body:
Jason Richey wrote:

>I'll do it, just tell me what usernames I am adding...
>
>Jason
>
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004653.html

 >I'd like to approve Erik, Magnus, and Tarquin for server access, if
that is something they'd like to do, and if that's something that we
think would be useful.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gray's Anatomy

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> No different from a 1911EB lift I would say.  The "eternal verities" are
> still good,
> such as the shape of a bone, but beware of conclusions about structures'
> purposes
> and functioning, often new research data about those.

As this is not my field of expertise, maybe a disclaimer at the top
should help, like

''This article is based on [[Gray's Anatomy]]. Some information might be
outdated.''

That would also help to locate all these articles, by choosing "What
links here" on [[Gray's Anatomy]].

I'll add some more during the next few days. Help is always appreciated :-)

Magnus


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA

body:
There was some talk a while back about deciding on a standard method of
indicating pronunciations on Wikipedia. Of course some people said
pronunciations belong on Wiktionary, but that's beside the point: there
are many articles where a discussion of the pronunciation of certain
words is necessary, and there ought to be a standard way of notating that.

In fact, there is. The International Phonetic Alphabet is ideally suited
to marking pronunciations of words, and is flexible enough to describe
broad transcriptions that represent how a word is pronounced in multiple
dialects to minute phonetic details. This wisdom, of course, has been
lost on the makers of most American dictionaries, who each insist upon
using their own ad-hoc pronunciation scheme (one of my personal pet
peeves). The _Cambridge Dictionary of American English_ is a notable, if
perhaps not well-known, exception. The foremost dictionary of (mostly)
British English, the _Oxford English Dictionary_ uses IPA, as does the
major Australian English dictionary,  _The Macquarie Dictionary_.

But I digress. There are several pages on the Wikipedia that deal
specifically with pronunciations, for example [[List of words of
disputed pronunciation]]. And the way that the pronunciations are listed
on that page is the worst possible mix of ad-hoc pronunciation schemes.
In fact, some of the ad-hac pronunciations given I couldn't even figure
what they meant. (does AHSK rhyme with American _task_ or _mosque_?).
Clearly some kind of standard scheme is needed.

I spent several hours today revamping that page, using IPA
transcriptions and doing some serious research about which
pronunciations are listed in what dictionaries. I put that page on
[[List of words of disputed pronunciation/IPA]]. However, I later
discovered to my tremendous dismay that the IPA letters simply do not
display in IE. The scheme for encoding IPA in ASCII, called SAMPA, is
capable of encoding anything in IPA, but it is not particularly readable
(although some might argue the same about IPA). It was designed to be
machine-readable, and it doesn't really seem like an adequate solution.
It uses lots of non-alphabetic characters to represent sounds (the 'a'
in _cat_ is '{' in SAMPA), and as a result SAMPA-ized pronunciations are
frankly ugly.

Anyhow, it seems that just using the HTML entities for the Unicode IPA
extensions is not an acceptable solution because it leaves IE users with
lovely but useless rectangles where there ought to be IPA characters.
There is a LaTeX extension called TIPA that allows the complete set of
IPA characters and diacritics. If this were installed into the TeX math
extensions, then a similar syntax could be used to generate images of
the IPA from LaTeX input.
I see the following possible solutions (in the order that I think is good):

1.) Auto-detect the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that
support it and TIPA LaTeX images to those that don't. (Pros: attractive
display of IPA for all users. Cons: lots of  programming)

2.) Just send TIPA LaTeX images (Pros: attractive display of IPA. Cons:
Uses images in text when for some users embedded IPA Unicode would look
better)

3.) Store the IPA in a special format or in a special tag, auto-detect
the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that support it and SAMPA
to the rest. (Pros: doesn't require inserting images or using TeX. Cons:
SAMPA is ugly and hard to read)

4.) Render IPA into GIFs or PNGs and just insert them as images. (Pros:
compatible with everything. Cons: time-consuming, and difficult to change)

5.) Devise a Wikipedia-specific pronunciation scheme and just use that
(blech!) (Pros: no coding required. Cons: YAAHPS (Yet Another Ad Hoc
Pronunciation Scheme))

6.) Do nothing and continue to allow people to use ad-hoc pronunciation
schemes (BLECH!!) (Pros: no action required. Cons: maintains status quo
harms as described above)

Of course, no. 1 requires doing some coding and testing for what may end
up being a feature used on just a few pages. On the other hand, such
code could possibly be extremely useful for the Wiktionary. In the
meantime, I'm going to leave [[List of words of disputed
pronunciation/IPA]] as it is, and wait for suggestions.

Now of course there will be opponents of the IPA, because it's too
technical or whatever reason. To those people I say the IPA for the
purposes of representing English is really no more complicated than the
pronunciation schemes used in American dictionaries, like the
_Merriam-Webster Dictionary_, and the _Cambridge Dictionary of American
English_, which is designed for learners of English, seems to do just
fine with it.

- David [[User:Nohat]]

*
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_of_disputed_pronunciation/IPA>*


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
Erik,

I am a bit disturbed

You started the new logo contest. You made the pages,
you set the rules. Some people are following all the
cheating that is occurring along, and you have no
reaction whatsoever. A certain degree of cheating is
no big deal, but to my opinion, there are limits. I
think as the organizer of the contest, you could at
least react to some of the worse irregularities. Right
now, anyone can vote under an ip, anyone can vote
without anyone knowing them, anyone can replace the
logo of someone else by his, in particular in the top
10. And perhaps a logo which was in the top 10 before
being replaced by another won't be in the top 10
anymore, just because someone had fun replacing that
top 10 logo.

And there are no reactions whatsoever.

The logo issue in itself is not important. But again,
this case is an experiment. It is the experiment of
how of whole organization could work together with a
common decision process. With respect and honesty
toward those who created the artwork, and respect and
honesty toward those who came to vote, and have the
belief we are all sharing something.

User:Kat left a couple of days ago, because too
disgusted by the decision process on the en wiki,
among other things. Right now, at wikipedia-wide
level, community does not scale either. I think any of
the international votes are important because they are
big scale experiment of how a "big" community could
take decisions together.

If we are so careless with these kind of decisions, I
see not why we would be better with more important
decisions. What is occuring is reflecting a broken
organisation.

Since no one reacted except Olie himself, I will be
bold. Whatever the outcome of the logo contest, if
logo 124 is not in the top 10, there will be 11 logos
in the top 10.

And I also think the next international vote will need
to be much better organised.

__________________________________
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from_name: Olie ze kat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Logo issue

body:
Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>, l'ami(e) des kats,
avait papatt? dans sa niouze :

| Olie just reported someone replaced yesterday logo 124
| per logo 12.
|
| This is a problem perhaps as it resulted from too many
| votes for 12, and perhaps loss of votes for 124
|
| --------
|
| Three users have voted for logo 12 listed at 124
|
| I suggest they confirm their vote for the logo 12.
| They have been removed from logo 124 (the original was
| replaced)
|
| [[User:H?mant|H?mant]],
| [[User:Jeanmichel|JeanMichel]],
| [[User:Pit|pit]]
|
| Moreover, the following users have not seen logo 124,
| and should be told to reconsider their vote perhaps
|
| Adam Bishop
| Jtvisona
| ELF
| Gandalf
| Etc...

I think it will be too hard to contact all...because we dont know for all their
basic Wikipedia Where we will be sure to contact.

|
| Following options.
|
| Either 124 have enough vote to be in the top 10, and
| we forget about it
|
| Or not
|
| * We have 12 hours to find all these people above and
| make them come back

Too few to repair what the logo 124 lost !

|
| * we tell User:Abi that never mind his logo
|
| * We admit it per default, making 11 top 11

Yes... logo 124 was always in top 10 ... If tomorrow it will not in top 10, I
suggest that we add it on final voting.

|
| So ?
|
| (ah; voting security :-))
|

I'm too surprised that it could be a vandalism... We must survey more if its not
a deceit :o(

NB: H?mant has confirmed that he wanted to vote for logo 12...Somebody (deutsch)
can explain to Pit on his personal page
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Pit that he must confirm his vote for logo
12 (simply move his name with another votes of logo 12)...Thank :op
--
Olie ze kat ---------  http://www.olid.fr.st


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Logo issue

body:
Adam Bishop <grenfell_ at hotmail.com>, l'ami(e) des
kats, avait papatt? dans sa niouze :

| I didn't vote for either 12 or 124, so that's one less person on your
| list
| :)
|
| Adam
|

You didn't understood... Anthere said that you didn't see the logo 124 while you
gone to vote because vandalism hidden it...

Please, come back to see it, perhaps you will want to vote for him ;o)

--
Olie ze kat ---------  http://www.olid.fr.st


from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
I dont think its all that much of a mess -- so much to
blame Erik.  It is a mess, though and there are some
lessons to be sifted from all of this -- but I think
for the most part -- as a preliminary round sort of
thing, I think its gone fairly well. Only one will win
out, and it looks like the puzzle concept is by far
the strongest, all around.  It looked like a winner
from the beginning, and it still looks that way
(though its way too damn busy and cluttered as it is).

All in all, the next time a big vote comes around,
there needs to be *radiobutton and cgi-counted votes -
*excluding repeat IPs *standard time deadlines
--*votes on the deadlines - not just a day or twos
discussion.

All is well that doesnt fall on your head at
4km/second.
-S-

--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Erik,
>
> I am a bit disturbed
>
> You started the new logo contest. You made the
> pages,
> you set the rules. Some people are following all the
> cheating that is occurring along, and you have no
> reaction whatsoever. A certain degree of cheating is
> no big deal, but to my opinion, there are limits. I
> think as the organizer of the contest, you could at
> least react to some of the worse irregularities.
> Right
> now, anyone can vote under an ip, anyone can vote
> without anyone knowing them, anyone can replace the
> logo of someone else by his, in particular in the
> top
> 10. And perhaps a logo which was in the top 10
> before
> being replaced by another won't be in the top 10
> anymore, just because someone had fun replacing that
> top 10 logo.
>
> And there are no reactions whatsoever.
>
> The logo issue in itself is not important. But
> again,
> this case is an experiment. It is the experiment of
> how of whole organization could work together with a
> common decision process. With respect and honesty
> toward those who created the artwork, and respect
> and
> honesty toward those who came to vote, and have the
> belief we are all sharing something.
>
> User:Kat left a couple of days ago, because too
> disgusted by the decision process on the en wiki,
> among other things. Right now, at wikipedia-wide
> level, community does not scale either. I think any
> of
> the international votes are important because they
> are
> big scale experiment of how a "big" community could
> take decisions together.
>
> If we are so careless with these kind of decisions,
> I
> see not why we would be better with more important
> decisions. What is occuring is reflecting a broken
> organisation.
>
> Since no one reacted except Olie himself, I will be
> bold. Whatever the outcome of the logo contest, if
> logo 124 is not in the top 10, there will be 11
> logos
> in the top 10.
>
> And I also think the next international vote will
> need
> to be much better organised.
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA

body:
I've done some testing now at home on my Mac, and neither Mac Phoenix
nor Mac Internet Explorer correctly display the Unicode IPA extensions.
Safari displays most of them, but is missing some critical symbols, like
the 'er' sound in 'her'.

It seems that a solution that works entirely correctly for the majority
of browser users is really the only acceptable solution. Since most
browser users use IE, just using Unicode IPA isn't really going to cut.

Since we cannot rely on browsers to correctly render IPA, we'll have to
render ourself, at the server-side. Since I've done my testing, I really
think option 1 from my first message is the best:

1.) Auto-detect the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that
support it and TIPA LaTeX images to those that don't. (Pros: attractive
display of IPA for all users. Cons: lots of programming)

This way, as certain browser/OS combinations come to be known to be
reliably reproducing IPA, we can let them get the Unicode IPA, and
everyone else gets LaTeX'ed IPA or if necessary, SAMPA.

I guess I should put my code where my mouth is and learn more about how
the math TeX extensions work with the Wikipedia back end and make it go
myself. In my copious free time.

On a mostly unrelated-note, perhaps explaining my obsession with the
topic, I work for a company that makes TTS (Speech Synthesis) software.
I work with phonetic representations of words all day long. Something
that might be cool for some pages on Wikipedia and definitely for all of
Wiktionary would be to have TTS-generated samples of how things are
pronounced. And before you complain about how robotic and wobbly TTS
sounds, you should listen to some of the most modern voices out there.
They sound very natural. Check out [[Speech synthesis]] for a list of
good voices with free web demos. We could probably negotiate a deal with
one of the companies wherein we include their TTS samples in the
Wikipedia in exchange for clearly marking where the TTS samples came
from. Since it costs virtually nothing to generate the samples, it would
be essentially free advertising for the company. And for all the people
who see pronunciation schemes as indecipherable Greek, a good sound
sample clarifies any phonetic confusion, and doesn't force poor
Wikipedia users to listen to crappy home recordings of our geeky voices.

Cheers! - David [[User:Nohat]]

Steve Vertigum wrote:
> This is probably the most well thought out addressing
> of this issue ever done on wp. I must say this is
> impressive and inline with the consensus of
>
> No unicode IPA on IE?? Hmm. Well, considering the
> expensive workarounds you listed -- as necessary to
> accomodate IE users -- for a fix that entirely in
> Microsoft's domain, I would lean toward calling the
> IPA Unicode as "standard" anyway, and let the ?? or
> Xboxes be the problem of the IE end user. This is
> already the case for any character sets that arent
> loaded up anyway -- (I have yet to load a Hindi
> character set for example. ;)  Soon afterward someone
> will write a hack to accomodate IE no doubt, but
> theres no reason not to push the Unicode IPA as the
> standard right now.
>
> But that still doesnt deal with the problem of easy
> input via a Roman character set.  A little conversion
> hack from the pseudovalues (/s/) to their IPA
> equvalents should be a first priority , and I would do
> it myself if I had the time, or could program a little
> better (late bloomer ok..)
>
> As always with apologies to the hackers,
> -S-
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Update to gfdl copyright notice needed

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tomos at Wikipedia" <wiki_tomos at hotmail.com>

> Regarding Toby's point that DMCA protects the project - I am not very sure
> about the implication of that to admins living elsewhere. There is a
> japanese law defining legal responsibilities of BBS admins, etc. The law
> seems to hold admins responsible if they know that illegal contents
> (defamation, obscenity, copyright violation, etc.) are there, and they do
> not delete illegal contents in a timely manner. And the fact that admins
are
> just volunteers do not seem to free from liability - there are cases where
> volunteer BBS admins are found to be guilty in the court (that was a
> defamation case).
I you certain that you would be considered an "administrator" under the
Japanese law; the law here that protects Internet Service Providers (but
not Internet Content Providers) 42 USC 230(c)(1) has recently been defined
by the Federal appellate court that covers the Wikipedia server.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0255658p.pdf
this case has become known as the Star Trek actress case.
Granted this is not a BBS case, but is a wiki more like a BBS site or more
like a dating site, I would vote for the dating site, BBS administrators
really
do review content before it is posted. Anyway, what is the Japanese
definition
of removing it in a timely manner? Who gives notice under Japanese law?
If you get a letter and remove it right away, that should be all right. That
is what all major service providers in the US do. Is Japan really different
in this regard?

> The location of server is also said to be irrelevant at least in certain
> cases that I looked at, when the contents are there mainly for japanese
> users.

Once again; the point is, who is responsible; you and I are volunteers.
Certainly
there is a sense of community here, that is one of the things that is
appealing
about Wikipedia, but WE are not Wikipedia. It is really a unique and
amorphous
concept. The service provider is Boomis, maybe they would have to be sued,
not you or I, no matter what our status (and now Wikimedia now might also
protect
Boomis and Jimbo too). It is true that you may get sued for what you do on
Wikipedia, but you would almost be required to make Boomis and Wikimedia
parties to your lawsuit and argue that as a community we are trying to
comply
with any laws that apply to us. (actually I have never saw a community
that was so vigilant and concerned about these issues as Wikipedia).

I can imagine a situation in which someone may have posted inflamatory
material
on a BBS and then refused to take it off citing the US First Amendment here,
but if it is derogatory and it is removed that would just prevent the victim
from
suing the BBS and its volunteers.

Maybe this is a reason that there should be an affirmation with a click box
like
the image upload page that not only states that the text being submitted is
not
in violation of copyright law but it is also not defamatory against any
person nor
a violation of that person's privacy rights in the country of origin and
that the person submitting the material indemnifies Wikipedia against any
defamation damages, especially internationally if the poster is from a
foreign
country.

> Now, my knowledge about these laws and issues of international
jurisdiction
> are so limited that I need more advice than stating my opinion here, but
if
> I have to choose now, I would not bet on the possibility that DMCA
protects
> all admins at Japanese wikipedia regarding copyright violations.

You probably could not get any lawyer to give you an opinion in this regard,
either in US law or Japanese law these are new issues and the law is in a
state
of evolution; even appelate decisions get modified or overturned.

I must state that while IAAL in the US, I really do not know much about
the developments in Japanese internet copyright and privacy law issues. All
I
can say is that my knowledge of privacy law (that has more to do with
defamation
and the like) is that civil law countries like Japan have much more
stringent rules
on this matter. If you can you point me to a copy of the Japanese Civil Code
that has
been translated into English I''ll write something general on [[publicity
rights]] about
the status of publicity and privacy rights in Japanese law; and you are
right, it has
nothiing to do with the location of the server. The delictual responsibility
under
the law of obligations, like the law of torts, applies where the defamation
occurs,
not where it is orignally published (thus the defamation may not happen in
the US,
only in Japan, there is still defamation in Japan evn if it is on a server
here in the
US, this is different than copyright law, which is related to the law of the
place
of publication).

The one thing I would add is that it is not you or I who post the infringing
material.
That is the person who is the cause of the defamation, not Wikipedia. As
Wikipedia
is an wiki that is open to anyone, anyone can post defamatory materials, we
cannot
control that. We can take _reasonable_ steps to remove it, and that is a
good thing, but
there is no guarantee that there will not be defamatory materials on
Wikipedia (we
may not even know that something is defamatory if it is between private
persons).
Wikipedia would have to point the finger at the poster, must as the judge
did in
the above Star Trek actress case (a good argument against anonymous posting,
or keeping an eye on anyone posting anonymously) to make the GFDL actually
mean something to third parties.

Maybe we really need a legal discussion list; this is getting too technical
for
the techies maybe. It might also focus issues and the discussion.

Alex756


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo

body:
I dont think its all that much of a mess -- so much to
blame Erik.  It is a mess, though and there are some
lessons to be sifted from all of this -- but I think
for the most part -- as a preliminary round sort of
thing, I think its gone fairly well. Only one will win
out, and it looks like the puzzle concept is by far
the strongest, all around.  It looked like a winner
from the beginning, and it still looks that way
(though its way too damn busy and cluttered as it is).

:I do not blame Erik for the mess; He is not
responsible of it. I am just unhappy that no one cares
the dies are loaded.

:and the fact one is likely to be the winner (which
suits me just fine) is no reason to accept the mess.

All in all, the next time a big vote comes around,
there needs to be
*radiobutton and cgi-counted votes -
*excluding repeat IPs
*standard time deadlines
*votes on the deadlines - not just a day or twos
discussion.

:protection of the propositions

All is well that doesnt fall on your head at
4km/second.
-S-

:of course Steve :-)

:I could also just forget those trying to fix the
mess, and let them explain the problem in their own
english themselves.

:Never mind. I will try to replace myself 14 months in
the past, when the french logo was changed and became
different from the general logo, and I will try to
focus on what having a common logo again means.

:-)

__________________________________
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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 20:22, David Friedland wrote:
> I've done some testing now at home on my Mac, and neither Mac Phoenix
> nor Mac Internet Explorer correctly display the Unicode IPA extensions.
> Safari displays most of them, but is missing some critical symbols, like
> the 'er' sound in 'her'.

Is there a problem with rendering those characters, or is it just that
standard system fonts don't include them? If the latter, are there free
fonts we could recommend to people?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo

body:
Hello all

I have responded privately to Erik on all his very
kind comments.

I will just copy here one very technical part of it,
to explain why *I* think there is a problem.

Second, I note that Erik has decided to blame all on
me. That won't do it Erik.

Many months ago, a french person told me an ambassador
should not voice any personal position on the ML, for
fear of making appear the personal position as hir
wikipedia position. Today, Erik decides to blame the
ambassador for reporting criticism and problems
reported by other users.

Hence, I will from now on separate these two
identities and make better use of basic google
translations.

Anthere

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

When I say you have no reaction, I don't talk about
the anon votes. I saw your comments. I talk about the
cheating. I translate Olie report that people have
been cheating. I ask what we should do to compensate
the cheat. I suggest the different options I can
imagine. And I get no response from you. Since you are
the one who are gonna make the counts, I think you
could have answered the propositions I made to fix
things the best we could. To be fair to the artist. If
you do not answer, I consider that my propositions are
all fine by you, so I tell which one I will do. Which
is "adding the logo upon which was practiced the
vandalism to the list of final logos if it is not in
the final list you set".

Perhaps is there a cultural issue there ? On the en
wiki, I know people always suggest to be bold. On the
french wiki, most people insist it is better to
explain the changes we plan to do before hand. I
follow the french practice, and tell you what I will
do. Letting the opportunity for other propositions or
comments. No comments = all agree. Okay ?

Say there are some presidential elections, with 15
candidates, among which Chirac, LePen and Jospin. 100
people are voting.

The vote session last 7 hours.

If all goes fine, let's say Chirac makes 60, LePen
makes 16 and Jospin 15 .
At the end of the vote, Chirac and Lepen are left for
second turn, and Jospin goes crying in his mother's
arms.

Now, let's say that during 1 hour, the voting papers
for Lepen are replaced by those of Jospin.
Voters see there are two papers for Jospin perhaps,
they vote taking the wrong paper, but it does not
matter, the officials count the papers and Jospin is
still 15.

Now, there are quite a bunch of people who came during
that unfortunate hour, and they were not aware LePen
was a candidate. So, they use their votes
differently...perhaps, they vote for Noel Mam?re
instead of LePen! So, in the end, LePen votes are not
16, there are only 14.

Final results : Chirac 60, LePen 14 and Jospin 15.
Who goes crying in his mother's arms ?

Right.

I did not count, but about 20 people came to vote at a
moment 124 bulletin was not there. They did not see
the logo. Hence they could not vote for it.
So, I just say, if this logo is number 11th this
evening, it might be very unfair, for maybe 20 people
would have voted for it. Or perhaps none of them. We
just don't know.

Here is why I say, in any cases, this logo should be
there. If it is 11th, we should have 11th logos for
the final vote.

Or we need to contact ALL the individual voters who
came around when this logo was not available. Which
will be a real pain.

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] software for making maps - newer version

body:
This is newer version of software used to make maps like those on:
    http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_first_useful_map
    http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map

Making usable maps with it is almost possible.
The biggest things missing are:
* better city subsystem
* some data tweaking to connect rivers with gaps

Having done these, it should be possible to (manually) create
maps that can replace most CIA maps for most languages.

For some maps cylindrical projection is not suitable,
so other projections will have to be implemented.
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Right
> now, anyone can vote under an ip, anyone can vote
> without anyone knowing them, anyone can replace the
> logo of someone else by his, in particular in the top
> 10. And perhaps a logo which was in the top 10 before
> being replaced by another won't be in the top 10
> anymore, just because someone had fun replacing that
> top 10 logo.

Has this actually happened?  Has someone removed a logo from the top
10 and replaced it with another?  That's pure and simple vandalism of
the worst sort.

As for voting under ips or votes from people "we" don't all know, how
significant are the numbers?  Is there really any reason to think that
anyone is stuffing the ballot box?

That would be very unwiki behavior.

> And I also think the next international vote will need
> to be much better organised.

I would love to see some specific recommendations, because I think
this has been run in an excellent fashion.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] A little more refactoring: death to globals!

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Wow! 1/3 off. Way to go Brion!
>
> But if we don't need all that code, why did we write it in the first
> place? ;-)

Wikipedians love to type.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

in_reply_to:
<8tHG6yyxpVB@erik_moeller>;
	from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 09:52:00AM +0200

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Through months of lobbying I and others have managed
> to erode that opposition somewhat

I think that 'lobbying' unnecessarily disparages what you've done.
"Calm and reasoned argument, discussion, and explanation" is more
accurate.

I, for one, can still be counted among the skeptical with respect to
voting, but I've been persuaded by Erik and others that it can
properly play a much bigger role than I had previously imagined.

One of the advantges of a well-done vote is that it can become a focal
point for consensus.  On the other hand, one of the disadvantages of a
poorly-done vote is that it can become a focal point for "party
behavior" or rivalries.

> You can vote on virtually every aspect of the contest -- logo format,
> number of pixels, number of colors, Wikipedia text or not, etc. In the
> wiki world we try to avoid voting and seek consensus instead. Someone
> proposes a specific guideline and if people do not agree with it they
> express their dissent. This was what happened here. Some people felt the
> deadline was too short, some people felt it was too long, in the end we
> voted and there was a majority for extending it. I see no point in wasting
> time on *voting* on the *voting* deadlines as well.

I don't know, maybe we should vote on whether we should have votes to
determine voting deadlines?  ha ha.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vote on voting method for final round

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Condorcet hasn't caused any trouble for Debian, and it assured fair
> elections without any tactical voting and less prefered outcomes being
> selected due to peculiarities of voting process.

I, too, am a fan of Condorcet, despite the complexity.  HOWEVER, for
the PRESENT election, I would support any sensible and easy method,
because it's just a logo, and any of the top competitors are going to
be excellent.

Condorcet is sufficiently complex to make voting by hand and
tabulating by hand really difficult.  But I would support a simple
implementation of Condorcet in the software, as I think that Condorcet
really is superior to other methods precisely in helping to find a
_consensus_, i.e. the avoidance of divisive tactical voting.

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo - I will be bold

body:
Anthere-
> You started the new logo contest. You made the pages,
> you set the rules. Some people are following all the
> cheating that is occurring along, and you have no
> reaction whatsoever.

I have responded several times on [[Talk:International logo vote]]
concerning specifically the matter of anonymous voting. My current
suggestion is: Let's keep an eye on what's going on, and let's set a clear
policy for the final vote that only people with existing user pages on
Meta can vote (I'm not sure if we want to make it necessary to be logged
in, because that's harder to control). With the amount of voting going on
right now, it is neither practical nor useful to follow up on every edit,
and the overall picture has not changed significantly since the vote has
started.

The image swapping is of course annoying, but let's not assume
maliciousness without good reason. Our software overwrites images without
prompting, and in spite of my explicit warning not to use obvious
filenames, several contestants have done so. The recent swapping seems to
have been an act of deliberate vandalism, and it was reverted before I
could react; the vote was adjusted accordingly. I myself have reverted two
image uploads. What more do you want?

> anyone can vote
> without anyone knowing them

Well, what do you propose as an alternative? People vote from all
Wikipedias, including the very small ones, so it's very hard to track down
individuals. I think the solution to require at least a redirect to an
existing user page is a good one.

> anyone can replace the
> logo of someone else by his,

And anyone can replace the text of the logo pages and the votes
themselves, imagine that! ;-) That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the
whole image uploading/deleting/reverting process is currently ugly as hell
and in desperate need of recoding. I shall await your PHP patches.

> And perhaps a logo which was in the top 10 before
> being replaced by another won't be in the top 10
> anymore, just because someone had fun replacing that
> top 10 logo.

The regularly updated top 20 page which someone started is of no relevance
whatsoever. I will do the real final count later today (today is the
voting deadline for the first round) and may throw out some votes as
irrelevant.

> The logo issue in itself is not important. But again,
> this case is an experiment. It is the experiment of
> how of whole organization could work together with a
> common decision process. With respect and honesty
> toward those who created the artwork, and respect and
> honesty toward those who came to vote, and have the
> belief we are all sharing something.

Sure. I think it's working fine. We have over 130 logos, many of them
excellent, and a very very interested and active Wikipedia community that
is currently expressing its opinion on their quality. It works exactly as
expected and the level of vandalism or cheating I have noticed is very
low.

> User:Kat left a couple of days ago,

People leave all the time and whenever they do, they become the fodder for
other people's arguments. Frankly, I'm getting tired of this. Please don't
speak for others.

> Right now, at wikipedia-wide
> level, community does not scale either.

Yeah, we've only managed to create 150,000 articles on en:. We'll never
grow past 300,000 ;-)

> I think any of
> the international votes are important because they are
> big scale experiment of how a "big" community could
> take decisions together.

Using wiki for voting is a bit like using a trout as a hammer; it's very
messy and you end up smelling like fish. Well, not exactly, but it is
certainly not the best way to organize a large vote. But until we have
voting support in our software, it's the best we can do and necessarily
limited. These limitations become visible here, but I see no reason to
assume that they have a significant impact on the outcome. Except for the
fish smell.

> Since no one reacted except Olie himself, I will be
> bold. Whatever the outcome of the logo contest, if
> logo 124 is not in the top 10, there will be 11 logos
> in the top 10.

The votes that were added after the logo was changed were moved and the
individual users contacted. What's your problem?

> And I also think the next international vote will need
> to be much better organised.

If there will be another international vote, I'll be sure to recommend you
as an organizer.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiTable implementation

body:
Magnus wrote:
>This early version has no error checking (matching
><table>s etc.), but it already handles HTML tags
>(if necessary), CSS definitions, and nested tables.

Nice! You should work with Erik though on syntax since he is working on a
template system.

-- mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo - I will be bold

body:
Erik wrote:
>Well, what do you propose as an alternative?
>People vote from all Wikipedias, including the
>very small ones, so it's very hard to track down
>individuals. I think the solution to require at least
>a redirect to an existing user page is a good one.

IMO in order to have your vote counted you must declare on your user page
which Wikipedia you are from an provide a link to your Wikipedia user page.

-- mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
Steve-
> It is a mess, though

In which respect? I agree that voting using the wiki is always somewhat
ugly. When I first proposed adding voting support to the software I was
met with wide disapproval for suggesting that voting should be used at all
for decision making. Through months of lobbying I and others have managed
to erode that opposition somewhat so I hope that eventually voting boxes
will just be another tag in the wiki syntax.

> All in all, the next time a big vote comes around,
> there needs to be
> *radiobutton and cgi-counted votes -

You are very welcome to submit changes to the MediaWiki software to
support voting, an external CGI-based solution would be an ugly hack with
many of the same problems as the current wiki-based voting.

> *excluding repeat IPs

Sure, if you do the sifting of thousands of votes with no software
support.

> *standard time deadlines

We have them (except for the submission deadline, but we accepted all
logos that were still submitted on the same day).

> *votes on the deadlines - not just a day or twos
> discussion.

You can vote on virtually every aspect of the contest -- logo format,
number of pixels, number of colors, Wikipedia text or not, etc. In the
wiki world we try to avoid voting and seek consensus instead. Someone
proposes a specific guideline and if people do not agree with it they
express their dissent. This was what happened here. Some people felt the
deadline was too short, some people felt it was too long, in the end we
voted and there was a majority for extending it. I see no point in wasting
time on *voting* on the *voting* deadlines as well. And no matter what
deadline you set, you can be sure that Anthere will complain about it.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Alex R. wrote:
>Maybe this is a reason that there should be an
>affirmation with a click box like the image upload
>page that not only states that the text being
>submitted is not in violation of copyright law but it is
>also not defamatory against any person nor a
>violation of that person's privacy rights in the
>country of origin and that the person submitting
>the material indemnifies Wikipedia against any
>defamation damages, especially internationally if
>the poster is from a foreign country.

How about

"Please note that all contributions to {project name} are considered to be
released under the [[GNU Free Documentation License]] (see [[{project
name}:Copyrights]] for details). By clicking save you agree that the text you
submit is not a copyright violation or is otherwise illegal to submit. You
also agree to our [[{project name}:terms and conditions]] and indemnify
[[{project name}]] and the [[Wikimedia Foundation]] from any damages that may
result from your submission."

[[{project name}:terms and conditions]] would be a policy page that has a
summary of only the most important policies of that project.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Updated LanguageDe.php for German Wikipedia

body:
On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 07:22, Christian Dietl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> two days ago i submitted on Sourceforge an updated LanguageDe.php for the
> German Wikipedia [1]. Unfortunately the file wasn't updated yet. Am I
> too impatient

Yes. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] CologneBlue stylesheet

body:
> On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:47:40 +0100, tarquin wrote:
>
> >> I also want to remind you about another thing that needs to be fixed
> >> with the CologneBlue stylesheet:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004911.html
> >>
> >>
> > I've taken a look at this.
> > There's probably a reason for not having a 100% width, though in my IE6
> > it was ok. could be a Netscape 4 or IE5 workaround?

Yes, it's some sort of IEsomething workaround as I recall.

On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 05:09, Daniel Herding wrote:
>
> 98% instead of 100% seems to a design question. But with 98% it simply
> doesn't
> work right, so we should change it to 100%. We also can't wait for
> templates.

It what way does it not work right?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
OK, I'm a bit pissed. The first two voting "users" who I checked don't have
/any/ Wikipedia contributions. They linked to their user pages on de.wiki so
I checked their contribs;

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=AzzKikr&limit=500&offset=0
	Only contrib /ever/ was to create a user page

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=Andybauer&limit=500&offset=0
	No contribs at all for this account

This is beyond the pale. I hereby call for a recount and a validation of every
vote; in order to have a vote counted each and every person should have to
declare which Wikipedia they are a contributor to and to provide a link to
their Wikipedia user page.

I'm not willing to propose what the defintion of a "contributor" is at the
moment, but certainly the two "users" above do not fit the bill.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo - I will be bold

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
>You do realize that taking your statement above literal,
>your own vote should not be counted? Your meta user
>page does not declare which Wikipedia you come from.

The link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric149 should give you a
clue. A link by itself should be enough.

-- mav


body:
Because there were strong objections from one participant against using
average (range) voting, which was already successfully used for our
article count reform, for the final voting round on the logos, there is
now a FPTP vote in progress on which voting method to use:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_logo_vote/
Vote_on_voting_method

And no, I am not particularly fond of that vote either, but I don't want
to be accused of ruthlessly exploiting my position of incredible power as
organizer of this world shattering contest to impose upon millions of
Wikipedians the voting standard which I prefer, so please do take the
opportunity to vote for a mind numbingly complex process that isn't used
in any real world election (because people already can't distinguish
between the names on their ballot and will certainly not understand the
method used to determine a Condorcet winner) if that's what makes you
happy. Note, however, that I will not take part in a solution with which I
do not agree, so that all blame for the disaster that will inevitably
ensue rests solely on the shoulders of the individuals responsible for
causing it.

Regards,

Erik


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] professor friendly Wikiversity

body:
Someone had a comment a while back about how we could make
this project professor friendly so they could use Wikibooks
/ Wikiversity as a portal site to create class content.

I'd like to look into this a bit more for several good
reasons.

Are there any professors out there on this list that would
like to tell us what they would want in order to start
creating original class content here for their classes ? Or
anyone else out there who is in contact with academia or
has an insight ?

Karl

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Steve-
> > It is a mess, though
>
> In which respect? I agree that voting using the wiki
> is always somewhat
> ugly. When I first proposed adding voting support to
> the software I was
> met with wide disapproval for suggesting that voting
> should be used at all
> for decision making. Through months of lobbying I
> and others have managed
> to erode that opposition somewhat so I hope that
> eventually voting boxes
> will just be another tag in the wiki syntax.

Yeah, its about time -- the purists lose me right
around the area of obvious necessity (just like
puritans are wacked about birth control)  and so some
added functionality is welcome.

> You are very welcome to submit changes to the
> MediaWiki software to
> support voting, an external CGI-based solution would
> be an ugly hack with
> many of the same problems as the current wiki-based
> voting.

Il consider asking for CVS access.  I may soon be too
occupied in other aspects of my life to do this. But I
think im ready to tinker ;-)

> Sure, if you do the sifting of thousands of votes
> with no software
> support.

Well, some of this ought to be done -- if someone
compiles a raw ip list from the recent changes list,
and dishes it out to the other developers - Jimbo
included, the five of you can do an easy tool for
common/redundant ips. I dont know the best *nix
software for this, since I dont run a nix yet.

> We have them (except for the submission deadline,
> but we accepted all
> logos that were still submitted on the same day).

Im glad you were flexible and reasonable with that,
and with other things.

> > *votes on the deadlines - not just a day or twos
> > discussion.

> You can vote on virtually every aspect of the
> contest -- logo format,
> number of pixels, number of colors, Wikipedia text
> or not, etc.

Yeah, but all of that is secondary to the issue of
when. (Where is not an issue). Consensus is fine, and
if somelike like you doesnt get ambitious with it and
take the lead, it might never get done. 'Herding cats'
is the applicable metaphor on wiki, (if your goal is
control anyway)  I think youve done a supremely fine
job, and knowing this, you should take Antheres
critiques with a grain of salt -- and consider them
sincere and potentially helpful.  Her English not so
good, is why it comes off a little sticky ;-)

> And no matter what
> deadline you set, you can be sure that Anthere will
> complain about it.
Haha.  Now... lets be civil.

Seriously,
-S-

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


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA

body:
David Friedland wrote:

> In fact, there is. The International Phonetic Alphabet is ideally
> suited to marking pronunciations of words, and is flexible enough to
> describe broad transcriptions that represent how a word is pronounced
> in multiple dialects to minute phonetic details. This wisdom, of
> course, has been lost on the makers of most American dictionaries, who
> each insist upon using their own ad-hoc pronunciation scheme (one of
> my personal pet peeves). The _Cambridge Dictionary of American
> English_ is a notable, if perhaps not well-known, exception. The
> foremost dictionary of (mostly) British English, the _Oxford English
> Dictionary_ uses IPA, as does the major Australian English
> dictionary,  _The Macquarie Dictionary_.
>
> I see the following possible solutions (in the order that I think is
> good):
>
> 1.) Auto-detect the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that
> support it and TIPA LaTeX images to those that don't. (Pros:
> attractive display of IPA for all users. Cons: lots of  programming)
>
> 2.) Just send TIPA LaTeX images (Pros: attractive display of IPA.
> Cons: Uses images in text when for some users embedded IPA Unicode
> would look better)
>
> 3.) Store the IPA in a special format or in a special tag, auto-detect
> the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that support it and SAMPA
> to the rest. (Pros: doesn't require inserting images or using TeX.
> Cons: SAMPA is ugly and hard to read)
>
> 4.) Render IPA into GIFs or PNGs and just insert them as images.
> (Pros: compatible with everything. Cons: time-consuming, and difficult
> to change)
>
> 5.) Devise a Wikipedia-specific pronunciation scheme and just use that
> (blech!) (Pros: no coding required. Cons: YAAHPS (Yet Another Ad Hoc
> Pronunciation Scheme))
>
> 6.) Do nothing and continue to allow people to use ad-hoc
> pronunciation schemes (BLECH!!) (Pros: no action required. Cons:
> maintains status quo harms as described above)

I've snipped your message, but it was all extemely well put :)
ad-hoc schemes are a peeve of mine too.

I'm opposed to options 5 & 6 :)
My opinion on the matter so far has been to stick with SAMPA until we
can do something about using IPA.
We could stick to SAMPA in wiki source text, since everybody can edit
it, and tag it. Then browser-detect and send IPA text / IPA in PNG
depending.

A smart thing to do if the renderer knows about SAMPA would be to
automagically provide a link to the SAMPA or IPA key.
eg:
/sampa/k{t/
turns into some IPA which if clicked takes the reader to the explanation
of tehe symbols.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiTable implementation

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> (Moved from wikien-l)
>
> Toby Bartels wrote:
>
>> Everybody interested in this should see [[meta:Wiki markup tables]].
>> This hasn't been worked on for a while, and fresh ideas would be good.
>
>
> I don't have any fresh ideas on that one, so I went ahead and
> (surprise!) implemented my table markup at the test wiki:
>
> http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Wiki_table_test
>
> (don't go to the test wiki itself, only use the above link)
>
> This early version has no error checking (matching <table>s etc.), but
> it already handles HTML tags (if necessary), CSS definitions, and
> nested tables.

Nice!

I was about to say we shouldn't need to use a table to hold an image --
a simple DIV with a paragraphs for the image and caption will be fine.
but then I remembered the problem with the width of the floated DIV --
it has to be specified, otherwise it can break.
The CSS float model can REALLY be a pain in the a*** sometimes :(


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] WikiTable implementation (was Re: [WikiEN-l]
 simplicity of markup and presentation)

body:
(Moved from wikien-l)

Toby Bartels wrote:
> Everybody interested in this should see [[meta:Wiki markup tables]].
> This hasn't been worked on for a while, and fresh ideas would be good.

I don't have any fresh ideas on that one, so I went ahead and
(surprise!) implemented my table markup at the test wiki:

http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Wiki_table_test

(don't go to the test wiki itself, only use the above link)

This early version has no error checking (matching <table>s etc.), but
it already handles HTML tags (if necessary), CSS definitions, and nested
tables.

Check it out!

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA@nohat.net

body:
"Brion Vibber"  wrote
 > On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 20:22, David Friedland wrote:
 > > I've done some testing now at home on my Mac, and neither Mac Phoenix
 > > nor Mac Internet Explorer correctly display the Unicode IPA
extensions.
 > > Safari displays most of them, but is missing some critical symbols,
like
 > > the 'er' sound in 'her'.
 >
 > Is there a problem with rendering those characters, or is it just that
 > standard system fonts don't include them? If the latter, are there free
 > fonts we could recommend to people?

I've done some more research this morning, and below is what I have
found. The following discussion is fairly technical, so I've
cross-posted to wikitech-l, and we should probably continue the thread
there if discussion remains this technical.

The Windows font "Lucida Sans Unicode" has all the Unicode IPA
Extensions, except for #686 "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK"
and #687 "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK AND TAIL", which are
apparently only used for some obscure branch of Chinese phonetics. In
other words, it has a complete set for almost all useful purposes.
Additionally, Lucida Sans Unicode seems to be included with most recent
flavors of Windows that I have encountered, although I could be wrong. I
haven't done any Mac testing yet because I am at work and my Mac is at home.

Secondly, Windows IE can be coerced into displaying the page

<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_of_disputed_pronunciation/IPA>

correctly by going to Tools -> Internet Options... -> Fonts... and
selecting Lucida Sans Unicode as "Web page font".

Furthermore, if a  tag
is placed around any IPA text, the IPA will be displayed correctly
regardless of what the font setting for "Web page font" is. Of course
this also works if e.g. if the line

.ipa { font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode" }

is included in the page's stylesheet and the  tag has class="ipa".

However, I don't seem to be able to put arbitrary  tags onto
Wikipedia pages, so I can't fix up [[List of words of disputed
pronunciation/IPA]] to display correctly by default in IE. I can insert

s though, so I'm sure allowing s is an easy fix. (For those
who don't know, a  is like a
 except it doesn't make a new
paragraph, so it is the best way to change text style mid-paragraph)

So, what I think could be done immediately is to add the .ipa class to
the stylesheet and make some kind of wiki syntax to put  tags around text in IPA, or least allow them to be manually
added. This will probably make most IPA text work correctly for many
more browsers than can currently view it.

Also, I agree that every instance, if not just the on each page, of IPA
text should have a link to a "IPA for English" page so people who are
unfamiliar with IPA can quickly figure out how to decipher it. I will
write that page write away.

- David


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>>Right
>>now, anyone can vote under an ip, anyone can vote
>>without anyone knowing them, anyone can replace the
>>logo of someone else by his, in particular in the top
>>10. And perhaps a logo which was in the top 10 before
>>being replaced by another won't be in the top 10
>>anymore, just because someone had fun replacing that
>>top 10 logo.
>>
>
>Has this actually happened?  Has someone removed a logo from the top
>10 and replaced it with another?  That's pure and simple vandalism of
>the worst sort.
>
>As for voting under ips or votes from people "we" don't all know, how
>significant are the numbers?  Is there really any reason to think that
>anyone is stuffing the ballot box?
>
Choosing the top ten for the short list was based on an arbitrary
number.  If 10th and 11th place are close in votes why not include the
11th?  If the occasional bit of improper voting happens, it is then
marginalized.  It would take massive vote fraud to make a difference.  I
prefer marginalizing the casual cheater to spending enormous energy
developing elaborate systems to catch them.

As for what to do with the short list (which also includes candidates
with multiple variants) perhaps they should be first reviewed for
technical workability.  Some of the high vote getters strike me as very
complicated designs that may not scale down very well for low-resolution
situations.

Ec

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA@nohat.net

body:
"Brion Vibber"  wrote
>
> Is there a problem with rendering those characters, or is it just that
> standard system fonts don't include them? If the latter, are there free
> fonts we could recommend to people?

I've done some more research this morning, and below is what I have
found. The following discussion is fairly technical, so I've
cross-posted to wikitech-l, and we should probably continue the thread
there if discussion remains this technical.

The Windows font "Lucida Sans Unicode" has all the Unicode IPA
Extensions, except for #686 "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK"
and #687 "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK AND TAIL", which are
apparently only used for some obscure branch of Chinese phonetics. In
other words, it has a complete set for almost all useful purposes.
Additionally, Lucida Sans Unicode seems to be included with most recent
flavors of Windows that I have encountered, although I could be wrong. I
haven't done any Mac testing yet because I am at work and my Mac is at home.

Secondly, Windows IE can be coerced into displaying the page

<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_of_disputed_pronunciation/IPA>

correctly by going to Tools -> Internet Options... -> Fonts... and
selecting Lucida Sans Unicode as "Web page font".

Furthermore, if a  tag
is placed around any IPA text, the IPA will be displayed correctly
regardless of what the font setting for "Web page font" is. Of course
this also works if e.g. if the line

.ipa { font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode" }

is included in the page's stylesheet and the  tag has class="ipa".

However, I don't seem to be able to put arbitrary  tags onto
Wikipedia pages, so I can't fix up [[List of words of disputed
pronunciation/IPA]] to display correctly by default in IE. I can insert

s though, so I'm sure allowing s is an easy fix. (For those
who don't know, a  is like a
 except it doesn't make a new
paragraph, so it is the best way to change text style mid-paragraph)

So, what I think could be done immediately is to add the .ipa class to
the stylesheet and make some kind of wiki syntax to put  tags around text in IPA, or least allow them to be manually
added. This will probably make most IPA text work correctly for many
more browsers than can currently view it.

Also, I agree that every instance, if not just the on each page, of IPA
text should have a link to a "IPA for English" page so people who are
unfamiliar with IPA can quickly figure out how to decipher it. I will
write that page write away.

- David


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo - I will be bold

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Erik wrote:
>
>>Well, what do you propose as an alternative?
>>People vote from all Wikipedias, including the
>>very small ones, so it's very hard to track down
>>individuals. I think the solution to require at least
>>a redirect to an existing user page is a good one.
>>
>
>IMO in order to have your vote counted you must declare on your user page
>which Wikipedia you are from an provide a link to your Wikipedia user page.
>
What ever happened to the idea of unified log-in and user name that
applies to all sites in the kingdom?  That should include Meta.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>OK, I'm a bit pissed. The first two voting "users" who I checked don't have
>/any/ Wikipedia contributions. They linked to their user pages on de.wiki so
>I checked their contribs;
>
>http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=AzzKikr&limit=500&offset=0
>	Only contrib /ever/ was to create a user page
>
>http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=Andybauer&limit=500&offset=0
>	No contribs at all for this account
>
>This is beyond the pale. I hereby call for a recount and a validation of every
>vote; in order to have a vote counted each and every person should have to
>declare which Wikipedia they are a contributor to and to provide a link to
>their Wikipedia user page.
>
>I'm not willing to propose what the defintion of a "contributor" is at the
>moment, but certainly the two "users" above do not fit the bill.
>
Did you simply forget to put a smiley on that last suggestion?

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Perhaps we could count the votes in multiple ways in order to see if
they are legitimate, and whether it affects the outcome?

For example: (1) count all votes (2) count all votes except those from
anon. ips.  (3) count all votes for users who are 'substantial'
contributors.  If there's no difference in the final results, then we
just don't worry about it.

It would be interesting to see if there is any one contribution that
is getting a lot of 'illegal' votes.  If so, we could take appropriate
action.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> OK, I'm a bit pissed. The first two voting "users" who I checked don't have
> /any/ Wikipedia contributions. They linked to their user pages on de.wiki so
> I checked their contribs;
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=AzzKikr&limit=500&offset=0
> 	Only contrib /ever/ was to create a user page
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=Andybauer&limit=500&offset=0
> 	No contribs at all for this account
>
> This is beyond the pale. I hereby call for a recount and a validation of every
> vote; in order to have a vote counted each and every person should have to
> declare which Wikipedia they are a contributor to and to provide a link to
> their Wikipedia user page.
>
> I'm not willing to propose what the defintion of a "contributor" is at the
> moment, but certainly the two "users" above do not fit the bill.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo - I will be bold

in_reply_to:
<3F58D78E.7080403@telus.net>;
	from saintonge@telus.net on Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:35:58AM -0700

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> What ever happened to the idea of unified log-in and user name that
> applies to all sites in the kingdom?  That should include Meta.

That idea is still universally favored by all.  It's merely a
technical matter that it doesn't exist yet.  And 'merely' actually
understates the difficulty involved in actually doing it.

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Herding

subject: [Wikitech-l] CologneBlue stylesheet

body:
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:47:40 +0100, tarquin wrote:

>> I also want to remind you about another thing that needs to be fixed
>> with the CologneBlue stylesheet:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004911.html
>>
>>
> I've taken a look at this.
> There's probably a reason for not having a 100% width, though in my IE6
> it was ok. could be a Netscape 4 or IE5 workaround?
> Is it a major problem? It would be easier to fix this sort of thing if
> we eventually switch to a template system. (in which case, we'd be
> remaking the skins as templates, and we wouldn't be using tables at all,
> if possible)

98% instead of 100% seems to a design question. But with 98% it simply
doesn't
work right, so we should change it to 100%. We also can't wait for
templates.

Please just change it as described in the link above.

>> If you delete
>>> padding: 0;
>> everything looks fine.

> Done. Uploaded to CVS.

How long will it take until the changes will be brought to the wikipedias?

Daniel


from_name: modemac at modemac.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for adminship

body:
I've posted a request to the page Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, so I hope I'm not committing a transgression by posting here.  The "Requests for adminship" page may not be read as regularly as this mailing list...

<butt-kiss>

I've been hooked on Wikipedia since I stumbled across it in August of 2002.  After more than a year of contributing, I figure it's time to throw my hat into the ring and ask for permission to be a moderator.

I promise to repeal the 2001 tax cuts, increase international cooperation in Iraq...errr, umm, wrong message.  :)

Actually, I'm hoping that my conduct over the past year has been sufficient to show that I intend to use NPOV in a manner that will hopefully prevent heated rivalries (and worse) in the more controversial subjects, as I've tried to do with my additions to the [[Scientology]] articles.  I also enjoy pop culture, and I intend to keep updating such life-changing subjects as movie and cartoon related articles, along with forays into topics related to skepticism, pseudoscience, and cults.

</butt-kiss>

(I also pledge to avoid petty political squabbles and backstabbing as much as possible, as this does not interest me.)


subject: [Wikitech-l] CologneBlue stylesheet

body:
Daniel Herding wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:47:40 +0100, tarquin wrote:
>
>>> I also want to remind you about another thing that needs to be fixed
>>> with the CologneBlue stylesheet:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004911.html
>>>
>>>
>> I've taken a look at this.
>> There's probably a reason for not having a 100% width, though in my
>> IE6 it was ok. could be a Netscape 4 or IE5 workaround?
>> Is it a major problem? It would be easier to fix this sort of thing
>> if we eventually switch to a template system. (in which case, we'd be
>> remaking the skins as templates, and we wouldn't be using tables at
>> all, if possible)
>
>
> 98% instead of 100% seems to a design question. But with 98% it simply
> doesn't
> work right, so we should change it to 100%. We also can't wait for
> templates.
>
> Please just change it as described in the link above.

Will do.

>
>> Done. Uploaded to CVS.
>
>
> How long will it take until the changes will be brought to the
> wikipedias?

Until a dev with server access is sufficiently prodded ;)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: The_polygon_map

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map
> > Political maps use 2-level coloring schemes.
> Main color is selected as to avoid 2 neighbour
countries having the
same color.
> It's shade is selected randomly.
> > The problem is to select such N (N about 8) colors
generators,
> and such colors for seas, rivers, city and country
labels,
> and other objects (borders,
river/mountains/island/sea labels etc.),
> that makes maps most readable.
> > Currently used scheme is:
> > Colors for:
>     city dots		white
>     city labels		white
>     rivers		#000060
>     seas		#000060
>     country labels	#FF8080
> Color generator 0  # cyan
>     $r = rand 64;
>     $g = 160 + rand 64;
>     $b = 160 + rand 64;
> Color generator 1 # green
>     $r = 64  + rand 64;
>     $g = 160 + rand 64;
>     $b = 64  + rand 64;
> Color generator 2 # yellow-green
>     $r = 128 + rand 32;
>     $g = 192 + rand 64;
>     $b = rand 32;
> Color generator 3 # greenish-blue
>     $r = rand 32;
>     $g =  64 + rand 64;
>     $b = 128 + rand 64;
> Color generator 4 # yellow
>     $r = 128 + rand 64;
>     $g =  96 + rand 64;
>     $b = rand 32;
> Color generator 5 # orange
>     $r = 128 + rand 64;
>     $g = 64  + rand 64;
>     $b = rand 64;
> Color generator 6 # magenta
>     $r = 160 + rand 64;
>     $g = 64  + rand 64;
>     $b = 160 + rand 64;
> Color generator 7 # gray
>     $r = 96 + rand 64;
>     $g = $r - 16 + rand 32;
>     $b = $r - 16 + rand 32;
> > But it doesn't give very good results.
> > Anyone with better idea for coloring ?

Hum.

I would say...put city dots and city labels in black.
There is nothing such as black for readability.

Put all the oceans in white. On a higher scale map, it
is quite more visible. You may distinguish the
different continent much more easily. Think
printability as well. No one like to kill his color
printer with just one map :-)

I would also put rivers in white. It is much more
visible as well.

Alternatively, a very clear blue. But you should try
white.

If you keep the labels in white (rather than black),
the background colors will always have to be very dark
for the labels to be visible. If the labels are black,
you keep basically all the possibilities you could
wish in terms of coloring.

As for the different colors, well I can't speak
automated generation. But what I would do (at least
for a geographical atlas) would be to use shades
varying between green and brown. Perhaps dark yellow.
It might be enough to support non confusion between
countries, without looking so strong and colorful.

Again, I would avoid too strong and flashy colors.

Some quick ideas (no generation)
52 104 38
45 155 17
73 231 33
124 213 152
190 228 172
110 154 89
101 173 23
143 173 23
147 201 29
223 245 195
175 255 206
120 135 102

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


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> HOWEVER, for the PRESENT election, I would support any sensible and easy
> method, because it's just a logo, and any of the top competitors are going
> to be excellent.

Can someone post a link to this competition, as I can only find the old one.
--
Gareth Owen
"The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"
                  --  W. B. Yeats forsees the standard of debate on wikipedia-l


body:
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 10:33:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Because there were strong objections from one participant against using
> average (range) voting, which was already successfully used for our
> article count reform, for the final voting round on the logos, there is
> now a FPTP vote in progress on which voting method to use:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_logo_vote/
> Vote_on_voting_method
>
> And no, I am not particularly fond of that vote either, but I don't want
> to be accused of ruthlessly exploiting my position of incredible power as
> organizer of this world shattering contest to impose upon millions of
> Wikipedians the voting standard which I prefer, so please do take the
> opportunity to vote for a mind numbingly complex process that isn't used
> in any real world election (because people already can't distinguish
> between the names on their ballot and will certainly not understand the
> method used to determine a Condorcet winner) if that's what makes you
> happy. Note, however, that I will not take part in a solution with which I
> do not agree, so that all blame for the disaster that will inevitably
> ensue rests solely on the shoulders of the individuals responsible for
> causing it.

If you call voting on article count reform "successful" then I don't want
to know what would you call "disastrous". And of course Debian, with more
voters than Wikipedia, and much more serious elections than just a logo,
isn't "real". Condorcet hasn't caused any trouble for Debian, and it assured fair
elections without any tactical voting and less prefered outcomes being
selected due to peculiarities of voting process.


from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo

body:
"Chirac 60, LePen 14 and Jospin 15. Who goes crying in his mother's
arms?" LePen and Jospin. Or Jospin and LePen. Who cares?

I suggest adding the logo you like as the 11th even if it ends up on the
100th place in the final count -- who knows if those 20 people, should
they have seen the logo, wouldn't have called all their friends to vote
for it? But alas! that logo wasn't visibile, so they never saw it, so
we'll never know if they would have done it. The problems with what-ifs...

Now seriously, add that logo as the 11th regardless of where it stands
in the final count. If it's good enough to be selected as the final
Wikipedia logo then it's only fair that it makes it in the final round.
And if it isn't, then it's not going to get voted for in the final round
anyway.

[[Gutza]]

Anthere wrote:

>Hello all
>
>I have responded privately to Erik on all his very
>kind comments.
>
>I will just copy here one very technical part of it,
>to explain why *I* think there is a problem.
>
>Second, I note that Erik has decided to blame all on
>me. That won't do it Erik.
>
>Many months ago, a french person told me an ambassador
>should not voice any personal position on the ML, for
>fear of making appear the personal position as hir
>wikipedia position. Today, Erik decides to blame the
>ambassador for reporting criticism and problems
>reported by other users.
>
>Hence, I will from now on separate these two
>identities and make better use of basic google
>translations.
>
>Anthere
>
>---------------
>
>When I say you have no reaction, I don't talk about
>the anon votes. I saw your comments. I talk about the
>cheating. I translate Olie report that people have
>been cheating. I ask what we should do to compensate
>the cheat. I suggest the different options I can
>imagine. And I get no response from you. Since you are
>the one who are gonna make the counts, I think you
>could have answered the propositions I made to fix
>things the best we could. To be fair to the artist. If
>you do not answer, I consider that my propositions are
>all fine by you, so I tell which one I will do. Which
>is "adding the logo upon which was practiced the
>vandalism to the list of final logos if it is not in
>the final list you set".
>
>Perhaps is there a cultural issue there ? On the en
>wiki, I know people always suggest to be bold. On the
>french wiki, most people insist it is better to
>explain the changes we plan to do before hand. I
>follow the french practice, and tell you what I will
>do. Letting the opportunity for other propositions or
>comments. No comments = all agree. Okay ?
>
>
>Say there are some presidential elections, with 15
>candidates, among which Chirac, LePen and Jospin. 100
>people are voting.
>
>The vote session last 7 hours.
>
>If all goes fine, let's say Chirac makes 60, LePen
>makes 16 and Jospin 15 .
>At the end of the vote, Chirac and Lepen are left for
>second turn, and Jospin goes crying in his mother's
>arms.
>
>Now, let's say that during 1 hour, the voting papers
>for Lepen are replaced by those of Jospin.
>Voters see there are two papers for Jospin perhaps,
>they vote taking the wrong paper, but it does not
>matter, the officials count the papers and Jospin is
>still 15.
>
>Now, there are quite a bunch of people who came during
>that unfortunate hour, and they were not aware LePen
>was a candidate. So, they use their votes
>differently...perhaps, they vote for Noel Mam?re
>instead of LePen! So, in the end, LePen votes are not
>16, there are only 14.
>
>Final results : Chirac 60, LePen 14 and Jospin 15.
>Who goes crying in his mother's arms ?
>
>Right.
>
>I did not count, but about 20 people came to vote at a
>moment 124 bulletin was not there. They did not see
>the logo. Hence they could not vote for it.
>So, I just say, if this logo is number 11th this
>evening, it might be very unfair, for maybe 20 people
>would have voted for it. Or perhaps none of them. We
>just don't know.
>
>Here is why I say, in any cases, this logo should be
>there. If it is 11th, we should have 11th logos for
>the final vote.
>
>Or we need to contact ALL the individual voters who
>came around when this logo was not available. Which
>will be a real pain.
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
>http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


body:
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
>
> "Please note that all contributions to {project name} are considered to be
> released under the [[GNU Free Documentation License]] (see [[{project
> name}:Copyrights]] for details). By clicking save you agree that the text
you
> submit is not a copyright violation or is otherwise illegal to submit. You
> also agree to our [[{project name}:terms and conditions]] and indemnify
> [[{project name}]] and the [[Wikimedia Foundation]] from any damages that
may
> result from your submission."
>
> [[{project name}:terms and conditions]] would be a policy page that has a
> summary of only the most important policies of that project.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

That's pretty good, here is an alternate that focuses on the defamation
concerns
boought up by Tomos (I think that every Wikimedia project should
specifically
bring up the defamation thing as that potentially has more problems for wiki
projects than the copyright issues):

"All contributions submitted here are released under the GFU Free
Documentation
License]], see [[{Project name}:Copyrights and Warranty Disclaimers]] . By
clicking
save you affirm the copyright owner(s) of all submitted material agrees to
these
terms; you further affirm that such text is not defamatory or in violation
of any
law; you also agree to [[{project name}:indemnify|indemnify]] {project
name},
all other volunteers and [[Wikimedia Foundation]] for any and all claims
connected
with your submission and are bound by the [[{project name): terms and
conditions]]."

The Warranty Disclaimers are those allowed under the GFDL.  See discussion
here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion/copyvio.
These
should also be project specific (and are obviously related to the
affirmation that
are make by submitting contributors).

I would put a link to in to a specific indemnification page on each project
so that
differences in national law regarding these indemnification issues can be
better
addressed (likewise with the terms and conditions as you suggest Mav).

Alex756


from_name: Christian Dietl

body:
Hi,

two days ago i submitted on Sourceforge an updated LanguageDe.php for the
German Wikipedia [1]. Unfortunately the file wasn't updated yet. Am I
too impatient or wasn't Sourceforge the right place for that? It's just
the case that we have some untranslated or bad translated phrases and
the users complain about that since a month now. As nobody has added the
missing translations I'm doing it now.

So, it would be great if someone could tell me what's the matter. :)

TIA,
Christian

[1] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=799941&group_id=34373&atid=411192


body:
Tomasz-
> There are many simple programs to calculate Condorcet winner, like this one:
> http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/politics/condorcet-program.html

That's exactly the problem -- instead of the voting process being so
simple that a six year old could understand it, you now need a program to
determine the winner. Voting systems of this complexity are prone to a
problem which the geeky voting analysts usually ignore: voter confusion.
This confusion in turn can be exploited for a strategy known under the
name "bad advice": "If you vote so and so, the Condorcet winner will be
FOO. You want FOO to win, don't you?" It can also be used for fraud as
fewer people will be able to validate the results, and can lead to voter
fatigue, because it leaves many voters unsatisfied as they do not
understand why a certain candidate won.

> Debian has Condorcet software integrated with GPG-signed voting by mail,
> but it's a bit too heavy procedure for us.

Nice that even you admit that. Learning from Debian when it comes to
usability is never a good idea. Their voting procedure is described this
way in their constitution:

- - -
   1.   Each voter's ballot ranks the options being voted on. Not all
options need be ranked. Ranked options are considered preferred to all
unranked options. Voters may rank options equally. Unranked options are
considered to be ranked equally with one another. Details of how ballots
may be filled out will be included in the Call For Votes.
   2. If the ballot has a quorum requirement R any options other than the default option which do not receive at least R votes ranking that option above the default option are dropped from consideration.
   3. Any (non-default) option which does not defeat the default option by its required majority ratio is dropped from consideration.
         1. Given two options A and B, V(A,B) is the number of voters who prefer option A over option B.
         2. An option A defeats the default option D by a majority ratio N, if V(A,D) is strictly greater than N * V(D,A).
         3. If a supermajority of S:1 is required for A, its majority ratio is S; otherwise, its majority ratio is 1.
   4. From the list of undropped options, we generate a list of pairwise defeats.
         1. An option A defeats an option B, if V(A,B) is strictly greater than V(B,A).
   5. From the list of [undropped] pairwise defeats, we generate a set of transitive defeats.
         1. An option A transitively defeats an option C if A defeats C or if there is some other option B where A defeats B AND B transitively defeats C.
   6. We construct the Schwartz set from the set of transitive defeats.
         1. An option A is in the Schwartz set if for all options B, either A transitively defeats B, or B does not transitively defeat A.
   7. If there are defeats between options in the Schwartz set, we drop the weakest such defeats from the list of pairwise defeats, and return to step 5.
         1. A defeat (A,X) is weaker than a defeat (B,Y) if V(A,X) is less than V(B,Y). Also, (A,X) is weaker than (B,Y) if V(A,X) is equal to V(B,Y) and V(X,A) is greater than V(Y,B).
         2. A weakest defeat is a defeat that has no other defeat weaker than it. There may be more than one such defeat.
   8. If there are no defeats within the Schwartz set, then the winner is chosen from the options in the Schwartz set. If there is only one such option, it is the winner. If there are multiple options, the elector with the casting vote chooses which of those options wins.

Note: Options which the voters rank above the default option are options they find acceptable.
Options ranked below the default options are options they find unacceptable.

- - -

Now try to explain this procedure to the average American voter. Hilarity
and/or violence ensues.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Colors for maps

body:
Is the problem that the randomly selected shades look bad together or
they don't have enough contrast?

I don't know a whole lot about color theory, but there is a page at
http://www.easyrgb.com/harmonies.php
That helps you find colors that harmonize well with a given color. They
don't give details for how it works, but I imagine it uses a non-RGB
color model like HSB (Hue, Saturation, Balance) to select colors that
harmonize by shifting a variable like hue while maintaining the other
two, and then convert back to RGB. The color palettes made by the color
harmonizer are all aesthetically pleasing, at least to my eye.

I would suggest fiddling with it, and the math page
http://www.easyrgb.com/math.html
to see if you can come up with a smarter algorithm.

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map
>
> Political maps use 2-level coloring schemes.
> Main color is selected as to avoid 2 neighbour countries having the same color.
> It's shade is selected randomly.
>
> The problem is to select such N (N about 8) colors generators,
> and such colors for seas, rivers, city and country labels,
> and other objects (borders, river/mountains/island/sea labels etc.),
> that makes maps most readable.
>
> Currently used scheme is:
>
> Colors for:
>     city dots		white
>     city labels		white
>     rivers		#000060
>     seas		#000060
>     country labels	#FF8080
> Color generator 0  # cyan
>     $r = rand 64;
>     $g = 160 + rand 64;
>     $b = 160 + rand 64;
> Color generator 1 # green
>     $r = 64  + rand 64;
>     $g = 160 + rand 64;
>     $b = 64  + rand 64;
> Color generator 2 # yellow-green
>     $r = 128 + rand 32;
>     $g = 192 + rand 64;
>     $b = rand 32;
> Color generator 3 # greenish-blue
>     $r = rand 32;
>     $g =  64 + rand 64;
>     $b = 128 + rand 64;
> Color generator 4 # yellow
>     $r = 128 + rand 64;
>     $g =  96 + rand 64;
>     $b = rand 32;
> Color generator 5 # orange
>     $r = 128 + rand 64;
>     $g = 64  + rand 64;
>     $b = rand 64;
> Color generator 6 # magenta
>     $r = 160 + rand 64;
>     $g = 64  + rand 64;
>     $b = 160 + rand 64;
> Color generator 7 # gray
>     $r = 96 + rand 64;
>     $g = $r - 16 + rand 32;
>     $b = $r - 16 + rand 32;
>
> But it doesn't give very good results.
>
> Anyone with better idea for coloring ?


body:
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 07:10:04AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Condorcet hasn't caused any trouble for Debian, and it assured fair
> > elections without any tactical voting and less prefered outcomes being
> > selected due to peculiarities of voting process.
>
> I, too, am a fan of Condorcet, despite the complexity.  HOWEVER, for
> the PRESENT election, I would support any sensible and easy method,
> because it's just a logo, and any of the top competitors are going to
> be excellent.
>
> Condorcet is sufficiently complex to make voting by hand and
> tabulating by hand really difficult.  But I would support a simple
> implementation of Condorcet in the software, as I think that Condorcet
> really is superior to other methods precisely in helping to find a
> _consensus_, i.e. the avoidance of divisive tactical voting.

There are many simple programs to calculate Condorcet winner, like this one:
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/politics/condorcet-program.html
Debian has Condorcet software integrated with GPG-signed voting by mail,
but it's a bit too heavy procedure for us.

The "harder" part is a parser for ballots, finding the winner is trivial -
just filling NxN table and making a summary of it.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo - I will be bold

body:
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Erik wrote:
> >Well, what do you propose as an alternative?
> >People vote from all Wikipedias, including the
> >very small ones, so it's very hard to track down
> >individuals. I think the solution to require at least
> >a redirect to an existing user page is a good one.
>
> IMO in order to have your vote counted you must declare on your user page
> which Wikipedia you are from an provide a link to your Wikipedia user page.

You do realize that taking your statement above literal, your own vote should
not be counted? Your meta user page does not declare which Wikipedia you come
from.

Mine is even worse: It does not declare which Wikipedia I come from AND it
links to my English Wikipedia user page although I come from nl: nowadays.

Andre Engels


from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [Wikipedia-l] SVG whiteboard

body:
Last night I did some digging into installing
whiteboard capability for WP and was pleased to find
it has just been implemented -- See
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG_whiteboard  for
links and discussion. The below text is from a dude
named Danny Ayers--I inquired of him because of his
apparent experience dealing with a wiki implementation
of an SVG whiteboard and various similar SVG related
issues. We dont even have true SVG viewing capability
yet though...

As if there wasnt enough on the collective plate
already,
-S-
---
Hi Stevertigo, I just got your comment on my blog re.
SVG Whiteboard. I'll be happy to help if I can.

You might also be interested in is what I've got in
mind for the Wiki code I'm working on. I plan to
generate RDF metadata from all pages - most of this
will be from the RSS 1.0 vocabulary, but I'll also
have to create some custom terms (like "WikiWord").
Basically provide machine-readable data about the
knowledge contained in the Wiki. This would (IMHO) be
a wonderful extension for the Wikipedia, for example,
where appropriate entries in the Wikipedia could be
automatically cross-referenced with WordNet and dmoz
entries. Putting it on the Semantic Web is a nice
visionary thing too.

As with the WikiWhiteboard, the implementation would
be different (I'm primarily using Java, though I think
Eugene's version is in Perl), but the RDF-specific
parts would be the same in the same way that the SVG
parts can stay the same across Wikis.

Cheers, Danny.

danny666 at virgilio.it

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
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subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG whiteboard


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I don't want
> to be accused of ruthlessly exploiting my position
> of incredible power as
> organizer of this world shattering contest to impose
> upon millions of
> Wikipedians...

Every king needs a jester.
-S-

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
What?? was this unexpected?? If im not mistaken thats
an advertisement on the front page of the WP!!

Is now the time to complain about anon/newbie votes??
No. The only gripe now is for somebody with dev access
to roll up their sleeves and unplug the disposal from
any dross and detritus that would (only naturally)
come as a byproduct of putting a ninety-foot billboard
up.
-S-

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> OK, I'm a bit pissed. The first two voting "users"
> who I checked don't have
> /any/ Wikipedia contributions. They linked to their
> user pages on de.wiki so
> I checked their contribs;
>
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=AzzKikr&limit=500&offset=0
> 	Only contrib /ever/ was to create a user page
>
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=Andybauer&limit=500&offset=0
> 	No contribs at all for this account
>
> This is beyond the pale. I hereby call for a recount
> and a validation of every
> vote; in order to have a vote counted each and every
> person should have to
> declare which Wikipedia they are a contributor to
> and to provide a link to
> their Wikipedia user page.
>
> I'm not willing to propose what the defintion of a
> "contributor" is at the
> moment, but certainly the two "users" above do not
> fit the bill.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiTable implementation

body:
So Magnus,
The essence is to allow for - to separate a row and
for } to delineate a column. Very nice idea-- but why
all the |?

Since the {| and |} seem to work as starter and closer
tags anyway, might it work to discard the |?
{| align=right border=1
Cell 1, row 1
Cell 2, row 1
-
Cell 1, row 2
Cell 2, row 2
|}

As always with apologies for my shameful
benightedness,
-S-

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from_name: Olie ze kat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Cheating on logo voting

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>, l'ami(e) des
kats, avait papatt? dans sa niouze :

| OK, I'm a bit pissed. The first two voting "users" who I checked
| don't have /any/ Wikipedia contributions. They linked to their user
| pages on de.wiki so
| I checked their contribs;
|
|
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=AzzKikr&
limit=500&offset=0
| Only contrib /ever/ was to create a user page
|
|
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=Andybaue
r&limit=500&offset=0
| No contribs at all for this account
|

It's confirm that Wikipedia need a IP tracking system :o|

--
Olie ze kat ---------  http://www.olid.fr.st


body:
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 06:28:00PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
> > There are many simple programs to calculate Condorcet winner, like this one:
> > http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/politics/condorcet-program.html
>
> That's exactly the problem -- instead of the voting process being so
> simple that a six year old could understand it, you now need a program to
> determine the winner. Voting systems of this complexity are prone to a
> problem which the geeky voting analysts usually ignore: voter confusion.
> This confusion in turn can be exploited for a strategy known under the
> name "bad advice": "If you vote so and so, the Condorcet winner will be
> FOO. You want FOO to win, don't you?" It can also be used for fraud as
> fewer people will be able to validate the results, and can lead to voter
> fatigue, because it leaves many voters unsatisfied as they do not
> understand why a certain candidate won.
>
> > Debian has Condorcet software integrated with GPG-signed voting by mail,
> > but it's a bit too heavy procedure for us.
>
> Nice that even you admit that. Learning from Debian when it comes to
> usability is never a good idea. Their voting procedure is described this
> way in their constitution:
>
> - - -
>    1.   Each voter's ballot ranks the options being voted on. Not all
> options need be ranked. Ranked options are considered preferred to all
> unranked options. Voters may rank options equally. Unranked options are
> considered to be ranked equally with one another. Details of how ballots
> may be filled out will be included in the Call For Votes.
>    2. If the ballot has a quorum requirement R any options other than the default option which do not receive at least R votes ranking that option above the default option are dropped from consideration.
>    3. Any (non-default) option which does not defeat the default option by its required majority ratio is dropped from consideration.
>          1. Given two options A and B, V(A,B) is the number of voters who prefer option A over option B.
>          2. An option A defeats the default option D by a majority ratio N, if V(A,D) is strictly greater than N * V(D,A).
>          3. If a supermajority of S:1 is required for A, its majority ratio is S; otherwise, its majority ratio is 1.
>    4. From the list of undropped options, we generate a list of pairwise defeats.
>          1. An option A defeats an option B, if V(A,B) is strictly greater than V(B,A).
>    5. From the list of [undropped] pairwise defeats, we generate a set of transitive defeats.
>          1. An option A transitively defeats an option C if A defeats C or if there is some other option B where A defeats B AND B transitively defeats C.
>    6. We construct the Schwartz set from the set of transitive defeats.
>          1. An option A is in the Schwartz set if for all options B, either A transitively defeats B, or B does not transitively defeat A.
>    7. If there are defeats between options in the Schwartz set, we drop the weakest such defeats from the list of pairwise defeats, and return to step 5.
>          1. A defeat (A,X) is weaker than a defeat (B,Y) if V(A,X) is less than V(B,Y). Also, (A,X) is weaker than (B,Y) if V(A,X) is equal to V(B,Y) and V(X,A) is greater than V(Y,B).
>          2. A weakest defeat is a defeat that has no other defeat weaker than it. There may be more than one such defeat.
>    8. If there are no defeats within the Schwartz set, then the winner is chosen from the options in the Schwartz set. If there is only one such option, it is the winner. If there are multiple options, the elector with the casting vote chooses which of those options wins.
>
> Note: Options which the voters rank above the default option are options they find acceptable.
> Options ranked below the default options are options they find unacceptable.
>
> - - -
>
> Now try to explain this procedure to the average American voter. Hilarity
> and/or violence ensues.

Procedure described in Debian Constitution includes:
* quorum
* supermajority
* default and non-default options
* absolute ties (equal number of votes)
* and Condorcet's method

Short description:
    Every voter selects order of preference of candidate options.
    It's not necessary to rank every option. Options not ranked are considered
    less preferred than ranked options. Format of the vote should be like:
    1 > 5 = 4 > 2 > 3
    What means that 1 is the most preferred option, followed by 4 and 5, which
    are equally preferred, 2 is preferred less than any of 1, 4 and 5, and 3
    is the least preferred option (unless there are more than 5 options, in which
    case they're considered even less preferred than 3).

    Option A wins with option B if more voters rank A over B than B over A.
    If certain option wins with all others, it becomes a winner.

    If there is no such option, then the winner is chosen using
    procedure XYZ.

For some XYZ that really isn't important for average user.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logo - I will be bold

body:
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:25:23AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Choosing the top ten for the short list was based on an arbitrary
> number.  If 10th and 11th place are close in votes why not include the
> 11th?  If the occasional bit of improper voting happens, it is then
> marginalized.  It would take massive vote fraud to make a difference.  I
> prefer marginalizing the casual cheater to spending enormous energy
> developing elaborate systems to catch them.
>
> As for what to do with the short list (which also includes candidates
> with multiple variants) perhaps they should be first reviewed for
> technical workability.  Some of the high vote getters strike me as very
> complicated designs that may not scale down very well for low-resolution
> situations.

*IF* we use Condorcet method, then you're right - one more option doesn't change
anything. But if we go with some voting method prone to tactical voting, like
FPTP, Average, or IRV, then it isn't so simple.