from_name: Jack Lynch

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Respected users who tell us what is what (was:
	Strawman attacks on recent proposals)

body:
I hope not... You made a VERY convincing case against the content
comitee there...

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 6/7/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Well, as Gomer Pyle would say:
>
> * "Surprise, surprise, surprise"
>
> Isn't this *precisely* what Larry Sanger was calling for? And wasn't
> this the *chief* criticism he made about Wikipedia in his famous screed?
>
> That we need *some* sort of reliable group of experts ("vetted panels of
> respected users who have demonstrated knowledge in certain areas" as Mav
> put it) to give us a reliable clue as to what is really so.
>
> Okay, maybe I shouldn't be so shrill and I-told-you-so-ish about this;
> sorry, I'll get off my high horse now.
>
> Taking the course Mav suggests could either help us a lot or hurt us
> terribly. If we choose wise (and unbiased!) panels, we'll be able to add
> the adjective "reliable" (or "authoritative") to our main page's slogan.
> If we simly hold an election, chances are that voters will (deliberately
> or not) choose a panel which MERELY REFLECTS THEIR PREJUDICES AND
> BIASES.
>
> It ultimately will come down to a question of:
>
> * Who is worthy of our trust?
> * How do we identify and attract such people?
> * How can we prove to others that they merit our trust?
>
> This task might be too hard for us, with our current organization. Now
> don't get me wrong: I really like the people on the arbcom, and I'm not
> wangling for a seat on it. I'm just saying that it's very difficult for
> non-experts to judge the qualifications of experts.
>
> To distinguish between:
>
> A. the scrupulously honest and self-sacrificial devotees of truth (of
> "what is") who are as M. Scott Peck wrote, "dedicated to reality at all
> costs"; and,
>
> B. people who will assert that something is true (1) out of ignorant
> error or (2) for an ulterior motive
>
> ...to make that distinction is more than we bargained for.
>
> Jimbo and Larry set up the NPOV idea out of what I regard as a kind of
> philosophical and practical desperation: I realization that the only way
> a really huge wiki could operate successfully was to DUCK all issues of
> determining right and wrong, true and false, good and bad - and simply
> "describe fairly each point of view". Thus the term Neutral Point Of
> View means "not endorsing or rejecting ANY point of view".
>
> It may be that Wikipedia has served its purpose: that it has reached the
> end of its tether. If so, we must look to others to build upon its
> foundation and continue onward.
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Daniel Mayer [mailto:maveric149 at yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 11:42 PM
> > To: English Wikipedia
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Strawman attacks on recent proposals
> >
> >
> > --- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Folks, we still have a major problem. There are many people
> > here who
> > > unfortunately refuse to cite sources, engage in original research,
> > > write things that are just false and bizarre.
> >
> > And the ArbCom is already charged with enforcing all
> > Wikipedia policies, including those that are about content
> > (such as NPOV, NOR, and Verifiability). We have in fact ruled
> > in this area several times before but have been usually
> > limited to cases that are fairly obvious.
> >
> > Spotting subtle POV, original research, or fringe ideas
> > masquerading as more mainstream than they are takes a fair
> > amount of pre-existing knowledge in the relevant subject
> > area. This is something that the current ArbCom could never have.
> >
> > Thus my idea of having vetted panels of respected users who
> > have demonstrated knowledge in certain areas that the ArbCom
> > could call upon to help it distinguish what is what.
> >
> > See
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitratio
> n/RFC#Alternate_solution_.239_by_mav._Content_subcommittee
>
>
> -- mav
>
> __________________________________________________
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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On 6/7/05, Andrew Venier <avenier at venier.net> wrote:
> How does one, in the course of documenting what is known on a topic,
> "accidentally find out something that wasn't known before"?

Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math
article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in
mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way
which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important
in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like
placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR
is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new
mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
On Jun 6, 2005, at 12:54 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>> Then those websites and books are pretty good references for their
>> opinions.  I don't see a problem here.  A flat earth society
>> website is an
>> excellent reference for a description of the views of that society.
>>
>
> But if the article is [[astrophysics]]?

It doesn't matter if the article is [[Strawberry lollipop]].  The Flat
Earth Society website's authority on the opinion, where it takes an
official position, of the Flat Earth Society on strawberry lollipops, the
Michael Jackson trial, the shape of the earth, or whatever, is pretty
solid.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> ... However, I believe that you, Mark and other
> arbitrators are examining the problem *only* from your point of view as
> arbitrators. This is an unnecessary limitation of perspective. I think
> there are community-based approaches that are not as susceptible to
> error and corruption and that therefore should be preferred.

The possibility of error and corruption always exists whenever you include
humans in a process. But increasing the number of vetted people involved will
tend to decrease this possibility, no? The ArbCom already hears cases that
involve violations of our content-related policies. Making it easier for them
to cut through subtle POV and original research will be make that body work
more effectively in making sure our content-related polices are followed.

I don't feel that I have proposed anything that would increase the possibility
of corruption and error. In fact, I feel I have made a proposal that would
decrease this possibility for the current ArbCom. Other approaches can and
should also be explored, but I do think what I've proposed can be part of the
solution.

> Now that you have so cogently pointed out the problem -- it's possible
> to wage "wars of attrition" over articles, and the person first to
> explode or give up is likely to lose --

Yep - this is exactly the problem. Bad behavior is bad no matter how factually
correct and content policy-adhering your edits are and there should be
consequences for that. *But* being factually correct and more closely adhering
to our content policies should mitigate any remedy against a user while
persistently not doing that should multiply any remedy against another user.

If we are serious about Wikipedia being an encyclopedia first and a wiki
community second, then we must take some stance similar to that. Yet, factually
correctness and how closely something follows our content policies  is not
something the ArbCom by itself is competent to determine except in the most
obvious of cases (which are much fewer and further between now). Thus my idea
of having various bodies we could consult on content-related matters.

> I would like us to look together
> for a solution that is compatible with our ideals and dreams of
> openness and cooperation in good faith, rather than one that takes us
> down the road of credentialism and hierarchy.

I fail to see how having a consultive body to the ArbCom would do that. They
would not have any power of their own and there will be checks and balances.
I'd just like to be able to ask groups of respected and vetted users who have
demonstrated some competence in certain areas questions from time to time as
needed.

-- mav

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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
I was pretty sure the site definition of original research was "ideas
that are entirely your own, theories, or something new that people in
the field haven't seen really yet", not just "something that cannot
cite sources because it comes from a person's head". I've written
plenty of articles in many different Wikipedias that would be
considered original research under the second definition but not the
first.

Mark

On 06/06/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/6/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > Aside from the question of whether you are doing original research
> > (which, by the way, I heartily approve of and support a change in
> > policy to accept) , a good effort to identify your source is still
> > necessary. This is a grey area. If I go to the Saguache County
> > Courthouse and look up documents on say the [[Baca Grant No. 4]] that
> > would seem to be both a well documented source (book and page) and
> > publicly available but also difficult and expensive to access and
> > original research to boot. So pretty ambiguous in terms of our policies.
>
> A open invitation to original research would be a bad thing... but at
> the same time the prohibition against it denies the ability to print
> common sense to those in a field... Despite the handwaving claims to
> the contrary, it can be quite difficult (measured against the value of
> including the text) to find a citation for something that is common
> sense in a given field but not necessarily outside it.  Fortunately,
> at least on en, we look the other way on original research unless
> there is a dispute.
>
> We need to start thinking about ways to include original research in a
> way which maximises the gains and minimizes the harms, and what sorts
> of research could be most easily included.
>
> I've been thinking about one such way which might be useful: Form a
> new project called Wikiviews.  Wikiviews is a collaborative framework
> for conducting and collecting interviews with notable people.  The
> wikiviews community would establish notability criteria to decide who
> is eligible for an interview for example, having an article on
> wikipedia about them would be a great start, but it would also be
> useful to interview notable professionals and hobbyists in their areas
> of interest.  Collaborative consensus building can be used to create
> proposed questions. The interview is then performed and stored, and
> can then be used for citations in Wikipedia articles. This would give
> us greater ability to insert informed opinion into an article without
> running into many of the problems with original research since we
> could attach a source to those views.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: www.biography.ms is illegally using Wikipedia
	content

body:
Hi Ant,

I actually encounter this problem a lot more.

This is presumably because more of the topics I search for have a
Wikipedia article but not a lot of other sites about them, or other
sites with low pagerank on Google.

Since of course there are so many verbatim copies of en.wikipedia, a
search on "yonaguni language" on Google will leave you almost
exclusively with copies of the same few pages on en:, although it may
or may not include two separate pages on Wikitravel (brand new), and
some pages from my blog.

Mark

On 07/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Funny that you mention it. Yesterday, I was looking for an old pdf
> version of Donella Meadows work. Had a hard time finding it because all
> what was on the net about her was copies of the wikipedia articles (mine
> in good part, so this was not what I was looking for). One of the most
> proeminent copy was precisely this website.
>
> It was also one of the first time I regretted articles existed in
> wikipedia... because I could not find the original paper I was looking
> for, because the web was so much infested by the wikipedia articles...
>
> I suddently regretted Google was not able to distinguish that all the
> articles were the same, and hidding other articles which are unique, but
> simply less visible. I actually wonder if this is not a bit problematic.
> It looks as if the search system was not able to handle this properly
> any more.
>
> Ant
>
> PS : I must not forget to add the pdf link to the article so I can find
> it next time.
>
> Maury Markowitz a ?crit:
> > I was doing a little googling this morning while the wiki was down, and
> > came across a reference to a site, www.biography.ms.
> >
> > The entire site is simply a bad scraping of the wikipedia, with all
> > attributions removed.
> >
> > Maury
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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body:
Actually, I searched for it, and Wikipedia copies appear to be the
*only* results (a search for the Japanese equivalent is more fruitful
however).

Sadly, the actual en.wiki page titled "yonaguni language" is the
penultimate result. It can be found on the 7th page.

Mark

On 08/06/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ant,
>
> I actually encounter this problem a lot more.
>
> This is presumably because more of the topics I search for have a
> Wikipedia article but not a lot of other sites about them, or other
> sites with low pagerank on Google.
>
> Since of course there are so many verbatim copies of en.wikipedia, a
> search on "yonaguni language" on Google will leave you almost
> exclusively with copies of the same few pages on en:, although it may
> or may not include two separate pages on Wikitravel (brand new), and
> some pages from my blog.
>
> Mark
>
> On 07/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Funny that you mention it. Yesterday, I was looking for an old pdf
> > version of Donella Meadows work. Had a hard time finding it because all
> > what was on the net about her was copies of the wikipedia articles (mine
> > in good part, so this was not what I was looking for). One of the most
> > proeminent copy was precisely this website.
> >
> > It was also one of the first time I regretted articles existed in
> > wikipedia... because I could not find the original paper I was looking
> > for, because the web was so much infested by the wikipedia articles...
> >
> > I suddently regretted Google was not able to distinguish that all the
> > articles were the same, and hidding other articles which are unique, but
> > simply less visible. I actually wonder if this is not a bit problematic.
> > It looks as if the search system was not able to handle this properly
> > any more.
> >
> > Ant
> >
> > PS : I must not forget to add the pdf link to the article so I can find
> > it next time.
> >
> > Maury Markowitz a ?crit:
> > > I was doing a little googling this morning while the wiki was down, and
> > > came across a reference to a site, www.biography.ms.
> > >
> > > The entire site is simply a bad scraping of the wikipedia, with all
> > > attributions removed.
> > >
> > > Maury
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
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from_name: Stephen Adair

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
Is anyone else having terrible lag times when trying to delete
articles?  Quite a while back I noticed that if I don't get the
confirmation screen within three seconds, I won't get it at all.  If
it takes longer than three seconds, what will happen instead is that
it eventually times out and I get a message that the Wikipedia server
didn't respond to the request.  Usually, when the first try doesn't
get a response within three seconds, I'll click stop and re-click
confirm.  The deletion usually occurs on the second or third try.

Tonight has been horrible.  I must have tried at least 15 times before
I was able to delete [[Dermapigmentation]] (content was "tasha").  So
far I've managed to delete three articles listed on
[[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion]] but the rest of them are
going to sit there.  It is too much trouble trying to delete because
of the horrible lag / time-out issue.

Anyone else having the same problem?

Stephen W. Adair
User:SWAdair


from_name: Guaka

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 11:03 -0500, Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 6/7/05, Guaka <guaka at no-log.org> wrote:
> > But if you accidentally find out something that wasn't known before
> > you'd have to erase it from Wikipedia and move it somewhere else... :/
> > Which also implies you could never earn a PhD by writing on Wikipedia.
> > I hope Wikiresearch and/or Wikiversity will become a bit bigger to
> > tackle this inconvenience. :)
>
> You are misintepreting WP:NOR.

As Sean wrote, "earning most advanced degrees requires original
research." If you say I'm misinterpreting the "no original reserarch"
rule, could you explain why?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Scheduled global downtime

body:
Hi Mark,

I'm assuming your "top 5" is based on article count.

I don't think that's right in this context, as it will be the visitors
who see the error page - the articles aren't the ones looking at the
error page, after all!

That would be, in order, English - Japanese - German - Spanish - French.

That top 5 would cover 80% of our visitors. (the top 3 would cover
70%, just English covers 40%)

Unfortunately (but for this purpose, fortunately), if you look at the
graph of cumulative %age of visitors/day by rank in visitors/day, the
curve is very very steep.

That means that with just a few languages, you can cover almost all visitors.

11 languages will cover 93%. In order: English - Japanese - German -
Spanish - French - Polish - Dutch - Swedish - Chinese - Italian -
Portuguese.

That also says a lot about us: most of these are languages which
originate in Western Europe, the only exceptions being Japanese,
Chinese, and Polish.

14 languages will cover 95%; just add Hebrew - Danish - Finnish to the
end. (again, in that order)

You could try to unify the Scandinavian versions of the message
(Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian), if you want to I can help with that.

23 languages will cover 97%, add Esperanto - Norwegian - Russian -
Arabic - Slovene - Catalan - Malaysian - Korean - Romanian.

As you can see, the more languages you add the less quickly it approaches 100%.

So it really all depends on what ratio of server load to number of
people who can read/understand it in their language you think is
best...

My personal opinion is that the 11 languages is the best option.

It might also be a good idea to have a shorter message for the lower
languages in the list.

Mark

On 07/06/05, ultrablue at gmail.com <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry I couldn't actually throw together the multilingual page, but I
> was studying for exams and will be for the next couple of weeks. But
> once that's finished, I want to get back on track and complete putting
> together multilingual server error messages. I don't think it's
> acceptable on a site as multilingual as Wikipedia (and the other
> Wikimedia projects too) to only give English language error messages.
> I was hoping to get some help scripting a page with mechanics similar
> to the Wikipedia preferences page, whereby clicking a link changes the
> content, but where the content still displays correctly on older
> browsers. I started doing this about a month ago, but other things got
> in the way. We would have to decide which languages to include. In my
> semi-working prototype, I included only the top 5 languages, which I
> think were English, French, German, Swedish and Japanese. If we
> include too many languages, we run a risk of placing extra strain on
> the servers because the file size will inflate. Anyway, tell me what
> you think of my idea.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
>
> On 6/8/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > ultrablue at gmail.com a ?crit:
> > > Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean you're shifting the
> > > servers across the street at 3AM? That's got to look suspicious :-)
> > >
> > > If you're setting up a downtime page on the Paris squids, I recommend
> > > not including a link to Openfacts.berlios.de. Every time Wikipedia has
> > > even a mild downtime (i.e. about 3 minutes or less) that site gets
> > > overwhelmed and goes down itself. I don't think it's fair on whoever
> > > owns that site.
> >
> > Well, your wishes were obeyed. The Paris squids showed to everyone
> > accessing wikipedia, that we again had a crash, were trying to fix it,
> > and would be back soon.
> >
> > It was not a maintenance page which was shown, but a crash page.
> > Not sure it is exactly good for our image.
> >
> > Ant
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki articles without en:

body:
That's not so surprising in and of itself.

I think what Milos meant is that there are 3 interwiki links, yet none
to English.

3 versions without an English version is sort of rare, but the fact
that those languages are Japanese, Swedish, and Serbian makes it all
the more peculiar.

Mark

On 07/06/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/6/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> > > Only two articles on ja: do not have an equivalent on en: ? That is just
> > > a small number. There is 100's if not 1000's that do not have
> > > equivalents on en: I know because I am responsible for at least 40 or 50
> > > or so :)
> >
> > My suspicion is that what was meant is that two articles had interwiki
> > links at all that did not include English.
>
> Yes. (Hmm... My English...) Some time ago, I found one more such
> article, but I forgot its name. It is not so easy to catch interwiki
> for articles which don't exist on en:, but it is possible (we did it
> using IRC for relation sr: - ja:; I don't know for the history of sv:
> - ja: relation). And I think that it should be noted for history ;)
> _______________________________________________
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>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
> How does one, in the course of documenting what is known on a topic,
> "accidentally find out something that wasn't known before"?

IIRC something like that happened with [[en:color blindness]].
But there are several other possibilities I guess, especially when
Wikipedia articles will delve deeper and deeper into subjects.

> If one does indeed have brand new ideas about a subject, these ideas
> warrant the testing and maturation that comes with peer review and
> publication before they warrant being repeated in an encyclopedia.

Yes, that's why I think Wikiresearch is a good idea. It combines peer
review and publication.


body:
Incidentally, there is now a Bosnian version of both articles ;p

Mark

On 06/06/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just to note that. ja:, sv: and sr: have two articles which don't exist on en:
>
> 1. Japanese god Hoderi:
> http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%87%E3%83%AA
> http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoderi
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B8
>
> 2. Japanes god Hoori:
> http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9B%E3%82%AA%E3%83%AA
> http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoori
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%BE%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8
>
> We have one guy who likes mythology. It seems that there is one more
> person on sv:
> _______________________________________________
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>

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined
	effort)

body:
A guy actually said that to you?

I think that his request should be granted :)

mark

On 07/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Guaka a ?crit:
>
> > I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas
> > under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up
> > contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every
> > article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000
> > articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much
> > more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it
> > will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more
> > effective than when there is nothing...
>
> I remember something someone told me once. He said :
>
> do not just bring computers to our villages. Bring computers with ideas
> of how to use them, make them alive. Show us something that we can
> transform ourselves from an education or economical point of view.
> Please do not come with computers and a cd rom of wikipedia, which will
> only tell us "we made this for you, now use it", rather bring computers,
> plus a wiki installed, a system to post articles by mail and a line good
> enough to send mails and download articles from time to time.
>
> ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
In response to the first part:

Yes, it is that much of a performance hog.
Just a little bit of text isn't that bad, but when you multiply it
times hundreds of thousands of visitors, it gets to be significant.

In response to the second part: I would imagine that this sort of
thing would take up more bandwidth as well.

However I don't know how much bandwidth either would take up - it may
not be too much.

Mark

On 08/06/05, Pavol Cupka <pavol.cupka at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Why not include all languages that would translate the error message?
> Is it really that much of a performance hog?
>
> Could also maybe a rewrite role be applied for example when someone
> tries to reach
>
> sk.wikipedia.org he would get sk.wikipedia.org/?lang=sk and so on for
> other langs with fall back to en
>
> just a thought
>
> --
> Palica
> http://sk.wikipedia.org/User:Palica
> Nezabudni si vzia? svoje Wikam?ny. / Don't forget to take your
> Wikamins today. - Palica
> http://sk.wikipedia.org - slobodn? encyklop?dia, ktor? m??e ka?d?
> upravova? - AJ TY
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] skins/php: inserting a 2'nd  page by name

body:
Heinz wrote:
> I would like to insert a second defined article by name into the a skin.
> I can't find any hints on the web.
> Can anybody help me?

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do. Can you explain it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Bernd Kulawik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Steve Jobs on Wikipedia

body:
Hello,

today I watched the video stream of the keynote Apple's CEO Steve
Jobs yesterday morning gave in San Francisco at Apple's World Wide
Developers Conference because I wanted to hear what he really said
about Apple's switch to Intel processors. Before that, Jobs mentioned
10 so-called Dashboard widgets, small programs for different purposes
that are part of Apple's new version of its operating system OS X
(version 10.4, called "Tiger"), -  among them also a Wikipedia widget
which looks up any article fast without opening a browser window - of
course, you'll need an internet connection for the search.
Though the fact has been mentioned on wikinews already, I found at
interesting that this short hint on the Wikipedia widget was not only
longer than the others, but also reveiled Jobs' high estimation of
Wikipedia:

Quote:

"This is a favourite of mine: Wikipedia. For those of you who don't
know: This is an Open Source encyclopedia where everybody contributes
to it. It has now become one of the most robust and certainly
accurate encyclopedias in the world because you got experts from all
over the world contributing to it. And we just look up "tiger" in
here, and you get the low-down (?) on all kinds of tigers. So that's
Wikipedia and it's great."

Maybe I made some mistake in understanding or spelling ... but the
fact remains that one of the most important important people in the
IT sector - whose visions had a great influence on the way we are
using computers today - calls Wikipedia "great" and his favourite. -
I like that :-)

Ciao

Bernd


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On 6/8/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/6/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> > Only two articles on ja: do not have an equivalent on en: ? That is just
> > a small number. There is 100's if not 1000's that do not have
> > equivalents on en: I know because I am responsible for at least 40 or 50
> > or so :)
>
> My suspicion is that what was meant is that two articles had interwiki
> links at all that did not include English.

Yes. (Hmm... My English...) Some time ago, I found one more such
article, but I forgot its name. It is not so easy to catch interwiki
for articles which don't exist on en:, but it is possible (we did it
using IRC for relation sr: - ja:; I don't know for the history of sv:
- ja: relation). And I think that it should be noted for history ;)


from_name: ulrice jardin

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC

body:
hi,

is it possible to use a TOC generated in a page in
another page? (I cannot find any reference to the
generated TOC)

thanks

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] vikipedija.org and vikimedija.org

body:
Thanks, I'll ask them if they want to use those domains.

On 6/7/05, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > At least, it would be used for Serbian local chapter. vikipedija.org
> > should be an alias for sr.wikipedia.org or to become a portal for
> > languages which write Wikipedia in such way.
>
> I know that Latvian Wikipedia does.
>
> --
> Ausir
> Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
> http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: compufixers

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of British Jews

body:
Your list of British Jews OMITS:

Professor Alec Boksenberg, Astronomer, Cambridge University, (Chair UK UNESCO Commission), formerly Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, who now works at the Institute of Astronomy.

Jeni Barnett
TV personality and presenter, currently presenting ITV1's Too Many Cooks.

I wonder how many other omissions there are... - ?

Gillian Younger


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Compulsory Mediation,
	Was Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
On 6/7/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> In real life, mediation is essentially a choice, not a
> requirement/obligation.

I've been in mandatory mediation twice (once on a court order, once on
my request).  The mediator, in both cases, had only the authority to
report on what agreement, if any, was reached during the mediation.
Matters discussed but not agreed upon would not be included in the
report.  (In one case, we agreed on most, but not all issues; in the
other we agreed on nothing.)  I think it's important that those acting
as mediators keep the bulk of the mediation in confidence, reporting
only that mediation occurred and on what was actually agreed upon, if
anything, during the mediation.  If either party refuses to mediate in
good faith, then the mediator should simply bring mediations to a
close and report back that no agreement was reached without explaining
why.

Kelly


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of British Jews

body:
I'm sure there's a lot more important stuff missing from Wikipedia,
but that's why it's a wiki and that's also why we've got that shiny
"edit this page"-button at the top of the page. Wikipedia is a work in
progress and it's quite possible the list hasn't got all famous
British Jews simply because the initial creator didn't know them.

Just click the link, look at how the coding is done and you can add it yourself.

Thanks for pointing it out.

--Mgm

On 6/8/05, compufixers <compufixers at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> Your list of British Jews OMITS:
>
> Professor Alec Boksenberg, Astronomer, Cambridge University, (Chair UK UNESCO Commission), formerly Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, who now works at the Institute of Astronomy.
>
> Jeni Barnett
> TV personality and presenter, currently presenting ITV1's Too Many Cooks.
>
> I wonder how many other omissions there are... - ?
>
> Gillian Younger
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
Yes, I did some deleting from that cat a while back and I had to click
a grand total of 5 times on one article to get it deleted IIRC. Maybe
we should mention it to the developers?

--Mgm

On 6/8/05, Stephen Adair <swadair at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is anyone else having terrible lag times when trying to delete
> articles?  Quite a while back I noticed that if I don't get the
> confirmation screen within three seconds, I won't get it at all.  If
> it takes longer than three seconds, what will happen instead is that
> it eventually times out and I get a message that the Wikipedia server
> didn't respond to the request.  Usually, when the first try doesn't
> get a response within three seconds, I'll click stop and re-click
> confirm.  The deletion usually occurs on the second or third try.
>
> Tonight has been horrible.  I must have tried at least 15 times before
> I was able to delete [[Dermapigmentation]] (content was "tasha").  So
> far I've managed to delete three articles listed on
> [[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion]] but the rest of them are
> going to sit there.  It is too much trouble trying to delete because
> of the horrible lag / time-out issue.
>
> Anyone else having the same problem?
>
> Stephen W. Adair
> User:SWAdair
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MHart

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC

body:
The function that does the TOC is in Parser.php, function formatHeadings().
You should create an extension that generates a new Article() inside a page,
subclass the Parser page to replace formatHeadings() with your own function
that outputs just the TOC to your extension.

- MHart
- http://taxalmanac.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "ulrice jardin" <ujelin at yahoo.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 9:36 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC

hi,

is it possible to use a TOC generated in a page in
another page? (I cannot find any reference to the
generated TOC)

thanks

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html
_______________________________________________
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Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>
>
>>Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Iif you use the old Soviet records somebody is bound to bring up the "No
>>>original research" rule.
>>>
>>>
>>Why are old Soviet records "original research" while old US records
>>(NVR, DANFS, &c.) are okay?
>>
>>
>Ease of verification?
>
>In theory, many old US records are accessible by the Freedom of Information
>Act; I believe something similar exists for many national archives.
>
There's a gold mine of material available before even needing FOI.  For
example, all US patent applications made since their big fire are
available on line.  In about 1970 I remember wandering in a section of
university stacks where they were storing booklets received at a rapid
rate from various US government agencies.  There was no way that any
library  could keep up with maintaining a subject catalogue of this
stuff. My favourite was a pamphlet from the US Army, "The Toxic Effect
of Burning Chicken Feathers."

>Years ago, when this topic was raised on this list, I seem to remember
>that there was a consensus towards requiring all sources cited or used
>to be *published*. Not only did that mean that the material received
>some token degree of review, & did not depend on Wikipedia for dissemination
>into the larger public discussion (which was one reason for the No Original
>Research rule), but it also allowed a Wikipedia user to verify the
>citation for her/himself. Thus an unpublished memo from a national or
>corporate archive written in 1955 should not be cited; but a letter
>between two ancient rulers that has been translated & published as
>part of _The Armana Letters_ (published by John Hopkins Press, & for
>sale on Amazon) can be cited.
>
"Years ago" is wonderfully hyperbolic considering that in most
jurisdictions the project is not old enough to attend kindergarten.
"Published", in most cases, is a solid objective criterion to use as a
starting point.  There may still be arguments about whether something
really was published.  Is a doctoral thesis "published" when it is
simply put on University library shelves and made available through
interlibrary loan?

>I am always happily surprised at what I can access through my local
>public library's Interlibrary Loan services -- often at no cost to me.
>
Half the problem faced by many of our contributors is in not knowing the
extent of available resources, and how to get at them.

>Of course, this requirement leads to other questions. What about rare
>books or ephemera? For example, if one wanted to write articles on
>Grunge rock in Seattle (home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarten & other
>well-known bands), _The Rocket_ is an invaluable & authoritative
>source to cite. However, that newspaper went out of business years ago,
>& I wouldn't have a clue where I could find copies of specific -- or
>any -- issues. (It was a free weekly newspaper that could be found at
>all of the local record stores in Seattle & Portland.) If there is a
>library with a run of its issues, I doubt that they would share either
>the originals or a photocopy thru ILL; but then, coming thru old
>issues of _The Rocket_ or 16th century incunabula seems to me close to
>performing original research.
>
To the extent that it can be found, protecting this ephemeral material
is a big problem.  Copyright permissions would be a nightmare, but in 95
years the newsprint is likely to be so crumbly as to be unusable.  Maybe
there's a need to be more agressive about building on-line pdf files of
this stuff.  There is a strong argument for considering such actions to
be fair use.  The fourth of the factors to be considered is the effect
on the copyright holder's market.

>Another question is citing untranslated, non-English sources in a
>English-language Wikipedia. Obviously, many experts write in languages
>other than English, & some topics cannot be developed beyond a stub
>without use of non-English sources; however, when a contributor writes
>an article & only cites, say, Russian or Georgian-language sources
>for her/his article, I have to take it on faith that not only are
>the references reported correstly, but that the works even exist.
>
>And I'm sure that there are other issues one could discuss. However,
>if we could agree that published sources -- either primary or secondary --
>can be cited, but unpublished works can not be, this would solve
>most of the problem.
>
It's a good starting point, as long as we don't start imposing
qualifications on the published material.  "Peer reviewed" is a common
one that is mentioned.  The problem with that is that it's a subjective
judgement; determining whether a publication is peer-reviewed requires a
significant exercise of POV.

In theory we could go beyond the "published" criterion, but I would
approach that with extreme caution.  We've been known to have a few anal
editors for whom ANY measure of flexibility sets us on the road to chaos
and confusion.

Ec


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
"Geoff Burling" <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote in
message news:Pine.LNX.4.33.0506071700550.567-100000 at joan.burling.com...
[snip]
> (Of course, an objection to this would be the matter of contemporary
> pop culture: AFAIK, there are no books about subjects like the Lost
> television series, Ken Jennings, Pokemon trivia. However, these topics
> have enough of an audience that we should trust that the Wiki method
> will provide a means to keep bad information from entering the
> article.)

Don't worry, this will all be nominated for deletion as "fancruft" anyway
:-(
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Namespace in Friulian Wiki

body:
Pavol Cupka <pavol.cupka <at> gmail.com> writes:

>
> For namespace there is only the hard way -> php file, but you can just
> translate the namespace part and the rest trans. through MediaWiki.
> And frankly it isn't that hard ;)
>
>
>
Ok, so I'll try the 'hard way'. Can I just take an existent language file (for
example French, since it uses the same characters of Friulian) and change inside
it the lang code? Is this enough? Thanks


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: TOC numbering bug

body:
"Lee Daniel Crocker" <lee at piclab.com> wrote in message
news:1118169317.6025.4.camel at penguin.piclab.com...
[snip]
> The cleanest fallback is to assume (and implicitly number) the missing
> intermediate: The example above should be numbered
>
> == 1
> ==== 1.1.1
> ==== 1.1.2
> === 1.2
> === 1.3
>
> Thanks for the heads-up; I'll make sure it's properly specified
> in the syntax.  One of the major goals of a markup language for
> non-technical users is robust and well-defined behavior regardless
> of user mistakes.

Excellent, but one point: could such an implicit header be numbered 0
(zero)?

Should be easy: you simply start the article with counts for each header
level set to zero and increment when you hit a real header at that level.

OK so it gets a bit interesting if people include "=" headers, but the
entire article has to be check in order to prepare the TOC anyway, so the
process could simply start the displayed numbers at the highest level
actually used.

So if an article only had "====" headers, they would logically be numbered
"0.0.0.1; 0.0.0.2; 0.0.0.3" but display as "1; 2; 3".
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: TOC numbering bug

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

>"Lee Daniel Crocker" <lee at piclab.com> wrote in message
>news:1118169317.6025.4.camel at penguin.piclab.com...
>[snip]
>
>
>>The cleanest fallback is to assume (and implicitly number) the missing
>>intermediate: The example above should be numbered
>>
>>== 1
>>==== 1.1.1
>>==== 1.1.2
>>=== 1.2
>>=== 1.3
>>
>>Thanks for the heads-up; I'll make sure it's properly specified
>>in the syntax.  One of the major goals of a markup language for
>>non-technical users is robust and well-defined behavior regardless
>>of user mistakes.
>>
>>
>Excellent, but one point: could such an implicit header be numbered 0
>(zero)?
>
I agree with this, and that the above should really be

== 1
==== 1.0.1
==== 1.0.2
=== 1.1
=== 1.2

>Should be easy: you simply start the article with counts for each header
>level set to zero and increment when you hit a real header at that level.
>
>OK so it gets a bit interesting if people include "=" headers, but the
>entire article has to be check in order to prepare the TOC anyway, so the
>process could simply start the displayed numbers at the highest level
>actually used.
>
>So if an article only had "====" headers, they would logically be numbered
>"0.0.0.1; 0.0.0.2; 0.0.0.3" but display as "1; 2; 3".
>
>
This could also attach an implicit level zero heading to the
introductory material so that it could be edited by itself.

Ec


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

body:
Sorry I couldn't actually throw together the multilingual page, but I
was studying for exams and will be for the next couple of weeks. But
once that's finished, I want to get back on track and complete putting
together multilingual server error messages. I don't think it's
acceptable on a site as multilingual as Wikipedia (and the other
Wikimedia projects too) to only give English language error messages.
I was hoping to get some help scripting a page with mechanics similar
to the Wikipedia preferences page, whereby clicking a link changes the
content, but where the content still displays correctly on older
browsers. I started doing this about a month ago, but other things got
in the way. We would have to decide which languages to include. In my
semi-working prototype, I included only the top 5 languages, which I
think were English, French, German, Swedish and Japanese. If we
include too many languages, we run a risk of placing extra strain on
the servers because the file size will inflate. Anyway, tell me what
you think of my idea.

~Mark Ryan

On 6/8/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> ultrablue at gmail.com a ?crit:
> > Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean you're shifting the
> > servers across the street at 3AM? That's got to look suspicious :-)
> >
> > If you're setting up a downtime page on the Paris squids, I recommend
> > not including a link to Openfacts.berlios.de. Every time Wikipedia has
> > even a mild downtime (i.e. about 3 minutes or less) that site gets
> > overwhelmed and goes down itself. I don't think it's fair on whoever
> > owns that site.
>
> Well, your wishes were obeyed. The Paris squids showed to everyone
> accessing wikipedia, that we again had a crash, were trying to fix it,
> and would be back soon.
>
> It was not a maintenance page which was shown, but a crash page.
> Not sure it is exactly good for our image.
>
> Ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Downtime postmortem notes, part I

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> A few notes:

> * We had a pretty, multilingual "down for maintenance" page all set up
> to be served for requests to the site during the downtime, but this was
> foiled for three or four hours because our offsite DNS in .nl hadn't
> been actually set up quite the way we thought it was, and our onsite DNS
> server in Florida was taken down earlier than planned by mistake.

regarding the downtime page, i've put it in CVS as /tools/downtime/, because
we've had such a notice at least twice now, and it seems wise to have a
standard, translated message for use in the future.

[...]
> * The Paris squids were I think still sending requests to the offline
> Florida machines instead of the downtime page in .nl. Not totally sure
> what was the issue here.

this shouldn't have mattered, should it?  the DNS for * was pointing at nl.
... well, in theory.

> * When bringing lots of web server machines online we have an issue with
> synchronization of time and configuration: the machines are set to
> automatically start the web server on boot, and the load balancers are
> set to automatically put work on them when they come up. But some
> machines have clock trouble and come up in the wrong time, and if the
> configuration has changed they'll have settings out of sync until
> changed. We need to resolve this; either by requiring a manual start or
> by some sort of sanity-check against the master clocks and config.

> For massively wrong clocks (eg, BIOS reset to 2003) we can easily sanity
> check by comparing the current time against $wgCacheEpoch to make sure
> it's later. :)

i think it should be possible to have apaches do a scap when booting before
starting apache, which would remove the problem with outdated PHP files.

> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

kate.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Scheduled global downtime

body:
Pavol Cupka wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:

> Hi,

> Why not include all languages that would translate the error message?
> Is it really that much of a performance hog?

for something as trivial as the downtime page, which is mostly static
content with some translated strings, i don't think it should be a problem.
yesterday, we served the downtime page for every wiki from a single server
(dual 2.2GHz Opteron) with about 15% CPU load.

> Could also maybe a rewrite role be applied for example when someone
> tries to reach

> sk.wikipedia.org he would get sk.wikipedia.org/?lang=sk and so on for
> other langs with fall back to en

currently it uses the Accept-Language to decide what language to serve.  if
that isn't specified, or is "en", it should be possible to use the Host
header to decide the language... i'll have a look at implementing that.

kate.


from_name: Heinz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: skins/php: inserting a 2'nd  page by name

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

>
> Heinz wrote:
> > I would like to insert a second defined article by name into the a skin.
> > I can't find any hints on the web.
> > Can anybody help me?
>
> Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do. Can you explain it?
>

I want to replace the navigation-menu by a fixed article (e.g. mywiki:menu).
Therefor i just would like to replace the navigation part ("<?php
foreach($this->data['navigation_urls']  ... " by a function, which inserts the
article called "mywiki:menu".
This would make the changing of the navigation-menue much more easier.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

references:
<d81fft$3nm$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d82l2t$82m$1@sea.gmane.org><d83m69$ilf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<b8b9a5110506070959401ad7b5@mail.gmail.com>	<d84kh0$smj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d879l6$j2l$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Phil Boswell wrote:
>
>> I am using it semantically.
>>
>> == Major Header
>> (=== generic explanations) // hidden header
>> ==== quick explanation 1 // which applies to all sub-header sections
>> ==== quick explanation 2 // which applies to all sub-header sections
>> === Sub-header 1
>> === Sub-header 2
>
> That is not using it semantically, that is pulling a spurious case out
> of your sleeve for the purpose of demonstrating a point.
>
> The "quick explanations" obviously belong under "Sub-header 1" or
> "Sub-header 2" depending on which of the two they are quick
> explanations of.

The solution to this problem should be independent of what people use
the headers for.  In Wiktionary the heading levels vary with circumstances.

Ec


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

body:
On 07/06/05, Guaka <guaka at no-log.org> wrote:
> > >> We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent
> > >> mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical
> > >> measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a
> > >> full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of
> > >> the advertising.
>
> Spend over 10000 US$ on advertising Wikipedia to the rich, in the hope
> they will be moved to write articles for the poor. This might work in
> India, but in Africa, that seems a total waste of money to me. I might
> be stating this a bit too harsh, but...

I think it may be relevant at this point to remind everybody of the
Firefox advertisement in the New York Times.

Specifically, a free project can have an occassional advertisement and
create a lot of publicity about it. The market share Firefox gained
from people seeing the advertisement is probably much less than that
gained from the hundreds of articles about it in newspapers and news
sites.

I do not mean that this would be beneficial for the aim of the
campaign (to encourage editing in minority language) but that it could
generate a large amount of publicity "on the side". After all, the
news articles would not reach urban areas in Africa, but only be
publicised in the developed world.

Incidentally, I myself felt the whole Firefox thing was a waste of
time. Why donate to the New York Times?

Tomer Chachamu (15)


from_name: Pavol Cupka

body:
Hi,

Why not include all languages that would translate the error message?
Is it really that much of a performance hog?

Could also maybe a rewrite role be applied for example when someone
tries to reach

sk.wikipedia.org he would get sk.wikipedia.org/?lang=sk and so on for
other langs with fall back to en

just a thought

--
Palica
http://sk.wikipedia.org/User:Palica
Nezabudni si vzia? svoje Wikam?ny. / Don't forget to take your
Wikamins today. - Palica
http://sk.wikipedia.org - slobodn? encyklop?dia, ktor? m??e ka?d?
upravova? - AJ TY


subject: [WikiEN-l] My views on policies and debates over content

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>Exclusion of minority opinions has always been
>policy. Not every theory can get in just because someone published a
>paper on it.
>
That's a drastic POV on the matter

>Scroll down to the second heading and read the quote from
>Jimbo:
>
>"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
>substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
>If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be
>easy to name prominent adherents; If a viewpoint is held by an
>extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in
>Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of
>whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it
>or not."
>
>If, out of a collection of say 100 scholarly articles, less than 5 of
>them represented a particular POV, that POV does not deserve
>inclusion. Of course people will quibble over what "minority" means,
>but we can always have a vote on the talk page to see whether people
>consider a source to be a minority source.
>
So you support the "tyranny of the majority".  Of course 95 will always
outvote 5.  And 51 will always outvote 49.  I would prefer not to be so
arrogant in my use of the word "deserve".

>The problem articles are generally not the ones with little
>information available about them.
>
That much is true.

>No, the problem articles are the ones where one large body of people
>coming from one POV are confronting another large body coming from
>another POV.
>
Generally yes.

>But of course it is not WP's role to solve these
>disputes, merely discuss them. Some people seem to forget this. If the
>process of WP:NPOV (weed out the minority sources) cannot arrive at a
>consensus set of facts, then that's fine. If we can't, then the real
>world probably can't either. We just present the opinions and move on.
>
It's fair enough to say that it's not our role to solve these problems,
and that we should be prepared to move on if we can't.  There are many
valid third party minority opinions.  The principal combatants are often
so caught up in their own battles that they ignore any alternative
options.  That's a terrible excuse for suppressing them.  The "King of
Hearts" represented a very important minority when he stood naked at the
doors of the asylum with a bird cage in his hand.

>All that is necessary for POV to prevail is for good Wikipedians not
>to read/enforce WP:NPOV properly.
>
>
i.e. behave and do what your told!  No thanks!

I prefer to put principles ahead of rules.

Ec


from_name: Alex Y. Kwan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Homosexuals and other groups overrepresented
	here(was: sco/fiu-vro in danger)

body:
Hello,

I haven't been reading this thread from the start, so if someone has
already posted this link, I apologise.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html

It didn't really say the degree of the guy's autism, but I figure this
is relevant on two points in the thread, both autism and
homosexuality.

little Alex


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
We have servers in more than one location. I think I recall that the
messages were served from Amsterdam. There is ample capacity to host
this data from there so we can have multiple languages and we can cache
these as well. Basically it is a non-issue.
Thanks,
GerardM

Mark Williamson wrote:

>In response to the first part:
>
>Yes, it is that much of a performance hog.
>Just a little bit of text isn't that bad, but when you multiply it
>times hundreds of thousands of visitors, it gets to be significant.
>
>In response to the second part: I would imagine that this sort of
>thing would take up more bandwidth as well.
>
>However I don't know how much bandwidth either would take up - it may
>not be too much.
>
>Mark
>
>On 08/06/05, Pavol Cupka <pavol.cupka at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>Why not include all languages that would translate the error message?
>>Is it really that much of a performance hog?
>>
>>Could also maybe a rewrite role be applied for example when someone
>>tries to reach
>>
>>sk.wikipedia.org he would get sk.wikipedia.org/?lang=sk and so on for
>>other langs with fall back to en
>>
>>just a thought
>>
>>--
>>Palica
>>http://sk.wikipedia.org/User:Palica
>>Nezabudni si vzia? svoje Wikam?ny. / Don't forget to take your
>>Wikamins today. - Palica
>>http://sk.wikipedia.org - slobodn? encyklop?dia, ktor? m??e ka?d?
>>upravova? - AJ TY
>>
>>
>>


from_name: Finne Boonen

body:
On 6/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Incidentally, there is now a Bosnian version of both articles ;p

as well as ho-ori in Dutch

Finne
--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
http://hekla.rave.org/cookbook.html - my crossplatform dieet/recipe app


body:
Kate Turner wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> regarding the downtime page, i've put it in CVS as /tools/downtime/,
> because we've had such a notice at least twice now, and it seems wise to
> have a standard, translated message for use in the future.

you can preview the current version at
<http://www.knams.wikimedia.org/downtime/>.

kate.


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Original Research

body:
The prohibition on original research is essential, because Wikipedia
does not have the peer review mechanisms in place to properly evaluate
it.


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
For a month or two, I was thinking to introduce barnstars for original
works on sr:. I introduced two categories: (1) for original work (in
the sense of Wikipedia; the rule is that there is no encyclopedic
article on other Wikipedias) and (2) for something which I called
"original interwiki work" (this case; article should exist on at least
one other Wikipedia, but not on en:).

And I got some results :) Two new articles: one in relation sr-hr,
which is not so interesting (I would like not to start with the
new-old explanations, so don't ask why ;) ) and one in relation sr-bg,
which is more interesting because Bulgarians have to translate text
from Serbian into Bulgarian (and vice versa) and it is not so easy for
people who don't have philological education.

So, it seems that it is not so rare if we are talking about languages
which have some relation. But, relation like ja-sv-sr is not so often
:)

I think we should note such events at some page (somewhere on Meta? on
en:? ;) ). The first and less important reason is that such article
should be added into "requested articles" on en:

It is important to show that Wikipedia is the place where diversities
between different people are not forced to be unified into "one
language world". At least.

This two articles are:

1) sr-hr, about Stojan Novakovic, Serbian politician, historican and
philologist:

http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stojan_Novakovi%C4%87
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%98%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%9D%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B

2) sr-bg, about Slobodan Jovanovic, Serbian politician, historian and
novelist (and president of Serbian Academy):

http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%99%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%88%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B

On 6/8/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >That's not so surprising in and of itself.
> >
> >I think what Milos meant is that there are 3 interwiki links, yet none
> >to English.
> >
> >3 versions without an English version is sort of rare, but the fact
> >that those languages are Japanese, Swedish, and Serbian makes it all
> >the more peculiar.
> >
> >
> >
> It is not that rare. I am sure I have seen it more often.
>
> Walter/Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Both exist in Portugese, too :)

On 6/8/05, Finne Boonen <hennar at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Incidentally, there is now a Bosnian version of both articles ;p
>
> as well as ho-ori in Dutch
>
> Finne
> --
> "Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
> unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
> http://hekla.rave.org/cookbook.html - my crossplatform dieet/recipe app
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
--- Stephen Adair <swadair at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is anyone else having terrible lag times when trying
> to delete
> articles?  Quite a while back I noticed that if I
> don't get the
> confirmation screen within three seconds, I won't
> get it at all.  If
> it takes longer than three seconds, what will happen
> instead is that
> it eventually times out and I get a message that the
> Wikipedia server
> didn't respond to the request.  Usually, when the
> first try doesn't
> get a response within three seconds, I'll click stop
> and re-click
> confirm.  The deletion usually occurs on the second
> or third try.

Yes, it's been really bad the last couple of days.  I
have made ten attempts at some deletions and have
finally given up, just put the {{delete}} header on
the page for later deletion when the process actually
works.  Of course, when I brought it up on the Village
Pump, I was ridiculed instead of given any
constructive advice.

RickK

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, I did some deleting from that cat a while back
> and I had to click
> a grand total of 5 times on one article to get it
> deleted IIRC. Maybe
> we should mention it to the developers?
>
> --Mgm

Brion Vibber knows.  He was one of those abusing me on
Village Pump.

RickK

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


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
That would be me... I added "Bog" to bs: as well, although I'm not
sure how it would integrate with the article [[Alah]]

Mark

On 08/06/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoderi on hr: :) The article is added by persion who added it on bs:
>
> On 6/8/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Both exist in Portugese, too :)
> >
> > On 6/8/05, Finne Boonen <hennar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 6/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Incidentally, there is now a Bosnian version of both articles ;p
> > >
> > > as well as ho-ori in Dutch
> > >
> > > Finne
> > > --
> > > "Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
> > > unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
> > > http://hekla.rave.org/cookbook.html - my crossplatform dieet/recipe app
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Hoderi on hr: :) The article is added by persion who added it on bs:

On 6/8/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Both exist in Portugese, too :)
>
> On 6/8/05, Finne Boonen <hennar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Incidentally, there is now a Bosnian version of both articles ;p
> >
> > as well as ho-ori in Dutch
> >
> > Finne
> > --
> > "Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
> > unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
> > http://hekla.rave.org/cookbook.html - my crossplatform dieet/recipe app
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>


from_name: David Monniaux

references:
<42A6355F.6060801@pobox.com> <1724616.TPrX4uBIcP@rose.local>
	<1624594.z2uRFGBJAt@rose.local>

body:
Kate Turner wrote:

>you can preview the current version at
><http://www.knams.wikimedia.org/downtime/>.
>
>
Dunno who wrote the French version but it sounds like some bad machine
translation.


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
The concern that some feel about this is not, I believe, based on
their misunderstanding of Wikipedia's fundamental policies.  Rather,
it is about how those policies should be interpreted, enforced, and
utilised.

Personally, my concern is that policy interpretations based on highly
contentious articles may lead to poor general rules: "Hard cases make
bad law".  I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules,
procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to
rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.

Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide.
Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize.

Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How
will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Steve Jobs on Wikipedia

body:
Bernd Kulawik wrote:
> Quote:
>
> "This is a favourite of mine: Wikipedia. For those of you who don't
> know: This is an Open Source encyclopedia where everybody contributes
> to it. It has now become one of the most robust and certainly  accurate
> encyclopedias in the world because you got experts from all  over the
> world contributing to it. And we just look up "tiger" in  here, and you
> get the low-down (?) on all kinds of tigers. So that's  Wikipedia and
> it's great."
>
> Maybe I made some mistake in understanding or spelling ...

>From WordNet 2.0:

  low-down
       n : slang terms for inside information; "is that the straight
           dope?" [syn: dope, poop, the skinny]

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

body:
On 6/7/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> The only real solution I see is to simply document these viewpoints.
> Wikipedia isn't the place to settle whether psychiatrists are
> pill-pushing pseudo-scientists, or psychologists are out-of-touch
> scientists who don't understand medicine, or philosophers should just
> butt out entirely, but we can document what they all say.

Indeed, the ultimate intention of NPOV.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Autism can go to being extremely asocial (such as not speaking, reacting
>violently to touch, refusing exchange with other individuals, having
>repetitive behavior... these autists are unlikely to have a job or a
>family) to having light troubles in interacting with others.
>
>An autist is more likely not to have a love relationship with someone else.
>But even if he does, he can be someone who will not be very warm toward
>spouse, perhaps not appreciate physical touch a lot. I guess this can be a
>the same time an issue both in terms of verbal and non verbal
>communication.
>
>I guess they are often qualified nerds because they deeply engaged
>themselves in activities which do not require to much human contact, or, at
>least activities where they can choose to be in contact or *not* in contact
>with others (single game playing, stamp gathering, gardening...). I think
>for most autists, the vibes sent by other humans have a huge impact and are
>very overbearing. They sort of flood their mental and prevent them from
>properly functionning. In front of this, an extreme solution is to build
>barriers, refuse contact entirely, to the point of not understanding the
>society. A less extreme relief solution is to give time to activities which
>can relieve them from the psychological pressure provided by other human
>beings. A sort of blank out relief. A routine activity helps forget the
>environmental noise.
>
>I do not think that means they cant have a boyfriend/girlfriend, but it is
>likely they will get one not requiring too much interaction from them. I'd
>say the spouse should probably understand the need of the autist to have
>times of isolation and his requirement for a very regular life. Anything
>getting largely out of the routine seems to be very hard to handle for the
>autist.
>
>ant
>
Thanks Anthere, couldn't have explained it better. I must emphasise however
that not all of them suffer from the same symptoms, but need for occasional
isolation is indeed very common. On the other hand, I personally feel the
need of contact with other people as well, as I am a member of a student
fraternity, for example. But... one remains strange anyway...:)

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki articles without en: (another one forMark)

body:
Waerth, you must have confused me with somebody else.

I am not surprised, on the contrary this is very expected...

Mark

On 08/06/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Specially for Mark who seems so surprised about articles linking amongst
> other languages but without an equivalent on english pedia!
>
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardus_Johannes_Alfrink
>
> There are probably 100's if not 1000's of these! On nl alone we have a
> couple of 1000 articles without english equivalent.
>
> Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Interwiki articles without en: (another one
	forMark)

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardus_Johannes_Alfrink
Sorry Walter, but that one just received the missing interwiki link the
original author forgot to add. Now you have to find a new example :-)

Andy
   [[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Scheduled global downtime

body:
Mark Williamson ti 8/6 sia-kong:
>However I don't know how much bandwidth either would take up - it may
>not be too much.

Also, I (and Mark) had pictured it differently (or so I presume - we
may have the same name but that doesn't mean I can speak for Mark) -
one page for everybody rather than multiple pages being based on
accept languages.

Host language is a better idea, I think, and we really should look
into it because many peoples' computers are set with, say, English as
the accept language but would prefer to see the message in, say,
Chinese.

Mark

On 08/06/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > Yes, it is that much of a performance hog.
>
> This is so obviously not true. We're talking about a small set of static
> HTML pages here. For 100 languages, that's 100 pages. Most people will
> look at no more than 2 of them. Millions of websites have more pages
> than that, visitors that surf through them more, and run from a single
> server without a performance problem.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikipedia-l] addind new language into wikipedia

body:
Hi Sulev,

Whether or not it's hard to begin a new Wikipedia really depends.

Tumbuka was created very rapidly with very little discussion, and now
lies totally inactive with under 50 pages (more like 17).

The people who requested its creation simply floated away after they
got what they wanted.

Os.wikipedia was requested around the same time as the V?ro kiil`
Wikipedia, but it was created sooner. One possible reason is that they
had an off-site Ossetic version of Wikipedia that they set up, which
might've helped increase the apparent urgency for a developer (the
sooner you set it up, the less likely they are to remain at a separate
website, etc).

Sometimes Wikipedias are created quickly and with little or no fuss,
and other times they take a very long time and have lots of argument.

My recommendations: Set up an off-site "V?ro kiilne Vikipeedia" (?),
possibly with the help of Amikeco (I don't know if he's willing to
help or not). Once you have 30~50 articles there and a fully
translated interface, ask a developer to create the Voro Wikipedia. If
they hesitate tell them about the off-site version, and if nothing
happens just keep doing what you're doing on your off-site
free-encyclopaedia with the same name.

I don't know if it's exactly legal to use the name "wikipedia" for an
off-site version, in fact I'm betting it's not, but the foundation has
plenty of more important things to worry about than costly legal
battles over whether or not such sites should be able to use the name,
especially if it's only temporary.

Mark

On 08/06/05, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
> Hi Arns,
>
> I'm happy to see activity on Samogitian language modernization.
> You have very good article about Samogitian in enWikipedia.
> I think Samogitian is worth to have its own Wikipedia.
> You should add your request to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> But it seems to be very hard to establish Wikipedia in a new language.
> I requested for creating V?ro language Wikipedia in January and there are very many
> other wikis that are waiting to be created, but as much as I know
> only one - Ossetian Wikipedia - has been created in this year.
> So you must be ready for very long waiting.
> Good luck to Samogitian!
>
> Your (almost) neighbour
> from V?romaa (South Estonia)
> Sulev Iva
>
> 5.06.2005 18:18:30, Zordsdavini iz Litvy <zordsdavini at gmail.com> kirot':
>
> >hello world,
> >I want to start new language (Samogitian) in wikipedia. Where are
> >about 0.5 million samogitians in west Lithuania and about another 0.5
> >million understand. The 3 letter language code for Samogitian could be
> >"smg" so the URL should be http://smg.wikipedia.org. I am a native
> >speaker and know the requirement for samogitian in web. It would be
> >good start for computerisation this language :-D
> >
> >Arns
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zordsdavini
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Magnus Manske

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

New bot idea:
* For an atricle with interwiki links
* that does *not* have an image
* check all interwiki links if they have an image
* Make a list like

"* [[:de:Zeug]] has no image, but its equivalent at [[:en:Stuff]] does"

Then go and upload suitable images on commons, and add them to the
imageless articles.

Magnus

Andreas Hoerstemeier schrieb:
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardus_Johannes_Alfrink
>
> Sorry Walter, but that one just received the missing interwiki link the
> original author forgot to add. Now you have to find a new example :-)
>
> Andy
>   [[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom a sham

body:
If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Skyring/Evidence
you will see an ArbCom hearing proceeding in the evidence-gathering
stage. It was my naive belief that the process was as fair and open as
need be. However, anybody knowing anything about this case will see
that one party has conspicuously failed to show on the evidence page
apart from a brief appearance at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_arbitration%2FSkyring%2FEvidence&diff=14745252&oldid=14736222

I chipped him about this on the talk page, saying it looked as if he
was squibbing his chance to give evidence. His response? "My views are
well known to the ArbCom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Skyring/Evidence&diff=prev&oldid=14863796

Is this *really* how it works? The whole process is a sham and it all
depends on backroom deals?

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki articles without en:

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>That's not so surprising in and of itself.
>
>I think what Milos meant is that there are 3 interwiki links, yet none
>to English.
>
>3 versions without an English version is sort of rare, but the fact
>that those languages are Japanese, Swedish, and Serbian makes it all
>the more peculiar.
>
>
>
It is not that rare. I am sure I have seen it more often.

Walter/Waerth


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion lag times

body:
Rick wrote:

>--- Stephen Adair <swadair at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Is anyone else having terrible lag times when trying
>>to delete
>>articles?  Quite a while back I noticed that if I
>>don't get the
>>confirmation screen within three seconds, I won't
>>get it at all.  If
>>it takes longer than three seconds, what will happen
>>instead is that
>>it eventually times out and I get a message that the
>>Wikipedia server
>>didn't respond to the request.  Usually, when the
>>first try doesn't
>>get a response within three seconds, I'll click stop
>>and re-click
>>confirm.  The deletion usually occurs on the second
>>or third try.
>>
>>
>
>Yes, it's been really bad the last couple of days.  I
>have made ten attempts at some deletions and have
>finally given up, just put the {{delete}} header on
>the page for later deletion when the process actually
>works.  Of course, when I brought it up on the Village
>Pump, I was ridiculed instead of given any
>constructive advice.
>
>
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Ec


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
>
> Well, it's not actually reasonable in that the numbers are duplicated. So if
> someone were to be printing it out with the numbers on, say,
> or...wait...producing a hard-copy version for distribution off-line...

Well, I don't know about other people, but if the article is so crap
that even the header nesting is broken, there's probably going to be a
plethora of other things equally horribly wrong with it that make it
unlikely that I would want to print that article.

Of course, you are perfectly entitled to submit a patch to make your
favourite change to the numbering system, but I'm pretty sure that the
majority of editors on Wikipedia will continue to enforce proper header
nesting, no matter what system you choose.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> The input is not garbage, the assumption that level N section has
> only level N+1 subsections is broken.

Not really. Well, at least not on Wikipedia. I'm finding it hard to
imagine a case where an improperly nested header would be appropriate,
but there might be one on a project that I'm unfamiliar with.

The systems you have proposed certainly have their merits over the
existing system, but of course none of them fix the _underlying_ issue,
which is the improperly nested headers. :-) The way you have presented
them they may look nice, but now if you take into account the font sizes
of the headers and the indentation in the TOC, you will still have a
problem.

Please feel free to implement your favourite alternative, and submit a
patch to MediaZilla. Nevertheless, I -- and I'm sure most others -- will
continue to make sure that headers on Wikipedia are nested properly. :-)

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

references:
<d81fft$3nm$1@sea.gmane.org> <d82l2t$82m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d83m69$ilf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> The auto-numbering assumes (quite reasonably) that the headings are
>> nested correctly. Garbage in, garbage out.
>
> * ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME.

I don't think we need to discuss this. The software *has* to assume that
there is a certain standard followed; without extremely sophisticated
AI, it can't make sense out of everything. It is a reasonable assumption
that if there is a {|, there will be a |}, and it is a reasonable
fall-back to display the {| as text (rather than guessing what the table
should look like) if there isn't. Why do you think does software have
bugs? Because the compiler ASSUMES that the programmer wrote what they
actually meant.

> In this particular instance, this structure is what I want for the
> situation: there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it that the
> software should restrict me.

The software doesn't restrict you in any way. You can have broken
headers if you like, just like you can have a "{|" in the middle of your
article if you like. You just shouldn't be surprised if it doesn't give
you what you expect if you didn't give it what it expects.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: TOC numbering bug

references:
<d81fft$3nm$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d82l2t$82m$1@sea.gmane.org><d83m69$ilf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<b8b9a5110506070959401ad7b5@mail.gmail.com>
	<d84kh0$smj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
>
> I am using it semantically.
>
> == Major Header
> (=== generic explanations) // hidden header
> ==== quick explanation 1 // which applies to all sub-header sections
> ==== quick explanation 2 // which applies to all sub-header sections
> === Sub-header 1
> === Sub-header 2

That is not using it semantically, that is pulling a spurious case out
of your sleeve for the purpose of demonstrating a point.

The "quick explanations" obviously belong under "Sub-header 1" or
"Sub-header 2" depending on which of the two they are quick explanations of.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Errors on the downtime message pages

body:
Kate Turner wrote:
> Timwi wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
>
>> I've noticed several errors on the downtime message page and its
>> translations. Once the servers are back up and the admins are no
>> longer busy with the upgrade, where can I go to fix them?
>
> what are the errors?

I don't want to post a message here every time I find an error, I want
to GO AND FIX IT the way we ALWAYS DO in Wikimedia land. Please
understand that!

> you can't fix them without local server access, because unlike the
> portal pages, these pages are not taken from meta, as meta is not up
> when the downtime message is shown :-)

Please put them on meta (or indeed any other wiki) and update the copies
that actually get shown periodically.

Either way, DO NOT, like, EVER, rely on people e-mailing you (or this
list or IRC or anything else). Neither with error corrections nor with
new translations. You will never get them that way.

The downtime message was beautiful, but it was still hugely embarrassing
because it was so full of mistakes and unprofessionalities. This is
*not* the right way to get people to stop believing we're a bunch of
amateur rowdies.

Timwi


body:
Kate Turner wrote:
> Frieda Brioschi wrote:
>
>> How/where can I send the italian translation of the message?
>
> either tell someone on IRC (#wikimedia-tech) or mail it to me
> privately (keturner at livejournal.com).

Wrong answer. Bad answer.

Correct answer would have been: "I'll set up a page on meta for this."

Timwi


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki and google - summer of code

body:
Marco Krohn wrote:
> is there any special reason why mediawiki is not part of the google - summer
> of code?

Well, the vast majority of open source projects are not part of it. I'd
be asking about special reasons why something else _is_ part of it. :)

If I'm not mistaken there's a little issue of timing, though:

   What kind of deadlines are associated with the Summer of Code?
   May 31st: Start of application process on code.google.com
   June 1st: Last Day new Organizations will be listed on code.google.com

While the Wikimedia Foundation itself doesn't happen to be a
"Participating Mentoring Organization", there's nothing stopping an
enterprising student from proposing a MediaWiki-related project to one
of those organizations and seeing if they bite. Obviously it should be a
project relevant to that organization...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Kate Turner

body:
Timwi wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> Correct answer would have been: "I'll set up a page on meta for this."

it's a wiki.  don't whine about it, do it yourself.

> Timwi

kate.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Downtime postmortem notes, part I

body:
David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

>> you can preview the current version at
>> <http://www.knams.wikimedia.org/downtime/>.

> Surely the versions in languages other than English should link to mirrors
> in the language in question, not mirrors of en:?

they do where such a mirror was provided by the translators (Danish,
Polish).

> - d.

kate.


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> Yes, it is that much of a performance hog.

This is so obviously not true. We're talking about a small set of static
HTML pages here. For 100 languages, that's 100 pages. Most people will
look at no more than 2 of them. Millions of websites have more pages
than that, visitors that surf through them more, and run from a single
server without a performance problem.

Timwi


body:
Milos Rancic wrote:

>Hoderi on hr: :) The article is added by persion who added it on bs:
>
>
>
Please also update the interwikilinks!

Waerth


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Interwiki articles without en: (another one
	forMark)

body:
Specially for Mark who seems so surprised about articles linking amongst
other languages but without an equivalent on english pedia!

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardus_Johannes_Alfrink

There are probably 100's if not 1000's of these! On nl alone we have a
couple of 1000 articles without english equivalent.

Waerth


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Interwiki articles without en: (another
	oneforMark)

body:
> Sorry Walter, but that one just received the missing interwiki link
> the original author forgot to add. Now you have to find a new example :-)
>
> Andy
>   [[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]

Boehoe

W


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Steve Jobs on Wikipedia

body:
Bernd Kulawik wrote:

>
> "This is a favourite of mine: Wikipedia. For those of you who don't
> know: This is an Open Source encyclopedia where everybody contributes
> to it. It has now become one of the most robust and certainly
> accurate encyclopedias in the world because you got experts from all
> over the world contributing to it. And we just look up "tiger" in
> here, and you get the low-down (?) on all kinds of tigers. So that's
> Wikipedia and it's great."
>
> Maybe I made some mistake in understanding or spelling ... but the
> fact remains that one of the most important important people in the
> IT sector - whose visions had a great influence on the way we are
> using computers today - calls Wikipedia "great" and his favourite. -
> I like that :-)

I'm here at WWDC (working :-) ) and saw it in person - the plug
was great, plus there was a full audience of reporters in the front
row. I was very relieved to see that the tiger article wasn't in a
vandalized state...

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion lag times

body:
Andreas H?rstemeier wrote:
>>Brion Vibber knows.  He was one of those abusing me on
>>Village Pump.
>
> Maybe he was still tired from the server movement.

I'm sorry if I've somehow offended Rick; it is not my intention to abuse
or ridicule him. For the public record, here's the exchange:

   == Deletion is broken ==

   At least, partially. A couple of article I have had no problems
   deleting, but I have tried at least ten times on both [[Danza Slap]]
   and [[Ben Wyrosdick]], and keep getting an ERROR message when I
   attempt it.  [[User:RickK|Rick]][[User talk:RickK|K]] 22:54, Jun 7,
   2005 (UTC)

   :They sure look deleted to me. --[[User:Brion VIBBER|Brion]] 00:16,
   Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

At the time I posted, the linked pages had indeed been successfully
deleted, indicating that the problem with that pages had apparently been
resolved. There was no other detail given about the scope of the problem.

Cyrius was kind enough to supply useful follow-up information that this
was a wider issue:

   ::This has been an ongoing problem for weeks. Deletions fail to go
   through with resulting error pages on a regular basis. One must try,
   try again. If you look at the deletion history, both pages were
   deleted later by other admins. -- [[User:Cyrius|Cyrius]]|[[User
   talk:Cyrius|✎]] 00:25, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Frustration is a natural reaction to computer problems, so I think we
can cut Rick some slack for his response to someone trying to help him:

   :::Gee, thanks.  So you just keep trying, 50, 100, 250 times before it
   takes?  OH, and duh, how stupid I must be, to think that red links
   aren't deleted.  Wow, I mut really be a moron.  Thanks for pointing
   that out, that was very useful.  [[User:RickK|Rick]][[User
   talk:RickK|K]] 06:39, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

> But as a very active
> speedy deletor that problem as been getting more and more annying recently,
> and today it has become virtually impossible to delete anything. Maybe
> after one hour of retrying the deletion it finally works, but that's
> unacceptable. But it already has a bug in bugzilla (2195) about it,

Bug 2195 was reported specifically as a browser-specific problem with
Opera -- complete with a claim that there was *NO* problem with Firefox.
When it was reported, I tried deleting pages with Opera and did not
experience a problem, so asked for additional testing (such as other
versions of Opera).

I'd like to thank Andreas and everyone else who's given additional
information on that report (such as that Firefox is *NOT* immune),
giving us the chance to seriously look into it as an en.wikipedia.org
problem instead of dismissing it as an unreproduceble problem with an
old version of Opera.

I haven't figured out the root problem yet, but I have localized it to
one part of the deletion operation, and put in place a workaround which
seems to have relieved the pressure. I'm doing some debug logging on
deletions, and haven't seen any breaking halfway through in the hour-ish
since I put it in place.

For a permanent fix it may be necessary to do some tweaks to the archive
table, where deleted pages are stored for review and possible
undeletion; some loads from it are also going rather slowly and there
might be an indexing or lock contention problem.

> it is
> mentioned in the Administrators Noticeboard and the Village Pump, that
> should be enough hint for the developers that the problem really exists.

Sysop hangouts on en.wikipedia.org and the wikien-l list probably should
not be considered sufficient notice to the developers; not everybody's
an active en.wikipedia.org sysop. I do try to skim the pumps there every
couple of days, but it's only one of our many projects and the number of
pump and pump-like pages has expanded dramatically in the last couple of
years; don't even assume that we know of the existence of all these pages.

Many of us aren't on this mailing list or don't read it regularly
because 50 messages a day of "X is a vandal!" "Y is an abusive sysop!"
gets real boring real fast. :)

As a general rule I strongly recommend using our Bugzilla to report
problems, and if you want to draw peoples' attention post to wikitech-l
and/or try to get ahold of us live in #wikimedia-tech on irc.freenode.net.

When you report a problem, it's best to try providing as much
information as possible about where the problem is, how reproduceable it
is (always, often or intermittent? mostly at peak access hours or all
day?), what alternatives you've tried (different browsers? other wikis?
other pages on the same wiki?), etc.

It's not that we're jerks (well, not *just* that we're jerks ;) but
we've got a lot of problem reports to deal with, and we're not
necessarily experiencing the same set of things you're experiencing. Not
everybody pounces on speedy deletes on en.wikipedia.org many times a
day; a problem that's specific to one action on one site might not be
getting noticed if the people who _are_ doing that aren't talking to us.

Some detail is *needed* to prioritize problem reports and to investigate
and solve problems that we haven't personally come across.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)