from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair, effective and
	free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:22:29 +0100
  Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>The reason homosexuality was considered an "illness" is because
>psychologists believed they could cure it.
>
>Today there is conclusive evidence to show that it is not something you can
>"cure". You can only force these people to fit into society by denying
>their own identity.

I disagree. None of the proposed "cures" for homosexuality seems to have
been very effective, but that does not mean that there might not be other
means that do work. Not to mention that there are some researchers who
claimed at least some success. Also, very similar "illnesses" such as
sado-masochism and pedophilia are still considered so by the psychiatric
community, even though there's just as little proof that they can be
"cured".

Rather than whether we can cure it, I think the main question is: If we
_could_ cure it, would we _want_ to do so. 30 years ago the answer was yes,
now it is no. That's what has differed.

Andre Engels


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> This has been a continuing problem with Wikipedia/media projects.
> Multiple communications channels are great for grassroots
> collaboration for content, but it's not good for due process. As
> Mav
> mentioned, I did not find it mentioned on Meta Goings on and
> Wikimedia
> News at all. If it was there, I think there would be much less
> problem
> with the decision. We should be able to improve on this.

Besides, who has time to go look at all the discussions on meta? I
barely skim this mailing list between my infrequent W edits.

I do try to keep up, but can't read 100+ long messages/day.

Keep it short people. (like this email)

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:57:20 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this
> > hoo-ha is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
> > clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that,
> > if worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias.
> > So why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's
> > not even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as
> > even-headed as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder
> > just what's going on.

I've no reason to doubt the good intentions of the board. However, the
place where it should have been announced or discussed before a vote
(m:Goings-on) didn't have it, nor was there a any significant call on
EN. So there has been a breakdown somewhere along the line in terms of
due process, and it does seem a dark cloud hangs over the new project.

One of the benefits of wikis, and why we love them so, is exactly the
elimination of process. Clay Shirky talks about this specifically
(http://www.corante.com/many/20030801.shtml)

However, when it comes to major extra-wiki decisions, such as creation
of new projects, or board level decisions, process should be defined
and followed. We're all breaking new ground here with the board and
its role, so let's learn from this and "reboot" in an appropriate
manner, even if it means suspending Wikispecies and going back to
obtain some kind of quorum (if not consensus).

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Minimalistic Web-API for use by Tools nad Bots

body:
Hello all.

I would like to suggest a few features that would mal life easier for
people who develop bots and other tools that access the wikipedia and
also reduce traffic from such tools. I belive those to be fairly easy to
implement.

In case some of the features already exist, I aplogize - I didn't find
any information about it (to be honstest, I don't even know where to
look in the first place).

The idea is to have an optionaly URL-Parameter like "format=", that
would tell the software to return a page in a format different from the
full-fledged HTML. I would like to suggest formats for "real" pages and
special pages separately, as the requirements are different.

For articles, discussion-pages, etc, support the following formats:

* source - return the wiki-source of that page
* text - return a plain text version, with all markup striped/replaced
(tables, text boxes, etc do not have to be formatd nicely, but their
content should be returned)

For special pages and all automatically generated lists (kategories,
changes, watchlist, whatlinkshere, etc):

* csv - return the list in CSV-format
* rss - return entries in the list as RSS items.

Additionally, for the normal "full html" view, provide a switch "plain"
that supresses all sidebars, etc and shows just the formated text.

As to the implementation, I would suggest to map the format-name to the
name of a php-class and load it on demand. That way, now formats can be
supported by just placing an appropriate file in the php lib-path.

Shall I submit a feature request to the wikizilla regarding this? What
do you think?

Thank you for your attention,
Daniel


from_name: Eckhart Wörner

body:
Hello Daniel,

Daniel Kinzler schrieb:
> Shall I submit a feature request to the wikizilla regarding this? What
> do you think?

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/208

There I requested something similar, perhaps you should append your
comments there.

Eckhart


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jens Ropers

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: A future for Nupedia? Academic degrees have
	real	usefulness

body:
> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 14:38:59 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
>
> Jens Ropers wirtes:
>> The only thing I am lobbying you all against is
>> that we (a) make degrees a requirement of some sort
>> at any stage in the process
>
> I would agree with this.
>
>> (b) and/or automatically value input from an academic
>> more than input from a non-academic. I still think
>> it is obvious (to me anyway) that ''most'' of the
>> time academics will prevail with their views.
>> ''But they will do so '''based on the merit of what
>> they say'' and NOT based on the recognition of their
> title.''
>
> I would agree with this as well.  I do feel that someone
> who spent four years in college and an additional two years
> earning a master, or an additional three to seven years
> earning a Ph.D. is much more likely to be worth listening
> to.  Wikipedia contributors, myself included, are a
> self-selected bunch of Internet-advocates.  Some of us are
> very much worth listening to, while some are not.

Aehm?
Did you notice that I said "AGAINST"??
>> The only thing I am lobbying you all against

Because unless you misread me I cannot understand how you can reply as
above and agree with me??

A very confused

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Register, Round Three

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>FYI, the Register's latest rant against Wikipedia:
>
>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/emergent_people_fail_to_impress/
>
>It's up to you to consider the value of responding to these folks. :)
>
And remember: Don't Feed the Trolls. :-) The Reg is amusing, but
usually fails to impress, heh-heh.

Stan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Register, Round Three


from_name: shantanu oak

subject: [Wikitech-l] New line to break

body:
Hi,
I have installed the mediawiki software that I downloaded from...
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
There is a drawback that prevents me from using it.
When I copy and paste text from Microsoft Word to wiki, it ignores the
paragraph brakes. I remember using NL to br (New line to Break)
command in php. Is there similar command/ option that can be used?

Shantanu Oak
shantanuo at yahoo.com


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [customer.support@orbimage.com: Illegal Use of SeaWiFS
	/	OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>We will need to do a search to determine if we have other images from
>this site as well.  The error was due to the assumption that if it is
>on the Nasa site, and is a picture from space, it is in the public
>domain.
>
>
In a brief spot-check of 30 NASA images, no others were from SeaWiFS, so
if there are any others, they seem to be in a small minority.  It's hard
to check for them though, as they come from various NASA sites under the
company's agreement with NASA, and not from a separate SeaWiFS site.
There is a http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov, but the only references we have
to that site are external links, not images.  So I'm guessing we're okay.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Marco Krohn wrote:
>
>
>>One last question though: did I get it right, that during the board
>>meeting about wikispecies, only members of the board took part in
>>the discussion and nobody else?
>>
>>
>
>Angela, Anthere and I are (along with many other people) on irc for
>the bulk of each day.  In the case in question, we just ran into each
>other and started talking about it, because I felt (incorrectly, as it
>turns out) that consensus had been reached and it was all only waiting
>on us to do something.  It was pretty informal.
>
>I can't really think of anything more impossible than for Angela,
>Anthere, and I to only speak to each other publicly.  We currently get
>quite a bit of work done by just chatting off and on throughout the
>day, informally, like "What do you think of this?" and "I will ask
>Anthere when she comes in" and "Did you send me that information yet?"
>
>Also, good decision making involves being able to ask for opinions
>freely and confidentally, without a concern that random thoughts will
>be quoted all over the web as facts.
>
>However, of course, we have had public meetings too, and will of
>course have many more.
>
>
I can't speak for others, but from my point of view speaking privately
is fine, and having public meetings is not necessary either, but some
sort of public review and requests for comments is.  Rather than doing
things, it'd be nice to say "we have discussed [blah], and are
considering doing it", and then give a week or so for comments before
_actually_ doing it.  Or to solicit more feedback on less-decided
things, "we've been thinking about [blah], does anyone have any
opinions?"  A formal meeting isn't necessary, but some of us would like
most decision-making to stay within the mailing lists and meta and talk
pages (with appropriate announcements so it doesn't get lost) rather
than move to discussions conducted amongst a committee.

-Mark


from_name: Dan Drake

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: RE: no more PD satellite photos?

body:
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:21:34 UTC, Matthew Larsen
<mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dont confuse US Law with the rest of the world.

Wouldn't think of it.  Why would I want to comment on the law in places
where I don't know the legal background?  Hey, if somebody did know the
background of this doctrine in a variety of legal systems, it would make a
useful Wikipedia article. Any takers?

[With no apologies for now continuing the OT subthread that I had hoped to
be done with]


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New line to break

body:
Shantanu Oak wrote:

> I have installed the mediawiki software that I
> downloaded from...
> http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
> There is one drawback that prevents me from using it
> extensively.
> When I copy and paste text from Microsoft Word to
> wiki, it ignores the paragraph brakes.

The solution is easy: Don't use Microsoft Word...

Seriously, though: Before copy & pasting, you can use Search & Replace
in Word to replace each paragraph break with two paragraph breaks. It
should work then.

Timwi


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa

subject: [Foundation-l] I can't seem to unsubscribe from this list

body:
On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 02:16:55PM -0600, Rich Points wrote:
> Can someone please help?
> Thanks
> --
> Rich Points
> Rich at RichPoints.com
> http://RichPoints.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Dunno if you could do that yet, but if not:

Take Welcome message sent to you when you have subscribed, find for you
pass and go to:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/options/foundation-l/

If you no longer have your Welcome message, you can request your passwd
in above site quickly.

List admin can add above site to footer...

- Riba


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: John Collison

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
Ya sure.

John Collison

On 14 Sep 2004, at 18:47, Stirling Newberry wrote:

> I'm looking to interview various wikipedians for bopnews.com, if
> anyone is interested drop me an email.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: apogr

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Not a fork! (was: mail WikiSpecies)

body:
Why not observe the fact that there are hundreds of scientific
classification of many disciplines called nomenclatures, or taxonomies or
clssifictaion systems on living things and dead things (objects) and
properties and relations, to name a few.

An unsorted load just snatched from the net for your kind information
.

http://anthro.palomar.edu/animal/default.htm

Az ?lol?nyek oszt?lyoz?s?r?l sz?l? honlap, ismerteti a taxon?mia elveit

az emberi oszt?lyoz?s kateg?ri?ira val? koncentr?l?ssal. Sok link, ?s
szaksz?sz?t?r.

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/iau-spec.html

A naprendszeren k?v?lrol ?rkezo csillag?szati sug?rz?s forr?sok jel?l?s?re
szolg?l? specifik?ci?k

&

http://www.ciser.cornell.edu/ASPs/search_athena.asp

dot f?jlok csak tagok sz?m?ra

&

http://classweb.loc.gov/Auto/

kongresszusi k?nyvt?ri oszt?lyoz?si rednszer,

elofizet?ses haszn?lat

&

http://completedb.ttc.lv/""+url+"'

complete ttc database

lett egyetem t?bbnyelvu sz?t?ra

&

http://dbhs.wwusd.k12.ca.us/Nomenclature/Nomenclature.htm

K?miai nommenklat?ra koll?gium

feladatainak tartalomjegyz?ke

&

http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Biology/Systematics_and_Taxonomy/

/Zoological_Nomenclature/

&

dot

dictionary of ocupational titles

m?r kommerszializ?l?dott

&

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binominal_nomenclature

Wikipedia

t?bbnyelvu enciklop?dia

Bionimal nomenclature

biol?gi?ban a fajok megnevez?s?nek szabv?nya

&

http://ep.llnl.gov/msds/orgchem/nomenclature.html

Nomenclature

linkgy?jtem?ny

&

http://fp.bio.utk.edu/mycology/Nomenclature/nom-intro.htm

Botanikai n?menklat?ra

egyetemi bevezeto tananyag

&

fttp.dcs.shef.ac.uk/share/ilash/Moby/

a Moby projekt nyilv?noss?gra hozott

eredm?nyei

moby hyphenator

moby language

moby part-of-speech

moby pronounciator

moby thesaurus

moby words

rpoject gutenbeng

http://gutenberg.net/browse/BIBREC/

&

google directory

subject-specific schemes

&

http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy.html

A bol?giai n?meklat?ra k?l?nlegess?gei

&

http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/lab/TaxonomyLab.html

the nuts and bolts of taxonomy and

classification

tannyag

&

http://les.aston.ac.uk/extdic.html

external dictionaries and term bank links

t?bbnyelvre

&

http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/allen/spectral_classification.html

the classification of stellar spectra

&

http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/atomic_nomenclature/atomic_nomeclature.html

atomic nomenclature

k?nyvt?ri t?j?koztat? anyag

&

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/lex/

lexical and classification resources

linkgyujtem?ny sz?t?rakr?l ?s oszt?lyoz?si

rendszerekrol

&

http://people.ouc.bc.ca/woodcock/nomenclature/index-2.htm

Basic Organic Nomenclature

alapveto szervesanyag n?menklat?ra

&

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/

a bolyg?k n?menklat?r?ja

&

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/asteroids/gaspTOC.html

USGS

GASPRA Nomenclature

bolygk f?ldrajzi nevei?

&

http://publish.aps.org/PACS/pacsgen.html

cikk az APS Journals-ban

Physics and Atsronomy Classification Scheme

(PACS)

let?ltheto

&

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-zshop/

intelligent entertainment

oxford english dictionary

&

http://science.widener.edu/svb/pset/nome_b.html

Vegyi n?menklat?ra

chemical nomenclature

&

http://ln.fi.edu/tfi/units/life/classify/classify.html

oszt?lyoz?si tananyag, multim?di?s,

gyerekeknek

&

http://tsk.fi/en/index.html

the finnish centre for technical terminology

&

http://us.expasy.org/enzyme/

Enzyme nomenclature database

&

http://uscode.house.gov/uscct.htm

amerikai t?rv?ynek

united states code

classification tables

&

http://uwasa.fi/comm/termino/collect/

terminology collection

online dictionaries

&

http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/Dic

Az ?gitestek n?menklat?ra sz?t?ra

&

http://www.acdlabs.com/iupac/nomenclature/

IUPAC szerves k?mia n?menklat?ra

&

http://www.acm.org/class/1998/

The ACM computing classification sstem

(1998-as v?ltozat)

?rv?nyes 2003-ban

&

http://www.acog.org/from_home/departments/dept_web.cfm?recno=6

ACOG

Coding and Nomenclature

american college of obstetricians and

gynecologists

&

http://www.ams.org/mathweb/mi-mathbyclass.html

matrials organized by mathematical subject

classification

&

http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/~charles/statlog/

machine learning neural and statistical

clasfication

k?nyv let?ltheto, eu projekt

&

http://www.amw.org/msc/

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification

&

http://www.andrews.com/kysc/terms.html

Nautical Nomenclature

vitorl?z?si szakkifejez?sek sz?szedete

a glossary of sailing terminology

&

http://www.arev.org

t?bbnyelvu port?l az eu sjogszab?lyokhoz

      az eur?pai bortermelo

r?gi?k gyul?se  (arev)

&

http://www.astrolog.org/labyrinth/glossary.htm

labiirintus sz?tr?

labirintus algoritmuosk is vannak

&

http://www.bacterio.cict.fr/

bakt?tium nevek jegyz?ke a n?menklat?r?ban

elfoglalt hely?kkel egy?tt

&

http://www.bgbm.org/iapt/nomenclature/code/tokyo-e/default.htm

Botanikai n?meklat?ra nemzetk?zi

k?dja (a T?ki? k?d) aktu?lis v?ltozat neve

St. Louis Code

&

http://www.biodiversity.soton.ac.uk/sp2000/DynamicChecklistSearch.html

organizmusok tudom?nyos nev?t lehet

fobb cosportokban megk?rdezni

&

http://www.biosis.org.uk/zrdocs/codes/codes.htm

Codes of Nomenclature

ide a woedbol az aktu?lisakat

&

http://www.biosis.org.uk/zrdocs/zoolinfo/syst_tax.htm

Biosis

sytematics, taxonomy and Nomenclature

&

http://www.bls.gov/soc

US department of labour

standard occupational classification (soc)

system

feor

&

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd9.htm

National center for Health statistics

classifications of diseases and functioning

and diability

&

http://www.census.gov/epcd/naics02/naicod02htm

az ipari k?dsz?mok ?s megnevez?sek

&

http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html

NAICS

North American Industry Classification system

&

http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/2carb/

Sz?nhidr?tok n?menklat?r?ja

&

http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iubmb/enzyme/

NC-IUBMB

enzim n?menklat?r?ja

&

http://www.chem.umr.edu/~poly/nomenclature.html

POLY - Nomenclature Committee

&

http://www.chem.vt.edu/RVGS/ACT/notes/Nmenclature.html

egyetemi jegyzet a vegy?szeti

n?menklat?r?r?l (nyelvrol)

&

http://www.chemqmw.ac.uk/iupac/

IUOPAC

elm?leti ?s alkalmazott k?mia

nemzetk?zi ?ni?ja

javaslatai

a szerves, biok?miai n?menkla?r?ra, jelekre

?s terminol?gi?ra, stb.

&

http://www.classification-society.org/

international federation of classification

societies honlapja

&

www.clres.com/

Cpmputational lexicons research

naygon fontops anyagok

&

http://www.clres.com/singlex.html

acl special interest group

association for computational linguistics

nagyon j? linkek, resources

&

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/

wordnet

a lexical database for the english language

online lexical refernce system

http://ftp-veluftp.cogsci.princeton.edu/pub/wordnet/

&

www.dagostini.it/patclass/patclass

olasz szabadalmi sz?m kereso hatnyelven

&

http://www.dsmz.de/bactnom/bactname.htm

DSMZ

leg?jabb baktr?ium n?menklat?ra

&

http://www.dsmz.de/dsmzhome.htm

German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell

Cultures

&

http://www.econlit.org/subject_descriptors.html

econlit subject descriptor

gazdas?gi t?mak?r?k taxonomi?ja

&

http://www.english.bham.ac.uk/drc/

birmingham i egyetem

dictionary research centre

&

http://www.ens-lyon.fr/LBMC/laudet/nomenc.html

Nuclear Receptor Nomenclature Homepage

&

http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/status/sub5_8html

biologiai n?meklat?ra ?s taxon?miai adat

szabv?nyok

&

http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/

HUGO Gene

Nomenclat?ra bizotts?g

minden emberi g?nnek ?rtelmes nevet ad?

szervezet

&

http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/guidelines.html

Guidelines fo Human gene Nomenclatue (2002)

&

http://www.gutenberg.net/

free online literature

&

http://www.gutenberg.net/

free online literature

&

http://www.hgvs.org/mutnomen/

Nomenclature for the description of sequence

variations

&

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/NNV/UN-NNV_ABC.html

Nomenclature of Naval Vessels

?s haj?z?si ?rtelmezo szaksz?t?r

&

http://www.ibiblio.org/patents/

Index to manual classification of patents

&

http://www.iczn.org

Zool?giai n?menklat?ra nemzetk?zi

bizots?g?nak n?menklat?r?ja

a www.iczn.org/code.htm helyen

&

http://www.ifla.org/VII/s29/sci.htm

classification and indexing section of

international federation of library

associations and instituions

&

http://www.imm.ki.se/CYPalleles/

Human Cytochrome P450 (CYP) Allele

n?menklat?ra bizotts?g

&

http://www.inform.umd.edu/PBIO/fam/revfam.html

Vascular Plant Family Nomenclature

&

http://www.inform.umd.edu/PBIO/pb250/nomc.html

PBIO 250 jegyzet

Nomenclature

nemzetk?zi botanikai n?vtan ICBN

&

http://www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/nomen/

Mouse Nomenclature

Home Page

MGI MOuse Genome Informatics

&

http://www.ishs.org/sci/icralist/icralist.htm

Directory of ICRAs

International Cultivar

Authorities

ISHS Commission Registration

ISHS

International Society for Horticultural

Science and Nomenclature

&

http://www.iupac.org/divsions/IV/IV.1/

IUPAC

sucommittee on macromolecular terminology

&

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html

Library of congress classification outline

&

http://www.lub.lu.se/metadat/subject-help.html

controlled vocabularies, thesauri and

classification systems available in the www.

dc subject

dublin core

&

http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~chris/MR/MR.html

1991 mathematics subject classification

&

http://www.nauticom.net.users/jihall/bill/ions.htm

ion n?menklat?ra

&

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ICTV/intro_to_universal/virus_nomenclature.html

Virus Nomenclature

&

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/nlmclassif.html

national library of medicine

nlm classification online

&

http://www.nps.gov/legacy/nomenclature.html

nemzeti park egys?geinek rendszerbe foglalt

kateg?ri?i, ?rtelmezo sz?t?r az egys?gekrol

&

http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/tpc7_1.htm

?pol?si m?dokr?l cikk ?s oszt?lyoz?si

kateg?ri?k

&

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/

Dewey Services

Dewey decimal Classification

&

http://www.opm.gov/fedclass/

office of peronnel management of the US gov

federal classification systems

munakk?r?k, foglalkoz?sok besorol?sa

&

http://www.osha.gov/oshstats/sicser.html

Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)

system Search

occupational safety and health administration

US department of labor

ipar?gak foglalkoz?si ?gak, tev?kenys?gek

&

http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000063.html

cikk inovation in classifictaion

petermemes

&

http://www.pitt.edu/~csna/csna.html

Classification Society of North America

&

http://www.redsun.com/type/classification/

betut?pusk oszt?lyoz?sa

&

http://www.rtpcompany.com/info/data/number.htm

RTP Company muanyaggy?rt?

compounded thermoplastic products

RTP product numbering

company nomenclature syntax

&

http://www.shodor.org/unchem/basic/nomen/

Nomenclature

egyetem tananyag

k?miai

&

http://www.sid.camac.uk/bca/bcahome.htm

bliss clasification association

honlapja

&

http://www.sidwell.edu/us/science/vlb4/Labs/Classification_Lab/classification_lab.hlab.html

oszt?lyoz?stani tananyag

&

http://www.snomed.org

SNOMED International

a College of ASmerican Pathologists (CAP)

r?szlege

szabv?nyos nyelv a betegs?gek le?r?s?ra

&

http://www.ss.astro.umd.edu/IAU/csbn/

IAU Division III

Committee on Small Body Nomenclature

&

http://www.statsoftinc.com/textbook/stclatre.thml

classification trees

tananyag

&

http://www.udcc.org

az eto honlapja

&

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk./metadata/desire/classification/

desire re 1004

te role of classification schemes in internet

resource description and discovery

&

http://www.uspto.gov/go/classification/

usa szabadalmi hivatalnak oszt?lyoz?si

rndszere

egy?tt van a v?djegyekkel

&

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/roman_names.html

R?mai (n?v) n?menklat?ra

&

http://www.vt.tuwien.ac.at/biobib/nom.html

biobib

nomenclature of biofuel names

&

http://www.wave.net/upg/immigration/sic_index.html

standard inustrial classification (sic) ndex

&

http://www.wipo.int/classifications/fulltext/new_ipc

ipc 7 english version

IPC Nice Vienna Locarn

nemzetk?z szabadalmi oszt?lyoz?s IPC

&

http://www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/Sites/TreeDBS/Botanic/botanic.html

Botanikai m?nemklat?ra a f?kr?l, tudomnyo ?s

k?znevek

&

http://www.worldprintmakers.com/english/nomencla.htm

Glossary of printmaking nomenclature and

abbreviations

&

http://www.zoonome.net/

Zoonomen

Zool?giai n?meklat?ra gyujtem?ny

&

http://www23.hhrdc-drhc.gc.ca/

national occupational classification

&

http://www23.hrdc_drhc.gc.ca/2001/e/generic/welcome.shtml

national occupational classification

of canada

&

http://xml.coverpages.org/classification.html

resource description and classification

xml forr?s

&

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] I am really tired of registering an account for each
	MetaWiki site I found

body:
> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:29:05 +0200
> From: David <julian37 at ifrance.com>
>
> Le 14 sept. 04, ? 18:13, Angela a ?crit :
>
>> See bug 57 at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57. The
>> code is available for this, but there are social issues involved in
>> deciding who gets to keep their name when more than one person is
>> using that name on different wikis.
>
> A solution might be
> Starting from now, every long-time users may register for a new
> "meta-login", available everywhere. Since metalogin list is empty,
> first in, first served.
>
> Newcomers will automatically have "meta-login", so there is no issues
> for them. Of course, they should be mass-mail to all long-time users to
> warn them
>
> Possible variations include:
> - In order to favour long-time users, meta-login for newcomers will be
> delayed so that long-time have time to register their name.

Why, simply disallow registration of a metalogin if any login of such
name exists in any wikipedia/wikimedia namespace.
Otherwise, yes, what you said.

-- Jens [[en:User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: John Lee

body:
It was just an example. I was citing the English Wikipedia as an example
because I frequent it the most, but my point was, why was such a useful
change not mentioned anywhere on any Wikipedia? (I didn't even ask for
the discussions to occur on any particular language's Wikipedia - that
was putting words in my mouth.) Wouldn't announcing it make changes go
more smoothly? I never implied this should be discussed on any
Wikipedia. Note that the English Community Portal often links to meta
discussions. If the change is as useful (or not) as it is, it should
have at least been linked to on every Wikipedia so that people could
have a chance to weigh in at meta, or at least be informed.

As for clandestine activities, that was another, well, I think you can
only call it strawmanning. I never mentioned their names - I think
highly of Jimbo and Angela (I don't know Anthere well enough). It's just
rather odd and a bit annoying that the majority of editors who could and
would benefit from this still aren't informed, because they don't
subscribe to the mailing list.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> John Lee wrote:
>
>> The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this
>> hoo-ha is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
>> clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that,
>> if worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias.
>> So why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's
>> not even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as
>> even-headed as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder
>> just what's going on.
>>
>> John Lee
>> ([[User:Johnleemk]] on En)
>>
>> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>
>>> <snip>
>>
>>
> Not hearing things on en:wikipedia is akin to not hearing it on
> nl:wikipedia. En:wikipedia may be the biggest wikipedia, it is not the
> platform for discussions regarding Mediawiki. It is Meta's purpose to
> discuss these things. The suggestion that something "clandestine"
> occured does speak of little respect for the integrity of people like
> Jimbo, Angela, Anthere ..
>
> Thanks,
>  GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
I cannot see why you do not realize that for making wikipedia a bi- or
multilingual product, there are also other, more useful ways.

For instance, if an article in the en:wp were fatastic, a mere translation
and in situ insertion of the same in language B would be a "perfect", and a
better solution (alligned texts - see translation emmories) . To see the
point goto  user:apogr/an_experiment, which is rudimental, but to the point,
the first step of rethinking this debate

apogr

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

> Stan Shebs wrote:
> > So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
> > like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".
>
> I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
> general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
> reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
> meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."
>
> > It would be great to have a common store for language-independent
> > information, but not only is there a commons to serve just that role,
> > but without higher-powered database and wiki machinery than is
> > currently available or being worked on, wikispecies is inevitably
> > going to be another pile of per-language data that partly duplicates
> > wikipedia content.
>
> It is my intention that we work early and hard on questions of
> software development to meet these needs.  I am confident that
> Benedict and others who are excited about this will be working hard to
> find development help to get the additions they need.
>
> Keep in mind: the initial mission of wikispecies.org is to resolve
> these questions first.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jim Redmond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> It's up to you to consider the value of responding to these folks. :)

Ah, but the problem is that, as a grassroots effort, we have no control
over the impulses of our participants.  Our more... fanatic... devotees
are likely to respond to this latest slight with mouths a-foaming and
fingers a-misspelling.

I plan to counter El Reg's criticisms by improving articles.  AFAIC it's
the only appropriate response.

--
Jim Redmond
jim at scrubnugget.com


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Well, I can remember that I have tried my darndest to get the
>> en:wikipedia resource "Three of Life" to consider working towards a
>> unified Taxobox that is acceptable to *all* Wikipedia. I was
>> basically ignored with the argument, "see our arguments in the
>> archives it was a hard slug to get this far we do not want any more
>> of this". I have presented arguments about things that were wrong for
>> internationalisation eg [[Animal]]ia in stead of [[Animalia]], I
>> stated that the mentioning of "Bionominal name" does not add anything
>> as it is inherent in "Scientific classification". The only result was
>> "we have voted on this, this is our consensus".
>>
> So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
> like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".
>
> That's why we're concerned about forking; the underlying reasons
> seem to be interpersonal conflicts in existing wikis, rather than
> a clearcut difference in content.
>
> It would be great to have a common store for language-independent
> information, but not only is there a commons to serve just that role,
> but without higher-powered database and wiki machinery than is
> currently available or being worked on, wikispecies is inevitably
> going to be another pile of per-language data that partly duplicates
> wikipedia content. Then the board will be faced with the really
> enjoyable decision of whether to perpetuate the fork or put an end
> to it...
>
> Stan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Well, if you want to read it like that, you may. However, it is not as
things went and it is not as I perceive them. People were not interested
enough to go for a taxobox that would unite all the wikipedia. This is a
shame, but I was mighty pleased that some progress was made towards
something that was halfway usable (the {{taxon}} implementation). I have
introduced the latest taxobox on nl: as well but I do confess I was not
entheausiastic about the latest iteration. Personally, I would welcome a
universal taxobox. It would save a lot of work particularly in the
smaller wikipedia.

When I try to understand what a fork is, I cannot help myself but come
to the conclusion that all these diferent implemenatations of a taxobox
can be defined of forks of the same concept. So please explain to me the
fault in my reasoning. It would point in the direction that Wikispecies
will combine all these forks into one universal implementation of a
relatively fixed amount of data.

In a previous post, I explained why having the commons to include this
data is a bad idea. I have not heard any arguments that refute that..

I fail to see how Wikispecies is going to be this pile of language
dependent data.
*For encyclopedic information Wikispecies will refer to the wikipedia's.
*English and Latin being the predominant languages in this field, will
mean that it will be mainly in English. The User interface may be in
multiple languages. This is being developped for other purposes at this
moment in time.

As to cooperation among the different wikipedia's, nothing would please
me more than when we find ways that will decrease the amount of work
needed to provide quality data to our public. I do welcome any
suggestion that leads to better consistent, data for all wikimedia
projects. I wish I could easily tap into the quality data of the en:ToL
for the nl:ToL. This is what I have been striving for all the time.

Mind you, I defend the Wikispecies idea, I am not the one who proposed
it. Therefore the suggestion that I want to make a seperate wiki is not
a true reflection of how things went.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikigeology and other future projects

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>One question:
>
>Is the level of detail in this article:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Zion_and_Kolob_canyons_area
>
>appropriate for Wikipedia? Or would it be better to have such an article in a
>Wikigeology project? I would certainly hate to see similarly detailed [[Biology
>of ...]] articles not be created for species in Wikipedia because the same
>content is in Wikispecies. Or worse, for them to exist in both and thus half
>the contributor base working on each of them.
>
The article is perfectly suitable for Wikipedia, which is why it's a
Featured Article. No doubt that's the conclusion you intend for us to
draw. What I would expect to have in a Wikigeology project is more data
rather than prose. Things like precise measurements of different strata
and substrata at various precise locations, or results of radioactive or
carbon dating from specific samples (the exact data might be different,
I'm just guessing and I'm no geologist). The data could be meaningful
regardless of language, though presumably some agreed standard language
would be necessary for a framework.

This is similar to my understanding of Wikispecies will be. Indeed, that
is what Wikispecies will have to be in order to succeed, and even then
success is not guaranteed. If Wikispecies does not establish an
independent justification for existence, it simply will not attract
enough interest because the bulk of contributors will not bother to redo
their Wikipedia work elsewhere.

The community's real decisions are often not made in these discussions,
or in the pronouncements of the Board, but because people "vote with
their feet", or in this case their hands at the keyboard. That is why
all this debate, however acrimonious, is not really decisive in saying
there is or is not a consensus for Wikispecies. The consensus will only
be seen over time, and is sometimes easier to find by listening and
watching than by arguing. Our representatives on the Board try hard to
do that, though perhaps they might have deliberated a little longer and
done more to prepare the ground for this new project.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: XML - Status?

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Have "we" (i.e. you guys) agreed on what to use to read in the XML
> yet? I seem to recall there have been several suggestions on this list.

Well, for starters, why not pipe the wiki source into the (C++) parser,
and pipe the result back to PHP?

There is also a ParserXML.php (or something) in CVS HEAD, which at the
moment make a treelike object from a given source.

Magnus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Register, Round Three

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>FYI, the Register's latest rant against Wikipedia:
>
>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/emergent_people_fail_to_impress/
>
>It's up to you to consider the value of responding to these folks. :)
>
Don't feed the trolls.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Register, Round Three

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Andrew Lih wrote:
>
>> FYI, the Register's latest rant against Wikipedia:
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/emergent_people_fail_to_impress/
>>
>> It's up to you to consider the value of responding to these folks. :)
>>
> And remember: Don't Feed the Trolls. :-) The Reg is amusing, but
> usually fails to impress, heh-heh.

Hmm! Looks like you beat me to it!

Ec


from_name: Wil Mahan

body:
--- Daniel Kinzler <daniel at brightbyte.de> wrote:

> * source - return the wiki-source of that page

action=raw does this.

[other formats snipped]

For me, what would be most useful would simply be a way of getting the
timestamp of the most recent revision. Right now, I can use a simple
script to get the wiki text with action=raw, but I can't submit
modifications because I don't have the edittime.

Also, would it make sense to allow a script or human to submit changes
to an article and be redirected to something other than the article
page? For a script, it might save resources to just return something
indicating "the change was successful". For a user, it might be useful
to redirect to a diff of the changes he or she submitted.

-- Wil

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Huge misunderstanding which arose from
	miscommunication (was [Wikispecies] Not a fork!)

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> I think that level is fine for Wikipedia.  A geology project would
> have to go into much more detail, and structure the facts in a more
> systematic way.

I also plan to create Wikipedia articles on each formation once I find a good
source for that. At that point, there really isn't much more to say so I don't
know what a Wikigeology project would cover that could not be naturally covered
in Wikipedia.

Although a spatial database showing the extent, thickness, and composition of
each formation at every studied point and the relationships between formations
would be most useful....

> It would be fine, however, to doubt the usefulness of
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF107

Well that's a stub so of course there could be doubts about its usefulness.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Board -> some answers

body:
See Angela's "mail Wikispecies" mailing.

(what follows is my follow-up to some of Anthere's points)

Anyway, my issue was mainly that although quite a few people are active
on the mailing list and IRC, a lot of people "on the ground" don't have
an inkling. The board should not be handling this issue by posting a
notice on every project - my concern was mainly that those in charge of
the relevant projects seemed to not have posted any notification of this
new project, which could be useful. Those who are doing the grunt work
often can provide helpful feedback. As for missing the discussion, I
only subscribed very recently after finding out about the Chinese
Wikipedia issue, as I was curious about it.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]] on the English Wikipedia)

Marco Krohn wrote:

>On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:17, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>
>>Finally, there were some report on meta, which you may find here :
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
>>Unless I am wrong, this link was also given on this ml.
>>
>>
>
>I searched my mailing list archive (last 6 months) and could _not_ find any
>reference to this board meeting.
>
>Please publish the IRC log of this meeting.
>
>best regards,
>  Marco
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Huge misunderstanding which arose from

body:
--- Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:

> While it's nice that Mav is happy about this, I'm still somewhat annoyed.

Well I'm not happy - just *OK* with the outcome. The in-between stuff was
rather unpleasant though.

> It's clear that there was no consensus in the broader Wikimedia
> community for this. If there was a discussion on meta, I haven't seen
> it, so it would only be those people who are subscribed to the list
> that would've known about this. It's also apparent that even on the
> list, Mav wasn't the only one with objections.

Turns out that most of those objections were considered and a compromise plan
created based on that. The trouble was a complete lack of communication
informing everybody about this.

I do agree that more people should have been involved and more time given.
Saying things like 'most people wouldn't get the idea so let's not bother them
about it' is kinda paternalist, IMO. If consensus could not be reached, we
could have a Wikimedia-wide vote where people could choose 1 to 5 for each
question;
1 (strongly disagree),
2 (somewhat disagree),
3 (don't know, don't care),
4 (somewhat agree), and
5 (strongly agree).
So the people who don't know or don't care about that question will not mess up
the results one way or another by that fact.

> But because the three
> or four proponents of this shouted him (and others) down more vocally,
> it seems the board decides to go off and do their own thing. I don't
> make the accusation that it was underhanded, but at the same time, I
> hope it won't be something that's repeated.

Actually I thought is was more the other way around...  :)

> If there is a non-forking policy, where is it, and why haven't I heard
> of it until now? If there is conditions placed on the creation of
> Wikispecies, what were they? Disclosure, people, disclosure.

Due to miscommunication it isn't easy to find. But here you go:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikispecies_Charter

-- mav (aka Daniel Mayer)

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from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:40:25 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I do not think it is a legal requirement that board meetings are help
> publicly. And I do not think it would be a good idea that we are
> required to discuss publicly only. As for the meeting in question, I for
> one, did not keep a copy of the log, and if some one did, I request to
> review it before it is possibly made public.

I was under the impression the board would be responsible for macro
issues that were incapable of being done by the "community", such as
the legal, monetary and logistical needs of the Foundation.  And that
anything that could still be initiated and decided on by the community
would be done in wiki space by Wikipedians. If this is an incorrect
interpretation, then an explanation would be appreciated.

So my response to your point would be either:
1) The decision should not be done by the board, but by Wikipedians
with the usual due process of proposal, discussion, yet more
discussion, too much discussion, then voting.
or
2) The decision be made by the board but be open and solicit opinions
from the community, with the proceedings made public.

Clearly, the way you suggest (by the board, but closed) is very much
against the open spirit the Wikipedia community is used to. To be
clear, I'm largely in favor of the Wikispecies proposal, and don't
think the board acted in bad faith. But we should also take this
opportunity to make sure that we set the right precedent for future
decisions.

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Sanford Forte

body:
John,

Most of what you see in the link below reflects the current state of Wiki
(and other) open source textbook development.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_content

It's hard to know exactly how many people are engaged in open source
textbook development, but it's growing all the time as the open source
textbook movements gathers steam as a practical way for states to save
money, while increasing quality of textbooks for universities and K-12.

To the best of my knowledge,  no K-12 public school district that has yet
adopted a Wiki textbook. This is primarily because the open source K-12
textbook effort is so new, as well as the fact that purchasing behaviors in
public school systems are strongly habituated to working with commercial
publishers. This has begun to change, but slowly.

That said, I'm also interested in hearing from anyone who knows of a public
school adoption of an open source K-12 textbook

Best,
Sanford
www.opensourcetext.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brolap" <brolap at yahoo.com>
To: <textbook-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 3:45 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] State of the Union on Open Wiki Textbooks?

> I am new to this group, but am super duper interested
> in supporting the "movement".
>
> Would someone be kind enough to give me an update as
> to the "State of the Union" for Open Wiki Textbooks?
>
> I would love to know things like:
>
> -- How many people are engaged?
> -- Is the movement growing, or shrinking?
> -- Are any Wiki textbooks "completed"?  If so, how
> many?
> -- Is there any record of any school or school
> district anywhere in the U.S. that has agreed to use a
> Wiki Textbook for official classes?
> -- Is there another forum or alias or group where the
> dialog is more active/involved?
> -- Are there other open textbook initiatives outside
> of this one that I should be aware of?
>
> I can't wait to learn more!
>
> John
>
>
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
> http://vote.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Sep 15, 2004, at 9:34 PM, Wil Mahan wrote:
> For me, what would be most useful would simply be a way of getting the
> timestamp of the most recent revision. Right now, I can use a simple
> script to get the wiki text with action=raw, but I can't submit
> modifications because I don't have the edittime.

Use Special:Export.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New line to break

body:
Timwi wrote:

> The solution is easy: Don't use Microsoft Word...

Wait a minute, does that mean you won't write that doc-to-wiki parser
after all? ;-)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] When to create new projects ;
	where should the line be drawn? (was: Re: Huge misunderstanding ...)

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Wouldn't the number of articles of this type be a factor?  As long as
> it's the only one it might as well stay where it is.

I plan to create one for every national park and national monument in the
United States. I then plan to create geology articles for every U.S. state and
add a lot of info to [[Geology of North America]]. This is all very appropriate
for Wikipedia, IMO. The merit of each article itself, not the fact of it having
many similar sister articles, is what should be looked at.

> A Wikigeology
> project is theoretically conceivable, but nothing can happen until
> someone has actually conceived it and is willing to play a leading role
> in its development.

If there is ever such a project it must not be an encyclopedia of geology since
our encyclopedia project is Wikipedia. It can contain the same information but
it should package it in a way that is very different than an encyclopedia.
Think of the difference between a geology textbook and a large collection of
geology artices that more or less cover the same content (of course such a
textbook would be hosted at Wikibooks). Each type of thing has a different
purpose and each a different audience with different needs. That is the type of
difference that should be the deciding factor about when to split; not the
topic area.

A tabular/relational database is a different type of thing; it is not a book
and its entries are not encyclopedia articles. So it is perfectly valid to
create a separate project based on that platform. That is the role I would like
to see Wikimedia Commons perform. But alas we already have a fork of the
Commons called Wikispecies. Oh well - I lost that battle.

> More people think they know about the world's
> animals than about its geological structure.  It may be necessary to
> develop a Wikiatlas before a Wikigeology project.

Wikiatlas/Wikimaps is another type of project that would be fundamentally
different from encyclopedia articles (although an atlas could make a good
book). Hosting maps is one of the proposed functions of the Commons. In the
future, GIS data could be added so that maps could be created on-the-fly.

I'm taking a class in Internet GIS applications right now and I think it would
be neat to start fiddling with that sometime soon (late this semester at the
earliest).

-- mav

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from_name: Nick Triantos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Charts, spreadsheets, and other plugins

body:
Fair enough, so as a follow-on question:  Does anyone [else] see it as a
worthwhile goal to try to stabilize the APIs, so that extensions could
be created more easily?  The most obvious ones, IMO, are those that
replace wikitext with some formatted output, such as what the
<math></nomath> functionality provides.

I see that there's some attempt to provide extension hooks in the parser
code, do people think that's sufficient?

thanks,
-Nick

Tim Starling wrote:

> Nick Triantos wrote:
>
>> I've been searching without luck to see if there's also a roadmap of
>> plug-ins being developed.  Within my company, another group is using
>> the Twiki wiki (http://www.twiki.org), and one of the key cool
>> features they like are all the plug-ins that have been developed so far.
>>
>> I'm trying to see if any comparable plug-ins are planned or have been
>> discussed for mediawiki.
>>
>> (and yes, I do know about EasyTimeline, but that's pretty different
>> than some of the twiki plugins)
>
>
> MediaWiki does not have a stable API, and has precious few hooks for
> plugins to use. In 1.3, you can't even add skins without changing the
> main codebase in (although that may change in 1.4).
>
> The only types of plugin available in 1.3 are extra special pages or a
> special type of parser extension. I made a sample special page plugin,
> it's at extensions/UnicodeConverter.php . WikiHiero and EasyTimeline
> are parser extensions.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
What is wrong with *my* solution?

--Jin Junshu/Mark

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 00:27:48 -0400, zhengzhu <zhengzhu at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is more or less the concept I was mulling over as a very general
> > solution, but I realised that it does have a big disadvantage: naive
> > users 'correcting' the translation may simply shift the error into the
> > opposite version. Or, more specifically, there is no way of
> > distinguishing a translational correction from a factual one.
>
> Completely agree. That why I think an explicit mark up that says
> Simplified "apple" IS Traditional "orange" is necessary.
>
> On the UI issue, it seems feasible to have two UIs coexisting together
> without running two separate sites: we can store two versions of every
> message key in the cache or the database. For example, for "mainpage",
> we will have "mainpage_cn" that maps to the Simplified title of the
> mainpage, and "mainpage_tw" that maps to the Traditional title of the
> mainpage. One mainpage can then be the redirect of the other. When
> rendering the UI, we will look for things with _cn in the message
> cache if the language preference is zh_cn, and _tw for zh_tw. I hacked
> up some code to do this and it is now runing on the test site,
> http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/wiki/. I am not sure if I got the
> message caching part right, because I currently don't have a way to
> test it. I think right now the messages are coming from the database.
>
> ---------------------
> gmail.com at zhengzhu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
That's the thing with the ambiguity. That's the reason I'm suggesting
articles be stored in Traditional and converted into Simplified
on-the-run.

Traditional-to-Simplified conversions will have a much much much
smaller number with ambiguous conversions than
Simplified-to-Traditional. If a Simplified user writes additional
content in Simplified, but parts of it are converted incorrectly
before being added to the database, then a special process will take
effect:

Since the wrong character and the right character in Traditional are
the same character in Simplified, it won't have any effect on
Simplified users who will continue browsing it as it is. However, the
error *will* show up to Traditional users, who will then correct it.
This correction will have no effect on the apperance of the text to a
Simplified user, but it will make it so it uses the correct character
for a Traditional user.

This eliminates the need for special semantic markup.

--Jin Junshu/Mark

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:51:54 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:31:11 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> > I propose to store all text in Traditional but convert it to
> > Simplified (perhaps with some sort of caching so articles do not have
> > to be re-generated each time) because TC>SC conversion is less
> > ambiguous than SC>TC conversion. If somebody adds text to an article
> > but they are typing in SC, it will be converted to TC when it adds it
> > to the database. In the edit window even though, text will appear as
> > whichever domain you are at. Titles of articles should be converted
> > too. If a mistake is made in conversion when a Simplified text is
> > added to the database, eventually somebody browsing at
> > http://zh-tw.wikipedia.org/ will notice this error and hopefully fix
> > it. In the mean time this error won't cause any problems on zh-cn
> > because it will convert back the same way.
>
> This is more or less the concept I was mulling over as a very general
> solution, but I realised that it does have a big disadvantage: naive
> users 'correcting' the translation may simply shift the error into the
> opposite version. Or, more specifically, there is no way of
> distinguishing a translational correction from a factual one. For
> example:
>
> Say you have a database in English, but with automated conversion to a
> dialect, we'll call it Blinglish. The English database contains the
> text "...while eating an apple...", and this is viewed by a Blinglish
> user. They replace the word 'apple' (in the Blinglish version) with
> 'orange'. The software now has no way of knowing whether the use is
> saying that 'orange' is the Blinglish word for 'apple', or whether the
> Blinglish user is correcting a fact, and the English version should be
> updated to say 'orange'.
>
> Obviously, the translation corrections *should* be labelled using
> special markup, but the majority of users find special markup very
> hard to learn, and huge numbers of users pass through who have no idea
> how to use such things. In order to encourage them to return and
> contribute more, we need to not only make the system work *despite*
> them, but to actively fit them into it.
>
> If, to continue my example, we translate 'orange' back to English,
> when it is in fact supposed to be an idiomatic translation, another
> user may come along on the English site and correct it back to
> 'apple'. The Blinglish version will then be in its original state, and
> the cycle will continue until a more experienced user spots the
> ambiguity and marks it up appropriately. A waste of everyone's time,
> and a definite turn-off for the casual users whose changes keep
> disappearing.
>
> If we can rely on a majority of the users understanding more than one
> of the languages involved, we could more-or-less avoid this by
> providing some obvious mechanism for saying "this change is because of
> a translation issue", that even technophobes can use. But anyone that
> only understands one version will not know themselves whether it is a
> translation issue - only that it is, within the version they are
> looking at, a mistake...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
> general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
> reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
> meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."

That could still be interpreted as meaning that [[biology of ...]] and
[[geology of ...]] articles should not be hosted on Wikipedia and instead on
separate projects. I am *very* much against that and don't agree with usage of
the term 'general audience' since that implies (to me at least) a forking of
content based on detail alone. Sidenote: A general encyclopedia is one that is
not specialized; since we don't have size limits that is a statement without
much distinction since we can - and do - go into detail on a great many topics
- just not all on the same page (and with summaries in appropriate places).

I consider some of my detailed geology articles to be good enough to be
considered professional reference material for geologists while at the same
time being accessible to any reasonably educated (high school or higher) and
interested layperson. But the point that *should* be made is that they are
*encyclopedia articles* - not books, not definitions, not source material and
not quotes. They are also not part of a relational database (ala what
Wikispecies wants to be), which is where I think you were going (and the role I
would like the Commons to perform in a general capacity - just as Wikipedia
performs the function of being an encyclopedia in a general capacity).

-- mav

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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: XML - Status?

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> How's the wiki-to-XML parser coming along? Do we have a DTD or a list
>> of used XML tags/attributes yet? How about some demo output?
>
> I've thought about creating a PHP page on my local installation that
> would allow you to play around with the parser, but I haven't gotten
> around to it yet.

I have done this now: http://timwi.dyndns.org/wiki/tmp.php
However, please remember that it works only when I'm online
(i.e. not at night my time).

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If we create a new project, say htt://www.wikispecies.org (to simplify)
> and that this project is multilingual, then we will also probably have
> http://en.wikispecies.org
> http://fr.wikispecies.org
> http://zh.wikispecies.org
> etc...

Huh? Wikispecies is *specifically* supposed to be a language-neutral database.
Subdomains mean different databases so I'm a bit perplexed. Perhaps you are
thinking about the language that the interface is in and having the subdomains
trigger that?

-- mav

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
--- Andreas Hoerstemeier <ahoerstemeier at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> So I wonder why [[meta:Wikispecies]] did not exist until yesterday? So
> there was absolutely no discussion of Wikispecies outside this mailing
> list - considering the controversy experienced here it feels strange
> that the creation of Wikispecies wasn't delayed until at least
> non-mailinglist Wikipedians had *a chance* to add their comment. Meta
> would also be the correct place to do the definition phase, after which
> a full proposal which addressed the worries of it being a fork would be
> there.

Yes - that is the way it *should* be. Creating a wiki for discussion and
panning about a proposed Wikimedia project is very odd since that is part of
what Meta is for.

> After the immidiate uproar on the mailing list about the proposal went
> silent *without consensus* I would have expected to see a summary of
> that discussion on Meta, addressing the concerns by the proponents, and
> inviting more discussion by posting a note on Goings On, Village Pump,
> ToL talk page (and similar pages for the non-english WPs), instead of
> setting facts by creating the Wiki directly - so I can fully understand
> Mav's surprise and anger.

In the future would should procede more or less as you suggest.

-- mav

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: XML - Status?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Have "we" (i.e. you guys) agreed on what to use to read in the XML
>> yet? I seem to recall there have been several suggestions on this list.
>
> Well, for starters, why not pipe the wiki source into the (C++) parser,
> and pipe the result back to PHP?

That wasn't what I was asking; I've already done that. :) I have created
a shared object which I can use to do something like this:

     dl ('php_wikiparse.so');
     $output = wikiparse_do_parse ($input);

$input is the wiki source, and $output will be the XML.
wikiparse_do_parse is a function that is actually implemented in C (see
line 802 in wikiparse.y).

My question was what to do next once I have the XML in PHP. But your
next paragraph answered that question:

> There is also a ParserXML.php (or something) in CVS HEAD, which at the
> moment make a treelike object from a given source.

A tree-like structure is indeed what I want. I'll take a look at
ParserXML later then. Thanks!

Timwi


from_name: Peter Danenberg

body:
> I see that there's some attempt to provide extension hooks in the parser
> code, do people think that's sufficient?

     It  hath  enabled us, for instance, to expand MediaWiki
by manifold LaTeX  extensions  (see  http://wikisophia.org);
but capitally lacks support for parameters, ex. gr.:

     <music tempo=80></music>

I've been meaning to amend it; but Timwi's shiny new project
may render it moot.

     Best, Peter

--
 .
..:


subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
--- Jim Redmond <jim at scrubnugget.com> wrote:
> ...
> I plan to counter El Reg's criticisms by improving articles.  AFAIC it's
> the only appropriate response.

We just need to tell him that if he thinks Wikipedia is crappy now, he should
go to the Internet archive and see how crappy we were three years ago, or even
a year ago. I think he them *might* get the idea that we have improved a great
deal and are getting better all the time.

The fact that Wikipedia is just 3 and a half years old and Britannica is over
200 should also help him gain perspective.

-- mav

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Linken NAAR wikispecies

body:
Hoi,
Is it possible to enable the linking to Wikispecies using this syntax
[[Species:User:GerardM|Species]] ??

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New line to break

body:
On 15 Sep 2004, at 23:56, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The Search & Replace function is one of the most useful things about
> MS Word.  You just have to avoid things with quotation marks which it
> insists on screwing up by changing to curly quotes.
>
> Ec

MS Office Law number one:
For every annoying default in MS Office products there is a place where
you can turn it off. It's just VERY hard to find.

OK. Admitting that I am (among other things) a fully qualified
Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert**:
(This may depend on what version you're using.)
- Tools
- AutoCorrect
- AutoFormat
- Under ==Replace==, uncheck box "Straight quotes with smart quotes"

-- Jens

**MCSE


from_name: zhengzhu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
> This is more or less the concept I was mulling over as a very general
> solution, but I realised that it does have a big disadvantage: naive
> users 'correcting' the translation may simply shift the error into the
> opposite version. Or, more specifically, there is no way of
> distinguishing a translational correction from a factual one.

Completely agree. That why I think an explicit mark up that says
Simplified "apple" IS Traditional "orange" is necessary.

On the UI issue, it seems feasible to have two UIs coexisting together
without running two separate sites: we can store two versions of every
message key in the cache or the database. For example, for "mainpage",
we will have "mainpage_cn" that maps to the Simplified title of the
mainpage, and "mainpage_tw" that maps to the Traditional title of the
mainpage. One mainpage can then be the redirect of the other. When
rendering the UI, we will look for things with _cn in the message
cache if the language preference is zh_cn, and _tw for zh_tw. I hacked
up some code to do this and it is now runing on the test site,
http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/wiki/. I am not sure if I got the
message caching part right, because I currently don't have a way to
test it. I think right now the messages are coming from the database.

---------------------
gmail.com at zhengzhu


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Linken NAAR wikispecies

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 23:58:25 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Is it possible to enable the linking to Wikispecies using this syntax
> [[Species:User:GerardM|Species]] ??

Well, it's certainly *possible*, but as I understand it, WikiSpecies
is in something of a "working out what it's actually going to be and
getting people to agree that it should exist" phase right now, so
whether enabling such links would be *sensible* or not, I'm not so
sure...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Register, Round Three


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Register, Round Three

body:
I misread that for a second as "the value of responding to these
trolls", which sums it all up really.

The Register is a whore; it'll do anything so long as it makes money -
i.e. gets the site noticed and visited, which gets visitors to read
the ads and pay the bills.  Their credibility is significantly less
than Wikipedia's, even by THEIR opinion of Wikipedia.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Meta goings on

body:
I have been trying to think about the past days issues.
Fuzheado and others mentionned the goings-on as the place they go to when they want to be kept updated.
I was glad to hear that, because I had the feeling this page was not very much used. If it is, then it is worth :-)

I'll revive a discussion we had with Erik and Mav on this goings-on issue, related to the "news" issue.

The "news" is the place where we keep track of relevant events in a chronological manner. Typically, we find news such as
- xx.wikipedia reached 10000 articles
- zz.wiktionary switched to utf today
- there was a meeting in city tt today
- we received the prize pp
- download time planned today

Currently, these news are very short (not detailed) with links. The audience is "contributors" and "people outside the project".
The display is actually a sort of a weblog.
Basically, it is not translated, but it is usually written in simple english.

The "goings-on" is the place where we mention events or discussions. This is a lot "internal kitchen" which imho is none of the business of external readers.
The information is first sorted by "type", then a little bit by "date".
We had hoped that the information would be translated on local goings-on, but it is just not done, even on big wikipedias such as the english one.
There is no easy navigation between languages.
The information is not as short as on the "news". Often, a short summary explains the issue itself. It is not always written in simple english.

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

My questions

Do you think the "news" and the "goings-on" should merged ? Or that one should be made the subset of the other ?
How do we manage the overlap of information ?

It seems to me that the current goings-on subsections are a bit confusing. I often hesitate between 2 sections when I want to add an information.
Should we keep the "by topic" classification ? Or switch to another type of classification ? If we do keep "by topic", should we keep the current classification or is there a better proposal ?

Should we try to identify timeline better ? Either by organising goings-on according to "date of addition" or introducing more date references in the "by topic" sections ?

How could we advertise goings-on better so that people not only think of reading it, but also to update it ? I think it is very important that we do not have to write dozen of times the same information in several places. This is a total loss of time and energy.

Translation is basically non existent. We have three options
1) We do not even try to translate and we try to keep to simple english -> It think this is not a good move
2) We have an english version on meta, and translations on local project -> We tried that for 6 months, obviously it does not work
3) We have all translations on meta -> Translation requests page on meta seems to be working quite well now. What would you think of trying goings-on translation and giving up local translation entirely ?

If translations are done on meta, how could we better advertise meta goings-on on each local project ? How to tell those new ones that there is another life beside local project and that they are welcome to join ? Links in welcome messages ? Improvement in the recent changes editorial sections ? Promoting adding links in local pumps ? In news ? Adding a link in the menu bar ?

All this would be much easier if meta was more multilingual, with language preference for menu, and easier navigation between languages (rather than awkard templates). There were discussions about doing this in the software ? Is there any news of this ? Is someone interested in doing it ? If so, when can we have hope ?
Errrr... what would motivate the developper to do so ?

Who can help improving all this ?

May I have chocolate ice-cream on top ?

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subject: [Foundation-l] Meta goings on


subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta goings on


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> I have yet to see anybody seek to remove it because it's
> "too detailed for a general audience". So why is it imperative
> to have a new wiki to solve a hypothetical problem?

This is not primarily about removing content that is "too detailed for
a general audience".

Look at our article [[Shark]].  It is a delightful article, but it
contains both more and less than the envisioned species reference work
aimed at professional biologists.  We include information about the
history of the word, how to survive a shark attack, shark fishing,
sharks in mythology, etc.  This is all excellent.  But it is not the
same thing as the totally different type of reference work that is
envisioned.

Not every reference work is an encyclopedia.  Other types of reference
works will likely include, according to the specific needs of their
users, both more and less information of various kinds.  It's just
different.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
> > general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
> > reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
> > meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."

> That could still be interpreted as meaning that [[biology of ...]]
> and [[geology of ...]] articles should not be hosted on Wikipedia
> and instead on separate projects.

Perhaps it _could_ be interpreted that way, but that interpretation
would not accord with my meaning.

> I am *very* much against that

Yes, of course, I think everyone is very much against that.

> and don't agree with usage of the term 'general audience' since that
> implies (to me at least) a forking of content based on detail alone.

I don't think the term "general audience" implies any such thing.

I have here a book on stochastic differential equations from my old
days in hardcore mathematical financial theory.  When I open the book
and start to read, I immediately notice that the book assumes a
certain context that I, sadly, no longer have.  The book is
inappropriate for a general audience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_mathematics on the other hand,
is a list of articles which, by and large, are appropriate for a
general audience.  Many of them are quite challenging, to be sure, but
they are all written quite differently from a text on the subject
which assumes that you already know what you need to know to get
started.

This is not (entirely) a matter of detail, it is also a matter of
style, of the particular needs of a particular audience.

> Sidenote: A general encyclopedia is one that is not
> specialized; since we don't have size limits that is a statement
> without much distinction since we can - and do - go into detail on a
> great many topics - just not all on the same page (and with
> summaries in appropriate places).

I read that it is estimated that there are 30-50 million species on
earth.  (Other estimates are "between 2 and 100 million" - the
question is fairly unsettled).  But just focussing on named species,
there are between 1.5 and 1.8 million, about half insects.

It would be inappropriate *for wikipedia*, and I think you will agree,
for us to have a "Rambot for species" to go through and add all of
those in one fell swoop.  This does not imply that such information,
collected in some place with an eye towards the needs of professional
biologists, would not be very valuable.  It just says that, hey, in a
general interest encyclopedia, a massive dump of stubs or
auto-generated articles which would make en: *4* times as big
overnight, is not a good idea.

> I consider some of my detailed geology articles to be good enough to
> be considered professional reference material for geologists while
> at the same time being accessible to any reasonably educated (high
> school or higher) and interested layperson. But the point that
> *should* be made is that they are *encyclopedia articles* - not
> books, not definitions, not source material and not quotes.

Exactly, I understand completely what you are saying.  And Wikipedia
should be for *encyclopedia articles*.  But this should not blind us
to exciting opportunities to empower people to work on different kinds
of reference works.

--Jimbo


body:
Rebecca wrote:
> It's also apparent that even on the list, Mav wasn't the only one
> with objections. But because the three or four proponents of this
> shouted him (and others) down more vocally, it seems the board
> decides to go off and do their own thing.

I don't think this is an accurate characterization of what happened at
all.  No one shouted down anyone.  What happened was that there was a
big discussion that we on the board judged to end in a consensus; we
attempted to formulate the consensus as a proposal and approve it so
that we could all move forward together on the next steps.

Where we failed was as follows: (1) I think we misjudged that there
was a consensus, that there was an easy middle way to satisfy all
parties and (2) we did not bring Mav and others appropriately into the
final decisionmaking loop in order to make sure that everyone was
happy with the compromise proposal *before* moving forward.

These failings are very much noted and will not happen again.

The main thing I want people to understand is that no one shouted
anyone down to get their way, and that the board did not "go off and
do their own thing".

> If there is a non-forking policy, where is it, and why haven't I heard
> of it until now? If there is conditions placed on the creation of
> Wikispecies, what were they? Disclosure, people, disclosure.

Look, I don't want to be blunt, but sometimes I have to be blunt.  Did
you even read the announcement?  Did you read the detailed meeting
minutes that were published?  There's not much else to disclose other
than what I was wearing at the time of the meeting.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New projects

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If we create a new project, say htt://www.wikispecies.org (to simplify)
> and that this project is multilingual, then we will also probably have
> http://en.wikispecies.org
> http://fr.wikispecies.org
> http://zh.wikispecies.org
> etc...

Mav said

Huh? Wikispecies is *specifically* supposed to be a language-neutral database.
Subdomains mean different databases so I'm a bit perplexed. Perhaps you are
thinking about the language that the interface is in and having the subdomains
trigger that?

-- mav

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

Fuz question was about the legal, financial and logistical possible implications of a *new project*. This was a *general* question, and I answered "generally". I should not have put wikispecies as an example possibly ;-) Wikispecies does not necessarily cause problem on some of the examples I cited. These were general points.

But it seemed that people were questionning the fact the board had to get involved in the decision of creating a new project. It seems perhaps some people were considering that as soon as a group of people decide a new project is worth, and that there is no strong opposition to it from editors, then the project should be created manu military and the foundation opinion is not involved. This is not true.

Anyone can indeed anytime suggest a new project, then anytime a group can decide to begin a new project, but if the project is to be part of Wikimedia proper, then I think the Foundation also is involved in the decision.

There is first a legal requirement (and moral requirement toward all editors actually).
The new project must fit with the mission of the Foundation. For example, even if the project is great, and is supported by enough editors, if the content provided in that project is not "free", then it does not fit the "mission statement" of the Foundation. I do not necessarily mean gfdl, but I think it should be free in some sense.

The new project (any new project, not wikispecies proper) will have a name... hence possibly a trademark registration (legal issue again, as well as monetary).

Someone will be necessary to manage DNS issues. There will be names to register. If there are subdomains, more names to register, hence more money required.
If the new project involved storing HUGE amounts of data, then more storage place will be needed. More storage means more money as well.

I do not say all this is necessary blocking the decision, money can be found to manage a new project of course, however, a new project not fitting the current mission statement could be blockable. Or the bylaws changed :-)

I only mean that indeed, the proper way is
1) propose a new project
2) study its suitability and interest for readers
3) see if enough contributors are interested to make the project viable
4) see if it would be a good idea to welcome it under Wikimedia umbrella

1, 2 and 3 are totally up to the editors to decide. If any of those 1, 2 and 3 gets a "no", welllll....
And if 1, 2 and 3 are "yes" while 4 is "no", the project could very well exist, but only as a friendly project. Perhaps like wikitravel is a friendly project ?

Within 4, it must be checked
4.1) if the project fits with Wikimedia mission statement
4.2) if we can technically welcome it,
4.3) if we can financially support it,
4.4) if it could cause a threat to other wikimedia project
4.5) if it is a strategic move.

Anyone is welcome to discuss any of these points of course, but ultimately, I guess it is up to the board to answer these questions and to decide. Possibly I missed some questions as well.

4.1 : is mandatory -> requires to look at mission statement, ask a lawyer etc...
4.2 : if we cannot, what should be done ? (factual) -> requires implication of the developer team, possibly developer payment etc...
4.3 : if we cannot, we should look for money to support it (factual) -> requires grants, donations etc...
4.4 : if so, estimate the potential benefits and the losses -> requires community feedback and to look at the big picture
4.5 : is really up to people opinion -> requires community feedback, but I hope the board would be trusted to avoid very wrong moves.

I guess the current criticism is over the 4.4 step no ?

 >>Actually, a new project has legal, monetary and logistical issues attached.
>
>
> This argument could be made for nearly anything under the Wikimedia
> umbrella, so it would be best to define explicit scope and procedures.

I guess the scope is above

Procedures (arrrggggg) should be something like
* propose a project on meta
* explain the proposal and the benefit of the project on meta
* list people interested on meta
* mention it on the goings-on
* head to the mailing list and talk about it
* toss well
* regularly put sumaries on meta
* let rest for some time
* toss again
* regularly put sumaries on meta
* let rest for some time
* look for support
* remind people
* regularly put sumaries on meta
* let rest for some time
* gather support
* whine, implore, threaten
* regularly put sumaries on meta
* let rest for some time
* make a poll or whatever
* report from the poll
* contact the board
* mention you contacted the board
* pray

Procedures are evil. But we should be able to summarize this one in 4 mandatory steps I guess (even if the truth will be probably nearer to what I wrote above)

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Andrew Lih a ?crit:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:59:32 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Actually, a new project has legal, monetary and logistical issues attached.
>
>
> This argument could be made for nearly anything under the Wikimedia
> umbrella, so it would be best to define explicit scope and procedures.

I think I already answered to this a bit, but I'll suggest more.
If we just toss the future content of wikispecies in wikipedia, as far
as we are concerned (wmf) that is a bland operation (though I suspect
someone will tell me that this should not be bland, but blank, or
invisible, or whatever).

If we create a new project, say htt://www.wikispecies.org (to simplify)
and that this project is multilingual, then we will also probably have
http://en.wikispecies.org
http://fr.wikispecies.org
http://zh.wikispecies.org
etc...

Up to possibly 50 or more adresses to manage.

Also, we'll have to purchase
http://www.wikispecies.us
http://www.wikispecies.pl
http://www.wikispecies.net
etc...

Up to how many countries in the world.

This is not free.

If we toss everything in wikipedia, we do not have to adapt the wiki
software, or we have to tweak the adaptation, so make current
functionning of wikipedia more complicated.

If we make a new project with specific requirements, we have to make
changes to Mediawiki. And we need people technically available to do it.
And we need people to be interested to do it.

Since it is a specialised wiki, could we not foresee that a foundation
somewhere might be interested by this very specialised and scientific
project, and envision specifically making a donation so as to push these
modifications ?

>>This project was initiated by a non wikipedian and rejoined by
>>wikipedians as far as I understood.
>>Wiki space... I think little discussion occured on wikispace
>>It was mostly on this mailing list, on meta and on irc.
>
>
> This has been a continuing problem with Wikipedia/media projects.
> Multiple communications channels are great for grassroots
> collaboration for content, but it's not good for due process. As Mav
> mentioned, I did not find it mentioned on Meta Goings on and Wikimedia
> News at all. If it was there, I think there would be much less problem
> with the decision. We should be able to improve on this.

Incidentely, I am glad to discover so many people were unhappy not to
see it on the goings on. I was of the opinion that this page was hardly
read, so less and less motivated to update it regularly. This is a joy
to discover that the information was felt missing here.
I consequently suggest an extra effort on this one :-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikigeology and other future projects

body:
Michael Snow a ?crit:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The community's real decisions are often not made in these discussions,
> or in the pronouncements of the Board, but because people "vote with
> their feet", or in this case their hands at the keyboard. That is why
> all this debate, however acrimonious, is not really decisive in saying
> there is or is not a consensus for Wikispecies. The consensus will only
> be seen over time, and is sometimes easier to find by listening and
> watching than by arguing. Our representatives on the Board try hard to
> do that, though perhaps they might have deliberated a little longer and
> done more to prepare the ground for this new project.
>
> --Michael Snow

By the way, are people happy that the "wikicommons" started ?
There was so much unhappiness because it was taking *so long* ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: I can't seem to unsubscribe from this list

body:
Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa a ?crit:
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 02:16:55PM -0600, Rich Points wrote:
>
>>Can someone please help?
>>Thanks
>>--
>>Rich Points
>>Rich at RichPoints.com
>>http://RichPoints.com
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> Dunno if you could do that yet, but if not:
>
> Take Welcome message sent to you when you have subscribed, find for you
> pass and go to:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/options/foundation-l/
>
> If you no longer have your Welcome message, you can request your passwd
> in above site quickly.
>
> List admin can add above site to footer...
>
> - Riba

Normally, Rich should be unsubscribed.

ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
On Sep 16, 2004, at 2:04 AM, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
>> general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
>> reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
>> meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."
>
> That could still be interpreted as meaning that [[biology of ...]] and
> [[geology of ...]] articles should not be hosted on Wikipedia and
> instead on
> separate projects. I am *very* much against that and don't agree with
> usage of
> the term 'general audience' since that implies (to me at least) a
> forking of
> content based on detail alone. Sidenote: A general encyclopedia is one
> that is
> not specialized; since we don't have size limits that is a statement
> without
> much distinction since we can - and do - go into detail on a great
> many topics
> - just not all on the same page (and with summaries in appropriate
> places).
>

Let me put this differently still. Would you prescribe a medication out
of wikipedia? Or perform a surgical procedure from it? Would you check
drug interactions from it?

Articles that people are going to stake their professional reputations
on, or base new work on. That is, works that must carry authority, have
different needs from general reference, and cannot simply be
watchdogged on the "well if the article is important someone will
monitor it" basis. This isn't knock on general wiki editing, this is
recognizing that as more and more money rides on internet information,
there will be more and more incentive to skew the results. This has
already happened in many professional fields, and many professional
journals out there in the paper world.

Dealing with the more complex issues of authority, credibility and
accuracy represent a large step forward for wikimedia, they are serious
issues and need to be addressed. I am firmly on the side of the
believers that they can be addressed within this framework. But it
isn't merely a matter of content. It is a matter of intent. Wiki
clearly states "no original research" for wikipedia, it is using
consensus to slowly reach the state of "settled knowledge", with
coverage of POVs within that context. Any professional quality project
will have to hit that moving target which is the state of research. The
paper world has these problems, and in fact, is right now thrashing
around under the weight of them. Electronic knowledge offers ways of
solving these problems in a better way. But that is very different from
making these problems disappear.

It's a question of what is called "apparatus". Footnoting is apparatus,
so are textual notes - these are means by which people who read check
and use that which is written. Wiki needs to begin developing more
sophisticated apparatus for professional users. In turn, such articles
will feed, not fork, the main project. The apparatus of bibliography,
footnote, reproducibility of tables, textual analysis and documentation
didn't get created at once for paper - it took decades. Ignoring the
question won't make it go away here.


subject: [Wikitech-l] 1,000,000 articles

body:
The official stats will be run this weekend, and we are planning a
press release on Monday.

Lightning wrote:

> copy-and-pasted from milestones talk on meta
>
> I think we are pretty close to hitting 1,000,000 articles globally,
> anyone care to confirm this?? looking at the starts in sept 8th or 9th
> we were~18k articles away at a rate of ~3k articles a day which would
> roughly mean that by the 15th or 16th we should roughly be there.
> anyone care to take a look? today is the 14th BTW
>
> Lightning 16:13, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
>
>
> So do we globally have 1,000,000 articles or what?
>
>
>
>
> Lightning
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
Oh, great, how clever of me to post my phone number on the net.

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
> > I'm looking to interview various wikipedians for bopnews.com, if anyone
> > is interested drop me an email.
>
> Of course, I am always available for interview, xxx-xxx-xxxx, I am on
> US east coast time, but don't let that worry you too much, I'm
> basically working on wikipedia stuff 12-16 hours a day these days.
>
> --Jimbo (wikipedia founder)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:59:32 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Actually, a new project has legal, monetary and logistical issues attached.

This argument could be made for nearly anything under the Wikimedia
umbrella, so it would be best to define explicit scope and procedures.

> This project was initiated by a non wikipedian and rejoined by
> wikipedians as far as I understood.
> Wiki space... I think little discussion occured on wikispace
> It was mostly on this mailing list, on meta and on irc.

This has been a continuing problem with Wikipedia/media projects.
Multiple communications channels are great for grassroots
collaboration for content, but it's not good for due process. As Mav
mentioned, I did not find it mentioned on Meta Goings on and Wikimedia
News at all. If it was there, I think there would be much less problem
with the decision. We should be able to improve on this.

> > Clearly, the way you suggest (by the board, but closed) is very much
> > against the open spirit the Wikipedia community is used to. To be
> > clear, I'm largely in favor of the Wikispecies proposal, and don't
> > think the board acted in bad faith. But we should also take this
> > opportunity to make sure that we set the right precedent for future
> > decisions.
>
> I see not why you say that "I" suggest "by the board but closed".
> I certainly did not suggest that.
> As I already said, I was not the one who started the decision making
> discussion. Also, it is not because I take the time to answer people
> concerns that I am the one responsible of the current situation.

No no, I didn't mean that you were the originator of the idea, only
that it's the one you mentioned. Sorry about the misunderstanding. I
certainly don't think you favor a "closed" board, but the problem is
of perception.

> We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But I
> must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three already
> streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen better, you will
> have to help us by providing better insight, summaries and such... and
> mostly, do not expect us to start polls or votes all the time. Neither
> of us three are very happy with votes and I doubt we'll start organising
> votes one by one. In short, those who want to help us take some final
> decisions will have to wet their shirt, hang around and call people to
> participate to discussion, create summaries, emulate discussions and co.

Yes, there is the alternative of delegating it to folks in the Meta
community to organize the effort and the voting. Most boards of
organizations don't get involved down the level of making these types
of decision. Your time is valuable, delegate!  And  I do realize this
is the opposite of "Be bold." :)

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)