subject: [Wikipedia-l] Any plans for "WikiBook"??

body:
abhio at vsnl.net wrote:

>Hi,
>   I was very keen to know whether the guys at wiki have plans to start a project to produce e-books/textbooks out of wiki articles. There was another similar request on the group also, so will the guys at wiki please respond back and tell us if they're interested on starting something like this. I have a whole lot of ideas that I was hoping to share on this sort of a project.
>I've put down all these ideas on my website, its at http://www.geocities.com/abioommen
>I've put a name to it -- gdocs.org -- but thats just for the heck of it and I don't have the resources or time to do it alone. Its a idea that I believe that Wiki can really bring to reality and it can kick off some sort of a revolution in open-content, if wiki seriously does something like this.
>So I was hoping if the guys at wiki would start something like this!!
>
As much as I support the underlying concepts of this proposal, I believe
it has to wait until the "foundation" is in place.  This will be a
modest revenue generating venture which will need to have a place to
deposit its money, and will also need to manage costs related to
producing printed books.  Those costs can be significant.

 Besides the obvious benefit of having the Wikipedia available to a
larger audience, physical publication will also be helpful in
guaranteeing that the open licence nature of Wikipedia is protected for
a long time after the present contributors are gone.  Being able to
produce a printed text at that time will be prima facie proof that the
person using it cannot legally override the open licence with his own
copyright.

In short: a great idea but still premature.

Eclecticology


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons

body:
Ordinarily I would just bring this up on a talk page, but
this issue cuts across several articles, and I might need
a ruling from Jimbo.

How do we discuss the issue of "whether or not Iraq has
chemical weapons"?

Officially, of course, they deny having any. And it's a
crucial yes-no matter because their alleged possession is
the chief rationale behind the US-led war in Iraq.

If Iraq doesn't chemical weapons, it looks like the US
military campaign is:

* not morally justified
* a violation of international law

...which may have ramifications about whether Iraq is
bound to treat POWs according to the Geneva Convention or
can "legally" torture, execute or rape them.

If Iraq does have chemical weapons, the US campaign seems:

* at least partially justified
* probably NOT a violation of international law

...although the last 2 points are in themselves
controversial.

The question is, how do we handle this when writing articles about the war?

Ed Poor


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] City names argument resurrected

body:
At 09:11 AM 3/25/03 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>This has been discussed before, at length, and the most
>passionate and devoted contributor on the topic has
>been maveric. I will go along with any naming convention
>he devises (i.e., he has my "proxy vote").
>
>The point of the naming convention has always been to
>make the article title:
>
>* unambiguous, and
>* as short as possible
>
>These two values compete somewhat, and there are always
>thorny special cases. Is [[Paris]] enough to indicate
>that big city in France? Does [[New York]] mean New York
>State or New York City? -- not to mention (although I
>just did; hi, cunctator!) that WITHIN New York City
>"New York" generally means Manhattan!
No. Within New York City "New York" means either the city
or the state, depending on context--but "the city" means the
part of Manhattan where most of the businesses and tourist
stuff are. Someone taking the bus down from the Bronx to
visit me, or the nearby hospital, or the Cloisters, wouldn't say
they were going into "the city".

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of
Wikipedia conventions.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
Vicki, I stand corrected -- unless I can get a seat on
the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), in which case I "sit
corrected".

Perhaps it is more common among residents of Queens,
Nassau and Suffolk to hear Manhattan referred to as "New
York". On the LIRR, conductors making announcements in
Jamaica, Queens use "New York" to mean Manhattan, as
opposed to Brooklyn. I hear people in Queens and Long
Island say "New York" as often as "the City" to indicate
Manhattan, especially when talking about where they work
or where they're going for an evening's entertainment.

Context is everything.

Ed Poor


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia HTML standards (was Skins)

body:
On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 14:31:52 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
<lee at piclab.com> wrote:

>
> - Article text should be in high-contrast colors that are not so
> overly loud they induce eye strain, and serifed fonts are
> preferred for readability.
>
<Klaxon sound>


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia HTML standards (was Skins)

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>
>- Site should render reasonably on Netscape 4.X, Gecko-based
>  browsers (Mozilla, Netscape 7, Galeon...), KHTML-based browsers
>  (Konqueror, Safari...), MS Internet Explorer 4+, and Lynx.
>  It's OK if some non-vital features won't render on some
>  browsers, especially Netscape 4.X and Lynx, as long as users
>  of those browsers can still view and edit articles and otherwise
>  interact with the site normally.
>
>
The default skin, yes.
But user-selectable skins shouldn't be afraid to ONLY parse for
standards-compliant browsers -- provided we *say so loudly* in the
preferences selection.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>
>Tarquin, Sheldon: could you create some sample HTML template files & CSS
>sheets in the form you'd *like* to be able to work with? Then we can see
>about making the code talk to it.
>
>
>
This is just a very rough mockup.
I've devised some substitution syntax :-) -- see the comments in the html.

couple of neat tricks:
1. the sidebar width scales with browser font size changes (we currently
don't)
2. use of a body class for article / meta namespace means we can do
things like put the header of non-article pages in italics

I'm assuming that substitutions is done in 2 phases: some of the
substitutions can be made when the template is uploaded & then cached by
the server as HTML.
This would be all the things which are language-dependent but the same
throughout a particular language, eg
* the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." text
* some of the links such as  "Recent Changes"
* the GFDL notice

It's a bit messy having "{MainLinks, suffix:"<br>"}", because I can't
see what the list is going to look like in my browser. One option would
be to use the same syntax as Apache's SSI, but the (big!) downside to
that is that I have to load my page through Apache every time I make
changes, which is quite a bit slower than loading from the file direct.
I'll scratch my head & see if I can come up with something slightly
better for lists of links ...

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Perhaps it is more common among residents of Queens,
>Nassau and Suffolk to hear Manhattan referred to as "New
>York". On the LIRR, conductors making announcements in
>Jamaica, Queens use "New York" to mean Manhattan, as
>opposed to Brooklyn. I hear people in Queens and Long
>Island say "New York" as often as "the City" to indicate
>Manhattan, especially when talking about where they work
>or where they're going for an evening's entertainment.
>
>Context is everything.
>
Exactly, and this sort of situation is not limited to NYC.  I'm sure
that there are other large cities where "going into town" simply means
going to the city core of the same city.  Unlike NYC they may not have
these clearly defined boroughs.  Of course, our context is a world
context, and we can't expect our readers to understand these things in
the same way as a New York City resident.

Rc


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> The point of the naming convention has always been
> to
> make the article title:
>
> * unambiguous, and
> * as short as possible
>
> These two values compete somewhat, and there are
> always
> thorny special cases. Is [[Paris]] enough to
> indicate
> that big city in France?
>
> The biggest bone of contention is probably whether
> to use commas or parentheses when we need to
> disambiguate.
> Some prefer [[Paris, France]] as familiar to most
> readers.
> Others prefer the convenience of [[Paris (France)]]
> because of the "pipe trick".
>
> I have no desire to take a side on this issue,
> except (as mentioned above) I will side with
whatever Mav
> wants.
>
> Ed Poor

Many people might get confused between New York state
and New York city (outsider point of view, when we say
New York, we usually refer to the city, not to the
state, I even think many french don't know there is a
state called New York, as for New York Manhattan,
that's a local meaning probably)

but I really think [[Paris]] is enough to indicate
that it is that big city in France, rather than Paris,
Arkansas, 3000 people.

__________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Rachel Corrie]] and [[Images of Rachel Corrie]]

body:
koyaanis qatsi wrote:

>Eclecticology wrote:
>
>>Although I very much support the inclusion of the
>>[[Rachel Corrie]] page as properly encyclopedic, I
>>see no value in continuing the images page,
>>which adds nothing to the subject.  The biographical
>>
>>page does include a few statements (like her love of
>>gardening) that have nothing to do with her claim to
>>fame, and therefore go beyond encyclopedia material,
>>I would be content to let those details stay for the
>>next few months.
>>
>
>Actually, Stephen King's rock band (with Amy Tan, Dave
>Barry, and Anne Rice) has nothing to do with his claim
>to fame, but I wouldn't mind reading about it.
>Similarly, that Kubrick was a photographer as well as
>a director is not so pressing (though one could argue
>that photography affected his directing--ok, one
>could, and I will).  Less so with King's guitar
>playing.  The only reason I haven't put in what Moby
>does with his spare time is because I personally
>consider it boring, but I wouldn't mind if anyone else
>added it. (when he's not waiting tables at his
>restaurant or composing music, he's attending
>concerts, taking photos, or playing Scrabble with his
>friends).
>
>If the claim is unduly praising, or unverifiable, then
>that's something else entirely.  But that it's
>irrelevant to her fame shouldn't be the deciding
>factor (but let me be clear that I think explaining
>why a subject is controversial, well-known, or
>generally discussed *should* be our goal as writers).
>
Although I am critical of some statements in the article which I
consider to be excessively adulatory or perhaps even boring, they're not
the sort of big point that I would consider important enough to declare
an edit war.

Ec


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
> (tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>):
>
> This is just a very rough mockup.
> I've devised some substitution syntax :-) -- see the comments in the html.

I don't see any use for a template system at all.  It's just
a performance penalty for no gain in either flexibility or capability.

What I'm interested in seeing is a /complete page/, fully rendered,
with all text, markup, and style elements.  We can then implement
that in the structure we already have which is quite powerful.

> couple of neat tricks:
> 1. the sidebar width scales with browser font size changes (we
> currently don't)
> 2. use of a body class for article / meta namespace means we can do
> things like put the header of non-article pages in italics

Those sound useful; if you can integrate that into the existing
stylesheets, so much the better.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Well, I don't think this is all that special.  There's a controversy,
>so we don't take a position on it.  We merely report.
>
As things stand perhaps the most acceptable source on whether or not
Iraq has these chemical weapons would be to base our writing on the
reports of Hans Blix to the Security Council.  From the parts that I did
hear they were full of well crafted diplomatic ambiguity.

>We can *never* take a position on whether the campaign is morally
>justified, nor on whether it "violates international law".
>
Agreed, though I do have my own views.  The Security Council has not yet
had a public debate on the invasion.  It is ultimately for the
International Criminal Court (ICC) to decide.

>>...which may have ramifications about whether Iraq is
>>bound to treat POWs according to the Geneva Convention or
>>can "legally" torture, execute or rape them.
>>
>
>I'm not aware that any provision of the Geneva Conventions which make
>torture, execution or rape of POWs legal, even if the conflict itself
>is somehow illegal.  But certainly an NPOV discussion of what,
>exactly, constitutes a war crime, is valid.
>
The Iraqis havc stated that they will follow the Geneva Convention.  The
alleged violation that triggered this discussion had nothing to do with
rape or torture, but with the much less serious violation of displaying
the POWs on TV.  I have the distinct impression that the families of
those POWs were relieved to see them alive.  The interviewers could only
ask very basic questions because of their very limited command of the
English language.  One person who had been captured during the earlier
Gulf War did remark on CNN that she was treated more harshly by the
local troops that captured her than by those further up the chain of
command who later took over custody.  There's nothing surprising about this.

>>The question is, how do we handle this when writing articles about
>>the war?
>>
>NPOV.  We don't take a position on anything controversial.  We state
>what others have said.
>
>For some of these things, our best friend will be time.  There's a lot
>going on "in the fog of war" that simply can't be treated very well in
>an _encyclopedia_, until the facts are more settled and widely known.
>
Some of the issues that divided the Biblical Israelis and their
Mesopotamian contemporaries are still unresolved. :-)

>At the same time, people have always enjoyed writing current events
>articles, and they are a strength, so I see no reason to avoid them,
>so long as we're careful and so long as we understand that the full
>story may not come out for many years.
>
Since I have definite POV's on some of these issues, I find that I do
best to keep away from the main themes, and limit my comments to a few
incidental aspects where I can keep my temper under control.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
> (tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>):
>
> Suppose I'd like to make improvements to the current skins -- how do I
> get HTML & CSS that I can work with?
> I can find the CSS files for the existing skins in the stuff I got from
> CVS, but everything else is in PHP. Where is the actual HTML made and
> how can I see it?

Well, yeah, it's in PHP; what gets rendered within the article
text is handled by the doWikiPass2() function of OutputPage.php,
which makes calls out to the skin to render links and some other
things.  The stuff before and after the article text is produced
by the skin directly.

Skin.php is subclassed by the individual skins.

> > What I'm interested in seeing is a /complete page/, fully rendered,
> with all text, markup, and style elements.
>
> You mean a Wikipedia page that's just like one I would save from
> my web browser?

Exactly.  If that shows me some tricks that would useful, then I can
code them up.

> >Those sound useful; if you can integrate that into the existing
> >stylesheets, so much the better.
>
> From what I can tell from Skin.php, the current system shoves a
> "bgcolor" => "#FFFFDD" into the HTML's BODY tag
> Change that to shove a class= ... as in my notes:
> "class" => "article" and "class" => "meta"
> presumably

That (or something like it) is probably a good idea.  I'm only a
bit concerned that I want to have styles that apply to the body
text of articles regardless of namespace, but I suppose I can
use the DIVs for that.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] No problem on the chiropractic article

body:
So all the accusations of bias you made against me were just in good fun?
Zoe
 Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:Tannin's claims against me bear no resemblance to reality.
He simply is not correct. In fact, I have worked with
others to make sure that this article is NPOV, and I have
not removed the recent additions and changes.

Believe me, if I was writing this article by myself, it
would look different than it does!

I don't even have a problem with Tannin. My only problem
has been with Fred, because his particular changes were
grossly misleading, which I have explained in the Talk
section of this article. With the help of Steven Carlson
and others, we are making great progress.

RK

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons

body:
Shooting at downed pilots is also against the Geneva Convention, but there were Iraqi troops shooting into the river where they thought they were hunting a downed American.
Zoe
 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:The Iraqis havc stated that they will follow the Geneva Convention. The
alleged violation that triggered this discussion had nothing to do with
rape or torture, but with the much less serious violation of displaying
the POWs on TV.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #236 - 14 msgs

body:
The UN inspectors were closely followed by Iraqi handlers.  The American trooops have none, and also have the cooperation of the locals, which the inspectors did not, because the locals were afraid of Hussein's backlash.
Zoe
 A thypique <thypique at yahoo.fr> wrote:
Let me first report what many french people said today
(just for information) :

US soldiers finding chemical weapons is necessarily a
joke, a forged "proof" to justify their invasion, just
as american representative tried to forge "proofs" for
the UN to make the war acceptable. It is very unlikely
that US soldiers tumble on chemical weapons just as
easily, when so many inspectors found nothing in
months.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The UN inspectors were closely followed by Iraqi handlers.  The
> American trooops have none, and also have the cooperation of the
> locals, which the inspectors did not, because the locals were
> afraid of Hussein's backlash.
> Zoe
>  A thypique <thypique at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Let me first report what many french people said today
> (just for information) :
>
> US soldiers finding chemical weapons is necessarily a
> joke, a forged "proof" to justify their invasion, just
> as american representative tried to forge "proofs" for
> the UN to make the war acceptable. It is very unlikely
> that US soldiers tumble on chemical weapons just as
> easily, when so many inspectors found nothing in
> months.
>

I'll agree with Zoe on that one. The other thing is that we might
then get renowned Iraqi scientists to say: "Yes we had a banned
weapons porgram, yes we reserched and produced chemical and
biological waepons, and yes, we were told by saddam that if we even
breathed a word about it, our entire family would be tortured and
killed."
If the French say that this is fabricated too, then maybe they will
not be welcome by the comman man in Iraq.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
> (tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>):
>
> The css has 3 blocks:
> body {
> /* these style rules apply to all articles */
> }
> body.article {
> /* just sets the white colour for articles */
> }
> body.meta {
> /* just sets the yellow colour for meta-pages*/
> }
>
> This is why it's called *cascading* stylesheets. :-D
> I think we have a communication problem! You speak PHP, I don't. I speak
> CSS, and I'm not sure you do.

Yes, I understand CSS just fine, I just hadn't looked specifically
at yours yet to see what you were doing. And it /is/ a nuisance that
you can't have multiple classes on a single element, even though you
can do a lot without them.  I never saw a line of PHP before I wrote
the wiki code, so if I can learn it well enough to write the whole
thing, you should be able to learn enough to make modifications
without too much work.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
> (tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>):
>
> Sorry if I offended -- I only meant to say we have areas of knowledge

No problem--I agree, I'm not a CSS guru by any means.

> There are quite a few tricks to work around the problem of single classes.
> For example, there's no need to give the "From Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopedia." paragraph a class. We can access it by either:
>
> h1 + p { /* first P after an h1 but I'm not sure how IE supports this */ }
> or
> div.masthead p { /* if we made a top div */ }
>
> with E[foo="bar"] you can do matching on arbitrary tags, but again,
> support is patchy.

Yep, that's another problem with CSS--I've tried to make the
stylesheets I created as simple and widely-supported as possible,
and the fallbacks reasonable.  That's why I want to see a complete
working page before I think about coding anything--I want to see
exactly what it looks like on a wide set of browsers first, then
make the code produce it.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons

body:
Zoe wrote:

> Shooting at downed pilots is also against the Geneva Convention, but
> there were Iraqi troops shooting into the river where they thought
> they were hunting a downed American.
>
> Zoe
>
I did see that incident on TV.  It seems to me that it is more typical
of local military behaviour, than reflective of broader military policy.
 That in fact there was nobody there to shoot at is characteristic of
populations that are either in panic and/or poorly disciplined.  Local
populations probably have never heard of the Geneva Convention.

Ec


body:
Zoe wrote:

> The UN inspectors were closely followed by Iraqi handlers.  The
> American trooops have none, and also have the cooperation of the
> locals, which the inspectors did not, because the locals were afraid
> of Hussein's backlash.
>
> Zoe
>
This was not the case of the inspectors who went in because of
resolution 1441.  The co-operation of the locals has been significantly
less than expected, notably in the Shia south where there has typically
been an anti-Saddam tradition.  The capture of Umm-Qasr has been more
difficult than expected, and troops have not gone into Basra at all.
 For many Iraqis the issue has become less a matter of preserving
Saddam's regime than of protecting the integrity of the country.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons

body:
On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Ordinarily I would just bring this up on a talk page, but
> this issue cuts across several articles, and I might need
> a ruling from Jimbo.
>
> How do we discuss the issue of "whether or not Iraq has
> chemical weapons"?

With liberal use of the word "alleged" and by indicating who is doing the
alleging and under what circumstances, same as any NPOV issue.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] is it possible?

body:
On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, [iso-8859-1] Chuck Smith wrote:
> Is it possible if someone types the name of an article
> which doesn't yet have any text that that person could
> be sent to a search page for that topic.  Thus, if I
> type http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen, instead
> of getting a page saying that this page doesn't exist,
> I would instead get the search results page?  Would
> anyone else want this?

Already proposed, not yet implemented:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_page_page

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our curmudgeon

body:
On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Please don't be a "pain in the neck" because then I'll have to choose
> between a chiropractor, an osteopath, or a regular doctor, for relief

You might consider garlic -- it's good for the heart, particularly when
served with a nice stake.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, this hagiography of Rachel Corrie
> has gone on long enough.  Since we've had the discussion of moving the
> victims of 9/11 to Meta, could we do the same thing with the Rachel Corrie
> iconography and worship pages?

The 9/11 information has not been moved to Meta, but to
sep11.wikipedia.org. Meta is not a dump for material considered off-topic
elsewhere. If the images go beyond what is acceptable on Wikipedia, they
should be deleted, not moved.

The problem here is one which rarely comes up on Wikipedia: "too much
information". Let me construct a less emotional analogy -- if someone
uploaded 100 photos of the Golden Gate bridge, to add to the respective
article or a separate page, we might argue the same way as you do for the
Corrie images.

My take on this is as follows: In such cases, formal criteria become more
relevant. Is the page well-designed and easy to edit and navigate? Are the
images in the public domain or under the FDL? We should not overdo the
"fair use" thing; having a few photos of Rachel in the article may be OK,
but an entire gallery goes a bit far.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Iraq and chemical weapons

in_reply_to: <BAA6360A.7BF6%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 04:36:26PM -0500

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> <US, Iraq, France discussion snipped>
>
> This discussion does not belong on the mailing list.

Seconded.  Please, everyone, let's *not* discuss politics on the list.
We're a bunch of opinionated, intelligent people who love to write.
We manage to get our work down with a modicum of peace and love.  I
know of no more sure way to get flame wars going about other things
than to discuss politics on the list, particularly in these tense
times.

Our mission here is humanitarian and global and unrelated to
transitory world events.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our curmudgeon

in_reply_to: <E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280CF635@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 05:36:59PM -0500

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Oh, dry up. You always say this or that doesn't belong on the
>mailing list, and then you turn around and say that we *didn't
>discuss* things enough, like the slogan naming policy.

I think your original question was perfectly fine.  "Here's a
controversial issue, how do we NPOV it?"

What Cunc was talking about, I'm pretty sure, was the discussion of
the *content*, i.e. of justification for war, etc., etc.

We shouldn't talk about that here.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] My aching back

body:
Please don't *make me* come to the chiropractic article and straighten out it out. I'll muscle in, if I have to, make no bones about it...

Ed Poor
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Prolipsis (was: Iraq and chemical weapons)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>= > How do we discuss the issue of "whether or not Iraq has
>= > chemical weapons"?
>=
>= With liberal use of the word "alleged" and by indicating who is doing the
>= alleging and under what circumstances, same as any NPOV issue.
>=
>= -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>Thanks, Brion. I hope I'm not taking up valuable mailing list space with my question about Iraq.
>
>Certain people -- not to name Cunctator, he he -- think this discussion should be on a talk page instead...
>
I've avoided talk pages about these issues.  When it comes to NPOV we
can't afford to be "conservative" ;-) about using the word "allege".

Ec


in_reply_to: <F53QUfMRw4XVZb8IAnT0002ef3d@hotmail.com>; from ts4294967296@hotmail.com on Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 09:54:32AM +1100

body:
(Tim accidentally attributed some remarks to me that were actually
made by Ed Poor.  No big problem, I just note it in case it comes up
in the future!)

Ed said, essentially, "Whatever Mav wants is fine with me."

Mav is quoted thusly:
> >There was a push to have Australian cities preemptively disambiguated a
> >while ago (just as American and Canadian cities are), but that movement
> >seemed to loose steam. I'm not sure what the Aussies want now.
>
> Well, I can tell you what three of the Aussies want: Tannin and I are in
> favour of simple names and Karen's happy to go along (although she argued
> for preemptive disambiguation originally). As far I as can see Robert Merkel
> has not expressed an opinion. That only leaves the less regular contributors
> such as Arno and Peter Eckersley (Pde).

I think we should do the same thing for all countries, or at least all
English speaking countries, or for all cities that meet some popular
recognition threshold, whatever that may be.

--Jimbo


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
<US, Iraq, France discussion snipped>

This discussion does not belong on the mailing list.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>>(tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com>):
>>
>>This is just a very rough mockup.
>>I've devised some substitution syntax :-) -- see the comments in the html.
>>
>>
>
>I don't see any use for a template system at all.  It's just
>a performance penalty for no gain in either flexibility or capability.
>
>
Suppose I'd like to make improvements to the current skins -- how do I
get HTML & CSS that I can work with?
I can find the CSS files for the existing skins in the stuff I got from
CVS, but everything else is in PHP. Where is the actual HTML made and
how can I see it?

 > What I'm interested in seeing is a /complete page/, fully rendered,
with all text, markup, and style elements.

You mean a Wikipedia page that's just like one I would save from my web
browser?

>Those sound useful; if you can integrate that into the existing
>stylesheets, so much the better.
>

 From what I can tell from Skin.php, the current system shoves a
"bgcolor" => "#FFFFDD" into the HTML's BODY tag
Change that to shove a class= ... as in my notes:
"class" => "article" and "class" => "meta"
presumably


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our curmudgeon

body:
Oh, dry up. You always say this or that doesn't belong on the mailing list, and then you turn around and say that we *didn't discuss* things enough, like the slogan naming policy.

I don't mind your being curmudgeon -- we need at least one! -- but would you please do it in a consistent way?

-----Original Message-----
From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 4:36 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Iraq and chemical weapons

<US, Iraq, France discussion snipped>

This discussion does not belong on the mailing list.


body:
= > How do we discuss the issue of "whether or not Iraq has
= > chemical weapons"?
=
= With liberal use of the word "alleged" and by indicating who is doing the
= alleging and under what circumstances, same as any NPOV issue.
=
= -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Thanks, Brion. I hope I'm not taking up valuable mailing list space with my question about Iraq.

Certain people -- not to name Cunctator, he he -- think this discussion should be on a talk page instead...

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our curmudgeon

body:
On 3/25/03 5:36 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Oh, dry up. You always say this or that doesn't belong on the mailing list,
> and then you turn around and say that we *didn't discuss* things enough, like
> the slogan naming policy.
>
> I don't mind your being curmudgeon -- we need at least one! -- but would you
> please do it in a consistent way?

I am consistent.

Maybe you can explain how an argument about US vs. French views of the
believability of the US military is pertinent to Wikipedia policy.

When did I say that we *didn't discuss* the slogan naming policy enough?

If you're going to claim that I'm a curmudgeon, and tell me to dry up, maybe
you should the facts first.


body:
On 3/25/03 5:47 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> = > How do we discuss the issue of "whether or not Iraq has
> = > chemical weapons"?
> =
> = With liberal use of the word "alleged" and by indicating who is doing the
> = alleging and under what circumstances, same as any NPOV issue.
> =
> = -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> Thanks, Brion. I hope I'm not taking up valuable mailing list space with my
> question about Iraq.
>
> Certain people -- not to name Cunctator, he he -- think this discussion should
> be on a talk page instead...

It's a good thing you didn't name me, he he, because I didn't say that I
think your question was inappropriate. I was referring to the argument that
ensued, e.g.

   The UN inspectors were closely followed by Iraqi handlers.  The
   American trooops have none, and also have the cooperation of the
   locals, which the inspectors did not, because the locals were afraid
   of Hussein's backlash.

and

  This was not the case of the inspectors who went in because of
  resolution 1441.  The co-operation of the locals has been significantly
  less than expected, notably in the Shia south where there has typically
  been an anti-Saddam tradition.  The capture of Umm-Qasr has been more
  difficult than expected, and troops have not gone into Basra at all.
  For many Iraqis the issue has become less a matter of preserving
  Saddam's regime than of protecting the integrity of the country.

An interesting and compelling discussion, but not relevant or appropriate
for the mailing list.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our curmudgeon

body:
Please don't be a "pain in the neck" because then I'll have to choose between a chiropractor, an osteopath, or a regular doctor, for relief ^_^

Ed Poor


body:
<<It's a good thing you didn't name me, he he, because I didn't say that I
think your question was inappropriate. I was referring to the argument that
ensued, e.g. >>

Thanks for clarifying that. You are still my most favourite and consistent curmudgeon. --Ed


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
tarquin wrote:
>
> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>  > What I'm interested in seeing is a /complete page/, fully rendered,
> with all text, markup, and style elements.

OK, a possible (and working!) *source* (template) is at
	http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AOmniCologneBlue
which renders something very similar to CologneBlue.

To view a *rendered* page, choose the "Omni" skin in your user settings.
To change the rendereing, edit [[Wikipedia:OmniCologneBlue]] accordingly.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our curmudgeon

body:
= > Please don't be a "pain in the neck" because then I'll have to choose
= > between a chiropractor, an osteopath, or a regular doctor, for relief
=
= You might consider garlic -- it's good for the heart, particularly when
= served with a nice stake.

You guys are really putting the bite on me tonight: stick to it, I appreciate the vamping. --Ed


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>Exactly.  If that shows me some tricks that would useful, then I can
>code them up.
>
>
Well if I were to design a skin from scratch, you'd code the entire
thing into PHP from my HTML?
egad!
I figured using templates would shunt part of the work onto the page
designer's lap, that's all.

>
>
>>>Those sound useful; if you can integrate that into the existing
>>>stylesheets, so much the better.
>>>
>>>
>>From what I can tell from Skin.php, the current system shoves a
>>"bgcolor" => "#FFFFDD" into the HTML's BODY tag
>>Change that to shove a class= ... as in my notes:
>>"class" => "article" and "class" => "meta"
>>presumably
>>
>>
>
>That (or something like it) is probably a good idea.  I'm only a
>bit concerned that I want to have styles that apply to the body
>text of articles regardless of namespace, but I suppose I can
>use the DIVs for that.
>
??
The css has 3 blocks:
body {
/* these style rules apply to all articles */
}
body.article {
/* just sets the white colour for articles */
}
body.meta {
/* just sets the yellow colour for meta-pages*/
}

This is why it's called *cascading* stylesheets. :-D
I think we have a communication problem! You speak PHP, I don't. I speak
CSS, and I'm not sure you do.

>
>
>


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>
> In short: a great idea but still premature.
>
I agree.
Besides, we still have many glaring omissions in our content: say,
[[saliva]] for example.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Strange quotes (was: City names argument resurrected)

body:
Right. I, Ed Poor, had said:

>This has been discussed before, at length, and the most passionate and
>devoted contributor on the topic has been maveric. I will go along with any
>naming convention he devises (i.e., he has my "proxy vote").

(Or, as Jimbo so ably paraphrased it, "Whatever Mav wants is fine with me.")

I even recognized that quote as coming from me -- but I didn't notice at the time that Tim seemed to be attributing it (albeit accidentally, I'm sure) as an "ibid" citation from Jimbo.

Ah, well, we think so alike nowadays -- the brainwashing has fully taken hold, no? -- soon my takeover will be complete and I will rule Wikipedia with an iron hand, buwah ha ha ha!

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Skins

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>Yes, I understand CSS just fine, I just hadn't looked specifically
>at yours yet to see what you were doing. And it /is/ a nuisance that
>you can't have multiple classes on a single element, even though you
>can do a lot without them.  I never saw a line of PHP before I wrote
>the wiki code, so if I can learn it well enough to write the whole
>thing, you should be able to learn enough to make modifications
>without too much work.
>
Sorry if I offended -- I only meant to say we have areas of knowledge

There are quite a few tricks to work around the problem of single classes.
For example, there's no need to give the "From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia." paragraph a class. We can access it by either:

h1 + p { /* first P after an h1 but I'm not sure how IE supports this */ }
or
div.masthead p { /* if we made a top div */ }

with E[foo="bar"] you can do matching on arbitrary tags, but again,
support is patchy.

>
>
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: City names argument resurrected

body:
On Tuesday 25 March 2003 10:22 am, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>...
>I have no desire to take a side on this issue, except
> (as mentioned above) I will side with whatever Mav wants.
>
> Ed Poor

Well my personal opinion on this has changed a bit but we did vote on the
issue. The results are below:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(city_names)/Archive_3

Summary: In general there is no special naming convention for cities but when
there is a reasonable ambiguity then and /only/ then do we add additional
distinguishing information to the title.

The only exceptions are the United States and Canada where nearly every city
name is used multiple times within their respective borders /and/ many others
are shared between them (there are several Richmonds in Canada and a couple
dozen in the United States, for example). So cities in these nations are to
be pre-emptively disambiguated because city naming in the United States and
Canada is /so/ ambiguous /and/ these cites are very often expressed in the
[city/plane name, state/province] format ("Richmond, California" or
"Richmond, Ontario").

Another thing that was voted on was the method for disambiguating
non-US/Canadian cities when it is needed. I voted for the method that won;
the comma convention. I now think this is a very bad choice because the comma
convention is only widely used in the US and English-speaking Canada (and to
a less extent in other English speaking countries) for disambiguating cities.
Many other countries place the nation/sub-national entity in parenthesis and
some, especially in continental Europe, use river names.

This is something that IMO we should discuss some more. But tentatively I
would suggest that ambiguous city names outside the US and Canada should
follow normal disambiguation. That is; if there is an unambiguous alternative
name that is often used by English speakers, then we should use that
('Frankfurt (Oder)' for the Frankfurt on the Oder river in the state of
Brandenburg - not to be confused with the more famous Frankfurt on the Main
river - , for example). But if there is no natural disambigutor then we
should use more standard parenthetical disambiguation (Cologne (Germany), -
not to be confused with the perfume for men, for example).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 18]]


from_name: A thypique

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #234 - 11 msgs

body:
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:42:53 -0800 (PST)
> From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
> To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Search feature
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Anthere wrote:
> >
> > --- Daniel Ehrenberg <name12323 at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > I hate to say this, but the seach engine in
> > > Wikipedia is once again slowing
> > > down the server.  i don't think the new server
> can
> > > keep up with the high
> > > demand for seaches. Maybe we should postpone
> using
> > > it until it works
> > > completely. Or maybe we should make some
> restrictive
> > > measure for searching,
> > > like only signed in users can seach. We really
> need
> > > another server.
> >
> > Using wikipedia with the google search is really
> > painful. not all articles are found by far
> > and we are working not only for editors, also for
> > readers, who will be non loggued in most of the
> time,
> > and could have the feeling the encyclopedia is
> emptier
> > on some topics that it really is
> > What about enhanced search feature ? With some of
> the
> > articles being classified in groups ? Not all of
> them,
> > but for example, authors could be grouped in an
> author
> > list, and people could search in the author list
> > instead than in the whole encyclopedia ?
> >
> > Exactly how much is the search feature used ? And
> > what's the proportion between real articles search
> and
> > meta search ?
> >
> One way the search engine could be improved on is if
> by default it does a logical "and" search, rather
> than
> the logical "or" search it appears to do now. To
> provide
> an example of what I'm talking about, the other
> night I needed
> to know who wrote the novel "Red Harvest," so I did
> a
> search on Wikipedia using those two words. What the
> search engine did was return all of the articles
> with
> the words "red" or "harvest" in either the title or
> the
> body of the article.
>
> After glancing through the first hundred hits, I
> gave up on
> Wikipedia, & used Amazon's search engine. The book
> was the
> first or second on the list.
>
> Although I'm not a database programmer (although
> I've taken
> a couple of classes on Oracle & SQL in the past),
> I'd guess
> that it's not that much of a performance hit to have
> the
> search query first treat the input as an "and"
> statement,
> then if nothing is returned, say in the subject
> head, then
> offer to rerun the query as an "or" statement.
>
> Just my two cents.
>
> Geoff

Hi list

It seems to me the query "and" rather than "or" makes
sense. Could the search functionality be easily
improved that way ?

Yours,
Athypique

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


body:
On Tuesday 25 March 2003 04:00 am, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Zoe wrote:
> > At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, this hagiography of Rachel
> > Corrie has gone on long enough.  Since we've had the discussion of
> > moving the victims of 9/11 to Meta, could we do the same thing with
> > the Rachel Corrie iconography and worship pages?
> >
> > Zoe
>
> Although I very much support the inclusion of the [[Rachel Corrie]] page
> as properly encyclopedic, I see no value in continuing the images page,
> which adds nothing to the subject.  The biographical page does include a
> few statements (like her love of gardening) that have nothing to do with
> her claim to fame, and therefore go beyond encyclopedia material, I
> would be content to let those details stay for the next few months.
>
> Eclecticology

Just because she isn't famous for her gardening doesn't mean we should exclude
that fact. [[Rachel Corrie]] is supposed to be an /encyclopedia/ article
/not/ a news report about her only claim to fame.

Our other bios are filled with information about famous people before they
became famous -  [[Rachel Corrie]] should be no different. But, of course, we
should only have information in that article (or for any article for that
matter) that can be referenced and attributed to reputable - or at least
well-known - sources. We also shouldn't have an article on her just for her
gardening. But since we have an article on her we might as well report on as
much of her life that we can without violating NPOV or 'we are an
encyclopedia' policies.

The images and especially the image gallery are excessive and should go,
however. Aside: I've been meaning to send a post about how some people are
adding POV to articles by stuffing them with one-sided images that evoke
certain emotions (thinking of the [[Kosovo War]] article here). But I leave
that for a future post.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 19]]


body:
 From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Iraq and chemical weapons
 Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org

Ordinarily I would just bring this up on a talk page,
but  this issue cuts across several articles, and I
might need  a ruling from Jimbo.

How do we discuss the issue of "whether or not Iraq
has  chemical weapons"?
Officially, of course, they deny having any. And it's
a crucial yes-no matter because their alleged
possession is the chief rationale behind the US-led
war in Iraq.

If Iraq doesn't chemical weapons, it looks like the US

military campaign is:
* not morally justified
* a violation of international law

...which may have ramifications about whether Iraq is
 bound to treat POWs according to the Geneva
Convention or can "legally" torture, execute or rape
them.

If Iraq does have chemical weapons, the US campaign
seems:
* at least partially justified
* probably NOT a violation of international law
...although the last 2 points are in themselves
controversial.

The question is, how do we handle this when writing
articles about the  war?

Ed Poor

--------

Hi Ed,

I believe your questions are very important.

But, allow me to react to one of your comment, that
might bring some light to you about how to handle the
articles.

If Iraq does have chemical weapons, the US campaign
seems:
* at least partially justified
* probably NOT a violation of international law
...

You are right when you say these last 2 points are in
themselves  controversial.

It seems to me that you say it could be considered a
justification to war to find chemical weapons in Irak.

Let me first report what many french people said today
(just for information) :

US soldiers finding chemical weapons is necessarily a
joke, a forged "proof" to justify their invasion, just
as american representative tried to forge "proofs" for
the UN to make the war acceptable. It is very unlikely
that US soldiers tumble on chemical weapons just as
easily, when so many inspectors found nothing in
months. Saddam will not use illegal weapons - even if
he has some - for it would give some justifications to
american people for the invasion. But american people
will find any way, to justify the war, if they don't
find the proofs, they will make them, or will accuse
other nations to have given weapons to Irak.

What most french people think is that giving proofs of
Irak having illegal weapons - whether these proofs are
believable or not - will not be a good justification.

The general belief here is that this war is *illegal*,
because it didnot have the UN aggreement, as it had
for the Gulf War.
Most consider international laws here should apply
*above* national laws, hence the illegality. Finding
proofs AFTER the invasion, will not succeed to
transform an illegal war in a legal...for the
illegality was about "beginning" the war with
international agreement in the first place. Not about
finding proofs AFTER.

If american soldiers find chemical weapons, I think
some people would consider fair to state "the US
campaign was at least partially justified".
Other will not find this a justification at all - in
particular all those who believe the situation could
have been handled another way.

Stating "finding chemical weapons made the US campaign
probably NOT a violation of international law", though
this point is controversial to some" would not really
be NPOV.
That "probably" is misplaced. "Probably" is an
oriented view point. It might give all view points,
but it might not give a proper representation of
worldwide views. It make appear the ones thinking it
was not a violation are the majority, when those who
think the opposite are the minority. And, this, I
fear, is not necessarily true and fair.

Many people will go on believing it was illegal, even
if they end up believing it was "maybe the best
choice".

And please, do avoid making the assumption that this
"probably" is justified by what you read in english on
the internet. I don't think that what one can read on
average in english on the internet is a full
representation of worldwide opinions. We might be
missing all reports in arabic.
Unfortunately.

Yours

Athypique

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: abhio at vsnl.net

body:
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from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] is it possible?

body:
Is it possible if someone types the name of an article
which doesn't yet have any text that that person could
be sent to a search page for that topic.  Thus, if I
type http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen, instead
of getting a page saying that this page doesn't exist,
I would instead get the search results page?  Would
anyone else want this?

Chuck

=====
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] is it possible?

body:
> Is it possible if someone types the name of an article
> which doesn't yet have any text that that person could
> be sent to a search page for that topic.  Thus, if I
> type http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen, instead
> of getting a page saying that this page doesn't exist,
> I would instead get the search results page?  Would
> anyone else want this?

This is the behavior when you use the Go button: If the article exists, it
is directly displayed, if it does not, the search results are shown. So if
you want to pass along URLs which work as you describe, use an URL of this
pattern:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=Schengen&go=Go

with Schengen replaced by the article title.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Fellow Australian Tannin (Tony Wilson) and I were confused as to the naming
of Canberra -- why is it [[Canberra, Australia]] rather than just
[[Canberra]], since there is only one in the world? It turned out that Karen
Johnson had moved the article to [[Canberra, Australia]] before either of us
came here. Tannin, Karen and I discussed the matter on Karen's user page.
I'm keen to move every non-ambiguous name (e.g. Canberra) and every
predominantly Australian name (e.g. Brisbane) to the simple [[Canberra]] or
[[Brisbane]]. Karen said it was fine with her, as long as I can "persuade
people to agree". So here I am.

Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian city
and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones.?Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: legal liability issues

body:
The lawyer is right. Potential liability is huge, basically the same as any
publisher. Prepare...

However common sense plays a role here. Consider the situation of anyone
contemplating a lawsuit against you...

Fred

> From: Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 01:01:30 -0600
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: legal liability issues
>
> Hi, all. I've been corresponding with an attorney about some issues
> pertaining to the Disinfopedia. He has some concern about whether we
> might be legally liable for its content. Specifically, could we be
> sued for libel or slander if someone posts false information there?
>
> I think this issue is substantially the same for Disinfopedia as it
> is for Wikipedia, since we both use the same software and editing
> rules (although the editorial standards are slightly different). I'm
> hoping therefore that someone here can tell me what discussions have
> taken place about this issue already and where I might go for further
> information.
>
> Here's what the attorney wrote in his message to me:
>
>> The disinfopedia thing looks like a cool use of web technology -
>> but I don't understand how you'll prevent all kinds of wackos
>> from screwing around with the text.
>
> I responded by saying (edited here for brevity):
>
> That was my reaction when I first heard about the Wikipedia web site
> (www.wikipedia.org). In practice, though, it works pretty well. In
> reality, most people behave honorably and appropriately. They far
> outnumber the wackos, and people who engage in vandalism are quickly
> detected and banned. ... I would add that even "wackos" can sometimes
> make useful contributions (depending, of course, on how you define
> "wacko"). ...
>
> The key point here is that since everyone who visits the site can
> *edit* as well as *read* articles, errors and deliberate
> disinformation should get detected and fixed quickly. This approach
> has worked quite well in developing open source software such as the
> Linux operating system, and it seems to work well for Wikipedia.
>
> Of course, we can't expect 100% accuracy, but that's not our goal.
> Our goal is to create a useful and *largely* accurate tool for use in
> analyzing and understanding propaganda. This project is still
> experimental and in its infancy, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able
> to meet and surpass the level of accuracy found in the mainstream
> U.S. news media.
>
> The attorney then responded further:
>
>> Thanks for such a detailed answer; very interesting. Of course I agree that
>> some so-called wackos will provide good info. As a lawyer I'm most
>> concerned that you not get in a situation where there's slander going on and
>> you could be accountable for it.
>
> [SNIP]
>
>> I think your website structure looks on first appearance to have a greater
>> degree of control (oversight/endorsement of content) than some others, and
>> therefore I'd expect a greater potential for liability exposure. I haven't
>> mined my way down the site to see your caveats etc.  just got this
>> impression on a quick look. No experience or insights other than that.
>
> Comments, anyone?
> --
> --------------------------------
> |  Sheldon Rampton
> |  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
> |  Author of books including:
> |     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
> |     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
> |     Mad Cow USA
> |     Trust Us, We're Experts
> --------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: legal liability issues

body:
Hi, all. I've been corresponding with an attorney about some issues
pertaining to the Disinfopedia. He has some concern about whether we
might be legally liable for its content. Specifically, could we be
sued for libel or slander if someone posts false information there?

I think this issue is substantially the same for Disinfopedia as it
is for Wikipedia, since we both use the same software and editing
rules (although the editorial standards are slightly different). I'm
hoping therefore that someone here can tell me what discussions have
taken place about this issue already and where I might go for further
information.

Here's what the attorney wrote in his message to me:

>The disinfopedia thing looks like a cool use of web technology -
>but I don't understand how you'll prevent all kinds of wackos
>from screwing around with the text.

I responded by saying (edited here for brevity):

That was my reaction when I first heard about the Wikipedia web site
(www.wikipedia.org). In practice, though, it works pretty well. In
reality, most people behave honorably and appropriately. They far
outnumber the wackos, and people who engage in vandalism are quickly
detected and banned. ... I would add that even "wackos" can sometimes
make useful contributions (depending, of course, on how you define
"wacko"). ...

The key point here is that since everyone who visits the site can
*edit* as well as *read* articles, errors and deliberate
disinformation should get detected and fixed quickly. This approach
has worked quite well in developing open source software such as the
Linux operating system, and it seems to work well for Wikipedia.

Of course, we can't expect 100% accuracy, but that's not our goal.
Our goal is to create a useful and *largely* accurate tool for use in
analyzing and understanding propaganda. This project is still
experimental and in its infancy, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able
to meet and surpass the level of accuracy found in the mainstream
U.S. news media.

The attorney then responded further:

>  Thanks for such a detailed answer; very interesting. Of course I agree that
>  some so-called wackos will provide good info. As a lawyer I'm most
>  concerned that you not get in a situation where there's slander going on and
>  you could be accountable for it.

[SNIP]

>  I think your website structure looks on first appearance to have a greater
>  degree of control (oversight/endorsement of content) than some others, and
>  therefore I'd expect a greater potential for liability exposure. I haven't
>  mined my way down the site to see your caveats etc.  just got this
>  impression on a quick look. No experience or insights other than that.

Comments, anyone?
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: Guillaume

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Argh... tooooooo slow !

body:
Bonjour,
Wikipedia performance are worse and worse... :o(
(I suppose that mean we are growing)
It's now lagging too much on the french Wikipedia !
It can be not a problem, but I recently lost a 30 lines articles due of a
server time-out.
I got a error message and it was impossible to comeback to my page to
retrieve my text.
I want an option to have a article insertion process in a popup windows (for
exemple selectable on the preference page).
Like this, if the server is dead or lagging a much I will got an error on
the popup windows and I keep my text on the other windows (I can save it to
a next attempt).
Please consider the problem.

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] Argh... tooooooo slow !


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Client-side caching updates

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-22 at 03:34, I wrote in wikitech-l:
> Okay, experimental code is in CVS and running on test.wikipedia.org,
> please give it a thorough tryout!
>
> Caching is now enabled for all browsers except for Internet Explorer 5.0
> and earlier (which apparently have some other dreadful problems, and
> I've no means to test them).

Well, I've gotten no feedback, so either no one checked or no one had
any problems....

I've put the new client-side caching code on http://meta.wikipedia.org ,
which attracts at least some small traffic. Try it out and report any
problems, 'cause I'm going to install this soon on all languages, and if
your browser can't read any pages at all I'd prefer to hear about it
beforehand. :)

In summary:
* Should eliminate problems with red links continuing to appear after
the page is created (or blue links after the page is deleted)
* Should eliminate problems with page layout not changing to reflect
logging in or changing display preferences
* Should, *I think*, fix "reload doesn't actually reload without also
holding down control" problem with Internet Explorer
* Client-side caching should now work on other browsers than IE. Early
versions of IE (5.0 and before) are still blacklisted, as we had all
kinds of trouble trying to accommodate 5.0 and I don't want to mess it
up. ;)

Some things this update does *not* do:
* Cache pages on the server; this is only to allow your web browser to
cache a page once it's been generated for you (but still be able to
refetch automatically if it's changed when you revisit it). The
invalidation mechanisms will help make server-side page caching work
properly once it's added in the future, though.
* Allow for caching of anything other than viewing pages, history lists,
or the Recentchanges list. (Other things could be cached, though,
they're just not yet keyed for it.)
* Invalidate cached pages when you log out.
* Make a distinction between preference changes that will and won't
alter page display. (Overly aggressive in invalidating caches.)

See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_strategy for more confusing
prose.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Client-side caching updates

body:
On Sat, 2003-03-22 at 03:34, I wrote in wikitech-l:
> Okay, experimental code is in CVS and running on test.wikipedia.org,
> please give it a thorough tryout!
>
> Caching is now enabled for all browsers except for Internet Explorer 5.0
> and earlier (which apparently have some other dreadful problems, and
> I've no means to test them).

Well, I've gotten no feedback, so either no one checked or no one had
any problems....

I've put the new client-side caching code on http://meta.wikipedia.org ,
which attracts at least some small traffic. Try it out and report any
problems, 'cause I'm going to install this soon on all languages, and if
your browser can't read any pages at all I'd prefer to hear about it
beforehand. :)

In summary:
* Should eliminate problems with red links continuing to appear after
the page is created (or blue links after the page is deleted)
* Should eliminate problems with page layout not changing to reflect
logging in or changing display preferences
* Should, *I think*, fix "reload doesn't actually reload without also
holding down control" problem with Internet Explorer
* Client-side caching should now work on other browsers than IE. Early
versions of IE (5.0 and before) are still blacklisted, as we had all
kinds of trouble trying to accommodate 5.0 and I don't want to mess it
up. ;)

Some things this update does *not* do:
* Cache pages on the server; this is only to allow your web browser to
cache a page once it's been generated for you (but still be able to
refetch automatically if it's changed when you revisit it). The
invalidation mechanisms will help make server-side page caching work
properly once it's added in the future, though.
* Allow for caching of anything other than viewing pages, history lists,
or the Recentchanges list. (Other things could be cached, though,
they're just not yet keyed for it.)
* Invalidate cached pages when you log out.
* Make a distinction between preference changes that will and won't
alter page display. (Overly aggressive in invalidating caches.)

See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_strategy for more confusing
prose.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki page counters

body:
When were they re-enabled for en.wiki? Have they been fixed to generate more
meaningful data and minimize server load? They don't appear to tick for each
page reload so something is different.

--mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] A Humourous  Disclaimer

body:
I found this on a site which has chiropratic information:

Although we at chiro.org do our best to provide you with accurate
information of all sorts, we cannot guarantee that any of it is accurate for
any purpose whatsoever! In fact, if you use this web site, you may receive
nothing but incorrect information. It will be your responsibility to
determine if anything here has any value. By clicking the "I Accept" button,
you are agreeing to not hold chiro.org or any of its members or friends
liable for anything you might find while using this internet site.

You must accept this to use the site.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: legal liability issues

in_reply_to: <BAA6A52E.1355%fredbaud@ctelco.net>; from fredbaud@ctelco.net on Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 12:30:39AM -0700

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> However common sense plays a role here. Consider the situation of anyone
> contemplating a lawsuit against you...

Well, from this perspective, Sheldon's disinfopedia is at more of a
risk than we are, I think.  His project is political and
confrontational in a way that ours isn't.  He specifically lists what
he calls "Case Studies of deceptive PR campaigns," for example.

>From our perspective, NPOV is a great mechanism for avoiding libel,
because it's pretty hard to libel someone without taking any position.

Just as an example, Wikipedia would not call a PR campaign
"deceptive", we would merely report that Disinfopedia said so.  ;-)

As far as the liability we might have for words posted by a random
contributor, the DMCA gives a pretty strong defense to that.

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
wrote:
> But I can ssh there.
>
> First line in top:
>
>   PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU
> %MEM   TIME COMMAND
> 25451 mysql     17   0  989M 948M  670M R    99.9
> 47.1 110:55 mysqld
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

I don't know what ssh means...

Slow Server Help ?
Silence ! Sleeping Happily ?
System Severily Hurt ?

Anyway, if the server is down, nothing special to say.
If the server is just slow, I would just say that no
connexions have been possible for the past two hours.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #237 - 10 msgs

body:
Message: 8  Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 12:53:19 -0800
(PST)
From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1
#236 - 14 msgs
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org

The UN inspectors were closely followed by Iraqi
handlers.  The  American trooops have none, and also
have the cooperation of the locals, which  the
inspectors did not, because the locals were afraid of
Hussein's  backlash.

Zoe

Hi Zoe,

I have no intention to discuss the validity of the
claims of anybody. This is not the goal of wikipedia.
We must exclude from articles any judgement of value
for any party involved.
Just report what each party thinks and does, and why
it thinks and does that way.

That's why I consider Ed initial question as perfectly
reasonable, and I believe the "probably not" would not
be a good idea to put in an article, as it involves a
value judgement, and a legal position that is
considered differently by each country.

It is very difficult to report what a party thinks and
does, and why, when you don't understand its language.
I think there is here a very difficult issue for those
who are used to "double check" opinions and facts
reported in articles by just googling them. Because,
this is typically a "checking" method which can't be
really valid here, as facts and opinions will maybe
not be checkable in english.

It might require an extensive use of "alleged" and of
"not confirmed" for a while, rather than rejection for
the reason that it can not be double-checked in
english on google.

Yours

Athypique

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran?ais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Thomas Corell

body:
abhio at vsnl.net wrote:
> Hi, I was very keen to know whether the guys at wiki have plans to
> start a project to produce e-books/textbooks out of wiki articles.

I'm still trying to convert articles to LaTeX (prime target is the
handbook of the germen wiki) and it's pretty awful. But if it will work,
  it will be pretty easy to convert a complete wikipedia to a pdf
document.  Than you only problem is to find a lasy printer.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Is it possible?

body:
> > Is it possible if someone types the name of an article
> > which doesn't yet have any text that that person could
> > be sent to a search page for that topic.  Thus, if I
> > type http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen, instead
> > of getting a page saying that this page doesn't exist,
> > I would instead get the search results page?  Would
> > anyone else want this?
>
> I would not like it. I use this method (creating the URL of the page by
> hand) sometimes when I want to create a page and there are no links to it,
> or I am not sure.

I do this too and I would find the proposed change frustrating.

m


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: [WikiFR-l] Ca rame: mea culpa ??

body:
Hello

Ryo is a bit worried he might be the reason why
wikipedia is down, for immediately after he made a
first set of query, wikipedia slowed very strongly,
then after he made another one, wikipedia stopped
working.

at least from here

as for myself, I don't understand that tech stuff, I
just see that wiki has apparently been non accessible
for the past 6 hours.

He suggested I forwarded his mail for explanation of
what he did

Note: forwarded message attached.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com
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Subject: [WikiFR-l] Ca rame: mea culpa ??
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 03 13:49:06
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from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 06:17:13AM -0800, Anthere wrote:
>
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
> wrote:
> > But I can ssh there.
> >
> > First line in top:
> >
> >   PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU
> > %MEM   TIME COMMAND
> > 25451 mysql     17   0  989M 948M  670M R    99.9
> > 47.1 110:55 mysqld
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> I don't know what ssh means...
>
> Slow Server Help ?
> Silence ! Sleeping Happily ?
> System Severily Hurt ?
>
> Anyway, if the server is down, nothing special to say.
> If the server is just slow, I would just say that no
> connexions have been possible for the past two hours.

Somebody is going to have to give mysqld a kill (maybe a kill -9).
Anybody got root on the box?

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] is it possible?

body:
On 26-03-2003, Erik Moeller wrote thusly :
> > Is it possible if someone types the name of an article
> > which doesn't yet have any text that that person could
> > be sent to a search page for that topic.  Thus, if I
> > type http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen, instead
> > of getting a page saying that this page doesn't exist,
> > I would instead get the search results page?  Would
> > anyone else want this?
>
> This is the behavior when you use the Go button: If the article exists,
> it  is directly displayed, if it does not, the search results are shown.
Not exactly so. You are rather quite often redirected to a page the search mechanism thinks you want. With funny results sometimes.
> So if  you want to pass along URLs which work as you describe, use an URL
> of this  pattern:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=Schengen&go=Go
Regards,
Kpjas.


body:
Jimbo said:

>We've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember the result.

I remember, because I looked at the mailing list archives yesterday. Nothing
was decided, everyone just got bored and moved on to more interesting
things, like the great ''' vs <b> debate.

>This has been discussed before, at length, and the most passionate and
>devoted contributor on the topic has been maveric. I will go along with any
>naming convention he devises (i.e., he has my "proxy vote").

Mav has already commented on the issue on [[User talk:Karen Johnson]]. He
said:

>There was a push to have Australian cities preemptively disambiguated a
>while ago (just as American and Canadian cities are), but that movement
>seemed to loose steam. I'm not sure what the Aussies want now.

Well, I can tell you what three of the Aussies want: Tannin and I are in
favour of simple names and Karen's happy to go along (although she argued
for preemptive disambiguation originally). As far I as can see Robert Merkel
has not expressed an opinion. That only leaves the less regular contributors
such as Arno and Peter Eckersley (Pde).

Ed Poor also said:

>The point of the naming convention has always been to
>make the article title:
>
>* unambiguous, and
>* as short as possible

Names such as Canberra are entirely unambiguous. There is only one. Brisbane
can be block disambiguated in line with existing policy, because of the
dominance of Brisbane, Australia over other uses. The real question is
consistency: versus length, surprise factor and need for pipes. I'm in
favour of lack of consistency, because I would like to see less pipes and
easier contribution for newbies unaware of disambiguation standards. This
argument is about *preemptive* disambiguation, not ordinary disambiguation.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones.?Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] is it possible?

body:
On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Chuck Smith wrote:

> Is it possible if someone types the name of an article
> which doesn't yet have any text that that person could
> be sent to a search page for that topic.  Thus, if I
> type http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen, instead
> of getting a page saying that this page doesn't exist,
> I would instead get the search results page?  Would
> anyone else want this?

I would not like it. I use this method (creating the URL of the page by
hand) sometimes when I want to create a page and there are no links to it,
or I am not sure.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> > (Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>):
> >
> > I don't know what ssh means...
>
> "Secure Shell": the standard way to log onto a
> machine remotely
> these days.  At any rate, the server is up, it's
> just totally
> slammed with traffic.

hum

Say Lee, the last connexion to the french wiki was
done at 11:21 am
It was down from 11:21 to about a couple of minutes
ago (that is 20:23)
Between these two times  (so ... 9 hours...),
absolutely NO connexions were possible
I just checked ...was the same on the en apparently

so....which traffic ? from where ? from who ? any idea
?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
> >
> > I've put the new client-side caching code on http://meta.wikipedia.org ,
> > which attracts at least some small traffic. Try it out and report any
> > problems, 'cause I'm going to install this soon on all languages, and if
> > your browser can't read any pages at all I'd prefer to hear about it
> > beforehand. :)
>
> Brion, if you can either (a) install it on a wiki that's OK to trash,
> or (b) check in the code, perhaps with a label, so that I can install
> it on a trashable wiki, then I can run the test suite against it to
> make sure you didn't miss anything obvious.

It's been checked in for a few days, and is running on
http://test.wikipedia.org/ (which you can feel free to trash). I guess no
one read my announcement from the other day. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki page counters

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> When were they re-enabled for en.wiki? Have they been fixed to generate more
> meaningful data and minimize server load? They don't appear to tick for each
> page reload so something is different.

They're not re-enabled, I just forgot to disable the counter _display_
code for en.wiki when I installed a bug fix in the skin code.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> I just killed and restarted MySQL and Apache. Looks like we're
> still getting slammed, and the logs don't show anything like an
> out-of-control bot, so it looks like just ordinary heavy traffic.

Lee, in the future when mysqld is doing its thang all too well; could you
try connecting (mysql -u root -p) and running a 'SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST'?
This should show the life-sucking query (somewhere among the big huge
list), and it is often possible to kill just that query using mysql's
KILL command.

(Mysql supposedly always reserves one connection for root for emergency
maintenance.)

If you already tried that and it didn't work, please ignore. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki page counters

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Nick Reinking wrote:
> Speaking of this, I don't see why they can't be reenabled.  However,
> instead of doing it in realtime (would which kill your performance), why
> not do it at night?  Parse through the Apache log, compile a list of how
> much each article counter needs to be incremented, connect to MySQL...
> and do it.  :)

Because I don't care about the counters, and I'm still way behind schedule
on things I think are important, like better caching and setting up
additional languages on the new system, so I haven't gotten to it; and no
one else has done it either.

Here's what a line of the wiki's logfile looks like:
20030326195656  0000.175        /wiki/Styx
  timestamp   response time        path

Parsing is left as an exercise to the reader... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > It's been checked in for a few days, and is running on
> > http://test.wikipedia.org/ (which you can feel free to trash). I guess no
> > one read my announcement from the other day. ;)
>
> I'm not good at testing chaching. Din't you wrote meta.wikipedia.org
> yesterday?

Yes, and on Saturday I wrote test.wikipedia.org. Both things are true.
However, I'd prefer that people not trash meta.wikipedia.org. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki page counters

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> While we're at it, I added the wiki logfile just to get some
> initial stats, but do we really need it anymore?  I'm sure Apache
> is much more efficient at it, and it would eliminate a disk
> access per page fetch.  The test suite can be used to get timing
> info now.

It's useful for debug info, but for general... The response time does show
how much time is being spent in the script as opposed to time spent
sending things over the network (but it's not entirely reliable, it seems
to sometimes kick off PHP output buffer while still counting). Maybe not
the most useful thing.

Exercise for the reader is scrapped, you'll have to use the apache log. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> > (Brion Vibber <vibber at sal-sun062.usc.edu>):
> >
> > It's been checked in for a few days, and is running on
> > http://test.wikipedia.org/ (which you can feel free to trash). I guess no
> > one read my announcement from the other day. ;)
>
> For some reason it doesn't have some of my recent code updates, so the
> test suite won't run against it (in particular I added name attributes
> to all the HTML forms so the test suite could find them).

How about now?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] can non-English Wikipedias move to another server?

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Chuck Smith <msochuck at yahoo.com>):
> > Is there any way that non-English Wikipedias could be
> > on a seperate server than the English one, so we
> > wouldn't have to feel the effects of the massive
> > English-language traffic killing us?
>
> No reason at all, other than having someone buy us another server.
> I'm sure it will happen eventually.

We do have another server coming, which will be used to separate the
database and the webserver onto two machines. The big advantage of this is
that we can assign a lot more memory to the database -- which should help
with searches -- and the database and PHP won't have to fight each other
for CPU time -- since they both want it at the same time. :)

This should greatly reduce contention. An additional separate server for
the rest of the languages might be a help, too, for splitting up the
overall traffic load.  Feel free to pass the plate and get one bought;
we'll find a way to use it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
It looks like it was a miswritten query by one of our new sysops on
fr.wikipedia.org. He has learned respect for the database the hard way. :)

(Slow query log lists it as taking 31141 seconds, which is presumably
where it got cut off by a kill/restart. Ouch!)

I'll have to see if there's a way to have an automatic timeout/kill query
for a certain mysql user; that would reduce the impact of these occasional
accidents. (Sysop sql queries are sandboxed in a 'wikisql' user account
which has limited privledges. In a super-ideal world, they'd probably also
run on their own replicated server where they will never interfere with
the live system. But, that means more computers. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
--- Nick Reinking <nick at twoevils.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 01:53:29PM -0600, Lee Daniel
> Crocker wrote:
> > > (Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>):
> > >
> > > Say Lee, the last connexion to the french wiki
> was
> > > done at 11:21 am
> > > It was down from 11:21 to about a couple of
> minutes
> > > ago (that is 20:23)
> > > Between these two times  (so ... 9 hours...),
> > > absolutely NO connexions were possible
> > > I just checked ...was the same on the en
> apparently
> > >
> > > so....which traffic ? from where ? from who ?
> any idea
> >
> > Well, that's the first time I'd heard that.  And
> there's
> > only one server: just because there's no traffic
> on one of
> > the many wikis doesn't mean the server isn't busy
> as hell.
> >
> > The only message I got this morning was "the wiki
> is down".
> > That didn't tell me anything, so I logged on and
> saw that
> > the CPU load was maxed out, and that there were
> hundreds
> > of active connections. Looked like regular traffic
> to me.

I dunno Lee
The wiki has been horribly slow for the past 2 weeks,
and many editors have already gave up editing because
of this
Today, it was just as if wiki didnot existed at all
during 9 hours, which were full day hours
And not only was there no response from the server at
all, but no response on the mailing list either. That
is a bit disturbing I would say.
In short, if 13/14 days it takes about 1 mn to respond
for each page during day time, and the 14th day wiki
doesnot exist at all, well, it won't be long for
anybody to just give up

Besides, I checked on the english wiki, and I saw
there were no edits in the recent changes log for many
hours, so you can hardly say it is no response from
"one of the numerous wiki". This was a general matter.
So, we wonder.

> > It seems to be responding better now after the
> kick, but
> > I'm reluctant to restart the server (which
> involves breaking
> > all active connections) unless I get a more
> specific report
> > than "the wiki is down".
>
> Well, hard to expect much more than that from a user
> who doesn't have a
> login to the server itself.  By the way, my guess is
> that some query, or
> perhaps some quirk, had caused MySQL to lock up.
> All of the apache
> processes were likely in a blocked state, waiting
> for MySQL to respond.
> Just because there are lots of processes running,
> doesn't mean they're
> actually responding.
>
> --
> Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 --
> Minneapolis, MN

Nick, did you read that message I forwarded several
hours ago from Ryo ? I was on my old email address
when I did the forward, and the wikitech list refused
it (the weird thing is that I just checked pending
request, and there are none, so I don't know where
that mail actually is:-)). But it got accepted on the
main list.

In short, Ryo reported he made a query around 11 am.
Just after that query, there were no answer from the
server for about 5 mn. Shortly after the server
finally answered, he made another one, and immediately
after he made that query, the server stopped
answering...for about 9 hours

these are the queries he made

select l.cur_title, r.cur_title from cur l inner join
links lnk on  binary l.cur_title = binary lnk.l_from
inner join cur r on binary    r.cur_title = binary
lnk.l_to where r.cur_text like '%#redirect%'

then simply

select count( * ) from links

could this be an explanation ?
or not ?

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia unscheduled downtime over

body:
Wikipedia was inaccessible from about 11:20 to 19:00 UTC this
evening/morning/whatever it is where you are.

The problem seems to have been triggered by a runaway database query on
the francophone wikipedia; unfortunately coming during our busiest time
of day everything just ground to a halt.

I'll try to rig up some better protection from accidents of this sort in
the future (automatic timeouts/kills for slow manual queries); in the
meantime, sysops always be careful with your queries! Treat our server
gentle, and she'll be good to you in return.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
> (Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
>
> I've put the new client-side caching code on http://meta.wikipedia.org ,
> which attracts at least some small traffic. Try it out and report any
> problems, 'cause I'm going to install this soon on all languages, and if
> your browser can't read any pages at all I'd prefer to hear about it
> beforehand. :)

Brion, if you can either (a) install it on a wiki that's OK to trash,
or (b) check in the code, perhaps with a label, so that I can install
it on a trashable wiki, then I can run the test suite against it to
make sure you didn't miss anything obvious.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
> (Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>):
>
> I don't know what ssh means...

"Secure Shell": the standard way to log onto a machine remotely
these days.  At any rate, the server is up, it's just totally
slammed with traffic.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
> (Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>):

>> Somebody is going to have to give mysqld a kill (maybe a kill -9).
>> Anybody got root on the box?

I just killed and restarted MySQL and Apache. Looks like we're
still getting slammed, and the logs don't show anything like an
out-of-control bot, so it looks like just ordinary heavy traffic.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
But I can ssh there.

First line in top:

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
25451 mysql     17   0  989M 948M  670M R    99.9 47.1 110:55 mysqld


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Nick Reinking wrote:
> Note that if we were running PostgreSQL, we could set timeout limits on
> a per user basis.  :P

Note that if someone wants us to run PostgreSQL, they should put their
code where their mouth is and adapt the software to run with it. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
--- Brion Vibber <vibber at sal-sun062.usc.edu> wrote:
> Wikipedia was inaccessible from about 11:20 to 19:00
> UTC this
> evening/morning/whatever it is where you are.
>
> The problem seems to have been triggered by a
> runaway database query on
> the francophone wikipedia; unfortunately coming
> during our busiest time
> of day everything just ground to a halt.
>
> I'll try to rig up some better protection from
> accidents of this sort in
> the future (automatic timeouts/kills for slow manual
> queries); in the
> meantime, sysops always be careful with your
> queries! Treat our server
> gentle, and she'll be good to you in return.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

The server is female ?

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body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Anthere wrote:
> > Treat our server gentle, and she'll be good to you in return.
>
> The server is female ?

I'm too much of a gentleman to check for sure...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>   PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
> 25451 mysql     17   0  989M 948M  670M R    99.9 47.1 110:55 mysqld

Seems ok, less than 50% memory in use ;)

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Nick Reinking wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 01:18:08PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Note that if someone wants us to run PostgreSQL, they should put their
> > code where their mouth is and adapt the software to run with it. :)
>
> Well, if I had a machine beefy enough to run a copy of the en Wikipedia,
> I'd be happy to do so.  Has the second box come in?  Maybe we can throw
> it on both, and have a little bakeoff?

Feel free to experiment with one of the smaller databases to start with.

We've a wide distribution of shapes and sizes. :)  You can start small 'n'
easy with Danish, for instance, or try French for a reasonable
intermediate size.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia dead again

body:
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Note that if someone wants us to run PostgreSQL, they should put their
> > code where their mouth is and adapt the software to run with it. :)
> >
>
> Adapting the software IMHO is not the main problem, what about all those
>    sysop's depending on e.g. mysql syntax? And I think there are more
> open questions.

Well, if we were to try to run the software on postgresql it would
obviously be very important to adapt the software to work on postgresql.
:)

However it's less clear that it would be particularly advantageous to use
postgresql.

That's why I keep hoping that the people who pop up and say "hey, this
would be a lot better with postgresql" can quantify the claim by making
the software work with postgresql and actually comparing performance with
the same operations on the same dataset on the same machine -- things we
can't do until the software is able to run with postgresql.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
--- Thomas Corell <T.Corell at t-online.de> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> > The server is female ?
>
> Of course, as you seen today you have to handle she
> very carefuly and
> tenderly like a wife.
>
> Smurf

hummmm
I like the idea

well, I am no lesbian, so I don't practice sql queries
on her ;-)

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