in_reply_to: <200208201647.g7KGlYc02338@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 09:47:34AM -0700

body:
On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 09:47:34AM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> > Woulnd't it be better to have a set-up where all updates to the codebase
> > of the English Wikipedia are (semi-)automatically propagated to all
> > Wikipedias that use the same codebase? [...]
>
> I'm inclined to think that if a particular community isn't large
> enough to come up with a developer to take care of its own needs,
> then it /should/ be left behind.  UseMod wiki is a fine piece of
> software for a small level of activity, and if a group never
> outgrows it, I don't see any reason for me to waste time and
> effort on them.

Just for clarity, I was only talking about "all Wikipedias that use the same
codebase". What I'm concerned about is that those that will move to the
Phase III script will also stay in sync in the future. Also note that I
wrote "semi-automatic"; I realize that updates that involve running scripts
on the database and/or changing the database schema should not be automated.
But at least the updates that involve only updating the common scripts
should be made as easy as possible. I would suggest that we put the local
scripts and common scripts into separate directories.

> The German, Spanish, and Polish guys are on the ball and won't be a
> problem.

Hmm, that reminds me, perhaps I should get a bit more involved with the
Dutch Wikipedia. :-)

But are you really sure there will be no problems? What I am afraid of is
that local developers start fixing bugs in the common part of the code. What
happens if you don't agree with those fixes? Or what if one of your updates
to the common part is going to break something on their Wikipedia? Are they
then going to have to fix this locally or should they stick to the previous
version until you have fixed the problem or approved their fix? Can they
depend on you for this? Apologies if that sounds insulting but from their
point of view that may not be so obvious.

Perhaps I'm only stating the obvious here, but I would suggest the following
guidelines:
- Local developers can make always updates in local parts of the code, for
  updates in the common part of the code they should ask Lee's permisson.
- When a new version of the code is installed for the English Wikipedia then
  this should be announced (on Wikitech-l) and then installed on local
  Wikipedias by the local developers as soon as possible.
- Local developers are responsible for putting local bug-reports on
  something in the common code in the Sourceforge bugtracker.

-- Jan Hidders


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikitech-l] software change for German Wikipedia

in_reply_to: <200208202118.g7KLIEt14914@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 02:18:14PM -0700

body:
On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 02:18:14PM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> [...] The code is also organized so that if, say, I add a special page and
> update the code of the foreign version, that special page will appear in
> the foreign version, but with English text; they can add the translation
> for that page at any time, no coordination needed.

If *you* update the code of the foreign version? Does that mean that you
would also take care of installing the updated code for the foreign
versions? That would take all my worries away, but I was under the
impression you wanted to leave that to the local developers.

-- Jan Hidders


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New e-mail feature

body:
I generally haven't been announcing software updates and fixes,
but this one's important enough to merit it, I think:

I implemented the "e-mail this user" feature.  Most of you
won't notice, and it won't be very useful at first because most
people don't have their e-mail addresses filled in, but I hope
that will change as more people start using this.

If you are logged in and have a valid e-mail address in your
own user settings, and you are viewing a user page, you will see
an "E-mail this user" link right below "User contributions".
Click on it and fill in the form, and mail will be sent to that
user.  That user's address will not be revealed to you, but your
e-mail address will appear in the "From" line of the message you
send, so that the recipient can reply.  There's a new user
setting to opt out of receiving these mails even if you do enter
an e-mail address.


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Where to put acknowledgements

body:
>> I think it would be polite to acknowledge the materials taken
>> from his site with a boilerplate note at the bottom of the article
>> containing a link back, similar to what we have been doing with
>> FOLDOC materials,

>I think we should set a precendent that such acknowledgements go
>on the Talk page, not in the main article.  As long as they are
>posted at the top of the talk page, with discussion below, and not
>deleted if discussion is refactored, I think we will meet all our
>credit obligations without limiting our ability to edit text.

I disagree, for the following reasons:

* Precedent has arguably been set with the FOLDOC materials already,
  but precedent doesn't really matter, so let's forget that.

* If somebody uses our material on their site, we want a prominent
  link back. We would probably not be happy with a notice on some
  attached discussion page that is buried among dozens of links and
  rather difficult to find for the casual user of the site. So then
  fairness requires that we give the same prominent attributions to
  others.

* I don't understand the "limiting our ability to edit text" part.
   * If you mean: we are then limited because we cannot remove the
     acknowledgement from the article anymore, then you are correct.
     Removing that notice would amount to a breach of copyright law,
     just like pasting in some copyrighted material would. But people
     check edits all the time, and these things would be noticed and
     reversed. The same applies to your Talk page solution, but edits
     on Talk pages are arguably much less scrutinized than edits in
     the main namespace.
   * If you mean we lose the ability to edit the material of the
     article itself: that's incorrect; we just phrase the
     acknowledgement properly ("This article is based on material
     from ...")

* Talk pages are for discussion, not for credits. Nobody would look
  there for them, and nobody would put them there. If you want a
  Credits: namespace, I think I could live with that, but I still find
  it more polite to give the original source more prominent
  exposure in the article itself. If somebody prints out the article, I
  want them to see the acknowledgement.

Axel


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interesting site (mostly on Rome)

body:
Here's the URL to an interesting site, portions of which are public domain.
Bill Thayer, the owner of the site has put some attention into copywrite
issues.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Good Point!

body:
Ok here's the URL to the interesting site:

http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/Places/Eu
rope/Italy/Umbria/Perugia/Gubbio/Gubbio/0.html

Since it has gone onto two lines you may need to paste it together. Note
the notice and link down at the bottom dealing with copywrite and be sure
to click on it.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Good Point!

body:
At 07:05 AM 8/21/02 -0600, you wrote:
>Ok here's the URL to the interesting site:
Actually here's a better one that will go on one line:

http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/home.html

>
>http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/Places/Eu
>rope/Italy/Umbria/Perugia/Gubbio/Gubbio/0.html
>
>Since it has gone onto two lines you may need to paste it together. Note
>the notice and link down at the bottom dealing with copywrite and be sure
>to click on it.
>
>Fred
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

>On 21-08-2002, Jan Hidders wrote thusly :
>
>>WikiWiki is also about community building and as the biggest
>>kid on the block Wikipedia has a certain responsibility here. The more
>>interlinked the open-content sites are, the better it is. And as Axel
>>already said, it is simply a matter of common courtesy: treat others as you
>>would like them to treat you.
>>
>Knowledge, information and content cross all borders. It is the property
>of mankind.
>I agree that some acknowledgement should be made but not neccessarily
>on the page. I think most of us take advantage of a lot of sources and
>resources. We don't want them all listed on the pages ?
>OK. What's the consensus here ?
>
Here's my vote supporting the inclusion of credits on the article page.
 A distant second choice would be for a separate acknowledgement page.

This isn't an issue of somebody's legal rights.  (The information in
these long lists of kings is in the public domain.)  It's as much an
issue of courtesy and public relations.  We don't sign our articles, but
many Wikipedians use their user pages to give a long list of articles to
which they have contributed, and that's OK.

The person who compiled these long lists must have done a lot of work to
do this, and it doesn't harm the article to have the credit appear
prominently.  When the efforts of others are taken for granted they can
easily feel ripped-off.  There's no question of lawsuits, but sometimes
we can lose potentially valuable contributors, or we can get a lot of
negative comments on other people's pages.

Certainly our pages change over time, and a part of the editing process
is making sure that links work and that they continue to be relevant.
 When the links cease to be valid, they can always be removed at that
later time.

Eclecticology


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] can we speed up google?

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
 > Does anyone know why google hasn't indexed the site for 6 weeks, and
what we can do about it?

It is the same whit the Dutch wikipedia, last index is from 25 - 06 -
2002  - If you use the option to "add a url" to google, google will
index the site again.

But befor you do that, and force the registration of the new .org
domain, it must clear of the English Wikipedia will use en.wikipedia.org
or not.

see tread:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-August/003979.html

giskart


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bug while editing -- all text in article lost

body:
While editing at 9:05 A.M. (Eastern) today, I lost all my edits, and the
text of the article disappeared to. See user:Ed Poor

What's going on?

Ed Poor


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
On 21-08-2002, Axel Boldt wrote thusly :
> >> I think it would be polite to acknowledge the materials taken
> >> from his site with a boilerplate note at the bottom of the article
> >> containing a link back, similar to what we have been doing with
> >> FOLDOC materials,
> >I think we should set a precendent that such acknowledgements go
> >on the Talk page, not in the main article.  As long as they are
> >posted at the top of the talk page, with discussion below, and not
> >deleted if discussion is refactored, I think we will meet all our
> >credit obligations without limiting our ability to edit text.
> I disagree, for the following reasons:
> * Precedent has arguably been set with the FOLDOC materials already,
>   but precedent doesn't really matter, so let's forget that.
> * If somebody uses our material on their site, we want a prominent
>   link back. We would probably not be happy with a notice on some
>   attached discussion page that is buried among dozens of links and
>   rather difficult to find for the casual user of the site. So then
>   fairness requires that we give the same prominent attributions to
>   others.
> * I don't understand the "limiting our ability to edit text" part.
>    * If you mean: we are then limited because we cannot remove the
>      acknowledgement from the article anymore, then you are correct.
>      Removing that notice would amount to a breach of copyright law,
>      just like pasting in some copyrighted material would. But people
>      check edits all the time, and these things would be noticed and
>      reversed. The same applies to your Talk page solution, but edits
>      on Talk pages are arguably much less scrutinized than edits in
>      the main namespace.
>    * If you mean we lose the ability to edit the material of the
>      article itself: that's incorrect; we just phrase the
>      acknowledgement properly ("This article is based on material
>      from ...")
> * Talk pages are for discussion, not for credits. Nobody would look
>   there for them, and nobody would put them there. If you want a
>   Credits: namespace, I think I could live with that, but I still find
>   it more polite to give the original source more prominent
>   exposure in the article itself. If somebody prints out the article, I
>   want them to see the acknowledgement.

Hi all,

I feel that it wouldn't be proper for Wikipedia to give credits and
acknowledgements on article pages themselves. It wouldn't be Wikiwiki.

We don't sign our articles.
After a time there can be very little left from the original source
and it would be just misleading to state "it is based on...".
It will be a nuisance to find out when it is Wikipedia's rather than
the original author.

Either we should create a separate acknowledgement page or we should
work out some mechanism for including a short note in the header or foot of pages.

Alternatively we should ask for a written consent to release their material
under GNU FDL.

I think it is important for some people that links to their sites appeared
somewhere on Wikipedia to draw visitors as well as improve their page rank.

Best regards,
kpjas.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New e-mail feature

body:
That's a great feature; thanks, Lee.

kq

>I implemented the "e-mail this user" feature.  Most of you
>won't notice, and it won't be very useful at first because most
>people don't have their e-mail addresses filled in, but I hope
>that will change as more people start using this.


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Timezone based on UTC? (was: New e-mail feature)

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> And can you also add an option in the preferences, so
> that people can enter their time compared to GMT? (Or
> what is it currently also called, UTC?) It's very
> unusual for the rest of the world to have to have to
> give their time as an offset to a local USA time.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Agreed. Is there any reason we can't just set the internal clock on the
  machine to UTC? (I personally can't, as I don't have root access to
the server.)

I suppose we might want to automagically add 7 (or 8?) hours to the
timezone settings of anyone who's set it, of course, so they still end
up correct.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 11:09:53AM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
>
> I feel that it wouldn't be proper for Wikipedia to give credits and
> acknowledgements on article pages themselves. It wouldn't be Wikiwiki.

Au contraire! WikiWiki is also about community building and as the biggest
kid on the block Wikipedia has a certain responsibility here. The more
interlinked the open-content sites are, the better it is. And as Axel
already said, it is simply a matter of common courtesy: treat others as you
would like them to treat you.

> After a time there can be very little left from the original source
> and it would be just misleading to state "it is based on...".
> It will be a nuisance to find out when it is Wikipedia's rather than
> the original author.

Why would you want to? Even if the original version only served as
scaffolding for the current article, I still feel a link on the page would
be warranted.

> Either we should create a separate acknowledgement page or we should work
> out some mechanism for including a short note in the header or foot of
> pages.

Hmm. As long as it shows up in the article itself. We might even have a
little pull-down menu on the edit pages with all the open-content sources
that have given explicit permission.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

body:
On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Jan Hidders wrote:

> Hmm. As long as it shows up in the article itself. We might even have a
> little pull-down menu on the edit pages with all the open-content sources
> that have given explicit permission.

I hope, by "permission" they understand that the material is now under the GNU
FDL, and that if someone feels like it, they can remove any attribution or back
links.

-- Daniel


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> While editing at 9:05 A.M. (Eastern) today, I lost all my edits, and the
> text of the article disappeared to. See user:Ed Poor
>
> What's going on?

Could you describe what happened? What browser were you using? (By
digging through the history of your talk page, which seems to have been
the location of the problem, apparently you're using some version of
Opera.) Did you see any error messages? Mysterious flashing lights? An
odd humming noise? Burp in your net connection? _Anything_? Was there
any particular text (or symbols) that you put in that edit that did not
appear in other versions that were successfully saved?

The server logs are a little scanty, but it looks okay -- your
submission was met with a 302 code (redirecting from the submit address
to the view-article address). Just, your submission appears to be empty...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On 21-08-2002, Jan Hidders wrote thusly :
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 11:09:53AM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> > I feel that it wouldn't be proper for Wikipedia to give credits and
> > acknowledgements on article pages themselves. It wouldn't be Wikiwiki.
> Au contraire! WikiWiki is also about community building and as the biggest
> kid on the block Wikipedia has a certain responsibility here. The more
> interlinked the open-content sites are, the better it is. And as Axel
> already said, it is simply a matter of common courtesy: treat others as you
> would like them to treat you.
Knowledge, information and content cross all borders. It is the property
of mankind.
I agree that some acknowledgement should be made but not neccessarily
on the page. I think most of us take advantage of a lot of sources and
resources. We don't want them all listed on the pages ?
OK. What's the consensus here ?
> > After a time there can be very little left from the original source
> > and it would be just misleading to state "it is based on...".
> > It will be a nuisance to find out when it is Wikipedia's rather than
> > the original author.
> Why would you want to? Even if the original version only served as
> scaffolding for the current article, I still feel a link on the page would
> be warranted.
> > Either we should create a separate acknowledgement page or we should work
> > out some mechanism for including a short note in the header or foot of
> > pages.
> Hmm. As long as it shows up in the article itself. We might even have a
> little pull-down menu on the edit pages with all the open-content sources
> that have given explicit permission.
Something like that.

Regards,
kpjas.


body:
> Agreed. Is there any reason we can't just set the internal clock
> on the machine to UTC? (I personally can't, as I don't have root
> access to the server.)
>
> I suppose we might want to automagically add 7 (or 8?) hours to
> the timezone settings of anyone who's set it, of course, so they
> still end up correct.

Yes, whether we fix it by changing the server time itself, or by
fixing the software to use UTC instead of server time, the user
table in the database will have to be updated.

Changing the time on the server is a decision Jimbo/Jason will have
to make, because it may have effects with other machines on their
network.  I really should fix the software; it's just that I haven't
personally felt that it was an important thing to spend time on, but
I suppose there are enough complaints now to raise that priority.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <200208212005.g7LK5Wn29349@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 01:05:32PM -0700

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> Changing the time on the server is a decision Jimbo/Jason will have
> to make, because it may have effects with other machines on their
> network.

I have no objection to setting the machine to UTC.

Part of the point of the new server is that I'm trying to sort out
Wikipedia and Nupedia from everything else here.

--Jimbo


body:
On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Fred Bauder wrote:

> Here's the URL to an interesting site, portions of which are public domain.

Where's the URL?

-- Daniel


body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 August 2002 16:53, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> > I wouldn't do that if the server is really in that timezone.
> > Servers have an actual location on earth and should run in
> > local time, I think.
>
> Servers serve the whole world and should run in UTC. What the time zone at
> the server's physical location is is irrelevant. Time zone change is
> disruptive, and though it happens at 2:00 in local time, that is broad
> daylight elsewhere on the globe.

Plus, end users can set the TZ environment variable so that they can
type 'date' and get a happy answer, local to them.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<3D63F4DC.6040400@pobox.com> (message from Brion VIBBER on Wed,
	21 Aug 2002 12:15:24 -0800)

body:
|From: Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>
|Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 12:15:24 -0800
|
|Poor, Edmund W wrote:
|> While editing at 9:05 A.M. (Eastern) today, I lost all my edits, and the
|> text of the article disappeared to. See user:Ed Poor
|>
|> What's going on?
|
|Could you describe what happened? What browser were you using? (By
|digging through the history of your talk page, which seems to have been
|the location of the problem, apparently you're using some version of
|Opera.) Did you see any error messages? Mysterious flashing lights? An
|odd humming noise? Burp in your net connection? _Anything_? Was there
|any particular text (or symbols) that you put in that edit that did not
|appear in other versions that were successfully saved?
|
|The server logs are a little scanty, but it looks okay -- your
|submission was met with a 302 code (redirecting from the submit address
|to the view-article address). Just, your submission appears to be empty...
|
|-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

After several disasters, I have quit using Opera for any editing at
all.  It seems to have problems with very long articles, like Ed's
talk page, and also keeps tossing its cookies, won't log me in, loses
track of my preferences, etc.  A shame, because I want Opera to
succeed, but the other three browsers (Omniweb, Netscape, and IE
(pronounced Aieee!)) all work fine.  This is on Mac OS X 10.1.5.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
I've read the replies and issues, and I've thought seriously about
it, but I really have to come out against putting acknowledgements on
the pages themselves.  It's /not/ required by the license, it's /not/
what I would expect someone using our text to do, it clutters the
page with information that isn't relevant to most users, it gives a
sense to users of the text being a "fixed" rather than "dynamic"
thing, and it will create a growing problem in the long run.

Crediting sources, in traditional works in traditional media, has
always been in ways that didn't disrupt the work itself.  Credits
appear after movies, on the copyright page of a book, in footnotes or
endnotes, the "About" box of a GUI program, etc., where only those
interested in the information would see it.  If someone wants to use
our text from here, I would likewise expect them to mention us
wherever they have their own credit statement, probably on a page
linked from the article, not on the article itself.

Putting acknowledgements in the articles themselves I fear might also
give the wrong impression about our content here: for one thing, it
makes the text look like an imported whole, and might discourage
people from making sweeping edits.  It might also appear to credit
the external source with edits that weren't his, even if the language
is vague like "some parts based on...".  If the credits are put on a
separate page where only people who are interested will see them,
then ordinary users won't be confused.

But perhaps the most serious problem I see is that works getting
copied from one source to another and to another over periods of time
may accumulate more credits than actual text.  We don't toot our own
horn on article pages, and we don't sign edits on the pages, so why
should we treat external sources even better?  We're here to serve
the readers, not the egos of writers who think writing a sentence or
two is a major accomplishment forever worthy of credit.  Indeed, we
are changing the notion of "authorship" itself, and we shouldn't
constrain ourselves to policies that fit the old paradigm.

I personally think that the summary comments and talk pages are fine;
but I'm also open to the idea of a "Credits" or "Notes" or "About"
namespace specifically for such things.  These pages might all
automatically start with some boilerplate about the dynamic nature of
authorship here and point to our policies.  I think we can just
create and enforce talk-page policies that serve that purpose well,
and document that use.

Another possibility I'm open to is a wiki markup specifically for
endnotes and credits, that gets rendered in a smaller font at the end
of the article or something, and which is preceded by some
boilerplate; for example, maybe something like

<credits>
Parts of this article were based on FOLDOC...
</credits>

Could render a section at the bottom of the page like:

Content of Wikipedia is dynamic and
editable by all users, many of them anonymous.  But copyright license
terms may require us to give credit to particular authors at times:

Parts of this article were based on FOLDOC...

The stylesheets would render it small, or in faded colors, or even
not at all if we chose.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Timezone based on UTC? (was: New e-mail

body:
>On the other hand I'm very practical and say: Use the
>local time, but follow common Unix practice. This problem
>is not new. Unix systems keep track of local time and
>universal time and it's not too hard to get any kind
>of time out of a Unix system.

That's true, except that the PHP language does not have a
gmtime() function.   That's the main reason the code was
written the way it is now.  I could work around it getting
local time and converting myself, with the local timezone
set somewhere, but that's not very Unix-like.  I'll probably
just take the easy way out and set the server to GMT.

>What are you saying? Are you unaware that Unix systems
>count the time in seconds since 1970 and derive all
>other further knowledge of date and time from that?
>
>(Of course then the next question is: does the system
>keep time in seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC or any other
>local time...?)

Either, or neither, depending on the whim of the OS vendor.


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Axel Boldt" <axel at uni-paderborn.de>
>
> The GNU FDL requires that the original main authors be acknowledged,
> and also that URLs of the original version of the document be
> retained. Removing these attributions would be a breach of copyright
> law.
>
Note that the attribution doesn't have to be on every page; just once within
one Document, which is the entire collation of pages. So people can copy
articles from Wikipedia to their site, and as long as they link to Wikipedia
right next to their copyright notice (generally speaking) for the site, they
don't have to link to Wikipedia in the articles.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Wednesday 21 August 2002 16:53, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
> I wouldn't do that if the server is really in that timezone.
> Servers have an actual location on earth and should run in
> local time, I think.

Servers serve the whole world and should run in UTC. What the time zone at
the server's physical location is is irrelevant. Time zone change is
disruptive, and though it happens at 2:00 in local time, that is broad
daylight elsewhere on the globe.

I have no trouble remembering that my time zone is 4 hours west of Greenwich
in the summer and 5 in the winter. But if I were trying to make sense of logs
kept in Australian time, which shifts forward when I shift back and maybe a
few weeks off, I would get quite confused.

phma


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New e-mail feature

body:
At 2002-08-21 01:02 -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>I generally haven't been announcing software updates and fixes,
>but this one's important enough to merit it, I think:
>
>I implemented the "e-mail this user" feature.  Most of you
>won't notice, and it won't be very useful at first because most
>people don't have their e-mail addresses filled in, but I hope
>that will change as more people start using this.
>
>If you are logged in and have a valid e-mail address in your
>own user settings, and you are viewing a user page, you will see
>an "E-mail this user" link right below "User contributions".
>Click on it and fill in the form, and mail will be sent to that
>user.  That user's address will not be revealed to you, but your
>e-mail address will appear in the "From" line of the message you
>send, so that the recipient can reply.  There's a new user
>setting to opt out of receiving these mails even if you do enter
>an e-mail address.

I don't mind if my email address is public (at least in
the to-field of an email). Can you add an option for that
too?

And can you also add an option in the preferences, so
that people can enter their time compared to GMT? (Or
what is it currently also called, UTC?) It's very
unusual for the rest of the world to have to have to
give their time as an offset to a local USA time.

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Rosa Williams

body:
From: "Tim Marklew" <tmarklew at hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 6:56 PM

> I wrote:
> >As far as I understand it, users of our material have to provide history
of
> >contributors, and we suggest that they link back to our article to fulfil
> >this obligation.  Alternatively, there is nothing to stop them just
copying
> >our history and use that instead, without linking to us (strictly, they
may
> >not even have to credit 'Wikipedia' at all).
> Looks like I was wrong here:  section 4J of the FDL *requires* giving the
> network location of previous versions of the document, so they would have
to
> link back to the original text.  I think the Wikipedia:Copyrights page
could
> do with changing to make that clearer.
>
> Also note section 4K of the GFDL which requires preserving pre existing
> acknowledgements and dedications.
>
> Tim (Enchanter)

Simple Science Wiki Is still using subpages, so I've just put a /Credits
subpage for each article where appropriate. It has text appropriate to the
usage, such as, "The first version of this article was based on text
originally from http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/blah of [[Wikipedia]]"  where
the wiki-link leads to a short blurb explaining and thanking Wikipedia.

Would it be possible to add a Credits: namespace that, like the Talk:
namespace would track a given article?  That way we could put credits,
links-back, links to any invariant texts, et cetera ad nauseum.  We could
even put in hardcopy references, which would be useful and keep 'em from
cluttering a document.  Best of all, it's unobtrusive but easily accessible.

Just a suggestion, your mileage may vary, code requirements may not permit,
and a half-dozen other disclaimers. :)

-- April

(Another shameless plug for
http://www.renaissoft.com/april/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Simple_Science_Wiki .)


from_name: Imran Ghory

body:
On 21 Aug 2002, at 11:09, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

> On 21-08-2002, Axel Boldt wrote thusly :
> > >> I think it would be polite to acknowledge the materials taken
> > >> from his site with a boilerplate note at the bottom of the
> > >> article containing a link back, similar to what we have been
> > >> doing with FOLDOC materials,
> > >I think we should set a precendent that such acknowledgements go on
> > >the Talk page, not in the main article.  As long as they are posted
> > >at the top of the talk page, with discussion below, and not deleted
> > >if discussion is refactored, I think we will meet all our credit
> > >obligations without limiting our ability to edit text.
> > I disagree, for the following reasons:
> > * Precedent has arguably been set with the FOLDOC materials already,
> >   but precedent doesn't really matter, so let's forget that.
> > * If somebody uses our material on their site, we want a prominent
> >   link back. We would probably not be happy with a notice on some
> >   attached discussion page that is buried among dozens of links and
> >   rather difficult to find for the casual user of the site. So then
> >   fairness requires that we give the same prominent attributions to
> >   others.
> > * I don't understand the "limiting our ability to edit text" part.
> >    * If you mean: we are then limited because we cannot remove the
> >      acknowledgement from the article anymore, then you are correct.
> >      Removing that notice would amount to a breach of copyright law,
> >      just like pasting in some copyrighted material would. But
> >      people check edits all the time, and these things would be
> >      noticed and reversed. The same applies to your Talk page
> >      solution, but edits on Talk pages are arguably much less
> >      scrutinized than edits in the main namespace.
> >    * If you mean we lose the ability to edit the material of the
> >      article itself: that's incorrect; we just phrase the
> >      acknowledgement properly ("This article is based on material
> >      from ...")
> > * Talk pages are for discussion, not for credits. Nobody would look
> >   there for them, and nobody would put them there. If you want a
> >   Credits: namespace, I think I could live with that, but I still
> >   find it more polite to give the original source more prominent
> >   exposure in the article itself. If somebody prints out the
> >   article, I want them to see the acknowledgement.
>
> Hi all,
>
> I feel that it wouldn't be proper for Wikipedia to give credits and
> acknowledgements on article pages themselves. It wouldn't be Wikiwiki.
>
> We don't sign our articles.

But the usernames are stored in the history, so essentially
speaking we are signing them. (In the same sense that some
program don't have list of contributors in the program, rather in a
CREDITS or AUTHORS file.)

Imran


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
> I would however request that the Printable Version of every
> article contains these Credits (in a smaller font if desired).
> Otherwise, printed out copies could arguably be seen as being
> in breach of license.

That's a good point.  If we do make a special place for credits
that don't normally appear on the page, I'd be quite happy for
them to appear on the printable version and other alternate media.


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
>I hope, by "permission" they understand that the material is now under
>the GNU FDL, and that if someone feels like it, they can remove any
>attribution or back links.

The GNU FDL requires that the original main authors be acknowledged,
and also that URLs of the original version of the document be
retained. Removing these attributions would be a breach of copyright
law.

But even if it weren't: surely, the more interlinks between open
content projects we have, the better.

Axel


body:
On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Axel Boldt wrote:

>> I hope, by "permission" they understand that the material is now under
>> the GNU FDL, and that if someone feels like it, they can remove any
>> attribution or back links.

> The GNU FDL requires that the original main authors be acknowledged,
> and also that URLs of the original version of the document be
> retained. Removing these attributions would be a breach of copyright
> law.

My mistake.

-- Daniel


from_name: Tim Marklew

body:
Mav wrote:
>What's wrong with simply placing any attrib or URL in the edit summary that
>places the text in the article? The history isn't editable and will
>(hopefully) be a permanent part of the article.
I agree that we should always credit attributions in the edit summary, so
that it appears in the 'History'.  As far as I understand it, we use the
article history, which includes the edit summary, as the formal history as
required under the GFDL.
>That, combined with another
>notice at the top of talk will be more than enough.
I don't think it is enough.  If others were using wikipedia articles, we
would want a prominent clickable link back to our article, not something
buried in the edit history or the talk page.  Simple fairness and courtesy
would require that we do the same and link prominently to others, as we do
with FOLDOC.

I think crediting in the edit summary and talk should be seen as the
absolute minimum, with a link in the main article if significant material
has been used.  We can always remove the link in the main article later if,
for example, the material has been heavily edited by Wikipedians so a
prominent credit is no longer necessary.
>As for others using our
>material; we already require a link-back to the original article so others
>can access the talk and history.
As far as I understand it, users of our material have to provide a history
of contributors, and we suggest that they link back to our article to fulfil
this obligation.  Alternatively, there is nothing to stop them just copying
our history and use that instead, without linking to us (strictly, they may
not even have to credit 'Wikipedia' at all).  So we will be relying to some
extent on the goodwill of other sites to credit us fully and prominently.
This suggests that we should build up goodwill by linking prominently to
other sites that we use for contributions.

Tim (Enchanter)

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Timezone based on UTC? (was: New e-mail
  feature)

body:
At 2002-08-21 13:05 -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>> Agreed. Is there any reason we can't just set the internal clock
>> on the machine to UTC? (I personally can't, as I don't have root
>> access to the server.)
>>
>> I suppose we might want to automagically add 7 (or 8?) hours to
>> the timezone settings of anyone who's set it, of course, so they
>> still end up correct.
>
>Yes, whether we fix it by changing the server time itself, or by
>fixing the software to use UTC instead of server time, the user
>table in the database will have to be updated.

If updating the database is a problem, a more smoother conversion
might be to add a flag to signify who is still using the old
system and who is using the new system. Everyone using the old
system would be converted whenever he changes his settings.

I don't know if this system would be less complex than changing
the complete user database at once.

>Changing the time on the server is a decision Jimbo/Jason will have
>to make, because it may have effects with other machines on their
>network.

I wouldn't do that if the server is really in that timezone.
Servers have an actual location on earth and should run in
local time, I think.

>I really should fix the software; it's just that I haven't
>personally felt that it was an important thing to spend time on, but
>I suppose there are enough complaints now to raise that priority.

It looks very silly and a lot of people come across it...

Greetings,
Jaap


body:
I wrote:
>As far as I understand it, users of our material have to provide history of
>contributors, and we suggest that they link back to our article to fulfil
>this obligation.  Alternatively, there is nothing to stop them just copying
>our history and use that instead, without linking to us (strictly, they may
>not even have to credit 'Wikipedia' at all).
Looks like I was wrong here:  section 4J of the FDL *requires* giving the
network location of previous versions of the document, so they would have to
link back to the original text.  I think the Wikipedia:Copyrights page could
do with changing to make that clearer.

Also note section 4K of the GFDL which requires preserving pre existing
acknowledgements and dedications.

Tim (Enchanter)

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Links

body:
Steve Callaway wrote:
> I have noticed something over the last few days; it may not be be a bug so I
> am hesitant to raise it as such however it does represent a change in
> behaviour. Items I have visited no longer remain highlighted in e.g. the
> Recent Changes page. Given the volume of throughput we now get, I found just
> flicking  down and noting them would enable me to see articles I was
> involved which had changed in at a glance. This no longer appears to the
> case.

Is this happening continuously, or just to items that you last visited
prior to the afternoon of the 15th (in which case the URLs have changed
from www.wikipedia.com to www.wikipedia.org, and your browser will not
recognize them as the same)?

If you want to be sure to see changes to articles that you might be
interested in, may I recommend using the Watchlist? Pages that you have
added to your watchlist (click "Watch this page") appear in bold in the
Recentchanges list, even if you log in on a different computer or with a
different browser. (You must be logged in for it to keep track, naturally.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Pierre Abbat wrote:

> I have no trouble remembering that my time zone is 4 hours west of Greenwich
> in the summer and 5 in the winter. But if I were trying to make sense of logs
> kept in Australian time, which shifts forward when I shift back and maybe a
> few weeks off, I would get quite confused.

Not to mention Afghanistan, where they're x and a half hour off. :)

-- Daniel


body:
At 2002-08-21 18:34 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>On Wednesday 21 August 2002 16:53, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>> I wouldn't do that if the server is really in that timezone.
>> Servers have an actual location on earth and should run in
>> local time, I think.
>
>Servers serve the whole world and should run in UTC.

Of course I agree with you that in a perfect world
there should only be one time. What does it matter at
what time Australians get up, they will get used to it.
They celebrate christmas in summer, why not get up at
00:00 and go to bed at 16:00? (I often do, although I'm
in the Netherlands). Of course I'm also dead set against
daylight savings time and think that the responsible
politicians should be shot. I used to work as an embedded
programmer and most people have no idea how difficult
issues of time and date can be, even without daylight
savings time. We used to make machines for the justice
department over here, and the best advice I can give
any crook: Do your evil deeds between 2:00 and 3:00
in the night the clock is being set back and make the
lawyers ask for a mistrial because the exact time of
the crime has not been reported correctly.

>What the time zone at the server's physical location
>is is irrelevant.

On the other hand I'm very practical and say: Use the
local time, but follow common Unix practice. This problem
is not new. Unix systems keep track of local time and
universal time and it's not too hard to get any kind
of time out of a Unix system.

The MS-DOS system was much funnier: A file second's
time couldn't be odd. Bill Gates tried to compress the
date and time in a kind of BCD in 32 bits and he came
one bit short...

>Time zone change is disruptive, and though it happens
>at 2:00 in local time, that is broad daylight elsewhere
>on the globe.

What are you saying? Are you unaware that Unix systems
count the time in seconds since 1970 and derive all
other further knowledge of date and time from that?

(Of course then the next question is: does the system
keep time in seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC or any other
local time...?)

>I have no trouble remembering that my time zone is
>4 hours west of Greenwich in the summer and 5 in the
>winter.

Yes, but I always wonder: Isn't the daylight saving
time valid in Greenwich itself?

So is our time relative to a virtual time that the
Greenwichers themselves live at, or at the time that
they really have on their watches?

I think that politicians that mess with time are
messing with the essence of things you can't mess
with and should be shot.

>But if I were trying to make sense of logs kept in
>Australian time, which shifts forward when I shift
>back and maybe a few weeks off, I would get quite
>confused.

Indeed. We should have a single universal time and
date accross the whole globe. We should also spell
it in the same way:
20020822 01:38
or
2002-08-22 01:38

It's strange however that years are counted from
the birth of a jewish rebel called Christ in
0000 (or 0001 as some claim), months also from 01,
days also from 01, but hours and minutes from 00,
although the angloamericans tend to count minutes
beyond the 12/24. The use of AM/PM is extra confusing,
because the question (for non angloamericans is)
is 12:30 AM or PM?

I'm not advocating the Swass Beat system which divides
each day into 1000 beats and which are the same over
the whole world, but especially you anglo-americans
should wise up!

Greetz,
Jaap


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
>I really have to come out against putting acknowledgements on
>the pages themselves.  It's /not/ required by the license,

Agreed.

>it's /not/ what I would expect someone using our text to do,

That's the crucial point. Previously, I had interpreted the consensus
on this list as asking for links back to Wikipedia on every page that
uses Wikipedia material. If that's really not the case (and I could
live with that), then we should phrase [[wikipedia:copyrights]] a bit
clearer.

>it clutters the page with information that isn't relevant to most
>users, it gives a sense to users of the text being a "fixed" rather
>than "dynamic" thing, and it will create a growing problem in the long
>run.

The last point, with accumulating credits over time, is a good one.

>We're here to serve the readers, not the egos of writers who think
>writing a sentence or two is a major accomplishment forever worthy of
>credit. Indeed, we are changing the notion of "authorship" itself,
>and we shouldn't constrain ourselves to policies that fit the old
>paradigm.

We have however chosen a license that enshrines these authorship
rights.

>Another possibility I'm open to is a wiki markup specifically for
>endnotes and credits

This would be good, or alternatively a Credits: namespace which by
default always contains a text like "Wikipedia articles are
collaborative efforts; you can find the contributors on the [[History
page]]." and then we could credit any other outside sources there.

I would however request that the Printable Version of every article
contains these Credits (in a smaller font if desired). Otherwise,
printed out copies could arguably be seen as being in breach of license.

Axel


from_name: Steve Callaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Links

body:
Hi,

I have noticed something over the last few days; it may not be be a bug so I
am hesitant to raise it as such however it does represent a change in
behaviour. Items I have visited no longer remain highlighted in e.g. the
Recent Changes page. Given the volume of throughput we now get, I found just
flicking  down and noting them would enable me to see articles I was
involved which had changed in at a glance. This no longer appears to the
case.

rgds

Steve Callaway


body:
On Wednesday 21 August 2002 20:17, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> That's true, except that the PHP language does not have a
> gmtime() function.   That's the main reason the code was
> written the way it is now.  I could work around it getting
> local time and converting myself, with the local timezone
> set somewhere, but that's not very Unix-like.  I'll probably
> just take the easy way out and set the server to GMT.

time() returns the time in seconds, and gmdate() converts it to
human-readable format in any of several formats.

phma


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
I think Lee is on the right track with putting the credits in the
*source* text, but displaying them not just as text, but elsewhere on
the page.

Would a [[credits:Based on the work on that guy]] do (similar to the
language links, which are no "real" namespaces as well), or would we run
into problems with linking to internal or external sites from within the
credits? Anyway, <credits> will do fine (yes, too much Episode I...).

Credits could be printed in a small font at the end of the article. On
the "view" pages, there could be a link to "credits", which opens a new
window (yes, popups are evil, but this might be an exception;). So,
anyone who is interested in the credits will see where we give'em, and
can read them; the others won't be bothered with yet more lines on their
800x600 screen.

Magnus


body:
On 21-08-2002, Rosa Williams wrote thusly :
> From: "Tim Marklew" <tmarklew at hotmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 6:56 PM
> > I wrote:
> > >As far as I understand it, users of our material have to provide history
> of
> > >contributors, and we suggest that they link back to our article to fulfil
> > >this obligation.  Alternatively, there is nothing to stop them just
> copying
> > >our history and use that instead, without linking to us (strictly, they
> may
> > >not even have to credit 'Wikipedia' at all).
> > Looks like I was wrong here:  section 4J of the FDL *requires* giving the
> > network location of previous versions of the document, so they would have
> to
> > link back to the original text.  I think the Wikipedia:Copyrights page
> could
> > do with changing to make that clearer.
> >
> > Also note section 4K of the GFDL which requires preserving pre existing
> > acknowledgements and dedications.
> >
> > Tim (Enchanter)
> Simple Science Wiki Is still using subpages, so I've just put a /Credits
> subpage for each article where appropriate. It has text appropriate to the
> usage, such as, "The first version of this article was based on text
> originally from http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/blah of [[Wikipedia]]"  where
> the wiki-link leads to a short blurb explaining and thanking Wikipedia.

> Would it be possible to add a Credits: namespace that, like the Talk:
> namespace would track a given article?  That way we could put credits,
> links-back, links to any invariant texts, et cetera ad nauseum.  We could
> even put in hardcopy references, which would be useful and keep 'em from
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> cluttering a document.  Best of all, it's unobtrusive but easily accessible.
This is a very good point here. I think it will become a neccessity,
some time in future, to give references, at least for medical articles.
Today's medicine paradigm is EBM (Evidence Based Medicine) and one _must_
give credible reference for any statement in articles.

BTW I should flesh out "Wikipedia medicine standards" at last.
What do you think about putting in a compulsory disclaimer in articles
on health related subjects ?

Regards,
kpjas.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Internationalization issues

body:
> I'm not sure I'm the right person to raise this question but
> I wondered what the current thinking is on adapting the code
> for other character sets. If I recall correctly we or now
> assuming UTF-8, right? What exactly does that mean, btw? That
> we changed the MySQL character tables for those above 7F?
> Anyting else?

The English Wikipedia, and the German one being tested now, are
both ISO-8859-1, not UTF-8.  UTF-8 will be needed for Polish and
other languages.  There won't be much software change involved;
just telling MySQL to index the right way.

As for a special notation for accented characters, I'm not fond
of the idea.  Foreign users should have foreign keyboards.  Others
should still be able to enter accents by whatever means their OS
and browser allow, and I'm not aware of any that don't have some
feature for it.  I don't like duplicating effort that should be
already done elsewhere.


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

in_reply_to: <200208220311.FAA01944@linde.uni-paderborn.de>; from axel@uni-paderborn.de on Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 05:11:51AM +0200

body:
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 05:11:51AM +0200, Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> This would be good, or alternatively a Credits: namespace which by
> default always contains a text like "Wikipedia articles are
> collaborative efforts; you can find the contributors on the [[History
> page]]." and then we could credit any other outside sources there.

Well, if we must, then I'd also prefer a separate namespace over some
special markup. It would be very similar to a Talk page, have its own color,
and the link to it could be next to the Talk link.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Jan Hidders wrote:

> > This would be good, or alternatively a Credits: namespace which by
> > default always contains a text like "Wikipedia articles are
> > collaborative efforts; you can find the contributors on the [[History
> > page]]." and then we could credit any other outside sources there.
>
> Well, if we must, then I'd also prefer a separate namespace over some
> special markup. It would be very similar to a Talk page, have its own color,
> and the link to it could be next to the Talk link.

Why not put it on the article's history page somewhere?

-- Daniel


body:
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 09:30:27AM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> On 21-08-2002, Rosa Williams wrote thusly :
> >
> > Would it be possible to add a Credits: namespace that, like the Talk:
> > namespace would track a given article?  That way we could put credits,
> > links-back, links to any invariant texts, et cetera ad nauseum.  We could
> > even put in hardcopy references, which would be useful and keep 'em from
>               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > cluttering a document.  Best of all, it's unobtrusive but easily accessible.
>
> This is a very good point here. I think it will become a neccessity,
> some time in future, to give references, at least for medical articles.

If those references are important for the article then they should be in the
article itself, not in the credits section. An important purpose of the credits
sections is to tell us that it is Ok that certain parts of the article were
copied from elsewhere. So it shouldn't be cluttered with other references.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 11:04:44AM +0200, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Jan Hidders wrote:
> >
> > Well, if we must, then I'd also prefer a separate namespace over some
> > special markup. It would be very similar to a Talk page, have its own color,
> > and the link to it could be next to the Talk link.
>
> Why not put it on the article's history page somewhere?

You mean in the edit summary? The problem with that is that it after a lot
of edits you won't see it anymore.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Jan Hidders wrote:

> > Why not put it on the article's history page somewhere?
>
> You mean in the edit summary? The problem with that is that it after a lot
> of edits you won't see it anymore.

So? Why should my edits/contributions be any less important (and visible) than
some external source?

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Links

body:
Brion,

I feel that this may be behaviour which occurred since the 15th although I
am not //entirely// sure. I certainly noticed it on/after the 15th as an
issue and I attributed it initially to the change in domains. I will keep an
eye on it and keep you up to date. My watchlist would probably be too
unwieldy to be serviceable (I only keep articles which are //particularly//
contentious in there), and I certainly prefer the already visited highlight
flick through method.

rgds

Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 7:57 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Links

> Steve Callaway wrote:
> > I have noticed something over the last few days; it may not be be a bug
so I
> > am hesitant to raise it as such however it does represent a change in
> > behaviour. Items I have visited no longer remain highlighted in e.g. the
> > Recent Changes page. Given the volume of throughput we now get, I found
just
> > flicking  down and noting them would enable me to see articles I was
> > involved which had changed in at a glance. This no longer appears to the
> > case.
>
> Is this happening continuously, or just to items that you last visited
> prior to the afternoon of the 15th (in which case the URLs have changed
> from www.wikipedia.com to www.wikipedia.org, and your browser will not
> recognize them as the same)?
>
> If you want to be sure to see changes to articles that you might be
> interested in, may I recommend using the Watchlist? Pages that you have
> added to your watchlist (click "Watch this page") appear in bold in the
> Recentchanges list, even if you log in on a different computer or with a
> different browser. (You must be logged in for it to keep track,
naturally.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 11:25:01AM +0200, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Jan Hidders wrote:
>
> > > Why not put it on the article's history page somewhere?
> >
> > You mean in the edit summary? The problem with that is that it after a lot
> > of edits you won't see it anymore.
>
> So? Why should my edits/contributions be any less important (and visible)
> than some external source?

It is not a matter of importance but of copyright-verification. (Your edits
are the most important of all, of course ;-)) If somebody of us sees text on a
page that is verbatim identical to something elsewhere on the web then
there is the risc of copyright-infringement. The credits section would
/ should provide us a quick way to see if there is a problem or not. Hiding
this between all the other edits wouldn't be very helpful.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Jan Hidders wrote:

>> So? Why should my edits/contributions be any less important (and visible)
>> than some external source?

> It is not a matter of importance but of copyright-verification. (Your edits
> are the most important of all, of course ;-)) If somebody of us sees text on a
> page that is verbatim identical to something elsewhere on the web then
> there is the risc of copyright-infringement. The credits section would
> / should provide us a quick way to see if there is a problem or not. Hiding
> this between all the other edits wouldn't be very helpful.

I don't see the point. If there are so many edits that the source reference
disappears, the content will likely not resemble the original anyway. Also,
source references need not be interspersed with edit notices, but could be
placed at the bottom or at the top, or something. The point is that this is the
page where authorship is described, and so source references (with regards to
copyright tracing) belong here.

IMO. :)

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 12:04:05PM +0200, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
>
> I don't see the point. If there are so many edits that the source reference
> disappears, the content will likely not resemble the original anyway.

Could be, could also not be. There may be a lot of little Wikification edits
that still leave the original article largely intact.

> Also, source references need not be interspersed with edit notices, but
> could be placed at the bottom or at the top, or something. The point is
> that this is the page where authorship is described, and so source
> references (with regards to copyright tracing) belong here.

I agree that the History would be an obvious place for the credits. However,
"reusing" the Talk-page concept means that it will be easy to program and has
an easy-to-understand user interface, including the possibility to re-edit
the credits in case they are forgotten, too imprecise or simpy incorrect.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Broken cookies?

body:
Hi all -- just thought I'd mention that my login isn't saving across
sessions -- don't know if anyone else is having that problem?

Jules
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Any suggestions for stopping Helga's latest onslaught...

body:
Short of blocking her?  She's now claiming to have found all kinds of
interesting "proof" of things like "the Soviets fabricated evidence for
the Nuremberg trials" and other "suppressed history."  Getting a little
weird out here in the trenches.  She also seems to think that people who
were fired or left office during the Truman administration because of
supposed (or real) communist ties points to a vast Communist conspiracy.
I wonder if she's heard of a certain senator from Wisconsin...

Jules
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Broken cookies?

body:
> Hi all -- just thought I'd mention that my login isn't saving across
> sessions -- don't know if anyone else is having that problem?

Have you already gone into your preferences and checked the
"Remember password across sessions" box recently (I mean, since
logging in to the new .org server)?  That may have become unset
with the server change.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Broken cookies?

body:
At 01:17 PM 8/22/02 -0700, you wrote:
>      Hi all -- just thought I'd mention that my login isn't saving across
>sessions -- don't know if anyone else is having that problem?  Jules

On one computer, the Macintosh, yes, on the the thinkpad, no. Have the same
problem with Half.com too.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:Re: Broken Cookies

body:
Yes, the box has been checked -- I just noticed that I also get logged
out if I go to the main page to check this list, then go back to recent
changes.

Jules
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Any suggestions for stopping Helga's latest
  onslaught...

body:
At 01:21 PM 8/22/02 -0700, you wrote:
>       """"""    I wonder if she's heard of a certain senator from
>Wisconsin...  Jules

Interesting, when you write in green like that it doesn't come up for the
reply. Anyway, she's probably right about the Soviets fabricating evidence,
if indeed they had anything to do with the Nuremberg trials and rewriting
history was definitely one of their things. But it hardly matters; how much
more guilty could the Nazis be? And she's exaggerating about communinist
influence in the Truman administration, but not completely wrong. Problem
with her is she probably knows about squat about anything American (or
Soviet, for that matter). She's just repeating something she got from
propaganda.

So she paints with a broad brush in more or less a right direction, but is
clueless about the actual details.

I found another one of her things in the genocide article. She claims (or
someone very like her) that millions of Germans died after the war during
the resettlement from the eastern territories. I left it partly because I
know it was a rough time and perhaps a few people did die, but it all seems
pretty farfetched.

My only suggestion is an inquiry about where she's getting this stuff and
the details. But that is almost sure to fail since she won't be able to
provide them and expecting someone else to dig around and find em is pretty
hopeless, people who could aren't interested.

Fred


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Timezone based on UTC?

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote in part:

>Yes, but I always wonder: Isn't the daylight saving
>time valid in Greenwich itself?

DST is used in Greenwich as in the rest of the EU.
But Greenwich Mean Time is another matter entirely.
GMT is not defined by our modern Time Zone standards,
nor by the day to day position of Sun in the sky
(which was how time was kept throughout most of human history),
but by the longitude where Greenwich is located.
The yearly average (mean) of Sun's position there determines GMT;
Paris Mean Time is different since Paris has a different longitude.
OTOH, their Standard Time is the same, since they're in the same Time Zone.
What's more, GMT is now deprecated in favour of UTC,
Coordinated Universal Time (the initialism shows you that
it's the fault of the French that Greenwich is now ignored),
which is based on the oscillation of caesium ions,
with leap seconds added from time to time to keep the hour
in line with the sunlight, more or less.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>


body:
I'm not sure I'm the right person to raise this question but I wondered what
the current thinking is on adapting the code for other character sets. If I
recall correctly we or now assuming UTF-8, right? What exactly does that
mean, btw? That we changed the MySQL character tables for those above 7F?
Anyting else?

I'm asking this because I know that some writers on the German Wikipedia
asked for an easy way to type accents. So I wondered if we should add a
special pre-parse function that is language-dependent, i.e, defined in
language??.php, and is called on edit text, title strings and search
expressions before they are processed. The Germans could define it for
example such that ö is always translated to \"o (or they could in fact
use '\"o' as a notation, if they wanted). They could then unambiguously
search for Goedel. I assume that the Polish would want similar stuff, and
perhaps the people at Vikipedio would also like a special notatation for
their special letters, but I know the situation is a bit more complicated
there.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] better MOVE documentation?

body:
Looking over [[Robert J. Flaherty]], I (mis?)remember a lot more being there than what I just wrote.  Maybe I'm confusing that with what was written about him at [[documentary film]].  Zoe expressed similar thoughts about [[The Wizard of Oz]].

I don't know that either page has been moved (or where they would have been moved to) but wondering about it made me realize that the article move is essentially undocumented.

Should we document the moving of a page from one location to another in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the history showing the time and user with an autogenerated comment like "article moved from [[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?

Is it something worth having?  And if so, would it be a fairly simple bit of programming, or would it require a mindbending hack equivalent to the first person's putting a stick through a wheel?

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] German Wikipedia

body:
Time to test the German installation.  Any of you who are up to it,
go to http://de-beta.wikipedia.org/ and test the new site.
EVERYTHING THERE WILL BE REMOVED when we move the site for real
after testing, so go ahead and trash the place.  Likewise, don't
do any real work there or it will get removed.


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Timezone based on UTC?

body:
At 05:33 PM 8/22/02 -0700, Toby wrote:

>DST is used in Greenwich as in the rest of the EU.
>But Greenwich Mean Time is another matter entirely.
>GMT is not defined by our modern Time Zone standards,
>nor by the day to day position of Sun in the sky
>(which was how time was kept throughout most of human history),
>but by the longitude where Greenwich is located.
>The yearly average (mean) of Sun's position there determines GMT;
>Paris Mean Time is different since Paris has a different longitude.
>OTOH, their Standard Time is the same, since they're in the same Time Zone.

Except they aren't: Paris (and all of France) is one hour ahead of GMT.
(No big deal, but I wanted to correct this before the error snuck into the
Wikipedia.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
On 22-08-2002, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote thusly :
> Short of blocking her?  She's now claiming to have found all kinds of
> interesting "proof" of things like "the Soviets fabricated evidence for
> the Nuremberg trials" and other "suppressed history."  Getting a little
> weird out here in the trenches.  She also seems to think that people who
> were fired or left office during the Truman administration because of
> supposed (or real) communist ties points to a vast Communist conspiracy.
> I wonder if she's heard of a certain senator from Wisconsin...

I am all for NPOVing articles on Polish-German history.
I am sure there is a lot of Communist propaganda in the history fed into
our minds during the old regime.
The history needs a thorough research, fact, references, common sense
and tact.

Helga Jonat's contributions are counter-productive in this respect.
This way we can start Polish-Lithuanian Polish-Ukrainian history
debates leading to nowhere. L'viv and Vilnius was Polish
back in the history. But we must look forward and try to discuss
conflicting views. Without all the propaganda.

The history of Europe is convoluted and especially Central Europe,
as one of German contributors said most German are good-willed and want to
reconcile rather than always look back into difficult histories of
our nations.

You can see that dialogue with her is rather difficult and I now am
awaiting your comments - what to do with the current situation.

Regards,
kpjas.


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Broken cookies?

body:
On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:

> Hi all -- just thought I'd mention that my login isn't saving across
> sessions -- don't know if anyone else is having that problem?

I find that it does, for the particular host I'm at, if I specifically turn it
on in preferences. But when I go to another host, it has disappeared again, and
I have to manually turn it on for that host too.

Actually, this suits me fine, since I have two computers where I always like to
be logged on, and a bunch of others where I just drop by.

I don't know if this is the same problem/feature you are encountering. :)

-- Daniel


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Should we document the moving of a page from one location to another in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the history showing the time and user with an autogenerated comment like "article moved from [[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?

YES YES YES, we should do that. Should be pretty straightforward.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Karl Juhnke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] median article size decreasing

body:
I got so curious about my own suggested statistic of median article
size that I have been tracking it by hand.  So far the data is:

Date  Median article size in bytes
----  ----------------------------
8/15  1001
8/18   999
8/19   997
8/20   995
8/21   995
8/22   991

My hyposthesis on the basis of one week of observation is that,
although our front page article count is rocketing up, this indicates
many new small articles, and thus a dcrease in the expected information
contained in a random article.

Just thought y'all might like to know.
Peace,
-Karl

P.S. It is also possible that there is something inaccurate about the
way I am calculating the median article size.  What I do is take the
article count from the front page (say 38000), divide by 2 (19000), and
then go to the special page "long articles" and look up the size of the
19000th longest article.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


in_reply_to: <200208221711.g7MHBfM04975@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 10:11:41AM -0700

body:
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 10:11:41AM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> The English Wikipedia, and the German one being tested now, are
> both ISO-8859-1, not UTF-8.  UTF-8 will be needed for Polish and
> other languages.  There won't be much software change involved;
> just telling MySQL to index the right way.

That may in fact involve defining our own new character set for MySQL that
defines the properties of the subset of UTF-8 that covers English, German
and Polish. Or is each Wikipedia going to get its own mysql server? Anyway,
I'll start asking around if something like that not already exists
somewhere.

> As for a special notation for accented characters, I'm not fond
> of the idea.  Foreign users should have foreign keyboards.  Others
> should still be able to enter accents by whatever means their OS
> and browser allow, and I'm not aware of any that don't have some
> feature for it.

All I know at the moment is that the request has been made by a member of
the German community. I don't know how many people asked for it, why they
wanted it or how badly they need it, but I'll ask them. I'm a bit surprised
that Magnus hasn't brought this up, (I'm not German) but I have the
impression he has been busy lately.

> I don't like duplicating effort that should be
> already done elsewhere.

The question is not if you would implement it, but only if it would be Ok to
define some hooks so that they can implement it themselves if they wanted
to without changing any common code.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Acknowledgements

body:
> Also, source references need not be interspersed with edit notices,
> but could be placed at the bottom or at the top

Now there's an idea. We could make part of the History page editable
(similar to [[image:]]) for credit information, or we could put the
credit information in the article itself using special markup, and
then display it on the History page. This is probably where people
would look for it.

Axel


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
> As for a special notation for accented characters, I'm not fond
> of the idea.  Foreign users should have foreign keyboards.

Of course that's not the problem.

> Others
> should still be able to enter accents by whatever means their OS
> and browser allow, and I'm not aware of any that don't have some
> feature for it.

I don't know which feature you mean. Some foreign contributors use html
entities for umlauts, others type ae for ?, oe for ? and ue fur ?. The
first one makes the EditBox look ugly, and Links with entities in them
don't work, and the second one has to be corrected by someone. At the
moment it's not a big deal, just annoying. But I think it could be
easily automated, if entities would automaticaly be turned into umlauts
when the text is saved. An easier way of entering umlauts, like \"o,
would make foreign contributors even happier, but that should be
standardized then in all wikipedias that use umlauts, accents, etc.

Could someone please configure this mailinglist the same way as
wikipedia-l, so that replies go to the list?

Kurt


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] requested change for wikitech-l behavior

in_reply_to: <007f01c24a68$03c520a0$2cabe6d9@maximilian>; from jansson@gmx.net on Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 07:43:28AM +0200

body:
I'm happy to make this change...  Of course, I'd like to get the
general consensus first.  Anybody agree/disagree/not care?

Jason

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Could someone please configure this mailinglist the same way as
> wikipedia-l, so that replies go to the list?
>
>
> Kurt

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
>koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>> Should we document the moving of a page from one location to
another in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the
history showing the time and user with an autogenerated comment
like "article moved from [[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?
>
>YES YES YES, we should do that. Should be pretty straightforward.

That's easy for you to say :-)

Article histories are not stored as change records; they are
constructed from stored revisions.  Moving an article doesn't
create a revision--it actually renames the article record and
all its revision records, so as far as the database is concerned
the article has /always/ had the new name--it doesn't know any
different.

To keep a log of moves would require a new table to record them,
and the changing the article history list to use that new table.
Not a major obstacle, but not a quickie either.


body:
> P.S. It is also possible that there is something inaccurate about
> the way I am calculating the median article size.  What I do is
> take the article count from the front page (say 38000), divide by
> 2 (19000), and then go to the special page "long articles" and look
> up the size of the 19000th longest article.

"Long articles" lists every page in the main namespace; the count
on the front page only counts "comma" articles.  Since there are
probably a few non-comma articles that rank above 38000th in length,
this method may actually give you a number slightly higher than the
real median size of "comma" articles.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] note to the militia

body:
I'm working 40 hours a week now /and/ going to school
full time. I will therefore no longer have time to
seek out new vandalism and copyright violations from
Recent Changes (a process that previously took me 2 to
3 hours a day). I will also not have time to seek out
and greet all new users either. I will have more time
to do this as soon as winter break arrives.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GMT

body:
What's more, GMT is now deprecated in favour of UTC,
Coordinated Universal Time (the initialism shows you
that
it's the fault of the French that Greenwich is now
ignored),
which is based on the oscillation of caesium ions,
with leap seconds added from time to time to keep the
hour
in line with the sunlight, more or less.
-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>

------------------

Except they aren't: Paris (and all of France) is one
hour ahead of GMT.
(No big deal, but I wanted to correct this before the
error snuck into
the
Wikipedia.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org
-----------------

GMT is deprecated in favor of UTC ???
Funny, I never realised you were not using GMT :-)))

Precision : Paris (and all of France) is one hour OR
two hours ahead of GMT, depending on the season (we
switch in spring and autumn). We decided to go ahead
or backward for energy saving many many years ago
(probably around 1974 ?).

anthere

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Any suggestions for stopping Helga's latest onslaught...

body:
People respond to tragedy in different ways. Somehow it has been rather easy for me to remain dispassionate about the atrocities in Central and East Europe; maybe I'm just numb to it, after a lifetime of reading about the Holocaust and the various Communist purges. The statistics are staggering: 100 million to 200 million civilians murdered by their own (totalitarian) governments. It mostly just makes me sad and tired.

Other people may become enraged, and anger can lessen one's reasoning capacity (hot-headed vs. cool-headed). Perhaps Helga fits into this category.

We of the Neutralist Cabal can either (A) ban the hotheads altogether or (B) clean up after them. I vote for Plan B, even though it's harder.

Look at what I'm doing this month with Q, Jacob and Uri in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Uri is starting to move text to talk pages and explain why, rather than merely reverting with a nasty comment. I see this as progress towards ending the edit wars. We might even reach a point of stability in the Middle East, at least at Wikipedia :-)

Ed Poor


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>
>>>Should we document the moving of a page from one location to
>>
> another in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the
> history showing the time and user with an autogenerated comment
> like "article moved from [[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?
>
>>YES YES YES, we should do that. Should be pretty straightforward.
>
>
> That's easy for you to say :-)
>
> Article histories are not stored as change records; they are
> constructed from stored revisions.  Moving an article doesn't
> create a revision--

Therein the reason they don't currently show up in the history.

 > it actually renames the article record and
> all its revision records, so as far as the database is concerned
> the article has /always/ had the new name--it doesn't know any
> different.
>
> To keep a log of moves would require a new table to record them,
> and the changing the article history list to use that new table.
> Not a major obstacle, but not a quickie either.

You misunderstand; when moving an article, simply *save* a new revision
of it with a summary field of "Renamed from X". Thus, it shows up in the
history list because there is a new revision.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
> The protection of a page also isn't mentioned in the arcticle
> history and on recent changes. Or is this just a bug on
> de-beta.wikipedia.org?

You're right, that's not recorded.  Rather than making "dummy"
revision as some have suggested (which would bloat the database),
it sounds like I should just create a new table to log certain
actions.  Maybe I could even put the uploads and deletions there
as well, rather than having a log article.


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> Looking over [[Robert J. Flaherty]], I (mis?)remember a lot more being there than what I just wrote.  Maybe I'm confusing that with what was written about him at [[documentary film]].  Zoe expressed similar thoughts about [[The Wizard of Oz]].
>
> I don't know that either page has been moved (or where they would have been moved to) but wondering about it made me realize that the article move is essentially undocumented.
>
> Should we document the moving of a page from one location to another in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the history showing the time and user with an autogenerated comment like "article moved from [[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?
>
> Is it something worth having?  And if so, would it be a fairly simple bit of programming, or would it require a mindbending hack equivalent to the first person's putting a stick through a wheel?

If that wasn't too hard to do it would be a fairly valuable piece of
information to have...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] German Wikipedia

body:
> Time to test the German installation.  Any of you who are up to it,
> go to http://de-beta.wikipedia.org/ and test the new site.
> EVERYTHING THERE WILL BE REMOVED when we move the site for real
> after testing, so go ahead and trash the place.  Likewise, don't
> do any real work there or it will get removed.

Thanks Lee, Magnus, Brion and everybody else involved! The new software
is so much nicer. :-)

We're already writing bug reports to keep you guys busy ...

Kurt


from_name: Seer Snively

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to edit user_rights to include Is_Sysop?

body:
Hello there!

I'm loving the Wikipedia PHP Script, and solving my all my install
problems except one.  I'm not quite sure how to edit the tinyblog
user_rights field so that I can become a sysop of my own site!  Does
anyone have a php script or an SQL query to do it?

Also, this might not be the place, but I've noticed how cool the
wikipedia.com's mod_rewrite is, but I don't know how to use it?  Is there
a simple setup text file on how to use mod_rewrite with Wikipedia?

Thanks in advance!
Seer

--
Seer Snively  	--	  Network Administrator      --  NetHelpNow.com
seer at nethelpnow.com 	"The medium is the message." -- Marshall McLuhan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meet and greet

body:
I'm sure we're all sorry (er, um, glad!) to hear about Mav's new job.

I've been greeting new users occasionally, and as of today I've started copying Mav's meet-and-greet template. I can't promise 3 hours a day of anti-vandalism patrol, but I do browse Recent Changes frequently.

I enjoy encouraging newbies with praise and guidance, and I don't mind cleaning up after the uninitiated. But if they refuse to listen, I won't hesitate to make 'em stand in the corner (see [[child time-out]]).

Ed Poor


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <002001c24aff$c6c85990$ad37a8c0@laptop>; from juleskemp@yahoo.com on Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 04:49:52PM -0700

body:
Helga has thus far not responded to my email requests for a dialogue
about these possibilities.  If she won't talk to me, it's hard for me
to help.

She should be STRONGLY encouraged to join wikipedia-l and talk to us
about the situation.  It's the only way to straighten this out, I think.

When I banned '24', it was only after he had refused entreaties to
talk in email.  I'd be hard pressed to ban anyone who would pay me the
common courtesy of a discussion about the problem.

--Jimbo


body:
> I'm loving the Wikipedia PHP Script, and solving my all my
> install problems except one.  I'm not quite sure how to edit
> the tinyblog user_rights field so that I can become a sysop
> of my own site!  Does anyone have a php script or an SQL query
> to do it?

If you're using the Phase III software (the stuff in the
"newcodebase" directory, then just use this SQL query:

  UPDATE user SET user_rights='sysop,developer' WHERE user_id=X;

(where X is your user id, which you can determine with s SELECT
query).  In the Phase II software, replace "sysop" and "developer"
with "is_sysop" and "is_developer".  If you only want one or the
other, omit the comma.

> Also, this might not be the place, but I've noticed how cool the
> wikipedia.com's mod_rewrite is, but I don't know how to use it?
> Is there a simple setup text file on how to use mod_rewrite with
> Wikipedia?

In general, using "mod_rewrite" and "simple" in the same sentence
is a non-sequitur.  The full documentation is on Apache's site.
The incantation used at wikipedia.org is this:

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml?title=$1 [NE]
  RewriteRule ^/w/wiki.phtml(.*) /w/wiki.phtml$1
  RewriteRule ^/wiki$ /w/wiki.phtml
  RewriteRule ^/$ /w/wiki.phtml
  RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml/$1 [NE]
  RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml$ /w/wiki.phtml

This is with the software installed in the "/w" directory
(I don't like installing stuff in the document root--it's too
inflexible for later changes.  But those last two lines make
it look as if it's installed at root).  If you install the
scripts in a different directory, or want different URLs,
modify the above appropriately.


body:
Seer Snively wrote:
> I'm loving the Wikipedia PHP Script, and solving my all my install
> problems except one.  I'm not quite sure how to edit the tinyblog
> user_rights field so that I can become a sysop of my own site!  Does
> anyone have a php script or an SQL query to do it?

UPDATE user SET user_rights="is_sysop";
should do it.

> Also, this might not be the place, but I've noticed how cool the
> wikipedia.com's mod_rewrite is, but I don't know how to use it?  Is there
> a simple setup text file on how to use mod_rewrite with Wikipedia?

Here are the rewrite rules currently in use:

     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml?title=$1 [NE]
     RewriteRule ^/w/wiki.phtml(.*) /w/wiki.phtml$1
     RewriteRule ^/wiki$ /w/wiki.phtml
     RewriteRule ^/$ /w/wiki.phtml
     RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml/$1 [NE]
     RewriteRule ^/wiki.phtml$ /w/wiki.phtml

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
>UPDATE user SET user_rights="is_sysop";
>should do it.

Um, yes, but it will also make every user in the database
a sysop.  Probably not what he had in mind...


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

body:
Ed,
 I am glad your approach seems to be working.  I have to disagree in the
case of Helga, however.  Whatever she has suffered (and I believe it was
not Helga, but her husband, who actually experienced all this) certainly
affects her writing, which is understandable.  It also makes her loopy
in an unacceptable way.  This isn't the place to play "bigger victim."
it's an encyclopedia.  It's supposed to provide information.  In my
opinion, her most recent comments and refusal to apologize to Vicki
merely demonstrate that she is emotionally unfit to work with the group.
It's incredibly sad, but she needs a time out.  If she can't back way
the hell off, I say we ban her for two weeks and let her know why.  I
also think that Vicki should have the final say here -- it is, after
all, just my opinion.

If we lose her, that will be both sad and a relief.  As I said, she has
good information to contribute, but frankly, she also is a huge drain on
the energies  of other wikipedians.  More likely, she'll just spend the
time looking up more "proof" of some of her wackier theories.

Jules


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>UPDATE user SET user_rights="is_sysop";
>>should do it.
>
> Um, yes, but it will also make every user in the database
> a sysop.  Probably not what he had in mind...

Well, at least you don't leave anybody out that way. :)

Lee is correct, use a WHERE clause. And, I forgot that the "is_" is no
longer used on phase III. Oy! Any other misinformation I can give you?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga joining the list

body:
Jimmy, maybe you could put a note on her user page suggesting that?  She
may not check the e-mail address on her website.  Actually, since she
has a user page, maybe you have a better e-mail address for her?  Good
luck.

Julie

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from_name: Jan Hidders

body:
On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 08:43:01AM -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
> I'm happy to make this change...  Of course, I'd like to get the
> general consensus first.  Anybody agree/disagree/not care?

Agree.

-- Jan Hidders


in_reply_to: <200208231751.g7NHplt29446@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 10:51:47AM -0700

body:
On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 10:51:47AM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> Article histories are not stored as change records; they are
> constructed from stored revisions.  Moving an article doesn't
> create a revision--it actually renames the article record and
> all its revision records, so as far as the database is concerned
> the article has /always/ had the new name--it doesn't know any
> different.
>
> To keep a log of moves would require a new table to record them,
> and the changing the article history list to use that new table.
> Not a major obstacle, but not a quickie either.

Couldn't you just insert a dummy revision (which would become the latest
revison) with the edit text unchanged and the edit summary saying something
like "Moving 'X' to 'Y'"?

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 10:51:47AM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> >koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> >> Should we document the moving of a page from one location to
> another in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the
> history showing the time and user with an autogenerated comment
> like "article moved from [[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?
> >
> >YES YES YES, we should do that. Should be pretty straightforward.
>
> That's easy for you to say :-)
>
> Article histories are not stored as change records; they are
> constructed from stored revisions.  Moving an article doesn't
> create a revision--it actually renames the article record and
> all its revision records, so as far as the database is concerned
> the article has /always/ had the new name--it doesn't know any
> different.
>
> To keep a log of moves would require a new table to record them,
> and the changing the article history list to use that new table.
> Not a major obstacle, but not a quickie either.

I think you could create a revision identical to the existing one,
just having a new comment.

JeLuF


body:
> > Should we document the moving of a page from one location to another
in the article's history?  e.g. create a new line in the history showing
the time and user with an autogenerated comment like "article moved from
[[IMDb]] to [[Internet Movie Database]]"?
>
> YES YES YES, we should do that. Should be pretty straightforward.

The protection of a page also isn't mentioned in the arcticle history
and on recent changes. Or is this just a bug on de-beta.wikipedia.org?

Kurt


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Friday 23 August 2002 11:43, Jason Richey wrote:
> I'm happy to make this change...  Of course, I'd like to get the
> general consensus first.  Anybody agree/disagree/not care?

I disagree. To reply to the list when reply-to is not set to the list, one
does this:
1. Hit the reply button with two arrows.
2. Highlight the sender's name.
3. Hit the delete button.
It's a bit more complicated if the list address is in the Cc: header, but
still involves no typing of addresses.
To reply to the sender when reply-to is set to the list, one does this:
1. Highlight the address.
2. Find the sender's address. (It's not in the current window.)
3. Type it. (Attempting to highlight it has a high probability of bringing up
a blank message window addressed to him.)

If the list address is set on the mail folder, one need only type L to reply
to the list. I don't have it set that way because I have both wikitech-l and
wikipedia-l in the same folder.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] note to the militia

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> I'm working 40 hours a week now /and/ going to school
> full time. I will therefore no longer have time to
> seek out new vandalism and copyright violations from
> Recent Changes (a process that previously took me 2 to
> 3 hours a day). I will also not have time to seek out
> and greet all new users either. I will have more time
> to do this as soon as winter break arrives.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Ah, so you do spend time in the real world after all Mav :) Good luck
with all the new obligations!

Something I wondered - how do you know who the new users to greet them?
Do you just look for user names you haven't seen before or is there some
way to identify them? I'd be happy to do the meet-and-greet but I don't
know how to do it.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


body:
On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 09:01:18PM -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Friday 23 August 2002 11:43, Jason Richey wrote:
> > I'm happy to make this change...  Of course, I'd like to get the
> > general consensus first.  Anybody agree/disagree/not care?
>
> I disagree. To reply to the list when reply-to is not set to the list, one
> does this:
> 1. Hit the reply button with two arrows.
> 2. Highlight the sender's name.
> 3. Hit the delete button.
> It's a bit more complicated if the list address is in the Cc: header, but
> still involves no typing of addresses.
> To reply to the sender when reply-to is set to the list, one does this:
> 1. Highlight the address.
> 2. Find the sender's address. (It's not in the current window.)
> 3. Type it. (Attempting to highlight it has a high probability of bringing up
> a blank message window addressed to him.)
>
> If the list address is set on the mail folder, one need only type L to
> reply to the list. I don't have it set that way because I have both
> wikitech-l and wikipedia-l in the same folder.

It's not a matter of how easy it is (on my good old mutt it's even easier
than on your Kmail) but how intuitive. I've already received several private
mails that were meant for the mailing list, and I have yet to see a message
on the mailing list that was intended to be private. That tells me that the
list isn't properly configured.

-- Jan Hidders


body:
> It's not a matter of how easy it is (on my good old mutt it's even
easier
> than on your Kmail) but how intuitive. I've already received several
private
> mails that were meant for the mailing list

Thank god I'm not the only one who hits the same button in all wikipedia
mailinglists, without much thinking about it. :-)
I know that OE users enjoy the questionable reputation of being very
learning resistant. But I'll switch to Linux soon, and then everything
will get better. :-)

Kurt