subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocked: 217.5.141.103

body:
Pierre Abbat <phma at webjockey.net> writes:

> I just blocked 217.5.141.103. Some sysop on the German Wiki please do the
> same. The block should be removed in a few hours, or sooner if he gets the
> message.

Stop, this user makes in the German wikipedia absolutely valuable
contributions (see f.e. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gew%FCrzvanille)

I suppose he is just not aware of how to place interlanguage links
correctly, but he seems to be goodwilled and no vandal.

greetings,
elian


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: The v-word (was: [Wikipedia-l] User pages)

body:
> Well, I've had words with Clutch -- both publicly and privately. I don't
> think the v-word applies. And name-calling, once it's gotten people's
> attention, is best dropped quickly. (that's a hint, Erik :-)

The "v-word" will be dropped as soon as the unvandalized version of the page
is restored. Again, what would you call it if people used your user page to
advocate their points of view under your name?

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


list: wikien-l

from_name: Digital Addictions Software

subject: [WikiEN-l] Witch Hunt

body:
Everyone needs to chill out Lir.  Next someone is going to call me Lir.  In
fact, maybe I might just claim that I am Lir.  Who would know?  Maybe I'm not
really Ram-Man.
	Ram-Man

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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body:
>  My troll days are long past;

That's not what I get from your changelog to Lir's page:

"Lir, I'm going to sit on you till you cry uncle"
"No. Bad Lir. No more senseless linking!"
"Still sitting on Lir; she isn't showing that she's interesting in
developing good taste in editing"
"We want good taste, or we'll spit you out."
"adding link to important article on Good Taste"
"Don't try to wriggle out of it Lir; a contributor of your stature needs to
develope some TASTE"
"Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle. If you don't take other peoples feelings
seriously Lir, why should we take your work seriously?"
"Give me some evidence you know what good taste is Lir. C'mon, I challenge
you"
"not even close. try again, Lir baby"
"(your fate is being decided; if you don't take your fate seriously, it will
certainly take YOU very seriously"
again: "putting in link to article on Good Taste"

This is when other Wikipedians started reverting your changes. Lir
repeatedly *removed* your link to the good taste article and only left it in because
you kept vandalizing her page and threatened to continue to do so. And yes,
I'm going to continue to say "her", nobody seems to be female on the Internet
anyway, so I can use it as a neutral gender [*].

You're falling back into your old trolling behavior, Jon. The sad thing is
that you got away with it for too long, because nobody likes to stick up for
Lir.

Regards,

Erik

[*] Yes, that was a joke.

--
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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II [...])

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>The issue of using diacritical marks is not about Lir.
>>
>To some extent, though, it is.  Lir is very alone in suggesting that
>Germany should be called Deutschland in an English text.  There are
>other foreign places where the English use is unstable, e.g. both the
>English spelling Gothenburg and the Swedish spelling G?teborg are used
>for the same city in English texts.  I think the NPOV policy is
>sufficient to address this.  For most smaller cities there never was
>an English name, and the use of diacritics might be justified.  But
>the name Germany never was in any of these categories.
>
>My remarks about Lir was about the "Deutschland" cases.  It was my
>interpretation that this was the result of independent thinking (which
>I admire) in combination with lack of interest in the opinion of
>others (which might come with more experience - it did for me).
>
I know that Lir was at the far end of the scale on this issue.  I too
would find it unwarranted to refer to Germany as Deutschland in an
English text.  Continuing to discuss the issue in terms of Lir only
serves to keep alive an extreme POV that nobody else supports.  Once we
remove the Lir factor we may find that our opinions are not that far apart.

For Gothenburg/G?teborg I see the issue as more in transition than
unstable.  I just looked at a popular work: "The World Almanac and Book
of Facts, 1998" and it uses "G?teborg".  This seems to reflect a modern
trend.  My 1906 Encyclopedia Americana lists it under "Gottenburg".adds
both alternatives and show "G?theborg" with the extra "h" as an
alternative Swedish spelling..

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Oregon City and Bryce Harrington

body:
I was the person who noticed the Oregon City article had a copyright notice
WITH an invariant section that the notice could not be removed.  This violates
the copyright agreement to add to Wikipedia (no invariant sections).  I
respectfully asked Bryce to remove the incompatibility or delete his additions
that he claimed credit for.  He removed the invariant section.  Let me make the
rest of this discussion a practical one.  Who among us would have accepted it
if I would put at the end of *every* 30,000 or so city articles a message that
the articles were mine and copyrighted "2002 Derek Ramsey"?  I am pretty sure
(unless I misunderstand) that if you add to Wikipedia you give your consent to
let others modify your work.  That may mean eliminating it, removing your
copyright notice, or whatever they feel like doing.  Wikipedia has a copyright
notice and that should be sufficient.  If you can't agree to it, you can't add
articles, no matter how much we want them.
	Ram-Man

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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body:
> I just posted a non-page to the page, a request that we all just drop
> it.  Please let's drop it.

I have no problem with that.

Regards,

Erik

--
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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A lesson in logic (was: The v-word)

body:
There's a particular kind of argument, often used in politics:

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

A is VERY BAD.
B is an A.
Therefore, B is VERY BAD.

We all agree that genocide is bad. Especially those of us who are (or know) people who lest relatives in the [[Holocaust]].

   G is very bad.

Israeli policy (settlements in the West Bank, etc.) is "genocide".

   S is G.

Therefore, S is very bad.

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

We can pull the same trick with Vandalism.

   V is very bad.

That edit is vandalism.

   E is V.

Therefore, E is very bad.

It's what my logic textbook calls a "valid but unsound" argument. It's valid, because the conclusion really does follow from the premises. It's unsound, because not all of the premises are true.

It only takes one untrue premise to demolish the soundness of an otherwise "valid" argument.

I would like to request to all my fellow (and lady!) contributors that we not use the bludgeon of this kind of fallacious argument against one another.

Ed Poor


subject: Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)

body:
Steve Callaway wrote:

> Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written.
>
>
>
> From: Zoe <mailto:zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
>
>     Criminal?
>
>     Zoe
>
>      Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net <mailto:saintonge at telus.net> >
>     wrote:
>
>         It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned
>         into a
>         criminal slander of Oliver.
>

My apologies, I should have said libel, consider my comment thus corrected.

Eclecticology


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] what people I know have to say about anglicization

body:
>We the peoples of the formerly well-known nations of Shqiperi,
>Al-Jaza-ir, Hayastan, Druk-yul, Zhongguo, Hrvatska, Kalaalit Nunaat,
>Misr, Eesti, Viti, Ellas, al'Urdan, Choson Minjujuui In'min
>Konghwaguk, Taehan-Min'guk, Dhivehi Jumhuriya, Pyidaungsu Myanma
>Naingngandaw, and Aotearoa would prefer not to get lost, actually, so
>no thanks.
>
>You'd never get all our little marks right in your barbaric typefaces,
>so we're happy being known to you as Albania, Algeria, Armenia,
>Bhutan, China, Croatia, Greenland, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Greece,
>Jordan, North Korea, South Korea, the Maldives, Myanmar, and New
>Zealand.

No non-racist, non-imperialist person would ever refer to the city I
live in by anything other than its native name of "Yangma" -- or, if you
absolutely must, the English translation of that name: "The Valley of
the Smokes."

Of course, many people insist on using, not just the absurd name the
conquistadores gave it, but a barbarous truncation thereof.  This
linguistic genocide must stop!

(This message is closed-smilied for the humor impared.)

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User pages

body:
Zoe wrote:

> What about the case where Lir attributed a quote to me on her User
> page that I never made?
>
> Zoe
>
You should certainly have a right to defend yourself when attacked
personally.  A simple "I did not say this" should do or "See the talk
page" where a longer response is needed.
Ec.

>  Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>     There is only one instance that comes to mind where I would make
>     minor
>     changes to somebody's user page, and that is to fix broken links or
>     multiple redirects incidental to a change somwhere else on Wikipedia.
>     Even there a piping to the correct title while retaining the
>     appearance
>     of the user page is often to be preferred.
>
>     Eclecticology
>


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] was: Help accessing Wikipedia?

body:
Thanks for rebooting the server, Brion. One of these days, I'll have to learn how to do it myself.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Brion Vibber [mailto:vibber at aludra.usc.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 5:46 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Help accessing Wikipedia?

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Zoe wrote:
> The Wikipedia seems to be inaccessible right now.  Anybody know what's
> wrong and if it's something that's going to be fixed any time soon?

Up again.

I tried upping the priority on the simple queries used for loading up and
displaying pages to see if it would improve interactive performance, but I
don't think it helped much.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<20021125192450.97869.qmail@web40707.mail.yahoo.com> (message
	from Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] on Mon, 25 Nov 2002 11:24:50 -0800 (PST))

body:
We the peoples of the formerly well-known nations of Shqiperi,
Al-Jaza-ir, Hayastan, Druk-yul, Zhongguo, Hrvatska, Kalaalit Nunaat,
Misr, Eesti, Viti, Ellas, al'Urdan, Choson Minjujuui In'min
Konghwaguk, Taehan-Min'guk, Dhivehi Jumhuriya, Pyidaungsu Myanma
Naingngandaw, and Aotearoa would prefer not to get lost, actually, so
no thanks.

You'd never get all our little marks right in your barbaric typefaces,
so we're happy being known to you as Albania, Algeria, Armenia,
Bhutan, China, Croatia, Greenland, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Greece,
Jordan, North Korea, South Korea, the Maldives, Myanmar, and New
Zealand.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocked: 217.5.141.103

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> I just blocked 217.5.141.103. Some sysop on the German Wiki please do the
> same. The block should be removed in a few hours, or sooner if he gets the
> message.

I'm curious, is this how we want Wikipedia to work?  No trial?  No
reasons stated?  Just "block him now!", really?  I find this
problematic.  Am I the only one?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


in_reply_to:
<3DE27B43.6070202@telus.net> (message from Ray Saintonge on Mon,
	25 Nov 2002 11:34:27 -0800)

body:
|
|What I really oppose is having English as the foundation for a modern
|Tower of Babel.
|

Hilsen, Gruess, Hola, and Hi,

I think you have it backwards.  English is a lingua franca.

First, everybody spoke Latin, then they spoke French, now they speak
English.

Until the next one comes along, English it is.  That said, we can
still do a lot to accommodate and show respect for all the other
languages.  And we can also push the Wikipedia in every language that
has an interest in having a Wikipedia.

That nearly multilingual guy,
Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Steve Callaway

body:
Exactly.

I had to have a good long laugh at the spelling (and the concomitant
breast-beating surrounding the word)  of 'anglicization', however, which was
almost (but not quite) a self-defining oxymoron. If ever there was a word
which needed spelling according to standard the English orthography, that
was it.

Many non-native English speakers, amongst whom I count myself, are troubled
by assertions such as the one below: it is as unfortunate a position as a
C++ programmer suggesting that a Java programmer should stick to only
looking at and writing Java code (or vice versa). We are either creating an
encyclopaedia or we are creating an organ of linguistic propaganda. Let us
hope we attain the latter.

Steve Callaway

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere5 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing

--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The English wikipedia is
> designed for people for whom English is the native
> language, by and large.

I hope not.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] a way to contact IP users

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Ed,
>
>I know you mean very well, and that you're trying to help solve an
>important problem, but I'm generally opposed to giving admins any special
>powers that they do not already have have.  Maybe give everyone this
>power?
>
>Isn't there another way to achieve what you are trying to achieve?
>
>Larry
>
>On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>
I agree with Larry on this. All logged-in users (or maybe even all
users) should have the power to send a message to unregistered IPs:
there is no need for a similar power to talk to logged-in users, as the
talk page will already work for them.

Perhaps this could be done by just editing the [[User:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]]
page for the appropriate IP.

Neil

>
>
>>How about giving admins the ability to throw up a "Please read this" message.
>>
>>Something like this:
>>* User submits an edit
>>* Wikipedia accepts the edit, and...
>>* Sends user to a "You have an urgent administrative message" page.
>>
>>User can then:
>>* Click on the "Read message" button, or
>>* Just ignore it
>>
>>We can think of variations, like, send the user directly to the message page, rather than the "you have a message waiting". Another, for egregious cases, would send the user to the "message waiting" or 'please acknowledge this' page after EVERY edit, until the click an OKAY button.
>>
>>Ed poor
>>
>>
>>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] a way to contact IP users

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

 >Ed,
 >
 >I know you mean very well, and that you're trying to help solve an
 >important problem, but I'm generally opposed to giving admins any special
 >powers that they do not already have have.  Maybe give everyone this
 >power?
 >
 >Isn't there another way to achieve what you are trying to achieve?
 >
 >Larry
 >
 >On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
 >
 >
I agree with Larry on this. All logged-in users (or maybe even all
users) should have the power to send a message to unregistered IPs:
there is no need for a similar power to talk to logged-in users, as the
talk page will already work for them.

Perhaps this could be done by just editing the [[User:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]]
page for the appropriate IP.

Neil

 >
 >
 >>How about giving admins the ability to throw up a "Please read this"
message.
 >>
 >>Something like this:
 >>* User submits an edit
 >>* Wikipedia accepts the edit, and...
 >>* Sends user to a "You have an urgent administrative message" page.
 >>
 >>User can then:
 >>* Click on the "Read message" button, or
 >>* Just ignore it
 >>
 >>We can think of variations, like, send the user directly to the
message page, rather than the "you have a message waiting". Another, for
egregious cases, would send the user to the "message waiting" or 'please
acknowledge this' page after EVERY edit, until the click an OKAY button.
 >>
 >>Ed poor
 >>
 >>
 >>


from_name: Lightning

body:
here's ,my take

split webservers and db servers.

1 master db, only write query's come to this db
as needed add slave servers, these only do read query's

add webservers as needed

this is the easiest way to go about it using mysql's built in replication
feature.. it makes the most sense too in my book....

the only thing needed to make wikipedia work like this is a db connection
library that looks at an SQL statement and routes it to where it's supposed
to be.. i wrote a db library for mysql in php once that did all this, its
pretty cool if i may say so.. if you are interested i'll send you the code,
its part of a much bigger project, but i figure any decent php programmer
should be able to grasp the concept of it... it might not be super efficient
cause i programmed this when  i didn't know many tricks and was kinda still
learning, but it works.. oh well .. if anyone is interested let me know

Lightning

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Hill" <nick at nickhill.co.uk>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 4:53 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Long term plans for scalability

> I believe Wikipedia is being held back in terms of how many people can use
> it and how it can grow, through architectural constraints.
>
> The current architecture of one machine taking the entire burden of all
> searches, updates and web page delivery inherently limits the rate at
which
> Wikipedia can grow.
>
> In order for Wikipedia to grow, it needs an architecture which can easily
> devolve work to other servers. A main database is still required to
enforce
> administrative policy and maintain database consistency.
>
> Work to improve the speed of the database and reduce lag will, in the long
> run, only be of very limited benefit and, perhaps, reduce the amount of
lag
> users experience for a few days or weeks.
>
> A method of easily implementing mirror servers with live, real-time
updates
> is required. Each mirror server should cater for all the functionality
> users expect from Wikipedia except for taking care of form submissions of
> updates, which should be forwarded to the master wiki server.
>
> The main database server should be released from the burden of serving web
> pages and concentrate on running administrative code, processing and
> posting database updates.
>
> The update system can be achieved by either:
> 1) the main server creating SQL files of incremental changes to
> be emailed to mirror servers, signed with a key pair, sequentially
> numbered to ensure they are automatically processed in order this
> way, the server can run asynchronously with the mirrors which is
> better for reliability of the server. The server will not need to
> wait for connection responses from the mirror and updates will be
> cached in the mail system in the event that the mirror server be
> unavailable. (The main server will then only need to create one
> email per update. The mail system infrastructure will take care of
> sending the data to each mirror. In fact, a system such as pipermail
> used on this list would solve the problem wonderfully. Mirror admins
> simply subscribe to the list to get all updates sent to their machine
> and can manually download updates they are missing from the list!)
>
> Or
> 2) by the master server opening a connection directly to the SQL daemon
> on each remote machine. In which case the server will need to track what
> the mirrors have and have not received updates and need to wait for
> time-out on non-operational mirrors)(this system may open exploits on the
> server via the sql interface).
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] French Wikipedia is too slow

body:
Anthere wrote:

> It is now more than a week that the french wikipedia
> is basically not usuable in the evening. All the usual
> evening participants don't participate any more.
> *This* is a *problem* to me.

Brion, would you please take a look at the French Wikipedia database. Is it tangle up with long-running queries? Is it slowed down by persistent connections?

Maybe it just needs a reboot. Jimbo talked recently about setting up a chron job to reboot it once an hour during certain hours of the day.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthere [mailto:anthere5 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 4:44 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Blocked: 217.5.141.103

--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > I just blocked 217.5.141.103. Some sysop on the
> German Wiki please do the
> > same. The block should be removed in a few hours,
> or sooner if he gets the
> > message.
>
> I'm curious, is this how we want Wikipedia to work?
> No trial?  No
> reasons stated?  Just "block him now!", really?  I
> find this
> problematic.  Am I the only one?

Hu, no. You are not.
Actually, what I did was to delete these pages...
He didnot put many of these, I had no way to know who
he was, nor to communicate with him. I did not want
him to create endless empty pages, unlikely to be
filled before long (architecture stuff, we have no
architect around !)
I thought maybe he would notice...maybe is that a
wrong move, dunno...

There's one thing I know though.

It is now more than a week that the french wikipedia
is basically not usuable in the evening. All the usual
evening participants don't participate any more.
*This* is a *problem* to me.


from_name: Alexander Stephen Bradbury

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User pages

body:
I have to say that I would be against any type of mechanism to protect
your user page, even if it is voluntary. I mean how can we expect people
to use wikipedia to research information, if we don't even trust the
system enough to let our user pages be edited. As I think Jimbo said, we
want to keep away from the feeling of owning pages. However much works you
put into an article, it is not yours. The whole concept of wikipedia is
anyone can edit whatever they want, now obviously with a user page I think
most of us would leave it be, but vandalism to user pages can be dealt
with just as easily as to encyclopedia articles.

ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]

--
<signature>
There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't
</signature>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] what people I know have to say about

body:
Julie,

I'm pretty confident that we're going to leave the geographical naming convention alone.

The radicals complaining about anglicization are most likely trying to score political points; I don't think they care about the "real" names at all. As Ortolan suggested satirically, if we always used native names for places in English, these places would quickly become "lost" to the English-speaking world. (We might write articles on the various movements that want the West to forget about the rest of the world and leave them alone.)

I think we can consider the naming issue settled. It's extremely unlikely at this point that any major change will be made in the foreseeable future.

So the article on Italy will be called [[Italy]] and will start something like:

  Italy (or ''Italia'') is a peninsular country in the Mediterranean...

Japan is lucky, because it gets 3 names:

  Japan (#* or Nippon) is an East Asian... (sorry, my e-mail program can't show you the beautiful Kanji characters depicting the sun rising behind the trees, ah the poetry we miss!)

Ed Poor


subject: Periodic restarts (was: [Wikitech-l] database connections)

body:
> > Would restarting any of the servers periodically help?
> >
> > Suppose it takes X minutes to restart a server, and
> > that the "lag" problem puts Wikipedia out of operation
> > for Y minutes -- where X << Y. Maybe then this would
> > be a good "band-aid" for the problem.
>
> It takes all of a couple seconds to restart apache; I've set it to do a
> "graceful" restart every half hour during US daytime, which more or less
> coincides with our peak hours.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Does restarting apache also untangle the gridlock of database queries?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Long term plans for scalability

body:
Nick,

Your idea assumes that the "lag" problem is due to overloading a single machine, which plays double roles: database backeand and web server. So, if we divide the work amoung 2 or more machines, you expect faster throughput. Right?

(I'm just repeating the obvious to make sure that what's obvious to me, is what you really meant!)

I guess if we all pitch in $50 each we can buy another machine. Where should I send my money?

Ed Poor


body:
I have no objection if you call the US "Les Etats Unis" -- and even if I did, it's YOUR language, so go ahead and call us whatever you want. Even if I think that "stat sunnies" sound a bit strange ;-)

Ed Poor


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright query

body:
Hello again,

I have a query about copyright, although not directly related to the Bryce
Harrington thing. If an article is in breach of copyright, and someone
else replaces the text with original material, the copyrighted material is
still publically available on the Wikipedia to anyone who knows about the
revision history page. Doesn't this mean that there is still a breach of
copyright here? And if so, doesn't the entire article (along with its
history) have to be deleted, and not just rewritten?

I think I may have edited some articles that *previously* contained
copyrighted material, and now I'm wondering if these edits actually need
to be deleted, which would be annoying...

Thanks for clarifying this!

Oliver

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


body:
Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written.

From: Zoe
  To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
  Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 8:46 PM
  Subject: Re: Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)

  Criminal?

  Zoe

   Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

    It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a
    criminal slander of Oliver.

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from_name: Zoe

body:
But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal.
Zoe
 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:Steve Callaway wrote:

> Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written.
>
>
>
> From: Zoe
>
> Criminal?
>
> Zoe
>
> Ray Saintonge >
> wrote:
>
> It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned
> into a
> criminal slander of Oliver.
>

My apologies, I should have said libel, consider my comment thus corrected.

Eclecticology

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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body:
Exactly right, Ram-Man.

Either donate your work to the world, or let us have a fair-use quotation from it.

Ed Poor


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright notice

body:
I added a small "copyright" note (en and de).

Magnus

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Should we have a link and terse copyright notice on every article in
>Wikipedia?
>
>I don't personally see this as being required by the license (read
>carefully the parts about compilations and copyright notices, and
>think of the website as a compilation).  But even if it is not, we
>might still think this is a good idea, to emphasize to newcomers that
>this is a free (in the GNU sense) project.
>
>See, for example:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
>
>Very nice looking, approaching a commercial quality level.  Yet,
>nowhere is it made clear that this text is available under the GNU
>FDL.
>
>I would recommend a notice somewhere on the page near this:
>
>
>>This page has been accessed 17682 times. The page was last modified
>>08:57 Nov 24, 2002.
>>
>>
>
>This email was inspired by Bryce's actions and complaints.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II
 [...])

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The issue of using diacritical marks is not about Lir.

To some extent, though, it is.  Lir is very alone in suggesting that
Germany should be called Deutschland in an English text.  There are
other foreign places where the English use is unstable, e.g. both the
English spelling Gothenburg and the Swedish spelling G?teborg are used
for the same city in English texts.  I think the NPOV policy is
sufficient to address this.  For most smaller cities there never was
an English name, and the use of diacritics might be justified.  But
the name Germany never was in any of these categories.

My remarks about Lir was about the "Deutschland" cases.  It was my
interpretation that this was the result of independent thinking (which
I admire) in combination with lack of interest in the opinion of
others (which might come with more experience - it did for me).

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Nick Hill

body:
I believe Wikipedia is being held back in terms of how many people can use
it and how it can grow, through architectural constraints.

The current architecture of one machine taking the entire burden of all
searches, updates and web page delivery inherently limits the rate at which
Wikipedia can grow.

In order for Wikipedia to grow, it needs an architecture which can easily
devolve work to other servers. A main database is still required to enforce
administrative policy and maintain database consistency.

Work to improve the speed of the database and reduce lag will, in the long
run, only be of very limited benefit and, perhaps, reduce the amount of lag
users experience for a few days or weeks.

A method of easily implementing mirror servers with live, real-time updates
is required. Each mirror server should cater for all the functionality
users expect from Wikipedia except for taking care of form submissions of
updates, which should be forwarded to the master wiki server.

The main database server should be released from the burden of serving web
pages and concentrate on running administrative code, processing and
posting database updates.

The update system can be achieved by either:
	1) the main server creating SQL files of incremental changes to
	be emailed to mirror servers, signed with a key pair, sequentially
	numbered to ensure they are automatically processed in order this
	way, the server can run asynchronously with the mirrors which is
	better for reliability of the server. The server will not need to
	wait for connection responses from the mirror and updates will be
	cached in the mail system in the event that the mirror server be
	unavailable. (The main server will then only need to create one
	email per update. The mail system infrastructure will take care of
	sending the data to each mirror. In fact, a system such as pipermail
	used on this list would solve the problem wonderfully. Mirror admins
	simply subscribe to the list to get all	updates sent to their machine
	and can manually download updates they are missing from the list!)

Or
	2) by the master server opening a connection directly to the SQL daemon
	on each remote machine. In which case the server will need to track what
	the mirrors have and have not received updates and need to wait for
time-out	on non-operational mirrors)(this system may open exploits on the
server	via the sql interface).


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] linking

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>
>
>  -- up-links that are not germane to the article.  Thus, a link in
> saying that B. B. King was born in the [[United States]] is not
> helpful because the reader is not likely to be interested at this time
> in a general discussion about the United States.  Another way of
> saying this might be "Avoid uplinking to an article where you would
> not reasonably expect a down link back.
>
I disagree -- the reader may think "what and where is the United
States?" The same applies for any other country of birth.


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposal for rendering math formulas

body:
My idea is like this:
    string render_math(string text)
    {
	tree parse_tree = parse_and_validate (text);
	if (parse_tree != NULL)
	{
	    string new_text = render_tex(parse_tree);
	    string hash = md5(new_text);
	    string file_name = file_prefix + hash;
	    if (file_exists(file_name))
		return "<img ... alt=" + htmlattr_escape(text) + ">";
	    else
		if (tex_render(new_text, file_name))
		    return "<img ... alt=" + htmlattr_escape(text) + ">";
		else
		    return "<b>Warning: couldn't render: " + wiki_escape(text) + "</b>";
	} else {
	    return text;
	}
    }

Where:
    md5()         		- obvious
    file_prefix 		- obvious
    httmlattr_espace()		- obvious
    wiki_escape()		- obvious
    file_exists()		- obvious
    tex_render()  		- call external tex rendering program
    parse_and_validate()	- generated LALR parser which checks if TeX
				  is safe. If it doesn't understand it, then
				  it's NOT safe.
    render_tex()		- render TeX string from tree. Place to add
				  all extra features, alternative syntaxes etc.
				  In easiest version just copies first text.

What do you think ?


in_reply_to:
<20021126012814.10312.qmail@web21308.mail.yahoo.com> (message
	from Digital Addictions Software on Mon, 25 Nov 2002 17:28:14 -0800
	(PST))

body:
The "owner" removed his three routine paragraphs in a snit and I
replaced them with six or seven paragraphs more thoroughly covering
this interesting little town filled with museums.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|From: Digital Addictions Software <digitaladdictions at yahoo.com>
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 17:28:14 -0800 (PST)
|
|I was the person who noticed the Oregon City article had a copyright notice
|WITH an invariant section that the notice could not be removed.  This violates
|the copyright agreement to add to Wikipedia (no invariant sections).  I
|respectfully asked Bryce to remove the incompatibility or delete his additions
|that he claimed credit for.  He removed the invariant section.  Let me make the
|rest of this discussion a practical one.  Who among us would have accepted it
|if I would put at the end of *every* 30,000 or so city articles a message that
|the articles were mine and copyrighted "2002 Derek Ramsey"?  I am pretty sure
|(unless I misunderstand) that if you add to Wikipedia you give your consent to
|let others modify your work.  That may mean eliminating it, removing your
|copyright notice, or whatever they feel like doing.  Wikipedia has a copyright
|notice and that should be sufficient.  If you can't agree to it, you can't add
|articles, no matter how much we want them.
|	Ram-Man
|
|


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:30:09PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> My idea is like this:
>     string render_math(string text)
>     {
> 	tree parse_tree = parse_and_validate (text);
> 	if (parse_tree != NULL)
> 	{
> 	    string new_text = render_tex(parse_tree);
> 	    string hash = md5(new_text);
> 	    string file_name = file_prefix + hash;
> 	    if (file_exists(file_name))
> 		return "<img ... alt=" + htmlattr_escape(text) + ">";
> 	    else
> 		if (tex_render(new_text, file_name))
> 		    return "<img ... alt=" + htmlattr_escape(text) + ">";
> 		else
> 		    return "<b>Warning: couldn't render: " + wiki_escape(text) + "</b>";
> 	} else {
> 	    return text;
> 	}
>     }
>
> Where:
>     md5()         		- obvious
>     file_prefix 		- obvious
>     httmlattr_espace()		- obvious
>     wiki_escape()		- obvious
>     file_exists()		- obvious
>     tex_render()  		- call external tex rendering program
>     parse_and_validate()	- generated LALR parser which checks if TeX
> 				  is safe. If it doesn't understand it, then
> 				  it's NOT safe.
>     render_tex()		- render TeX string from tree. Place to add
> 				  all extra features, alternative syntaxes etc.
> 				  In easiest version just copies first text.
>
> What do you think ?

Hi,

I already hacked something similar, and I render "simple" formulas as HTML if
possible (e.g. only letters, +, -, *, /, exponents and indices). At the moment
I don't have the time to get it to a production level quality (and I think as
long as we have these performance problems we should not add the load of
generating lots of little images to the poor server). Are you interested in
taking a look at the code?

	Regards,

		JeLuF


body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:47:27PM +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I already hacked something similar, and I render "simple" formulas as HTML if
> possible (e.g. only letters, +, -, *, /, exponents and indices). At the moment
> I don't have the time to get it to a production level quality (and I think as
> long as we have these performance problems we should not add the load of
> generating lots of little images to the poor server). Are you interested in
> taking a look at the code?

Sure, send it to me.


body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 03:11:44PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > Would restarting any of the servers periodically help?
> >
> > Suppose it takes X minutes to restart a server, and that the "lag" problem puts Wikipedia out of operation for Y minutes -- where X << Y. Maybe then this would be a good "band-aid" for the problem.
>
> It takes all of a couple seconds to restart apache; I've set it to do a
> "graceful" restart every half hour during US daytime, which more or less
> coincides with our peak hours.
>
Will "graceful" be sufficient? When messing around with oracle I'm
usually forced to do a "restart" instead.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and
	Americanization thing)

body:
On 11/26/02 12:14 AM, "Zoe" <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:

> But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal.
>
Please, let sleeping dogs lie.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Zoe wrote:

> But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal.
>
> Zoe
>
I took your comment as rhetorical, and failed to realize that you
expected an answer.
The following are extracted from the Criminal Code of Canada

>
> Defamatory Libel
>
>
>
> Definition <http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-298>
>
> 298. (1) A defamatory libel is matter published, without lawful
> justification or excuse, that is likely to injure the reputation of
> any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that is
> designed to insult the person of or concerning whom it is published.
>
> Mode of expression
>
> (2) A defamatory libel may be expressed directly or by insinuation or
> irony
>
> (a) in words legibly marked on any substance; or
>
> (b) by any object signifying a defamatory libel otherwise than by words.
>
> R.S., c. C-34, s. 262.
>
> Publishing <http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-299>
>
> 299. A person publishes a libel when he
>
> (a) exhibits it in public;
>
> (b) causes it to be read or seen; or
>
> (c) shows or delivers it, or causes it to be shown or delivered, with
> intent that it should be read or seen by the person whom it defames or
> by any other person.
>
> R.S., c. C-34, s. 263.
>
> Punishment of libel known to be false
> <http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-300>
>
> 300. Every one who publishes a defamatory libel that he knows is false
> is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a
> term not exceeding five years.
>
> R.S., c. C-34, s. 264.
>
> Punishment for defamatory libel
> <http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-301>
>
> 301. Every one who publishes a defamatory libel is guilty of an
> indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding
> two years.
>


from_name: elian

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> The English Wikipedia slowed down again today.

The German, too.

> Until we figure out what's causing the slowdown, what kind of First Aid
> measures can we apply?

Switching off all these nice little functions which are not absolutely
necessary for editing? for example "this page was accessed xx times",
"what links here"...

There is really a need for first Aid measures. The english wikipedia may
not have this problem, but the other language wikipedias are in desperate
need of every editor and with every lag we run the risk of loosing
valuable contributors.

For later (since I don't understand anything of programming I just throw
my ideas in and leave it to the experts to judge them as rubbish or think
about them - there is a common saying in German about blind chickens ;-)):
recently I found an article about database replication in a
German PHP-magazine (two mysql databases, one working as master, one as
slave). Maybe we could use such a slave database for reading access to
wikipedia and the main for editing.

greetings,
elian
My obedit (obligatory edit) for this posting:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_II.
--
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
(Rich Cook)


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] When Pushto comes shove, Project Sourceberg has gotta go

body:
I found Project Sourceberg at ps.wikipedia.com. Is there any plan to move it
to wikipedia.org? If so, it can't be ps.wikipedia.org, as that is reserved
for the Pushto Wikipedia.

phma


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Watch list and performance issues

body:
Would it not be interesting to slightly change the way the watch list is working ?

That's a very important tool on the en.wiki

1) to follow-up articles one is interested in

It can hardly be done with recent changes now; too many articles modifications everyday.

But in the watch list feature, what is really interesting - imho - is the watch of the most recent articles modified.

2) to a lesser extent to find back some articles one want to go back one day

but this can also be done with the search, or by adding links on personal pages

My watch list is hideously big. Each time I click on watch list, my next move is to click on the *stop loading* button after a small bunch of seconds. Just display the last 3/7 days of watched articles. 99% of the time, that's *all* what is needed. Why should one wait for the whole watch list to be downloaded ? Why should one impose extra useless burden to the server ?

How much of server time does the watch list query take anyway ?

How much of the client time does it take to load 400 kb of data, when only 50k are really needed ?

Why should not a persistent and repetitive human habit be automated ?

I'd like to see at the top of the watch list something like

- display the articles I follow which were modified in the past 3 days

- display the articles I follow which were modified in the past 14 days

- display all the articles I follow

With a default at 3 days for example.

It is not that this is *really* needed by humans, though it would be nice. But could it help performance ?

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] List of TeX constructs we want to support

body:
I have just made some simple TeX validator and parser.

To make it any useful I need a list of all TeX constructs we support.
Everything that contains some other function will be considered
illegal.

Here is short list of obvious ones (classified by arity):

0 alpha beta gamma theta tau vartheta
0 pi upsilon varpi phi delta kappa
0 rho  varphi epsilon lambda varrho  chi
0 varepsilon mu sigma psi zeta  nu
0 varsigma omega eta
0 Gamma Lambda Sigma Psi Delta Upsilon Omega Theta Pi Phi
1 sqrt
2 frac

Do you have some more complete list ?
Parser should have no problem with a couple thousands,
so don't hesitate.


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikitech-l] needed; explanation of other-language wikipedias

body:
I'm still working on my long-term redesign of the Wiki software (planned
to be an Apache module written in C, with PostgreSQL as the backend).

I notice the two letter country codes, with a colon, prefix articles in
the wikipedias for other languages.

Are these namespaces, or are they parsed specially by the php to get
redirected to a different URL, which is a totally different wikipedia in
it's own right?

I guess that's another table to create:

CREATE TABLE wikipedias (
  language_code byte(2),
  url_prefix text
  );

INSERT INTO wikipedias VALUES ("eo", "http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/");

Of course this table would be accessed only once, when the Apache module
gets initialized.  Would make it easier to add web based editing too.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>The radicals complaining about anglicization are most likely trying to score
>political points

Mav and Julie have the basic decency to argue the idea on its merits.
If you can't do the same, then say nothing;
leave the rhetorical BS out of it.

-- Toby


body:
Nick Hill wrote:

>I envisage many wikipedia servers around the world, supported by private
>individuals, companies and universities. Much like the system of mirror FTP
>and mirror web sites. All these servers are updated in real time from the
>core wikipedia server. From the user's perspective, all are equivalent.
>Each of these servers can do everything the current wikipedia server can do
>except for accepting update submissions. Updates from users are accepted
>only by the core wiki server.
>
>Reasons for such an architecture:
>1) Growth of bandwidth useage may put financial pressure on Wikipedia.
>Growth may follow a non-linear growth curve.
>
>2) The cost of implementing one very fast, reliable, redundant machine is
>more than the cost of farming out work to many quite fast, unreliable
>systems none of which are mission critical. Especially true where there are
>people willing to donate part of their hard drive, CPU and net connection
>(or even an entire system) to a good cause such as wikipedia. (Overall
>system reliability can be guaranteed by using DNS tricks to ensure users
>and queries are only directed to working machines).
>
>Given wikipedias limited technical resources, we need to make a choice
>between making small scale changes to the system (which may make 30-50%
>change in availability) or to make architectural changes which can scale to
>improvements of 100x or 1000x magnitude.
>
I confess to complete ignorance with the technical aspects of these
proposals.  Be that as it may, there still needs to be a review of the
administrative structure of the project.  There was some discussion a
couple months ago about forming a non-profit corporation, but that was
quickly forgotten.

A project that continues to depend on funding from a single source is
always at risk.  Similarly, depending on ad hoc demands of $50 from
everybody may work once or twice, but it does not give any kind of
financial security.  Aside from any moral issues about depending on
handouts from a single benefactor, there is the reality that no person's
pockets are bottomless and we have no idea where the bottom is.  It is
irresponsible for the group as a whole to wait for a message from Jimbo
like "I want to contribute more, but I can't."  Messages like that never
come at convenient times; they often coincide with major equipment
breakdowns or necessary technical expansion.

The brand new dedicated server is less than a year old, and it already
has difficulties coping with its volume of work.  I think that Nick is
conscious of the potential costs that we could be facing.  This is
evident from his willingness to look for lower cost alternatives.  I
would like to see the budgetting alternatives in terms of costs and in
terms of what will be needed from participants over an extended length
of time.

It is my experience that most volunteers find corporate boards,
budgetting and issues of long term fiscal planning to be frightfully
boring, but facing these issues is a question of fiscal responsibility.

Eclecticology


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Anthere,

I believe that your idea about your watch list could be programmed very easily. Also, it will improve performance -- at least for you. Especially, if you are using a slow connection, like 5 KB / second.

Why should you have to wait 1 minute and 20 seconds, for something that could reach you in 10 seconds?

Brion, could we add a clause like this?

   WHERE (today - timestamp) < 3 days? /* I know this is not correct syntax */

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthere [mailto:anthere5 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 5:48 AM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Watch list and performance issues

Would it not be interesting to slightly change the way the watch list is working ?

That's a very important tool on the en.wiki

1) to follow-up articles one is interested in

It can hardly be done with recent changes now; too many articles modifications everyday.

But in the watch list feature, what is really interesting - imho - is the watch of the most recent articles modified.

2) to a lesser extent to find back some articles one want to go back one day

but this can also be done with the search, or by adding links on personal pages

My watch list is hideously big. Each time I click on watch list, my next move is to click on the *stop loading* button after a small bunch of seconds. Just display the last 3/7 days of watched articles. 99% of the time, that's *all* what is needed. Why should one wait for the whole watch list to be downloaded ? Why should one impose extra useless burden to the server ?

How much of server time does the watch list query take anyway ?

How much of the client time does it take to load 400 kb of data, when only 50k are really needed ?

Why should not a persistent and repetitive human habit be automated ?

I'd like to see at the top of the watch list something like

- display the articles I follow which were modified in the past 3 days

- display the articles I follow which were modified in the past 14 days

- display all the articles I follow

With a default at 3 days for example.

It is not that this is *really* needed by humans, though it would be nice. But could it help performance ?

  _____

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail  <http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com> Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up  <http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com> now

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from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tweak to Fr:

body:
tarquin wrote:
> Brion, or someone with dev access, please could you tweak the following
> on the french pedia:
>
> in the standard text that appears below an edit bow, there is a link to
> "Wikip?dia:Copyrights"
>
> Please change this to "Wikip?dia:Copyright"
>
> (drop the final s)

Fait.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
(re Anthere's sensible suggestion for a date limit)
> Brion, could we add a clause like this?
>
>    WHERE (today - timestamp) < 3 days? /* I know this is not correct
> syntax */

A few days ago I put in a simple number limit of 250 results. Still too
many, I guess. ;)

I've put in the same limits as Recentchanges. When I'm done messing with
other things, I'll add the links to increase the limits if you want to
see more.

Note that it's still pretty slow if you've got a long watchlist because
it's implemented rather inefficiently on the backend (a gazillion string
comparisons).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:21:57 -0500
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Nick,
>
> Your idea assumes that the "lag" problem is due to overloading a single
> machine, which plays double roles: database backeand and web server. So,
> if we divide the work amoung 2 or more machines, you expect faster
> throughput. Right?

My idea is not to divide the roles of web server and backend. It is to
divide the workload of the one server between many servers. This includes
search queries and other functionality.

I envisage many wikipedia servers around the world, supported by private
individuals, companies and universities. Much like the system of mirror FTP
and mirror web sites. All these servers are updated in real time from the
core wikipedia server. From the user's perspective, all are equivalent.
Each of these servers can do everything the current wikipedia server can do
except for accepting update submissions. Updates from users are accepted
only by the core wiki server.

Reasons for such an architecture:
1) Growth of bandwidth useage may put financial pressure on Wikipedia.
Growth may follow a non-linear growth curve.

2) The cost of implementing one very fast, reliable, redundant machine is
more than the cost of farming out work to many quite fast, unreliable
systems none of which are mission critical. Especially true where there are
people willing to donate part of their hard drive, CPU and net connection
(or even an entire system) to a good cause such as wikipedia. (Overall
system reliability can be guaranteed by using DNS tricks to ensure users
and queries are only directed to working machines).

Given wikipedias limited technical resources, we need to make a choice
between making small scale changes to the system (which may make 30-50%
change in availability) or to make architectural changes which can scale to
improvements of 100x or 1000x magnitude.

The core server takes the update submissions. These are integrated into the
core database. Changes to the core database are reflected in all mirror
servers in real time by using a system of pushing the database update to
the mirror servers.

The core server will implement access control, ip blocking and other such
administration and policy.

I accept the technological suggestion I made is by no means the only way to
achieve this goal, although it may be a good one for it's scalability
potential.

Before mirrors are implemented in the way I suggested, It would be wise to
introduce meta-fields and records into the database. Fields which have no
current use but may be used in future wikipedia software releases. Future
wikipedia software releases for the mirror servers is guaranteed and extra
database fields are almost certainly going to be required. Adding mata
fields can help forward compatibility of databeses. This would be necessary
in advance as not all mirror servers will update their whole database and
software simaultaneously.


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> (re Anthere's sensible suggestion for a date limit)
>
>> Brion, could we add a clause like this?
>>
>>    WHERE (today - timestamp) < 3 days? /* I know this is not correct
>> syntax */
>
>
> A few days ago I put in a simple number limit of 250 results. Still
> too many, I guess. ;)
>
> I've put in the same limits as Recentchanges. When I'm done messing
> with other things, I'll add the links to increase the limits if you
> want to see more.
>
> Note that it's still pretty slow if you've got a long watchlist
> because it's implemented rather inefficiently on the backend (a
> gazillion string comparisons).

I want to object that this has resulted in my receiving only the last
three days of changes on my watch list, and there is nothing in my
preferences to turn this off.  Ever since the recent changes became
fairly unusable, I've depended a lot more on the way that I manage my
watch list.  Some things that are an ongoing interest are often left for
more than three days, especially when the mailing list is su busy that
it leaves me little time for the Wikipedia itself.  Maybe people who
like this 3-day feature should take the time to cull obsolete material
from their watch lists; I do that from time to time.

If the limitations can't be treated as an option, they should be turned
off until they can.

Eclecticology


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eskimos and Voodoo

body:
1: I'd like to formally request sysop status.
2: I stumbled across the talk page at Vodun a week ago
or so, and some IP asked if it was the same thing as
Voodoo and if so, if the article should be moved there
because Voodoo is the more commonly used term.  That
led me to the following conclusion:

I'd like to propose a minor modification to the
current naming conventions that I think will make a
lot of the different sides happy.  If experts in a
field nearly universally use a different term than the
general population, the expert term should be used to
name the article.  The only two I can think of that
this would apply to is Vodun and Inuit instead of
Voodoo and Eskimo.  Asking my seven reasonably
educated co-workers, six out of the seven have no idea
what Vodun is (though they've heard of Voodoo) and one
thought it was the capital of "one of them southeast
Asian countries" (for those keeping score, seven out
of eight paramedics are unfamiliar with the word, with
myself the only exception).  Four out of the seven
were familiar with the word "Inuit" but said they
probably wouldn't think to use it.  Three claim to
have never heard it before, though all seven knew what
an Eskimo was.  Because experts in the field of
religion and anthropology use "Vodun" and "Inuit" to
the complete exclusion of "Voodoo" and "Eskimo"
(except maybe to explain that they're the same thing
at the beginning of an essay or paper or whatever), I
think the Wikipedia would seem a bit... well, dumb,
having an article about Eskimos when everybody
involved with the people in question refer to them as
Inuit.  I don't think this rule would apply to most of
what has been discussed, kings and queens and
satellites and latin vs common names and all, but just
to these two and maybe a handful of other cases ("The
Beatles" vs "The White Album", "Myanmar" vs "Burma" maybe).

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>> I've put in the same limits as Recentchanges. When I'm done messing
>> with other things, I'll add the links to increase the limits if you
>> want to see more.
>
> I want to object that this has resulted in my receiving only the last
> three days of changes on my watch list, and there is nothing in my
> preferences to turn this off.

The options are already available in the URL like so:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Watchlist&days=6

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> If it's not too much trouble, could we do the watchlist without string comparisons? I bet a table like this speed things up:
>
> user_id article_id
> ------- ----------
[..]
> Would this work?
> How hard would it be to implement?

For the most part it would be very straightforward; I didn't implement
it when it was first suggested because I wasn't sure how to get the
associated talk pages to come up in the list easily. This is a key
feature of the watchlist and I didn't want to break it without recourse.
We could add them to the wacthlist table along with the main pages when
a user adds a page; but if the talk page is created later, we'd have to
go update everyone's watchlists on page creation. (Hmm, could work.)

Using namespace and title instead of cur_id would make it more
straightforward, but wouldn't give the advantage of automatically
preserving a page in the list after a page move. (Though, we could
easily issue an update on page move that way.)

> How much would it help?

Somewhat, particularly for the small but promiscuous few who have very
very long watchlists.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Eskimos and Voodoo

body:
Tucci wrote:

>I stumbled across the talk page at Vodun a week ago
>or so, and some IP asked if it was the same thing as
>Voodoo and if so, if the article should be moved there
>because Voodoo is the more commonly used term.  That
>led me to the following conclusion:
>
>I'd like to propose a minor modification to the
>current naming conventions that I think will make a
>lot of the different sides happy.  If experts in a
>field nearly universally use a different term than the
>general population, the expert term should be used to
>name the article.  The only two I can think of that
>this would apply to is Vodun and Inuit instead of
>Voodoo and Eskimo.  Asking my seven reasonably
>educated co-workers, six out of the seven have no idea
>what Vodun is (though they've heard of Voodoo) and one
>thought it was the capital of "one of them southeast
>Asian countries" (for those keeping score, seven out
>of eight paramedics are unfamiliar with the word, with
>myself the only exception).  Four out of the seven
>were familiar with the word "Inuit" but said they
>probably wouldn't think to use it.  Three claim to
>have never heard it before, though all seven knew what
>an Eskimo was.  Because experts in the field of
>religion and anthropology use "Vodun" and "Inuit" to
>the complete exclusion of "Voodoo" and "Eskimo"
>(except maybe to explain that they're the same thing
>at the beginning of an essay or paper or whatever), I
>think the Wikipedia would seem a bit... well, dumb,
>having an article about Eskimos when everybody
>involved with the people in question refer to them as
>Inuit.
>
The terms Eskimo and Inuk are not equivalent.  Properly used the term
Eskimo is a broader one of whom the Inuit are a subset. The term Inuit
does not apply to those people who are in the more western, Siberian
part of the range.  People in the eastern part of the range consider the
use of "Eskimo" as politically incorrect, and if they had their way
would probably also insist on changing the name of the Edmonton football
team.  The best approach would be to move the material to two separate
articles that reflect the different usages.

Polls of a small local groups about what terms they know does not strike
me as a sound basis for deciding what name(s) we should use.

I am very much less certain about usage of voodoo/vodun.  I've always
considered that vodun was the Dahomean language word for God and that
voodoo was derived from that.  You are probably right to put everything
under "vodun".


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tweak to Fr:

body:
Brion, or someone with dev access, please could you tweak the following
on the french pedia:

in the standard text that appears below an edit bow, there is a link to
"Wikip?dia:Copyrights"

Please change this to "Wikip?dia:Copyright"

(drop the final s)


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>
>>> I've put in the same limits as Recentchanges. When I'm done messing
>>> with other things, I'll add the links to increase the limits if you
>>> want to see more.
>>
>> I want to object that this has resulted in my receiving only the last
>> three days of changes on my watch list, and there is nothing in my
>> preferences to turn this off.
>
>
> The options are already available in the URL like so:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Watchlist&days=6

My apologies if I seem to jump in on this issue too fast.
Thanks for dealing with this quickly, and for putting the options on the
Watchlist page directly.
Now, at your convenience, it would be nice if the options could be put
on the user preference page.  This would go a long way in accomodating
the different work habits of contributors.  As things now stand, I have
131 items on my watch list (including talk pages) with the oldest one
being dated Feb. 25 - I would likely set my limits at 150 articles with
an indefinite number of days.

Another place where a longer number of days option on the page would be
convenient is the User contributions page.  Often when looking at this
for an unregistered user with questionable edits the default options
give a very small number of edits with the last 24 hours.  The question
I then want to ask the system is whether this guy has done any other
stupid edits in the last year.

Anyway, even as a non-techie I sense that completely reconstructing some
of these pages every time must put an enormous burden on the system.  At
the risk of appearing naive, it seems that a Recent Changes File
containing the maximum number of entries reflecting the most that people
would normally expect to see on a regular basis would save a lot of
unneeded searches.  Searches with a higher number of references to be
sought would still need to be done, but a judicious choice of the number
of items in the recent changes would make such searches relatively
infrequent.

1,000 items in the Recent Changes file where with every edit the most
recent change is added and the 1000th is dropped could accomplish this.

Eclecticology


body:
If it's not too much trouble, could we do the watchlist without string comparisons? I bet a table like this speed things up:

user_id article_id
------- ----------
284     298
284     1598
284     6503
284     1364
284     3305

Then, we could link the tables, like:

SELECT * FROM cur, watch
 WHERE cur_id = watch_article_id AND watch_user_id = 284

(Again, I'm not sure of the syntax: I made up a non-existent table!)

Would this work?
How hard would it be to implement?
How much would it help?

Ed Poor


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Another place where a longer number of days option on the page would be
> convenient is the User contributions page.  Often when looking at this
> for an unregistered user with questionable edits the default options
> give a very small number of edits with the last 24 hours.  The question
> I then want to ask the system is whether this guy has done any other
> stupid edits in the last year.

The default options on user contribs were set when it was really slow to
do the query, and can now be changed to something more reasonable.

I think there's no practical reason to keep a date limit around except
for the "gimme the last changes since I loaded this recentchanges page 5
minutes ago, I must stay up to date!!" case. Click "last 100 changes" or
"last 10000 changes" and you know what you're in for, whereas "last 30
days" could give you two changes or it could give you thirty thousand.
Having both interlocking selections is a confusing state that has to go.

> Anyway, even as a non-techie I sense that completely reconstructing some
> of these pages every time must put an enormous burden on the system.  At
> the risk of appearing naive, it seems that a Recent Changes File
> containing the maximum number of entries reflecting the most that people
> would normally expect to see on a regular basis would save a lot of
> unneeded searches.

We have a recentchanges table which keeps the last 7 days' worth of
entries (~15000 at our present rate; older ones are cropped off the
bottom of the list every 1000 edits or so). (Currently you can't see
anything older than that through Recentchanges, but requests to do so
haven't come up yet...)

This keeps the burden off the cur and old tables, so a slow
Recentchanges won't affect other pages' response, and slow other pages
won't affect Recentchanges' speed. (At least in theory... actually,
Recentchanges checks for the existence of the pages linked in the header
and the user pages of each user who's edited something, so we still have
to wait on write locks on the cur table.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eskimos and Voodoo

in_reply_to:
<3DE3D32E.60106@telus.net> (message from Ray Saintonge on Tue, 26
	Nov 2002 12:01:50 -0800)

body:
|From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
|X-Accept-Language: en-us
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 12:01:50 -0800
|
|Tucci wrote:
|
|>I stumbled across the talk page at Vodun a week ago
|>or so, and some IP asked if it was the same thing as
|>Voodoo and if so, if the article should be moved there
|>because Voodoo is the more commonly used term.  That
|>led me to the following conclusion:
|>
|>I'd like to propose a minor modification to the
|>current naming conventions that I think will make a
|>lot of the different sides happy.  If experts in a
|>field nearly universally use a different term than the
|>general population, the expert term should be used to
|>name the article.  The only two I can think of that
|>this would apply to is Vodun and Inuit instead of
|>Voodoo and Eskimo.  Asking my seven reasonably
|>educated co-workers, six out of the seven have no idea
|>what Vodun is (though they've heard of Voodoo) and one
|>thought it was the capital of "one of them southeast
|>Asian countries" (for those keeping score, seven out
|>of eight paramedics are unfamiliar with the word, with
|>myself the only exception).  Four out of the seven
|>were familiar with the word "Inuit" but said they
|>probably wouldn't think to use it.  Three claim to
|>have never heard it before, though all seven knew what
|>an Eskimo was.  Because experts in the field of
|>religion and anthropology use "Vodun" and "Inuit" to
|>the complete exclusion of "Voodoo" and "Eskimo"
|>(except maybe to explain that they're the same thing
|>at the beginning of an essay or paper or whatever), I
|>think the Wikipedia would seem a bit... well, dumb,
|>having an article about Eskimos when everybody
|>involved with the people in question refer to them as
|>Inuit.
|>
|The terms Eskimo and Inuk are not equivalent.  Properly used the term
|Eskimo is a broader one of whom the Inuit are a subset. The term Inuit
|does not apply to those people who are in the more western, Siberian
|part of the range.  People in the eastern part of the range consider the
|use of "Eskimo" as politically incorrect, and if they had their way
|would probably also insist on changing the name of the Edmonton football
|team.  The best approach would be to move the material to two separate
|articles that reflect the different usages.
|
|Polls of a small local groups about what terms they know does not strike
|me as a sound basis for deciding what name(s) we should use.
|
|I am very much less certain about usage of voodoo/vodun.  I've always
|considered that vodun was the Dahomean language word for God and that
|voodoo was derived from that.  You are probably right to put everything
|under "vodun".
|

Inspired by this, I just added to the [[Saami]] article that these
people find "Lapp" very offensive.

Tom P.
O88


body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> do we have any numbers related to the CPU usage of the machine? Throwing
> hardware at a performance issue is a solution that's chosen very often,
> but it's
> a) most of the time expensive
> b) too often not the solution
>
> In case of a high lag situation, which process is blocking the CPU? Is it
> apache (that is: PHP) or mysql? How is the memory utilization? What is
> the I/O rate?

The CPUs seem to have a fair amount of idle time whenever I check... I'm
not sure how to measure CPU usage usefully (I can pop into 'top', but
that corrupts the data -- top itself is usually the biggest user of CPU
time!)

Load average when things are running smoothly runs between 1 and 2 (2 is
ideal usage for a 2-CPU system). Right now there's an old zombie process
that bumps up the load average by 1. During busier times during the day,
3-5 is not uncommon. The busiest periods can push us into the teens or
very occasionally more.

Very roughly from top:

Apache processes take about 15-25 MB, with 10-25 MB of shared memory.
MySQL has a resident memory size of around 234 MB, plus ~88MB of shared
memory. I think most of this is shared between processes.

And more generally:
  ~14 MB buffers
  800-900 MB disk cache (dips to 100-300 during very high load times)
~150-200 MB free (dips much lower during very high load times)

That probably doesn't quite cover everything, as we've got 2GB to fill
up with those figures.

And:
120-180 MB of rarely used stuff sitting in swap

If you want to see load and memory stats from "uptime" and "free"
updated every 10 minutes starting mid-day yesterday, see
http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/uptimelog

How can we measure i/o rate?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Question about current code

body:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 02:50:24AM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?
>
>Wikipedia script when rendering should find all <math>.*</math> in markup,
>call this program (which is very fast if images are already rendered)
>and get info provided by it to render a page. I'm not even sure what should
>that program return.

An easier to implement way is this: have a special page where you can
type in the TeX; when you hit "submit", it gets rendered, and saved as
the png file of a name you have specified.  It would look like, and be
analogous to the image upload page.  Then you could use the image
directly in your page, and any other page that is needed, and it would
save re-parsing and re-generating the image everytime someone views the
page.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
Nick Hill wrote:

>On Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:21:57 -0500
>"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Nick,
>>
>>Your idea assumes that the "lag" problem is due to overloading a single
>>machine, which plays double roles: database backeand and web server. So,
>>if we divide the work amoung 2 or more machines, you expect faster
>>throughput. Right?
>>
>>
>
>My idea is not to divide the roles of web server and backend. It is to
>divide the workload of the one server between many servers. This includes
>search queries and other functionality.
>
<snip brave and expensive vision>

While the proposal of Nick will no doubt be the long-term future,
separating database server and webserver is both relatively cheap and
easy, and should increase performance. It is even recommended in either
the MySQL or the PHP online manual (or was it apache? Brain, where are
you?).

Even a smaller server might do, though I'm not sure wether to run apache
or MySQL on it. Probably the latter.

Oh, and we need a place for the sifter project, while we're at it ;-)

Magnus


body:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:13:11AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
>We would be best served by not duplicating the efforts of
>http://planetmath.org, a GFDL math encyclopedia.
>
>I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
>what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
>planetmath.org.

planetmath, alas, is not a Wiki.  Totally different dynamic.  I would be
happy to see Planetmath integrate with us.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 08:12:05PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Nick Hill wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:21:57 -0500
> >"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> >>Your idea assumes that the "lag" problem is due to overloading a single
> >>machine, which plays double roles: database backeand and web server. So,
> >>if we divide the work amoung 2 or more machines, you expect faster
> >>throughput. Right?
> >
> >My idea is not to divide the roles of web server and backend. It is to
> >divide the workload of the one server between many servers. This includes
> >search queries and other functionality.
> >
> <snip brave and expensive vision>
>
> While the proposal of Nick will no doubt be the long-term future,
> separating database server and webserver is both relatively cheap and
> easy, and should increase performance. It is even recommended in either
> the MySQL or the PHP online manual (or was it apache? Brain, where are
> you?).
>
> Even a smaller server might do, though I'm not sure wether to run apache
> or MySQL on it. Probably the latter.

Hi,

do we have any numbers related to the CPU usage of the machine? Throwing
hardware at a performance issue is a solution that's chosen very often,
but it's
a) most of the time expensive
b) too often not the solution

In case of a high lag situation, which process is blocking the CPU? Is it
apache (that is: PHP) or mysql? How is the memory utilization? What is
the I/O rate?

Do we have this kind of data already available?

	Best regards,

		jens frank


body:
On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 22:12, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 02:50:24AM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?
> >
> >Wikipedia script when rendering should find all <math>.*</math> in markup,
> >call this program (which is very fast if images are already rendered)
> >and get info provided by it to render a page. I'm not even sure what should
> >that program return.

We would be best served by not duplicating the efforts of
http://planetmath.org, a GFDL math encyclopedia.

I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
planetmath.org.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Question about current code

body:
I want to add support for TeX mode to Wikipedia script.

I wrote a program which takes TeX code on stdin,
validates and standarizes it (so that "x+y" and "x + y" don't have to be
generated twice), and even has some extensions ("%" -> "\%"),
checks if given image already exists, and if i doesn't, passes it to latex,
dvips and convert to get nice antialiased png file.

How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?

Wikipedia script when rendering should find all <math>.*</math> in markup,
call this program (which is very fast if images are already rendered)
and get info provided by it to render a page. I'm not even sure what should
that program return.

There are 3 possibilities:
* illegal markup - <tt>Illegal markup: ^$%^*^%$%(^$%(^$^$%^$</tt>
* markup validated ok, latex runs corectly - <img href="/path/345456986858674.png">
* markup validated ok, latex failed - ???

The last case shouldn't happen too often, but if we always wait for latex
to finish, that will unnecesarily increase latency.

I'm also thinking that some similar solution should be added for
chemical reactions.

Any opinions ?


body:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 02:00:08PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>Neither of these two solutions would work well, nor would "upload pngs".

On further thought, I recommend a new namespace, TeX, and that the tex
source for an equation goes in it's own entry; every time the TeX is
updated, a new png is generated, and the old png discarded, but the old
TeX is kept, same as how old versions of articles are kept.

This scheme is comparitavely easy to code because it is an add-on
instead of involving changes to the parser itself, and it reduces cpu
load.  Running TeX for every page with an equation on it could bring the
server to it's knees.

It would be nice if the resulting png could be made a link to the
original TeX, so one could edit that directly.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchlist table

body:
I managed to device a query for the watchlist that brought in both pages
and their talk pages (or, if you are watching only the talk page, the
associated subject page) from the cur_id, thanks to the magic of bitwise
or. Switching to the table format cuts generation of my 1000-entry
watchlist (with default limit of 125) almost in half, from ~9-10 seconds
to ~5-6. Hurrah!

One slight bug: if you're watching both a page *and* its talk page, they
show up twice in the watchlist.

I have so far installed it only on the English wiki. If anyone updates
User.php, Skin.php, SpecialWatchlist.php, SpecialRecentchanges.php,
SpecialRecentchangeslinked.php on the others before I get to it, put in
and run "upgradeWatchlist.php" out of the maintenance/ subdirectory
first; this will generate the table from the current user-table list.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] how many namespaces are there (currently)?

body:
The Special: doesn't really count, because it refers to pages that are
dynamically generated, not to something that is article-like.

The Wikipedia: namespace; is it a namespace only because changes to
articles in it don't show up in Recent Changes?

Obviously the User: and User_talk: and Talk: and Wikipedia_talk and
Special_talk namespaces although I'm not sure those things really
need to be separate namespaces.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] watchlist error preventing me from editing

body:
I was just editing User:Clutch/mod_wiki and tried to save it, and got
the following error:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an
illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug
in the software. The last attempted database query was:

    INSERT INTO watchlist (wl_user, wl_page) VALUES (2583,152410)

from within function "". MySQL returned error "1062: Duplicate entry
'2583-152410' for key 1".

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] more on the watchlist error

body:
It only happens when I edit pages I am "watching"... if I uncheck the
"watch this page" checkbox, the edit succeeds.  Then I have to re-watch
the page again.  Aargh.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:58:03PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:47:27PM +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I already hacked something similar, and I render "simple" formulas as HTML if
> > possible (e.g. only letters, +, -, *, /, exponents and indices). At the moment
> > I don't have the time to get it to a production level quality (and I think as
> > long as we have these performance problems we should not add the load of
> > generating lots of little images to the poor server). Are you interested in
> > taking a look at the code?
>
> Sure, send it to me.

Here you are. It works like this:

- Formulas are given in the normal article as [[math:a+b]].
- The PHP-Render-Code checks whether the formula is "simple",
  whether it only contains constructs like letter, +, -, *, /,
  exponents and indices. If yes, the formula is rendered as HTML,
	=> Exit.
- The PHP-Render-Code checks whether an image for this formula exists.
  As filename a MD5-Hash of the formula is used.
- If it does not exist, a TeX-File containing some header and footer is
  generated and passed to a skript generating a PNG.
- The image link is added.

I do not parse the TeX-code. There are *much* to many allowed constructs.
I just grep for two not allowed constructs.

Both the HTML-Formula or the image are stored to the database for caching
purposes.

If latex fails to parse the file, I start up latex to render the error
message into a PNG. So only the tex2png-Skript has to handle exceptions.

Regards,

	JeLuF
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from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] some data

body:
I am running this command on the new server and piping it into a
publicly accessible file:

iostat -x -t 5 8640

It will give extended device I/O stats for each partition, plus CPU
stats.  There will be a report added to the file every 5 seconds.  A
total of 8640 reports will be written (that's 12 hours).  I'm doing it
today because it's on my mind, but today is not ideal, since usage
will be different than normal with the Thanksgiving holiday.  That's
why I'm only doing 12 hours.

The file is accessible as:

http://www.wikipedia.org/stats/io.txt

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On Mit, 2002-11-27 at 07:13, The Cunctator wrote:

> We would be best served by not duplicating the efforts of
> http://planetmath.org, a GFDL math encyclopedia.
>
> I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
> what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
> planetmath.org.

Hi Cunc,

we should try to incorporate the PlanetMath material into Wikipedia, as
it's very much compatible with our mission statement. I for one welcome
Tomasz' hard work to bring more powerful math rendering features to
Wikipedia, regardless of what we do about PlanetMath.

Regards

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] sysop status request by Tucci (aka Tokerboy?)

body:
On Wednesday 27 November 2002 04:00 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> 1: I'd like to formally request sysop status.

You forgot a vital piece of information. By which user name do you want sysop
user rights? Tokerboy or Tucci528 (I assume Tokerboy since that is the user
name you seem to be using these days).

Either way I fully support your bid for sysophood. Tokerboy has been a great
help in the mythology and music sections and in general weeding.

BTW our current primary naming convention is to use what most English speakers
would know and recognize as article titles with a reasonable minimum of
ambiguity and do any usage explanation in the article itself.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Payment for this post:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County_War


body:
On Wed, 2002-11-27 at 08:23, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Mit, 2002-11-27 at 16:56, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> > It only happens when I edit pages I am "watching"... if I uncheck the
> > "watch this page" checkbox, the edit succeeds.  Then I have to re-watch
> > the page again.  Aargh.
>
> I've fixed this in CVS.

Thanks, fix installed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, 2002-11-27 at 07:47, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> The Special: doesn't really count, because it refers to pages that are
> dynamically generated, not to something that is article-like.
>
> The Wikipedia: namespace; is it a namespace only because changes to
> articles in it don't show up in Recent Changes?

They show up in recentchanges along with everything else. They _don't_
show in the article count, the "new articles" list, etc.

> Obviously the User: and User_talk: and Talk: and Wikipedia_talk and
> Special_talk namespaces although I'm not sure those things really
> need to be separate namespaces.

To go over the list again by number and English name:
0 - '' (encyclopedia articles)
1 - 'Talk' (discussion about the above)
2 - 'User' (user pages; names coincide with user names -- but there are
also crudely made slash-subpages in user namespace)
3 - 'User talk' (discussion about the above)
4 - 'Wikipedia' (general meta pages that serve as information and
documentation for readers and editors)
5 - 'Wikipedia talk' (discussion about the above)
6 - 'Image' (descriptions of uploaded files; names coincide with
uploaded file names)
7 - 'Image talk' (discussion about uploaded files)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: tarquin

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>I want to add support for TeX mode to Wikipedia script.
>
>I wrote a program which takes TeX code on stdin,
>validates and standarizes it (so that "x+y" and "x + y" don't have to be
>generated twice), and even has some extensions ("%" -> "\%"),
>checks if given image already exists, and if i doesn't, passes it to latex,
>dvips and convert to get nice antialiased png file.
>
>How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?
>
See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_Markup for previous discussion
on this -- the general idea last time this came up was for markup like:

[[math:someTexcode]]

the PNG would be cached until the Tex markup is changed

>I'm also thinking that some similar solution should be added for
>chemical reactions.
>
>
yay! :-)

>
>


body:
On Wed, 2002-11-27 at 08:00, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:13:11AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 22:12, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 02:50:24AM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > > >How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?
> > > >
> > > >Wikipedia script when rendering should find all <math>.*</math> in markup,
> > > >call this program (which is very fast if images are already rendered)
> > > >and get info provided by it to render a page. I'm not even sure what should
> > > >that program return.
> >
> > We would be best served by not duplicating the efforts of
> > http://planetmath.org, a GFDL math encyclopedia.
> >
> > I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
> > what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
> > planetmath.org.
>
> Neither of these two solutions would work well, nor would "upload pngs".

I fail to see how the second method wouldn't work well-it's a philosophical
approach, not a particular method. All I'm saying is that we should
figure out ways to work with planetmath.org, not duplicate their effort.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: how many namespaces are there (currently)?

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>>On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 10:38:56AM -0800, Brion
Vibber wrote:
>> 2 - 'User' (user pages; names coincide with user
>>names -- but there are also crudely made
slash->>subpages in user namespace)
>
>User's subpages are very useful. Can we add some
>support for them ? For example by automatically
>adding links from User:X to all User:X/*
>and link from every User:X/* to User:X ?

Please do. This used to be available to all pages but
was killed in Phase III. Killing subpage functionality
for the article namespace makes perfect sense but this
feature would still be very useful for user pages and
all talk pages. It is currently a chore to make talk
archive subpages and user subpages.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>User's subpages are very useful. Can we add some support for them ?
>For example by automatically adding links from User:X to all User:X/*
>and link from every User:X/* to User:X ?

I don't see the need for these.
My user subpages are for my own personal use,
and would be unlikely to be of any interest to anybody else.
(Every edit that I make is marked minor and labelled "Ignore.".)
It would be pointless and confusing to advertise them on my user page.
If I create a user subpage that I do want to advertise to others,
then I'll include the link (and a backlink) myself.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't remember about them
when writing code that reacts to user pages.
Supporting them in the sense that the codes realise that
[[User:Joe/junk]] belongs to a user named "Joe",
not to a user named "Joe/junk", is good.

Speaking of which support, do we allow slashes in user names?
Probably we shouldn't, to avoid conflicts.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Data on status of English

body:
|From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
|Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:26:19 -0800
|
|BTW our current primary naming convention is to use what most English
|speakers would know and recognize as article titles with a reasonable
|minimum of ambiguity and do any usage explanation in the article itself.
|
|-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
|

Came across this the other day:

English is an official language in 71 countries in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and the Americas, and has been granted special status in six
more, also throughout the world.

According to this source, Great Britain is in the first group and the
US is in the second group.  Another source, somewhat older, says GB
only gives unofficial status to English.

Total English-speaking population, world-wide, 338 million as a first
language, 236 million as a second language.  Total population of
countries granting status to English, 2 billion plus.

English is the sole statutory language of Namibia and one of two
statutory languages of Canada, and is one of five statutory languages
of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (with Arabic, Chinese,
French, and Spanish).

In other words, it isn't all American arrogance.  The Namibians are
with us all the way.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

1 - The Cambridge Factfinder
2 - The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language