from_name: Angela

body:
On 9/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> I took far to long for the donation notices to removed from wikis with
> less active admins (It doesn't help that a lot of admins don't really
> know thier way arounf the mediawiki namespace but no matter).

That isn't a result of not having enough stewards. Stewards have the
ability to give any user adminship on other wikis, but they do not
have that access level themselves, so can not just edit site notices.
The reason these stayed up too long was that no one noticed and asked
for adminship in order to remove them. Stewards should not be confused
with global admins (which don't exist on Wikimedia).

Angela.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
This has been the most oligarchic policy on wikipedia since it was
created. Obviously an anon can't "Ignore All Rules", he'll be banned.
When an admin "ignores all rules" and is justly banned, he unblocks
himself. Thats the spirit oif the rule.

In my experience this policy is yet another excuse for the old hands
to bite newbies and those outside their clique. It's an unprofessional
policy, in fundamental contradiction of the rigour required for the
creation of an authoritative book of reference.

Jack (Sam Spade)


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] New proposal - no version protection

body:
On 9/20/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have written a proposal which basically suggests blanking protected
> pages, and leaving a template on them that kinda combines
> {{protected}} and {{twoversions}}. You can see it at [[WP:NVP]], or
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_version_protection
>
> Please keep discussion of this on the relevant talk page, to avoid
> fragmentation.

I support this proposal only if we link to both versions of the
article in question, thereby giving all parties in the dispute the
perfect opportunity to go fork themselves.

OK, that wasn't serious at all.  No discussion here, I'll save it for
the project page.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apache config rearrangement

body:
Notice to Wikimedia server admins: I've rearranged the Apache
configuration files in the pmtpa cluster.

First, the master files have moved from /h/w/conf to /h/w/conf/httpd to
keep things more distinct from the other programs' files we have in
there. Additionally, instead of symlinking the NFS-shared directory into
/usr/local/apache/conf, each Apache now has a local copy of the config
files, which should be more robust.

If you need to change the apache config files, run the sync-apache
script to rsync the files out before restarting the daemons.

Also, I've switched over from RewriteRule+ampescape patch to an Alias
for the /wiki/Foo aliasing. This should make it easier for us to use
standard Apache packages in the future.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Phroziac

body:
I have written a proposal which basically suggests blanking protected
pages, and leaving a template on them that kinda combines
{{protected}} and {{twoversions}}. You can see it at [[WP:NVP]], or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_version_protection

Please keep discussion of this on the relevant talk page, to avoid
fragmentation.


list: commons-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Commons-l] Introducing FlickrLickr

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Using the Flickr API, I am building a database of free photos from
> Flickr, and users can apply for access to the frontend to review slices
> of 1,000 photos each. After a slice is finished, I review it and run the
> upload bot to upload the selected photos to the Commons. See the above
> page for more information.

This sounds fantastic, but I worry about a few things.

How accurate is the metadata at flickr?  Presumably for photos that
people take themselves and upload, it is 100% accurate by definition.

But I worry about copyvios at Flickr leaking into Commons.

One of the things that prevents rampant copyvios at Wikimedia projects
generally is community reputation.  It is essentially impossible to
imagine any prominent contributor uploading copyvios and lying about the
license data to Wikipedia itself.  And if we ever caught someone doing
so, we would quickly review all of their contributions and nuke them all.

But if we're importing large quantities of questionably-licensed data
from Flickr, and then Flickr bans the person for doing something wrong,
how do we know about it?

This is not an insurmountable problem of course.

Reviewing things 1,000 at a time sounds reasonable, but we need to be
pretty rigorous somehow.

> Please help by applying for access to a slice of Flickr. Best send me a
> private email with a link to your username so I can look at your past
> contributions.

I'm known as user Jimbo Wales in most projects.  I have the most edits
in English Wikipedia, but still not that many.  I think if you ask
around, though, despite my weak history of editing, a lot of people know
me and will tell you that I'm ok. :-)

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Puddl Duk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

body:
On 9/20/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oh god... those stupid silent letters.
>
> "Oh gee we like Latin so much!!! Let's insert a letter for no good
> reason."
>
> Island, receipt, etc

fuckinA, and why have four syllables when you can have FIVE !!

Aluminium*
*


subject: [Commons-l] Trademarks

body:
David Benbennick wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>The core goal of Commons is maximal reuse.
>
>
> Actually, that's incorrect.  Lots of previous discussions have used
> arguments similar to the following: Suppose, for example, that Saudi
> Arabia bans photographs of nude people.  "Maximal reuse" would require
> us to then delete the contents of [[Category:Nudity]].

Your point is valid.  I overstated the case.

The core goal of Commons is to maximize reuse free of copyright,
trademark, and patent issues across a broad spectrum of nations, while
at the same time acknowledging that some very idiosyncratic
jurisdictions may be too difficult to accomodate.

This formulation is accurate, I think, but of course it leaves open a
fairly large gray area where community consensus is going to be our best
guide.

--Jimbo


subject: [Commons-l] Trademarks

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> One cannot take photographs of many real-world objects or scenes without
> encountering trademarks.  Cars bear trademarks (their manufacturer's
> emblems, names, sometimes even shapes or paint designs).  Streets are
> covered with trademarks.  And so on and so forth.
>
> I hope that such are not included in any restrictions.

This is where reasoned community consensus can resolve the issue nicely.
 Incidental use of a trademark is not typically a problem, as compared
with actual simple reproduction of the trademark.

To make a simple example:

A CocaCola logo in and of itself is not appropriate for commons.

A photo of a CocaCola bottling plant, which contains the logo as part of
a sign, is appropriate for commons.

Borderline cases can be discussed and debated with a view towards
balancing competing interests.

--Jimbo


subject: [Commons-l] Trademarks

body:
David Benbennick wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>The core goal of Commons is maximal reuse.
>
>
> On 9/13/05, David Benbennick <dbenbenn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Actually, that's incorrect.
>
>
> As another example, the Commons has consistently decided to keep the
> various Wikimedia Foundation logos, which are "all rights reserved"
> and hence not reusable at all outside of Wikimedia.  (I've always
> voted to delete them for that reason, but I'm in a small minority.)

I would also vote to delete them.

_Obviously_ we have permission to use _our own_ logos.  But our usual
NPOV approach tends to require us not to give ourselves special
treatment. :-)

--Jimbo


list: foundation-l

from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

body:
Poe, Marshall napisa?u:

> Thanks for your comments, Lars.

> I agree with most of what you said. The primary mission of a library of memoirs like
> Wikimemory is to collect, maintain and disseminate memoirs. As Anthere rightly said the
> other day, there are already ways of doing this. People do write memoirs, those memoirs
> are sometimes printed, and the resulting books are sometimes deposited  and cataloged in
> place, the goal will be achieved.  And while we might be able to build a massive memoir
> library (MML) without a universally editable wiki, it seems to me that it will be difficult
> to build it without WikiMedia.
> Respectfully, Marshall

Why not Wikicities?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Making NFS reliable?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> Am I correct in thinking that the problem seems to be centred on
>> Zwinger's being a central NFS server for a number of crucial read-only
>> configuration files used by a large number of servers, and apps behaving
>> in a peculiar (and usually disastrous) way when NFS dies?
>>
>> How about just keeping local copies on each server, running rsync,
>
> [snip]
>
> Did you see my previous mail to this list on this topic, subject "SPOF
> notes"?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
Ah. I have now...

-- Neil


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WP:IAR

body:
If WP:IAR were deleted, people would not suddenly say "Oh, my goodness, I see
that the policy has changed, I will now start slavishly following the rules."
So there's no particular reason to delete it.

But if WP:IAR were deleted, people would still be bold and occasionally
ignore the rules. So there's no particular reason to have it.

Wikipedia is a community of people that have the technical capability of
performing certain operations within Wikipedia. Wikipedian policy is whatever
it is that Wikipedians customarily do. "Policy" statements inform, they do
not coerce.

It would be appropriate to delete WP:IAR if there had, in fact, been a sea
change in general Wikipedian conduct, toward the direction of rigorously and
literally following written policy at all times.

Should we consider deleting "Wikipedia:Be bold"?


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OurMedia for ASL-English video

body:
On 9/20/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
>
> OurMedia.org may serve as a nice home for the video for an ASL-English
> wikipedia. It seems to have no restrictions on video size. Wikipedia can
> house the English text and link to the video file at OurMedia.
> Also for the wiki in wikipedia. Consider a video file the same as an image
> file in wikipedia.In Wikipedia, an image file cannot be edited other than
> by replacement. A video could be "edited via replacement" the same way.
> Words and sentences in Wikipedia are also done this way. If I change "lion"
> to "king of the beasts" I have essentially edited via replacement.

Then what you're proposing really isn't a wiki.  Ease of editing is
what makes a wiki a wiki, and your "editing by replacement" that
requires any edits to require rerecording the entire signed video is
not "easy" by any stretch of the imagination.

On top of that, I'm still not clear on how a person with at most a 4th
grade reading level is going to use the website.

Kelly


from_name: HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us

body:
OurMedia.org may serve as a nice home for the video for an ASL-English
wikipedia. It seems to have no restrictions on video size. Wikipedia can
house the English text and link to the video file at OurMedia.
Also for the wiki in wikipedia. Consider a video file the same as an image
file in wikipedia.In Wikipedia, an image file cannot be edited other than
by replacement. A video could be "edited via replacement" the same way.
Words and sentences in Wikipedia are also done this way. If I change "lion"
to "king of the beasts" I have essentially edited via replacement.
Hhamilton


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 41

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>jesus your so funny.
> I know spelt it wrong, but I can't be arsed to delete every single typo,
>this isn't copy.
> you might be amused to hear that my job is correcting people's spelling
>mistakes, but I'm not so petullant (do you like that one?!) as to currect
>your's (and yes, I put the apostrophe there on purpose).
>
I'm well aware that correcting typos is usually contrary to good
netiquette, but I'm willing to make an exception for someone whose
version of the language is elevated to high pomposity.

Ec


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Jim Breen

body:
[Gerard Meijssen ([Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] English orthographies) writes:]
>> How many different orthographies / dialects are there for English.

It all depends on definition. I say there is one "orthography" for
English (the A-Z "Latin" alphabet). Perhaps you are confusing
"orthography" and spelling.

As for dialects, well many people who work in dialects do not regard
"British English" and "American English" as distinct dialects because
they are very similar (when compared with real dialects.)

>> I
>> would not dare to presume that a word is truly shared between the less
>> well known versions of English. There are also the "true" dialects like
>> Geordie that have to be considered. Creating check boxes assumes in a
>> way that the editors /know/ these different versions of English well
>> enough. Technically it can be done, but the spelling of the text in a
>> meaning, an etymology needs to be adapted anyway. You have to realise
>> that certain meanings do not travel well. It is therefore not only the
>> orthography but also the Meanings of a word that needs to be considered.

Yes, I suspect you have conflated "orthography" and "spelling".

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


from_name: Caroline Ford

body:
We're so much more educated than you, you know!

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
Sent: 20 September 2005 08:45
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

Oh god... those stupid silent letters.

"Oh gee we like Latin so much!!! Let's insert a letter for no good reason."

Island, receipt, etc

On 20/09/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Jack & Naree wrote:
> > Well I don't want to live in an Americanised world; I'd rather take
> > arms against a sea of illiterate yanks, than suffer the slings and
> > arrows of their nauseating makey-uppy drawl. (and yes I do have
> > American friends!)  I know it's not going to feed the starving
> > children in Africa, but I simply can't feckin' stand seeing the word
> > "center" and "color" and hearing people raising the intonation at the
end of their sentences.
> >  American-English is like a giant linguistic fingernail down the
> > English blackboard.
>
> The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation
> for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it.
> They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and
> kept historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be
> bizarre (e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic
> laughing stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.
>
> It's a pity the debate has to be so politically charged, wouldn't it
> be nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?
>
> Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form
> of Americanisation, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
>
> -- Tim Starling (Australian)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR
MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN
TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
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Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.1/104 - Release Date: 16/09/2005


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>Anyway, by way of propsing a solution to the American-English problem, I
>want to offer this and intermediate measure:
> That there be no redirection for words that are in *a* correct orthography.
> Thus, if an American types a search for "color", they get the article in
>their orthography with the headword "color"; and if a
>non-American-English-speaker types in "colour", they get the article in
>their orthography with the headword "colour".
> ...for words with different meanings but identical orthographies you get a
>disambiguation page; and, for articles about the same subject that have a
>different word for the thing - like Aubergine (Am-En "Eggplant") for
>example: you get a page for each; in each respective orthography.
> I think this is a simple, effective, and practical solution for all
>languages where differences like this exist, like Spanish, French,
>Portuguese, Italian, German, and Chinese, etc... Above all I think it's
>pretty fair.
> Can we try and reach some consensus on this?
>
In Wiktionary, this is already being done.

I was among the most vocal in that project against this kind of
redirect, and I found the proposed solution using the compound headword
"color/colour" to be an abomination that stressed the worst of both
worlds.  In most instances the two forms of the word are perfectly
interchangeable, but there will nevertheless be specifically American or
British contexts where only one form can be correct.

I've spurned the use of disambiguation pages to this end, but have
preferred a cross reference to the other form on each page. If American
forms seem to dominate perhaps it reflects the simple fact that more
Americans are editing.

These issues are not new, and Wikipedia had no choice but to deal with
the issue of the major dialects very early on in its life.  Establishing
two separate projects for the two most important versions of the
languagejust to accomodate spelling variants would not have been
practical.  Had we agreed to that solution I would speculate that each
of these projects would be less than half of its present size.  ... and
we would still not have accomodated the most populous English-speaking
country in the world.  Is it any wonder that your proposal was not taken
as being serious?  The consensus is already there.

Ec


subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
[Gerard Meijssen ([Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
>>
>> 1) English, American English and other orthographies are treated as
>> seperate entities.

I think this will be a disaster.

Can you explain why "jewellery" and "jewelry" cannot be alternatives
within the one entry?

>> This means that all words need to exist for each
>> orthography/dialect. On the plus side it means that descriptions like
>> etymology and meaning will be in this one orthography as well. This is
>> also the most easy method to provide information for a spell checker.

In what way is this easier "to provide information for a spell checker"
than having spelling variants with an entry?

>> 2) We treat these variants as belonging to a specific "spelling
>> authority".

I wonder what a "spelling authority" would be for English.

>> ..... It does however provide us with the possibility to be more
>> precise in what makes English different from American, Australian etc.

It's news to me that "English [is] different from American, Australian,.."
The versions of English used in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, South
Africa, etc. do vary, although not to a significant extent. The
spellings also differ for a very small percentage of words, and meanings
differ slightly too, although this happens *within* the UK, USA,
Australia, etc. too.

Only a small part of the regional variation in English can be reflected
in a dictionary. Much of it is grammar, and choice of words.

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: On speedying "halfway decent stubs"

body:
"Chris L?er" <chris at zandria.net> wrote in
message news:6.2.3.4.2.20050919093012.03d15dd8 at mail.zandria.net...
[snip]
> An example of what I'm thinking of: [[Attila the Hun]] has a whole bunch
> of pictures of Attila -- but all of them are fictional. To the credit of
> the article, it is actually mentioned that there are no real pictures of
> him. But this is way at the end, and the first fictional picture is at the
> very beginning of the article. Unexperienced readers that don't read all
> the way to the end might be misled into accepting these pictures as
> factual representations.

Proper captions should help: does the caption for that picture not give
proper attribution? {{sofixit}}

> Shouldn't the same encyclopedic standards we have for text be applied to
> images, too?

Yes.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Commons-l] Local laws, trademarks and such

body:
In general, because of international copyright laws, you have to abide by
the laws of where you took the photo as well as the laws applying to where
you're putting the photo (Florida, USA). Otherwise you, and possibly
Wikimedia, are in some trouble.

As to the trademark question, while I don't think we should be hosting
trademarked logos on Commons, I don't think we have or should have a blanket
ban on anything that contains something that may be trademarked. As others
have pointed out, most trademarks are very specific about what they protect,
and it's very hard to avoid trademarked things in the modern world.

It's probably best to bring up a specific example if you have a current real
concern, rather than a hypothetical.

-Matt
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from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD Threshold being Revised Downward Again?

body:
Snow spinner stated for the record:
> For those looking for your daily dose of VfD (Because, really, why
> pretend changing V to A changed anything) abuse, I submit for your
> amusement http://www.slate.com/id/2126570/entry/2126575/

A Slate article was deleted?  What does an article on pr0n have to do
with Wikipedia?

I'm so confused....


from_name: Mike Kuklinski

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>More Roman (American) imperialism and theft of the truth (!), that we Greeks
>(British) must not just resist, but fight!
>
>
Would you like some french fries? Perhaps you would care for some
colored cookies? Perhaps an Anglicized name?


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On 19/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> > Since English is really a dialect of French, a lie bree is probably a
> > place where you buy your books, as it is in any "proper language" (-:
>
> I'm not 100% sure if you were joking or just labouring under a
> misunderstanding, so I thought I'd point out that English is largely a
> Germanic language, closely related to the various modern Scandinavian
> tongues, and also to modern Dutch and German.

I was joking; I know English is a Germanic language. but among all
Germanic languages, it has borrowed most from French. It looks far more
like French than Dutch or German do - and the Scandinavian languages are
even more remote. It may be a Germanic language, but it's a bit of the
ugly duckling among them (-;

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-20 09:09:59   12.0 degrees Celsius ( 53.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Right all a disgrunted POV warrior needs to do is cause a fuzz and we
need to click through different versions to see which is the one we're
looking for. Have you thought about how a blank page looks to the
public. If they've got problems reading headers on the Help desk, I
don't expect them to look any further when the page is blanked. We'd
get daily complaints that things are missing.

--Mgm

On 9/20/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have written a proposal which basically suggests blanking protected
> > pages, and leaving a template on them that kinda combines
> > {{protected}} and {{twoversions}}. You can see it at [[WP:NVP]], or
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_version_protection
> >
> > Please keep discussion of this on the relevant talk page, to avoid
> > fragmentation.
>
>
> I support this proposal only if we link to both versions of the
> article in question, thereby giving all parties in the dispute the
> perfect opportunity to go fork themselves.
>
>
> OK, that wasn't serious at all.  No discussion here, I'll save it for
> the project page.
>
> --
> Michael Turley
> User:Unfocused
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

body:
I've just removed two references to [[Image:Mac Internet
Explorer.png]] and two to [[Image:XPlogo.png]] from user pages.  While
both of these images have a good argument for fair use on the
appropriate articles about their related products, there is no fair
use argument for placing these on user pages or in cutesy little
"product endorsement" boxes (see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]) for people to
put on their user pages.  Wikipedia doesn't need to carry
advertisements for anybody, especially not using copyrighted logos.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete IAR

body:
If the current wording is such a problem, then why don't you suggest a
new formulation instead of getting rid of it entirely?

--Mgm


from_name: Sascha Brockmeyer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting Fatal error by all missed searches

body:
Hello, i ve one big problem with my MediaWiki.

I ve installed it @ my localhost (an IIS from Microsoft, with PHP and MySQL)
and it works fine.

But even when i search for an title that doesnt exist i get the Fatal Error:
"Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in
c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\includes\SearchEngine.php on line 36"

What must i do to get an page like "Nothing where found with this text."
e.g.

I havn?t changed this dokument.

LG
Sascha Brockmeyer


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>Well I'm familiar with the Canadian immigration procedure, and I know that
>it's hard to get in without decent qualifications and useful work experience
>(unless you speak French).
>
Canadian immigration policy is a subject best left for another time. :-$

>So all these Commonwealth English-speaking immigrants (including those from
>the British Isles) go into important jobs where they have input into the
>language that gets written down in the Canadian media; on websites; and
>official documents.
>
If you review the important statistics that you cited India and Pakistan
are Commonwealth countries that provide considerably more immigrants
than either the UK or US.  A form of American English is also widespread
in the Philippines.  The English of the subcontinent has a distinctive
flavour of its own, and if put in a position of influence those
immigrants may have an influence on Canadian English that could be quite
different from what you would expect.  Immigrants from the UK will
include people with many other skills that just linguistic ones.  Those
other skills are more important for immigration policy.  Although the
same might be true for Americans it must be remembered that the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is also a factor there that will
facilitate higher level migration within an established company

>The podgy working-class Canucks, on the other hand may well be
>indistinguishable from podgy working-class Yanks, but they can't have as
>disproportionate an effect on written English in Canada as these
>aforementioned immigrants.
>
Television, and products advertised on television are more influential.
Most mass marketed books are from the USA.  Those less educated persons
who continue to read are more likely to be influenced by American
romance novels.

>http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pub/facts2004/permanent/12.html
>The number of Commonwealth English speakers combined is by far the largest
>contingent.
>Plus the fact that you've got the French influence on spellings - it's
>cheaper (for advert/sign-writing) and more efficient to use one spelling, so
>why have an American and French version when you can have an English one
>that suits both.
>
The French spelligs do tend to be closer to the British for reasons that
go back to the Norman conquest, but if the context requires full
translation this is not likely to be noticed.  The bulk of the
translation is from English to French so that becomes an exercise in
protecting French from the corruption of anglicisms of which ever type.
The politically correct tendency in Quebec French is sometimes toward
having a language that is more correct than what you might find in France.

Ec

>On 19/09/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Jack & Naree wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The thing aboot (!) Canada is that there's a steady stream of recent (and
>>>educated) British immigrants as with Australia, maintaining the standards.
>>>
>>>
>>>I would not be surprised to find Americanisms more a feature of urban
>>>working-class Canadians near the US border.
>>>
>>>
>>Some 80% of the Canadian population lives within 150km of the US
>>border. (That's about 90 miles for you Brits and Yanks that don't
>>understand that.) British and Australian immigrants have not been
>>dominant among those who choose to come live in Canada; we see far more
>>newcomers from India. I understand that years of British influence have
>>resulted in a peculiar form of hypercorrect English, but I don't see how
>>this influx of Raj English will help maintain standards among Disneyfied
>>Canadians. I think that a continued practice of smug linguistic aikido
>>will be more effective Come to think of it, that strategy may work as
>>well in cricket as in baseball.
>>
>>


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] English - a sub-vernacular of Norman French

body:
On 19/09/05, Gerrit Holl wrote:
> Since English is really a dialect of French, a lie bree is probably a
> place where you buy your books, as it is in any "proper language" (-:

I'm not 100% sure if you were joking or just labouring under a
misunderstanding, so I thought I'd point out that English is largely a
Germanic language, closely related to the various modern Scandinavian
tongues, and also to modern Dutch and German.

French is like a distant cousin (sharing
great-great-great-great-grandparents in Proto-Indo-European) which
recently had a quick affair, so that a few of her features show up in
the offspring ;)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]
_______________________________________________

English a germanic language?  Impossible! An absurd notion! Lunacy!  Exaggeration!  Unadulterated opinionated insanity!  Essentially misdirected ill conceived viewpoints. Troublesome tempestuous tapestries.  As tasteless as a tarty tarantella. Significantly senseless.  Quintessentially unquotable.  Positively preposterous. Necessarily nonplussed and nominally abnormal. Exponentially and exceedingly uneventful.  Undeveloped, uncorroborated, irresponsible, and finally, bountifully morally bankrupt.  I opine that I have proven my point.

Yours truly, frankly, ecetera

pippu d'angelo

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo


subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
Jim Breen wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>[Gerard Meijssen (Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
>
>
>>>In the database design,
>>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design , an
>>>Expression is a number of characters that make up a valid occurrence in
>>>a language. Therefore every spelling IS a different Expression.
>>>
>>>
>OK, so the short answer is that the UW database was designed that way.
>
>I predict it will be a mess. It is also at variance with all the
>lexicographical databases I have seen.
>
I largely share your prediction. It's trying to be too many things for
too many people. That has some merit in an ideal world. At this point
the UW software has not been made public, and we have not yet had the
opportunity to poke at it. Seeking to solve these problems before it is
made public is likely to make the result brittle.

The aikido master lets the dance evolve.

>>>The English used in Britain, the United States, Australia etc is
>>>significantly different.
>>>
>>>
>Nonsense.
>
The dedicated nationalists would disagree.

>To be blunt, it sounds like the UW database design was done with one
>or a few languages in mind, and the others are being told to fall into
>line.
>
This is reminiscent of the classics movement of a few centuries ago that
considered Greek and Latin as the standard for evaluating all languages.

Ec


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On 9/20/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:

>  That there be no redirection for words that are in *a* correct orthography.
>  Thus, if an American types a search for "color", they get the article in
> their orthography with the headword "color"; and if a
> non-American-English-speaker types in "colour", they get the article in
> their orthography with the headword "colour".
>  ...for words with different meanings but identical orthographies you get a
> disambiguation page; and, for articles about the same subject that have a
> different word for the thing - like Aubergine (Am-En "Eggplant") for
> example: you get a page for each; in each respective orthography.

I think this is certainly a more reasonable proposal than splitting
the English wikipedia.

The problem with this, however, is that the natural way to do it with
the current infrastructure is to have separate articles for each
orthography.   Though this introduces less
balkanisation than would separate wikis, it is still damaging.

For example, as a speaker of Canadian English I myself would never use
"aubergine" for "eggplant" (well, except when speaking French or
German), but I might possibly have something to contribute to an
article on this fruit which would be of interest to English speakers
who call it "aubergine".

A technical solution to avoid separate articles is to use some kind of
template variable, e.g. "{{PAGENAME}} is a fruit" and have the
variable filled in with the user's preference.  But this is
potentially confusing, and limits the way the article could be
written.

Steve


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete IAR

body:
On 9/20/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the same problem with the formulation, I think it's crap. How about
>
> "Over the years, the wikipedia community has created an impressive
> amount of policies and guidelines. These guidelines should be
> followed, but can be confusing to many people, and they should not
> stand in the way of common sense. If you feel an action is warranted,
> but is not specifically supported by the rules, feel free to ignore
> all rules and follow common sense"
>
> I would like to add "this don't give you a right to do whatever...",
> but people seem to like short snappy policies.
>
> --gkhan
>

Burn the "feel free".

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete IAR

body:
> Due to a widespread confusion regarding the
> application of IAR as a policy, rather than simply an
> informal guideline, I propose deleting the third leg
> of the so-called policy trifecta.

*Fuck* no. You think the rules lawyers are a plague now?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> It's a stick of dynamite. If for the sake of the project you need to do
> something and the rules are in the way, you may take it upon yourself to
> emply the dynamite.
> If when the smoke clears there is agreement that things are better than they
> would have been otherwise, there may be a little polite applause. Otherwise
> you'd better just reverse what you did, apologise, and move on.

Indeed. From [[m:Bash]]:

<Tony_Sidaway> What did Ed do, exactly?  Delete VfD?
<DavidGerard> yep.
<DavidGerard> deleted vfd.
<DavidGerard> :-O
<DavidGerard> just the front index page, not the daily pages ;-)
<Tony_Sidaway> Hmmm.  I had no idea this little VfD would become a cause
               celebre.
<Tony_Sidaway> "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

- d.


from_name: Traroth

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

body:
--- "Poe, Marshall" <MPoe at theatlantic.com> a ?crit :

> Just a quick reply to Mark on peer review. The
> memoirs would not be anonymous. Any reporter worth
> his or her salt would try to track down the witness
> to see if he/she were credible.  If the source could
> not be found, or was found to be less than credible,
> then the reporter/researcher wouldn't use him/her.
> This is SOP in all credible journalism, and works
> the same for all sources, no matter where they come
> from.  Moreover, if a user (such as a reporter)
> finds that a source is not credible, then this could
> be added to the metadata (a bit like the discussions
> on Wikipedia entries).

Seems complicated. Is it doable ? I'm not sure we have
the means to do it. But if we have, it could be great.

>
> You are certainly right that controversial events
> will attract POV accounts, and even falsified
> accounts. We'll have to trust that users will
> understand this, and help identify bad actors.  But
> I would say that for the vast majority of memoirs,
> POV won't really come into play.  I saw one of the
> last Led Zeppelin concerts with the original line
> up.  My POV is that it was great, but I have a lot
> of other observations that Zep fans and folks
> interested in the history of Rock and Roll will be
> interested in. Particularly in 100 years.
>

I'm not sure POV is a problem in this very case, as
long the contributors are honest. The sense of the
project, if I understood right, is precisely to get
testimonies, which means point of view. If you want
objective historical facts, don't ask the man of the
street for testimony.

Traroth

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory


from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
So you prefer Doritos to French fries, and would order Jackson biscuits
(http://www.jacksonbiscuit.com/) over frosted cookies
(http://www.bloomingcookies.com/frosted-cookie-recipe.aspx)?  If you say
so...  But I never eat Doritos with a nice hamburger, nor do I have a
southern-style biscuit for a desert or snack, rather for breakfast.

James

PS - UK cultural imperialism - from the country that invented it!
PPS - this is sarcasm, get over it.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jack & Naree
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 10:21 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

no I'll stick to chips, biscuits, and my anglicised name thanks.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
Anyone else prefer Lay's chips and Dorito's over french fries?  And anyone
else prefer having biscuits as a desert/snack over cookies?

James

PS - this is sarcasm.  Get over it.
PPS - I never watched my step while in London, but I did mind the gap.  It
was a breathtaking gap, and thinking about it was so worthwhile on the
subways there.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jack & Naree
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 10:21 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

no I'll stick to chips, biscuits, and my anglicised name thanks.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete IAR

body:
I have the same problem with the formulation, I think it's crap. How about

"Over the years, the wikipedia community has created an impressive
amount of policies and guidelines. These guidelines should be
followed, but can be confusing to many people, and they should not
stand in the way of common sense. If you feel an action is warranted,
but is not specifically supported by the rules, feel free to ignore
all rules and follow common sense"

I would like to add "this don't give you a right to do whatever...",
but people seem to like short snappy policies.

--gkhan

On 9/20/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the current wording is such a problem, then why don't you suggest a
> new formulation instead of getting rid of it entirely?
>
> --Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
Jim Breen wrote:

>[Gerard Meijssen ([Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
>
>
>>>1) English, American English and other orthographies are treated as
>>>seperate entities.
>>>
>>>
>
>I think this will be a disaster.
>
>Can you explain why "jewellery" and "jewelry" cannot be alternatives
>within the one entry?
>
>
>
In the database design,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design , an
Expression is a number of characters that make up a valid occurrence in
a language. Therefore every spelling IS a different Expression. The
answer to your question is therefore; as they are spelled in a different
way, they are on the level of an expression different entries that
should be connected through the table SynTrans.

>>>This means that all words need to exist for each
>>>orthography/dialect. On the plus side it means that descriptions like
>>>etymology and meaning will be in this one orthography as well. This is
>>>also the most easy method to provide information for a spell checker.
>>>
>>>
>
>In what way is this easier "to provide information for a spell checker"
>than having spelling variants with an entry?
>
>
In a spelling checker people who use that spelling checker want to know
that their spelling is the English, American, Australian, whatever
spelling. When a variety is acceptable within the same orthography,
spelling variants can be included. Again, the current concept of an
"entry" has to be abandoned because that does not provide any of the
advantages that a relational aproach offers.

>
>
>>>2) We treat these variants as belonging to a specific "spelling
>>>authority".
>>>
>>>
>
>I wonder what a "spelling authority" would be for English.
>
>
A spelling authority is in essence nothing more that a record in a
table. In real life, the Oxfort or Websters dictionary can be considered
a spelling authority.

>
>
>>>..... It does however provide us with the possibility to be more
>>>precise in what makes English different from American, Australian etc.
>>>
>>>
>
>It's news to me that "English [is] different from American, Australian,.."
>The versions of English used in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, South
>Africa, etc. do vary, although not to a significant extent. The
>spellings also differ for a very small percentage of words, and meanings
>differ slightly too, although this happens *within* the UK, USA,
>Australia, etc. too.
>
>Only a small part of the regional variation in English can be reflected
>in a dictionary. Much of it is grammar, and choice of words.
>
>
The English used in Britain, the United States, Australia etc is
significantly different. This can be found in the difference in
vocabulary and the difference in orthography. Typically when considering
spelling, the way the English, American, Australian spell differently
makes it a different orthography. This is reflected in there being
English, American etc dead wood dictionaries. In a project like UW where
we collect all words of all languages, it makes sense to reflect this.

You are correct where you say that grammar and the choise of words
reflect the difference as well. In a dictionary we only consider
lexicological use.

Thanks,
GerardM


body:
Jim Breen wrote:

>[Gerard Meijssen ([Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] English orthographies) writes:]
>
>
>>>How many different orthographies / dialects are there for English.
>>>
>>>
>
>It all depends on definition. I say there is one "orthography" for
>English (the A-Z "Latin" alphabet). Perhaps you are confusing
>"orthography" and spelling.
>
>As for dialects, well many people who work in dialects do not regard
>"British English" and "American English" as distinct dialects because
>they are very similar (when compared with real dialects.)
>
>
American and British English are different orthographies because their
rules of spelling differ. When creating a spellchecker, you need to have
a clear destinction in what is what. When people look up words in UW it
HAS to be clear what is what.

Thanks,
GerardM


from_name: HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ASL editing and users

body:
Simply replacing a video will be easier than trying to edit it. There is no
way to mesh video of single ASL signs that is commonly available to all.
Making a picture bigger or smaller does not change its content and
information. To edit the picture, i.e., make it express something slightly
or greatly different from the original, requires it to be replaced in a
wiki.

The 4th grade level readers (and those slightly above and below) will be
able to find the article on a topic they are interested in by searching
just like any other user. A single or multi-word search is not curtailed by
the users reading level unless they are totally unable to read and write.
The "average" user can then attempt to read the English text if they like
and see the ASL video which they will have a better chance of
understanding. Thus their trip to the article has allowed them to gain
knowledge via ASL and perhaps helped them understand the English text a bit
more via the ASL support provided


body:
If there's no real images of Atilla, I don't see any problem with
using an artist's representation. That has nothing to do with
encyclopedic standards.

--Mgm


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
For those looking for your daily dose of VfD (Because, really, why
pretend changing V to A changed anything) abuse, I submit for your
amusement http://www.slate.com/id/2126570/entry/2126575/

Which is deleted at 60%, with one of the delete votes being very
weak. When someone sensibly objected to deleting at 60%, which is
considerably below the MINIMAL and highly disputed 2/3 threshold, and
undeleted...

A delete/undelete war started.

Yes, there was a fairly conclusive VfU that said keep deleted. But as
has been noted, VfU is exceedingly deferent to VfD, such that bad
calls on VfD have no real recourse.

Adding to the problem is the fact that we're apparently adding a
condition of extreme deference to the closing admin, which means that
the final fate of articles is more or less being single-handedly
decided by whether or not the closing admin happens to be of the 2/3
flavor, the 60% flavor, the 75% flavor, the "I just delete what I
feel like" flavor, or what.

If nothing else, we should accept that deletion will be handled like
blocking, with objections to deletion being taken very seriously, and
with admins being given a wide latitude to undelete what they see as
bad closings.

To summarize, there are two key problems that NEED to be addressed,
and that exist outside of whether one is an inclusionist, a
deletionist, or a big blue frog.

1) AfD is simply too busy for the statement "Any good article that is
nominated for AfD will be noticed by someone within five days" to be
plausible, leading to a high probability that the generally
deletionist tendencies on AfD will delete articles that, by most
reasonable standards of the Wikipedia community at large, would be kept.

2) The closing procedures for AfD and subsequent appeals processes
are heavily biased towards deletion, meaning that the only time that
noticing and objecting to a good article being nominated is useful is
in the first five days.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
"Craig Franklin" <craig at halo-17.net> wrote in
message news:000b01c5bd11$4db5a210$015a5a0a at equinox...
[snip]
> ... just like reading the odd Australianised
> word hopefully doesn't fill my American brothers with murderous hatred.

No, but quoting an entire **digest** in your post is likely to...

Netiquette, brethren and sistren...

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
Somewhat related to this, I have to say I question the value of quite a
few of the portals that have been created.  I imagined that portals were
supposed to be pretty high level and aimed at general readers, but a lot
now seem to be aimed mainly at fans of games and TV programs, or are so
narrow that I can't see what a portal provides that an article doesn't.
Examples of the former are portals for Doctor Who, Final Fantasy, James
Bond, Oz, Stargate, the Simpsons and Warcraft, while for the latter
there's Ancient Germanic culture, Eastern Christianity, Scientific Method,
Utah and Bucharest.

Personally I think portals as fan areas such as the ones above are a bad
idea.  Just wondered what anyone else though?

WT

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel P. B. Smith [mailto:dpbsmith at verizon.net]
> Sent: 16 September 2005 11:09 AM
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors
>
>
> We all know about "POV warriors." I'm fortunate or wimpy enough not
> to have been involved in articles with serious long-standing POV
> wars, but my impression is that _for the most part_ these things seem
> to stay under reasonable control.
>
> On the other hand, I think we are developing "topic warriors" who
> feel that a specific subject area deserves very detailed coverage,
> systematically watch VfD for any cases where articles on their pet
> topic are nominated for deletion, and oppose deletion of _any_
> article on their topic on principle, regardless of the quality of the
> article.
>
> Unlike POV, a relatively small number of topic warriors CAN
> effectively achieve their goal. (And, of course, they are assisted by
> Wikipedians who do _not_ accept the premise that "Wikipedia is not an
> indiscriminate collection of information.")
>
> NOTE NOTE NOTE ---> topic wars are FAR, FAR less damaging to
> Wikipedia and FAR less of a concern than POV wars.
>
> Some Wikipedians undoubtedly feel that topic wars do not damage
> Wikipedia at all. My feeling is that they do,  because they
> deliberately _create_ systemic bias, and  create an area in which the
> average quality of the articles  is lower than the rest of Wikipedia.
>
> They certainly damage the Wikipedia community by factionalizing it,
> creating an "us versus them" mentality, and, in some cases, publicly
> gloating over their "success."
>
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Jack & Naree

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
>From my point of view as a native English speaker who lives in England (not
in the American sense of "UK"!)
I think it's important that when I type in words like:
 "colour"
 That I get "colour" and not "color". I don't see why I need to know the
spelling of the word in what to me is a foreign language when I'm looking up
a word in a dictionary of my language.
 ---
 To GerardM
 Basically there are two orthographies for English.
 Some might argue the toss about that, I mean for myself as a "Scots"
speaker, I know there are some who make a big deal about it being a separate
language, but I myself don't know how to spell it properly, and I just think
of it as a regional dialect of English like Scouse, Yorkshire, Texan, Kiwi
and whatever else - because I would read normal English and pronounce it the
same way as Scots - the odd word like "leid" to me is no different than a
Yorkshireman saying "summat" for "something" or someone from the southeast
USA saying "y'all" - they're just dialect words.
I can show you texts written in a Yorkshire orthography, but the practical
fact is that the overwhelming majority of the text in the modern world is
either spelt the English way, or the American way.
 The debate is "huge" in terms of it's implications, because up until now
no-one appears to have challenged the idea that American-English has the
right to be considered the standard form of English. It's patently obvious
it's a dialect, with it's own orthography and it's simply wrong for the
headword in English to be written in a dialect of English in a dialectal
orthography and presented as the standard form, when it's not.


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/20/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that Mark said it well when he mentioned that we should have an
> ASL wiki and not an English/ASL wiki. I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Yeah, but to do that you're going to need an orthography for ASL.

Kelly


body:
jesus your so funny.
 I know spelt it wrong, but I can't be arsed to delete every single typo,
this isn't copy.
 you might be amused to hear that my job is correcting people's spelling
mistakes, but I'm not so petullant (do you like that one?!) as to currect
your's (and yes, I put the apostrophe there on purpose).

 On 20/09/05, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:54:04 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <849f98ed050919135443fb84e2 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> > Irrelevent, how?
>
> See, now, this is just what I've been waiting for since the beginning
> of this thread. Our little friend here who cares so much about
> "correct" spelling and grammar has fouled up our beautiful language by
> using an absolutely incorrect spelling, ignorant of the etymology of
> the word.
>
> It's "irrelevant". In all English varieties.
>
> Mark
>
> P.S.
>
> That stuff I said about fouling up our beautiful language was a joke.
>
>
> maybe he meant to say "irreverent" - it fits the context just as well!
>
> pippu d'angelo
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
>
>
>
> The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation
> for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it.
> They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and kept
> historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be bizarre
> (e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic laughing
> stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.

 ...and the American system is better?!

> It's a pity the debate has to be so politically charged, wouldn't it be
> nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?
>
> Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form of
> Americanisation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
>
> -- Tim Starling (Australian)

 who cares, it's ugly.

_______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> A couple of days ago I was on the verge of taking this matter very
> seriously.
>
> Then I looked at the net growth rate of the Wikipedia page count. Around
> 1500 new pages per day remaining undeleted after seven days. I compared it
> to the sclerotic maximum capacity of Articles for Deletion (AfD) (average of
> 112 listings per day early June to early September) and the fact that AfD
> participants complain bitterly about their inability to keep up with AfD at
> present.
>
Tony's observation reminds me of a question I've pondered off & on over
the last couple of months, which I'm adding to the mail list on the off
chance someone may want to study it.

Simply put: is there a point in Wikipedia's size where it's current growth
will taper off or stop? I don't mean to repeat the old chestnut that
knowledge is somehow finite: put in different words, is there a certain
point where contributors will find it far easier to work on existing
articles than to contribute new ones?

(This is a problem that I doubt we'll encounter until Wikipedia reaches
somewhere between 5 & 10 million articles, but I think it is a potential
problem.)

> Bottom line: AfD doesn't scale. Whatever problems may exist with AfD's
> tendency to randomly delete a selection of perfectly reasonable articles,
> and VFU's growing unwillingness to rectify this, the problem will decrease
> in significance in the long term as page creation rates accelerate
> inexorably beyond the reach of AfD, and possibly even any defensible
> extension of speedy deletion.

If there is such a tipping point, we may find that AfD (in whatever form
it has at the time) not only will be able to keep up with the flow, but
may actually reduce the size of Wikipedia!

Nevertheless, I admit Tony addresses a problem that will likely be seen
far sooner than mine.

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multilingual error messages

body:
I think it should be in pictures - not words... for thickies like me.

On 20/09/05, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I finally ran out of excuses to keep putting it off. So I've
> created a page on meta (
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_error_messages ) to start
> off the process of redesigning the Wikimedia server error messages. I
> find it unacceptable that all wikis - regardless of their setup
> language - receive the same English language message. We also need to
> do things like remove the link to OpenFacts, because that site gets
> overloaded within a few seconds of any Wikipedia downtime.
>
> I welcome any comments whatsoever on this project.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Anyway, by way of propsing a solution to the American-English problem, I
want to offer this and intermediate measure:
 That there be no redirection for words that are in *a* correct orthography.
 Thus, if an American types a search for "color", they get the article in
their orthography with the headword "color"; and if a
non-American-English-speaker types in "colour", they get the article in
their orthography with the headword "colour".
 ...for words with different meanings but identical orthographies you get a
disambiguation page; and, for articles about the same subject that have a
different word for the thing - like Aubergine (Am-En "Eggplant") for
example: you get a page for each; in each respective orthography.
 I think this is a simple, effective, and practical solution for all
languages where differences like this exist, like Spanish, French,
Portuguese, Italian, German, and Chinese, etc... Above all I think it's
pretty fair.
 Can we try and reach some consensus on this?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Upgrading from 1.4.9 to 1.5rc4

references:
<f7ccd24b050916024254e2bc47@mail.gmail.com>	<dgf7up$spe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f7ccd24b05092003493a167316@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> Still, I'm a bit puzzled. Surely $wgBookstoreList* is something prone
> to be customized in non-Wikipedia installations of MediaWiki. What's
> the point of having a getter getBookstoreList() and not a setter
> setBookstoreList()?

The list is just a default when there's not a wiki page for the books
list defined; customizations are meant to be done in the wiki.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SPOF notes

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> For lock files, I dont know why there is any using the mount anyway.
> Can't they be on the local file system under /var/lock/ or something?

Wiki lock files for declaring an entire wiki locked.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Juanma Barranquero

body:
On 9/16/05, Jamie Bliss <astronouth7303 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> > Now, the only thing I miss is a way to customize $wgBookstoreListEn
> > which doesn't involve hacking languages/language.php (because I must
> > remember to update it every time I upgrade, which is a PITA). Setting
> > it in LocalSettings.php does not work. Any ideas?
>
> Write an extension function to change it after initialization.

I've done that, and it works beautifully, thanks.

Still, I'm a bit puzzled. Surely $wgBookstoreList* is something prone
to be customized in non-Wikipedia installations of MediaWiki. What's
the point of having a getter getBookstoreList() and not a setter
setBookstoreList()?

--
                    /L/e/k/t/u


references:
<f7ccd24b050916024254e2bc47@mail.gmail.com>
	<dgf7up$spe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f7ccd24b05091617533c20f649@mail.gmail.com>
	<dghha3$lts$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f7ccd24b05091711306d17411f@mail.gmail.com>
	<dghuk0$mic$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 9/17/05, Jamie Bliss <astronouth7303 at gmail.com> wrote:

> At this point, it sounds a little more intricate than can be easily
> discussed on a mailing list. If you can paste the code somewhere, maybe
> we (I) can help you.

It's not really intricate. Please follow the example, which uses two
files and less than 15 lines of code.

(Using MediaWiki 1.5rc4) add

  include('extensions/MyExtensions.php');

at the end of your LocalSettings.php. The file
extensions/MyExtensions.php contains this:

  <?php
  function __autoload($class_name) {
      require_once($class_name . '.php');
  }
  SpecialPage::addPage(new UnlistedSpecialPage('MyTest'));
  ?>

and extensions/SpecialMyTest.php contains this:

  <?php
  function wfSpecialMyTest() {
      global $wgOut;
      $wgOut->setPageTitle('My Test');
      $wgOut->addHtml('');
  }
  ?>

Loading MediaWiki produces a warning about undefined variables on
SpecialPage.php. Now add this to extensions/MyExtensions.php:

  require_once('SpecialPage.php');

*before* the call to SpecialPage::addPage(). Now MediaWiki loads
without any warnings and runs just fine.

In MediaWiki 1.4.X, loading SpecialPage.php before the call was not
needed. Why the difference?

--
                    /L/e/k/t/u


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
On 9/20/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> We should speedily delete obvious rubbish, and we do.

No, we don't. A ton of obvious rubbish must be sent to AfD because it's not
covered by the CSD. Band vanity is the most obvious example, but there are
many others, such as: neologisms, corporate vanity, personal essays/rants.
No one can give any good reason why these should be deliberated upon, but
they are, all in the name of making sure we never, ever delete a good
article by accident; even if that means making editors who could be using
their time to write articles deliberate on the merits of garbage.

- Ryan


from_name: Philip Sandifer

body:
Whoops. Wrong thing on my clipboard, apparently.

Here's the actual thing I'm bitching about: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_gags_in_Airplane%21

-Snowspinner

On Sep 20, 2005, at 12:02 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Snow spinner stated for the record:
>
>
>> For those looking for your daily dose of VfD (Because, really,
>> why  pretend changing V to A changed anything) abuse, I submit for
>> your  amusement http://www.slate.com/id/2126570/entry/2126575/
>>
>>
>
> A Slate article was deleted?  What does an article on pr0n have to
> do with Wikipedia?
>
> I'm so confused....
>
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
On 9/20/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> Somewhat related to this, I have to say I question the value of quite a
> few of the portals that have been created.  I imagined that portals were
> supposed to be pretty high level and aimed at general readers, but a lot
> now seem to be aimed mainly at fans of games and TV programs, or are so
> narrow that I can't see what a portal provides that an article doesn't.
> Examples of the former are portals for Doctor Who, Final Fantasy, James
> Bond, Oz, Stargate, the Simpsons and Warcraft, while for the latter
> there's Ancient Germanic culture, Eastern Christianity, Scientific Method,
> Utah and Bucharest.
>
> Personally I think portals as fan areas such as the ones above are a bad
> idea.  Just wondered what anyone else though?
>
True. We should have portals for television shows, video game and
culture, instead of the portals you mentioned. That's what
WikiProjects were made for. Maybe we should have such portals moved to
a subpage of their respective projects?

--Mgm


body:
On Sep 20, 2005, at 1:31 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
> But AfD is already swamped by growth and this will only get worse.
> Correcting its strong exclusionist bias and restoring its
> connection with
> the deletion policy would not solve its fundamental brokenness.
>

I agree wholeheartedly. Among other things, I think deletion policy
is always going to have to be adaptive, because, like the blocking
policy, stupid will always find new and previously unimagined ways to
exist. Ultimately, the deletion policy, like the blocking policy,
amounts to endless iterations of "Stop things that hurt Wikipedia
without preventing anything beneficial to Wikipedia." Which is to
say, we cannot sensibly connect the deletion policy to anything as a
set of rigid rules, because all that will obtain is a system designed
to be gamed.

AfD has two deeply seated problems.

1) It is unmanageably big, and will only get bigger.
2) The case for deletion can usually be made with a cursory look at
the article. The case for inclusion often requires mildly substantive
research using non-Wikipedia sources. Thus deletion is always going
to be a fundamentally easier case to argue.

Thus it will always be the case that AfD becomes unmanageable, and
that the unmanageability affects the exclusionists noticably less
than the inclusionists.

-Snowspinner


body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>>From my point of view as a native English speaker who lives in England (not
>in the American sense of "UK"!)
>I think it's important that when I type in words like:
> "colour"
> That I get "colour" and not "color". I don't see why I need to know the
>spelling of the word in what to me is a foreign language when I'm looking up
>a word in a dictionary of my language.
> ---
> To GerardM
> Basically there are two orthographies for English.
> Some might argue the toss about that, I mean for myself as a "Scots"
>speaker, I know there are some who make a big deal about it being a separate
>language, but I myself don't know how to spell it properly, and I just think
>of it as a regional dialect of English like Scouse, Yorkshire, Texan, Kiwi
>and whatever else - because I would read normal English and pronounce it the
>same way as Scots - the odd word like "leid" to me is no different than a
>Yorkshireman saying "summat" for "something" or someone from the southeast
>USA saying "y'all" - they're just dialect words.
>I can show you texts written in a Yorkshire orthography, but the practical
>fact is that the overwhelming majority of the text in the modern world is
>either spelt the English way, or the American way.
> The debate is "huge" in terms of it's implications, because up until now
>no-one appears to have challenged the idea that American-English has the
>right to be considered the standard form of English. It's patently obvious
>it's a dialect, with it's own orthography and it's simply wrong for the
>headword in English to be written in a dialect of English in a dialectal
>orthography and presented as the standard form, when it's not.
>
>
Hoi,
I would not consider either variation of English to be more or less
important/relevant. What I consider is practical; how does it impact
including this content in Ultimate Wiktionary.. Here we have a need to
identify a word as either EE or AE or ?E and the question is how to do this.

It is up to the Wiktionary comunity how they want to have this. They can
either have it with descriptions in definitions and etymologies spelled
in one of the used orthographies or it can be considered not to be too
important and it can be either.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>>France is hard to govern, as De Gaulle did put it, because it has "as
>>many kinds of cheese as days in the year". Way more than 246, that is.
>>
>>The French say soixante-dix, quatre-vingt and quatre-vingt-dix
>>The Belgians say septante, quatre-vingt and nonante
>>The Swiss say septante, huitante and nonante, some even say octante.
>>They are the only ones who got it straight. (And I am French)
>>
>>
>What do the Qu?becois say?
>
They are the same as the French on this issue.

>The worst
>way to write down a pronunciation is by trying to write it phonetically in
>English - you end up with pronunciations that are totally different from the
>way it is actually pronounced. My name is NOT pronounced "Gair-Rid Hole" -
>not even near (see [[en:User:Gerritholl]] for how it is), but I can't think
>of a closer approximation using this "phonetic transcription".
>
No phonetic transcription is ever satisfactory.  Very young Swedish
children may have never seen a phonetic transcription but they still get
the pronunciation correctly.  Most of us become so accustomed to our
ways of pronunciation that we never investigate exactly how we move our
tongus in the process.  An early exposure to any second language helps
to ease some of these problems.

Ec


from_name: Phroziac

body:
*sigh* it only sent it to mgm.

On 9/20/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> ..if you look at the test, you will see that it's not blank, but has a
> nice template explaining what the deal is, and has a link to both
> versions on it. That's not very hard to find the content..
>
> On 9/20/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Right all a disgrunted POV warrior needs to do is cause a fuzz and we
> > need to click through different versions to see which is the one we're
> > looking for. Have you thought about how a blank page looks to the
> > public. If they've got problems reading headers on the Help desk, I
> > don't expect them to look any further when the page is blanked. We'd
> > get daily complaints that things are missing.
> >
> > --Mgm
> >
> > On 9/20/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 9/20/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I have written a proposal which basically suggests blanking protected
> > > > pages, and leaving a template on them that kinda combines
> > > > {{protected}} and {{twoversions}}. You can see it at [[WP:NVP]], or
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_version_protection
> > > >
> > > > Please keep discussion of this on the relevant talk page, to avoid
> > > > fragmentation.
> > >
> > >
> > > I support this proposal only if we link to both versions of the
> > > article in question, thereby giving all parties in the dispute the
> > > perfect opportunity to go fork themselves.
> > >
> > >
> > > OK, that wasn't serious at all.  No discussion here, I'll save it for
> > > the project page.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Michael Turley
> > > User:Unfocused
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
>


body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>
>     Hoi,
>     I would not consider either variation of English to be more or less
>     important/relevant. What I consider is practical; how does it impact
>     including this content in Ultimate Wiktionary.. Here we have a need to
>     identify a word as either EE or AE or ?E and the question is how
>     to do this.
>
>
> An American-English dictionary, and a (Commonwealth) English
> Dictionary then.
> Otherwise, it has to be all listed as seperate entries.
> Frankly I favour the first option, because to non-American-English
> speakers, the American spellings are simply misspellings.
>
> How does Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikaans approach this? Do you have a
> separate Flemish wiktionary etc...?

Dutch and Flemish are considered one language. I would not want a
seperate spell checker for either Dutch or Flemish. All Flemish words
are as far as I am concerned as good as any Dutch word. Afrikaans is a
seperate language and it should be truly be seen as such.

>
>     It is up to the Wiktionary comunity how they want to have this.
>     They can
>     either have it with descriptions in definitions and etymologies
>     spelled
>     in one of the used orthographies or it can be considered not to be too
>     important and it can be either.
>     Thanks,
>        GerardM
>
>


subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies


body:
More Roman (American) imperialism and theft of the truth (!), that we Greeks
(British) must not just resist, but fight!


body:
On Sep 20, 2005, at 1:56 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 9/20/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thus it will always be the case that AfD becomes unmanageable, and
>> that the unmanageability affects the exclusionists noticably less
>> than the inclusionists.
>>
>>
>
>
> Actually my conclusion is the opposite, from more or less the same
> set of
> observations.
>
>

The problem is that this leads to an inclusionist position with a
substantial and non-trivial exclusionist force that goes and mucks
things up. The result is, I think, bad, and bad in a way that is
still exclusionist. The result is that, instead of a consistent
exclusionism, we have an inconsistent one - some number of articles
will get deleted, those articles will stay deleted regardless of the
arguments to the contrary, and those articles will be selected more
or less at random.

-Snowspinner


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
"Jack & Naree" <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote
in message news:c822ae8d050920043629b45332 at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> Can we try and reach some consensus on this?

I suspect that what you are failing to realise is that there has already
been a consensus on this for some considerable time; this is why there are
not continuous edit wars over spelling and grammar...

Well, actually there are, but they're pretty small scale, and usually pretty
lame, so no real problem.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
On 9/20/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, we don't. A ton of obvious rubbish must be sent to AfD because it's not
> covered by the CSD. Band vanity is the most obvious example, but there are
> many others, such as: neologisms, corporate vanity, personal essays/rants.

A lot of that rubbish is being deleted speedily anyway, regardless of
what the CSD policy says.  WP:IAR gets used a lot by new page
patrollers, at least those with deletion rights.  If all the admins
who speedily delete non-CSD rubbish stopped, AFD would be groaning
that much more.

Kelly


body: no I'll stick to chips, biscuits, and my anglicised name thanks.


body:
On 20/09/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Jack & Naree" <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote
> in message news:c822ae8d050920043629b45332 at mail.gmail.com...
> [snip]
> > Can we try and reach some consensus on this?
>
> I suspect that what you are failing to realise is that there has already
> been a consensus

 consensus between Americans, non-native English speakers, and unpatriotic
Americanised English-speakers.

 on this for some considerable time; this is why there are
> not continuous edit wars over spelling and grammar...
>
> Well, actually there are, but they're pretty small scale, and usually
> pretty
> lame, so no real problem.

 So what; absence of evidence of dissatisfaction is not evidence of absence,
is it.

HTH HAND
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [Foundation-l] Multilingual error messages

body:
Well, I finally ran out of excuses to keep putting it off. So I've
created a page on meta (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_error_messages ) to start
off the process of redesigning the Wikimedia server error messages. I
find it unacceptable that all wikis - regardless of their setup
language - receive the same English language message. We also need to
do things like remove the link to OpenFacts, because that site gets
overloaded within a few seconds of any Wikipedia downtime.

I welcome any comments whatsoever on this project.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search broken

body:
On de.wikipedia, repeatedly:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
/usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/extensions/LuceneSearch.php on
line 400
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from_name: Zephram Stark

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Potential Wikipedian growing pains

body:
How about a more natural approach to the function of the AfD?  Many sites, including Netflix.com, allow users to rate the articles of other users, or at least click on whether or not these articles are helpful.  At Netflix, this determines placement of the review, with the top placed review becoming the default.  Alternate reviews are easily retrievable and could be promoted to the top place if people find them more useful for that subject.

At Wikipedia, we could add a stipulation that if most people find the entire subject of the article not useful, it would be placed on a deletion short-list.  Items on the short-list would automatically be removed to a compressed archive if they ever go more than thirty days without being accessed.  The system could also automatically add any article to the short-list that goes more than six months would being accessed.

The only significant source of contention at Wikipedia is when people try to unduly influence articles.  Yet, it is possible to create a system where unduly influencing articles cannot be achieved.  Many sites have done this on a small basis.  We can get rid of administrators and do it on a large basis here if we are willing to let our influence be based on the quality of our edits and not on the friends we know in high places.

Zephram Stark zephramstark at yahoo.com
432-224-6991

----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel P. B. Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 6:03 PM

>> From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
>
>>  is there a point in Wikipedia's size where it's current growth
>> will taper off or stop? I don't mean to repeat the old chestnut that
>> knowledge is somehow finite: put in different words, is there a
>> certain
>> point where contributors will find it far easier to work on existing
>> articles than to contribute new ones?
>
> Oddly enough, I wonder about the exact opposite. I fear that people
> enjoy creating new articles far more than they enjoy editing existing
> articles, and that people look desperately for topics that do not
> exist yet so that they can be the first to create them. The
> Wikipedian equivalent of the Slashdot FIRST POST!!!!
>
> This means that over time a greater proportion of newly created
> articles will reflect an artificial attempt to find a topic that
> hasn't been "taken," and a smaller proportion will be reflect a
> genuine attempt to serve potential readers.
>
> I do not think its growth will stop. The problem is, will the quality
> of the articles hold up? There's no obvious reason why it shouldn't,
> and no obvious reason why it should.
>
> One reason why it _might_ not hold up is that when Wikipedia was less
> famous, contributing to it required a greater interest in the project
> and a greater commitment to the project's ideals. As it becomes more
> and more familiar, it is possible that we will see an increasing
> proportion of new "articles" that are really paragraph-long newbie
> tests.
>
> To tell the truth, I think many of the "articles" that land on AfD
> are best not regarded as articles at all, but as elaborate newbie
> tests OR as badly executed article requests. I'm thinking of substubs
> that convey no information at all except the fact that someone either
> a) genuinely wanted an article on that topic, or b) simply wanted to
> experience the pleasure of creating an article.
>
> I've been casting "votes" recently in AfD that say "delete, and enter
> a request for the article." So far, nobody but me seems to think this
> is a good idea.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:
> Well I don't want to live in an Americanised world; I'd rather take arms
> against a sea of illiterate yanks, than suffer the slings and arrows of
> their nauseating makey-uppy drawl. (and yes I do have American friends!)
>  I know it's not going to feed the starving children in Africa, but I simply
> can't feckin' stand seeing the word "center" and "color" and hearing people
> raising the intonation at the end of their sentences.
>  American-English is like a giant linguistic fingernail down the English
> blackboard.

The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation
for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it.
They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and kept
historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be bizarre
(e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic laughing
stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.

It's a pity the debate has to be so politically charged, wouldn't it be
nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?

Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form of
Americanisation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

-- Tim Starling (Australian)


subject: [WikiEN-l] New proposal - no version protection

body:
It might be nicely linked but it's just another two links too many
visitors have to go through. People, especially newbies are
notoriously bad at finding stuff even if it's staring them in the face
(aka Help desk instructions). Such a thing as this is only going to
cause more problems than it's solving.

Protection one version over the other (without paying too much
attention what version it's protected on encourages at least one of
the parties to discuss.

--Mgm


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reboots of doom

body:
On 9/19/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The one thing that came to my mind is: why does anyone log into zwinger
> in the first place?  Since it's this horribly frightening SPOF, ought we
> to not avoid even _looking_ at it funny?

One reason is that some things are installed on it that aren't (afaik)
installed anywhere else, like dsh(1) which is required for scap(1) and
sync-file(1)


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
On 9/20/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> True. We should have portals for television shows, video game and
> culture, instead of the portals you mentioned. That's what
> WikiProjects were made for. Maybe we should have such portals moved to
> a subpage of their respective projects?

I think portals should be the "public face" of WikiProjects.  A portal
should only exist if there is a formal set of users dedicated to
keeping it maintained.  If this is not happening, it should be
archived or deleted (preferably archived).  Pages like
[[Portal:Cricket]], while potentially just fan pages, actually provide
an excellent method of navigating appropriate content.  If they are
kept up, they do no harm.  If they are not kept up, they look messy
and a messy portal seems worse than an incomplete article.

Sam


body:
Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> AFAICS, MediaWiki:Booksources contains the name of a page in the
> {{ns:4}} namespace, which is used verbatim, except that MAGICNUMBER is
> substituted by the ISBN.
>
> Nice, though not the most documented of features :)

It predates the editable MediaWiki: messages, so yeah it's a little
ugly. Could use some cleanup.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Wikitech-l] Announcement: Proposed CheckUser Policy

body:
Hey everyone,

Some time ago I've wrote a proposed CheckUser Policy
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_CheckUser_Policy), and since
I can't find anyway to improve it, I'm posting it to Meta. I hope to
get some feedback from everyone on this. If someone could also fix the
grammar on that page, I'd be very grateful.

Of course, [[CheckUser]] will get changed in time, after the policy
will be established.

I think that's all, hope to see some comments from the community.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Has any editor yet complained that an administrator has unprotected The
Wrong Version?


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Korn [mailto:smoddy at gmail.com]
> Sent: 20 September 2005 5:49 PM
> To: macgyvermagic at gmail.com; English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors
>
>
> On 9/20/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> True. We should have portals for television shows, video game and
culture, instead of the portals you mentioned. That's what
>> WikiProjects were made for. Maybe we should have such portals moved to
a subpage of their respective projects?
>
> I think portals should be the "public face" of WikiProjects.  A portal
should only exist if there is a formal set of users dedicated to keeping
it maintained.  If this is not happening, it should be
> archived or deleted (preferably archived).  Pages like
> [[Portal:Cricket]], while potentially just fan pages, actually provide
an excellent method of navigating appropriate content.  If they are kept
up, they do no harm.  If they are not kept up, they look messy and a
messy portal seems worse than an incomplete article.
>
> Sam

Hm, personally I don't see too much of a link between portals and
projects.  Astronomy-related projects include telescopes and astronomical
objects, neither of which would make a good topic for a portal, while a
wikiproject:astronomy would be too broad to work well as a project.  I
agree with MgM that the portals I listed in my earlier mail cover topics
much more suited to a project than to a portal.

WT


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/20/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has any editor yet complained that an administrator has unprotected The
> Wrong Version?
>

no in so many words they will normaly phrase it as the disspute not
ever being over.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Topic warriors

body:
On 9/20/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> Hm, personally I don't see too much of a link between portals and
> projects.  Astronomy-related projects include telescopes and astronomical
> objects, neither of which would make a good topic for a portal, while a
> wikiproject:astronomy would be too broad to work well as a project.  I
> agree with MgM that the portals I listed in my earlier mail cover topics
> much more suited to a project than to a portal.

On the contrary.  I thought the entire intention of portals was to
provide a comprehensive overview (I don't think that's an oxymoron) of
a certain area.  I think an astronomy portal would be excellent.
There should be the possibility of a good article every month to
feature.  I guess some of the wikiprojects are too narrow: they should
combine to form the portal.  If there is enough coverage to keep a
portal going, we should have a portal.

Sam


body:
On 9/20/05, Philip Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whoops. Wrong thing on my clipboard, apparently.
>
> Here's the actual thing I'm bitching about: http://en.wikipedia.org/
> wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_gags_in_Airplane%21
>
> -Snowspinner
>

On the other hand the VFU appears to be a pretty strong consensus.
--
geni


body:
A couple of days ago I was on the verge of taking this matter very
seriously.

Then I looked at the net growth rate of the Wikipedia page count. Around
1500 new pages per day remaining undeleted after seven days. I compared it
to the sclerotic maximum capacity of Articles for Deletion (AfD) (average of
112 listings per day early June to early September) and the fact that AfD
participants complain bitterly about their inability to keep up with AfD at
present.

Bottom line: AfD doesn't scale. Whatever problems may exist with AfD's
tendency to randomly delete a selection of perfectly reasonable articles,
and VFU's growing unwillingness to rectify this, the problem will decrease
in significance in the long term as page creation rates accelerate
inexorably beyond the reach of AfD, and possibly even any defensible
extension of speedy deletion.

Perhaps requiring editors to sit a short examination on deletion policy
would help to keep inappropriate nominations down and increase the overall
capacity of AfD, but this would not address the problem of scale.

We should speedily delete obvious rubbish, and we do. In time this manual
mechanism may be augmented by cooperative RC (recent changes) monitoring
tools, which would improve our efficiency.

But AfD is already swamped by growth and this will only get worse.
Correcting its strong exclusionist bias and restoring its connection with
the deletion policy would not solve its fundamental brokenness.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Commons-l] Introducing FlickrLickr

body:
On 9/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Jimmy Wales:
>
> > How accurate is the metadata at flickr? Presumably for photos that
> > people take themselves and upload, it is 100% accurate by definition.
> >
> > But I worry about copyvios at Flickr leaking into Commons.
>
> The metadata at Flickr is decent, if very POV and personal.
> Photographers often tell little stories about how a photo came to be.
> Some tags are a bit silly -- for some reason, people feel the need to
> tag all their photos with "photo", or with their first name.

I'd also add that a Creative Commons license is NOT the default at Flickr;
you have to explicitly change the license to that. It is possible to change
one's user setup there so that everything you upload gets marked as the
Creative Commons license one chooses, but again, not the default, and too
much effort in general for someone uploading copyright violations.

A bigger problem would be people uploading stuff that's made freely
available by someone else but under a Commons-incompatible license, but has
been incorrectly marked as the 'nearest matching' CC license, out of a
desire to display its free status.

-Matt
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from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OurMedia for ASL-English video

body:
> OurMedia.org may serve as a nice home for the video for an ASL-English
> wikipedia. It seems to have no restrictions on video size. Wikipedia can
> house the English text and link to the video file at OurMedia.
> Also for the wiki in wikipedia. Consider a video file the same as an image
> file in wikipedia.In Wikipedia, an image file cannot be edited other than
> by replacement. A video could be "edited via replacement" the same way.
> Words and sentences in Wikipedia are also done this way. If I change "lion"
> to "king of the beasts" I have essentially edited via replacement.
> Hhamilton

So you actually want us to create a second Wikipedia in English, the
only difference from the original Enlish one being links to external
ASL videos, and you wonder why people oppose this idea?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: AFD only doesn't scale for people who want to vote
 on all listed articles.

body:
> From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
> AFD only doesn't scale for people who want to vote on all listed
> articles.
> Only vote for articles that need the votes and to ones where you can
> add something to the discussion.

This is pretty much what I do. My interest in AfD waxes and wanes,
but if I look at AfD at all, you may take it as given that I have
glanced at every discussion for an entire day. I probably participate
in less than one in ten.

*I don't participate if there is already obvious consensus and it's
clear which way the discussion will go. (But if it's important to me
I will put it on my watchlist).

*I don't participate if I truly am indifferent to the outcome of the
particular nomination.

*I don't participate if I am not in a position to make an informed
judgement, _and_ the subject is of so little interest to me that I
can't spare ten minutes to start to educate myself about it.

*I _do_ participate if it's something that is _almost_ a speedy and
there are only a couple of votes there already. (FIRST POST!!!!)

*I _do_ participate if I'm aware of possessing some relevant fact
about the article or topic that has not already been mentioned by
another participant.

*I _do_ participate if I click on the article and it makes a very
different impression on me than it made on the nominator.

*I _do_ participate if the article arouses my curiosity. (I enjoy
improving/rewriting/"rescuing" AfD's _if it's a topic that happens to
pique my interest_.)

*I'm afraid that I _do_ participate if I see a number of "votes" that
give no rationale, or a bad rationale. These are probably my least
useful comments.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Esquire article on Wikipedia

body:
I was asked to let everyone know about a little experiment that a
reporter for Esquire magazine
and Jimbo agreed to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Improve_this_article_about_Wikipedia

The page is pretty self explanatory. A journalist for Esquire magazine,
A.J. Jacobs, did a story about Wikipedia,
and then posted it on Wikipedia so that Wikipedians can edit it. He
wants to see how his draft is changed
(preferably for the better).

-Mark