from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
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Daniel R. Tobias stated for the record:
> On 30 Sep 2006 at 10:12, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen"
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Personally I think a little bit of ignore goes a long way here. Tell
>>Seth to divest himself of the EFF pioneer award, and come back again,
>>methinks.
>
>
> Then he'd be notable as somebody who renounced an award, wouldn't he?
> I think the handful of people who refused, renounced, returned, or
> had revoked [Oscars | Pulitzer prizes | Olympic medals | Nobel prizes
> | Fields Medals] tend to be very notable for this fact.

It's become fairly clear that, once even a tiny number of Wikipedians
decide that you must have an article, it is all-but-entirely impossible
to get it removed or even cleaned up by working within the system.  Very
nearly the only way to proceed is by legal threats and OFFICE protection.

I would welcome a counter-example.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | If you are what you eat,
 sean at epoptic.com | I'm fast, cheap, and easy.
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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

body:
Ok, could we please all calm down on that now?

Taipei was chosen - that is a fact. They did great work like all other
bidding teams did. Instead of creating problems could we please look
forewards and help them to make it a great event? There is always only
one winner.

Are we a community or not?

Other events can be programmed of course - and having things on a
national level, for example something like an after Wikimaina (like it
was done in the Netherlands this year) would make sense, but I don't see
any sense to now discuss about obvious things. The Jury was known before
and I believe it was composed of people who know what they did and why.

So please: help Taipei or if you are not interested do nothing - but
don't hinder them from doing their work.

Thank you!!!

Sabine

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval of
 Gilekiwikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Excuse me?
>
> On 29/09/06, philip sampson <sampsonphilip at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> STOP !

I think he meant to say that maybe you could have spent a bit more time
thinking about your messages before you posted them. There's no rush. Then
maybe one post would have been enough, rather than three.

Anyway, I would rather have a list drawn up, or at least checked, by someone
other than Mark. In my experience, following Mark's advice on language
matters can annoy a lot of people.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] dwdiff - word by word diffs

body:
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/1913234

Interesting. Any use for wikitext diffs, you think?

- d.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jake Waskett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

body:
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 19:37 -0600, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
> > On Sep 29, 2006, at 3:26 PM, Jake Waskett wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
> >>> The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability
> >>> with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.
> >> What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of
> >> inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to
> >> show
> >> them.
> >
> > Go write the code.
>
> You're being needlessly brusque, and also misleading. Do you mean that
> only people who have the time and ability to actually do Wikimedia
> programming get to decide what Wikipedia looks like and how it
> functions? If I were to sit down and write the code to add a preference
> allowing users to add blink tags to all wikilinks, that'd go in without
> any discussion by non-coders? I wouldn't think so. Programmers with any
> sense of professionalism should pay at least a little attention to what
> the users of their software say about it.
>
> That all said, I just checked the source HTML and see that references
> have 'class="reference"' in the <sup> tags. I suspect a very simple
> stylesheet change is all that's needed, not something that would trouble
> programmers.

That would be great, if it worked, but as others have pointed out, it
might not be achievable.

Personally, I'm not familiar with the Wiki code, and I don't intend to
dive in and break it, but my suggestion needn't be too difficult to
implement. I'd be grateful if someone would forward this to the
appropriate list where developers can read it.

1. Add a 'reference_level' field to the users table.
2. When generating a page, read this field at the same time as
performing the new messages check. If the user is not logged in, set a
sensible default.
3. When generating the HTML for a <ref>, check that the reference_level
permits it. A straightforward implementation would have level 0 = no
refs, 1 = show refs. For extra credit, allow 'important' references to
be specified, and allow the levels: 0 = none, 1 = important only, 2 =
all refs.
4. Add appropriate user preferences.

Jake


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
	needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
On 9/30/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
[snip]
> For Ogg Vorbis there is;
> http://www.jcraft.com/jorbis/
>
> And with that you can play a Ogg Vorbis file without a player at the
> client side.
>
> The software is free to download. I can not be very difficult to inclued
> this in the wiki so that you have the option to listen to by a webbased
> player. A user good in templates can probably do that in in a couple of
> minutes. The only thing that really needs to be done is install JOrbis
> on the WMF server so that not an external hosted service must be used
> for this.

It's already setup on enwiki, linking to a modified copy on toolserver.

I set it up weeks ago and have been able to gather fairly little
interest in it... thus my frustration with people insisting that we
must use proprietary formats for ease of use.

Hours to talk abour unfree tools but not a second to build something real...


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
On 9/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>  That does not solve any problems. The problem is not that they want to be online. Many of them have their own websites which get considerable traffic. The problem is that they want to be on Wikipedia. That is all they want. And as long as they are not on Wikipedia, they will keep coming back, regardless of whether they are on Yellowiki or not.
>
The solution seems pretty simple, then.  Put them in Wikipedia.

In fact maybe we can beat them to the punch.  Create a verifiable
neutral article about them *before* they get around to it.

Wikipedia gets what it wants.  The companies get what they want.
Everyone is happy, except I suppose some people who calculate the
value of the encyclopedia based on the popularity of the article
titles.

Anthony


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
> fire.
>
> On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome to
> > read the history. It was created in November.
> >
> > Problem is, there is no such place.
> >
> > Hmmm.
> >
> > Danny

Are you suggesting that this is the proper solution to any
{{unsourced}} article?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

body:
On 29 Sep 2006, at 22:15, David Gerard wrote:

> On 29/09/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>> On 28 Sep 2006, at 19:22, George Herbert wrote:
>>> On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>>> So, the current situation is that
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York
>>>> contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and
>>>> unverifiable paragraph:
>
>>> I think that using a school website for additional descriptive
>>> information
>>> of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable.
>
>> I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's
>> view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.
>
>
> The reader will be interested in a summary of what the school thinks
> about itself. I don't see how that's not relevant to a useful article.

Yes - let's have that, but clearly marked as their self-image.
Facts about a school should come from an independent source.


from_name: Voice of All

body:
I'd be interested in helping with any sort of client & server side
development. Not only can it be more covert and difficult to analyize and
circumvent, but since sending script may sometime be easier than actually
running a server-side version, there is the chance that it might be easier
on the servers to implement something of this sort.

Tim Starling-2 wrote:
>
> Wouldn't it be better to apply the filter retroactively, i.e. to delete
> orphan articles with human confirmation some time after they are created?
> If
> we put in profanity filters to prevent bad page saves, Wikipedia would
> suddenly be overwhelmed with 5H1t, if you understand my meaning. But the
> current system of IRC notification and semi-automated reversion is
> strangely
> effective.
>
> Let's say for argument's sake that maybe there is a way to automatically
> recognise PR fluff, even if the best method is not by orphan status as
> geni
> has suggested. Then you can automate the process of deleting it. Display a
> big list of articles with a column of checkboxes, click "select all",
> select
> "CSD a7" from a drop-down list, click "delete". Wham, all gone. Keep the
> filters covert as much as possible, e.g. on the client side.
>
> These kinds of features are the things we're trying to encourage with what
> I've been calling "hybrid" development, i.e. simultaneous development on
> the
> client and server. Get the client-side developers interested, ask them
> what
> they need on the server side in support, and we server-side developers
> will
> see if we can incorporate it into an API or extension.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Corporate-vanity-policy-enforcement-tf2358125.html#a6582111
Sent from the WikiMedia Foundation mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


list: textbook-l

from_name: Martin Swift

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 05:08:59PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that
> our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.

Granted, this is an issue. Perhaps not so much that they don't look
like conventional textbooks, but that they are constrained by
Mediawiki syntax and XHTML markup.

There isn't much that can be done about it. I'd love to be able to
have more control over floats and such, but currently the markup isn't
more flexible.

> First, I'm distracted by
> the sidebar.

This can be customized by changing your stylesheet.

> Perhaps even more significant, out textbooks look like web pages. Even
> the downloadable PDF (screenshot at [1]) looks like a printed web
> page.

Frankly, I don't think the form of your screen-shot is bad for the
topic. Again, this can be modified by stylesheets (see:
  <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/media.html#q2>)
and wiki2pdf might allow for more configuration or layout options (I
don't know that software at all, though)

> Thes have this sidebar, which is not blank like ours, but
> contains important information, like additional figures, notes, and
> keywords for the paragraph they're next to.

Would something like the following be useful?
  <div style="display: none; float: left; position: relative; left:
  -160px; width: 130px; padding: .5em; border: thin solid red">
    {{lorem ipsum}}
  </div>

> There's a small
> book/chapter navigation bar on the top, and a list of headings within
> the page on the bottom (might not work in IE, but it's just a demo).

The "position: fixed" is neat, but not very easily incorporated into
the current stylesheet. Currently such navigation aids are added as
templates. You could create a class which, in some alternative
"reading-mode" stylesheet would render as in your mock-up.

> The key feature are sidenotes, which are currently done by manually
> hacked HTML, but could be done automatically.

Would you see the sidebar usage example above to be a hack? I don't
see why this needs an extension rather than a simple template.

Bottom line, your suggestions are certainly valid (at the very least
for some books).  As I see it, however, these can all be addressed by
using more fundamental markup and styling techniques.

Sincerely,
Martin

--
\u270C


body:
On 30 Sep 2006, at 03:09, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> Wikipedia has a unique _requirement_ for very dense references,
> _denser_ than those found in research papers or nonfiction books, so
> it is not surprising that traditional solutions are not perfect for
> Wikipedia, and that we will need to think of better approaches.

We also have more solutions at our disposal.

May preference is to use colour. There are many
possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
and light grey would be not supported or opposed.

Then uncited claims which were "obviously" true
would soon gain credibility, but contentious claims
would also be obvious.

As has been mentioned, a simple viewing option
could turn everything back to normal.


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Special Education

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_education

On 9/30/06, ROSC Volunteer <resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Does Wiki have a page on Special Education?
>
>   I can't not find one on Wikimedia. If someone can start the article or
> give me the URL, that would be great!
>
>   Thanks!
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done
> faster.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Special Education


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seth Finkelstein in the Technology Guardian

body:
On 30 Sep 2006 at 10:12, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen"
<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally I think a little bit of ignore goes a long way here. Tell
> Seth to divest himself of the EFF pioneer award, and come back again,
> methinks.

Then he'd be notable as somebody who renounced an award, wouldn't he?
I think the handful of people who refused, renounced, returned, or
had revoked [Oscars | Pulitzer prizes | Olympic medals | Nobel prizes
| Fields Medals] tend to be very notable for this fact.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: David Russell

body:
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Delirium wrote:
>
> They certainly don't look the same, unless the person "reviewing" the
> article utterly lacks any competence to review the article, in which
> case they should kindly refrain from doing so.  Anyone who has even very
> basic competence knows what is an uncontroversial statement that appears
> in numerous textbooks in their field.
>
> I don't agree with the expert-centric approach Larry Sangers advocates,
> but we don't have to have only people who have *no* idea what they're
> doing editing our articles either.
>
> -Mark

We are talking about /readers/ here, not Wikipedia editors. If a
/reader/ sees a particular unreferenced statement on Wikipedia, they do
not know whether the statement is unreferenced because:
a) Some idiot has made it up without any factual basis
b) It is 'widely accepted as a fact'

Your 'people familiar with the field will recognise it as a well-known
fact' argument doesn't really wash in this situation. The reason a
person would be reading a Wikipedia article on a subject is because they
_don't_ know enough about the subject. What may appear as a 'widely
accepted fact' to someone writing a Wikipedia article on a subject may
be nothing of the sort to an uninformed person seeking to use Wikipedia
to expand his/her knowledge (which is, after all, what we're for).

Cynical
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body:
On 30 Sep 2006 at 12:12, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:

> May preference is to use colour. There are many
> possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
> sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
> editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
> either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
> strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
> and light grey would be not supported or opposed.

An interesting possibility; but just how would the user interface be
done so as to allow editors to mark such preferences (which might
pertain to anything from entire articles to single words) without
requiring use of complex and bothersome command or markup syntax?
Some sort of WYSIWYG interface to highlight pieces of text and add
approval or disapproval would be desirable, but that would probably
require complex scripting that wouldn't be cross-browser compatible
for all users.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Richard Holton

body:
On 9/30/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
> May preference is to use colour. There are many
> possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
> sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
> editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
> either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
> strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
> and light grey would be not supported or opposed.
>
> Then uncited claims which were "obviously" true
> would soon gain credibility, but contentious claims
> would also be obvious.
>
> As has been mentioned, a simple viewing option
> could turn everything back to normal.

Please,  no!

This is  the sort of  "voting for the truth" that Colbert dubbed
"wikiality".

It is not a question of how many people think it's true, or vote for it to
be true. It's a question of reliable, verifiable sources.

Yes, we can go wonko about process, or smother articles with reference-love
(neither of which is good), but let's not encourage the view that whatever
most people believe must be the truth.

-Rich
[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: rfrangi at libero.it

body:
Yes. That Logo.

Snowdog

> Excuse me. Could you clarify what is the "logo from the Torino's bid" you
> mentioned? Do you mean the WM with a green W and red M on the left-under
> corner of Torino's banner?
>
> THD
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] the process that isn't written

body:
On 30/09/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't know what the prompt to write this was, but it was relevant
> recently on commons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Practical_process

> It's a damn, damn hard thing to help people see their own cultural
> assumptions, and to be constantly aware of your own.

- d.


from_name: Brad Patrick

body:
> In fact maybe we can beat them to the punch.  Create a verifiable
> neutral article about them *before* they get around to it.
>

True to your belief everything should be in Wikipedia, Anthony.  I disagree.

> Wikipedia gets what it wants.  The companies get what they want.
> Everyone is happy, except I suppose some people who calculate the
> value of the encyclopedia based on the popularity of the article
> titles.

You have it backward.  Whether we like it or not, people in the world
perceive they aren't somebody unless they are in Wikipedia.  Companies
especially so.  Nobody would argue publicly traded companies, Fortune
500, etc. count, I don't believe.  But walk a mile in our shoes for a
moment.  Every numbskull with letterhead on the planet believing they
have a "right" to have their brother-in-law marketing partner spam us
with corporate schmutz?  Please.

But honestly, where is your line?  What does it take to plunge off the
cliff of oblivion for you before something can be considered non-WP
worthy?

>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


from_name: THD

body:
>
>
> Should we deny that a bid has been choosen that copied even the idea
> of a logo from the Torino's bid? Even.
>

Excuse me. Could you clarify what is the "logo from the Torino's bid" you
mentioned? Do you mean the WM with a green W and red M on the left-under
corner of Torino's banner?

THD


from_name: Peter Jacobi

body:
Hi Mark, All,

Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> They certainly don't look the same, unless the person "reviewing" the
> article utterly lacks any competence to review the article, in which
> case they should kindly refrain from doing so.  Anyone who has even very
> basic competence knows what is an uncontroversial statement that appears
> in numerous textbooks in their field.

Just stumbled over another example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance

There were also other arguments for not promoting to GA
right now (e.g. relation to the [[Italian renaissance]])
article) but prominetly cricized was the lack of in-line cites.

Heck, this is an overview article. It should only contain
current widespread consensus to be found in major textbooks.

Yes, as specific scholars are mentioned, their works can get
a footnote, but that's not primarily a WP:V issue.

Regards,
[[User:Pjacobi]]

--
Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome to
read the history. It was created in November.

Problem is, there is no such place.

Hmmm.

Danny


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
 Robth wrote
> Yes, yes, yes.  Our articles need to come in with a chip on their shoulders,
> as it were.  There is no external reason to believe that what it says resembles
> the truth, no author or organization claiming responsibility for the text. The
> article needs to make a case for the information it presents being
> accurate. Don't
> just state facts, show the reader how they can confirm the accuracy of the
> statements.  Trusting a Wikipedia article requres a leap of faith; we want to
> minimize the distance of that leap.

Actually, I think an ultra-sceptical attitude is complete poison, when it comes to learning anything you don't already know. It is actually rather symptomatic of adult learners, that they have to know everything in full detail, before assenting to anything. Insisting on reading the fine print is a good life lesson, but it is hopeless when it comes to  self-education.

I contrast what is above with the point made by [[Frank Adams]], about reading survey articles: you should try first to get the general idea of what is going on.

I always think of WP articles as aspiring to be exactly that: good surveys. I hope it doesn't signify too much that [[survey article]] is still a red link. In such articles, anyway, it is assumed that there is a good biblography, but usually little footnoting.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
fire.

On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome to
> read the history. It was created in November.
>
> Problem is, there is no such place.
>
> Hmmm.
>
> Danny
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


body:
On 9/30/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 30 Sep 2006, at 18:33, Richard Holton wrote:
>
> > On 9/30/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> May preference is to use colour. There are many
> >> possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
> >> sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
> >> editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
> >> either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
> >> strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
> >> and light grey would be not supported or opposed.
> >>
> >> Then uncited claims which were "obviously" true
> >> would soon gain credibility, but contentious claims
> >> would also be obvious.
> >>
> >> As has been mentioned, a simple viewing option
> >> could turn everything back to normal.
> >
> >
> > Please,  no!
> >
> > This is  the sort of  "voting for the truth" that Colbert dubbed
> > "wikiality".
> >
> > It is not a question of how many people think it's true, or vote
> > for it to
> > be true. It's a question of reliable, verifiable sources.
> >
> > Yes, we can go wonko about process, or smother articles with
> > reference-love
> > (neither of which is good), but let's not encourage the view that
> > whatever
> > most people believe must be the truth.
>
> There is a difference between voting for the truth
> and showing which statements have been widely
> considered.

In what way would such a color-based interface reflect that difference? If
there was a widely-accepted but false statement in an article, how would it
appear based on this interface? How would such an interface help (or hurt)
in a hotly-contested article, like [[Intelligent design]] or [[George W.
Bush]]?

I just don't see such an interface contributing anything to the issues it
attempts to solve.

-Rich
[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


body:
"Daniel P. B. Smith" wrote

> I sometimes think that at least some people who object to citations
> do so because what they really want is to _establish themselves as
> authorities_ through social interaction with other page editors. That
> is, they want their Wikipedian colleagues to recognize _them_ as
> reliable sources, and agree that any fact inserted by
> [[User:Pantomath]] does not need a citation because everyone agrees
> that User:Pantomath knows everything.

That sort of thing is not the reason why I don't think that (to take a random sort of mathematical fact) the centre of a group being a subgroup doesn't merit a reference. I do think it would be clutter. I do think, also, that "if you know enough to ask the question, you know enough to answer it". If you understand what is at issue here, you can see that it is a reasonable statement with a quick proof. If not, looking at a book will presumably not help that much.

Also, I have to say that where I come from, priorities are different. Statements with undefined terms in are completely opaque. Therefore, getting pages up with definitions on is the way to increase well-founded knowledge. And until people know what is being talked about, they cannot possibly know whether they are on the right page, at all. This is a crunch issue. The Web contains huge numbers of technical papers with the latest stuff. What you want may be out there, but actually no one is polymathic enough to be able to grok it all. We do a pretty good job here of making technical literature accessible, and that access is more to do, in my view, with demystification of buzzwords, than by fact-checking zealotry. I'm all for purging errors, but not for referencing the bleeding obvious.

Charles

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subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Well, if we make it a new criterion, we shouldn't apply it retroactively. I
understand there was a time when sources didn't mean as much.

As for the unsourced articles that currently exist, we could do some very
long PROD deal with it -- articles tagged as having zero sources have three
months to get at least ONE SOURCE for any part of the article before it
qualifies for speedy. That's a generous amount of time.

On 9/30/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
> > fire.
> >
> > On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome
> to
> > > read the history. It was created in November.
> > >
> > > Problem is, there is no such place.
> > >
> > > Hmmm.
> > >
> > > Danny
>
> Are you suggesting that this is the proper solution to any
> {{unsourced}} article?
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


body:
"David Gerard" wrote

> Indeed. I wrote an [[WP:PRO|essay]] about this. Feel like applying
> some of the ideas in it?

I have an upmarket quote for you.

'Maladjustment in human affairs is a concomitant of change. Forms, procedure, and ideas outlive the conditions which gave them rise; disbodied they continue an independent existence. [...] The cri de coeur of a member of the [[Long Parliament]], "You will shout 'Fire, fire', be it in Noah's flood", describes one aspect of the ever-changing divergence between fixed ideas and a changing reality.'

[[Lewis Namier]], a 1952 essay "History".

Charles

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from_name: Delirium

body:
David Russell wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>They certainly don't look the same, unless the person "reviewing" the
>>article utterly lacks any competence to review the article, in which
>>case they should kindly refrain from doing so.  Anyone who has even very
>>basic competence knows what is an uncontroversial statement that appears
>>in numerous textbooks in their field.
>>
>>I don't agree with the expert-centric approach Larry Sangers advocates,
>>but we don't have to have only people who have *no* idea what they're
>>doing editing our articles either.
>>
>>-Mark
>>
>>
>
>We are talking about /readers/ here, not Wikipedia editors. If a
>/reader/ sees a particular unreferenced statement on Wikipedia, they do
>not know whether the statement is unreferenced because:
>a) Some idiot has made it up without any factual basis
>b) It is 'widely accepted as a fact'
>
>Your 'people familiar with the field will recognise it as a well-known
>fact' argument doesn't really wash in this situation. The reason a
>person would be reading a Wikipedia article on a subject is because they
>_don't_ know enough about the subject. What may appear as a 'widely
>accepted fact' to someone writing a Wikipedia article on a subject may
>be nothing of the sort to an uninformed person seeking to use Wikipedia
>to expand his/her knowledge (which is, after all, what we're for).
>
>
Well, that's why I think we *should* have review processes of some
sort.  Then if a reader sees an unreviewed article, they are indeed in
the situation you describe.  But if a reader sees an article that has
been reviewed as at least "pretty good" by people who know something
about the field, then they can rest assured that nothing obvious is
wrong about it.  For what it's worth, I do think we should have a
different process of reviewing than good/featured, but that's been
talked about at length before.

In any case, given references doesn't solve the problem you describe
either, because then the reader still can't determine without some
background knowledge whether this is a mainstream/reliable reference, or
a reference to a book written by someone with a decidedly minority
view.  That's why I think we should help readers out by having people
with at least some knowledge in the area the article's about give the
reader some indication of how good the article is---delegating all the
fact-checking to every individual reader simply doesn't work.

-Mark


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 30/09/06, effe iets anders
> <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Please... Why are we having these fights?
>
>
> Because this is the sort of thing that can come from
> setting it up as
> a competitive process.
>
>
> > Taipei has been chosen now,
> > and we can i think do two things: Accept that or
> not. If we do the
> > second, we will be fighting over this for weeks,
> months and maybe
> > longer.
>
>
> I suspect at least some of those not chosen question
> the transparency
> of the selection criteria and process. Saying "stop
> talking about
> this" doesn't stop them thinking about it.
>
>
> > Please stop fighting over who copied something
> from someone else. It
> > is NO use! In wiki it is *good* to copy the good
> things right? As long
> > as it is the idea of improoving your bid, it is OK
> imho. The bid it is
> > copied from won't be less good by that.
>
>
> I do like the idea of the wiki process being applied
> to bids. It means
> at least some effort is preserved for use by others.
>
>
> > The idea is not to *win* with
> > your bid,
>
>
> If that is the case, it is at odds with the word
> "win" being used all
> the way through the process, and with it being a
> competitive process.
>
>
> >  Please let's all
> > hope it will be a great conference, and don't make
> it harder for them
> > with all these fights.
>
>
> The competitive process by definition has a winner
> and several losers.
> The losers will be upset if the selection process
> and criteria appear
> not to have been transparent. Telling people to stop
> talking about it
> won't stop them thinking about it, especially if
> they feel their
> concerns are being dismissed rather than addressed.
> (I have no idea if
> their concerns are valid, but they certainly think
> they are.) And
> volunteers who feel ill-treated leave the project,
> which is damage to
> the project caused by using a competitive process.
>
> As I said, a competitive process will be inherently
> damaging. If
> there's really no other way than a competitive
> process, then fine, but
> don't be surprised when it has the side effects it's
> *obviously* going
> to have.
>
>
> - d.

I intially disagreed with you, david, but now I am
coming around to your way of thinking.   Everyone is a
volunteer doing there best in this.  I do not doubt
that this is true.  But I am beginning to think a
competitive process requires a higher level of
professionalism than can be provided by volunteers
doing their best.

Not that I think people should continue fighting over
the Wikimania 2007 selection.  But we should not stop
talking about this process.  We should start talking
about how future Wikimania's should be selected.
Perhaps the first task is to really define the
relationship between Wikimania and Wikimedia.  Is it
dealt with through a commitee?  Are there any Board
Resolutions that pertain to Wikimania?  What exactly
is the connection?

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
I do agree with Gerad's ideas, but I also think this
is not the place to be discussing what en.WP speedy
deletion criteria should or should not be.  I have
heard en.WP has an entire mailing list all to itself.

Birgitte SB

--Gerad's message--
Hoi,
We should before we want to even consider policies
whereby sources are
required consider what it would do to other projects.
Many of the other
projects do not have the maturity to follow the lead
of the English
Wikipedia they do not have sufficient content and
burdening the content
creation with this zeal would put a damper on the
creation of new
content. The idea that the English language sources
are universally
good
is problematic as well.

We should also consider how much work it is to source
all the unsourced
articles. I assume that the amount of time involved is
such that it is
not even feasible to source all English articles that
do not have
sources in half a year. When an article has one
source, it does not
follow that the article is sufficiently sourced.
Uncompletely sourced
articles are as bad or worse than articles that have
not been sourced
at
all.

I am afraid I could not disagree with you more.

Thanks,
    GerardM

James Hare wrote:
> Well, if we make it a new criterion, we shouldn't
apply it
retroactively. I
> understand there was a time when sources didn't mean
as much.
>
> As for the unsourced articles that currently exist,
we could do some
very
> long PROD deal with it -- articles tagged as having
zero sources have
three
> months to get at least ONE SOURCE for any part of
the article before
it
> qualifies for speedy. That's a generous amount of
time.
>
> On 9/30/06, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>
>>> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no
sources, nuke it.
With
>>> fire.
>>>
>>> On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com>
wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]].
Any admins are
welcome
>>>>
>> to
>>
>>>> read the history. It was created in November.
>>>>
>>>> Problem is, there is no such place.
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm.
>>>>
>>>> Danny
_______________________________________________
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http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/l

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subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that
our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.

Suppose I want to learn from a wikibooks textbook. I open a chapter
(sorry, a "module";-) and it looks like wikipedia. That is not bad in
itself, however, IMHO it has some drawbacks. First, I'm distracted by
the sidebar. If I want to learn about a topic, I don't want to go to
the "staff lounge" or the "community portal". And when I scroll down,
the sidebar is replaced by - a really blank space. That's all fine on
wikipedia, where you come to be part of the experience, or to look up
some topic, then leave. Learning from a textbook is another process
altogether.

Perhaps even more significant, out textbooks look like web pages. Even
the downloadable PDF (screenshot at [1]) looks like a printed web
page. I don't know what your textbooks look like, but most of mine
(the better ones, actually) don't resemble a web page sent to the
printer. Thes have this sidebar, which is not blank like ours, but
contains important information, like additional figures, notes, and
keywords for the paragraph they're next to.

I'm not sure if that layout is merely done to make the book longer and
thus more expensive, but I'd wager there's a good reason behind it. I
for one find these things useful and welcome our side-scribbling
overlords.

Long story short, I made a mockup [2] of an alternative viewing mode
for wikibooks. It currently features only a single page from the
Biochemistry book, but you'll get the idea. There's a small
book/chapter navigation bar on the top, and a list of headings within
the page on the bottom (might not work in IE, but it's just a demo).

The key feature are sidenotes, which are currently done by manually
hacked HTML, but could be done automatically. For this, I propose a
new extension, <sidenote> or the like, which would include each
sidenote. In normal mode, like it is now, it would be ignored, or
converted to a <div style='float:right'>, similar to a thumbnailed
image. In the alternative viewing mode, it would be rendered like the
mock-up.

The extension would likely be hidden by templates: {{sidenote}} for
normal text, {{sideimage}} for images with caption, {{sidealert}},
{{sidetip}} etc. with standard icons.

Two questions:
* Would this be something the wikibooks crowd would like to use?
* Would I have backup from the tech department (I write it, you turn it on)?

Magnus

[1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bookmockup/book_now.png
[2] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bookmockup/bookmockup.php


from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
First of all, we should think about what is Wikibooks made for: reading books or writing books. Your idea is not bad for the first purpose, but fails when we focus on the second one. My opion is that we should not make Wikibooks look like a 'conventional' book, because this will complicate creating and improving our textbooks.

Remember Wikibooks mission: we do not host ready books, we are a platform where books can be created and improved; this process never ends. Wikisource is for finished materials.

When someone wants just to read our textbook, we give him "print version" - all chapters in one, no sidebars and obsolete elements. I think our print versions are quite decent; I don't understand what's wrong with http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bookmockup/book_now.png; in my opinion it is great.

When it comes to sidenotes and sideimages (never seen such thing), I'm against them. In the example you have given, they only narrow place for text and look odd; textbooks I use in most cases don't have such things.

Regards,
--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Does it matter?  Can we just end the thread without
pinning the blame on anyone.  It is not just this one
thread, I had just noticed the en.WP conversations on
a major increase lately.

Birgitte SB

--- James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah... I was wondering meself why Danny posted this
> English Wikipedia info
> on the Foundation List.
>
> On 9/30/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I do agree with Gerad's ideas, but I also think
> this
> > is not the place to be discussing what en.WP
> speedy
> > deletion criteria should or should not be.  I have
> > heard en.WP has an entire mailing list all to
> itself.
> >
> >
> > Birgitte SB
> >
> > --Gerad's message--
> > Hoi,
> > We should before we want to even consider policies
> > whereby sources are
> > required consider what it would do to other
> projects.
> > Many of the other
> > projects do not have the maturity to follow the
> lead
> > of the English
> > Wikipedia they do not have sufficient content and
> > burdening the content
> > creation with this zeal would put a damper on the
> > creation of new
> > content. The idea that the English language
> sources
> > are universally
> > good
> > is problematic as well.
> >
> > We should also consider how much work it is to
> source
> > all the unsourced
> > articles. I assume that the amount of time
> involved is
> > such that it is
> > not even feasible to source all English articles
> that
> > do not have
> > sources in half a year. When an article has one
> > source, it does not
> > follow that the article is sufficiently sourced.
> > Uncompletely sourced
> > articles are as bad or worse than articles that
> have
> > not been sourced
> > at
> > all.
> >
> > I am afraid I could not disagree with you more.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> >
> >
> > James Hare wrote:
> > > Well, if we make it a new criterion, we
> shouldn't
> > apply it
> > retroactively. I
> > > understand there was a time when sources didn't
> mean
> > as much.
> > >
> > > As for the unsourced articles that currently
> exist,
> > we could do some
> > very
> > > long PROD deal with it -- articles tagged as
> having
> > zero sources have
> > three
> > > months to get at least ONE SOURCE for any part
> of
> > the article before
> > it
> > > qualifies for speedy. That's a generous amount
> of
> > time.
> > >
> > > On 9/30/06, George Herbert
> > <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's
> no
> > sources, nuke it.
> > With
> > >>> fire.
> > >>>
> > >>> On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com
> <daniwo59 at aol.com>
> > wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>> I have just deleted an article,
> [[Porchesia]].
> > Any admins are
> > welcome
> > >>>>
> > >> to
> > >>
> > >>>> read the history. It was created in November.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Problem is, there is no such place.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Hmmm.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Danny
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/l
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
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>

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subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Buttay cyril

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that
> our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
>
Hi,

I agree that the presentation of a wikibook is important, as someone is
supposed to spend more time on a book than on an article. The problem is
that I've never found a practical way to display the content of a book
on a webpage. In my opinion, pdf is better, because the complete book is
available as a single file (this is better for the user, not for memory
use!), the layout of the book is fixed by the editor, and the
typographic quality is (can) far better.

This is why I'm working at improving wiki2pdf , even if it is a slow
process...
> Perhaps even more significant, out textbooks look like web pages. Even
> the downloadable PDF (screenshot at [1]) looks like a printed web
> page. I don't know what your textbooks look like, but most of mine
> (the better ones, actually) don't resemble a web page sent to the
> printer. Thes have this sidebar, which is not blank like ours, but
> contains important information, like additional figures, notes, and
> keywords for the paragraph they're next to.
>
> I'm not sure if that layout is merely done to make the book longer and
> thus more expensive, but I'd wager there's a good reason behind it. I
> for one find these things useful and welcome our side-scribbling
> overlords.
>
Sidebar text, notes, keywords are indeed valuable for a book, as they
tend to "break" the strict layout, and give easy access to some
important information. I agree that a small set of extension might
improve this. That would be better than workarounds based on templates.

As far as I'm concerned, what I miss most (even in wikipedia, as I
haven't contributed to wikibooks yet!) is automatic numbering for
equations and figures, as well as a way to reference them in the text. I
can't imagine to write a technical book without these. This is bug 5600
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5600 .


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Wikipedias created

body:
On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 11:42:17PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> http://new.wikipedia.org/		Newar / Nepal Bhasa

Hee.

> http://roa-tara.wikipedia.org/		Tarantino

Hee^2.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


from_name: Manuel Gomez

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook style

body:
The real missing thing in Wikibooks is a way to define the structure of
the book, in a way understood by the software. Currently the only notion
of structure for MediaWiki is the parent-page/subpage relation, but this
is clearly insufficient. All the book contents, the ordering of chapters
(next, previous chapter), even the chapter hierachy if present (up, down
chapter), should be provided using wiki syntax and then profited by the
software in several ways. This is something I think comes implicit in
Magnus' proposal. As I see it, the important concept of his idea is that
of structure and navegability rather than the  viewing mode. The later
is something obvious once you have the first point implemented.

There is an extension already developed and available in [1] for
implementing this concept. Once we had the book structure defined,
MediaWiki and external tools, could make use of it for several
applications: better printable version, automated all-content pages,
automated TOC for the whole book, etc. I definitely think this is
something missing in MediaWiki for clearly fitting the Wikibooks goal.

Regards,

ManuelGR

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nigelk/Nav


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
 needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 30/09/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/30/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
>
>>> For Ogg Vorbis there is;
>>> http://www.jcraft.com/jorbis/
>>> And with that you can play a Ogg Vorbis file without a player at the
>>> client side.
>
>
>> I set it up weeks ago and have been able to gather fairly little
>> interest in it... thus my frustration with people insisting that we
>> must use proprietary formats for ease of use.
>
>
> I, and I assume most of those who saw it, thought it was an early demo
> - not something ready to roll. I also wasn't aware it ran under GCJ as
> well as proprietary Java.
>
> As such, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? ROLL IT OUT! SOMETHING USABLE! IT
> SHOULD BE ON EVERY OGG IMAGE PAGE!
>
> (The "about" will have to mention it works fine under GCJ and is
> Free-As-In-Stallman Software all the way down.)
>
> cc: to wikitech-l in case there's some technical hiccup to doing so
>
>
> - d.

The Vietnamese-language projects currently link to JOrbisPlayer on all
its OGG description pages. [1] We use a hack in order to make this work:
we have [[MediaWiki:Fileinfo]] call [[MediaWiki:Playfile]], passing the
MIME type as a parameter. If anyone creates another OGG player on the
Wikimedia Toolserver, we'd be happy to link to that as well.

[1] See, for example, the JOrbisPlayer link at:
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%ACnh:SCA_approach.ogg

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
 needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.


from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

body:
I wish to let you know that the logo is the official logo of Wikimania,
which you can find in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_(blue-red).svg

H.T.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of rfrangi at libero.it
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:40 PM
To: foundation-l
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

Yes. That Logo.

Snowdog

> Excuse me. Could you clarify what is the "logo from the Torino's bid"
> you mentioned? Do you mean the WM with a green W and red M on the
> left-under corner of Torino's banner?
>
> THD

___________________________________________________
 ??????? ? ????????????????
 http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/


from_name: Stephen Streater

body:
On 30 Sep 2006, at 18:33, Richard Holton wrote:

> On 9/30/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> May preference is to use colour. There are many
>> possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
>> sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
>> editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
>> either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
>> strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
>> and light grey would be not supported or opposed.
>>
>> Then uncited claims which were "obviously" true
>> would soon gain credibility, but contentious claims
>> would also be obvious.
>>
>> As has been mentioned, a simple viewing option
>> could turn everything back to normal.
>
>
> Please,  no!
>
> This is  the sort of  "voting for the truth" that Colbert dubbed
> "wikiality".
>
> It is not a question of how many people think it's true, or vote
> for it to
> be true. It's a question of reliable, verifiable sources.
>
> Yes, we can go wonko about process, or smother articles with
> reference-love
> (neither of which is good), but let's not encourage the view that
> whatever
> most people believe must be the truth.

There is a difference between voting for the truth
and showing which statements have been widely
considered.


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category Intersections - some early testing

body:
Timwi  wrote:

> ...
> I thought I had mentioned before (maybe not to you) that this query is
> unnecessarily inefficient (because it scans both categories completely).
> Why do you use this adventurous approach when there is a much simpler
> and more obvious one, which also happens to be faster?
>
> SELECT c.cl_from FROM categorylinks c WHERE c.cl_from IN (
>         SELECT c2.cl_from FROM categorylinks c2
>         WHERE c2.cl_to='Fantasy_films'
> ) AND c.cl_to='Disney_films'

Showing rows 0 - 8 (9 total, Query took 0.9231 sec) <-- took longer than the
count/group by query
SQL query: SELECT c.cl_from
FROM categorylinks c
WHERE c.cl_from
IN (

SELECT c2.cl_from
FROM categorylinks c2
WHERE c2.cl_to = 'Fantasy_films'
)
AND c.cl_to = 'Disney_films'
LIMIT 0 , 30

I tried your way before, an a smaller data set, and got basically identical
results for your way and mine.  Trying your way on the larger dataset (copy
of en), it appears it may be slower than mine.  I think I recall that when
you tested it, it was in MSSQL, and not MySQL.  If the efficiency is equal,
I like this approach becuase it scales seasily to intersections of more than
two cateogories.  It looks like the count/group by approach may be faster in
MySQL, based on this example.

Aerik


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia sidebar box for wikipedia.org

body:
On 9/29/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Clearly, in terms of communications between chapters and the base users
> of Wikimedia projects, it is important to offer information and
> organizational information in multiple languages.
>
> Remember, less than half of all Wikimedia content is written in English,
> and that percentage that is in English is increasingly becoming smaller.

And please remember it is I that would be the person who would spend
the longest time to seek certain language translators including the
ones which you call "obscure". Generally most of Wikipedians & sister
project editors are not interested in the Foundation issues or
precisely more interested in the project oriented issue. I don't speak
from mere assumption but from my daily interactions and experiences.

I agree with you generally, but without concrete proposals or
suggestions, it brings vains and frustrations.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
> fire.
>

Most of our articles do not have sources. Even the extream
deletionists would regard that standard as unreasonable.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Yeah... I was wondering meself why Danny posted this English Wikipedia info
on the Foundation List.

On 9/30/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I do agree with Gerad's ideas, but I also think this
> is not the place to be discussing what en.WP speedy
> deletion criteria should or should not be.  I have
> heard en.WP has an entire mailing list all to itself.
>
>
> Birgitte SB
>
> --Gerad's message--
> Hoi,
> We should before we want to even consider policies
> whereby sources are
> required consider what it would do to other projects.
> Many of the other
> projects do not have the maturity to follow the lead
> of the English
> Wikipedia they do not have sufficient content and
> burdening the content
> creation with this zeal would put a damper on the
> creation of new
> content. The idea that the English language sources
> are universally
> good
> is problematic as well.
>
> We should also consider how much work it is to source
> all the unsourced
> articles. I assume that the amount of time involved is
> such that it is
> not even feasible to source all English articles that
> do not have
> sources in half a year. When an article has one
> source, it does not
> follow that the article is sufficiently sourced.
> Uncompletely sourced
> articles are as bad or worse than articles that have
> not been sourced
> at
> all.
>
> I am afraid I could not disagree with you more.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> James Hare wrote:
> > Well, if we make it a new criterion, we shouldn't
> apply it
> retroactively. I
> > understand there was a time when sources didn't mean
> as much.
> >
> > As for the unsourced articles that currently exist,
> we could do some
> very
> > long PROD deal with it -- articles tagged as having
> zero sources have
> three
> > months to get at least ONE SOURCE for any part of
> the article before
> it
> > qualifies for speedy. That's a generous amount of
> time.
> >
> > On 9/30/06, George Herbert
> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no
> sources, nuke it.
> With
> >>> fire.
> >>>
> >>> On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]].
> Any admins are
> welcome
> >>>>
> >> to
> >>
> >>>> read the history. It was created in November.
> >>>>
> >>>> Problem is, there is no such place.
> >>>>
> >>>> Hmmm.
> >>>>
> >>>> Danny
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/l
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
	needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 07:04:36PM -0700, Minh Nguyen wrote:
>
> The Vietnamese-language projects currently link to JOrbisPlayer on all
> its OGG description pages. [1] We use a hack in order to make this work:
> we have [[MediaWiki:Fileinfo]] call [[MediaWiki:Playfile]], passing the
> MIME type as a parameter. If anyone creates another OGG player on the
> Wikimedia Toolserver, we'd be happy to link to that as well.

I'm a fan of Helix Player, myself.  I don't think there's a Windows
version of it, though.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts." - Paul Graham


from_name: Alison Wheeler

body:
On Sat, September 30, 2006 07:45, Gatto Nero wrote:
> I'm not saying that you were not allowed to copy or to take
> inspiration from the other bids.
> I just find it sad to make it in this way.

Could you just get a reality check here, and there's also a bit of the pot
calling the kettle back here. Your bid *also* copied ideas from other
bids, including london's, yet you haven't seen us complain. All the bids
were GFDL (because of where they were placed on meta - personally I'd have
been much much happier if the bids were developed in private by the
various teams and then submitted by email).

For instance; For London I added links to the articles about London on
every language's wp [1] timestamped 10:56, 10 September 2006. The next
evening you copied this! (21:36, 11 September 2006 [2]). Taipei waited
until [3] then at 07:54, 14 September 2006 you moved your list to the
exact same position [4] on the bid as ours!

On 20:10, 10 September 2006 we added a gallery of images of London already
in commons [5]. A gallery was added by Taipei at 00:54, 13 September 2006
[6] but then removed in favour of including the images individually.

Or maybe I should mention the use of flags? At 18:35, 14 September 2006
[7] I added them to our bid (indeed I had to create one! [8]) yet at
05:23, 16 September 2006 there was Taiwan using them too [9]!

We were surprised though that no other bid copied our welcome in multiple
languages [10] at the top of the bid (English, French, German, Italian and
Japanese) to make the point that London is very much a multi-lingual city
as we believe that Wikimania should reflect the babel of languages that
are spoken world-wide.

There are other examples too of bids taking ideas from each other (but I
don't intend to go through every diff - life is too short) but the point
is Wikimania - like all the other WMF projects - is a collaborative thing
too. I found it very flattering that many of my ideas were copied quickly
- it is the 'wiki way'.

Alison Wheeler

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=430653
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Torino&diff=next&oldid=431780
[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=next&oldid=433195
[4]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Torino&diff=next&oldid=433825
[5]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=prev&oldid=431053
[6]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=prev&oldid=432816
[7]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=433903
[8] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Icons-flag-eu.png
[9]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=next&oldid=434991
[10]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=432060


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
Hihi. Stay tuned. I feel in my bones a Grigori Perelman article AFD is
in the works. (Just joking, and for the record there should be a
snowballs...)

On 9/30/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> On 30 Sep 2006 at 10:12, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen"
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Personally I think a little bit of ignore goes a long way here. Tell
> > Seth to divest himself of the EFF pioneer award, and come back again,
> > methinks.
>
> Then he'd be notable as somebody who renounced an award, wouldn't he?
> I think the handful of people who refused, renounced, returned, or
> had revoked [Oscars | Pulitzer prizes | Olympic medals | Nobel prizes
> | Fields Medals] tend to be very notable for this fact.
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 30/09/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:

> > For Ogg Vorbis there is;
> > http://www.jcraft.com/jorbis/
> > And with that you can play a Ogg Vorbis file without a player at the
> > client side.

> I set it up weeks ago and have been able to gather fairly little
> interest in it... thus my frustration with people insisting that we
> must use proprietary formats for ease of use.

I, and I assume most of those who saw it, thought it was an early demo
- not something ready to roll. I also wasn't aware it ran under GCJ as
well as proprietary Java.

As such, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? ROLL IT OUT! SOMETHING USABLE! IT
SHOULD BE ON EVERY OGG IMAGE PAGE!

(The "about" will have to mention it works fine under GCJ and is
Free-As-In-Stallman Software all the way down.)

cc: to wikitech-l in case there's some technical hiccup to doing so

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
	needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On Sat, September 30, 2006 19:35, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome to
> read the history. It was created in November.

As a comparison, something that got dealt with earlier this year - where
there were inbound and outbound links but nobody (ie no regular editor)
had taken a look at the article;
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gransha&direction=prev&oldid=50468866

This became the subject of a media event in Northern Ireland when the
local politician discovered that - according to us - he was in the middle
of a major terrorist area. In fact it was and remains a very quiet area;
the article had basically been created and edited to extremes by local
schoolkids, but because it wasn't on anyone's watchlist it didn't get
'caught'.

The issue is, if an article survives the 10-30 minutes it remains on 'new
articles' it is likely to stick around unless you happen across it while
taking a random-article-walk. How we deal with articles 'getting away from
us' like the Gransha one did though I do not know ...

Alison Wheeler


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
I don't know what the prompt to write this was, but it was relevant
recently on commons.

It's a damn, damn hard thing to help people see their own cultural
assumptions, and to be constantly aware of your own.

Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

On 30/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can anyone think how to rephrase this better? Would it actually get
> through to anyone who needs to hear it?
>
> (I eagerly await all the people saying I should read what I wrote.)
>
> ====
> Cultural expectations
>
> These are the things we do that aren't actually codified. The feel of
> the project. The social structure. This stuff is process too, but if
> you contradict it you'll really upset people. Breaking a rule is just
> breaking a rule; but breaking a cultural expectation is breaking
> people's basic assumptions about the fabric of this small world of
> ours. And upset volunteers fade away.
>
> If you think you're keeping to the fundamental rules and the sensible
> processes but repeatedly upset people in the same way, your approach
> is ineffective. If you are in fact right, and cultural expectations
> are getting in the way of writing the encyclopedia, you've got a hard
> job ahead of you changing them. But that's the trouble with vision.
> ====
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/30/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In fact maybe we can beat them to the punch.  Create a verifiable
> > neutral article about them *before* they get around to it.
> >
>
> True to your belief everything should be in Wikipedia, Anthony.  I disagree.
>
In a perfect world "everything" should be in Wikipedia, I suppose, but
I don't believe we live in such a perfect world.  Please don't
misrepresent my position.

> > Wikipedia gets what it wants.  The companies get what they want.
> > Everyone is happy, except I suppose some people who calculate the
> > value of the encyclopedia based on the popularity of the article
> > titles.
>
> You have it backward.  Whether we like it or not, people in the world
> perceive they aren't somebody unless they are in Wikipedia.  Companies
> especially so.

So what?  Is the purpose of Wikipedia to tell people whether or not
"they are somebody"?  Of course it isn't.  Moreover, is the purpose of
Wikipedia to tell society whether or not a company is deemed notable
by a self-selected group of admins/AfDers/whatever?  I'd suggest this
isn't the purpose either.

> Nobody would argue publicly traded companies, Fortune
> 500, etc. count, I don't believe.  But walk a mile in our shoes for a
> moment.  Every numbskull with letterhead on the planet believing they
> have a "right" to have their brother-in-law marketing partner spam us
> with corporate schmutz?  Please.
>
Actually, my suggestion above was that we write the articles, not the
marketers.

> But honestly, where is your line?  What does it take to plunge off the
> cliff of oblivion for you before something can be considered non-WP
> worthy?
>
I believe there are lots of things that are non-WP worthy.  Please
don't misrepresent my position.

Anthony


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
> fire.

'''Porchesia''' is an island off the coast of [[Syria]] and
[[Lebanon]].  It is ruled by Lebanese government.  [1]

[1] Cassidy, Daniel. Porchesia: History of a Little-Known Island. Los
Angeles: Cambridge and Boston Press, 2005.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


body:
On 30/09/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:

> Please... Why are we having these fights?

Because this is the sort of thing that can come from setting it up as
a competitive process.

> Taipei has been chosen now,
> and we can i think do two things: Accept that or not. If we do the
> second, we will be fighting over this for weeks, months and maybe
> longer.

I suspect at least some of those not chosen question the transparency
of the selection criteria and process. Saying "stop talking about
this" doesn't stop them thinking about it.

> Please stop fighting over who copied something from someone else. It
> is NO use! In wiki it is *good* to copy the good things right? As long
> as it is the idea of improoving your bid, it is OK imho. The bid it is
> copied from won't be less good by that.

I do like the idea of the wiki process being applied to bids. It means
at least some effort is preserved for use by others.

> The idea is not to *win* with
> your bid,

If that is the case, it is at odds with the word "win" being used all
the way through the process, and with it being a competitive process.

>  Please let's all
> hope it will be a great conference, and don't make it harder for them
> with all these fights.

The competitive process by definition has a winner and several losers.
The losers will be upset if the selection process and criteria appear
not to have been transparent. Telling people to stop talking about it
won't stop them thinking about it, especially if they feel their
concerns are being dismissed rather than addressed. (I have no idea if
their concerns are valid, but they certainly think they are.) And
volunteers who feel ill-treated leave the project, which is damage to
the project caused by using a competitive process.

As I said, a competitive process will be inherently damaging. If
there's really no other way than a competitive process, then fine, but
don't be surprised when it has the side effects it's *obviously* going
to have.

- d.


body:
On 9/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>  What Gerard suggests is NOT a solution. There are reasons people are spamming Wikipedia and not adding content to Yellowiki. We are the fourteenth largest website in the world, while Yellowiki does not count in the top one hundred thousand. We have a consistently high google rating and our links ensure that they will have a high google rating, Yellowiki does not. We can offer some modicum of respectability, while they cannot Compare these two statements: "Look at me! I'm in the encyclopedia!" v. "Look at me! I'm in the phonebook! "
>
Doesn't this statement about google rating misrepresent how google
ratings work?  http://en.wikipedia.org/ has a pagerank of 9.
http://www.myspace.com/ has a pagerank of 8.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_Network has a pagerank of 0.
http://www.theweddingnetwork.co.uk/ has a pagerank of 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeBOX has a pagerank of 0.
http://www.edgebox.net/ has a pagerank of 2.  The fact that the main
page of the English Wikipedia has a high pagerank seems to me to have
absolutely no relevance to the fact that people want their companies
in it.

I think you come the closest to an explanation of why people want
their companies in Wikipedia when you talk about offering "some
modicum of respectability".  People want their companies in Wikipedia
because it's relatively hard to get a company in Wikipedia.

Anthony


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Hoi,
We should before we want to even consider policies whereby sources are
required consider what it would do to other projects. Many of the other
projects do not have the maturity to follow the lead of the English
Wikipedia they do not have sufficient content and burdening the content
creation with this zeal would put a damper on the creation of new
content. The idea that the English language sources are universally good
is problematic as well.

We should also consider how much work it is to source all the unsourced
articles. I assume that the amount of time involved is such that it is
not even feasible to source all English articles that do not have
sources in half a year. When an article has one source, it does not
follow that the article is sufficiently sourced. Uncompletely sourced
articles are as bad or worse than articles that have not been sourced at
all.

I am afraid I could not disagree with you more.

Thanks,
    GerardM

James Hare wrote:
> Well, if we make it a new criterion, we shouldn't apply it retroactively. I
> understand there was a time when sources didn't mean as much.
>
> As for the unsourced articles that currently exist, we could do some very
> long PROD deal with it -- articles tagged as having zero sources have three
> months to get at least ONE SOURCE for any part of the article before it
> qualifies for speedy. That's a generous amount of time.
>
> On 9/30/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
>>> fire.
>>>
>>> On 9/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have just deleted an article, [[Porchesia]]. Any admins are welcome
>>>>
>> to
>>
>>>> read the history. It was created in November.
>>>>
>>>> Problem is, there is no such place.
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm.
>>>>
>>>> Danny


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


body:
On 30 Sep 2006, at 20:52, Richard Holton wrote:

> On 9/30/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 Sep 2006, at 18:33, Richard Holton wrote:
>>
>>> On 9/30/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> May preference is to use colour. There are many
>>>> possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
>>>> sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
>>>> editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
>>>> either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
>>>> strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
>>>> and light grey would be not supported or opposed.
>>>>
>>>> Then uncited claims which were "obviously" true
>>>> would soon gain credibility, but contentious claims
>>>> would also be obvious.
>>>>
>>>> As has been mentioned, a simple viewing option
>>>> could turn everything back to normal.
>>>
>>>
>>> Please,  no!
>>>
>>> This is  the sort of  "voting for the truth" that Colbert dubbed
>>> "wikiality".
>>>
>>> It is not a question of how many people think it's true, or vote
>>> for it to
>>> be true. It's a question of reliable, verifiable sources.
>>>
>>> Yes, we can go wonko about process, or smother articles with
>>> reference-love
>>> (neither of which is good), but let's not encourage the view that
>>> whatever
>>> most people believe must be the truth.
>>
>> There is a difference between voting for the truth
>> and showing which statements have been widely
>> considered.
>
>
> In what way would such a color-based interface reflect that
> difference? If
> there was a widely-accepted but false statement in an article, how
> would it
> appear based on this interface? How would such an interface help
> (or hurt)
> in a hotly-contested article, like [[Intelligent design]] or
> [[George W.
> Bush]]?
>
> I just don't see such an interface contributing anything to the
> issues it
> attempts to solve.

Perhaps you could continue to look a little deeper.

A false but widely accepted item would show up as
having consensus agreement. A discussion on the
talk page by the enlightened few would be expected
to change this consensus - possibly including a link
to the discussion which included any cites so new
people could see how the consensus was reached.
This compares to the current system where such a
statement sits there without comment.

A false but not widely supported view, on the other
hand, would be much more distinct. In the current
system, it appears black and indistinguishable to the
lay reader from a widely known truth. In the colour
system, such an unsupported opinion would appear
as pale grey.

Even hotly contested articles contain many facts
agreed by all sides. The contested information
and the agreed information would be clearly
distinguished. This is an area where many cites
to support any opinion would be available, so
citations on their own would not resolve the
differences in the current set up.

So the issues it would resolve are
(a) to clarify which areas have few or many opinions
(b) to clarify which areas are contentious


subject: [Foundation-l] Six criteria for Wikipedia inclusion

body:
On 9/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/30/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > In fact maybe we can beat them to the punch.  Create a verifiable
> > > neutral article about them *before* they get around to it.
> > >
> >
> > True to your belief everything should be in Wikipedia, Anthony.  I disagree.
> >
> In a perfect world "everything" should be in Wikipedia, I suppose, but
> I don't believe we live in such a perfect world.  Please don't
> misrepresent my position.
>
I thought I'd expand a little bit on what my position is.  I can think
of six criteria off the top of my head for Wikipedia articles.  They
must be:

1) based on verifiable sources - anything which can not be written
about using verifiable sources shouldn't be in Wikipedia - this
criterion includes the concept of "no original research" - this is a
big part of what I mean by "in a perfect world...", as in a perfect
world we'd be able to verify anything.
2) NPOV - if an article is not written from a neutral point of view it
should generally be rewritten - however, in some cases perhaps it
makes more sense to simply remove the article - this criterion
includes the concept of barring autobiographies.
3) encyclopedic - this is perhaps the fuzziest criterion, but it would
exclude things like essays, lists of quotes, articles about words,
fiction, etc.
4) legal - due to various laws, including but not limited to privacy
laws and so called "intellectual property" laws, there are some things
we can't legally have free articles about
5) of a decent size - articles which are too short and will likely
never be expanded should generally be merged with other articles and
redirected.
6) in line with human dignity - this would prohibit disclosure of
certain types of private information, even in cases where it's
probably legal under US law to include the information - I also think
we should give the benefit of the doubt in borderline cases to people
who ask that private information, especially biographies, not be
included - however, I only think we should take this so far, and in
the case of legally disclosable and already widely available public
information I think the NPOV principle overrides any concerns about
disclosing negative information.

One criterion that I explicitly do not include is how popular
something is.  In fact, I think the less popular something is the
*more* useful it is to include information about it in Wikipedia.


from_name: zero 0000

body:
It is clearly true, and not at all silly, that some
facts in articles do not need sources to be given.
However, the criterion "widely accepted" suggested
here is not enough.  For a fact to not need a
citation it should be widely accepted, uncontroversial,
and very easy to check.  The last criterion is maybe
the important one.

For example, if an article mentions Paris as the
capital of France then it does NOT need to cite a
geography book as verification that Paris is indeed
the capital of France.  Similarly, an article should
be able to refer to the revolution of the Earth
around the Sun without citing an astronomy journal.

Zero.

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 9/30/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Does it matter?  Can we just end the thread without
> pinning the blame on anyone.  It is not just this one
> thread, I had just noticed the en.WP conversations on
> a major increase lately.

Rather than dismissing the discussion why not tell those of us less
connected with the other language wikis how this problem has been
completely solved [1] on those subprojects.

(1) I must assume that this is totally solved everywhere except enwiki
for you to be claiming that this thread is an offtopic enwiki only
matter.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
Please... Why are we having these fights? Taipei has been chosen now,
and we can i think do two things: Accept that or not. If we do the
second, we will be fighting over this for weeks, months and maybe
longer. I think Taipei made a good bid, and I am not in the position
to decide whether it was the best. It has been chosen, please let the
bidding team now proove that their bid was good indeed (we will never
know a comparison with Turin or London or Alexandria)
Please stop fighting over who copied something from someone else. It
is NO use! In wiki it is *good* to copy the good things right? As long
as it is the idea of improoving your bid, it is OK imho. The bid it is
copied from won't be less good by that. The idea is not to *win* with
your bid, but the idea should be to let the jury offer as much as
possible material to be able to make a fair choise for the best bid.
So please leave the harass behind, and let the Taipei people do their
job, let them work their bid out to a real wikimania. Please let's all
hope it will be a great conference, and don't make it harder for them
with all these fights.

Greetings,

Lodewijk

2006/9/30, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com>:
> On Sat, September 30, 2006 07:45, Gatto Nero wrote:
> > I'm not saying that you were not allowed to copy or to take
> > inspiration from the other bids.
> > I just find it sad to make it in this way.
>
> Could you just get a reality check here, and there's also a bit of the pot
> calling the kettle back here. Your bid *also* copied ideas from other
> bids, including london's, yet you haven't seen us complain. All the bids
> were GFDL (because of where they were placed on meta - personally I'd have
> been much much happier if the bids were developed in private by the
> various teams and then submitted by email).
>
> For instance; For London I added links to the articles about London on
> every language's wp [1] timestamped 10:56, 10 September 2006. The next
> evening you copied this! (21:36, 11 September 2006 [2]). Taipei waited
> until [3] then at 07:54, 14 September 2006 you moved your list to the
> exact same position [4] on the bid as ours!
>
> On 20:10, 10 September 2006 we added a gallery of images of London already
> in commons [5]. A gallery was added by Taipei at 00:54, 13 September 2006
> [6] but then removed in favour of including the images individually.
>
> Or maybe I should mention the use of flags? At 18:35, 14 September 2006
> [7] I added them to our bid (indeed I had to create one! [8]) yet at
> 05:23, 16 September 2006 there was Taiwan using them too [9]!
>
> We were surprised though that no other bid copied our welcome in multiple
> languages [10] at the top of the bid (English, French, German, Italian and
> Japanese) to make the point that London is very much a multi-lingual city
> as we believe that Wikimania should reflect the babel of languages that
> are spoken world-wide.
>
> There are other examples too of bids taking ideas from each other (but I
> don't intend to go through every diff - life is too short) but the point
> is Wikimania - like all the other WMF projects - is a collaborative thing
> too. I found it very flattering that many of my ideas were copied quickly
> - it is the 'wiki way'.
>
> Alison Wheeler
>
>
> [1]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=430653
> [2]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Torino&diff=next&oldid=431780
> [3]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=next&oldid=433195
> [4]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Torino&diff=next&oldid=433825
> [5]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=prev&oldid=431053
> [6]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=prev&oldid=432816
> [7]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=433903
> [8] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Icons-flag-eu.png
> [9]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=next&oldid=434991
> [10]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=432060
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
On Sat, September 30, 2006 21:20, effe iets anders wrote:
> Please... Why are we having these fights? ...
> Please stop fighting over who copied something from someone else. It
> is NO use! In wiki it is *good* to copy the good things right?

I'm sorry, Lodewijk, but did you actually read my post?

I quote ...
> 2006/9/30, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com>:
> Your bid *also* copied ideas from other bids, including london's, yet
> you haven't seen us complain.

> but the point is Wikimania - like all the other WMF projects - is a
> collaborative thing too. I found it very flattering that many of my
> ideas were copied quickly - it is the 'wiki way'.

Please don't see "fights" where none exist!

Alison Wheeler


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Porchesia

body:
I have posted this to foundation, but for those who do not know--

Today I deleted the article [[Porchesia]], which was created on November  23,
2005, i.e., 10 months ago. The article described an island off the coast of
Lebanon with a population of over 300,000. The languages are Arabic, Greek,
and  English.

I will gladly restore the article when someone finds me one source  verifying
the facts of this article. You might start by finding Porchesia on a  map.

Danny


from_name: Minh Nguyen

body:
Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 07:04:36PM -0700, Minh Nguyen wrote:
>> The Vietnamese-language projects currently link to JOrbisPlayer on all
>> its OGG description pages. [1] We use a hack in order to make this work:
>> we have [[MediaWiki:Fileinfo]] call [[MediaWiki:Playfile]], passing the
>> MIME type as a parameter. If anyone creates another OGG player on the
>> Wikimedia Toolserver, we'd be happy to link to that as well.
>
> I'm a fan of Helix Player, myself.  I don't think there's a Windows
> version of it, though.

Actually, the point of the links is that you don't have to download
anything (server-side players). For other clients, we link to our audio
help page. I suppose such a player would have to be on the Toolserver,
since otherwise it would be remote loading.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Wikipedias created

body:
Hello,

the following new Wikipedias have been created, as requested on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages

http://wuu.wikipedia.org/		Wu
http://mzn.wikipedia.org/		Mazandarani
http://new.wikipedia.org/		Newar / Nepal Bhasa
http://lbe.wikipedia.org/		Lak
http://eml.wikipedia.org/		Emilian-Romagnol / Sammarinese
http://bxr.wikipedia.org/		Buryat (Russia)
http://hsb.wikipedia.org/		Upper Sorbian
http://nov.wikipedia.org/		Novial
http://pag.wikipedia.org/		Pangasinan
http://bar.wikipedia.org/		Bavarian
http://bpy.wikipedia.org/		Bishnupriya Manipuri
http://diq.wikipedia.org/		Zazaki
http://zea.wikipedia.org/		Zealandic
http://roa-tara.wikipedia.org/		Tarantino
http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/		Zamboanga Chavacano
http://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/	Classical Chinese
http://cu.wikipedia.org/		Old Church Slavonic
http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/		Siberian/Nort Russian
http://glk.wikipedia.org/		Gilaki
http://cdo.wikipedia.org/		Min Dong

Best regards,

jens


from_name: Emmanuel HABUMUREMYI

subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
---------------------------------
 Nouveau : t?l?phonez moins cher avec Yahoo! Messenger ! D?couvez les tarifs exceptionnels pour appeler la France et l'international.T?l?chargez la version beta.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-01

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: David Russell

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

Delirium wrote:
> Well, that's why I think we *should* have review processes of some
> sort.  Then if a reader sees an unreviewed article, they are indeed in
> the situation you describe.  But if a reader sees an article that has
> been reviewed as at least "pretty good" by people who know something
> about the field, then they can rest assured that nothing obvious is
> wrong about it.  For what it's worth, I do think we should have a
> different process of reviewing than good/featured, but that's been
> talked about at length before.
>
> (snip)
> -Mark

Yeah but people still wouldn't know if the article had changed since it
was deemed 'pretty good'.

Cynical
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

body:
Hi Phoebe,

Thanks for the clairification, really appreciate. I think I should correct
my words as "It's the logo for Wikimania 2006".

Thanks and regards,
H.T.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of phoebe ayers
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 11:41 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

FYI, that lovely logo was designed by Ben Yates (tlogmer) for Wikimania
2006, and the red and blue colors were chosen for 2006 out of a whole
spectrum of possibilities. AFAIK there's not been talk of making it "the
official logo" for future Wikimanias, though there's no reason why it
couldn't be -- it seemed to print and scale quite well, and I heard quite a
bit of unsolicited praise for it :)

best,
phoebe

On 9/30/06, Hsiang-Tai Chien <htchien1225 at yahoo.com.tw> wrote:
>
> I wish to let you know that the logo is the official logo of
> Wikimania, which you can find in
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_(blue-red).svg
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_%28blue-red%29.svg>
>
> H.T.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org ] On Behalf Of
> rfrangi at libero.it
> Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:40 PM
> To: foundation-l
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
>
> Yes. That Logo.
>
> Snowdog
>
> > Excuse me. Could you clarify what is the "logo from the Torino's bid"
> > you mentioned? Do you mean the WM with a green W and red M on the
> > left-under corner of Torino's banner?
> >
> > THD

___________________________________________________
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 http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsing database dumps

body:
"Platonides" <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:efk2vt$1gk$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> "Mark Clements" wrote:
> > As a separate, but related question, why is the namespace not given as
> > part
> > of the page information?
> >
> > e.g.
> >    <title>Help:Contents</title>
> >    <namespace>12</namespace>
> >    <pagetitle>Contents</pagetitle>
> >
> > Surely this would be more useful when it comes to wider application?
> >
> > - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
>
> I'd add it there as <title ns="12">Help:Contents</title>  (undefined
> parameter meaning 'old xml version', not main namespace)
> Giving title, namespace and pagetitle is redundant and should be avoided.
It
> can be several Mb for uncompressed dumps.

That's a pretty good solution, although one of the issues is that the title
includes the namespace, which needs to be removed to get the actual page
title. I feel that the <page> section should be complete in and of itself,
without requiring the header section mapping namespace names to ids. Without
knowing the mappings (ns to ns-title) that are present in the header, you
cannot interpret the title unambiguosly, for example <title ns="0">Star
Trek: The Next Generation</title> relies on the parser knowing that ns-0 is
not called 'Star Trek' in order to be interpreted properly.

How about <title ns="12" ns-title="Help">Contents</title>?

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)