from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
(There must have ben some problem with a mail server somewhere. I
received 4 copies of this email, none made it to the list, & I've
been seeing a number of responses to emails I never saw the
first time around.)

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Skyring wrote:

> On 5/17/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 May 2005, Skyring wrote:
>
> > >
> > > CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
> > >
> > And here we can see several reasons why this proposal stirs up so much
> > resistance.
> >
> > * The assertion that because the style "CE/BCE" is "common usage", it
> > should be exclusive usage. A confusion of categories: is there any proof
> > that if an academic or scientist uses the style "AD/BC", that the
> > editor will change it or reject the submission?
>
> We're talking about a standard usage in a single publication. I make
> no doubt that many organisations and publications have similar
> standards and will edit submitted articles to conform to the standard
> unless there is a good reason not to do so.
>
No, I think you mean *you* are. And you don't offer proof: just confidence
that your assertion is correct. So let's take a look at the possible
evidence, courtesy of Google.

I spent a couple of hours last night with Google, first searching for
"style manual", then two searches within the results: first for "AD BC",
then for "CE BCE" & looked at the first 20 pages returned. I discarded
duplicates, links to Wikipedia (which appeared in both sorts) & Wikipedia
mirrors, then studied -- I did not count -- the opinions of the remaining
29 sites.

(A bone for those of you who are growing tired of this debate, but have
read this far: the Iraq Museum's Internation Open Encyclopedia mirrors
Wikipedia's article [[Common Era]]. Not only do they give credit to WP,
but they also direct readers to Wikipedia to make edits there, content
to show only the most recent copy. I thought that was rather clever.)

While the pages this query produce do not exclusively report from academic
sites (only 22 samples are clearly either from university or academic
sites), it did return pages from a variety of different sites, all of whom
have given this subject some thought, & it provides a rather intreguing
snapshot of opinions on this issue. In brief, this shows that most writers
still standardize on AD/BC, in a manner that suggests they accept it
without any thought of the existence of an alternative by a margin
approaching 2-1; & it shows that those who standardize on CE/BCE are
far more vocal that other people should use it.

The details are as follows. Not all of these 28 pages that concern the
style of its contributors explicitly state whether papers should use either
AD/BC or CE/BCE; only 11 explicitly offered guidance over which style
should be used. (I guess this issue is not as important in academia as
some think it is.) For most, I had to infer what they expected from
the examples the guide provided: if the guide only talks about how to
use "CE/BCE", I scored it as "implicitly for" that style; if the guide
only talks about how to use "AD/BC", I scored it as "implicitly for"
that style.

The results broke down this way: 11 were implicitly for "AD/BC", including
the University of Hawai'i (which I believe has a multicultural student
body) & Middlebury College (which also includes a section about bias-free
content. There was only one site which insisted on using "AD/BC",
commenting "Use 'C.E.' and 'BCE' only when you're joking." (This
comment can be found at
http://response.adv100.com/responsemag/static/staticHtml.jsp?id=31822 --
If this comment offends you, gripe to them, not me.) Because this did
not appear to be an academic site, I almost tossed this response out,
but decided to leave it in after examining all of the results. Even though
I felt the writer would be happier in a place where showing concern for
other people's sensitivities wasn't important -- like the weblog Little
Green Footballs -- I came to understand his POV.

There were 3 guides that showed preference to AD/BC, yet allowed CE/BCE
if the contributor used it; the intent of this stand seemed to give
the individual contributor permission to exercise her/his best judgement.

Four more guides showed no preference for either style, & only provided
guidance on how to use both correctly. One guide -- the American
Anthropogical Association -- provided examples for both on different
web pages, which made my tally a little harder.

One site implicitly assumed contributors would use CE/BCE: the Tibetan &
Himalayan Digital Library.

And 7 guides explicitly required CE/BCE -- although two sites addressed
submissions for books under production for the same editor. And one
college -- the Office of Publications for the College of Staten Island --
insisted that C.E. be placed before the year, not after. (I thought about
removing one of these as a duplicate, but instead decided to leave the
snide comment about CE/BCE in the count.) I was more than a little
surprised at that twist; although I be surprised if that was some
form of protest, it could also be a clue to the erudition behind this dictum.

In short, while the style CE/BCE has many supporters in academe, neither
all academics nor the majority of them support it. Some people may think
the majority *do* support it because its supporters are more vocal; based
on this quick survey, more users of AD/BC are willing to allow others to
use CE/BCE than the other way around, & could be seen as more tolerant
or understanding of other POVs.

But then, I may have misunderstood Skyring's point: that journals must
standardize on one style. If this is the case, then either it does not apply
to Wikipedia -- where in many cases articles are written in different
styles -- or is irrelevant because Wikipedia currently insists on the
same style being used through the article.

Geoff


list: commons-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] Directmedia update

body:
Karl Eichwalder:
> Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> writes:
>
>
>>As you can see, I have written some conversion routines to translate
>>date information from German into English. Other information, however,
>>is primarily in German.

> What you call the English date format actually is the [[ISO 8601]] date
> format and as such it is the official (preferred?) date format in
> Germany and in many other European countries.  For more info see
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

I was not referring to the standard date format, but to information like
"before 300" or "early 19th century", which was translated from German
into English.

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

body:
On Tuesday, May 17, 2005, at 15:11, steven l. rubenstein
<rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:

> Alphax wrote ...
>
> > You mean whether it's plain sense or not? No, it's not. It's actually
> > /more/ POV than BC/AD is, because it makes the *assertion* that the
> > Birth of Jesus, whether is Christ, Lord, Prophet or otherwise, is
> > *common* to *all* cultures - it's Western Imperialism and Political
> > Correctness at its worst.
>
> You have a right to believe this, as you have a right to disagree with my
> proposal.  But it is clear that you didn't read my proposal, since I
> argue against the interpretation you present, and provide a different
> explanation.

No, SLR, this doesn't logically follow; I am of the same (or, at least,
similar) beliefs as Alphax on this issue, which is that cloaking the
Jesus-based calender behind more 'PC' terms is the exact opposite of NPOV,
attempting to hide the western imperialism with a sop to 'minorities'. I
have read your suggestion, and yes, you do mention this, but I disagree with
your argument (and yes - before you suggest this, as you have done before -
I did understand it).

Just because someone reads your argument doesn't mean that they agree with
it. Honest.

[Snip rambling]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: dumps

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> Timwi schrieb:
>
>>For Windows users, I recommend GetRight to download the file in chunks
>>and with interruptions.
>
> What, you recommend mucho $$$ software

Uhm... no?... I recommend something which is free at least in the sense
of "free beer".

> [1] http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

Haven't heard of that yet -- will try that later. I'll send my
complaints about it to you via private mail, mwahaha :-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special variable

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
> news:d6ci8n$t1l$2 at sea.gmane.org...
>
>> Phil Boswell wrote:
>>
>>> Is it not possible to arrive at an article by any other means
>>> than an explicit search? Like clicking a wiki-link perchance? Or
>>> following a link from an outside source?
>>
>> How can a wiki-link or an outside link ever link to [[lilac
>> (color)]] if it is meant to link to [[lilac]]?
>
> How about from a search engine?
> http://clusty.com/search?v%3aproject=clusty-encyclopedia&query=lilac
> for example.

As I already said, by that logic [[George W. Bush]] should probably link
to [[bush]], [[Condoleezza Rice]] should link to [[rice]], ...


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
James Trodel writes ...
>He gets a
>compromise on the Jesus page* (which he claims to support) on Sunday
>and follows it up Sunday night with this proposal.
>*The compromise was to use BC/BCE only and to avoid the use of AD/CE
>all together.

First, we need to keep the debate on the Jesus talk page and the debate
over my proposal separate.  It is clear that the discussion on the
Talk:Jesus page over BCE/CE and BC/AD relates only to the Jesus page.  This
became evident when Tomer added "applies to this article ONLY" on 7:59 9 May:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jesus&diff=13466533&oldid=13466515

Second, as to my then making a proposal, the reason is obvious -- the
debate on the Jesus talk page is limited to changes in the Jesus article,
and in the debate several people argued that there was no clear NPOV policy
concerning this question.  Indeed, on 17:58, 9 May 2005 (UTC) Rangerdude
responded to one of my comments, "Re your statement "And if the policy says
BC/AD is acceptable, that policy should be changed." That's something for
you to take up with the policy itself then if you truly feel that way."

Rangerdude was right which is why I developed a policy proposal.  Is Jim
Trodel saying editors are not allowed to make policy proposals?

Third, the compromise was to use both BCE/CE and BC/AD and I have kept to
that compromise.

James D. Forrester wrote ...
>No, SLR, this doesn't logically follow; I am of the same (or, at least,
>similar) beliefs as Alphax on this issue, which is that cloaking the
>Jesus-based calender behind more 'PC' terms is the exact opposite of NPOV,
>attempting to hide the western imperialism with a sop to 'minorities'. I
>have read your suggestion, and yes, you do mention this, but I disagree with
>your argument (and yes - before you suggest this, as you have done before -
>I did understand it).

James, you may be right.  I am not sure, but I think I was responding to
something Tiwi said ("You know, I've always found this AD vs. CE debate
extremely stupid.") and not Alphax.  Alphax, if this is so I am sorry.  I
was trying to use something you said to raise a much bigger issue, and I am
sorry that (1) I didn't make it clear that the comment just led me to want
to make a comment, rather than that I was replying directly to your
comments, and (2) it may have been Tiwi's comment any way and my using your
name was a mistake.  Please accept my apologies.

As to the point I was trying to make, I still think it is valid.  People
with opposing points of vie often think that each other's view is
stupid.  This is one of the main reasons we have an NPOV policy to begin
with.  Saying that "this debate is stupid" is precisely the reason to have
an NPOV discussion, not to end it.

As to James' own argument against my proposal.  James, I disagree with you
for all of the reasons set out in my proposal.  But I do think you have a
reasonable argument, and I respect that.  I honestly do,

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta-templates considered harmful?

body:
> David Gerard wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#.5B.5BWikipedia:Meta-templates_considered_harmful.5D.5D
> >
> >A question: is there any good reason to keep templates in templates working
> >on the Wikimedia servers?

Absolutely. All the PayPal donation forms require it. Same for any templates
system that has translations (the translations are on one template, and the
form/table is on another). Templates within templates are also extensively used
by many WikiProject to make translation easier.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: privacy problem with anonymous posting

body:
monk at zoomcon.com wrote:
>
> I want to stress again - I by no way meant to disallow anonymous
> posting AT ALL; just to make it more explicit.

We cannot make absolutely any changes that will make editing for
non-logged-in users even the slightest bit more difficult. Many
contributions, especially corrections of subtle errors, come from IP
addresses, and the barrier to helping is already very high (because
people don't expect that they can just edit). The few people that do, we
cannot afford to lose even a single one of those edits.


body:
Skyring wrote:
> It's fun to be deliberately stupid, isn't it?

Please reconsider your attitude towards other people on this mailing
list. Thank you.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

body:
RickK wrote,

>Just because someone (and apparently a majority of the
>people who have expressed an opinion) disagrees with
>your interpretation of NPOV does not mean that we
>don't understand it.
>
>RickK

Rick, I do not think some people do not understand our NPOV policy because
they disagree with me, I think they do not understand (or are committed to)
our NPOV policy because of the way they explain their objections.

I have already shared with the list that there are some people who disagree
with my proposal but whom I respect for their thoughtful explanations.  And
there are a few people I didn't mention.  And in many cases, I told them I
respected their views in a comment to their vote, in the proposal page
itself.  There are many "opposed" votes -- I haven't counted, but if it is
less than half it is still a large number -- that I respect and cannot
argue against.  But there are at least as many votes, and comments on the
page, that convince me that many people do not understand or are committed
to our NPOV policy.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] re: Explanation of Tony Sidaway's block of Pioneer-12,
	who isn't doing anything wrong

body:
As I said earlier, I'm not participating in any more discussion on this
matter, but if you can find an admin prepared to unblock you while you're
still in a licensing dispute with Wikipedia, good for you.


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Semantic Model: first pass

body:
I've made a first pass at a semantic model for wiki content as
a prelude to a more formal syntax.  Please review and comment:

<http://piclab.com/lee/index.php/Wiki_Semantic_Model>

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Export Dictionary?

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Andrew Dunbar wrote:
>
>> While a fully structured re-design would obviously help myself and
>> people wanting to interchange Wiktionary data with .dict data, it
>> would definitely make it much harder for the general user to
>> contribute.
>
> I am interested in knowing why it would be harder to contribute for a
> general user.

I think he just made certain assumptions about the correlation between
database back-end and UI front-end which simply don't hold in general.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised this proposal

body:
I am writing to respond to Ray Saintong's comment of Tue, 17 May 2005
12:06:08 -0700.  I am not, as is customary, going to quote his whole
comment.  His comment was long and thoughtful; to quote the whole thing
would take up too much space, and to excerpt parts of it would not do it
justice.  I will quote only those sentences to which I am specifically
replying; assume I do not have any major problem with the bulk of his
comment.

The first thing I want to say is that I appreciate its thoughtfulness, and
if a hundred people responded to my proposal as thoughtfully -- even if
they all voted to oppose my proposal -- I'd be happy.  I agree with you
that people may disagree with my interpretation of NPOV.  I still believe
many do not understand the policy and I think the comments on my proposal
page give ample evidence of it.  But among people who understand it there
is room for reasonable disagreement and thus discussion.  I hope that is
what I am doing in responding to your comment.  I certainly think that is
what you were doing in your response to mine.

I just want to say a few things to clarify my position (and no, I do not
mean that if you disagree with me it is because you do not understand
me.  But I do think that even if you disagree with me for legitimate or
even very good reasons, you might still misunderstand at least part of what
I said).

"I'm one of those non-believers who is not offended by using BC/AD"

I understand your not being offended by AD-BC, and I cannot argue against
your feelings.

"We really can't let policy be driven by what various handfuls of people
consider offensive. "

I do not think handfulls of people are offended,  I think millions of
people find this offensive (and I repeat, only when being used in
secular  topics or to express non-Christian views), and I think there are
many more who may not be offended but who do find it inappropriate.  These
millions may not be wikipedians, but they are out there and part of our
potential readership.

You see, I won't argue against your feelings.  You are not offended?  Okay,
I accept and respect that.

But it seems to me that you and others do not accept and respect my
feelings.  I am offended.  Why do people tell me I am "feigning offence" or
hypersensitive, or over-reacting, or stupid?  We can discuss our reasons
for our feelings, but I am not criticizing or challenging yours.

And this is where I do think NPOV comes in.  People have different points
of view.  People have different thoughts and feelings.  I see NPOV as a way
of dealing with that when writing articles.  I have said a number of times
that there are several people who reject my proposal whom I respect.  But
when people reject it because
    * AC/BC does not offend them
    * They think it is silly to take offense
    * they think it is trivial
they are just erasing my point of view -- and the point of view of
millions.  If the basis of our NPOV policy is that there are different
points of view and we cannot dismiss anyone held by a significant number of
people, then I just do not understand these particular reasons for opposing
my proposal.   It seems to me that these people are saying only their point
of view counts, and my point of view does not count.  Some people even
state that the whole debate is stupid.  But if our NPOV policy is premised
on the fact that there are opposing points of view, doesn't that
necessarily suggest that there will be debates, and that such debates are
valid?  Please explain to me what interpretation of NPOV this is consistent
with?

I guess at this point I once again need to make clear that I am not for
banishing AD/BC.  I respect the Christian point of view, and believe that
in many articles it must be presented (along with other views, be they
Jewish or Atheist or critical history, or whatever), and in presenting this
POV it only makes sense to use AD and BC.  Please accept the fact that I am
not trying to outlaw BC and AD

(and yes, I see several points in my argument where people can disagree,
e.g. BC and AD no longer signify a Christian point of view.  I disagree
with you, but I will NOT say that you do not understand or care about our
NPOV policy)

"The claim of systemic bias ignores the fact that most people do things
without any intention to offend."

Ec, please explain to me how you square this with our NPOV policy, which
states:
Bias need not be conscious. For example, beginners in a field often fail to
realize that what sounds like common sense is actually biased in favor of
one particular view. (So we not infrequently need an expert in order to
render the article entirely unbiased.)

"For me NPOV is more an attitude and state of mind than a series of rigid
rules. It little behoves us that that such a principle be used as a
rhetorical tool for silencing opposition"

I agree.  The reason that I included a space for general discussion,
comments opposed to my proposal, and space for opposing votes in addition
to the conventional "talk" page, was because I did not want to silence
opposition.

I agree that NPOV is a state of mind, but when people learn that my view is
different from theirs and they tell me I am feigning my view or stupid, I
do not think they get the NPOV state of mind.  (By the way, people have
explained to me why they think AD and BC do not violate NPOV.  But so far,
I haven't figured out the argument for why BCE and CE are POV.  The best I
can make out is that people think it is POV because they are not accustomed
to it.  But doesn't our NPOV policy often require editors to write in a way
we are unaccustomed to?)

I agree that NPOV is a state of mind.  The reason I made my proposal was
because in the Jesus debate (where, at the time, BCE/CE was in the
majority) many people who argued for using AD and BC were rejecting, out of
hand, the possibility that anyone could reasonable object -- which to me
meant, they didn't have the NPOV state of mind.

Maybe my way of going about encouraging discussion was not the best
way.  Still, I am glad it led you to write the e-mail you did, and hope you
accept mine in the same spirit.  And perhaps you have other ideas about
opening up constructive discussion about NPOV.  I would welcome that,

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Neil Phillips

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Greasemonkey script for wikipedia geo.location

body:
Hi,

In advance of any 'switch on' of the meta:GIS extension for wikipedia, I've
written a script for greasemonkey which does the same thing.

It just looks through wikipedia pages and if it finds a URL corresponding to
coordinates, it adds geo meta tags client side to the page.

This allows people using firefox extensions for geo meta data e.g. Nearby
(see link)

Greasemonkey extension at:
http://www.neilphillips.com/wikipedia

More about greasemonkey:
http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org

Nearby firefox extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&categ
ory=Navigation&numpg=10&id=503

More on geocoding in wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geographical_coordin
ates

Cheers,

Neil

P.S. it's very beta at the moment, your suggestions are welcome.

http://www.neilphillips.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: PGP plug-in

body:
Brion Vibber (brion at pobox.com) [050517 12:28]:
> Tim Starling wrote:

> >Haven't you heard? Public key cryptography is a panacea, it fixes all
> >conceivable software-related problems. Bots attacking your network? Use
> >PKA. Users being harassed by an unfriendly government? Use PKA. A troll
> >is creating 10 sock puppets per day? Just use PKA. It's just a matter of
> >working out how to apply it. The programmers can work out those tedious
> >details, don't worry, they're good at that sort of thing.

> Don't be silly, Tim. Everybody knows it's P2P that does all those things!

So the first person to wikify Freenet gets all the chicks?

- d.


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on mole molars

body:
> Speaking of explosives, should we talk of chemical measures in terms of
> moles (units consisting of a certain number of molecules, the number of
> which has slipped my mind at this moment)?

You're thinking of Avocado's Number, named after the famous lawyer.

Two avocados is a yotta molecules (if you interpret "yotta" in the
"binary prefix" sense of 2^80 rather than 10^24).

A mole is a small burrowing animal in the family Talpidae, and their
dentition does include molars.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Commons-l] Directmedia update

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

>> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
>
> I was not referring to the standard date format, but to information like
> "before 300" or "early 19th century", which was translated from German
> into English.

Yes, but the other way around: you use the ISO format as the English
('en') format and that's at least misleading.

Also we should stay away from the dates in different formats again and
again.  Using YYYY-MM-DD and nothing else in the template is good
enough.  MySQL or glibc can convert the dates to the format the user
prefers.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for days of the week

body:
I think that in the interest of NPOV we should change all references to
days of the week to First Day, Second Day, Third Day, Fourth Day, Fifth
Day, Sixth Day, and Seventh Day.

Oh, wait... that would be imposing a Quaker POV. Never mind.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Alphax

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

Skyring wrote:
> On 5/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Skyring wrote:
>>
>>>On 5/16/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Skyring wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On 5/16/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Skyring wrote:
>>>>>>[snip]
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>...except where use of BC and AD is appropriate.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>As Steven said "a general policy that BC and AD represent a
>>>>>Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate,
>>>>>that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a
>>>>>Christian point of view."
>>>>>
>>>>>I support his standard. I think it is plain common sense. Don't you?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Reading the proposed policy page, a poll of *44* people - out of however
>>>>many million speakers of English, *44* - decided that BCE/CE was the
>>>>more favoured term. That's a mighty poor sample. And yet people are
>>>>claiming "NPOV" and "countering systematic bias".
>>>
>>>
>>>Just answer the question, please. Evasion just leads me to wonder
>>>about your motive.
>>
>>Evasion is caused by me actually reading the page and trying to work out
>>what is really going on. I'm not so sure that BCE and CE are any less
>>POV than AD and BC are. In fact, I'm starting to wonder whether they are
>>in fact anti-Christian POV.
>
>
> Just answer the question, please.
>

You mean whether it's plain sense or not? No, it's not. It's actually
/more/ POV than BC/AD is, because it makes the *assertion* that the
Birth of Jesus, whether is Christ, Lord, Prophet or otherwise, is
*common* to *all* cultures - it's Western Imperialism and Political
Correctness at its worst.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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body:
mvh Bj?rn wrote ...

>  I like many
>other people are not comfortable in arguing and such an abstract level
>and therefore you get misunderstood. It would have been better if you
>had started the discussion at the level of abstractness you intended
>because the shifts from particularity to generality is confusing me.

First, I appreciate your saying that I have raised people's awareness of
the issues.  As to your suggestion: I can't criticize it, but I do not
think I know how to do that.  I encourage you, if not now then sometime, to
try to re-start the discussion at what you think is a reasonable or
constructive level of abstractness.  I don't mean to tell you what to do,
but from your comments it seems to me that you are interested in this
issue, and have something to say.  Maybe where I went wrong, you can go right.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


body:
Geni wrote,
>Big deal. There is a picture on wikipedia that I know will offend
>~5million people. That image isn't going anywhere.

Well, that is your point of view.  But I have a different point of view
(not that offense itself should dictate policy, but that it is relevant and
should be taken into consideration along with other variables, for reasons
I tried to explain in my proposal).

So there you have it: you have your view, I have mine.

And this is precisely why we have, and need, our NPOV policy.

S

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Brian Suda

subject: [Wikitech-l] Export Dictionary?

body:
> ... In your mail you want
> to export the wiktionary data. The consequence is that when you choose
> for export, you will have to do this continually as we hope to increase
> the content of Ultimate Wiktionary dramatically.

--- i agree, i personally and on the road alot and only have access to
dial-up, a 'local copy' so i could search without getting online would
be great, i know that there would be a drift in the content online and
the local content, but that is acceptable for the ability to search
offline. It was just a thought, i realise the implications on
bandwidth, etc, but it is something to consider.

> As far as I understand
> the RFC, there is a need for responding to a request and providing a
> reply in a set format. There is no need to have a database in a specific
> format as long as the respons provided conforms to the RFC.

--- Yes, i was just asking about the database to see if the structure
was inplace to make an easy transition from RDB entry to a .dict
response. I think you answered it as basically, no, since each page is
formatted independantly, and Yes, since the new Ultimate Wiktionary
will have a defined structure.

> As the Ultimate Wiktionary is being designed at the moment and as
> Wikidata is being built, this is a time to consider what is needed to
> provide .dict functionality. This functionality will be included when
> someone does the programming or when someone finds the funds to strap
> the .dict functionality on top of Ultimate Wiktionary.

--- i would be willing to help and donate time to work on .dict
functionality, when things get to that point in the Ultimate
Wiktionary development please keep me in mind.

> One problem I see with exporting content from Wiktionary is the GNU-FDL
> requirement to maintain the history of the contributors. For the UW, I
> think it can be solved by adding the history information on the talk
> page. The necessity for UW stems from the likelyhood that many
> wiktionaries, if not all, may merge into the Ultimate Wiktionary and be
> abandoned.

--- i agree, you don't want multiple forks of definitions floating
around, i only suggested the export for offline reference, not for
importing somewhere else and continuing from there.

-brian

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk


from_name: james

subject: [Wikitech-l] importing wiki dump to mediawiki

body:
hi,

how do you import a wiki sql dump into mediawiki?

thanks


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised
	thisproposal

body:
"Ray Saintonge" wrote

> We really can't let policy be driven by what various handfuls of people
> consider offensive.

Agree.  That whole area has 'don't go there' on it, as far as I'm concerned.
I actually think BCE/CE is quite appropriate in many cases; but really it is
not to do with NPOV.

Charles


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion rampage

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Aevar appears to have left the project in an explosion, deleting everything
> he's ever uploaded.

More on this unfortunate matter here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#.C6var_Arnfj.F6r.F0_Bjarmason


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
I was working on parsing the English Wiktionary for some months, with a
long-term goal of sharing translations for my translator, Linguaphile.

The free-form nature of Wiktionary articles is the biggest hurdle. While there
is a format to add some structure to the data, it has many variations, many
experimental new ones appearing all the time, and many inherent flaws which
the contributors either haven't overcome, or haven't been able to agree to a
single way to overcome.

I would've happily shared the code I had, but due to a grey-out (so I'm told),
almost all of my computer's components were destroyed and I haven't been
able to recover the data from the hard drive.

While a fully structured re-design would obviously help myself and people
wanting to interchange Wiktionary data with .dict data, it would definitely
make it much harder for the general user to contribute.

I've been thinking about a compromise solution where slightly more
structure might be added, perhaps similar to HTML/CSS styles. This
coupled with some kind of very flexible parsing might get a degree of
success.

I'm still very interested in this field and may try to recreate my parser but
losing that much work is very disheartening.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

On 5/17/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brian Suda wrote:
>
> >I have been on this list awhile, when i originally joined i was
> >interesting in the possibility of exporting the wiktionary data as
> >.dict format. Now that the newest version of OSX 10.4 has a built-in
> >dictionary that uses the dict:// to look-up words i was interested to
> >see if anyone on the technicaly side would like to explore the
> >possibility of either exporting the Wiktionary database as .dict
> >format, or run a dictionary daemon that would access the wiktionary
> >database server and return dict entries. It would be read-only, but it
> >would be another interesting way to access the wiktionary besides the
> >web interface.
> >
> >Does anyone on the tech list know if this is even possible? I'm not
> >asking you to do it (i can write the export), i was wondering if there
> >is some sort of database schema available to extract the data into
> >dict format, or are the entries too fragmented to even attempt an
> >export?
> >
> >-brian
> >
> Hoi,
> I read your mail with intrest. It made me look into what the .dict
> format is. It is described in RFC 2229. It allows for people to look up
> information from their computer and the information is delivered from
> one of the many hosts that may hold the requested information. As Angela
> said in her reply to your post, we are working on a new iteration of
> Wiktionary that is going by the name of "Ultimate Wiktionary". This will
> have a relational database at its heart. It is intended to have content
> in all languages and the first challenge is to make it work in the first
> place. The second challenge is to create a User Interface that
> translates to all these languages and the third challenge is to have an
> import and export mechanism, preferably using a standards based XML scheme.
>
> We hope to show something at the Wikimania event. In your mail you want
> to export the wiktionary data. The consequence is that when you choose
> for export, you will have to do this continually as we hope to increase
> the content of Ultimate Wiktionary dramatically. As far as I understand
> the RFC, there is a need for responding to a request and providing a
> reply in a set format. There is no need to have a database in a specific
> format as long as the respons provided conforms to the RFC.
>
> As the Ultimate Wiktionary is being designed at the moment and as
> Wikidata is being built, this is a time to consider what is needed to
> provide .dict functionality. This functionality will be included when
> someone does the programming or when someone finds the funds to strap
> the .dict functionality on top of Ultimate Wiktionary. At this time it
> is premature to think about exporting from UW as UW has not been built
> yet. It will however be possible to do so.
>
> Some of the current wiktionaries can be parsed into information as they
> are highly structured. Some will prove an interesting challenge to
> convert to any other format. Because of its lack of structure and
> consistency it is as closed as any proprietary format would be. Even the
> names of an article is not necessarily the name of the associated word
> as some Wiktionaries still capitalise the first character of a word.
>
> One problem I see with exporting content from Wiktionary is the GNU-FDL
> requirement to maintain the history of the contributors. For the UW, I
> think it can be solved by adding the history information on the talk
> page. The necessity for UW stems from the likelyhood that many
> wiktionaries, if not all, may merge into the Ultimate Wiktionary and be
> abandoned.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 5/17/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Tue, 17 May 2005, Jim Trodel wrote:
> >
> > On 5/17/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > Speaking of explosives, should we talk of chemical measures in terms of
> > > moles (units consisting of a certain number of molecules, the number of
> > > which has slipped my mind at this moment)?
> >
> > My memory is 6.022 x 10^23
>
> Why such a weird number, anyway?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro's_number

Cormac


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Longterm software strategy

body:
On Tuesday 10 May 2005 21:18, Tim Starling wrote:

> int main() {for (unsigned i=0; i<(unsigned)1e9; i++);}
> executes in 1.58 seconds on my desktop computer.

hm.. we all know how badly microbenchmarks can
go wrong. in this case i'd have expected the loop
to be optimized away, since it does not affect the
state of the rest of the program in any way..

daniel


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Metric road signs in the U. S.

body:
On 5/17/05, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> P.S. To be honest, the signage in Ireland is only there at all at all
> for the sole purpose of directing tourists into the countryside where
> they get lost and spend money on our Aran sweaters and
> Celtic/Leprechaun trinkets. It works.

Tony Hawks in "Around Ireland With a Fridge" and the late Pete
McCarthy in "McCarthy's Bar" have words to say about Irish signs and
getting lost. I think they are all in favour of it, actually!
--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Fredrik Johansson

body:
On 5/17/05, Daniel Wunsch <the.gray at gmx.net> wrote:
> hm.. we all know how badly microbenchmarks can
> go wrong. in this case i'd have expected the loop
> to be optimized away, since it does not affect the
> state of the rest of the program in any way..

What if it's purposefully used to create a delay to avoid a clash
between two threads in the control system for a nuclear reactor? ;-)

- Fredrik


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on mole molars

body:
Avogadro. You're thinking of either a fruit or a Spanish lawyer.....

UtherSRG

On 5/17/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Speaking of explosives, should we talk of chemical measures in terms of
> > moles (units consisting of a certain number of molecules, the number of
> > which has slipped my mind at this moment)?
>
> You're thinking of Avocado's Number, named after the famous lawyer.
>
> Two avocados is a yotta molecules (if you interpret "yotta" in the
> "binary prefix" sense of 2^80 rather than 10^24).
>
> A mole is a small burrowing animal in the family Talpidae, and their
> dentition does include molars.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: PGP plug-in

body:
admin Yellowikis wrote:
> So, if someone from Andijan wanted to edit:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2005_unrest_in_Uzbekistan from Andijan
>
> without fear of being caught by the friendly local police; they'd need
> to install the Tor client to help protect their IP anonymity and make
> it more difficult for their network location to be identified.
>
> Setting up a username and password on Wikipedia also helps hide their
> IP addess (along with Tor)...
>
> But (in theory) the actually post isn't secure from interception  (and
> blocking?) - unless the wiki server is running https.

Tor encrypts traffic from your computer to the exit node. It can indeed
be intercepted and blocked, because the IP addresses of the Tor servers
are known. I have heard that Tor has been illegal in China since shortly
after it was invented, and all traffic to it is blocked. But perhaps it
would be useful in countries which are attempting to maintain an
appearance of free speech.

In countries with blanket prohibition of anonymising services, the
methods for distributing information anonymously are necessarily covert
and diverse.

> Do any Wikipedias run https?

No. But even if it did, the government could work out who is posting
what by simply correlating the transmission time with the edit time.
That's possible with Tor too, especially if the number of Tor users in
the country is small and they're all being monitored.

Steganography is probably a better way to distribute information in such
situations.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 5/17/05, Fredrik Johansson <fredrik.johansson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/17/05, Daniel Wunsch <the.gray at gmx.net> wrote:
> > hm.. we all know how badly microbenchmarks can
> > go wrong. in this case i'd have expected the loop
> > to be optimized away, since it does not affect the
> > state of the rest of the program in any way..
>
> What if it's purposefully used to create a delay to avoid a clash
> between two threads in the control system for a nuclear reactor? ;-)

In that case anyone who uses a waiting loop for a specified number of
loops or even a specified time rather than any explicit clash
handling, should be fired immediately.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

body:
"steven l. rubenstein" wrote

>But there are at least as many votes, and comments on the page, that
>convince me that many people do not understand or are committed to our NPOV
>policy.

The bottom line is how people edit.  Not how they answer any kind of
'written test' on NPOV, or anything else.  There is certainly a place for
policy wonkery.  Apart from egregious cases, I think there is little
percentage for the community in abstractly marking people down as
uncomprehending.

Charles


body:
On 5/17/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Skyring wrote:
> > On 5/17/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Also, some people in this discussion have drawn parallels between
> >> this and imperial units of measurement. HELLOOOO?! It's not really
> >> like you need to *convert* between the two, you know?! Or maybe I
> >> just somehow missed that 1 year CE is actually equivalent to
> >> 3.573495764 years AD?
> >
> > Just as some people cling to old units of measurement, the
> > "standardists" in the AD/CE debate cling to AD and BC because they
> > are used to them, not because they are Christians.
>
> Did you even read my message? Presumably not. I never denied nor
> contradicted that, nor even mentioned or referred to it.

It's fun to be deliberately stupid, isn't it? I particularly liked the
way you cleverly snipped the evidence that cut you off at the knees.
That was well done.

I think we're done with this bit of the discussion anyway.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon

body:
David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#.5B.5BWikipedia:Meta-templates_considered_harmful.5D.5D

If I understand correctly (and I may not understand correctly, so
please correct me if I'm wrong), the basic argument is that when you
edit a meta-template you invalidate a lot of pages, which then have to
be rebuilt.  But meta-templates are most often used when many
templates should have the same formatting, correct?  So wouldn't you
just have to edit all of the templates individually, invalidating the
same number of pages?

To put it more concretely:

Pages A-M use template 1.  Pages N-Z use template 2.  Let's say that
templates 1 and 2 are similar, so if we allow meta-templates they're
based on template 0.

Editing template 0 will invalidate both A-M and N-Z.  But presumably
if we had to edit template 0, we would otherwise have to edit both
templates 1 and 2 anyway, which *also* means that A-M and N-Z are both
invalidated.  It could even save us cache misses if both 1 and 2 are
used on the same page.

So I don't see how avoiding meta-templates will help anything.

--
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brent at brentdax.com>
Perl and Parrot hacker


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised this
	proposal

body:
> I do not think handfulls of people are offended,  I think millions of
> people find this offensive (and I repeat, only when being used in
> secular  topics or to express non-Christian views), and I think there are
> many more who may not be offended but who do find it inappropriate.  These
> millions may not be wikipedians, but they are out there and part of our
> potential readership.

Big deal. There is a picture on wikipedia that I know will offend
~5million people. That image isn't going anywhere.

--
geni


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

Timwi wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>>
>> It's actually /more/ POV than BC/AD is, because it makes the
>> *assertion* that the Birth of Jesus, whether is Christ, Lord, Prophet
>> or otherwise, is *common* to *all* cultures - it's Western
>> Imperialism and Political Correctness at its worst.
>
>
> Why do so many people associate Political Correctness with NPOV?
>
> It is politically correct to state that all humans are equal in dignity
> and rights, but as much as we would like for that to be universally
> accepted, it isn't, and so it is POV.
>
> Timwi
>

I said it was politically correct, *not* NPOV. Political correctness is
MPOV.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised this
	proposal

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

Timwi wrote:
> I think we should have a Dumbest Discussion of the Week award. Or
> Deadest Horse of the Week. Or whatever.
>
> Timwi
>

And the previous winners are:

* Banning the 3RR
* The reader's right to perform autofellatio
* Wikipedia kook sues Usenet

Have I forgotten any?

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

body:
> >I read that. To me it mostly sounded like a "I'm right, you are wrong"
> >argumentation. It would be good if you could describe in which ways
> >your opponents have not understood our NPOV policy. That they just
> >disagree with you does not suffice.
>
> First off, I really appreciate your thoughtful response.
>
> Well, it is true that I believe very firmly in the interpretation of NPOV
> (or rather, the spirit behind it) that I presented.  But I also felt I was
> addressing NPOV at a rather abstract level.  My point is, I do wish that

That is a problem with how you and many other policy-makers have
reasoned. You are raising the debate from the fairly concrete question
"AD/BC on [[Jesus]]?" to he more abstract "AD/BC disallowed in
Wikipedia?" to some really abstract discussion about NPOV. I like many
other people are not comfortable in arguing and such an abstract level
and therefore you get misunderstood. It would have been better if you
had started the discussion at the level of abstractness you intended
because the shifts from particularity to generality is confusing me.

> I appreciate your generous comment.  I also agree with you -- I have to,
> since it is clear that I really do not understand why so many people are so
> irritated by BCE/CE.  But I have to say this: although I have read some
> very reasonable objections to my proposal, I don't think anyone has been
> able to explain to me why BCE and CE so upsets them.

It is not so much the phenomenom as much as the transition to it that
upsets them. See other peoples mails in the threads in which they
describe how certain things would explode if certain governments
decided to measure certain things with different units. But which
"USA:ian" can explain why SI-units upsets them? My only argument in
favour of AD/BC is that for me it is slightly easier to interpret 75
BC - 20 AD than BCE 75 - CE 20.

> But to be honest with you, I still don't understand why people see BCE and
> CE as "American" or any kind of POV.  And I still don't understand how
> people can claim BC and AD are not POV, although I recognize that many feel
> this way.

With my analogy I was not trying to put you or anyone else in the
impossible position of defending the "unfair" usage of the word
American and at the same time advocating changing the usage of AD/BC.
My point is that "American" is very similar to AD/BC. Certainly a
misnomer, and certainly a thing that irritates some people.

> In my argument, "offense" is not a reason for calling AD/BC POV.  In my
> argument, I bring up offense only as an example of one way that one group
> signals to a second that the second group has an unconscious bias.  It is
> true that I believe that once you know BC and AD offend me (in secular

I thought you were arguing with two arguments:

1. AD/BC is offensive to some people.
2. AD/BC is POV.

The argument I have tried to refute is 1. Yes, it may be offensive but
much less so than hundreds of other words and expressions that
changing it because of offensiveness would require you to change so
many other words and expressions that the situation would become
absurd. I can't debate your other argument. Because to me AD/BC is
pronounced Ay-Dee slash Bee-Cee and BCE/CE is Bee-Cee-Ee slash Cee-Ee.
So not so much POV with either abbrevation.

Note also that the situation is very much different in other languages.

> >In a few years it is not implausible that CE/BCE will have "won." But
> >currently AD/BC is much more popular according to Google.
>
> proposals which, I presumed, were made a while ago and are still in
> proposal limbo.  I thought that would happen to my proposal too.
> In any event, we are building an encyclopedia, and all committed to NPOV,
> and if as you suggest the world may slowly change, surely a small bit of
> that slow change will happen here.

Atleast you have raised people's awareness of the issue. But both
sides already have entrenched and it doesn't seem like either side is
going to give up right now. In the real world, outside Wikipedia, the
debate is also ongoing between the two date formats. Right now there
is no clear winner, just as the situation is in Wikipedia. Isn't that
perfect? Wikipedia is doing what it should do, mirror the reality. I
believe that in a few years the BCE/CE side will win. Naturally,
Wikipedia should also change when that happens. But for Wikipedia to
advance past the real world I think is a dangerous mistake. It doesn't
create NPOV, but a "Wikipedia-POV."

--
mvh Bj?rn


body:
> ... In your mail you want
> to export the wiktionary data. The consequence is that when you choose
> for export, you will have to do this continually as we hope to increase
> the content of Ultimate Wiktionary dramatically.

--- i agree, i personally and on the road alot and only have access to
dial-up, a 'local copy' so i could search without getting online would
be great, i know that there would be a drift in the content online and
the local content, but that is acceptable for the ability to search
offline. It was just a thought, i realise the implications on
bandwidth, etc, but it is something to consider.

> As far as I understand
> the RFC, there is a need for responding to a request and providing a
> reply in a set format. There is no need to have a database in a specific
> format as long as the respons provided conforms to the RFC.

--- Yes, i was just asking about the database to see if the structure
was inplace to make an easy transition from RDB entry to a .dict
response. I think you answered it as basically, no, since each page is
formatted independantly, and Yes, since the new Ultimate Wiktionary
will have a defined structure.

> As the Ultimate Wiktionary is being designed at the moment and as
> Wikidata is being built, this is a time to consider what is needed to
> provide .dict functionality. This functionality will be included when
> someone does the programming or when someone finds the funds to strap
> the .dict functionality on top of Ultimate Wiktionary.

--- i would be willing to help and donate time to work on .dict
functionality, when things get to that point in the Ultimate
Wiktionary development please keep me in mind.

> One problem I see with exporting content from Wiktionary is the GNU-FDL
> requirement to maintain the history of the contributors. For the UW, I
> think it can be solved by adding the history information on the talk
> page. The necessity for UW stems from the likelyhood that many
> wiktionaries, if not all, may merge into the Ultimate Wiktionary and be
> abandoned.

--- i agree, you don't want multiple forks of definitions floating
around, i only suggested the export for offline reference, not for
importing somewhere else and continuing from there.

-brian

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
> I think that in the interest of NPOV we should change all references to
>  days of the week to First Day, Second Day, Third Day, Fourth Day,
> Fifth  Day, Sixth Day, and Seventh Day.
>
> Oh, wait... that would be imposing a Quaker POV. Never mind.

Not to mention the anti-programmer bias!  Without a Zeroth Day we'd be
forever hitting fence post errors and the stack-heap collisions on Seventh
Day would not be worth thinking about.


body:
On 5/18/05, steven l. rubenstein <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> Geni wrote,
> >Big deal. There is a picture on wikipedia that I know will offend
> >~5million people. That image isn't going anywhere.
>
> Well, that is your point of view.  But I have a different point of view
> (not that offense itself should dictate policy, but that it is relevant and
> should be taken into consideration along with other variables, for reasons
> I tried to explain in my proposal).

The image offends ~5million people (an entire relgion). This is a
solid fact. That image isn't going anywhere based on the shear number
of people who would opose it's deletion. No POV just facts.


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary www page

body:
Hello,

            I just wanted to inform the list that the Anglo-Saxon wiktionary
has over 100 entries!

Later,

James


from_name: Hm..

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia user Trey Stone: Email to SlimVirgin

body:
I have continually tried to compromise, but these people have removed info w/o justification. BTW, I did NOT revert more than 3 times -- I have done several edits, trying to add in new info as well to counterbalance the extremely pro-Castro POV.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] date and cache

body:
Hi

Three times now in about a week or so, some spanish editors reported me a weird bug, that makes them see the wrong date on some pages or on recent changes. See the last comment http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Anthere&curid=521&diff=0&oldid=132341

I know there was a bug a while ago about this, but as far as I understood, it was fixed.

Still... there is still something going on and people still regularly see a wrong date.

A couple of personal observations...

... I also noticed in the past few days a huge issue with cache.
Three times yesterday, when I edited meta, for a new page, after I saved the page, there was nothing on it, and I had to reload to see the new page.

That also happened to me on the Foundation website yesterday, when I tried to create a redirection from "board" to "board of Trustees". After saving, the page was empty.

Weirder is what is currently happening on the village pump on the french wikipedia (though part of it might be due to Paris servers).

I connected anonymously yesterday, and I got the 14th of may page. I reload several times, forced reload... and still got the 14th of may.

I ended up login, I still had the 14th of may, but after one simple reload, I finally got the 17th.

I *think* there is a problem here. I do not know what it is, but if I have the idea to reload and reload and login and reload again to finally get the right page, I do not think readers or recent editors think of doing this. Any ideas ?

Anthere (looking for the future, not so much on the past)

---------------------------------
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for deprecation of syntax features for
	1.5

references:
<51dd1af805051106093d6161c0@mail.gmail.com>
	<200505120943.20670@bloodgate.com>
	<shr7gbafls.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Friday 13 May 2005 06:56, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> I think different.  XML is simple, self-explaining.  wiki-syntax is
> cryptic and by no mean ''plain text''.

why do you think comma people invented punktuation
question mark because a dot is easier to distinguish
from the doublequote plain text doublequote that you
seem to prefer semicolon closing parentheses linefeed
linefeed daniel


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion rampage

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=delete&user=%C6var%20Arnfj%F6r%F0%20Bjarmason&page=&limit=500&offset=0

Aevar appears to have left the project in an explosion, deleting everything
he's ever uploaded. This leave a pile of articles minus images. Images
can't be easily undeleted. Does anyone have an image dump to restore them
from?

(Tim Starling has desysopped him for the moment until we find out wtf.
Aevar, you out there?)

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] date and cache

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Three times now in about a week or so, some spanish editors reported
> me a weird bug, that makes them see the wrong date on some pages or
> on recent changes. See the last comment
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Anthere&curid=521&diff=0&oldid=132341

We could really use more details here, such as *what sort* of wrong
dates are seen. Specifically what they are, and specifically where they
are seen. Comparitive times (eg 'I saw "May 99, 2199" at the date for
three changes on Recent Changes at about 12:40 UTC on May 16') and
confirming screen shots may help.

If it's an old cached page, vs it's the specific year 2025 thing, vs
it's a year 2003 thing, etc might have to be treated differently.

> ... I also noticed in the past few days a huge issue with cache.
> Three times yesterday, when I edited meta, for a new page, after I
> saved the page, there was nothing on it, and I had to reload to see
> the new page.

This sort of thing is generally due to lagging in the database
replication, and is more prone when load is heavy (and especially when
painful page rename operations and such are going on).

> Weirder is what is currently happening on the village pump on the
> french wikipedia (though part of it might be due to Paris servers).
>
> I connected anonymously yesterday, and I got the 14th of may page. I
> reload several times, forced reload... and still got the 14th of may.

Cache updates might not be going through properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 09:20:15PM +0200, Daniel Wunsch wrote:
> On Tuesday 10 May 2005 21:18, Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > int main() {for (unsigned i=0; i<(unsigned)1e9; i++);}
> > executes in 1.58 seconds on my desktop computer.
>
> hm.. we all know how badly microbenchmarks can
> go wrong. in this case i'd have expected the loop
> to be optimized away, since it does not affect the
> state of the rest of the program in any way..

It might be pretty off-topic, but not much more than the rest of this thread.

This loop is indeed optimized in any decent SSA-style compiler.
gcc3 experimentally supports SSA, and it's enabled by -fssa -fssa-dce -fssa-ccp
gcc4 is supposed to be totally SSA-based.

It is possible in non-SSA compilers too (there is no such thing as "the" optimization
algorithm, every compiler has different bag of tricks), but they usually assume
that if something affects control flow (and the i variable does), it should not be optimized away.

$ cat foo.cc
int main() {
    for (unsigned i=0; i<(unsigned)1e9; i++);
    return 0;
}
$ g++ --version
g++ (GCC) 3.3.6 (Debian 1:3.3.6-5)
Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
$ g++ -O6 foo.cc -o foo
$ time ./foo

real    0m1.882s
user    0m1.573s
sys     0m0.101s
$ g++ -fssa -fssa-dce -O6 foo.cc -o foo
$ time ./foo

real    0m0.006s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.002s
$ g++ -fssa -fssa-dce -O6 foo.cc -S
$ cat foo.s
        .file   "foo.cc"
        .text
        .align 2
        .p2align 4,,15
.globl main
        .type   main, @function
main:
.LFB3:
        pushl   %ebp
.LCFI0:
        movl    %esp, %ebp
.LCFI1:
        subl    $8, %esp
.LCFI2:
        andl    $-16, %esp
        xorl    %eax, %eax
        movl    %ebp, %esp
        popl    %ebp
        ret
.LFE3:
        .size   main, .-main
        .section        .note.GNU-stack,"", at progbits
        .ident  "GCC: (GNU) 3.3.6 (Debian 1:3.3.6-5)"
$

Please adjust your expectations now. :-)


from_name: iMeowbot

body:
On May 17, 2005, at 3:32 PM, Rick wrote:

> I can just see the United States trying to do a mass
> conversion of highway signs.  Each state would have to
> sign off on it, and many would not just out of "the
> federal government can't tell us what to do."

That's pretty much what actually happened.

1975: Federal projects are required to start moving to metric.
1978: The law is updated to ban the use of federal funds on metric
road signs (that's how the few that were installed managed to
disappear over time).
1979: It's allowed again, but only in Puerto Rico.
1991: Metric signs are no longer banned.
1995: States are still allowed to install metric signs (and in a
startling innovation, are now allowed to build roads to metric
dimensions!), but the Feds are prohibited from requiring them to do so.

The rest of the world is now welcomed to join in yet another chorus
of "what is *wrong* with those people?"


body:
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#.5B.5BWikipedia:Meta-templates_considered_harmful.5D.5D

A question: is there any good reason to keep templates in templates working
on the Wikimedia servers?

- d.


body:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050518 05:32]:

> I can just see the United States trying to do a mass
> conversion of highway signs.  Each state would have to
> sign off on it, and many would not just out of "the
> federal government can't tell us what to do."
> We'll see if the states actually buy the new driver's
> license requirements.  Utah has already rejected the
> "No Child Left Behind" education requirements, the DL
> stuff is going to be even worse.  But highway signs
> would be a war.

What I want to know is whether weather reports in Detroit *really do* show
temperatures on the US side in Fahrenheit and on the Canadian side in
Celsius, on the same diagram, with no explanation.

- d.


body:
Sean Barrett (sean at epoptic.org) [050518 05:42]:

> > What I want to know is whether weather reports in Detroit *really do* show
> > temperatures on the US side in Fahrenheit and on the Canadian side in
> > Celsius, on the same diagram, with no explanation.

> That's 'cause Canada is colder, of course.  Duh.

"Aaaand it's thirty-eight in Detroit tonight, but only THREE in Windsor!
Phew!"

- d.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Are we STILL discussing this?

If mention of religion offends you, too bad. Mention of autofellatio
offends me, but I'm not griping.

If you THINK that use of AD/BC implies "endorsement of the truth of
Christianity", then you're in a fantasy world. It's just a habit. Many
retail stores gear up for the Christmas holidays and even derive a
substantial fraction of their income from the Xmas season. Does this
mean they ENDORSE Christianity? (Hint: they are just being pragmatic.)

There are many calendars in use, throughout the English-speaking world.
Even the ANTI-RELIGIOUS Soviet Union continued to use the same numbering
system for years as the (Christian) West. Nobody EVER thought that this
usage implied any endorsement (or even TOLERANCE) of religion on their
part.

This whole thing smacks of an "anti-religious agenda", rather than any
sincere effort towards neutrality. When we couldn't agree on British vs.
American spelling, we chose this solution:

* Let each article use one consistent style throughout.
* If I as an American want to write theater and center, I should NOT do
so, if the article already uses theatre and centre.
* Above all, nobody should systematically go through articles purging of
the "hated style".

Ever hear of live and let live? Sheesh!

Uncle Ed


from_name: Skyring

body:
On 5/18/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Skyring wrote:
> > It's fun to be deliberately stupid, isn't it?
>
> Please reconsider your attitude towards other people on this mailing
> list. Thank you.

I think you missed my point, you humourless bastard.

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
On 5/18/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>
> By the way, Islamic years and solar years have different lengths.
> Also, by the way, it's not exactly the number of years since Jesus's
> birth, as the writers of the New Testament were racking their brains out
> trying to figure what happened when - and made mistakes, of course. This
> led to a monk, the one who invented the BC/AD system to begin with, making
> a "best guess" on the basis of inconsistent evidence in scripture. The
> upshot: now folks think Jesus was born in 4 BCE, or 6 BCE, or some such
> year.

The monk was Dennis the Short, according to Stephen Gould. He goes
into the whole thing in some detail.

--
Pete, wondering if WP does


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Commons-l] Directmedia: Die ersten 100 Bilder / the first 100
	pictures

body:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Yorck_Project

'''de:''' Bitte teilt mir mit, ob das alles soweit OK ist; wenn ja,
folgt als n?chstes der komplette Upload der 10.000.

'''en:''' Please tell me if there are any problems with the images
uploaded so far, if not, I will proceed to upload the rest.

An Karl: Alle Datumsangaben sind jetzt im ISO-Format.

Viele Gr??e

Erik


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
This matter has been before arbitration (or perhaps just disussed at length
on the mailing list) although I do not remember the details or even if we
accepted the case. I just remember reading through a lot of it and wondering
why the three perspectives you set forth could not suffice without attempts
to impose a particular viewpoint on the various articles. I agree that there
are problems with one, or probably several editors, who are not permitting
the range of opinions on the matter to be expressed appropriately in the
articles.

Fred

> From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 20:39:47 +1000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors who refuse to supply checkable sources
>
> On 5/18/05, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> "Skyring" wrote
>>
>>> I was speaking of abusive editors.
>>
>> This will be about Adam Carr, won't it?  I'm no great fan of Adam's
>> approach.  It seems to me you are probably doing the pettifogging thing
>> yourself, rather than trying to word the relevant page: just banging on
>> about sources endlessly isn't a way to a meeting on minds.
>>
>> There is a policy on civility.  If you think you have a case, you can take
>> this to a formal procedure.  If, as you say, you have been off WP for a
>> while, you could also try to take a different tack to this matter of
>> 'Australia as republic' - for example, let it ride and add to some other
>> part of wiki-en.
>>
>> Since you show no sign of changing the record, I shall not myself read any
>> more of these mails.
>
> Clearly you didn't read the discussion page I cited. Nobody was
> talking about republics. I'm trying to remove incorrect and unverified
> material. Adam's position is that a combination of abuse, threats, and
> shilling beats verifiability.
>
> I disagree.
>
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject:
[Commons-l] Re: Directmedia: Die ersten 100 Bilder / the first 100
	pictures

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

Thanks for this great contribution and for making it available on
commons!

> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Yorck_Project
>
> '''en:''' Please tell me if there are any problems with the images
> uploaded so far, if not, I will proceed to upload the rest.

Basically, it is okay.  Two issues I'd like to see improved:

. On the Category:The_Yorck_Project page, it would be more helpful if
you could replace the filename and the image size with the name of the
Creator and the title of the work.  For the moment, the title can stay
in German, IMO.  Using the name of the Creator you can link to pages
like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D?rer, where the reader
can find more info.  Every thumbnail picture is correctly linked to the
Image page.

. On the Image pages there is too much '''bolding'''.  IMO, it is not
necessary to render the language codes ("de", "en") bold, esp. in
combination with the prefixing bullet and the trailling colon it looks
too heavy.  ''de:'' would be strong enough.

> An Karl: Alle Datumsangaben sind jetzt im ISO-Format.

Very good, thanks a million!

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject:
[Commons-l] Re: Directmedia: Die ersten 100 Bilder / the first
	100 pictures

in_reply_to:
<sh4qd16ppd.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de> (Karl Eichwalder's message of
	"Wed, 18 May 2005 07:57:50 +0200")

body:
Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de> writes:

> . On the Image pages there is too much '''bolding'''.  IMO, it is not
> necessary to render the language codes ("de", "en") bold, esp. in
> combination with the prefixing bullet and the trailling colon it looks
> too heavy.  ''de:'' would be strong enough.

On the Images, also provide a link tho the artist; instead of the
following:

    Author: Altdorfer, Albrecht

Simply use:

    Author: [[Albrecht Altdorfer]]

BTW, it is arguable, whether "Altdorfer" counts as a proper surname; the
concept of surnames starts around 1500 or some years later.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject:
[Commons-l] Re: [Wikide-l] Directmedia: Die ersten 100 Bilder / the
 first 100 pictures

body:
Hi Wikipedianer,

Erik Moeller schrieb am 05/18/2005 07:31 AM:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Yorck_Project
>
> '''de:''' Bitte teilt mir mit, ob das alles soweit OK ist; wenn ja,
> folgt als n?chstes der komplette Upload der 10.000.
>
> '''en:''' Please tell me if there are any problems with the images
> uploaded so far, if not, I will proceed to upload the rest.

I really would prefer if the file name contains not only the artist
name, but the title of the artwork.

[[Image:Hans_von_Aachen_002.jpg]] is not linked to an artist page/category?

Bye, Tim.

--
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321


subject: [Wikipedia-l] List policy: unsubscribed posts

body:
Brion Vibber (brion at pobox.com) [050518 08:01]:

> Due to a very high volume of spam hitting this list in the last couple
> days (several hundred), I've changed the list configuration to
> automatically discard posts from addresses not subscribed to the list
> instead of holding them in the moderation queue.

Yeah, WTF is happening? wikien-l is getting a new spam literally every
minute or two. Is there a new spammer in town with our address?

- d.


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion rampage

body:
If we don't find a decent image dump, we could try The Internet
Archive, although I'm not entirely confident. When I get back from uni
I'll continue undeleting the anon talk pages he decided to delete.

~Mark

On 5/18/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=delete&user=%C6var%20Arnfj%F6r%F0%20Bjarmason&page=&limit=500&offset=0
>
> Aevar appears to have left the project in an explosion, deleting everything
> he's ever uploaded. This leave a pile of articles minus images. Images
> can't be easily undeleted. Does anyone have an image dump to restore them
> from?
>
> (Tim Starling has desysopped him for the moment until we find out wtf.
> Aevar, you out there?)
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 123552-FW] Wiki-Like Project Inquiry

body:
manual copy of a board message (since the forwarding
system does not work)

I "do not like" the otrs system.

ant

---- Message renvoy? par "Joseph Agoada"
<jagoada at msn.com> ----

Date:
De : "Joseph Agoada" <jagoada at msn.com>
?: board at wikimedia.org
Copie :
R?pondre ?:
Sujet: [Ticket#: 123552-FW] Wiki-Like Project Inquiry

> Greetings,
>
> My name is Joseph Agoada. I'm an after school
teacher in the Madison,
> Wisconsin area, and I've begun planning for a
literacy program that I
> believe the wikimedia foundation might be intersted
in. The program,
> entilted the Muisc Library is a highly innovative,
interactive, and
> effective learn-to-read initiative which utilizes
new media to keep
> administrative and start-up costs low, while keeping
management simple
> and
> time flexible. A major vision for the Music Library
is the "The Muisc
> Library Online" a hip open source web project about
music that lets kids
> and
> afterschool teachers in elementary after school
programs build simple
> web
> pages around the subject of music. The site will
hopefully be a
> community
> website where students can create fan sites, have
message board
> discussions
> about music, or tell the tales of music legends. The
more urban side of
> music will be explored in this open source project.
Attached to this
> e-mail
> I have included a detailed outline for the Music
Library project. I hope
> you
> take the time to look it over, because I believe it
represents the next
> generation of educational programs. Hope to hear
from you soon!
>
> -Joe A.
>
>
---- Fin du message retransmi ----

__________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

body:
On 5/18/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
<snip lots of great stuff>
>
> But then, I may have misunderstood Skyring's point: that journals must
> standardize on one style.

No, I was saying that many journals would insist on CE as a standard.
Not all. Not even most.

> If this is the case, then either it does not apply
> to Wikipedia -- where in many cases articles are written in different
> styles -- or is irrelevant because Wikipedia currently insists on the
> same style being used through the article.

What I was thinking about was publications such as Encyclopaedia
Britannica, where standards would presumably be enforced throughout
the whole work. All off the top of my pointy bald head, BTW.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 5/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> My crude impression of the map of the Irish roads system was that it was
> designed so that it would be difficult to travel between two west coast
> communities without going through Dublin. :-)
>
> Ec
>

We recently had Canadian friends over to our home (in Wicklow,
Ireland) and whenever we took the car down the small byroads, (the
ones you might not see on a map) the two of them were just gripping
their seats and squealing as if they were in a rollercoaster - it was
hilarious!

Cormac


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors who refuse to supply checkable sources

body:
"Skyring" wrote

>I don't think I should have to put up with this.

I can't imagine why you think anyone on this list has anything fresh to add
to this much-trailed content dispute, that has been exhaustingly aired here.
(I don't say 'exhaustively', since I'm not up with this arcane
constitutional point.)

We were speaking of dead horses, I believe.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on mole molars

body:
On 5/17/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > Speaking of explosives, should we talk of chemical measures in terms of
> > moles (units consisting of a certain number of molecules, the number of
> > which has slipped my mind at this moment)?
>
> You're thinking of Avocado's Number, named after the famous lawyer.
>
> Two avocados is a yotta molecules (if you interpret "yotta" in the
> "binary prefix" sense of 2^80 rather than 10^24).
>
> A mole is a small burrowing animal in the family Talpidae, and their
> dentition does include molars.
>

So, in other words, it's the number of avocados it takes to fill a mole?

6.022 * 10^23

That's a pretty big mole..


from_name: james

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: importing wiki dump to mediawiki

body:
-------------------------------------------------------
$> zcat cur*gz | mysql yourdatabase

Please note that after that you'd either want to rebuild all links, or import
links tables from http://download.wikimedia.org/
--------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for that - though I do not really understand this, I have EasyPHP1-8
installed, on an XP machine, which I will be wanting to run the wikipedia
from. I have downloaded 20050421_cur_table.sql.gz and have unpacked it to
20050421_cur_table.sql - do I need the other downloads aswell, like broken
links, etc?

Could you, or someone else, provide me a step by step guide, so that an idiot
could follow (like me lol), so I can then start it off

Thanks Again


body:
"Skyring" wrote

>I was speaking of abusive editors.

This will be about Adam Carr, won't it?  I'm no great fan of Adam's
approach.  It seems to me you are probably doing the pettifogging thing
yourself, rather than trying to word the relevant page: just banging on
about sources endlessly isn't a way to a meeting on minds.

There is a policy on civility.  If you think you have a case, you can take
this to a formal procedure.  If, as you say, you have been off WP for a
while, you could also try to take a different tack to this matter of
'Australia as republic' - for example, let it ride and add to some other
part of wiki-en.

Since you show no sign of changing the record, I shall not myself read any
more of these mails.

Charles


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary www page

body:
Hi,

Congratulations !

BTW, this should be sent to the Wiktionary list.
I updated the portal and the statistics.

Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary www page
Date: Wednesday 18 May 2005 07:20
From: "James R. Johnson"
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org

Hello,

I just wanted to inform the list that the Anglo-Saxon wiktionary
has over 100 entries!

Later,

James

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

references:
<d6cnou$dro$1@sea.gmane.org>	<BAY107-F343B6FB6081C0AAC6B02EDB0160@phx.gbl>
	<d6ff13$4k2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> JAY JG wrote:
>
>>> The point isn't that the measurement is inaccurate. The point is
>>> that renaming it to "CE" does not make it a different measurement.
>>> It is still based on the same Christian considerations.
>>
>> When one uses the B.C. system one is able to make the rather bizarre
>> statement that "Christ was born 4 to 6 years Before Christ".  At
>> least Before the Common Era does away with that.
>
> No, it doesn't, it only makes it subtler. "4 to 6 years before the
> Common Era" would still mean "4 to 6 years before the point in time
> that some wackos at some point thought was the birthdate of Jesus".

I wouldn't exactly call them wackos.  Research facilities at the time
were rudimentary by today's standards.  I don't know how long it took
before it was realized that Jesus was probably born 4 years earlier, but
by then the damage was done since the A.U.C. dating system had already
been abandoned for some time.  I suppose that the properr thing might be
to advocate for a change in the calendar that reflects the fact that we
are now four years later than we thought we were.  This is really the
year 2009!  All dates in historical records and books should be changed
to reflect that.  (Columbus did not discover America until 1496, WWII
lasted from 1943 until 1949, the Y2K panic anticipated the coming of the
year 2004, etc.)

Unfortunately people might not understand the importance of such a
move.  There were riots when the change from the Julian to the Gregorian
calendar stole 11 days from people's lives.  Imagine how irrationally
they will respond when we seek to shorten their lives by four years. :-)

Ec


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] dumps

body:
Domas Mituzas:
> new dumps (as of 20050516) available at http://download.wikimedia.org/
> Please note, we no longer provide 2GB split files. I do sincerely believe,
> that HTTP has enough capability to do partial downloads of files ;-)
> And those splits simply double disk space requirements...

The server doesn't handle requests for partial content correctly.

This is the output of
wget -d -c http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/old_table.sql.gz
after I interrupted the previous connection at a file size of
3907378719 Bytes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEBUG output created by Wget 1.9+cvs-stable (Red Hat modified) on linux-gnu.

--09:53:24--  http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/old_table.sql.gz
           => `old_table.sql.gz'
Aufl?sen des Hostnamen ?download.wikimedia.org?.... 207.142.131.212
Caching download.wikimedia.org => 207.142.131.212
Verbindungsaufbau zu download.wikimedia.org[207.142.131.212]:80...
verbunden.
Created socket 3.
Releasing 0x94a34c0 (new refcount 1).
---request begin---
GET /wikipedia/de/old_table.sql.gz HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: Wget/1.9+cvs-stable (Red Hat modified)
Host: download.wikimedia.org
Accept: */*
Connection: Keep-Alive
Range: bytes=3907378719-

---request end---
HTTP Anforderung gesendet, warte auf Antwort... HTTP/1.0 206 Partial Content
Connection: keep-alive
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 07:51:15 GMT
Content-Length: 12856795601
ETag: 1881960765
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Type: application/x-gzip
Content-Range: bytes 2147483647-15004279247/15004279248
Server: Wikimedia dump service 20050409 (lighttpd)

Found download.wikimedia.org in host_name_addresses_map (0x94a34c0)
Registered fd 3 for persistent reuse.
Closing fd 3
Releasing 0x94a34c0 (new refcount 1).
Invalidating fd 3 from further reuse.
Erneuter Versuch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Obviously "Range" in the request and "Content-Range" in the response
don't match. This results in wget trying to request the same over and
over again. (Download doesn't start at all. The last line above,
"Erneuter Versuch", means "next try".) Maybe this confused the T-Online
proxies as well yesterday.

My version of wget is the one that comes with Fedora Core 3 and claims
to be able to handle files larger than 2GB.

--
5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail
+++ GMX - die erste Adresse f?r Mail, Message, More +++


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] importing wiki dump to mediawiki

body:
> how do you import a wiki sql dump into mediawiki?

$> zcat cur*gz | mysql yourdatabase

Please note that after that you'd either want to rebuild all links, or import links tables from http://download.wikimedia.org/

Domas


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Are we STILL discussing this?
>
>If you THINK that use of AD/BC implies "endorsement of the truth of
>Christianity", then you're in a fantasy world. It's just a habit. Many
>retail stores gear up for the Christmas holidays and even derive a
>substantial fraction of their income from the Xmas season. Does this
>mean they ENDORSE Christianity?
>
Is there any support in Jewish tradition for the idea of a Chanukah
bush?  One fine tradition of ancient times was to adopt the timetable of
local pagan festivals and gradualy subvert its purpose so that the
festivals celebrated the traditions of the new masters.  To be effective
subverters do not announce their intention.  At this rate we can expect
that in due time the name "Christmas" will be changed to "Marketing Day".

>Even the ANTI-RELIGIOUS Soviet Union continued to use the same numbering
>system for years as the (Christian) West. Nobody EVER thought that this
>usage implied any endorsement (or even TOLERANCE) of religion on their
>part.
>
They did not just continue it; they adopted it.  Before the revolution
Russia was still using the Orthodox Julian calendar.  The Soviet
government brought the country into line with everybody else on this point.

>This whole thing smacks of an "anti-religious agenda", rather than any
>sincere effort towards neutrality.
>
Not really.  Those belonging to non-christian religious traditions are
the ones more likely to find offence.  The anti-religious are more
likely to be content with the present system.  That makes for a strange
alliance of convenience between atheists and fundamentalist Christians.


from_name: Amir Livne Bar-On

subject: [WikiEN-l] Address blocked without a visible reason

body:
Around the time Wed May 18 08:41:00 UTC 2005, I was given "User is
blocked" on attempt to edit "Software transactional memory", and then
"Wikipedia:Sandbox" (to check whether I'm actually blocked) on the
English Wikipedia.

I'm not a registered wikipedian, and doesn't have a user page. The
single edit that I recall in the past few days was a spelling correction
in some page about a person (I can't recall which).

I use a firewall and a NAT, but that shouldn't affect my wiki browsing.
The blocking page requests me to include the sentence "Your IP address
is 217.132.73.18" in my requests, so here I do. It is notable that
212.132 doesn't appear in Special:Ipblocklist at this time.

I'd very much like this to be fixed, or at least get a reply. I'm not a
user of the mailing list, but I will check it for updates every few hours.

Thanks in advance,
	Amir Livne Bar-On (lightstep)


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Statistics

body:
Hi,

FYI, we have now 21 Wiktionaries with more than 1,000 articles and 20 more
with more than 100 articles.

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and
	encyclopedic merit.

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Through my participation in the schools debate, it has come to my
>attention that there are wikipedians who believe that we should
>include everything which is verifiable and NPOV, with no standard of
>notoriety applied.  My perspective is that while that might be a good
>set of criteria for a dictionary of trivia, it is not a good criteria
>for an encyclopedia, even one made out of tiny bits of magnetized
>composits rather than paper.
>
Notoriety and notability are different conmcepts.

>Already the next database dumb of cur will likely be too big to fix
>gzipped on my Zarus (a pocket sized computer. The prior one just fit
>it's 1gb SD card and I find it amazingly useful ... I'm going to need
>to come up with some kind of filter to reduce the size for the next
>one).....   Soon we will begin brushing the size of what we can fit on
>a DVD, so what of access to our work by people in disconnected
>communities and third-world nations? As our working-set grows past the
>amount of ram we can reasonably expect to put in our caches and
>database servers, our performance will become increasingly diskbound.
>I think that many people mistake the the claim that [[m:Wiki is not
>paper]] with a claim that we have boundless storage without
>compromise.
>
I didn't realize that one of the aims of Wikipedia was to have a
database small enough to be dumped entirely on anybody's drive.  I
suspect that most passive users have no need or desire for such a dump.
Omitting the articles that you would like to see left out will slow the
growth of database a little, but that will only delay the time before it
won't fit on your pocket computer.  When it comes to third world
equipment, I'm sure that we have long since exceeded the capacity of
that equipment.  As to Wikimedia's own capacity for storing information,
I would find the request "Slow down, we have too much stuff," more
credible if it came from our senior developers.

>I didn't just choose the intersection example because I thought it was
>a good strawman, ( :) )
>
I'm glad to here that, but others may see it differently.  Perhaps you
could dispel those misunderstandings by providing data on the number of
articles about such intersections that have been contributed to Wikipedia.

>I also choose it because I'm aware of the
>level of information available, and could actually create a lot of
>these articles myself. Since I used to work for a county government in
>Florida, still have a copy of most of the GIS database, and know the
>right people in a few other counties, I could patch together a bot to
>create thousands of such articles, complete with aerial photographs,
>construction dates, and in many cases some level of traffic
>information (I have traffic counters for all the arterial/arterial
>intersections with the data I have).
>
Fantastic!

>Such trivia would only be useful as a raw reference, why not
>wikisource if any of the preexisting wikis?
>
>
I don't think that dumping material that you don't like into any other
project is a friendly act unles you have an agreement with the people
involved in that project.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] date and cache

body:
Hi,

Le Wednesday 18 May 2005 12:15, Anthere a ?crit :
> Hi
>
> Three times now in about a week or so, some spanish editors reported me a
> weird bug, that makes them see the wrong date on some pages or on recent
> changes. See the last comment
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Anthere&curid=521&dif
>f=0&oldid=132341
>
> I know there was a bug a while ago about this, but as far as I understood,
> it was fixed.
>
> Still... there is still something going on and people still regularly see a
> wrong date.
>
> A couple of personal observations...
>
> ... I also noticed in the past few days a huge issue with cache.
> Three times yesterday, when I edited meta, for a new page, after I saved
> the page, there was nothing on it, and I had to reload to see the new page.
>
> That also happened to me on the Foundation website yesterday, when I tried
> to create a redirection from "board" to "board of Trustees". After saving,
> the page was empty.

This happens very often to me, especially on pick time.

> Weirder is what is currently happening on the village pump on the french
> wikipedia (though part of it might be due to Paris servers).
>
> I connected anonymously yesterday, and I got the 14th of may page. I reload
> several times, forced reload... and still got the 14th of may.
>
> I ended up login, I still had the 14th of may, but after one simple reload,
> I finally got the 17th.

This is probably due to the way the French WP is now managed with subpages.
When a new subpage is added, the cache of the VP has to be purged, but users
forget to do it. I?did it yesterday and the VP was updated as you saw it.

> I *think* there is a problem here. I do not know what it is, but if I have
> the idea to reload and reload and login and reload again to finally get the
> right page, I do not think readers or recent editors think of doing this.
> Any ideas ?
>
> Anthere (looking for the future, not so much on the past)

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Timwi

body:
james wrote:
>
> Thanks for that - though I do not really understand this, I have EasyPHP1-8
> installed, on an XP machine, which I will be wanting to run the wikipedia
> from. I have downloaded 20050421_cur_table.sql.gz and have unpacked it to
> 20050421_cur_table.sql

OK, now click "Start", then "Run", then type "cmd" and press Enter. A
DOS box opens. Then type the following:

	mysql -D wikidb < C:\path-to-the-file\20050421_cur_table.sql

Of course, you will have to enter the actual real path to the file.

This assumes that you have already created a database called "wikidb".
If you have installed MediaWiki and it's already running, then you have.

> - do I need the other downloads aswell, like broken
> links, etc?

You don't strictly *need* them; you can re-create them using the
rebuildlinks.php script. But, of course, you can also download them and
import them as well. I don't know which is faster.

Timwi