subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
Not sure where you got all this.

The problem unique to DNS servers, as opposed to servers of any other
kind, is that you can't change the address by which the rest of the
world seeks out the DNS server anywhere besides at the root server.
Therefore, if for whatever reason you have to do so, you must go through
a registrar.  They are notorious for bad service--all of them.  And even
under the best of circumstances, you cannot expect the change to take
less than 24 hours to achieve full effect.

Much of the point of having multiple secondaries is that you can,
rapidly, easily, with minimum risk, turn any one of them into a primary
if you need to.

Louis

Jens Frank wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 03:46:22PM -0500, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>
>>There is nothing particularly difficult about setting up DNS, and there
>>is no reason you can't run DNS on both servers, setting up one as a
>>secondary.  This is what should be done.  I wouldn't trust register.com
>>for a minute for as much traffic as WP gets.
>
>
> Thou shalt not have the two DNS servers in neither the same LAN nor
> the same building.
>
> And it's another tool that has to be kept up-to-date for security reasons.
>
>
>>Also, I highly recommend www.easydns.com for reliable secondary service.
>> I have no relationship with them other than as a satisfied customer.
>>They have servers on two or three continents and will set them up as
>>secondaries for a nominal fee, around $50 a year as I recall.
>
>
> If we really want to have our own DNS servers, I think there are enough
> people here that have servers we can use.
>
>
>>There are a number of advantages, among the more important being that
>>the domain can be more readily redirected if the IP is unavailable.  For
>
>
> Just assign the IP to another box. Like www.wikipedia.org is currently
> using Larousse's IP on Pliny.
>
>
>>example, if because of some ISP related snafu, the IP has to change on
>>short notice, you can rely on the easyDNS secondary to provide service
>>until Veri$ign and the root nameservers can get updated.  Similarly, if
>>the WP has to be rehosted at another location on short notice, the
>>traffic can be switched, pronto, without waiting around for the root
>>nameservers.
>
>
> Well, if there is some "ISP related snafu", the secondaries won't see
> the primary any longer. The secondaries will go on telling the wrong
> adresses.
>
>
>>Anyway, BIND can be set up to serve requests in round-robbin fasion.
>>For that matter, if you want 1/3 of the traffic to pliny and 2/3 to
>>larousse that could be done without much trouble as well.
>
>
> We would probably need a dynamic workload management if we want to do
> it properly. DNS is not a very good way to do load balancing.
>
>
>>Louis
>>
>>
>>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, JDG wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the
>>>>>works
>>>>>or at least planned?
>>>>
>>>>YES, absolutely.
>>>
>>>
>>>And while that's on my mind; how do we go about setting up a clean round
>>>robin DNS that's fairly tolerant of one of the servers dropping out for
>>>"unplanned maintenance"?
>>>
>>>I think we're currently using register.com's default DNS servers; would we
>>>need to set up our own?
>>>
>>>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikitech-l mailing list
>>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

> > * DB replication. For some reason, server time is much more readily
> > donated than actual money. A few people have offered to host mirrors. I
> > want to know if it is feasible to set up these small servers as full
> > read-write mirrors -- a kind of distributed cluster. I imagine an
> > architecture involving a local slave DB at each location, and the master
> > DB on pliny.

> I'm not an expert on MySQL, but MS SQL Server and Oracle both have
> considerable native support for replication.  Perhaps MySQL does too; if
> not, I think it would be a relatively simple matter to migrate to a
> commercial database product that does.

PostgreSQL Inc. just released their formerly proprietary replication system for
the PostGreSQL database as free software. This is supposed to be "enterprise
quality".

And there's also those Germans, the SAP people, with hard core replication
stuff as free software.

-- Daniel


list: wikien-l

from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop bashing me

body:
cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> writes:

> This isn't at all an unreasonable request. Ed has brought forward a
> legitimate problem

Which, due to his own POV, he has IMHO greatly exaggerated

> and in his frustration has made a threat to temporarily ban NPOV
> violators.

which would be a far greater than the one Ed "identified"

> but that these NPOV violations should be brought to the attention of the
> community, since as Ed said, explaining NPOV and being cordial did not work.

Mainly because Ed could not realise that "scientific consensus"
and "Ed's POV" might not be the same thing.

Given his conciliatory nature, this whole episode has been most un-Ed, and he
has been just as rude about Sheldon as Sheldon has about him.
--
Gareth Owen
"The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"
                  --  W. B. Yeats forsees the standard of debate on wikipedia-l


list: textbook-l

from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
--- Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sanford,
>
> Would it be feasible to take the work done on the US
> Constitution and Government and/or US History books
> and
> adapt it to fit the CA state standards in place of
> the
> World History Project ?

I don't think we should focus on standards. It would
be better to focus on making good textbooks. To be
realistic, public schools would probably not use our
books, but there is a chance that private schools or
homeschoolers (the ones that don't use more radical
methods) would use them. These groups don't
particularly like books that were formulaically
constructed around state standards.
>
> Um, congrats or condolances on your new governor,
> depending
> on your opinion.
>
> Karl

Condolences.
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
--- David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
> Allan Crossman wrote:
> > While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I
> should note here that I have
> > deleted the odious article [[Finding child
> pornography on the Internet]] even
> > though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think
> it was obviously not going to
> > survive, and deleting it as fast as possible
> seemed a good idea...
>
>
> Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't
> see the content, I
> can't really say whether or not it deserved being
> deleted. All I can do
> is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to
> have been deleted, but
> I guess I'll never know for sure...
>
> - Nohat

I can see delted content with the new deletion system;
I wonder why you can't. All you do is click on the
thing that says something like "See 3 edits before
deletion", then you can click on any version and look
at it (unless it's perminantly deleted). Maybe the
deletion system is broken temporarily.
LDan

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
Sure, visual is better than text ;o)
What about cut the logo in parts to create "only globe color" variants,
"only globe text" variants and "only wikipedia text" variants. The final
logo will be assemblage of the favorite variant of each parts.

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

> Guillaume-
> > No objection on Nohat's variant.
> > But perhaps we can vote again :o) not for logo, but just for feature on
the
> > logo.
> > For exemple :
> > Color : Yes / B&W
> > Texte on the globe : No / Big / Small
> > Wikipedia : No / Upper / Lower
> > Or something like that.
> > Just a idea... but perhaps people against this logo will still against
it...
>
> I prefer voting/expressing my opinion on actual variants. For example, I
> might prefer a color variant of Nohat's logo, but I do not like the
> current color variants much (too pale). I might want *some* kind of text,
> but then someone might create a totally cluttered variant and I would hate
> it. So I'd say we should just encourage people to keep submitting variants
> in all colors, shapes and sizes and then express our opinion on what we
> think about those particular variants.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grandfather Louis for sysop

body:
I don't know who Grandfather Louis is. Surely not a refugee from "The
Munsters"? ;-)

But everything he says makes sense. He's gained my instant respect, and
respect is something I usually give out grudgingly.

He plainly has a lot of on-line experience. And he doesn't write
anything like Martin Harper - or Lir. (Actually, his style is closer to
Jimbo's if anyone's but I detect a Confucianist flavor.)

If he's not a sysop, he should be one.

Uncle Ed
Junior Assistant to Grandfather Louis


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop bashing me

body:
cprompt-
> This isn't at all an unreasonable request. Ed has brought forward a
> legitimate problem, and in his frustration has made a threat to
> temporarily ban NPOV violators. The consensus is that he should not do
> this, but that these NPOV violations should be brought to the attention
> of the community, since as Ed said, explaining NPOV and being cordial
> did not work.

The implication being, of course, that it is the others who violate NPOV
and not Ed himself. I think it is fair and reasonable for Sheldon to
defend himself and others against that claim, but so long as there are no
fundamental policy questions here, the matter should be taken to the
respective talk pages.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please change the embarrassing donations message
	and Re: The donation text

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> There was general agreement on wikipedia-l that the
> current donation text on each Wikipedia page should be
> changed to:
>
>    Find out how you can help [support] Wikipedia's
> phenomenal growth.

Done... cached pages will be updated as the pages are edited.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
Allan Crossman wrote:
> While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I should note here that I have
> deleted the odious article [[Finding child pornography on the Internet]] even
> though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think it was obviously not going to
> survive, and deleting it as fast as possible seemed a good idea...

Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't see the content, I
can't really say whether or not it deserved being deleted. All I can do
is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to have been deleted, but
I guess I'll never know for sure...

- Nohat


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
It's not at all ridiculous, and I find your characterization offensive, as well.

RickK

Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
Stevertigo wrote:
> --- Anthere wrote:
>
>>what does "Retard" means ? (in french, it implies
>>"late")
>
>
> LOL. En English it means "mentally retarded" --as in
> "stunted growth". See "fire retardant".

"To retard" is a perfectly legitimate verb meaning "to hold back" or "to
slow." Assuming that it refers to a psycological condition is every bit
as ridiculous as assuming that "niggardly" has something to do with skin
color.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob

body:
Really?  A scatalogical definition of "Fudgepacker" is not indicative of an anti-gay bias?

RickK

Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com> wrote:

I have been watching the "vote" and conversation here regarding
User:Jesus_is_Lord! with interest. I am saddened to see what I believe
is a mob justice attitude developing.

I wish there were something I could do, since I believe this is
unfolding most unfairly, and in a fashion detrimental to the Wiki.

The first edits under the name Jesus_is_Lord! began October 6.
Generally, the edits appear helpful and in good faith. Most have been
made to articles addressing homosexual issues. In contrast to the
assumption many have made (me included until I read through the
history), the edits do not reflect an anti-gay bias.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Grandfather Louis for sysop

body:
Unfortunately, none of us can check this link out because, as is too often the case nowadays, the Wikipedia server is down.  Again.

And please don't throw in a commercial for donations.  I can't afford it, okay?

RickK

Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I don't know who Grandfather Louis is. Surely not a refugee from "The
>Munsters"? ;-)
>
>But everything he says makes sense. He's gained my instant respect, and
>respect is something I usually give out grudgingly.
>
>He plainly has a lot of on-line experience. And he doesn't write
>anything like Martin Harper - or Lir. (Actually, his style is closer to
>Jimbo's if anyone's but I detect a Confucianist flavor.)
>
>If he's not a sysop, he should be one.
>
>
Unless this is some sort of an allusion I've completely missed, perhaps
what you're looking for is here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#Nominations_for_adminship

-Mark

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

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from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 02:53 PM 10/8/2003, sannse wrote:
> >Louis wrote (in part):
> >
> > > Mydogategodshat - Two readings here, my/dog/ate/gods/hat and
> > > my/dog/ate/god/shat.  Both unacceptable.
> >
> >I /do/ feel this one is unacceptable, and said so when it was first
> >discussed in May.  If feel it is directly comparable with our old friend the
> >radioactive chicken.
>
> OK, this is the old argument from the Request for Adminship page...
>
> Can someone PLEASE explain to me what is offensive about that username? My
> Dog Ate God's Hat. It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, sure, but offensive?
> Please...

FWIW, I had a brief exchange with the user in question. He was concerned
that some members of Wikipedia didn't like using tables in articles, & was
concerned that I might get in trouble for adding them to the series of
Roman Emperor articles. From exchanging comments in each
other's Talk: pages, my impression is that he's maybe a little naive, maybe
worried about how people treat each other on Wikipedia, but most likely
honest & sincere.

Out of curiousity, has anyone simply *asked* him what the point of his
username is? I wouldn't be surprised if it's nothing more than a goofy,
absurd bit of humor.
>
> And don't complain about how some people could interpret it the other
> way... that other way also makes no sense and is grammatically shaky to boot.
>
> Should we force JT not to use his nickname because some people might think
> the "fear" part of "fear?IREANN" was the imperative mood of the verb "fear"
> and an instruction that they should fear him? Please....
>
And for the record, the 3rd person declension of the Latin word ``facere"
sounds an awful lot like an English obscenity (at least the way my Latin
professor used to pronounce it). Should we also worry about someone using
the string ``facit" in a username?

My point is that sometimes our worry for offensive names makes us too
cautious. ISTR a Science Fiction story, in the usual space opera setting,
where the point was made that names for the Galactic Federation spaceships
had to be carefully selected to avoid an obscenity or sacrilegious
phrase in the major languages of the member planets.

Geoff


from_name: Andrew

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
From: "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

> Stevertigo wrote (in part):
>
> > Plus the guy was being a
> > jerk -- making him change his name was a way to tap
> > him on the shoulder, and ask him to pay attention to
> > the wikiworld around him.
>
> I have to object to this Steve.  Either the name is offensive and we do
> something about it, or it is acceptable and we don't - whether you think
the
> guy/gal is being a jerk in other ways shouldn't come into it.  If there
are
> problems elsewhere, surely we can deal with them directly - not by making
> the rules different for this one user.
>
> Regards,
>
> sannse
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I agree with sannse. -Evil saltine


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Speaking up against the mob

body:
> Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> > So, in light of all this, I once again call for
> the vote to be
> > discontinued, and encourage everyone who has taken
> strong positions one
> > way or another to retract them so that there is
> enough space for
> > discussion and consensus.

Nonsense.  Jesus is Lord! (with the exclamation mark)
needs to put his flame out and pick a name which the
tribe agrees with.  Even Jimbo is not immune to a vote
on his username on the grounds that it may meet with
disagreement. Go ahead -- try it out.  See what it
gets.  The vote is a way of registering discussion, Mr
24-- in case you hadnt noticed. I understand Jesus is
Lord! wants to take advantage of people like Mr
Starlings pleasant and non-confrontational demeanor,
but there are plenty of precedents for namechanges,
and since they are all subjective, they fall to a
vote. The tribe has spoken.

Finally, whoever came up with the notion that it fell
to the developers to enforce anything? This must be
where Ed's been getting his notions of power from!

~S~

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from_name: wikipedia-l at gl00on.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
> There seems to be a strong consensus developing on [[m:Final logo
> variants]] for this logo variant of the winning logo:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7a/Nohat-wiki-logo.png
>
> So far only one person has said that it is worse than the current (new)
> logo while 19 have said that it is better. What do you say, should we try
> the consensus approach for a change and just replace the logo until
> someone objects very strongly and annoyingly? Then we can start refining
> this one some more.

Hard to say whether that's nicer or worse than the current one. In either
case, I think there should definitely be another round of voting; everything
else would just generate the impression that we first hold a multi-round
public vote and then ignore the results.

--
 7:57PM  up 50 days,  4:19, 2 users, load averages: 0.13, 0.17, 0.16

Every non-empty totally disconnected perfect compact metric space is
homeomorphic to the Cantor set.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, JDG wrote:
> Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the works
> or at least planned?

YES, absolutely.

But right now there is only one server running, and when we've go the
other one up we'll still be sharing the database and web on one of them
(not ideal), or else taking one off web duty and letting it concentrate
on the database.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, JDG wrote:
> > Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the works
> > or at least planned?
>
> YES, absolutely.

And while that's on my mind; how do we go about setting up a clean round
robin DNS that's fairly tolerant of one of the servers dropping out for
"unplanned maintenance"?

I think we're currently using register.com's default DNS servers; would we
need to set up our own?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Dante wrote:

> OK, this is the old argument from the Request for Adminship page...
>
> Can someone PLEASE explain to me what is offensive about that username? My
> Dog Ate God's Hat. It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, sure, but offensive?
> Please...
>
> And don't complain about how some people could interpret it the other
> way... that other way also makes no sense and is grammatically shaky to
boot.
>
> Should we force JT not to use his nickname because some people might think
> the "fear" part of "fear?IREANN" was the imperative mood of the verb
"fear"
> and an instruction that they should fear him? Please....
>

I didn't see the argument there, I only saw the short discussion on the
list.  But my answer would be:  the user name is /not/ "My Dog Ate God's
Hat", it's "Mydogategodshat".  I would have no objection to the first, the
second can easily be (mis?)read and IMO is rather offensive.

But, that said, I won't press the point further.  I understand that most
people /don't/ find it offensive, and my objection is not strong enough to
shout about.

Regards,

sannse

(p.s. I think I'm pretty looped tonight - please add into this message all
appropriate smiley faces, expressions of good intent and other signs of
non-argumentativeness (if that's a word) - Ta).


from_name: Daniel Herding

subject: [Wikitech-l] broken image in SQL table of nl.wikipedia.org

body:
There is a broken image which has no filename on the SQL table of
nl.wikipedia.org:

(5554,6,'','','',19,'Jcwf','20021121050911','',0,0,0,0,0.281004031450491,'79978878949088','20031005104213'),(5555,6,'Tabeh.png','tabeh\r\n
een poging tot hieroglyphen (zelf getypt)

(from 2003-10-07 SQL dump).

Please remove it somehow because it interferes with a tool I'm writing.

Daniel


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop bashing me

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Sheldon Rampton is annoying me. I wish he would be more affable.
>
>In previous posts, he's wished aloud for the ability to murder me by
>electrocution.

Ed is referring to a joke I made in February in which I proposed
adding a feature to the Wikipedia software that would provide "the
ability to push a button that will instantly send one million
megavolts coursing through the body of Ed Poor. (Just joking.)" Of
course, we all know that it is impossible to add such a feature to
the software, so I think it should have been obvious that I wasn't
really "wishing for that ability." Even if that were not the case,
the phrase "just joking" made it clear that this was a joke and not a
wish. I find it hard to believe that Ed regarded my comment as a
threat to commit "murder," as he now claims.

>I don't appreciate personal remarks like
>* "I don't think Ed is a total jerk" -- Is he calling me "a jerk", or
>what?

Here, Ed is complaining that I said I DON'T think he's a jerk. In
retrospect, I suppose I should have left out the word "total." In any
case, my intent was simply to make it clear that I think the guy
possesses some redeeming qualities. OK?

>On several occasions he has tried to discredit me with unfair tactics.
>Ironically, a central theme of his books and websites are that SKEPTICS
>try to discredit environmentalists with unfair tactics.

I don't think my tactics have been unfair at all. Our first clash
occurred nine months ago when Ed attacked me repeatedly without any
provocation on my part -- an attack for which he eventually
apologized. (I made my joke about sending electricity through his
body after the apology. The intent of the joke was not to attack him
but to lighten the mood through humor.) Since then, I have said
nothing whatsoever about Ed until now, when I felt compelled to
respond to his attack on others.

Ed began this thread by accusing several dozen other Wikipedians
(including William Connolley, an actual working climate scientist) of
"junk science." Ed declared that he was "hopping mad" and sick of
having to fix their willful errors, and asked Jimbo to back him up
when he banned them. All I have done is show how Ed himself has
introduced errors that reflect his point of view regarding global
warming and demonstrate that the people he accuses of "junk science"
have actually adhered to higher standards of accuracy and scholarship
than Ed himself. I don't think it's an "unfair tactic" for me to
point this out in the context of Ed's stated intention to ban them.

>I beg Sheldon to ask himself sincerely if he's giving me
>a fair shake or not; whether he's treating me the way he wants to be
>treated himself, the way he wants environmentalists and scientists who
>agree with his POV to be treated.

Yes, I  do sincerely think I gave Ed a fair shake.

>I wish he would stop taking one minor counter-example to a trend and
>calling it representative of a supposed counter-trend.

I presented an example here of Ed's error with respect to the 1975
NAS report on climate change. That was indeed only "one minor
example," but I could present many other examples of tendentious
errors that Ed has introduced into the global warming article.
(Fortunately, most of those errors have subsequently been corrected
by others.) I have not attempted to present a full enumeration of
Ed's errors here because (1) the normal wiki process is fixing them
anyway, and (2) I don't think anyone here has the patience to read a
full list of these errors. As several people here have stated, the
proper place for that sort of discussion is on a Wikipedia talk page,
not here.

Please note that I am not proposing banning Ed from participation in
the global warming article (even though he proposed banning others).
Everyone makes mistakes, myself included, and in some ways even Ed's
errors have had a beneficial effect by obliging others to refine
their explanations and improve the level of detail in the global
warming article.

The only reason I brought this up at all is that Ed used this
listserv to accuse others of "mistakes" as a prelude to banning them.
Moreover, he went further by singling out another Wikipedian, William
Connolley, by name for criticism. Ed accused Connolley and "three
dozen other contributors" of "using smear tactics" and "injecting
bias." He then self-confidently characterized himself as "slowly and
patiently undoing each mistake and explaining it." Since Connolley
and many of the others do not subscribe to wikien-l, they are not in
a position to defend themselves here against Ed's attacks, and I
therefore feel that it was reasonable for me to defend them. And
since Ed himself brought up the issue of "mistakes," I think it was
entirely fair for me to demonstrate that Ed himself has made errors.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Stevertigo wrote (in part):

> Plus the guy was being a
> jerk -- making him change his name was a way to tap
> him on the shoulder, and ask him to pay attention to
> the wikiworld around him.

I have to object to this Steve.  Either the name is offensive and we do
something about it, or it is acceptable and we don't - whether you think the
guy/gal is being a jerk in other ways shouldn't come into it.  If there are
problems elsewhere, surely we can deal with them directly - not by making
the rules different for this one user.

Regards,

sannse


subject: [Wikitech-l] UseModWiki to MediaWiki conversion script

body:
I've tweaked up the unfinished importUseModWiki.php to make what seems
to be a workable minimalist version: it doesn't do any conversion of
subpage links, import of images, or character references that could be
turned to straight unicode; it doesn't move talk pages into talk
namespace; it doesn't fix links broken by case insensitivity; it
doesn't (yet) try to import user accounts; it doesn't try to create
interlanguage links from existing ones pointing in.

It just dumps pages as-is into cur and old, and assumes that humans
will clean it up. This should be enough for many of the smaller wikis
to get going on MediaWiki in the near future.

The new version is in maintenance directory of both test and stable
branches in cvs.

Caveat: after the pages are imported to a newly created wiki, all the
support tables will need to be rebuilt. I'm having some trouble getting
the link rebuild script to work, I'll debug that a bit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: James Duffy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
>
> > There seems to be a strong consensus developing on [[m:Final logo
> > variants]] for this logo variant of the winning logo:
> >
> > http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/7a/Nohat-wiki-logo.png
> >
> > So far only one person has said that it is worse than the current (new)
> > logo while 19 have said that it is better. What do you say, should we
>try
> > the consensus approach for a change and just replace the logo until
> > someone objects very strongly and annoyingly? Then we can start refining
> > this one some more.
>
>Hard to say whether that's nicer or worse than the current one. In either
>case, I think there should definitely be another round of voting;
>everything
>else would just generate the impression that we first hold a multi-round
>public vote and then ignore the results.
>
>
That proposed version is much much better. The trouble with the current logo
is that it does two conflicting things. It introduces an interesting graphic
look, the uncompleted globe in colour /and/ text on the globe. The text
isn't intended to be read, but small text, on jigsawed colour, in a broader
graphic, looks too cluttered. The old graphic was good because it was simply
shaped single tone text. Colour /and/ text /and/ graphic shape in a small
logo in the corner of a computer screen is too cluttered by far. It lacks
clarity, lacks definition and recognition.

JT

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
>> do we go about setting up a clean round robin DNS that's fairly tolerant of one of the servers dropping out for "unplanned maintenance"? <<

You don't, for the reasons already outlined. Consider this alternative:

o router (cheap home type or something better, anything with remote console) set to primary IP and forward traffic to an internal IP.

o IP addressable remote power switch for the router so you can reset it if necessary. And the servers if it's not already there, costs $500 or so for 4 remote switches, half that for a single. Maybe less on ebay.

o each server running Squid as a reverse proxy server set up to do load balancing/failover between the boxes on their internal IP addresses.

Point the router to the preferred Squid IP/port. If that server goes down, tell the router to point the unchanging external IP to the machine which is up. If the other server goes down, Squid will switch the traffic the machine it is running on automatically. If the router goes down, use the remote power switch.

Squid should do well on the database server most of the time. It'll offload some of the CPU load from the main web server and use it on the disk-bottlenecked database server with the less used CPU.

To add speed these are some options:

o more web servers, same database, helps spread page building load with Squid doing the load balancing.
o squid on a different machine, probably more reliable than shared service, so site reliability should go up. Also helps with caching, since Squid does that and could offload that chore from the page builders.
o if connection levels really rise, the router can be switched to a load balancer pointing to a set of Squid machines offloading connections from a page builder farm.

I'm assuming that memcached keeps database load under control.


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
Karl Wick:
> > Sanford,
> >
> > Would it be feasible to take the work done on the US
> > Constitution and Government and/or US History books
> > and
> > adapt it to fit the CA state standards in place of
> > the
> > World History Project ?

Daniel Ehrenberg:
> I don't think we should focus on standards. It would
> be better to focus on making good textbooks. To be
> realistic, public schools would probably not use our
> books, but there is a chance that private schools or
> homeschoolers (the ones that don't use more radical
> methods) would use them. These groups don't
> particularly like books that were formulaically
> constructed around state standards.

I think that's a possibility. **As long as the framework standards are
adhered to**, the book should pass California (and many other states) peer
review. Note that the California frameworks are considered to be very
progressive, and thorough, even by institutions that are outside the public
school system, including home and private schools.

If you look at the frameworks for just about any course, they're really
quite thorough. The beauty of open source content is that a lot more
creativity and variety can be placed around state-approved curriculum
frameworks. In this scenario, everyone wins. In fact, I know several home
schoolers - both in and out of California - who use California K-12 textbook
as part of their home-based curriculum.

Further, it's not at all accurate to say that home schoolers and private
schools eschew state-approved books. I spent 15 years in the academic school
book business; both home and private schools use "state-approved" books in
very large numbers.

The whole idea behind the Wikipedia K-12 textbook project is to create open
source K-12 textbooks. yes, it's well within the realm of possibility to
create K-12 books that don't adhere to state frameworks. Personally, I think
that would be a massive strategic mistake that leads to gross
inefficiencies.

Sure, *some* private schools and some home schools might chose to use
non-framework books; however, the *vast* amount of good that could be done
by providing *better, cheaper, more flexible* content scenarios to *10's of
millions* of students, worldwide, would be lost. We would not be able to use
these materials in public schools. Millions of public school students would
lose out - many of these students are from poor districts, which badly need
quality content that is affordable.We also need to realize that the content
created to state framework standards would be used by countries like India
and China, who look to approved framework-standard materials in English to
teach their students  (many schools teach the native tongue, and English,
simultaneously).

The argument for writing to a state framework standard is unassailable,
especially in distributed, open, content environments. The fact is that is a
book is written to a framework standard, it *will* be used by public
institutions, and internationally. It *will* also be used by private and
home schools (even some of the radical ones). Those private and home schools
who want to variate Wikipedia K-12 content (picking and choosing and
modifying what they want) would be able to do so, and/or add their own open
source contributions to make it fit their exact needs. Thus, choosing to
ignore state frameworks in this project severely reduces it's overall
impact. Writing to state framework standards is clearly the only way to go,
*if* we want to make the largest difference possible.

Let's do this project right, and create a K-12 textbook publishing
revolution that makes a real difference, changes the way K-12 content is
sourced and distributed, and sets an example - worldwide - that is nothing
short of a gold standard.

Sanford


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 03:46:22PM -0500, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> There is nothing particularly difficult about setting up DNS, and there
> is no reason you can't run DNS on both servers, setting up one as a
> secondary.  This is what should be done.  I wouldn't trust register.com
> for a minute for as much traffic as WP gets.

Thou shalt not have the two DNS servers in neither the same LAN nor
the same building.

And it's another tool that has to be kept up-to-date for security reasons.

> Also, I highly recommend www.easydns.com for reliable secondary service.
>  I have no relationship with them other than as a satisfied customer.
> They have servers on two or three continents and will set them up as
> secondaries for a nominal fee, around $50 a year as I recall.

If we really want to have our own DNS servers, I think there are enough
people here that have servers we can use.

> There are a number of advantages, among the more important being that
> the domain can be more readily redirected if the IP is unavailable.  For

Just assign the IP to another box. Like www.wikipedia.org is currently
using Larousse's IP on Pliny.

> example, if because of some ISP related snafu, the IP has to change on
> short notice, you can rely on the easyDNS secondary to provide service
> until Veri$ign and the root nameservers can get updated.  Similarly, if
> the WP has to be rehosted at another location on short notice, the
> traffic can be switched, pronto, without waiting around for the root
> nameservers.

Well, if there is some "ISP related snafu", the secondaries won't see
the primary any longer. The secondaries will go on telling the wrong
adresses.

> Anyway, BIND can be set up to serve requests in round-robbin fasion.
> For that matter, if you want 1/3 of the traffic to pliny and 2/3 to
> larousse that could be done without much trouble as well.

We would probably need a dynamic workload management if we want to do
it properly. DNS is not a very good way to do load balancing.

>
> Louis
>
>
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> >On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
> >
> >>On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, JDG wrote:
> >>
> >>>Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the
> >>>works
> >>>or at least planned?
> >>
> >>YES, absolutely.
> >
> >
> >And while that's on my mind; how do we go about setting up a clean round
> >robin DNS that's fairly tolerant of one of the servers dropping out for
> >"unplanned maintenance"?
> >
> >I think we're currently using register.com's default DNS servers; would we
> >need to set up our own?
> >
> >-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ahem

body:
While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I should note here that I have
deleted the odious article [[Finding child pornography on the Internet]] even
though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think it was obviously not going to
survive, and deleting it as fast as possible seemed a good idea...

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
Nohat wrote:

>Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't see the content, I
>can't really say whether or not it deserved being deleted. All I can do
>is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to have been deleted, but
>I guess I'll never know for sure...

Actually, you can, since it's been undeleted now.

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Periodic lag problem

body:
I wrote a little perl script to monitor the health of Wikipedia by
regularly checking the file size of the main log. The idea was that it
would email me if apache crashed. I soon discovered something rather
interesting and unexpected.

Once every 15 minutes or so, Wikipedia shuts down for a minute or two.
This is bad, needless to say. During these episodes, it shows few if any
log entries. Load is depressed slightly (from ~20 to ~10), so CPU
starvation didn't seem likely. I suspected database troubles.

Attached is a zip file containing the output from SHOW PROCESSLIST.
There is one file showing "typical" output, between the episodes, and
three showing output in the middle of an episode. One thing stands out
like a sore thumb:

SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='167.206.112.85'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='217.244.15.107'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='80.55.166.58'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='66.196.90.11'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='172.176.254.188'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='220.54.212.24'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_id=7580
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='194.78.48.226'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='80.225.14.29'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='144.32.128.73'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='62.216.15.127'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='134.151.225.179'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='213.81.145.123'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='129.137.208.159'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='195.93.72.17'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='218.19.141.2'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='68.11.187.242'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='63.34.208.93'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='81.196.21.16'
SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='202.156.2.82'

Millions of user_newtalk requests, conspicuously absent from the typical
dump. Many of them are doing "statistics", whatever that means, and the
rest are locked. One side of me is curious as to what "statistics" means
and why it produces this behaviour. The other side of me says

KILL KILL KILL

I DON'T CARE WHY OR HOW IT'S HAPPENING JUST KILL IT NOW!!!!!!

ARRRRGGHH (axe hitting hard drive noises)

Anyone up for some memcached programming?

Also attached is some sample output from the monitor program. Each entry
represents 5 seconds, and is expressed in units of the "danger
threshold" of 100 bytes per second.

BTW this appears to be unrelated to whatever the problem is with it as I
type, i.e. a long-term (~1hr) slowdown with load at 0.25 and log file
turnover at ~20% of normal.

-- Tim Starling.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Periodic lag problem

body:
> BTW this appears to be unrelated to whatever the problem is with it as I
> type, i.e. a long-term (~1hr) slowdown with load at 0.25 and log file
> turnover at ~20% of normal.

Sorry, make that load 35. 0.25 was the load on my desktop PC *smacks
head* . I never had that problem when I was using Windows :) All these
terminal windows look the same.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: JDG

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0310092024120.13810-100000 at server.ikso.net...
> On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, JDG wrote:
> > > Can someone answer my question about round robin, whether it is in the
works
> > > or at least planned?
> >
> > YES, absolutely.
>
> And while that's on my mind; how do we go about setting up a clean round
> robin DNS that's fairly tolerant of one of the servers dropping out for
> "unplanned maintenance"?
>
> I think we're currently using register.com's default DNS servers; would we
> need to set up our own?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Damn, my powers of recall are so shot, I can't answer this in the detail it
needs. I know you need BIND 4.9.3 or later and the round robin itself is
just a matter of  having two or more A records. My experience was completely
with in-house DNS. Does register.com allow you to get fancy with zone files?
Having your own DNS server(s) is certainly better, but I'm sure you knew
that so there must be a reason you're offsite (budget?). I'd say having an
in-house DNS server on the same machine with a webserver is better than any
offsite DNS, and of course dedicated in-house DNS is ideal (DNS is memory
intensive but very light on everything else, so often a cheap machine with
scads of RAM will do fine).

If I'm remembering correctly, the BIND daemon can be restarted very nicely--
Apache just takes it in stride and page serving is very minimally impacted.
So you can have a script polling the secondary webserver and if it has gone
out of action, restart BIND with only the primary A record. Another script
can do this on purpose for planned maintenance on the secondary webserver...
Yes, there are far prettier solutions, but we had a variation of this
chugging along and serving our pages lightning fast under absurdly heavy
load...

We attempted a "true load balancing" solution once but ran into all manner
of out-of-left-field complications. Then we realized our simple-minded
little round robin was already doing just about everything we needed. On top
of that, we saved ourselves from spending a bundle on a new hotrod DB server
because it turned out nearly all the lag some folks were attributing  to the
DB disappeared the moment round robin got going.

--
JDG


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Periodic lag problem

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> Anyone up for some memcached programming?
>

Talking to myself again... I've committed some completely untested fixes
for this problem to CVS, in User.php and UserTalkUpdate.php. The idea is
to basically not use the database at all for anonymous users.
UserTalkUpdate sets the key in memcached, and if memcached deletes it
because it runs out of memory, or the server restarts, tough. User talk
messages to anonymous users are only good for a few hours anyway.

I would have tested it but it's getting kind of late here.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at joey.bomis.com>

> I think that Erik's suggestions here have great merit, and I'd like to
> open the floor to a discussion.  Obviously, he's given a fair amount
> of detail, and I may not want to adopt all of the detail that he's
> suggested, but I think in broad outline we're going to have to move to
> something like this.
>
> --Jimbo

This is another reason that a policy/procedure regarding bans
should be in place.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512

Title 17 USC section (512(i)(1)(A)):

(i) Conditions for Eligibility. -

(1) Accommodation of technology. - The limitations on liability established
by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service
provider -

(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and
account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy
that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of
subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network
who are repeat infringers; and

Alex756


body:
"user_Jamesday" <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com>
wrote in message news:1065752059.b24fe1e0user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com...
>> do we go about setting up a clean round robin DNS that's fairly tolerant
of one of the servers dropping out for "unplanned maintenance"? <<

> You don't, for the reasons already outlined.

[snip]

I dunno-- I've been out of the game for a while, but I do know simple round
robin did wonders for a website that was busier than Wikipedia is likely to
be for another year or so. Reverse-proxy is tougher to configure correctly
and comes with its own problems (especially URL rewriting). I've never known
anyone to use reverse-proxy without a truckload of mods or scripts that were
developed in troubleshooting mode. It would be worth it if it worked well,
but they always seemed to be mumbling about "a house of cards"... A possible
third option?-- Linux Virtual Server:  http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org--
it's sort of a supercharged round robin.

--
JDG


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob

body:
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 19:12:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob
To: lazolla at hotmail.com, English Wikipedia
<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Message-ID:
<20031010021207.59909.qmail at web80606.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Really?  A scatalogical definition of "Fudgepacker"
>is not indicative
>of an anti-gay bias?

>RickK

I remember a lesbian explaining to me that word back
in 1992.

May I suggest that anal sexuality is not the
prerogative of gays ?

Or if I misunderstood the meaning, is there a [[list
of offensive terms for homosexuals]] where this one
could be better explained to non-english speakers ?

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

Incidently, I appreciated the numerous answers to my
question about "retard". I understand the "politically
correct" side of it. However, I would say that the
adjective (or the noun) first applied to its user; and
if a user choose to carry a (to some) pejorative user
name, I would tend to think it is mostly his problem.
But I understand some may be bothered.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 10:40:29 -0700, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> gave
utterance to the following:

> Stevertigo wrote:
>> --- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> what does "Retard" means ? (in french, it implies
>>> "late")
>>
>>
>> LOL. En English it means "mentally retarded" --as in
>> "stunted growth". See "fire retardant".
>
> "To retard" is a perfectly legitimate verb meaning "to hold back" or "to
> slow."  Assuming that it refers to a psycological condition is every bit
> as ridiculous as assuming that "niggardly" has something to do with skin
> color.
>
Yes, but there is a natural tendency to interpret any name in its noun
form in preference to its verb form in cases where both exist.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop bashing me

body:
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 13:21:35 +0000, cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> gave
utterance to the following:

>>
>> Ed Poor
> This isn't at all an unreasonable request. Ed has brought forward a
> legitimate problem, and in his frustration has made a threat to
> temporarily ban NPOV violators. The consensus is that he should not do
> this, but that these NPOV violations should be brought to the attention
> of the community, since as Ed said, explaining NPOV and being cordial
> did not work.

Basically, Ed forgot one of the fundamental rules of sysophood: "Sysop
powers may not be used in disputes on articles where the sysop is a party
to the dispute (has contributed to the article)."
His correct action would have been to post "I'm fed up with these people,
could someone please come and referee?" without suggesting suspension.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Feature Requests on Meta-Wiki

body:
On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 01:12:17PM +0200, Ivo K?thnig wrote:
> The last idea is an java-chat to improve comunicatian of actual users online.
> More informations can be found here:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultan_Java-Chat

There's a well-established channel at FreeNode:
irc://irc.freenode.net/wikipedia

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	        Urlaub? http://www.tomk32.de/fewo-koll/
   / \              http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
Rick wrote:
 > Really?  A scatalogical definition of "Fudgepacker" is not indicative of
 > an anti-gay bias?

I reviewed the edits carefully.

The user expanded an existing definition of this word written several
months ago by an IP user, and then merged it with "homophobic hate
speech," replacing the original entry with a redirect.  His expansion of
the definition appeared to be in good faith, though there was room for
improvement which, due to the power of the wiki, has already been
provided by others.

Merging a pejorative term into an article on "homophobic hate speech"
and getting it out of the main namespace, IMO, is laudatory, as it makes
the nature of the word very clear.

As many contributors are aware, there is a growing number of Chritian
churches and congregations that are proponents of equal treatment of
GBLT people, and who do not consider GBLT lifestyles and sexual acts
sinful.  Most prominent among these are the many UCC congregations who
have adopted a public "Open and Accepting" stance toward GBLT people.
Though small in number of followers, many meetings of the Society of
Friends (Quakers) have had such a doctrine for years.  And there are a
few Catholic congregations that, in spite of official doctrine, publicly
support gay and lesbian people and lifestyles.

Louis


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Rick wrote:
> It's not at all ridiculous, and I find your characterization offensive,
> as well.
>
> RickK

It is entirely ridiculous, as is your taking offense.

--
  Sean Barrett
  sean at epoptic.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop bashing me

body:
Sheldon,

You are miscontruing nearly everything I've said. It has the effect of
putting words in my mouth.

You then use these words in strawman arguments to disparage my
character.

I don't know why you're doing this. We are not enemies. I have no books,
no website, no POV axe to grind.

I am 100% for NPOV. I do not ask the Wikipedia to endorse any of my pet
projects or favorite ideas. I am not a scientist or politician or
lobbyist.

I only want to describe each side of controversial issues fairly.
Oftentimes, advocates overstate their own case. I _hate_ it when this
happens, and I am mortified any time I discover I have done it myself.

Please don't consider me an enemy. You and I are not opponents, unless
you choose to oppose NPOV itself.

I will continue to try as hard as I can to overcome my own bias when
writing on controversial subjects on which I have strong opinions.

I will not issue unilateral temporary bans on egregious bans, and you
would be just as wrong to suggest I would do such a thing as I would be
to accuse you of plotting to murder me. (BTW, you're not plotting that,
are you? ;-)


subject: FW: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop bashing me

body:
Excuse me, in:

> I will not issue unilateral temporary bans on egregious bans

I meant '...bans on egregious NPOV violators'.

Ed Poor


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK's continuing participation

body:
- Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com> wrote:
> However, it is also necessary to clear the air.

Thats a nice thought.

> Some of RK's actions in the past have been
unacceptable.

Youre kidding. Get outta here! No way...

> I would hope that he would not continue them.

Ah but the realist in you says otherwise, eh Lou?

> Unfortunately, his most recent contributions appear
to be rather unhelpful.

Oh stop it you anti-Semite.

> Any suggestions?

Ban him. Or make him change his name to TUF-KARK

~S~

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from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
At 09:18 AM 10/10/2003, you wrote:
>Rick wrote:
>>It's not at all ridiculous, and I find your characterization offensive,
>>as well.
>>
>>RickK
>
>It is entirely ridiculous, as is your taking offense.
>
>--
>  Sean Barrett

I'd like to congratulate both of you for engaging in this conversation in
public on the list rather than over private email. It takes great courage
to waste everyone's time so blatantly and annoy so many people so
frivolously. Good work!

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiP fairly flyin

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 08:02 AM, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>
>> I'm not an expert on MySQL, but MS SQL Server and Oracle both have
>> considerable native support for replication.  Perhaps MySQL does too;
>
>
> Go to mysql.com and type "replication" in the search.
>

I'm more interested in hardware requirements than software, e.g. network
bandwidth between master and slave. How small can a slave server be
before it can realistically keep up with the master? Will a web server
with no local slave database be slow?

I don't expect anyone to answer these questions. Testing and
experimentation is required.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:
> At 09:18 AM 10/10/2003, you wrote:
>
> I'd like to congratulate both of you for engaging in this conversation
> in public on the list rather than over private email. It takes great
> courage to waste everyone's time so blatantly and annoy so many people
> so frivolously. Good work!

I apologize to the list members for so blatantly and frivolously
annoying them.  I was careless in my use of the reply button and didn't
check the resulting address.


body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> So, in light of all this, I once again call for the vote to be
> discontinued, and encourage everyone who has taken strong positions one
> way or another to retract them so that there is enough space for
> discussion and consensus.
>

Fine by me. I thought the vote was unnecessary, especially considering
that there was ongoing discussion. It's turned the debate into something
of a circus. Martin has suggested a possible compromise, which I hope
will be acceptable to all parties, and will make the vote obsolete.

-- Tim Starling.


body:
Everyone,

RK has made continued contributions to Wikipedia, so far only to talk
pages.  I have every reason to believe that he will wish to edit
articles as well.

I believe that we should welcome RK.  His depth of knowledge in certain
subject areas, his writing ability, and his willingness to work hard
offer great potential to help the project.

However, it is also necessary to clear the air.  Some of RK's actions in
the past have been unacceptable.  I would hope that he would not
continue them.  Unfortunately, his most recent contributions appear to
be rather unhelpful.

Any suggestions?

-
Louis


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> I believe that we should welcome RK.

Well, he hasn't been banned permanently or anything.  But he needs to
know that the word from on high is that he *can not* insult people by
calling them Nazis, etc. and expect to stick around much longer.

> However, it is also necessary to clear the air.  Some of RK's actions
> in the past have been unacceptable.  I would hope that he would not
> continue them.  Unfortunately, his most recent contributions appear to
> be rather unhelpful.
>
> Any suggestions?

Kindness, friendliness, and then I'll ban him if he doesn't treat
others with respect.  It really just boils down to that.  If he can be
kind to others, then everything else is fine with me.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Could someone please come and referee?

body:
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003 14:53:37 -0400, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> Richard wisely observed:
>
>> Basically, Ed forgot one of the fundamental rules of sysophood: "Sysop
>
>> powers may not be used in disputes on articles where the sysop is a
> party
>> to the dispute (has contributed to the article)."
>> His correct action would have been to post "I'm fed up with these
> people,
>> could someone please come and referee?" without suggesting suspension.
>
> Well, ex-cuuuuse me for voicing a wish. I'm only human.
>
> So you gonna come referee, or what?
>
Sure, if you'll do all the deadlined work that is going to wipe out my
weekend :-)
I don't count myself qualified, and I think that the ref should be a sysop
so that they can act if necessary.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fatal error: Call to a member function on a
	non-object in ...

body:
On Friday, October 10, 2003, at 02:39 PM, Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
> /usr/local/apache/common/php/OutputPage.php on line 926

Found the culprit: [[Media:|Gr??eres Bild]]

Links with no title outside the namespace will now disappear rather
than crashing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's bury the hatchet

body:
Someone has come up with an insanely great idea -- or a great way to get
rid of the insanity.

Take a look at what [[User:Mediator]] has been doing lately. Here is a
tiny sample:

> Regardless of the positions one takes or arguments one
> accepts, it remains particularly important not to lose our
> neutral perspective with respect to religion, ethics, or
> politics itself. These are central issues. We have done an
> admirable job so far...

Ed Poor


from_name: Venu Durgam

subject: [WikiEN-l] Java code to convert Wiki text to HTML ?

body:
Hello All,

Is there an open source Java code to convert Wiki text to HTML ?

Thanks.

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body:
On Friday, October 10, 2003, at 02:05 PM, Venu Durgam wrote:

> Is there an open source Java code to convert?Wiki text to HTML ?

See: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:OfflineWiki.zip

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Java code to convert Wiki text to HTML ?


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PayPal total updates?

body:
Several people, including myself, have been very
interested in seeing a running total of our PayPal
donations (maybe even creating an automatically
updated bar with a $6,000 goal line). This isn't that
important right now, but when our month long
fundraising drive "officially" starts in concert with
distribution of our press release, I think it would be
very important to have a running tally (even if it is
updated by hand only once a day).

And if we hit the $6,000 figure real quick, we could
always find another thing to shoot for (I'm sure the
developers can think of something - such as maybe
hiring a PHP/MySQL expert to audit MediaWiki's code
and suggest/implement optimization changes).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
LittleDan wrote:

>Nohat (David Friedland) wrote:

>>Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't see the content, I
>>can't really say whether or not it deserved being deleted. All I can do
>>is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to have been deleted, but
>>I guess I'll never know for sure...

>I can see delted content with the new deletion system;
>I wonder why you can't. All you do is click on the
>thing that says something like "See 3 edits before
>deletion", then you can click on any version and look
>at it (unless it's perminantly deleted). Maybe the
>deletion system is broken temporarily.

Or maybe Nohat, like the vast majority of en.Wikipedians,
is not an administrator on [[en:]] and can't do any of this.

To be sure, Nohat's comment does seem a bit facetious,
since he can ask to see the page on [[Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion]].
And I believe that it was in fact undeleted so that people could see it.

Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here.
It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were)
to report the deletion to the mailing list,
since they were unsure as to whether it would be regarded
(at least by those most concerned with fairness in deletions)
as justified by en.Wikipedia policy.
But, having brought it to the list's attention,
some list readers -- such as Nohat -- now find themselves
unable to look at the situation being discussed.

The solution?  I don't see a clear one, outside of software changes.
(And which software changes is not entirely obvious either!)
The deleter might have mentioned it on the list /before/ deleting,
but then why not just put it on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]?
Yet the whole point was to test the policy on deletion
to see if all agreed that there was good reason
that it ought to be deleted immediately /without/ being listed.

The bottleneck, it seems to me, is that there are dedicated Wikipedians,
such as Nohat, that read the mailing lists and participate in policy
but nevertheless are not administrators (for any of various reasons).
And we decided some time ago not to force users to become admins. ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's bury the hatchet

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Someone has come up with an insanely great idea -- or a great way to get
>rid of the insanity.
>
>Take a look at what [[User:Mediator]] has been doing lately. Here is a
>tiny sample:
>
>>Regardless of the positions one takes or arguments one
>>accepts, it remains particularly important not to lose our
>>neutral perspective with respect to religion, ethics, or
>>politics itself. These are central issues. We have done an
>>admirable job so far...
>>
Yes, indeed!  I've already commented there.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop bashing me

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I am 100% for NPOV. I do not ask the Wikipedia to
> endorse any of my pet
> projects or favorite ideas. I am not a scientist or
> politician or
> lobbyist.
>
Please don't call opposing views "Junk science", then.

> I only want to describe each side of controversial
> issues fairly.
> Oftentimes, advocates overstate their own case. I
> _hate_ it when this
> happens, and I am mortified any time I discover I
> have done it myself.
>
What if you leave what's there and just add "However,
others say that..." so that all sides are represented,
even the ones that you say are representing the facts
wrong.
LDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob

body:
[Sent to both <wikiEN-L> and directly to RickK by email,
since RickK seems to have requested that.]

RickK wrote:

>Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com> wrote:

>>The first edits under the name Jesus_is_Lord! began October 6.
>>Generally, the edits appear helpful and in good faith. Most have been
>>made to articles addressing homosexual issues. In contrast to the
>>assumption many have made (me included until I read through the
>>history), the edits do not reflect an anti-gay bias.

>Really?  A scatalogical definition of "Fudgepacker"
>is not indicative of an anti-gay bias?

But isn't that what the word in fact means?
To report on anti-gay prejudice is not to be anti-gay;
quite the contrary.

I found the article informative, and I'm hardly anti-gay.
While I have grave suspicions about JiL's intentions here,
I must protest the condemnation of this article /as such/.
If JiL is anti-gay, then he is being more subtle about it
(as any decent troll would be) than you seem to be inferring.

Indeed, this is the perfect edit for a troll;
it would let a troll call us "fudgepackers" in its heart,
while not explicitly condoning the word's usage
in any of the article text that the troll actually writes.
But the proper response is to neutralise the troll's activities --
say by incorporating the information into [[Homophobic hate speech]]
on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a dictionary,
thus avoiding a proliferation of articles named after slurs
without any appearance of direct censorship --
rather than to attack the troll directly, which only feeds it.
(I'm not committed to the position that JiL is a troll, BTW.
But I find it a plausible hypothesis, and I'm willing to accept it
for the sake of this argument.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>With regard to Mydogategodshat, what about just changing it to capitalized
>form (MyDogAteGodsHat)? Minimal changing, just enough to disambiguate...
>
The problem with that is that it would then lose its clever
Monty-Pythonesque ambiguity which lies just as much in the work that you
need to do to be able to figure it out.

Ec


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
With regard to Mydogategodshat, what about just changing it to capitalized
form (MyDogAteGodsHat)? Minimal changing, just enough to disambiguate...

-- Jake


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
What a silly man you are Edmund.  Anyone who looked at the page knows JiL got way more thumbs down --and all the other votes were scattered.  You try to say 1.5 actually objected -- when you should have said "took offense" -- big difference.  Theres has never been in any voting system that I know of for a process by which people must legitimize their vote somehow in accordance with another subjective standard. Silly Ed.

~S~
Le tribe hast spokenst

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
I think the standard on user names should be:

"Anyone can call themselves anything, until and unless several people
say that it offends them."

By that standard, TMC had to be changed. But JisL has only 1.5 objectors
so far: one says they're offended (after I SOUGHT a list of offended
people), and the other says they slightly or mildly offended. That's no
consensus.

Much ado about nothing.

Ed Poor
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Being too nice to the trolls? (Speaking up)

body:
Is this "soft security" or "containment by appeasement" . Not that I disagree --rather for sake of conversation, I'll go along with your point, Toby --  I do think there is real philosphical issue here that should be hammered out. Can we realistically take hard stands? Can we realistically set community standards?  Im personally not offended by it (IANG) but we do seem to be appeasing POV and stereotype rather than find a way to frame it or barring that flushing it.  People had the same kind of antipathy towards the AKFD article-- and Ive always thought its because theres a misunderstanding of NPOV or trolling.

~S~

Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
[Sent to both and directly to RickK by email,
since RickK seems to have requested that.]

RickK wrote:

>Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

>>The first edits under the name Jesus_is_Lord! began October 6.
>>Generally, the edits appear helpful and in good faith. Most have been
>>made to articles addressing homosexual issues. In contrast to the
>>assumption many have made (me included until I read through the
>>history), the edits do not reflect an anti-gay bias.

>Really? A scatalogical definition of "Fudgepacker"
>is not indicative of an anti-gay bias?

But isn't that what the word in fact means?
To report on anti-gay prejudice is not to be anti-gay;
quite the contrary.

I found the article informative, and I'm hardly anti-gay.
While I have grave suspicions about JiL's intentions here,
I must protest the condemnation of this article /as such/.
If JiL is anti-gay, then he is being more subtle about it
(as any decent troll would be) than you seem to be inferring.

Indeed, this is the perfect edit for a troll;
it would let a troll call us "fudgepackers" in its heart,
while not explicitly condoning the word's usage
in any of the article text that the troll actually writes.
But the proper response is to neutralise the troll's activities --
say by incorporating the information into [[Homophobic hate speech]]
on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a dictionary,
thus avoiding a proliferation of articles named after slurs
without any appearance of direct censorship --
rather than to attack the troll directly, which only feeds it.
(I'm not committed to the position that JiL is a troll, BTW.
But I find it a plausible hypothesis, and I'm willing to accept it
for the sake of this argument.)

-- Toby
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
The current balance in the Paypal account is $7,040.09 USD.

This came as a complete shock to me and is primarily the result of a
single large contribution of $5,000.

I'm not sure of the proper etiquette here, I am bursting at the seams
to thank this person publicly, but with no indication really that
I have permission, I'll let them remain anonymous for right now!

Actually, it is:
U.S. Dollar (Primary):  $6,654.73 USD
Canadian Dollar: $51.20 CAD
Euro: ?207.04 EUR
Pound Sterling: 66.67 GBP

And I could convert the non-US currencies to get to the $7,040.09.

--Jimbo


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
From: "Jake Nelson" <jnelson at soncom.com>

> With regard to Mydogategodshat, what about just changing it to capitalized
> form (MyDogAteGodsHat)? Minimal changing, just enough to disambiguate...
>
> -- Jake

With lower case my eyes keep getting drawn to the ends of the text,
namely Mydog and shat mydogategodshat which begs the reading
"my dog ate;  go'd'shat."  Which might be be understood as slang
as  "my dog has eaten and goes to do a defecation.."

Using caps judiciously makes that reading difficult to support and
appears not to offend the user's intention.

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
I think the standard on user names should be:

"Anyone can call themselves anything, until and unless several people
say that it offends them."

By that standard, TMC had to be changed. But JisL has only 1.5 objectors
so far: one says they're offended (after I SOUGHT a list of offended
people), and the other says they slightly or mildly offended. That's no
consensus.

Much ado about nothing.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: [WikiEN-l] Java code to convert Wiki text to HTML ?

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Venu Durgam [mailto:vdurgam at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 5:06 PM
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Java code to convert Wiki text to HTML ?

Hello All,

Is there an open source Java code to convert Wiki text to HTML ?

Thanks.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>What a silly man you are Edmund.  Anyone who looked at the page knows JiL got
>way more thumbs down --and all the other votes were scattered.  You try to
>say 1.5 actually objected -- when you should have said "took offense" -- big
>difference.  Theres has never been in any voting system that I know of for a
>process by which people must legitimize their vote somehow in accordance with
>another subjective standard. Silly Ed.

But there /has/ been policy for offensive usernames
that they are to be changed because the /cause offense/.
You're right, Ed should have said that only 1.5 "took offense".
But it is still significant that this is a small number.
(BTW, my position changed from "Don't understand the fuss" to "Abstention"
the moment that somebody said that they were personally offended.
But I haven't been able to edit the talk page yet.
It may change further depending on JiL's responses
to attempts to convince him to choose a new name volunatarily;
but I haven't been able to read his responses yet.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Should we remove the donation text for now as the preliminary goal has
> been reached? If not, we need to set a new goal.

Well, there are many other needs, so I think we can leave it up for
now.  But we should craft a wise list of needs to publicize for when
we're up and running fast and really push for media attention via the
press release.

Our current plan is to have two front-end webservers in front of the
big backend, and once that's in place to evaluate where the bottleneck
is.

But for that, we'll likely want to have a front-end load balancing
machine -- that's what we used to do at Bomis, and it works well with
only minimal hardware... but there *is* that minimal hardware.

We've always talked about how nice it would be to have the mailing
lists hosted on different machines from the website, and so that's
another need.

We'd like to be able to pay Brion for all his admin work at some
point, if that's at all possible.

There's the legal stuff that Alex keeps wisely warning us about.

There's plenty of use for at least $20,000 right away, if we can get
it.

But the server fund was the MOST PRESSING thing and this is going
to make a HUGE difference.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Server purchase plan - advice needed quickly

body:
With the sudden reaching of our $6,000 goal, we have money to go
shopping, and I want to do it right away.  Jason will be in San Diego
on Monday to finish the first round of upgrades, and I'd love it if he
had to drive back down there on Friday to install the new big db
machine.

We actually have $7,000 in Paypal which I can transfer to our regular
bank account, where we already have almost $2,500 of my money that I
put in to kick things off.  So that's an actual available funds of
$9,500, although of course we should NOT spend it all on the database
machine unless that's the best thing to do.

Here's what I have lined up at penguincomputing.com for $7,108.00.

Please comment.  One thing totally left open here is how to partition
the RAID volume, probably Brion and others can give good advice about
the best way to do that.

One of the toughest decisions is which exact RAM to buy.  1GB pieces
are a lot cheaper, and there are 8 total slots available.  So I
thought: buy 4 1GB pieces, and there's plenty of room for growth.
When 2GB pieces drop in price (which I'm sure they will, and quickly),
we have room for 8 gig more or 12 total.  Or, if absolutely needed,
we could move these 1GB pieces to other machines in our future network,
and fill this server up to the full 16gig.

It would cost $778 more to have 2x2Gig = 4 versus what I have, which
is 1x4Gig = 4.

For the RAID, I selected 4x36gig in a RAID 5 array, for a logical
drive capacity of 105 gig.  I also selected 1 extra hot spare drive,
just for that much more added reliability.  There are many other
possibilities for this, and I'm open to recommendations.  My
impression is that with RAID 5, more drives means more performance,
but with enough RAM, we shouldn't be hitting the drives that hard
anyway.

Component Summary

Standard Features
3U (5.25") Rackmount Chassis
Dual AMD Opteron 200 Series Processors
Up to 16GB of PC2100 ECC Reg. DDR RAM
Integrated Dual Channel ATA-100 Controller
Up to Seven Hot-swappable 3.5" Hard Drive Bays
Dual Integrated Gigabit NICs
Three Available PCI Slots
Integrated Video
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 Preload
Altus 3200 Documentation
Penguin Computing Three Year Warranty
 Selected Features
Altus 3200
Hot Swap Power Supply
Dual AMD Opteron 246 Processors
4GB Low Profile PC2700 ECC DDR (4 x 1GB)
Up to 6 Drives on 2 SCSI Channels in two 3-bay SCA Internal Enclosures
LSI 320-2: 2 Channel RAID 64MB w/battery backup
105.0 GB RAID 5 Volume (4+1) 36GB, 10,000RPM Low Profile SCA
52X IDE CD-ROM
Rackmount Ball-Bearing Rails (Rack Depth 26")
Preload ONLY, SuSE Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64
Standard Three Year Warranty

 Resource Summary

PROCESSOR
MAIN MEMORY
Total installed memory -> 4096 MB
Free memory slots -> 1 SIMM
Free memory slots -> 4 DIMM
NETWORK INTERFACE
1GB/sec Copper -> 2 RJ-45
DISK INTERFACE
Total SCA Drive Bays (Low Profile) -> 6 bays
Free SCA Drive Bays (Low Profile) -> 1 bays
Total 5.25" Drive Bays -> 6 bays
IDE Interface -> 4
RAID Channels -> 2
PCI / ISA Slots
PCI slots -> 7 total PCI slots
PCI slots -> 6 free PCI slots
Video

 Disk Storage Summary

Mount Point Partition Size File System

  RAID 5 Volume
 (4+1) x 36GB, 10,000RPM Low Profile SCA Logical Capacity: 105 GB
 unallocated 105.0 GB (100.0)

 Unassigned Partitions
 / ext3 6.00 GB
 /boot ext3 80 MB
 /home ext3 0 MB
 /var ext3 1.02 GB
 swap swap 2.04 GB
 TOTALS Logical Capacity: 105.0 GB, Allocated Capacity: 0.0 GB (0.0 %)
 Unallocated Capacity 105.0 GB  (100.0)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> But I haven't been able to edit the talk page yet.
> It may change further depending on JiL's responses
> to attempts to convince him to choose a new name
> volunatarily;
> but I haven't been able to read his responses yet.)

What do his responses have to do with your opinion on
the merits of the name? I would agree with those who
caution that the issue should be separate from
behaviour.  Tim pointed this particularly important
bug out to me.  Part of maintaining a consistent
policy is abstaining from the sideissues -- Just vote
on the merits of the name, dagummit thats it.

The real problem issue I see is with the tacit
deferment of action on these matters to developers--
like Tim, who's mostly used his conversion script for
non-inflammatory changes, and seems a little tender
about just getting it over with.  This shouldnt be a
big deal -- ideally we want people to agree to a
change, but barring that, its a conflict between the
consensus and the ego of one person.  Are sysops *not
to enforce a nay vote on a username, always defering
to a developer?  This puts developers in a bind,
because in order for them to make a decision they seem
to think they need to get involved. They dont-- they
just need to do the bidding of the community.

~S~

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> We'd like to be able to pay Brion for all his admin
> work at some point, if that's at all possible.

Congratulations on your sucessful and sustainable NPO
startup.  I would add that Brion isnt the only skilled
developer who gives his valuable time and skills to
WP, though.

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Silly Users named

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Ed Poor ====> who's havng socend thoughts about
> typing while drinknig

Second thoughts-- no... But a man should not drink
alone. I will have a drink with you... (scotch)
whenever I get over this illness--whatever it is.
(Seriously, I dunno..)

~S~
Maybe its AIDS!

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body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Is this "soft security" or "containment by appeasement" . Not that I disagree
>--rather for sake of conversation, I'll go along with your point, Toby --  I
>do think there is real philosphical issue here that should be hammered out.
>Can we realistically take hard stands? Can we realistically set community
>standards?  Im personally not offended by it (IANG) but we do seem to be
>appeasing POV and stereotype rather than find a way to frame it or barring
>that flushing it.  People had the same kind of antipathy towards the AKFD
>article-- and Ive always thought its because theres a misunderstanding of NPOV
>or trolling.

The only misunderstanding of NPOV is by people trying to change the name
(some of them, that is, not all).  Nobody claims that the name is NPOV.
But we allow plenty of POV on Wikipedia -- on talk pages, on user pages,
on [[meta:]] and in the [[Wikipedia:]] namespace when signed,
and even in article pages when attributed to relevant authorities.
We also allow it on [[Special:Recentchanges]] in edit summaries.
If we're not going to allow it on [[Special:Recentchanges]] in usernames,
then this is a new idea, not some well-known and obvious fact.
(We also allow POV on [[meta:]] and in the [[Wikipedia:]] namespace
when unsigned -- that is in the policies and guidelines of the project --
but limited to opinions about the project itself, which must be positive.)

This is all quite reasonable -- Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
take no opinion on the various controversies that may arise,
but individual Wikipedians do have opinions, and nobody denies this.
And Wikipedia even keeps its own good opinion of itself
outside of the encyclopaedia proper (thus [[Wikipedia]] is NPOV,
even though [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia]] is not).

This doesn't impinge on the question of whether [[User:Jesus is Lord!]]
causes /offence/ -- that is another matter, and it does seem to do so,
even if only to "1.5 people", in Ed's words.  But /if/ JiL is a troll
and intended to cause offence, then reacting as if we are offended
(whether or not we are!) is, precisely, feeding the troll.
That's why I'm trying to talk to JiL as if he's not a troll,
to convince him that it is a good thing to change his name
to something along the lines of [[User:Subject of Lord Jesus]].
This is the right thing to do regardless of his true intentions.

And this is not to say that users should be deliberately inflammatory.
If that's JiL intention, then this person should be ashamed -- obviously.
But users do have opinions, and I for one am grateful when a user
states their biases up front so that I can watch out if necessary.
If /this/ was JiL's intention, then it is to be lauded,
even the means chosen to do so were not ideal.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Erik wrote:
>Donations >$50 will be listed on [[Wikipedia:Donations]]
>(to be protected and only edited by admins) with the name
>of the giver, unless the giver requests to remain anonymous.

Uh, the donation is to the Wikimedia Foundation, not just to Wikipedia. So, if
anything it would be a protected page on meta that is displayed at a
WikimediaFoundation.org webpage (possibly updated in near real time by a
script). We could tell people to input "anon" in the "Payment For" PayPal
field if they want their contribution to be anonymous (or use a special
PayPal "Merchant Tools" button).

BTW, under "Reporting Tools" at PayPal
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/reports-products-outside

it would be nice to have a few trusted Wikimedians have access to:
   Downloadable Logs - Keep track of your transaction
   history by downloading it into various file formats
   (suitable for financial settlements)

With those data (only using selected fields and respecting people's wish to be
anonymous if they so choose), we could keep the community up-to-date on
Wikimedia's finances.

Also, any Wikimedia Foundation financial officer would need access to
View Balance
View Profile
Edit Profile
Cancel Payments
Refunds

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/permissions-outside

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Well, there are many other needs, so I think we
>can leave it up for now.  But we should craft a
>wise list of needs to publicize for when we're up
>and running fast and really push for media
>attention via the press release.

Now that we have the money for the database server, #1 on my list would be to
hire a MySQL/PHP optimization expert to optimize MediaWiki's semi-permanently
disabled features. I'm sure our developers would be the first to state that
hardware alone will not solve our problems.

#2 on my list would be to purchase 10 year registrations on each
Wikimedia-owned domain (Wiktionary.org is due in December).

>There's plenty of use for at least $20,000 right away,
>if we can get it.

For now a more modest push for $10,000 to cover expenses over the next six
months would be more realistic, IMO. We could either try to get that in the
month after initial press release distribution, and/or we could state that we
won't take down the [support] message from each page until we hit the $10,000
figure. Then in another six months the [support] message goes back up and a
new fundraising drive begins in concert with a new press release for some new
milestone. Just some thoughts...

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Persistence of cult leader

body:
I don't care what anyone says about me being in a cult. This statement
has remained at Ward's Wiki since the day I put it there, and 1,000
software methodologists can't be wrong!

Evil is taking advantage of another person for your own benefit. Good is
sacrificing yourself for the benefit of another. - - SunMyungMoon,
founder of the UnificationChurch.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GoodAndEvil

I don't know how to access their page history feature, but it's been
there about 18 months, near as I can figure.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Developer user accounts

body:
For the moment I've disabled read-write SQL access for developer
accounts on the wiki. Our active developers should already have login
access to the server where they can do read-write sql when needed, more
securely.

Anyone marked "developer" on the wiki can lock or unlock the wiki into
read-only mode, and look at our PHP configuration. And, that's about it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Persistence of cult leader

body:
> Ed wrote:
> > 1,000 software methodologists can't be wrong!
>
> See, this kind of logic explains how cults come into existence.
>
> ;-)
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

LOL! Touche. :-)

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Silly Users named

body:
Steve,

You have the silliest user name I know of. I mean you are the silliest
user I can name. Er, that is, you're making users dizzy about their
names.

Actually, I'm experiencing vertigo Steve. You've got me off balance, or
you're unbalanced.

Or something like hat.

Ed Poor ====> who's havng socend thoughts about typing while drinknig
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body:
Two words:

Speed & Scalability

Ed Poor


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Geoff Burling wrote (in part)

> Out of curiousity, has anyone simply *asked* him what the point of his
> username is? I wouldn't be surprised if it's nothing more than a goofy,
> absurd bit of humor.

There is a discussion about it on his user page:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mydogategodshat

I think you are right - there is no intent to offend

Regards

sannse


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] a good news - GFDL- CCPL compatibility

body:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2003-October/000135.html

I've been concerned about the possibile "valcanization" of the copyleft
resources, because
of the license incompatibilities between GFDL and CC BY-SA, etc. And I know
from the past postings
that I am hardly alone here.

So I took the above-linked posting quite encouraging.

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
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(depending on the local service providers in your area).
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from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object
	in ...

body:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
/usr/local/apache/common/php/OutputPage.php on line 926

seen on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Minerale
and
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarz

Kurt


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 05:48:55PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> With the sudden reaching of our $6,000 goal, we have money to go
> shopping, and I want to do it right away.  Jason will be in San Diego
> on Monday to finish the first round of upgrades, and I'd love it if he
> had to drive back down there on Friday to install the new big db
> machine.
>
> We actually have $7,000 in Paypal which I can transfer to our regular
> bank account, where we already have almost $2,500 of my money that I
> put in to kick things off.  So that's an actual available funds of
> $9,500, although of course we should NOT spend it all on the database
> machine unless that's the best thing to do.
>
> Here's what I have lined up at penguincomputing.com for $7,108.00.
>
> Please comment.  One thing totally left open here is how to partition
> the RAID volume, probably Brion and others can give good advice about
> the best way to do that.
>
> One of the toughest decisions is which exact RAM to buy.  1GB pieces
> are a lot cheaper, and there are 8 total slots available.  So I
> thought: buy 4 1GB pieces, and there's plenty of room for growth.
> When 2GB pieces drop in price (which I'm sure they will, and quickly),
> we have room for 8 gig more or 12 total.  Or, if absolutely needed,
> we could move these 1GB pieces to other machines in our future network,
> and fill this server up to the full 16gig.
>
> It would cost $778 more to have 2x2Gig = 4 versus what I have, which
> is 1x4Gig = 4.
>
> For the RAID, I selected 4x36gig in a RAID 5 array, for a logical
> drive capacity of 105 gig.  I also selected 1 extra hot spare drive,
> just for that much more added reliability.  There are many other
> possibilities for this, and I'm open to recommendations.  My
> impression is that with RAID 5, more drives means more performance,
> but with enough RAM, we shouldn't be hitting the drives that hard
> anyway.

[huge clip here]

I think this is a very well balanced machine here, and I think your
analysis of the current RAM situation is correct.  I say go for it.  :)

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Starting Tamil WikiPedia

body:
Amala Singh wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I would like to start Tamil Wikipedia. But I have no
> I idea to whom to contact and how to go ahead with
> this.
>
> Can anybody help me regarding this?
>
> Amala Singh.

I think you best put it on the "To do" list of Brion.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Todo_list

About this language;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language

It looks like you needs special encoding for this language;
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/tamilenglish.html

Whit Shift_JIS it works. Japanese language support.

You start working on the translation of the language file while you are
waiting.

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phase3/languages/

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be