subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
FreeBSD is based on the Berkeley Software Distribution
License, aka BSD License, University of California.

See http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/index.html

--Optim

--- Nick Hill <nick at nickhill.co.uk> wrote:
> I have found the stability of the system does vary
> with distribution,
> although theoretically it shouldn't. I suppose much
> of this is down to
> proper versioning, eg dynamic libraries.
>
> I haven't used Non-free Suse. Out of the many other
> distros I have used,
> I find Debian by far the most reliable, easy to
> administer in the long
> term, and difficult to install. (I rarely bother
> installing Debian from
> the official ISO, I prefer to clone systems). It
> took me 6 months of
> using GNU/Linux before I had enough knowledge to
> install Debian. Once I
> did so, dependency hell simply vanished and
> reliability has been 100%. I
> vowed to avoid RPMs from then on.
>
> I haven't used BSD5. What licenses is it distributed
> under?
>
>
>
> Magnus Manske wrote:
> > Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at
> >
>
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598
> > someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0:
> >    "Our site gets a million hits a day on a
> completely db-driven
> > website. Both the Apache webserver and the two
> replicated MySQL servers
> > on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have
> been for months now."
> > Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An
> alternative to
> > consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
Welcome back Danny.

I haven't watch what happened and I don't know why you
left, but I like to see old users coming back in the
community.

May you have PEACE PROFOUND,

--Optim

--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Glad to see you reconsidered, Danny. Welcome back.
>
> RickK
>
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Hi
>
> Well, well, it's been a while. First, I want to
> thank everyone for the kind words that have been
> said to me and about me, both publically and
> privately. I sincerely appreciate it.
>
> I also want to thank Jimbo, for bending over
> backwards to accommodate me while keeping within the
> Wiki guidelines. If I have been stubborn or said
> anything that offended him, I apologize here,
> publically. I admit that I was skeptical at first,
> but I believe that his efforts in bringing about
> arbitration and dialogue will lead to a greater
> spirit of camaraderie among everyone who
> participates in Wikipedia. I also believe that this
> spirit of camaraderie and partnership is the best
> way to pursue and promote knowledge, which is
> certainly our goal.
>
> Given all that, I would like to apologize to
> everyone if my (rash) departure created a stir. I
> have reconsidered my position and decided to accept
> Jimbo's offer of bringing this dispute before the
> arbitration committee, no strings attached. I
> understand that the issues to be discussed will
> include my behavior regarding the text in question,
> but I hope they will also cover the issue of
> bullying on a much wider level.
>
> I would also like to ask that, if possible, someone
> who knows how restore my personal pages. Whatever
> happens, I am proud of Wikipedia and would like to
> have some reminder somewhere that I played some
> little part in building it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Danny Wool
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus"
Sweepstakes>
_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 07:56, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at
>    http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598
> someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0:
>    "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven
> website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL
> servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for
> months now."
> Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to
> consider in case SUSE proves unstable.

FreeBSD is lovely (my test server at home runs it), but I don't think
it's going to magically fix hardware problems.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/3e070724/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Finnish Wikipedias recent changes totally haywire!!!!

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 04:04, Jens Frank wrote:
> ta.wikipedia.org and fi.wikipedia.org use the same DB settings. Changes
> done on fi appear on ta, and vice versa. So Finnish Wikipedia is the
> same as Tamil wikipedia. The strange characters you see are Tamil.

Still not seeing this; fi is quite distinct from ta.

If someone fixed this in the meantime, please speak up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/b09c15be/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV means that we acknowledge all views

body:
Libertarian alleged:

> It is several weeks since Ed Poor and Angela tried
> mediating on at least one issue (their mind was made up
> already but they were pretending to mediate), but when I
> confronted them with FACTS and EVIDENCE, they quietly
> withdrew from the mediation. This is a
> clear case of dishonesty, but never mind.

I gave you all the help you asked for; you stopped asking for help, so I
stopped helping. If you want more help, please ask for it.

Criticizing your helper (for not helping you enough) is not going to get
you as much help as ASKING FOR HELP.

Libertarian also seems to think:

> If flat-earth theory is given the same legitimacy as what
> science accepts the shape of the earth to be, Wikipedia
> loses its credibility.

This argument is not sound, because it ASSUMES that Wikipedia gives
legitimacy to flat earth, and that it gives legitimacy to what science
accepts.

1. The [[flat earth]] article, which I helped edit, says in its opening
sentence that the theory is "opposed to the view of modern science"

2. The Wikipedia neither endorses nor opposes the findings of modern
science: it merely REPORTS these findings. If scientists make a new
discovery, and other scientists are able to replicate these findings, we
change our science articles accordingly. If enough scientists challenge
a prevalent view, then we report the existence of that minority and
explain why they hold contrary views.

Libertartian also complained that:

> He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the
> reason that it has not evolved into real storehouse of
> knowledge.

To some extent, this is true. I have been "shouted down" occasionally;
on-line discussion is not a perfect process, and a WikiWiki is not a
perfect medium. If you have alternatives, please suggest them.

But to the extent that any of our articles don't provide real knowledge,
I would venture to say that the biggest problem is that we have only
begun, and we have only a small volunteer staff. When Britannica or
Americana encyclopedias get ready to issue a new edition, they HIRE
hundreds of editors and pay REAL MONEY for articles. Our goal is to make
a free encyclopedia: free as in free speech, as well as free as in free
beer.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] History Flow Diagrams from IBM

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 09:25, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I haven't seen this mentioned here, so I figured I'd post it.
>
>   http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/

That got posted here in August, but yeah it's awesome. :) Those who
haven't seen it before, do take a look.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20040112/1c0e9961/attachment.pgp


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment

body:
Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> writes:

> American readers should know that "bugger off" means "fuck off".

British Wikipedians (of whom Martin is one) would know full well that
"Bugger Off" is *far* more polite than "fuck off".  Its akin to "Piss Off" in
the US.
Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of endearment.

It is my opinion that "Bugger Off" is also considerably more polite than:
                   "Fuck you sick Nazi bastards"

RK, while I don't agree with the sentiment, I can well understand why people
want you to piss off.  You're utterly incapable of playing well with others.

PS : Didn't you leave, already?
--
Gareth Owen
"It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia."
                                 -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Do not confuse vague allegations with specific edits

body:
> Here we go again... I could never follow up on all the
> pro/anti-Semitism wars on Wikipedia, but *everything else
> aside*, I find it very peculiar that all have one single
> thing in common: you on one side and hateful crowds
> of anti-Zionists and anti-Semits and soon-to-be-Nazis
> on the other.

First off, you are confused about word the word
"anti-Zionist" means. Please read the new, improved article
on this topic which Danny, myself, and Adam Carr all worked
on. Danny is anti-Zionist...but that doesn't make him an
anti-Semite out for blood.  Members of my own family are
non-Zionist and anti-Zionist, and they don't hate the Jews.

(That being said, most anti-Zionists today also have
anti-Semitic views. The problem is that people are using
the same word ("anti-Zionism") to refer to many different
things.  Last year, no one saw this problem. After I made
this point in new ways, a number of times, others here
finally figured that out. Hence the new improved article.

> Doesn't this strike you as too much of a coincidence as
> well?

Why would it be coincidence that anti-Semite would not like
a Jew?  It would be odd if they loved Jews!

> Maybe they're anti-RK, not anti-Semitic, ever thought of
> that? Seriously. Did it ever cross your mind?

No, and I think the problem is that you have no idea what I
was talking about. I was talking about the many explicitly
anti-Semitic posts made by a number of Wikipedia users,
which were well-documented.

What caused trhew problem was that Martin and a few others
here began to defend this explicitly anti-Semitic Nazi
material as correct. (They even denied that it was
anti-Semitic.)

When it was proven (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that
large amounts of anti-Semitic were being pushed on
Wikipedia, the response on this list was to defend the Nazi
material and make personal attacks on me. (People imagined
that it was I who wrote the analysis. Actually, it was
written by someone else. I can forward you copy of the
posting.)

So, no, it didn't cross my mind that people who accept Nazi
propaganda are not anti-Semitic. The term "anti-Semitic" is
the only one possible for people who defend NAzi (or
Christian Identity) anti-Jewish propaganda. (And again, you
must remember that I talking about very specific edits,
which I can show you. This is not a vague allegation.)

What made me sad was that other Jewish people on Wikipedia
agreed with me, and wrote me letters off-line, but they
refused to say so on line. They stated that their were
afraid that Wiki-En users would gang up on them as well.
(They were probably correct.)

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stick to the issue

body:
here is the issue. Watch carefully what the issue, and
watch the typical response.

Issue: I am just trying to restore the large amounts of
material that keep disappearing. We Wikipedians can't edit
it or improve it unless it is there to be edited. The
problem is that there is no discussion, no editing, no
alternatives given. People are not offering sources or
facts; they are just using their personal opinions, and
anger at Israel, to remove verified and important
historical facts.

I also have repeatedly stated that Danny is a very smart
man, and that he has been a great contributor in the past,
and can be again. Check out the Talk pages and Talk
archives for articles that both Danny and I have worked
together on. There are dozens of such explicit and positive
statements from me in the past few months. (Danny has not
reciprocated, and seems to get angrier each time I say
something positive about him.)  In recent days I had to
call Danny on his vandalism, but he seems calmer now, and
has stated that he is willing to work on editing. I am
certainly willing to take him at his word.

This issue needs to be resolved by people sticking to
facts, and not be censorship to push a pro-Arab agenda.

Yet few people are responding to the above argument.
Instead, this list is filled with ad homenin remarks, like
the below one from Stan:

"Not only have you yourself made the ugliest and most
hateful personal attacks that I've yet seen on Wikipedia,
you then have the unmitigated gall to pretend that you
haven't done anything. It doesn't say much for Wikipedia
governance that you haven't been banned forever for your
unacceptable actions."

This is sort of Sad. Stan continually hurls ugly personal
attacks, while I am only asking that we follow our usual
NPOV editing procedures. This is called projection, and it
is neither helpful nor reasonable.

I can only ask people to _try_ to stick the specific points
that both Jimbo and I have repeatedly raised, the points
that anonymous people have made (they are afraid to use
their real names, due to the way that Wiki-En users gang up
on people.)  If you stick to the issues, and stop the
non-stop personal attacks, we can get work done.

If you continue the personal attacks, it only shows who is
causing the real problem.

Robert

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
Sorry to spam the list, but I tried to submit a bugreport to
Sourceforge--only to get a message that SF was undergoing
maintenance :-/

Can someone please take a look at the Finnish Wikipedia?
The recent changes ("Tuoreimmat muutokset") is totally broken!

No changes are being displayed.

All the messages from the MediaWiki: namespace have been
replaced (at least in my browser) with question marks.
Maybe the original text is in arabic or japanese or something
(except those two at least display quite nicely on my browser).

Anyway, can someone please look into this ASAP?

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/23b00c35/attachment.html>


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stick to the issue

body:
Robert wrote:

>Yet few people are responding to the above argument.
>Instead, this list is filled with ad homenin remarks, like
>the below one from Stan:
>
>"Not only have you yourself made the ugliest and most
>hateful personal attacks that I've yet seen on Wikipedia,
>you then have the unmitigated gall to pretend that you
>haven't done anything. It doesn't say much for Wikipedia
>governance that you haven't been banned forever for your
>unacceptable actions."
>
>This is sort of Sad. Stan continually hurls ugly personal
>attacks, while I am only asking that we follow our usual
>NPOV editing procedures. This is called projection, and it
>is neither helpful nor reasonable.
>
OK, then answer this yes or no - did you or did you not say
"Fuck you sick Nazi bastards" to everyone on this mailing list,
and do you think this was an acceptable thing for you to do?

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly

body:
Let's not gang up on Robert. If anyone feels an urge to "attack" a
contributor, feel free to pick on me; I'm tough; I can take it.

Hey, Sheldon Rampton, you outrageous liar, nyaah nyaah boo boo!

Uncle Ed (taking the gloves off)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the harassment and censorship.

body:
Mark,

Robert made a general point about decorum and policy of this list.

You replied with some personal remarks.

* "You ... left this project in a huff"
* "You ... might not be the best person"

Let's try not to do that, shall we?

Ed Poor
Mailing List Administrator
Wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages.

body:
I like Zero's proposal about having twin versions: official and draft.
I've thinking about this for several weeks, ever since the nice folks at
[[talk:Silesia]] asked me to help mediate.

Perhaps we could protect the official version, and trust admins to move
consensus text into it. An alternate or working version could be at,
e.g., [[Silesia (draft)]] and purposely left unprotected.

Needless to say -- which is why I'm saying it! -- is that any admin who
is a party to an edit war or otherwise is distrusted by those working on
the draft, should not be the one to move "agreed-upon" text to the
official article.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
I have asked a Linux expert friend and he made very
positive comments on kernel 2.6. He even suggested me
to move to 2.6 and stop using 2.4 ASAP.

--Optim

--- Alwin Meschede <ameschede at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen schrieb:
> > Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this.
> In my experience, FreeBSD has
> > been more stable and performed better under high
> load.
>
> Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the
> new scheduler and
> overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better
> under load than
> Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has
> improved the network
> performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should
> give it a try on
> some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...
>
> Alwin Meschede
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Avoid personal remarks

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>* you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect
>
OK, I'm sorry about that, clearly out of bounds for the list.

Reminiscent of the intemperate stuff I posted to Usenet 20 years
ago that Google Groups has unmercifully resurrected, ahem. :-)

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
We really, really need to move the database back to a machine with a
decent hard drive. The wikis are very sluggish, and a fair chunk of
it's from waiting on the database.

Ursula's sitting around with a 90% idle CPU, but everything's blocked
on disk I/O to the point it's got a load average of about 16. At any
given time from 8-20 processes are blocked and waiting. Operations that
hit a lot of rows like history and watchlist are particularly badly hit
since they don't play as well with caching.

If Geoffrin's not going to be up soon, and Pliny's still emitting
spurious disk errors, what are our options out of the available
machines?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/525f9b95/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Robert wrote:
>
> >Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment. He won't stop
> >writing hateful notes to me on my home page.
> >
> Oh, the chutzpah... I'm still waiting for an apology from you for
> calling me a Nazi and calling Wikipedia "Nazipedia". Until that
> happens you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect.
>
> Stan
>
> Just as a reminder, here is a copy of what RK sent to all of us
> at the beginning of October:
>
> "Fuck you sick Nazi bastards.
>
[letter continues in same vein, & unnecessary to quote further from]

Following this exchange, I was reminded of that same email, too.

Geoff


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: This is getting ugly

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Hey, Sheldon Rampton, you outrageous liar, nyaah nyaah boo boo!

Oh yeah? Well, your mother wears army boots! Let's meet in the
playground after school and settle this once and for all!

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading

body:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 09:51:02AM -0800, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> A notice for everyone who writes often on Wikipedia:
>
> ***Users do not read the page; they just scan it!***
>
> See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
>
I've read this (the whole series); it applies to marketers
etc who want to "push" information on to readers and not to
an academic entity where readers come to _get_ information.
The style of an encyclopedia should be scholarly, more like
a book than a brochure.

Nonetheless several of the ideas in those articles are
general and would apply to us as well, such as express only
one idea per paragraph.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: audin at okb-1.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 11:11:28AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Ursula's sitting around with a 90% idle CPU, but everything's blocked
> on disk I/O to the point it's got a load average of about 16. At any
> given time from 8-20 processes are blocked and waiting. Operations that
> hit a lot of rows like history and watchlist are particularly badly hit
> since they don't play as well with caching.

	I mentioned this before, but it may have gotten lost as the server
fell over completely right afterwords...

	Is DMA turned on and interrupt unmasking enabled on Ursula?

	`/sbin/hdparm /dev/hda` (or whatever device it is) will show the
current configuration.

	/sbin/hdparm -u1 -c3 -d1 /dev/hda` will turn on DMA, turn off
interrupt masking, and enable 32bit i/o support.  Interrupt masking itself can
have a huge impact on the amount of cpu time spent waiting for the disk...and
it is almost always set conservatively (ie: wrong) on an untweaked linux
installation.

--
                                            Audin Malmin - audin at okb-1.org

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and
Romans, and must be that of every free state.  -- Thomas Jefferson


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Finnish Wikipedias recent changes totally
	haywire!!!!

body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

> Can someone please take a look at the Finnish Wikipedia?
> All the messages from the MediaWiki: namespace have been
> replaced (at least in my browser) with question marks.
Brion said he updated the language texts on the tamil wikipedia
(ta.wikipedia.org), however it seems like he applied the changes to the
finnish one instead - as the tamil user requesting the change did not
see any change on ta:.

Bye,
   [[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
Alwin Meschede wrote:
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
> >... but I don't think
> >it's going to magically fix hardware problems.
>
> BTW, what's the status of our hardware? It doesn't seem as if anything
> has happened over the weekend, as Wikipedia is still as slow as usual ;-)

Geoffrin, with the new motherboard, still failed memest86.  Jason
found self-contradictory information in the motherboard manual as to
which slots pairs of memory were supposed to be in -- he tried several
alternatives, and one almost worked.  He has not found any
configuration in which all 4Gb of RAM would pass the tests.

Today he is contacting Penguin about them replacing the machine
completely.  It is very likely that I will just have them send the
'new Geoffrin' directly here as part of our migration strategy.

I'm waiting to hear the status of the other hardware that Jason
installed in the colo on Saturday before I do anything else, but
the next step will be one of these two:

(1) I have a new Penguin 1000E dual Opteron on order for Bomis,
and if Wikipedia isn't joyful by the time it comes in, I will loan
it to Wikipedia.

(2) Depending on the exact status of things, I will have Jason move
all the websites off of one of the existing Bomis servers to have yet
another machine to loan to Wikipedia.  I think I have a SCSI machine
that I could trade with Wikipedia.  But I have to study this for an
hour or so to determine how much work it will be because another
option would be to order some other 'off the shelf' configuration that
Penguin or Silicon Mechanics can ship same-day, and loan that to
Wikipedia instead.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Avoid personal remarks

body:
I would like to remind all of us that discussions on this mailing list
are more useful when we avoid personal remarks. Let's stick to the
issues, which are difficult enough.

Here are examples of personal remarks:

* Sheldon, stop being an ass; yer pissing me off
* you sick Nazi bastards
* You lied
* you're just a lowlife that deserves zero respect
* community of violent Jew haters

I'll let you all decide who said which of these gems, but I think we'll
all agree that they're not the sparkling jewels of wit we may have
thought when we wrote them. (I wish I could take back my own, er,
contribution to this parade of shame.)

Ed Poor
Wikien-l admin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 11:22, audin at okb-1.org wrote:
> 	Is DMA turned on and interrupt unmasking enabled on Ursula?

DMA is on. Interrupt unmasking, no.

> 	`/sbin/hdparm /dev/hda` (or whatever device it is) will show the
> current configuration.

# /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  multcount    = 16 (on)
  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
  using_dma    =  1 (on)
  keepsettings =  0 (off)
  readonly     =  0 (off)
  readahead    =  8 (on)
  geometry     = 7476/255/63, sectors = 120103200, start = 0

> 	/sbin/hdparm -u1 -c3 -d1 /dev/hda` will turn on DMA, turn off
> interrupt masking, and enable 32bit i/o support.  Interrupt masking
> itself can
> have a huge impact on the amount of cpu time spent waiting for the
> disk...and
> it is almost always set conservatively (ie: wrong) on an untweaked
> linux
> installation.

Well, went ahead and turned on interrupt unmasking and 32-bit io. The
numbers in vmstat don't look too much different yet, but we'll see.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/864666b0/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading

body:
As a matter of fact, after scannig those lines at useit.com,
one gets the impression that it is the same as with books. Good readers
(and people reading WP articles are -for my part- assumed to be good
readers do not read word by word EVER. Even a book. It is absolutely
hideous and the worst way to get information. Only in the interent people
read faster because they do not look for verbose info (even less for
style).

One idea per paragraph is a basic style concept.
highlighting, sub-headings. lists, etc.. well that is pretty obvious if
the reader looks for SPECIFIC DETAILS. Not necessarily so in an
encyclopedia (which needs to give also circumstancial details).

etc...

In any case, good sectioning, structuring and heading are the
keys for any text to be started to be read.

Pedro.
--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


from_name: Audin Malmin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 09:03:06PM +0100, Camille Constans wrote:
> On my IBM 80 Go, 7200 trs/mn
>
> Before :  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
> >  Timing buffered disk reads:   82 MB in  3.05 seconds =  26.89 MB/sec
>
> After : IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
> > Timing buffered disk reads:   74 MB in  3.03 seconds =  24.42 MB/sec
>
> No changes seen....

	Yes, I/O mode is odd.  Sometimes it makes a significant difference,
other times not.  I suspect the deal is that, at the hardware level, it
shouldn't matter, since it is a 16 bit connection to the drive in either case.
So the cases where it makes a difference are instances where the 16-bit mode
of the controller is flawed, but the 32-bit mode isn't.

	DMA and interrupt masking almost always have pretty big impacts,
though.

--
                                            Audin Malmin - audin at okb-1.org

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest
of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.
				-- Freeman Dyson


subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting silly (was: This is getting ugly)

body:
LOL :-)

Ed Poor wrote:

>Hey, Sheldon Rampton, you outrageous liar, nyaah nyaah boo boo!

Oh yeah? Well, your mother wears army boots! Let's meet in the
playground after school and settle this once and for all!

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
I haven't seen this mentioned here, so I figured I'd post it.

  http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/

Fascinating visualization of the history of Wikipedia articles,
contributions, contributors, etc.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [WikiEN-l] My view on deletions

body:
At least one person has privately expressed to me the opinion that my
position on deletions is that nothing should be deleted.  That's
absolutely not true, and I thought that this misunderstanding might be
widely enough shared that I should speak to it for a moment.

I think that the vast majority of deletions are perfectly fine.
Deletions for vandalism seem to be pretty well not abused.  Borderline
cases, with a fairly open policy, are sent to VfD now, and that almost
always works out just fine.

But I'm unhappy with some deletions (and redirections) that happen on
VfD.  I call the process broken by analogy with hypothetical (and
virtually all real!) criminal justice systems that get the right
answer most of the time, but for various procedural reasons sometimes
do exactly the wrong thing.

But in no way am I saying anything even remotely supportive of the
idea that vandals should be given free hand, nor that deletion or
redirection should always be avoided at all costs.  They are important
tools, but we need to improve how we use them.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> I'll repeat my eariler question... Is the memory in that box *certified*
> to work on that motherboard?  If the BIOS has an option like "spread
> spectrum", try turning that off.

I'll let Jason answer these questions definitively.  As to the first,
I can only suppose that the answer has to be 'yes'.  Penguin is a
reputable manufacturer with a lot of experience in Linux commodity
webservers, their specialty.  That's such an obvious detail that I
don't see them overlooking it.  But I haven't checked to be certain.

I also doubt if the bios has any options set that would break things,
Penguin ships boxes like this all the time, I would imagine, to much
bigger customers than us.

I think there's just something wrong.

I'm not happy about any of this, but I will say that -- other than
shipping us a broken machine -- Penguin has been steadfast and upfront
in their willingness to do the right thing to make things right with
us.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 08:23:33PM +0000, Nick Hill wrote:
> This would be cured by moving the database to solid state memory.
> Mechanical media has a very long seek time and when many seeks are
> required, become unreliable.
>
> Either:
> Run two MySQL instances, one starting after the finest grained database
> files have been copied to ramdisk. Replicate database to a hard disk file.
>
> Or
> Install a solid state IDE disk. For example, a 4Gb Compact Flash card
> has an IDE interface built in as part of the specifications. Access time
> 0.1ms comapred to mechanical 8.5ms. 85x faster. CF to IDE cables are
> trivial and available.
>
> To put it another way, you would need 85 mechanical drives to provide
> the seek performance of a solid state equivalent.

	Uh, except for that wondrous innovation known as caching...

	Ramdisks have no place beyond MS/PC-DOS, Knoppix, and OS install
floppies.  Why dedicate a gob of memory to a ram disk when you can achieve
similar performance with the OS's caching facility while also allowing that
memory to be conscripted for other uses should the need arise?

	Flash devices have rather serious write-cycle limitations.  As mysql
does not do anything to avoid hot spots, such a setup would likely not last
long.

	As to the Apple RAID boxes, my investigations a while back indicated
that they are not really redundant.  Each box is two seperate RAID devices.
So you have to do software raid between them if you want to avoid a single
point of failure.  This may or may not be a problem, but is not explicitly
mentioned in the apple literature.  I'm not sure this is a deal breaker, but
it is certainly something to think about.

--
                                            Audin Malmin - audin at okb-1.org

As a working hypothesis to explain the riddle of our existence, I propose that
our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate
as human beings is to make it so.  -- Freeman Dyson


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
how about the cost?

--- Nick Hill <nick at nickhill.co.uk> wrote:
> This would be cured by moving the database to solid
> state memory.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Ruimu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the censorship.

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert" <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 6:23 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop the censorship.

> The result is the same. They are deleting most of the
> _content_ of the article, resulting in the same censorship
> that a small but growing consensus here has condemned.

    I didn't see any consensus, and calling those edits censorship is
unfair. Reading the [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], I feel this
article is more or less a trial, with the sum of all proofs, with a public
prosecutor and so on. The intent of this trial is to prove that some
Palestinian officials are lying. My reaction to this is:

1/ You are trying to prove that 1+1 = 2, all successful politicians are
"lying" this way, Bush and Chirac are equals in the sport, nothing new under
the sun.

2/ Such a mundane trial has no place in an encyclopedia, but we may disagree
on what is encyclopedic.

3/ If this article really has a place in Wikipedia, it should by written
mainly by Palestinians, with a little paragraph stating that some of them
may say something in English and something else in Arabic.

4/ If the complete trial has a place in Wikipedia, what I doubt, it should
be balanced with a similar trial on Israelis point of view about Peace.

About "consensus", what I did see here, is a consensus of people regreting
the departure of Danny.

And do call me "leftist", I am not. In Europe, you may find many people from
the right wing (what I am not either) that /you/ would call
"pro-palestinian". Things are not black and white.


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI

body:
This is a test. If you see it, delete it. Dont reply.
Thanks and sorry if I take unneeded space on your
mailboxes.

purpose of the test: to check how the filter works and
see whether this message will appear on the mailing
list. it's not mean to be perceived as a comment on
the word ban.

--Optim

Nazi

nazi

NAZI

"Nazi"

"nazi"

"NAZI"

Nazism

nazism

NAZISM

"Nazism"

"nazism"

"NAZISM"

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts
> mentioning the word "Nazi".
>
> Ed Poor
> Wikien-l admin
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Menchi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nazi nazi NAZI

body:
Give it a few hours. He only said it like 5 minutes ago. Maybe the mail
server needs a long time to update.

What a horrible looking test... ;p


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk

body:
What do you mean?
1. A personal filter on your mailbox?
2. or a mailing list filter which prevents users from
posting messages with the word "Nazi" ?

thanks,
--Optim

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts
> mentioning the word "Nazi".
>
> Ed Poor
> Wikien-l admin

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI

body:
I see :)

thanks for replying.

may you have Peace Profound,
--Optim

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Optim,
>
> The filter is much more sophisticated than this:
>
>  if (msg.indexOf("Nazi") > -1) {
>
> 	msg.reject();
>
>  }
>
> It's context-sensitive.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
ta.wikipedia.org and fi.wikipedia.org use the same DB settings. Changes
done on fi appear on ta, and vice versa. So Finnish Wikipedia is the
same as Tamil wikipedia. The strange characters you see are Tamil.

	JeLuF

On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 12:26:20PM +0200, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Sorry to spam the list, but I tried to submit a bugreport to
> Sourceforge--only to get a message that SF was undergoing
> maintenance :-/
>
> Can someone please take a look at the Finnish Wikipedia?
> The recent changes ("Tuoreimmat muutokset") is totally broken!
>
> No changes are being displayed.
>
> All the messages from the MediaWiki: namespace have been
> replaced (at least in my browser) with question marks.
> Maybe the original text is in arabic or japanese or something
> (except those two at least display quite nicely on my browser).
>
> Anyway, can someone please look into this ASAP?
>
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk

body:
well, next time I should *read* mailing list messages
instead just *scanning* them :)

--Optim

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> It's very sophisticated, the latest in AI techniques
> based on Godwin's
> Law. I can't explain it any better than that.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
I think the db is about 30-35GB?

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> How much memory do we need to hold a working copy of
> the entire
> Wikipedia database?
>
> Is it 512 MB, 2 GB, 10 GB or what?
>
> Ed Poor

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Going Off in a Huff

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>>Regarding Jimbo: I think it is important that you create an account under
>>>some persona, edit some articles, get into an edit war or two, and in
>>>general get grounded in the realities of this project.
>>>
>>Peter the Great did it - why not Jimbo?
>>
>Ah, my hero. ;-)
>
>Here's the problem, basically.  My own political opinion in the
>Israeli/Palestinian situation is not very far from RK's.
>
I think that the spirit of Fred's suggestion was to develop trench
experience in the edit wars without having the article influenced by the
knowledge that you are the one who is editing.  The chaos of the
Israeli/Palestinian situation would not be a good place to start this.
 I would suggest something more obscure, where some people might try to
make a case for deleting it as not belonging in an encyclopedia.  If you
are concerned that your political opinions might bleed into the subject
and make your chosen persona, then simply choose a less political subject.

Some of this could be a bit trollish, but I've never felt that some
controlled use of trolling was all that bad.  The important thing when a
person uses such a tactic is to know when to stop.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Genitalia

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>Genitalia. Genitalia. Genitalia! g-e-n-I-t-a-l-i-a! Anagram for "TILE AGAIN."
>It's spelled with two I's.  It ends in "Italia."
>
Wow!  I hadn't previously realized that they were invented by Italians. :-)


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 1:11 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> We really, really need to move the database back to a machine with a
> decent hard drive. The wikis are very sluggish, and a fair chunk of
> it's from waiting on the database.
>
> Ursula's sitting around with a 90% idle CPU, but everything's blocked
> on disk I/O to the point it's got a load average of about 16. At any
> given time from 8-20 processes are blocked and waiting. Operations
> that hit a lot of rows like history and watchlist are particularly
> badly hit since they don't play as well with caching.
>
> If Geoffrin's not going to be up soon, and Pliny's still emitting
> spurious disk errors, what are our options out of the available
> machines?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we seem to have is
reliable
and speedy hard drives.  Perhaps it might be wise to consider possible
purchasing an external disk subsystem?  Something like the Apple Xserve
RAID systems are speedy (lots of internal hardware RAID), reliable (easy
to swap out disks), and expandable (up to 3.5TB, 1TB in the cheapest
configuration).  If the database server dies, it should be fairly easy
to plug
the external disk system into another machine.

http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/

Might be something worth considering...

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
For 40GB RAM you may need up to US$12000 or more.

So, forget it, except if you can claim [[Aristotle
Onassis]]' monetary&material inheritance (and if you
can, give some to me too).

--Optim

--- Nick Reinking <nick at twoevils.org> wrote:
> The problem is that there isn't a machine short of
> large "enterprise
> class" machines out there that can hold 40GB of RAM.
>  And no, we can't
> afford one of them.  ;)
>
> --
> Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 --
> Minneapolis, MN
>
> On Jan 12, 2004, at 3:15 PM, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> > Well, which is cheaper or faster? 40 GB of RAM, or
> a 40 GB hard drive?
> > Surely we can afford either one.
> >
> > Ed Poor
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Viajero

body:
Hi Zero, welcome to the list.

I agree entirely with Zero's assessment of these hot-spots, few in number
but eternally contentious. Aside from content issues, many of these
articles are simply BAD PROSE; they bear the scars of too many edit-wars.

My only reservation is one of strictly practical grounds; since the
wikipedia software, like everything else here, is written by volunteers,
we probably shouldn't depend on substantial changes to the underlying
software, which such a scheme, at first glance, suggests. Our best bet --
at least in the short-term -- would be to try to develop organizational
strategies *within* the existing system. For example, leaving the main
article read-only and shifting ALL editorial development to the
corresponding Talk page and having only a committee or certain designated
users update the "official" version as needed.

Technically speaking, this would require no changes; perhaps just a
message at the top of the page. However, I can already hear the
complaints: it would be counter-intuitive, managerial, "cabal-forming",
and -- above all -- counter the wiki spirit of "you can edit this page
right now!". But perhaps Zero is right: perhaps the original wiki
conception doesn't work for every page in the encyclopedia.

V.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am resigning if this goes on

body:
If people continue to make personal remarks, I am going to resign as
Wikien-l administrator. I am tired of all the bickering and pointless
arguments.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Charles Podles

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sticking to the issue, as requested

body:
I assume that RK is referring to the edit war over
[[Palestinian views of the peace process]]? (I haven't been following
this thread too
closely, so correct me if I'm mistaken.) Observe, then, a very
convenient memory lapse
on his part.
Robert wrote:
 > People are not offering sources or
 >facts; they are just using their personal opinions, and
 >anger at Israel, to remove verified and important
 >historical facts.

Observe one instance where someone (me) did offer sourced and
referenced  historical facts (regarding the Treaty of Hudaibiya) that
contradicted part of the article in question. Note that my reference was
to a Wikipedia article, so RK could have checked it with one mouse click:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2125757&oldid=2125728

And observe RK's response; he responded to some of my objections, but
left others (those that were sourced and referenced to a reliable
source) untouched;
he responded to Martin's objections on the same topic with more
editorializing, instead of the sources and facts that he claims to love
so much:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2131253&oldid=2131208
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2131208&oldid=2131189

But despite his lack of sourced, referenced factual information to
counter my objections, he reverted the article, twice, so it included
the material that I had challenged and he had not justified (and
somehow, he removed the NPOV and inclusion dispute headers, but never
mind -- that could have been an accident.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2133693&oldid=2133433
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2133117&oldid=2133007

(I added further references to reliable historical sources later on, if
anyone has any doubts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_views_of_the_peace_process&diff=2133712&oldid=2133682
)

RK continues to claim that he is trying to build an accurate, NPOV
article on this topic, but his actions suggest otherwise.

--Charles P. (en:User:Mirv)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Anthere wrote:
>In my opinion, this separation of 1) primary audience : native
>english speakers and 2) secondary audience : non native
>is not a good idea if it comes to overinflate an issue (such as
>circumsision) or underunflate (hum) another (such as excision).

Of course not - that is why I said "within the bounds of NPOV".

>Some here may be here to write for the most obvious
>audience :  americans. But not all of us.

What?! Why the hell does this always come down to American bashing? I was
talking about the /entire/ English speaking world *NOT JUST AMERICANS!!!*.

>I do not like the concept of "first" and "second" audience
>because that would be officially stating that we should
>primarily write for the first, to the detriment of the second.

No, it means we primarily write for the first and secondarily write for the
second. They are /both/ part of our audience and are both important.

>If english people write only or mostly for english people,
>if french people write only or mostly for french people, if
>arab people write only or mostly for arab people, then we
>fail. Wikipedia fails.

OK, that has got to be the most bizarre thing I've read in a while. I write
for *all* English speaking people. Sorry but how can I write for a French
audience when I don't speak French?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 1:47 PM, Ricky Beam wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Nick Reinking wrote:
>> It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we seem to have is
>> reliable
>> and speedy hard drives.  Perhaps it might be wise to consider possible
>> purchasing an external disk subsystem?  Something like the Apple
>> Xserve
>> RAID systems are speedy (lots of internal hardware RAID), reliable
>> (easy
>> to swap out disks), and expandable (up to 3.5TB, 1TB in the cheapest
>> configuration).  If the database server dies, it should be fairly easy
>> to plug the external disk system into another machine.
>
> "Like" is the key word there.  6k$ for a [censored] Apple logo is
> insane.
> I've bought similar hardware for less than 1/10th that price.  If all
> you
> need is a drive shelf, start searching eBay. (I can recommendations if
> anyone cares.)
>
> If you grab a fibre channel shelf (or more than one), I have plenty
> of drives for the cause (14x18G and 10x9.1G drives gathering dust.)
> I'd offer an entire Eurologic shelf, but you can find those local in
> CA easier and faster than shipping across the country. (6 of mine came
> from Canada :-))
>
> --Ricky

Hey, I'm just saying that we could certainly use a reliable external
disk
subsystem.  If you know of somebody who sells a reliable external disk
subsystem for a better price, than that's great.  I'm guessing that
you're going
to have trouble building a rack mounted disk system, that supports fibre
channel, redundant power supplies, disk hot-swapping, and a built-in
RAID
subsystem, with 1TB of disk space for less than $600, then let me know.
  I'd like
to buy a few for myself.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 2:23 PM, Nick Hill wrote:

> This would be cured by moving the database to solid state memory.
> Mechanical media has a very long seek time and when many seeks are
> required, become unreliable.
>
> Either:
> Run two MySQL instances, one starting after the finest grained
> database files have been copied to ramdisk. Replicate database to a
> hard disk file.

I'm not sure how running two copies of MySQL on a machine is going to
be faster than running one.  Plus,
I don't think MySQL can even work in this configuration.

> Or
> Install a solid state IDE disk. For example, a 4Gb Compact Flash card
> has an IDE interface built in as part of the specifications. Access
> time 0.1ms comapred to mechanical 8.5ms. 85x faster. CF to IDE cables
> are trivial and available.
>
> To put it another way, you would need 85 mechanical drives to provide
> the seek performance of a solid state equivalent.

Hmm... 4GB Compact Flash cards would be:

Too small (4GB is not enough space, we would need a couple hundred
cards)
Too expensive (4GB cards cost approximately about $1100, or around
$330000 for enough space)
Too slow (fast access, but only a 5MB/sec read/write)
Limit read/writes (they would last about one week, and need to be
tossed out)

So, no.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scanning VS. Reading

body:
At 12:11 PM 1/12/04 +0100, you wrote:
>As a matter of fact, after scannig those lines at useit.com,
>one gets the impression that it is the same as with books. Good readers
>(and people reading WP articles are -for my part- assumed to be good
>readers do not read word by word EVER. Even a book. It is absolutely
>hideous and the worst way to get information. Only in the interent people
>read faster because they do not look for verbose info (even less for
>style).

Many good readers--and I count myself as one--read at least some books
word for word. And when we write--which is what we're doing for Wikipedia--we
intend every word to be read.

Yes, it is possible to scan certain documents. Textbooks in particular are
often written so that readers in a hurry can get an overview by reading just
the first sentence of each paragraph. But readers who have more time will
learn more by reading the whole text. Otherwise, why would anyone bother
writing it, instead of just writing the first sentences?

Sure, we should write so that the reader can learn something even if she
only has time, or desire, to read part of the article. And yes, well-organized
sections and headers are helpful. But if nobody is going to read something,
I see no point in writing and publishing it.


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Nick Reinking wrote:
>It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we seem to have is reliable
>and speedy hard drives.  Perhaps it might be wise to consider possible
>purchasing an external disk subsystem?  Something like the Apple Xserve
>RAID systems are speedy (lots of internal hardware RAID), reliable (easy
>to swap out disks), and expandable (up to 3.5TB, 1TB in the cheapest
>configuration).  If the database server dies, it should be fairly easy
>to plug the external disk system into another machine.

"Like" is the key word there.  6k$ for a [censored] Apple logo is insane.
I've bought similar hardware for less than 1/10th that price.  If all you
need is a drive shelf, start searching eBay. (I can recommendations if
anyone cares.)

If you grab a fibre channel shelf (or more than one), I have plenty
of drives for the cause (14x18G and 10x9.1G drives gathering dust.)
I'd offer an entire Eurologic shelf, but you can find those local in
CA easier and faster than shipping across the country. (6 of mine came
from Canada :-))

--Ricky


subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Geoffrin, with the new motherboard, still failed memest86.  Jason
>found self-contradictory information in the motherboard manual as to
>which slots pairs of memory were supposed to be in -- he tried several
>alternatives, and one almost worked.  He has not found any
>configuration in which all 4Gb of RAM would pass the tests.

I'll repeat my eariler question... Is the memory in that box *certified*
to work on that motherboard?  If the BIOS has an option like "spread
spectrum", try turning that off.

--Ricky


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
This is my understanding of how it works:

There are two RAID devices in each box.  Each device supports up to 7
drives,
and can use RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 0+1, 10, 30, and 50 with these seven
disks.  Now,
if you want to use the entire 14 in one gigantic RAID setup, you can do
that with
software RAID (you can do RAID 10, 30, or 50 across the two RAID
systems).

This is not actually terribly optical.  It is best to use the two RAID
systems separately.
If you want a gigantic file system, you can use LVM and pull both RAID
systems
in (probably running RAID 5).  However, how I really think it would be
most useful
would be if we had two database servers.  One would run en, and one
would run
the international wikis.  Since the RAID system has two fibre channel
ports, you can
give each system its own external RAID hardware subsystem in the
future.  (so,
both could have up to 1.75TB of storage at their disposal).

In the near term, just using half the machine (7 disks, just one RAID
controller)
would still make a huge improvement, I think.  It's not the cheapest
solution, but
it is a lot more reliable than hoping the disks in the servers don't
croak, and it
gives us the ability to move the database around fairly easily if a
server should
die (just plug it into a different machine).

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN

On Jan 12, 2004, at 2:35 PM, audin at okb-1.org wrote:

> 	As to the Apple RAID boxes, my investigations a while back indicated
> that they are not really redundant.  Each box is two seperate RAID
> devices.
> So you have to do software raid between them if you want to avoid a
> single
> point of failure.  This may or may not be a problem, but is not
> explicitly
> mentioned in the apple literature.  I'm not sure this is a deal
> breaker, but
> it is certainly something to think about.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Math homework (for Martin)

body:
Martin,

I have often taught math to kids, and my specialty is "word problems".
May I help you with you math?

The following statement need re-factoring:

  "X says Y about Z and they meant W"

How about this?

  A says that when X said Y about Z, they meant W.

Can you handle an equation with five variables?

An alternate 'solution' is:

  X said Y about Z.
  A said that X meant W.

I have run across nearly a dozen examples that fit this formula on
Friday and today (lazy bum that I am, I took the weekend off).

* Wesley Clark's statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda

=> "A" quotes Clark as linking Iraq being buddy-buddy with Al Qaeda a
couple years ago
=> "A" quates Clank as saying recently that Iraq NEVER had a link with
Al Qaeda

Then, good reporter that he is, "A" quotes Clark as saying that the two
(apparently contradictory) statements aren't really contradictory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/politics/campaigns/12CLAR.html

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] All right, that's enough

body:
All this "he said, I said" stuff is off-topic. This list is about how to
improve the Wikipedia.

For example, mild-mannered Martin meandered into a muddy morass, and
moaned:

> I see that you have decided to branch out from claims that I am
"harrassing" and
"censoring" you and decided to move back to the familiar territory of
accusing me of
being a Nazi and anti-Semite.

If you have personal problems, settle yourselves or ask someone for
help. But keep it off the list.

Or else, instead of doing something dramatic like "resigning" I just
might do something practical and start "moderating" the list. I have the
password, and I /can/ set the list software so it holds all or some
messages for review.

Don't make me do something drastic.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
The problem is that there isn't a machine short of large "enterprise
class" machines out there that can hold 40GB of RAM.  And no, we can't
afford one of them.  ;)

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN

On Jan 12, 2004, at 3:15 PM, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Well, which is cheaper or faster? 40 GB of RAM, or a 40 GB hard drive?
> Surely we can afford either one.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
>
> Here's a crazy thought: Is there a way to make a server identify
> itself as a *harddrive* on the SCSI bus? If so, we could take a
> machine with lots of RAM which does nothing else than holding most of
> the DB in cache (cheaper and faster than Compact Flash:-) and
> occasionally write stuff to its hard drives. Probably won't need much
> of a CPU, and maybe not even SCSI drives, just cheap IDE ones, as all
> it does is caching.
>
> Then, we could plug that thing into the "real" DB server, which just
> sees a really fast HD.
>
> Well, one can dream...

I think I remember reading about projects fairly similar to this many
years ago.  However, I don't think they went anywhere.  I imagine
people realized that if it costs $10k to build a generic machine that
can handle these disks, and a huge number of hours to configure it and
get it running, then you were probably better off buying a more
reliable $15k external disk system.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


subject: [WikiEN-l] Audience

body:
Since some people will undoubtedly not have read what I said in my posts
previous to the last one, let me clarify:

Different languages often have different traditions on how to best organize
information. This means that what passes for a great article in one language
will not necessarily translate very well into another language (meaning, it
would probably not be viewed as being great and may in fact be viewed as
being poor - even when it is translated well).

Things like dictionaries, encyclopedia, newspapers and other media are not
really the same things across different languages and thus something that
would be good in one language may not be seen as good if translated as-is
into another. For example, what constitutes a textbook - the type of thing
that it *is* - has a different tradition in different languages. Sometimes
that tradition is fairly uniform between two languages, sometimes it is very
different.

This is why having editorially independent Wikipedia versions in many
different languages is a such a great thing. A mere translation of the
English Wikipedia, for example, would not meet the expectations of what an
encyclopedia *is* (the way it should cover topics) by many non-English
speaking people. An *encyclopedia* is really a different thing in different
language traditions.

*That* is what I am talking about when I say that we have primary audiences
(those whose native language is one we are writing in) and secondary
audiences (those whose native language is something other than the language
we are writing in but who still speak in the language we are writing in). It
would be internal balkanization to allow the traditions of one language to be
used in an encyclopedia in another language.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk

body:
I'm applying a mailing-list filter to posts mentioning the word "Nazi".

Ed Poor
Wikien-l admin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 3:33 PM, Ricky Beam wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>> Someone mentioned $6K for Apple raid storage, but that price is not so
>> high: here at work we have some kind of raid NAS (half a terabyte I
>> think)
>> that went for about $4K. So yeah, NAS can be expensive, a simple
>> internal
>
> And it's certainly IDE based.  You might have it connected to a SCSI
> card
> but the drives are the same unreliable IDE drives everyone throws away
> every year.  SCSI hardware RAID is, strictly speaking, unnecessary.
> The two opterons in the box are far more powerful than any RAID card.
> Sure, hardware is nice, but not really necessary with good drives
> from the get-go (i.e. they're all SCSI and we don't need some magic
> from a hardware RAID card to make IDE performance acceptable.)
>
> I currently have a $250 eurologic fibre channel shelf (FC7 or FC9) with
> dual power supplies and 7 146G seagate (300$ each) heating my
> apartment :-)
> The shelf is easy to find.  Wiki would want new drives vs. the OEM
> pulls
> I'm using which doubles the cost of the drives. (they aren't easy to
> find
> used anyway.)  That's just under 1TB.  Each drive can stream ~60MB/s.
> Yes,
> EACH. (all the way to bus saturation: 2Gb/s)
>
> --Ricky
>
> PS: I have 6 more of those shelves loaded with 18G drives... old NetApp
>     filer disks.

I'm not saying you can't build a similar system for cheaper (possibly a
couple thousand dollars cheaper).  But, do we want to spend a lot of
time building and debugging hardware?  Do we want to be responsible for
paying for any unforeseen hardware problems, or do we want to have some
kind of support contract with someone?  Imagine how much this Penguin
Computing system would be costing us in time and money if we had to pay
for all the replacement parts (especially when we are unsure where the
problem lies.)  Building your own hardware is great when you're
desperate to save a few bucks, but if we've got the money, we might as
well spend it on making things as reliable as possible.  I think we
would be doing a disservice to all those who made donations otherwise.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi nazi NAZI

body:
Optim,

The filter is much more sophisticated than this:

 if (msg.indexOf("Nazi") > -1) {

	msg.reject();

 }

It's context-sensitive.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nix on Nazi talk

body:
It's very sophisticated, the latest in AI techniques based on Godwin's
Law. I can't explain it any better than that.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
How much memory do we need to hold a working copy of the entire
Wikipedia database?

Is it 512 MB, 2 GB, 10 GB or what?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
Well, which is cheaper or faster? 40 GB of RAM, or a 40 GB hard drive?
Surely we can afford either one.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] filter

body:
It's okay to mention RK, as long as it's not a "personal remark".

All issues relating to Wikipedia are open for discussion.

But if you want to criticize people, please follow these two simple
rules:

1. Don't.
2. See rule #1

Ed Poor


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 16:07, Nick Hill wrote:
> From what I have gathered, the cost (limiting factor to performance)
> is that of delays seeking fine grained data. Either this seek load
> will need to be spread across many mechanical devices such that the
> work is not unduly duplicated, or store the fine grained data in solid
> state storage so that it can be seeked quickly.

As a reminder, Geoffrin (the opteron box) is *perfectly fine* at this
and handles the database load admirably. It's just out of service and
replaced by a box (Ursula) with a hideously slow drive at the moment
because that's what was available to get back online with.

The medium-term plan is simply to get Geoffrin back online, and to get
_some_ machine with decently fast drives to serve as a replicated hot
backup.

The ideas about squid caches etc are not about lightening the load on
the database server (which it wouldn't really do except insofar as it
may cache more stuff than our present on-web-server caching), but about
lightening and spreading out the load on the web servers. Squid caches
will *not* help the immediate question here to a significant degree;
anyway no more than making slight alterations to the present caching
code to avoid checking timestamps in some cases would.

Our present alternatives for database duty are:

* Pliny, which has done it in the past. Exhibiting intermittent errors
on primary drive, and crashed a couple times when it ran the database
again in late December, which is why we took it back off to Ursula.

* Carol (currently idle) with a SCSI drive that's too small for the
whole database.

* Susan (currently idle) with another IDE drive that's likely not the
fastest.

Unless somebody's got a clearer suggestion, I'll be following JeLuF's
advice and in a few hours moving some of the more heavily trafficked
European languages to one of these spare boxes to attempt to split the
load on Ursula's poor drive.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/730b88d3/attachment.pgp>


from_name: John C. Penta

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Monday, January 12, 2004 4:31 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment

> Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of
> endearment.

Well, yeah, but they also paint their sheep with lipstick.;-)

<ducks, runs for cover>

John
will probably get hurt by an Australian soon...:-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Off-topic: Australians

body:
Try to stay on topic. That was funny, John, but we have work to do.

...term of endearment ... Lipstick

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>Someone mentioned $6K for Apple raid storage, but that price is not so
>high: here at work we have some kind of raid NAS (half a terabyte I think)
>that went for about $4K. So yeah, NAS can be expensive, a simple internal

And it's certainly IDE based.  You might have it connected to a SCSI card
but the drives are the same unreliable IDE drives everyone throws away
every year.  SCSI hardware RAID is, strictly speaking, unnecessary.
The two opterons in the box are far more powerful than any RAID card.
Sure, hardware is nice, but not really necessary with good drives
from the get-go (i.e. they're all SCSI and we don't need some magic
from a hardware RAID card to make IDE performance acceptable.)

I currently have a $250 eurologic fibre channel shelf (FC7 or FC9) with
dual power supplies and 7 146G seagate (300$ each) heating my apartment :-)
The shelf is easy to find.  Wiki would want new drives vs. the OEM pulls
I'm using which doubles the cost of the drives. (they aren't easy to find
used anyway.)  That's just under 1TB.  Each drive can stream ~60MB/s.  Yes,
EACH. (all the way to bus saturation: 2Gb/s)

--Ricky

PS: I have 6 more of those shelves loaded with 18G drives... old NetApp
    filer disks.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at
    http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598
someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0:
    "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven
website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers
on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now."
Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to
consider in case SUSE proves unstable.

Magnus


from_name: Nick Hill

subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
I have found the stability of the system does vary with distribution,
although theoretically it shouldn't. I suppose much of this is down to
proper versioning, eg dynamic libraries.

I haven't used Non-free Suse. Out of the many other distros I have used,
I find Debian by far the most reliable, easy to administer in the long
term, and difficult to install. (I rarely bother installing Debian from
the official ISO, I prefer to clone systems). It took me 6 months of
using GNU/Linux before I had enough knowledge to install Debian. Once I
did so, dependency hell simply vanished and reliability has been 100%. I
vowed to avoid RPMs from then on.

I haven't used BSD5. What licenses is it distributed under?

Magnus Manske wrote:
> Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at
>    http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598
> someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0:
>    "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven
> website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers
> on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now."
> Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to
> consider in case SUSE proves unstable.


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BSD, anyone?

body:
Debian!

;-)

--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 17:01, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> If we have an old machine Squid will serve anything cached straight
> from
> memory (small objects) or disk (images) without ever contacting the
> database. That's a speedup of at least 50x over the current disk cache
> with DB lookup etc.

...which would only work as such if we make changes to the wiki which
are roughly identical to the changes we'd have to make to the present
caching system to avoid hitting the database to confirm timestamps.
(ie, explicit purging of cached pages that are no longer valid)

Squid may be a great caching system, but for purposes of this
discussion it's not really different from what we've got.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/b6df1ee7/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reading Software

body:
Considering that we usually don't put some punctuation
(; . , :) after headings (section titles), List items,
See also listings where a list is utilised, etc etc...
I am afraid to say that the current Wikipedia style
seems to be unfair to Reading Software (software which
converts text into voice, Example: Adobe 6). Reading
Software uses the punctuation to make pauses, and
cannot get into account the document's markup and
format (headings etc). Lately I started putting :
after headings and ; or . after list items, but I
found the visual result disgusting and hard-to-read.
If I don't use the punctuation, the problem is that
Reading Software cannot recognize the necessary pauses
and as a result the listener has trouble understanding
the meaning. I would like to find some way to
incorporate some hidden punctuation into the articles,
which will be used only by reading software but will
be invisible to the user who reads the text on the
screen or paper. Do you have any idea on this? If
impossible, I propose to think about the issue of
reading software and decide on whether punctuation
should be used and what kind of punctuation, as an
effort to optimise our writing style for Reading
Software. Thank you and may you have Peace Profound, --Optim

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Gutza

subject: [WikiEN-l] This is getting ugly

body:
Robert wrote:

>If the consensus is that Wikipedia should promote
>anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and hateful crowds ganging up
>on one user, then that is precisely the reputation that it
>will get offline.
>
>
Here we go again... I could never follow up on all the pro/anti-Semitism
wars on Wikipedia, but *everything else aside*, I find it very peculiar
that all have one single thing in common: you on one side and hateful
crowds of anti-Zionists and anti-Semits and soon-to-be-Nazis on the
other. Doesn't this strike you as too much of a coincidence as well?
Maybe they're anti-RK, not anti-Semitic, ever thought of that?
Seriously. Did it ever cross your mind?

--Gutza


body:
John C. Penta wrote:

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk>
>
>>Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of
>>endearment.
>>
>
>Well, yeah, but they also paint their sheep with lipstick.;-)
>
At which end?


from_name: Peter Wöhrer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BSD, anyone?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>    "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven
> website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers
> on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now."
> Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to
> consider in case SUSE proves unstable.

I've been running Red Hat, SuSE and Debian on various servers, can't say
anything about one of the BSD-flavours. Debian ist the most demanding
system of the three I know, but also the one with the most control.
SuSE CAN be reliable and secure, but you need a lot of manual
configuration work (at least until 7.x I wasn't happy at all with the
SuSE setup routines; don't know about later versions).

Peter


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Secondary servers

body:
On Jan 12, 2004, at 17:48, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:15:38 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Squid may be a great caching system, but for purposes of this
>> discussion it's not really different from what we've got.
>
> Believe me that Squid is *way* faster than any php caching system will
> ever be- with modification date checking or not.

This thread is about disk access on the temporary database server.

No matter how insanely fast the caching is, it doesn't happen on the
database server. Superduperfast squid caching that doesn't touch the
database server and kinda speedy php caching that doesn't touch the
database server are exactly equal in the eyes of the database server.

Lemme put it this way: you're talking about tuning up the engine on a
car, when we're trying to discuss how the tires all are flat and the
parking brake is stuck on. The car's not going to go very fast in this
condition no matter how much the engine is improved.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040112/20c0eb9b/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> writes:

> > Maybe they're anti-RK, not anti-Semitic, ever thought of
> > that? Seriously. Did it ever cross your mind?
>
> No, and I think the problem is that you have no idea what I was talking
> about. I was talking about the many explicitly anti-Semitic posts made by a
> number of Wikipedia users, which were well-documented.

No Robert.  They're not well documented at all.
You have yet to point out a single post that anyone, besides yourself,
was prepared to call Anti-Semitic.

> What caused trhew problem was that Martin and a few others here began to
> defend this explicitly anti-Semitic Nazi material as correct.

Wahey!  We're Nazis again.  Didn't take long, did it.

> When it was proven (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that large amounts of
> anti-Semitic were being pushed on Wikipedia

No such thing was proved.
And you are extremely deluded, if you believe that it was.
--
Gareth Owen
"The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"


subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Nick Reinking wrote:
>I'm not saying you can't build a similar system for cheaper (possibly a
>couple thousand dollars cheaper).  But, do we want to spend a lot of
>time building and debugging hardware?

Uhhh, we're already doing that for a brand new server.

>Do we want to be responsible for
>paying for any unforeseen hardware problems, or do we want to have some
>kind of support contract with someone?  Imagine how much this Penguin
>Computing system would be costing us in time and money if we had to pay
>for all the replacement parts (especially when we are unsure where the
>problem lies.)

It'd cost exactly what it's currently costing.  Everything in that server
is new and thus supported both by the people who sold it to us and the
people who made it.  A pair of drives from Maxtor purchased 1.5 years
ago were replaced in 48hours from the time requested the RMA. (it usually
takes a week.)

>Building your own hardware is great when you're
>desperate to save a few bucks, but if we've got the money, we might as
>well spend it on making things as reliable as possible.  I think we
>would be doing a disservice to all those who made donations otherwise.

This isn't "penny pinching".  The cost savings is enormous.  And you're
using hardware someone else has burned-in.  Of course, you have to has
some trust in the source of the gear.

If you want spankin' new, go price a shelf from IBM, DEC/Compaq, or Dell.
A quick look at Dell shows a SCSI shelf with 14 36G 10k drives, dual 600W
power supplies, rails, cables, etc. for ~6k. (ETA 8days.)

--Ricky


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek

body:
As far as I can remember, I have never interacted with
User:Annek in any way.  Looking at his contributions,
it's possible I changed something he didn't like,
since he's edited [[hip hop]] and some other articles
I watch.  There's never been any conflict between us,
however.  He has changed a sentence describing me on
my own userpage from "I am also homosexual" to "I am a
fag".  I don't appreciate it, for perhaps obvious
reasons, and have let him know on his talk page.  I
don't know what, if anything, we want to do about
this, especially if it remains a single isolated
incident, but I wanted to bring it up to the mailing
list.

TUF-KAT

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Alwin Meschede

subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> ... but I don't think
> it's going to magically fix hardware problems.

BTW, what's the status of our hardware? It doesn't seem as if anything
has happened over the weekend, as Wikipedia is still as slow as usual ;-)

Alwin Meschede


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
> If you want spankin' new, go price a shelf from IBM, DEC/Compaq, or
> Dell.
> A quick look at Dell shows a SCSI shelf with 14 36G 10k drives, dual
> 600W
> power supplies, rails, cables, etc. for ~6k. (ETA 8days.)

Listen, I don't care who the heck we go through - I'll leave that up to
Jimbo.  I'd just like a system with dual fibre channel (or SCSI, as
this system is).  Whatever gives us the greatest bang for the buck -
I'm not trying to turn this into a partisan battle.  14x36GB is 504GB.
If we think that would be fine for the reasonable future, then that's
not a bad deal (at $6565 with the current 10% discount). (although
later expansion would involve replacing, not adding, drives).

Dell PowerVault SCSI:
- 14x36GB = 504GB
- Dual SCSI U320 ports
- 3yr support contract
- ?? on cache

Total: $7294 ($6565 with discount that expires Jan 14th)
Total: $8001 for 7x73GB ($7201 with current discount) - this gives
future expansion space

Apple Xserve RAID:
- 7x250GB = 1750GB (7200 RPM ATA drives)
- 256MB cache (128MB for each RAID subsystem)
- Dual fibre channel ports
- 3yr Applecare support contract

Total: $8997
Total: $7497 for 4x250 = 1000GB

In any case, nobody has even decided that this a bad/good idea.  Is it
wise to spend a lot of money on a fast disk system, or should be be
buying bigger beefier servers instead?  As near as I can tell, the
prices are pretty equal across the two boxes - the Dell would probably
be a bit faster (lower latency), the Apple would have quite a bit more
space.  Penguin Computing also has storage gear, although they don't
allow you to price it out on their website.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Nikos-Optim wrote:

> I consider FreeBSD as superior to GNU/Linux.

Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this. In my experience, FreeBSD has
been more stable and performed better under high load.

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen schrieb:
> Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this. In my experience, FreeBSD has
> been more stable and performed better under high load.

Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and
overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than
Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network
performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on
some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...

Alwin Meschede


from_name: Anthere

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> Optim wrote:
>
>>Who decided which is the "primary" and the "secondary
>>audience" of the English Wikipedia and when this
>>decision took place?

<snip>

> All English speakers are the audience of the English Wikipedia, but native
> readers - especially monolingual ones - will expect and need to have
> information organized in a way that is most useful and familiar to them.
> Replace "English" with any other language and the same applies there as well.

Just for the record Mav, I use the words "international" wikipedias as
opposed to "english" wikipedia as this is the terminology most used
among wikipedians. It is a facility, by lack of other descriptive terms.
I agree that english is one of the most international language among all
those we cover.

We are raising an important point I think : we are wondering who our
audience is. Or rather, we are apparently not agreeing who our audience
is after 3 years :-)

We are 1) writers
making 2) articles
for 3) readers.

We know who we are
We know what we are doing
But it seems who we are writing for, is not the same for everyone.

You say the primary audience is native english speaking people, and the
secondary audience is non native.
Roughly, for you, the primary audience is Americans, Canadians,
Australian, British, Irish (roughly, I do not want to hurt any one
feelings).
The secondary audience is ... others.
Then you imply that articles should be carved in such way as to
preferably suit the native english audience. To the point of
misrepresenting a worldwide situation, to fit it better to what you
perceive our audience is and would like to read.

In my opinion, this separation of 1) primary audience : native english
speakers and 2) secondary audience : non native
is not a good idea if it comes to overinflate an issue (such as
circumsision) or underunflate (hum) another (such as excision).
It is important that we mention that both circumsision types exist, but
if the argument justifying the overinflation of one, is just that we
perceive that it is the one which will interest the audience, then we
should agree on what the audience is.

Some here may be here to write for the most obvious audience :
americans. But not all of us.
My opinion is that it would be a trap to think so and to act so. That
would be a huge restriction of audience, and that would be a blow in the
face of non english people here.

I do not like the concept of "first" and "second" audience because that
would be officially stating that we should primarily write for the
first, to the detriment of the second.

* First because as you stated it, english (along with spanish possibly)
is international language. It is the most international of all
languages. Potentially, it can reach many many more people than just
native english speakers. Whether you want it or not, english is not
entirely your language anymore. It is our common language. The one we
can share. The one that can be a babel tower so we can understand all
together.

That mean, not only do WE, non native, speak to you, and write for you,
to communicate with you.
But that also mean that you, native, should speak to us, and write for
us, to communicate with us.

Something that is far less likely to happen in french, or in most languages.

So, when I come to en.wikipedia, I like to write on things like the
reasons why our people, your and mine, disagree upon GMO matters,
islamic matters (even if I know so little of the topic that it is
laughable) or iraq matters (same :-)). Because if I can explain even a
tiny bit to some americans why we think differently, so they can agree
that arguments exists on all sides, if I can do that, it is information
sharing and it is beneficial to mutual understanding.

And I would like people such as you, or as RK, or whoever, to write
things, not only to explain to some americans what other americans think
about this american topic, but rather to explain to ME, to MY people,
what some americans think. Because if you can explain even a tiny bit to
some french people why we think different, so they can agree that
arguments exists on all sides, if you can do that, it is information
sharing and it is beneficial to mutual understanding.

If english people write only or mostly for english people, if french
people write only or mostly for french people, if arab people write only
or mostly for arab people, then we fail. Wikipedia fails.

* Second because
- most english natives are much more wealthy than most people in the
world. They can purchase an encyclopedia with less pain than other
people, who need their money to buy food and clothes.
- most english natives have more freedom of access to information than
most people in the world. They can buy a newspaper, see television. They
can surf on the net. Many people do not have that freedom. Some must
risk a lot to access information that is not propaganda. But they will
look for information nonetheless.

Free encyclopedia

--------

Who are you writing for ?


subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Alwin Meschede wrote:

>> Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this. In my experience, FreeBSD has
>> been more stable and performed better under high load.

> Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and
> overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than
> Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network
> performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on
> some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...

There's are some interesting benchmarks comparing (among others) Linux 2.6 and
FreeBSD 5.0 (I think):

  http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/

This seems to imply that you're correct in thinking 2.6 is more on level with
FreeBSD in performance under load. I still feel Linux is not mature enough (who
knows if 2.6 is stable, 2.4 certainly had a tendency not to be) to compare to
FreeBSD here.

Still, the difference is insignificant compared to the work already sunk into
the GNU/Linux base of Wikipedia. I agree that the easiest way to get some free
performance (but not perhaps stability) is to just switch to 2.6.

-- Daniel


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Home pages vs Talk pages

body:
Dear Robert.

I must inform you that I have yet to edit your HOME page, and have in fact only
edited your TALK page. In other words, I have edited "user talk:RK", but not
"user:RK". As such, when you say that

> Martin is still making non-stop personal attacks on me on my own home page

you are being somewhat economic with the truth. This contrasts with your own
behaviour, in that you really have edited my HOME page, at "user:MyRedDice".
Specifically, you deleted everything there, and wrote in its place:

> I promote vandalizing other people's user pages. After all, if I can do it to others,
> others can do it to me.

> Or would it be hypocritical for me to do this to others, but not allow others to do
> that to me? Well, its Ok to do it to Jews!

I hope that this clarifies the tricky  issues involved in distinguishing between HOME
pages and USER TALK pages. I trust that you will formally acknowledge to the list
that I have never edited your HOME page, at "user:RK", and perhaps apologise for
any confusion you may have inadvertantly caused.

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


from_name: Menchi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Annek

body:
Obviously the reincarnation of another vandal who you admonished. Think
hard.

--
___________________________
Menchi


from_name: Dave Caroline

subject: [Wikitech-l] Secondary servers

body:
At 11:11 12/01/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>We really, really need to move the database back to a machine with a
>decent hard drive. The wikis are very sluggish, and a fair chunk of it's
>from waiting on the database.
>
>Ursula's sitting around with a 90% idle CPU, but everything's blocked on
>disk I/O to the point it's got a load average of about 16. At any given
>time from 8-20 processes are blocked and waiting. Operations that hit a
>lot of rows like history and watchlist are particularly badly hit since
>they don't play as well with caching.
>
>If Geoffrin's not going to be up soon, and Pliny's still emitting spurious
>disk errors, what are our options out of the available machines?

For a small amount of money put a raid array in a machine to speed up
access time
and / or split the db accros a few boxes

>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Dave Caroline aka archivist

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BSD, anyone?

body:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:55:38 +0100, Alwin Meschede wrote:

> Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and
> overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than
> Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network
> performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on
> some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...

I don't think it would be worth the risk- the differences in performance
between different kernel versions or netbsd/linux will always be small- i
value easy maintenance and high reliability much higher. We can easily add
another server to the new setup if the load demands it. There will be
quite a few additional machines to maintain- i think the easier this job
gets the better.

I have Debian running on all my machines, best uptime so far was a
webserver that came down after 450+ days because of a broken cooler- with
the plain vanilla Debian kernel.

I don't consider a Debian install to be difficult really- quickest so far
is the Morphix live CD (for a desktop setup). Chroot installs aren't hard
either, even with XFS support.

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Annek

body:
TUF-KAT refers to this edit:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:TUF-KAT&diff=2142133&oldid=2140779

I don't know User:Annek and I haven't interacted with
him/her either.

I am very sad about what happened and the incident
affected me deeply. I support TUF-KAT and I strongly
disagree with Annek's action and attitude.

I ask the community to keep an eye on Annek and if
(s)he continues his/her bad behaviour to take proper
action.

User:Annek must explain and apologise for his/her
action immediatelly.

--Optim

--- Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As far as I can remember, I have never interacted
> with
> User:Annek in any way.  Looking at his
> contributions,
> it's possible I changed something he didn't like,
> since he's edited [[hip hop]] and some other
> articles
> I watch.  There's never been any conflict between
> us,
> however.  He has changed a sentence describing me on
> my own userpage from "I am also homosexual" to "I am
> a
> fag".  I don't appreciate it, for perhaps obvious
> reasons, and have let him know on his talk page.  I
> don't know what, if anything, we want to do about
> this, especially if it remains a single isolated
> incident, but I wanted to bring it up to the mailing
> list.
>
> TUF-KAT
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus"
> Sweepstakes
> http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [Wikitech-l] BSD, anyone?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> FreeBSD is lovely (my test server at home runs it), but I don't think
> it's going to magically fix hardware problems.

I am well aware of that; my hope is that the self-healing powers of
wikipedia might, over time, extend to the hardware it runs on! :-)

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stick to the issue

body:
I suggest that the moderator of that mailing list (hi Ed !) do start
moderating the mailing list not only for spam issues, but for uncivility
as well.

Those who offer only personnal comments as food for thought should be
added on a non-automatically post list. The content reviewed. And only
posted if it is constructive, or at least non-destructive.