from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski"
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 04:59:59PM -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> > > NPOV is not impossible for textbooks.  Why should it
> > > be?  It's the
> > > easiest thing in the world.  I don't agree with
> > > Alex's comments on
> > > history being necessarily POV at all -- I think that
> > > his comment
> > > misunderstands the social evolution of consensus
> > > embodied in an NPOV
> > > policy.
> > >
> > OK, I guess NPOV is possible for *some* textbooks,
> > namely the ones that couldn't have a POV (like
> > programming languages) or ones with minimal
> > disagreement (such as physics ....

I agree with that too, these subjects are based upon actual
knowledge and information. There is little disagreeent
on what a law of physics is or even those theories that
are theoretical; generally physicists will explain and
present theories they don't personally agree with..

>> or literature), ...

I a not so sure about literature. A textbook writer may
have a theory of literature that they are pushing
through their textbook; once again this is entering
the area of intepretive knowledge that is often based
upon a POV. It is not the simple NPOV dispute we
often see on Wikipedia, X happened, not Y.  Or X
happened because A felt it meant B.

But the more complex "X happened because of facts A, B, C, ...
resulting in Z. The reason this happened is because
Prop(1), Prop(2), Prop(3) are true." Then the second
POV is "X happened because of facts B, E, F, ... resulting
in Z. The reason this happened is because Prop (11),
Prop(12), Prop(13), Prop(1) are true." With further POVs
that can reach a large number of POVs. My understandin
of NPOV is to include all of them, but if there are
hundreds of such theories the article is no longer about
X but about the various interpretations of X, a different
subject, really  but about the history of interpretations
of what people believe about X happening. This is
called historiography, and because of this the study
of history is never simple and based upon an evolvling
social consensus. History is all about the point of view
of the historian that is constructing the historical model.

>> but for
> > things like Israeli history ...  there is widespread
> > disagreement about basic underlying facts, not to
> > mention people's motives, both of which are essential
> > to creating a good textbook. ....

This is what I am talking about. Underlying facts are not
necessarily known; certain high profile facts may be known,
but the underlying facts are the sources of history that
remain hidden from view. But even if they are known there
is still the same problem.

> History is exactly where good NPOV textbooks are needed most.
> In most countries history textbooks are little more than propaganda,

I would agree with the statement that many countries use grammer school
and high school history textbooks as tools of propaganda, is, but what do
historians do? They write their own textbooks and when students get to
university then they begin to understand how the study of history is
often captured by state controlled institutions for political reasons. Does
this process occur in democracies where there is freedom of speech?
Yes, but as most people do not understand how sophisticated
propaganda can be in these lower schools so there is little political will
to make the study of history more inclusive. Some would also argue that
younger students would not really understand the levels of interpretation
that go on in contstructing models of history and that often these
political histories are not wrong in themselves, just generalizations that
cannot be more sophisticated because they are for an audience that
could not understand how relative history may be. The history of a
country is often tied in with a sense of nationalism and the reason
people are willing to serve their country. If one puts all that into
question, the basic rationale for the nation-state may begin to
fall apart so history serves some kind of state function and that
is why it is often propaganda in some schools.

> by both choice of material (ever noticed that they are mostly about
history of
> the government of the country, with relatively little information about
other
> areas like economy, culture etc. ?) and very strong bias in describing it.

This is the whole point, history is always written from the point of view
of some theory, there is no inclusive theory of history. It may be written
from a political point of view or from a economic point of view or from a
cultural point of view. The proponents of these different views do not agree
about the relevant facts (it would be impossible to have a history textbook
that has all the facts of the past, just as it is impossible that Wikipedia
have
a page on every person who ever lived). Thus, each POV has to have an
underlying methodology, the historians of each approach  study different
sets of primary sources (where history comes from) and analytically
construct
a theory based upon that set of sources. They may butrice those primary
sources with secondary sources (these are already interpretations but may
have some value). Are we talking about there being differences about basic
facts? Sometimes yes, because the historical record may have been created
out of secondary sources and a return to the primary sources may not verify
what had been believed to be true. Sometimes the basic facts are not in
dispute, but that does not make it any easier as those basic facts can be
interpreted in a variety of ways, all possibly reasonable interpretations of
those underlying "facts".

> In particular, if people in Israel had good NPOV information instead of
being
> fed by propaganda by both sides all the time, it would be much easier for
them
> to solve their problems.

This is not really about history. First what is "NPOV information"?  When it
comes to history historians, I think, would say that there is no trivial
answer
to this question. Would they call their differing interpretations of history
"propaganda? I don't think so. It is those who use the work of historians
that
make it propaganda.  If you study the French Revolution from the point of
view
of one historian you may be looking at the evolution of economic forces in
France, the effects of crop yields, migration patterns of peasant families,
etc.
you, as a historian, has certain perspectives on the forces of history;
these
forces were what caused the Revolution, not the rhetoric of certain
revolutionary
notables that happened to be in the right place at the right time. Another
historian may see the French Revolution as being just the development of
ideological
forces at work in Paris and the activities of the metropolitan elites
resulting in the
breakdown of the ancien regime beaucratic infrastructure. What caused  such
a breakdown for this second historian? It may be the acts of a small number
of revolutionaries that were given general support by the municipal
population of Paris and the ripple effect that occurred throughout
France was what caused the French Revolution.

So we have dozens, if not hundreds of theories about the French Revolution.
How do you put them all into an NPOV textbook? That is my question. If
the textbook is being used by a historian who has a political approach to
history they want their students to understand the various models that
historians
from that point of view have presented (in other words, even within
different
schools of history there are disagreements about the causes of events).
Will that historian want her/his textbook to mention other approaches from
different schools of history, and not just differing opinions within one
model?
Yes, possibly, but to really put them all together in the same textbook?
 I doubt it, because doing so would make it very difficult (if not
impossible)
 for the reader to understand the approach of the differing models within
one particular school of historical analysis. A textbook looking at
particular
perspectives on a particular set of historical events or periods may not be
able to cover all approaches and all histories.

Certainly a book can be written about the history of history (we call this
historiography) and such a book should be written from a NPOV. This is the
place for NPOV in history, but on the level of the approaches of individual
historians? In a way, constantly injecting the approaches of other schools
of history into a textbook written from a particular point of view would be
very disruptive to that particular approach to history. When I have read or
discussed history from historians one pays due regard for the historical
approach before criticizing it or decontructing it. Of course one can always
incorporate footnotes as references to the historiography literature that
may
be linked to a particular historical contraversy, but to put it all together
in a single
text?  I have never seen a history textbook that did not have a particular
point
of view about history, propaganda or not. If one were to create such a
textbook, first it would be a daunting task, that would require individuals
who
understood all the different approaches to a specific historical period (and
remember that history is not a general subject, a book has to be written for
each period of history, each geographical region, each political division
and
for each of these historians are only operating in specific areas, those
studying
French Revolutionary history are not the same historians who are studying
modern French history, so each period of history and place that has a
history
will have different historians who take different points of view.

Alex756


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!

body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> Don't you feel we make a together monolog (bilog!?).
>
> Even when I bother to write a mail to the list I
> often don't get any
> answers.
>
> The only solution I see to improve multi-language
> coordination is to create
> about ten clones of Brion ;o)
>
> By the wait, are they any Japanese here!? It is the
> fastest growing
> Wikipedia, isn't it?

Well if they are not-- they should be. People should
not be shy about posting in Japanese to the
Wikipedia-l, or the Intlwiki-l listss ( although there
isnt much activity on the WikiJA-l list either)

Everyone-for enjoyment-humourous:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikija-l/2003-September/thread.html

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia, MediaWiki logos uploaded

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> Oh and I like the Wikimedia logo /exactly/ the way it is. The only
>> thing I would change on the MediaWiki logo is to obtain a photo of a
>> more perfect and healthy flower (unless that is supposed to be
>> somehow symbolic ;).
>
>
Were IS the wikimedia logo? I can't see it anywhere :( , eg
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WatchedItem.php

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've consolidated some of the watchlist access code into WatchedItem.php
> and added memcached support for it. This should reduce db hits on
> logged-in page views; it had been checking the watchlist table (twice!)
> per logged-in page render.

Good stuff. Watchlist queries were common features in the slow query
log. BTW as I discovered with wfMsg(), querying memcached on a local
machine takes on the order of a millisecond (on my poor old 66 MHz FSB
Celeron). So if you need to access thousands of entries in the course of
a request, it's probably better to consolidate the entries into larger
chunks.

> (Also a note: main development is currently going on in the stable
> branch and is focused on speed, security, and bug fixes, not features. A
> lot of fixes will need to be forward-ported to the dev branch at some
> point.)

I've been working on the dev branch. When do you next want to merge the
two branches? I'm not going to port my parser optimisation to stable, so
if we want that, we'll have to do a proper merge.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Robot code: open source or lock away in safe?

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 October 2003 12:29, Rob Hooft wrote:
>
>>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>>I propose that critical part of source (one that reads and writes data on
>>>Wikipedia), with the enhancements that Louis proposed, should be stored
>>>in a library which would be freely distributable but closed source. Then
>>>the rest of the bot code could be released open source.
>>
>>Unfortunately that will not work, as the 'bot is written in python,
>>which is source code or VM code which can be easily disassembled. And
>>even without disassembly it is easy to "modify" the library in a running
>>program.
>
>
> Then perhaps it could be non-free open source. If someone wants to make a bot,
> he would ask Wikimedia for the source, if Wikimedia agrees it wold give the
> source with legal obligation that it is not spread further.

I don't see what the problem is. A vandalbot and a well-behaved bot are
two different things. The common code is only a small proportion. As
long as sysops are not shy about blocking clueless, unapproved bots, I
have no problem with making the code public.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] English Wikipedia and the other languages

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Anthere has raised an important issue about the
> relationship between the
> English Wikipedia and the other languages. I hope we
> address this issue
> properly, with kindness and respect.

Theres a little discussion on meta "Lingusitic
democracy in a multilingual project" --Anthere and I
have noted this problem before --to some extent there
is a defacto-acceptance of English as wiki-lingua
franca, but there has been little attention given to
providing other languages the leadership and
representative access that they need in feeling like
they are too shaping the wikipedia.  Its like trickle
down government, and no trickle up whatsoever, if you
dont write English.

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

~S~

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Lee Pilich wrote:

> At 17:05 22/10/2003 -0700, Mark (Delirium) wrote:
>
>> I don't think it would cut nearly enough out.  For example, a short
>> article listing my place of birth, high school attended, and
>> university attended is easily verifiable through publically available
>> records.
>
> Then it could be deleted on the grounds that it would never be more
> than a stub (I don't know if it's formalised anywhere, but deleting
> things for that reason has been pretty widely done in the past).
>
> OK, maybe there's a *bit* more to a "keepable" article than it simply
> being verifiable, but I guess my main point is that it's possible to
> make a reasonable decision about whether to delete an article without
> resorting to (necessarily subjective) judgements on its "importance"
> or "notability".

I agree with Lee that each such case must have its own common sense
approach without needing to resort to a lot of rigid rules.  In
addition, I also continue to believe that the benefit of any doubt
should favour retention.

Ec

>


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
At 09:27 AM 10/23/2003, you wrote:
>A better solution would be to accept his votes at face value, worth
>neither more nor less than anyone else's.  Obviously he has a strong
>attitude against deletions in general.  There should be no obligation for
>him to justify his votes.

There is no reason for the charitable assumptions that you suggest. In
fact, there are reasons NOT to assume the above. Anyone with a passionately
held anti-deletionist position would most likely have spoken out at some
point, or at least answered queries on his talk page. Historically he has
also voted to "Delete" /en masse/ on the VfD page as well. These are, in my
opinion, the actions of a troll.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: PHP parser made twice as fast

body:
Cool.  Now that the algorithm is cleaned up, when do we rewrite it in
assembler?

Louis
(who is mostly kidding since the database dips wouldn't go any faster)

Tim Starling wrote:
> I just doubled the speed of the PHP parser.
>
> In my test page ([[Anime]], ~60 links with half broken), I cut the time
> for replaceInternalLinks from 800ms to 350ms, and the time for
> Article::view from 1310 to 610ms.
>
> This was acheived by eliminating redundant calls to secureAndSplit,
> using static variables for constants, and catering to PHP oddities such
> as the fact that === is slower than ==.
>
> Okay, you may shower me with praise now.
>
> -- Tim Starling.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
"Ray Saintonge"  wrote

> If you don't want titles in the articles that you write that's just
> fine.  Others may prefer to include them in the articles that they
> write; that's fine too..  Going around and removing these titles just
> because they don't please you is a disrespectful act.

Puzzled by this comment.  I wouldn't so remove anything, in the absence of a
convention.  Presumably there can be conventions? My wish not to have
William Nicholson (artist) not called Sir wasn't respected.

Charles


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Shower of praise for Tim Starling

body:
Tim,

Oops! I mean, "O brillant one" :-)

Thank you for trimming the parsing times!!

I always knew you guys were smart enough to figure this out, and now my
confidence has been vindicated.

Well done (and don't forget to 'towel off' after your shower, I don't
want you to catch cold ;-)

Ed Poor


body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> --- Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I don't see what the problem is. A vandalbot and a
>>well-behaved bot are
>>two different things. The common code is only a
>>small proportion. As
>>long as sysops are not shy about blocking clueless,
>>unapproved bots, I
>>have no problem with making the code public.
>
>
> "As long as" does'nt work, because its not a simple
> rule --and generally, people are under the impression
> (as they should be) that bots run only under the
> watchful eye of devers -who might actually know what
> the thing is doing.

It can be made into a simple rule. We already have a vague policy that
one should obtain approval before running a bot. We can make it into a
more concrete policy: someone who wants to run a bot should describe in
detail what the bot will do on [[Wikipedia:Bots]]. This should be listed
for at least a week. In the event of debate, there should be a consensus
before the bot is allowed to run. If a bot is run before the one week
listing has elapsed, or when there is no consensus that the bot is a
good idea, a sysop should block it.

 > Might there be a way to compile the bot into a
 > configurable (non-disassemble-able, like C, etc )
 > executable?

Then how will people collaboratively improve the code?

-- Tim Starling.


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 06:20:29PM -0700, Stevertigo wrote:
>
>>--- Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I don't see what the problem is. A vandalbot and a
>>>well-behaved bot are
>>>two different things. The common code is only a
>>>small proportion. As
>>>long as sysops are not shy about blocking clueless,
>>>unapproved bots, I
>>>have no problem with making the code public.
>>
>>"As long as" does'nt work, because its not a simple
>>rule --and generally, people are under the impression
>>(as they should be) that bots run only under the
>>watchful eye of devers -who might actually know what
>>the thing is doing.
>>
>>Might there be a way to compile the bot into a
>>configurable (non-disassemble-able, like C, etc )
>>executable?
>
>
> Security through obscurity again ?

It's not securing anything. There's no point putting a deadlock on a 1
metre high garden gate, and the fact that deadlocks can be picked is
beside the point.

If we need to secure against edit bots, we can add edit throttling to
slow down the damage. But the potential for damage is minimal. It is
easily reversed and offenders are easily blocked. The exception to this
is if great deal of work has gone into the bot to make it evasive and
hard to block, but in that case it would be just as easy to write it
from scratch as to start from a well-behaved bot.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 12:16 US/Pacific, Luc Van Oostenryck
wrote:
> OK thanks, now can I ask again, on the name of the french wikipedians
> to disable the inline linking of images on the french wikipedia?

C'est fait, je m'excuse pour la delai.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!)

body:
[eo]
Eksperimente, dum la sekvaj tagoj mi ne parolos angle en Vikipedio. Por
kontakti min, nepre uzu Esperanton a? la francan. Se vi ne parolas
tiujn lingvojn, ser?u tradukiston. Mi esperas demonstri iomete la
frustron kiun sentas la eksterangla vikipediistularo; mi petas pardonon
se tio ?enas.

[fr]
Comme exp?rience (pseudo-)scientifique, pendant les journ?es sequentes
je ne parlerai pas l'anglais en Wikip?dia. Pour me contacter, il faut
utiliser le fran?ais ou l'esp?ranto. Si vous ne les parlez pas,
recherchez un traducteur. J'esp?re demonstrer un peu la frustration
sentie des wikip?diens non-anglophones; je m'excuse pour l'inconv?nient.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
On Thursday 23 October 2003 12:27 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> A better solution would be to accept his votes at face value, worth
> neither more nor less than anyone else's.  Obviously he has a strong
> attitude against deletions in general.  There should be no obligation
> for him to justify his votes.

Of course there is a need to justify votes in contentious cases, and most
regular contributers to VfD do so. VfD, despite its title, is not just a
voting booth but also a discussion area about deletion. How can one make an
informed decision if one does not know the motivations of the people casting
the votes?

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:

>On Thursday 23 October 2003 12:27 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>A better solution would be to accept his votes at face value, worth
>>neither more nor less than anyone else's.  Obviously he has a strong
>>attitude against deletions in general.  There should be no obligation
>>for him to justify his votes.
>>
>
>Of course there is a need to justify votes in contentious cases, and most
>regular contributers to VfD do so. VfD, despite its title, is not just a
>voting booth but also a discussion area about deletion. How can one make an
>informed decision if one does not know the motivations of the people casting
>the votes?
>
I don't waste a lot of time at VfD, and I don't visit the Village Pump
much anymore.  I find that the amount of time that I spend on the
mailing lists more than adequately fills the time that I have available
for controversy.  So the ones who enjoy working on VfD shouldn't
complain about others having different priorities.  Maybe the people who
don't justify themselves do so because they don't feel the need to
engage in the same old tired defences over and over and over again.  And
why should someone else'e motivation affect your decision to make an
informed vote?

Perhaps we should ask the people who put things on VfD to explain what
they did to improve the situation before they made that request. ;-)

Ec


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>> On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 02:19 US/Pacific, tarquin wrote:
>>
>>> Were IS the wikimedia logo? I can't see it anywhere :( , eg
>>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki
>>
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/
>
>
> Or if you meant the mediawiki logo, http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
>
I did. Sorry, I got mixed up!
Very nice! Can we put it on the http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki
page too?

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 09:27 AM 10/23/2003, you wrote:
>
>> A better solution would be to accept his votes at face value, worth
>> neither more nor less than anyone else's.  Obviously he has a strong
>> attitude against deletions in general.  There should be no obligation
>> for him to justify his votes.
>
> There is no reason for the charitable assumptions that you suggest. In
> fact, there are reasons NOT to assume the above. Anyone with a
> passionately held anti-deletionist position would most likely have
> spoken out at some point, or at least answered queries on his talk
> page. Historically he has also voted to "Delete" /en masse/ on the VfD
> page as well. These are, in my opinion, the actions of a troll.

I always though that it was very unwiki to assume malicious intent.
 When was this changed?  If the guy is inconsistent about his votes that
should be his problem, not ours. If you think he's such a troll just
stop feeding him.

BTW it would make it easier to trace these items if there were "(cur)"
features on the user contribution pages - especially when they have
worked on such a heavily edited page as VfD.  Wartortle's most recent
edit was on the 22nd and is already out of the most recent 50 in the
page history.  This made tracking the facts a lot more difficult.

Ec


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP parser made twice as fast

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:

> * inline language links in the form [[:fr:lien interwiki]] finally work

Is this the same as [[FrWikipedia:lien interwiki]]?

Kurt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At 01:08 PM 10/22/03 -0700, Delirium wrote:
>
>> In retrospect I agree partially, and would move towards using neither
>> Blessed or Saint.  In fact, I would prefer not using titles at all.
>> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant for an example of
>> this in practice (note that it does not start off "General Ulysses S.
>> Grant..." -- even though in this case "General Grant" was in fact a
>> common way to refer to him before, during, and after his Presidency.
>>
>> There are a few exceptions, of course.  "Saint Peter" should be
>> referred to as such, because that's the most common way to refer to
>> him (though I wouldn't object to "Peter the Apostle" either).  Popes
>> should probably be referred to as "Pope John Paul II", because "John
>> Paul II" is not actually a personal name, but one adopted with the
>> office.  But I don't think this should extend to all people who have
>> titles.
>
>
> This is basically the--sensible, I think--approach recommended by
> Fowler, decades
> ago: start by calling people by the name they're best known by, and
> optionally add
> others. So Mother Theresa gets listed as that ("Saint Theresa" needs
> to be a disambiguation
> anyway), and the article should note her birth name as well as the
> fact that she was
> canonized by the Roman Catholic church in 2003 (other churches also
> have saints,
> but not the same list--so we need to be specific). Ringo Starr isn't a
> redirect to
> Richard Starkey, and Gerald Ford is listed as that, not primarily as
> "President Ford" or
> by his birth name.

There is a risk of confusing two issues here.  Obviously we need
stricter naming rules for srticle titles than in the body of an article.
 Failing to adopt conventions for article titles could make some of them
unfindable, especially since the search function became dysfunctional.

The article title [[Sir Ringo Starr]] would not be acceptable.  The
controversy for now is over the first sentence of an article.  Thus if
an article about him were to begin "Sir Ringo Starr was a member of the
Beattles," would that be an acceptable placing of the word "Sir".
 Assuming that it is factually correct, I would say yes.  My more
general contention is that this is a point where a great deal of
latitude and flexibility is essential.

Ec


from_name: Brian Corr

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please post to the right list

body:
I have just recently subscribed to this list (in addition to
wikien-l at Wikipedia.org) since it seems the only way to keep up with many
issues, and I just want to second the request to reduce cross-posting.

There have been a lot of good emails about the differences between the two
lists, and it definitely adds to the challenge of reading them. My sense
(based on very little experience, though) is that most of what gets
crossposted really belongs on wikien-l (e.g. that blessed Mother Teresa
article), and that a much smaller amount should really just be on wikipedia-l.

No disrespect intended to Ed for cross posting *his* message  -- but I'll
only respond here since that seems to be following my own advice ;-)

Brian
At 04:49 PM 10/23/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 09:22:23 -0400
>From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please post to the right list
>
>As the administrator of English Wikipedia mailing list (Wikien-l), I
>would like to *request* that contributors avoid cross-posting to the
>International Wikipedia mailing list (wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org).
>
>The international list should only be used for issues which affect all
>languages, or the project as a whole.
>
>I believe that all discussions relating to the [[Mother Theresa]]
>article should be confined to Wikien-l and kept off the international
>list.
>
>The difference of opinion between Erik & James is purely an English
>Wikipedia issue, so let's keep it there.
>
>NOTE: If you reply to this post, please CHOOSE either Wikien-l or
>Wikipedia-l (one or the other, NOT BOTH :-)
>
>Ed Poor
>Mailing List Administrator
>English-language Wikipedia (Wikien-l)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia-in-a-box

body:
Nice work, Magnus! I can hardly wait to try it out!!

Ed Poor


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
In message <5.2.0.9.1.20031023082716.0305c970 at smtp.panix.com>, Vicki
Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> writes
>At 01:08 PM 10/22/03 -0700, Delirium wrote:
>
>>In retrospect I agree partially, and would move towards using neither
>>Blessed or Saint.  In fact, I would prefer not using titles at all.
>>See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant for an example of
>>this in practice (note that it does not start off "General Ulysses S.
>>Grant..." -- even though in this case "General Grant" was in fact a
>>common way to refer to him before, during, and after his Presidency.
>>
>>There are a few exceptions, of course.  "Saint Peter" should be
>>referred to as such, because that's the most common way to refer to
>>him (though I wouldn't object to "Peter the Apostle" either).  Popes
>>should probably be referred to as "Pope John Paul II", because "John
>>Paul II" is not actually a personal name, but one adopted with the
>>office.  But I don't think this should extend to all people who have titles.
>
>This is basically the--sensible, I think--approach recommended by
>Fowler, decades
>ago: start by calling people by the name they're best known by, and
>optionally add
>others. So Mother Theresa gets listed as that ("Saint Theresa" needs to
>be a disambiguation
>anyway), and the article should note her birth name as well as the fact
>that she was
>canonized by the Roman Catholic church in 2003

Just nitpicking to be pedantic, but she hasn't been canonized, only
beatified so far... (I nearly said "beautified", but that would be more
difficult! :) )

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


body:
Jeudi, 23 Oct 2003, Luc Van Oostenryck a ?crit:
> [fr]
> Je voudrais juste insister sur le fait que je pense que l'anglais
> reste la meilleure langue d'intercommunication entre tous les wikip?dias.
> C'est surtout la communication tout court qui me pose souvent des probl?mes.

Oui. Le probl?me n'est pas l'anglais meme, mais l'assumption apr?s
quelques heures de discussion anglophone que tout le monde se trouve en
accord.

Pour les decisions ? consensus, il faut avoir assez des consenteurs...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
James Duffy wrote:

> As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of
> articles, by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and
> bookworms like Deb to experts on constitutional history like John
> Kenney, any unilateral attempt to abandon what has been agreed because
> Mark has a POV he wishes to push, would be a gross abuse of  wiki and
> grossly insulting to the many people who solved what had been a
> glaring problem. Mark may not like titles, but the fact that they
> exist. Covering them accurately and factually is NPOV. Trying to push
> an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I will remove them',
> is pushing a POV, is unencylop?dic and grossly disrespectiful to the
> large numbers of people who debated the issue, made observations and
> have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy in a
> professional, encyclop?dic NPOV manner.

I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both a
logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent Latin
phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.

The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not
endorsing others, which is inconsistent and POV.  When we use Sir,
Blessed, and so on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His Excellency,
and The Honorable, this is a POV judgment, and unacceptable in a
professional encyclopedia.

If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some
conventions adopted indicating which we should use, and which we should
not.  Why should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off "Blessed
Mother Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]] does not start
off "The Honorable Clarence Thomas"?  Is there a principle behind this
decision?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
At 01:08 PM 10/23/2003, you wrote:
>I always though that it was very unwiki to assume malicious intent. When
>was this changed?

Unwiki or not, it is sometimes the intelligent assumption.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
Delirium wrote:

> James Duffy wrote:
>
>> As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of
>> articles, by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and
>> bookworms like Deb to experts on constitutional history like John
>> Kenney, any unilateral attempt to abandon what has been agreed
>> because Mark has a POV he wishes to push, would be a gross abuse of
>> wiki and grossly insulting to the many people who solved what had
>> been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles, but the fact that
>> they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is NPOV. Trying to
>> push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I will remove
>> them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopic and grossly disrespectiful to
>> the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made observations
>> and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy in a
>> professional, encyclopic NPOV manner.
>
>
> I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both
> a logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent
> Latin phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.
>
> The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not
> endorsing others, which is inconsistent and POV.  When we use Sir,
> Blessed, and so on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His
> Excellency, and The Honorable, this is a POV judgment, and
> unacceptable in a professional encyclopedia.
>
> If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some
> conventions adopted indicating which we should use, and which we
> should not.  Why should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off
> "Blessed Mother Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]]
> does not start off "The Honorable Clarence Thomas"?  Is there a
> principle behind this decision?

You're talking about two different issues.  James is talking about
article titles.  Delirium is talking about personal titles at the
beginning of the text IN an article. It makes it easier to know what we
disagree about when when we agree to disagree about the same thing. :-)

POV is unencyclopic when it pokes out one's only good eye.   ;-)   Sorry
James, but I can't resist the temptation of a good typo.!
Ec


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Lee Pilich wrote:

>Delirium wrote:

>>I don't think it would cut nearly enough out.  For example, a short
>>article listing my place of birth, high school attended, and university
>>attended is easily verifiable through publically available records.

>Then it could be deleted on the grounds that it would never be more than a
>stub (I don't know if it's formalised anywhere, but deleting things for
>that reason has been pretty widely done in the past).

Better IMO is to redirect him to [[List of foos]],
where "foo" means whatever got him on in the first place
(residents of his hometown, Wikipedians trying to make a point [*], etc).
A while ago, [[Gnasher]] was redirected to [[Dennis the Menace (UK)]]
because it too would (in all probability) never be more than a stub.
(This is the last example that I recall coming up on the list.)
That is the right thing to do, not to delete [[Gnasher]];
if you delete it, then somebody will come along and create it again.

[*] Actually, if the article is created merely to make a point,
    then I don't mind particularly if it ends up deleted.
    I don't care much for articles created to make a point,
    even when I still have more hope for them than /most/ people do.
    But if it's created for an earnest reason, even a bad one,
    then it will come up again and so should be redirected someplace better.

-- Toby


body:
On Thursday 23 October 2003 03:41 pm, Brion Vibber wrote:
> [fr]
> Comme exp?rience (pseudo-)scientifique, pendant les journ?es sequentes
> je ne parlerai pas l'anglais en Wikip?dia. Pour me contacter, il faut
> utiliser le fran?ais ou l'esp?ranto. Si vous ne les parlez pas,
> recherchez un traducteur. J'esp?re demonstrer un peu la frustration
> sentie des wikip?diens non-anglophones; je m'excuse pour l'inconv?nient.

Sans aucun doute pseudo-scientifique! :-)

I'll try and contribute to getting relevant discussion on the English Village
pump moved to wikipedia-l.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
aka snoyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

>Just a heads-up. A user "Wartortle" (a Pokemon reference, apparently) has
>been voting "keep" /en masse/ on the VfD page with no explanations for
>awhile now. He has been questioned (politely) numerous times as to his
>intentions via his talk page.... there has been no response. I think the
>time may come for Jimbo to give him a talking too... or else we all could
>decide together if this is vandalism of a sort.

It's now vandalism to vote on Votes for Deletion???
He should respond to comments on his user talk page,
but since he's relatively new, are we sure that he's noticed them?
Even then, it's not vandalism of /any/ sort to ignore comments;
that falls under the "problematic user" business.
(If you believe that he's really an old troll, then that's different,
especially if he's voting dishonestly.  But you didn't mention that.)

If you want to delete things on consensus,
and you note that Wartortle has written nothing but Pok?mon articles,
and has actually edits VfD more often that any of those,
and that therefore his objections to any consensus among others
are irrelevant to you, and you ignore him, then that's fine with me.
But if you say that VfD requires only a supermajority of 75%,
then you're going to see a hell of a lot more of this later on.
I agree that people ought to give reasons on VfD, but if y'all make it
nothing a simple numerical vote, then that's all that it'll become.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Saints

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

>This is basically the--sensible, I think--approach recommended by Fowler, decades
>ago: start by calling people by the name they're best known by, and optionally add
>others. So Mother Theresa gets listed as that ("Saint Theresa" needs to be a disambiguation
>anyway), and the article should note her birth name as well as the fact that she was
>canonized by the Roman Catholic church in 2003 (other churches also have saints,
>but not the same list--so we need to be specific). Ringo Starr isn't a redirect to
>Richard Starkey, and Gerald Ford is listed as that, not primarily as "President Ford" or
>by his birth name.

Call people the name they're best known by --
just like [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]] has said for years?
What an intriguing and revolutionary proposal!

<end sarcasm>

Yes, Vicki is entirely correct.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia-in-a-box

body:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Magnus Manske wrote:
> >As a demo, I have cundeled up the software and an old (converted) DB
> >dump of the German wikipedia. It's about 30 MB and resides here:
> >
> >	http://download.wikipedia.org/wikipedia_standalone.zip

Tr?s cool... Source?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
To cut the traffic on VfD, list on Cleanup for two weeks first if it isn't actually harmful (offensive or illegal, not tasteless or dictionary) to have it around for that time. And tell the most prominent creators it's been listed there for more work so they can do that work if they want to.

This gives time for the debates to start and maybe finish before things arrive at VfD. Also time for the people who are inclined to work on articles to do that before they use the more time-consuming VfD process. Would be nice not to see newbies getting educated instead of listed on VfD an hour afer starting work on a page as well.

Once those steps have halved the demand for VfD there won't be a need to cut the time things stay there.

Cleanup might need to switch to one page per day of the week but that's less painful there because there's no deadline.


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Saints

body:
On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 06:59:20PM +0200, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Yes.  Arabs and Jews wil not rate Bernhard of Clairvaux as a "saint".

Why? I would accept Saint Ibrahim (change christian religious nonsense to
whatever religious nonsense arabs have) as they reference him as that. If a
group defines its member as Foo then he's a Foo, allright, no matter whether
I believe in Fooness or not. I expect Foo Ibrahim to redirect to Al-ahmed El
Bizmar Ibn-abhur Ibrahim or what. Doesn't hurt me.

Apart from that it's logical to reference people with their names, and list
their titles later. But many should have their own pretty redirects simply
because LOTS of people look up their given names or titles, for example St.
Stephen (who happened to be Istvan, who happened to be Vajk originally, and
noone looks up him this way). Dunno about Mother Theresa's original name,
I'd look her up as Mother Theresa (which should be redirect to her original
name, which is The Article). Not St Theresa, right now, but who knows how
the generally accepted reference changes in 5 years? I expect a redirect,
then, probably.

grin

(btw if someone is saint for christians and Foo for Xyzzyans then article
should mention both. If they contradict, list them in separate sections
referencing the source.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
James Duffy wrote:

> :-) Actually Ec, the naming conventions deal with whole issue of
> naming; article titles and textual entries. Whether one likes titles
> or loathe titles, they do (unfortunately) exist. Using factually
> existing titles is simply a recognition of reality. ''Choosing'' to
> ignore them is by definition POV and you are choosing because of a
> point of view to ignore them. So Delirium's stance, apart from doing a
> Bobby Ewing and trying to imagine that the last year and the work of
> many people, not to mention debates, discussions, proposals put to the
> Wiki-L, etc didn't exist, is POV in that it is taking a policy stance
> based on personal opinion to ignore something that exists. So on three
> fronts, ignorance of what titles are, ignoring the work of everyone
> over the last year who following an agreed naming convention, and
> seeking to opt for POV reasons to ignore the reality and push a POV
> agenda on titles, Delirium is wrong.

I still disagree, and do not appreciate your condescending "this matter
has been decided by the High Council of Wikipedians With PhDs in the
Field" tone.  I do agree that where titles are an integral part of the
name, they should be used.  Pope John Paul II should clearly be referred
to as such.  However, "Mother Theresa" is the standard form of that name
(at least in English), and "Blessed Mother Theresa" is used by very few
non-Catholics.  This is true of people who have been beatified a long
time ago as well: the "Blessed" title is rarely used by non-Catholics.
"Saint" is a more tricky issue, as it also involves factual
correctness.  As with an example someone else brought up (Bernard of
somewhere-or-other), some people are considered Saints by some Churches
and not Saints by other Churches.  Calling them Saint is taking a POV
stance on the issue, since some Churches disagree that they are
deserving of Sainthood.  [[List of saints]] has a handy table
summarizing the various stances on this issue.  Saying "so-and-so was
canonized in 1856 by the Patriarch of Constantinople and is considered a
Saint by Orthodox Christians" is factually correct.  Calling him a Saint
with no qualifications is factually incorrect, because the Roman
Catholic Church may not agree (one can easily find examples of the
reverse situation as well).

Note also that this is not me versus a unanimous consensus.  The Saint
Bernard issue was brought up by someone else who opined that the term
Saint should not be applied to him in an unqualified fashion (I've since
deleted the email, so can't recall who), and the "Blessed" was removed
from the front of the Mother Theresa article by someone else (I didn't
remove it; I only supported its removal on the talk page).

In short, I think we should not use titles unless they are the common
English way of referring to a person.  This viewpoint had significant
support the last time it was discussed on the naming conventions talk
page before I left that debate, thinking it was resolved.  Under this
viewpoint, we have:
*Pope John Paul II
*Cardinal Richelieu
*Mother Theresa
*Saint Peter
*Charles, Prince of Wales
*etc.

But not:
*President John F. Kennedy
*The Honorable Representative Tom DeLay
*His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholemew
*Blessed Mother Theresa
*Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
*etc.

As for your distinction between honorifics and actual titles, this isn't
even consistent on Wikipedia.  You cite "Her Majesty" as a title we
*don't* use, but [[Charles, Prince of Wales]] begins "His Royal Highness
The Prince of Wales, Charles Philip Arthur George
Mountbatten-Windsor...".  So apparently we *do* use "His Royal
Highness", an honoriffic form of address, but for some reason do not use
"The Honorable" or "His Excellency" or "His All-Holiness", which seem
very similar in spirit.  Is there a reason for this?  I'd argue
"Blessed" is very close to this as well, as outside of the Catholic
community is is rarely used.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re : Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!

body:
Anth?re wrote:
> Some time ago, the english wikipedia decided to change
> the software to make it suit better her own needs;
> that is to make it possible to any sysop to block
> someone.
> I followed the discussion. It was a general soft
> change, intended for the needs of ONE wikipedia only
> (granted, we could use it as well one day, and that
> can really help in case of vandalism). It was
> discussed by english wikipedians only. It was decided
> by english wikipedians only.
> When I said that I did not want that on the french
> wiki (sorry that no one else speak up, but I am not
> gonna stop giving my opinion just because I am alone
> talking), the soothing answer was "then we won't make
> it available on the french wiki".
>
> It was not even officially announced to
> internationals, though imho, it is a *major* change,
> and could have *very* bad consequences on those
> wikipedias, where there are few sysops and no Jimbo.
>
> Of course, the feature is available on the french
> wiki. Just as politicians, promises last the time they
> are written.

It's enabled on all the wikis due to carelessness more than anything.
When I was writing it, I put in per-wiki configuration at your request,
but then I didn't put any more thought into the matter. It just so
happens that the default setting was on, and no-one bothered to turn it
off, so therefore it's on. I apologise for my oversight. I'll turn it
off by default now, on the basis that there is no consensus for it on
the other wikis. Then each wiki can discuss the feature separately, and
we'll turn it on for those wikis which express a consensus to enable the
feature.

The reason I implemented it at all was because Jimbo requested it. I've
finally hunted down the relevant posts:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-May/002994.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-May/002996.html

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Saints

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
Had a ''Sir'' imposed on an article I wrote, and felt
this made too much of a non-hereditry title.

And later wrote:
My wish not to have William Nicholson (artist) not
called Sir wasn't respected.

And then Ray Saintonge made me pay attention by
writing:
I would, however, recommend that you discuss the
matter with [[User:Angela]] who is the person who made
the change.

Me? Oh, I'd been ignoring this whole debate until I
saw my name mentioned. I really don't care either way.
I thought what I was doing was making it consistent
with other articles. If you have a problem with it you
should have changed it back, mentioned it on the talk
page or asked me directly. I was not "not respecting
your wish". I didn't know that was your wish. Maybe I
just thought you'd missed it out accidentally. It
wasn't meant to impose on "your" article in any way
and you are quite free to remove it. I don't even
remember making the edit - although as it was at
5.30am I was probably asleep anyway. :-).

I apologise for having caused you any distress or to
feel that your views were not being respected. This
was certainly not my intention.

Angela

________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
 > >"Ray Saintonge"  wrote

> I looked at the article and respect your view about it.  It has had only
> one edit besides yours.  The last four were by you and more than a week
> ago, so I have no reason to touch it myself because I know nothing aboui
> Nicholson.  There is nothing on the discussion page.  In these
> circumstances I would be the last one to object to your dealing with the
> "Sir" in the manner that you stateed.  I would, however, recommend that
> you discuss the matter with [[User:Angela]] who is the person who made
> the change.

Think you misunderstand why I brought this up.  There is no wiki reason for
me not to edit the page; but every human reason not to get involved in an
edit war over three letters.  I've not been seriously involved in WP for
long enough to do more than test the water on the issue, since others have
raised it.

In any case, I have other wiki experience to tell me that these things can
certainly wait.

Charles


body:
On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Tim Starling wrote:
> Maybe we should try PHPA:
>
> http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/

[fr] Nous l'utilisons d?j?. :)
[eo] Ni jam uzas ghin. :)

> > * initial spaces in the title of a link with a namespace are now
> > trimmed, so [[Wikipedia:_Oops]] now maps correctly to [[Wikipedia:Oops]]
> > instead of generating a technically illegal title with initial
> > whitespace in cur_title.
>
> What about [[Wikipedia:__Oops]]?

[eo] Sinsekvo de spacoj jam estas unuigita, do estu:
[fr] Selon ma memoire, une sequence des espaces serait unifi?e en une
     espace:

  'Wikipedia:__Oops' -> 'Wikipedia:_Oops' -> (4, 'Oops')

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
At 17:05 22/10/2003 -0700, Mark (Delirium) wrote:
>I don't think it would cut nearly enough out.  For example, a short
>article listing my place of birth, high school attended, and university
>attended is easily verifiable through publically available records.

Then it could be deleted on the grounds that it would never be more than a
stub (I don't know if it's formalised anywhere, but deleting things for
that reason has been pretty widely done in the past).

OK, maybe there's a *bit* more to a "keepable" article than it simply being
verifiable, but I guess my main point is that it's possible to make a
reasonable decision about whether to delete an article without resorting to
(necessarily subjective) judgements on its "importance" or "notability".

That's my feeling, anyway.

Lee (Camembert)


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

body:
Effectively it's really pitty your are the alone to speak for french people.
(your are often not representative of other french opinion)
I can't help... I can't read all the mails (too long to translate for me).
Just hope the french Wikipedia growing will attract more people fluent in
english.
How about other no-english Wikipedia ?

Guillaume

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 2:12 PM
Subject: Re : [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!

> From: Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
> > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!
> > Post to the right
> > list or don't post at all.)
>
> > The Cunctator wrote for the most part:
> >
> > >Don't blame the participants--blame the flawed
> > interface of using
> > >multiple mailing lists for discussing Wikipedia
> > issues.
> >
> > Do you mean that it would be better for the French
> > speakers
> > to look through all posts now on wikiEN-L /and/
> > wikipedia-L
> > to search for matters relevant to all Wikipedias?
> > Having general material appear on wikiEN-L from time
> > to time,
> > and [[en:]]-specific material appear on wikipedia-L
> > occasionally,
> > seems easier to deal with than always having to
> > check everything.
> >
> > Of course, I read both lists anyway, so I'll defer
> > to Anth?re if I'm wrong.
> >
> >
> > -- Toby
>
> :-)
> I am registered to fr, en, main, international,
> textbook, and tech lists.
> Because you guys are commonly spilling things at the
> wrong place and that is the *only way* to know what is
> going on. Ideally, I should also follow the village
> pump as well, because more than once I fell upon
> something all decided there. But I rarely do.
> And of course, discussions also go on at meta, so that
> is another place to watch.
>
> For an english-only participant, that makes rather few
> places to follow. Not so for someone working on
> several wikipedias. Plus, we do not read so quickly as
> you all do. And sometimes misinderstand entirely
> things done, such as I did 2 days ago with Mav.
>
> I think ultimately, one give up trying to follow.
>
> I could not assume more than 100 messages a day in my
> mail box, so I switched to digests. Now, I am breaking
> threads, because I can't answer to a comment, just
> copy the title of the thread. Further impairing the
> information flow.
>
> I know few internationals have the courage to follow
> everything.
>
> -------
>
> Need proof ?
>
> Some time ago, the english wikipedia decided to change
> the software to make it suit better her own needs;
> that is to make it possible to any sysop to block
> someone.
> I followed the discussion. It was a general soft
> change, intended for the needs of ONE wikipedia only
> (granted, we could use it as well one day, and that
> can really help in case of vandalism). It was
> discussed by english wikipedians only. It was decided
> by english wikipedians only.
> When I said that I did not want that on the french
> wiki (sorry that no one else speak up, but I am not
> gonna stop giving my opinion just because I am alone
> talking), the soothing answer was "then we won't make
> it available on the french wiki".
>
> It was not even officially announced to
> internationals, though imho, it is a *major* change,
> and could have *very* bad consequences on those
> wikipedias, where there are few sysops and no Jimbo.
>
> Of course, the feature is available on the french
> wiki. Just as politicians, promises last the time they
> are written.
>
> Similarly, a year ago, I remember fighting against the
> red links for non articles, saying I would prefer ? to
> be default. Again, I was finally told that the french
> wikipedia would have ? as default then. Do I need to
> say which one is default between ? and red links ?
>
> Last week, one french, one that is supposingly
> following the ML discovered by chance the ability to
> block user name with one discussion here. He is
> typically one that should have known, that should have
> followed the discussion. But clearly did not. Probably
> because the decision in software change was lost in
> the discussion threads.
>
> When the change over blocking decision was done,
> french were discussing over a problematic user. I did
> not want him to be banned, because I thought the issue
> could be solved through discussion. Unless I am wrong,
> it was.
> If the french had known the feature, I foresee he
> would have been blocked. So, I did not say anything
> :-)
> I suppose most french users are still not aware sysops
> can block them. And it is not written anywhere :-)
>
> ------
>
> I know damn well everyone is making efforts, and that
> in the heat of a war, it is easy to make a mistake and
> post things at a wrong place.
>
> I know also that some people do disperse discussions
> on purpose.
>
> Wikipedia is supposed to be a global project.
>
> Language can make whatever policies they see fit.
>
> But software is commun asset. As such, any change made
> to it should be discussed in common. Not at the
> village pump and not on the english list. And ideally,
> not in english only.
> And when english people decide of a software change,
> please do stop saying the change will be local only if
> international do not agree with it. The truth is that
> it is a good way to shut someone else opinion to say
> so, and force someone to accept something, when they
> discover that whatever their opinion, the change is
> there, so better do with it.
>
> I hardly dare to remind this, but the internationals
> are slowly growing up. They may not be underage
> wikipedias any more. They also have concerns on their
> own, that are perhaps not those on the english
> wikipedias.
>
> There are also the small ones, not to forget. They
> should perhaps have a specific mailing list, or a
> specific place on meta, on their own, because their
> concerns are differents from the biggest ones.
>
> Any change in softwaree should NOT be discussed in
> english and on english list and pump only. And it
> should be officially announced somewhere. Perhaps a
> "technical news" page should be set somewhere, where
> we would put the upgrades announcements, the software
> updates, the server status, the purchase
> announcements, the classical bugs (ugly red missing
> and visited links).  Having all this centralized could
> help have the information follow.
>
> Meta is becoming messy, because we can't distinguish
> was is one wikipedia relevant, from what is wikipedia
> wide relevant. English use meta as a repository of all
> what they like on their main space. It is hard to
> distinguish what we should read from what is not
> necessary. Making it even more likely that we miss
> something.
> I would like very much to see something like
> "categories" on meta, with boxes to tick when creating
> or saving a page "english specific matters only",
> "general matters". So at least an indicator on the
> recent change could highlight what we are little
> likely to be interested in. Or...do I dare say
> again...even better, separate recent changes ?
>
> __________________________________
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia-in-a-box

body:
I have finally found a way to create a standalone wikipedia (read-only,
for now), based on my C++ parser. It comes with its own http server
(Tiny-something, it is freeware for non-commercial applications), and
does need *no* installation at all, which makes it perfect for
wikipedia-on-a-CD (Windows only, as of yet).

As a demo, I have cundeled up the software and an old (converted) DB
dump of the German wikipedia. It's about 30 MB and resides here:

	http://download.wikipedia.org/wikipedia_standalone.zip

Just unzip it, run the batch file to start the server, then follow the
URL link. Doesn't get much easier than that.

To avoid conflicts with other http servers (e.g., apache), the
standalone server is running on port 81, which can be changed by editing
the batch file. When you're done, you'll have to kill the server
"tiny.exe" in the task manager manually (or just leave it running).

On a related issue, I have worked on the MySQL -> sqlite converter,
which now converts the en dump in ~8 minutes, although sqlite needs a
lot more time indexing it (I guess 40-60 minutes total).

1.0, here we come ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mailing lists

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>[eo]
>Eksperimente, dum la sekvaj tagoj mi ne parolos angle en Vikipedio. Por
>kontakti min, nepre uzu Esperanton a?? la francan. Se vi ne parolas
>tiujn lingvojn, ser??u tradukiston. Mi esperas demonstri iomete la
>frustron kiun sentas la eksterangla vikipediistularo; mi petas pardonon
>se tio ??enas.

>[fr]
>Comme exp?rience (pseudo-)scientifique, pendant les journ?es sequentes
>je ne parlerai pas l'anglais en Wikip?dia. Pour me contacter, il faut
>utiliser le fran?ais ou l'esp?ranto. Si vous ne les parlez pas,
>recherchez un traducteur. J'esp?re demonstrer un peu la frustration
>sentie des wikip?diens non-anglophones; je m'excuse pour l'inconv?nient.

Well, between Esperanto and French, I can understand this!

But ... for the sake of easier communication with poor operating systems,
maybe the Esperanto in your emails could use the "x"-system??? ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
No, no, no, no, no!  Kill that obnoxious Cleanup proposal.  It's impossible to understand, and unworkable.

RickK

user_Jamesday <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
To cut the traffic on VfD, list on Cleanup for two weeks first if it isn't actually harmful (offensive or illegal, not tasteless or dictionary) to have it around for that time. And tell the most prominent creators it's been listed there for more work so they can do that work if they want to.

This gives time for the debates to start and maybe finish before things arrive at VfD. Also time for the people who are inclined to work on articles to do that before they use the more time-consuming VfD process. Would be nice not to see newbies getting educated instead of listed on VfD an hour afer starting work on a page as well.

Once those steps have halved the demand for VfD there won't be a need to cut the time things stay there.

Cleanup might need to switch to one page per day of the week but that's less painful there because there's no deadline.

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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was:

body:
> From: "Guillaume Blanchard" <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was:
> Dammit!
>
> Don't you feel we make a together monolog (bilog!?).

bilog :-)

> Even when I bother to write a mail to the list I
> often don't get any
> answers.

[en:]
That does not mean no one read it.

[fr:]
Un stroke n?gatif vaut mieux que pas de stroke du
tout.

> The only solution I see to improve multi-language
> coordination is to create
> about ten clones of Brion ;o)

[en:]
Nod.

[fr:]
T'ais je dis que j'aimerais bien me reproduire aussi ?
Pire que dans tes pires cauchemards :-)

> PS: I'm not at all for banning people, I already
> said many time that is as
> unfair (private other user using an IP) as useless
> (it's so easy to change
> his IP). But as a sysop, I want to be able to stop a
> real vandal even if his
> logged. I'm just against feeding trolls ;o)

[fr:]
Voui. Que veut tu, le role d'une agronome est de
nourrir le monde...:-)

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subject: Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (enjoyment-humourous)

body:
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!

> > By the wait, are they any Japanese here!? It is
the
> fastest growing
> Wikipedia, isn't it?

Well if they are not-- they should be. People should
not be shy about posting in Japanese to the
Wikipedia-l, or the Intlwiki-l listss ( although there
isnt much activity on the WikiJA-l list either)

Everyone-for enjoyment-humourous:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikija-l/2003-September/thread.html

Si des francophones sont int?ress?s, la liste
fran?aise re?oit entre 1 et 5 douceurs de ce genre
tous les jours. Je peux forwarder aux int?ress?s :-)

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from_name: James Duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
>
>Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>>"Delirium" wrote
>>
>>>... I'd propose we remove titles from both article names and
>>>the beginning of the first sentence of the article, unless they are
>>>absolutely integral.  This includes both official titles (President,
>>>Prime Minister, etc.) and honorific titles (Blessed, Sir, etc.).
>>>
>>
>>I'd agree with the general sentiment.  Had a ''Sir'' imposed on an article
>>I
>>wrote, and felt this made too much of a non-hereditry title.  Isaac Newton
>>doesn't need the "Sir", for example.
>>
>If you don't want titles in the articles that you write that's just fine.
>Others may prefer to include them in the articles that they write; that's
>fine too..  Going around and removing these titles just because they don't
>please you is a disrespectful act.
>
>Ec

Wiki's policy on titles was worked out in detail in a debate raised on
wiki-L, on talk pages and the results pulled into a detailed naming
convention. On this basis /thousands/ of articles have been pulled together
in a uniform structure, having been a hilarious mess (I first found
wikipedia, having received an email from a colleague of mine - we both had
edited texts for two of the biggest US encylop?dias -  under the heading
'look at this for a laugh'. The email went around to quite a few academics,
writers, journalists, quoting some of the farcical rubbish that passed for
titles on wikipedia, and did wikipedia considerable damage at the time
because it suggested - wrongly - that wikipedia was sub-high school
standard, or as one academic in Harvard is supposed to have said, 'National
Enquirer-opedia'. While I cringed at the amateurish handling of the naming
issue, I was impressed by the rest and stayed and regard wikipedia as a
superb sourcebook).

After a thorough debate, and detailed discussion, not to mention extensive
research, the naming conventions were implemented, having been agreed here
and elsewhere initially by a small number, including Zoe, Deb, John Kenney,
myself and others, then by /everyone/, worldwide, from Swedish users to
Australian users, Americans, Europeans and from Asia, who worked on articles
about people with titles. As a result, what had been a hilarious mess based
on farcically simplistic presumptions (eg, all British royals have the
surname Windsor, actually there are 19 names used by members of the British
Royal Family, and according to his own staff, the Prince of Wales's surname
is not Windsor but Mountbatten-Windor, the name he married under in 1981,
similarly Queen Victoria's marital surname was 'Wettin' ) is now
professionally organised and academic-standard; a senior editor on a rival
print encyclop?dia said that /they/ should try to be as good, as factual and
as correct in the area of titles as wikipedia, having slammed wikipedia a
year earlier as 'amateurish and opinionated' in the area.

As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, by
a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like Deb
to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral
attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes to
push, would be a gross abuse of  wiki and grossly insulting to the many
people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles,
but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is
NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I
will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylop?dic and grossly
disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made
observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy
in a professional, encyclop?dic NPOV manner.

JT

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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
I want to add to what Anth?re said :
that almost everything is discussed in english is one problem
but the first we should be aware that something is discussed somewhere.

I also follow wikipedia-l, wikitech-l, intlwiki-l (and wikifr-l of course)
and very often important things are discussed somewhere else: wikien-l, village pump on en:
and meta.

# I can't follow wikien-l anymore: too much traffic and far too low signal/noise ration
# Meta is a real mess: no structure, no way too make difference between "official" information,
   personnal essays, proposition, pure delire, ...
# I don't really participate anymore on en:, so the village pump on en: should be useless for me
   (this is where LOCAL' stuff should be discussed. No?)

What I should like is that for everything that is more or less official and
should concern directly or indirectly wikipedias other than the english,
at least someone post a message on wikipedia-l or intlwiki-l saying
"topic about XXX is discussed here or there".
This should be the very first step for better communication between the wikipedias.
And even if there is no discussion, at least we should be informed that this or that have been decided or have been changed.

I don't think this is asking too much and will decrease on the non-english wikis the feeling that we are second (or third) class citizen.

-- Looxix


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, Oct 22, 2003, at 22:12 US/Pacific, Anthere wrote:
>
>> Similarly, a year ago, I remember fighting against the
>> red links for non articles, saying I would prefer ? to
>> be default. Again, I was finally told that the french
>> wikipedia would have ? as default then. Do I need to
>> say which one is default between ? and red links ?
>
>
> This can be set in the language file, as for instance the default on nl
> is to use ? links. I just install the files you guys give me, if you
> want a different default somebody's got to make the decision to do so.
>
> I can't speak to the banning stuff, as I've not been closely involved
> with setting it up.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

OK thanks, now can I ask again, on the name of the french wikipedians to disable the inline linking of images on the french wikipedia?

-- Looxix


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Inline linking

body:
From: Luc Van Oostenryck
<luc.vanoostenryck at easynet.be>

Pas de probl?me pour le delai, mais j'avais compris
qu'il ?tait question que les tous les wikis seraient
modifi?es en m?me temps, mais tous les
wikis ne sont pas pr?ts en m?me temps. D?sol? si ma
demande ?tait une peu
''rude'', ce n'?tait pas son intention.

------

C'est juste que j'avais esp?r? que d'autres wikipedias
profiteraient du "wagon", et ?clairciraient leur
politique d'utilisation des images en m?me temps que
les francophones.

I had just hoped that other wikipedias could benefit
of the "legal" work we had done with Alex, and would
go toward a cleaner image use policy with us.

Since Alex showed us inline linking could lead to
liability issues, since english had proof it could go
with strong vandalism, and since I try to show that
inline linking would be detrimental to the information
we are trying to offer readers and users of the
encyclopedia, I had hoped in my innocence, that
disabling inline linking could be made a global policy
(perhaps with exceptions) on wikipedia.

For this reason, I have several times tried to raise
the topic here, on international list and one meta. It
was meant to be an international work, not something
with just french people in mind. That was why I talk
about it here.

Not just a "french" policy because "french" people had
asked for it. But a global policy because a wikipedian
has suggested it, given arguments for it, and asked
for feedback.

Except for Andre who asked for time to fix the images,
no one opposed this disabling of in line linking. I
think it should be disabled everywhere.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Esperanto sucks

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Tim-
>
>
>>[en]
>>I just want to go on the record saying this: Esperanto sucks!
>>
>>
>
>I will go on the record saying this: There is a world language, and its
>name is English. Can we please stick to it in conversations? It has the
>additional advantage that it keeps the French out.
>
>In return, it would be nice if Americans could finally adopt the metric
>system.
>
>
We'll adopt the metric system as soon as the British do, which is to say
you'll probably be waiting a while. =D

(This means not having speed limits in miles/hour, beer in pints, and
peoples' weights on the BBC News in stones).

On a mildly more on-topic note, there was some discussion earlier of
some sort of automatic translation of units based on user preferences
(kg/lbs, degrees F / degrees C, mi/km, etc.).  Did anything ever come of
that?  Despite the obvious convenience of using metric as a standard,
currently a fairly large percentage of English speakers would have to
convert the units to make sense of them (the ~300 million Americans form
a fairly decent percentage of English speakers), so using the old
"standard" units for them makes some sense.

-Mark


body:
Don't you feel we make a together monolog (bilog!?).

Even when I bother to write a mail to the list I often don't get any
answers.

The only solution I see to improve multi-language coordination is to create
about ten clones of Brion ;o)

By the wait, are they any Japanese here!? It is the fastest growing
Wikipedia, isn't it?

Aoineko

PS: I'm not at all for banning people, I already said many time that is as
unfair (private other user using an IP) as useless (it's so easy to change
his IP). But as a sysop, I want to be able to stop a real vandal even if his
logged. I'm just against feeding trolls ;o)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!

> From: "Guillaume Blanchard" <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
>
> >Effectively it's really pitty your are the alone to
> >speak for french people.
> >(your are often not representative of other french
> >opinion)
>
> Yeah. But it is not exactly as if I was not calling
> for you all to participate more hein ?
> And as I said, I am not gonna just shut up because you
> guys don't speak up, right ?
>
> Ce n'est pas faute de vous interpeller souvent :-)
> Je ne vais pas me taire uniquement parce que d'autres
> ne peuvent pas parler.
>
> This said, apart from blocking undesired ones, I think
> we agree on most things Aoi. Just check last
> decisions.
> Hum...and CD release of raw french version perhaps as
> well.
>
> Je pense Aoi, qu'? part le CD et la pratique de
> bloquer toute personne qui semble avoir une vision
> autre que le politiquement correct, nous sommes
> d'accord dans la majorit? des cas. La plupart des
> d?cisions "en rade" sur fr, ne le sont pas du fait
> d'un blocage de ma part.
>
> >I can't help... I can't read all the mails (too long
> >to translate for me).
>
> Yup. And I suppose you also have troubles finding the
> relevant ones :-)
>
> et peut ?tre sont ils un peu trop nombreux ?galement
>
> >Just hope the french Wikipedia growing will attract
> >more people fluent in english.
>
> See to which extremities we are resolved ? We need to
> attract people fluent in english to have a say. How
> democratic is that ?
>
> Et donc, pour participer, nous devons n?cessairement
> parler anglais.
>
> >How about other no-english Wikipedia ?
>
> Not very much here either. At best one or two people
> for each language participate actively to mailing
> lists. No real representation can be fair this way.
>
> Guillaume
>
> Ben, pas mieux que nous.
>
> __________________________________
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> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

body:
>From: Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:48:09 -0700
>
>James Duffy wrote:
>
>>As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles,
>>by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like
>>Deb to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral
>>attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes
>>to push, would be a gross abuse of  wiki and grossly insulting to the many
>>people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like
>>titles, but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and
>>factually is NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them,
>>therefore I will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylop?dic and
>>grossly disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the
>>issue, made observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed
>>wikipedia policy in a professional, encyclop?dic NPOV manner.
>
Mark wrote:
>
>I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both a
>logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent Latin
>phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.
>
>The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not endorsing
>others, which is inconsistent and POV.  When we use Sir, Blessed, and so
>on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His Excellency, and The Honorable,
>this is a POV judgment, and unacceptable in a professional encyclopedia.
>
>If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some conventions
>adopted indicating which we should use, and which we should not.  Why
>should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off "Blessed Mother
>Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]] does not start off "The
>Honorable Clarence Thomas"?  Is there a principle behind this decision?

:-) If you are going to discuss titles, honorifics, styles, etc, do try to
know what they are!

Sir is not the same as All-Holiness. One is a manner of address, one is when
inherited or awarded as part of one's name. 'Blessed' is not the same as
'The Honourable'. They are two fundamentally different things.  'The
Honourable' is not part of a name, but a mode of address, the diplomats and
most presidents are 'His/Her Excellency', monarchs are 'His/Her Majesty',
popes/Dalai lamas are 'His Holiness. 'Blessed' becomes in effect part of the
name of a beatified person and over time the standard reference when
referring to them. They really are fundamentally different concepts, which
is why wikipedia has clear agreed rules for how one uses styles, titles,
courtesy titles, honours, etc. They are fundamentally different things, a
fact your comments here and elsewhere suggests you have completely failed to
grasp.

To give a practical example, courtesy titles are often so identified with a
holder that they are almost impossible to recognise without them. So anyone
who has ever studied British or Irish history knows immediately that ''Lord
John Russell'' is the British Prime Minister in the 1840s. Nobody would have
a clue who the article was about if it was referred to as ''John Russell'',
because no-one but his mother ever called him that. But Bob Geldof, Ronald
Reagan and Ted Health, who were awarded knighthoods, are recognisable
without using 'Sir'. So there is no question of including the 'sir' in the
article name. This was all discussed in intense detail and a structure for
when to use what, and when not to use what, agreed and followed by wikipedia
ever since.

JT

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Saints

body:
>
>Peter Gervai <grin at tolna.net> writes:
>
> > (btw if someone is saint for christians and Foo for Xyzzyans then
>article
> > should mention both.
>
>Sure, and if he is just a normal human being for the rest of the
>world?  Yes, here is the solution:
>
> > If they contradict, list them in separate sections referencing the
> > source.)
>
>Talk about sainthood(?) later.  As long as he lived, has was no saint;
>after his death he was made a saint.

You don't know your theology. He (or she) was made a saint in the belief
that he or she was in heaven, because of his or her conduct on earth. Ipso
facto, s/he was a saint when he lived, and declared a saint when he/she
died.

JT
>
>--
>                                                          |      ,__o
>                                                          |    _-\_<,
>http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)
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from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Saints

body:
Peter Gervai <grin at tolna.net> writes:

> (btw if someone is saint for christians and Foo for Xyzzyans then article
> should mention both.

Sure, and if he is just a normal human being for the rest of the
world?  Yes, here is the solution:

> If they contradict, list them in separate sections referencing the
> source.)

Talk about sainthood(?) later.  As long as he lived, has was no saint;
after his death he was made a saint.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Esperanto sucks

body:
On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 21:03 US/Pacific, Tim Starling wrote:
> But there does not seem to be any automatic translation service for
> Esperanto.

[eo] Jen unu: http://lingvo.org/irvdel/eoxx.html

"Welcome to the Vikipedio in Esperanto, a nettally being built
encyclopedia.  Present-day?  Is Tuesday, the 21-a of October, 2003 /
(the?  UTC), the Esperanto-versio to begin?  Is in November 2001, and
we now cooperate about 9244 articles.  A thanks to?  Some people!  We
want to have than 100 000, so we should work!"

;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
-- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> No, no, no, no, no!  Kill that obnoxious Cleanup
> proposal.  It's impossible to understand, and
> unworkable.

I wonder if anyone else saw the one-dimensional irony
in this statement.

~S~

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: banning

body:
From: Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com>

>> > I do not think it is necessary that you switch
off the
>> procedure Tim, as I know what french people will
vote.

>14 vs 1.

you forgot the abstention :-)

However, most said they wanted it only with a clear
procedure and rules. And a log. It is not clear
whether people are favorable to "punishment" in case
of abuse. It seems some fear sysops will never dare
blocking if there is a risk of punishement afterwards.

Interesting. No power should ever go without personal
responsability in case of power abuse. I know that it
will be a veto case for me if there is no possibility
to do anything in case of abuse. The fact we trust
current sysops can not be automatically extended in
the future.

Aoineko says "For me, if the blocked logged/annonyme
have any solution to contact other wikipedians and
contest the blocking, and if any other admin can
un-block logged/annonyme, there are no risk of a
abuse."

I think he is thinking that anything reversible has no
impact on spirit. No consequences. Such as when
someone is put in jail for 6 months because of an
juridical error. If the trial shows he is innocent,
and released, nothing happened; there was no abuse
whatsoever.

I agree reversible is the main thing. I object to the
"there is no abuse".

[fr:]
Aoineko. Je pense que tu sous estimes l'impact
psychologique d'un blocage, ou de tout situation
d'exclusion, m?me temporaire. Ce n'est pas le fait de
relacher un innocent apr?s coup qui efface d'un coup
de baguette magique l'impression d'?tre exclu. Et le
fait de reconnaitre une erreur apr?s coup ?galement, a
ces limites en termes de responsabilit?. Toute
personne qui a un pouvoir, quel qu'il soit, doit ?tre
capable de se justifier, doit accepter de reconnaitre
ses erreurs, et doit ?tre pr?te ? les assumer. Toi,
moi, Chirac (enfin, dans le meilleur des mondes). Il
ne doit pas y avoir pouvoir sans controle de pouvoir
et sans pouvoir retirer le dit pouvoir ? celui qui en
abuse.
Cela ne veut pas dire que cela sera pratiqu?, mais en
cas de besoin, et pour l'avenir, c'est n?cessaire ? un
bon ?quilibre.

-------

I have no idea which french word could have been
translatd in club-footer :-(

Would the log appears in recent changes when it is
modified ?

> > I would really would like that
> * the log feature is done, so tracking of who ban is
> available for public consideration
> * a system is made possible to warn people that a
> loggued in user has been banned (could it be a
message
> at the top, or an automatic email, or automatic
update
> of a visible banning log ?)
> * that on the message displayed to the banned user,
> the adress of the mailing list appears, and that the
> message sent be automatically approved by the
emailer
> (perhaps could it be a wikimail to the mailing list)
> and this whether the user has a valid email address
or
> not
> * that any first blocking be initially programmed to
> expire after a certain number of hours
> * perhaps that a specific page on wikipedia is made
> editable even by a loggued in user, for wikipedia
> communication. The banned user could not edit any
page
> but this one.
> > These are propositions.
> I think english people can handle blocking better
than
> we can, with less risk of abuse.
> But since we have not your safeguard, I think we
need
> other tools to avoid slipping.

See my comment on the bistro. Expiry times are easy,
the log is in the
dev branch. If you have a proposal for a message which
is displayed to
blocked users, I suggest you put it in the
fr:Wikip?dia namespace, like
I did with [[en:Wikipedia:You have been blocked]].
Soon (when the CVS
branches are next merged), the message displayed will
be directly
editable by any French administrator, or by any user
if you choose to
unprotect it. The other suggestions are certainly nice
ideas, but they
will take time to implement. We have to prioritise.

-- Tim Starling.

[en:]
Ok, thank you Tim. As you said in your other messages,
you and Jimbo wished this use would be limited to
vandals, reincarnations of ban users.

I similarly hope it will not be used to censor people,
to threaten others, to deal with problematic users, to
manage edit wars.

And we both know how our wishes go :-(

[fr:]
Aoineko, je d?bloquerais tout utilisateur qui sera
bloqu? pour des actes autres que vandalisme pur et
dur.  En particulier lorsque l'utilisateur sera
provoqu? par d'autres ?diteurs.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr addendum (double)

body:
--- Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] <[name omitted for privacy reasons]@msn.com> wrote:
> I sent a second email (which I don't think was
> received), noting that Adam hadn't really neglected
> the Muslims -- I dunno. Im not trying to cast him as
> some crazy; its just, he is being rude to me and I
> don't like it. Anyways, Im sure Erik Moller is
> getting pretty sick of seeing my rapidfire mailing
> list posts, so Ill stop trying to clarify what Im
> trying to communicate. >

Adam --Adam is one of many professionals who have
little patience for immature and overactive jostling.
It might be a good idea if you just took things easy
and learned a thing or two from people him, rather
than to see them as someone to troll or argue with.
In addition to being a teeny bit snooty (a rather
common academic's disease ) he also seems to be a very
sincere, straightforward, and a bit more understanding
than many others youre going to deal with.  And yes,
take a little time with your words -- as J-sus said:
"Its not what you put in your mouth that defiles you,
its what comes out of it that defiles you."

~S~

Note: According to US Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia, that was *not a sanction by J-sus of
"homo-sexual behaviour."

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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 12:16 US/Pacific, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
>
>> OK thanks, now can I ask again, on the name of the french wikipedians
>> to disable the inline linking of images on the french wikipedia?
>
>
> C'est fait, je m'excuse pour la delai.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Pas de probl?me pour le delai, mais j'avais compris qu'il ?tait question
que les tous les wikis seraient modifi?es en m?me temps, mais tous les wikis
ne sont pas pr?ts en m?me temps. D?sol? si ma demande ?tait une peu ''rude'', ce n'?tait pas son intention.

   No problem for the delay. It was just that I had understand
   that all wikis will be changed at the same time, but not all wikis are ready at the same time.
   Sorry if my request seem a bit rude, it was not the intent.

Thanks Brion.

-- Looxix


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Esperanto sucks

body:
TS:Its funny you mention this, cause I had just
thought aloud something along those lines on meta:
Linguistic democracy...

LDan: "As Brion said, maybe we can speak Esperanto for
our official interlanguage (for interlingual issues
only)...Esperanto grammar is very simple and it is a
good interlanguage....One can learn Esperanto very
quickly."

SV:"It might be easier to just learn Chinese.
Esperanto ???though many here seem to have a serious
infatuation with it, is not a very good international
language... Using Esperanto for a non-Esperanto
project is like voting for a w:Green party candidate
who everybody respects, but only gets 2% in the
polls."

--- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> Your German sucks.
Well this was rather rude and maybe stupid.

> I hate translation machines cuz they will NEVER be
> as good as a human
> translator. If there's no machine for Esperanto,
> than that should be
> seen as an advantage, cuz we're save from such bad
> translations.

Mach trans isnt supposed to be as good as people are.
It cant by definition ever be -- because machines are
machines, and people are not... But it's a tool to
throw stuff out there in more or less like the way the
language should look. There's noone here who reads
French or German who cant figure out pretty easily
what machine translated German/French paragraphs are.
There is usually a term or two which it totally flubs.
 ( like the word flubs!)

~S~

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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> [eo]
> Eksperimente, dum la sekvaj tagoj mi ne parolos angle en Vikipedio. Por
> kontakti min, nepre uzu Esperanton a?? la francan. Se vi ne parolas
> tiujn lingvojn, ser??u tradukiston. Mi esperas demonstri iomete la
> frustron kiun sentas la eksterangla vikipediistularo; mi petas pardonon
> se tio ??enas.
>
> [fr]
> Comme exp??rience (pseudo-)scientifique, pendant les journ??es sequentes
> je ne parlerai pas l'anglais en Wikip??dia. Pour me contacter, il faut
> utiliser le fran??ais ou l'esp??ranto. Si vous ne les parlez pas,
> recherchez un traducteur. J'esp??re demonstrer un peu la frustration
> sentie des wikip??diens non-anglophones; je m'excuse pour l'inconv??nient.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

[fr]
Je voudrais juste insister sur le fait que je pense que l'anglais
reste la meilleure langue d'intercommunication entre tous les wikip?dias.
C'est surtout la communication tout court qui me pose souvent des probl?mes.

[slecht nl]
Ik wille juist zegt dat ik denkt dat engels is het best taal voor
intercommunicatie tussen de wikipedia.
Het is alleen met slechte of geen communicatie dat ik heeft probleem.

[en]
Just to had a bit of frustation.

-- Looxix


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
The tone on Wikipedia seems to be degenerating.

Not that I'm surprised VfD is a nest of hornets. I've thought it a bad
idea from the start.

It's also disturbing that pages that aren't offensive or illegal are
being listed on VfD. There is *no need* to delete stub entries. We have
methods of indicating them as stubs, which is much more constructive
than simply deleting them.

> RickK wrote:
> No, no, no, no, no!? Kill that obnoxious Cleanup proposal.? It's
impossible to understand, and unworkable.
> ?
> RickK
>
> > user_Jamesday <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > To cut the traffic on VfD, list on Cleanup for two weeks first if it
isn't actually harmful (offensive or
> > illegal, not tasteless or dictionary) to have it around for that
time. And tell the most prominent creators
> > it's been listed there for more work so they can do that work if
they want to.

> > This gives time for the debates to start and maybe finish before
things arrive at VfD. Also time for the
> > people who are inclined to work on articles to do that before they
use the more time-consuming VfD process.
> > Would be nice not to see newbies getting educated instead of listed
on VfD an hour afer starting work on a
> > page as well.

> > Once those steps have halved the demand for VfD there won't be a
need to cut the time things stay there.

> > Cleanup might need to switch to one page per day of the week but
that's less painful there because there's
> > no deadline.


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jeudi, 23 Oct 2003, Luc Van Oostenryck a ?crit:
>
>>[fr]
>>Je voudrais juste insister sur le fait que je pense que l'anglais
>>reste la meilleure langue d'intercommunication entre tous les wikip?dias.
>>C'est surtout la communication tout court qui me pose souvent des probl?mes.
>
>
> Oui. Le probl?me n'est pas l'anglais meme, mais l'assumption apr?s
> quelques heures de discussion anglophone que tout le monde se trouve en
> accord.
>
> Pour les decisions ? consensus, il faut avoir assez des consenteurs...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

C'est exactement cela ou m?me pire: on ne r?fl?chit pas toujours que certains wikis,
qui ne fonctionnent pas exactement de la m?me mani?re et dont les contributeurs
n'ont pas la m?me mentalit?, pourraient avoir un avis diff?rent.

-- ? plus tard, Looxix


from_name: Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]

subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr

body:
At [[Talk:Jesus]], besides being (in my not at all humble opinion) a most disagreeable person; Adam has stated that Jews hate Jesus (for good reason). I just think people should be aware that he said this, I am sure it has some bearing on...something or other. I also noticed that he didn't include Islam in his list of major world religions...Im sure you see what Im getting at.
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