from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia

body:
I posted this a few days ago but failed to get any responses, so I'm
trying again.

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>> Should a free encyclopedia be redistributable by anyone in every
>> country, or only the United States, or need it not be
>> redistributable at all?
>
> It should be as widely redistributable as is practical.  Due to
> differences in jurisdiction, there can be difficulties associated with
> this.  We must not bend our NPOV/encyclopedia policies to conform to
> censorship, for example, but we can try as hard as we can to
> accomodate minor differences in copyright laws.

The variations in copyright laws can be a tremendous hurdle.  As a
person active on Wikisource, I've developed quite a different
perspective on the matter.  There, the issue rarely has anything to do
with images.  To whatever extent we may want images the copyrights are
usually an extension of the work that contains them.  Nor, since we
include whole books, is fair use a major topic.

Whether or not a given work is in the public domain, is a far more
common problem and far more difficult.  It can be even more difficult if
we need to look after the interests of the downstream user.

In an earlier post in this thread Jimbo said "we are not legal risk
takers"  That does not get rid of the problem.  When does the risk
probability become so small that it is no longer a risk?  Which carries
the greater risk, an earthquake in California, or a hurricane in
Florida?  Compare that with the risk of a law suit over a particular
technical copyright infringement.  The range of risks is very wide, and
nobody is seriously suggesting that we carry the text of any current
best seller.
These are among the questions we have encountered:

   1. Hitler's "Mein Kampf" - Volume 1 was originally published in
   1926.  There were four distinct English translations (one British,
   three American) between 1932 and 1041.  The British translator died
   in 1946.  The American translation copyrights are all owned by
   Houghton-Mifflin and were properly renewed.  We determined that we
   could not carry the existing English versions.  The German language
   version could probably be safely carried in the US because of enemy
   property exemptions when the U. S. agreed to honour European
   copyright extensions.  Other countries have had mixed messages about
   whether the copyrights continue to be valid.

   2. Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi"  This was originally
   published in 1946.  He died in 1952.  The organization that held
   posthumous rights to the work renewed the copyright in 1974, but it
   was challenged in court in 2000.  The copyright was overturned on
   the grounds that it could not be proved that Yogananda had granted
   them the right to renew.  We now carry this work.

   3. Max Planck won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1918.  This was
   awarded to him at a ceremony in 1920 where he delivered an
   acceptance speech.  The Swedish Academy published this with other
   similar speeches in 1921.  A separate version of the speech was also
   published in England in 1922.  It has not yet been established
   whether a U.S. edition exists.  Planck died in 1947.  The work would
   appear to be in the public domain in the U. S. because it was
   published before 1923, but would continue to be protected in Sweden
   and Germany  until 2017.  Following this line of thought the lecture
   delivered by Pieter Zeeman when he won the 1902 physics prize would
   be the oldest one still covered by copyright.  This issue is still
   undecided.

In dealing with matters like this to what extent do we protect
downstream users?  Should we go ahead and include the text, and add a
warning that a downstream user republishes the material at his own risk?
There are probably other areas where we could safely republish material
that is prima facie copyright, but that point can be discussed at some
other time.  Suffice it to say that any such action should not be done
recklessly.

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and "personal use"?

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Putting something on a website is most certainly not "Personal" use in
> any legal system i know of.

It doesn't matter.  This sort of thing goes to the very core of what
the freedom of speech is all about.  We have a right to comment and
document on matters of a political nature, and our right to do so is
very much tied up in our abiity to reproduce small snippets of
content, such as this logo, to further that purpose.

There are at least two possible issues here:

1.  Copyright in the logo -- this falls quite cleanly under fair use.
2.  Trademark -- we are not using the logo as a trademark, but rather
as illustration of an article about the Bush campaign, which is symbolized
by the trademark.

And finally, it is worth taking some reasonable consideration of what
the legal risk could possibly be.  It would be a political disaster of
such monumental proportions for the Bush/Cheney campaign to hassle the
beloved Wikipedia in such a baseless manner as any complaint about
this would be.

It is important not to violate copyrights or trademarks, but this is
not plausibly a violation.  It is important to not take legal risks
that are too severe, even if there is a plausible argument that we are
right, but in this case, the nature of the parties (a political party
and a volunteer encyclopedia project) makes it virtually impossible
that we would even get the hint of a complaint about this.

--Jimbo


body:
One more quick thought....

There is a very common corporate tactic to give people permission on a
website to do something that they could do anyway, period.  Indeed, it
is common to give permission for *less* than what you can do anyway.

An extreme example might be "You may quote my book at no charge, so
long as you allow me to review the commentary before you pubish it."

Yes, this is a permission.  But it is a tricky one, because it subtly
hints that you're going to get in trouble if you quote without
permission anyway.

--Jimbo


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles like "Violence against Israelis"

body:
The problem with articles like "Violence against Israelis" is not so
much that the material they contain is false, but that the topic of
the articles is unfixably POV.  People like Lance6Wins and
MathKnight who devote many hours to maintaining these lists
do not do it out of a desire to make Wikipedia a fine encyclopedia.
They are on a political mission, and do not consider that the NPOV
rule is relevant to them.

If these people were well-motivated, they would also be including
violence against Palestinians as well.  Try to find the following in
Wikipedia, for example (I went to the web site of the Israeli
human-rights organization B'Tselem and entered a random month):

8 February 2003
Mustafa Ibrahim Abu 'Adwan, age 10, died of wounds inflicted by IDF
gunfire in Khan Younis, in the south of The Gaza Strip, on 7 February,
2003. Did not participate in fighting

11 February 2003
Hassan al-Ghoul, age 8, from Qalqiliya, killed by IDF gunfire shot in
response to stones and molotov cocktails thrown at soldiers, in
Qalqiliya,
The West Bank. Did not participate in fighting

And so on for a total of 11 children killed by Israeli forces in April
2003.
The list of adults killed, including both combatants and
non-combatants,
is much longer.  April 2003 was not an unusual month.

The reason these are not listed in Wikipedia is that there is nobody
with
the dedication and time to match the efforts of Lance6Wins and
MathKnight.
(Actually, such a person or persons would need several times as much
dedication because several times as many Palestinians are killed as
Israelis.)
Would we want such a competition between lists anyway?  From experience
we know that articles like this cannot be deleted.  My preferred
solution
would be to kick out the political fanatics, and good riddance, but it
won't
happen.  The problem in fact will not be solved and this open sore will
remain.  Sorry to bring bad news.

Zero.

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia RC is broken

body:
Something like this has been proposed before, a "Article_validation system".

See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation
And: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_feature
And: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etusiv

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 23:44:44 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> > I think the filtering would only be a partial solution. The reason RC worked
> > so well was that every change was reviewed by a few competent people.
> > If we divide the RC (and provide a special RC for uncategorized articles,
> > from which they will be moved to specialized RCs), this property will be restored.
> > With general filtering it seems to me that there are going to be many changes
> > which won't get into filters of enough competent people. The only idea
> > I have how to cope with that group of changes is the division, but maybe
> > there's some other way.
>
> Yesterday I dreamt of a "review queue". There's a common situation: I
> check an edit on RC, okay, it's not vandalism, but it smells somehow
> fishy. The problem is, I have no knowledge of the subject (say, it is
> biology). Currently the only, very stony solution is to leave someone I
> know who knows about biology a message on his talk page to please have a
> look at the article. But most people don't do that.
>
> Instead, I could - RC patrol mode switched on in my user pref - select
> in the diff view the biology-queue, and the edit would go in the review
> queue of the biologists where someone checks the edit and removes it
> from the queue (and takes the appropriate measures).
>
> Dunno if that's too complicated, sounds like.
>
> greetings,
> elian
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Putting something on a website is most certainly not "Personal" use in
any legal system i know of.

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:10:16 -0400, John <flockmeal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Back in May 2004 [[User:ChrisDJackson]], who appears to be inactive on
> Wikipedia at the moment, uploaded [[Image:Bushlogo.jpg]], but provided
> no information about its source or its use status. Assuming it came
> from http://www.georgewbush.com/  then it would fall under the sites
> copyright terms which are http://www.georgewbush.com/copyright.aspx
>
> "All compilation and content of this site, including its assembly,
> design, text, illustrations, photographs, logos, etc. are the
> intellectual property of Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., its affiliates or its
> content suppliers and constitute copyrighted material, trademarks
> and/or trade dress. This site and its contents may be used only for
> personal, noncommercial use. All worldwide rights, titles and
> interests are reserved."
>
> Now, Wikipedia is certainly noncommercial, but these copyright terms
> bring up another larger question, is Wikipedia "personal"?
>
> Should we continue to use this image, or other images protected for
> "personal" use? What's the US law in this area, do laws of other
> nations also apply because Wikipedia is an internet site?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>>No it is not since the Commons is a common place to host data and files
>>
>that
>
>>are used by more than one wiki. It therefore helps to bind us together,
>>
>not
>
>>divide us.
>>
>
>It was my understanding that Wikispecies is to be a common place to host
>species data that is used by more than one wiki.  So why doesn't Wikispecies
>help to bind us together?
>
I think people are using "data" to mean different things. If it
means language-independent data (maximum recorded length, say),
along with a way to splice it into each language's article, then
great, it would be just as beneficial as sharing images; each
language WP would get consistent statistics, which would eliminate
a major maintenance load, and speed creation of articles for all
the languages - just mention the common taxobox, or common general
characteristics, and boom, Bulgarian gets content just as good
as English.

If Wikispeces data means quasi-articles with text in some language,
that has much more undesirable forking potential.

Stan


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I don't have a problem with POV, but I do with detailed listings of each
incident and casualty. There is violence against Israelis. An encyclopedia
article would present the statistics, perhaps several examples, but not
extensive lists. Corresponding lists of Palestinian grievances are also
inappropriate, although I do think articles about Israeli locations should
include information regarding previous names of the place.

Fred

> From: zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 06:14:05 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles like "Violence against Israelis"
>
>
> The problem with articles like "Violence against Israelis" is not so
> much that the material they contain is false, but that the topic of
> the articles is unfixably POV.  People like Lance6Wins and
> MathKnight who devote many hours to maintaining these lists
> do not do it out of a desire to make Wikipedia a fine encyclopedia.
> They are on a political mission, and do not consider that the NPOV
> rule is relevant to them.
>
> If these people were well-motivated, they would also be including
> violence against Palestinians as well.  Try to find the following in
> Wikipedia, for example (I went to the web site of the Israeli
> human-rights organization B'Tselem and entered a random month):
>
> 8 February 2003
> Mustafa Ibrahim Abu 'Adwan, age 10, died of wounds inflicted by IDF
> gunfire in Khan Younis, in the south of The Gaza Strip, on 7 February,
> 2003. Did not participate in fighting
>
> 11 February 2003
> Hassan al-Ghoul, age 8, from Qalqiliya, killed by IDF gunfire shot in
> response to stones and molotov cocktails thrown at soldiers, in
> Qalqiliya,
> The West Bank. Did not participate in fighting
>
> And so on for a total of 11 children killed by Israeli forces in April
> 2003.
> The list of adults killed, including both combatants and
> non-combatants,
> is much longer.  April 2003 was not an unusual month.
>
> The reason these are not listed in Wikipedia is that there is nobody
> with
> the dedication and time to match the efforts of Lance6Wins and
> MathKnight.
> (Actually, such a person or persons would need several times as much
> dedication because several times as many Palestinians are killed as
> Israelis.)
> Would we want such a competition between lists anyway?  From experience
> we know that articles like this cannot be deleted.  My preferred
> solution
> would be to kick out the political fanatics, and good riddance, but it
> won't
> happen.  The problem in fact will not be solved and this open sore will
> remain.  Sorry to bring bad news.
>
> Zero.
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Template/taxobox mess-up!

references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org> <cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Why would it ever break? I can see it getting slow because it cannot
be optimized but not breaking, all it's doing is just including one
thing after the other

{{a}} gets Template:A which contains "foo" and {{b}} gets Template:B
which contains "bar" hence

{{a}}{{b}} = foobar

Why would this break in whatever parser you plan to implement?

The only reason i can see why that would happen is if you were to
implement some auto-completion of the table syntax. Sort of like
tidy(html) for wikisyntax and do it before things get fetched from
Template: rather than after everything has been included.

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 11:29:11 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
> > Timwi wrote:
> >
> >> {{Taxobox | color = pink | name = Domestic Dog |
> >>  image = [[...]] | regnum = [[Animal]]ia | ... etc. ... }}
> >
> > We would if we could. See ToL talk for more.
>
> Can I regard this as an official statement that you will not mind those
> multi-template boxes breaking when a new parser is introduced that will
> support the "correct" way? :)
>
> If that is the case, then that will make my job for the new parser way
> easier.
>
> Thanks,
> Timwi
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] New standard for citations?

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Violence_against_Israelis&diff=5476069&oldid=5418772

Anon added this: "It should be noted, however, that more people have
been killed by Israeli attacks on Palestinian cities than the
reverse."

This might be true, and it might not be. I agree that it's very
important to cite sources and especially important to cite sources on
articles such as this one.

Note that i did not revert it.

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 05:48:41 -0700 (PDT), Harry Smith
<lance6wins at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Copied from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Violence_against_Israelis#Lists
>
> (posted here so I don't have to repeat myself five
> times) I dispute the factual accuracy of the various
> terrorism against Israel in {year} pages because
> sources for the reports therein are (apart from the
> word of a single Wikipedian) fragmentary or
> non-existent. I will happily withdraw the accuracy
> disputes when each item on each list is annotated
> properly. ?No-One Jones 10:37, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
>
> Mirv has added the "factually disputed" tag to this
> set of articles without disputing any individual item.
> Are we to annotate each item in each article to meet
> this criteria?  Are we to apply this level of citation
> to a set of articles?  Is this level of citation to
> apply to Violence against Israelis alone?
>
> I would like the disputed tags remove till a factually
> inaccuracy is found.  At that point I would like the
> inaccuracy corrected, so that the tag would not apply.
>
> Lance6Wins
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template:PD-US

body:
>From Wikipedia:Copyrights:

"Government photographs

Works produced by employees of the United States federal government in
the scope of their employment are public domain by statute. However,
note that, despite popular misconception, the US Federal Government
can own copyrights that are assigned to it by others. As a general
rule photographs on .mil and .gov sites are public domain. However
there are some notable exceptions. Check the privacy and security
notice of the website. It should also be noted that governments
outside the US often do claim copyright over works produced by their
employees (for example, Crown Copyright in the United Kingdom). Also,
most state governments in the United States do not place their work
into the public domain and do in fact own the copyright to their work.
Please be careful to check ownership information before copying."

>From Template:PD-US
"This image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly
other jurisdictions. See Copyright."

I think it's a bit vague but don't dare "fix" it because i might be
"un-fixing" something, what it reads like to me is that things marked
as {{PD-US}} are in the public domain in the United States but might
not be in the public domain in other countries. Is this the desired
message or does it mean to say that things marked as {{PD-US}} are
things put into the public domain by the US Government?


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> I think people are using "data" to mean different things. If it
> means language-independent data (maximum recorded length, say),
> along with a way to splice it into each language's article, then
> great, it would be just as beneficial as sharing images; each
> language WP would get consistent statistics, which would eliminate
> a major maintenance load, and speed creation of articles for all
> the languages - just mention the common taxobox, or common general
> characteristics, and boom, Bulgarian gets content just as good
> as English.

Exactly the point of the Wikimedia Commons. No reason why wikispecies.org can't
be pointed to the project page for taxobox/species relational info on the
Commons. But all encyclopedic info (such as the example Jimbo gave from
fishbase) should go into the respective wikipedia language versions. If that
info is too much detail for the main article on any species/taxon, then
[[evolution of ...]] and [[biology of ...]] articles could go into the needed
detail with summaries left at the main entry.

But a common place to have things like taxoboxes will be most useful.

-- mav

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from_name: Harry Smith

body:
Some of this discussion seems to be made up of thin
air.  There are several sources attached to article
that provide information

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> >I don't have a problem with POV, but I do with
> detailed listings of each
> >incident and casualty. There is violence against
> Israelis. An encyclopedia
> >article would present the statistics, perhaps
> several examples, but not
> >extensive lists. Corresponding lists of Palestinian
> grievances are also
> >inappropriate, although I do think articles about
> Israeli locations should
> >include information regarding previous names of the
> place.
> >
> >
> Not to mention that compiling such a list is clearly
> primary research:
> it is not easy at all to determine a complete and
> accurate list of
> casualties on either side, and until someone
> publishes an authoritative
> such list (or at least one that has been well
> researched), we shouldn't
> publish one that's simply made up out of thin air,
> with some
> inconsistent citations to news stories people
> happened to run across.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiFR-l] Fr.wikipedia 50.000 articles

body:
Hi,

Le Monday 30 August 2004 00:19, Anthere a ?crit :
> Hi,
>
> The french wikipedia just made it to 50 000 articles
> today.
>
> I must say... I cheated, so as to ensure I would do
> the 50 000 article :-)
> I prepared a collection of stubs and saved them in a
> row at the right moment :-) The trick was to save the
> right article for the 50 000...

Thanks fo your mail, Anthere.
The big childs are also the most entertaining. ;o)

Les grands enfants sont aussi les plus plaisants. ;o)

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: Delirium

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I don't have a problem with POV, but I do with detailed listings of each
>incident and casualty. There is violence against Israelis. An encyclopedia
>article would present the statistics, perhaps several examples, but not
>extensive lists. Corresponding lists of Palestinian grievances are also
>inappropriate, although I do think articles about Israeli locations should
>include information regarding previous names of the place.
>
>
Not to mention that compiling such a list is clearly primary research:
it is not easy at all to determine a complete and accurate list of
casualties on either side, and until someone publishes an authoritative
such list (or at least one that has been well researched), we shouldn't
publish one that's simply made up out of thin air, with some
inconsistent citations to news stories people happened to run across.

-Mark


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
> No it is not since the Commons is a common place to host data and files
that
> are used by more than one wiki. It therefore helps to bind us together,
not
> divide us.

It was my understanding that Wikispecies is to be a common place to host
species data that is used by more than one wiki.  So why doesn't Wikispecies
help to bind us together?


from_name: Denni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
Fuzheado wrote:

> > All this talk of deliberately wrong edits has apparently inspired a
> > misguided person, one [[User:AlHalawi]], to do it.
>
> FYI, this is the experiment, and the 100% grade RC patrol folks attained.
>
> http://alex.halavais.net/news/index.php?p=794
>
> And a longer post by Ross Mayfield about this:
>
> http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/08/29/wikipedia_reputation_and_the_wemedia_project.php
>

In the Many2Many blog, one correspondent writes
 "Reading the posts you'd think it was a war, when in fact EVERYONE's supporting the Wikipedia
except this rather insignificant journalist."

Congrats to our editors for meeting a challenge few even knew existed. I think we ought to be
careful, though, not to let our agenda be set by morons. The writer who set this off, just as in
the instance a few weeks ago where we were criticised on someone else's site, did so with no
intention of being anything other than confrontational. At the same time, we rose to the two-bit
bait as if we'd been attacked by a senior editor of the New York Times. I'm thinking we ought to
relax a bit. We know what we have as a product, and we know there is an endless supply of morons.

Denni


from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] questions on mediawiki features

body:
hey all,

iI was wondering if anyone was working on the following features for mediawiki. Or
if they existed already, and I don't know about them:

    1) ability to upload a gnuplot data file, and have it turn into an associated
       PNG graph inside mediawiki.

    2) ability to do polling/data collection based off of IP.

If nobody is working on these, I'd like to add them. It would also be cool to
add an integrated mailing list creator for projects through interface to majordomo,
although I'm a little bit hazy on implementation of this one.

Ed

(
    ps - for images, how does mediawiki get around the inode limit? I noticed
    in the LocalSettings.php that there was a directory for images, but I'd
    think that images/files being stuffed into one directory would ultimately be
    cause for trouble..
)


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A new idea: a Wiki-based TV episode guide

body:
On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:58:17 -0700 (PDT) Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>--- kelvSYC <kelvsyc at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Seeing that there seems to be articles on individual episodes of
>> certain TV shows in Wikipedia that some might argue is unencyclopedic
>> (due to the fact that they contribute little other than an episode
>> summary), how about a television episode guide based on the Wiki
>> philosophy (a "Wikivision" perhaps)?
>
>Just lump small summaries together into larger, list-like articles for the
>relevant seasons. This is already done for minor fictional characters. No
>need
>for a separate project.

I disagree here. It's a matter of level. If we are talking about title plus
a one-line description of the various episodes, then I agree with you that
this is the way to go. But if we're talking about a 2 or 3 paragraph
overview for each episode, I would not want to have it in Wikipedia.

Likewise those minor characters - An overview of the various minor
characters in a book or a series is something I think would be good for
Wikipedia to have. But if someone goes and writes a whole article about one
minor character from a book (or even a major character from a minor book),
it's not what I want to see in Wikipedia.

Andre Engels


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes DifferenceEngine.php,1.36,1.37

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

> Modified Files:
> 	DifferenceEngine.php
> Log Message:
> BUG#244 Backed out changes done in Patch 1.33 due to major
> security problems. HTML tags were not escaped and it was possible to execute arbitrary javascript code

Can you give me an example of two article texts such that the diff
between them produces this security problem?

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Don't use Wikipedia as source

references:
<9940F6D8-F8A7-11D8-9E03-0003931DCE20@ropersonline.com>
	<slrncj4o6e.atv.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>
	<2ed171fb04082922466d70c602@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Monday 30 August 2004 07:46, Andrew Lih wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:03:42 +0100, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> > All this talk of deliberately wrong edits has apparently inspired a
> > misguided person, one [[User:AlHalawi]], to do it.
>
> FYI, this is the experiment, and the 100% grade RC patrol folks attained.
>
> http://alex.halavais.net/news/index.php?p=794
>
> And a longer post by Ross Mayfield about this:
>
> http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/08/29/wikipedia_reputation_and_th
>e_wemedia_project.php

just to add he added all mistakes (total of 13) from _one_ account. And it is
almost clear that finding one mistake will lead to the discovery of all the
others. It's good to see that it was discovered, but given the method he used
I didn't expected the result to be different.

He later wrote about this:

"If I were to do it again (I won?t), I would have spread my changes out over a
few days, and posted from different username/ip addresses. I know that some
of the more obscure changes were caught in a chain from some of the less
obscure ones. I guess I don?t make a particularly good wiki troll; which
isn?t a terrible thing to be bad at."

best regards,
  Marco


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:03:42 +0100, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:

> All this talk of deliberately wrong edits has apparently inspired a
> misguided person, one [[User:AlHalawi]], to do it.

FYI, this is the experiment, and the 100% grade RC patrol folks attained.

http://alex.halavais.net/news/index.php?p=794

And a longer post by Ross Mayfield about this:

http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/08/29/wikipedia_reputation_and_the_wemedia_project.php

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


body:
On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 03:59:54PM -0400, Delirium wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
>
> >   1) ability to upload a gnuplot data file, and have it turn into an
> >   associated PNG graph inside mediawiki.
> >
> >

> I'd prefer that, as with many things, we come up with our own syntax for
> specifying graphs.  Gnuplot is not the most intuitive of programs, and
> ideally it would be possible for a non-technically-minded person to at
> least put together a simple graph.

hmm.

The problem with making your own syntax is that plotting is an extremely
difficult task to get correct, and the programs are complicated for a reason..

still, I see value in a small subset of graphing functionality as being part
of the core of mediawiki..

> Actually, we might want to look into whether gnuplot is the best tool at
> all.  If I remember correctly, it's damn near impossible to generate a
> histogram (bar graph) in gnuplot, and there's lots of other things that
> are basically hardcoded into it.  I believe Erik Zachte was using
> another open-source plotting package, ploticus, for the wiki-stats page,
> which might be another option.

well, I've looked at ploticus - and looked at gnuplot - and they both have
their strengths and weaknesses. Ploticus plots data better, wheras you can do
various mathematical fits with gnuplot, as well as plot regular mathematical
formulas and 3D graphs.

In any case, maybe the answer is having different prefixes for different
programs.

	graph:file.txt

for regular 'built in' graphing,

	graph_gnuplot:file.txt

for gnuplot graphing, and

	graph_ploticus:file.txt

for ploticus. In each case, file.txt would have to be a self-contained file
which creates one PNG, which would then be named file.png.

Ultimately, the coolest thing would be plotting graphs by Adobe Illustrator,
although I really don't know how you could do that (because Illustrator AFAIK
does not have a command line interface). By *far* the coolest graphs are made
with Illustrator, and they are suitable for high-process printing. Wheras plots
with gnuplot and ploticus seem to only be 'servicable'.

Ed

(
    ps - just curious, but why isn't there a link to upload images, etc on the
    edit page? AFAIK you need to go to a totally separate page to upload things - it
    would be nice if there was a popup that let you do it whilst editing the page.
)


references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<41320DAA.3090500@apple.com>

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> I'm still wondering why this would matter.

It matters because it is impossible to generate a proper parse tree for
a template that contains only part of a table. A table is one object.

> So what if a group of
> templates is being used together? If that's going to be disallowed,
> that seems like a major change in the language, not a detail of
> parser implementation.

Maybe you are underestimating the vast differences in implementation
between the current not-really-a-parser and what I am working on.

There is nothing wrong with using a group of templates together, but
there *is* something majorly wrong with patching together one object (a
table, in this case) using pieces from different places. It works with
the current not-really-a-parser because it takes the wiki source texts
from the templates, sticks them together somehow, and then converts them
to HTML. This kind of practice is exactly what leads to all the problems
with our current not-really-a-parser. A proper parser should parse each
template individually, and then use its parse tree in the processing of
the page that uses it.

> Any definition of template that doesn't
> work a lot like a C-type preprocessor macro is likely to be
> difficult to explain to users.

Uhm. I don't think so. Editors are not supposed to know about C or
similar pre-processors.

Quite to the contrary, I think it is quite hard to explain to users how
the taxoboxes are patched together from little pieces that are scattered
around several templates. If the entire table was contained in *one*
template (which, of course, may include other templates inside it, but
nevertheless it represents the whole table), I'm pretty sure that not so
technically savvy people would have less trouble understanding the
concept of templates.

I am sorry if I'm sounding like I'm pounding your current solution to
the taxobox problem. I hope that at least some of you understand my
position. I have put work into this parser, and it would be a shame if
it's not going to be used just because it breaks something that isn't
really supposed to work at all. It would be virtually impossible for me
to make your current way work with a real parser. To compensate, I am
perfectly happy to help you convert all the taxoboxes to a proper structure.

Greetings,
Timwi


references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>	<41320DAA.3090500@apple.com>
	<cgv94n$bjq$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> [The current way of doing template taxoboxes] isn't
> really supposed to work at all. It would be virtually impossible for me
> to make your current way work with a real parser. To compensate, I am
> perfectly happy to help you convert all the taxoboxes to a proper
> structure.
>
> Greetings,
> Timwi

I for one am delighted that you are happy to help convert taxoboxes to a
proper structure (i.e. implement optional parameters).

However I just wanted to remark that your remarks smack of "blame the
user". It is hardly the users' fault that they (we) are using it as a
text replacement mechanism - that is precisely the heritage of the
template system through 1.2 and 1.3 and no-one has ever, until now, said
anything different.

Pete


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
>     ps - just curious, but why isn't there a link to upload images, etc on the
>     edit page?

There is, right in the sidebar. Same as on every page.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 02:27:09PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
> >    ps - just curious, but why isn't there a link to upload images, etc on
> >    the edit page?
>
> There is, right in the sidebar. Same as on every page.

I don't see it.. are you referring to clicking the 'special pages' link,
and then clicking 'upload a file'?

what I was thinking was having a link to upload on the edit page itself,
such that it makes a popup window that allows you to do the upload whilst
you are editing (so you don't lose focus on what you are doing and have to
go to a different tab, browser instance, or different screen to do this)

Ed


body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 02:27:09PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>Edward Peschko wrote:
>>>   ps - just curious, but why isn't there a link to upload images, etc on
>>>   the edit page?
>>
>>There is, right in the sidebar. Same as on every page.
>
> I don't see it.. are you referring to clicking the 'special pages' link,
> and then clicking 'upload a file'?

Toolbox
? What links here
? Related changes
? Upload file
? Special pages

> what I was thinking was having a link to upload on the edit page itself,
> such that it makes a popup window that allows you to do the upload whilst
> you are editing (so you don't lose focus on what you are doing and have to
> go to a different tab, browser instance, or different screen to do this)

You can always open any link in a new windows, this is a standard
browser function.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 03:02:44PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
> >On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 02:27:09PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> >>Edward Peschko wrote:
> >>>  ps - just curious, but why isn't there a link to upload images, etc on
> >>>  the edit page?
> >>
> >>There is, right in the sidebar. Same as on every page.
> >
> >I don't see it.. are you referring to clicking the 'special pages' link,
> >and then clicking 'upload a file'?
>
> Toolbox
> ??? What links here
> ??? Related changes
> ??? Upload file
> ??? Special pages

ah.. I see it now. I missed it before.

thanks,

Ed


from_name: Ewen Caroline

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fr.wikipedia 50.000 articles

body:
Congratulations ! - Bravo ! :)

I hope the Luxembourgish Wiki will achieve this goal in a few years (so far,
we're 7 editors...quite a lot of work :) - J'esp?re que la Wiki
luxembourgeoise arrivera un jour ? ce point (bon, probablement dans quelques
ann?es puisqu'on est qu'? 7 ? ?diter, beaucoup de boulot ? faire :)

Bris?is.

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:19:11 -0700 (PDT), Anthere wrote
> Hi,
>
> The french wikipedia just made it to 50 000 articles
> today.
>
> I must say... I cheated, so as to ensure I would do
> the 50 000 article :-)
> I prepared a collection of stubs and saved them in a
> row at the right moment :-) The trick was to save the
> right article for the 50 000...
>
> Cough.
>
> When I first edited the french wikipedia, it was
> mostly  a collection of stubs, perhaps 5 serious
> articles and 100 stubs. Then months after months,
> articles got better, more complete. And while they
> grew, more and more contributors started complaining
> against stubs, which they judge dishonest toward the
> readers and not worth for the project.
>
> In summer 2002 (the wikipedia was still in the first
> version of the software then, so there was no notion
> of namespaces, and about 700 pages all included), a
> new editor joigned, Tim (Athymik). Tim has now left
> wikipedia.
>
> Tim often wrote stubs; he wrote many in human biology.
> One day, he wrote a stub, which could even be called
> substubs, the most famous of which was the article on
> the apple.
>
> The '''apple''' is a [[fruit]].
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085.
>
> This one, and with it, several other articles on
> fruits (the pear is a fruit etc...) was really
> borderline :-)
>
> After Tim wrote several of those, some people
> protested (definitly, me included).
>
> A reference of this discussion is here
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter%3APoire (this is
> the discussion page of the pear).
>
> The article on the apple is now here :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme
>
> A year later, ''the apple is a fruit'' had become a
> real article. The pirannah affect was born.
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3AEffet_piranha
>
> Tim throw a few bits on a page, and the other editors
> ate them. I think that "the apple is a fruit" became a
> historical reference.
>
> Later, Tim grew tired of Wikipedia, and after he
> dropped his sysop status, he left. I regretted him,
> because we both played a lot having anonymous funny
> exchanges on Wikipedia.
>
> Today, I made as the 50 000 article, la n?fle, the
> medlar.
>
> The medlar is a fruit.
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=N%C3%A8fle&oldid=784091
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A8fle
>
> The expression "Des n?fles" also means in french
> "something of little value"
>
> Just as a stub is in itself of little value.
>
> In doing this, the stub-n?fle, I wished to remind
> editors that if a stub has nothing very exciting, it
> is a start. Our collective additions give our common
> project its value.
>
> I also wished to remind that even if Wikipedia is
> quite young, Wikipedia also has an history. And I
> wanted to thank all those who brought quite a lot and
> who are now gone, such as Athymik and so many others,
> who left some memories, who left content and who are
> now gone.
>
> Thanks to all of them for what their participation.
>
> I'll see what the n?fle article is in one year from
> now. Hopefully in 10 years :-) Hehe.
>
> ant
>
> Les plus anciens se souviendront de cette histoire que
> je vais vous relater. Il existait dans les temps
> anciens un contributeur nomm? Tim. Tim est parti
> depuis de long mois maintenant, mais il fut un
> contributeur important ? une ?poque.
>
> Dans ces d?buts, la majeure partie de l'encyclop?die
> ?tait constitu? de stubs (je pourrais probablement
> dire que le projet comptait environ 100 stubs quand je
> l'?ditait - anonymement - la premi?re fois. Au cours
> des mois, les articles se sont am?lior?s enrichis. Et
> de nouveaux contributeurs se sont mis ? ronchonner
> contre les stubs, jug?s peu dignes du projet.
>
> Un jour, Tim ?crivit une s?rie de stubs, ? la limite
> de l'indignit?. Un de ces stubs fut celui de la
> [[pomme]]. Je vous invite ? voir l'article de l'?poque
> :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085.
> Apr?s que Tim eu ?crit plusieurs articles du m?me
> genre, plusieurs personnes protest?rent (dont moi, car
> en effet, ce genre de stub ne m'enchante pas). Vous
> trouverez une petite r?f?rence ici :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter%3APoire (la
> poire ayant subi le m?me outrage que la pomme).
>
> L'effet pirannah ?tait n?. Tim jeta en pature quelques
> miettes, et les autres ?diteurs firent le reste.
> Presque deux ans plus tard, vous pouvez lire ce qu'il
> deveint de la [[poire]] (certes moins belle que la
> pomme). Voir ainsi [[Wikip?dia:Effet piranha]].
>
> Puis Tim s'est lass?, et, apr?s avoir quitt? son
> statut d'admin, il est parti. Je l'ai regrett?, car
> j'aimais jouer ? l'?diteur anonyme avec lui (jeu
> r?ciproque).
>
> En recr?ant comme 50 000 article la [[n?fle]], j'ai
> voulu ? la fois rappeler aux m?moires que, m?me si un
> stub n'a rien d'excitant, c'est un point de d?part, et
> que nos ajouts collectifs donnent sa valeur ? notre
> projet commun. J'ai voulu aussi rappeler que m?me si
> jeune, Wikip?dia a d?j? une histoire, et remercier
> ceux qui ont d?j? beaucoup apport?s, et sont partis,
> comme [[Utilisateur:Athymik]] ou [[Utilisateur:Curry]]
> (suspendu en plein vol), ou [[Utilisateur:Tibo]] ou
> tellement d'autres, qui sont pass?s, qui ont laiss?
> leur trace, et qui sont repartis. Merci ? eux et ?
> vous tous :-)
>
> ant
>
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I don't have a problem with POV, but I do with detailed listings of each
>incident and casualty. There is violence against Israelis. An encyclopedia
>article would present the statistics, perhaps several examples, but not
>extensive lists. Corresponding lists of Palestinian grievances are also
>inappropriate, although I do think articles about Israeli locations should
>include information regarding previous names of the place.
>
>
Perhaps these lists for all sides are the kind of thing that belongs on
an expanded 9/11 Memorial project.

Ec


from_name: gracefool

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: new sister project (off of home page) redux

body:
"Edward Peschko" <esp5 at pge.com> wrote in message
news:20040827044829.GA6979 at mdssdev05...
> well, I'm not sure if wikiprojects would work for what I had in mind.
> I want to get some heavy-hitters in on this, and I've talked to a
> few of them (Freeman Dyson, Lynn Margulis, Jared Diamond) as well as
> some of the more popular writers like Richard Heinberg and
> Colin Campbell, some EIA energy analysts, the IEA, etc.)
> to ask them for advice. One of the things I asked them about is
> their opinion on wiki.
>
> And they aren't too keen on it as it stands. Aggregating what I've heard,
in
> particular, they have 5 major issues with it:
>
>     1 - no ready road to publishing. Its very hard to get a cohesive
>         physical paper out of wiki.
>
>     2 - no editorial control. Since anyone can edit the page,
>         the background is constantly shifting and not able to be given
>         as a reference. Plus they think it is 'impermanent'.
>
>     3 - No guarantee of attribution.
>
>     4 - lack of features for research collaboration.
>
>     5 - work in progress unable to be kept private amongst a group of
>         researchers until publication.

Firstly, with regards to objections to using Wikipedia for your project, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies

#1 - Just copy and paste the text of a page you think is good enough

#2 - You can link to / reference old versions of a page, which are
guaranteed to not change.

What do you mean by #4?

- gracefool


body:
Edward Peschko wrote:

>    1) ability to upload a gnuplot data file, and have it turn into an associated
>       PNG graph inside mediawiki.
>
>
I'd prefer that, as with many things, we come up with our own syntax for
specifying graphs.  Gnuplot is not the most intuitive of programs, and
ideally it would be possible for a non-technically-minded person to at
least put together a simple graph.

Actually, we might want to look into whether gnuplot is the best tool at
all.  If I remember correctly, it's damn near impossible to generate a
histogram (bar graph) in gnuplot, and there's lots of other things that
are basically hardcoded into it.  I believe Erik Zachte was using
another open-source plotting package, ploticus, for the wiki-stats page,
which might be another option.

-Mark


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Article SVM

body:
Hi all,

The French computer magazine SVM published a very nice article about
Wikipedia.

The magazine informatique SVM a publi? un excellent article sur Wikip?dia.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Svm1.jpg
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Svm2.jpg

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


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Article SVM


references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>	<41320DAA.3090500@apple.com>	<cgv94n$bjq$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cgv9te$dri$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:

> However I just wanted to remark that your remarks smack of "blame the
> user".

Ah. Thanks for pointing that out; I apologise that I came across that
way. (Well, re-reading my first e-mail, I see that I should have known.
But when I saw those ... uhm ... you know :) )

> It is hardly the users' fault that they (we) are using it as a
> text replacement mechanism - that is precisely the heritage of the
> template system through 1.2 and 1.3 and no-one has ever, until now, said
> anything different.

True. Which is no surprise because it has worked until now. But if those
techniques proliferate, then introducing a new parser will eventually
become impossible. And the current not-really-a-parser isn't really
maintainable at all and has a lot of bugs (especially with templates)
which are near impossible to fix. We would steer towards a static,
inextensible template mechanism with loads of unfixable bugs.

This I'm trying to prevent from happening. :-)

Timwi


from_name: Austin Hair

body:
Bah.  What's the big deal about fifty articles?  ;)

(Only kidding.  Kudos to fr:.)

--
Austin D. Hair <austin at austinhair.org>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Callidus
http://www.austinhair.org/
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subject: [Wikitech-l] PHPTal for PHP5 update

body:
There's an early snapshot release of PHPTal for PHP 5 now available. It
doesn't yet include the i18n module so I doubt it would work (yet) with
MediaWiki. If anyone wants to try it out, maybe lend a hand, see:

Announce on mailing list:
http://sf.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=5445473&forum_id=32803

Download snapshot:
http://sf.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=78395&package_id=128560

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Templates/taxoboxes, or: why a converter isn't a parser

references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af804083000486123f077@mail.gmail.com>

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

> Why would it ever break? I can see it getting slow because it cannot
> be optimized but not breaking, all it's doing is just including one
> thing after the other
>
> {{a}} gets Template:A which contains "foo" and {{b}} gets Template:B
> which contains "bar" hence
>
> {{a}}{{b}} = foobar

Of course, this simple example would still work. But picture this:

Template:A contains:         I ''li
Template:B contains:         ke'' hamburgers

currently, {{a}}{{b}} would yield "I like hamburgers", but only
because it sticks the pieces together and then tries to make sense of it.

Why is this bad? Picture this:

Template:A contains:
	{|
	| nowrap
Template:B contains:
	| Text
	|}

Is the "nowrap" a table cell attribute or text in a separate cell? Does
this change depending on whether there is a newline after "nowrap"? ...
And this is just a simple example.

> Why would this break in whatever parser you plan to implement?

Because a parser is not a converter. The current not-really-a-parser is
actually a converter: It looks out for particular syntax elements like
''these'' and turns them into HTML tags. This is bad because it
means that several of these conversions can interfere with each other:

	I ''like [[hamburger|hamburgers'']]

produces invalid HTML. It gets even worse when it tries to locate
{{template inclusions}} and replaces them with some other text, not
knowing what it is or how it fits into the document structure.

A real parser analyses the document's structure. It turns the wiki text
into a data structure in memory that actually bears resemblance to the
structure of the document. It creates a "heading" element where there is
a heading, instead of turning some strategically-placed equals signs
into <h#> tags.

> The only reason i can see why that would happen is if you were to
> implement some auto-completion of the table syntax. Sort of like
> tidy(html) for wikisyntax and do it before things get fetched from
> Template: rather than after everything has been included.

Your terminology "auto-completion" reveals that you are thinking in
terms of conversion. Don't think of it as auto-completion; for example,
if a '' has no matching '', I can tell the parser what to do
independently of what it does when there *is* a matching ''. There are
several possibilities: make an italics element (what you would probably
call auto-completion); make a text element (i.e. pretend the "''" was
actually text); or bail out saying "syntax error". Of course, we don't
want the latter. My parser currently does the second: It turns the ''
into text. I did that because this is also how the current
not-really-a-parser functions. However, I can easily change that.

In our specific case, there would be a document (a template) that has a
{| with no matching |}. What should it do? Unfortunately, none of the
three options make it work the way you have come to expect from the
current not-really-a-parser.

Timwi


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Yes, it could be expanded to include victims of the Gulag and of the
Holocaust as well. There does seem to be quite a lot of energy for compiling
these lists among survivors.

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 15:31:20 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Articles like "Violence against Israelis"
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> I don't have a problem with POV, but I do with detailed listings of each
>> incident and casualty. There is violence against Israelis. An encyclopedia
>> article would present the statistics, perhaps several examples, but not
>> extensive lists. Corresponding lists of Palestinian grievances are also
>> inappropriate, although I do think articles about Israeli locations should
>> include information regarding previous names of the place.
>>
>>
> Perhaps these lists for all sides are the kind of thing that belongs on
> an expanded 9/11 Memorial project.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Marc Hennemeyer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles like "Violence against Israelis"

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Corresponding lists of Palestinian grievances are also
> inappropriate...

Why??

Friedrich Barbarossa


subject: [Wikitech-l] url rewrite and htaccess

body:
Saurav Pathak wrote:
> i am nearly got it to work, except search is not working.
[snip]
> # Rewrite any article as wiki/index.php/article and stop
> RewriteRule ^(.*)$                      index.php?title=$1 [L]

Your rewrite rule overwrites the existing query string, which indeed
breaks search. Use the QSA (query string append) option on the rule.

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>>No it is not since the Commons is a common place to host data and files
>>
>>
>that
>
>
>>are used by more than one wiki. It therefore helps to bind us together,
>>
>>
>not
>
>
>>divide us.
>>
>>
>
>It was my understanding that Wikispecies is to be a common place to host
>species data that is used by more than one wiki.  So why doesn't Wikispecies
>help to bind us together?
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
Wikispecies will be a common place to host bioligical data that will be
available to all wikiresources. It will help to bind the scientific
world and the wikiworld together. Data like the scientific text to
describe a taxon. Discussions on the merits of a particular phenomenon,
scientific research data and papers that have no place in an encyclopedy
will be in WikiSpecies.

It is a fallacy to think WikiSpecies will be less available than
WikiCommons. WikiSpecies will host scientific data, it will be accecible
from within WikiMedia. Technically there is no reason for it to be
otherwise. With WikiScience outside of WikiMedia you are correct, that
is however the least beneficial option for both worlds.

Again, Wikipedia is not only en:wikipedia. En:ToL is currently a
resource that is limited to en:. I wish this was not true, I wish the
en:ToL is open to other wikipedia. The arguments that WikiSpecies is a
fork are the same arguments that keep en:ToL a fork of Taxonominal
information within Wikipedia.

Thanks,
  GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fr.wikipedia 50.000 articles

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Les plus anciens se souviendront de cette histoire que
> je vais vous relater. [...]

J'esp?re que cela ne te g?ne pas que je l'ai traduit en allemand et l'ai
envoy? ? la liste de diffusion allemande. :-)

Merci de cet histoire, Anth?re; je le trouvais tr?s int?ressant. Dommage
que je ne peux pas v?rifier si mes stubs allemands auraient ?t?
am?lior?s; ils ?taient tous ?ffac?s.

Amicalement,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>>> No it is not since the Commons is a common place to host data and files
>>>
>> that
>>
>>> are used by more than one wiki. It therefore helps to bind us together,
>>>
>> not
>>
>>> divide us.
>>>
>>
>> It was my understanding that Wikispecies is to be a common place to host
>> species data that is used by more than one wiki.  So why doesn't
>> Wikispecies
>> help to bind us together?
>>
> I think people are using "data" to mean different things. If it
> means language-independent data (maximum recorded length, say),
> along with a way to splice it into each language's article, then
> great, it would be just as beneficial as sharing images; each
> language WP would get consistent statistics, which would eliminate
> a major maintenance load, and speed creation of articles for all
> the languages - just mention the common taxobox, or common general
> characteristics, and boom, Bulgarian gets content just as good
> as English.
>
> If Wikispeces data means quasi-articles with text in some language,
> that has much more undesirable forking potential.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Hear, Hear !!
WikiSpecies will be mainly in the biological language of choise,
therefore it will be mainly English. It is most definetly not the idea
to have quasi-articles. It is certainly the intention to link to
wikipedias for encyclopedic information. There is no wish for creating
what is already there. Propably resources like WikiCommons will be used
to store pictures in exactly the same way as with Wikipedia. Maybe
WikiSource will be used for fixed scientific texts. Too much speculation
is not good either.

Definetly, the idea is not to fork and the idea is to share strengths
and overcome weaknesses.

Thanks,
  GerardM


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New standard for citations?

body:
About the inclusion of those terror attacks in the year lists.

I think it's important that they go in, but at the same time,
considering the lack of detail (and the complaining user's prior
record), I think it's pretty important they be cited. If Mirv or
someone can provide me with a list of affected articles, I'll see what
I can do about going through and finding citations for each one.

ambi


from_name: Anthere

body:
I think we were roughly 7 when I joined fr.

And I think the english wikipedia was about 50 000 articles when I
joined it.
It seemed a huge place then :-)

This is a special treat to see a wiki transform from a homy place to a
big one, from a place where we all know each other to a rather anonymous
crowd. It is fascinating :-) I am sure the Luxembourgish Wiki will be
very big before you know it... but take the best moments of now when you
are small as well.

Ewen Caroline a ?crit:
> Congratulations ! - Bravo ! :)
>
> I hope the Luxembourgish Wiki will achieve this goal in a few years (so far,
> we're 7 editors...quite a lot of work :) - J'esp?re que la Wiki
> luxembourgeoise arrivera un jour ? ce point (bon, probablement dans quelques
> ann?es puisqu'on est qu'? 7 ? ?diter, beaucoup de boulot ? faire :)
>
> Bris?is.
>
>
> On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:19:11 -0700 (PDT), Anthere wrote
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>The french wikipedia just made it to 50 000 articles
>>today.
>>
>>I must say... I cheated, so as to ensure I would do
>>the 50 000 article :-)
>>I prepared a collection of stubs and saved them in a
>>row at the right moment :-) The trick was to save the
>>right article for the 50 000...
>>
>>Cough.
>>
>>When I first edited the french wikipedia, it was
>>mostly  a collection of stubs, perhaps 5 serious
>>articles and 100 stubs. Then months after months,
>>articles got better, more complete. And while they
>>grew, more and more contributors started complaining
>>against stubs, which they judge dishonest toward the
>>readers and not worth for the project.
>>
>>In summer 2002 (the wikipedia was still in the first
>>version of the software then, so there was no notion
>>of namespaces, and about 700 pages all included), a
>>new editor joigned, Tim (Athymik). Tim has now left
>>wikipedia.
>>
>>Tim often wrote stubs; he wrote many in human biology.
>>One day, he wrote a stub, which could even be called
>>substubs, the most famous of which was the article on
>>the apple.
>>
>>The '''apple''' is a [[fruit]].
>>
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085.
>>
>>This one, and with it, several other articles on
>>fruits (the pear is a fruit etc...) was really
>>borderline :-)
>>
>>After Tim wrote several of those, some people
>>protested (definitly, me included).
>>
>>A reference of this discussion is here
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter%3APoire (this is
>>the discussion page of the pear).
>>
>>The article on the apple is now here :
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomme
>>
>>A year later, ''the apple is a fruit'' had become a
>>real article. The pirannah affect was born.
>>
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3AEffet_piranha
>>
>>Tim throw a few bits on a page, and the other editors
>>ate them. I think that "the apple is a fruit" became a
>>historical reference.
>>
>>Later, Tim grew tired of Wikipedia, and after he
>>dropped his sysop status, he left. I regretted him,
>>because we both played a lot having anonymous funny
>>exchanges on Wikipedia.
>>
>>Today, I made as the 50 000 article, la n?fle, the
>>medlar.
>>
>>The medlar is a fruit.
>>
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=N%C3%A8fle&oldid=784091
>>
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A8fle
>>
>>The expression "Des n?fles" also means in french
>>"something of little value"
>>
>>Just as a stub is in itself of little value.
>>
>>In doing this, the stub-n?fle, I wished to remind
>>editors that if a stub has nothing very exciting, it
>>is a start. Our collective additions give our common
>>project its value.
>>
>>I also wished to remind that even if Wikipedia is
>>quite young, Wikipedia also has an history. And I
>>wanted to thank all those who brought quite a lot and
>>who are now gone, such as Athymik and so many others,
>>who left some memories, who left content and who are
>>now gone.
>>
>>Thanks to all of them for what their participation.
>>
>>I'll see what the n?fle article is in one year from
>>now. Hopefully in 10 years :-) Hehe.
>>
>>ant
>>
>>Les plus anciens se souviendront de cette histoire que
>>je vais vous relater. Il existait dans les temps
>>anciens un contributeur nomm? Tim. Tim est parti
>>depuis de long mois maintenant, mais il fut un
>>contributeur important ? une ?poque.
>>
>>Dans ces d?buts, la majeure partie de l'encyclop?die
>>?tait constitu? de stubs (je pourrais probablement
>>dire que le projet comptait environ 100 stubs quand je
>>l'?ditait - anonymement - la premi?re fois. Au cours
>>des mois, les articles se sont am?lior?s enrichis. Et
>>de nouveaux contributeurs se sont mis ? ronchonner
>>contre les stubs, jug?s peu dignes du projet.
>>
>>Un jour, Tim ?crivit une s?rie de stubs, ? la limite
>>de l'indignit?. Un de ces stubs fut celui de la
>>[[pomme]]. Je vous invite ? voir l'article de l'?poque
>>:
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pomme&oldid=18085.
>>Apr?s que Tim eu ?crit plusieurs articles du m?me
>>genre, plusieurs personnes protest?rent (dont moi, car
>>en effet, ce genre de stub ne m'enchante pas). Vous
>>trouverez une petite r?f?rence ici :
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter%3APoire (la
>>poire ayant subi le m?me outrage que la pomme).
>>
>>L'effet pirannah ?tait n?. Tim jeta en pature quelques
>>miettes, et les autres ?diteurs firent le reste.
>>Presque deux ans plus tard, vous pouvez lire ce qu'il
>>deveint de la [[poire]] (certes moins belle que la
>>pomme). Voir ainsi [[Wikip?dia:Effet piranha]].
>>
>>Puis Tim s'est lass?, et, apr?s avoir quitt? son
>>statut d'admin, il est parti. Je l'ai regrett?, car
>>j'aimais jouer ? l'?diteur anonyme avec lui (jeu
>>r?ciproque).
>>
>>En recr?ant comme 50 000 article la [[n?fle]], j'ai
>>voulu ? la fois rappeler aux m?moires que, m?me si un
>>stub n'a rien d'excitant, c'est un point de d?part, et
>>que nos ajouts collectifs donnent sa valeur ? notre
>>projet commun. J'ai voulu aussi rappeler que m?me si
>>jeune, Wikip?dia a d?j? une histoire, et remercier
>>ceux qui ont d?j? beaucoup apport?s, et sont partis,
>>comme [[Utilisateur:Athymik]] ou [[Utilisateur:Curry]]
>>(suspendu en plein vol), ou [[Utilisateur:Tibo]] ou
>>tellement d'autres, qui sont pass?s, qui ont laiss?
>>leur trace, et qui sont repartis. Merci ? eux et ?
>>vous tous :-)
>>
>>ant
>>
>>
>>_______________________________
>>Do you Yahoo!?
>>Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
>>http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> --
> Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)


body:
Timwi a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Les plus anciens se souviendront de cette histoire que
>> je vais vous relater. [...]
>
>
> J'esp?re que cela ne te g?ne pas que je l'ai traduit en allemand et l'ai
> envoy? ? la liste de diffusion allemande. :-)
>
> Merci de cet histoire, Anth?re; je le trouvais tr?s int?ressant. Dommage
> que je ne peux pas v?rifier si mes stubs allemands auraient ?t?
> am?lior?s; ils ?taient tous ?ffac?s.
>
> Amicalement,
> Timw
> i

Merci :-)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AKurier

Mes stubs sont list?s sur pages ? supprimer, mais j'ai bon espoir, les
d?l?tionnistes ne passeront pas ! En tous cas, le 50000eme a d?j? grossit.

My stubs are currently listed on votes for deletion, but I am
optimistic, deletionists wont win this case. And the 50000 has been
saved by generous editors :-)


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please don't litter my sidewalk...

body:
>> Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 09:19:22 -0700
>> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
>>
>> I agree very strongly with this.  When I talk to reporters and this
>> topic comes up, I specifically ask them *not* to do it, because it is
>> very rude behavior, even as an experiment.
>>
>> --Jimbo

Dear reporters: Some of the nice people who live on my street have the
habit of picking any litter that they see on the sidewalk. I hope you
will resist the urge to dump litter on my sidewalk just to find out
whether anybody really picks it up.

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


from_name: Eric B. Rakim

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: defining the free encyclopedia

body:
>In dealing with matters like this to what extent do we protect
>downstream users?  Should we go ahead and include the text, and add a
>warning that a downstream user republishes the material at his own risk?

I believe that there is always a risk to any publisher to publish anything.
Free speech is only skin deep. I also think that Wikipedia should allow all
media that should be public domain but for some strange copyright
strangeness isn't. Like Max Planck's speech and Mein Kampf. Or like all
those images that have become a part of the world heritage but are still
claimed copyright on. Like the pic of the WTC towers burning and the Che pic
just to take two examples out of tens of thousands. I know that that is way
to radical position for Wikipedia but that's what I feel about the issue.

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Saurav Pathak

subject: [Wikitech-l] url rewrite and htaccess

body:
hi,

i am nearly got it to work, except search is not working.  i have
tried different combinations of rewritrules, but to no avail.  what i
use is given below, based on the entry in meta.wikipedia.  obviously
i don't know mod_rewrite well enough to go much beyond.

i am using mediawiki 1.3.1 installed in /wiki/.  the .htaccess file
is in /wiki/.

The LocalSettings.php variables are:
$wgScriptPath       = "/wiki";
$wgScript           = "$wgScriptPath/index.php";
$wgRedirectScript   = "$wgScriptPath/redirect.php";
$wgArticlePath      = "$wgScriptPath/$1";

Thanks in advance for your help.
saurav
-----
# first, enable the processing
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /wiki

# Verifying if user forgot to put trailling slash. If so, we'll rewrite to Main_Page
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}               ^/wiki$
RewriteRule ^(.*)                        /wiki/index.php [L]

# Don't rewrite requests for files in MediaWiki subdirectories,
# MediaWiki PHP files, HTTP error documents, favicon.ico, or robots.txt
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/(stylesheets|images)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/(redirect|texvc|index).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

# Make sure there is no query string. /Adrian
# This gives "badly formed search query".
# gets /wiki/Special:Search?search=somequery&go=Go instead of
#      /wiki/index.php?search=somequery&go=Go
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/wiki/Special:Search

# Rewrite any article as wiki/index.php/article and stop
RewriteRule ^(.*)$                      index.php?title=$1 [L]
--------


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anent Dartmouth, again

body:
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

> Actually I (currently) have nothing whatsoever to say on this topic...
>
> ...but I really wanted to fix the typo in the word "anent."
>
And I'm surprised that no one has commented that in my original email
I misspelled "chauvinist".

With apologies to M. Nicholas Chauvin,
Geoff


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject:
[WikiEN-l] in response to your article "Librarian: Don't use
	Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard

body:
Point taken.
I was actually quoted out of context, but nevertheless:
My apologies for any inconvenience caused.
-- Jens

On 30 Aug 2004, at 07:10, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 09:19:22 -0700
> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] in response to your article "Librarian: Don't
> 	use	Wikipedia as source" in the Post-Standard
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20040829161922.GD7406 at wikia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>> So please don't tell people "go and try" (they will suceed if they are
>> halfway intelligent) but tell them: "most people just don't do it,
>> that's why wikipedia works".
>
> I agree very strongly with this.  When I talk to reporters and this
> topic comes up, I specifically ask them *not* to do it, because it is
> very rude behavior, even as an experiment.
>
> --Jimbo
>


from_name: Dan Drake

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Michael/User:Mike Garcia

body:
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 04:24:21 UTC, Rick
<giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Good"  It's good that Guanaco doesn't discuss it, or it's good that he's reverting it and listing me as a vandal?  This is is DIRECT contravention of Jimbo's hard ban.

Aren't we *supposed* to delete stuff contributed by hard-banned users? A
quick search of the Wikipedia: name space came up blank for any
information at all about hard banning, so I thought I'd ask here. But if
it's the case, as I think I've seen, then criticizing or reversing a
deletion on the grounds that the particular sumission wasn't really bad in
itself would be invalid.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Edward Peschko wrote:

>    ps - for images, how does mediawiki get around the inode limit? I noticed
>    in the LocalSettings.php that there was a directory for images, but I'd
>    think that images/files being stuffed into one directory would ultimately be
>    cause for trouble..

They are stored into subdirectories with names generated from the MD5 hash
of the image filename. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7d/Brun.jpg

Alfio


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anent Dartmouth, Again

body:
(1) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030163.html
(2) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030167.html

(3) On 30 Aug 2004, at 17:38, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> You said that [[Hanlon's razor]] applies.  "Never attribute to malice
> that
> which can be adequetely explained by stupidity."  This is calling the
> professor stupid.
>
> Then you said the "next problem would be hubris."  Hubris is
> arrogance.  So
> you called the professor arrogant too.
>
> Anthony

With reference to the above emails: You've got things mixed up there,
Anthony.
I said "[[Hanlon's razor]] applies"  when talking about the Darthmouth
affair and User:pcw. That was way back when. See this email:

	http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030030.html

I made the comment
 > However, I do feel that I did not lecture but plead and also feel that
 > I did not engage in hostile behaviour.
when the conversation had long since moved on and I was talking about
Geoff

	http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/030157.html

1.
I asked you to clarify who/what you were referring to. Accusing others
publicly, not clarifying what the accusation refers to (even when
expressly asked to do so) and sending others off on a search is bad
form.

2.
I did not use the words "stupid" and "arrogant" when talking about
User:pcw. I said what I said and I stand by it. I stated what I stated
in a general fashion. Go re-read that email. (You will find that wasn't
trying to draw through the mud anyone there. You will find that I was
actually trying to put things in perspective and included the admission
that we all are guilty of the same crimes.)

3.
I would ask you to not send such emails to WP mailing lists in the
future.
If you still feel you have to, then please at least EXPLAIN what you're
referring to. Especially when asked. Not doing so forces others to
waste their precious time doing what you should have been doing to get
your facts straight, and doing it just so they can defend themselves
against criticism leveled at them.

-- Jens


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] L'effet piranha (was Fr.wikipedia 50.000 articles)

body:
Anthere wrote:

>A year later, ''the apple is a fruit'' had become a
>real article. The pirannah affect was born.
>
I must admit, something called the "piranha effect" prompted a rather
different image in my mind. Instead of an effect produced by editors
swarming to a new article and improving it, my first thought was of the
current discussions on en: about the problems with Votes for deletion.
The concern there is that perhaps the swarm devours and destroys, and
not just destroying articles (some of the articles warrant destruction),
but also sometimes damaging people's self-esteem and the community
atmosphere.

I suppose most swarms that I can think of in nature tend to be pretty
destructive (locusts, sharks, wasps, crickets, etc.). Perhaps we should
consider that we've accomplished a lot just in being able to generate
positive results from swarming behavior at all. We may not be perfect at
harnessing the swarm yet - sometimes the "smart mob" reverts to being a
plain old mob - but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.

--Michael Snow


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Adding a botanical glossary and first letter
	capitalisation

body:
Hoi,
I have a 8878 big botanical glossary that I want to add to the wiktionary. I already have asked Andre Engels to help me out with preparing the upload and helping me out with doing things more easily aided by programs.

However some words are capitalised and some are not as they should be. I do not want to upload all these words before the capitalisation has been turned off for nl:wiktionary. It is just to much work to have it corrected at a later date.

At this moment the slim majority that prevents en:wiktionary to forego first letter capitalisation are some IP-numbers that have it for the Nayes. This "democratic" process prevents both nl:wiktionary and de:wiktionary from having the requested capitalisation turned off. In the discussions on en: it is stated that each project has the choise to decide on this issue. This is however not the case as the programmers want to have all wiktionaries the same way.

In order to have some more discussion on the subject, I send this message both to the wiktionary and wikitech list. I also send it to Jimbo Wales as he does not monitor the wiktionary list afaik. (I spoke with him on sunday..). Please, let us discuss this issue. The nl:wiktionary is on 3123 words, we will already have a big job to get things working again after the transfer. With time this will only increase and again, I will not upload the glossary and have to do these eventually as well.

Questions:
*How are we goint to resolve this issue?
*How can we turn capitalisation off, preferably in a fased way?
*Are there ways to help out with programs?
*How long are we going to discuss this issue before coming to a workable decision. NB not only for the wiktionaries but also the system maintenance?

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Adding a botanical glossary and first letter
	capitalisation


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

references:
<cgrd8l$773$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cgsa9p$gq8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cgsb7g$i9m$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af804083000486123f077@mail.gmail.com>
	<cgvime$8bb$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
I already got it in your reply here:

Maybe you are underestimating the vast differences in implementation
between the current not-really-a-parser and what I am working on.

There is nothing wrong with using a group of templates together, but
there *is* something majorly wrong with patching together one object (a
table, in this case) using pieces from different places. It works with
the current not-really-a-parser because it takes the wiki source texts
from the templates, sticks them together somehow, and then converts them
to HTML. This kind of practice is exactly what leads to all the problems
with our current not-really-a-parser. A proper parser should parse each
template individually, and then use its parse tree in the processing of
the page that uses it.

It's great that you're working on a different way to do it thats not
just dumb-text-includes.

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:55:01 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
> > Why would it ever break? I can see it getting slow because it cannot
> > be optimized but not breaking, all it's doing is just including one
> > thing after the other
> >
> > {{a}} gets Template:A which contains "foo" and {{b}} gets Template:B
> > which contains "bar" hence
> >
> > {{a}}{{b}} = foobar
>
> Of course, this simple example would still work. But picture this:
>
> Template:A contains:         I ''li
> Template:B contains:         ke'' hamburgers
>
> currently, {{a}}{{b}} would yield "I like hamburgers", but only
> because it sticks the pieces together and then tries to make sense of it.
>
> Why is this bad? Picture this:
>
> Template:A contains:
>         {|
>         | nowrap
> Template:B contains:
>         | Text
>         |}
>
> Is the "nowrap" a table cell attribute or text in a separate cell? Does
> this change depending on whether there is a newline after "nowrap"? ...
> And this is just a simple example.
>
> > Why would this break in whatever parser you plan to implement?
>
> Because a parser is not a converter. The current not-really-a-parser is
> actually a converter: It looks out for particular syntax elements like
> ''these'' and turns them into HTML tags. This is bad because it
> means that several of these conversions can interfere with each other:
>
>         I ''like [[hamburger|hamburgers'']]
>
> produces invalid HTML. It gets even worse when it tries to locate
> {{template inclusions}} and replaces them with some other text, not
> knowing what it is or how it fits into the document structure.
>
> A real parser analyses the document's structure. It turns the wiki text
> into a data structure in memory that actually bears resemblance to the
> structure of the document. It creates a "heading" element where there is
> a heading, instead of turning some strategically-placed equals signs
> into <h#> tags.
>
> > The only reason i can see why that would happen is if you were to
> > implement some auto-completion of the table syntax. Sort of like
> > tidy(html) for wikisyntax and do it before things get fetched from
> > Template: rather than after everything has been included.
>
> Your terminology "auto-completion" reveals that you are thinking in
> terms of conversion. Don't think of it as auto-completion; for example,
> if a '' has no matching '', I can tell the parser what to do
> independently of what it does when there *is* a matching ''. There are
> several possibilities: make an italics element (what you would probably
> call auto-completion); make a text element (i.e. pretend the "''" was
> actually text); or bail out saying "syntax error". Of course, we don't
> want the latter. My parser currently does the second: It turns the ''
> into text. I did that because this is also how the current
> not-really-a-parser functions. However, I can easily change that.
>
> In our specific case, there would be a document (a template) that has a
> {| with no matching |}. What should it do? Unfortunately, none of the
> three options make it work the way you have come to expect from the
> current not-really-a-parser.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: John

subject: [WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia

body:
I'd like to help tackle the issue of labeling images according to
their copyright status. Is there a specific article someone could
point me to explaining the procedure for labeling images?

What should I do when I come across an image that has no information
on its source/copyright status?


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 01:30:44PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Jens Frank wrote:
>
> >Modified Files:
> >	DifferenceEngine.php
> >Log Message:
> >BUG#244 Backed out changes done in Patch 1.33 due to major
> >security problems. HTML tags were not escaped and it was possible to
> >execute arbitrary javascript code
>
> Can you give me an example of two article texts such that the diff
> between them produces this security problem?

http://mediawiki.mormo.org/index.php?title=Difftest&diff=0&oldid=5982

Currently mormo is running the broken version.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Timwi

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
>
> It's apparently related to the external C-DiffEngine. The bug only
> occurs when wgUseExternalDiffEngine is set to true.

Fixed. Thanks. :-)


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: authoritative web site]

body:
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> writes:
>
>
>Dear Ms. Stagnitta,
>
>thank you for your reponse. There were lenghly discussions on several
>places in the Internet. May I quote you
?
>
>
>Yours,
>Mathias Schindler
>
I just re-read what I originally sent to Al Fasoldt in the recent
Post-Standard column.   I'm afraid I do have egg all over my face.
Another great illustration for my students about reviewing what they
have written in an email before they hit send.

I'll probably regret saying this... this is what got me in trouble in
the first place, but... you may quote me.  I thank you for forwarding
this to the ongoing discussion.

While I was not happy with the way the column was worded (especially the
title), I take responsibility for the way it was interpreted by Mr.
Fasoldt.  I did say in a direct quote to him...it appears that "the
Wikipedia is not an authoritative source.  It even states this in their
disclaimer on their website."  What I was discussing was the difficulty
we all face in determining the authority of information found on a web
source.  In particular... what steps can the average student use to
determine the authority of a website for research, if at every turn,
there is no author, no sponsor, or very long disclaimers that state the
content may or may not be valid.   I commented that I thought if he was
going to recommend Wikipedia to his readers, that he should comment on
how the site was created. Specifically, that the Wikipedia was different
from the old fashioned print encyclopedia that his casual web surfing
readers may be used to.

The message was NOT... do not use Wikipedia as a source.... or that
Wikipedia is not an authoritative source.   The message was that the
best thing about the web (the sharing of information and ideas) can also
make it harder for the average high school student to make a judgement
call when checking the authority of a source used for research.

I'm sorry if this generated controversy over the authority of the site,
this is NOT what was intended.  It just illustrates the problem.   It
has generated some wonderful discussions though.   Another great thing
about the web!

==================================================================
Susan E. Stagnitta


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: authoritative web site]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki 1.3.2 released

body:
What about writing the names of the developers who contributed to a
version in the release notes ?

Brion Vibber a ?crit:
> 1.3.2 fixes since 1.3.1:
> * Fix namespaced page creation links when no go match
> * When cookies are disabled, don't show login screen twice
> * Install should no longer die when PHP is pre-configured to compress
>   output
> * Fixed bug that caused long Japanese pages to time out with Tidy active
> * When session.handler is set incorrectly, try automatic override
>   to 'files'
> * Watch/Unwatch links back to the affected page instead of Main Page
> * Upload link no longer displayed on Monobook if uploading is disabled
> * Special:Allmessages faster, shows correct original text, works in
>   safe mode
>
> Anyone still running the 1.3 beta releases is _strongly_ recommended to
> upgrade to the current code due to numerous fixed bugs and a security
> vulnerability in the betas with some PHP configurations.
>
> Note that while MediaWiki through 1.1 required register_globals to be
> on, 1.2 and 1.3 *do not*. If you have register_globals on, you should
> turn it off unless you are absolutely sure you require it for some other
> package. See http://php.net/register_globals for general information.
>
>
> Release notes:
> http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=264310
>
> Download:
> http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.2.tar.gz?download
>
> Wiki admin help mailing list:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>
> Bug report system:
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/
>
> Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
> #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> MediaWiki-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes DifferenceEngine.php,1.36,1.37

references:
<E1C1V1N-0004Q2-4W@sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net>
	<cgv6ne$49p$1@sea.gmane.org> <20040830220130.GL18644@jeluf.mine.nu>

body:
On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 12:01:32AM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 01:30:44PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> > Jens Frank wrote:
> >
> > >Modified Files:
> > >	DifferenceEngine.php
> > >Log Message:
> > >BUG#244 Backed out changes done in Patch 1.33 due to major
> > >security problems. HTML tags were not escaped and it was possible to
> > >execute arbitrary javascript code
> >
> > Can you give me an example of two article texts such that the diff
> > between them produces this security problem?
>
> http://mediawiki.mormo.org/index.php?title=Difftest&diff=0&oldid=5982
>
> Currently mormo is running the broken version.

It's apparently related to the external C-DiffEngine. The bug only
occurs when wgUseExternalDiffEngine is set to true.

JeLuF


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Questions: How to bulk-copy/clone MediaWiki:namespace
 pages from Wiki A to Wiki B (same server)

body:
(1) Is there a simple way to bulk copy (clone) the whole
MediaWiki:namespace from one wiki to another wiki (on the same server) ?
(2) Is there a simply way to extract let's say five MediaWiki:pages so
that I can put it together with a patch into the CVS ?

In my case, the coming e-mail notification patch for 1.3.2 (see my
recent (pre)documentation pages on the MetaWiki) uses  a couple of
MediaWiki:namespace pages for composing the notification mails and other
purposes and I want to publish these important pages together with the
program patch in one "package".

But I don't know, how.
Tom


subject: [WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia

body:
John <flockmeal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a specific article someone could
> point me to explaining the procedure for labeling images?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags has instructions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yann/Untagged_Images has a list of
untagged images.

> What should I do when I come across an image that has no information
> on its source/copyright status?

You could ask the uploader about it, or you could decide that the
image is {{fairuse}} following the guidelines at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_description_page#Fair_use_rationale.
Or you could add {{unverified}} to the image description page.

Angela.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Calling attention to "broken" articles

body:
> On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:44:44 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> > Here's an idea; how about adding a "summon editor attention" link
> or button
> > that places the article into a page similar to recentchanges?

I agree, could work well.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] questions on mediawiki features

body:
On Monday 30 August 2004 21:59, Delirium wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
> >    1) ability to upload a gnuplot data file, and have it turn into an
> > associated PNG graph inside mediawiki.
>
> I'd prefer that, as with many things, we come up with our own syntax for
> specifying graphs.  Gnuplot is not the most intuitive of programs, and
> ideally it would be possible for a non-technically-minded person to at
> least put together a simple graph.
>
> Actually, we might want to look into whether gnuplot is the best tool at
> all.  If I remember correctly, it's damn near impossible to generate a
> histogram (bar graph) in gnuplot, and there's lots of other things that
> are basically hardcoded into it.  I believe Erik Zachte was using
> another open-source plotting package, ploticus, for the wiki-stats page,
> which might be another option.

I'd also recommend taking a look at JpGraph. It is very easy to program and
produces nice graphs. The only disadvantage is that it is under QPL which
doesn't bother Wikipedia but might hurt other projects.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] bugs: after actions such as "E-mail this user" : wiki
 should return to last relevant page, not to Main_Page

body:
similar bug as in "watch this page" (this being now solved in 1.3.2):

(1)
* Situation: being on a page of user X
* after having sent an "E-Mail this user" an acknowledgment page appears
and returns to Main_page
* However, it is proposed to automatically return to last relevant page
(i.e. the page of User_X) instead

(2)
* After deleting a page (as Admin), the wiki returns to the Main_Page
* It is suggested to return to the previous relevant page (in this case,
the page visited _before_ the now-deleted page)