body:
On 21/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> it's link to "red" wouldn't it? and on the red page, you could have a link
> to both "color" and "colour" - unless of course you have previous selected
> the English (US) wiki, in which case, the issue shouldn't arise, should it.

Right; I was discussing your suggestion that those articles with
alternate headwords be split. It just seemed like it would be rather
tedious and ugly to go round replacing every instance of "[[color]]"
or "[[colour]]" with "[[color]]/[[colour]]". Currently, either form
alone will be a functional link.

> > Then perhaps a solution to that problem, such as one article having
> > multiple headwords, might be more appropriate?
>
> Agreed.

OK, so let's forget about duplicating articles, or entire wikis, and
think about how this might work. One problem would be that even if
"Color" and "Colour" were both treated as equally valid names for an
article (neither redirecting to the other), all the references would
still have to be one or the other (as currently) or both (which I
think would look far more ugly). And there'd still be the problem of
all the mentions which *aren't* links, so I guess this would only work
as part of an automatic "translation" approach.

> Otherwise it seems likely that the only articles that will be in English
> English will be ones about the British Isles. Pretty much everything else
> will end up American.

Well, I don't think that's *inevitable*. There's certainly a potential
problem of having a larger userbase in the US than probably everywhere
else put together, with the result that more articles will end up
looking "USian". But perhaps all we need is a better way of ensuring
that a better balance rises up. For instance - and I'm not sure this
is a particularly good or necessary idea, but it's a thought - we
could declare that certain topic areas (maths, biology, etc) should
always use certain varieties of English, such that they would each get
a share.

On the other hand, since the aim of the project is to make an
encyclopedia - to share knowledge - maybe all we need do is make sure
the text is understandable to most English-speaking readers. And if
most of our writers use US English, perhaps most of our readers will
too, so it actually works out fine. This is another issue which
frequently comes up in discussing new wikis - to what extent should
Wikimedia be supporting languages for the sake of furthering political
or social causes, rather than making the knowledge understandable to
the most people. To put it to the extreme, if everyone spoke
Esperanto, would it be ok to only have one Esperanto Wikipedia,
fulfilling the primary goal of sharing encyclopedic knowledge.

> I actually thought an Eggplant was an Avocado, and I don't think it's fair
> to assume that all, most, or even any significant number of British people
> will necessarily know or understand the American language entries. It works
> against Accessibility and Inclusiveness.

No, I agree. Any article that has ambiguousness in this way should be
carefully worded to make it clear. The beauty of a hypertext system is
that as soon as you click on the word "eggplant", you can be taken to
a page revealing that it is an aubergine

> What you are advocating is effectively that British people learn American,
> and accept it; and also accept that the orignal English form is defunct, or
> "lesser", and is putting English English on linguistic death row..

No, you are completely misrepresenting - or perhaps just
misunderstanding - my position. I am advocating that, wherever
possible, we make things understandable to all English speakers around
the world. I am indeed saying that British users may have to make the
effort to put up with and understand the odd Americanism; but I'm also
saying that American users should make the effort to put up with and
understand the odd Britishism.

I have *never* held the opinion that British English is defunct, or
inferior, or should be "put on linguistic death row". I'm not sure
that it makes any sense to talk of "the original English form" - it
always makes me wonder at what point in history this form was or
should have been frozen - and I object equally to claims that US
English is "inferior" as to claims that British English, Scots
English, Yorkshire English, Estuary English, or any other form is
"inferior". They are all different, and some are more suited to being
comprehensible by a wide audience than others, but none is
intrinsically "better".

> It sounds like a very fair solution to have the scientific name as the
> headword for both "Eggplant" and "Aubergine" -searchers to be directed to.

As I say, unfortunately, this isn't necessarily possible because there
are two different species. It's also not a solution which generalises
to other problem pairings, like pavement/sidewalk, so it's a bit of a
distraction. Besides which, text will still contain the words
"eggplant" and "aubergine" in the middle of sentences, whether they
are linked to a "neutral" form or not.

> In some or many cases yes, but... blanket policies are flawed. it may be
> inconvient, but can't assume that two apparently identical articles should
> be entirely synchronised - even if they are talking about the same thing,
> because the articles can also contain other culturally-specific information.

If there is culturally-specific information, it should be included in
the article *whatever* language/dialect/orthography it is written in.
If there were notable cultural information about aubergines in France,
I would expect them to be explained to me, in English, in an
encyclopedia. Similarly, I would consider it an omission if a
British-published encyclopedia neglected to mention American cultural
information - especially if that encyclopedia held "neutrality" as its
highest value.

> Here is an American academic piece which supports my argument that these are
> not the same language:
> http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/norton.pdf

An interesting article, although I'm not entirely sure it supports
your argument. For instance, it talks about the forces "which ensure,
in short, that English will continue as a single language, rather than
a collection of dialects that are free to wander wherever they will."
It actually seems rather admiring of those forces, and certainly
doesn't suggest that they are now breaking down.

Meanwhile, its author clearly agrees with me that there is no
"Standard English":

"Wherever we place the beginnings of English, though, there was never
a time when the language was not diverse."

"People often refer to this basis for communication as "Standard
English," but that term is misleading. [...] What English does have,
rather, is a collection of standard features [...] which taken
together ensure that certain kinds of communication will be
more-or-less comprehensible in any part of the language community."

Interesting that he should mention comprehensibility, which I consider
a far greater goal than "correctness" or "standardness". Another
passage touches on this as a reason to strive towards unity of the
language, rather than defining separate "standards" (by my reading,
the author considered this striving a positive force, not a negative
one):

"Maintaining the unity of a language over an extended time and space,
then, requires a more-or-less conscious determination by its speakers that
they have certain communicative interests in common that make it
worthwhile to try to curb or modulate the natural tendency to fragmentation
and isolation."

There is also a paragraph touching on another topic we've been
discussing - that of whether England can claim English as its own:

"By now, in any event, the view of English as an essentially English
creation is impossible to sustain even on purely linguistic grounds ? the
influences of the rest of the English-speaking world have simply been too
great."

> these are not minor (unless you can prove it) - they are quantifiably the
> same as several of the differences between wikis that currently exist.

Then maybe those wikis shouldn't exist. I'm not saying the situation
we have is perfect, and given the frequency of debates about
Scandinavian, Yugoslavian, and Eastern European languages/dialects, I
don't think using precedent to override reasoning is sensible.

> The discussion of the particular case of the English wiki, must include a
> justification of why other languages with similar degrees of difference -
> such as Norwegian - are allowed two wikis, when English is not.

There are several possible reasons: maybe the degrees of difference
are not as similar as you think; maybe the cultural and political
forces are stronger; maybe there just happens to be a different
balance of opinion in the users of those wikis than the users of
English ones; maybe we (or, rather, they - I'd imagine few users of
the English wiki have had anything to do with any Norwegian ones) have
just got it wrong.

If the situation is genuinely as similar as you are making out, I
would probably be of the opinion that those wikis should be merged.
However, I don't speak any of the languages concerned, and so have no
desire to get involved in their linguistic politics, and no right to
dictate the practice of their edition[s] of Wikipedia. I do, however,
speak English, and contribute to the English Wikipedia, and therefore
wish to have a say in how it is run.

> > I'm sure Canadians and Australians will be pleased to hear you
> > pronounce that from your golden pedestal. As will Indians, New
> > Zealanders, South Africans, etc etc. [It was pointed out, for
> > instance, that an Australian user would not wish to select either "US"
> > nor "British" spellings, because they would naturally use a mixture of
> > the two.]
>
> I'm sorry, but there's no evidence to support that view. Provide evidence,
> and I'll agree with you.

Well, I was merely recalling something contributed by an Australian
Wikipedian to an earlier debate on this list. I can't remember the
exact examples given, and don't know any Australians to ask, but it
anyway seems rather unreasonable to me to assume that English can be
divided neatly into two versions.

I should also clarify that I (or, rather, the Australian who I am
recalling) was not arguing that Australian English had large numbers
of features (spellings, vocabulary, etc) which were not present in
either US or British English - although for all I know it may well -
but merely that it contained some features from one, and some from the
other. So if you present an Australian user with a choice between
wikis, or articles, in "US" and "British" (or "American" and
"English", as you put it) varieties of English, neither of them will
seem "correct" - the US one will seem too "USian", and the British one
too British.

Naturally, you could create a third option - and then a fourth, and a
fifth, etc, as other groups come along - but this increases the work
significantly.

> > > grammar and punctuation is a different issue - one for edit whores.
> > [...]
> No, because it's a different issue to orthography. The fact that you
> recognise the differences implies that you recognise that these are two
> different orthographies - just like the two forms of Norweigan.

Actually, one of the main differences we've been discussing - the
aubergine/eggplant example - is not one of orthography at all, but of
vocabulary. It's not that Americans say "aubergine" but write it
"eggplant", it's a different word for the same thing. So you are
saying that spelling and vocabulary together form something which is
distinct from grammar and punctuation; whereas I am saying that all
should be considered part of the concept of dialect, and considered as
aspects of the same issue.

I accept that US and British English have different orthographies only
in as much as I accept that they are distinct dialects, and that the
distinctions between them include distinctions of orthography.

> > I am British, born and bred, and strongly object to being labelled
> > "Americanised" simply because I am pragmatic enough to put up with two
> > spellings of the word "colour".
>
> "put up with". You may not like it, but if you accept and use American
> orthography (use in general), then you are Americanised to a degree.

No. I never said I used American "orthography", I said I put up with
it - meaning I don't feel the need to "correct" it wherever I see it,
unless it is in content otherwise written in British English. I don't
think that makes me "Americanised", any more than talking to a
Yorkshireman without picking up on their dialect would make me
"Yorkshirised".

> >  I am not a "useful idiot" of either a Jewish or an American
> > conspiracy, I am an individual who tries to examine propositions
> > logically and reach his own conclusions.
>
> That is a disgusting and pathetic insinuation to make, and makes your
> declaration of trying to examine propositions logically, laughable.

My apologies - out of context, that looked like I was accusing you of
something equivalent to fascism, which was not my intention. What I
was reacting to was the idea that just because I don't strongly oppose
the influence of US English I am somehow "Americanised", and the
perceived insinuation that that made me somehow less British, and less
worthy of respect. Maybe you didn't really mean it like that, but in
contrasting "americanised types" to "Brits" you certainly implied it.

The point being, that just because I don't oppose something, that
doesn't mean I think it should be welcomed with open arms as our new
overlord.

> It is not morally wrong to be patriotic; it does not make you a fascist -
> what If I told you I was Jewish-Scottish-British, would that make you look
> like an idiot?

Only in that I wasn't clear in making my point; once again, I
apologise. However, I would like to point out that it is also not
morally wrong to *not* be patriotic, as in my case.

> Why should we? Why should we accept Americanisation? Why should we accept
> the abolishment of Britain? Why should we be ashamed and embarressed of who
> we are?

Why indeed? I have never promoted Americanisation, and I think there
are genuine threats from it - I just don't happen to think that the
variety of English used by Wikipedia is one of them.

> > That rant over, I would characterise it more as you coming and saying
> > "I'm against all of you" than us saying "we're all against you" - you
>
> and this is more "logical examination of proposals"?!
> I'm not "against all of you", I'm against unfairness, which is fundamentally
> what this is about. Inaccuracy is also the other major issue, on top of
> that, there's a lack of consistency.

The consistency issue, I'll grant you - presuming you're referring
once again to the Norwegian precedent. Unfairness? I'm not sure that
our current policy is fundamentally unfair, except in the sense that
it doesn't artificially adjust upwards the amount of content in
varieties of English native to smaller groups of users. And as for
accuracy, I'm not even sure what you're referring to.

What I was trying to say is that you have come in and challenged an
existing policy, which seems to be more-or-less supported by most
existing users - it's not that those existing users are ganging up
against you, so much as that you are challenging them all to consider
your views. For what it's worth, I think there may be a better
approach to the issue than we have currently, but I've yet to see a
suggestion which isn't flawed in its own way.

> > have yet to prove that there is even an issue to solve (except
> > inasmuch as it is stopping you from contributing; and the more I hear
> > of your biases, the less of a problem that seems).
>
> I'm biased towards fairness; you appear to be biased towards something else.

I was talking more about your biases towards patriotism, and the
superiority of one form of English, and so on. But it wasn't a
particularly productive comment, and could be seen as little more than
a personal attack, so I apologise for it.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Public Domain in occupied Iraq

body:
steve v wrote:

>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>7.   If pre-occupation Iraqi law would provide
>>protection for this
>>photograph, it should be recognized for a period of
>>at least 25 years
>>after the date of first publication.  There is ample
>>time before we need
>>to determine whether that period of time should be
>>longer.
>>
>>
>Really? This is interesting, because Saddam law might
>have ruled it illegal to drive tanks over his statues,
>and take pictures of him in his underwear. Current
>"law" in Iraq doesnt seem to hold those "rights"
>inviolate. Theres a similar issue with Nazi-era
>photographs, etc. Does Germany claim Deutchland? for
>anything Fuhrer??
>
>
I don't know whether this is better characterized as irrational or
incoherent. There is no suggestion that President Hussein was the
personal copyright holder for the photograph. Your ramblings have
nothing to do with copyright. It doesn't seem right to want to punish
all the citixens of a country just because you don't like its former
president.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where to send patches?

body:
On 21/09/05, Juanma Barranquero <lekktu at gmail.com> wrote:
> And BTW, what's the right place (mailing list, MediaZilla, etc.) to
> send patches?

Probably MediaZilla, though here is fine for small ones (large ones as
attachments may or may not get scrubbed out for security reasons). And
once you contribute a few and prove yourself reasonably trustworthy,
you can apply for CVS rights and commit them direct.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: FW: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
> I'll go one further, in fact. I think everyone who has been main or
> sole author on a publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
> deserves a Wikipedia article. Yes, this would include a whole lot of
> grad students. But if they're making or have made verifiable
> contributions to their field, we should be including them. No question.
>
> -Snowspinner

Nah, I disagree with that.  I've written several papers in astronomy, and
a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field,
but I'd hate to see an article about myself.  The specific field I am
allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article,
although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote that)
and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]].

Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field in
the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal
contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of
published academics.

WT


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Better tools to fight Wiki vandalism

body:
#en.wikipedia.vandalism on Freenode has this also. Very nice, uses the
same feed cdvf uses, but filters it to pretty much stuff that is
mostly vandalism, and shows people reverting.

On 9/21/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> You might want to check out CDVF. It has most of that: [[WP:CDVF]]
>  Ryan
>
>  On 9/20/05, Frederic <frederic at conrotte.be> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Wikipedians,
> >
> > just a question regarding Wiki Vandalism on Wikipedia.
> >
> > On this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges, would it
> > be possible to display a symbol in front of the line (let's say "V" for
> > Vandalism)
> > if some facts are met about the changes on an article ?
> > E.g. : if size has decreased of more than 20%
> > Another way would be to compute a level of probability of vandalism based
> > on some criteria, a bit like SpamAssasin is working on killing spams.
> >
> > Another tool that would usefull to fight spam would be to create a page
> > like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
> > but with differences directly displayed, without the full articles. I mean
> > you would have all the differences on the latests articles amended displayed
> > on one page.
> > Ok ok It would cost maybe too much CPU to do this, but this could be a
> > tool reserved for "significant Wikipedia contributors"
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > (Sorry if this topic has already been discussed/solved but I didn't find a
> > way to query the ML's history)
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Delirium wrote:

> steve v wrote:
>
>> Theres a similar issue with Nazi-era
>> photographs, etc. Does Germany claim Deutchland? for
>> anything Fuhrer??
>
> This is actually not that different a situation, surprisingly. The
> current Bavarian state government claims copyright on Hitler's _Mein
> Kampf_, and uses that authority to prevent reprintings within Germany,
> except in specifically authorized/edited/commented historical research
> editions. However, this copyright is not generally recognized outside
> Germany. (For example, Sweden's supreme court ruled that Bavaria's
> copyright claims were spurious because the modern state of Bavaria is
> not the same legal entity as the pre-WW2 one; see [[en:Mein Kampf]]
> for details.)

I've heard of that case.  It determined that the book was still
copyright protected, but did not recognize Bavaria as the owner.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>
>>Jack & Naree wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>"Jack & Naree" <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Can we try and reach some consensus on this?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>I suspect that what you are failing to realise is that there has already
>>>>been a consensus
>>>>
>>>>
>>> consensus between Americans, non-native English speakers, and unpatriotic
>>>Americanised English-speakers.
>>>
>>>
>>The consensus is that "Jack & Naree" are trolling and should
>>better leave this list before they are banned.
>>
>>
>There is no consensus: I disagree. I find this an interesting
>discussion, and it has been educational for me. Perhaps I'm in a
>minority, but you are not speaking for me when you want "Jack & Naree"
>to leave this mailinglist. I disagree with the proposal put forth by
>him/them, and both sides could show a bit more respect, but if consensus
>is needed to ban someone, let it be clear that I oppose it.
>
>
I thought that Lars' comment was a little strange.  Opposition to Jack &
Noree's proposal is nearly unanimous, but there needs to be some level
of tolerance for people who put forth unpopular ideas.  I've taken my
shots in this thread, but if I think that he is a troll I still have the
option of not feeding him.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
Worldtraveller wrote:

>Nah, I disagree with that.  I've written several papers in astronomy, and
>a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field,
>but I'd hate to see an article about myself.  The specific field I am
>allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article,
>although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote that)
>and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]].
>Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field in
>the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal
>contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of
>published academics.

Yeah, but it's pretty well established by now that people don't get
any say in the presence or absence of an article on themselves ;-)

(And this is partly because their judgement of their own notability is
skewed. I think Geogre is needlessly harsh on articles on small rock
bands because of his own time in an indie rock band, for example.)

- d.


from_name: Juanma Barranquero

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where to send patches?

body:
A trivial patch (assuming it is right, of course ;) to remove some
unused variables in QueryPage.php. The patch is for trunk, but it
should be applicable to REL1_5.

And BTW, what's the right place (mailing list, MediaZilla, etc.) to
send patches?

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Index: includes/QueryPage.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/QueryPage.php,v
retrieving revision 1.68
diff -u -2 -r1.68 QueryPage.php
--- includes/QueryPage.php	16 Sep 2005 15:05:07 -0000	1.68
+++ includes/QueryPage.php	21 Sep 2005 14:58:46 -0000
@@ -230,5 +230,5 @@
 	 */
  	function doQuery( $offset, $limit, $shownavigation=true ) {
-		global $wgUser, $wgOut, $wgLang, $wgRequest, $wgContLang;
+		global $wgUser, $wgOut, $wgContLang;

  		$sname = $this->getName();
@@ -236,5 +236,4 @@
  		$sql = $this->getSQL();
  		$dbr =& wfGetDB( DB_SLAVE );
-		$dbw =& wfGetDB( DB_MASTER );
  		$querycache = $dbr->tableName( 'querycache' );


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
Jim Breen wrote:

>[I missed this earlier posting]
>
>
>
>>>Jack & Naree wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>An American-English dictionary, and a (Commonwealth) English
>>>>Dictionary then.
>>>>Otherwise, it has to be all listed as seperate entries.
>>>>
>>>>
>
>Um. What about words that are spelled differently within and
>between Commonwealth countries? Or words like accoutrement/accouterment
>which are spelled differently within the US?
>
>Of course they shouldn't be separate entries, but Gerard's
>database design seems to be dicating that one.
>
>
>
The fact that words are spelled differently needs to be addressed in one
way or the other. Even in old style wiktionary there needs to be
something both at the accoutrement and the accouterment article in order
to make them "findable". The English Wiktionary nowadays frowns on the
use of redirects so it is more substantial than that.

In itself there is no value added to the fact that it has its own record
in the tables Expression and Word. The words can be connected through
SynTrans to the same meaning. They can be related through Relation to
say that they are alternative ways of spelling.

Consequently, there is nothing special in having both accoutrement and
accouterment exist within the database. The thing that is relevant is
that they are both shown to the user of the dictionary who looks up
either Expression. When they are alternate spellings within the same
Language, they will be seen as such. So as far as I am concerned, this
seems to me to be much ado about nothing.

>>>>Frankly I favour the first option, because to non-American-English
>>>>speakers, the American spellings are simply misspellings.
>>>>
>>>>
>
>Well that's news to this non-American-English speaker  8-)} I
>don't regard them as "misspellings" at all. Just different.
>
>
I would regard all accepted words as Expressions. In order to know more
about an expression, you have to add more information to enrich the
experience. It will be for instance be possible to date the first
accepted use of the later spelling. The etymology is also different.
Then again, this may not be of interest to you but it is there for those
who find it of interest.

Thanks,
GerardM


from_name: Dorozynski Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Nick Jenkins
| Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 10:36 AM
/
| # gzip -dc ~nickj/wikipedia/20050909_pages_public.xml.gz |
php
| maintenance/importDump.php
/
| // (i.e. spontaneously aborts after ~3200 pages and ~60
seconds).
| ======================================================

|
| I'm beginning to suspect that some kind of higher-being is
determined
| that under no circumstances will I be able to load this
data into a
| database ;-)

Things go from bad to worse :-)
I can load via importDump.php 15000 pages of 23rd June xml
dump of polish wiki. This bug is reported as no. 2979 on
Bugzilla. You can try Kate's importDump.phps, but for me it
solution wasn't successful, import has been silently
terminating after load apr. 142000 pages for about 190000.

 All the best, too :-))

	Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: Delirium

body:
steve v wrote:

>Theres a similar issue with Nazi-era
>photographs, etc. Does Germany claim Deutchland? for
>anything Fuhrer??
>
>
This is actually not that different a situation, surprisingly. The
current Bavarian state government claims copyright on Hitler's _Mein
Kampf_, and uses that authority to prevent reprintings within Germany,
except in specifically authorized/edited/commented historical research
editions. However, this copyright is not generally recognized outside
Germany. (For example, Sweden's supreme court ruled that Bavaria's
copyright claims were spurious because the modern state of Bavaria is
not the same legal entity as the pre-WW2 one; see [[en:Mein Kampf]] for
details.)

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Dorozynski Janusz
| Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 5:52 PM
/
| I can load via importDump.php 15000 pages of 23rd June xml
| dump of polish wiki.

It is wrong, I  tried 13th July xml dump, of course.

	Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
> Debian Woody is my mortal enemy. I thought it was dead finally, but no...

Ah, you see to a distro-laggard like our company, Woody is still a
very viable option, in fact it's considered quite safe and stable,
whereas Sarge is considered a little bit too new and risque to be
trusted yet with mission-critical stuff. That mentality will probably
only change when the updates for woody stop (which I believe is
scheduled to happen on 1/05/2006, unless Etch is released before that
date, which honestly seems rather unlikely). So only after the 1st May
2006 will Woody finally really be dead :-)

On the data import front, today I've tried installing MediaWiki
1.5RC4, and importing via importDump, but I didn't have much luck:
======================================================
# wget http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/20050909_pages_public.xml.gz
# gzip --test ~nickj/wikipedia/20050909_pages_public.xml.gz
// no output or error, so presumably the gzip file is not corrupt
# md5sum ~nickj/wikipedia/20050909_pages_public.xml.gz
1de5093f1dd6c5afd4ed080474456d54
/home/nickj/wikipedia/20050909_pages_public.xml.gz
// this matches the sum in
http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/20050909-md5sums
# gzip -dc ~nickj/wikipedia/20050909_pages_public.xml.gz | php
maintenance/importDump.php
100 (58.59332294078 pages/sec 58.59332294078 revs/sec)
200 (54.030806663729 pages/sec 54.030806663729 revs/sec)
300 (51.490838593282 pages/sec 51.490838593282 revs/sec)
400 (50.320459245887 pages/sec 50.320459245887 revs/sec)
500 (49.26519486778 pages/sec 49.26519486778 revs/sec)
600 (48.360482472114 pages/sec 48.360482472114 revs/sec)
700 (48.871787388943 pages/sec 48.871787388943 revs/sec)
800 (49.154366513935 pages/sec 49.154366513935 revs/sec)
900 (49.266177573961 pages/sec 49.266177573961 revs/sec)
1000 (49.018343826441 pages/sec 49.018343826441 revs/sec)
1100 (49.167214599006 pages/sec 49.167214599006 revs/sec)
1200 (49.605583964957 pages/sec 49.605583964957 revs/sec)
1300 (49.425412530694 pages/sec 49.425412530694 revs/sec)
1400 (49.357795012659 pages/sec 49.357795012659 revs/sec)
1500 (49.401458453695 pages/sec 49.401458453695 revs/sec)
1600 (49.248578795592 pages/sec 49.248578795592 revs/sec)
1700 (49.205397806241 pages/sec 49.205397806241 revs/sec)
1800 (49.139689484041 pages/sec 49.139689484041 revs/sec)
1900 (49.369342847918 pages/sec 49.369342847918 revs/sec)
2000 (49.706945229133 pages/sec 49.706945229133 revs/sec)
2100 (49.860871622316 pages/sec 49.860871622316 revs/sec)
2200 (49.935237390351 pages/sec 49.935237390351 revs/sec)
2300 (49.976472942288 pages/sec 49.976472942288 revs/sec)
2400 (49.965834881883 pages/sec 49.965834881883 revs/sec)
2500 (50.095592279086 pages/sec 50.095592279086 revs/sec)
2600 (49.913163596511 pages/sec 49.913163596511 revs/sec)
2700 (50.346513647263 pages/sec 50.346513647263 revs/sec)
2800 (50.554639314109 pages/sec 50.554639314109 revs/sec)
2900 (50.30025952798 pages/sec 50.30025952798 revs/sec)
3000 (50.235683978552 pages/sec 50.235683978552 revs/sec)
3100 (49.935743124336 pages/sec 49.935743124336 revs/sec)
3200 (49.898859597319 pages/sec 49.898859597319 revs/sec)
Content-type: text/html

#
// (i.e. spontaneously aborts after ~3200 pages and ~60 seconds).
======================================================

I'm beginning to suspect that some kind of higher-being is determined
that under no circumstances will I be able to load this data into a
database ;-)

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
> In addition to massive (rather than minor) orthographic differences,
> Bokm?l and Nynorsk have very different grammars (some examples: the
> word "I" is "Jeg" in Bokm?l and "Eg" in Nynorsk, the word "not" is
> "ikke" in Bokm?l and "ikkje" in Nynorsk, even the word "Norway" is
> "Norge" in Bokm?l and "Noreg" in Nynorsk.)

Well, that's a vocabulary difference, not a grammar difference. But I
believe you that there are also some grammar differences :), although
the examples you gave look pretty minor to me, like color/colour...

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


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: FW: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
Why isn't Wikipedia best served by both? If someone comes across one of your
papers and wants to know more about the author, isn't that useful, even if
they just find out that the author is no one special?

There's clearly a potential benefit, and I just don't see what the negative
is. As long as you stick to insisting that everything in the article is
easily verifiable, anyway (which is already a rule outside of notability).

I suppose you could argue that such an article is best served by a dedicated
wiki, one for all authors, for instance. But that would mean either creating
a fork or taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia entirely. The
other alternative, to have notable authors in Wikipedia and non-notable ones
out of Wikipedia, would likely cause way too many problems in
implementation. Taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia is very
unlikely to happen, so you're basically ensuring a fork.

Anthony

Nah, I disagree with that. I've written several papers in astronomy, and
> a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field,
> but I'd hate to see an article about myself. The specific field I am
> allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article,
> although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote that)
> and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]].
>
> Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field in
> the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal
> contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of
> published academics.
>
> WT
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Potential Wikipedian growing pains

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Andrew Lih wrote:
>
>
>>I used to tell folks writing for wiki was easy, and the inclusiveness
>>of it has to do with not being like a database or data entry system.
>>That has changed with templating now being extensively used around the
>>Wikimedia projects.
>
>
>
> Nowadays I pretty much tell new contributors "just write a few
> paragraphs and INCLUDE REFERENCES and don't worry about the fancy
> markup for now. Just INCLUDE THE REFERENCES and people will know it's
> a real article about a real thing."
>
> (references++)
>
>

I'm starting to think that maybe we should just leave everything in that
isn't immediately speediable, let things be merged and redirected at the
will of the people, and finally let Wikipedia 1.0 sort it all out.

(The other day, when the wiki went slow, someone said suggested
disabling editing, serving Wikipedia from one of the static database
dumps, and declaring Wikipedia as being version 1.0 ;) )

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Sam Korn wrote:
>
>
>>I think portals should be the "public face" of WikiProjects.  A portal
>>should only exist if there is a formal set of users dedicated to
>>keeping it maintained.  If this is not happening, it should be
>>archived or deleted (preferably archived).  Pages like
>>[[Portal:Cricket]], while potentially just fan pages, actually provide
>>an excellent method of navigating appropriate content.  If they are
>>kept up, they do no harm.  If they are not kept up, they look messy
>>and a messy portal seems worse than an incomplete article.
>
>
>
> It depends. In a contentious area, they can be a way of subtly or
> unsubtly pushing a POV, much like bad article series boxes. An example
> is [[Template:Scientology]] - the current version is for talk pages
> and marks the article as part of WikiProject Scientology, but if
> you're an admin then look at the deleted versions - they're article
> series boxes that push a critical POV. You could set up a portal for
> each POV, but that's just article forks pushed to a higher level.
>
<snip>
>
> BTW, I see nothing wrong with people going to VFD/AFD and voting
> "keep" on their topic area. You know, they might KNOW THE AREA or
> something better than nonspecialist VFD regulars. What a thought, eh?
>

I've said that several times now...

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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body:
On 20/09/05, Frederic <frederic at conrotte.be> wrote:
> (Sorry if this topic has already been discussed/solved but I didn't find a way to query the ML's history)

For future reference, and the benefit of anyone else wondering, add
"site:mail.wikipedia.org" to a query in Google/Yahoo!/your favourite
search engine. You can also be more specific, so
"site:mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l" searches just the
archives of this one list, which are all in that directory.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: WP Credibility watch: stats of WP and EB citations
	in news press:

body:
Jeff Kinz wrote:

>>I haven't done any comparisons for "leadership" press use of citations.
>>For example it will probably be a long time before the NY Times, or the
>>Washington Post are willing to cite WP rather than EB in any articles.
>>
>>
Having followed this closely for some time, but without crunching
numbers in the same fashion, my anecdotal observation is that citations
to Wikipedia are increasingly penetrating leading news media. Early on,
it came more from smaller, local media. The bigger fish have gradually
joined in, usually starting with specialty topics where we clearly
perform better (does Britannica have an article on podcasting yet?). By
now, I think one of the major papers in just about every large American
city has cited Wikipedia as a source, and not just via recycled wire
copy. With the current cycle of cuts in personnel, which will probably
hit hard in terms of resources devoted to background research, I expect
the scope and volume of Wikipedia citations to increase further.

>>One publication, "the Jurist" has appeared relatively recently and is
>>probably the source of about half (or more) of the recent WP cite counts.
>>It may be necessary to eliminate them from future counts since their
>>extremely high rate of WP cites are not a normal pattern for a news
>>publication. Of course "the Jurist" is not a normal news publication
>>anyway. I'm surprised Google indexes them for Google news. Well, its a
>>reputable publication anyway.
>>http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/
>>
>>
Within the realm of what Google News does, which includes a lot of
specialty news, the Jurist site certainly qualifies and their inclusion
is not that surprising. They are one of the first to make a systematic
rather than occasional habit of linking to Wikipedia articles for
background information, but I expect to see more places adopt this
practice in the future.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
I'm not so sure it's needed.

Unlike Serbian or Chinese, rather than using different writing systems
we just have slightly different spellings.

Mark

On 21/09/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> I am sure that it is possible to make a software for conversion
> between British and American English, such Zhengzhu did for Chinese.
> All people would work on one Wikipedia and all people would use their
> own variant.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 21/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/09/05, Frederic <frederic at conrotte.be> wrote:
> > (Sorry if this topic has already been discussed/solved but I didn't find a way to query the ML's history)
>
> For future reference, and the benefit of anyone else wondering, add
> "site:mail.wikipedia.org" to a query in Google/Yahoo!/your favourite
> search engine. You can also be more specific, so
> "site:mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l" searches just the
> archives of this one list, which are all in that directory.

Does "site:" work on directories? IIRC you'd have to use "inurl:" for that...

(This trick is also very useful for searching Wikipedia, since
"inurl:" lets you define what namespace you want)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] English - a sub-vernacular of Norman French

body:
On 20/09/05, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:

> English a germanic language?  Impossible! An absurd notion! Lunacy!  Exaggeration!  Unadulterated opinionated insanity!  Essentially misdirected ill conceived viewpoints. Troublesome tempestuous tapestries.  As tasteless as a tarty tarantella. Significantly senseless.  Quintessentially unquotable.  Positively preposterous. Necessarily nonplussed and nominally abnormal. Exponentially and exceedingly uneventful.  Undeveloped, uncorroborated, irresponsible, and finally, bountifully morally bankrupt.  I opine that I have proven my point.
>
> Yours truly, frankly, ecetera

Of course, if English truly were a Germanic language, it would look like this:

http://www.grijalvo.com/Citas/Peculiar_English.htm

(the second part is pretty neat, too, and a lot less well-known)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] English stats

body:
On 20/09/05, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> By the way, does en.wiki have / has en.wiki got its own mailing list? Why
> aren't most of these threads there? I think ASL belongs here (being ASL a
> language on its own), but Wikipedia English English doesn't yet.

The British English Or Whatever It's Called This Time thread
presumably ended up here since the original poster sent it here,
though the topic was originally raised on en.wiki. I apologise to all
concerned for helping kick it off...

(I suspect the response on wikien-l would have been just as, hmm, forthright)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 21/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does "site:" work on directories? IIRC you'd have to use "inurl:" for that...

It appears to.

> (This trick is also very useful for searching Wikipedia, since
> "inurl:" lets you define what namespace you want)

Interesting, I'd never thought of that.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: TINC, TANC, TUNC

body:
On 21/09/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Reading:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_internet_slang
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WP

And, of course, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On 21/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does "site:" work on directories? IIRC you'd have to use "inurl:" for that...
>
> It appears to.

Excellent.

> > (This trick is also very useful for searching Wikipedia, since
> > "inurl:" lets you define what namespace you want)
>
> Interesting, I'd never thought of that.

Admittedly, to use Main it involves having to add "-inurl:wiki/Talk
-inurl:wiki/User ...", but such is life.

On the matter of search functions, I recently discovered - when doing
global searches for ASINs, something I must get back to - that the
Wikipedia internal search works on the raw text, not the displayed
text - so it covers URLs which have been included but are given
linknames...

Interesting applications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: TINC, TANC, TUNC

body:
I've only heard TINC, and you have to be a cabal member to know that
*There Is No Cabal*. (...hint....)

On 9/21/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/09/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Reading:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_internet_slang
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WP
>
> And, of course, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jeff Kinz

subject:
[WikiEN-l] WP Credibility watch: stats of WP and EB citations in
	news press:

body:
FYI, FWIW, YMMV:

The "credibility battle" has a distinct trendline:

Since November 2004 I've been capturing two automated news
feeds generated by Google News alerts on citations of the Wikipedia and
"that other encyclopedia"(E. Britannica).

As the items dribbled in, I eliminated those which were "about" the
'pedias and kept those which "cited" the pedias. **

Here are the results :

>From 11/7/2004 to 9/21/2004, citations appearing in an arbitrarily
selected group of news publications [Pubs indexed by Google News]
count as follows:***

Wikipedia: 412 ****

Encyclopedia Britannica: 73

Ratio of roughly 5.6 to 1.    Call it 11 to 2 for integer only CPU's :)

WP is leading handsomely.

This is a crude measure. A more meaningful analysis would have to
analyze the "status" of which pubs were citing and how often etc...

I may follow up with some of that if someone gives me a carrot...

I haven't done any comparisons for "leadership" press use of citations.
For example it will probably be a long time before the NY Times, or the
Washington Post are willing to cite WP rather than EB in any articles.

If anyone wants to examine the collection of Google alerts just let me
know.*****

** There is some double counting as some of the alerts contained
multiple items which could be either a citation or an article "about"
"some"pedia. Since the keep/delete selection has to be made on the
entire alert transmission (an email) some "abouts" may be counted as
cites. Since it occurs for both it balances out to some extent.

***
Some of the citations referenced very early versions of the EB, like
1853!

****
One publication, "the Jurist" has appeared relatively recently and is
probably the source of about half (or more) of the recent WP cite counts.
It may be necessary to eliminate them from future counts since their
extremely high rate of WP cites are not a normal pattern for a news
publication. Of course "the Jurist" is not a normal news publication
anyway. I'm surprised Google indexes them for Google news. Well, its a
reputable publication anyway.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/

*****
No, I don't really have a thing for footnotes, just thought I'd do it
this once.

Distribute as desired.
--
speech recognition software was used in the composition of this e-mail
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
??Ya no mas!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Again, TINC (Was: Potential Wikipedian growing pains)

body:
TINC, but there are many mini-cabals. :P

On 9/21/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The use of clique should not be considered a
> pejorative, and may refer just as much to a "web of
> trust" as to a "cabal." I dont make any judgements,
> but rather chose a term which is neutral, and which
> critics as well as core members of the "cabal" (you
> and I ;)) may find agreeable.
>
> TINC, true, but WIND (democracy) is also true. Whether
> one prefers the term "core" or "cabal" is a matter of
> where one is on the map.
> SV
>
> --- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, steve v wrote:
> >
> > > You know, Ill admit there is a certain ambiguity
> > when
> > > we talk about "IAR" as a "stick of dynamite, and
> > as a
> > > valve to allow "decent wikipedians" (our clique)
> > to
> > > trump "trolls, vandals" (undesirables, etc.).
> > >
> > Steve, you just lost a large chunk of credibility
> > with me by using
> > the word "clique".
> >
> > TINC. It's a case of thinking the grass is greener
> > on the other
> > side of the fence: because some people do more work,
> > or are more
> > persuasive in their arguments, other people think
> > that they are
> > part of some ruling clique, complete with a secret
> > Masonic handshake [*]
> > & Get Out of Jail cards.
> >
> > I've been on Wikipedia as long as you, & I don't see
> > any special
> > favors here. I have met only one person here in Real
> > Life, & only
> > know one other person from previous usenet contact
> > -- & I doubt that
> > I have any special clout with them because of it.
> > (Sometimes I
> > doubt anyone even reads my emails to this list --
> > but that's another
> > subject entirely.)
> >
> > And if there was a clique, they'd either moderate
> > this list entirely
> > ("Hey, that ligwitch guy's trying to post again!
> > Silly rabbit, hasn't
> > he learned that he's Not Allowed?"), or ignore it &
> > communicate on
> > their own list or IRC channel.
> >
> > And it's an easier idea to accept than that
> > Wikipedia has grown so
> > much that unless you spend a good chunk of time
> > looking for
> > conversations & disputes, things will happen &
> > decisions will be
> > made that will surprise you. And even if you do
> > extend the effort,
> > these surprises will still happen.
> >
> > At the end of the day, after contributing hours of
> > labor on the
> > dull, unexciting parts of Wikipedia, one might wish
> > there was a
> > cabal or clique when some pissant resurrects the
> > same trivial argument
> > for the upteenth time that her/his POV is not being
> > heard, & that
> > not only could he/she be banned from Wikipedia, but
> > someone sent to
> > the person's home & have their modem & hard drive
> > smashed. But one
> > doesn't, because the other members of this alleged
> > clique would be
> > just as angry at you for high-handedness as the
> > pissant in question.
> >
> > In short, if there was a real ruling clique on
> > Wikipedia, we'd
> > all know it. For one thing, we'd have at least one
> > mediocrity
> > here who would be rubbing the fact that she/he
> > belongs in our faces.
> >
> > </rant>
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> > * For the record, I've been shown a Real Masonic
> > Handshake. It's
> > not as interesting as the Monty Python sketch makes
> > it out to be.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jim Breen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
[I missed this earlier posting]

>> Jack & Naree wrote:
>> > An American-English dictionary, and a (Commonwealth) English
>> > Dictionary then.
>> > Otherwise, it has to be all listed as seperate entries.

Um. What about words that are spelled differently within and
between Commonwealth countries? Or words like accoutrement/accouterment
which are spelled differently within the US?

Of course they shouldn't be separate entries, but Gerard's
database design seems to be dicating that one.

>> > Frankly I favour the first option, because to non-American-English
>> > speakers, the American spellings are simply misspellings.

Well that's news to this non-American-English speaker  8-)} I
don't regard them as "misspellings" at all. Just different.

Cheers

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
One thing that we can say with certainty. Wikipedia should not take risks on
copyright. An unattributed, and therefore unlicensed, photograph of recent
provenance should not normally be used. To assume public domain could be
extremely dangerous.


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
On 21/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
> > On the other hand, since the aim of the project is to make an
> > encyclopedia - to share knowledge - maybe all we need do is make sure
> > the text is understandable to most English-speaking readers.
>
> No, it's not enuf. This mait be undestandabel, but cetanly not apropiat
> for an anciclopedia!

No, obviously I agree - I was putting the point almost as Devil's
Advocate, rather than something I agree with personally. But I do
think that it's not as important an issue as some are suggesting -
most of the time, either "standard" (the US one or the British one)
will produce text equally fit for the purpose of distributing
encyclopedic information throughout the English-speaking world.

Ambiguous phrasing, obtuse phrases which (often inadvertently) hide
information, or lack thereof, repetition, redundancy, and other such
overly long, sesquipedalian, or floccinaucinihilipilificatious
constructions, are far more harmful than the odd wrong but
understandable spelling, whatever "standard" it is "wrong" according
to.

[sorry, I got a bit carried away there; I plead tiredness ;)]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Gerrit Holl

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On the other hand, since the aim of the project is to make an
> encyclopedia - to share knowledge - maybe all we need do is make sure
> the text is understandable to most English-speaking readers.

No, it's not enuf. This mait be undestandabel, but cetanly not apropiat
for an anciclopedia!

I will write all my articles in English the way I learned it at school:
that's British English. I can't write anything else. Usually my writing
needs to be checked by a native speaker anyway[1], because I can't write
either variant flawlessly.

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghan_parliamentary_election%2C_2005&diff=23450743&oldid=23449896

> Actually, one of the main differences we've been discussing - the
> aubergine/eggplant example - is not one of orthography at all, but of
> vocabulary. It's not that Americans say "aubergine" but write it
> "eggplant", it's a different word for the same thing.

I think mainly the British are the ones saying 'throatwobbler mangrove ' (-;

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-22 00:09:49    6.1 degrees Celsius ( 43.0F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Jack & Naree wrote:
> > Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "Jack & Naree" <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Can we try and reach some consensus on this?
> > >
> > > I suspect that what you are failing to realise is that there has already
> > > been a consensus
> >
> >  consensus between Americans, non-native English speakers, and unpatriotic
> > Americanised English-speakers.
>
> The consensus is that "Jack & Naree" are trolling and should
> better leave this list before they are banned.

There is no consensus: I disagree. I find this an interesting
discussion, and it has been educational for me. Perhaps I'm in a
minority, but you are not speaking for me when you want "Jack & Naree"
to leave this mailinglist. I disagree with the proposal put forth by
him/them, and both sides could show a bit more respect, but if consensus
is needed to ban someone, let it be clear that I oppose it.

regards,
Gerrit.

P.S.
I would be in favour of a Wikip?dia that is only in British English,
but, alas, this is not the case, and never will be.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-22 00:19:53    6.0 degrees Celsius ( 42.8F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanted - help desk helpers

body:
On 9/22/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> (She lied about the cookies)
>
> Angela.

Unlike Sannse, I won't pretend to offer cookies... if you'd ever seen
my baking you'd agree that it's probably better if I don't! Besides,
they get stale in the mail. :-)

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New web servers online

body:
After a few days of experimenting with configuration, and about a day
running one server as a test, we've now got 13 web servers online and
serving pages out of the batch delivered last week.

These are spiffy Opteron boxes, nice and fast, and should help take the
load off the other apache boxen quite nicely.

For now the Opteron apaches are running with APC as the opcode cache
rather than the Turck MMCache we're using on the Pentiums. We used to
use APC a couple years ago and it was a bit flakier then, but the
current version seems to be much more responsive with performance in
line with the competition* and is being actively maintained to work with
current versions of PHP.

* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Turck_vs_APC_benchmark

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
And LOTS of cliques.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> TINC, but there are many mini-cabals. :P


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
I am sure that it is possible to make a software for conversion
between British and American English, such Zhengzhu did for Chinese.
All people would work on one Wikipedia and all people would use their
own variant.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia 'Straiyan English

body:
Yes, let stalk strine!

Mark

On 22/09/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
> >I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
> >English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
> >differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
> >Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
> >the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
> >for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
> >number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
> >and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.
>
>
> http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/English-American_Dictionary
> http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Australia-English_Dictionary
>
> (I am looking to expand the latter a bit then get it onto the front page.)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Esquire article on Wikipedia

body:
My favorite edit summary ever!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Improve_this_article_about_Wikipedia&diff=23721920&oldid=23721822

"Nor do they have articles on the micronation of Sealand, the Holy Prepuce
of Jesus, or the cruel and unusual execution method of crushing by
elephant." -> "Nor do they have articles on the micronation of Sealand, the
Holy Prepuce of Jesus, or the old-fashioned execution method of crushing by
elephant."

"remove cruel and unusual, too political for US readers"

Boy! And there I was aiming for light hearted humor...


body:
On 9/22/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Some thoughts:
>
> - Many of the smaller, Internet-based publications will cite Wikipedia
> while this is less likely with the major mainstream news outlets.
> - Britannica is a subscription site, with only a small portion
> available for free, so the selection is even smaller
> - Lots of tech sites are in Google News, and Wikipedia excels at tech
> entries.
> - Wikipedia pounds other 'pedias when it comes to current events coverage
>

To which I would add:

"...though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at
least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in
two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has
the words Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
> I am sure that it is possible to make a software for conversion
> between British and American English, such Zhengzhu did for Chinese.
> All people would work on one Wikipedia and all people would use their
> own variant.

But what if an American document was quoted in the article? Surely we
wouldn't want that to be converted. Same if we say in the article
colour that the American spelling is color, we wouldn't want that to
be converted.

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


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wanted - help desk helpers

body:
The info-en email address is getting ever more traffic, and once
again, we are in need of new volunteers to answer these mails, which
are dealt with using [[OTRS]], the Open-source Ticket Request System.
Sannse is currently away, so please reply to Kat
<mindspillage at gmail.com> if you are interested in helping.

An alternative, for questions that can be asked publicly, is the new
helpdesk mailing list,
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l> which is open
to anyone to subscribe to and ask or answer questions.

As sannse wrote in the last call for help on June 15:

"Now that the info-en email address is on the "contact us" pages, the
amount of mail is increasing, and we need more help.

We are looking for a long-standing contributor with a good knowledge of
the English Wikipedia and its policies and procedures.  You should also
have a working knowledge of other projects.  You need to have infinite
patience to reply to the same newbie questions time after time, and a
friendly and helpful style of writing.  Most important is the ability
not to laugh at people who write to tell us we have a massive security
hole - an edit link on each page!!!11!.

Being active on IRC is an advantage - it makes a real difference to be
able to talk over the tricky ones sometimes.

Pay is at the usual Wikipedia rate of lots of good feeling and all the
cookies you can eat."

(She lied about the cookies)

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanted - help desk helpers


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Puddl Duk

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

body:
On 9/20/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've just removed two references to [[Image:Mac Internet
> Explorer.png]] and two to [[Image:XPlogo.png]] from user pages. While
> both of these images have a good argument for fair use on the
> appropriate articles about their related products, there is no fair
> use argument for placing these on user pages or in cutesy little
> "product endorsement" boxes (see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]) for people to
> put on their user pages. Wikipedia doesn't need to carry
> advertisements for anybody, especially not using copyrighted logos.
>
>
I see this fundemental lack of understanding all the time. And it seems to
be exacerbated with specific fair use tags.

One example I recently ran across was a user uploading a lot of porn and
nude screenshots from various movies. I listed these on the copyright
problems page. Instead of the images being deleted, the person processing
the copyvios added a {{screenshot}} tag to a bunch of them. These were
orphans. They had zero fair-use rationale. But what the hell, there was a
{{screenshot}} tag to use.

I just ran across
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JilKelly-BonitaSaint-DevenDavis-Perfect_Pink.jpgthis
morning and am wondering if it is even worth the effort to list on
WP:CP.


from_name: Caroline Ford

body:
I shouldn't be adding to this stupid thread but:

Pissed is one of those words that causes transatlantic communications
issues. Pissed = drunk (UK), pissed as short for pissed off (US). A bill is
a request for payment - a ?20 bill would be a request to pay the ?20 you
owe.

It's not bank holiday vs public holiday - it's holiday vs vacation.

Pants are underpants. Americans should never discuss their fannies in
public.

Caroline/secretlondon

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax
Sent: 22 September 2005 06:21
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

Mark Williamson wrote:
>> I'm sorry but there are not a "few" usage differences, there really
>>are quite a lot. And this is more than just dialect we are talking
>>about: I'm not arguing for "equal rights" for each dialect; but for
>>"equal rights" for the two orthographies, in the same way as Scots,
>>and the two forms of Norwegian.
>> this is just an example:
>>http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html
>>http://www.krysstal.com/ukandusa.html
>
>
> You really are barking mad, aren't you?
>
> The vast majority of those aren't even real differences.
>
> Some examples:
>
> "note" vs "bill" -- "bill" would probably not be understood in the UK,
> but referring to them as notes would be understood in the US.

A bill is something demanding payment.

> "maths" vs "math" -- any good encyclopaedia should always say
> "mathematics" rather than abbreviating it so lazily.

Agreed.

> "autumn" vs "fall" -- we use them both as synonyms on this side of the
> pond. You guys don't?

Nope. Fall is something that hurts.

> "bank holiday" vs "legal holiday" -- I've lived in the US my entire
> life, and I've never even heard of the latter

Never heard of a "legal holiday", and I don't think we have "bank holidays"
either.

> "tick" vs "check" -- not the same thing. a check is a distinct symbol,
> as is a tick, and they are two different symbols.

Never heard of a check in that context...

> "pissed off" vs "pissed" -- WTF!? first of all, this won't be found in
> most encyclopaedia articles. second of all, we say both here.

Also use both.

> "trousers" vs "pants" -- although we consider "trousers" to be a bit
> old-fashioned, it will be widely understood here. I did used to think
> it meant shoes though.

Trousers are more formal than any old pants :)

> "pedestrian crossing" vs "crosswalk" -- we use both here.

Never heard of a "crosswalk".

> "store" vs "shop" -- this is probably the lamest one on there.

Agreed, but you can always buy things at a shop :)

> "chemist" vs "drug store" -- "chemist" isn't common here, but it's
> better than "apothecary", which is probably less ambiguous than either
> of the other two.

Chemist and Pharmacy all the way...

> "bill" vs "check" -- uhh... we use both.

You can make out a cheque to pay a bill...

> ".co.uk" vs ".com" -- that's not a linguistic difference. There are
> plenty of UK companies that have a .com, as it's supposed to be
> international (as opposed to .us)

Agreed, that's a historical difference - UK decided on .co.uk, NZ decided on
.co.nz, Australia decided on .com.au, and US got .com because they could.

> "car" vs "automobile" -- we usually just say "car" here. only people
> like you say "automobile".

I say good sir, that's a horseless carriage, and I shall dual any many who
should say otherwise!

> "jug" vs "pitcher" -- absolut rediculos~!
>

Except of course for a Pitcher Plant...

> I could go on. But I'm getting bored. You're mad. End of story.
>

And I'm Australian.

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.4/109 - Release Date: 21/09/2005


from_name: Taco Deposit

subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD

body:
Am I way off here, or does this article I wrote about a much-discussed
website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_the_South really not belong on
Wikipedia? If it's deleted I want to be assured that it's because of
community consensus to do so, and not just consensus of a cadre of
deletionists active of AfD.

Thanks,
TD


from_name: DOJOPRESS at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Dead End

body:
Been trying to appeal your block. This page says you will get back to me
within 24 hours, but no one has. All I was asking is that you not publish the
names of my friends, but you insist doing it and ignoring any attempt by people
who actually know me to lobby in my favor. I find this terribly unfair.

I remain,
Ashida Kim

For a complete listing of _Ashida Kim_ (http://ashidakim.com/)  books and
tapes go to _DOJO Press_ (http://dojopress.com/)


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WP Credibility watch

body:
>From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com>

>- Wikipedia pounds other 'pedias when it comes to current events coverage

One of the things Wikipedia does best, IMHO, is to cover "history in the
making" by synthesizing and integrating news stories.

There are large numbers of Wikipedians with interest in the news, and large
numbers of detailed news articles available. It's much easier to research the
story of pre-Katrina hurricane preparation in New Orleans than it is to
research what happened to Liberal Arts Inc. in Pittsfield, MA in 1947. You
actually do have collaboration between many editors and the stories end up
well-written, well-balanced, with concise summaries of developing events and
facts supporting the main points of view.

I used to find that the weekly newsmagazines did a more consistent job of
following and following UP stories than the daily newspapers. Wikipedia does
a better job than the newsmagazines. Three months after an event, when the
news stories are no longer available in Google News, Wikipedia has good,
detailed yet selective summaries of what the news was.

Of course, it's a little scary if Wikipedia is relying on the press as its
source while the press is relying on Wikipedia!


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: English orthographies

body:
On 9/22/05, Jim Breen <Jim.Breen at infotech.monash.edu.au> wrote:
> [Gerard Meijssen (Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
> >> Jim Breen wrote:
> >> >>>Jack & Naree wrote:
> >> >>>>An American-English dictionary, and a (Commonwealth) English
> >> >>>>Dictionary then.
> >> >>>>Otherwise, it has to be all listed as seperate entries.
> >> >
> >> >Um. What about words that are spelled differently within and
> >> >between Commonwealth countries? Or words like accoutrement/accouterment
> >> >which are spelled differently within the US?
> >> >
> >> >Of course they shouldn't be separate entries, but Gerard's
> >> >database design seems to be dicating that one.
> >> >
> >> The fact that words are spelled differently needs to be addressed in one
> >> way or the other.
>
> Absolutely.
>
> >> Even in old style wiktionary there needs to be
> >> something both at the accoutrement and the accouterment article in order
> >> to make them "findable".
>
> Agreed.
>
> >> The English Wiktionary nowadays frowns on the
> >> use of redirects so it is more substantial than that.
>
> Yes, in fact it is the frowning on redirects that led me to looking at
> the UW proposals. I was looking at the Wiktionary structure to see if it
> would be a suitable environment for my Japanese-Multilingual dictionary
> database. I ran into a number of problems, one of which was the "no
> redirects" policy, and someone suggested I look at UW.

The "frowning on redirects" policy is largely due to the fact that we have many
languages in one "namespace". When a particular English spelling variant or
even a plural happens to coincide with the spelling of another word in another
language then we have to have two pages anyway. This is not uncommon.
We then decided it was better to try for some consistency rather than having
some shared pages and some redirects. The other major issue was what to
do when a dictionary is created for both the British (colour, centre) market
and the American (color, center) market without us trying to force upon anyone
which is the "standard" and which is the "variant", which redirects lead to.

When these distinctions are at the database level, they can be presented to
the user by the software in any number of ways.

> >> In itself there is no value added to the fact that it has its own record
> >> in the tables Expression and Word. The words can be connected through
> >> SynTrans to the same meaning. They can be related through Relation to
> >> say that they are alternative ways of spelling.
> >>
> >> Consequently, there is nothing special in having both accoutrement and
> >> accouterment exist within the database. The thing that is relevant is
> >> that they are both shown to the user of the dictionary who looks up
> >> either Expression.
>
> Absolutely.
>
> >> When they are alternate spellings within the same
> >> Language, they will be seen as such. So as far as I am concerned, this
> >> seems to me to be much ado about nothing.
>
> Provided:
> (a) the essential information (senses, POS, etymology, etc.) only has to
> be entered once, and remains the same for all the spelling and
> orthographical variants;

Sometimes some of these will be different. In British and the Commonwealth
except Canada "tire" only means "become tired". In US and Canadian English
it also means "tyre", the rubber ring on the outside of a wheel. But these are
homonyms rather than senses though many non-lexography savvy people
don't realise the difference.

> (b) the user, on entering either form, gets the one collection of
> information which shows all the alternative forms of the word, then
> I really have no objection. I can't understand why they are in different
> database records, and in the case of my own JMdict (XML) they aren't,
> but then I don't use SynTrans, etc.

Basically it's an arbitrary database design issue. UW is going for more
granularity. In this way it's probably more object-oriented since it breaks
things down into more, smaller objects. There is nothing intrinsic right or
wrong about either approach.

> >> >>>>Frankly I favour the first option, because to non-American-English
> >> >>>>speakers, the American spellings are simply misspellings.
> >> >
> >> >Well that's news to this non-American-English speaker  8-)} I
> >> >don't regard them as "misspellings" at all. Just different.
>
> >> I would regard all accepted words as Expressions. In order to know more
> >> about an expression, you have to add more information to enrich the
> >> experience. It will be for instance be possible to date the first
> >> accepted use of the later spelling.
>
> That's useful (and very often difficult to establish).
>
> >> The etymology is also different.
>
> Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
> everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin), but
> in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.

Sometimes one spelling is definitely known to be derived from another
and both remain in use in various places. For instance the Spanish word
for "peanut" was borrowed from Nahuatl in Mexico as "cacahuate" but
when it was later borrwed into Spain itself it became "cacahuete". It would
be a shame to not have a way to record such things in the cases we do
know them.

> >> Then again, this may not be of interest to you but it is there for those
> >> who find it of interest.
>
> As a lexicographer I am always interested in etymology. I am a bit
> mystified by the view that it is somehow coupled to spelling. In the
> languages I know, spelling used to be highly fluid and individualistic, and
> has only recently been pinned down into recognized norms. In the case of
> English, the fact that there are two "schools" of spelling (which only
> affect a minority of words) is largely the result of the simplifications
> made and promulgated by one man: Noah Webster. Interesting indeed, but
> nothing to do with etymology.

Spelling may not be exactly part of the definition of "etymology" but it is a
part of the broader subject of "word history" but the former term has more
popularity and is often used to cover both, rightly or wrongly.

As regards Webster's simplifications, in fact I've read it's not so
simple and that
some spellings were concocted by Samuel Johnson. Some of those were
continued by Webster and some he "reverted".

Andrew Dunbar (from Australia if it makes a difference)

> Cheers
>
> Jim
>
> --
> Jim Breen
> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
> Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905
> 9554
> Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905
> 5146
> (Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, steve v wrote:

> The use of clique should not be considered a
> pejorative, and may refer just as much to a "web of
> trust" as to a "cabal." I dont make any judgements,
> but rather chose a term which is neutral, and which
> critics as well as core members of the "cabal" (you
> and I ;)) may find agreeable.
>
> TINC, true, but WIND (democracy) is also true. Whether
> one prefers the term "core" or "cabal" is a matter of
> where one is on the map.

You're right about that: Wikipedia does have a number
of cliques in the neutral sense. I posted in haste & confused
"clique" & "cabal".

I apologize for my comments to you, Steve, & have restored
the chunk of respect I deducted -- for whatever that is
worth.

Geoff


from_name: David Gerard

body:
steve v wrote:

>The use of clique should not be considered a
>pejorative, and may refer just as much to a "web of
>trust" as to a "cabal." I dont make any judgements,
>but rather chose a term which is neutral, and which
>critics as well as core members of the "cabal" (you
>and I ;)) may find agreeable.

God forbid editors should talk to each other and get along and
discover each other to be decent people in practice, rather than being
eternally at loggerheads on discussion pages.

- d.


body:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2005, Alphax wrote:

> Geoff Burling wrote:
> <snip>
> > (Sometimes I doubt anyone even reads my emails to this list -- but
> > that's another subject entirely.)
> >
>
> I know exactly how you feel :)
>
> (pretends to read email)
>
One of the features of Wikipedia once had that I miss was the counter
on every page. It was a definite ego boost to create a new article,
then return a day or two later & see how many people had rerad it.

I understand why this feature was disabled, but it was a nice thing
while it lasted. (And probably something suitable for the Wikiholic
test.)

Geoff


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/22/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 9/20/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've just removed two references to [[Image:Mac Internet
> > Explorer.png]] and two to [[Image:XPlogo.png]] from user pages.  While
> > both of these images have a good argument for fair use on the
> > appropriate articles about their related products, there is no fair
> > use argument for placing these on user pages or in cutesy little
> > "product endorsement" boxes (see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]) for people to
> > put on their user pages.  Wikipedia doesn't need to carry
> > advertisements for anybody, especially not using copyrighted logos.

>  I see this fundemental lack of understanding all the time. And it seems to
> be exacerbated with specific fair use tags.
>
>  One example I recently ran across was a user uploading a lot of porn and
> nude screenshots from various movies. I listed these on the copyright
> problems page. Instead of the images being deleted, the person processing
> the copyvios added a {{screenshot}} tag to a bunch of them. These were
> orphans. They had zero fair-use rationale. But what the hell, there was a
> {{screenshot}} tag to use.
>
>  I just ran across
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JilKelly-BonitaSaint-DevenDavis-Perfect_Pink.jpg
>  this morning and am wondering if it is even worth the effort to list on
> WP:CP.

No, that's a speedy delete, after you delete the user page references
(which can never been fair use), the image has no use on Wikipedia,
making it an unused fair use image, which is a copyvio.  Jimbo gave us
license to speedily delete copyvio images.  Feel free to zorch it,
assuming I don't beat you to it.

Kelly


body:
Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:

>>Nowadays I pretty much tell new contributors "just write a few
>>paragraphs and INCLUDE REFERENCES and don't worry about the fancy
>>markup for now. Just INCLUDE THE REFERENCES and people will know it's
>>a real article about a real thing."

>Absolutely!  Speaking as the one who has been pushing the POV on
>Wiktionary that even vocabulary needs to be referenced, I am amazed by
>the people who consider some number of Google hits as evidence.  Some of
>the most common offending terms are those that seek to rename sexual
>practices, or characterize some kind of on-line activity.  A large
>proportion of these terms may indeed be valid, but that requires some
>kind of documentation to distinguish them from something that the
>contributor just made up for the occasion.

I've just edited [[Wikipedia:Your first article]] accordingly.

By the way, that page was UNRELENTINGLY negative before I did. Jeez,
we want to *encourage* good new editors. And it needs a severe
tightening of the writing. It's a perfect example of instruction
creep. Could a good writer please hack it up?

- d.


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> - Lots of tech sites are in Google News, and Wikipedia excels at tech
> entries.

I would say that as far as computer stuff goes, we've largely achieved
quality. Wikipedia is the *first* place I look at concerning some
technical thing I've never heard of and need to quickly get up to
speed on. Google tends to give you mailing list posts.

(If it isn't there, I'll write it ;-)

> - Wikipedia pounds other 'pedias when it comes to current events coverage

This is a new and magical excellent thing we do, by the way.

- d.


from_name: Roth Philippe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Change page color

body:
Dear All,

I would like to know if it's possible and how to change the page page
color.
For example, an article page is white and the discussion page of this
article is blue for the english Wikipedia and yellow for the french
Wikipedia.
Is it also possible to make color different for administrative pages?

Many thanks in advance,
PRoth


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanted - help desk helpers

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>On 9/22/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>(She lied about the cookies)
>>
>>Angela.
>>
>>
>Unlike Sannse, I won't pretend to offer cookies... if you'd ever seen
>my baking you'd agree that it's probably better if I don't! Besides,
>they get stale in the mail. :-)
>
>
Some computer chip cookies are hard to digest. :-)

Ec


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Esquire article on Wikipedia

body:
On 9/22/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Fuzheado:
>
> > >The only thing it will do is show how badly
> > Wikipedians are at writing
> > >magazine feature articles. :)
> > >
> > >-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
> This appeared to have been true, and Ive done my best
> to inject some life into it. ( WP:ITAAW )
>
> There is currently some debate over the article's size
> -- Im now wondering if there was some naive assumption
> on the part of the writer that there would be a side
> by side of similar sized versions.

Here's a quick update on the process so far:
- Folks not familiar with Esquire magazine tend to write in the
wooden, straight encyclopedia style we're all used to. Much of the
resulting effort has been to reinject life and punch into the article.
- There has been back and forth as to what articles we use as
exemplars: whimsical, serious, current events, etc.
- Jimbo chimed in on the parts about his financial freedom, interest
in constitutional law and Ayn Rand. He said how "ludicrous" those
comments were. Good thing the part about gun politics was taken out
before he saw _that_. :)
- Too elaborate. Details about administrators, featured articles,
vandal fighting techniques, Nupedia operations, etc. keep creeping in.
This article is for a lifestyle magazine, not Linux Journal.
- We should probably keep the article close to the original 709 word
count. I would say no longer than 900 words. It has regularly climbed
to above 1200, requiring major cutbacks.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

>It's not bank holiday vs public holiday - it's holiday vs vacation.
>
We have statutory holidays and annual vacations.

>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>>"tick" vs "check" -- not the same thing. a check is a distinct symbol,
>>as is a tick, and they are two different symbols.
>>
>>
>Never heard of a check in that context...
>
Ticks spread Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

>>"trousers" vs "pants" -- although we consider "trousers" to be a bit
>>old-fashioned, it will be widely understood here. I did used to think
>>it meant shoes though.
>>
>>
>Trousers are more formal than any old pants :)
>
A dog pants

>>"bill" vs "check" -- uhh... we use both.
>>
>>
>You can make out a cheque to pay a bill...
>
A bird can pick it up in his bill.

>>"car" vs "automobile" -- we usually just say "car" here. only people
>>like you say "automobile".
>>
>>
>I say good sir, that's a horseless carriage, and I shall dual any many who
>should say otherwise!
>
Go ahead and duel him, but I would prefer not to have a second copy of him.

>>"jug" vs "pitcher" -- absolut rediculos~!
>>
>>
>Except of course for a Pitcher Plant...
>
That girl has big jugs.

These differences add to the richness of the language.  For those of us
with a capacity to find the wrong meaning at the right time it fertile
nightsoil for endless puns.

Ec


body:
On 9/22/05, Jeff Kinz <jkinz at kinz.org> wrote:
>
> FYI, FWIW, YMMV:
>
> The "credibility battle" has a distinct trendline:
>
> Since November 2004 I've been capturing two automated news
> feeds generated by Google News alerts on citations of the Wikipedia and
> "that other encyclopedia"(E. Britannica).
>
> As the items dribbled in, I eliminated those which were "about" the
> 'pedias and kept those which "cited" the pedias. **
>
> Here are the results :
>
> >From 11/7/2004 to 9/21/2004, citations appearing in an arbitrarily
> selected group of news publications [Pubs indexed by Google News]
> count as follows:***
>
> Wikipedia: 412 ****
>
> Encyclopedia Britannica: 73
>
>
> Ratio of roughly 5.6 to 1.    Call it 11 to 2 for integer only CPU's :)
>
> WP is leading handsomely.

Some thoughts:

- Many of the smaller, Internet-based publications will cite Wikipedia
while this is less likely with the major mainstream news outlets.
- Britannica is a subscription site, with only a small portion
available for free, so the selection is even smaller
- Lots of tech sites are in Google News, and Wikipedia excels at tech entries.
- Wikipedia pounds other 'pedias when it comes to current events coverage

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de

body:
On the German Wikipedia, I've noticed they've got a nifty trick with
templates whereby you can include a button to hide an infobox, in the same
way as you can hide a contents box.  See an example down at the bottom of
this page:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematische_Navigation_Deutschsprachige_L%C3%A4nder

I don't know of any templates to do the same thing on en:, and when I
tried to replicate the code on the German templates it didn't work.  Does
anyone know how one might get something similar working on en:?

WT


body:
Alphax wrote:

>I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
>English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
>differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
>Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
>the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
>for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
>number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
>and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/English-American_Dictionary
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Australia-English_Dictionary

(I am looking to expand the latter a bit then get it onto the front page.)

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Which tables are needed after upgrading?

body:
Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> A few questions about database tables:
>
>   - It is safe to assume that, after a successful upgrade to 1.5, the
> following tables are not needed and can be dropped: blobs,
> brokenlinks, cur, links, linkscc and user_rights?

Yes (unless you've engaged the special blob mode of the upgrade in which
case cur entries may still be used for text storage. But chances are you
haven't done this, since you need to set a secret variable and use the
alternate upgrader script. :)

>   - maintenance/tables.sql specifically singles out searchindex as
> having to be MyISAM. What about trackbacks, transcache and
> user_newtalk, whose create instructions do not specify an storage
> engine?

searchindex must be MyISAM because InnoDB does not support the fulltext
index type. You may have deadlocking troubles with ipblocks on a busy
site on InnoDB; if you do try switching it to MyISAM.

Nothing else requires being MyISAM; the InnoDB forcing was probably just
left out.

>   - And speaking of transcache, it is needed for day-to-day
> operations, or it is an artifact of the updating procedure? (It is not
> listed in maintenance/tables.sql.)

I'm not sure what exactly is the status of this... but it won't be used
unless you've enabled interwiki transclusions.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>I live out in the boonies and have tractor crossing signs. And there's
>this sign with what looks like a guy riding a cow. I think it's
>supposed to look like a horse, but it looks like a cow. heh.
>
Was it udderly correct?

Some of these caution signs reflect local circumstances.  I've seen them
with silhouettes of alligators in northern Louisiana, or horse-drawn
buggies in eastern Pennsylvania.

Ec


body:
On 9/22/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Jeff Kinz wrote:
>
> >>I haven't done any comparisons for "leadership" press use of citations.
> >>For example it will probably be a long time before the NY Times, or the
> >>Washington Post are willing to cite WP rather than EB in any articles.
> >>
> >>
> Having followed this closely for some time, but without crunching
> numbers in the same fashion, my anecdotal observation is that citations
> to Wikipedia are increasingly penetrating leading news media. Early on,
> it came more from smaller, local media. The bigger fish have gradually
> joined in, usually starting with specialty topics where we clearly
> perform better (does Britannica have an article on podcasting yet?). By
> now, I think one of the major papers in just about every large American
> city has cited Wikipedia as a source, and not just via recycled wire
> copy. With the current cycle of cuts in personnel, which will probably
> hit hard in terms of resources devoted to background research, I expect
> the scope and volume of Wikipedia citations to increase further.

I did a paper related to this last year, and back then UK and
Australian newspapers embraced Wikipedia much more than American news
sites - Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald.

Might also be useful to compare the results against lists we maintain, like at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_a_press_source_2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_a_press_source_2005

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

>
> >>One publication, "the Jurist" has appeared relatively recently and is
> >>probably the source of about half (or more) of the recent WP cite counts.
> >>It may be necessary to eliminate them from future counts since their
> >>extremely high rate of WP cites are not a normal pattern for a news
> >>publication. Of course "the Jurist" is not a normal news publication
> >>anyway. I'm surprised Google indexes them for Google news. Well, its a
> >>reputable publication anyway.
> >>http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/
> >>
> >>
> Within the realm of what Google News does, which includes a lot of
> specialty news, the Jurist site certainly qualifies and their inclusion
> is not that surprising. They are one of the first to make a systematic
> rather than occasional habit of linking to Wikipedia articles for
> background information, but I expect to see more places adopt this
> practice in the future.
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>Why isn't Wikipedia best served by both? If someone comes across one of your
>papers and wants to know more about the author, isn't that useful, even if
>they just find out that the author is no one special?
>There's clearly a potential benefit, and I just don't see what the negative
>is. As long as you stick to insisting that everything in the article is
>easily verifiable, anyway (which is already a rule outside of notability).
>I suppose you could argue that such an article is best served by a dedicated
>wiki, one for all authors, for instance. But that would mean either creating
>a fork or taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia entirely. The
>other alternative, to have notable authors in Wikipedia and non-notable ones
>out of Wikipedia, would likely cause way too many problems in
>implementation. Taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia is very
>unlikely to happen, so you're basically ensuring a fork.

I second all of the above.

- d.


from_name: Zephram Stark

subject: [WikiEN-l] Equality

body:
While some people are quite good at diverting sensitive discussion toward whether or not certain editors are evil, or to questions about the mating habits of Jews, none of these things are relevant to my proposal.

As per the numerous quotes I listed, and the governments founded upon those concepts, general consensus amongst political philosophers is that truth, goodness, and beauty will all rise to the top in a system where equality is recognized and supported by the construct of government.

Even though equality is not recognized here at Wikipedia by administrators who think they have the right to punish other editors, it still exists in the form of "vandalism" and other methods of indirect expression.  To the extent that editors believe there is no better method to influence the content of articles than consensus, vandalism will cease to exist.

The above is a bold statement that would require considerable risk to implement, but it is exactly the same concept that the founders of my country pledged their "Lives," "Fortunes," and "sacred Honor" to protect.  I submit that my nation, the United States of America, is a success because they did so.

It is possible to write the programming code for Wikipedia so that no administrators are necessary and so that nobody can gain undue influence over an article.  I would be happy to write this code for free if we can all agree that it will be implemented.

Zephram Stark zephramstark at yahoo.com 432-224-6991

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