subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> First, our growth has to level off at some point.  Has to, dammit!
> :-)
> Maybe we're already maxed out; there's not really any way to know.

I doubt we're anywhere close to maxing out.

I can see 500 million hits per day (15 billion hits per month) by
year's end (especially just leading to and around the elections).
That would put us squarely in the top 10 on the internet.

Of course, now may be the time to talk to IBM about those mainframe
donations.

The W has achieved enormous press coverage in the last year and now
the completeness level is good enough that for all practical purposes
for the average person, we have articles on everything.

Can you name another computer-based project (beside IE's
vulnerabilities) that gets as much "good" press coverage as we do?

I suggest the ride is going to get even more fun.

People: Send in your donation, we have to ramp up.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedians meeting in Boston (was: Passing through)

body:
The following Wikipedians have signed up to meet in Boston, July 31st,
2004 -- a Saturday afternoon (exact time and place to be determined):

*	Jimbo - well, duh! It was his idea...
*	Bcorr - offers to organize
*	Uncle Ed - willing to help Bcorr organize; willing to give Danny
a ride
*	moink - local, can help some
*	Danny - would like to go up together (from NYC)
*	Mihai - yes

*	Acegikmo1 - interested in attending
*	Raul654 - thinking about it
*	Plato - considering

*	(Steven G. Johnson regrets that he probably can't come )

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please let [[special:blockip]] flag AOL proxies

body:
I use Primus-AOL in Australia. What's all this about proxies? I only
rarely see my connection having two IP addresses (when the Supertunnel
is active).

~User:Mark

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 18:48:12 +0000, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> I understand that, when blocking vandals, blocking addresses
> that are actually AOL proxies is worse-than-useless: the
> vandal isn't blocked, and legit users will be. I have fallen
> afoul of this myself (and emailed apologies to aggrieved
> AOL users after unblocking).
>
> So, here is a request: something on special:blockip that
> will warn you that you are about to block an AOL proxy (by
> IP number), and possibly even not let you do so.
>
> Are all the AOL address ranges easily obtainable? (A simple
> query to ARIN, or perhaps emailing and asking AOL?)
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the Childlover article

body:
On 07/13/04  at 07:35 PM, daniwo59 at aol.com said:

> I would like to draw everyone's attention to the [[Childlover]] page.

The term "childlover" appears, presumably for tactical reasons, to be essentially a synonym for pedophilia, so shouldn't the contents of the page simply be merged with [[Pedophilia]], which already has  a one-line paragraph on the term?

Also, I am not in favor of moralizing, even indirectly, but if there is clinical evidence that sex with children is not healthy, that surely it should be reported. The text as it now stands reads like a defense against a charge which is not explicitly made evident.

V.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Plese minnan WP move to poj.wikipedia.org

references:
<loom.20040706T174455-653@post.gmane.org>
	<ccf88d$5pm$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a56ne0100jqgikoetg1jlfgcagekckit7p@4ax.com>
	<40EC489C.5080507@lomaji.com>

body:
Kaixo!
Li Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:01:48 -0400,
 Henry H. Tan-Tenn <share2002nov at lomaji.com> scrijheut:

 HH T> One could, for example, problematize the claim that the German
 HH T> at de.wikipedia.org serves all the linguistic varieties subsumed under
 HH T> that name, say Schweizerdeutsch.

It does not; "Schweizedeutsch" is not a variety of German
("Hochdeutsch") but of Alemanic.
"Schweizedeutsch" is related to Alsatian (which has a wikipedia of
its own, btw), and not to German.

the confusion arises maybe because, while in Switzerland "Schweizedeutsch"
is *spoken* it is usually not *written*, but German is used to write
instead.

The article [[Alemannic German]] says that "Swiss German" is a "High
Alemanic" variety; while "Alsatian" and "Swabian" are of "Low Alemanic".

--
? bient?t,
Pablo Saratxaga           PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:02:59AM -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Do it now, convert later.
> >
> > I agree.
> >
> > > There are serious obstacles to developing real map system, most
> > > important
> > > being limited free geographical data of decent quality.
> >
> > I say forget mapping. Just put in coordinates into physical
> location
> > pages, and let the mapping software companies do their magic.
>
> What do the world need the mapping companies for ?
> Most of the mapping is being done by the governments, for
> taxpayers' money,
> so the data should be available for free.
> Unfortunately, except for the US, it isn't.
>
> Once we have the data, the software itself isn't that difficult.

The mapping companies have the maps with the elevation with not much
interesting on them. We add the stuff on the map that makes the map
come alive. It's an overlay.

Imagine walking around in israel and you bump your head in the wall.
Oh, sorry. Imagine you have a wireless gps device and you're walking
on a road and the devices announces: "According to Wikipedia, you are
on the same road Roman General Vespasian marched on in 69AD with 9000
roman soldiers on the way to the fortress of Masada."
A few minutes later: "This village hosts a regional olive competition
that will last till Friday. Also, famed guitarist SomeMadeUp Name
grew up here until he was 19."

Would that not be fun?

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Tim wrote:

>Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability from mere grammatical
>imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.

Well, it tells you *something* about the quality of the article. I'm
pretty sure that the Encyclopedia Britannica would be concerned if
one in five of its articles was riddled with grammatical errors.

Mark Richards wrote:

>I don't think so, although, of course, the two
>sometimes do go together. We have some contributors
>for whom English is not their first language. Grammar
>and spelling are an issue for them where facts are
>not.

Someone who can't communicate well in English is more likely to
produce inadvertent errors of fact. As one rather humorous example of
this, years ago I knew a guy from Mexico with a thick accent who
declared that he wanted "world piss." It took a few minutes before
everyone figured out that he was actually saying he wanted "world
peace."

In the stub articles I mentioned, the grammatical flaws in one were
numerous but insufficient to prevent me from discerning the author's
intent. In the other article, one of the sentences was so poorly
written that I couldn't figure out the writer's meaning at all. When
that's the case, I think poor grammar and spelling do indeed call
"the facts" of the article into question.

The bottom line, though, is that an encyclopedia article shouldn't
have errors of grammar *or* fact. I know some respected university
scholars who have problems with spelling and grammar, but before
their writings get published, someone fixes those problems. An
article in the Wikipedia that has problems with spelling and grammar
clearly hasn't been through the level of review that goes into a
student's term paper, let alone an article for the Encyclopedia
Britannica.

I'm not saying that contributors should be banned from Wikipedia if
they have trouble with spelling and grammar. All I'm saying is that
Wikipedia hasn't yet figured out how to match Encyclopedia Britannica
with respect to the quality of its articles. Some individual articles
in the Wikipedia are undoubtedly superior in quality to corresponding
articles in the Britannica, but with the Britannica, *every article*
comes virtually guaranteed to be accurate and well-researched -- and
also correct in terms of spelling and grammar. That degree of
confidence doesn't exist across the board for the Wikipedia.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google ads

body:
Dori schrieb:
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 03:10:26 +0200, Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> wrote:

>>If we once *really* need the money we should use opt-out, but I hope this will
>>never happen.
>
> Opt-out is even worse.

Of course. But only then the amount of money is worth to talk about. But I see
this only as the last option in a worst case scenario, if everything else (like
persuading the board of the German Verein to rob the Deutsche Bank) fails.

> If people want to support Wikipedia by looking at ads, I would propose
> a Wikimedia-sponsored mirror with ads, while the main Wikipedia is
> left pristine. Don't know how effective this would be though.

It only works if we try to compete with all the entries of the main site at
Google, which isn't very cool. If we hide it from search engines the income
would be much less (but a bit more than with opt-in ads). But ads are still uncool.

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>The ability to tell journalists "Wikipedia is completly free of
>advertising" is
>worth more than a few cents from Google ads, IMHO. With ads, even if
>opt-in, we
>are much less of a bird of paradise in the web's top 1000. And there
>might also
>be a negative psychological effect on the donors.

I think we're talking about more than "a few cents from Google ads."
I was talking awhile back with the guy who created envirolink.org.
They started running Google ads awhile ago, and I was surprised when
he told me how much money the ads were bringing in. I forget the
amount, but as I recall it was more than $1,000 per month. And for
Wikipedia, which gets a lot more traffic than Envirolink, I think the
revenues would likely be greater.

I you want to see how the ads look on envirolink, here's the URL:

http://www.envirolink.org/

Of all the advertising I've seen on the web, the Google ads are the
most tasteful and least intrusive. They're text-based ads, which
means little use of bandwidth. They're topic-relevant. (The ads on
envirolink.org all have something to do with the environment.)
They're clearly labeled as advertising, and they can placed in a
position on the page where they don't overwhelm its editorial
content. Also, it is possible to reject advertising deemed
inappropriate. (The envirolink webmaster told me that they have
rejected attempts by anti-environmental organizations to place ads on
their website.)

As for the value of the ability to tell journalists that Wikipedia is
completely free of advertising, what value is that exactly? Most
journalists work themselves for publications that rely on advertising
for part of their revenue. I happen to work as a journalist for an
organization that does not accept advertising or corporate
contributions, but we're the exception, not the rule, and the reason
we follow this policy is because our specific mission is to act as a
critical watchdog of corporate and government propaganda.

As far as credibility with journalists is concerned, the issues are:

(1) Would acceptance of advertising diminish the independence and
integrity of Wikipedia's non-advertising content? For this to be the
case, we would have to imagine a scenario in which Wikipedia users
shy away from adding certain types of content out of fear that it
would offend an advertiser. Given the way that Wikipedia operates, I
think this scenario is unlikely.

(2) Is there a danger that visitors would confuse advertising with
editorial content? I think this danger is actually small.

(3) Is there transparent disclosure of the relationship between
Google and Wikipedia? This should be pretty easy too. Every Google ad
comes with a link at the top that says, "Ads by Google." Clicking on
that llink opens a page that explains how the advertising works.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category:Stub

body:
Hey,

	In Category:Stub thread was suggested to make limit for
	displaying stubs preferenceable, and
	Especial:Preferences#prefsection-6  now has an option for that.
	But  Category:Stub  still shows 15694 entries....

	Maybe this is not a bug; maybe this was not programmed yet... Or
	programmer is still awaiting for a definition in what should be done
	to stub category... But i think is still better limit that page than
	show so many entries, while a better solution isnt defined here.

	And forgive for saying what (i think) should be programmed instead
	program it, i dont have (yet) knowledgement enough in
	mediawiki database schema to do such modification (i'm new around)...

Regards,
Riba


from_name: Dori

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:31:13 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards
<marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I agree - is there any way that we could use markers
> or categories (maybe on the talk page) to 'certify'
> that articles have been checked by someone for g and
> s? It would limit the amount of duplication of effort,
> of course, it would only be much use for relatively
> stable articles.
> Mark

Currently this wouldn't matter as someone could come right after the
article was checked and mess it up. I think what might be useful is to
have an easy syntax to refer to a certain version. Something like:
[[Wikipedia at 4613311]] which would expand to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&oldid=4613311 or
some such. If we really publicised this, then it would also be better
for those trying to quote something on Wikipedia without fear that
their quote will no longer be in the article. They can do the quoting
right now for older versions, but the most recent version doesn't have
an oldID attached to it (since it's not old yet).

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] The list wikilegal-l does not exist - Yes,
	but some users still send mails to it

body:
On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:49:51PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >but GNAME [...] when I reply to them via gname [...]
>
> Psst. Gmane. Not gname. ;-)
>
> P.S. you sent that mail to wikilegal-l too...
>

Well, this isn't a beaultifull solution, but why not create a user
wikilegal-l at wikimedia.org? It will make sure any list wikilegal-l
will exist, and a mail sent to that address will be recoverable...

[]s,
Riba


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> I you want to see how the ads look on envirolink, here's the URL:
>
> http://www.envirolink.org/

I also see the they have a "PayPal donate" logo at the bottom of that page.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> IF the GEO coordinate links to a special page, then this page could
> link
> to/show a mapquest map around that point, among other things. Or
> should
> we use such a map image which links to the special apge (like
> thumbnails)? That should be at least *some* feedback.

> And for missing geography data: How about wikipedition (wikipedia
> expedition) to collect that data? Imagine: Thousands of wikipedians
> all
> over the world emerging from their basements, roaming streets,
> shorelines, walking along rivers and climbing mountains, their GPS
> receivers in one hand, the data-logging laptop in the other,

Wasn't there a zombie movie that started out like that ? Just
kidding.

Independent of maps, you could also find other "nearby" articles from
geopoint to geopoint distances and direction. Try doing that in EB.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Matthew Trump

body:
Would probably attend if I can get a ride up from NYC and share gas.

Matt (User:Decumanus)

Poor, Edmund W said:
> The following Wikipedians have signed up to meet in Boston, July
> 31st,
> 2004 -- a Saturday afternoon (exact time and place to be determined):
>
> *	Jimbo - well, duh! It was his idea...
> *	Bcorr - offers to organize
> *	Uncle Ed - willing to help Bcorr organize; willing to give Danny
> a ride
> *	moink - local, can help some
> *	Danny - would like to go up together (from NYC)
> *	Mihai - yes
>
> *	Acegikmo1 - interested in attending
> *	Raul654 - thinking about it
> *	Plato - considering
>
> *	(Steven G. Johnson regrets that he probably can't come )
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Showing causation among articles

body:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:24:19 -0700 "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>What *would* be cool, and might just be a different implementation of
>exactly what you have in mind, would be a tool to find all the
>(reasonably short) click-paths between any two concepts.  I mean, now
>that I selected the article titles randomly, I actually wonder how
>many clicks it takes to get from Marie Antionette to Michael Jordan.
>And what's intervening?

I'm afraid that the shortest connections are often not the one that are most
interesting. Going through the links, one short path from Marie Antoinette
to Michael Jordan is the three-step:

Marie Antoinette -> October 16 -> October 30 -> Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan got back to the NBA in the same month of the year that Marie
Antoinette was executed. Not really something deep...

Andre Engels


from_name: Brian Corr

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedians meeting in Boston (was: Passing through)

body:
I'm, proposing that we go ahead and do it at the S&S -- It's a decent-sized
place, there's parking and it's about 10 minutes from the subway, and it's
vegetarian-friendly. I've posted more detailed info, directions , and links
to menus at the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Boston

The only thing left to decide is the time and duration.... Any suggestions
from attendees?

Thanks,
Brian (Bcorr)

Ed Poor wrote:
>The following Wikipedians have signed up to meet in Boston, July 31st,
>2004 -- a Saturday afternoon (exact time and place to be determined):
>
>*       Jimbo - well, duh! It was his idea...
>*       Bcorr - offers to organize
>*       Uncle Ed - willing to help Bcorr organize; willing to give Danny
>a ride
>*       moink - local, can help some
>*       Danny - would like to go up together (from NYC)
>*       Mihai - yes
>
>*       Acegikmo1 - interested in attending
>*       Raul654 - thinking about it
>*       Plato - considering
>
>*       (Steven G. Johnson regrets that he probably can't come )
>
>Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: moink

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedians meeting in Boston (was: Passing
	through)

body:
> The only thing left to decide is the time and duration.... Any suggestions
> from attendees?

Just don't make me get up too early.  I'm rarely anywhere before noon. :)

moink


from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category pruning

body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 18:24:06 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe it would be better just to produce a special bot-friendly interface,
> instead (limitable to registered bot accounts); one that doesn't have to wait
> for and parse HTML responses, thus slowing down both it and the website...

That sounds like a really good idea.

I was talking with Tim Starling on IRC briefly last night about maybe
moving some of the parsing code out into Javascript so that the client
could do some of the work.

An interface for viewing articles as unparsed wikicode (and minus the
surrounding page framework, so it could all go in an IFRAME, like how
Epoz and FCKedit work) would be useful for both a Javascript parser
and a bot interface.

I assume there are routines for outputting articles this way anyway,
since something needs to populate the <textarea> fields when editing.

/off to go pick through code

-Bill Clark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
--- Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> Both Galileo and the GPS use the International Terrestrial
> Reference
> System as their reference frame, and TAI as their reference
> timescale.
> They then derive their own realizations of these idealized systems
> using
> their own infrastructure.
> Although the Galileo and GPS realizations of the ITRS and TAI will
> be
> independent, they should match to within a resolution of a few
> centimeters or nanoseconds respectively, and so should be
> effectively
> interchangeable for most low-resolution use.
>
> See
>
http://www.galileosworld.com/galileosworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=75619&pageID=6
>
> and http://www.iers.org/iers/earth/itrs/itrs.html for more details.
>

I smell a new article for wikipedia coming on...

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal re gramer and speling

body:
Yes, it would be most use to articles that don't get
much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones that
do get more action get checked more. It's the ones
that noone ever sees that concern me most. The edit
history would show whether there were major changes
since a check. Can anyone who is more conversant with
how the categories (or another system) work suggest a
way to trial this that wouldn't annoy people?

--- Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
> Mark Richards wrote
>
> > I agree - is there any way that we could use
> markers
> > or categories (maybe on the talk page) to
> 'certify'
> > that articles have been checked by someone for g
> and
> > s?
>
> There seems to be plenty of flexibility in the
> category system for 'rating
> usages'.  The page history would show up edits
> subsequent to any 'rating'.
> Of course this is most useful on pages that are
> rarely edited.  Which will
> in many cases be those that are _least_ read.  I
> don't know how practical it
> would be to institute a drive to spread this all
> over WP.  The basic
> categories are not propagating so very rapidly, IMX.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
Yes, it would be most use to articles that don't get
much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones that
do get more action get checked more. It's the ones
that noone ever sees that concern me most. The edit
history would show whether there were major changes
since a check. Can anyone who is more conversant with
how the categories (or another system) work suggest a
way to trial this that wouldn't annoy people?

--- Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
> Mark Richards wrote
>
> > I agree - is there any way that we could use
> markers
> > or categories (maybe on the talk page) to
> 'certify'
> > that articles have been checked by someone for g
> and
> > s?
>
> There seems to be plenty of flexibility in the
> category system for 'rating
> usages'.  The page history would show up edits
> subsequent to any 'rating'.
> Of course this is most useful on pages that are
> rarely edited.  Which will
> in many cases be those that are _least_ read.  I
> don't know how practical it
> would be to institute a drive to spread this all
> over WP.  The basic
> categories are not propagating so very rapidly, IMX.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising notice (on de)

body:
The fundraising notice for the German Wikipedia has been temprarily
disabled. We think that since the German Verein will need a few more
days to be able to receive donations ...

It would be counterproductive to direct people to a page prompting them
to make donations to a US account. Knowing Germans, that will result in
relatively few donations. (Many Germans, for example, don't have a
credit card.) If on the other hand we wait for a few days, until the
bank account for the Verein has been set up, we estimate that we will
recieve much more donations.

It would be nice if such actions were discussed beforehand.

-Arne (akl)


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV policy for history, sociology and religion articles

body:
I recently proposed that we make explicit Wikipedia's NPOV
policy on historical context. It is clear that the vast
majority of our contributors, in all areas of religion,
history and sociology, understand NPOV to mean that we
discus the historical development of an issue. We don't
just look at things the way there are today, and assume
that this is how they always have been.

As such. I am working on wording for this idea. The
following comes from [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism]].

Wikipedia [[NPOV]] policy means that we attempt to treat
issues in light of their historical development. We do not
merely describe the way that Judaism's beliefs and
practices exist now. We certainly do describe these, but we
also describe their historical origins as known from the
best evidence.

Wikipedia articles on history and religion draw from a
religion's sacred texts, in this case including the Torah,
Tanakh, Tosefta, Mishnah, the two Talmuds, the [[midrash]]
literature and the [[responsa]] literature. But Wikipedia
articles on history and religion also draw from modern
archaeological, historical and scientific sources

Wikipedia articles describe changing social, religious and
political conditions, and how Judaism's beliefs and
practices may have developed over time.

Many Orthodox Jews will strenuously object to a critical
historical treatments, claiming that this discriminates
against their religious beliefs. They would prefer that the
articles describe their faith as they see it, which is from
an ahistorical perspective (e.g. the way things are is the
way things have always been; any differences are from
heretical sects that don't represent the real religion.)
This point of view can also be mentioned; there is no
necessary contradiction. NPOV policy means that we say that
Group A says one thing for somesuch reasons, while group B
says another thing for other reasons.

==

Obviously, it would be easy to adapt this sort of form for
us in other religion WikiProjects.

The problem is that there are literally hundreds of
statements on NPOV and historical context within Wikipedia
Talk pages, but I can't find one central statement. Since
agreement usually exists in practice, I propose that we add
a new section to the NPOV article that makes our shared
understanding of this issue explicit.

The text that I propose above is, of course, tentative, and
subject to revision, like all Wikipedia text. I look
forward to the suggestions of others.

Robert (RK)

=====
"No one is poor except he who lacks knowledge....A person who has knowledge has everything.  A person who lacks knowledge, what has he? Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack?  [Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim, 41a]

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from_name: Sj

subject:
[Foundation-l] [wikipedia@earthlink.net: [Wikipedia-l] Re:
	[Wikide-l] Neues Uploadformular]

body:
This looks great!  Now we just need to have the form's text factored into
separate site-specific messages and translated for other WPs... I don't
know of a good place to announce such translation needs, so I created
a section for it at [[meta:Translators#Translation Requests]].  Comments on that
translation template would be appreciated.

Must there be a vote before this can be implemented?  Has anyone
suggested we not implement such a form?

+sj+

> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> -----
> From: Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net>
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:01:11 -0700
>
> I think Andre has done excellent work, and this upload form should be
> implemented on all Wikipedias as quickly as possible.

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:08:05 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I think this is something that should be reviewed and implemented
> right away.  It is long overdue.  Perhaps after some discussion, the
> board should even vote on it to make it clearly official.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV discussion on historical context

body:
Robert wrote

> As I understand it, writing in accord with NPOV policy
> means that we treat our issues in light of their historical
> development.

Well, I wonder if it does mean that.  That sounds rather close to
historicism, in the sense Historicism (I) that is mentioned in the
[[historicism]] article.

While this is arguably a principled position from which to write, I don't
think everyone would be happy with it.  'Always historicize' is a slogan
with very definite associations.

Charles


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered
	to	have	discovered Wikipedia!

body:
On 07/14/04 14:43, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

>>Not 'practitioners', but the organisation itself. That's different.

> Of course, just as with Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Catholics,
> Jews, Athiests, whatever, there is the chance that overly partisan
> people may have a rough emotional time of it.  But we can proceed with
> professionalism and love in all cases, towards a solid outcome.

Indeed. The poster I'm referring to has just claimed that I am editing
the article in question as a "professional critic". I've asked for an
explanation of this novel assertion ...

- d.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Timwi - legal mailing list

body:
>P.S. you sent that mail to wikilegal-l too...

Timwi, I think you do not understand. I do not send
mail to wikilegal-l, I merely REPLY to a mail sent to
foundation-l. And when I reply to most mails sent to
foundation-l, these mails are ***automatically*** sent
to wikilegal-l because wikilegal-l is one the
newsgroup the *original* sender sent the mail to. I
can not do anything to change the newsgroup to which
they are sent.

This newsgroup is gmane.org.wikimedia.legal.

This newsgroup should not exist any more. It should be
deleted.

Now, here is what I think. The legal list was not
closed properly, or the gmane system was not warned
that this list did not exist any more, and now the
whole system is bugged.

Is it possible that the legal list is really closed ?
Or that gmane is explained that the list does not
exist anymore and the newsgroup
gmane.org.wikimedia.legal deleted ?
Or could the legal list be reopened so that the mails
are retrieved and can go through again ?

Any solution is fine by me. I would just like that I
can use the system again and that half of my mails are
not lost.

Or could I be registered to the legal list, and my
mails automatically authorized ?

If no one can do anything for me, could I have the
*password* of the legal mailing list so that I could
authorized myself, or at least retrieve my mails each
time they are blocked there ?

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Timwi - legal mailing list


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
Europe will over the next years install a GPS-like positioning system
called Galileo. The German list got a suggestion to include coordinates
in the form of
    [[Geo:-13?23'+45?2'23'']]
or similar for locations. A future GPS/Galileo PDA/smartphone could then
reverse-lookup what wikipedia has about the current location. (This is
kind of a PR gag, but still...)

IMHO that brings us back to the map system we already discussed to death ;-)

Seriously, such markup could link to a special page with multiple functions:
* Show it on a map
* List wikipedia locations nearby
and others I can't think of right now.

Should we
a) include such a syntax?
b) wait for a "real" map system to emerge, or just do this now and
convert later?

Magnus


body:
And interesting. It would be good to have a list of
article by how many people had them on their
watchlist, so some folks could watch 'un-watched'
articles, and not commonly watched ones.

--- Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 July 2004 23:03, Mark Richards
> wrote:
> > much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones
> that
> > do get more action get checked more. It's the ones
> > that noone ever sees that concern me most. The
> edit
>
> Unrelated to the topic, but this gave me a thought.
> How many articles there
> are which are not on anyone's watchlist? Should'nt
> be so hard to determine. I
> think that the results will be either surprising or
> frightening.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 04:25:17PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Should we
> b) wait for a "real" map system to emerge, or just do this now and
> convert later?

Do it now, convert later.

There are serious obstacles to developing real map system, most important
being limited free geographical data of decent quality.


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] editable page ratings

body:
I had been thinking about this for awhile, and a recent comment by Charles Matthews inspired me to write up a general idea regarding it.

This is just a rough draft of course, and I'm open to ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Spade/Policy_Proposals

Jack / [[User:Sam Spade]]

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote

>. All I'm saying is that
> Wikipedia hasn't yet figured out how to match Encyclopedia Britannica
> with respect to the quality of its articles.

This might be quite true.  Or one could look at it another way.  The concern
about 'minimum standard for inclusion in WP' is quite natural; but in a
sense there is no real minimum standard.  Well, some small proportion of the
dross is deleted every day at VfD; rather more is strangled at birth in
quick deletion; but we really operate a presumption in favour of inclusion
(e.g., in the past few minutes, a Gundam article on a particular armour
suit - don't tell me this is Britannicable).

Basically there is not much of a cut-off at the lower end.  We could remedy
this with (my pet scheme) editable page ratings, of which only the
featured-article and deletion settings would not be accessible to everyone.
The point is that we could easily implement some way of keeping stubs and so
on out of RandomPage, or other kinds of filtering, if there really seemed to
be a need.  Considering the low level of what is printed in newspapers
(which are not free), not to speak of the Web as a whole, there doesn't seem
to be much pressure yet for implementing any serious division of articles.

Charles


body:
Ed Poor wrote

>I think we should incorporate Robert (RK)'s ideas about historical
context into the [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]] article.

You do realise that any orthodox Serb nationalist would feel that the
Milosevic trial is in the context of the [[Battle of Kosovo]], 1389?

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Mark Richards wrote

> I agree - is there any way that we could use markers
> or categories (maybe on the talk page) to 'certify'
> that articles have been checked by someone for g and
> s?

There seems to be plenty of flexibility in the category system for 'rating
usages'.  The page history would show up edits subsequent to any 'rating'.
Of course this is most useful on pages that are rarely edited.  Which will
in many cases be those that are _least_ read.  I don't know how practical it
would be to institute a drive to spread this all over WP.  The basic
categories are not propagating so very rapidly, IMX.

Charles


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Escaping backticks?

body:
Bill Clark wrote:
> I just encountered an interesting problem.  The article on Michael
> Moore mentions Front Row Entertainment, Fahrenheit 9/11's UAE
> distributor.
>
> How do I italicize "Fahrenheit 9/11" without italicizing the "s" in
> the possessive (since that's not properly part of the title)?

''Fahrenheit 9/11''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s

Yeah, it's ugly, but there's no way to cleanly work around it with the
'' and ''' syntaxes short of special-casing /\S'''s/ and similar.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Solution ?] [ 967833 ] Only first five template
	inclusions work

body:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:08:08 +0200 Emmanuel Engelhart
<emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:

> On  wikipedia  the  MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT  limit (=5)  in  Parser.php  is
> problematic.  I  propose to  change the sens  of this  constraint from
> "max template inclusions" to "max different template inclusions".

> To  solve the  memory  usage problem,  we  could use  a tempory  table
> containing the previously loaded templates  in the article ?  So, each
> template replicated x  time in an article would  generate only one SQL
> request.

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:46:35 +0200, Jens Frank <jeluf at gmx.de> wrote:

> If article [[X]] includes [[Template:A]] which includes [[Template:B]],
> which again includes [[Template:A]], this would result in a memory
> bomb using only two different templates.

I think Emmanuel's suggestion is more akin to PHP's include_once() and
thus wouldn't be vulnerable to the type of problem you're describing.

-Bill Clark


from_name: Dori

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads and other ramblings by Chris

body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:08:12 +0100, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:18:39 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >By the way, has anyone done any car/window stickers for wikipedia?
> >Donate $10, get a sticker. Put it on your car or bathroom window,
> >give it to a friend, whatever.
>
> Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
>
> I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.

Linked from the fundraising page: http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Help! I've lost my Wikipedia password!

body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:12:48 +0100, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> I've lost my Wikipedia password.
>
> Is there any way of getting back into my account, perhaps having
> Wikipedia mail me a new password?
>
> My user name is Cabalamat
>
> (Yes, I know I should have taken better care of my password. I'm
> bad at remembering passwords, so I wite them all down in a book.
> Unfortunately, I lost the book.)

If you had entered an email address in your settings (or when you
registered), all you have to do is go to the login page
([[Special:Userlogin]]), enter your username, and ask for a password
to be mailed to you.

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category pruning

body:
> Is there someone operating a CatBot for deleting
> things like [[Category:FHM 100 Sexiest Women List]]
> from all the entries

It occurs to me (in a fairly inconsequential and rambling way) that
this need is due to the software's use of inline markup for what
should be out-of-line metadata - i.e. we can't have an easy database
removal of a category, because the article end of the equation is
stored in the text of the article, rather than (as well as?)
separately in the DB.

It's kind of obvious, but it's a disadvantage that more and more
features are encountering (interlanguage links and some template
maintenance tasks are similarly hard to automate, for the same
reason).

I know there's been an absolute ton of discussion about metadata,
key-value pairs, etc, but I wonder if it's not worth going for a
fairly simple system of having a "metadata" text-box which is actually
a magic interface to special fields in the DB - the user edits special
markup like they do now (for translations, categories, etc), but it's
parsed at save and not actually stored as text (except perhaps in some
kind of cache if necessary). That way, a lot of 'bots' could be
integrated and operate at the DB level, rather than sitting outside
the software and pretending to be users.

But I guess that's all just a pipe-dream, and there are plenty of
things it doesn't solve. Maybe it would be better just to produce a
special bot-friendly interface, instead (limitable to registered bot
accounts); one that doesn't have to wait for and parse HTML responses,
thus slowing down both it and the website...

I'll shut up now.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:02:59AM -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
>
> > Do it now, convert later.
>
> I agree.
>
> > There are serious obstacles to developing real map system, most
> > important
> > being limited free geographical data of decent quality.
>
> I say forget mapping. Just put in coordinates into physical location
> pages, and let the mapping software companies do their magic.

What do the world need the mapping companies for ?
Most of the mapping is being done by the governments, for taxpayers' money,
so the data should be available for free.
Unfortunately, except for the US, it isn't.

Once we have the data, the software itself isn't that difficult.


from_name: Bill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia denigrated in The Register

body:
In passing review of Wikipedia:

  "For example, if you consult the world's most useless online text,
  the captive Wikipedia, you'll see Fuller's entry is a plug for
  Eric "AI" Drexler."

From:

   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/14/buckminster_fuller_stamp/

Guess Andy doesn't love us.

Bill


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:24:43AM -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:02:59AM -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > > --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Do it now, convert later.
> > >
> > > I agree.
> > >
> > > > There are serious obstacles to developing real map system, most
> > > > important
> > > > being limited free geographical data of decent quality.
> > >
> > > I say forget mapping. Just put in coordinates into physical
> > location
> > > pages, and let the mapping software companies do their magic.
> >
> > What do the world need the mapping companies for ?
> > Most of the mapping is being done by the governments, for
> > taxpayers' money,
> > so the data should be available for free.
> > Unfortunately, except for the US, it isn't.
> >
> > Once we have the data, the software itself isn't that difficult.
>
> The mapping companies have the maps with the elevation with not much
> interesting on them. We add the stuff on the map that makes the map
> come alive. It's an overlay.
>
> Imagine walking around in israel and you bump your head in the wall.
> Oh, sorry. Imagine you have a wireless gps device and you're walking
> on a road and the devices announces: "According to Wikipedia, you are
> on the same road Roman General Vespasian marched on in 69AD with 9000
> roman soldiers on the way to the fortress of Masada."
> A few minutes later: "This village hosts a regional olive competition
> that will last till Friday. Also, famed guitarist SomeMadeUp Name
> grew up here until he was 19."
>
> Would that not be fun?

Pretty fun, yeah, but we need mapping support in Wikipedia for that to happen:
* People need some feedback or they won't work on geographical data.
  Numbers are boring.
* Feedback is needed to see if the data is correct. It's very easy to make
  a typo when typing numbers and if the result isn't presented on some
  kind of map, it's highly unlikely that somebody would correct it.

I don't remember the URL, but Lars's paper about wiki contains some more
thoughts on maps.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category pruning

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>I know there's been an absolute ton of discussion about metadata,
>key-value pairs, etc, but I wonder if it's not worth going for a
>fairly simple system of having a "metadata" text-box which is actually
>a magic interface to special fields in the DB - the user edits special
>markup like they do now (for translations, categories, etc), but it's
>parsed at save and not actually stored as text (except perhaps in some
>kind of cache if necessary). That way, a lot of 'bots' could be
>integrated and operate at the DB level, rather than sitting outside
>the software and pretending to be users.
>
>
Someone (was it me?) once proposed this two-step plan:
1. Take meta info out of the text on save and store it in special db
fields, then paste it back at the end of the page on the next edit.
2. Once this works, split the edit box in two - one for article, one for
meta data.
Acceptance is everything here :-)

>But I guess that's all just a pipe-dream, and there are plenty of
>things it doesn't solve. Maybe it would be better just to produce a
>special bot-friendly interface, instead (limitable to registered bot
>accounts); one that doesn't have to wait for and parse HTML responses,
>thus slowing down both it and the website...
>
>
How about editing like "...?title=xyz&action=edit&mode=bot"? That could
remove the framework, and return a blank page with either "OK" or
"EDIT_CONFLICT" after saving, thus letting the bot know what happened.

>I'll shut up now.
>
>
No, please, by all means, stay with it :-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category pruning

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Someone (was it me?) once proposed this two-step plan:
> 1. Take meta info out of the text on save and store it in special db
> fields, then paste it back at the end of the page on the next edit.
> 2. Once this works, split the edit box in two - one for article, one for
> meta data.
> Acceptance is everything here :-)

That actually sounds very sensible - it allows for a fair bit of
robustness testing on the conversion process. It might even be
possible to leave the inline-syntax-extractor enabled to give users a
warning if they enter metadata in the wrong box, but act on it anyway
(as though it had been entered in the other box in the first place).

On a very minor note, if it did get implemented, it might be best to
label it something less intimidating than "metadata", especially given
the existing uses of "meta" within Wikimedia projects.

> How about editing like "...?title=xyz&action=edit&mode=bot"? That could
> remove the framework, and return a blank page with either "OK" or
> "EDIT_CONFLICT" after saving, thus letting the bot know what happened.

That sounds good (plus "NO_PERMISSION" for 'protected' pages, etc). I
guess the main thing that would need thinking about for such an
interface is the *submission* part of the process - it could work
essentially as now, but I wander if it couldn't be simplified. The
actual HTTP POST is probably simple enough, but then you've got to
handle cookies for authentication, and there are 'hidden' fields to do
with edit conflicts that need retaining and sending back. From a bot's
point of view, it would be best if these were all rolled into one
framework (some kind of XML?) so that the whole thing could be dumped
back as one big POSTDATA field. I think cookies in particular seem an
unnecessary overhead for a single-purpose bot, although I don't know
how easily general authentication can be seperated from
cookie-specific code as the software stands.

> >I'll shut up now.
> >
> No, please, by all means, stay with it :-)

Well, one of these days, I'll stop dreaming and submit a
properly-written patch. Ma?ana, ma?ana...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Please enable full HTML on foundation wiki

body:
I would really like to move the fundraising page to the new foundation wiki,
but I can't until that wiki can support (at least) forms. Also, since there are
many ideas about how to improve that page that involve other parts of HTML that
we do no allow (for security reasons) by default, I think it would be best to
allow full HTML.

In short, this http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising , needs to look a lot more
like http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising soon.

Allowing full HTML will also make it possible for other language versions of
that page (which have already been written) to go live.

Also, could somebody move the whole wiki to wikimediafoundation.org? It was a
bad mistake to place it at the wikimedia.org domain name since;
1) we do not own the .com and many people naively put .com at the end of every
domain name.
2) it can be easily confused with wikipedia.org.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Once we have the data, the software itself isn't that difficult.

Actually, you can do a lot of fun with geo coordinates even if you
don't have access to mapping data.  For example, you can compute the
distance between two coordinates or you can list coordinates that are
within close range of each other.  In an article on Napoleon, you can
follow every [[link]] and see if the pointed-to page has a coordinate,
then you can put all these coordinates as numbered circles on a map
overlay, to trace Napoleon's world tour.  Then add this overlay to a
map if you have one.

Just like ISBN: numbers can be useful with any different online
bookshop or even without any online bookshop, GEO: coordinates can be
useful with different online map sources.  This could be selected with
individual user preferences.  If I am a subscriber to a commercial
online map source, my personalized view of Wikipedia could render GEO:
coordinates as a link to that source.  Since the contents with the
GEO: coordinates is distributed under GFDL, another website can do
something else with the GEO: coordinates.

On http://susning.nu/Wroclaw the wiki text map:51.11:17.03:100000
(i.e. geo 51.11 N, 17.03 E) is rendered as a link to
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&latitude=51.11&longitude=17.03&zoom=6

The difficult thing is to agree on the exact shape of the world
(ellipsoid, geoid).  Converting between Greenwich and Paris meridian,
between decimal and non-decimal degrees, or between different
projections is trivial. But is 51.11 and 17.03 the official center of
Wroclaw?  Or is it a few dozen meters off?  Mapquest seems to draw
this coordinate at the Ratusz (town hall), which seems like a good
choice, but another map source might have a different opinion.  What
does your GPS tell you?  And which coordinate should be in the
Wikipedia page?  This is where some knowledge about cartography could
be very useful. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Choosing_a_model_for_the_shape_of_the_Earth

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


from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] Escaping backticks?

body:
I just encountered an interesting problem.  The article on Michael
Moore mentions Front Row Entertainment, Fahrenheit 9/11's UAE
distributor.

How do I italicize "Fahrenheit 9/11" without italicizing the "s" in
the possessive (since that's not properly part of the title)?

''Fahrenheit 9/11'''s does horrible things to the text.  I thought
maybe I could escape the backticks out, but that doesn't work
(although it seems like the best solution here).

Should escaping of metacharacters be added, or is there another
workaround for this problem?

-Bill Clark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category pruning

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> removal of a category, because the article end of the equation is
> stored in the text of the article, rather than (as well as?)
> separately in the DB.

The reason that they are stored in the article text is that article
texts are easy to edit.  If you want to avoid this, you have to
provide another easy way to input and edit the same information.
Perhaps the edit page should have a list of one-line input fields
for metadata under the big textarea, like this:

  [ Germany is a country in Europe...   ]
  [ bla bla                             ]
  [ bla bla                             ]

  metadata: [ de:Deutschland    ]  (leave blank to remove)
  metadata: [ category: Country ]
  metadata: [ fr:Allemagne      ]
  metadata: [                   ]  (add new metadata here)

  [save]  [preview]

However, this is the road to compartmentalization, and wiki has so far
been very successful in doing without that.

I less intrusive approach would be to separate out all metadata when
the page is saved, and never actually store metadata with the article
text.  In this case, it has to be collected from where it is stored
before the textarea is presented to the next editor.

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


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] New upload form

body:
Sj wrote:

>This looks great!  Now we just need to have the form's text factored into
>separate site-specific messages and translated for other WPs... I don't
>know of a good place to announce such translation needs, so I created
>a section for it at [[meta:Translators#Translation Requests]].  Comments on that
>translation template would be appreciated.
>
>Must there be a vote before this can be implemented?  Has anyone
>suggested we not implement such a form?
>
Nobody on wikide-l has objected to the idea of having a form, and the
response there was generally quite positive. Given the need for a form
that requires source and license information, I haven't heard any
objections to the basic idea and I'm not sure what reasonable objections
there could be. If somebody wants to call a vote, they're welcome to,
but I would say we already have a consensus on that much.

As to the exact details of the form, those can be worked out in our
usual collaborative way. Somebody else later mentioned a model they had
been working on (http://www.rainerzenz.de/wikitest.html), which has a
radio button to choose GFDL or public domain, but no required source
field. This doesn't help us meet the legal requirements for fair use
images, so I think Andre's form is the basic outline we have to work
from. Improvements are welcome, but the longer we delay, the bigger the
backlog of inadequately documented images.

The text of the instructions given to uploaders, and the choice of which
licenses to accept, are separate policy issues. There's no need to
debate those just to get this form implemented.

I saw a couple reports of minor appearance issues with Andre's form,
apparently browser-specific:

>Mit Opera 7.20 ?berlappt das Bild und Teile der Navigationsleiste
>den Text:
>
>http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/~ebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif <http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/%7Eebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif>
>
A little bit of testing should be able to iron out these problems.

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] New upload form

body:
Sj wrote:

>This looks great!  Now we just need to have the form's text factored into
>separate site-specific messages and translated for other WPs... I don't
>know of a good place to announce such translation needs, so I created
>a section for it at [[meta:Translators#Translation Requests]].  Comments on that
>translation template would be appreciated.
>
>Must there be a vote before this can be implemented?  Has anyone
>suggested we not implement such a form?
>
Nobody on wikide-l has objected to the idea of having a form, and the
response there was generally quite positive. Given the need for a form
that requires source and license information, I haven't heard any
objections to the basic idea and I'm not sure what reasonable objections
there could be. If somebody wants to call a vote, they're welcome to,
but I would say we already have a consensus on that much.

As to the exact details of the form, those can be worked out in our
usual collaborative way. Somebody else later mentioned a model they had
been working on (http://www.rainerzenz.de/wikitest.html), which has a
radio button to choose GFDL or public domain, but no required source
field. This doesn't help us meet the legal requirements for fair use
images, so I think Andre's form is the basic outline we have to work
from. Improvements are welcome, but the longer we delay, the bigger the
backlog of inadequately documented images.

The text of the instructions given to uploaders, and the choice of which
licenses to accept, are separate policy issues. There's no need to
debate those just to get this form implemented.

I saw a couple reports of minor appearance issues with Andre's form,
apparently browser-specific:

>Mit Opera 7.20 ?berlappt das Bild und Teile der Navigationsleiste
>den Text:
>
>http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/~ebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif <http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/%7Eebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif>
>
A little bit of testing should be able to iron out these problems.

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] New upload form

body:
Sj wrote:

>This looks great!  Now we just need to have the form's text factored into
>separate site-specific messages and translated for other WPs... I don't
>know of a good place to announce such translation needs, so I created
>a section for it at [[meta:Translators#Translation Requests]].  Comments on that
>translation template would be appreciated.
>
>Must there be a vote before this can be implemented?  Has anyone
>suggested we not implement such a form?
>
Nobody on wikide-l has objected to the idea of having a form, and the
response there was generally quite positive. Given the need for a form
that requires source and license information, I haven't heard any
objections to the basic idea and I'm not sure what reasonable objections
there could be. If somebody wants to call a vote, they're welcome to,
but I would say we already have a consensus on that much.

As to the exact details of the form, those can be worked out in our
usual collaborative way. Somebody else later mentioned a model they had
been working on (http://www.rainerzenz.de/wikitest.html), which has a
radio button to choose GFDL or public domain, but no required source
field. This doesn't help us meet the legal requirements for fair use
images, so I think Andre's form is the basic outline we have to work
from. Improvements are welcome, but the longer we delay, the bigger the
backlog of inadequately documented images.

The text of the instructions given to uploaders, and the choice of which
licenses to accept, are separate policy issues. There's no need to
debate those just to get this form implemented.

I saw a couple reports of minor appearance issues with Andre's form,
apparently browser-specific:

>Mit Opera 7.20 ?berlappt das Bild und Teile der Navigationsleiste
>den Text:
>
>http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/~ebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif <http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/%7Eebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif>
>
A little bit of testing should be able to iron out these problems.

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] New upload form

body:
Sj wrote:

>This looks great!  Now we just need to have the form's text factored into
>separate site-specific messages and translated for other WPs... I don't
>know of a good place to announce such translation needs, so I created
>a section for it at [[meta:Translators#Translation Requests]].  Comments on that
>translation template would be appreciated.
>
>Must there be a vote before this can be implemented?  Has anyone
>suggested we not implement such a form?
>
Nobody on wikide-l has objected to the idea of having a form, and the
response there was generally quite positive. Given the need for a form
that requires source and license information, I haven't heard any
objections to the basic idea and I'm not sure what reasonable objections
there could be. If somebody wants to call a vote, they're welcome to,
but I would say we already have a consensus on that much.

As to the exact details of the form, those can be worked out in our
usual collaborative way. Somebody else later mentioned a model they had
been working on (http://www.rainerzenz.de/wikitest.html), which has a
radio button to choose GFDL or public domain, but no required source
field. This doesn't help us meet the legal requirements for fair use
images, so I think Andre's form is the basic outline we have to work
from. Improvements are welcome, but the longer we delay, the bigger the
backlog of inadequately documented images.

The text of the instructions given to uploaders, and the choice of which
licenses to accept, are separate policy issues. There's no need to
debate those just to get this form implemented.

I saw a couple reports of minor appearance issues with Andre's form,
apparently browser-specific:

>Mit Opera 7.20 ?berlappt das Bild und Teile der Navigationsleiste
>den Text:
>
>http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/~ebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif <http://www.math.hu-berlin.de/%7Eebermann/vikipedio/upload-formular.gif>
>
A little bit of testing should be able to iron out these problems.

--Michael Snow
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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Just out of curiosity, how will the GPS co-ordinates differ in the
>Galileo system from the existing system?  I assume that the two can be
>easily converted back and forth, or that the numbers are the same for
>both?
>
>If the numbers differ, we should accept both, so the markup should
>have the ability to distinguish.  It'd be a shame if I took my GPS
>receiver (which uses the existing system) to get a location, but could
>not enter it.  It would be equally a shame if someone took a Galileo
>system out in a few years and could not easily enter that as well.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
Both Galileo and the GPS use the International Terrestrial Reference
System as their reference frame, and TAI as their reference timescale.
They then derive their own realizations of these idealized systems using
their own infrastructure.
Although the Galileo and GPS realizations of the ITRS and TAI will be
independent, they should match to within a resolution of a few
centimeters or nanoseconds respectively, and so should be effectively
interchangeable for most low-resolution use.

See
http://www.galileosworld.com/galileosworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=75619&pageID=6
and http://www.iers.org/iers/earth/itrs/itrs.html for more details.

-- Neil


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Simonides is out of control.

body:
We have a serious problem with a new user, Simonides. The
man is out of control. On multiple articles Simonides has
attempted to take ownership of articles. He then attacks
many other contributors with ad homenim attacks, slanders
them, reverts all of their edits, deletes large chunks of
texts from articles, and then refuses to engage in any
productive discussions on the talk page.

Steve Rubenstein, Jayjg, I and others have repeatedly tried
to explain the NPOV policy to him, and tried to explain
that articles evolve by consensu. He responds by childish
remarks and reverts.

Simonides has damaged the consensus reached by many
contributors on the Philosophy article. Trying to avoid a
confrontation, I kept 90% of his overhaul, and made only
minor edits and minor additions...and he began a revert war
and falsely accused me of vandalism.

He has repeatedly demonstrated the same behaviour towards
many other users. Steve Rubenstein repeatedly tried to
reason with Simonides, but Simonides rebuffed all
communication, and launched into ad homenim attacks such as
"It is impossible to work with people who adopt such a
juvenile approach. Slrubenstein, you don't seem to have the
faintest idea of what is going on."

Simonides has damaged articles on anti-Semitism,
anti-Zionism, and philosophy, and refused to follow the
consensus, and disparaged NPOV policy. Bizarrely, he keeps
shoving in Muslim and Christian religious apologetics into
articles with have nothing to do with the subject.

While many people with different ideas have been able to
work together to come to a consensus on all three of these
difficult topics (anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and
philosophy) Simonides alone has wreaked such havoc in
recent days that we are at a loss for what to do.

I suggest talking to Jayjg about this issue; he has been
abused more than the rest of us. When Jayjg patiently
explained for the tenth time what NPOV policy was, and why
certain edits were made, Simonides angrilly replied "Do you
even stop to consider what you're saying before typing a
string of hot air remarks you can't even back up?"  He
simply makes no effort to work with anyone, and uses
bullying to force POV edits to articles that otherwise have
reached a wide consensus. That is a horrible precedent.

In the past, such behaviour was reason enough for a one
week ban, with a warning that a similar ban will follow if
the person refuses to change their behaviour.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Solution ?] [ 983680 ] username starting with :

body:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:26:45 -0400
Robert Fries <phpscripter at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 21:16:41 +0200, Emmanuel Engelhart
> <emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:
> > So it forbids the creation of new accounts with a login starting with ":"
> > But the problem stays with created accounts, an idea ?
>
> How many existing accounts are affected by this?  The answer may help
> determine the best solution ...
>

I don't know,  I'm not a wikipedia administrator.   But my opinion is,
that on  the way  to prevent further  badformed login  registrations ;
this patch should be applied...

Emmanuel Engelhart

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'experience a fait remarquer que, dans les pays ou les peines sont
douces, l'esprit du citoyen en est frapp?, comme il l'est ailleurs
par les grandes.     Montesquieu, "de l'esprit des lois" livre VI/XII
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Pretty fun, yeah, but we need mapping support in Wikipedia for that to happen:
>* People need some feedback or they won't work on geographical data.
>  Numbers are boring.
>* Feedback is needed to see if the data is correct. It's very easy to make
>  a typo when typing numbers and if the result isn't presented on some
>  kind of map, it's highly unlikely that somebody would correct it.
>
>

IF the GEO coordinate links to a special page, then this page could link
to/show a mapquest map around that point, among other things. Or should
we use such a map image which links to the special apge (like
thumbnails)? That should be at least *some* feedback.

And for missing geography data: How about wikipedition (wikipedia
expedition) to collect that data? Imagine: Thousands of wikipedians all
over the world emerging from their basements, roaming streets,
shorelines, walking along rivers and climbing mountains, their GPS
receivers in one hand, the data-logging laptop in the other, to discover
new life and new civilizations, to boldly wander where no geek has
wandered before ;-)
And they could take pictures for wikimedia commons while they're at it!

Magnus


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered to have
	discovered Wikipedia!

body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
> > Not 'practitioners', but the organisation itself. That's different.
>
> I recently told a reporter that representatives of the Chinese
> government are welcome to edit zh.wikipedia.org if they like.  I think
> we can extend the same courtesy to representatives of the Church of
> Scientology.
>
> Of course, as with any highly ideological and controversial topic, a
> careful approach to NPOV is warranted.  Particularly given the fact
> that many Scientologists feel that they have been portrayed unfairly
> in the media, I think they will welcome the chance to participate in a
> truely neutral forum.
>
Knowing where David is coming from, I understand his wariness; it is to
his credit that he asked for a sanity check concerning his disagreement
with this contributor. The CoS does not want equal time to explain their
POV -- unless you define "equal time" as meaning "we're the only ones
who can speak on this topic."

I took a look at the latest contributions said Wikipedian made to
[[Scientology]], & felt that there wasn't anything deceptive in what was
contributed -- although I removed a couple of links because I sincerely felt
that they were unneeded. (The material they linked to would offer the
discerning reader an accurate accessment to the beenfits of the teachings
of L. Ron Hubbard; however, I would much prefer to listen to the sermons
of one specific gay minister ordained by the Church of the Nazarine.)

> Of course, just as with Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Catholics,
> Jews, Athiests, whatever, there is the chance that overly partisan
> people may have a rough emotional time of it.  But we can proceed with
> professionalism and love in all cases, towards a solid outcome.
>
I dunno. This is an organization that managed to go toe-to-toe with the
IRS & win a questionable case concerning tax exemptions, simply thru
brute force. Their continued struggle against alt.religion.scientology
is not only legendary, but instructive: I'd be happier if Wikipedia had
mirrors in the Netherlands & other European countries before any of us
smiled & said "bring them on."

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:33:38PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> IF the GEO coordinate links to a special page, then this page could link
> to/show a mapquest map around that point, among other things. Or should
> we use such a map image which links to the special apge (like
> thumbnails)? That should be at least *some* feedback.
>
> And for missing geography data: How about wikipedition (wikipedia
> expedition) to collect that data? Imagine: Thousands of wikipedians all
> over the world emerging from their basements, roaming streets,
> shorelines, walking along rivers and climbing mountains, their GPS
> receivers in one hand, the data-logging laptop in the other, to discover
> new life and new civilizations, to boldly wander where no geek has
> wandered before ;-)
> And they could take pictures for wikimedia commons while they're at it!

Some of the data is easy to enter - locations of cities etc.
Other is pretty difficult - like exact shapes of borders and rivers.
Unfortunatelly it's the latter kind where the gaps are largest.


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:04:05 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>To answer a few lingering Google-ad Q's -- if Google thinks it's being gamed
>by clickthroughs from your site, it can shut off your account.  It also retains
>the ability to freeze your Google-ad account balance if it thinks you
>or your site visitors have been gaming it, iirc.

Indeed it does.

Has anyone contacted Google to see what they think of opt-in
adverts? I think they might break the AdServe terms of service, in
that Google might see opt-in as encouraging people to click on the
ads to make money for Wikipedia, not because people are interested
in the ads.

However, Wikipedia is quite a high-traffic website, which would
probably give it a reasonable level of clout in any negotiations
with Google.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:18:39 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>By the way, has anyone done any car/window stickers for wikipedia?
>Donate $10, get a sticker. Put it on your car or bathroom window,
>give it to a friend, whatever.

Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?

I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
> On  wikipedia  the  MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT  limit (=5)  in  Parser.php  is
> problematic.  I  propose to  change the sens  of this  constraint from
> "max template inclusions" to "max different template inclusions".
>
> To  solve the  memory  usage problem,  we  could use  a tempory  table
> containing the previously loaded templates  in the article ?  So, each
> template replicated x  time in an article would  generate only one SQL
> request.
>
> An opinion ?
>
> Emmanuel Engelhart
>

Please understand "I  propose to  change the sens" as "I  propose to  change the meaning".

Is there already a plan to remove this constraint ?

-- Looxix


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
Sheldon Rampton schrieb:

> I think we're talking about more than "a few cents from Google ads."

I was talking about revenues from the suggested opt-in ads, sorry if that wasn't
clear.

> Of all the advertising I've seen on the web, the Google ads are the most
> tasteful and least intrusive.

I can second that. If we want ads, then we should use Google for that.

> As for the value of the ability to tell journalists that Wikipedia is
> completely free of advertising, what value is that exactly?

It's mostly about credibility. They don't have to ask me "is there really no one
in the background making money with the site?" and "do the ads really not
influence what people write on Wikipedia?". There are no ads - it's that easy at
the moment.

And of course a new visitor would ask the same questions. Lesser people will
write articles or donate money with every bit of credibility we loose. There
will be "clean" forks the very next day after the implementation of ads.

It might be worth it in the future, the sums Jimbo is talking about are really
tempting because you could do so much good with them. But I'm very sceptic. It's
good that we don't have to decide on this in the near future.

> As far as credibility with journalists is concerned, the issues are:
> [...]

You're right, I guess, but this is less about hard facts but more about the
spirit in the community (of authors and readers). The project *will* change
significantly with the introduction of ads, and if you sum up all the effects
and new possibilities I don't know if it's more for the good or the bad.

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad HTML:

in_reply_to:
<40F594F6.1000501@easynet.be> (Luc Van Oostenryck's message of
	"Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:17:58 +0200")

body:
Please stop generating sequences as follows
(<URL:http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin>):

If vertical whitespace is required (why?), use CSS properties.
Unfortunately, browsers do not treat those sequences as empty...

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


body:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:08:08 +0200
Emmanuel Engelhart <emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:

> On  wikipedia  the  MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT  limit (=5)  in  Parser.php  is
> problematic.  I  propose to  change the sens  of this  constraint from
> "max template inclusions" to "max different template inclusions".
>
> To  solve the  memory  usage problem,  we  could use  a tempory  table
> containing the previously loaded templates  in the article ?  So, each
> template replicated x  time in an article would  generate only one SQL
> request.
>
> An opinion ?
>

As Attachment, a very simple patch which implements this idea.

Emmanuel Engelhart

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sit?t que les hommes sont en soci?t?, ils perdent le sentiment de
leur faiblesse ; l'?galit? qui ?tait en eux cesse, et l'?tat de
guerre commence.      Montesquieu, "de l'esprit des lois" livre I/III
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31
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body:
I've lost my Wikipedia password.

Is there any way of getting back into my account, perhaps having
Wikipedia mail me a new password?

My user name is Cabalamat

(Yes, I know I should have taken better care of my password. I'm
bad at remembering passwords, so I wite them all down in a book.
Unfortunately, I lost the book.)

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Category:Stub

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

> Where is this preference? prefsection-6 is time zone settings for me.

He meant "Threshold for stub display:", which is in prefsection-7.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Category:Stub

body:
Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa wrote:

> 	In Category:Stub thread was suggested to make limit for
> 	displaying stubs preferenceable, and
> 	Especial:Preferences#prefsection-6  now has an option for that.
> 	But  Category:Stub  still shows 15694 entries....

No, there is no option for that. You are thinking of "Threshold for stub
display", but that does something different. Please read
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide:_Setting_preferences#E-mail.2C_search.2C_etc.

Timwi


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:58:20PM +0200, Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:08:08 +0200
> Emmanuel Engelhart <emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:
>
> > On  wikipedia  the  MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT  limit (=5)  in  Parser.php  is
> > problematic.  I  propose to  change the sens  of this  constraint from
> > "max template inclusions" to "max different template inclusions".
> >
> > To  solve the  memory  usage problem,  we  could use  a tempory  table
> > containing the previously loaded templates  in the article ?  So, each
> > template replicated x  time in an article would  generate only one SQL
> > request.
> >
> > An opinion ?
> >
>
> As Attachment, a very simple patch which implements this idea.

If article [[X]] includes [[Template:A]] which includes [[Template:B]],
which again includes [[Template:A]], this would result in a memory
bomb using only two different templates.

Caching templates is a good idea when keeping track of the used
memory. Before we do so, the number of templates used must currently be
restricted to avoid endless loops.

Regards,

	JeLuF


body:
phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> I've lost my Wikipedia password...

A developer can enter your email address into your user preferences so
you will be able to email yourself a new password.

There is a new page on Meta for such requests to be made to
developers. Please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-development_tasks_for_developers.

Angela.


from_name: Simonides of Ceos

subject: [WikiEN-l] Context

body:
Someone sent an alert about a message that had to do with me, and I was not too surprised to read another wave of flatulence from a master baiter. I do not wish to waste much time on this pathetic, tortured little creature who calls himself RK, who finds his daily redemption in mountains of lies, slander, stalking people (like me) from article to article, instigating trouble, and who takes pride in being a charlatan (by making edits to articles he does not have the faintest idea about, ex. Philosophy), a victim (re: his almost daily accusations of anti-Semitism), and a fraudulent crusader (re: his daily strawman attacks, ex. "Muslim and Christian apologetics", which have nothing to do with me but are a reference to a passage, written by someone else, that RK kept deleting for no reason and I merely restored.) But I don't want to depress anyone reading this nonsensical material for the nth time - surely some of you share my amusement when RK calls people on NPOV, RK who keeps leaving
 "Nazipedia" but for some reason doesn't fail to return to throw mud at even more people, who deletes anything he doesn't like without explanation or discussion, then wails "censorship!" and "no discussion!" when his versions are rebuffed and no one replies to his screeds; who, hilariously, wrote yesterday that "The only criticism that we should have, or link to, is encyclopedia scholarly criticis" - this from a regular spammer of flotsam!

For anyone who wishes to understand the difference between my "out of control" edits and the extremely careful edits of RK and co., here are some links, which contain further links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/RK2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation#User:Simonides_and_User:Jayjg.2C_User:RK.2C_User:Humus_sapiens_.2B_others

One of the pages that is not linked above is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy, which had to be protected because the little worm started following me around today (I spent a long time making extensive edits to the article last night, which fellow contributors were more or less fine with), also making an appearance at an article I created earlier and corrected yesterday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Possible_crisis_in_Western_publishing . If a user could be banned on grounds of harrassment, I believe RK would have been kicked out a while ago.

Anyway, I'm off, but I AM sorry that you all have to be exposed to such banalities, and I hope the rest of your day is more interesting.

---------------------------------
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Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Category:Stub

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 11:32:42AM -0300, Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa wrote:
> 	In Category:Stub thread was suggested to make limit for
> 	displaying stubs preferenceable, and
> 	Especial:Preferences#prefsection-6  now has an option for that.
> 	But  Category:Stub  still shows 15694 entries....
>
> 	Maybe this is not a bug; maybe this was not programmed yet... Or
> 	programmer is still awaiting for a definition in what should be done
> 	to stub category... But i think is still better limit that page than
> 	show so many entries, while a better solution isnt defined here.
>
> 	And forgive for saying what (i think) should be programmed instead
> 	program it, i dont have (yet) knowledgement enough in
> 	mediawiki database schema to do such modification (i'm new around)...

Hi,

Where is this preference? prefsection-6 is time zone settings for me.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Galileo and others

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
>> Pretty fun, yeah, but we need mapping support in Wikipedia for that
>> to happen:
>> * People need some feedback or they won't work on geographical data.
>>  Numbers are boring.
>> * Feedback is needed to see if the data is correct. It's very easy to
>> make
>>  a typo when typing numbers and if the result isn't presented on some
>>  kind of map, it's highly unlikely that somebody would correct it.
>
> IF the GEO coordinate links to a special page, then this page could
> link to/show a mapquest map around that point, among other things. Or
> should we use such a map image which links to the special apge (like
> thumbnails)? That should be at least *some* feedback.
>
> And for missing geography data: How about wikipedition (wikipedia
> expedition) to collect that data? Imagine: Thousands of wikipedians
> all over the world emerging from their basements, roaming streets,
> shorelines, walking along rivers and climbing mountains, their GPS
> receivers in one hand, the data-logging laptop in the other, to
> discover new life and new civilizations, to boldly wander where no
> geek has wandered before ;-)
> And they could take pictures for wikimedia commons while they're at it!

Once a basic map format is adopted, this project will develop
incrementally to a level consistent with the scale of map being edited.
We should not expect that everything should be submitted at once.
Features can be added later in a Wiki way if it's easy enough for people
to it.  We can start with a set of basic one degree blank rectangles
that fill a significant portion of the users screen.  Some essential
features can be added at this scale.  Perhaps the very first question
might be so simple as. "Is this land or water?"  A mid-ocean rectangle
is not likely to get much attention, but there would be nothing
preventing anybody from adding undersea features.  A one degree
rectangle can be divided to a finer scale for more detailed features.

One interesting site for pictures is at the Degree Confluence Project
http://www.confluence.org/  Their idea is to create a series of pictures
at each degree intersection.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Help! I've lost my Wikipedia password!

body:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 17:58:35 -0500, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:12:48 +0100, phil hunt <zen19725 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
>> I've lost my Wikipedia password.
>>
>> Is there any way of getting back into my account, perhaps having
>> Wikipedia mail me a new password?
>>
>> My user name is Cabalamat
>>
>> (Yes, I know I should have taken better care of my password. I'm
>> bad at remembering passwords, so I wite them all down in a book.
>> Unfortunately, I lost the book.)
>
>If you had entered an email address in your settings (or when you
>registered), all you have to do is go to the login page
>([[Special:Userlogin]]), enter your username, and ask for a password
>to be mailed to you.

I tried that, and it didn't work, so I guess I didn't enter an email
address when creating the account.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Escaping backticks?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Bill Clark wrote:
>
>> I just encountered an interesting problem.  The article on Michael
>> Moore mentions Front Row Entertainment, Fahrenheit 9/11's UAE
>> distributor.
>>
>> How do I italicize "Fahrenheit 9/11" without italicizing the "s" in
>> the possessive (since that's not properly part of the title)?
>
>
> ''Fahrenheit 9/11''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s
>
> Yeah, it's ugly, but there's no way to cleanly work around it with the
> '' and ''' syntaxes short of special-casing /\S'''s/ and similar.

We would not normally encourage HTML for italics but I just tried
''Fahrenheit 9/11</i>'s and that works too.
Hmm! Amazing that a technical dunce could come up with a solution. =-O
Ec


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Wednesday 14 July 2004 23:03, Mark Richards wrote:
> much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones that
> do get more action get checked more. It's the ones
> that noone ever sees that concern me most. The edit

Unrelated to the topic, but this gave me a thought. How many articles there
are which are not on anyone's watchlist? Should'nt be so hard to determine. I
think that the results will be either surprising or frightening.


body:
On Wednesday 14 July 2004 18:32, Charles Matthews wrote:
> Ed Poor wrote
>
> >I think we should incorporate Robert (RK)'s ideas about historical
> context into the [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]] article.
>
> You do realise that any orthodox Serb nationalist would feel that the
> Milosevic trial is in the context of the [[Battle of Kosovo]], 1389?

I know some Orthodox Serb nationalists and can assure you that they would feel
that the context is quite weak; it probably wouldn't deserve more than a
sentence or two.

Now, the trial has its place in the context of the [[Great Schism]]. This
would probably deserve much greater degree of coverage.


subject: Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Multiple categories

body:
On Wednesday 14 July 2004 13:06, Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa wrote:
> > Category:Female/Catholic,Protestant/Saint
>
> Why not Category:Female,Catholic,Protestant,Saints ??? This way, we could
> order Categories by several ways:
> Category:Saints lists all category of Saints
> Category:Female lists all category of Females
> Category:Female/Saints is the same as Category:Saints/Female

Yes, that is what already exists. I was proposing a future extension:

Category:Saint/Pope would return all Popes who are also saints
Category:Pope,Patriarch would return all Popes and Patriarchs
Category:Saint/Pope,Patriarch would return all saints who were Popes or
Patriarchs
etc.

By the way, what happened to this patch?


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Solution ?] [ 967833 ] Only first five template
 inclusions work

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
>
> Caching templates is a good idea when keeping track of the used
> memory. Before we do so, the number of templates used must currently be
> restricted to avoid endless loops.

The number of templates on a page does not need to be restricted in
order to avoid endless loops within templates.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Slight problem with mediawiki-cvs list

references:
<cd1pbl$6bt$2@sea.gmane.org> <cd1pfg$6bt$3@sea.gmane.org>
	<cd4hu0$3b3$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki.cvs
>> now exists as a mirror to the mediawiki-cvs list. :)
>
> Maybe the reply-to for g.o.w.mediawiki.cvs should be set to the
> technical list ( gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical ) ?

It is.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Solution ?] [ 967833 ] Only first five
	template inclusions work

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:23:20 +0200, Jens Frank <jeluf at gmx.de> wrote:

> Emmanuel and I have tested it: It is vulnerable to this approach.

Then it's implemented wrong.  The idea Emmanuel described (keeping
track of which templates have already been included so as to keep from
including them again) should work.  I can't tell from looking at the
patch what the problem might be, but there must be some silly mistake
we're not seeing.  Is the "temporary table" a bit too temporary,
maybe?

I just downloaded the phase3 code (I'd been using the 1.2.6 stable
release) and am poking through it now... not that I'm probably going
to be able to make heads or tails of it all for quite some time still
(not really my style of coding, and I still have such a poor grasp of
the "big picture" here with how most of the modules interface with
each other).

-Bill Clark


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Solution ?] [ 967833 ] Only first five template
	inclusions work

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 15:50:53 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> That's what we already do. MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT is a maximum for
> inclusions of a given template, there's no limit on the number of
> different templates included. So if A included B and B included A, you'd
> get 5 copies of each: A->B->A->B->A->B->A->B->A->B->link to A.

I thought Emmanuel was suggesting that A and B each only be included once.

> This is unacceptable because people want to use templates for things
> which are included many times in a single page, like superscript "Le" on
> fr, or fancy bullet points.

Ah.  I see.  So what I thought Emmanuel was suggesting wouldn't be any
good anyway.

-Bill Clark


body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 15:50:53 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> This is unacceptable because people want to use templates for things
> which are included many times in a single page, like superscript "Le" on
> fr, or fancy bullet points.

How about a MAX_INCLUDE_DEPTH then, instead?

-Bill Clark


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki.cvs
> now exists as a mirror to the mediawiki-cvs list. :)

hello Timwi,

Great :o)

Maybe the reply-to for g.o.w.mediawiki.cvs should be set to the
technical list ( gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical ) ?

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Escaping backticks?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 08:21:09 +0200, Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmx.net> wrote:

> '''chu'wI'''''e' or <b>chu'wI'</b>'e'.)

...and you kiss your mother with that mouth?  For shame.  :)

-Bill Clark


body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:11:16 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The vulnerability with inclusion was pointed out when we had a
> hard-coded maximum depth of 1. As I explained in a comment in the source
> file:
>
> #----------------------------------------
> #    Variable substitution O(N^2) attack
> #-----------------------------------------
> # Without countermeasures, it would be possible to attack the parser by
> saving a page
> # filled with a large number of inclusions of large pages. The size of
> the generated
> # page would be proportional to the square of the input size. Hence, we
> limit the number
> # of inclusions of any given page, thus bringing any attack back to O(N).
> #

Hmm.. the problem would seem insurmountable then (barring some sort of
checking on the size of includes, which seems like more trouble than
its worth).

Oh well.

-Bill Clark


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Passing through

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>>Did I miss you passing through NYC/Boston?
>
>
> Possibly you meant this as a private note to me?
>
> Anyhow, this is a good excuse for me to hype the Boston meeting:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Boston
>
> This will be the first large-scale meeting of Wikipedians in the
> United States.  We had sizeable meetings in London, Berlin, Munich,
> and Genoa, and smaller but still important meetings in Frankfort and
> Vienna.

Paris perhaps ? Or was it a dream ?