from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: group work, unattributed work (was: Use of
 Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com)

body:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> > Not to be a wag, but how can we reconcile anonymous
> > contributions of any stripe--including ones that
> > aren't logged in--with the FDL?
>
> Those are pseudonyms.  Nothing about the FDL requires authors to give
> their 'real names'.  However an author chooses to identify themselves
> is good enough.

An author does not choose their IP address. In the vast majority of cases,
they won't even know their IP address, or even what an IP address is! You
cannot claim that an author is "choosing" to use a name if they don't even
know what that name is.

> > Pick an AOL IP address and try to assign it to one author, without
> > AOL's help.  Impossible.
>
> Sure, and lots of people have the same names, too.

It is common in ordinary printed works for authors with names shared by
other authors to be disambiguated in some way, for example by the use of
middle initials. It is also common to have a paragraph of text about the
author, saying who they are, possibly even explicitly telling people not
to confuse them with another identically named person. Reasonable lengths
are usually gone to to ensure that different authors are distinguished
from each other.

If, as you seem to be asserting, the attribution requirements of the GFDL
allow firstly for an author's "name" to be assigned by an external party,
without the author's knowledge or consent, and secondly for no effort to
be gone to to ensure that the "name" thus assigned corresponds to a single
individual, then it follows that citing "the author" as the author of any
piece of work is perfectly acceptable. If this sort of thing was really
what the authors of the GFDL intended to be allowed, then they wouldn't
have even included a requirement for authors to be listed. Interpreted as
you seem to be interpreting it, the requirement would be entirely
redundant. Clearly this is not what the authors of the GFDL intended.

I think any reasonable interpretation of the idea of listing authors would
have the following two properties:

(1) The name of the author, even if it is a pseudonym, should be agreed by
that author.

(2) Reasonable lengths should be gone to to make the name as near to
unique as is feasible. (In a database, there is no reason for this not be
become just plain "unique".)

> The GNU FDL only requires redistributors to pass along at least 5
> names of prior contributors, not that the prior contributors be hunted
> down and investigated for their 'real' names.

Even if it is agreed that pseudonyms are acceptable, it is still true that
the current system doesn't even require *them*.

Perhaps the edit page should have a notice saying, "This edit will be
attributed to you under the pseudonym [some unique identifier here]. If
you do not wish to use that pseudonym, you may wish to register a user
name or, if you already have one, log in."

That way, by clicking on "Save page", the user really would be agreeing to
use this as their pseudonym. (It would also alert registered users who had
been automatically logged out to the fact that this had happened. This has
happened to me before, and I haven't noticed.)

Then you really could claim that the user has chosen to use this as a
pseudonym, and different pseudonyms would correspond to different people.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Committed stuff

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Timwi-
>
>>The Go button never returns pages that are not in the article namespace.
> That's simply not true.

You appear to be right. I could have sworn I tried that several times in
the past and it never worked.

Thanks for your enlightenment,
Timwi


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crackpot articles

in_reply_to: <yr4cel0w4tbz.fsf@myth7.Stanford.EDU>; from cyd@stupidchicken.com on Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 03:00:32PM -0700

body:
Chong Yidong wrote:
> [[Plasma cosmology]]
> [[Dynamic theory of gravity]]
> [[Rotating magnetic field]]

I know little enough about physics that I can't say anything
meaningful about these particulars, but I would say

(a) if those are valid concepts about which we need an article, we
should patch these up or rewrite them so they aren't nonsenese

(b) if those are *known* and *popular* crackpot ideas, then we should
have an article about them, identifying them *as* ideas that are completely
rejected by the consensus of leading scientists or NPOV verbiage to that
effect

(c) if those are *individualized* crackpot ideas, i.e. stuff made up
by one anonymous crank, then after some time on 'votes for deletion'
they should just be deleted, not for being false, but for failing the
test of confirmability.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re-use of Crown copyright material]

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I received this reply from HMSO concerning Crown copyright. It seems
that HM Government's opinion is that Crown Copyright is not compatible
with the GFDL.

I'm not really surprised, but ... "Signalman, hoist 'Bummer Zulu.'"

- -------- Original Message --------
<headers available upon request>

Dear Mr Barrett

Thank you for your letter of 7 July which was addressed to Carol Tullo
(Controller and Queen's Printer).

HMSO's  policy is to encourage the re-use of government information.  A
large amount of the material that is published on government websites is
considered "core" information and this can be reproduced at no charge under
the terms of HMSO's on-licence known at the Click-Use Licence.   Here is a
direct link to the licence terms:

http://www.hmso.gov.uk/copyright/licences/core/core_licence.htm

You will see at paragraph 6.2  that there is an obligation on any holder of
a Click-Use Licence to ensure that the users of the licensee's
products/services are given an end-user licence to enable them to use the
Crown copyright material that is included in the product/service.

As I understand it the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License mean that
you are not able to pass on the obligations of our licence to the users of
your open content encyclopaedia (the end user).  If that is the case you
would not be meeting the terms of our licence.  If you are able to meet the
terms of our licence then there are no obstacles to you using core Crown
copyright material from government websites on your open content
encyclopaedia.

I hope this note has clarified the query raised in your letter to Mrs Tullo.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Eeles
Licensing Manager
HMSO
St Clements House
2-16 Colegate
Norwich
NR3 1BQ

Tel  01603 723009
Fax 01603 723000

Her Majesty's Stationery Office - delivers access and reuse of government
information through innovative e-services at www.hmso.gov.uk

		******************************
The Cabinet Office's computer systems may be monitored and communications
carried on them recorded, to secure the effective operation of the system
and for other lawful purposes.

- --
~ Sean Barrett     | Braccae illae virides cum subucula rosea et
~ sean at epoptic.com | tunica Caledonia-quam elenganter concinnatur!
~                  | [Those green pants go so well with
~                  | that pink shirt and the plaid jacket!]
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQE/D6Yav/8xpnvE6M8RArERAJ0V6S7fWyEGQ5HGhYyhaZMR43A9mgCfQly2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: group work, unattributed work (was: Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com)

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> Can you quote anything from the GFDL which suggests that anonymous edits
> are in keeping with its spirit? I can't see anything which even hints at
> that. In fact, since it explicitly talks of listing authors, it seems
> obvious to me that its spirit is the exact opposite. If I have overlooked
> anything in the license which suggests otherwise, please could you point
> me to the bit I have missed?

I don't agree that the 'presumption' works that way.  The right of
authors to write anonymously is unquestioned.  So the presumption
should be that it's perfectly o.k. for anonymous authors to release
their work under the license *unless the license specifically forbids
it*.

The license is silent on the matter, therefore, under general
principles of freedom (in the sense of speech, not beer), which is the
foundational principle of GNU, then anonymous authorship is just fine.

I can ask RMS if you really want me too, but I think it's highly
HIGHLY unlikely that he would say "Oh, no, I didn't intend for people
to write things anonyous under the FDL.  The talk about authorship is
supposed to imply that people are required to give their full name,
address, and social security number before they can use the license!"

I just don't see it.

Freedom of speech means the freedom to speak freely, even anonymously.
That's the spirit of GNU.

Going back into history, we see that the Founding Fathers of this
country advocated their radical ideas of freedom through anonymous
pamphlets.  Freedom of speech, and privacy and anonymity, are closely
linked in history.

I have no idea where you get the idea that the default assumption is
that if the license doesn't explicitly permit people to write
anonymously if they want, that it is forbidden.  Freedom doesn't mean
rules that say "whatever is not permitted is forbidden", it means that
"whatever is not forbidden is permitted".

  --Jimbo


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: group work, unattributed work

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote in part:

>An author does not choose their IP address. In the vast majority of cases,
>they won't even know their IP address, or even what an IP address is! You
>cannot claim that an author is "choosing" to use a name if they don't even
>know what that name is.

True, the author licensed their work to the world completely anonymously,
so I have no obligation to list their authorship except otherwise.
That said, any author familiar with the practices of Wikipedia
has a reasonably expectation that they will be identified by their IP address,
so I believe that I really ought to identify them thus all the same.

>It is common in ordinary printed works for authors with names shared by
>other authors to be disambiguated in some way, for example by the use of
>middle initials. It is also common to have a paragraph of text about the
>author, saying who they are, possibly even explicitly telling people not
>to confuse them with another identically named person. Reasonable lengths
>are usually gone to to ensure that different authors are distinguished
>from each other.

It's up to the author to do this, not the deriver.
But again, authors familiar with Wikipedia practice
can reasonably expect a link to thier user page,
where they might place information of just this sort.
That's why I think that derivers should link to Wikipedia
rather than just copying down the author list.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Duplicate user names

body:
Brion Vibber, who may be me, wrote:

>Before we go tearing our hair out, we should probably actually *check* to
>see how many duplicate names we've got to deal with.
>
>If the number is quite small, which I expect it is, conflicts could simply
>be resolved by (consensually) renaming a few accounts.
>
Okay, I ran a little script to check over the user tables and spit out
names that are registered on multiple wikis which don't all match in
either e-mail address or password. I haven't yet checked any of the
accounts for activity, nor have I visually checked the e-mail addresses
for signs of similarity, nor their user pages. Certainly there are
plenty on the list that do belong to the same person. :)

False matches (can follow a chain between matching emails and password
hashes but the script didn't catch them): [2]
Den fj?ttrade ankan (da,de,sv,en)
Luca Masters (da,de,eo,es,fr,nl,pl,sv,en)

Partial matches: [30]
A (de,ja,pl) -- match: de,pl -- out: ja
Abc (pl,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: pl
Alex (de,fr,nl,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: de,fr,nl
Alvaro (meta,da,de,es,fr,nl,pl,sv,en) -- match: meta,de,es,sv,en --
match: nl,pl,da -- out: fr
Aoineko (meta,es,fr,ja) -- match: es,ja -- match: meta,fr
Brion VIBBER
(meta,sep11,cs,da,de,eo,es,fr,ja,ko,ms,nl,pl,ru,tr,zh,sv,en,he,hu,hi,sl)
-- hehe, i let one or two get out of sync :)
Calimero (nl,sv,en) -- match: sv, en -- out: nl
Chd (meta,de,eo,es,fr) -- match: meta,eo,es,fr -- out: de
Dexter (de,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: de
Emma (fr,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: fr
Folken (fr,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: fr
Fono (de,es,pl) -- match: es,pl -- out: de
Hannes (de,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: de
Harald (nl,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: nl
JohnOwens (meta,de,ru) -- match: de,ru -- out: meta
Kils (da,de,es,pl,sv,en) -- match: da,de,pl,sv,en -- out: es
Mm (meta,fr,ru) -- match: meta,fr -- out: ru
Pelle (de,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: de
Sakura (ja,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: ja
Samuel (eo,es,fr,ja,zh) -- match: eo,fr,ja,zh -- out: es
Stefan (de,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: de
Stevertigo (meta,sep11,es,ar) -- match: meta,sep11,es -- out: ar
Taw (meta,de,eo,fr,ja,pl) -- match: meta,de,eo,fr,ja -- out: pl
TeunSpaans (meta,de,nl) -- match: de,nl -- out: meta
Topory (de,es,fr,nl,pl,sv,en) -- match: de,es,fr,nl,sv,en -- out: pl
Tor (pl,sv,en) -- match: sv,en -- out: pl
Unukorno (de,eo,nl) -- all match
Willy (meta,de,es,nl) -- match: meta,es -- out: de,nl
WojPob (meta,de,pl) -- match: de,pl -- out: meta
Youssefsan (meta,de,eo,es,fr,ja,nl,pl,ru) -- match:
meta,de,eo,es,ja,nl,pl,ru -- out: fr

No two can be found to match: [98]
AGiss (meta,fr)
Aaa (de,pl)
Aki (de,ja)
Al (de,fr)
Alberto (es,fr)
Albin (de,fr)
Alexx (de,fr)
Ana (es,pl)
Andres (de,es)
Angel (es,zh)
Anna (es,pl)
Antonio (eo,es)
Arno (meta,fr)
Axel (da,de)
Barbara (es,pl)
Baruch (es,nl)
Basil (meta,de)
Ben (de,fr)
Beyer (da,de)
Boud (fr,pl)
Cezar (eo,pl)
Chris (de,fr)
Chuck Smith (meta,de)
Cicero (de,nl)
Cyril (eo,fr)
Daniel (de,bs)
Dave (de,fr)
Dug (de,pl)
Eddy (eo,es,nl)
Erich Nohe (de,es)
Flo (de,fr)
Flor (de,es)
Frank (de,ja,nl,zh)
Fritz (de,nl)
General Wesc (meta,es)
Geralmor (meta,es)
Hannibal (fr,pl)
Hans (da,de,es)
Iris (de,nl)
James (meta,es)
Jerry (fr,pl)
Jim (meta,de)
Jojo (de,nl)
Joselo (es,fr)
Juan (es,ja)
Jul (meta,fr)
Julian (de,es)
Kale (de,nl)
Kid (de,es)
Kriss (fr,pl)
Laura (es,pl)
Leonardo (de,es)
Leonidas (de,es)
Lila (de,pl)
Lucas (es,nl)
M (pl,ru)
Marc (de,fr,nl)
Marian (de,pl)
Mario (de,es)
Marisa (de,es)
Mars (pl,zh)
Martin (fr,nl)
Max (de,es)
Med (meta,fr)
Miguel (eo,es)
Miroslav Malovec (cs,eo)
Mk (de,ja)
Mrwojo (meta,eo,fr)
Mswake (meta,fr)
Murat (de,tr)
Nabla (de,pl)
Nick (de,nl)
Ok (meta,zh)
Pablo (es,pl)
Paolo (de,es)
Paul (eo,zh)
Peter (de,nl)
Pieter (meta,cs,nl)
Qwerty (fr,nl)
Rafael (eo,es)
Rene (de,es)
Seb (meta,fr)
Sebastian (de,es,fr)
Sergio (de,es)
Shark (de,nl)
Simon (de,zh)
Snow (de,zh)
Solar (pl,zh)
Spade (da,de)
TJ (meta,de)
Tadeusz (da,pl)
Thomas (de,fr)
Toto (de,fr,ja,zh)
Victor (es,nl,ru)
Vladimir (eo,es)
Wolf (de,es)
Woody (fr,nl)
1 (ja,zh)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook Project

body:
Jimbo writes:
> Our greatest strength is the strength of our community, and the
> "institutional knowledge" that we've gained as a group.  We talk a
> lot, but more importantly, we just *do* things as they seem possible,
> without waiting for a 'project business model'. ;-)
------------
;) I'm with you. Here's some more background, to help make clear why there
is a project summary, and other 'constraints' in a project like this. It
should also enswer some of your questions.

In California (and most other states) the State Departments of Education
have "curriculum framworks" groups (or divisions). There's a link to the
California Curriculum Frameworks group on my web site.

The Frameworks groups 'rotates' the various content areas (for  all grades)
through th esystem every eight years. Thus, one year might see High School
Geometry, Physics, an elementary education topic, etc. developed. The
frameworks are put together by Education Department specialists, with some
voluntary help by a select group of teachers familiar with the subject
matter.

Once the framework for a certain course is finished, anyone can use it as a
guide to creating content.

The framework is absolutely necessary to follow, as a general guide to
content decisions, and approach. Why? Because once a publisher finsishes a
topical area (let's say high school geometry),  the finished product goes to
the State Board of Education textbook review committee for approval. If the
book is seen as meeting the framework standards, it is then recommended by
the Board for adoption by any California State District who want to use it.
Often, several books are chosen for a topical area, and the individual
districts adopt the one they most like.

Here's another caveat. K-8 (especially K-5) content is often created around
a highly detailed set of specifics that require publishers to create a whole
content 'program' that meets the framework standard.

Thus, a pilot project for some topical area in the grades 9-12 range would
probably be most practical, because the demands would be more discrete, and
easier to manage.

Another problem (one I have no control over at the moment), is that the
intention of COSTP is to have this all result in printed textbooks. The
minute one starts talking about replacing the printed book with cD-ROM's,
web-based environments, etc., eyes begin to gloss over. It costs money to
produce a book. However, if a successful pilot product could pass muster
with the State Board of Ed., it would be a matter of finding one of the R.R.
Donnelly's of the world to print it, at a normal markup (still saving
enormous profits taken by the publishers). At the very least, a pilot that
passed muster in terms of meeting the framework standards would prove that
this can be done, and spur legislation (if not in California, certainly
elsewhere)

I'm attaching a version of the project plan (which is really a rationale -
in depth - for the project...it's not a 'procedural guide for how to do
this')

Relative to open source, the one constraint in K-12 is that there *are*
frameworks standards to be met.

I would suggest reading the project plan - it's not that long - and then
going from there. I've spent a lot of time in the state sytem lobbying this
project. In another life, I worked with several major textbook publishers,
so I have some insight into how they work, and how the system works.

COSTP - ro something like it - could save billions in textbook costs,
worldwide.

> For your purposes, what kinds of textbooks would be most useful to you
> as as 'pilot that proves the concept'?  Choose wisely, because you may
> find yourself in two years holding a copy of whatever book you request
> of us!
-------------
Wow! This is what I like...action!

I would start by taking a look at the math frameworks
http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/math.pdf

The above doc was accessed as a subset of www.cde.ca.gov/cfir

There are more frameworks guides there.

Here's Science http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/downloads.html

There's more.

Again, the best place to start is the high school curriculum because it's
easier to manage.

> My own thinking here is that the textbook project of the Wikimedia
> Foundation should focus on a single book or series of books that fit
> into the K-8 curriculum.
----------
I would encourage any author (or group of authors) that wants to take on the
K-8 curriculum to read the framworks first. They're more integrated, and
demanding, than K-12 material. However, in some ways, it would make sense to
see what came out of an open source effort for say 'language development'.
It's an all-encompassing, amorphous area that crosses over disciplines.
However, it's also just the sort of undertaking - if proven to be possible
in open source - that would open the door to serious consideration by
California and other states to go the open source route for textbook
provisioning.

> Interested parties should then write in accordance with the California
> state standards, supplemented by standards of other states where
> appropriate, and should also endeavor to obtain examples of competitor
> books as a "development target", i.e.  to meet or exceed the standard
> set by existing texts.
----------
Well put. Mostly, the publishers 'pay attention' to the curriculum
frameworks of three states - California, Florida, and Texas. Their hope is
that they will get one, or more of those three states, make their
cost-of-goods' break even, and sell to the other states (most of which are
followers, with a few exceptions) - that's where the profit is made.

> If we focus our efforts in this way, we should be able to produce
> something that could be printed in small quantities as an example, and
> then you could use that as a proof of concept for your lobbying
> efforts.
-----------
Absolutely; if you guys can pull that off, millions, maybe billions of other
people would be forever in your debt.(I'm not exaggerating this #, as there
is a great need for K-12 books/content  written in English for places like
China, India, etc.).

There are massive economies that can be wrought via open source for
educational materials. In the college and university (and technical
training) texbook sectors, there is already some impressive work going on
(e.g. O'Reilly), but nobody has taken on the biggest challenge of all, K-12.

There are many, many advantages to doing open source in the K-12 sector. Not
only could the best 'on-the-ground' teacher content be included, but some
books that are currently out of print might be gotten back into the content
stream for with various 'attribution' licenses.

Also as portable digital devices begin to insinuate themselves into the
classroom (this will happen in a big way withint the next 5-10 years), it
will be important to be able to stream content without making people paying
an arm and a leg. From experience, I can tell you that if one of the
commercial publishers has published an 'integrated' social studies book, ten
years hense, and there is a lot of supplementary material streamed from
their servers to the stdents and teachers, someone is going to have to pay
for that. Imagine a 10th-grader streaming the 'Preamble to the Consitittion
of the United States" from say, a Prentice-Hall server, and having her
school system have to anye up a micropayment for it. This is just one more
thing that open source in this sector will do - i.e. liberate content for
the good of all in education, and help technology live up to its promise of
'more, for less, for everyone'.

If you have time, read the attached summary. If you have questions, fire
away! If you require a voice conversation, send me your #, and we'll chat.

Sanford

> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>...
>I have a feeling we're losing the war on
>pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient
>number of motivated skeptical contributors.
>I've been giving serious thought to advertising
>our cause on the major skeptical community
>forums.
>...

Yes please do! It is hard enough to expand and improve articles on valid
scientific theories without feeling compelled to defend things so basic like
the existence of matter.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikimedia login, and global login solution

body:
Hi Lightning,

Lightning wrote:
> Ok, I would love to see global log-ins, but yeah there is user conflicts and
> the problem of making the switch smoothly. Here is what I propose.

Your proposal seems quite fine. You have very well layed out the pros
and cons.

However, I would really rather not create just a user database now
without thinking about all the other database stuff that needs to be
taken care of.

I'll post a separate entry about this.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database design

body:
Now that my own proposal to re-write the entire code in Perl again was
met with great resistance, I propose to at least create an entirely new
database structure, and then adapt the current code to it. I have
studied the current database structure and see the following rather
severe problems with it:

* BLOBs that store article text are combined in the same table as
meta-data (e.g. date, username of a change, change summary, minor flag,
etc.). This is bad because variable-length fields like BLOBs negatively
affect the performance of reading the table. Pages like the watchlist
should not have to bother with variable-length data such as article text
and would run a lot faster if they could get their data entirely from
fixed-length rows.

* Currently, all user properties and preferences, as well as article
properties, are columns in a table. Although this is not a problem in
terms of DB-reading performance, introducing a new user preference or
other enhancements involve adding a new column, and adding a new column
becomes extremely database-intensive as the database grows. LiveJournal
uses a very clever system that will easily remedy this. One table,
'userproplist', stores the possible user properties (userprops), and
another table, 'userprop', stores what user has what userprop with what
value. This way all that is needed for adding a new userprop is adding a
single row to the 'userproplist' table. The same would analogously apply
to articleprops. Once we have that, the user table will hopefully remain
very small (in terms of number of columns), so looking up a username (to
name just an example) would be ridiculously efficient.

* BLOBs that fulfill the same function (article text) are scattered
across two tables (cur and old). This is bad because it means
variable-length text has to be moved across tables on every edit. Very
slow. Better to give every version/revision of an article (i.e. each
item of article text) a permanent ID and use those IDs in the 'cur' and
'old' tables instead. Then have one large table, 'articletext' perhaps,
mapping the IDs to their actual BLOBs. This eliminates the need to ever
delete a BLOB (except perhaps when actually deleting an article with all
its history, which is rare enough). Additionally, there isn't really a
need for separate 'cur' and 'old' tables, especially when MemCacheD can
take care of most recent versions.

* You are using a 'recentchanges' table which, I presume, gets also
updated with every edit. This, I assume is the idea behind it, allows
the 'Recent Changes' page to quickly grab the most recent changes
without having to find them elsewhere in the DB. Contrary to intuition,
this is a bad idea. It is always a better idea to optimise for less DB
writes even if it means a few more DB reads, because writes are so much
slower. (I am so sure of this because LiveJournal has made these
experiences with their "Friends Page": grabbing entries from all the
friends' journals all over the place in the DB is faster than updating a
"hint table" with every newly created entry.)

In addition to these existing problems, of course there are things the
database cannot currently handle, but were planned. While we're changing
the DB, we could also add the following functionality to it:

* Store translated website text, so translators don't have to dig
through PHP code and submit a file to the mailing list.

* A global table for bidirectional inter-wiki links. People should not
have to add the same link to so many articles. In fact, taking this a
step further, people should not even have to enter text like
'[[fr:d?mocratie]]' into the article text when it's not part of the
article text. There should be drop-downs underneath the big textbox
listing languages, and little text boxes next to them for the target
article name.

Are you all still convinced that adapting the current code to all these
radical changes is easier than rewriting it all from scratch? :-)

Anyway. I'm tired.

I'm going to bed.

Good night.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

body:
Chong Yidong wrote:
> Any suggestions about what to do?

It really depends on the situation:

> I'd like to point out a number of crackpot articles recently
> contributed by the user Reddi:

What exactly does 'contributed' mean here? If the articles are entirely
new, then there's no reason to act at all, other than improving the
articles. If the user has replaced the entire text of existing articles,
I suppose that would be reason enough to revert, although of course it
would be wiser to try to combine all the information contained in both
versions.

> These studies have however no relevance to the
> purported topic, which is an "alternative cosmology to the Big
> Bang theory."

Then simply remove the reference ;-)

> In addition, there have been several equally incoherent edits to
> articles such as [[Luminiferous aether]].

Again, this depends on what kind of edits they were. If they only added
a paragraph or several, then leave them or improve them. If they have
actually deleted/replaced text that you think was much better before the
edit, try reverting it. The worst that can happen is that they will
re-revert it, in which case you should discuss it with them either on
the article's talk page or on their User talk page. Or maybe you should
do that in the first place.

In any case, I don't think it was a good idea to post this to a public
mailing list (and/or newsgroup). If I were them and I'd read it, I'd be
offended, being ridiculed and denunciated publicly.

Sorry for my bad English, I'm just tired and I'm going to bed now,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Update Special pages using Cron Job?

body:
The following pages currently hold saved versions that are rather old:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages (May 03)
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Longpages   (May 03)
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Shortpages  (May 03)
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Wantedpages (Jun 03)

Would it be feasible to set up a cron job that updates them
automatically during off-peak hours (say once every 24 hours)?

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems with the article title and special chars

body:
Thomas Luft wrote:

>I just moved the German Artikel about Alexander Dubcek from "Alexander
>Dubcek" to "Alexander Dubcek". Since then the page title is broken. The
>URL-Address is OK and says "Dubcek", but the title itself says "Dub?[]ek"
>([] is a non displayable char). Is this an error in the database? Or is it a
>browser related problem?
>
That letter, Latin lowercase c with caron, does not exist in the ISO
8859-1 character set which is used on the western-european-language
portions of Wikipedia. Naturally, this causes trouble when you try to
use it. ;)

I've moved the page back to the plain-old-c version.

Until the German and other western-european-language wikis are upgraded
to utf-8, alas you'll have to avoid using such characters in titles.
(This is largely dependent on how big the contingent of people who have
browsers that damage UTF-8-encoded pages when they edit them is, and
whether it's easier to find a workaround for broken browsers or to force
them to upgrade.)

See http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html#ISO-8859-1 for a handy
chart of ok characters.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Seriously, we should do the upgrade and force everyone with broken browsers
>to upgrade. There are very few non-UTF8-compatible ones left. It works
>perfectly on Polish wiki, so why should it be any different on others ?
>
I blame Anthere mostly. Now that she's using Netscape 7 instead of some
dreadful old pre-Unicode version of Opera, we're good to go. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > I think that is a very good idea. Otherwise, as you
> > have noted, allowing Anon edits isn't really in the
> > spirit of the GNU FDL.
>
> I couldn't possibly disagree more, I think.  *Disallowing* anon edits
> would not be in the spirit of the GNU FDL.

Can you quote anything from the GFDL which suggests that anonymous edits
are in keeping with its spirit? I can't see anything which even hints at
that. In fact, since it explicitly talks of listing authors, it seems
obvious to me that its spirit is the exact opposite. If I have overlooked
anything in the license which suggests otherwise, please could you point
me to the bit I have missed?

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database design

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Jul 2003, Timwi wrote:
>
>>* BLOBs that store article text are combined in the same table as
>>meta-data (e.g. date, username of a change, change summary, minor flag,
>>etc.). This is bad because variable-length fields like BLOBs negatively
>>affect the performance of reading the table.
>
> How much of a difference does this make when we're usually taking single
> rows found via an index?

Hm. Good point. I haven't thought about it in that much detail -- I've
only been "taught" this from experience on LJ. I think it has something
to do with hard disk seeks and stuff -- very technical. Regardless,
though, it should be clear that at least *updating* a table with
variable-length fields is quite a lot more complex than updating one
without.

>>* Store translated website text, so translators don't have to dig
>>through PHP code and submit a file to the mailing list.
>
> We certainly could do this, though there are performance concerns whenever
> the idea is brought up. Caching the strings in shared memory may alleviate
> this.

It's worked perfectly on LJ ever since it was introduced. Additionally,
I'm keeping MemCacheD in mind while thinking this all through. It would
probably keep all the text in memory all the time.

> There's been some talk of adapting the translation system we use at some
> of Esperanto cxe Interreto's sites, such as http://lernu.net/, so the
> interface and source-file-scanner doesn't have to be written from scratch.

Well, one of the problems I find with that system is that it is too
easily vandalisable. If you vandalise a single Wiki page, that doesn't
matter too much, it can be reverted within a few minutes, but if you
vandalise, say, the wording of the "Edit this page" link, it would
affect everybody who would visit Wikipedia within the minutes it takes
someone to revert it.

I can see several ways of doing this:

* Restrict access to assorted people. Of course, this is un-wiki-like
   and not a real lot better than modifying LanguageXY.php.

* Make changes in the translatable strings not take effect until they
   have been kept unchanged for 24 hours. Some trusted few could be given
   the privilege to be able to change the strings directly (in case, for
   example, a vandalism goes unnoticed for 24 hours).

   However, for this to work, the changes in the translation system
   should appear on the Recent Changes pages with the Wiki pages. Perhaps
   they *should* be Wiki pages with their own namespace (String:XYZ?).
   Which in turn would deviate from the concept that lernu.net uses.

> I haven't looked at the table structure used, but I imagine it's a fairly
> straightforward language-key-string triplet set.

I don't know about lernu.net either, but as for LJ, it's a little bit
more complex than that. If you're interested, LJ's database is here:
http://www.livejournal.com/doc/server/ljp.dbschema.ref.html
The tables beginning with "ml_" are the ones pertaining to the
translation system.

>>* A global table for bidirectional inter-wiki links. People should not
>>have to add the same link to so many articles.
>
> There's an experimental table for interwiki links, but it's not entirely
> the best setup. It's questionable whether bidirectional is really right,
> though, as there's not always a 1:1 matchup between articles.

Colour me ignorant, but why shouldn't there always be a 1:1 matchup?
Maybe there isn't now, but articles certainly can (and perhaps they
should) be changed to comply. Or do you know of a particularly striking
example where it should not?

Oh, by the way. How would you prefer to do the conversion from the old
database to the new? Myself, I thought perhaps we could have the
software do this whenever an article is edited by a user. This way, we
don't have to take Wikipedia down for the time it takes to convert the
entire database.

>>Are you all still convinced that adapting the current code to all these
>>radical changes is easier than rewriting it all from scratch? :-)
>
> Yes, certainly.

Okay then. I'll take your word for it and learn some PHP. I'll create a
preliminary SQL table-creation script for all this tomorrow. Which is
really today, but I should really go to bed first...

Good night,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>What exactly does 'contributed' mean here?
>>If the articles are entirely new, then there's
>>no reason to act at all, other than improving
>>the articles.
>
> You are completely missing the point; [.....]

Ah, I see. The original posting wasn't being very clear about this.

Sorry,
Timwi


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: group work, unattributed work (was: Use of
  Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com)

body:
Note: this entire message is tangential and can safely be ignored by
those in a hurry.

At 10:08 AM 7/12/03 +0100, Oliver Pereira wrote:
>On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > The license is silent on the matter, therefore, under general
> > principles of freedom (in the sense of speech, not beer), which is the
> > foundational principle of GNU, then anonymous authorship is just fine.
> >
> > I can ask RMS if you really want me too, but I think it's highly
> > HIGHLY unlikely that he would say "Oh, no, I didn't intend for people
> > to write things anonyous under the FDL.  The talk about authorship is
> > supposed to imply that people are required to give their full name,
> > address, and social security number before they can use the license!"
>
>My message was about pseudonyms, so full names, addresses, and social
>security numbers don't come into it.
><snip>
>
>But I should point out that just because the ideas of freedom of speech,
>and privacy and anonymity, are closely linked in American history, it
>doesn't mean that they are in truth. Privacy and anonymity are just
>personal barriers, and barriers are restrictions on freedom.

It is no more a "barrier" for me to say "just call me Redbird" than it
is for me to say "just call me Vicki Rosenzweig" or "just call me
Rachel Rebecca Kanner". The only "barriers" come in when someone
demands proof that any or all of those are really my name, and then
insists on defining "really". My skin is a barrier, and so are the walls
of my home. They do not restrict freedom, unless freedom is defined
as the right of bacteria to infect me, or the right of wind and rain to
interfere with my sleep and destroy my books.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageDe.php

body:
I added the translations for the last changes done in Language.php. Just to
be ready if someone starts them.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> The license is silent on the matter, therefore, under general
> principles of freedom (in the sense of speech, not beer), which is the
> foundational principle of GNU, then anonymous authorship is just fine.
>
> I can ask RMS if you really want me too, but I think it's highly
> HIGHLY unlikely that he would say "Oh, no, I didn't intend for people
> to write things anonyous under the FDL.  The talk about authorship is
> supposed to imply that people are required to give their full name,
> address, and social security number before they can use the license!"

My message was about pseudonyms, so full names, addresses, and social
security numbers don't come into it.

Anyway, now that you've started referring to "the Founding Fathers of this
country", I see that this may be as much a matter of culture as of logic.
If the interpretation of the GFDL requires a grounding in American
history, then I give up. And I expect you're right about Mr. Stallman's
views. I've just had a look round his website.

But I should point out that just because the ideas of freedom of speech,
and privacy and anonymity, are closely linked in American history, it
doesn't mean that they are in truth. Privacy and anonymity are just
personal barriers, and barriers are restrictions on freedom. This is not a
statement about whether I think they are good or bad; I'm just pointing
out that they are opposed to each other. Ah, isn't philosophy fun? :)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [WikiEN-l] licenses

body:
Could Wikipedia just decide to change all of its content
from one license to another ? Is it legally or otherwise
bound to continue with the GNU license ? Is there a danger
of later legal challenges of this ? From whom ? What if we
give anyone the option to go back thru and rescind any work
that they contributed if we changed to a Creative Commons
license ?

I ask this, because, just maybe, we could smoothly switch
into the Creative Commons share alike license or something
like it with less problems than we anticipate. Maybe its
against "the rules" but who makes them ? Couldn't we just
decide ourselves ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


body:
Sanford Forte wrote:
> The framework is absolutely necessary to follow, as a general guide to
> content decisions, and approach.

Right.  If you check the archives, we were discussing the frameworks
just before you joined the list, and I gave links to frameworks of
different states.  Presumably, we should look at the frameworks of
multiple states and try to meet several of them at once, when
possible.

> Thus, a pilot project for some topical area in the grades 9-12 range
> would probably be most practical, because the demands would be more
> discrete, and easier to manage.

That sounds good to me.  Can you provide a specific link to content
standards for topic areas in grades 9-12 so that we can all peruse it
and further refine the choice of a pilot project?  (Nevermind, I see
you did, below...)

> Another problem (one I have no control over at the moment), is that the
> intention of COSTP is to have this all result in printed textbooks. The
> minute one starts talking about replacing the printed book with cD-ROM's,
> web-based environments, etc., eyes begin to gloss over. It costs money to
> produce a book.

Absolutely.  We'll take as the primary focus of what we're doing, the
organizing principle of this particular pilot project to be the
production of content that's usable in paper format.

> However, if a successful pilot product could pass muster
> with the State Board of Ed., it would be a matter of finding one of the R.R.
> Donnelly's of the world to print it, at a normal markup (still saving
> enormous profits taken by the publishers).

Yes!  The raw cost of printing is very low as compared to the prices
of textbooks that have proprietary content.

> At the very least, a pilot that
> passed muster in terms of meeting the framework standards would prove that
> this can be done, and spur legislation (if not in California, certainly
> elsewhere)

Isn't it true that legislation isn't really necessary in order for
GNU-free texts to compete directly with proprietary texts?  I mean, if
we can produce a product that meets the CA standards, and print it for
say 2/3s the cost of the competitors, then for their own reasons,
various districts will be inclined to buy ours rather than the
proprietary stuff?  What legislation is really needed, then?

> Relative to open source, the one constraint in K-12 is that there *are*
> frameworks standards to be met.

Well, that actually makes our job easier, as it eliminates a lot of
the time-consuming debates we would otherwise have about what "ought"
to go into a 9th grade American History book.  The more detailed the
standard, then the easier it will be for us to simply work to meet the
standard.

Our wiki development model works best when there's an easy "yes/no"
answer as to whether something belongs or not.

> I would suggest reading the project plan - it's not that long - and then
> going from there. I've spent a lot of time in the state sytem lobbying this
> project. In another life, I worked with several major textbook publishers,
> so I have some insight into how they work, and how the system works.

Can you fill us in more on what, exactly, you've been lobbying for?

> I would start by taking a look at the math frameworks
> http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/math.pdf

Math is a little harder for us than some other things, just because of
the constraints of the web and our wiki software.  We're best with
text, like a history book.  There should also be a lot of re-usability
for our existing wikipedia content.

On the other hand, we probably have a higher 'brain power' in areas
of sciene and math and computers, just because of the sort of people
who we have working on the project for the most part.

> Well put. Mostly, the publishers 'pay attention' to the curriculum
> frameworks of three states - California, Florida, and Texas. Their hope is
> that they will get one, or more of those three states, make their
> cost-of-goods' break even, and sell to the other states (most of which are
> followers, with a few exceptions) - that's where the profit is made.

Good information!  I had already found the California and Florida
websites, I will look for the California website.

> Absolutely; if you guys can pull that off, millions, maybe billions of other
> people would be forever in your debt.(I'm not exaggerating this #, as there
> is a great need for K-12 books/content  written in English for places like
> China, India, etc.).

Hey, that's what we're all about: World Domination.  Fast.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: uploaded files

body:
Thanks Magnus.

I hate M$ Word as much as the next guy, but if you upload
the docs in Word format I think I can use the images more
easily .. is there a way to easily extract the images from
a PDF file ?

Karl

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

body:
I second the request!  The skeptical community types may have to be
educated in the wiki way when it comes to articles on religion, but I
think they'll get the hang of it quickly.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
> >...
> >I have a feeling we're losing the war on
> >pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient
> >number of motivated skeptical contributors.
> >I've been giving serious thought to advertising
> >our cause on the major skeptical community
> >forums.
> >...
>
> Yes please do! It is hard enough to expand and improve articles on valid
> scientific theories without feeling compelled to defend things so basic like
> the existence of matter.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] licenses

body:
Karl Wick wrote:
> Could Wikipedia just decide to change all of its content
> from one license to another ?

No, we can't do that.  Wikipedia does not own the copyrights for most
of the content in the Wikipedia.  We merely license it from the
original authors, who have released it to us under the GNU FDL.

The Wikimedia Foundation formally owns the copyrights to all my edits,
and the edits of people who edited Wikipedia while in my employ at
Bomis (subject to some caveats, i.e. Larry's Philosophy Text is owned
by him, not being written for hire by me).

> Is it legally or otherwise bound to continue with the GNU license ?
> Is there a danger of later legal challenges of this ? From whom ?
> What if we give anyone the option to go back thru and rescind any
> work that they contributed if we changed to a Creative Commons
> license ?

No, we can't do that.  It'd be deeply offensive to a lot of people,
and legally wrong.

If we could round up consent from everyone who has written portions of
existing articles, then, yes, we could change the license.  But at
this point, with many thousands of contributors, many of whom we can't
find, that'd be impossible.

--Jimbo


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [WikiEN-l] CYD for admin (was Crackpot articles)

body:
I second the nomination of CYD for admin!

I also want to urge Tim to go forward with his plan to get some
involvement from the skeptic community, we need some informed skeptics
to provide some balance on this issue.

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Tim Starling
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 3.08
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

"Chong Yidong" <cyd at stupidchicken.com> wrote
in message news:yr4cel0w4tbz.fsf at myth7.Stanford.EDU...
> Hi there. I haven't posted to the list before, but I've been editing
> under the callsign "CYD" for for quite a while now.

You should be an admin. Hang on, I'll nominate you.

> I'd like to point out a number of crackpot articles recently
> contributed by the user Reddi:

<snip>

> Any suggestions about what to do?

We have to keep an eye on him. Note that most of his contributions need
copyediting anyway, since his English isn't too good. Reddi seems to be
a pleasant, courteous guy, so he's never going to get banned.

After coming across [[reciprocal system of theory]] for the first time
just recently, and after personally spending a great deal of time on
[[neutrosophy]] and other articles, I have a feeling we're losing the
war on pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient number of motivated
skeptical contributors. I've been giving serious thought to advertising
our cause on the major skeptical community forums.

I don't really see any other way to do this, other than plain
old-fashioned manpower. If any of these theories are truly
idiosyncratic, we'll be able to save a lot of time if we can get them
deleted. Other than that, we've just got to do the research, present the
flaws, and contextualise.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] phase III software for Romanian and Welsh

body:
I just wanted to say that with Brion's help, we set up
the Romanian (8 pages) and Welsh (12 pages) wikipedias
and I also added some of the special characters to the
Romanian version with the help of a Romanian coworker.
 :)

Unfortunately, we can't convert the larger Wikipedias
because it would be too much manual work, unless some
Wikipedians from those languages would be willing to
manually copy over all the pages.  I think this would
still be possible for the Volapuk (112 pages), Frisian
(51 pages), and Basque (48 pages) Wikipedias, but I'm
not willing to convert *that many* pages manually for
languages I don't know and I'm not learning... if you
want vo.wikipedia.org, fr.wikipedia.org, or
eu.wikipedia.org so you can copy the pages manually,
just send a message to Brion(brion at pobox.com) as soon
as possible since he takes off for Sweden on
Wednesday.  Otherwise you'll just have to wait until
the conversion script is finished.

Best wishes,
Chuck

=====
Learn Esperanto - http://www.lernu.net/
My homepage - http://www.amuzulo.net/
TEJO-Vikio - http://www.tejo.org/vikio/
Enciklopedio - http://eo.wikipedia.org/

__________________________________________________________________

Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
Logos und Klingelt?ne f?rs Handy bei http://sms.yahoo.de


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Duplicate user names

body:
> Okay, I ran a little script to check over the user tables and spit out
> names that are registered on multiple wikis which don't all match in
> either e-mail address or password. I haven't yet checked any of the
> accounts for activity, nor have I visually checked the e-mail addresses
> for signs of similarity, nor their user pages. Certainly there are
> plenty on the list that do belong to the same person. :)
>

Not bad, but still not that good, I still would like to propose my system
since its easy to implement, it centralizes usernames into one table. and it
allows us to implement the wikimedia login system without disrupting service
or breaking anything, all it would take is a couple of changes to the user
login code. the basics are simple, the rest, like the alias system can be
worked in at a later time...

I have since changed my idea bit though, I like timwi's idea of using the
LJ-style userprop & userproplist tables. I reallythink that the user table
should have as little columns as possible, say something like "e-mail,
username, userId, password hash, registration date" and thats it. im even
sketchy about registration date.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Textbook-l] Uploads

body:
I have begun to upload some files to the textbook site. They are PDFs (I
can also upload Word format if preferred) containing some stuff I
scribbled down at university and brought into readable form :-)

I hereby declare that it can be harvested for the textbook site. The
text is German, but I think the images can come in useful.

I have also started a page where such files can be added to clarify
their origin, so they can be used without copyright worries.

Magnus


from_name: Thomas Luft

body:
Hi,

I just moved the German Artikel about Alexander Dubcek from "Alexander
Dubcek" to "Alexander Dubcek". Since then the page title is broken. The
URL-Address is OK and says "Dubcek", but the title itself says "Dub?[]ek"
([] is a non displayable char). Is this an error in the database? Or is it a
browser related problem? Seems to look like this with all common browsers
(see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Alexander_Dubcek).
Regards

Thomas aka Urbanus

____________________________________________________________________________
ImmobilienScout24 - Uber 170.000 Immobilien - Finden Sie hier Ihre neue
Traumwohnung! In Immobilien die Nr.1 im Netz: http://info.is24.de/web.de


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 04:45:23AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Thomas Luft wrote:
>
> >I just moved the German Artikel about Alexander Dubcek from "Alexander
> >Dubcek" to "Alexander Dubcek". Since then the page title is broken. The
> >URL-Address is OK and says "Dubcek", but the title itself says "Dub?[]ek"
> >([] is a non displayable char). Is this an error in the database? Or is it
> >a
> >browser related problem?
> >
> That letter, Latin lowercase c with caron, does not exist in the ISO
> 8859-1 character set which is used on the western-european-language
> portions of Wikipedia. Naturally, this causes trouble when you try to
> use it. ;)
>
> I've moved the page back to the plain-old-c version.
>
> Until the German and other western-european-language wikis are upgraded
> to utf-8, alas you'll have to avoid using such characters in titles.
> (This is largely dependent on how big the contingent of people who have
> browsers that damage UTF-8-encoded pages when they edit them is, and
> whether it's easier to find a workaround for broken browsers or to force
> them to upgrade.)
>
> See http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html#ISO-8859-1 for a handy
> chart of ok characters.

Seriously, we should do the upgrade and force everyone with broken browsers
to upgrade. There are very few non-UTF8-compatible ones left. It works
perfectly on Polish wiki, so why should it be any different on others ?


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

body:
"Chong Yidong" <cyd at stupidchicken.com> wrote
in message news:yr4cel0w4tbz.fsf at myth7.Stanford.EDU...
> Hi there. I haven't posted to the list before, but I've been
> editing under the callsign "CYD" for for quite a while now.

You should be an admin. Hang on, I'll nominate you.

> I'd like to point out a number of crackpot articles recently
> contributed by the user Reddi:

<snip>

> Any suggestions about what to do?

We have to keep an eye on him. Note that most of his contributions need
copyediting anyway, since his English isn't too good. Reddi seems to be a
pleasant, courteous guy, so he's never going to get banned.

After coming across [[reciprocal system of theory]] for the first time just
recently, and after personally spending a great deal of time on
[[neutrosophy]] and other articles, I have a feeling we're losing the war on
pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient number of motivated skeptical
contributors. I've been giving serious thought to advertising our cause on
the major skeptical community forums.

I don't really see any other way to do this, other than plain old-fashioned
manpower. If any of these theories are truly idiosyncratic, we'll be able to
save a lot of time if we can get them deleted. Other than that, we've just
got to do the research, present the flaws, and contextualise.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crackpot articles

body:
> >I have a feeling we're losing the war on
> >pseudoscience, mainly due to an insufficient
> >number of motivated skeptical contributors.
> >I've been giving serious thought to advertising
> >our cause on the major skeptical community
> >forums.
> >...
>
> Yes please do! It is hard enough to expand and
> improve articles on valid
> scientific theories without feeling compelled to
> defend things so basic like
> the existence of matter.

Um... is this a new pseudoscientific theory -- that
pseudoscience is winning out against science?
-S-
p.s.  And that matter actually exists -- doesnt really
say much about what it really *is....

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] wikipedia in Arabiya

body:
Ive done a bit of work translating to the best of my
crude ability -- some of the basics for the arabiv
wikipedia -- if anyone can read Arabic and would like
to proof, please do..

http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translated_for_system_functions

I think it will come along nicely --- there are some
issues with links.. particularly if there are too many
langalinks  at top, there will be some overlap ...
nothing worth explaining or dealing with yet... the
place needs some basic electrical wiring before we can
start looking for furtniture....

There is also the issue with Arabic that Unicode might
not be able to keep up with its morphology... Ill
report more later, but apparently Arabic -as rendered
by unicode is not quite up to grade in terms of the
rules for morphing letters depending on their
placement -- the Unicode  Unidate has a special patch
that makes do with arabic, but wont quite accomodate
some of the other more morphic scripts out there.. Ill
have a full report later, but it helps to plan for the
future, especially where the issue of the
base-encoding for an entire pedia is concerned... Itll
be an open issue ... whether Unicode is the direction
most Arabic dev is going...

Anyway... enough for today...

-S-

 p.s. -- what happened to any text that was leftover
from the phase 1 ar.wiki?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Oualmakran Youssef

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Languages [was: Database design and interwiki
 links]

body:
Hello,

Well, I would like to be hired... since I jave not found any
job yet.

Youssef


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: licenses

body:
Karl Wick wrote:

> Could Wikipedia just decide to change all of its content
> from one license to another ?

What problems are you seeing with the GFDL that the "Creative Commons"
license (which I'm not familiar with) would solve?


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database design and interwiki links

body:
Timwi wrote:
>
>
> ...
>
> * A global table for bidirectional inter-wiki links. People should not
> have to add the same link to so many articles. In fact, taking this a
> step further, people should not even have to enter text like
> '[[fr:d?mocratie]]' into the article text when it's not part of the
> article text. There should be drop-downs underneath the big textbox
> listing languages, and little text boxes next to them for the target
> article name.
>
> Are you all still convinced that adapting the current code to all these
> radical changes is easier than rewriting it all from scratch? :-)
>
> Anyway. I'm tired.
>
> I'm going to bed.
>
> Good night.
>
> Timwi
>
>

While it seems to be a very good thing, in fact it can't really work so
because the relation between articles between the wikis is not a one-to-one relation
For example on en:, the roman god and the greek ones share the same article but on fr:
this is not the case, they have they own article.
How a global table can resolve this sort of problems?

----
Luc Van Oostenryck aka [[Looxix]]


body:
On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 05:10:18AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >Seriously, we should do the upgrade and force everyone with broken browsers
> >to upgrade. There are very few non-UTF8-compatible ones left. It works
> >perfectly on Polish wiki, so why should it be any different on others ?
> >
> I blame Anthere mostly. Now that she's using Netscape 7 instead of some
> dreadful old pre-Unicode version of Opera, we're good to go. ;)

So let's go 'n do it !


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [OT] Re: Re-use of Crown copyright material

body:
Sean Barrett wrote in small part:

>Andrew Eeles, Licensing Manager, HMSO, wrote:

>>If you are able to meet the                            v
>>terms of our licence then there are no obstacles to you using core Crown
>>copyright material from government websites on your open content
>>encyclopaedia.

My goodness, even Her Majesty's Stationery Office
can't manage to use the Queen's English properly!

Sorry to bring up such an obscure point of grammar
(especially one which I often refuse to obey myself),
but we Americans have a heightened sense of language
as it is used by our former colonial masters,
and when I read this letter aloud to myself
in my best attempt at John Cleese's "posh" accent,
the error just leaped (or leapt) out at me.

^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] legal counsel on copyright issues

body:
Karl Wick wrote:

>(My textbook plans dont include using much from the WP anyway).

Now there's a thought ... what if each textbook project
decides for itself depending on its own estimation of its needs?
If a project decides wrongly, then only it has to start over.
Sitewide policy can be submitted to the public domain,
or kept under GFDL for copying from Wikipedia.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Duplicate user names

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in relatively small part:

>Okay, I ran a little script to check over the user tables and spit out
>names that are registered on multiple wikis which don't all match in
>either e-mail address or password.

I've found an error in your results --
either that, or I don't understand their presentation.

>False matches:
[Contains no "Miguel".]

>Partial matches:
[Contains no "Miguel".]

>No two can be found to match:
>Miguel (eo,es)

So what about [[en:User:Miguel]], who also exists?
(And is the only of the 3 to have any user contibutions!)

-- Toby


from_name: Sanford Forte

body:
> Sanford Forte wrote:
> > The framework is absolutely necessary to follow, as a general guide to
> > content decisions, and approach.
>
> Right.  If you check the archives, we were discussing the frameworks
> just before you joined the list, and I gave links to frameworks of
> different states.  Presumably, we should look at the frameworks of
> multiple states and try to meet several of them at once, when
> possible.
----------
Good idea.

> > Another problem (one I have no control over at the moment), is that the
> > intention of COSTP is to have this all result in printed textbooks. The
> > minute one starts talking about replacing the printed book with
cD-ROM's,
> > web-based environments, etc., eyes begin to gloss over. It costs money
to
> > produce a book.
>
> Absolutely.  We'll take as the primary focus of what we're doing, the
> organizing principle of this particular pilot project to be the
> production of content that's usable in paper format.
---------
Great.

> > At the very least, a pilot that
> > passed muster in terms of meeting the framework standards would prove
that
> > this can be done, and spur legislation (if not in California, certainly
> > elsewhere)
>
> Isn't it true that legislation isn't really necessary in order for
> GNU-free texts to compete directly with proprietary texts?  I mean, if
> we can produce a product that meets the CA standards, and print it for
> say 2/3s the cost of the competitors, then for their own reasons,
> various districts will be inclined to buy ours rather than the
> proprietary stuff?  What legislation is really needed, then?
---------
California (and maybe some other states) published its own K-12 materials
into the 50's. The book were terrible because they were created by a few
curriculum writers on the state dole. When the baby boom hit, commercial
publishers saw an opening, and asked the state for permission to publish
*for* the state. Thus, the California Legislature legislated the State out
of the textbook production business.

It's really not a big deal to create new legislation authorizing the state
to do this itself. It will take political will, and the latter would be
emboldened by a project that proved it possible to radically reduce cost. At
the very least, if the open source model works, even if the state decided
not to act, open source could be presented as an option. This would create a
powerful opening for open source here, and other states, as well.

> > I would suggest reading the project plan - it's not that long - and then
> > going from there. I've spent a lot of time in the state sytem lobbying
this
> > project. In another life, I worked with several major textbook
publishers,
> > so I have some insight into how they work, and how the system works.
>
> Can you fill us in more on what, exactly, you've been lobbying for?
----------
I've been lobbying for three things:

1) Acceptance of the open source model as a viable alternative for K-12
textbook production.

2) Having the legislature approve production of texbooks (from open source
content) by the state.
(this would require the state to set up a system that 'sourced' open source,
and filtered the material to meet frameworks standards; thus, content from
individuals, web sites, out-of-print-authors, and teachers could contribute
to 'content bins' for organization, and publishing by the state. The initial
publishing efforts would also require the state to pony up the cash  - to
itself - to physically publish the books. There's detail in the plan
summary).

> > I would start by taking a look at the math frameworks
> > http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/math.pdf
>
> Math is a little harder for us than some other things, just because of
> the constraints of the web and our wiki software.  We're best with
> text, like a history book.  There should also be a lot of re-usability
> for our existing wikipedia content.
>
> On the other hand, we probably have a higher 'brain power' in areas
> of sciene and math and computers, just because of the sort of people
> who we have working on the project for the most part.
---------
Any curricula would work. If Wikipedia finishes a project in American
History, fine. The idea is to show that it can be done, that open source can
work as effectively as commercial publishers (if not better) in this domain.

> > Absolutely; if you guys can pull that off, millions, maybe billions of
other
> > people would be forever in your debt.(I'm not exaggerating this #, as
there
> > is a great need for K-12 books/content  written in English for places
like
> > China, India, etc.).
>
> Hey, that's what we're all about: World Domination.  Fast.  :-)
----------
Do you have a supply of wikipedia flags? Or, perhaps a chapter in the World
History text about the 'next Guttenberg revolution'

Sanford

> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


body:
> Isn't it true that legislation isn't really necessary in order for
> GNU-free texts to compete directly with proprietary texts?  I mean, if
> we can produce a product that meets the CA standards, and print it for
> say 2/3s the cost of the competitors, then for their own reasons,
> various districts will be inclined to buy ours rather than the
> proprietary stuff?  What legislation is really needed, then?
---------
One thing I forgot to mention is that I hadn't considered that someone like
wikipedia could take this on as a pilot. Right now, the constraining factor
is proof that it can be done. So, if wikipedia can pull this off, it's a
godsend.

I spoke to a state legislator last week who claimed that the best way to get
the state to pay attention to something like this was to do a pilot; if
possible, in conjunction with the state's knowledge. Thus, if the pilot
happens, and is completed, *and* we have someone inside the bureaucacy
saying "these people can deliver", it will mean a lot.

So, once you've decided (if you decide) to take this on, I will connect with
some 'state' people (all this will be copied to wikipedia, in an open
process) and start looking for one, or more 'champions' to take up our cause
inside the bureaucracy.

San

> > Relative to open source, the one constraint in K-12 is that there *are*
> > frameworks standards to be met.
>
> Well, that actually makes our job easier, as it eliminates a lot of
> the time-consuming debates we would otherwise have about what "ought"
> to go into a 9th grade American History book.  The more detailed the
> standard, then the easier it will be for us to simply work to meet the
> standard.
>
> Our wiki development model works best when there's an easy "yes/no"
> answer as to whether something belongs or not.
>
> > I would suggest reading the project plan - it's not that long - and then
> > going from there. I've spent a lot of time in the state sytem lobbying
this
> > project. In another life, I worked with several major textbook
publishers,
> > so I have some insight into how they work, and how the system works.
>
> Can you fill us in more on what, exactly, you've been lobbying for?
>
> > I would start by taking a look at the math frameworks
> > http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/math.pdf
>
> Math is a little harder for us than some other things, just because of
> the constraints of the web and our wiki software.  We're best with
> text, like a history book.  There should also be a lot of re-usability
> for our existing wikipedia content.
>
> On the other hand, we probably have a higher 'brain power' in areas
> of sciene and math and computers, just because of the sort of people
> who we have working on the project for the most part.
>
> > Well put. Mostly, the publishers 'pay attention' to the curriculum
> > frameworks of three states - California, Florida, and Texas. Their hope
is
> > that they will get one, or more of those three states, make their
> > cost-of-goods' break even, and sell to the other states (most of which
are
> > followers, with a few exceptions) - that's where the profit is made.
>
> Good information!  I had already found the California and Florida
> websites, I will look for the California website.
>
> > Absolutely; if you guys can pull that off, millions, maybe billions of
other
> > people would be forever in your debt.(I'm not exaggerating this #, as
there
> > is a great need for K-12 books/content  written in English for places
like
> > China, India, etc.).
>
> Hey, that's what we're all about: World Domination.  Fast.  :-)
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Duplicate user names

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>No two can be found to match:
>>Miguel (eo,es)
>>
>>
>
>So what about [[en:User:Miguel]], who also exists?
>(And is the only of the 3 to have any user contibutions!)
>
Urps, bug in my script didn't count the English wiki properly. :)

New results, now also with a vagueified cache-update time* count of
edits (from old table) by each account; accounts with no edits are
discarded from this version:

* should be reset on each login, save of preferences, or watch/unwatch
of page. An active user is fairly likely to trip an update to this field.

False matches, determined by checking chaining of common email/pwd hashes or
user pages clearly showing a common user:

AGiss (meta,fr) (user page says same)
Alvaro (meta,de,es,fr,nl,pl,sv,en) (one well-known id)
Aoineko (meta,es,fr,ja,en) (one well-known id)
BoogieMan (zh,en) (same)
Brion VIBBER
(meta,sep11,cs,da,de,eo,es,fr,ja,ko,ms,nl,pl,ru,tr,zh,sv,en,he,hu,hi,sl)
(same!)
Carey Evans (meta,en) (same)
Castor (fr,en) (same)
Chd (meta,de,en) (same)
Chuck Smith (meta,de,en) (same)
Den fj?ttrade ankan (da,de,sv,en)
Elian (meta,de,en) (same)
EntmootsOfTrolls (meta,fr,en) (same)
Fred Bauder (meta,en) (same)
Isis (meta,en) (same)
JohnOwens (meta,de,ru,en) (known good id)
Juanan (es,en) (presumed same; this is the guy who runs Enciclopedia Libre)
Kils (da,de,es,pl,sv,en)
Luca Masters (da,de,eo,es,fr,nl,pl,sv)
Macar (cs,es,pl,en) (same)
Maveric149 (meta,sep11,de,es,en,textbook,quote,wiktionary)
Miroslav Malovec (cs,eo) (same)
Quintessent (fr,en) (same)
Roan (nl,en) (same)
SJK (meta,en) (same)
Saprtacus (meta,en) (same)
Scott REDD (eo,en) (same)
Steffen (de,en) (same)
Stevertigo (meta,sep11,en,ar) (same)
SwPawel (pl,en) (same)
Taw (meta,de,eo,fr,ja,pl,en) (known id, same)
Tbc (meta,en) (same)
TeunSpaans (meta,de,nl,en) (presumed same; single meta edit)
Unukorno (de,eo,nl,en)
WojPob (meta,de,pl,en) (same)
Youssefsan (meta,de,eo,es,fr,nl,pl,en) (known id, same)

Pretty sure they're *not* the same people:
Alex (fr,nl,sv,en) (separate fr, en pages; look like different people)
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 117
        [nl]  (inactive since April) 1
        [sv]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (active in July) 267
Arno (meta,fr,en) (fr, en appear to be separate folks)
        [meta]  (active in July) 1
        [en]  (active in July) 1092

        [fr]  (inactive since June) 84
Triton (de,en) (look unrelated)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 56
        [en]  (inactive since June) 302

----

Dupe names, but not same email or password:
A.Tigges (de,en)
        [de] (active in July) 1
        [en] (active in July) 30
Al (de,fr)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 19
        [fr]  (inactive since June) 1
Albin (de,fr)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 2
        [fr]  (active in July) 101
Alex Anlicker (de,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 806
        [en]  (inactive since May) 4
Chris (fr,en)
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 1
        [en]  (inactive since April) 23
Cicero (de,nl)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 25
        [nl]  (active in July) 6
Cluster (de,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 13
        [en]  (inactive since May) 70
Cyril (eo,fr)
        [eo]  (inactive since April) 3
        [fr]  (inactive since May) 5
Dave (de,fr)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 16
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 34
Dexter (de,sv)
        [de]  (inactive since May) 1
        [sv]  (active in July) 282
Dlloader (zh,en)
        [zh]  (active in July) 42
        [en]  (inactive since April) 25
Folken (fr,sv)
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 1
        [sv]  (inactive since April) 6
Fono (de,es,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 25

        [es]  (active in July) 1
        [en]  (active in July) 1
Fritz (de,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 2946
        [en]  (inactive since May) 3
G (ja,en)
        [ja]  (active in July) 1736
        [en]  (active in July) 40
Gamma (es,en)
        [es]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (active in July) 106
Gebeleizis (eo,en)
        [eo]  (active in July) 8
        [en]  (active in July) 33
General Wesc (meta,es,en)
        [meta]  (inactive since May) 3
        [es]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (active in July) 460
Gihelle (fr,en)
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 27
        [en]  (inactive since April) 4
Graham Chapman (meta,en)
        [meta]  20030326083933 13
        [en]  (inactive since April) 394
H. Jonat (de,en) (same)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 59
        [en]  (inactive since April) 671
Herodotus (nl,en)
        [nl]  (inactive since June) 3
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1
Hirzel (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 35
        [en]  (active in July) 722
Igor (pl,en)
        [pl]  (inactive since June) 27
        [en]  (inactive since June) 13
Jacco (nl,en)
        [nl]  (inactive since June) 1
        [en]  (active in July) 5
Jb (cs,en)
        [cs]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1
Jerome (fr,en)
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (inactive since April) 5
Jerry (fr,pl)
        [fr]  (active in July) 6
        [pl]  (active in July) 486
Jojo (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since May) 10
        [en]  (inactive since April) 2
Juergen (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 549
        [en]  (inactive since April) 14
K (ja,en)
        [ja]  (active in July) 50
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1
Kid (de,es)
        [de]  (active in July) 2
        [es]  (inactive since April) 1
Klaus (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 10
        [en]  (inactive since May) 102
Leo (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since May) 1
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1
Leonardo (de,es)
        [de]  (active in July) 74
        [es]  (inactive since April) 42
Maciek (pl,en)
        [pl]  (inactive since May) 14
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1
Magnus (de,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 1903
        [en]  (inactive since June) 170
Marc (de,fr,nl)
        [de]  (active in July) 37
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 13
        [nl]  (active in July) 1
Marian (de,pl,en)
        [pl]  (inactive since April) 7

        [de]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (inactive since April) 52
Marta (pl,en)
        [pl]  (inactive since April) 18
        [en]  (inactive since April) 5
Marymary (de,es,en)
        [de]  (inactive since May) 3
        [es]  (inactive since May) 3

        [en]  (inactive since May) 91
Max (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (inactive since April) 2
Med (meta,fr,en)
        [meta]  (inactive since March) 1

        [fr]  (active in July) 1613
        [en]  (inactive since June) 6
Milan (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 2
        [en]  (inactive since April) 5
Nick (de,nl)
        [de]  (inactive since May) 4
        [nl]  (active in July) 112
Oliver (eo,en)
        [eo]  (inactive since April) 4
        [en]  (inactive since April) 17
Pascal (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 10
        [en]  (active in July) 54
Paul (eo,zh,en)
        [eo]  (active in July) 1339
        [zh]  (inactive since April) 1
        [en]  (active in July) 41
Pelle (de,sv)
        [de]  (active in July) 1
        [sv]  (inactive since April) 33
Pieter (cs,nl)
        [cs]  (inactive since June) 40
        [nl]  (active in July) 2162
Prometeo (es,en)
        [es]  (inactive since April) 6
        [en]  (inactive since April) 3
Qwerty (fr,nl,en)
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 2
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1

        [nl]  (inactive since April) 1
Reinhard (de,en)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 17
        [en]  (inactive since June) 41
Rune (da,en)
        [da]  (inactive since May) 6
        [en]  (active in July) 1
Sebastian (de,fr)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 789
        [fr]  (inactive since April) 1
Shaihulud (fr,en)
        [fr]  (active in July) 1806
        [en]  (inactive since April) 4
Sjc (meta,en)
        [meta]  (inactive since March) 4
        [en]  (inactive since May) 4659
Spino (es,en)
        [es]  (active in July) 1
        [en]  (active in July) 13
Stefan (sv,en)
        [sv]  (inactive since June) 14
        [en]  (active in July) 47
TJ (meta,de)
        [meta]  (active in July) 4
        [de]  (active in July) 4
Thomas (de,fr,en)
        [de]  (inactive since April) 18

        [fr]  (inactive since May) 1
        [en]  (inactive since June) 70
Topory (de,es,fr,nl,pl,sv,en)
        [de]  (inactive since June) 20
        [es]  (inactive since June) 2
        [fr]  (inactive since June) 2
        [nl]  (inactive since June) 2
        [sv]  (inactive since April) 3
        [en]  (active in July) 184

        [pl]  (active in July) 6551
Toto (de,ja)
        [de]  (active in July) 105
        [ja]  (inactive since June) 1
Victor (es,ru)
        [es]  (inactive since April) 1
        [ru]  (inactive since April) 6
Vinci (de,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 522
        [en]  (inactive since April) 1
Willy (meta,de,es)
        [meta]  (active in July) 33
        [es]  (active in July) 76

        [de]  (inactive since April) 9
Wing (de,en)
        [de]  (active in July) 229
        [en]  (inactive since April) 28
Wizzer (meta,en)
        [meta]  (inactive since March) 1
        [en]  (inactive since June) 37
Wshun (zh,en)
        [zh]  (inactive since April) 3
        [en]  (active in July) 543

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Sanford Forte wrote in small part:

>Jimbo wrote:

>>For your purposes, what kinds of textbooks would be most useful to you
>>as as 'pilot that proves the concept'?  Choose wisely, because you may
>>find yourself in two years holding a copy of whatever book you request
>>of us!

>Wow! This is what I like...action!

>I would start by taking a look at the math frameworks
>http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/math.pdf

Despite that they define "mathematics" as
"using abstract symbols to describe, order, explain, and predict",
I think that we could do this.

The introduction says that the framework is about "content"
as opposed to "pedagog[y]" -- which means that it won't tell us
what sort of pedagogical approaches that they're looking for.
So we may have to copy from existing textbooks at first,
if we want to ensure that we're acceptable to State bureaucracy.
(Naturally, we should avoid paranoia along these lines too. ^_^)

Mathematics divides into grades K-7 and grades 8-12 (beginning with algebra),
not into grades K-8 (Sanford says avoid) and grades 9-12 (Sanford says do).
To maximise our applicability while minimising the K-8 conflicts,
we might start with Mathematical Analysis (aka Precalculus),
last in the main sequence that most students are made to take,
and work our way both down and up from there.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database design and interwiki links

references: <benpvq$181$1@main.gmane.org> <3F105FFD.8090905@easynet.be> <beq7bq$580$1@main.gmane.org> <20030713003321.GA26679@tavaiah> <beqccc$rat$1@main.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote in part:

>Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>>There's no reason why one language's Wikipedia should do something one way
>>just because some other language's does it so.

>Why? The only reason Wikipedia exists in several languages is to make it
>accessible to speakers of other languages, not to create different
>content based on a certain audience. Ideally, the actual contents of the
>Wikipedias should be the same, only in different languages.

Ideally, yes.
Ideally, Wikipedia should be available in all languages,
with complete versions on all topics of human knowledge.
None of this is going to happen in /my/ lifetime.
One language's version of Wikipedia, while it develops,
shouldn't force the development of another language's version,
even though both are approaching the goal of complete coverage.
At least not until there's sound auto-translation software,
because humans aren't going to be willing to do the work.

>In
>particular, the set of covered topics (read: article titles) should be
>the same, because the set of expressible topics as well as the
>importance or relevance of each topic do *not* depend on language.

And if it isn't -- what then?  (Meaning forever, what then.)
Tomasz's plan for automatic interlanguage links,
whatever its flaws, at least addresses this possibility.
Your plan, however, won't allow certain links to be written at all
until the discrepancy between the wikis' organisation is sorted out.

Interlanguage links are the /first/ step on the road
to helping each language's version contain all the info
that each other language's version has --
it can't be held hostage to article organisation,
which on [[en:]] at least is rearranged often.
(Not to mention that it depends on [[en:]]'s naming conventions,
which themselves rely heavily on the /English/ language.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Duplicate user names

body:
Lightning wrote in part:

>I have since changed my idea bit though, I like timwi's idea of using the
>LJ-style userprop & userproplist tables. I reallythink that the user table
>should have as little columns as possible, say something like "e-mail,
>username, userId, password hash, registration date" and thats it. im even
>sketchy about registration date.

Actually, even e-mail isn't central to our user management.
Quite a few users have no e-mail address -- none is required.
I say "userId, username, password hash" -- that identifies the user.
The rest -- even e-mail -- is for specific tasks of one sort or another,
the material for userproplist.

-- Toby


body:
Toby Bartels writes:
> Despite that they define "mathematics" as
> "using abstract symbols to describe, order, explain, and predict",
> I think that we could do this.
-------
Absolutely! Really, most publishers now publish 'by committee'. Often, they
will hire several writers and content experts to create the book, and then
slap a well known person's name on it. They will also take books written by
single authors. The bottom line is that the talent available to Wickipedia
via the open source world is far, far, more capable on the whole than some
several authors hired by a commercial publisher.

>
> The introduction says that the framework is about "content"
> as opposed to "pedagog[y]" -- which means that it won't tell us
> what sort of pedagogical approaches that they're looking for.
> So we may have to copy from existing textbooks at first,
> if we want to ensure that we're acceptable to State bureaucracy.
> (Naturally, we should avoid paranoia along these lines too. ^_^)
>
> Mathematics divides into grades K-7 and grades 8-12 (beginning with
algebra),
> not into grades K-8 (Sanford says avoid) and grades 9-12 (Sanford says
do).
> To maximise our applicability while minimising the K-8 conflicts,
> we might start with Mathematical Analysis (aka Precalculus),
> last in the main sequence that most students are made to take,
> and work our way both down and up from there.
-----------
I'm going to make a call on Monday, to the state education frameworks
people, and see if I can rustle up some suggestions. Failing that - even
including that - your idea seems sound.

San
>
> -- Toby
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


body:
Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> * A global table for bidirectional inter-wiki links. People should not
>> have to add the same link to so many articles. In fact, taking this a
>> step further, people should not even have to enter text like
>> '[[fr:d?mocratie]]' into the article text when it's not part of the
>> article text. There should be drop-downs underneath the big textbox
>> listing languages, and little text boxes next to them for the target
>> article name.
>
> While it seems to be a very good thing, in fact it can't really work so
> because the relation between articles between the wikis is not a
> one-to-one relation
> For example on en:, the roman god and the greek ones share the same
> article but on fr:
> this is not the case, they have they own article.
> How a global table can resolve this sort of problems?

If the French Wikipedia has separate articles for them, it probably
means several articles are warranted, in which case the English ones
should be split to match. If not, the French ones should be combined. Or
is there a good reason why French *needs* them separate when English
doesn't?

If you have an answer to that, then use redirection pages. As I see it,
French has two articles [[fr:Zeus]] and [[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)]],
while English has [[en:Zeus]] and lets [[en:Jupiter (god)]] redirect to
that. What's wrong with linking [[fr:Zeus]] <=> [[en:Zeus]] and
[[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)]] <=> [[en:Jupiter (god)]]?

Timwi


body:
On Sun, Jul 13, 2003 at 01:58:51AM +0200, Timwi wrote:
> Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
> >Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>* A global table for bidirectional inter-wiki links. People should not
> >>have to add the same link to so many articles. In fact, taking this a
> >>step further, people should not even have to enter text like
> >>'[[fr:d?mocratie]]' into the article text when it's not part of the
> >>article text. There should be drop-downs underneath the big textbox
> >>listing languages, and little text boxes next to them for the target
> >>article name.
> >
> >While it seems to be a very good thing, in fact it can't really work so
> >because the relation between articles between the wikis is not a
> >one-to-one relation
> >For example on en:, the roman god and the greek ones share the same
> >article but on fr:
> >this is not the case, they have they own article.
> >How a global table can resolve this sort of problems?
>
> If the French Wikipedia has separate articles for them, it probably
> means several articles are warranted, in which case the English ones
> should be split to match. If not, the French ones should be combined. Or
> is there a good reason why French *needs* them separate when English
> doesn't?
>
> If you have an answer to that, then use redirection pages. As I see it,
> French has two articles [[fr:Zeus]] and [[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)]],
> while English has [[en:Zeus]] and lets [[en:Jupiter (god)]] redirect to
> that. What's wrong with linking [[fr:Zeus]] <=> [[en:Zeus]] and
> [[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)]] <=> [[en:Jupiter (god)]]?

There's no reason why one language's Wikipedia should do something one way
just because some other language's does it so. Forcing 1:1 correspondence
because it's easier to code with it, and generally dictating policy based
on purely technical reasons, is very rarely a good idea.

I think we should allow named multiple links and just do it automatically.

Markup:
fr "Zeus" says [[en:Zeus]]
fr "Jupiter (mythologie)" says [[en:Zeus]]
pl "Zeus" [[en:Zeus]]

Links on en (if nothing is specified for French and Polish):
[[fr:Zeus|French (Zeus)]], [[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)|French (Jupiter (mythologie))]],
[[pl:Zeus|Polish]]

If we have relation more complex than 1:N we will link too much.
For imaginary example:
Polish: [[Historia - lata 1918-1939]], [[Historia - lata 1939-1945]]

English: [[History - years 1918-1941]], [[History - years 1941-1945]]

[[Historia - lata 1918-1939]] links to [[History - years 1918-1941]]
[[Historia - lata 1939-1945]] links to both English articles
[[History - years 1918-1941]] links to both Polish articles
[[History - years 1941-1945]] links to [[Historia - lata 1939-1945]]


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 13, 2003 at 01:58:51AM +0200, Timwi wrote:
>
>>If the French Wikipedia has separate articles for them, it probably
>>means several articles are warranted, in which case the English ones
>>should be split to match. If not, the French ones should be combined. Or
>>is there a good reason why French *needs* them separate when English
>>doesn't?
>>
>>If you have an answer to that, then use redirection pages. As I see it,
>>French has two articles [[fr:Zeus]] and [[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)]],
>>while English has [[en:Zeus]] and lets [[en:Jupiter (god)]] redirect to
>>that. What's wrong with linking [[fr:Zeus]] <=> [[en:Zeus]] and
>>[[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)]] <=> [[en:Jupiter (god)]]?
>
> There's no reason why one language's Wikipedia should do something one way
> just because some other language's does it so.

Why? The only reason Wikipedia exists in several languages is to make it
accessible to speakers of other languages, not to create different
content based on a certain audience. Ideally, the actual contents of the
Wikipedias should be the same, only in different languages. In
particular, the set of covered topics (read: article titles) should be
the same, because the set of expressible topics as well as the
importance or relevance of each topic do *not* depend on language.

> Forcing 1:1 correspondence
> because it's easier to code with it, and generally dictating policy based
> on purely technical reasons, is very rarely a good idea.

As outlined in the above paragraph, my reasoning is not solely based on
coding and technical reasons. My greatest concern is consistency,
conformance to user expectation, and minimising user confusion.

Let's take a real-life example. I'm German, now suppose my English were
rather poor. I read some website which has a link to an English
Wikipedia article. I see the "Other languages:" list of links at the
top; I want it to go straight to the German version of what I'm seeing,
or what the original website intended to link to. I should not have to
make an extra decision (which of the several German links to follow),
nor should I have to worry that an article I go to will contain stuff
I'm not expecting to see, i.e. stuff the original website didn't intend
to link to.

Another example. Suppose I was bilingual and I liked to compare German
and English versions of articles for fun (or for some project or
whatever). So I read through a German article first. Then I click on the
link to the English article. I would expect there to be a link straight
back to the German article I had just read; if there were two links to
two German articles, I'd be confused, and I'd be unable to compare any
two articles not only because they are contentually not the same, but
because none of the three are even about the exact same topic.

> Links on en (if nothing is specified for French and Polish):
> [[fr:Zeus|French (Zeus)]], [[fr:Jupiter (mythologie)|French (Jupiter (mythologie))]],
> [[pl:Zeus|Polish]]

As I said above, I really don't think it's a good idea to load an
unnecessary decision upon the user (which article to go to), especially
when the links are somewhere in the middle of a long list of links to
all sorts of other languages.

> If we have relation more complex than 1:N we will link too much.
> For imaginary example:
> Polish: [[Historia - lata 1918-1939]], [[Historia - lata 1939-1945]]
> English: [[History - years 1918-1941]], [[History - years 1941-1945]]
>
> [[Historia - lata 1918-1939]] links to [[History - years 1918-1941]]
> [[Historia - lata 1939-1945]] links to both English articles
> [[History - years 1918-1941]] links to both Polish articles
> [[History - years 1941-1945]] links to [[Historia - lata 1939-1945]]

As you said yourself, that's linking too much. It would confuse users a
lot. I think in this case [[en:1918-1941]] should clearly link to
[[pl:1918-1939]] because that covers most of it. Then [[pl:1918-1939]]
in turn should have navigational links to what comes before 1918 and
what comes after 1939.

However, as you also said yourself, this was a fictional example. From
the impression I got, we're supposed to have one page for each single
year, one for each decade, one for each century, etc. I can see where
using arbitrary periods of time could lead to a heated POV debate
because people will think the boundaries are chosen with reference to
events that are the most important only to a subset of the audience.

Again, the contents of the Wikipedias should be the same. They should
only be in different languages.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special pages

body:
Please could a sysop or admin or someone update the following pages?

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Longpages
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Shortpages
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Wantedpages

on the German Wikipedia as well as the English. We've received
complaints about their out-of-datedness on the German mailing list.

Would it be feasible to set up a cron job that updates them
automatically during off-peak hours (say once every 24 hours)? (Sorry
for asking this again, but I didn't receive a reply to the previous time
I asked :-p)

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] stuck

body:
The  mailing lists admin interface and the french wiki
have been stuck for about an hour.

Could someone do something about that please ?

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