from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buying public domain books

body:
I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or a
little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking
then email likely purchases to Jimbo.

One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the
Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on Bartelsby
at

http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/

Early volumes and perhaps all of the first edition of the Oxford English
dictionary too

Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better old
libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an evaluation
made.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:38:02 -0800
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
>
> Imran Ghory wrote:
>> Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
>> (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
>> creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>
> What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
> someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
> I wrong?
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

body:
Cheapest set I can find is

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=214483227

There are odd volumes availble, such as this 1885 Volume 1

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=224154342

Fred

> From: Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:05:08 +0000 (GMT)
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
>
> On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Imran Ghory wrote:
>>> Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
>>> (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
>>> creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>>
>> What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
>> someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
>> I wrong?
>
> The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project
> Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed
> destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book
> and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
>
> If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the
> "Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it
> for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for
> any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in
> second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph
> Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and
> mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with
> minimal changes to form useful stubs.
>
> Imran
> --
> http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Alex R.

body:
Here is an example of an organization that does this with
newspapers:  www.oldpapers.org

Alex Roshuk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 12:10 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buying public domain books

> I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or
a
> little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking
> then email likely purchases to Jimbo.
>
> One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the
> Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on
Bartelsby
> at
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/
>
> Early volumes and perhaps all of the first edition of the Oxford English
> dictionary too
>
> Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better
old
> libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an
evaluation
> made.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> > Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:38:02 -0800
> > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
> >
> > Imran Ghory wrote:
> >> Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain
books
> >> (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used
for
> >> creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks
coverage.
> >
> > What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
> > someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
> > I wrong?
> >
> > --Jimbo
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Server situation

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> If you set the list options so that mail from unsubscribed people
> is automatically rejected, then you'll see virtually no spam.  Or,
> is there something else going on in this case?
>
>
> Thomas R. Koll wrote:

For a real list you can do that. I have set Intlwiki-l so to reject all
postings by non-listmembers.

But infode-l is not a real list but a "Contact Wikipedia" address. A
emailaddress for visitors to ask a question. It is normal that the are
not listmembers.

The Dutch Wikipedia is using for this the listadmin address of the list;
wikinl-l-owner AT wikipedia.org  There is also no spamfilter on that
address. For now we do not get many spam on that address.

A emailaddress in the format; info at XX.wikipedia.org to cantact a
Wikipedia is nicer.

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia DOT be
Join SETI and team Wikipedia.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_172338.html


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server situation

body:
Jimbo wrote:
> If you set the list options so that mail from unsubscribed people
> is automatically rejected, then you'll see virtually no spam.  Or,
> is there something else going on in this case?

Mails to info at wikipedia.de are forwarded to this list, so rejecting
unsubscribed people would be a bad idea ... :-)

Kurt

--
+++ GMX - die erste Adresse f?r Mail, Message, More +++
Neu: Preissenkung f?r MMS und FreeMMS! http://www.gmx.net


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?

body:
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] Chuck Smith wrote:

> We could also use the money to finance other worthy
> educational projects like other foundations do.
> "Sponsored by Wikimedia"

Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
(e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


list: wikien-l

from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Redirects

body:
The Cunctator writes:
> Deprecated isn't a great idea; we want to restrict names to ones that
> don't have meaning only within a Wikipedia context; they should have
> meaning outside of Wikipedia.

One would want to keep such a 'deprecated' link only if it was linked-to
from outside pages.  I can see us occasionally wanting to keep a
well-known title even if it would otherwise be dropped.

On the other hand, I'm not sure this actually happens much in the real
world.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Max Lobovsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] more metadata

body:
Hello, I regularly read and contribute to Wikipedia under the name Iammaxus.
Over the last few weeks, I have been mulling over an idea on how to
significantly improve the mediawiki project.  I posted the following on my
user page before finding and reading this mailing list only to find out that
this idea has been discussed here
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-December/007185.html),
albeit not with the scale that I'm imagining   Because im not sure where to
put this in the metawiki, and im not sure if anyone would care if I did,
here is an excerpt from a conversation i had with a friend of mine
knowledgeable in computer science on 12/24/03 (note that I wasn't seriously
asking him to do this, just more of bouncing an idea of off him):

I Am MAXUS (2:30:14 PM): yo

Chin Jut: hi

I Am MAXUS: code a meta data system for wikipedia

Chin Jut: what's that mean?

I Am MAXUS: i can't even begin to imagine the possibilities

I Am MAXUS: well first off

I Am MAXUS: organize topics

I Am MAXUS: in a tree system

I Am MAXUS: this would be part of the meta data system

I Am MAXUS: well wiat

I Am MAXUS: lemme start from the beginning Chin Jut: ok

I Am MAXUS: the overall point is to allow more machine generated info, stuff
that shouldnt be manually made like it is now, or even with one time use
scripts

I Am MAXUS: such as lists of articles

I Am MAXUS: tables of dates

Chin Jut: alright

Chin Jut: "List of famous bears", that sorta thing

I Am MAXUS: but much greater than taht

Chin Jut: alright

I Am MAXUS: so u could just request a list of a certain sub tree

I Am MAXUS: etc

I Am MAXUS: then it would have more specific meta data

I Am MAXUS: such as meta data about books including the author and such

I Am MAXUS: so that this would automatically be put into an article about
the book

Chin Jut: ok

I Am MAXUS: so:

I Am MAXUS: ?

I Am MAXUS: go

I Am MAXUS: ]and do it

Chin Jut: well, gee

Chin Jut: that's a large project

Chin Jut: I'm not even sure what to begin with

Chin Jut: I mean, what features need to be available?

Chin Jut: (I'm not gonna be able to do this, why am I talking?)

Chin Jut: what, concretely, needs to be done? I Am MAXUS: good question

I Am MAXUS: well first of all, learn xml and shit

I Am MAXUS: cause thats how all this junk is done

I Am MAXUS: or somethintg

I Am MAXUS: lol

Chin Jut: But Tim Sweeney speaks disparagingly of XML...

I Am MAXUS: does he? Chin Jut: yeah

I Am MAXUS: what does he say is bad about it?

Chin Jut: lemme see if I can find it

Chin Jut: "Does anyone else see XML as an overcomplicated solution the
meager problem of serializing data in and out of text files?"

Chin Jut: Philip Wadler (one of the main guys behind Haskell) also bashes
XML: "So the essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and
it does not solve the problem well."

Chin Jut: All the same, yeah, I'll learn XML

I Am MAXUS: lol

I Am MAXUS: well screw those guys

I Am MAXUS: cause everyone is using it

Chin Jut: yeah

Chin Jut: Phil Wadler goes on to say

I Am MAXUS: waht does he mean "serializing data..."?

Chin Jut: It's worth studying XML just because it became popular while
better things did not

Chin Jut: Serializing data means writing it and reading it from files

Chin Jut: you take a complicated structure, like a tree

Chin Jut: and turn it into some linear sequence of bytes

Chin Jut: hence, you've turned it into a series... you've serialized it

I Am MAXUS: right

I Am MAXUS: anyway i dont know if u can usel xml

I Am MAXUS: because of the database based nature of it

I Am MAXUS: but something similar

I Am MAXUS: anyway

I Am MAXUS: i dont know about searching, and thats the main function of this
system

I Am MAXUS: so u have to figure out how to do that

I Am MAXUS: so each article has info attached to it

I Am MAXUS: ideally, the types of info could be specified by ppl in a
realtively plain language way

I Am MAXUS: so taht ppl could specify more types of meatadata for certain
types of files

Chin Jut: what types of metadata would people specify?

Chin Jut: Like "this article is about bears"?

Chin Jut: Shouldn't that be auto-discovered by computers?

I Am MAXUS: thats beyond the scope of this

I Am MAXUS: that requires all sorts of human communication stuff

Chin Jut: ok

Chin Jut: so then what is this, exactly?

I Am MAXUS: i told you!

I Am MAXUS: for example, lets take the organism pages

Chin Jut: ok

I Am MAXUS: they all have the classification on the side

I Am MAXUS: well instead, each page would have a is a member of this higher
group

I Am MAXUS: which wikipedia would look at

Chin Jut: I see

I Am MAXUS: and see what thats a memeber of

I Am MAXUS: and dynamically figure out the whole classifcation

I Am MAXUS: this is not such a useful example because its much more static

I Am MAXUS: but take the date pages, those are useful mommas to meta-fy

Chin Jut: ah

I Am MAXUS: so if a page is an event

Chin Jut: so people would have to say in the event

I Am MAXUS: it would include date info

I Am MAXUS: and type of event info

Chin Jut: "Date info: July 4, 1776"

I Am MAXUS: right

Chin Jut: and then the date page would say "Search for all pages with date
info: July 4, 1776"

I Am MAXUS: so it coud be added to the "type of info in history" page

I Am MAXUS: that too

Chin Jut: "typo of info in history" page?

I Am MAXUS: well like the music in history page

I Am MAXUS: etxc

I Am MAXUS: etc

Chin Jut: ah

I Am MAXUS: so if u had a page that was under the music subtree

I Am MAXUS: and then under the band subtree

I Am MAXUS: and u had dates of existence of that band

I Am MAXUS: and then there could be an important concert subtree, etc

Chin Jut: well, to be technical, I don't think these are trees, I think
they're DAGs

Chin Jut: but it doesn't matter

I Am MAXUS: dag?

Chin Jut: directed acyclic graph

Chin Jut: in a tree, a node has only one parent

Chin Jut: (at most)

I Am MAXUS: yeah good point

Chin Jut: ok, it's sorta interesting. I have no idea how to do it
efficiently, though. But I think I might actually work on it

I Am MAXUS: lol

I Am MAXUS: i want to copy this conversation into the metawikipedia.org
somewhere

I Am MAXUS: maybe in the todo for vers 4 or 5

Chin Jut: I want to eat breakfast, because I have yet to do so

Chin Jut: bbl

I Am MAXUS: bye

Chin Jut signed off at 2:48:15 PM.

Those are our AOL Instant Messenger screen names. His wikipedia name is
Chinju

Thanks for reading this, I hope you consider this because I believe this
idea has the potential to revolutionize not just the wikipedia, but all
sorts of projects.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031224/01c17146/attachment.html>


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server situation

body:
On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 02:36:10PM +0100, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Jimbo wrote:
> > If you set the list options so that mail from unsubscribed people
> > is automatically rejected, then you'll see virtually no spam.  Or,
> > is there something else going on in this case?
>
> Mails to info at wikipedia.de are forwarded to this list, so rejecting
> unsubscribed people would be a bad idea ... :-)

I've talked with brion about and I'm quite sure that he might install
spamassassin or something like that. I gonna try it on my own box (GMX.de is
good at filtering but could do better).

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server situation

body:
On Dec 24, 2003, at 06:47, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> I've talked with brion about and I'm quite sure that he might install
> spamassassin or something like that. I gonna try it on my own box
> (GMX.de is
> good at filtering but could do better).

I actually installed SpamAssassin some time ago but never quite got
around to figuring out how to plug it into postfix. I asked on the list
if anyone could advise and heard only silence.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031224/f24f9f61/attachment.pgp>


body:
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Imran Ghory wrote:
> > Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
> > (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
> > creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>
> What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
> someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
> I wrong?

The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project
Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed
destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book
and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.

If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the
"Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it
for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for
any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in
second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph
Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and
mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with
minimal changes to form useful stubs.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


body:
Hi,
Why not some textbooks, I'm sure many professors will give us there works.
That might push wikibooks a bit.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] screwy statistics

body:
Hi Brion, thanks for responding to my
panicky inquiry...

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
On Dec 24, 2003, at 12:57, Jay Bowks wrote:
>> On the statistics page one reads:
>> "The Interlingua version has rapidly decreased
>> unexpectedly. This might be a temporary problem. "
>> Somehow the number went from over 4000
>> articles to 2800 and then decreasing over
>> each statistics check as if there are deletions
>> taking place.

>Who takes these statistics, how? Have there in fact been deletions?

The stats I found were at:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics
Paolo Castellina complained to
me that a great number of his
articles were missing, I took it
to imply that these were deleted.
I tried to explain that witht he
software and domain name changes
something may have been lost and
I'd try to inquire about it.

>Note that under the old software, administrative deletion of pages
>would have left no trace and been irreversible.

Ay ay ay... well checking the dates on the
stats page the sudden decrease took place
before the change to MediaWiki software
and the Wiki was still under UseMod software.

>> I've already requested to have access as
>> admin which I had before the change over
>> to the new software.

>You've already been given it, no?

Ok, if so, is there a place to check
deletions? I got the uneasy feeling that
someone or something a bot perhaps
had gone berserk and started deleting
pages, so I was getting panicky about
it. How does one check for deletions
in the new software?

Again thanks so much for your help
in all of this Brion, and kudos on the
work you've accomplished in getting
the other than English wikis up and
running on the new software, after the
initial shock that the capitalization had
made a lot of pages invisible to the links,
and many of us started changing titles
over there have now been good comments
about the new software. Overall it seems
like the site is quite speedy, and this may
perhaps only be a reflection of how many
are away for the holidays and not editing,
but things are flying... this is a good thing!

With best regards always,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Geoffrin crashed?

body:
Fell offline during regular backup. No response to ping, ssh, etc.

Is there a warranty on this thing?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031225/8d41f867/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database server down

body:
The database server has crashed again, during the regularly scheduled
backup. We so far have no way to reboot this machine remotely, so it'll
stay down until someone can go in and push the button.

While it's very fast, it's also very unstable; it perhaps has hardware
problems. With any luck, the manufacturer has given us a warranty of
some sort for our very expensive purchase and will fix the thing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20031225/6cdefaa0/attachment.pgp


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
Damned computers.

Well, Tim is out of town.  Jason is a couple hours away and there's no
way I'm asking him to drive down on Christmas.  The colo does not have
24x7 staffing, so no one is there to reboot it for us today.

Therefore, we're doomed until tomorrow morning.  Jason has a family
obligation tomorrow at 10AM, so he _could_ go down tomorrow afternoon,
but only if we can't get someone at the colo to do the reboot.

At least the website is serving cached pages, maybe if someone has a
chance, the cached-pages message could be updated to explain the time
we expect editing to resume.

>From now on when we think about how to spend money, we should think about
this morning, and think about redundancy, which is expensive but probably
necessary as we get bigger and bigger.

--Jimbo

Brion Vibber wrote:

> While the new server is wonderfully fast, it's crashing way *way* too
> often. :(
>
> Has the memory been tested? What kind of warranty do we have? Will
> Penguin replace any defective parts? How long would this take?
>
> We *really* need a way to reboot it remotely. Somebody's going to have
> to go in on Christmas day just to push the reset button, and that ain't
> cool.
>
> sigh...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Crashy opteron


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Geoffrin crashed?

body:
It might be tomorrow, but I'm working on it, trying to find a way...

wolfram at student.no wrote:

>
>
> when will the database be online again?
>
> / Wolfram
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Server situation

body:
On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 04:09:11PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Dec 24, 2003, at 06:47, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> >I've talked with brion about and I'm quite sure that he might install
> >spamassassin or something like that. I gonna try it on my own box
> >(GMX.de is
> >good at filtering but could do better).
>
> I actually installed SpamAssassin some time ago but never quite got
> around to figuring out how to plug it into postfix. I asked on the list
> if anyone could advise and heard only silence.

I've installed it myself and still have to train it, but it's already working
at 50%. I'm running it with procmail to do all at once.

They have a wiki over here
http://wiki.spamassassin.org/w/

For MTAs (90% PostFix, lucky brion)
http://wiki.spamassassin.org/w/IntegratedInMta

Training the Bayes-Filter needs some spam and ham first. That means some
manual sorting before it works.
http://wiki.spamassassin.org/w/BayesInSpamAssassin

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: wolfram at student.no

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Geoffrin crashed?

body:
when will the database be online again?

/ Wolfram


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
On Dec 25, 2003, at 08:00, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> From now on when we think about how to spend money, we should think
>> about
> this morning, and think about redundancy, which is expensive but
> probably
> necessary as we get bigger and bigger.

When Geoffrin comes back online, I intend to move the live database
back to Pliny. Geoffrin is unsuitable for production use until it is
thoroughly tested for defects and rebootable in case of future crashes.
In just three weeks we've had two hard crashes and two instances of
file corruption.

A RAM test needs to be done; that's a highly likely source of errors
(over 32 billion bits of memory; if just _one_ is defective, it can
cause data corruption or a crash).

We *really should* get database replication going, if at some point we
have two working machines with enough disk space to handle the
database, so a dead database server can be taken over by the slave.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031225/c8f555db/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or a
>little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking
>then email likely purchases to Jimbo.
>
>One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the
>Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on Bartelsby
>at
>
A whole 14 vol. set of the 1931 reprint of the 1917 edition of the
English Literature portion recently sold on eBay for $41.00!

A 15 vol. 1967 set is currently being offered with a $60.00 opening bid,
but no takers.  I would not hesitate to bid that on the older version.

>Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better old
>libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an evaluation
>made.
>
>Fred
>
Luck is only part of it. You also need a nose for bargains, and
sometimes a willingness to take risks.  When the best opportunities
present themselves there is no time to thoroughly check things out at a
major library.  Two of my recent purchases John Howard Brown's 1897
"Cyclop?dia of American Biographies" in 7 volumes for $25.00, and
William Shaw's 2 volume1905 "Knights of England" (autographed) for
$27.00.  The 1976 and 2000 reprints normally sell for about $100.00 when
you can find one.

>>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
>>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
>>
>>Imran Ghory wrote:
>>
>>>Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
>>>(e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
>>>creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>>>
>>What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
>>someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
>>I wrong?
>>
 From a Wikisource perspective this is a useful idea, but buying these
books should not be a central organization function.  It should be the
contributors that do this since they are the one who will keep the books
after they've been scanned.  I would be surprised if Wikimedia had any
intent to start a rare and old book library.

Cost may not be the problem with this proposal.  Scanning and
proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not suit
everybody's temperament.

Ec


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

body:
> Therefore, we're doomed until tomorrow morning.
> Jason has a family
> obligation tomorrow at 10AM, so he _could_ go down
> tomorrow afternoon,
> but only if we can't get someone at the colo to do
> the reboot.

If it's any consolation, I imagine you helped a lot of
families stay together for Christmas.

"What?  I thought you said you were gonna work on
Wikipedia today?"

"Nah, I changed my mind [the server is down]."

"Awww... too bad.  Now you can spend time with your
family!"

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
Chuck

=====
We are the Esperanto speakers who say "Ni!"
http://www.esperantomobilo.org/

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Informaci?n de Estados Unidos y Am?rica Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Vis?tanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com


body:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:

>  From a Wikisource perspective this is a useful idea, but buying these
> books should not be a central organization function.  It should be the
> contributors that do this since they are the one who will keep the books
> after they've been scanned.

As I said in one my previous messages, if you're willing to destroy the
book in the process you can scan it with the minimum of work and time by
using a high-speed destructive scanner.

Scanning by hand means you don't need to destroy the book, but it involves
a lot of work and you can only scan at a maximum speed of about 350
pages/hour.

> Cost may not be the problem with this proposal.  Scanning and
> proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not suit
> everybody's temperament.

Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading
easier by distributing the process across many people.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


subject: [Wikitech-l] Geoffrin up

body:
Geoffrin is back up.  I am trying to get the website back to normal,
but I really don't know what I'm doing, so I'm just poking around
looking at things.  Probably someone could fix this pretty quickly.

I left a voicemail for Brion, but anyone else who knows what to do
could probably do it as well.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> A RAM test needs to be done; that's a highly likely source of errors
> (over 32 billion bits of memory; if just _one_ is defective, it can
> cause data corruption or a crash).

Early next week, Jason is going to be delivering the new machine, and
it can be pressed into service while we take the opteron out of
service for testing and parts swapping, if that's what the problem is.

> We *really should* get database replication going, if at some point we
> have two working machines with enough disk space to handle the
> database, so a dead database server can be taken over by the slave.

And then perhaps once we get rolling again, this is what we can do
with the $4000 in the bank... buy a machine to be the secondary DB
server?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Why we matter...

body:
An email I received...

-------
Hi,

I am Sujith, 29 years, Male.

I visit your esteemed website on regular basis.I was
shoked to know that ur Database server has crashed
down.
I have one of important exams comming up for which my
study material is only wikipedia.org.

Pl. pull up ur socks and also help us.

Best wishes for a very happy new year ahead.

Thanks,
SUJITH

__________________________________

So, yeah, I guess I better pull up my socks.

--Jimbo


from_name: Dan Carlson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia on-site documentation

body:
For the past few weeks, I and some others have been in the process of
setting up a new MediaWiki-based wiki site devoted to the "Star Trek"
television series, called Memory Alpha.  We have had few problems after
the initial pains of actual installation; however, in trying to adapt
the MW framework for our site, we've been running into a few snags.

The main problem from my perspective is documentation for users of the
wiki software in sites which are not straight-up mirrors of Wikipedia.
We've been doing a rather haphazard job of copying over the various
bits of documentation for using the site -- stuff like how to write an
article, how to edit a page, the policies and guidelines, and other
material.

Our problem is that so many of these pages will definitely be useful,
and although they'll most likely be adapted and changed as time goes on
and we set up our own policies, I think it would still be useful if we
could have something that we could start with.

Currently, MediaWiki uses the website's name to create a separate
namespace for documentation and other "meta" type pages.  (I'm not
referring to the Meta-Wikipedia, but rather the "Wikipedia:" pages on
Wikipedia itself.)  And I realize that this is probably a workable
system...

But, considering that the MediaWiki software is made publicly available
for download and for establishing other websites, I wonder if it might
be useful to have some kind of help "module" -- that is, a collected
copy of the documentation pages that can be easily copied and set up on
other sites.  Possibly, this could also add a new "Help:" namespace
which would help distinguish those pages for the general users.  But
that last isn't really necessary as far as the content goes, although
it would make linking between the various help pages simpler if the
namespace wasn't changed on each site.

I'm not a programmer myself, although I've got a basic grasp of coding
and I'm very slowly learning PHP.  I could probably try to help if
someone else wanted to try to implement this or something similar, but
I thought that I would propose this idea to the group first, seeing as
how many of you are a lot more familiar with the MW's inner workings.

Thanks,
Dan Carlson
Administrator, Memory Alpha
http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/


body:
I just put in a preliminary bid on a partial set (missing 2 volumes) at
eBay
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3575193499&category=29353&rd=1
There's an unspecified reserve on this.

Ec

Fred Bauder wrote:

>Cheapest set I can find is
>
>http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=214483227
>
>There are odd volumes availble, such as this 1885 Volume 1
>
>http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=224154342
>
>Fred
>
>>From: Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk>
>>
>>On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>>Imran Ghory wrote:
>>>
>>>>Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
>>>>(e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
>>>>creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>>>>
>>>What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
>>>someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
>>>I wrong?
>>>
>>The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project
>>Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed
>>destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book
>>and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
>>
What a terrible way to mistreet a book!!!

>>If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the
>>"Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it
>>for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for
>>any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in
>>second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph
>>Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and
>>mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with
>>minimal changes to form useful stubs.
>>


from_name: Peter Jaros

body:
On Dec 26, 2003, at 6:21 AM, Imran Ghory wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Cost may not be the problem with this proposal.  Scanning and
>> proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not
>> suit
>> everybody's temperament.
>
> Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading
> easier by distributing the process across many people.

Have you seen www.wikipedia.org, it's a project that makes huge
information gathering and processing easier by distributing the process
across many people. ;)

Sorry, I really don't mean that to be flippant.  Just pointing out that
we could probably handle the proofreading within the Wikimedia network.

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show


body:
Chuck Smith wrote:

>>Some problems; What are we going to do with all that
>>money? If we can't spend it, would that jeopardize
>>our
>>nonprofit status? I think it would be a step
>>backwards
>>for Wikimedia to become a for-profit organization.
>>
>
>I think we should hire full-time editors especially
>for the non-English Wikipedias.
>
Until we are very clear about the function of such an editor, this is
definitely something to be avoided.  It often means that editorial
policy is then centralized in one person.  That needs to remain in the
community.  Some short term (say 3 months) editorial contracts might be
worthwhile when we want to give a boost to a particular language which
has had very limited activity.  Sometimes, a person to manage and
organize the transition between Wikipedia and paper could be worthwhile
in making the paper contents less random.  There are certainly strong
arguments for a technical person.

>  The English Wikipedia
>had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the
>Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge)
>never had such luxuries.  As I said before, I would
>propose Brion Vibber (technical support, non-English
>wikis) and Arno Lagrange (Esperanto Wikipedia editor)
>as full-time employees.  Arno is now trying to start a
>Wikipedia organization in France to be able to legally
>work full-time for the Esperanto Wikipedia.
>
I would avoid speaking of particular individuals, until the general
issue is settled.

>Also, I've never heard of having too much money as
>being a problem.  I mean, we're a foundation!  Lots of
>foundations have millions of dollars...  We could use
>the money to hold Wikipedia seminars and conferences.
>We could also use the money to finance other worthy
>educational projects like other foundations do.
>"Sponsored by Wikimedia"
>
Too much money can be a bigger problem than not enough.  Money
completely changes the social dynamics.

Ec


body:
I expect the reserve is well over $500.

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 12:49:59 -0800
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
>
> I just put in a preliminary bid on a partial set (missing 2 volumes) at
> eBay
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3575193499&category=29353&r
> d=1
> There's an unspecified reserve on this.
>
> Ec
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> Cheapest set I can find is
>>
>> http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=214483227
>>
>> There are odd volumes availble, such as this 1885 Volume 1
>>
>> http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=224154342
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>> From: Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>>
>>>> Imran Ghory wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
>>>>> (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
>>>>> creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>>>>>
>>>> What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
>>>> someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
>>>> I wrong?
>>>>
>>> The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project
>>> Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed
>>> destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book
>>> and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
>>>
> What a terrible way to mistreet a book!!!
>
>>> If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the
>>> "Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it
>>> for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for
>>> any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in
>>> second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph
>>> Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and
>>> mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with
>>> minimal changes to form useful stubs.
>>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] One domain with several languages

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

Hi,

Since the DB server is down, I got some spare time looking into the software a
way to have a localized menu for Wikisource and Wikibooks with only one
domain. I have seen no official decision about that, but it seems that what
is projected. First, is someone already working on that? Is there a design
projected about this? I looked through the archives but could not find
anything.

I entered a feature request about this on Sourceforge.
Also I got the software installed and running on my PC.

I suppose that we want that the language changes acccording to users' settings
with a "user_language" field in the user table.

I see a problem with the cached pages. We will need to have a cache for each
language.

I am Ok or what?

Thanks,
Yann

- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/7Dykm4KYjQo0y9oRAv3FAJkBk5nc9sYnDe6m6auhjBDF1C69iwCfTVO7
C2ogi7r2O2bBZZmWthGbKmg=
=gRNx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 02:50:21PM +0100, Yann Forget wrote:
> way to have a localized menu for Wikisource and Wikibooks with only one
> domain. I have seen no official decision about that, but it seems that what
> is projected. First, is someone already working on that? Is there a design
> projected about this? I looked through the archives but could not find
> anything.

I see no practical use in it except for Chinese. What sense makes a localized
UI if the article itself is in a different language?

One hint if you still wanna try:
LocalSettings.php
Change $wgLanguageCode = "de"; in line 43 to this little hack:
$wgLanguageCode = $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']; // PHP 4.1.0 and newer

> I see a problem with the cached pages. We will need to have a cache for each
> language.

That's true, but might be solved by having a two-layer cache. First one
renders the actual article and the second renders the UI.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


subject: [Wikitech-l] memcached

body:
On Dec 26, 2003, at 12:21, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jimbo got the machine rebooted and I restored the settings, but I have
> no
> idea how to get the memcached stuff working right. I disabled it for
> now.

memcached runs on the web servers, not on geoffrin.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031226/f746963e/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
I agree that currently a 32bit operating system is
better for production use on AMD Opteron CPUs.

When I first learnt that Geoffrin uses 64bit Linux I
was very surprised. I really don't understand why
Geoffrin was set up to work in 64bit mode, since it is
a production machine and stability is a critical
issue, so we should use 32bit Linux (or freebsd).

I don't mean that AMD Opteron is not good hardware. I
just say that it is too early to install 64bit
software, because probably it is more buggy than the
32bit versions.

Optim

--- Alwin Meschede <ameschede at gmx.de> wrote:
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
> > When Geoffrin comes back online, I intend to move
> the live database back
> > to Pliny. Geoffrin is unsuitable for production
> use until it is
> > thoroughly tested for defects and rebootable in
> case of future crashes.
> > In just three weeks we've had two hard crashes and
> two instances of file
> > corruption.
>
> We are using a 64-bit Kernel on Geoffrin, right? I
> wonder if this is a
> good idea, since the Kernel hackers working on the
> AMD64 Linux port have
> just fixed several nasty bugs that could lead to
> data corruption and
> crashes. According to Andi Kleen, one of the lead
> hackers working on
> x86_64-Linux, AMD64 isn't really ready for
> production use and has still
> lots of hack value.
>
> Maybe it might be a good idea to stick with a 32-bit
> system on Geoffrin
> until the Linux codebase for AMD64 stabilizes a bit
> more?
>
> Alwin Meschede
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
On Dec 26, 2003, at 16:33, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> I agree that currently a 32bit operating system is
> better for production use on AMD Opteron CPUs.
>
> When I first learnt that Geoffrin uses 64bit Linux I
> was very surprised. I really don't understand why
> Geoffrin was set up to work in 64bit mode, since it is
> a production machine and stability is a critical
> issue, so we should use 32bit Linux (or freebsd).

My understanding is that the system shipped with SuSE Professional 8.1
for AMD64 preinstalled. If that's not production ready, somebody should
really tell Penguin Computing that they're shipping broken goods.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031226/1f00c731/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Opteron's temperature?

body:
I am wondering why Geoffrin is so unstable. For how
many hours was it down?

how about the Opteron's temperatures? I suppose it is
installed in an air-conditioned room.

and how about the Opteron's motherboard BIOS? is it
updated with a stable revision? Some Opteron
motherboards had problems with the BIOS.

for the remote reset issue somebody suggested this on
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status
:

"Type "remote power management" into Google, and
you'll get listings for lots of network-controlled
power-distribution devices, which will allow you to
remotely power-cycle locked-up boxes, but without the
cost of a UPS, and more importantly, with the ability
to power cycle on a per-power socket basis.
(wikipedian, the Anome)"

--
Optim

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
AMD x86-64 (AMD64) technology was designed in 2001 and
got into production in 2003. The hardware is good, but
I would never trust AMD64 software to run critical
server. It's just too new.

Even if it has no bugs at all, it is too early to run
AMD64 software for mission critical applications.

I think Geoffrin has 2GB of memory? In that case, we
needn't the 64bitness, since 32bit kernels work fine
with 2GB of memory. 64bit is needed when a machine has
more than 4GB RAM. I suppose that the extra
performance of AMD64 mode is not so required, so we
can downgrade to 32bit Linux/freebsd to be sure that
the problem is not from the AMD64 kernel.

--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> My understanding is that the system shipped with
> SuSE Professional 8.1
> for AMD64 preinstalled. If that's not production
> ready, somebody should
> really tell Penguin Computing that they're shipping
> broken goods.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
On Dec 26, 2003, at 16:56, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> I think Geoffrin has 2GB of memory?

4gb.

Reinstalling a 32-bit distro is a possibility.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031226/9b1e86e6/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Opteron's temperature?

body:
On Dec 26, 2003, at 16:44, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> I am wondering why Geoffrin is so unstable. For how
> many hours was it down?

Once it crashes it stays down until someone reboots it. The length of
the outage isn't related to the seriousness of the cause.

> how about the Opteron's temperatures? I suppose it is
> installed in an air-conditioned room.

Who knows? How to check?

> and how about the Opteron's motherboard BIOS? is it
> updated with a stable revision? Some Opteron
> motherboards had problems with the BIOS.

Who knows? Who can check?

> for the remote reset issue somebody suggested this on
> http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status

We've *got* a remote-controllable power strip. We're out of outlets,
and it doesn't allow cycling two outlets at once.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031226/c1e949a1/attachment.pgp>


body:
Chuck Smith wrote:

>>Therefore, we're doomed until tomorrow morning.
>>Jason has a family
>>obligation tomorrow at 10AM, so he _could_ go down
>>tomorrow afternoon,
>>but only if we can't get someone at the colo to do
>>the reboot.
>>
>If it's any consolation, I imagine you helped a lot of
>families stay together for Christmas.
>
For me it didn't help that my monitor also decided to cease breathing.
 But the thought did cross my mind that the server might have been
better named Murphy.

>"What?  I thought you said you were gonna work on
>Wikipedia today?"
>
>"Nah, I changed my mind [the server is down]."
>
Not everyone would have mentioned the server being down.  Many
wikiholics would prefer to be judged as having had a sudden surge of
magnanimity.

>"Awww... too bad.  Now you can spend time with your
>family!"
>
No doubt voiced with a tone of sarcasm.

>Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
>
Ditto


body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

>> Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading
>> easier by distributing the process across many people.
>
> Have you seen www.wikipedia.org, it's a project that makes huge
> information gathering and processing easier by distributing the
> process across many people. ;)
>
> Sorry, I really don't mean that to be flippant.  Just pointing out
> that we could probably handle the proofreading within the Wikimedia
> network.

Thinking of Wikisource where the material could be added in relatively
large chunks, I would be ashamed of contributing unproofed ocr
gibberish. :-)

Ec


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

Hi,

Thanks for your answer.

Le Friday 26 December 2003 15:01, Thomas R. Koll a ?crit :

> > way to have a localized menu for Wikisource and Wikibooks with only one
> > domain. I have seen no official decision about that, but it seems that
> > what is projected. First, is someone already working on that? Is there a
> > design projected about this? I looked through the archives but could not
> > find anything.
>
> I see no practical use in it except for Chinese. What sense makes a
> localized UI if the article itself is in a different language?

Well, we have to find a way to implement this feature for Wikisource and
Wikibooks, and possibly other sites (Wikinews ?). Otherwise, if the language
is set according to content, we better create a separate domain for each
language, isn't? For me any option is ok as long as we have a localized UI.
We have to decide this before doing anything.

See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Todo_list#Wikisource_2
and http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Maveric149

> One hint if you still wanna try:
> LocalSettings.php
> Change $wgLanguageCode = "de"; in line 43 to this little hack:
> $wgLanguageCode = $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']; // PHP 4.1.0 and newer

Yes, but it seems also interesting to be able to change that information with
the preferences form.

> > I see a problem with the cached pages. We will need to have a cache for
> > each language.
>
> That's true, but might be solved by having a two-layer cache. First one
> renders the actual article and the second renders the UI.

Yes, I thought about that, and even that might already exist.

> ciao, tom

Thanks,
Yann

- --
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/7Hgzm4KYjQo0y9oRAsTJAKCWPzXh03XgIgfWY3NUdeP3HLXQ8gCfVMfX
Xh4tmThsCsL419PccAfTyrs=
=lnxz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Opteron's temperature?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> >how about the Opteron's temperatures? I suppose it is
> >installed in an air-conditioned room.
>
> Who knows? How to check?

I don't know how to check the internal temp, if anyone knows, that'd
be cool.  But I can say that the facility that it's in is perfectly
fine -- a proper modern colocation facility with ample ventilation,
backup power, and what not.

> We've *got* a remote-controllable power strip. We're out of outlets,
> and it doesn't allow cycling two outlets at once.

I'd be happy to move some less urgent machine of mine off the remote
power strip, to make room for wikipedia, except that the limiation on
cycling two outlets at once makes this a useless gesture.

But, remote power strips are not expensive in the grand scheme of
things, if someone can find one that permits us to cycle two outlets
at once.  This can't be a rare problem -- tons of people have machines
with redundant power supplies.

(My bright idea was to leave one of the outlets unplugged for now, so
we could cycle the machine by cycling the other, but Jason reports that
the machine makes an ungodly noise when both supplies aren't plugged in!)

I'll be on the phone to Penguin Monday morning, consulting with them
about a sensible course of action.

--Jimbo


body:
On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 12:59:57PM -0500, Peter Jaros wrote:
> On Dec 26, 2003, at 6:21 AM, Imran Ghory wrote:
> >On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading
> >easier by distributing the process across many people.
>
> Have you seen www.wikipedia.org, it's a project that makes huge
> information gathering and processing easier by distributing the process
> across many people. ;)
>
> Sorry, I really don't mean that to be flippant.  Just pointing out that
> we could probably handle the proofreading within the Wikimedia network.

FYI: There's a project digitalizing the German Meyers Konversationlexikon
from 1888 and most of the content in included to the German WP
after proofreading and such. I don't know excact figures but google-search
indicates that about 200 articles already were imported, though this is
surely only a fifth of the real imports.
* http://www.meyers-konversationslexikon.de/
* [[de:Meyers_Konversationslexikon]]

Personally I'm against buying encylopedias in the major languages from en:
to pl: and would like to suggest to give WPs with less than 5000 articles
an helpfull basis.

Images and drawings would be a very good thing, even more than text.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> My understanding is that the system shipped with SuSE Professional 8.1
> for AMD64 preinstalled. If that's not production ready, somebody should
> really tell Penguin Computing that they're shipping broken goods.

I agree completely.  They *will* hear from me on Monday, and the more
information I have by Monday morning, of course the more intelligent
my complaining will be.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
The machine has 4 gig of memory, so yes, a 32 bit kernel would be
fine.  I have no objection to trying that, although we should
recognize that we have no specific information to cause us to think
that this is actually the problem.

SuSE ships this as production software, and I generally trust them.
But, the machine is crashing, so...

Nikos-Optim wrote:

> AMD x86-64 (AMD64) technology was designed in 2001 and
> got into production in 2003. The hardware is good, but
> I would never trust AMD64 software to run critical
> server. It's just too new.
>
> Even if it has no bugs at all, it is too early to run
> AMD64 software for mission critical applications.
>
> I think Geoffrin has 2GB of memory? In that case, we
> needn't the 64bitness, since 32bit kernels work fine
> with 2GB of memory. 64bit is needed when a machine has
> more than 4GB RAM. I suppose that the extra
> performance of AMD64 mode is not so required, so we
> can downgrade to 32bit Linux/freebsd to be sure that
> the problem is not from the AMD64 kernel.
>
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > My understanding is that the system shipped with
> > SuSE Professional 8.1
> > for AMD64 preinstalled. If that's not production
> > ready, somebody should
> > really tell Penguin Computing that they're shipping
> > broken goods.
> >
> > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> >
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
> http://photos.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 12:44:05PM -0500, Dan Carlson wrote:
> The main problem from my perspective is documentation for users of the
> wiki software in sites which are not straight-up mirrors of Wikipedia.
> We've been doing a rather haphazard job of copying over the various
> bits of documentation for using the site -- stuff like how to write an
> article, how to edit a page, the policies and guidelines, and other
> material.
>
> Our problem is that so many of these pages will definitely be useful,
> and although they'll most likely be adapted and changed as time goes on
> and we set up our own policies, I think it would still be useful if we
> could have something that we could start with.

I think packing all the help-pages into an extra database dump should be
enough.
My first suggestion is having an index/list of all the help-pages somewhere
(MediaWiki: most likely) and make an extra dump out of them.
That way we can offer them parallel to the regular full-dumps

A second solution could use the XML-Export at Wikipedia to grab the
help pages and import them into the new installation. As long as no
XML-Import exists, pywikipediabot can do the job.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] memcached

body:
Jimbo got the machine rebooted and I restored the settings, but I have no
idea how to get the memcached stuff working right. I disabled it for now.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Geoffrin up

body:
it: is up, but it seems that changes to the MediaWiki namespace (to
customize the interface) have been lost. Maybe they are stored in some
file that must be manually loaded/activated ?

Ciao,
Alfio

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Geoffrin is back up.  I am trying to get the website back to normal,
>but I really don't know what I'm doing, so I'm just poking around
>looking at things.  Probably someone could fix this pretty quickly.
>
>I left a voicemail for Brion, but anyone else who knows what to do
>could probably do it as well.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Alwin Meschede

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> When Geoffrin comes back online, I intend to move the live database back
> to Pliny. Geoffrin is unsuitable for production use until it is
> thoroughly tested for defects and rebootable in case of future crashes.
> In just three weeks we've had two hard crashes and two instances of file
> corruption.

We are using a 64-bit Kernel on Geoffrin, right? I wonder if this is a
good idea, since the Kernel hackers working on the AMD64 Linux port have
just fixed several nasty bugs that could lead to data corruption and
crashes. According to Andi Kleen, one of the lead hackers working on
x86_64-Linux, AMD64 isn't really ready for production use and has still
lots of hack value.

Maybe it might be a good idea to stick with a 32-bit system on Geoffrin
until the Linux codebase for AMD64 stabilizes a bit more?

Alwin Meschede


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: what to do with the money?

body:
Chuck Smith wrote:

> I think we should hire full-time editors especially
> for the non-English Wikipedias.  The English Wikipedia
> had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the
> Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge)
> never had such luxuries.  As I said before, I would

What is the hurry?

A lot of the Wikipedias who have now a active comunity and many articles
have started very slow whit only 1 or 2 members.

I remember the very early period of the Dutch Wikipedia, it looks now so
long ago... Very few people. Every new vistor used to be a real event.
The first 100 articles...  Trying to find out how to be a Wikipedia, a
real one, not just a copy of the Mother of all Wikipedias, the English.

Yes, it takes time. But you need it. It creates a social structure and a
history. Whit hired full-time editors you do the opposite of the
Wikipedia way. Wikipedia is a encyclopedia by the people for people. If
the people of a language are not interested to create a wikipedia the do
not get a wikipedia.

Look at the Frysk Wikipedia. The first version is from +/- september
2002. Many months almost no activity. Now it is a very small but active
Wikipedia. The change from a usemod Wikipedia to the MediaWiki version,
that can give a jump to a wikipedia.

I know there are not enough Brion's to do all the work. But faster
technical support and reponds to requests from small Wikipedias is
important.

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia DOT be
Join SETI and team Wikipedia.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_172338.html


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Geoffrin up

body:
I can confirm that all the MediaWiki namespace changes on the Welsh
Wikipedia (cy.wikipedia.org) are not in effect, although all the strings
still exist in the namespace. Looks like something needs to be reloaded
somewhere!

Thanks,
Arwel

In message <Pine.GSO.4.58.0312262106270.9807 at zeus>, Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi-FJ0sXg9k8Phcnc8mwR5TMg at public.gmane.org> writes
>
>it: is up, but it seems that changes to the MediaWiki namespace (to
>customize the interface) have been lost. Maybe they are stored in some
>file that must be manually loaded/activated ?
>
>Ciao,
>Alfio
>
>On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>Geoffrin is back up.  I am trying to get the website back to normal,
>>but I really don't know what I'm doing, so I'm just poking around
>>looking at things.  Probably someone could fix this pretty quickly.
>>
>>I left a voicemail for Brion, but anyone else who knows what to do
>>could probably do it as well.
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikitech-l mailing list
>>Wikitech-l-g2DCOkC13y2GglJvpFV4uA at public.gmane.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Yann wrote:
>I suppose that we want that the language changes acccording
>to users' settings with a "user_language" field in the user table.

A user pref to override the default UI language would be nice. Another thing
that can be done in addition to that is have something like &lang=fr in the
URL to force an interface change for anybody who has not set an override
language in their UI (to French in this example).

>I see a problem with the cached pages. We will need to have
>a cache for each language.

Language category tags (via the MediaWiki category system which is waiting for
some more bug fixing before it is implemented) would be a way to solve that.
Then when anons (who view cached pages by default) visit a page with a French
language category tag in it their UI would switch to French (&lang=fr could
then be added to history and talk page links so the French UI follows the
anon).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Opteron's temperature?

body:
the temperature check should be performed while the
CPU is working at full load (100%). to raise the CPU
usage at 100% you can use some benchmark software like
www.mersenne.org (run the software twice, for both
CPUs)

you can do the check with:
1. software, as ameschede at gmx.de wrote.
2. BIOS, if it reports temperatures. in this case you
need a console (keyboard, monitor) and physical access
to geoffrin. Warning: the temperature you read in the
BIOS is NOT the temperature of the CPU when it works
at full load (100%).
3. install a thermal sensor. not a very good idea.
4. open the server's box and place your fingers on the
CPU :)

also check the motherboard manufacturer's website and
see whether your BIOS version has some bugs. in that
case, install a newer BIOS, but NOT the newest one (to
avoid new problems, newest BIOSes are untested).

Optim

--- Alwin Meschede <ameschede at gmx.de> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales schrieb:
> >>>how about the Opteron's temperatures? I suppose
> it is
> >>>installed in an air-conditioned room.
> >>
> >>Who knows? How to check?
>
> What we need is called lm-sensors, a kernel module
> to read out internal
> motherboard sensors. But I've never done that on
> Linux. My understanding
> is, that you also need special drivers for i2c bus
> and whatnot. Someone
> with the specs of Geoffrin at hand could figure it
> out.
>
> If you are lucky, the SuSE kernel we are using now
> has all this stuff
> precompiled, all you'd have to do is to figure out
> what modules must be
> loaded.
>
> Once you've got the lm-sensors driver working, it's
> easy to find a
> userspace frontend for it that can print out the
> current temperature of
> the processors on the console.
>
> Alwin Meschede
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
since we dont know what causes the problem we suspect
everything.

Possible problems:
1. Temperature. Can be checked with software.
2. BIOS bugs. Check the motherboard manufacturer's web
site for information and new versions. Do not install
the newest version, very often it is unstable or
untested.
3. 64bit linux kernel bugs. Solution: 32bit kernel.
4. Defective CPU. solution: downclock (but I think
this is impossible on Opterons, they are locked), less
CPU work (less utilization), change the CPUs with
other CPUs. (use warranty). Make sure you use a good
heatsink and fan.
5. Defective memory. Solution: buy new memory and
change  it. (use warranty). Always buy REGISTERED and
ECC memory, never non-ECC, and always from well-known
manufacturers such as Kingston, Corsair, Crucial etc.
The memory should have its own passive cooling system
too (heatsink).

To check the CPU, the L2 cache, and the RAM, you can
use the MPrime Software from www.mersenne.org

to check the memory you can use the memtest86 Software
from www.memtest86.com

also test the hard disk surface for bad sectors
(although this should not cause such a problem).

Production software often has bugs. The only thing
that can assure you that something will run without
problems is its Years of Presence in the market. AMD64
is so new, it is untested. 32bit linux exists for so
many years and it is tested very well, so you can be
sure that if you install a 32bit kernel, your problem
(if you still have the crash problem) will not be
because of the 64bit kernel. However keep in mind
that, in general, 32bit software has 20% lower
performance than 64bit software on AMD Opterons.

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> The machine has 4 gig of memory, so yes, a 32 bit
> kernel would be
> fine.  I have no objection to trying that, although
> we should
> recognize that we have no specific information to
> cause us to think
> that this is actually the problem.
>
> SuSE ships this as production software, and I
> generally trust them.
> But, the machine is crashing, so...
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Design document for new layouts

body:
The servers being down gave me a chance to do some more work on layout
design for MediaWiki:

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Design document for new layouts


subject: [Wikitech-l] Opteron's temperature?

body:
Jimmy Wales schrieb:
>>>how about the Opteron's temperatures? I suppose it is
>>>installed in an air-conditioned room.
>>
>>Who knows? How to check?

What we need is called lm-sensors, a kernel module to read out internal
motherboard sensors. But I've never done that on Linux. My understanding
is, that you also need special drivers for i2c bus and whatnot. Someone
with the specs of Geoffrin at hand could figure it out.

If you are lucky, the SuSE kernel we are using now has all this stuff
precompiled, all you'd have to do is to figure out what modules must be
loaded.

Once you've got the lm-sensors driver working, it's easy to find a
userspace frontend for it that can print out the current temperature of
the processors on the console.

Alwin Meschede


from_name: Ramanan Selvaratnam

body:
On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 22:25, Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Chuck Smith wrote:
>
>
> > I think we should hire full-time editors especially
> > for the non-English Wikipedias.  The English Wikipedia
> > had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the
> > Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge)
> > never had such luxuries.  As I said before, I would
>
> What is the hurry?
>
> A lot of the Wikipedias who have now a active comunity and many articles
> have started very slow whit only 1 or 2 members.

With all respect to the good work done by busy people may I point out
that the money is better spent on technical support issues.

I am a member of 3 people who have shown interest in the 'ta' module
(already one is uncommunicative which probably isa good thing as wikis
go :). But I am very concerned about the requests to correct the totally
misleading interpretation of the licence terms (free as in 'gratis'
instead of 'libre') not being attended to in the LanguageTa.php or
request on how to set up a mailing list being unanswered.
This stops me from giving publicity in the correct places (I believe to
be iseal in the correct time etc....)

I understand the money/resources at hand is not a great amount (at the
moment) but why not spend it toWards getting the important
technical/legal matters like these sorted out as a priority.

>
> I remember the very early period of the Dutch Wikipedia, it looks now so
> long ago... Very few people. Every new vistor used to be a real event.
> The first 100 articles...  Trying to find out how to be a Wikipedia, a
> real one, not just a copy of the Mother of all Wikipedias, the English.

Exactly. A copy of 'en' is a bad idea. Especially if an artificial pace
is set to mirror the inequality in printed material (by DP like
mechanisms). I hope you give considerations to the negative effect of
hegemony of English (or any European language for that matter) had
contributed to non-free information.
>
> Yes, it takes time. But you need it. It creates a social structure and a
> history.

... and captures informed free knowledge.

>  Wikipedia is a encyclopedia by the people for people. If
> the people of a language are not interested to create a wikipedia the do
> not get a wikipedia.

hear hear.

Regards,

Ramanan


body:
On Dec 27, 2003, at 10:08 AM, Agon S. Buchholz wrote:

> Dan Carlson schrieb:
>
>> The main problem from my perspective is documentation for users of
>> the wiki software in sites which are not straight-up mirrors of
>> Wikipedia.
>
> I agree. That's the reason why I started to restructure and rewrite
> the documentation (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation).
>
> The problem with the current official documentation
> (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide) is, that it's
> not a "User's Guide", but more of a mixture of Installation,
> Configuration, User's, Administrator's, and partial even Developer's
> Guide. According to MediaWiki terminology, a "User" is also an
> administrator; however, it will take the normal user some time to
> distinguish this wording.

I've noticed the same thing.  And though the English Wikipedia has a
decent page through the Policies and Guidelines that provides a partial
list, it's still not always useful in connecting to all the appropriate
pages.

> I'm trying to write documents for different targeted users; people,
> who want to know what MediaWiki is, should read a mostly non-technical
> overview (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Introduction);
> people who want to write articles should read the User's Guide
> (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_User's_Guide),
> explaining how to edit and write pages; people who want to set up a
> MediaWiki site should read the Administrator's Guide
> (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Administrator's_Guide),
> explaining hw to install and confugure the software, and so on. These
> documents have to be structured from the scratch, be written for
> different levels of experience, and stay focused for specific tasks
> related to the work of these target groups.

That's a very good idea; I'd be willing to pitch in and help out in
rewriting/reorganizing some of that data.

>> But, considering that the MediaWiki software is made publicly
>> available for download and for establishing other websites, I wonder
>> if it might be useful to have some kind of help "module" -- that is,
>> a collected copy of the documentation pages that can be easily copied
>> and set up on other sites.  Possibly, this could also add a new
>> "Help:" namespace which would help distinguish those pages for the
>> general users.
>
> Nice idea. But do we want another namespace?

True, another namespace will add some more complication.  But take a
look at the following list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
List_of_articles_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace

Not only is that a daunting amount of information for people like me
who are trying to set up separate wiki sites with a new name, but it's
also a job that is complicated by the fact that we have to go through
and change all the internal links in the documentation to match our new
namespace.  If the documentation used a "Help:" namespace, then none of
the links would have to be updated, and all an administrator of a new
site would need to do would be to download the documentation database
dump and upload it.  And it would also help separate the site-specific
pages (like Wikipedia:) from those "meta" type pages that are about how
a user (that is, a site visitor) can operate the MediaWiki interface.

Possibly, it would be a good idea to make it easy to change the name of
the website in the documentation, or else make the distribution copy of
the documentation vague so that it can apply to all sites.  This would
require some rewriting, but it probably wouldn't be as big a deal
(either way).

I had this idea to go along with it -- I don't know how feasible it is
or whether the MW developers would want to use it, but... what if there
were another variable added that can be included inline with the wiki
text?  I'm thinking of those items like "number of articles" or
"current date" and so forth.  If another one of those were the website
name (already a variable for the web browser title bar), then the
variable could be used in place of referring to the website in any
documentation text, and thus would *automatically* be updated.

I suppose this all assumes that the people who are using the software
want to start out with the same established policies that Wikipedia
currently uses, but from my perspective, that's exactly what I'm trying
to do, at least in the initial stages of the site's growth.

Thanks,
Dan Carlson
Administrator, Memory Alpha
http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Damned computers.

Amen!!!

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now
http://companion.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Google Adwords

body:
On Dec 27, 2003, at 12:56 PM, GreenMountain wrote:

> Consumer Reports magazine does not
> include ads, as they do not want to be in any way tainted by
> sponsers.  I think we should follow suit and prevent future
> problems.

This won't be a problem.  Magazines have advertising departments which
contract with businesses for advertising and that can affect
impartiality.  Wikimedia would have no control over the ads on the site
since they are chosen automatically by a Google algorithm based on the
page itself.  More importantly the advertisers would have no control
over the Wikipedia, since they won't even know where their ads show up.

> Also, I am sure that it would cause many valuable
> contributers to leave wikipedia for other encyclopedias, which
> might mean the death of wikipedia if enough people branch off.

This, I think, is the only real issue.  there are some technical
issues, including where on the page to place them, but this is the only
"real" problem I'm aware of.

Peter

---
There's no place I can be
	Since I found Serenity
You can't take the sky from me
		-- Ballad for Serenity, Firefly


from_name: Agon S. Buchholz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Crashy opteron

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:

> My understanding is that the system shipped with SuSE Professional
> 8.1 for AMD64 preinstalled. If that's not production ready, somebody
> should really tell Penguin Computing that they're shipping broken
> goods.

I think, we should use as much existing knowledge as possible, this
machine is not intended as a learning environment. If nobody here has
experience with 64bit Linux Kernels, we shouldn't use them. We ''have''
experience with 32Bit SMP kernels, so let's go for it. If someone has
access to the remote console during boot, install GRUB instead of LILO,
it helps debug kernel related boot problems, but of course only if you
can reach the console.

If nobody here has experience with SuSE Professional 8.1 for AMD 64, we
should replace it with an distribution we ''are'' familiar with, be it
Red Hat Linux, Fedora Project, or Debian GNU/Linux. However, we have to
eliminate as much variables as possible, and to my understanding that
means, we have to use an operating system base, which the people who
administer the machine are familiar with and trust [1].

The latest 64Bit hardware is more than enough to explore, we don't need
no more SPOFs than necessary.

If the hardware ''is'' working properly is a totally different story [2].

Greetings & good luck, -asb

[1] Because of experiences at work with GNU/Linux-based Internet and
enterprise infrastructure services, I personally don't trust SuSE. But I
''do'' trust Red Hat Linux, and Debian GNU/Linux - but only if it's
administered by someone with enought expererience with Red Hat Linux, or
Debian GNU/Linux (and ''only'' then).

[2] I personally don't like SMP machines based on AMD CPUs like the
Athlon MP because (a) neither I nor my dealer nor the manufacturer of
the mainboards (Tyan) was ever able to chill them down to acceptable
temperatures without watercooling, which definitely ain't no fun on
remote SMP systems (lm_sensors will tell you more than you want to know
about this), and (b) the BIOS manufactured by AMD I know so far are too
buggy (whatever this Opteron is using might be totally different).


body:
Dan Carlson schrieb:

> The main problem from my perspective is documentation for users of
> the wiki software in sites which are not straight-up mirrors of
> Wikipedia.

I agree. That's the reason why I started to restructure and rewrite the
documentation (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation).

The problem with the current official documentation
(http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide) is, that it's
not a "User's Guide", but more of a mixture of Installation,
Configuration, User's, Administrator's, and partial even Developer's
Guide. According to MediaWiki terminology, a "User" is also an
administrator; however, it will take the normal user some time to
distinguish this wording.

I'm trying to write documents for different targeted users; people, who
want to know what MediaWiki is, should read a mostly non-technical
overview (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Introduction);
people who want to write articles should read the User's Guide
(http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_User's_Guide), explaining
how to edit and write pages; people who want to set up a MediaWiki site
should read the Administrator's Guide
(http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Administrator's_Guide),
explaining hw to install and confugure the software, and so on. These
documents have to be structured from the scratch, be written for
different levels of experience, and stay focused for specific tasks
related to the work of these target groups.

> But, considering that the MediaWiki software is made publicly
> available for download and for establishing other websites, I wonder
> if it might be useful to have some kind of help "module" -- that is,
> a collected copy of the documentation pages that can be easily copied
> and set up on other sites.  Possibly, this could also add a new
> "Help:" namespace which would help distinguish those pages for the
> general users.

Nice idea. But do we want another namespace?

Greetings, -asb


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database moved back to pliny

body:
The database is back on pliny for now.

Replication isn't currently set up, mainly because pliny is short on
disk space, and the binlogs accumulate at a rate approaching a gig per
day.

Once we're satisfied with geoffrin, we can move everything back, yay...
:P

We waste a lot of disk space on the old table; gzipping old text should
save a fair chunk of space relatively easily at minor cpu cost, without
the complications of trying to make consistent diff-based storage. Even
if it were only 50% savings, that's several gigabytes. I may try to
throw something together for this...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031227/b30b7183/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memory testing

body:
memtest86, the quintessential memory tester app, requires physical
console access and a reboot. In the meantime, I've run some tests on
geoffrin from within Linux with a program called 'memtester' which was
recommended to me:

http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/memtester/

It only seemed willing to lock about 2 gigs at a time, so I ran two
memtester processes, which between them covered most of the available
memory. I didn't tell it to test _all_ memory as I was afraid Linux
might start killing sshd processes for daring to ask for more memory to
send me the results. ;)

Well, it's spewing out errors right and left; 19 failures caught
between all the tests on the first pass. At this point we can't be sure
if these are actual physical RAM defects, or artifacts of kernel bugs
or other problems (or even bugs in memtester, which might not have been
thoroughly tested on amd64), but it's not a good sign.

I'll post the logs once it's run a while longer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031227/2cfdf611/attachment.pgp>


from_name: GreenMountain

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Google Adwords

body:
Are ads going to be requried to pay for wikipedia, or will we be
able to exist without them?  I think it would be *extremely*
detrimental to the NPOV state of many articles, if we included
ads anywhere on the site.  Consumer Reports magazine does not
include ads, as they do not want to be in any way tainted by
sponsers.  I think we should follow suit and prevent future
problems.  Also, I am sure that it would cause many valuable
contributers to leave wikipedia for other encyclopedias, which
might mean the death of wikipedia if enough people branch off.
I understand that ads would solve our present money problems,
but I think in the long run, it would cause many problems.  We
have enough NPOV problems as it is, and I can only see this
causing more.  I would rather see wikipedia down every other day
without ads, then to see ads everyday on wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales writes:

> I should add that I'm just answering questions about factual matters
> to the best of my ability, not advocating anything at all.
>
> Chuck Smith wrote:
>> 1) Would this be the same amount of money if we only
>> showed ads to those who weren't logged in?
>
> Yes, I think so.  Others are more qualified than I am to say for sure,
> but my sense of it is that the vast majority of pageviews are to
> people who are not logged in.  People log in when they want to edit,
> and lots more people view than edit.
>
> Also, I think that an easy one-click "turn off all ads permanently"
> link that sets a longterm no-ads cookie would not appreciably affect
> the revenue, either, since lots of people wouldn't care.
>
>> 2) Did you only include the English Wikipedia in your
>> calculations?  I wouldn't want to impose this on other
>> languages.
>
> Yes, that's just for en.  The number is based on my own experience.  I
> could compile a keyword frequency list and send it off for an
> analysis, I think, and then the estimate would be better.
>
>> 3) Would Brion Vibber still leave the Wikipedia
>> because of the ads to users who aren't logged in when
>> he would have a full-time position at Wikipedia?
>
> He might.  And so might a lot of other important contributors.  A fork
> is even possible.  A successful fork is even possible.  All of those
> outcomes would be extremely bad, in my opinion.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get your free 15 Mb POP3 email @alexandria.cc
Click here -> http://www.alexandria.cc/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memory testing

body:
On Dec 27, 2003, at 17:40, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I'll post the logs once it's run a while longer.

Well, after a while the kernel had a general protection faults and one
of my logins freaked out ('ls' segfaulting) and froze. I killed off the
memtesters and tried to reboot, but it hasn't got all the way there. :/

Here's the output:
http://leuksman.com/misc/geoffrin%20test%201.txt
http://leuksman.com/misc/geoffrin%20test%202.txt
http://leuksman.com/misc/Geoffrin%20bad.txt

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031227/101a7eb5/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memory testing

body:
you may like to use MPrime or Glucas too.
www.mersenne.org

--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Dec 27, 2003, at 17:40, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > I'll post the logs once it's run a while longer.
>
> Well, after a while the kernel had a general
> protection faults and one
> of my logins freaked out ('ls' segfaulting) and
> froze. I killed off the
> memtesters and tried to reboot, but it hasn't got
> all the way there. :/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia down

body:
The Wikipedia is down again.  If it's of interest to
anyone, I just got the following error message on the
main page:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could
be because of an illegal search query (see Searching
Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software.
The last attempted database query was:

    SELECT HIGH_PRIORITY length(cur_text) AS x,
cur_namespace, cur_is_redirect FROM cur WHERE
cur_id='32907'

from within function "". MySQL returned error "2013:
Lost connection to MySQL server during query".

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


subject: [WikiEN-l] Disambiguation policy

body:
Please take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_(disambiguation)

which has now become an index of all things that somehow contain "Forest"
in their name, including DeForest Kelley (an actor) and Forrest Gump. It
also contains dozens of links to places in the UK that we don't have
articles about yet and that have "Forest" in their name.
User:Pigsonthewing seems to insist on having these links on the page and
keeps adding more.

This is problematic because "articles" like this become free-for-all
linklists to add unstructured, useless information. It is also not the
purpose of disambiguation pages to be a list or an index of all things
with a certain text in it -- they are not search indices and are pretty
useless as such. If I search for "Forest Glade" in the UK, I don't expect
to find that page by visiting the "forest" disambiguation page. In fact,
it might make finding things more difficult for hapless Google visitors
who stumble upon such pages from search engines and find out that they
point to nowhere.

The purpose of disambiguation pages is to list articles with the same
title where I'd otherwise have no idea where to find them. And this is
made much harder by these chaotic linklists, as the actual information
that I want gets buried under a heap of "Oh, look, I found another name
with 'forest' in it" style crap.

I believe we should set a clear policy that
- Disambiguation pages should link only to pages that actually exist -
otherwise, if the subject is worth describing, it should get a brief
description *on the disambig page*.
- Disambiguation pages should only link to pages where there is a
*substantial risk of confusion* with the actual page title.

Currently, Wikipedia:Disambiguation makes no such recommendations.

On another note, I think that our articles on numbers, such as "one
hundred one", have a similar problem in that they become free-for-alls to
add completely useless information. For example, the article

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_hundred_one

tells us that 101 is "a .com URL that redirects to the Disney .go.com
website", and "in the title of the movie 101 Dalmatians, starring Glenn
Close". This is complete rubbish. Anyone who cares about the movie knows
where to find it. If we ever have a Wikitrivia site, that might be the
kind of material worth adding to it, but it does not belong in an
encyclopedia. In my opinion, all these number articles should be deleted
except where there's something really informative about the actual number
(such as the history of the number zero).

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny SCSI issues?

body:
It's continuing to get these errors after a reboot.

Seems to be the primary controller; I'm not a SCSI guru, I don't know
what's what.

I'll get all the data backed up somewhere if I can...

sigh

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20031227/94d828f8/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server troubles (as always)

body:
On top of the problems we've been having with Geoffrin, the new
database server, the secondary web server (and backup database server,
and mail server) Pliny has developed some sort of disk problem.

Hopefully the disk can be swapped out or something in the next couple
days... In the meantime, things are offline.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20031227/24c0b908/attachment.pgp


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Away for a few days

body:
I'm going to my brother's wedding in Mobile, Alabama today and I will
be back Saturday evening.  A few people have limited access to the
Paypal account to check the balance, and I hope they will update the
http://www.wikimedia.org/letter.html page daily or more often for me.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Away for a few days


subject: [Wikitech-l] Single-sign-on

references:
<20031229205918.GB11045@joey.bomis.com> <8+mmvwTxpVB@erik_moeller>
	<20031229225046.GE15625@tomk32.homelinux.org>
	<bst2tv$sqa$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
I think we should do this ASAP, because the issues are only going
to get harder.  But the main issue, Timwi, is social -- there are
certainly cases where two different people have the same username
but in different languages.

Timwi wrote:

>
> Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> >On Mon, Dec 29, 2003 at 11:04:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> >
> >>Stuff like single sign on
> >
> >That is not possible anymore. It would be total chaos.
>
> I'm pretty confused at this assessment of yours.
>
> All it would take to achieve this would be to:
>
> - Add a field to the 'cur' and 'old' tables (or perhaps even just the
> 'cur' table) to specify what language an article is in.
> - Move all the articles from all languages into one database.
> - Adapt code accordingly.
>
> Should be doable (given adequate manpower).
>
> Timwi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://wikipedia.mormo.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Mirror in Europe

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:
> The thought's crossed my mind a few times as well- they've got very good
> connectivity, and IIRC, it's about $5k for a colo rack slot, which isn't
> unreasonable for being outside of national jurisdictions.

It might not be unreasonable if we were doing anything illegal or
controversial.  But we aren't.  If anything, I'm going to be
struggling with my own moral reservations about government funding
rather than worrying about governments shutting us down.  We're just
the sort of feel-good project that politicians love to take credit
for.

Because of our license, copies of Wikipedia's database are already on
probably thousands of machines all over the world.  The servers are
based in the U.S., where the First Amendment as well as the general
culture give us broad protection and political support.

I think Havenco is neat, but for us, it's really not desirable.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Server update

references:
<522A808A-3B52-11D8-8C80-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>
	<8+unVKGSpVB@erik_moeller> <bsud75$n60$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
zocky wrote:
> If machines keep dying, there could also be weird stuff happening
> with power supply.

Well, we have had no problems with bomis servers, which are on the
same power supply.  And the power to this facility is nice clean
power, professionally managed, so I doubt that's an issue.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: e-gold vs Paypal

body:
Nikos-Optim wrote:
> I didn't mean to stop using paypal, just to use all
> possible solutions for money transfers, like e-gold
> etc.

Yes, I agree.  Over time, we will be setting up as many alternatives
as possible.

I've setup an account at moneybookers.com, though I'm not done
actually testing it.

I'll look into egold next week.

I'm also contacting merchant account providers so we can just accept
credit cards directly, ourselves.

And I'm also researching setting up a European bank account so that
people in the EU countries can costlessly transfer money that way.

--Jimbo