subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 10:18:54AM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > Yes. But do we agree that formulas that are "sane to do in HTML",
> > like
> > x2 + y2 ≥ 0 for instance, should be
> > written in
> > HTML even when the TeX system is in place?
>
> No. It sould be in pseudo-TeX.

I disagree: that way we send lots of unnecessary png's to our users.
This wastes bandwidth and creates problems if people use the wrong
screen resolution or non-graphical browsers.

> Part of my plan is to make Wikipedias available on dict format
> and put it them into Debian packages. The less HTML it will use,
> the more useful these dicts will be.

Why not put the rendered HTML tree into Debian? That way all the
formatting including tables will be the way the authors intended it to
be.

In any event, I don't think that requirements of a possible future
presentation format should guide our present editing decisions. Right
now, Wikipedia is presented in HTML.

Axel

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 2

body:
On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 11:50:54AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz,
>
> perhaps I have missed something, but where can I find this texvc you are
> using? Google turns up nothing.

It's inside patch in attachment.


list: sifter-l

source: wayback-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: RE: [Sifter-l] Reviewer feedback

body:
Here's a simpler answer to my own question about copyeditors and certification.

A certifier (or "adjudicator" as Larry prefers) goes to Wikipedia and finds a version of an article that they want to approve. Ruth or Vicki R. copy-edits it. Then the certifier tells Sifterpedia to fetch that *specific* version from Wikipedia.

You know, it might be a tad easier if Brion or Magnus adds a "Submit to Sifterpedia" function for users with "adjudicator" rights (or whatever you call certifiers). Then they could browse the history of the article ("Older versions") and submit last week's Wonderful version even if the latest version is the Monstrous result of an edit war.

(Or they could right-click and copy the URL of the link to the version they wanted, which would give the Article ID Number, and paste that into a form back at Sifterpedia, if we don't want to change Wikipedia software too much.)

I got lots of ideas...

Ed Poor


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] Roles in the approval process

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>In response to several people who have raised the copy-editing issue, I say let's endeavor to make the approval process as simple as possible. Anything that makes it cumbersome should be left out, if possible.
>
I think the vast majority agrees on that, especially the people still
suffering from "Nupedia trauma" ;-)
[exaggerated...]

>So why not designate 2 or more classes of reviewers?
>
>The primary reviewing role would be that of the expert who certifies the overall correctness and quality level of the article. But there can also be a "copyediting expert" (like Ruth). And why not a "fact checker" like Newsweek and the New York Times (supposedly :-) have.
>
That would mean that a "fact checker" can not completely approve an
article? That sounds somewhat impractical, especially for smaller
articles. Why not do that on a case-by-case basis?

>Anyway, aren't there going to be multiple reviewers on certain articles? Like, an article which 3 different Political Science reviewers all approve?
>
The software is designed for a single reviewer to approve an article.
There's also a Recent Changes page where every reviewer (everyone, in
fact) can check recent imports.

Would a "delete this article" function for reviewers be helpful? So, if
Reviewer A imported an article, and Reviewer B discovers major errors
that cannot be fixed with a minor edit on wikipedia and a reimport,
Reviewer B can delete the article from the sifter system, giving time to
redo the wikipedia article.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz stop harrassing Helga

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] <lapollutionestsimauvaise at yahoo.com> writes:

> Helga was making the article not only NPOV but also more informative, as
> ultimatum is a much more weighted word than treaty.

Yes.  But it wasn't  a treaty and it *was* an ultimatum.

Von Ribbentrop told the Lithuanian minister
   "The situation in the Klaip?da Territory is such that any minute German
    blood may be spilled there, and if that happens the German army will march
    into Lithuania and nobody can predict where it may halt."

Thats not a treaty, thats an ultimatum, if not an outright threat. The only
relevant treaty, that of 1927, said Klaip?da was a Lithuanian territory.

I know, don't feed the trolls, especially those with unresolved gender issues.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


subject: Re: FW: [Sifter-l] Roles in the approval process

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>On the other hand, are we planning to restrict reviewers only to certain subject matter realms? Like, the physics reviewer wouldn't review (or delete) political science articles.
>
As wikipedia does not contain categories, there's no (automatic) way to
check if an import takes place only in an assigned category. We'd have
to rely on a reviewer to stick to his/her field of knowledge. So, why
put reviewers into categories anyway?

I wouldn't go ahead and approve the "Freiwirtschaft" article. I have
(almost) no knowledge in that field, and certainly not enough to say
"this is a good article", scientifically speaking.

>How about letting the statistics expert review meteorology articles (e.g., global warming)?
>
I wouldn't approve [[global warming]] either, because I don't know
enough about it. Any responsible reviewer should judge himself in such a
way, IMHO. So, automatically, the statistics people, or maybe
ecologists, will be the ones to import such an article anyway.

>Or were you folks primarily thinking about traditional, non-controversial subjects?
>
>
There's another reason against artificial reviewer classification.
Sometimes you just know it's good, or crap ;-)

Magnus


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 2

body:
OK, I got it to work. It took me a while to figure out the right
directory settings and permissions. Please make sure to have this
configurable in LocalSettings.php and passed to texvc from
OutputPage.php.

Is it possible to generate transparent PNGs? That would look a lot
nicer.

One major problem is that it doesn't match <math></math> pairs with
linebreaks within them. I don't know why, I thought all the preg_
functions would treat the string as a single line.

Otherwise, good work. Let us know when you think it's ready.

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchlist db errors

body:
>From Village pump on en.wiki:

Getting DB errors on my watchlist as follows:

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 DISTINCT wl_page,talk.cur_id AS id,talk.cur_namespace AS
namespace,talk.cur_title AS title, talk.cur_user AS
user,talk.cur_comment AS comment,talk.cur_user_text AS user_text,
talk.cur_timestamp AS timestamp,talk.cur_minor_edit AS
minor_edit,talk.cur_is_new AS is_new FROM cur as page, cur as talk,
watchlist WHERE wl_user=5862 AND wl_page=page.cur_id AND
page.cur_title=talk.cur_title AND talk.cur_namespace |
1=page.cur_namespace | 1 ORDER BY talk.cur_timestamp DESC LIMIT 50

from within function "wfSpecialWatchlist". MySQL returned error "1030:
Got error 127 from table handler".

Help! -Martin

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


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Vandalism

body:
Hello everybody there.
Yesterday (sunday, december 1st) the french wikipedia was attacked by a
vandal bot (Iala'29899).
Luck for us, at the time the bot attacked there were some sysops logged on
the site and they were able to block the 10 successive IP address it used.
We are worring about new attack and we though about some idea to prevent
vandal to make hell on Wikipedias:

- Display already blocked address in RecentChange in a different way (bold?
italic? different color?) to be able to see quickly witch address was
already blocked and witch are not yet.

- Allow Sysop to have an easy way to block a logged user (in RecentChange if
possible).

- Send warning mail to Sysop (who solicited it) when a user modify some
pages in strange ways (articles size seriously reduced, too many articles
modify in a short laps, ...)

- Provide a tool to repair the dommage. Reverse action of a user/IP from
"date/time 1" to "date/time 2".

Please hearten us ;o)

Aoineko


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] Adjudicators, not reviewers

body:
On Monday 02 December 2002 11:32 am, Larry Sanger wrote:
> So: there will be no submitters unless we, for example, specifically set
> up a Sifter page where non-adjudicators can nominate Wikipedia articles.
> And if we do set up such a page, then we should definitely have a space
> where an adjudicator can explain what problems still exist in the article.

So anybody who is already a member of Sifter would be able to nominate an
article for import and explain any weaknesses? If that is what you mean, then
I like this idea. Such a process would focus the attention of copyeditors and
interested persons at improving the Wikipedia article so that an Adjudicator
can later approve it for submittal to Sifter or state what still needs to be
done to the article. Neat, simple and open.

The above plan could be augmented by just one more level of approval: Either
an officially designated Copyeditor checks and fixes any last glitches in the
Adjudicator-approved article, and/or an officially designated Copyeditor
checks and fixes any last glitches as a last step before and Adjudicator
approves it. Then the article "goes live" on the Sifter website.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: Re: [Sifter-l] Copyediting

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Another simple bloodless solution is to make all of your changes offline,
>using a word processing program, so that you can quickly hit the Wikipedia
>"Save" button and then hit the "sifter" "Approve" button.
>
>Another solution, which I'm sure Magnus wouldn't like to hear, would be to
>import a local working copy to the "sifter" website, and when it's
>finished, the updated version is posted both to the "sifter" website and
>Wikipedia.  (But one would always *fetch* the working copy *from*
>Wikipedia--no forks.)
>
>
As Larry has summond me by spelling my name, I appear and say:
Does "edit conflict" ring a bell? :-)

IMHO that would complicate things not just for the poor bastard writing
the software;-) but also for the users of both projects: Who edited what
where? In fact, we'd have distributed editing. People on wikipedia will
find "Edit conflict with Larry Sanger on the sifter project" and go
berserk...

Which reminds me of another thing: So far, I haven't touched the Phase
III software at all for the sifter project. This works reasonably well
for the minimalistic functionality I implemented so far. But, I'd like
to have some nice gimmics in the sifter software someday, like "this
article was changed xxx times on wikipedia since this version". Would be
nice for people and especially reviewers to check out the latest
additions. For that, Phase III softwaremost likely needs additional
functions. Three basic courses of action here:

1. Leave everything as it is now. No fancy interaction between wikipedia
and sifter.
2. Make an "invisible" special page (or the like) on wikipedia,
especially for the sifter software to navigate and retrieve information.
3. Throw away the current sifter software, and expand the Phase III
software. Have editing restrictions, which are by default turned *off*
(for wikipedia), and are turned *on* for sifter. This will ensure
compatability forever.

I forsee we'll do #1 for the moment, and switch to #3 some time later.
When the wikipedia markup gets more powerful, the sifter software might
not be able to cope.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 2

body:
On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 04:56:45PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> OK, I got it to work. It took me a while to figure out the right
> directory settings and permissions. Please make sure to have this
> configurable in LocalSettings.php and passed to texvc from
> OutputPage.php.

Sure.

> Is it possible to generate transparent PNGs? That would look a lot
> nicer.

What is state of support for transparent PNGs in browsers ?
Would it be necessary to support non-transparent PNGs too ?

Does anybody remember how to do that with ImageMagick without writing
a script ?

> One major problem is that it doesn't match <math></math> pairs with
> linebreaks within them. I don't know why, I thought all the preg_
> functions would treat the string as a single line.

. matches everything but \n by default.
Yes, that should be changed.


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX

body:
On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 10:18:54AM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> > But you can see a diference between "possible to do in HTML"
> > and "sane to do in HTML" now.
>
> Yes. But do we agree that formulas that are "sane to do in HTML", like
> x2 + y2 ≥ 0 for instance, should be written in
> HTML even when the TeX system is in place?

No. It sould be in pseudo-TeX.

Part of my plan is to make Wikipedias available on dict format
and put it them into Debian packages. The less HTML it will use,
the more useful these dicts will be.

> > I'm not completely sure about safety. Probably we should both
> > validate and
> > run TeX in safe mode.
>
> For safety concerns, preparsing of TeX is not necessary: the safety
> issues of running PHP and calling an external parser are much larger.

Right.
How to put TeX into safe mode ?

> > texvc is extremely easy to extend. It shouldn't take too much time
> > just to
> > add a few dozens of new tags, and a night or two should be enough for
> > completely new kind of markup, be it chemistry (which certainly
> > should be added),
> > chess, music or whatever.
>
> Unfortunately, the xypic package (which I consider the one feature that
> is really needed in the math area right now) as well as the other
> packages I listed all use their own idiosyncratic syntax quite unlike
> ordinary TeX. So extending texvc may not be quite as simple, and I'm
> afraid we are creating a development bottleneck by requiring the
> external parsing stage.

If the only thing that can be done with them is generating PNGs, then
PNGs should be generated and uploaded. Syntax of xypic is neither
widely-known nor (as far as I can see) very readable, so I don't see
much benefit with it being generated on server.


from_name: Makoto & Guillaume

subject: [Wikitech-l] Vandalism

body:
> > - Send warning mail to Sysop (who solicited it) when a user modify some
> > pages in strange ways (articles size seriously reduced, too many articles
> > modify in a short laps, ...)
>
> Hmm...

Or more simple :
If a big sized article become very small, just display this update in red (or something visible) in the RecentChange page.

The problem is that the french Wikipedia is not as visited as the english version. We are afraid a vandal act when nobody is logged there.

Aoineko
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from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX

body:
On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 08:39:43PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 10:18:54AM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > Unfortunately, the xypic package (which I consider the one feature that
> > is really needed in the math area right now) as well as the other
> > packages I listed all use their own idiosyncratic syntax quite unlike
> > ordinary TeX. So extending texvc may not be quite as simple, and I'm
> > afraid we are creating a development bottleneck by requiring the
> > external parsing stage.
>
> If the only thing that can be done with them is generating PNGs, then
> PNGs should be generated and uploaded. Syntax of xypic is neither
> widely-known nor (as far as I can see) very readable, so I don't see
> much benefit with it being generated on server.

It's editable if it's inline. Mistakes can be changed easily.
Expecting a potential editor to have a running TeX installation
to fix an error is a higher requirement than him having a browser.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 3

body:
I made texvc render nicely-fomatted HTML sums products and integrals,
using tables.

Such HTML code would be insane to write by hand.

Anybody has any idea how to render fractions in HTML ?
tables with
 work but aren't really nice.
Maybe if
 was made to produce simpler line ...

Have fun.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX

body:
On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 01:03:26PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > Part of my plan is to make Wikipedias available on dict format
> > and put it them into Debian packages. The less HTML it will use,
> > the more useful these dicts will be.
>
> Why not put the rendered HTML tree into Debian? That way all the
> formatting including tables will be the way the authors intended it to
> be.

Putting HTML tree into Debian is fine, but that's not really a point.
The point is to have Wikipedia accessible the same way foldoc, wordnet,
jargon and all other data is - from text mode command line.

> In any event, I don't think that requirements of a possible future
> presentation format should guide our present editing decisions. Right
> now, Wikipedia is presented in HTML.

There is really no reason for Wikipedia to depend on particular presentation
format. If it will become multi-format it will be much more useful.
Dict was just one example. I'm sure people have their own list of formats
they would like to see Wikipedia in.

Another obvious format is TeX (and ps/pdf generated from it) for
printable version of Wikipedia pages.


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 3

body:
On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 11:08:16PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> I made texvc render nicely-fomatted HTML sums products and integrals,
> using tables.
>
> Such HTML code would be insane to write by hand.
>
> Anybody has any idea how to render fractions in HTML ?
> tables with
 work but aren't really nice.
> Maybe if
 was made to produce simpler line ...
>
> Have fun.

Now he's gone completely insane. Can we have a
doctor look at him?

	JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
Here is newest version.

* It allows configuring directories from LocalSettings.php,
* It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
  <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
  be error in real TeX)
* It contains a TODO file containing list of all things that
  should be done before texvc is ready to be used on Wikipedias
  (copy&paste from my previous emails mostly).
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Long term plans for scalability

in_reply_to: <20021126103559.2e3da187.nick@nickhill.co.uk>; from nick@nickhill.co.uk on Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 10:35:59AM +0000

body:
Nick Hill wrote:
> I envisage many wikipedia servers around the world, supported by private
> individuals, companies and universities. Much like the system of mirror FTP
> and mirror web sites. All these servers are updated in real time from the
> core wikipedia server. From the user's perspective, all are equivalent.
> Each of these servers can do everything the current wikipedia server can do
> except for accepting update submissions. Updates from users are accepted
> only by the core wiki server.

Organizationally, this would be a nightmare.  Having a central server
farm really eases everything, because the volunteer admins can be
given root passwords, etc., and the ability to make changes on all the
servers very quickly.  It's not easy to get that kind of access if we
are co-ordinating across many servers around the world.

Co-ordinating across many servers around the world *is* a solution we can
ponder *if* it appears to be absolutely necessary for some reason.  But it
strikes me as unlikely for this to be the case.

> Reasons for such an architecture:
> 1) Growth of bandwidth useage may put financial pressure on Wikipedia.
> Growth may follow a non-linear growth curve.

With the continued fall in bandwidth costs, this is very unlikely to
exceed my capacity to support Wikipedia in the short run.  *Bandwidth*
per se, is not a major issue.

> 2) The cost of implementing one very fast, reliable, redundant machine is
> more than the cost of farming out work to many quite fast, unreliable
> systems none of which are mission critical. Especially true where there are
> people willing to donate part of their hard drive, CPU and net connection
> (or even an entire system) to a good cause such as wikipedia. (Overall
> system reliability can be guaranteed by using DNS tricks to ensure users
> and queries are only directed to working machines).

This is easy to say, but harder to implement well.  I don't know of
any really successful implementations of the kind you are discussing.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <3DE3AF6B.8020608@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 09:29:15AM -0800

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  There was some discussion a
> couple months ago about forming a non-profit corporation, but that was
> quickly forgotten.

Not forgotten at all.  In the works.  Announcements forthcoming soon.

> A project that continues to depend on funding from a single source is
> always at risk.  Similarly, depending on ad hoc demands of $50 from
> everybody may work once or twice, but it does not give any kind of
> financial security.  Aside from any moral issues about depending on
> handouts from a single benefactor, there is the reality that no person's
> pockets are bottomless and we have no idea where the bottom is.  It is
> irresponsible for the group as a whole to wait for a message from Jimbo
> like "I want to contribute more, but I can't."  Messages like that never
> come at convenient times; they often coincide with major equipment
> breakdowns or necessary technical expansion.

That's all 100% correct.  With the layoff of Larry Sanger and Toan Vo,
both excellent people working full-time on Nupedia, this has already
happened.  I've gone from support at a level exceeding $100k per year,
to current levels, which are difficult to measure exactly.  (My time,
Jason sometimes, the server, the bandwidth).

What I am current planning is a nonprofit corporation with a separate
bank account, with the ability to accept credit cards, whereby people
can sign up for various levels of monthly or quarterly or annual
support.  The contributors will be able, within some limits, to
earmark contributions for particular uses (server, bandwidth,
promotion, etc.).

I think that many regulars will be willing and able to sign up at the
$20 per month level.  Just 100 people at that level would give us
$2000 a month, which would fairly quickly translate into a pretty
serious server farm.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] was: Help accessing Wikipedia?

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E0A5D155@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 05:56:20PM -0500

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Thanks for rebooting the server, Brion. One of these days, I'll have to learn how to do it myself.

Here's a quick tutorial:

To restart apache:

/apache/bin/apachectl restart

or

/apache/bin/apachectl graceful

I prefer the first, but it does tend to 'zing' people who are in the
middle of some long download.

To reboot the *machine*, which is almost never the right thing to do,
but as a last resort will almost certainly work:

shutdown -r now

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Oregon City and Bryce Harrington

in_reply_to: <20021126012814.10312.qmail@web21308.mail.yahoo.com>; from digitaladdictions@yahoo.com on Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 05:28:14PM -0800

body:
There's a difference between what the GNU FDL will allow, and what we
prefer here.  Part of the design rationale for the GNU FDL is for
authors to be able to retain credit for their work.  This we must
respect, through the article history, and there are aspects of this
which are imperfect in our current implementation.

But socially and traditionally on the wikipedia, we have a strong
culture of non-ownership of articles, in the sense that we don't think
of individual articles as "ours".  Someone who wants permanent
"credit" for an article, using the mechanisms of the GNU FDL, may
contribute things that we have to respectfully decline in order to
keep our wiki nature.

So, Ram-Man, yes, you are right, it would have been not well received socially
had you wanted to put your name into all those articles.

Digital Addictions Software wrote:

> I was the person who noticed the Oregon City article had a copyright notice
> WITH an invariant section that the notice could not be removed.  This violates
> the copyright agreement to add to Wikipedia (no invariant sections).  I
> respectfully asked Bryce to remove the incompatibility or delete his additions
> that he claimed credit for.  He removed the invariant section.  Let me make the
> rest of this discussion a practical one.  Who among us would have accepted it
> if I would put at the end of *every* 30,000 or so city articles a message that
> the articles were mine and copyrighted "2002 Derek Ramsey"?  I am pretty sure
> (unless I misunderstand) that if you add to Wikipedia you give your consent to
> let others modify your work.  That may mean eliminating it, removing your
> copyright notice, or whatever they feel like doing.  Wikipedia has a copyright
> notice and that should be sufficient.  If you can't agree to it, you can't add
> articles, no matter how much we want them.
> 	Ram-Man
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright query

in_reply_to: <3DE2C31F.1080202@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 04:41:03PM -0800

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >I think I may have edited some articles that *previously* contained
> >copyrighted material, and now I'm wondering if these edits actually need
> >to be deleted, which would be annoying...
> >
> I think we should be all right as long as the article history pages are
> not available to search engines.

In some cases, as you outlined, this could be true.  But in others, I
don't think so.

If someone were to cut and paste a new Tom Clancy novel into
wikipedia, we'd want to get it out completely, even out of the
history.

Under the DMCA, an ISP (me) has a certain "safe harbor" immunity if we
follow a "take down" procedure.  In this example, if Tom Clancy or his
representatives sent a formal demand of the correct form, then I would
be required to "take down" the material in question.  Until then, I
don't have to do anything, although we strive for a much higher level
of care, due to our interest in having the database be "copyright
clean" for potential licensees.

As a practical matter, I'm not very worried about copyright lawsuits.
If a copyright holder has a problem with anything we are doing, then
we'll gladly comply with their demands instantly to avoid a lawsuit.
We aren't copyright protestors in that sense.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

in_reply_to: <20021129145121.GA686@tavaiah>; from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:51:21PM +0100

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Well, images I want won't rally be external, but won't be uploaded either.
> In any case, linking to external images should be policy issue,
> not something that is forced by software.

Well, some policy issues should be forced by software.

What images are you talking about that won't really be external but
won't be uploaded either?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> Helga is back on the Wikipedia (see the user talk for H. Jonat). As far as
> I can tell, she was banned on September 9, for three months. Have I missed
> an announcement, or is this return without Jimbo's knowledge/assent?

This return is without my knowledge or assent.  She's supposed to talk to me
first.

--Jimbo


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz stop harrassing Helga

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Lir wrote:

>>Plz stop harrassing Helga.

>With all due respect, Lir, you will appreciate that your impaired
>credibility on Wikipedia means that your intervention on issues
>concerning Helga may be counterproductive to your apparent
>intentions.... or more crudely put:  With friends like you she doesn't
>need enemies.

Ah, but perhaps this is Lir's plan all along!

See, Lir sees things in highly politicised terms,
and is a leftist (an anarcosocial-communist, to be precise),
while Helga's edits could easily be seen as rightwing
(perhaps sympathetic to Nazis, and definitely antiCommunist).
If Lir does see them that way, and thus identifies Helga as an enemy,
the naturally this is just what she would do!

-- Toby


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz stop harrassing Helga

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 07:15:58AM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
>See, Lir sees things in highly politicised terms,
>and is a leftist (an anarcosocial-communist, to be precise),

No.  He adopts the rhetoric of libertian socialism, but is really a
burn-and-smash nihilist.  Not the same thing at all, and rather a
discredit to freedom lovers everywhere.

>while Helga's edits could easily be seen as rightwing
>(perhaps sympathetic to Nazis, and definitely antiCommunist).

Even libertarian socialists are firmly opposed to Marxism, Leninism, and
Stalinism. As for the Nazis, they were socialists too.

>If Lir does see them that way, and thus identifies Helga as an enemy,
>the naturally this is just what she would do!

In which case we should deny Lir the impression that he is still able to
manipulate or have an effect on the Wikipedia.

Helga does seem to have returned; I haven't seen a long string of edit
wars like before; I hope she talks to Jimmy.  When I saw her reply on
her talk page, I assumed her account had actually been unblocked in the
database itself.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>* It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
>  <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
>  be error in real TeX)

Even if you fix the user unfriendliness of ^,
this should still produce e ^ {\sin} \alpha,
not e ^ {\sin \alpha}, as you seem to expect.
Unless you're changing TeX's entire philosophy of grouping,
which doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 04:53:07PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>What's the point? The TeX can be directly edited, it doesn't need its
>own namespace or to be stored in an image namespace => waste of space
>and user confusion.

I notice that a TeX namespace is nicely supported in Clutches new
scheme; the actual TeX would go in the comment field, and the
PNG generated from it would go into the data field.  It would be like a
special kind of image.

I personally am in favor of a [[tex:]] namespace.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:31:24PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>They don't want to do
>
>	[[TeX:My formula]]
>
>then create the TeX page, then go back to the page and continue writing.
>So should the <math> .. </math> pair transparently create a new page?
>That sounds like an awful idea.

Although that is a possibility, it wasn't what I had in mind.  I was
thinking something like [[tex:\pi * 2]], and the image and page would be
generated when you saved your edit, if they didn't already exist.  Every
day or so, "orphaned" articles in the tex namespace could be deleted
entirely with a single simple, non-cpu-intensive, non-database-lagging
query.  These "objects" would only exist in the current and pages tables;
they'd never reach the deleted or previous tables.

>Tomasz' TeX scheme is already quite well thought out. It only needs some
>tweaks to be useful IMHO.

If we ever start getting the content and daily hits that PlanetMath is
getting, watch server performance drop into the toilet.  tex itself is
not fast to run.  Stick 10 of these tex invocations in, and the page
will take a long time to load.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga's back and no one's harassing her, dammit

body:
Lir, in answer to your questions:  1) it was an
ultimatum.  Helga wants it to be a treaty because she
is trying to prove that most of what is now Poland and
the Baltic states, along with much of Hungary, the
Czech Republic, and Slovakia, are traditionally part
of an entity anachronistically known as Magna
Germania.  This is somewhat of an oversimplification,
but sums up the essence of over a year of Helga's
"cooperation" on the site.  2) The fact that no one
has taken the time to write on Boleslav's successors
doesn't mean there aren't any, only that no one has
taken the time.  The articles started out as a Helga
demonstration that the Poles were somehow vassals of
the Emperor, and so really their lands were German...

More importantly, I do hope someone is talking to
Helga (hint, Jimmy), because one of her new pages is
entitled something like German cities conquered by the
Soviet Union -- again, something that by itself could
be seen as almost (but really not) neutral, but is in
fact meaningless separate from a series of articles
that will include information on how these areas were
unfairly conquered by evil communists...

JHK, who was beginning to be re-lured into it at the
end of the quarter, but is now thinking it's still SOSDD.

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 06:01:23PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>Tomasz' texvc generates the images in a directory and re-uses them on
>demand (the TeX strings are hashed and stored in a table). I doubt it
>would be a performance hit at all, but if it would,
>texvc->latex->dvips->convert could easily be executed on a remote
>machine.

Well, that is fine, but I'd prefer having the TeX text and resulting
images in the database.  Makes internal coding a lot easier.  We have
namespaces; there is no reason not to use them.  Having it in-database
lets us check for orphaned equations trivially.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Reinstating ban on Helga

body:
So, what's the easy/correct way to do this?  I can't ban her username, so I want
to ban her ip.  How do I find out her ip easily?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

>I notice that a TeX namespace is nicely supported in Clutches new
>scheme;

You *notice*???

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes redesign proposal

body:
I know you said to reply to the talk page, but I'm so happy about the new design I must gush right here, too!
----
Erik, I really like this redesign of the Recent Changes page. I would like it available as a "verbose" option. Could we have a checkbox on our Set User Preferences page to see recent changes as "regular" or "verbose"?

I would especially like the verbose mode when investigating vandalism reports.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.

So in order to use your system on Wikipedia,
a new user will not only have to learn wiki (easy)
but they'll also have to learn wikiTeX (harder) --
even if they already know TeX!

If you're going to invent a new markup language,
then don't make it look like TeX,
that will only confuse people.

>I think that a ^ b ^ c should also be changed,
>but I'm keeping it to mean an error for now.

At least if you change this to a ^ {b ^ c},
then that's the most obvious thing to change it to.
You can't say that about a ^ \b c -> a ^ {\b c}.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reinstating ban on Helga

body:
On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 09:16, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> So, what's the easy/correct way to do this?  I can't ban her username, so I want
> to ban her ip.  How do I find out her ip easily?

She's still not logging in, so it's very easy indeed!
Same old IP: 66.47.62.78

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ed Poor IP unblocked Helga's IP -- was: Helga banned

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> Having gone back and read that email, I note that this unblocking was in
> violation
> of stated policy and decisions--Jimbo had banned Helga for three months. It may
> be that your reference to a two-month ban that "should have expired" is part of
> why nobody noticed that you had, in fact, changed the rules unilaterally.

Ed informed me before you wrote this that he had made a simple error.
He misread "three months" as "two months" in the relevant email and thought
he was just doing an administrative task that had been previously ignored.

He didn't mean to "change the rules unilaterally".

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Die, 2002-12-03 at 01:11, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Here is newest version.
>
> * It allows configuring directories from LocalSettings.php,
> * It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
>   <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
>   be error in real TeX)
> * It contains a TODO file containing list of all things that
>   should be done before texvc is ready to be used on Wikipedias
>   (copy&paste from my previous emails mostly).

Hi,

works nicely. Making the temp directory for the TeX files user
configurable would be most important IMHO. Right now I have to make my
code directory writable to use texvc, which is not nice.

Here's a TeX->MathML converter we could use:
http://mathosphere.net/editeurml/doc_english.html

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] New vandal bot attack !

body:
December 1st & december 2nd the french wiki was attacked by a vandal bot.
It serially replace articles content by a short statement.
Please speed up the security revision of the software !
What about a repair bot ?
Someone is working on ?
Can we help ?
Until now, there were always someone on wiki to block the bot IPs,
but if the vandal launch the bot where noone is logging, it can be
catastrophic.
Please help.

Aoineko


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiFR-l] Alerte de vandalisme

body:
--- athymik <athymik at ifrance.com> wrote:
> Des nouvelles :
>
> * Une autre vague a ?t? repous?e...
> * LAG total ! On peut m?me plus voir ce qu'il fait !
>
> Une id?e ?
> Merci ;-)
>
> Tim

Je suis de retour depuis 15 mn

Aucune connection a aucun site

Good news

We are safe, horray !!!

Bad news : maybe the lag is happening because the
assault moved to another place

Do not restart the server !!  When down, we are safe
!!!

Athymyk, seriously, could you tomorrow work on a
"REPAIRBOT"

I agree with it by default !!!!

below some thoughts

A vandal bot not taking all the advantages it could is
either
* a vandal managed by an idiot
* a fire drill

Typically
* running the bot under an ip rather than loggued in
user
* giving up after a couple of minutes
* only using a dozen ip at most
* running on small wikis at the very moment when it is
most likely for people to be watching rather than
off-peak hours
* same comment and same text everywhere

== How could we detect a vandal bot ? ==
* more than xxx edits per minut with a max of yy edits
per t mn
* replacement of a text of more than xxx characters
per a chain of less than yyy characters, this more
than t times (especially the same text)
* replacement of a text of more than xxx characters
per picture, this more than t times (especially the
same picture)
* replacement of a text of more than xxx characters
per blank page, this more than t times
* identical comment per same user more than t times

Pros : some perfectly acceptable actions can be
repeted many times (reversion, typos...)
:reponse : why not make a list of old-hands loggued
users who might be excluded from the watch ?

== How could detection system alert people ? ==
* automatic alert on mailing lists (main list,
wikitech list, specific language list)
* personnal mail alert for designed users, for
specific language
* general alert with visual indicator on all wikipedia
(specific to language, example : interlanguage gets
red)
* personnal alert on talk pages of designed used

== How could we stop the vandal bot ? ==

* international sysops
* in recent change, the status of the ip or of the
loggued-user must be displayed ("block this ip" or "ip
blocked")
* possibility to limit the number of edit per page of
a loggued-in user per a sysop
cons : abuse during edit war
answer : peer pressure

== How could we repair the damage ? ==
* RepairBot
Spec :

1. accessibility
:from the special pages
:directly from recent change by clicking on the "ip
blocked" link
:sysop only ?
:feature available only for blocked user or ip to
limit abuse

2. Displays a page, with the vandal ip or user name,
list of pages with "top" qualification (vandal was
last to edit)
3. the repairBot go through all those pages one after
the other; check if the last edit was the vandal one,
revert to the last before vandalism.
4. repairBot is a non-loggued ip, to be stopped by a
sysop

cons : abuse during edit war
Answer : the bot could be used only by a sysop
different from the one who did the block

>
> > Peut-?tre revenir m'aider maintenant... il est
> revenu !!!
> >
> > > holalala, mais qu est ce qu on va faire !!!!!
> > >
> > > --- athymik <athymik at ifrance.com> wrote:
> > > > Bonjour ? tous,
> > > >
> > > > Iala'29899 est revenu nous dire bonjour alors
> :
> > > >
> > > > * diff) (hist) . . Alcalo?de; 22:16 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albin; 22:16 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Alberta; 22:16 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albert King; 22:16 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albert Ducrocq; 22:15 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albert Collins; 22:15 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albert Camus; 22:15 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albanie; 22:15 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Albanais; 22:15 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Alan Greenspan; 22:15 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Ai; 22:15 . . Francis
> (revert)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Alan Cox; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Alain Madelin; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Alain Jupp?; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Alain-Fournier; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Al-Bahnasah; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akseli Gallen-Kallela;
> 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akira Kurosawa; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akihito; 22:14 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akihabara; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akh?naton; 22:14 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akhit; 22:13 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akhenaton; 22:13 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akh; 22:13 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Aker; 22:13 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akenaton; 22:13 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Akachan; 22:13 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Aka; 22:13 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Aisne; 22:13 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Aires prot?g?es; 22:13 . .
> > > > 213.4.108.197 (bloquer)
> > > > (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Ain; 22:12 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Aiguchi; 22:12 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Aichi; 22:12 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899
> > > > RULEZ)
> > > > * (diff) (hist) . . Ai; 22:12 . .
> 213.4.108.197
> > > > (bloquer) (Iala'29899 RULEZ)
> > > >
> > > > Voila... @+ HELP ! On est que trois...
> > > >
> > > > Tim
> > >
> > >
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> > >
> > > > GRAND JEU SMS : Pour gagner un NOKIA 7650,
> envoyez
> > > > le mot IF au 61321
> > > > (prix d'un SMS + 0.35 euro). Un SMS vous dira
> si
> > > > vous avez gagn?.
> > > > R?glement :
> http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/sign.sms
> > > >
> > > >
> _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiFR-l mailing list
> > > > WikiFR-l at wikipedia.org
> > > >
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikifr-l
> > >
> > >
> __________________________________________________
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> > > Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up
> now.
> > > http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiFR-l mailing list
> > > WikiFR-l at wikipedia.org
> > >
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikifr-l
> > >
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> > > GRAND JEU SMS : Pour gagner un NOKIA 7650,
> envoyez le mot IF au 61321
> > > (prix d'un SMS + 0.35 euro). Un SMS vous dira si
> vous avez gagni.
> > > Rhglement :
> http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/sign.sms
> >
> >
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> > GRAND JEU SMS : Pour gagner un NOKIA 7650, envoyez
> le mot IF au 61321
> > (prix d'un SMS + 0.35 euro). Un SMS vous dira si
> vous avez gagn?.
> > R?glement : http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/sign.sms
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiFR-l mailing list
> > WikiFR-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikifr-l
> >
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> > GRAND JEU SMS : Pour gagner un NOKIA 7650, envoyez
> le mot IF au 61321
> > (prix d'un SMS + 0.35 euro). Un SMS vous dira si
> vous avez gagni.
> > Rhglement : http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/sign.sms
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> GRAND JEU SMS : Pour gagner un NOKIA 7650, envoyez
> le mot IF au 61321
> (prix d'un SMS + 0.35 euro). Un SMS vous dira si
> vous avez gagn?.
> R?glement : http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/sign.sms
>
=== message truncated ===

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subject: [Wikitech-l] "View article" link changed

body:
As per Mav's request, the "View article" link is now context-dependent
(code in CVS). "View Wikipedia page" for Wikipedia: pages was too long,
so I use "View meta page" instead. I know we already have meta.wiki, but
nobody suggested anything better (even though I asked), and technically,
these are meta pages (pages about the encyclopedia).

I have included a German translation, but this *will* break translations
in other Wikipedias (i.e. English text will be shown). To fix this, text
for articlepage, imagepage, wikipediapage, userpage needs to be included
in Language??.php instead of the text for subjectpage.

Regards,

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


body:
I unblocked Helga's IP on November 12th and reported this on the mailing list as follows:

http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-November/007408.html

However, to my regret and consternation, I note that my e-mail was so obscure as to fail to catch anyone's attention.

Ed Poor


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Say 'high' to a new sysop

body:
Why don't we give Tokerboy (aka Tucci) sysop rights? I have developer rights, so if no one objects in the next few hours I'll just run the script.

We'll have a party with cake and some other more potent goodies later this evening... ;-)

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Tucci [mailto:tucci528 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 3:50 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #25 - 9 msgs

> You forgot a vital piece of information. By which
> user name do you want sysop
> user rights? Tokerboy or Tucci528 (I assume Tokerboy
> since that is the user
> name you seem to be using these days).

Tokerboy, definitely.  I only used Tucci528 before I
could think of anything better (I'm indecisive).

I was out of town for a few days, and I thought for
sure I'd have about a million digests waiting for me.
Turns out there were three, so I guess I'm not the
only one who was vacationing from wikipedia during Thanksgiving.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 12:31, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.
>
> So in order to use your system on Wikipedia,
> a new user will not only have to learn wiki (easy)
> but they'll also have to learn wikiTeX (harder) --
> even if they already know TeX!

Changing TeX markup to something equivalently opaque is an impressively
bad idea.

Rather, feel free to design your own idiosyncratic markup. Just don't
impose it on anyone else; make sure that Wikipedia uses standard TeX.

If only so we can simply cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.

Has anyone who's interested in doing all this mathwork contacted anyone
working on that project?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Is server down?

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E0A5D17A@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 03:01:29PM -0500

body:
I am able to ping it.  Brion sent a note earlier that he was
rebooting.  And if your email came through to the list, this suggests
that at least sendmail is working on the machine.

However, I'm currently unable to reach the website, nor am I able to
ssh in.

So the machine is up, but not responding to http or ssh.

I will continue probing for a few minutes before doing anything drastic.

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I'm not getting any response from www.wikipedia.org and I'm guessing that something's wrong on the server.
>
> Should I try to reboot it remotely, or what?
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Reinstating ban on Helga

body:
Jimbo,

Helga Jonat (H. Jonat) uses 66.47.62.78 for her IP address.

   See: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=66.47.62.78

Any user with sysop rights ought to be able to block her IP from Recent Changes.

If that fails, I can run a query to block either:
(A) her IP
(B) her username, or
(C) both A & B

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 12:16 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Reinstating ban on Helga

So, what's the easy/correct way to do this?  I can't ban her username, so I want
to ban her ip.  How do I find out her ip easily?

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Reinstating ban on Helga

body:
You could also just enter the following in your browser:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Blockip&ip=164.58.161.98

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ed Poor IP unblocked Helga's IP -- was: Helga banned


subject: [Wikipedia-l] FW: Say 'high' to a new sysop

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W.
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 12:37 PM
To: 'wikien-l at wikipedia.org'
Subject: Say 'high' to a new sysop

Why don't we give Tokerboy (aka Tucci) sysop rights? I have developer rights, so if no one objects in the next few hours I'll just run the script.

We'll have a party with cake and some other more potent goodies later this evening... ;-)

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Tucci [mailto:tucci528 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 3:50 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #25 - 9 msgs

> You forgot a vital piece of information. By which
> user name do you want sysop
> user rights? Tokerboy or Tucci528 (I assume Tokerboy
> since that is the user
> name you seem to be using these days).

Tokerboy, definitely.  I only used Tucci528 before I
could think of anything better (I'm indecisive).

I was out of town for a few days, and I thought for
sure I'd have about a million digests waiting for me.
Turns out there were three, so I guess I'm not the
only one who was vacationing from wikipedia during Thanksgiving.


subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: Say 'high' to a new sysop


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Ed Poor IP unblocked Helga's IP -- was:
  Helga banned

body:
At 12:28 PM 12/3/02 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>I unblocked Helga's IP on November 12th and reported this on the mailing
>list as follows:
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-November/007408.html
>
>However, to my regret and consternation, I note that my e-mail was so
>obscure as to fail to catch anyone's attention.

Having gone back and read that email, I note that this unblocking was in
violation
of stated policy and decisions--Jimbo had banned Helga for three months. It may
be that your reference to a two-month ban that "should have expired" is part of
why nobody noticed that you had, in fact, changed the rules unilaterally.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: [Wikipedia-l] Ed Poor IP unblocked Helga's IP -- was:  Helga banned

body:
Vicki wrote:

> Having gone back and read that email, I note that this unblocking was
> in violation of stated policy and decisions--Jimbo had banned Helga
> for three months. It may be that your reference to a two-month ban
> that "should have expired" is part of why nobody noticed that you
> had, in fact, changed the rules unilaterally.

Vicki,

You are right, and I'm sorry that I jumped the gun. I have also apologized privately to Jimbo.

Based on discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list, I think Jimbo is going to restore the ban.

Actually, any sysop can do it. Simply click on the following URL.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Blockip&ip=164.58.161.98

You'll be taken to a confirmation page, where you can enter the reason. Then, click the "Block this address" button.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ed Poor IP unblocked Helga's IP -- was:  Helga banned


subject: [Wikitech-l] I'm working on the server

body: But I have very few clues at this point.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Tuesday 03 December 2002 12:55, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poor, Edmund W.
> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 12:37 PM
> To: 'wikien-l at wikipedia.org'
> Subject: Say 'high' to a new sysop
>
>
> Why don't we give Tokerboy (aka Tucci) sysop rights? I have developer
> rights, so if no one objects in the next few hours I'll just run the
> script.
>
> We'll have a party with cake and some other more potent goodies later this
> evening... ;-)

I'd bring the sage if I had some - but all I have is basil (and the one you
see in the picture has lost all its leaves - I brought its son inside).

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] Partial victory declared

body:
Well, things seem sort of normal again now.  There is no definitive
answer as to what was going on.  It seems likely to have had something
to do with the apc cache.

Brion has a very safe looking script to clear the apc cache, I see
nothing wrong with running it.  But it seemed "stuck", and the site
was very unhappy, and when he kill -9'd it, the site seemed better.

But at roughly the same time, he disabled apc caching completely,
which is probably a negative for performance to some extent.

So, we're running again, but I'm not at all confident that we understand
the problem.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
> > Why don't we give Tokerboy (aka Tucci) sysop rights? I have developer
> > rights, so if no one objects in the next few hours I'll just run the
> > script.
> >
> > We'll have a party with cake and some other more potent goodies later this
> > evening... ;-)
>
> I'd bring the sage if I had some - but all I have is basil (and the one you
> see in the picture has lost all its leaves - I brought its son inside).
>
> phma

I'm going to take your wry comment as a tacit endorsement, thus bringing the tally to 4 in favor, none opposed.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: What I just did

in_reply_to: <1038952563.2301.75.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 01:56:01PM -0800

body:
Everything seems more or less normal now, but I'm going to leave
MaxClients down around 100 for a little while, just to see how it
goes.  In an hour or two, if all is well, I'll set it back up to 150.

150 is the default, and generally not the best choice in my
experience.  On Bomis, we usually set it much higher, but only after a
fair amount of experimenting with memory usage, etc.  Possibly the 150
clients setting is a performance bottleneck on most days.

--Jimbo


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
Once she is back, there is certainly no reason to block her again, as long as she remains within the boundaries of NPOV.

Danny


from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz do not slander me

body:
Plz do not discuss my sexuality, political viewpoints, religion, philosophy, or the like. I have not discussed these things with you and those of you doing so are slandering me.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Is server down?

body:
I'm not getting any response from www.wikipedia.org and I'm guessing that something's wrong on the server.

Should I try to reboot it remotely, or what?

Ed Poor


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Here's a proposal with a GUI mockup of a more powerful, dynamic Recent
Changes page, as I suggested earlier:

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

Please post comments on the Talk page.

Regards,

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


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz do not slander me

body:
--- Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] <lapollutionestsimauvaise at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Plz do not discuss my sexuality, political viewpoints, religion,
> philosophy, or the like. I have not discussed these things with you
> and those of you doing so are slandering me.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

Adam Aka Bridget aka Lir,

We wo are US citizens are exercising our constitutionally guaranteed
right of free association and free speech in private. If you feel
strongly enough that you have a case against us, please contact the
State Attorney's office in your state and ask initiate legal
proceedings.

-OR-

Go rant on slashdot.

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

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 06:37:10AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Well, images I want won't rally be external, but won't be uploaded either.
> > In any case, linking to external images should be policy issue,
> > not something that is forced by software.
>
> Well, some policy issues should be forced by software.

I don't think this should be one of them.

> What images are you talking about that won't really be external but
> won't be uploaded either?

Math generated from pseudo-TeX.
See other threads on wikitech-l.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>>What images are you talking about that won't really be external but
>>won't be uploaded either?
>>
>>
>
>Math generated from pseudo-TeX.
>See other threads on wikitech-l.
>
>
External images are Evil(TM). Either a [[tex:]] namespace, or you
generate them in the upload directory somewhere and use [[image:]].

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] can't connect--and it looks like nobody can

body:
I tried going to the recent changes page, and got this error message:

Warning: Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection
errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in
/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 19
Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1

Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection errors.
Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
please notify the Wikipedia developers.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] sorry--reloading worked

body:
Please disregard the tone of panic in my previous message--clearing my
cache and reloading worked.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Die, 2002-12-03 at 16:20, Magnus Manske wrote:
> External images are Evil(TM). Either a [[tex:]] namespace, or you
> generate them in the upload directory somewhere and use [[image:]].

What's the point? The TeX can be directly edited, it doesn't need its
own namespace or to be stored in an image namespace => waste of space
and user confusion.

External images are evil because they can be abused or disappear. Here
the files are local, and the LocalSettings.php contains the path where
the autogenerated TeX images are stored, so this can be easily made an
allowed URL for "external" (i.e. non-namespaced) images.

Regards,

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiWik downdown

body:
Well, it looks like Wikipedia has been down for about 2 hours. Not that I want my money back or anything ;-)

But Jimbo and Brion have been trying to restore service. I myself took a look, but I'm the new guy and I couldn't do anything helpful.

For now, we are stuck in Read-Only mode until someone smarter than me decides to unlock the database. So browse, away, folks! And save all your edits off-line...

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiWik downdown


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.

Unless the equation contains a TeX construct that texvc doesn't
understand. Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.

I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro packages,
exactly what PlanetMath provides.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 5

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Open questions:
> * How to put TeX in safe mode ?

In tetex's texmf.cnf
 # Don't execute user's shell code:
 shell_escape = f

 # Don't openout "dot" files or files with absolute paths
 openout_any = p

Many distributions use these settings by default. In addition, TeX and
the other tools should be run as some nobody user and chroot'ed.

Axel

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from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz stop harrassing Helga

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> See, Lir sees things in highly politicised terms,
> and is a leftist (an anarcosocial-communist, to be precise),

I don't agree that Lir is a leftist.  He's just immature, looking for
a project where he can spend his energy.  Why not give him a project?
Perhaps he can learn to program PHP and fix Wikipedia's performance
problems.  Perhaps he can learn Serbian and translate the SH
Wikipedia?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Die, 2002-12-03 at 17:07, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 04:53:07PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> >What's the point? The TeX can be directly edited, it doesn't need its
> >own namespace or to be stored in an image namespace => waste of space
> >and user confusion.
>
> I notice that a TeX namespace is nicely supported in Clutches new
> scheme; the actual TeX would go in the comment field, and the
> PNG generated from it would go into the data field.  It would be like a
> special kind of image.
>
> I personally am in favor of a [[tex:]] namespace.

Again, what's the point? Users don't want to create separate TeX pages,
they want to use TeX as part of their regular articles. So they want to
write, as Tomasz' scheme allows them to, stuff like

	<math>
	\pi * 4 / 2
	</math>

They don't want to do

	[[TeX:My formula]]

then create the TeX page, then go back to the page and continue writing.
So should the <math> .. </math> pair transparently create a new page?
That sounds like an awful idea.

If you want an application where namespaces would be useful, take a look
at the poll scheme described here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ADecision_Making_Process

Tomasz' TeX scheme is already quite well thought out. It only needs some
tweaks to be useful IMHO.

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 08:07:10AM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >* It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
> >  <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
> >  be error in real TeX)
>
> Even if you fix the user unfriendliness of ^,
> this should still produce e ^ {\sin} \alpha,
> not e ^ {\sin \alpha}, as you seem to expect.
> Unless you're changing TeX's entire philosophy of grouping,
> which doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.

This is NOT TeX, the same way Wiki markup is not HTML.
It will just provide the best features of TeX,
and add lot of both syntactic and semantic sugar
to make it more user friendly.

I think that a ^ b ^ c should also be changed,
but I'm keeping it to mean an error for now.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Die, 2002-12-03 at 17:34, Jonathan Walther wrote:

> If we ever start getting the content and daily hits that PlanetMath is
> getting, watch server performance drop into the toilet.  tex itself is
> not fast to run.  Stick 10 of these tex invocations in, and the page
> will take a long time to load.

Tomasz' texvc generates the images in a directory and re-uses them on
demand (the TeX strings are hashed and stored in a table). I doubt it
would be a performance hit at all, but if it would,
texvc->latex->dvips->convert could easily be executed on a remote
machine.

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 12:37:14PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 12:31, Toby Bartels wrote:
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >
> > >Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.
> >
> > So in order to use your system on Wikipedia,
> > a new user will not only have to learn wiki (easy)
> > but they'll also have to learn wikiTeX (harder) --
> > even if they already know TeX!
>
> Changing TeX markup to something equivalently opaque is an impressively
> bad idea.
>
> Rather, feel free to design your own idiosyncratic markup. Just don't
> impose it on anyone else; make sure that Wikipedia uses standard TeX.
>
> If only so we can simply cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.
>
> Has anyone who's interested in doing all this mathwork contacted anyone
> working on that project?

The only things that are changed are things that wouldn't be legal
in TeX anyway. Care is taken so that everything that is legal TeX
stays legal pseudo-TeX.

You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.


subject: [WikiEN-l] New sysop Tokerboy (was: Say 'high' to a new sysop)

body:
There being no objection...

I gave sysop rights to Tokerboy.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:03:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> >
> > > You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.
> >
> > Unless the equation contains a TeX construct that texvc doesn't
> > understand.
>
> While texvc lacks support for lot of important features now,
> I don't think it will be difficult to make it support 99% of
> equations that are used on MathPlanet.

And 80% of those equations we can already represent in Wikipedia using
clean HTML. The remaining features are the fun stuff: commutative
diagrams, matrices and tables, Latex figures, equation arrays, amssymb
etc. That is what TeX mode is really needed for.

> > Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
> > equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.
>
> Well, texvc creates real TeX at some point, so you could copy and
> paste that.

As a Wikipedia user, I don't have access to that.

> > I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro
> > packages, exactly what PlanetMath provides.
>
> I'm strongly against.
> Being format-independent is too important.

I don't think the goal of format independence for Wikipedia markup has
been agreed upon or even been mentioned before. And while I agree that
it is desirable, I don't see that it is clearly more important than the
benefits that come from straight TeX. TeX is not just for math nerds.
There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge benefits
to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.

Furthermore, trying to become ouput format independent by inventing a
new input format strikes me as less than helpful.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz do not slander me

body:
No slander has occured or can occur.  Now if you want to talk about libel... ;)

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

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons]
  To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
  Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 5:37 PM
  Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz do not slander me

  Plz do not discuss my sexuality, political viewpoints, religion, philosophy, or the like. I have not discussed these things with you and those of you doing so are slandering me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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  Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 5

body:
Main changes:
* MD5 is stored in binary in database now, so MySQL has easier life
* Everything produced by renderMath is protected from further evaluation
  Mechanism for doing that is ugly as hell (it's almost the same as one used
  by <nowiki>)
* texvc is compiled to native code by default now. It probably won't make much
  difference in terms of speed, as it's latex dvips and convert who take
  most resources, but its free gaim, so why not use it (well, we could
  also consider stripping texvc binary to make it a bit smaller, or doing some
  really obscure optimalizations, but texvc is really not a performance
  bottleneck).

Open questions:
* How to put TeX in safe mode ?
* Did you really measure that dir/a/ab/abcdef012345678.png is significantly
    faster than dir/abcdef012345678.png and I should make math mode use this
    trick too or you were just guessing and I can ignore that ?
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 20:47, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:03:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro packages,
> > exactly what PlanetMath provides.
>
> I'm strongly against.
> Being format-independent is too important.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean there.

I think having the standard that we should be able to cut-and-paste
between the two resources is an appropriate constraint. At worst there
should be an "export to PlanetMath-readable format" built in from the
start.


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>The only things that are changed are things that wouldn't be legal
>in TeX anyway. Care is taken so that everything that is legal TeX
>stays legal pseudo-TeX.

Thus, "a ^ \b c" is interpreted as "a ^ {\b c}"
*if* \b is a command (like \sin) that can't legally follow ^,
but "a ^ \b c" interpreted as "a ^ \b c" (= "{a ^ \b} c")
if \b is a command (like \pi) that *can* legally follow ^.

I don't think that this counts as user friendly.
There are good reasons for TeX's consistent notion of grouping.

I am not arguing that extending the range of legal TeX
is an inherently bad idea, only that it's tricky,
and that you didn't do it well in this particular case.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>I'm strongly against.
>Being format-independent is too important.

How is TeX not format independent?
LaTeX input can be output in various forms:
* human readable LaTeX source (most of the time)
* HTML and GIF (using latex2html)
* HTML and MathML (using mathosphere)
* PostScript (using latex and dvips)
* PDF (using pdflatex)
* probably more (we could search CTAN)
This is more than texvc can do!

That is, more than texvc so far, at least.
But if you want texvc to output a different format,
then you'll have to write the programme to do that.
Why not write the programme for LaTeX instead?

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Last edit rollback

body:
I think I forgot to mention this except on the French list; earlier
today I added a rollback-last-edit function (for sysops). It's currently
accessible from the user contributions page; next to 'top' revisions,
there's a 'rollback' link which will resave that page with the most
recent revision by an author other than the most current.

It's basically just a shortcut for page->history->old revision->
edit->save, not a new functionality, but rather handy if you've got to
do more than a couple at a time.

(See changes to Article.php; slighter to Language.php, wiki.phtml,
SpecialContributions.php)

I've also put the current CVS revision of everything as of a few hours
ago onto all the languages, so we should be running consistent.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 09:06:18AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 06:01:23PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> >Tomasz' texvc generates the images in a directory and re-uses them on
> >demand (the TeX strings are hashed and stored in a table). I doubt it
> >would be a performance hit at all, but if it would,
> >texvc->latex->dvips->convert could easily be executed on a remote
> >machine.
>
> Well, that is fine, but I'd prefer having the TeX text and resulting
> images in the database.  Makes internal coding a lot easier.  We have
> namespaces; there is no reason not to use them.  Having it in-database
> lets us check for orphaned equations trivially.
>
There is no reason to have the image in the DB. All you need is the
meta-information to do what you want to do. And that's what's already
going to be put into the DB. You can check for orphaned images without
having the actual image in the database.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz stop harrassing Helga

body:
Clutch wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>See, Lir sees things in highly politicised terms,
>>and is a leftist (an anarcosocial-communist, to be precise),

>No.  He adopts the rhetoric of libertian socialism, but is really a
>burn-and-smash nihilist.  Not the same thing at all, and rather a
>discredit to freedom lovers everywhere.

Goodness, I'm not claiming that Adam/Lir is an *intelligent* political thinker!
Only that (s)he (under either name) identifies with the political left.
(Just look at the list at [[m:anarcosocial-communism]].)
That's enough for my theory -- he can still be a discredit.

>>while Helga's edits could easily be seen as rightwing
>>(perhaps sympathetic to Nazis, and definitely antiCommunist).

>Even libertarian socialists are firmly opposed to Marxism, Leninism, and
>Stalinism. As for the Nazis, they were socialists too.

Sure, *real* anarchists oppose Marxism, but you just said that Lir is a faker.
And even then, anarchists oppose Redbaiting, which Helga has tendencies toward.
(I don't want to charge Helga with anything seriously along those lines;
the only issue is what one might reasonably expect Lir to perceive.)
Also, calling Hitler "socialist" is like, well, calling Stalin "socialist".
(Or calling either "democratic", which both liars claimed to be as well.)

>>If Lir does see them that way, and thus identifies Helga as an enemy,
>>the naturally this is just what she would do!

>In which case we should deny Lir the impression that he is still able to
>manipulate or have an effect on the Wikipedia.

I only want Lir to get the impression that I made a joke out of the situation.
And this is enough work to sustain that joke, I think.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 6

body:
Main changes:
* diff against newer version of CVS
* Failure message localized
* configurable temporary directory
* temporary file names prefixed by pid, so two texvc generating the same
  image won't clash

Code is gradually getting closer to production quality.
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body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>I unblocked Helga's IP on November 12th and reported this on the mailing list as follows:

>http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-November/007408.html

>However, to my regret and consternation, I note that my e-mail was so obscure as to fail to catch anyone's attention.

I noticed it at the time, but then I forgot all about it!

So, yes, some administrator just made a mistake, and it was Ed ^_^.
So Ec is right that we can judge her based on her actions now,
and not worry that she managed to evade Jimmy by some underhanded tactic.

-- Toby


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] new GNU FDL version 1.2

body:
Dear Wikipedians!

I just read in the Debian Weekly News that the Free Software Foundation
has published a new revision of the GNU Free Documentation License,
version 1.2:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html

Here's a discussion of the changes on the debian-legal mailinglist:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200211/msg00285.h
tml

I have no clue about these things, but I thought it might be of interest
for our project. Do we gain anything if we change to the new version?

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 5

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:14:56PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> > Open questions:
> > * How to put TeX in safe mode ?
>
> In tetex's texmf.cnf
>  # Don't execute user's shell code:
>  shell_escape = f
>
>  # Don't openout "dot" files or files with absolute paths
>  openout_any = p
>
> Many distributions use these settings by default.

Is it enough ?
Mine says:

% Allow TeX \openin, \openout, or \input on filenames starting with `.'
% (e.g., .rhosts) or outside the current tree (e.g., /etc/passwd)?
% a (any)        : any file can be opened.
% r (restricted) : disallow opening "dotfiles".
% p (paranoid)   : as 'r' and disallow going to parent directories, and
%                  restrict absolute paths to be under $TEXMFOUTPUT.
openout_any = p
openin_any = a

So it would be able to leak lot of informations if it broke restrictions
placed by texvc.

> In addition, TeX and
> the other tools should be run as some nobody user and chroot'ed.

I'm paranoid so it sounds like a good idea to me.
What do Wikipedia admins think about that ?


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:03:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> > You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.
>
> Unless the equation contains a TeX construct that texvc doesn't
> understand.

While texvc lacks support for lot of important features now,
I don't think it will be difficult to make it support 99% of equations
that are used on MathPlanet.

Is it possibe to extract all equations (/$.*?$/) from PlanetMath somehow,
so I can test how much of that does texvc support and see what features
it lacks ?

> Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
> equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.

Well, texvc creates real TeX at some point, so you could copy and paste that.

> I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro packages,
> exactly what PlanetMath provides.

I'm strongly against.
Being format-independent is too important.


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 7

body:
Main changes:
* functions with optional parameter, like \sqrt[n] m vs. \sqrt m
* \mbox {foo}, now ASCII-only, but it will have to support Unicode in future.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 07:02:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > While texvc lacks support for lot of important features now,
> > I don't think it will be difficult to make it support 99% of
> > equations that are used on MathPlanet.
>
> And 80% of those equations we can already represent in Wikipedia using
> clean HTML. The remaining features are the fun stuff: commutative
> diagrams, matrices and tables, Latex figures, equation arrays, amssymb
> etc. That is what TeX mode is really needed for.

Not really. Fractions, sums and integrals can't be represented in clean HTML,
but can be represented in texvc's pseudo-TeX. Many things that are
represented in HTML look ugly on graphical browsers and are completely
illegible in text mode.

And there will always be things that will have to be done by hand and uploaded.

> > > Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
> > > equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.
> >
> > Well, texvc creates real TeX at some point, so you could copy and
> > paste that.
>
> As a Wikipedia user, I don't have access to that.

This will be fixed.

> TeX is not just for math nerds.
> There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
> diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge benefits
> to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.

You will still be able to compile them on your computer and upload,
just like you can do it now.

> Furthermore, trying to become ouput format independent by inventing a
> new input format strikes me as less than helpful.

texvc can support multiple formats for both input and output.
It supports subset of TeX right now and a few extensions to TeX.

Do you think that some of following extensions should be disabled ?
* % is percent (\% in real TeX), not comment
* \foo aliases for \bar, if there exists HTML entity &foo; that means
  the same thing as \bar
* a couple cases of inserting {}s where TeX would just fail.

If we turn them off we'll get proper subset of TeX.

Would that be any better ?

And texvc can be extended to support "math in html" or whatever markup
you wish.


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

body:
Can anyone find out whether Wikipedia has been censored by China?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2540309.stm

While of course that would be very unfortunate, it would be a great
selling point for the website: "Censored by China!"  I can even see making
some great banners and graphics.  ;-)

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Julie Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz DOO knot tok 2 Leer NEmore

body:
Toby and everybody.  Who cares about Lir or what he
espouses?  It's pretty clear that Adam/Bridget/Lir has
burned most of his/her bridges -- let's please just
leave it at that.  He isn't contributing at present
and lurks on the mailing list more to comment than to
try to learn more about the community and how to work
within it, as far as I can tell.  Let's just leave off
on any speculation that would induce a response that's
other than helpful.  It's just too much of a drain on
our e-mail boxes ;-)

Jules, who apologizes for the header, but thinks we
really should try to maintain some orthographical
standards.

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


from_name: Nathan Silva

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

body:
Currently Wikipedia is blocked according to Harvard.
http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Sanger [mailto:lsanger at nupedia.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 8:08 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

Can anyone find out whether Wikipedia has been censored by China?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Last edit rollback

body:
Thanks, Brion. That will be very helpful for sysops who are undoing vandalism. Will it also let you enter a comment?

There's always a chance that a page deletion or "Hi, mom!" message is more of a newbie experiment than deliberate damage.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Brion Vibber [mailto:brion at pobox.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 2:38 AM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Last edit rollback

I think I forgot to mention this except on the French list; earlier
today I added a rollback-last-edit function (for sysops). It's currently
accessible from the user contributions page; next to 'top' revisions,
there's a 'rollback' link which will resave that page with the most
recent revision by an author other than the most current.

It's basically just a shortcut for page->history->old revision->
edit->save, not a new functionality, but rather handy if you've got to
do more than a couple at a time.

(See changes to Article.php; slighter to Language.php, wiki.phtml,
SpecialContributions.php)

I've also put the current CVS revision of everything as of a few hours
ago onto all the languages, so we should be running consistent.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

body:
Nathan Silva wrote:
> Currently Wikipedia is blocked according to Harvard.
> http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.html

Interesting!  So is Bomis, but then, anyone in their right mind would
block Bomis.  :-)


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Protection against vandalism (was: Last edit rollback)

body:
I often protect a page, before I undo damage to it.

Before reading this thread, my motivation for protecting a damaged page was just to keep the vandal (or newbie experimenter) from mangling the page further. But now I realize that, serendipitously, it also would stop non-sysops from wasting their time duplicating my work.

After I've protected and fixed a number of damaged pages, I then decide whether to label the person responsible a "vandal" or not. If I decide they're a vandal, I block their IP. Then I unprotect all the pages.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 07:02:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > TeX is not just for math nerds.
> > There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
> > diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge
> > benefits to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.
>
> You will still be able to compile them on your computer and upload,
> just like you can do it now.

Sure, but I don't want to, because it's not the wiki way: people who
intend to improve my work are then required to install the necessary
software and recreate the work from scratch. It's clearly much more
user friendly to allow direct editing of the work's description in the
browser.

My point was that you want to give up this advantage for the goal of
output format independence, and that I don't agree with these
priorities.

Axel

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Better yet, if we could write article (even about Taiwan, et al.) so NEUTRALLY that even mainland China had no objections, that would be a big plus -- besides being a public service to China and the world.
>
That's not the way it works.  For many bureaucrats it's the most neutral
articles that are the most offensive.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Plz do not slander me

body:
Lir,

The problem with that approach is that you have by your editing actions
shown us all those things; not that knowing those things about  you
justifies  a negative or hostile attitude in this mailing list or in our
editing behavior.

Some one once said, "Speak that I may know you." A character in Shakespeare
I think.  Well, "act before a large audience and we will know you is just
as true."

Fred

>Plz do not discuss my sexuality, political viewpoints, religion,
>philosophy, or the like. I have not discussed these things with you and
>those of you doing so are slandering me.
>
>
>Do you Yahoo!?
> <http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com>Yahoo! Mail
>Plus - Powerful. Affordable.
><http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com>Sign up now


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

body:
On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 08:53, Nathan Silva wrote:
> Currently Wikipedia is blocked according to Harvard.
> http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.html

The Chinese wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) seems to get through fine,
though.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Last edit rollback

body:
On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 05:55, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Thanks, Brion. That will be very helpful for sysops who are undoing vandalism. Will it also let you enter a comment?

Naw, if you want to leave a comment you can just do it the old-fashioned
way. This is intended more for 'bot gone wild' situations where you have
to revert dozens of mistaken or malicious edits by the same user.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Last edit rollback

body:
On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 05:48, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> > > * So, the revert gets reverted, bringing the vandalism to top again!
> > I did a little test, and this kind of behaviour is indeed possible.
>
> It seems that it's also possible that in the time between someone clicks
> on "delete this page", enters a reason for deletion and clicks on
> "delete", another person could write something useful on the page. The
> page still gets deleted.
>
> The software can detect EditConflicts, so this shouldn't be possible.

Good point. We can stick the last-revision time in as with edits...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censored by China?

body:
I expect some articles are. A good place to find out is on the China forum
at the New York Times. A number of people on the mainland participate in
that forum and could readily test whether certain pages can be accessed.

Fred

>Can anyone find out whether Wikipedia has been censored by China?
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2540309.stm
>
>While of course that would be very unfortunate, it would be a great
>selling point for the website: "Censored by China!"  I can even see making
>some great banners and graphics.  ;-)
>
>Larry
>--
>"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
>the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l