body:
>> Larry Sanger wrote:

> The main reason for this is simply that that isn't what the many good
> people who signed up for the Nupedia project signed up for; they'd be
> furious if I tried to hijack their project that way, even if it's a
> project that isn't currently going anywhere.

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

>> I'm considering a mass email to ask them what they want to do.  I
think it's perfectly reasonable for us to offer to setup software for
them to start reviewing and approving articles from Wikipedia.  I
can't imagine why they'd be furious about it.

Hi Jimbo,

First: I could be persuaded to support your position.  But:

You remember what happened when we first ran the idea by Nupedians, of
creating just a fun wiki side-project.  After a week or two it seemed the
vast majority of Nupedia's editors and reviewers were against continuing
an association with the wiki.  It became Wikipedia.  Then, we started the
Nupedia Chalkboard, which was going to be a more exclusive wiki that would
be able to import Wikipedia articles (remember?)--a Wikipedia halfway
house.  Getting the advisory board to agree to it was like pulling teeth.
Then only about three or four people showed up.  After I set it up, Magnus
is the only one who did any serious work on it (thanks, Magnus).
Finally, more recently--about a year ago, when we were debating the future
of Nupedia--there was some talk of making Nupedia simply a vetting
mechanism for Wikipedia.  I remember that several Nupedia editors and
reviewers came out very strongly against having any association with
Wikipedia, and at least one (or was it two?) of them threatened to quit
when it was suggested that Wikipedia and Nupedia become more closely
associated.  All these people are still there, waiting, by the way, and I
suspect their opinions haven't changed--though of course I could be wrong
about that.  So that's why I say *that* they'd be furious.

As to *why* they'd be furious, I can think of a few reasons.  While they
*do* want to work on a free encyclopedia, they *don't* want to do
professional-level work with people who are not at a professional level.
Moreover, they don't, individually (though there are some notable
exceptions!), want to be associated with a *wiki*, which smacks of
amateurishness (and there are other anti-wiki reasons as well).  That's OK
for us amateurs, but not for most people, including most people who want
to work on a free encyclopedia, who have paid their dues getting the
highest degree in their field and then worked for years at a professional
level.  Finally, they can actually view the work of Wikipedia, and while
I'm sure some of them are impressed with the amount of work we've done,
I'm also sure that most of the Nupedia editors and reviewers think that
most of the material currently in Wikipedia is nowhere near to a level
such that they'd like to be associated with it.

I'm not now saying that Nupedians are *right* to feel this way.  I do know
Nupedians at least as well as anyone, though, and I'm pretty sure that a
large portion of the outspoken Nupedian population *does* in fact feel
this way.

With respect to my recent "subset" proposal, I have to admit that Nupedia
would be a perfect venue to pursue this, **IF** some significant portion
of the existing editorial and review staff got into the act.  I just don't
know if they would.  The above-reported experience indicates they might
very well not.  But it seems likely to me that there would be a massive
changing of the guard, and perhaps a mass exodus.  Definitely, *some* of
the most productive, most helpful Nupedia members would leave--which is to
say that they would never again work on *either* Nupedia *or* Wikipedia.
(Unless, I suppose, Nupedia turned out to be a screaming success, which of
course it might.  Then they might come back.)

The other option, of course, is to start a new website, beg Nupedians to
get involved, and save Nupedia for something else.

Whatever becomes a professional review mechanism for Wikipedia, let me
tell ya how I think it should work: the reviewer should look at a
candidate article, perhaps make a few last minute changes on Wikipedia,
and then press a button, and it's posted as certified.  End of story.
After our experience with Nupedia, I think it should be *that* simple.
On this conception, *Wikipedia* is the editing mechanism; the review
mechanism consists of qualified people *just* pressing *one* button.
(I'm just offering this as an idea--I'm not saying that it's *definitely*
what we should do.  But I do strongly feel it should be that simple, or
nearly that simple.  Once we determine the venue, we can discuss the
details fo the mechanism.)

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Astrobiology encyclopedia and Wikipedia

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>The provider has limited liability, but not the website editor(s), unless
>I'm mistaken.

An interesting point.
Surely they won't try to make me personally responsible
for the edits of anonymous user xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, yes?
They'll say <We won't hold all N thousand registered users responsible,
but we demand to know who added this infinging material!
Otherwise, we'll have nobody in particular to sue, which is bad.>.
Then we'll look at the history logs and say <This is their IP number.>.
Voila! there's our scapegoat!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Your message to Wikitech-l awaits moderator approval

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Instead, the message should say: "Hey, you sent them from an
>unsubscribed address, so it's going straight into a blackhole never to
>be seen again."

Sounds good.  It took me a few times to figure out about the black hole.

>Alternatively, someone could volunteer to be the moderator for the
>list.  (The list is not moderated, mind you, it's just that the
>moderator has the power to take care of this kind of administrivia.)

What level of traffic are we talking about?
(Of moderable posts, that is.)

-- Toby

PS:  I believe that the last post of mine to be lost,
     sometime during the Enciclopedia Libre negotiations,
     included my saying nice things about your character.
     So you see, Jimmy, you want these things posted!
     ^_^


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Feature Proposal: Certification

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Larry has already suggested that Nupedia might act like this;
>>well, we could have a site that covers Team Nupedia
>>and a bunch of other certification teams too,
>>if there's interest.

>OK, two comments: (1) while I and others have often said in the past that
>Nupedia is perfectly free to use Wikipedia articles, and even that Nupedia
>could serve as a Wikipedia-vetting project, that is *not* my most recent
>proposal.

I didn't mean to imply <This is like Larry's current proposal.>,
I just meant <This is similar to an idea that you've seen before;
if you don't recognise it, Larry mentioned it some time back.>.
Sorry for the inadvertent slander ^_^.

>(2) No offense but I really don't want any "team" of reviewers that I help
>organize associated with other (nonprofessional) reviewing "teams" as
>designated by Wikipedia.

Meaning that Nupedia wouldn't actually participate in the team site.
Well, that's probably to be expected ^_^.

-- Toby


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] possible copyright violation

body:
I deleted the lyrics of all but one short one. Quite nice lyrics, actually. So good, in fact, that the copyright holder might consider them rather valuable.

Maybe an external link to some other site which has the lyrics legally or is willing to take a chance on liability, eh?

Ed Poor


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Possible copyright violation

body:
>I'm not really too sure about this one,
>but thought I'd better throw it in to
>your current copyright/fair use debate.
>Someone at 64.175.251.49 has just posted
>all the lyrics to the songs from an album
>called cowboys from hell
>(http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboys_From_Hell).
>Apart from the fact this doesn't seem like
>encyclopedia material, is it fair use to
>put these here? It doesn't seem safe ot me.
>I've heard that quite a few large lyric
>repositories have been shut down over the
>past few years.
>
>ASB

Sigh, 64 again... Thank your for noticing this. Zoe
and I have already found and removed a half dozen
possible copyright violations by this IP. These are
listed on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votes_for_deletion near
the end. I had hoped that the replacement of the
offending material with the 'possible copyright
violation' boilerplates would either clue this person
into learning a bit about not stealing the work of
others or at least prompt them into giving some
evidence that the text is used with permission. Since
these new violations of copyright have occurred well
after the posting of the boilerplates I have placed a
24 hour block on that IP so we can have enough time to
clean-up. If you want to help please visit:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=64.175.251.49

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

=====

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
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from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 07:51:45 -0800
|
|Larry Sanger wrote:
|>  The main reason for
|> this is simply that that isn't what the many good people who signed up for
|> the Nupedia project signed up for; they'd be furious if I tried to hijack
|> their project that way, even if it's a project that isn't currently going
|> anywhere.
|
|I'm considering a mass email to ask them what they want to do.  I
|think it's perfectly reasonable for us to offer to setup software for
|them to start reviewing and approving articles from Wikipedia.  I
|can't imagine why they'd be furious about it.
|
|--Jimbo

Like many on the Wiki side, I've never warmed up to Nu, possibly
because Wiki lets me write any article I want and Nu probably wouldn't
let me write on any subject, what with my not being an expert on
anything.

Nonetheless, it seems totally appropriate to solve this problem of
incoherence and occasionally upsetting behavior (inherent in the
nature of Wikipedia), by moving properly vetted, well-behaved,
near-complete, shoe-and-shirt-wearing articles from Wikipedia to
Nupedia.

I still think Wikipedia will continue to be the more interesting,
active, and complete encyclopedia.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
I wish Larry would stay on the soapbox a little longer. I'd be happy to bring him coffee and donuts...

I see two parallel and complementary ideas regarding certification being discussed here:
1. Improving signal to noise ratio
2. Verifying quality of scholarship

Simple, mechanical schemes like "some signed-in user read or wrote this" can help distinguish between sheer vandalism (noise) and someone's sincere attempt to write useful stuff. This is like the squelch control on a radio.

On a higher level, we need to verify content on important matters that only expert reviewers are competent to judge. This is roughly analogous to what the military calls "authentication" (like a PGP key).

There's no way I would want Wikipedia degenerate into a back-patting, incestuous, self-congratulatory mutual admiration society. Like a newsgroup where everyone agrees with each other. That way madness lies.

Nor do I want to see Wikipedia become the victim of its own success. With 100,000 signed-in users and 10,000,000 hits per day, how will we be able to stop the graffiti artists and script kiddies? Once the goat man gets a following...

I still think we should offer our "customers" advanced filtering features. Libraries and moms will want a no-porn guarantee. A CD-ROM publisher donating to the third world (maybe a Unificationist organization like Professors for World Peace) might want to focus more on scholarly topics, and not care about pop music reviews.

We can make the filters as sophisticated as we want. I haven't volunteered (yet) to be a developer, but I'm actually quite good with pattern matching and SQL joins. What I mean is, I'm willing to write code. But it's more a problem of deciding on features than figuring out how to implement them.

So let's take some more about these (and other) kinds of certification. What do we think the public wants and needs?

Ed Poor


body:
Ortolan wrote:

> Nonetheless, it seems totally appropriate to solve this problem of
> incoherence and occasionally upsetting behavior (inherent in the
> nature of Wikipedia), by moving properly vetted, well-behaved,
> near-complete, shoe-and-shirt-wearing articles from Wikipedia to
> Nupedia.

I agree. There's a huge difference between "requiring proper attire" and outright racism, to expand on Tom's metaphor.

Suppose a town decides to revoke its vagrancy law and allow homeless people to wander the streets and sleep in the park. It would be perfectly permissible for it to draw the line at access to public facilities like restaurants and libraries, with, e.g., a "no shirt no shoes no service" rule. This isn't "discriminatory", because anyone with the price of a meal can still eat in the restaurant: they just can't come in with their dirty, smelly feet or show their tits. Likewise, a dress or bathing code in a library isn't necessarily discriminatory. Even bums and hobos are welcome to read there without paying.

Whether the "well-behaved" articles are moved to Nupedia, or marked in a special way, or linked from some as yet undefined 3rd sites, is not the issue. Sure, Nupedia can stay intact, Larry, no one's trying to hurt your baby :-)

We need a certification scheme that does not:
* inhibit the free flow of info into the Wikipedia
* establish a (deadly) cabal
* reduce everything to the common denominator

Surely we can think of a scheme that satisfies these requirements, as well as any others that Larry, Cunc, Toby, Elian, et al., have posed.

I won't brag about how much money I've made in software development, but I'll say this: when I've been authorized to collect and refine user requirements, it has always led to a system that knocked the users' socks off!

Ed Poor
"Writing for myself, not my company"


from_name: Chas Brown

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com
> Ortolan88 wrote:
> >We have no guarantee that the entries will remain the same either.
> >The bioastropedia is an excellent web site, but we aren't going to
> >import their articles wholesale and leave them untouched forever, are
> >we?
>
> Well, no, I didn't expect us to.  I guess the question is "at what
> point have articles changed enough from the source that
> it's ok to remove the citation"?  I would (today, anyway) urge people
> to leave the citations in and change "works cited" to
> "works consulted"--if for no other reason than that several notable
> academics have been caught plagiarizing lately.

I recently noted that in the article on [[New Age]], there are several
quote lengthy direct quotes (with attribution and permissions), but
these quotes are 7 or 8 lengthy paragraphs long; and contain some POV
material (as well as some incorrect material, as noted in the wiki
commentary for the article).

What is the correct approach here? Summarize with attribution? Leave it
alone? The latter seems inconsistent with the spirit of wiki, the former
may result in a reduction of credibility by removing some referenced
source.

Cheers - Chas


from_name: Giskart

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Your message to Wikitech-l awaits moderator
 approval

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Alternatively, someone could volunteer to be the moderator for the
> list.  (The list is not moderated, mind you, it's just that the
> moderator has the power to take care of this kind of administrivia.)
>
> --Jimbo

I am willing to do that for Intlwiki-l and mayby wikitech-l. Not for
wikipedia-l. I do it now for wikiNL-l, not that there is not much traffic...

Giskart


from_name: Zoe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir, again

body:
Lir posted "ITZAK MORGA RIN!" on my Talk page, and refuses to explain what it means.  Does anyone have a clue?
Zoe

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use and GFDL

body:
Imran Ghory wrote in part:

>IIRC. Copyright doesn't extend to short phrases or single
>sentences.

I think that it's the *relative* size that matters.

Ashleigh Brilliant is the writer of Pot-Shots,
a syndicated newspaper column/cartoon consisting of
brand new pithy saying that he invents for the purpose.
He's successfully defended his copyrights
against the makers of posters and greeting cards,
even though no individual Pot-Shot has more than 17 words.
(According to the forewords of his books,
his court cases were even groundbreaking.)

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia.sourceforge.net

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> Has the page http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net been removed? I can't get
> there anymore.

Either SF was down when you looked or it's just you.

 > Formerly, this was a handy page containing an
> introduction to the Wikipedia software and several links,

Still is. I've just gone in and updated some of the links while I was at it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Michael Brutsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia.sourceforge.net

body:
Works for me.

On Sun, 27 Oct 2002 18:56:51 -0800 (PST)
Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Has the page http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net been removed? I
> can't get there anymore. Formerly, this was a handy page
> containing an introduction to the Wikipedia software and several
> links, much more digestable than the disaster that is
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/
>
> Axel
>
> P.S. See
> http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:nk3YWmXcUg0C:wikipedia.sourceforge.net/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
> for Google's cache of the page.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
Michael Brutsch
wikipedia at brutsch.com
(972) 240-7094


from_name: Alexander Stephen Bradbury

body:
I'm not really too sure about this one, but thought I'd better throw it in
to your current copyright/fair use debate. Someone at 64.175.251.49 has
just posted all the lyrics to the songs from an album called cowboys from
hell (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboys_From_Hell). Apart from the
fact this doesn't seem like encyclopedia material, is it fair use to put
these here? It doesn't seem safe ot me. I've heard that quite a few large
lyric repositories have been shut down over the past few years.

ASB

--
<signature>
There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't
</signature>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikipedia "mirror"

body:
elian wrote:
> "Derek Ross" <derekross at fisheracre.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>>While doing a Google search just now, I found this
>>    http://wiki.namweb.com.na/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page
>>It appears to have been copied sometime in September
>
> very nice: they left the foreign language links untouched.
>
> any other hardcoded URLs in the sourcecode? "As you can edit the page
> right now" there may be some danger.

URLs for local links are controlled by a local settings file that has to
be manually configured by the person setting up the server. (Unless they
really are at http://www.myhost.com/...) Edit links are local links, so
you edit the local copy of the page.

It might ultimately be a good idea to have some kind of explicit 'mirror
mode' such that there's a "see and/or edit the current version of this
page on the main server"-ish link instead of a local edit link.

And perhaps a way to dump a static HTML tree. -- Incidentally, the total
combined size of the pages in article and Wikipedia: space on the
English wiki is about 172 megabytes. The upload directories bring
another 134 megs; we still fit on a CD-ROM uncompressed. That may not
remain so, though...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
James Zitzmann wrote:
> wikipedia is my hoe.

Indeed; it is a tool for cultivating the garden of knowledge and tearing
away the weeds of ignorance.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cross-language image?

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> How do I do a cross-language image? I just translated the [[Rosetta Stone]]
> article into French and made an [[en:Image:]] link, which ended up at the top
> of the page next to the link to the English article looking odd.

Currently, there are only two ways to do this, both ugly:

1) Use the direct URL for the image file. (No link to image description
page, won't be shown in the links list.)

2) Upload a copy of the image on the other language's wiki.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Feature Proposal: Certification

body:
>...
>Whatever becomes a professional review mechanism
>for Wikipedia, let me tell ya how I think it should
>work: the reviewer should look at a candidate
article,
>perhaps make a few last minute changes on Wikipedia,
>and then press a button, and it's posted as
certified.
>End of story.
>After our experience with Nupedia, I think it should
>be *that* simple. On this conception, *Wikipedia* is
>the editing mechanism; the review mechanism consists
>of qualified people *just* pressing *one* button.
>(I'm just offering this as an idea--I'm not saying
>that it's *definitely* what we should do.  But I do
>strongly feel it should be that simple, or
>nearly that simple.  Once we determine the venue,
>we can discuss the details fo the mechanism.)
>
>Larry

Wow Larry, I really like this idea. It is simple,
fast, easy, doesn't require freezing of a Wikipedia
article during a review and most importantly it would
not represent a version fork. There could even be a
second level pass by somebody else with even higher
qualifications. They would review the Wikipedia
article sometime after the first reviewer, make some
needed changes (possibly reverting some less than
stellar edits since the last review), click a button
and presto!

I have a Bachelors degree in Biology with an
unofficial concentration in microbiology so sign me up
to review some basic biology and microbiology
articles. There would be criteria for a reviewer to
follow, right? We need to work this stuff out. I
suggest we create a Metapedia page to work-out some
details. I would like to also go over Nupedia's review
guidelines and see if we can get some good ideas on
what to do and not to do from that. We also need to
dig-up your original mailing list post on this subject
in the archives. There were some great posts made
during the great beta/stable debate several months ago
that should also be mined for ideas.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] RecentChanges Performance

body:
Am Fre, 2002-11-01 um 15.11 schrieb Brion VIBBER:

> My little old PII Linux box isn't bad-ass enough for me to dare putting
> the huuuge English Wikipedia database on it, so I just did some quick
> tests with the smaller Danish and German dbs. Using the recentchanges
> table seems to be consistently a few percent faster than reading
> straight from cur and old, but not significantly so. (This may just be
> the difference in overhead between querying two tables versus one.)
> Under load and with a larger database, there may or may not be a more
> pronounced difference.

I'll try this with the full DB on Monday, I can't do it immediately
because I have to build the RC table first, which will probably take a
while.

> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > There should be an INDEX on the rc_timestamp column.

This is not done in the default table build, but the index is created in
the recentchanges build script. Since I haven't run that yet, my table
still lacks the index. Sorry about the confusion.

> However it's also teling me "Using filesort", which I get the impression
> is a bad thing.

The MySQL manual has a page on this:
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/ORDER_BY_optimisation.html
I don't see how any of the conditions they list for when the index
cannot be used to resolve ORDER BY is true in our query, though. In any
case, my guess is that this doesn't significantly affect performance as
we are dealing with fairly small sets of data that need to be sorted.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Chas Brown wrote:

>I recently noted that in the article on [[New Age]], there are several
>quote lengthy direct quotes (with attribution and permissions), but
>these quotes are 7 or 8 lengthy paragraphs long; and contain some POV
>material (as well as some incorrect material, as noted in the wiki
>commentary for the article).
>
>What is the correct approach here? Summarize with attribution? Leave it
>alone? The latter seems inconsistent with the spirit of wiki, the former
>may result in a reduction of credibility by removing some referenced
>source.
>
I've looked at the article, and it needs serious help.  If those quotes
are to remain they could perhaps be relegated to a sub-page, after
beinmg checked.  I looked up the first one and noted that the reference
to the motto on the back of the U.S. seal was not correctly transcribed.
It should read "A New Order of the Age begins"

Even though I support some of the concepts raised in the article, I find
that the term "new age" is used as an excuse for muddle-headedness.

Eclecticology


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Chas wrote:
>I recently noted that in the article on [[New Age]], there are several
>quote lengthy direct quotes (with attribution and permissions), but
>these quotes are 7 or 8 lengthy paragraphs long; and contain some POV
>material (as well as some incorrect material, as noted in the wiki
>commentary for the article).
>
>What is the correct approach here? Summarize with attribution?

I would reduce that drastically.  IMHO 7 or 8 paragraphs in almost any wikipedia article is too much to be "fair" use (most of our articles are probably not even 7 or 8 paragraphs long!).  It's also a backdoor to insert bias, since you can't change direct quotations.  I'd edit furiously, and summarize.  But that's just me, and you're you, so there's that.  ;-)

kq


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Larry Sanger wrote:
>
>
>> The main reason for
>>this is simply that that isn't what the many good people who signed up for
>>the Nupedia project signed up for; they'd be furious if I tried to hijack
>>their project that way, even if it's a project that isn't currently going
>>anywhere.
>>
>>
>
>I'm considering a mass email to ask them what they want to do.  I
>think it's perfectly reasonable for us to offer to setup software for
>them to start reviewing and approving articles from Wikipedia.  I
>can't imagine why they'd be furious about it.
>
>
The important thing is that we don't *replace* Nupedia with that new
project, at least not initially. If it turns out that the wikipedia
spin-off boosts, we might think again, in a year or so.

There's another effect we might want to consider. Suppose I want to copy
a wikipedia article to that spin-off, and I will be listed as the one
who did, I'd make pretty sure the article is correct in the first place,
and covers all important points. I'd also like it to be well written.
Now, a good article from wikipedia might lack a few minor things before
I'd consider it ready to be approved. So, the obvoius thing is for me to
edit the wikipedia article and fix these (minor) items before I approve it.
As a result, wikipedia itself will improve from the spin-off.

I think.

I am working on a demo version for a new software. I could have it
running this weekend.

Magnus


from_name: James Zitzmann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Your message to Wikitech-l awaits moderator approval

body:
wikipedia is my hoe.

---
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On Fri, 01 Nov 2002 23:30:22
 rose.parks wrote:
>Hi Members,
>
>     As a moderator of one of the nupedia mailing lists, I do encourage some of
>you to volunteer to Jimmy to moderate one of the three wikipedia mailing lists.
>This is not hard. It just requires that you check your e-mail a few times a day.
>     If a message is posted to the list from an e-mail not on the subscribers'
>list, a message goes to the moderator to approve or not to approve the message.
>Or you can reject with a reason, like, "Sorry, but you are not subscribed under
>that e-mail address. Please use your usual e-mail address or change the e-mail
>you are subscribed under."
>
>     I bet at least a few people came up with the same suggestion...
>
>                         As Ever,
>
>                           Ruth Ifcher
>
>--
>
>> Toby Bartels wrote:
>> > >I am aware when such posts happen.  For regular contributors, I just
>> > >ignore them.  For newcomers, I try to respond.
>> >
>> > So if I accidentally send a post from the wrong From: address
>> > and it gets sent to you for moderation, then you ignore it?
>> > I'd much rather that you posted it!
>>
>> In a perfect world, that would be the best thing.  But there's no time
>> for that.
>>
>> Instead, the message should say: "Hey, you sent them from an
>> unsubscribed address, so it's going straight into a blackhole never to
>> be seen again."
>>
>> Alternatively, someone could volunteer to be the moderator for the
>> list.  (The list is not moderated, mind you, it's just that the
>> moderator has the power to take care of this kind of administrivia.)
>>
>> --Jimbo
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

__________________________________________________________
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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I wish Larry would stay on the soapbox a little longer. I'd be happy to bring him coffee and donuts...
>
>I see two parallel and complementary ideas regarding certification being discussed here:
>1. Improving signal to noise ratio
>2. Verifying quality of scholarship
>
>Simple, mechanical schemes like "some signed-in user read or wrote this" can help distinguish between sheer vandalism (noise) and someone's sincere attempt to write useful stuff. This is like the squelch control on a radio.
>
>On a higher level, we need to verify content on important matters that only expert reviewers are competent to judge. This is roughly analogous to what the military calls "authentication" (like a PGP key).
>
>
>
Ed has made an important distinction.

Simple automated or semi-automated procedures are very good for doing 1,
but totally useless for 2.
Arguments about their uselessness for the purposes of problem 2 do not
mean that they are not a good idea for solving problem 1.

I have no idea how to go about solving the second problem.
Let's see if we can have a go at the first.

Neil


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cross-language image?

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > How do I do a cross-language image? I just
> translated the [[Rosetta Stone]]
> > article into French and made an [[en:Image:]]
> link, which ended up at the top
> > of the page next to the link to the English
> article looking odd.
>
> Currently, there are only two ways to do this, both
> ugly:
>
> 1) Use the direct URL for the image file. (No link
> to image description
> page, won't be shown in the links list.)
>
> 2) Upload a copy of the image on the other
> language's wiki.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Hi Brion,

currently, within the text, we can use some
[[w.nameofarticle]] which send us to the en.wiki; and
some [[m:nameofpage]] which send us to the meta.wiki.

What options could be available to make similar links
within pages to link international wikis ? And how to
differenciate them from the links to other languages
at the top of the pages (are these the ones you call
magic links ?)

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from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cross-language image?

body:
How do I do a cross-language image? I just translated the [[Rosetta Stone]]
article into French and made an [[en:Image:]] link, which ended up at the top
of the page next to the link to the English article looking odd.

phma


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair use and GFDL

body:
On 31 Oct 2002, at 8:37, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Axel Boldt wrote:
> > I agree with Imran that fair use materials in a GFDL document are a
> > problem. In essence we tell our readers "we grant you the right to
> > do what you want with these materials, just follow the GFDL", but we
> > are in no position to make such an announcement: we don't own the
> > copyright to the fair use materials nor have we received permission
> > from the copyright holder. Our readers *cannot* do what they want
> > with them.
> >
> > Like Cunctator says, invariant sections don't provide a way out.
>
> There must be _something_ wrong with this analysis.  If correct, then
> we can't even quote sources.  We can't quote a single line from any
> book.  That's obviously absurd, so there must be something wrong with
> it.

IIRC. Copyright doesn't extend to short phrases or single
sentences.

> I will write to Richard Stallman to ask about this.  I'm sure the FSF
> lawyers thought of all this, and if there was a significant problem,
> they would have provided for it in the license somehow.

Not necessarily, the GNU FDL was designed for software
documentation not for the kind of articles we're developing. So "fair
use" material may not have been considered.

Imran


from_name: Derek Ross

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikipedia "mirror"

body:
While doing a Google search just now, I found this

    http://wiki.namweb.com.na/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page

It appears to have been copied sometime in September

Cheers

Derek
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from_name: rose.parks at att.net

body:
Hi Members,

     As a moderator of one of the nupedia mailing lists, I do encourage some of
you to volunteer to Jimmy to moderate one of the three wikipedia mailing lists.
This is not hard. It just requires that you check your e-mail a few times a day.
     If a message is posted to the list from an e-mail not on the subscribers'
list, a message goes to the moderator to approve or not to approve the message.
Or you can reject with a reason, like, "Sorry, but you are not subscribed under
that e-mail address. Please use your usual e-mail address or change the e-mail
you are subscribed under."

     I bet at least a few people came up with the same suggestion...

                         As Ever,

                           Ruth Ifcher

--

> Toby Bartels wrote:
> > >I am aware when such posts happen.  For regular contributors, I just
> > >ignore them.  For newcomers, I try to respond.
> >
> > So if I accidentally send a post from the wrong From: address
> > and it gets sent to you for moderation, then you ignore it?
> > I'd much rather that you posted it!
>
> In a perfect world, that would be the best thing.  But there's no time
> for that.
>
> Instead, the message should say: "Hey, you sent them from an
> unsubscribed address, so it's going straight into a blackhole never to
> be seen again."
>
> Alternatively, someone could volunteer to be the moderator for the
> list.  (The list is not moderated, mind you, it's just that the
> moderator has the power to take care of this kind of administrivia.)
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikipedia "mirror"

body:
"Derek Ross" <derekross at fisheracre.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> While doing a Google search just now, I found this
>
> ??? http://wiki.namweb.com.na/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page

> It appears to have been copied sometime in September

very nice: they left the foreign language links untouched.

any other hardcoded URLs in the sourcecode? "As you can edit the page
right now" there may be some danger.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikipedia "mirror"

body:
"Derek Ross" skribis:

> While doing a Google search just now, I found this
>
>     http://wiki.namweb.com.na/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page
>
> It appears to have been copied sometime in September

It is only the english wikipedia, it's really
slowly, and I get lots of error messages when
trying to edit pages or to login (but anyway
the edit is successful, look at "recent changes"!)

Paul


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikitech-l] netscape?

body:
At 2002-11-01 08:51 +0100, Wolfram Steinacker wrote:
>Hallo, seit gestern sehe ich wikipedia nicht mehr unter netscape.
>
>Es erscheint:
>----
>"Warning: Too many connections in
>/usr/local/apache/htdocs-de/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 19
>Konnte keine Verbindung zur Datenbank auf 127.0.0.1 herstellen
>
>Too many connections
>
>If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
>please notify the Wikipedia developers."
>----
>Wann ist das Betrachten unter netscape wieder m?glich?

It has nothing to do with Netscape. The PHP script
running on the Wikipedia server couldn't connect
to the MySQL database server on that same server
because there were already too many scripts
connected to the database server.

Try again later when it's less busy in the USA.

Greetings,
Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-English Wikipedias

body:
I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of that
change Kpjas

First notice what the top of that page is saying in
terms of description

"We use Intlwiki-L, to coordinate Wikipedia across
different languages.  Please take a look at the
Wikipedia Embassy and join if you're interested in the
future of these projects"

It is about *coordination*, not so much stating the
*existence of other languages*, fact that is already
stated otherwise.

Second : that change should not be a surprise. A
couple of days ago, tc wrote in the talk page

"I'd like to redirect this page to
Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination. I think that
better expresses the intent of this page, and doesn't
carry any nationalistic baggage. It's also an active
name--describes an ongoing process, rather than a
fuzzy entity of unclear definition."

I don't think I saw any no-wait answer to his comment,
but only support from Mav.

I think using the word "international wikipedias" is
not a good idea, because
1) it stress out the "national" part of the wiki,
which is wrong since our wikis are defined by langage
rather than by nationalities
2) it set up by default two groups, the international
one and the english one
3) as Mav said, it excludes Esperanto

The choice of the "non-english page" is better, for it
focuses back on the language. But it still maintain a
two groups settings.

This new page title is imho better for it removes that
separation, and, yes, insists on the evolution most of
us desire.

No, it does not make us a subproject, notice the
en.wiki is also in the list.

This said, I think our stats have nothing to do on
this page. They should be on another page. They have
nothing to do with coordination.

> I don't think we can agree to "the smaller have to
> subdue" rule.

I don't understand why this new title makes you think
that.

If there is something to complain about, let me give
you an example.

It seems that from the fr.wiki, I can link an english
article with [[w:blabla]] or a meta article with
[[m.blabla]]. Is there any way I can directly link a
french article on the en.wiki ? I don't think so.
Maybe I am wrong. If I am, please somebody explain to
me how I do that. If I am not, why is it that a link
can only go one way, and not the other?

That is a coordination issue. The fact it is between
english language and a non-english language is
irrelevant. It should just work between a language and
another, whatever the language.

--- "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpj at gower.pl> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Cunctator moved 'Wikipedia:Non-English Wikipedias'
> to 'Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination'.
>
> One might think that there are no Wikipedias in
> other languages anymore.
> Are we destinied to be just a division of Wikipedia
> for Multilingual
> coordination ?
>
> It seems to be rather unfair to people involved in
> Wikipedias in other
> languages.
>
> 1. some contributors of Wikipedias in other
> languages have put a lot of
>    effort and passion into creating "their"
> Wikipedias. They may or may not
>    care much about the English WP
> 2. Non-English Wikipedias have only recently been
> given more attention by
>    Wikipedia community at large which is dominated
> by English speaking
>    crowd
> 3. we always wanted help and coordination but we
> felt put aside a little
>
> I suppose there is a general consensus in
> non-English Wikipedias about the current policies
> and plans towards ONE Wikipedia in different
> languages but
> I don't think we can agree to "the smaller have to
> subdue" rule.
>
> Regards,
> Kpjas
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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from_name: Peter Lofting

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
At 8:03 AM -0800 11/1/02, Larry Sanger wrote:
>  > Another benefit if this is it could divert the energies of those with
>>  strongly diverging POVs from "vandalizing" the page. They could
>>  instead channel their energies into expressing their difference via
>>  the rating and creating a linked counter-page...always room for one
>>  more page.
>
>Do you mean that we could create competing pages on the same topic?
>Well, notwithstanding the few pages where there are a few different
>competing articles on the page (this is viewed as a temporary expedient),
>this is one of the original ur-proposals for creating an encyclopedia, and
>on both Nupedia and Wikipedia we've always come out against it.  Cf.
>[[neutral point of view]].

Just the observation that if there are multiple POVs and one slot you
will always have a power struggle between the POVs to own the slot;
wheras if you have a place - someplace, anyplace to put each POV you
can say to each of "them" - "You belong here... stop fighting with
each other... there's room for both of you".

This could take the form of sub-pages or sub-paragraphs or whatever.
This is much like the lemma of a dictionary and the multiple senses
of the term that accumulate under the entry.

Of course it doesn't solve the extreme cases where one POV is in
denial of another, but it does give them somewhere else to "live" in
the document.

Just an attempt to convert some of the heat into light.

Peter.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
At 8:03 AM -0800 11/1/02, Larry Sanger wrote:
>  > An endorsement list would be the ultimate way to go, showing
>>  names/URLs of individuals or bodies who have accepted the page as
>>  OK/useful, along with a rating value. Amazon.com book ratings could
>>  be a first model - open to all with a star rating. Note that such a
>>  list could also reflect variation in evaluation and people could then
>>  follow links to those endorsers who diverged in their rating to find
>>  out why.
>
>But how on earth can we attract the "knowers" of the world to so much as
>think about Wikipedia for one hot second, without giving them some
>guarantee that they won't be wasting their time?  And how *do* we give
>them that guarantee?

Your comment contains both the assumption that I see as constraining
your POV and also the key criteria that IMHO will encourage "knowers"
to pass by:

(1) Your assumption appears to me to be that knowers won't come to
the site unless it already contains the highest quality knowledge and
you cannot guarentee that so you are in a catch 22 view of the
problem. It sounds like you're living through the night before a big
examination and are terrified of failure!

I would point out that people's motivations are many and varied -
including 'knowers', and imagining a wider variety of reasons other
than just wanting ready-perfected look-ups can ease this catch 22
view of things. e.g.

	- joy of knowledge - people love anything on their chosen subject
	- joy of sharing - people love sharing with others
	- joy of teaching - people love being able to give of themselves
	- joy of refinement - people love being able to perfect (ie.
correct a page)
	- joy of recognition - people love being seen and acknowledged
	- joy of absorbtion - people love being absorbed in their subject
	- joy of learning - people love finding out new views and
facets of knowledge
	- joy of children - people love helping the next generation

etc... All these can be strong motivations that do not require
perfect knowledge to be already present on the site.

(2) The key criteria for 'knowers' to engage in your site is not that
things are perfect , but that they don't have their time wasted.

That means that there needs to be honest and accurate advertising of
the status of information and the process by which it is edited. Then
people can choose whether to invest their time - for whatever reason.
You will lose people rapidly if their contributions are wasted in
some way - ignored, bounced, defaced, etc.

Cheers

P


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
At 8:03 AM -0800 11/1/02, Larry Sanger wrote:
>Maybe!  It *might* also suggest to readers familiar with Everything2 and
>Kuro5hin and other projects that are self-evaluating, that the project is
>essentially a self-contained community, interested in impressing itself
>and not really interested in meeting independent standards.

I'm not familiar with those other sites. I'm not interested in
self-contained communities. I am a stranger who has stumbled across
the wiki site and is interested in the idea of it. It appears to be a
idea with rich potential and noble ideals... abstract attractions
perhaps.

As an "outsider" I now have the nerve/conceit/guile to express my POV
and interact on the list.

What am I now that I interact? An insider or an outsider?

What If I continue to interact? Do I become more of an insider or
more of an outsider?

By the nature of the technology and the setup, there is no boundary
or container and anyone can interact - both positively and negatively.

Yet there is a community, so what binds it and how is it joined and left?

On the one hand you despair of vandalism and yet on the other you
despair of getting informed input.

How do you attract the "right" people and dissuade the "wrong" people
from interacting?

Who should manage/own/weild that distinction of right and wrong?

The words "community" and "consensus" come to mind, but how to
articulate them in a living interaction?

Because it is boundary-less, you as a community don't have powers of
exclusion, so the only way I can think of attracting the right kind
of people is by "resonance": Resonance is the phenomenon of inducing
similar activity in others (e.g. other tuning forks). Whatever you do
will attract people who resonate with that activity.

The implication here is you get where you want to be by embodying the
activities and principles you hold and not feeding (i.e. reacting to)
those of different POVs.

If this is done consistently the result is a collection of
like-minded people all in resonance and aligned to a shared purpose,
while the "others" have lost interest and taken themselves elsewhere
to find their own resonances.

If you're attracting riff-raff and having editorial battles the
implication is that the riff-raff are in resonance with some people
in the community who like creating drama.

If this is the case the most productive thing to do is examine the
motives and goals of each "member" and try to align them better....
that or accept that the present state is what "members" choose -
consciously or unconsciously.

Why are you involved in the Wiki project?


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Non-English Wikipedias

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I think using the word "international wikipedias" is
> not a good idea, because
> 1) it stress out the "national" part of the wiki,
> which is wrong since our wikis are defined by langage
> rather than by nationalities

Hence "*inter*national wikipedia", not "a collection of national
wikipedias".

> 2) it set up by default two groups, the international
> one and the english one
> 3) as Mav said, it excludes Esperanto

Esperanto is "the international language"; it would seem perfectly ideal.

> It seems that from the fr.wiki, I can link an english
> article with [[w:blabla]] or a meta article with
> [[m.blabla]]. Is there any way I can directly link a
> french article on the en.wiki ? I don't think so.
> Maybe I am wrong. If I am, please somebody explain to
> me how I do that. If I am not, why is it that a link
> can only go one way, and not the other?

[[w:title]] is a historical usage from meta to English wikipedia, and
it's an accident that it works anywhere else. [[m:title]] is from any
language wikipedia to meta. [[<language code>:title]] works from meta to
any language. I would _like_ for [[<language code>:title]] to work from
any language to any language, but since we already use that syntax for
the magic language links instead of regular inline links, we may need
some other syntax.

Ideas:
1) Like linking image description pages: "see [[:fr:Page fran?ais|some
french page]]", "vois [[:en:English page|une page anglaise]]"

2) I notice that DeWikiPedia is available as an InterWiki suffix to the
German wikipedia in the UseMod-style InterWiki InterMap. We could add
the rest to this list, and start using it, and you could link eg
[[FrWikiPedia:Page Fran?ais|a french page]]

3) The 'magic' links probably shouldn't be magic on talk pages, where
you're more likely to be explicitly referencing a page under discussion.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-English Wikipedias

body:
On 11/2/02 9:34 AM, "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpj at gower.pl> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Cunctator moved 'Wikipedia:Non-English Wikipedias' to 'Wikipedia:Multilingual
> coordination'.

Actually, I moved 'Wikipedia:International Wikipedia' to
'Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination'.

I renamed the "Non-English Wikipedias" link on the Main Page (which pointed
to Wikipedia:International Wikipedia through a redirect) to "Coordination
between languages".

> One might think that there are no Wikipedias in other languages anymore.

I hope not. This is to put every language on a level playing field.

> Are we destinied to be just a division of Wikipedia for Multilingual
> coordination ?
>
> It seems to be rather unfair to people involved in Wikipedias in other
> languages.
>
> 1. some contributors of Wikipedias in other languages have put a lot of
>  effort and passion into creating "their" Wikipedias. They may or may not
>  care much about the English WP
> 2. Non-English Wikipedias have only recently been given more attention by
>  Wikipedia community at large which is dominated by English speaking
>  crowd
> 3. we always wanted help and coordination but we felt put aside a little

The phrase "Multilingual coordination" means "coordination between
languages", exactly what you say people want.

> I suppose there is a general consensus in non-English Wikipedias about the
> current policies and plans towards ONE Wikipedia in different languages but
> I don't think we can agree to "the smaller have to subdue" rule.

I certainly was not trying to imply that. I don't think the smaller have to
subdue.

Are you upset because I made the change, and not someone else?


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

body:
rose.parks at att.net wrote:
>
> Hi Members,
>
>      As a moderator of one of the nupedia mailing lists, I do encourage some of
> you to volunteer to Jimmy to moderate one of the three wikipedia mailing lists.
> This is not hard. It just requires that you check your e-mail a few times a day.
>      If a message is posted to the list from an e-mail not on the subscribers'
> list, a message goes to the moderator to approve or not to approve the message.
> Or you can reject with a reason, like, "Sorry, but you are not subscribed under
> that e-mail address. Please use your usual e-mail address or change the e-mail
> you are subscribed under."

If you want another moderator I'll put my hand up. My internet is on at
least 10 hours a day, and I'm usually sitting in front of it :)

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


from_name: Larry Sanger

body:
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> >...
> >Whatever becomes a professional review mechanism
> >for Wikipedia, let me tell ya how I think it should
> >work: the reviewer should look at a candidate
> article,
> >perhaps make a few last minute changes on Wikipedia,
> >and then press a button, and it's posted as
> certified.
> >End of story.
> >After our experience with Nupedia, I think it should
> >be *that* simple. On this conception, *Wikipedia* is
> >the editing mechanism; the review mechanism consists
> >of qualified people *just* pressing *one* button.
> >(I'm just offering this as an idea--I'm not saying
> >that it's *definitely* what we should do.  But I do
> >strongly feel it should be that simple, or
> >nearly that simple.  Once we determine the venue,
> >we can discuss the details fo the mechanism.)
> >
> >Larry
>
> Wow Larry, I really like this idea. It is simple,
> fast, easy, doesn't require freezing of a Wikipedia
> article during a review and most importantly it would
> not represent a version fork.

Yes, this is really important to me, so let me explain why.  From the very
beginning we were encouraging people to move articles from Wikipedia to
Nupedia--nobody did it.  If we were to propose doing that again now, I
can't see why it would be significantly different from before.  To be
sure, a revitalized Nupedia could be greatly simplified; but I think it's
pretty safe to say that Nupedians will insist on being on more than just a
subset of Wikipedia.  But in that case, if we had a greatly-simplified
Nupedia just borrowing articles from Wikipedia, and also adding articles
of its own, running a parallel project, that would be great, but because
it *would* be a different project (I don't like the word "fork" in this
context), Wikipedia would still probably have grounds for a certification
process of its own.  It couldn't *predict* that Nupedia would serve as a
"best of" Wikipedia; a revitalized, simplified Nupedia might simply ignore
Wikipedia, as it did before, when Nupedia was active.

The present proposal is to create a functionally and editorially
independent project that *only* uploads selected Wikipedia articles, and
does not change them at all.

> There could even be a
> second level pass by somebody else with even higher
> qualifications.

That's sort of what I thought Nupedia could do.

> They would review the Wikipedia
> article sometime after the first reviewer, make some
> needed changes (possibly reverting some less than
> stellar edits since the last review), click a button
> and presto!
>
> I have a Bachelors degree in Biology with an
> unofficial concentration in microbiology so sign me up
> to review some basic biology and microbiology
> articles. There would be criteria for a reviewer to
> follow, right? We need to work this stuff out. I
> suggest we create a Metapedia page to work-out some
> details. I would like to also go over Nupedia's review
> guidelines and see if we can get some good ideas on
> what to do and not to do from that. We also need to
> dig-up your original mailing list post on this subject
> in the archives. There were some great posts made
> during the great beta/stable debate several months ago
> that should also be mined for ideas.

I'm sure we could learn something that way.  An essential aspect of the
project as I conceived of it is that it would be potentially attractive to
college professors who want to work with colleagues and who do not want to
have to debate (or check up on) changes made by people whom they think
aren't yet their equals in terms of qualifications or ability.  The entry
bar would therefore necessarily have to be high in terms of
qualifications.  I think all this entails that, for planning purposes,
once we have decided we're really going to do this (and I at least am
pretty sure I want to get behind it), we should set up a separate mailing
list for the project.  It's only appropriate that the project be more
specifically defined, and guided, by the future participants.

But these things (the new mailing list included) is contingent to a
certain extent upon Jimbo's intentions vis-a-vis Nupedia itself.  I hope
we'll hear more from him about all of this.  He's probably out having fun
on the weekend now, as usual, so we might not hear from him about this for
a few days.

Larry


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia subset proposal

body:
I just wanted to reply to what people wrote in reply to the original
"Wikipedia subset proposal" (which can be found here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006352.html ).

I'm very glad to see Magnus, Axel, and Mav behind it.

Ruth Ifcher kindly wrote in response:

>> It is hard to form an opinion of this proposal, with just a very bare
outline of it. Nevertheless, the first question that occurred to me when I
read it was, would there be someone in charge of this Wikipedia subset,
like an editor-in-chief or whatever.
     It would seem that we need to have someone in charge of seeing that
all the policy decisions get made, implemented, and documented, and to see
the project through.
     I have a number of questions but the proposal is far from clear to
me. I think more details have to be outlined, before I, for one, feel
ready to ask questions. <<

As is usual for vague new proposals, there's a tension between being clear
enough to let people know if they really want to be involved, and vague
enough so that they might feel they can have a shape in how it's going to
be formed.  As far as I'm concerned, Ruth Ifcher should be one of the
people listened to closely for answers to the questions that she would be
apt to ask!

Would there be someone in charge of the Wikipedia subset--an
editor-in-chief?  Well, do we need one for *this* project and what for if
so?  It isn't obvious to me.  The core idea as I see it is simply subject
area experts (bona fide experts, mind you) pushing "approve" buttons and
after that being publicly accountable for their button-pushing.  For what
is an editor-in-chief needed here?  Perhaps only to approve reviewers, but
surely if I for example were editor-in-chief, I would like to pass on this
responsibility to the most senior or distinguished scholar in a given
area, a "head reviewer."  For example, G. B. Lane, Nupedia's music editor,
can more easily tell a good musicologist from a bad one than I can.

As to implementing policy decisions and simply keeping the project on
track, from experience I know that *would* require a leader--though in
fact, many policy decisions have already been discussed ad nauseam on
either Nupedia or Wikipedia or both, and we might as well not reinvent the
wheel.

So it really isn't clear how much work leading a Wikipedia filter project
would require.  I know that *I* could make a full-time job of organizing
it, if I could justify actually spending that time; but since I am still
underemployed (but thankfully not entirely unemployed), part of the
justification has to come in terms of money!  Before I think any more
about that, though, I'd like to see if enough people are behind it, and
how Nupedia fits into it.

I can say this: if it's under a new domain name that I control, I'll be
much more motivated to work on it; for reasons stated above, I have to
make sure that I have *some* sort of *clear stake* in the project if I'm
going to work on it the way I worked on Nupedia and Wikipedia.
Otherwise, I'll be spending many hours of my free time on a project when I
should, to be responsible to myself and my wife, be out making more money.

If everything goes well, if I wanted to start working on this in earnest,
I would begin by joining Lee's (reported) effort to set up a Free
Encyclopedia Foundation.  Hopefully a steady and growing source of income
might come from that, so that the overall project of creating a free
encyclopedia could support the needed *professional* involvement it really
requires.

But even if no money is forthcoming, I think we might be able to organize
a roughly self-managing project, and I'd try to help get it started.
Still, to do a good job, I really do think we need a full-time manager.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


body:
I wrote:

>>As is usual for vague new proposals, there's a tension between being
clear enough to let people know if they really want to be involved, and
vague enough so that they might feel they can have a shape in how it's
going to be formed.				     ^^^^^

Not "shape," "stake"!  :-)

Also, I'm glad Stephen Gilbert and Toby Bartels gave their blessing as
well, thanks guys.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-English Wikipedias

body:
Hi all,

Cunctator moved 'Wikipedia:Non-English Wikipedias' to 'Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination'.

One might think that there are no Wikipedias in other languages anymore.
Are we destinied to be just a division of Wikipedia for Multilingual
coordination ?

It seems to be rather unfair to people involved in Wikipedias in other
languages.

1. some contributors of Wikipedias in other languages have put a lot of
   effort and passion into creating "their" Wikipedias. They may or may not
   care much about the English WP
2. Non-English Wikipedias have only recently been given more attention by
   Wikipedia community at large which is dominated by English speaking
   crowd
3. we always wanted help and coordination but we felt put aside a little

I suppose there is a general consensus in non-English Wikipedias about the current policies and plans towards ONE Wikipedia in different languages but
I don't think we can agree to "the smaller have to subdue" rule.

Regards,
Kpjas


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikipedia "mirror"

body:
Derek Ross wrote:

>While doing a Google search just now, I found this

>??? http://wiki.namweb.com.na/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page

>It appears to have been copied sometime in September

September 20, to judge by its Recentchanges.

Other notes:
Their site claims to "already have 0 articles"!
Randompage always gives [[Main Page]] there.
Watchlinks doesn't seem to work on their site.
Since [[Main Page]] is a protected page on the real Wikipedia,
 I can't edit theirs to indicate that theirs is inactive
 and point people to our Wikipedia, even though I'm a sysop.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
Peter Lofting wrote:

>Just the observation that if there are multiple POVs and one slot you
>will always have a power struggle between the POVs to own the slot;
>wheras if you have a place - someplace, anyplace to put each POV you
>can say to each of "them" - "You belong here... stop fighting with
>each other... there's room for both of you".

The way that we're supposed to do this is to have
a paragraph, section, or page (depending on size)
that says <A thinks B about C>.  But even this should be NPOV;
B should accurately reflect what A really thinks about C,
and it shouldn't imply that A is right about C or that B is correct.

-- Toby


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

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

>1) Like linking image description pages: "see [[:fr:Page fran?ais|some
>french page]]", "vois [[:en:English page|une page anglaise]]"

I was about to suggest exactly this.

-- Toby


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
Peter wrote:
>> The way that we're supposed to do this is to have
>> a paragraph, section, or page (depending on size)
>> that says <A thinks B about C>.  But even this should be NPOV;
>> B should accurately reflect what A really thinks about C,
>> and it shouldn't imply that A is right about C or that B is correct.

The Cunctator responded:
>Rather, that's *one* way to do this. There are many, many ways of presenting
>information and knowledge that do equivalent jobs of achieving balance.

Please remind me of what the other ways are.

kq


subject: [Wikitech-l] Dedicated editor for Wikipedia

body:
Hello all,

Please read about this idea and comment on Talk page.

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

Regards,
Kpjas.
--
Wikipedia - The Free Online Encyclopedia


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Certification

body:
On 11/2/02 7:38 PM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> Peter Lofting wrote:
>
>> Just the observation that if there are multiple POVs and one slot you
>> will always have a power struggle between the POVs to own the slot;
>> wheras if you have a place - someplace, anyplace to put each POV you
>> can say to each of "them" - "You belong here... stop fighting with
>> each other... there's room for both of you".
>
> The way that we're supposed to do this is to have
> a paragraph, section, or page (depending on size)
> that says <A thinks B about C>.  But even this should be NPOV;
> B should accurately reflect what A really thinks about C,
> and it shouldn't imply that A is right about C or that B is correct.
>
Rather, that's *one* way to do this. There are many, many ways of presenting
information and knowledge that do equivalent jobs of achieving balance.


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>I just wanted to reply to what people wrote in reply to the original
>"Wikipedia subset proposal" (which can be found here:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006352.html ).
>
>I'm very glad to see Magnus, Axel, and Mav behind it.
>
>
>
Yes, having read it, it sounds like a good idea, as it

1 looks like a good idea, even if it is only as a "best of Wikipedia"
2 is unlikely to harm Wikipedia
3 might be a way forward towards resolving the scholarly review conundrum

I particularly like the idea that Wikipedia _remains the editing forum_:
editing is the lifeblood of a wiki.

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] metapedia.org

body:
I just wrote [[Metapedia]], and I tried to link to <metapedia.org>,
which of course is wrong, so I fixed it when I figured it out.
But neither <metapedia.org> nor <metapedia.com> seems to be owned now,
so would it be more trouble than it's worth to get them?

-- Toby

PS:  The <title>s of Metapedia pages say "Wikipedia" in them.
     That should be "Metapedia" too, don't you think?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: metapedia.org

body:
I wrote:

>I just wrote [[Metapedia]], and I tried to link to <metapedia.org>,
>which of course is wrong, so I fixed it when I figured it out.
>But neither <metapedia.org> nor <metapedia.com> seems to be owned now,
>so would it be more trouble than it's worth to get them?

I guess that "Metapedia" is just an abbreviation for "Meta-Wikipedia",
so this seems less reasonable than before,
since we certainly do have <meta.wikipedia.org>.

>The <title>s of Metapedia pages say "Wikipedia" in them.
>That should be "Metapedia" too, don't you think?

However, this could still use changing, one way or another,
so that I can distinguish the [[Main Page]]s of each wiki
in the titles on my web browser's minimised windows.

-- Toby


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > I think using the word "international wikipedias"
> is
> > not a good idea, because
> > 1) it stress out the "national" part of the wiki,
> > which is wrong since our wikis are defined by
> langage
> > rather than by nationalities
>
> Hence "*inter*national wikipedia", not "a collection
> of national
> wikipedias".

I hear inter*national* in the word. Maybe is that a
cultural biais.

> Ideas:
> 1) Like linking image description pages: "see
> [[:fr:Page fran?ais|some
> french page]]", "vois [[:en:English page|une page
> anglaise]]"

Yes.
Or [[fr:une page fran?aise]] would do for the magic
link, and [fr:une page francaise|une page fran?aise]
would do for a link in the text. That way, it could be
*very quick to write
*more similar to regular links
*could make a distinction between
- internal links (see also) in blue
- external links in green
- int-ext links in....well...grey

Ultimately, it should be clear when a link is really
making people quit wikipedia, or just jump in another
chapter of the book.

> 2) I notice that DeWikiPedia is available as an
> InterWiki suffix to the
> German wikipedia in the UseMod-style InterWiki
> InterMap. We could add
> the rest to this list, and start using it, and you
> could link eg
> [[FrWikiPedia:Page Fran?ais|a french page]]

Amha, the prefix is too long :-)

> 3) The 'magic' links probably shouldn't be magic on
> talk pages, where
> you're more likely to be explicitly referencing a
> page under discussion.

lol, I agree.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Lag

body:
I've been getting lag for about the past hour
that seems to be especially pronounced when saving articles.
Otherwise, it's slower than usual but still tolerable.
Saving, however, takes half a dozen minutes.

-- Toby


from_name: David Levinson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia subset proposal

body:
Larry's Wikipedia subset proposal is an elegant solution to the problem
of "freezing" a clean cut of the wikipedia.

Sign me up (I have Ph.D. Civil Engineering and teach transportation
engineering, planning, and policy)

It should not go under the name nupedia, nor should it go under the
name wikipedia, but something else. According to network solutions
metapedia.com is owned, but metapedia.org and metapedia.net are
available.  Hyperpedia.org is also a good name and available.

We might want to think about an updating protocol, as wikipedia
articles evolve past the frozen versions, some sort of flagging would
be in order of articles that diverged significantly from frozen
articles and the "liquid" wikipedia open to edits.

We might also want to think about allowing multiple groups be able to
"publish"  "frozen" versions at the touch of a button (sort of
combination of Larry and Ed's idea).  Any individual/group, once
registered, would be able to touch a button and establish a flag on a
wikipedia article.  Thus in Frozen version A, the academics might have
a tight standard and only review/update once in a blue moon, but
another group B could freeze a different version and update more
frequently.  Since these are only article flags on particular versions
(all of which are stored in a single database), there would not be
forking as such.  However someone could search only for group A.  Group
A would have their own web interface (own name, own address).  If
someone else didn't like group A's cut (too small, too elite, too
whatever), they could publish their own take on the encyclopedia.

It would allow someone potentially to be using wikipedia to publish a
non-NPOV encyclopedia, since versions in the middle of edit wars would
be freezable by a particular group - but as long as that was somehow
acknowledged, and the lines between liquid wikipedia and frozen
wikipedia (versions A, B, ...) were established, I think it could be
tolerated.

The issues of interlinking - linking to a "liquid" article would need
to be addressed either by identifying it as external link, removing
that link in the "frozen" version, or as some third kind of link.
However, this raises questions of self-containment.

David Levinson
levin031 at tc.umn.edu


subject: [Wikipedia-l] metapedia.org

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> I just wrote [[Metapedia]], and I tried to link to <metapedia.org>,
> which of course is wrong, so I fixed it when I figured it out.
> But neither <metapedia.org> nor <metapedia.com> seems to be owned now,
> so would it be more trouble than it's worth to get them?

Well, since we don't have a site called "Metapedia"...

> PS:  The <title>s of Metapedia pages say "Wikipedia" in them.
>      That should be "Metapedia" too, don't you think?

That's probably because they're Meta-Wikipedia pages, not Metapedia
pages. They _ought_ be to explicitly linked to the Wikipedia name,
because they're explicitly part of the Wikipedia project. However, they
shouldn't say "Encyclopedia article from", as they are not part of the
_encyclopedia_ Wikipedia, but are meta-discussion about the _project_
Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
Could we please disallow offsite images?

*Using them steals bandwidth & is rude to the people who have to pay for the other site
*They're useful for vandals (goatse.cx)
*Thanks to e.g. doubleclick, some people run programs that kill offsite images automatically (e.g. Proxomitron for Windows boxes)
*if not killed automatically, they can cause a page not to finish loading when it would otherwise (doubleclick has a problem?  well just sit there a few minutes waiting for hotmail to come up)

I'm running proxomitron now; most of the country articles have killed images; the goatse image is thankfully killed also.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Could we please disallow offsite images?
>
> *Using them steals bandwidth & is rude to the people who have to pay for the other site
> *They're useful for vandals (goatse.cx)
> *Thanks to e.g. doubleclick, some people run programs that kill offsite images automatically (e.g. Proxomitron for Windows boxes)

Mozilla has an option for this built in, as well as a handy "block
images from this server" option on the context menu for any image.

> *if not killed automatically, they can cause a page not to finish loading when it would otherwise (doubleclick has a problem?  well just sit there a few minutes waiting for hotmail to come up)
>
> I'm running proxomitron now; most of the country articles have killed images; the goatse image is thankfully killed also.

Since this has been discussed and generally approved of previously, I'm
going to go ahead and disable them. There are probably still some
legitimate off-site images floating around; I'll make a list for
replacements.

(I'm only going to do this for the English wiki for now; some of the
others are probably still using many external images.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocked, insulted, and pissed

body:
Eli wrote:
> Your user name or IP address has been blocked by PierreAbbat. The reason
> given is this:
> Vandalized World Trade Center, William I of England. Removed large
> section of Napoleonic Code,
...
> I am new to Wikipedia.  The time I first saw this page, I had not yet
> registered a user name on Wikipedia.  I plead innocent to these crimes.

Your ISP uses a caching server which hides both you and some asshole
vandal behind the same IP address. We have no way of telling you apart,
unfortunately.

I've unblocked the IP, and am putting it on a list to watch in case the
vandal comes back as well as you.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Brion wrote:
>>Since this has been discussed and generally approved of previously, I'm
>>going to go ahead and disable them. There are probably still some
>>legitimate off-site images floating around; I'll make a list for
>>replacements.
>
> Thanks Brion.  If there's some way to make a list of external images and pages they were used on, I'd be happy to upload the ones we need & have the right to use.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-local_images

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
Brion wrote:
>Since this has been discussed and generally approved of previously, I'm
>going to go ahead and disable them. There are probably still some
>legitimate off-site images floating around; I'll make a list for
>replacements.
>
>(I'm only going to do this for the English wiki for now; some of the
>others are probably still using many external images.)

Thanks Brion.  If there's some way to make a list of external images and pages they were used on, I'd be happy to upload the ones we need & have the right to use.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki links and most wanted

body:
Hi all,

Would it be possible and helpful to have some (visual) indication
in interwiki section of all pages that in some Wikipedias there are
corresponding articles,  at least , 50% bigger in size ?
Or this feature in watchlist ?

Another idea for the future would be to have a list with most wanted
articles by other language Wikipedias. Provided that interlinking to
non-existent aricles is allowed.

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia subset proposal

body:
> From: David Levinson <dlevinson at mn.rr.com>
> Sign me up (I have Ph.D. Civil Engineering and teach transportation
> engineering, planning, and policy)

Great!

> It should not go under the name nupedia, nor should it go under the
> name wikipedia, but something else. According to network solutions
> metapedia.com is owned, but metapedia.org and metapedia.net are
> available.  Hyperpedia.org is also a good name and available.

We clearly need Jimbo to reply on this point.  I've got a few name
ideas myself.

> We might want to think about an updating protocol, as wikipedia
> articles evolve past the frozen versions, some sort of flagging would
> be in order of articles that diverged significantly from frozen
> articles and the "liquid" wikipedia open to edits.

Definitely--I'm sure that sort of feature will be one of the first to be
added.

> We might also want to think about allowing multiple groups be able to
> "publish"  "frozen" versions at the touch of a button (sort of
> combination of Larry and Ed's idea).  Any individual/group, once
> registered, would be able to touch a button and establish a flag on a
> wikipedia article.  Thus in Frozen version A, the academics might have
> a tight standard and only review/update once in a blue moon, but
> another group B could freeze a different version and update more
> frequently.  Since these are only article flags on particular versions
> (all of which are stored in a single database), there would not be
> forking as such.  However someone could search only for group A.  Group
> A would have their own web interface (own name, own address).  If
> someone else didn't like group A's cut (too small, too elite, too
> whatever), they could publish their own take on the encyclopedia.
>
> It would allow someone potentially to be using wikipedia to publish a
> non-NPOV encyclopedia, since versions in the middle of edit wars would
> be freezable by a particular group - but as long as that was somehow
> acknowledged, and the lines between liquid wikipedia and frozen
> wikipedia (versions A, B, ...) were established, I think it could be
> tolerated.

I think this is a *great* idea.  I can easily see how the encyclopedia
filter software could become more popular that PediaWiki itself.  It's
essentially a way to import articles from Wikipedia (or, theoretically,
any PediaWiki website).

Of course, the only drawback is that "reviewing" efforts might be spread
too thinly; but somehow I doubt that will be a problem.

> The issues of interlinking - linking to a "liquid" article would need
> to be addressed either by identifying it as external link, removing
> that link in the "frozen" version, or as some third kind of link.
> However, this raises questions of self-containment.

Exactly right.  That setting should probably be left open to the reader.
Then we could debate about what the default setting should be.

Larry


from_name: Eli

body:
[Probably not the right place for this plea.  Please forward to the right person.  (See next to last paragraph below for my reason for using this forum.]

I am a new user of Wikipedia.  It seems like a great project.  Since about 1963, I have believed that the world needs a really big encyclopedia to access all knowledge about everything (before the internet, I estimated thousands of printed volumes).  In the '80s I learned of the idea now called "hyperlink" and I knew, theoretically, how this could work as a continually updated virtual book.  Nupedia and Wikipedia promise to fulfill this vision.

But the very second time I tried to add a suggestion I was referred to a page with this content:

============================================================
User is blocked


body:
Eli wrote in part:

>============================================================
>User is blocked
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

>Your user name or IP address has been blocked by PierreAbbat. The reason given is this:
>Vandalized World Trade Center, William I of England. Removed large section of Napoleonic Code,

>You may contact the administrator to discuss the block.

>Return to Main Page.
>============================================================

>"Vandalizing the World Trade Center" may be an unfortunate, unthinking choice
>of words, but I am still deeply offended.

Indeed it is an unfortunate, unthinking choice of words.
I'm glad to see that Pierre didn't in fact use those words.

>(As for removing large sections of the Napoleonic Code: there are large
>sections of the IRS Code and the US Code I should like to delete and replace,
>but under our Constitution my opinion on this doesn't matter--when we vote
>Tuesday, DC will once again choose a Non-Voting Delegate to Congress.)

Again, nobody mentioned anything about
"removing large sections of the Napoleonic Code".
But I realise that you're joking; it's a nice pun.
Especially when Pierre is ignoring the subject,
it's easy to pretend that he's ignoring articles too.
At least you had the presence of mind
to not be offended by your own pun this time.

</grumpy response>
<pleasant response>

>I think you need to rethink the practice of blocking dynamic IP numbers.  Not
>everyone lives in an area served by cable modems or DSL.  Many of those who do
>cannot afford the additional expense of a high speed connection that is always
>on.

Now you have definitely got a point.
Many adminsitrators block IP addresses routinely
but fail to unblock them in a reasonable amount of time
or even to check to see if they are dynamic.
Yours is the second time that
this problem has come to the attention of the list
(the first time, several regulars were blocked).
If we must block IPs, then we need to do so more intelligently!

>The message advises me to "contact the administrator to discuss the block."
>This is nice.  It would have been nicer if a hyperlink to the administrator's
>"mailto:" address were included.  Unlike most websites, the Wikipedia home
>page offers no hyperlink to the webmaster.  This is why I joined and wrote to
>this list.  Probably there is a better place for this msg.  If so, please
>forward this, and tell me.

The list is actually pretty appropriate; we'all are the webmasters.
The easiest way to allow people to contact administrators
would be to include a link to [[Wikipedia:Adminstrators]],
where the individual administrator's user page can be found.
Not every administrator has a readable email address there,
but I do, and I've now marked myself for attention on that page.
(Other administrators that publish their email addresses can join me.)

>There are four things that need fixing here:  my access to Wikipedia,

Already done by Brion.

>your handling of dynamic IP addresses,

Definitely needs to be a priority.

>an easy way to contact the Wikipedia webmaster or administrator,

A link to [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] will be a useful kludge for now.

>and DC's voting rights.

I like your licence plates, even if that jerk Bush won't use them.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Lag

body:
I wrote:

>I've been getting lag for about the past hour
>that seems to be especially pronounced when saving articles.
>Otherwise, it's slower than usual but still tolerable.
>Saving, however, takes half a dozen minutes.

This problem ended about an hour after I sent the post.

-- Toby


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic &#codes; to UTF8 conversion patch

body:
Patch for Polish Wikipedia.
-------------- next part --------------
--- convertWiki2SQL.php.orig	2002-09-19 07:48:35.000000000 +0200
+++ convertWiki2SQL.php	2002-11-03 18:09:45.000000000 +0100
@@ -66,6 +66,23 @@
 if ( $wikiLanguage == "pl" ) {
 $wikiTalk = "Dyskusja" ;
 $fieldSeparator = "\xff";
+
+function num_to_utf8($num)
+{
+    if ($num[0][2] == 'x')
+	$i = hexdec($num[1]);
+    else
+	$i = (int)$num[1];
+    if ($i > 0 && $i < 0x7f)
+	return sprintf ("%c", $i);
+    else if ($i > 0x80 && $i < 0x7ff)
+	return sprintf ("%c%c", 0xC0 | (($i>>6) & 0x1f), 0x80 | ($i & 0x3f));
+    else if ($i > 0x800 && $i < 0xffff)
+	return sprintf ("%c%c%c", 0xE0 | (($i>>12) & 0xf), 0x80 | (($i>>6) & 0x3f), 0x80 | ($i & 0x3f));
+    else
+	return $num[0];
+}
+
 function RecodeCharsetPl ( $text ) {
 	# Convert iso8859-2 to UTF-8
 	# In a happy world, we could use iconv for this
@@ -85,7 +102,10 @@
 	"\xEE" => "\xc3\xae", "\xEF" => "\xc4\x8f", "\xF0" => "\xc4\x91", "\xF1" => "\xc5\x84", "\xF2" => "\xc5\x88", "\xF3" => "\xc3\xb3",
 	"\xF4" => "\xc3\xb4", "\xF5" => "\xc5\x91", "\xF6" => "\xc3\xb6", "\xF7" => "\xc3\xb7", "\xF8" => "\xc5\x99", "\xF9" => "\xc5\xaf",
 	"\xFA" => "\xc3\xba", "\xFB" => "\xc5\xb1", "\xFC" => "\xc3\xbc", "\xFD" => "\xc3\xbd", "\xFE" => "\xc5\xa3", "\xFF" => "\xcb\x99" ) ;
-	return strtr ( $text , $l2u8 ) ;
+	$text = strtr ($text , $l2u8);
+	$text = preg_replace_callback ('/&#(\d+);/', num_to_utf8, $text);
+	$text = preg_replace_callback ('/&#x([0-9a-fA-F]+);/', num_to_utf8, $text);
+	return $text;
 	}
 	$recodeCharset = recodeCharsetPl ;
 	$firstIsLowercase = firstIsLowercasePl;


subject: [Wikitech-l] mysql issues

body:
There are 4 issues standing between polish wikipedia and phase 3
software.

One is automatic conversion of &#codes; are requires just a small
patch, which has been sent by me already.

Second is support for H1 (don't say that it is reserved for page
titles, CSS already treats H1 and H1.pagetitle different).

Two others are MySQL issues:
* MySQL doesn't search UTF-8 right.
* Wikipedia should be mirrorable and MySQL database dumps are not
  really convenient way.

Afair MySQL 4.1 is supposed to fix the first, and there is some
patch already that fixes that, so could you investigate that stuff ?

Mirroring by downloading dumps is very inconvenient,
making nightly patches of dump file available is bare minimum.
But in longer term some better solution should be developed.

Anyway, I'm for setting up final setup instalation as soon as
&#code; and H1 issue is fixed. MySQL issues may be hard to fix
and nothing really critical would happen if they were fixed a few
weeks later.


from_name: Giskart

body:
Is there no better way to identify a user instead of a IP-adress? What
when ip6 is used. Can it not be done by the mac-adress?

Giskart


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strong request: Make the == presentation smaller

body:
The time has come to present the ==Header== in a more modest type
face.  People are beginning to use it consistently, but it is still
godawful big and I am tired of apologizing for it every time I write
about how to be a good markup citizen.

The size of the presentation holds back proper markup.  Even
outstanding citizens like the guy who can't spell Brian and the guy
who can't spell Maverick argue against the ==Header==, largely because
it is ugly, and it is in most browsers.

I understand some browsers may not cooperate, but we can certainly
change the default presentation style on our end, can't we?

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> > Brion wrote:
> >> Since this has been discussed and generally approved of previously,
> >> I'm going to go ahead and disable them. There are probably still
> >> some legitimate off-site images floating around; I'll make a list
> >> for replacements.
> > Thanks Brion.  If there's some way to make a list of external images
> > and pages they were used on, I'd be happy to upload the ones we need
> > & have the right to use.
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-local_images

Could you make a list for the German wikipedia, too, please?
Another thought: it would be very nice to have a possibility to see which
images are available in which wikipedia and have some better mechanism for
exchange than saving locally and uploading in the other.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
elian wrote:

>Could you make a list for the German wikipedia, too, please?
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Offsite_images


subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> elian wrote:
>
>> Could you make a list for the German wikipedia, too, please?
>>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Offsite_images
>

What is the SQL query to make this list?

Giskart


subject: [Wikipedia-l] offsite images

body:
Giskart wrote:

> What is the SQL query to make this list?

Try the one on
    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ADatabase_queries

Magnus


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Can I be an admin please?

body:
Hi all,

I'd like to be made an admin, or sysop, or whatever you want to call them.
My username is Camembert. I've been around since late July, and have
thought of asking for admin status a couple of times before. It's the
latest goatse.cx vandal and encouragement from mav that have finally
convinced me to ask for the upgrade.

I promise not to abuse my powers by deleting the "Votes for deletion" page,
and if there's some sort of pledge I need to take, then send it over, and
I'll read it out facing the [[Main Page]] with hand on heart.

Cheers
LP (camembert)


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Can I be an admin please?

body:
I can't remember if we're supposed to vouch for would-be admins, but I
certainly will for Cam.
He's done tons of work on music-related pages as well as lots of
RecentChanges weeding work.

- tarquin

Lee Pilich wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to be made an admin, or sysop, or whatever you want to call
> them. My username is Camembert. I've been around since late July, and
> have thought of asking for admin status a couple of times before. It's
> the latest goatse.cx vandal and encouragement from mav that have
> finally convinced me to ask for the upgrade.
>
> I promise not to abuse my powers by deleting the "Votes for deletion"
> page, and if there's some sort of pledge I need to take, then send it
> over, and I'll read it out facing the [[Main Page]] with hand on heart.
>
> Cheers
> LP (camembert)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RMS on fair use [rms@gnu.org: Re: Wikipedia and GNU FDL "fair use" question]

body:
Clearly from the tone and content of this, we should regard this as a
tentative opinion from someone who knows a lot about this stuff
generally but who hasn't really researched this particular question in
detail.

RMS currently advises against including things like album covers and
movie box covers.  While I don't think his opinion on that is
authoritative, it's surely reason for us to pause to consider it.

----- Forwarded message from Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org> -----

From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 08:56:04 -0500
To: jwales at bomis.com
Subject: Re: Wikipedia and GNU FDL "fair use" question

This is a harder question than I thought it was.

For small quotations from prose works, I think there is no problem.
Such quotations are fair use in any context, even a commercial one, I
believe.

Poetry is a different matter.  I believe there was a ruling that
quotations from poetry are never allowed as fair use.  I think you
simply cannot include any poetry.  The situation for images is not
exactly the same, but due to the reasons you stated, you probably
should not include those record covers.

The GNU lawyers are overwhelmed with work, so I probably cannot
find a lawyer to help with this.  I will ask, though.

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia subset proposal

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> > It should not go under the name nupedia, nor should it go under the
> > name wikipedia, but something else. According to network solutions
> > metapedia.com is owned, but metapedia.org and metapedia.net are
> > available.  Hyperpedia.org is also a good name and available.
>
> We clearly need Jimbo to reply on this point.  I've got a few name
> ideas myself.

I have no opinion at the present time.  I am intending to revive
Nupedia in the near future, in some fashion, and I am thinking very
much along the lines of what is being discussed here.  Therefore, I
think that Nupedia might be the right vehicle for this in the first
place.

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] internal image links to other wikipedias

body:
What about a new tag that allows inclusion of images from other
wikipedias?
This would save us a lot of effort to download and re-upload say 200 CIA
factbook maps, 200 country flags and the like (which is not fun to do
especially with current occasionally very slow response times).

Something like [[image:en:Image_US_flagmedium.png]]

Erik Zachte


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia is stuck

body:
Wikipedia has been stuck for the past twelve minutes or so. Can someone
unstick it, or correlate it with some timeconsuming query?

phma


body:
On Sunday 03 November 2002 14:35, Eli wrote:
> [Probably not the right place for this plea.  Please forward to the right
> person.  (See next to last paragraph below for my reason for using this
> forum.]
>
> I am a new user of Wikipedia.  It seems like a great project.  Since about
> 1963, I have believed that the world needs a really big encyclopedia to
> access all knowledge about everything (before the internet, I estimated
> thousands of printed volumes).  In the '80s I learned of the idea now
> called "hyperlink" and I knew, theoretically, how this could work as a
> continually updated virtual book.  Nupedia and Wikipedia promise to fulfill
> this vision.
>
> But the very second time I tried to add a suggestion I was referred to a
> page with this content:
>
> ============================================================
> User is blocked
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
>
> Your user name or IP address has been blocked by PierreAbbat. The reason
> given is this: Vandalized World Trade Center, William I of England. Removed
> large section of Napoleonic Code,
>
> You may contact the administrator to discuss the block.
>
> Return to Main Page.

I am very sorry for this. I can't at the moment see what the IP address is,
as Wikipedia is stuck, but we've had incidents before where a proxy server
was blocked.

phma


body:
On Sunday 03 November 2002 21:13, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Again, nobody mentioned anything about
> "removing large sections of the Napoleonic Code".
> But I realise that you're joking; it's a nice pun.
> Especially when Pierre is ignoring the subject,
> it's easy to pretend that he's ignoring articles too.
> At least you had the presence of mind
> to not be offended by your own pun this time.

I wasn't ignoring the subject. I was at a friend's house getting his USB DSL
modem to work with his new Linux box. It's a recent Mandrake distro, and
there should have been instructions on how to make it work with Mandrake, but
weren't. So I had to figure out which instructions were irrelevant (don't
need to compile the module) and which had to be done differently.

phma


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Dear Ruth,

	I am willing to moderate a mailing list, part time. That is, I have chosen not to use the Internet at home, so I would only be available to moderate on weekdays.

	I hope this may be of some help.

			Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: rose.parks at att.net [mailto:rose.parks at att.net]
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 6:30 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Your message to Wikitech-l awaits
moderator approval

Hi Members,

     As a moderator of one of the nupedia mailing lists, I do encourage some of
you to volunteer to Jimmy to moderate one of the three wikipedia mailing lists.
This is not hard. It just requires that you check your e-mail a few times a day.
     If a message is posted to the list from an e-mail not on the subscribers'
list, a message goes to the moderator to approve or not to approve the message.
Or you can reject with a reason, like, "Sorry, but you are not subscribed under
that e-mail address. Please use your usual e-mail address or change the e-mail
you are subscribed under."

     I bet at least a few people came up with the same suggestion...

                         As Ever,

                           Ruth Ifcher