from_name: Mike Friedman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Methods for creating hierarchical content

body:
Hi folks.

I'm a relatively new wikipedian
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Friedo) and also a programmer, so
I'd like to get your feedback on some ideas I had for improving the
code. I'm not too familiar with PHP (I come from the Perl/C side of
things) so I haven't quite wrapped my brain around all the source files
yet. (Ergo pointers on where to start would be great.)

I think there needs to be a method for creating sub-articles which
share content with their parent in a permanent way. I think this would
be extremely beneficial in creating content where there is a need for
hierarchical organization. In particular, what I envision is a special
tag which could be placed in a sub-heading, which would collapse
everything from that point to the next heading behind a link that says
"Read more..." (or similar.)

So, for example, in an article on programming syntax, you could have
something like:

==Foo==
Foo is a [[metasyntactic variable]]. Blah blah blah.

{{sub:Foo}}
===Uses for foo===
...
===Origin of foo===
...
==Bar==

Everything between {{sub:Foo}} and ==Bar== would then be replaced by a
"Read More.." link. Since the actual content is all in the master
article, sub-articles can be edited as sections and a user could set a
preference to automatically expand all sub-articles. And of course they
should be nestable. Ideally sub-articles would be browse-able
independently of their parents (but with a link to the parent) and have
their own TOC. (However, this raises the conundrum of how to do the
markup -- you'd probably end up with really low-level headings which
would need to be rendered as top-level when displayed on the sub-page.)

So, thoughts? Is this practical or doable? I'd be happy to write the
code just as soon as I learn some more PHP.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Useful Page

body:
John C. Penta wrote:
> Is there anywhere people could: A. Acquire the Wikipedia codebase

http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/

> B. Find a FAQ

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_FAQ

> If there is, it could be better marked.

Definitely ... :/


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help: namespace

body:
Daniel-
> What about the other Wikimedia projects (not to mention all the other
> non-Wikimedia projects that use MediaWiki)?

That's not the issue. We can proceed as follows:

1) Each Wikipedia has an editable Help: namespace, where their language
handbook is maintained;

2) The other Wikimedia projects, and in fact any MediaWiki site, can
import a dump of the help pages from the respective Wikipedia in their
language (dumping and importing just the help: pages is trivial), as
protected pages. If they want to make changes, they are encouraged, but
not required, to make them to the Wikipedia version. During the next
update they can choose to just update unmodified pages.

The only thing we need to take care of in this scenario is avoiding
Wikipedia references and links from help texts to policy pages (still
abundant through much of our current help texts).

> That is why I started the
> handbook on Meta in the first place!

I would love to have the handbook on Meta. Before we do something hasty
I'd like to think this through a bit more. My original idea was to have
Help: namespaces in various languages on Meta:
- Help: / Help talk:
- Hilfe: / Hilfe Diskussion:
- Aide: / Aide discuter:
..

This would be reasonably easy if we switch Meta to a separate codebase
from Wikipedia (like test.wikipedia.org's codebase is separate), or if we
beefed up the namespace system a little to allow for easy expansion of
namespaces. In the current setup (shared codebase with all wikis) it is
nontrivial.

As for the user interface, given that the kind of people who work on the
handbook need to get a lot of info from the English version anyway, I
think having an English user interface for maintaining the documentation
is not such a big deal, at least in the short term.

> Would it be possible to have development on the handbook occur on Meta
> MediaWiki pages (at least for English)

There's no reason to do that. The MediaWiki pages are for MediaWiki
interface strings only. User-created custom messages which are currently
in the MediaWiki: namespace will be in a Template: namespace in the next
version of the software. Exportability or importability is not the issue
as soon as all pages belonging to the set you are interested in (in our
case, help pages) can be clearly identified. Even if all pages just
started with "MediaWiki Users' Guide", we could export and import just
these pages, but a real namespace makes things a lot more maintainable and
reliable.

If your concern is keeping the handbooks in sync, and you imagine a kind
of interwiki transclusion system, that is not really the problem. As noted
above, wherever the help pages live, they will be unprotected. Wherever
they do not live, they will be protected. We can even make the Edit page
point somewhere else, although that might be confusing, we can put a
special notice on all Help: pages that are not "live" etc. - all kinds of
possibilities. Updating within regular intervals is trivial.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Bill

subject: [WikiEN-l] "What links here" repetition problem

body:
When I look at the "What links here" page for the Leo Strauss article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Leo_Strauss

I see the inbound links for "Lie" and "Political economy" repeated many
times.  Is there anything I, as a regular old user, can do to fix this?
Or is this a system problem of some kind?

Thanks,

Bill


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
On Monday 22 March 2004 15:04, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> In the tables for [[Montana]] (a state in the United States) and
> [[Germany]] (the country in Europe), we learn that Montana is 381,156
> km^2 and Germany 357,022 km^2.  To Americans such as myself, these
> numbers have no intuitive meaning.  I know via conversion factors how
> long a kilometer is, if I stop to think about it, but still the
> numbers mean nothing.
>
> This bugs me, but I consider that particular argument to have been
> lost a long time ago, and with good reason I suppose.  (Although I
> think in the case of km^2, it would be sensible to express both
> numbers and not omit mi^2.)

It is possible to change the software in such a way that, for example,
{{num:km2:357022}} would render as 357,022 km2 for users and
visitors from Europe and as whichever mi2 for users and visitors
from the US.


body:
On Mar 23, 2004, at 5:56 AM, Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> Before you code this in PHP: How do I write the wiki link to one of
> these sub-articles?

There would be some delimiter, (perhaps a ':' or '/'  ). You would then
write something like [[New York  City:History]]

>   And how do I write the URL if I want to link to a
> sub-article from an external web page?

Something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City:History

>   And if I arrive at such a
> sub-article URL, and then press "edit this page", will I also edit the
> common introduction to the bigger article?

That's the idea; it would be similar to editing a section, but the
intro (i.e. everything before the TOC) would be shared between the
parent article and the child, so any changes there would appear on
both. Also, a child article would feature a link under the title saying
something like "Parent article: New York City"

Note that since I'm not very familiar with the code yet, I have no idea
what would be an easy or proper method (or syntactical/semantic
structure) for implementing this; that's why I'm putting the idea out
for discussion. A simpler idea that occurred to me after my initial
message is to maintain the sub-articles as separate articles in the DB,
and link them into the parent article via a {{msg: }} type mechanism
which would pull in the intro from the sub at the appropriate heading
level. For example, you would put in the main New York City article:

==={{sub:New York City:History}}===

...and that would insert the intro paragraphs for New York City:History
at a second level heading in the parent. (Does that make sense?)

That solves the problem of very deep headings and makes it possible for
a sub to be included in more than one parent, even at different levels.

> The traditional reaction to the word "hierarchical" has been "think
> again".  Neither wiki nor hypertext in general is hierarchical, but
> networked, with many small pieces of information each reachable by a
> unique URL.

True, but I don't see any reason why it can't be both. I think this
feature would be most useful for maintaining large complexes of related
articles (such as the ones I've been working on relating to New York
City.) Specifically, it would be a great tool for working towards
creating detailed topics and sub-topics (and sub-sub-topics) without
making master articles too big or polluting the main namespace with
billions of stubs that are difficult to keep track of.

Wikipedia does cover a lot of material that would benefit from a
formalized hierarchical structure, but I am NOT advocating forcing
hierarchy anywhere where it doesn't belong.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia downtime

body:
Last night while attempting to edit, Wikipedia kept going down several times.  Or at least, I kept getting "Page cannot be found", and I had to keep Refreshing until it came back up.  This morning I have tried to get on and have been unable to do so.  I still get "Page cannot be found" and Refreshing is doing no good.

Is this something that only I am experiencing, or is it general?

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] login problem

body:
On Mar 23, 2004, at 03:24, Joachim Schiele wrote:
> when i login and then click on Main_page it seems as i got loged out
> without
> intention. BUT i would lik to use this loginfeature, at least to set
> things
> with the sysop user (which can't be used right now ;P, too)

Can you check that the cookies are being set?

> i'm using:
>  mediawiki 1.2.0rc4 released 2004-03-15
>
> i configured everything as in the docs.
> what i didn't set is the /etc/php.ini file
> ...
> register_globals = Off
> ...

register_globals is no longer necessary.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

body:
Message: 10
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 08:47:08 -0500
From: "Poor, Edmund W"
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Bishop temp-blocked user:Gdansk
To:
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

<< 22:35, 20 Mar 2004 Adam Bishop blocked "Gdansk" with an expiry
time of 24 hours (Being annoying, minus a million points!) >>

I'd like to know why Adam did this, and I wish he had said
something about the block on the mailing list. Does every admin have the
right to temp-block a long-time contributor just for "being annoying"?

TUF-KAT asked me to be a Mediator for an issue involving
user:Gdansk, and I think I'm owed the courtesy of being informed
if an administrator blocks a party involved in a mediation.

Ed Poor
Mediator, Admin, Bureaucrat, etc.

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

I suppose Adam did not know

Aren't quickpoll open now ? If so, why wasn't the blocking decided by a quickpoll ?
In this case, someone could realise that the user in in mediation, and kindly tell Ed.

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Bishop temp-blocked user:Gdansk

body:
<< 22:35, 20 Mar 2004 Adam Bishop blocked "Gdansk" with an expiry
time of 24 hours (Being annoying, minus a million points!) >>

I'd like to know why Adam did this, and I wish he had said
something about the block on the mailing list. Does every admin have the
right to temp-block a long-time contributor just for "being annoying"?

TUF-KAT asked me to be a Mediator for an issue involving
user:Gdansk, and I think I'm owed the courtesy of being informed
if an administrator blocks a party involved in a mediation.

Ed Poor
Mediator, Admin, Bureaucrat, etc.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: en.wikipedia timeout

body:
On Mar 23, 2004, at 08:45, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:35:41 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
>> What's up with the en being down (pardon the pun)? I can reach de
>> quite
>> well.
>
> Long story short: the colo blocked the ip en points to because they
> thought wikipedia was a spam business..
> Everything was fine, just the traffic to 207.142.131.236 was missing.

Would they mind telling us why?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: RameezDon

subject: [Wikitech-l] Clarifications......

body:
 Hi folks,

i wold like to clarify a few things :

i) When is the SQL Dump updated i.e Weekly / Fortnightly or what
???

ii) Are the Image files (*.jpg / *.png ) present in yhe cur
table as seen in the cur_namespace =6 or is it just the title

iii) How are  the  Articles in the Encyclopedia classified i.e
at the Database level or      logical level or anything
else.....

i would be glad if u could answer to these queries in detail....

regards

Rameez Don
(rameezdon at gawab.com)

________________________________
15 Mbytes Free Web-based and  POP3
Sign up now: http://www.gawab.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
On 03/23/04 05:59, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> It is possible to change the software in such a way that, for example,
> {{num:km2:357022}} would render as 357,022 km2 for users and
> visitors from Europe and as whichever mi2 for users and visitors
> from the US.

This is not a good idea. It will lead to silly pseudo-accuracy, of the
sort often seen in sloppy journalism: where "a thousand miles" in a US
wire report is carefully translated to "1.609 km" in an Australian
newspaper article.

- d.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
>>>>> "MF" == Mike Friedman <friedo at friedo.com> writes:

    MF> I think there needs to be a method for creating sub-articles
    MF> which share content with their parent in a permanent way. I
    MF> think this would be extremely beneficial in creating content
    MF> where there is a need for hierarchical organization.

    MF> In particular, what I envision is a special tag which could be
    MF> placed in a sub-heading, which would collapse everything from
    MF> that point to the next heading behind a link that says "Read
    MF> more..." (or similar.)

The way this is currently done in Wikipedia is thus:

    Algeria.

    == Agriculture ==

    See [[Agriculture of Algeria]]

    == Metallurgy ==

    See [[Metallurgy of Algeria]]

Subpages are pretty much disparaged on Wikipedia, but this could also
be:

    Algeria.

    == Agriculture ==

    See [[Algeria/Agriculture]]

    == Metallurgy ==

    See [[Algeria/Metallurgy]]

The big problem with sub-pages, as I understand it, is that
hierarchical information networks imply a certain way of looking at
that information. And that's not always justified. For example, why
wouldn't "Metallurgy" be like this?

    Metallurgy.

    == In Algeria ==

    See [[Metallurgy/Algeria]]

    == In Spain ==

    See [[Metallurgy/Spain]]

Having an intertwingled network rather than a strict hierarchy allows
us to structure and re-structure information in extremely interesting
ways.

That said, I think twist-down sub-sections of MediaWiki articles
would be somewhat useful.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Haven eateries, again

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
> "New Haven has 2 claims of the worlds first. 1 being the Pizza and 2
> being the Hamburger. For pizza there are 2 choices Sally's Pizza and
> Pepe's Pizza. MBoth reside on Wooster St. And beleive you me, Its the
> BEST pizza in the world. For burgers, there's Louis' Lunch, using old
> fashiond vertical burners Louis willmake you a damn goor burger." [sic]
>
> This was arguably POV (if "beleive you me" isn't POV I don't know what
> is), and certainly needed editing. In my own view, its removal was
> understandable, though possibly an over-reaction.

I agree.  I don't necessarily think it's an over-reaction in a case
like that, either, on grounds of bad grammar alone!

> "New Haven is home of many homey eateries, including Louis' Lunch, a
> restaurant that claims to have originated the hamburger: its vertical
> burners, freshly-ground beef, and burgers on toast has long but orderly
> queues ten deep at lunchtime. New Haven also boasts several pizza
> places of distinction, notably Sally's Pizza and Pepe's Pizza, both on
> Wooster St., and Frank's Pizza, offering chicken pizza and clam pizza.
> Other spots catering to the college population include the Yankee
> Doodle Coffee Shop."

*nod*

> What I wish to note is that on the one hand, a) the removers, including
> myself, didn't do much independent research to see whether the
> establishments really had any claim to being notable. On the other
> hand, b) the re-inserters didn't do much to explain _why_ the
> establishments were notable. Some of the re-inserters simply appealed
> to _their own_ authority.

*nod*

> I'm not quite sure what counts as "notable enough" for inclusion, but
> these all sound like legitimate local landmarks. I realize that every
> town has restaurants with autographed pictures in them, but noting that
> "thus-and-such famous person ate there" and "it won thus-and-such
> national award" would, IMHO, go a long way to validating the inclusion
> of a place.

Yes, I agree.

Communication is the key, I suppose.

--Jimbo


from_name: Adam Bishop

body:
Oh, sorry, basically he had admitted he was being a troll, by going around
adding Polish names to German cities in revenge for places like Gdansk
having "Danzig" mentioned in their articles.  I asked what relevance the
Polish name had to cities like Kiel or Munich, but he said it didn't matter.
(Unfortunately, as en: is down I can't find exact quotes right now.)

I really shouldn't have blocked him, of course, as I had become
semi-involved...and I know "being annoying" is not a good reason.  But it
had to stop somehow.

Adam Bishop

>From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Bishop temp-blocked user:Gdansk
>Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 08:47:08 -0500
>
><< 22:35, 20 Mar 2004 Adam Bishop blocked "Gdansk" with an expiry
>time of 24 hours (Being annoying, minus a million points!) >>
>
>I'd like to know why Adam did this, and I wish he had said
>something about the block on the mailing list. Does every admin have the
>right to temp-block a long-time contributor just for "being annoying"?
>
>TUF-KAT asked me to be a Mediator for an issue involving
>user:Gdansk, and I think I'm owed the courtesy of being informed
>if an administrator blocks a party involved in a mediation.
>
>Ed Poor
>Mediator, Admin, Bureaucrat, etc.
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Premium includes powerful parental controls and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: whatlinkshere and {{msg:xxx}}

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:
> http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Speci%C3%A1lis:Whatlinkshere&target=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Leford%C3%ADtand%C3%B3
>
> should list
>
> http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Magyar_uralkod%C3%B3k_list%C3%A1ja
>
> but it doesn't. Obviously it's because of the problem I already brought up
> half a year ago about msg and linkback tables.
>
> Is there a way to actually update the whatlinkshere tables? At least weekly
> or so? It would be _extremely_ nice to have that in working order. It is not
> a solution to "go and edit them once" since I cannot FIND them without the
> whatlinkhere, and that's the purpose of the stuff anyway. :-)
>
> Thanks,
> [[user:grin]]

That was the requested behaviour, it's working properly. Originally
there were problems with updating the link table -- links within msg
tags were registered in the link table, then not updated when the
message itself was updated. People complained, and one particular
solution was particularly popular.

The link cache is disabled while processing inclusions, thereby
preventing any links within the message from being entered into the link
table. Additionally, a link is registered pointing from the article to
the message. If you go to:

http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Speci%C3%A1lis:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Leford

You'll see that [[Magyar uralkod?k list?ja]] is listed there.

One problem still remains with inclusion, and that is that the squid
cache and client cache are not cleared when included messages are
updated. This is fixed in CVS.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: en.wikipedia timeout

body:
I'm working with people at the colo to make sure that this never
never happens again.

Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:35:41 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> > What's up with the en being down (pardon the pun)? I can reach de quite
> > well.
>
> Long story short: the colo blocked the ip en points to because they
> thought wikipedia was a spam business..
> Everything was fine, just the traffic to 207.142.131.236 was missing.
> --
> Gabriel Wicke
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Mike Friedman wrote:
> I think there needs to be a method for creating sub-articles which
> share content with their parent in a permanent way. I think this would
> be extremely beneficial in creating content where there is a need for
> hierarchical organization. In particular, what I envision is a special
> tag which could be placed in a sub-heading, which would collapse
> everything from that point to the next heading behind a link that says
> "Read more..." (or similar.)
> [...]
> So, thoughts? Is this practical or doable? I'd be happy to write the
> code just as soon as I learn some more PHP.

Before you code this in PHP: How do I write the wiki link to one of
these sub-articles?  And how do I write the URL if I want to link to a
sub-article from an external web page?  And if I arrive at such a
sub-article URL, and then press "edit this page", will I also edit the
common introduction to the bigger article?

The traditional reaction to the word "hierarchical" has been "think
again".  Neither wiki nor hypertext in general is hierarchical, but
networked, with many small pieces of information each reachable by a
unique URL.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
On Tuesday 23 March 2004 10:16, David Gerard wrote:
> On 03/23/04 05:59, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > It is possible to change the software in such a way that, for example,
> > {{num:km2:357022}} would render as 357,022 km2 for users and
> > visitors from Europe and as whichever mi2 for users and
> > visitors from the US.
>
> This is not a good idea. It will lead to silly pseudo-accuracy, of the
> sort often seen in sloppy journalism: where "a thousand miles" in a US
> wire report is carefully translated to "1.609 km" in an Australian
> newspaper article.

Well, I doubt that this could be a problem. If the exact number is
unimportant, the {{num:}} would simply not be used. If someone uses it
wrongly, someone else would revert. Finally, there could be workaround for
this, for example, {{num:~mi:1000}} might get out as "1600 km" (converted,
then rounded to a precision of, say, original number/10).


from_name: Joachim Schiele

subject: [Wikitech-l] login problem

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Dear list,
when i login and then click on Main_page it seems as i got loged out without
intention. BUT i would lik to use this loginfeature, at least to set things
with the sysop user (which can't be used right now ;P, too)

i'm using:
 mediawiki 1.2.0rc4 released 2004-03-15

i configured everything as in the docs.
what i didn't set is the /etc/php.ini file
...
register_globals = Off
...

i can't edit this file because i'm on a sourceforge.net account.

(also can i use the .htaccess file to set this variable)
and if so, is it dangerous?

- --
gruss,
joachim schiele
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

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TlV8Fi7AGNlWWpVua7qWMQA=
=oELN
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body:
Mike Friedman wrote:
> > again".  Neither wiki nor hypertext in general is hierarchical, but
> > networked, with many small pieces of information each reachable by a
>
> True, but I don't see any reason why it can't be both. I think this
> feature would be most useful for maintaining large complexes of related
> articles (such as the ones I've been working on relating to New York
> City.)

One objection would be that the history of New York City is both a
subcategory of New York City and of American history.  This looks
more like a network (web, mesh) than a hierarchy:

    United States   -->  History of the United States
      |                        |
      |                        |
      V                        V
    New York City   -->  History of New York City

There used to be "subpages" in Wikipedia's first year, because the
originally used UseModWiki software supported this.  However, this was
abandoned.  Articles such as [[Sweden/History]] were then renamed
[[History of Sweden]].  Some argumentation is found on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Subpages

"Real" (classic, printed) encyclopediae have also wrestled with this
problem.  In some, "language" and "art" are mere subheadings in the
article on Poland, in others, "Polish language" and "Polish art" are
articles of their own.

I think the least intrusive way to implement a part of your idea is to
introduce a "hide this subsection" link (a triangle icon) next to
today's subheadings, just like you can hide the table of contents at
the top of the article.  For editing, storage and URLs, the article
would still be one whole.  But for viewing, subsections could be
folded in and out.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>Subpages are pretty much disparaged on Wikipedia
>
>
I once was in favor of subpages, when they still existed. Larry
convinced me otherwise. Let's bow to his wisdom and not re-introduce
subpages.

That said, maybe an inline JavaScript display, loading an "insert" on
demand, would be a nice option. Compare slashdot.

We should keep the current title system, though.

Magnus

>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wikipedia timeout

body:
What's up with the en being down (pardon the pun)? I can reach de quite
well.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Alternative to single server?

body:
Maybe this would do to prevent faliures in the future:
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/04/03/23/1418240.shtml?tid=106&tid=126&tid=156&tid=185


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] first media article mention of Wikibooks

body:
My Google News alert for the word "wikibooks" just turned
up its very first result:

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287

It is an article about Wikipedia approaching its release of
version 1.0 and how it has decimated the encyclopedia
racket held by Britannica, and mentions how Wikipedia
founder Jimmy Wales hopes to make a similar impact with
Wikibooks.

Karl

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: en.wikipedia timeout

body:
On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:35:41 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:

> What's up with the en being down (pardon the pun)? I can reach de quite
> well.

Long story short: the colo blocked the ip en points to because they
thought wikipedia was a spam business..
Everything was fine, just the traffic to 207.142.131.236 was missing.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: en.wikipedia timeout

body:
On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 08:52:44 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Would they mind telling us why?

Apparently some nigerian spam business sent mails with a link to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent-Desire_Kabila, that triggered a
semi-automatic blocking system that sent a few mails that got lost (as
spam). Without reply they just went ahead and blocked the ip.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Adam Bishop temp-blocked user:Gdansk

body:
Ed Poor wrote:
> << 22:35, 20 Mar 2004 Adam Bishop blocked "Gdansk" with an expiry
> time of 24 hours (Being annoying, minus a million points!) >>

> I'd like to know why Adam did this, and I wish he had said
> something about the block on the mailing list. Does every admin have the
> right to temp-block a long-time contributor just for "being annoying"?

> TUF-KAT asked me to be a Mediator for an issue involving
> user:Gdansk, and I think I'm owed the courtesy of being informed
> if an administrator blocks a party involved in a mediation.

During the last days user "Gdansk" has repeatedly done strange edits
to various German city articles like Kiel, Dresden, Munich etc. In the edit
summary of Kiel he wrote:

"retaliation action for blocking of Gdansk
and Szczecin - just to enter in edit war, block editing, and make the
Germans angry"

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Kiel&action=history)

When he was blocked, he was engaged in several similar edit wars which
could be considered as vandalism. I think, blocking in this case was
justified because he admitted that his actions had no other purpose
than making other people upset.

So, if you enter mediation with this user could you please tell him in
some way that these actions have to stop? I am not part of this
mediation, but I don't like to see articles vandalised that have
nothing to do with the original dispute.

By the way, could an admin now unprotect the Kiel page? It was not
listed on the list of protected pages, so it has probably been
forgotten.

Mirko (Baldhur)


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Haven eateries, again

body:
>
> Communication is the key, I suppose.
>
> --Jimbo

I think the best way to do this would be to change the
"Do you want to edit this [[U.S. cities]] entry?" note
on the talk pages of the rambot articles.  They could
become MediaWiki messages such as those that have
sprung up of late and include suggestions of what kind
of landmarks should be included and how to add
information so that the encyclopedicness is obvious.

Tuf-Kat

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


body:
First the print media, then TV, and now the Nigerian spammers. Wikipedia
has finally made it! I'm so proud... ;-)

Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 08:52:44 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>Would they mind telling us why?
>
>
> Apparently some nigerian spam business sent mails with a link to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent-Desire_Kabila, that triggered a
> semi-automatic blocking system that sent a few mails that got lost (as
> spam). Without reply they just went ahead and blocked the ip.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: en.wikipedia timeout

body:
Magnus Manske a ?crit:
> First the print media, then TV, and now the Nigerian spammers. Wikipedia
> has finally made it! I'm so proud... ;-)

ROFL


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] info@wikipedia.de still not working

body:
It would be great if somebody could make it work again. The problem is that
mails to info at wikipedia.de and info-de-l at wikipedia.org seem to drop into some
kind of black hole, without notice to the list admin (me). Normally I get
informed if spam mails are deleted, and I still get "... needs appoval"
messages for those with too many recipients (probably those which are collected
through the catch-all entry).

I have no clue were the problem lies, and I don't have much experience with
this server stuff, sorry.

Another possibility is that there is some kind of misconfiguration, but I
have no idea what it could be. I'm pretty sure I didn't change anything that
might be important, but nevertheless it would be good if someone could look
through the list options.

The info at wikipedia.de adress has been lost before two or three times, every
time because of server misconfiguration. This is really bad, because it's
listed on our main page and the press portal, we handle our press contacts
through it and get offers for cooperations from time to time. BTW, the sender
doesn't get any information that the mail couldn't be delivered. Did I mention
that the loss of the info-adress is really, really bad?

Kurt

--
+++ NEU bei GMX und erstmalig in Deutschland: T?V-gepr?fter Virenschutz +++
100% Virenerkennung nach Wildlist. Infos: http://www.gmx.net/virenschutz


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
--- Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 March 2004 10:16, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 03/23/04 05:59, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > > It is possible to change the software in such a
> way that, for example,
> > > {{num:km2:357022}} would render as 357,022
> km2 for users and
> > > visitors from Europe and as whichever
> mi2 for users and
> > > visitors from the US.
> >
> > This is not a good idea. It will lead to silly
> pseudo-accuracy, of the
> > sort often seen in sloppy journalism: where "a
> thousand miles" in a US
> > wire report is carefully translated to "1.609 km"
> in an Australian
> > newspaper article.
>
> Well, I doubt that this could be a problem. If the
> exact number is
> unimportant, the {{num:}} would simply not be used.
> If someone uses it
> wrongly, someone else would revert. Finally, there
> could be workaround for
> this, for example, {{num:~mi:1000}} might get out as
> "1600 km" (converted,
> then rounded to a precision of, say, original
> number/10).
>
>
Why not use a conversion syntax that allows a question
mark for one of the values, which then gets converted
and replaced in the actual markup code. The editor
could then correct the converted value for the
context.

For example, {{num:mi:1000:km:1600}} would show "1000
miles" (or whatever) for a US user, and would show
1600 km for everyone else.

If the editor entered {{num:mi:1000:km:?}}, then it
would be converted in the markup text as
{{num:mi:1000:km:1609}}. The editor could then change
that to read as the first example above, if desired.
Similarly, the editor could express the value in km
and leave the mi as a question mark...

This would allow a preference of either unit, or both.

By the way, I'm not at all stuck on this syntax -- I
haven't given those details much thought. It the
concept that I want to contribute.

-Rich Holton (Rholton)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: lars hennings

subject:
[Textbook-l] convert .doc & .pdf into wiki format
	(andcompiletexts to print)

body:
www.photographien.org
+49 (0)30 6290 4734
nur: lars at l-hennings.de

Hi, there is a problem making a link in the wikibooks mainpage. Who can
help?

The problem is:

I wrote the title "photoschule Gro?format" as a link on the wikibooks
mainpage - but it is not to see on the screen.

Than I go to edit this page, I see it.

Sometimes there was in the mainpage written the correct titel AND an
incorrect one - but I deleted the uncorrect titel before.

To this time I can?t see the link (but it is written in the edit-stile...)

best wishes

lars


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: info-Qm5IaAUhVgguZeo0DBJMuQ@public.gmane.org still
	not working

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

[cut]
> time because of server misconfiguration. This is really bad, because it's
> listed on our main page and the press portal, we handle our press contacts
> through it and get offers for cooperations from time to time. BTW, the sender
> doesn't get any information that the mail couldn't be delivered. Did I mention
> that the loss of the info-adress is really, really bad?
>
>
> Kurt

I know the feeling. The "info" email address of the Dutch Wikipedia used
to be wikinl-l-admin at wikipedia.org but some day it was gone and it never
have come back. Now we use wikinl-l-owner for external contacts.

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia DOT be


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

body:
the name of which I will not repeat here.

Someone posted a page whose title is alleged to be the name of the woman who has accused Kobe Bryant of rape.  It is illegal in the state of Colorado to reveal the personal information of alleged rape victims, IANAL so I don't know the situation where the Wikipedia servers are located, but I'd hate to see us shut down over this.

If I was wrong, the article's name is in the delete log and can be undeleted.

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
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from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reference Desk questions

body:
On Mar 22, 2004, at 1:09 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>> Judy Inman inman at powerweb.net wrote:
>>
>> 1. Approve the post, so it's passed on to the mailing list?
>>
>> 2. Reject the post with the default explanation:   "Non-members are
>> not allowed to post messages to this   list."
>>
>> 3. Refer the person to some sort of Reference Desk on the   Wikipedia
>> website?
>>
> Either 1 or 3 is a good choice.  2 strikes me as rude and evasive, and
> for you to do that would be very Poor PR.
>
> Pedro has given an answer and there is no need for him to apologize.
>
> Using 1 does not put anyone under the obligation to answer.  If we can
> be seen as willing to help people with queries of this sort it's all
> for the better.  Fortunately, Pedro was able to give specific help,
> but even making the suggestion that I would look for the information
> on the Website for a Madrid newspaper is a friendly act.
> Of course we need to recognize it when some kid is trying to get us to
> do his homework.  I never even give my own son a straight answer when
> he's trying to do that. :-)

But 1 puts us in the position to ignore it (rude and unhelpful), answer
it
(encouraging the list as the home for such questions), or refer them to
the
reference desk (just like 3, but less organized and more work all
around).

I vote 3.

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
An interview with Jimmy Wales and info about Wikipedia:

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Consistency

body:
On Mar 22, 2004, at 9:04 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> In the tables for [[Montana]] (a state in the United States) and
> [[Germany]] (the country in Europe), we learn that Montana is 381,156
> km^2 and Germany 357,022 km^2.  To Americans such as myself, these
> numbers have no intuitive meaning.  I know via conversion factors how
> long a kilometer is, if I stop to think about it, but still the
> numbers mean nothing.
>
> This bugs me, but I consider that particular argument to have been
> lost a long time ago, and with good reason I suppose.  (Although I
> think in the case of km^2, it would be sensible to express both
> numbers and not omit mi^2.)

I posted an idea to solve this problem at
<http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/
MediaWiki_feature_requests_and_bug_reports#Conversion_syntax>, but I
got no
response (hint, hint...), so I don't know if it's feasible.

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Derek L.

body:
Mike, it sounds like you are trying to cram evermore information onto one page.
 This is (IMHO) a wrong approach as it adds load to the server (dynamically
creating page text rather than serving an existing chunk) and does not enhance
the user experience.  There is, from the use side, no difference between 'New
York City History (read more..)' and 'Read about the [[New York City
(history)|history of New York]].

D.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.2.0 release

body:
I've gone ahead and released 1.2.0 on account of a major bug in
1.2.0rc4 that could delete an existing wiki instead of upgrading it
when using the web installer. At some point later a 1.2.1 should clean
up some other minor installation issues and bugs.

Download link:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.2.0.tar.gz?
download

See release notes for changes since 1.1.0:
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=226003

Changes from 1.2.0rc4:

Web install:
* Serious upgrade bug fixed; an attempt to install over an existing
database should now either upgrade gracefully or immediately fail,
instead of wiping out your entire database (BUT BACKUP FIRST!)
* Configuration tosses in output compression if available
* Detects more image-related options (but uploads are still disabled by
default)

Localizations:
* Spanish localization has had most hard-coded "Wikipedia"s removed
* French localization has been changed to UTF-8

Maintenance scripts:
* rebuildrecentchanges.php works again
* importPhase2.php for importing from very old format (pre-May 2002)
wiki

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Clarifications......

body:
RameezDon wrote:

> Hi folks,

Hiya. Please don't hit "reply" on messages you're not actually replying
to. Thanks.

> ii) Are the Image files (*.jpg / *.png ) present in yhe cur
> table as seen in the cur_namespace =6 or is it just the title

No, they're not. We are not clear on how to distribute the images,
because not all of them are GFDL. Some are fair use and would be illegal
for others to use for different purposes.

> iii) How are  the  Articles in the Encyclopedia classified i.e
> at the Database level or      logical level or anything
> else.....

I'm not sure what you mean by that. There are the namespaces that
separate actual articles from Talk pages, Wikipedia-specific
information, etc. The actual articles are in namespace 0.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consistency

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> On Tuesday 23 March 2004 10:16, David Gerard wrote:
>
>>On 03/23/04 05:59, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>>It is possible to change the software in such a way that, for example,
>>>{{num:km2:357022}} would render as 357,022 km2 for users and
>>>visitors from Europe and as whichever mi2 for users and
>>>visitors from the US.
>>
>>This is not a good idea. It will lead to silly pseudo-accuracy, of the
>>sort often seen in sloppy journalism: where "a thousand miles" in a US
>>wire report is carefully translated to "1.609 km" in an Australian
>>newspaper article.
>
> [...] there could be workaround for
> this, for example, {{num:~mi:1000}}

Actually, I think a much better idea would be to stick to kilometers and
other international standard metric units, and hope for the best that
the US abandon their weird units in the long run...


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Rick wrote:

> An interview with Jimmy Wales and info about Wikipedia:
>
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287
>
>
>
> RickK
>
Good!  Too bad they don't realize that it's wikipedia.org rather than
wikipedia.com.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> After reading that article I begin to have serious doubts about the
> viability of a print version. What would the production costs actually
> be? Even giving volunteer editing, printing, binding and distribution
> costs might exceed any reasonable price. Remember we are talking about
> a multi-volume work, or are we? Maybe a 1 volume, "Best of", would be
> the way to go.

I saw that, and wondered in a similar way.  Multi-volume at this stage
is probably overly ambitious, but is worth considering at some time in
the future.  If the publishers with whom Jimbo is negotiating are going
to handle the production costs the matter is very much out of our hands.

Many of the "almanacs" that come out each year are reasonably priced and
quite thick.  The downside is that they are produced on a low quality
paper which will fall apart faster than most..  That is nevertheless is
acceptable if the plan is to revise and update every year.

As I've said before I very much support the idea of a print version, but
I think that the planning that has gone down so far is somewhat short of
realistic.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
After reading that article I begin to have serious doubts about the
viability of a print version. What would the production costs actually be?
Even giving volunteer editing, printing, binding and distribution costs
might exceed any reasonable price. Remember we are talking about a
multi-volume work, or are we? Maybe a 1 volume, "Best of", would be the way
to go.

Fred

From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:41:07 -0800 (PST)
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

An interview with Jimmy Wales and info about Wikipedia:

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center <http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html>  - File
online. File on time.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

body:
We are in violation of an order of the District Court of Eagle County,
Colorado. Get rid of it completely.

Fred

From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:35:16 -0800 (PST)
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

the name of which I will not repeat here.

Someone posted a page whose title is alleged to be the name of the woman who
has accused Kobe Bryant of rape.  It is illegal in the state of Colorado to
reveal the personal information of alleged rape victims, IANAL so I don't
know the situation where the Wikipedia servers are located, but I'd hate to
see us shut down over this.

If I was wrong, the article's name is in the delete log and can be
undeleted.

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center <http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html>  - File
online. File on time.
_______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Maybe it should be thought of as a newspaper is, a kind of annual newspaper.
After all a year is a looong time on Wikipedia. If the deal is to negotiate
with a publisher, indeed production and distribution is their problem.

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 05:43:08 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news
>
> Many of the "almanacs" that come out each year are reasonably priced and
> quite thick.  The downside is that they are produced on a low quality
> paper which will fall apart faster than most..  That is nevertheless is
> acceptable if the plan is to revise and update every year


from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
Funny I can see it in every version that you edited. Perhaps the problem lies with your computer. Try hitting the refresh button to stop a cached version of the page loading.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: lars hennings [mailto:wissenschaft at t-online.de]
Sent: 23 March 2004 19:28
To: Wikimedia textbook discussion
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] convert .doc & .pdf into wiki format(andcompiletexts to print)

www.photographien.org
+49 (0)30 6290 4734
nur: lars at l-hennings.de

Hi, there is a problem making a link in the wikibooks mainpage. Who can
help?

The problem is:

I wrote the title "photoschule Gro?format" as a link on the wikibooks
mainpage - but it is not to see on the screen.

Than I go to edit this page, I see it.

Sometimes there was in the mainpage written the correct titel AND an
incorrect one - but I deleted the uncorrect titel before.

To this time I can?t see the link (but it is written in the edit-stile...)

best wishes

lars

_______________________________________________
Textbook-l mailing list
Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

body:
I agree that as a matter of taste, we should (for now) keep this page
deleted.  However, as a matter of law, there is no reason for us not
to publish this information.

Fred Bauder wrote:
> We are in violation of an order of the District Court of Eagle County,
> Colorado. Get rid of it completely.

I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about here, but I don't think
that's accurate.

http://www.post-gazette.com/FirstAmendment/20030730kobep5.asp

"The judge presiding over Kobe Bryant's sexual assault case warned
reporters that they may not get a seat in his courtroom if they
publish the name or photograph of the basketball star's alleged
victim.  Critics said the ruling may be unconstitutional."

I think that ruling *is* unconstitutional, but even so, it only
applies to those reporters who wish to have a seat in that courtroom,
which obviously doesn't apply to us.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Lee Pilich wrote:
> I'm interested in how these things get in papers by the way. Most previous
> coverage, I think, has come from press releases, but this article is
> mainly about a paper version, about which there have been no offical
> pronouncements that I'm aware of. So what happened here - did somebody go
> to the paper about this, or did the paper go to Jimbo out of the blue?
> Just curious. If it's the latter, it's surely a sign that we're being
> taken really quite seriously (something which probably shouldn't surprise
> me, but which nontheless regularly does).

The author of the article, Danny Bradbury, is a fairly well-known IT
journalist working primarily as a freelancer:
http://www.itjournalist.com/

He contacted me for an interview, but I don't remember what exactly he
said prompted him to be interested.  If I remember correctly (and I
may not), he's been following the project for awhile.

As to my role in the project, that's something that I try to downplay
a lot in interviews, for two reasons.  First, when I tell reporters
that I'm astounded by the quality of the people involved and that
mostly my job is just to listen to what really smart people tell me,
it's *true*.  But second, I think it's good media schtick for me as
well, if you see what I mean.

A Dutch Magazine _Ode_ published an article last month about
Wikipedia...  I just got a copy in the mail the other day.  And the
title of the article is "Jimmy Wales' encyclopedia".  That's pretty
silly, although my mom will surely like it.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consistency

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Actually, I think a much better idea would be to stick to kilometers and
> other international standard metric units, and hope for the best that
> the US abandon their weird units in the long run...

:-)

Not until my generation is dead and buried, at least.  Back when I was
in grade school in the 70s, they tried to teach us the metric system
(which is clearly inferior and incomprehensible, by the way!) but it
didn't take.  Being an educated person, I can do the conversions, but
I have no intuitive grasp of Celcius temperatures, nor do most
Americans.

Seriously, though, at the present time there is no significant
movement afooot to change our measurement system, nor does anyone seem
to particularly care.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun project: IMDB link submission

body:
On Mar 24, 2004, at 08:11, Erik Moeller wrote:
> IMDB (the movie database) has a submission interface for signed in
> users
> which can be used to submit "External reviews" to IMDB. I was advised
> by
> the IMDB staff that, in order to work towards a more comprehensive
> content
> partnership with them, we should first submit links to the relevant
> movies, so that they can gauge user interest.
>
> So we need a bot that auto-submits all Wikipedia articles about movies
> to
> IMDB's "external reviews" sections about these movies.

IMDB has a strict no-robots and no-screen-scraping policy. Make sure
you clear this with them first.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Textbook-l] excel to wiki?

body:
>Is it possible to make from an excel file (.xls) which includes an
>interactiv table to get values of a lense a wiki htm?
>How to load an htm and than the excel file to wiki. if I try uploading it
>says: no image.

You can upload excel spreadsheets, but you can't display them on the page AFAIK. You have to use [[media:spreadsheet.xls]] instead of [[image:spreadsheet.xls]] on the page though. This will provide a link for the file to be downloaded. See my sandbox for an example

http://wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Theresa_knott/sandbox


from_name: David Speakman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Magnus Manske
>>
>
> AFAIK, we're going for a one-volume desktop edition first. In
> the early
> days of Nupedia (when the earth was still flat), someone (Jimbo or
> Larry) mused about one day printing an encyclopedia on "phone book
> paper". Shouldn't bee too far off the scale, especially if we
> get some
> educational/humanitarian organization to share the costs with.
>
> Magnus
>

A paper edition of WP, in my opinion, would fail to sell. It loses all
of WP's strengths, including:
1. WP is not paper
2. WP is constantly changing to be up to date
3. WP is accessible wirelessly via the Internet

As a venture capital journalist for the past seven years, I am
skeptical.
Traditional paper encyclopedia companies are going out of business.

--
David Speakman
http://www.DavidSpeakman.com
501 Moorpark Way #83
Mountain View CA 94041
Phone: 408-348-1786>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

>One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias
>is in our coverage of current events. However, the current scenario
>has a couple of disadvantages:
>* The amount of information about a particular event that can
>meaningfully be incorporated into the article on the person/thing etc.
>is quite limited
>* The info. is often dispersed among more than one article
>* Readers have to scan the whole article to get to the one line or
>paragraph about the current event
>
The depth with which a current event can be covered is very limited.
 Daily newspapers have deadlines that need to be met, and often don't
have the leisure to consider the subject in any serious depth.  The
advantage that we have in current events is that we can link to
background material by doing nothing more than adding a pair of square
brackets,   TV is in a worse position, and those personel are sometimes
just as compulsively caught up in events.  The 9/11 events were
understandably all-consuming for the TV networks on that day.  Here on
the West coast there is a 3-hour time difference from New York, so the
hits took place before I got out of bed that day.  Almost nothing else
was in the news that day, and I soon found that TV coverage was highly
repetitious.  How many times can you watch the same plane hit the same
building before the event ceases to inform?

A weekly publication is able to give a more comprehensive picture, and
eliminate the repetitious.  A quarterly is in a better position to
evaluate the event and begin placing it in an historical context.

>So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.
>
>It would be somewhat like indymedia, but with important differences:
>* Wiki
>* NPOV
>* News about an event would be integrated into a single comprehensive
>article rather than having a collection of articles written at
>different points of time
>
>So how about it? (Don't know if this has been proposed before...)
>
I think that something of the sort is periodically suggested by various
people.  NPOV in current events may only be the ability to refrain from
editorializing.  I don't know if a single comprehensive article about
the event is always attainable.  That is normally the domain of the
quarterlies, but we are in a position to present "quarterly" information
more quickly than the quarterlies, and that's a big advantage.

The other point. for having a credible current events service is
maintenance.  Putting ourselves forward as offering that kind of service
requires disciplined and regular attention to such things.  (Even though
I don't like what has happened to the general layout of the Main Page, I
can still take notice of the fact that those who are involved have made
considerable efforts to keep the material fresh.)

My suggestion to Arvind, since he does contribute from India, would be
to start [[Current Events in India]].  He is in a position to provide
current information about what is being reported in the Indian news
media to people whose understanding is limited to the belief that India
is about to drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
David Speakman wrote:
> A paper edition of WP, in my opinion, would fail to sell. It loses all
> of WP's strengths, including:
> 1. WP is not paper
> 2. WP is constantly changing to be up to date
> 3. WP is accessible wirelessly via the Internet
>
> As a venture capital journalist for the past seven years, I am
> skeptical.
> Traditional paper encyclopedia companies are going out of business.

I think that some skepticism is warranted, of course.  But consider
this: our cost model is radically (radically!) different and lower as
compared to a traditional paper encyclopedia company.

Judging from publishing industry statistics,
http://www.publishers.org/industry/index.cfm

the paper book per se is in no danger of extinction -- sales continue
to increase year-to-year.

Publishers make money all the time, even when they have to pay for the
content.  Drive that cost to zero, as we have, and it seems inevitably
lucrative.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:
> I sent the press release to the independent some time ago. I also did
> the BBC - maybe it paid off?

That seems very very likely, yes!

Probably your press release sent them shopping for an article, or hit
them just at the time or just before Danny Bradbury tried to sell them
his article.

We may never know, but it seems likely, yes!

--Jimbo


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consistency

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 March 2004 10:16, David Gerard wrote:
>
>>On 03/23/04 05:59, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>>It is possible to change the software in such a way that, for example,
>>>{{num:km2:357022}} would render as 357,022 km2 for users and
>>>visitors from Europe and as whichever mi2 for users and
>>>visitors from the US.
>>
>>This is not a good idea. It will lead to silly pseudo-accuracy, of the
>>sort often seen in sloppy journalism: where "a thousand miles" in a US
>>wire report is carefully translated to "1.609 km" in an Australian
>>newspaper article.
>
>
> Well, I doubt that this could be a problem. If the exact number is
> unimportant, the {{num:}} would simply not be used. If someone uses it
> wrongly, someone else would revert. Finally, there could be workaround for
> this, for example, {{num:~mi:1000}} might get out as "1600 km" (converted,
> then rounded to a precision of, say, original number/10).

A better idea IMHO would be to guess the number of significant figures
in the original number and to convert it to another number with the same
accuracy. I saw in New Scientist recently "up to 3000 K (2737 C)", I
have to say it annoys the hell out of me.

A possible algorithm would be that in a number with rightmost zeros left
of the decimal point, or in a number with one significant figure, use
one extra significant figure. In a number with no rightmost zeroes left
of the decimal point but more than 1 sig fig, use the same number of
significant figures. Finally, if the result is more than 20% different
to the true value, extra digits are added to bring it to the appropriate
accuracy.

So 3000 K becomes 2700 K due to the extra sig fig, 1 K becomes -273 C
due to the 20% rule, 1.0 miles becomes 1.6 km, 1.000 miles becomes 1.609
km.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Textbook-l] excel to wiki?

body:
www.photographien.org
+49 (0)30 6290 4734
nur: lars at l-hennings.de

HI Theresa, thanks - today it is ok, you are right. It?s the same with
uploading images - takes long time to do the way along the server.

Another question is:

Is it possible to make from an excel file (.xls) which includes an
interactiv table to get values of a lense a wiki htm?
How to load an htm and than the excel file to wiki. if I try uploading it
says: no image.

thanks and bye

lars


subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I agree that as a matter of taste, we should (for now) keep this page
>deleted.  However, as a matter of law, there is no reason for us not
>to publish this information.
>
>Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>We are in violation of an order of the District Court of Eagle County,
>>Colorado. Get rid of it completely.
>>
>I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about here, but I don't think
>that's accurate.
>
>http://www.post-gazette.com/FirstAmendment/20030730kobep5.asp
>
>"The judge presiding over Kobe Bryant's sexual assault case warned
>reporters that they may not get a seat in his courtroom if they
>publish the name or photograph of the basketball star's alleged
>victim.  Critics said the ruling may be unconstitutional."
>
>I think that ruling *is* unconstitutional, but even so, it only
>applies to those reporters who wish to have a seat in that courtroom,
>which obviously doesn't apply to us.
>
She's named in the article cited above, but I don't feel particularly
concerned about that one way or another.  Canada takes such things a
little more seriously, and doesn't see such gag orders as violations of
free speech since in most cases (except where children are involved) the
matter will become public eventually anyway.  Contaminating jury pools
is the usual excuse for such things, but there not going to call me for
jury duty there anyway.  So it doesn't matter if I know her name, and do
I do with that information now that I do know?

The CBC recently did a piece on the first person to be killed in a case
of on ice hockey violence in 1905.  His attacker was charged with
murder, and subsequently was acquitted on a reduced charge of
manslaughter.  What really struck me was that the on-ice event took
place in March of that year and by the end of April the trial was over.
 If the court system got on with its work instead of dragging things out
for years, maybe such gag orders wouldn't matter anyway.  Instead the
legal system has become a high priced welfare system for high income
lawyers who benefit by keeping cases in the system as long as possible.

Ec


from_name: Mike Friedman

body:
I'll do it -- I have lots of experience with LWP already and have been
itching to contribute some code. This sounds right up my alley. :)

On Mar 24, 2004, at 11:11 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Something for people looking for a fun project to hack on:
>
> IMDB (the movie database) has a submission interface for signed in
> users
> which can be used to submit "External reviews" to IMDB. I was advised
> by
> the IMDB staff that, in order to work towards a more comprehensive
> content
> partnership with them, we should first submit links to the relevant
> movies, so that they can gauge user interest.
>
> So we need a bot that auto-submits all Wikipedia articles about movies
> to
> IMDB's "external reviews" sections about these movies.
>
> There is a [[List of movies]]. An index could be generated from the
> linked
> pages. The script should remember which movies it has already
> submitted,
> so that we can easily add new articles to the index.
>
> IMDB takes some time to process submissions, so you can only test if
> the
> script is working correctly by looking at the HTML sent from their
> server.
> You will probably want to use some throwaway email address for the
> account
> as IMDB sends a confirmation for each submission.
>
> For implementing this I would use libwww-perl, an excellent web
> scripting
> library for Perl, but I'm sure there are equivalents for all other
> major
> scripting languages.
>
> So, does anyone want to take this project?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Textbook-l] excel to wiki?

body:
>You have one more good idea? It is an interactive htm.

No I think I'm out of ideas. You could try copying the html code from the .htm file into the edit box. Wikipedia does support some html. However it does not support scripting ( Javascript, VBS) so I doubt it'll work.

You could also try contacting a developer to see if they can help you do what you want. Try User http://wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Brion_VIBBER to see if he can help you.

Theresa


subject: [Textbook-l] excel to wiki?

body:
www.photographien.org
+49 (0)30 6290 4734
nur: lars at l-hennings.de

Hi Theresa, fine, xls works, but not the .htm - than there is no way to save
it otherwise.

You have one more good idea? It is an interactive htm.

thanks a lot

lars

----- Original Message -----
From: "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk>
To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 11:23 AM
Subject: RE: [Textbook-l] excel to wiki?

>Is it possible to make from an excel file (.xls) which includes an
>interactiv table to get values of a lense a wiki htm?
>How to load an htm and than the excel file to wiki. if I try uploading it
>says: no image.

You can upload excel spreadsheets, but you can't display them on the page
AFAIK. You have to use [[media:spreadsheet.xls]] instead of
[[image:spreadsheet.xls]] on the page though. This will provide a link for
the file to be downloaded. See my sandbox for an example

http://wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Theresa_knott/sandbox

_______________________________________________
Textbook-l mailing list
Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting page histories

body:
Some weeks ago Thomas Luft has written the code that is needed
to delete individual revisions (Request ID 908150 at SourceForge).
Will this be integrated into the MediaWiki software? We need this
for the de-WP, because we now have identified a lot of copyvios in
the page histories that sould be deleted as soon as possible.

de:Benutzer:El

--
+++ NEU bei GMX und erstmalig in Deutschland: T?V-gepr?fter Virenschutz +++
100% Virenerkennung nach Wildlist. Infos: http://www.gmx.net/virenschutz


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

body:
Rick,

Sounds like a good call; it's not Wikipedia's job to "out" people. This
is one of the reasons I have never supported any of these "de-sysopping"
campaigns against you and other newly minted admins.

Thanks.

Ed Poor
A Wikipedia Bureaucrat

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from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiHiero is here !!

body:
Hi all,
I developed a PHP program (named WikiHiero) to convert text wrote according
to the "Hieroglyphs coding manual" (international standard for typing
hieroglyph text on computer) syntax into HTML tables using a set of image
(no image generation like TeX).

I'd like to add this program into Wikimedia software that we can easily use
hieroglyphs in Wikipedia, WikiSource and Wikitionary. We need a new tag (for
example [[hiero:]]) then send to the WikiHiero program the text into that
tags. This program create a string with HTML tags (<table> and <img>) we can
print (echo) into the page during parsing.

[[hiero:w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a]] => echo WikiHiero("w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a");

I put a test version of WikiHiero at http://aoineko.free.fr. You can, for
example, try to type w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a, your name, or what you want ;o)
('-' is for block separation and ':' for glyph superposition).

I personally planed to use it in Wikipedia, but there are many hieroglyph
texts available we may add to WikiSource (if under a free licence).

The set of image contain about 1000 small PNG pictures for a total size of
about 1 Mb.
I didn't tune yet the program, but I think parsing time is inconsequential
for small text (I avoid all file check by creating pre-calculate tables).
I'm sure we can make many speed improvements, but I think this version is
quick enough to be added to Wikimedia. Any advices to speed process are
welcome.

I add an option to output hieroglyph as text (for text only browser) using
the glyph phonemes. Ypu can test it on http://aoineko.free.fr by choosing
the "Text only" mode. The better may be to add an option into preference
(like TeX) to choose the render method.

The program is under GFDL (I didn't released source yet because I want to
comment them first) and hieroglyphs pictures author authorized me to put
them under GFDL.

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiHiero is here !!


from_name: Dan Miller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Taste?

body:
> I agree that as a matter of taste, we should (for
> now) keep this page
> deleted.  However, as a matter of law, there is no
> reason for us not
> to publish this information.
>

True, but we'll want a page once the trial's over.  Or
else we ought to delete [[Nicole Brown Simpson]].

Meelar

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Biography stub dump, anyone?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> At http://world.std.com/obi/Biographical/
> there's a copyleft list of 15,000 biography stubs (one-liners). It
> goes like this:
>
> Abbot, Charles Greeley (C. G. Abbot)  US astrophysicist; secy. of
> Smithsonian Institution 1928-1944 _1872-1973
>
> I think we all agree to use that resource. But how?
>
> 1. As one (or multiple) long lists, with links to the appropriate
> article, so we can manually paste the stub into the article
> 2. As automatically generated stub for each non-existing article
>
> #1 would not require much work, #2 would need one of the wiki-bots.

#1 I think. We have a huge number of bios now, but not a full set of
redirects for each variation on a name, so you'd likely end up with
a huge number of duplicates, and inevitably people will start to
"fill in" the dup, not realizing that a complete article exists already.

A semi-workaround for a bot might be to compute alternate name forms
and see if they exist, although that won't help for multiple similar
names. Sooner or later you'll have to determine identity by looking at
dates and content, which seems like an easier activity to do from a
list of free links + content than by undoing the mass effects of a bot.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Taste?

body:
This is very different and should never be a Wikipedia page.

Fred

> From: Dan Miller <meelar2 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 13:53:31 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Taste?
>
>
>> I agree that as a matter of taste, we should (for
>> now) keep this page
>> deleted.  However, as a matter of law, there is no
>> reason for us not
>> to publish this information.
>>
>
> True, but we'll want a page once the trial's over.  Or
> else we ought to delete [[Nicole Brown Simpson]].
>
> Meelar
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
> http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

body:
Arvind-

> One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias
> is in our coverage of current events.

Indeed. However, Wikipedia's current events are not a news service, they
are a summary service, similar to news.google.com, but with human-written,
free content summaries. These summaries are useful and should remain
within Wikipedia.

I envision a Wikinews project as something that incorporates elements of
independent media organizations like Indymedia. That means that Wikinews
reporters would actually have go out, do interviews, make photos etc.
Wikinews could become a source for Wikipedia's current events, but it
would not (only) be a summary service, but a real news service.

I believe the totally open wiki model is unsuitable for such a project.
There should be an editing phase, and after the editing phase is over,
material is approved and published, at which point only typos can be
corrected, and factual updates need to be clearly labeled as such.

In this model there should also be a limit on who is allowed to do
original research. We cannot allow any anonymous user to claim "I was in
Jenin today and I saw the Israeli troops massacre 100 Palestinians". There
need to be two levels of editing; one that is strictly limited to writing
and correcting summaries (this could include anonymous users), and one
which is allowed to do original research.

People who want to do original research would have to do so under their
real name (possibly verified by phone), and their privilege to do so could
be permanently revoked.

Such a project needs to be well planned before it is launched, because
structural reforms are hard to implement once a project is up and running.
I would love to work on something like this full-time, but one has to pay
the bills somehow ..

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Biography stub dump, anyone?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> On 03/24/04 21:30, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> At http://world.std.com/obi/Biographical/
>> there's a copyleft list of 15,000 biography stubs (one-liners). It
>> goes like this:
>> Abbot, Charles Greeley (C. G. Abbot)  US astrophysicist; secy. of
>> Smithsonian Institution 1928-1944 _1872-1973
>
> So if we put the README as a permission note, with a link on each
> article,
> we should be fine.

It's just a basic list so I don't think we even need to do that.

>> 2. As automatically generated stub for each non-existing article
>> #1 would not require much work, #2 would need one of the wiki-bots.
>
> Are there a lot we wouldn't want? If not, dumping all in would be good.
> I don't see why not.

Letting a bot loose on this stuff could result in an awful lot of stubs
for people to work on.  Taking whole pages and wikifying them, then
removing the items from the list once they have been done might make
more sense - or we could merge them with similar existing lists of
people to be written about.

Ec


body:
Something for people looking for a fun project to hack on:

IMDB (the movie database) has a submission interface for signed in users
which can be used to submit "External reviews" to IMDB. I was advised by
the IMDB staff that, in order to work towards a more comprehensive content
partnership with them, we should first submit links to the relevant
movies, so that they can gauge user interest.

So we need a bot that auto-submits all Wikipedia articles about movies to
IMDB's "external reviews" sections about these movies.

There is a [[List of movies]]. An index could be generated from the linked
pages. The script should remember which movies it has already submitted,
so that we can easily add new articles to the index.

IMDB takes some time to process submissions, so you can only test if the
script is working correctly by looking at the HTML sent from their server.
You will probably want to use some throwaway email address for the account
as IMDB sends a confirmation for each submission.

For implementing this I would use libwww-perl, an excellent web scripting
library for Perl, but I'm sure there are equivalents for all other major
scripting languages.

So, does anyone want to take this project?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

body:
Arvind Narayanan schrieb:

> So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.

the idea itself is interesting. Have you considered any transistional
phase, such as expanding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_events?

The more I like this idea, the more I fear of doubling almost the same work.

Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
AFAIK, we're going for a one-volume desktop edition first. In the early
days of Nupedia (when the earth was still flat), someone (Jimbo or
Larry) mused about one day printing an encyclopedia on "phone book
paper". Shouldn't bee too far off the scale, especially if we get some
educational/humanitarian organization to share the costs with.

Magnus

Fred Bauder wrote:

> After reading that article I begin to have serious doubts about the
> viability of a print version. What would the production costs actually
> be? Even giving volunteer editing, printing, binding and distribution
> costs might exceed any reasonable price. Remember we are talking about
> a multi-volume work, or are we? Maybe a 1 volume, "Best of", would be
> the way to go.
>
> Fred
>
>
>     *From: *Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
>     *Reply-To: *English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>     *Date: *Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:41:07 -0800 (PST)
>     *To: *English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>     *Subject: *[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news
>
>
>
>     An interview with Jimmy Wales and info about Wikipedia:
>
>     http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287
>
>     RickK
>
>     Do you Yahoo!?
>     *Yahoo! Finance Tax Center <http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html> *
>     - File online. File on time.
>     _______________________________________________
>     WikiEN-l mailing list
>     WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>     http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

body:
Mathias-
> when I read your mail, it reminded me on the typical reactions of some
> people who did not know wikipedia and heard about writing an encylopedia
> bye allowing anyone to post :)

Actually, there's a key difference. We have a "no original research"
requirement on Wikipedia for exactly the reason that we can't rely on
original research by anonymous contributors (also, because it goes beyond
the scope of an encyclopedia).

Controversial information in Wikipedia has to backed up with sources and
citations. Anyone can provide a citation, it doesn't matter whether they
are anonymous as long as the source is obtainable and can be verified by
others.

For a real news service, original research is of course essential, and for
original research to be credible, there have to be reputation and
accountability attached to it. One of the worst mistakes we can make is to
treat wiki as a dogma. Wikis should be the basis of all Wikimedia
projects, but the exact parameters in terms of policy and technology
should be varied depending on the individual project needs.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Mike-
> I'll do it -- I have lots of experience with LWP already and have been
> itching to contribute some code. This sounds right up my alley. :)

Great! Please get back to me when you have something workable, or if you
get stuck. I'd like to inform them before we officially launch this
(submitting a few test links is no big deal) so they can keep an eye on
the user who makes these submissions, and possibly auto-approve them.

I'd suggest creating a new IMDB user "wikipedia" for this task.

All best,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

body:
Erik Moeller schrieb:

> I believe the totally open wiki model is unsuitable for such a project.

Hi Erik,

when I read your mail, it reminded me on the typical reactions of some
people who did not know wikipedia and heard about writing an encylopedia
bye allowing anyone to post :)

When I read your suggestion about limiting and certain steps of editing
an open news project, I was reminded on Nupedia somehow.

Indeed, wikipeadia was one of the best resources on March 11 when the
bombs hit Madrid and people outside wikipedia have noticed it.

By the way:
There is an increasing number of articles containing the following
phrase: "according to wikipedia". This is great and I guess there are
more occasion when journalists used wikipedia to get facts without
citing the source in their article.

Has anyone an idea how to intensify this? Does anyone work for a
newspaper or a news agency?  It's a simple tradeoff: They are delivering
keywords what they actually need in the near future and interested
people might write something about it in wikipedia...

Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [WikiEN-l] SI vs. Imperial/US/cubits and furlongs...

body:
On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 08:06:44PM -0800, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Send WikiEN-l mailing list submissions to
> 	wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>
> Why not use a conversion syntax that allows a question
> mark for one of the values, which then gets converted
> and replaced in the actual markup code. The editor
> could then correct the converted value for the
> context.
>
> For example, {{num:mi:1000:km:1600}} would show "1000
> miles" (or whatever) for a US user, and would show
> 1600 km for everyone else.
>
> If the editor entered {{num:mi:1000:km:?}}, then it
> would be converted in the markup text as
> {{num:mi:1000:km:1609}}. The editor could then change
> that to read as the first example above, if desired.
> Similarly, the editor could express the value in km
> and leave the mi as a question mark...
>
> This would allow a preference of either unit, or both.
>
> By the way, I'm not at all stuck on this syntax -- I
> haven't given those details much thought. It the
> concept that I want to contribute.
>

If we're going to be pedantic about this, I'd suggest
a couple more features, listed in order of priority:

1) The *first* figure to appear in the notation should always be
the "source" figure, so when editing you know which one has
been rounded for display.

2) Should you be able to explicitly indicate the number of significant
digits in a measurement?

3) Ideally, you'd like to be able to mouse-over such figures in the
displayed article, and get the metric and imperial equivalents in a
pop-up box or something, as well as an indication of which is the source
figure.

4) Would it be going over the top to (optionally) be able to specify a
separate "source figure" (of higher precision than that desirable for
display) that is separate from the displayed figure in that unit system?
So you could record a source figure of 84.52 km/h (which appears in the
mouse-over box) but is displayed in the text as 85 km/h or 52 mph?

Is this all getting too complicated?

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

She's leaving the country...she doesn't speak English...I insulted her
friend's breasts...and she thinks I collect women's ears in a bucket.
 -- Jeff Murdock (Richard Coyle), "Coupling"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Rick wrote:
 >An interview with Jimmy Wales and info about Wikipedia:
 >http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287

Page 11 of the review section, for those taking notes. Accompanying
pictures: a pile of dusty-looking books, and a photo of some kids gathered
round a computer monitor, apparently in thrall of the knowledge presented
before their eyeballs.

Ec wrote:
 >Too bad they don't realize that it's wikipedia.org rather than
 >wikipedia.com.

They also say "Any self-styled expert in a subject can write or edit an
article about anything to join the 200,000 others in the Wikipedia, *as
long as they give the intellectual property to the project*" (my asterisks)
which is a bit wide of the mark.

I also wonder if the article talks up Jimbo's role in the whole thing a bit
- I mean, he's our spiritual leader, benevolent dictator and sugar daddy, I
know, but things like "To manage the editing process, Wales uses the
Wiki..." make him sound a bit like editor-in-cheif as well.

I'm sort of picking fault, really. It's not a bad article on the whole.

Fred wrote:
 >Remember we are talking about a
 >multi-volume work, or are we?

As I understand it, that's not what is being talked about at the moment
(though it's something many would aspire to for the future). The talk has
been of a single-volume concise work, along the lines of the Columbia or
Britannica Concise encyclopedias. Comparisons with the full EB made in the
article are somewhat premature, methinks.

I refer you to Jimbo's original post on the subject:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/011045.html

---

I'm interested in how these things get in papers by the way. Most previous
coverage, I think, has come from press releases, but this article is mainly
about a paper version, about which there have been no offical
pronouncements that I'm aware of. So what happened here - did somebody go
to the paper about this, or did the paper go to Jimbo out of the blue? Just
curious. If it's the latter, it's surely a sign that we're being taken
really quite seriously (something which probably shouldn't surprise me, but
which nontheless regularly does).

Lee (Camembert)


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] I just deleted a page ...

body:
Thanks.  I'm not really worried about being desysopped, I don't think anything I've done warrants it, but if it happens, it happens, and I leave the project.

RickK

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

Sounds like a good call; it's not Wikipedia's job to "out" people. This is one of the reasons I have never supported any of these "de-sysopping" campaigns against you and other newly minted admins.

Thanks.

Ed Poor
A Wikipedia Bureaucrat

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Taste?

body:
I don't see it as the same situation.  Rape shield laws are designed to protect a victim from unwanted attention.  There's nothing that says her name will ever be printed by reputable press outlets.

RickK

Dan Miller <meelar2 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I agree that as a matter of taste, we should (for
> now) keep this page
> deleted. However, as a matter of law, there is no
> reason for us not
> to publish this information.
>

True, but we'll want a page once the trial's over. Or
else we ought to delete [[Nicole Brown Simpson]].

Meelar

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Lee Pilich wrote:

> Rick wrote:
> >An interview with Jimmy Wales and info about Wikipedia:
> >http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=504287
>
> Page 11 of the review section, for those taking notes. Accompanying
> pictures: a pile of dusty-looking books, and a photo of some kids
> gathered round a computer monitor, apparently in thrall of the
> knowledge presented before their eyeballs.
>
> Ec wrote:
> >Too bad they don't realize that it's wikipedia.org rather than
> >wikipedia.com.
>
> They also say "Any self-styled expert in a subject can write or edit
> an article about anything to join the 200,000 others in the Wikipedia,
> *as long as they give the intellectual property to the project*" (my
> asterisks) which is a bit wide of the mark.
>
> I also wonder if the article talks up Jimbo's role in the whole thing
> a bit - I mean, he's our spiritual leader, benevolent dictator and
> sugar daddy, I know, but things like "To manage the editing process,
> Wales uses the Wiki..." make him sound a bit like editor-in-cheif as
> well.
>
> I'm sort of picking fault, really. It's not a bad article on the whole.
>
> Fred wrote:
> >Remember we are talking about a
> >multi-volume work, or are we?
>
> As I understand it, that's not what is being talked about at the
> moment (though it's something many would aspire to for the future).
> The talk has been of a single-volume concise work, along the lines of
> the Columbia or Britannica Concise encyclopedias. Comparisons with the
> full EB made in the article are somewhat premature, methinks.
>
> I refer you to Jimbo's original post on the subject:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/011045.html
>
> ---
>
> I'm interested in how these things get in papers by the way. Most
> previous coverage, I think, has come from press releases, but this
> article is mainly about a paper version, about which there have been
> no offical pronouncements that I'm aware of. So what happened here -
> did somebody go to the paper about this, or did the paper go to Jimbo
> out of the blue? Just curious. If it's the latter, it's surely a sign
> that we're being taken really quite seriously (something which
> probably shouldn't surprise me, but which nontheless regularly does).
>
> Lee (Camembert)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
I sent the press release to the independent some time ago. I also did
the BBC - maybe it paid off?

Caroline


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Biography stub dump, anyone?

body:
I agree with Ec. We already have tons of stubs. Lets turn this into lists
that people can work on at their leisure, so that hopefully, many of these will
not remain stubs.

Danny
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from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

body:
One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias
is in our coverage of current events. However, the current scenario
has a couple of disadvantages:
* The amount of information about a particular event that can
meaningfully be incorporated into the article on the person/thing etc.
is quite limited
* The info. is often dispersed among more than one article
* Readers have to scan the whole article to get to the one line or
paragraph about the current event

So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.

It would be somewhat like indymedia, but with important differences:
* Wiki
* NPOV
* News about an event would be integrated into a single comprehensive
article rather than having a collection of articles written at
different points of time

So how about it? (Don't know if this has been proposed before...)

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me