subject: [Wikitech-l] IRC question

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hi,
> Why don't host IRC chanels on wikimedia servers ? (ie. irc.wikimedia.org)

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

If our servers are cut off, we could lose that communications channel as
well. (This is already a risk with the mailing lists. We have an offsite
backup MX but it doesn't always go smoothly.)

Also, IRC would be yet another service susceptible to load problems,
denial of service attacks, and various abuses. I feel much more
comfortable with the dedicated effort that the Freenode folks put into
running an IRC network well.

> Freenode may vanish day, we have better to get ready for that.
> It may be also nice to offer people under firewall a Web interface to be
> able to acces IRC even at office (as Shaihulud do for some of us with
> CGI:IRC).

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it; Freenode is a great
resource, and serves a lot of free software projects and users. I don't
understand why any planning is necessary when it's a simple matter of
setting up a channel somewhere else.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: [Wikitech-l] IRC question]

body:
Since this message was cross-posted to Wikipedia-l, I'm forwarding my
reply here as well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] IRC question
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 00:43:34 -0700
From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
References: <004d01c44c5e$ac5dc600$d100a8c0 at arcsy.co.jp>

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hi,
> Why don't host IRC chanels on wikimedia servers ? (ie. irc.wikimedia.org)

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

If our servers are cut off, we could lose that communications channel as
well. (This is already a risk with the mailing lists. We have an offsite
backup MX but it doesn't always go smoothly.)

Also, IRC would be yet another service susceptible to load problems,
denial of service attacks, and various abuses. I feel much more
comfortable with the dedicated effort that the Freenode folks put into
running an IRC network well.

> Freenode may vanish day, we have better to get ready for that.
> It may be also nice to offer people under firewall a Web interface to be
> able to acces IRC even at office (as Shaihulud do for some of us with
> CGI:IRC).

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it; Freenode is a great
resource, and serves a lot of free software projects and users. I don't
understand why any planning is necessary when it's a simple matter of
setting up a channel somewhere else.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I don't think it is something that needs to be "fixed".  It's very
> deliberately left out, because the FSF, as detailed on their website
> (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content) does not
> believe even using the word "content" fits with their goals, and would
> prefer its use died out entirely.  If there were a "GNU Free Content
> License", *that* would be something that needed to be fixed.

And the FDL was very deliberately written to work well for free software
documentation, manulals and textbooks. Its use for non-text-based content was
not forseen - yet that is the situation we are faced with. But if they have a
semantic hangup on the use of the word 'content' then we could use a different
name for the license.

> I certainly don't see Wikimedia as producing "content".

What do you call images, sound, and video then? They are not documents. What
word do you suggest we use to describe what we have? Is the free content
movement operating under a bad name? If so what should it call itself?

'Media' *might* work but has some ambiguity issues. 'Publication' might also
work. 'Copyleft' would be redundant. Any other ideas?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A first encounter with Categories

body:
K Forstner wrote:
> I'm again intrigued by the discussions here, be it categorizations or a user
> I seem to have never come across called 172 (?). I came back from a weekend
> a couple of hours ago and since then have been trying to access Wikipedia --
> to no avail.
>
> As far as categories are concerned, I tried to point out some days ago that
> there should be some policy everyone could agree on, but Timwi suggested we
> should just go ahead. The result of this approach is being deplored already.
>
> I wonder though if a bot is the right answer.
>
> KF

Well, I regret that all what people understood of my proposal was the
final comment on bots. It was not a bot proposal I was suggesting, but a
team working proposal, something a bit like a wikiproject, in order to
reduce current anarchy on category organisation.

No one commented on anything, but on this bot issue; so I gather my
suggestion was not interesting. Never mind :-)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: epzachte at chello.nl

subject: [Wikitech-l] erik zachte and timeline

body:
Hunter Peress wrote
"Please remove timelines from the cvs until it is simplified to work with wiki-tables."

Hunter, so far you've been the only one who dislikes the current concept,
most reactions were favourable or even highly so.
At least five people gave it a try on de: in the past three days and produced workable timelines
with some help of mine.

The syntax is not that difficult to understand.
The length of the document has mainly to do with the number of options that need to be described.
As always flexibility comes at a price: higher complexity.
One has to invest some time to master the finer details, but I believe most people
used an existing example as a template and got away with it.

I'm working on making the syntax as straightforward as possible.
This week I will release an update that will save quite a few lines on some of the existing scripts.
It will never become a no-brainer to produce a fancy new layout,
and finetuning text positions in a crowded chart is a bit of a hassle,
but after my next release (with auto bar positioning and auto image sizing)
adding or correcting an existing chart is certainly within reach of the average editor,
without studying the syntax first.

If someone produces a better solution, (you Hunter ?), I'll be happy to assist in writing a conversion script.
Maybe your only point is that the current syntax stands apart from other wiki syntax?
In that case, I'm afraid I don't think wiki table layout will do much good, as it will just add an extra level of
complexity. But prove me wrong, I'd surely like to test any alternative.

I hope in a years time we can have a fairly complete set of timelines for all major episodes in history.
Without EasyTimeline we would probably have none that could be edited online.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] erik zachte and timeline

body:
epzachte-
> I hope in a years time we can have a fairly complete set of timelines for
> all major episodes in history. Without EasyTimeline we would probably have
> none that could be edited online.

Thanks again for all the work you've done on this and continue to do on
it. Some of the results I've seen are amazing. This would not be possible
with a simplistic table-based syntax. I see no reason why simple and
complex solutions should not happily coexist, given that complex code can
be easily hidden on template pages. I suggest that those who seek simpler
solutions go ahead and implement them, or at the very least write a
comprehensive proposal.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] proposed policy change - allow
	*certain* CC-licensed images on Wikipedia...

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I fully support that we should accept images under all free licenses,
>using the aggregation clause of the GNU FDL. (Clause 7.)
>
>
This requires defining a free license, however:

-- Does requiring attribution (like old-style BSD) make the license
non-free?  Richard Stallman seems to think so, from what I can gather
from gnu.org.
-- Does permitting only verbatim redistribution make the license
non-free?  Many people (including myself) would argue so.

If we're going to allow things other than GFDL and public domain, we'll
have to come up with a set of free software guidelines, much as Debian
has done (either that, or agree to adopt one of the existing sets,
either Debian's, or the FSF's, or some other one).

-Mark


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Yes copyleft is what I was talking about. And for me it is a central part of
>what free content is. That's one of the reasons why I want to help create a GNU
>Free Content License. The FDL doesn't mention *content* as you rightly state -
>that is something that needs to be fixed.
>
>
I don't think it is something that needs to be "fixed".  It's very
deliberately left out, because the FSF, as detailed on their website
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content) does not
believe even using the word "content" fits with their goals, and would
prefer its use died out entirely.  If there were a "GNU Free Content
License", *that* would be something that needed to be fixed.

I certainly don't see Wikimedia as producing "content".

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Big crash 6/6

references:
<9AMw3EoCpVB@erik_moeller> <40C3A216.7050909@pobox.com>
	<3191D3C8-B830-11D8-B628-000A95AF8E04@creativechemistry.net>

body:
Lightning wrote:
> On Jun 6, 2004, at 7:00 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> We should be back online sometime tonight where "tonight" is defined
>> as "before I get any sleep".
>
> I just want to take a moment to say thanks. that kind of dedication is
> much appreciated. wikipedia would have never become what it is today
> without your help or this kind of dedication, its easy for people to say
> "X is broken *somebody* fix it"  and it seems you are more often than
> not that *somebody*

Thanks for the compliment, but this long downtime and heroics are
totally unnecessary. If we'd managed to keep the database slave server
running and in sync we should have been back online within an hour.

Spare-time off-site volunteer labor is fine as far as it goes, but
managing a server farm on a high-traffic dynamic web site is hard to do
remotely.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/languages LanguageFr.php,
	1.64, 1.65

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Modified Files:
> 	LanguageFr.php
> Log Message:
> adding isRTL() althought its false;

Uh, why?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: NFS fun

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just a note: NFS version 2 breaks on files over 2gb. Tweaking NFS
> settings is cool, but remember to use version 3, not 2, if you set a
> version explicitly. This lesson has been brought to you by Painful
> Experience University (PEU).
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Is it the cause of the actual wikipedia "maintenance" ? :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
We need to start fundraising again, and at least for today, we should
have a link up on the 'wikipedia is dead' page to the donations page
on the wikimedia website.  I am sure people will contribute at a time
like this.

Going forward, I think that we need a constant message on every page
of the site, most likely at the bottom of each article, saying
something like "If you have found Wikipedia helpful, remember that we
are a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from users like
you."

We have now a total of approximately $12,000-$14,000 in the bank...
we are going to need to use that to buy additional apaches and
probably additional squids.  Other than the fact that we're currently
in the middle of a database fiasco, we likely have enough DB power for
right now... although we should try to be ahead of the curve.

Last week, before I left, traffic had approximately doubled in a
single week.  This is staggering, because traffic was already huge.

In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
from the general public.

But to raise money, we have to ask.  People won't give unless they
know that we need it, and unless they know how incredibly efficient we
are with the resources that are given to us.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki 1.3.0beta2 released

body:
Laurent GUERBY wrote:
> Hi, I'm not sure if this list is the preferred channel to report
> installation problem, if not please tell me what is the preferred channel :).
> My machine is running SuSE 9.1 professional, no preexisting wiki database, Apache/2.0.49,
> PHP 4.3.4, MySQL 4.0.18.

Hello,

This list is for all mediawiki software issues and wikipedia technical
troubles :o)  There is also an irc channel:
	irc://irc.freenode.net/#mediawiki

<snip flushing trouble with apache2>

> May be I need to change some PHP settings, from phpinfo it looks like I
> have "memory_limit 8M", I tried 80M and the install
> worked. What value should we recommend here?

I had mine at 12MB to run the configuration script as much as I remind.
My mediawiki installation is currently set with: memory_limit = 10M .

> BTW, wikipedia.org seems down right now, it would be nice
> to include a recent english version of "Editing Help" with
> the mediawiki release tarball. I'm using the google
> cached version right now :).
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
> Laurent

Maybe we should start building a documentation package for mediawiki.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


subject:
[Foundation-l] Article validation (was WikiReader Free Software
	and Free Contents)

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Anthere wrote:
> Nod. But we could give different goals to products.
> For example, the goal of wikireaders could be from now
> on be much more defined.
>
> It is already a different goal that wikipedia
> * it offers limited information (it is an extract of
> wikipedia)
> * it tries to cover quite generally a whole topic (eg,
> a wikireader on a country will covers its geography,
> politics, economics, tourism etc...)
> * it is meant to be read only (errors can't be fixed).
>
> * it is meant to be sold (while wikipedia is free)
>
> We could add to these different goals the fact the
> information in it has been double checked, that it
> undergone an *organised* peer-review (rather than a
> quite anarchic one like on wikipedia).

I agree with all of this and would like to add that the WikiReader idea could
eventually be expanded to cover entire limited subject/focus encyclopedias
(such as concise, science, biography, war, geography, ... etc.). Good
categorization could be used to help select which articles to go into these
various WikiReader encyclopedias and the concise version could use the lead
sections from a much larger set of articles. All selected articles would then
have to go through some kind of approval process and fixed as needed or
discarded from the list (all edits would still be on Wikipedia).

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

Yes. This is why I suggested in the category discussion on the wikien-l, that people start to team together around one topic. A team work (rather a loose association as right now) could develop around specific topics (just as it is done from time to time on wikiprojects).

These teams could at the same time work together
* to define proper categorizing of the topic
* try to define which essentials articles are still missing for the topic to be roughtly covered
* work together toward filling the main gaps
* once the team agree that the topic is generally well covered, decide which articles could perhaps constitute the frame of a wikireader (or any type of material which could be distributed, less pages, more pages, specific goal, specific audience...)
* organise a team peer review of all articles selected to belong the distribution material

For this, I wonder if it might not been best that each team develops with the help of one organiser, someone strongly trusted for his/her knowledge of the topic, and his/her cooperative and organising abilities.

Distribution of the whole encyclopedia is an interesting goal, but I guess it will be tough. Probably is it best to go step by step, and have groups focus on isolated topic. Through this, we will have the opportunity to test our ability to cover properly *some* areas, review them fully for accuracy and completeness, then define production and distribution procedure.

Ant

---------------------------------
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body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Anthere wrote:
> Nod. But we could give different goals to products.
> For example, the goal of wikireaders could be from now
> on be much more defined.
>
> It is already a different goal that wikipedia
> * it offers limited information (it is an extract of
> wikipedia)
> * it tries to cover quite generally a whole topic (eg,
> a wikireader on a country will covers its geography,
> politics, economics, tourism etc...)
> * it is meant to be read only (errors can't be fixed).
>
> * it is meant to be sold (while wikipedia is free)
>
> We could add to these different goals the fact the
> information in it has been double checked, that it
> undergone an *organised* peer-review (rather than a
> quite anarchic one like on wikipedia).

I agree with all of this and would like to add that the WikiReader idea could
eventually be expanded to cover entire limited subject/focus encyclopedias
(such as concise, science, biography, war, geography, ... etc.). Good
categorization could be used to help select which articles to go into these
various WikiReader encyclopedias and the concise version could use the lead
sections from a much larger set of articles. All selected articles would then
have to go through some kind of approval process and fixed as needed or
discarded from the list (all edits would still be on Wikipedia).

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

Yes. This is why I suggested in the category discussion on the wikien-l, that people start to team together around one topic. A team work (rather a loose association as right now) could develop around specific topics (just as it is done from time to time on wikiprojects).

These teams could at the same time work together
* to define proper categorizing of the topic
* try to define which essentials articles are still missing for the topic to be roughtly covered
* work together toward filling the main gaps
* once the team agree that the topic is generally well covered, decide which articles could perhaps constitute the frame of a wikireader (or any type of material which could be distributed, less pages, more pages, specific goal, specific audience...)
* organise a team peer review of all articles selected to belong the distribution material

For this, I wonder if it might not been best that each team develops with the help of one organiser, someone strongly trusted for his/her knowledge of the topic, and his/her cooperative and organising abilities.

Distribution of the whole encyclopedia is an interesting goal, but I guess it will be tough. Probably is it best to go step by step, and have groups focus on isolated topic. Through this, we will have the opportunity to test our ability to cover properly *some* areas, review them fully for accuracy and completeness, then define production and distribution procedure.

Ant

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Anthere wrote:
> Nod. But we could give different goals to products.
> For example, the goal of wikireaders could be from now
> on be much more defined.
>
> It is already a different goal that wikipedia
> * it offers limited information (it is an extract of
> wikipedia)
> * it tries to cover quite generally a whole topic (eg,
> a wikireader on a country will covers its geography,
> politics, economics, tourism etc...)
> * it is meant to be read only (errors can't be fixed).
>
> * it is meant to be sold (while wikipedia is free)
>
> We could add to these different goals the fact the
> information in it has been double checked, that it
> undergone an *organised* peer-review (rather than a
> quite anarchic one like on wikipedia).

I agree with all of this and would like to add that the WikiReader idea could
eventually be expanded to cover entire limited subject/focus encyclopedias
(such as concise, science, biography, war, geography, ... etc.). Good
categorization could be used to help select which articles to go into these
various WikiReader encyclopedias and the concise version could use the lead
sections from a much larger set of articles. All selected articles would then
have to go through some kind of approval process and fixed as needed or
discarded from the list (all edits would still be on Wikipedia).

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

Yes. This is why I suggested in the category discussion on the wikien-l, that people start to team together around one topic. A team work (rather a loose association as right now) could develop around specific topics (just as it is done from time to time on wikiprojects).

These teams could at the same time work together
* to define proper categorizing of the topic
* try to define which essentials articles are still missing for the topic to be roughtly covered
* work together toward filling the main gaps
* once the team agree that the topic is generally well covered, decide which articles could perhaps constitute the frame of a wikireader (or any type of material which could be distributed, less pages, more pages, specific goal, specific audience...)
* organise a team peer review of all articles selected to belong the distribution material

For this, I wonder if it might not been best that each team develops with the help of one organiser, someone strongly trusted for his/her knowledge of the topic, and his/her cooperative and organising abilities.

Distribution of the whole encyclopedia is an interesting goal, but I guess it will be tough. Probably is it best to go step by step, and have groups focus on isolated topic. Through this, we will have the opportunity to test our ability to cover properly *some* areas, review them fully for accuracy and completeness, then define production and distribution procedure.

Ant

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Anthere wrote:
> Nod. But we could give different goals to products.
> For example, the goal of wikireaders could be from now
> on be much more defined.
>
> It is already a different goal that wikipedia
> * it offers limited information (it is an extract of
> wikipedia)
> * it tries to cover quite generally a whole topic (eg,
> a wikireader on a country will covers its geography,
> politics, economics, tourism etc...)
> * it is meant to be read only (errors can't be fixed).
>
> * it is meant to be sold (while wikipedia is free)
>
> We could add to these different goals the fact the
> information in it has been double checked, that it
> undergone an *organised* peer-review (rather than a
> quite anarchic one like on wikipedia).

I agree with all of this and would like to add that the WikiReader idea could
eventually be expanded to cover entire limited subject/focus encyclopedias
(such as concise, science, biography, war, geography, ... etc.). Good
categorization could be used to help select which articles to go into these
various WikiReader encyclopedias and the concise version could use the lead
sections from a much larger set of articles. All selected articles would then
have to go through some kind of approval process and fixed as needed or
discarded from the list (all edits would still be on Wikipedia).

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

Yes. This is why I suggested in the category discussion on the wikien-l, that people start to team together around one topic. A team work (rather a loose association as right now) could develop around specific topics (just as it is done from time to time on wikiprojects).

These teams could at the same time work together
* to define proper categorizing of the topic
* try to define which essentials articles are still missing for the topic to be roughtly covered
* work together toward filling the main gaps
* once the team agree that the topic is generally well covered, decide which articles could perhaps constitute the frame of a wikireader (or any type of material which could be distributed, less pages, more pages, specific goal, specific audience...)
* organise a team peer review of all articles selected to belong the distribution material

For this, I wonder if it might not been best that each team develops with the help of one organiser, someone strongly trusted for his/her knowledge of the topic, and his/her cooperative and organising abilities.

Distribution of the whole encyclopedia is an interesting goal, but I guess it will be tough. Probably is it best to go step by step, and have groups focus on isolated topic. Through this, we will have the opportunity to test our ability to cover properly *some* areas, review them fully for accuracy and completeness, then define production and distribution procedure.

Ant

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why CHAT is not necessaraly a good idea to host

body:
It is suggested to host IRC on wikimedia servers. The argument being that Freenode may vanish.

There are several good reasons against it.
*It does cost extra bandwith.
*It means that the Mediawiki server park becomes even more complicated.
*This means that there are more eggs in the mediawiki basket.
*All this work is done to a large extend by volunteers. The current infrastructure needs all the attention it can get. IRC on wikimedia servers will devide the attention and that is not a good idea at this moment in time.
*There is no reason to believe that Freenode will be gone in the near future.

It is more important to stabilize the current servers and make them more reliable.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Not a lynch mob

body:
Charles, sorry if I was too hasty to be clear. Let me try again.

A lynch mob (a) kills someone (b) without giving them a trial.

A. This mailing list is not killing anyone, so the reference to
"lynching" is an exaggeration.

B. No one is calling for action OF ANY SORT to be taken without
following the proper procedure. Rather, we trying to come to some sort
of an agreement RATHER THAN taking an "adverse action". If somebody
simply blocked user:172 WITHOUT going through the committee system, this
would be "extra-judicial", that is, BY-PASSING the offical system to
take unoffical action.

It seems to me we are bending over backwards to be the precise OPPOSITE
of the sort of vigilantes who lynched an innocent man in the classic
Western "Incident at Red Rock", so I wish Abe wouldn't characterize us
this way. Nonetheless, he enjoys free speech here so if it FEELS like a
lynch mob he's free to say so. But those who are stolidly REFUSING to
take unilateral action against him have the right to register their
objection to such a characterization.

Clear now?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How is the backup/restore progressing

body:
Gerard.Meijssen wrote:
> When a backup/restore process is running, usually there is some indication as to progress. Is there any information that can be shared about the problem, causes and what the likely scenario is.
> * causes of the database corruption

Not known exactly, though incorrect shutdown of server is suspicious.

> * estimated time for completion

Sometime in the next few hours. No particular hour given because it will
be wrong.

> * estimated time to check the database after the restore
> * estimated time of general availability

Should be up shortly after.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] A first encounter with Categories

body:
On Sunday 06 June 2004 13:52, Viajero wrote:
> Thanks to various responses to my earlier post on the subject, I have come
> to appreciate some of the possibilities of Categories, at least in theory.
> So, this morning I decided to categorize the forty or so articles on
> writers which I created or to which I made major contributions, having seen
> several suitable Categories show up in my Watchlist for similar articles.
> To start with,  I wanted to know what categories have already been created
> for writers and journalists. For example, I saw a category for for
> "Argentine writers" (the article on Borges I think). Does this mean I
> should also create a category for Uruguayan, Mexican, and Chilean writers
> (I wrote up a couple) even though such categories would have one or two
> entries?  However, there doesn't seem to be any comprehensive, hierarchical
> index of categories. [[Wikipedia:Categorization]] should serve this
> function, but it is woefully incomplete. [[Category:Main page]] is even
> worse. So, I turned to

Initially, I imagined that categories would be organized differently and that
most articles would belong to several categories instead of a single
subcategory. I even wrote a patch which enables displaying of articles that
belong to multiple categories, for example, Category:Mexican/Writer would
return all articles which are in both Category:Mexican and Category:Writer
(this could be streched even further, and you could have, for example,
Category:Female/American/Singer/Blonde). But I guess that developers were too
busy with installing new version of the software to look at it.


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Big crash 6/6

body:
Why don't cash in on this occasion to make a clean switch to Ariel ?
Yesterday it was so terrible to edit article (before the crach) that I
prefere 24h down time rather than N days of exterme slowness.

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 5:17 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Big crash 6/6

> We had a serious MySQL crash on suda with associated data corruption today
> (6/6). There's a summary of the events leading up to the crash at
> http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_plans
>
> Whether it was the kill -9 that led to the corruption or whether the
> database was already corrupted and did therefore not respond we do not
> know; in any case, there seem to have been no alternatives to killing it
> (people on #mysql knew nothing either).
>
> Shaihulud made a copy of the CUR tables from all wikis earlier today and
> imported it on Ariel. We've switched the live wikis to readonly from
> Ariel; readonly because Ariel doesn't have OLD and lots of other stuff,
> because it's not sufficiently tested, and because we'd like to prevent any
> data loss if possible.
>
> Tim created a special "readonly" user on ariel for this purpose.
>
> The following have been changed as long as we are in readonly mode:
> 1) Counters disabled on all wikis
> 2) Linkscc disabled
> 3) readonly file set to /home/wikipedia/common/readonly
> 4) user_newtalk disabled
> 5) $wgDatabaseServer and $wgDBuser changed to ariel
>
> There will still be lots of error messages and because the OLD tables are
> not on Ariel revision histories are missing etc. This is *only* to make
> sure that people can read our articles.
>
> The next step is to fix the data corruption on suda.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC and setting it

body:
Shaihulud can set IRC up on a Wikimedia server when nobody is against it.

Well, actually I am dead against it.

The rationale against is overwhelming; it increases the complexity of the Wikimedia serverpark. The timing is bad; in the middle of a big outage requiring restore..

Brion Vibber is against it; it puts too many eggs in the same basket. When the servers are down, the IRC goes with it.

So, reading the message threat _please_ do not set it up even when you can.

Thanks,
  Gerard


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC question

body:
Guillaume Blanchard schrieb:
> Hi,
> Why don't host IRC chanels on wikimedia servers ?

This is not an alternative but an additional service to freenode.
Imagine the servers dying. How do you coordinate through a irc service
that is dependent on a thing that might break?

Adding irc.wikipedia.org to the freenode network could provide service
in case something goes really wrong, nor?

Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: { and function code

references:
<c9snk5$q72$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<c9spcd$tg7$1@sea.gmane.org>	<20040605210730.GM13095@jeluf.mine.nu>
	<ca26l0$bkf$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Jens Frank wrote:
>> Some statistics ( /includes/* only)
>> jf at mormo:/var/www-phase3/includes$ grep function *php| grep '(' |wc -l
>> 1425
>> jf at mormo:/var/www-phase3/includes$ grep function *php| grep '(' |grep
>> '{' |wc -l
>> 692
>>
>> Looks like a tie.
>
>
> This looks nothing like a tie. :) You're forgetting that the first grep
> also counts lines that contain only a function invocation.

It includes a handful of calls to function_exists() I suppose. These
mostly occur in if statements immediately preceding function declarations.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
On Jun 7, 2004, at 9:08 AM, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
> Furthermore our problem shouldn't be the hardware any more. When we
> are not
> able to get a simple second database server to work since a half year
> now,
> it's not the hardware. The server wasn't brought down by too much
> traffic.
> Either we by the wrong hardware, or it's badly configured, or we have
> the
> wrong software because it doesn't scale. Then we should think about
> software,
> not about hardware. The bottlenecks is not the hardware. Sorry to say
> this,
> but there was enough money to get this thing running. Probably we
> spent it
> the wrong way.

Maybe the money was spent in the right way, but contingency planning
failed us. Unlike most of my work in private sector doing failure
recovery planning, I haven't seen a clear set of plans, goals,
triggers, and timelines for bringing up cold spares, for deciding how
much data loss is acceptable, for mirroring data for fastest recovery,
for adding new hardware, etc.

If suda (literally) caught on fire, was there an understood, written
plan for recovery? What was considered the acceptable downtime? Was the
scenario tested? What software/hardware systems exist to handle rack
fires? How about explosions at data centers? 300% surges in traffic
over 24 hours? What is the planned, formal, command chain for decision
making during crisis? Have all the decisions been made already, so the
command chain is not a problem? Has a much more expensive 15 minutes of
total downtime per catastrophic event been budgeted for, rather than a
much cheaper 16 hours per event?

Maybe I'm wrong, and this multi-hour outage is exactly the planned for,
and expected, result from recent events, and once we started having
problems, the policy and procedures kicked in. I kind of doubt it,
though.

-Bop


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

body:
>Sure ;o) But running tool as CGI:IRC on a Wikimedia server may
>be nice for
>those you want to use discussion under a firewall. Not necessary during
>working time ;o)
>
>Aoineko
>

I could set it, if nobody is against. CGI:IRC is a perl script which dont take many bandwith. It's only text :)

Shaihulud


subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

> 172 asserts something that is challenged, he repeats
> his reasons, he ignores any kind of rational input
> from the other party (e.g., authorities quoted, logical
> arguments, etc.), he starts getting nasty, & finally
> threatens to leave -- but stays.

I agree with Geoff: this is a fairly accurate summary of
Abe (172)'s habits. And this bolsters my argument that
some sort of action (like a ban) must be taken.

At the risk of turning this into something personal, I would like to
point out some differences between Abe and me.

When challenged on NPOV, I nearly always simply back off. I assume good
faith, first of all, so if someone says I'm making biased edits I figure
they have the advantage of taking a fresh look. Secondly, I hardly ever
"revert a reversion". That leads to edit wars, and I prefer to nip these
in the bud; I don't think I've ever used up my 3x/day quota an ANY
article, and I doubt that I've "reverted a reversion" more than about
1x/month on ALL articles put together.

On this, I think I set a pretty good example. (Some contributors, like
Mav, set an even better example by avoidng contentious subjects
altogther. I'm more of a maverick :-) so I edit a bit more boldly.

I haven't looked at the [[Augusto Pinochet]] article since Friday, so I
don't know if I "got what I wanted", as Abe (172) said. I'm hoping that
the article can (a) stay unlocked and (b) satisfy ALL contributors that
it's accurate and unbiased. If Abe would prefer to stay, while adhering
to Wikipedia's NPOV policy, I'd rather have that than have him leave --
but if he's going to engage in "reversion wars" to the extent that other
contributors begin to think of him as a bully, then some time off might
serve the project better.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC and setting it

body:
t
>
>
>Shaihulud can set IRC up on a Wikimedia server when nobody is
>against it.
>
>Well, actually I am dead against it.
>
>The rationale against is overwhelming; it increases the
>complexity of the Wikimedia serverpark. The timing is bad; in
>the middle of a big outage requiring restore..
>
>Brion Vibber is against it; it puts too many eggs in the same
>basket. When the servers are down, the IRC goes with it.
>
>So, reading the message threat _please_ do not set it up even
>when you can.
>

I dont want to set up an IRC server, I want to install a gateway from http->irc.
IRC server will be freenode.net. It's only for people who cant get an IRC service through their firewall.

Shaihulud


subject: [WikiEN-l] Not a lynch mob

body:
User:172 (Abe Sokolov) wrote:

> ... But considering the lynch mob atmosphere of this mailing
> list, I suppose that writing this article is more evidence
> in favor of a ban, right?

I object to the characterization of this mailing list, which I
administer, as having a "lynch mob" atmosphere. Lyching is literally an
extrajudicial killing, and while being blocked from editing Wikipedia
for a period of time may FEEL like death of a sort, there is certainly
nothing extra-judicial about this discussion.

In fact, I brought the issue to mailing list rather than starting
"banning procedures" because I had hopes we could settle the matter
WITHOUT a ban. That why I carefully entitled my original post as "Can we
ban 172 now? And VV too!" It seems to have sparked exactly the
discussion I had hoped -- which is about what sort of activities we all
need to engage in to craft good articles in the face of sharp
disagreements.

I only recall a couple replies seconding my proposal of a ban; the other
100 posts have been about the issues:

* What sorts of edits are appropriate?
* What are the limits on reverting?
* How must we characterize sources?
* What must we all do to work together?

These are not the sorts of issues that can be resolved by a ruling from
the Arbitration Committee, are they? Only one user -- Ptolemy? --
suggested taking this directly to the AC; everyone else seems to think
there are larger issues involved.

I don't want blood. I want peace.

Uncle Ed


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: IRC question

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hi,
> Why don't host IRC chanels on wikimedia servers ? (ie. irc.wikimedia.org)
> Freenode may vanish day, we have better to get ready for that.
> It may be also nice to offer people under firewall a Web interface to be
> able to acces IRC even at office (as Shaihulud do for some of us with
> CGI:IRC).
>
> Aoineko

Freenode is the irc network for all kind of open source. When someone
want to chat about the mediawiki software, they will just have to /join
#mediawiki instead of opening a new server tab to irc.wikipedia.org then
join. It saves one step.

If your firewall is blocking IRC, you should probably doing something
else ... like working :o)
Maybe the freenode guys will set up a page like this, maybe it already
exist !

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: Summary style (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken)

body:
Mav and Brian:

maveric149 at yahoo.com wrote:

"A comprehensive summary that takes less than 15 minutes to read is needed
as well as all the detail - giving the reader a *choice* as to how much
detail they are prepared to go through in order to answer their questions. I
would have written it myself, but 172 indicated that any effort to do so
would be reverted. So I didn't bother spending time on it."

I don't know if that's reason not to bother spending any time on it. I never
said that I wouldn't listen to other ideas; I was just trying to make it
clear that Bryan would have to reconsider his proposal. But I admit that
this is a generally fair statement of my position at the time. I opposed any
effort to create a NI-style series (at least right away) just as much as the
two of you supported such efforts.

When editors have conflicting ideas, they are tacitly aware that unless they
reach a compromise amongst themselves or unless one side leaves the table,
an edit war is the only option. When you think of it this way, edit wars are
in effect the force behind compromise. The occurrence of an edit war in and
of itself only is a sign of disagreement, and good contributors at times can
(and do) disagree.

In particular, I had compelling reasons for withholding this option at the
time. Notice that as the reader moves down the page, the narrative builds on
points already established in the text. Unless someone rewrote and
significantly expanded each section of the article, Bryan's proposals
would've left the individual components of the series superficial at best
and incoherent at worst. BTW, this was stated a number of times on the talk
page (and not just by me), and so far no one has responded to this-- at
least to the best of my recollection.

But at the root of this disagreement, we're likely dealing with competing
stylistic preferences-- not the realms of black/white and right/wrong. On
one hand, I favor quality (which requires multiple contexts-- the scholarly
approach to achieving NPOV) over brevity; and IMHO, the way the article's
currently organized is best suitable considering the diverse
historiographical tradition on the subject. (Not to diverge, but I can offer
evidence that the writers/editors/readers stating that they see things
similarly outnumber the two of you). On the other hand, the two of you seem
to stress "news style" more so than I do, making them less able to stomach a
"long article."

We should keep this difference of opinion respectful. Although I think that
Mav is wrong here, it does not diminish the great deal of respect that I've
developed over the past ~year and a half for him, recognizing a prodigious
range of talents and abilities.

On that note, I found the tone of Bryan's postings far less constructive
than Mav's. While I'm not saying that Bryan was deriding me in his two
mailing list postings, the tone of his postings was certainly derisive
(using terms and phrases like "obstinate," "going on the attack," "threats,"
"bludgeoned into submission," and the like). We do not have to analyze this
disagreement in terms of our character flaws. I regret that Bryan'd decided
to join in on this vitriolic attack-fest on the mailing list in response to
a single disagreement.

Perhaps I was curt -- and I'm sorry. Now let's take this discussion back to
where it belongs?back to [[Talk:Origins of the American Civil War]] and try
to avoid personalizing this difference of opinion next time.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page ? FREE
download! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/


body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> In particular, I had compelling reasons for withholding this option at the
> time. Notice that as the reader moves down the page, the narrative builds on
> points already established in the text. Unless someone rewrote and
> significantly expanded each section of the article, Bryan's proposals
> would've left the individual components of the series superficial at best
> and incoherent at worst. BTW, this was stated a number of times on the talk
> page (and not just by me), and so far no one has responded to this-- at
> least to the best of my recollection.

Under my plan the content you wrote would stay almost exactly the same; I just
want to summarize the 85KB of text you wrote into a ~20KB top-level survey
article and give the different 'pages' of the series real names. Of course the
~20KB survey article will be inadequate compared to the 85KB of text, but the
survey article would be for people who do have the time or interest in the
topic to read the 85KB of detail. Those that do will likely skip past the
survey article and go directly to the detail. Both user types are still served.

> But at the root of this disagreement, we're likely dealing with competing
> stylistic preferences-- not the realms of black/white and right/wrong. On
> one hand, I favor quality (which requires multiple contexts-- the scholarly
> approach to achieving NPOV) over brevity; and IMHO, the way the article's
> currently organized is best suitable considering the diverse
> historiographical tradition on the subject. (Not to diverge, but I can offer
> evidence that the writers/editors/readers stating that they see things
> similarly outnumber the two of you). On the other hand, the two of you seem
> to stress "news style" more so than I do, making them less able to stomach a
> "long article."

We can still give a sense of the "diverse historiographical tradition on the
subject" with a summary. I think that I'm pretty good at that. But building a
good summary takes a good deal of time - time I do not want to expend unless
I'm reasonably sure my efforts will not be lost in the page history. And "news
style" does not correctly represent what I want since that refers to the
organization of individual articles. Summary style takes some ideas from news
style but applies them within the context of an encyclopedia and most
importantly to topics instead of articles.

> We should keep this difference of opinion respectful. Although I think that
> Mav is wrong here, it does not diminish the great deal of respect that I've
> developed over the past ~year and a half for him, recognizing a prodigious
> range of talents and abilities.

Thank you. :) Even though we often disagree and I think you could stand to be
more cooperative sometimes, I also have a great deal of respect for your
knowledge of history and ability to write at length on it. I would just like to
distill that a bit in the form of separate top-level survey articles so that it
is also accessible to those who do not have the time or interest in the topic
to read so much text. Those that do will still have easy access to what you
wrote (and many people will want to know about a single aspect of a topic -
summary style allows them to read a survey article which will point them in the
right direction toward the detailed article on the aspect they want lots of
detail on and still provide some context to the whole subject).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: Jim Cecropia

subject: [WikiEN-l] Not a lynch mob

body:
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from_name: Carson, David

subject: [WikiEN-l] Any word on en.wikipedia.org's database problems?

body:
It's been broken all morning for me.. saying "The database is read-only
and using an older copy while some serious problems are fixed, sorry for
the inconvenience this may cause." Anyone know what's wrong, or when we
might hope to have it up and running again? Or is it just me who's
having a hard time of it?

Thanks!

David Carson

Senior Analyst/Programmer
Nine Network Australia


body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> > there are a couple of different approaches. One is to
> > create categories for every conjunction of categories - if you have
> > "hotels" and "museums" and "Ohio", that means you should have "hotels
> > in Ohio" and "museums in Ohio" categories.
>
> I favour this approach. Without it, [[Category:Museums]] would contain
> *all* museums in the world (millions!), and [[Category:Ohio]] would
> contain absolutely *everything* about Ohio (cities, museums,
> exhibitions, operas, theatres, cinemas, railways, bus lines,
> sightseeing, TV stations, and all sorts of other unrelated things).

That is simply bad database design. A user should be able to select [Museums]
WITHIN [Ohio] or just [Museums] or even just [Ohio]. Otherwise different tags
will be needed for all possible combinations of museums, sport stadiums, or
amusement parks in every single area of the world. It would be much better to
have tags for the places and tags for things. Let the user decide what
combination of variables he or she wants to select. That will require an
advanced search capability to be added to MediaWiki, but I assume that was
planned anyway.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Jimmy-
> > In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
> > the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
> > from the general public.
>
> Yes. A $100K fundraising drive makes sense, but at least *some* content
> should be up - at least the squids serving pages in offline mode. That's
> because many of our visitors come from Google, and if fundraising is the
> first thing they see - and no content - they will be turned away.

I completely agree with that. People need to see the goods before they pony up
the dough (sorry, needless Americanisms).

> We should also have realtime updates of funds coming in, this can
> dramatically increase participation. This isn't that hard to do as PayPal
> provides an interface for it:
> https://www.paypal.com/en/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/ipn-intro

That's neat! Although in the meantime I could update the numbers a few times a
day during a fund drive.

> Lastly, I think hardware alone is not enough. We need a fulltime
> professional systems administrator with direct access to the machines.
> Within a $100K budget that is certainly viable. If Brion wants a new job,
> I'd say he should be immediately offered this opportunity.

Yes - I think we have reached a point where throwing more hardware at the
problem will not be as productive as having somebody on site (at least part
time) managing the machines. Brion seems to be the obvious choice but that
would require him to move to Florida, which is a lot for us to ask.

Another idea I've been toying with is establishing a 'tip jar' for every active
developer in the form of links to their PayPal accounts at the bottom of the
donations page. Brion already has one but that was for his notebook computer
fund - something he bought a while ago. This would be more of an ongoing thing.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
> We need to start fundraising again, and at least for today, we should
> have a link up on the 'wikipedia is dead' page to the donations page
> on the wikimedia website.  I am sure people will contribute at a time
> like this.

We are up to $7,002.69 total in the PayPal account. We were at $4,662.08 USD on
May 28. Difference: $2340.61 USD. I'll keep sending updates to this list until
I'm able to edit the actual fundraising page.

> Going forward, I think that we need a constant message on every page
> of the site, most likely at the bottom of each article, saying
> something like "If you have found Wikipedia helpful, remember that we
> are a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from users like
> you."

There is already a donations link in the sidebar that has an alt text message
similar to that. But IMO we should have organized quarterly fund drives where
more obvious/intrusive messages are displayed - otherwise people will start to
tune out the message.

> We have now a total of approximately $12,000-$14,000 in the bank...
> we are going to need to use that to buy additional apaches and
> probably additional squids.  Other than the fact that we're currently
> in the middle of a database fiasco, we likely have enough DB power for
> right now... although we should try to be ahead of the curve.

Where did the extra money come from (roughly)? The statements you gave me
indicated there was about 200 bucks in the bank account as of early May.

> Last week, before I left, traffic had approximately doubled in a
> single week.  This is staggering, because traffic was already huge.

Wow! We are just too damn popular. There is also the phenomenon of induced
demand; the more responsive our servers are the more people use our website.
This often happens when new lanes are added to existing congested highways. The
only real way to stay ahead of the game is to look for more and better ways to
improve the performance : infrastructure ratio (adding car pool lanes and buses
to the highway or hiring somebody to further optimize our server farm set-up
and software). Simply adding more lanes/servers only solves the problem
temporarily.

> In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
> the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
> from the general public.

I think that half of that would be better spent on hiring a full-time (or a
couple half time) on-site server admins and/or a consultant to further optimize
MediaWiki.

> But to raise money, we have to ask.  People won't give unless they
> know that we need it, and unless they know how incredibly efficient we
> are with the resources that are given to us.

That is why I think that reporting everything we do is so very important. Thank
you for allowing me to help with that.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Viajero

body:
On 06/07/04  at 12:57 AM, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> said:

> Well, I regret that all what people understood of my proposal was the
> final comment on bots. It was not a bot proposal I was suggesting, but a
>  team working proposal, something a bit like a wikiproject, in order to
> reduce current anarchy on category organisation.

> No one commented on anything, but on this bot issue; so I gather my
> suggestion was not interesting. Never mind :-)

Actually, it was a good suggestion. I left a message on Camembert's talk page yesterday asking him if he wanted to coordinate with classical music categories with me and a similar message on another user's page who is interested in Latin American topics. Alas, this was shortly before the database server went belly-up...

V.


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: Arbitration (Trollkien) was Re: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
Yes, I've looked, it's pretty incoherent, and there is
little that I think could be considered grounds for
excluding someone, especially since other remedies
don't seem to have been tried. This case was brought
straight to arbitration without the previous steps
that the guidelines recommend.
Mark

--- John Robinson <john at freeq.com> wrote:
> >What would he be banned for exactly? Are there
> >specific edits or problems?
>
> Have a look at
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JRR_Trollkien/Evidence
>
> >If so it should be possible either to fix it, or go
> through the normal
> >procedure.
>
> Oh there's a normal procedure, that actually works?
> I must have
> missed that; what is it?
>
> >What would he be banned for exactly? Are there
> >specific edits or problems? If so it should be
> >possible either to fix it, or go through the normal
> >procedure.
> >Mark
> >
> >
> >>  >3 non-AC member admins to do such a block
> >>
> >>  This is a good idea, we've had five already in
> >>  Trollkien's case, for example.
> >>  As with all good ideas, though, it never seems
> to
> >>  get implemented (didn't we
> >>  first see this proposal months ago?).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >__________________________________
> >Do you Yahoo!?
> >Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> >http://messenger.yahoo.com/
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: Lynching (was RE: [WikiEN-l] Not a lynch mob)

body:
Agreed - it is clear that the meaning was a group of
people deciding that the community process was not
getting the result that they wanted, and that they
should take action themselves (even though they did
not have a mandate to act).

The kinds of comments on Requests for Review of Admin
Actions typify this atmosphere, where a complaint that
someone has abused their admin powers might be met
with 'Good' or a comment to the effect that admins
should not be constrained by rules or guidelines, or
accountable for their actions.

Mark

--- Jim Cecropia <jcecropia at mail.com> wrote:

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

Well, "lynch mob" has a meaning in US culture beyond
literally "stringing someone up" "extra-judicially."
It refers to an atmosphere in which the question on
the table which can be stated: "We're fed up this guy,
podners, what're ya gonna do about it?" I see some of
that here. I've had an unpleasant run-in in an issue
in which 172 was a part, and I do think he is too
aggressive and arbitrary; but I've also come to
realize that he is one of the best contributors to
Wikipedia. This shouldn't give him (or anyone) a
"pass" to become a "super-user," but I think our
efforts should focus on how we can get experienced
contributors to follow certain basic rules without
"banning," which is an insult, rather than a time-out.
Maybe it's not possible, but I think the desire for
collegiality should make us think.

To return to the "lynching" issue, when Clarence
Thomas was being hammered for allegedly saying "Long
Dong Silver" to an aide, he finally described the
process as a "high-tech lynching"; noone thought he
literally meant that someone was going to string him
up, but everyone got the point, and it characterized
the atmosphere correctly. Also, BTW, the classic
example of lynching in literature is probably "The
Ox-Bow Incident."

Cheers!

--
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
U.S. Dollar (Primary): $4,258.18 USD
Canadian Dollar:       $195.05 CAD
Euro:                  ?1,551.57 EUR
Pound Sterling:        ?507.65 GBP
Yen:                   ?5,239 JPY

Current Total in U.S. Dollars: $7,221.33 USD

28 May 2004 total:             $4662.08 USD

Difference:

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
U.S. Dollar (Primary): $4,258.18 USD
Canadian Dollar:       $195.05 CAD
Euro:                  ?1,551.57 EUR
Pound Sterling:        ?507.65 GBP
Yen:                   ?5,239 JPY

Current Total in U.S. Dollars: $7,221.33 USD

28 May 2004 total:             $4662.08 USD

Difference:                    $2559.25 USD

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


from_name: Fennec Foxen

body:
Regarding the idea of our own IRC servers:

Allow me to add: Freenode is a nice network, they have a good solid
setup and a staff which is experienced in handling it. If it's
attacked by flood-bots, clone-bots, IRC viruses, zombies, et cetera,
someone will be able to handle it.

Regarding the servers going down: Freenode isn't going anywhere soon.
And if it does, we can always set ours up in a hurry (simply running
an ircd is *not* hard :).

And finally, you can lurk around on other Freenode channels and lure
in open-source-lovers to help out. :)


from_name: Matthew Trump

body:
Yes, I'm aware that this is the wiki process :). My point is that
it's a very labor intensive one that cannot be undone very easily,
unlike an edit rollback or a page move. My point is not that things
change, but rather the one similar to yours in that in the long run,
there should optimally be some kind of automated updating of
categories if an entire category is moved or redefined.

Timwi said:
> Matthew Trump wrote:
>
>> In any case, this is resulting in many editors going through many
>> articles repeated to change the categorization. My watchlist is
>> filled with long repeated edits in multiple waves.
>
> I really don't see anything wrong with that. Some people just act a
> bit
> too quickly, and add articles to too broad categories. (I did that
> too
> at first.) But it gives people something to work with, and splitting
> them up into smaller categories is less work than creating smaller
> categories from scratch.
>
> This is the Wiki process. Someone makes a sub-optimal contribution
> and
> others improve on it. Yes, sometimes it's a bit of work to clean up
> after *really* sub-optimal contributions, but a good end-result will
> eventually precipitate out. C'est la vie-kie.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
LS,
When a backup/restore process is running, usually there is some indication as to progress. Is there any information that can be shared about the problem, causes and what the likely scenario is.
* causes of the database corruption
* estimated time for completion
* estimated time to check the database after the restore
* estimated time of general availability

As to a drive to get more money, one of the critisisms on /. was that a figure had been given but that it was not clear how we came on that figure. The result was that people on /. came with all kinds of "well intended" advice.

Now a figure of 100k $ is mentioned; this is 5 times larger that the previous 20k. We are in the process of implementing the new hardware; what was wrong in the previous figures.

Possibly wikipedia-l is not the right forum, if so what is?

Thanks,
GerardM


body:
I completely agree. I think the main thrust of categories right now
is that perhaps they are becomng very quickly fine-grained (Fine
grained categories are just more interesting perhaps).

Ideally, it would have best to have only coarse-grained categories at
first (using some kind of community process like Anthere described),
creating finer-grained ones only later.

I realize that this is hindsight, but I think in the long run
something like you propose would be very good and may eventually
result in the fine-grained categories being replaced by more
convenient coarse-grained ones. It would definitely make searching
much more easy, if you could choose from "Ohio" and "museums" rather
than having to search a much longer list for "museums of Ohio" or
"Ohio museums" or "museums in Ohio" or "museums (Ohio)" etc.

Daniel Mayer said:
> --- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>> > there are a couple of different approaches. One is to
>> > create categories for every conjunction of categories - if you
>> have
>> > "hotels" and "museums" and "Ohio", that means you should have
>> "hotels
>> > in Ohio" and "museums in Ohio" categories.
>>
>> I favour this approach. Without it, [[Category:Museums]] would
>> contain
>> *all* museums in the world (millions!), and [[Category:Ohio]] would
>> contain absolutely *everything* about Ohio (cities, museums,
>> exhibitions, operas, theatres, cinemas, railways, bus lines,
>> sightseeing, TV stations, and all sorts of other unrelated things).
>
> That is simply bad database design. A user should be able to select
> [Museums]
> WITHIN [Ohio] or just [Museums] or even just [Ohio]. Otherwise
> different tags
> will be needed for all possible combinations of museums, sport
> stadiums, or
> amusement parks in every single area of the world. It would be much
> better to
> have tags for the places and tags for things. Let the user decide
> what
> combination of variables he or she wants to select. That will require
> an
> advanced search capability to be added to MediaWiki, but I assume
> that was
> planned anyway.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
Jimmy-
> In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
> the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
> from the general public.

Yes. A $100K fundraising drive makes sense, but at least *some* content
should be up - at least the squids serving pages in offline mode. That's
because many of our visitors come from Google, and if fundraising is the
first thing they see - and no content - they will be turned away.

We should also have realtime updates of funds coming in, this can
dramatically increase participation. This isn't that hard to do as PayPal
provides an interface for it:
https://www.paypal.com/en/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/ipn-intro

Lastly, I think hardware alone is not enough. We need a fulltime
professional systems administrator with direct access to the machines.
Within a $100K budget that is certainly viable. If Brion wants a new job,
I'd say he should be immediately offered this opportunity.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> But to raise money, we have to ask.  People won't give unless they
> know that we need it, and unless they know how incredibly efficient we
> are with the resources that are given to us.

I think it's important to bundle the plea for money with an short FAQ on
resource use and plans for the future.

Last time round, I know a lot of people thought Wikipedia was doing the "we're
taking our toys and leaving"-stunt, semi-blackmailing the public for money.

Once it was pointed out that Wikipedia would struggle on no matter what, that
the servers were realistic in relation to the traffic (the sums are already
quite a bit larger than what most Free Software projects dabble with), etc.
people emptied their pockets.

It's also probably wise to tell the Slashdot editors not to post anything about
it until you ask them too, or we become subject to any odd angle, not to
mention timing.

But you already know this. :)

--
Daniel Mikkelsen
Copyleft Software AS


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote in part:

>The FDL was very deliberately written to work well for free software
>documentation, manulals and textbooks. Its use for non-text-based content was
>not forseen - yet that is the situation we are faced with.

Is that really the central issue of what we're faced with?
Even Wikipedia's text articles are not documentation,
which is why the GNU FDL doesn't fit in seemlessly with them.

Actually, I don't believe that the FDL was written for textbooks,
which IMO are more like encyclopaedia articles than manuals
(although arguably they really fit in the middle somewhere).
Judging by how its written and the GNU material about it,
it seems to me that textbooks were an afterthought.
For that matter, so were encyclopaedia articles. ^_^

Of course, you're correct that the FDL wasn't intended for sound and images,
which is why it fits even ''less'' seemlessly with those.

>Delirium wrote:

>>I certainly don't see Wikimedia as producing "content".

>What do you call images, sound, and video then? They are not documents.

Sure, they're documents.  But they're not ''documentation'',
which is the "D" in "FDL".  I agree that the situation is unclear,
since the meaning of the term "document" is arguable.
But so is the meaning of the term "content", if it comes to that.

>'Media' *might* work but has some ambiguity issues. 'Publication' might also
>work. 'Copyleft' would be redundant. Any other ideas?

I wouldn't worry very much about the best name,
except that we need something that GNU would like
if we want GNU to create a new licence for us.
I'd say that "document" is ideal in theory,
but for a practically useful name,
this would depend on how the new GNU licence is created.

If the GNU FDL is modified to be more like what we want,
in part by generalising it to more documents than just documentation,
then GNU could change its name to "Free Document License"
without changing the initials, like they did to the GNU LGPL.
But the general impression seems to be that GNU won't want to do this.

If a new licence (like what mav calls the "GNU FCL" is created),
then it would be confusing to name it "Free Document License",
because of the initials.  Given GNU's "semantic hangup" about "content",
I'd say that "publication" is the best term, so we get "GNU FPL".
(But even this initialism may look too much like "GNU GPL".)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
On 7 Jun 2004, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Lastly, I think hardware alone is not enough. We need a fulltime
> professional systems administrator with direct access to the machines.
> Within a $100K budget that is certainly viable. If Brion wants a new job,
> I'd say he should be immediately offered this opportunity.

I agree. It should be full time, because an event based model would cause the
conspiracy heads to suspect the paid admins to manufacture problems. :)

I also think there should be a part time position for someone doing some of the
work Jimbo is doing today. The routine part of coordination.

--
Daniel Mikkelsen
Copyleft Software AS


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
Am Montag, 7. Juni 2004 14:10 schrieb Jimmy Wales:
> We need to start fundraising again, and at least for today, we should
> have a link up on the 'wikipedia is dead' page to the donations page
> on the wikimedia website. ?I am sure people will contribute at a time
> like this.

Sorry, but I believe this is a very bad idea. We had a similar action last
christmas and that generated very bad feelings. It has an haugut of
"Wikipedia is putting there servers down to raise money". That isn't the case
of course, but people will think it is.

Furthermore our problem shouldn't be the hardware any more. When we are not
able to get a simple second database server to work since a half year now,
it's not the hardware. The server wasn't brought down by too much traffic.
Either we by the wrong hardware, or it's badly configured, or we have the
wrong software because it doesn't scale. Then we should think about software,
not about hardware. The bottlenecks is not the hardware. Sorry to say this,
but there was enough money to get this thing running. Probably we spent it
the wrong way.

Uli


from_name: sada asda

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am STILL unfairly banned!

body:
I am not a previous user who was formerly banned. I have not committed any wrongs. I have merely disagreed with User:172 over the content of an article, and now I am being blacklisted and denied even a pretense of fair treatment!

My posts are not accepted at the english mailing list, I am banned from the chatroom, I am personally attacked and insulted by numerous users, and I am currently banned without the support of Jimbo Wales, or the arbitration committee!!!!!!!!

This is not fair. This is not reasonable. This is not acceptable.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] I am STILL unfairly banned!

body:
I am not a previous user who was formerly banned. I have not committed any wrongs. I have merely disagreed with User:172 over the content of an article, and now I am being blacklisted and denied even a pretense of fair treatment!

My posts are not accepted at the english mailing list, I am banned from the chatroom, I am personally attacked and insulted by numerous users, and I am currently banned without the support of Jimbo Wales, or the arbitration committee!!!!!!!!

This is not fair. This is not reasonable. This is not acceptable.

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subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: proposed policy change - allow *certain*
	CC-licensed images on Wikipedia...

body:
Delirium wrote in part:

>-- Does requiring attribution (like old-style BSD) make the license
>non-free?  Richard Stallman seems to think so, from what I can gather
>from gnu.org.

I hope that this isn't what Richard Stallman thinks!,
because his own licences (GNU FDL, also GNU GPL and GNU LGPL)
also require attribution.  Actually, according to
<licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>,
the problem with the old BSD licence is
"the ``obnoxious BSD advertising clause''",
and even then, RMS says that the licence is (while flawed) still free.

The ``obnoxious BSD advertising clause'' is more than attribution;
it requires attribution on all ''advertising'' for the software,
and ''specifically'' for the software's origin at UC Berkeley.
This is obnoxious because it's more than just a Credits file;
even so, in RMS's opinion, it's still free.
Source: <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html>.

>-- Does permitting only verbatim redistribution make the license
>non-free?  Many people (including myself) would argue so.

I would argue so too, and I believe that even Stallman would agree.
RMS often permits only verbatim redistribution of his essays,
but I don't believe that he would characterise those essays as free.
He doesn't want them to be free, since they're ''his'' opinion --
in contrast both to free software and to free documents like Wikipedia,
which belong to the world.

Neither RMS, nor Debian, nor the Open Source Initiative,
give clear definitions of "freedom" except for programming code,
and it's not clear that the same rules should apply to everything else.
But all of them that require free software must be modifiable.

-- Toby


body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> ....
> I'm not sure what the "free content" movement should call itself.
> "Creative commons" is one term I rather like, as it emphasizes the space
> (a "commons") in which many different materials (or simply "stuff") can
> co-exist rather than grouping the materials themself under a single
> moniker, but the term seems to already be taken by a particular
> instantiation of the idea.

Actually I just found out that CC founder Larry Lessig is now on the FSF board
of directors. Hopefully this will mean that we will be able to more
successfully lobby for a FDL 2.0 and CC-by-sa that are compatible and thus be
able to migrate to the CC-by-sa instead of essentially writing a new GNU
license.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] I am unfairly banned,
	until it is resolved I have little choice but to post here

body:
I cannot "prove" my innocence; and it is ridiculous that I am being asked to defend myself against crimes which don't even exist. If I am a sockpuppet (which I am not), so what? Many users have more than one account. What wikipedia page states that sockpuppetry is a bannable offence? Regardless, Im not a sockpuppet!

I should be unbanned, if you have a problem with me -- you can request mediation and then arbitration. The process should not be usurped by you people, simply because some of you have the power to do so.

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from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Not a lynch mob

body:
Ed Poor wrote

>I object to the characterization of this mailing list, which I
administer, as having a "lynch mob" atmosphere. Lyching is literally an
extrajudicial killing, and while being blocked from editing Wikipedia
for a period of time may FEEL like death of a sort, there is certainly
nothing extra-judicial about this discussion.

>In fact, I brought the issue to mailing list rather than starting
"banning procedures" because I had hopes we could settle the matter
WITHOUT a ban. That why I carefully entitled my original post as "Can we
ban 172 now? And VV too!"

So the objection is to calling this 'procedure' of Ed's 'extra-judicial',
_because_ it was was deliberately chosen by him as outside the judicial
option?

Sorry, can't allow that through.  Even list admins have to make some sort of
basic logical sense.

Charles


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Keep in mind, you're the one that's proposing a stricter policy.
>>So it's no surprise that I'm asking you to justify assumptions
>>that go into making that policy!

>I'm proposing we stay with what we have had all along: Copyleft. Others want to
>do something different. So from my perspective, it is they who need to justify
>why they want to do something different.

''Does'' anybody want to do anything different?

When Wikibooks was first begun, Karl Wick wanted to write an OChem book
that used a noncopyleft licence (if I'm remembering things correctly).
But now, I don't know anybody that's suggesting noncopyleft for WikiNews,
only people that are considering whether the possibility is a good one.
I may be ignorant of a discussion somewhere else, of course;
but in any case, I agree with you that they need to make their case.

And even if we adopted the not-necessarily-copyleft text that Erik suggested,
then they would still have to make their case.

>>Then, this introduces a new factor, which is dilution of effort;
>>presumably lowering the average quality of each fork
>>(even ''before'' we consider whether they can be recombined).
>>I don't think that I agree with this,
>>since more derivative works may be spread more widely,
>>causing more people to work on improvement in the first place.

>Wikipedia is directly available all around the world already. Thus there is
>little need to have derivative works all over the place being worked on
>separately. Wikipedia content is also mirrored by many different websites. Thus
>extending our reach. The few forks we have are also directly compatible with
>Wikipedia. Thus any improvements they make can be reincorporated back into
>Wikipedia. We are also not dealing with fiction here: we are writting reference
>material. Thus any improvement that is made in one derivative work will likely
>also have to be made in every other fork. That is needless duplication of
>effort.

I'm not disagreeing with the duplication/dilution of effort.
The question is whether the average fork (or even the original)
has lower quality.  In Wikipedia's case, this is probably true;
I don't believe that [[w:es:]] is better because of EL, for example.
It's not so clear to me for WikiNews, for the reasons that I gave last time.

>>This is particularly likely in the WikiNews example,
>>since any hesitation on the part of news organisations
>>to redistribute GNU FDL or CC-by-sa stories
>>translates directly into a less widespread audience.

>The CC-by-sa is already well-suited for WikiNews. We just need to inform
>newspapers exactly what they can do with WikiNews content - just as the
>Associated Press already informs newspapers what they can do with AP content.

Of course, we do need to inform them, but we also need to sell to them.
Many local news organisations will begin prejudiced against our material,
and it won't help if we require stricter conditions on them than the AP does.
To be sure, in a sense we require much more lenient conditions;
they can't let others copy the AP material, but our stuff is OK.
However, people that are used to to the Closed framework
are more comfortable with the AP's method, evil as it is.

This is not to say that we shouldn't try to make people understand
the free paradigm.  I'm just pointing out the material fact
that free content will be strange to many prejudiced people.
Thus in convincing them that WikiNews is a good idea after all,
it may well turn out that CC-by works where CC-by-sa does not.
OTOH, it may well turn out that CC-by-sa works where CC-by does not.
I would suggest some surveys before deciding what to use with WikiNews.

>Dual-licensing with the GFDL will make it possible to use WikiNews content in
>any other Wikimedia project. Hopefully the compatibility issue will be fixed
>soon.

If the incompatibility (in that direction) with CC-by-sa is fixed,
then any incompatibility with CC-by will also be fixed;
I don't see why you brought this up.

>>With Wikinews, however, this deadline would arrive even faster.
>>As 95 years is an insanely long time to protect an encyclopaedia article,
>>so even 14 years would be an insanely long time to protect a news story.
>>One day might be enough, and one week would surely suffice;
>>so this makes it less significant if the protection dwindles to zero.
>>Any proprietary fork would have only a week's worth of useful material.

>How would that work if content is under the CC-by? The AP could get Wikinews
>content as soon as it is published and add improvements, thus making a
>proprietary derivative work right away. Then only the AP could grant
>distribution rights to the superior version.

That's a good point, although the AP is likely to be even more prejudiced
against our material.  That said, after a few years, then they would catch on.
So you're right, this will be the same problem as we have today
when Microsoft incorporates BSD code into Windows.

Thus, anybody proposing CC-by for WikiNews now has a harder case to make. ^_^

>>But the situation with WikiNews will probably be very different.
>>First of all, many people consistently look for news every day,

>And hopefully in time many will go to Wikinews as a source for unbiased and
>factual news.

And hopefully many won't.  If my local newspaper picks up WikiNews --
and I hope that they do! -- then I'll never go to WikiNews as a reader.
Since I don't intend to be a regular editor on WikiNews, I'll rarely go.
So it is important that local organisations pick up WikiNews --
and I believe that you agree. ^_^

>>It should be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy
>>that, whatever may come up in the future (like WikiNews),
>>our goal shall be to develop content for free use by others.

>Not when that freedom is the freedom to restrict use of derivative works.

Freedom to restrict use of deriviative works is not, IMO,
any sort of freedom of use of the original Wikimedia work.
And it doesn't count as "freedom" in the standard (FSF) meaning,
so nobody will be able to argue that the previous sentence
defends such a freedom.

>>But it should not be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy
>>that copyleft shall always be the best way to realise that goal.
>>We may yet find ourselves in a situation where it isn't.

>I still hold that copyleft should always be our default position. If and when
>copyleft has proved to be an unreasonable hindrance to a particular project
>that is preventing it from becoming viable, then we can re-consider other
>options.

>>Maybe we should just retain the ambiguous wording
>>that Anth?re first asked about???

>For the time being that is fine by me since my interpretation of the wording
>includes copyleft.

And mine does not.  (That is, whether or not copyleft is a good idea,
the wording that Anth?re quoted clearly does not require copyleft, IMO.)
So the discussion will arise again, hopefully with more direct relevance.

Thus, I guess that we can stop here, and give Anth?re an answer:
# No, the GNU FDL itself won't necessary have to be used.
# Yes, whaterver licence is used must be free in the FSF sense.
# Who knows, copyleft licences may be required and may not;
  it depends on who you ask.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l list administrators

body:
This list's moderation queue doesn't seem to be regularly maintained.
I've just gone through the last month and a half's held messages to
delete the spam and let through the legit messages from non-subscribers;
sorry if I missed some, but there were a *lot* of accumulated messages.

I'm adding myself and Jeronim as list administrators, so held messages
should be let through more swiftly from now on.

(Our mailing lists hold messages from non-subscribers so that you guys
don't see the barrels of spam that hit the list addresses.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC question

body:
Hi,
Why don't host IRC chanels on wikimedia servers ? (ie. irc.wikimedia.org)
Freenode may vanish day, we have better to get ready for that.
It may be also nice to offer people under firewall a Web interface to be
able to acces IRC even at office (as Shaihulud do for some of us with
CGI:IRC).

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] IRC question


subject: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot article on wiki-spamming

body:
Mentions Wikipedia protection of "nigritude ultramarine". I don't
think this is really a problem for right now (especially) in the
Sandbox context, but as always it's good to keep abreast of trends

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/07/1623244.shtml?tid=111&tid=126&tid=95


subject: [Foundation-l] PayPal update

body:
U.S. Dollar (Primary): $4,330.40 USD
Canadian Dollar:       $195.05 CAD
Euro:                  ?1,646.27 EUR
Pound Sterling:        ?560.10 GBP
Yen:                   ?5,239 JPY

Current Total in U.S. Dollars: $7501.42 USD

Total of of 28 May 2004:       $4662.08 USD

Difference:                    $2839.24 USD

Also, could a developer include a donations link at the end of the 'Database is
read only ...' message? That should increase the donation rate.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] PayPal update


subject: [Foundation-l] PayPal update


subject: [Wikipedia-l] PayPal update


subject: [Wikitech-l] PayPal update


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] PayPal update


subject: [WikiEN-l] Not a lynch mob

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

> But those who are stolidly REFUSING to
take unilateral action against him have the right to register their
objection to such a characterization.

>Clear now?

Stolidly refusing to take unilateral action against 172: that would be every
admin who is not banning him (around 240).  Have a right to register an
objection to being characterised as a lynch mob: yes, no collective action
means no mob.  Would enough positive replies to 'can we ban 172/VV'  have
justified any banning action, though?

I think Abe has it wrong: 'kangaroo court' is the apt phrase, rather than
what he said.  Ed, I think you would probably prefer to have this presented
as some sort of mediation by list debate.  For myself, it looks more like an
attempt to 'run him out of town'.

Charles


body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> If the incompatibility (in that direction) with CC-by-sa is fixed,
> then any incompatibility with CC-by will also be fixed;
> I don't see why you brought this up.

So that any modifications made to a CC-by-sa Wikinews article (or a FDL
version) could all be re-incorporated back into Wikinews. Under the dual
license scheme content could flow from Wikinews to any Wikimedia project via
the FDL and from Wikinews to newspapers via the CC-by-sa, but not in the
reverse direction. If the CC-by-sa and FDL were compatible, then that could
happen and we could make things simple by publishing all Wikimedia content
under the CC-by-sa.

> >How would that work if content is under the CC-by? The AP could get Wikinews
> >content as soon as it is published and add improvements, thus making a
> >proprietary derivative work right away. Then only the AP could grant
> >distribution rights to the superior version.
>
> That's a good point, although the AP is likely to be even more prejudiced
> against our material.  That said, after a few years, then they would catch
> on.
> So you're right, this will be the same problem as we have today
> when Microsoft incorporates BSD code into Windows.
>
> Thus, anybody proposing CC-by for WikiNews now has a harder case to make. ^_^

Good example, although I wasn't aware of that MS factoid.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: Delirium

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>I certainly don't see Wikimedia as producing "content".
>>
>>
>
>What do you call images, sound, and video then? They are not documents. What
>word do you suggest we use to describe what we have? Is the free content
>movement operating under a bad name? If so what should it call itself?
>
>'Media' *might* work but has some ambiguity issues. 'Publication' might also
>work. 'Copyleft' would be redundant. Any other ideas?
>
>
Well, I don't see it as one category.  If you're producing artwork, I'd
call it 'artwork'.  If you're producing educational materials, I'd call
them 'educational materials'.  Decomposing them into 'visual content'
and 'audio content' or something like that smacks too much of a
marketplace-oriented categorize-and-package-for-sale approach.  If a
generic term is necessary, I'd prefer something really generic like
"material".  I.e. "I produced some video-based material today".

I'm not sure what the "free content" movement should call itself.
"Creative commons" is one term I rather like, as it emphasizes the space
(a "commons") in which many different materials (or simply "stuff") can
co-exist rather than grouping the materials themself under a single
moniker, but the term seems to already be taken by a particular
instantiation of the idea.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
>the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
>from the general public.
>
>
I think we'll need a decent justification of that to make sure everyone
understands why we need the money and what we're going to do with it.
$100,000 is a *lot* of money, and I can imagine at least some people
will be skeptical that it's entirely necessary---we have to give them at
least some plausible reason to believe that it's really not possible to
run the site reasonably well on, say, $50,000 worth of equipment instead
(which would still be a lot of equipment!).  At the very least a
proposed parts list with some explanation of why we need the various
parts (and can't do with cheaper replacement for the very-expensive
ones) would help---even non-techie people who aren't going to read it
all the way through will be somewhat mollified by at least seeing that
we've taken the time to put something like that up.

-Mark


from_name: Stephen Yeago

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem installing the MediaWiki 1.3.0beta2

body:
Heya all, everything appeared to go well on the web-install, however no
LocalSettings.php was created in /config.

So I thought I'd reload the page, on the thought that I had interrupted
it (although I didn't notice the page still (loading).

At any rate, this is what I got:

    * PHP 4.3.6 ok
    * PHP server API is cgi; using ugly URLs (index.php?title=Page_Title)
    * Have zlib support; enabling output compression.
    * Found GD graphics library built-in, image thumbnailing will be
      enabled if you enable uploads.
    * Installation directory: /homepages/22/d94944393/htdocs/yeago.net/wiki
    * Script URI path: /wiki
    * MySQL error 1045: Access denied for user:
      'root at infong223.kundenserver.de' (Using password: NO)
    * Trying regular user... ok.
    * Connected to database... 4.0.17-standard-log; enabling MySQL 4
      enhancements
    * Database db95048066 exists
    * There are already MediaWiki tables in this database. Checking if
      updates are needed...

Updating ipblocks table... Query "ALTER TABLE ipblocks ADD ipb_auto tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0', ADD ipb_id int(8) NOT NULL auto_increment, ADD PRIMARY KEY (ipb_id)" failed with error code "Table 'db95048066.ipblocks' doesn't exist".

So, there may be two problems:

1) LocalSettings.php not being created
2) ipblocks table not being created

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

-Steve


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: [Wikitech-l] IRC question]

body:
> Brion : If our servers are cut off, we could lose that communications
channel as
well.

IRC server don't have to be at same place/server than Wikipedia ones.

> Gerard : All this work is done to a large extend by volunteers. The
current infrastructure needs all the attention it can get. IRC on wikimedia
servers will devide the attention and that is not a good idea at this moment
in time.

I didn't said I like this feature right now ;o) It's just a long term view.

> Hashar : If your firewall is blocking IRC, you should probably doing
something
else ... like working :o)

Sure ;o) But running tool as CGI:IRC on a Wikimedia server may be nice for
those you want to use discussion under a firewall. Not necessary during
working time ;o)

Aoineko