from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google ads

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Kurt Jansson wrote:
> I am of the opinion that we will never "need" the money.  I think the
> challenge to the community is going to be from a different direction:
> how much good could we do to further our goals as a charitable
> institution, and does that good outweigh our distaste for advertising.

I think we can do all we want to do through donations and grants. If we are
going to have any kind of advertising ever, then, IMO, it should be limited to
a newsletter/WikiReader (ala National Geographic) sent to our millions of
subscriber-donors. An additional idea would be to have a separate website where
we post vetted article/book versions alongside Google ads (all the editing
would still be at the ad-free Wikipedia and other wiki projects).

> As a thought experiment, consider a day 2 years in the future when
> Wikipedia is serving 1 billion pageviews per month, and we are
> continuing to easily fund the site's growth through donations, grants,
> etc.

I certainly hope it will only be 1 billion page views a month, since my
projection of 'business as usual' (meaning 90% traffic growth compounded
quarterly) has us at more than 135 billion hits per month by the end of 2006.

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/upload/0/07/Hardware_costs_-_year.pdf

> A conservative estimate (in my experience, which is valid I think) of
> how much revenue we could generate with Google Adwords or similar,
> i.e. no banners, no flashing lights, no popups, would be around $1 per
> thousand.  So a billion pageviews a month generates at least $1
> million per month.  Even with the ability for people who hate ads to
> opt-out with a single click, the revenue would be substantial.

And so could the risks to our community and all we have built. But if and when
we are presented with the choice between closing shop and having Google ads,
then and *only* then should we seriously consider it. All my opinion, of
course. There are many millions of dollars available in grants that we not even
looked at yet.

> My dream is to create a comprehensive free encyclopedia to be
> distributed at extremely low cost to them to every single person on
> the planet.

I share this dream and I do believe we can achieve it in a reasonable timeframe
without taking shortcuts through bad parts of town (which is how I view
advertising on the wikis).

> Is our distaste for ads so high that we are willing to
> deny the people who don't even have access to clean drinking water a
> copy of a work that could help empower them to change their lives?

I personally don't have a distaste for ads - they just annoy me a bit. But I do
have a distaste for the thought of forks such as with Enciclopedia Libre. This
is especially dangerous now that chapters are being set-up that could fund a
successful fork.

> To sum up, I don't think we will ever "need" the money to keep doing
> what we are doing.  But I think the day may come when we have to make
> a very tough decision about what kind of good we could do with the
> money.

It may indeed. Let's try to exhaust all other funding options first. If we find
that doesn't work, or if the amount of money is only good enough to keep the
website up and little else, then we can seriously consider ads on Wikipedia and
the other project wikis. But we *must* demonstrate to the community that there
simply is no other way and that we tried, and failed, to do everything ad-free.

> I have my own opinion about what we should do when that day comes,
> which you might or might not be able to glean from the above, but for
> now I remain firmly opposed to advertising on Wikipedia, for all the
> reasons that many people have already mentioned: credibility, good
> taste, the feeling that we are doing something extra-ordinary, etc.

Exactly my position as well.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Bill Clark

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Solution ?] [ 967833 ] Only first five template
	inclusions work

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:50:12 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> We've discussed all this before, a couple of times. It's not insurmountable.

> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-June/010701.html

When I read Emmanuel's first post, I thought MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT limit
was set solely in order to prevent infinite loops in inclusions.

Then you informed me that it was also intended to prevent attacks
based on including a large number of large files (or more accurately,
including a limited number of large files multiple times).

I didn't see any way to prevent that kind of attack without either:

1) Checking the size before inclusion.

2) Limiting the number of inclusions (or at least making it more
difficult by limiting the number of times the same file can be
included, thus forcing attackers to create multiple large templates,
which is easier to track and/or prevent).

I didn't think (1) was feasible (but see below) so that meant we're
stuck with (2), which also prevents the inclusion of a large number of
small files (such as the fancy bullets you mentioned).  That's why I
thought the problem was insurmountable; it seemed to be intrinsically
tied to the number of repeated includes.  Block repeated includes for
large files, and you also have to block them for small files.

Maybe the type of approach in (1) isn't as bad as I thought though,
since we could just keep a running total of how much data has been
included, and block further inclusions once a limit has been reached.
MAX_CUMULATIVE_INCLUDE_SIZE?

Actually, that might not be a half bad idea, since it would solve the
infinite inclusion problem as well (though MAX_INCLUDE_DEPTH might
still be a better way to handle that problem, since it might take too
long for small looping templates to build up to the size limit).

-Bill Clark


body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 03:17:59 -0400, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe the type of approach in (1) isn't as bad as I thought though,
> since we could just keep a running total of how much data has been
> included, and block further inclusions once a limit has been reached.
> MAX_CUMULATIVE_INCLUDE_SIZE?

Wait... that's exactly what you said in the post you linked, isn't it? :)

I mis-read it the first time, and thought you meant a 2MB limit on
each included file.

I think the MAX_INCLUDE_DEPTH solution might preferable to checking
for loops directly though, since that could end up getting very
complicated if the cycle is particularly long (or else end up being
too restrictive, depending on how it was implemented).

-Bill Clark


list: wikien-l

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Context

body:
Simonides,

You must avoid personal remarks, especially on the mailing list.
Bathroom humor, or deliberate digs DISGUISED as bathroom humor, are not
allowed.

*	wave of flatulence
*	master baiter

If I see this again, I will ask the list for permission to start
screening your posts. This would mean you would still receive each
message moments after others posted to the list, but your posts would be
held pending administrator approval -- or rejected if deemed offensive.

Considering the gist of your message below is that you are blameless and
others are to blame, I strongly suggest you abide by my advice: the best
way to convince other Wikipedians of your good intentions is to leave a
"clean audit trail" of positive and useful messages.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Mailing List Admin

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Simonides of Ceos [mailto:simonidesofceos at yahoo.com]
	Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 3:04 AM
	To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
	Subject: [WikiEN-l] Context

	Someone sent an alert about a message that had to do with me,
and I was not too surprised to read another wave of flatulence from a
master baiter. I do not wish to waste much time on this pathetic,
tortured little creature who calls himself RK, who finds his daily
redemption in mountains of lies, slander, stalking people (like me) from
article to article, instigating trouble, and who takes pride in being a
charlatan (by making edits to articles he does not have the faintest
idea about, ex. Philosophy), a victim (re: his almost daily accusations
of anti-Semitism), and a fraudulent crusader (re: his daily strawman
attacks, ex. "Muslim and Christian apologetics", which have nothing to
do with me but are a reference to a passage, written by someone else,
that RK kept deleting for no reason and I merely restored.) But I don't
want to depress anyone reading this nonsensical material for the nth
time - surely some of you share my amu sement when RK calls people on
NPOV, RK who keeps leaving "Nazipedia" but for some reason doesn't fail
to return to throw mud at even more people, who deletes anything he
doesn't like without explanation or discussion, then wails "censorship!"
and "no discussion!" when his versions are rebuffed and no one replies
to his screeds; who, hilariously, wrote yesterday that "The only
criticism that we should have, or link to, is encyclopedia scholarly
criticis" - this from a regular spammer of flotsam!

	For anyone who wishes to understand the difference between my
"out of control" edits and the extremely careful edits of RK and co.,
here are some links, which contain further links:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/RK2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation#User:Simon
ides_and_User:Jayjg.2C_User:RK.2C_User:Humus_sapiens_.2B_others

	One of the pages that is not linked above is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy, which had to be protected
because the little worm started following me around today (I spent a
long time making extensive edits to the article last night, which fellow
contributors were more or less fine with), also making an appearance at
an article I created earlier and corrected yesterday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Possible_crisis_in_Western_publishing
. If a user could be banned on grounds of harrassment, I believe RK
would have been kicked out a while ago.

	Anyway, I'm off, but I AM sorry that you all have to be exposed
to such banalities, and I hope the rest of your day is more interesting.

  _____

	Do you Yahoo!?
	Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/spamguard/*http://promotions.ya
hoo.com/new_mail/static/protection.html> .

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from_name: zero 0000

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered to
	have	discovered Wikipedia!

body:
> From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered to
> 	have	discovered Wikipedia!
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0407142137290.551-100000 at joan.burling.com>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> > I recently told a reporter that representatives of the Chinese
> > government are welcome to edit zh.wikipedia.org if they like.
> > I think we can extend the same courtesy to representatives
> > of the Church of Scientology.

I find this quite alarming.  At the existing policy page
[[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]] we find "editing an article about
yourself or your organization is also generally considered
improper and best avoided."  Should we announce a change of
policy now?

Zero.

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] How could information flow ?

body:
I heard there was some complain surrounding the fundraising message.
I would like to clarify a couple of points, and make a suggestion or two.

The fundraising banner was set because there was an ongoing interview of Jimbo on Slashdot.

Given the number of visits we have each time WP is slashdotted, and given that the last time WP was on /. there were many discussions about donations and other means to get money to run the project,  it appeared to be a good choice to make "donation link" temporarily much more visible.
This fundraising banner will only stay up for a couple of days.

This was not planned so we could not really discuss it in length beforehand. It was more an opportunity.
As far as I know, the message was initially set only to be on en.I understood that the message was then made active on all wikipedias, without warning.
And several languages were quite upset by this message. Several criticisms were voiced, and in particular the fact it was not translated.
Some people then started translating the message in their respective languages.
Finally, while several languages were already translated, the message was removed from the non english wikipedias, again without warning. further upsetting some people.

I was not there when that happened but a couple of people told me about it yesterday, in particular Sj who I think helped on the translations, and I saw comments on the french wikipedia as well, since a vote was started to have the banner removed.
I was also nicely explained I should have made a page to explain why the banner was on, how long it would stay on and so on. Of course, that page should have been in 50 languages all at once.
I agree with all this, but it is just not possible that one, or even two people make this all by themselves, in particular when time is short.
This is only possible if more people are automatically made aware of the issue, and can come and help.

Here are the points which were pointed at

1. the fundraising campaign was not discussed beforehand2. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was set3. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was removed4. Non english wikipedias were not explained the reasons why the message was set,so it came unexpectedly. They were not told either it would be temporary.5. The message appeared everywhere in english, and people did not know how to have it translated6. The message is not pretty (location in the page, red border, police size...)7. The message appears on every page (not enough discretion)

If we let aside the fact it was decided very quickly, so not discussed before hand, I see two major issues at stake here.

First, the message is not pretty and is ?defacing? the wikipedia pages. Each time this banner is up, people complain about it.
Would it be possible that someone try to think where it would be best to place it, and to have it be visible, but not outrageously visible ?

The second issue is simple. It is just a communication issue between projects.

We discussed it with Sj yesterday, and here is a proposal.
Within one project, communication works quite well.

Mailing lists is another channel, but it only covers some of the people. Not everyone is registered to wikipedia-l or foundation-l or wikitech-l. And not everyone understands english. And unfortunately, it seems few of those understanding take the time to have the information flow.

IRC is a great information channel when speed is required, but again, not everyone is on irc.

Meta is getting slowly a rather good information channel, but only those visiting meta know the information, and again do not necessarily spread it. I doubt very much goings-on are regularly updated on most projects. The source is reliable, but structurally very slow, because people do not come everyday.

So, in the end, the ONLY way to have information be known on all projects, by everyone and very rapidly, is this little red banner. This is why we use it for server downtime warning, for elections warning, for fundraising and such.

I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see is something similar to the current ?you have a message?.  A little warning at the top of every page (anonymous included), indicating the editor that new global information is available. For example, when a down time is planned 48 hours in advance, do we really need a huge and highly visible message on each page for 48 hours ? Not really, we just need to be warned once, and the highly visible banner could be set just before the down actually occur.I could figure an additional link in the menu, where we could add global information, for example [[Global news]].
The information could be added one paragraph at a time on meta, and in english. It could be in a mediawiki page or a form.
Once edited, it would appear on all projects, in english by default, but will be editable easily for translation (just as a mediawiki page, and in this case, it will always be a unique mediawiki page, so users won?t have to look for the page to translate it). That way, anyone reading the message first, could translate it at once for the other readers.

Each time the meta message page is updated (each time a message is added to the meta page, or through a form), a warning of the type ?you have a message? would appear to all users on all projects. They can click on it to access the global news page.
Once the page is read, the warning message would disappear, but the information still be available from the menu in the ?global news? page.
Each language would be responsible from cleaning up their message page little by little, for translating it, or not translating it (depending on the local editors)I do not foresee a new message being added every day.  We should be careful not to abuse of it, and really use it for relevant information, when we want information to be delivered very quickly or when we really want to ensure every one is informed.

I view it a bit like the announcement-l mailing list which was an attempt to do this, but never really worked. I think doing it directly on the website would ensure that everyone is really aware of the announcement and every one can easily participate to its translation.

Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do you have other ideas ?

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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body:
I heard there was some complain surrounding the fundraising message.
I would like to clarify a couple of points, and make a suggestion or two.

The fundraising banner was set because there was an ongoing interview of Jimbo on Slashdot.

Given the number of visits we have each time WP is slashdotted, and given that the last time WP was on /. there were many discussions about donations and other means to get money to run the project,  it appeared to be a good choice to make "donation link" temporarily much more visible.
This fundraising banner will only stay up for a couple of days.

This was not planned so we could not really discuss it in length beforehand. It was more an opportunity.
As far as I know, the message was initially set only to be on en.I understood that the message was then made active on all wikipedias, without warning.
And several languages were quite upset by this message. Several criticisms were voiced, and in particular the fact it was not translated.
Some people then started translating the message in their respective languages.
Finally, while several languages were already translated, the message was removed from the non english wikipedias, again without warning. further upsetting some people.

I was not there when that happened but a couple of people told me about it yesterday, in particular Sj who I think helped on the translations, and I saw comments on the french wikipedia as well, since a vote was started to have the banner removed.
I was also nicely explained I should have made a page to explain why the banner was on, how long it would stay on and so on. Of course, that page should have been in 50 languages all at once.
I agree with all this, but it is just not possible that one, or even two people make this all by themselves, in particular when time is short.
This is only possible if more people are automatically made aware of the issue, and can come and help.

Here are the points which were pointed at

1. the fundraising campaign was not discussed beforehand2. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was set3. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was removed4. Non english wikipedias were not explained the reasons why the message was set,so it came unexpectedly. They were not told either it would be temporary.5. The message appeared everywhere in english, and people did not know how to have it translated6. The message is not pretty (location in the page, red border, police size...)7. The message appears on every page (not enough discretion)

If we let aside the fact it was decided very quickly, so not discussed before hand, I see two major issues at stake here.

First, the message is not pretty and is ?defacing? the wikipedia pages. Each time this banner is up, people complain about it.
Would it be possible that someone try to think where it would be best to place it, and to have it be visible, but not outrageously visible ?

The second issue is simple. It is just a communication issue between projects.

We discussed it with Sj yesterday, and here is a proposal.
Within one project, communication works quite well.

Mailing lists is another channel, but it only covers some of the people. Not everyone is registered to wikipedia-l or foundation-l or wikitech-l. And not everyone understands english. And unfortunately, it seems few of those understanding take the time to have the information flow.

IRC is a great information channel when speed is required, but again, not everyone is on irc.

Meta is getting slowly a rather good information channel, but only those visiting meta know the information, and again do not necessarily spread it. I doubt very much goings-on are regularly updated on most projects. The source is reliable, but structurally very slow, because people do not come everyday.

So, in the end, the ONLY way to have information be known on all projects, by everyone and very rapidly, is this little red banner. This is why we use it for server downtime warning, for elections warning, for fundraising and such.

I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see is something similar to the current ?you have a message?.  A little warning at the top of every page (anonymous included), indicating the editor that new global information is available. For example, when a down time is planned 48 hours in advance, do we really need a huge and highly visible message on each page for 48 hours ? Not really, we just need to be warned once, and the highly visible banner could be set just before the down actually occur.I could figure an additional link in the menu, where we could add global information, for example [[Global news]].
The information could be added one paragraph at a time on meta, and in english. It could be in a mediawiki page or a form.
Once edited, it would appear on all projects, in english by default, but will be editable easily for translation (just as a mediawiki page, and in this case, it will always be a unique mediawiki page, so users won?t have to look for the page to translate it). That way, anyone reading the message first, could translate it at once for the other readers.

Each time the meta message page is updated (each time a message is added to the meta page, or through a form), a warning of the type ?you have a message? would appear to all users on all projects. They can click on it to access the global news page.
Once the page is read, the warning message would disappear, but the information still be available from the menu in the ?global news? page.
Each language would be responsible from cleaning up their message page little by little, for translating it, or not translating it (depending on the local editors)I do not foresee a new message being added every day.  We should be careful not to abuse of it, and really use it for relevant information, when we want information to be delivered very quickly or when we really want to ensure every one is informed.

I view it a bit like the announcement-l mailing list which was an attempt to do this, but never really worked. I think doing it directly on the website would ensure that everyone is really aware of the announcement and every one can easily participate to its translation.

Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do you have other ideas ?

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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list: wikimedia-l

body:
I heard there was some complain surrounding the fundraising message.
I would like to clarify a couple of points, and make a suggestion or two.

The fundraising banner was set because there was an ongoing interview of Jimbo on Slashdot.

Given the number of visits we have each time WP is slashdotted, and given that the last time WP was on /. there were many discussions about donations and other means to get money to run the project,  it appeared to be a good choice to make "donation link" temporarily much more visible.
This fundraising banner will only stay up for a couple of days.

This was not planned so we could not really discuss it in length beforehand. It was more an opportunity.
As far as I know, the message was initially set only to be on en.I understood that the message was then made active on all wikipedias, without warning.
And several languages were quite upset by this message. Several criticisms were voiced, and in particular the fact it was not translated.
Some people then started translating the message in their respective languages.
Finally, while several languages were already translated, the message was removed from the non english wikipedias, again without warning. further upsetting some people.

I was not there when that happened but a couple of people told me about it yesterday, in particular Sj who I think helped on the translations, and I saw comments on the french wikipedia as well, since a vote was started to have the banner removed.
I was also nicely explained I should have made a page to explain why the banner was on, how long it would stay on and so on. Of course, that page should have been in 50 languages all at once.
I agree with all this, but it is just not possible that one, or even two people make this all by themselves, in particular when time is short.
This is only possible if more people are automatically made aware of the issue, and can come and help.

Here are the points which were pointed at

1. the fundraising campaign was not discussed beforehand2. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was set3. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was removed4. Non english wikipedias were not explained the reasons why the message was set,so it came unexpectedly. They were not told either it would be temporary.5. The message appeared everywhere in english, and people did not know how to have it translated6. The message is not pretty (location in the page, red border, police size...)7. The message appears on every page (not enough discretion)

If we let aside the fact it was decided very quickly, so not discussed before hand, I see two major issues at stake here.

First, the message is not pretty and is ?defacing? the wikipedia pages. Each time this banner is up, people complain about it.
Would it be possible that someone try to think where it would be best to place it, and to have it be visible, but not outrageously visible ?

The second issue is simple. It is just a communication issue between projects.

We discussed it with Sj yesterday, and here is a proposal.
Within one project, communication works quite well.

Mailing lists is another channel, but it only covers some of the people. Not everyone is registered to wikipedia-l or foundation-l or wikitech-l. And not everyone understands english. And unfortunately, it seems few of those understanding take the time to have the information flow.

IRC is a great information channel when speed is required, but again, not everyone is on irc.

Meta is getting slowly a rather good information channel, but only those visiting meta know the information, and again do not necessarily spread it. I doubt very much goings-on are regularly updated on most projects. The source is reliable, but structurally very slow, because people do not come everyday.

So, in the end, the ONLY way to have information be known on all projects, by everyone and very rapidly, is this little red banner. This is why we use it for server downtime warning, for elections warning, for fundraising and such.

I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see is something similar to the current ?you have a message?.  A little warning at the top of every page (anonymous included), indicating the editor that new global information is available. For example, when a down time is planned 48 hours in advance, do we really need a huge and highly visible message on each page for 48 hours ? Not really, we just need to be warned once, and the highly visible banner could be set just before the down actually occur.I could figure an additional link in the menu, where we could add global information, for example [[Global news]].
The information could be added one paragraph at a time on meta, and in english. It could be in a mediawiki page or a form.
Once edited, it would appear on all projects, in english by default, but will be editable easily for translation (just as a mediawiki page, and in this case, it will always be a unique mediawiki page, so users won?t have to look for the page to translate it). That way, anyone reading the message first, could translate it at once for the other readers.

Each time the meta message page is updated (each time a message is added to the meta page, or through a form), a warning of the type ?you have a message? would appear to all users on all projects. They can click on it to access the global news page.
Once the page is read, the warning message would disappear, but the information still be available from the menu in the ?global news? page.
Each language would be responsible from cleaning up their message page little by little, for translating it, or not translating it (depending on the local editors)I do not foresee a new message being added every day.  We should be careful not to abuse of it, and really use it for relevant information, when we want information to be delivered very quickly or when we really want to ensure every one is informed.

I view it a bit like the announcement-l mailing list which was an attempt to do this, but never really worked. I think doing it directly on the website would ensure that everyone is really aware of the announcement and every one can easily participate to its translation.

Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do you have other ideas ?

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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body:
I heard there was some complain surrounding the fundraising message.
I would like to clarify a couple of points, and make a suggestion or two.

The fundraising banner was set because there was an ongoing interview of Jimbo on Slashdot.

Given the number of visits we have each time WP is slashdotted, and given that the last time WP was on /. there were many discussions about donations and other means to get money to run the project,  it appeared to be a good choice to make "donation link" temporarily much more visible.
This fundraising banner will only stay up for a couple of days.

This was not planned so we could not really discuss it in length beforehand. It was more an opportunity.
As far as I know, the message was initially set only to be on en.I understood that the message was then made active on all wikipedias, without warning.
And several languages were quite upset by this message. Several criticisms were voiced, and in particular the fact it was not translated.
Some people then started translating the message in their respective languages.
Finally, while several languages were already translated, the message was removed from the non english wikipedias, again without warning. further upsetting some people.

I was not there when that happened but a couple of people told me about it yesterday, in particular Sj who I think helped on the translations, and I saw comments on the french wikipedia as well, since a vote was started to have the banner removed.
I was also nicely explained I should have made a page to explain why the banner was on, how long it would stay on and so on. Of course, that page should have been in 50 languages all at once.
I agree with all this, but it is just not possible that one, or even two people make this all by themselves, in particular when time is short.
This is only possible if more people are automatically made aware of the issue, and can come and help.

Here are the points which were pointed at

1. the fundraising campaign was not discussed beforehand2. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was set3. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was removed4. Non english wikipedias were not explained the reasons why the message was set,so it came unexpectedly. They were not told either it would be temporary.5. The message appeared everywhere in english, and people did not know how to have it translated6. The message is not pretty (location in the page, red border, police size...)7. The message appears on every page (not enough discretion)

If we let aside the fact it was decided very quickly, so not discussed before hand, I see two major issues at stake here.

First, the message is not pretty and is ?defacing? the wikipedia pages. Each time this banner is up, people complain about it.
Would it be possible that someone try to think where it would be best to place it, and to have it be visible, but not outrageously visible ?

The second issue is simple. It is just a communication issue between projects.

We discussed it with Sj yesterday, and here is a proposal.
Within one project, communication works quite well.

Mailing lists is another channel, but it only covers some of the people. Not everyone is registered to wikipedia-l or foundation-l or wikitech-l. And not everyone understands english. And unfortunately, it seems few of those understanding take the time to have the information flow.

IRC is a great information channel when speed is required, but again, not everyone is on irc.

Meta is getting slowly a rather good information channel, but only those visiting meta know the information, and again do not necessarily spread it. I doubt very much goings-on are regularly updated on most projects. The source is reliable, but structurally very slow, because people do not come everyday.

So, in the end, the ONLY way to have information be known on all projects, by everyone and very rapidly, is this little red banner. This is why we use it for server downtime warning, for elections warning, for fundraising and such.

I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see is something similar to the current ?you have a message?.  A little warning at the top of every page (anonymous included), indicating the editor that new global information is available. For example, when a down time is planned 48 hours in advance, do we really need a huge and highly visible message on each page for 48 hours ? Not really, we just need to be warned once, and the highly visible banner could be set just before the down actually occur.I could figure an additional link in the menu, where we could add global information, for example [[Global news]].
The information could be added one paragraph at a time on meta, and in english. It could be in a mediawiki page or a form.
Once edited, it would appear on all projects, in english by default, but will be editable easily for translation (just as a mediawiki page, and in this case, it will always be a unique mediawiki page, so users won?t have to look for the page to translate it). That way, anyone reading the message first, could translate it at once for the other readers.

Each time the meta message page is updated (each time a message is added to the meta page, or through a form), a warning of the type ?you have a message? would appear to all users on all projects. They can click on it to access the global news page.
Once the page is read, the warning message would disappear, but the information still be available from the menu in the ?global news? page.
Each language would be responsible from cleaning up their message page little by little, for translating it, or not translating it (depending on the local editors)I do not foresee a new message being added every day.  We should be careful not to abuse of it, and really use it for relevant information, when we want information to be delivered very quickly or when we really want to ensure every one is informed.

I view it a bit like the announcement-l mailing list which was an attempt to do this, but never really worked. I think doing it directly on the website would ensure that everyone is really aware of the announcement and every one can easily participate to its translation.

Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do you have other ideas ?

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] How could information flow ?

body:
I heard there was some complain surrounding the fundraising message.
I would like to clarify a couple of points, and make a suggestion or two.

The fundraising banner was set because there was an ongoing interview of Jimbo on Slashdot.

Given the number of visits we have each time WP is slashdotted, and given that the last time WP was on /. there were many discussions about donations and other means to get money to run the project,  it appeared to be a good choice to make "donation link" temporarily much more visible.
This fundraising banner will only stay up for a couple of days.

This was not planned so we could not really discuss it in length beforehand. It was more an opportunity.
As far as I know, the message was initially set only to be on en.I understood that the message was then made active on all wikipedias, without warning.
And several languages were quite upset by this message. Several criticisms were voiced, and in particular the fact it was not translated.
Some people then started translating the message in their respective languages.
Finally, while several languages were already translated, the message was removed from the non english wikipedias, again without warning. further upsetting some people.

I was not there when that happened but a couple of people told me about it yesterday, in particular Sj who I think helped on the translations, and I saw comments on the french wikipedia as well, since a vote was started to have the banner removed.
I was also nicely explained I should have made a page to explain why the banner was on, how long it would stay on and so on. Of course, that page should have been in 50 languages all at once.
I agree with all this, but it is just not possible that one, or even two people make this all by themselves, in particular when time is short.
This is only possible if more people are automatically made aware of the issue, and can come and help.

Here are the points which were pointed at

1. the fundraising campaign was not discussed beforehand2. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was set3. Non english wikipedias were not warned before the message was removed4. Non english wikipedias were not explained the reasons why the message was set,so it came unexpectedly. They were not told either it would be temporary.5. The message appeared everywhere in english, and people did not know how to have it translated6. The message is not pretty (location in the page, red border, police size...)7. The message appears on every page (not enough discretion)

If we let aside the fact it was decided very quickly, so not discussed before hand, I see two major issues at stake here.

First, the message is not pretty and is ?defacing? the wikipedia pages. Each time this banner is up, people complain about it.
Would it be possible that someone try to think where it would be best to place it, and to have it be visible, but not outrageously visible ?

The second issue is simple. It is just a communication issue between projects.

We discussed it with Sj yesterday, and here is a proposal.
Within one project, communication works quite well.

Mailing lists is another channel, but it only covers some of the people. Not everyone is registered to wikipedia-l or foundation-l or wikitech-l. And not everyone understands english. And unfortunately, it seems few of those understanding take the time to have the information flow.

IRC is a great information channel when speed is required, but again, not everyone is on irc.

Meta is getting slowly a rather good information channel, but only those visiting meta know the information, and again do not necessarily spread it. I doubt very much goings-on are regularly updated on most projects. The source is reliable, but structurally very slow, because people do not come everyday.

So, in the end, the ONLY way to have information be known on all projects, by everyone and very rapidly, is this little red banner. This is why we use it for server downtime warning, for elections warning, for fundraising and such.

I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see is something similar to the current ?you have a message?.  A little warning at the top of every page (anonymous included), indicating the editor that new global information is available. For example, when a down time is planned 48 hours in advance, do we really need a huge and highly visible message on each page for 48 hours ? Not really, we just need to be warned once, and the highly visible banner could be set just before the down actually occur.I could figure an additional link in the menu, where we could add global information, for example [[Global news]].
The information could be added one paragraph at a time on meta, and in english. It could be in a mediawiki page or a form.
Once edited, it would appear on all projects, in english by default, but will be editable easily for translation (just as a mediawiki page, and in this case, it will always be a unique mediawiki page, so users won?t have to look for the page to translate it). That way, anyone reading the message first, could translate it at once for the other readers.

Each time the meta message page is updated (each time a message is added to the meta page, or through a form), a warning of the type ?you have a message? would appear to all users on all projects. They can click on it to access the global news page.
Once the page is read, the warning message would disappear, but the information still be available from the menu in the ?global news? page.
Each language would be responsible from cleaning up their message page little by little, for translating it, or not translating it (depending on the local editors)I do not foresee a new message being added every day.  We should be careful not to abuse of it, and really use it for relevant information, when we want information to be delivered very quickly or when we really want to ensure every one is informed.

I view it a bit like the announcement-l mailing list which was an attempt to do this, but never really worked. I think doing it directly on the website would ensure that everyone is really aware of the announcement and every one can easily participate to its translation.

Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do you have other ideas ?

---------------------------------
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from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

references:
<20040713192908.87E7F109ED4@xprdmailfe1.nwk.excite.com>
	<742dfd0604071313045c41b455@mail.gmail.com>
	<slrncfb7rh.sr.zen19725@cabalamat.cabalamat.org>

body:
Just a couple of important notes...

phil hunt wrote:
> Has anyone contacted Google to see what they think of opt-in
> adverts?

I would like to discourage people from contacting Google directly on
our behalf.  I have an existing and substantial (to me!) business
relationship with Google and good contacts within their ad syndication
group.  It will baffle them if random people call them up asking
questions about us.

> However, Wikipedia is quite a high-traffic website, which would
> probably give it a reasonable level of clout in any negotiations
> with Google.

Sure.  Even with Bomis, we don't just sign up for their general public
program, we have a (long and detailed) contract.  There's no reason to
assume that their general AdSense terms of service would have much to
do with us.

At the same time, I think it is important to recognize that "opt-in"
is likely to be frowned upon for exactly the reason that you mentioned
-- the audience of people opting in would be too likely to click just
to generate revenue, as opposed to clicking out of genuine interest.
That's useless for the advertisers.

I also am not really comfortable with opt-in.  Compared to opt-out, I
think it would generate very close to zero revenue.  Probably less
than 5% of the revenue potential of opt-out.  The reason is that the
vast majority of our pageviews are from people who just happen in.
These people are not opposed to advertising, but at the same time,
they will not care enough to bother to read a link about how to enable
ads.

So with opt-in, we get almost all of the "negative press" issues as we
get with opt-out, but we also don't get the kind of money that would
enable us to do really astounding things consistent with our
charitable mission.

Let me state again that I am currently opposed to any advertising on
Wikipedia.  I have only been talking about this because I think it is
important for us to continue to make the "no advertising" decision
while being fully cognizant of what it is that we are turning down.

It's much easier for us to say no when we imagine that the revenue
would be $1,000 a month.  It would obviously be much easier for the
community to say no, if the revenue was to go to a for-profit company.
(Hooray!  The make-Jimbo-rich fund!  Not.)

But I think that the issue really only gets interesting when we start
talking about really vast sums of money that would be spent with
extreme efficiency to further our charitable aims.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
I think this is an excellent idea.  I will have Terry look into it.

Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Why not create a account for Wikipedia and publish the id of the accout.
> So everyone who is interested to support Wikipedia can add google-adsense
> to their website. Specially for mirrors that would be a nice idea without
> much work for the webmasters.
>
> ciao, tom
>
> --
> == Weblinks ==
> * http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
> * http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads and other ramblings by Chris

body:
phil hunt wrote:
> Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
>
> I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.

We already have this:
http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia

It brings in very very close to nothing.  I believe Erik told me when
I was in Berlin that we are getting close to the threshold for them to
cut us our first check of $100.  Something like that anyway, I'm sure
he'll clarify if this is materially wrong.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jens Frank

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Solution ?] [ 967833 ] Only first five template
	inclusions work

body:
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 05:53:41PM -0400, Bill Clark wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:08:08 +0200 Emmanuel Engelhart
> <emmanuel at engelhart.org> wrote:
>
> > On  wikipedia  the  MAX_INCLUDE_REPEAT  limit (=5)  in  Parser.php  is
> > problematic.  I  propose to  change the sens  of this  constraint from
> > "max template inclusions" to "max different template inclusions".
>
> > To  solve the  memory  usage problem,  we  could use  a tempory  table
> > containing the previously loaded templates  in the article ?  So, each
> > template replicated x  time in an article would  generate only one SQL
> > request.
>
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:46:35 +0200, Jens Frank <jeluf at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > If article [[X]] includes [[Template:A]] which includes [[Template:B]],
> > which again includes [[Template:A]], this would result in a memory
> > bomb using only two different templates.
>
> I think Emmanuel's suggestion is more akin to PHP's include_once() and
> thus wouldn't be vulnerable to the type of problem you're describing.

Emmanuel and I have tested it: It is vulnerable to this approach.

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiFR-l] How could information flow ?

body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

Hi Anth?re,

As I already said, I think that people requesting to remove this kind of
banner are nor very responsible. It is necessary that this information
reaches everybody.

You are correct. It is necessary that information reaches everybody. We are currently trying to gather and centralize information and little by little we are really improving on this, *but* we are still expecting people to come voluntarily look for the information we gathered.
And this is just not happening. Some people go and look for information, but most are rather expecting to be directly given digested information. I do not criticize this attitude, it is mostly a question of time and of interest. Hunting for information is mostly a full time job :-) Once we start hunting for information, we do not have any more time available for other activities. This is just not efficient an option.

In short, we should not expect that people come to the information, but we should make the information goes to people. But collecting, digesting and translating information is heavy job, so we must find a way so that many people are involved in those steps.

I would not say those who requested the banner to be removed are not responsible, but rather that they are not informed.
It is perfectly understandable that people get upset because things happen without them being asked their opinion, or without them having enough information to just understand why this has been done. It is also perfectly understandable that they feel decisions are being dropped on them.

If they knew better our current financial situation, I think they would react differently. They would also react differently if the banner was not so aggressive. They would also react differently if they could immediately and easily translate it in local language, and also differently if they could locally choose for the banner to be on or to be off.

And indeed, donations call was mostly interesting on the english projects, because /. is in english; Still, some small wikipedia were happy to have the donation banner, and got upset *when* it was removed :-(

So...oh well...

Le Thursday 15 July 2004 14:47, Anthere a ?crit :
> I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see
> is something similar to the current ?you have a message?. A little warning
(...)
> Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do
> you have other ideas ?

I think that this is a great idea. It would meet most of the concerns people
have about this.

Regards,
Yann

I thank you very much Yann :-)

---------------------------------
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body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

Hi Anth?re,

As I already said, I think that people requesting to remove this kind of
banner are nor very responsible. It is necessary that this information
reaches everybody.

You are correct. It is necessary that information reaches everybody. We are currently trying to gather and centralize information and little by little we are really improving on this, *but* we are still expecting people to come voluntarily look for the information we gathered.
And this is just not happening. Some people go and look for information, but most are rather expecting to be directly given digested information. I do not criticize this attitude, it is mostly a question of time and of interest. Hunting for information is mostly a full time job :-) Once we start hunting for information, we do not have any more time available for other activities. This is just not efficient an option.

In short, we should not expect that people come to the information, but we should make the information goes to people. But collecting, digesting and translating information is heavy job, so we must find a way so that many people are involved in those steps.

I would not say those who requested the banner to be removed are not responsible, but rather that they are not informed.
It is perfectly understandable that people get upset because things happen without them being asked their opinion, or without them having enough information to just understand why this has been done. It is also perfectly understandable that they feel decisions are being dropped on them.

If they knew better our current financial situation, I think they would react differently. They would also react differently if the banner was not so aggressive. They would also react differently if they could immediately and easily translate it in local language, and also differently if they could locally choose for the banner to be on or to be off.

And indeed, donations call was mostly interesting on the english projects, because /. is in english; Still, some small wikipedia were happy to have the donation banner, and got upset *when* it was removed :-(

So...oh well...

Le Thursday 15 July 2004 14:47, Anthere a ?crit :
> I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see
> is something similar to the current ?you have a message?. A little warning
(...)
> Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do
> you have other ideas ?

I think that this is a great idea. It would meet most of the concerns people
have about this.

Regards,
Yann

I thank you very much Yann :-)

---------------------------------
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body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

Hi Anth?re,

As I already said, I think that people requesting to remove this kind of
banner are nor very responsible. It is necessary that this information
reaches everybody.

You are correct. It is necessary that information reaches everybody. We are currently trying to gather and centralize information and little by little we are really improving on this, *but* we are still expecting people to come voluntarily look for the information we gathered.
And this is just not happening. Some people go and look for information, but most are rather expecting to be directly given digested information. I do not criticize this attitude, it is mostly a question of time and of interest. Hunting for information is mostly a full time job :-) Once we start hunting for information, we do not have any more time available for other activities. This is just not efficient an option.

In short, we should not expect that people come to the information, but we should make the information goes to people. But collecting, digesting and translating information is heavy job, so we must find a way so that many people are involved in those steps.

I would not say those who requested the banner to be removed are not responsible, but rather that they are not informed.
It is perfectly understandable that people get upset because things happen without them being asked their opinion, or without them having enough information to just understand why this has been done. It is also perfectly understandable that they feel decisions are being dropped on them.

If they knew better our current financial situation, I think they would react differently. They would also react differently if the banner was not so aggressive. They would also react differently if they could immediately and easily translate it in local language, and also differently if they could locally choose for the banner to be on or to be off.

And indeed, donations call was mostly interesting on the english projects, because /. is in english; Still, some small wikipedia were happy to have the donation banner, and got upset *when* it was removed :-(

So...oh well...

Le Thursday 15 July 2004 14:47, Anthere a ?crit :
> I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see
> is something similar to the current ?you have a message?. A little warning
(...)
> Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do
> you have other ideas ?

I think that this is a great idea. It would meet most of the concerns people
have about this.

Regards,
Yann

I thank you very much Yann :-)

---------------------------------
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body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

Hi Anth?re,

As I already said, I think that people requesting to remove this kind of
banner are nor very responsible. It is necessary that this information
reaches everybody.

You are correct. It is necessary that information reaches everybody. We are currently trying to gather and centralize information and little by little we are really improving on this, *but* we are still expecting people to come voluntarily look for the information we gathered.
And this is just not happening. Some people go and look for information, but most are rather expecting to be directly given digested information. I do not criticize this attitude, it is mostly a question of time and of interest. Hunting for information is mostly a full time job :-) Once we start hunting for information, we do not have any more time available for other activities. This is just not efficient an option.

In short, we should not expect that people come to the information, but we should make the information goes to people. But collecting, digesting and translating information is heavy job, so we must find a way so that many people are involved in those steps.

I would not say those who requested the banner to be removed are not responsible, but rather that they are not informed.
It is perfectly understandable that people get upset because things happen without them being asked their opinion, or without them having enough information to just understand why this has been done. It is also perfectly understandable that they feel decisions are being dropped on them.

If they knew better our current financial situation, I think they would react differently. They would also react differently if the banner was not so aggressive. They would also react differently if they could immediately and easily translate it in local language, and also differently if they could locally choose for the banner to be on or to be off.

And indeed, donations call was mostly interesting on the english projects, because /. is in english; Still, some small wikipedia were happy to have the donation banner, and got upset *when* it was removed :-(

So...oh well...

Le Thursday 15 July 2004 14:47, Anthere a ?crit :
> I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see
> is something similar to the current ?you have a message?. A little warning
(...)
> Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do
> you have other ideas ?

I think that this is a great idea. It would meet most of the concerns people
have about this.

Regards,
Yann

I thank you very much Yann :-)

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiFR-l] How could information flow ?

body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

Hi Anth?re,

As I already said, I think that people requesting to remove this kind of
banner are nor very responsible. It is necessary that this information
reaches everybody.

You are correct. It is necessary that information reaches everybody. We are currently trying to gather and centralize information and little by little we are really improving on this, *but* we are still expecting people to come voluntarily look for the information we gathered.
And this is just not happening. Some people go and look for information, but most are rather expecting to be directly given digested information. I do not criticize this attitude, it is mostly a question of time and of interest. Hunting for information is mostly a full time job :-) Once we start hunting for information, we do not have any more time available for other activities. This is just not efficient an option.

In short, we should not expect that people come to the information, but we should make the information goes to people. But collecting, digesting and translating information is heavy job, so we must find a way so that many people are involved in those steps.

I would not say those who requested the banner to be removed are not responsible, but rather that they are not informed.
It is perfectly understandable that people get upset because things happen without them being asked their opinion, or without them having enough information to just understand why this has been done. It is also perfectly understandable that they feel decisions are being dropped on them.

If they knew better our current financial situation, I think they would react differently. They would also react differently if the banner was not so aggressive. They would also react differently if they could immediately and easily translate it in local language, and also differently if they could locally choose for the banner to be on or to be off.

And indeed, donations call was mostly interesting on the english projects, because /. is in english; Still, some small wikipedia were happy to have the donation banner, and got upset *when* it was removed :-(

So...oh well...

Le Thursday 15 July 2004 14:47, Anthere a ?crit :
> I think another tool would be very much welcome. What I would like to see
> is something similar to the current ?you have a message?. A little warning
(...)
> Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do
> you have other ideas ?

I think that this is a great idea. It would meet most of the concerns people
have about this.

Regards,
Yann

I thank you very much Yann :-)

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Fork risk (was Re: Google ads)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to
> avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we
> should give them our blessing.

I would oppose this idea very strongly.  One of the most important
things for the future of the project is, indeed, to avoid forks.  But
encouraging the division of ownership of the servers would absolutely
be a solid path to internal division and forking.

I remain opposed to advertising on the wikiepedia, period.  I can't
really emphasize that enough.

--Jimbo


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK and Simonides are out of control.

body:
On 07/15/04 04:31, Robert wrote:

> We have a serious problem with a new user, Simonides. The

No, you have a serious problem with him, and he has one with you.

I chatted to him on IRC last night (I fear I SHOUTED A LOT)
strongly suggesting you lot take it to mediation. You've been
at least as bad as him on the articles in question. I suggest
you start on a mediation with him as well.

Remember: first one to get on with it gets the credibility points.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Passing through

body:
Anthere wrote:
> >This will be the first large-scale meeting of Wikipedians in the
> >United States.  We had sizeable meetings in London, Berlin, Munich,
> >and Genoa, and smaller but still important meetings in Frankfort and
> >Vienna.
>
> Paris perhaps ? Or was it a dream ?

Oh man, that was a terrible mistake, and I apologize.  The Paris
meeting was very large, and very important, since it was a discussion
of the founding of the French association, and also the site of the
first face-to-face meeting of the board.

I will go edit an article now to show penance.

--Jimbo


body:
On 07/15/04 07:31, David Gerard wrote:
> On 07/15/04 04:31, Robert wrote:

>> We have a serious problem with a new user, Simonides. The

> No, you have a serious problem with him, and he has one with you.
> I chatted to him on IRC last night (I fear I SHOUTED A LOT)
> strongly suggesting you lot take it to mediation. You've been
> at least as bad as him on the articles in question. I suggest
> you start on a mediation with him as well.
> Remember: first one to get on with it gets the credibility points.

Ah, looks like he can take some advice and try to resolve things.

Probably the most effective thing you could do at this point is
pursue the mediation in good faith at this point. For the good of
the articles.

- d.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered to have
	discovered Wikipedia!

body:
Jimbo's example is a good one. Attempts by the Chinese government to edit
Wikipedia articles on China would be highly counter-productive and
embarrassing for many of the same reasons that apply to an individual user.

Perhaps Scientology is willing to accept the consequences.

Fred

> From: zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 05:46:59 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered to
> have discovered Wikipedia!
>
> I find this quite alarming.  At the existing policy page
> [[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]] we find "editing an article about
> yourself or your organization is also generally considered
> improper and best avoided."  Should we announce a change of
> policy now?
>
> Zero.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] A new Wiki in the news

body:
Wikipedia got mentioned again in the news, this time in TimeOut New York, a
local magazine, as the basis for the new NYwiki.com
(http://www.nywiki.com/new-york-city/index.php/Main_Page). Paparo, who created the site, said he used the
Wikipedia software and idea as a model. Of course, he is a marketer and doing
this as what appears to be a money-making venture. They already have google
ads as a sidebar.

Danny
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from_name: Simonides of Ceos

subject: [WikiEN-l] Context

body:
Like all the many other "positive, useful, unoffensive" messages in the archive perhaps, or like the impersonal - of course - one I replied to, with my name in the thread title? I don't mind if you start "screening" posts, because I rarely post here, and because I am not interested by these silly and transparent games, like your effort at "neutrality" on the Anti-Semitism Talk page where you blithely accepted some of RK's delusions and prodded him to take the "higher moral ground".

Simonides
Not admin and not flustered.

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
Simonides,

You must avoid personal remarks, especially on the mailing list. Bathroom humor, or deliberate digs DISGUISED as bathroom humor, are not allowed.

   wave of flatulence
   master baiter
If I see this again, I will ask the list for permission to start screening your posts. This would mean you would still receive each message moments after others posted to the list, but your posts would be held pending administrator approval -- or rejected if deemed offensive.

Considering the gist of your message below is that you are blameless and others are to blame, I strongly suggest you abide by my advice: the best way to convince other Wikipedians of your good intentions is to leave a "clean audit trail" of positive and useful messages.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Mailing List Admin

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly slowed

body:
Pete, I think you're not reading the evidence correctly, but I think
that we need to make sure we get this right.  Forecasting the future
is tricky enough, and we can only do it well if we understand the
past.

So I invite real scrutiny of all these numbers, because I really need
to know the right answer.

> 1) The Webalizer pages: (http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/)

Look at pageviews per day...
February 2004 3.01 million
June 2004, 5.28 million

For the intervening months, there are significant problems with the
averages due to some missing data.  (For example, several days in
April are in the dataset and part of the denominator but clearly have
missing data, for example showing 94 pageviews in a day.)

Additionally, it is a very big mistake when talking about growth to
focus solely on en.  En is not the fastest growing wikipedia, in terms
of traffic percentages.

You can see the growth better here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesUsagePageRequest.htm

Notice in particular the dramatic spike in June which is continuing
unabated into July.  This spike, I believe, corresponds with the
acquisition of new servers.

> 2) The Wikipedia Statistics pages
> (http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm)

A better page (to get the global perspective) is here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansNew.htm

It does seem true that the number of new wikipedians peaked in March,
but notice the big spike in de.wikipedia which distorts the statistic
to some degree.  en has experienced similar spikes before, and the
subsequent decline after a spike was not indicative of the long term
trend, which continues generally to be strongly positive.

> 3) Alexa
>
> - see the following graph
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=large&compare_sites=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#graph
> which shows Wikipedia has not grown in the last four/five months.

Given that we know traffic has more than doubled in that time frame, this bears taking a closer look.

I think this picture is more informative:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#graph

Here, you have to remember that the chart is logarithmic, *and* that
increases in rank require different increases in traffic as different
scales.  That is, to go from #10,000 to #1,000 is less of an
achievement than to go from #1,000 to #100.  (Almost any website can
spike into the top 1,000 if it gets press coverage of the right sort.)

Look at that picture and recognize that if we blipped up to #1, it
would look like a minor blip, due to the logarithmic nature of the
chart.

Alexa shows our 3 mos change as being +86 (in rank), and since we are
already in the ballpark of 600, that representents a substantial
traffic increase.

And finally, Alexa numbers are fun to look at, but they do not
accurately represent real traffic numbers.  If you look up Bomis on
there, you'll see a precipitous decline -- but from our perspective
(at Bomis), traffic was stable for that same time period.  (Of course
being stable while everyone else is growing is one possible
explanation, but another explanation is that Alexa stats are
questionable anyway.)

After a chat with the developers yesterday, I'm comfortable (for now)
with the number of 360 million pageviews per month.  If that's wrong,
I need to know soon, because I'm going to say that number in public.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia denigrated in The Register

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> Out of interest, what do you suppose he means by "captive"?

Yeah, I thought that was more interesting than calling us useless,
actually.  Useless is a wrong and stupid opinion, but at least I can
grasp what it means.  But "captive"?

--Jimbo


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Yes, I see your point, but you would still be able to
see at a glance when it was last checked, and who had
edited it since, and make a better determination about
whether to bother re-checking it than you can now.
I like the idea about being able to quote old
versions.
Mark

--- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:31:13 -0700 (PDT), Mark
> Richards
> <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I agree - is there any way that we could use
> markers
> > or categories (maybe on the talk page) to
> 'certify'
> > that articles have been checked by someone for g
> and
> > s? It would limit the amount of duplication of
> effort,
> > of course, it would only be much use for
> relatively
> > stable articles.
> > Mark
>
> Currently this wouldn't matter as someone could come
> right after the
> article was checked and mess it up. I think what
> might be useful is to
> have an easy syntax to refer to a certain version.
> Something like:
> [[Wikipedia at 4613311]] which would expand to
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&oldid=4613311
> or
> some such. If we really publicised this, then it
> would also be better
> for those trying to quote something on Wikipedia
> without fear that
> their quote will no longer be in the article. They
> can do the quoting
> right now for older versions, but the most recent
> version doesn't have
> an oldID attached to it (since it's not old yet).
>
> --
> [[en:User:Dori]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
> >   "For example, if you consult the world's most useless online text,
> >   the captive Wikipedia, you'll see Fuller's entry is a plug for
> >   Eric "AI" Drexler."
> >
> > From:
> >
> >    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/14/buckminster_fuller_stamp/

Another weird thing about this is that there is no rational
possibility of reading that entry as a "plug for Eric "AI" Drexler".
Drexler is mentioned, in one sentence, but not favorably or
unfavorably, just a simple fact.

Is the whole article just an inside joke or something?  I'd hate to
call the guy to discuss this only to find out I'm just lame for not
getting the joke.

--Jimbo


from_name: Philip Newton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Escaping backticks?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 15:11:31 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Bill Clark wrote:
> >
> >> I just encountered an interesting problem.  The article on Michael
> >> Moore mentions Front Row Entertainment, Fahrenheit 9/11's UAE
> >> distributor.
> >>
> >> How do I italicize "Fahrenheit 9/11" without italicizing the "s" in
> >> the possessive (since that's not properly part of the title)?
> >
> >
> > ''Fahrenheit 9/11''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s
> >
> > Yeah, it's ugly, but there's no way to cleanly work around it with the
> > '' and ''' syntaxes short of special-casing /\S'''s/ and similar.
>
> A similar problem is often encountered on fr, where they want to write
> l'foo where foo is the title of the article and hence should be bold,
> without bolding the apostrophe. One solution is to use HTML-style tags,
> i.e. l'foo

tlh: also has this, e.g. when adding the suffix 'e' to the name of the
article in bold.

I usually write '''article''''e', which is ugly but works.

(It gets interesting when the name of the article also ends in ', e.g.
when saying something like "A '''musician''' is someone who plays a
musical instrument", it becomes "jan chu'bogh vay' ghaH chu'wI''e'",
with "chu'wI'" being bold - so it needs to become something like
'''chu'wI'''''e' or chu'wI''e'.)

Cheers,
Philip


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV policy

body:
Big problem here though. For example, if you apply this to Judaism, you are
taking the Reform Judaism position.

Fred

> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:00:56 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV policy
>
> I appreciate RK's work on developing our NPOV policy concerning historical
> context for articles such as ones on religion.  For what it is worth, I
> think we can explain it in a simpler and more direct way.
> 1) NPOV often means multiple points of view.  This means providing not only
> the points of view of different groups today, but different groups in the
> past.
> 2) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.  One important task for articles is to
> explain things.  In the case of human beliefs and practices, explanation
> encompasses not only what motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and
> practices, but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be and
> took shape.
>
> Steve
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.690 / Virus Database: 451 - Release Date: 5/22/2004
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
Hi,

Why not create a account for Wikipedia and publish the id of the accout.
So everyone who is interested to support Wikipedia can add google-adsense
to their website. Specially for mirrors that would be a nice idea without
much work for the webmasters.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

body:
On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 08:39:13AM +0200, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Why not create a account for Wikipedia and publish the id of the accout.
> So everyone who is interested to support Wikipedia can add google-adsense
> to their website. Specially for mirrors that would be a nice idea without
> much work for the webmasters.

And additionally users can add some JavaScript code to their User/monobook.js
to opt-in the adds if the really want to.

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32


body:
From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 05:47:40 -0700 (PDT)

> Is this technically possible ? Is this suitable ? What do you think ? Do you have other ideas ?

How about a link on this (and any future) such announcements that says
something like "What's this announcement all about?"  It could point
to a page explaining everything you just did about the banner (that
it's temporary, because of a Slashdot interview with Jim, ads on pages
-- even self-promotion ads -- isn't something Wikipedia normally does,
 etc.)

-Bill Clark


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ewen Caroline

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Language request: Luxembourgish

body:
Hi,

I would like to request a luxembourgish version of Wikipedia. First of all,
it's the language of my country, Luxembourg, and second, luxembourgish is
only spoken in my country and still not by the whole population as we have
42% foreigners who mostly speak french. To keep the language alive, I think
it would be a good idea to have a wikipedia in lux.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: The Church of Scientology is discovered to have
	discovered Wikipedia!

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> As currently worded, this policy page contradicts itself.

I don't think it actually does, but I agree that it could be
clarified.

This part is perfectly fine:
> >If you are reasonably significant, someone will create an article
> >about you sooner or later. You are free to contribute to that
> >article, but please only add verifiable information and be
> >especially careful to respect the neutral point of view.

This part is fine, too:
> >Editing an article about yourself or your organization is also
> >generally considered improper and best avoided.

The idea here is that yes, you are free to contribute to an article
about yourself, but some people feel that it's unseemly to do so, and
therefore if you do, you should please only add verifiable information
and be especially careful to respect NPOV.

> Strictly speaking, it isn't true that the "Church of Scientology" has
> discovered Wikipedia. A church is an inanimate object that doesn't
> "discover" things. What has happened is that some *members* of the
> church of Scientology have discovered Wikipedia. But how is this
> different from having members of the Catholic or Mormon Church edit
> articles about their particular religions?

I agree.  I'm not too worried about it, frankly.  Our articles should
not slam the Church of Scientology, nor repeat false stories about
them, nor do anything of the sort.  And so long as we don't do that, I
have every confidence that they will accept an NPOV presentation of
their philosophy and of controversies surrounding them.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems with the search function at Rev. 1.2.6

body:
Wiki WIKI wrote:
> I am using MediaWiki Rev. 1.2.6 and I am facing troubles with the search function.
> Strings with less than 4 characters are not searchable, however I set the parameter
> in the DefaultSettings.php.
>
> I have set the $wgDBminWordLen = 2 and ran rebuildtextindex.php but no change.

You need to configure MySQL's fulltext index to change the default
minimum word length; $wgDBminWordLen should match that setting. Please
see the documentation on mysql.com.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV policy

body:
I appreciate RK's work on developing our NPOV policy concerning historical
context for articles such as ones on religion.  For what it is worth, I
think we can explain it in a simpler and more direct way.
1) NPOV often means multiple points of view.  This means providing not only
the points of view of different groups today, but different groups in the past.
2) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.  One important task for articles is to
explain things.  In the case of human beliefs and practices, explanation
encompasses not only what motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and
practices, but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be and
took shape.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

body:
Selon Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com>:

>
> 1) Checking the size before inclusion.
>

I'm coding a patch in this way, which prevents the inclusion of more than
MAX_TEMPLATE_INCLUSION_CHAR.

> 2) Limiting the number of inclusions (or at least making it more
> difficult by limiting the number of times the same file can be
> included, thus forcing attackers to create multiple large templates,
> which is easier to track and/or prevent).

My opinion, is simply to prevent endless recursive templates (by storing the
recursion path).

With, what I already code, the template parsing should be faster, and with less
painful limitations.

Emmanuel Engelhart


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: The Church of Scientology is discovered to have
 discovered Wikipedia!

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>I find this quite alarming.  At the existing policy page
>[[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]] we find "editing an article about
>yourself or your organization is also generally considered
>improper and best avoided."  Should we announce a change of
>policy now?

As currently worded, this policy page contradicts itself. On the one
hand, it states:

>If you are reasonably significant, someone will create an article
>about you sooner or later. You are free to contribute to that
>article, but please only add verifiable information and be
>especially careful to respect the neutral point of view.

This says unambiguously that it is okay for people to contribute to
articles about themselves. Later, however, the article states,

>Editing an article about yourself or your organization is also
>generally considered improper and best avoided.

Since there is no clear difference between "contributing" to the
Wikipedia and "editing an article," these two statements contradict
each other.

Another problem with this policy emerges when it goes beyond talking
about individual autobiographies and says that people shouldn't edit
articles about "your organization." The problem here is that there is
a wide range in degrees of affiliation and "ownership" of
organizations. Does this policy mean that only the founder of an
organization should hesitate to edit an article about it? What about
the president of an organization's board of directors? Its executive
director? What about someone who is just an active volunteer or
employee? Extending a little further outward, should all members of
Greenpeace feel constrained from editing the article about
Greenpeace? What about Democrats who want to edit the article about
the Democratic Party? What about Jews, Catholics or Italians who want
to edit articles about their religion, nation or ethnic group?

These aren't merely questions in the abstract. They are at the heart
of what we are discussing with regard to the Church of Scientology.
Strictly speaking, it isn't true that the "Church of Scientology" has
discovered Wikipedia. A church is an inanimate object that doesn't
"discover" things. What has happened is that some *members* of the
church of Scientology have discovered Wikipedia. But how is this
different from having members of the Catholic or Mormon Church edit
articles about their particular religions?

--Sheldon Rampton


subject: [Wikitech-l] New install question

body:
Joe Block wrote:
> Everything seems to be working ok, but I'm trying to change it to not
> say "From Octavo, the free encyclopedia." I've edited
> languages/Language.php and changed the fromwikipedia entry, but it
> hasn't changed the actual pages output when I look at pages with the
> browser.
>
> I've looked for a way to refresh the templates, but haven't find one.

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

Make sure you reload the pages after changing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV

body:
I guess I need to be clearer about  my remarks on NPOV and
history.  Basically, I was just trying to show how RK's attempts could be
reduced to more basic principles.

Fred, I don't exactly see how my approach is taking Reform Judaism's
view.  Of course, an article on "Judaism" needs to provide Reform as well
as other (Orthodox, etc.) views.  Views of Jews from the past (tannaim,
amoraim, saducees) do not necessarily support Reform's POV.  Also, the
notion that Judaism itself has a history is not specifically Reform.  I am
not a Reform Jew nor an expert on Reform Judaism.  I do know that in the
19th century Reform Judaism was characterized by seeing Judaism as a
religion; claiming a connection with the prophetic tradition; renouncing
ritual laws and elevating ethical laws; having services in the vernacular
-- I don't see how a study of history necessarily leads to any of these
positions.  What I was trying to say was that any article should show how
current elements of Judaism (to stick to his example) -- Reform, Orthodox,
Conservative, Reconstructionist -- came to be.  I don't see how or why
"history" should privilege any one of these over an other.

If I understand Charles's point, I guess it goes without saying: sometimes
people disagree over what historical facts are relevant, or how to
interpret them.  In such cases, where there are multiple histories or
interpretations of history, our NPOV policy requires that we make room for
all major views.  I don't think anything I wrote precludes an article from
saying "no one is sure how this came to be," or "critical scholars and
theologians have diverging views of the history of this development" or
something like this.  By the way, I worked a lot on the Jesus article,
putting in views of critical scholars.  At times there were conflicts among
editors over what to include and how.  Personally, though, I think it is
now one of Wikipedia's best articles, at least as far as NPOV goes.  It
provides the kind of historical account I think RK is talking about, but
provides it in a way, and alongside other accounts, that is NPOV and that
-- so far -- Christian contributors accept.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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from_name: Alexandre Dulaunoy

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, Pablo Saratxaga wrote:

> Kaixo!
>
> On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 09:06:47AM +0200, Ewen Caroline wrote:
>
> > luxembourgish is only spoken in my country
>
> Not true; it is also spoken in its neighbours (Arelerland, parts of
> Germany; I've also been told by a Romanian that the "german language"
> spoke by "German speakers" there is actually much more close to
> Luxemburguish than to Hochdeutsch).
> Only in Luxembourg however it has official status and is commonly used
> in written.

Hi Pablo,

Yes.  Just  for your  information,  Luxemburguish  is  also spoken  in
Belgium in the area of Aubange.

Have a nice day,

--
** Alexandre Dulaunoy (adulau) **** http://www.foo.be/ **** 0x44E6CBCD
**/ "To  disable the  Internet to  save EMI  and Disney  is  the moral
**/ equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure the
**/ livelihood of monastic scribes." Jon Ippolito.


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

body:
Kaixo!

On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 09:06:47AM +0200, Ewen Caroline wrote:

> luxembourgish is only spoken in my country

Not true; it is also spoken in its neighbours (Arelerland, parts of
Germany; I've also been told by a Romanian that the "german language"
spoke by "German speakers" there is actually much more close to
Luxemburguish than to Hochdeutsch).
Only in Luxembourg however it has official status and is commonly used
in written.

http://lb.wikipedia.org/ would be a very good news.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
The only fork reason i see at the moment is because of philosophical
reasons, en. is no longer free with fair-use all over Image:

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:41:55 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > I personally don't have a distaste for ads - they just annoy me a bit. But I do
> > have a distaste for the thought of forks such as with Enciclopedia Libre. This
> > is especially dangerous now that chapters are being set-up that could fund a
> > successful fork.
>
> If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to
> avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we
> should give them our blessing. We should also give them a conditional
> license to use the Wikipedia name, access to private SQL dumps and full
> technical support. And once they have their hardware set up, we can set
> the relevant DNS entries to point to them. We can help them with backups
> and redundancy with a slave database server in Florida replicating all
> writes. In order to allow software upgrades, maintenance tasks and
> future features such as shared logins, it would be nice if all the
> developers with shell access to the Florida servers also had shell
> access to the foreign servers.
>
> Forking is a bad thing because it implies duplicate effort from editors.
> But I see no reason to fear distribution. The French chapter is
> prohibited by law from sending most of their money to Florida, so in the
> future it might be best for them to contribute hardware.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] re : how information could flow

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 07/15/04 12:47, Anthere wrote:
>
>> 6. The message is not pretty (location in the page,
red border, police
>> size...)
>
>
>
> We fiddled with it last night (see the edit history)
to make it less
> obnoxious. Centering it and putting it in italics
seems to make it
> less obnoxious. I would have made it <small> as
well, but that doesn't
> look so good in Monobook or Cologne Blue skins.
(Perhaps someone who
> knows css well enough can change the 'classic' skin
to render the
> template in small ...)

Good.

>> 7. The message appears on every page (not enough
discretion)
>
>
>
> That's a ridiculous objection. The Wikipedia logo
also appears on every
> page. Current Events appears on every page.
Presumably the servers are
> bought using air ...
>
>
> - d.

I agree. But still that is an objection which was
made. And this is one of the reason why the message
was removed from non en pedias.

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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia growth since February 2004 greatly slowed

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
>
> > This time last year WP was very often top of typical searches.
> Now our
> > mirrors always come out ahead except for very recently breaking
> news
> > (where they don't have the new content yet). What I term the
> "second
> > generation" mirrors (such as thefreedictionary.com) are "gaming"
> the
> > Google algorithm much better than Wikipedia is, and in a way the
> older
> > mirrors (4reference.net etc) didn't.
>
>
> But... think about it... what we want is information to be made
> available... after all, this is what mirrors are offering... they
> distribute information, and relieve our servers.
>
> Hum ?

Ant has a point. Let them pay for the bandwidth and the servers.

Of course, I would send them the "be a Wikipedia Donor" letter first.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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