from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: minor issue, but still a npov warning

body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Till yesterday, the information on landing and on the probe was
>> entirely in the mission article. Even today, most of the information
>> was still in the mission article, not on the landing one. To such a
>> point there is currently no wikipedia reference on the net about the
>> landing article. Wikipedia reference is on the mission article.
>
>
> Why would that be the right thing to do?  The landing is merely one part
> if the mission---The [[Apollo 11]] page, by comparison, doesn't have one
> article on the trip *to* the moon, and a separate article on the moon
> landing.  There's one article on the entire mission, trip and landing,
> and then separate articles on the equipment, like the lunar module.

You cannot compare I think.
Unless I am wrong, the Apollo II main mission was to go on the moon. So,
the craft, the mission and the equipement may be confused in one
reference. Also, it was set only by only one country.

In this case, the Cassini mission is multiple, and releasing a probe is
only one of its mission among others. Among its mission, there is a
mission of carrying a probe. But there are other missions. So that makes
sense to differenciate the mission of one craft, with the mission of one
of the object it is carrying, because the goals of both parts were
different. The engineers working on one part had for the goal to reach
one place in the universe in good shape, the other engineers had the
goal of landing titan and getting data. This is not the same mission, so
it makes sense that there are not treated under the same name entirely,
though obviously an article under mixed name is due.

The second point, and the one which really makes me react is simply that
both parts, even if of course the job was a common job, were not created
by the same people, from the same nation.

The probe landing is a HUGE success for the european space industry. In
particular after recent failure. Huge means for all this industry new
blood, more money etc...
While repeated failure would mean basically strongly reducing space
activity for Europe.

You may find this minor issue. It is not.
The mission is certainly a big success for both NASA and ESA. But it has
a special meaning for Europe in particular. And if the probe landing had
failed, it would have been amply advertised that the US mission was a
success while the ESA mission was a disaster.

So, honesty would be to fairly report a european success as a european
success. Yesterday, in one of the article, there were some external
links to pictures and report of the probe landing and picture labelled
as [[cassini images]].

Sorry, if you feel that it is NPOV, you are either very blind, or very
political.

  So,
> here, the landing should be in [[Cassini-Huygens]], unless we're talking
> about detailed information about how the landing was carried out by the
> probe or something like that.
>
> I don't see how this is American bias, either.  The European Space
> Agency's own website containing the pictures of the landing has a title
> of "Cassini-Huygens", and is located here:
> http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html
>
> The ESA's gallery with the pictures is entitled "Cassini-Huygens images"
> (left sidebar on the above site).
>
> I just don't see *anyone*, including the ESA, using "Huygens" as a
> separate
  name for the landing, only as the name of the piece of
> equipment.

http://www.google.fr/search?as_q=&num=10&hl=fr&btnG=Recherche+Google&as_epq=huygens+probe&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=

Google search on "Huygens probe" used as alone an expression : 164 000
results.

Besides, what you say is just wrong.
Look at http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/

It is written in this page :

15 January 2005   Audio data collected by the Huygens Atmospheric
Structure Instrument (HASI) etc...
14 January 2005   Europe reaches new frontier ? Huygens lands on Titan
14 January 2005   Radio astronomers confirm Huygens entry in the
atmosphere of Titan
14 January 2005   Huygens descent timeline
12 January 2005   Huygens trajectory spot on

The word used on the ESA site for the landing IS Huygens.

BBC report : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4121515.stm

Word used to refer to all landing events : Huygens probe

Another source : http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/huygens-mission.cfm
What are the references for the landing : Huygens.

NOT Huygens-Cassini.

There is a good reason for this : this is the Huygens probe.

  So it would seem reasonable that we use the name that both
> NASA and the ESA use, which is "Cassini-Huygens".
>
> -Mark

It would be reasonable to use the word everyone use for the probe and
the landing, and the only one fair in reporting the reality. The probe
is called Huygens probe. And it is the probe which landed and took
pictures. Not the Cassini.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

body:
Bryan Derksen a ?crit:
> At 11:40 PM 1/14/2005 +0100, Anthere wrote:
>
>> For european, this is a joint project but a european success.
>>
>> For american, according to what is implied by the article division, it
>> is basically an american (and a bit european) success.
>
>
> I'm the one who created the original redirect from [[Huygens probe]] to
> Cassini. Back when I did that, the Cassini article was located at
> [[Cassini probe]] so that's where I redirected it to. Also, the article
> itself was at the time just a mildly-modified version of material I had
> copied directly from
> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1997-061A and
> http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ - both of them NASA websites, so naturally
> with an American perspective on things.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cassini-Huygens&oldid=2550496
> for those interested in seeing the article as it was at the time.
>
> I'm also the one who split the Huygens section off into its own article
> again a couple days back. Article size was the reason why I split it off
> when I did, so that's why I put it in the edit summary. There are other
> perfectly valid reasons to split the article, and if someone had split
> it up based on those other reasons I'd expect those other reasons to be
> in the edit summary instead. I don't see why it makes a difference,
> since we both agree that it should be split.
>
> I'm Canadian, BTW, which means I'm half European and half American but
> will deny being either. :)
>
>> Go on google, and look at "Cassini-Huygens landing site".
>> Look at results, Wikipedia IS there.
>>
>> now, look at "Huygens landing site"
>> Look at results, right, Wikipedia is not in the first page.
>> Only on the second, and only for Cassini.
>
>
> Google doesn't update its rankings instantaneously, so splitting the
> article won't have an effect for a while yet. You could have split it
> earlier if you wanted, I don't disagree with your reasoning and would
> have supported it if I'd noticed you doing it back then

Yes, thank you for this comment. I am totally certain of your good
faith, and as I said, the articles were great and the update yesterday
amazing. This was good to see.

My comment does not want to lessen the quality, just to point out at how
sometimes, naming issues are problematic.

(I would not really put Canada in Europe, but you are welcome among us :-))

Cheers

Ant


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
N> There is a new initiative regarding software patents with the name "Thank you,
N> Poland!" at http://www.thankpoland.info . There are banners you can use at
N> http://www.thankpoland.info/banners.html . RMS' FSF/GNU already supports the
N> initiative by displaying a banner at http://www.gnu.org . My site also
N> supports "Thank you, Poland!". I suggest that you should also do that, by
N> placing their banner on your main page.

Have you heard of [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]]?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

>'Balanced' demographics will lead to different points
>of views, but what should that balance be?
>
>
If one presumes to know what that balance will be that too is an
unbalanced POV.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: allow xml tags: a first approach

references:
<41E81DAF.1020604@laposte.net>
	<20050115093206.GE14867@jeluf.mine.nu>
	<shwtuekiod.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<9f02ca4c050115081370ba19f1@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> writes:

> WP's markup - or rather MediaWiki's - is a variant of the original
> WikiWikiWeb's, and was designed with ease of editting (by humans) at
> the very top of the agenda.

As Perl ;)

> As for "hackish", though, I'm not sure I agree: the *syntax* is
> perfectly good at doing what it does - which is to say, it allows
> people to describe the formatting they require of a piece of text.

Yes, and that's wrong.  I don't care about the formatting, I'd like to
markup contents properly.  WP unfortunately wants us writers to care
about formatting for certain devices (screen and print, not for audio).

>> With a proper markup language it would not be necessary to change ''' ->
>> '' -> " -> ''' -> ? -> '' -> ? -> " all the time; you would simply write
>> <obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> and you are done.  Once and for all.  That's
>> only one example.
>
> Unfortunately, I have no idea what that example refers to.

Within a paragraph you often want to highlight some words or
phrases. Some of these phrases are citations others are catch words.
Some of us uses "quotations marks", others '''bolding''' and next one
goes for ?German UTF-8 quotations marks?.  To avoid those problems, make
use of descriptive markup (e.g. TEI XML):

    <q>To be, or not to be</q>

Or for catch word, when you want to describe or list famous monument in
Nuremberg:

    The <obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> is worth a visit.  Some parts of it
    are from the medieval period.  Some buildings are later additions.
    ...  Main Churches are <obj>St. Sebald</obj>, <obj>St. Lorenz</obj>
    and the <obj>Lady's Chapel</obj>.

> I think the key problem with semantic markup is that in order to have
> any advantage, it has to be both very rich and very standardised -
> e.g. you'd need to have a way of saying "this text is the name of a
> film", and people would need to know that this was "<movie>" and not
> "<film>" (or "<movietitle>" or "<filmtitle>", or any number of other
> possibilities). If you were to impose such a scheme on something like
> Wikipedia, you'd just create a tremendous learning curve.

Not necessarily.  Most things are obvious.  And those, who do not
want to make use of it, can write as before...

>> In 'de' they just invented an invisible "personendaten" box...
>
> Again, you've lost me; for what purpose did they create this "box", in
> what sense is it "invisible", and how would XML/"a proper markup
> language" deal with the same issue?

The so called WP markup is not enough.  Many a lot symbols are already
in use ' | {} [] * # = - : ; and the leading space and empty lines.
Sure, all of them are easy to remember and combining and nesting them is
no problem.  Oops, I forgot to mention that <div>, <span> and some more
are also allowed...

Here is an example for the "personendaten" box:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Felixm%C3%BCller

{{Personendaten|
 NAME=Felixm?ller, Conrad
|ALTERNATIVNAMEN=
|KURZBESCHREIBUNG=bedeutender [[Maler]] des [[Expressionismus]] und der [[Neue Sachlichkeit|Neuen Sachlichkeit]]
|GEBURTSDATUM=[[21. Mai]] [[1897]]
|GEBURTSORT=[[Dresden]]
|STERBEDATUM=[[24. M?rz]] [[1977]]
|STERBEORT=[[Berlin-Zehlendorf]]
}}

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


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization for Lojban

body:
On Saturday 15 January 2005 00:33, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Jan 14, 2005, at 8:08 PM, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > That should work, but I don't see wgCapitalLinks in the files I have,
> > which
> > are:
> > Language.php     LanguageDe.php  LanguageJbo.php
> > Language1.3.php  LanguageFr.php  LanguageJbo1.3.php
>
> It wouldn't be in any of those, as it's a site configuration setting
> and goes into LocalSettings.php
>
> > So I tried to do it by modifying ucfirst and lcfirst.
>
> That would break everything that tries to do upper and lowercasing, so
> you might not want to do that.

Okay, I deleted that.

> > Can you install the language file so that I can see what it's doing?
>
> Well, not until it's fixed...

What else needs to be fixed?

phma
--
Ils pensent que j'ai un cancer du th? russe...
	-Les Perles de la m?decine


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Portal source

body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:34:13 +0100 (MET), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> I remember that the source for www.wikipedia.or is on meta somewhere, but
> I didn't bookmark it and Google fails. Can someone point me to the page?

See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template (protected)
and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_portal (editable)

There is also a poll at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal which
ends on January 20.

Angela.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Portal source

body:
I remember that the source for www.wikipedia.or is on meta somewhere, but
I didn't bookmark it and Google fails. Can someone point me to the page?

Alfio


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] HEAD Patch: Fix config/index.php

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 4:36 PM, Andrew Miller wrote:
> +# The whitelist
> +\$wgWhitelistRead = array(\"Special:Userlogin\");
> +

Since this causes any installed wiki to fail to be accessible, I've
taken it out.

> +        if ($dbr == null)
> +            return;

As a general rule, you should use is_null() rather than == null, as the
== operator is relatively 'weak' and will allow equality between for
instance null and 0, "", and false.

>        function reportConnectionError( &$conn )
>     {
> +        global $wgUseDatabaseMessages;
>         $fname = 'LoadBalancer::reportConnectionError';
>         wfProfileIn( $fname );
> +        if (!$wgUseDatabaseMessages)
> +            return;

I don't understand the purpose of this. $wgUseDatabaseMessages controls
whether user interface messages (generally retrieved via wfMsg() or
wfMsgForContent() functions) are to be pulled from the MediaWiki: page
entries in the database, or directly from the arrays defined in the
language files.

Pulling messages from the default arrays should not prevent the
reporting of database errors.

Additionally, as a general rule if you return from a profiled function
you should remember to do a wfProfileOut( $fname ) to avoid unbalancing
the call tree.

>             /** Get rights */
>             $anong = Group::newFromId($wgAnonGroupId);
>             if (!$anong)
> -                wfDebugDieBacktrace("Please update your database
> schema "
> -                    ."and populate initial group data from "
> -                    ."maintenance/archives patches");
> +                        {
> +                if ($wgUseDatabaseMessages)
> +                    wfDebugDieBacktrace(
> +                        "Please update your database ".
> +                        "schema and populate initial ".
> +                        "group data from maintenance/".
> +                        "archives patches");
> +                return;

This is another really weird bit. Loading UI messages from the
hardcoded arrays should definitely not cause a database error to be
ignored.

Note also that wfDebugDieBacktrace() causes script execution to end, so
a return statement after it can never be reached.

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site (NSK)

body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:32:01 -0600, dpbsmith at verizon.net
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> The actual Homo floriensis link under discussion struck me as being more like
> spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam.

Beaked beans. Is this a new species?

--
Pete, human bean


body:
Stan Shebs a ?crit:

> And you corrected them on this, right? This is absolutely nothing
> to do with NPOV,

Then we just do not have the same perception of what is neutral, this is
all. For me, naming things (like a polish city) may have to do with
neutrality of report.

> and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
> that they're biased and not doing anything about it.

This is an unfair comment, as I mentionned that the articles were great.
What I report rather tends to fit in systemic bias of Wikipedia.

There is a bias of the en wikipedia to have anglo success appears bigger
than they may appear to african people for example, just as there is
definitly a bias on the french wikipedia which makes France appear more
important that other french speaking countries.

We are all biaised, and little can be done about this.

What you
> report fits exactly into the worst stereotypes of the French;
> sneering at other people's work, but not taking any responsibility
> for having let this perceived problem go unmentioned for years.

Hu ? Well, I let you responsability for saying this.

In any cases, since it seems it is bad to let it unmentionned for years,
I will take responsability for having this problem be mentionned.

> You said these scientists "know Wikipedia"; did you ask them why
> they didn't do anything about it themselves?

Some already ponctually corrected a couple of things.
But generally, they do not believe in Wikipedia neutrality though they
see the efforts to try to be neutral.
You may not expect french people who really write a bad english to go
correct all what is biaised in the english wikipedia.

This is a good question : why did not they fix it ?

It took me three months to dare edit the english wikipedia after I met
it. I feared criticism of my english like hell; And still fear it very
much, as there are regularly unpleasant comments made about it.
Recently, I had to block 2 times an editor who was being extremely rude
with non english people on meta. A place where international people ARE
welcome. When editors rudely handle non english in a place such as meta,
you might guess how nice these editors can be on the english wikipedia
itself.

Amongst french people, I am generally considered quite good in english.
Still, editing in good english is difficult for me and takes a lot of
time. Arguments which start on talk page and last dozens and dozens of
screens put me off. It takes too much time to read it all and try to
understand it all.

Many french scientists read english, because nearly all science is in
english, so of course, it is their main source of information. But most
french scientists do not manage english well enough to become editors.

It needs courage you may not realise. It needs efforts, and it needs to
overcome the comment of some people who do not think we belong there.

So, they look at the article, they may correct a typo, but do not go any
further.

> I also note for instance that (as of several hours ago) the
> French wikipedia had a single article with Huygens as the second
> half. Are we supposed to take that to mean the Europeans are
> biased against themselves?

No, mostly there were no french editors motivated to edit this page. At
least, these pages are poorly referenced by google.

Now, what upset me deeply in this comment you made, is that when I
comment on a point of the english wikipedia, you THROW ME IN THE FACE
how bad the french people are themselves and how bad the french article is.

Has it cross your mind that I really care about the english wikipedia
because it is the best one, and yesterday it was a major source for
ANYONE looking on the net for that topic, because it was one of the four
sources coming up ?

Has it cross your mind that I could care about a part of the whole
project which I am supposed to represent right now, and would not wish
to be just lowered only to my nationality and language project ?

> There are enough real problems making WP unbiased and neutral;
> by taking a trivial point of organization never before discussed
> anywhere,

It is not because something has never been discussed before that it does
not exist.

and holding it up as something that matters, you're
> undercutting all the editors who put in real research and real
> discussion time on the issues that are genuinely important. Why
> should I bother spending two hours in the library to research
> a substantive question, when you're telling the world that WP
> is biased because some frontpage article doesn't cater enough to
> nationalistic pride?

This is a good question. I do not think I told the whole world, this is
just our personal ml.
I do not think that I ever said such a thing in any of the public
presentation of Wikipedia I made in the past 6 months.

But yes, why would I even neglect my whole family and personal job as
well as personal health by lack of sleep to try to take care of a
project, and try to make it the best possible and the least biased
possible, when you are telling me that my opinion has no importance
whatsoever, is fantasm and only nationalistic pride ?

> The whole attitude really troubles me. I've put in a lot of WP
> time over the past two years, and now it feels like it doesn't
> matter.
>
> Sta
> n

You own attitude really troubles me as well.
I have probably put as much work on wikipedia as you did for now three
years, and it now feels like it does not matter either.

I understand you guys can be upset because I report a little bias to
you, which is likely to appear shocking to some of the world population.
However, I did not criticized the job done, on the contrary I mentionned
it was a very good article, I only pointed out to a problem.

I can understand that some of you just do not see where the problem is
and think I am just nut. That is okay, you can consider I am nut and
that there is no bias here. I can accept that.

This is exactly where the problems stand when we come to lack of
neutrality. One editor considers one point of view and another will not
necessarily see the same point of view at all. And this is exactly why
we have edit wars, because the second will just not recognise the
validity of the first one view and will just refuse that the other one
could have a piece of truth in his hands.

That is fine.

What is not fine is to resort to personal comments on those having a
perception that you do not share, and try to lower the possible validity
of what they say by resorting of calling her "French".

I feel quite upset by your comment. If you wish to close your eyes to
internal comments, or to attack those of us who try to point out to what
is not perfect, do not be suprised when there is criticism from public
audience.

I apologize to those who participated to the article if they feel I
criticized their work. I did not.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thank you, Poland!

body:
Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:

>>>Have you heard of [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]]?
>
> N> How is NPOV applied on this issue?
>
> Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.
>

I think he meant that NPOV is a policy that applies to articles only.


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Time Zone using 24-hour clock instead of number of
	hours

body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:41:14 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> I've long noticed that when websites let you choose a UTC offset,
> there's frequently no provision for going in anything other than
> one-hour increments. I'd imagine that Newfies and the like may be prone
> to assuming they can't enter something other than a number of hours,
> especially when the text on the page implies they can't.

That's a very good point. Few though they are, it would be nice to
make things obvious for the newbies from those parts of the world
which have non-integer time zones.

> Unless you're a programmer, you're unlikely to think of "1.5" when told
> "a number of hours"

Yes, that particular comment was bordering on the facetious/pedantic -
most people will likely assume "a number of hours" means the same as
"a whole number of hours", as that's how it's generally used.

> I think the message should be changed to "amount of time (hh:mm)", which
> is both more correct and more explicit.

That would be better, yes. As I say, low priority, but in an ideal
world it would be like that (as Tim points out, getting *all* the
translations up-dated is hard work).

----

A far higher priority, just to plug it to anybody who fancies
correcting some, are all the messages that have blatantly incorrect
information about clearing/by-passing your cache (e.g.
'clearyourcache', 'usercsspreview', 'userjspreview') - currently, most
messages give key combinations for *normal* refreshes, rather than for
*forced* refreshes, which are necessary for clearing the cache in
these circumstances.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Clearyourcache for
links to the relevant information. And if anyone can shed light on
exactly how Opera behaves in this respect, please explain on that talk
page...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
On 15 Jan 2005, at 9:41 pm, Puddl Duk wrote:

>> We are all biased, and little can be done about this.
>
> Communication is the only way

That and systematically recruiting certain people so as to balance the
demographics.

Christiaan


from_name: Hynek Hanke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 11:04:16PM +0100, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
> >> Have you heard of [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]]?
> N> How is NPOV applied on this issue?
> Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.

Nearly everything is POV then. According to a survey led
by the European Comission itself, 98.5% of developers
who participated think software patents are bad.

But I agree it's not appropriate to put the Thank you
poland letter on Wikipedia, the reason being rather that
Wikipedia shouldn't participate in political issues
than (N)POV

With Regards,
Hynek


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
>> Have you heard of [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]]?
N> How is NPOV applied on this issue?

Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Message propagation (was Re: Time Zone using 24-hour
	clock instead of number of hours)

body:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 03:37:39 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Then why, to pick an example, is there no second or third show/hide link
> in the header of RC in a default installation of de, fa, lt, ro, th or
> wa? It's been 11 months since I implemented that feature. They don't
> propagate, we need a way to flag messages needing translation.

We do indeed. I have a friend who is part of the Welsh translation
team for GNOME, and they have all sorts of automated statistics
telling them what is unfinished, out of date, etc. I'm sure there are
tools out there somewhere which we could adapt to our needs.

Or maybe a home-grown system is enough - basically, a database or
somesuch with the following fields:
* Language
* Release (so that, for instance, 1.3.x and 1.4.x can both have
appropriate translations)
* Message name
* Last translated (if we assume that En will always be the master, we
can just compare <date of last change to En> with <date of last change
in this language> to see if the message is up to date)

>From this, we can produce pretty graphs like GNOME does
(http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.10/index.html) so people can see
just how far their language is lagging behind, and which messages it
is that have changed/been added.

Add to this some kind of web interface for doing the translations
themselves, to replace the "run a wiki and export the MediaWiki:
namespace occasionally" habit, and ... yes, I know, "so code it then,
Rowan". Maybe I should... [it's possible, but I doubt I will].

Of course, we'd then need anyone who checks in a patch that affects
the meaning or function of a message, even if the English message can
stay the same, to reset the timestamp on the En entry; but if we
forced them through the translation interface too, I guess this would
happen when things did change, anyway.

Oh, and then there's the problem of individual wikis having editted
their MediaWiki: pages, and so needing to merge their changes with
those of a new software version when it's finally released. We need to
notify them of that somehow, too. [Although, come to that, users need
somewhere to notify a sysop that a message needs changing *anyway*...]

But maybe I should stop dreaming now!

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 00:52:19 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Sunday 16 January 2005 00:04, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
> > Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.
>
> Not saying that software patents are bad is a POV.

No, saying that software patents *aren't* bad is a POV; not saying
either is an *omission*; saying that there are people who believe both
is NPOV.

If there were no article stating the case against software patents,
*but there was one mentionning their advantages*, that would
constitute a POV by omission.

But if not putting something *on the main page* constitutes declaring
a POV for one side of the argument (which side?), then we're putting
out a lot of points of view right now, because I don't see every
debate in the world mentionned on Wikipedia's front page. [I wonder
which side of the abortion debate we're supporting by advertising
neither the "Right to life" nor the "Right to choose"...]

OK, so this is all a bit pedantic, but given that Wikimedia *isn't* a
political advocacy Foundation - and in many ways strives to be the
opposite - any exception to its normal neutrality would have to be
considered very carefully indeed.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
> >> ... certain demographics are disproportionately
> represented and that
> >> there are things we can do to counter this.
> >>
> >> Christiaan
> >>
> >
> > Does that include making post sumaries like;
> >
> > "(rv, put it this way they've been around in peace
> for a '''lot'''
> > longer than your petulant menace of a country)"
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > title=Iraqi_resistance&action=history
>
> Yes, I have a sore point for petulant Americans who
> think that history
> started in 1492.
>
> Christiaan
>
Anthere, I agree with you that there is bias in
en.wikipedia.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
>> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in
>> 24h 1m,
>> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the piss?"
>> test.
>
>
> Last I checked, admins had no special authority to decide Wikipedia
> policy, and admin consensus was irrelivant next to community consensus.

While that may be true, the problem is that admins are forced to enforce
the letter instead of spirit of the law. Sure, some retarded admins may
go overboard, but the beauty of the system is that if someone is
wrongfully blocked, other admins can undo it. What happened to be bold
and the wiki system? Instead we straitjacket our admins with specific
laws, a haven for trolls. Trolls end up doing just enough to avoid a
ban. See [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Everyking]] to see just how
damaging the 3RR can be when someone (un)intentionally takes advantage
of it.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software, part two

body:
OK, I went ahead and worked some more on this (no new images to show
off, yet). But, more info and the complete data set of Bavaria at
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo
to give you an idea of the internal workings. I'm actually using
(media)wiki syntax to denote the data, so it stays humanly readable.

And, I now read my data from my local wiki (through URL, action=raw).
Generating the half-German map takes about 2 seconds.

Tomorrow, I need to work on the parameters to call the thing. As you can
see, I can already state to draw Hamburg in red. But, I want to see the
surrounding parts of Europe in one color, Germany in another, and Berlin
in yet another one. And to draw an extra border around Germany as a
whole. This will prove tricky.

Also, for drawing parts of Europe, I need more data. And a city drawing
routine. and some rivers and lakes. And the ocean. Geez, why do I always
get myself into such a mess ;-)

Magnus


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
On Saturday 15 January 2005 19:07, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
> Have you heard of [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]]?

How is NPOV applied on this issue?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Paul Youlten

subject: [Wikitech-l] performance

body:
did you try installing the PHP booster Turck MMCache? I'm not allowed to on
my shared server - but it appears to give performance a big boost.

Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "NSK" <nsk2 at wikinerds.org>
To: <wikitech-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 11:54 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] performance

> MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 are very slow and uses too many CPU cycles
> and
> memory compared to other wikis. The database schema, as I see it, seems to
> be
> inefficient. Are there any changes planned for 1.4 final to increase
> performance?
>
> --
> NSK
> http://portal.wikinerds.org
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

> 'Balanced' demographics will lead to different points of views, but
> what should that balance be?

All humans on Earth springs to mind. I wouldn't go looking to far for
your answer though, the point is one major reason for systemic bias on
Wikipedia is that certain demographics are disproportionately
represented and that there are things we can do to counter this.

Christiaan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
On Sunday 16 January 2005 00:04, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
> Saying that sofware patents are bad is a POV.

Not saying that software patents are bad is a POV.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] subsections

body:
On Jan 16, 2005, at 12:46 AM, NSK wrote:
> when accessing #subsection1 after editing, for example, the second
> subsection1, MW will go to the first subsection1 and not to the second
> subsection1.

Please search our bug reports database before reporting a bug on the
mailing list.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111

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

body:
MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 are very slow and uses too many CPU cycles and
memory compared to other wikis. The database schema, as I see it, seems to be
inefficient. Are there any changes planned for 1.4 final to increase
performance?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Note to Anthere

body:
Anthere,
   I see that you are distressed by the recent
exchanges here over the Cassini-Huygens issue.  I feel
I should write to tell you how I'm seeing the dispute.
   I can say that, as an American, I feel no
particular attachment to Cassini -- I am sure all the
editors who have responded also did not even consider
that the way Cassini-Huygens was reported here could
be seen as pro- or anti-American.  Because of this, it
feels odd to me (and perhaps others) that someone
would see our coverage and a) assume that pro-American
bias created the current article situation, and
b)consider the matter serious enough to raise on the
mailing list.  I am not saying that you should not
have done so.  But it did seem odd to me that the
issue was of that level of significance, especially
since your comments lead me to believe that the
content of the articles themselves was not partisan --
it was merely the naming of articles that gave the
appearance of bias.
   I am happy to agree to rearranging article titles
in whatever way is most respectful of the ESA -- I
feel confident that the other editors responding to
you also have nothing but respect for the ESA's
accomplishments.  I would say, though, that the
responses I saw to you were not aimed at diminishing
European accomplishments in any way.  What I saw
looked to me (again, this is only my perspective) like
good editors who, like me, had never considered the
issue of bias in this area.  These editors replied
with an explanation of why they saw the current issue
as reasonable -- I think it is because "bias" is such
a harsh word these days (it suggests that we have
consciously and intentionally pushed America to the
front) that these editors wanted to make clear that
the current article situation had been created for
reasons of space and organization, not because of who
made and/or launched what.
   Anthere, I am sorry you have become upset.  Stan
did say some things harshly to you, and I hope he will
apologize.  But I do understand in a small way how
Stan felt -- it remains confusing to me that this
issue was major enough to take directly to the mailing
list.  Matters of article naming are normally handled
on talk pages, and I still don't fully understand why
this should have been different.  I recognize that, as
an American, I may be less aware of European concerns,
but as I said above, I am completely confident that
this situation arose entirely innocently.  No slight
was intended -- after all, if I saw that the French
Wikipedia had redirected everything about Cassini to a
Huygens article, I would just assume it was for
organizational convenience, or because of common usage
in French, or perhaps simply because well-meaning
French editors didn't consider the American
perspective.  I might leave a note on the talk page,
but I wouldn't write to a fr.wikipedia mailing list
accusing them of bias.
   And whether or not you intended that tone, Anthere
(and I don't believe you did intend it), I do have to
tell you that I felt you were accusing us of
intentionally biasing the Wikipedia against European
space efforts.  And I have to say, I find that
difficult to handle -- rather than asking why the
situation arose, or merely pointing out that it would
be better to name the articles in a different way, the
word "bias" appeared from the very beginning.  It made
us defensive.
   I like you, Anthere, and we've always gotten along
well.  I'm confident we will continue to do so
indefinitely.  I'm not writing this to attack you or
to make you feel unappreciated -- you have given more
to Wikipedia than I ever will.  Your suggestions about
Cassini-Huygens should certainly be taken.  But I feel
that, as a colleague (and perhaps even a friend?), I
need to say that your initial email on this issue came
across as angry, and I think it should not have been.
I find errors and holes in our coverage every day.  I
could, if I wanted, see in some of these errors a bias
in Wikipedia -- a bias against Christians (of whom I
am one) or homeschoolers (of whom I am one) or
Swedish-Americans (of whom I am one).  And perhaps
there are such biases.  But it is more productive for
me, I think, to talk openly with people, to start
dialogue to educate others, to work quietly on my own
to make change happen, and to assume good faith as
much as I can.  If I claim bias, I must wait until I
have established good communication with those who may
feel I am accusing them of intentionally doing such
things.  You are free, of course, to do as you like.
Perhaps the situation is different for you.  But I
would ask you (nicely, I do hope) to consider my
thoughts on the issue.  My best wishes to you, as
always,

James Rosenzweig
en:User:Jwrosenzweig

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Robert Brookes (the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com) [050115 20:22]:

> I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its "simplicity" in that when a breach is committed there is no doubt? No sooner had the ink dried on that policy update that such a breach could lead to a 24 hour block than some of the more "imaginative" sysops were proposing to "interpret" the intention of  a specific editor and demanding the power to block at will based on their personal interpretation.
> There is a need to indeed keep it simple or severely restrict who may block through their personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of what another person is thinking.

I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h 1m,
and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the piss?"
test.

Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet democracy. It's a
project to write an encyclopedia.

- d.


body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

>> ... certain demographics are disproportionately represented and that
>> there are things we can do to counter this.
>>
>> Christiaan
>>
>
> Does that include making post sumaries like;
>
> "(rv, put it this way they've been around in peace for a '''lot'''
> longer than your petulant menace of a country)"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Iraqi_resistance&action=history

Yes, I have a sore point for petulant Americans who think that history
started in 1492.

Christiaan


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Time Zone using 24-hour clock instead of number of
	hours

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:28:58 +0530, Rohan Sharma
> <gates.plusplus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I didn't try that with the colon :).
>
>
> Well, I saw the colon was there already, so assumed I could put
> something after it. Perhaps the message should be changed to
> "...number of hours and minutes..." to make this clear to those less
> prone to experimentation than myself?
>

You can also use a decimal point, e.g. -1.5. It used to be that you
could only enter an integer, but I fixed that about a year ago. Changing
messages is a hassle, it's never going to get changed in all the other
languages unless you go to a lot of trouble.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>If an editor has reverted a page three times in a 24 hour period, with
>the exception of **blatant** vandalism, they should be blocked.
>Period.  This ensures even-handedness.
>
>
I thought the rule was *more* than three times, not exactly three?

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thank you, Poland!

body:
On Sunday 16 January 2005 00:03, Hynek Hanke wrote:
> Wikipedia shouldn't participate in political issues

Pericles, Athenian statesman and politician, 495-425ac, said:

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics
won't take an interest in you"

"Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend
it."

http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/pericles/

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Concern with performance issues

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The issue as I see it, is that we are now asking too much of too few volunteer
> developers and none of them can be on-site at the colo. Thus I think it is the
> time to consider hiring one full time or two of them part time to perform
> server maintenance tasks for us that currently are not done in a timely manor
> (esp the on-site stuff). Our budget is now so big ($US80,000 last quarter) that
> the addition of one or two employees under contract would not be too much of a
> burden. Neither would some up-front relocation money.

We're doing this already, paying the guy who goes by the name "Baylink"
on IRC. More servers would also be nice -- more in every category. We're
having trouble using the hardware we have efficiently due to the lack of
system administrators and developers, but inefficiency can be
compensated for by buying more hardware.

The cheap way to get more hardware is to fix the ~7 machines that are
currently broken and under warranty. Setting up new machines is a
significant time cost to the system administrator team, it would be
better if the existing machines were fixed and put back into service as
soon as possible after breaking. The cluster configuration changes
constantly, if a machine is out of action for long enough, reconfiguring
it to match the rest of the cluster becomes as hard as adding a new machine.

There's not much any of us can do to get machines fixed besides hassle
Jimbo.

I'm told 10 machines were ordered yesterday, that will help. Here are
the details:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_ordered_January_2005

I suspect any difference between the Paris squids and the Florida squids
will disappear when those dual-H/D machines are put into service.
However I don't think it will be long before the apache cluster needs
attention again.

JamesDay is of the opinion that we need two more database slaves worth
$10,000-$15,000 each. I'd add that to a large degree, available database
hardware limits what we can consider implementing in MediaWiki. We
typically live on the breadline, but we can always find a use for more
database hardware.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Message propagation (was Re: Time Zone using 24-hour
 clock instead of number of   hours)

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Actually once messages are changed in English they tend to propagate
> through the rest of the languages.

Then why, to pick an example, is there no second or third show/hide link
in the header of RC in a default installation of de, fa, lt, ro, th or
wa? It's been 11 months since I implemented that feature. They don't
propagate, we need a way to flag messages needing translation.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Portal source

body:
Angela (beesley at gmail.com) [050116 05:49]:

> See
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template (protected)
> and
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_portal (editable)

> There is also a poll at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal which
> ends on January 20.

Did node really not bother voting in a poll on a view he spent (est.) 25kb
advocating?

- d.


body:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:36:19 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Delirium a ?crit:
> > Why would that be the right thing to do?  The landing is merely one part
> > if the mission---The [[Apollo 11]] page, by comparison, doesn't have one
> > article on the trip *to* the moon, and a separate article on the moon
> > landing.  There's one article on the entire mission, trip and landing,
> > and then separate articles on the equipment, like the lunar module.
>
> You cannot compare I think.
> Unless I am wrong, the Apollo II main mission was to go on the moon. So,
> the craft, the mission and the equipement may be confused in one
> reference. Also, it was set only by only one country.

That's Apollo 11, not Apollo II. The mission after the initial lunar
landing was Apollo 12, not Apollo III.

The situation is comparable to a notional Apollo mission where the
lander was made by and crewed by Europeans.

In any case, well done, Americans and Europeans alike! Landing
something on Titan and sending back sound and vision is an awesome
feat. Of science, communication and co-operation.
--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Anthere wrote:

>
>
> Stan Shebs a ?crit:
>
>> And you corrected them on this, right? This is absolutely nothing
>> to do with NPOV,
>
>
> Then we just do not have the same perception of what is neutral, this
> is all. For me, naming things (like a polish city) may have to do with
> neutrality of report.

Except that this isn't even about naming, it's whether there is
one article or two.

>
>> and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
>> that they're biased and not doing anything about it.
>
>
> This is an unfair comment, as I mentionned that the articles were great.
> What I report rather tends to fit in systemic bias of Wikipedia.

But it's a very very bad thing to say to people who take issues of
bias and npov seriously - sort of like driving down the street,
saying "nice house" and then throwing a rock through the window. I
know you didn't intend it that way, but you're a well-respected
person (as witness the messages supporting you and against me), and
a board member, so what you say carries a lot of weight. This is a
public mailing list; all the messages are carefully archived forever,
then carefully indexed by Google, and if past experience is any
guide, there's a good chance that your initial message will be
brought out as support for one side or another in an edit war.

If you had said that about one of my articles, without prior
private email or talk page note, I would have been mortally
insulted, and very angry. Look to Jimbo as an example; he's
been pretty careful about not taking sides on content.

>
> What you
>
>> report fits exactly into the worst stereotypes of the French;
>> sneering at other people's work, but not taking any responsibility
>> for having let this perceived problem go unmentioned for years.
>
>
> Hu ? Well, I let you responsability for saying this.

I thought hard about whether to include this, and I fear I was
misinterpreted. I personally don't have this feeling; I love
France, would go more often if I could, and since November
I'm wondering if I could emigrate there. Again, because
this is a public list, there are people reading your comments
who would be willing to use them against WP in some way.
(Lest anyone think this is paranoid, I work with the GNU
project; 10 years ago people laughed at the suggestion that
Microsoft would ever even notice open source, and now Bill
Gates slams it in every interview he gives.) Every step up
in Alexa, WP is going to be scrutinized more and more
closely. Just think of how much airplay Larry Sanger's
recent comments got; it was all over online sites, and
so the first thing that many people heard about WP was
"WP's cofounder thinks it's bad". Not fair perhaps, but
that's what happens with public statements.

>> You said these scientists "know Wikipedia"; did you ask them why
>> they didn't do anything about it themselves?
>
>
> Some already ponctually corrected a couple of things.
> But generally, they do not believe in Wikipedia neutrality though they
> see the efforts to try to be neutral.
> You may not expect french people who really write a bad english to go
> correct all what is biaised in the english wikipedia.
>
> This is a good question : why did not they fix it ?

I did not myself say "fix it" - my expectation would have
been that "doing something" included simply asking on the
talk page. A question as simple as "why doesn't the Huygens
probe have its own article?" is usually enough to spur a
flurry of edits by knowledgeable people. Those of us who are
serious about bias will drop everything else to look at that
sort of thing and try to fix it. I think that's part of why
your original comment hurts; I've sacrificed a bunch of time
working on subjects that I personally don't enjoy, just to
try to address other people's claims of bias.

>
> It took me three months to dare edit the english wikipedia after I met
> it. I feared criticism of my english like hell; And still fear it very
> much, as there are regularly unpleasant comments made about it.
> Recently, I had to block 2 times an editor who was being extremely
> rude with non english people on meta. A place where international
> people ARE welcome. When editors rudely handle non english in a place
> such as meta, you might guess how nice these editors can be on the
> english wikipedia itself.

FWIW, I believe that all people should be welcome on all WPs. It's
just unbelievably rude to criticize someone's command of a language,
about at the level of commenting on body odor, and my experience is
that the critics are not necessarily that competent themselves. The
problem is that the person being criticized is not going to have an
easy time making an official complaint and getting it heard.

So I'd like to see meta's policy extended throughout WP; in
the meantime, if a non-native speaker is being harassed, just
let me know and I'll apply a few of those "harsh words" to the
misbehaving editor.

>> I also note for instance that (as of several hours ago) the
>> French wikipedia had a single article with Huygens as the second
>> half. Are we supposed to take that to mean the Europeans are
>> biased against themselves?
>
>
> No, mostly there were no french editors motivated to edit this page.
> At least, these pages are poorly referenced by google.
>
> Now, what upset me deeply in this comment you made, is that when I
> comment on a point of the english wikipedia, you THROW ME IN THE FACE
> how bad the french people are themselves and how bad the french
> article is.

Did I say the French article was "bad"? I think the one/two article
choice is a trivial issue, and fr:'s organization is perfectly
fine. But it seems like a double standard to announce to the whole
world that en:'s article is evidence of systemic bias there, even
though the same organization is being used in other language WPs
without anybody seeming to be troubled by it.

> What is not fine is to resort to personal comments on those having a
> perception that you do not share, and try to lower the possible
> validity of what they say by resorting of calling her "French".
>
> I feel quite upset by your comment. If you wish to close your eyes to
> internal comments, or to attack those of us who try to point out to
> what is not perfect, do not be suprised when there is criticism from
> public audience.

I'm sorry to have upset you, that was not my intent. I'm guessing
that maybe you weren't completely aware of this list's visibility;
it was an eye-opener for me the first time an argument on the net
came up in a job interview, and since that time I'm (usually :-) )
pretty careful only to post things that I'm willing to stand behind
for the rest of my life (check out Google Groups for things posted
long ago by "ssc-vax!sts" that he maybe wishes he hadn't said...).

Stan


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portal source

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:

> Did node really not bother voting in a poll on a view he spent (est.) 25kb
> advocating?

Actually, he did bother, and apparently added a monkey poll in the page
which I was told was quite funny.

It was deleted.

Anthere


subject: [Wikitech-l] subsections

body:
MW1.3.9 has a bug with subsections of the same name.

==section1==
===subsection1===
===subsection2===
==section2==
===subsection1===
===subsection2===

when accessing #subsection1 after editing, for example, the second
subsection1, MW will go to the first subsection1 and not to the second
subsection1.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: portal page

body:
Hi,

Le Sunday 16 January 2005 04:22, Tim Starling a ?crit :
>
> I see you've created the portal page, that's nice, but you also need a
> template:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_template
>
> ...analogous to the template page for Wikipedia:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template

Ok done:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_template
I included the 10 biggest Wiktionaries in the search box (en, pl, gl, nl,
hu, it, de, fr, sv, ja).

> -- Tim Starling

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


from_name: Rick

body:
What UTTER nonsense.  This has nothing do with bias, just a difference of outlook.  I CANNOT imagine how you can possibly consider this naming difference bias.  And I am offended that you believe that there is some sort of conspiracy among English-speaking Wikipedians to downgrade the accomplishments of other people.  How about cleaning up the French language Wikipedia before you start casting stones?

RickK

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Stan Shebs a ?crit:

> And you corrected them on this, right? This is absolutely nothing
> to do with NPOV,

Then we just do not have the same perception of what is neutral, this is
all. For me, naming things (like a polish city) may have to do with
neutrality of report.

> and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
> that they're biased and not doing anything about it.

This is an unfair comment, as I mentionned that the articles were great.
What I report rather tends to fit in systemic bias of Wikipedia.

There is a bias of the en wikipedia to have anglo success appears bigger
than they may appear to african people for example, just as there is
definitly a bias on the french wikipedia which makes France appear more
important that other french speaking countries.

We are all biaised, and little can be done about this.

---------------------------------
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body:
Are you talking about Wikiepdia as a whole, or the English language Wikipedia in particular?  I think your own bias is showing.

RickK

Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
Puddl Duk wrote:

> 'Balanced' demographics will lead to different points of views, but
> what should that balance be?

All humans on Earth springs to mind. I wouldn't go looking to far for
your answer though, the point is one major reason for systemic bias on
Wikipedia is that certain demographics are disproportionately
represented and that there are things we can do to counter this.

Christiaan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Note to Anthere

body:
 > James Rosenzweig a ?crit:

100% understood.
My initial mail did not mean to sound angry, and I apologize if it did.

It becomes easier to discuss through mail than through a website which
is hardly editable by me at my hours of connexion after work. I edit
often around 7h-9h pm and at this time I mostly get no page in less than
one mn or often errors when I try to edit a page. It is sad but the
consequence of this is either that I tend to discuss wiki content on ml
or mostly on irc. I rarely go to talk pages any more. You just made me
realise this. And this is just not good.

Aside from this, for me at least, mentioning a bias is not meant to be
an insult, it is a statement. I am sorry if it was seen as an insult, or
an attack. I did not mean to belittle the work done by the editors.

Stan comments were meant to hurt and they did. Mostly they show, that
whatever the efforts made by editors to overcome nationalism, there will
be some to try to win arguments by reducing people to their country of
origin. I think Wikipedia people should go over that. And I think I will
stay sad for a while. If I could, I would take a wikibreak actually.

Thanks for your comment anyway.


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR: No sympathy for those hit by it

body:
> Robert Brookes (the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com) [050115 20:22]:
>
>> I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its "simplicity" in
>> that when a breach is committed there is no doubt? No sooner had the
>> ink dried on that policy update that such a breach could lead to a 24
>> hour block than some of the more "imaginative" sysops were proposing
>> to "interpret" the intention of  a specific editor and demanding the
>> power to block at will based on their personal interpretation.
>> There is a need to indeed keep it simple or severely restrict who may
>> block through their personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of
>> what another person is thinking.
>
> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h
> 1m,
> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the
> piss?"
> test.
>
> Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet democracy. It's a
> project to write an encyclopedia.

CriminENTles! I have no sympathy at all for anyone who gets all huffy
and legalistic about enforcement of the 3RR rule. Just limit yourself
to what you believe to be TWO reverts within twenty-four hours and
you'll never have any trouble. Whatever it is you think you're trying
to do, if two reverts didn't work a third revert isn't going to,
either.

If you sit over Wikipedia with a hand-tally and a stopwatch and a world
time zone chart trying to score as many reverts as possible, in hopes
of increasing the duty cycle with which some vibrating article is
supporting your POV, and you get blocked, the appropriate steps to take
are:

1) make sure nobody but close friends are within earshot;
2) holler a cuss word at primal scream intensity;
3) count to ten to let the anger subside;
4) complain that life is not fair;
5) lick your wounds;
6) take a twenty-four vacation from Wikipedia. Visit Slashdot, or
USENET, maybe even meatspace.

I'd say "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," but violating
the 3RR isn't a crime. And the penalty isn't even a parking ticket.

It's more like going through a "ten items or less" checkout line with
fifteen items, in Cambridge, Mass, and having someone behind you say
"Are you an MIT student who can't read or a Harvard student who can't
count?"

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


body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What UTTER nonsense.  This has nothing do with bias,
> just a difference of outlook.  I CANNOT imagine how
> you can possibly consider this naming difference
> bias.  And I am offended that you believe that there
> is some sort of conspiracy among English-speaking
> Wikipedians to downgrade the accomplishments of
> other people.  How about cleaning up the French
> language Wikipedia before you start casting stones?
>
> RickK
>

Anthere is right, people tend to be more enthusiastic
about their own countries' successes than the success
of other countries. Its perfectly natural and requires
constant vigilance to stave off. Accepting feed back
is key, whether you agree with it or not.

Anthere's posts were polite and articulate, not 'stone
casting'.

> Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Stan Shebs a ?crit:
>
> > And you corrected them on this, right? This is
> absolutely nothing
> > to do with NPOV,
>
> Then we just do not have the same perception of what
> is neutral, this is
> all. For me, naming things (like a polish city) may
> have to do with
> neutrality of report.
>
> > and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
> > that they're biased and not doing anything about
> it.
>
> This is an unfair comment, as I mentionned that the
> articles were great.
> What I report rather tends to fit in systemic bias
> of Wikipedia.
>
> There is a bias of the en wikipedia to have anglo
> success appears bigger
> than they may appear to african people for example,
> just as there is
> definitly a bias on the french wikipedia which makes
> France appear more
> important that other french speaking countries.
>
> We are all biaised, and little can be done about
> this.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced
> search. Learn more.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Quarto

body:
Since Wikipedia has been dead for at least 15 minutes now... I use the
opportunity (I need to satisfy my wikipediholism) to remind you of
Wikimedia Quarto, our quartely (well, as much as availability allow in
truth, as well as mood...) publication, which tries to :

* report on the Foundation activity. Read more on our last grants. Did
you know we just got 40000 dollars to help the projects ?

* keep you informed on new projects and generally on projects evolution
aside from the english wikipedia. Do you know in how many languages
Wikinews is currently developped ? Do you know how to say "Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year" in Italian ?

* keep you updated with last trimester technical stuff. Did you know
that we had now three servers in Paris to help the Florida cluster ?

* keep you informed on past meetings and future meetings. Do you know
the name of the great organiser of last netherlands meetup ? (Tip : he
is bald). Have you thought of organising a meeting yourself ? Do you
plan to come to Wikimania ?

* update you on local chapters existence and activity. Quizz : does the
french chapter exist or does not exist ? Which languages are trying to
set up a chapter ?

* keep you informed with the media opinion on what wikipedia is... Do
you know which one refers to Jimbo as the king of England ?

Anyway, plenty of great stuff, now completed in english (but for a board
letter which I had the insuffurably crazy idea to write in french and
which I lack courage to translate for now, you are welcome to help).

You are welcome to read this letter, entirely, or only the parts you
feel like reading, AND to correct mistakes, typos, anything you feel
need improvement in style. We need proofreaders :-)

Many people participated to that letter, and many are not english
speaking, so it *might* be that some of you feel like correcting the
language.
Please do so, but please DO NOT add "sic" behind poorly spelled words,
as this is a reason for blocking people on meta.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/2

Thanks

Anthere

PS : if you have helped write the letter and are not mentionned in the
writers, please add your name without shyness, or complain to me in
private so that I can do it :-)


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: portal page

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> For wikipedia they changed www.wikipedia.org to become a portal to show
> that wikipedia is a project in many languages. This is to show that
> wikipedia is not only English as many people think. The same is true for
> the wiktionary; there are many wiktionaries and, in the same manner as
> we have with wikipedia I propose to have wiktionary.org point to the
> page that can be found on META
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_portal
>
> It took the wikipedia crowd two years to get to the point and change
> things. I expect that people will have the same arguments why they think
> wiktionary means en:wiktionary. However, wiktionary is much less known
> than wikipedia and, the other wiktionaries like pl: with over 28.000+
> and gl: with 11.000+ prove that en: with 52.000+ is not the only kid on
> the block.There are also 9 others in between 1.000+ and 10.000- who
> emphasize the point.
>
> So I hope that we can agree to have a similar portal for wiktionary as
> we have for wikipedia.

I see you've created the portal page, that's nice, but you also need a
template:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_template

...analogous to the template page for Wikipedia:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template

-- Tim Starling


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Failed edits may in fact have worked

body:
Apologies if the rest of you already know this.

When I try to save an edit, the page often appears not to load, and I
get a message saying that the server didn't respond. For example:

"Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return
any response to your request . . . Generated Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:08:30
GMT by maurus.wikimedia.org
(squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219.wp20050114.icpfix.nortt.S7)

In the last couple of days, instead of continuing to try to save, I've
opened a second browser window, gone to the page, and on every
occasion, the edit has in fact been saved. I thought I'd pass this on
in case it's of use to anyone. It may mean that the recent increase in
requests-per-second is in part caused by editors continuing to try to
save edits that only appear to have failed. This adds to the load,
which slows things down even further. But I'm talking way beyond my
technical knowledge here, so I'll cut out any further analysis.  :-)

Slim


from_name: Nick Triantos

subject: [Wikitech-l] performance

body:
It's also certainly worth looking at installing Squid
(http://www.squid-cache.org) if you haven't, yet.  That made a huge
difference on the MW install I've got on an intranet at work, and also
reduced the memory footprint.

cheers,
-Nick

Paul Youlten wrote:

> did you try installing the PHP booster Turck MMCache? I'm not allowed
> to on my shared server - but it appears to give performance a big boost.
>
> Paul
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "NSK" <nsk2 at wikinerds.org>
> To: <wikitech-l at Wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 11:54 PM
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] performance
>
>
>> MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 are very slow and uses too many CPU
>> cycles and
>> memory compared to other wikis. The database schema, as I see it,
>> seems to be
>> inefficient. Are there any changes planned for 1.4 final to increase
>> performance?
>>
>> --
>> NSK
>> http://portal.wikinerds.org
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thank you, Poland!

body:
On Saturday 15 January 2005 17:43, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> I personally like the idea, I even proposed to put a "get firefox" icon
> on every page :o)

I suggest to have a poll on thankpoland and firefox.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: jjcogliati-wp at yahoo.com

subject:
[Wikitech-l] RFC: Bug 626 - Different new page text for each
	namespace

body:
This is a request for comments on both the patch and
the feature that are in Bug 626: Different new page
text for each namespace (enhancement) at:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626

This patch creates new system messages to modify the
how the system message newarticletext is used.

Currently, newarticletext is for new pages in any
namespace, including talk, new catagory, new image
descriptions and so forth.  This patch creates 8 new
page text variables:
newuserpagetext,
newwikipediapagetext,
newimagepagetext,
newmediawikitext,
newtemplatetext,
newhelppagetext,
newcategorytext,
newtalktext
so that custom messages can be created for each.  This
allows the message that a user sees when creating a
new talk page to be different when creating a new
article and so on and so forth.  I created this patch
initially when I saw the message:

Wikipedia does not yet have a Talk page called
Scarcity.

    * To start the article, begin typing in the box
below. When you're done,
press the "Save page" button. Your changes will be
visible immediately.
    * Please do not create an article to promote
yourself, a website, a product,
or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy).
    * If you are new to Wikipedia, please read the
tutorial before creating your
first article, and only use the sandbox for editing
experiments.
    * Search for Scarcity in Wikipedia

and I thought that the text was rather strange for
creating a discussion page.  The text on en.wp has
since been improved, but as the system message is used
in practice (that is, a brief guide to creating new
pages), I believe it would be useful to have different
messages for different namespaces.

I request your comments on both the attached patch,
and on whether it would be useful to have seperate new
page texts for each namespace.

Josh Cogliati


subject: [WikiEN-l] Database locked

body:
Why is the database locked, and for how long?  Where was it announced that this would take place?  Why doesn't the message tell us when it will be back in usable form?

RickK

---------------------------------
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 All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!


body:
I've encountered the same problem.  When I get the error message, I do a revert and try Save again, and get an Edit conflict message.  When I Cancel, I see that my edit has actually been saved.

RickK

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
Apologies if the rest of you already know this.

When I try to save an edit, the page often appears not to load, and I
get a message saying that the server didn't respond. For example:

"Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return
any response to your request . . . Generated Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:08:30
GMT by maurus.wikimedia.org
(squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219.wp20050114.icpfix.nortt.S7)

In the last couple of days, instead of continuing to try to save, I've
opened a second browser window, gone to the page, and on every
occasion, the edit has in fact been saved. I thought I'd pass this on
in case it's of use to anyone. It may mean that the recent increase in
requests-per-second is in part caused by editors continuing to try to
save edits that only appear to have failed. This adds to the load,
which slows things down even further. But I'm talking way beyond my
technical knowledge here, so I'll cut out any further analysis. :-)

Slim
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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Not really.  I, personally, tend to revert back to the version that the article was at prior to the revert war.
>
> RickK

Now THAT makes sense.

Smoddy


from_name: Andrew Miller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HEAD Patch: Fix config/index.php

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
...

> I did not apply the $wgCommandLineMode = true in index.php cause it's
>
>not true :o)  Need to find another way to use that :o)
>
>
>
My patch removes that line(i.e. the - in unified diff means that it was
in the code before but after the patch is applied it will be removed).

>>Index: config/index.php
>>===================================================================
>>RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/config/index.php,v
>>retrieving revision 1.89
>>diff -b -u -d -r1.89 index.php
>>--- config/index.php    28 Dec 2004 14:49:41 -0000    1.89
>>+++ config/index.php    15 Jan 2005 00:17:12 -0000
>>@@ -405,7 +405,6 @@
>>         $wgDBadminuser = "root";
>>         $wgDBadminpassword = $conf->RootPW;
>>         $wgDBprefix = $conf->DBprefix;
>>-        $wgCommandLineMode = true;
>>         $wgUseDatabaseMessages = false;    /* FIXME: For database
>>failure */
>>         require_once( "includes/Setup.php" );
>>         chdir( "config" );
>>
>>
...


subject: [Wikitech-l] performance

body:
Just an FYI.. I only have ~130 users on my intranet MW install.  I made
an article that I thought would be useful, so I emailed it out to a wide
audience, and ended up slashdotting my own wiki server.  I didn't get
that many hits, I don't think, but each one was trying to render that
same page, and it ended up filling memory and the paging file.  I
installed Squid shortly after that.

The lesson: Don't wait for performance requirements to demand it.  ;-)

-Nick

Jonah Bossewitch wrote:

> Out of curiosity, has anyone experimented with configuring cacheing
> within
> apache itself?
>
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_cache.html
>
> It is my understanding that squid takes advantage the same pragma headers
> that mod cache can look at - I wonder if there is an intermediate
> configuration that can be tuned and recommended without having to
> install a
> separate proxy server.
>
> mod_cache is something I plan to look at in conjunction with MW as
> soon as
> performance requirements demands it (and time permits ).
>
> /Jonah
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Triantos" <nick at triantos.com>
> To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2005 5:48 PM
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] performance
>
>
>> It's also certainly worth looking at installing Squid
>> (http://www.squid-cache.org) if you haven't, yet.  That made a huge
>> difference on the MW install I've got on an intranet at work, and
>> also reduced the memory footprint.
>>
>> cheers,
>> -Nick
>>
>> Paul Youlten wrote:
>>
>>> did you try installing the PHP booster Turck MMCache? I'm not
>>> allowed to on my shared server - but it appears to give performance
>>> a big boost.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "NSK" <nsk2 at wikinerds.org>
>>> To: <wikitech-l at Wikimedia.org>
>>> Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 11:54 PM
>>> Subject: [Wikitech-l] performance
>>>
>>>
>>>> MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 are very slow and uses too many CPU
>>>> cycles and
>>>> memory compared to other wikis. The database schema, as I see it,
>>>> seems to be
>>>> inefficient. Are there any changes planned for 1.4 final to increase
>>>> performance?
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> NSK
>>>> http://portal.wikinerds.org
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Database locked

body:
Yes, the Once and Future Skin.  :)

RickK

David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050117 10:56]:

> Why is the database locked, and for how long? Where was it announced that this would take place? Why doesn't the message tell us when it will be back in usable form?

00:30 UTC at least for database defragmenting. The message shows in
Monobook, but I don't see it in Classic, which leads me to guess you too
are using the One True Skin.

- d.

_______________________________________________
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http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
You can't expect to stir shit and keep your stick clean at the same
time.  In their exchange, neither Stan nor Anthere used the word
"conspiracy", but you seemed enthusiastic to impute that motivation.
You may very well find it impossible to imagine that bias intrudes into
a good-faith dispute, so much so that you need to imagine bad faith and
conspiracies just to make sense of it.  Maybe the rest of us do not
derive the same perverted pleasure as you out of being offended.

What I saw in the most recent posts from the two principal participants
was a tone that looked for understanding, not one intended to inflame
passions.

Systemic bias is anything but conspiratorial.  This is quite different
from overt bias.  Those who practise systemic bias usually do so in the
belief that their actions are perfectly moral.  I have to believe a
preacher's bigotted homophobic rants from the pulpit are uttered in good
faith.

Ec

Rick wrote:

>What UTTER nonsense.  This has nothing do with bias, just a difference of outlook.  I CANNOT imagine how you can possibly consider this naming difference bias.  And I am offended that you believe that there is some sort of conspiracy among English-speaking Wikipedians to downgrade the accomplishments of other people.  How about cleaning up the French language Wikipedia before you start casting stones?
>
>RickK
>
>Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Stan Shebs a ?crit:
>
>
>>And you corrected them on this, right? This is absolutely nothing
>>to do with NPOV,
>>
>>
>Then we just do not have the same perception of what is neutral, this is
>all. For me, naming things (like a polish city) may have to do with
>neutrality of report.
>
>
>>and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
>>that they're biased and not doing anything about it.
>>
>>
>This is an unfair comment, as I mentionned that the articles were great.
>What I report rather tends to fit in systemic bias of Wikipedia.
>
>There is a bias of the en wikipedia to have anglo success appears bigger
>than they may appear to african people for example, just as there is
>definitly a bias on the french wikipedia which makes France appear more
>important that other french speaking countries.
>
>We are all biaised, and little can be done about this.
>


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Note to Anthere

body:
James Rosenzweig wrote:

><snip>
>
100% agreed.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
Rick, it was the edit conflict thing made me realize the edits were
being saved too. Almost every edit I tried to save, if I didn't get
"server not responding," I got "edit conflict," even on pages that no
one else had edited for a thousand years. Eventually it clicked that I
was in conflict with myself, so now I keep a second browser window
open to check whether the failed edit is in fact there; usually it is,
but not always, and I haven't been able to detect a pattern yet. It's
a slow process, because waiting for the page to load in the second
browser window can take awhile, but it's usually faster than sitting
through multiple time-outs.

Slim

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 15:58:26 -0800 (PST), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've encountered the same problem.  When I get the error message, I do a
> revert and try Save again, and get an Edit conflict message.  When I Cancel,
> I see that my edit has actually been saved.
>
> RickK


body:
Stan Shebs a ?crit:
 > A lot of things

Nod. I recognise the validity and wiseness of all your comments. Seen in
this way, your comments were fair and honest. Thanks for the explanation.
You are correct that I may under estimate the visibility of this list
and possible impact in certain situations where wp is criticized.

(Boy, should not we have a private list then ? jk)

Anthere


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

subject: [Wikitech-l] performance

body:
Out of curiosity, has anyone experimented with configuring cacheing within
apache itself?

http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_cache.html

It is my understanding that squid takes advantage the same pragma headers
that mod cache can look at - I wonder if there is an intermediate
configuration that can be tuned and recommended without having to install a
separate proxy server.

mod_cache is something I plan to look at in conjunction with MW as soon as
performance requirements demands it (and time permits ).

/Jonah

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Triantos" <nick at triantos.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2005 5:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] performance

> It's also certainly worth looking at installing Squid
> (http://www.squid-cache.org) if you haven't, yet.  That made a huge
> difference on the MW install I've got on an intranet at work, and also
> reduced the memory footprint.
>
> cheers,
> -Nick
>
> Paul Youlten wrote:
>
>> did you try installing the PHP booster Turck MMCache? I'm not allowed to
>> on my shared server - but it appears to give performance a big boost.
>>
>> Paul
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "NSK" <nsk2 at wikinerds.org>
>> To: <wikitech-l at Wikimedia.org>
>> Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 11:54 PM
>> Subject: [Wikitech-l] performance
>>
>>
>>> MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 are very slow and uses too many CPU cycles
>>> and
>>> memory compared to other wikis. The database schema, as I see it, seems
>>> to be
>>> inefficient. Are there any changes planned for 1.4 final to increase
>>> performance?
>>>
>>> --
>>> NSK
>>> http://portal.wikinerds.org
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site

body:
Once again the wise real estate agent speaks sense. NSK is overly
promoting his website, to the annoyance of many, and is frequently
preachy about what we [wikimedia] should do, but i really dont think
that he is doing any of this in bad faith, i think that because he is
so involved in what ever the hell his knowledge base thingo is, that
he sees everything through that prisim; <flamebait> its like when the
Dubbya Bush views the rest of the world through a wealthy american's
prisim, with out realising that other place might be a might be a
little different, he goes and invades places, and then gets suprised
when it all backfires </flamebait>.

...sorry couldnt help it.

paz y amor,
me.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:09:27 +1100, csherlock at ljh.com.au
<csherlock at ljh.com.au> wrote:
> With all due respect to Ambi, I feel that this is a little unfair. He
> does promote his website, but I don't think he added that link in bad
> faith. I don't think we're being overly too lenient on him. So long as
> he doesn't start an edit war, I don't have an issue with the link.

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portal source

body:
No, I did not bother. I never voted in the first portion of the poll.

Mark

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:52:27 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> David Gerard a ?crit:
>
> > Did node really not bother voting in a poll on a view he spent (est.) 25kb
> > advocating?
>
> Actually, he did bother, and apparently added a monkey poll in the page
> which I was told was quite funny.
>
> It was deleted.
>
> Anthere
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thank you, Poland!

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Ashar,

we had the same debate about the FFII campaign against software patents
in general. ("Thank you, Poland!" in a way is the result of this
campaign).

I can think of two maybe good ways to work around the POV probleme with
banners like this one:

- make decision about banners part of the skins/themes, so one could
select the "GNU EFF theme" including such banners (or the "Corporate
World theme", for the other side).

- Don't use the banner, but point out in our article about [[Wikipedia]]
(and in some articles in the Wikipedia:namespace) how Wikipedia is using
open source software and how this is only possible without corporate
software patents. And of course: have a good article about [[Software
Patent]]s and explain there the "Thank you, Poland!" banner (I haven't
looked how it looks at the moment).

Till

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

>NSK wrote:
>> There is a new initiative regarding software patents with the
>> name "Thank you, Poland!" at http://www.thankpoland.info . There
>> are banners you can use at http://www.thankpoland.info/banners.h
>> tml . RMS' FSF/GNU already supports the initiative by displaying
>> a banner at http://www.gnu.org . My site also supports "Thank
>> you, Poland!". I suggest that you should also do that, by
>> placing their banner on your main page.

>Hello,

>I personally like the idea, I even proposed to put a "get firefox"
>icon on every page :o)

>One trouble is that we need NPOV and this is maybe too european
>centric.

>cheers,

>- --
>Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
>http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
>Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

>iD8DBQFB6ToepmyHQ2O4INERAsyCAJ4k8Lt99REYatB05surTGCYT94qhgCg7vnR
>bm4lFGUCFABYPs2UuiMokc0=
>=rXry
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Hirschstra?e 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
I'm talking about the English part but I imagine it applies to the
whole. Yes of course my bias shows, I don't try to hide it. But bias is
not the problem (everyone has bias), the issue is too many people with
one kind of bias, aka a lack of diversity (compared with the english
speaking population i.e.). Wikipedians are disproportionately white and
male, disproportionately American, and disproportionately from white
collar backgrounds. In my opinion one of the best ways to counter such
systemic bias is to systematically recruit editors who are not white,
male, American, or from a white collar background. I don't think this
is a point worth arguing about or taking offense on, it's just worth
getting on and dealing with it.

Christiaan

On 16 Jan 2005, at 8:33 pm, Rick wrote:

> Are you talking about Wikiepdia as a whole, or the English language
> Wikipedia in particular?  I think your own bias is showing.
>
> RickK
>
> Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
> Puddl Duk wrote:
>
>> 'Balanced' demographics will lead to different points of views, but
>> what should that balance be?
>
> All humans on Earth springs to mind. I wouldn't go looking to far for
> your answer though, the point is one major reason for systemic bias on
> Wikipedia is that certain demographics are disproportionately
> represented and that there are things we can do to counter this.
>
> Christiaan


from_name: Scott Nelson

subject: [Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

body:
On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
> six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
> avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
> source of income.

This is actually a very good idea.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Happy Wikipedia Day!

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Wikipedia went live four years ago today, on January 15, 2001.
>
> Amazingly, this crazy project we've gotten ourselves into is still on
> the web, not _completely_ filled with Pok?mon stubs and crackpot rants,
> and even remains free of advertisements, supported by donations and a
> lot of hard work.
>
> Presented for your pleasure:
> http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/

Neat Brion - thax :)

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Jumping wiki logo

body:
When you refresh some wikipedia pages in IE the wiki.png graphic seems
to make a small jump. (not Opera - which just a little twitch as the
bullet.gifs are loaded or FF - rock solid except for a tiny upwards
bullet.gif jump)

It doen't happen on the German wikipedia (how predictable is that?)

(yes, yes, the answer of course is to stop using IE)

It happens on my wikis too - anyone know how the Germans got it so perfect?


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 15:19:03 -0800 (PST), jjcogliati-wp at yahoo.com
<jjcogliati-wp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is a request for comments on both the patch and
> the feature that are in Bug 626: Different new page
> text for each namespace (enhancement) at:
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626

I haven't looked at the exact operation of your patch, but as stated
in bugzilla I support the idea of allowing these messages to be
configured independently. The only disadvantage I can see is that the
more messages there are, the more there is to translate, and the
harder it is for site administrators to keep track of customisation
(the more you *can* customise, the longer it takes to do so).

The only way to avoid that problem is to have some kind of
"transparent" messages, or just a switch, so that the old
one-size-fits-all message can be used by those who don't want to think
about the different namespaces. But as far as I'm aware, you can do
transclusions within MediaWiki messages (am I right?), so anyone
wanting to *merge* the messages can just use
{{MediaWiki:newarticletext}} for those they don't want to define.

This even gives the option of picking and choosing, so really obvious
distinctions, like starting a new *discussion* versus new *content*,
or *describing* a category versus *creating* an article, can be made
even if others aren't. [But maybe I *am* wrong about inclusions in
MediaWiki: messages...]

I know I'm in danger of restating my case once too often here, but I
thought this would be a reasonable context to work through some of the
possible concerns.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
I blocked Everyking for 24 hours because he had made 4 reverts to the [[Pieces of Me]] article in 24 hours.  But since he is an admin, he continues to edit.  Is there something we can do about this?

RickK

---------------------------------
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from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: performance

body:
Jonah Bossewitch wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
> Out of curiosity, has anyone experimented with configuring cacheing within
> apache itself?
>
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_cache.html
>
> It is my understanding that squid takes advantage the same pragma headers
> that mod cache can look at - I wonder if there is an intermediate
> configuration that can be tuned and recommended without having to install
> a separate proxy server.

Last time I looked at mod_proxy it did not understand the PURGE request
type.  MediaWiki needs this to tell the proxy to purge its cache.  I don't
know if this applies to mod_cache or if there's a different way to do it -
I wasn't interested in caching at the time so I didn't look closely.

Kate.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
But how do we enforce it, short of getting his adminship revoked?

RickK

John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
Rick wrote:

>I blocked Everyking for 24 hours because he had made 4 reverts to the [[Pieces of Me]] article in 24 hours. But since he is an admin, he continues to edit. Is there something we can do about this?
>
>RickK
>
>
>
Isn't that block evasion? His block time should be restarted, according
to policy, from the time he last made an edit.

Disclaimer: I have been deeply involved in a dispute between Everyking,
myself, and several other users relating to [[Ashlee Simpson]] articles,
that has gone to arbitration. Heed my advice at your own risk.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])
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