body:
Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

>The German Wikipedia has reached it's 20.000 article. We will send out a press
>info soon. So I'd like to ask all the admins to not use heavy database
>queries and not to do system updates the next few days - A heavy loaded
>server is not the best thing to have when journalists are coming to look at
>the project!
>
While I agree that we don't want a heavily loaded system, this
unfortunately conflicts a bit with wanting to not make updates and
potentially destablize things. :(

On Eloquence's suggestion, I've upgraded de.wikipedia.org to the same
version of the wiki software that www.wikipedia.org is running, so it
_does_ now include caching of pages to significantly reduce server load
during an influx of new visitors. (But does _not_ include the fancy new
experimental features in the development version that you'll see at
test.wikipedia.org.)

The main visible changes should be:

* 'Nicht angemeldet' is shown in the corner instead of your IP address
if you're not logged in. This is so we can store the pages and serve
them back to other people without having to re-render the whole page.

* The 'Diese Seite wurde bisher (Nummer) mal abgerufen.' message at the
bottom of pages is still there for now, but the hit count may not be
shown up to date for anon users, and will undercount anonymous visits.

* The article count on the main page may not keep up to date for users
who aren't logged in, as they will see a saved copy of the page. It will
update when the page is next edited, and logged-in users should always
see the current count.

(Note that the new version can use the alternate article count system --
links instead of commas -- but for now I have left it on the comma
count, so it won't change suddenly and dramatically. :)

If anything is more broken than usual ;) give out a shout.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please help test new features

body:
Cunc-
> The content of the Wikipedia pages below the title and above the links at
> the bottom has always been entirely user-configurable.

Wrong, as I have already demonstrated.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Israeli-Palestinian neutrality

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>The problem is that those most knowledgeable and interested in
>>spending a great deal of time writing articles on these topics are
>>often those who are most partisan to one side or the other.
>>
>
>That's exactly right, and it's a general problem that we have to face
>on every controversial issue.
>
Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing is often viewed by
partisans as seriously biased in favour of the opponents.

Ec


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael claiming identity of actor Ahmed Best

body:
>Geoff wrote: At some point, we must needs talk to his
ISP & force them >to discipline him. Even if Michael
is using someone like AOL or >MSN who are at best
indifferent to Wikipedia, I assume we have >enough
Wikipedians from those domains who would be willing to
>complain about how he is pissing in their swimming
pool, & >make even those ISPs realize that he's not
worth ignoring.

This is the last word, really on the vandalismo thing
--- James' notions of copyright infringement of
inteelectual property are utterly vacuous, and I have
to wonder if it was he or the pint that was talking
there.

But there's going to have to be some kind of
relationship established between WP and some of these
ISP's -- as the case can be made:

1. That people who commit vandalist acts on the
internet are in violation of their ISP contract, and
2. The ISP itself is liable somewhat for the acts of
its users.

So, after a Wiki request, the admins at AOL or MSN
might just hang up the phone and go back do
downloading porn. Or a terse and detailed letter from
a lawyer, explaining the situation and implying a
threat of a lawsuit, might start the process of
cooperation.  The ISPs tend to favor their paying
clientele over outsiders, quite naturally -- and it
may help matters if people who are associated with an
isp in question be the contact to explain the case.

The downside then becomes, that the WP then would have
established lines of process between itself and
corporate entities -- these entities then in some
legal way may derive some kind of sense of duty of the
WP to them and their interests, be it censorship of
content, etc.  Fuck them.

-Stiv

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


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

body:
james duffy wrote:

>
> I said before that Michael and Adam's 'trolling' of wiki, whatever one
> may think of it, never raised the problems including serious legal
> issues (ie possible copyright abuse) thrown up by DW. I'd like to
> amend that to suggest that Michael could potentially be raising
> another legal nightmare.
>
> A couple of times lately he has assumed the names of ''real people''
> and claimed to be them when editing wiki. He apparently has now
> assumed the identity of actor Ahmed Best. Not knowing anything about
> Star Wars (I'm more of a Trekkie!) I know nothing of Mr. Best,
> including whether he does exist. But he does feature in wiki articles
> that seem to have been created by other genuine contributors, so I
> presume he must.
>
> According to the page of [[User:Jar Jar Binks]] (the character on Star
> Wars played by Best), Michael wrote:
>
> Hi there, I'm the real [[Jar Jar Binks]] ([[Ahmed Best]]).
> I heard this website is a tough place for a banned user that I don't
> know.
> I played in all [[Star Wars]] sequals from 1998 to 2003.

I would assume that the username Jar Jar Binks is a problem, as it's
more than likely been tradmarked.

>
> PS: The great thing about Ireland is that it is so small we all tend
> to know each other (or know someone who knows someone who . . . ) If
> Michael uses Bono's name, I'll have a word with him and try to stop
> him from suing wiki. (I know his wife Ali!)  :-)

That makes the whole world's leadership a small place :)


from_name: David Levinson

body:
I think the Table of Contents feature will be very helpful, and will
become more so as articles grow in length. I commend the developers. It
makes the wikipedia look more professional and authoritative, and will
help immensely with the writing of  organized articles. It will also
encourage the proper use of headings.  Text before the TOC is also a in
general good thing, but that probably should be user configurable. The
introduction of anchors also helps.

  A simple <notoc> tag to allow authors to have articles avoid
displaying the table (for whatever reason, like the Main Page, or
others) should suffice. Similarly, a preference for logged in users
would take care of the rest who really hate it.  Since it is a good
idea, requiring a positive affirmation of a toc, that is a <toc> tag
for every article, will require significant editing and touching of
130000+ entries that would be better spent on content.

== Comments on features ==

=== Numbering ===
The numbering is awkward since the headings aren't numbered, maybe the
TOC should be bulleted, or maybe headings should be numbered, I prefer
bulleting the TOC to numbering the headings.

=== Size of text box ===
The area taken by the shaded box probably ought to extend across the
screen, rather than be in a fixed size box, see
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be for a really ugly outcome of the
current implementation (especially when the screen is narrow), which I
am sure can be fixed.

=== Repeat article title ===
The Table of contents probably should repeat the article title, e.g.
"Table of contents - Philosophy"

=== List of tables ===
A list of tables and list of figures would also help.

== Signature ==
David Levinson
dlevinson AT mn DOT rr DOT com


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Terrible new design

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>It's the first time vistors we want to impress, and for them we want
>to have either a decent main page or a decent "default main page skin".
>

I plan to do some more work on a default main skin.
I posted a rough version of what I had in mind about a week ago on the
tech mailing list. (you will also see my design goals on that test page)

I've had some positive & constructive feedback so far and when I next
have time I will go through people's comments, make changes and release
another work-in-progress for further comments.

-- tarquin


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tobin Richard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New Installation

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Would some of you please look at the new installation at:
>
> http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org
>
> Thanks, Fred Bauder

Just a quick question, should *Affiliated with Wikipedia* be on your
Main Page?

That seems to suggest that your site is some kind of official partner to
Wikipedia (which, unless I'm very much mistaken, it isn't).

Tobin Richard.

----
Cunnan, ye olde wiki.
http://www.sca.org.au/cunnan/


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Terrible new design

body:
"The Cunctator" <cunctator at kband.com> wrote in
message news:1057355234.17618.15.camel at venus.mit.edu...
> While the new happy post-it-note styling of the homepage is a cute and
> enterprising experiment in design, it's amateurish, arbitrary, and busy.
>
> This is why we have skins! Please make this an optional skin only.

Just make your own main page and bookmark it, that will have much the same
effect. It's the first time vistors we want to impress, and for them we want
to have either a decent main page or a decent "default main page skin". I
happen to think the former is better since it's easier to collaboratively
edit.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: julien tayon

body:
> === Size of text box ===
> The area taken by the shaded box probably ought to extend across the
> screen, rather than be in a fixed size box, see
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be for a really ugly outcome of the
> current implementation (especially when the screen is narrow), which I
>
> am sure can be fixed.
>
Sure, you can buy a larger screen :)

Jul
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Faster link updates

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>After some indirect prompting from Erik, I wrote some link table update code
>which hopefully will speed up edits to pages with lots of links.
>
Yay!

>* fairly well enabled/disabled with $wgUseBetterLinksUpdate
>* Article::showArticle() loads the link table with LinkCache::preFill(),
>then calls LinkCache::clear(), which clears the cache but leaves a copy of
>it hidden away. It then refills the cache with the new link table.
>
(Haven't looked at it in much detail yet.) Hmm, does this mean we take
the overhead of a double cache on every page view? We should only need
it when saving pages. I suppose in most cases it's the least of our
troubles though. :)

>* LinksUpdate::doUpdate() calls LinkCache::incrementalSetup(), which works
>out what needs to be added and deleted, and applies a simple formula to
>decide whether the old way or the new way should be quicker.
>* The new way deletes links row by row, and then adds the new ones using a
>single insert. Blanking large articles would be slow, hence that would be
>done the old way.
>
It may be a touch more efficient to do the deletes in one query, such as:
$sql = "DELETE FROM links WHERE l_from='{$this->mTitleEnc}' AND l_to IN ("
. implode( ",", $del) . ")";

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] German Wikipedia announcing 20.000 article

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The main visible changes should be:
>
> * 'Nicht angemeldet' is shown in the corner instead of your IP address
> if you're not logged in. This is so we can store the pages and serve
> them back to other people without having to re-render the whole page.
>
> * The 'Diese Seite wurde bisher (Nummer) mal abgerufen.' message at the
> bottom of pages is still there for now, but the hit count may not be
> shown up to date for anon users, and will undercount anonymous visits.
>
> * The article count on the main page may not keep up to date for users
> who aren't logged in, as they will see a saved copy of the page. It will
> update when the page is next edited, and logged-in users should always
> see the current count.
>
> (Note that the new version can use the alternate article count system --
> links instead of commas -- but for now I have left it on the comma
> count, so it won't change suddenly and dramatically. :)
>
> If anything is more broken than usual ;) give out a shout.
>

First of all, thank you :)

Additionally:
* Some translations are fixed, e.g. Allpages (Alle Artikel) uses 'bis'
instead of 'to' :) I will check all others after the next coffee ;)

* Search now displays appropriate search-result number.

* Language-Links can now handle e.g. Bosnia (bs) and all the others, I
added (to much to list).

No more obvious errors than usually. :)

--
Smurf

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New Installation

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
 > The links in question are to the wikipedias in languages other than
English
 > which are affiliated with Wikipedia.
 >
 > There will be another section of on-line encyclopedias which are
 > independent.
 >
 > Fred

My mistake. I'd misread it as the links aren't indented along with the
heading.

Tobin Richard.

----
Cunnan, ye olde wiki.
http://www.sca.org.au/cunnan/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>>I strongly think we're better off formalizing a policy in which
>>>particular author attribution is not required. That is, by contributing
>>>to Wikipedia, you agree to be attributed as one of the "Wikipedia
>>>Contributors" or somesuch.
>>>
>>Well that certainly much more closely matches our social custom, in
>>which articles aren't "owned" by anyone, and we value all sorts of
>>contributions to the project without specifically privileging
>>'authorship'.
>>
>>But, how can we reconcile your suggestion with the FDL?
>>
>
>For past contributions, we probably can't.
>But for future contributions, we'd ask them to assign authorship rights
>to the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
Another alternative may be that as authors we effectively appoint
Wikimedia as our copyright agent, but with this may come Wikimedia's
'''obligation''' to globally defend those rights.

Most of the discussion on this range of issues leaves the impression of
being "stuck" with the GNU-FDL without any right to amend it to suit our
own purposes.  When the whole project began basic copyright decisions
obviously had to be made just to be able to function.  Most of us in
allowing our efforts to be covered by GNU-FDL are more concerned with
the spirit rather than the letter of that document.  I certainly do not
agree that FSF should have the right to amend the document as it applies
to us without the amendment having been fully discussed in one of our
appropriate forums.  I don't recall any such discussion taking place in
November 2002 when version 1.2 was adopted.

In this context I think that the establishment of Wikimedia provides an
opportunity for us to develop our own home grown system that takes into
consideration the particular problems that Wikipedia has encountered
since its inception.  If the GNU-FDL (1.2) is to be a basis for that
then Wikimedia must retain all rights to make subsequent amendments.

To date the Wikimedia Foundation does not have a published constitution
or any kind of democratically chosen by-laws or internationally
representative Board of Directors.  When it is finally elected that
Board should give serious consideration to what kind of copyright
licensing rules etc. should apply in the future before everybody's
rights are massively transferred from Wikipedia (or whomever) to Wikimedia.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Response to Anthere's claims

body:
Robert wrote:

>Anthere writes:
>
>>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.
>>
>
>I do not like it when people make accusations of
>"scientism".  It is a perjorative word, used to demean and
>insult.  (Anthere's charge, by the way, is false.  I am not
>an adherent of "scientism". Frankly, I have never met
>*anyone* who is.)
>
That's an interesting point of view.  This puts "scientism" on the same
pejorative footing as "pseudoscience".  I've never met anyone who is an
adherent of "pseudoscience".

As long as "pseudoscience" continues to be used "scientism" is fair
game. :-)

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Weekly News

body:
sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca wrote:

>I've put up a page for working on this at
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Weekly_News , as well a
>sample newsletter at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWN_sample
>
You must be sending messages from the future, Stephen, cause I don't see
them. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>>>It is acceptable for people to hold their own opinions and express
>>>them -- but not in an inappropriate forum.  One of the cardinal
>>>principles of Wikipedia is respect for others, even others with
>>>whom we have significant political or other disagreements.
>>>
>>Absolutely. Even more so, in my opinion, of long-time contributors.
>>
>
>In a sense, I suppose.  But once we're long-time contributors, we
>are friends (to a degree), and we can probably take a little heat,
>although it's best if it's kept private or avoided entirely when
>we can.
>
>If I had to choose between "act more respectuflly towards old-timers"
>or "act more respectfually towards newcomers", I'd tend to favor the
>latter.  But I don't think there's any "more so" needed.
>
>I don't always follow my own advice here -- none of us always do, and
>that's part of the human condition.  But courtesy and kindness is
>powerful magic, and we should use it in all cases to our best
>advantage.
>
>>But I do want him to know that I think that the way he expresses
>>himself in the heat of "righteous outrage" is a bit detrimental to
>>his reputation as far as I am concerned.
>>
>
>Well, I'm sure he's listening with an open heart to what you are
>saying.
>
Being too quick to treat a comment as offensive, or being excessive in
reaction never helps.  There is often a world of difference between
egregious anti-Semitism and perceived anti-Semitism; I would tend to
give the writer the benefit of the doubt.  When the writer has been
shown how his comment could be viewed as anti-Semitic, and has
acknowledged the fact, that should be the end of the matter.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:
>
>>Oliver Pereira wrote:
>>
>>>This is the message I sent.
>>>
>>[Snipped!]
>>
>>It's perfectly fine that Oliver sent a letter,
>>since he discovered and his letter was just from him.
>>We should send one more letter: a form letter
>>(or something that looks just as official ^_^)
>>that's worked out on [[meta:]] and can be used again.
>>
>
>I've had a reply from Russ McNeil of Malaspina Great Books. I was going to
>forward his reply to the list, but then I had the thought that that would
>probably be an infringement of *his* copyright, which would be quite
>ironic in the circumstances. :)
>
Probably not.  If you were writing on behalf of Wikipedia, then his
reply to you was received as an agent of Wikipedia, so sharing it with
the list would be appropriate.

>Basically, he says that he supports the Wikipedia philosophy, and thought
>that by acknowledging the source and linking back to the Wikipedia
>articles he was dong everything he had to. He said he would check to see
>if he needed to do more. (I think this means he didn't trust my statement
>that he *did* need to do more!) So I think we should check his site again
>later to make sure that he's making the necessary changes.
>
Malaspina Great Books and Malaspina College did come up before, and Ed
Poor appears to have written to them in October 2002 about the Ernest
Hemingway article to mention the GFDL requirements, and the attributions
were modified accordingly by Malaspina.  My impression is that Malaspina
is quite willing to treat the matter with appropriate consideration.

Ec


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Faster link updates

body:
06.07.2003 14:21:09, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> It may be a touch more efficient to do the deletes in one query, such
> as:
> $sql = "DELETE FROM links WHERE l_from='{$this->mTitleEnc}' AND l_to
> IN (". implode( ",", $del) . ")";

Probably not just a touch. :-)

Yeah, I was going to say the same. Do it this way, and then this way
should always be faster than the old way, so trash it.

I would have loved to do it, but I guess I'm too late :-)
Timwi


body:
06.07.2003 03:09:54, David Levinson <dlevinson at mn.rr.com> wrote:

>== Comments on features ==
>
>=== Numbering ===
>The numbering is awkward since the headings aren't numbered, maybe the
>TOC should be bulleted, or maybe headings should be numbered, I prefer
>bulleting the TOC to numbering the headings.

People can turn on numbering of headings in their prefs.

However, I agree with you that the TOC should really be bulleted when
people have that pref off (i.e. the TOC should follow that pref). I
don't know how easy or difficult that would be to code, though.

>=== Size of text box ===
>The area taken by the shaded box probably ought to extend across the
>screen, rather than be in a fixed size box, see
>http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be for a really ugly outcome of the
>current implementation (especially when the screen is narrow), which I
>am sure can be fixed.

What text box? What shaded box? What is fixed-size? Please could you be
more specific? :) I don't see anything ugly about the Be article, except
perhaps if you go even narrower than 800 pixels, which I don't think we
are supposed to support.

>=== Repeat article title ===
>=== List of tables ===

Good ideas :)

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fwd: failure delivery (wikidown)

body:
>The emailadres to report a down Wikipedia is wikidown at bomis.com

Then please change the error message to show that e-mail address. It
currently shows wikidown at wikipedia.org (I think), which bounces.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
> Mav, if you'd _read_ Erik's message you'd have noted he said that the
> TOC is *not* displayed when showing the main page, which is why you
> need to give other examples.

It is not really a good argument to just say "This is a special case,
show me other examples". How many other good examples will be dismissed
as special cases? How many good examples does it take to no longer be a
bunch of special cases?

> Me, I'm all in favor of being able to manually suppress automatic
> functions that aren't always appropriate for particular tasks.

Maybe the preferences should allow users to set the threshold of how
many sections an article must have to get a TOC.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: German Wikipedia announcing 20.000 article

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

> But it seems that TeX support is broken:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TeX

(kicks self for forgetting)

At some point Lee changed the default settings to disable TeX (since it
requires additional support programs), and I forgot to explicitly turn
it on in the config file. Should be back working now...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!

body:
If only Wikimedia could buy out EB........cheap......Imagine!!
Ec

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby-
>
>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>>So, this is pretty interesting.  According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is
>>>now more popular than Britannica.
>>>
>>We should probably keep in mind that Britannica is also available in print.
>>In fact, that's the brand's traditional medium.
>>
>
>Encarta has very much harmed Britannica's print sales. Britannica counted
>on their brand name and image, but even many of their customers did not
>see why they would have to pay thousands of dollars for a paper
>encyclopedia when they could get a decent encyclopedia, plus lots of
>multimedia stuff, maps etc. for 100 bucks or less, and the whole thing
>would fit neatly into their back pocket.
>
>Swiss investor Jacob Safra bought Britannica in 1996 (it's still based in
>Chicago), and the sales staff for the paper version was fired shortly
>thereafter. Since then the focus has been almost exclusively on the
>Internet and CD-ROM version, which was massively reduced in price and is
>now dirt cheap. For some time they even had the full text online --
>remember, those were the dot com days.
>
>Things are looking pretty grim for Britannica. Their Java-based software
>is a piece of crap, and Encarta has much better marketing. They still have
>their original content bonus, but even in terms of content they have
>massive weaknesses in some areas (for example, compare their article on
>circumcision with ours). I think the Britannica brand will live on, but in
>terms of competition we should be more worried about Encarta (and vice
>versa).
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiWomen (was Partial deletion)

body:
steve vertigo wrote:

>Alright, alright... I got the point.  Would the people
>with clitorises stop making fun of the people with
>penises, please?  It's no picnic to carry on of *these
>around -- as evidenced by constant presumptiveness,
>bountiful typographical errors, and an early risk of
>alzheimers.
>
My OED says nothing about the plural of "clitoris"; even the above might
be read as "people with a clitoris" as it would be freaky for anybody to
have more than one.  Still there are grammatical circumstances in my
warped mind where the plural is imaginable.  "Clitoris" is a word of
Greek origin, and I wonder whether the proper plural might be "clitorides"

Ec


from_name: sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Weekly News

body:
Keeping up with everything at Wikipedia is a daunting task. In
English, there are two medium to high traffic mailing lists (four for
those interested in multi-lingual and technical issues), the
announcements page, Meta-Wikipedia, and the uncounted issues
being debated on Talk pages scattered about. And that's assuming
you don't speak any other languages. Of course, if you're
interested in what's happening on, say, the Spanish Wikipedia but
*don't* speak Spanish, things become even more difficult. How can
we make it easier to stay informed, especially for causal
Wikipedians and interested observers?

I propose we take a cue from the Debian Project
(http://www.debian.org/). It's a very complex project, with a myriad
of mailing lists. For people who don't have time to eat, drink and
breathe Debian, there's the Debian Weekly News, a weekly email
newsletter that summarizes the major threads on the lists,
announces new subprojects and software, and provides security
update notices.

Debian Weekly News is run by one person, with occassional
submissions from others. We can do better, using wiki
collaboration. We could set up a page using a template on the
meta. When people notice something of interest happening, they
post a summary on the Wikipedia Weekly News page, along with
links to where the action is (wiki page, mailing list thread, etc). On
a given day and time, someone puts the text into an email, and
sends it out over the new WWN-L mailing list. Then, the wiki page
is archived, wiped, and the template is reposted, ready for next
week's issue. Eventually, we could work up a script to automate
the sending and archiving.

Ideally, we would have correspondents from each language with an
active wiki. These correspondents could translate news from their
wikis into English, and then translate the whole newsletter into
their own languages. This would be a bit of work, but if there's
enough interest, we could have several Wikipedia Weekly News
lists, allowing people to keep up with project-wide news in their
own languages. Also, representitives from wikitech-l would be
good; they could summerize the tech discussions going on in
layman's terms.

I've put up a page for working on this at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Weekly_News , as well a
sample newsletter at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWN_sample
(obviously I need a lot of help coming up with a workable template).
If there's enough interest in getting this going, I think it would do
much to improve communication through the project.

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


from_name: Adam

from_email: Adam

subject: [WikiEN-l] response to cprompt

body:
Cprompt said:

If you apologize

He must have missed the dozen posts in which I apoligized so let me say again:

I apoligize unequivocally. I am sorry.

He then said: Whether you are or are not Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] means little.

He almost certainly missed the several nasty emails I received regarding my name, as well as the numerous comments on talk pages.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
David Levinson wrote in small part:

>== Comments on features ==

>=== Numbering ===
>The numbering is awkward since the headings aren't numbered, maybe the
>TOC should be bulleted, or maybe headings should be numbered, I prefer
>bulleting the TOC to numbering the headings.

Headers /can/ be numbered, it's a user prefernce.  I number them.
Perhaps the TOC should be bulleted or numbered, per that same user pref?

-- Toby


body:
The Cunctator wrote in part:

>The content of the Wikipedia pages below the title and above the links at
>the bottom has always been entirely user-configurable. To change that
>summarily is not something to be taken lightly.

Persumably you meant Wikipedia /articles/ here, not Wikipedia /pages/,
since you already pointed out that Erik's example of subpage backlinks
applies only outside the article namespace -- but it does apply to some pages.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Newbies' influence (Was: Please help test new features)

body:
Timwi wrote at first:

>I know I'm new and all, and I probably don't have a lot of say in this,

We try to not let seniority have a great influence here.
See [[en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians in order of arrival]]
and the discussion surrounding that page.
The main relevance (that I can think of) of your recent arrival
is that it suggests possible unfamiliarity with Wikipedia's culture --
but that just means that we'll have to judge what you say on its merits!

-- Toby


body:
James D. Forrester wrote at last:

>On the semi-related note of inter-article sub-linking ([[a#x]]) as opposed
>to intra-article sub-linking ([[#x]]), I also think that having support for
>this (the former) is a Bad Thing(tm); given that we are so set against it
>being used, adding the deprecated functionality to the system is (highly)
>illogical, IMO.

I'm also unhappy with the prospect of inter-article sub-linking;
but in fairness, I must remind you that we get this automatically.
No coder is going out of their way to enable this;
rather, we're asking them to go out of their way to disable it.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The nature of a Wikipedia article (Was: Please help test new features)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote in part:

>Stub sections are evil. They are a form of meta comment like "is this
>really true?" insertions in articles and should be avoided whenever
>possible. Wiki is a means to an end, not an end in itself -- Wikipedia is
>first and foremost an encyclopedia, not a scratchpad. If you want to talk
>about an article's potential future structure, use the talk page.

One of the poorest developements that I've seen in Wikipedia
over the course of the past year that I've spent here
is that people are abandoning the notion that Wikipedia articles
are, by their very nature, always and inherently works in progress.
Comments hidden away on the talk page or inside the HTML code
are useful to me only once I decide to work on it --
they do nothing to encourage me to start working in the first place.

-- Toby


body:
David Friedland wrote:

>I propose that whether and and where a TOC appears should be specified
>by each article using a wiki tag indicating where the TOC should appear.

This seems like the obvious thing to do,
and was suggested on one of these mailing lists
before Erik's code was ever implemented on [[test:]].
The obvious code would be <TOC> (or <toc>, or either).

Despite David's arguments, I see one big problem
with /requiring/ a <TOC> tag on any article with a TOC.
The problem is that articles all start out without TOCs.
My solution: Let Erik devise the best system that he can
for estimating when an article needs a TOC and when it doesn't.
(The current estimate is the number of headers; that's fine.)
And let him estimate the best place (before the first header).
Then run a conversion script to put "<TOC>" in all of those articles.

At this point, the situation is exactly what Erik would have it be always.
Yet humans can now go through and make adjustments, if necessary.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Update LanguageDe.php

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:

> There had been some typos in the historywarning messages, I fixed.
>
> Brion, can you put the new LanguageDE.php from CVS to Live-wiki?
> Thanks in advance.

Sure thing! Done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] nested URLs

body:
Karl Wick wrote:

>http://textbook.wikipedia.org/organic_chemistry/foundational_concepts/history_of_organic_chemistry/vital_force

This doesn't fit in very well with the idea of
reusing the same modules in different ways for different textbooks.
Now, I don't know how big of a deal that is;
will such reuse be limited to a few cases,
so that copying modules will work:

>One final idea is to use an idea similar to that employed
>by the Yahoo briefcase where you can copy modules from one
>folder to another, for example to create a derivative
>textbook or just take a couple of modules from one to
>another without having to open each page and copy out the
>code.

:or if we'll be reusing modules all over the place in many ways.
In the later case, a URL that first states the module name,
then lists whatever other data we need in ?%%=%% format,
would be best IMO.

>The idea of using nested URLs will also help us get around
>funky URLs and/or page names for pages with common names
>like "Problem set". Plus this structure of URL hierarchy
>should be familiar to most internet users already so there
>is little learning curve.

Even if the latter case wins above and y'all agree with me,
still [[Vital force/Problem set]] would be a reasonable module title.

That said, problem set modules could well present
their own special difficulties
if the modules that they build on are reused in many ways.
Here an idea off the cuff:
Each /problem/ is a separate file,
with some of its data specifying which modules it uses,
and the problem will appear in a given textbook
as soon as all of its prerequisites have been read.
(The textbook itself might specify, however,
that problems can appear, say, only at the end of a chapter.)
This is just off the cuff, remember! ^_^

-- Toby


body:
Walter Vermeir wrote in part:

>Karl Wick wrote:

>>http://test.wikipedia.org is not responding and the email I
>>just sent to wikidown at wikipedia.org was just returned to
>>me.

>The emailadres to report a down Wikipedia is wikidown at bomis.com

I thought that somebody fixed the address listed on the error page.
<wikidown at wikipedia.org> has never existed, only <wikidown at bomis.com>.
The point of that address is that <bomis.com> will probably be up
even when <wikipedia.org> is completely down (including this mailing list).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems with Table of Contents and possible solution

body:
David Friedland wrote at last:

>(I'm not sure if this is more appropriate discussion for Wikipedia-l, as
>it might involve policy, so I erred on the conservative side and have
>posted on wikitech-l)

I replied on <wikipedia-L>, since you posted there also eventually.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Please help test new features

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Not sure if we can get 1.2.3 formatting with <ol> at all. In any case, the
>numbering is different with inversely nested headlines (a higher level
>being introduced after a lower one).

I don't know how to get 1.2.3 for <ol> either;
but as a user of auto-numbered headings, I don't need it.
The number with inversely nested headlines is the same;
it's just that you have to take care that the HTML is valid.
I should point out that inversely nested headlines, AFAICT,
are /always/ an error -- and I always fix them.
I support switching to <ol>.

-- Toby


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>The emailadres to report a down Wikipedia is wikidown at bomis.com
>>
>>
>
>I thought that somebody fixed the address listed on the error page.
>
It was fixed on the English Wikipedia, but not on the test wiki. I fixed
it today.

><wikidown at wikipedia.org> has never existed, only <wikidown at bomis.com>.
>The point of that address is that <bomis.com> will probably be up
>even when <wikipedia.org> is completely down (including this mailing list).
>
Unless, of course, the whole data center explodes / sinks into the sea /
is swarmed by locusts and takes out all of Bomis's servers. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Faster link updates

body:
In CVS:

After some indirect prompting from Erik, I wrote some link table update code
which hopefully will speed up edits to pages with lots of links. Basic
features:

* fairly well enabled/disabled with $wgUseBetterLinksUpdate
* Article::showArticle() loads the link table with LinkCache::preFill(),
then calls LinkCache::clear(), which clears the cache but leaves a copy of
it hidden away. It then refills the cache with the new link table.
* LinksUpdate::doUpdate() calls LinkCache::incrementalSetup(), which works
out what needs to be added and deleted, and applies a simple formula to
decide whether the old way or the new way should be quicker.
* The new way deletes links row by row, and then adds the new ones using a
single insert. Blanking large articles would be slow, hence that would be
done the old way.

This has not been tested for speed yet. I think constructing a realistic
test would be difficult -- it's probably easier just to put it on the live
server and see what happens.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo says that my name is unimportant

body:
Adam von [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

> And how many posts have been placed both on this list, and on the wiki
> itself, harrassing, belittling, and attacking me because, apparently,
> my name is Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (or so the cabal says) and that I should be
> banned for not using that name. Jimbo can say all he wants that my
> name was not a factor in banning me, but the history of the mailing
> list says otherwise. Perhaps he didn't read all the mailing list posts.

You've promised not to make any more edits, and there are a lot of
people who are willing to believe that you are not Pizza Puzzle. If you
apology, and accept responsibility for the reasons you were banned
(according to the person who banned you) and don't commit those actions
(according to the people who complained about you) then you should be
fine. Forget the cabal, forget your name. I use the name cprompt, and no
one seems to care. Whether you are or are not Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] means little.

--

--cprompt


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
tarquin wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> Like I've said before; Sifter, team certification and a "stable"
>> distribution of Wikipedia are all basically the same thing in that
>> they are trying to accomplish similar goals. To be viable we should
>> make one project that encompasses the best aspects of all three ideas.
>>
>>
>>
> Yup.
>
> I see it as a collection of "pointers" to particular revisions in
> Wikipedia -- at least while we're working online.

Then let's make this happen! How about this:
* Each article gets a pointer to its "stable" version.
* A new site (NuNupedia;-) is set up with the wiki software, using the
same database, with two differences:
** No editing, for noone
** Instead of displaying the current article, it displays the "stable"
version
* On wikipedia, a link "make this the stable version" appears for editors

We'll just have to find a way to determine the editors. That aside,
would that be a viable concept? I ask because it'd be dead easy to code ;-)

Magnus


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Unless, of course, the whole data center explodes / sinks into the
>> sea / is swarmed by locusts and takes out all of Bomis's servers. :)
>
>
> BTW, how often do we make backups, and where are they stored? :-)

Weekly, latest one downloadable from http://download.wikipedia.org/
I keep copies at home, and hope that other people do too. :)

Tonight's backup is still compressing, wait a bit....

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Sun, 6 Jul 2003, james duffy wrote:
>
> >Geoff Burling wrote
> >
> >Here we face another problem: why can't we trust that if someone says
> >she/he is a celebrity, that person is telling the truth? After all,
> >celebrities
> >*do* participate on the Internet (Wil Wheaton is one example, but the woman
> >who used the name Brandy Alexander in several porn movies also was a
> >regular
> >on alt.sex.movies for many years.) And I hope that some of these actors &
> >actresses eventually come to Wikipedia & make useful contributions.
> >
> >I'd recommend that we trust people to be whom they say they are: if
> >someone creates the user account of Jennifer Lopez or Gus van Sant (for
> >example), we take them at face value until it's clear that they aren't
> >whom they say they are (e.g. "Jennifer Lopez" doesn't understand Spanish,
> >or "Gus van Sant" clearly has never been to Portland, Oregon in his life),
> >at which point they are told to change their user name or face being
> >banned.
> >
> >Otherwise, we trust that Equity will tell us when someone is not one of
> >these celebrities, & require better documentation that Equity is whom
> >they say they are (e.g., a certified letter with a lawyer's letterhead with
> >a valid phone number will always trump email), & give the user the choice
> >of either changing their username (unless it's clear that they have been
> >a nuisence in more ways than this) or be banned. There's an infinite
> >number of possible usernames out there: I see no profit to Wikipedia in
> >condoning identify theft.
>
> In normal circumstances I agree that we should trust someone until proven
> otherwise. However in Michael's case, his behaviour is such that it becomes
> obvious almost immediately that it is him. In the circumstances  as we know
> Ahmed Best  /isn't/ Ahmed Best but Michael, we cannot sit back and allow
> Michael to steal Best's name, nor anyone else's, not least because that
> would place /us/ in legally complicated waters, if by our inaction though we
> knew the facts we allowed the defamation of someone, the theft of a
> trademark, on wiki. And and anyone who has ever clashed with them on such
> issues knows, Equity and Lucasfilm do not tend to politely ask you why did
> you let this happen. They use the law, and they have some of the best
> lawyers at their disposal.
>
> As so often unfortunately Michael is a unique case. While in the case of 99%
> of wiki users we can give them the benefit of the doubt, there are clearly a
> small but dangerous number of people (Michael & DW being two examples
> currently but more will no doubt arise in the future) where past history
> shows they will simply use our tolerance as a means to damage wiki.
>
I guess I wasn't clear in my post, because I see James is responding to two
seperate, although related items.

1. Trusting people to say who they actually are. IIRC, my original point
was that in our zeal do deal with certain people, we should be careful
about identifying a new contributor as one of these individuals & treating
her/him accordingly.

2. Use of copyright material. Setting aside my own beliefs on the use &
abuse of copyright, I'm in agreement with current Wikipedia policies:
when in doubt, don't submit it. (One reason I haven't been submitting
scans of objects from Classical Times from museum & exhibit catalogs
I own is that I don't want to make Wikipedia a target for a suit from,
say, the British Museum or Dumbarton Oaks. Oh well, I hope Wikipedia
will be around in 2020 when I plan to upload illustrations from my
collection of old _Antiquity_ magazines.)

And Lucasfilm isn't the only corporation that is stingy about use of
its materials: a certain arrangement of three circles are apparently
too evocative to people of a certain cartoon mouse, & may not be used
without permission. Best that we forbid uploading even third-party
creations of certain television & movie subjects, such as Star Wars,
Star Trek, & the Warner Brothers/Walt Disney cartoons.

If I were to offer my opinion, it would be to give them what they want
& just boycott all use of these corporate images! Maybe then they'll
knock off this attempt at perpetual copyright. (But I said I wasn't going
to offer my opinion, so forget I said anything.)

Geoff


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
Magnus-

<snip>

> We'll just have to find a way to determine the editors. That aside,
> would that be a viable concept? I ask because it'd be dead easy to code ;-)

Speaking of code, would you mind finishing the article categorization code
before starting a new project? ;-)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] jimbo and lir and the wiki too!

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

>Adam von [name omitted for privacy reasons] (Lir) wrote:

>>As I understand it, I was banned for:
>>....
>>* attacking RK for being a Jew

>This in itself is reason enough that I think you don't belong on the
>Wikipedia, and that I have no reason to believe your apologies.

If you remember what this was about and are responding to that, fine;
but if you're responding to what Lir wrote in that list,
keep in mind that it's a list of things that people have said
(presumbably in talk pages and mailing lists) to her,
not things that she admits to having done.
(The later entries should make that clear.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Faster link updates

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:3F081435.1070100 at pobox.com...
> Tim Starling wrote:

...

> >* Article::showArticle() loads the link table with LinkCache::preFill(),
> >then calls LinkCache::clear(), which clears the cache but leaves a copy
of
> >it hidden away. It then refills the cache with the new link table.
> >
> (Haven't looked at it in much detail yet.) Hmm, does this mean we take
> the overhead of a double cache on every page view? We should only need
> it when saving pages. I suppose in most cases it's the least of our
> troubles though. :)

No, showArticle() is only called from insertNewArticle() and
updateArticle(). In fact, it doesn't show anything at all, it just updates
some tables and sends a redirect.

> >* LinksUpdate::doUpdate() calls LinkCache::incrementalSetup(), which
works
> >out what needs to be added and deleted, and applies a simple formula to
> >decide whether the old way or the new way should be quicker.
> >* The new way deletes links row by row, and then adds the new ones using
a
> >single insert. Blanking large articles would be slow, hence that would be
> >done the old way.
> >
> It may be a touch more efficient to do the deletes in one query, such as:
> $sql = "DELETE FROM links WHERE l_from='{$this->mTitleEnc}' AND l_to IN ("
> . implode( ",", $del) . ")";

I'll take your word for it. MySQL is still pretty much a mystery to me.

-- Tim Starling.


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

body:
James duffy wrote in part:

>I would disagree with the description of what I am suggesting as
>'witchhunting' software.

Well, I'm not the one that introduced that term. ^,^

>DW in particular is a serious
>threat to wiki; from raising possible serious legal difficulties over
>copyright photos, to threatening to sue anyone who 'outs' him, to scaring
>off newbies and not so new-bies with his behaviour.

This isn't strictly relevant,
but the copyright photos aren't a very /serious/ threat.
The DMCA protects Wikipedia, despite what DW says.
(But we've talked about that elsewhere.)

>The rules should be:
>[...]

You've cleared up any question in my mind now
as to whether what you're advocating is sufficiently open.
For me, it is.  Thank you!

-- Toby


from_name: james duffy

body:
>Geoff Burling wrote
>
>Here we face another problem: why can't we trust that if someone says
>she/he is a celebrity, that person is telling the truth? After all,
>celebrities
>*do* participate on the Internet (Wil Wheaton is one example, but the woman
>who used the name Brandy Alexander in several porn movies also was a
>regular
>on alt.sex.movies for many years.) And I hope that some of these actors &
>actresses eventually come to Wikipedia & make useful contributions.
>
>I'd recommend that we trust people to be whom they say they are: if
>someone creates the user account of Jennifer Lopez or Gus van Sant (for
>example), we take them at face value until it's clear that they aren't
>whom they say they are (e.g. "Jennifer Lopez" doesn't understand Spanish,
>or "Gus van Sant" clearly has never been to Portland, Oregon in his life),
>at which point they are told to change their user name or face being
>banned.
>
>Otherwise, we trust that Equity will tell us when someone is not one of
>these celebrities, & require better documentation that Equity is whom
>they say they are (e.g., a certified letter with a lawyer's letterhead with
>a valid phone number will always trump email), & give the user the choice
>of either changing their username (unless it's clear that they have been
>a nuisence in more ways than this) or be banned. There's an infinite
>number of possible usernames out there: I see no profit to Wikipedia in
>condoning identify theft.

In normal circumstances I agree that we should trust someone until proven
otherwise. However in Michael's case, his behaviour is such that it becomes
obvious almost immediately that it is him. In the circumstances  as we know
Ahmed Best  /isn't/ Ahmed Best but Michael, we cannot sit back and allow
Michael to steal Best's name, nor anyone else's, not least because that
would place /us/ in legally complicated waters, if by our inaction though we
knew the facts we allowed the defamation of someone, the theft of a
trademark, on wiki. And and anyone who has ever clashed with them on such
issues knows, Equity and Lucasfilm do not tend to politely ask you why did
you let this happen. They use the law, and they have some of the best
lawyers at their disposal.

As so often unfortunately Michael is a unique case. While in the case of 99%
of wiki users we can give them the benefit of the doubt, there are clearly a
small but dangerous number of people (Michael & DW being two examples
currently but more will no doubt arise in the future) where past history
shows they will simply use our tolerance as a means to damage wiki.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


body:
>A user about whom there is confusion over name wrote: And how many posts
>have been placed both on this list, and on the wiki itself, harrassing,
>belittling, and attacking me because, apparently, my name is Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]
>(or so the cabal says) and that I should be banned for not using that name.
>Jimbo can say all he wants that my name was not a factor in banning me, but
>the history of the mailing list says otherwise. Perhaps he didn't read all
>the mailing list posts.
>
According to mailing info, it was sent
>From: Adam von [name omitted for privacy reasons] <cddvdlenscleaner at yahoo.com>

Personally I don't give to hoots whether the person is called Adam, Bridget,
Vera, Susan, Napoleon von Humberdick or whatever. But it would make things a
lot easier if the person in question could settle on /one/ name and stick to
it. And it would show other wikipedians a lot of respect if the user used
that name and no others when editing wikipedia.

So do you agree to stick to one identity?   Y__  N__

What name do you wish to be known as? ________________

One final point: a question was asked some time ago of 'Adam' as to whether
he is the user currently known as Pizza Puzzle. I am not here advocating
PP's banning. But it would clear the air if 'Adam' could answer a simple
question asked in the past but not answered. An honest and upfront
relationship with other wikipedians would go a long way to solving the
issues that have arisen in 'Adam's relationship with wiki. And note I am not
raking over past issues of past identities. All I want to know, as part of a
process of trust building is, is Pizza Puzzle 'Adam'?

Yes _____      No _____

If there is honesty with regard to usernames then that could well form the
beginning of a new relationship between the user formerly known as Adam and
wikipedia.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


subject: [Wikitech-l] Technical TOC tweaks

body:
OK, I have some notes:

The pipe trick would work well in this case,
with [[#Y|]] being treated as [[#Y|Y]] --
because that's almost always what you want to do --
and perhaps [[X#Y|]] being treated as [[X#Y|Y]].
Currently, both of these remain unparsed.
I found it rather annoying to continually type in [[#Y|Y]].

In a preview, an internal [[#Y]] link
links to a URL with <&action=submit> and everything.
We know that some browsers interact badly
with the back and forward buttons in article previews
(neither Netscape nor IE uses these buttons correctly),
which is why we had to introduce all that page cache stuff.
This could exacerbate things, with people hopping all over a previewed page.
Instead, these links might link to the ordinary URL,
the same as a link of the form [[X]] [[X#Y]] (even on the page [[X]]) does.
(I'm less sure about this one.)

-- Toby


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> If anything is more broken than usual ;) give out a shout.

Thanks again for the update.

But it seems that TeX support is broken:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TeX

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Faster link updates

body:
Tim-

thanks for coding this. One bug I noticed: When creating and removing a
link to a non-existent page, the brokenlinks table is not updated
accordingly, i.e. the removed link is still there. It works fine for
normal links.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Recieving online donations

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>
>>>The Wikipedia is operated by the
>>>Wikipedia Foundation. Find out how
>>>you can help.
>>>
>>Seems a bit wordy ; just a one or two word normal link would do.
>>Also don't
>>you mean to say Wikimedia Foundation?
>>
>
>Yes, yea, and a resounding yes!
>
>ahem...
>
I think that any scheme to solicit money from the public is premature.
 Organizational structure, and an operating budget which sets
fundraising targets should come first.

A sudden unplanned influx of large amounts of money, which I believe is
out there in the light of the Alexa report if the subject is approached
properly, can be deadly to the project.  A pool of found money too
easily attracts ways to spend it.

Yes, of course, there are things for which we could use further funds
even now, but would it be too much to plan that out?

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] World domination. Step one

body:
webmaster wrote:

>I think right now we need to focus on publicity.  But as pointed out on [[Wikipedia talk:Press release: Wikipedia surpasses Britannica]], we shouldn't do that until the wikipedia foundation is open for donations.  So...
>...What's being done about this?  What can I do to help?  I know there is a website for a company somewhere that will do donation transactions for non-profits for free (I'll go look into that now.)  Anyhow, who is working on this, and what can I do to help move it along?
>
I don't think that publicity needs to be a major focus at all.  It
didn't take a lot of publicity for WP to catch EB.  Our product is our
best publicity.  An occasional news release when something notable
happens may be all the publicity we need.  What would we be trying to
accomplish with publicity?

Ec


body:
cprompt-
> You've promised not to make any more edits, and there are a lot of
> people who are willing to believe that you are not Pizza Puzzle.

It's called "willing suspension of disbelief".

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Update LanguageDe.php

body:
There had been some typos in the historywarning messages, I fixed.

Brion, can you put the new LanguageDE.php from CVS to Live-wiki? Thanks in
advance.

--
Smurf

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


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Toby Bartels wrote:

>> <wikidown at wikipedia.org> has never existed, only <wikidown at bomis.com>.
>> The point of that address is that <bomis.com> will probably be up
>> even when <wikipedia.org> is completely down (including this mailing
>> list).
>>
> Unless, of course, the whole data center explodes / sinks into the sea /
> is swarmed by locusts and takes out all of Bomis's servers. :)

BTW, how often do we make backups, and where are they stored? :-)

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> I have formulated a policy for Wikipedia development here:
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy
>
>
> Sorry to ask, but where is the discussion about that policy?

Right here! :)

> Have all delelopers agreed to this policy?

Me!

> Who count's as developer and had to agree to that policy?

Well, if you don't, speak up.

> Why there aren't any coding rules specified (at leased somethin like:
> no more than 78 chars/line)?

If you'd like to write up a codification of our current code style,
please do. Some of the basics:

function wfGlobalFunctionName( $notethespace, $anotherparam ) {
    # <-- indent with tabs
    global $wgSomeGlobalVar;
    doMyStuff( $wgSomeGlobalVar, $anotherparam );
}

class SomeClass {
    var $mMemberVariable;
    # Use get/setters if possible
    # very very short function can be on one line like this:
    function getMemberVariable() { return $this->mMemberVariable; }
}

I would however counsel against the sort of cryptic local variable names
in much of the older code, or the unnecessary duplication of code that
should be refactored into functions or classes that can be shared.

> Where discussions aout new features take place and where there have to
> be an archive about all this discussions?

This mailing list is archived.

> And I'm sure there are other things missing.
>
> Sometimes you get the feeling that all the beautiful rules in
> wikipedia don't count a cent if they hit reality.

Bah!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Technical TOC tweaks

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>OK, I have some notes:

>>The pipe trick would work well in this case,
>>with [[#Y|]] being treated as [[#Y|Y]] --

>Not sure we should really simplify this stuff (and probably not with
>another overload of the pipe, that is going to get real messy), given that
>we generally want to discourage it.

I think that I've been a #-link sceptic before,
but I /don't/ want to discourage such /internal/ uses.
I can live with it either way, although ...

If you want to make it available without encouraging it,
then make it work like Lee's [[X (Y)|]] -> [[X (Y)|X]] trick;
change the markup directly in the saved version,
so that nobody will ever find out about it.
Experienced Wikipedians are always coming along
saying that they never knew about [[X (Y)|]], after all!
^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>We still need someone to finish the conversion
>script, though -- Italian is still on UseMod, for example, they really
>should be switched over.
>
Note that while I'd like to get this done at some point, I'd be quite
happy if someone else took it over and actually _got_ it done, as I'm
mostly mired with general maintenance at the moment and just don't have
the energy to finish this up which will just generate more maintenance
needs... ;)

The half-finished script is maintenance/archives/importUseModWiki.php

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
Claudine Chionh wrote:

>Just to throw something in to the discussion:
>See <http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/>

This suggests that GNU would be happy
with our using the name "GNUpedia" --
and other comments by Jimmy suggest the same.
It seems that there are /Wikipedians/, however,
who aren't so happy with such a relationship.

OTOH, perhaps they're merely anticipating others' unhappiness?
Does anyone claim unhappiness on their own part?
(Not that the English list is a survey of everybody, far from it.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Then let's make this happen! How about this:
>* On wikipedia, a link "make this the stable version" appears for editors

I basically agree with y'all (Magnus, mav, and Erik).
But I question this one point.

The problem is, it allows only one Sifter project.
That's all that we'll have to start with,
and maybe that's all that we ever want, period.
But in the past, we've discussed several projects --
a stable version, a peer-reviewed version, a safe-for-kids version.
Allowing all of these works easiest if it's the Sifter site,
not the Wikipedia site itself, where people pick versions.
The true beauty of this is that somebody that hates our Sifters
is now free to set up their own Sifter using our Sifter software,
and choose Wikipedia articles according to their own judgements.
(Let a hundred Sifters bloom.)

>We'll just have to find a way to determine the editors. That aside,
>would that be a viable concept? I ask because it'd be dead easy to code ;-)

That's good to know.  Would /this/ be as easy to code:

* No new links on Wikipedia (except links to the Sifter site[s], of course).
* From within a Sifter site, an /editor only/ can view all Wikipedia versions,
  even though ordinary readers can view only the stable/safe/reviewed versions.
* Again from /within/ the Sifter site, an editor viewing a Wikipedia version
  can choose that version to be the Sifter site's new version.
* To really sweeten the deal, editors of a Sifter site
  can edit a Wikipedia article from within the Sifter site --
  this works because the Sifter site performs the same GET and POST commands
  as any ordinary user would when editing the Wikipedia site.
  The Sifter site can even have its own log in and be registered like bots are.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please help test new features

body:
Timwi wrote:

>Maybe the preferences should allow users to set the threshold of how
>many sections an article must have to get a TOC.

This isn't a bad idea at all!

Reading through some of the recent posts about this
has made me realise that I might well like to have TOCs
on /all/ pages -- say if there are == External links == below.
Rather than arguing about how the TOCs must work,
we could simply argue about what the default should be --
and Erik's setting of 3 headers seems fair enough to me --
then let users decide what we like for ourselves.
Include an option for always (0 headers required)
and never (infinitely many headers required).

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
wikien-l at wikipedia.org schrieb am 06.07.03 22:34:14:
> Speaking of code, would you mind finishing the article categorization code
> before starting a new project? ;-)

Not at all, but I encountered a freakish bug in PHP (that is PHP, *not* the script!) which is rather vital to the category feature. So, instead of waiting for PHP to heal itself, I thought I'd just do something else...

Magnus


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Claudine Chionh wrote:
>
>
>>Just to throw something in to the discussion:
>>See <http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/>
>>
>
>This suggests that GNU would be happy
>with our using the name "GNUpedia" --
>and other comments by Jimmy suggest the same.
>It seems that there are /Wikipedians/, however,
>who aren't so happy with such a relationship.
>
>OTOH, perhaps they're merely anticipating others' unhappiness?
>Does anyone claim unhappiness on their own part?
>(Not that the English list is a survey of everybody, far from it.)
>
I can attest from personal experience that dancing a little too
closely with RMS has its downsides (*figuratively*, folks,
figuratively :-) ).  He is a great moral crusader, but weak on
tactics and personal relationships.  Everybody knows about the
GNU/Linux vs Linux thing, but he's stuck his oar into a lot of
lesser issues, for instance the details of wording and content
of GNU documentation, and he's alienated many of his own devoutest
supporters. Extrapolating from past incidents, it's even possible
that after studying Wikipedia, he could decide he's against the
NPOV policy and would start an effort to change Wikipedia content
to reflect his long-term goal of making all software free.

So my advice is to think hard about what real advantages one hopes
to get from the GNU connection (keeping in mind that few outside
the computing world have heard of GNU) that are not available
otherwise, before jumping in.

Stan


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikitech-l] bug (or feauture) in "new articles" special page in es.wiki

body:
Today I noticed that in the new pages listing, some
titles are acompinied with the name of the first
author,
but the summary written by the last editor.

Is this a bug or an intended behaviour?

AstroNomer

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


from_name: Rotem Dan

subject: [Wikitech-l] update LanguageHe.php on Hebrew wiki

body:
Hi, since I can't nag Brion, can some developer update this:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageHe.php to this:
http://he.wikipedia.org/ . Thanks

BTW, the Hebrew Wikipedia was started on 9 July 2003 and already has ~70
articles. (about 60 of them created today ;-) after it was published in
an open-source related blog)..

-- Rotem


from_name: webmaster

subject: [WikiEN-l] automated processes, and wikipedia API

body:
I am just now reading over the e-mail's from the list over the past 4 days, and I am delighted to see that someone beat me to it.  I was going to suggest the same thing.  I have no experience with the wikipedia code, or server, but I would be more than happy to work on a script that would automatically update these pages (I would require some assistance or at least developer access.  Which reminds me, I have reqested developer access via sourcefourge so that I can start work on a wikipedia API in python, but no one has replied to my request (although I still have about 40 more unread e-mails to read so maybe someone has :))
If anyone is interested in working on the wikipedia API in python, no knowledge of python is needed (I personally have never written anything in python, this is sort of an excuss to learn it.), although programming experience is a must.   I plan on creating a sourceforge project sooner or later for the python API, but for now, if you want to join the current team of 4 programmers, just e-mail me at wikipedia at jumpingjackweb.com.

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a Mbecker
a.k.a MB

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Benjamin Esham <bdesham at iname.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date:  Fri, 4 Jul 2003 00:08:13 -0400

>On Thursday, July 3, 2003, at 11:49  PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> webmaster wrote:
>>
>>> Recently, I have seen multiple requests for pages that were once
>>> autimatically updated, like Orphaned pages, to be updated.  It is my
>>> understanding, that the automatic updating of these pages was turned
>>> off because the server was running slowly.  Since then, we have
>>> gotten a second server.  So could someone please turn these services
>>> back on?
>>
>> They're still very slow and take the wiki to its knees for minutes at
>> a time.
>>
>> These functions need to be rewritten in an efficient manner before
>> they'll be reenabled on the big, slow English wiki.
>
>What if we cached each of the pages (as we do now), updating the cache
>each day during the times of lowest traffic?  That would keep the pages
>reasonably up-to-date, while at the same time adding only a little to
>the server strain.
>
>--
>Benjamin D. Esham      {      http://bdesham.net
>bdesham at iname.com      }      AIM: bdesham 1 2 8
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] response to Adam

body:
Is anyone else receiving "Adam's" emails with a strange time/date stamp?
When I receive messages from Adam (to the list) in my inbox, it's typically
a LONG time after the time/date stamp indicates.

I last checked my email just a few hours ago, yet when I just checked it
this time, there were many new messages. Most of them were from this
morning, but at least two were from Adam and said that they were from July
4th! Anyone know what's going on? I'm using Eudora, in case it's a
client-side issue. I'm also in California, if time zones matter...

-----
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: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
I have formulated a policy for Wikipedia development here:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy

In short:
* We now have a "stable" branch. All Wikipedias should henceforth be
updated from that branch. It is currently identical to the main (unstable)
branch, but I'll take some untested features out in the next days.

* NO MORE MANUAL OVERWRITING OF FILES ON TEST.WIKI. Sorry for shouting,
but this really has to stop. If our Test-Wiki is supposed to be useful, it
has to be in a consistent state. That means it should only be updated from
CVS unstable.

* A basic testing procedure. Features will have to run on test.wiki for
3-10 days before they are committed to stable.

With this policy in place, it should become much more feasible to keep all
the Wikipedias up to date. We still need someone to finish the conversion
script, though -- Italian is still on UseMod, for example, they really
should be switched over.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Toby-
> Despite David's arguments, I see one big problem
> with /requiring/ a <TOC> tag on any article with a TOC.
> The problem is that articles all start out without TOCs.
> My solution: Let Erik devise the best system that he can
> for estimating when an article needs a TOC and when it doesn't.
> (The current estimate is the number of headers; that's fine.)
> And let him estimate the best place (before the first header).
> Then run a conversion script to put "<TOC>" in all of those articles.

This isn't going to happen, but I might implement a <notoc> tag, which
would pretty much have the same effect with far less trouble and clutter.
For the time being, no convincing arguments have been made for either,
though, and not a single real world example has been cited except for the
Main Page, which is already auto-exceptioned. So I consider this a largely
theoretical discussion.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Technical TOC tweaks

body:
Toby-
> OK, I have some notes:

> The pipe trick would work well in this case,
> with [[#Y|]] being treated as [[#Y|Y]] --

Not sure we should really simplify this stuff (and probably not with
another overload of the pipe, that is going to get real messy), given that
we generally want to discourage it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] response to Adam

body:
First of all "Adam", I am a bit confused to as how to address you.  What would you like me to address you as?
Second, I have personally posted messages to this mailing list under 3 names:
root
webmaster
Michael Becker

I have heard few complaints about this (even though root and webmaster could be confusing).
Certainly, no one has asked for me to be banned for it!

So, if someone has in the past complained about your name without good reason, please post links to the list, and address that person asking them what there problem is.
It is my personal belief that we are all people who can talk to each other and work things out (unless said person doesn't want to work things out).  I have had anumber of arguements/confrontations with other users, but I have worked all of them out through thoughtful and civil conversation.  Remember, it is easy for people to misunderstand you when you words carry no conotation.  I find it very common for heated arguements to start on wikipedia over a simple miscommunication.  Also, remember, people are more critical of you when you treat others badly and generally have a past of breaking the rules.

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a Mbecker
a.k.a MB


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>A growing article with many stub sections should have those stubs
>removed then, so the TOC doesn't get in their way?
>
>
>Stub sections are evil. They are a form of meta comment like "is this
>really true?" insertions in articles and should be avoided whenever
>possible. Wiki is a means to an end, not an end in itself -- Wikipedia is
>first and foremost an encyclopedia, not a scratchpad. If you want to talk
>about an article's potential future structure, use the talk page.
>
>Articles should always be in a consistent state. Encarta or Britannica
>have many stubs, but they don't have "stub sections". In any case, I fail
>to see how the TOC can get in the way if there is no content it can get in
>the way of.
>
I was pleasantly surprised to return from vacation to see that a TOC
system had sprung up out of nowhere.  It looks great.

As for the stub, or at least the empty sections, could they not be made
to appear in red?  This behaviour would parallel the use of coulour in
our links to other articles.

>>What if there is no good way to break up a few long sections into
>>shorter ones?
>>
>Show me such a case and I will show you how it could be broken up. In any
>case, a TOC of 2 or 3 sections would only look out of place, and be of
>little help in navigating the article.
>
A long article that can't be sectioned is probably badly written with no
sense of organization to the author's thoughts.  After some copyediting
the sectioning should fall into place naturally.

>>I agree than in an ideal Wikipedia, every article would have exactly the
>>right number of sections of exactly the right length, and the TOC
>>algorithm would word perfectly. But in the meantime, with a non-ideal
>>Wikipedia, how can you defend the TOC feature's exacerbating the
>>situation
>>
>Articles that have improper sections will be fixed sooner as the problems
>become more apparent. For example, I already noticed several articles that
>use colons in the headings. This looks very ugly, and the TOC makes it
>easy to detect such stylistic errors. Then, with the section editing
>enabled, you just select the heading, edit it, and save in a matter of a
>few seconds
>
>Hiding our problems, on the other hand, will not make them go away. Those
>who are annoyed by the TOC can turn it off easily. But its current
>implementation should work well for articles that are reasonably
>structured.
>
I agree fully with Erik on this.  One benefit may be to encourage the
consolidation of overly fragmented subjects.  Thus, for example, where
there are now separate articles to list the contents of each of a band's
albums it will be more convenient to have these together on a single page.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] response to cprompt

body:
Well, you seemed to have crawled like a dog. Enough for me ;

Fred

From: Adam von [name omitted for privacy reasons] <cddvdlenscleaner at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 20:54:35 -0700 (PDT)
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] response to cprompt

Cprompt said:

If you apologize

He must have missed the dozen posts in which I apoligized so let me say
again:

I apoligize unequivocally. I am sorry.

He then said: Whether you are or are not Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] means little.

He almost certainly missed the several nasty emails I received regarding my
name, as well as the numerous comments on talk pages.

Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL
<http://pa.yahoo.com/*http://rd.yahoo.com/evt=1207/*http://promo.yahoo.com/s
bc/>  - Now only $29.95 per month!

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Page load problems

body:
webmaster wrote:

>Once again today, someone is complaining about page load time on the pump.  I am beginning to suspect that this is a bandwidth problem.  What has been done to investigate the reason behind this problem, and what were the results of said tests?  I haven't really heard a straight answer from anyone saying what the problem is, just speculation.
>
Perhap it's related to the news that Wikipedia is ca 1,400th in
traffic on the net?  I got mail out of the blue this weekend from
a prospective contributor who'd just noticed WP, and this morning
my wife was asking me to spell it so she could pass the url along
to someone she was talking to on the phone.  Maybe this is the
marketing tornado that Geoffrey Moore talks about (quick, to the
store for more servers! :-) )

Stan


body:
When can we hope that the new feature will be implemented on Wiktionary?
 Structure is a lot more important there than on Wikipedia.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] PNG format???

body:
Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

> Ralphem at aol.com wrote:
>
>> JPEG AND GIF are the standards for use on the web
>
> From [[PNG]]:
>
>    Version 1.0 of the PNG specification was released on 1 July
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1> 1996
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996>, and later appeared as RFC 2083
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFC_2083>. It became a W3C
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium>
> Recommendation on 1 October <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_1>
> 1996 <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996>.
>
> Having an RFC makes it an Internet standard, being recommended by the
> W3C makes it a web standard. Simple solution: update your browser.

That attitude is nothing more than techie talk.

Many users are satisfied with machinery that fulfils their basic
requirements.  I expect that many Wikipedia users, who are promarily
interested in WP's text contents, fall in that category.  They are quite
rightly annoyed when they are constantly asked to upgrade or update
their systems to accomodate a technical feature that they never wanted
and will probably never use.  Keeping track of RFC's may be fine for the
techies, but it leaves the average user in a fog of confusion.  For many
users the simple idea of needing to upgrade is extremely stressful.

Thomas Koll's attitude that anyone with hardware or software more than 4
years old must be mad strikes me as terribly elitist.  IMHO backward
compatibility should permit nearly full access to Wikipedia for any
system up to 10 years old, perhaps even older.  Of course some features
will not work, and many will be restricted by only being able to use ISO
8859 coding instead of Unicode.  Although it's not on line my older
machine that functions on MSDOS 3.2 still works fine, and does
everything that I want it to.  Maybe I'm just one of those old farts
that considers it wasteful to demote a perfectly good machine to the
status of doorstop.  Some years ago when I stopped using my first
computer, an Apple II+ that had been upgraded to have 64K of RAM, I
resented the wastefulness of such an action.  It's still kicking around
somewhere doing nothing, and I suppose that if I wanted I could fire it
up again (if I remember how).

The other important aspect about backward compatibility relates to
schools and the education system.  I think that most Wikipedians would
be very happy to see a greater use of WP in the schools.  The problem is
that many schools are plagued with old equipment.  In school districts
with serious funding problems computers are not a first priority, and
many kids complain that they have better equipment at home than at
school.  For those kids that don't have a home computer the problem is
more serious.

These are all things that should be considered when you say that people
with equipment older than 4 years old are mad.

Eclecticology


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS

body:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Timwi wrote:
> not wanting to sound impatient, but I still haven't received an answer
> to my questions.
>
> a) What about my patch (the one about the pentuple-apostrophe bug)? Is
>     it going to be committed? If not, why not? What do I need to change
>     to make it committable?

Well, I would like to see it thoroughly tested; basic markup is something
we try not to break.

> b) Will I ever get CVS write access or not? If not, am I supposed to
>     submit patches to this mailing list? Nobody else seems to do that.

Everybody else who has CVS access has been a longtime contributor who
asked for it to facilitate something particular they'd been working on
(updating language files in several cases). You've sort of popped up out
of the blue, which is fine, but don't expect to have the keys to the
source repository handed out instantenously; we don't use a wiki for
source control yet. ;)

I've added you to the project; feel free to commit the patch and I'll make
sur it gets on the test server for more live testing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Right here! :)
>
> Well I think I have missed some mails. I only got the 'I done it'-Mail
> by Erik.

Right, that's the beginning of the discussion.

> >> Have all delelopers agreed to this policy?
> > Me!
>
> You are _all_ developers? Fine, than I stop my 'developing' right now.

I am one of the developers, saying that I agree with Erik's suggestion.

> >> Who count's as developer and had to agree to that policy?
> > Well, if you don't, speak up.
>
> If only you are a developer, I'm not affacted, so why speak up?

Straw man.

> >> Where discussions aout new features take place and where there have to
> >> be an archive about all this discussions?
> > This mailing list is archived.
>
> I know that! But why not wrote it down, for all the others? And to make it
> clear how the work is coordinated.

That's what Erik's suggestion is all about!

> PS: this is not meant as offence, I only wanted to point that e.g. there
> may be other developers around -- not only Erik and you. And some developer
> may read your and/or Eriks mail as a insult. I'm to old to get realy
> agitated about such mails, but I'm not sure of others.

Then I think there is a misunderstanding.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Page load problems

body:
Once again today, someone is complaining about page load time on the pump.  I am beginning to suspect that this is a bandwidth problem.  What has been done to investigate the reason behind this problem, and what were the results of said tests?  I haven't really heard a straight answer from anyone saying what the problem is, just speculation.

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a. Mbecker
a.k.a. MB


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> apologies for the surprise mail. Brion and I discussed this before and it
> was time to simply implement this in order to move forward.

To keep the cabal-watchers from worrying, this prior discussion consisted
of Erik mentioning to me in IM that he thought we should have stable &
unstable branches in CVS and me agreeing. We did _not_, I repeat, _not_
secretly plan to round up the other developers in a fake truce meeting
where we would use poison gas released from the scale model of the
development tree to kill off our competition. Nothing like that even came
up. No sir, on my honor.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] response to Adam

body:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Dante Alighieri wrote:
> Is anyone else receiving "Adam's" emails with a strange time/date stamp?
> When I receive messages from Adam (to the list) in my inbox, it's typically
> a LONG time after the time/date stamp indicates.

Mr. Cddvdlenscleaner isn't signed up for the mailing list, so his posts
aren't sent through until reviewed by a list administrator (this is
mainly to prevent the list being flooded with spam; we get enough crap
from the list members as it is! ;)

The admins for wikien-l are Elian and Dairiki.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Page load problems

body:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, webmaster wrote:

> Once again today, someone is complaining about page load time on the
> pump.  I am beginning to suspect that this is a bandwidth problem.

It is sooooooooo not bandwidth.

Typical usage is 50-80 k/s each on larousse and pliny. (Usage is a touch
lower on larousse, which serves the English wikipedia, because it's set up
to compress cachable pages that are sent to non-logged-in users for about
25% total savings; and also pliny carries the big database backup
downloads.)

I've gotten ca 1000 k/sec downloads of backup dumps from uni here, even
when the wiki was hella slow.

If you'll look at: http://www.wikipedia.org/stats/usage_200307.html
you'll see that peak usage does not exceed average by that much.

> What has been done to investigate the reason behind this problem, and
> what were the results of said tests?  I haven't really heard a
> straight answer from anyone saying what the problem is, just
> speculation.

When I stare at mysql's process list to see the slowpokes, who comes up
on top?

Search, search, search.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS

body:
Hi,

not wanting to sound impatient, but I still haven't received an answer
to my questions.

a) What about my patch (the one about the pentuple-apostrophe bug)? Is
    it going to be committed? If not, why not? What do I need to change
    to make it committable?

b) Will I ever get CVS write access or not? If not, am I supposed to
    submit patches to this mailing list? Nobody else seems to do that.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
Smurf wrote in part:

>Brion Vibber wrote:

>>Smurf wrote:

>>>Have all delelopers agreed to this policy?

>>Me!

>You are _all_ developers? Fine, than I stop my 'developing' right now.

I wondered when would be the right time to jump in
and try to keep people from taking offence unnecessarily.
Perhaps this is that time.

Brion definitely wasn't claiming to be all developers here.
He was simply listing himself as /a/ developer that had agreed.
The other developers now need to give their opinions,
as you did and as he has now done.

That's why Brion wrote this:

>>>Who count's as developer and had to agree to that policy?

>>Well, if you don't, speak up.

And please do work these things out on [[meta:]]!
Wikis are great for more than just writing encyclopaedias, you know.
It's one thing to edit a policy page on the sly to win an argument elsewhere,
but it's perfectly OK to hash out /new/ policies
on policy pages that are being watched closely by many people.
Like editing encyclopaedia articles, you must act in good faith,
but you need not act always in accordance with my own desires.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] response to cprompt

body:
Lir wrote:

>Cprompt wrote:

>>Whether you are or are not Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] means little.

>He almost certainly missed the several nasty emails I received
>regarding my name, as well as the numerous comments on talk pages.

You're not responsible for everything that anybody ever told you.
(I definitely wouldn't pay any attention to anything that Clutch said!)
By unvarnished tradition, if you win over Jimmy, then you're welcome here,
so only worry about what /he/ has said that you need to do.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ideas on a methodology

body:
Erik Moeller wrote at last:

>Yes, I do anticipate that others will be uncomfortable with such a name,
>but I'm uncomfortable with it myself.

Thanks, that answers my question!

I won't respond to anything that you said in detail,
unless you ask me to do so specifically,
because I wanted to define the terms of the debate
more than actually press a particular opinion.
(That is, there are two groups whose comforts to consider,
and is the discomfort from our group only anticipatory.)

But now I'll join the debate a bit and ask you:
When GNU and RMS say that you shouldn't say "open source":
Is this just RMS' personal preference, or will they enforce it?
Because I think that we should /definitely/ say "open source";
it's widely recognised, and it means something
(which is not quite the same as "free", of course).

-- Toby


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I have formulated a policy for Wikipedia development here:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy
>
[...]
> With this policy in place, it should become much more feasible to keep all
> the Wikipedias up to date. We still need someone to finish the conversion
> script, though -- Italian is still on UseMod, for example, they really
> should be switched over.

Sorry to ask, but where is the discussion about that policy? Have all
delelopers agreed to this policy? Who count's as developer and had to agree
to that policy?

Unfortunatly I sometimes feel like a developer (only if I add something to
the CVS of course), but I din't feel like one as I got this mail. Are you
not usually complaining that every change etc. has to be done via
democtratic wiki decicion?

I think a proper poliy is ok, and it should be written down somewhere, even
in more than one language IMHO. But should not be a little discussion about
it, somewhere? Why not added that every change has to be documentated,
especialy new features? Why there aren't any coding rules specified (at
leased somethin like: no more than 78 chars/line)? Where discussions aout
new features take place and where there have to be an archive about all
this discussions? And I'm sure there are other things missing.

Sometimes you get the feeling that all the beautiful rules in wikipedia
don't count a cent if they hit reality.

Smurf

--

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


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] languageNl.php

body:
I have translated the latest additions of the CVS into Dutch. The new
languageNl.php is attached to this message, with the request for someone
to upload it.

Why is it that even when I translate it, it sometimes does not get on the
Dutch site? This happened recently with the semi-automatic addition of
text upon deletion. Is there something else that has to be set, and if so,\
what and where?

Andre Engels
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: update LanguageHe.php on Hebrew wiki

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 11:30:49AM +0200, Rotem Dan wrote:
>
>>Hi, since I can't nag Brion, can some developer update this:
>>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageHe.php to this:
>>http://he.wikipedia.org/ . Thanks
>>
>>BTW, the Hebrew Wikipedia was started on 9 July 2003 and already has ~70
>>articles. (about 60 of them created today ;-) after it was published in
>>an open-source related blog)..
>
>
> Yeah, Brion's away, so let's forget all that CVS crap ;)
> New file installed on http://he.wikipedia.org/. Now as I can't read a letter
> in Hebrew (can't you people write left-to-right like the rest of the world ?),
> let alone understand anything, I have no idea what it could have broken.
> At least http://he.wikipedia.org/ works, so it can't be that bad.
>
> If anything breaks:
> $ cp /apache/htdocs-he/LanguageHe.php-old /apache/htdocs-he/LanguageHe.php
>
> OK, someone will have to upload it to CVS now ;)

It works great, Hebrew translation is very very complete and now /I/ am
going for a vacation. :-) (umm.. not really though)

Rotem


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Announcing Wikimedia Foundation

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>I personally would like to see a global page at www.wikipedia.com,
>one  that shows the global reach of the product (for example a world
>map of languages rather than countries) stats about the project,
>number of contributors, articles in each language, as well as links
>to each of the language wikis.
>
>This, I think, would really separate the project from all other book
>or web based encyclopedias: none are multilingual to the extent of
>the W.
>
>Effectively, this would put the pressure on other encyclopedia to
>match our multilingual "feature", but of course they couldn't.
>
I actually believe that the multilingual environment is the second most
important feature for distinguishing us from the other encyclopedias.
 The open contribution system is more significant.  That approach
carries the risk that some first draft articles will sometimes be highly
POV or even outright goofy.  At the same time this is the feature that
allows us to react more quickly to world events in all areas of
knowledge as well as to our own more highly opinionated contributors.
 An encyclopedia that is bound by traditional editorial structures
cannot do this.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Right here! :)

Well I think I have missed some mails. I only got the 'I done it'-Mail by Erik.

>> Have all delelopers agreed to this policy?
> Me!

You are _all_ developers? Fine, than I stop my 'developing' right now.

>> Who count's as developer and had to agree to that policy?
> Well, if you don't, speak up.

If only you are a developer, I'm not affacted, so why speak up?

>> Where discussions aout new features take place and where there have to
>> be an archive about all this discussions?
> This mailing list is archived.

I know that! But why not wrote it down, for all the others? And to make it
clear how the work is coordinated.

Smurf

PS: this is not meant as offence, I only wanted to point that e.g. there
may be other developers around -- not only Erik and you. And some developer
may read your and/or Eriks mail as a insult. I'm to old to get realy
agitated about such mails, but I'm not sure of others.

--

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Please help test new features

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Maybe the preferences should allow users to set the threshold of how
>>many sections an article must have to get a TOC.
>
> Include an option for always (0 headers required)

I wanna see what a TOC for an article without any headings would look
like! ;-)


from_name: David Friedland

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I can live with an override function. I am strongly opposed to making
>authors have to insert a TOC tag manually into articles. For the time
>being, howeevr, I would like to see examples where the TOC is
>inappropriate before I implement the override, to avoid having unnecessary
>added complexity.
>
I think part of the problem I've been having with coming up with
examples where a TOC is inappropriate/needed is that it is currently
only implemented on the test Wikipedia, and I don't really spend much
time just "browsing" the test server. I believe that when the TOC
feature is on the live server, then cases where it needs to be
overridden will become apparent. Then again, perhaps not.

Cheers!

- David [User: Nohat]


subject: [Wikitech-l] New development policy

body:
Thomas-
> Sorry to ask, but where is the discussion about that policy? Have all
> delelopers agreed to this policy? Who count's as developer and had to agree
> to that policy?

apologies for the surprise mail. Brion and I discussed this before and it
was time to simply implement this in order to move forward. I used the
wiki to formulate the policy so that other aspects could be easily added
and agreed upon. If you object to a specific part, just mention or change
it in the wiki.

I don't want a vote on everything -- never did, never will. Votes are
useful for agreeing on *controversial* matters. But if a matter is
uncontroversial, surely there is no need to vote on it? Even if it is
controversial, it is usually advisable to seek compromise and consensus
first. All our existing wiki policies were initially started like this one
(with the difference that Larry would hit you over the head if you
disagreed). It's an open process.

Regards,

Erik