from_name: Anthere

body:
Hello again "Royal We".

I will have only one comment.

Last month, you have said I was a vandal. You have
said my english level was not enough to grant me
access here.

For this full month, I have *avoided* doing edits on
the gaia articles, except substantially on the
[[Endosymbiotic hypothesis]] and except for a couple
of minor edits to related articles. In short, to avoid
problems with *you*, I have not even taken the time to
make something proper with the gaia theory (article),
left in pieces since your last outburst.

The only benefit I got from this precaution of mine is
that today, you say

- I am trolling
- I am harassing you
- my english should get me out of here
- I must be banned.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Gaia&action=history

with the comment : "Sigh. I give. This is officially a
VANDALISM alert. Anthere keeps shoving science facts
into this article on a Greek goddess. Please ban her."

Consequently, I set a ban page for me on my user page.
You are free to add any substantial babble to it.

Please, don't put anything on my talk page from now
on. This is an area you are not welcome any more.

------

As for Brion questions, I will see tomorrow, because
it is too late.

-------

--- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We have another problem with Anthere and here
> obsession
> with all the Gaia articles.  Despite repeated
> clarifications, she keeps causing problems.  She has
> invented her own private naming system that no
> scientist in
> the world uses, and is insisting on naming Wikipedia
> articles in this way.
>
> I and others have tried to work with her before, but
> she
> refused to discuss anything; she again is just using
> reversions.  No talk or discussion, mind you. Just
> reverts.
> And worst of all, Anthere has no regard for how
> thousands
> of other English speakers and scientists use these
> terms.
>
> Let me crystal clear: English speakers DO NOT use
> the
> bizarre terminology that she uses.  She should not
> be
> allowed to rewrite Wikipedia entries to suit her
> peculiar
> desired.
>
> English speakers do NOT use the terminolgy she uses,
> plain
> and simple.  I have read books on this subject,
> articles on
> the subject, and followed Google links to a huge
> number of
> websites. The result is always the same: She doesn't
> know
> she is talking about.
>
> This isn't about science, mind you. It isn't about
> NPOV. It
> s about the fact that no one uses Anthere's
> perculiar
> terminology.  This isn't the French Wikipedia, its
> the
> English one. If she doesn't like, she can go
> elsewhere. But
> her reversions, and your refusal to even admit that
> English
> speakers *might* be misled by your private
> terminology only
> proves that she is not a team player.
>
> I am tired of her trolling.
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> __________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] More people need server access

body:
tarquin wrote:
>> Thomas Corell wrote:
>>
>>> Well, and currently there are so many with CVS but too few (23 vs 1)
>>> checking and installing all those things.
 >
> I seems we need some of the 23 people with CVS access to also have
> server access.
>
> Could Jimbo & other people who currently have access suggest who they'd
> like from the current list of CVS-people?
> Could people volunteer themselves?

A good way before asking for volunteers could be a to make clear what
different possibilities exists on the server(s).

It's nearly like these 'developer' states:
- Developer on Sourceforge
- Developer on spezific Wikipedia

Nealy nowhere you can get infos about that, instead of e.g. how to get
Administrator / Sysop.
Not everybody ( I know at least someone how does *grin innocently at some
mirror* )likes to volunteer without knowing what is possible and what is
expected.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch & CVS

body:
Hi,

in response to Brion Vibber's reply to my posting to the wrong mailing
list (apologies), I'm attaching here a patch of what I think fixes the
bug that five apostrophes produce invalid HTML.

This takes care of quite a lot of weird cases and nestings. However, of
course I'm aware that it is not perfect. I can construct cases where it
will still fail, but those are cases that I don't think will ever
actually come up in an encyclopedia article (or if they do, the author
was feeling fancy and deserves to be shot ;-) ).

Here's the patch:

--- includes/OutputPage-old.php	Sun Jun 29 04:06:12 2003
+++ includes/OutputPage.php	Sat Jun 28 19:04:42 2003
@@ -675,6 +675,15 @@

 	/* private */ function doQuotes( $text )
 	{
+		/* prevent invalid HTML (...) */
+		$text = preg_replace( "/'''''(.+)'''(.*)''/mU", "\$1\$2", $text );
+		$text = preg_replace( "/'''''(.+)''(.+)'''/mU", "\$1\$2", $text );
+		$text = preg_replace( "/'''(.*[^'])''([^'].*)'''''/mU", "\$1\$2", $text );
+		$text = preg_replace( "/''(.+)'''(.+)'''''/mU", "\$1\$2", $text );
+
+		$text = preg_replace( "/(.*)'''(.+)'''(.*<\\/strong>)/mU", "\$1\$2\$3", $text );
+		$text = preg_replace( "/(.*)''(.+)''(.*<\\/em>)/mU", "\$1\$2\$3", $text );
+
 		$text = preg_replace( "/'''(.+)'''/mU", "\$1", $text );
 		$text = preg_replace( "/''(.+)''/mU", "\$1", $text );
 		return $text;

How do you usually handle casual programmer contributions? Are they
usually posted to this mailing list? Or do you have a BugZilla
installation somewhere where I should upload this as a patch? Or is
there an actual chance I might get write access to the repository?

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Magnus-

some further thoughts&comments on the current implementation:

1) I think the "Categories:" link at the top should only show up on pages
that actually have categories assigned to them. Otherwise it's slightly
confusing to click the link and end up with a list of categories which
have no relationship to the current article (and it also shows up somewhat
annoyingly on special pages). If you want a generally available "List of
categories", that seems to be a job for a special page.

2) I'm not sure the "|" is a good category separator. When I see

        Categories: Biology | Medicine | Health

This suggests to me a kind of hierarchy, whereas

        Categories: Biology, Medicine, Health

seems to indicate better that it is a list of items that do not
necessarily have a relationship to each other.

3) The categories are not currently displayed in the Cologne Blue skin.
Since you seem to like it, I thought I'd point that out ;-)

Once we have this set up, we'll have to think long and hard about related
policies. What to put on category pages? Should parent categories be
linked when child categories are already linked? Should we replace the
current Main Page navigation with a category-based one? Should currently
hand-maintained pages like "Needing attention", "Votes for deletion", "Fix
a stub" be automated using categories? (Maybe we need MetaCategories?)
etc. etc. Boy, this is gonna be fun ;-)

> Maybe that could be done "on-the-fly", when showing the edit page?

Yes, that might be worth doing. I suggest waiting with the implementation
until it becomes a real problem, though. Of course if it's all optional, I
have no complaints about having it implemented right away. :-)

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's follow Wikipedia rules for the Gaia articles

body:
Let me say this one more time. Wikipedia has simple
coventions for disambiguation: We have Disambiguation
pages. We also have "See also" links at the bottom of most
articles.  Further, this is the *English* Wikipedia, and we
need to us enaming conventions and spellings that most
English speakers are familiar with, and like to use. What
about this is so difficult to grasp?

For as long as I have been on Wikipedia, we all have had to
follow the same rules. For instance, Wikipedia does NOT
break apart every topic into topic-fragments by author. Let
me give you an example:

We DO NOT have
  Evolution (Gould)
  Evolution (Dawkins)
  Evolution (Darwin)
  Evolution (Mayr)
  and...Evolution!

We DO NOT have:
  Quantum Mechanics (Heisenberg)
  Quantum Mechanics (Schr?dinger)
  Quantum Mechanics (Dirac)
  and...Quantum Mechanics!

We DO NOT have:
  Relativity (classical)
  Relativity (Einstein)
  Relativity (Superstring extension)
  Relativity (Supersymmetry extension)
  and...Relativity

So why do we now have:
  Gaia theory
  Gaia hypothesis
  Gaia (goddess)...including BIOLOGY theories?!?!
  Gaia theory (Biology)

Anthere's obsession with having more and more articles on
the same topic is unjustifiable, confusing, and misleading.
She also is using a naming terminology that English
speakers DO NOT use. Jimbo Wales and others have already
made clear that our primary purpose here is to make this
project accessible and clear to an English speaking
audience.  The terms we use are extremely imporant,
otherwise people looking for one topic could very well miss
much of what we have to offer on it.

Chopping up articles like Anthere does is confusing to the
reader. Someone will read one article, and think that they
have read what they need to on the subject...all the while
mising the other critical information on the other pages.
(And let's be real, most people DO NOT follow most links.
They follow a few links, that's all.)

Anthere's method prevents future edits from being useful.
Someone new will come along, and find one or two of her
Gaia articles; they might want to contribute, and make an
addition or an edit. Sounds good...but they probably will
only make the edit to one part of the whole; what about all
the other articles on the same topic?

And it gets worse. Many scientists have written on the Gaia
theory, not just the two that Anthere is dwelling on.  Will
she create even more, such as [[Gaia theory (Dawkins)]]?
If not, why?  She already is doing so now...if we follow
her convention, we will have to do so for many more
articles.  And why is her naming convention being defended
for this one topic only, but rejected for other topics?

Again, this is not about content or NPOV. Anthere should
not be jamming tiny bits of an entire subject into four
separate articles.

Worst of all, the primary page [[Gaia theory]] is very
misleading...because Anthere refuses to let us discuss gaia
theory here!  Instead, she focuses on pre-gaia theory
theology and mysticism, and on radical left-wing politics!
She forces any real discussion of Gaia theory into
sub-pages. That is bizarre. I don't know what her college
is like, but among *English* speakers, the phrase "Gaia
theory" refers exclusively to a scientific thoery.

We English speakers to use the phrase "Gaia theory" to
refer to biological theories by Lovelock, Margulis, et. al.
Only on the rarest of occasions does anyone use it to refer
to anything else. Anthere's demands for namin conventions
are totally backwards. It is the [[Gaia theory]] article
which should be about the Gaia biological theories by
Lovelock, Margulis. If someone wants to read about
Anthere's other interests, such as quasi-Gaian mystial
theories of other people from previous decades and
centuries, that should be on some other page such as "Gaia
theory (precedents)".  If someone wants to read about
radical left-wing political groups, that should not be here
either, but rather in another article.

This article should be about biology, because most English
speakers who want to discuss this subject will use this
name. What about this is so unreasonable? All I am asking
is that we follow the same rules as we follow everywhere
else.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
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from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] add Textbook-l to gmane.org and rename

body:
Textbook-l is not yet listed on gmane.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

If no objections I will ask gmane to add Textbook-l

Now all wikipedia lists are using the gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia*
hierarchy.

Whit the new "wikimedia" name i propose to use the gmane.org.wikimedia.*
hierarchy for all wikimedia lists.

So for Textbook-l gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook

The other lists can become like this;
gmane.org.wikimedia.wikipedia.technical

(but this move will have to wait until the winter afther a software change
at gmane.org)

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


body:
--- Royal We <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So why do we now have:
>   Gaia theory
>   Gaia hypothesis
>   Gaia (goddess)...including BIOLOGY theories?!?!
>   Gaia theory (Biology)

Wrong.
We do not have Gaia (goddess).
We have Gaia.

As such, it does not necessarily imply it is about the
goddess only. And since the word Gaia is evocating the
hypothesis to more and more "english speakers" as
compared to the goddess, it is perfectly relevant to
introduce the topic here

> Anthere's obsession with having more and more
> articles on
> the same topic is unjustifiable, confusing, and
> misleading.

The Gaia article was set on the

There have been no new articles on the topic since the
[[Daisy World]]. You are dreaming them.

> She also is using a naming terminology that English
> speakers DO NOT use. Jimbo Wales and others have
> already
> made clear that our primary purpose here is to make
> this
> project accessible and clear to an English speaking
> audience.  The terms we use are extremely imporant,
> otherwise people looking for one topic could very
> well miss
> much of what we have to offer on it.

Yes. You are right. I entirely made up the "Gaia
Hypothesis" name. All the 12500 references to that
name on google

http://www.google.fr/search?as_q=&num=10&hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Recherche+Google&as_epq=Gaia+Hypothesis&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=

I made up myself
I can be very prolific.

> Chopping up articles like Anthere does is confusing
> to the
> reader. Someone will read one article, and think
> that they
> have read what they need to on the subject...all the
> while
> mising the other critical information on the other
> pages.
> (And let's be real, most people DO NOT follow most
> links.
> They follow a few links, that's all.)

I think this is the very principle of Wikipedia to
link articles between them, rather than stuffing all
of a topic in one and unique article.
Small articles with a focus help understanding, while
huge and dispersed ones discourage people.

> Anthere's method prevents future edits from being
> useful.
> Someone new will come along, and find one or two of
> her
> Gaia articles; they might want to contribute, and
> make an
> addition or an edit. Sounds good...but they probably
> will
> only make the edit to one part of the whole; what
> about all
> the other articles on the same topic?

I think someone really interested in the topic, enough
to add information to it, will probably make the
effort to read the huge number of three articles.

> And it gets worse. Many scientists have written on
> the Gaia
> theory, not just the two that Anthere is dwelling
> on.  Will
> she create even more, such as [[Gaia theory
> (Dawkins)]]?
> If not, why?  She already is doing so now...if we
> follow
> her convention, we will have to do so for many more
> articles.  And why is her naming convention being
> defended
> for this one topic only, but rejected for other
> topics?

This comment is out of topic. The Gaia theory
(biology) is there to support all theories. Not only
Margulis one. I do not intend to break the topic into
pieces. Though, I certainly will make sure to put
Margulis other theories in other articles, as it make
sense.
And I will add that since an article is multiauthored,
I find pleasant to receive the reproach *my* article
is not complete on the topic. Excuse me there.

> Again, this is not about content or NPOV. Anthere
> should
> not be jamming tiny bits of an entire subject into
> four
> separate articles.

3.
But maybe are you right, and no article should be cut
into pieces until they are at least 32 ko.

> Worst of all, the primary page [[Gaia theory]] is
> very
> misleading...because Anthere refuses to let us
> discuss gaia
> theory here!

Excuse me ? When exactly did I prevented you to "add"
things there ???? As history will show anyway, your
only edits on this page have consisted in *removing*
information.

Instead, she focuses on pre-gaia
> theory
> theology and mysticism, and on radical left-wing
> politics!
> She forces any real discussion of Gaia theory into
> sub-pages. That is bizarre. I don't know what her
> college
> is like, but among *English* speakers, the phrase
> "Gaia
> theory" refers exclusively to a scientific thoery.

Here is where you are uncovering you.
For the past month, Royal We has been trying to remove
anything *not* about science on the topic.
His intent in bugging me is only that I prevent him
from plainly *removing* non science stuff. In short,
he is trying to force Wikipedia on a full science
view, just as he has been trying to do on the
knowledge article.

I have no problem with NPVO (I am glad he mentions
it), but he certainly has.

> We English speakers to use the phrase "Gaia theory"
> to
> refer to biological theories by Lovelock, Margulis,
> et. al.
> Only on the rarest of occasions does anyone use it
> to refer
> to anything else. Anthere's demands for namin
> conventions
> are totally backwards. It is the [[Gaia theory]]
> article
> which should be about the Gaia biological theories
> by
> Lovelock, Margulis. If someone wants to read about
> Anthere's other interests, such as quasi-Gaian
> mystial
> theories of other people from previous decades and
> centuries, that should be on some other page such as
> "Gaia
> theory (precedents)".  If someone wants to read
> about
> radical left-wing political groups, that should not
> be here
> either, but rather in another article.

And hopefully, you will then be able to remove then
entirely later on. Who are you trying to convince here
?

> This article should be about biology, because most
> English
> speakers who want to discuss this subject will use
> this
> name. What about this is so unreasonable? All I am
> asking
> is that we follow the same rules as we follow
> everywhere
> else.
>
> Robert (RK)

All you are asking is that you remain the only author
of these articles, and can remove everything that does
not suit your pov. That is very sad.
This is what you have started to do here

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Gaia_theory&diff=1039281&oldid=1038950

But I will let you do it entirely and remove
everything non scientific on the topic. The english
wikipedia is not only about science.

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] reply to Brion

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Robert wrote:
> [snip]
>
> >Most English speakers use the names "Gaia theory"
> and "Gaia
> >hypothesis" interchangably.  They do make a
> distinction
> >between Lovelock's Gaia theory and Margulis's Gaia
> theory,
> >but not with the terminology she uses.
> >
> >Further, we *already* have an article on this
> subject
> >[[Gaia theory (biology)]] that discusses both
> points of
> >view in detail. Yet Anthere keeps insisting that we
> have
> >THREE articles on this same topic, in the same
> detail.
> >
> [snip]
>
> Without devolving into flames and calls for banning,
> could you please
> answer the following questions?
>
> a) What's wrong with having three articles
> (overview, specific on
> Lovelock, specific on Margulis)?
>
> and
>
> b) What terminology would you recommend, and on what
> basis?
>
>
> And Anthere, can you please answer these questions?
>
> a) What's wrong with one big article covering both
> these two specific
> versions and other variants?
>
> and
>
> b) What's the basis for the particular page titles
> you're advancing?
>
>
> That would go a long way towards sorting this out.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Historic.

There were initially 3 articles. One was specifically
about Margulis recent Theory. One about Gaia
Hypothesis (as proposed by Lovelock) and one general
article, where all the different aspects were
proposed, historical and other theories on the matter,
as well as political, mysticism and sociological
aspect.

At that point, I had basically never participated to
any of these articles, except for removing the [[Daisy
World]], and making it a stand alone article. Until
now, no one has challenged that move that I know of.

Needless to say, I did not "made" any of the original
titles as Royal We claims it, since I was not yet on
Wikipedia then.

When Royal We decided all articles should be united in
one, some merged were done, resulting in three
articles. A general one (with mostly political,
sociological...aspects), another one on pure
biological aspects (the scientific one), and the
Hypothesis was kept as it was. Unlike what Royal We
claims, I was *not* the author of these moves, nor of
the new names proposed.

When that was done, User Royal We didnot revert it,
which I supposed meant he agreed with it. That was
less than a month ago. Now, he is claiming I made the
renaming, I made the move, and he never agreed upon
these.

He is currently suggesting that we move away the
general article, to replace it with the content of the
scientific one. This is very wrong. This is wrong
because there is more to the Gaia theories than just
*science*. And there is a strong risk, that most of
the general article will be cut into parts and made
inintelligeable, just because some people consider it
is not a scientific theory, and as such, should not be
considered unless proved. Of course, it is typically a
theory difficult to prove. But, that does not mean the
theories do not exist.
And that is no reason to disperse all the
non-scientific points in other articles to keep just
the scientific point. I think that here, that is the
scientism of User Royal We that makes him try to push
away all non-scientific points away. This is bad.

For this reason, I think keeping the scientific
theories *apart* from other perspectives is a best
choice, to avoid mixing scientific perspectives from
others.

The second point : the most famous of all Gaia
theories is Lovelock Hypothesis. Mind you, this is
under this name I believe it is most well-known. This
is not a crazy suggestion of mine to call it that way.
This is what can be read in articles on the topic, as
well as in Lovelock book. Suffice it to read a bit
litterature on the topic to realise that.

I think that since it is the most famous theory, that
is in fact the one most readers will look for, when
searching information on the topic. For this reason, I
believe it is a good idea to have an article named
"Gaia Hypothesis". It is likely the name under which
they know this theory, I would say it would be
confusing to redirect them in a more general article
dealing with every aspect of scientific views of the
Gaia topics. I am just trying to avoid losing them
here.

User Royal We claim I want to put only Margulis on the
Gaia theory (biology) article. I know not where he
took that idea. There is nothing further of my mind.
This one is meant to discuss the various claims made
on the topic, influential Gaia, Gaia co-evolution,
Gaia homeorhetic, Gaia homeostatic, geophysiological
Gaia, optimizing Gaia.
To detail, from the weaker claims to the stronger
claims, which are the *scientific* points supporting
each of the way the Gaia theories have been expressed.

Of course, Lovelock Hypothesis is part of this. But
only part of it. And I fear a reader will get confused
in all the theories, while in truth, he just initially
wanted to have a clear idea of what Lovelock
Hypothesis was on the topic.

Hence, my suggestion that we keep an specific article
on the Hypothesis, rather than just redirecting to a
more complex article.

Now, I don't know what is best. Should this one be
just a short one, giving the basics and the general
one give the details, or should it be the opposite ?
This is totally open to discussion.

But, just making a redirect of the article without
initial discussion, without even keeping the last
changes made to the article, it is *not* good.

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's follow Wikipedia rules...just an add-on and correction

body:
--- Royal We <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So why do we now have:
>   Gaia theory
>   Gaia hypothesis
>   Gaia (goddess)...including BIOLOGY theories?!?!
>   Gaia theory (Biology)

Wrong.
We do not have Gaia (goddess).
We have Gaia.
As such, it does not necessarily imply it is about the
goddess only. And since the word Gaia is evocating the
hypothesis to more and more "english speakers" as
compared to the goddess, it is perfectly relevant to
introduce the topic here

> Anthere's obsession with having more and more
> articles on
> the same topic is unjustifiable, confusing, and
> misleading.

Wikipedia was stuck, so I add the info now, since you
appear to claim I am also responsible for the
existence of the [[Gaia]] article.

The Gaia article was set on the 25th of february 2002,
by The Epopt. I am not the creator of it. Unless I am
The Epopt ? And The Epopt put the initial link to the
[[Gaia Hypothesis]].

I just improved it in march. But nobody complained
about me improving it. And I don't think this is a
tribunal where I need to justify any of my edits. I
stand by it.

However, Eloquence rephrase is fine by me.

> This article should be about biology, because most
> English
> speakers who want to discuss this subject will use
> this
> name. What about this is so unreasonable? All I am
> asking
> is that we follow the same rules as we follow
> everywhere
> else.
>
> Robert (RK)

All you are asking is that you remain the only author
of these articles, and can remove everything that does
not suit your pov. That is very sad.
This is what you have started to do here
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Gaia_theory&diff=1039281&oldid=1038950
But I will let you do it entirely and remove
everything non scientific on the topic. The english
wikipedia is not only about science.

Of course, I meant to write "I will not let you do it
entirely and remove everything non scientific on the
topic"

But, of course, my poor english is responsible of my
typos. You suffer no such typos problems.

__________________________________
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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Robert wrote:

>What about this is so difficult to grasp?
>
Stop the ad hominem attacks, please.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
| Watch out that we don't develop a corps (or cabal?) of "senior figures"
| that keep tabs on suspected bad guys without others' knowing what's going
on.
| We have [[meta:List of Michael's pseudonyms]] available to all;
| any list of DW's pseudonyms should similarly be open to inspection.
| To be sure, such lists should state up front that these are /suspected/.
| (Michael's now does.)

We already do have a "Cabal" -- its made up by connected people who
communicate on exclusive mailing lists.

-Steve

PS. Adminstrative ban pages (Case files) belong on the Pedia itself -- for
precisely the same reason as I alluded to above.  I will begin a process of
formalizing these immediately.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Really copy logo in update.php?

body:
Matthias Jordan wrote:

>I just wondered whether ppl think it's a good idea to copy wiki.png to
>the installation path when calling the update script ("php4
>update.php"). IMHO it isn't. A working setup will likely have a
>customized logo that it doesn't want overwritten. IMHO only code should
>be updated.
>
a) You can set the wiki to use a different file for the logo.
b) You can put your custom logo in your work source tree.
c) You don't need to use update.php at all. I don't; I use a script that
copies individual files into all running wikis' live script directories.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Its good to hear Roberts arguments made more clearly, with less obfuscation,
as this facilitates greater communication, and communication is an important
part of language, somewhat.

I do think, that Robert misses the point, when he accuses that too much
attention is being paid to this particular subject, when on other subjects
he would tend to write verbosely. He also tends to use the scattergun
approach, when something more subtle might be far more powerful. As such,
his long arguments are hard to read -- more so than Anthere's.

All that said, I do a see some problems with the articles, As Brion keyed in
on -- why have a theory article and a hypothesis article, for example?  The
later one tends to trump the latter.  My charge to Anthere would be to unify
these articles in some way -- a disam page might work well -- but the
respective articles seem to be disjointed, not properly flowing from one to
the next, and the contexts to which they link could (like ten thousand other
WP pages ) be better linked.

Hence, in summation, I know how much Robert wants to have this be resolved.
Perhaps it could better be resolved if he cuts Anthere a little slack and
takes a week off from the Gaia stuff? Anthere may then feel more open to
make some reasonable changes -- under her own interest, rather than under
duress.  Thank you Robert for calling our attention to the matter, though
one very short email, free of accusation, would have sufficed.

-Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>We already do have a "Cabal" -- its made up by connected people who
>communicate on exclusive mailing lists.
>
Yes, exclusive unmoderated mailing lists with open web archives, an open
NNTP feed, open self-subscription, and numerous links to them from the wiki.

Shocking!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
>
>I suggest starting at
>     http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy
>which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.
>
>I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.
>
>Magnus
>
>P.S.: This time I'll try to outsmart you all; unless I hear about some real problems with this scheme in the next few days, I'm going to put this into the CVS! Be warned!! ;-)
>
I'm just glad that something is happening.  I do have some concerns
similar to those expressed by Magnus.  I'll be away for the next month,
and I'll be looking forward to see what goes wrong in my absence. :-)
I do believe that most of the real problems won't show up until the
scheme has had a chance to be tried by Wikipedians in general instead of
on test Wiki.

Eclecticology


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] California Open Source Textbook Project

body:
Here is a link to a group in CA that is working to make
open content that it can license to other states with the
goal of cutting K-12 textbook prices by 33-50%.

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

It sounds like they are creating content that they will
print up in hard copies for distribution or be the basis
for derivative hard copy works.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] An open letter

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>While I understand and sympathize to a degree with what you're saying,
>but I must point out that we are under an obligation -- strategically,
>if for no other reason -- to extend every courtesy to the bitter end.
>
>One of the things that's really helpful to me in making and defending
>these banning decisions is a _clean paper trail_.  When a good person
>has an outburst like yours -- no matter how warranted by the
>circumstance -- I can rest assured that it will be quoted back to me
>as evidence of my inconsistency because I didn't ban or reprimand
>you, when I did ban or reprimand someone else.
>
>Sure, cause and effect and "who started it" matters.  But those things
>also get lost to history, to a maze of counter-allegations.
>
>It's better when we are all courteous and kind, even in the face of
>extreme provocation.
>
>Everyone who was named as an "example" of rude behavior by "Joe
>Canuck" should examine their own actions.  Are we consistent, if we
>insist on good behavior from others, but don't insist upon it for
>ourselves?  We almost all fail in this regard from time to time --
>such is the human condition, I guess -- but we should strive for the
>best within us.
>
I very much support  an approach based on kindness and courtesy, and
even when some of us get carried away with our anger we can soon gain
control of our emotions and go back into some kind of "normal"
behaviour,  Unfortunately, a few of our regulars to hold onto their
perceptions of wrongdoings like bulldogs without leaving much latitude
for escaping from the grind that accompanies some of these issues.

The number of our persistent problem people is surprisingly small when
you discount all the multiple personalities that some bring  into the
subject.  Reading through the unending e-mails about this handful is
perhaps one of the least pleasant tasks on the mailing list. I gave up
trying to read  Joe Canuck's purported defence after the first few
paragraphs.

There is much to be said about having a due process policy for dealing
with these people, and a page set aside for each of them where anyone
can see what they did, and their sins are properly documented and dated.
 Details of their banning, and the conditions for their return can also
be there.  When a newbie asks what they did that was so wrong we can
always simply refer them to that page without needing to keep going over
the same material again and again.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why I don't believe (any more) in NPOV

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At 05:12 PM 6/27/03 +0200, Tomasz wrote:
>
>> There is exactly 0 people who have experienced any god,
>> while there are still quite a few that survived Shoah, so
>> I don't know how you got your results.
>
> I know at least two people who have experienced gods, and
> more than two who survived the Shoah. In both cases, I'm basing
> this on direct personal report.
>
> (One of the two mentioned above is now a serious follower of the
> gods in question; the other had an idle conversation, enjoyed the
> garden as the god invited him to, and hasn't changed his life in
> any way.)

Ahh!  but how do you distinguish between experiencing a god, and living
under the delusion of having been so visited?

Ec


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] An open letter

body:
At 01:10 PM 6/29/2003, Ec wrote:
>I very much support  an approach based on kindness and courtesy, and even
>when some of us get carried away with our anger we can soon gain control
>of our emotions and go back into some kind of "normal"
>behaviour,  Unfortunately, a few of our regulars to hold onto their
>perceptions of wrongdoings like bulldogs without leaving much latitude for
>escaping from the grind that accompanies some of these issues.
>
>The number of our persistent problem people is surprisingly small when you
>discount all the multiple personalities that some bring  into the
>subject.  Reading through the unending e-mails about this handful is
>perhaps one of the least pleasant tasks on the mailing list. I gave up
>trying to read  Joe Canuck's purported defence after the first few paragraphs.
>
>There is much to be said about having a due process policy for dealing
>with these people, and a page set aside for each of them where anyone can
>see what they did, and their sins are properly documented and dated.
>Details of their banning, and the conditions for their return can also be
>there.  When a newbie asks what they did that was so wrong we can always
>simply refer them to that page without needing to keep going over the same
>material again and again.
>
>Ec

I agree 100%. Far too much time is spent defending the actions of those who
combat trolls through reversion. People keep popping up asking, "Why are
you reverting all this users edits?" When informed that they are banned,
the next question is inevitably, "But why revert ALL their edits?". It
becomes pointless to repeat the same answers time and time again. We need,
as Ec suggested, a single page per vandal where all the evidence and
pertinent information is located that we can use as an illustrative aid
when questioned on our actions regarding the vandal.

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

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>LD and I were talking about this at length. In attempting to sort out some
>basic rules for phonetic schemes, it occurred to us that though phonetics
>are important, they would tend to default to majority accents - which are
>irreconcilable ethno-political fodder.
>
>English words act as symbolic placeholders which contain an idea within the
>shape -- just as Hanzi does.  This, despite the fact that shape of English
>words of course, is entirely designed to represent the phonetic -- these
>shapes in and of themselves make no attempt at representing the thing
>itself --unlike Han ideographs.
>
>So theres a tradeoff with each.  English, though the lingua franca -- is not
>in the majority in terms of how its vowels are used.  Its this difference
>between American English and the older and the
>more widespread Latin/Balto-Slavic vowel sounds that exemplifies the bulk of
>any disagreement.  I mean, if you cant agree on what an "a" sounds like, you
>cant really continue.
>
>This is where English, I think is in the minority, and will typically tend
>to reject like the metric system any attempt at mundification.  So typically
>English sounds arent it - and neither are SAMPA eugh!  (There was an
>interesting booktv talk on the origins of the American units system, btw --
>and why today people in the US look at the metric system in a xenophobic and
>skeptical way)
>
>I challenge anyone to show us here a scheme that is both easy to read (SAMPA
>eugh) and gives all the sonic description that these attempt to. In the end,
>the sonic descriptors are practically irrelevant when they get into too much
>detail -- regardless of how accurately you interpret the signs, youre still
>going to speak the foreign word with your particular accent.  And its going
>to be wrong.  The merits of the Roman alphabet are that its fairly standard,
>covers quite enough ground -- is modifyable in slight ways (ie pinyin,
>romaji.... SAMPA eugh!)
>
>Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some direction toward an
>international standard is a good idea.
>
I would basically agree with this analysis, complete with the hostility
toward SAMPA where I find many of the supposed pronunciations to be
counterintuitive.  In many respects it really doesn't matter whether
Bremen rhymes with layman or lemon as long as the listener knows what
you are talking about.  Any attempt to find the '''right'''
pronunciation for a word is bound to end in failure.  The best we can
hope for is that ambiguities in a word like "lead" will be resolved.

Ec


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] first upload never works

body:
Go to upload file on en: wikipedia.

Choose a file, fill in description, check "copyright" box.

Click "upload", wait ....

The browser returns to the SAME page. Fields are blank except for the
description.

Second attempt successfully uploads the file.


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Gaia obsession is out of hand, again. Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #502 - 8 msgs

body:
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 21:52:13 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Gaia obsession is out of hand, again.
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> Hello again "Royal We".
>

Hello anthere. You are OK in my book :-)

Graham (Quercus Robur)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch & CVS

body:
>Hmm, here are some cases that really oughtn't fail; even if they're
>probably rare, they're perfectly legit. Using a pattern twice on the
>same line shouldn't cause it to fail. :(

>* ''em '''em-strong''''' normal ''em '''em-strong'''''
>goes to:
>em em-strong normal em
>em-strong

Ah, I see.

Well, I've already sort of concluded (and now for certain) that regexps
won't do this. You shouldn't have made Wiki-markup use the same
character (') for two concepts that can be nested. You should have used
'' for em and "" for strong. :-p

Now, the case you described at least produces completely wrong output,
which is better than wrong HTML that renders right. This forces the
author to go back and check. Eventually they will realise that they can
get it to work by putting a linebreak in between (which obviously won't
put a linebreak in the final output, so you're okay).

>An alternate implementation, incidentally, might be to treat '' and
>''' as toggles rather than nestable delimiters, and ensure that the
>correct nesting level in the output HTML is maintained upon changing
>the toggles.

Yes, that would have been my second implementation plan, but I don't
think that'll be possible with just regexps.

> Posting to the list is the most likely way to get people to look it
> over. If we ever get around to setting up a CVS commit notification
> mailer that would do as well...

Hm, I'm sorry, but this didn't really answer my question. Are you going
to commit the patch for me (once I've made it work satisfactorily), or
are you going to give me CVS write access? I'm wondering this because
copying & pasting patches from e-mails seems like a very inefficient way
of handling it; certainly that can't be how you handle contributions
from other developers?

Thanks a lot for your help, insight, etc.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Stevertigo wrote:
>
> >We already do have a "Cabal" -- its made up by
> connected people who
> >communicate on exclusive mailing lists.
> >
> Yes, exclusive unmoderated mailing lists with open
> web archives, an open
> NNTP feed, open self-subscription, and numerous
> links to them from the wiki.
>
> Shocking!
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I remember some months ago, quite a lot of discussion
around moderation on the en list though. We can never
be so sure about what we hold...

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch & CVS

body:
Here is another (much more elaborate) attempt at fixing the
pentuple-apostrophe problem (patch below).

This should handle all situations correctly where users enter
correctly nested mark-up, e.g. '' text ''' text '''''.

Even for incorrectly nested mark-up, it often returns desirable
results:
	'' text ''' text '' text '''
is turned into
	 text  text  text

However, for incorrect mark-up, it sometimes returns weird results.
For example, for the following input:
	'' text ''' text '' text
if I'm not mistaken (remember I don't have an installation to test
it on), it will return:
	 text  text ''' text
which is at least correct HTML.

Anyway, here's the patch.

Greetings,
Timwi

--- OutputPage-orig.php	Sun Jun 29 15:36:00 2003
+++ OutputPage.php	Sun Jun 29 15:35:08 2003
@@ -675,9 +675,67 @@

 	/* private */ function doQuotes( $text )
 	{
-		$text = preg_replace( "/'''(.+)'''/mU", "\$1", $text );
-		$text = preg_replace( "/''(.+)''/mU", "\$1", $text );
-		return $text;
+		if ( preg_match( "/^(.*)''(.*)$/mU", $text, $m ) ) {
+			if ( substr ($m[2], 0, 1) == "'" ) {
+				return $m[1] . doQuotesStrong ( substr ($m[2], 1) );
+			} else {
+				return $m[1] . doQuotesEm ( $m[2] );
+			}
+		} else {
+			return $text;
+		}
+	}
+
+	/* private */ function doQuotesEm( $text )
+	{
+		if ( preg_match( "/^(.*)''(.*)$/mU", $text, $m ) ) {
+			if ( substr ($m[2], 0, 1) == "'" ) {
+				return doQuotesEmStrong ( $m[1], substr ($m[2], 1) );
+			} else {
+				return "" . $m[1] . "" . doQuotes ( $m[2] );
+			}
+		} else {
+			return "''" . $text;
+		}
+	}
+
+	/* private */ function doQuotesStrong( $text )
+	{
+		if ( preg_match( "/^(.*)''(.*)$/mU", $text, $m ) ) {
+			if ( substr ($m[2], 0, 1) == "'" ) {
+				return "" . $m[1] . "" . doQuotes ( substr ($m[2], 1) );
+			} else {
+				return doQuotesStrongEm ( $m[1], $m[2] );
+			}
+		} else {
+			return "'''" . $text;
+		}
+	}
+
+	/* private */ function doQuotesEmStrong( $pre, $text )
+	{
+		if ( preg_match( "/^(.*)''(.*)$/mU", $text, $m ) ) {
+			if ( substr ($m[2], 0, 1) == "'" ) {
+				return doQuotesEm ( $pre . "" . $m[1] . "" . substr ($m[2], 1) );
+			} else {
+				return "" . $pre . "" . $m[1] . "" . doQuotesStrong ( $m[2] );
+			}
+		} else {
+			return "'''''" . $text;
+		}
+	}
+
+	/* private */ function doQuotesStrongEm( $pre, $text )
+	{
+		if ( preg_match( "/^(.*)''(.*)$/mU", $text, $m ) ) {
+			if ( substr ($m[2], 0, 1) == "'" ) {
+				return "" . $pre . "" . $m[1] . "" . doQuotesEm ( substr ($m[2],
1) );
+			} else {
+				return doQuotesStrong ( $pre . "" . $m[1] . "" . $m[2] );
+			}
+		} else {
+			return "'''''" . $text;
+		}
 	}

 	/* private */ function doHeadings( $text )


subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Over the weekend...

body:
martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk wrote:

>>"unmoderated mailing lists..."
>>"a mailing that anyone can join"
>>
>>
>
>Mr. Wales> "Otherwise, just have your final word, and then I will remove you from
>the mailing list"
>
>When singing our own praises, it would be useful if our hymns reflected reality.
>
The list is readable by anyone on the internet; conversations and
decisions here are not secret in any way.

Joining the list to receive messages directly by e-mail and to post to
it yourself does not require approval, except by your own confirmation
message.

Can you get kicked off the list later for consistent abuse? Certainly,
but that's not the same as prior restraint or shadowy back-room
dealings, is it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Erik Moeller schrieb:
[about separate edit boxes for meta information]
> Yes, that might be worth doing. I suggest waiting with the implementation
> until it becomes a real problem, though.

The interlanguage links already are a real problem. Please implement it
as soon as possible.
Of course they shouldn't be shown to new users, only as an option in the
preferences. But then you'd have to create accounts on every Wp just to
make interlanguage links. That's annoying.

I still prefer a separate meta namespace.

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Dynamic dates

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> I've written some PHP code to convert date formats from those typed to a
>> user preference. A demonstration is now available at:
>>
>> http://www.piclab.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Date_demonstration
>>
>> There's also some information at:
>>
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dates
>>
>> Any comments would be appreciated. There's just a few minor things
>> left to
>> do: for example I want to have an option in LocalSettings.php to
>> disable it.
>
>
> I haven't seen your code, but if you haven't already done so I highly
> recommend putting the guts of this into Language.php, so it doesn't
> clutter up the common code, and so other languages that want such an
> option can adapt it cleanly.
>
> The user option should also override the sitewide setting in
> Language::date() ($wgAmericanDates true or false -- incidentally,
> although there were terrible flame wars a few months ago when it was
> suggested to change the date format used to display timestamps from
> American to British order, I've not heard a peep since the default got
> flipped during the server upgrade over a month ago.)
>
>> Can I please have whatever access is necessary to enable me to
>> install this
>> on test.wikipedia.org, and ultimately on the live server?
>
> I'll see about setting up a login for you. (Erik probably should get
> one, too.)

The ISO format is based on numerical dates.  Thus for the example it
would be 2003-06-24.  It includes hyphens and has leading zeros for days
and months.  To the extent that I have been applying them I would enter
such a date as [[2003]]-[[06-24]].  The first hyphen is outside of the
link, and I have written redirects for the numerical dates on an as
required basis.

Eclecticology


from_name: Matthias Jordan

body:
Hi, folks!

I just wondered whether ppl think it's a good idea to copy wiki.png to
the installation path when calling the update script ("php4
update.php"). IMHO it isn't. A working setup will likely have a
customized logo that it doesn't want overwritten. IMHO only code should
be updated.

Alternatively we could just change the copyfile method so it doesn't
abort if a file can't be written.

Any comments, criticism, ideas, hints, objections? Else I'll just
comment the concerning line out.

Bye!
Matthias


subject: [Wikitech-l] New idea on how to create new article

body:
Hi, folks!

Currently, it's possible to create a new article by editing the URL in
the title bar of ones browser. This method is even described in the
Wikipedia help text.

Why don't we put a link into the "sorry, your search didn't produce any
results" text that is displayed after a search fails? This link could
point directly to the keyword the user searched for and, thus, make the
creation of a new article much easier (i.e. "click to create article").

Sure, this method will create a new orphan, but this is already allowed
anyway.

Bye!
Matthias


body:
Matthias-
> Sure, this method will create a new orphan, but this is already allowed
> anyway.

Yes, it is already allowed through the URL-trick, but that's a hack which
few people know about and should only be used for testing purposes. The
proper way to create an article in a wiki is to link to it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Another reason to hate Internet Explorer

body:
For quite some time, we've been outputting HTML pages with a
half-doctype declaration, with no DTD specified:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

Browsers interpret such a doctype as not quite reliable, and render
pages in so-called "quirks" mode for backwards compatibility with the
parsing and rendering bugs of earlier versions. It's been occasionally
suggested that it's superior to include also a URL to the DTD, which
will put browsers into a stricter, standards-compliant mode:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

A couple days ago I slipped this in. All well and good in Mozilla, but
in Internet Explorer 6.0 (I haven't tried 5.x) this triggers a selection
bug, such that trying to select text with the mouse selects everything
from the beginning of the document to the point where you've got the
mouse, instead of the portion of text you're dragging over. Not very
helpful.

Since, unfortunately, a lot of people use this dreadful program, and
this is a _really_ annoying browser bug, I've temporarily taken the DTD
reference back out, so we're back to quirks mode, where selection works.

Sigh...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>
>We already do have a "Cabal" -- its made up by connected people who
>communicate on exclusive mailing lists.
>
>
>
a mailing that anyone can join, whose archives are publicly accessible.
oooh yeah, top secret!

>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Hi,

I'm new on this mailing list and I just stumpled upon this thread.

>>OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.

That's an interesting category system you came up with. I have a few
questions about it:

* The link "Categories" at the top of every article is very prominent.
  Ideally, it should therefore link to something useful. However, the
  Special:Categories page as it is is not very useful for two major
  reasons I can see:
  * It shows *all* pages in the Category namespace, including those
    that are just redirects and those that don't contain any articles.
    Maybe those should be hidden by default?
  * It does not display any kind of hierarchy. Now, of course I know you
    don't want all the categories to form a canonical hierarchy, but
    some kind of hierarchy would still be useful.
    * How about having it list only the "top-level" categories, so you
      can navigate your way through the "not-quite-a-tree", and have it
      display a link to a Special:Allcategories page that really lists
      everything.
    * Or perhaps show a list of the (say) 500 categories with the most
      articles? For obvious reasons, [[Category:Mathematics]] is going
      to have way more articles than [[Category:Abstract algebra]]. Of
      course, this is not ideal: [[Category:Popular but specialised
      computer science topic]] may have more articles than [[Category:
      Almost top-level but esoteric topic]].

* Would it be possible to show the categories link only if the article
  does have categories?

* The list of categories (both on Special:Categories and on the article
  and category pages) should have the underscores converted to spaces.

* The list is currently formatted link this:
    Categories : Category1 | Category2
  Firstly, I don't like the space in front of the ":", and secondly I
  don't really like the "|". Wouldn't something like this look more
  professional?
    Categories: Category1, Category2

* The list of sub-categories on the category pages shouldn't list
  categories that just redirect straight back to the same category.
  For example, http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_algebra
  has a link to "Abstract Algebra" with a capital A, which just
  redirects straight back to "Abstract algebra". Maybe it shouldn't list
  any redirects at all.

* Apparently you've put introductory paragraphs like this into each of
  the categories:
	"These are all of the articles about advanced mathematics. If you
	 see an article about advanced mathematics that isn't listed
	 here, then place a link to this page in it: "[[Category:Advanced
	 mathematics]]".
  I'm seeing difficulty in keeping those consistent. Perhaps it would be
  wiser either
  * to automate this paragraph (so category pages can't be edited at
    all), or
  * to make (say) [[Category:Abstract algebra]] act as the article that
    is now [[Abstract algebra]].

* Another thing I find a little limiting, but it doesn't bother me that
  much, is that you cannot link to a category (just like you cannot link
  to an article on another language wiki) in the middle of the text. All
  [[Category:something]] will be moved to the list of categories at the
  top of the page. Maybe it would be wiser to reserve [[cat:something]]
  for the list, and let users still put [[Category:something]] to link
  to the category page in the middle of text. This would be especially
  useful on Talk pages.

Those are my thoughts on it just now. I've probably forgotten loads, but
I'll just send this off now. :) Please let me know what you think.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Textbook-l] Some concept ideas

body:
Toby wrote:
>Maveric149 wrote in part:
>
>>IMO it would also make it much
>>less obvious that anyone /can/
>>edit any page just by logging-in
>>-- all they would see was "Protected
>>page" where the edit button should
>>be and "Log-in." That doesn't make
>>it obvious we are a wiki, no?
>
>If we require /everybody/ to log in, then
>it shouldn't say that. It should say "'''Edit
>this page'''" with a nice bright link -- that
>sends them to the log in page (returning
>to the edit page).

That is a bit misleading, no? I've had this trick played on me many times by
clicking on a link that indicates there is content behind it just to be
presented with a "free-registration" screen. My time is precious to me and
when I'm presented with the reg screen I almost always hit the back button.
Likewise many people who just want to test the system by correcting a typo
will be put-off by the reg screen; we thus loose the opportunity to snag
another editor.

The NY Times does this type of thing and as a result I never read it on-line.

If and when "anon edits" become a problem then we can think about restricting
things (IMO this will never be a serious enough problem to warrent such
action).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

> I don't use MSIE for anything other than checking pages to see how
> many hacks I have to work in to make IE behave, but in all of my time
> reading HTML groups and forums where the standard advice is to use a
> fully- qualified DTD, I have never heard mention of such a bug. Are
> you sure that there isn't some other markup error in the Wikipedia
> pages which is combining to create the effect in IE?

The page I tested ([[Ozone]] a couple hours ago) validated in the w3
validator, which is usually a good sign. Of course it's possible that
there is misuse of markup that validates, and works correctly in
Mozilla, and works correctly in IE6 in quirks mode, but _ought_ to cause
this type of selection. :)

Most likely there is a pecularity in our markup (possibly incorrect,
possibly not), such that the combination of some particular feature of
our page and IE's non-quirks rendering mode results in the strange
selection behavior. Most likely, if a minimal case can be constructed,
it can be worked around. I haven't had a chance to rip the page apart to
find it yet.

I have not tried to validate the stylesheet, so that's another factor to
examine. Of course, stylesheets don't have doctypes...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Dynamic dates

body:
> I haven't seen your code, but if you haven't already done so I highly
> recommend putting the guts of this into Language.php, so it doesn't
> clutter up the common code, and so other languages that want such an
> option can adapt it cleanly.

Good idea, will do.

> The user option should also override the sitewide setting in
> Language::date() ($wgAmericanDates true or false -- incidentally,
> although there were terrible flame wars a few months ago when it was
> suggested to change the date format used to display timestamps from
> American to British order, I've not heard a peep since the default got
> flipped during the server upgrade over a month ago.)

Okay. I was wondering what that option did.

> I'll see about setting up a login for you. (Erik probably should get
> one, too.)

Thanks.


subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Wikipedia may provide books made with different perspectives input, whilst others can't

body:
Toby wrote:
>But anyway, I doubt that DPOV
>will ever be written up. Jimmy invented
>NPOV, and he says that NPOV includes
>what mav wants.
>
>If anything happens, it's that [[NPOV]]
>will have to be clarified. But since Jimmy
>also keeps agreeing with my
>intepretations of it, I see no risk that
>any such clarification will threaten your
>book. The only alternative is that Jimmy's
>opinions are incoherent, but nobody is
>arguing that.

Yep - all I ever really wanted was to clarify NPOV to suit the needs of
textbooks (to give it a new framework or focus to work in - I mistakingly
called that "POV"). I was just trying to be clear by giving it a new name but
Jimbo has convinced me that the needed changes are not drastic enough to
warrent a new name. It will just be the "textbook's version of NPOV."

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Textbook-l] linearity

body:
LDan wrote:
>I'm not the programmer, but
>should it really be a link to a
>regular wiki page? I think it
>would be more appropriate
>if it linked to something like
>[[Special:Next]] or {{NEXTPAGE}}.
>It would also be convienient for
>that to appear at the bottom of
>the screen automatically, but that
>would take some coding.

I really, really like this idea; that way a particular module (wiki textbook
page) could be used by several different textbooks. The software would keep
track of the textbook (and module) the reader is reading from so that "Next
page" always keeps the reader in the same textbook even when many of the
modules of that textbook are shared. A possible way for the software to know
the order of pages is to simply scan the table of contents of whatever
textbook the reader is reading from.

A website I've been working on uses JavaBeans to do this type of thing but I'm
sure there is an open source solution.

In short: Hard coding "Next page" is bad as far as scalability is concerned
(but for now it should work fine).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Over the weekend...

body:
> "unmoderated mailing lists..."
> "a mailing that anyone can join"

Mr. Wales> "Otherwise, just have your final word, and then I will remove you from
the mailing list"

When singing our own praises, it would be useful if our hymns reflected reality.

Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>
>This is where English, I think is in the minority, and will typically tend
>to reject like the metric system any attempt at mundification.
>
I'm fairly confident that the majority of the world's English speakers
use the SI system: UK, Australia, India, etc.

SAMPA isn't ideal.
But it's a one-to-one correspondence with IPA, so at some future date
when IPA can easily be used in Wikipedia, we could have some sort of
script switch everything over.

I've explained elsewhere why DIY pronunciation guides are a bad idea.


body:
> Richard Grevers wrote:
>
>> I don't use MSIE for anything other than checking pages to see how
>> many hacks I have to work in to make IE behave, but in all of my time
>> reading HTML groups and forums where the standard advice is to use a
>> fully- qualified DTD, I have never heard mention of such a bug. Are
>> you sure that there isn't some other markup error in the Wikipedia
>> pages which is combining to create the effect in IE?
>
Here's a minimal test case:

http://leuksman.com/misc/with-dtd.html
http://leuksman.com/misc/without-dtd.html

It's got a single <div> with the style 'position: absolute' applied.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


references: <3EFFBCF7.9050505@pobox.com> <oprrkf8lmjzs1r4a@localhost> <3EFFD9CF.8030805@pobox.com> <3EFFE1B8.40805@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Here's a minimal test case:
> It's got a single <div> with the style 'position: absolute' applied.

Now with selectable doctypes:
http://leuksman.com/misc/probdemo

The selection problem triggers with the HTML 4.0 or 4.01 transitional
doctypes only with a DTD reference, or with the HTML 4.0/1 strict and
XHTML 1.0 transitional doctypes with or without a DTD reference.

Tested with Internet Explorer 6.0.1800.1106IC on Windows 98.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


references: <3EFFBCF7.9050505@pobox.com> <oprrkf8lmjzs1r4a@localhost> <3EFFD9CF.8030805@pobox.com> <3EFFE1B8.40805@pobox.com> <oprrkmethrzs1r4a@localhost>

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

> Hmm, I get the opposite effect (with the standards-mode DTD it selects
> everything between the cursor and the end of the document!)
>
> I've never looked closely at the wikipedia markup - does it have
> everything positioned?

Of sorts; the whole page except the sidebar is slapped into a div with
this style:
#content { position: absolute; top: 0;  margin: 0; padding: 0; }

Since there isn't anything else about I don't see as it's strictly
necessary. :) Removing the position & top leaves us with a few blank
pixels at the top of the screen, but ought not have any ill effects.

I've gone ahead and made the switch. We've got our doctype & DTD back,
and with non-absolutely-positioned content, IE's selection bug seems to
go away.

So hopefully it won't turn out that there was a good reason for the
absolute positioning that I've just broken. ;)

> What seems to be happening  is that because there is no content in the
> general flow of the page, the body ends right at the top.

ARRRRGHHHH! That's no excuse not to select text that it's willing to
show, though... :)

> Layouts where every element is positioned seldom work smoothly, and
> I'm sure this can be done more tidily by other means.

Yeah, well they *should* work dammit! :)

> I'd be happy to investigate but am in the middle of moving house 700km
> away, so it will be a fortnight before I can get to it.

Well, hopefully it's in hand... good luck moving!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Edit this section", TOC implemented

body:
I've just committed a bunch of new stuff to CVS:

1) "Edit this section". If you enable the user preference "Show links for
editing individual sections", you get little "edit" links under each
article section. These can be used to fetch just the text of that section,
and edit it. No more scrolling through 30 K articles to edit a typo. No
more wading through long discussion threads to add a short comment
(provided they are organized using headlines).

2) Automatic table of contents. If the option "Show table of contents for
articles with more than 3 headings" is enabled, a small TOC is added on
top of the page with navigation links to the individual sections. From
this it follows logically that we now have

3) Anchors for each article section (named after the section title, e.g.
"External links" becomes "External_links"). So you can link to these from
elsewhere.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Erik Moeller schrieb:
> I've just committed a bunch of new stuff to CVS:

Great, thanks!

> 3) Anchors for each article section (named after the section title, e.g.
> "External links" becomes "External_links"). So you can link to these from
> elsewhere.

Just to be sure, "from elsewhere" means "from elsewhere inside the same
article", right?

Kurt


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Timwi wrote in part:

>    * Or perhaps show a list of the (say) 500 categories with the most
>      articles? For obvious reasons, [[Category:Mathematics]] is going
>      to have way more articles than [[Category:Abstract algebra]].

That depends on how you count them, of course.
If an article links to [[Category:Abstract algebra]],
then it generally won't link directly to [[Category:Mathematics]].
OTOH, it will of course link /in/directly to [[Category:Mathematics]].

>* Would it be possible to show the categories link only if the article
>  does have categories?

I don't see the need for the "Categories" /link/ at all, really.
[[Special:Categories]] should appear in the list of all special pages;
then we can /print/ "Categories:" before listing the categories,
if any in fact exist.

>* The list of sub-categories on the category pages shouldn't list
>  categories that just redirect straight back to the same category.
>  For example, http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_algebra
>  has a link to "Abstract Algebra" with a capital A, which just
>  redirects straight back to "Abstract algebra". Maybe it shouldn't list
>  any redirects at all.

But it should list the pages that link to the redirect.

>* Apparently you've put introductory paragraphs like this into each of
>  the categories:
[...]
>  I'm seeing difficulty in keeping those consistent. Perhaps it would be
>  wiser either
>  * to automate this paragraph (so category pages can't be edited at
>    all), or
>  * to make (say) [[Category:Abstract algebra]] act as the article that
>    is now [[Abstract algebra]].

I'm not sure that I agree.
I put that text in, but I don't know that it's really the /best/ text.
And it's not clear to me that the text should be the same for everything;
compare [[Category:Mathematics]] with [[Category:Advanced mathematics]].
Inserting the article [[Mathematics]] would definitely be way too much!

>* Another thing I find a little limiting, but it doesn't bother me that
>  much, is that you cannot link to a category (just like you cannot link
>  to an article on another language wiki) in the middle of the text. All
>  [[Category:something]] will be moved to the list of categories at the
>  top of the page. Maybe it would be wiser to reserve [[cat:something]]
>  for the list, and let users still put [[Category:something]] to link
>  to the category page in the middle of text. This would be especially
>  useful on Talk pages.

Actually, I don't think that category links should be special at all,
except from pages in the [[:]] and [[Category:]] namespaces.
Similarly, language links don't work in [[...talk:]] namespaces.
However, it doesn't matter much, since you can link to a category page,
even from within an article in [[:]], using [[:Category:xxx]].
(Note the extra colon.)  Try it!

Incidentally, you can also put interlanguage links in an article,
using the corresponding interwiki link (like [[EnWikiPedia:xxx]]).
But for some reason, this doesn't work on [[test:]],
even though other interwiki links (like [[MeatBall:xxx]] work fine.)

-- Toby


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>3) Anchors for each article section (named after the section title, e.g.
>"External links" becomes "External_links"). So you can link to these from
>elsewhere.

If by "from elsewhere", you mean ?from other articles?,
then am I the only one left that considers this a Bad Idea?

But if by "from elsewhere", you mean ?from elsewhere in the same article?,
then great!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch & CVS

body:
Timwi wrote in part:

>However, for incorrect mark-up, it sometimes returns weird results.
>For example, for the following input:
>	'' text ''' text '' text
>if I'm not mistaken (remember I don't have an installation to test
>it on), it will return:
>	<em> text <strong> text </strong></em>''' text
>which is at least correct HTML.

I see what you're doing.  Clever!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Andre Engels wrote in part:

>One thing I would like to remark, is that for interwiki use, if at all
>possible the word "Category" should be softcoded, so that it can be
>overruled in a language's language.php.

Yes, [[Category:]] should be a namespace.
Right now it technically isn't.

-- Toby


references: <3EFFBCF7.9050505@pobox.com> <oprrkf8lmjzs1r4a@localhost> <3EFFD9CF.8030805@pobox.com> <3EFFE1B8.40805@pobox.com> <oprrkmethrzs1r4a@localhost> <3EFFF857.7080702@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in part:

>So hopefully it won't turn out that there was a good reason for the
>absolute positioning that I've just broken. ;)

Perchance, is this on [[test:]] now but not on [[en:]].
Because on [[test:]], the sidebar runs across the entire page,
lying on top of the content (but transparently).
Specifically, its horizontal rules run all the way across,
and the content is unclickable and unselectable
wherever there is some sidebar to the left of it.

-- Toby


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote in large part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>>>at least
>>>in Europe people were able to stop caring about the church without changing
>>>their beliefs much.

>>Well, if Europeans manage to believe in God
>>without giving power to the Church,

>It's wrong to say that most Europeans believe in god or that they don't -
>most don't give a shit either way.

So back when the Church had a lot of power in Europe,
do you think that even then most Europeans didn't give that shit?
Or do you think that no longer giving a shit isn't much of a change?
It seems to me that opinions have probably changed a lot,
but I was willing to accept what you said.

>They managed to see the real question
>and answered it "no" - they aren't going to give church any powers.

Good!  And please don't think that I prefer what Americans have done.
I still don't see what this has to do with what we were talking about,
which is applying NPOV to various differing beliefs.

-- Toby


body:
Kurt-
>> 3) Anchors for each article section (named after the section title, e.g.
>> "External links" becomes "External_links"). So you can link to these from
>> elsewhere.

> Just to be sure, "from elsewhere" means "from elsewhere inside the same
> article", right?


from_name: Thomas Corell

body:
Matthias Jordan wrote:
> Why don't we put a link into the "sorry, your search didn't produce any
> results" text that is displayed after a search fails? This link could
> point directly to the keyword the user searched for and, thus, make the
> creation of a new article much easier (i.e. "click to create article").
>
> Sure, this method will create a new orphan, but this is already allowed
> anyway.
>

It's easy: Add a proper text in Language??.php, var "nogomatch", and there
you are. See e.g. LanguageDe.php.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Professor XYZ

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>She mailed me privately and said that it would be OK to change all
>occurances of "J Hofmann Kemp" to "JHK".

That's even simpler than "Professor XYZ".

>I changed her username and the
>article histories, but changing the talk page sigs is a bit of work, and
>I'm wary of running a potentially destructive SQL query on hundreds of
>pages.

There are less than 600 pages that link to [[User:JHK]],
[[User talk:JHK]], and their redirects.
If we split things up, then we might be able to go through these by hand.
Then a search for "Hofmann Kemp" hopefully won't find many more.
Alternatively, perhaps it'd be safe to run an SQL query
that turn all links to [[User:JHK]] or its redirects
into [[JHK|User:JHK]] no matter what -- but does /only/ links.
Then the search for "Hofmann Kemp" will give us the first start by hand.

-- Toby


body:
RK wrote in part:

>We DO NOT have
>  Evolution (Gould)
>  Evolution (Dawkins)
>  Evolution (Darwin)
>  Evolution (Mayr)
>  and...Evolution!

However, we do have [[Punctuated equilibrium]].
That's analogous to [[Evolution (Gould)]] for number of articles.
It's analogous as far as names are concerend,
but then those names are strawmen.

>Worst of all, the primary page [[Gaia theory]] is very
>misleading...because Anthere refuses to let us discuss gaia
>theory here!  Instead, she focuses on pre-gaia theory
>theology and mysticism, and on radical left-wing politics!
>She forces any real discussion of Gaia theory into
>sub-pages. That is bizarre. I don't know what her college
>is like, but among *English* speakers, the phrase "Gaia
>theory" refers exclusively to a scientific thoery.

This is certainly not true, as I know from personal experience.
Perhaps it's true among those English speakers that RK hangs out with.

(Of course, RK also gave a false vandalism alert for an edit war,
so he automatically loses it by my standards. ^_^)

-- Toby


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>If by "from elsewhere", you mean ?from other articles?,
>>then am I the only one left that considers this a Bad Idea?

>Well, as I recently learned, it was always possible to link to anchors
>within other articles using the [[foo#bar]] syntax. Only the anchors were
>not yet added to the articles (but could be added manually using HTML).
>Now the anchors are auto-generated, because it was necessary for the table
>of contents generation to do that. I'm not inclined to modify the code to
>take a previously existing feature (the [[foo#bar]] support) out, which
>means that it is now possible to link to sections on any page from any
>page. Call it a side effect that was difficult to avoid.

I wouldn't call that a previously existing /feature/,
since it was useless without an HTML trick that was never intended.
That it becomes useful is a side effect of what you've done, yes;
but then, its very existence is just a side effect of how we parse links.
However, since you didn't /create/ this, let me rephrase:

I suggest disabling intrawiki links of the form [[X#Y]] (but not [[#Y]]),
for the reasons that may be found in past discussions.

I am still generally favorable, of course!

-- Toby


references: <3EFFBCF7.9050505@pobox.com> <oprrkf8lmjzs1r4a@localhost> <3EFFD9CF.8030805@pobox.com> <3EFFE1B8.40805@pobox.com> <oprrkmethrzs1r4a@localhost> <3EFFF857.7080702@pobox.com> <20030630110139.GE4143@math-cl-n01.ucr.edu>

body:
I wrote:

>Perchance, is this on [[test:]] now but not on [[en:]]?
>Because on [[test:]], the sidebar runs across the entire page,
>lying on top of the content (but transparently).
>Specifically, its horizontal rules run all the way across,
>and the content is unclickable and unselectable
>wherever there is some sidebar to the left of it.

I forgot to note that this is with Netscape 6 or IE 5 on Windows 9x.

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] Some concept ideas

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>If we require /everybody/ to log in, then
>>it [...] should say "'''Edit
>>this page'''" with a nice bright link -- that
>>sends them to the log in page (returning
>>to the edit page).

>That is a bit misleading, no? I've had this trick played on me many times by
>clicking on a link that indicates there is content behind it just to be
>presented with a "free-registration" screen.

Good point.  It should thus say "Log in to '''edit this page'''".

Anyway, I claim invalidity /only/ for
your argument that people won't notice that they can't edit pages
(or rather, I still claim that there are ways around it).
I don't challenge any of the other arguments that people have presented.
And right now, it doesn't look like anybody currently supports
restricting edits to logged in users, at least to begin with;
so it doesn't really matter.

-- Toby


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
Hi!

I am a little annoyed by Martin's recent antics, regarding the unblocking of
vandals, not to mention his defense of the most obvious cases of extreme
vandalism (the Zog incident comes to mind). It is very difficult to ban someone on
Wikipedia--in fact, the number of permanently banned users I know of is just
six (HJ, Ark, Lir, Michael, DW, Zog, some of whom had various incarnations).
The ability to block an IP (and not a user name) is used to prevent kids from
adding grafitti to the site. In most cases, it is effective, and those vandals
disappear once it becomes more challenging to edit. It is not some instance of
eternal damnation. If the person apologizes and begins to really contribute,
they are welcomed back. Even in the serious bans above, people have been told
that if they reform their behaviors they can return and continue to contribute.
Discuss it with Jimbo and they will be welcomed back. Most don't because they
have no interest in coming back.

Wikipedia is a project with a stated objective--creating an encyclopedia. Its
objective is not to create an ideal democratic society a la Martin's
perception of one. Nor is it a dumping ground, where anyone can put any crap they want
in the name of free speech. It is a place that works best by consensus and
compromise--not by making abrupt decisions that this must be the policy, come h
ell or high water. That is why I was opposed to making a final decision on the
date format and spelling policies. Look how much time that wasted from the
overriding goal, when a compromise of allowing people to do what they want seemed
to be working fine for the most part. Unfortunately, it was Martin pushing
that finalizing agenda again.

The end result of all this is that some of the serious long term contributors
have left--Zoe, for one, was one of the most prolific Wikipedians and a real
defender of the project against vandalism. While Martin is certainly prolific
on the Recent Changes, a quick look at his past 500 changes show that his work
is over 90 percent focused on users' Talk pages, and most of the rest on
contentious pages, where it is bound to flame the fires of dispute.

What I would like to see are some solid contributions--an article culled out
of a Talk page does not count---before wasting our time with the Vandal
Liberation Front. Instead I wonder when he was made a sysop whether it was to police
it over the rest of us or to further the goal of creating an encyclopedia.

Danny
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subject: [Textbook-l] linearity

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>LittleDan wrote:

>>I think it
>>would be more appropriate
>>if it linked to something like
>>[[Special:Next]] or {{NEXTPAGE}}.

>I really, really like this idea; that way a particular module (wiki textbook
>page) could be used by several different textbooks. The software would keep
>track of the textbook (and module) the reader is reading from so that "Next
>page" always keeps the reader in the same textbook even when many of the
>modules of that textbook are shared.

Oo, good idea!

In terms of what I was discussing before regarding math texts,
where an instructor might choose different sets of material to go through,
and where we might have to write things differently
depending on what has gone before:
We can put all of the math material in one big database,
while different math texts are offered (or constructed by new users)
that go through different modules in different orders,
according to the needs of different courses.
No need for ?If you know concept A, read definition X,
but if you know concept B, then read definition Y.?,
since the reader can just click "Next" in any well designed textbook
to get to whatever definition they're supposed to use.

Now making the /index/ develop automatically and correctly --
that may be tricky, but it should be possible.

-- Toby


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on Athere

body:
On Sat, 28 Jun 2003 18:58:30 -0700 (PDT), Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> More on Anthere. Sigh, It just keeps getting worse.  She
> has now made a comment on a Talk page, rebutting a position
> she thinks I have. The problem is, I don't have the
> position that she attributes to me.
>
Hmmm, last time you made these accusations the edit history showed you to
be lying, or at best exaggerating wildly. So why should I even waste my
time reading or checking out your current accusations? Especially when you
don't offer a single link to a diff that illustrates anthere's alleged
crimes.
--
Richard Grevers


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: vandals, signin, linearity

body:
If the main reason to have a required sign-in for page
editing is to fight against vandals, is there another
solution that would have the same benefits without the
drawbacks ? The idea springs to mind to have a quick
administrative function to revert to earlier page versions.
It sounds like currently it is a hassle to revert
vandalized pages. Is this true ? Would it be possible and
reasonable to develop a one-click page revert function for
admins ?
I like the idea of making every textbook compilable into
one printable document. Would it be feasible to add the
feature to change the default order of book sections ? In
my organic chemistry books the total content covered is the
same but the order in which it is presented is not, and
some professors and students prefer one order to another.

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from_name: sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca

body:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> It's wrong to say that most Europeans believe in god or that they don't -
> most don't give a shit either way. They managed to see the real question
> and answered it "no" - they aren't going to give church any powers.
> Having done so, whether they think "god exists" or not is as important as
> believing in fluffy elephants bringing luck or in existence of Neptune -
> it doesn't affect them, so they may answer like others do, or the way
> they feel any given day.

Come on now, guys. Take it to Usenet. :)

-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Dynamic dates

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>> I've written some PHP code to convert date formats from those typed
>>> to a
>>> user preference. A demonstration is now available at:
>>>
>>> http://www.piclab.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Date_demonstration
>>>
>>> There's also some information at:
>>>
>>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dates
>>>
>>> Any comments would be appreciated. There's just a few minor things
>>> left to
>>> do: for example I want to have an option in LocalSettings.php to
>>> disable it.
>>
It seems a little bats that at a time when our databse is struggling,
we're adding more load to the system for something so trivial.
Can't Americans read dates when they're the other way round?


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> RK wrote in part:
> >Worst of all, the primary page [[Gaia theory]] is
> very
> >misleading...because Anthere refuses to let us
> discuss gaia
> >theory here!  Instead, she focuses on pre-gaia
> theory
> >theology and mysticism, and on radical left-wing
> politics!
> >She forces any real discussion of Gaia theory into
> >sub-pages. That is bizarre. I don't know what her
> college
> >is like, but among *English* speakers, the phrase
> "Gaia
> >theory" refers exclusively to a scientific thoery.
>
> This is certainly not true, as I know from personal
> experience.
> Perhaps it's true among those English speakers that
> RK hangs out with.
>
> (Of course, RK also gave a false vandalism alert for
> an edit war,
> so he automatically loses it by my standards. ^_^)
>
>
> -- Toby

I fear I could be expecting to be a "troll" again very
soon :-(

I was apparently not offered the truce some suggested.
 I think the the phrase "Gaia theory" does not refer
exclusively to a scientific thoery.
Thank you to those of you morally supporting me :-)

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Timwi wrote:

> * The list is currently formatted link this:
>     Categories : Category1 | Category2
>   Firstly, I don't like the space in front of the ":", and secondly I
>   don't really like the "|". Wouldn't something like this look more
>   professional?
>     Categories: Category1, Category2

Personally, I like the |'s better.

> * Another thing I find a little limiting, but it doesn't bother me that
>   much, is that you cannot link to a category (just like you cannot link
>   to an article on another language wiki) in the middle of the text. All
>   [[Category:something]] will be moved to the list of categories at the
>   top of the page. Maybe it would be wiser to reserve [[cat:something]]
>   for the list, and let users still put [[Category:something]] to link
>   to the category page in the middle of text. This would be especially
>   useful on Talk pages.

I would propose the [[:Category:something]] syntax here, because an equivalent
piece of syntax already exists for images and such ([[:Image:something]]
gives a normal link to an image page).

One thing I would like to remark, is that for interwiki use, if at all
possible the word "Category" should be softcoded, so that it can be
overruled in a language's language.php.

Andre Engels


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Toby-

> > I suggest disabling intrawiki links of the form [[X#Y]] (but not
> > [[#Y]]), for the reasons that may be found in past discussions.
>
> Yes, we can do that. I'd like to have a general consensus on the
> matter, though. Heh, just kidding. But we should have a vote first.
> Several people have requested this functionality.

Did I miss the general consensus or vote that allowed your patch in?

I am against inter-article anchor links because they make the rewriting
and refactoring of long articles much harder, yet that will soon be the
most important if not most common activity on Wikipedia.

Axel

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

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body:
--- Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If the main reason to have a required sign-in for
> page
> editing is to fight against vandals, is there
> another
> solution that would have the same benefits without
> the
> drawbacks ?

etc...

I find it hard to believe that on such a new topic,
with so much to discuss, so much time is spent talking
on vandalism issues. Aren't there more to discuss than
vandalism ?
Vandalism will occur. And vandalism can be treated
just the way it is on Wikipedia. If the project is so
different that it requires other ways to manage
vandalism, just wait the moment it will happen. Right
now, why don't you assume you will not be able to use
similar ways that the ones used on other wiki projects ?

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dynamic dates

body:
tarquin-
> It seems a little bats that at a time when our databse is struggling,
> we're adding more load to the system for something so trivial.

This should not add substantial load if properly coded, since it's just a
search/replace operation with a fairly specific match (only triggers on
linked dates). It will help us present a consistent picture throughout all
our pages while not giving up some editorial liberty. I therefore fully
support the implementation of this feature, unless the code is completely
nuts ;-)

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Julie Kemp

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cleaning out the old me

body:
HI all - Thanks, Toby for your suggestions on helping.  I'm doing a lot
of the cleanup by myself since I can understand Erik's reluctance to do
a SQL search and replace.  Out of curiosity, has my old name been
replaced in article histories?  Anyway, if anyone feels like helping do
the changes by hand, that would be great.  Otherwise, I'll keep going,
and perhaps if someone runs into my old name, he or she could just
change it to [[User:JHK|JHK]]?  Thanks bunches!

Jules
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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Mon, 30 Jun 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Perchance, is this on [[test:]] now but not on [[en:]].

Nope, It's on en: but not on test.wikipedia.org. (There is no [[test:]])

> Because on [[test:]], the sidebar runs across the entire page,
> lying on top of the content (but transparently).
> Specifically, its horizontal rules run all the way across,
> and the content is unclickable and unselectable
> wherever there is some sidebar to the left of it.

That's totally unrelated. I rearranged the directory structure of
test.wikipedia.org to match the others, and seem to have broken the
style sheet directory. :P  I thought I fixed that already...

Aha, the *directory* was fine, but the settings were trying to load things
from the wrong place.

Should be better now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] A question to a "wikipedian"

body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I am a little annoyed by Martin's recent antics,
> regarding the unblocking of
> vandals, not to mention his defense of the most
> obvious cases of extreme
> vandalism (the Zog incident comes to mind). It is
> very difficult to ban someone on
> Wikipedia--in fact, the number of permanently banned
> users I know of is just
> six (HJ, Ark, Lir, Michael, DW, Zog, some of whom
> had various incarnations).
> The ability to block an IP (and not a user name) is
> used to prevent kids from
> adding grafitti to the site. In most cases, it is
> effective, and those vandals
> disappear once it becomes more challenging to edit.
> It is not some instance of
> eternal damnation. If the person apologizes and
> begins to really contribute,
> they are welcomed back. Even in the serious bans
> above, people have been told
> that if they reform their behaviors they can return
> and continue to contribute.
> Discuss it with Jimbo and they will be welcomed
> back. Most don't because they
> have no interest in coming back.
>
> Wikipedia is a project with a stated
> objective--creating an encyclopedia. Its
> objective is not to create an ideal democratic
> society a la Martin's
> perception of one. Nor is it a dumping ground, where
> anyone can put any crap they want
> in the name of free speech. It is a place that works
> best by consensus and
> compromise--not by making abrupt decisions that this
> must be the policy, come h
> ell or high water. That is why I was opposed to
> making a final decision on the
> date format and spelling policies. Look how much
> time that wasted from the
> overriding goal, when a compromise of allowing
> people to do what they want seemed
> to be working fine for the most part. Unfortunately,
> it was Martin pushing
> that finalizing agenda again.
>
> The end result of all this is that some of the
> serious long term contributors
> have left--Zoe, for one, was one of the most
> prolific Wikipedians and a real
> defender of the project against vandalism. While
> Martin is certainly prolific
> on the Recent Changes, a quick look at his past 500
> changes show that his work
> is over 90 percent focused on users' Talk pages, and
> most of the rest on
> contentious pages, where it is bound to flame the
> fires of dispute.
>
> What I would like to see are some solid
> contributions--an article culled out
> of a Talk page does not count---before wasting our
> time with the Vandal
> Liberation Front. Instead I wonder when he was made
> a sysop whether it was to police
> it over the rest of us or to further the goal of
> creating an encyclopedia.
>
> Danny

Have you understood the principles upon which
Wikipedia is built ?

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body:
Toby-
> If by "from elsewhere", you mean ?from other articles?,
> then am I the only one left that considers this a Bad Idea?

Well, as I recently learned, it was always possible to link to anchors
within other articles using the [[foo#bar]] syntax. Only the anchors were
not yet added to the articles (but could be added manually using HTML).
Now the anchors are auto-generated, because it was necessary for the table
of contents generation to do that. I'm not inclined to modify the code to
take a previously existing feature (the [[foo#bar]] support) out, which
means that it is now possible to link to sections on any page from any
page. Call it a side effect that was difficult to avoid.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] A question to a "wikipedian"

body:
Anthere wrote:
>>Danny wrote:
>>[a long letter about some of his concerns]
>
>Have you understood the principles upon which
>Wikipedia is built ?

Do you? We are here to build an encyclopedia. The
community aspect is a means to an end, not an end in
itself (and I think that was the underlying message
that Danny was writing about). And please consider how
insulting it appears to put in quotes the word
"Wikipedian" when referring to another contributor; in
English this implies that you believe the other person
is not a real Wikipedian. That isn't nice and I hope
you will do the right thing and apologize to Danny -
who /is/ a damn good and very real Wikipedian.

See also:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

=====

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from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] flash animations

body:
IN a textbook I could see a place for some small flash
animations, for example to represent some organic
reactions. I poked around the site but found nothing
difinitive, except a lack of mention of flash usage. Could
using flash animations in some contexts be a viable option
?

Karl

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