabled underlines for wikitravel.org. I'm wondering if there
is some user-interface principle I'm missing here.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
tarquin meant to write ;) --

> > I found many redirects.
> > A "purge all redirects from my watchlist" command might be useful.
>

That might be good, as long as there was no risk of not noticing that a page
that had been moved.  If a page I'm interested in suddenly becomes a
redirect, either because the page has been moved or through an edit, I want
to know.

I don't think that what you are describing would affect this?  Although an
"ignore all redrects" command might.

sannse


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
>james-
>
> >> I've set the default cutoff to one hour
>
> > That is driving me MAD!!! WHY??? The only reason I use my watchlist is
>when
> > I log on after being off for 10 of 15 hours to see what pages I am
> > interested in have been worked on in my absence by others. Instead I end
>up
> > being told what was worked on in the last hour, which I can see from the
> > blooming Recent Changes anyway! I end up having to do a second watchlist
> > search having reset the perameters. An hour-long search is worse than
> > useless.
>
>I agree, the 1 hour default is kind of silly. We really need to find a
>solution that allows watching thousands of articles without delay. Since
>Brion is an avid watchlist user himself I'm sure he'll optimize it some
>more, but if not, I'll try to see what I can do.
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik

Thanks Eric,
The irony is I purged my watchlist, cutting over a thousand articles from
it. But it still is very slow and when it finally shows up on the screen,
with the crazy 1 hour limit, I often end up with a grand total of 1 on the
list or sometimes none, requiring me to do a second search with a longer
paremeter. BTW 'recent changes' is causing all sorts of problem to my
browser. Sometimes it takes so long the browser Camino times out (I have
already had to stop using my favourite browser because it constantly timed
out when in wiki). Either that or the browser gets stuck putting the page
together and I end up either unable to use any other pages for anywhere else
in the net because the cursor is spinning as it waits and waits and waits
for wiki to throw up the page, or out of frustration if I want to use
something else I end up having to 'force quit' the browser completely. The
best of luck with finding a solution.

JT

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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
Tarquin wrote:

>sannse wrote:

>>When I was pruning my watchlist I came across several pages that no longer
>>existed.  Could these be removed from the watchlist automatically?  Or do
>>they make no difference anyway?

Please no!

>>It would also be useful if there were some sort of notification that a page
>>on watch had been deleted.

Yes, I'd like this too.

>I found many redirects.
>A "purge all redirects from my watchlist" comment might be useful.

And a "purge all nonexistent pages" would be fine too.

I deliberately have both nonexistent pages and redirects on my watchlist.
Maybe I'll find that I must purge these to make it short enough --
then such purging commands would be useful.
But please don't purge them automatically.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
Catherine Munro wrote:

>Would it be difficult to have two options at the bottom of the
>page:  "Watch this article forever", and "Watch this article for two weeks"?

This was suggested back when the "watch upon saving" option was started.
It's still not a bad idea.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
Mr. James Duffy, can you please write an improved routine for the
watchlist that's a lot faster and less painful for the database on long
watchlists than the current one? Thanks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] American nationality

body:
The issue is that the term American - technically
referts to people of all Americas.. Arent Mexicans,
Bolivians, Guyanans (where Vespucci first saw
"America") and so on.  Even in the name United States
of America -- US people *of America.

Now the typical response is a practical one -- USA
people are called by default Americans -- its a common
term, and theres no reason to change it.  I agree with
this view -- but dislike your (Rick)  one sided way of
putting the issue to the list (explain the debate
please people)-- and dislike even more your inuendo
toward a nationalist appeal.

Nationalism of any kind is irrelevant here. The
opposing argument can just as easily claim that the
use of the term American -- as it refers to only one
state out of many -- simply comes from the 400 pound
Gorilla effect.  But only the conventional arguments
are important here, and Wikpedians are perfectly
willing to defy convention to forward Wiki goals.
"Americans" can mean two different things entirely.
Its a paradox -- like many things in adult life.

Respectfully,
-S-

--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
> At 07:24 PM 8/9/03 -0700, RickK wrote:
> >User Wik is intent on trying to claim that people
> from the United States
> >are "U.S.", not "American".   I have backed off on
> almost every argument
> >that I've been involved in since I came to
> Wikipedia, but I can't see
> >backing off on this. It is offensive to me to have
> my nationality
> >minimized like this, as if I don't have the right
> to call myself what I
> >feel I am.  "U.S." is not the correct term to use
> to describe people and
> >institutions of the United States.
> >
>
> Depending on context, either or both is correct. I
> am an American, but an
> American
> or a US citizen; the U.S. government is often
> referred to that way; and
> while the
> ambassador to France is the American ambassador, our
> representative in Lima
> is the
> "Ambassador of the United States of America" on all
> official paperwork.
>
> How about you both put this aside until Monday?
>
> --
> Vicki Rosenzweig
> vr at redbird.org
> http://www.redbird.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Mr. James Duffy, can you please write an improved
> routine for the
> watchlist that's a lot faster and less painful for
> the database on long
> watchlists than the current one? Thanks.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

ROFL -- Ill go give him a hand. We'll write it in
Brainfuck.

:D
-S-

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subject: [WikiEN-l] American nationality

body:
At 07:24 PM 8/9/03 -0700, RickK wrote:
>User Wik is intent on trying to claim that people from the United States
>are "U.S.", not "American".   I have backed off on almost every argument
>that I've been involved in since I came to Wikipedia, but I can't see
>backing off on this. It is offensive to me to have my nationality
>minimized like this, as if I don't have the right to call myself what I
>feel I am.  "U.S." is not the correct term to use to describe people and
>institutions of the United States.
>

Depending on context, either or both is correct. I am an American, but an
American
or a US citizen; the U.S. government is often referred to that way; and
while the
ambassador to France is the American ambassador, our representative in Lima
is the
"Ambassador of the United States of America" on all official paperwork.

How about you both put this aside until Monday?

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


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jay-
> Checking Google brought out this conversation below.
> It seams the Indymedia.org people were already thinking
> of the name "MediaWiki" almost a year ago.

They don't use it, so we can.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] userid in cookies

body:
On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 10:57:51AM -0700, Steve Vertigo wrote:
> Might it be a good idea to conceal (make hash/
> otherwise encrypt) the username in a cookie?
>
What for?

JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Not searchable

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>Is it possible to change which phrases cannot be searched? A user on
>WikipediaNL noted that the word "wants" could not be searched. In Dutch
>a "wants" is a certain type of insect (don't know the English word), and
>is the title of a page. Can this be changed? Is there a list of unsearchable
>words available?
>
See the default stopword list:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ACommon_words%2C_searching_for_which_is_not_possible

In theory it can be changed, on a server-wide basis, in some way.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] definition lists

body:
Richard-
> But do text browsers actually indent blockquotes,

lynx, w3m and links all do. None of them support CSS margins.

> or do they use colour to
> distinguish them such as they do for B, I, EM and STRONG?

No.

> I think some
> graphic browsers Italicize a blockquote,

Which ones?

> and some screen readers might
> change voice.

Which is better than doing nothing at all in our context, as they would in
the case of CSS.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist

body:
sannse wrote:

>When I was pruning my watchlist I came across several pages that no longer
>existed.  Could these be removed from the watchlist automatically?  Or do
>they make no difference anyway?
>
>It would also be useful if there were some sort of notification that a page
>on watch had been deleted.
>
I've also weeded many of these from my watchlist.  Quite often they have
not been deleted but changed into redirects.  It may not be possible or
practical to transfer the watch listing when an article has been
redirected, and sometimes it's useful to know if something has been
redirected.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
Steve Vertigo wrote:

>>"Benevolent dictator" Jimbo wrote:
>>In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel
>>Peace Prize and
>>the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of
>>old Milli Vanilli
>>classics, I will permit an article about me.
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
>
>We all eagerly await the day.
>
>;)
>
A video of the lipsynched rendition will need to be appended to the
article. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
>
>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Rumor has it that there are actually people who use Wikipedia only for a
>>limited time each day; in fact, I have heard (as of yet entirely
>>unsubstantiated) claims that some people do not even use Wikipedia each
>>and every day.
>>
>These people probably have shorter watchlists, which are not subject to the
>1-hour default cutoff for long watchlists.
>
/How/ short does it have to be? 2? I dumped 2/3 of the articles on my list
only to find that I am now stuck with an utterly useless 1 hour default
anyway. A 1 hour cut off is plain barmy. It should at least 4 hours,
preferably longer.

JT

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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Islamofascism

body:
User JoeM is constantly reinserting a POV diatribe on this topic, under
various names: Islamofascism, Totalitarian Islamofascism, Islamo-fascism, World War
IV. (In my mind, an article that begins with the assertion "Evil exists" is
already questionable and hardly encyclopedic.) He has been asked to stop and
been reverted incessantly. It's just wasting people's time.

Danny
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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel
> Peace Prize and
> the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of
> old Milli Vanilli
> classics, I will permit an article about me.
>
> --Jimbo

Even if you were just CEO of Bomis and Wikipedia was
started by someone else, you'd still deserve an
article. But as head of a giant free encyclopedia
project, the biggest and most useful wiki in
existance, you definately deserve one. There are
already stubs about you in other langauages, such as
polish. Why can't these accomplishments be enough?
-LittleDan

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kenneð

body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:

>>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Undelete&target=To
>>talitarian+Islamofascism&timestamp=20030810130312
>>
>>
>
>And why on earth do we still have pages which are viewable only by
>sysops? Undelete was supposed to be made available to all users once
>the bugs were knocked out of it.
>
It's on my todo list. Unless you'd like to knock the bugs out of it,
it'll be there for a while yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

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

body:
At 02:10 PM 8/10/03 +0100, Allan Crossman wrote:
>Someone may wish to put a block on User:Kenne? who's gotten involved
>in this JoeM / Islamofascism debate. Kenne? has responded with a
>death threat (now deleted). I think we have a precedent in these
>cases?

Death threats are a serious matter--banning from Wikipedia, while
justified, may not be sufficient here.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Islamofascism

body:
This sounds like an only 10% milder counterpart to the Palestinian
activist from last week.  Well, if he keeps it up, I approve that we
should put him on auto-revert unless and until he gets the message.

<editorial>What the world needs to do is put all the people like this
from both sides into a room and tell them that the outcome will depend
on them fighting each other.  But while they are in there distracted,
the rest of us sane people can figure out solutions that are mutually
acceptable and reasonable to all sensible parties.</editorial>

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> User JoeM is constantly reinserting a POV diatribe on this topic, under
> various names: Islamofascism, Totalitarian Islamofascism, Islamo-fascism, World War
> IV. (In my mind, an article that begins with the assertion "Evil exists" is
> already questionable and hardly encyclopedic.) He has been asked to stop and
> been reverted incessantly. It's just wasting people's time.
>
> Danny


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Not searchable

body:
Is it possible to change which phrases cannot be searched? A user on
WikipediaNL noted that the word "wants" could not be searched. In Dutch
a "wants" is a certain type of insect (don't know the English word), and
is the title of a page. Can this be changed? Is there a list of unsearchable
words available?

Andre Engels


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
At 09:41 AM 8/10/2003, you wrote:

>--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> > In the year in the future when I win both the Nobel
> > Peace Prize and
> > the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition of
> > old Milli Vanilli
> > classics, I will permit an article about me.
> >
> > --Jimbo
>
>Even if you were just CEO of Bomis and Wikipedia was
>started by someone else, you'd still deserve an
>article. But as head of a giant free encyclopedia
>project, the biggest and most useful wiki in
>existance, you definately deserve one. There are
>already stubs about you in other langauages, such as
>polish. Why can't these accomplishments be enough?
>-LittleDan

The irony here is that Jimbo can't really /prevent/ us from creating an
article about him without using a bit of heavy-handed dictatorial power
(which he usually seems loath to do).

So, it would seem, that if enough of us think there ought to be an article
about him, his "permission" would be hardly necessary. :)

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


subject: [WikiEN-l] Islamofascism

body:
At 10:11 AM 8/10/2003, you wrote:
><editorial>What the world needs to do is put all the people like this
>from both sides into a room and tell them that the outcome will depend
>on them fighting each other.  But while they are in there distracted,
>the rest of us sane people can figure out solutions that are mutually
>acceptable and reasonable to all sensible parties.</editorial>
>
>daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

<editorial> What the world REALLY needs to do is put all the people like
this from both sides into a room and never let them out. </editorial>

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


subject: [WikiEN-l] Islamofascism

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 10:11 AM 8/10/2003, you wrote:
>
>> <editorial>What the world needs to do is put all the people like this
>> from both sides into a room and tell them that the outcome will depend
>> on them fighting each other.  But while they are in there distracted,
>> the rest of us sane people can figure out solutions that are mutually
>> acceptable and reasonable to all sensible parties.</editorial>
>>
>> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
> <editorial> What the world REALLY needs to do is put all the people
> like this from both sides into a room and never let them out.
> </editorial>

If you put them all in a room together, with the intent that they can
all come out when they've solved their differences, it's almost a
certainty that far fewer will come out than went in. :-D

Wasn't there a similar underlying idea in the 17th century when the
English shipped their undesireables to Van Dieman's land. :-)

As a matter of observation about Kenne?, I've noticed from his
contribution list that not a single thing that he has written has been
to a real article.  Everything has been to User:, Talk:, or Wikipedia:
pages.

Ec


from_name: Steve Vertigo

subject: [Wikitech-l] language.php

body:
Whats up with the warning on the Language.php meta
file - do we really have to download the whole
snapshot just to get to the real file, -- how does the
snapshot file jive with the meta file, which seems to
be the subject of a few reasonable edits and
corrections itself. ?

-S-

(PS. How do we punctuate questions that end with
statements?  %)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
Well I oly know that I wouldnt like it if people
talked about me in the third person on an open list --
especially if the comments were embarrasingly
complimentary.

:)
-S-

--- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
wrote:
> At 09:41 AM 8/10/2003, you wrote:
>
> >--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> > > In the year in the future when I win both the
> Nobel
> > > Peace Prize and
> > > the Grammy for my a capella lipsynched rendition
> of
> > > old Milli Vanilli
> > > classics, I will permit an article about me.
> > >
> > > --Jimbo
> >
> >Even if you were just CEO of Bomis and Wikipedia
> was
> >started by someone else, you'd still deserve an
> >article. But as head of a giant free encyclopedia
> >project, the biggest and most useful wiki in
> >existance, you definately deserve one. There are
> >already stubs about you in other langauages, such
> as
> >polish. Why can't these accomplishments be enough?
> >-LittleDan
>
> The irony here is that Jimbo can't really /prevent/
> us from creating an
> article about him without using a bit of
> heavy-handed dictatorial power
> (which he usually seems loath to do).
>
> So, it would seem, that if enough of us think there
> ought to be an article
> about him, his "permission" would be hardly
> necessary. :)
>
>
> -----
> Dante Alighieri
> dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com
>
> "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those
> who maintain their
> neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
>     -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Islamofascism

body:
Umm.. Beleive me I sympathize with sentiments that
want to solve the whole Is-Pal conflict deal -- Maybe
wikipedia needs to have some special facilties to deal
with this particular debate -- in ways that emulate
real world attemps. It seems kinda silly though.

But in sharp and direct contrast to what some of the
helpful "suggestions" on this particular matter have
been -- I am more and more convinced with each passing
day that Celebrity deathmatches and fancy cages are no
solution, rather what we *really need now is -- love,
sweet love...

;)
-S-

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
> > At 10:11 AM 8/10/2003, you wrote:
> >
> >> <editorial>What the world needs to do is put all
> the people like this
> >> from both sides into a room and tell them that
> the outcome will depend
> >> on them fighting each other.  But while they are
> in there distracted,
> >> the rest of us sane people can figure out
> solutions that are mutually
> >> acceptable and reasonable to all sensible
> parties.</editorial>
> >>
> >> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > <editorial> What the world REALLY needs to do is
> put all the people
> > like this from both sides into a room and never
> let them out.
> > </editorial>
>
> If you put them all in a room together, with the
> intent that they can
> all come out when they've solved their differences,
> it's almost a
> certainty that far fewer will come out than went in.
> :-D
>
> Wasn't there a similar underlying idea in the 17th
> century when the
> English shipped their undesireables to Van Dieman's
> land. :-)
>
> As a matter of observation about Kenne??, I've
> noticed from his
> contribution list that not a single thing that he
> has written has been
> to a real article.  Everything has been to User:,
> Talk:, or Wikipedia:
> pages.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikitech-l] definition lists

body:
On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 15:11:06 -0700, Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> On Thursday 07 August 2003 12:15, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> <blockquote> would work, but you're not _supposed_ to use it for
>> indentation of things that aren't quotes.
>
>
>
> The 4.01 standard says 'The usage of BLOCKQUOTE to indent text is
> deprecated in favor of style sheets.'
>
> "Deprecated" doesn't mean "you can't do that", it's closer to "avoid
> doing that if possible, and if you go to a later standard, be ready to
> not be able to do it". But the doctype line at the top of Wikipedia's
> pages doesn't say "the latest standard", it says "HTML 4.01
> Transitional", and HTML 4.01 transitional says "you can do it if you
> really want to". And since we appear to be stuck on supporting browsers
> that can't keep up with 5-7 year old standards, it would appear we
> "really want to".

But do text browsers actually indent blockquotes, or do they use colour to
distinguish them such as they do for B, I, EM and STRONG? I think some
graphic browsers Italicize a blockquote, and some screen readers might
change voice.
There is no legitimate way to indent text via HTML, and there never has
been. So let's just write it off it for the tiny proportion of users with
non-css capable UA's rather than harming things for the vast majority.
--
Richard Grevers
A lottery is just a tax on people who are bad at math


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kennd

body:
The JoeM and Kenn(d) accounts were created within hours (if not
minutes) of each other; I wouldn't be a bit surprised if these were the
same person.

- Hephaestos


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Kenneð

body:
Mirko Thiessen wrote:
>> Someone may wish to put a block on User:Kenne? who's gotten involved
>> in this JoeM / Islamofascism debate. Kenne? has responded with a
>> death threat (now deleted). I think we have a precedent in these
>> cases?
>> Sysops can view what he wrote here:
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Undelete&target=To
>> talitarian+Islamofascism&timestamp=20030810130312
>
> The wording was "shut the fuck up JoeM. PS I i know where you live you
> sick fuck and ill hunt you down like the vermin you are with my police
> issue 9mm." This user has a preference for profanity, as you can see,
> when looking at this old version of his talk page:

We have zero tolerance for death threats. Ban immediately, get his IP, and
call the police.

-- mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki.org/.com

body:
http://mediawiki.org and http://mediawiki.com

I bought these yesterday and forwarded them to
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/ . Please test to make sure both work.

These domain names will be transfered to the Wikimedia Foundation if the
foundation wants them. Otherwise they will expire in a year.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] JoeM

body:
More JoeM material is popping up.

We have:

''The Communist Party of China is the most diabolical organization that has
ever existed. It has more blood on its hands than any regime in human
history:Tens of millions slaughtered in the terrorist campaign to seize control of the
country, tens of millions starved to death because of evil Communist Policies,
tens of millions of political murders, tens of millions dead due to campaigns
of genocide that are still ongoing, and unspeakable poverty due to the
failures of Communism. ''

and:

''The '''People's Republic of China''' ('''PRC''') is the self-proclaimed
name of the totalitarian regime of that the Communist Party imposes on China. Red
China is an inhuman state of terror and perhaps one of the most vicious
tyrannies ever imposed on human kind. ''

and:

''One of the darkest chapters in human history was opened up in 1949, when
China fell to Communist tyranny. Mao ruined the economy and made life miserable
for the Chinese people, committed tens of millions of political murders, set
up a police state, an apparatus of state terror all in the name of the evil
ideology of Communism. 40 million perished in the famine caused by the Great Leap
forward. Mao terrorized the population during the Cultural Revolution. When
he died in 1976, the regime realized that Communism was a miserable failure,
like it was everywhere else, so they moved to a capitalist economy while
maintaining the vicious tyranny of the party police state. Since then, there has been
some economic growth enjoyed by Chinese who chose to collaborate with their
tyrannical government. Ordinary people and Chinese who dream of basic,
inalienable human rights still get slaughtered in mass, like in Tiananmen Square, like
the Chinese democracy movement, and like the Tibetans.''

Can we get rid of him please?

Danny
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from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kenneð

body:
Someone may wish to put a block on User:Kenne? who's gotten involved
in this JoeM / Islamofascism debate. Kenne? has responded with a
death threat (now deleted). I think we have a precedent in these
cases?

Sysops can view what he wrote here:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Undelete&target=To
talitarian+Islamofascism&timestamp=20030810130312

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Kenneð

body:
> Someone may wish to put a block on User:Kenne? who's gotten involved
> in this JoeM / Islamofascism debate. Kenne? has responded with a
> death threat (now deleted). I think we have a precedent in these
> cases?
> Sysops can view what he wrote here:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Undelete&target=To
> talitarian+Islamofascism&timestamp=20030810130312

The wording was "shut the fuck up JoeM. PS I i know where you live you
sick fuck and ill hunt you down like the vermin you are with my police
issue 9mm." This user has a preference for profanity, as you can see,
when looking at this old version of his talk page:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Kenne%F0&oldid=1268903

Of course I do not want to defend user JoeM in any way, who does
nothing than inserting blatant POV (as Danny said before). He is as
problematic as his counterpart.

Cheers,

Mirko (Cordyph)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Camino (was Re: Watchlist)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I cannot reproduce the Camino browser issues you have described. Camino
>should behave in most ways like Mozilla, but I've never had any of these
>problems with Moz.
>
I recommend testing the nightly builds of Camino as well as the release
version, which is 5 months old and was based on old Mozilla code at the
time.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/camino/nightly/latest/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion management redesign (was Re: User:Kenneð)

body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:

>Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>It's on my todo list. Unless you'd like to knock the bugs out of it,
>>it'll be there for a while yet.
>>
>>
>
>Well, I can look. Can you give me the bug numbers?
>

See discussion at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletion_management_redesign

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] language.php

body:
Steve Vertigo wrote:

>Whats up with the warning on the Language.php meta
>file - do we really have to download the whole
>snapshot just to get to the real file,
>

You can grab individual files (including their version histories) from:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phase3/

Of course, everything's now complicated by having development and stable
branches. Bleh. And, that web mirror is up to 24 hours behind current
commits to the repository.

> -- how does the
>snapshot file jive with the meta file, which seems to
>be the subject of a few reasonable edits and
>corrections itself. ?
>
I don't know nothing about no snapshots, but don't trust anything you
see on meta. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] bug in the "ignore language links to self" feature

body:
I tried this on Wikipedia:Sandbox and Sexually transmitted disease.
With a language link to the current language, the firts few words on the
article do not appear when the page is saved -- but they are still there
in the source.

bug submitted to sourceforge.


from_name: Karl Wick

body:
Hey I'm no real programmer although I have tinkered with
code. I wanted to mess with that cool side note page to see
if I could format it into two formal columns, one wide one
on the left and a narrow one on the right. However I don't
konw how to mess with it as there is no "edit" button in
the page. (I could note that I have not messed with
uploading files to the WP before ...) Is there a simple way
that someone could explain how I can play with that code ?
Or could someone do the edit into two columns, so that
there is no text reflow when the note dialog opens ?

Thanks,
Karl

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] languageNl.php

body:
Here is a new version for languageNl.php.

Andre Engels
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from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
So, with the MediaWiki (sweet name, btw), users uploading an image
write up the rights info for an image on the Image: page.

It would be a lot easier for downstream users to have data in the
database about what's under a free license, what's copyrighted, and
who has copyright on what. Especially for a license like the GFDL or
the by-sa, where attribution is required to re-use content, it becomes
pretty necessary.

I was thinking that IWBNI there was a radio-button list on the upload
page for defining the rights of an image. Something like this:

     I affirm that:

     ( ) I am the copyright holder of this image and I agree to
         license it according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
     ( ) The copyright holder is [textbox here] and they have agreed
         to license it according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
     ( ) This image is in the public domain because [textbox].
     ( ) This image was created by [textbox here] and I am uploading
         it here according to the principle of $FAIR_USE_PAGE|fair use
         because [textbox].
     (o) I left the default value of this radio button list checked
         because I don't read fine print, especially about confusing
         copyright info.

Empty values for the text boxes, or leaving the default chosen, would
be an error.

It might actually be useful to mark article edits similarly:

     I affirm that:

     ( ) I wrote these changes and I agree to license them according
         to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
     ( ) The writer is [textbox here] and they have agreed
         to license their work according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
     ( ) This text is in the public domain because [textbox].
     ( ) This text was created by [textbox here] and I am uploading
         it here according to the principle of $FAIR_USE_PAGE|fair use
         because [textbox].
     (o) I left the default value of this radio button list checked
         because I don't read fine print, especially about confusing
         copyright info.

An additional side benefit would probably be a lower rate of copyvios.

I'm going to try to make this work on wikitravel.org, and submit a
patch for MediaWiki afterwards.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou
evan at prodromou.san-francisco.ca.us


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kenneð

body:
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
> Someone may wish to put a block on User:Kenne? who's gotten involved
> in this JoeM / Islamofascism debate. Kenne? has responded with a
> death threat (now deleted). I think we have a precedent in these
> cases?

If it's really a death threat, we should contact the police, just as we
did with the suicide threat.

I believe Mav said he did so with 24's threat. What was the result of
that?

> Sysops can view what he wrote here:
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Undelete&target=To
> talitarian+Islamofascism&timestamp=20030810130312

And why on earth do we still have pages which are viewable only by
sysops? Undelete was supposed to be made available to all users once
the bugs were knocked out of it.

-M-


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kenned

body:
> If it's really a death threat, we should contact the police, just
> as we did with the suicide threat.

Well, it was a death threat, though not one that would be taken
seriously, I expect. Still, I don't see much difference between it
and Michael's threat to Zoe in April, or whenever it was.

Mirko has reposted the text of it in an earlier email.

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


body:
--- Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hey I'm no real programmer although I have tinkered
> with
> code. I wanted to mess with that cool side note page
> to see
> if I could format it into two formal columns, one
> wide one
> on the left and a narrow one on the right. However I
> don't
> konw how to mess with it as there is no "edit"
> button in
> the page. (I could note that I have not messed with
> uploading files to the WP before ...) Is there a
> simple way
> that someone could explain how I can play with that
> code ?
> Or could someone do the edit into two columns, so
> that
> there is no text reflow when the note dialog opens ?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Karl

In your browser, there should be some type of option
"save page as" in the File menu. Then, you open the
file with a text editor, and edit it. After that, just
save it locally on your computer and reupload it to
wikipedia. You may want to change where you're saving
it, though. I made a version that looks more like a
windowing system and had some simplified javascript,
but I uploaded it to Sidenote-window.html (see
http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/d/de/Sidenote-window.html)
instead because some people might object to how the
changes look.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I cannot reproduce the Camino browser issues you
> have described. Camino
> should behave in most ways like Mozilla, but I've
> never had any of these
> problems with Moz.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I use firebird, and with high-traffic websites like
Wikipedia, about 1 in 20 page views time out. But this
can be fixed by just clicking the link again.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Kenned

body:
Allan Crossman wrote:
> Well, it was a death threat, though not one that would be taken
> seriously, I expect. Still, I don't see much difference between it
> and Michael's threat to Zoe in April, or whenever it was.
>
> Mirko has reposted the text of it in an earlier email.

I see. I agree, we can't treat that as a genuine death threat. It is a
particularly unpleasant personal attack, though, and Jimbo made it
clear long ago that such things have no place here.

-M-


subject: [WikiEN-l] JoeM, Paektu & Palestine liberator the same messer?

body:
--- james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I suspect that [[User:Palestine liberator]],
> [[User:Paektu]] and now
> [[User:JoeM]] are the same person, purely on the
> basis of edits. All three
> 'users' have notable similarities in style, and
> Paektu's and JoeM's user
> pages are strikingly alike in construction. All
> three strike me as
> provocative 'characture' users created to provoke
> people.
>
> The views of all three are not merely extreme but
> ludicrously extreme.
> Paektu claimed to be a stalinist, yet his writings
> seemed clich?d and
> phoney, basically an act. Ditto with Palestine
> liberator who didn't seem
> concerned with promoting an NPOV analysis of the
> middle east and actually
> appeared to know surprisingly little about the topic
> for someone who
> pretended to know a lot, and seemed to me merely an
> exercise in screwing up
> pages and causing chaos for the fun of it. JoeM's
> stuff seemed equally
> extreme, nutty and phoney, as if trying to pick a
> fight. Their edits seem
> too suspiciously loopy and deliberately ludicrously
> provocative to be
> genuine.
>
> I can't help wondering whether any banned user with
> a grudge isn't trying to
> get revenge. One particular banned user did after
> all come on some time ago
> posing as paedophile, even asking if he could
> download pictures of any
> children we had. (A real paedophile wouldn't have
> asked, just done so. That
> user wanted to let everyone /know/ what he was up
> to, as if trying to taint
> wiki with paedophilia, perhaps hoping it would
> damage us. These three
> 'characture' users seem in a similar vein.
>
> JT

A new Lir? I thought we had just ridden ourselves of
all of these trolls.
LDan

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