from_name: james duffy

body:
>From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Distasteful names - CrucifiedChrist
>Date: 27 Jan 2003 23:48:38 -0800
>
>On lun, 2003-01-27 at 22:47, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 10:37:11PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > >CG used a number of login names from the same IP, including this one.
> > >All things considered, I'd say it's a huge improvement.
> >
> > Blasphemy is as offensive as lewdness.  He is still trying to
> > deliberately provoke and offend people; hardly what I would consider a
> > "collegial spirit of mutual respect".
>
>The problem with these names is the disruption caused by other
>Wikipedians taking offense at them.
>
>"Cumguzzler" received acrid complaints within hours and generated pages
>of screed *entirely from other people debating its lack of merits*
>within a couple days of its first appearence, while "CrucifiedChrist"
>has been used for almost two weeks *without a peep* from anyone until
>today.
>
>In my book, that's a huge improvement. Now please stop feeding the
>trolls; we've got an encyclopedia to work on.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
><< signature.asc >>

Actually, Brian, 'CrucifiedChrist' has caused offence; I received five
private emails about it so far (as well as the Wiki Mail stuff) after I
mentioned to someone that I thought the term unacceptable.

However people feel 'embarrassed' complaining publicly about it because
taking offence at religious references might make them seem like far right
religious nutters. But the people who complained aren't fanatical religious
folk; two described themselves as non-religious, one a lapsed Roman
Catholic. It says something about public attitudes to religion (and the
damage done to religion by the religious right) that they felt uncomfortable
about complaining publicly and ended up sending me a message saying 'will
you say something?'

Personally, as another non-religious person, I think CrucifiedChrist is FAR
MORE OFFENSIVE than Cumguzzler. The latter is merely a childish wordplay on
sex. CrucifiedChrist is a direct, deliberate mocking of the religious
beliefs of millions of web users and large numbers of people using Wiki. I
have been trying to get permission to use a set of pictures for Wiki, but
was turned down. One of the reasons was that  the person who has ownership
of the pictures logged on to Wiki, saw references to CrucifiedChrist and
took offence, arguing that if that is the standard of contributions and
contributors made to Wiki, Wiki obviously isn't a serious attempt at an
encyclopedia and he was withdrawing permission which he up to then was on
the brink of giving. (And so we lost a set of photographs of world heads of
state and prime ministers.)

So this is not a trivial argument, it is about the respect Wiki shows to ALL
its contributors and ALL its users. Would it be seen as equally trivial or a
'huge improvement' if Cumguzzler had changed his username to a term that
mocked jewish beliefs, agnostic beliefs, feminist beliefs, or that attacked
the culure and values of African-Americans, Hispanics, etc? NPOV should mean
equal respect for all. That includes christians. Either EVERY name, no
matter what the offence caused, is acceptable, or we draw a line and few
serious websites would turn a blind eye to a contributor who deliberately
set out to mock the beliefs of many fellow users. So again, I want to find
out what action Wiki proposes to take about a user who in their username
mocks the central tenet of beliefs of many people on Wiki. His action
remains unacceptable and needs to be dealt with.

JT

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

body:
Jonathan,

I think you are seriously mistaken about Mav. He is one of the nicest
people, and one of the most constructive people, I have met on Wikipedia.
You have seriously misjudged him and your comments were certainly open to
the implication of a threat, perhaps unintentionally.

J.T.

>From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org, krooger at debian.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] 142.177.xxx.xxx (aka 24) is at it again
>Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 19:03:37 -0800 (PST)
>
>
>WOAH!
>Jonathan, WHAT are you talking about?  Mav is one of the least contentious
>people around here!  Be nice?  Mav is always nice, except when there are
>times when it's wrong to be nice.  Do you have any idea what you're talking
>about?
>Zoe
>  Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org> wrote:On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at
>02:38:39PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >>Murder of vast numbers of people who believe as you
> >>do becomes justified, when you use control of a
> >>technology that they don't have, to censor their
> >>views on what you are doing, and make it impossible
> >>for them to stop you any other way.
> >
> >I may have been wrong in banning the IP from en.wiki
> >but I don't appreciate thinly veiled threats on my
> >life.
>
>That wasn't a thinly veiled threat on your life. That was a wakeup
>call. Try being nice, and let other people have their day in the sun
>too. By the way, what did he mean by "people who believe as you do"?
>Are you a Republican?
>
> >Can we ban all this users IPs and perhaps call the
> >cops?
>
>That is an extreme, and unwarranted reaction.
>
>Jonathan
>
>--
>Geek House Productions, Ltd.
>
>Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
>QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
>General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998
>
>Phone: 604-435-1205
>Email: djw at reactor-core.org
>Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
>Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5R2W2
> > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature
>
>
>---------------------------------
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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban those who send, and justify, death threats

body:
Anthere wrote:

>euh ?!?!?
>
>Do you really think that threats to a sysop are worse
>than threats to a non-sysop ???
>
>Are they more "precious" or what ?
>
>
Of course they are!

Magnus (sysop)

[sorry, couldn't resist]


from_name: rednblack at alum.mit.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Distasteful names - CrucifiedChrist

in_reply_to:
Your message of "29 Jan 2003 01:10:00 +0100."
             <8elLGTGSpVB@erik_moeller>

body:
There's no reason why existing users can't be grandfathered in, and also
no reason why people can't use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. I don't
think it's so unfair to new users that it should prevent us from using this as
a solution.

At any rate, since this is clearly an unpopular solution, perhaps it's not
worth fighting it out.

Alternatively, perhaps we should make strong recommendations on what kind of
usernames are acceptable, succinctly stated when creating a new login.  (E.g.,
"Please choose a username that you do not think will offend people, or else
members of the community may require you to change it.") This will cut out
those people who create what may be an offensive username without intending to
offend, but then get self-righteous about it when told they must change it, and
thus clearly delineate who is a collosal jerk.

If this, also, seems crazy or ineffective, fine. But we should figure out some
way to highlight who is choosing names because they want to make a statement or
simply piss people off, and who is choosing names just because they don't know
any better or are trying to be funny. And we should figure out some process of
urging them to change it (cf. Votes for Deletion or VANDALISM IN PROGRESS),
rather than thrashing it out here for a week every time.

Saurabh

------
 Living in this country will always be hell until people stop
 demanding that the state imprison their neighbors.

In message <8elLGTGSpVB at erik_moeller>, Erik Moeller said:
>
>> If this is going to become such an issue, might I propose that, to avoid
>> debate in the future, we switch to UseRealNames (e.g., your handle is
>> FirstnameLastname, or FMLastname)?
>
>Not practical. We have made the choice, have thousands of registered
>users, can't switch now. Requiring this from new users only would be
>unfair towards existing ones and create lots of conflicts. Besides, you
>can bet there's plenty of people in our userbase right now who would be
>fiercely opposed to such a policy.
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Why is 'CrucifiedChrist' less offensive than a pun on oral
 sex?

body:
What Brion said.  In the policy we put together, we stated that
offense was to be in the eyes of the offended, not in the inoffensive
motives of the creator of the name.  Certainly there are all kinds of
religious belief and practice, sincerely followed, that may be
offensive to others, even to co-religionists.

Tom Parmenter

|From: Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
|Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 18:19:36 -0600
|
|Brion Vibber wrote:
|
|>Offense is only taken, not given. There is no objective measure of
|>offensiveness that I can perform; actual reactions and quanitifable
|>results as to how the project is affected are much more convincing to
|>me.
|
|This is a good point. There's no way of knowing simply from the
|phrase "Crucified Christ" whether the speaker means it as a joke or
|as some sort of actual statement of religious belief.
|
|Mormons actually regard the crucifix itself as offensive. They argue
|that using it as a religious symbol is tantamount to worshipping the
|weapon used to murder Christ. Obviously, most traditional Christian
|religions don't share this attitude, but it has a certain logic to it.
|
|I remember taking a Japanese Buddhist on a visit to a Catholic church
|once. She walked around the chapel, looking at the depictions of the
|stations of the cross, with Jesus dragging the crucifix and being
|tortured with his crown of thorns and blood dripping down his
|forehead. I don't know if she was "offended," exactly, but she
|certainly found it scary.
|--
|--------------------------------
||  Sheldon Rampton
||  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
||  Author of books including:
||     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
||     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
||     Mad Cow USA
||     Trust Us, We're Experts
|--------------------------------
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|


from_name: Eric Demolli

body:
Call the police !

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 11:38 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] 142.177.xxx.xxx (aka 24) is at it again

> I found this on my meta talk page after I extended a
> ban on an IP that is virtually identical to an IP that
> had already been banned for making a hideous racial
> slur:
>
> >....
> >Murder of vast numbers of people who believe as you
> >do becomes justified, when you use control of a
> >technology that they don't have, to censor their
> >views on what you are doing, and make it impossible
> >for them to stop you any other way.
>
> I may have been wrong in banning the IP from en.wiki
> but I don't appreciate thinly veiled threats on my
> life.
>
> Can we ban all this users IPs and perhaps call the
> cops?
>
> For background on this user see:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Maveric149/archive_8
>
> Direct link to my talk page:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Maveric149
>
> --mav
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Posting problems?

body:
Richard Grevers <dramatic=kGM0oXzJM5p02iOg2JU2CQ at public.gmane.org> wrote
in news:oprjp7ele1k4g8ki at smtp.xtra.co.nz:

> I believe that I am subscribed to three of the Wikipedia Miling lists.
>
> However, the number of times I have had to go through the "confirm
> your address" and then "your post is being moderated" process now
> stands at 7 - all from the same email address as far as I can tell.
> What gives? :-(

Do you use the normal mailing list or the newgroup interfase?
news.gmane.org

You are a list member of wikitech-l whit dramatic AT xtra.co.nz
You are not a list member of Intlwiki-L
I do not administer the other lists
I have not recieved any special error messages fron my lists the last days.

The only thing that came from you was;

31-12-2002 03:01 UTC
As list administrator, your authorization is requested for the
following mailing list posting:

    List:    Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
    From:    newsfeedback at dramatic.co.nz
    Subject: A browser-specific problem
    Reason:  Post by non-member to a members-only list

I approved the posting. Nothing else from you.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why is 'CrucifiedChrist' less offensive than a pun on oral sex?

body:
Brion,
I'm puzzled at your reply, particular about your 'effective opening
argument' comment. The loss of those pictures was a result of the use of a
clearly offensive name, CrucifiedChrist. But that name has already caused
offence to Wikipedia users and contributors.  Yet you seem to be only
bothered by the loss of the pictures, and not by the unambiguous
offensiveness of the user nickname, which with a logic I cannot fathom, you
regard as a 'huge improvement'!!!

People who complained to me said they would not complain publicly because
their views would not be taken seriously. I've been sending messages back
telling people that it is OK to complain, that their views will be taken as
seriously, and they will be shown the same respect as everyone else. Your
continuing inability to see any problem with this nickname makes me think
that maybe they are right; that mocking their beliefs is OK, because
religious believers are perceived as second class citizens in terms of
causing offence. Poor and corny sexual puns are 'of course' offensive. But
mocking someone they regard as the Son of God isn't. Is this the latest
political correctness? As a non religious persion myself, I find your
attitude and complete inability to see the scale of the offence caused
puzzling, to put it at its politest. I thought pluralism is concerned with
showing similar respect to all sides equally. Or are religious
sensitivities, specifically sensitivities towards christians, less important
that other sensitivities, specifically ones to do with oral sex?

Please explain why causing offensive to religious people is a 'huge
improvement' on a pun on oral sex.

JT.

>From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Distasteful names - CrucifiedChrist
>Date: 28 Jan 2003 13:01:37 -0800
>
>On mar, 2003-01-28 at 11:53, james duffy wrote:
> > One of the reasons was that  the person who has ownership
> > of the pictures logged on to Wiki, saw references to CrucifiedChrist and
> > took offence, arguing that if that is the standard of contributions and
> > contributors made to Wiki, Wiki obviously isn't a serious attempt at an
> > encyclopedia and he was withdrawing permission which he up to then was
>on
> > the brink of giving.
>
>That would have made a _much_ more effective opening argument -- thank
>you for following up with details.
>
>Unfortunately, since Wikipedia didn't adopt a 'use your real name or
>post anonymously' policy, the selection of nicks, and the process of
>deciding what is and isn't acceptable, is always going to be arbitrary
>and ex post facto. (Does "Tokerboy" give the professional appearence we
>want to present to potential IP donors? Or even "Maveric149"?)
>
>Cf. http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?UseRealNames on MeatballWiki.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
><< signature.asc >>

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary sysop

body:
May I be a Wiktionary sysop? I just came upon an article [[??????]], which was
created because someone's web browser changed Russian letters to question
marks, and my first impulse was to delete it - but I can't.

phma


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary sysop

body:
Mardon, 2003-01-28 18:52, Pierre Abbat skribis:
> May I be a Wiktionary sysop? I just came upon an article [[??????]], which was
> created because someone's web browser changed Russian letters to question
> marks, and my first impulse was to delete it - but I can't.

Done.

Merkredon, 2003-01-15 16:28, Ray Saintonge skribis:
> Something that I've tried to avoid since coming on board Wikipedia in
> February 2001.  Could I be made a sysop for Wiktionary; I can still do
> without it for Wikipedia.  Since I joined Wiktionary on day-1 I'm
> finding that there is a need to be able to cull some of the experimental
> pages which have built up.

Just noticed this one in my inbox too; done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages for user & talk pages

body:
> Can those we've already created be grandfathered as subpages, or would we
> need to recreate them? Zoe

Yes, they can be re-used. You can shorten the links from e.g. "User:Zoe/
foo" to "/foo" if you want, but you don't have to; the backlink is added
in both cases.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] yay subpages, finally!

body:
> I have just added namespace-specific subpage
> support to Wikipedia.

Thank you so much!  A year ago I kept bugging the
techies to add this until I finally just gave up on
the idea.  However, I think the subpages should only
be used on the User namespace.  If Jimbo disagrees
with this then he should delete his user subpages...

Chuck

=====
You just can't not learn Esperanto!  :-)
----------------------------------------
Just Learn It! - http://www.lernu.net/
My Webpage: http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.com/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

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from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive Names - a Suggested Solution

body:
--- james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Some people have suggested using real names for user
> names. I would oppose
> that as many people would feel uneasy using their
> real names and it might
> lead to some people deciding not to contribute
> anymore.  But there is a
> solution.
>
> ?WHEN SOMEONE SIGNS UP, THEY ARE GREETED WITH THE
> FOLLOWING MESSAGE:?
>
> In using Wikipedia, you are requested to use a User
> ID. In chosing that ID,
> remember, people from many different cultures,
> traditions, faiths and
> countries use Wikipedia, as readers, contributors,
> or both. In an effort to
> avoid causing offence (however inadvertent) to
> people from diverse
> backgrounds you are asked in chosing your user ID to
> follow one simple rule:
>
> 1. No user ID is to be used that has a
> a) sexual
> b) religious
> c) cultural
> d) political
> meaning that could cause offence to other users of,
> and/or contributors to,
> Wikipedia.
>
> Options for User IDs include
> * any set of initials, eg RHK
> * numbers, eg 115, 8724
> * words or a combination of all three, eg,
> Mangus099, RHK115.
> It is up to you. Once you follow the simple rule of
> avoiding terms that
> might cause offence, you have absolute freedom to
> choose whatever
> combination you want.

Though I understand concerns about offensive names,
that whole conversation looks pretty aerial to me.
The very idea of asking people to register under their
real name is pretty bad, and I am sure many would quit
if it had to be so. Me first.
May I mention that this would have sense only if
identities were "checked" ? Social security number
maybe ? Id card ? Blood group ? Education background
next ?

Not only would I quit by myself, but I am actually in
that situation where my real name looks very much like
a slang word, which some of you might think offensive,
and others probably ridiculous. (French speaking only
of course, but though that conversation takes place on
the en.list, I gather it would be extended to the
whole wikipedia, otherwise it would not have sense).

I don't care for my name in real life, but I know what
I would write would "carry" a "sort of" stigmate. And
maybe some people would recommand me to go to change
my name to keep up with the serious image we are
supposed to display. Should I go to the civil office
then ?

As for recommandations to respect people faith,
religion...when picking up an IP, I would just add two
things

1) Offenses are perceived very differently depending
on culture, political stances.... 69 is barely a
number, but might be sexually offending, 1789 carry
political weight, white or black : are they just
colors....the list could be endless

2) If sexual orientations, political stances and
religious faiths could be first "tolerated" on
wikipedia, and editors reporting extremist views
"tolerated" (I am not even daring to say accepted) as
editors as well as the others, and respected as the
others are "requesting" to be themselves, I would be
much happier.
You are just considering a straw in your eye, when
some people are beaten with tree trunks everyday on
wikipedia. This is a matter of concern to me. Not
names.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] yay subpages, finally!

body:
Chuck Smith wrote:

>Thank you so much!  A year ago I kept bugging the
>techies to add this until I finally just gave up on
>the idea.  However, I think the subpages should only
>be used on the User namespace.  If Jimbo disagrees
>with this then he should delete his user subpages...
>
>
Wellm the point was not so much the subpages as the magic "/", which
would make a backlink to "GNU" on the "GNU/Linux" article and the like.

Just don't tell Larry ;-)

Magnus


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

body:
>Hi Taku,
>
>we *know* that the site is slow. And we *know* that it's
not because our
>server is too small. Our problems are database/lock
related, and putting
>stuff on an even bigger server will not help much when
dealing with O(n^x)
>problems. What we need to figure out is:
>
>- When are our tables/rows locked and why (this behavior
has changed
>drastically with the recent update to InnoDB).
>- When are our queries using indices and when are they not,
and why (MySQL
>index behavior can be very hard to predict).
>
>Solving these two problems should make Wikipedia very fast.
If we cannot
>optimize some queries, we need to think about making them
simpler, or
>caching them. (Also note that MySQL now supports
subqueries, which we
>don't use yet.) We are dealing with *particular* queries in
*particular*
>situations that make Wikipedia slow.

Oh, I see. But are you only talking about searching? I don't
think MySQL can be bottleneck of simple displaying pages.
Without simply extending server capacity, is it possible to
sustain the increase of traffic? (Fortunettely or
unfortunettley? the wikipedia seems still to grow.)

>Not practical. Too many queries require access to a single
centralized
>article database, even an index alone won't suffice. Think
of stuff like
>Most wanted, Orphaned pages etc. Besides, it won't make
things any faster
>because our problem is not a too small server.

I am not sure I understand you. Whatever algorithm is too
stupid, the increase of capacity always makes the site fast,
if not . Think of brute-force algorithm. I am not talking
about adding just 2 or 3 more servers but possibly hundereds
of servers. Maybe I am wrong because I am still not sure how
to implement my idea.

Surely we can't have the server that Google or Amazon has.
The strength of wikipedia is its democratic structure. Why
don't we employ it for hosting too?

Maybe my idea is not practical. Then can you tell me how so?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] yay subpages, finally!

body:
> Wellm the point was not so much the subpages as the magic "/", which
> would make a backlink to "GNU" on the "GNU/Linux" article and the like.

It does, in the current implementation (however, if "GNU" does not exist,
it does not add a backlink). This was necessary to "grandfather" existing
subpages, as Zoe put it. The alternative would be to use another magic
character which is currently not allowed in titles, to add an is_subpage
flag, or to use a more complex logic that does not store the parent page
in the title.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] C again :-) for worried Wikipedians

body:
Hello, Pieter.

>Agree, we should think (brainstorm) about distributed
>servers, but this is a very difficult topic (for me at
least).

Yeah, I think so too. But while the wikipedia grows as
encyclopedia, that its system remains same is a problem
surely.

>I've got more weird ideas: I'll make the source-code of my
pure-C-
>wikisoftware available via its' WikiWebInterface ITSELF!
This way,
>I'll never loose my sources! (the recursive trick).

I don't think this is weird, but nothing but wonderful! Such
a idea has already been proposed in wiki community. You may
want to check this out.
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?
WikiAsSourceControlRepository

I believe it would work. At first, Wikipedia seems not to
work, but actually it does, we know that. I am always
dreaming of why don't we use wiki for everything?

Best wishes,
Takuya Murata
takusi at manjiro.net


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wrong 24 (was 142.177.xxx.xxx (aka 24) is at it again)

body:
> It was Axel who first brought
> the '24'/142 connection to my attention so he would
> probably be a better person to explain the connection.

Yes. I dealt quite a bit with 24 back in the day, and I'm quite
convinced that 142.177 is that same person. He has a certain extremely
idiosyncratic cycle of ideas, including:
* everything, even the philosophy of mathematics, is somehow tied to
ecology.
* everything having to do with "ontology", "foundation ontology",
"ontological proof" etc. has a strong attraction
* Euler's identity is held to have some deep significance for the
foundations of mathematics
* He likes to link to "cognitive bias", originially created by 24.
* "Sacred geometry" is a favorite link target as well. That page was
also created by 24.

Maybe the best place to observe all these features is [[folk
mathematics]] and its talk page.

To be precise, I believe [[user:24]] is the same as

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=142.177.93.29

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=142.177.12.44

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=142.227.121.39&days=60&limit=50

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=142.177.104.168&days=30&limit=50

The guy is extremely fast and productive. There's a lot of cleanup to
do.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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body:
Thanks Brion,

I understand your argument more fully now. I was somewhat surprised to find
myself 'acting' as a voice for people offended by the usernick chosen. But I
thought it important to let people know some people were unhappy but felt
uneasy about expressing their views, fearing they would not be taken
seriously. Re Zoe's observation that the person responsible for the
complaint must be very religious, there were a number of people, some
non-religious, some religious, but all felt that the name CrucifiedChrist
was offensive to religious believers and those sensitive to the beliefs of
christians.

Regards,

JT

>From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why is 'CrucifiedChrist' less offensive than a
>punon oral sex?
>Date: 28 Jan 2003 14:08:50 -0800
>
>On mar, 2003-01-28 at 13:51, james duffy wrote:
> > Brion,
> > I'm puzzled at your reply, particular about your 'effective opening
> > argument' comment.
>
>Allow me to compare, using an exaggerated form purely for rhetorical
>effect:
>       "I'm the only person ever to complain about how
>        offensive this is! Ban it now!"
>with
>       "Wikipedia has lost access to a valuable resource
>        because this user name made the project look
>        extremely unprofessional."
>
> >  The loss of those pictures was a result of the use of a
> > clearly offensive name, CrucifiedChrist. But that name has already
>caused
> > offence to Wikipedia users and contributors.  Yet you seem to be only
> > bothered by the loss of the pictures, and not by the unambiguous
> > offensiveness of the user nickname, which with a logic I cannot fathom,
>you
> > regard as a 'huge improvement'!!!
>
>Offense is only taken, not given. There is no objective measure of
>offensiveness that I can perform; actual reactions and quanitifable
>results as to how the project is affected are much more convincing to
>me.
>
> > People who complained to me said they would not complain publicly
>because
> > their views would not be taken seriously. I've been sending messages
>back
> > telling people that it is OK to complain, that their views will be taken
>as
> > seriously, and they will be shown the same respect as everyone else.
>
>Thank you for doing so -- we can't take seriously a complaint that is
>never received!
>
> >  Your
> > continuing inability to see any problem with this nickname makes me
>think
> > that maybe they are right; that mocking their beliefs is OK, because
> > religious believers are perceived as second class citizens in terms of
> > causing offence. Poor and corny sexual puns are 'of course' offensive.
>But
> > mocking someone they regard as the Son of God isn't. Is this the latest
> > political correctness?
>
>You clearly have misunderstood my position. I am offended by neither
>corny sexual puns nor by co-opting of religious terminology, but I
>consider both to be in the category of things that make the project look
>bad, along with silly usernames in general. If they make the project
>look bad enough, or they provoke enough trouble within the ranks, that
>it is detrimental to the project, I'm all in favor of kicking them out
>and letting us all get back to work.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
><< signature.asc >>

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Such things are great on sites where they belong.  I curse like a
>sailor, in the proper context.  I'm not stranger to offensive humor,
>either.  Get me on a roll, and I could have the Pope laughing at
>pregnant Nun jokes.
>
I'll have to remember that if we ever meet for a beer.. or two .. or
three... :-)

Eclecticology


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
On Wed, 2003-01-29 at 00:28, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Bonjour!
>
> The bars drown with ---- are good to separate completely different part of a
> text, but we may enjoy to use also small bars (for exemple 100 pixel width)
> to separate paragraph.
>
> What do you think about ----X---- where X is a width in pixel or the screen
> width percentage.
>
> Wikipedia : ----100----
> HTML :

>
> Wikipedia : ----50%----
> HTML :

>
> Can you please add this feature ?
> Where is the better place to speak about Wikipedia syntax ?

It's an interesting idea, but misguided in terms of interface principles
(which isn't your fault, since it's been a problem with HTML since the
introduction of Mosaic).

If you desire to format articles in a particular style, that should be
done with stylesheets, not by explicitly declaring visual elements.

In other words, we should stylistic standards about using horizontal
rules in Wikipedia articles first, then worry about implementation.

In general, for many (hopefully self-evident) reasons, Wikipedia style
tends to the minimalistic.


body:
On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 22:56, james duffy wrote:
<"how to pick a politically correct user name" instructions snipped>
> Any observations?
>
At the risk of being offensive, this is getting even more ridiculous.

My username makes reference to a Roman general. This might be offensive
to people who think that I'm advocating militaristic imperialism, or
that I'm critiquing the Roman empire.

Moreover, people have believed that my name is somehow vulgar ("a pun on
dictator").

Should we ban everyone from using their real names, too? What if
someone's first name is Dick? Or Jesus? Or Moses? If their last name is
Johnson? Or Matsushitsa? Or Fokker?

Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would
be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on
a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.

Thus instead of seeing entries by CrucifiedChrist you'd see entries by
5406 or whatever.

If some number of people do this, then (and only then) would we need to
consider taking some more serious action (like an automatic warning
requesting a change of username; if more people continue to "shun" that
user, the username change might be automatic. however, i dislike this
idea because it could lead to some ugly tyranny of the majority
situations).

Just my two cents.

--tc


body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 03:44:33PM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I concur, with the caveat that in all but a few shocking cases that
>> only a twisted mind such as mine could think up anyway, ha ha, I don't
>> think that someone coming in with an offensive nickname is enough to
>> ban the *person*, particularly on a first offense.  We can just tell
>> them that they need to pick a more professional handle.
>
>
> I am in favor of renaming them summarily.  Or at least changing their
> "nickname" that shows up in recent changes, while leaving the actual
> login name itself alone.

I would at least notify a newbie that some Wikipedians consider the name
to be offensive, and give him a day or two to choose something more
suitable.  I'm not personally offended by these names, but I do find
them infantile.  I would also advise the offender that even the most
tolerant Wikipedians may consider that person's contributions
unreliable, and subject to closer scrutiny.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

body:
Hi Taku,

we *know* that the site is slow. And we *know* that it's not because our
server is too small. Our problems are database/lock related, and putting
stuff on an even bigger server will not help much when dealing with O(n^x)
problems. What we need to figure out is:

- When are our tables/rows locked and why (this behavior has changed
drastically with the recent update to InnoDB).
- When are our queries using indices and when are they not, and why (MySQL
index behavior can be very hard to predict).

Solving these two problems should make Wikipedia very fast. If we cannot
optimize some queries, we need to think about making them simpler, or
caching them. (Also note that MySQL now supports subqueries, which we
don't use yet.) We are dealing with *particular* queries in *particular*
situations that make Wikipedia slow.

In other words, if I had the option to invest $10k in a new server or in a
experienced database engineer, I'd pick the latter.

> Now then, here is my proposal. Can we distribute database
> and related stuff?

Not practical. Too many queries require access to a single centralized
article database, even an index alone won't suffice. Think of stuff like
Most wanted, Orphaned pages etc. Besides, it won't make things any faster
because our problem is not a too small server.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "You've followed a link to a page that doesn't exist yet"

body:
> If I attempt to edit a page which DOES exist, "You've followed a link to a
> page that doesn't exist yet ..." is nonetheless being displayed at the top
> of the page.

Oops, that's what you get for doing 55 things at the same time. Fixed in
CVS; Brion, please update.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> If this is going to become such an issue, might I propose that, to avoid
> debate in the future, we switch to UseRealNames (e.g., your handle is
> FirstnameLastname, or FMLastname)?

Not practical. We have made the choice, have thousands of registered
users, can't switch now. Requiring this from new users only would be
unfair towards existing ones and create lots of conflicts. Besides, you
can bet there's plenty of people in our userbase right now who would be
fiercely opposed to such a policy.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine

body:
Our search engine desperately needs retooling. If there's no objection
from those in the know, I'd like to migrate us to MySQL 4. The fulltext
search in 4 has boolean capabilities built right in, meaning we could
remove our hackish and buggy parser, and wouldn't need to stack so many
MATCHes together in a query when some poor sap types in "chemical
composition of the earth's atmosphere oxygen nitrogen" or something.

(Our search queries are also frequently *dog slow*. This is exacerbated
because, being a myisam table, it locks when someone tries to write it
and another read is pending. I don't _think_ this lock virulently
spreads to other tables joined with it, but it's annoying anyway.)

Other things to think about:

* Stopwords. Can we just get rid of the damn stopwords and search
anything?

* "Title results" vs "Text results" - this two-prong approach is, I
think, rather confusing. We could have a single search index field with
the title text weighted more heavily (by repetition?), and just give a
single set of results.

* Text extracts: these show the raw wikicode, and often include language
links, HTML code, etc. Yuck! If we can strip these, that might be good.

* Character entities: should be folded to their raw equivalents in the
search index, so searching a page containing "Schr?dinger" and one
containing "Schrödinger" gives identical results.

* 'Power search' is perhaps a little confusing, and there's currently no
way to get to it short of doing two searches.

* 'Search' and 'go' buttons are not clearly demarcated; several people
have noted confusion.  Better labelling or better arrangement is needed.

* Redirects. We generally want to filter out redirects that seem
duplicative of other things already listed, but *must* show them for
alternate names. Clearer labeling of redirects would help as well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] yay subpages, finally!

body:
> Heh, well, I'm pretty sure Eric isn't talking about enabling this for
> the articles, which I REALLY would think is a bad idea, and I'd have to
> raise more hell about it for a long time.

> He's only talking about the User pages and the Talk pages, right?

That's correct, however, you will still get a backlink to

[[Talk:GNU]]

on

[[Talk:GNU/Linux]].

Without breaking compatibility with existing subpages, the software can't
know whether Talk:GNU/Linux is a subpage of Talk:GNU or a separate Talk
page.

This is a very rare case, though; I can't think of any other one. If you
absoutely want to avoid that single backlink, disable subpages for Talk
pages (we can still allow them for User talk pages); however, they are
very handy for archiving stuff.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Pieter Suurmond

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
>
> I hardly write e-mails and even post to the mailing-list, so
> if I did something wrong, just let me know. Also, I am well
> known for terrible speeling  and non-English grammer, please
> excuse them too.
>
> I have some proposal to the wikipedia system.
>
> I don't have any worry about the encyclopedical side of
> wikipedia. Both quality and coverage have been improving
> constantly. It is just fine. But recently I started to worry
> about technological side or hosting stuff.
>
> While contents of wikipedia are open-conent and it is nice,
> hosting server and  database are not. As we all know the
> current server is inadequate to support the huge traffic and
> it seems going to be worse and worse.
>
> Now then, here is my proposal. Can we distribute database
> and related stuff? Each mimi-wikipedia contains certain
> articles and provide both displaying and editing service.
>  Search querys are sent to all of mimi-wikipedian then put
> the results together in the main server and return it.
>
> The scale of mimi-wikipedia may vary, say 100 artcles to
> possibly 10,000. I think there are many people who are
> willing to provide diskspaces, including me.
>
> The problem is set up. Surely the current dependency hell
> makes hard to host mimi-wikipedia, particularly on windows-
> based servers.
>
> Another problem is what if some mimi-wikipedian is down? For
> financially, lost of personal interest, whatever reason. My
> solution is duplication.
>
> Also this duplication scheme makes wikipedia more reliable
> and easier to extend the capacity in terms of hosting.
>
> I don't know if this kind of system is fesible. I don't see
> such a site. But if we agree the idea is good, why don't we
> try it?
>
> I agree with the guy who suggested pure wikipedia software
> written in C (I am sorry I can't remember his name).

That's me!!! :-) I have the same worries.
It is a shame that "WikicWeb" lost its' C sourcecode,
read: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikicWeb

Possibility to download a (weekly or so) snapshot, or a
tarball containing ALL WikipediaNL content (-Idols)  would
also be nice. :-)

Agree, we should think (brainstorm) about distributed
servers, but this is a very difficult topic (for me at least).

I think I _can_ write a proper and reliable WikiServer in
pure C (only needing a proper POSIX OS). I think it can
only be done if Wiki-syntax is defined very strictly,
expanding the software will be difficult / dangerous in C.

I agree C sure has some major drawbacks. (As wiki's evolve,
software might need to adapt with it: On the other hand,
people know the evolution of Wiki now: we should come to
an Open Standard for Wikipedia-syntax (ban html and so, or
choose for full HTML4.01 and ban Wiki-syntax). If all these
problems can be solved (needs consensus) a very FAST server
in pure C can be set up: only dependancies will be:
 1: Operating system (Preferably some sort of Linux or other Unix).
 2: C Compiler (Preferably GCC).
 3: A physical machine attached to the internet.

 4?: Maybe some sort of progressive compression algorithm
     (as an alternative for diff maybe?)

I've got more weird ideas: I'll make the source-code of my pure-C-
wikisoftware available via its' WikiWebInterface ITSELF! This way,
I'll never loose my sources! (the recursive trick).
Now Wikipedia depends on Sourceforge. This is not necessary:
Wikipedia could own their own sources on Wikipedia.org itself.

I am searching for proper C-alternatives for Wikipedia.
Preferably with with Wikipedia-functionality.
If I cannot find it, I will develop my own Wiki in pure C.
I only need a very strict definition of Wikisyntax (and semantics).

	One can do without mySQL and Apache and do it ALL
	in ONE programming language. If we do it all in C,
	we only need a proper compiler: GNU's GCC and an OS nothing else!

Thanks for reading :-)
(C-madman) Pieter Suurmond

> Also, if there was some similar proposal before, excuse me.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive names - a simple suggestion

in_reply_to: <200301290832.h0T8WS513002@www.wikipedia.org>; from list@redhill.net.au on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 07:26:41PM +1100

body:
Red Hill Technology wrote:
> Who should the "Name Police" be?

Unless there's a consensus that I'm not doing a good job of it, or
grave concerns that I might abuse the power, or things along those
lines, or unless I get really tired of doing it, I can continue to be
the name police myself.

As I've said, and partly as a result of discussions with Erik, I think
that in the future, we will be slowly and cautiously migrating to more
formalized decision methods, including voting, committees, and things
of that nature, but there are some big downsides to all that and we
shouldn't do it prematurely.

I certainly agree with the rest of your analysis.  By and large, this
is not a very difficult issue.

Basically, the only complaint that I have heard about not allowing
certain names is that it may "censor" people's views.  I think that is
a pretty obviously specious objection.  Certainly, if anyone comes to
me with that kind of argument in a specific case, I will gladly give
them a web page on one of my servers, where they can put forward their
previously "censored" views.

For example, C*mguzzler might be given a page on jimmywales.com, my
personal site, where he can put forward the important and urgent
public policy and ethical implications of not just drinking it, but
guzzling it.

I'm being sarcastic (though I'm dead serious), because I think it's
pretty clear that the only real agenda people like that have is to act
like jackasses.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <1043819762.5031.92.camel@mayon.mit.edu>; from cunctator@kband.com on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:56:02AM -0500

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> My username makes reference to a Roman general. This might be offensive
> to people who think that I'm advocating militaristic imperialism, or
> that I'm critiquing the Roman empire.
>
> Moreover, people have believed that my name is somehow vulgar ("a pun on
> dictator").

The standard is not that a name might conceivably be offensive to
*someone* with some fabricated grievance.  My own nickname, "Jimbo"
might be perceived by some as a slight against the American south.
But clearly, it is not, since I'm from Alabama and it's actually a
real nickname in the South.

The idea that because there are borderline or difficult cases, we
can't do anything about extreme and obvious cases like "Cumguzzler" or
"CrucifiedChrist" is not persuasive to me.

In the event of borderline cases, we will accomodate as best we can,
making a specific judgment in individual cases as necessary.

> Should we ban everyone from using their real names, too? What if
> someone's first name is Dick? Or Jesus? Or Moses? If their last name is
> Johnson? Or Matsushitsa? Or Fokker?

An absolute defense to offense is that the name is, in fact, someone's
real name.

There used to be a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville
named, I kid you not, "Fat Ho".  Chinese.  Engineering prof.  Anyhow, if
he shows up on wikipedia, he can use that name.  No one else can.

> Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would
> be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on
> a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.

This is convoluted.  Imagine: parents read about wikipedia in the newspaper
and come to check it out, with an eye toward recommending it to their
children as a resource.  They click on recent changes and see 'cumguzzler'
and 'throbbing monster cock' and 'pedophilejesusdotcom' (I made that one
up, pretty good, huh?).

Or, imagine: a Nobel Prize winner reads about Wikipedia in the
newspaper and thinks, oooh, if this is a serious project, I'd like to
chip in and work on it, and ask all my Nobel Prize pals to chip in,
too.  What a great resource.  And again, they see our merry band of
jerks and decide to pass.

To respond to these cases by saying "Oh, but if Milton Friedman doesn't
like those names, he can go into his user preferences and block them on a
case by case basis, or choose to view numbers instead" is pretty weak,
I think.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

in_reply_to: <1043836823.1286.19.camel@chesoo.fokus.gmd.de>; from e.moeller@fokus.gmd.de on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 11:40:23AM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Trust me, wiki is *very* hard to decentralize. It's a nice idea, but it
> will take years until it happens. You need an architecture like Freenet
> ( http://freenetproject.org ), only scalable (which Freenet is not),
> plus SQL-like query support.

I think Erik is exactly right on this.


from_name: james duffy

body:
Some people have suggested using real names for user names. I would oppose
that as many people would feel uneasy using their real names and it might
lead to some people deciding not to contribute anymore.  But there is a
solution.

?WHEN SOMEONE SIGNS UP, THEY ARE GREETED WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:?

In using Wikipedia, you are requested to use a User ID. In chosing that ID,
remember, people from many different cultures, traditions, faiths and
countries use Wikipedia, as readers, contributors, or both. In an effort to
avoid causing offence (however inadvertent) to people from diverse
backgrounds you are asked in chosing your user ID to follow one simple rule:

1. No user ID is to be used that has a
a) sexual
b) religious
c) cultural
d) political
meaning that could cause offence to other users of, and/or contributors to,
Wikipedia.

Options for User IDs include
* any set of initials, eg RHK
* numbers, eg 115, 8724
* words or a combination of all three, eg, Mangus099, RHK115.
It is up to you. Once you follow the simple rule of avoiding terms that
might cause offence, you have absolute freedom to choose whatever
combination you want.

2. If however, perhaps inadvertently, you choose a User ID that does cause
offence, Wiki will notify you and ask you to change it to a different
option.

3. Remember, in those circumstances, you 'have' to change, within 48 hours.
Members who persist in using terms that could be offensive to others will be
banned from Wikipedia and all contributions made by them WILL BE REVERTED,
irrespective of content or quality.

(The last line is to act as a double deterent. Some may think that if banned
they can simply sign on as a different user and continue on where they left
off. However the threat that all their hard work would automatically,
irrespective of contribution or quality, be undone, may well make users who
want to be on Wikipedia think twice before endangering their work by using a
potentially offensive name.)

Any observations?

JT

>From: Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>CC: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is 'CrucifiedChrist' less offensive than a
>pun on oral sex?
>Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 20:43:12 -0500
>
>What Brion said.  In the policy we put together, we stated that
>offense was to be in the eyes of the offended, not in the inoffensive
>motives of the creator of the name.  Certainly there are all kinds of
>religious belief and practice, sincerely followed, that may be
>offensive to others, even to co-religionists.
>
>Tom Parmenter
>
>|From: Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
>|Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 18:19:36 -0600
>|
>|Brion Vibber wrote:
>|
>|>Offense is only taken, not given. There is no objective measure of
>|>offensiveness that I can perform; actual reactions and quanitifable
>|>results as to how the project is affected are much more convincing to
>|>me.
>|
>|This is a good point. There's no way of knowing simply from the
>|phrase "Crucified Christ" whether the speaker means it as a joke or
>|as some sort of actual statement of religious belief.
>|
>|Mormons actually regard the crucifix itself as offensive. They argue
>|that using it as a religious symbol is tantamount to worshipping the
>|weapon used to murder Christ. Obviously, most traditional Christian
>|religions don't share this attitude, but it has a certain logic to it.
>|
>|I remember taking a Japanese Buddhist on a visit to a Catholic church
>|once. She walked around the chapel, looking at the depictions of the
>|stations of the cross, with Jesus dragging the crucifix and being
>|tortured with his crown of thorns and blood dripping down his
>|forehead. I don't know if she was "offended," exactly, but she
>|certainly found it scary.
>|--
>|--------------------------------
>||  Sheldon Rampton
>||  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
>||  Author of books including:
>||     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
>||     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
>||     Mad Cow USA
>||     Trust Us, We're Experts
>|--------------------------------
>|_______________________________________________
>|WikiEN-l mailing list
>|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>|
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

in_reply_to: <20030129120732.GK30956@mrtall.compsoc.man.ac.uk>; from jason@jasonandali.org.uk on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:07:32PM +0000

body:
Jason Williams wrote:
> Did we consider yet a new scratch: namespace for
> temporary or working pages?

What's the purpose?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

in_reply_to: <20030129123955.GM30956@mrtall.compsoc.man.ac.uk>; from jason@jasonandali.org.uk on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:39:56PM +0000

body:
Jason Williams wrote:
> It'd be a neater solution to user subpages, IMO.
> [[scratch:Khendon's things to do]].

Hmm...  The nice thing about the user namespace is that it is clear
that whatever's there is stuff put there by a single user.  The scratch
namespace would be open to all manner of nonsense from anyone, right?

> Also, [[scratch:United Kingdom]] rather than [[United Kingdom/Temp]].

Why should either of these exist?

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <BA5D4E11.65DC%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 09:23:29AM -0500

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people
> commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting
> mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't
> have.
>
> I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain
> it clearly.

O.k., it makes more sense now.  I thought that the voting part was a
concession you were making, rather than a central part of the
proposal.

Stepping back from this particular issue, I'm a bit surprised here
that you seem to favor some kind of voting or formalization.  I would
have intuitively guessed that you'd be opposed.  I am guessing that
you _do_ think that there are dangers to voting mechanisms,
particularly if they can be abused to carry out agendas for which they
were not originally designed.

In this case, any formal process would have to be somehow insulated
from being a mechanism for a determined group to hassle people of a
different political viewpoint, with an eye toward politicizing some
entry or set of entries.  At least some simple rules are dangerous in
that regard.

For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have
to change it".  Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist?
Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?

I'm not saying that all formalization leads to bad outcomes!  I'm just
saying that one benefit of an informal approach is that it can be
flexible and is harder to abuse.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
Bonjour Guillaume!

> What do you think about ----X---- where X is a width in pixel or the
screen
> width percentage.

Could you please give an example in which article you need this feature?

I'm not all against adding new wiki tags, but only if we really need
them.
"Keep it simple!" is our motto :-)

(And the lag of article design features leads to our nice and unique
Wikipedia corporate design. Someone in the heise.de article discussion
said our site wouldn't be attractive enough for vandals - he meant it
literally and as a compliment.)

Kurt


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] "View user page" edit links on anon talk pages

body:
Why in the world are we now giving anon users the option to create user pages?
Talk pages are a good idea but please don't display an edit link to "View
user page" on anon talk pages. We don't want to give them too much since that
will only result in fewer of them actually signing up for and using a user
account (which is still something we want to encourage, no?).

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #989 - 1 msg

body:
> Interesting fact:  Google returns more
> results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"

What about for Catalan, Catal?, Catal?n, and Catalana put together?


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Posting problems?

body:
I believe that I am subscribed to three of the Wikipedia Miling lists.

However, the number of times I have had to go through the "confirm your
address" and then "your post is being moderated" process now stands at 7 -
all from the same email address as far as I can tell. What gives? :-(

--
Richard Grevers


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
>Far simpler just to say that lewdness, blasphemy, and slurs of all
types
are unwelcome here.

Yeah, and so is name-calling, you poo-poo-headed geek! ;-)

Ed Poor (my real name)

P.S. "The exception proves the rule", heh, heh.


body:
On 1/29/03 6:23 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:

>> Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would
>> be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on
>> a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.
>
> This is convoluted.  Imagine: parents read about wikipedia in the newspaper
> and come to check it out, with an eye toward recommending it to their
> children as a resource.  They click on recent changes and see 'cumguzzler'
> and 'throbbing monster cock' and 'pedophilejesusdotcom' (I made that one
> up, pretty good, huh?).
>
> Or, imagine: a Nobel Prize winner reads about Wikipedia in the
> newspaper and thinks, oooh, if this is a serious project, I'd like to
> chip in and work on it, and ask all my Nobel Prize pals to chip in,
> too.  What a great resource.  And again, they see our merry band of
> jerks and decide to pass.
>
> To respond to these cases by saying "Oh, but if Milton Friedman doesn't
> like those names, he can go into his user preferences and block them on a
> case by case basis, or choose to view numbers instead" is pretty weak,
> I think.

You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people
commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting
mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't
have.

I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain
it clearly.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Publicmindedness: was Offensive Names - a Suggested Solution

body:
On a more serious note, let me underscore the public-mindedness of Jimbo's approach. As always, he is considering more than just the current contributor base, but also the full population of potential users and contributors.

We avoid "obscene" usernames for a reason: not because Wikipedia is against obscenity , but rather because the feelings of contributors, present and potential -- as well as readers those of readers -- are important to the project.

Although it is a sacrifice for some of us (e.g., I'd rather be known as "MoonIsTheSon" :-) we endure a bit of self-denial for the sake of others.

"Uncle Ed" (aka Ed Poor, which is actually my real name)


body:
On 1/29/03 9:23 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>> You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people
>> commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting
>> mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't
>> have.
>>
>> I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain
>> it clearly.
>
> O.k., it makes more sense now.  I thought that the voting part was a
> concession you were making, rather than a central part of the
> proposal.
>
> Stepping back from this particular issue, I'm a bit surprised here
> that you seem to favor some kind of voting or formalization.  I would
> have intuitively guessed that you'd be opposed.  I am guessing that
> you _do_ think that there are dangers to voting mechanisms,
> particularly if they can be abused to carry out agendas for which they
> were not originally designed.

I believe in "vote with your feet" mechanisms, rather than "go to the polls
to select from a ticket" mechanisms. Vote with your feet mechanisms allow
for everyone to be individually satisfied until a critical mass

> In this case, any formal process would have to be somehow insulated
> from being a mechanism for a determined group to hassle people of a
> different political viewpoint, with an eye toward politicizing some
> entry or set of entries.  At least some simple rules are dangerous in
> that regard.

Yes.

> For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have
> to change it".  Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist?
> Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?

I think the number of people finding a name offensive to instigate an
automatic change would have to be considerably higher. Also, my mechanism
would trigger a warning first, which would allow that user time to make his
case etc.

> I'm not saying that all formalization leads to bad outcomes!  I'm just
> saying that one benefit of an informal approach is that it can be
> flexible and is harder to abuse.

Well, open to abuse in very different ways. However, if we've got you as
benevolent dictator on this issue, then we can take advantage of that:
instead of there being some automatic cut-off, there would just be a page
listing the offensive names and their ranking (preferably viewable only by
you) that you could act upon using your judgment.


body:
James Duffy wrote:

> Any observations?

Yes. In spite of my warnings, what I was afraid of is increasingly
happening: the "no offensive usernames" policy is used for extensive discussions about
"offensiveness", the creation of a "name police", long warning messages
about all kinds of "lewdness and blasphemy", and so forth.

This whole debate should have ended 10 messages ago. Either appoint a single
benevolent dictator who just says "Yes/No" to usernames without much
discussion, or use voting. This is the perfect example where voting makes sense to
reach a quick conclusion.

Regards,

Erik

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
It is worse now than it was during the Slashdotting especially with Konqueror.
Sometimes all I get for hours are timeouts.

Does this have anything to do with the new table structures Brion installed a
few days ago? Everything was working fine before then.

--mav


subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

body:
Hello, everyone

>Rendering a Wikipedia article requires, for example, to
look up all the
>links contained in it and determine if the pages exist or
not.

What else do we need to render wiki-marked up text? Aside
from images, I don't see any other parts that require access
to the main index.

>Actually, we had a *decrease* in traffic in the last month
due to the
>Google hiccups.

I know this.

We should be able to cope with much higher traffic if we
>optimize our queries. Note that pure bandwidth is not a
problem; the
>database tarball downloads are very fast. Ask Brion for the
server specs
>and be impressed.

Ok, so the problem is cpu usage or database optimization
stuff. I think you are right. If the database and queries to
it is too complex, decentralizing hardly improve the
performance.

By the way, notice I am not talking about only the
performance but also scalability and extenability. What
about such a case?

>2) You cite Google as an example of a huge centralized
database

No, I cited it as an of 'decentralized' database.

>Trust me, wiki is *very* hard to decentralize. It's a nice
idea, but it
>will take years until it happens. You need an architecture
like Freenet
>( http://freenetproject.org ), only scalable (which Freenet
is not),
>plus SQL-like query support.

While it is nice, it seemed for me only solution eventually.
I think finally see the gap of understanding. I was talking
about years-long project. I was talking about the time
wikipedia reaches the next milestone 1,000,000 (million-
pedia? haha). It seemed that eventually we have to go to the
same path that big sites like google or amazon went. As you
and I know, Google is heavily decentralized and it is one of
its strength. I bet you know about load balancers (I know
almost nothing about it thought). In my knowledge, most of
huge sites decentraize their site to mimi servers like
Google. We, of course, don't have finance to sustain such a
huge decentralized data-center. But we have decent
democratic community. The strehgth of us is that community.

As I wikipediaholic (ach!), I am so worried about the future
of wikipedia in terms of the server. We need definitely
better solution (if not necessary my decentralized server
idea). Possible solution includes the proposal Pieter's
published scripts or better web-site for wikipedia
developers. (It seemed quite a few people who are actually
coding for wikipedia, compared with the scale of wikipedians
writing articles)

>wiki is *very* hard to decentralize

I knew this. But can we figure out about how in here? I am
not saying you do what I told. I can cooporate of course,
tons of skilled programmers can do too I guess.

If you think this debate is totally wasting time (I mean if
I, who knows little, am annoying this mailing list), let me
know then I quit but if not, please give me a comment.

Okay, how about this? It seems to me that one of core
problems is rendering requires queries about whether the
page exists or not. I remember the post saying the rendering
of a page containg many internal links is one of bottleneck
(I suppose it is still true).

First, each mimi-wikipedia has a database about if the page
exists or not and subscribes the list of newly-made pages.
Also, when it is launched, it downloads the complete list of
new pages. Because now that each mimi knows which page
exists or not regardless its mimi-database, it is possible
to render the page without querying the main database.

For disclamiler, probably I am wrong. But if you can, can
you tell me why and how so?

Anyway, I understand wikipedia still can be optimized much
(that I didn't know in the first time I posted my proposal)
Sure, if we can optimize the database and it gains the huge
increase in performance hopefully, we should head for there
of course. The priority should be optimization of the
database. I agree.

Anyhow, I approciate your detailed explanation about the
problem we face now to me who knows really little.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Posting problems?

body:
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 21:08:23 +0000 (UTC), Giskart
<giskart=Qm5IaAUhVgjh8EpZiFPGsQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Richard Grevers
> <dramatic=kGM0oXzJM5p02iOg2JU2CQ=XMD5yJDbdMReXY1tMh2IBg at public.gmane.org>
> wrote
> in news:oprjp7ele1k4g8ki=BO1BnLnDMYpUA9E4jmGRnQ at public.gmane.org:
>
>> I believe that I am subscribed to three of the Wikipedia Miling lists.
>>
>> However, the number of times I have had to go through the "confirm
>> your address" and then "your post is being moderated" process now
>> stands at 7 - all from the same email address as far as I can tell.
>> What gives? :-(
>
>
> Do you use the normal mailing list or the newgroup interfase?
> news.gmane.org
That's highly debatable - I am using Opera's new M2 client, and I
subscribed to the newsgroups when I set it up, but Opera automatically
recognised that the posts contained mailing list headers and created
mailing list access-points for them as well. I tend to read there because
they are slightly better behaved threading-wise (don't show my sent
messages twice).
The moderated post last night was actually to Wikipedia-En, but I thought
this was the more appropriate List to ask a list meta question.
--
Richard Grevers


body:
>Why in the world are we now giving anon users the option to
create user pages?

Also, I was wondering where such a decision was made. The
main wikipedia mailing-list? The decision process should be
more clear and more democratic.

Best wishes,
Takuya Murata


in_reply_to: <200301291638.EDX07478@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:39:03AM -0600

body:
Most policy decisions should be made on wikipedia-l.  This should
be more clear, sure.  But it's pretty 'democratic' already, and doing
it on the wiki itself might not help.

Takuya Murata wrote:

> >Why in the world are we now giving anon users the option to
> create user pages?
>
> Also, I was wondering where such a decision was made. The
> main wikipedia mailing-list? The decision process should be
> more clear and more democratic.
>
> Best wishes,
> Takuya Murata
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
The irony is: on a Christian discussion website or newsgroup, "CrucifiedChrist" wouldn't be considered an offensive username. Rather, it would be a sign that the user was a devoted Christian who closely identified with his Savior.

It reminds me of Saint Paul, who wrote that he would discuss nothing other than "Christ, and him crucified". (1 Corinthians 2:2). See also discussion at http://www.piney.com/1Cor2JFBGiftHS.html or do a Google search for "Christ and Him Crucified" (did you know there's a Christ and Him Crucified Webring?)

Ed Poor  -> thinking of changing my username to "BlessedAreThePoorInSpirit" (Matt. 5:3)


subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> It is worse now than it was during the Slashdotting especially with Konqueror.
> Sometimes all I get for hours are timeouts.
>
> Does this have anything to do with the new table structures Brion installed a
> few days ago? Everything was working fine before then.

"Everything was working fine before then"? You have a short memory, my
friend. :)

As I've said before, it's going to take some time to get everything
tweaked just right.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
On Mit, 2003-01-29 at 06:28, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Bonjour!
>
> The bars drown with ---- are good to separate completely different part of a
> text, but we may enjoy to use also small bars (for exemple 100 pixel width)
> to separate paragraph.

Sorry, but that's a bad idea. One rule of good design is only to use
design elements - like fonts, italics etc. - when necessary. Adding more
formatting "fluff" will make some people use it excessively, just like
the smiley-pictures on messageboards or colors in email clients. This
will make Wikipedia more confusing and chaotic. It's bad enough with the
normal <hr>, its use should be limited as much as possible.

Regards,

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

body:
On Mit, 2003-01-29 at 06:05, Takuya Murata wrote:

> Oh, I see. But are you only talking about searching? I don't
> think MySQL can be bottleneck of simple displaying pages.

Displaying a Wikipedia page is far from simple. The pages are stored in
the table as wikitext, not as HTML, and are rendered dynamically.
Rendering a Wikipedia article requires, for example, to look up all the
links contained in it and determine if the pages exist or not.

> Without simply extending server capacity, is it possible to
> sustain the increase of traffic?

Actually, we had a *decrease* in traffic in the last month due to the
Google hiccups. We should be able to cope with much higher traffic if we
optimize our queries. Note that pure bandwidth is not a problem; the
database tarball downloads are very fast. Ask Brion for the server specs
and be impressed.

> I am not sure I understand you. Whatever algorithm is too
> stupid, the increase of capacity always makes the site fast,

1) If the algorithm doesn't scale linearly, expanding your server
linearly will gain you almost nothing. If an increase in edits by a
factor 10 will lead to a 100 decrease in performace, you need to stop
buying hardware and look at what you're doing wrong. Of course, if you
keep optimizing and you don't gain anything, you need to think about
buying hardware, but this is not the case here.

2) You cite Google as an example of a huge centralized database, which
is untrue. Google is actually an example of a highly distributed
database, using >10,000 Linux servers. When the index is updated, it
takes a while for the index updates to populate to all those servers,
even though they're essentially in the same building and using high
bandwidth connections. The "Google dance":
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

With a distributed architecture that is actually hosted in different
locations with different bandwidth, and with updates not coming from the
inside but from the outside *all the time*, in addition to our highly
complex queries, this kind of sync operations would be virtually
impossible to do properly, unless you move much stuff to a central
server, in which case you gain very little by distributing.

Trust me, wiki is *very* hard to decentralize. It's a nice idea, but it
will take years until it happens. You need an architecture like Freenet
( http://freenetproject.org ), only scalable (which Freenet is not),
plus SQL-like query support.

Regards,

Erik

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


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:58:41PM +0100, Chuck Smith wrote:
> namespace."  I'm also firmly against the use of
> subpages in the Talk namespace and I'm not thrilled
> about having them in the Wikipedia namespace, but I
> don't like how many user pages just get so big!

Did we consider yet a new scratch: namespace for
temporary or working pages?

--
"I urge you all to go berserk. This is not a time for calm reflection
and a measured reaction. Instead you should be running round like
ostriches who've had too much black coffee." -- Hoggart paraphrases Tories
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,884358,00.html

jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine

body:
On Mit, 2003-01-29 at 10:19, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Our search engine desperately needs retooling. If there's no objection
> from those in the know, I'd like to migrate us to MySQL 4. The fulltext
> search in 4 has boolean capabilities built right in, meaning we could
> remove our hackish and buggy parser, and wouldn't need to stack so many
> MATCHes together in a query when some poor sap types in "chemical
> composition of the earth's atmosphere oxygen nitrogen" or something.

As a tempfix, we could match against 'phrase' for any phrase that
doesn't contain OR or NOT, no?

> (Our search queries are also frequently *dog slow*. This is exacerbated
> because, being a myisam table, it locks when someone tries to write it
> and another read is pending. I don't _think_ this lock virulently
> spreads to other tables joined with it, but it's annoying anyway.)

If Jimbo has some money to spend, he should give it to InnoDB and ask
them to implement the damn FULLTEXT index:
http://www.innodb.com/todo.html

Failing that, we might think about delaying index updates. Ugly, though.
Also, split up the join as we discussed. If we're really freaky, we
could move the searchindex to a separate PostgreSQL database, perhaps as
part of the phase IV (or was it V?) transition.

> * Stopwords. Can we just get rid of the damn stopwords and search
> anything?

Absolutely in favor!

> * "Title results" vs "Text results" - this two-prong approach is, I
> think, rather confusing. We could have a single search index field with
> the title text weighted more heavily (by repetition?), and just give a
> single set of results.

Not sure, I always liked the distinction. Has anyone complained about
this?

> * Text extracts: these show the raw wikicode, and often include language
> links, HTML code, etc. Yuck! If we can strip these, that might be good.

Yes!

> * Character entities: should be folded to their raw equivalents in the
> search index, so searching a page containing "Schr?dinger" and one
> containing "Schrödinger" gives identical results.

Right.

> * 'Power search' is perhaps a little confusing, and there's currently no
> way to get to it short of doing two searches.
>
> * 'Search' and 'go' buttons are not clearly demarcated; several people
> have noted confusion.  Better labelling or better arrangement is needed.

I'm afraid that in the limited space we have, we can't really do much
better. "Go" is fairly obvious when you use it, and I can't think of a
better label. With the new matching (namespace handling could be
improved), it's really darn useful.

We might want to add a small "Advanced search" link below, in another
column of the row where the interlanguage links are shown.

> * Redirects. We generally want to filter out redirects that seem
> duplicative of other things already listed, but *must* show them for
> alternate names. Clearer labeling of redirects would help as well.

Well, I thought about a syntax like

#redirect [[foo]] (reason)

We could then show this nicely in the search results as

 "Redirects to page foo. Reason: spelling error."

Also, on the actual page

 "Redirected from bar. Reason: spelling error."

However, by allowing freetext here, we will get lots of different
non-standardized texts, which is bad. I'd rather have some standard
texts defined in Language.php and have these referenced with shorthands
like

	"sp"		- spelling error
	"old"		- older spelling
	"tra"		- naming convention:
			  anglicization/transliteration
	"acr"		- naming convention: acronyms
	"plu"		- naming convention: pluralization
	"com"		- naming convention: common name
	"nam"		- naming convention: names and titles
	"sty"		- naming conventions - style, general
	"dis"		- disambiguation
	"ndis"		- unique title, no disambiguation needed

These labels should always be as specific as possible, i.e. not just
"alternative title", but refer to the correct naming convention. The
texts could, in fact, link to the proper Wikipedia articles. This would
help readers understand why we are redirecting where, expose more people
to our policies, and allow better presentation of seach results. We
could define for each of them whether they should be included in the
search or not (I think that "nam" and "dis" should not be included.)

These labels would not be hardcoded anywhere but in LanguageXY.php, i.e.
they would not be auto-inherited by other languages. So every Wikipedia
could set its own policies and shortcuts.

Regards,

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Old table locking

body:
Just a note; of our current slowdowns, many are coming from locks on the
'old' table (which is still MyISAM, not the new table type). I'm going to
try tweaking the sort buffer a bit, as I notice a lot of the stuck threads
are in "sorting" state.

We may want to look at queries using the old table (reads: history list,
diffs; sometimes show old version.  writes: inserts on page edit; updates
on rename; deletes on delete. There _oughtn't_ to be too much contention
on this table.) and generally fix stuff up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 01:09:55PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:58:41PM +0100, Chuck Smith wrote:
> > > namespace."  I'm also firmly against the use of
> > > subpages in the Talk namespace and I'm not thrilled
> > > about having them in the Wikipedia namespace, but I
> > > don't like how many user pages just get so big!
> >
> > Did we consider yet a new scratch: namespace for
> > temporary or working pages?
>
> Please don't do that. Meta is bad enough.

Why not?

--

jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Zoe

body:
I never said he MUST be very religious, only that he MIGHT be, because you had said that the nick was obviously offensive.
Zoe
 james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:Thanks Brion,

I understand your argument more fully now. I was somewhat surprised to find
myself 'acting' as a voice for people offended by the usernick chosen. But I
thought it important to let people know some people were unhappy but felt
uneasy about expressing their views, fearing they would not be taken
seriously. Re Zoe's observation that the person responsible for the
complaint must be very religious, there were a number of people, some
non-religious, some religious, but all felt that the name CrucifiedChrist
was offensive to religious believers and those sensitive to the beliefs of
christians.

Regards,

JT

>From: Brion Vibber

>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why is 'CrucifiedChrist' less offensive than a
>punon oral sex?
>Date: 28 Jan 2003 14:08:50 -0800
>
>On mar, 2003-01-28 at 13:51, james duffy wrote:
> > Brion,
> > I'm puzzled at your reply, particular about your 'effective opening
> > argument' comment.
>
>Allow me to compare, using an exaggerated form purely for rhetorical
>effect:
> "I'm the only person ever to complain about how
> offensive this is! Ban it now!"
>with
> "Wikipedia has lost access to a valuable resource
> because this user name made the project look
> extremely unprofessional."
>
> > The loss of those pictures was a result of the use of a
> > clearly offensive name, CrucifiedChrist. But that name has already
>caused
> > offence to Wikipedia users and contributors. Yet you seem to be only
> > bothered by the loss of the pictures, and not by the unambiguous
> > offensiveness of the user nickname, which with a logic I cannot fathom,
>you
> > regard as a 'huge improvement'!!!
>
>Offense is only taken, not given. There is no objective measure of
>offensiveness that I can perform; actual reactions and quanitifable
>results as to how the project is affected are much more convincing to
>me.
>
> > People who complained to me said they would not complain publicly
>because
> > their views would not be taken seriously. I've been sending messages
>back
> > telling people that it is OK to complain, that their views will be taken
>as
> > seriously, and they will be shown the same respect as everyone else.
>
>Thank you for doing so -- we can't take seriously a complaint that is
>never received!
>
> > Your
> > continuing inability to see any problem with this nickname makes me
>think
> > that maybe they are right; that mocking their beliefs is OK, because
> > religious believers are perceived as second class citizens in terms of
> > causing offence. Poor and corny sexual puns are 'of course' offensive.
>But
> > mocking someone they regard as the Son of God isn't. Is this the latest
> > political correctness?
>
>You clearly have misunderstood my position. I am offended by neither
>corny sexual puns nor by co-opting of religious terminology, but I
>consider both to be in the category of things that make the project look
>bad, along with silly usernames in general. If they make the project
>look bad enough, or they provoke enough trouble within the ranks, that
>it is detrimental to the project, I'm all in favor of kicking them out
>and letting us all get back to work.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
><< signature.asc >>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 04:22:06AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Jason Williams wrote:
> > Did we consider yet a new scratch: namespace for
> > temporary or working pages?
>
> What's the purpose?

It'd be a neater solution to user subpages, IMO.
[[scratch:Khendon's things to do]].

Also, [[scratch:United Kingdom]] rather than [[United Kingdom/Temp]].

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
> Just don't tell Larry ;-)

Why should Larry mind, since he's the one who said,
"Subpages would be nice, I suppose, for other
namespaces, like the Wikipedia namespace and the User
namespace."  I'm also firmly against the use of
subpages in the Talk namespace and I'm not thrilled
about having them in the Wikipedia namespace, but I
don't like how many user pages just get so big!

Chuck

=====
Interesting fact:  Google returns more
results for "Esperanto" than for "Catalan"
----------------------------------------
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Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Our search engine desperately needs retooling.
>
This is a welcome innitiative.

>Other things to think about:
>
>1. Stopwords. Can we just get rid of the damn stopwords and search
>anything?
>
A very few may still need to be there, but with the opportunity to override.

>2. "Title results" vs "Text results" - this two-prong approach is, I
>think, rather confusing. We could have a single search index field with
>the title text weighted more heavily (by repetition?), and just give a
>single set of results.
>
I believe in options.  Perhaps a checkbox if one only wants to look for
titles.  A 'titles only' search will naturally be much faster, and may
be all that is needed.

>3. Text extracts: these show the raw wikicode, and often include language
>links, HTML code, etc. Yuck! If we can strip these, that might be good.
>
For the general search I agree.  Still an opt-in to all that is very
helpful when we are looking for things to edit.

>4. Character entities: should be folded to their raw equivalents in the
>search index, so searching a page containing "Schr?dinger" and one
>containing "Schrödinger" gives identical results.
>
Also "Schrodinger" without an umlaut, etc..

>5. 'Power search' is perhaps a little confusing, and there's currently no
>way to get to it short of doing two searches.
>
I guess I'm just one of those luddites that's never distinguished
between a search and a power search.

>6. 'Search' and 'go' buttons are not clearly demarcated; several people
>have noted confusion.  Better labelling or better arrangement is needed.
>
>7. Redirects. We generally want to filter out redirects that seem
>duplicative of other things already listed, but *must* show them for
>alternate names. Clearer labeling of redirects would help as well.
>
See my answer to 3.

Eclecticology


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:58:41PM +0100, Chuck Smith wrote:
> > namespace."  I'm also firmly against the use of
> > subpages in the Talk namespace and I'm not thrilled
> > about having them in the Wikipedia namespace, but I
> > don't like how many user pages just get so big!
>
> Did we consider yet a new scratch: namespace for
> temporary or working pages?

Please don't do that. Meta is bad enough.

Regards,

Erik

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 04:39:03AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Also, [[scratch:United Kingdom]] rather than [[United Kingdom/Temp]].
>
> Why should either of these exist?

[[United Kingdom/Temp]] existed while it was being constructed to
a new template. I can't remember specific examples, but I've seen
similar things happen to other pages while they're being converted.

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikitech-l] mimi-wikipedia

body:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:26:38AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Trust me, wiki is *very* hard to decentralize. It's a nice idea, but it
> > will take years until it happens. You need an architecture like Freenet
> > ( http://freenetproject.org ), only scalable (which Freenet is not),
> > plus SQL-like query support.
>
> I think Erik is exactly right on this.

Indeed. Wikipedia is becoming more and more a true complex database-oriented
application and as such is very likely to actually *suffer* in performance
if we start distributing. Can anybody say two phase locking protocol?

Hopefully people will realize that the database is the bottle-neck (and not
PHP, for example, programming the stuff in C is a waste of time) and that a
good database design (along with good SQL design) is crucial here.

Speaking of which, why on earth was it decided to start using locking? IMO
we don't really need it and AFAICT this wreaks havoc on the performance. A
very bad decision if you ask me.

-- Jan Hidders

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from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
Bonjour!

The bars drown with ---- are good to separate completely different part of a
text, but we may enjoy to use also small bars (for exemple 100 pixel width)
to separate paragraph.

What do you think about ----X---- where X is a width in pixel or the screen
width percentage.

Wikipedia : ----100----
HTML :

Wikipedia : ----50%----
HTML :

Can you please add this feature ?
Where is the better place to speak about Wikipedia syntax ?

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiSyntax

body:
Thank Cunctator & Kurt,

In fact I just start to use it today :oP
You can see an exemple in our Bistro (equivalant to english "village_pump").
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Le_Bistro

I understand the need of keep the syntax as simple as possible.
I don't want to replace the actual ---- by a more complexe syntax,
but I may be happy to be able full bar (----) AND small bar.
If you prefere, we can use only one small bar as <--> (without parameters)

Wiki:    <-->
HTML: <hr align="center" width="33%">

or <---->

Aoineko


body:
> For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have
> to change it".  Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist?
> Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?
>

Well, that's not really voting. You also have to count those who oppose the
proposal, i.e. think that a name is not offensive.  Which brings us to
Magnus' planned consensus module again, which IMHO would be useful for this type of
decision.

Regards,

Erik

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subject: [Wikitech-l] What's up with the lag?

body:
On mer, 2003-01-29 at 14:15, Jan Hidders wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:43:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > > Is it correct the we are now using the locking mechanism in MySQL? (I
> > > haven't been following this list for a while.) If so then this is probably
> > > causing all the delays. Was there is specific reason for starting to use
> > > locking?
> >
> > No. We switched to the InnoDB table type, which uses row-level locking
> > instead of MyISAM's table locking. So in general, things should get much
> > faster.
>
> Not necessarily, row level locking causes sometimes a *lot* more overhead
> and can block *more* than table level locking. I assume you have read the
> manual but for good measure I will quote the relevant part anyway:

If you have concrete suggestions on how to reform our code, I'd *love*
to hear them. I say this in all seriousness; I freely admit that I'm new
at this database stuff, and am unsure of the best course of action.

Our slow locks currently seem to be happening on 'old' and
'searchindex', both MyISAM tables -- so no row-level locks on them. When
one thread is stuck reading the table, and other threads are sitting
waiting for it (or rather waiting for another thread which is waiting to
write the table), killing the stuck thread springs things back into
action.

'old' is usually being queried for the list of previous edits for a
given page, or sometimes user contribs; these queries have no joins, and
are WHERE'd with = on indexed fields. It appears to be properly indexed,
so I'm unsure why it sometimes takes so long. It's rarely written to
except for an INSERT on each page save.

'searchindex' has a row REPLACEd into it on every page save, and has
SELECTs run over most of the table quite frequently (fulltext MATCH
AGAINST), with a join on the integer index to the cur table. As an
experiment last night, I tried taking out the join and grabbing the cur
data in a separate query; it didn't improve performance any, so the join
doesn't seem to be blameable.

> > Cons:
> >
> >    * Takes more memory than page level or table locks.
> >    * Is slower than page level or table locks when used on a big part of
> >      the table, because one has to do many more locks.
> >    * Is definitely much worse than other locks if you do often do GROUP BY
> >      on a large part of the data or if one has to often scan the whole
> >      table.

This is (or should be) relatively rare; the vast majority of selects are
either on one row (check the existence of an article) or on a specific
subset (grab rows belonging to one or a particular set of articles).

GROUP BY does turn up in a couple of places:
* Recentchangeslinked (where it seems to be redundant, and should only
operate on a small subset of pages)
* Undelete (sysops only, rarely used, on a small table)
* Wantedpages (currently disabled)

> >    * With higher level locks one can also more easily support locks of
> >      different types to tune the application as the lock overhead is less
> >      notable as for row level locks.

Examples?

> Especially if you are also going to use transactions that span more than 1
> SQL statement (are you?) things may even get considerably worse.

If you mean chunks of statements actually wrapped in BEGIN/COMMIT
blocks, then there are only a couple of these at present, both done on
page save. The first should be quite lightweight in terms of rows, doing
a 1-row update to 'cur', a 1-row insert to 'recentchanges', and two more
updates to 'recentchanges' which hit respectively 1 row and as many rows
as are present that refer to the particular article.

The other does deletes and insertions on the links and brokenlinks
tables, and may hit a larger number of rows when touching oft-linked
pages. I've not yet seen any evidence that anything is blocking on locks
on the link tables.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Larry wouldn't mind

body:
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Jason Williams wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 04:39:03AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > > Also, [[scratch:United Kingdom]] rather than [[United Kingdom/Temp]].
> >
> > Why should either of these exist?
>
> [[United Kingdom/Temp]] existed while it was being constructed to
> a new template. I can't remember specific examples, but I've seen
> similar things happen to other pages while they're being converted.

I STILL don't see why that should exist. What is the problem with just
putting the template on the page, if necessary with a meta-remark that
it is still being worked on?

Andre Engels