body:
Kit Langton wrote:

> what are those? jk... however, itstead of having all of these "i dont
> really know what to call them" languages... why not just have a click
> away on the language thing.. where you choose the language that reads
> something that could be understood in all languages.. maybe a '...' or
> something.  so the language list doesn't grow too big... and it is
> getting pretty big.. hard to find english sometimes.
>

No.  ???-ing it would involve discrimination against one or more
languages, and that is something Wikipedia shouldn?t and won?t do.

    I have been pondering about the idea of having a <SELECT>, that is,
a drop-down list for going to another language of the article (as I
guess you?re talking about the language links on the top of the page),
but this would result in hardship of use, compared to the ease of
hyperlinks.

    Just my thoughts on the matter.

    But this is rather unrelated to the current discussion about
constructed languages.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: I want to start a new language... with the
	code"eg" please.

body:
Brion-
> Anti-Klingonists, which would you prefer, given these two options: a
> Klingon-language encyclopedia in a side project that you never have to
> see or hear about, or neverending fighting *about* one from people who
> just won't shut up about it?

A side project with its own domain name for conlangs and dead languages
seems like a good idea. It may be possible to work with the people from
the Unilang wiki on this:
http://www.unilang2.org/main/wiki/wiki.phtml
(Unilang also uses MediaWiki.)

I remain somewhat concerned about using foundation resources to promote a
few people's pet projects. This isn't even for Jimmy alone to decide as
much of Wikimedia's current resources come from outside donations. Perhaps
this question should be put to a Wikimedia-wide vote.

The argument can of course be made that since Klingon, Toki Pona, Modern
Egyptian et al. have practically no speakers, they aren't at risk of
consuming significant resources. However, I believe that every Wikimedia
or Wikipedia project should at least have the *potential* to become large
and useful to thousands of people. If that potential doesn't exist, then
the question may be raised why we should do it at all.

"EnlargeSpace"? People like "Prince of Egypt" strike me as not quite
dissimilar to the micronation crowd, and I'm not sure it's a good idea for
us to go to great lengths to attract more of them.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
You are definitely in the right place, althought there are other right
places such as the Villge Pump.

On the surface (I am no programmer, but many who read this list are) your
arguement is persuasive, but so is the arguement of your opponents who take
the position that the level of detail you are going into is inappropriate
for an ecyclopedia.

However in many other areas, even more detailed expositions are present and
planned for encyclopedia, generally, no town is so small, no King so
obscure, and especially, no bird so extinct that it does not deserve an
article.

We have a policy, "Don't bite the newbies", but, it is not necessarily
followed in spirit. In fact, in your case, the excellence of your article
and its very sophistication perhaps works against the policy, as the
reaction is more to the imposition of that sophistication rather than to the
cluelessness of a newbie.

The suggestion that the article, and others like it, ought to be moved to
Wikibooks is one you might take seriously. I see the debate on VfD (Votes
for Deletion) as pretty typical and at this point about evenly divided.
Which means your article at worst might end up in Wikibooks. This is often
the fate of howto material.

The piling on engaged in by Beelzebubs and DavidWBrooks is, of course,
inexcusable. I have restored your stub (perhaps it was deleted more due to
its stub nature than its content) and suggest you finish working on it, if
you have any time and energy with all your other articles up for deletion.

This imperious comment:

> "But I'd recommend you leave listing them to users with good
> contribution records, and the same with discussing this
> one. AFAIK all the many articles you have written so far
> have been listed for deletion and will be deleted as
> unencyclopedic. IMO you aren't entitled to vote on
> VfD. Sorry." Andrewa....

constitutes a serious and sustained newbie mauling. I suppose the idea is
that you should edit a few hundred articles about small towns in America
before you jump into the serious stuff.

I hope this helps. A few serious and valuable contributors have been put
off, and, eventually driven away, (usually by butting heads with our
amateurish qualities) but I hope you are not one of them and will continue
to participate in our "Newbie training and socialization process". Made that
quote up, but I hope you get the idea.

As far as getting any apologies, considering the damage you have done to the
reputation of your tormentors, doubt you can expect any.

You might make your user page [[User:Eric B. and Rakim]] a bit more serious.
Perhaps a slight part of your difficulty is due to your joking around there.

Fred

> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 10:43:44 +0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] help me
>
> Dear mailing list readers,
>
> I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
> help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
> urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
> useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
> since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
> it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
> is a little thin I think. Well, I'm quite knowledgeable when
> it comes to computer related topics and I love to write. So,
> therefore I took it upon me to fix this defiancy.
>
> Big mistake it seems, some people didn't like that at all.
>
> Especially not a user by the name RickK, who a few minutes
> after I had written an initial version of "XFree86 logfile"
> added it to a page "Votes for Deletion" on which he is
> currently holding a vote whether that page should be destroyed
> or not. Naturally, I protested strongly, because I couldn't
> and still cannot understand why he wants to delete that
> page. He didn't try to communicate with me and just wrote
> "Huh?" and then when I asked him why he thought that that
> page should be deleted he answered "It isn't discussing
> anything encyclopedic. I THINK it describes a file format,
> but I'm not really sure."
>
>> From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
> the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
> anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
> XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
> listed all other six articles I had written:
>
> glDrawElements, glVertexPointer, glDrawArrays, glEnable,
> GL_QUADS, fbdevhw
>
> And wrote: "I'll ask again. Do we really want articles on
> subroutines?" Which is really funny since only the four
> first documents subroutines.
>
> Then quite a few other users also said that they wanted
> those articles destroyed. No reasons where given except for
> pointless platitudes like "not encyclopedia material" and
> "Wikipedia is not (should not be) an API reference".
>
> I tryid arguing and, no offense intened, but it was totally
> wasted time. Those functions are the essential cornerstones
> for modern 3d graphics.. Have to realize that some people
> just have a very different view of things than me. However,
> I refuse to accept that Wikipedia in general would have such
> a twisted view of things because then there wouldn't be
> 250,000+ articles here.
>
> Then I wrote the beginning of an article named pcidata,
> which is a X module for displaying PCI information. Two
> minutes after it was submitted a user named Beelzebubs wrote
> "Speedy deletion" on it and a minute later it was destroyed
> by DavidWBrooks. It made me quite angry because I had no way
> whatsoever to even object. And from looking at their
> respective user pages I deducted that none of them is
> interested in Linux and therefore (probably) has no idea
> what pcidata is.
>
> It seems like Wikipedia really isn't a very newbie friendly
> page. Well, I can't exclude UtherSRG's very friendly
> message on my talk page. Is this some kind of hazing or are
> regular users treated like this too? Seems like a calculated
> move - tease the new guy til they fight back and then accuse
> them. Especially this little gem by the same user that also
> accused me of being rude:
>
> "But I'd recommend you leave listing them to users with good
> contribution records, and the same with discussing this
> one. AFAIK all the many articles you have written so far
> have been listed for deletion and will be deleted as
> unencyclopedic. IMO you aren't entitled to vote on
> VfD. Sorry." Andrewa....
>
> I need help. Because I don't know what I should do. Either
> it is so that my work and expertise isn't appreciated or
> even accepted by Wikipedia. If so, I will leave peacefully
> and not return. If not so, I would expect an apology from
> the perpetrators and that my work is not destroyed.
>
> //Bj?rn (aka. Eric B. and Rakim)
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion bot

body:
After the recent vandal attack on zh:, I have written a bot to enable
faster deletion of pages. Basically, it shows each page in a list, and
asks one whether to delete it. Because of the contentious nature of the
bot, I prefer not to give out the code freely (although it is actually
very simple), but trusted users with some experience in large-scale
vandalism repair can ask for it.

Note that this bot is meant to be used ONLY in cases of large-scale
vandalism, NOT for normal deletion.

Also note that Tim is fully correct in stating that a developer could
do things even easier.

Andre Engels


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion bot


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon etc and wiktionary

body:
In the en:wiktionary there are already words in languages like Klingon. (check language for instance).

Certainly if people are concerned about "sillines", it looks even more silly in wiktionary where the Klingon et al words are not in a seperate space.

On the nl:wiktionary there are two problems:
* www.nl.wiktionary.org will give you  a "technical problems" page while it can be found on nl.wiktionary.org

*It is not possible to create an article with an hebrew title. (this is possible on the en:wiktionary.

Thanks,
  Gerard


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject:
[Wikitech-l] categories: separate category link table? (wican:
	addressed to exclusive sender for this address)

body:
On Sunday 16 May 2004 07:38, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jim Laurino wrote:
> > I started a log of my thinking and exploration related
> > to this topic at wikipedia User:AJim/extensions.
> >
> > I looked at the v 1.18 tables.sql categorylinks table,
> > and I think the cl_sortkey index is right on track
> > to support the kind of functionality I was looking for.
> >
> > I am pretty new to this stuff. Will the changes that
> > Brion just made appear on the test wiki soon?
>
> Already there, I installed it a few minutes after checking it in.
>
> By default, the sort key will be the name of the article. That is, in an
> article "Linus Torvalds", a category link [[Category:Programmer]] will
> confer the sort key "Linus_Torvalds", and when you look at the list of
> programmers at Category:Programmer he'll appear under the L's.
>
> If you override it, say [[Category:Programmer|Torvalds, Linus]], then
> he'll be sorted in the T's, though he'll still be listed as "Linus
> Torvalds".
>
> (It's currently an ugly binary search and should get improved to
> something that's at least case-insensitive and ideally
> language-targetted. MySQL's limited language settings mean we'll have to
> manage that ourselves, making binary sort keys from the text.)
>
> Categories can be nested in a tree structure, though the display is
> currently a bit awkward for that. There is not (yet) any specific
> navigation support for being "in" a category, though perhaps that's
> something that could get added somehow.

Does this mean that, if the page Category:Programmer has a link to
Category:Human, Linus will appear on Category:Human without his article
linking to Category:Human?

If Linus is linked to Category:Programmer and Category:Man, will it be
possible that he appears in a list of male programmers? It should be easy
though I have no idea how to do it.

By the way, I expected that categories will work similar to interlanguage
links, hidden if not prefixed with :.


from_name: Magnus Link

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
I was about to write a one-year evaluation of my
Wikipedia experience, but that will have to wait to a
rainy day. Today I have one, in my opinion, important
thought, that I would like to share with you.

I think I've made no secret of my dislike for Wik. Or
rather for many of his ways and actions. There is no
need to deny, that I think he is one of the
contributors who harm wikipedia much more than they
make good, although this doesn't mean that I think Wik
is factually wrong (particularly often), not at all.

However, I am concerned about Wikipedia-discussions
tending to become personalized. As if everything would
be OK if only this or that person was tought better -
alternatively chased away.

I think this is a totally wrong approach.

I think what concerned intelligent and experienced
wikipedians should better put their energy into, is
not the question of what to do with this or that
harmful person, but instead what to change in
wikipedia to make wikipedia less vulnerable for the
harm they cause.

(Of course I have ideas myself, but my intention here
is not to promote a particular solution. :-)

Greetings!

en:User:Ruhrjung

Mit sch?nen Gr??en von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
It has been repeatedly suggested that this gentleman (these gentlemen?) might be more comfortable working at Wikibooks, but he took this suggestion with scorn and made personal attacks on those who suggested it.  *I* am not holding a vote on the subjects, Wikipedia is holding a vote.

And yes, I know what subroutines are, I didn't feel the need to specifically indicate which of the items he had written were subroutines and which were not.  They were clear from context.

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
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from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

body:
>
>In the en:wiktionary there are already words in languages like
>Klingon. (check language for instance).
>
>Certainly if people are concerned about "sillines", it looks
>even more silly in wiktionary where the Klingon et al words
>are not in a seperate space.
>
>On the nl:wiktionary there are two problems:
>* www.nl.wiktionary.org will give you  a "technical problems"
>page while it can be found on nl.wiktionary.org

I dont think www.nl.wiktionary.org is set somewhere.

>*It is not possible to create an article with an hebrew title.
>(this is possible on the en:wiktionary.

nl.wiktionary is in utf-8 ?

Shaihulud


list: foundation-l

from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Foundation-l] Association et foundation

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  Bonjour ? tous.

Does anyone need an english translation, or a summary?

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Error messages

body:
Med?ric Boquien wrote:

>Hi
>
>Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>On a (hopefully not) related matter, I am in the process of rsync-ing
>>the images of the German wp, for an offline (CD/DVD) edition.
>>
>>
>
>Could you tell us a little bit more about this? Will you just make static
>html page to visalize with a web browser or are you making a software
>dedicated to this task? I ask you that because Ryo and me (95% Ryo in fact)
>are starting a project to browse wikipedia offline. We are making a
>platform independant library using a true database (sqlite), having search
>functions, etc. On top of this, we plan to make an user interface for
>several platform. The aim of this is to distribute the database and the
>software on a CD/DVD. The name of the library is WikiRover, and we have
>been accepted on sourceforge.
>
>
>
That's so funny; I wrote a C++ program that uses sqlite, and together
with a free no-install web server (tinyweb), I generate pages and do
searches (fulltext).

The source is with the MediaWiki software, in the package "waikiki".

There is also a working demo for the Getman wikipedia (75 MB Window$
installer, no images):
    http://download.wikimedia.org/2004-05-11-wpol_de.exe

With the images, and probably a little more tweaking, my software is
ready to go.
One problem, though: As the tinyweb server insists on writing log files,
I currently haven't figured out a way to run it directly from CD; an
install (at least for the software, not the data/images) would be required.

I hope we can "join forces" here :-)

Magnus


body:
Summary/translation.
by Christopher Mahan

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  Bonjour ? tous.

Hi all

> Suite au mail de Yann, et ? quelques discussions sur irc hier soir,
> je voudrais donner mon opinion et pr?ciser quelques petites choses.

following conv with Yann and some chats on IRC, my opinion and
clarifications.

> Tout d'abord, je vais insister sur le fait que je ne souhaite pas
> entrer ? nouveau dans les pol?miques de d?cembre dernier. L'?poque
> ?tait inopportune pour diverses raisons et je trouverais tr?s
> dommage que les souvenirs de d?cembre limitent la discussion (en
> bref, si on fait table rase de d?cembre, on optimise nos chances de
> discuter paisiblement, alors que si chaque remarque entraine un
> "oui, mais en d?cembre blablabla", je ne crois pas que nous serons
> tr?s constructifs).

Don't want to rehash last december's stuff.

> Ensuite, une chose importante. Je le pr?cise car je ne suis pas
> sure que quelqu'un l'ai ?voqu? ouvertement :-) Je trouve formidable
> que Shaihulud se soit int?gr? ? l'?quipe de d?v et de maintenance
> de cette fa?on. J'ai l'impression que Shai a totalement la
> confiance de la part de Brion. Et je me r?jouis... car cela veut
> dire
> 1) que nous renfor?ons l'unicit? de l'aspect technique du projet
> 2) que nous renfor?ons son aspect international
> 3) et que nous serons au courant de ce qui se passe dans les
> c?nacles techniques

Important: don't know if someone said it before: Shai did a great job
getting int he dev team. looks like Brion likes him. It's good
because:
1) unified technical aspect
2) strengthen internationalization
3) we will know what does on in dev circles

> Je fais totalement confiance ? Shai pour faire ce qui sera le
> mieux.

I trust Shai to do what's best.

> (Note : cela veut dire en particulier que les craintes faces ? la
> mise en place de miroirs n'ont plus de raisons d'?tre, je suis
> certaine que les meilleures d?cisions seront prises, en toute
> connaissance de cause)

Fears about mirror issues will be handled well.

> Je crois que la gestion de tout le mat?riel technique devra ?tre
> d?l?gu?, ie, pas seulement en termes de maintenance, mais aussi en
> terme d'achat. Il faudrait que se constitue une petite ?quipe de
> d?veloppeurs, avec un responsable habilit? ? g?rer le parc d'un
> point de vue financier. Ceci ne doit plus ?tre dans les mains de
> Jimbo directement, dans un souci d'efficacit? essentiellement.

devs should manage servers and funds for servers. Jimbo should not
have to deal with this. Isuue of efficiency.

>
>
> Deuxio, je soutiens la cr?ation d'une association fran?aise (ou
> belge ou ...). Je n'ai pas de formation l?gale, et n'ai jamais mis
> en place une association, donc je peux parfois poser des questions
> assez innocentes :-). Mais, en terme de mise en place l?gale d'une
> association, je fais enti?rement confiance ? Yann et qlq autres
> pour faire cela correctement. J'esp?re que Villy pourra ?tre
> impliqu? ?galement, car il faut utiliser les comp?tences qui sont
> disponibles autant que possible et je suis certaine de Villy peut
> aider (et a indiqu? ?tre pr?t ? le faire). Il apporte une autre
> perspective que celle de Yann et autres, et tout autre perspective
> ne peut ?tre que b?n?fique. Responsables d'association, avocats,
> juges etc... peuvent tous aider.
>

Second, I support a french association, or belgian, etc. I have no
formal training in that realm, so defer to Yann and others. Villy
willing to help.

> ----------------
>
> Petit rappel sur la Foundation.

Little reminder about the foundation

> La fondation am?ricaine n'existera l?galement que lorsque le
> conseil sera constitu?, ce qui devrait ?tre fait courant juin - fin
> juin je pr?sume. Pour ceux qui n'ont pas tout suivi, le conseil
> sera constitu? dans un premier temps de 5 personnes.

will only exist after boeard is in, end of june. 5 people:

> * Jimbo, le pr?sident

Jimbo, president.

> * deux autres personnes, qui pr?cisons le, ne sont pas des employ?s
> de Jimmy, mais ses associ?s dans Bomis. Pendant 3 ans, c'est la
> soci?t? Bomis qui a financ? le projet, et donc indirectement ces
> deux personnes, m?me si celles-ci ne participent pas.

2 others, Bomis business pertners / associates. For three years Bomis
financed the projet, so they did indirectly
[note from Chris: not sure this statement is correct, Yo, Jimbo?]

> * deux repr?sentants des utilisateurs.

2 user reps.

>
> Quelques d?tails sur ces deux repr?sentants.

Some details on these 2

> L'un sera charg? de repr?senter TOUS les participants (ip compris).
> Il sera ?lu par tous les participants enregistr?s (sans que ceux-ci
> aient besoin d'?tre membres cotisants de l'association). Le concept
> consiste ? dire que la Foundation prend en compte l'opinion de tous
> les participants, et non uniquement les "payants". En effet, les
> projets Wikimedia sont des projets collectifs, construits par tous,
> et Jimbo souhaite que tous les participants aient un droit de
> parole et une repr?sentation l?gale.

one will represent all users. will be elected by all registered users
(no financial participation required), so all users have a voice.
Wikimedia projects are collective works, and Jimbo wants all users to
have a voice.

> Je tiens ? le pr?ciser car je pense que l'association fran?aise
> devrait ?tre construite sur un principe similaire, ? savoir que
> tous les participants devraient pouvoir ?tre repr?sent?s, et donc
> ?lire leur repr?sentant. Je ne pense pas que les "actifs" dans
> l'association doivent ?tre uniquement ceux qui "payent" et encore
> moins, ceux qui "sont ? la r?union de fondation". L'association est
> affaire du collectif et non d'une petite ?quipe de super-motiv?s
> seuls (tout en admettant le fait que fonder l'association n?cessite
> une ?quipe de super-motiv?s).

I want to say that I think the french association can be built in a
similar fashion, that all users have a voice. I don't think paying
members only need have say, and even then those who attent the
meetings. The assiciation is greater than the leadership group. Not
to say that a leadership group is not needed in founding the
association)

> Je crois qu'il est un secret de polichinelle, que de dire qui sera
> le repr?sentant des volontaires (ie, de tous les participants). La
> r?ponse est ?vidente :-) (il me semble m?me qu'un vote soit
> inutile...).

I think it is a false secret to pretend no-one knows who the
volunteer representative will be. The answer is obvious. (seems a
vote is unnecessary).

> Le deuxi?me repr?sentant sera charg? de repr?senter les membres
> cotisants, et sera ?lu par les cotisants uniquement (en d'autres
> termes, le cotisant sera doublement repr?sent?). A noter, il serait
> possible que la cotisation soit ? 0 dollars... mais m?me si c'est
> le cas, il est certainement probable que le montant de la
> cotisation soit diff?rent selon les pays en raison des diff?rences
> de pouvoir d'achat (une cotisation de 5 dollars est acceptable pour
> un am?ricain, mais certainement pas acceptable au Bangladesh). Si
> nous voulons pouvoir garantir les droits ? l'acc?s, ceci devra ?tre
> pris en compte.

The second rep will represent paying member, and will be elected by
them only (in other words, those who pay will have double
representation). Please note it is possible that the required
donation amount may be $0. Even if this is the case, it is obvious
that differences in purchasing power dictates that the threshold
differ from country to country, if representation is to be fair.

> ---------------
> Je n'ai pas eu l'occasion de vous expliquer *mon* point de vue sur
> ce que devrait ?tre la Fondation Wikimedia et sur la relation qui
> devrait exister entre Wikimedia et les associations locales.
> J'aimerais que ceux qui ont une autre vision explique la leur pour
> que nous trouvions comment nous rencontrer :-)

I'll explain my point of view on the relation between wikimedia and
local associations. Others might do likewise to encourage dialog.

> Je vais juste essayer de le pr?ciser en quelques mots.

in a few words.

> Pourquoi mettre en place la Fondation ?

Why a foundation?

> Essentiellement pour des motifs l?gaux. Nous avons besoin d'une
> plateforme l?gale

Legal platform for:

> * pour collecter l'argent (soit par des cotisations, soit par des
> dons, soit par des subventions)

raising money.

> * pour pouvoir le d?penser (pour les serveurs, pour la bande
> passante, pour les noms de domaine, pour des actions
> promotionnelles, pour financer des projets de distributions tels
> que les WikiReaders, pour rembourser les frais de d?placements pour
> certaines op?rations, ?ventuellement plus tard, pour payer des
> employ?s).

To spend money. Domain names, servers, bandwidth, marketing,
distribuutions projects (wikireaders), operating costs, future:
employees.

> * Nous avons ?galement besoin d'un "propri?taire" pour le mat?riel
> technique

Ownership of equipment

> * pour la protection intellectuelle de notre contenu et la
> protection des participants (?ventuellement)

Defence of intellectual property.

> A ceci j'ajouterais

I will add:

>
> * pour garantir que les principes de base des projets Wikimedia
> soient toujours respect?s :  contenu libre et gratuit; ouverture et
> wikilove entre participants.

To guarantee project integrity, free content, accessibility,
wikilove.

> Et j'ajouterais enfin, ? terme

Finally,

>
> * pour devenir un lieu de rencontre, de prise de d?cision commune,
> de coop?ration entre tous les projets, ie, entre toutes les
> associations locales.

A nexus for meetings, common decisions, cooperation between projects,
and local associations

>
>
> Partant de la?pourquoi mettre en place des associations locales ?

Why local associations?

> * pour collecter de l?argent plus facilement  et b?n?ficier
> d?exemption d?impots

collect local monies more effectively, tax exemption

> * pour pouvoir le d?penser certes

of course to spend it.

> * pour ?tre propri?taire?peut ?tre, mais non certain.  Des miroirs
> pourraient rester la propri?t? de la Fondation

hardware ownership, but not ncecessarily. Mirrors could remain under
the foundation

> * pour la d?fense du contenu ?ventuellement

legal defense of wiki contents

> * pour organiser la distribution du contenu (version papier,
> version CD etc?)

organize content distribution: paper, CD mamer, cd

> * pour ?tre un lieu de rencontre en langue fran?aise, donc plus
> accessible pour tous les francophones, ce qui est en effet tr?s
> important en terme de communaut?.

A place to meet in french, more accessible to french speakers. Very
needed by the community.

>
> Mais !
> Cette association doit ?tre attentive ? trois choses

but, keeping in mind:

> 1. Elle doit repr?senter le maximum de participants, car si nous
> construisons ce projet ensemble, nous avons aussi tous notre mot ?
> dire sur la fa?on dont il est distribu?. Si nous avons des fonds ?
> utiliser, nous devons tous avoir notre mot ? dire sur la fa?on dont
> il est d?pens?. Si nous avons un serveur ? acheter, tous les
> d?veloppeurs ont leur mot ? dire, qu?ils soient membres cotisants
> ou non. En d?autres termes, les diff?rents responsables de
> l?association (pr?sident, tr?sorier, membres du conseil) doivent
> ?tre ?lus par tous les participants, et non pas seulement ceux
> pr?sents ? la r?union de fondation ; en d?autres termes aussi, les
> d?cisions prises par les responsables de l?association doivent
> r?sulter de discussions faites sur Wikipedia ensemble et non pas de
> discussions limit?es aux assembl?es g?n?rales. Enfin, l?association
> ne peut pas parler au nom de Wikipedia, si elle ne repr?sente que
> 5% des participants.

Needs good user representation and oversight.
Anthere?

>
> 2. Cette association ne doit pas ?tre dissoci?e de la Fondation.
> Elle doit y ?tre clairement affili?, et ces membres clairement
> d?clarer suivre les principes fondateur de la Fondation. Cela
> signifie aussi que les associations locales devraient aussi ?tre
> repr?sent?es au sein de la Foundation m?me. Les relations l?gales
> entre la Foundation m?re et les affili?es doivent ?tre pr?cis?es,
> de m?me que les roles et responsabilit?s individuelles de chaque.

must maintain good links with foundation. Legal standing with
Foundation must be established.

>
> 3. Cette association doit fonctionner en tandem avec la Foundation
> en termes de prise de d?cision quant aux usages financiers, ceci
> pour garantir l?unicit? du projet et conserver une d?marche
> coop?rative. En particulier, il faut envisager de mettre toutes les
> ressources financi?res dans un pot commun et non g?rer son
> patrimoine de fa?on ind?pendante. Car une bonne partie de notre
> patrimoine est commun (ie, les serveurs, le nom, le concept, les
> principes fondateurs) et il serait illogique de g?rer nos parties
> communes de fa?on s?par?e.

Common ownership and management of resources with wikimedia.

> Il serait positif qu?un budget soit ?tabli, pour identifier les
> besoins structuraux communs (serveurs, bande passante, noms de
> domaine) et pouvoir d?cider au mieux de l?usage des ressources
> restantes (nous pourrions d?cider de d?penser un certain montant
> pour des projets identifi?s, un certain montant pour aider des
> projets peu d?velopp?s, et le reste ?tre redistribu? aux
> associations locales). Un don offert ? l?association francophone
> pour le support du projet Wikimedia dans son ensemble doit ?tre
> utilis? pour le bien commun, et non pas uniquement pour la
> promotion du projet en France. Nous b?n?ficions des dons collect?s
> dans d?autres pays,  pour l?achat des serveurs que nous utilisons
> tous par exemple, nous devons aussi participer ? l?effort commun.

Must participate in global development of wikimedia, not just worry
about the french stuff [Translator: super paraphrase I know]

> En bref, si les aspects purement l?gaux de la mise en place d?une
> association en France ne sont probablement PAS un probl?me, la
> d?finition des relations existantes entre Wikimedians et
> association p?che un peu. Quand aux relations entre Wikimedia
> Foundation et associations locales, elles restent enti?rement ?
> d?finir et ? mettre en place.

While a french association might not be hard, the kinks are in the
details of the relationshionships between the foundation and local
associations.. These need to be defined.

>
>
>
> J?esp?re, Shaihulud, que ceci clarifie ma position d?hier soir. Je
> suis totalement pour une association francophone, mais pour une
> association qui nous repr?sente collectivement, qui ait un lien
> fort et clair avec la Foundation et les autres associations locales
> et finalement, qui participe ? la construction de l?ouvrage commun.

Shai, I hope this clarifies what I said yesterday. I agree to a
french association, but one with common representation, strong and
clear links with the foundation and other local associations, and
that participates in a common work.

> Nous pouvons fort bien nous ? d?couper ? le travail. Certains
> bosser sur la mise en place de l?assoc proprement dite, d?autres
> sur la mise en place de la structure de la repr?sentation et des
> d?cisions par l?association, selon les souhaits du collectif, et
> d?autres encore, sur la mise en place des liens entre associations
> m?re et filles.

We can easily "split" the work among ourselves. Some can work on
founding the association, others on the structure and representation,
and decisions by the association, accorting to community wishes, and
others yet can work on defining the links between parent and child
organizations.

> Bon, ? la semaine prochaine :-)

until next week.

> Anthere

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 02:40:30AM +0100, Timwi wrote:

> only arguments that actually oppose the introduction of a Klingon
> Wikipedia are (a) copyright problems (which we've established numerous
> times isn't an issue) and (b) reputation problems (which is a really
> dumb argument for keeping Toki Pona).

c) as far as I know Unicode (or at least that supported bottom 16 bit wide
part of it) does not support klingon glyphs, therefore it is pretty
impossible to actually display a klingon wikipedia for anyone not
specifically had installed the required customised fonts. I do not believe
in transliterated documents (do chinese want pinyin wikipedia? I doubt it).

Let there be a separate project for conlangs. Let there be a technically
good way (this addresses brion :)) to be able to 'promote' a mere conlang to
a wikipedia if it reaches some acceptable standard of quality and quantity
of the articles. This way everyone's happy: you can start an encyclopedia in
your favourite conlang, and if you don't gather followers, it'll just sit
there silently and not disturbing wikipedia; if your language springs up in
the air and moves half a continent of followers then great, let's convert it
to a real, separate wikipedia.

my 0.02 euros.

grin


from_name: Eric B. Rakim

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
Dear mailing list readers,

I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
is a little thin I think. Well, I'm quite knowledgeable when
it comes to computer related topics and I love to write. So,
therefore I took it upon me to fix this defiancy.

Big mistake it seems, some people didn't like that at all.

Especially not a user by the name RickK, who a few minutes
after I had written an initial version of "XFree86 logfile"
added it to a page "Votes for Deletion" on which he is
currently holding a vote whether that page should be destroyed
or not. Naturally, I protested strongly, because I couldn't
and still cannot understand why he wants to delete that
page. He didn't try to communicate with me and just wrote
"Huh?" and then when I asked him why he thought that that
page should be deleted he answered "It isn't discussing
anything encyclopedic. I THINK it describes a file format,
but I'm not really sure."

>From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
listed all other six articles I had written:

glDrawElements, glVertexPointer, glDrawArrays, glEnable,
GL_QUADS, fbdevhw

And wrote: "I'll ask again. Do we really want articles on
subroutines?" Which is really funny since only the four
first documents subroutines.

Then quite a few other users also said that they wanted
those articles destroyed. No reasons where given except for
pointless platitudes like "not encyclopedia material" and
"Wikipedia is not (should not be) an API reference".

I tryid arguing and, no offense intened, but it was totally
wasted time. Those functions are the essential cornerstones
for modern 3d graphics.. Have to realize that some people
just have a very different view of things than me. However,
I refuse to accept that Wikipedia in general would have such
a twisted view of things because then there wouldn't be
250,000+ articles here.

Then I wrote the beginning of an article named pcidata,
which is a X module for displaying PCI information. Two
minutes after it was submitted a user named Beelzebubs wrote
"Speedy deletion" on it and a minute later it was destroyed
by DavidWBrooks. It made me quite angry because I had no way
whatsoever to even object. And from looking at their
respective user pages I deducted that none of them is
interested in Linux and therefore (probably) has no idea
what pcidata is.

It seems like Wikipedia really isn't a very newbie friendly
page. Well, I can't exclude UtherSRG's very friendly
message on my talk page. Is this some kind of hazing or are
regular users treated like this too? Seems like a calculated
move - tease the new guy til they fight back and then accuse
them. Especially this little gem by the same user that also
accused me of being rude:

"But I'd recommend you leave listing them to users with good
contribution records, and the same with discussing this
one. AFAIK all the many articles you have written so far
have been listed for deletion and will be deleted as
unencyclopedic. IMO you aren't entitled to vote on
VfD. Sorry." Andrewa....

I need help. Because I don't know what I should do. Either
it is so that my work and expertise isn't appreciated or
even accepted by Wikipedia. If so, I will leave peacefully
and not return. If not so, I would expect an apology from
the perpetrators and that my work is not destroyed.

//Bj?rn (aka. Eric B. and Rakim)

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
>>>>> "MC" == Marcos Cramer <marcos.cramer at balliol.oxford.ac.uk> writes:

    MC> Is disk space really so expensive that we need to be so strict
    MC> with conlangs? If they are not very big, they are not going to
    MC> take much disk space anyway.

Disk space shouldn't be the issue. The issue is that a dead wiki is a
security risk and a legal liability. It takes sysadmin time and effort
to maintain.

    MC> Rather, I propose to allow any conlang that is actually used
    MC> for communication. Three people knowing it well, and a few
    MC> others understanding it a bit, can be enough for this.

I'd say that any conlang advocates should just go out and create a
wiki on another server. I think a conlang would benefit from a more
open-ended wiki structure, anyways, rather than the kind of rigid
divisions in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc.

A general wiki could have instructional texts, dictionary, translated
works, original works, phrasebooks, discussion areas (for practicing
the language), news, organizational discussion for meetings & clubs,
etc. Of course, an encyclopedia could also be part of the mix.

MediaWiki is kinda hard to set up, but there are a ton of good Wiki
engines out there that aren't.

        http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines

I personally like PmWiki, since it's easily skinnable and extensible,
and will run anywhere you can run PHP scripts.

        http://www.pmwiki.org/

There are a number of free (gratis) hosting services that allow PHP
scripts.

        http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Hosting/Free/

Wikimedia is a great public service, but it's not the be-all and
end-all of wiki.

~ESP

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


from_name: Maik Arnold

subject: [Foundation-l] New Project Idea

body:
Dear all,

while reading some article in the wikipedia, an idea for a new project came to
my mind: There could be a wiki-page which collects field reports from
missionaries around the world.

How can I get help for starting a new project with wikimedia? ... and someone
who is interested in developing the project?

Maik Arnold


subject: [Foundation-l] New Project Idea


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
Eric B. Rakim wrote
> I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
> help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
> urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
> useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
> since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
> it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
> is a little thin I think.

It is not complete (and never will be).  It could also do with better
organisation.

However ...

Having found [[User:Eric B. and Rakim]], and read the way the VfD debate
went, I have less sympathy than at first.

>Well, I can't exclude UtherSRG's very friendly
> message on my talk page. Is this some kind of hazing or are
> regular users treated like this too? Seems like a calculated
> move - tease the new guy til they fight back and then accuse
> them.

No, this is normal; no special treatment.

> I need help. Because I don't know what I should do. Either
> it is so that my work and expertise isn't appreciated or
> even accepted by Wikipedia. If so, I will leave peacefully
> and not return. If not so, I would expect an apology from
> the perpetrators and that my work is not destroyed.

If you are an expert, and can also work within the Wikipedia constraints,
that's great.

Charles


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Questia link

body:
On this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedia_articles_based_upon_websites

we have a link to
http://www.questia.com/

Questia has offered to pay us $12 per signup through that link, but we
would have to change the link to a tracking url.

I almost just went ahead told them no, but then I thought, hmm, maybe
we should talk about this.  It's not likely to generate any
significant revenue -- that's a pretty obscure page I think -- so it's
really more a question of the general principle here.

I guess the problem I have with it is that the text of that page is
pure editorial content, and should remain that way.  It's different
even from the book sources page in that respect.  Putting a paid link
on a page can be perfectly fine to do, but not unless clearly marked
as such.  But starting down the path of embedding paid links with
disclaimers all over wikipedia is a pretty huge _stylistic_ change if
nothing else, and I'm not really comfortable with it.

Linking to booksellers and having a mix of paid and unpaid links on
that page is not likely to give rise to doubts about our neutrality.
But linking for money *within* the content of actual articles, not in
the margin or whatever, that sounds pretty bad to me.

I think I would be a lot more comfortable with a link in the margin, a
link to their search engine for the topic of the page, with us getting
paid, with a disclaimer.  That would be *outside* the editorial
content of the article itself.

(I am not proposing that we do that, I am just saying that it would be
different.)

--Jimbo


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
A piece of advice - don't be rude to people. It gets their backs up. Phrases that include "moron" should be avoided.

I understand how you feel I really do. The first page I created was listed on VfD (although it was not deleted) It feels like a slap in the face, all your hard work, and they want to delete it. It's not a nice feeling but I survived as did many others.

Lot's of people have suggested a move to wikibooks. If you re read the page it reads like the page of a textbook, so IMO wikibooks is perfect. Note that wikibooks is a sister project of wikipedia set up to cater for the sort of things that are considered "un encyclopedic" on wikipedia. I think you will be much more warmly welcomed there (Actually I know it, I'm an admin there).Check out this page http://wikibooks.org/wiki/IT_bookshelf as you can see there is lot's of work to do, and help out wherever you want.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric B. Rakim [mailto:eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com]
Sent: 19 May 2004 11:44
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

Dear mailing list readers,

I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
is a little thin I think. Well, I'm quite knowledgeable when
it comes to computer related topics and I love to write. So,
therefore I took it upon me to fix this defiancy.

Big mistake it seems, some people didn't like that at all.

Especially not a user by the name RickK, who a few minutes
after I had written an initial version of "XFree86 logfile"
added it to a page "Votes for Deletion" on which he is
currently holding a vote whether that page should be destroyed
or not. Naturally, I protested strongly, because I couldn't
and still cannot understand why he wants to delete that
page. He didn't try to communicate with me and just wrote
"Huh?" and then when I asked him why he thought that that
page should be deleted he answered "It isn't discussing
anything encyclopedic. I THINK it describes a file format,
but I'm not really sure."

>From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
listed all other six articles I had written:

glDrawElements, glVertexPointer, glDrawArrays, glEnable,
GL_QUADS, fbdevhw

And wrote: "I'll ask again. Do we really want articles on
subroutines?" Which is really funny since only the four
first documents subroutines.

Then quite a few other users also said that they wanted
those articles destroyed. No reasons where given except for
pointless platitudes like "not encyclopedia material" and
"Wikipedia is not (should not be) an API reference".

I tryid arguing and, no offense intened, but it was totally
wasted time. Those functions are the essential cornerstones
for modern 3d graphics.. Have to realize that some people
just have a very different view of things than me. However,
I refuse to accept that Wikipedia in general would have such
a twisted view of things because then there wouldn't be
250,000+ articles here.

Then I wrote the beginning of an article named pcidata,
which is a X module for displaying PCI information. Two
minutes after it was submitted a user named Beelzebubs wrote
"Speedy deletion" on it and a minute later it was destroyed
by DavidWBrooks. It made me quite angry because I had no way
whatsoever to even object. And from looking at their
respective user pages I deducted that none of them is
interested in Linux and therefore (probably) has no idea
what pcidata is.

It seems like Wikipedia really isn't a very newbie friendly
page. Well, I can't exclude UtherSRG's very friendly
message on my talk page. Is this some kind of hazing or are
regular users treated like this too? Seems like a calculated
move - tease the new guy til they fight back and then accuse
them. Especially this little gem by the same user that also
accused me of being rude:

"But I'd recommend you leave listing them to users with good
contribution records, and the same with discussing this
one. AFAIK all the many articles you have written so far
have been listed for deletion and will be deleted as
unencyclopedic. IMO you aren't entitled to vote on
VfD. Sorry." Andrewa....

I need help. Because I don't know what I should do. Either
it is so that my work and expertise isn't appreciated or
even accepted by Wikipedia. If so, I will leave peacefully
and not return. If not so, I would expect an apology from
the perpetrators and that my work is not destroyed.

//Bj?rn (aka. Eric B. and Rakim)

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
It can be a bit disconcerting no doubt to drop into the middle of
Wikipedia and finding yourself in the crossfire of one of our
perennial debates.  As to the personal issues, I can only counsel that
you stay friendly, forgive those who you fell have trespassed against
you, and recognize that everyone is working for the same goal, but
that some minor disagreements are inevitable.

As to the article itself, I think [[XFree86 logfile]] is very much a
proper topic for an article in Wikipedia.  It's a little clumsily
written at the moment, but so are many articles on the first revision.

What I would recommend to you on these sorts of articles is to include
a bit of preamble, setting the context for editors who may not get
what it's all about or why it's important.  A little motivational
material can go a long way.

It took me 2 clicks from the Wikipedia homepage to find the article
"P-adic number".  I daresay not more than 1 in 10 of the people
reading this list can say what those are, and not more than 1 in
10,000 in the general population.

I did a search for 'P-adic' at Britannica, and they don't even mention
it (as far as I can see).  So by traditional standards of what an
encyclopedia should contain, "P-adic number" is too obscure to be a
fit topic for an encyclopedia -- perhaps it's appropriate for a
specialist textbook, but not an encyclopedia.

Except, we don't believe that.  We think, rightly so, that our
mathematical coverage is one of our finest achievements.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Attack against chinese wiki

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The important thing is that you MUST CONTACT A DEVELOPER, when a large
> scale attack is launched. This doesn't mean standing in the middle of
> nowhere and calling "developer!!" into the wind, you need to get their
> attention. You should probably contact a developer who will be willing
> and able to respond. Your best bet would probably be me. I'll update the
> vandalbot page on methods of contacting a developer.

I am willing to give my personal cellphone number to all overseas
(overseas from me, I mean) sysops, to be used only in emergencies.  Of
course, for me to understand what's gong on, you have to be able to
speak English at least a little bit.  My phone is on almost 24x7.

Then, I could either do something myself or try to find a developer
more useful than I am.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anonymous proxy attack on zh

body:
I will talk to my contact at our ISP, to see what can be done about
allowing us to run our proxy scanner.  We'd always want to keep our
scans to a minimum, just to avoid lots of headaches.  But my *huge*
concern is that people not start firewalling us for this, that'd be
very bad.

--Jimbo

Tim Starling wrote:

> As reported on wikipedia-l, zh was the subject of a large-scale
> automated attack. Approximately 3000 pages were deleted over the last
> two days. I just wanted to point out that this could have been prevented
> by the use of an appropriately configured proxy scanner.
>
> Scanning for proxies may require some administrative overhead in terms
> of replying to automatically generated intrusion detection messages, and
> in obtaining an understanding from Verio and any other upstream network
> service providers. But it would certainly have its benefits.
>
> Our response to this in human terms was less than ideal, but I'll post
> my thoughts on that to wikipedia-l.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
As reported on wikipedia-l, zh was the subject of a large-scale
automated attack. Approximately 3000 pages were deleted over the last
two days. I just wanted to point out that this could have been prevented
by the use of an appropriately configured proxy scanner.

Scanning for proxies may require some administrative overhead in terms
of replying to automatically generated intrusion detection messages, and
in obtaining an understanding from Verio and any other upstream network
service providers. But it would certainly have its benefits.

Our response to this in human terms was less than ideal, but I'll post
my thoughts on that to wikipedia-l.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Ting Chen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> in the last two days the chinese wiki is under massive attack. The attacker
> uses a bot and various IP-adresses. We have problem to block all the
> adresses and we are at the moment also short on person to remove all the
> devastations. At the moment the attacker creates lots of new articles with
> the following content: (???????????????????????????????????) DeleteMeShizhao
>
>
> Can someone help?
>
> Sorry this is really an emergency. Thanks.

I wanted to express my sincere apologies for not responding to this
attack. I saw a message on the village pump but it was inspecific and I
was busy, so I ignored it.

I wrote [[m:Vandalbot]] back in February, and promoted it on en, in the
hopes that people would read it, and know what to do in this situation.
Unfortunately the page hasn't been promoted on the non-English wikis as
much as it should have been. I'll also update it in response to this
latest attack. Here's the URL for convenience:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalbot

It's very important that all sysops read this page carefully. It's like
first aid or fire response, you'll never think to read the manual when
you're in the middle of dealing with an attack.

The important thing is that you MUST CONTACT A DEVELOPER, when a large
scale attack is launched. This doesn't mean standing in the middle of
nowhere and calling "developer!!" into the wind, you need to get their
attention. You should probably contact a developer who will be willing
and able to respond. Your best bet would probably be me. I'll update the
vandalbot page on methods of contacting a developer.

BE SPECIFIC. Quote numbers. Wikipedia is attacked by bots constantly.
"Someone is vandalising zh" won't get anyone's attention. A better
report would be:

"Someone is creating 1 page per second and has been doing so for the
past day, and we can't block them because they are using many different
IP addresses. 3000 pages have been created."

What you have to understand is that it's much easier for me to delete
3000 pages than it is for you to do it. I'm very sorry I didn't do so.
In the future I'll watch the reports more closely.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Questia link

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> I strongly oppose that. The reason is that this is a *link directory*.
> People expect these links to point to the website without going through
> some referrer system. We are first and foremost an encyclopedia, and
> encyclopedia content should *never* be tainted by any kind of sponsorship
> agreements.

Very well put.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:
> c) as far as I know Unicode (or at least that supported bottom 16 bit wide
> part of it) does not support klingon glyphs, therefore it is pretty
> impossible to actually display a klingon wikipedia for anyone not
> specifically had installed the required customised fonts. I do not believe
> in transliterated documents (do chinese want pinyin wikipedia? I doubt it).

This is all offtopic, but just FYI the Latin alphabet is in fact the
canonical spelling for Klingon. There is no standard or official mapping
to the decorative glyphs used in Star Trek movies.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: N.T. Riche

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
Hello Comrade Rakim (and others), I do see a slight problem with this (but i'd have to see the article first), if your article was well-written, and Encyclopedic then it shouldn't be put on VFD. I've had some "problems" with Rick before, I want you to show me this article on and lay out your point of contention on my talk page. However if this articles wasn't encycolpedic as rick said than he was justified in putting it on VFD.

(Now here come part two: the VFD page is terrible, it is so long, a user can't vote on any of the articles they feel pertains to them. I am begging one of the syosps that is most likely reading this PLEASE fix it. Thank You)

User:plato

"Eric B. Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear mailing list readers,

I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
is a little thin I think. Well, I'm quite knowledgeable when
it comes to computer related topics and I love to write. So,
therefore I took it upon me to fix this defiancy.

Big mistake it seems, some people didn't like that at all.

Especially not a user by the name RickK, who a few minutes
after I had written an initial version of "XFree86 logfile"
added it to a page "Votes for Deletion" on which he is
currently holding a vote whether that page should be destroyed
or not. Naturally, I protested strongly, because I couldn't
and still cannot understand why he wants to delete that
page. He didn't try to communicate with me and just wrote
"Huh?" and then when I asked him why he thought that that
page should be deleted he answered "It isn't discussing
anything encyclopedic. I THINK it describes a file format,
but I'm not really sure."

>From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
listed all other six articles I had written:

glDrawElements, glVertexPointer, glDrawArrays, glEnable,
GL_QUADS, fbdevhw

And wrote: "I'll ask again. Do we really want articles on
subroutines?" Which is really funny since only the four
first documents subroutines.

Then quite a few other users also said that they wanted
those articles destroyed. No reasons where given except for
pointless platitudes like "not encyclopedia material" and
"Wikipedia is not (should not be) an API reference".

I tryid arguing and, no offense intened, but it was totally
wasted time. Those functions are the essential cornerstones
for modern 3d graphics.. Have to realize that some people
just have a very different view of things than me. However,
I refuse to accept that Wikipedia in general would have such
a twisted view of things because then there wouldn't be
250,000+ articles here.

Then I wrote the beginning of an article named pcidata,
which is a X module for displaying PCI information. Two
minutes after it was submitted a user named Beelzebubs wrote
"Speedy deletion" on it and a minute later it was destroyed
by DavidWBrooks. It made me quite angry because I had no way
whatsoever to even object. And from looking at their
respective user pages I deducted that none of them is
interested in Linux and therefore (probably) has no idea
what pcidata is.

It seems like Wikipedia really isn't a very newbie friendly
page. Well, I can't exclude UtherSRG's very friendly
message on my talk page. Is this some kind of hazing or are
regular users treated like this too? Seems like a calculated
move - tease the new guy til they fight back and then accuse
them. Especially this little gem by the same user that also
accused me of being rude:

"But I'd recommend you leave listing them to users with good
contribution records, and the same with discussing this
one. AFAIK all the many articles you have written so far
have been listed for deletion and will be deleted as
unencyclopedic. IMO you aren't entitled to vote on
VfD. Sorry." Andrewa....

I need help. Because I don't know what I should do. Either
it is so that my work and expertise isn't appreciated or
even accepted by Wikipedia. If so, I will leave peacefully
and not return. If not so, I would expect an apology from
the perpetrators and that my work is not destroyed.

//Bj?rn (aka. Eric B. and Rakim)

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Andrew Smith wrote:

>From: "Tim Starling"
>
>
>
>>I wrote [[m:Vandalbot]] back in February, and promoted it on en, in the
>>hopes that people would read it, and know what to do in this situation.
>>Unfortunately the page hasn't been promoted on the non-English wikis as
>>much as it should have been. I'll also update it in response to this
>>latest attack. Here's the URL for convenience:
>>
>>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalbot
>>
That page still involves tracking down sombody who can help.  It does
advise readers to become familiar with the process, but human nature
being what it is ....

>>What you have to understand is that it's much easier for me to delete
>>3000 pages than it is for you to do it. I'm very sorry I didn't do so.
>>In the future I'll watch the reports more closely.
>>
What I would suggest is the idea of the developer (or steward) on duty.
Whenever he logs in his name would appear listed in the side-bar, ready
to be contacted in an emergency.  (If he's nice maybe he'll even have
the privilege of turning it off if he wants to work quietly. :-) )

>Six months ago we could have guessed, now we can make
>informed guesses, perhaps in a year's time we'll have a pretty water tight
>solution.
>
Microsoft has no shortage of money to throw at this kind of problem, but
the hackers still get through.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
>And yes, I know what subroutines are, I didn't feel the need to
specifically indicate which of the items he had written were subroutines and
which were not.  They were clear from context.

RickK

By the way, does this opprobrium also attach to Ed Poor posting articles
about scraps of SQL?

Charles


from_name: ZH Wikipedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion bot

body:
I'm is zh admin. Deletion bot can give me? thanks!

[[user:shizhao]]


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> What I would suggest is the idea of the developer (or steward) on duty.
> Whenever he logs in his name would appear listed in the side-bar, ready
> to be contacted in an emergency.  (If he's nice maybe he'll even have
> the privilege of turning it off if he wants to work quietly. :-) )

The best way to get the immediate attention of the developers is via
IRC. There's usually at least one of us in #wikimedia and/or #mediawiki
on irc.freenode.net; between Europe (gwicke, shaihulud and others), the
US (me) and Australia (Tim) a fair chunk of time is covered. Since we
are total geeks, we're online a lot. ;)

(#wikipedia is more chatty, so we may be more likely to notice an
undirected request for help in #mediawiki. Include someone's name when
you say something to get their attention specifically.)

See: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels

We do have an emergency anti-spam filter in the wiki which we can update
to cut off spambots/vandalbots which post a common text over and over; I
updated it immediately after reading the first message in this thread,
but if we had heard about the attack when it started it would have saved
an awful lot of deleting.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
Opprobium?  Please quote any opprobrium I posted.

RickK

Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>And yes, I know what subroutines are, I didn't feel the need to
specifically indicate which of the items he had written were subroutines and
which were not. They were clear from context.

RickK

By the way, does this opprobrium also attach to Ed Poor posting articles
about scraps of SQL?

Charles

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from_name: Marcos Cramer

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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Evan-
> MediaWiki is kinda hard to set up,

Bah - FUD, I say!
1) Download tarball
2) upload contents of tarball into directory on FTP server
3) Make directory tree server-writable
4) run config/ directory on webserver
5) Answer install questions
6) Copy LocalSettings.php to main directory

That's pretty much the same procedure as for any other LAMP application.
I'd say that something like UseMod is in fact at least as hard to install.
The difference is that MediaWiki offers some power features which make use
of external apps, none of which (with the exception of ocaml for math
support) are particularly exotic. But you don't need to enable any of
these features. So I see no good reason to advertise other wiki software
than our own.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: logos (Nohat)

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Is it possible to have a couple of wikipedia logos (several language) in
> high resolution, for display at a larger size that the current one on
> Wikipedia ?
>
> Are they directly available somewhere, or could Nohat tell me how I
> could have these ?
>
> thanks
>
> Ant

Just let me know what languages you need and I'll make it happen. Sorry
for the delay in response, I've been traveling.

- David (Nohat)


subject: [WikiEN-l] 'I Shot the Sheriff'

body:
I'm thinking of the lines from the song

'Every time I plant a seed/He say kill it before it grow'.

There's a great deal of sheriff-stuff around just now, on New Pages.  I
happened to be able to save [[injective hull]], a mathematical good stub on
an esoteric topic, from speedy deletion.  That must be unjustified.  Some
trigger-happy people out there.

Charles

http://www.speakingasaparent.com/


in_reply_to:
<99AkPtIhpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "19 May
	2004 19:13:00 +0200")

body:
>>>>> "EM" == Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> writes:

    Me> MediaWiki is kinda hard to set up,

    EM> Bah - FUD, I say!

Don't mistake me -- I was trying to forestall any objections that
noone can run a wiki except Wikimedia.

    EM> That's pretty much the same procedure as for any other LAMP
    EM> application.

Some other wiki engines leave out the M part, or make it optional,
which makes them easier to run on free or low-cost hosting services
where MySQL is unavailable or restricted.

    EM> So I see no good reason to advertise other wiki software than
    EM> our own.

OK.

~ESP

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


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] Questia link

body:
On May 19, 2004, at 4:32 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jimmy-
>> Questia has offered to pay us $12 per signup through that link, but we
>> would have to change the link to a tracking url.
>
> I strongly oppose that. The reason is that this is a *link directory*.
> People expect these links to point to the website without going through
> some referrer system. We are first and foremost an encyclopedia, and
> encyclopedia content should *never* be tainted by any kind of
> sponsorship
> agreements.

What about a second, clearly marked link, to allow people to support
Wikipedia consciously?  We currently do this for Amazon.com on the
Special:Booksources page.  I don't know if this would count
according to the offer.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


subject: [WikiEN-l] Questia link

body:
Jimmy-
> On this page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedia_articles_based_upon
> _websites

> we have a link to
> http://www.questia.com/

> Questia has offered to pay us $12 per signup through that link, but we
> would have to change the link to a tracking url.

I strongly oppose that. The reason is that this is a *link directory*.
People expect these links to point to the website without going through
some referrer system. We are first and foremost an encyclopedia, and
encyclopedia content should *never* be tainted by any kind of sponsorship
agreements.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: help me

body:
On Wed, 19 May 2004 10:43:44 +0000, Eric B. Rakim <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Dear mailing list readers,
>
>I don't know if this is the proper place to turn for
>help. If it isn't, then please tell me because the matter is
>urgent. Wikipedia is a fine resource and contains very much
>useful information. Reading Wikipedia is fun, and every day
>since I discovered it I've learnt a thing or two by reading
>it. But its coverage about programming and computer software
>is a little thin I think. Well, I'm quite knowledgeable when
>it comes to computer related topics and I love to write. So,
>therefore I took it upon me to fix this defiancy.
>
>Big mistake it seems, some people didn't like that at all.
>
>Especially not a user by the name RickK, who a few minutes
>after I had written an initial version of "XFree86 logfile"
>added it to a page "Votes for Deletion" on which he is
>currently holding a vote whether that page should be destroyed
>or not. Naturally, I protested strongly, because I couldn't
>and still cannot understand why he wants to delete that
>page. He didn't try to communicate with me and just wrote
>"Huh?" and then when I asked him why he thought that that
>page should be deleted he answered "It isn't discussing
>anything encyclopedic. I THINK it describes a file format,
>but I'm not really sure."
>
>>From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
>the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
>anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
>XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
>listed all other six articles I had written:
>
>glDrawElements, glVertexPointer, glDrawArrays, glEnable,
>GL_QUADS, fbdevhw
>
>And wrote: "I'll ask again. Do we really want articles on
>subroutines?" Which is really funny since only the four
>first documents subroutines.

May I suggest that some of this sort of information might be better
located on the Belios OpenFacts Wiki, which is a "free knowledge
database about open source software", to quote its front page. You
can find it at:

   http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Main_Page

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: help me

body:
On Wed, 19 May 2004 05:56:14 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>You are definitely in the right place, althought there are other right
>places such as the Villge Pump.
>
>On the surface (I am no programmer, but many who read this list are) your
>arguement is persuasive, but so is the arguement of your opponents who take
>the position that the level of detail you are going into is inappropriate
>for an ecyclopedia.

How do we decide what is appropriate for an encyclopedia?
Traditional encyclopedias, such as Britannica, were written on
paper, and had intrinsic size constrains to what could be put in.
They couldn't hope to cover anything but a small proportion of human
knowledge, so they had to be very selective.

Wikipedia faces no such limitations. If we choose to do so, we can
make an encyclopedia with a much larger scope than any other. Take,
for example living things: science has named about 3  million unique
species. Some of these are already in Wikipedia and it's possible
that in years to come most of these will be in Wikipedia -- which
IMO would be a good thing.

Recipes are another issue which involves the same considerations.

Back to this matter of software APIs, my gut feeling is that they
don't really belong in Wikipedia, (but I can see the argument of
those who would disagree). It may be that the OpenFacts wiki that I
mentioned in another post is a better place for them.

>However in many other areas, even more detailed expositions are present and
>planned for encyclopedia, generally, no town is so small, no King so
>obscure, and especially, no bird so extinct that it does not deserve an
>article.

Indeed.

One needs to bear in mind that tradional encyclopedias have tended
to prefer academic knowledge to practical knowledge; therefore a
long-dead monarch was deemed more important than how to build a
brick wall or program a computer.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
> Hello Comrade Rakim (and others), I do see a slight problem with this (but i'd have to see the article first), if your article was well-written, and Encyclopedic then it shouldn't be put on VFD.

If the request was not frivolous but arose from genuine concern, it
has every reason to be put on VFD. That's why it's VOTES for deletion,
and discussion about whether it should be deleted. Many articles are
listed which eventually end up improved because someone noticed them
there, and many articles are not deleted.

> I've had some "problems" with Rick before

Indeed, you have had problems with Rick- and while several users have
had problems with Rick, I believe that you have also had problems with
several users. (Part of this may be related to the views you express
regarding certain users who have been censured and/or banned in the
past).

> I want you to show me this article on and lay out your point of contention on my talk page. However if this articles wasn't encycolpedic as rick said than he was justified in putting it on VFD.

I believe that VFD is probably a better place to make the points at
this time, for visibility reasons.

> (Now here come part two: the VFD page is terrible, it is so long, a user can't vote on any of the articles they feel pertains to them. I am begging one of the syosps that is most likely reading this PLEASE fix it. Thank You)

I believe there is a page about deletion management redesign. You may
find it profitable to investigate it. I think User:Angela links to it
somewhere. But many have complained about both the deletion management
setups we have had; I personally view it as a slight "barrier to
entry" to prevent frivolous deletion requests. What exactly do you
have in mind for a "fix" and what is the problem?


from_name: Andrew Smith

body:
From: "Tim Starling"

> I wanted to express my sincere apologies for not responding to this
> attack. I saw a message on the village pump but it was inspecific and I
> was busy, so I ignored it.
>
> I wrote [[m:Vandalbot]] back in February, and promoted it on en, in the
> hopes that people would read it, and know what to do in this situation.
> Unfortunately the page hasn't been promoted on the non-English wikis as
> much as it should have been. I'll also update it in response to this
> latest attack. Here's the URL for convenience:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalbot
>
......
>
> What you have to understand is that it's much easier for me to delete
> 3000 pages than it is for you to do it. I'm very sorry I didn't do so.
> In the future I'll watch the reports more closely.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Don't be so hard on yourself Tim, you can't be everywhere all the time!

Although I'm sure this hasn't been a pleasent experience for the Chinese
Wikipedians we can draw some positives from it, there's technical
discussions about proxy scanners (whatever they are) and increased awareness
of the importance of pages like the above, which I'm sure will both lead to
a better response in a few months time if a vandal attacks (say) the
Portugese Wikipedia. I think we all need to remember that we are, in a way,
conducting original research: given a few hundred projects over half a
million pages in 50+ languages, what is the best response to concerted
technical vandalism? Six months ago we could have guessed, now we can make
informed guesses, perhaps in a year's time we'll have a pretty water tight
solution.

Thanks for all the work you do Tim, your efforts are seriously appreciated
and I'd find it hard to believe that anyone would want to lay any blame at
your door for what's been happening over at zh.

Andrew (Ams80)


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: help me

body:
Eric B. Rakim wrote:

>  >From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
>the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
>anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
>XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
>listed all other six articles I had written:

I took a look at the [[XFree86 logfile]] article, and my impression
is that although it contains information that would be useful to
someone who is trying to debug XFree86, it doesn't really belong in
the Wikipedia. Someone else here suggested putting it into a computer
manual in WikiBooks, and I think that's a good suggestion.

The difference between [[XFree86]] and [[XFree86 logfile]] is that
[[XFree86]] really *is* an "encyclopedia" article. It begins with a
lead paragraph that explains, even to a relative novice, what XFree86
is: "an open source implementation of the X Window System.." By
contrast, [[XFree86 logfile]] begins as follows:

>When XFree86 starts, it creates a logfile which contains information
>about what happened when XFree86 started. It contains information
>about what modules were loaded, which color depth that is used etc.
>The file is especially useful when something goes awry, as reading
>it can help you find exactly what went wrong.

This reads like a technical manual, not an encyclopedia. As a lead
paragraph, it leaves something to be desired. It mentions several
concepts that are not explained and are not easily understood by a
naive reader, who would likely be left wondering, "What's a module?"
or "How do I 'read' the file?" Such a reader would be left even more
confused upon reading the next sentence in the article:

>The file almost always resides in "/var/log/XFree86.0.log",
>ofcourse, where it is placed is configurable.

The questions that I imagine arising include, "Where is
'/var/log/XFree86.0.log'?" "What does it mean to 'reside' there?"
"How is it 'configurable'?" Someone who is not already fairly
knowledgeable about Unix will be thoroughly confused by this language.

Of course, even the [[XFree86]] article would be esoteric and
uninteresting to someone who does not use Unix. However, its lead
paragraph does at least provide enough contextual information that
even someone who is ignorant about Unix could quickly understand the
gist of the article.

Some of this could be addressed by putting more context into the
article, e.g., the lead paragraph could begin, "The XFree86 logfile
is a computer file that logs information about operations of the
[[XFree86]] interface that runs under many Unix-like operating
systems."

The real problem, though, is that the topic itself is inherently so
technical in nature that no amount of rewriting will make it
accessible to a general reader. An "encyclopedia" should be a
collection of articles that are accessible even to readers who are
not specialists. Articles of this type often can be written even
about obscure topics. For example, the article on [[Chandigarh]], a
city in India, is easy to understand even for someone who knows
nothing else about India. I don't think this is really possible with
an article about [[XFree86 logfile]], which by its very nature
requires a fairly high level of computer literacy on the part of the
reader.

I don't think the article should be deleted, but I think it should be
relocated out of the Wikipedia and into a more specialized
information resource, such as WikiBooks.

--Sheldon Rampton


subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
Jimmy-
> As to the article itself, I think [[XFree86 logfile]] is very much a
> proper topic for an article in Wikipedia.

For me, one important question in deciding whether something belongs on
Wikipedia is:

Does this article have the potential to ever become a featured article?

By that I don't mean that we shouldn't cover obscure subjects -- plenty of
articles about obscure subjects have become featured articles. I mean that
articles should have the potential to grow into a coherent, independent
work that speaks for itself.

I am not very fond of articles that are destined to always remain stubs. I
believe such articles would be more appropriately merged into larger pages
(with redirects), or in some cases, deleted or moved to another Wikimedia
project. I think doing so also helps our credibility when we boast about
our article count.

Another test is whether an article is primarily *descriptive* or primarily
*instructive*. If it is more of a how-to, it's probably best to put it on
Wikibooks.

Applying these two tests to the articles in question I find:
1) The XFree86 logfile is a very complex subject that probably deserves
its own article instead of being merged into [[XFree 86]].
2) The OpenGL subroutine articles should probably be merged and redirected
to [[OpenGL]].
3) /var/log/wtmp should probably be merged and redirected to [[Filesystem
Hierarchy Standard]]
4) Individual X modules should be described on [[XFree86]] at first, and
only moved out if they get too long.

All articles are borderline in terms of the descriptive/instructive
distinction. I think in such cases we can leave it to the original author
to decide whether they work on a Wikibook or on the encyclopedia. By
leaving this to the author, we also create an incentive for people who
want it to be moved to Wikibooks to be nicer to the author. ;-)

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Anonymous proxy attack on zh

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I will talk to my contact at our ISP, to see what can be done about
> allowing us to run our proxy scanner.  We'd always want to keep our
> scans to a minimum, just to avoid lots of headaches.  But my *huge*
> concern is that people not start firewalling us for this, that'd be
> very bad.
>
> --Jimbo

Hello Jimmy,

A possible solution is that your ISP directly forward such abuse
requests to a mailling list like abuse at wikimedia.org . I am already
willing to answer such emails (I have been an abuse engineer for a big
ISPs before).

Also, all IPs assigned in north america are stored in the ARIN database,
  the block of our server is:
http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=!%20NET-207-142-131-0-1

Maybe your isps could divide this block and create a new one named for
example WIKIMEDIA-207.142.131.192-207.142.131.255 and list
abuse at wikimedia.org as an abuse contact as well as abuse at monsterpipes.com .

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Hashar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: help me

body:
Before I disagree with one little bit of what Sheldon has written, let
me say that I do agree with him completely regarding his suggestions
of how the article could be edited to make it read less like a
technical document and more like an encyclopedia article.

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> The real problem, though, is that the topic itself is inherently so
> technical in nature that no amount of rewriting will make it
> accessible to a general reader. An "encyclopedia" should be a
> collection of articles that are accessible even to readers who are
> not specialists. Articles of this type often can be written even
> about obscure topics. For example, the article on [[Chandigarh]], a
> city in India, is easy to understand even for someone who knows
> nothing else about India.

I don't think that the criterion that you are using here is going to
be very helpful for us.  The counter-example that I would give is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-adic_number
which is accessible in 2 clicks from the home page.

The topic of "P-adic numbers" is "inherently so technical in nature
that no amount of rewriting will make it accessible to a general
reader."

I have taken graduate level courses in Real Analysis, Stochastic
processes, etc.  So I am not a "general reader".  And yet, I find this
particular article to be extremely challenging, even though I have a
fair amount of background and interest in the topic.

I don't think anyone would argue (would they?) that [[P-adic number]]
should go on wikibooks.  But surely [[XFree86 logfile]] is more
accessible than many hundreds of articles on mathematical or
scientific concepts.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Questia link

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:
> What about a second, clearly marked link, to allow people to support
> Wikipedia consciously?  We currently do this for Amazon.com on the
> Special:Booksources page.  I don't know if this would count
> according to the offer.

I didn't know that we are still doing this on the Special:Booksources page.
Are we?

But, in any event, the idea of having two links, one paid and one
unpaid, is a reasonable suggestion, except that we aren't talking
about a Special:Booksources page but part of the actual content of the
article.  So it's very different in that sense.  The booksources page
is not actual content itself, it's an automatically generated 'meta'
page.


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Eric B. Rakim's request for help

body:
1) Eric B. Rakim's presentation, in this mailing list, of his case for
including these articles and of the behavior of others, fell far short of
exhibiting a NPOV. It was extremely assertive advocacy. It should always be
possible for any party to a dispute to describe the points in contention in a
way that is _acceptable_ to other parties.

2) IMHO listing articles on VfD is indeed slightly hostile to the author and
it is understandable that an author may get angry about it. However, it is
not by any stretch of the imagination "vandalism."

3) I find that I have developed a bad habit, which I am trying to cure, of
discussing articles in VfD as if the author were not present.

4) Every contributor really needs to accept _in his heart_ the note on the
submission page "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly...
then do not submit it."

5) Perhaps this warning needs to be expanded a bit, as I do not think newbies
generally understand "merciless editing" can extend as far as deleting the
article.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
> From: <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 7:36:41 -0500
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>, <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Eric B. Rakim's request for help
>
> 1) Eric B. Rakim's presentation, in this mailing list, of his case for
> including these articles and of the behavior of others, fell far short of
> exhibiting a NPOV. It was extremely assertive advocacy. It should always be
> possible for any party to a dispute to describe the points in contention in a
> way that is _acceptable_ to other parties.

It is the encyclopedia article, not the person and all his communications
which is expected to exhibit NPOV.
>
> 2) IMHO listing articles on VfD is indeed slightly hostile to the author and
> it is understandable that an author may get angry about it. However, it is
> not by any stretch of the imagination "vandalism."
>
> 3) I find that I have developed a bad habit, which I am trying to cure, of
> discussing articles in VfD as if the author were not present.
>
> 4) Every contributor really needs to accept _in his heart_ the note on the
> submission page "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly...
> then do not submit it."
>
> 5) Perhaps this warning needs to be expanded a bit, as I do not think newbies
> generally understand "merciless editing" can extend as far as deleting the
> article.

There remains a reasonable assumption that if you put forth good work it
will be treated with appropriate respect.

Anyone knows you can't jump into a new situation and suddenly master all the
ins and outs, but smoothing that process out is our responsibility.

Fred


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
 --- Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote: > >
> I believe there is a page about deletion management
> redesign. You may find it profitable to
> investigate it. I think User:Angela links to it
> somewhere.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/deletion_management_redesign

See also:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strengths_and_weaknesses_of_the_current_deletion_system
and about 60,000 words in the talk archives of VfD
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion)

Angela.

____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] help me

body:
> Fennec now i took a look at the article an frankly it is rather un-encyclopedic, it should be moved though rather than be placed on VFD. I don't know wiki books maybe that would qualify to have an article like this.

> Now with Rick i was just saying to user that i have had problems with him before nothing else, now my views on certain users have changed yes (i think Michael deserved to be hard-banned), however with others no (In the case of bird i feel he was justified, but we could bring up that subject on the irc).

>Now with the vfd page, maybe you sysops should organize it along the days it was put on vfd (I'll discuss this further on the irc also) thanks.

Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Comrade Rakim (and others), I do see a slight problem with this (but i'd have to see the article first), if your article was well-written, and Encyclopedic then it shouldn't be put on VFD.

If the request was not frivolous but arose from genuine concern, it
has every reason to be put on VFD. That's why it's VOTES for deletion,
and discussion about whether it should be deleted. Many articles are
listed which eventually end up improved because someone noticed them
there, and many articles are not deleted.

> I've had some "problems" with Rick before

Indeed, you have had problems with Rick- and while several users have
had problems with Rick, I believe that you have also had problems with
several users. (Part of this may be related to the views you express
regarding certain users who have been censured and/or banned in the
past).

> I want you to show me this article on and lay out your point of contention on my talk page. However if this articles wasn't encycolpedic as rick said than he was justified in putting it on VFD.

I believe that VFD is probably a better place to make the points at
this time, for visibility reasons.

> (Now here come part two: the VFD page is terrible, it is so long, a user can't vote on any of the articles they feel pertains to them. I am begging one of the syosps that is most likely reading this PLEASE fix it. Thank You)

I believe there is a page about deletion management redesign. You may
find it profitable to investigate it. I think User:Angela links to it
somewhere. But many have complained about both the deletion management
setups we have had; I personally view it as a slight "barrier to
entry" to prevent frivolous deletion requests. What exactly do you
have in mind for a "fix" and what is the problem?
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Theresa Knott Vs. Mr. Natural Health

body:
These two users are at it again with this on-going edit war on Alt. Medicine. Now i have seen the page and the main dispute is over Osteopathy (a subject i know nothing about but i will investigate it). Franky in your defense ms. knott it does sound poved...but I'd say it just needs to be re-worded not removed completely. Now I have seen Knott commit Ad hominem on users such as lir and Dr. Dan, but John (MNH) has also done the same with that "I'm a Nazi from New York" attack on Robert, (I took insult to also myself because I'm Gypsy in ancestry). My suggestion for both of you is to avoid each other, and have a neutral observer re-word the Osteopathy part of the article. Now I'd suggest Arbitration but the committee usually favors the sysop.

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [KINGDOMOFMARDUK@aol.com: re. the by the Wikimedia regd.
	principality seborga]

body:
I found this entertaining; I hope you all will as well.

I think that our entry on Seborga *does* need updating, because in its
present state, it's entirely unclear as to what the inhabitants of
Seborga actually think.  Is the independence claim meant to be
serious?  Or is it a tourist-attracting joke?  Or what?

I did a bit of research on HM King of Marduk I, and suffice to say that
I think we should be skeptical of his claims.  :-)

----- Forwarded message from KINGDOMOFMARDUK at aol.com -----

From: KINGDOMOFMARDUK at aol.com
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 08:02:22 EDT
To: jwales at bomis.com
Subject: re. the by the Wikimedia regd. principality seborga

email dtd. 20. May 2004 - official notification to the
Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
3911 Harrisburg St.NE
St. Petersburg FL 33703 USA
we inform you that the principality of Seborga, is since 22. April  2004
official of the sovereign absolute Monarchystate - Kingdom of Marduk  - on basic
the international law, irrevocable occupied the fact is by the  United Nations
in N.Y. since 29th April 2004 official UN confirmed  regd. The Situation is
since 22. April that the former principality  of Seborga is juridical not more
existence, all rights by the King and  Head of State - HM King Marduk I.,
further the former currency of Seborga  the Luigino is not more present, the new
currency is the Barcillon, and  one Baricollon have a value of 100 Cesares -
this fact is by the IMF, ECB  and the US Centralbank regd.. further the former
representative of  Seborga have not more a juridical competence, whe you would
more  information, give you for our information your fax no: ...........  and
we send you different informations.Please change your seborga  information page.
Best regards
HM King Marduk I.
>kingdomofmarduk at aol.com<

----- End forwarded message -----


body:
I don't disagree with anythingFred said here, I only write to put my
own WikiLove spin on it.

Fred Bauder wrote:
> It is the encyclopedia article, not the person and all his communications
> which is expected to exhibit NPOV.

No, but of course as a general recommendation on getting things done,
I find that courtesy and cutting the other person a lot of slack is
generally advisable.  I think that when people call attention to this,
it can be helpful.

And trying really really hard to present a dispute in an NPOV fashion
can be a great tool for calming finding a solution.  Sometimes both
parties to a dispute mainly want the visibility of someone outside the
dispute stating both sides of the story neutrally and without blame.

And of course we can _all_ remind ourselves from time to time that
being kind in the face of hostility of any kind is frequently the most
productive response.

> There remains a reasonable assumption that if you put forth good work it
> will be treated with appropriate respect.
>
> Anyone knows you can't jump into a new situation and suddenly master all the
> ins and outs, but smoothing that process out is our responsibility.

That's right.  And the only behavior that each of us can control
directly is our own.

--Jimbo


from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 01:53:58PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Peter Gervai wrote:
> >c) as far as I know Unicode (or at least that supported bottom 16 bit wide
> >part of it) does not support klingon glyphs, therefore it is pretty
> >impossible to actually display a klingon wikipedia for anyone not
> >specifically had installed the required customised fonts. I do not believe
> >in transliterated documents (do chinese want pinyin wikipedia? I doubt it).
>
> This is all offtopic, but just FYI the Latin alphabet is in fact the
> canonical spelling for Klingon. There is no standard or official mapping
> to the decorative glyphs used in Star Trek movies.

You're right, I checked my authoritative source.

...wikipedia of course! :)

Apologies for the disruption.

/me *cloaking*