body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>I just learned that Amazon.com has some new web services stuff, that
>might be interesting.  You can download their kit, and write your own
>applications on your own website.  I haven't checked it out yet, but
>the info is on http://www.amazon.com/webservices
>
>I guess they are not placing their reviews under GFDL, though... that
>would have been a great service!  Is it OK to put book reviews in
>Wikipedia (on an Amazon scale)?  Do we know how many book reviews are
>already in Wikipedia?  Or should there be a separate wiki for this?
>
Of course copying Amazon's reviews would carry too much copyright
violation risks.

Wikipedians have sporadically written about their favorite books, and
that does represent some kind of book review even if it's called
something else. Since we're not in the book selling business we can give
equal treatment to old classics as to the latest best seller.  It's been
developping even better in the movies area.  This all has been
functioning  quite well,  so there's no need for changes.

Eclecticology


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction of
	current and ongoing events of historical significance

body:
On 8/12/02 9:05 AM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> "Current events is not a news page. We shouldn't be in the business of
> writing articles about breaking news stories, unless indeed we can be very
> confident, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, that in the future
> there will be a significant call for an encyclopedia article on that topic.
> One very significant danger is that news articles must be kept current in
> order to remain accurate. Wikipedians might begin a news article and then
> simply lose interest in the topic, whereupon the article becomes
> inaccurate. In short, we aren't set up to be an amateur news organization,
> and we shouldn't try to compete with professional news organizations."
>
> In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not yet
> determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be
> significant when it does. It is pretty clear that an article that does
> doesn't attract participation is a loser. If an article does attact
> significant participation it provides a record of contemporary views of the
> event.

That's one opinion. Mine is different.


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: Is Wikipedia a WEB Encyklopedia was Re: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
On 12-08-2002, Stephen Gilbert wrote thusly :
> --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
> wrote:
> <snip>
> > I agree we must press on with what we have but it
> > makes
> > me nervous to hear people claiming the text only
> > wiki
> > interface is an advantage that should be preserved.
> I don't think anyone is claiming that. For my part, I
> think that the text interface is very important; that
> doesn't mean that a GUI is out of the question. I just
> want to be able to do everything with my keyboard. If
> others think a GUI would be better for them, I have no
> objection, so long as the GUI doesn't render the text
> interface obsolete.

Another thing worth discussing :
is and if so how much is Wikipedia a Web Encyklopedia ?

Web presentation of text (or content) is not like
in traditional publications.

It is generally realized that web perception of information
is quite different. Layout and use of multimedia resources
can contribute greatly to qualities of Web pages.
If used wisely, that is.

On the other hand the "content is the king" motto is another point
of view that has its merits, I can't deny.
One should strike a balance.
It is not a top priority obviously but perhaps a subject for an "editorial"
discussion.

Regards,
kpjas


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Easton's Bible Dictionary

body:
> Should [[Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)]] contain a list of
> all the created topics? That would reduce the orphans list a lot...

No, they should be orphans; because that's what they really are
until some human being comes in to edit them and link them into
the rest of the site.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] diff on recent changes

body:
> I have noticed that when one clicks one of the 'diff' links on
> the Recent changes page, one does not see the diff of the change
> to the right of it, but the last change to the page, whichever it
> was. Is there a reason for this? I would think that the other
> functionality would be better.

That bug has already been reported.  It's just a pain to fix,
and I'm working on other implementations of the "Recent Changes"
page now anyway, so there's not much point to fixing what's going
to be replaced.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction  of

body:
>Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Information on contributing to the current events page
>>[...]
>> In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not
yet
>> determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be
>
>Would it be wrong to write this under [[2002]] right away?  Even if
>the invasion of Iraq in October doesn't happen, it is a fact that
>during July and August many worried that it would, and this could be
>worth noting anyway.  Besides "births", "deaths", and "events", the
>year-in-review pages could have a new headline for "media reporting".
>Or is that the same as "events"?

I personally wouldn't put a non-event like that under a year page.
The media reports lots of things, and people worry about a lot of
things, that never happened and never will.  The year pages should
report on what actually did happen.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Transitioning toward a clean wiki syntax.

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>While I think that your fears are unjustified, Cunc,
>at the same time I feel that I know where you're coming from.
>Lee has said that he doesn't value humility, and it shows;
>but this is his personality type, and I don't think
>that he intends to be a tyrant (which I hope that you agree with).
>
>This is one reason that I was trying to get a discussion forum
>for bugs and features that more people would see than this list.
>When Lee closes a request because he doesn't want to implement it,
>it looks dictatorial and arbitrary to me, and *I* know better --
>imagine what it must look like to a random user that doesn't!
>But this is a problem of perception, because Lee *does*
>bow to popular opinion -- and solicit it, as he did this time.
>
At the root of most debates about dictatorship, cabals, etc. there is
this problem of perception.  The perception of a dictatorship can often
linger even when the reality of dictatorship is completely absent.  A
lack of humility doesn't help the problems.  Things do need to get done,
even if or as (regrettably)  meaningful conversations fade off into some
non-productive never-never land.  In a "tech" context a person with a
"dumb" problem wants to feel that he has been heard and considered.  He
doesn't want to be silently ignored, but he doesn't expect that there
will always be a solution to all of the problems that he raises.
Eclecticology

>
>My opinion on the discussion thing, BTW,
>is that the best thing to do might well be
>to put a link to [[Wikpedia-L]] on [[Bug reports]],
>with instructions that while SourceForge is for ''reporting'',
>''discussion'' of bugs and features takes place on the list.
>Does anybody object to my adding that?
>
No objection


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Parsing TeX

in_reply_to: <20020812081114.GE4502@math-lw-n02.ucr.edu>; from toby+wikipedia-l@math.ucr.edu on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 01:11:14AM -0700

body:
On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 01:11:14AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
>
> >Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> >>Jan Hidders wrote:
>
> You intend to render [$...$] by calling LaTeX (possibly using a script to
> render simple things in other ways, but still ultimately to make LaTeX the
> arbiter of meaning), right?

Exactly. And these other ways could also be MathML, for example.

> But now should I understand that you won't normally use it in an
> expression like [$x^2y = z_1$]; you'd write [$x^2$][$y$] = [$z_1$], and
> save the full power of LaTeX for the fancy stuff? That would keep people
> from trying [$x% = x/100$], mostly.

Ah, isn't communication wonderful if it works. :-) Actually I would even
expect people to write  [$x$]2[$y$]. However, if I'm honest I
have to admit that my fingers would be itching to change that to [$x^2y =
z_1$].

> >>Well, that's just it.
> >>We must mention LaTeX to make [$c^2$] work your way.
>
> >Where in my little explanation did I use the word LaTeX?
>
> If [$...$] calls LaTeX, then I hope that you mention it ''somewhere''.
> I understand that you don't have to mention it at the ''beginning''.

Well, having thought about it a bit more, maybe I *would* mention it at the
beginning. If [$ .. $] means that its contents is going to be interpreted as
LaTeX markup then that is what the first sentence of its description should
say. But I would follow that with saying that for simple mathematics you
only have to know [$x_1$] and [$y^k$] means.

> I also am speaking about ''if'' we introduce a markup for LaTeX;
> but my argument is that it shouldn't make simple things any harder,
> or introduce surprises into simple things (like weird behavior for "%").

I agree, and that is one of the reasons that I now think that we should
mention LaTeX right from the beginning. People then would know that "weird"
stuff might happen if they are going to put more than just variable
names between [$ and $].

> I remember these, and I agree that there's no point in rehashing them.
> It's the comment that <var> was never intended for mathematical variables
> that caught my eye.  I'd like to hear more about that, if you want, either
> here or elsewhere.

Well, I didn't consider that an important argument because it is what
browser are actually doing with it at the moment that matters. Anyway. The
description in HTML2.0:

  The VAR element indicates a placeholder variable, typically rendered as
  italic. For example:

  Type <SAMP>html-check <VAR>file</VAR> | more</SAMP> to check
  <VAR>file</VAR> for markup errors.

in HTML3.2:

  used for variables or arguments to commands

and in HTML4.0:

  Indicates an instance of a variable or program argument.

In "A beginners guide to HTML" (originally at NCSA) it is described as:

  for a "metasyntactic" variable, where the user is to replace the
  variable with a specific instance. Typically displayed in italics.
  (rm <var>filename</var> deletes the file.)

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Fact Factory: a Wikipedia knock-off

body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

>>Is it OK to put book reviews in
>>Wikipedia (on an Amazon scale)?  Do we know how many book reviews are
>>already in Wikipedia?  Or should there be a separate wiki for this?
>>
>>
>I think a superb idea for a separate Wiki.
>
>
>
see http://bookshelved.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marxists.org

body:
The fine communists over at marxists.org have approached me about the
possibilities of sharing content.  They have a lot of content that's
under the GNU FDL, and they've expressed an interest in putting it
into the wikipedia.

I was brutally honest with them about my own personal opinion of
Marxism, which is quite low, and they were more pleasant to me in
return than I deserved.  I recommended that they subscribe to this
list to chat about how best to put their stuff into the wikipedia.

I recommended that they might want to add just a few articles a day
for as long as it would take, rather than dumping everything in at
once.  This would give people a better chance to respond.

They appear to be interested in non-bias, and to understand that
people would want to make modifications in order to make things
satisfactory to a wide audience.  They appear to have a genuine
interest in contributing solid knowledge.

I'm just saying this now to invite everyone to go take a look at
their site, so that we can have intelligent comments for them.

--Jimbo


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Easton's Bible Dictionary

body:
Should [[Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)]] contain a list of all the
created topics? That would reduce the orphans list a lot...


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving vs. redirecting (sysop application)

body:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>>It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the name of an
>>article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to MOVE the article
>>rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.
>>May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?
>
>
> Any logged in user can move articles. Or has this changed?

It only recently changed *to* allowing any logged-in user to move
articles. (It has not changed back.)

But, if the title you want to move _to_ already exists (as a redirect to
the current title, or as a clunkily-made paste-in), you have to delete
it first, and _that_ requires being a sysop.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] date links...

body:
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:

>The normal form of date links in the wikipedia seems to be Febuary 1,
>March 15 etc. However, people often try to link to date in different
>forms - Febuary 1st, 15 March etc. I'm not sure what should be done
>about that... However, as I speak, redirects are being created for dates
>in number format - 8-11 etc. And there is a basic problem with that,
>which if you look at my example shows up loud and clear. American date
>format is NOT the same as Australian or English date format. I don't
>know about the rest of the world, but in Australia and the UK dates are
>written day/month/year NOT month/day/year. So if I were to write an
>article and try to link to it using that format I'd end up on the wrong
>day entirely.
>
>Which day is 8-11? Right now it's being linked to September 11, but if I
>was using it I'd want it to link to November 8... People shouldn't use
>this format at all, and it especially shouldn't be automatically
>disambiguated because it will make a LOT of facts apparantly 'wrong'.
>
Oh-no!  and I thought that 8-11 would be August 11.

The Canadian situation on this is chaotic.  Traditionally Canada
followed the Australian and English example, but because of the American
proximity and American multinationals just as many people follow the
American pattern.  Thus any date up to the 12th of any month is
ambiguous when it is in number form.  I once pointed out to a client who
had written a year's worth of post-dated alimony cheques to his ex using
numbered days that she could have cashed one a day until January 12.  On
way of coping is to make sure that the name or letter abbreviation is
used for the month; in some situation a Roman numeral can be used for
the month.

Now all government correspondance and government forms use the ISO Y-M-D
format;  Acceptance and usage by others is mixed.  Using [[08-11]] out
of context is obviously confusing and misleading.  It is only a matter
of co-incidence that the M-D elements happen to coincide with the
American dating system.
Eclecticology


body:
On 12-08-2002, Lars Aronsson wrote thusly :
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > Making the ISBN links go to a book store search engine giving you
> > comparative prices is very different from Amazon links which usually are
> I just learned that Amazon.com has some new web services stuff, that
> might be interesting.  You can download their kit, and write your own
> applications on your own website.  I haven't checked it out yet, but
> the info is on http://www.amazon.com/webservices
> I guess they are not placing their reviews under GFDL, though... that
> would have been a great service!  Is it OK to put book reviews in
> Wikipedia (on an Amazon scale)?  Do we know how many book reviews are
> already in Wikipedia?  Or should there be a separate wiki for this?
I think a superb idea for a separate Wiki.

Regards,
kpjas


body:
> It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the
> name of an article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to
> MOVE the article rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.
>
> May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?

Actually I just made that feature available to non-sysops as well,
but I also have no problem making you a sysop to you can head off
vandals and such.

And "move" is not an alternative to redirects--in fact it makes one.
It just also moves the article history to the new title instead of
leaving it under the redirect.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction of current and ongoing events of historical significance

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>What do the people on the list think of articles like
>[[Stock market downturn of 2002]] and [[United States invasion of Iraq]]?
>Much previous discussion is at the pages linked from
>[[Talk:Stock market downturn of 2002]] and [[Talk:Main Page]].
>See also the The Cunctator's Aug 11 00:34 PDT change to
>[[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]].
>
Since these issues have not yet played themselves out, I would consider
them pre-historic.  Though the Iraq item is a tad speculative.  The
facts are continuing to evolve, and much of what is written is based on
incomplete information.  But Wikipedian collaboration can overcome that.

I would put these dogs on a long leash, but still watch that they don't
bite.

Eclecticology


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] diff on recent changes

body:
I have noticed that when one clicks one of the 'diff' links on the
Recent changes page, one does not see the diff of the change to the right
of it, but the last change to the page, whichever it was. Is there a reason
for this? I would think that the other functionality would be better.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Naming conventions (city names)

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>I saw the tail end of discussion of this issue on this list,
>but I didn't participate and, thinking that the issue was decided,
>but also thinking that the decision was (to an extent) wrong,
>and seeing no mention of the dissent that I remembered from the list
>on the page [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names)]],
>I added a statement of my opinion, just for the record, on the talk page.
>
>To my surprise, many others chimed in to say that they felt the same,
>and in fact some have now been saying that the issue was ''never'' decided.
>If that is true, then the naming conventions page is in error
>(to the extent that it purports to describe settled policy).
>
>'''I especially urge natives and residents of the British Isles,
>and other native English speakers in Europe, to weigh in!!!'''
>
I've been following the discussion which has become quite long -- to the
point where I'm not sure what is still being debated anymore!
Eclecticology


body:
> I think we should go back to having the move function move the
> Talk page with the subject page (or at least have that as a
> checkbox option on the move interface).
>
> I don't see a compelling reason why the Talk page shouldn't move
> as the default.

Nor do I; having it be a checkbox option checked by default
sounds good to me.  I'm working in that part of the code right
now anyway to help settle Mav's nerves a bit, so I'll do that
while I'm there.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the name of an article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to MOVE the article rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.

May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?

I pledge not to impose my POV on articles, and not to abuse this power to "win" edit wars. I promise not to "stealthily" edit such controversial articles as evolution, global warming, etc. Okay?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] diff on recent changes

body:
>> That bug has already been reported.  It's just a pain to fix,
>> and I'm working on other implementations of the "Recent Changes"

> I was thinking about what it would take to build a website where
> a wiki is just one of the components.  Other components might be
> a weblog, a bugzilla, a part with read-only web pages, etc.  You
> would still want a single "recent changes" page for all these
> parts.  All it takes is a standardized RC log file format (or
> database table) to which all components can add a line (or record)
> when an update is made.  Since each component could use different
> methods to present a diff, the most general and flexible approach
> would be to let one field of the RC log format be a complete URL
> to the diff.  Just an idea.

And an interesting one.  The implementation I'm working on now does
have a "recent changes" database table separate from the wiki tables
themselves, so it would be easy to extend at some point to add other
information sources into it.  Unfortunately, the major problem at
the moment is handling information overload, finding better ways to
filter the information that is already too much for human bandwidth.


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] diff on recent changes

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>

Unfortunately, the major problem at
> the moment is handling information overload, finding better ways to
> filter the information that is already too much for human bandwidth.

Changing the experienced editors' focus to approving a few changes,
instead of reviewing all changes for vandalism, would split the
information load.

regards,
mirwin


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction  of
 current and ongoing events of historical significance

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Information on contributing to the current events page
>[...]
> In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not yet
> determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be

Would it be wrong to write this under [[2002]] right away?  Even if
the invasion of Iraq in October doesn't happen, it is a fact that
during July and August many worried that it would, and this could be
worth noting anyway.  Besides "births", "deaths", and "events", the
year-in-review pages could have a new headline for "media reporting".
Or is that the same as "events"?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


body:
On 8/12/02 5:50 PM, "lcrocker at nupedia.com" <lcrocker at nupedia.com> wrote:

>> It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the
>> name of an article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to
>> MOVE the article rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.
>>
>> May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?
>
> Actually I just made that feature available to non-sysops as well,
> but I also have no problem making you a sysop to you can head off
> vandals and such.
>
> And "move" is not an alternative to redirects--in fact it makes one.
> It just also moves the article history to the new title instead of
> leaving it under the redirect.
>
I think we should go back to having the move function move the Talk page
with the subject page (or at least have that as a checkbox option on the
move interface).

I don't see a compelling reason why the Talk page shouldn't move as the
default.

Thoughts?


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Parsing TeX

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>But now should I understand that you won't normally use it in an
>>expression like [$x^2y = z_1$]; you'd write [$x^2$][$y$] = [$z_1$], and
>>save the full power of LaTeX for the fancy stuff? That would keep people
>>from trying [$x% = x/100$], mostly.

>Ah, isn't communication wonderful if it works. :-) Actually I would even
>expect people to write  [$x$]2[$y$]. However, if I'm honest I
>have to admit that my fingers would be itching to change that to [$x^2y =
>z_1$].

If people write [$x$]2[$y$] = [$z$]1,
then we really gain nothing from using the LaTeX syntax.
OTOH, if you change it to [$x^2y = z_1$], then people that copy you
will be likely to write [$x% = x/100$], even without reading
[[Wikipedia:How does one edit a math page]] or whatever.
So we have a difference between simple math that doesn't need LaTeX
and complicated math that people need to know LaTeX to use.
And these will be written in two different wiki styles as well,
just using the same symbol [$...$] (or whatever).

>>If [$...$] calls LaTeX, then I hope that you mention it ''somewhere''.
>>I understand that you don't have to mention it at the ''beginning''.

>Well, having thought about it a bit more, maybe I *would* mention it at the
>beginning. If [$ .. $] means that its contents is going to be interpreted as
>LaTeX markup then that is what the first sentence of its description should
>say. But I would follow that with saying that for simple mathematics you
>only have to know [$x_1$] and [$y^k$] means.

Perhaps it would be more profitable just to have a system
that handles scripts and not the rest of LaTeX, for ordinary use
(that is, use without the \sum s and \mapsto s of this world).
This thought is expanded upon below.

>>I also am speaking about ''if'' we introduce a markup for LaTeX;
>>but my argument is that it shouldn't make simple things any harder,
>>or introduce surprises into simple things (like weird behavior for "%").

>I agree, and that is one of the reasons that I now think that we should
>mention LaTeX right from the beginning. People then would know that "weird"
>stuff might happen if they are going to put more than just variable
>names between [$ and $].

Still, as you taught me, many people will just copy this notation,
and their usage won't satisfy the [[Principle of least astonishment]] ^_^.

>>I remember these, and I agree that there's no point in rehashing them.
>>It's the comment that <var> was never intended for mathematical variables
>>that caught my eye.  I'd like to hear more about that, if you want, either
>>here or elsewhere.

>Well, I didn't consider that an important argument because it is what
>browser are actually doing with it at the moment that matters. Anyway.

[snipped for brevity; see Jan's last post]

All this makes me wonder if perhaps it should be in  anyway.
You'd probably agree with this too; and most browsers don't distinguish
 from <var> (although lynx does, or can, as I've mentioned before).

----

Maybe we should do this instead:

Develop a wiki syntax for subscripts and superscripts
that can be used for math ''or'' other things, such as chemistry.
(My best suggestion now is "_{...}" and "^{...}".
For simplicity in the algorithm, braces would ''not'' be optional,
which would also spare random underscores in other contexts.
And perhaps it would be best to use something other than braces too.
But these details aren't central to what I'm talking about now.)

I should give up on this <var> crap and use  instead.
(You can continue to try to convince me to use '' and '''
in every situation instead of  and , while this is going on.)

The above can be implemented now (or at least soon);
meanwhile, we all work on a LaTeX system intended only
for complicated (displayed?) mathematical expressions,
and which, like tables, will be an advanced feature
(although as accessible as we can manage to make it)
that people won't copy without knowing that it's special.
This LaTeX (or similar) won't be used for most math expressions,
but we won't have two systems for math expressions either,
because there ''is'' no special syntax for most math!
(The  and  markup would work for anything, not just math.)

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] date links...

body:
The normal form of date links in the wikipedia seems to be Febuary 1,
March 15 etc. However, people often try to link to date in different
forms - Febuary 1st, 15 March etc. I'm not sure what should be done
about that... However, as I speak, redirects are being created for dates
in number format - 8-11 etc. And there is a basic problem with that,
which if you look at my example shows up loud and clear. American date
format is NOT the same as Australian or English date format. I don't
know about the rest of the world, but in Australia and the UK dates are
written day/month/year NOT month/day/year. So if I were to write an
article and try to link to it using that format I'd end up on the wrong
day entirely.

Which day is 8-11? Right now it's being linked to September 11, but if I
was using it I'd want it to link to November 8... People shouldn't use
this format at all, and it especially shouldn't be automatically
disambiguated because it will make a LOT of facts apparantly 'wrong'.

If you want redirects for dates I'd make them only for the ordinal
numbers - 2nd, 16th etc. A lot of people use them in their writing
because they flow smoother than the other version.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Easton's Bible Dictionary

body:
Lee <(?) wrote:

>? wrote:

>>Should [[Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)]] contain a list of
>>all the created topics? That would reduce the orphans list a lot...

>No, they should be orphans; because that's what they really are
>until some human being comes in to edit them and link them into
>the rest of the site.

I agree.  The purpose of the orphans list is not to be small;
if that were our goal, Lee could easily code it to be perpetually empty.
The purpose is to give us information stating that certain articles
aren't going to be found by people just reading through the website,
and that will still (probably) be true if they're link from
[[Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)]].  (Why click on something
just because it's in a long list of articles that we copied
from an 1897 encyclopaedia?)

Indeed, that so many of these articles are orphans merely shows
that many of them probably shouldn't exist (at this stage of
the development of Wikipedia, that is; we'll want them *eventually*).
IMO.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] date links...

body:
Does anybody outside of the ISO actually use dashes instead of slashes?
If not (and I realise that this is a big if),
then the redirects become reasonable as a way to use ISO dates.
If so, then I agree that they're a bad idea,
and should in fact be deleted (*at least* up to the 12th).

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>I think we should go back to having the move function move the Talk page
>with the subject page (or at least have that as a checkbox option on the
>move interface).

I agree!

>I don't see a compelling reason why the Talk page shouldn't move as the
>default.

I don't really care what the *default* is,
I just want the option.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marxists.org

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>The fine communists over at marxists.org have approached me about the
>possibilities of sharing content.  They have a lot of content that's
>under the GNU FDL, and they've expressed an interest in putting it
>into the wikipedia.
>
>I was brutally honest with them about my own personal opinion of
>Marxism, which is quite low, and they were more pleasant to me in
>return than I deserved.  I recommended that they subscribe to this
>list to chat about how best to put their stuff into the wikipedia.
>
>I recommended that they might want to add just a few articles a day
>for as long as it would take, rather than dumping everything in at
>once.  This would give people a better chance to respond.
>
>I'm just saying this now to invite everyone to go take a look at
>their site, so that we can have intelligent comments for them.
>
I speak as a person who believes that Marxists have gotten a bad rap
over the years,  and that they failed because they antagonized people
with big vested interests in keeping the economic system just as it is
so that it can keep producing economic wonders like Enron.

I'm impressed with the democratic philosophy that they apply to the
operation of their site.  They even include detailed reports on their
internal financial operations.  The kind of dispute they had over
developing their Chinese language version seems to be just the kind of
arguments that we often have among Wikipedians.  They should fit in very
well.

Their site includes the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA), a series of
important E-texts relevant to their interests.  This already
includes.the first 30 volumes of the collected works of Lenin.  They
would need to understand that we are not a Guttenberg style repository
of E-texts.

One other thing that I've noticed over the years about dedicated Marxist
volunteers is their immense capacity for work thankless in the face of
overwhelming odds.  They also have a sense of humour. -- very important
for survival on Wikipedia!  This quote is from their web site.

> Lastly, this year saw two MIA volunteers suffer devestating injuries
> due to their volunteer work. While typing away feverishly at email
> correspondence, one of our volunteer's hands locked shut. He aquired
> severe tendonitis, caused by endless seams of email correspondence and
> transcribing documents by hand, leaving him crippled and unemployed
> for nearly a year, though still continuing to volunteer through speech
> recognition technology. Trajedy struck another volunteer in the
> summer, after staring at the computer screen for hour after hour,
> proofing piles of digital transcriptions, fissures began to form in
> his retina, breaking his eye sight down further and further until he
> was no longer able to view the screen for more than several minutes.
> He was forced to leave the archive, after trying at great lengths to
> keep up with MIA correspondence and archive work. Please, everyone,
> practice smart erogonomics <http://www.tifaq.com/> when working on the
> computer!
>
Let's do our best to welcome them.

Eclecticology


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<B97DAA90.2930%cunctator@kband.com> (message from The Cunctator
	on Mon, 12 Aug 2002 18:10:24 -0400)

body:
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|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|List-Archive: <http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/>
|Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 18:10:24 -0400
|
|On 8/12/02 5:50 PM, "lcrocker at nupedia.com" <lcrocker at nupedia.com> wrote:
|
|>> It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the
|>> name of an article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to
|>> MOVE the article rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.
|>>
|>> May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?
|>
|> Actually I just made that feature available to non-sysops as well,
|> but I also have no problem making you a sysop to you can head off
|> vandals and such.
|>
|> And "move" is not an alternative to redirects--in fact it makes one.
|> It just also moves the article history to the new title instead of
|> leaving it under the redirect.
|>
|I think we should go back to having the move function move the Talk page
|with the subject page (or at least have that as a checkbox option on the
|move interface).
|
|I don't see a compelling reason why the Talk page shouldn't move as the
|default.
|
|Thoughts?
|

I entered a bug on this, number now lost to me, but I commented that
any kind of softeware merge of talk pages was sure to be chaotic and
that a link on the new talk page to the old talk page was a better
solution, leaving the merges to the usual resources, people who think
they should be merged and are willing to do the work.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> I saw the tail end of discussion of this issue on this list,
> but I didn't participate and, thinking that the issue was decided,
> but also thinking that the decision was (to an extent) wrong,
> and seeing no mention of the dissent that I remembered from the list
> on the page [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names)]],
> I added a statement of my opinion, just for the record, on the talk page.
>
> To my surprise, many others chimed in to say that they felt the same,
> and in fact some have now been saying that the issue was ''never'' decided.
> If that is true, then the naming conventions page is in error
> (to the extent that it purports to describe settled policy).
>
> I urge this list to look at the talk page mentioned above,
> as well as [[Talk:Naming conventions]], where people (not me) are discussing
> not the convention itself but the process by which it was reached.
>
> '''I especially urge natives and residents of the British Isles,
> and other native English speakers in Europe, to weigh in!!!'''

You mean people are squabbling like two-year-olds... I said my piece and
there's no point in saying it again.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirects to nonexistent pages

body:
Here is an idea that I've had in mind for a while,
and expressed parts of before, but never so completely.
It is now an official feature request:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=594421&group_id=34373&atid=411195
I copy here the text of that request (slightly recontextualised):

There are several redirects to nonexistent pages, and these are
worse than useless. If [[A]] redirects to [[B]], [[B]] doesn't
exist, and [[C]] has a link to [[A]], then it appears that an article
has been written, causing readers to waste their time following
the link and causing writers to pass up the chance to write a new
article. Furthermore, [[A]] doesn't appear on the Mostwanted
list.

However, there is some sense in these redirects. If there are
several possible names for an article, or even if there is only one
name that best fits our conventions but other possibilities that are
well known to be common mistakes, or common variations that
might appear in the text of an article, then it's nice if the redirect
from [[A]] to [[B]] is there, even if [[B]] isn't written, in order
to anticipate [[B]]'s arrival. Unfortunately, this really doesn't
work in light of the previous paragraph.

Here is how we fix that problem, and make redirects to
nonexistent pages harmless (or better). If as before, [[A]]
redirects to [[B]], [[B]] doesn't exist, and [[C]] links to [[A]],
then this link shall be rendered in [[C]] using the style for
nonexistent pages. Furthermore, the URL for that link shan't
have &noredirect in it, so that people that click on the link will be
editing [[B]], which is probably what they want. However, since
this may be surprising, there shall be a big notice warning people
that this is happening, along with a link to the &noredirect URL,
so that they can edit [[A]] itself if they think that the redirect is
wrong. (This big notice could be along the lines of the big notice
warning people when they're editing an old version of an article.)

As for the Mostwanted list, we will get an additional bonus
feature. If [[A]] redirects to [[B]] and [[B]] doesn't exist, then
any link to [[A]] *or* [[B]] shall be added to the Mostwanted
count for [[B]]. [[A]] itself still won't show up on Mostwanted.
This is what makes the idea not only a convenience but actually a
positive good. If [[A]] and [[B]] are both names for the same
thing, then they *should* combine in Mostwanted, to get a more
accurate idea of what articles are really most wanted.

Of course, if you make [[A]] redirect to [[B]], then it's best to
write [[B]] as well, but sometimes people don't have the time or
the knowledge for it at the moment.

I'll give you an example from real life. While I was
disambiguating [[Corn]] a while back, I found myself going
through a lot of CIA pages on various countries' economies, and I
noticed that there were at least 3 versions of [[Soybean]] (that
plus [[Soy]] and [[Soya]]), none of which existed. Now, I could
have changed these all to have the same name, but I didn't want
to start a search through articles for "soy" when I was already
busy with "corn". Also, they're all fairly common names, and they
*should* be redirects in the end. So I put them all (plus [[Soya
bean]] just in case) on my watchlist. By and by, Vicki (IIRC)
created one of the articles (writing what I never could have), and
then I made the rest redirects. But it would have been easier if I
could have made the redirects right away and been done with it.
Furthermore, the article might well have been written sooner,
since Vicki only wrote it because she found it on Mostwanted. It
should have been one of the top 10 most wanted articles, but
because the wants were distributed among several names, even
the top version was down the list a bit.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

body:
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the name of an
> article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to MOVE the article
> rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.

> May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?

Any logged in user can move articles. Or has this changed?

> I pledge not to impose my POV on articles, and not to abuse this power to
> "win" edit wars. I promise not to "stealthily" edit such controversial
> articles as evolution, global warming, etc. Okay?

Not even such controversial issues as attacks on third world countries?

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Managing the watchlist

body:
Yet another feature request for discussion.
Presumably the technical feasibility needn't come up here,
but I did want to draw attention to it on the part of
whoever it was that wanted a Watchlist in chunks
(last 50 etc), like Recentchanges is.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=594423&group_id=34373&atid=411195

I think that I won't even bother to quote it here.
If you were interested in the idea of a chunky Watchlist,
then go and take a look, and return here to discuss it if you wish.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
On Monday 12 August 2002 14:06, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> If your browser is set to UTF-8 on an ISO-8859-1 page, you're doing
> something very wrong.
>
> (Perhaps you're running Netscape 4.x, which has bugs that prevent it
> from showing non-Latin-1 character entities unless you switch to a more
> inclusive character encoding, thereby trashing any directly encoded
> non-ASCII characters?)

I'm running Konqueror 2.1.1. Sounds like the same bug though.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Making redirects out of bad page names

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Exactly!  The [[06-05]] alone was taken out of context.  The redirects
> allow the ISO long format to work, and at most there will only be 366
> such redirects.  Multiple ways of doing things can be great, if you
> keep a few things in mind.
>    1. Don't expect anybody else to do things your way.
>    2. It is grossly impolite to change anybody else's work in an
> article to fit your way of doing things.
>    3. Make the necessary redirects or other adaptations that will
> allow your way to function in a context of Wikipedia orthodoxy.
>
I think on dates we should be strict on a single house style. The
established formats for dates are:
[[June 6]]
[[June 6]], [[1980]]
the [[1980s]]
the [[19th century]]

It would be cleaner if all dates were edited to look like one of those.
Adding redirects to suit everyone's taste will be confusing.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] diff on recent changes

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> > I have noticed that when one clicks one of the 'diff' links on
> > the Recent changes page, one does not see the diff of the change
> > to the right of it, but the last change to the page, whichever it
>
> That bug has already been reported.  It's just a pain to fix,
> and I'm working on other implementations of the "Recent Changes"

I was thinking about what it would take to build a website where a
wiki is just one of the components.  Other components might be a
weblog, a bugzilla, a part with read-only web pages, etc.  You would
still want a single "recent changes" page for all these parts.
All it takes is a standardized RC log file format (or database table)
to which all components can add a line (or record) when an update is
made.  Since each component could use different methods to present a
diff, the most general and flexible approach would be to let one field
of the RC log format be a complete URL to the diff.  Just an idea.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction
  of

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> things, that never happened and never will.  The year pages should
> report on what actually did happen.

Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, "1. The world is all
that is the case."  Did the worry "happen" or not?  Do Americans
suddenly drive with US flags sticking out of their car windows, like
some nationalist fanatics?  Is that an event or just a sentiment?
Does it in fact help the US govt to launch a war on Iraq?  Maybe we
shouldn't get too deep into this.  "7. What we cannot speak about we
must pass over in silence."  But seeing this with my own eyes on a
recent visit to NYC sure helps me understand what's going on.  Wish I
could have been in Berlin in 1936, when that people were waving their
flags like crazy.  Wittgenstein could have, but I think he stayed in
England.  How many toes did I step on now?  Ouch.

Media reporting does have an effect on the real world, which is why I
think media reporting _is_ an event.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent_--_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ark

body:
I see Ark is back with a vengeance. While I do not support banning him (yet),
is there some way to get him to tone down his rhetoric and attacks. His
comments  to JHK at Talk:Infanticide were, frankly, insulting and disgusting.

Danny


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] marxists.org

body:
I've just had a look at the marxists.org site, and was quite impressed -
there is a lot of good quality free content on the site which could be
useful to us.

We will of course have to be careful that marxist views are attributed to
marxists, and not presented as fact, in accordance with the neutral point of
view policy.  On many of the pages I looked at the majority of the content
was factual and already suitable for Wikipedia.  I don't think importing
this material will present too many problems, provided that we all take it
slowly so that the new material is properly integrated with the existing
articles.

I would encourage other Wikipedians to take a look and think about using
some of the material into our articles.

Tim (the Enchanter)

>The fine communists over at marxists.org have approached me about the
>possibilities of sharing content.  They have a lot of content that's
>under the GNU FDL, and they've expressed an interest in putting it
>into the wikipedia.
>
>I was brutally honest with them about my own personal opinion of
>Marxism, which is quite low, and they were more pleasant to me in
>return than I deserved.  I recommended that they subscribe to this
>list to chat about how best to put their stuff into the wikipedia.
>
>I recommended that they might want to add just a few articles a day
>for as long as it would take, rather than dumping everything in at
>once.  This would give people a better chance to respond.
>
>They appear to be interested in non-bias, and to understand that
>people would want to make modifications in order to make things
>satisfactory to a wide audience.  They appear to have a genuine
>interest in contributing solid knowledge.
>
>I'm just saying this now to invite everyone to go take a look at
>their site, so that we can have intelligent comments for them.

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] marxists.org

body:
--- Tim Marklew <tmarklew at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I've just had a look at the marxists.org site, and
> was quite impressed -
> there is a lot of good quality free content on the
> site which could be
> useful to us.
>
> We will of course have to be careful that marxist
> views are attributed to
> marxists, and not presented as fact, in accordance
> with the neutral point of
> view policy.  On many of the pages I looked at the
> majority of the content
> was factual and already suitable for Wikipedia.  I
> don't think importing
> this material will present too many problems,
> provided that we all take it
> slowly so that the new material is properly
> integrated with the existing
> articles.
>
> I would encourage other Wikipedians to take a look
> and think about using
> some of the material into our articles.
>
> Tim (the Enchanter)

Yes, I agree. I poked around their Marxist
Encyclopedia and there's quite abit of good stuff in
there. Of course, they "present these words uniquely
with a Marxist analysis & critique...", so the
material will require editing.

They people at marxists.org would be welcome
contributors, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they
understand and accept that topics will not be
presented from a Marxist point of view here.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marxists.org - seems to be some good material there

body:
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> They have some quite useful material there - for instance, as a random
> sampling I had a look at some of the "F" articles - the article on
> Milton Friedman was brief, but reasonably accurate AFAICT,

Yeah, it's not bad.  It needs some editing, too, but it's not bad.  It
is basically NPOV, and at least as good as many of our articles in
that respect.  (I wouldn't call Milton Friedman "conservative" nor the
University of Chicago school of economics "right wing", but those aren't
_insane_ descriptors anyway.)  :-)

I think their stuff is mostly o.k.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] marxists.org

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> They people at marxists.org would be welcome
> contributors, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they
> understand and accept that topics will not be
> presented from a Marxist point of view here.

I think they do understand that, yes.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marxists.org

body:
At 01:35 PM 8/12/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>The fine communists over at marxists.org have approached me about the
>possibilities of sharing content.  They have a lot of content that's
>under the GNU FDL, and they've expressed an interest in putting it
>into the wikipedia.

>They appear to be interested in non-bias, and to understand that
>people would want to make modifications in order to make things
>satisfactory to a wide audience.  They appear to have a genuine
>interest in contributing solid knowledge.
>
>I'm just saying this now to invite everyone to go take a look at
>their site, so that we can have intelligent comments for them.

Wikipedia may have met its match here. Marxists are onery. Thing is,
though, any one from there who wants to come here and write articles is
perfectly welcome. But editing and changes to what they write (or
especially to what they copy from their site to here) is not going to go
down well with them, no matter what they may say in advance.

Many articles are not encyclopedic in nature but lexigraphic and focused
around jargon, see:

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/c.htm#actuality

So the problem exists of smoothly integrating Marxist knowledge into both
mainstream and other sectarian knowledge. I think that might be a useful
exercise for all concerned.

I have observed over a long life people in various labor and social
situations reinventing various idea and techniques which have a history in
Marxist thought, but because they either have no access to such thought or
don't realize what it contains aren't able to use that history in their
current activities. So the information is important if it can somehow
conveniently accessed.

Much of their site is devoted to archives of Marxist literature.

I note that they at least make a stab at trying to deal with the problem of
sectarianism in their rules, i.e. no one group, no matter how hard they try
to pack the ballot box, gets total say. As wikipedia now stands we have no
such mechanism and limited expertise in that area. An experienced Marxist
can rather easily sort out advocates of various positions. That sort of
sorting out of contributers is not really contemplated here.

Anyway, fascinating initiative...

Fred Bauder


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute
  construction  of

body:
At 11:56 AM 8/12/02 -0700, Lee wrote:
>
>>Fred Bauder wrote:
>>> Information on contributing to the current events page
>>>[...]
>>> In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not
>yet
>>> determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be
>>
>>Would it be wrong to write this under [[2002]] right away?  Even if
>>the invasion of Iraq in October doesn't happen, it is a fact that
>>during July and August many worried that it would, and this could be
>>worth noting anyway.  Besides "births", "deaths", and "events", the
>>year-in-review pages could have a new headline for "media reporting".
>>Or is that the same as "events"?
>
>I personally wouldn't put a non-event like that under a year page.
>The media reports lots of things, and people worry about a lot of
>things, that never happened and never will.  The year pages should
>report on what actually did happen.

Something did happen. Threats were made. Senate hearings were held. Iraq
and the rest of the world responded. And apparently in the Pentagon they
are very busy. There was a lot of media reporting and speculation. It all
adds up to a major event however uncertain the outcome. A position that
there is no event until an actual invasion occurs in untenable.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marxists.org

body:
At 12:48 PM 8/13/02 +0100, Gareth Owen wrote:
>Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> writes:
>
>> But editing and changes to what they write (or especially to what they copy
>> from their site to here) is not going to go down well with them, no matter
>> what they may say in advance.
>
>Oh, please.  How can you possible know this?

Experience, but if they start contibuting in a big way you will soon gain
some too as will they. All good.

Fred


from_name: wojtek pobratyn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] marxists.org

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Marklew" <tmarklew at hotmail.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 4:30 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] marxists.org

| I've just had a look at the marxists.org site, and was quite impressed -
| there is a lot of good quality free content on the site which could be
| useful to us.
|
| We will of course have to be careful that marxist views are attributed to
| marxists, and not presented as fact, in accordance with the neutral point of
| view policy.  On many of the pages I looked at the majority of the content
| was factual and already suitable for Wikipedia.  I don't think importing
| this material will present too many problems, provided that we all take it
| slowly so that the new material is properly integrated with the existing
| articles.
|
| I would encourage other Wikipedians to take a look and think about using
| some of the material into our articles.
|
| Tim (the Enchanter)

I agree that some of their material might be quite usefull. Although it would be good
if they gave us a brief hello on the list so that we know who they are. We should also kindly
ask them to register (another bunch of anonymous IP contributors is the last thing we need, IMHO).

regards,
WojPob


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute
  construction of

body:
At 12:54 AM 8/13/02 +0200, Lars wrote:
>lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> > things, that never happened and never will.  The year pages should
> > report on what actually did happen.
>
>Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, "1. The world is all
>that is the case."  Did the worry "happen" or not?  Do Americans
>suddenly drive with US flags sticking out of their car windows, like
>some nationalist fanatics?  Is that an event or just a sentiment?

That's an event, reflecting sentiment and an earlier event. It has nothing
to do with a possible attack on Iraq: it's a response to the attack on the
World Trade Center.

>Does it in fact help the US govt to launch a war on Iraq?  Maybe we
>shouldn't get too deep into this.  "7. What we cannot speak about we
>must pass over in silence."  But seeing this with my own eyes on a
>recent visit to NYC sure helps me understand what's going on.  Wish I
>could have been in Berlin in 1936, when that people were waving their
>flags like crazy.  Wittgenstein could have, but I think he stayed in
>England.  How many toes did I step on now?  Ouch.
>
>Media reporting does have an effect on the real world, which is why I
>think media reporting _is_ an event.

The problem is, we're still in the middle of this, which makes it hard to know
whether the "event" is going to be "after months of leaks and propaganda,
the US attacks Iraq" or "Bush administration fails to gain support for an
attack on Iraq, and does nothing." The latter might be worth a mention in an
article on George W. Bush, but isn't an event of 2002.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
tarquin wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > Exactly!  The [[06-05]] alone was taken out of context.  The redirects
> > allow the ISO long format to work, and at most there will only be 366
> > such redirects.  Multiple ways of doing things can be great, if you
> > keep a few things in mind.
> >    1. Don't expect anybody else to do things your way.
> >    2. It is grossly impolite to change anybody else's work in an
> > article to fit your way of doing things.
> >    3. Make the necessary redirects or other adaptations that will
> > allow your way to function in a context of Wikipedia orthodoxy.
> >
> I think on dates we should be strict on a single house style. The
> established formats for dates are:
> [[June 6]]
> [[June 6]], [[1980]]
> the [[1980s]]
> the [[19th century]]
>
> It would be cleaner if all dates were edited to look like one of those.
> Adding redirects to suit everyone's taste will be confusing.

You CANT redirect them all anyway, because half of them conflict with
each other...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] marxists.org

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>They people at marxists.org would be welcome
>contributors, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they
>understand and accept that topics will not be
>presented from a Marxist point of view here.
>
If a contributor wants to express himself from a Marxist point of view
that's fine, as long as he understands that his contributions could be
severely edited.

A lot of Marxist material is so sensible that it may not be noticed to
be Marxist unless somebody says so.

Eclecticology


body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

>Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>
>>Surely not! 06-05 is part of a date in ISO long format. With links it'll look
>>like so: [[YYYY]]-[[MM-DD]]
>>
>I don't suppose ISO have a standard on how city names should be written...
>
I actually wondered about that when I trying to find information on the
comma/parenthesis part of that battle.

Eclecticology


from_name: Gareth Owen

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

> Surely not! 06-05 is part of a date in ISO long format. With links it'll look
> like so: [[YYYY]]-[[MM-DD]]

I don't suppose ISO have a standard on how city names should be written...
--
Gareth Owen


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

body:
On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 01:35:20PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> The fine communists over at marxists.org have approached me about the
> possibilities of sharing content.  They have a lot of content that's
> under the GNU FDL, and they've expressed an interest in putting it
> into the wikipedia.
>
> I was brutally honest with them about my own personal opinion of
> Marxism, which is quite low, and they were more pleasant to me in
> return than I deserved.  I recommended that they subscribe to this
> list to chat about how best to put their stuff into the wikipedia.
>
> I recommended that they might want to add just a few articles a day
> for as long as it would take, rather than dumping everything in at
> once.  This would give people a better chance to respond.
>
> They appear to be interested in non-bias, and to understand that
> people would want to make modifications in order to make things
> satisfactory to a wide audience.  They appear to have a genuine
> interest in contributing solid knowledge.
>
> I'm just saying this now to invite everyone to go take a look at
> their site, so that we can have intelligent comments for them.

They have some quite useful material there - for instance, as a random
sampling I had a look at some of the "F" articles - the article on
Milton Friedman was brief, but reasonably accurate AFAICT, the
article on Betty Friedan was OK but would need some editing, and
the article on Sigmund Freud would be useful reference material but
wouldn't be useful as the basis of a Wikipedia article.

I agree that a drip-feed of articles, particularly until we get
used to their style of contribution, is the best way to go.

It will be an impressive demonstration of the power of our
method if we can successfully collaborate with these people.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net
Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless : http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >I think we should go back to having the move function move the Talk page
> >with the subject page (or at least have that as a checkbox option on the
> >move interface).
>
> I agree!
>
> >I don't see a compelling reason why the Talk page shouldn't move as the
> >default.
>
> I don't really care what the *default* is,
> I just want the option.

It seems only logical to me - if you move an article the talk directly
associated with it should go to.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US invasion of Afghanistan

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> To Daniel: It's only the article title I wanted to change in the
 > "attack on/invasion of" thing, which I discussed with The Cunctator
 > and Brion.
>
> The POV, that the US invasion amounts to an attack, should definitely
 > be in the article -- but attributed to a source, even a vaguely
 > defined one: as in, "many critics regard the invasion as an unwarranted
 > attack on Afghanistan" or "Already talk has begun of indicting Tommy
 > Franks for [[crimes against humanity]] for the attacks."

Eh? I don't understand why the word "attack" is supposed to be "POV"
here. Did "attack" suddenly become a bad word while I wasn't looking,
that a military operation involving actively lobbing ordinence at one's
enemy on their home turf should not be called an "attack" just because
the persons doing the attacking believe they're justified in doing so?

"Invasion" is better in the title because that's what it ended up as; US
soldiers entered the country with intent to seize it from the former
governing body (which was not legally recognized), and many are still
there today months later. Nothing POV or NPOV about it, it's just a more
accurate description of the event as a whole.

Naturally, it would be POV to say that the attack is or isn't warranted,
or is or isn't criminal, but that's a separate issue from the use of the
word "attack" in my understanding.

> BTW, when is someone going to write [[The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan]]?

There's already scattered information in [[Afghanistan]], [[Soviet
Union]], etc. It ought to be collected and improved perhaps...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marxists.org

body:
Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> writes:

> But editing and changes to what they write (or especially to what they copy
> from their site to here) is not going to go down well with them, no matter
> what they may say in advance.

Oh, please.  How can you possible know this?

In my experience Marxists are no more ornery, or less dogmatic, than
Objectivists(tm) and many of those are extremely valued contributors to
wikipedia.

I appreciate that in some parts of the world "Marxist" is synonymous with
"Bogeyman", but I'd like to think that everyone whose contributions conform to
the 'pedia's standards are welcome, and no-one (even - shock, horror -
Marxists) will get prejudged.

> Much of their site is devoted to archives of Marxist literature.

So lets not include that part.  Or at least, lets put it along side all the
stuff about the masterful works of Ayn Rand.
--
Gareth Owen


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bulk imports (dumbing down or dumping?)

body:
I am against the wholesale importing of articles from any large repository, whether it be an old out-of-copyright Encyclopedia Britannica, a Bible commentary, or the marxism.org site.

However, I see nothing wrong with individuals (preferably signed in, so we can track their "contributions") copying a few article here and there to fill in the void.

The articles I've read from the Bible dictionary are useless to me: personally, I'm just ignoring them. Thank God they have their source designator on 'em so I can tell them apart from the regular, peer-reviewed, relentlessly scrutinized normal Wikipedia articles.

The article on the Labour Theory of Value from marxism. seems a bit one-sided to me. If it was imported, I'd have to stick in a large number of phrases like "According to Marx..." and "Modern supporters of Marxist economics still feel that..."

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Junking Spanish Wikipedia?

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>The Enciclopedia libre at http://enciclopedia.us.es/ is much larger
>and more active than the Spanish Wikipedia at http://es.wikipedia.com/
>
>I think we should junk our Spanish Wikipedia, provide a link to their
>site on our main page (they probably don't like to be called
>Wikipedia, so we could simply say "non-English sister projects") and
>have our interwiki links point to them rather then to the Spanish
>Wikipedia.
>
>And if we ask nicely, we may even get a link back to wikipedia.com.
>
>P.S. I would assume that over time, other international Wikpedias will
>prefer to operate out of their own countries, to improve connection
>speeds and gain more contol, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
>
This may very well become standard procedure for all languages, but it
would make more sense to discuss this issue in general terms rather than
doing it separately for each language.  Perhaps some kind of
co-operation agreements might be the way to go.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Moving vs. redirecting (sysop application)

body:
>> It has come to my attention that the preferred way to change the
>> name of an article (when such a change is in fact warranted) is to
>> MOVE the article rather than use the clunky old REDIRECT feature.
>>
>> May I please become a sysop, so I can use the MOVE feature?
>
>Actually I just made that feature available to non-sysops as well,
>but I also have no problem making you a sysop to you can head off
>vandals and such.
>
>And "move" is not an alternative to redirects--in fact it makes one.
>It just also moves the article history to the new title instead of
>leaving it under the redirect.

Thanks, Lee.

Was it you who added the Move Article History feature? To me, that's an essential part of changing an article title. I've never been comfortable with simply REDIRECTing an article without copying the talk page, either.

I don't think our anarchic cooperative can function properly without a full, detailed audit trail. As a (former) bookkeeper and (current) SQL Server 7.0 programmer, I rely HEAVILY on backups, transaction history, et al.

As a Wikipedian, I routinely view the History and Diff pages, so I can judge whether a given change is NPOV. Now I might not be the world's best judge of that, but in recent months I think I've improved. My aim is not to start edit wars but to find a way to resolve them peacefully.

Ed Poor


body:
To Daniel: It's only the article title I wanted to change in the "attack on/invasion of" thing, which I discussed with The Cunctator and Brion.

The POV, that the US invasion amounts to an attack, should definitely be in the article -- but attributed to a source, even a vaguely defined one: as in, "many critics regard the invasion as an unwarranted attack on Afghanistan" or "Already talk has begun of indicting Tommy Franks for [[crimes against humanity]] for the attacks."

I'm absolutely not trying to suppress ideas here. I just like the articles to have a consistent naming scheme.

BTW, when is someone going to write [[The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan]]?

Ed Poor


body:
>To Daniel: It's only the article title I wanted to change in the "attack
>on/invasion of" thing, which I discussed with The Cunctator and Brion.
>
>The POV, that the US invasion amounts to an attack, should definitely be
>in the article -- but attributed to a source, even a vaguely defined one:
>as in, "many critics regard the invasion as an unwarranted attack on
>Afghanistan" or "Already talk has begun of indicting Tommy Franks for
>[[crimes against humanity]] for the attacks."
>
>I'm absolutely not trying to suppress ideas here. I just like the articles
>to have a consistent naming scheme.
>
>BTW, when is someone going to write [[The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan]]?

I have to write that one since I thought it was such a good idea at the time...

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inflammatory rhetoric (Ark)

body:
I looked some of Ark's comments on Talk:Infanticide, and he sure seems upset about something. I'm going to see if I can engage him in dialogue, and see if I can figure out why he feels he must use language like the following snippets:

* my lazy opponents ... you lazy bums ...
* I don't accept the judgement of idiots. ... I am dealing with morons ... living in denial
* I'll say what conclusions can be supported from the evidence (which I don't feel the least need to spell out ...)

Perhaps he (she?) doesn't realize how hurtful such words can be, to other contributors.

Ed Poor


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <200208132337.TAA13227@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 07:37:05PM -0400

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> Spanish speakers wouldn't like it to be called a Wikipedia because
> they really don't even like saying or hearing the "Wiki" part, both
> the "w" and the "k" sound being foreign and unpleasant.

For the Esperanto people, I registered vikipedio.com/net/org

I could do the same for Spanish people, if there is an acceptable analogue.

I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias.

--Jimbo


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Ark

body:
Thanks, Danny -- I find him irritating and offensive, but mostly because
he is writing about really serious subjects and doing them a great
disservice, IMHO.  By taking a hard-line he cannot support, he's going
to be edited and edited, wasting everyone's time, when everyone really
just wants a good article.
Regards,

Julie Hofmann Kemp
253-638-1944
206-310-3461

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in_reply_to:
<200208132059.WAA23831@linde.uni-paderborn.de> (message from Axel
	Boldt on Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:59:55 +0200 (MET DST))

body:
Spanish speakers wouldn't like it to be called a Wikipedia because
they really don't even like saying or hearing the "Wiki" part, both
the "w" and the "k" sound being foreign and unpleasant.

Here's some data.

I just checked one name, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the greatest living
writer in Spanish, probably, certainly the best known:

-- No article in the Spanish Wikipedia

-- Short article in the Enciclopedia Libre, short list of works, with
   all blank links or external links

-- Nice long article in the English Wikipedia with a much longer list
   of works with all blank links

Maybe we should investigate what we need to do to encourage and
support translation?

Also, we should certainly offer or arrange to transfer the content of
the Spanish Wikipedia to the Enciclopedia Libre and not just swap
links.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|From: Axel Boldt <axel at uni-paderborn.de>
|Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:59:55 +0200 (MET DST)
|
|The Enciclopedia libre at http://enciclopedia.us.es/ is much larger
|and more active than the Spanish Wikipedia at http://es.wikipedia.com/
|(in fact, it is by a large margin the biggest non-English free
|encyclopedia and the third largest wiki in the world).
|
|I think we should junk our Spanish Wikipedia, provide a link to their
|site on our main page (they probably don't like to be called
|Wikipedia, so we could simply say "non-English sister projects") and
|have our interwiki links point to them rather then to the Spanish
|Wikipedia.
|
|And if we ask nicely, we may even get a link back to wikipedia.com.
|
|Axel
|
|P.S. I would assume that over time, other international Wikpedias will
|prefer to operate out of their own countries, to improve connection
|speeds and gain more contol, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
|


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Call to vote on city disambiguation issue

body:
Hi,

I've started a vote on the issue of city name disambiguation at
[[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)]] to finally resolve
the ongoing debate (yes, I was one those that continued it...). Everyone
with an opinion on the subject, please let your voice be heard.

Below I included the text from the page, for possible questions or
discussions here on the list.

Jeroen Heijmans

----
To decide upon a naming convention for city names, you can now express
your support for the one other proposal.

The problem of disambiguation is especially tricky with city names, as
there are more duplicate city names than for other subjects, especially
with respect to cities in the USA. Two main solutions to deal with this
problem have been proposed:

   1. Pre-emptive disambiguation - Because the number of duplicate city
names is so large, disambiguate pre-emptively. This is done by naming
the city articles as [City, Country] or [City, State] in the case
disambiguation is necessary within a country (such as the USA or Canada).
   2. Normal disambiguation - Follow the disambiguation rules as
currently described at wikipedia:disambiguation . That is a
disambiguation page if a naming conflict occurs. The duplicate articles
should then be given names using a natural disambiguator if possible, or
else include the difference between two instances in parentheses.

Examples for both proposals:

   1. The city of Paramaribo would be placed at Paramaribo, Suriname.
Since there are no other Paramaribos, the article Paramaribo can be a
redirect to Paramaribo, Suriname. The city of Sydney in Australia would
be placed at Sydney, Australia. Sydney would be a disambiguation page,
with links to Sydney, Australia and to other Sydneys.
   2. The city of Paramaribo would be placed at Paramaribo. The city of
Sydney in Australia would be placed at Sydney (Australia)? (or using a
natural disambiguator) while Sydney would be a disambiguation page with
links to Sydney (Australia)? and other Sydneys.

(...)

 In the case of the "normal disambiguation" proposal, the natural
disambiguators may differ per country, but the most obvious examples use
the [City, State] format. It could be decided to use that format for al
disambiguation involving cities, using the smallest entity necessary, so
Sydney, Australia in stead of Sydney (Australia)? . *IF* and *WHEN* the
second proposal would be elected, would you support using the
"comma-notation" as a natural disambiguator for all cities?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Karl's question on the German wiki

body:
After Helga's latest nonsense on Copernicus (for my flaming  response to
which I now apologize), I looked again at her entry in the German
wikipedia.  It's pretty much everything she tried to put on the English
wiki, but since no one ever mentioned  the Poland thing, it just looks
like a weak article.   What she says on the talk page, however, is
pretty ugly.  She pretty much says that we (face it, I'm pretty sure she
means me, although perhaps I am sensitive) have tried to suppress the
truth, and asks a series of questions about our motives that would make
any conspiracy theorist proud.  I left an answer in my awful written
German  saying that it was a misrepresentation and inviting English
speakers to read the article for themselves and give an opinion.   At
least, I hope that's what I said -- I read German much better than I
speak it these days.  I have as yet refrained from saying what I think
about her on either site, but am currently so annoyed, I will do it
here.  Apologies in advance, but I will now vent.  Sie ist eine bloede,
dumme KUH.

Regards,

Julie Hofmann Kemp

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body:
After Helga's latest nonsense on Copernicus (for my flaming  response to
which I now apologize), I looked again at her entry in the German
wikipedia.  It's pretty much everything she tried to put on the English
wiki, but since no one ever mentioned  the Poland thing, it just looks
like a weak article.   What she says on the talk page, however, is
pretty ugly.  She pretty much says that we (face it, I'm pretty sure she
means me, although perhaps I am sensitive) have tried to suppress the
truth, and asks a series of questions about our motives that would make
any conspiracy theorist proud.  I left an answer in my awful written
German  saying that it was a misrepresentation and inviting English
speakers to read the article for themselves and give an opinion.   At
least, I hope that's what I said -- I read German much better than I
speak it these days.  I have as yet refrained from saying what I think
about her on either site, but am currently so annoyed, I will do it
here.  Apologies in advance, but I will now vent.  Sie ist eine bloede,
dumme KUH.

Regards,

Julie Hofmann Kemp

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sorry for HTML format -- nm


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
|Content-Disposition: inline
|User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
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|List-Subscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=subscribe>
|List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia <wikipedia-l.nupedia.com>
|List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|List-Archive: <http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/>
|Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 15:44:22 -0700
|
|Tom Parmenter wrote:
|> Spanish speakers wouldn't like it to be called a Wikipedia because
|> they really don't even like saying or hearing the "Wiki" part, both
|> the "w" and the "k" sound being foreign and unpleasant.
|
|For the Esperanto people, I registered vikipedio.com/net/org
|
|I could do the same for Spanish people, if there is an acceptable analogue.

Keeping in mind that Spanish is itself phonetic and that I can't put a
diaresis over the u, the Spanish Royal Academy would probably spell it

			 g-u<diaresis>-q-u-i

based on their preferred spelling of "whisky" as

		       g-u<diaresis>-i-s-q-u-i

The diaresis is not an umlaut, but a diacritical mark indicating that
the U and the I are in separate syllables.  The Spanish aren't crazy
about this solution (whisky is usually just spelled whisky), but it is
the official one.  I don't know how you'd get a diaresis into a URL.

Perhaps you should check with contributor Perique des Palottes.

Tom

|
|I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias.
|
|--Jimbo
|[Wikipedia-l]
|To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


subject: Correction Re: [Wikipedia-l] Junking Spanish Wikipedia?

in_reply_to:
<200208140101.VAA11898@TheWorld.com> (message from Tom Parmenter
	on Tue, 13 Aug 2002 21:01:20 -0400)

body:
Oops, see CORRECTION below.

||Tom Parmenter wrote:
||> Spanish speakers wouldn't like it to be called a Wikipedia because
||> they really don't even like saying or hearing the "Wiki" part, both
||> the "w" and the "k" sound being foreign and unpleasant.
||
||For the Esperanto people, I registered vikipedio.com/net/org
||
||I could do the same for Spanish people, if there is an acceptable analogue.
|
|Keeping in mind that Spanish is itself phonetic and that I can't put a
|diaresis over the u, the Spanish Royal Academy would probably spell it
|
CORRECTION:			 g-u<diaresis>-i-q-u-i
|
|based on their preferred spelling of "whisky" as
|
|		       g-u<diaresis>-i-s-q-u-i
|
|The diaresis is not an umlaut, but a diacritical mark indicating that
|the U and the I are in separate syllables.  The Spanish aren't crazy
|about this solution (whisky is usually just spelled whisky), but it is
|the official one.  I don't know how you'd get a diaresis into a URL.
|
|Perhaps you should check with contributor Perique des Palottes.
|
|Tom
|
||
||I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias.
||
||--Jimbo
|


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
On Tuesday 13 August 2002 08:24 pm, brion vibber wrote:
> "Invasion" is better in the title because that's what it ended up as; US
> soldiers entered the country with intent to seize it from the former
> governing body (which was not legally recognized), and many are still
> there today months later. Nothing POV or NPOV a

I agree that "attack" is not inherently POV but... I'm more familiar with the
word "attack" being used to describe the campaign. If this is also true with
a majority of other English speakers then the word "attack" should be used
regardless of the fact that the operation is more appropriately called an
invasion.

>....

> There's already scattered information in [[Afghanistan]], [[Soviet
> Union]], etc. It ought to be collected and improved perhaps...

As I've told Ed before there is a good amount of info on this very subject
amongst the ungodly massive amount of history that we have on Afghanistan
already (which is probably an artifact of importing projects always starting
with "A"). Here is the link;
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanistan

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static HTML tree: search function?

body:
I was thinking about creating a static HTML tree from the database
dump. The only thing I can't figure out is how to provide a decent
search function. Are there any ready-made solutions for this problem?

The possibilities I see are

* ship a minimal web server, and use some sort of htdig cgi search script.
* hack together some javascript code which doesn't need a server.
  (Something like this exists already at
  http://www.javascript.freeuk.com/oldindex.html, but they recommend
  it only for "up to 50 pages")
* Use some format other than HTML which provides search capabilities,
  such as MS help files or pdf.

I don't like either option.

Axel


body:
The Enciclopedia libre at http://enciclopedia.us.es/ is much larger
and more active than the Spanish Wikipedia at http://es.wikipedia.com/
(in fact, it is by a large margin the biggest non-English free
encyclopedia and the third largest wiki in the world).

I think we should junk our Spanish Wikipedia, provide a link to their
site on our main page (they probably don't like to be called
Wikipedia, so we could simply say "non-English sister projects") and
have our interwiki links point to them rather then to the Spanish
Wikipedia.

And if we ask nicely, we may even get a link back to wikipedia.com.

Axel

P.S. I would assume that over time, other international Wikpedias will
prefer to operate out of their own countries, to improve connection
speeds and gain more contol, and I don't see anything wrong with that.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:Junking Spanish Wikipedia?

body:
Axel wrote:
> I think we should junk our Spanish Wikipedia, provide a link to their
> site on our main page (they probably don't like to be called
> Wikipedia, so we could simply say "non-English sister projects") and
> have our interwiki links point to them rather then to the Spanish
> Wikipedia.
>
> And if we ask nicely, we may even get a link back to wikipedia.com.
>
> Axel

We can try to cooperate, but I got the distinct feeling from reading their
about page at :
http://enciclopedia.us.es/wiki.phtml?title=Enciclopedia+Libre+Universal+en+Espa%F1ol
that they /really/ don't like us.

This especially seems true for the English Wikipedia where there is/are (and
I roughly quote); article censorship and fear of censorship, where
administrators harass contributors and delete pages (stated in a way that
suggests this is a form of excessive censorship), and where those same
administrators block pages from being edited (again suggesting that this is
some kind of unfair censorship).

They also seem to not like the fact that a "American for-profit .com company
that wants to establish a presence in the educational market* controls
Wikipedia (the .com part may be a directed toward wikipedia's URL and not
Bomis - my Spanish is rusty and the fish ain't much help).

All I can say is that they sure have a twisted sense of how things really
are.

giskart wrote:
> A great thing of Wikipedia is the global aspect. Please do not blow it.
>
> giskart, Dutch Wikipedia

I agree. It is certainly possible to have amicable forks where an entire
language wiki moves to a different server and its software is maintained by
different developers.  However, I think that in the long term the two
wikiware code-bases will eventually become incompatible and cross-linking and
any other future inter-lingua stuff will soon stop working. Hopefully this
type of interfunctionality will convince more and more Spanish speakers to
contribute to es.wikipedia.com than to enciclopedia.us.es.

Jimbo wrote:
> I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias. ?
>
> --Jimbo

I now agree completely. I vote for keeping es.wikipedia.com, load the new
software and then run the two projects side-by-side for at least a few
months. If activity doesn't  improve much /then/ and only then should we even
consider closing the Spanish Wikipedia.

We above all else must respect those that still contribute to our Spanish
wiki. Besides as someone already said, we can port the EL stuff to our wiki
since they use the same license (<hint> I will help with this myself as soon
as Lee's excellent new software gets installed </hint> --- but please don't
ask me to help with the translations; its been so long since I've used it
that my written Spanish is down-right embarrassing).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: mllnzeyclymq at spammotel.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] do not send anything to Intlwiki-L !

body:
It is not my day.
Yesterday I want to send a posting to Wikitech-L.
1ste i post - nothing, not even a bounceback-mail
2th the same
Today i do it again , posting 3th and 4th - nothing
OK - seems to be a problem whit that mailinglist.

I send it to Intlwiki-L.
And now i do get responds, and how ! Sombody's Auto-replay is sending
many postings to the list.

DO NOT SEND any new postings now to that list.
Look at it here;
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-August/thread.html

I have send already a mail to the person listed in the auto-replay
asking to please switch the auto-replay off.

I wil now repost my question again now in this list, i hope it wil work.
  -- giskart


subject: [Wikipedia-l] changing Wikipedia Language-configurationfile for the Dutch wikipedia

body:
[re-post; 6]

Hy,
My question is related to a other question from my. Please read now:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-August/000561.html

There seems not real interest about this subject from the Wikipedia
group for this sitiuation. OK - no problem.

The Dutch wikipedia is now working on the translation of the
configuration file for the labels. If the Dutch wikipedia would like to
use the natieve names for making links to the other Wikipedia am i right
the only thing nessary is to put on
[[http://nl.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Project_Vertaling_Configbestand_Wikipedia_NL/Deel2]]

this part of the file the natieve names ? Is that all ? This would not
give any problems ?  -- giskart


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Inflammatory rhetoric (Ark)

body:
On Tuesday 13 August 2002 08:24 pm, Ed wrote:
> I looked some of Ark's comments on Talk:Infanticide, and he sure seems
> upset about something. I'm going to see if I can engage him in dialogue,
> and see if I can figure out why he feels he must use language like the
> following snippets:
>
> * my lazy opponents ... you lazy bums ...
> * I don't accept the judgement of idiots. ... I am dealing with morons ...
> living in denial * I'll say what conclusions can be supported from the
> evidence (which I don't feel the least need to spell out ...)
>
> Perhaps he (she?) doesn't realize how hurtful such words can be, to other
> contributors.
>
> Ed Poor

Ed please try, but be advised that I have already spent /many/ hours trying
to do the exact same thing (although you do seem better at this type of thing
than me).

I have asked nice; that didn't work

I have pleaded; that didn't work

I have suggested that his rhetoric is harming the project; that didn't work

I have stated that his rhetoric is a violation of our etiquette policy; that
didn't work either

I have even stated that if he did not play nice and continued to sap the
energy of other contributors that his actions will have to be reviewed by the
mailing list and he may be blocked from editing;

That warning obviously hasn't been headed.

I personally give up and say we should issue one final warning and then test
the block user function if that warning is also ignored. This person is not
at all worth loosing any valued and long time contributor over. Wasn't the
fact that we tolerate stuff like this (the amature and persistant POV stuff
Ark does, not the rhetoric) the reason why Michael Tinkler left the project?

If it means loosing somebody like Ark to keep somebody like Michael, then I
say we should have some, but limited tolerance for the Ark's of the world.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> --from Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>--
> --reply wikipedia-l at nupedia.com--
>
>
>
>
>                    --MLLNZEYCLYMQ at spammotel.com--
>
> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> The Enciclopedia libre at http://enciclopedia.us.es/ is much larger
> and more active than the Spanish Wikipedia at http://es.wikipedia.com/

That is a fact.

> I think we should junk our Spanish Wikipedia, provide a link to their
> site on our main page (they probably don't like to be called
> Wikipedia, so we could simply say "non-English sister projects") and
> have our interwiki links point to them rather then to the Spanish
> Wikipedia.

That would be *very* unfair and a insult to the people who work on the
Spanish Bomis-wikipedia. That Wikipedia is active;
http://es.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Cambios_Recientes
If it would be a dead Wikipedia things would be different.
The fact that it is smaller is not a reason to junk it.

Every Wikipedia is autonomous to do things like the seem fit in general.
But I see the Bomis-Wikipedia's as a part of a federation. Some ways of
doing things my vary from wikipedia to wikipedia but the are all from
the same family. The preferd partner must always be a fellow Wikipedia
and not a foreign pedia.

> P.S. I would assume that over time, other international Wikpedias will
> prefer to operate out of their own countries, to improve connection
> speeds and gain more contol, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Only that if you exclude some fellow-wikidpia the "international
Wikpedias" would likely be soon no "Wikipedia" anymore. ("international
Wikpedias" -> does this mean there is also a national Wikipedia ? )

A great thing of Wikipedia is the global aspect. Please do not blow it.

giskart, Dutch Wikipedia


in_reply_to: <200208141255.OAA27858@linde.uni-paderborn.de>; from axel@uni-paderborn.de on Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 02:55:59PM +0200

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> Frankly, I find this game of "our encyclopedia should be bigger than
> theirs" and not providing any links from es.wikipedia to EL or from EL to
> es.wikipedia quite ridiculous and counter productive. Since both projects
> have precisely identical goals, it just amounts to a duplication of
> efforts.

I didn't realize that there was such a game.

Why don't you add a link from es.wikipedia to EL? "Edit this page" or
should I say "Edita el texto de esta pagina".  :-)

--Jimbo


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> At 03:44 PM 8/13/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
> >Tom Parmenter wrote:
> >> Spanish speakers wouldn't like it to be called a Wikipedia because
> >> they really don't even like saying or hearing the "Wiki" part, both
> >> the "w" and the "k" sound being foreign and unpleasant.
> >
> >For the Esperanto people, I registered vikipedio.com/net/org
> >
> >I could do the same for Spanish people, if there is an acceptable analogue.
> >
> >I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias.
>
> How about a link to both of them?

A link to both of which?


body:
At 03:44 PM 8/13/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>Tom Parmenter wrote:
>> Spanish speakers wouldn't like it to be called a Wikipedia because
>> they really don't even like saying or hearing the "Wiki" part, both
>> the "w" and the "k" sound being foreign and unpleasant.
>
>For the Esperanto people, I registered vikipedio.com/net/org
>
>I could do the same for Spanish people, if there is an acceptable analogue.
>
>I'm very much opposed to closing any of our language wikipedias.

How about a link to both of them?

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MetaTree

in_reply_to: <3D5A7AB4.4030305@planetunreal.com>; from tarquin@planetunreal.com on Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 04:43:48PM +0100

body:
tarquin wrote:
> >I think its a pain in the ass.  If I'm reading about music and click on
> >"pitch" I do *not* want to be told about tar-like substances and places where
> >sport is played.  It distracts me from the matter at hand.
> >
> gareth, are you saying that when you look for something in a paper
> encyclopedia you *never* stop off and read about something else that has
> caught your eye?
> That's the huge joy of reference works!

No, I think he's saying that if he wants to browse aimlessly, there
are better ways to do that in wikipedia than to have strange "blind
links" that don't lead where the reader would expect.

If I'm reading an article about music in a paper encyclopedia, and it tells me
to "see also Musical Pitch", then I go there to read that.  In the wikipedia,
of course, we have a more natural way of linking to [[pitch]] within a sentence.
But we should linke to [[musical pitch|pitch]], right?