from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mediawiki 1.4, images tarball

body:
Folks,

  I have been trying out the new feature of having the interface in one
  language while reading wikipedia in another.

  I have found some small bugs.

  While the interface is set to French in my preferences, the English
  wikipedia reports "Bas? sur le travail de $1." at the top of
  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=xx

  Obviously a parameter missing somewhere.

  Also, at the bottom of any page,

     Derni?re modification de cette page : 9 jan 2005 ? 21:45. All text is
     available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see
     Copyrights for details).

  Perhaps the License description should be in French too.

  On a different subject, I see that the images tarball has ballooned
  from 2.5 Gig in March 2004 to 15 Gig Jan 2005.

  Wow.

  I would /love/ an rsync interface to this archive - downloading the
  whole thing to get the updates is rapidly becoming unmanageable.

  I put snapshots of wikipedia down in South African schools that do not
  have realtime access to Internet - and it is proving very popular. My
  distribution mechanism has become a hard drive, with Linux, mysql,
  mediawiki, and the wikipedia tables and images pre-installed, and
  either mailed or carried to the school.

  I download the wikipedia frontpage nightly and fix up the links to
  point to the local snapshot - give it a fresh, newsy feel. Some links
  do not work, of course, but things like the Featured Article work
  well, and non-bolded links in the News items and Recent articles.

  Any local edits are lost, of course, when I update them (disk swap).

Cheers,     Andy!

http://wizzy.org.za/
[[en:User:Wikiwizzy]]

~~~~ :wq!


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A challenge to the integrity of wikipedia

body:
On Jan 13, 2005, at 9:51 AM, Joseph Reagle wrote:

> On Thursday 13 January 2005 01:11, Tim Starling wrote:
>> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>>> http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710
>
> This is a bit more abstract, but I was recently exploring some
> concepts with
> respect to Wikipedia and intelligent design as well.
>
> http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/epistemological-authority
> 2005 Jan 06 | Epistomological Authority
>

Thanks, linking to it now in the post.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transform 'talk/discussion' pages to real forum

body:
Philippe Elie wrote :

> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 at 00:06 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> I agree, did you get a look at extensions/wikiforum.php written by
> aoineko ?
>
> In short words it add a new namespace Thread and a special page Forum.
> This page display links to Y last modified page in this namespace + X
> last modified page displayed inline (X < Y). Page are normal page so
> can be moved get history etc. It seems a much simpler solution to
> this problem. A few things should be added, like a link in each page to
> the Special page, perhaps some change to Search only in this namespace
> when doing a search from a page in this namespace. Last time I tried
> thread names with accented char was broken too.
>
> Note this was not intended as a replacement of talk page but just as
> replacement of village pump. Anyway I don't see any real use of forum
> like things for talk page except if we want to start to dicuss more than
> to work :)
>
> Aoinkeo any progress with wikiforum ?
>
> -- phe

I was too busy with my job so wikiforum didn't progress since last time
you test it.
I'll try to fix the invalid title problem as soon as possible but I'd
really appreciate if someone activate this extension on test server that
everybody may able to test it.

Aoineko


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikitech-l] Information Architectures

body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:02:17 +0100, paul at immediart.com
<paul.youlten at gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to start a wiki where users have the option to use a different
> language front-end - but all the data is held in one central database. So if
> I search from the German start page - I might get results that were
> originally added in Spanish or French - as well as German.
>
> Is there an elegant way of achieving this?

I am not sure if I understand your question, but since MediaWiki 1.4,
each user can choose his interface language in his preferences. So
that you can have one wiki site (with one database), but users can see
the interface in any language they want.

-- [[ cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Good work!

body:
Since there are thousands of reports of slowdowns, database errors, etc,
from time to time there are good news :-) I got a few reports from France
where, after the new squids were installed, wikipedia is faaaast.
Congratulations to the developers!

Alfio


list: wikien-l

from_name: Stacey Greenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching errors get copied and mirrored

body:
When I first updated the Primate pages to use a 2001 taxonomy, I
accidentally typo'd genus ''Pseudopotto'' as ''Psudopotto''. Recently
I fixed the error. Googling, I can find all the mirrors that have
picked up the error but which haven't yet gotten a more recent copy,
as well as 'pedias that have copied and/or translated it, maintaining
the error. Although it doesn't show on Google, Wikispecies even copied
my mistake. I feel so honored. *grins*

yours in amused ramblings,
[[en:User:UtherSRG]]


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wiktionary-l] portal page

body:
Of course you have my full support on this.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> For wikipedia they changed www.wikipedia.org to become a portal to show
> that wikipedia is a project in many languages. This is to show that
> wikipedia is not only English as many people think. The same is true for
> the wiktionary; there are many wiktionaries and, in the same manner as
> we have with wikipedia I propose to have wiktionary.org point to the
> page that can be found on META
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_portal
>
> It took the wikipedia crowd two years to get to the point and change
> things. I expect that people will have the same arguments why they think
> wiktionary means en:wiktionary. However, wiktionary is much less known
> than wikipedia and, the other wiktionaries like pl: with over 28.000+
> and gl: with 11.000+ prove that en: with 52.000+ is not the only kid on
> the block.There are also 9 others in between 1.000+ and 10.000- who
> emphasize the point.
>
> So I hope that we can agree to have a similar portal for wiktionary as
> we have for wikipedia.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

--
"La n?fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 05:52:19 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> I would also like to add that NerdyPC has been mentioned in an article of The
> Hindu, the Online edition of India's National Newspaper, Monday, Nov 08,
> 2004: http://www.hindu.com/biz/2004/11/08/stories/2004110800631500.htm

Not to burst your bubble, but if you look at the context for the
mention you'll see it's Wikimedia itself which pointed to your site..

"Check out this MediaWiki link
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki) that lists out
several links to public Wikis created using the MediaWiki's Wiki
engine. Links to a variety of Wikis such as NerdyPc (Computer hardware
review Wiki- http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Main_ Page) and
SocSci (Social Science
Wiki-http://mads.warhead.org.uk/socsci/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) are
included in the list."

Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

body:
I think that one of the things we need to be absolutely certain about
is that when we do show an error page, it is not ugly but rather a
direct appeal for more resources to solve the problem.  I am told that
hardware and MediaWiki software are not the problem, but load
balancing, and this takes developer time and resources to figure out.

One thing we might do here is think about how we might apply some
resources to developer/admin recruitment.

Here's the basic argument: traffic can grow very quickly.  Adding new
authors is very easy.  Part of the whole point of a wiki is that new
people can get involved easily.  But growing the number of
developers/admins takes time, because there's a steep learning curve
for people to get involved.  So it might be the case that over time,
this aspect of things lags behind.

And of course when there is too much work for too few people, it isn't
as fun anymore.

When I'm at Fosdem next month, a *big* part of my talk will be
focussed on this: a sales pitch to potential devs to get involved.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site (NSK)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I have no hesitation in reverting this variety of edit as spam, and usually
> in blocking the IP if it's an anon. I fully expect to continue as well.
> Because it is spam.

Agreed fully.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> > Anthere wrote:
> > > Brion Vibber is blocked on meta for "calling people names and
> > > threatening them with banning".
> >
> > He blocked himself. Don't worry Brion, I'm getting the joke, even if
> > no-one else is.
>
> I used to block myself all the time on my work computer. But it wasn't a joke -
> my work productivity was on the line. :)

I heard that on en wikipedia there is now a rule against blocking yourself.  I'm
tempted to violate it just to see if I get hauled before the ArbCom. :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Frando

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Transform 'talk/discussion' pages to real forum

body:
Rowan Collins schrieb:
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:51:32 +0100, Frando <frando at xcite-online.de> wrote:
>
>>My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real forum, as known
>>from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.
>
>
> I think everyone will agree that some move to incorporate the
> advantages of forum systems within the context of the wiki would be a
> good idea. Let's face it, wikis just *aren't* suited to linear
> discussions. *But* the fact that everything within a MediaWiki wiki is
> - well, within the wiki - has it's advantages too, and I (and, I
> suspect, many others) would be wary of just plain ripping out the
> discussion pages and putting a forum in instead. Better to improve
> what we have than to replace one set of flaws with another.
>
>
>>The forum structure could be like this:
>
> <snip>
>
> This is where your thinking is already diverging from mine - wikis
> don't have a hierarchical structure of this sort, and for good reason.
> One of the longest-standing concepts of a wiki is that, because
> everything can be editted, everything can be "refactored" -
> reorganised, renamed, disassembled and put together in a different
> order, summarised, combined, split...
>
> Although MediaWiki's use of discussion pages has already diverged from
> that original concept (where discussions are simply "turned into" an
> article about the subject under discussion), there is still a definite
> feeling that things are "fluid". And a discussion page on MediaWiki is
> still just that - a page full of discussion, which can be linked to or
> not by any related page you feel like, but doesn't need to have a
> "place in the universe" just *in order to exist*. [Hierarchies are
> useful, but why should there have to be any one definitive hierarchy?]
>
> Of course, you then have a section of the hierarchy labelled "subforum
> for each article" - since the articles aren't hierarchical, this has
> to be one big flat structure; so why do we not just have one big flat
> structure for the whole site? [BTW, I'm not sure what you are
> referring to by "portals" here, but that's a minor point]
>
>
>>I think this way the discussions would be much more effective and
>>purposeful.
>
>
> I agree with the "effective" bit, in as much as they'd be using tools
> more suited to discussions rather than anything else. I'm not so sure
> it would make them any less "purposeful" though, since people seem
> quite happy to define the purpose of a conversation under the current
> system.
>
>
>>You are here: [Wikipedia Forum] -> [Articles] -> [Foobar] -> [Delete
>>this article?]
>
>
> Are the first two steps of that example really useful? Effectively
> they tell you "you are in Wikipedia" and "this is the discussion of an
> article", both of which are clear from all sorts of explicit and
> implicit parts of the current design [and if they aren't clear enough,
> they can be]. This may seem like nit-picking, but what I'm getting at
> is that the remaining two are also available in the current system, in
> the sense that the page Talk:Foobar contains all the discussion about
> "Foobar", and everything under the heading "Delete this article?" can
> be editted as a section, referenced directly ("[[Talk:Foobar#Delete
> this article?]]"), etc.
>
>
>>The most important thing is that the discussion is really organized in
>>forums, subforums, threads and posts, EXACTLY the way it is in the known
>>Burning Boards.
>
>
> The thread and post model is certainly useful. But as for the forum
> and subforum one, I'm far from convinced. Thus, I can't agree with
> your "EXACTLY".
>
>
>>Because currently you hardly find ever a real discussion, i.e. about
>>feature requests. Many people out there have fantastic ideas how to
>>improve wikipedia ... so a real discussion forum would be great.
>
>
> Well, for feature requests about the *software*, we have an
> installation of BugZilla, because the developers find it useful for
> tracking things. For ways of improving Wikipedia, the best place is
> probably the "Village pump", or its equivalent in other languages and
> projects; that has plenty of discussions on it. Or, of course, you can
> take advantage of this being a wiki and *do* the thing you're
> suggesting; then people can discuss its merits with you if they feel
> the need.
>
>
>>Or when somebody just doesnt understand a part of an article, he could
>>just start a new thread in the article's forum and get an answer...
>
>
> They can do that already: click "discussion", click "edit" or "+",
> type your question, click "save". That's not to say we couldn't do
> with better features for tracking the answers (as a simple one, how
> about seperating watchlists by namespace? or, more radically, how
> about giving "sections" enough real existence that the software can
> answer questions like "when was the last edit *to this section*?"?)
> and all sorts of other things, but to imply you need a forum before
> you can ask a question is just wrong.
>
>
> Like I say, I don't want to dispute the fact that there are definite
> advantages of forums/bulletin boards which a page on a wiki really
> can't emulate; but I don't agree that *structure* is one of them. In
> fact, I would argue that a wiki can give *better* structure in some
> cases, simply because it is not rigid, and you can create new kinds of
> relationships between pages and sections just by describing them.
>
> "Eloquence" has described a kind of "ideal world" discussion system at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads, and I think I agree with
> the advantages stated there: basically, a threaded discussion gives a
> solid meaning to "discussions" and "comments", allowing information
> about those to be processed and manipulated; and, crucially, allowing
> them to be "watched".
>
> The exact balance between solid relationships and complete editability
> is a difficult one to get right, and LiquidThreads certainly *sound*
> good, but might be very hard to get right in practise. One of the key
> problems, for instance, is how to avoid the system becoming so complex
> that people are put off taking part in discussions because they don't
> understand the proliferation of options, views, controls, special
> cases, etc, with which they are presented.
>
> So my opinion is that wikis can definitely learn something from
> forums, but I think forums could well learn something from wikis too.
>
> [This protracted ramble brought to you by my tired and distracted
> brain. We apologise for any boredom caused.]

I read the infos about LiquidThreads, and i've to say: it's IMHO simply
perfect. If i'd known about this project, I wouldn't have started this
discussion, because at the moment I think LiquidThreads is still *much*
better than my proposal  ;)
So, I think this discussion has not to be continued.
If i read correctly, a release of LiquidThreads will only be available
with the release of MediaWiki 2.0. I read about MediaWiki 2.0 the first
time a few days ago, is there already a code available? Who is mainly
responsible for this project? Where are more infos available?

I have dealt with the MediaWiki software for a few weeks now, and i've
to say, it's partly really very unlogically organized code ;)
So IMHO MediaWiki 2.0 is a real great project. This time, the main
target should be - from the beginning on - perfect extensibility,
logically structured code (1 parser class in 1 file ;) ), increase of
performance and so on ..

[Frando]


from_name: Sj

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:25:05 -0800 (PST), Rich Holton
<rich_holton at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We are invited to help, but given no indication how we might do that.

I strongly agree with this.  Can we please put up a donation banner?

The only thing more frustrating than a prolonged speed problem is
having people say "we're working it out; just come back soon".   Even
if donations won't fix the immediate cause of this week's slowdown,
they will definitely improve speed in the future and will make users
feel better.

> However, I am becoming quite concerned about the recent performance
> issues on en.wikipedia. I don't know if there are similar issues with
> other projects or languages.

It seems pretty universal, unless you're connecting via the French
squids.  I agree that it has been bad for an *awfully* long time, and
we should make sure that this never happens again.  I've had many
quick 15-minute intervals this past week where I was at a machine with
time to work on WP projects, and that was never enough time to get
anything done.

We should also consider some method of allocating "dedicated
connections" to people for slots of time; I could make very productive
use of 5 minutes of a fast connection, rather than trying to load a
set of pages sporadically for eight hours.

+sj+


body:
It might be neat to have a mirrors project that keeps track of these
things, watching how frequently different sites update, keeping track
of their contact info and whether they've opted to get feedback from
us about copyvios, etc.

sj

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:34:56 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Stacey Greenstein wrote:
>
> >When I first updated the Primate pages to use a 2001 taxonomy, I
> >accidentally typo'd genus ''Pseudopotto'' as ''Psudopotto''. Recently
> >I fixed the error. Googling, I can find all the mirrors that have
> >picked up the error but which haven't yet gotten a more recent copy,
> >as well as 'pedias that have copied and/or translated it, maintaining
> >the error. Although it doesn't show on Google, Wikispecies even copied
> >my mistake. I feel so honored. *grins*


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	Wikipedia quoted on air! (without credit, unfortunately!)

body:
On this morning's phone-in on BBC Radio Five Live, about the furore
about Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party, the
host, Victoria Derbyshire, read a history of the swastika's use in
eastern religions -- I thought "that sounds familiar", and sure enough
it turns out to be the last paragraph of the introduction of our
[[Swastika]] article, with a couple of sub-clauses omitted.

You can hear it on "Listen again" at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive_aod.shtml?morning# until
tomorrow's show goes up -- click the +15 minutes button three times as
soon as the programme begins, and you'll be right in the middle of the
quote.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Puddl Duk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Searching source code highlighting plugin

body:
> Does anyone know a source code highlighting plugin
> for Wikimedia?
>
> axel
>

For windows;
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/english/download.html

Crimson editor is free, and has built in highlighting
for php and other languages.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Rich Holton <rich_holton at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We cannot allow en.wikipedia (and perhaps others) to languish for days
> with horrible response times and frequent, ugly user errors. We must
> quickly determine what we need to do to remedy this situation, and
> quickly act to implement the remedy.

We have grown to the point where money for hardware really isn't the issue.
Whenever we need money we have been able to raise it. [ASIDE: as of 31 Dec
there was over US$30,000 in the bank and today there is over US$17,000 in
PayPal - not to mention what the German Chapter has.] In early February we have
our next donation drive planned.

The issue as I see it, is that we are now asking too much of too few volunteer
developers and none of them can be on-site at the colo. Thus I think it is the
time to consider hiring one full time or two of them part time to perform
server maintenance tasks for us that currently are not done in a timely manor
(esp the on-site stuff). Our budget is now so big ($US80,000 last quarter) that
the addition of one or two employees under contract would not be too much of a
burden. Neither would some up-front relocation money.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Delirium

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

> This is a security flaw in wikipedia's process, the argument of open
> source projects is that flaws are easily discovered, reported, and
> dealt with. The argument of proprietary projects is that such flaws
> are best dealt with by small selected groups of people out of reach of
> others.

There is also an argument over what a "flaw" is.  I imagine people on
your side of the debate would have been arguing, were this 1965, that
our article on [[homosexuality]] ought to be fully scientific, drawing
on the medical consensus that homosexuality was a mental illness
(specifically a paraphilia), and clinically describe it symptoms in
accordance with the standard consensus text on the subject (the
_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_), perhaps at
most mentioning as an aside that some activists disagree with this
viewpoint ("but it should be noted that these activists do not hold
medical degrees").

Not that I think intelligent design makes any sense whatsoever, but I
don't think we ought to write our articles from a hardline
the-current-consensus-of-scientists-is-everything point of view.

-Mark


from_name: Lightning

body:
i've seen one... i know they exists. someone on this list e-mailed al
ink recently that took me too it.. i think it has to do with the
Antwiiki project or something i believe

Will

On Jan 13, 2005, at 3:43 PM, Axel wrote:

> Hi
>
> Does anyone know a source code highlighting plugin for Wikimedia?
>
> Something like <php>...some php source...</php> should simply
> highlight the PHP keywords.
>
> axel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

references:
<cs3v42$ql4$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<9f02ca4c0501121606235f8eff@mail.gmail.com>
	<cs5ng2$6dr$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:53:42 +0100, Frando <frando at xcite-online.de> wrote:
> I read the infos about LiquidThreads, and i've to say: it's IMHO simply
> perfect.
<snip>
> If i read correctly, a release of LiquidThreads will only be available
> with the release of MediaWiki 2.0. I read about MediaWiki 2.0 the first
> time a few days ago, is there already a code available? Who is mainly
> responsible for this project? Where are more infos available?

I hate to disappoint you, but as far as I'm aware LiquidThreads, and
anything else that's been put forward for "MediaWiki 2.0" is currently
nothing more than a concept. The development of the existing code is
heavily constrained by the lack of full-time developers, and there are
all sorts of things people would *like* to do, and even things that
*need* doing [as in bug-fixes, etc], which are simply having to be put
off indefinitely.

So, as far as I know, MediaWiki 2.0 isn't really a project at all;
it's a set of aims, that, if there were time to make really major
changes to the software, would be the priorities. That's not to say
it'll never happen, but I think it would be unwise to try and predict
when it will. As for features, like LiquidThreads, that are labelled
as "coming in 2.0" or whatever, I think that's more or less a way of
saying "this isn't something that's coming any time soon, but if I had
time I'd try coding it".

> So IMHO MediaWiki 2.0 is a real great project. This time, the main
> target should be - from the beginning on - perfect extensibility,
> logically structured code (1 parser class in 1 file ;) ), increase of
> performance and so on ..

These are indeed great aims, and if anyone had the time to do such a
rewrite it would be enormously useful. But I'm afraid I don't see
anyone getting round to it any time soon. Sorry to disappoint.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
Really, that is absurd...

Mark

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:48:48 +0000, Pete/Pcb21
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:14:41 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
> > <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I heard that on en wikipedia there is now a rule against blocking yourself.
> >
> >
> > What happens if someone violates it? Do they get blocked? ;)
>
>  From the top of my talk page:
>
> ----
> Hi.
>
> You recently self-blocked, apparently due to a wish to depart Wikipedia
> for a time.
>
> Self-blocking is not permitted, see Wikipedia:Blocking policy. I have
> removed the block.
>
> uc 13:38, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
>
> ...so the truth is you get UNblocked as punishment!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
> http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710

Just a couple of facts that weren't obvious to me at first glance but
which I think are important:

1) The linked article was written by Stirling Newberry
2) Stirling Newberry is involved in a heated dispute over the
[[Intelligent Design]] article.

The article makes more sense when you read it in that context.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] portal page

body:
Hoi,
For wikipedia they changed www.wikipedia.org to become a portal to show
that wikipedia is a project in many languages. This is to show that
wikipedia is not only English as many people think. The same is true for
the wiktionary; there are many wiktionaries and, in the same manner as
we have with wikipedia I propose to have wiktionary.org point to the
page that can be found on META
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_portal

It took the wikipedia crowd two years to get to the point and change
things. I expect that people will have the same arguments why they think
wiktionary means en:wiktionary. However, wiktionary is much less known
than wikipedia and, the other wiktionaries like pl: with over 28.000+
and gl: with 11.000+ prove that en: with 52.000+ is not the only kid on
the block.There are also 9 others in between 1.000+ and 10.000- who
emphasize the point.

So I hope that we can agree to have a similar portal for wiktionary as
we have for wikipedia.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050114 10:34]:
>
>
>>Really, that is absurd...
>>
>>
>Not really. The rationale is that it clogs the block log and adds
>unnecessary confusion. And if someone really wants an extensive
>wikiholiday, they should apply for de-adminning.
>
>
I have to agree with Mark.  It's well within the finest tradition of
that theatre.

Ec


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org no longer redirects to the en main
	page

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:
> On 9 Jan 2005, at 22:39,
> csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:
>
>> The problem is that the main page is exceedingly dull and off-putting
>> to new users.
>
>
> This was already fixed in the past:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&oldid=88465
>
>> .org is a US domain, a country that speaks primarily English. Those
>> who visit it are reasonably expected to speak English.
>
>
> I'm very tempted to respond with a long-winded political rant, but I
> think one word sums it up: Sheesh.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com

Nice. What a polite person you are. It appears that I made a mistake,
but there was no need for a response like that.

TBSDY


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050114 10:34]:
>
>
>>Really, that is absurd...
>>
>>
>Not really. The rationale is that it clogs the block log and adds
>unnecessary confusion.
>
It was also problematic when the IP autoblocker hit other users besides
the self-blocking admin. Since the situation doesn't come up frequently,
people often weren't aware of the implications, though perhaps it's
better understood now after the "Every time we block Michael, we block
Danny too" fiasco. The underlying issue is a matter of courtesy,
especially toward non-admins.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
On Jan 13, 2005, at 2:14 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>>> Anthere wrote:
>>>> Brion Vibber is blocked on meta for "calling people names and
>>>> threatening them with banning".
>>>
>>> He blocked himself. Don't worry Brion, I'm getting the joke, even if
>>> no-one else is.
>>
>> I used to block myself all the time on my work computer. But it
>> wasn't a joke -
>> my work productivity was on the line. :)
>
> I heard that on en wikipedia there is now a rule against blocking
> yourself.  I'm
> tempted to violate it just to see if I get hauled before the ArbCom.
> :-)
>
> --Jimbo

I would be forced to make an out of policy ban against you for trolling.

-Snowspinner


subject: [WikiEN-l] SOLLOG article

body:
I've finished putting in a references section. I'd appreciate it if we
could keep this going! Heck, after things calm down it might be FAC worthy.

TBSDY


body:
--- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be nice to have a proper safety margin of redundant machines
> - say, one hot spare for every core machine, and one for every two
> apaches/squids - before deciding that "money for hardware really isn't
> the issue".  I had the impression that some of the recent delays and
> outages would have been less troublesome (and less noticeable), had
> there been more redundancy of key components.

I said what I said based on my impressions by talking with developers; both
Jimmy and I are often pushing them to buy more servers but want to make sure we
get the largest bang for the buck.

> The $50k in available funds as of Dec 31 was a bit less than two
> months' operating costs; not as much as it might seem.

My point was that the cost of having an employee or two is now relatively cheap
given the enormity of our other expenses and income. Thus it is now possible to
talk of such a thing and not be shouted down due to its budgetary
impracticability.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
It would be nice to have a proper safety margin of redundant machines
- say, one hot spare for every core machine, and one for every two
apaches/squids - before deciding that "money for hardware really isn't
the issue".  I had the impression that some of the recent delays and
outages would have been less troublesome (and less noticeable), had
there been more redundancy of key components.

The $50k in available funds as of Dec 31 was a bit less than two
months' operating costs; not as much as it might seem.

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Translating mediawiki via pootle?

body:
Hello all,

The Translate Toolkit folks have set up a web portal where you can
distribute the translation of a set of strings (like the interface for
a piece of software).  What do people think about using this to help
translate Mediawiki ?

http://translate.sourceforge.net/pootle-release-2004-12-16.html

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:48:48 +0000, Pete/Pcb21
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
> > What happens if someone violates it? Do they get blocked? ;)
>
>  From the top of my talk page:
> ----
> Hi.
>
> You recently self-blocked, apparently due to a wish to depart Wikipedia
> for a time.
>
> Self-blocking is not permitted, see Wikipedia:Blocking policy. I have
> removed the block.
>
> uc 13:38, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yikes.  Go sit in the corner, young Pete.

--
+sj+


body:
I'm not related.  :-)  Here's the source code, if people want to run
their own setup on a WM server..: it's a little out of date, though.

     http://davidf.sjsoft.com/pootle/

I was thinking that pootle would be a nice system to avoid creating
new Wikis *just* so that people could translate the interface... since
then they're also an extra spam target, etc.

+sj+

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 11:05:35 +1100, Zigger <zigger at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Special:Allmessages pages in the various wikimedia projects
> already contains many relevant UI translations that are missing from
> the mediawiki language files.  These pages would be a good place to
> start if somebody has CVS commit rights and is willing, or has their
> own mediawiki site and is looking for translations.  More translations
> can sometimes be found on meta, e.g.
>
>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_languageXX.php_update
>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Locales_for_the_Wikimedia_projects
>
> The pootle software is probably good (BTW, are you related to
> sjsoft.com?), but the current bottleneck seems to be in reviewing and
> committing existing UI translations.
>
> -- Zigger
>
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 18:37:27 -0500, Sj wrote:
> > ...
> > The Translate Toolkit folks have set up a web portal where you can
> > distribute the translation of a set of strings (like the interface for
> > a piece of software).  What do people think about using this to help
> > translate Mediawiki ?
> >
> > http://translate.sourceforge.net/pootle-release-2004-12-16.html
> > ...


subject: [Foundation-l] A wiki for product info and documentation

body:
Jon Udell writes a nice piece about the sad state of tech support for
high-end products (and how most people end up searching for answers in
scattered chat fora).

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/07/02OPstrategic_1.html

I would enjoy using a wiki dedicated to product information, with a
level of detail and a breadth of coverage unsuitable for either
wikibooks or wikipedia.  Right now lots of open-source products
maintain local wikis for users of their tools, but they too could
benefit from the wider audience of a unified public site.

Thoughts?  Feel free to comment on meta:
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikiproducts

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A wiki for product info and documentation


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Announce] <graph> plugin

body:
Tels wrote:

> having written a <graph>-plugin for Mediawiki, I would like to announce it
> here.
>
> It takes textual graph descriptions between <graph></graph> like this:

...

> However, before I wander off over the proverbial big cliff, I'd rather get
> some corrections. Read: please tell me what you think about it, whether
> this is going to be usefull/work/bring world-peace etc.

Thanks a lot for your efford but *please* do not try to invent another
language. GraphViz's dot-language is a powerful standard for graphs
almost like TeX is a standard for formulars.

> My main interest in this area lies in _easily_ documentating network
> plans, flow charts, schematics and other things in that area. IMHO having
> such a feature in a wiki would be very usefull.

Then please call it <easygraph> or something like this. I'd better like
a plugin for all kind of graphs and GraphViz is obviously the best one.

Greetings,
Jakob


subject: [WikiEN-l] Boston ALA conference this weekend

body:
There will be Wikipedia flyers and WP-knowledgable librarians
wandering about the ALA conference in Boston this weekend.  (tomorrow
through tuesday)  We don't have our own booth, but a number of
attending librarians with floor passes are giving us a hand.

If you are visiting the conference, be sure to say hello to them.
And if you have WP-related content that you think the people on the
display floor would be interested in, or things we should target at
librarians in particular (like a clear description of what a
library-meetup / collaborative research day might be like), let me
know.   Right now, the plan is : "Ask me about Wikipedia!" buttons and
a flyer explaining what WP is about.

--
+sj+


from_name: Tels

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Thursday 13 January 2005 19:43, Jakob Voss wrote:
> Tels wrote:
> > having written a <graph>-plugin for Mediawiki, I would like to
> > announce it here.
> >
> > It takes textual graph descriptions between <graph></graph> like
> > this:
>
> ...
>
> > However, before I wander off over the proverbial big cliff, I'd
> > rather get some corrections. Read: please tell me what you think
> > about it, whether this is going to be usefull/work/bring world-peace
> > etc.
>
> Thanks a lot for your efford but *please* do not try to invent another
> language. GraphViz's dot-language is a powerful standard for graphs
> almost like TeX is a standard for formulars.

> > My main interest in this area lies in _easily_ documentating network
> > plans, flow charts, schematics and other things in that area. IMHO
> > having such a feature in a wiki would be very usefull.
>
> Then please call it <easygraph> or something like this. I'd better like
> a plugin for all kind of graphs and GraphViz is obviously the best one.

I have to disagree.

First, I didn't know that there is a graphviz plugin (or anyother
extension, I overlooked extension), and if there is a name-clash, I will
rename my plugin.

Second:

Even knowing the graphviz plugin, I would redo the work I did for several
reasons:

* output: I don't like these types of graph-images. Beside that I like
ASCII/HTML output over PNG etc, IMHO the output of graphviz looks ugly.
* I find the graphviz language too complicated in the same sense that HTML
is too complicated over the normal wiki language. Compare  the example
from http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension with one of
my more complicated examples, I think my formatting is visual more
distinct. (Of course, both languages should be "equivalent", e.g. it
should be possible to write a converter - which means the language the
graph is written in will be irrelevant)

Anyway, thanx for your input,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Thu Jan 13 20:11:45 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
 demo."  -- Andy Finkel, computer guy

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:14:41 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I heard that on en wikipedia there is now a rule against blocking yourself.

What happens if someone violates it? Do they get blocked? ;)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Axel

body:
Hi

Does anyone know a source code highlighting plugin for Wikimedia?

Something like <php>...some php source...</php> should simply highlight
the PHP keywords.

axel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
What I think is unfortunate is that if that had only affected
anonymous users, it may well have gone on forever.

Mark

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 18:01:09 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050114 10:34]:
> >
> >
> >>Really, that is absurd...
> >>
> >>
> >Not really. The rationale is that it clogs the block log and adds
> >unnecessary confusion.
> >
> It was also problematic when the IP autoblocker hit other users besides
> the self-blocking admin. Since the situation doesn't come up frequently,
> people often weren't aware of the implications, though perhaps it's
> better understood now after the "Every time we block Michael, we block
> Danny too" fiasco. The underlying issue is a matter of courtesy,
> especially toward non-admins.
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:14:41 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
> <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>I heard that on en wikipedia there is now a rule against blocking yourself.
>
>
> What happens if someone violates it? Do they get blocked? ;)

 From the top of my talk page:

----
Hi.

You recently self-blocked, apparently due to a wish to depart Wikipedia
for a time.

Self-blocking is not permitted, see Wikipedia:Blocking policy. I have
removed the block.

uc 13:38, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

...so the truth is you get UNblocked as punishment!


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Axel wrote:
> Hi
>
> Does anyone know a source code highlighting plugin for Wikimedia?
>
> Something like <php>...some php source...</php> should simply highlight
> the PHP keywords.

here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Coffman/Geshi_Syntax_Highlight_extension

to others: if you have written an extension, please add a page on
meta-wiki about it and place it in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mediawiki_Extensions

greetings,
elian


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050114 10:34]:
>
>> Really, that is absurd...
>
> Not really. The rationale is that it clogs the block log and adds
> unnecessary confusion. And if someone really wants an extensive
> wikiholiday, they should apply for de-adminning.

this doesn't remove the edit link ;-)

greetings,
elian


body:
Tels wrote:

> On Thursday 13 January 2005 19:43, Jakob Voss wrote:
>>>My main interest in this area lies in _easily_ documentating network
>>>plans, flow charts, schematics and other things in that area. IMHO
>>>having such a feature in a wiki would be very usefull.
>>
>>Then please call it <easygraph> or something like this. I'd better like
>>a plugin for all kind of graphs and GraphViz is obviously the best one.
>
> I have to disagree.
>
> First, I didn't know that there is a graphviz plugin (or anyother
> extension, I overlooked extension), and if there is a name-clash, I will
> rename my plugin.

Ok, if there is also <graphviz> I don't mind. Thanks for your work anyway.

> Second:
>
> Even knowing the graphviz plugin, I would redo the work I did for several
> reasons:
>
> * output: I don't like these types of graph-images. Beside that I like
> ASCII/HTML output over PNG etc, IMHO the output of graphviz looks ugly.

Well, uglyness is a very subjective argument that may fit to both.

> * I find the graphviz language too complicated in the same sense that HTML
> is too complicated over the normal wiki language. Compare  the example
> from http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension with one of
> my more complicated examples, I think my formatting is visual more
> distinct. (Of course, both languages should be "equivalent", e.g. it
> should be possible to write a converter - which means the language the
> graph is written in will be irrelevant)

If you draw complicated graphs, graphviz is complicated but not more
compicated than any other language, including yours. But there is a
limit in graphviz: you cannot embed Wikilinks! So if your plugin
produces clickable images like Erik's Timeline that would be really useful.

Greetings,
Jakob


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia quoted on air! (without credit,
	unfortunately!)

body:
Could anyone record this segment, even if only by holding a microphone upto the speakers?

Nick Moreau, "Zanimum"

Replied to:

You can hear it on "Listen again" at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive_aod.shtml?morning# until tomorrow's show goes up -- click the +15 minutes button three times as soon as the programme begins, and you'll be right in the middle of the quote.

---------------------------------
 ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] E-Mail Notification and E-Mail-Authentication

body:
Dear Developers,

I need to clarify some things, because the amount of complaints is going
into a wrong direction, which does not please me, as I wanted to support
the MediaWiki project, not to slow it down.

As my two "babies" (see subject) are now merged into the CVS-HEAD
version (on 18.12.2004) and some people are still complaining this and
that instead of acknowledging the efforts, I kindly ask those of you
being interested in my enhancements - which are running quietly and
stable on my four wikis without a single problem since August 2004:

to consider to visit http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif , to try a fresh
checkout from the CVS HEAD version and to contact me if you have
problems or to tell me, that and how you like it. There are
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 for ENotif and
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866 for EAuthent ,
however, I prefer direct e-mail contact, because I can answer quicker.

Please be reminded and check first:
============================
There are two commonly reported pitfalls (not problems): 1. You do
***not*** get any e-mail notifications for your own changes: you can
test the e-notification only if you commit page changes as another user
(e.g. anonymous). 2. You must have ***stored*** an E-mail address -
obviously - to receive notifications. If also EAuthent was enabled
during installation, you need to have the address ***authenticated***,
which status is always shown in your user preferences.

I am pretty convinced that you will like it. If you have concrete
proposals for ameliorations, please carefully read the existing list on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Email_notification_to-do_list . This page
lists not only to-do items, but also the existing user proposals.

Tom
aka Wikinaut


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright, images and the voicing of doubt

body:
I haven't seen written policy on this, but practice has been that the
word of a respected contributor with a history of accurate copyright
specification is generally respected, while there have been incidents
of new users claiming ownership of images that look like professional
studio photos that have been removed.

I'd say that, as in most things, rough consensus is the way to go.
The word of any particular user does not win out over the general
consensus of everyone else.

Is there a specific incident you have in mind?  It sounds like there is.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Reuven R.

subject: [Foundation-l] WikiTrivia proposal

body:
hallo!

i've added a new proposal at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects
with the following text,

Wiki Trivia

    * Link to proposal on mailing list: -None yet-
    * Naming suggestions: WikiTriva and WikiFacts
    * Domain name: WikiTriva.org or WikiFacts.org
respectively. Where the sub domain could either
represent the difficulty (easy.wikitrivia.org) or the
main catagory (genetics.wikitrivia.org).
    * Scope: A facts listing in the form of Qs and As
and possibly articles to more detiled information on
other wiki if such information exists with keywords. A
playing page might be a nice idea but should serve
mainly as a source for other application to retrive
data from. Might also benifit if a quick way to enter
facts is introduced (To use for ex with a firefox
plug-in).
    * Details: WikiTrivia
    * Proposer: santa c
    * People interested joining:
          o -Maybe you? ;)-

=====
http://www.mia.org.il/petition/index1.html
http://hungersite.com

in case, ur wondering, about the first link -
http://www.terror-victims.israel.net/mainh.swf

and who'd thought that we'll need http://www.petitiononline.com/rjw23/ ,eh?

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [Foundation-l] WikiTrivia proposal


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>I'm a bit hesitant about this. If we hire some of the existing
>volunteers, we would partly be paying for what we now get in volunteer
>time. And if we hire people from outside, will not lead that to
>problems with people who do the same thing for free?
>
>If we lose volunteer work for what we get in paid work, the price of
>paid work might well be a lot higher than what it is at first sight.
>
>
That will always be a concern with any kind of hiring.  We would
probably do best to contract for a fixed term of three months at a time,
with an option to renew once for another three months.  After that the
person could not be hired again for at least another six months.  One
thing that this would accomplish is that it would avoid having people
become dependent on the Foundation for a regular source of income.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a bit hesitant about this. If we hire some of the existing
> volunteers, we would partly be paying for what we now get in volunteer
> time. And if we hire people from outside, will not lead that to
> problems with people who do the same thing for free?
>
> If we lose volunteer work for what we get in paid work, the price of
> paid work might well be a lot higher than what it is at first sight.

These are good points that need to be taken into consideration. However, many
other non-profits mix volunteers with paid staff with no ill-effect. So let's
see how they get things to work.

-- mav

__________________________________
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http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> For those of you interested in automatic map generation for MediaWiki,
> check out the very first screenshot of my emerging "geo" software:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo
>
> Continue? Or walk away in disgust?

Yes - please continue. SVG is certainly the right direction.

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
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body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>What is the policy on copyrights that are disputed on suspicion?
>
>Suppose there exists a photograph donated under GFDL and the uploader says
>that it was produced by him.
>Is the assertion of doubt by a third party _alone_ reason to post this as
>a "possible" copyright violation and recommend it for deletion on that
>basis?
>I'm not talking about the case where circumstantial evidence or other
>evidence exists to suggest that the image is a copyright violation.  Only
>that someone has voiced the possibility that it is one.
>
A third party should have something more than mere suspicion or doubt
for making his claim.  "Assume good faith" implies that we believe that
the contributor is telling the truth when he says that he took the
picture himself.

The reality of third party claims is that most of the time they come
from do-gooders who don't have a clue about what they are saying.  It is
with good reason that one of the conditions in issuing a takedown order
is that the person issuing the order must have some relationship to the
copyright work before he can ask for it to be taken down.

Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for taking
action on a copyright violation.  If something has been on the site for
at least three years it is probably safe to keep.  The argument that
continuing availability may result in new limitation periods can
probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Unavailable message - web traffic comparison to
	Slashdot

body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> I wouldn't think Apple or IBM would be appropriate, as they are both
> profit-making companies.  It wouldn't be NPOV to link to them.
> Incidentally, I agree with you about Slashdot, and Britannica.
> Perhaps a Wikipedia mirror - I know we don't particularly like them,
> but it would be our own information.

There is nothing wrong with being a for-profit company.

Some mirrors are much more appropriate than others, of course.

Some we don't like for simple aesthetic reasons.  Others because they
have been guilty of spamming.  But in general, I personally love
mirrors, because that's what we want people to do: reuse our work.

--Jimbo


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050114 10:34]:

> Really, that is absurd...

Not really. The rationale is that it clogs the block log and adds
unnecessary confusion. And if someone really wants an extensive
wikiholiday, they should apply for de-adminning.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A person having issues with copyright

body:
Certainly the GNU FDL and Crown Copyright are incompatible.  So Crown
Copyright provides no reason to think that we can use this is in
wikipedia.  There could be other rationales (fair use in the United
States for example), but I think we should try in almost all cases to
avoid those and instead use freely licensed images for all cases other
than those of extreme historical importance where we have no other
choice but to rely on fair use.

--Jimbo


from_name: Zigger

body:
The Special:Allmessages pages in the various wikimedia projects
already contains many relevant UI translations that are missing from
the mediawiki language files.  These pages would be a good place to
start if somebody has CVS commit rights and is willing, or has their
own mediawiki site and is looking for translations.  More translations
can sometimes be found on meta, e.g.

   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_languageXX.php_update
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Locales_for_the_Wikimedia_projects

The pootle software is probably good (BTW, are you related to
sjsoft.com?), but the current bottleneck seems to be in reviewing and
committing existing UI translations.

-- Zigger

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 18:37:27 -0500, Sj wrote:
> ...
> The Translate Toolkit folks have set up a web portal where you can
> distribute the translation of a set of strings (like the interface for
> a piece of software).  What do people think about using this to help
> translate Mediawiki ?
>
> http://translate.sourceforge.net/pootle-release-2004-12-16.html
> ...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> For those of you interested in automatic map generation for MediaWiki,
> check out the very first screenshot of my emerging "geo" software:
>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo

This question makes me regret that I don't have the technical skills to
develop my own vision of a map project that would be subject to the
principles of wiki editing, notably that anybody can edit any map. Thus:
    1. The 1-degree "square" is the fundamental building block of the
world map.
    2. A map may be scaled, with smaller squares showing a greater level
of detail.
    3. The simplest level of map does nothing more than answer whether
that square is all land, all water, or mixed land and water.  This may
even seem simplistic and too diagrammatic, but it would certainly let
you know which squares need more work
    4. A map of any square would be built by adding a series of
overlays.  These could be (among other things)
       a. Contour lines, including shore lines.
       b. Rivers and other aquatic features
       c. Cities, towns, villages and other communities.
       d. Political boundaries, both national and sub-national
       e. Transportation systems
       f. Special features
       g. Historical references, where clicking on the feature would
take us to the Wikipedia article about the event that happened there.

If there is any one major criticism that I would have about the
discussion of this topic so far, it's that it has been infected by a lot
of in-the-box kind of thinking.  A map project has a far greater
potential if we look at it from the ground up, and avoid the more
limited popular focus on the role of maps.

Ec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
What is the policy on copyrights that are disputed on suspicion?

Suppose there exists a photograph donated under GFDL and the uploader says
that it was produced by him.
Is the assertion of doubt by a third party _alone_ reason to post this as
a "possible" copyright violation and recommend it for deletion on that
basis?
I'm not talking about the case where circumstantial evidence or other
evidence exists to suggest that the image is a copyright violation.  Only
that someone has voiced the possibility that it is one.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for taking
>> action on a copyright violation.  If something has been on the site
>> for at least three years it is probably safe to keep.  The argument
>> that continuing availability may result in new limitation periods can
>> probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.
>
> However, republishing in another medium, such as publishing a print
> edition of Wikipedia, probably would easily restart the limitation
> period.

That's debateable.  With GFDL the history of the material should be
traceable.  A fairly recent case involving laches went against the
Church of Scientology because they had delayed the enforcement of their
rights.  This was despite the fact that the limitation period had not
yet expired when they started their action.  It then becomes a question
of our dilligence in tracking the history of the article versus the
copyright owner's dilligence in protecting his copyright.  A downstream
user of the Wikipedia material should have both the benefits and
responsibilities of the GFDL.  If he doesn't give the proper credits he
is violating the GFDL, and can't rely on the accumulated history in his
defence.

Ec


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Friday 14 January 2005 01:03, Jakob Voss wrote:
> Tels wrote:
> > On Thursday 13 January 2005 19:43, Jakob Voss wrote:
> >>>My main interest in this area lies in _easily_ documentating network
> >>>plans, flow charts, schematics and other things in that area. IMHO
> >>>having such a feature in a wiki would be very usefull.
> >>
> >>Then please call it <easygraph> or something like this. I'd better
> >> like a plugin for all kind of graphs and GraphViz is obviously the
> >> best one.
> >
> > I have to disagree.
> >
> > First, I didn't know that there is a graphviz plugin (or anyother
> > extension, I overlooked extension), and if there is a name-clash, I
> > will rename my plugin.
>
> Ok, if there is also <graphviz> I don't mind. Thanks for your work
> anyway.
>
> > Second:
> >
> > Even knowing the graphviz plugin, I would redo the work I did for
> > several reasons:
> >
> > * output: I don't like these types of graph-images. Beside that I
> > like ASCII/HTML output over PNG etc, IMHO the output of graphviz
> > looks ugly.
>
> Well, uglyness is a very subjective argument that may fit to both.
>
> > * I find the graphviz language too complicated in the same sense that
> > HTML is too complicated over the normal wiki language. Compare  the
> > example from http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension
> > with one of my more complicated examples, I think my formatting is
> > visual more distinct. (Of course, both languages should be
> > "equivalent", e.g. it should be possible to write a converter - which
> > means the language the graph is written in will be irrelevant)
>
> If you draw complicated graphs, graphviz is complicated but not more
> compicated than any other language, including yours. But there is a
> limit in graphviz: you cannot embed Wikilinks! So if your plugin
> produces clickable images like Erik's Timeline that would be really
> useful.

Cool idea :o) I am currently on a vacation, but I will implement it soon
to see how that looks :)

Interestingly enough, since my plugins output is some sort of text, you
can also copy & past the output, and in quite a lot of cases and up with
something resembling the original input. Which means, that also searhc
engines will be able to index it etc. I think any graphical output could
be "spiced" up with mouse-over maps, annotations and/or comments, if I
ever go this route.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Jan 14 11:52:55 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law. Right
 now, any professor can show a complete movie in his classroom without
 paying a dime - that's fair use. What is not fair use is making a copy
 of an encrypted DVD, because once you're able to break the encryption,
 you've undermined the encryption itself." - Jack Valenti

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
I'm a bit hesitant about this. If we hire some of the existing
volunteers, we would partly be paying for what we now get in volunteer
time. And if we hire people from outside, will not lead that to
problems with people who do the same thing for free?

If we lose volunteer work for what we get in paid work, the price of
paid work might well be a lot higher than what it is at first sight.

Andre Engels

> The issue as I see it, is that we are now asking too much of too few volunteer
> developers and none of them can be on-site at the colo. Thus I think it is the
> time to consider hiring one full time or two of them part time to perform
> server maintenance tasks for us that currently are not done in a timely manor
> (esp the on-site stuff). Our budget is now so big ($US80,000 last quarter) that
> the addition of one or two employees under contract would not be too much of a
> burden. Neither would some up-front relocation money.


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:

> For those of you interested in automatic map generation for MediaWiki,
> check out the very first screenshot of my emerging "geo" software:
>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo
>
> Continue? Or walk away in disgust?
>
> Magnus
> __

Thumbs up from here.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> This question makes me regret that I don't have the technical skills to
> develop my own vision of a map project that would be subject to the
> principles of wiki editing, notably that anybody can edit any map. Thus:
>     1. The 1-degree "square" is the fundamental building block of the
> world map.
>     2. A map may be scaled, with smaller squares showing a greater level
> of detail.
>     3. The simplest level of map does nothing more than answer whether
> that square is all land, all water, or mixed land and water.  This may
> even seem simplistic and too diagrammatic, but it would certainly let
> you know which squares need more work

That sounds like a raster map, which is not a good choice for this type of
thing. Vectors (points, lines, polygons) are far more widespread and useful for
mapping (rasters are mostly used for analysis and for aerial/satellite
photography).

WikiGIS.org/.com and WikiMaps.org/.com are both owned by the foundation
already.
Maps.wikimedia.org would work too, as would having this be part of Commons.

I'd like to help along such a project with my GIS knowledge regardless of where
the project ends up.

Meta user Tschirl ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tschirl ) is very
interested in marrying wiki software with mapping functionality. An example of
the open source GIS software is the the project admin for is at
http://www.mapbender.org/demoserver.html

Interesting stuff.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:
> On this morning's phone-in on BBC Radio Five Live, about the furore
> about Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party, the
> host, Victoria Derbyshire, read a history of the swastika's use in
> eastern religions -- I thought "that sounds familiar", and sure enough
> it turns out to be the last paragraph of the introduction of our
> [[Swastika]] article, with a couple of sub-clauses omitted.
>
> You can hear it on "Listen again" at
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive_aod.shtml?morning# until
> tomorrow's show goes up -- click the +15 minutes button three times as
> soon as the programme begins, and you'll be right in the middle of the
> quote.
>

That's cool! Add it to [[WP:Media]] :)

TBSDY


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> Traroth schrieb:
>
> >'Seems cool... Does it work for maps outside Germany ?
> >
> >
> Sure it does - except there currently *are* none ;-)
>
> The point is to develop the maps together using a wiki. Almost as
> crazy
> as writing an encyclopedia, no? :-)

Love it.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site

body:
With all due respect to Ambi, I feel that this is a little unfair. He
does promote his website, but I don't think he added that link in bad
faith. I don't think we're being overly too lenient on him. So long as
he doesn't start an edit war, I don't have an issue with the link.

If you think that wikinerds is spam, then my advise is to request that
we add it to our list of websites that we block on our spam filter on
Metawiki.

TSBDY

Rebecca wrote:
> I think it's a fairly clear example of spamming. Based on a look at
> NSK's contributions, it seems (and doesn't surprise me) that a
> majority of them are adding links, many to his site. Nearly every post
> by NSK to Wikipedia's mailing lists, including this one, is either a)
> trying to convince people to go to his site, or b) trying to convince
> people that Wikipedia needs to be made more like his site. I think by
> this point it's abundantly clear that NSK is here, not to add to
> Wikipedia, but to advertise his own site, and that he's fast becoming
> one of the shining examples of Wikipedia being overgenerous with its
> good faith.
>
> With this in mind, I think the removal was perfectly justified.
>
> -- ambi
>
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:38:25 -0800, Nicholas Knight
> <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
>
>>Matt Brown wrote:
>><snip>
>>
>>>I do not think there should be an /a priori/ rule that posting links
>>>to your own sites is forbidden.  On the other hand, one should expect
>>>a certain amount of scrutiny if one does.
>>>
>>>In this case, it looks like your link is on topic and relevant.
>>>Whether it is needed is another matter, but one that can be resolved
>>>in a more peaceable manner.  I don't agree with removing it and citing
>>>as the sole reason that it's a site you put up.
>>
>>Ditto'd. A little extra scrutiny is not unreasonable, but calling it
>>spam simply because it's his own site is pretty much off the deep end.
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Slowness of Wikipedia

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Thank you for taking the time to reply, Tim. The information's much
>> appreciated.
>>
>> A day or so in read-only mode? But I'm completely addicted. Gulp. That
>> may require round-the-clock anesthesia.
>>
> It's just read-only to regular folks, the cabal will be still be
> able to edit and get everything their own way, bwahaha.
>
> Lots to do when WP is not online though - go to the university
> library and get info out of the many books there (most of that
> info is not online anywhere, WP article will be the first
> appearance), also take pictures and prepare them for uploading.
> 30,000 towns in the US alone, every town article should have at
> least one picture so the rest of us can see what it looks like.
>
> Stan

When the database is locked noone gets access. Including the Cabal.
Evidently there is a master-Cabal that controls the Cabal. Muahaha- oh.
Wasn't meant to let that one slip.

TBSDY


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050108 01:29]:
>
>
>>What if someone does 3 reverts, waits a full 24 hours, then does his "edit"
>>again, and reverts to it 3 times - has he violated the 3RR or not?  Does
>>the clock always start ticking *after* the first edit?
>
>
>
> If it's 24h 5 min and they do it consistently, they're pretty obviously
> gaming the system. I don't see how they could stay on a reverting quest
> like this without violating other policies along the way.
>
>
> - d.

Hey :) I've blocked Alberuni for just this reason. If a user is
reverting in this way I cannot assume good faith and they risk getting
blocked. As an admin, I'll be checking the talk page to see how much
they've discussed this with the other party first, however. If the user
has made an attempt to discuss the issue with another difficult party
I'd be much less inclined to block the user.

TBSDY


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Illegitimate block.

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>
> Well, yeah.
>
> One point to remember about 3RR: if you get as far as *three* reverts in 24
> hours, something's badly wrong. Allowing three reverts in 24 hours is one
> of the things Wikipedia allows but does not condone.
>
>
> - d.

Exactly. I think we need to step back a moment and understand WHY the
3RR has been created. It was created to stop those who won't edit via
consensus and thus stop all progress on articles. I'd suggest we be a
little less legalistic about it and look at each editor on a
case-by-case basis.

TBSDY


body:
The question is what we are concerned about: being sued, or about
being above board with what we use and properly redistributable?

Certainly, in most cases, Wikipedia is safe from being sued.

Have you noticed, by the way, that the current trend on image
copyright is NOT 'assume good faith' on Wikipedia?  We no longer
assume that reading a statement and clicking yes to agree is
sufficient -- we require people to justify.

-Matt (User:Morven)


body:
I do find myself wishing so very often for a time machine to go back
and take GFDL'able photographs of historical events, scenes, stuff ...

I've uploaded a fair number of fair use, or permission-and-fair-use,
images of historical things to Wikipedia where I've had no luck
finding an image available under a free license and it's impossible to
photograph it now, but I hope for a day where this is no longer
necessary, and I am forever on the lookout for images and the
opportunity to persuade photograph owners to help Wikipedia.


body:
> That would be bitter experience with idjits who pull an image off the front
> page of their hero's website and put it on Wikipedia as 'public domain'.
> Or 'fair use' with no justification and a barrage of flames if one dares
> question them.

Ah, the 'Fair Use' definition of 'That's not fair, I wanna use it!'

-Matt


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 12:21 PM, paul at immediart.com wrote:
> Is it possible to put headings into the edit window of a new page?

Sure, just hack the code to populate the initial textarea.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Delirium

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for taking
> action on a copyright violation.  If something has been on the site
> for at least three years it is probably safe to keep.  The argument
> that continuing availability may result in new limitation periods can
> probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.

However, republishing in another medium, such as publishing a print
edition of Wikipedia, probably would easily restart the limitation period.

-Mark


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>I do find myself wishing so very often for a time machine to go back
>and take GFDL'able photographs of historical events, scenes, stuff ...
>
>I've uploaded a fair number of fair use, or permission-and-fair-use,
>images of historical things to Wikipedia where I've had no luck
>finding an image available under a free license and it's impossible to
>photograph it now, but I hope for a day where this is no longer
>necessary, and I am forever on the lookout for images and the
>opportunity to persuade photograph owners to help Wikipedia.
>
That's where the image tagging is useful; it focusses attention
on the pool of troublesome cases, which will then tend to shrink
as people look around for substitutions, enabling even more
scrutiny for the remainder.

I expect that some day celebrities and organizations will donate
images to WP just to keep their articles from being illustrated
with mugshots and perp walks... 1/2 :-)

Stan


body:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:03:16 -0800, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> I expect that some day celebrities and organizations will donate
> images to WP just to keep their articles from being illustrated
> with mugshots and perp walks... 1/2 :-)

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if this has already happened.

-Matt


from_name: Giovanni

subject: [Wikitech-l] SCRIPT Extension

body:
Hi,
I created an extension to insert into an article JavaScript Code.
But if I insert more lines of code it doesn't work because when I visualize HTML code of the page, there are soma P tags between different line of JavaScript code.
There is some setting to change?
Thanks.

Giovanni

SCAI - Tradizioni del Sud
http://stores.ebay.it/tradizionidelsud
http://www.tradizionidelsud.com


from_name: Traroth

subject: [Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

body:
It depends : system administration, for exemple, is a
boring work (imho), and could be done by somebody from
outside, without special training (no need to know how
MediaWiki works, for exemple). So time can be released
for more specific (and interesting) work, like
development. Other opinions ?

Traroth

 --- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> a ?crit :
> I'm a bit hesitant about this. If we hire some of
> the existing
> volunteers, we would partly be paying for what we
> now get in volunteer
> time. And if we hire people from outside, will not
> lead that to
> problems with people who do the same thing for free?
>
> If we lose volunteer work for what we get in paid
> work, the price of
> paid work might well be a lot higher than what it is
> at first sight.
>
> Andre Engels

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates

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

On Jan 14, 2005, at 3:05 PM, paul at immediart.com wrote:
> Slight problem: I can't find any reference to "initial_textarea" nor
> "initial textarea" where exactly should I be looking?
>
> I'm running 1.4beta4 could it have been renamed or am I just being
> dim? (it's friday, it's late, I'm tired - so it's probably me)

You won't find the words "initial textarea" in the source, sorry.
EditPage.php includes the code which produces the HTML of the edit
form, which includes a <textarea> element in which the text of the
article goes.

You'll need to find a way to set the initial state of that textarea
when someone starts editing a page that doesn't exist; normally it is
filled with an empty string, but you would want it to contain some
other text.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] SCRIPT Extension

body:
On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 02:49:39PM +0100, Giovanni wrote:
> I created an extension to insert into an article JavaScript Code.
> But if I insert more lines of code it doesn't work because when I visualize HTML code of the page, there are soma P tags between different line of JavaScript code.
> There is some setting to change?
> Thanks.

<nowiki> maybe

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
For those of you interested in automatic map generation for MediaWiki,
check out the very first screenshot of my emerging "geo" software:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo

Continue? Or walk away in disgust?

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
'Seems cool... Does it work for maps outside Germany ?

Traroth

 --- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> a ?crit :
> For those of you interested in automatic map
> generation for MediaWiki,
> check out the very first screenshot of my emerging
> "geo" software:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo
>
> Continue? Or walk away in disgust?
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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from_name: Lee Campion

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unavailable message - web traffic comparison to Slashdot

body:
Now I know I'm biased against Slashdot but what is the point in comparing
ourselves against them when the unavailable message is shown (a link to
Alexa.com compares our web traffic)?  Would it not be possible to link to
something more appropriate?  We demolish Britannica.com (though would they
complain about the comparison) and Apple.com and IBM.com are both
interesting.

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] minor issue, but still a npov warning

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Cassini Huygens is today the most updated article on the net.
> Congratulations.
>
> ------
>
> This said, just a comment.
>
> During months, the Cassini-Huygens mission was only on ONE article,
> called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens.

I think you're working a bit too hard to find bias here. The
Huygens probe had 1/2 of the original article created 2.5 years
ago, and sizewise would have been fine to split even then, but
somehow not one of 600+ million Europeans could be bothered
to make the split, or to propose it on the talk page.

The "bias" is that we work on what interests us. I've been
digging figures of European history out of 1911EB lately,
and half the time it's the first information about these
in any language WP. We're just perennially short of people
to do all the things we would like to get done.

Stan


from_name: Charles Podles

body:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:13:17 -0800, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:03:16 -0800, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> > I expect that some day celebrities and organizations will donate
> > images to WP just to keep their articles from being illustrated
> > with mugshots and perp walks... 1/2 :-)
>
> I wouldn't be entirely surprised if this has already happened.
>
> -Matt

You've see [[Ol' Dirty Bastard]], then? One of the images is, yes, a
mug shot. :-)


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
I wouldn't think Apple or IBM would be appropriate, as they are both
profit-making companies.  It wouldn't be NPOV to link to them.
Incidentally, I agree with you about Slashdot, and Britannica.
Perhaps a Wikipedia mirror - I know we don't particularly like them,
but it would be our own information.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 18:01:58 -0000, Lee Campion <lee at campion26.plus.com> wrote:
> Now I know I'm biased against Slashdot but what is the point in comparing
> ourselves against them when the unavailable message is shown (a link to
> Alexa.com compares our web traffic)?  Would it not be possible to link to
> something more appropriate?  We demolish Britannica.com (though would they
> complain about the comparison) and Apple.com and IBM.com are both
> interesting.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Copyright, images and the voicing of doubt

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for
>>> taking action on a copyright violation.  If something has been on
>>> the site for at least three years it is probably safe to keep.  The
>>> argument that continuing availability may result in new limitation
>>> periods can probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.
>>
>> However, republishing in another medium, such as publishing a print
>> edition of Wikipedia, probably would easily restart the limitation
>> period.
>
> That's debateable.  With GFDL the history of the material should be
> traceable.  A fairly recent case involving laches went against the
> Church of Scientology because they had delayed the enforcement of
> their rights.  This was despite the fact that the limitation period
> had not yet expired when they started their action.

Two points are worth noting here. First of all, in case it's not clear,
the doctrine of laches can only apply if the plaintiff knows about the
infringement and fails to complain. If, as is very likely, a copyright
holder did not know about infringing material on Wikipedia, then laches
would not prevent a claim based on the continuing availability of the
material within the statute of limitations.

Second of all, if the Scientology case Ec alludes to is the New Era
Publications v. Henry Holt case that I've read, I should mention that
laches was only applied to deny an injunction against publication. It
did not prevent a remedy for monetary damages.

So the notion he suggests, that anything that's been on Wikipedia for at
least three years is safe to keep forevermore, probably should not be
used as a "rule of thumb" for copyright problems.

--Michael Snow


body:
Generally our articles on missions are on the missions themselves, their
planning, accomplishments, and so on, with separate articles on the
components describing the functioning of the components themselves.  For
example, the information on the first moon landing is on [[Apollo 11]],
the name of the mission, while [[Apollo Lunar Module]], the craft that
actually performed the landing, is an article on the craft itself (which
of course does mention that it landed on the moon, but is not the
primary article about the moon landing).

It seems to make sense, along similar lines, to have [[Cassini-Huygens]]
be the article about the mission, which was planned and executed largely
as a joint mission, and then separate articles about [[Cassini]] and
[[Huygens]] describing the detailed information about the craft.  After
all, there was no "Huygens mission" or "Cassini mission", but a
"Cassini-Huygens mission" that used both craft.  Huygens and Cassini
themselves are merely pieces of equipment.

-Mark


from_name: Anthere

body:
since we are on the copyright topic, what is currently done with
articles where there is a certainty of copyright but are not new, or
even worse, have been edited since then ?

Are they reverted ?
Or, is the cp content just removed ?
Or is it commonly practiced to remove in the history of the article the
place where it is under copyright to avoid cp to be in history ?

Anthere

Tony Sidaway a ?crit:
> What is the policy on copyrights that are disputed on suspicion?
>
> Suppose there exists a photograph donated under GFDL and the uploader says
> that it was produced by him.
> Is the assertion of doubt by a third party _alone_ reason to post this as
> a "possible" copyright violation and recommend it for deletion on that
> basis?
> I'm not talking about the case where circumstantial evidence or other
> evidence exists to suggest that the image is a copyright violation.  Only
> that someone has voiced the possibility that it is one.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Map drawing software

body:
Magnus Manske a ?crit:
> For those of you interested in automatic map generation for MediaWiki,
> check out the very first screenshot of my emerging "geo" software:
>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geo
>
> Continue? Or walk away in disgust?
>
> Magnus

Walk toward in faith :-)

Anthere


subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization for Lojban

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 7:19 PM, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> I updated LanguageJbo.php to HEAD, as well as I could understand the
> code, but
> would like some help with these:
> *Date formats are rather different. There are two sets of month names
> in use,
> and two sets of weekday names, but such formats as "Friday, January
> 14, 2005"
> cannot be used in a sentence, it has to be "the 14th of January of the
> 2005th, which is Friday" or else just numbers.

Dates and times occur in three types:
* date only (year/month/day given in some particular format)
* time only (hour and seconds)
* date and time together

(I don't think we actually use the day of the week for anything.)

Each is formatted by a method of the Language object (time(), date(),
timeanddate()), which can be overridden in the child class for a
particular language.

Usually they occur as headers (dates on Special:Recentchanges) or as
part of a table (times on Special:Recentchanges, date+time on history
list, etc). They may appear in a sentence only in a couple of places I
think, such as "Show new changes starting from 19:43, Jan 14, 2005",
though you could modify those messages to some more appropriate form if
necessary.

> *Initial capitalization does not exist. Capitalization indicates
> stress.
> If you'd like to help me with this, please let me know.

I added the $wgCapitalLinks option some time ago to disable forced
title capitalization for languages such as lojban (though it's also
gotten used on several of the Wiktionaries simply to enforce lowercase
page titles for definitions). If there's anything else necessary to
support this, we'll need more detail. :)

User names are still forced to capitalization to avoid introducing
gratuitous incompatibilities for the future common login system.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
Traroth schrieb:

>'Seems cool... Does it work for maps outside Germany ?
>
>
Sure it does - except there currently *are* none ;-)

The point is to develop the maps together using a wiki. Almost as crazy
as writing an encyclopedia, no? :-)

Magnus


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

body:
Would these happen to be open maps, with editable place names for
language-specific name variations?

Cool start!

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Magnus Manske
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 7:54 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software

Traroth schrieb:

>'Seems cool... Does it work for maps outside Germany ?
>
>
Sure it does - except there currently *are* none ;-)

The point is to develop the maps together using a wiki. Almost as crazy
as writing an encyclopedia, no? :-)

Magnus
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: f-x.p at laposte.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] allow xml tags: a first approach

body:
Hello,

A wiki is probably the best way to share documents and informations...
why not **structured** informations, like xml ?

PROBLEMS
Allowing xml tags is different from html or xhtml tags in one aspect:
namespaces.

1)Namespaces appear in:

- the tags (exemple: tei:page, dc:title, rdf:Alt, doc:formula ...)
- the attributes (xml:lang, ...)
- in the css example:
rdf\:li.block {display: block; font-weight: bold;}

2)Namespaces Declarations appear in:

- the main __html__ tag of the html/xhtml document
*exemple:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:jw="http://jspwiki.org"
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/" >
*Actual difficulty:
a list of allowed namespaces doesn't only come to allow the tag, but
also fill the template html tag with the namespace and its refered url

- any tag
*Actual difficulty:
Mediawiki recognises a link in the namespace declaration and thus
transformes it :
<my:tag xmlns:my="http://my.url">  BECOMES <my:tag xmlns:my="<a
href=" http://my.url="" class="external"
title="http://my.url">http://my.url">

- in the css
at the top (not yet compulsory as far as I know):
@namespace tei url(http://www.tei-c.org/);

SOLUTIONS

1) BARBARIAN solution:
commenting the a good deal of the mediawiki/include/parser.php function
removeHTMLtags( $text )

2)Future maybe
As for today, the white list of tags and attributes doesn't support
addition of namespace tags (tei:page) nor just namespace (tei).

QUESTIONS
Has any one an idea of how to implement an "allow xml namespace" system
in Mediawiki?

Fran?ois Parlant


subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates

body:
Hi,

Is it possible to put headings into the edit window of a new page?

So when someone creates a new page the form is already populated with
some headings and notes rather than just a blank page?

They don't have to be fixed - of course users should be able to delete
them if they want... but it would be useful for my wiki to encourage
users to use the same basic structure for new pages.

Any tips or suggestions would be very welcome.

PaulY


subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization for Lojban

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 8:08 PM, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Is it possible to set the date format in preferences?

In limited ways, this is somewhat hardcoded for the English situation
and is not used otherwise.

>  For different formats in
> different contexts, can I define a new method of the Language object?

No, there is no provision for this.

> That should work, but I don't see wgCapitalLinks in the files I have,
> which
> are:
> Language.php     LanguageDe.php  LanguageJbo.php
> Language1.3.php  LanguageFr.php  LanguageJbo1.3.php

It wouldn't be in any of those, as it's a site configuration setting
and goes into LocalSettings.php

> So I tried to do it by modifying ucfirst and lcfirst.

That would break everything that tries to do upper and lowercasing, so
you might not want to do that.

> Can you install the language file so that I can see what it's doing?

Well, not until it's fixed...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] MySQL 4.1

body:
On Jan 14, 2005, at 9:07 PM, NSK wrote:
> Does MediaWiki 1.3.9 and 1.4beta4 work with MySQL 4.1.8?

 From the RELEASE-NOTES of 1.4beta4:

''''' Thinking of using MySQL 4.1? Please read this first! '''''
''''' Your PHP installation probably uses the OLD protocol '''''
'''''   http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html  '''''

Unless you know what you are doing and have properly configured PHP and
MySQL 4.1 to work together, I recommend you do not try to use the
not-quite-compatible MySQL 4.1, but stick with MySQL 4.0.

If you have configured PHP and MySQL 4.1 to work correctly together,
then there are still pitfalls due to MySQL 4.1's character set system:
* The default character set for the server should be latin-1, not
UTF-8. The UTF-8 mode will cause data corruption and will probably
simply fail when trying to create the tables.
* When backing up data with mysqldump, be sure to set the character set
again to latin-1, or UTF-8 and compressed data will be IRRETRIEVABLE
CORRUPTED by a silently performed data conversion.
* There are probably other silent data corruption problems not yet
discovered where MySQL thinks it knows more about your data than it
really does and conveniently "converts" it for you.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: textbook-l

from_name: Manuel G R

subject: [Textbook-l] Why Wikibooks projects are not using subpages?

body:
This is something I have wondering too much time. The subpages could
improve the current [[Some book:Some module]] convention and the others.

I have written a proposal to enable subpages on the main namespace of
all the Wikibooks projects in Meta, see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks_should_use_subpages

Regards.
--
Manuel


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization for Lojban

body:
I updated LanguageJbo.php to HEAD, as well as I could understand the code, but
would like some help with these:
*Date formats are rather different. There are two sets of month names in use,
and two sets of weekday names, but such formats as "Friday, January 14, 2005"
cannot be used in a sentence, it has to be "the 14th of January of the
2005th, which is Friday" or else just numbers.
*Initial capitalization does not exist. Capitalization indicates stress.
If you'd like to help me with this, please let me know.

phma
--
le xruki le ginxre xrixruba xu xrula cu xrani?