from_name: Chris Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google search

body:
Hi,

In the "not found" screen ("No page with this exact title
exists, trying full text search. Well, I would be trying a full text
search here... Google and run a search on
site:wikipedia.org -- the results will be outdated and
incomplete, though.") wouldn't it be much friendlier to send
the user directly to the following link?  I think I copied this
from the old search or "not found" screen:

http://www.google.com/custom?
sa=Google+Search&domains=wikipedia.org&sitesearch=
wikipedia.org

Regards,
 Harris7


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Whitelist mode for article viewing

body:
Matthias-
> I know it's a bold move but I want to propose a whitelist mode for
> article viewing. This is a feature that is most useful for Wikis with a
> closed user base. My implementation takes only few lines in Article.php
> and a new global config variable. Default action is - as usual - that
> everybody on this planet (or more precisely: in this net) can view
> everything. If the feature is turned on, only logged in users are able
> to view articles.

Instead of forcing people to log in, I would prefer a small box below the
edit window for anons:

If you were logged in, your edit would be attributed, and you could change
your [[Wikipedia:User preferences help|preferences]].

Username:                 Password:              [log in and save]
Password repeat:          Email:                 [create an account
                                                  and save]

But I have no objection to making the whitelist a sitewide option.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories

body:
After a brief vacation, I'm back online now, and have already fixed my buggy category implementation (in the CVS and at the test site).

Any serious objection to turn that function on with the next update (currently, en only)?

Magnus


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
on 8/6/03 2:00 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge at telus.net wrote:

>> (for 1 year) during which we came from nothing (internet speaking), broke
>> into the top 10,100 and have rapidly risen to the 1,493th most used site.
>> Projecting the rate of change we will soon be in the top 1000.
>>
> Today's spike has at at #1,057!
>
> Ec

Yes today we passed ibiblio.org.

Fred


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 05:06:09AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> But a little bit of code, I don't see much harm, but I do see a lot of
> potential benefit.

As far as I understood, he wants per-article entry of who is allowed
to read an article, what is going to need one database query on every view,
and slow down things a lot.


from_name: Matthias Jordan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Whitelist mode for article viewing

body:
Hi, folks!

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> As far as I understood, he wants per-article entry of who is allowed
> to read an article, what is going to need one database query on every view,

No, no. Not by far. I just love Phase3 and want to use it for a closed
community. So I want to ensure:

+ Only community insiders can read articles
+ Only community insiders can edit/create articles
+ Only certain people are allowed to become insiders.

A per-article ACL feature would be increadibly bloated and I wouldn't
even know what benefits it could have.

Bye!

Matthias


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] CNN video clip?

body:
Jimmy-
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> I notice there's also some sort of video clip, but I think you have to pay
>> them money or something (in addition to installing RealPlayer, which may
>> not be to your liking).

> If anyone out there has access to this and wants to send me a copy,
> under the principles of fair use, of course, I would really enjoy
> watching it.

I've put a temporary copy on

http://www.scireview.de/wiki/techwatch.wmv

I will remove it in a few days for bandwidth reasons.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] [OT] HTTpd authentication

body:
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
> In my experience, if I follow a link into a subpage in the protected
> directory rather than the index page (where my browser does store the
> login) or if I follow an URL which includes the user/pass (as I might in a
> bookmark) then if I follow any link from that first page I have to log in a
> second time. This happens on several browsers.

Well, I've never seen that happen.

Here, I've put a couple other pages into one of my Safari bug test pages
at work. Try:

http://www.scec.org/safaribugdemo/somefile.html

with username "username" and password "password", then click on the other
links.

Safari 1.0: works fine
IE 5.2/Mac: works fine
Mozilla Firebird 0.61: works fine
Mozilla 1.4: works fine
Netscape 4.77: works fine
lynx 2.8.4rel.1: works fine
Konqueror 3.1.1: works fine
Amaya 7.1: works fine
IE 5.0/Win: works fine

Having told each browser to store the password, quit and come back to same
page:

Safari 1.0: works transparently
IE 5.2/Mac: remembers the values, but brings up filled-out dialog box on
first visit back, you have to hit OK. After that links to other pages are
transparent.
Mozilla Firebird 0.61: same -- filled-out dialog on first page, then
transparent
Mozilla 1.4: same -- filled-out dialog on first page, then transparent
Opera 6.02: similar; you have to hit "get from keychain" to fill out the
dialog box, hit ok; other pages then transparent

IE 5.0/Win: I was unable to get this to save passwords, but it may be
disabled elsewhere in the configuration.

The following don't seem to allow saving passwords, so you have to type it
in once for each browser session:
Netscape 4.77
lynx 2.8.4rel.1
Konqueror 3.1.1

Try revisiting at the index page (http://www.scec.org/safaribugdemo/)
instead of a named page:

Same behavior as the named page:
Safari 1.0
IE 5.2/Mac*
Mozilla Firebird 0.61
Mozilla 1.4

Not quite the same:
Opera 6.02: 'get from keychain' comes up with the wrong user/password
pair. It's unclear what it would do if I didn't have a stored password for
another section of the site.

* Another note on IE 5.2/Mac: it doesn't seem to be able to distinguish
between different realms on the same server. If you save a
username/password pair for one realm, it offers the same pair when
visiting a separate password-protected part of the server. If you then
save that pair, it offers up the new pair the next time you visit either
realm. So, you can apparently only store one set per server with this
browser.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Jimmy-
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>> If it's copyrighted by anyone living in Europe, European laws apply.

> European laws apply in Europe.  They have no impact on me.

Continental European copyright law cannot be transferred, only a subset of
usage rights can be. This very much applies to you if you intend to
distribute material to European readers under legally valid terms. The FSF
Europe has come up with a special agreement for Europeans to transfer
usage rights (instead of copyright) to the GNU project, called the
"Fiduciary License Agreement":

http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/index.en.html

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugs/features on the Hindi Wikipedia

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

> Something else again. This should show a list of all articles, isn't ?
> http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki.cgi?action=Index

This URL looks like an old Phase-I URL. :-)

What you are referring to is
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B7:Allpages

This would normally list chunks of articles (see, for comparison, the
English one at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allpages). But
since the Hindi Wikipedia doesn't have that many articles yet, it's
showing just one such "chunk".

Thus, click on "1 ?????" to see a list of all your articles:
http://hi.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B7:Allpages&from=1_%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4

:-) Long URL.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 02:37:35PM +0200, Matthias Jordan wrote:
> Hi, folks!
>
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >As far as I understood, he wants per-article entry of who is allowed
> >to read an article, what is going to need one database query on every view,
>
> No, no. Not by far. I just love Phase3 and want to use it for a closed
> community. So I want to ensure:
>
> + Only community insiders can read articles
> + Only community insiders can edit/create articles
> + Only certain people are allowed to become insiders.
>
> A per-article ACL feature would be increadibly bloated and I wouldn't
> even know what benefits it could have.

Wouldn't a simple basic authentication for the server also serve your
purpose?

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] CIA Factbook Slurping

in_reply_to:
<878yq8wbs7.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us> (Evan
 Prodromou's message of "Tue, 05 Aug 2003 08:04:40 -0400")

body:
>>>>> "EP" == Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> writes:

    EP> Back to my original question: does someone have existing code
    EP> to slurp the Factbook?

Ep -- too late. B-) I'm done. Thanks for help from everyone.

~ESP

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


body:
On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 03:38:11PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 02:37:35PM +0200, Matthias Jordan wrote:
> > Hi, folks!
> >
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >
> > >As far as I understood, he wants per-article entry of who is allowed
> > >to read an article, what is going to need one database query on every view,
> >
> > No, no. Not by far. I just love Phase3 and want to use it for a closed
> > community. So I want to ensure:
> >
> > + Only community insiders can read articles
> > + Only community insiders can edit/create articles
> > + Only certain people are allowed to become insiders.
> >
> > A per-article ACL feature would be increadibly bloated and I wouldn't
> > even know what benefits it could have.
>
> Wouldn't a simple basic authentication for the server also serve your
> purpose?

That's more or less what I meant. If it doesn't use Wikipedia-specific
information about user accounts and articles, then httpd is much better
suited for it. If it uses these information, it will cause huge bloat.
So either way it's not good idea to add such code to codebase.


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
Someone with an axe to grind keeps inserting POV stuff into
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bradford and accusing anyone who makes
any changes/reverts of being a 'liar'. Personally I've never even heard of
Easter Bradford, but could somebody else cast an eye on this before I get
drawn into an edit war about something I couldn't even care less about?

Cheers Graham


body:
Hi, folks!

Jens Frank wrote:

>>No, no. Not by far. I just love Phase3 and want to use it for a closed
>>community. So I want to ensure:
[...]
> Wouldn't a simple basic authentication for the server also serve your
> purpose?

You mean .htaccess style authentication? Basically, yes, but the
.htaccess scheme has some disadvantages: it requires two layers of
authentication for the user (which is quite annoying) and requires
authentication credentials to be maintained at two different places
(which is also quite annoying). Especially if the community that is
employing the Wiki is non-technophile (to say the least).

Bye!

Matthias


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

body:
Alex R. (WIAL!) wrote:

>Would not it be more expedient to ask for a non-exclusive general license
>to be transferred to Wikimedia Foundation

As our pro bono lawyer, we'll trust you about the right way to phrase it.
If "non-exclusive general license" is right, then let's do that!

>such a non-exclusive license would
>be vast enough to allow the original author to do whatever else they want
>with their work

Good, we want this.

>while giving Wikimedia enough power to prevent infringement by third parties and
>to create any variations of open source licenses or copyleft licences in the
>future.

Good, we want this too.

-- Toby


body:
Hi, folks!

I wrote:

> Totaling less than 70 lines of code. Do you really want to fork a

... which I was afraid it could be a too optimistic figure. It turned
out I had to change the user account creation slightly for a better
handling. I introduced a new button "by eMail" directly next to "create
new account" that lets a logged in user create an account and
immediately send the password to the supplied eMail address. To
implement this, I had to rearrange some code for not having any
duplicate code in SpecialUserlogin.php. But, hey, the diff is still only
150 lines in size. :-)

Bye!

Matthias


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Andre Engels wrote:
> > No, check on the bottom of the page. 'Power users' can influence the number
> > of page views, but they hardly if at all influence the reach. Still,
> > Wikipedia's position in the reach listing is actually even better than its
> > position in the page view listing.
>
> How can we view the reach listing?

Just go down the page. First you see the graphic, then some books (sponsored
by amazon), then a list of subsites (wikipedia.org 76%, ja.wikipedia.org 4%,
de.wikipedia.org 3%, etcetera), and then two lists "Reach for wikipedia.org"
and "Page Views for wikipedia.org".

Currently the reach data for wikipedia.org are thus:
Today: 0.0845%, rank 1152
weekly average: 0.0575%, rank 1779
3 months average: 0.0412%, rank 2341

Page views:
Today: rank 1169
weekly average: rank 1907
3 months average: rank 2960

Andre Engels


body:
On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 04:13:28PM +0200, Matthias Jordan wrote:
> Hi, folks!
>
> Jens Frank wrote:
>
> >>No, no. Not by far. I just love Phase3 and want to use it for a closed
> >>community. So I want to ensure:
> [...]
> >Wouldn't a simple basic authentication for the server also serve your
> >purpose?
>
> You mean .htaccess style authentication? Basically, yes, but the
> .htaccess scheme has some disadvantages: it requires two layers of
> authentication for the user (which is quite annoying) and requires
> authentication credentials to be maintained at two different places
> (which is also quite annoying). Especially if the community that is
> employing the Wiki is non-technophile (to say the least).

You have access to auth data from cgi wikipedia script.
That seems like the right way.


subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Anonymous contributions

body:
LittleDan wrote:

>As a wikipedia author, why can't I relicence wikipedia
>content under the CC ATT-SA?

You can relicense what you write, in general.
So if you write a new article by scratch, OK.
But if you /edit/ an article, then what you've just written
was open to you only because the previous version was GNU FDL,
which requires you to license you new version only under the FDL too.

-- Toby


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!

body:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > This kind of situation does not lend itself very well to waiting until
> > we have the cash.  Encarta has a bit of an advantage in that department.
> > A purchase offer of $1.00 may be more appropriate if it's presented as
> > an offer which Safra's estate can't refuse.
> >
> > For interesting background reading see
> > http://www.businessweek.com/1997/42/b3549124.htm and
> > http://www.jewishsf.com/bk991210/obsafra.shtml
> >
> > Our offer also needs to maintain Wikipedia's philosophical integrity.
>
> It's a shame that Safra has died, because presumably his estate will
> have fiduciary responsibilities that would preclude any sort of OS
> gift to the world.  Safra might have been persuadable, from the point
> of view of charity, but his heirs, it's hard to predict.

Since I've only just heard of these people, I may be getting this wrong,
but it seems from what I've been reading that there are two different
Safras being discussed here. The chap who died in the fire was Edmond
Jacob Safra (August 6, 1931 or 1932 - December 3, 1999), while the chap
who bought the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is his nephew Jacob Safra (born
c. 1950), who as far as I can tell is still alive...

References:

The above two pages, and these ones:
* http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=367708
* http://www.adamdavidson.com/tencyc.html

Who wants to volunteer to do some more research and write biographical
articles for these people for the Wikipedia? :)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


body:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Oliver Pereira wrote:

> Since I've only just heard of these people, I may be getting this wrong,
> but it seems from what I've been reading that there are two different
> Safras being discussed here. The chap who died in the fire was Edmond
> Jacob Safra (August 6, 1931 or 1932 - December 3, 1999), while the chap
> who bought the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is his nephew Jacob Safra
> (born c. 1950), who as far as I can tell is still alive...

Sorry, I meant "c. 1960". The following article, dated March 1, 1998, says
that Jacob Safra is "supposed to be in his late 30s".

> * http://www.adamdavidson.com/tencyc.html

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Jtdirls fabrications and slander

body:
James Duffy, JTDIRL, has been causing problems on the
"State of Israel" article of late, because he refuses to
work with others in our Wikipedia peer-review. Instead of
working on the many Arab and Jewish refugee articles that
already exist, he keeps bypassing the peer-review by trying
to stuff his own biased statements into new articles.

When I noted this, he made personal attacks on me as
promoting "censorship". This is a violation of Wikipedia
protocol.  I have tried discussing this with him, and have
alerted members of this list about this incident.
Astonishingly, Jtdirl has decided to respond with total
frabrications. He is now screaming that I am accusing him
of anti-Semitism.  Huh?

Sure, it is wrong of Jtdirl (James Duffy) to do an end-run
around our peer-review, and for him to shove his POV essays
on this subject into other articles. And it is wrong for
him to falsely accuse me of "censoring" him, for the
"crime" of asking him to follow standard Wikipedia
protocol. But where does this have to do with
anti-Semitism?  Nowhere.

JTDIRL claims:
> Any attempt to add in /anything/ that is not pro-Israeli
> immediately leads to RK going ballistic and screaming
> anti-semitism.

That in of itself is false.  But more disturbing, Jtdirl
then starts mentioning something about the status of
Jerusalem, which has NOTHING to do with this topic. His
claims to the contrary are bald-faced lies. No one is
writing about Jerusalem. He is just making this up.  Jtdirl
just is in some sort of rage, because I AND a few others
have removed his POV essay and out of place statements in
the State of Israel article.

Sadly, though, his incoherent responses do come close to
Jew-baiting. Every time I disagree with him, he claims to
be the victim of false anti-Semitism charges...even though
the topic has nothing to do with Jews or anti-Semitism. He
seriously needs to lay of the Jews for a while. Seriously.

With concerns,

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Textbook-l] California history text standards

body:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/standards/history/

We're focussing on grades 9, 10, 11, and 12.

The titles of the content standards are:

Grade 9 -- no standards, schools are supposed to offer electives

Grade 10 -- World History, Culture, and Geography: The Modern World

Grade 11 -- United States History and Geography: Continuity and Change
in the Twentieth Century

Grade 12 -- Principles of American Democracy and Economics

I think it is pretty clear, and a conversation with LittleDan has
further convinced me, that our expertise lies best in Grade 10 --
World History, Culture, and Geography: The Modern World.

Here's the link:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/standards/history/grade10.html

and similar for Florida:
http://www.firn.edu/doe/curriculum/crscode/basic612/912/ss912/2109310.pdf

although the actual "Instructional Materials Specifications" for
Florida are apparently buried here:
http://www.firn.edu/doe/instmat/pdf/social_studies.pdf
(see page 189, which is Adobe page 198)

As you can see, these are detailed specifications, and we should
probably be able to write to it with a fair degree of success.

A "ToDo" list on this would include making sure that this is the right
document to work from, and also to look on the web to see if Texas
standards can be found as well.

And any other states or countries that anyone has a particular
interest in, of course.

(For example, are there published content standards for courses in
Australia and Great Britain, etc.?)

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: Anonymous contributions

in_reply_to: <20030805152331.93180.qmail@web41804.mail.yahoo.com>; from littledanehren@yahoo.com on Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 08:23:31AM -0700

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Is it in any way possible for us to have an agreement
> with eachother that says that we can use eachother's
> material? Would that be against the GPL?

This sticking points is not between us and them, but between thousands
of contributors and us or them.  Tons of stuff has been contributed
under the GNU FDL, and there's no easy way to get permission from
those people.

--Jimbo


body:
Alex R. wrote:
> It is ironic that these various licenses are incompatible with each
> other, maybe a simpler solution would be to have a very straightforward
> license like has been used commonly in areas where non-exclusive
> licensing is a commercial reality and just make sure that atribution
> is preserved (sort of like the moral rights approach of European
> copyright) isn't that what we all really want when we talk about
> open content?

Absolutely, except that now it is too late for Wikipedia.

If I were doing it all again with benefit of hindsight, I would have
setup wikipedia *from the start* to require everyone to contribute
under a disjunctive license that said, basically, people can
redistribute under the terms of the GNU FDL or any other content
license specifically approved by the FSF as free and copyleft.

--Jimbo


body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> Since I've only just heard of these people, I may be getting this wrong,
> but it seems from what I've been reading that there are two different
> Safras being discussed here. The chap who died in the fire was Edmond
> Jacob Safra (August 6, 1931 or 1932 - December 3, 1999), while the chap
> who bought the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is his nephew Jacob Safra (born
> c. 1950), who as far as I can tell is still alive...

Ah, this warrants further investigation, then.

Perhaps Jacob could get excited about much cheaper philanthropy to
generate a superior result.  He could close the operation of
Britannica, give the Wikimedia Foundation 1/10th of what he expects to
lose, and authorize us to use the name.

I'll be the new Mortimer Adler, it'll be fun.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] I really do wish I could talk to Jtdirl

body:
Jimbo writes:
> Robert, I really think you should moderate your tone,
> because I think that doing so will make your comments
> more effective.

In theory, I agree with you. However, I also agreed with
Jtdirl that these topics (Arab refugees and Jewish
refugees) should be discussed on Wikipedia. That's moderate
as well. I just was shocked by his false claims of
censorship. (Especially since we have more than three
articles discussing this subject!)

When we work together for months to whip articles into
decent shape, it seems inappropriate, and a violation of
Wikipedia policy, to do an end-run around them by starting
a new discussion on the same subject, pushing only Jtdirl's
point of view. I am not the only person who has pointed
this out.

Jimbo writes:
> Making a moral judgment in a case like this is likely to
> turn people off.  And, really, it runs a very strong
> risk of being _not true at all_.  It strikes me as more
> likely that jtdirl is mistaken, rather than actively
> dishonest.  Or that you are mistaken.

Ok, I agree; I could be mistaken. But Jtdirl refuses to
talk to me, so no conversation is possible. You saw for
yourself James Duffy's odd response to my points:

I said we *should* have articles on Arab refugees, but we
should no do an end-run around our peer-rview. I stated
that it is wrong to claim censorship is going on.

Jtdirl (James Duffy) responded, stop calling me an
anti-Semite!  And then Jtdirl started talking about
Jerusalem.

Huh? His statements have absolutely no relationship to what
is being said to him. He is in his own little world, and
that kind of freaks me out.  I get the idea that people
read his letter, and respond to his false claims about
me...even though my letter said nothing about what he
mentions!

It would be very easy to smooth things over, but that is
impossible until his responses respond to what I actually
write. (That is a truism, no?)

On a separate topic:  I am uncomfortable with the way that
Jtdirl and others slander me as a racist. For example,
Jtdirl again stated that Zionists are racists. He does this
knowing that I a Zionist, therefore the clear implication
is that I am racist bigot whose words should be ignored.

Such angry and false speech about Zionists (which includes
tens of millions of Jews and Christians) is not appropriate
here. Would we accept it if people said that Irish
nationalism is racist? That feminism is FemiNazism? That
black progressivism is really white-hating communism? I
doubt that most Wikipedias would stand for this.  But when
people here make these generalized and incorrect statements
about Zionists, no one says a word.

You and I don't speak this way about people of other
groups; I propose that this standard should be true for all
of us here. I hope that I am not perceived as being
unreasonable.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Sanford Forte

body:
Looks good.

Again, for the purpose of a successful *pilot*, I would suggest taking on
the California frameworks. This will focus the project, and get us to
completion faster.

Sanford

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 5:39 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] California history text standards

> http://www.cde.ca.gov/standards/history/
>
> We're focussing on grades 9, 10, 11, and 12.
>
> The titles of the content standards are:
>
> Grade 9 -- no standards, schools are supposed to offer electives
>
> Grade 10 -- World History, Culture, and Geography: The Modern World
>
> Grade 11 -- United States History and Geography: Continuity and Change
> in the Twentieth Century
>
> Grade 12 -- Principles of American Democracy and Economics
>
> I think it is pretty clear, and a conversation with LittleDan has
> further convinced me, that our expertise lies best in Grade 10 --
> World History, Culture, and Geography: The Modern World.
>
> Here's the link:
> http://www.cde.ca.gov/standards/history/grade10.html
>
> and similar for Florida:
> http://www.firn.edu/doe/curriculum/crscode/basic612/912/ss912/2109310.pdf
>
> although the actual "Instructional Materials Specifications" for
> Florida are apparently buried here:
> http://www.firn.edu/doe/instmat/pdf/social_studies.pdf
> (see page 189, which is Adobe page 198)
>
> As you can see, these are detailed specifications, and we should
> probably be able to write to it with a fair degree of success.
>
> A "ToDo" list on this would include making sure that this is the right
> document to work from, and also to look on the web to see if Texas
> standards can be found as well.
>
> And any other states or countries that anyone has a particular
> interest in, of course.
>
> (For example, are there published content standards for courses in
> Australia and Great Britain, etc.?)
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


subject: License Incompatibilities (was Re: [Wikitech-l] CIA Factbook Slurping)

in_reply_to: <8rH7+FexpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 10:31:00PM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Evan-
> > Yes, I'm pretty sure they're incompatible, actually.
>
> Dual licensing should be possible. Just change the submission notice to
> say that users agree that content can be used under both the terms of the
> FDL and the CC Share Alike license.

Well, several of us have analyzed this carefully, and I don't agree.
Dual licensing doesn't really help much, and actually would tend to
invite disastrous complexities.

Here's the problem: there's tons of GNU FDL only content in Wikipedia.
Anyone can take that content and modify/redistribute it *under the
GNU/FDL*.  But they can't take the content and modify/redistribute it
*under the CC/ATT-SA*, even though the licenses are very similar in
spirit.

A writes an article and releases under GNU FDL.  If B tries to dual
license it and distribute to C, then B is purporting to give rights to
C that A never authorized.  (In particular, the ATT-SA drops several
specific requirements of the GNU FDL.)

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CNN article on Wikipedia

body:
Try this page for the complete reference to the CNN pieces, including
the video.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_coverage#English

-Andrew

Andrew Lih, Assistant Professor
Journalism and Media Studies Centre
University of Hong Kong
Email: alih at hku.hk | Web: http://jmsc.hku.hk/


from_name: Dante Alighieri

body:
At 06:08 PM 8/5/2003, you wrote:
>On a separate topic:  I am uncomfortable with the way that
>Jtdirl and others slander me as a racist. For example,
>Jtdirl again stated that Zionists are racists. He does this
>knowing that I a Zionist, therefore the clear implication
>is that I am racist bigot whose words should be ignored.
>
>Such angry and false speech about Zionists (which includes
>tens of millions of Jews and Christians) is not appropriate
>here. Would we accept it if people said that Irish
>nationalism is racist? That feminism is FemiNazism? That
>black progressivism is really white-hating communism? I
>doubt that most Wikipedias would stand for this.  But when
>people here make these generalized and incorrect statements
>about Zionists, no one says a word.
>
>You and I don't speak this way about people of other
>groups; I propose that this standard should be true for all
>of us here. I hope that I am not perceived as being
>unreasonable.
>
>
>Robert (RK)

I would imagine that it doesn't help your cause when you falsely attribute
comments to the improper party. jtdirl didn't say that Zionists were
racists, PL did. jtdirl mentioned it as an example of why PL should be
banned. Not that I expect logic and facts to get in the way of your agenda,
but I figured I at least ought to point out one of the most egregious of
your mischaracterizations.

Feel free to get all worked up and in a huff about my comments, I'm not
going to stop you. You have every right to your own private delusions and,
given the nature of the Wikipedia, even a right to bore those of us on the
mailing list with your continual claims of how you've been terribly
victimized.

RK, those of us who read the talk pages and edit summaries know what's
going on. You don't have us buffaloed. Your treatment of various people is
regularly agressive, bordering on abusive, and your credibility is
virtually nil. If you want to engage in serious debate on any of the issues
I've raised, feel free. If you want to complain about how this is another
example of how people are treating you unfairly, I'm not interested, and I
would refer you to creating a ban page to have me removed from Wikipedia.

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

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


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] False cries of censorship in State of Israelarticle

body:
>Fred wrote
>I have now looked at the Wikipedia article, "Israel". It is acceptable
>without editing for inclusion in Internet-Encyclopedia; that is, it is
>written from a sympathetic point of view, If you will compare the article,
>"People's Republic of China", which includes sharply negative information
>(Most of which I have insisted on including) you will see that the Israel
>article fails to achieve a neutral point of view.
>
Any attempt to add in /anything/ that is not pro-Israeli immediately leads
to RK going ballistic and screaming anti-semitism. Even something as basic
as mentioning that while Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital, most of
the world refuses to accept that designation, led to screams of 'pro-Arab'
and 'anti-semitism'. Note, it was not being said that Jerusalem was not
Israel's capital. All that was being pointed out was that while 3 world
states accept that designation, 100+ don't and regard the 1948 capital, Tel
Aviv, as the capital, as a result basing their embassies and diplomatic
missions there. That there is a dispute on the issue is 100% correct but the
add in was /very/ careful not to agree with either side, and to list
Jerusalem with an explanatory footnote. But even that drove RK and a few
others ballistic.

The dispute on PROC was not over whether one could include negative
information, just the manner in which it was being added in, which struck
many people as being, probably unintentionally, POV. The issue was simply
one of trying to reformat the add-in in an NPOV manner. On Israel, any
attempt to be express anything other than a pro-Israel POV is blocked.
Criticism of any sort is shunted off to daughter articles, leaving only a
one-sided pro-Israel argument in the article. It is an outrageous betrayal
of the many Jewish people who have been victims of anti-semitism for RK and
others to call attempts to add some balance 'anti-semitism'. It is nothing
of the sort but his insidious attempts to silence any balanced criticism is
damaging wiki and the credibility of the articles RK thinks he is defending.

JT

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Call for Participation Wizards of OS 3]

in_reply_to: <8r16cMRSpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 09:59:00PM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Jimbo has agreed to participate in this conference, and I will probably
> moderate the panel. Other than that I will try to get representatives from
> other collaborative writing projects like Everything2 and H2G2. Hopefully
> the conference can also become a meeting place for European Wikipedians,
> but it's still a bit early to talk about that (WOS 3 is in April 2004).

In case this was cryptic to others, what it means is that I'll be at
the Wizards of OS conference in April 2004.  This will be in Germany,
Berlin I think, but the website is down right now so I can't be sure.

I'm not sure it's really too early to talk about, then, because if we
want to get a whole bunch of people together then, people will need to
plan in advance.

Obviously, no one should travel far to hear me speak on a panel!  You
already know what I'll say.  "Uh, be nice to each other, and uh, you
know, try to be nice and stuff."  :-) But, I think it'd be worth
travelling a long way if we have a reasonable critical mass of
Wikipedians to see each other.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

subject: [WikiEN-l] False cries of censorship in State of Israel	article

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>on 8/4/03 7:07 PM, Robert at rkscience100 at yahoo.com wrote:
>
>
>
>>"rv yet more RK censorship. Does he ever stop? Does he have
>>a clue what NPOV means?"
>>
>>
>
>He knows what censorship is and POV, being an expert practitioner himself.
>You'll just have to fight it out. Hint: he and his colleagues NEVER give up.
>
>
I'd figure that you'd be an expert practitioner in POV too, having
started an encyclopaedia dedicated to it, yes?


in_reply_to: <oprtgm671szs1r4a@localhost>; from lists@dramatic.co.nz on Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 01:46:09PM +1200

body:
This really shouldn't be on wikitech-l.

Richard Grevers wrote:
> Question: If none of the existing licensing systems quite fulfils
> Wikipedia's needs, why doesn't Wikimedia (i.e. us) write a license that
> does work?

Well, we can write whatever we want, but it won't help with the
problem, because we have this huge mass of content under GNU FDL.

I think that the best we can do is to come up with strong suggestions
for GNU FDL 2.0, and under the "any later versions" clause, use that.

What I'd like to see if GNU FDL 2.0 and CC ATT-SA 2.0 both explicitly
say that copying and pasting stuff between stuff licensed under either
is perfectly fine.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Palestine liberator

body:
>
>We have a problem with a new user, "Palestine liberator"
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Palestine_liberator
>
>Here are some of his gems. Let's start with his
>anti-Semitic statement in which he demands that all the
>Jews in Israel be murdered "Only peace will come when the
>Zionists drink the sea at Gaza."
>
>Some more of his statements:
>
>INSERTING PIC OF UGLY DICK SHARON
>
>SHARON IS FECES
>
>RULES: COMMENTS BY ZIONISTS WILL BE DELETED !
>
>This site is crawling with Zionists
>
>ZIONIST TERROR
>
>The Zionists are the REAL terrorists.
>
>This was genocide and ethnic cleansing. The UN says Zionism
>equals racism and this proves they are right, as the
>genocide by the Zionists was motivated by their race
>hatred.
>
>Only peace will come when the Zionists drink the sea at
>Gaza.
>
>The Zionist entity, which the Zionists call "Israel" so
>that everyone forgets their crimes against the Arab nation
>of Palestine, is the world's biggest terrorist. Like Nazi
>Germany and bin Laden, this terrorist must be destroyed so
>that Palestine can strech from the river to the sea
>
>(There is more, but I tire of copying his rants.)
>
>I think "Palestine liberator"'s statements speak for
>themselves. His rabid hatred is a violation of everything
>that Wikipeida stands for, and I hope that he is not
>allowed to damage our community.
>
>
>Robert ("RK")

Actually Robert yesterday I reverted his edits, left a tough message on his
talk page telling him his POVing of content was unacceptable, opened up a
ban page, then put details of what he was doing on the wiki-list and
requested his immediate banning, which Jimbo agreed was an immediate
necessity and implemented.

Perhaps you could remember all of this the /next/ time you start calling me
an anti-semite and pro-Arab or that I am following an anti-Israeli agenda. I
have been called a 'pro-British Tory' and a 'rapid Irish republican', a
fanatical Australian monarchist and a pro-Australian republican, a communist
and a neo-fascist in my attempts to stop /any/ side POVing articles. I will
continue to do so to all sides to ensure nothing short of NPOV.

JT

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: There is also an english wikipedia available

body:
Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
Something from a few months ago. Sorry about that, I don't know where
that came from.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Easter Bradford

body:
Graham Burnett <grahamburnett at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:Someone with an axe to grind keeps inserting POV stuff into
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bradford and accusing anyone who makes
any changes/reverts of being a 'liar'. Personally I've never even heard of
Easter Bradford, but could somebody else cast an eye on this before I get
drawn into an edit war about something I couldn't even care less about?

Cheers Graham

Easter Bradford is a Wikipedia contributor, which is why I included his name in the discussion of whether Wikipedia contributors should be writing material about themselves.

RickK

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body:
At 08:23 PM 8/5/2003, you wrote:
>You can't ignore an elephant in the room and maintain your legitimacy as an
>authoritative reference.
>
>Fred

What if we call it a pachyderm, name him Chauncy, and tell everyone he's a
neurosurgeon from Guatemala?

...

Oh, sorry, I thought we were doing the absurdist play thing...

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

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
on 8/5/03 6:37 PM, Robert at rkscience100 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Jtdirl
> Sadly, though, his incoherent responses

No, that's not true. Jtdirl is not incoherant. He is making sense that
offends your point of view. Whether the specific changes he wanted to put in
the Israel article belong there or not the position he takes is rational.

Fred


body:
on 8/5/03 7:08 PM, Robert at rkscience100 at yahoo.com wrote:

> In theory, I agree with you. However, I also agreed with
> Jtdirl that these topics (Arab refugees and Jewish
> refugees) should be discussed on Wikipedia. That's moderate
> as well. I just was shocked by his false claims of
> censorship. (Especially since we have more than three
> articles discussing this subject!)
>
> When we work together for months to whip articles into
> decent shape, it seems inappropriate, and a violation of
> Wikipedia policy, to do an end-run around them by starting
> a new discussion on the same subject, pushing only Jtdirl's
> point of view. I am not the only person who has pointed
> this out.

Well, its like some absurdist play (I remember one about a body in the room
that everyone tries to ignore).

You can't have a legitimate Israel article that leaves out the conquest and
subjugation of the Palestinians anymore than you can have a People's
Republic of China article without a prominent link to totalitarianism and
authoritarianism.

You can't ignore an elephant in the room and maintain your legitimacy as an
authoritative reference.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] False cries of censorship in State of Israel article

body:
>I'm going to be a bit firm here, but I want to push for a more
>peaceful way of interacting that's more likely to lead to productive
>solutions.  Both RK and Jtdirl are valued contributors in their own
>right.
>
>Robert, I really think you should moderate your tone, because I
>think that doing so will make your comments more effective.
>
>Robert wrote:
> > For reasons I do not understand, Jtdirl is being dishonest
> > about my work on Wikipedia.
>
>It would be better to say "For reasons I do not understand, it seems
>that Jtdirl has misperceived that nature of my work on Wikipedia."
>
>'misperceived' leaves open the question of a moral judgment: was it
>deliberate?  Was it an oversight?  Was it stupidity?  Was it
>forgetfulness?
>
>'seems' leaves open the possibility that with further discussion, it
>may turn out that you were wrong.  'seems' has you only expressing
>your current understanding of the situation, as opposed to a formal
>and final judgment.
>
>Making a moral judgment in a case like this is likely to turn people
>off.  And, really, it runs a very strong risk of being _not true at
>all_.  It strikes me as more likely that jtdirl is mistaken, rather
>than actively dishonest.  Or that you are mistaken.
>
> > "rv yet more RK censorship. Does he ever stop? Does he have
> > a clue what NPOV means?"
>
>I would also recommend jtdirl to avoid such terms as 'censorship' and
>'does he have a clue'?  These are inflammatory and likely to give rise
>to hard feelings rather than productive co-operation.
>
>Better would be 'rv RK.  RK, I'm unconvinced that your edit here is
>NPOV, can we chat on the talk page to reach a compromise?'
>
>--Jimbo

The problem was that an important line lost in an edit had been reinstated
by me in a carefully worded NPOV manner. The issue was being discussed on
the talk page. As he regularly does, RK swept in and deleted the paragraph
including my line without discussion, announcing with his usual
infallibility that it had previously been discussed, without comment on the
talk page. This is his regular behaviour on this and related pages. If he
doesn't approve he denounces it as  "anti-semite" or "pro-Arab" and deletes
it on sight. As Fred Bauder pointed out, the page is rather too POV in its
pro-Israeli contents. Any attempts to so much as mention that there is any
problem fall foul of RK.

The line I had added in related the fact that Israel, which was created as a
typical 'nation-state', suffers from the same problem that exists or has
existed in Ireland, Poland, Germany and some other names, namely that the
'state' (the civil governmental entity) and the 'nation' (a shared sense of
culture, identity, heritage, idenfication etc) are not coterminus. Normally
they are. Where they are not, and the state governs only part of the nation,
or a territory larger than the nation - the case in Israel - problems arise
over how does one deal those who do see themselves as part of the nation but
aren't included in the state, or, and this is Israel's problem, those within
the state who don't define themselves as part of the nation, in Israel's
case the Palestinians. The Oslo Accord proposed one solution; those places
in what is now Israel where there is a different sense of national identity
and sense of nationhood, are given their own right of self-government, in
effect their own 'nation-state'.  The sentence was not perscriptive (there
are articles on the detail of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute) merely
descriptive and NPOV, a basic political science analysis of the theorectical
basis of the modern problem (as to the original problem, claims of Israel
'displacing' Palestine; no-one seriously suggests displacing Israel, which
has a clear and unambiguous right to exist, a right which must be
acknowledged in any solution.)

I called RK's behaviour censorship because I have to say that it how it
looks. On the Israel page and on many others, RK seems to spend most of his
time removing other people's work, calling it POV (ie not his POV which he
thinks is NPOV), anti-semitic and pro-Arab, ie not pro-Israeli enough for
his own liking. I can understand the sensitivity of the Jewish people, given
all they have experienced in terms of rascism and bigotry. Some pro-Israeli
contributors have been excessively protective. (One on the talk page regards
everyone in Israel as part of what he called the "Jewish nation", which he
equates with Israel.  That would come as a surprise to Palestinians, who
most definitely do not regard themselves as part of the Israeli nation, much
less a Jewish one.

But RK goes way overboard (as shown by his disgraceful treatment of
Anthere), removing what he does not like and calling everyone who disagrees
with him anti-semitic. By his actions he damages the very cause he fights
for, reducing the charge of anti-semitism from a serious charge to a term of
abuse, while keeping out from 'his' pages anything that might seriously
offer intellectual insight, as opposed to a pro-Israeli slant. Wiki will
suffer, and the cause for which RK so passionately believes will suffer, by
RK's self-righteous suffication of debate.

JT

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia.org

body:
I slapped a few links and logos onto the http://wikimedia.org
placeholder page.

I made a temporary logo for Wikibooks out of one of the old proposed
Wikipedia logos (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_suggestions -
number 10, by our own Magnus Manske)... I also squarified the Nupedia
logo so it fit in better with the others.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Evan-
> Yes, I'm pretty sure they're incompatible, actually.

Dual licensing should be possible. Just change the submission notice to
say that users agree that content can be used under both the terms of the
FDL and the CC Share Alike license.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, james duffy wrote:

> I think wiki does need as it develops to be able to have some 'final'
> articles that, having reached a clear standard of accuracy, readability etc
> can he removed from the editing process. The downside of constant editing is
> that some articles that reach a high standard then can lose that as those
> who produced the standard leave and someone comes on and rewrites it to a
> lower standard. Wiki's open edit policy is its major plus, as it allows us
> to evolve and update, but its downside is reliability. Can I be sure if at
> 8.17pm I read an article /everything/ in it is factual or could I have the
> bad luck to read it just after some user either through not knowing what
> they were doing or deliberately, mucked it up and added in false
> information? For example, Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel is
> disputed. That is stated on wiki (after a battle!). But what if a reader at
> 8.17 reads a version that says in a POV edit it is an 'undisputed' capital.
> Or someone doing an essay on JFK reads an edit at 8.17 that says he was the
> 33rd not the 35th president?
>
Keep in mind that as topics gain a density of articles, it will become
harder for a vandal or crank to quickly make edits that lower the quality of
information of that topic. To directly address your example, James, if
someone changes the article on JFK in the manner you mentioned, they would
also have to change the links to previous presidents & future presidents --
as well as to the list of US Presidents. Yes, a determined vandal could
make all of those changes, but not before he was detected & the changes
reverted.

The problem lies in topics that are not as well populated. To throw a
hypothetical example, it would be possible for someone to sneak fabricated
information about a crank theory of Atlantis into existing articles on
Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, because there are so few of us working
on articles about ancient history (off the top of my head I could name
three of us, & if given time I might be able to double that number), &
it would take us weeks -- if not months -- to discover the change.

I'd say that as Wikipedia gathers more articles & more contributors, this
problem will recede -- as long as the computer resources scale to handle
the demand.

> For all their downsides, the 'centainty of standard' is the one major plus
> that Brittanica, World Book, Encarta has. When you read an article you are
> getting a definitive version, not that moment's edit. At some stage wiki is
> going to face a credibility barrier where people ask 'but can I be sure that
> King Edward VI of England actually died on that day, or is it a bad edit?
> How can I be sure W.T. Cosgrave said that? How and when we deal with the
> 'certainty of standard' issue will mark the moment we go from being a good
> secondary source that may give a fascinating insight but which just to be
> sure you might want to cross check, just in case, to a /guaranteed/ reliable
> primary source.
>
As someone else remarked, they have to apply a certain degree of scholarly
scepticism to the information. Wiki isn't the first resource that faces this
problem: I recall a book where a scientist, out of curiousity, examined the
articles in EB concerning his area of expertise -- & was appalled at how
out of date the information was! Then again, the EB suffered for decades
from the practice of making only minor revisions to certain articles, adding
other items of current interest, & ignoring topics "nobody" reads (Ancient
and Medieval History comes to mind as examples) until the text was painfully
out of date.

[I'm snipping James' last paragraph because I don't have a response for
the points he raised there.]

Geoff


subject:
License Incompatibilities (was Re: [Wikitech-l] CIA Factbook
 Slurping)

body:
On 5 Aug 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Evan-
> > Yes, I'm pretty sure they're incompatible, actually.
>
> Dual licensing should be possible. Just change the submission notice to
> say that users agree that content can be used under both the terms of the
> FDL and the CC Share Alike license.

Dual licensing is of course possible, but it only resolves problems in one
direction. In the other direction one cannot copy. Even worse, a dual
license means that one cannot copy _anything_ that is not under one's own
copyright or in the public domain. Both the GNU/FDL and CC make it impossible
to take a dually licensed text and redistribute it dually licensed.

Andre Engels


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: License Incompatibilities (was Re: [Wikitech-l] CIA Factbook Slurping)

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales on Tuesday, August 05, 2003 9:55 PM
> This really shouldn't be on wikitech-l.
>
> Richard Grevers wrote:
> > Question: If none of the existing licensing systems quite fulfils
> > Wikipedia's needs, why doesn't Wikimedia (i.e. us) write a license
that
> > does work?
>
> Well, we can write whatever we want, but it won't help with the
> problem, because we have this huge mass of content under GNU FDL.
>
> I think that the best we can do is to come up with strong suggestions
> for GNU FDL 2.0, and under the "any later versions" clause, use that.
>
> What I'd like to see if GNU FDL 2.0 and CC ATT-SA 2.0 both explicitly
> say that copying and pasting stuff between stuff licensed under either
> is perfectly fine.

That is what is to be hoped for, yes. In particular, that anything
licensed with no Cover Texts or Invariant Sections under the current
GFDL (e.g. Wikipedia) can be redistributed under CC ATT-SA.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: Accents

body:
Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
> Sorting order is language specific, and some languages handle some
> accented letters as different letters of their own, not as simple
> variations of the base letter.

Sorting is one thing, searching is another.  Both are determined by
the language "collation" order.  For example: In Swedish, A and ? are
two different letters, but ? is just an accented version of A.

I just finished  reading chapter 8 of the MySQL manual, covering new
features in MySQL version 4.1, http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Charset.html

The contents sounds promising for applications like Wikipedia.  As far
as I know Wikipedia only uses MySQL 4.0.12 yet, but when 4.1 becomes
more stable it would be possible to use these new features.  Among
them is the possibility to specify the collation order for fulltext
search (select match()) or sort (order by) operation.  Each database,
table or column can also have a default collation.  This means the
Hungarian Wikipedia could have the Hungarian collation as its default,
but a user could specify as her personal preference to use the English
collation (accent-ignorant) for her searches.  I'm looking forward to
this.

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


from_name: Matthias Jordan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Password reminder mail settings

body:
Hi, folks!

I just stumbled over the "FIXME" in SpecialUserlogin.php. The message
that Phase3 sends to users has one hardcoded From field and one
hardcoded Reply-To field, which are different. Does it make sense to use
different mail addresses in this context? I propose we just use one
address that is defined in a global variable. If there are really weird
setting that require a Reply-To field different from the From field, the
maintainer will know how to work around this (namely $sender =
"forget at wiki.org\r\nReply-To: admin at wiki.org").

Bye!

Matthias


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia.org

body:
Brion wrote:
>I made a temporary logo for Wikibooks out of one of
>the old proposed Wikipedia logos
>(http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_suggestions -
>number 10, by our own Magnus Manske)...

"Learn free, think free" - I kinda like that. The logo ain't half bad either
(A "W" made out of books). This will do just fine as our first logo - please
make it so on the site itself (I'll localize Wikibooks' language.php file
this weekend).

Oh, and Wikibooks.org/.com is already forwarded to the Wikipedia subdomain. I
cc'd you the user names and passwords to those (and other domain names).
Moving isn't a priority but would be nice.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>>You may be interested in this graph;
>>
>>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=large&compare_sites=bomis.com&url=wikipedia.org#graph
>>
>These graphs look highly suspicious to me. According to alexa, wikipedia
>is having more traffic than
>
>* heise.de (very popular German IT news ticker)
>* rtl.de (Germanys most popular commercial TV station)
>* fokus.de, stern.de (two popular weekly news magazines)
>* bild.de (most popular Yellow Press daily newspaper)
>* microsoft.de
>* Britannica.com
>* sex.com is only a few places before us
>
>This all seems very unlikely to me. I think Mav and perhaps some other
>"power user" are using the alexa toolbar and their many hits adulterate
>the statistics.
>
I'm surprised by sex.com but not the others.  See my comments on meta at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_is_more_popular_than... where
I've questioned the popularity level of Encarta as well.

Ec

>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban Palestinian liberator immediately

body:
Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> Well, the idea is that for a banned user, you don't really have to
>> pay  much attention to what he does -- just revert and let other
>> people restore  if it's any good. For non-banned users you have to
>> look at each edit  carefully before reverting. Sorry if that
>> distinction wasn't clear.
>>
>
> Sorry, just couldn't pass up the chance to make a smart ass comment.
> As for the "let other people..." part - that's what I have tried to do
> with Michael's stuff for a while, and it's lead tosome minor
> disagreement; it may take a while for this approach to gain currency.

I know the irresistable attraction of smart ass comments.  Given the
amount that's been written about PL one can only say that with friends
like him the Palestinians don't need any enemies. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>JeLuF wrote:
>
>>This all seems very unlikely to me. I think Mav and
>>perhaps some other "power user" are using the alexa
>>toolbar and their many hits adulterate the statistics.
>>
>
>Is that an allegation that I'm rigging the system?
>
>Instead of throwing around baseless accusations why don't you look up the
>criteria for hit counting; one IP is counted only once a day per page (see
>http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=1 ). Oh and I use
>a non-Windows operating system so the Alexa Toolbar doesn't work on my
>computer - same for a disproportionately large number of daily contributors.
>So if anything Wikipedia's stats are undercounted by the use of the "power
>users".
>
Amazon and msn are more likely candidates for rigging the system.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Look at this graph:
>
>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=medium&comp
>are_sites=&url=wikipedia.org#top
>
>(for 1 year) during which we came from nothing (internet speaking), broke
>into the top 10,100 and have rapidly risen to the 1,493th most used site.
>Projecting the rate of change we will soon be in the top 1000.
>
Today's spike has at at #1,057!

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>Look at this graph:
>>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=medium&comp
>>are_sites=&url=wikipedia.org#top
>>
>>(for 1 year) during which we came from nothing (internet speaking), broke
>>into the top 10,100 and have rapidly risen to the 1,493th most used site.
>>Projecting the rate of change we will soon be in the top 1000.
>>
>
>Wikipedia did not come from nothing, but there is something wrong with
>their data before 2003.  Other sites have data before 2003, including
>susning.nu.
>
Could this be because of the change from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org?

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CNN article on Wikipedia

body:
Brett A. Thomas wrote:

> It was linked from their front page yesterday, but is only in the tech
> section, now.  It's pretty light and fluffy (and calls all the
> Wikipedians "cult-like" ;), but it's about Wikipedia.  There's also a
> "Video" link, which leads me to believe they may have mentioned this
> on-air, too, but since I'm not a paying subscriber to CNN, I can't see
> it.

"Light and fluffy" is just fine when it comes to publicity.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikidown spam...

body:
The wikidown address has been getting spam in the last few days... I
don't know if Lee still has it forwarding to his beeper, but that could
be awful annoying. :P

Suggestions?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Andre-
> On 5 Aug 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

>> Evan-
>>> Yes, I'm pretty sure they're incompatible, actually.
>>
>> Dual licensing should be possible. Just change the submission notice to
>> say that users agree that content can be used under both the terms of the
>> FDL and the CC Share Alike license.

> Dual licensing is of course possible, but it only resolves problems in one
> direction. In the other direction one cannot copy.

One could, if Wikipedia was also dual licensed. Unfortunately that's not
possible at this point. But since Evan is profiting from Wikipedia
development, it would only be fair for him to make some effort to let us
use the material his site creates.

> Even worse, a dual
> license means that one cannot copy _anything_ that is not under one's own
> copyright or in the public domain. Both the GNU/FDL and CC make it
> impossible to take a dually licensed text and redistribute it dually
> licensed.

Huh? I do not understand this at all. Please elaborate.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Temp?

body:
What's with the explosion of Temp articles, and sysop-locked pages,
etc.?

Sounds like we're creating a nice happy hierarchic world here. Hoohah.

Not only that, it's kudgy as all get out.

--tc


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  How Wikipedia breaks the GNU/FDL

body:
I'm not a lawyer. Anyone taking anything in the below text as legal advice
should be drawn and quartered.

on Wednesday 06 August 2003 00:40 -0700, Andre Engels wrote:

> 4B: We do not list the author of the last version plus at least five
> authors
>     of the old version on the title page.

To quote from 4B:
"...unless they release you from this requirement."

One could easily argue that Wikipedia recieves an implicit release based on
the fact that it is self-evident to contributors before they submit anything
that we do not list the authors in this way.

> 4E: We do not add a copyright notice each time a new document is
> created.

To quote 4E in its entirety:
"E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications
   adjacent to the other copyright notices."

WHAT other copyright notices?

>4F+addendum: The license notice of Wikipedia is not in the
> prescribed form,
>     and it is not put on the title page

The only person concievably able to try and enforce that provision on
documents submitted to Wikipedia without looking like a complete idiot in
front of everyone -- including U.S. courts -- would be the original author,
and he'd have a time of it.

First, if he edited any other articles on Wikipedia without following 4F
himself, principles of mutually assured destruction apply; and people don't
often submit an article and then go away (articles that stick around, that
is).

Secondly, are you aware of a principle called entrapment? When a
law-enforcement officer (e.g. police) essentially force a person to commit a
crime in order to arrest (and presumably prosecute) them for it, that's
entrapment. In contract law (which copyright licenses are part of in the
U.S.) it'll usually be under the broader concept of "bad faith". If someone
comes to Wikipedia, it will be self-evident that 4F is not followed. If they
then submitted an article and then sued when someone "violated" 4F, that'd be
willful negligence at best, which by itself is good cause for
dismissal/aquittal. In sane situations, it's called "bad faith", and not only
nullifies the claim, but may expose the complaintant to legal action.

> 4I: Our history section is called "<title> Revision history" rather than
>     "History".

"Judge! The contractor built my house two inches from where I told him to
build it in the middle of my empty 20-acre lot!"

"Did this cause you any damage or substantial emotional distress?"

"Err..."

Need I say more?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CNN article on Wikipedia

body:
tarquin wrote:

> Great stuff :)
> But "just a few edits an hour"?

Only off by a factor of sixty... Not bad for CNN. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wednesday 06 August 2003 03:05, Andre Engels wrote:
> So you are basically saying that because we are not likely to get sued for
> it in court, it does not matter?

That's stretching it a little[1]. I'm saying that no one is being harmed, and
no one that contributes to Wikipedia can reasonably claim that they had any
expectation of the sections you mentioned being followed.

I'm not really saying it *doesn't matter* -- testing the limits of law is
rarely a good idea -- but rather that I don't think it poses any serious
problems. We're talking about one clause I don't think we're really
violating, two that we *are* (for some values of violating), and a fourth
that nobody's going to file a lawsuit based on, and even if they did it'd
never get past the first hearing. "Revision history" vs "History" is just
silly.

> In that case, I propose that we announce
> that we shift from GNU/FDL to CC license in a few months' time as soon as
> possible. I don't think anyone would mind, and if someone does, we can
> still remove their text at request. If then they still want to go to court,
> they'll have a hard time arguing that the CC license (with removal on
> request) damaged them in a way the GNU/FDL would not have.

I'll need a link to the specific CC license we're talking about to decide just
how absurd this is (I've not seen the thread(s) that defined which CC license
is favoured here), but I seriously doubt we could get away with it without
losing most of our content.

[1] Please note that I'm not known for my ability to articulate myself. If you
think I'm saying one thing but I might reasonably be saying something else,
do ask what the heck I'm blabbering about. :)


body:
Jimmy-
> Here's the problem: there's tons of GNU FDL only content in Wikipedia.
> Anyone can take that content and modify/redistribute it *under the
> GNU/FDL*.  But they can't take the content and modify/redistribute it
> *under the CC/ATT-SA*, even though the licenses are very similar in
> spirit.

I'm just looking for a way to get Evan's stuff, not for a way to give him
ours :-). Since he has already decided not to use the FDL, he will
obviously not be able to use FDL-only content. But if he dual-licenses
wikitravel at least we can add useful information from it to the
encyclopedia. Otherwise that's not possible without contacting each
author.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Temporary alternate search enabled

body:
I've set up a static copy of the search index table to run on Larousse,
the web server, separately from the main database server, and modified
the wiki to run searches through it.

This is rather experimental, and I don't know if it'll remain smooth. If
it doesn't play nice, it'll get disabled again. For now this is a static
copy of the search index, so it won't automatically update with new
pages, changed pages etc. But, it's better than nothing and should be
more up to date than Google for the time being.

(I'd prefer to be running these sorts of things on a third machine,
capable of being a full live backup database server, but we don't yet
have one. Larousse does have plenty of free memory at the moment, so
stealing some to run a limited-purpose mysqld shouldn't hurt it too much
in the short term.)

Technical notes: the duplicate searchindex table has been modified to
include the cur_is_redirect and cur_namespace columns out of cur, since
these are used to narrow down the search. The modified search engine
grabs a series of matching page ID numbers out of the alternate
database, then grabs the current title and and contents from the real
cur table using the index numbers for just the matches that it needs to
display, which should be quite fast. I've also dropped the default
number of results per page from 20 to 10.

I haven't checked in these experimental changes to CVS; a diff to
SearchEngine.php is attached. Also slight change to
DatabaseFunctions.php to support more options to wfGetDB() but it
doesn't diff cleanly against the current version and I'm too tired to
sort it out right now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Temporary alternate search enabled

body:
I've set up a static copy of the search index table to run on Larousse,
the web server, separately from the main database server, and modified
the wiki to run searches through it.

This is rather experimental, and I don't know if it'll remain smooth. If
it doesn't play nice, it'll get disabled again. For now this is a static
copy of the search index, so it won't automatically update with new
pages, changed pages etc. But, it's better than nothing and should be
more up to date than Google for the time being.

(I'd prefer to be running these sorts of things on a third machine,
capable of being a full live backup database server, but we don't yet
have one. Larousse does have plenty of free memory at the moment, so
stealing some to run a limited-purpose mysqld shouldn't hurt it too much
in the short term.)

Technical notes: the duplicate searchindex table has been modified to
include the cur_is_redirect and cur_namespace columns out of cur, since
these are used to narrow down the search. The modified search engine
grabs a series of matching page ID numbers out of the alternate
database, then grabs the current title and and contents from the real
cur table using the index numbers for just the matches that it needs to
display, which should be quite fast. I've also dropped the default
number of results per page from 20 to 10.

I haven't checked in these experimental changes to CVS; a diff to
SearchEngine.php is attached. Also slight change to
DatabaseFunctions.php to support more options to wfGetDB() but it
doesn't diff cleanly against the current version and I'm too tired to
sort it out right now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: wikidown spam...

body:
On Wednesday 06 August 2003 01:43, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The wikidown address has been getting spam in the last few days... I
> don't know if Lee still has it forwarding to his beeper, but that could
> be awful annoying. :P
>
> Suggestions?

Auto-reject anything that doesn't have a certain string in it?

Naturally this can't be something simply tossed along side the address. I'd
suggest omething like "Add pi to itself. For the purposes of this exercise,
pi is three-point-one-four. Include the result in the subject.". Takes two
seconds, not worth the effort for spammers to try and parse automatically
(yet), and not terribly likely to show up as an actual part of the spam.


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: CNN and the like

body:
Saurabh wrote:

>So wikipedia is now reaching 1 in 1000 web users according to Alexa,

No. Alexa says that Wikipedia's traffic is ranked at about position
1000 among all websites. This is completely different, and given the
likely traffic distribution, Wikipeda has a much much smaller share
than 1 in 1000 of the whole traffic.

If your lot is the tenth biggest in your street, then you own a lot
less than one tenth of the real estate in your street.

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia.org

body:
Brion-
> I slapped a few links and logos onto the http://wikimedia.org
> placeholder page.

We should decide what we want to do with Nupedia. All the Nupedia content
is in Wikipedia (all 30 articles), so why bother advertising it at all?
The only valid use for Nupedia.org I see is a Sifter project, which does
not seem to be planned for the near future.

At some point dead projects should be given a decent burial.

Regards,

Erik


body:
>At 06:08 PM 8/5/2003, you wrote:
>>On a separate topic:  I am uncomfortable with the way that
>>Jtdirl and others slander me as a racist. For example,
>>Jtdirl again stated that Zionists are racists. He does this
>>knowing that I a Zionist, therefore the clear implication
>>is that I am racist bigot whose words should be ignored.
>>
>>Such angry and false speech about Zionists (which includes
>>tens of millions of Jews and Christians) is not appropriate
>>here. Would we accept it if people said that Irish
>>nationalism is racist? That feminism is FemiNazism? That
>>black progressivism is really white-hating communism? I
>>doubt that most Wikipedias would stand for this.  But when
>>people here make these generalized and incorrect statements
>>about Zionists, no one says a word.
>>
>>You and I don't speak this way about people of other
>>groups; I propose that this standard should be true for all
>>of us here. I hope that I am not perceived as being
>>unreasonable.
>>
>>
>>Robert (RK)
>
>Dante Alighieri replied:

>I would imagine that it doesn't help your cause when you falsely attribute
>comments to the improper party. jtdirl didn't say that Zionists were
>racists, PL did. jtdirl mentioned it as an example of why PL should be
>banned. Not that I expect logic and facts to get in the way of your agenda,
>but I figured I at least ought to point out one of the most egregious of
>your mischaracterizations.

Thank you, Dante, for pointing out that. Trust RK to yet again read into
something not about him a personalised attack on himself. In all the time I
have been on wiki I have read many (endless, oh god, endless!) epistles from
RK talking about all the horrendous personalised attacks on himself. And
then I'd go looking for one of these attacks to read to see how could anyone
say anything so horrid to him and find some totally innocent or mildly
critical comment which RK had built up into one of the biggest attacks ever
issued on wikipedia, an assault on every fiber of his being.  Even more
comically he now actually imagines that I am so preoccupied with him that I
either care that he is a zionist or even remember that he is one. Even
though I have heard it probably 4.8 million times from him since I first had
the 'pleasure' of encountering his editing syle I actually forgotten that he
is a zionist, so even if some miracle, I was bothered enough to want to
'offend' him, it would have been difficult to deliberately do so using a
fact I am forgotten. (I wonder if I try enough can I blank out not just RK's
zionism but RK from my consciousness?)

The curious thing is, it is not the first time he has accused me of
deliberately insulting him by calling him a Zionist and I've read him make
the same accusation of others. Does he recycle his allegations  or
something? Or is there this vast conspiracy of people on wiki, all hovering
around waiting to make anti-zionist comments when he is logged on to wiki,
millions of wiki users secretly watching a hidden camera to wait for the
moment when RK decides to log on to wiki, then all the world's (well the
wiki's anyway) anti-zionists, anti-semites, anti-RKians, all rush to add in
special insults, just for RK, about RK.

For the record, RK

1. I do not spend everyone working hour thinking about you, nor for that
matter do most people on wikl. You have told us ad nausaum that you are a
Zionist but frankly we really couldn't be bothered to remember.

2. From what I could see, most of the offensive comments you have complained
about on wiki are your own imaginings. /You/ attach frequently bizarre
meanings to them, take offence at your bizarre attached meanings,  and then
attack others for lauching attacks on you that are in fact your own
fantasies, as in interpreting my reference to an anti-semite vandal's
comments, which were intended to point out why this user should be banned,
as an attack on you.

BTW just so we are clear, RK, that last paragraph did not (a) call you a
vandal, (b) call you an antisemite, (c) did not call for you to be banned,
(d) did not mention ''Zionism'' (which I had forgotten again for a moment.
That you for reminding me about a fact that is of no interest to me, least I
use the forgotten topic of no interest to me to deliberately attack a user I
really don't think much about using something I have forgotten anyway!)

Finally, an example of how RK's rampant paranoia is catching. In a first
draft of the first paragraph, I accused RK in his paranoia, of to use a
theatrical saying, 'hamming it up'. But then it dawned on me that he might
(no, in RK's case, would) think I was attacking his Jewish identity by
referring to religious dietary rules. So though using a threatrical phrase
not thinking of food or religion (just a film earlier last night about an
actor accused of hamming his performance), /I/ found myself not thinking
about the nature of what I had written, but instead about the paranoid
interpretation that RK, as usual, would construct around it and so how to
avoid triggering offence, however accidentially, to RK who seems to have an
almost masochistic desire to take offence. (BTW RK, please don't interpret
the word 'masochistic' as meaning that I am in any way commenting on any
sexual matter, I am not accusing you of any kinky activities, much less
thinking of you engaging in any kinky activities of a zionist or non-zionist
kind. Is that now clear, RK? Have you  /finally/ got the message? (Oh
please, dear God/Jehovah/Allah, Our Father, Our Blessed Mother, anyone out
there, let RK get the message this time and stop driving the rest of wiki
demented with his paranoia!) :-)

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Whitelist mode for article viewing

body:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003 13:59:20 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
<taw at users.sourceforge.net> gave utterance to the following:

> On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 05:47:03AM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> on 8/5/03 5:31 AM, Tomasz Wegrzanowski at taw at users.sourceforge.net
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Do we really want all that in our codebase ?
>> > Why can't you just fork ?
>>
>> Sourceforge serves more than just Wikipedia. Eventually our software
>> will be
>> used in a variety of projects, unless it get screwed up so no one else
>> can
>> use it without doing extensive tedious modifications.
>
> Yeah, but what he proposes is so radically unwiki that he should
> probably just fork.

I don't see a problem of unwikiness. I am involved in two confidential
projects which use UseMod wiki where editing is restricted to a smallish
(about 50) pool of people (one has a slightly larger reading pool), and
having access control as part of the software would be much more convenient
then having to use httpd authentication (always enter via the same URL etc)
.

I'm also merging the enhanced wiki parser I'm writing with an access
control script to form a content management system for my clients.
--
Richard Grevers
Bureaucrats cut red tape - lengthwise


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop lying about the content of my letters

body:
James Duffy, JTDIRL, has been causing problems on the
"State of Israel" article of late, because he refuses to
work with others in our Wikipedia peer-review. Instead of
working on the many Arab and Jewish refugee articles that
already exist, he keeps bypassing the peer-review by trying
to stuff his own biased statements into new articles.

When I noted this, he made personal attacks on me as
promoting "censorship". This is a violation of Wikipedia
protocol.  I have tried discussing this with him, and have
alerted members of this list about this incident.
Astonishingly, Jtdirl has decided to respond with total
frabrications. He is now screaming that I am accusing him
of anti-Semitism.  Huh?

Sure, it is wrong of Jtdirl (James Duffy) to do an end-run
around our peer-review, and for him to shove his POV essays
on this subject into other articles. And it is wrong for
him to falsely accuse me of "censoring" him, for the
"crime" of asking him to follow standard Wikipedia
protocol. But where does this have to do with
anti-Semitism?  Nowhere.

JTDIRL claims:
> Any attempt to add in /anything/ that is not pro-Israeli
> immediately leads to RK going ballistic and screaming
> anti-semitism.

That in of itself is false.  But more disturbing, Jtdirl
then starts mentioning something about the status of
Jerusalem, which has NOTHING to do with this topic. His
claims to the contrary are bald-faced lies. No one is
writing about Jerusalem. He is just making this up.  Jtdirl
just is in some sort of rage, because I AND a few others
have removed his POV essay and out of place statements in
the State of Israel article.

Sadly, though, his incoherent responses do come close to
Jew-baiting. Every time I disagree with him, he claims to
be the victim of false anti-Semitism charges...even though
the topic has nothing to do with Jews or anti-Semitism. He
seriously needs to lay of the Jews for a while. Seriously.

With concerns,

Robert (RK)

Jimbo writes:
> Robert, I really think you should moderate your tone,
> because I think that doing so will make your comments
> more effective.

In theory, I agree with you. However, I also agreed with
Jtdirl that these topics (Arab refugees and Jewish
refugees) should be discussed on Wikipedia. That's moderate
as well. I just was shocked by his false claims of
censorship. (Especially since we have more than three
articles discussing this subject!)

When we work together for months to whip articles into
decent shape, it seems inappropriate, and a violation of
Wikipedia policy, to do an end-run around them by starting
a new discussion on the same subject, pushing only Jtdirl's
point of view. I am not the only person who has pointed
this out.

Jimbo writes:
> Making a moral judgment in a case like this is likely to
> turn people off.  And, really, it runs a very strong
> risk of being _not true at all_.  It strikes me as more
> likely that jtdirl is mistaken, rather than actively
> dishonest.  Or that you are mistaken.

Ok, I agree; I could be mistaken. But Jtdirl refuses to
talk to me, so no conversation is possible. You saw for
yourself James Duffy's odd response to my points:

I said we *should* have articles on Arab refugees, but we
should no do an end-run around our peer-rview. I stated
that it is wrong to claim censorship is going on.

Jtdirl (James Duffy) responded, stop calling me an
anti-Semite!  And then Jtdirl started talking about
Jerusalem.

Huh? His statements have absolutely no relationship to what
is being said to him. He is in his own little world, and
that kind of freaks me out.  I get the idea that people
read his letter, and respond to his false claims about
me...even though my letter said nothing about what he
mentions!

It would be very easy to smooth things over, but that is
impossible until his responses respond to what I actually
write. (That is a truism, no?)

On a separate topic:  I am uncomfortable with the way that
Jtdirl and others slander me as a racist. For example,
Jtdirl again stated that Zionists are racists. He does this
knowing that I a Zionist, therefore the clear implication
is that I am racist bigot whose words should be ignored.

Such angry and false speech about Zionists (which includes
tens of millions of Jews and Christians) is not appropriate
here. Would we accept it if people said that Irish
nationalism is racist? That feminism is FemiNazism? That
black progressivism is really white-hating communism? I
doubt that most Wikipedias would stand for this.  But when
people here make these generalized and incorrect statements
about Zionists, no one says a word.

You and I don't speak this way about people of other
groups; I propose that this standard should be true for all
of us here. I hope that I am not perceived as being
unreasonable.

Robert (RK)

----

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>

I am disturbed by the way that so many Wikipedia
contributors are libelling me. Time after time, people are
ignoring the words I write in lettesr, and somehow respond
to statements that I never wrote.

For instance, I have worked with many others in articles on
Arab refugees and Jewish refugees from the Arab-Israeli
wars. Also, in recent days I have been concerned about this
topic in regards to the State of Israel article, and have
said so quite explicitly. I *agreed* with everyone,
including Jtdirl, that these topics should be discussed,
but I do not want him doing an end-run around all already
peer-reviewed articles. In all other cases, people here
have labelled that sort of thing as a violation of
Wikipedia standards; I only hold that we maintain the same
standards here. This should not be controversial.

Yet in response, Jtdirl wrote dishonest (or incoherent)
responses, mumbling about Jerusalem and anti-Semitism. This
proves my point. His response literally has nothing to do
with the content of my post. In fact, they never do. He
just keeps screaming about anti-Semitism, over and over.
He can keep screaming about anti-Semitism until he turns
blue, but that won't change the issues. It is just a
diversionary tactic on his part, and one I am sad to say
that some of you seem to have fallen for.

And many of you were so fooled by his posts, that you
missed the truth: Jtdirl has been using me as a whipping
boy for his disagreements with all the other people who
also agree with. Many people have been bothered by Jtdirl's
recent POV writings to the State of Israel article. Try
checking the History option. Several Wikipedians, including
Jiang, me, and Uriber have been disagreeing with Jrdirl.
But instead of dealing with them, he uses Jew-issues as a
smokescreen. For shame.

Chris Mahan also wrote a response to this issue... saying
"Boo hoo". Wow!  Real mature!  I had no idea that this was
the kind of problem solving that Wikipedia encourages.  I
am saddened that so many people find such responses
acceptable.

And let us considers two of Fred Bauder's recent posts.
When I pointed out that Jtdirl needs to respond to what
people actually write (as opposed to topics that no one
even mentioned) Fred bizarrely wrote that Jrdirl's
responses do make sense, and I am just not accepting NPOV.
This isn't about NPOV; it is about the fact that Jtdirl
made some sort of response that had nothing to do with what
anyone on this list wrote.

Fred Bauder, out of the blue, then chastizes me:
> You can't have a legitimate Israel article that leaves
out the conquest
> and subjugation of the Palestinians anymore than you can
have
> a People's Republic of China article without a prominent
link to
> totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
> You can't ignore an elephant in the room and maintain
> your legitimacy as an authoritative reference.

Huh?  I never said otherwise, and I am tired of certain
people here lying about my beliefs. In fact, my position is
the exact opposite of what Fred attributes to me. I have
always held that these are subjects that Wikipedia should
cover, and I am glad that we already have many articles on
them.

Do you see what I mean?  I have a certain position...and
people just write total fabrications about my beliefs. That
is just unacceptable.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
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http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: CNN and the like

body:
on 8/6/03 7:58 AM, Axel Boldt at axelboldt at yahoo.com wrote:

>> So wikipedia is now reaching 1 in 1000 web users according to Alexa,

750 of every 1,000,000 or .075%

Lots of room for growth, which is occurring rapidly and is probably retarded
by things like the search engine not working. So we need to move as rapidly
as possible to industrial strength solutions like those seen on eBay and
Amazon, whatever they may be.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Alexa.com

body:
Out of curiosity I looked up wiktionary on Alexa.  It doesn't make it
into the first 100,000 but it does show that 2% of the wiktionary
traffic is on fr.wiktionary.org!?  I didn't know that anybody had
started a French wiktionary.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] [OT] HTTpd authentication

body:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 13:11:07 -0700 (PDT), Brion Vibber
<vibber at aludra.usc.edu> gave utterance to the following:

> On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> I don't see a problem of unwikiness. I am involved in two confidential
>> projects which use UseMod wiki where editing is restricted to a smallish
>> (about 50) pool of people (one has a slightly larger reading pool), and
>> having access control as part of the software would be much more
>> convenient
>> then having to use httpd authentication (always enter via the same URL
>> etc)
>
> I should point out that you _don't_ need to enter via the same URL for
> HTTP authentication -- going to any page in the protected zone without
> sending the auth info will prompt a password request.
>
> And most browsers will happily store your username/ password and
> automatically send it, if your machines/user accounts are considered
> secure enough. If you just want to restrict editing, not viewing, then
> obviously that won't do, but if you want to restrict viewing, that's
> exactly what it was designed for.
>
In my experience, if I follow a link into a subpage in the protected
directory rather than the index page (where my browser does store the
login) or if I follow an URL which includes the user/pass (as I might in a
bookmark) then if I follow any link from that first page I have to log in a
second time. This happens on several browsers.

--
Richard Grevers
Bureaucrats cut red tape - lengthwise


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 6 Aug 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> > Even worse, a dual
> > license means that one cannot copy _anything_ that is not under one's own
> > copyright or in the public domain. Both the GNU/FDL and CC make it
> > impossible to take a dually licensed text and redistribute it dually
> > licensed.
>
> Huh? I do not understand this at all. Please elaborate.

When one makes a copy, one should use either or both licenses to have the
right to do so.

The GNU/FDL states:

"You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
 expressly provided for under this License."

And the Creative Commons license states:

"You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the
 terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted
 hereunder."

To publish something under dual license, is not "expressly provided for under
the GNU/FDL", and it "offers terms on the work that alter the terms of the
CC license".

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How Wikipedia breaks the GNU/FDL

body:
Before going after other people's supposed GNU/FDL violations, we should
realize that we don't follow the letter of it ourselves either. I found that
the following provisions are broken by Wikipedia. Note that the Title Page
of Wikipedia is defined in the GNU/FDL. If we consider each page a separate
GNU/FDL document, it is the part between the title of the page and its text.
If we consider Wikipedia a single document, it is probably above the text
"Main Page" on the main page.

It seems that the smallest amount of broken rules comes when we consider
Wikipedia as a "Collection of Documents" rather than "Combined Documents" or
a single document, but in any case we break:

4B: We do not list the author of the last version plus at least five authors
    of the old version on the title page.
4E: We do not add a copyright notice each time a new document is created.
4F+addendum: The license notice of Wikipedia is not in the prescribed form,
    and it is not put on the title page
4I: Our history section is called "<title> Revision history" rather than
    "History".

And that's just the English version. Other languages have even greater
problems. The German version already starts with not containing the GNU/FDL
but only a link to it. Some of the minor languages have not even that.

Andre Engels


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] disappearing/reappearing column-side notes

body:
Here is a technical question: in the same way that the
table of contents feature can be opened and collapsed with
a click  apparently wihout reloading the whole page (which
IMHO is a very cool feature !), could we have collapseable
notes for the edge of a document ?

I am talking in reference to the idea put forth by Mav to
have two columns on some pages with a text on one side and
notes about that text next to it in a second column. Could
we have a tiny link nested right in the main text that
would expand a box on the side of the page, revealing a
note relevent to the text ?

This would be a great feature for Shakespeare plays with
tons of side notes and comments, or even in a textbook
where there are bunches of semi-relevent semi-tangental
comments that could add to the understanding of a subject
.. having the dialog boxes makes them easily available
without having to go to a whole new page and back while
still communicating that it is a secondary idea and giving
the reader the choice of skipping them. Having them open
and close means that 1. They are not cluttering up the
whole page and 2. you can fit a bunch of them in a small
space for those times when you need to.

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
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from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Banning a user account...

body:
Hey, this is Marumari - how does one go about banning a user account
(rather than an IP address).  Can we even do this?  I'm getting requests
to deal with Michael again...

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


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CNN article on Wikipedia

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>Try this page for the complete reference to the CNN pieces, including
>the video.
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_coverage#English
>
>-Andrew
>
>
>
Great stuff :)
But "just a few edits an hour"?


from_name: Chris Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google search

body:
Well, I realize I'm a newbie and all... but <sniff> I guess I'll have to just
reply to my own email since nobody will talk to me :-)

I just noticed the search button is now working, and working great!  A big
Thank You to the responsible developer!!

One followup newbie question:  I didn't see the search "fix" announced
on Wikipedia:Announcements - is there some other place that
Wikipedia/software announcements are made?  Or maybe there is
another maillist with such announcements?

Thanks,
Harris7

8/5/03 2:09:53 PM, Chris Harris <harris7 at io.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>In the "not found" screen ("No page with this exact title
>exists, trying full text search. Well, I would be trying a full text
>search here... Google and run a search on
>site:wikipedia.org -- the results will be outdated and
>incomplete, though.") wouldn't it be much friendlier to send
>the user directly to the following link?  I think I copied this
>from the old search or "not found" screen:
>
>http://www.google.com/custom?
>sa=Google+Search&domains=wikipedia.org&sitesearch=
>wikipedia.org
>
>Regards,
> Harris7
>