from_name: Deathphoenix

body:
If I may weigh in on the BC/AD BCE/BC debate, it seems that the best way
to handle this is similar to how we deal with British/American English
spelling: if an article already has BC/AD and is consistent, there is no
need to change this to BCE/BC.

In addition, I would think that articles on history (especially articles
baesd before the BCE/BC notation) should keep the BC/AD notation.

Fred Bauder wrote:

> 1) Wikipedia has established a Wikipedia:Manual of Style for the
> "purpose of making things easy to read by following a consistent
> format," see [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29#Eras). The
> prescriptions of Wikipedia's manual of style are not binding, but it
> is suggested that with respect to eras that "Both the BCE/CE era
> names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable, but be consistent
> within an article."
>
> Fred
>
> On Jun 23, 2005, at 12:56 PM, Jon wrote:
>
>> ArbCom, unfortunately, but at least now with good intentions, is
>> making another mistake on the BCE/CE arbitration. It appears to be
>> about to declare that the MoS (or at least an extract of it) is
>> policy. My understanding is this is not the case, and that the MoS
>> is just a non-binding guideline.
>>
>> This understanding comes from a recent discussion, initiated by
>> SlimVirgin, who argued that the MoS had never followed the correct
>> procedure to become policy. I argued that it had - as it was
>> followed generally by WPians and had been effectively accepted as
>> such by the community. However, SlimVirgin, supported by others,
>> argued that it would need a consensus vote. I didn't persevere in
>> countering this argument for too long, and the designation of the
>> MoS as "policy" was removed.
>>
>> It seems the ArbCom is about to reverse the effects of that
>> discussion and declare a basic guideline as policy. As there is
>> nothing in the general wording of the MoS to separate out the bits
>> on BCE/CE notation from the rest, it leaves open the possibility
>> that users not complying with the MoS (and most don't from time to
>> time at least in some respects) are leaving themselves open to
>> complaints.
>>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> Jguk
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PCcalling worldwide with
>> voicemail
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wiktionary-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Wytukaze

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: LISA article and Wiktionary misunderstandings

references:
<BAY22-F32538C5D1600A0597E5C8EB7F70@phx.gbl>
	<42B4D46D.6000505@telus.net> <42B4E4D8.8050406@yahoo.it>
	<742dfd06050620174141d2733c@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.sspm93no2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>
	<42B7D0DD.9010504@gmail.com>
	<op.ssqhi7jr2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>
	<42BA3B61.8090502@telus.net> <42BB01F5.7020302@gmail.com>

body:
On 6/23/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> This is the kind of reply that is helpfull. So I am really pleased to
> answer these questions. For the understanding of how I think about
> words, and to a large extend how UW may work, you have to appreciate
> that language word and meaning relate to each other. Highest in the
> order is the "language", the language has "word"s, a word has
> "meaning"s. Meanings have "translations". A translation is nothing more,
> nothing less than a relation to other words. In a list of translations,
> only the word will be shown. To get the full meaning of the translation,
> you have to go to the meaning of this word to appreciate all its subtelties.
>

[snip]

>
> Idiom will be welcome in UW, it will be treated as a word with the
> wordtype "idiom". Mind you the wordtype is defined with the word. As
> such it is possible to add translations as required. I do agree that
> idiom needs to be in the same language as the word itself.
>

I'm sure you've already considered this, but I'd like to mention it
anyway. With idioms, and to some respect all of our possible entries,
it could be quite important to include both a literal translation and
a gloss; that is, with the idiom "black sheep" (as a very simple
example), you would include (something like):

Dutch -
Literal: zwart schaap
Gloss: ongewone persoon

French -
Literal: mouton noir
Gloss: personne unordinaire

German -
Literal: schwarzes Schaf
Gloss: ungew?hnlich Person

Please forgive the basic formatting and my mistakes, in the highly
likely chance that I made some. :)

Of course, with the idiom I have chosen, there just so happens to be a
regular non-idiomatic usage, but it should give you the basic idea of
what I'm on about, no?

[snip]
> >
> >
> > "Meaning on a global level" would need to be in some kind of
> > abstraction.  Without that you would need to give precedence to some
> > language.
>
> Please refer to what I wrote about relations at the top of my answer.
> When a meaning has been defined, it may have a list of words that are
> included because these words have the same meaning in the other language
> eg "you" can have many different words as a translation because of the
> way grammar works differently in different languages. When the
> translations of the words are seen as included in the meaning of the
> English word "you", you will have a list of words all translating to
> "you" but not being synonymous. From a translation point of view they DO
> translate to the English meaning of "you" even though they have a
> distinct meaning in the original language.
>

Again, I would hope that a note is made in the translations (and not
just leave it up to users to figure it out for themselves) that the
definitions do not correlate exactly, that "you" encompasses "tu" and
"vous" and so on. This becomes important in situations where the word
being listed as a translation does not yet exist, or where the
languages are sufficiently exotic that one cannot expect the user to
have any sort of background knowledge. (For example, how many of you
would know exactly what the Ga word "ny?" meaning "you" specifically
refers to?)

> When meanings are added at this time, often the translations are not
> touched making it uncertain if these translations are correct. With UW
> translations are linked to meanings, these translations will not
> automagically transfer to a new meaning. One can assume that the orginal
> meaning stays within the boundaries of what was intended. If not, the
> translations have to be removed and reapplied by someone who understands
> both languages.
>
> >
> >>>>> [1] There is a difficult question, which we are ignoring for now :
> >>>>> just how precisely do all the translations of "minster (English, n.,
> >>>>> 2)" have synonymous definitions?  When are two different words ever
> >>>>> truly synonymous?  But that is a discussion for another month.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Even when words are not "truly" synonymous for some, they may be
> >>> "truly"
> >>> synonymous for others. Some words have only a distinct meaning in
> >>> certain subcultures. This can be adressed by giving a word multiple
> >>> meanings. The truly synonymous meaning and the slightly differing
> >>> meaning.
> >>
> >>
> >> If a word really has different meanings, that's not a problem, and
> >> should
> >> be being done anyway.
> >
> >
> > How different is different?  "Number" and "numeral" have closely
> > related, but different meanings that are not recognized by everyone.
> > The differential will not always be the same in all languages.
> >
> >> But this doesn't work if the word doesn't actually *have* multiple
> >> meanings
> >> to native speakers.  English "you" isn't divided into formal and
> >> familiar,
> >> or masculine and feminine, as it is in some languages. I hope this isn't
> >> what you're talking about.
> >
> >
> > The 2nd person pronoun is full of problems.  The English singular,
> > "thou", is rarely used, so using that in translation would sound very
> > strange to most hearers.  In French politeness and social standing
> > play a major role in the choice of singular and plural.  Spanish takes
> > politeness one step further by also using "usted", which takes a third
> > person verb.  New and old world versions of the language will treat
> > these issues differently.  You can't possibly sort this out through a
> > multi-language translating dictionary.
> >
> >>>> A minister is a special case. Nouns that refer to specific referents
> >>>> are likely to have synonymous definitions, but they're relatively
> >>>> rare; most words won't have ready one-word translations so easily.
> >>>> Try:
> >>>> walk, run, saunter, dash, sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop (varying
> >>>> degrees of the same kind of action); die, expire, pass away, kick the
> >>>> bucket, buy the farm (varying degrees of the formality of an
> >>>> action);...
> >>>> sludge, slush, slime, mush, slurry... (various specific referents
> >>>> in the
> >>>> same close semantic field) -- different languages will handle them all
> >>>> differently (though possibly the common European languages will share
> >>>> more gracefully than others).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> When it comes to explain what words like walk, run, saunter, dash,
> >>> sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop mean, it helps when you use
> >>> methodology used in thesauri: some terms are included in others some
> >>> may
> >>> be specific to certain animals.
> >>
> >>
> >> Yes, they all have different meanings.  They have different pragmatics
> >> too. For example it may be that the usual translation in one language
> >> actually has a different literal meaning, and that the exact translation
> >> is a kind of technical term nobody would use, or may not exist at all.
> >> (A well-documented example is that of color terms.)  But if, as I
> >> understand from what you say above, translation tables are not being
> >> shared across words with "synonymous" definitions, then my previous
> >> comment on this point doesn't apply.
> >
> >
> > It's the subtleties that make the difference.  Albert Camus' novel
> > "L'?tranger" is variously tianslated as "The Stranger" or "The
> > Outsider".  It takes more than crude dictionary knowledge to sort out
> > the distinction.
> > Before a UW project or any other kind of multilanguage translating
> > dictionary can be an effective tool the material belonging to the
> > separate component languages must first be functional reference tools
> > for the native speakers of each language.  English already has over
> > 75,000 entries, but it still has a long way to go before it can be
> > that kind of tool for English speakers.  I can't imagine that the much
> > smaller wiktionaries for other languages are any closer.
>
> The current wiktionaries are with respect, similar to a paper based
> dictionary. It does have little to no functionality that allows it to
> make a difference in this digital world. When we start to publish
> content in .dict or RFC 2229 format, people use in effect multiple
> resources to get their dictionary content. That will be new
> functionality. It means that new functionality can be bootstrapped onto
> an incomplete resource. When the OmegaT people are to use UW as a
> glossary resource in their translationtool, it will be new
> functionality. Functionality that will enhance the UW content. When UW
> can become a resource for Open / Free projects, it will gain many words
> that from a lexicological point of view may be incomplete but that will
> make it usefull as a resource to some. This will be new functionality.
>
> In effect, there is no reason that I can see to improve the current
> wiktionaries when the same information can be had in the UW. There are
> reasons to use UW in stead of individual wiktionaries because the
> usefullness and the synergy factor is so much better.
>

Well, the main reason to improve current Wiktionaries would be so that
they remain viable resources while we have no UW, of course.

> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> >
> > Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

On a completely unrelated note, I gave our list a description, so
those of you with clever email clients might notice a crazy name being
inserted before the email address if you have the list as a contact.

Wytukaze


list: wikien-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Per-article blocking

body:
On 6/23/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Blanking doesn't seem very helpful at all when the page needs to be
> protected. All you need to do is make up a fuss between enough users
> and you can disrupt wikipedia until there's no tomorrow. Besides, no
> one can edit a blanked article into something else the parties might
> accept.

Obviously good sense is applied to determine if someone is just trying
to create a disruption to cause a blanking, such a judgement is
already used for protection.

And protected pages shouldn't be edited, blank or not. Of course the
history is available, and the discussion can take place on the talk
page... where all sides will be encouraged to participate because
their preferred version is not on top. :)


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

references:
<BAY22-F32538C5D1600A0597E5C8EB7F70@phx.gbl>	<42B4D46D.6000505@telus.net>	<42B4E4D8.8050406@yahoo.it>	<742dfd06050620174141d2733c@mail.gmail.com>	<op.sspm93no2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>	<42B7D0DD.9010504@gmail.com>	<op.ssqhi7jr2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>
	<42BA3B61.8090502@telus.net>

body:
Hoi,
This is the kind of reply that is helpfull. So I am really pleased to
answer these questions. For the understanding of how I think about
words, and to a large extend how UW may work, you have to appreciate
that language word and meaning relate to each other. Highest in the
order is the "language", the language has "word"s, a word has
"meaning"s. Meanings have "translations". A translation is nothing more,
nothing less than a relation to other words. In a list of translations,
only the word will be shown. To get the full meaning of the translation,
you have to go to the meaning of this word to appreciate all its subtelties.

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Muke Tever wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Muke Tever wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>          [Interlingua]: ministro;  [Japanese]: ?? (????,
>>>>> daijin);
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Will users of non-Roman scripts be able to see transliterations in
>>>> their own scripts, or will they have to be stuck with Roman?
>>>
>>>
>>> When you look at the current practice in the nl:wiktionary, you will
>>> find that the different scripts are supported. This will also be the
>>> case for Ultimate Wiktionary. More interesting is how a right to left
>>> implementation will look like, like Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew ..
>>
>>
>> No, I know the scripts are supported. I meant, in the translation list,
>> if the transliteration such as "daijin" would be transliterated (or
>> transliteratable) into the user's script as well.  I know that nl:wikt
>> doesn't give a Hebrew transliteration of "??" anywhere, and that
>> en:wikt
>> has actually been deleting Cyrillic transliterations of Chinese (though
>> those were added as entries, not translations).
>
>
> Whatever my complaints about Gerard's UW, scripts are not one of them.
>
>>>>> == [Dutch] ==
>>>>> minister ([n.]) 1. [A person commissioned by the government for
>>>>> public service.]
>>>>>          "Zware voet jaagt minister Anciaux uit de bocht."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hopefully there's space for a translation of this example
>>>> in the user's language.
>>>
>>>
>>> There will be room for idiom, this line is problematic in that the
>>> meaning of "zware voet" is not clear in its own right without context.
>>> So as idiom it is not really great.
>>
>>
>> I think that's meant to be a sample sentence using the word, not
>> necessarily an idiom.  But it should bear a translation into the
>> user's language as well.
>
>
> We haven't really addressed this issue at en:wiktionary.  My first
> impression would be that a quotation to illustrate the use of a word
> in a foreign language should be in its original, _and_ should be
> accompanied by its English translation.

Idiom will be welcome in UW, it will be treated as a word with the
wordtype "idiom". Mind you the wordtype is defined with the word. As
such it is possible to add translations as required. I do agree that
idiom needs to be in the same language as the word itself.

>
>>>> What exactly is the translation table attaching to?  The definition
>>>> number? The auto-translating definition? or the individual language's
>>>> translation of the definition? If the English definition is improved
>>>> by someone, made more specific (and hopefully it would be) nothing
>>>> stops a Dutch editor from adding translations (in several languages
>>>> even) that relate only to the older definition that was faithfully
>>>> done into his language.  Also, the English editor mightn't even think
>>>> to check an added translation--does he know that the Dutch editor
>>>> isn't
>>>> translating from the same definition?
>>>
>>>
>>> Meaning exist on a global level. When a meaning is added, it will be
>>> universally seen to be there. Meanings are linked to a word.
>>> Translations will be linked to meanings.
>>
>>
>> So the problem of translations given to a language's out-of-date version
>> of a meaning will still exist?
>
>
> "Meaning on a global level" would need to be in some kind of
> abstraction.  Without that you would need to give precedence to some
> language.

Please refer to what I wrote about relations at the top of my answer.
When a meaning has been defined, it may have a list of words that are
included because these words have the same meaning in the other language
eg "you" can have many different words as a translation because of the
way grammar works differently in different languages. When the
translations of the words are seen as included in the meaning of the
English word "you", you will have a list of words all translating to
"you" but not being synonymous. From a translation point of view they DO
translate to the English meaning of "you" even though they have a
distinct meaning in the original language.

When meanings are added at this time, often the translations are not
touched making it uncertain if these translations are correct. With UW
translations are linked to meanings, these translations will not
automagically transfer to a new meaning. One can assume that the orginal
meaning stays within the boundaries of what was intended. If not, the
translations have to be removed and reapplied by someone who understands
both languages.

>
>>>>> [1] There is a difficult question, which we are ignoring for now :
>>>>> just how precisely do all the translations of "minster (English, n.,
>>>>> 2)" have synonymous definitions?  When are two different words ever
>>>>> truly synonymous?  But that is a discussion for another month.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Even when words are not "truly" synonymous for some, they may be
>>> "truly"
>>> synonymous for others. Some words have only a distinct meaning in
>>> certain subcultures. This can be adressed by giving a word multiple
>>> meanings. The truly synonymous meaning and the slightly differing
>>> meaning.
>>
>>
>> If a word really has different meanings, that's not a problem, and
>> should
>> be being done anyway.
>
>
> How different is different?  "Number" and "numeral" have closely
> related, but different meanings that are not recognized by everyone.
> The differential will not always be the same in all languages.
>
>> But this doesn't work if the word doesn't actually *have* multiple
>> meanings
>> to native speakers.  English "you" isn't divided into formal and
>> familiar,
>> or masculine and feminine, as it is in some languages. I hope this isn't
>> what you're talking about.
>
>
> The 2nd person pronoun is full of problems.  The English singular,
> "thou", is rarely used, so using that in translation would sound very
> strange to most hearers.  In French politeness and social standing
> play a major role in the choice of singular and plural.  Spanish takes
> politeness one step further by also using "usted", which takes a third
> person verb.  New and old world versions of the language will treat
> these issues differently.  You can't possibly sort this out through a
> multi-language translating dictionary.
>
>>>> A minister is a special case. Nouns that refer to specific referents
>>>> are likely to have synonymous definitions, but they're relatively
>>>> rare; most words won't have ready one-word translations so easily.
>>>> Try:
>>>> walk, run, saunter, dash, sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop (varying
>>>> degrees of the same kind of action); die, expire, pass away, kick the
>>>> bucket, buy the farm (varying degrees of the formality of an
>>>> action);...
>>>> sludge, slush, slime, mush, slurry... (various specific referents
>>>> in the
>>>> same close semantic field) -- different languages will handle them all
>>>> differently (though possibly the common European languages will share
>>>> more gracefully than others).
>>>
>>>
>>> When it comes to explain what words like walk, run, saunter, dash,
>>> sashay, hurry, skip, mosey, gallop mean, it helps when you use
>>> methodology used in thesauri: some terms are included in others some
>>> may
>>> be specific to certain animals.
>>
>>
>> Yes, they all have different meanings.  They have different pragmatics
>> too. For example it may be that the usual translation in one language
>> actually has a different literal meaning, and that the exact translation
>> is a kind of technical term nobody would use, or may not exist at all.
>> (A well-documented example is that of color terms.)  But if, as I
>> understand from what you say above, translation tables are not being
>> shared across words with "synonymous" definitions, then my previous
>> comment on this point doesn't apply.
>
>
> It's the subtleties that make the difference.  Albert Camus' novel
> "L'?tranger" is variously tianslated as "The Stranger" or "The
> Outsider".  It takes more than crude dictionary knowledge to sort out
> the distinction.
> Before a UW project or any other kind of multilanguage translating
> dictionary can be an effective tool the material belonging to the
> separate component languages must first be functional reference tools
> for the native speakers of each language.  English already has over
> 75,000 entries, but it still has a long way to go before it can be
> that kind of tool for English speakers.  I can't imagine that the much
> smaller wiktionaries for other languages are any closer.

The current wiktionaries are with respect, similar to a paper based
dictionary. It does have little to no functionality that allows it to
make a difference in this digital world. When we start to publish
content in .dict or RFC 2229 format, people use in effect multiple
resources to get their dictionary content. That will be new
functionality. It means that new functionality can be bootstrapped onto
an incomplete resource. When the OmegaT people are to use UW as a
glossary resource in their translationtool, it will be new
functionality. Functionality that will enhance the UW content. When UW
can become a resource for Open / Free projects, it will gain many words
that from a lexicological point of view may be incomplete but that will
make it usefull as a resource to some. This will be new functionality.

In effect, there is no reason that I can see to improve the current
wiktionaries when the same information can be had in the UW. There are
reasons to use UW in stead of individual wiktionaries because the
usefullness and the synergy factor is so much better.

Thanks,
  GerardM

>
> Ec


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
On 23/06/05, jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk> wrote:
>
> RFC, however, is completely inadequate. Community response to RFCs is very modest, even (or especially) when controversial articles are being discussed. Only recruiting like-minded editors through their talkpages seems to help. RFC or otherwise, it often leads to no agreement between the litigants, and mediation is sought etc etc. By that time the experienced user is already tired and wants to go back to normal editing.
>
> Jfdwolff

In the last few weeks, several of us have made an effort to respond to
RfCs and try and 'mediate' on an ad-hoc basis - with good results, I
might add.

And as a result of a suggestion by Maurreen in response to Raul's
RfAr/RfC, we've recently made an overhaul of the RfC content section -
with the results being very well recieved.

So please, don't write RfCs off.

Dan


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Merlin

subject: [Wikitech-l] images missing

body:
Hello everybody,

I just installed the wiki media and the german version of wikipedia on
my pc. Looks like it works fine, but the images are missing. On the spot
where the image should be located it says missing imag and the name.
Does anybody know where to optain the images, or if they are anyhow
inside the tables and i made a mistake with the inserts.

Thank you for any hint,

merlin


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom about to declare that the MoS is policy

body:
On Thursday, June 23, 2005 7:57 PM, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

[Snip whether the MoS is policy]

> SlimVirgin, supported by others, argued that it would need a
> consensus vote.

I truely hope that this is not in fact what SlimVirgin and the others meant,
as, if so, it shows a distressingly great misunderstanding of what policy
is; the result of votes it is not. A few examples at random would be No
Personal Attacks, No Original Research, the Deletion Policy, the Sockpuppet
policy, amongst others. Oh, and this little one called "NPOV". None of these
started as consensus polls, nor were not considered 'policy' until they had
managed to muster such support.

And, BTW, you probably meant "consensus poll"; votes are binding, and we
just don't /do/ binding polls, a.k.a. votes, on Wikipedia (even in the case
of the selection of members of the Arbitration Committee, it is, in the end,
just appointment by Jimbo as he sees fit, whether guided by the results of
the poll of users or not).

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM  (MSN) : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Silly mailing lists

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

Sam Korn wrote:
> If you are prepared to accept the rules of Wikipedia, then I have no doubt
> that you will be allowed back to edit. As it is, you were creating a
> worrying copyright problem, something that would be bet avoided.
>
> After all, what problem does it give you to put your comments under the
> GFDL? They still must be attributed to you.
>
> Sam
>
> On 6/23/05, thomas-edison @ ziplip. com <thomas-edison at ziplip.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Mailing lists are just so inefficient.... why not just have a forum? At
>>least this mailing list has a virtual forum.
>>
>>http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/
>>
>>Also, I don't seem to get very good feedback here.... I guess I'll just
>>have to post some more on the talk pages, even though people with no
>>knowledge of copyright law will complain. Tough!
>>
>>(c) 2005, Pioneer-12
>>
>>p.s. I have been banned unfairly and no one has even bothered to ADDRESS
>>that in a MONTH. <sarcasm> Way to go, Wikipedia! Good job treating volunteer
>>editors who are simply standing up for their rights like criminals.
>></sarcasm>
>>

More than just attributed - any modification of them must be attributed
to both you and whoever modified them. If you're worried about your
comments being mangled, don't be. Or, PGP sign every comment you make,
and then we can tell they haven't been altered :)

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta hacked?

body:
Is meta hacked or what? Take it offline if it isn't possible to remove the
banner.

Alfio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta hacked?

body:
On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Chad Perrin wrote:

>On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 10:22:04PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>>
>> Is meta hacked or what? Take it offline if it isn't possible to remove the
>> banner.
>
>What banner?  I'm looking at meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and see
>no banner.

It's gone, whatever it was. A bright orange banner saying something like
"This page brought to you by Ass Pus Productions".

Alfio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta hacked?

body:
On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Rob Brewer wrote:

>On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:34:29 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi wrote
>
>> It's gone, whatever it was. A bright orange banner saying something like
>> "This page brought to you by Ass Pus Productions".
>
>It was in [[m:Template:MediaWiki links]].

Oops. A vandalized template was the obvious answer. Don't know why I
thought of crackers.

Alfio


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Content, reason and the ArbCom

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>On 6/22/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Despite the current fad for the term "African-American" neither the
>>United Negro College Fund nor the National Association for the
>>Advancement of Colored People have seen fit to change the names of their
>>organizations.  I avoid the term "African-American" because a person's
>>citizenship is not apparent in his racial features, and I certainly
>>would not want to offend a non-citizen by calling him "American".  To me
>>there is something offensive about a herd instinct that requires me to
>>change my terminology to suit the whims and fashions of the day.
>>
>>
>These particular examples are not about "whims and fashions of the
>day" but a people who have historically labeled in a derogatory manner
>and who have no simple identification term attempting to find
>something they can live with.
>
A person's racial characteristics are not evident from his participation
in this list, and in general should not need to be referenced at all.

Your presumptions about historically derogatory labels presume that all
uses of these labels were derogatory.

>The two groups you named have names from the time they were created
>and get a lot out of the fact that they are historic. On its own
>printed matter the UCNF refers to its mission as supporting
>"historically black" college and uses the term "African American" (no
>hyphen). The NAACP also uses the term "African Americans." Just
>because they keep historic names does not mean that they have not seen
>it fit to change their overall terminology.
>
>This is not about "herd instinct" in the slightest, and this is a
>lousy example. One should in these cases, especially with issues which
>have LONG histories of abuse, try to be a bit respectful.
>
Respectfulness goes two ways.  Those who want to insist on politically
correct vocabulary are just as much in need of lessons in being respectful.

>If using
>your judgment to pick out the best term ("Black" and "African
>American" and "people of Africa descent" are all known to be
>acceptable as polite terms if used in good faith) based on the
>definition of "polite" of the day (or, in this case, the last 20 years
>or so) is too much for your brain to handle, I can't imagine how you
>possibly get through the day. There is nothing that irritates me more
>than people using the ridiculous excuse that they "can't keep up" or
>"can't be expected to remember" or things like that with this
>particular case when honestly there have been a total of only five or
>six "changes" and the last one was twenty years ago. Hopefully you are
>capable.
>
In fact in most circumstances I am most likely to use "blacks".  But I
do not do so to please someone who has just displayed a make-believe
show of being offended..

>>Language change is more complex than that.  We learn our terminology at
>>different times and different places.  Paramount is its need to continue
>>as an effective means of communication.  These formerly neutral terms
>>may still be neutral in another place, or with another segment of the
>>same society, or in different circumstances.  "Assuming good faith"
>>includes assuming that the person using a particular term does so
>>without intent to offend.  Only the context of his words will show the
>>difference.
>>
>>
>We learn, and we continue to learn. Our language is not static, and
>neither are we. This is not rocket science, don't act as if it is
>truly difficult. If you want to insist on your own labelings and
>terminology -- fine. But don't pretend it is difficult to keep track
>of, unless you travel from country to country every different day of
>the week.
>
I said nothing about it being difficult to track the changes.  That was
not my argument.  My argument was against the imposition of political
correctness.

Ec


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cluster strategy - expansion plans

body:
On 6/23/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
<snip>
> What might we ask of a large potential donor next?

The devs can crack me upside the head if I'm wrong and servers are
needed (or if they don't like money), but why not ask the next big
donor to either donate money towards or to directly hire some of the
volunteer admins to work on the ever increasing number of servers?
I've asked this before, but thought I'd bring it up again as I see the
human bottleneck as a bigger issue.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Replication-friendly upgrader

body:
Just a heads-up for those not following CVS; I'm fixing up an alternate
schema upgrader which will do the major schema updates and UTF-8
conversion for the 1.5 upgrade, and should be relatively friendly to
replication.

One of the many tricky things about MySQL server replication is that the
update log is serialized. When you're working on one server, you can be
making updates to many databases and tables simultaneously (so long as
they don't interfere with each other); the update log used for
replication reorders the queries into a logically equivalent stream, one
after the other.

That makes your life much simpler if your job is writing replication
support for MySQL. ;) However it makes your life more complicated if
you're trying to use replicated servers for load balancing of read-only
queries with time-sensitive data (that's us!).

The worst case is when something like a major database schema change
happens -- you're interleaving small, fast changes (edits, saved
preferences, new accounts...) with large, slow changes (change the
layout of a million old-page records). On the single server things may
mostly work, but when the replication gets to that million-record
honker, nothing else gets applied on the slave server until it's done
with that one. As a result the view of the database in the slave servers
get more and more behind the current state of the master. Weird things
happen on the site, with out-of-date or missing pages.

We get that to a degree when certain mass nasties happen (like page-move
attacks on massively-linked pages), but doing database maintainence
while keeping wikis online would be particularly ugly.

I've been putting together an alternate 1.5 schema upgrader which also
includes the UTF-8 conversion (which we need anyway), which applies the
updates in smaller chunks. That is, instead of "copy these fields from a
million 'old' records into the 'revision' table", it chunks in say 100
records at a time.

This is probably slower 'in total' (though since we have to do UTF-8
conversion on several large wikis anyway, it's necessary to a degree),
but the main benefit is that it should allow the replication stream to
be interleaved -- a chunk of upgrade, a few edits, a chunk of upgrade, a
few edits. The slaves should stay up to date during the process, always
applying small, recent updates.

So instead of turning everything off indefinitely while tables are
churned around, we should be able to upgrade a wiki at a time, while
keeping the rest of the wikis online and editable as they wait their turn.

For instance while en.wikipedia.org is in read-only for conversion,
people should still be able to edit Wikinews or Wiktionary, or another
language Wikipedia.

In theory. :)

We'll see how it goes this weekend...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Silly mailing lists

body:
Karl A. Krueger (kkrueger at whoi.edu) [050624 00:33]:
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 04:43:37AM -0700, thomas-edison at ziplip.com wrote:

> > Mailing lists are just so inefficient.... why not just have a forum?

> Mailing lists (and newsgroups) have some real advantages over Web
> forums.

If you have newsreading software (Thunderbird or Outlook Express will do
it), you can read and post to the Wikimedia lists using gmane.org - go to
http://www.gmane.org/ for info.

- d.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: parsertest keyword in MediaZilla

body:
Update, that's now "parsertest" for bugs that have a parsertest and
"need-parsertest" for bugs that need one

Here's a list of bugs that might need to get the need-parsertest
keyword, please help with marking them: http://tinyurl.com/c7zfw


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Meta hacked?

body:
This regularly happens. This banner has been on from time for possibly 2
months now ?
No big deal. Just revert and that is it.

Just as wiki :-)

Look
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:MediaWiki_links&curid=10755&diff=0&oldid=146143

Ant

Alfio Puglisi a ?crit:
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>
>>On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 10:22:04PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>>
>>>Is meta hacked or what? Take it offline if it isn't possible to remove the
>>>banner.
>>
>>What banner?  I'm looking at meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and see
>>no banner.
>
>
> It's gone, whatever it was. A bright orange banner saying something like
> "This page brought to you by Ass Pus Productions".
>
> Alfio


from_name: leercontainer-wikimedia at yahoo.com

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Hopefully Special:Import will not be enabled on the
	Wikimedia servers?

body:
I tested Special:Import on test.leuksman.com yesterday. While it
certainly has improved I sure hope that it will NOT be enabled on the
Wikimedia servers in its current state.

It is very easy (for admins) to falsify (with the file upload feature)
or just mess up article histories and user contributions, and since
imports are not logged there's no way to keep track of it.

I don't fear that we have many rogue admins that would try to abuse the
feature, but you don't have to be rogue to make a mess. Since the
contributors (/authors) of an imported article are treated as they were
local you can create a real mess of user contributions.

On no.wikipedia and nn.wikipedia there are for example two different
active users called "Jhs". If I were to import an article contributed
by "Jhs" from no.wikipedia to nn.wikipedia, it would show up in Jhs's
user contributions on nn.wikipedia, even though that user never wrote
anything like it.

In its current state I would say that for license complience it is also
inferior to manual import, since it does not point to the source of the
article in any way, just to a non-existent user (as far as I can
understand). And since the default is to only export (and thus import)
the last revision, only one contributor is attributed.

--Guttorm Flatab?
(user:dittaeva)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Henry Tan-Tenn

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

body:
I would love to see an Amis (Pangcah) project.  It's the fourth or fifth
largest language spoken natively in Taiwan (Japanese, though having many
speakers, is always non-natively spoken among the elderly).  There
should be enough educated, Internet-using literate speakers to get one
going, though slow progress is to be expected, at least till it builds
up a reputation for being "the on-line Amis project" (Wikimedia sadly
having received very little press attention in Taiwan).  Like other
Taiwanese Austronesian languages, there may be major dialect differences
to negotiate (or perhaps ignore).

~~~~

Mark Williamson ti 2005/6/10 ChS 08:21 sia-kong:
> No, there is no objection, and I don't think there ever has been.
>
> The same seems to be true with Amis, except that Amis doesn't have a
> suitable language code.
>
> If it would be OK, an agreement was reached among the involved parties
> that amis.wiktionary.org would be suitable. (they wanted a Wiktionary
> created, and maybe a Wikipedia at some future date).
>
> Otherwise, xxx-amis, i-amis, x-amis, or anything like that might be OK.
>
> Amis will actually have a code in the new version of the ISO
> three-letter codes, but it hasn't been finalised yet (I for one think
> it's horrible -- it's based almost entirely on the Ethnologue, which
> means they combine languages which shouldn't be combined and divide
> languages which shouldn't be divided, and exclude some languages
> altogether).
>
> There haven't been any objections to the Sa--whatsit Wikipedia, but
> then there are no good code suggestions either.
>
> Also, a Scots Wikipedia (among others) has been requested and has a
> test Wikipedia that seems to be working a bit. I  don't recall any
> objections to Scots either, and it has an iso code, sco:
>
>
> Mark


from_name: edwardzyang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Possible Trademark Violations

body:
I stumbled upon this the other day on the Village Pump:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29#Wikipedia_hiring

Which essentially talks about this:

http://www.wikipedia.co.jp/
http://www.wikipedia.co.jp/english/recruit.html (english page)

A company under the name of "Wikipedia" that, well, isn't really Wikipedia. It's probably a trademark violation, but not only that, we may be dealing with a domain squatter (although this is of dubious verifiability). What should we do?


body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> Isn't it possible that some new entries in the cur table will be left
> behind? That is, once the upgrader has moved on to changing a
> different part of the database, somebody makes an edit. What will
> happen to their edit?

A database that's being upgraded would be locked, obviously.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Hopefully Special:Import will not be enabled on
	the	Wikimedia servers?

body:
leercontainer-wikimedia at yahoo.com wrote:
> I tested Special:Import on test.leuksman.com yesterday. While it
> certainly has improved I sure hope that it will NOT be enabled on the
> Wikimedia servers in its current state.
>
> It is very easy (for admins) to falsify (with the file upload feature)

Arbitrary import uploads will not be enabled.

Logging isn't done yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Just a heads-up for those not following CVS; I'm fixing up an alternate
>> schema upgrader which will do the major schema updates and UTF-8
>> conversion for the 1.5 upgrade, and should be relatively friendly to
>> replication.
>
> Since basically everything (cur & old) will be changed in the database,
> can't we just update the master DB server *without* synchronization to
> the slaves, and then set up the slaves "de novo"?

We could, but how would we benefit from this? That implies significantly
more work (reconfiguring servers to enable/disable replication on
certain databases and fanning out updates to multiple servers,
selectively disabling filesystem alterations, etc).

> We could leave half of the slave servers in 1.4 format and serve
> read-only wikipedia from there, while setting up the master and the
> other slaves to 1.5. Then, serve wikipedia from the 1.5 master/slaves
> and setup the remaining 1.4 slaves.

If you're proposing this as an alternative to using small inserts in the
conversion script for purposes of making upgrades while the site remains
online, I don't understand how this is supposed to be equivalent.

> Shouldn't take much longer, seems less complicated and doesn't require
> these fancy upgrade scripts you young people keep talking about ;.)

Sounds like it would have no benefits, be more complicated to run, and
would require yet another custom-written upgrade script to replace both
the existing stock one (which doesn't do UTF-8 conversion) *and* the one
I'm touching up (which does do the required UTF-8 conversion, and as a
side benefit does replication-friendly chunked updates).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Tomer Chachamu wrote:
>
>> Isn't it possible that some new entries in the cur table will be left
>> behind? That is, once the upgrader has moved on to changing a
>> different part of the database, somebody makes an edit. What will
>> happen to their edit?
>
> A database that's being upgraded would be locked, obviously.

Rather, the _wiki_ would be locked. The database needs to be changeable
so the upgrade can happen. ;)

So people would be editing on other wikis, but not on the one actively
being upgraded at any given time.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Cluster strategy - expansion plans

body:
Hey,
> I wonder if people can update me/us on how the integration with the
> Amsterdam cluster is going.  Are there any lessons?  Are we still
> committed to our multiple-data-center strategy?  Is there anything new
> which we have learned?

Sure, that light speed sucks, if it concerns information, and that having
content as close to people, increases user satisfaction a lot. Having
squid caches in distributed locations (so at least majority of
requests do not cross oceans) is a really win-win situation.

We did enjoy having good hardware with good management possibilities,
so... we do not need man on site for most of operations and we do not
need various power switches (APCs) or serial consoles.

We still didn't solve problems of distributed apaches or distributed
databases, but that requires quite careful planning and lots of
determination and motivation, as it would complicate our bits a lot.

> I am working with Yahoo to finalize the details of the South Korean
> facility... what have we learned which might help with this?

Well, first of all, Asia needs this and it will definately improve
the service. Though, as we have issues with speed of light,
we're not sure yet how to deal with it in most effective way.

> What might we ask of a large potential donor next?

We are not small anymore. We might be wanting to use
industry-standard technogy for our database failover
(eh, some mid-range storage;-). Maybe. I'm just raving ;-)
As well, we might be wanting to have high-availability network
with redundant switches for our main servers (did I say we
need new Cisco 3560? :)

It will be much more interesting to analyze our future needs
after 1.5 deployment and tuning. But we might be wanting
to go high-availability soon. And sure, increase our capacity.
We still have our media storage orphaned and unaddressed,
but hopefully Mark will be trying to put all his summer efforts
there.

All this higher availability stuff is not only to please our users
(though, lately they have been spoiled ;-), but for less stress
and more concentration in development.

And sure, we will need more application and db servers in
Florida, some day. As it is summer season and usage is slightly
decreased, our next order might be in... September?
Maybe we'll have enough of planning time in Frankfurt,
and I hope as much as possible of development and tech
people to be there.

Anyway, we've been doing not that bad lately, so it might be
a bit more difficult to do a fundraising.. :)

Domas


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Possible Trademark Violations

body:
I forwarded the issue at juriwiki-l at wikimedia.org.

In the future, this kind of issue is best sent at
foundation-l at wikimedia.org than to the technical list.

Cheers

Anthere

edwardzyang a ?crit:
> I stumbled upon this the other day on the Village Pump:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29#Wikipedia_hiring
>
> Which essentially talks about this:
>
> http://www.wikipedia.co.jp/
> http://www.wikipedia.co.jp/english/recruit.html (english page)
>
> A company under the name of "Wikipedia" that, well, isn't really Wikipedia. It's probably a trademark violation, but not only that, we may be dealing with a domain squatter (although this is of dubious verifiability). What should we do?


from_name: michaelturley at myway.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Gmail invites: Thank you.

body:
Thanks to all who sent me Gmail invites.

I'll set up an account there and see how much
better it is for word wrap and threaded reading.

Thanks again.

Michael Turley
User:Unfocused

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way  your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chinese history


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

body:
On 24/06/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> That is, instead of "copy these fields from a
> million 'old' records into the 'revision' table", it chunks in say 100
> records at a time.
>
> This is probably slower 'in total' (though since we have to do UTF-8
> conversion on several large wikis anyway, it's necessary to a degree),
> but the main benefit is that it should allow the replication stream to
> be interleaved -- a chunk of upgrade, a few edits, a chunk of upgrade, a
> few edits. The slaves should stay up to date during the process, always
> applying small, recent updates.

Isn't it possible that some new entries in the cur table will be left
behind? That is, once the upgrader has moved on to changing a
different part of the database, somebody makes an edit. What will
happen to their edit?


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology of OpenSource localizations

body:
Today for the first time I read a request on OpenSource terminology
(Firebird and Opera) on the Italian translator's list. Really it has
been quite a long time now that I was considering to create these
glossaries within wiktionary since I believe they will become
fundamental during the following years. More and more people work with
OpenSource software and so it is only a question of time when people
will start to look for this terminology.

Do we have people within our group who already have such glossaries or
have contacts to the right people?

I believe it is time to talk about such things - I am posting this to
the wikipedia-l as well, as it is likely that contributors of wikipedia
have the right contacts. Please from now on use the wiktionary-l for
this disucssion to avoid cross postings or write me by private mail.

Thank you!!

Ciao, Sabine

*****
Sabine Cretella
Translations IT-DE, EN-DE
s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
skype: sabinecretella

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


subject: [Wiktionary-l] terminology of OpenSource localizations


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Just a heads-up for those not following CVS; I'm fixing up an alternate
> schema upgrader which will do the major schema updates and UTF-8
> conversion for the 1.5 upgrade, and should be relatively friendly to
> replication.

Since basically everything (cur & old) will be changed in the database,
can't we just update the master DB server *without* synchronization to
the slaves, and then set up the slaves "de novo"?

We could leave half of the slave servers in 1.4 format and serve
read-only wikipedia from there, while setting up the master and the
other slaves to 1.5. Then, serve wikipedia from the 1.5 master/slaves
and setup the remaining 1.4 slaves.

Shouldn't take much longer, seems less complicated and doesn't require
these fancy upgrade scripts you young people keep talking about ;.)

Magnus


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transparent proxy blocked - again

body:
>From: fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
>
>Nice to see RickK blocking again though ;-)

Unfortunately that was an autoblock from a block several days ago.  RickK
hasn't edited in 3 days. :-(

Jay.


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Gmail invites: Thank you.

body:
No, you weren't :-)

Dan

On 24/06/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess I wasn't the only person with that idea then...
> -Mgm
>
> On 6/24/05, michaelturley at myway.com <michaelturley at myway.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks to all who sent me Gmail invites.
> >
> > I'll set up an account there and see how much
> > better it is for word wrap and threaded reading.
> >
> > Thanks again.
> >
> > Michael Turley
> > User:Unfocused
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> > Make My Way  your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Gmail invites: Thank you.

body:
I guess I wasn't the only person with that idea then...
-Mgm

On 6/24/05, michaelturley at myway.com <michaelturley at myway.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks to all who sent me Gmail invites.
>
> I'll set up an account there and see how much
> better it is for word wrap and threaded reading.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Michael Turley
> User:Unfocused
>
> _______________________________________________
> No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> Make My Way  your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Continued issues with Commons: unilateral
	interpretations of policy

body:
Hi,

I would like to complain about vipuser's actions on Commons. He has
been reverting my edits, for example
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:DeletionMenu-zh&action=history
, giving no reason.

The version he reverts to are Simplified-only.
He has not discussed it with anyone else first, and is interpreting
policy unilaterally. It is my view that he is abusing his rollback
button.

I think it's high time he stop harassing me in this manner and let
Traditional Chinese coexist peacefully on meta, commons, and
foundation-wiki.

Mark

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


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Licensing concern.

body:
I posted this on Uninvited Company's talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UninvitedCompany

As for my opinion on your licensing thing, I don't think your
assumptions are accurate. People speak of the Wikipedia as 'an
encyclopaedia', but really it is just a collection of millions of
pieces of text interspersed with Mediawiki markup. The work is not
indivisible, because all the separate contributions can be identified
(that's what the history pages are there for). By using
[[Special:Contributions]] you can identify each of the millions of
edits, which are essentially individual works released under GFDL. The
articles are derivative works, created by the Mediawiki software,
derived from the initial edit. Indeed, the whole website is a
collection of derivative works (which are themselves GFDL licensed).
And whatever your opinion of the GFDL, you really have no option but
to release your contributions under it. Indeed anyone who makes an
edit implicitly accepts the Wikipedia licensing system. One can choose
to multi-license, but any combination of licenses must include the
GFDL (with the exception of public domain).

Putting that aside, you can redistribute any derivative work (or a
verbatim copy) you create from original works under the GFDL, as long
as you distribute it under the GFDL also. That means you can't license
the whole Wikipedia under, for example, a CC license. You can license
your own contributions separately.

Finally IANAL, but IAALS, albeit one in Australia and not familiar
with United States law. --~~~~

On 6/20/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a
> > form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that
> > because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many
> > authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k
> > edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole
> > which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole
> > under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant
> > the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the
> > GFDL.   Although he has been careful to pad his words with the
> > expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the
> > licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to
> > disregard our licensing.
>
> <snip>
>
> > So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited
> > company to revise his user page.  I don't think his claim has any more
> > merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his
> > talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it
> > purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him
> > rather than just his own.
> >
>
> While your insistence on the GFDL is admirable, I (and IANAL) feel
> that the user page of UninvitedCompany does not present the same
> problems as that of User:Pioneer-12, because UnivitedCompany is *not*
> saying that they are refusing to license under the GFDL.
>
> As I see it (and again, IANAL), the statement on
> [[User:UninvitedCompany]] (as of 04:25, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)), says:
>
> 1. I have contributed to Wikipedia
> 2. Wikipedia is NOT a collection, but a single work (which, IMHO, is
> contrary to consensus)
> 3. Wikipedia is a single work with joint authorship (again, contrary to
> consensus)
> 4. Since Wikipedia is a single work, any author can license it however
> they want, the rest of Wikipedia be damned (which is against the GFDL)
> 5. I hereby multi-license my contributions under CC-BY-SA 1.0 and 2.0
> 6. IANAL so anything in 1-4 must be taken with a very large grain of
> salt, and people should check before the distribute material
> 7. This is a statement of intent, not a contract.
>
> The problems I see are in the status of Wikipedia as being a single work
> rather than a collection of works; and the right of a single user
> (namely UnivitedCompany) to change the license of the entire Wikipedia
> by simply saying that they want their contributions to be under the
> Creative Commons licenses.
>
> Now if I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multi-licensing
> correctly (and again, IANAL), All Wikipedia articles are licensed under
> the GFDL, and only the portions written by authors who have
> multi-licensed under CC/BSD/whatever are licensed under those
> alternative licenses. So (and again, IANAL): your contributions cannot
> be licensed under anything except the GFDL unless you choose to do so,
> and even then, *they are still under the GFDL*.
>
> - --
> Alphax
> OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
> and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
> Lewis
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFCtkld/RxM5Ph0xhMRApxvAJ4jDybEl5oiiXab4608BUUuPB9LhgCffKLw
> 53DYHkNh/qn4rCsdEjP65vo=
> =+aip
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Brion:
>>We'll see how it goes this weekend...
>
> Just a reminder: could we have a fresh dump before then?
> It will be the last opportunity to run wikistats for quite a while.

Looks like it's ready now: "This is dump service of 20050623 backup run"

http://download.wikimedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> On 6/24/05, Michael Keppler <Michael.Keppler at gmx.de> wrote:
>>Some weeks ago I asked if I might complete and rework the German
>>translation. I was told to _not_ invest my time because the
>>nationalization mechanism would change in the near future (at least I
>>understood it that way). Did that already happen?
>
> Wasn't that when Brion told you not to bother with changing double
> quotes to single quotes since we'd be changing to something else soon
> (which let's face it, won't be "soon")? Updated translations are
> always appriciated.

Mass-changing double quotes to single quotes has no actual benefits. But
it has several important drawbacks:

* Huge quote changes obscure real changes in the CVS change history
* Bugs are often introduced (some quotes missed, escaped metacharacters
missed, embedded variables missed)
* It wastes your time :)

I strongly recommend that someone working on a translation file *not*
mess about with double/single quotes. Doing that has negative benefits
RIGHT NOW, and any mythical perceived benefit of consistency or whatever
WILL disappear in the future when we take the message arrays out of PHP
source files. That hasn't happened yet, but it will eventually.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] inserting categories silently before a save

body:
Ryan P Bobko wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to insert category tags to whatever the user enters when
> editing a page. I've been focusing in EditPage.php, and tried appending the
> text ("[[category:test]]") to EditPage->textbox1 just before the
> Article::insertNewArticle call, but it doesn't seem to work. Instead of a
> link to my test category, I get a broken link to a "category:test" page.
>
> I've also fooled with changing Article::getContent, but it seems like I
> shouldn't have to change that code to do this. $wgHooks, too, but still no
> luck.

In theory an article save hook should be able to do that, though it may
or may not actually work. Can you post your code somewhere to look at?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC and freenode

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/24/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>A little announcement by Lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of
>>staff of freenode. For those who do not know... Freenode is ... our irc
>>service...
>
> I'd think we'd be better off if people on this list donated first to
> wikipedia. Freenode is a nice project but wikipedia provides something
> quite unique.  We already have to run our own IRC servers for recent
> changes...

Freenode's an important service for the open source community at large;
it's helpful to be on the same network as it's a little easier to pop
over to another project's channel for help & to be helped.

We're really not interested in maintaining an IRC network of our own; we
have a limited read-only server for the RC changes, which doesn't
involve all the hassles of protecting against person-to-person attacks,
crapflooders, etc. The only reason we've got that at all is that the RC
bots kept getting automatically kicked from freenode due to their
volume, a very specialized case.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: byron gamildien

subject: [WikiEN-l] Gmail invites: Thank you.

body:
On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 13:31:50 +0100
 Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, you weren't :-)
>
>
> Dan
>
> On 24/06/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I guess I wasn't the only person with that idea then...
> > -Mgm
> >
> > On 6/24/05, michaelturley at myway.com
> <michaelturley at myway.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Thanks to all who sent me Gmail invites.
> > >
> > > I'll set up an account there and see how much
> > > better it is for word wrap and threaded reading.
> > >
> > > Thanks again.
> > >
> > > Michael Turley
> > > User:Unfocused
> > >where the hell is my Gmail invite?
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> > > Make My Way  your home on the Web -
> http://www.myway.com
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_____________________________________________________________________
For super low premiums, click here http://www.dialdirect.co.za/quote


from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dumps on download.wikimedia.org

body:
May be, that I miss an information in this newsgroup, may be, my english
is too humble for understanding it, but I cannot find an answer to my
question: "When can we expect fresh dumps?"

Our mirror meanwhile uses a five weeks old cur_table, which seems to me
to be the recent one.

Please give me a hint, if I'm wrong or at least the hope for a freash dump.

Cheers

jo


from_name: Jake Waskett

body:
An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to be a
really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently
used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is: "troll,
offensive user name".)

As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large UK
telco).
manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net

a) Could somebody please remove the block, and
b) Could we please discuss establishing a policy that requires checking DNS
before setting a block, to ensure that this situation does not arise? It is
not the first time, and it is irritating to say the least, especially as it
only takes a few seconds to check.

Thanks.

[[User:Jakew]]


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
I've commited a tool (maintenance/transstat.php) to CVS that makes the
localization statistics prestented here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_statistics, if any of you
have some free time to waste you could help update the current
translations or help prune old redundant messages from them (see bug
2502 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2502)).


from_name: Ryan P Bobko

body:
Hi Folks,
I'm interested in using Mediawiki 1.4.5 for an upcoming project at work, so
I've been poking around for a little while now, with various amounts of
success.

I'm looking for a way to insert category tags to whatever the user enters when
editing a page. I've been focusing in EditPage.php, and tried appending the
text ("[[category:test]]") to EditPage->textbox1 just before the
Article::insertNewArticle call, but it doesn't seem to work. Instead of a
link to my test category, I get a broken link to a "category:test" page.

I've also fooled with changing Article::getContent, but it seems like I
shouldn't have to change that code to do this. $wgHooks, too, but still no
luck.

I'd appreciate any help floating around out there. Thanks,

ry
--
Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if
each acts like a vulture, all will end as doves.


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
Brion:

> We'll see how it goes this weekend...

Just a reminder: could we have a fresh dump before then?
It will be the last opportunity to run wikistats for quite a while.

Thanks, Erik Zachte


list: textbook-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks Newsletter No. 1

body:
This is great, Karl!   Thanks for the updates... I'd love to hear more
about FHSST in the future, maybe an interview with one of their prime
movers.

SJ

On 6/24/05, Karl Wick <karlwick at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is the first edition new *Wikibooks periodical newsletter*. It's goal
> is to give general information about current Wikibooks developments. This
> first issue will mention several things from the relatively recent past on
> Wikibooks, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
Erik,

What is it that will take a lot of time to update, rewriting the queries?
There are some SQL-friendly people around here who would like to
help with that.

SJ

On 6/24/05, Erik Zachte <epzachte at chello.nl> wrote:
> Brion:
>
> > We'll see how it goes this weekend...
>
> Just a reminder: could we have a fresh dump before then?
> It will be the last opportunity to run wikistats for quite a while.
>
> Thanks, Erik Zachte


from_name: Alphax

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

JAY JG wrote:
>> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>> Language change is more complex than that.  We learn our terminology
>> at different times and different places.  Paramount is its need to
>> continue as an effective means of communication.  These formerly
>> neutral terms may still be neutral in another place, or with another
>> segment of the same society, or in different circumstances.  "Assuming
>> good faith" includes assuming that the person using a particular term
>> does so without intent to offend.  Only the context of his words will
>> show the difference.
>
>
> Excuse me - I get the last word here.  Use of BC/AD is evil and causes
> cancer.
>
> Jay.
>
>

Jimbo has said that there is nothing wrong with BC/AD, and he's
American! So nyeh! :-P

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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n6oLzs+7gmIkGWzan+9DaJA=
=aySh
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Silly mailing lists

references:
<HTIPPWOPFRAOJYKIPXL4LZLUAIOIBXAOKMKJKEAK@ziplip.com>
	<20050623143406.GB3380@whoi.edu>
	<4418c60e05062307453b10e04@mail.gmail.com>
	<98dd099a050623081047fde18e@mail.gmail.com>

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

Fastfission wrote:
> I second this. Gmail does a great job of putting messages in similar
> threads together as well, which makes it almost like an online forum.
> I have a little flag which goes up anytime there is a thread I've
> written on, so I can see if there are replies, etc.
>
> I don't know if it is still "invite only" but if so, if anybody
> doesn't have one (or wants another) feel free to write to me
> personally (off list) and I'll send you an "invite" -- I've got 50 or
> so of them (as probably everybody with a gmail account).
>
> FF
>

I get my Gmail forwarded to my regular account, and then Thunderbird
filters them into nice threads :)

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
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=jEzD
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: chapters of the Wikimedia Foundation

body:
On 6/23/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 6/23/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > There are currently three chapters, in Germany, France and Italy.
> > Others are currently under work, for Switzerland, England, Poland,
> > Netherlands...
>
> Has there been any discussion of a United States chapter (or, probably
> more realistically, U.S. state chapters)?
>
> - --Slowking Man

There was also an informal mailing-list set up for interested people;
it hasn't seen much discussion yet (and should probably get a proper
wikimedia mailing list someday).

SJ


body:
I couldn't find the IP block. Anyway, autoblocks are done
automatically even though they are contributed to the user who blocked
the the user that was originally attached (in this case Abortion.

I think he was quite right to block someone with the username
Abortion. such a name is only going to cause problems.

As for forced proxies, I'll leave those to someone else to discuss.

--Mgm
On 6/24/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to be a
> really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently
> used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is: "troll,
> offensive user name".)
>
> As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large UK
> telco).
> manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net
>
> a) Could somebody please remove the block, and
> b) Could we please discuss establishing a policy that requires checking DNS
> before setting a block, to ensure that this situation does not arise? It is
> not the first time, and it is irritating to say the least, especially as it
> only takes a few seconds to check.
>
> Thanks.
>
> [[User:Jakew]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC and freenode

body:
On 6/24/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A little announcement by Lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of
> staff of freenode. For those who do not know... Freenode is ... our irc
> service...

I'd think we'd be better off if people on this list donated first to
wikipedia. Freenode is a nice project but wikipedia provides something
quite unique.  We already have to run our own IRC servers for recent
changes...


from_name: geni

body:
On 6/24/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to be a
> really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently
> used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is: "troll,
> offensive user name".)
>
> As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large UK
> telco).
> manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net
>
> a) Could somebody please remove the block, and

It should be clear now. Problem users fromNTL are anoying.


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary and Wiktionary list

body:
Hey,

            The Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary now have over 1000 entries!
And.where's the Wiktionary list?  I can't find it.

James


from_name: iznogood at iznogood-factory.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] orphaned pages update

body:
Hello, sorry to insist:

I'm a french wikipedia contributor especially to link orphaned pages.

But I have a problem with orphaned list page update frequency.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages

I wonder if it is possible to make an update on week or 2 weeks bases
even if it is only on french orphaned list page.

That will ease my linkage job.

Thanks.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
On 6/24/05, Michael Keppler <Michael.Keppler at gmx.de> wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason schrieb:
> > if any of you
> > have some free time to waste you could help update the current
> > translations or help prune old redundant messages from them (see bug
> > 2502 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2502)).
>
> Some weeks ago I asked if I might complete and rework the German
> translation. I was told to _not_ invest my time because the
> nationalization mechanism would change in the near future (at least I
> understood it that way). Did that already happen?

Wasn't that when Brion told you not to bother with changing double
quotes to single quotes since we'd be changing to something else soon
(which let's face it, won't be "soon")? Updated translations are
always appriciated.

> As many of those languages need much rework instead of minor changes
> only, would you like to get a reworked translation file or a monster
> patch? Or something completely different?

Monster patch;)


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for adminship reform

body:
Hi people,

This is my first proper contribution to how Wikipedia is "run", and
I'm jumping straight in the deep end! I would say 'please be gentle',
but adminship is a serious issue, no matter who says "adminship is no
big deal".

My first contribution to Wikipedia was only back in November of 2004,
when I fixed a couple of links regarding spin in politics. I
unfortunately think this is somewhat how requests for adminship is
going at the moment, with people quoting Jim Wales' comment about
adminship when it suits them.

I didn't contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis for a few weeks, I
made a few edits relating to photosynthesis in plants, and a few
spelling corrections and one instance of reverting vandalism, which I
had encountered for the first time on Wikipedia. It was nothing major,
just me dipping my toes in the water. As I am a forum moderator at a
fairly large internet community, I'm quite used to spam, trolling and
most importantly, controversy. While some rightly say that Wikipedia
is not an experiment in democracy and the community should not be the
foremost target, it is important not to forget that it is hard to
imagine what Wikipedia would be like without its community and
consensus.

Every time I look at Wikipedia I am reminded just how much I don't
know. I pride myself on my general knowledge and I'm normally able to
do a substantial part of any general knowledge crosswords, and I was
gratified when one of my friends commented on it. The pursuit of
knowledge is a lofty goal and I'm glad to be someone contributing to
it, even with minor contributions like me, like spelling corrections,
rewrites and aiming to improve comprehension and clarity of some
Wikipedia articles which may not be written as well as they could have
be.

I have tried my hand at simple vandalism reversion for a set period of
time - one time I managed 90 minutes, the second time a bit less. The
reason I stopped was that /vandalism reversion is tedious/ -
especially without the rollback feature. That people voting on the
current votes for adminship expect people to have tried their hand at
vandalism reversion (not just when they see it, but actively hunting
it) is counter-productive - reverting simple vandalism is time wasted
for people without rollback. We should give the ability to rollback
liberally, but revoke that privilege liberally. If someone uses the
rollback function for something other than vandalism, it should be
rescinded. I think I am right in saying that the rollback feature was
initially developed specifically to fight vandalism - I do not yet see
any need to widen that remit.

The page protection tool is another useful ability, being used to
forcibly stop edit wars. I think it should be used in one more
scenario - suspected copyright violations. As a relative newcomer I
read the events leading up to RickK's departure with great interest. A
suspected copyright violation should be protected until the situation
is resolved - isn't that what the point of it is? I think that
copyright paranoia is something to be wary of, however it shouldn't be
dismissed. If a copyvio is suspected, the page should be protected as
soon as possible (with the template in place) so we don't have the
same repeat situation with revert warring over whether or not
something is a copyright violation. I think we need a clearer policy
for admins on this.

Banning is a different issue, and something I believe new admins
should be careful about doing. We have a 3RR policy, sure, but it's
supposed to be for clear-cut cases of revert warring. When we get to
the grey area about edit warring and defining vandalism I think we
should be wary of using the 3RR to forcibly settle a dispute. Assuming
good faith on behalf of the person who made the accusation should
definitely be done (surely they had a reason, especially if they are a
long-term contributor - making unsubstantiated copyvio reports might
be vandalism). I think we should be less hasty with applying the 3RR
rule if people are disagreeing over whether it should apply under the
3RR rules.

Where am I going with this? I've reviewed the different admin
abilities (excluding deleting, which we have a good policy for in my
opinion), so what? I think we need to look at our admin appointment
system as a whole.

I am concerned, as some people have already voiced, that requesting
adminship is becoming a popularity contest. Some people are elected
with huge majorities, with a couple of dissenting voices from people
who have had disagreements with the electee in the past. Without a
reason for voting, it's difficult to tell what people are voting for.
Are they voting for the person's character, or something else? I think
Boothy443 is right to question the voting procedure (however I don't
agree with the method of doing it). I am attempting to demean those
admins who have been elected to adminship with large majorities and
turnouts - but what does 50 names really show?

The procedure in requests for adminship I do like is the discussion on
opposition votes - the tone it sometimes takes may just have to come
with the territory. When you vote at elections in the "real world", at
least in the UK, you aren't voting for your concillor's or MP's
character, you're voting for the policies that they stand for. This
analogy is not quite apt to requesting adminship, as there is one set
of policy formulated by everyone. But only today I read a story about
a conman who convinced many people that he was a spy, and deceitfully
conned thousands of pounds. I would contend that someone's outward
personality is not, alone, a valid reason to give them administrative
powers. But the issue arises - how does one determine whether someone
would make a good admin without trusting that they would? I would
argue that it's very difficult.

Therefore I would like to propose a mentor system for new admins. If
someone wishes to become an admin, they should find an existing admin
who would willingly mentor them. When a mentor is found, the request
would be put forward, and the adminship ability would be temporarily
granted. During a set period (maybe 2-3 weeks) the mentor would
monitor the actions of the adminee. A page for comments by other users
and admins would exist. At the end of the period, the mentoring admin
would provide a synopsis of the adminee's actions, and offer a
decision on whether or not the admin should become a permanent admin,
or returned to "normal user" status.  A bureaucrat would be
responsible for making the final call on whether to promote or not.

An obvious flaw, so far, with this system, is that a potential
malicious user can go through the adminee period, get nominated
without a hitch, and then cause trouble. This is why a deadminship
procedure would need to be created - abuses of power should /not/ be
tolerated. Currently there are irrevocable actions admins can take -
these must either be fixed in code, or more appropriately, it made
absolutely clear that anyone who takes malicious actions as an admin
will face severe disciplinary action.

This proposal, as it stands, does give admins more of a
responsibility. I don't think this is a bad thing - admins do keep the
wheels of Wikipedia turning. Changing the process to become an admin
will result in it being thought less of as a status symbol and more of
as a means to an end - ensuring that Wikipedia stands the test of time
to become a fountain of knowledge - the reason I joined up to
contribute, in my own way, to Wikipedia.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson ([[User:Talrias]])
http://talrias.net/


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Dumps on download.wikimedia.org

body:
Jochen Magnus wrote:
> May be, that I miss an information in this newsgroup, may be, my
> english is too humble for understanding it, but I cannot find an
> answer to my question: "When can we expect fresh dumps?"

Please be patient. People are working hard on the upcoming conversion to
the new version of MediaWiki, 1.5.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block has expired, but still can't edit.

body:
Someone explicitly unblocked you two days ago. Do you get a message
saying you are blocked? Maybe there's an autoblock left on your IP
adress.

(You could be trying to edit a protected page too, try another one too).

--Mgm

On 6/22/05, Jeremy Hanson <jarlaxleartemis at msn.com> wrote:
> My block has expired, but I still can't edit anything.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why do we have them??

body:
Hi all,
I have a question: why do we have separate Wikipedias for Malay and Indonesian?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_Malay_and_Indonesian
, "The differences between Malay (Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesian
(Bahasa Indonesia) are comparable to the those between British English
and American English."

If this is the case, then why does our policy on English differ so
sharply than our policy with Malay/Indonesian?

Don't people realise that we're dividing labour? If they had
col-laborated on a single Wikipedia from the very beginning, the
Malay/Indonesian Wikipedia would probably have at least 15k articles
by now.

Mark

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


from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason schrieb:
> if any of you
> have some free time to waste you could help update the current
> translations or help prune old redundant messages from them (see bug
> 2502 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2502)).

Some weeks ago I asked if I might complete and rework the German
translation. I was told to _not_ invest my time because the
nationalization mechanism would change in the near future (at least I
understood it that way). Did that already happen?

As many of those languages need much rework instead of minor changes
only, would you like to get a reworked translation file or a monster
patch? Or something completely different?

Ciao, Michael.


from_name: Angela

body:
On 24/06/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has there been any discussion of a United States chapter (or, probably
> more realistically, U.S. state chapters)?

There has. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/United_States_Wikimedia_Chapter

Angela.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
Messi wrote:
> 2005/6/24, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
>>Mass-changing double quotes to single quotes has no actual benefits.
>
> Won't parsing be faster? Or is it really a myth?

There is a difference in speed but it's quite small and IMHO doesn't
justify effort spent on it.

I just did a quick test under PHP 4.3.10; parsing a huge file of 5000
200-character single-quoted strings 100 times is about 2.5% faster than
parsing the same file with double-quoted strings.

The $wgAllMessagesEn array parses in about 15 milliseconds on my test
box (2 GHz Athlon XP), so a 2.5% speedup/slowdown would be a fraction of
a millisecond, easily lost in the noise.

Further, on a server using Turck MMCache, eAccelerator etc the tiny
speedup will likely only happen once, as the script is not reparsed on
each load.

>>* Bugs are often introduced (some quotes missed, escaped metacharacters
>>missed, embedded variables missed)
>
> This can be done quickly by a script that writes a new LanguageXx.php.
> (e.g. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Messi/d2s_script

This script doesn't seem to take other escaped chracters into account
(for instance \n or \t).

> Btw, is it safe to single quote strings with $1?)

$1, $2 etc are not special in double-quoted strings; they get replaced
by the wfMsg* functions at runtime. So they're safe in single-quoted
strings too.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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