from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Metric v. English

body:
On Friday 03 January 2003 07:34 am,  tarquin wrote:
> The [[Orders of Magnitude]] group of pages should help with this --
> wherever units are given they should link to one of the "chain pages"
> that give comparisons & conversions.

IMO it is a fallacy to think that your average American can really can get
their brain around what 9,000,000 square miles (sic) is in the real world or
the average European can really get their brain around what 9,000,000 square
kilometres (sic) is in the real world. They both just /think/ they know what
that is because they are familiar with what the base unit is.

IMO numbers that size combined with the fact that areas and especially volumes
get numerically larger faster than what most people intuitively expect (a
circle with a diameter of 20 units has an area of 314 sq units; a sphere with
an diameter of 20 units has a volume of 4,190 cubic units) tends to render
such large numbers relatively non-comprehensible without some frame of
reference other than familiarity with a base unit.

That is why the Orders of Magnitude articles are so useful: A list is given
with examples of things in the same size range and if that size range
includes an Imperial unit then a conversion factor is presented. In addition
to this, links to an online converter are provided for most of the order of
mag /and/ unit articles. See

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_E6_m?
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_kilometer

> Besides, the metric system is really not hard to grasp. There's one
> basic unit for each type of measurement that can be used for anything.
> and the same multiplying prefixes apply to all units.

Very true. This is one of the reasons why the WikiProjects
have standardized on metric/SI while linking to either the unit
articles (such as N,NNN [[square kilometre|km?]]) or the order
of mag articles (such as [[1 E9 m?|N,NNN km?]]). The unit
articles have conversion factors in them, the order of mag
articles have examples of things in the given size range
and both article types have links to an online converter.
(NOTE: We toyed with the idea of having Imperial in parenthesis
but this makes the tables too fat for users with 800x600 displays).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma Payment. Have you had your Wiki today?
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=January_3&diff=555047&oldid=554745
(along with updating almost all articles linked from that page)


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Walt Disney's genealogy

body:
Someone has created articles for Walt Disney's ancestors:  [[Elias Disney]], [[Kepple Disney II]], [[Flora Call]], [[Herbert Arthur Disney]].  It is my contention that these articles are not of importance to an encyclopedia.  Eloquence seems to think that they're useful (see the Talk for Elias Disney).  What is the opinion of the community?

Zoe

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Anons can no longer make minor edits

body:
On Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 04:28:21PM +0000, Lee Pilich wrote:
>Your proposal is, I think, worse than the current system. Unreliable users
>still wouldn't be trusted and would still have every edit checked, reliable
>users still would be trusted and have every edit ignored by default. But
>with your proposal, large edits (in terms of sheer size), which might
>actually be very minor (lots of spelling fixes, table formatting, restoring
>vandalised articles, etc), would not, in fact, be marked minor. And
>automatically marking small edits is minor is surely a bad idea - it would
>be worse than the current system because people who are honest about such
>small (in terms of size) changes actually being major would have their
>edits automatically marked minor as well.
>
>It might well be "a win from a usability point of view" inasmuch as one
>doesn't have to click on a pesky check box if one's edit is minor, but this
>is surely outweighed by the fact that those "M"s on Recent Changes would
>all become unreliable (instead of just some of them being unreliable).

I'm not sure you understand.  The M flag on Recent Changes is unreliable
RIGHT NOW.  What is a minor fix to one person may be a major point of
theology to the next person.  One persons raftload of spelling fixes may
be minor to one person, but important to another.  Since the Minor flag
is essentially meaningless, we wouldn't notice any difference if it just
went away altogether.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Anons can no longer make minor
	edits

body:
On 1/4/03 3:46 PM, "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

>> I note, by the way, that a lot of anon users do still to be making edits
>> marked as "minor". So has this really been implemented?
>
> Yes, it has. The code is currently in CVS and will go "live" as soon as
> Wikipedia is updated to the CVS code again. Because it isn't live yet I
> posted to wikitech-l where the developers hang out. I would have posted a
> separate announcement to wikipedia-l later, but Cunctator copied my post
> to wikipedia-l prematurely.
>
You misspelled "maturely".


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Anons can no longer make
  minor edits

body:
At 12:00 04/01/2003 +0000, you wrote:
> >> I think there shouldn't be any "minor edits" flag at all; we have the
> >> ability to have the software determine if an edit is "minor"; why not
> >> let the software flag a change as minor in the html if only a few bytes
> >> have changed?
> >
> >Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite
> > ->
> >Richard Wagner was not an anti-Semite
> >
> >4 bytes. Minor edit?
>
>The current system also fails to catch that one, since a person making a
>change like that would probably mark it as minor.  My proposal to let
>the software do the work is no worse than the current system, and is a
>win from a usability point of view.

Your proposal is, I think, worse than the current system. Unreliable users
still wouldn't be trusted and would still have every edit checked, reliable
users still would be trusted and have every edit ignored by default. But
with your proposal, large edits (in terms of sheer size), which might
actually be very minor (lots of spelling fixes, table formatting, restoring
vandalised articles, etc), would not, in fact, be marked minor. And
automatically marking small edits is minor is surely a bad idea - it would
be worse than the current system because people who are honest about such
small (in terms of size) changes actually being major would have their
edits automatically marked minor as well.

It might well be "a win from a usability point of view" inasmuch as one
doesn't have to click on a pesky check box if one's edit is minor, but this
is surely outweighed by the fact that those "M"s on Recent Changes would
all become unreliable (instead of just some of them being unreliable).

LP (camembert)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Anons can no longer make minor
  edits

body:
At 12:00 04/01/2003 +0000, Cunc wrote:
> > It is my understanding that this was the consensus, so I have disabled
> > the "minor edit" checkbox for anonymous users. The reasoning here is
> > that an anon can never gain the trust necessary to have his edits
> > ignored by some users.
> >
> > Note that the checkbox is simply not rendered, an anon can theoretically
> > still get an edit marked as minor with URL magic. I'll try to get to
> > that later.
> >
>This is not good. Please change it back until this can be better discussed.

"Until it can be better discussed"? What does that mean? Do we have to wait
until a full moon or something?

Seriously - I for one do actually trust some anon users enough to ignore
their edits, and don't really think this is such a great change. I should
think that people who are concerned about cleaning up vandalism and so on
have minor edits switched on anyway, so isn't this just going to thrust a
lot of edits that minor-edit-ignorers don't care about onto their Recent
Changes pages? I may be wrong, but I think the majority of anon users can
be trusted (just as the majority of signed in users can be trusted).

I note, by the way, that a lot of anon users do still to be making edits
marked as "minor". So has this really been implemented?

LP (camembert)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The KnowledgeWeb

body:
I just stumbled across [[The KnowledgeWeb]] on Recent Changes, and had a
look at their demo, especially their demo search results
(http://www.k-web.org/demo/search_results.html). It resembles "What
links here", but goes beyond it.

I think it would be quite possible to have such a "view" linked from
every wikipedia article. As brief contents, we could use the first
(real) sentence of an article (that is, no table containing images, no
language links, etc.). We could also display the first image of the
article, if there is one. We don't have a "node type", though. (I tried
to introduce flexible categories to wikipedia in the past, but would you
listen to me? ;-)

Would there be, basically, interest in such a "smart browse" (or
whatever) function?

Magnus


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Walt Disney's genealogy

body:
I agree that these pages are a little absurd. Are we going to start doing
pages for everyone's grandfather and grandmother?

Danny
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body:
In a message dated 1/4/2003 4:22:14 AM Eastern Standard Time,
krooger at debian.org writes:

> think there shouldn't be any "minor edits" flag at all; we have the
> ability to have the software determine if an edit is "minor"; why not
> let the software flag a change as minor in the html if only a few bytes
> have changed?  We already do something similar for the links on article
> pages, where we classify the links according to their size.
>
> Jonathan
>
>

Because a minor edit is determined by more than just byte size. Adding one
word (such as "not") can change the meaning of an article, but a bot might
consider that a minor edit, while a lot of little typo fixes could be missed.

Danny
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from_name: Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Private sections of the wiki

body:
Is there a simple way to make it so part of the wiki could be private, and
in that section all private and public information would be accessable,
while in the public section only the public data would be accessable?

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Walt Disney's genealogy

body:
Zoe wrote:

> Someone has created articles for Walt Disney's ancestors:  [[Elias
> Disney]], [[Kepple Disney II]], [[Flora Call]], [[Herbert Arthur
> Disney]].  It is my contention that these articles are not of
> importance to an encyclopedia.  Eloquence seems to think that they're
> useful (see the Talk for Elias Disney).  What is the opinion of the
> community?
>
As a rule I have no problem with genealogical articles, or showing
ancestry.  I admit that the disputed articles are fairly useless, but
they are harmless at the same time.  They're certainly not worth a big
argument.

Eclecticology


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Should image pages contain the images?

body:
On sab, 2003-01-04 at 12:52, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Currently image pages only link to the actual image files they refer to.
> You have to choose a revision from the history or follow the filename link
> to view the image. This is problematic because it makes it hard to have
> links like "Large version" in the articles without using the dreaded
> external links. (Unless I am missing something, that is.)

The obvious thing is to include the larger image in the image
description page of the smaller image (and hence the click-through from
articles containing the smaller image), and this is *exactly* what a
number of people started doing when the image upload system was first
put in place.

For reasons still not clear to me, a number of prominent members of the
Wikipedia community found this to be anathema and stamped out the
practice.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> I note, by the way, that a lot of anon users do still to be making edits
> marked as "minor". So has this really been implemented?

Yes, it has. The code is currently in CVS and will go "live" as soon as
Wikipedia is updated to the CVS code again. Because it isn't live yet I
posted to wikitech-l where the developers hang out. I would have posted a
separate announcement to wikipedia-l later, but Cunctator copied my post
to wikipedia-l prematurely.

Regards,

Erik


body:
On sab, 2003-01-04 at 15:08, Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik wrote:
> Is there a simple way to make it so part of the wiki could be private, and
> in that section all private and public information would be accessable,
> while in the public section only the public data would be accessable?

No, nor will there ever be; Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a
collection of private journals.

(Though if you were to set up your own wiki using the software we run
Wikipedia on, you could modify it to provide such sections if you
wished.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Currently image pages only link to the actual image files they refer to.
You have to choose a revision from the history or follow the filename link
to view the image. This is problematic because it makes it hard to have
links like "Large version" in the articles without using the dreaded
external links. (Unless I am missing something, that is.)

I suggest an image page be structured like this:

Image
Caption

== Image history ==
..
== Image links ==
..

What do you think?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The KnowledgeWeb

body:
On 04-01-2003, Magnus Manske wrote thusly :
> I just stumbled across [[The KnowledgeWeb]] on Recent Changes, and had a
> look at their demo, especially their demo search results
> (http://www.k-web.org/demo/search_results.html). It resembles "What
> links here", but goes beyond it.
I introduced James Burke and KnowledgeWeb articles to Wikipedia.
I have glimpsed the KnowledgeWeb site now and then. They are progressing
slowly but I believe James Burke will make it truly outstanding. As
all projects he has already created.
> I think it would be quite possible to have such a "view" linked from
> every wikipedia article. As brief contents, we could use the first
> (real) sentence of an article (that is, no table containing images, no
> language links, etc.). We could also display the first image of the
> article, if there is one. We don't have a "node type", though. (I tried
> to introduce flexible categories to wikipedia in the past, but would you
> listen to me? ;-)
To me neither. :-( Let's do categories classification programatically.
Bots perhaps ?

> Would there be, basically, interest in such a "smart browse" (or
> whatever) function?
Very much so.

I suppose we can improve current Wikipedia user interface to the
Wikipedia's knowledge base. I would like views. Of the RC page at the
minimum. Biology view or medicine view or technology view etc.

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism by 172.147.58.92: Doctor Who?

body:
On Saturday 04 January 2003 05:18, Rob Brewer wrote:
> The [[Doctor Who]] edit was one sentence of POV commentary: "Daleks are
> so cool". The [[Colin Baker]] and [[Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers]]
> articles which were started by this IP are trivial, light-hearted and
> opinionated, but are about genuine(-ish) topics and aren't obscene. All
> five edits made by this IP fall into the category of "newbie experiment"
> rather than vandalism, and I think blocking was very harsh.

There were nine edits, not five (the other four were the creation of useless
articles). I thought, looking at the times, that two people used the same IP
address - one created [[Colin Baker]] and [[Jive Bunny]] and then the other
created the useless articles.

An article called [[of the]] containing "The french leader of the guerilla
movement in the 20th decade." does not look like a newbie experiment to me.
It looks like someone intentionally polluting the Wiki with silliness. An
article containing "Put your text for the aoeusnth page here" is a newbie
experiment.

If you think blocking was too harsh, go ahead and unblock the address.

phma


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Some Potential Out-of-Copyright Sources

body:
As a way of saying hello to the list, I thought I'd mention a couple
of print sources that are now out of copyright & may be useful for
mining future information/maps/illustrations from:

1. The London Illustrated News. If half of the blurbs I've read is
true, then the issues prior to 1912 should be full of engravings
of the current archeological finds -- as well as contemporary events.
Has anyone explored this?

2. The Victoria County History series. For those not in the know,
these were a collection of volumes on the historic counties of England,
covering the geography, antiquities, & natural history of each county.
Many of these were written before 1912; if I can make the time in the
next few weeks, I will stop by a local college which has many of
these & see if I can find an out-of-copyright plan of the excavation
of Silchester.

Geoff (aka llywrch)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Walt Disney's genealogy

body:
> Someone has created articles for Walt Disney's ancestors:  [[Elias Disney]],
> [[Kepple Disney II]], [[Flora Call]], [[Herbert Arthur Disney]].  It is my
> contention that these articles are not of importance to an encyclopedia.
> Eloquence seems to think that they're useful (see the Talk for Elias
> Disney).  What is the opinion of the community?

My position is that, where we have sufficiently detailed information (i.e.
more than just the name and dates), and where this information is
factually verifiable, it is OK to have it in a separate article. This is
true for the Elias Disney article (Walt's father), but not for the Kepple
Disney II article, which just reads:

"Kepple Disney II(November 2 , 1832 - May, 1891. American farmer born in
Kellis, Kansas to Arundel Elias Disney and Maria Swan. He is mostly known
as Walt Disney's grandfather."

That article should be deleted and the information moved to the Walt
article.  In general, I think the family tree should be part of the main
[[Walt Disney]] article, but having redirects from the individual name
pages to there would be OK.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> I'm not sure you understand.  The M flag on Recent Changes is unreliable
> RIGHT NOW.  What is a minor fix to one person may be a major point of
> theology to the next person.  One persons raftload of spelling fixes may
> be minor to one person, but important to another.  Since the Minor flag
> is essentially meaningless, we wouldn't notice any difference if it just
> went away altogether.

You do have a good point: Minor edits mean different things to different
people. We should try to develop a clear policy for when to mark edits as
minor.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Eric Demolli

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hi

body: Hi it's Ericd.


body:
What about different categories then?  Each category would be like its own
wiki, but without another installation.  In this way things could spread out
into different categories without worry of overlap, yet it'd still be
integrated.

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
To: "wikipedia-l" <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 12:47 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Private sections of the wiki

> On sab, 2003-01-04 at 15:08, Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik wrote:
> > Is there a simple way to make it so part of the wiki could be private,
and
> > in that section all private and public information would be accessable,
> > while in the public section only the public data would be accessable?
>
> No, nor will there ever be; Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a
> collection of private journals.
>
> (Though if you were to set up your own wiki using the software we run
> Wikipedia on, you could modify it to provide such sections if you
> wished.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] significant figures

in_reply_to: <20030103221119.42804.qmail@web40706.mail.yahoo.com>; from lapollutionestsimauvaise@yahoo.com on Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 02:11:19PM -0800

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> jimbo - you are forgetting significant figures, 10 miles is not 16.09 km

No, I'm not forgetting significant figures.  This is precisely my point.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Anons can no longer make minor edits

in_reply_to: <av688g$4m7$2@main.gmane.org>; from giskart@wikipedia.be on Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 09:07:28AM +0000

body:
Giskart wrote:
> If it is for all wikipedia's, it is a Intlwiki-l issue. Wikipedia-l is only
> the second list of en.wikipedia.

This is a misunderstanding.  Wikipedia-l is for policy issues for all wikipedias.
Intlwiki-l is for discussion of specific issues of internationalization.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <20030104091728.GA5377@reactor-core.org>; from krooger@debian.org on Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 01:17:28AM -0800

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> >Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite
> > ->
> >Richard Wagner was not an anti-Semite
> >
> >4 bytes. Minor edit?
>
> The current system also fails to catch that one, since a person making a
> change like that would probably mark it as minor.  My proposal to let
> the software do the work is no worse than the current system, and is a
> win from a usability point of view.

I do not agree with Jonathan.  The degree to which an edit is minor or
not has virtually nothing to do with the number of bytes.

The ability to signal to others that an edit is minor is useful and should
be continued.  Denying this ability to anon users is reasonable, and does not
prevent them from making any edits.  Soft security at its finest.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <20030104231010.GA7878@reactor-core.org>; from krooger@debian.org on Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 03:10:10PM -0800

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> I'm not sure you understand.  The M flag on Recent Changes is unreliable
> RIGHT NOW.  What is a minor fix to one person may be a major point of
> theology to the next person.  One persons raftload of spelling fixes may
> be minor to one person, but important to another.  Since the Minor flag
> is essentially meaningless, we wouldn't notice any difference if it just
> went away altogether.

The minor flag is not essentially meaningless.  It's not perfect, but
it's highly reliable, particularly for contributors of good will.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <BA3BAE8A.5DF3%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 09:18:02PM -0500

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 1/3/03 10:56 AM, "Erik Moeller" <e.moeller at fokus.gmd.de> wrote:
>
> > It is my understanding that this was the consensus, so I have disabled
> > the "minor edit" checkbox for anonymous users. The reasoning here is
> > that an anon can never gain the trust necessary to have his edits
> > ignored by some users.
> >
> > Note that the checkbox is simply not rendered, an anon can theoretically
> > still get an edit marked as minor with URL magic. I'll try to get to
> > that later.
> >
> This is not good. Please change it back until this can be better discussed.

This was discussed and decided a long time ago.  It was only an
accident that it got changed back.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Walt Disney's genealogy

body:
Zoe wrote:
> Someone has created articles for Walt Disney's ancestors: [[Elias
>Disney]], [[Kepple Disney II]], [[Flora Call]], [[Herbert Arthur
>Disney]].  It is my contention that these articles are not of
>importance to an encyclopedia.  Eloquence seems to think that they're
>useful (see the Talk for Elias Disney).  What is the opinion of the
>community?

I think these are absolutely delightful, and I'm glad to see them.

I don't think that a biography of my mother would be good for
wikipedia, unless and until I make the same kind of impact on the
world that Walt Disney did.  But background information on famous
people, I like it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Walt Disney's genealogy

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I agree that these pages are a little absurd. Are we going to start doing
> pages for everyone's grandfather and grandmother?

I agree that there's a limit, but I think we should err on the
inclusive side.

A biography of my parents would not be suitable for Wikipedia.  Hell,
a biography of *me* wouldn't be suitable for Wikipedia.

But I'm not Walt Disney.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 10:33, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> When it will be installed ?

Since I've received no other feedback about altering or replacing texvc
before installing it (and I finally have free time!) I will install it
today.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mispeelings are disabled half the day

body:
The maintenance page (also the lonely page) is disabled half the day. The
result is that the list of pages with mispeelings, which used to fit in one
page, now goes on for several. Can we have it back on all the time? I suggest
caching the result of the query for ten minutes.

phma


from_name: Rob Brewer

body:
At 22:33 04/01/03 -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>On Saturday 04 January 2003 05:18, Rob Brewer wrote:
>There were nine edits, not five (the other four were the creation of useless
>articles). I thought, looking at the times, that two people used the same IP
>address - one created [[Colin Baker]] and [[Jive Bunny]] and then the other
>created the useless articles.

That puts things in a slightly different light. Thank you.

>An article called [[of the]] containing "The french leader of the guerilla
>movement in the 20th decade." does not look like a newbie experiment to me.
>It looks like someone intentionally polluting the Wiki with silliness. An
>article containing "Put your text for the aoeusnth page here" is a newbie
>experiment.

I don't entirely agree with you here. If a newbie wants to experiment with
creating pages, they aren't necessarily going to type at random into the
edit box. If they have some wit, they might well type something silly.
The question is, how long do we put up with that silliness? If he got to
nine edits and was getting sillier, it does look like he came to be silly,
not encyclopedic.

>If you think blocking was too harsh, go ahead and unblock the address.

I'm not a sysop, and I'm happy for those who are sysops to have the
final say in these matters.

Rob
wikikarma: is [[Chain]] at 23:11GMT substantial enough?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright permission

body:
In the course of verifying that two articles in Wikipedia were not
copyright violations,  I became concerned that our mechanisms for
documenting copyright permissions are not adequate.  In this case the
two anonymous contributions were the only two things by the person.  I
e-mailed the author who's works appeared to be violated, and he
acknowledged that he had himself added the questioned material to
Wikipedia.  The problem now is in how to properly document this so as to
ensure that the documentation remains safe if the matter should be
raised 10 years hence.  A simple mention in the article or on its talk
page can always be changed.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright permission

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 11:41, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The problem now is in how to properly document this so as to
> ensure that the documentation remains safe if the matter should be
> raised 10 years hence.  A simple mention in the article or on its talk
> page can always be changed.

And it can always be restored from the edit history, just like any other
important item of information. Where's the problem?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> When it will be installed ?

I have listed a couple of minor problems and showstoppers on
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_requests

I still think that it is inane to plan a whole plethora of backend
plugins for various types of graphics, rather than simply support tex
and be done with it, once and for all. The only argument that I have
seen with any weight was that TeX is a programming language and
therefore insecure; the counterargument is that TeX can be run safely
without being able to read or write files it is not supposed to, and
that its memory can be limited to eliminate DoS attacks. Planetmath and
xxx.lanl.gov do just that.

I have given it my best shot, and if you don't agree, I can't do
anything more than that.

It turns out that the one feature I need when editing math, namely
commutative diagrams as on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_lemma ,
I will not get. I guess I have to wait until someone implements an
xypic plugin.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

in_reply_to:
<3E183D27.4030506@planetunreal.com> (message from tarquin on Sun,
	05 Jan 2003 14:11:51 +0000)

body:
Tarquin et al,

The older practice was to state at the foot of an article

		This entry is from a 1911 encyclopedia

The later practice, discussed on the talk pages (now archived,
perhaps), is to use and adapt the EB1911 material freely, but to
credit it properly when quoting directly.  It also isn't a bad idea to
mention on the article's talk page what the source is, although that
is usually sadly obvious.

Let me take this opportunity to tout [[Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia
Britannica]] as a guide to recycling EB1911 materials.  If those
suggestions are followed, the articles are both better and not
"stolen".

So, in answer to the question on the floor:

Use the out-of-copyright EB1911 material freely, but give them credit
when quoting directly.  When giving credit, cite [[1911 Encyclopedia
Britannica]], which includes links to two online sources.  Remove the
weasly "this is from a 1911 encyclopedia' when encountered.

And, if anybody ever busts us for this (which won't ever happen), I
own two hard copies of the EB1911 that we can say we used to get the
info.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|From: tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>
|X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2003 14:11:51 +0000
|
|I've seen a lot of recent 1911-Brit imports with the followign footer:
|//
|
|/
|/
|
|/> This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
|<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopedia_Britannica>.
|/
|
|However,
|http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3A1911_Encyclopaedia_Britannica
|says:
|
|Although the /Encyclop?dia/ is not copyright and you can copy its
|phrasing directly if you wish, Wikipedia cannot /advertise/ the presence
|of this material using the word "Britannica", which is a trademark
|<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark> of Encyclop?dia Britannica,
|Inc. Of course, we can still /use/ that phrase within our pages to give
|proper credit.
|
|I'm a bit baffled by this. I've seen many older pages that say:
|
| > This entry is from a 1911 encyclopedia
|
|So we can't use their name, but we credit them? Does that mean "don't
|use their name EXCEPT to credit them", or "don't use their name and
|credit them in an abscure fashion that dones't use their trademark"?
|
|
|
|Wiki Karma:
|anything written by the mysterious user Fwapplet.
|repairing links to Henry IV plays
|how many typos do you want?
|
|>
|
|
|_______________________________________________
|Wikipedia-l mailing list
|Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 12:25, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > When it will be installed ?
>
> I have listed a couple of minor problems and showstoppers on
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_requests

Any reason these things cannot be fixed later, after it's installed?

> I still think that it is inane to plan a whole plethora of backend
> plugins for various types of graphics, rather than simply support tex
> and be done with it, once and for all.

Can TeX draw arbitrarily specified maps of the world? Can TeX render SVG
to PNG for browsers that don't support it natively?

> It turns out that the one feature I need when editing math, namely
> commutative diagrams as on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_lemma ,
> I will not get. I guess I have to wait until someone implements an
> xypic plugin.

"Will not get" meaning that it still needs to be added to texvc, or
meaning that there is some fundamental incompatibility between texvc and
commutative diagrams?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Anons can no longer make minor
 edits

in_reply_to:
<3E186F7B.9040008@epost.de> (message from Magnus Manske on Sun,
	05 Jan 2003 18:46:35 +0100)

body:
|From: Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de>
|X-Accept-Language: de-de, en-us, en
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2003 18:46:35 +0100
|
|Jimmy Wales wrote:
|
|>The ability to signal to others that an edit is minor is useful and should
|>be continued.  Denying this ability to anon users is reasonable, and does not
|>prevent them from making any edits.  Soft security at its finest.
|>
|>
|I agree with that. But, maybe we shouldn't abandon Jonathan's idea, but
|use it for soft security. Similar to a prior suggestion of mine:
|
|Those who want can activate a user option that marks "suspicious" edits.
|That would include
|* edits by IPs (anons) that remove more than 20% of the article (in bytes)
|* edits (by IPs, or anyone) that add certain keywords (f**k, etc.)
|* edits by IPs whose edits have been "rolled back" (with the function)
|lately
|* edits by IPs who are listed on the Vandalism in Progress page
|
|These are just some ideas that come to mind. More can be added. This
|won't find all vandals, and will have a false alert once in a while, but
|could improve the "hit rate" on malicious edits.
|
|Magnus
|

These suggestions by Magnus follow the lines of the most effective
first-line mail filters, which have been shown to work very well
without needlessly restricting information flow.

Tom P.
O88


body:
At 12:00 05/01/2003 +0000, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> >It might well be "a win from a usability point of view" inasmuch as one=20
> >doesn't have to click on a pesky check box if one's edit is minor, but thi=
>s=20
> >is surely outweighed by the fact that those "M"s on Recent Changes would=
>=20
> >all become unreliable (instead of just some of them being unreliable).
>
>I'm not sure you understand.  The M flag on Recent Changes is unreliable
>RIGHT NOW.  What is a minor fix to one person may be a major point of
>theology to the next person.  One persons raftload of spelling fixes may
>be minor to one person, but important to another.  Since the Minor flag
>is essentially meaningless, we wouldn't notice any difference if it just
>went away altogether.

No, I understand - the current system isn't perfect. That's because people
aren't perfect. But I trust people to decide what is minor and what isn't
more than I trust a computer to do it, particularly as the computer is only
going to be counting bytes to make a decision.

I agree we need some sort of guidance about what constitutes a minor edit,
which is why I'm glad we've got such guidance on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contributing_FAQ

LP (camembert)

I keep forgetting to enclose wikikarma - here's two:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inigo_Jones (new)
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Masque&diff=0&oldid=560981


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

body:
I've seen a lot of recent 1911-Brit imports with the followign footer:
//

/
/

/> This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopedia_Britannica>.
/

However,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3A1911_Encyclopaedia_Britannica
says:

Although the /Encyclop?dia/ is not copyright and you can copy its
phrasing directly if you wish, Wikipedia cannot /advertise/ the presence
of this material using the word "Britannica", which is a trademark
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark> of Encyclop?dia Britannica,
Inc. Of course, we can still /use/ that phrase within our pages to give
proper credit.

I'm a bit baffled by this. I've seen many older pages that say:

 > This entry is from a 1911 encyclopedia

So we can't use their name, but we credit them? Does that mean "don't
use their name EXCEPT to credit them", or "don't use their name and
credit them in an abscure fashion that dones't use their trademark"?

Wiki Karma:
anything written by the mysterious user Fwapplet.
repairing links to Henry IV plays
how many typos do you want?

>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Metric v. US

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 12:48, Richard Grevers wrote:
> "The cost of the damage is expected to be well over $NZ1.93M. Quite clearly
> this has been $US1M originally, and the context makes it quite clear that
> it would be best to write $NZ2M.

As long as you don't read that rapper Eminem made his Hollywood debut in
"12.872 Kilometer", or that the United Kingdom has elected once again to
stay out of the Euro, sticking with the 0.454 kilogramme sterling...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Andre Engels

in_reply_to:
<8dCHB$DSpVB@erik_moeller> from Erik Moeller at "Jan 4, 2003 09:52:00
 pm"

body:
> Currently image pages only link to the actual image files they refer to.
> You have to choose a revision from the history or follow the filename link
> to view the image. This is problematic because it makes it hard to have
> links like "Large version" in the articles without using the dreaded
> external links. (Unless I am missing something, that is.)

If I remember correctly, that can be done by using a [[media: instead of an
[[image: link.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Swedish policy (and Brion please read)

body:
To clarify:

I'm going out of town Monday through Friday.  I'll probably have
minimal net access.  I won't have time to study this at length until
the following Monday when I get back.

Right now, no one is banned.  Everyone is instructed to stop fighting
and get back to work until I get back.  At that time, I'll study the
issue from every angle and see what I can do to help, up to and
including banning one or more people if I'm convinced that they can't
work in a spirit of love and goodwill.

If right now, someone is technically banned, based on anything that
I've said, please lift that ban for now.  And everyone please try to
be on best behavior, as a kindness to me and to each other for the
week to come.  :-)

And finally, I appoint, uh, Brion Vibber, because he hasn't asked and
probably doesn't want to do it, :-) to enforce the above by whatever
he sees fit in my absence, up to and including a temporary ban until I
get back, shutting down that site completely, etc.  Basically, if
anyone goes bonkers and starts vandalizing the site, then of course do
what's necessary, and Brion will be the final authority until I get
back.

Brion didn't know I was going to do this to him, so I'll duck and
run now so he doesn't hit me.

--Jmibo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Something just broke with character references.

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-02 at 07:13, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> It worked like what I'm saying in UseMod (and phase 2), then upgrade
> broke it, and restoring old behaviour was requested to make Polish
> Wikipedia work correctly again.

No. In both UseMod and phase 2, <pre>...</pre> sections _did_ allow
character references, while escaping out wiki markup and HTML tags into
plaintext.

If you wish to restore the old behavior, character references should be
allowed.

> You use spaces in first column if you want to have Wiki markup with
> preformated text.

Yup.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Metric v. US

in_reply_to: <1041808699.12324.150.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 03:18:17PM -0800

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> As long as you don't read that rapper Eminem made his Hollywood debut in
> "12.872 Kilometer", or that the United Kingdom has elected once again to
> stay out of the Euro, sticking with the 0.454 kilogramme sterling...

Well, to be fair, it has been suggested that we would include a means
to indicate precision, so we would instead read that Eminem made his
Hollywood debut in "Nearly 13 Kilometer".

;-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Minor changes to texvc

body:
On mer, 2003-01-01 at 07:44, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Already applied to test.wikipedia.org

Committed to CVS.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anons can no longer make minor edits

body:
On ven, 2003-01-03 at 07:56, Erik Moeller wrote:
> It is my understanding that this was the consensus, so I have disabled
> the "minor edit" checkbox for anonymous users. The reasoning here is
> that an anon can never gain the trust necessary to have his edits
> ignored by some users.
>
> Note that the checkbox is simply not rendered, an anon can theoretically
> still get an edit marked as minor with URL magic. I'll try to get to
> that later.

Thanks, that's a start! Should go into effect shortly as I make upgrades
tonight...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: Go button

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-02 at 07:14, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I have checked in a new feature that adds a "Go" button next to the
> "Search" button (default skin). By using this button, you can display a
> page directly instead of first searching for it and then following the
> link, e.g. you type "CIA", click "Go", and you are put directly on the
> CIA page. Quite handy if you have to jump between articles a lot.

Personally, I find the function to be non-obvious, and it clutters an
already cramped corner of the screen.

Thoughts?

I've put it on test.wikipedia.org so other people can try it out.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: Backlink when editing a page

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-02 at 08:26, Erik Moeller wrote:
> When editing a page or displaying its history, you now get a link "View
> article" / "View user page" etc. to go back to displaying the page. This
> is something I have missed badly because I often edit a page and need to
> check how the article looked before my edits, but want to keep the edit
> window in its current state. Now I can open a new tab with the "View
> article" link and compare the two.
>
> As always, please let me know if there are any problems.

For editing, this duplicates the existing "Cancel" link. However, the
"Cancel" itself is sufficiently non-obvious in function and position
that it might make sense to just remove it in favor of this, which is in
the sidebar and consistent with the existing article/discussion links.
(However, note the "Nostalgia" skin lacks a sidebar completely, and
Cologne Blue still needs major overhaul.)

Ultimately though, I think it would be better to just have most of the
history, whatlinkshere, etc links equally available in editing and
history views (iow, "Don't mode me in!")

Now running on test.wikipedia.org, try it out. I'll let it in with
upgrades tonight unless there's a reason otherwise soon...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>The ability to signal to others that an edit is minor is useful and should
>be continued.  Denying this ability to anon users is reasonable, and does not
>prevent them from making any edits.  Soft security at its finest.
>
>
I agree with that. But, maybe we shouldn't abandon Jonathan's idea, but
use it for soft security. Similar to a prior suggestion of mine:

Those who want can activate a user option that marks "suspicious" edits.
That would include
* edits by IPs (anons) that remove more than 20% of the article (in bytes)
* edits (by IPs, or anyone) that add certain keywords (f**k, etc.)
* edits by IPs whose edits have been "rolled back" (with the function)
lately
* edits by IPs who are listed on the Vandalism in Progress page

These are just some ideas that come to mind. More can be added. This
won't find all vandals, and will have a false alert once in a while, but
could improve the "hit rate" on malicious edits.

Magnus


body:
> I agree with that. But, maybe we shouldn't abandon Jonathan's idea, but
> use it for soft security. Similar to a prior suggestion of mine:

> Those who want can activate a user option that marks "suspicious" edits.
> That would include
> * edits by IPs (anons) that remove more than 20% of the article (in bytes)
> * edits (by IPs, or anyone) that add certain keywords (f**k, etc.)
> * edits by IPs whose edits have been "rolled back" (with the function)
> lately
> * edits by IPs who are listed on the Vandalism in Progress page

> These are just some ideas that come to mind. More can be added. This
> won't find all vandals, and will have a false alert once in a while, but
> could improve the "hit rate" on malicious edits.

How about giving sysops the ability to flag certain IPs as "suspicious"? I
wouldn't want to extend that ability to signed in users for various
reasons, though.

Personally, I think that having talk pages and a "new message" indicator
for anons would go a long way to resolving many problems. I've put that in
my pipeline.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: Go button

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 18:43, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Personally, I find the function to be non-obvious, and it clutters an
> > already cramped corner of the screen.
>
> It may not be entirely obvious, but it's one of those things that are easy
> to explore, like the "I'm feeling lucky" button in Google.

Maybe I'm just timid, but I've never ever used Google's "I'm feeling
lucky" button. I didn't know what it did, couldn't guess it from the
name or context, didn't seem to be missing any search functionality by
skipping it, and I *never* feel lucky when it comes to mystery buttons
in software.

When I happened to come across an explanation of its function while
looking for unrelated things in the documentation, I wondered why anyone
would want such a thing... I'd _much_ rather see several options and
pick what I think looks best; I'm frequently looking for multiple
options or have something particular in mind but only vague search terms
that will probably not return my desired destination first.

And of course, if I do know _exactly_ where I'm going, I don't need the
search engine at all, as I can just type the URL into my browser.

> It might be
> extended to run a normal search when there is no direct hit, and to do
> some smarter case variations (e.g. if "Gone with the wind" doesn't exist,
> try "Gone With the Wind", then "Gone With The Wind").

Maybe...

> The "Go" is wrapped into the next line in some browsers, which is ugly. Is
> there any reason why that table cell has a fixed pixel width?

If I knew why anything in that header is the way it is, I'd be a much
more knowledgeable person. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 18:46, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Ultimately though, I think it would be better to just have most of the
> > history, whatlinkshere, etc links equally available in editing and
> > history views (iow, "Don't mode me in!")
>
> I dunno, this might create the wrong impression for non-technical users
> that these links then relate to the edited version of the article.

Well, they do! Editing an article doesn't change what other articles
link to it, or what older revisions of it are stored in the database, or
the presence of its talk page...

> I think
> the mode lock-in has the advantage of sending a clear message: "Hey,
> you're editing. You need to save this before doing anything else!"

But that's not a true message, unless they're running Lynx on a
singletasking DOS machine with the right arrow on the keyboard broken...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body: When it will be installed ?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] intwiki-l needs to go

body:
> I disagree. IntlWiki-l should be about non-policy related interlanguage
> coordination issues

The separation doesn't make sense. Because intwiki-l is such a specialized
list, most people just subscribe to wikipedia-l. Which is fine, because we
really don't need a separate list:

* Language string and site setup issues should be brought up on wikitech-l
where all the developers actually participate and can fix problems. Small
string problems have gone unfixed because people mention them in all sorts
of different places.
* Coordination issues should be brought up on wikipedia-l where
participants from all the large Wikipedias will read about them. The whole
"embassy" idea has been stagnating pretty much because there's no common
place to talk about it.

By having more international participants on wikipedia-l, people would
also automatically become more careful about which mailing list to use for
English-only matters.

As for projects without a mailing list, well, if they use wikipedia-l in
the meantime, that should greatly speed up the creation of new mailing
lists. Their posts are just as much noise on the intwiki list: Why should
the French wiki-ambassador care about the site structure of the Slovakian
Wikipedia?  On wikipedia-l it would at least be noticed, but saying "use
intwiki-l in the meantime" is a cop-out that allows us to ignore the
problems because, after all, it's on a "less important" mailing list.

If we continue to use intwiki-l, the alienation between the English and
non-English Wikipedias will increase further.

Regards,

Erik


body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 19:33, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Well, they do! Editing an article doesn't change what other articles
> > link to it, or what older revisions of it are stored in the database, or
> > the presence of its talk page...
>
> The following may behave in unexpected ways:
> * Related changes (but I just inserted a link here!)
> * Move this page (where did my edits go?)
>
> "Watch this page" might also cause problems: Say you load "Watch this
> page" in the background and then save your edit, but with the "Watch this
> article" checkbox turned off - in that case the already watched article is
> transparently unwatched.

Every one of these is exactly as true if you select them after clicking
"View article", then go back to your edit window.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Metric v. US

body:
On Sunday 05 January 2003 18:18, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On dim, 2003-01-05 at 12:48, Richard Grevers wrote:
> > "The cost of the damage is expected to be well over $NZ1.93M. Quite
> > clearly this has been $US1M originally, and the context makes it quite
> > clear that it would be best to write $NZ2M.
>
> As long as you don't read that rapper Eminem made his Hollywood debut in
> "12.872 Kilometer", or that the United Kingdom has elected once again to
> stay out of the Euro, sticking with the 0.454 kilogramme sterling...

I am going to put my 30 cm down (though it's actually only 21) to say that no
one who spouts such nonsense is going to be allowed in my back .91m!

BTW, I saw an ad for a 6.02e23 pole which was touted as driving away the
rodents. I didn't gopher it. 6.02e23 is not a rodent.

Anyway, the temperature is approaching 0.56 radians Fahrenheit, so I'm not
going out tonight.

phma


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Should image pages contain the images?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>It would also be nice to have any text in [[:image:foo.jpg]] be displayed as
>mouse over text whenever a mouse pointer is over the displayed foo.jpg (with
>or without an image displayed [[:image:foo.jpg]]).
>
>
I have done that already at http://test.wikipedia.org for the "visually
impaired", against some votes of caution. Have a look.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 12:25:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > When it will be installed ?
>
> I have listed a couple of minor problems and showstoppers on
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_requests

None of them is a "showstopper", and most important of things you
list there: \left and \right - works since the very first version
of texvc.

Brion: Please don't listen to Alex and install texvc.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] New Features: Was: New feature: Backlink when
	editing a page

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 21:27, rose.parks at att.net wrote:
>      Just because many members of wikipedia do not have the skills to make such
> changes, it doesn't mean that they don't have an opinion on them.

Then they should learn to do so or at least actively get involved in the
process, just as people who don't like their governments should become
active in the political process instead of being passive sheep who can
be pushed around.

This isn't a secret shadowy cabal; the developers' list is open to
anyone who subscribes, the archives are publicly readable, and changes
to the code are a matter of public record in our CVS repository.

'Power to the people' doesn't just _happen_ magically; the people have
to make use of their power. First step: sign up for wikitech-l and speak
up when you have an opinion!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TeX math support installed

body:
Inline TeX support for math formulae is now enabled on Wikipedia in all
languages on phase 3; please try it out and report any functional
problems.

Those interested should probably put some documentation together; some
is on the test wiki at: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texwiki_docu

For those helping to maintain translation files, I've attached a diff of
Language.php which shows the math options and a number of other
additions of the last month or so that haven't been localized as widely
as they might.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/Language.php,v
retrieving revision 1.166
retrieving revision 1.178
diff -u -r1.166 -r1.178
--- wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/Language.php	2002/11/25 20:31:25	1.166
+++ wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/Language.php	2003/01/02 16:24:00	1.178
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
 	"quickbar" => 1, "underline" => 1, "hover" => 1,
 	"cols" => 80, "rows" => 25, "searchlimit" => 20,
 	"contextlines" => 5, "contextchars" => 50,
-	"skin" => 0, "rcdays" => 7, "rclimit" => 50,
+	"skin" => 0, "math" => 1, "rcdays" => 7, "rclimit" => 50,
 	"highlightbroken" => 1, "stubthreshold" => 0
 );

@@ -35,12 +35,20 @@
 	"Standard", "Nostalgia", "Cologne Blue"
 );

+/* private */ $wgMathNamesEn = array(
+	"Aways render PNG",
+	"HTML if very simple or else PNG",
+	"HTML if possible or else PNG",
+	"Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)"
+);
+
 /* private */ $wgUserTogglesEn = array(
 	"hover"		=> "Show hoverbox over wiki links",
 	"underline" => "Underline links",
 	"highlightbroken" => "Highlight links to empty topics",
 	"justify"	=> "Justify paragraphs",
 	"hideminor" => "Hide minor edits in recent changes",
+	"usenewrc" => "Enhanced recent changes (not for all browsers)",
 	"numberheadings" => "Auto-number headings",
 	"rememberpassword" => "Remember password across sessions",
 	"editwidth" => "Edit box has full width",
@@ -296,6 +304,7 @@
 "whatlinkshere"	=> "Pages that link here",
 "help"			=> "Help",
 "search"		=> "Search",
+"go"		=> "Go",
 "history"		=> "Older versions",
 "printableversion" => "Printable version",
 "editthispage"	=> "Edit this page",
@@ -303,7 +312,12 @@
 "protectthispage" => "Protect this page",
 "unprotectthispage" => "Unprotect this page",
 "talkpage"		=> "Discuss this page",
-"subjectpage"	=> "View article",
+"articlepage"	=> "View article",
+"subjectpage"	=> "View subject", # For compatibility
+"userpage" => "View user page",
+"wikipediapage" => "View meta page",
+"imagepage" => 	"View image page",
+"viewtalkpage" => "View discussion",
 "otherlanguages" => "Other languages",
 "redirectedfrom" => "(Redirected from $1)",
 "lastmodified"	=> "The page was last modified $1.",
@@ -369,10 +383,13 @@
 "unexpected"	=> "Unexpected value: \"$1\"=\"$2\".",
 "formerror"		=> "Error: could not submit form",
 "badarticleerror" => "This action cannot be performed on this page.",
-"cannotdelete"	=> "Could not delete the page or image specified.",
+"cannotdelete"	=> "Could not delete the page or image specified. (It may have already been deleted by someone else.)",
 "badtitle"		=> "Bad title",
 "badtitletext"	=> "The requested page title was invalid, empty, or
 an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title.",
+"perfdisabled" => "Sorry! This feature has been temporarily disabled during peak
+access hours for performance reasons; come back between 02:00 and 14:00 UTC
+and try again.",

 # Login and logout pages
 #
@@ -543,6 +560,12 @@
 "qbsettings"	=> "Quickbar settings",
 "changepassword" => "Change password",
 "skin"			=> "Skin",
+"math"			=> "Rendering math",
+"math_failure"		=> "Failed to parse",
+"math_unknown_error"	=> "unknown error",
+"math_unknown_function"	=> "unknown function ",
+"math_lexing_error"	=> "lexing error",
+"math_syntax_error"	=> "syntax error",
 "saveprefs"		=> "Save preferences",
 "resetprefs"	=> "Reset preferences",
 "oldpassword"	=> "Old password",
@@ -566,6 +589,7 @@

 # Recent changes
 #
+"changes" => "changes",
 "recentchanges" => "Recent changes",
 "recentchangestext" => "Track the most recent changes to Wikipedia on this page.
 [[Wikipedia:Welcome,_newcomers|Welcome, newcomers]]!
@@ -840,6 +864,10 @@
 "reverted"		=> "Reverted to earlier revision",
 "deletecomment"	=> "Reason for deletion",
 "imagereverted" => "Revert to earlier version was successful.",
+"rollback"		=> "Roll back edits",
+"rollbacklink"	=> "rollback",
+"cantrollback"	=> "Can't revert edit; last contributor is only author of this article.",
+"revertpage"	=> "Reverted to last edit by $1",

 # Undelete
 "undelete" => "Restore deleted page",
@@ -883,7 +911,7 @@
 "blockip"		=> "Block IP address",
 "blockiptext"	=> "Use the form below to block write access
 from a specific IP address.
-This should be done only only to prevent valndalism, and in
+This should be done only only to prevent vandalism, and in
 accordance with [[Wikipedia:Policy|Wikipedia policy]].
 Fill in a specific reason below (for example, citing particular
 pages that were vandalized).",
@@ -1036,6 +1064,11 @@
 	function getSkinNames() {
 		global $wgSkinNamesEn;
 		return $wgSkinNamesEn;
+	}
+
+	function getMathNames() {
+		global $wgMathNamesEn;
+		return $wgMathNamesEn;
 	}

 	function getUserToggles() {


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX math support installed


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

body:
|X-Authentication-Warning: bryant.aronsson.se: lars owned process doing -bs
|Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 22:52:07 +0100 (CET)
|From: Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>
|X-No-Archive: yes
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|tarquin wrote:
|> Although the /Encyclop?dia/ is not copyright and you can copy its
|> phrasing directly if you wish, Wikipedia cannot /advertise/ the presence
|> of this material using the word "Britannica", which is a trademark
|> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark> of Encyclop?dia Britannica,
|> Inc. Of course, we can still /use/ that phrase within our pages to give
|> proper credit.
|
|What is your source for this idea that the use of the word Britannica
|would be restricted?  Is it a fact or an urban legend?  Are you
|representing Encyclopaedia Britannica, or have you talked to somebody
|representing the company?

No.  It is their trademark.  End of story.  We can't use it any more
than we can use Coca-Cola.

That means we can't say "Wikipedia contains 10,000 articles from the
Encyclopedia Britannica" even if it is true that we use 10,000
out-of-copyright articles from the 1911 edition.  I can't think that
we'd want to do that anyway.

Tom Parmenter

|
|I've heard a similar explanation from Michael Hart of Project
|Gutenberg when he digitized the first volume of EB11 in 1995, but I've
|also heard rumors that representatives of EB should have changed their
|mind later, although I don't know this for sure.  So I'm in doubt, and
|I would like to know if you have good reason to be any more certain.
|

PS -- By the  way, why so belligerent?

Tom

|
|--
|  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
|  Aronsson Datateknik
|  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
|  tel +46-70-7891609
|  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/
|
|_______________________________________________
|Wikipedia-l mailing list
|Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


body:
Gee, I think Vera Cruz is worse.  172 has climbed down a bit from his
high horse, but Vera is still going whole hog.  Both of them have made
many substantive contributions to the Wikipedia, but Vera's war with
172 in [[New Imperialism]] is my idea of hell.

Ed Poor would know what to do.  I don't, but banning doesn't really
seem to be the right weapon here.  I have been entirely caught by the
tarbaby of [[New Imperialism]] when all I wanted to know was what made
it "new".

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|From: "james duffy" <jtdirl at hotmail.com>
|Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 03:29:20 +0000
|
|Hi Zoe,
|
|I'm not normally in favour of banning people, but from what I see of 172's
|contibutions, they are strikingly POV, and constantly reverting pages
|without explaining why is completely unacceptable. I think the time has come
|to ban 172.
|
|JT
|
|
|
|>From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
|>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|>Subject: [WikiEN-l] It's time for 172 to be banned
|>Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 15:23:35 -0800 (PST)
|>
|>
|>He/she is making wholesale reversions to any changes made by anyone in
|>[[New Imperialism]], without comment.
|>
|>Zoe
|>
|>
|>
|>
|>
|>---------------------------------
|>Do you Yahoo!?
|>Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
|
|
|
|
|_________________________________________________________________
|The new MSN 8 is here: Try it free* for 2 months
|http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup
|
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TeX math support installed

body:
On dim, 2003-01-05 at 23:51, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> >Inline TeX support for math formulae is now enabled on Wikipedia in all
> >languages on phase 3; please try it out and report any functional
> >problems.
>
> Has it been committed to CVS yet?

Yes, it's been in CVS for about a week and a half (plus a couple more
recent tweaks).

> I tried to get TeX support to work
> on my Disinfopedia and ran into some problems.

It's a little tricky. I tried to get some of it in the docs, but I'm
kind of new to it myself...

Dependencies:
OCaml - http://caml.inria.fr/
TeX, ImageMagick (should be available with most Linux distributions)

Setup:
Under the directory that contains the PHP source files should be a
'math' subdirectory which contains the OCaml source for the texvc
support utility; run 'make' and copy the subdir (or at least the
executables) under the install dir too.

To confuse you further, you also need a 'math' and a 'tmp' directory
that are writable by the web server process; this 'math' is where
rendered PNG images are dropped, and needs to be accessible via the web.
It shouldn't harm anything for 'tmp' to be web-accessible too, but you
don't need it to be.

Config: in LocalSettings.php, you need to set these variables:
$wgMathPath         = "..."; # *URL* path to 'math' dir
$wgMathDirectory    = "..."; # *File* path to 'math' dir
$wgTmpDirectory     = "..."; # File path to 'tmp' dir

And, um, it _should_ work. :)

Also, check if your database has a 'math' table; if you originally set
it up with an earlier version of the software, execute
maintenance/patch-math.sql to add it.

(I probably left some steps out.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 12:50:56PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On dim, 2003-01-05 at 12:25, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > > When it will be installed ?
> >
> > I have listed a couple of minor problems and showstoppers on
> > http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_requests
>
> Any reason these things cannot be fixed later, after it's installed?

You can read my reply on http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_requests
In one sentence: no such reason

> > I still think that it is inane to plan a whole plethora of backend
> > plugins for various types of graphics, rather than simply support tex
> > and be done with it, once and for all.
>
> Can TeX draw arbitrarily specified maps of the world? Can TeX render SVG
> to PNG for browsers that don't support it natively?

TeX can do none of these.

> > It turns out that the one feature I need when editing math, namely
> > commutative diagrams as on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_lemma ,
> > I will not get. I guess I have to wait until someone implements an
> > xypic plugin.
>
> "Will not get" meaning that it still needs to be added to texvc, or
> meaning that there is some fundamental incompatibility between texvc and
> commutative diagrams?

It's rather "it still needs to be added to texvc".
No real incompatibility here.


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Inline TeX support for math formulae is now enabled on Wikipedia in all
>languages on phase 3; please try it out and report any functional
>problems.

Has it been committed to CVS yet? I tried to get TeX support to work
on my Disinfopedia and ran into some problems.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metric v. English

body:
At 2003-01-03 06:30 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Cup, pint, quart, half-gallon, gallon -- binary!  More rational than
>decimal, if you're likely to be multiplying and dividing by 2.  (As
>in, doubling or halving a recipe.)

Nobody forbids you to express the amount of liters
in the binary system:

bin   = dec
1       1     litre
0.1   = 0.5   litre
0.01  = 0.25  litre
0.001 = 0.125 litre

Or why not introduce the 'neg-2log-litre', being
the negative base 2 logarithm of the amount of
litres as a new unit:

0 neg-2log-litre = 2^ 0 litre = 1     litre
1 neg-2log-litre = 2^-1 litre = 0.5   litre
2 neg-2log-litre = 2^-2 litre = 0.25  litre
3 neg-2log-litre = 2^-3 litre = 0.125 litre

Makes more sense than cup, pint, quart, half-gallon,
gallon. I think that especially housewives would
welcome this new system!

You could abbreviate the unit to 'noglitre',
'nlit', 'nll' or 'decibel-litre'.

By the way, it's already in use in European
paper formats: A3, A4, A5 etc.

Perhaps we could also abbreviate the
volumes units to: L0, L1, L2, L3.

Hi bartender, L1's of beer and a happy new year
for everyone on this list!

;-)

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: james duffy

body:
Hi Zoe,

I'm not normally in favour of banning people, but from what I see of 172's
contibutions, they are strikingly POV, and constantly reverting pages
without explaining why is completely unacceptable. I think the time has come
to ban 172.

JT

>From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] It's time for 172 to be banned
>Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 15:23:35 -0800 (PST)
>
>
>He/she is making wholesale reversions to any changes made by anyone in
>[[New Imperialism]], without comment.
>
>Zoe
>
>
>
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8 is here: Try it free* for 2 months
http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup


subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: Go button

body:
> On ?a?, 2003-01-02 at 07:14, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> I have checked in a new feature that adds a "Go" button next to the
>> "Search" button (default skin). By using this button, you can display a
>> page directly instead of first searching for it and then following the
>> link, e.g. you type "CIA", click "Go", and you are put directly on the
>> CIA page. Quite handy if you have to jump between articles a lot.

> Personally, I find the function to be non-obvious, and it clutters an
> already cramped corner of the screen.

It may not be entirely obvious, but it's one of those things that are easy
to explore, like the "I'm feeling lucky" button in Google. It might be
extended to run a normal search when there is no direct hit, and to do
some smarter case variations (e.g. if "Gone with the wind" doesn't exist,
try "Gone With the Wind", then "Gone With The Wind").

The "Go" is wrapped into the next line in some browsers, which is ugly. Is
there any reason why that table cell has a fixed pixel width?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: Go button

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Personally, I find the function to be non-obvious, and it clutters an
> already cramped corner of the screen.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> I've put it on test.wikipedia.org so other people can try it out.

For my part, I really love this new feature, however I agree about the
cluttering. But the search box is put twice on every page (do we need this
really in terms of cluttering?), maybe it could
be added only to the search box at the bottom.

greetings,
elian
--
Wikikarma at http://www.wikpedia.org/wiki/Ijtihad


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> Ultimately though, I think it would be better to just have most of the
> history, whatlinkshere, etc links equally available in editing and
> history views (iow, "Don't mode me in!")

I dunno, this might create the wrong impression for non-technical users
that these links then relate to the edited version of the article. I think
the mode lock-in has the advantage of sending a clear message: "Hey,
you're editing. You need to save this before doing anything else!"

What I do plan to add is an additional "View <subject> page" if it's a
Talk page.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature: Go button

body:
> Maybe I'm just timid, but I've never ever used Google's "I'm feeling
> lucky" button. I didn't know what it did, couldn't guess it from the
> name or context, didn't seem to be missing any search functionality by
> skipping it, and I *never* feel lucky when it comes to mystery buttons
> in software.

Maybe, but it's also not the best analogy. Search vs. go [directly to this
page] is fairly straight-forward. It is more useful than "I'm feeling
lucky" because Wikipedia articles have unique identifiers.

Perhaps it should just be a user preference; let's wait for some more
feedback.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> Well, they do! Editing an article doesn't change what other articles
> link to it, or what older revisions of it are stored in the database, or
> the presence of its talk page...

The following may behave in unexpected ways:
* Related changes (but I just inserted a link here!)
* Move this page (where did my edits go?)

"Watch this page" might also cause problems: Say you load "Watch this
page" in the background and then save your edit, but with the "Watch this
article" checkbox turned off - in that case the already watched article is
transparently unwatched.

>> I think
>> the mode lock-in has the advantage of sending a clear message: "Hey,
>> you're editing. You need to save this before doing anything else!"

> But that's not a true message, unless they're running Lynx on a
> singletasking DOS machine with the right arrow on the keyboard broken...

Most people browse in single window mode. But perhaps this risk is
exaggerated, thanks to Microsoft people already know that they have to
click "Save" as often as possible ..

How about this:

        View mode               Edit mode
        ----------------        --------------------
        Edit this page          View article
        Watch this page         [View subject page]
        Move this page          Older versions
        Discuss this page       What links here
        Older versions
        What links here
        Related changes

Regards,

Erik


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Features: Was: New feature: Backlink when editing a page

body:
Hi,

     I am beginning to be confused about the sequence of events when a new
feature is introduced. It seems that one or two members of wikitech-l
(developers) support a new feature, write the code, put it on
test.wikipedia.org and wait for feedback.
     At times this wait is less than a day. The feature is usually implemented.
Then, it is announced or noticed by someone on wikipedia-l, and 60 e-mails
follow discussing and arguing over it.
     If someone has a new feature they want to see implemented, why don't they
present it to the whole membership first and then allow a few days for
discussion. After everyone has a chance to think about it and raise their
objections, modifications, etc, then implement it, if most members want it.
     Recently, there have been remarks on a number of changes, that it might
have been better to have a broader-based discussion, before implementation,
when the usual flood of e-mails followed the announcement of a new feature.
     Just because many members of wikipedia do not have the skills to make such
changes, it doesn't mean that they don't have an opinion on them.
     Tonight I am watching this process proceed on two changes on the
edit/preview pages. All discussion is on wikitech-l. It has been suggested that
at least one change will probably be implemented tomorrow. Meanwhile, the main
membership has no idea that any such change/s are about to happen.

                   As Ever,

                     Ruth Ifcher

--


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Yes, it's been in CVS for about a week and a half (plus a couple more
>recent tweaks).
>
>  > I tried to get TeX support to work
>  > on my Disinfopedia and ran into some problems.
>
>It's a little tricky. I tried to get some of it in the docs, but I'm
>kind of new to it myself...
>
>Dependencies:
>OCaml - http://caml.inria.fr/
>TeX, ImageMagick (should be available with most Linux distributions)

OK, our server is running FreeBSD, so I don't know if these are
present. Actually, TeX support is something I probably don't need, so
I think I'll hold off on this for the time being.

I noticed that the "INSTALL" file says the following:

>   If you don't want tmbeddex TeX support, disable it by setting
>    $wgUseTex = false;
>   in LocalSettings.php

However, the $wgUseTex variable doesn't currently exist in the latest
CVS version of LocalSettings.php, and when I inserted it myself, my
version of Wikipedia still gives me errors that say "Failed to parse."

Also, I'm not sure you want the following line to appear as-is in the
CVS distribution of LocalSettings:

$wgMathPath = "http://wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org/~taw/wiki/math";
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


body:
Rose,

wikitech-l is intended for discussions about feature additions,
usability etc. Only when policy matters are concerned or when broad
feedback is useful should wikipedia-l be used. Otherwise we'll never get
anything done. Rest assured that TheCunctator will complain loudly on
wikipedia-l if he thinks that our decisions are too far-reaching.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Metric v. US

body:
On Sat, 4 Jan 2003 00:33:31 -0800 (PST), Anthere
<anthere5=/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> And what about being able to choose in the prefs some
> regional settings, us or metrics.
>
> Then, an editor would write the measurement with his
> prefered system in a tag : <tag>xx miles</tag>
>
> Then, if the editor's unit system is the same than the
> reader's system, say us, will be displayed :
>
> bla bla xx miles.
>
> When the editor's unit system is not the reader's
> prefered system, will be displayed :
>
> bla bla xx miles (yy km).
>
Once again, there is a precision issue. There are some articles on which
precision is implied and necessary, and others where it should be
approximate.
Poor unserstanding of precision of numbers seems to crop up everywhere,
with Journalists being particularly bad at it. In New Zealand, Currencies
are converted to $NZ for many stories, so one encounters such atrocities as
"The cost of the damage is expected to be well over $NZ1.93M. Quite clearly
this has been $US1M originally, and the context makes it quite clear that
it would be best to write $NZ2M. Another related pet hate which is nothing
to do with conversion is phrasing such as "more than 23 widgets". Which
either means "24 widgets" or could be better phrased (maybe "24 widgets at
the time of writing")

Anyway, back to wiki, perhaps the only way to automate precision would be
to use scientific notation for all numbers, and the conversion should have
no more significant figures than the original. (Or perhaps one more
significant digit, otherwise a sentence such as "1 mile is equal to
approximately 1.6Km" could get badly mangled)
--
Richard Grevers
Christchurch, New Zealand


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] behaviour of HTML entities in <nowiki>

body:
On lun, 2003-01-06 at 05:34, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-01-06 at 14:28, tarquin wrote:
> > has this been changed recently?
> > look at the sections on special characters on
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AHow_does_one_edit_a_page
> >
> > Things like
> >
> > π <nowiki>π</nowiki>
> >
> > now shows the same thing twice -- so it's now not possible to
> > demonstrate how to produce these charcaters.
>
> This is probably not intentional, but you can work around it by typing
> &pi; etc.

It's quite intentional, and restores the original behavior of <nowiki>
and <pre> from a longtime bug in phase 3.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


references:
<8dKHUlDCpVB@erik_moeller>
	 <1041825549.12324.353.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>

body:
On Mon, 2003-01-06 at 04:59, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On dim, 2003-01-05 at 19:33, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > > Well, they do! Editing an article doesn't change what other articles
> > > link to it, or what older revisions of it are stored in the database, or
> > > the presence of its talk page...
> >
> > The following may behave in unexpected ways:
> > * Related changes (but I just inserted a link here!)
> > * Move this page (where did my edits go?)
> >
> > "Watch this page" might also cause problems: Say you load "Watch this
> > page" in the background and then save your edit, but with the "Watch this
> > article" checkbox turned off - in that case the already watched article is
> > transparently unwatched.
>
> Every one of these is exactly as true if you select them after clicking
> "View article", then go back to your edit window.

The behavior is the same, but the expectation is different. Someone who
manages to load a link in the background is probably experienced enough
to realize that this will not apply to the version they are currently
editing.

Regards,

Erik

--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> This is a wikipedia-l issue, not wikitech-l issue.
>

This /is/ a Wikiteck-l issue because allowing anon users the ability to make
minor edits was a bug. Phase two /did not/ allow anon users to make minor
edits and this feature was lost when Phase III was written.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> > If it is for all wikipedia's, it is a Intlwiki-l issue. Wikipedia-l is
> > only the second list of en.wikipedia.
>
> intwiki-l should be abolished and the wikipedia / wikien-l distinction
> should be more actively enforced.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I disagree. IntlWiki-l should be about non-policy related interlanguage
coordination issues and it should serve as the general mailing list for any
Wikipedia language that does not yet have a mailing list.

Wikipedia-L is the /policy/ mailing list. General mailing lists are language
specific if there is enough traffic to substantiate having a separate list or
Intlwiki-L is used.

Giskart wrote
> If it is for all wikipedia's, it is a Intlwiki-l issue. Wikipedia-l is only
> the second list of en.wikipedia.

See above about Intlwiki-l. Wikipedia-L is about policy for the whole project.
There still is some talk on that list that is en.wiki specific but that's
only because that list for /so/ long about project-wide policy and general
en.wiki business.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Features: Was: New feature: Backlink when	editing a page

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>>     Just because many members of wikipedia do not have the skills to make such
>>changes, it doesn't mean that they don't have an opinion on them.
>>
>Then they should learn to do so or at least actively get involved in the
>process, just as people who don't like their governments should become
>active in the political process instead of being passive sheep who can
>be pushed around.
>
>This isn't a secret shadowy cabal; the developers' list is open to
>anyone who subscribes, the archives are publicly readable, and changes
>to the code are a matter of public record in our CVS repository.
>
>'Power to the people' doesn't just _happen_ magically; the people have
>to make use of their power. First step: sign up for wikitech-l and speak
>up when you have an opinion!
>
This is all great theory.  I subscribe to Wikitech, but a lot of
material that goes through there goes right over my head.  I know that
there has been considerable discussion about using TeX for mathematical
expressions, but I can't say that I understand that debate; however,
since I have no plans to write about mathematical subjects, I can't
concern myself too much with that.  That's a characteristic of many tech
debates:  most people won't notice until the proposal is implemented.

I do support citizen activism, but I also undrstand that people have
their own private lives, and that causes can soak up a tremendous amount
of energy from private lives.  Activists need to be careful about
choosing their causes.  I've certainly spoken up on many issues here,
and I plan to continue doing so.  Even so, there are many other comments
on these lists where I have an opinion, but have to accept that there
just isn't time to comment on everything.  If it turns out that my value
to Wikipedia is in contributing to actual articles, who benefits from my
spending my time responding to endless e-mails.  (The box was empty when
I went to bed last night, but it had 64 messages when I looked in the
morning.)

Perceived cabals don't usually develop because  a minority is seeking to
control a situation, but because a majority fails to participate until
there is a crisis.  When the crisis is reached the majority then find
themselves totally without background to the problem, and getting on
track is one big uphill fight.  I can understan the frustration in
Brion's comments, but I can also see it from the oother side.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>Let me take this opportunity to tout [[Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia
>Britannica]] as a guide to recycling EB1911 materials.
>
>Use the out-of-copyright EB1911 material freely, but give them credit
>when quoting directly.  When giving credit, cite [[1911 Encyclopedia
>Britannica]], which includes links to two online sources.  Remove the
>weasly "this is from a 1911 encyclopedia' when encountered.
>
Should I update [[Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]] to explain this?


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] intwiki-l needs to go

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> If we continue to use intwiki-l, the alienation
> between the English and
> non-English Wikipedias will increase further.

I agree.
Because people are confused between
"internationalization" (which is about linking all of
*us* together) and "international wikipedias" (that
is, all smaller wikipedias, excluding the english
wikipedia). It will stay that way as long as
"international" will mean "non-english", which likely
will stay that way a loooong time.
Isn't the english wikipedia involved in
internationalization just as well ?

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subject: [Wikitech-l] wikisearch broken

body:
On lun, 2003-01-06 at 10:49, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> I looked at the http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/wikisearch.php
> and it seems to be broken as far as Polish Wikipedia search goes.
>
> Can someone fix it, please ?

Done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

body:
On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 10:52:07PM +0100, Lars Aronsson wrote:

<stuff about copyrights acknowledged>

In any case, when discussing the 1911 EB when it first became available
on the net, it quickly became clear that the material from it is
totally unsuited for cut-and-paste into Wikipedia anyway.  Obviously
much of it is totally out-of-date (read the article on "Calculating
machines" for amusing speculation on the possibility of a completed
Analytical Engine), the style is archaic, and even the stuff on historical
figures has been invalidated by later research.

Use it for source material (with a good deal of care), but I would strongly
argue *not* to cut-and-paste it in.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                          rgmerk at mira.net
Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint):He followed me here from the hotel.
Leonard (Martin Landau): He was in your room?
Roger Thornhill (Carey Grant): Sure.  Isn't everybody?
  -- "North By Northwest
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Footer text changed

body:
As per Talk:Main Page, I have modified the standard page footer to be
somewhat more eloquent and accurate. A sample footer now looks like
this:

        This page has been accessed 478909 times. It was last modified
        10:00 Oct 31, 2002. All text is available under the terms of the
        GNU Free Documentation License.

I have also defined a standard (small) footer fontsize in the default
stylesheet.

Note that besides the "This page redundancy", I have also changed the
GNU FDL wording to apply to text only. Since some of our images are
"fair use", not all images may be freely modified/copied; this is
discussed on Wikipedia:Copyrights.

Changes in CVS.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


body:
On Sunday 05 January 2003 04:00 am, brion vibber wrote:
> The obvious thing is to include the larger image in the image
> description page of the smaller image (and hence the click-through from
> articles containing the smaller image), and this is *exactly* what a
> number of people started doing when the image upload system was first
> put in place.
>
> For reasons still not clear to me, a number of prominent members of the
> Wikipedia community found this to be anathema and stamped out the
> practice.

That was LDC's call and I have just been following through on enforcing the
image policy he wrote (and which wasn't opposed to by anyone on the mailing
list BTW). At first I too wanted to place the larger image in the image
description page of the smaller image but LDC convinced me that this isn't a
good idea since it would cultivate an expectation in visitors that clicking
on an image will bring them to a page that has a larger version of the same
image when in fact most images in Wikipedia do not have larger versions at
all (then visitors soon wouldn't know what to expect). Enforcing this leaves
us with a more consistent situation: Image description pages are where the
descriptions and copyright info for the images are. If you want to have a
link to a larger version of the image then provide a media link in the
article itself.

I still am not too happy with the situation though since it flies in the face
of the webstandard that if you click on an image you are usually taken to a
larger version of that image.

It would be nice if this behavior were made to be a bit smarter: if an image
is displayed on the image description page of foo.jpg then mouse pointers
become little hands when over image foo.jpg in an article and clicking once
brings you to the image description page (this is the current behavior for
all images). But if there is no image displayed on the image description page
of foo.jpg ([[:image:foo.jpg]]) then mouse pointers would /not/ become little
hands when over displayed image foo.jpg and a person would have to click the
image twice to get to the image description page.

It would also be nice to have any text in [[:image:foo.jpg]] be displayed as
mouse over text whenever a mouse pointer is over the displayed foo.jpg (with
or without an image displayed [[:image:foo.jpg]]).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Go button changes

body:
The "Go" button is now smarter, before viewing a page, it tries some
capitalization variations. If there is no direct match, it then runs a
standard search (with an additional error message stored in "nogomatch"
-> Language.php).

I have also changed the default skin to remove the absolute 200 pixel
width as there seems to be no need for it. This should stop the Go
button from being wrapped into the next line.

Brion, could you update test.wikipedia.org to CVS? I would really like
the Go button to be part of the Wikipedia.org default, though. It's
mighty useful.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enhanced Recent Changes

in_reply_to:
<3E19B99D.4060108@epost.de> (message from Magnus Manske on Mon,
	06 Jan 2003 18:15:09 +0100)

body:
Enhanced Recent Changes seems to mess up My Watchlist in all four
browsers on my Mac (OSX 10.1).  Instead of (diff) and (hist), both
linked, I get (cur) and (last), and (last) i s not linked.  Titles are
not bolded, and are only intermittently bolded in Recent Changes.
Otherwise, it seems to work, Real slow, I guess, but so what?  I
imagine it will speed up.

Tom P.
O88

PS -- Speaking of enhancements, the Move page dialog is much clearer
and better than it was back when I was whining about it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

in_reply_to:
<3E195C56.3040000@planetunreal.com> (message from tarquin on Mon,
	06 Jan 2003 10:37:11 +0000)

body:
|From: tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>
|X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 10:37:11 +0000
|
|
|Tom Parmenter wrote:
|
|>Let me take this opportunity to tout [[Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia
|>Britannica]] as a guide to recycling EB1911 materials.
|>
|>Use the out-of-copyright EB1911 material freely, but give them credit
|>when quoting directly.  When giving credit, cite [[1911 Encyclopedia
|>Britannica]], which includes links to two online sources.  Remove the
|>weasly "this is from a 1911 encyclopedia' when encountered.
|>
|Should I update [[Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]] to explain this?
|

Please do.

Tom P.
O88


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enhanced Recent Changes

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>For those recent changes addicts out there: You can now choose "Enhanced
>>recent changes" from your user preferences. It works with
>>Mozilla/Netscape7/IE, but not with Opera and some other browsers, and
>>uses JavaScript. Multiple edits of a page on a single day are summed up,
>>with a "diff" link for the total changes, and a "clickable" arrow that
>>lists the individual edits, with links to the "old" versions and correct
>>diffs!
>>
>>
>
>
>
It's great :-)
But both the unexpanded & expanded lines need to be indented a bit more
-- the article names don't line up properly (mozilla 1.1)

>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enhanced Recent Changes

body:
For those recent changes addicts out there: You can now choose "Enhanced
recent changes" from your user preferences. It works with
Mozilla/Netscape7/IE, but not with Opera and some other browsers, and
uses JavaScript. Multiple edits of a page on a single day are summed up,
with a "diff" link for the total changes, and a "clickable" arrow that
lists the individual edits, with links to the "old" versions and correct
diffs!

Give it a try. I will certainly use it!

Magnus


body:
has this been changed recently?
look at the sections on special characters on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AHow_does_one_edit_a_page

Things like

π <nowiki>π</nowiki>

now shows the same thing twice -- so it's now not possible to
demonstrate how to produce these charcaters.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Am I wasting my time?

body:
Ortolan88 Wrote:
>Fwappler is (pick one), a suitable case for treatment, a troll, or the
>most ineffable individual in history.  See [[User_Talk:Fwappler]] for
>data.

Hm, I rather thought s/he was a bot.  The more you talk with him/her,
the less sense the conversation makes.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enhanced Recent Changes

body:
> For those recent changes addicts out there: You can now choose "Enhanced
> recent changes" from your user preferences. It works with
> Mozilla/Netscape7/IE, but not with Opera and some other browsers, and
> uses JavaScript. Multiple edits of a page on a single day are summed up,
> with a "diff" link for the total changes, and a "clickable" arrow that
> lists the individual edits, with links to the "old" versions and correct
> diffs!

Thanks for implementing this, but I'm having problems with Mozilla 1.2.1;
clicking the down arrow doesn't open the individual changeset (nothing
happens). Earlier versions on test.wikipedia.org worked.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enhanced Recent Changes

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Thanks for implementing this, but I'm having problems with Mozilla 1.2.1;
>clicking the down arrow doesn't open the individual changeset (nothing
>happens). Earlier versions on test.wikipedia.org worked.
>
>
Weird; I'm using 1.2.1, and it works. Did you enable JavaScript? (just
asking;-)

Magnus


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> most important of things you
> list there: \left and \right - works since the very first version
> of texvc.

I apologize, I must have missed it in the documentation :-) This
feature can actually also be used to produce the case distinctions I
complained about:
<math>f(x)=\left\{\begin{matrix}n/2&\mbox{if }n\mbox{ is
even}\\3n+1&\mbox{if }n\mbox{ is odd}\ \end{matrix}\right.</math>

Note that something goes wrong if one forgets the \right command.

Axel

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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX ?

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On dim, 2003-01-05 at 12:25, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > It turns out that the one feature I need when editing math, namely
> > commutative diagrams as on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_lemma ,
> > I will not get. I guess I have to wait until someone implements an
> > xypic plugin.
>
> "Will not get" meaning that it still needs to be added to texvc, or
> meaning that there is some fundamental incompatibility between texvc
> and commutative diagrams?

I don't know if texvc is flexible enough to handle the rather bizarre
syntax of xypic. If not, a separate plugin would have to be written.

Axel

>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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