subject: [Wikipedia-l] A policy for albums

in_reply_to: <8ghSIgyhpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 02:09:00AM +0100

body:
I'm not sure that I agree 100% with everything, but I do think Erik
has said a lot of wise things here.

Some thoughts:

1. FreeDB contains many duplicate or near-duplicate entries.  It's
designed around the ability to have a software program on my computer
"magically" recognize what CD I just put into the computer, in order
to show the album track names.  There are many slight variations on
CD's, apparently, so the same "album" (in a sense) will often appear
multiple times in their listings.

2. Even if that problem were solved by sticking to unique artist/title
combinations, the data is of limited value for our purposes.  If there
ever did arise a big clamor for that sort of thing, we could probably
serve that interest better by setting up a software engine to allow
people to easily include FreeDB links into articles.  I'm thinking
of something like an 'album:' namespace that interfaces realtime into
the freedb listings, without actually importing them as wiki-text.

I'm not advising that we do that, I'm just saying that it would be a
heck of a lot better than free-texting data that's already formatted
by someone else.

> 2) Make another policy that pages about bands should *not* contain
> links to the individual albums. These links should be created on
> demand, not for all album titles.

I think that the first sentence is too strong, but I think the second
sentence softens it nicely.  Basically, I think contributors should
use good judgment here -- some albums are of historical importance and
will of course need an entry.  Others, well, maybe, maybe not.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please use <!--HTML comments-->

in_reply_to: <200302280454.XAA25798@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 11:54:14PM -0500

body:
My concern about encouraging the use of HTML comments is that they
might end up being used as a kind of "secondary talk", hidden from
observers, and only noticed by people actively editing an article.

There are a lot of times when I'm puzzling over an edit war, but I
almost never edit in those cases, because of my political position
around here.  If people start leaving comments like

<!-- YOUR MOTHER SUCKS DUCKS IF YOU CHANGE THIS PART -->

that's not good.  :-)

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking 205.188*

body:
It would be nice if we had a wildcard mechanism here.

I'm uncomfortable with blocking, even temporarily, such a broad
address space as x.x.*.*, but I think that x.x.x.* would be fine.

These should always be treated with caution, as Zoe has here.

Zoe wrote:

>
> I have blocked several IP addresses beginning with 205.188.  Seeing the histories of these addresses, it appears that they are joint addresses that have been used for useful additions to the Wikipedia in the past.  If someone wants to review the blocks and unblock them in a while, please do so, but I was trying to stem an attack.
>
> Zoe
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more


subject: [WikiEN-l] election

in_reply_to: <BAY1-F98gC81TbdkSmL000211ca@hotmail.com>; from jtdirl@hotmail.com on Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 04:59:06AM +0000

body:
james duffy wrote:
> It may seem pedantic but this is a SERIOUS sourcebook here, not a
> game where we adopt the attitude 'ah shucks, who cares?' Canadians
> aren't going to take a sourcebook seriously that acts as though they
> don't exist

I think that your discussion of Ireland and "Irish" and so forth
is right-on, but really we're talking about common usage, right?

In today's Globe and Mail,

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030228.wxedit0228/BNStory/National/

there's an editorial about MP Carolyn Parrish, who has caused a bit of
a dust-up Wednesday when -- after she thought she was no longer on
camera -- she said "Damn Americans, I hate those bastards."

Without commenting on her sentiment, I think it's pretty clear
that she accepts the use of the term "American" to refer to the
United States.

Doing a search on the term "American" in Canadian, British, and
Australian newspapers reveals that all of them use the term to mean
the United States.

I do think we need to follow common usage, and to avoid controversial
usages.  But I don't think this is a good example at all.  It simply
isn't true that a serious resource shouldn't use that term in that
way.  Serious sources do, all the time.

Is it odd that this is conventional usage?  I don't know, and as an
encyclopedia, we shouldn't take a position on it.

--Jimbo


subject: Tracking (was: [WikiEN-l] 142)

in_reply_to: <E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F43CB@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 09:35:10AM -0500

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I think what Jimmy just wrote amounts to a new policy -- or a
> fresh reformulation of something I always felt was either
> policy or a "feature" of our wiki software.

Oh, well, I didn't mean for it to be all that.  I was just thinking
out loud about anonymity and privacy and tracking.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] 142

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:
> How about introducing user accounts that do not require an email
> address, simply username & password. Then one could say that there
> is no reason for not making edits under a username, and anonymous
> editors could be prompted to make an account after a certain number
> of edits.

This is already the case.  I think perhaps the login page should make
this more clear.  Perhaps it should say:

Your e-mail(*): [                ]

And at the bottom of the page:

* Entering an email address is optional.  But it enables people to
contact you through the website without you having to reveal your
email address to them, and it also helps you if you forget your
password.

--Jimbo


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lists which are sheer nonsense

body:
Sean,

I agree that the entire issue is nonsense, but maybe
not in the way you meant it.

Granted that Pierre Trudeau, being a well-know Canadian,
is unlikely to be confused with a US citizen.

But the [[List of Americans]] article seems designed
to provoke controversy, to stir up a fuss and to pro-
vide entertainment for those who want to have some-
thing to wrangle about. Remember all the fun that was
had with [[List of famous Canadians]]?

I'm NOT going to discuss it on the talk page, and I'm
not going to get involved with the article: I think
it's stupid and useless. I don't see what legitimate
purpose it serves.

Sure, I'm proud of America (i.e., the United States)
and proud to be a natural-born citizen of it. But what
the heck do we need a list for? I mean, what would any-
one *do* with such a list?

Okay, if someone wants to start creating lists like
the following, I guess I won't mind :-)
* [[List of US citizens]]
* [[List of citizens of South Korea]]
* [[List of Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles]]
* [[List of Latin American singers]]

But please let's not waste any more time with contro-
versy magnets.

Uncle Ed, aka Ed Poor


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A policy for albums

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> Even if this policy is not implemented, I will point out at this juncture
> that I am strongly opposed to an import of the FreeDB data, should that
> ever come up.

I agree with everything Erik has written above...
--
Gareth Owen


subject: Tracking (was: [WikiEN-l] 142)

body:
I think what Jimmy just wrote amounts to a new policy -- or a
fresh reformulation of something I always felt was either
policy or a "feature" of our wiki software.

Some wiki boards don't track who changes what, and they don't
have a problem with it. They have a low edit volume and high
readership rate, so any nonsense gets weeded out quickly.

But our wiki is the world's largest, and the ratio of reads to
 writes isn't as high as it used to be. We _need_ user
tracking.

If I see one bogus edit, like "Hi I am Johnny and I love that
cutie Mary from English class" replacing the [[William
Shakespeare]] article, I want to be able to click on the "User
Contributions" link and see what other damage this graffiti
artist has done. I'll revert everything and list the IP or
username on a page where sysops and other interested parties
can see it.

Also, if someone has really bad spelling or grammar skills, or
goes on a POV rampage or even (*happy sigh*) writes brilliant
prose, I want to be able to see more of their work.

Being able to know who does what is important around here, and
maybe we should make that clear in the policy pages.

Uncle Ed, aka Ed Poor


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cultivating your outrage

body:
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 11:40:56 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>> People are looking for things to become outraged about.
>>
>> BUT:
>> * norteamericano = US + Canada
>> * Latin America = Mexico and all countries south of it
>>
> Now hold on!  You can't go around saying that the people of Belize,
> Guyana or Surinam are Latins.   :-)
>
Doesn't the current President of the USA wich he spoke Latin so that he
could communicate with them? :-)

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What's up with Wiktionary?

body:
Greetings!

What's up with Wiktionary?

I've been reading the Talk pages and
there's an awful lot of complaining and
whining. First, about the Interlingua
entries. I need a large file type of list
that I can work from to add entries.
They are moving to the index section.
They can be deleted when I'm done
the bulk of entering the multilingual
info I have.

Now, please don't misunderstand me...
I'm willing to follow protocols and
learn the wiki-ways. Plus whatever
conventions can be made clear I'll
willingly follow.

But...

Someone complained about my French,
ehem ehem, not my swearing mind you,
my use of French, in that it isn't proper
enough, and not accurate enough. Well
all I can say is that I'm not a native
French speaker, my French High School
teacher learned it in Algiers and it's been
years since I had a fluent conversation in
it for more than five minutes. I do what
I can. My German is rotten also, but
I do what I can. When I don't know
I either leave it blank or put in the English
as a marker for me to look up that word
later. Again, the index entries are there
to help me enter in new info into the main
Wiktionary... similarly with Wikipedia
articles. Two windows open, cut and
paste the look ups, edit here and there,
etc.

Now I'm getting requests to "slow down"
how un-wiki is that???

Then about the use of HTML tags, well,
frankly, the "list" tags in the Wiktionary
are all HTML, my additions are usually
a mixture of both HTML and wiki-coding.
I find it more assuring to write
 than
to let the parser put a line where it thinks
it should. Same for
 and for

the ---- is sometimes good sometimes
not clear enough for me. These are basic
HTML tags that shouldn't scare anyone.
If tables are a problem, I've only put these
in the Wikipedia Homepage for Interlingua
and Volapuk and in a couple of wikipedia
entries where everything needed a certain
layout, like the table of HTML and ASCII
codes in the Interlingua Wikipedia.

Now my questions regarding the Wiktionary
are:

Is there a set way of entering the info?

Is there an entity that can decide this once
and for all?

Is it possible to have foreign language
appendixes on the English Wiktionary?

Or...

Is there a possibility that a namespace
will happen anytime soon for other languages?
(There's even complaints that "this is an English
dictionary, isn't it!!!" Well, maybe so but I thought
it was also a multilingual dictionary, and that's where
I'm interested in helping out).

So those are the issues and I welcome
any insights or clues you can pass my way.

Cheers,
Jay B.


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with Wiktionary?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Return of DW?

in_reply_to: <5.1.1.6.0.20030228182613.020aaea0@mail.btopenworld.com>; from pilich@btopenworld.com on Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 06:37:14PM +0000

body:
Lee Pilich wrote:
> I strongly suspect that User:Ron Davis is User:DW (who was banned a
> while ago) under a different name.

Has anyone asked Ron Davis?

One possible route for redemption, one that I don't really want to
encourage but can't really prevent, is for a person who has been
warned repeatedly and then banned for bad behavior to come back under
a new name *and behave*.  If they actually *do* behave, well, there's
not much harm.

The only harm, really, is that a standing policy like that might
encourage some people to just keep coming back under new names.  In
particularly problematic cases, we might have to be really strict
about it, up to and including complaining to ISPs or bigger
authorities if absolutely necessary.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A policy for albums

in_reply_to: <3E5FAD11.7010405@tonal.clara.co.uk>; from usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk on Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 06:40:17PM +0000

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> That way, Wikipedia articles can link to the MusicBrainz database,
> providing instant discographies and track listings without having to
> import them into Wikipedia, and -- more to the point -- the MusicBrainz
> database would link to Wikipedia as the default place for _articles_ on
> bands.

This sounds totally sweet to me.


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] 142

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

On Friday 28 February 2003 09:03 am, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I can really understand concern for privacy and anonymity.  I
> understand it a lot less in this context than in most, because what
> we're doing is as uncontroversial as stamp collecting in most
> jurisdictions.  But if people want privacy and anonymity, hey, that's
> great with me, because I support those things generally.
>
> But this idea "I won't log in because I don't want to be tracked"
> doesn't really make sense.  From the viewpoint of privacy and
> anonymity, it's exactly backwards.  It's a real pain in the neck for
> anyone, even me, to figure out an ip number for a logged in user, by
> the design of the software.
>
> The only reason I can think of for someone like this to not want to
> log in is a reason that I don't think we can say is valid: the desire
> to make independent edits that are not watched by the community.
> Someone with a bad mission, either vandalism or pov, may want to pop
> in numerous times and make edits without anyone realizing it's the
> same person again.
>

How about introducing user accounts that do not require an email address,
simply username & password. Then one could say that there is no reason for
not making edits under a username, and anonymous editors could be prompted to
make an account after a certain number of edits.

WDYT?

Sascha Noyes

- --
Please encrypt all correspondence.
PGP key available from:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/noyes/snoyes.asc
- --
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+X4V9gzJdfX+cTW8RAkFCAJ9AlvpN7Or1fyTobb2gQYgBYSXN2gCfZ8ES
FVpqXEmA9Ze1rckTqJUb7v0=
=5jZL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Cultivating your outrage

body:
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:16:03 -0800 (PST), Zoe
<zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> No.
> That was said about Dan Quayle, though I don't know if he really said it.
> Zoe
>
Thanks Zoe - so many of the Dan Quayle gags were recycled for George W.,
but that was one I must have missed the first time round. What does this
say of the retention span of many Americans? :-)

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] [mail@danielbeyer.com: internel Server error on german site]

body:
----- Forwarded message from Daniel Beyer <mail at danielbeyer.com> -----

From: Daniel Beyer <mail at danielbeyer.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:01:19 +0100
To: comments at nupedia.com, bomis-coders-l at bomis.com
Subject: internel Server error on german site

hi,

the search-button on the german site does not work!

______________________________________________________________
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was
unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, bomis-coders-l at bomis.com and
inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have
done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use
an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.23 Server at www.nupedia.com Port 80

--
_______________________________
Daniel Beyer
Tel. : +49-3677-843173 (DTAG)
Tel. : +49-3677-786172 (Genion) <-- Neu !!!
Mobil: +49-179-9128255          <-- Neu !!!
Jabber: beyer at amessage.de
E-Mail: mail at danielbeyer.com

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

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or "manipulated" to teach English?]

body:
>> Robert has of course the option to use for his translation tutorial
>> only those Wikipedia texts that have been released into the public domain,

> Are there any? I know that you release all of your contris into the public
> domain, but once someone else starts working on them, they become FDL
> licensed.

The specific parts contributed by authors who release their work to the
PD still are, and always will be, PD.  Additions made by others are, as
you say, under the FDL by default.  But there are still some pretty
significant chunks of PD text in the wiki, notably mine.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
> (julien tayon <julien at tayon.net>):
>
> There is a slight confusion in the speech of IP :
> copy-right is the protection made through a patent or a registration
> (c) (tm) (r), it is the historical anglo-saxon point of view (Bern
> Convention) author's right is the automatic protection of the creation
> (Geneva Convention) this conception comes from the 1789 revolution. It
> covers espcially the "moral right" (such as paternity) of the creation
>
> FDL is based on the second concept. It is quite abusive (even though it
> is made in official translation of UNO or WTO) to translate droit
> d'auteurs in copyright.

You are both confused and mistaken here; "moral rights" ("droit
d'auteurs") is a European concept not recognized by US law at all.
The FDL is entirely based on US copyright law.  We still follow
the Berne convention rule that copyright exists automatically
without registration (this is not new), but the copyright itself
is still nothing but a simple monopoly on certain uses: reproduction,
public performance, etc.  The FDL grants an exception to that
monopoly control to anyone who agrees to its terms. This is
entirely a matter of using the government-granted power to achieve
a specific end; it has nothing at all to do with author's rights.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: E-mail disclaimer on login page (was Re: [WikiEN-l] 142)

body:
On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I think perhaps the login page should make
> this more clear.  Perhaps it should say:
>
> Your e-mail(*): [                ]
>
> And at the bottom of the page:
>
> * Entering an email address is optional.  But it enables people to
> contact you through the website without you having to reveal your
> email address to them, and it also helps you if you forget your
> password.

Done for English -- other languages should submit appropriate updates to
the notice.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Oh, Geez.  Sorry about that.  I didn't realize...

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> > ----- Forwarded message from Daniel Beyer <mail at danielbeyer.com> -----
> > the search-button on the german site does not work!
> [snip]
> > Apache/1.3.23 Server at www.nupedia.com Port 80
>
> To be clear, this is the German *Nupedia* site, not the Wikipedia.
>
> English seems to work:
> http://www.nupedia.com/n_search.fcgi?request=test
>
> German and Portuguese don't:
> http://www.nupedia.com/de/n_search.fcgi?request=test
> http://www.nupedia.com/pt/n_search.fcgi?request=test
>
> The Spanish, French, and Italian main pages simply put you to the English
> search, which works but isn't very helpful. ;)
>
> I don't have access to that server, so here my helpfulness ends.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [mail@danielbeyer.com: internel Server error on
 german site]

body:
On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Daniel Beyer <mail at danielbeyer.com> -----
> the search-button on the german site does not work!
[snip]
> Apache/1.3.23 Server at www.nupedia.com Port 80

To be clear, this is the German *Nupedia* site, not the Wikipedia.

English seems to work:
http://www.nupedia.com/n_search.fcgi?request=test

German and Portuguese don't:
http://www.nupedia.com/de/n_search.fcgi?request=test
http://www.nupedia.com/pt/n_search.fcgi?request=test

The Spanish, French, and Italian main pages simply put you to the English
search, which works but isn't very helpful. ;)

I don't have access to that server, so here my helpfulness ends.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Opinions re. [[List of communities in Quebec]] please

body:
I'm currently having an argument in [[Talk:List of communities in Quebec]].
This morning, I moved the article that Ron Davis had created from its rather
unwieldy title of [[Communities of the Province of Quebec, Canada]]. I did
this for the following reasons:

1) the title [[Communities in the province of Quebec, Canada]] is
excessively
long;
2) the title List of communities in Quebec matches the format [[List of
cities in Canada]];
3) it has the word "List" in the title (an article "Communities..." etc.
would ordinarily be expected to be about the communities, e.g. municipal
politics and suchlike; compare [[List of popes]] etc.)

Cf. [[List of Georgia counties]].

Ron seems to have taken great offence at
this, believing some kind of political motive, and moved it back (by copying
and pasting, not the move tool.) Further, he seems to think it's "his"
article.

I think I'm right, but I'm reluctant to try this again without some backup
for fear of an edit war. Help please?

Matt (Montrealais)


subject: [WikiEN-l] SoftSecurity, Roman style (was: Return of DW?)

body:
Egad, where the Cunctator when you need him? At the drop of a hat, people are talking about banning this one and banning that one.

If someone writes badly, just revise their work. If someone puts something on the wrong shelf, just put it back.

SoftSecurity, right?

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 1:30 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Return of DW?

Lee Pilich wrote:
> I strongly suspect that User:Ron Davis is User:DW (who was banned a
> while ago) under a different name.

Has anyone asked Ron Davis?

One possible route for redemption, one that I don't really want to
encourage but can't really prevent, is for a person who has been
warned repeatedly and then banned for bad behavior to come back under
a new name *and behave*.  If they actually *do* behave, well, there's
not much harm.

The only harm, really, is that a standing policy like that might
encourage some people to just keep coming back under new names.  In
particularly problematic cases, we might have to be really strict
about it, up to and including complaining to ISPs or bigger
authorities if absolutely necessary.


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
Lists serve as an organizing tool.  They show what we have and don't
have.  [[List of people from the United States]] is too broad to be of
much use, but [[List of boogie woogie musicians]] is invaluable, both
as an aid to those of us working on the topic, but also the reader.
There may never be a full article on Drive'em Down, the legendary New
Orleans piano player, but he's in the Wikipedia, and in a place where
his contributions can be best understood.

In addition to their use as indexes, the "Related changes" and "What
links here" are helpful to writers working in a particular area and
the talk pages serve as a meeting place.

There are all kinds of lists.

The best lists are:

- confined to a single graspable topic.  If the topic is vast, the
better lists will have been largely assembled by some outside
authority, Hall of Fame or the like.

- annotated, why is the person place or thing on the list?

- organized in a useful fashion.  They can be grouped by topic, in
alphabetical order, or chronological, whatever helps make the list
more useful.

Further observations:

- [[List of novelists]] is barely tolerable.  It is huge, but at least
it is grouped by an amalgam of language/country identifiers that is
not intellectually rigorous. but works for the reader.

- [[List of gay movies]] is in alphabetical order and unannotated.   I
have been arguing on thetalk page that if it were annotated (why is
''Rebel Without a Cause'' a gay movie) and in chronological order
(showing changing attitudes) it would be more useful (and interesting,
always a big number with me).

- [[List of musical topics]] is vast, alphabetical, and unannotated, but
it shows the scope of Wikipedia and give music-minded writers
something to chew on.

- The alphabetical biography lists are much more useful if they are
annotated, which has been a side project of mine.

- [[One hit wonders]] went immediately off the tracks.  It started as
a list ofthose odd but classic numbers but was quickly mired down by
objections that so-and-so had had two hits (one of which was never
heard of and did not matter) and also by diligent folks with reference
books listing every song that had ever been on any hit parade for at
least a week.

I'm very pro-list, and willing to take the good with the bad.

If [[List of Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles]] shows up, so be it.
[[List of glass harmonicists]] will soon be along to make up for it.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 08:58, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Okay, if someone wants to start creating lists like
> the following, I guess I won't mind :-)
> * [[List of US citizens]]
> * [[List of citizens of South Korea]]
> * [[List of Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles]]
> * [[List of Latin American singers]]
>
Actually, only the "citizens" lists sound like a bad idea, since they're
way to broad in scope.

I wouldn't mind learning about the good Mexican restaurants in L.A.


from_name: Dan Keshet

subject: [WikiEN-l] 142

body:
Sorry that my messages don't thread; I read through the web.

Anyway, just for the record, the conversation I was referring to about
logging in and being tracked is at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting
Systems]].

--dk


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com> wrote:

> The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a better
> place for discussing the faults of articles.  Since there are very
> few
> articles that couldn't be expanded or don't need work, comments,
> displayed or not, don't add much.  If they are displayed, they look
> kind of amateurish.

Comments belong on talk, no question about it. But an article that
clearly points out that a certain topic should be covered but isn't
looks a lot less amateurish to me than an article that silently omits
the topic. These omission notices are important information for our
readers, most of whom come through Google and will never even discover
Talk:.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


from_name: julien tayon

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles
 be translated or "manipulated" to teach English?]

body:
Le Thu, 27 Feb 2003 19:09:14 -0800 (PST),
inspir? Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> ?crivait la plume alerte :
> Erik Moeller writes
>
> >Yes, you can use Wikipedia articles. They are licensed under
> >the GNU Free Documentation License, which mainly means that
> >articles that use them also have to be FDL-licensed. Note that
> >the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights, only
> >that others will be able to copy and modify the so-
> >licensed text. We consider this fair:
>
> Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights
> using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.

There is a slight confusion in the speech of IP :
copy-right is the protection made through a patent or a registration (c)
(tm) (r), it is the historical anglo-saxon point of view (Bern
Convention)
author's right is the automatic protection of the creation (Geneva
Convention) this conception comes from the 1789 revolution. It covers
espcially the "moral right" (such as paternity) of the creation

FDL is based on the second concept. It is quite abusive (even though it
is made in official translation of UNO or WTO) to translate droit
d'auteurs in copyright.

The first concept is more editor-friendly than the second one which is
clearly authors-friendly.

Friendly yours,

Jul


body:
>> The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a
>> better place for discussing the faults of articles.

Talk pages are for comments /about the article/.  HTML comments
in the source text are for comments /about the source text/ that
don't relate to the article.  Most people aren't programmers, and
so will have no concepts matching the latter; that's OK, they'll
never use them.  But they are vital to those of us who /do/
understand the difference, and their existence doesn't make the
experience for non-techies any more difficult.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

references:
<8ghSIyFhpVB@erik_moeller> <shheaprraq.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<200302280454.XAA25798@TheWorld.com>

body:
Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com> writes:

> The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a better
> place for discussing the faults of articles.  Since there are very few
> articles that couldn't be expanded or don't need work, comments,
> displayed or not, don't add much.  If they are displayed, they look
> kind of amateurish.

Yes, but I've very special comments in mind:

    1. ''[We must replace this list of items with running text.]''

    2. ''[Hier den Text von en: einf?gen]'' -- this means in a German
       article the English version offers more info one is considered
       to translate and to add here.

Otherwise you are right.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] What's up with Wiktionary?

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:

>Greetings!
>
>What's up with Wiktionary?
>
>I've been reading the Talk pages and
>there's an awful lot of complaining and
>whining. First, about the Interlingua
>entries. I need a large file type of list
>that I can work from to add entries.
>They are moving to the index section.
>They can be deleted when I'm done
>the bulk of entering the multilingual
>info I have.
>
These  bagan to appear in quantity.  They were lists of interlingua
words followed by apparent translations into 5 or 6 languages.

>Now, please don't misunderstand me...
>I'm willing to follow protocols and
>learn the wiki-ways. Plus whatever
>conventions can be made clear I'll
>willingly follow.
>
The conventions are being developed.  Your opinions on these
developments are as welcome as those of all others.

>Someone complained about my French,
>ehem ehem, not my swearing mind you,
>my use of French, in that it isn't proper
>enough, and not accurate enough. Well
>all I can say is that I'm not a native
>French speaker, my French High School
>teacher learned it in Algiers and it's been
>years since I had a fluent conversation in
>it for more than five minutes. I do what
>I can. My German is rotten also, but
>I do what I can. When I don't know
>I either leave it blank or put in the English
>as a marker for me to look up that word
>later. Again, the index entries are there
>to help me enter in new info into the main
>Wiktionary... similarly with Wikipedia
>articles. Two windows open, cut and
>paste the look ups, edit here and there,
>etc.
>
More often leaving things blank is better than putting in something that
is knowingly wrong.  When you put erroneous material into the articles
it may stay that way for a long time.  If large quantities of this stuff
appear, there simply aren't enough people available to clean up the
errors.  I didn't really look at the German entries because I am not as
familiar with that language as French, but the French did leave me
suspicious about all the others.  The mixed assortment of tenses in the
French verbs instead of the usual infinitive also made me uncertain
about what tense was being used to express the Interlingua verb.  If, as
you say, the purpose of these articles is to have an index to help you
 begin new entries and the index will be deleted later anyway, then put
manageable quantities on a Sandbox subpage of your user page.  When you
have finished with one batch there it's easy to replace it with a new
batch.  No regular participant ever disturbs what you put in a sandbox
because it is presumed that you are experimenting on something that is
often partial or incomplete.

>Now I'm getting requests to "slow down"
>how un-wiki is that???
>
Yes.  Because you're rushing along in your own direction without regard
to what others are doing.  Nobody regards your contributions as
malicious.  It's more like you're functioning like a bull in a china shop.

>Then about the use of HTML tags, well,
>frankly, the "list" tags in the Wiktionary
>are all HTML, my additions are usually
>a mixture of both HTML and wiki-coding.
>I find it more assuring to write
 than
>to let the parser put a line where it thinks
>it should. Same for
 and for

>the ---- is sometimes good sometimes
>not clear enough for me. These are basic
>HTML tags that shouldn't scare anyone.
>If tables are a problem, I've only put these
>in the Wikipedia Homepage for Interlingua
>and Volapuk and in a couple of wikipedia
>entries where everything needed a certain
>layout, like the table of HTML and ASCII
>codes in the Interlingua Wikipedia.
>
Not everyone is familiar with HTML, and as long as nobody feels the need
to edit the article they will remain untouched.  It is much easier to
develop some kind of standard format for articles if we are all using
the same mark-ups.  Using tables is an entirely negotiable matter,

>Now my questions regarding the Wiktionary
>are:
>
>Is there a set way of entering the info?
>
It's under development in a co-operative manner.

>Is there an entity that can decide this once
>and for all?
>
Realistically:  No.

>Is it possible to have foreign language
>appendixes on the English Wiktionary
>
What would such appendices do?

>Or...
>
>Is there a possibility that a namespace
>will happen anytime soon for other languages?
>(There's even complaints that "this is an English
>dictionary, isn't it!!!" Well, maybe so but I thought
>it was also a multilingual dictionary, and that's where
>I'm interested in helping out).
>
Hopefully a sub-domain instead of a namespace for each language.
 Consider the existing Wiktionary as a dictionary for English speakers
rather than simply a dictionary of English.  It is multilingual in its
efforts to present an understanding of other languages for English
speakers.  I expect that a parallel situation will exist when the
sub-domains are developed for other languages.

Eclecticology


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
There is at least one area of wikipedia work that I do which I think HTML
comments will come in very handy; HTML tables.  HTML tables can get quite
complicated and messy, and being able to leave notes for future editors to
help them add to the table is something I just don't see the talk: page as
being very good for. Very complicated lines of TeX might also benefit from
an HMTL comment or two, though I imagine math equations aren't as likely to
be modified by future contributors.

In a closely related vein, there are a lot of articles which use
standardized "templates"; for example the planetary data sheets or the
tatobox for biological species. Filling the template with HTML comments
describing what sorts of stuff goes where, and what the preferred formats
are, will help to keep these things consistent when new people use the
templates.


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Return of DW?

body:
I strongly suspect that User:Ron Davis is User:DW (who was banned a while
ago) under a different name. Both have worked a very great deal on cemetery
articles, both have a very similar (non-conventional) biographical style,
both place a string of periods before their signature, and the long message
Ron Daivs left on [[User talk:Rbrwr]] has more than a hint of DW to it.
Most recently, Ron Davis has moved [[List of communities in Quebec]] back
to [[Communities of the Province of Quebec, Canada]], from where it was
originally moved by User:Montr?alais. Montr?alais' move was correct in my
opinion, Ron Davis' is rather petty, and judging from the comment he left
on [[Talk:List of communities in Quebec]], was done simply because it
wasn't the name he had originally given the article (considering articles
he had written to be "owned" by him was another DW characteristic).

What we should do about this, if anything, I don't know. I just mention it
out of interest and as a sort of warning. Apologies if it seems that I'm
jumping to conclusions, but I've been watching this guy for a number of
weeks, and I'm completely convinced.

lp (camembert)
WikiKarma: two more Turner Prize winners - [[Tony Cragg]] and [[Richard Long]]


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A policy for albums

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I'm not sure that I agree 100% with everything, but I do think Erik
>has said a lot of wise things here.
>
>Some thoughts:
>
>1. FreeDB contains many duplicate or near-duplicate entries.  It's
>designed around the ability to have a software program on my computer
>"magically" recognize what CD I just put into the computer, in order
>to show the album track names.  There are many slight variations on
>CD's, apparently, so the same "album" (in a sense) will often appear
>multiple times in their listings.
>
>2. Even if that problem were solved by sticking to unique artist/title
>combinations, the data is of limited value for our purposes.  If there
>ever did arise a big clamor for that sort of thing, we could probably
>serve that interest better by setting up a software engine to allow
>people to easily include FreeDB links into articles.  I'm thinking
>of something like an 'album:' namespace that interfaces realtime into
>the freedb listings, without actually importing them as wiki-text.
>
>I'm not advising that we do that, I'm just saying that it would be a
>heck of a lot better than free-texting data that's already formatted
>by someone else.
>
>
>
>>2) Make another policy that pages about bands should *not* contain
>>links to the individual albums. These links should be created on
>>demand, not for all album titles.
>>
>>
>
>I think that the first sentence is too strong, but I think the second
>sentence softens it nicely.  Basically, I think contributors should
>use good judgment here -- some albums are of historical importance and
>will of course need an entry.  Others, well, maybe, maybe not.
>

MusicBrainz is an established open-content project, with a mixed public
domain / Creative Commons licensing policy. See
http://www.musicbrainz.org/products/server/download.html
Like Wikipedia, they  intend to create a non-profit corporation to  act
as a vehicle for the project.

I've been speaking to Ben Roeder, who has been speaking to the
MusicBrainz people --- he has made the excellent suggestion that the
right approach is to _cross-link_ wikipedia and MusicBrainz.

That way, Wikipedia articles can link to the MusicBrainz database,
providing instant discographies and track listings without having to
import them into Wikipedia, and -- more to the point -- the MusicBrainz
database would link to Wikipedia as the default place for _articles_ on
bands.

This seems to me to be an ideal compromise: the Wikipedia is not gunged
up by music listings (in particular, people are dissuaded from
data-dumping MusicBrainz/FreeDB into Wikipedia), and both sites gain
from more traffic and contributors.

See also:
* http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think14.html

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Return of DW?

body:
At 10:30 28/02/2003 -0800, Jimbo wrote:
>Lee Pilich wrote:
> > I strongly suspect that User:Ron Davis is User:DW (who was banned a
> > while ago) under a different name.
>
>Has anyone asked Ron Davis?

I've just done so on his talk page.

>One possible route for redemption, one that I don't really want to
>encourage but can't really prevent, is for a person who has been
>warned repeatedly and then banned for bad behavior to come back under
>a new name *and behave*.  If they actually *do* behave, well, there's
>not much harm.

I agree, and have only brought this up now because he's begun to be a
little (and only a little) troublesome. I suspected it was probably DW some
weeks ago, but didn't mention it as he was causing no trouble. I'm not a
big fan of banning (though realise it's sometimes necessary), and I
certainly won't mind if he stays and behaves.

lp (camembert)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps

body:
On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 18:10, Pedro M.V. wrote:
> I cannot use the [[map:27.42:88.08|27? 42' N, 88? 08' E]],  link in
> [[Kanchenjunga]].

That is not surprising, as there is no support for such links on
Wikipedia yet.

Magnus had added some experimental code to test.wikipedia.org at one
point; I don't know if it's still in place or what, exactly, the link
would bring up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: tarquin

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Remember all the fun that was
>had with [[List of famous Canadians]]?
>
>
>
see my user page for a comment on *that* particular load of fun!

>
>
>


from_name: Zoe

body:
Nonsense.  Americans are the citizens or residents of the United States.  DESIGNED to provoke controversy?  Only if you're looking for something to make controversial.
Zoe
 "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:But the [[List of Americans]] article seems designed
to provoke controversy,

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more
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in_reply_to:
<20030301001257.GA4511@piclab.com> (message from Lee Daniel
	Crocker on Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:12:57 -0600)

body:
|From: Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|X-URL: http://www.piclab.com/lee/
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:12:57 -0600
|
|>> The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a
|>> better place for discussing the faults of articles.
|
|Talk pages are for comments /about the article/.  HTML comments
|in the source text are for comments /about the source text/ that
|don't relate to the article.  Most people aren't programmers, and
|so will have no concepts matching the latter; that's OK, they'll
|never use them.  But they are vital to those of us who /do/
|understand the difference, and their existence doesn't make the
|experience for non-techies any more difficult.
|

This seems to be a distinction without much of a difference.  Anyone
who edits the article will see the comments, and probably not know
what to do with them.  The only examples given so far have been
comments about the article itself.  If there need to be comments about
the coding, the talk pages can bear this extra burden.

If the coding of the article is so complex as to require comments,
then A) it is too complicated, so that no one can edit it, or B) the
comment can just as well be on the talk page.  Comments such as these
are for real code, not Wikipedia articles.

IMHO, Tom P.

				 =*=


body:
Tables are death to a living article.  Except for standardized tables
for a few routine situations, lists of the state bird, flower, motto,
the taxoboxes for animals, etc., I believe tables should be assiduosly
avoided.  The more coding there is in an article, the less chance that
people will edit it.  I usually don't bother with any article that has
a table in it on the theory that I can accomplish more elsewhere where
there are none, which is identical to my policy on trolls and edit
wars.

Tom P.

|From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
|X-Sender: bryan.derksen at shawmail
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:30:02 -0700
|
|There is at least one area of wikipedia work that I do which I think HTML
|comments will come in very handy; HTML tables.  HTML tables can get quite
|complicated and messy, and being able to leave notes for future editors to
|help them add to the table is something I just don't see the talk: page as
|being very good for. Very complicated lines of TeX might also benefit from
|an HMTL comment or two, though I imagine math equations aren't as likely to
|be modified by future contributors.
|
|In a closely related vein, there are a lot of articles which use
|standardized "templates"; for example the planetary data sheets or the
|tatobox for biological species. Filling the template with HTML comments
|describing what sorts of stuff goes where, and what the preferred formats
|are, will help to keep these things consistent when new people use the
|templates.
|
|_______________________________________________
|Wikipedia-l mailing list
|Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Please use <!--HTML comments-->  (Bug)

body:
On Friday 28 February 2003 04:09 pm,  Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Talk pages are for comments /about the article/.  HTML comments
> in the source text are for comments /about the source text/ that
> don't relate to the article.  Most people aren't programmers, and
> so will have no concepts matching the latter; that's OK, they'll
> never use them.  But they are vital to those of us who /do/
> understand the difference, and their existence doesn't make the
> experience for non-techies any more difficult.

Stop the presses! If we do decide to encourage HTML comments then please fix
an annoying bug that I've seen in Konqueror 3.1.3 and Mozilla 1.1: for every
line of comments a line of leading white space is added. See
http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/2/2c/Maveric149-temp.png

--mav

WikiKarma
The usual at [[February 22]]


body:
On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 23:38, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Stop the presses! If we do decide to encourage HTML comments then please fix
> an annoying bug that I've seen in Konqueror 3.1.3 and Mozilla 1.1: for every
> line of comments a line of leading white space is added. See
> http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/2/2c/Maveric149-temp.png

What the screenshot doesn't show is that there are spaces at the ends of
the two comment lines. The comments are removed prior to parsing,
leaving those spaces at the beginning of the line: which puts <pre>
blocks into the text, hence the vertical space.

Remove the spaces from the ends, and everything looks fine.

If those aren't supposed to be spaces, then that's a bug in itself, but
I don't know if it's with the browser or the wiki. Please test...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Pedro M.V.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps

body:
I cannot use the [[map:27.42:88.08|27? 42' N, 88? 08' E]],  link in [[Kanchenjunga]].

Regards.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Internet archive at the new library of alexandria

body:
To access a web archive for about the last 8 years try:

http://www.bibalex.gov.eg/Start.asp?LangID=1

You'll need to search around a bit on the site for the "internet archive"
link. You need the url to access the old pages.

Fred


subject: License discussion (was: [Wikipedia-l] [robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or "manipulated" to teach English?])

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 19:09, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > Erik Moeller writes
> > >Note that the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights,
> only
> > >that others will be able to copy and modify the so-
> > >licensed text. We consider this fair:
> >
> > Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights
> > using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as
hypocritical.
>
> It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual
> property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for*
> intellectual property rights *for everyone*.

... as long as it is understood that "everyone" is defined as "everyone
who is able and willing to use a license compatible with GFDL". Those
who for various reasons use one of the couple dozen incompatible open
content licenses are granted by us only a single right: the right to
read. That's exactly what they get from encyclopedia.com as well.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
non-breaking space (Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Please use <!--HTML
	comments-->  (Bug))

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 04:36, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 11:10:19AM +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> > In German we are using ISO-8859-1 (or ISO-8859-15?)
>
> Both, kind of. The difference between -1 and -15 is the Euro symbol which
> is replacing the "Currency"-symbol of ISO-8859-1.

No, ISO-8859-15 also replaces the broken vertical bar, spacing diaresis,
spacing acute accent, spacing cedilla, and fractions with various other
letters and ligatures.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
non-breaking space (Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Please use <!--HTML
 comments-->  (Bug))

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

> If those aren't supposed to be spaces, then that's a bug in itself, but
> I don't know if it's with the browser or the wiki. Please test...

I've another complaint.  In German we are using ISO-8859-1 (or
ISO-8859-15?); both contain the non-breaking space: "?" in HTML
" ".  But when I write "3?dogs" the parser replace the
non-breaking space with a simple space.

I rate this behavior as a bug.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: License discussion (was: [Wikipedia-l]
 [robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or
 "manipulated" to teach English?])

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 08:58, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual
> > property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for*
> > intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
>
> ... as long as it is understood that "everyone" is defined as "everyone
> who is able and willing to use a license compatible with GFDL". Those
> who for various reasons use one of the couple dozen incompatible open
> content licenses are granted by us only a single right: the right to
> read. That's exactly what they get from encyclopedia.com as well.

Nonsense. They have the right to use and reuse and redistribute and
modify and rerelease the GFDL content _under the GFDL license_. They
just can't rerelease it _under a different license_. This is *the whole
point* of using such a license -- ensuring that those rights continue to
be protected by requiring the same license terms to be used for
redistribution.

This doesn't hurt people who use other licenses for other works -- as
you may or may not be aware, one isn't required to use the same license
for everything one does in life. :)

It may "hurt" people who have decided to use YAOCL and want to integrate
free content into another work without providing the same set of
protections that allowed them to get it. Well sorry, bub, but that's the
point. If we dilute the protections by letting any old license be used,
you can expect a read-only embraced & extended version of Wikipedia
peppered with material that's uncopyable under any license. If that's
your idea of freedom, I suppose that prisoners are "free" to try to
escape from prison at any time. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lists which are sheer nonsense

body:
Zoe wrote:

>Nonsense.  Americans are the citizens or residents of the United
>States.  DESIGNED to provoke controversy?  Only if you're looking
>for something to make controversial.

I've been wanting to avoid wading into this discussion, but the term
"Americans" does have a double meaning, and its usage as a reference
solely to U.S. citizens  rankles with some people from Canada, Mexico
and other parts of North and South America who also consider
themselves "American" as well. The term is commonly used in reference
U.S. citizens, and it doesn't particularly offend me personally, but
I know people who object to it.

Using "Americans" in reference to U.S. citizens is a bit like using
"Indians" in reference to Native Americans or "cripples" in reference
to the physically disabled. I know there are people who find it silly
and irritating that they should be asked to use more "politically
correct" language, but whenever possible I think it's best to be
sensitive about these things. I don't see a downside to saying
"United States citizens." It's precise, unambiguous and offends no
one. That would be my preferred usage.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] French language-bot entries

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 11:21, Lee Pilich wrote:
> Just so everybody knows, IP 62.147.142.55 just added a stack of
> French-language stubs on sci-fi novels at a rate which suggested they had
> to be using a bot (over 20 per minute). I've blocked the address to prevent
> any more being added and left the user a note saying that one needs
> approval before using a bot, and the French language wikipedia is somewhere
> else anyway.

This appears to have been due to a problem with Athymik's bot, which
he's been testing on test.wikipedia.org. (Probably somehow left out the
'host' header; leaving the default virtual host, the English wiki, as
the target.) There shall be words exchanged.

> Out of interest, am I right in thinking that if this user were to now make
> a user account and start again, there's nothing we could do about it until
> a developer came along to block them?

For the moment.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 13:06, Jason Williams wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 08:03:39AM +1300, Richard Grevers wrote:
> > **After all, would you simply stop at "Federated States" if you were
> > talking about Malaysia?
>
> And, of course, it'd make no sense to talk about the UK rather than
> the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ;-)

...and *Northern* Ireland. Don't want to ruffle _those_ feathers, now do
we? :)

-- brion viber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jens Frank

subject: non-breaking space (Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Please use <!--HTML comments-->  (Bug))

body:
On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 11:10:19AM +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
> In German we are using ISO-8859-1 (or
> ISO-8859-15?)

Both, kind of. The difference between -1 and -15 is the Euro symbol which
is replacing the "Currency"-symbol of ISO-8859-1.

Regards,

JeLuF


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: non-breaking space (Re: Re: Please use
	<!--HTML comments-->  (Bug))

references:
<20030301000902.29827.81126.Mailman@www.wikipedia.org>
	 <200302282338.59096.maveric149@yahoo.com>
	 <1046504658.3704.34.camel@frank.vibber.org>
	 <shu1enpfck.fsf_-_@tux.gnu.franken.de> <oprlct1bwpk4g8ki@news.gmane.org>
	 <shfzq6pxwt.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 13:41, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Displaying is not my problem.  Transferring character 160 decimal from
> the web browers edit buffer to the wikipedia database and back is the
> problem.

Please check that the browser's edit buffer does, in fact, contain a
char 160, and that it does, in fact, send this character to us. We don't
do any conversions that I would expect to alter this character if we
were receiving it.

Try this: http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/testnobreak.php

It's a minimal check for an 0xa0 (160) byte in a submitted textarea. A
quick test on Windows 2000 shows IE 5.5 working fine, but Mozilla 1.3b
fails: that is, Mozilla is converting the non-breaking space to a
breaking space before sending it to the server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps

body:
My experimental map code on the test site was removed. Does anyone have
a copy? It wasn't much code, what I need most is an example URL of a
map, which was originally submitted by Lars, AFAIR.

More important is the question: Should we support map links? My format was
	[[map:xx.xx:yy.yy:s|Title]]
with xx.xx and yy.yy being the coordinates, and s an optional scale
factor. The link was "rewritten" to a free map service (as a link to an
external page, not to a map image!).

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps : Never mind

body:
I found the source for the map links; it is up again at the test site. Try
	http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_testing
for an example.

Magnus


from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikipedia-l] takubot

body:
>We're saying the same thing.

Not quite. You believe reading the manual is the
responsibility of each participant and I don't agree.

>Why didn't I tell you? Because Wikipedia is not my job.
It's not my life. I
>don't check in every 15 minutes, every hour, on every
discussion, to monitor
>what goes on.

So you are saying if you delete some text from the article
and some complain about it, then you will say you don't want
to debate because you don't have time?

>I wouldn't mind being omniscient and omnipotent, but I'm
not. You shouldn't
>be upset with me for not knowing everything.

I am being upset not because you are not omnisicent but
because you didn't talk. Wikipedia is a community and the
basis of community is communication.

>But I do appreciate that you think I should be able to know
everything.

I only wish the community functions.


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: License discussion (was: [Wikipedia-l] [robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or "manipulated" to teach English?])

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 08:58, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual
> > > property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for*
> > > intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
> >
> > ... as long as it is understood that "everyone" is defined as
> > "everyone who is able and willing to use a license compatible
> > with GFDL". Those who for various reasons use one of the couple
> > dozen incompatible open content licenses are granted by us only a
> > single right: the right to read. That's exactly what they get
> > from encyclopedia.com as well.
>
> Nonsense. They have the right to use and reuse and redistribute and
> modify and rerelease the GFDL content _under the GFDL license_.

You will notice that that is exactly the case I excluded above.

Concretely, the guy who is writing or contributing to a science
textbook under a license that prohibits commercial distribution, or
doesn't require authorship acknowledgements, or doesn't allow invariant
sections, or allows modifications without changing the title etc. etc.
does not get anything out of Wikipedia. No intellectual property rights
for this dude.

And there will be many dudes like him. Lawrence Lessig just collected a
cool $2M grant for his little crappy project of polluting the world
with a maze of countless open content licenses, all slightly different.

> If we dilute the protections by letting any old license be
> used, you can expect a read-only embraced & extended version of
> Wikipedia peppered with material that's uncopyable under any license.
> If that's your idea of freedom,

So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the Wikipedia contents, locks them
up and improves upon them. Does that hurt me in any way? Or anybody
else for that matter? I still have precisely the same amount of freedom
I had before they decided to to that. Wikipedia is still free. If
anything, I benefit because more people get to read my material and I
get to read Britannica's improvements.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  takubot

body:
>Now, I would strongly support changing this to say 'You
must get
>permission from', rather than 'Ideally one should check
with'. But it's
>a bit harsh to jump on people for taking the page literally.

But it is the truth then we should not hide it. It is better
to warn people before they actually make mistakes. I will
apply this to bots page in English wikipedia.


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 02:10 PM 2/28/03 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>Egad, where the Cunctator when you need him? At the drop of a hat, people
>are talking about banning this one and banning that one.

You're doing a fine job of channeling him here.

>If someone writes badly, just revise their work. If someone puts something
>on the wrong shelf, just put it back.
>
>SoftSecurity, right?

We have bans for good and sufficient reasons. I don't think it's
unreasonable for people to
point out cases (e.g. VeraCruz) in which a banned user comes back in
disguise and
repeats the behavior that caused banning.

It's possible that you could revise everything that needs revising, and
move back everything
that's in the wrong place--but it would use all your energy.

Me, I want to create something good, not just spend all my time painting
over graffiti.
If I enjoyed the endless, losing fight against entropy, I'd go scrub my
kitchen floor.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] takubot

body:
>A day or a week sounds good to me.  We love bots, but it's
good for
>people to talk it over first,

Yeah, I would love to discuss and expected much before
running bots. But the long time brings more thoughts from
varaetiy of people? It seems to me in most of cases that
once a post in Village Pump became old say some hours, it
hardly gets more attention.

Fortunettly or unfortunatelly there is the tendency that
people act first then discuss. It is really difficult to get
many supports or complains before actually making
significant changes.

Yeah, maybe bots should be an exception because the result
might be unfixable. But some bots are really harmful and I
believe mime too.


body:
>So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the
>Wikipedia contents, locks them up and
>improves upon them. Does that hurt me in
>any way? Or anybody else for that matter?
>I still have precisely the same amount of
>freedom I had before they decided to to that.
>Wikipedia is still free. If anything, I benefit
>because more people get to read my material
>and I get to read Britannica's improvements.
>
>Axel

At that point the /only/ thing you would be able to do is just read
Britannica's improvements.

Without the protections of the GNU FDL you would not be able to improve on
their improvements. Thus Britannica improves and Wikipedia doesn't - the
positive feedback cycle ends with the imprisonment of a version of the
content.

Thanks to the GNU FDL the content always improves and is always free.
Britannica is more than welcome to incorporate our content but any changes
they make would have to be licensed under the GNU FDL. Thus that gives us the
/freedom/ to improve upon their improvements. Default copyright forbids them
to use the content at all and the public domain only grants freedom in one
direction.

I for one would not contribute to Wikipedia if it were in the public domain.

--mav

WikiKarma:
The usual at [[February 25]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] takubot

body:
>Fair enough.  We should make it more clear, then.
>
>Please keep in mind that our rules, including this one, are
social
>norms that are sometimes informal, and don't get formalized
until we
>have something that pushes us to get more formal.  I mean,
there are
>so many possible things that people might do, for better or
worse,
>that we can't (and shouldn't try) make a formal rule for
everything in
>advance.

The last thing we want is a bureaucratic prodecure. I never
advocate to formalize rules or detail them.

What frustrates me is that even though rules are not formal,
they are applied, sometimes rigidly.

>"Get approval before running a bot" is a good idea.
Approval from
>who?  Well, you know, some sysops.  One sysop?  Probably
more than
>one?  From Jimbo?  No, not unless ultimately there's trouble
>establishing unanimity and we just need a ruling to get on
with
>things.

My idea is again we should stop impling rules and stick to
wiki style, which is act first then discuss and fix the
problem.

I don't think it would work that those who want to use bots
wait for a day or possiblly a week. Or maybe I just haven't
seen working cases yet.

My current side is simply ban bots by ordinary wikipedians
other than sysops. I believe the wiki way act first then fix
is a basic premise and because bots can be too destructive,
we can't apply the wiki way to it.

>Is this vague?

The problem is not rules are vague but the reasons of people
apply it are.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: License discussion (was: [Wikipedia-l]
	[robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or
	"manipulated" to teach English?])

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 18:21, Axel Boldt wrote:
> Concretely, the guy who is writing or contributing to a science
> textbook under a license that prohibits commercial distribution, or
> doesn't require authorship acknowledgements, or doesn't allow invariant
> sections, or allows modifications without changing the title etc. etc.
> does not get anything out of Wikipedia. No intellectual property rights
> for this dude.

This hypothetical dude remains free to republish and release derivative
works of the GFDL material under the GFDL. He can run a handsome side
business printing and selling GFDL'd textbooks with Wikipedia material
if he likes.

However, if he wants to publish GFDL'd material under a different
license (which does not provide the same guarantees to the next set of
users that he enjoys), he needs the explicit permission of the copyright
holder(s). So no, without that (which may be difficult to get on a
project like Wikipedia where there are many anonymous contributors) he
can't use it in his non-free, business-hating, anti-author science
textbook. ;)

> So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the Wikipedia contents, locks them
> up and improves upon them. Does that hurt me in any way? Or anybody
> else for that matter? I still have precisely the same amount of freedom
> I had before they decided to to that. Wikipedia is still free. If
> anything, I benefit because more people get to read my material and I
> get to read Britannica's improvements.

Read, yes. Republish and further improve upon, no.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] French language-bot entries

body:
Just so everybody knows, IP 62.147.142.55 just added a stack of
French-language stubs on sci-fi novels at a rate which suggested they had
to be using a bot (over 20 per minute). I've blocked the address to prevent
any more being added and left the user a note saying that one needs
approval before using a bot, and the French language wikipedia is somewhere
else anyway.

Out of interest, am I right in thinking that if this user were to now make
a user account and start again, there's nothing we could do about it until
a developer came along to block them?

lp (camembert)
WikiKarma: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Mahler)


from_name: Jason Williams

body:
On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 08:03:39AM +1300, Richard Grevers wrote:
> **After all, would you simply stop at "Federated States" if you were
> talking about Malaysia?

And, of course, it'd make no sense to talk about the UK rather than
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ;-)

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: non-breaking space (Re: Re: Please use
 <!--HTML comments-->  (Bug))

in_reply_to:
<oprlct1bwpk4g8ki@news.gmane.org> (Richard Grevers's message of
 "Sun, 02 Mar 2003 00:54:37 +1300")

references:
<20030301000902.29827.81126.Mailman@www.wikipedia.org>
	<200302282338.59096.maveric149@yahoo.com>
	<1046504658.3704.34.camel@frank.vibber.org>
	<shu1enpfck.fsf_-_@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<oprlct1bwpk4g8ki@news.gmane.org>

body:
Richard Grevers <dramatic at xtra.co.nz> writes:

> It must be browser dependent, I think. Opera displays   using
> character 160 decimal, which would be what you want.

Displaying is not my problem.  Transferring character 160 decimal from
the web browers edit buffer to the wikipedia database and back is the
problem.  I can enter umlauts (?, ?, ? and accented characters like ?,
?, ?, etc.) literally into the database, but this does not work for "?".
I'm forced to write " " and that's cumbersome force to use anothor
editor than Emacs ;-(

Is it possible to call Emacs from Mozilla?

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Please use <!--HTML comments-->

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>There is at least one area of wikipedia work that I do which I think HTML
>comments will come in very handy; HTML tables.  HTML tables can get quite
>complicated and messy, and being able to leave notes for future editors to
>help them add to the table is something I just don't see the talk: page as
>being very good for.

Another way that I like to use HTML-style comments with tables:
When a huge table (like those for US States, elements, etc)
confronts a newbie trying their hand at editing,
they may not realise how easy wiki editing is
when all that they can see is this mass of HTML code.
So I add a comment *before* the table (on its own line),
letting them know that they should skip past the table code
if they want to edit the ordinary running text.

-- Toby


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: non-breaking space (Re: Re: Please use <!--HTML comments-->  (Bug))

body:
On Sat, 01 Mar 2003 11:10:19 +0100, Karl Eichwalder
<ke at gnu.franken.de> wrote:

> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>
>> If those aren't supposed to be spaces, then that's a bug in itself, but
>> I don't know if it's with the browser or the wiki. Please test...
>
> I've another complaint.  In German we are using ISO-8859-1 (or
> ISO-8859-15?); both contain the non-breaking space: "?" in HTML
> " ".  But when I write "3?dogs" the parser replace the
> non-breaking space with a simple space.
>
> I rate this behavior as a bug.

It must be browser dependent, I think. Opera displays   using
character 160 decimal, which would be what you want.
(This causes me hedaches, because I have occasion to use an automatic
script generator written by someone else which uses a lot of  s. Since
the Server-side processor these are destined for treats them as non-
whitespace and throws errors, I ahve to go on a search and destroy mission
in my text editor after copying the output.

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: License discussion (was: [Wikipedia-l]
 [robertocasiraghi@iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or "manipulated"
 to teach English?])

body:
On 1 Mar 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> However, if he wants to publish GFDL'd material under a different
> license (which does not provide the same guarantees to the next set of
> users that he enjoys),

Or even if he wants to publish it under a different license that holds
exactly the same guarantees.

Andre Engels


body:
On Sat, 1 Mar 2003 11:49:23 -0600, Sheldon Rampton
<sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:

> Zoe wrote:
>
>> Nonsense.  Americans are the citizens or residents of the United States.
>> DESIGNED to provoke controversy?  Only if you're looking for something
>> to make controversial.
>
> I've been wanting to avoid wading into this discussion, but the term
> "Americans" does have a double meaning, and its usage as a reference
> solely to U.S. citizens  rankles with some people from Canada, Mexico and
> other parts of North and South America who also consider themselves
> "American" as well. The term is commonly used in reference U.S. citizens,
> and it doesn't particularly offend me personally, but I know people who
> object to it.
>
> Using "Americans" in reference to U.S. citizens is a bit like using
> "Indians" in reference to Native Americans or "cripples" in reference to
> the physically disabled. I know there are people who find it silly and
> irritating that they should be asked to use more "politically correct"
> language, but whenever possible I think it's best to be sensitive about
> these things. I don't see a downside to saying "United States citizens."
> It's precise, unambiguous and offends no one. That would be my preferred
> usage.

Given the near-universal* usage of "American", I see it as preferable to
the cumbersome "United States Citizens" (also given that "United States"
itself is an incomplete descriptor**). The other nations on the North
American continent both have good adjectices to distinguish them (Canadian,
Mexican), and the term "North American" is a manageable collective
adjective.

* The most common term in Australia/NZ might in fact be "bloody yanks", but
I concede that this might not be appropriate :-)
**After all, would you simply stop at "Federated States" if you were
talking about Malaysia?
--
Richard Grevers


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

> Remove the spaces from the ends, and everything looks fine.

Okay, but here's another problem;
cf. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AKeichwa

Testing comments
================
Input
-----
xxx
<!-- yyy -->
zzz

Output
------
xxx

zzz

Expected Output
---------------
xxx zzz

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The bug is that the parser does not the newline after "-->"; I'd
recommend to read all of [\n\t ]+$ after "-->".  Otherwise it's hard or
impossible to add comments within paragraphs or in between list items.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I for one would not contribute to Wikipedia if it were in the public
> domain.

Yes, and I'm sure you are not alone there. Attracting contributors is
the major strength of copyleft licenses in my view, and that's why they
are useful. I don't even argue that Wikipedia should switch to public
domain, and of course that would be entirely impossible to do now.

What I don't like is if copyleft licenses are sold as increasing
freedoms and intellectual property rights, when there are lots of
people, even ones opposed to traditional copyright concepts, who are
concretely restricted in their choices because of them. Ultimately,
these licenses are strategic instruments, tradeoffs, and should be
understood as such.

What I am arguing for, I guess, is that Wikipedia contributors who
don't need the additional motivation of copyleft anymore, and who have
already lost the notions of authorship and ownership enshrined in GFDL,
release their contributions into the public domain early (eventually
they will fall into the public domain anyway). That doesn't diminish
the strategic value of GFDL in any way, but can help potential users of
the materials quite substantially.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary links (was: Redirection

body:
From: "Pedro M.V." <macv at interlap.com.ar>
> - Create a wiktionary list (for multilingual wiktionary in mind too).
> - Include a link automatically to wikipedia article about the same word,
for user?s more information.

Excellent! I like it!
But there's an awful lot of complaining
in the Wiktionary that it is only an
English Wiktionary and the idea of
a multilingual Wiktionary is not so
welcomed by some. But as far as
I'm concerned foreign language index
pages in the English Wiktionary can
be as appendixes which can point
back to articles or entries either in
the Wiktionary or the Wikipedia,
maybe even both.

http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Es_a_index

Some Encyclopedias have a tome
for quick reference and
a set for in-depth look ups.

Since,
Con saludos,
Jay B.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Lists which are sheer nonsense

body:
On Sat, 1 Mar 2003 21:06:11 +0000, Jason Williams
<jason at jasonandali.org.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 08:03:39AM +1300, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> **After all, would you simply stop at "Federated States" if you were
>> talking about Malaysia?
>
> And, of course, it'd make no sense to talk about the UK rather than
> the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ;-)
>
Gatcha - I meant the federated states of Aurstralia :-). The UK is
unambiguous for the time being.

--
Richard Grevers


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps : Never mind

body:
On dim, 2003-03-02 at 06:17, Pedro M.V. wrote:
> Thanks a lot !!!!. Let this feature alive forever ;). It?s very
> usefull to spare space ( instead of upload maps ) and can be included
> in the MoS ( for mountains, rivers and so on).

Relying on a third-party proprietary service which may shut off access
at any time is not the best idea. This is why we've tossed around the
idea of running our own map server. Wouldn't really save space ;) but
would save time -- no need to generate, save, and upload thousands of
individual maps except where they really need additional editing work.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: cprompt at optonline.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Re: Re: Lists which are sheer nonsense

body:
I realize that anecdotal evidence doesn't really mean much for an
encyclopedia, but I'd still like to share. I asked my friend who lives in
Canada whether he ever calls himself an American as a resident of North
America, and whether he would refer to people in Mexico or South America as
Americans. He replied no, and said that he refers to himself as a Canadian,
United States citizens as Americans, Mexico citizens as Mexicans, etc. He
doesn't know anyone else who does. It seems to me that an overwhelming
majority of people I've come into contact with, as well as the media I've
been exposed to refer to U.S. citizens as Americans, preferring to identify
people by their nation rather than continent. While you could refer to
people from Europe as Europeans, it would just promote confusion if you
identified people from the Americas and Americans. While I personally think
that one nation, (even if it is my own) should not hog the name of two
entire continents, I see it as the same situation as Pennsylvania Dutch
(Pennsylvania German?)

We should name our articles as the majority of the world expects to find
them, not as whatever is academically or linguistically correct.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps : Never mind

body:
Thanks a lot !!!!. Let this feature alive forever ;). It?s very usefull to spare space ( instead of upload maps ) and can be included in the MoS ( for mountains, rivers and so on).

Regards.

P.S. : is there any wiktionary mailing list ??.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 2:51 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maps : Never mind

> I found the source for the map links; it is up again at the test site. Try
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_testing
> for an example.
>
> Magnus
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirection

body:
When one redirects (initially) a definition form wiktionary to wikipedia, where is no way edit the wiktionary page to skip the redirection, when one has written the wiktionary definition.

It would be very interesting :

- Create a wiktionary list (for multilingual wiktionary in mind too).
- Include a link automatically to wikipedia article about the same word, for user?s more information.

Regards.


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American who reads the Wikipedia?

body:
Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the English Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format.  How did this slip under the radar without a major discussion?  It's a very anti-American thing to do.

Zoe

---------------------------------
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from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Nobody has slipped anything under your radar, Zoe.  I am simply
continuing the long discussion you just joined.

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]  On Behalf Of Zoe
> Sent:	Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:10
> To:	WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject:	[WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American who
reads the Wikipedia?
>
> Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
English Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format.  How did
this slip under the radar without a major discussion?  It's a very
anti-American thing to do.
>
> Zoe
>
>
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center
<http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailtagline/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/> -
forms, calculators, tips, and more


body:
So let's discuss.  What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003?

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]  On Behalf Of Zoe
> Sent:	Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:10
> To:	WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject:	[WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American who
reads the Wikipedia?
>
> Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
English Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format.  How did
this slip under the radar without a major discussion?  It's a very
anti-American thing to do.
>
> Zoe
>
>
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center
<http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailtagline/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/> -
forms, calculators, tips, and more


subject: [WikiEN-l] 'AIDS Kills Fags Dead' slogan

body:
Cunctator insists on having an article at [['AIDS Kills Fags Dead' slogan]], despite many other people's objections.  There seemed to have developeda consensus that the article be called [[Homophobic hate speech]], but Cunctator decided unliaterally to change that.  We need a decision that everybody can live with.

Zoe

---------------------------------
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body:
You claim that the discussion is ongoing, and yet the Bot has already been written, tested, and is set to go off in 30 minutes!
It's confusing because it is NOT what Americans write, unless they have military training.  Try writing 2/3/03 and tell me what the date is.
Zoe
 Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:So let's discuss. What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003?

--
Sean Barrett
sean at epoptic.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe
> Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:10
> To: WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American who
reads the Wikipedia?
>
> Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
English Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format. How did
this slip under the radar without a major discussion? It's a very
anti-American thing to do.
>
> Zoe
>
>
>
>
>
> _____
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center
-
forms, calculators, tips, and more

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

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Beware the Datebot!

body:
I apologize for being so slow with this message that Zoe became alarmed.

As a result of the discussion on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style (dates
and numbers)]], I have written a datebot that will convert dates of the
form "[[March 2]], [[2003]]" to "[[2 March]] [[2003]]" (and also the
simpler case of "[[March 2]]" to "[[2 March]]").  I have tested it in my
own sandbox and on a few naval ship pages.

Currently it has no automatic article selection mechanism; it only
munges the single article it's pointed at.  I intend to run it manually
and slowly on the ship articles and make sure I haven't missed anything
about its operation.

I have no intention of doing anything precipitous.

--
 Sean Barrett     | How am I supposed to hallucinate
 sean at epoptic.com | with all these swirling colors
                  | distracting me? --Lisa Simpson


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Beware the Datebot!


body:
What is with these straw man attacks?  It is NOT going to go off in 30
minutes.  Where in the world did you get that absurd idea?  Furthermore,
2/3/03 is a non-sequitur -- no one has ever suggested it.  The
discussion involves only 2 March 2003 versus March 2, 2003.

What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003?

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]  On Behalf Of Zoe
> Sent:	Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:28
> To:	wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject:	RE: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American
who reads the Wikipedia?
>
> You claim that the discussion is ongoing, and yet the Bot has already
been written, tested, and is set to go off in 30 minutes!
>
> It's confusing because it is NOT what Americans write, unless they
have military training.  Try writing 2/3/03 and tell me what the date
is.
>
> Zoe
>
>  Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
> So let's discuss. What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003?
>
> --
> Sean Barrett
> sean at epoptic.com
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe
> > Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:10
> > To: WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American who
> reads the Wikipedia?
> >
> > Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
> English Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format. How did
> this slip under the radar without a major discussion? It's a very
> anti-American thing to do.
> >
> > Zoe
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _____
> >
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Tax Center
> -
> forms, calculat! ors, tips, and more
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center
<http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailtagline/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/> -
forms, calculators, tips, and more


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 07:24:37PM -0800, Zoe wrote:
>   Cunctator insists on having an article at [['AIDS Kills Fags Dead'
>   slogan]], despite many other people's objections.  There seemed to have
>   developeda consensus that the article be called [[Homophobic hate
>   speech]], but Cunctator decided unliaterally to change that.  We need a
>   decision that everybody can live with.

The article is about the slogan, isn't it?  It is false and misleading
to name the article "Homophobic hate speech" when it is really about the
slogan "AIDS Kills Fags Dead".

The real question you should be asking is: is such an article encyclopedic,
and does it belong in the Wikipedia at all?  I respectfully submit to
the jury that such an article is NOT encyclopedic, and does not belong
in the Wikipedia.

Denis Diderot is rolling in his grave at your descration of his legacy.
You Wikipedians would have crucified Samuel Johnson long ago, had he
shown up and tried to contribute.  Shame.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
You wrote: The datebot has been thoroughly tested and is almost ready to be set ravening among the articles. At [[Sun Mar 2 19:44:31 PST 2003|this moment]] it has no automatic article-selection mechanism.
I read this as saying that you were planning on setting it off at 19:44:31.
Zoe
 Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:What is with these straw man attacks? It is NOT going to go off in 30
minutes. Where in the world did you get that absurd idea? Furthermore,
2/3/03 is a non-sequitur -- no one has ever suggested it. The
discussion involves only 2 March 2003 versus March 2, 2003.

What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003?

--
Sean Barrett
sean at epoptic.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe
> Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:28
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American
who reads the Wikipedia?
>
> You claim that the discussion is ongoing, and yet the Bot has already
been written, tested, and is set to go off in 30 minutes!
>
> It's confusing because it is NOT what Americans write, unless they
have military training. Try writing 2/3/03 and tell me what the date
is.
>
> Zoe
>
> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> So let's discuss. What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003?
>
> --
> Sean Barrett
> sean at epoptic.com
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe
> > Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:10
> > To: WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American who
> reads the Wikipedia?
> >
> > Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
> English Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format. How did
> this slip under the radar without a major discussion? It's a very
> anti-American thing to do.
> >
> > Zoe
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _____
> >
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Tax Center
> -
> forms, calculat! ors, tips, and more
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
> _____
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center
-
forms, calculators, tips, and more

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

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more
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body:
Contrary to Zoe's accusations, I am not -- and will not be -- committing
wholesale changes.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of The Cunctator
Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:57
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American
whoreads the Wikipedia?

On 3/2/03 10:09 PM, "Zoe" <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Apparently there is a move under way to change EVERY date in the
English
> Wikipedia to "2 March" format from "March 2" format.  How did this
slip under
> the radar without a major discussion?  It's a very anti-American thing
to do.
>
Where? That is bad, and not because of its anti-Americanism. It's simply
antiWikipedian to commit wholesale changes.

Some links would be helpful.

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