from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
Jerome Jamnicky:
> Not directly related, but I'm told that there are plenty of IRC networks
> which are as stable as or more stable than Freenode, and which get by
> with no donations of money at all.  Which leads to the question, why
> donate at all?  I haven't been able to find an answer for this yet.

What alternative do you have in mind? I don't think a network of
Freenode's size will be able to survive without either fundraising or
sponsors. Freenode could probably get more sponsorship, but it's good to
avoid dependency situations. I have seen big IRC networks shut down
because a major sponsor suddenly lost interest.

I think being part of the largest open source chat network in existence
is also very compatible with our general philosophy. As I type this:

	#gentoo - 827 people online
	#debian - 723 people online
	#ubuntu - 452 people online
	##linux - 390 people online
	#python - 371 people online
	##c     - 329 people online
	#fedora - 321 people online

and so on. For people with a simple IRC client that doesn't support
multiple connections, being able to hop easily from one cool channel to
the next is a big benefit. In practical terms, not being on a network
with lots of skript kiddies and warez channels is desirable from a
public relations perspective, from a signal/noise perspective, and from
a DoS attack perspective.

$16,000 of their fundraising goal goes into lilo's salary. This is quite
ridiculously small pay given the amount of time he puts into the
project. Except for the occasional downtime (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*),
I find the network to be very pleasant. There are useful services like
ChanServ, NickServ, SeenServ, MemoServ, good documentation, and there's
generally someone available to help you.

Now, why they changed the perfectly cromulent name "openprojects.net"
into freenode.net, I will never understand.

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Simple English Wikipedia - Requesting a rethink

body:
Also, a quote from Angela from Wiktionary: "[...] the community on the
Simple English Wikipedia has almost died out."

Mark

On 02/07/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll just direct you again to what Angela said. Obviously it's not inactive...
>
> Mark
>
> On 02/07/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > I had a quick look at recent changes there and received the impression
> > that they have an active community.  Perhaps the best place for this
> > discussion might be at their equivalent to a Village Pump.
> >
> > Even accepting the premise that the project was initially ill conceived,
> > one cannot treat it as a dormant project..
> > Ec
> >
> >
> > Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:
> >
> > >David's analysis of the state of the SE Wikipedia is quite an accurate one and I would agree with almost all of his arguments. And - like Mark - I do believe that a "rethink" should eventually result in the phasing out of the Simple English Wikipedia.
> > >
> > >Simple: doesn't work well. Of course, that is a fact it shares with many existing but more or less dormant Wikipedias. More severe however is the "lack of focus and ... lack of direction", like David put. I would even dare to say it lacks a purpose altogether, at least one conforming with Wikipedia's general aims.
> > >
> > >At http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia one reads that it "has been started as a response to the need for English learners". Fine, but Wikipedia was never meant as a language course. WP is an encyclopedia, i. e. a place where knowledge is gathered and can be accessed. Furthermore, Wikipedia is committed to providing knowledge in people's _native_languages_. Hence, there is no need for a Wikipedia for those with a limited command of English (or German, French, Spanish ...).
> > >
> > >I just don't see why we should continue the Simple English Wikipedia.
> > >
> > >Boris
> > >
> > >
> > >wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 29.06.05 01:16:39:
> > >
> > >The subject of Simple English Wikipedia has came to the mailing list before,
> > >but after reading talk pages there and seeing the dormancy of Recent Changes
> > >(bar a few persistent users, and the odd anon editor) I feel it is time to
> > >suggest a rethink, or at least look into the direction of Simple English
> > >Wikipedia.
> > >
> > >Simple English Wikipedia currently has 4,157 articles, the vast majority of
> > >which fail to extend further than three sentences in length. There are a few
> > >administrators, Netoholic being the most active of them. There is a small
> > >user base, but unlike some language Wikipedias where this results in a small
> > >and persistent community, the small user base at Simple English often have
> > >their priorities understandably set on the main English Wikipedia.
> > >
> > >The SE Wikipedia currently has a lack of focus, and a lack of direction.
> > >Indeed, it claims to cater for multiple groups of people, which simply isn't
> > >working:
> > >
> > >"It is focused on readers who tend to be quite different people with
> > >different needs: students, children, and translators."
> > >
> > >The description there, taken from
> > >http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia, is too
> > >ambiguous to encourage any regular contributors to the Wikipedia. Whereas
> > >with the main Wikipedias there is a ultimate cause of creator 'the sum of
> > >all human knowledge', Simple English doesn't have a goal, as its not aiming
> > >for anything specifically.
> > >
> > >The aims of students, children and translators, to me, is wrong on all
> > >counts. I've read a few articles on Simple English, and the variation and
> > >way of writing is at times so belittiling that I wonder why such a project
> > >exists. This quote from the talk page sums it up perfectly:
> > >
> > >"One thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that people act like
> > >this is supposed to writted towards children, talking down to them and such,
> > >when in fact Wikipedia Jr. is there to handle that - this should be aimed at
> > >just reposting English articles in a simplified and standardized version of
> > >English, as opposed to the "baby talk" many of the articles are crammed
> > >with.
> > >Simple: A problem I have with this website is that there is a website like
> > >it that is already here - Wikipedia Junior. I think that this website should
> > >be for people from another country who are learning English, not small
> > >children. This website talks to its people badly."
> > >
> > >Simple English Wikipedia is, in reality, never going to be used by babies or
> > >small children - Infact, unleashing such persons onto Wikipedia is dangerous
> > >(as proven by our Recent Changes list :p ). Wikijunior, which is in
> > >development, caters for the young market and has a focus to not talk down to
> > >people. When I read Simple English trying to explain racism, I felt like it
> > >was dumbing me down. Anyone capable of using Wikipedia normally can use
> > >normal Wikipedia, whilst Simple English is not going to be used by 4 or 5
> > >year olds. Children is a bad thing to aim at. Aiming at translators is
> > >similiarly odd, because a translator wouldn't be a translator if their
> > >English wasn't fluent.
> > >Simple English Wikipedia needs to, in my opinion, have a huge rethink. It
> > >should be aimed at persons wanting to practice their English by reading it,
> > >and should be an aid for those learning it as a foreign language. Simple
> > >English should read simply, but not so simply that it puts down the reader.
> > >People contribute to Wikipedias for a reason, and for a goal - Simple
> > >English has no goal, so theres no clear reason for editors to contribute to
> > >it. A look at recent changes shows that.
> > >
> > >Without a rethink and a real discussion into the direction, policies and
> > >descriptions of Simple English Wikipedia, it had mayswell be deleted. Simple
> > >English was the second Wikipedia I visited, after main English, and I
> > >believe it will be the same for many others. It doesn't reflect well on
> > >Wikimedia Foundation to have a Wikipedia in such a bad state, and in the
> > >English language - Quality over quantity isn't necessarily always true, but
> > >in the case of having Wikimedia Foundation projects and Wikipedias, it is.
> > >Simple is way too out there to stay as it is; a rethink is needed.
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
SJ:
> I'm not sure that intense game-playing on the wiki is a great thing.
> And we can all imagine marginal ways in which doing anything but
> concretely building the encyclopedia -- editing one's own user page,
> adding to BJAODN,  fooling around with personal CSS or javascript
> settings, chatting with friends about non-encyclopedic subjects --  is
> 'wasteful'.

None of these activities are perfomed exclusively by members of the
community. (In the case of BJAODN, it's also a useful service, because
the people posting stuff to BJAODN are frequently the same who are
vetting out the nonsense in the first place. BJAODN also reduces
trolling about censorship.) If they are, as in the case of people
abusing their user pages as webspace, we generally don't tolerate it.

The issue is that games can exist entirely in parallel to
encyclopedia-building. For example, the user who created the
"Wikipedia:Wikigames" project (since redirected) has never made a single
edit to a Wikipedia article. When the fun activity becomes the primary
focus and the encyclopedia becomes incidental, a line has to be drawn.

That's why I believe, as I have posted earlier, that any fun or game
activity has to meet a rather high threshold of community approval. If
games have to be started in the Wikipedia: namespace, instead of the
Sandbox as currently happens frequently, I think things will evolve
naturally into that direction.

Surely banning all "fun" from Wikipedia would be an overreaction. But
this is not going to happen. As is often the case on wikis, things tend
to escalate beyond a certain level of tolerance, the group who was
previously a minority suddenly becomes a majority, and the measures
advocated become more drastic. Hopefully this will lead to a mutually
acceptable solution in the end.

Erik


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] SHOWCASING Abuses of Admin Power

body:
I have a dream ... of a wikien-l that isn't the [[Thomas Crapper]] Memorial
Sewer for en:. One that has something vaguely to do with writing an
encyclopedia.

New members of the list now start moderated. This is a major PITA for your
power-crazed fascist list admins (to be addressed henceforth as Dear
Leader), but that's the problem with persistent trolling.

- d.


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposal for a new project: Wikipedia Historical
	Atlas

body:
Menchi:

> The only obstacle to this project is actually writing the software.

:-)

First of all, I'm not convinced this needs to be a separate project
anymore than we need WikiTimelines. A historical map that is useful,
animated or not, can already be added to a Wikipedia article on the topic.

As for the technical implementation, it is certainly not impossible --
there are free maps available, and an EasyTimeline-like extension where
you could say

<infomap>
country=Germany
values(government)=
"CDU/CSU",black
"SPD",red
government(Bavaria)=CDU/CSU
government(Berlin)=SPD
..
</infomap>

and so on, with a decent backend of countries, states and cities (based
on PD maps), and other parameters, like relations between map elements,
could certainly be useful. But unless such a scripting language already
exists, we're talking about a major implementation effort.

As an interim solution, I suggest lobbying for SVG support on the
Wikimedia sites, which is still held up by security considerations. In
combination with my External Editor tool, this would allow relatively
easy editing of maps for purposes like this, though not with any level
of standardization.

Erik


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 02/07/05, Bill Konrad <bkonrad123 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> "Dan Grey" <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Why don't people just give trolls what they deserve?
> >
> > Do us all a favour, and when people post here only looking for
> > trouble, give them what they deserve - the silent treatment.
>
> Indeed, one recently prolific poster to this list has earned the distinction
> of being the first person added to my blocked user list -- it'd just too
> tedious sifting through the drek.
>
> Bkonrad

Crikey, I've only been on the list a few weeks and I already have,
erm, several filters :-).

To Rob - it's not turning the other cheek. Trolls only post to get a
reaction - the fundamental truth is that it's pure attention seeking,
how ever it's dressed up on the surface.

Ignore them - totally - and they don't get they want, they very
rapidly get bored, and bugger off :-)

Dan


from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal attacks and low EQs

body:
Nathan J. Yoder wrote:
>>"You are a hypocrite" is a personal attack. "You seem to apply a
>>lenient standard to yourself and a strict standard to others" is a
>>description of behavior, particularly if you cite examples.
>
>
> Those mean the exact same thing!  You just gave the definition of a
> hypocrite.  You're making a meaningless distinction here and I
> seriously doubt you follow your own logic.  Are you saying you've
> never called someone a troll or accused them of using sock puppets?
> Can you honestly say that you've been using a very long-winded,
> politically correct version of a troll accusation?

It will be useful to you if you criticise the person's behaviour rather
than criticise the person.  Maybe you see no distinction, but the fact
is that criticising the behaviour is less likely to cause offense and
lead to a flamewar.

Unfortunately Wikipedia does not provide a course in social skills for
the benefit of those who can't or won't learn by themselves.  In fact
it's likely to be impossible to completely unambiguously codify it,
which makes things vulnerable to _lawyering_ by people acting in bad
faith.  There is a continuous stream of people who are indistinguishable
from antisocial wikilawyers.  In order to differentiate yourself from
those people, I'd suggest you try to make it quite clear that you're
acting in good faith.  Then you might escape from your present situation
and give people some hope that you won't cause more trouble than your
contribution to Wikipedia is worth.

[snip]

---
Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Sean Barrett (sean at epoptic.org) [050703 02:01]:
> A. Nony Mouse stated for the record:

> >Oh give me a fucking break and stop lying.

> Can we make mailing list subscriptions by approval only when they come
> from free sites like hotmail?  That would hinder some of these whiney
> children....

Anyone who wants a gmail account, just email me (dgerard at gmail.com). I have
a zillion invites, like everyone does.

- d.


from_name: SJ

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wiki tidbits : Grimme Prizes, Cookbooks,
	and WP-spinoffs

body:
Wikipedia won a pair of online awards in Germany this week in the
annual Grimme Prize competition:  one of three jury-awarded Knowledge
and Education prizes, as "an excellent example of collaboration on the
Internet," and the overall Audience Award, barely beating out the
tele-novela "Verliebt in Berlin" (http://www.sat1.de/vib/serie/)
   http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61312

Meanwhile, Peter "Shaggy" Shanks whips out a 'slimmed down XHTML
version' of Wikipedia -- "the Wikipedia writ small" -- for people
whose phones' egos outstrip their screen-size:
    http://wapipedia.org/wikipedia/mobilerandom.aspx

..."The London Line" notes the English Wikicoobook as a place to look
for world recipes:
    http://www.thelondonline.co.uk/theline/article.php?articleID=484

...and eHow, the victorious dot-com "how-to" site, has started up a
wiki section, "The How-To Site that anyone can Write or Edit",
"powered and Inspired by MediaWiki" :
    http://wiki.ehow.com/Main-Page

The eHow interface has a few interesting aspects:

* It is very clean, with no left-hand sidebar, no logo at the top, and
almost no user nav-links at all.  It compresses most of those links
into a drop-down menu in the middle of the top of each screen,
labelled "Toolbox".
* It has a separate "create a page" interface, which makes creating a
page a pleasure
     http://wiki.ehow.com/index.php?action=easy
* Empty pages, rather than simply saying "There is currently no text
in this page", say
"This discussion page has not yet been started, click '''here''' to
leave the first comment."

Happily, they are CC-licensed.  However, they are CC-NC, and so
incompatible with current Wikimedia projects.

(finally, for kicks, don't miss http://wickerpedia.org and its fine
search interface)

--
++SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
SJ:
> It seems likely that once s/he tires of on-wiki games (which is
> admittedly difficiult, considering what an adrenaline rush our new
> gaming platform is), with a positive view of the local community, this
> will be a natural outlet for other notes and work...

Mh-hm. Notes and work, eh?

Here's the opposite scenario. We're all fun-loving people and we allow
this guy to set up his "Wikigames" project as an unofficial part of
Wikipedia. He starts about 20 new game pages, all as subpages of
Wikipedia:Wikigames, which we accept as legitimate. He invites some of
his friends to join. A #wikigames IRC channel is set up. A parallel
community grows in that section of Wikipedia of people who primarily
play games.

While every single human being on the planet should read Wikipedia, I'm
not convinced that every single human being on the planet should edit
it. There are people who are mentally ill, utterly ignorant,
fundamentally irrational, belligerent, rude, paranoid, malicious, and
worse. We can edit their pages, but we have limited access to their
brains. There are people who, in spite of our best efforts, will never
become useful contributors to the site. I like to believe that their
number is small. The cynic in me says otherwise.

The fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia acts as a social filter. If
you encourage and allow the growth of a parallel community, that social
filter loses much of its effectiveness. Moreover, even the process of
post-discovery discouragement may no longer work, because these users
have their Wikigames ghetto to return to and come back from, where rules
like NPOV are as relevant as Schopenhauer is to the Furry fandom.

I therefore strongly oppose the growth of parallel communities.
Wikigames need to be very limited, and linked to the encyclopedic nature
of Wikipedia itself.

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>
>> On 7/2/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Then why doesn't Wikimedia just donate to Freenode? :-p
>>
>>
>> Because our donors have been given the impression the money was going
>> towards Wikimedia's own servers and not to third parties.
>
>
> Oh, so you have defined the purpose for Wikimedia donations too
> narrowly. I wouldn't have thought the purpose was restricted to hardware
> only. If it was something general like "to help the Wikimedia projects"
> or whatever, then certainly helping our fellow IRC network falls under
> it because it helps Wikimedians and therefore indirectly helps Wikimedia.
>
> Timwi
>

Not directly related, but I'm told that there are plenty of IRC networks
which are as stable as or more stable than Freenode, and which get by
with no donations of money at all.  Which leads to the question, why
donate at all?  I haven't been able to find an answer for this yet.

---

Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Licensing information transcluded from the Commons

body:
Thanks, Kate!  Fabulous... another step towards true metadata
separation of license information.

On 7/3/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Kate Turner has added code to MediaWiki to load licensing information
> directly from the Commons when viewing a local image description page.
>
> What this means is that you can go to, e.g.,
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Aubrey_Beardsley_1.jpg
> and get the licensing information for that image from the Wikimedia
> Commons without having to "click through."

--
++SJ


from_name: Servien Ilaino

body:
Hi Mark,

It's quite ununderstandable, it's not just the orthography, but in
Germany they use different words so you have to know that dialect to
understand it. I can understand the first sentence, but the second
sentence is very hard to understand, the first part of this sentence is
understandable as well, at "veet nu Bescheed" it's completely
ununderstandable for any Low Saxon speaker in the Netherlands: "Man de
Bezeukers vun de Lezung miet Hartmut Cyriacks un Peter Niszen veet nu
Bescheed euver den plattduutschen Harry Potter. De Kulturvereen "PEP" un
de Stadtbeukerie Kelinghuzen harrn de baaiden Plattmakers inlaodt, un dat
veer en heel gode Idee..."

 The first sentence of that text is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon:
"Wie weet nog wat en teuvernaor is? Dat et Platduutse woord deurveur
"Sauwberer" is, bin de meeste minsen waorschynlik al vergeten.
(Plattdeutsch: "Wokeen veet noch, vat en Teuverer is? Dut ole
plattduutsche Wort veur "Zaauberer" hebbt de mehrsten Luud maaist
vergeten.")

Hope you get my point now...

Servien Ilaino

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Mark Williamson"
  To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
  Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
  Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 17:00:59 -0700

  >
  > Hi Servien,
  >
  > Please check out
  >
  http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=HP_op_Platt&variant=ks-de
  > and tell me what you think of the conversion.
  >
  > It's obviously not perfect but I'm still working on it.
  >
  > Any tips for improvements (ie, specific spelling errors) are
  welcome.
  >
  > Mark
  >
  > On 02/07/05, Servien Ilaino wrote:
  > > Sorry it's suppose to be
  > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
  > >
  > > ----- Original Message -----
  > > From: "Servien Ilaino"
  > > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
  > > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
  > > Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:11:47 -0500
  > >
  > > >
  > > > Hi,
  > > >
  > > > I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made
  my
  > > own
  > > > mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but
  > > anyway...
  > > > for people who like to check it out here is the link:
  > > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
  > > >
  > > > Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some
  comments.
  > > >
  > > > Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but
  how
  > > do
  > > > you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ":
  and ::
  > > and
  > > > :::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of
  understand
  > > it
  > > > because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
  > > >
  > > > Servien Ilaino!
  > > >
  > > > --
  > > > ___________________________________________________________
  > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
  > > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
  > > >
  > > > _______________________________________________
  > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
  > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
  > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
  > >
  > > --
  > > ___________________________________________________________
  > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
  > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
  > >
  > > _______________________________________________
  > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
  > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
  > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
  > >
  >
  >
  > --
  > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
  > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
  > POSSIT MATERIARI
  > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
  > _______________________________________________
  > Wikipedia-l mailing list
  > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
  > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
SJ:
> We've encountered a few, and have entire chapters of process on how to
> handle them.  You'd rather filter them out in advance, according to
> some set of profiles?

By defining the purpose of our site and community and adhering to it, yes.

>>post-discovery discouragement may no longer work, because these users
>>have their Wikigames ghetto to return to and come back from, where rules
>>like NPOV are as relevant as Schopenhauer is to the Furry fandom.

> You think this is different from the "Child-love article cluster" ghetto?

Absolutely, for the reasons I have given. The child-love article cluster
is a part of Wikipedia proper, and many people are working on it to try
to make it NPOV. If you can cite a cluster of articles that is
fundamentally out of sync with our key policies and purpose, I'll be
interested.

> Let's wait until we actually have a problem -- say,
> more than 10% of game-playing users who are not also active wiki
> contributors or newbies

10% of active users? You want hundreds of people playing games and doing
nothing else before you consider intervening? Absolutely no way. For the
reasons I cited, late intervention is not an option -- particularly
since those 10% will then become vocal opponents of any such
intervention, citing precedent and lack of consensus. The problem needs
to be stopped at its very root now. You have presented no single
plausible argument why this is not so.

Erik


from_name: eddie sandoval

subject: [WikiEN-l] NWO

body:
Jerome's Latin Vulgate 405 A.D. Info

Eph 3:21 Unto him [be] glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, World without end. Amen.
Eph 3:21 ..ipsi gloria in ecclesia et in Christo Iesu in omnes generationes saeculi saeculorum amen.
Saeculi = Ages.
Saeculorum=Secular=World, Worldly, World w/o God.
Godless New World Order...you know separation of church & state...No 10 Commandments.
Latin puts the Noun before the Adjective...so Novus Ordo Seclorum means New World Order...It is Masonic for One World Government under Satan the All Seeing Pagan Eye ON the TOWER OF BABEL & the French Masons gave us the Worlds Largest Pagan Goddess the Statue of Liberty in the BIG APPLE & the next cities water tower reads Babylon New York...the Mystery Babylon mentioned in the Holy Bible (KJV).


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Thoughts on the process of requesting adminship

body:
>JAY JG wrote:
>>
>>What tangible (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better
>>encyclopedia would these changes provide?
>
>What tanglble (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better
>encyclopedia would being able to edit freely provide? Well, duh, you
>have more freedom and therefore are better able to help.

So, nothing specific comes to mind then?

>>Disagree.  Admin is a position of increased responsibility and trust;
>>trust must be earned.
>
>This is exactly the "we have to assume everyone's guilty" argument I
>already refuted.

It's easy to refute strawman arguments; that's the reason people make them
in the first place.

>Trust must be earned, I agree; but distrust must be
>earned too. We are currently requiring too much trust for people to
>become admins, and we are distrusting new users undeservedly.

Your opinion is interesting; I see no evidence that it reflects reality.
New users are, in fact, able to completely modify just about any part of
Wikipedia they want.  This is a huge amount of trust that already creates
huge vandalism problems.  What you are asking for is for them to be given
special powers to do things like easily reverting pages and blocking users.
Of course, this would simply give them abilities to act against other users
that they distrust, but wouldn't help them (for example) WRITE BETTER
ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES!

>>>As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose"
>>>votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past
>>>wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to
>>>vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as
>>>this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against
>>>crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however,
>>>I suggest that candidates
>>>must be nominated by an existing admin.
>>
>>Not only is this easily gamed,
>
>It's no more easily gamed than normal editing privileges are. You just
>get them! If you do bad things, you lose your editing privileges.

Huh?  This is nothing like normal editing privileges.  Even you admit as
much, since you specify that people must be nominated by an existing admin.
If you think these powers should be no different than other editing
abilities, why not simply argue that they beome part of the "basic package"?

>>but only having a few hundred edits means that other people evaluating the
>>editor have little to go on when trying to assess whether or not they will
>>abuse being an admin.
>
>Again, the "guilty until proven innocent" mentality. You have no reason to
>believe that anyone (who hasn't even nominated themselves) is going to
>abuse anything, especially not if they haven't abused their already-present
>editing privileges already.

No, not "guilty until proven innocent". Rather "reserve judgement, because
the jury is still out".  That's simply prudent commonsense.

>>As has been pointed out, there are already plenty of admins, 500 and
>>growing, more than enough,
>
>I'm afraid "we already have 500 admins, more than enough" is an even worse
>reason to vote "oppose" than "this user doesn't have enough edits". Why
>should we deny anyone adminship just because we already have 500 of them?

No-one has voted oppose on those grounds; but you are proposing that way
more people be made admins, without any sort of consensus process for making
them so, because we somehow need even more people with these powers than
already have them.

>
>>and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are
>>generally quite sensible.
>
>Again, so you're assuming that people are "unsensible" until you're
>convinced otherwise.

No, I simply don't know if they're sensible.  I do know that the majority of
new editors are "not sensible" in that they are not familiar with Wikipedia
policies and norms, and therefore regularly violate them.  Some editors
learn the ropes quickly; others never do, even after tens of thousands of
edits, either because they are unable to learn them, or unwilling to do so.

>>This is simply another attempt to fix a non-existent problem.
>
>I do have my reasons for posting this proposal; I believe that there *is* a
>problem. Of course most current admins won't see the problem because
>they're already admins. If it's too hard for a new user to become admin,
>current admins wouldn't have to care, but it means there *is* a problem.

Huh?  The problem is it's too hard for new users to become admin, therefore
it *is* a problem?  That's entirely circular.  What on earth makes you think
it is "too hard"?  Exactly how did you measure that, on the [[Mohs scale]]?

>>Imagine a bunch of page-move/pelican-shit vandals admins working together.
>
>We've already had page-move vandals working together. We've dealt with
>them.

Not ones with admin powers.

>>Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no
>>sense,
>
>If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing
>admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a
>year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working
>well.

Why not?  Please note that assertions and proofs are entirely different
things.

Jay.


body:
>From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
>
>I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was just trying to
>say that if there are more admins, then it will be easier to keep problem
>users with administrative privileges under control,

But that's never been a problem, has it?  And that's because there's a
process that ensures that admins are not "problem users".  What you're
proposing is to do away with the process, make just about everyone admins,
and then fix the inevitable problem of "problem users with administrative
privileges" by creating even more admins to deal with them.

It makes more sense just to not create the problem in the first place.

Jay.


body:
Hi Servien,

There is a major fallacy in your argument.

That is that you are saying "...is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon..."

But there is no absolute division of dialects.

In your artificial linguistic constructed world you'd like everybody
to believe in, all Dutch speakers of Low Saxon can understand one
another and speak identically, and all German Low Saxon speakers can
understand one another and speak identically, yet German Low Saxon
speakers and Dutch Low Saxon speakers can't understand one another.

But this is not the case. The fact of the matter is, Low Saxon itself
is a dialect continuum. A man from one side of the Dutch-German border
can perfectly understand the Nedersaksisch of a man from the other.
Yet you would split them into "Dutch Low Saxon" and "German Low Saxon"
categories. This is preposterous.

Another huge problem with the current Low Saxon Wikipedia is that it
seems it's written in Missingsch rather than "real" Low Saxon. I would
like to find out more about this particular issue, though.

Wouter has said before that people on opposite sides of the border can
understand each other well enough, but that a Pommersch speaker can't
understand a speaker of t Grunnings, and for this reason Germany and
the Netherlands need different Wikipedias based on nation for Platt,
rather than on actual solid linguistic distinctions.

Obviously, a speaker of Pommersch can't understand a speaker of
Grunnings, but a speaker of Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs should be
able to have a conversation with few difficulties.

Also, it is a common linguistic principle that intelligibility is
greatly increased in the written word. I could not, for my life,
understand Derek Ross if he told me about Scotland in Scots, yet if he
wrote it down I would be able to understand it at a good level. A
speaker of Navajo and a speaker of Western Apache can only understand
each other a little bit, but the written word is almost completely
mutually comprehensible. German and Dutch aren't really mutually
comprehensible when spoken, but when written you can get at least the
gist of what the other person is saying.

Recently, somebody filed a request on the requests for new languages
page for a Triestin Wikipedia. Almost the whole world considers
Triestin to be a dialect of Venet, yet this person and his supporters
consider it to be a different language.

So I asked for a sample from two independent sources. The samples were
nearly identical. I posted them, and he said "Well, I would translate
it this way" even though both of my translations were provided by
native speakers. His "alternative" translation was still nearly
identical, and those differences that WERE added could be explained as
purposeful linguistic manipulations to make it more different from
Venet. (Similarly, Bokm?l and Nynorsk have various acceptable variant
forms. In many cases, there are forms in Bokm?l which are identical to
forms in Nynorsk. Often, people [especially Nynorsk-users]
purposefully avoid forms similar to Bokm?l to make their writing more
distinctly Nynorsk)

The main problem is how to solve a dialect continuum. Creating
separate Wikipedias based on national borders is just ignoring the
problem. Oostfreesk speakers and Pommersch speakers will still not be
able to understand each other. Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs speakers
will still be able to understand each other. Teh world will keep on
turning. And we will have side-stepped the problem rather than
attempting to look for a workable solution.

Mark

On 03/07/05, Servien Ilaino <nl2b at europe.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> It's quite ununderstandable, it's not just the orthography, but in Germany
> they use different words so you have to know that dialect to understand it.
> I can understand the first sentence, but the second sentence is very hard to
> understand, the first part of this sentence is understandable as well, at
> "veet nu Bescheed" it's completely ununderstandable for any Low Saxon
> speaker in the Netherlands: "Man de Bezeukers vun de Lezung miet Hartmut
> Cyriacks un Peter Niszen veet nu Bescheed euver den plattduutschen Harry
> Potter. De Kulturvereen "PEP" un de Stadtbeukerie Kelinghuzen harrn de
> baaiden Plattmakers inlaodt, un dat veer en heel gode Idee..."
>
>  The first sentence of that text is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon: "Wie
> weet nog wat en teuvernaor is? Dat et Platduutse woord deurveur "Sauwberer"
> is, bin de meeste minsen waorschynlik al vergeten. (Plattdeutsch: "Wokeen
> veet noch, vat en Teuverer is? Dut ole plattduutsche Wort veur "Zaauberer"
> hebbt de mehrsten Luud maaist vergeten.")
>
> Hope you get my point now...
>
> Servien Ilaino
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Williamson"
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 17:00:59 -0700
>
> >
> > Hi Servien,
> >
> > Please check out
> >
> http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=HP_op_Platt&variant=ks-de
> > and tell me what you think of the conversion.
> >
> > It's obviously not perfect but I'm still working on it.
> >
> > Any tips for improvements (ie, specific spelling errors) are welcome.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 02/07/05, Servien Ilaino wrote:
> > > Sorry it's suppose to be
> > >
> http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Servien Ilaino"
> > > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> > > Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:11:47 -0500
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made my
> > > own
> > > > mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but
> > > anyway...
> > > > for people who like to check it out here is the link:
> > > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> > > >
> > > > Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some comments.
> > > >
> > > > Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but how
> > > do
> > > > you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ": and ::
> > > and
> > > > :::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of understand
> > > it
> > > > because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
> > > >
> > > > Servien Ilaino!
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > >
> ___________________________________________________________
> > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> ___________________________________________________________
> > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> > POSSIT MATERIARI
> > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>  --
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
>  http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Thoughts on the process of requesting adminship

body:
>From: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>
>
> > Ond of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more
> > people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.
>
>Where is the problem that would warrant this?

And in my view, more importantly, why do people keep forgetting why
Wikipedia exists? It's not intended to be a training ground for "skillfull,
neutral administrators", but rather, an Encyclopedia.  The philosophical
underpinnings are a method of producing that goal, but they are not the goal
itself.  Changes which are purely for philosophical reasons, do not solve
any apparent problems, and do not relate to achieving that goal, are simply
not warranted.

Jay.


body:
>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>
>No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal,
>becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all
>trustworthy users.
>
>Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not
>abusing the tools long ago...
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Uncle_G
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Eequor_%282nd%29
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/ScudLee
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Pedant

Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy;
someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so.  And
consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship

body:
>From: "Nathan J. Yoder" <njyoder at energon.org>
>
> > Just read, don't edit.
>
>That misses the whole point, which is that it shouldn't have been
>doing that in the first place as it's a bug.

No, it's supposed to work that way.  It's doing exactly what it is intended
to do.

>Obviously, I wouldn't
>have ever hit edit if I *knew* it did that.

Why is that "obvious"?  Why on earth would you hit the edit button when you
were banned from editing?

Jay.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Is Aphaia around again?!

body:
Wouter, the problem is that it wasn't created in the Test-wp "directory".

It still exists, though. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A4iske_Sproake

On 03/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> What the hell! I just discovered the test wiki article
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/Test-wp:Seeltersk/Fr?iske_Sproake has disappeared!
> This can impossibly be done by the author, who can only erase the text. So
> either this is a kind of database error, or a moderator on meta: deleted it!
> There is one main suspect.
>
> WHY on earth do such things happen? Can those test wikis /never/ be left in
> peace?
>
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2005! Jimbo, Ward, RMS, and 300 of you...

body:
Dear all,   ( translators, please forward to your local projects )

Wikimania 2005 is coming up, during the first week of August.  It is
being held in Frankfurt, in a beautiful hostel-and-conference-center
downtown.  If you are planning on coming, register this week, before
the conference and hostel rates go up!

    http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/
    http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/hackingdays.php

Send email to wikimania-registration at wikimedia.org if you have any
diffulcties.  See who else is already registered:
    http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/registration/attendees.php

We have some excellent speakers coming, including Jimmy Wales himself,
Ward Cunningham, Richard Stallman, Sunir Shah of MeatballWiki, and
Ross Mayfield of Socialtext; also Gabriele Beger on law, Achal
Prabhala on rural information development in Southern Africa, and
Stefan Magdalinski on building magical wiki applets.

    http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Speakers

There will also be presentations by core developers of many wiki
platforms, including Twiki, Xwiki, and Socialtext; by Wikipedians,
about their projects; and by academics researching Wikipedia.

The whole conference has been made as inexpensive as possible, so that
all can attend. The last three days will be a larger conference, when
we take over the entire hostel; it should be a great deal of fun.
Registration for all three days is 50 Euros.  The first half of the
week will be devoted to our Hacking Days, a small-group discussion and
brainstorming among developers; these days are free (but you must
register for them as well, to reserve space in the hostel).

SJ

ps -- If you are interested in helping out with the event, even if you
can't be there yourself, we could use help setting up our Trivia
Contest and judging the initial entries for the summer writing & media
competition.  More about these later.
     http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Competitions

pps -- If you really want to come, but can't quite afford it; please
register and fill out the field at the end of the form to request a
discount.

ppps -- If you can't come, but still want to participate, there will
be audio streaming, IRC backchannels, and regular podcasts available
of conference events.  You can sign up or ask for details on the
remote-particpation page:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Remote_participation


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2005! Jimbo, Ward, RMS, and 300 of you...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is *already* written from a scientific POV

body:
Poor, Edmund W (Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com) [050702 00:42]:

> 1. Perhaps my first error is to assume that global warming has not been
> settled. The United Nations' climate panel makes it sound like there's
> virtually no other hypothesis being entertained. Only nuts like Singer,
> Lindzen and Balunias think otherwise (and they're obviously on the
> industry payroll, so they can safely be ignored).

I am shocked that anyone could ever consider [[S. Fred Singer]], famous for his
work for the tobacco industry via the [[Alexis de Tocqueville Institution]],
any sort of industry shill.

- d.


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Licensing information transcluded from the Commons

body:
Please forward this information to your local project.

Kate Turner has added code to MediaWiki to load licensing information
directly from the Commons when viewing a local image description page.

What this means is that you can go to, e.g.,
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Aubrey_Beardsley_1.jpg
and get the licensing information for that image from the Wikimedia
Commons without having to "click through."

This has been a highly requested feature for some time.

This will only work for wikis that have been upgraded to MediaWiki 1.5.
See Special:Version of your wiki to see if you have been upgraded already.

The text of MediaWiki:Sharedupload may need to be updated.

Many, many thanks to Kate for making this much requested change.

All best,

Erik


body:
Servien, at this point you have gone beyond even a distortion of
reality to pure fantasy. Speech varieties cannot develop separately if
they're spoken 4km apart from one another (an example I gave earlier
in the thread), unless there's a huge geographical barrier between
them.

Low Saxon is a dialect continuum. This means that things change
gradually. There is no "oops, suddenly I crossed the national border,
now I can't understand what people say!"

It's more like "hmm, I can't understand the people in this town as
well as the last, but almost as much..." and a little bit less and
less until eventually "I don't understand the people in this town at
all", but certainly there is no division along national borders like
you're trying to say.

Mark

On 03/07/05, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> It is not a "linguistic constructed world" as you call it because I
> don't plan on constructing a common language to be used on nds-nl.
> Everyone will be free to use his or her own dialect.
>
> You're correct by saying Dutch-Low Saxon speakers can mostly
> understand each other, because Dutch-Low Saxon tends more towards
> Dutch and German-Low Saxon tends way more towards German (as suggested
> in the name) in fact the Low Saxon used isn't even Low Saxon, it's
> Missingsch.
>
> It is not preposterous to split up the Low Saxon by border, if people
> in the Netherlands understand the German-Low Saxon better they're
> welcome to go there, but I dought that they in fact will understand
> the German-Low Saxon version, since ALL Dutch-Low Saxon dialect use an
> orthography based on Dutch and mostly use words from Dutch. Of course
> you can't always understand one another like some Twents words won't
> be used in Stellingwarfs etc. but this problem is smaller on the Dutch
> side.
>
> The two languages on either sides of the border have evolved
> differently as result of Dutch and German influences, the Wikipedia
> isn't actually in "Low Saxon" it's also called "Plattdeutsch" refering
> only to the German-Low Saxon dialects, thus not including Dutch, which
> you can see because they're not mutually understandable even if you
> change the orthography. That's why I want to create a Dutch-Low Saxon
> Wikipedia.
>
> There are more dialects in the Netherlands than only Stellingwarfs and
> Grunnings, like Twents, Sallaands and Veluws etc. the people who live
> on the Veluwe understand Grunnings Twents and Stellingwarfs mostly and
> vice versa, this isn't the case with the Low Saxon-German dialects.
> (With a few exceptions along the borderlines.)
>
> You said: "German and Dutch aren't really mutually comprehensible when
> spoken, but when written you can get at least the gist of what the
> other person is saying."
>
> You're half right, if German and Dutch LS-dialects are writting down
> they still wouldn't be able to understand each other even if they had
> a common orthography because on the other side of the border they use
> a lot of German words, if you read on the website, there is even a
> category saying if they don't know the LS word they should use German,
> and this happens a lot, and makes it incomprehensible for Dutch-LS
> speakers if don't didn't study German! (As result most Dutch-LS users
> use the Dutch version.
>
> Servien Ilaino
>
> 2005/7/3, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > Hi Servien,
> >
> > There is a major fallacy in your argument.
> >
> > That is that you are saying "...is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon..."
> >
> > But there is no absolute division of dialects.
> >
> > In your artificial linguistic constructed world you'd like everybody
> > to believe in, all Dutch speakers of Low Saxon can understand one
> > another and speak identically, and all German Low Saxon speakers can
> > understand one another and speak identically, yet German Low Saxon
> > speakers and Dutch Low Saxon speakers can't understand one another.
> >
> > But this is not the case. The fact of the matter is, Low Saxon itself
> > is a dialect continuum. A man from one side of the Dutch-German border
> > can perfectly understand the Nedersaksisch of a man from the other.
> > Yet you would split them into "Dutch Low Saxon" and "German Low Saxon"
> > categories. This is preposterous.
> >
> > Another huge problem with the current Low Saxon Wikipedia is that it
> > seems it's written in Missingsch rather than "real" Low Saxon. I would
> > like to find out more about this particular issue, though.
> >
> > Wouter has said before that people on opposite sides of the border can
> > understand each other well enough, but that a Pommersch speaker can't
> > understand a speaker of t Grunnings, and for this reason Germany and
> > the Netherlands need different Wikipedias based on nation for Platt,
> > rather than on actual solid linguistic distinctions.
> >
> > Obviously, a speaker of Pommersch can't understand a speaker of
> > Grunnings, but a speaker of Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs should be
> > able to have a conversation with few difficulties.
> >
> > Also, it is a common linguistic principle that intelligibility is
> > greatly increased in the written word. I could not, for my life,
> > understand Derek Ross if he told me about Scotland in Scots, yet if he
> > wrote it down I would be able to understand it at a good level. A
> > speaker of Navajo and a speaker of Western Apache can only understand
> > each other a little bit, but the written word is almost completely
> > mutually comprehensible. German and Dutch aren't really mutually
> > comprehensible when spoken, but when written you can get at least the
> > gist of what the other person is saying.
> >
> > Recently, somebody filed a request on the requests for new languages
> > page for a Triestin Wikipedia. Almost the whole world considers
> > Triestin to be a dialect of Venet, yet this person and his supporters
> > consider it to be a different language.
> >
> > So I asked for a sample from two independent sources. The samples were
> > nearly identical. I posted them, and he said "Well, I would translate
> > it this way" even though both of my translations were provided by
> > native speakers. His "alternative" translation was still nearly
> > identical, and those differences that WERE added could be explained as
> > purposeful linguistic manipulations to make it more different from
> > Venet. (Similarly, Bokm?l and Nynorsk have various acceptable variant
> > forms. In many cases, there are forms in Bokm?l which are identical to
> > forms in Nynorsk. Often, people [especially Nynorsk-users]
> > purposefully avoid forms similar to Bokm?l to make their writing more
> > distinctly Nynorsk)
> >
> > The main problem is how to solve a dialect continuum. Creating
> > separate Wikipedias based on national borders is just ignoring the
> > problem. Oostfreesk speakers and Pommersch speakers will still not be
> > able to understand each other. Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs speakers
> > will still be able to understand each other. Teh world will keep on
> > turning. And we will have side-stepped the problem rather than
> > attempting to look for a workable solution.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 03/07/05, Servien Ilaino <nl2b at europe.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi Mark,
> > >
> > > It's quite ununderstandable, it's not just the orthography, but in Germany
> > > they use different words so you have to know that dialect to understand it.
> > > I can understand the first sentence, but the second sentence is very hard to
> > > understand, the first part of this sentence is understandable as well, at
> > > "veet nu Bescheed" it's completely ununderstandable for any Low Saxon
> > > speaker in the Netherlands: "Man de Bezeukers vun de Lezung miet Hartmut
> > > Cyriacks un Peter Niszen veet nu Bescheed euver den plattduutschen Harry
> > > Potter. De Kulturvereen "PEP" un de Stadtbeukerie Kelinghuzen harrn de
> > > baaiden Plattmakers inlaodt, un dat veer en heel gode Idee..."
> > >
> > >  The first sentence of that text is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon: "Wie
> > > weet nog wat en teuvernaor is? Dat et Platduutse woord deurveur "Sauwberer"
> > > is, bin de meeste minsen waorschynlik al vergeten. (Plattdeutsch: "Wokeen
> > > veet noch, vat en Teuverer is? Dut ole plattduutsche Wort veur "Zaauberer"
> > > hebbt de mehrsten Luud maaist vergeten.")
> > >
> > > Hope you get my point now...
> > >
> > > Servien Ilaino
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Mark Williamson"
> > > To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> > > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> > > Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 17:00:59 -0700
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi Servien,
> > > >
> > > > Please check out
> > > >
> > > http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=HP_op_Platt&variant=ks-de
> > > > and tell me what you think of the conversion.
> > > >
> > > > It's obviously not perfect but I'm still working on it.
> > > >
> > > > Any tips for improvements (ie, specific spelling errors) are welcome.
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > On 02/07/05, Servien Ilaino wrote:
> > > > > Sorry it's suppose to be
> > > > >
> > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> > > > >
> > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > From: "Servien Ilaino"
> > > > > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> > > > > Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:11:47 -0500
> > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hi,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made my
> > > > > own
> > > > > > mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but
> > > > > anyway...
> > > > > > for people who like to check it out here is the link:
> > > > > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some comments.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but how
> > > > > do
> > > > > > you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ": and ::
> > > > > and
> > > > > > :::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of understand
> > > > > it
> > > > > > because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Servien Ilaino!
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > >
> > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > > > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > >
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > >
> > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> > > > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> > > > POSSIT MATERIARI
> > > > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > >  --
> > >
> > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > >  http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup
> >
> > --
> > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> > POSSIT MATERIARI
> > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Inputbox extension (search, create) operational

body:
Relevant for wikis on MediaWiki 1.5 only:

I have coded and made operational an extension that can be used to add a
search box, or a "create an article" box, to any page:

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

The search functionality is primarily of interest to Wikipedia, where
those Wikipedias that would like to now have the option to put a
prominent, Google-like search box on their Main Pages.

The create an article functionality is currently trialed on the English
Wikinews to make it easier for newcomers to start writing stories. It
supports preloading the newly created page with the source from another
page, and also adding a custom tag at the top. These two features are
independently available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=FJADOVAFD&preload=Stub&action=edit

loads the text of [[stub]] into the new page with the bogus title.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=FJADOVAFD&editintro=Stub&action=edit

gives you a modified introduction, which is useful when creating custom
edit pages. The two parameters only work when the page does not exist yet.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Inputbox extension (search, create) operational


body:
Also, Missingsch is _not_ considered to be a dialect of Low Saxon.
Rather, it is a dialect of German with some Low Saxon traits. Please
see Ron's earlier message, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missingsch

Mark

On 03/07/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Servien, at this point you have gone beyond even a distortion of
> reality to pure fantasy. Speech varieties cannot develop separately if
> they're spoken 4km apart from one another (an example I gave earlier
> in the thread), unless there's a huge geographical barrier between
> them.
>
> Low Saxon is a dialect continuum. This means that things change
> gradually. There is no "oops, suddenly I crossed the national border,
> now I can't understand what people say!"
>
> It's more like "hmm, I can't understand the people in this town as
> well as the last, but almost as much..." and a little bit less and
> less until eventually "I don't understand the people in this town at
> all", but certainly there is no division along national borders like
> you're trying to say.
>
> Mark
>
> On 03/07/05, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Mark,
> >
> > It is not a "linguistic constructed world" as you call it because I
> > don't plan on constructing a common language to be used on nds-nl.
> > Everyone will be free to use his or her own dialect.
> >
> > You're correct by saying Dutch-Low Saxon speakers can mostly
> > understand each other, because Dutch-Low Saxon tends more towards
> > Dutch and German-Low Saxon tends way more towards German (as suggested
> > in the name) in fact the Low Saxon used isn't even Low Saxon, it's
> > Missingsch.
> >
> > It is not preposterous to split up the Low Saxon by border, if people
> > in the Netherlands understand the German-Low Saxon better they're
> > welcome to go there, but I dought that they in fact will understand
> > the German-Low Saxon version, since ALL Dutch-Low Saxon dialect use an
> > orthography based on Dutch and mostly use words from Dutch. Of course
> > you can't always understand one another like some Twents words won't
> > be used in Stellingwarfs etc. but this problem is smaller on the Dutch
> > side.
> >
> > The two languages on either sides of the border have evolved
> > differently as result of Dutch and German influences, the Wikipedia
> > isn't actually in "Low Saxon" it's also called "Plattdeutsch" refering
> > only to the German-Low Saxon dialects, thus not including Dutch, which
> > you can see because they're not mutually understandable even if you
> > change the orthography. That's why I want to create a Dutch-Low Saxon
> > Wikipedia.
> >
> > There are more dialects in the Netherlands than only Stellingwarfs and
> > Grunnings, like Twents, Sallaands and Veluws etc. the people who live
> > on the Veluwe understand Grunnings Twents and Stellingwarfs mostly and
> > vice versa, this isn't the case with the Low Saxon-German dialects.
> > (With a few exceptions along the borderlines.)
> >
> > You said: "German and Dutch aren't really mutually comprehensible when
> > spoken, but when written you can get at least the gist of what the
> > other person is saying."
> >
> > You're half right, if German and Dutch LS-dialects are writting down
> > they still wouldn't be able to understand each other even if they had
> > a common orthography because on the other side of the border they use
> > a lot of German words, if you read on the website, there is even a
> > category saying if they don't know the LS word they should use German,
> > and this happens a lot, and makes it incomprehensible for Dutch-LS
> > speakers if don't didn't study German! (As result most Dutch-LS users
> > use the Dutch version.
> >
> > Servien Ilaino
> >
> > 2005/7/3, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > Hi Servien,
> > >
> > > There is a major fallacy in your argument.
> > >
> > > That is that you are saying "...is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon..."
> > >
> > > But there is no absolute division of dialects.
> > >
> > > In your artificial linguistic constructed world you'd like everybody
> > > to believe in, all Dutch speakers of Low Saxon can understand one
> > > another and speak identically, and all German Low Saxon speakers can
> > > understand one another and speak identically, yet German Low Saxon
> > > speakers and Dutch Low Saxon speakers can't understand one another.
> > >
> > > But this is not the case. The fact of the matter is, Low Saxon itself
> > > is a dialect continuum. A man from one side of the Dutch-German border
> > > can perfectly understand the Nedersaksisch of a man from the other.
> > > Yet you would split them into "Dutch Low Saxon" and "German Low Saxon"
> > > categories. This is preposterous.
> > >
> > > Another huge problem with the current Low Saxon Wikipedia is that it
> > > seems it's written in Missingsch rather than "real" Low Saxon. I would
> > > like to find out more about this particular issue, though.
> > >
> > > Wouter has said before that people on opposite sides of the border can
> > > understand each other well enough, but that a Pommersch speaker can't
> > > understand a speaker of t Grunnings, and for this reason Germany and
> > > the Netherlands need different Wikipedias based on nation for Platt,
> > > rather than on actual solid linguistic distinctions.
> > >
> > > Obviously, a speaker of Pommersch can't understand a speaker of
> > > Grunnings, but a speaker of Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs should be
> > > able to have a conversation with few difficulties.
> > >
> > > Also, it is a common linguistic principle that intelligibility is
> > > greatly increased in the written word. I could not, for my life,
> > > understand Derek Ross if he told me about Scotland in Scots, yet if he
> > > wrote it down I would be able to understand it at a good level. A
> > > speaker of Navajo and a speaker of Western Apache can only understand
> > > each other a little bit, but the written word is almost completely
> > > mutually comprehensible. German and Dutch aren't really mutually
> > > comprehensible when spoken, but when written you can get at least the
> > > gist of what the other person is saying.
> > >
> > > Recently, somebody filed a request on the requests for new languages
> > > page for a Triestin Wikipedia. Almost the whole world considers
> > > Triestin to be a dialect of Venet, yet this person and his supporters
> > > consider it to be a different language.
> > >
> > > So I asked for a sample from two independent sources. The samples were
> > > nearly identical. I posted them, and he said "Well, I would translate
> > > it this way" even though both of my translations were provided by
> > > native speakers. His "alternative" translation was still nearly
> > > identical, and those differences that WERE added could be explained as
> > > purposeful linguistic manipulations to make it more different from
> > > Venet. (Similarly, Bokm?l and Nynorsk have various acceptable variant
> > > forms. In many cases, there are forms in Bokm?l which are identical to
> > > forms in Nynorsk. Often, people [especially Nynorsk-users]
> > > purposefully avoid forms similar to Bokm?l to make their writing more
> > > distinctly Nynorsk)
> > >
> > > The main problem is how to solve a dialect continuum. Creating
> > > separate Wikipedias based on national borders is just ignoring the
> > > problem. Oostfreesk speakers and Pommersch speakers will still not be
> > > able to understand each other. Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs speakers
> > > will still be able to understand each other. Teh world will keep on
> > > turning. And we will have side-stepped the problem rather than
> > > attempting to look for a workable solution.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On 03/07/05, Servien Ilaino <nl2b at europe.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi Mark,
> > > >
> > > > It's quite ununderstandable, it's not just the orthography, but in Germany
> > > > they use different words so you have to know that dialect to understand it.
> > > > I can understand the first sentence, but the second sentence is very hard to
> > > > understand, the first part of this sentence is understandable as well, at
> > > > "veet nu Bescheed" it's completely ununderstandable for any Low Saxon
> > > > speaker in the Netherlands: "Man de Bezeukers vun de Lezung miet Hartmut
> > > > Cyriacks un Peter Niszen veet nu Bescheed euver den plattduutschen Harry
> > > > Potter. De Kulturvereen "PEP" un de Stadtbeukerie Kelinghuzen harrn de
> > > > baaiden Plattmakers inlaodt, un dat veer en heel gode Idee..."
> > > >
> > > >  The first sentence of that text is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon: "Wie
> > > > weet nog wat en teuvernaor is? Dat et Platduutse woord deurveur "Sauwberer"
> > > > is, bin de meeste minsen waorschynlik al vergeten. (Plattdeutsch: "Wokeen
> > > > veet noch, vat en Teuverer is? Dut ole plattduutsche Wort veur "Zaauberer"
> > > > hebbt de mehrsten Luud maaist vergeten.")
> > > >
> > > > Hope you get my point now...
> > > >
> > > > Servien Ilaino
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: "Mark Williamson"
> > > > To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> > > > Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 17:00:59 -0700
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Hi Servien,
> > > > >
> > > > > Please check out
> > > > >
> > > > http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=HP_op_Platt&variant=ks-de
> > > > > and tell me what you think of the conversion.
> > > > >
> > > > > It's obviously not perfect but I'm still working on it.
> > > > >
> > > > > Any tips for improvements (ie, specific spelling errors) are welcome.
> > > > >
> > > > > Mark
> > > > >
> > > > > On 02/07/05, Servien Ilaino wrote:
> > > > > > Sorry it's suppose to be
> > > > > >
> > > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > > From: "Servien Ilaino"
> > > > > > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> > > > > > Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:11:47 -0500
> > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Hi,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made my
> > > > > > own
> > > > > > > mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but
> > > > > > anyway...
> > > > > > > for people who like to check it out here is the link:
> > > > > > > http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some comments.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but how
> > > > > > do
> > > > > > > you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ": and ::
> > > > > > and
> > > > > > > :::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of understand
> > > > > > it
> > > > > > > because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Servien Ilaino!
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > --
> > > > > > >
> > > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > > > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > > > > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > >
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > >
> > > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > > > > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> > > > > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> > > > > POSSIT MATERIARI
> > > > > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > >  --
> > > >
> > > > ___________________________________________________________
> > > > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> > > >  http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup
> > >
> > > --
> > > SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> > > QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> > > POSSIT MATERIARI
> > > ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Muke Tever

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] en.wiktionary.org temporarily
	broken

body:
Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic,
>> one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common)
>> is to find what the correct spelling of a word is.  If there is not
>> "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary
>> is useless for this.
>
> Only as useless as a paper dictionary already is.

Ehehe :)  At least in a paper dictionary you are given a whole page of
entries at once, and can skim them.  On wiktionary you either get the
full, single-article view or the empty index view which gives no indication
a spelling might belong to the word one has in mind.

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

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


from_name: Chris Hittinger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Import Database to mediawiki

body:
Hi,

i tried to import a database with some technical information
to a mediawiki 1.4.4.

To do that, i imported the data to the cur-Table through
a insert-Statement and looked, what happened.

The new pages appeared on the page with the
uncategorized articles.

As soon as i opened the articles to edit them,
i couldn?t apply categories. The
link simply didn?t appear on the changed page.

On the web i found a script to import a usemod database,
but this doesn?t suit my needs.

Has anybody had a similar problem or has a piece of code,
which i could use?

PHP, Perl or something else.

sincerly
chris


body:
On 03/07/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not
> abusing the tools long ago...

There's a difference?

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Live 8 and the In the news box

body:
On 02/07/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> I think that the inthenews box in general is in a state of, well, problems.
> In the past week or two theres been a couple of copyvios on there - One
> blatant copyvio, Ahmedinezhad.jpg, was on there for three days and added
> back again after being taken off. Theres also possibly a bit of bias to US
> events there, too - Often news only relevant to the US is on there, which
> isn't 'big news' to the rest of the world at all.
>
> On top of that, its occasionally slow to be updated.

Well, it's been a bit rubbish ever since it was protected - a
necessary evil, of course. The US bias is noticeable, and reflects
poorly on Wikipedia.

A pity there can't be some sort of template transclusion from Wikinews
- that site's much more on the ball.

I suppose the only solution is more admins giving it TLC. So c'mon guys :-)

Dan


body:
On 03/07/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/2/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > To Rob - it's not turning the other cheek. Trolls only post to get a
> > reaction - the fundamental truth is that it's pure attention seeking,
> > how ever it's dressed up on the surface.
> >
> > Ignore them - totally - and they don't get they want, they very
> > rapidly get bored, and bugger off :-)
> >
> >
> > Dan
>
> Keep in mind, however, that this is probably the rudest possible thing
> you can do.  It's really important to apply this only to the very
> worst of trolls.
>

I *really * don't care about pissing off trolls, minor or major. We're
here to write an encyclopaedia, nothing more.

Dan

PS Apols to Michael, who's going to get this twice - I keep hitting
reply, instead of reply to all. D'oh.


from_name: Berteun Damman

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX markup: \stackrel and \mathop

body:
Hello,

I hope this is the correct mailing list to send a bug report and a
feature request.

I was trying to make a \stackrel{\rm def}{=} definition in the TeX
markup. The stackrel command seems to be disallowed however; there's
also the TeX macro \buildrel, namely {\buildrel\rm def \over =}, but
this one isn't allowed either. Ideally stackrel would be supported in
the next version. But, while I tried to create workarounds I stumbled
on some strange behaviour.

A work around I imagened would be using some form of nested \atops,
but this is quite ugly, another form is matrices, but this is quite
ugly too, and requires at least two rows. A third trick would be
{}^{?}_{\rm def} -- ugly too.

A fourth trick is to take advantage of the way sub and supscripts are
rendered for operators, like \sum_{i = 1}^{N}, these are put below and
above the operator, when rendered as a display. And normally, it
seems, this is done, for example \lim_{x \to infty} places the 'lim'
on top of the x \to \infty, yet \mathop{=}^{\rm def} does not do this,
this is rendered 'inline style', that is, with 'def' being placed at
the upperright of the =. This is not the behaviour (La)TeX exhibits.

Is this a feature or a bug of texvc? I suppose support for \stackrel
would be best, because I think the other tricks / workarounds might
lead to quite nasty situations when mathml would be outputted for
example, and the editing gets unclear.

Berteun


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [Wikitech-l] Filters missing from "User contributions" page

body:
Do I see correctly that the filters from the "User Contributions"
pages have been removed?

Why?

I think this is a problem for Wikipedias which tie voting rights to
e.g. 200 contributions in the article space, such as de.wikipedia.org.

That feature was *extremely* useful, e.g. to see if someone was ever
rude on "User talk" pages before deciding about nominating them to
admin status, etc.

Will the filter be re-added?

Thanks,
nyenyec


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Chris Hittinger wrote:
> To do that, i imported the data to the cur-Table through
> a insert-Statement and looked, what happened.
>
> The new pages appeared on the page with the
> uncategorized articles.
>
> As soon as i opened the articles to edit them,
> i couldn?t apply categories. The
> link simply didn?t appear on the changed page.

Check cache. Check that you imported all fields correctly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
On Jul 2, 2005, at 7:11 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I find the network to be very pleasant. There are useful services like
> ChanServ, NickServ, SeenServ, MemoServ, good documentation, and
> there's generally someone available to help you.
>
> Now, why they changed the perfectly cromulent name "openprojects.net"
> into freenode.net, I will never understand.
>
> Erik
>

So donate your money to it.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
I dont see how this comment about Checkers, from the Department of Fun  page,
helps to build an encyclopedia:

"Play checkers at Wikipedia and reduce your stress. No editing, patrolling,
or anything else is allowed during this time!"

This is not at all what the Department of Fun was intended to be. It was a
tool to help build an encyclopedia. It was never intended as a tool to keep
people from editing, as this statement clearly asserts.

Danny


from_name: Nathan J. Yoder

body:
> Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy;
> someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so.  And
> consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.

How is a majority vote NOT consensus?

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship

body:
> No, it's supposed to work that way.  It's doing exactly what it is intended
> to do.

No, it's supposed to protect against block evasion, how is it doing
that in this case?  What purpose does it serve exactly?  Do you
realize that if someone doesn't realize that they're blocked and they
hit edit it automatically resets it?

> Why is that "obvious"?  Why on earth would you hit the edit button when you
> were banned from editing?

I already explained this a million times now, I was doing it to check
the information on the block page again and to see if I could still
get the source for a certain page (read only).  It'd also be helpful
to see when it expires.

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


from_name: Rebecca

body:
On 7/3/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no fundamental reason not to apply soft security to
> adminship.  A few technical changes which should be made to allow
> this:

That it's unnecessary, for starters. What we have now works fine.
Changing that creates a whole lot of security problems that we just
don't need - particularly with no compelling reason to change in the
first place.

> And a few social changes : If you reduce hard security, you do have to
> increase soft security.
> * It would become normal for admins who crossed a line to be
> admonished and forced to stop using admin powers for a short while,
> just as good users are sometimes blocked for a short while.
> * There would be a page for people to discuss users who shouldn't be admins.
> * If an admin were admonished, the person who nominated that admin
> should be also; people should take responsibility for their
> sponsorships

What purpose does this serve? It builds adminship up into some sort of
huge thing that it isn't. If you generally behave yourself and make a
few good edits, you become an admin. It really isn't very hard. It
also isn't very helpful to continually hang an axe over the head of
good users, in regard to their adminship in this case. People make
mistakes. The Open Directory Project continually hung an axe over
people - and they left as a result, in droves. Let us not make the
same mistake. If someone isn't doing something *seriously* wrong,
their only *need* to have anything to do with meta stuff at all is to
request adminship.

> One final thing I would like to stress : we take in all manner of
> people who *can't write* and, by allowing them to try for weeks and
> months, in the presence of good models, we teach them.  People who
> have never been good writers become skilled at writing crisp, neutral,
> encyclopedic prose... even if they still can't write a decent letter
> to their parents.

Somehow I suspect this would be a lot more trouble than it's worth. If
someone is that antisocial that they're not trusted enough to become
an admin, then perhaps they should look to themselves. Wikipedia is
not group therapy.

> Ond of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more
> people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.

Where is the problem that would warrant this?

-- ambi


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is *already* written from a scientific
	POV

body:
>         # 45% believe that God created human beings pretty much in their
>           present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so
>         # 37% believe that human beings have developed over millions of
>           years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided the
>           process.
>
> That's 82%, which I call "most".

#2 is not the same as a belief in creation science.  Plenty of people
believe that God helped guide evolution in the same sense that God
helps guide everything else, but that's not the same as creation
science.   I agree with alphax, the way that you're interpreting these
statistics is a bit off.

>         When asked by name whether they believe in or lean more towards
>         the "theory of creationism" or the "theory of evolution", 57%
>         indicated creationism, 33% indicated evolution, and 10%
>         responded "not sure."
>
> Again, 57% I call "most".

57% is just a simple majority, it would be misleading to refer to it
as most.  You're also pulling more meaning out of that statistic than
there is.  That question is asking which one they lean more towards,
which is different from accepting a belief wholesale.  It's clear from
the statistic you cited before that the majority aren't accepting
creation science wholesale.

> Nathan, may I suggest you reply to the list only, and not to people
> privately? It can be seen as intrusive.

People have been doing that to me, so  I've just been hitting 'reply
all' since it's easier as well.  I'll just do it directly to the list
then.

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


body:
>> It also isn't very helpful to continually hang an axe over the head
>> of good users, in regard to their adminship in this case.

> I don't think my proposal is advocating anything of the sort, unless you
> would refer to the current threat of being blocked for inappropriate
> behaviour as "hanging an axe over their head" too.

She considers any threat to her adminship extreme, even if it's
perfectly justified.  If adminship really isn't that big of a deal,
then a hanging axe shouldn't be a big deal either since they'd only be
losing something that doesn't matter much.  Her own logic works
against her.  Admins are a dime a dozen really and Wikipedia isn't
going to fall apart even if Wikipedia suddenly lost half its admins.

I agree with the approach of making the admin position even less of a
big deal, since that would make it less abuse prone due to the
psychological aspect of having 'special powers' being lessened and it
would allow for more accountability since being on equal grounding
means people are more likely to report and follow through with abuse.

>> The Open Directory Project continually hung an axe over people - and
>> they left as a result, in droves. Let us not make the same mistake.
>
> I suppose we're doing the other extreme (high bar for entry to adminship
> and even higher bar for getting "axed out" of adminship) - and we have
> rather few good admins as a result (500 out of 25500, less than 2%,
> isn't very much for something that's supposedly "no big deal"). That's
> the mistake on the other side of the spectrum...

Yeah and the opposite action is horrible.  The bar for getting removed
most certainly should not be lower than what it took to get in and it
shouldn't be held to a lower standard than users.  It really doesn't
make the slightest bit of sense to do that and only serves to remove
accountability for admins.

I have to wonder, why does ambi think that admins are so valuable that
it will matter if we lose some (aside from the obvious hidden motive)?
No one will care and Wikipedia will continue functioning as normal
because Wikipedia thrives mostly because of what non-admins do.

Her analogy to ODP is completely false.  With ODP, you need special
privileges just to edit.  That was the issue, that the editors
themselves were held to high standards.  In this case, it's just the
admins.

Even with admin status removed, you're still fully capable of edits,
which is the primary purpose of Wikipedia.  Really, if you're judging
your importance in terms of being an admin instead of being a normal
editor, then you really shouldn't be on Wikipedia as you're obviously
viewing it in terms of power [tripping] rather than useful
contributions.  What's worse is that they'll try to rack up tons of
minor edits in attempt to make themselves seem valuable, when it's
really more of an image thing than anything else.

And yeah, being only 2% does make it a big deal.

Remove the importantance and emphasis on the power aspect of being an
admin and you can only help Wikipedia.

----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
----------------------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX not working

body:
Timwi wrote:
> However, I get the same behaviour as if TeX was turned off
> ("<math>1+1=2<math>" in the wiki page).

Parser cache or browser cache.

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

body:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=FJADOVAFD&preload=Stub&action=edit

This is really nice :)
Saves a lot of time when adding similar articles.
Would it be feasible to allow something like preload=de:Berlin to get
articles from other languages, or even other Wikimedia projects?

> loads the text of [[stub]] into the new page with the bogus title.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=FJADOVAFD&editintro=Stub&action=edit
>
> gives you a modified introduction, which is useful when creating custom
> edit pages. The two parameters only work when the page does not exist yet.

This only shows when the article doesn't exist yet. Is that a feature?


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Commons-l] Re: Licensing information transcluded from the Commons

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> Kate Turner has added code to MediaWiki to load licensing information
> directly from the Commons when viewing a local image description page.
>
> e.g., http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Aubrey_Beardsley_1.jpg

Other than the small hidden sentence "This file is a shared upload and
may be used by other projects.", there seems to be no indication that
the image is actually on a different server. As a consequence, I fear a
lot of non-savvy users will hit "edit" and then be confused because the
edit box is empty...


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Read what the homeopaths are writing

body:
> The "scientific" formulation of "life helps like," as I've heard it,
> is simply "symptoms to diseases are actually signs of the immune
> system attempting to work. Rather than stifle them, one should
> encourage them." So, for example, when you have a cold, rather than
> take medicines to force your runny nose to stop running, one should
> take things which encourage the nose to run more: the running is a
> sign of the nose trying to purge out whatever you caught, and blocking
> it up only prolongs the disease period itself.
>
> Now I'm not saying that's correct at all as a medical model but
> formulated *as such* you can see why it was not dismissed as total
> quackery by my professors. Of course the diluted aspect is clearly
> pure unscientific nonsense.

Yes, I see. I suppose that's a fairly typical
introduction to homeopathy. It sounds sort of
plausible and somewhat interesting. Here's a
sample pro-homeopathy article that starts like
this:

http://www.betterhealthchannel.com.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Homeopathy?OpenDocument

"Homoeopathic medicine deliberately mimics or provokes the symptoms of a
patient's disease to strengthen the body's ability to heal itself."

Sounds plausible but read a bit further down
and see the actual basis of the method:

"Modern homoeopathy was founded in the 18th Century by a German physician,
Dr Samuel Hahnemann. He believed that:

* Disease stemmed from a disturbance to the energy field of the body,
which he called the 'vital force'.

* The best cure could be achieved by using 'energised' medicine.

* As the size of the dose decreased, the potency of the substance increased."

Anyone familiar with science or medicine should
be raising eyebrows at this point - but the best
is yet to come.

"These medicines then undergo a progressive series of dilutions, which
includes shaking the bottle between each dilution.
...
After the twelfth dilution, the homoeopathic medicine goes beyond what is
called 'Avogadro's limit' and there is no discernible trace of the
original substance left in the medicine."

Note that this is from a *pro-homeopathy* article.
They freely admit that the purported medicine is
completely diluted out of the solution. They claim
that it works anyway:

"Although conventional scientific methods cannot explain how they work,
many clinical trials have found homoeopathic medicines to be effective in
treating a range of disorders."

Science can indeed not explain how something like
that would work. If someone did prove it to work
it would be a huge development in physics, chemistry
and medicine. A Nobel prize would be guaranteed.

But it hasn't been proven to work, despite their
claim to the contrary. In *properly conducted*
clinical trials it fails every time. But in studies
conducted by homeopaths it always seems to work
- and how could it fail to work with these kinds
of criteria:

"Sometimes, symptoms get worse before they get better. This may be a sign
that the medicine is working, and that the body is strengthening its
efforts to fight the disease..."

So, if you get better it's working and if you get
worse, well, it's probably working anyhow.

And look at these homeopaths' attitude to boring
old conventional medicine:

"According to the homoeopathic philosophy, conventional drugs that
suppress symptoms are only driving the disease deeper into the body."

Of course they have the requisite disclaimers about
consulting with your regular doctor but they're still
giving out harmful medical advice.

- - -

But don't take my word for it. Read this homeopathy
page for yourself (it's short) and then tell me if
there's still doubt in your mind as to the pseudoscientific
nature of the discipline and whether you think it is
reasonable for an encyclop?dia to entertain such doubts
in its category system.

Regards,
Haukur

P.S. Full disclosure, I came upon this article from
http://www.randi.org/jr/070105quality.html#1


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/3/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal,
> >becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all
> >trustworthy users.
> >
> >Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not
> >abusing the tools long ago...
> Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy;
> someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so.  And
> consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.

Consensus is a fantastic method for governance when the decision is
something with directly effects everyone... it is perhaps the only
method for governance where it is possible to act without ethical
compromises.

However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction
is less harmful than action.

In the case of those adminships, there was no consensus to admin but
there was also no consensus to fail to admin. Because adminship is no
big deal, and because the natural state of a longtime and trustworthy
user should be as an admin, it would be reasonable to argue that the
correct result of a no consensus adminship should be adminning.

The adminships I cited were not just random failures: In each of the
cited the reasons given by the oppose were cited by a fair number of
the supporters as not reasons to oppose. In each of the cases the
support community contained a group of wikipedians at least as well
respected and as experienced as users in the opposed camp.

By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice
to the Wikipedia community. Short of actually being adminned, these
users will have no way of proving themselves. (that much is clear, at
least one of them had a failed prior adminship due to real issues and
put in an additional year of hard work before someone renominated).

The complex popularity game that it takes to become an admin turns
adminship into something it should not be, a big deal... and it is our
duty to tack action to fix that.