from_name: David Wendt

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>I asked brion on #mediawiki if he ever had problems merging between
>branches due to the CVS keywords we have embedded in the source code.
>Keywords in source make merging between branches kinda hard; you get a
>lot of spurious conflicts, and it's consequently harder to find and
>resolve the real ones. See this URL for details:
>
>    https://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.18/cvs_5.html#SEC64
>
>Brion said that, yes, he did have problems with them, and said to remove
>CVS keywords when I saw them. I then did a global search-and-replace
>across the codebase, removing all the CVS keywords I could find (almost
>all were $Id:$; I found one or two $Revision:$ ones).
>
>I realize that having CVS keywords in source files can be convenient; I
>don't think that convenience outweighs the burden put on release
>managers when merging across branches. Life's hard enough for our
>release managers, and if a release manager misses a real conflict
>because a merge caused 65 false ones, we've got a quality problem.
>
>I've added notes to this effect in the coding standards in
>docs/design.doc; I'll try to find a place on meta.w.o to add it, too. I
>should have posted to the list about it earlier; sorry I didn't.
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
Use option -kk when merging. This disables RCS keyword expansion.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: byron gamildien

subject: [Foundation-l] Liberation

body:
On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:31:01 -0800 (PST)
 Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=255781
>
> Hi everyone.
>
> I am proud to announce that Wikipedia is featured in an
> article of liberation.fr, one of the major french news
> media (paper and web). The article is listed on
> liberation main page, so we can expect some good feedback
> (visitors) for the site. I mention it because this is our
> FIRST front page article in a major media, and hopefully,
> the first of a long list now. This is a stone for french
> speaking people.
>
> There are a couple of rather inexact points in the
> article, but nothing problematic.
> The most curious is probably that there is no link to the
> encyclopedia itself... I hope people will spontaneously
> look in google ;-)
>
> Many thanks to Yann who made it possible in keeping in
> touch with the author of the article.
>
> -------------
>
> Aside from this point, I am yet to be connected to the
> real/virtual world with a phone and internet connexion.
> Meanwhile, I try to organise my new home, clean the old
> one, and planted some rose bushes yesterday. I also
> highjacked an university old computer for 2 hours, it
> broke after 45 mn, I had to switch to an even older
> computer, on which the only navigator was netscape 4.5.
> For those who wonder, no, it is not possible to edit
> wikipedia with Netscape 4.5. And no, installing new
> software on collective computers is not allowed either.
>
> I am currently fully realising how addictive Wikipedia
> can be. I try to make it easier in reading private mails
> (thank you for those keeping me up to date with current
> Wikipedia gossip, more is welcome ;-)) and updating my
> blog (for those who read french, please see
> http://anthere.shaihome.net for opinions on the political
> goal of Wikipedia).
>
> I think my next thoughts will be oriented toward what
> French call "fracture num?rique", ie, the great gap
> currently widening between those who have access to the
> net versus those who do not (or have a very limited net
> access). We might think about what we are *currently*
> doing : we are certainly improving the amount and quality
> of information of those who already have access to
> information. But we are not bringing information to those
> who do not really have access to information.
>
> I miss you all :-(
> i am happy for you.you know what your second point is so
true.i live in stanger south africa and the only access i
have to the internet is by coming to this resource centre
that a couple thousand people use to e-mail or surf the
web.it is just too expensive to buy a computer or be
connected to the internet.in south africa only businesses
and the wealthy can afford the web.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Meet the all-new My Yahoo! ? Try it today!
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

_____________________________________________________________________
For super low premiums, click here http://www.dialdirect.co.za/quote


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Liberation


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Removing CVS keywords ($Id:$ and friends) from
	source files

body:
On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 15:35 -0500, David Wendt wrote:
> Use option -kk when merging. This disables RCS keyword expansion.

Thanks; I made a note about that in design.doc and forgot to mention it
here. From the URL I quoted in my previous message:

        https://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.18/cvs_5.html#SEC64

        "There is, however, one major caveat with using `-kk' on merges.
        Namely, it overrides whatever keyword expansion mode CVS would
        normally have used. In particular, this is a problem if the mode
        had been `-kb' for a binary file. Therefore, if your repository
        contains binary files, you will need to deal with the conflicts
        rather than using `-kk'."

There are other ways to work around this, but it means additional work
for the release manager at merge time.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Removing CVS keywords ($Id:$ and friends) from	source
	files

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 15:35 -0500, David Wendt wrote:
>
>
>>Use option -kk when merging. This disables RCS keyword expansion.
>>
>>
>
>Thanks; I made a note about that in design.doc and forgot to mention it
>here. From the URL I quoted in my previous message:
>
>        https://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.18/cvs_5.html#SEC64
>
>        "There is, however, one major caveat with using `-kk' on merges.
>        Namely, it overrides whatever keyword expansion mode CVS would
>        normally have used. In particular, this is a problem if the mode
>        had been `-kb' for a binary file. Therefore, if your repository
>        contains binary files, you will need to deal with the conflicts
>        rather than using `-kk'."
>
>There are other ways to work around this, but it means additional work
>for the release manager at merge time.
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
Do we have any binaries in the repository?

I cant check, I dont have access.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New language introduction

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Estimates I find on the net speak of 2 million speakers rather than 4
>  or 5 million. Still, that number is of course more than enough to
> say that a Wikipedia would be a good idea. I do see a problem with
> the low internet access in the region; I fear you might remain the
> only contributor for quite some time. Still, my opinion here is
> positive.
>
> The ISO 639 code for Tumbuka is 'tum', so the location would be
> tum.wikipedia.org.
>
> Andre Engels

Hello,

And how many speaker of this language are able to write it and have an
internet access ?  :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
> > Adding new languages is certainly a strain on developers. It
> > certainly will be that this project will grow slowly (it would be
> > wiser perhaps to work mostly on wiktionary rather than wikipedia to
> > start with), but I do not think we should on purpose limit the
> > existence of small projects on the motive there will be few editors
> > to work on.
>
> It's not that much of a strain. I actually added this to the language
> list as soon as I saw the post, thinking that since it has an ISO 639-2
> code, it would be uncontroversial. But then I remembered this:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
>
> The OP hasn't met the conditions outlined on that page. So I removed it
> from the language list pending discussion.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Unfortunately this is now the case for all new languages with less
than 5 people.

Mark


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

references:
<003101c4d835$8fd89a60$a6c1dcc1@qobaccounts3>	<6faf39c9041202020664de0ef1@mail.gmail.com>
	<conc0c$v5e$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Andre Engels wrote:
>
>> Estimates I find on the net speak of 2 million speakers rather than 4
>>  or 5 million. Still, that number is of course more than enough to
>> say that a Wikipedia would be a good idea. I do see a problem with
>> the low internet access in the region; I fear you might remain the
>> only contributor for quite some time. Still, my opinion here is
>> positive.
>>
>> The ISO 639 code for Tumbuka is 'tum', so the location would be
>> tum.wikipedia.org.
>>
>> Andre Engels
>
>
> Hello,
>
> And how many speaker of this language are able to write it and have an
> internet access ?  :o)
>
When you read the original message that asked for the wikipedia, you
will read that at least one person WHO SPEAKS THE LANGUAGE is interested
in doing the work. Someone interested in promoting the language so in my
book this is a real and relevant opportunity to adress some of the bias
that we have against Africa and its subjects in Wikipedia. The current
version article on Tumbuka in the en:wikipedia is extremely poor. By
getting more wikipedia content on Africa and in African languages by
having all the African words we can get in wiktionary we adress a
wrongness in what we currently have.

It is not the amount of speakers with internet access that is relevant,
it is that we adress Africa at all. At this moment I think it is the
subject that has the poorest covering of all in all the wikipedia's.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia dates

body:
Hey,

            Does anyone have a start date for the Catalan, Gujarati,
Japanese, Malayalam, Marathi, Portugese, Sotho, Swahili, Ukrainian, Urdu,
and Walloon wikis?  I'm updating the Multilanguage list on
ang.wikipedia.org, and would like to make the list complete.

James


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Removing CVS keywords ($Id:$ and friends)
	from	source files

body:
On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 16:05 -0500, David Wendt wrote:
> >        "There is, however, one major caveat with using `-kk' on merges.
> >        Namely, it overrides whatever keyword expansion mode CVS would
> >        normally have used. In particular, this is a problem if the mode
> >        had been `-kb' for a binary file. Therefore, if your repository
> >        contains binary files, you will need to deal with the conflicts
> >        rather than using `-kk'."
>
> Do we have any binaries in the repository?

62, by my count:

	perl -MFile::Find -e "find sub { print (\$_, \"\n\") if (-f \$_ && -B \$_) }, '.'" | wc -l
	62

> I cant check, I dont have access.

There's anonymous public access to the CVS repository on SourceForge:

	http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=34373

You can also check the downloadable tarballs at:

	http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] REL1_4 branched

body:
On Dec 2, 2004, at 1:32 PM, Thomas Gries wrote:
> do you want to have the Email Notification in REL1_4 ?

It's awfully hard to do this if you never actually provide a current
patch. You keep telling us that you're *going to* provide another
version of the patch for CVS, but I haven't seen it yet. The last
version you posted, to my knowledge, was an incremental patch for the
1.3 hack on November 6.
(http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454)

If you can produce a working, current diff for 1.4, I'll be happy to do
further integration work and merge it. Otherwise, I have to continue
with the release because we have our own requirement to get bug fixes,
features, and performance improvements rolled out.

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

from_name: R E Broadley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderators? (was Re: Opinion of the many?)

body:
Fred,

In this case, it might be a good idea for the web page where one signs
up for the mailing list to mention links to the basic policies, and
inform people not to post to the mailing list prior to reading them all.
Apologies if it already says this - I obviously missed it if so. I also
wasn't aware that most of my emails had been so newbie-ish, so apologies
for this also. I shall try harder in future.

Sincerely,
Ed

Fred Bauder wrote:

>Whether you intend to or not, your posts stir up a lot of senseless trouble.
>It's hard to explain simply, but mainly it comes down to you not knowing or
>misunderstanding the basic policies of Wikipedia and results in discussions
>which start at square one over and over.
>
>Fred
>
>


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 08:48:43 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
[snip]
> It's not that much of a strain. I actually added this to the language
> list as soon as I saw the post, thinking that since it has an ISO 639-2
> code, it would be uncontroversial. But then I remembered this:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
>
> The OP hasn't met the conditions outlined on that page. So I removed it
> from the language list pending discussion.

I can appreciate the reasoning behind the requirement that there need
be at least 5 persons pledged to contribute to the wiki.

However, I suspect that this number was chosen at least partly to
serve as an obstacle for very obscure or extinct languages to overcome
before being supported.   To me this is reasonable: we should not
waste resources on a Hittite wikipedia if only a couple individuals
want it.

But I think the policy ought to take into account (which is does not
now) the size of the current speaking population in making these
choices.  So I think that, whatever the minimum number of pledged
users needs to be, that it should be lower for languages like Tumbuka
than for, say, Hittite, because the greater size of the existing
speaking population implies a greater payoff for Wikipedia in
supporting the language.

Steve


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia dates

body:
Le Thursday 2 December 2004 16:39, James R. Johnson a ?crit :
> Hey,
>
>             Does anyone have a start date for the Catalan, Gujarati,
> Japanese, Malayalam, Marathi, Portugese, Sotho, Swahili, Ukrainian, Urdu,
> and Walloon wikis?  I'm updating the Multilanguage list on
> ang.wikipedia.org, and would like to make the list complete.

Activity on the Gujarati Wikipedia really started at the end of July 2004.
>
> James

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Website to block

body:
Please block http://www.objectssearch.com from stealing live content form
Wikipedia.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-compliant_site_coordination#Action_needed

[[w:nl:gebruiker:Walter]]


from_name: a a

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] In Chile,
	instant Web feedback creates the next day's paper

body:
hi how do I download a page for offline viewing?

Andrew


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Removing CVS keywords ($Id:$ and friends)	from	source
	files

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 16:05 -0500, David Wendt wrote:
>
>
>>>       "There is, however, one major caveat with using `-kk' on merges.
>>>       Namely, it overrides whatever keyword expansion mode CVS would
>>>       normally have used. In particular, this is a problem if the mode
>>>       had been `-kb' for a binary file. Therefore, if your repository
>>>       contains binary files, you will need to deal with the conflicts
>>>       rather than using `-kk'."
>>>
>>>
>>Do we have any binaries in the repository?
>>
>>
>
>62, by my count:
>
>	perl -MFile::Find -e "find sub { print (\$_, \"\n\") if (-f \$_ && -B \$_) }, '.'" | wc -l
>	62
>
>
>
Aah... so that's how you check. I dont have perl on this system, but I
guess there are a lot of binaries. Hope that they dont change on the
branch. Is it possible we could merge using -kb, or is this impossible?

>>I cant check, I dont have access.
>>
>>
>
>There's anonymous public access to the CVS repository on SourceForge:
>
>	http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=34373
>
>You can also check the downloadable tarballs at:
>
>	http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
Almost forgot about the read-only on sourceforge. (I must be losing it,
I commit to repositories on SF every day!)

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


references:
<003101c4d835$8fd89a60$a6c1dcc1@qobaccounts3>	<6faf39c9041202020664de0ef1@mail.gmail.com>	<conc0c$v5e$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<41AF354B.5000403@myrealbox.com>

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
<snip>
>>And how many speaker of this language are able to write it and have an
>>internet access ?  :o)
>
> When you read the original message that asked for the wikipedia, you
> will read that at least one person WHO SPEAKS THE LANGUAGE is interested
> in doing the work. Someone interested in promoting the language so in my
> book this is a real and relevant opportunity to adress some of the bias
> that we have against Africa and its subjects in Wikipedia. The current
> version article on Tumbuka in the en:wikipedia is extremely poor. By
> getting more wikipedia content on Africa and in African languages by
> having all the African words we can get in wiktionary we adress a
> wrongness in what we currently have.
>
> It is not the amount of speakers with internet access that is relevant,
> it is that we adress Africa at all. At this moment I think it is the
> subject that has the poorest covering of all in all the wikipedia's.

Hello Gerard,

I totally agree with you. I was just kidding, sorry if it got
misunderstood :o)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."


body:
On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 23:32 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:

> > > 62
> 63
> [...]
> 66

These are all pretty much in the same ballpark. I think the scale is
such that a manual solution (such as merging with -kk, then copying over
the binary files by hand from one or the other branch, and hand-checking
them for correctness) would be impracticable and error prone. Of course,
if that's what the release manager(s) want to do, I won't stop them.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Removing CVS keywords ($Id:$ and
	friends)	from	source files

body:
On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 18:05 -0500, David Wendt wrote:

> >>>       "There is, however, one major caveat with using `-kk' on merges.
> >>>       Namely, it overrides whatever keyword expansion mode CVS would
> >>>       normally have used. In particular, this is a problem if the mode
> >>>       had been `-kb' for a binary file. Therefore, if your repository
> >>>       contains binary files, you will need to deal with the conflicts
> >>>       rather than using `-kk'."

> Is it possible we could merge using -kb, or is this impossible?

My reading of the above paragraph is that you get either keyword
expansion suppression (-kk), OR proper treatment of binary files (-kb),
but not both.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
Mamma Mia wrote:

>Thanks to you all for the comments/suggestions/questions.
>
>I'll try to address most of the queries/questions and maybe give a little bit more information.
>
>The 2 million estimate is most definitely out of date and/or based only on those people that live in Tumbuka speaking regions. Tumbuka is the lingua franca of the North of Malawi, a region of almost 3 million people of whom over two thirds speak the language. My estimate is that at least a million people in Zambia speak the language and at least half a million of people from these areas residing elsewhere speak the language. So 3.5 million would be a very conservative estimate. There should be at the very least 5 thousand Tumbuka speakers in the US alone and am sure at least 10 of these would contribute something to the site.
>
>In Tumbuka water is maji. Tumbuka, like most Banthu languages, is a phonetic language so ma is pronounced as in man and ji as in Jeep. In another Malawian language, chiChewa,  it's madzi (dzi pronounced as in AIDS!) and in a language spoken in South Africa and Botswana, seTswana, it's Metsi ('tsi' as in Nazi - please forgive my choice of word here, I don't know any other word that has 'tsi' sound that I could have used).
>
>Merry Charismas and Happy New Year is: Christmas yiweme na chaka chipya chiweme; there's no word for Christmas in Tumbuka so we use the English one but normally spell it differently (phonetically) but I prefer spelling 'borrowed' words the original way.
>
>My estimate is that around 75% of the speakers of this language can read and write of which at the very least 10 thousand have internet access.
>
>I have written a few friends of mine and I hope they will be interested in the project. By my estimate, at least five should join the group within the next 24 hours (I'm some optimist!)! I didn't actually know that there's an entry for Tumbuka (in English) on Wikipedia until I saw it on GerardM's email. Thanks for that. I'll definitely add a few items to that this coming weekend.
>
>Once again, thanks to you all for your contributions.
>
>Dinnette
>
>
Hoi,
Thanks for this wonderfull answer. I have added Tumbuka as a language to
the Italian and the Dutch wiktionary.

Is seTswana the same as Tswana ?? If so, the ISO-639 code is tsn
chiChewa is also known as Nyanja ?? If so, the ISO-639 code is nya

I have added "Christmas yiweme na chaka chipya chiweme" for you to the
Italian wiktionary Christmas project.
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
I have added maji on the Dutch wiktionary.
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/water


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction


from_name: Mamma Mia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
Thanks to you all for the comments/suggestions/questions.

I'll try to address most of the queries/questions and maybe give a little bit more information.

The 2 million estimate is most definitely out of date and/or based only on those people that live in Tumbuka speaking regions. Tumbuka is the lingua franca of the North of Malawi, a region of almost 3 million people of whom over two thirds speak the language. My estimate is that at least a million people in Zambia speak the language and at least half a million of people from these areas residing elsewhere speak the language. So 3.5 million would be a very conservative estimate. There should be at the very least 5 thousand Tumbuka speakers in the US alone and am sure at least 10 of these would contribute something to the site.

In Tumbuka water is maji. Tumbuka, like most Banthu languages, is a phonetic language so ma is pronounced as in man and ji as in Jeep. In another Malawian language, chiChewa,  it's madzi (dzi pronounced as in AIDS!) and in a language spoken in South Africa and Botswana, seTswana, it's Metsi ('tsi' as in Nazi - please forgive my choice of word here, I don't know any other word that has 'tsi' sound that I could have used).

Merry Charismas and Happy New Year is: Christmas yiweme na chaka chipya chiweme; there's no word for Christmas in Tumbuka so we use the English one but normally spell it differently (phonetically) but I prefer spelling 'borrowed' words the original way.

My estimate is that around 75% of the speakers of this language can read and write of which at the very least 10 thousand have internet access.

I have written a few friends of mine and I hope they will be interested in the project. By my estimate, at least five should join the group within the next 24 hours (I'm some optimist!)! I didn't actually know that there's an entry for Tumbuka (in English) on Wikipedia until I saw it on GerardM's email. Thanks for that. I'll definitely add a few items to that this coming weekend.

Once again, thanks to you all for your contributions.

Dinnette


from_name: Dinganie Soko

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body: Dinnette, and everybody else, I am on board. Thanks to all of you for the support. Tumbuka now has two and counting...


list: textbook-l

from_name: John Dehlin

subject: [Textbook-l] re: questions

body:
I sincerely appreciate you guys being willing to entertain my questions.

It's funny, because I now revere Wikipedia so much, that I just assume that
all aspects of Wikipedia are running on full throttle.  Hearing your
responses reminds me as to what I should have known all along....that I/we
am/are the community.....and what it is, or what it is to become, is
squarely up to me/us.  I guess that's the beauty, huh?

So...I have a question...where is the best place to read up on "...Here,
there is a higher level of organization to make a book."

What types of moderation infrastructure or policy or technology are in place
to make a textbook?  This is obviously a huge key to success (state
adoption).

I very much look forward to learning/engaging more.

John Dehlin

On 12/1/04 2:59 PM, "Karl Wick" <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:

> John,
>
> I think that the slowdown has a couple of reasons: the
> newness has worn off so the initial burst is over and the
> true longterm growth has not started yet. Also, I was
> making a lot of contributions but am not currently due to
> limited access to the Internet living in the Third World at
> the moment. And, the more complicated nature of textbooks
> requires a higher level of commitment than the regular
> Wikipedia, where any person can work on any module without
> concern for any other. Here, there is a higher level of
> organization to make a book.
>
> What will help: time will only help us, as even small
> contributions snowball over time into something impressive.
> Organized or institutional backing, like the grant the
> WikiMedia Foundation recently recieved from the Beck
> Foundation (do I remember that right?) to develop some
> booklets for kids, or better than money, the dedication of
> a group of educators working together with the tools
> available on the site. That?s where I think that you folks
> in Utah can help, showing that things can be done even if
> it is with one book. Things get very exciting very quickly
> when people start to work collaboratively on wikis over the
> web, especially when you know what kind of a difference the
> work will make.
>
> As for the delay in getting the emails sent out, I think it
> was an oversight by our very overworked volunteer Brion,
> who seems to have the responsability of watching spam along
> with so many other things.
>
> Please let me know if there is anything else that you think
> I can do for you at any time.
>
> Karl
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Setting up Wikinews languages

body:
Hi,

now that we're about to move demo.wikinews.org to en.wikinews.org, we have
to think about a procedure for setting up other language domains. If any
decision on this matter has already been made by the Board, please let me
know.

It should be noted that on two of the language voting pages, no majority
was reached on starting the project. These are French and Chinese. Others
had very small participation.

In the original proposal, I suggested that Wikinews can be set up in any
accepted Wikimedia project language where there is at least one interested
participant, and that 4 more regulars are required for the language to be
recognized as "official", and for the firsts sysops to be created.

I would like to ask the Board if this procedure is acceptable.

If it is not, one possible alternative would be to immediately set up
language domains for any language where there are more than 10 votes on
the respective voting page on Meta, and more than 50% in favor. This would
currently mean Japanese and German. The vote could be re-opened, and kept
open permanently.

In any case, I would ask for the immediate authorization of
de.wikinews.org, as there was overwhelming support on the German voting
page for starting the project, there has been some German press coverage
on it, and there is already much interest on the German mailing list.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

body:
During the brainstorming phase of the project, we ran a small straw poll
on what the preferred license for Wikinews content would be:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll

The content that is currently on the Demo wiki is in the public domain in
order to facilitate the migration to any other license. In the straw poll,
there is currently a small lead in favor of using dual licensing, but the
opinions on what licenses to use differ: Some think we should dual-license
as copyleft, others believe that we should allow non-copyleft uses for the
sake of simplicity. The straw poll as such is not very conclusive.

If there are no objections, I will go ahead and hold a real vote on the
issue as soon as demo.wikinews.org is moved to en.wikinews.org. However,
please note that this is a rather far-reaching decision, so Board input
would be appreciated.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> It should be noted that on two of the language voting pages, no majority
> was reached on starting the project. These are French and Chinese. Others
> had very small participation.

...maybe due to the fact that the poll procedure started with english as
the first page where to place your vote. At least that's what I did.

> In any case, I would ask for the immediate authorization of
> de.wikinews.org, as there was overwhelming support on the German voting
> page for starting the project, there has been some German press coverage
> on it, and there is already much interest on the German mailing list.

I support that.

Mathias


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] REL1_4 branched

body:
Dear all,

do you want to have the Email Notification in REL1_4 ?

I invested a lot of time and it is almost ready and stable since months
(in my checked-out branch, daily updated from HEAD) and would simply
like to know your opinion.

Or, you could alternatively allow me to commit into the HEAD, so that
the new 1.5 comes with that.

Tom


from_name: Johannes Schindelin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch: Lilypond support for MediaWiki

body:
Hi,

I recently hacked a LilyPond support into MediaWiki. It works just like
the old TeX support, i.e. it creates a tmp/ and math/ subdirectory in
images/.

A few people told me that there is already WikiTeX (which supports
LilyPond) being merged into MediaWiki, however, as LilyPond is moving away
from TeX, and my patch really is simple, I dare submitting this to you.

I really like MediaWiki better than the other Wikis I know, and I want to
convince the good LilyPond people to build a user "forum" on it.

If there is enough demand, I am ready to upgrade the patch to the CVS
version of MediaWiki.

Ciao,
Dscho


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews-l created

body:
A while back, Jimbo asked me to create a wikinews-l mailing list for
discussing the project. I had done so, but had not yet announced it
properly. So here it is:

        http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Unless there are any good reasons not to, I will create accompanying
language mailing lists for the different language versions when they are
created (wikinews-de-l etc.).

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews-l created


from_name: John Bradley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Acount Irate

body:
Hi,

I seem to have been disabled for breaking the 3RR. My last 3 msg being 10
hours after the previous bring it to four, and happened when User:Anthony
DiPierro engaged in deliberate vandalism of the Clitoris page. I wasn't
diabled until about 5 hours after the last revert.

User:Anthony DiPierro who revert four times to my three this morning has
been left online by user:ChrisO.

I think my account should be reanabled and User:Anthony DiPierro
disabled and user:ChrisO admin rights should be removed. It seems a
pervers use of the 3RR for whatever reasons.

ChrisO should provide an explanation of his slective and deleyed action.
		Yours

		John Bradley

Loc: 	15/22 Gambier Terrace, Liverpool, L1 7BL, UK.
Phone:	+44 (0)151 708 7238
Email:  john at ontobus.co.uk
WWW:	www.ontobus.co.uk


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
David Wendt <dcrkid at optonline.net> wrote:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > David Wendt wrote:

> >>Do we have any binaries in the repository?

> >62, by my count:
> >   perl -MFile::Find -e "find sub { print (\$_, \"\n\") if (-f \$_ && -B \$_) }, '.'" | wc -l
> >   62

> Aah... so that's how you check. I dont have perl on this system, but I
> guess there are a lot of binaries.

Well, just for the sake of it, here's a way of checking without Perl
(using find, grep, and wc):
  find . -path "./images" -prune -or -exec file "{}" ";" | grep " data" | wc -l
  63
[Note that includes 3 Vim ".swp" temp-files; the rest are mostly
images, and the odd thing that 'file' misinterpretted]

An even simpler, and cheekier, test:
 grep -rLI "" . | grep -v "\./images" |wc -l
 66
[This picks up "empty" files as well; the extra grep is to make sure
uploads aren't counted, as is the "-path...-prune...-or" in the find
example]

Unix pipelines rule! :)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Acount Irate

body:
I've unblocked you but take heed. The _only_ reason i unblocked you is
because anthony wasn't blocked. You violated the 3RR and so did
desearve the block  - note that the three reverts are in a 24 hour
period - so if you revert the night before and again the next morining
you may break the rule without really realising it.

I know you were restoring the consensus version, I know that
sockpuppets were used - but there is no need for you to revert war.
Do your three reverts and then step back from the article - I assure
you that someone else will take up the reigns because as the votes on
the talk page there is an overwhelming majority in favour of having
the picture.

I do not support any action against chrisO. The policy is new, we are
still finding our feet with it.

Please take my advice - a rule is a rule and we all have to follow
them. (If you are going to the  wikimeet tomorrow night - I'll see you
there)

Therresa

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:48:28 -0000, John Bradley <john at ontobus.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I seem to have been disabled for breaking the 3RR. My last 3 msg being 10
> hours after the previous bring it to four, and happened when User:Anthony
> DiPierro engaged in deliberate vandalism of the Clitoris page. I wasn't
> diabled until about 5 hours after the last revert.
>
> User:Anthony DiPierro who revert four times to my three this morning has
> been left online by user:ChrisO.
>
> I think my account should be reanabled and User:Anthony DiPierro
> disabled and user:ChrisO admin rights should be removed. It seems a
> pervers use of the 3RR for whatever reasons.
>
> ChrisO should provide an explanation of his slective and deleyed action.
>                 Yours
>
>                 John Bradley
>
> Loc:    15/22 Gambier Terrace, Liverpool, L1 7BL, UK.
> Phone:  +44 (0)151 708 7238
> Email:  john at ontobus.co.uk
> WWW:    www.ontobus.co.uk
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Angela

body:
> But then I remembered this:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
> The OP hasn't met the conditions outlined on that page. So I removed it
> from the language list pending discussion.

This is only a proposed policy. If people have suggestions for
adaptations to it, please make these on the talk page so the policy
can be finalized and decisions made about new languages.

Angela.


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

subject: [Wikitech-l] additional variables on the phptal context

body:
Hi,

What is the recommended practice for making additional information available
to the phptal template?

I know that I need to call the set method on the template

$tpl->set( "foo", $bar );

but the temlate is created and returned within the outputPage method.

It would be great if there were a hook that could easily be overridden in a
subclass that would enable me to stick extra info into the context w/out
having to modify the distribution.

Is this the kind of patch you would consider taking?

thanks
Jonah


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Preliminary Deletion (again)

body:
Some people have been complaining that this hasn't been implemented yet,
but I consider the results of the first poll too inconclusive to be
certain. Therefore, I have written a provision for a new vote into the
proposal. This new vote is not justified by the moanings of those
disappointed about the first poll's result, but by the following:

    * The provisions for preventing abuse of the process gained a very
      large following, and as such, have been severely reduced in size
      and merged with the original proposal;
    * The criteria have also been reduced in size, but not in meaning;
    * A 9-point Q&A section answering common concerns has been added;
    * A minimum edit count and registration date have been added to the
      prerequisites for voters;
    * A standard for minimum support to go ahead with the proposal has
      been added to avoid ambiguities.

As you can see, the proposal has changed quite a bit, and as such, I
have felt justified in making provisions for a second round of voting. I
hope those who have opposed and supported the proposal will not just
vote, but actually *discuss* the proposal before passing full judgement
on it. Those concerned may find the proposal located at
[[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]].

John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Delirium

body:
Anthere wrote:

>On the net, I found "Tumbuka is a Bantu language spoken in Zambia, Malawi & Tanzania.  There are a total of nearly 700,000 speakers in Malawi, where it is spoken primarily in the northern part of the country.  Within Zambia, about 450,000 speakers are located mostly on the eastern side of the country.  The balance of the nearly 2,000,000 total speakers are in Tanzania. "
>
>
Well, Wikipedia is not an oral source, so the relevant figure is readers
rather than speakers.  As far as I can tell from google, there are very
few readers of Tumbuka, because it is not taught in any schools in the
region---even those who speak Tumbuka at home read and write in a
different language.  That makes the usefulness of a Tumbuka Wikipedia as
an information source potentially limited.  Not that we shouldn't have
it, but it's not going to suddenly bring a wealth of information to
millions of people, because very few people can read the language.

-Mark


from_name: Victor Fariña Infante

subject: [Wikitech-l] REL1_4 branched

body:
Hi ...
I think that REL1_4 comes with Enotif , and LDAP auth, it is the 2 major
features since a lot of time ...
I dont know why this features arent on the release yet .

I will migrate my wikis to 1.4 only if this features are available ...
It would be a greater advance to independence of the wiki from WIKIPEDIA.
If not , it would be a drawback for me.

waiting for your coments.
thanks .

Thomas Gries wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> do you want to have the Email Notification in REL1_4 ?
>
> I invested a lot of time and it is almost ready and stable since
> months (in my checked-out branch, daily updated from HEAD) and would
> simply like to know your opinion.
>
> Or, you could alternatively allow me to commit into the HEAD, so that
> the new 1.5 comes with that.
>
> Tom
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
> Now that we're about to move demo.wikinews.org to en.wikinews.org, we have
> to think about a procedure for setting up other language domains.

I support moving the demo to a URL which makes it clear the project is
not temporary. However, it is also important to make clear to readers
that the project is in Beta to avoid responses to the site being
overly-critical in these early stages. This could be done via a
beta.wikinews.org URL, but this becomes more complicated once other
language domains are added, so perhaps a message in the site notice,
or on the logo, would be more appropriate.

> In the original proposal, I suggested that Wikinews can be set up in any
> accepted Wikimedia project language where there is at least one interested
> participant, and that 4 more regulars are required for the language to be
> recognized as "official", and for the firsts sysops to be created.

There is a proposed policy for new languages at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages

There may be reasons for Wikinews to follow a different procedure to
our other wikis though, since the process of creating a news site
really needs more users than an encyclopedia. The proposed language
policy currently states five users are needed. If this does not
change, then the same policy can be applied to Wikinews.

> If it is not, one possible alternative would be to immediately set up
> language domains for any language where there are more than 10 votes on
> the respective voting page on Meta, and more than 50% in favor.

I don't think the vote on whether to start the project is the same as
a vote to have a language sub-domain once the project has started, so
these votes should be discounted now. Any creation of a new language
Wikinews should follow whatever the procedure is going to be used
without reference to the previous vote.

> In any case, I would ask for the immediate authorization of
> de.wikinews.org...

I haven't read the German mailing list, but from IRC, I had the
impression that there were objections to this and that some wanted to
wait until there was evidence the English version was running well
before starting a German version. Could someone please confirm whether
this is the case or whether there is already enough support for a
German Wikinews?

> The content that is currently on the Demo wiki is in the public domain in
> order to facilitate the migration to any other license.

It would be best to keep the project as public domain for a couple of
weeks to allow users of the project to decide how they might want to
use text from Wikipedia in future, and whether Wikipedians feel they
want to be able to use text from Wikinews in Wikipedia articles. I
would prefer a vote not be held immediately, to give people time to
discuss which projects need to be compatible with each other, and how
external users are likely to want to use Wikinews.

Angela.


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

body:
I'm not active in Wikinews and I don't know whether I'll ever join --
but anyway, here are my 2 eurocents as regards the licensing issue:

(1)
While WP compatibility might seem like a real important and convenient
thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as in [[logical
fallacy]]):
- WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people want to
DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP.
- Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project that would NOT
simply duplicate WP content.
Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license compatibility is much
less than one might think.

(2)
I would ''strongly'' argue for a public domain "license". As they say:
Yesterday's news is used to wrap fish tomorrow. For a news site like
Wikinews, the biggest asset will likely turn out to be an active,
striving contributor community. Yes, a PD "license" would dramatically
lessen Wikinews' control over content reuse, but any static copies will
quickly become outdated and only serve as far as their archive value
goes (real obnoxious automated content grabbing sited could be
blocked). Users will thus figure out pretty quickly that the real McCoy
is at wikinews.org. So little is lost by going PD and PD is what news
should be. Any writing "for posteriority" (where you might have bigger
concerns over content reuse) probably belongs at wikipedia.org anyway.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 2 Dec 2004, at 22:10, Erik Moeller wrote:

> During the brainstorming phase of the project, we ran a small straw
> poll
> on what the preferred license for Wikinews content would be:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll
>
> The content that is currently on the Demo wiki is in the public domain
> in
> order to facilitate the migration to any other license. In the straw
> poll,
> there is currently a small lead in favor of using dual licensing, but
> the
> opinions on what licenses to use differ: Some think we should
> dual-license
> as copyleft, others believe that we should allow non-copyleft uses for
> the
> sake of simplicity. The straw poll as such is not very conclusive.
>
> If there are no objections, I will go ahead and hold a real vote on the
> issue as soon as demo.wikinews.org is moved to en.wikinews.org.
> However,
> please note that this is a rather far-reaching decision, so Board input
> would be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to destroy the good morning I had...

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f
>
> "I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the human condition
> until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about mammalian
> intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an online encyclopedia
> called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort to harness the
> elusive Power of Loser."

That's brilliant, it's a little insight into the mind of a vandal. He's
  calling us all losers for trying to construct something of value. He
attacks the site just out of revulsion for the effort we put in. I guess
if we want to be more than "barely-sapient", we should discard our
geekish ways and go play football.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 00:07 -0500, Jonah Bossewitch wrote:

>
> It would be great if there were a hook that could easily be overridden in a
> subclass that would enable me to stick extra info into the context w/out
> having to modify the distribution.
>
> Is this the kind of patch you would consider taking?

Jonah: please take a look at the includes/Hooks.php file and the
docs/hooks.doc document. If you can find some good hook points in the
code for adding template data, I'd be happy to integrate such a patch.
I've been spending the last week adding such hookpoints into the code.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou                  .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO
--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] New WikiRU-l list (Russian)

body:
On request I've created a Russian-language mailing list for Wikipedia
etc. Please make sure this is announced in the appropriate places.

To subscribe:
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiru-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On request I've created a Russian-language mailing list for Wikipedia
etc. Please make sure this is announced in the appropriate places.

To subscribe:
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiru-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On request I've created a Russian-language mailing list for Wikipedia
etc. Please make sure this is announced in the appropriate places.

To subscribe:
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiru-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On request I've created a Russian-language mailing list for Wikipedia
etc. Please make sure this is announced in the appropriate places.

To subscribe:
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiru-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
The phrase orginated primarily as a practical means to deal with
physics cranks, of which of course there are a number on the web.

The basic concept is as follows: it can be quite difficult for us to
make any valid judgment as to whether a particular thing is _true_ or
not.  It isn't appropriate for us to try to determine whether
someone's novel theory of physics is valid, we aren't really equipped
to do that.  But what we _can_ do is check whether or not it actually
has been published in reputable journals or by reputable publishers.
So it's quite convenient to avoid judging the credibility of things by
simply sticking to things that have been judged credible by people
much better equipped to decide.

The exact same principle will hold true for history, though I suppose
the application will in some cases be a bit different and more subtle.

apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk wrote:
> Hi everyone, I have been following the this thread with interest,
> but am confused as to to what the term 'original research' means. As
> a writer of history I take it to mean searching the literature and
> archives and writing a new, properly referenced, article about topic
> which may well not have appeared in any other place than
> Wikipedia. Certainly there is a great deal in my field which is not
> to be found anywhere on the Web, and Wikipedia is an excellent means
> of getting it there.

Suppose for example you've come up with a novel historical theory
which appears in no peer reviewed journals and which is contradicted
by prominent authorities in the field, and you prove your theory
through original research into primary sources, archives, etc.

I am thinking of a particular example, and I'll give that to
illustrate my point.  Michael Bellesiles published a book by a
reputable publisher in 2000 with the surprising thesis that contrary
to popular understanding, guns were quite rare in the early years of
the United States.  This book generated a firestorm of controversy and
it was later determined by an outside panel of investigators hired by
his University to investigate fraud charges that he was "guilty of
unprofessional and misleading work".

It took a fair amount of time (2 years) for this process to work
itself out, and juding the validity of Bellesiles claims involved a
lot of scholarly work *of the type that we are poorly equipped to
carry out*.

Suppose Bellesiles had attempted to publish his novel historical
thesis at wikipedia, rather than in traditional primary sources?  We
would quite properly have rejected it as original research, because we
are ill-equipped to judge the validity of such things.

> If we are going to have a blanket ban on 'original research' we ought
> to be more precise as to what it actually means, perhaps re-wording
> the phrase. Any ideas?

I think the phrase is just fine, but I do agree with you that we need
to explore more carefully what it means.  In many cases, the
distinction between original research and synthesis of published work
will require thoughtful editorial judgment.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wiktionary-l] [en] A Modest Proposal for Pretend Words

body:
Ian Monroe wrote:
> Proposal:
> I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words
> (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
>
> (Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).

I would recommend that this be adopted as a blanket policy for all of
wiktionary.  The specific means of judging which words are "pretend"
will likely vary by language, of course, but the general principle is
universal.

I would be interested to hear any counter-arguments, but I doubt very
much if there are any.  Made up words, original words, are quite
beside the point of a dictionary.

There will be some tough judgment calls about neologisms, and I'm not
sure exactly how these should be decided.  A "google test" is no good,
although it can be a clever tool for a first check.

--Jimbo


from_name: Titha Paliani

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
Dinnette, am in too, three and counting...

Dinganie Soko <dinganie at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Dinnette, and everybody else, I am on board. Thanks to all of you for the support. Tumbuka now has...

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Send a seasonal email greeting and help others. Do good.


body:
> >http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f

I say with a fair degree of certainty that I have personally met more
wikipedians than any other person.

And I have yet to meet people who fit the descriptions he gives in the
article.  Wikipedians are really smart people typically, but also very
friendly and outgoing.  Because of the essentially social nature of
how we work together, success in the wikipedia community depends on
having good social skills as well as having intelligence

(Of course I suppose the more shy among us may tend to avoid the
meetups.  People can be socially skillful online, but still shy about
coming out to meet people.  For those who feel this way, I recommend
to try it sometime, you'll find out that you like them as much in
person as you do online. :-))

--Jimbo


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

body:
Could we possibly convince Cornell newspaper's editor-in-chief Andy Guess (editor at cornelldailysun.com) to print an actual positive article from one of our own writers?

Nick/Zanimum

---------------------------------
Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win ?10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Acount Irate

body:
Certainly in such cases, both users should be blocked.

I am particularly disappointed with Anthony's statement "(fine, if he
can violate the 3RR then so can I)".  This is in very poor taste, and
that kind of retaliatory behavior is what we should all strive to
avoid whenever we can.

Take the higher path, improve your own behavior, even if others do
not.  Never sink to the level of an interlocutor who is behaving
poorly.

This principle servers multiple purposes.  First, it is good for you,
it is something you can take pride in.  Second, it helps the community
to sort out who the problem user is... leave a clean paper trail.
Third, it can very often inspire the counterparty to pay you the same
courtesy in return.

--Jimbo


body:
Yes, please set up de.  I was interviewed by Die Welt last night, as
was elian.  (Erik, I would have pointed them to you, but you weren't
on irc and I didn't have a phone number for you, and she was on a
deadline.)

--Jimbo

Mathias Schindler wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >It should be noted that on two of the language voting pages, no majority
> >was reached on starting the project. These are French and Chinese. Others
> >had very small participation.
>
> ...maybe due to the fact that the poll procedure started with english as
> the first page where to place your vote. At least that's what I did.
>
> >In any case, I would ask for the immediate authorization of
> >de.wikinews.org, as there was overwhelming support on the German voting
> >page for starting the project, there has been some German press coverage
> >on it, and there is already much interest on the German mailing list.
>
> I support that.
>
> Mathias
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Implementing Editing Revision Summaries--my
	progress

body:
On Dec 3, 2004, at 3:28 AM, Nick Pisarro wrote:
> But while this all works great, I did discover a bit of a "got cha". I
> noticed that the number of 'recentchanges' records in my 'wikidb' is a
> small fraction of the number in 'cur' and 'old'. It seems that after
> every 1-1,000 changes the RC table is "pruned" to hold only the last
> week's changes. Hmmmm. I found this disturbing for several reasons: 1)
> The Recent Changes page lets you "see" up to 30 days of recent
> changes--won't work.

Well, it often will work on a lightly used wiki. On a heavily used
wiki, though, certainly no. But then you'd never see 30 days' worth of
edits anyway on a really busy wiki, since the numeric limit will be hit
long before.

> 2) As this could be the definitive log of *all* changes on a wiki, I
> would think you should *never* want to prune this.

The recentchanges table is purely an optimization hack. Originally,
Special:Recentchanges pulled data directly from the cur and old tables,
but this was very inefficient: first, at the time we were on MySQL 3.x
which couldn't optimize descending sorts using an index (eg, the
timestamp field). This meant that hits had to pull a bunch of rows from
cur and old and sort them each in a temporary table. More generally,
slogging cur and old rows around meant an extra burden because they
carry the full article text.

Putting edit notifications into a smaller table as well meant that they
could be pulled out much more quickly, with less copying and sorting
and merging of large records.

We later added the inverse_timestamp fields to cur and old to provide
for descending sort optimization for other features (such as
Special:Contributions and page history), and MySQL 4.x I believe can do
a descending sort efficiently, so the table is not as important
anymore. In the next major revision we'll also be splitting the edit
history bits from the page text parts of cur/old, so pulling directly
from the revisions database will be much more efficient than pulling
from cur and old now would be.

We have extended the recentchanges table a little bit, specifically in
regards to its 'epemeral' nature: "bot" edits are specially marked to
be temporarily hidden from view, and we store IP addresses of editing
users temporarily (they are not logged permanently, but having the
information for recent edits assists in tracking down vandalism
problems). None of this is permanent -- the permanent records of
editing is in the cur and old tables.

>  3) At the very least, the age
> to which it is pruned should be a variable in DefaultSetting.php so it
> could be adjusted on a wiki by wiki basis.

Perhaps.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Setting up Wikinews languages

body:
Angela-
>> Now that we're about to move demo.wikinews.org to en.wikinews.org, we have
>> to think about a procedure for setting up other language domains.

> I support moving the demo to a URL which makes it clear the project is
> not temporary. However, it is also important to make clear to readers
> that the project is in Beta to avoid responses to the site being
> overly-critical in these early stages. This could be done via a
> beta.wikinews.org URL, but this becomes more complicated once other
> language domains are added, so perhaps a message in the site notice,
> or on the logo, would be more appropriate.

I agree, a Google-like "BETA" in the logo would be sufficient, IMHO.

> I haven't read the German mailing list, but from IRC, I had the
> impression that there were objections to this

Well, there were objections to the English Wikinews as well. The question
is - do they matter? We're not going to get consensus on any new language
as some people remain opposed to Wikinews on principle. It seems unfair to
start Wikinews in English only when there is a substantial number of
German users who would like to use it now, and when there were many more
objections by English users than by German ones.

Of all the possible options, waiting for full community consensus until we
launch a new language seems the least feasible. There should be objective,
fair criteria for launching a new edition. So from this standpoint, I
suggest adopting the proposed policy currently on Meta.

I disagree that Wikinews requires a larger user base to be useful. It
certainly requires a large userbase in order to present a balanced mix of
news, just like Wikipedia does in order to provide a wide range of
articles. But even a couple of dedicated users can provide reliable news
on the subjects that interest them. Just think of the hundreds of weblogs
which do just that. As long as we do not set up the expectation that
Wikinews can immediately replace CNN in any language, we should be fine.
The BETA marker helps with that.

I believe that the demo phase served the purpose of testing the basic idea
of Wikinews, and that we should now move on to launch it in all languages
where there is a community of users interested in working on it, unless
clear and compelling reasons are cited for not doing so that relate
specifically to that language, and not to the idea of the project itself.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Heli Retzek

subject: AW: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents

body:
I stole a great Idea from some Thomas

http://www.homeopathy.at/wiki/index.php?title=Vorlage:HelpBar

HELP-BAR or NAVI-BARS

I create for each Name-Space on my WIKI a NAVI-BAR and use the {{VORLAGE}}
to put that in

In Addition I have a page with all {{Vorlagen}} to have overview and quick
access to extend them

http://www.homeopathy.at/wiki/index.php?title=Vorlagen:%C3%9Cbersicht

thats a great help vor navigation within the namespaces

xx HeliR

> -----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
> Von: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]Im Auftrag von Evan Prodromou
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. November 2004 20:23
> An: Wikimedia developers
> Betreff: Re: [Wikitech-l] Generate table of contents
>
>
> On Tue, 2004-30-11 at 12:02 +0100, peter wrote:
>
> >
> > Is there any way to generate a table of contents to disaplay on
> the main
> > page och any special page.
> >
> > I am using MediaWiki for documentation and dictionary on our intranet
> > and a good overview of all the topics would be great.
> >
> > Any work done on this kind of feature?
>
> I don't think so.
>
> You have a couple of options I can think of:
>
>
>      1. Make a category tree, and have a "top" category. Include this
>         top category on your Main Page as a template. That'd just give
>         you an _index_ of all categories, though -- not a ToC.
>      2. Do a Table of Contents by hand.
>      3. Add an extension to do it.
>
> G'luck,
>
> ~ESP
>
> --
> Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
>


from_name: Ian Monroe

body:
Proposal:
I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words
(so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.

(Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).

Reasons to do so:
*It goes against what I believe (and I think generally believed) to be
the purpose of a dictionary (particularly Wiki ones): not to judge or
make rules for a language, but to objectively describe language.
Pretend words are, of course at their heart, POV. In Wikipedia marking
an article as POV is a cause for alarm, in Wiktionary it has become a
classification.
*[[hu]] is a good example of how pretend words can become encyclopedic
pretty quickly. It is necessary to create the context that is
obviously not otherwise present, as well as make arguments for the
words very necessity.
*The rules for inclusion of a pretend word could be considered one of
Wiktionary's more arbitrary set of rules: whether folks believe the
word to be viable, fulfill a need, follow naming some convention etc.
are not the sort of decisions that sysops should have to make if it
can be avoided.
*Even if identified as pretend, they lessen the credibility of
Wiktionary and Wikimedia as a whole.
*Pretend words might happen to be real ones already. (ex. [[hu]] was
apparently a god in an esoteric New Age religion already).
*The previous point brings up the scary possibility of folks deciding
an existing word should have an additional meaning in their POV. Scary
because it would be very easy to miss.
**There seems to be currently a division between the rules of pretend
 word (make up your definition) and the rest (describe accurately real
 words), which is inconsistent and thus confusing for new users.
*Wiktionary is still young and such changes are still possible without
much hassle.
*Recent beer parlor discussions have showed a lack of support for
pretend words. Folks differ on how exactly they should be dealt with,
but its seems to be generally felt that they do not add to the quality
of Wiktionary.

Implementation:
Just to make things clear, Wiktionary should allow and encourage the
inclusion of new words that actually exist in the wild. Words should
more or less be given the benefit of the doubt, especially if the
author is willing to take even a jab at defending it. So far the words
of [[Category:Protologism]] are all quite obvious as to what they are,
even if they hadn't been marked. Except ironically for "protologism"
itself which should probably hang on as a wiktionary jargon.

If the proposal was implemented, pages which direct users on creating
new pretend words could be removed and/or edited. I know for a fact
that some of the pretend words being created are in response to such
documentation.

I'd be interested to know what the other Wiktionaries have as their policy.

Thank you,
[[user:eean | Ian Monroe]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] New Security model to work on REL1.4

body:
On Dec 3, 2004, at 5:19 AM, vic wrote:
> I am very interested on the new security model (developed by hashar i
> think), as
> the one listed on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:User_levels
> Are this implemented on REL1.4 (i dont think so).
> Are you planning to implement on final 1.4 ?

There are some pretty basic things broken about it right now, and
Hashar's said he won't have time to work on it for a while. So for 1.4
we've backed it out, but it remains in the 1.5 branch (CVS HEAD).

We are aiming for February-ish for 1.5.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Nick Pisarro

body:
NickP writes:
>1) What if I add a variable $wgUserEditCommentTimeout, which specifies a
>*time limit*, in minutes, and specifies the amount time a user has to
>modify a comment before the comment "becomes permanent"? ...  I could
>allow values of 0,
>don't allow users to make any changes to comments, which would satisfy
>Nick Triantos's request, or -1 to allow a user all the time in the world
>to modify a comment.
>
I have implemented this. If a time limit is set, once a user starts
editing a comment (summary), I give them an extra 2 minutes to allow them
to edit the change. After the timeout their change is rejected.
>
>
>2) Comment changes should be logged in Recent Changes. Recent Changes is
>the most accurate audit trail now and should have note of these changes. A
>brief look at the definition of the table 'recent changes' suggests to me
>that it may need modification to record these changes.

I have implemented this. I put a message in Recent Changes of the form:
"Summary of *article* changed (diff; *hist*) . . *Username* (Talk) was
(*original comment*) now (*new comment*)". I made the link to the article
open the article revision whose summary was revised.

It turns out that I did not have to change the schema of 'recentchanges'
to implement this. I added a new type of change (define(
"RC_EDIT_COMMENT", 5);) and usurped the field,  'rc_moved_to_title', to
hold the original comment, since it is only used when logging
moves--slightly kludgy. I modified Skin.php to properly format the new
type for old and new format RC pages.

But while this all works great, I did discover a bit of a "got cha". I
noticed that the number of 'recentchanges' records in my 'wikidb' is a
small fraction of the number in 'cur' and 'old'. It seems that after every
1-1,000 changes the RC table is "pruned" to hold only the last week's
changes. Hmmmm. I found this disturbing for several reasons: 1) The Recent
Changes page lets you "see" up to 30 days of recent changes--won't work.
2) As this could be the definitive log of *all* changes on a wiki, I would
think you should *never* want to prune this. 3) At the very least, the age
to which it is pruned should be a variable in DefaultSetting.php so it
could be adjusted on a wiki by wiki basis.

My changes are based on 1.3.7, so I have yet to merge them to the head
branch.

Nick


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
In a message dated 03/12/2004 01:16:02 Eastern Standard Time,
dinganie at yahoo.co.uk writes:
won't
bore you with Malawi politics but you get the idea.
Actually, we are looking forward to seeing the information about Malawi and
neighboring countries grow as a result of the addition of a Tumbuka Wikipedia.
Please add what you can to the English Wikipedia as well about this part of
the wolrd where, admittedly, our coverage is lacking.

Danny


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.4beta1 released

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

MediaWiki 1.4beta1 is an experimental release, to help flush out
remaining major problems in the code prior to a final public 1.4.0
release. It is not recommended to use this beta on a public site unless
you're familiar with MediaWiki innards and are willing and able to help
diagnose and fix problems that come up.

=== New features ===

* 'Recentchanges Patrol' to mark new edits that haven't yet been viewed.
* New, searchable deletion/upload/protection logs
* Image gallery generation (Special:Newimages and <gallery> tag)
* SVG rasterization support (requires external support)
* Users can select from the available localizations to override the
   default user interface language.
* Traditional/Simplified Chinese conversion support

=== Installation and compatibility ===

* The default MonoBook theme now works with PHP 5.0
* Installation on systems with PHP's safe mode or other oddities
   should work more reliably, as MonoBook no longer needs to
   create a compiled template file for the wiki to run.
* A table prefix may be specified, to avoid conflicts with other
   web applications forced to share a database.
* More thorough UTF-8 input validation; fixes non-ASCII uploaded
   filenames from Safari.
* Command-line database upgrade script.

=== Customizability ===

* Default user options can now be overridden in LocalSettings.
* Skins system more modular: templates and CSS are now in /skins/
   New skins can be dropped into this directory and used immediately.
* More extension hooks have been added.
* Authentication plugin hook.
* More internal code documentation, generated with phpdoc:
   http://www.mediawiki.org/docs/html/

=== Optimization ===

* For many operations, MediaWiki 1.4 should run faster and use
   less memory than MediaWiki 1.3. Page rendering is up to twice
   as fast. (Use a PHP accelerator such as Turck MMCache for best
   results with any PHP application, though!)
* The parser cache no longer requires memcached, and is enabled
   by default. This avoids a lot of re-rendering of pages that
   have been shown recently, greatly speeding longer page views.
* Support for compiled PHP modules to speed up page diff and
   Unicode validation/normalization. (Requires ability to compile
   and load PHP extensions).

=== What isn't ready yet ===

* A new user/groups permissions scheme has been held back to 1.5.
* An experimental SOAP interface will be made available as an extension
* PostgreSQL support is largely working, but search and installer
   support are not complete. These are being actively worked on
   and should come in later betas.
* E-mail notification of watched page changes and verification of
   user-submitted e-mail addresses is not yet included. If updates
   are available, this may make it into later betas.
* Log pages are not automatically imported into the new log table
   at upgrade time. A script to import old text log entries is
   incomplete, but may be available by the time 1.4 finishes.
* UI messages may be broken in Latin-1 mode in this release due to some
   minor breakage in the language selection module.

Full release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=287326

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.4beta1.tar.gz?download

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dinganie Soko

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
I think one thing that needs to be understood about these 'minority'
languages is to understand the reasons behind some of the circumstances the
languages find themselves in. I'll help Dinnette by talking about the
circumstances on the Malawian side of the language. During the dictatorship
of Dr Hastings Banda, Tumbuka (and other Malawian languages) was suppressed
because he wanted his mother tongue to be the national language. I won't
bore you with Malawi politics but you get the idea.
One thing that should also be understood is that, as Dinnette rightly said,
Bantu languages are highly phonetic - if you can speak it, you can
read/write it. You might also find it interesting that though it might not
be taught in many schools it is a language of instruction in primary schools
in all areas where it is spoken. When learning the alphabet, you learn it in
Tumbuka. If publishers, whose main objective is making profits (with very
little social responsibilities) can publish books in Tumbuka, it means there
is a market, that in turn means a big number of people DO read (AND write!)
the language.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Delirium" <delirium at hackish.org>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 7:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New language introduction
 Well, Wikipedia is not an oral source, so the relevant figure is readers
rather than speakers.  As far as I can tell from google, there are very  few
readers of Tumbuka, because it is not taught in any schools in the
region---even those who speak Tumbuka at home read and write in a different
language.  That makes the usefulness of a Tumbuka Wikipedia as  an
information source potentially limited.  Not that we shouldn't have  it, but
it's not going to suddenly bring a wealth of information to millions of
people, because very few people can read the language.

Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> I will not participate in a PD wikinews that does not ensure that free
> text remains free.

I agree, but I hope you'll participate on a short-term basis with it
being PD, since the purpose of being PD right now is just to enable us
to have some time to really think through the licensing issues more
carefully.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing


from_name: apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Hi everyone,
I have been following the this thread with interest, but am confused
as to to what the term 'original research' means. As a writer of
history I take it to mean searching the literature and archives and
writing a new, properly referenced, article about topic which may
well not have appeared in any other place than Wikipedia. Certainly
there is a great deal in my field which is not to be found anywhere
on the Web, and Wikipedia is an excellent means of getting it there.

Others seem to define 'original research' as a new scientific theory
which has not been published elsewhere.

If we are going to have a blanket ban on 'original research' we ought
to be more precise as to what it actually means, perhaps re-wording
the phrase. Any ideas?

Tony Woolrich (User: Apwoolrich)
Canal Side, Huntworth, Bridgwater, Somerset UK
Phone (44) 01278 663020
Email apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New language introduction

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Adding new languages is certainly a strain on developers. It
> certainly will be that this project will grow slowly (it would be
> wiser perhaps to work mostly on wiktionary rather than wikipedia to
> start with), but I do not think we should on purpose limit the
> existence of small projects on the motive there will be few editors
> to work on.

It's not that much of a strain. I actually added this to the language
list as soon as I saw the post, thinking that since it has an ISO 639-2
code, it would be uncontroversial. But then I remembered this:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages

The OP hasn't met the conditions outlined on that page. So I removed it
from the language list pending discussion.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Nyanja and Tswana

body:
Hoi,
In a recent post I wrote the ISO-639 codes for Nyanja and Tswana. The
information although correct was not complete; they have both two and
three character codes within ISO-639.

Nyanja or chiChewa has ny and nya
Tswana has ts and tsn

For use within Wikimedia projects we always use the two character codes.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Nyanja and Tswana


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews moved to en.wikinews.org

body:
With Board approval, I have asked Tim Starling to move the project out of
the demo stage and to en.wikinews.org. As per the earlier suggestion, I've
added a big red "Beta" notice on the logo (make sure your cache is empty).

I've also revised the proposed review process. It is now clearly optional
and more like an accelerated Featured Article Candidate procedure.

More on

        http://en.wikinews.org/

Regards,

Erik


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autoblocker: change it or shut it off

body:
I believe that at present the autoblocker is doing more harm than good.
I believe we should shut it off.

Alternatively, we could cause autoblocks to affect account creation and
anon editing only.  At present they also affect logged-in users, which
is particularly unfortunate.

I recently blocked [[User:259]], and an ensuing autoblock also affected
[[User:SFTVLGUY2]] who asked me to explain why the block applied since
he was adequately identified by his username and password and had no
history of vandalism.

Other than saying, "that's the way it works, I'm sorry," I had no reply
to give him.  And I hate giving out answers like that.

The Uninvited Co., Inc.
(a Delaware corporation)


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Yup, "college junior" pretty much sums it up. He's actually better
> than average, almost knows how to use four-syllable words (five
> syllables are for seniors).

He knows how to use a thesaurus, we have to give him credit for that. A
dictionary is probably a bit much for him though. From WordNet:

   sapient
        adj : acutely insightful and wise; "much too perspicacious to be
              taken in by such a spurious argument"; "observant and
              thoughtful, he was given to asking sagacious
              questions"; "a source of valuable insights and sapient
              advice to educators" [syn: perspicacious, sagacious]

So "barely-sapient" doesn't quite make sense, it's more like "barely
clever" than "barely sentient", which is probably what he meant.

Justin wrote:
> Don't fret it much.  I don't think there's ever been a student
> newspaper that wasn't filled with whining students.

My tone wasn't clear in my first post. I'm not fretting, I think it's
amusing. Just returning sarcasm with a bit of sarcasm of my own.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Muke Tever

body:
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 02:37:24 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words
>> (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
>>
>> (Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).
>
> I would recommend that this be adopted as a blanket policy for all of
> wiktionary.  The specific means of judging which words are "pretend"
> will likely vary by language, of course, but the general principle is
> universal.
>
> I would be interested to hear any counter-arguments, but I doubt very
> much if there are any.  Made up words, original words, are quite
> beside the point of a dictionary.

A minority language may find it necessary to resort to neologisms, either
by calque or by borrowing, when defining modern concepts ("blog",
"fluoxetine"), culturally remote concepts ("khan", "senator"), the best
gender or declension to put a foreign place name in (is "Shikoku" neuter
or feminine?), or the best way to spell foreign names in a non-Latin
script ("Xhosa" in Cherokee, or "Pirah?" in Mkhedruli).

This practice should probably be (strongly) differentiated from making
up words at random, as with [[hu]].

(For a language as "fixed" as English, we take for granted one of the
earlier purposes of dictionaries, which was to suggest usage as well:
note the innovations made in spelling by some of the earlier lexicographers,
some of which took hold and some of which didn't. For a project as rambling
as the English wiktionary, this effect is probably impossible, but if
a language took its wiktionary as seriously as, say, English takes its
Wikipedia, it could well be influential, if not an actual authority.)

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
A frigging MEN. Ive never understood why these so called 'tough jocks'
need to wear a metre worth of padding.

btw, the last paragraph is a bit confusing;

But on the less-than-bright side ... these really are the best and
brightest of humanity. They've got DSL. And grammar. And encyclopedic,
albeit utterly useless, depths of knowledge. It's horrible, but true:
when ekOeOfhOpe and dArK_RaVeN and Sparky and Evercat are found
rotting in their apartments, it will be their inferiors who have
repopulated the earth in their own sweaty image. Ooh. Not so chipper
anymore.

paz y amor,
rjs

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:32:09 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>
>
> > Mathias Schindler wrote:
> >
> >> http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f
> >>
> >> "I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the human condition
> >> until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about mammalian
> >> intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an online
> >> encyclopedia called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort
> >> to harness the elusive Power of Loser."
> >
> > That's brilliant, it's a little insight into the mind of a vandal.
> > He's  calling us all losers for trying to construct something of
> > value. He attacks the site just out of revulsion for the effort we put
> > in. I guess if we want to be more than "barely-sapient", we should
> > discard our geekish ways and go play football.
>
> The expression "depressingly successful" suggests a tinge of jealousy.
>
> Later in the article he states: "The only drawback is that the content
> is just a tad skewed toward entries about hentai, Magic cards and KFC."
> Many a chicken found out only too late about the intentions of their
> friend Harlan from KFC.
>
> Maybe he should learn Australian rules football, or at least rugby
> rather than that tame American excuse for football.
>
> Ec
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: sekani nyangulu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language introduction

body:
I am for the introduction of Tumbuka as well. Let's hope one more person
joins so that we can make that magic number of five.

_________________________________________________________________
FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar - get it now!
http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

body:
Does anyone have any info on the discussions between jimbo, lessig and
rms re: cc-by-sa and gfdl compatibility. If it looks like it is going
to happen sometime in the not to distant future, then perhaps some of
this discussion won't be as important.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

On 02 Dec 2004 22:10:00 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> During the brainstorming phase of the project, we ran a small straw poll
> on what the preferred license for Wikinews content would be:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll
>
> The content that is currently on the Demo wiki is in the public domain in
> order to facilitate the migration to any other license. In the straw poll,
> there is currently a small lead in favor of using dual licensing, but the
> opinions on what licenses to use differ: Some think we should dual-license
> as copyleft, others believe that we should allow non-copyleft uses for the
> sake of simplicity. The straw poll as such is not very conclusive.
>
> If there are no objections, I will go ahead and hold a real vote on the
> issue as soon as demo.wikinews.org is moved to en.wikinews.org. However,
> please note that this is a rather far-reaching decision, so Board input
> would be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing


from_name: byron gamildien

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

body:
On 3 Dec 2004 17:28:17 +0900
 wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos at inter7.jp> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:47:22 +0100
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing
>
> >(1)
> >While WP compatibility might seem like a real important
> and convenient
> >thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as
> in [[logical
> >fallacy]]):
> >- WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people
> want to
> >DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP.
> >- Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project
> that would NOT
> >simply duplicate WP content.
> >Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license
> compatibility is much
> >less than one might think.
>
> Looking at the Wikinews articles I was involved in so
> far, it
> seems that taking materials from Wikipedia does not
> happen much.
>
> If Wikinews articles can be incorporated into Wikipedia
> article,
> that would be good. I am guessing that the need for
> Wikinews to
> incorporate Wikipedia articles is quite limited.
>
> Regarding the license poll, I noticed that the people who
> expressed
> their opinions are not necessarily the active
> participants on
> Wikinews so far. I am not sure what to make of it, but I
> wonder
> if only Wikinews participants will vote on the license
> issue, or
> any Wikimedian can vote. The former has some intuitive
> appeal, but
> there aren't that many active participants yet. I think
> it is okay
> to delay the vote until there will be more active users
> on Wikinews.
> For a while, Wikinews contents are under public domain -
> it is like
> a opening special give-away for potential re-users.
>
> There is virtually no discussion on license issue on
> wikinews. The
> biggest discussion so far among the participants is if we
> would like
> to publish unreviewed articles on the main page (the
> community is
> really divided on this), and if and how we want to change
> the reveiw process.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomos
> thanks a million for that bit of news.it is really
interesting and i will think on
it._______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

_____________________________________________________________________
For super low premiums, click here http://www.dialdirect.co.za/quote


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing


body:
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 01:53:33 +1100
 Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
> >
>
http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f
> >
> > "I never fully understood the sheer awfulness of the
> human condition
> > until last Tuesday. In the course of a debate about
> mammalian
> > intelligence, my friend Harlan and I discovered an
> online encyclopedia
> > called Wikipedia.org, a depressingly successful effort
> to harness the
> > elusive Power of Loser."
>
> That's brilliant, it's a little insight into the mind of
> a vandal. He's  calling us all losers for trying to
> construct something of value. He
> attacks the site just out of revulsion for the effort we
> put in. I guess if we want to be more than
> "barely-sapient", we should discard our geekish ways and
> go play football.
>
> -- Tim Starling
> we are all createwd differently by GOD so one man`s
terrible opinion of you should not bother you.just ignore
him.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_____________________________________________________________________
For super low premiums, click here http://www.dialdirect.co.za/quote


from_name: Hauke Zuehl

subject: [Wikitech-l] How does wikipedia generate thumbnails?

body:
Hi all :)

I hope this question is on-topic :)

We have some problems concerning thumbnails. We updated PHP to a newer version
(PHP 4.3.8) and it seems that thumbnails are created in another way than with
the older version. A good example is http://www.tuxfutter.de/wiki/The_GIMP.

I would like to switch to ImageMagick but unfortunately some packages are not
available (the system is an older FreeBSD).

Any hints or should I ask in a PHP group?

Thanks,
Hauke
--
> Sitze ich vor einer Winkiste bekomm ich hier die Kriese.
Ja, Windows ist wie Sackhuepfen ohne Beine.
----
diskless und valencia im Heise-Forum


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 22:45 +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> I recently hacked a LilyPond support into MediaWiki. It works just like
> the old TeX support, i.e. it creates a tmp/ and math/ subdirectory in
> images/.

Can you clump it all up into a single extension module? By, say, adding
a new tag?

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Vina Wang

subject: [Wikitech-l] what's the criteria for the "orphaned pages"

body:
What's the criteria for the "orphaned pages"?  Does it include pages that no links at all, or those without links from an actual article?

-Vina


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Dec 3, 2004, at 12:02 PM, Vina Wang wrote:
> What's the criteria for the "orphaned pages"?  Does it include pages
> that no links at all, or those without links from an actual article?

No links at all.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] original research

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:

> I think the policy "no original research" is one of our most important
> policies, and essential to the integrity of our project as an
> encyclopedia.

One of the interesting things that has been starting to emerge,
and I expect will happen more and more as WP deepens its coverage,
is that the integration of different subject areas is turning up
inconsistencies between the specialists in those areas. For
instance, the US Navy has apparently fabricated some of the "fish
names" used for its submarines, a historical detail that seems
to have gone mostly unnoticed for half a century, but has now
been made glaringly obvious by our attempts to cross-reference
with our fish articles.

This shouldn't change our policy about original research, but I
can see WP *creating* a demand for new original research, to
answer questions that have come up. It might be worthwhile to
create an "open problems" page listing issues where we've done our
best and come up dry, and advertise it to researchers looking to
pump up CVs for the tenure committee. 1/2 :-)

Stan