subject: [Wikitech-l] Causes for Slowdown? (long, but hopefully useful)

body:
With the recent increases in traffic (which fit well with my estimates
earlier) I think we should be giving some thought now to how the
Wikipedia can be made massively scalable.  If we start now, we should
have a solution available before it is needed, rather than hitting a
crunch point and then fixing things in a hurry.

Some thoughts on this:

* The single image of the database is the ultimate bottleneck. This
should be held in RAM as far as possible.  Thought should be given to
using PostgreSQL rather than MySQL, which should scale better in heavily
loaded cases.

* Wikipedia is read an order or magnitude more often than it is written.
Caching can give a major performance boost, and will help palliate
underlying scaling problems.

* Wikipedia read accesses appear to obey [[Zipf's law]]: most pages are
read relatively infrequently, and a few very frequently. However, most
of the load is from the aggregated accesses of the many low-traffic
pages. Therefore, a 'hot spot' cache will not work: the cache has to be
big enough to encompass the whole Wikipedia. Again, the cache will have
to be held in RAM to avoid the 1000-times slower performance of disk
accesses.

* Web serving consumes RAM: a slow modem transfer of a page will lock
down resources in RAM for the duration of a page load. At one end of the
scale, this is simply socket buffers. At the other end of the scale, it
can be a page-rendering thread and its stack, unable to progress to do
other work because it can't commit its output to the lower levels of the
web server. On low-traffic sites, this is insignificant. On high-traffic
sites, it can become a bottleneck. Machines with vast amounts of RAM are
very expensive: it is cheaper to buy a number of smaller machines with
reasonable amounts of RAM in -- and you get the benefit of extra CPUs
for nothing.

=== The grand vision ===

For all these reasons, I propose a solution in which the database is
kept on a separate server from the user-facing servers.  The extra
overhead involved in doing this should be repaid many times over in the
long run by the fact that the front-end servers will take more than 90%
of the load off the central server.

The front-end servers should be kept _dumb_, and all the control logic,
program code, and configuration files should reside on the master
server.  This removes the need to configure vast numbers of machines in
sync.

The front-end server code can also be kept small and tight, with most of
the work (page rendering, parsing, etc.) being done by the existing
code. (Later, rendering and parsing could be moved to the front-end
servers if needed).

=== How to get there easily ===

The first step is to implement a separate caching server.

The system can even be trialled now, by running the master and slave
servers on the same box!  The existing Wikipedia just needs to have a
special skin that serves up 'raw' rendered pages, without any page
decorations, CSS, or whatever.

The caching server will deal with all user interaction: cookies, skins,
etc. It should serve up 'raw' pages decorated with user-specific content
and style sheets.

The caching system could be put on an experimental server, or later put
on the main site, as a beta test.

There is only one other thing needed to implement this.  Each page in
the central DB needs to have a 'last changed' time, and a way to get
hold of it.  Now, this is where things get slightly tricky.  This 'last
changed' timestamp should be updated, not only when the page itself is
edited, but also when any page linked in the page is created or deleted.
  That is to say: when creating or deleting a page, timestamps on all
pages that link to that page should be touched.

Note that there is no need to touch other pages' timestamps when a page
is edited.  This is good, as otherwise the extra overhead of all that
marking would be unreasonably high.

Now, this last-modified timestamp can be determined using a special
request format: the underlying HTTP mechanism could be used, but this is
too awkward to fiddle with as a way of supporting experimental software.
Better to do something like:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/last_changed?Example_article

(which even avoids invoking the main code at all)

result: a page with the content:

20020417120254

=== Criticisms ===

But, I hear you say -- surely you have added another bottleneck?  For
every page hit, you still generate a hit on the central DB for the 'last
changed' timestamp.  The answer is: yes, but -- the timestamp db is very
small, performs a very simple lightweight operation, has a single writer
and multiple readers, and can therefore later be made separate from the
main DB, replicated, etc.

So, there are some ideas.

* Client/server database split
* Front-end/back-end script split

Does anyone have any idea how reasonable this is as an idea, based on
refactoring retrofitting the existing script?  I think that if things
were done slowly, the front-end code could be made about 10% of the
overall complexity, mostly refactored from existing code.

-- Neil


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] A comparison of PostgreSQL with MySQL

body:
A few links regarding comparisons of PostgreSQL vs. MySQL.

The general consensus seems to be the MySQL is fast but very slightly
flaky and may have scaling problems. PostgreSQL is slower under low
loads, but getting better, and may perform better than MySQL under heavy
loads.

Really, the only way to find out is to try both and compare.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

From:

http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/01/31/worldforge.html?page=2

Quotes:

Riddoch:

"MySQL performs poorly under a heavy load," he says. "In particular, it
does not handle very large tables well and does not optimize complex
queries well.

Harrington:

"For read-only applications [PostgreSQL] can be significantly slower
than MySQL, but we have not done any benchmarking or timing so we can't
really say much there.

http://www.mysql.com/information/benchmarks.html

shows MySQL generally outperforming PostgreSQL on simple reads.

http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/rdbmssql.html

mostly critiques MySQL as unstable compared to other databases

http://osdb.sourceforge.net/

the Open Source Database Benchmark

http://openacs.org/philosophy/why-not-mysql.html

generally criticises MySQL!


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] radio interview

body:
The most popular Esperanto radio station interviewed
me about the Esperanto wikipedia project today.  It
was a little difficult, because she spoke quite fast,
but I think I handled it ok.  ;-)  I'll try to let
everyone know when it airs (it airs on the Internet as
well).

Chuck

=====
Come to my homepage!  Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Informaci?n de Estados Unidos y Am?rica Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Vis?tanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] AW: Re:  [Wikipedia-l] Source texts

body:
On 18 Apr 2002, at 9:07, magnus.manske at epost.de wrote:

> >> Why would we be doing this project at all if we didn't think
> >> that Wikipedia will be around longer than other sites, and that we
> >> will be able to present texts in a superior way?  Project
> >> Gutenberg, for example, suffers from the problem that its texts are
> >> ancient ASCII. We can already do a bit better, because we can
> >> include images from the original, original italics, etc. Ours are
> >> also searchable, and we can include links to commentary.
> >
> >While I agree that Gutenberg could use some updating, I disagree on
> >Wikipedia involvment. This is really for another project, and one
> >that probably doesn't use wiki but some other system such as Zend
> >which is more easily regulated.
>
> IMHO such a project *could* work with the wiki system, especially for
> OCRed pages that need manual work. This could be done by a community
> rather than by a single person, especially if, e.g., a book is broken
> into chapters taht can be edited seperately.

It's already been done without a wiki see,

http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg/

Imran


from_name: Joao Mário Miranda

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Question: Are there public domain French-English
 dictionaries?

body:
Hannes Hirzel wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I was just looking at the page
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Public+Domain+Resources
>
> I did not find references to public domain French-English / English
> French dictionaires.
>
> Does anybody know if such a thing exists?
> Even a short dictionary with 3000 .. 8000 well chosen entries would
> already be helpful.

Try:

http://octopus.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/magic-dic/

http://www.travlang.com/Ergane/erganeen.htm

Joao
http://www.nonio.com


body:
Hannes Hirzel wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I was just looking at the page
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Public+Domain+Resources
>
> I did not find references to public domain French-English / English
> French dictionaires.
>
> Does anybody know if such a thing exists?
> Even a short dictionary with 3000 .. 8000 well chosen entries would
> already be helpful.

See also the Wikipedia Machine Translation Project:

http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia+Machine+Translation+Project

Joao
http://www.nonio.com


from_name: Hannes Hirzel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Question: Are there public domain French-English dictionaries?

body:
Hi

I was just looking at the page
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Public+Domain+Resources

I did not find references to public domain French-English / English
French dictionaires.

Does anybody know if such a thing exists?
Even a short dictionary with 3000 .. 8000 well chosen entries would
already be helpful.

Regards

Hannes Hirzel


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Source texts

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
> What (if anything) is the present consensus on including (short) PD texts in
> the 'pedia.  I'm thinking of
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

This is not an answer to your question, just a reflexion: At some
point, the titles of such texts will "pollute" the name space of
Wikipedia.  For example, should [[The Raven]] be the poem and
[[Raven]] be a description of the bird?  Should [[U.S. Constitution]]
be a text about the constitution or the text of the constitution?
To some extent, titles of works are a namespace of their own.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New feature suggestion

body:
How about a special:RecentPageViews which displays the top 50 (or 100,
or 200 etc.) recently _read_ pages -- like a sort of mini Google
Zeitgeist for Wikipedia.

Unlike special:PopularPages it would be the equivalent of a
very-short-term memory.

Perhaps a good name would be "Recent picks"?

-- Neil Harris


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
> > IMHO such a project *could* work with the wiki system, especially for
> > OCRed pages that need manual work. This could be done by a community
> > rather than by a single person, especially if, e.g., a book is broken
> > into chapters taht can be edited seperately.
>
> It's already been done without a wiki see,
>
> http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg/
>

Cool! Seems all they need is a better interface to present their proofread
books;)

To Jimbo: How about setting up a [[wikipedia:Support wikipedia]] page, with
a PayPal link like the above site has? That's no advertisement, and the
money (if any;) could go to a special account for the Nupedia foundation
(coming up, right?).


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New feature suggestion

body:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Neil Harris wrote:

> How about a special:RecentPageViews which displays the top 50 (or 100,
> or 200 etc.) recently _read_ pages -- like a sort of mini Google
> Zeitgeist for Wikipedia.

Imagine the feedback effects. :)

-- Daniel


from_name: Daniel Lee Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Ideas on a source:namespace

body:
On Thursday 18 April 2002 12:02 pm, Magnus wrote:
> IMHO such a project *could* work with the wiki system, especially for OCRed
> pages that need manual work. This could be done by a community rather than
> by a single person, especially if, e.g., a book is broken into chapters
> taht can be edited seperately.
> There would have to be some special features, though, like subpages for
> the chapters (back to square one;) , a better diff system maybe, and access
> for logged-in users only to cut down troll activity.
> Another advantage would be that it could be easily interlinked with
> wikipedia ([[source:The Origin of Species]]...)
>
> Magnus

This would be an excellent feature and adding a source:namespace with more
restrictive rules would probably work out nicely. However, for source texts
like this I would further limit editing ability to sysops or maybe only to
users who have been in the database more than a set amount of time (there is
nothing stopping a vandal from logging in to do some harm).

Per a previous feature request I submitted, I still think it would be nice to
display parts of protected text in a text box within a regular wikipedia
world-editable article (maybee have all source:namespace articles
automatically have numbered lines, so that a user could call upon those
particular lines to display in a regular article.....just brainstorming).
Whatever we decide to do, we do need to somehow protect the integrity of what
the author said -- otherwise it is useless.

Annotation is a different story and usually has small sections taken out of
contex to be discussed (often by critics) -- there is much less expectation
that what is being annotated is the actual words of the original author than
would a dump of the complete text. Therefore, nothing really special is
needed for that other than regular wiki magic. Although a link to some kind
of 'protected' source would only help the argument of the annotator (or
detract from, depending on the validity of the argument).

If something is going to be seriously planned along these or similar lines,
then we should perhaps just have the sysops go around and protect the source
material and maybee replace it if there is reason to believe that it has been
tampered with (thus changing what the Bible said, for example). Otherwise we
should probably remove all such material from the current versions of
articles and replace it with external links to the text.

maveric149


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Distributed Proofreaders

body:
On Thursday 18 April 2002 12:02 pm, Imran wrote:
> >?IMHO such a project *could* work with the wiki system, especially for
> >?OCRed pages that need manual work. This could be done by a community
> >?rather than by a single person, especially if, e.g., a book is broken
> >?into chapters taht can be edited seperately.
>
> It's already been done without a wiki see,
>
> http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg/
>
> Imran

What an excellent project! If we do decide to implement some kind of
protected source setup, we should encourage wikipedians to go to that website
first for historical documents. Although there may be some copyright
concerns.....

maveric


body:
Imran Ghory wrote:
> > IMHO such a project *could* work with the wiki system, especially for
> > OCRed pages that need manual work. This could be done by a community
>
> It's already been done without a wiki see,
> http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg/

Actually, I have done this _with_ the wiki-like component, for the
Scandinavian e-text project that I run, "Project Runeberg".  If you
want to help me proofread the Swedish translation of Poe's "The
Raven", you don't need to know Swedish, you only have to visit
http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/rydbdikt/0060.html
and scroll down til you see the OCR text below the facsimile image.

I'm afraid you'll get an error when you try to "save" (I should fix
this bug soon), but you should get the idea.  There's so much that can
be done by borrowing ideas from wiki into other projects.  Note that
this implementation is still a prototype, and should be developed
further and bugfixed before it is launched publicly.

There's even a "recent changes" with diffs and all on
http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/rc.pike

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] redirects in search engine

body:
When someone searches, you need to have the redirects
come up last in the search results.  Don't eliminate
them, but if someone is going to take the time to go
through the entire search results, then they will find
the redirects at the end.  No option is needed for
this solution.  :)

Chuck

=====
Come to my homepage!  Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Informaci?n de Estados Unidos y Am?rica Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Vis?tanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <MLEPJFEEOFMFHGIHGJPIIEKNCAAA.magnus.manske@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 07:13:03PM +0200

body:
> To Jimbo: How about setting up a [[wikipedia:Support wikipedia]] page, with
> a PayPal link like the above site has? That's no advertisement, and the
> money (if any;) could go to a special account for the Nupedia foundation
> (coming up, right?).

Right.  But, there's no pressing need for money at the present time, I
think.  But I think we will be set up soon so that people can donate
to the nonprofit.

My thinking on this is that we can come up with several different proposals, and
let people earmark the funds for whatever they most want to support.  New hardware,
advertising in academic-oriented publications, editor salaries, investment in the
production of a paper version, whatever people find worthwhile.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Source texts

body:
> > What (if anything) is the present consensus on including (short) PD
texts in
> > the 'pedia.  I'm thinking of
> > http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus
> > http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
>
> This is not an answer to your question, just a reflexion: At some
> point, the titles of such texts will "pollute" the name space of
> Wikipedia.  For example, should [[The Raven]] be the poem and
> [[Raven]] be a description of the bird?  Should [[U.S. Constitution]]
> be a text about the constitution or the text of the constitution?
> To some extent, titles of works are a namespace of their own.

How about adding (source text) behind them, like [[Grundgesetz
(Quellentext)]] in the German WP. I don't know what the benefit of a
separate namespace would be, but it will not hurt either.

I don't think a protection is needed for these text, it would be enough
to make them a bit more eye catching on the RecentChanges page, so that
it doesn't take 5 minutes but only 2 until vandalism is restored (just
guessing). And maybe some kind of consensus that editings of these text
have to be explained on Talk: - I'm thinking of translation corrections
here. It should also be possible to wikify the texts.

But I also agree that WP isn't the right place to store large texts - at
the moment.

Bye,
Kurt


body:
Daniel Lee Mayer wrote:

> This would be an excellent feature and adding a source:namespace with more
> restrictive rules would probably work out nicely. However, for source texts

I think such a project should be given a different name and kept
separate from Wikipedia.  The Wikipedia brand should represent
something that is similar to an encyclopedia, or everybody will get
confused.  The same people (and company) can be involved in more than
one project.  There can be close links (even namespace-like
links) between two websites that run under different brands.

Other than this, the current Wiki technology has limited use for
source texts, because there can be any number of texts having the same
title, so [[source:The Raven]] could be very ambiguous.

What we could easily do is to introduce a link scheme, that translates
the Wiki text gutenberg:1063 into a useful link like
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1063
just like the 'ISBN:' rule we have today.  If the upenn website goes
away, the Wikipedia pages still contain "gutenberg:1063" and the link
rule can be rewritten to use another website.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] redirects in search engine

body:
(Discussion redirected here because it is a technical point.)

Chuck Smith wrote:
> When someone searches, you need to have the redirects
> come up last in the search results.  Don't eliminate
> them, but if someone is going to take the time to go
> through the entire search results, then they will find
> the redirects at the end.  No option is needed for
> this solution.  :)

In an ideal world, shouldn't we not link to redirects in the search
engine, but instead link to the page that's at the end of the
redirects?

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <200204192250.g3JMopD16304@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 03:50:51PM -0700

body:
*laugh* Do you know David Friedman?  I talk to him all the time (in
email).  Smart guy!

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

>
> > But I think we will be set up soon so that people can donate
> > to the nonprofit.
>
> If the delay is finding legal help, I have a minimum of legal
> training and experience sufficient to set up a California non-
> profit which I would be glad to do for you.
>
> And yes, my mind ponders the irony of a radical Friedmanite
> anarchocapitalist offering a radical Randian Objectivist help
> in establishing a non-profit collective. :-)
> 0


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20020419/3132e17b/attachment.diff


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be glad this guy isn't writing for the wikipedia!

body:
I probably shouldn't be forwarding this here, but I thought it might
tickle a few funnybones... It was forwarded to alt.humour.best.of.usenet
for obvious reasons. :)

Karen

PS. So that I'm saying something real with this post, has anyone else
been having a problem with requests to the wikipedia timing right out? I
keep getting 'zero sized replies' after much sitting staring at a blank
screen. It's annoying...

*****

[Submitter's note: The folks in misc.writing are not nice to people who
ask for help with home work.  I especially liked the last line. . . .]

Subject: Re: grain shortage
From: billo at saltmine.radix.net (Bill Oliver)
Newsgroups: misc.writing

In article <3d8c5406.0203270016.11105efa at posting.google.com>,
Jhon <ahmad1403 at hotmail.com> wrote:
 >Hi:
 >I've some questions and I want answers for my questions,please.
 >These are the questions:

 >1. What is the overall situation of the world grain?

Not too bad.  Thanks for asking.

Not many people recognize that most of the world's food needs are met
by a single large grain of rice called "The World Grain" (TWG), also
known historically as "Twiggy."

The existence of The World Grain has been known for millenia, of
course.  Plato noted that all things in the world come from single
World Objects in his famous "Shadows in a Cave" speech before the Hasty
Pudding Club in 1032 BC.  A best-selling expose of this was more
recently written by Henry Beard and Ron Barrett called "The Way Things
Really Work And How They Actually Happen."

In this book, Beard and Barrett expose one of the greatest secrets of
America -- that there is only one Chinese Restaurant in the world (The
World Chinese Restaurant (TWCR) ).  There is a vast web of pipes that
attaches TWCR to all of the other Chinesse restaurants that we eat
at. The Chinese Take Out of the entire world is fed through these pipes.

The Chinese restaurant you probably order from is not real.  Oh sure,
you can sit down and eat there, or you can order take out.  But it's
not really real.  It's just a place with wait staff where you go and
pay for prepared food to eat on the premises or take away.  But
it's not a *restaurant* restaurant. It's a little like
misc.writing.moderated.

And, of course, there is The World Computer (TWC) which is in Redmond,
California.  I can't really write about that, else the it will take
back my share of the world electron.

The World Grain is, of course, the single grain from which all
other grain comes.  It is generally mined.  The chips are then
colored or milled and sold as corn, rice, or SUVs.

The World Grain was first discovered by the early American Indians.
The early Indians were mostly ranchers and hunters, though, and they
were not particularly interested in a rock-hard lump of starch the size
of a mountain.  There were plenty of buffalo around at the time,
anyway, so they sold it to the early European settlers for a Timeshare
in Cornwall and season tickets to the St Endellion Festival Chorus.

Unfortunately, they had attempted this without an agent, and found
that they had overlooked the need for transportation. The famous
artist Max Factor painted a scene where the settlers told the
Delaware Indians that they could get tickets to Cornwall the
day Louisiana elects an honest governor.  This painting, called
"Washington Crossing the Delaware" shows a number of Delaware
Indians scratching their heads in furious thought.  This habit
of scratching the head when trying to find passage is the origin
of our phrase "scalping for tickets."

The World Grain was then taken to Plymouth, where it was known
as the Plymouth Rock.  At first, attempts to mine the TWG were
unsuccessful because of the hard shell covering the grain.  There
was a group of people who wanted to soak the world grain in the
ocean to soften it up (so-called "hard shell baptists" because
they wanted to "baptise" the grain).  The grain was placed in the
ocean, but quickly started to expand well beyond what the settlers
wanted.  The World Grain started creeping across the continental
shelf.  People started building beach houses on it.  The water
near Boston turned even more icky than normal, though while
looking out over the harbor Sting was moved to write those
stirring words to our National Anthem about "amber waves
of grain."

Clearly, something had to be done.  The world grain had
to be removed.  However, the folk in Massachusetts had
also developed an impressive tourist trade based on this
expanding behemoth, slowly becoming The World Pasta.  So, they
took out the world grain and put in a big stone.  The tourists,
while easily deceived as all tourists are, were still a bit
disappointed.  To this day, tourists go there, look at Plymouth
Rock, and say "What? This is what we drove 6 hours for?"

The world grain was then bought by a railroad tycoon and moved
to Ohio, where it was mined successfully for years.  Since
the world grain was in Ohio, and Mann's Chinese Theater (and
restaurant) was in California, the transcontinental railroad
was built.  Trainloads of freshly-mined grain chips went across
the nation and feeding the world.

Eventually a Democrat was elected President, and the government
took the world grain away from the citizens in order to better
serve them.  The government set up an efficient mining and
food distribution system which we call "The Great Depression."
Millions of people were starving and went to Washington to
demand action.  Always responsive, the government created a
diversity committee to better help people adjust.

More recently, modern technology has allowed even the government
to mine the world grain efficiently.  In an effort to feed
America's poor, the government called in the INS to distribute
food to the needy inner cities of America.  The INS always
serious about its job, immediately set about dropping tons of
food from airplanes into random uninhabited parts of Afghanistan.

 >2. How does water effect on the production of grain?

It helps a lot.

 >3. How much of the grain product is used to feed people and how much
 >is used to feed animals?

Most of it.  A small amount is used to make ethanol for liberals
who want expensive gas and for Senators from the Midwest who want
re-election.

 >4. How much of world hunger caused by grain shortage?

None.  Most hunger is caused by not eating.

Nope this helps!

billo

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

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

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Ian

body:
They don't appear to have a historical theme.

I agree, though, it looks like a execellent project, but that it is
something we don't need to replicate.

Ian Monroe
http://ian.webhop.org

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Daniel Lee Mayer maveric149 at yahoo.com XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:

> On Thursday 18 April 2002 12:02 pm, Imran wrote:
> > >?IMHO such a project *could* work with the wiki system, especially for
> > >?OCRed pages that need manual work. This could be done by a community
> > >?rather than by a single person, especially if, e.g., a book is broken
> > >?into chapters taht can be edited seperately.
> >
> > It's already been done without a wiki see,
> >
> > http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg/
> >
> > Imran
>
> What an excellent project! If we do decide to implement some kind of
> protected source setup, we should encourage wikipedians to go to that website
> first for historical documents. Although there may be some copyright
> concerns.....
>
> maveric


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking IPs and related wikiware tweaks proposal

body:
On Saturday I blocked 212.138.47.12 after this person deleted content from at
least three Islam related articles ([[Qur'an]], [[Dialect]], & [[Muslim
language]]).

It would be nice if I could have stated my reason why as part of the blocking
process and for [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] to show up in Recent Changes with
my explanation automatically in an edit comment.

I really don't think the current seemingly hush-hush setup will alleviate
fears in some that a secretive cabal has taken over the 'pedia. I know that
this is not the case and not the intention of the current setup, but others
don't.

We should be completely open with everything we do and the software needs to
be tweaked to make this natural and easy. There should also be a notice on
[[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] telling the world just how long an IP is blocked
and there should eventually be the ability for other sysops to undue an IP
ban if a mistake has been made.

On a related front: Is it possible to block the IP of a logged in user? There
is nothing stopping a vandal from logging in and doing harm. Although I am
not aware of any logged in user actually performing a systematic assault on
articles there have been several logged in users uploading copyrighted or
inappropriate material.

BTW it also would be nice to be able to more easily track what these vandals
have done so that the other damage these people have probably done can be
fixed. Otherwise many of the less obvious changes these people have made will
be obscured by someone else editing a vandalized article in order to improve
it -- thus removing their IP/user name from Recent Changes. Could
"contributions of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" automatically be generated and placed on
[[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] when xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is blocked?

As soon as we decide what to do with these issues in general this discussion
should be switched to the developer mailing list to work out the details.

maveric


from_name: Brion L. VIBBER

body:
On sab, 2002-04-20 at 22:16, Daniel Lee Mayer wrote:
> On Saturday I blocked 212.138.47.12 after this person deleted content from at
> least three Islam related articles ([[Qur'an]], [[Dialect]], & [[Muslim
> language]]).

(See notes in [[Wikipedia talk:Blocked IPs]] for more details.)

> It would be nice if I could have stated my reason why as part of the blocking
> process and for [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] to show up in Recent Changes with
> my explanation automatically in an edit comment.

Agreed, I was going to add that feature but didn't finish it. I'll get
on that...

> I really don't think the current seemingly hush-hush setup will alleviate
> fears in some that a secretive cabal has taken over the 'pedia. I know that
> this is not the case and not the intention of the current setup, but others
> don't.
>
> We should be completely open with everything we do and the software needs to
> be tweaked to make this natural and easy. There should also be a notice on
> [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] telling the world just how long an IP is blocked

The time the ban was made appears in the list. Unfortunately, it appears
as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. :)

That's already fixed in the development version.

> and there should eventually be the ability for other sysops to undue an IP
> ban if a mistake has been made.

All sysops can un-ban people simply by editing [[wikipedia:Banned IPs]]
and removing the address in question from the list. Maybe this should be
stated in a message at the top of the page?

> On a related front: Is it possible to block the IP of a logged in user? There
> is nothing stopping a vandal from logging in and doing harm. Although I am
> not aware of any logged in user actually performing a systematic assault on
> articles there have been several logged in users uploading copyrighted or
> inappropriate material.

No, not at this time. Blocks will (I think) apply to anyone, whether
they *subsequently* log in or not, but if they're logged in while they
do their initial dirty work there's no way to ban them (short of having
Jimbo comb through the server logs to find their IP address) because the
IP won't be recorded in the database, just the username.

> BTW it also would be nice to be able to more easily track what these vandals
> have done so that the other damage these people have probably done can be
> fixed. Otherwise many of the less obvious changes these people have made will
> be obscured by someone else editing a vandalized article in order to improve
> it -- thus removing their IP/user name from Recent Changes. Could
> "contributions of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" automatically be generated and placed on
> [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] when xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is blocked?

Yeah, that's easy to do. I'll add it if there's no objection.

> As soon as we decide what to do with these issues in general this discussion
> should be switched to the developer mailing list to work out the details.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On sab, 2002-04-20 at 22:45, I wrote:
> On sab, 2002-04-20 at 22:16, Daniel Lee Mayer wrote:
> > It would be nice if I could have stated my reason why as part of the blocking
> > process and for [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] to show up in Recent Changes with
> > my explanation automatically in an edit comment.
>
> Agreed, I was going to add that feature but didn't finish it. I'll get
> on that...

Done...

> > BTW it also would be nice to be able to more easily track what these vandals
> > have done so that the other damage these people have probably done can be
> > fixed. Otherwise many of the less obvious changes these people have made will
> > be obscured by someone else editing a vandalized article in order to improve
> > it -- thus removing their IP/user name from Recent Changes. Could
> > "contributions of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" automatically be generated and placed on
> > [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] when xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is blocked?
>
> Yeah, that's easy to do. I'll add it if there's no objection.

and done (in the development version, that is).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] considering blocking an IP

body:
I am very close to blocking 194.117.133.118, who seems to be using the Wiki
for a campaign against ukonline.gov.uk.

Any arguments *against* blocking this person, please?
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


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from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Diagnosing slowdowns

body:
Jimbo, could we have access to some httpd logs and a ps -A -f
output?

Axel


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Connection to database lost

body:
After several unsuccessful attempts to find out about Willard van Orman
Quine, I get this error:

Warning: MySQL: Link to server lost, unable to reconnect in
/home/wiki-newest/work-http/databaseFunctions.php on line 11
Could not connect to MySQL server:

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] Simple changes

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Simple changes

body:
On mer, 2002-04-24 at 14:45, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> There are a couple of simple fixes I can make easily, like fixing the
> <dl> code, recognizing ".JPG", etc.  I have downloaded the latest
> stuff from CVS.  What would be a quick and convenient way to get
> those fixes done?  Posting a diff to this list?  Sending a complete
> file to one of the maintainers?  I'm not sure I want or need CVS
> checkin access; this is not something I'll be doing regularly.
> 0

Sending a diff to the list sounds great to me.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Recent discussion on about text on wikipedia:policy that needs clarification


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Recent discussion on about text on
    wikipedia:policy that needs clarification

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Orphans, skins

body:
I just noticed the link tables in the 'pedia are (still?) inconsistent. For
example, [[803]] shows up on the Orphans page, but 15 (!) articles link to
it.

-

Currently, we generate the skins from within the code. This really starts
getting ugly. How about:
* For each skin, there's a dummy HTML file
* It contains special markup like @@textRandomPage
* These could be enclosed in <showRandomPages>....</showRandomPages>
* On display, the HTML is adapted to the viewer and the page to be viewed
(no "delete this page" on special pages etc.)

This would make it easy to keep the skins up-to-date, add more skins, and
keep the code relatively clean.

The HTML for the skins could even be stored as a "wikipedia:" article.
Thinking of it, we could store the whole PHP script as protected articles
and update the running version from there... ('scuse me, going berserk;)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun new features to slow the server down more

body:
After much clamoring from many quarters, I decided to add to
special:whatlinkshere a list of pages that link to the current page via
redirects. Doesn't seem to have exploded so far... Feel free to improve
it / integrate it better with the rest of the list.

One potential problem is that a redirect page could, conceivably, have
additional links in the text after the #REDIRECT line, and the current
code would think those links were actual redirects and list them
accordingly. But, well, they shouldn't.

Also, I've disabled redirect-following for diffs. If I want to diff a
redirect page, goshdarnit, I want to diff the redirect page, not the
page that it (now) redirects to!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Vacation

body:
I'm on vacation until next Sunday... but I will try to get to some
Wikipedia related requests, particularly for those related to the
slowdowns.

I'll also instruct Jason to set up the pl2.wikipedia.com server,
in consultation with people on the tech list.  jasonr at bomis.com
is his direct address.

Jason, can you help the wikipedia folks out?  We're most interested in
getting the pl site on a test wikipedia with mysql, and the esperanto
one, too.

Also, give them access_logs or whatever they need to help diagnose the
slowness!


in_reply_to: <20020425043811.WWEB19669.rwcrmhc54.attbi.com@there>; from maveric149@yahoo.com on Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 09:34:21PM -0700

body:
Daniel Lee Mayer wrote:
> Specifically, if Bomis is claiming ownership then they can, on a whim
> overnight change the license to anything they want. Not that I believe Jimbo
> Wales would do such a thing, but car accidents happen all the time and
> liquidators don't care didly about the project. Yeah, I know; all the older
> versions of the 'pedia would still be under the FDL. But one of the reasons I
> contribute is because I have the knowledge that what I do here will forever
> be free and there will never be an unfree version. I really don't know if I
> would continue contributing without this knowledge. --maveric149, Wednesday,
> April 10, 2002

> Jimbo what is the official position so the the text can be updated?
>
> BTW, what, if any, plans are there for licensing the "collection" of
> articles? Could this be done with a dual license that would enable a future
> non-free publication of the collection of articles (although the articles
> themselves would still be 100% free -- if this is can be done, then one
> couldn't amass more than a certain percentage of the articles in any one
> publication without permission - not sure if that is even legal with the FDL,
> let alone practical)? Last two questions have no intent or direction behind
> them.... just interested.

I think that there's no way for anyone to "dual license" the articles,
not even me.

The official position is the copyright is held by the author(s) of a
given article, and they release it under the GFDL.  Bomis can't
release a non-free version any more than anyone else can.

In the event that there is a substantial violation of the GFDL,
substantial to the point that a court resolution is necessary, and
perhaps monetary damages possible, then it would surely make sense for
several authors to join together (probably with me funding the effort
if I can) in the lawsuit, all profiting from the settlement.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <200204251626.g3PGQ5J12841@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 09:26:05AM -0700

body:
Since I'm on vacation, I'm typing on my mom's slow computer.
It's too painful to write very much.

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

> You Wrote:
> >>From [[wikipedia:policy]]:
>
> Which, by the way, I intend to replace entirely with
> [[wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] when I finish all
> the reorganization there...
>
> >Jimbo what is the official position so the the text can be updated?
>
> Jimbo, if you do want to make a more detailed official
> statement, do so on the page [[wikipedia:copyrights]], which
> should be the final home of such things (it's linked from
> the [[wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] page. I hope to
> eliminate all the duplicate references to things like that.
> 0


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] polish, and esperanto wikipedias, and slowness in the new software

body:
Hello,

I am a programmer here at Bomis, and I have been asked to get
pl.wikipedia.com and es.wikipedia.com running on the new (PHP/MySQL
based) software.  I have also been asked to help resolve the
performance issues that Wikipedia has been having.  I am new to this
list, so I'll be taking a little time to look over the archives before
I start doing anything drastic, but I wanted to introduce myself.

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


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

body:
Eirik Bakke wrote:

> I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really
> know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;
>
> I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran
> into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When
> entering artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want
> to make, already have alot of information on a totally different
> subject (Fish, Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious
> solution would be to add it to the existing pages under a different
> meaning of the word, however I feel that would do more harm then good
> on alot of topics. (Writing about progressive rock under the entrance
> for "Fish") Is there any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several
> pages for the same topic, that would both show up on a search, without
> the clutter of having elerything on the same page. This problem will
> only get more common as the numbers of articles increase.

That which you seek you shall find explained in
[[wikipedia:Disambiguation]].
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/wikipedia:Disambiguation

Most likely in this case you'd want to create pages such as [[Fish
(band)]] (I thought it was "Phish"... There's already an article under
that title; is it the same group?), [[Genesis (band)]] etc, with a brief
note and link from [[Fish]], [[Genesis]], etc.

Note that at the bottom of [[Genesis]], there's already a brief note
about the band with a link to a non-existent page [[Genesis/group]].
That's an ugly link using the old slash-subpage style from before
parentheses worked in wiki titles, feel free to change it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Eirik Bakke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

body:
Greetings,

I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;

I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When entering artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want to make, already have alot of information on a totally different subject (Fish, Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious solution would be to add it to the existing pages under a different meaning of the word, however I feel that would do more harm then good on alot of topics. (Writing about progressive rock under the entrance for "Fish") Is there any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several pages for the same topic, that would both show up on a search, without the clutter of having elerything on the same page. This problem will only get more common as the numbers of articles increase.

I would apprechiate and insight you migth have to offer.

Thank you.

Eirik Bakke
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Karen AKA Kajikit" <kaji at labyrinth.net.au>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 5:17 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

> > Eirik Bakke wrote:
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really
> > know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;
> >
> > I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran
> > into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When
> > entering artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want
> > to make, already have alot of information on a totally different
> > subject (Fish, Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious
> > solution would be to add it to the existing pages under a different
> > meaning of the word, however I feel that would do more harm then good
> > on alot of topics. (Writing about progressive rock under the entrance
> > for "Fish") Is there any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several
> > pages for the same topic, that would both show up on a search, without
> > the clutter of having elerything on the same page. This problem will
> > only get more common as the numbers of articles increase.
> >
> > I would apprechiate and insight you migth have to offer.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Eirik Bakke
>
> Hi Eirik,
>
> If it was me doing that work, I'd make the entries with titles as clear
> and disabiguous as I could eg. Fish (Rock band) Someone who did a search
> for fish would see all the entries with the word 'fish' in them and they
> ought to be able to tell which are the ones they're looking for.
>
> From my personal knowledge, a 'fish' is a creature with fins and a
> tail... :)
>
> --
>
> Karen AKA Kajikit
>
> 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
>
> Love and huggles to all!
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

Yes, that should work. Won't look as elegant, but it should serve. Thanks
for the tip :)

Eirik Bakke


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

body:
Will do.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 6:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

> Eirik Bakke wrote:
>
> > I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really
> > know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;
> >
> > I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran
> > into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When
> > entering artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want
> > to make, already have alot of information on a totally different
> > subject (Fish, Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious
> > solution would be to add it to the existing pages under a different
> > meaning of the word, however I feel that would do more harm then good
> > on alot of topics. (Writing about progressive rock under the entrance
> > for "Fish") Is there any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several
> > pages for the same topic, that would both show up on a search, without
> > the clutter of having elerything on the same page. This problem will
> > only get more common as the numbers of articles increase.
>
> That which you seek you shall find explained in
> [[wikipedia:Disambiguation]].
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/wikipedia:Disambiguation
>
> Most likely in this case you'd want to create pages such as [[Fish
> (band)]] (I thought it was "Phish"... There's already an article under
> that title; is it the same group?), [[Genesis (band)]] etc, with a brief
> note and link from [[Fish]], [[Genesis]], etc.
>
> Note that at the bottom of [[Genesis]], there's already a brief note
> about the band with a link to a non-existent page [[Genesis/group]].
> That's an ugly link using the old slash-subpage style from before
> parentheses worked in wiki titles, feel free to change it.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.

body:
> Eirik Bakke wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really
> know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;
>
> I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran
> into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When
> entering artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want
> to make, already have alot of information on a totally different
> subject (Fish, Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious
> solution would be to add it to the existing pages under a different
> meaning of the word, however I feel that would do more harm then good
> on alot of topics. (Writing about progressive rock under the entrance
> for "Fish") Is there any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several
> pages for the same topic, that would both show up on a search, without
> the clutter of having elerything on the same page. This problem will
> only get more common as the numbers of articles increase.
>
> I would apprechiate and insight you migth have to offer.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Eirik Bakke

Hi Eirik,

If it was me doing that work, I'd make the entries with titles as clear
and disabiguous as I could eg. Fish (Rock band) Someone who did a search
for fish would see all the entries with the word 'fish' in them and they
ought to be able to tell which are the ones they're looking for.


body:
> LDC replies to maveric:
>
> I'm sure it's just outdated.  From the discussions we've had about the
topic
> here and on the mailing list, it's clear that the intent is that Bomis
hold a
> collection copyright on Wikipedia as a whole, but that individual
articles
> are still copyrighted by their original author(s), who grant use of
them
> under the GFDL to Bomis and to the public.  Further, Bomis grants
license to
> use the collection under the GFDL as well.  Yes, there need to be
clearer
> statements of these legal positions here.  -- Lee Daniel Crocker

Why does "Bomis hold a collection copyright on Wikipedia as a whole"? I
think the contributors are the ones who form the collection (create the
hypertext structure, "place the links"). Where is the essential part
that Bomis adds to Wikipedia (in an ideal way - I don't mean the server
space)?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful to Jimbo/the Bomis people for
making this possible. It's just something I don't understand (but I'm no
lawyer) - could someone explain this to me?

Bye,
Kurt

P.S.: I can hardly wait to have the German WP running under the PHP
script.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug in diff

body:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/P-adic_numbers&diff=yes

{'''Q'''} should be {'''Q'''0}.

phma


body:
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from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Duplicate pages

body:
Message: 3
From: "Eirik Bakke" <eirik_bakke at broadpark.no>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 04:24:01 +0200
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.
Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_0029_01C1EDA3.5B787E40
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Greetings,

I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really =
know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;

I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran =
into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When entering
=
artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want to make, =
already have alot of information on a totally different subject (Fish, =
Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious solution would be to =
add it to the existing pages under a different meaning of the word, =
however I feel that would do more harm then good on alot of topics. =
(Writing about progressive rock under the entrance for "Fish") Is there
=
any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several pages for the same =
topic, that would both show up on a search, without the clutter of =
having elerything on the same page. This problem will only get more =
common as the numbers of articles increase.

I would apprechiate and insight you migth have to offer.

Thank you.

Eirik Bakke

Hi Eirik --  Speaking of duplication, isn't it a good thing we have
User: Eirik Bakke to distinguish him from Eirik Bakke (the footballer)?

Jules Kemp


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Duplicate pages

body:
Haha, the worst thing is I'm even from the same region of Norway that he is,
he grew up about a two hour drive from where I did, and I knew about him
back when he was a local nobody. Small world, eh? ;)

Eirik

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julie Hofmann Kemp" <juleskemp at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 7:43 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Duplicate pages

>
> Message: 3
> From: "Eirik Bakke" <eirik_bakke at broadpark.no>
> To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
> Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 04:24:01 +0200
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate pages.
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
>
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
> ------=_NextPart_000_0029_01C1EDA3.5B787E40
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> Greetings,
>
> I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and this mailinglist, so I don't really =
> know if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes;
>
> I'm attempting to flesh out the area of music genres, however I've ran =
> into a problem I cannot seem to find a way to get around. When entering
> =
> artists of various musical genres, alot of the entries I want to make, =
> already have alot of information on a totally different subject (Fish, =
> Genesis,Delerium,Live, Emperor ect). The obvious solution would be to =
> add it to the existing pages under a different meaning of the word, =
> however I feel that would do more harm then good on alot of topics. =
> (Writing about progressive rock under the entrance for "Fish") Is there
> =
> any workaroud for this? Ideally creating several pages for the same =
> topic, that would both show up on a search, without the clutter of =
> having elerything on the same page. This problem will only get more =
> common as the numbers of articles increase.
>
> I would apprechiate and insight you migth have to offer.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Eirik Bakke
>
> Hi Eirik --  Speaking of duplication, isn't it a good thing we have
> User: Eirik Bakke to distinguish him from Eirik Bakke (the footballer)?
>
>
> Jules Kemp
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Duplicate pages

body:
....

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen" <daniel at copyleft.no>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 7:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Duplicate pages

> On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Eirik Bakke wrote:
>
> > Haha, the worst thing is I'm even from the same region of Norway that he
is,
> > he grew up about a two hour drive from where I did, and I knew about him
> > back when he was a local nobody. Small world, eh? ;)
>
> Of course you did, you inbred Norwegian fucker. ;)
>
> -- Daniel
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Duplicate pages

body:
On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Eirik Bakke wrote:

> Haha, the worst thing is I'm even from the same region of Norway that he is,
> he grew up about a two hour drive from where I did, and I knew about him
> back when he was a local nobody. Small world, eh? ;)

Of course you did, you inbred Norwegian fucker. ;)

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

body:
Just a quick clarification on collection copyrights: if you put
together a collection of materials, then you acquire a copyright in
your particular presentation of the collection, not in the materials
of the collection themselves.

This means that Bomis' collection copyright would be violated if
somebody were to copy the website wholesale. If on the other hand the
wiki sources of the articles are downloaded one by one, and a new web
site created out of those, then Bomis' collection copyright won't be
violated. If this new web site doesn't offer the articles under GFDL,
then the individual article authors could sue of course.

This is similar to a Linux distribution. If you create a distribution,
you can claim collection copyright, and somebody who copies the CDROM
image without permission is in violation. Everybody can however create
their own distribution out of the exact same free software components
that you used, without violating your collection copyright.

Axel


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Bug in diff

body:
> {'''Q'''} should be {'''Q'''0}.

Yup, that's fixed in the current version. It was due to the "feature"
of php which treats "" and  "0" both as 'false'.

Axel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

body:
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

body:
IANAL, but in general we don't have as strong database type laws here in
the US. Database copyright rules get kind of distrubing because you start
getting into copyrighting information, instead of just expression.

Plus, everything is released under the GFDL and in a single
downloadable file, so I think the intention is that if someone wants to
they could mirror the whole thing.

And Kurts right, unless you sign over your copyright everything you do is
your own, so the contributors of wikipedia all own their work released
under the GFDL.

Ian Monroe
http://ian.webhop.org

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002, Kurt Jansson jansson at gmx.net XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:

> Hi Axel!
>
> > Just a quick clarification on collection copyrights: if you put
> > together a collection of materials, then you acquire a copyright in
> > your particular presentation of the collection, not in the materials
> > of the collection themselves.
>
> Okay, but my question is: Does Bomis put together a collection of the
> articles, actively? I mean, Jimbo doesn't say: Okay, we'll take this
> article, it's good quality, but I'll keep that one out because it's
> complete nonsense (like a Linux distributor does).
>
> You could perhaps say we all own the collection copyright (because
> everybody decides if an article is good or so bad that it should be
> edited/replaced/deleted). Or a collection copyright doesn't exist for
> Wikipedia, because it's just a source out of which people could create
> collections (e.g. printed encyclopedias).
>
> But that's more my sense of justice than a funded knowing of the legal
> facts.
>
> Bye,
> Kurt
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Real-world" comparison of MySQL with PostgreSQL

body:
On Monday 29 April 2002 15:11, Neil Harris wrote:
> For read performance, they are comparable, with mySQL performing about
> 50% better.
>
> In the 10% write case, however, Postgres kept going beyond the
> client-concurrency load where MySQL falls over.

I suspect that's the problem then. Sometimes every page comes up fast (except
a few specials like "find all pages such that no pages link to them"), then
suddenly, for many minutes, I get nothing but timeouts. I suspect that lots
of people are writing, which makes MySQL fall over. Particularly annoying
when I'm trying to edit an article and I get repeated timeouts - then find
that one of them went through and I get an edit conflict.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

body:
Hi Axel!

> Just a quick clarification on collection copyrights: if you put
> together a collection of materials, then you acquire a copyright in
> your particular presentation of the collection, not in the materials
> of the collection themselves.

Okay, but my question is: Does Bomis put together a collection of the
articles, actively? I mean, Jimbo doesn't say: Okay, we'll take this
article, it's good quality, but I'll keep that one out because it's
complete nonsense (like a Linux distributor does).

You could perhaps say we all own the collection copyright (because
everybody decides if an article is good or so bad that it should be
edited/replaced/deleted). Or a collection copyright doesn't exist for
Wikipedia, because it's just a source out of which people could create
collections (e.g. printed encyclopedias).

But that's more my sense of justice than a funded knowing of the legal
facts.

Bye,
Kurt


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
For anyone who is interested, Tim Perdue has performed a set of
benchmarks  comparing MySQL with PostgreSQL

See his article at

    http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000705.php3?page=2

and

    http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000705-res.php3

for the raw results.

For read performance, they are comparable, with mySQL performing about
50% better.

In the 10% write case, however, Postgres kept going beyond the
client-concurrency load where MySQL falls over.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bogus edit conflict

body:
Can anyone explain this?

I just spent about two dozen times trying to submit the new page
"Chelicerata" and finally got an edit conflict. It says that someone
submitted the page while I was submitting it, but the page the other guy
submitted is blank. If it were the same as what I tried to submit, then the
other guy would be my previous attempt, and if it contained more text, then
my previous attempt succeeded and someone else then edited it.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

body:
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from_name: Mark Christensen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

body:
This raises an important question in my mind.  The Wikipedia FAQ says that
"the articles" are licensed under the FDL, but says nothing about the
collection.  Is it, like all of the articles, licensed under the FDL?

It has been my understanding that Bomis has released the collection under
the terms of the Free Document License, but, as I did  a quick search of the
list archive and on the wikipedia I find that it shows no specific text
stating that this is the case.

I did find an e-mail from Larry Sanger saying that he thought everybody
assigned copyright to Bomis, and then Bomis which licensed everything thing
under the GNU/FDL.  I think the part about copyright assignment has been
hashed out sufficiently on this list, but I would like clarification on the
issue of the license status of the collection.

My best guess is that it is. I'm fairly certain that Jimbo and Larry
intended for the entirety of the "free encyclopedia" to be licensed under
the FDL.  If I am correct in assuming that the FDL also applies to the
collection copyright, then I'd amend Lee's analysis to mention that: though
copyright law gives Bomins the right to control the use of the wikipedia
collection, the FDL explicitly allows republication and modification.
Therefore anyone who downloads and republishes the wikipedia would not be in
violation of copyright unless they violate the terms of the FDL.  Moreover,
since it is only the FDL that grants anybody the right to reproduce
Wikipedia articles at all, it is not particularly burdensome to be required
to abide by the FDL if somebody publishes enough of it to violate Bomis's
collection copyright.

-----Original Message-----
From: lcrocker at nupedia.com [mailto:lcrocker at nupedia.com]
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:23 PM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

>This means that Bomis' collection copyright would be violated if
>somebody were to copy the website wholesale. If on the other hand the
>wiki sources of the articles are downloaded one by one, and a new web
>site created out of those, then Bomis' collection copyright won't be
>violated. If this new web site doesn't offer the articles under GFDL,
>then the individual article authors could sue of course.

There's a little more to it than that: copyrights apply to "creative
expression", and "selection" of what to present is a creative act
specifically recognized (see Feist v. Rural).  So it doesn't matter
how they acquire the whole collection, whether they copy the website
whole or download the articles one by one; if they present the same
collection of articles that we do, they have violated our copyright
on that creative choice of which articles to present.

> This is similar to a Linux distribution. If you create a
> distribution, you can claim collection copyright, and somebody
> who copies the CDROM image without permission is in violation.

...that's true...

> Everybody can however create their own distribution out of the
> exact same free software components that you used, without
> violating your collection copyright.

...but that's not true.  You /can/ be sued for violating a
collection copyright for publishing the same collection of free
components as someone else, regardless of how you acquired them,
and even if you package them differently.  Choice of what to
present is a creative act, and is protected.
0


subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com

body:
I have now set up http://test.wikipedia.com as the php version of
pl.wikipedia.com.  I hope I did it correctly.  I suppose some people
will need to test it now...

Of course, this is just a "test" site.  Any changes to the content of
the pages will be lost when a final migration is done.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com

body:
(cross-posting also to intlwiki-l)

On mer, 2002-05-01 at 12:45, Jason Richey wrote:
> I have now set up http://test.wikipedia.com as the php version of
> pl.wikipedia.com.

Thanks!

>  I hope I did it correctly.  I suppose some people
> will need to test it now...

At first glance at least the conversion looks right, but the interface
isn't showing the Polish localized strings, and it's coming up in the
wrong character set. Probably there's a line missing from
wikiLocalSettings.php:

  $wikiLanguage = "pl";

should fix that right up.

Taw and other Polish folks: once that's done, check to make sure that
all the localized strings are showing up. There's a bunch of new stuff,
especially for the Cologne Blue skin, that probably hasn't been added to
all the translations yet.

> Of course, this is just a "test" site.  Any changes to the content of
> the pages will be lost when a final migration is done.
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com

in_reply_to: <20020501204217.GA6722@tavaiah>; from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Wed, May 01, 2002 at 10:42:17PM +0200

body:
This is the line as I have it in wikiLocalSettings.php:

$wikiLanguage = "pl"; # Polish

Perhaps I didn't delete the wikiLocalSettings.php_apc...  I'll do that
now.  Is that the right way to reload a file?  If you could all
forgive me, I'm still a little new to PHP and mod_php...

Jason

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 12:45:06PM -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
> > I have now set up http://test.wikipedia.com as the php version of
> > pl.wikipedia.com.  I hope I did it correctly.  I suppose some people
> > will need to test it now...
> >
> > Of course, this is just a "test" site.  Any changes to the content of
> > the pages will be lost when a final migration is done.
> >
>
> You seem to forgot to add:
>     $wikiLanguage = "pl";
> in wikiLocalSettings.php

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patches to wikiPage.php

body:
perl mode in emacs doesn't do too bad a job here...  PHP is close
enough in syntax to perl for it to work fairly well (cperl-mode is too
smart for PHP)...

emacs filename
ALT-x perl-mode #sets the mode to cperl
CTRL-SPACE #this sets the "mark"
SHIFT-ALT-> #moves the "point" to the end of the buffer
SHIFT-ALT-\ #indents the region between the "mark" and the "point"

I beleive that these are all default key-bindings.  People who care
may argue that "ALT" should be "META" (or ESCAPE).  This may not do
what you want, so you can always SHIFT-CTRL-_ to undo (note that I
press shift before CTRL, it matters somehow).

Please don't flame me for using emacs (or describing funtionality so
poorly)...

Jason Richey

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>
> Is there a tool that will reformat PHP code the way "indent"
> does for C code?  This code is a real mess in places.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at ross.bomis.com
> http://ross.bomis.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com

body:
On mer, 2002-05-01 at 16:07, Jason Richey wrote:
> This is the line as I have it in wikiLocalSettings.php:
>
> $wikiLanguage = "pl"; # Polish
>
> Perhaps I didn't delete the wikiLocalSettings.php_apc...  I'll do that
> now.  Is that the right way to reload a file?

Well, whatever you just did, it looks right now!

>  If you could all
> forgive me, I'm still a little new to PHP and mod_php...

You're doing well so far...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patches to wikiPage.php

body:
On mer, 2002-05-01 at 17:07, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> The attached context diff contains fixes for the source file
> wikiPage.php, with these changes:

Great! But the attachment seems to have fallen out...

> - Now accepts "JPG", "PNG", etc., in uppercase as image names.
>   No longer accepts "tif" or "tiff"--that's not an appropriate
>   format for web images, so they'll just be rendered as links.

Sounds good to me.

> - Removes HTML comments from wiki text before rendering, so they
>   can be used to leave comments _about_ the wiki text.

Not entirely unreasonable, but has this been discussed on wikipedia-l
and/or the wiki?

> - Major reworking of the code that handles p/pre/ol/ul/dl.  Old
>   code basically ripped out and replaced; now produces clean HTML,
>   compact dls, handles nesting better, etc.  I've tested this
>   pretty extensively on my own server without problems, but it
>   is a major change, so you might want to schedule installation
>   for a time when Jimbo or Jason is available to roll it back if
>   I missed something.

Sounds wonderful!

> Is there a tool that will reformat PHP code the way "indent"
> does for C code?  This code is a real mess in places.

"indent" might work all right on PHP; but then again it may not, I
haven't tried it. I don't know of a specific tool.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patches to wikiPage.php

body:
The attached context diff contains fixes for the source file
wikiPage.php, with these changes:

- Now accepts "JPG", "PNG", etc., in uppercase as image names.
  No longer accepts "tif" or "tiff"--that's not an appropriate
  format for web images, so they'll just be rendered as links.

- Removes HTML comments from wiki text before rendering, so they
  can be used to leave comments _about_ the wiki text.

- Major reworking of the code that handles p/pre/ol/ul/dl.  Old
  code basically ripped out and replaced; now produces clean HTML,
  compact dls, handles nesting better, etc.  I've tested this
  pretty extensively on my own server without problems, but it
  is a major change, so you might want to schedule installation
  for a time when Jimbo or Jason is available to roll it back if
  I missed something.

Is there a tool that will reformat PHP code the way "indent"
does for C code?  This code is a real mess in places.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Oops...forgot the attachment

body:
Patch file attached.
--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
-------------- next part --------------
*** wikiPage.old	Wed May  1 18:56:22 2002
--- wikiPage.php	Wed May  1 18:52:26 2002
***************
*** 12,18 ****
      var $timestamp ; # Time and date of last edit
      var $cache ; # For cached pages
      var $canBeCached ;
!
  #### Database management functions

      # This loads an article from the database, or calls a special function instead (all pages with "special:" namespace)
--- 12,21 ----
      var $timestamp ; # Time and date of last edit
      var $cache ; # For cached pages
      var $canBeCached ;
!
!     var $dtOpen; # Used for handling DLs
!     var $lastSection; # Used for p/pre sections
!
  #### Database management functions

      # This loads an article from the database, or calls a special function instead (all pages with "special:" namespace)
***************
*** 403,409 ****

      # This function replaces wiki-style image links with the HTML code to display them
      function parseImages ( $s ) {
!         $s = ereg_replace ( "([^[])http://([a-zA-Z0-9_/:.~\%\-]*)\.(png|jpg|jpeg|tif|tiff|gif)" , "\\1" , $s ) ;
          return $s ;
          }

--- 406,412 ----

      # This function replaces wiki-style image links with the HTML code to display them
      function parseImages ( $s ) {
!         $s = ereg_replace ( "([^[])http://([a-zA-Z0-9_/:.~\%\-]*)\.(png|PNG|jpg|JPG|jpeg|JPEG|gif|GIF)" , "\\1" , $s ) ;
          return $s ;
          }

***************
*** 696,702 ****
          # I don't *think* these are dangerous
          "id", "class" , "name" , "style" );

!     # Yeah, it seems kinda ugly.
      $bits = explode ( "<" , $s ) ;
      $s = array_shift ( $bits ) ;
      $tagstack = array() ; $tablestack = array () ;
--- 699,707 ----
          # I don't *think* these are dangerous
          "id", "class" , "name" , "style" );

!     # Delete comments right up front
!     $s = preg_replace( "//", "", $s );
!
      $bits = explode ( "<" , $s ) ;
      $s = array_shift ( $bits ) ;
      $tagstack = array() ; $tablestack = array () ;
***************
*** 844,849 ****
--- 849,939 ----
          return $s ;
          }

+     # Some functions here useful for processing */#/: lines:
+     #
+     # Regrettably, the fact that we allow miscellaneous HTML in
+     # in wiki text as well as our own markup makes it almost impossible
+     # to parse a full DOM and output nicely-balanced and checked
+     # XHTML, so we settle for HTML 4.0 and never close
 tags (if
+     # we tried we'd have headings inside paragraphs and such muck).
+     # Someday...
+
+     # getCommon() returns the length of the longest common substring
+     #
+     function closeParagraph( )
+     {
+         $result = "";
+         if ( 0 != strcmp( "p", $this->lastSection ) &&
+              0 != strcmp( "", $this->lastSection ) ) {
+             $result = "</" . $this->lastSection  . ">";
+         }
+         $this->lastSection = "";
+         return $result;
+     }
+     # of both arguments, starting at the beginning of both.
+     #
+     function getCommon( $st1, $st2 )
+     {
+         $fl = strlen( $st1 );
+         $shorter = strlen( $st2 );
+         if ($fl < $shorter) { $shorter = $fl; }
+
+         for ( $i = 0; $i < $shorter; ++$i ) {
+             if ( 0 != strcmp( substr( $st1, $i, 1 ), substr( $st2, $i, 1 ) ) ) {
+                 break;
+             }
+         }
+         return $i;
+     }
+
+     # These next three functions open, continue, and close the list
+     # element appropriate to the prefix character passed into them.
+     #
+     function openList( $char )
+     {
+         $result = $this->closeParagraph();
+
+         if ( "*" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
+         else if ( "#" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
+         else if ( ":" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
+         else if ( ";" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
+         else { $result = ""; }
+
+         return $result;
+     }
+
+     function nextItem( $char )
+     {
+         if ( "*" == $char || "#" == $char ) { return "

"; }
+         else if ( ":" == $char || ";" == $char ) {
+             $close = "
";
+             if ( $this->dtOpen ) { $close = "
"; }
+             if ( ";" == $char ) {
+                 $this->dtOpen = true;
+                 return $close . "
";
+             } else {
+                 $this->dtOpen = false;
+                 return $close . "
";
+             }
+         }
+         return "";
+     }
+
+     function closeList( $char )
+     {
+         if ( "*" == $char ) { return "

"; }
+         else if ( "#" == $char ) { return "

"; }
+         else if ( ":" == $char ) {
+             if ( $this->dtOpen ) {
+                 $this->dtOpen = false;
+                 return "

";
+             } else {
+                 return "

";
+             }
+         }
+         return "";
+     }
+
      # This function does the actual parsing of the wiki parts of the article, for regions NOT marked with <nowiki>
      function subParseContents ( $s ) {
          global $user ;
***************
*** 874,945 ****
          # Parsing through the text line by line
          # The main thing happening here is handling of lines starting with * # : etc.
          $a = explode ( "\n" , $s ) ;
!         $s = "
" ;
!         $obegin = "" ;
          foreach ( $a as $t ) {
!             $pre = "" ;
!             $post = "" ;
!             $ppre = "" ;
!             $ppost = "" ;
!             if ( trim ( $t ) == "" ) $post .= "

" ;
!
!             if ( substr($t,0,1) == " " ) { $ppre = "
\n " ; $ppost = "
".$ppost ; $t = substr ( $t , 1 ) ; }
!             if ( substr($t,0,1) == "*" ) { $ppre .= "
" ; $ppost .= "
" ; }
!             if ( substr($t,0,1) == "#" ) { $ppre .= "
" ; $ppost .= "
" ; }
!             if ( substr($t,0,1) == ":" ) { $ppre .= "

" ; }
!             if ( substr($t,0,1) == ";" ) {
!                 $ppre = "
\n
 " ;
!                 $t = str_replace ( ":" , "
" , $t ) ;
!                 $ppost = "
".$ppost ;
!                 $t = substr ( $t , 1 ) ;
!                 }
!
!             $nbegin = "" ;
!             while ( $t != "" and $obegin != "" and substr($obegin,0,1)==substr($t,0,1) ) {
!                 $nbegin .= substr($obegin,0,1) ;
!                 $t = substr ( $t , 1 ) ;
!                 $obegin = substr ( $obegin , 1 ) ;
!                 }
!
!             $obegin = str_replace ( "*" , "
" , $obegin ) ;
!             $obegin = str_replace ( "#" , "
" , $obegin ) ;
!             $obegin = str_replace ( ":" , "
" , $obegin ) ;
!             $pre .= $obegin ;
!             $obegin = $nbegin ;
!
!             while ( substr ( $t , 0 , 1 ) == "*" ) {
!                 $pre .= "
" ;
!                 $t = substr ( $t , 1 ) ;
!                 $obegin .= "*" ;
!                 }
!
!             while ( substr ( $t , 0 , 1 ) == "#" ) {
!                 $pre .= "
" ;
!                 $t = substr ( $t , 1 ) ;
!                 $obegin .= "#" ;
!                 }
!
!             while ( substr ( $t , 0 , 1 ) == ":" ) {
!                 $pre .= "
" ;
!                 $t = substr ( $t , 1 ) ;
!                 $obegin .= ":" ;
!                 }
!
!             $t = str_replace ( "  " , "  " , $t ) ;
!
!             $t = $pre.$ppre.$t.$ppost.$post ;
!             $s .= $t."\n" ;
!             }
!         $s .= "
" ;
!
!         $s = str_replace ( "
\n
" , "
\n
" , $s ) ;
!         $s = str_replace ( "
\n
" , "" , $s ) ;
!         $s = str_replace ( "
\n
" , "" , $s ) ;
!
!         # Removing artefact empty paragraphs like

!         $this->replaceAll ( "
\n
" , "

" , $s ) ;
!         $this->replaceAll ( "

" , "" , $s ) ;
!         $this->replaceAll ( "

" , "
" , $s ) ;

          # Stuff for the skins
          if ( $user->options["textTableBackground"] != "" ) {
--- 964,1050 ----
          # Parsing through the text line by line
          # The main thing happening here is handling of lines starting with * # : etc.
          $a = explode ( "\n" , $s ) ;
!         $s = "
" ;
!         $lastPref = "";
!         $lastSection = "";
!         $this->dtOpen = false;
!         $inBlockElem = false;
!
          foreach ( $a as $t ) {
!             $oLine = $t;
!             $opl = strlen( $lastPref );
!             $npl = strspn( $t, "*#:;" );
!             $pref = substr( $t, 0, $npl );
!             $pref2 = str_replace( ";", ":", $pref );
!             $t = substr( $t, $npl );
!
!             if ( 0 != $npl && 0 == strcmp( $lastPref, $pref2 ) ) {
!                 $s .= $this->nextItem( substr( $pref, -1 ) );
!
!                 if ( ";" == substr( $pref, -1 ) ) {
!                     $cpos = strpos( $t, ":" );
!                     if ( false === $cpos ) {
!                         # PHP weirdness: need empty block here.
!                     } else {
!                         $term = substr( $t, 0, $cpos );
!                         $s .= $term . "

";
!                         $t = substr( $t, $cpos + 1 );
!                     }
!                 }
!             } else if (0 != $npl || 0 != $opl) {
!                 $cpl = $this->getCommon( $pref, $lastPref );
!
!                 while ( $cpl < $opl ) {
!                     $s .= $this->closeList( substr( $lastPref, ($opl - 1), 1 ) );
!                     --$opl;
!                 }
!                 while ( $npl > $cpl ) {
!                     $char = substr( $pref, $cpl, 1 );
!                     $s .= $this->openList( $char );
!
!                     if ( ";" == $char ) {
!                         $cpos = strpos( $t, ":" );
!                         if ( false === $cpos ) {
!                         } else {
!                             $term = substr( $t, 0, $cpos );
!                             $s .= $term . "

";
!                             $t = substr( $t, $cpos + 1 );
!                         }
!                     }
!                     ++$cpl;
!                 }
!                 $lastPref = $pref2;
!             }
!             if ( 0 == $npl ) { # No prefix--go to paragraph mode
!                 if ( preg_match( "/(<table|<blockquote|<h1|<h2|<h3|<h4|closeParagraph();
!                         $s .= "<" . $newSection . ">";
!                     } else if ( 0 != strcmp( $this->lastSection, $newSection ) ) {
!                         $s .= $this->closeParagraph();
!                         if ( 0 != strcmp( "p", $newSection ) ) {
!                             $s .= "<" . $newSection . ">";
!                         }
!                     }
!                     $this->lastSection = $newSection;
!                 }
!                 if ( $inBlockElem &&
!                      preg_match( "/(<\/table|<\/blockquote|<\/h1|<\/h2|<\/h3|<\/h4|<\/h5|<\/h6)/i", $t ) ) {
!                     $inBlockElem = false;
!                 }
!             }
!             $s .= $t . "\n";
!         }
!         $s .= $this->closeParagraph();

          # Stuff for the skins
          if ( $user->options["textTableBackground"] != "" ) {


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com

body:
On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 12:45:06PM -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
> I have now set up http://test.wikipedia.com as the php version of
> pl.wikipedia.com.  I hope I did it correctly.  I suppose some people
> will need to test it now...
>
> Of course, this is just a "test" site.  Any changes to the content of
> the pages will be lost when a final migration is done.
>

You seem to forgot to add:
    $wikiLanguage = "pl";
in wikiLocalSettings.php


body:
On mer, 2002-05-01 at 18:56, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> >> - Removes HTML comments from wiki text before rendering, so they
> >>   can be used to leave comments _about_ the wiki text.
> >
> >Not entirely unreasonable, but has this been discussed on wikipedia-l
> >and/or the wiki?
>
> I know I brought it up before with the old software, but I don't
> recall any particular arguments for or against.  I think Clifford
> just wasn't interested enough to do it.  If you think it might be
> controversial, feel free to bring it up to the group, but I don't
> see any big problem deciding some such issues by programmer fiat.

Well, if anybody doesn't like it, it can be taken out again.

Offhand pro: Comments can be used to note details of a tricky table
layout or similar, to help future editors make sense of inherently
confusing markup.

Offhand con: Hidden text seems contra-wiki in spirit; text that is
commented out, but left in an article, may confuse newbie editors.

On mer, 2002-05-01 at 17:23, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Patch file attached.

Checked into CVS.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l]  Collection copyright

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20020502/d7d7e021/attachment.diff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Another patch...

body:
On ?a?, 2002-05-02 at 17:25, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> Sorry I didn't see this one before I gave you the big patch.
> It's a one-line fix for my new DL code that didn't show up in
> my testing until today.  In addition, I went ahead and asked
> Magnus to give me CVS access so I won't have to bug you anymore.
>
> (Attached)

Applied.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikitech-l] Esperanto Wikipedia conversion?

body:
Maybe I missed something, but I don't see anything
regarding the PHP conversion of the Esperanto
wikipedia.  Can someone give me an update as to when
this is scheduled to happen?

Thanks,
Chuck

=====
Come to my homepage!  Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Informaci?n de Estados Unidos y Am?rica Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Vis?tanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Another patch...

body:
Sorry I didn't see this one before I gave you the big patch.
It's a one-line fix for my new DL code that didn't show up in
my testing until today.  In addition, I went ahead and asked
Magnus to give me CVS access so I won't have to bug you anymore.

(Attached)

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
-------------- next part --------------
*** wikiPage.old	Thu May  2 19:21:04 2002
--- wikiPage.php	Thu May  2 19:14:17 2002
***************
*** 896,902 ****
          if ( "*" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
          else if ( "#" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
          else if ( ":" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
!         else if ( ";" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
          else { $result = ""; }

          return $result;
--- 896,905 ----
          if ( "*" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
          else if ( "#" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
          else if ( ":" == $char ) { $result .= "

"; }
!         else if ( ";" == $char ) {
!             $result .= "

";
!             $this->dtOpen = true;
!         }
          else { $result = ""; }

          return $result;


subject: [Wikitech-l] Is the database logging?

body:
Jason,

could you check whether the wikipedia mysql database server is logging
all requests? That could be a reason for the slowdown. It would be a
huge fast growing file called *.log somewhere in mysql's directory.

Axel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Collection copyright

body:
[about collection copyrights:]

>There's a little more to it than that: copyrights apply to "creative
>expression", and "selection" of what to present is a creative act
>specifically recognized (see Feist v. Rural).

Ok, but neither Bomis nor anybody else can claim a collection
copyright over Wikipedia in this sense, since nobody, and certainly
not Bomis, actively selects articles for presentation in a manner that
could be called creative expression. Or maybe: we all own tiny bits of
the collection copyright in this sense, since we all occasionly reject
articles.

Axel


body:
I didn't mention that because I had some trouble with it...  When I
set up http://test-eo.wikipedia.com, it just gave the "Can't select
database: xxxx" error.  I haven't had the time to get back to it yet,
but it is almost ready to go.  I should get to it today...

I assume it is okay if the data in the database for this wiki is a
couple days old.  If this is not the case,  please let me know.

Jason

Chuck Smith wrote:

> Maybe I missed something, but I don't see anything
> regarding the PHP conversion of the Esperanto
> wikipedia.  Can someone give me an update as to when
> this is scheduled to happen?
>
> Thanks,
> Chuck
>
> =====
> Come to my homepage!  Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
> http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
> ====
> Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
> esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/
>
> _________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Informaci?n de Estados Unidos y Am?rica Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
> Vis?tanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at ross.bomis.com
> http://ross.bomis.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Is the database logging?

in_reply_to: <200205022256.AAA20700@linde.uni-paderborn.de>; from axel@uni-paderborn.de on Fri, May 03, 2002 at 12:56:09AM +0200

body:
It is logging slow requests...  320 Meg since April 19.

Jason

Axel Boldt wrote:

> Jason,
>
> could you check whether the wikipedia mysql database server is logging
> all requests? That could be a reason for the slowdown. It would be a
> huge fast growing file called *.log somewhere in mysql's directory.
>
> Axel
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at ross.bomis.com
> http://ross.bomis.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] eo-php wiki

body:
http://test-eo.wikipedia.com/

The new php-based eo.wikipedia.com is working now.  I noticed that the
$wikiMainPage is different than the original
(http://test-eo.wikipedia.com/wiki/Hejmpagxo), but it seems to
function...

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] eo-php wiki

body:
On ven, 2002-05-03 at 15:07, Jason Richey wrote:
> http://test-eo.wikipedia.com/
>
> The new php-based eo.wikipedia.com is working now.

Thanks!

>  I noticed that the
> $wikiMainPage is different than the original
> (http://test-eo.wikipedia.com/wiki/Hejmpagxo), but it seems to
> function...

Hmm, something went wrong in the conversion: the Esperanto special
characters should have been converted from the pseudo-ASCII
representation into full unicode (ie, "gx" should be "g" with cirumflex
etc).

Could you double-check that there was '$wikiLanguage = "eo";' set in
wikiSettings.php before the conversion? It looks like it is, though,
since the "Priparolu" discussion pages were properly renamed, and the
other language-dependant strings in the conversion seem okay.

But trying again on my local machine, they do get converted... Huh.

Make sure that $recodeCharset didn't get somehow redefined after being
set to recordCharsetEo...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Styles, Skins

body:
The next thing that bugs me most about the current PHP code is
the stylesheet/skin handling, so I'm thinking about tackling that.
But I'd like to get some feedback on some potential changes:

First off, we're currently using inline stylesheets instead of
linked stylesheets.  The latter would reduce bandwidth while
allowing more customization, and clean up the code considerably.
Is there any popular browser that chokes on linked stylesheets
and might therefore be a reason to retain them?

I want to make each skin a PHP object type, each of which
inherits from a common base type (and possibly one of its
subtypes).  Is there a way in PHP to only interpret the class
definition code on-the-fly for the needed type?  For example,
if our user has chosen the Startrek skin, can we avoid loading
the file that defines the Cologne skin object?  This might
require getting tricky with include() and defining classes
within a outer class def, and I just don't know PHP that well.

Any other gotchas I should know about?

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


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow response

body:
I'm getting incredibly slow responses from the main Wikipedia now and
in the last few days.  Why is this?  Who is working to fix it?  How
can I help?

The request

  GET /wiki.png HTTP/1.1
  Host: www.wikipedia.com

is lightening fast.  But

  GET / HTTP/1.1
  Host: www.wikipedia.com

can take well over a minute to return.  This is strange, since the
start page is seldom updated and could easily be cached in HTML, ready
to send to any client.

Simple but useful measurements can be done with the Linux commands:

  time lynx -dump http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.png >/dev/null
  time lynx -dump http://www.wikipedia.com/ >/dev/null

I can run this at regular intervals and report statistics to you, if
this is interesting.

I have worked with finding and removing transaction response time
bottlenecks in C++, Java, and Perl applications, but never in PHP, so
I don't know how hard it is.  My general approach is to look at the
system clock when a new request comes in and then again at various
points in the execution path, to find the point where more than 3
seconds have passed.  If the code has a function for writing a debug
or trace log message, that is the place to look at the system clock.
Who can do this?  Can I assist you in any way?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/