body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
 > V. Ivanov wrote:
 >
 >> 2005/5/28, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>:
 >>
 >>
 >>> Maybe we should make this concept better known globally.  Maybe we
 >>> should organise a list of Wikipedians who are prepared to give money to
 >>> poor people in return for an article in a language that has an inactive
 >>> Wikipedia.  The Wikipedians would be able to specify any conditions,
 >>
 >> Say, offer a preferable topic or even a certain article (or article
set).
 >>
 > I would be wary of any scheme to pay people for articles.  We have
 > prided ourselves on an all volunteer production in all languages.
 >
 > The one thing that is not mentioned in the discussion is who would fund
 > this proposal.  Is there a rich Ossetian benefactor willing to pay for
 > this idea?  There are many other languages that could benefit from this
 > approach, but it should not be the responsibility of the general
 > community to pay for such things in other languages either.

Hi Ec

This is not a proposal, it already exist.
It is currently funded by individuals, who may or may not be
contributors. I just do not know.

We do not have to say anything about this, it exists, it is independant
and anyone should be free to find a way to help promote one language. I
think the best *we* can do as *editors*, is to help them in their
organisation, and also help them transform these teachers in more
permanent editors in the long term (feeling proud of a good article
featured on home page is one of these ways... there are others...).
Typical limitation could be "we offer you money for a good article, but
for no more than xx articles".

But you raise an important issue, which is whether *we* as an
*organisation* should financially help similar ideas (ie, paying
editors). Of course, this requires specific requirements (such as
control, validation of final quality, starting language with few editors
expected, local organisers etc...), but on the concept, should we or
should we not ?

You are perfectly allright : till now, editors have always been
volunteers. Which could be the consequences that start paying some, even
if it is on a small and little know language ?

As a reminder, only 3 people have till now financially directly making
benefits. Larry initially, now Brion and Chad Perrin. Another person
should soon be welcome as well to help with the paperwork. The three
last people concerned, paid by or soon to be paid by the Foundation,
have received the approval from Jimbo, Angela and myself... and that the
three are americans exclusively. Other benefits made in terms of
"personal income" were non direct (such as development contracts with
other organisations).

Given that the goal of the Foundation is "to encouraging the growth,
development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
free of charge", I would say that supporting such projects (ie, paying
editors in certain specific conditions) is within our area of action.
What I do not know is whether it would be acceptable to do it with
donation money, or if grants should be seek (sought ?) to support such
an involvement. I would really welcome opinions on this. In the past
year, I have seen little criticizing (as opposed to supporting) comments
related to the way the Foundation money should be spent, but for
comments saying (a year ago) that developers should get paid in
priorities before Angie and my costs be reimbursed, or comments saying
(early 2005) that with all the money we got, the website should be more
accessible.

So, I am not sure whether it would be globally acceptable, borderline
but acceptable, or frankly unacceptable to the editors or not.

Perhaps a beginning of an answer would be that current developers do not
seem overall to be mad with the idea of Chad and Brion be paid, while
they are not. It may be because they consider Brion has been working a
lot for the project and deserve to be partially paid by the Foundation,
it may be because they consider that Chad work is required and can not
be done any more by Jimbo. In short, it is acceptable because one is
known and loved, and acceptable because the other is seen as doing a
mandatory job. I am not sure, not being in the developer team. I suppose
participation to such project will be possibly acceptable to editors if
they can see where the benefits stands. Just thoughts. Waiting for all
of yours.

Ant


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: <math> tags

body:
Thank you!
The proplem was that during mediawiki installation the texvc wasn't
able to install.
So I've installed it according math/Readme. Created myself
$wgMathDirectory and $wgTmpDirectory.
And now all works well.
It would be nice if  somebody add message in log installer about texvc util. :)

Sergey

On 5/28/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Sergey Samoylov wrote:
> >
> > I've installed wikipedia on my site. But <math> tags on pages isn't handled..
> > What do you think about it?
>
> Read math/README.
>
> In particular, make sure you have the following lines in your
> LocalSettings.php:
>
> $wgUseTeX           = true;
> $wgMathPath         = "{$wgUploadPath}/math";
> $wgMathDirectory    = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/math";
> $wgTmpDirectory     = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/tmp";
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Upload service interruption on
	en.wikipedia.org

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> We're going to be moving some images around tonight to relieve disk load
> on the central image file server.
>
> Uploads may be briefly disabled on en.wikipedia.org during parts of this
> process to ensure that files aren't lost. Sorry for any inconvenience
> this may cause.

The main images for en.wikipedia.org have been moved to a less loaded
server, and the brief upload outage is past.

We're still fiddling with thumbnail images, so you may occasionally see
a cached page where a thumbnail doesn't display properly until that's
done. If this happens, just use the old ?action=purge thing, which
should force the thumbnail to regenerate.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload service interruption on en.wikipedia.org

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> We're going to be moving some images around tonight to relieve disk load
> on the central image file server.
>
> Uploads may be briefly disabled on en.wikipedia.org during parts of this
> process to ensure that files aren't lost. Sorry for any inconvenience
> this may cause.

The main images for en.wikipedia.org have been moved to a less loaded
server, and the brief upload outage is past.

We're still fiddling with thumbnail images, so you may occasionally see
a cached page where a thumbnail doesn't display properly until that's
done. If this happens, just use the old ?action=purge thing, which
should force the thumbnail to regenerate.

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

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Problème de copyright dans l'usage de vos sources Wikipedia

body:
Wouter Steenbeek a ?crit:
>
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Toutefois, nous aimerions signaler que lorsque vous
>>> utilisez du mat?riel provenant de Wikipedia, il est
>>> n?cessaire de citer d'une part la source et d'autre
>>> part la licence.
>>
>>
>> Il n'est pas n?cessaire de citer la source. Il est pourtant n?cessaire
>> de citer l'histoire de chaque article inclus les auteurs, et
>> normalement nous recommandons aux utilisateurs de notre contenu de
>> faire cela en liant ? l'article original sur Wikip?dia.
>>
>> Au moins, c'?tait toujours mon impression. :-)
>>
>> Timwi
>
>
> I guess you're right. It is even unusual for encyclopaedias to quote,
> unless it comes to information which is tied very strongly to one
> source. That is what sets encyclopaedias apart from scientifical
> publications. But I prefer you to hold this discussion in English,
> indeed to hold any discussion on this list in English. There will be a
> lot of people who are unable to read French...
>
> Wouter

I wrote in french for two reasons

1) there are apparently a good many people here who are currently
forgetting that we are not in an english-restricted list. I think it is
good to remind people from time to time that we are multilingual and
that speaking english requires an effort for some of us.

2) second, the problem mentionned in terms of copyright only concerns
the dutch, the french and the german wikipedias. When I write to a
website publishing in french, dutch and german, I see no valid reason to
write them in a fourth language.

I will add that being allowed to speak in my language help me cooling
down, keep faith in a multilingual project, and to avoid just plainly
unregistering from this list as I have been seriously considering in the
past few days.

Ant


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

body:
It would appear that we are breaking the law with respect to copyright
at download.wikimedia.org.

This is a result of our policy about the insertion of copyrighted
material into articles:

[[Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions]]
"Pages where the most recent edit is a copyright violation, but the
previous article was not, should not be deleted. They should be
reverted. The violating text will remain in the page history for
archival reasons unless the copyright holder asks the Wikimedia
Foundation to remove it."

As a result our database contains large quantities of violating
material. Because this material is completely untagged (just looks
like a normal revert in most cases), someone who wanted to
redistribute the database without substantial liability would be
unable.

It is unfortunate that we will not be able to always find and remove
every copyright violation, but when we instruct our editors to sweep
violations they discover under the rug, our actions could easily be
construed as willful infringement.

At a minimum we should instruct editors to tag reverts with a uniform
tag. In the case where the copyvio was only in the most recent version
it would be fairly trivial (though computationally expensive) to sweep
the DB and prune revisions that were copyvio.  In cases where there
were other edits after the copyvio there may be no automatic way to
remove the violating text... but at least we should be tagging these
changes.


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: OFF

body:
Well Anthere, take my advice: lay it aside. You know how nationalist some
Americans are. Any bright straight thinker will dismiss all this as
nonsense. Personally I can only urge you to stay with us. But a wikiholiday
of one week isn't so bad... I recently took one of a few days myself. If you
are really upset, then take some rest and return with new enthousiasm after
one week or so - bet they've missed you badly then!

Wouter

Anthere wrote:
>It may not be entirely clear, but I am currently
>nearly on a wikivacation and seriously reconsidering
>my possibly candidacy to the board.
>
>Just for trying to raise an issue, I have been treated
>as an american-basher.
>
>I find that plain non acceptable.
>
>I have been living in the USA and loved it. My son was
>american before being french. My two kids started
>learning english while 5 years old (usually 11 in
>France).
>I joined an english speaking project with no other
>languages more than 3 years ago. I was recently told I
>was amongst the top 100 biggest contributors.
>In the past year, I have been spending an absolutely
>incredible number of hours on an american foundation,
>besides my own job which I have to keep to survive,
>and besides my family life.
>I do this entirely as a volunteer, it actually costs
>me money because the Foundation does not reimburse all
>costs, while we currently pay 2 and soon 3 american
>employees, who are the only ones to benefit from the
>whole system.
>On the english wikipedia, I have been writting many
>articles, helped in the mediation committee and
>generally never hesitated helping anyone who was
>asking for it.
>And yes, I trusted Mav (an american) to take care of
>finance, Danny (am american again) to take care of
>grants
>And so on...
>
>All this for the shit I heard in the past days on
>wikipedia-l? That I am an american basher ? That I am
>unable to make the difference between a bad journalist
>and the whole american people ? I have been insulted
>by a whole lot of comments of what I supposingly
>believe the american people to be, and which is so
>afar from my own beliefs that I am extremely pained by
>all this.
>
>What pains me more than anything, is that but for
>Jimbo, no one took a single second to say it was not
>true, that I was able to make the difference.
>
>So, forgive me, but right now, I am not in a good
>mood.
>Volunteer is good, but being insulted when you
>volunteer many hours a day for more than 3 years, with
>no apologies afterwards is just plain an error. I
>think I am generally polite enough to people so that I
>can make a criticism to a professional group without
>being killed by the whole nation to whom this group
>belong.
>
>ant
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com

_________________________________________________________________
Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


subject: [Wikitech-l] The surplus tag in wikipedia

body:
Hi, there...

If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Algeria&action=edit
you'll see a surplus </font> tag, which doesn't have a start tag
(<font>). At wikipedia.org it's hided but at my site it showed  and
damage page design.
Does anybody know how to solve this problem?

Thanks
     Sergey


subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Problème de copyright dans l'usage de vos sources Wikipedia

body:
>Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
>>
>>But I prefer you to hold this discussion in English, indeed to hold
>>any discussion on this list in English.
>
>I am sure many people will "prefer" that, but that doesn't stop us from
>using other languages whenever we feel like it.
>
>>There will be a lot of people who are unable to read French...
>
>There are people who are unable to read English.  Picture that.
>
Yes, but not one this list; at least I am confident that anyone having
suscribed to this list can read English. The sole reason why I prefer
English here (note: just *here*, not on Wikisource, Wikiquote, the commons
etc.) is a practical one. It makes communication easier. I can very well
read your French (but hardly respond in the same language, unfortunately)
and - if necessary - German and Spanish as well, but I would be lost if
people began to write in Chinese, Arabic or Swahili, though these are quite
viable international languages in certain parts of the world. Others however
might be willing to use languages like these. Anything posted here must be
accesible to all of us, imo. I must stress I fully support multilinguality.

Wouter Steenbeek

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Guaka

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid-for-articles WPs in smaller languages
	(was: bambara)

body:
Hi,

First, thanks to HaafLimbo (his alias on the Limburgish Wikipedia) who
pointed me to this mailinglist :)

> > it's often a possibility that the person has seen a webpage but that
> > writing the manuscript out in longhand is more convenient for them.

That can even be more convenient inside cities where there is internet,
like Bamako. Many people have never touched a computer. In fact, last
week I proposed an older Fulaar man, who is also head of a Fulaar
cultural association, to simply bring me written articles.

> > Just because you don't have access to a computer doesn't mean you
> > never HAVE had access. And you might have access to a computer, but it
> > might be inconvenient compared to writing on paper and using
> > conventional post.

Not to forget the costs of using the computer (let alone the internet).

> >>Or should I register a special account to post all the articles
> >>created in the project? That will make searching them very easy, etc.
> >>What do you think?

Yesterday, when I added 5 articles to the Bambara Wikipedia I simply put
the name of the author in the comment box.

> >>>Among our further plans is looking for such people in the villages of
> >>>North Ossetia, where exists at least one highly literate group: the
> >>>teachers of the Ossetian language. But most of them are not at all
> >>>good computer users... So we have many interesting challenges.
> >>
> >><<Perhaps a collaboration with computer offer ?>>
> >>
> >>Can you tell more about your idea? I didn't get it.

Reading this thread... An idea that pops up right now... Communities
could be provided with one or more computers, under the condition they
regularly write new Wikipedia articles. An internet connection is
probably too expensive at such places. This way people can be provided
with lots of valuable information in languages some people can
understand while at the same time working on information in their native
language.

Make computer usage free for people who contribute to Wikimedia projects
(or localization, documentation, development of free software, free
information projects), and people who don't contribute can choose to pay
a small sum that pays the electricity, and possibly the internet
connection...

I've been quite a while in Bamako now. And I've tried to get people
interested. First with 200 CFA per article (0.3 EUR), but that didn't
really work. I've tried with university students, but nothing really
happened. Recently a new Geek arrived however, who has equipped a little
community school/center with a bunch of computers, in one of the poorer
areas of Bamako. And they are really interested. The university students
and the more "well off" people couldn't be bothered with the 500 CFA.
Poorer people however, don't have the money to use a cybercafe. 500 CFA
per hour is considered cheap here, for using the internet, but is also
unaffordable for at least 90% of the population.

Yesterday, at the center, I gave out the first 500 CFA pieces, and
people are starting to get the idea.

I also installed a DICT version of Wikipedia on the computer, so they
can access all the text from the French Wikipedia and translate that.

bye,
Kasper


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Notice to an Admin

body:
Well, thanks for that update. Now I'll wait for Cranston to reply with
his own evidence. If he doesn't I'll have to assume it doesn't exist.

--Mgm

On 5/29/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [050529 22:16]:
>
> > ElKabong matches with KaintheScion firstly on writing style and pages of
> > interest, and secondly they both edited [[Talk:George W. Bush]] in the same
> > hour from the same IP. (I sent a list of the edits and their times to him
> > and he emailed back saying I must have made that up.) KaintheScion and
> > Enviroknot have the same pages of interest and edit from the same IP,
> > starting as the IP and then as Enviroknot the moment I blocked Kain as a
> > sockpuppet of ElKabong (who I unblocked - the problem is abusing a
> > sockpuppet to pretend to be two people, not running a second account per
> > se). Which is a DSL theoretically on DHCP, but I know Roadrunner often
> > keeps people on the same IP for ages. Certainly this one.
>
>
> Oh - and as well as Enviroknot's home IP matching Kain's, "Cranston Snerd"
> has edited (and signed "Cranston Snerd") from the same two IPs favoured by
> ElKabong. Thus completing the circle.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 96

body:
Is that a joke? Please be careful. Such comments can inflame people.

--Mgm

On 5/29/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> >
> >>New Wikipedia policy proposal:
> >>
> >>        "Users using DHCP are immune against admin action. They are by
> >>         definition right and have not done anything wrong."
> >
> > What about admins using DHCP?
>
> Admins are already immune, by definition always right, and have done
> nothing wrong.  Do you doubt it?  Then you are a troll!
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid-for-articles WPs in smaller languages

body:
> But you raise an important issue, which is whether *we* as an
> *organisation* should financially help similar ideas (ie, paying
> editors). Of course, this requires specific requirements (such as
> control, validation of final quality, starting language with few editors
> expected, local organisers etc...), but on the concept, should we or
> should we not ?

I guess *we* is the Wikimedia Foundation. I don't think Wikimedia should
fund projects that pay editors. There are plenty of NGO's and there is
plenty of money going into development projects for developing
countries. Lots of that money is spent on expensive plane flights and
big salaries to send white people to poor countries. So what we (as in
the broader Wikipedia community) can do is try to get some of that money
to develop projects we think can make a difference, by directly paying
many people in poor countries (as opposed to several politicians and big
men gaining lots of bribes).

> You are perfectly allright : till now, editors have always been
> volunteers. Which could be the consequences that start paying some, even
> if it is on a small and little know language ?

Bambara is spoken by more than 10 million people and if you include
Dioula and other Mande languages we're probably talking about 30 million
people who are able to understand it (if it's spoken out, hence the
importance of creating .oggs once there is substantial material).

That it is little known is basically due to the fact that it is spoken
by poor people, and hardly ever read or written.

> Given that the goal of the Foundation is "to encouraging the growth,
> development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
> providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
> free of charge", I would say that supporting such projects (ie, paying
> editors in certain specific conditions) is within our area of action.
> What I do not know is whether it would be acceptable to do it with
> donation money, or if grants should be seek (sought ?) to support such
> an involvement. I would really welcome opinions on this. In the past
> year, I have seen little criticizing (as opposed to supporting) comments
> related to the way the Foundation money should be spent, but for
> comments saying (a year ago) that developers should get paid in
> priorities before Angie and my costs be reimbursed, or comments saying
> (early 2005) that with all the money we got, the website should be more
> accessible.

If Wikimedia Foundation starts a fund raising for specifically this
goal, that would be fine. But people who donated often donated the money
for having more reliable access. They _could_ be disappointed to see
that the money is being used to pay people to write articles. But again,
we (community) can find the money elsewhere - and Wikimedia can endorse
such projects.

> Perhaps a beginning of an answer would be that current developers do not
> seem overall to be mad with the idea of Chad and Brion be paid, while
> they are not. It may be because they consider Brion has been working a
> lot for the project and deserve to be partially paid by the Foundation,
> it may be because they consider that Chad work is required and can not
> be done any more by Jimbo. In short, it is acceptable because one is
> known and loved, and acceptable because the other is seen as doing a
> mandatory job. I am not sure, not being in the developer team. I suppose
> participation to such project will be possibly acceptable to editors if
> they can see where the benefits stands. Just thoughts. Waiting for all
> of yours.

There is a huge difference between paying developers to improve the
access to Wikipedia and to paying contributors. Wikimedia should make
sure Wikimedia (and especially its servers) keeps online.

Guaka!


from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Inserting old dump into db. How long will it take?

body:
Merlin schrieb:
> As far as I remember there was something like 200 inserts per minute. So
> this could take weeks, right?`

No. One INSERT operation will insert multiple rows into the current table.

> Did somebody already do that and can provide some figures?

I can only say that I do import the German cur table (around 1.1 GB sql
file) in less than 7 minutes on an AMD-64. Please search this newsgroup
as there was some discussion about import times recently.

Ciao, Michael.


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I'd say it was brutally insightful, a razor sharp wit.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 5/29/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is that a joke? Please be careful. Such comments can inflame people.
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 5/29/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> > >
> > >>New Wikipedia policy proposal:
> > >>
> > >>        "Users using DHCP are immune against admin action. They are by
> > >>         definition right and have not done anything wrong."
> > >
> > > What about admins using DHCP?
> >
> > Admins are already immune, by definition always right, and have done
> > nothing wrong.  Do you doubt it?  Then you are a troll!
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Hello Wouter,

wikipedia-l explicitly allows posts in languages other than English,
especially since intlwiki-l was merged into it. However, list members
are encouraged to translate messages from one language into the other.
This is a bit messy given the limits of the medium, but it's certainly
possible - just post a translation as a reply.

There are quite a few people for whom writing in English is a lot of
effort, just like writing in French is for you and me. And of course
there are people who don't speak English at all. These people should not
be excluded -- they should be able to start discussions, which could be
opened up to a larger group by anyone reading this list and being able
to translate them into other languages.

Of course, if you speak English, using it is a good way to reach the
largest number of readers possible. But that is a decision that should
be up to the original author of a message.

NB: It appears that you sent something which was sent to you off-list to
the public mailing list. Subjects like OFF or OFFLIST are generally used
to indicate that something is private and not meant to be shared.

Best,

Erik


body:
>NB: It appears that you sent something which was sent to you off-list to
>the public mailing list. Subjects like OFF or OFFLIST are generally used to
>indicate that something is private and not meant to be shared.

Imo, it was quite serious so I could hardly imagine it was not intended for
the mailing list. I just wanted everyone to know I at least support the
sender of the mail you discuss here. But sorry then, I did not intend to do
so. It is quite stupid: you see I'm a newbe. Should I unsubscribe then and
let the whole goddamned wikipedia project lay aside forever? All of my
contributions seem to be irrelevant.

On language choice: It seems to be highly unusual that someone uses an other
language than English. So one should have grave reasons to do so: it
excludes others.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Angela

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Problème de copyrigh t dans l'usage de vos sources Wikipedia

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
>> Anything posted here must be accessible to all of us, imo.

I don't agree with this. If someone wants to post in a language other
than English, I'd rather they do that than not post at all. We would
risk missing out on a lot of news and issues from the others
Wikipedias if we tried to enforce any sort of English-only policy
here. If the message is on this list, it gives other people the
opportunity to quickly translate it into English, or any other
languages that might be useful to people reading the thread. It would
be very difficult to prevent English-only speakers ever seeing another
language in a project as multilingual as Wikipedia.

> I can very well read your French (but hardly respond in the same language?)

I don't think anyone is claiming you do need to respond in the same
language. I've posted English replies to the mailing lists of
non-English Wikipedias with no complaints that I'm aware of - or maybe
just no complaints I could read ;)

Angela.


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 11:53:55AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> One aspect of the English language's dominance in the world is its
> ability to create new words whenever circumstances require.  English has
> no Acad?mie rushing in to say, "You can't use that word, because it's
> not in the dictionary."   This is a huge problem for lexicographers.
> New words are regularly being invented, but many are invented for a
> particular ephemeral occasion.  When that occasion passes the word
> passes with it; it has no need for an obituary.  If I inject a new word
> or usage into a text or conversation, as I frequently do, it is in
> anticipation that my readers or listeners will understand it's meaning
> from the context.  If I suggest that Mark quayles the English language
> readers will have some understanding of what I mean, but I would have no
> illusion about making that verb a normal part of English usage.

I agree 100% with the content of that paragraph.  Good job.

>
> Those of us with a more conservative view of language accept a
> lexicographer's duty as one of description and documentation.  Mark and
> his prescriptivist friends are too quick to tell us what belongs in the
> language without the least shred of verifiability.  They seem to forget
> the basic point that I put at the begining of this message: "The purpose
> of language is to communicate."

I would not, on my weirdest days, describe Mark's views on linguistics
as "prescriptivist".  I tend to agree with the content of your entire
email except your characterization of Mark's views as "prescriptivist".
In fact, judging by what I read in your email, I'd call YOU a
prescriptivst, but with the entirely reasonable addition of an
acceptance of new additions to the language when old material doesn't
suffice.  That is, in fact, basically how I'd describe my own views on
the matter.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 02:10:13PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> This has little to do with spelling - even in the most recent times
> when English spelling was largely up to the individual author, they
> would've branded that as "incorrect".

This seems almost without context.  What?

>
> People like you seem to believe that language does _not_ change over time.

I'm curious where you get that impression.  Really.  I have no such
belief.

>
> In that case I say to you, behold:
>
> "Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bi? ?ghw?m ??t he his freond wrece,
> ?onne he fela murne. Ure ?ghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes;
> wyrce se ?e mote domes ?r dea?e; ??t bi? drihtguman unlifgendum ?fter
> selest."

I fear some characters aren't rendering properly.  Your example, thus,
is not presented accurately.

>
> What, you say, English? Isn't that Icelandic or some other crazy
> langauge like that? No, it is indeed English, and that is how it was
> written. Even if you replaced the spelling of words that have cognates
> in modern English with their current standard spelling, it would be
> quite literally incomprehensible.

Really?  Why don't you do so, and let others judge it for themselves?
Maybe it'll be more comprehensible to me if it uses characters I can
see.

>
> Many of the words have been replaced by French ones, many others have
> changed in their pronunciation so drastically as to be quite literally
> unrecognisable.

I don't see how that in any way invalidates what I said.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 29/05/05, Sergey Samoylov <ssamoylov at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Algeria&action=edit
> you'll see a surplus </font> tag, which doesn't have a start tag
> (<font>).

Since it's in the content of the wiki page, you can just go ahead and
fix the markup - in fact, I already have. It looks like at some point
somebody changed a couple of "<font ...>" tags into "<big>" and
"<small>", but didn't fix the closing "</font>"s to match.

>At wikipedia.org it's hided but at my site it showed  and
> damage page design.

I think this is because Wikipedia is set up to run a utility/library
called "htmltidy" over the output, which was able to successfully work
out what was intended here and put the correct closing tags in the
rendered copy.

> Does anybody know how to solve this problem?

1) edit the page so that the markup's right
and/or 2) enable htmltidy on your own MediaWiki install (get the
necessary libraries, and copy and amend the appropriate section of
includes/DefaultSettings.php to your LocalSettings.php; search for
"tidy" in that file and read the comments)

HTH
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Although you'll probably complain now that it's not "authentic" and
that you can't judge anything with it, I have replaced the "special"
characters with their not-so-special equivalents (keep in mind though
that the original used thorn, eth, and aewhateveritscalled):

"Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bith aeghwaem thaet he his freond wrece,
thonne he fela murne. Ure aeghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes;
wyrce se the mote domes aer deathe; thaet bith drihtguman unlifgendum
aefter selest."

In modern spelling, that would be (keep in mind though that the words
were pronounced differently - 'sorga', although equivalent to the
modern 'sorrow', was actually pronounced 'sore-gah'):

"Not sorrow, (snotor) (guma); (selre) be each that he his friend
(wrece), than he full mourn. Our each shall end (gebidan) world life;
work se the must doom are death; that be (drihtguman) (unlifgendum)
(selest)"

List of words without cognates: Snotor = wise; guma = one; "sel" is an
adjective meaning "good" so "selest" is "best"; wrece = avenge;
gebidan = pray; se = the; drihtguman = ??; unlifgendum = ??; selest =
best.

Now note that in the above transcription I had to discard case endings
or other parts of words in many cases (only "aeghwa" in "aeghwam"
corresponds to "each",  the final 'm' is the genetive case ending),
and that many of the words have slightly different meanings ("world
life" for example).

Now that you are so sure that Old English is only incomprehensible
because of the way it's spelled, let's see how you handle some respelt
Chaucer:

"Befell that, in that season on a day; In Southwark, at the Tabard as
I lay; Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage; To Canterbury with full
devout courage; At night was come into that hostelry; Well nine and
twenty in a company; Of sundry folk, by adventure he fallen; In
fellowship, and pilgrims were they all; That toward Canterbury would
ride; The chambres and the stables were wide; And well we were treated
with the best; And shortly when the sun was to rest; So had I spoken
with him every-which-one; That I was of hir fellowship anon; And made
forward early for to rise; To take our way, there as I you devise".

Of course that makes much more sense than the Beowulf extract. But
much of it doesn't mean what you think. "with full devout courage"
means "with a fully devout heart", not "with full devout courage"; "by
adventure he fallen" means "by chance fallen"; "the stables were wide"
means "the stables were large".

Also, there's the use of the pronominal triplet he - him - hir meaning
actually they - them - their. And words which you probably don't know
at all (at least not in such a normal sense) such as "anon" which
means "forthwith", and you wouldn't say "befell that" but rather "it
befell that" or "it so happened".

Other than those examples, to point out that prescriptivism changes...
contractions are much more widely accepted today than perhaps a
century ago.

You would probably have no problem with the sentence "A girl riding on
a bus", but it is quite 'wrong' because it 'should' read "A girl
riding on an omnibus". You probably have no problem with "Zoology is
fun", but I do. It 'should' be (and I would write it as) "Zo?logy is
fun" (dieresis on the second o because it is pronounced separately -
it's not z+eulogy, it's zoo+ology). You would have no problem with "A
trip to the zoo" but it 'should' infact be "A trip to the zo?logical
garden". This isn't having to do with the dieresis so much as the
usage of "zoo" rather than the more 'proper' "zo?logical garden" which
nobody would expect today.

You could write "zoo" in a term paper and it wouldn't be a problem,
but could you write "F'e'd've thought'f't, th'n'e'd prob'ly've
invent'd th'telephone b'fore that"? Perhaps that's not how _you_ say
"If he would have thought of it, then he would probably have invented
the telephone before that" in casual speech (you may "drop" less
sounds or you may "drop" more), but the point still stands: the same
way that that is purely casual usage, "zoo" used to be purely casual
and it was not OK to write a term paper on a zoo - it was, as far as
you would be concerned with writing your term paper, a zo?logical
garden (or perhaps a zoological garden, depending on how stuck up you
really are).

Mark

On 29/05/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 02:10:13PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > This has little to do with spelling - even in the most recent times
> > when English spelling was largely up to the individual author, they
> > would've branded that as "incorrect".
>
> This seems almost without context.  What?
>
>
> >
> > People like you seem to believe that language does _not_ change over time.
>
> I'm curious where you get that impression.  Really.  I have no such
> belief.
>
>
> >
> > In that case I say to you, behold:
> >
> > "Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bi? ?ghw?m ??t he his freond wrece,
> > ?onne he fela murne. Ure ?ghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes;
> > wyrce se ?e mote domes ?r dea?e; ??t bi? drihtguman unlifgendum ?fter
> > selest."
>
> I fear some characters aren't rendering properly.  Your example, thus,
> is not presented accurately.
>
>
> >
> > What, you say, English? Isn't that Icelandic or some other crazy
> > langauge like that? No, it is indeed English, and that is how it was
> > written. Even if you replaced the spelling of words that have cognates
> > in modern English with their current standard spelling, it would be
> > quite literally incomprehensible.
>
> Really?  Why don't you do so, and let others judge it for themselves?
> Maybe it'll be more comprehensible to me if it uses characters I can
> see.
>
>
> >
> > Many of the words have been replaced by French ones, many others have
> > changed in their pronunciation so drastically as to be quite literally
> > unrecognisable.
>
> I don't see how that in any way invalidates what I said.
>
>
> --
> Chad Perrin
> [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

body:
Interestingly enough, the only time I pilfered text from an essay I
wrote (for something other than WP) that is widely available, and used
it on WP, nobody ever caught it and introduced the possibility of a
copyvio - it still stands.

Mark

On 29/05/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Kate Turner (keturner at livejournal.com) [050530 08:37]:
> > Gregory Maxwell wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:
>
> > > As a result our database contains large quantities of violating
> > > material.
>
> > my understand of the relevant US law is that we are not required to
> > aggressively remove copyright violations until requested by the copyright
> > holder.
>
> If someone ever codes the facility to zap old revisions easily, we could
> deal with such without great pain. The main barrier at present is that
> zapping old revs entails deleting the article then restoring all revs
> except the offender. On a heavily-trafficked page this present obvious
> logistical problems.
>
> Our proactive approach, though, does stand us in good stead should we ever
> end up in a courtroom. Generally the copyvio page is *rabid* and that's
> good. Even if on many occasions the author of a given text has to point out
> they're the editor that added it to Wikipedia ;-)
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Timwi

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
>
> It seems to be highly unusual that someone uses an other language
> than English. So one should have grave reasons to do so: it excludes
> others.

I believe that "I want to" is a pretty damn grave reason.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] my previous emails

body:
I have received a private email that requested I make a private apology
to a board member for saying some things that incorrectly accused her of
certain behavior.  I won't comment publicly on who sent me the email,
but I will address the matter publicly as concern regarding my public
behavior was expressed.  I likewise will not comment on the specific
content of the email I was sent, but I will say that I agree my phrasing
and my targeting of my comments was less than constructive.

I seem to have accidentally blamed what I saw as a trend in behavior
from several people on one person.  That was not my intent in any way,
and in fact most of that was not anything that one person did.  I
apologize to her for my unintended use of her as proxy for the whole
trend, and to the list for making it visible to them.

Specifically, to Anthere:

I did not mean to suggest that you complained in any way about the US
public.  The fact that my phrasing suggested you did is my fault, not
yours.  As I already indicated, I effectively used you as a proxy for
others who have done exactly what I said, both in this recent thread
arising from the NPR interview and previously, but much of what I said
had nothing to do with your own actions.  I should not have implied,
even by accident, that you ever said such things.

My response was made directly to Mark/Delirium as an expansion on my
agreement with some points he made, and not directly to Anthere.  Mark's
email was a direct reply to an email of Anthere's, however, and the
implication that my intent was to single her out was an easy one to
make.  What to my mind read like a general statement about criticisms of
American culture on the worldwide stage likely looked like an aimed
attack on Anthere's character, which was outside the range of my intent.
I shall take responsibility for the consequences of my negligence,
however, just as I would the consequences of my conscious actions.

In short, I apologize.  I don't want to place anyone in the position of
appearing to accept blame for what they have not done, nor of having to
publicly correct me if I can correct myself.

I like to think I'm a reasonable guy.  Sometimes, I guess that means
admitting my mistakes.  This was certainly one of them.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: David Benbennick

subject: [Wikitech-l] Very simple thumbnail bug + patch

body:
Given an image of width say 100, the code "[[Image:Name|100px]]"
causes MediaWiki to generate a 100px thumbnail.  Besides wasting disk
space, this bug is annoying since the thumbnail is often larger than
the original image.

Attached is a 1-character patch against CVS head that should fix the problem.

(This is my first time submitting a patch for MediaWiki.  Is this the
right place?  Or should I file a bug report on bugzilla instead?)

-- [[en:User:Dbenbenn]]


from_name: Andries Krugers Dagneaux

subject: [WikiEN-l] The harmful "Main article fixation" phenomenon

body:
[[user:Dbachmann]] introduced the term "Main article fixation" at
[[talk:Germany]] for a phenomenon that, he and I think, is an impediment
for the improvement of Wikipedia. He noticed that editors are fixated on
arguing over every word on the main article [[Germany]] though the
article is of reasonable quality.

Editors seem to forget that [[Germany]]'s ancillary articles like
[[Geography of Germany]] are in a sorry state and in dire need of
competent editors.

I have the impression that this is a general phenomenon at Wikipedia,
not confined to [[Germany]]. The reason seems to be that editors think
that if their POV or positive fact is mentioned in a main article then
people will read it. I think editors forget that people who are
interested in a certain subject will also click on the more detailed
article that offers more facts and divers POVs

I hope that editors who read this will help to distract attention of
other editors from the main articles to the ancillary articles to enable
the overall better quality of Wikipedia.

Thanks. Andries K.D.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin

references:
<BFDFCB6F-E025-4D62-8227-3D13B8FAE935@sbcglobal.net>
	<BAY12-F19C2C6EC64BA1E83F10A8DD8010@phx.gbl>
	<d7c52h$olf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi (timwi at gmx.net) [050529 20:25]:
> Cranston Snord wrote:

> >I have adequately explained what is going on, and I have referenced all
> >the Wikipedia policy that Gerard and his cohorts are violating.

> Hey, guys. Since we're all a conspiracy anyway, why don't we just change
> the policies so that we are no longer violating them? We could just make
> a policy that "we don't like Cranston Snord", and then anything we'll do
> has legitimacy and he can't complain.

To pass it as policy properly, we need to have a vote on it IMMEDIATELY,
without opportunity for discussion. I'll get to work on a fifteen-part poll
*immediately*.

- d.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l]
	Re: broken e-mail notification on testwiki - who knows, why ?

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>
>> Why don't you find something else to do for a change?
>
>
> If I remember correctly, you are the one who has the nerve to refuse to
> move even a single finger for any project that you deem inappropriate
> (such as the Klingon Wikipedia), and if I also remember correctly, you
> were the one who most vocally told *me* not to tell other people what to
> do when I was new.
>
> I *very strongly* suggest you not tell other people what to do.
>
> Comments like the one above can very easily shatter all motivation
> someone may have to work on something voluntarily in their free time. I
> would hate to see that happen to Thomas, with all his great and hard
> work on Enotif going to waste. A lot of people are looking forward to
> this feature.
>
> You may have your own opinions about things; you may think that everyone
> here is a really crap programmer and you could do it all much better if
> you had the time. You might think Enotif is a piece of shit just like
> you do with my Recent Changes Patrol feature and flexbisonparse. But,
> man, you gotta learn to keep it to yourself.
>
> Timwi

"Work on something else for a change" was exactly what I told Mark Ryan
after he said on what is now [[Talk:Perth, Western Australia]]:

"Aaaargh! somebody give me some feedback!!!! Somebody tell me what they
think of the Perth page now, what it still needs etc etc... I can't do
this alone."

Strangely enough he didn't take offence. What I said to Tom just then
was meant in the same way. Sometimes people can get emotionally involved
in a single pet project. The project becomes everything, they worry
constantly about what other people think of it, hang on every word of
criticism or praise and try to do everything they think will make
everyone repect their work. This applies equally to Tom now and to Mark
then, as well as many other situations. Unfortunately Mark didn't see my
advice until much later, he lost interest in Wikipedia in the same week
and didn't come back for 18 months.

Sometimes obsessive people forget that there is more than one way to
earn the respect of others. Email notification is good, but even if it
was perfect, it wouldn't be respected to the same degree that a
continuing, diverse contribution to the community might be. Working on a
range of things is a great way to avoid stress -- if you put all your
eggs in one basket, you're in trouble if the basket fails.

We're working on including email notification in 1.5, there's nothing
more that Tom has to do for this to occur. I'm committed to this, it
won't be removed. That's why my advice to him is to stop assuming the
worst every time it's disabled on a wiki somewhere, to stop posting to
wikitech-l every week accusing us of some injustice against it, and to
find something else to do which will earn him the appreciation he sorely
needs.

I see you've taken the opportunity to list all the wrongs I've done
against you in the past. I'll say a few words about each of them.

* I honestly thought refusing to contribute to the Klingon Wikipedia was
a fair compromise. Several people argued vociferously against it, I
could have easily joined them, and done whatever I could to prevent the
wiki from being created. Would you have preferred that? Instead I
decided to live and let live.

* The "don't tell other people what to do" thing shattered my confidence
in my ability to communicate with other people. I tried to be honest and
explain the situation, but you wouldn't believe me when I told you I had
nothing against you, and you took offence at everything I said. It was
an unpleasant experience. Unable to explain myself without making
matters worse, I resigned myself to hoping that perhaps you would
forgive and forget with the passage of time. I guess you haven't.

* I don't think anyone here is a crap programmer, least of all you. Your
skills are among the best on the team. I admit I was disappointed with
the recent changes patrol feature from a design/usability perspective,
but if I recall correctly, you agreed with me that its design was
provisional rather than ideal.

* Flexbisonparse is in a class of its own, I think it's amazing. Writing
something like that is far beyond my capabilities. I can't imagine
myself saying that there's something wrong with it. I may have said that
I want to see benchmarks of the speed, and I may have said that it's not
much use without HTML output, but both statements were intended to be
encourage development towards a drop-in replacement, not to put you down.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject: [Wikitech-l]

references:
<42986491.1030903@tgries.de> <d7a0r0$koe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d7c3f6$l00$1@sea.gmane.org> <m3br6ul2yv.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>

body:
"Anders" == Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> writes:

> "Timwi" == Timwi  <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
>> You may have your own opinions about things; you may think that
>> everyone here is a really crap programmer and you could do it all
>> much better if you had the time. You might think Enotif is a piece
>> of shit just like you do with my Recent Changes Patrol feature and
>> flexbisonparse. But, man, you gotta learn to keep it to yourself.

>  Have you actually seen the Enotif code? If not, then I suggest that
> you take a look at the latter half of UserMailer.php

 After reading the above message, it strikes me as unneccesarily short
and terse. I did not mean to imply the lack of coding proficiency on
Tom Gries's part, but rather that the enotif extension at this point
has been engineered and reengineered so many times that it could
benefit greatly from third-party refactoring.

--
/Wegge
Min holdning til Usenet - <http://wiki.wegge.dk/Usenet>
Min weblog - <http://blog.wegge.dk/>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Notice to an Admin

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050529 20:25]:
> On 5/29/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> > > Actually, I was asking enviroknot to back up his statements.

> > Then maybe you should have replied to Enviroknot and not to David Gerard.

> I was under the impression I was replying to the entire list.
> Never mind. I'll keep it in mind for next time.

Not to worry :-) I took it as being to me because basically the devs with
database access are the only ones who can confirm or deny the evidence I
see.

ElKabong matches with KaintheScion firstly on writing style and pages of
interest, and secondly they both edited [[Talk:George W. Bush]] in the same
hour from the same IP. (I sent a list of the edits and their times to him
and he emailed back saying I must have made that up.) KaintheScion and
Enviroknot have the same pages of interest and edit from the same IP,
starting as the IP and then as Enviroknot the moment I blocked Kain as a
sockpuppet of ElKabong (who I unblocked - the problem is abusing a
sockpuppet to pretend to be two people, not running a second account per
se). Which is a DSL theoretically on DHCP, but I know Roadrunner often
keeps people on the same IP for ages. Certainly this one.

Mindspillage theorised on IRC that the sockpuppeteer can't imagine anyone
being smarter than him or having more information. Hey, *he'd* be fooled by
these games, so if we aren't then we must be *conspiring*.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Notice to an Admin

body:
David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [050529 22:16]:

> ElKabong matches with KaintheScion firstly on writing style and pages of
> interest, and secondly they both edited [[Talk:George W. Bush]] in the same
> hour from the same IP. (I sent a list of the edits and their times to him
> and he emailed back saying I must have made that up.) KaintheScion and
> Enviroknot have the same pages of interest and edit from the same IP,
> starting as the IP and then as Enviroknot the moment I blocked Kain as a
> sockpuppet of ElKabong (who I unblocked - the problem is abusing a
> sockpuppet to pretend to be two people, not running a second account per
> se). Which is a DSL theoretically on DHCP, but I know Roadrunner often
> keeps people on the same IP for ages. Certainly this one.

Oh - and as well as Enviroknot's home IP matching Kain's, "Cranston Snerd"
has edited (and signed "Cranston Snerd") from the same two IPs favoured by
ElKabong. Thus completing the circle.

- d.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wiktionary-l] GNU-FDL and Ultimate Wiktionary

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Not really, since the existing wiktionaries would continue as they have
> all along.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing or taking any position on this at all.
 Please consider my questions about this to be merely data gathering. :-)

Why should we have such a formal break?  Why shouldn't we instead
transition from one to the other in a seamless way?  I worry a lot about
duplication of effort, etc.

Are there objections from old-school wiktionarians to the ultimate
wiktionary plans?  Is it possible that we could address these objections
through code?

I'm very sorry that I don't already know all of this, but I'm sure you
can all get me up to speed quite quickly.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
David Benbennick wrote:
> Given an image of width say 100, the code "[[Image:Name|100px]]"
> causes MediaWiki to generate a 100px thumbnail.  Besides wasting disk
> space, this bug is annoying since the thumbnail is often larger than
> the original image.
>
> Attached is a 1-character patch against CVS head that should fix the problem.

First, you need to define the problem.

Is the problem that a thumbnail is generated for a size of 100px? That's
not a problem; that's a deliberate feature! Transferring a 4 megabyte
photograph instead of a 70kb thumbnail doesn't make a lot of sense.

Is the problem that sometimes the generated thumbnail has a larger
filesize than the source file? Note that there are already some bugs
filed in bugzilla about the "sometimes a thubmnail is larger than the
source file" problem. It's unclear what the best solution is. You should
probably start with the existing bug reports on the subject.

> (This is my first time submitting a patch for MediaWiki.  Is this the
> right place?  Or should I file a bug report on bugzilla instead?)

Bugzilla is the place. Besides the problem that something posted here
will not be maintained in a queue if it's not acted on immediately,
attachments usually do not pass through the list as we've disabled
binary attachments due to virus problems in the past.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
On 29/05/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 07:36:27PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Although you'll probably complain now that it's not "authentic" and
> > that you can't judge anything with it, I have replaced the "special"
> > characters with their not-so-special equivalents (keep in mind though
> > that the original used thorn, eth, and aewhateveritscalled):
>
> Say what?  If you're so convinced you know what my opinions are and how
> I'll respond, perhaps you should just write a bot with my name and have
> a conversation with that instead of me.

If I knew a programming language, perhaps I would. But that would
probably be an enormous waste of time.

> >
> > "Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bith aeghwaem thaet he his freond wrece,
> > thonne he fela murne. Ure aeghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes;
> > wyrce se the mote domes aer deathe; thaet bith drihtguman unlifgendum
> > aefter selest."
> >
> > In modern spelling, that would be (keep in mind though that the words
> > were pronounced differently - 'sorga', although equivalent to the
> > modern 'sorrow', was actually pronounced 'sore-gah'):
> >
> > "Not sorrow, (snotor) (guma); (selre) be each that he his friend
> > (wrece), than he full mourn. Our each shall end (gebidan) world life;
> > work se the must doom are death; that be (drihtguman) (unlifgendum)
> > (selest)"
> >
> > List of words without cognates: Snotor = wise; guma = one; "sel" is an
> > adjective meaning "good" so "selest" is "best"; wrece = avenge;
> > gebidan = pray; se = the; drihtguman = ??; unlifgendum = ??; selest =
> > best.
>
> All of that seems to indicate positive evolution of the language.

"Positive"? What do you mean?? That "snotor" just plain doesn't make
sense as a word meaning "wise"? That phonetic spelling is bad (that is
actually how those words were pronounced at the time - the spelling
used in the original _is_ phonetic)? Or something else that makes more
sense?

> I'm
> surprised you didn't try to make a case for "evolution" of the language
> by way of the sort of inclusionary modifications that are popular with
> strict descriptivists, since that seems to be your point.  Of course, I
> never said that the language doesn't change according to the whims of
> descriptivists, or that it doesn't change at all: only that A) it
> shouldn't change because some radio-friendly song popularizes a
> particular corruption of the language and

See, "corruption" is where I believe you're wrong, and what is
essentially the problem between descriptivists and prescriptivists
(more like proscriptivists).

You characterise all those letter-droppings and corruptions of
perfectly good existing words and improper usages which got the
language from Proto-Indo-European all the way to Modern English as
"good" and "making sense", yet anything that occurs _now_ is bad,
ignorant, "corrupt", and "incorrect". Except, of course, the things
that happened before you were born, which you accept as prized
innovations (contractions, for example - they save oh-so-much time!
the fact is that contractions have always been used, they have just
been kept to speech most of the time)

The simple fact is that prescriptivists, in any language at any time,
have been saying the same thing. You can find it in the Appendix Probi
- it's _bad_ to use anything other than the most proper Latin! But
then through the magic of language change, the same language
one-and-a-half millenia later is being praised by French
prescriptivists as the most logical language ever, and they want you
to use it a certain way that would've given the author of the Appendix
Probi a heart attack because it's such an abomination of Latin.

The same thing with Sanskrit: Panini would've had a fit if he had been
told that Sanskrit would become, through a series of complex changes,
such "incorrect" "corruptions" of his perfect logical favourite
language as Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati...

And finally with English. The writers of Beowulf were probably not
prescriptivists, but they would've told you that the language we're
using today is most certainly not "Englisc" as they knew it, or if it
is it is a nasty vile corruption of it. Not just the spelling - no, to
them our grammar, syntax, and usage of foreign words would sound like
a foreigner's poor attempt at producing coherent speech.

> B) a given example of
> linguistic "evolution" you presented only looked like it differed by way
> of spelling changes.

So, o snotor guma, work you use such sel words at least once a decade
in your English  speech and writing as "bearn", "wrece", "drihtguman",
"gebidan", or "unlifgendum"?

Modernising their spelling doesn't help much either, seeing as they
have no cognates in modern english and quite simply can't be
modernised.

And unless you're absolutely numb in your blain, you must've noticed
the dramatic syntactical differences as well as the fact that words
had case endings in Old but not Modern English??

> > Now that you are so sure that Old English is only incomprehensible
> > because of the way it's spelled, let's see how you handle some respelt
> > Chaucer:
>
> When did I say that?

Just now - "a given example of linguistic "evolution" you presented
only looked like it differed by way of spelling changes."

Oh, but that was *after* I sent my e-mail, was it not? But you said
it, nonetheless. Just as I told you you would.

> > Also, there's the use of the pronominal triplet he - him - hir meaning
> > actually they - them - their. And words which you probably don't know
> > at all (at least not in such a normal sense) such as "anon" which
> > means "forthwith", and you wouldn't say "befell that" but rather "it
> > befell that" or "it so happened".
>
> It's nice to see that occasionally grammatical rules that make sense
> become more widely used.

"That make sense" - can you give me, please, some examples of
grammatical rules YOU enforce that are nonsensical? Or do you believe
that they all make sense?

Like any believer in any religion believes that his is the one true
path, the only RIGHT religion, any prescriptivist from any language at
any time believes that the form of the language HE promotes makes the
most sense, and would like to beat to a pulp with a pencil those
future prescriptivists who would say differently.

> > Other than those examples, to point out that prescriptivism changes...
> > contractions are much more widely accepted today than perhaps a
> > century ago.
>
> I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
>
>
> >
> > You would probably have no problem with the sentence "A girl riding on
> > a bus", but it is quite 'wrong' because it 'should' read "A girl
> > riding on an omnibus". You probably have no problem with "Zoology is
> > fun", but I do. It 'should' be (and I would write it as) "Zo?logy is
> > fun" (dieresis on the second o because it is pronounced separately -
> > it's not z+eulogy, it's zoo+ology). You would have no problem with "A
> > trip to the zoo" but it 'should' infact be "A trip to the zo?logical
> > garden". This isn't having to do with the dieresis so much as the
> > usage of "zoo" rather than the more 'proper' "zo?logical garden" which
> > nobody would expect today.
>
> Since when did I express a problem with contractions and abbreviations?

You never did. That's exactly my point. Had you been a prescriptivist
of yesteryear, you would've. But you're not. So you don't. What was
once illogical, ignorant, and incorrect, is now greasing the wheels of
communication without invalidating the more lengthy and precise terms
from which they're derived.

> They grease the wheels of communication without invalidating the more
> lengthy and precise terms from which they're derived.

If I said "I go store tomorrow in blue bus with Jenny", that would
certainly be more compact than "I'm going to go to the store tomorrow
in the blue bus with Jenny", and in that way it would grease the
wheels of communication without invalidating the more lengthy and
precise rules from which it was derived, but would you allow it or
would you look down your nose at it and scoff at its ignorance, lack
of education, etc etc etc?

>  On the other
> hand, I am a little disappointed that in cases where longer terms are
> appropriate people have chosen to eschew accuracy without any particular
> good reason.  Then, of course, other people have chosen to chronicle the
> abbreviated terms as "official" parts of the language.  The word "zoo"
> was, orginally, an abbreviation of "zoological [noun]" (modify spelling
> as necessary to make it strictly accurate, using the correct character
> set -- which I apparently don't have installed on this computer).  A
> dictionary reference to "zoo" as a slang term is appropriate when zoo
> enters common usage, and ultimately removing the "slang" reference might
> be appropriate as well, but including (for instance) reference to
> "imply" as a synonym of "infer" in the dictionary is absolutely NOT
> appropriate.  Given a couple decades, however, it might end up being an
> accepted synonym for a significant portion of the population because
> dictionary editors have started making unironic reference to this
> supposed synonymous meaning.

"because" dictionary editors have? In a century, imply will probably
mean the same thing as infer even according to the most conservative
of prescriptivists, and the fact that they once meant what they
supposedly do now (I must admit, I use them "correctly" and am
irritated when they're used "incorrectly", but I am irritated with my
irritation because I know it's silly since language change is natural)
will be an interesting footnote in the long history of English.

 > That's a brief explanation of how your attempted characterization of my
> intent missed the mark, and how I actually feel on the matter.  I want
> accuracy and precision, not stultifying adherence to tradition.

Like this sentence because not long but still accurate? (Do you like
this sentence, because it is not long, yet it is still accurate?)
Maybe hate because ungrammatical? (Maybe you hate it because it is
ungrammatical?) This show why prescriptivism silly - say discard
unnessecary good, but only if discard unnessecary already (This shows
why prescriptivism is silly - you say that discarding "unnessecary"
things is good, but only if they've already been discarded)

Those example maybe not good, not that much shorter but if
en.wikipedia use like this, save much space. (Those examples may not
be good examples because the simplified versions aren't that much
shorter, but if en.wikipedia were to adopt this usage, it would save a
lot of space.)

> Essentially, as far as I'm aware, prescriptivism is about defining the
> language according to its rules, and descriptivism is about defining the
> language according to the way people who don't know, or ignore, the
> rules use it.  As far as I'm aware, neither one is trying to say that
> the language did or did not evolve from any given set of standards,
> though they may say that it should or should not have evolved the way it
> did.

No, it's about who is competent.

Presciptivism takes those nose-in-the-clouds approach and says that
only people who study "rules" which are not based on modern usage
"know the rules of the language", while descriptivism takes the
down-to-earth approach and says that any native speaker who is fluent
in the language "knows the rules of the language".

If a person didn't "know the rules of the language", they'd simply not
be able to use it at all. Rules of language are fluid and are defined
by actual usage, whether you like it or not. Prescriptivism is just a
little behind the curve and takes quite a while after usage becomes
popular before accepting it.

Mark

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I think that GNU FDL is perfectly fine for Ultimate Wiktionary and there
>> is no need to change the license.  The license is perfectly compatible
>> with the .DICT format, so there should be no problems at all.
>>
> I'm glad to hear that.

I do not understand why you think so.

>> Thinking about how to import data from wiktionary in the ultimate
>> wiktionary may pose a few puzzles with respect to FDL compliance, but I
>> don't see any significant problems.  The import script should keep track
>> of who contributed to a chunk of data and take note of that fact.  The
>> history may be a little more problematic, and I think we will want to
>> get advice on exactly how to do it.
>>
> Importing histories into Gerard's project will not remove them from
> the existing Wiktionaries.  Simply putting a dated link to the source
> Wiktionary should do it.  That would only become a problem if the
> existing Wiktionary deletes the article or otherwise makes it
> unworkable.  In the existing transwiki technique article histories are
> moved with the term in question.  This gives a nice list of who edited
> and when, but records of what changes these people made are
> unavailable.  In some cases, particularly as regards very stubby
> articles, it has proved more practical to discard the transwikied
> material and its history completely, and start a whole new article.

To what wiktionary would you attribute information and on what level ??
When you interwiki, you expect that old style wiktionaries will continue
to exist.. I expect that several wiktionaries, if not all, will
eventually be discontinued.

 From my point of view there is nothing wrong with very stubby
information. The only criterium is that information is correct.

>> But changing the license to something else would require throwing away
>> all existing work in wiktionary, which seems quite unwise to me.
>
> Not really, since the existing wiktionaries would continue as they
> have all along.
>
> Ec

Hoi,
When a Wiktionary has its data imported into Ultimate Wiktionary and
when its users have migrated to the Ultimate Wiktionary as well, why
should they continue as they did before. It does not makes sense to
suggest that they would. I will not work on any Wiktionay if the work of
UW proves to be more efficient. Given the amount of work that I did on
the nl.wiktionary it can not continue as it did before.

The idea that Wiktionary is similar to Wikipedia is also something that
can be disputed. It is more of a lemma than an article. Wiktionary is in
many respects like a list, the individual words cannot be copyrighted.
The individual translations cannot be copyrighted. This is unlike
Wikipedia. So if anything stubby lemmas in Wiktionary are not a problem.
There is also the consideration that the content can come from many
sources. It is therefore very difficult to state in the Ultimate
Wiktionary who contributed to a word because it can originate from many
sources. When you add for instance that a noun has a particular gender,
you cannot claim copyright because that fact is in the public domain.

The GNU-FDL is not intended for data like wiktionary, this license was
intended for manuals and it is not really appropriate for data like
dictionaries. There are public domain dictionaries that will give you
90% of what you need to have in a modern dictionary.

When changing the license for Ultimate Wiktionary is a given, there are
several ways of dealing with complaints from people who have contributed
to a wiktionary.
*You can import the same/similar data from several sources. So when a
wiktionary editor complains he is removed as an editor and an other
resource is attributed as its source.
*This division is particularly easy for language independent stuff like
translations wordtypes genders etc. Meanings and etymologies are more
personal.

Given that it is only contributors can complain and given that changing
the license will be done to make the UW more usefull, I doubt there will
be many people that will complain. I also think that it will not be
apreciated by the community when people complain as the reason why the
license would be changed is to make it easier to fulfill the goals of
the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 07:36:27PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Although you'll probably complain now that it's not "authentic" and
> that you can't judge anything with it, I have replaced the "special"
> characters with their not-so-special equivalents (keep in mind though
> that the original used thorn, eth, and aewhateveritscalled):

Say what?  If you're so convinced you know what my opinions are and how
I'll respond, perhaps you should just write a bot with my name and have
a conversation with that instead of me.

>
> "Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bith aeghwaem thaet he his freond wrece,
> thonne he fela murne. Ure aeghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes;
> wyrce se the mote domes aer deathe; thaet bith drihtguman unlifgendum
> aefter selest."
>
> In modern spelling, that would be (keep in mind though that the words
> were pronounced differently - 'sorga', although equivalent to the
> modern 'sorrow', was actually pronounced 'sore-gah'):
>
> "Not sorrow, (snotor) (guma); (selre) be each that he his friend
> (wrece), than he full mourn. Our each shall end (gebidan) world life;
> work se the must doom are death; that be (drihtguman) (unlifgendum)
> (selest)"
>
> List of words without cognates: Snotor = wise; guma = one; "sel" is an
> adjective meaning "good" so "selest" is "best"; wrece = avenge;
> gebidan = pray; se = the; drihtguman = ??; unlifgendum = ??; selest =
> best.

All of that seems to indicate positive evolution of the language.  I'm
surprised you didn't try to make a case for "evolution" of the language
by way of the sort of inclusionary modifications that are popular with
strict descriptivists, since that seems to be your point.  Of course, I
never said that the language doesn't change according to the whims of
descriptivists, or that it doesn't change at all: only that A) it
shouldn't change because some radio-friendly song popularizes a
particular corruption of the language and B) a given example of
linguistic "evolution" you presented only looked like it differed by way
of spelling changes.

>
> Now that you are so sure that Old English is only incomprehensible
> because of the way it's spelled, let's see how you handle some respelt
> Chaucer:

When did I say that?

>
> Also, there's the use of the pronominal triplet he - him - hir meaning
> actually they - them - their. And words which you probably don't know
> at all (at least not in such a normal sense) such as "anon" which
> means "forthwith", and you wouldn't say "befell that" but rather "it
> befell that" or "it so happened".

It's nice to see that occasionally grammatical rules that make sense
become more widely used.

>
> Other than those examples, to point out that prescriptivism changes...
> contractions are much more widely accepted today than perhaps a
> century ago.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

>
> You would probably have no problem with the sentence "A girl riding on
> a bus", but it is quite 'wrong' because it 'should' read "A girl
> riding on an omnibus". You probably have no problem with "Zoology is
> fun", but I do. It 'should' be (and I would write it as) "Zo?logy is
> fun" (dieresis on the second o because it is pronounced separately -
> it's not z+eulogy, it's zoo+ology). You would have no problem with "A
> trip to the zoo" but it 'should' infact be "A trip to the zo?logical
> garden". This isn't having to do with the dieresis so much as the
> usage of "zoo" rather than the more 'proper' "zo?logical garden" which
> nobody would expect today.

Since when did I express a problem with contractions and abbreviations?
They grease the wheels of communication without invalidating the more
lengthy and precise terms from which they're derived.  On the other
hand, I am a little disappointed that in cases where longer terms are
appropriate people have chosen to eschew accuracy without any particular
good reason.  Then, of course, other people have chosen to chronicle the
abbreviated terms as "official" parts of the language.  The word "zoo"
was, orginally, an abbreviation of "zoological [noun]" (modify spelling
as necessary to make it strictly accurate, using the correct character
set -- which I apparently don't have installed on this computer).  A
dictionary reference to "zoo" as a slang term is appropriate when zoo
enters common usage, and ultimately removing the "slang" reference might
be appropriate as well, but including (for instance) reference to
"imply" as a synonym of "infer" in the dictionary is absolutely NOT
appropriate.  Given a couple decades, however, it might end up being an
accepted synonym for a significant portion of the population because
dictionary editors have started making unironic reference to this
supposed synonymous meaning.

That's a brief explanation of how your attempted characterization of my
intent missed the mark, and how I actually feel on the matter.  I want
accuracy and precision, not stultifying adherence to tradition.

Essentially, as far as I'm aware, prescriptivism is about defining the
language according to its rules, and descriptivism is about defining the
language according to the way people who don't know, or ignore, the
rules use it.  As far as I'm aware, neither one is trying to say that
the language did or did not evolve from any given set of standards,
though they may say that it should or should not have evolved the way it
did.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Muke Tever

body:
Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> *This division is particularly easy for language independent stuff like
> translations wordtypes genders etc. Meanings and etymologies are more
> personal.

Even most of the etymology can be done automatically, I have been doing
like that on la: by making the etymologies lists, as you might have seen
at http://frath.net/stuff/translatio.gif  ('protogermanic' and 'proto-indo-
european' are not translated though... reconstructed languages don't have
ISO codes).

Certainly annotations to the etymologies will be "more personal", but that
should go equally for annotations to all other information -- assuming,
hopefully, that such are allowed.

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


body:
Dori wrote:
> Not having looked at the patch or the code, I think he was saying that
> a thumb would get generated even if the width of the image is the same
> as the would-be thumb.

Ahhhh, that would make sense. Yeah, I see now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Kate Turner

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:

> It would appear that we are breaking the law with respect to copyright
> at download.wikimedia.org.

this is not particular to downloads, but applies to any place that old
revisions are available, including the web interface.

> This is a result of our policy about the insertion of copyrighted
> material into articles:

> [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions]]
> "Pages where the most recent edit is a copyright violation, but the
> previous article was not, should not be deleted. They should be
> reverted. The violating text will remain in the page history for
> archival reasons unless the copyright holder asks the Wikimedia
> Foundation to remove it."

does this policy apply everywhere or only en.wp?

> As a result our database contains large quantities of violating
> material.

my understand of the relevant US law is that we are not required to
aggressively remove copyright violations until requested by the copyright
holder.

kate.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Not really, since the existing wiktionaries would continue as they have
>>all along.
>>
>>
>
>I am not agreeing or disagreeing or taking any position on this at all.
> Please consider my questions about this to be merely data gathering. :-)
>
>Why should we have such a formal break?  Why shouldn't we instead
>transition from one to the other in a seamless way?  I worry a lot about
>duplication of effort, etc.
>
>Are there objections from old-school wiktionarians to the ultimate
>wiktionary plans?  Is it possible that we could address these objections
>through code?
>
>I'm very sorry that I don't already know all of this, but I'm sure you
>can all get me up to speed quite quickly.
>
>
To a large extent I see the fundamental difference between Gerard and me
as rooted in different visions about the role and nature of
dictionaries.  I'll try not to misrepresent his point of view.

I see Gerard's vision as being based in the need for technical solutions
for machine translations.  In theory with his method one should be able
to look up a word in one's own language and immediately be able to find
a corresponding term in whatever other language one desires.  I at least
agree with him that such an approach would require far more
sophisticated software than what we now employ.  Much of what he
proposes appears to be very highly dependent on templates and technical
codification rather that plain language editing, and I'm afraid that
that would scare away many potential new contributors who don't feel
comfortable with the more technical approach.

For my part translation is a secondary function of a dictionary.
Documenting the history of a word, citing quotations that support uses
of the word, and commentary on the usages of a word are more interesting
and important.  I recently did a little of this to raise awareness of
the divergence of  [[gourmand]]  in English and French.  I find our
present software essentially adequate for the task.

Gerard has been talking about his Ultimate Wiktionary for a long time,
but so far I have not seen examples of what Gerard's Wiktionary will
look like, how it will work or how it will be editable.  Perhaps if he
presented more concrete examples attitudes could change.

I guess "old-school" is probably a good term.  I have very little
involvement on the technical side of things.  I do find it a chore to
insert a picture or a table, but I figure it out when I have to.  When
templates appear in an article that I am editing, I need to make extra
effort just to track where some of them come from or what they mean.  If
I, as a person who has been here for over three years, am having trouble
with this, it must be worse for a non-technical person who just wants to
indulge his love of words.

Ec


from_name: V. Ivanov

body:
2005/5/29, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> > The one thing that is not mentioned in the discussion is who would fund
> > this proposal.  Is there a rich Ossetian benefactor willing to pay for
> > this idea?  There are many other languages that could benefit from this
> > approach, but it should not be the responsibility of the general
> > community to pay for such things in other languages either.

> This is not a proposal, it already exist.
> It is currently funded by individuals, who may or may not be
> contributors. I just do not know.

It seemed to me, I've mentioned the benefactors in my previous
messages: there are *four individuals* both in Moscow and Vladikavkaz
who have already paid 1000 RUR (~20 articles) for the project and are
going to help it from time to time so that we will be able to pay at
least 100 quality articles a year.

Sure, if the idea of Anthere will be realized, we will be able to use
the money of foreign benefactors as well: also for popularizing the
encyclopedia at the universities. I believe, people would pay articles
in a smaller language more willingly, if the see the project in work
and having real results. But also without external help it runs
already, using the fact that the Ossetian speakers are rather
diversified by income: some live in poorer South, some in more
successful North.

Anyhow, I agree with Ray that Wikimedia Foundation should not fund
projucts like that -- it is not a smaller languages supporting
organization after all.

Sl. / Amikeco
--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
2005/5/29, Guaka <guaka at no-log.org>:
> Reading this thread... An idea that pops up right now... Communities
> could be provided with one or more computers, under the condition they
> regularly write new Wikipedia articles. An internet connection is
> probably too expensive at such places. This way people can be provided
> with lots of valuable information in languages some people can
> understand while at the same time working on information in their native
> language.
> Make computer usage free for people who contribute to Wikimedia projects
> (or localization, documentation, development of free software, free
> information projects), and people who don't contribute can choose to pay
> a small sum that pays the electricity, and possibly the internet
> connection...

Buying a computer and transferring it to Tskhinval may cost at least
100 USD. We cannot afford it now, as we have 1000 RUR (about 37 USD)
in our fund. Maybe we'd better run the project as it already runs now:
but nothing really prohibits us to dream of a couple of computers for
the editors in South Ossetia.

Sl. / Amikeco

--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] More on multilingualism and the press

body:
Since we've been debating the treatment Wikipedia receives in the press
and whether its multilingual aspect is sufficiently emphasized, I
thought I would share this link from the Jerusalem Post:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1117333099943
<http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1117333099943>

The story is about an author whose Wikipedia biography was apparently
falsified, and the information "verified" by somebody impersonating the
author on Wikipedia. The Post is written in English, and does not
identify the Wikipedia language involved (the incident, it seems, took
place on the Hebrew Wikipedia).

I'm not sure if that makes people feel better or worse about the media's
assumptions regarding Wikipedia - it can cut both ways. On one hand,
they're definitely not assuming that people think Wikipedia is only in
English; but on the other hand, they're writing in English and not
bothering to let people know that Wikipedia exists in other languages.

--Michael Snow


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>> Thinking about how to import data from wiktionary in the ultimate
>>> wiktionary may pose a few puzzles with respect to FDL compliance, but I
>>> don't see any significant problems.  The import script should keep
>>> track
>>> of who contributed to a chunk of data and take note of that fact.  The
>>> history may be a little more problematic, and I think we will want to
>>> get advice on exactly how to do it.
>>
>> Importing histories into Gerard's project will not remove them from
>> the existing Wiktionaries.  Simply putting a dated link to the source
>> Wiktionary should do it.  That would only become a problem if the
>> existing Wiktionary deletes the article or otherwise makes it
>> unworkable.  In the existing transwiki technique article histories
>> are moved with the term in question.  This gives a nice list of who
>> edited and when, but records of what changes these people made are
>> unavailable.  In some cases, particularly as regards very stubby
>> articles, it has proved more practical to discard the transwikied
>> material and its history completely, and start a whole new article.
>
>
> To what wiktionary would you attribute information and on what level
> ?? When you interwiki, you expect that old style wiktionaries will
> continue to exist.. I expect that several wiktionaries, if not all,
> will eventually be discontinued.

It would be attributed to the Wiktionary that supplied the information.
I don't know what you mean by "level".The rest of it is a question of
differing visions

> From my point of view there is nothing wrong with very stubby
> information. The only criterium is that information is correct.

I never expressed any opposition to stubby information.  I only said
that it was easier to rewrite some of those stubs.

>>> But changing the license to something else would require throwing away
>>> all existing work in wiktionary, which seems quite unwise to me.
>>
>> Not really, since the existing wiktionaries would continue as they
>> have all along.
>>
>> Ec
>
>
> Hoi,
> When a Wiktionary has its data imported into Ultimate Wiktionary and
> when its users have migrated to the Ultimate Wiktionary as well, why
> should they continue as they did before. It does not makes sense to
> suggest that they would. I will not work on any Wiktionay if the work
> of UW proves to be more efficient. Given the amount of work that I did
> on the nl.wiktionary it can not continue as it did before.

The amount of work that you did?  So is this a personal thing?  There's
a lot more to life than efficiency.

> The idea that Wiktionary is similar to Wikipedia is also something
> that can be disputed. It is more of a lemma than an article.
> Wiktionary is in many respects like a list, the individual words
> cannot be copyrighted. The individual translations cannot be
> copyrighted. This is unlike Wikipedia. So if anything stubby lemmas in
> Wiktionary are not a problem. There is also the consideration that the
> content can come from many sources. It is therefore very difficult to
> state in the Ultimate Wiktionary who contributed to a word because it
> can originate from many sources. When you add for instance that a noun
> has a particular gender, you cannot claim copyright because that fact
> is in the public domain.

Any proposition can be disputed.  One way to look at a dictionary is as
an encyclopedia of and about words.  Lemma?  There is certainly more to
a Wiktionary article than a list of headings or an intermediate
theorem.  To say that Wiktionary is nothing more than a list is to
completely undervalue the work that has gone into it.  Of course
individual words cannot be copyright, and the individual translations of
words cannot be copyright, but the way that definitions are expressed
can be, and so can detailed explanations about how two words differ, or
how to distinguish between false friends.  Cointent can indeed come from
many sources, and all of those sources do need to be recognized.  Making
note of the gender is a trivial exercise.  Documenting who made that
alteration is not a matter of copyright, but of recognizing that some
person made the effort to put it there.  If people make up sentences to
illustrate a word those are copyright.

> The GNU-FDL is not intended for data like wiktionary, this license was
> intended for manuals and it is not really appropriate for data like
> dictionaries. There are public domain dictionaries that will give you
> 90% of what you need to have in a modern dictionary.

And the other 10%?  I accept that there are probably better licences for
us.  Being FDL does not override public domain when it's applicable.

> When changing the license for Ultimate Wiktionary is a given, there
> are several ways of dealing with complaints from people who have
> contributed to a wiktionary.
> *You can import the same/similar data from several sources. So when a
> wiktionary editor complains he is removed as an editor and an other
> resource is attributed as its source.
> *This division is particularly easy for language independent stuff
> like translations wordtypes genders etc. Meanings and etymologies are
> more personal.

So you would remove all the efforts of people who don't agree with your
system.  That's not nice at all.

> Given that it is only contributors can complain and given that
> changing the license will be done to make the UW more usefull, I doubt
> there will be many people that will complain. I also think that it
> will not be apreciated by the community when people complain as the
> reason why the license would be changed is to make it easier to
> fulfill the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation.

To claiim that you have that you have the key to fulfilling the goals of
the Wikimedia Foundation seems a little inflated.  Openness is better
served by having a software that minimizes the difficulties for editors.

Ec


body:
On 5/29/05, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not having looked at the patch or the code, I think he was saying that
> a thumb would get generated even if the width of the image is the same
> as the would-be thumb.

Yes, that's what I meant.  Sorry to be unclear.

I'll list it on Bugzilla tomorrow.  The patch is simply:

--- includes/Image.php  28 May 2005 06:57:59 -0000      1.96
+++ includes/Image.php  30 May 2005 02:52:42 -0000
@@ -907,7 +907,7 @@
                        return null;
                }

-               if( $width > $this->width && !$this->mustRender() ) {
+               if( $width >= $this->width && !$this->mustRender() ) {
                        # Don't make an image bigger than the source
                        return new ThumbnailImage(
$this->getViewURL(), $this->getWidth(), $this->getHeight() );
                }

(silly binary attachments!)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Note lack of privacy for anon ratings (was Article
	validation: allow IP ratings for the raw data phase)

body:
Till Westermayer (till at tillwe.de) [050529 21:37]:

> catching up after holidays, I'm not sure if anybody mentioned it, but at
> least theoretically it would be possible to make statistical
> comparisions between anonymous ratings and logged-in ratings (if anon/
> logged in is stored), so after a while we could show if there a
> statictically significant differences between both ratings.

Yep. Having gathering the data and processing the data as two completely
separate things will be a good way to go forward, because we can build
tools on top to analyse the data any way we happen to feel like.

> And on a related topic: I think ratings (who rates what how) should be
> visible, meaning raters are conscious about their decisions and the
> consequences.

Yes. Though it'll need to be noted on the ratings page - anon users who
rate things on other sites wouldn't normally expect the source of a rating
to be world-visible. Something like:

"Note: All ratings are readable, just like article edits, with the
person and time. Like edits, they are part of the process of improving
Wikipedia and so responsibility is attached to them. See the privacy policy."

This will discourage some anon raters, but if we don't then many people
will get a nasty surprise and be quite upset.

That second sentence, giving the rationale, needs work.

- d.