subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: 'zh-min-nan' or 'cfr' for Holopedia at Wikipedia,
	please! [no forking]

body:
Let me preemptively apologize for the tone of this message.

Quick summary: if 'zh-min-nan' is not desirable, change to
'cfr.wikipedia.org'.  See reasoning below.

Tim Starling, 2004-07-07 21:56:46+1000:
> The reason for choosing zh-cfr can be summarised in one word: Aromanian.
> A wiki in the Aromanian dialect was requested, and it was agreed that we
> should have one, but there was a problem with choosing the subdomain.
> Aromanian does not have a distinct ISO 639 code, however it is listed in
> the Ethlnologue under the code RUP. We had used only ISO 639 codes up to
> that time.
>
> The solution we came up with was to use the group ISO 639 code followed
> by the SIL code. This allows us to specify most languages in the
> Ethnologue without conflicting with the ISO standard, since ISO 639
> codes do not contain hyphens.

All right.  Now, explain why it is 'roa-rup' rather than
just 'rup'?  Why 'zh-cfr' rather than just 'cfr'?  That is
mixing ISO 639-1 unnecessarily with SIL code, which creates
a monster: see paragraph below.

Maybe it is too late and the damage has been done, but one
of the several reasonable candidate solutions would be:
(option a)
 Wikipedia host 2-letter sequence -> look up in ISO 639-1
 Wikipedia host 3-letter sequence -> look up in SIL Ethnologue
But the current solution is:
(option b)
 Wikipedia host containing hyphen -> look up in both ISO 639-1 or 639-2 and SIL
And there is no understanding of which language is referred
to when one encounters something internally contradictory
such as en-frn.wikipedia.org. Is that English (ISO 639-1:
en) or French (SIL: FRN)??  (One may argue that it will
return 'This Wiki does not exist', but I still do not see
why (b) is in any way necessary or better than (a) other
than the farcical possibility of including ad hoc pidgins.)

> Using the hyphenated language tags assigned by IANA, such as zh-min-nan,
> would conflict with this scheme. For example if we used zh-yue, it would
> be difficult to know what "yue" refers to. Is it an SIL code or an
> assigned code?

(option c)
No, it would not.  RFC 3066 adopts all ISO 639-1 language
codes.  Just look up in RFC 3066 (and transitively ISO
639-1).

> We could use the RFC 3066 codes instead. This is still an option.
> However it wouldn't give us access to a large number of languages
> without resorting to awkward constructions such as x-sil-RUP.

(option c, corollary)
And that is the thing one should do: using constructions
such as x-sil-RUP when nothing more appropriate comes up
elsewhere in RFC 3066.  That is why such standards are
useful -- they are usually very precise and expressive,
however awkward one may consider.

> If I'm wrong about that, feel free to explain it to me.

I have been arguing for the hardcore option (c), but I
think a compromise is to consider option (a), which will
involve
(option a, implementation)
 1) changing 'minnan' and 'zh-cfr' to simply 'cfr'
 2) changing 'roa-rup' to 'rup'
[3) any other adjustments]

[By the way, much of the SIL-inclusion problems have been
argued about when RFC 3066 was being drafted ... and the
result was x-SIL-RUP etc.  Sorry to be speaking a bit ex
cathedra, but I resent fighting battles already-won....]

> If I understand correctly, Shizhao's problem is that holopedia.net, and
> by extension minnan.wikipedia.org, is written in a script peculiar to
> Taiwan. The writing there is thus not representative of min-nan
> generally. So wouldn't it be better to use the RFC 3066 code specific to
> Taiwanese, namely zh-min-nan-TW? Or indeed, in keeping with my earlier
> point about such language codes being cryptic and unnecessarily lengthy,
> why not use ho-lo-oe.wikipedia.org?

To give a glib answer: I do not think Shizhao speaks Minnan,
otherwise he will rather contribute to Holopedia in whatever
way he writes Minnan, or apply for zh-min-nan-CN.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Forbidden when retrieving metadata

body:
Nathan R. Yergler wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> That is how HTML works. Ampersands are escaped as &.
>
> I knew that was the case in the body of a document, but wasn't aware it
> applied to head elements as well.  Thanks.

In general, it applies to both "normal" text and to text inside the
attributes of tags. Otherwise there would be no way to say something
like <img src="..." alt="The town of Å, Norway" />, for example...


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
"We are the wikipedians. Resistance is futile." ;-)

Austin Hair wrote:

>I heard this guy on the BBCWS, a few weeks back--interesting stuff; he
>goes so far as to suggest that a group will often be smarter than its
>smartest member due to the dynamic created, and given a large enough
>sampling over a long enough period of time will actually outperform the
>best single experts in any given field, or something to that effect.
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


from_name: Kaihsu Tai

body:
And again let me apologize for presuming that you know about
RFC 3066 before adopting the (ISO 639-1/2)-(SIL) scheme
(which I still regard monstrous).

Kaihsu Tai, 2004-07-07 13:50:58+0100:
> Let me preemptively apologize for the tone of this message.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>FYI, this book has been getting attention lately, so you may want to
>take a look:
>
>The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How
>Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
>by James Surowiecki
>
>To Wikipedians, this merely reinforces what we've all know and have
>experienced firsthand.  But it is interesting that the theme of the
>"power of many" is being picked up by the mainstream and it may prove
>a useful reference for folks who just "don't get wiki."  It's a more
>general book than Rheingold's "Smart Mobs," which could be dismissed
>as too technocentric and focusing on mobile devices
>
>Instead, Surowiecki's "Wise crowds" are described as having (1)
>diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another;
>(3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions.
>(four points quoted from Amazon.com's review).
>
>I'm sure Wikipedians will find these concepts quite familiar.
>
>
The last thing I needed was an excuse to buy another book (or two). :-)

It's one of those paradoxical ideas that make experts cringe.  Just as
experts can at times come out with extraordinarily stupid ideas, so too
can the crowd outdo them in that.  These kinds of activities are not
amenable to rigid scientific studies.  Large flocks of birds or schools
of fish change their collective movement without problems.  Marching
groups of soldiers cannot do this without one person giving orders lest
they all run into each other.

Experts have a vested interest in having their views accepted as truth,
and have the backing of scientific rigour to support them.  The last
person they want to hear from is the trickster.

I've long believed that the development of the internet has put us on
the threshhold of a paradigm shift in the way that it has allowed
communication to be initiated and information to be shared between
individuals who previously would never have known of each other's
existence.  This is important in obscure fields where the number of
interested individuals worldwide is very small.  In the old world there
may have been a single recognized expert in the field, and all
communications needed to be through the expert who would avoid sharing
lists of correspondents under the guise of protecting their privacy.
That is no longer the case, and the "expert" is being marginalised.

The recent issue of "Utne" magazine has an article entitled "Global
Village or Virtual Shopping Mall?" in which is discussed the lobbying
efforts being made on behalf of the major telecom companies to maintain
control of broadband access.  The effort is being made to restrict your
choice of ISPs to insure that you obliged to take the whole advertising
package that they offer.  They give a link for further information
www.democraticmedia.org/ddc

The four characteristics describe by amazon are worth noting, but we can
depend on the WP for only the fourth one.

Ec


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Plese minnan WP move to poj.wikipedia.org

references:
<loom.20040706T174455-653@post.gmane.org>	<ccf88d$5pm$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a56ne0100jqgikoetg1jlfgcagekckit7p@4ax.com>

body:
Philip Newton wrote:
> I believe he means something like "There is a Wikipedia in the subdomain
> 'minnan.wikipedia.org'. However, this 'minnan' Wikipedia does not serve
> the complete Southern Min family of languages that is described on
> [[en:min-nan]], but specifically the Taiwanese language Ho-lo-oe."

Thanks for the interpretation.

Along that line then:

I suppose that is true.  Without belaboring the point I wonder how *any*
written, standardized/standardizing language can do justice to
the full spectrum of dialects/languages subsumed under the generic
label.  One could, for example, problematize the claim that the German
at de.wikipedia.org serves all the linguistic varieties subsumed under
that name, say Schweizerdeutsch.  Yet the label is useful.

More importantly most references to Minnan do cite the Taiwanese
variety as a representative of the group.  The Taiwanese variety is as
good as any other, with the added advantage of having a written
tradition in diverse genra and plenty of Internet access for its users
-- features particularly supportive of an online encyclopedia.  I could
go on but the discussion is probably beyond the scope of wikitech-l so
I'll end here.

~~~~


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia:searching

body:
A bit of help, or at least a watcheful eye here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Searching#Google_search

thanks.
I'm using this:

http://www.google.com/custom?sa=Google+Search&domains=en.wikipedia.org&sitesearch=www.wikipedia.org

instead, but everything was so much more convenient in the past...
Sorry my formatting is prob. bad but I havn't gotten the hang of the mailing list yet.

Jack / [[User:Sam Spade]]

_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Searching

body:
A bit of help, or at least a watchful eye here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Searching#Google_search

thanks.
I'm using this:

http://www.google.com/custom?sa=Google+Search&domains=en.wikipedia.org&sitesearch=www.wikipedia.org

instead, but everything was so much more convenient in the past...
Sorry my formatting is prob. bad but I havn't gotten the hang of the mailing list yet.

Jack / [[User:Sam Spade]]

_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Something different - Internet traffic?

body:
Just as a change of topic(s): does anyone have some figure on the growth of
Internet, or WWW, traffic, say from the start of 2004?  I ask this out of
interest in the interpretation of WP's position in ranking (Alexa).  This is
no longer consistently rising; but I notice that many of the comparison
sites are actually in decline, compared with start 2004.

This would make some sense, given  the continuing heavy load on WP's
servers, if WP is attracting some constant proportion of a growing 'cake'
(traffic total); while other sites have constant traffic but therefore a
lower share.  So I would find it of interest if this could be confirmed

Charles


from_name: Ralesk Ne'vennoyx

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
?The trouble with the global village are all the global village idiots.
- Paul Ginsparg.?

(as written on imdb.com, by the way)

Austin Hair wrote:
> I heard this guy on the BBCWS, a few weeks back--interesting stuff; he
> goes so far as to suggest that a group will often be smarter than its
> smartest member due to the dynamic created, and given a large enough
> sampling over a long enough period of time will actually outperform the
> best single experts in any given field, or something to that effect.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] zh-min-nan for Holopedia@Wikipedia, please! [no
	forking]

body:
Kaihsu Tai wrote:
> because I am really quite upset and fed up about the
> ridiculous treatment Holopedia at Wikipedia received -- the
> [...]
> intention was to prevent forking -- we could easily have run
> MediaWiki somewhere else (and indeed we did, as a means of

Your angry tone and constant threats about forking suggests that this
is exactly what you should do.  Go fork.

Suppose people at Wikipedia agreed to your demands today.  Then you
would come with new demands tomorrow, threatening again to fork.
With friends like you, the Wikipedia community needs no enemies.
You are angry now.  Go away and calm down.  In the mean time, take
your idea with you and prove that you can indeed build upon it.
Next year you can merge with Wikipedia again, if you want to.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User:Tim Starling/Password matches

body:
Give it up.

-Snowspinner

On Jul 6, 2004, at 7:24 PM, C A S [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

>
> Not only does this page contain false accusations; not only does it
> represent an abuse of Tim Starling's administrative powers; but, it
> can be used to find out the passwords of various users. It should be
> deleted and Tim Starling and should be demoted.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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from_name: Dan Drake

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: American concepts of justice

body:
On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 18:54:44 UTC, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> My apologies. No admonition was intended, though I can see now where the
> imperative "Just try ..." can be interpreted that way.  I would have
> thought that the smiley would have been a stronger suggestion of
> friendly banter.

Well, this dern nationalism stuff makes people too sensitive even when
they think they're arguning against it, so my apologies also.


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About "the" language

body:
Kaixo!

On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 12:23:34PM +0600, Desmond Tutu wrote:

> name. In "Chadian", the language name is written "??????".

So it should be "Shadian" instead. Or even "Shadien"

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About a new language...

body:
> So not a spoof, but simply a minor conlang with a confusing name, if I
> understand correctly.

Langmaker.org which has info
on hundreds of conlangs doesn't
mention it.

The impact of Esperanto and
Volapuk is considerable since
in Eo's case it is used by
thousands of people around
the world today, Volapuk in
the early 20th Cent. may have
been as popular. It really doesn't
speak well of a conlang  to try
to compare itself with Eo and
Vo. Or with Latin as in the last
post. (Hey, even Toki Pona
probably has more speakers
than this "Chadian" conlang :-)

Better to have these "Chadian"
speakers use MediaWiki to make
their own site and then consider
its progress... I'd suggest the
author registers it with Langmaker.org
and other conlang sites; if there is anyone
interested in helping with the project
that's a likely source of helpers in
making a conlang wiki work out.

Cheers,
Jay B.


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

>Austin Hair wrote:
>> I heard this guy on the BBCWS, a few weeks back--interesting
>> stuff; he goes so far as to suggest that a group will often be
>> smarter than its smartest member due to the dynamic created, and
>> given a large enough sampling over a long enough period of time
>> will actually outperform the best single experts in any given
>> field, or something to that effect.

Funny -- everything I know from studying psychology hints in the other
direction (okay, depending on the task). But especially for cognitive
taks, the performance of the group is (1) mostly worse than that of the
best group member, if they act single, and (2), there is [[Groupthink]]
(or maybe [[Group think]]), the phenomen that group disciplina and
dynamics led to hindrances for new ideas in groups.

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: IP blocked, and e-mail is not being accepted

body:
Perhaps you should stop blocking people then ?

Rick wrote:
> I used to have my email address available, but I got so much abusive
> email I changed my preferences.
>
> RickK
>
> Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     I proposed at
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Email_proposal
>     that all sysops should have a valid email address, though I'm not sure
>     now whether that was a worthwhile proposal.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail
> <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/100/*http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail/static/efficiency.html>
> - 100MB free storage!
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia subscription donation

body:
Yup :-)

Come over to meta, and let's discuss it :-)

drop a word on my talk page please,
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3AAnthere

or send an email to anthere9ATyahoo.com

thanks

ant

Alan Shields wrote:
> I note on http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising that you encourage
> recurring donations. I've searched about but found no mention of where
> to set up a subscription donation, such as through Paypal.
>
> I donate through a Paypal subscription to the FreeNetProject on a
> monthly basis and would like to set up the same for WikiMedia.
>
> I'd post the question to the wiki, but I think this is something that a
> financial admin would have to do, so I'm posting here. Redirect me if
> need be.
>
> Thanks for all your work,
> Alan Shields


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Josh Cogliati

subject: [Wikitech-l] Start of a patch far Article Infopage

body:
Attached is a patch for a feature that creates an info page with
information about a page. Currently, it is the number of people
watching the page, the number of edits, and the number of talk edits,
the number of authors of the article and the number of authors on the
talk page.

It still some further work to:
* Add link to info page from Views
* Make it work with mysql 3
* Change it to a special page?
* Break down the watchers into active and passive watchers (somehow).

--
Josh Cogliati

-------------- next part --------------
Only in mediawiki-1.3.0beta4: LocalSettings.php
diff -ur mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/includes/Article.php mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/includes/Article.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/includes/Article.php	2004-06-26 18:05:26.000000000 -0600
+++ mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/includes/Article.php	2004-07-07 20:47:13.000000000 -0600
@@ -1833,6 +1833,62 @@
 	/* static */ function onArticleEdit($title_obj){
 		LinkCache::linksccClearPage( $title_obj->getArticleID() );
 	}
+
+	# Info about this page
+
+	function info()
+	{
+		global $wgUser, $wgTitle, $wgOut, $wgLang;
+
+		$basenamespace = $wgTitle->getNamespace() & (~1);
+		$fullTitle = $wgTitle->makeName($basenamespace,
+			$wgTitle->getDBKey());
+		$wgOut->setPagetitle(  $fullTitle );
+		$wgOut->setSubtitle( wfMsg( "infosubtitle" ));
+		$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM watchlist WHERE wl_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND wl_namespace = " .
+			$basenamespace;
+		$wgOut->addHTML( wfMsg("numwatchers") . wfSingleQuery( $sql, DB_READ ) . "
" );
+		$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM old WHERE old_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND old_namespace = " .
+			$basenamespace;
+		$old = wfSingleQuery( $sql, DB_READ );
+		$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND cur_namespace = " .
+			$basenamespace;
+		$new = wfSingleQuery( $sql , DB_READ );
+		$wgOut->addHTML( wfMsg("numedits") . ($old + $new) . "
");
+		$sql = "SELECT old_user FROM old WHERE old_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND old_namespace = " .
+			$basenamespace .
+			 " UNION SELECT cur_user FROM cur WHERE cur_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND cur_namespace = " .
+			$basenamespace;
+		$res = wfQuery( $sql,  DB_READ);
+		$authors = wfNumRows( $res );
+		wfFreeResult($res);
+		$wgOut->addHTML( wfMsg("numauthors") . $authors . "
" );
+		$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) from old where old_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND old_namespace = " .
+			($basenamespace+1);
+		$old = wfSingleQuery( $sql , DB_READ);
+		$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) from cur where cur_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND cur_namespace = " .
+			($basenamespace+1);
+		$new = wfSingleQuery( $sql, DB_READ );
+		$wgOut->addHTML( wfMsg("numtalkedits") . ($old + $new) . "
");
+		$sql = "SELECT old_user FROM old WHERE old_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND old_namespace = " .
+			($basenamespace + 1).
+			 " UNION SELECT cur_user FROM cur WHERE cur_title = '" .
+			$wgTitle->getDBkey() . "' AND cur_namespace = " .
+			($basenamespace + 1);
+		$res = wfQuery( $sql ,DB_READ );
+		$authors = wfNumRows( $res );
+		wfFreeResult($res);
+		$wgOut->addHTML( wfMsg("numtalkauthors") . $authors  );
+
+	}
 }

 ?>
diff -ur mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/includes/DatabaseFunctions.php mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/includes/DatabaseFunctions.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/includes/DatabaseFunctions.php	2004-06-26 18:05:26.000000000 -0600
+++ mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/includes/DatabaseFunctions.php	2004-07-07 20:53:44.000000000 -0600
@@ -39,6 +39,15 @@
 	}
 }

+function wfSingleQuery( $sql, $db, $fname = "" )
+{
+	$res = wfQuery($sql, $db, $fname );
+	$row = wfFetchRow( $res );
+	$ret = $row[0];
+	wfFreeResult( $res );
+	return $ret;
+}
+
 function &wfGetDB( $db = DB_LAST )
 {
 	global $wgLoadBalancer;
diff -ur mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/index.php mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/index.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/index.php	2004-06-26 18:05:24.000000000 -0600
+++ mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/index.php	2004-07-07 20:40:48.000000000 -0600
@@ -108,6 +108,7 @@
 		case "rollback":
 		case "protect":
 		case "unprotect":
+		case "info":
 			$wgArticle->$action();
 			break;
 		case "print":
diff -ur mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/languages/Language.php mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/languages/Language.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.0beta4_orig/languages/Language.php	2004-06-26 18:05:28.000000000 -0600
+++ mediawiki-1.3.0beta4/languages/Language.php	2004-07-07 20:54:58.000000000 -0600
@@ -1300,6 +1300,14 @@
 'categoryarticlecount' => "There are $1 articles in this category.",
 'usenewcategorypage' => "1\n\nSet first character to \"0\" to disable the new category page layout.",

+# Info page
+"infosubtitle" => "Information for page",
+"numedits" => "Number of Article Edits: ",
+"numtalkedits" => "Number of Talk Edits: ",
+"numwatchers" => "Number of Watchers: ",
+"numauthors" => "Number of Article Authors: ",
+"numtalkauthors" => "Number of Talk Authors: ",
+
 # Monobook.js: tooltips and access keys for monobook
 'Monobook.js' => '/* tooltips and access keys */
 ta = new Object();


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: zh-min-nan for Holopedia@Wikipedia,
	please! [no forking]

body:
Kaihsu Tai wrote:
> We requested the hostname 'zh-min-nan', per RFC 3066
> "http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-tags/zh-min-nan".  I
> registered the tag, so I should know.  Some silly person did
> not honour our request, but created a syncretic monster
> 'zh-cfr' without consulting the community (to prevent
> forking (and to prevent giving it any authority), I will not
> let you know where the letters CFR came from).  Then, some
> (other) silly person dictated 'minnan'.

Actually that was me both times.

> Then, yet some
> other person suggested the meaningless 'poj'.

We don't pick language codes on the basis of what the community in
question requests. Instead we are attempting to create some kind of
site-wide standard. Wikimedia is not a webhosting company, it does not
assign subdomains to whoever requests them on a first-come first-served
basis.

The reason for choosing zh-cfr can be summarised in one word: Aromanian.
A wiki in the Aromanian dialect was requested, and it was agreed that we
should have one, but there was a problem with choosing the subdomain.
Aromanian does not have a distinct ISO 639 code, however it is listed in
the Ethlnologue under the code RUP. We had used only ISO 639 codes up to
that time.

The solution we came up with was to use the group ISO 639 code followed
by the SIL code. This allows us to specify most languages in the
Ethnologue without conflicting with the ISO standard, since ISO 639
codes do not contain hyphens.

Using the hyphenated language tags assigned by IANA, such as zh-min-nan,
would conflict with this scheme. For example if we used zh-yue, it would
be difficult to know what "yue" refers to. Is it an SIL code or an
assigned code?

We could use the RFC 3066 codes instead. This is still an option.
However it wouldn't give us access to a large number of languages
without resorting to awkward constructions such as x-sil-RUP.

Later I came to doubt the usefulness of language codes which are longer
than the names of the languages themselves. Maybe en.wikipedia.org is a
useful shortcut for english.wikipedia.org, but surely
aromanian.wikipedia.org would be easier to remember than
roa-rup.wikipedia.org.

If I'm wrong about that, feel free to explain it to me.

If I understand correctly, Shizhao's problem is that holopedia.net, and
by extension minnan.wikipedia.org, is written in a script peculiar to
Taiwan. The writing there is thus not representative of min-nan
generally. So wouldn't it be better to use the RFC 3066 code specific to
Taiwanese, namely zh-min-nan-TW? Or indeed, in keeping with my earlier
point about such language codes being cryptic and unnecessarily lengthy,
why not use ho-lo-oe.wikipedia.org?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive email

body:
On Wed, 7 Jul 2004 12:25:51 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards
<marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Not that I approve of it. but I think the amount of
> abusive email one gets can be a useful bellweather of
> the level of approval of actions.
> Mark

Hey, some of that abusive email is fun! Like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vernon_John_De_Duckmanton ...  :)


body:
On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 23:56:47 +0200, Ralesk Ne'vennoyx
<ralesk at livejournal.com> wrote:
> C A S [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> >
> > Not only does this page contain false accusations; not only does it
> WHAT page.

Why, [[User:Tim_Starling/Password_matches]], of course. - ~~~~

- ~~~~? Why isn't this rendering?! ~~~~!!!!!


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> The legal concept of a "public forum" applies specifically to
>> government property. In particular, it covers property like public
>> streets, sidewalks, and parks that have traditionally been used for
>> civic assembly and discussion. Wikipedia as a website is operated by
>> a private nonprofit organization, and Wikipedia as a community is a
>> collection of private individuals. The public can participate, and
>> nearly all activity happens "in public", but none of that makes this
>> a public forum in a legal sense, because it's not owned by the public.
>
> That's an unduly narrow definition of "public forum" and appears
> contrary to the generally held impression of that term.  Your
> particular definition should be backed up with a source.

I used a legal definition of public forum because Chris used the term in
his argument that US constitutional law guarantees a right to freedom of
speech on Wikipedia. That makes the legal definition the appropriate one
to use in considering whether Wikipedia is a public forum. If you would
like some references, I would recommend starting with Hague v. CIO, 307
U.S. 496 (1939), which is the seminal Supreme Court case dealing with
the concept of a public forum. There are also plenty of cases since then
about the extent to which speech in public fora can be restricted or
regulated, and this is the sense in which they generally use the term
"public forum".

> It is more common to think of that expression as a space (including a
> virtual one) where members of the general public can come to express
> their views, and hear the views of others.

I have no problem with saying that Wikipedia is a public forum in the
sense that it is a space that allows public expression. Definitions of
terms often vary with how they are used, and that definition would be
fine for general discourse. But when people use a term in a technical
setting, they have to be prepared to accept the technical definition
when it's a term of art in that particular field.

>> Just a general reminder: editing Wikipedia is a privilege, not a
>> right. The privilege is granted liberally, but it can be restricted
>> or taken away, though that will usually happen only in extreme
>> circumstances.
>
> We have all heard this stale distinction before in many different
> circumstances.  It seldom rises above the status of word play, and
> does not assist us in finding a constructive solution.  There likely
> would be broad general support for banning hate speech, and that's why
> your argument is useless.  The problem is in defining what we mean.

I'm not sure what argument you think I was making. I was responding to
an argument that freedom of speech on Wikipedia is a legally protected
right. Hence much of my discussion focused on "rights" in the legal
sense. Just because I rejected this argument, it does not follow that I
am advocating any particular policy with respect to speech, or
hate-speech in particular. I don't doubt you've heard the clich? many
times, but not everyone has, and it bears repeating when people make
claims that they have a "legal right" to do anything here.

As for finding a constructive solution to the problem of hate-speech, I
think it *is* helpful to rebut erroneous arguments that such speech is
legally protected. I agree with you that we also need an adequate
definition in order to have any kind of workable policy.

--Michael Snow


body:
C A S [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>
> Not only does this page contain false accusations; not only does it
> represent an abuse of Tim Starling's administrative powers; but, it can
> be used to find out the passwords of various users. It should be deleted
> and Tim Starling and should be demoted.
>
WHAT page.

And stop behaving like our ?beloved? politician Torgy?n.  (Hungarian
readers will know what I mean.)

Also stop trolling.

kthxbyegtfaway


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia:Searching

body:
Jack Lynch wrote:

> A bit of help, or at least a watchful eye here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Searching#Google_search

*sigh* If only the people who write these things were to consider the
circumstances first. Do any of you guys realise how long the developers
have been working hard to bring back the search thingie, and do you
remember how much pressure the community has put on them for it? Now
they've finally done it, people bash on it again. It's ridiculous.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: 'zh-min-nan' or 'cfr' for Holopedia at Wikipedia,
 please! [no forking]

body:
Kaihsu Tai wrote in part:
>>Using the hyphenated language tags assigned by IANA, such as zh-min-nan,
>>would conflict with this scheme. For example if we used zh-yue, it would
>>be difficult to know what "yue" refers to. Is it an SIL code or an
>>assigned code?
>
>
> (option c)
> No, it would not.  RFC 3066 adopts all ISO 639-1 language
> codes.  Just look up in RFC 3066 (and transitively ISO
> 639-1).

I mean it's ambiguous if you use both the ISO-SIL hybrid and RFC 3066 on
the same site. I'm quite aware of the fact that RFC 3066 adopts all ISO
639-1 codes.

>>We could use the RFC 3066 codes instead. This is still an option.
>>However it wouldn't give us access to a large number of languages
>>without resorting to awkward constructions such as x-sil-RUP.
>
>
> (option c, corollary)
> And that is the thing one should do: using constructions
> such as x-sil-RUP when nothing more appropriate comes up
> elsewhere in RFC 3066.  That is why such standards are
> useful -- they are usually very precise and expressive,
> however awkward one may consider.
>
>
>>If I'm wrong about that, feel free to explain it to me.
>
>
> I have been arguing for the hardcore option (c), but I
> think a compromise is to consider option (a), which will
> involve
> (option a, implementation)
>  1) changing 'minnan' and 'zh-cfr' to simply 'cfr'
>  2) changing 'roa-rup' to 'rup'
> [3) any other adjustments]

I suggested a few similar schemes to Brion, and he turned them down on
the basis of lack of standards compliance. SIL codes may conflict with
future ISO 639 assignments.

> [By the way, much of the SIL-inclusion problems have been
> argued about when RFC 3066 was being drafted ... and the
> result was x-SIL-RUP etc.  Sorry to be speaking a bit ex
> cathedra, but I resent fighting battles already-won....]

This is a different battle, we have different needs. I'm disappointed
you haven't commented on my idea of using descriptive names rather than
codes. Cryptic hyphenated codes may be useful for information
interchange between computers, but humans often find them hard to
remember. We can always include the ISO 3066 code in the document
headers, and we can always set up redirects from various language
identifiers to the primary subdomain.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About "the" language

body:
Pablo Saratxaga wrote:

>>name. In "Chadian", the language name is written "??????".
>
> So it should be "Shadian" instead. Or even "Shadien"

Why "should" it?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About "the" language

body:
Desmond Tutu wrote:

> There's a translation in
> Latin but nobody has Latin for mother tongue :)

Oh really? Do you have any references for this claim?


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia subscription donation

body:
--- Alan Shields <wikimediafoundation at alan.shields.name> wrote:
> I note on http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising that you encourage
> recurring donations. I've searched about but found no mention of where
> to set up a subscription donation, such as through Paypal.
>
> I donate through a Paypal subscription to the FreeNetProject on a
> monthly basis and would like to set up the same for WikiMedia.
>
> I'd post the question to the wiki, but I think this is something that a
> financial admin would have to do, so I'm posting here. Redirect me if
> need be.

Hello Alan -

I've been thinking about doing something like that for some time, but I've held
off so far since I think that we first need to develop a fee structure and
associate that with Wikimedia membership.

In the meantime I will figure out how to do this so that we can implement it as
soon as we figure out how to proceed.

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: About "the" language

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
>
>>> name. In "Chadian", the language name is written "??????".
>>
>>
>> So it should be "Shadian" instead. Or even "Shadien"
>
>
> Why "should" it?
>
seing how it?s ?????? and not ??????, and chadien and not tchadien, it
would be logical at least.


body:
Fennec Foxen wrote:

> Why, [[User:Tim_Starling/Password_matches]], of course. - ~~~~
>
Ah, starting the real content in the Subject, how fabulous :)

> - ~~~~? Why isn't this rendering?! ~~~~!!!!!

You addict, you ;)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Start of a patch far Article Infopage

body:
Timwi, Thanks for the version of the patch.  I have some questions though.
On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 12:07:08PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> >* Change it to a special page?
>
> No, please not!... I don't like special pages because they make the tabs
> disappear. :) I'd really rather prefer if Special:Movepage were
> converted to a simple &action=move thingie.
Tim Starling made the argument that
special pages were easier to link to and did not involve adding more
UI stuff to Article.php.

> >* Break down the watchers into active and passive watchers (somehow).
>
> How do you define this distinction?
I am still thinking about this.  Probably active watchers have looked at
their watchlist in the past week.  Doing this efficiently is the problem.

+
+                       # to find number of distinct authors, we need to do some
+                       # funny stuff because of the cur/old table split:
+                       # - first, find the name of the 'cur' author
+                       # - then, find the number of authors in 'old'
+                       # - then, find out if the 'cur' author is anywhere in 'old'; if not, add 1
+
+                       # find 'cur' author
+                       $sql = "SELECT cur_user_text FROM cur WHERE ".$cur_clause;
+                       $cur_author = wfSingleQuery( $sql, DB_READ );
+
+                       # find number of 'old' authors
+                       $sql = "SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT old_user_text) FROM old WHERE ".$old_clause;
+                       $authors = wfSingleQuery( $sql, DB_READ );
+
+                       # find out if 'cur' author occurs in 'old'
+                       $sql = "SELECT old_user_text FROM old WHERE ".$old_clause
+                                       ." AND old_user_text='".$cur_author."' LIMIT 1";
+                       $res = wfQuery( $sql, DB_READ);
+                       $has_cur_user = wfNumRows( $res );
+                       wfFreeResult($res);
+                       if ($has_cur_user < 1) { $authors++; }

Would it be quicker to turn this into two query? Where the second query is
something like:
+                       $sql = "SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT old_user_text) FROM old WH
ERE ".$old_clause . " AND old_user_text != " . $cur_author;
Then you can always $authors++ since the current author will not appear in
the second query.  So the second query is becomes more complicated, but
the third query is unneeded.

--
Josh Cogliati


from_name: Joel Konkle-Parker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia Capabilities

body:
I'm interested in starting a Wiki-based project, and I'm wondering if Wikimedia
has the capabilities I'm looking for (or if it can be made to). Like most
people, I discovered Wikimedia through Wikipedia, and I enjoyed using it enough
to consider it for my own project.

My project will consist of one or more data sets, each split into pages (like
Wikipedia). There will also be a set of "overlays" or "diffs" that provide
alternate views of one or more pages within a data set. Each diff should be
editable like an ordinary Wiki page, including having its own diffs and
changelogs.

When I get done, a user should be able to view Page, be able to view Overlay 1
(which modifies Page 1 and Page 2, for example), be able to edit Page and
Overlay 1, and be able to track the changes to both Page and Overlay 1.

>From my experiences with Wikipedia, it appears to me that Wikimedia would do
well with a Page and a Changelog, or a Page and an Overlay (which would be a
changelog), but not with all three of those types.

Any thoughts?

--
Joel Konkle-Parker
Webmaster  [Ballsome.com]

E-mail     [jjk3 at msstate.edu]
Phone      [662-518-1636]


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>The law in some states, notably California, protects a certain amount of
>free speech on some private property, specifically the ability to
>petition or solicit individuals in shopping centers that are open to the
>general public. Maybe this is what gave Chris the idea that Wikipedia is
>a public forum. But even if this principle applied to speech on
>Wikipedia, I highly doubt it would cover anything resembling hate-speech.

This brings up a question that I'd like answered: Given that
Wikipedia is *not* a public forum, can it or its owner be sued for
libel?

What happens, for example, if an anonymous user with a determined
attitude insists on posting something claiming that Michael Moore is
a pedophile? Since the anonymous user's identity can't be traced,
Moore's only recourse would be to sue the MediaWiki foundation. And
even if the user is banned, he could come back forever and keep
posting the claim on different articles under different sock-puppet
IDs.

Doesn't this put Wikipedia in the difficult position of being legally
responsible for behavior that it doesn't have the power to control?
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
--------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding features to Mediawiki

body:
Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some
irritating and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided
that we want to be able to require contributors to register and to
provide a confirmed email address when they do so. I realize that
this is a more restrictive policy than the Wikipedia has been
following, but I think the additional inconvenience to users will be
offset by the reduced troll-aggravation. I'd like to know how we can
get this capability added to the software. The organization for which
I work, the Center for Media and Democracy, has some funding
available with which we would be able to pay a programmer for the
necessary work (provided the cost is within reason), and of course we
would be happy to have the resulting code included in the standard
open source distribution so that other MediaWiki sites can use it
also if they so choose.

Currently the capacity we want is not built into the MediaWiki
software. Although it is possible to flip a switch that makes
preregistration necessary before posting, there's no way to require
users to supply a verified email address as a condition of
registration.

We'd like to be able to use a registration system like the one that
comes with vBulletin:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/register.php

After a new user submits their email address, vBulletin displays a
message that says something such as:

>Thank you for registering, Sheldon Rampton. An email has been
>dispatched to sheldon.rampton at verizon.net with details on how to
>activate your account. Click here to return to where you were
>previously. You will receive an email in your inbox. You MUST follow
>the link in that email before you can post on these forums. Until
>you do that, you will be told that you do not have permission to
>post.

In addition, we would like to be able if necessary to turn on a
higher level of security that says,

>All membership requests must be approved by the moderator. You will
>receive a confirmation email when your membership has been approved.

If someone here is willing to work with on this, please get in touch
with me at <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> or <sheldon at prwatch.org>.


from_name: Slow Poke

references:
<20040708034002.GA30078@toad.honors.montana.edu>	<ccj9th$4vr$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<20040708133749.GA3528@toad.honors.montana.edu>
	<ccjm3n$95s$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 15:35:15 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
snip
> In my mind, it makes sense to be able to link to pages that pertain to
> the wiki as a whole (e.g. Special:Recentchanges) or to a user (e.g.
> Special:Contributions), but I don't see the benefit in being able to
> link to Special:Movepage. (Admittedly, there is an obvious benefit in
> being able to link to the info page for an article... but quite frankly,
> I think if we really need that so badly, we should come up with a new
> syntax for it so that we can also link to edit, history, etc.
>
> Suggestion: [[::history:Article title]]

We can already link to edit and history, see for example:
[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Main Page|action=edit}}]
[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Main Page|action=history}}]

It's ugly, but that's cause it's generic (and it works)
--
[[en:User:Dori]]


from_name: Stormie

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia:Searching

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Jack Lynch wrote:
>> A bit of help, or at least a watchful eye here:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Searching#Google_search
>
> *sigh* If only the people who write these things were to consider the
> circumstances first. Do any of you guys realise how long the developers
> have been working hard to bring back the search thingie, and do you
> remember how much pressure the community has put on them for it? Now
> they've finally done it, people bash on it again. It's ridiculous.

It's great to have it back, for "up to the minute" searching. But the
Google search has its uses too. If the old Google search link was added
to the bottom of the Wiki search page, I suspect everybody would be happy.

I know that I would use both, for different types of searches.

Cheers!
David...


from_name: Rick

body:
Perhaps you should take a course in Wiki etiquette.  Congratulations.  You just made my list of people whose emails are blocked due to obnoxiousness.

RickK

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Perhaps you should stop blocking people then ?

Rick wrote:
> I used to have my email address available, but I got so much abusive
> email I changed my preferences.
>
> RickK
>
> Angela wrote:
>
> I proposed at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Email_proposal
> that all sysops should have a valid email address, though I'm not sure
> now whether that was a worthwhile proposal.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail
>
> - 100MB free storage!
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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body:
Perhaps you should take a course in Wiki etiquette.  Congratulations.  You just made my list of people whose emails are blocked due to obnoxiousness.

RickK

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Perhaps you should stop blocking people then ?

Rick wrote:
> I used to have my email address available, but I got so much abusive
> email I changed my preferences.
>
> RickK
>
> Angela wrote:
>
> I proposed at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Email_proposal
> that all sysops should have a valid email address, though I'm not sure
> now whether that was a worthwhile proposal.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail
>
> - 100MB free storage!
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive email

body:
This from Mister "I love trolls."

RickK

Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Not that I approve of it. but I think the amount of
abusive email one gets can be a useful bellweather of
the level of approval of actions.
Mark

--- Rick wrote:
> I used to have my email address available, but I got
> so much abusive email I changed my preferences.
>
> RickK
>
> Angela wrote:
> I proposed at
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Email_proposal
> that all sysops should have a valid email address,
> though I'm not sure
> now whether that was a worthwhile proposal.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!>
_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
_______________________________________________
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WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forum vs. project

body:
Wikipedia is not a public forum. It's not a place for people to come and
exchange views. The Internet already has such a place: it's called
Usenet, or "newsgroups".

Wikipedia is a project to create freely editable encyclopedia articles.

Unlike a forum, Wikipedia has strict rules of etiquette. Whereas it's
perfectly acceptable in forums to impugn the character of other
participants, Wikipedia has a "no personal attacks" policy.

Unlike a forum, Wikipedia has no interest in determining the "winner" of
a debate. So it doesn't matter who's cleverest, loudest, or keeps at it
the longest. What goes and what stays is determined only by (a) accuracy
and (b) NPOV.

Unlike a forum, Wikipedia produces an ever-increasing body of work,
which is organized for the benefit of the public.

I could go on, but I hope you get the point.

Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is currently unusable

body:
I WAS getting nothing but blank screens when I tried to access Wikipedia.  The attempt to access the page would end and there would be no error messages or any indications that there was anything wrong, just a blank screen.  I kept Refreshing until that finally stopped, and now I'm getting nothing but an attempt to access the page for minutes and minutes.  I've now been almost ten minutes trying to get to a page with no success, no error message, nothing.

RickK

---------------------------------
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from_name: Jim Cecropia

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Improvement of a patch for article info page

body:
Josh Cogliati wrote:

> Attached is a patch for a feature that creates an info page with
> information about a page. Currently, it is the number of people
> watching the page, the number of edits, and the number of talk edits,
> the number of authors of the article and the number of authors on the
> talk page.

Thanks for your work! However, I have a few comments about it :)

- Your feature displays bogus information when the page and/or its talk
   page don't exist.
- You forgot to display the total number of edits of the talk page, even
   though you added a string for it in Language.php. :)
- Some of your queries were pretty inefficient: At one point, you
   retrieved a potentially large number of rows, just to count them.
- Your patch uses "UNION". MySQL 3 doesn't support that.
- The text you added to Language.php was a bit weird (why did you
   capitalise everything?).

I fixed all of this in one fell swoop, see attachment :)

Sorry about the whitespace changes in my patch, but there aren't many,
they don't make the patch unreadable, and committing them once will make
them never occur again :)

Timwi
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body:
Oh, I forgot to mention:

> * Add link to info page from Views

Yes, someone with knowledge of the skin system should do this :)

> * Make it work with mysql 3

My patch already does this

> * Change it to a special page?

No, please not!... I don't like special pages because they make the tabs
disappear. :) I'd really rather prefer if Special:Movepage were
converted to a simple &action=move thingie.

> * Break down the watchers into active and passive watchers (somehow).

How do you define this distinction?

Timwi


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Audio file from the Paris press conference

body:
Hi all,

The audio file from the press conference in Paris on July 4th is available at
http://wikimedia.org/media/paris_meeting_2004.ogg

It lasts 70 minutes and it makes about 47 MB.
Most of it is in English and translated in French.

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
Sj wrote:

>The recent interest in grants is super!, as is the enthusiasm to apply
>for our first grant as soon as possible. Moreover, the requirements for serious
>grants tend to be good metrics for the successful and organized completion of
>subprojects, so the effort required to fill out these applications is
>not wasted.
>I am excited for the near future.
>
>That said, please let us not use this particular grant to get our feet
>wet.  It would
>require multiple heroic efforts to submit an application in time, and
>this grant isn't
>designed for projects at our stage of development.  We need to pace
>ourselves for
>the long haul, not burn out our grant enthusiasts in the first sprint.
>
I hesitated to comment when I first read of this proposal.  A number of
the strong supporters of this are also among the Wikimedians that I most
respect, so I was not about to dump ice-water on their vision.  Sj is
right in his criticism, and for the best of reasons.

I fear that this quest for $500,000 is based more on wishful imaginings
than on any kind of coherent plan.  I don't think that it is very
productive when an organisation begins to adapt its approaches simply
for the sake of obtaining a grant.  The idea should come first;
afterwards we can ask for grants that further those ideas.  We've only
begun to think of topics like budgets and financial management.  Mav's
proposal that we follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
is a perfectly sound one, but I don't know how many of us are that
familiar with even the most rudimentary accounting principles.  What
internal audit procedures do we have in place?

The application asks about resum?s and expertise and credentials, etc.
Some of us may have very fine resum?s, but that's not what the wiki is
about.  The lack of credentials is not an impediment to editing; we have
had excellent efforts from 12-year-olds who deserve the same respect as
PhD's. That point needs to be sold to grant reviewers who have gotten to
where they are through traditional hierarchical means.  The idea of an
encyclopedia that anybody can edit at any time is completely
counterintuitive to a system of thinking that has been developing since
the time of Aristotle.  It also butts heads with prevailing ideas of
intellectual property, and other proprietary interests in the
development of electronic media.  Who among us has given throrough
thought to this?

The 1.0 project is a more achievable venture at this stage, but after a
flurry of discussion a few months ago it ended up on the back burner.
The conversation at the time lapsed into a lot of unproductive fears
over what should or should not be included.  It certainly failed to
consider that a faulty 1.0 would preferably be followed by an improved
2.0.  A coherent plan to deal with this could lead to funding
opportunities.  The sales that such a project might generate could also
become the basis for dependable funding of routine administration.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive email

body:
Well, I didn't appreciate your trolling on my talk
page, if that's what you are refering to, in general
though, I do love the ability of talk and user pages
to represent a diverse range of views. If you want to
call that trolling, then fine, but it's not a very
useful definition.
Mark

--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This from Mister "I love trolls."
>
> RickK
>
> Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Not that I approve of it. but I think the amount of
> abusive email one gets can be a useful bellweather
> of
> the level of approval of actions.
> Mark
>
> --- Rick wrote:
> > I used to have my email address available, but I
> got
> > so much abusive email I changed my preferences.
> >
> > RickK
> >
> > Angela wrote:
> > I proposed at
> >
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Email_proposal
> > that all sysops should have a valid email address,
> > though I'm not sure
> > now whether that was a worthwhile proposal.
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free
> storage!>
> _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other
providers!>
_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some irritating
> and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided that we want
> to be able to require contributors to register and to provide a
> confirmed email address when they do so.

It would separately be nice to require that an e-mail address _if given_
be confirmed, even where having an address is not itself required. (The
main concern here being the possibility of using wiki accounts to send
interuser e-mail with false return addresses.)

Reconfirmation would need to be required when the user changes the
address stored in their preferences; this leads to the possibility of
storing 'confirmed' and 'new' e-mail addresses to tide over the time
between changing and confirming.

(It *is* necessary to allow people to change their addresses. In the
real world, people gain and lose e-mail access at various institutions
over the course of their online lives.)

The address-required mode that Sheldon would like could then basically
require that the confirmed address be set in order to allow login.

For upwards compatibility on upgrading existing wikis, I'd recommend
using user_email for the 'unconfirmed' address and adding something like
'user_confirmed_email' for the confirmed one; thus users would be given
the opportunity to confirm their e-mail address when they next visit.
(But not doing so would not disable their accounts. Might show a message
up top akin to the 'new messages' notification.)

I'm not going to get to this anytime soon, so volunteers please go for it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Daniel-
> In the meantime I will figure out how to do this so that we can implement it
> as soon as we figure out how to proceed.

It's very simple to do, I've done it for a customer of mine. See
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/subscr-intro-outside

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
I am 100% fully back at work.  I stand ready to do whatever I need to
do to assist with this.

--Jimbo

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> As you may know, a number of us are trying to get  a two-year NEH grant for
> the Wikimedia Foundation. This is a grant for anything from $80-700,000 for the
> development of resource materials. Gentgeen has spoken with them, they are
> familiar with Wikipedia, and they encouraged us to apply for the grant.
>
> We are asking for $500,000. This is a lot of money, but we believe that it
> will cover our operating costs for 2 years, including the purchase of new
> servers, etc. We can do some amazing things with half a million dollars, and really
> help Wikipedia and the other projects to soar.
>
> To do this, however, requires a lot of help. The grant deadline is July 15,
> and it is already July 3. It must be in their office by then, so that means it
> will have to go out by Fedex from somewhere by July 13 at the latest. The
> proposal is complicated, and requires all sorts of documentation. No one will just
> give us money for the asking, and the complete proposal has to be written and
> approved by the community.
>
> That said, I appeal to everyone to give us a hand with this. Pick a section
> you want to write or edit, submit ideas, help Mav with the budget, argue about
> it, discuss it. This is a chance to take Wikipedia to an exciting new stage,
> and it is one that we should not miss.
>
> For more information, a good place to start is:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEH_Reference_materials_grant_application
>
> Looking forward to your insights and contributions to this effort,
>
> Danny

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


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
I too wish to express my misgivings at getting the grant. There's
always strings attached, and targets have to be met, and so on. Who's
gonna run it? Who's gonna keep track of the money, the milestones,
etc...

I would rather mav publish a monthly budget and post that to the
front page, like this:

This month, we need $4000 to meet expenses. So far, users have
contributed $2800. Thank you!

If budget is met, then you write:

This month's budget has been met. Thank you!

It needs to be updated daily.

I think we can raise more money that way than through grants

Furtehrmore, once grant moeny starts rolling in, users will be able
to say: they're funded by grant money, so I'll not contribute.

I say: we all swim, or we all sink.

Once we start taking outside money, I guarantee there will be some
corruption of the wiki process, at least because the board will want
to cater to its donors, at least subconsciously. I'd rahter they
catered to the wikipedians than some once-a-year grant organization.

To those who say that the US government would not care to get
involved in the day-to-day, I reply that it would damange the
reputation of the W for foreigners.

For example, voice of america does fine programming, yet is seen as a
means for western propaganda in foreign countries because it is
funded by the US gov.

Just some ramblings.

Again, we need complete transparency of the books.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
I am just now getting back into the swing of things.  Are there
people who may agree or disagree with SJ's opinions here.

Keep in mind that I have not yet reviewed the proposed grant
application, nor the requirements of the grant, etc.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forum vs. project

body:
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Category:Stub

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Did anyone look at [[Category:Stub]] lately? Well, "There are 10483
> articles in this category." And they are all on one page.
>
> Seems we need to break down large categories into several pages after
> all. What would be a good number of article links per page? 500? That
> would make 21 pages and counting, for this special case.

A better solution might be to use this as an opportunity to look at
these articles to see if they really are stubs.  If not the stub message
could be deleted.  In the others there is no shortage of work to be
done. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Adding features to Mediawiki

body:
Timwi wrote:
> I'm not sure why you want two different e-mail fields? Why not just have
> a boolean "address confirmed yes/no" field?

I wrote:
> Reconfirmation would need to be required when the user changes the
> address stored in their preferences; this leads to the possibility of
> storing 'confirmed' and 'new' e-mail addresses to tide over the time
> between changing and confirming.

Not doing so means locking out the account between change and
confirmation, which would be rather a trouble given a typo in the address.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forum vs. project

body:
You mean the Wikimedia foundation, no?

----- Original Message -----
Ed, I said "for speech purposes," as in "suing." People may abuse its
stated purpose, but it is rather in the nature of a "common carrier,"
open to all. If we insist that it is NOT a public forum, but rather a
managed proprietary site, Mediawiki might well get sued.


from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
The recent interest in grants is super!, as is the enthusiasm to apply
for our first grant as soon as possible. Moreover, the requirements for serious
grants tend to be good metrics for the successful and organized completion of
subprojects, so the effort required to fill out these applications is
not wasted.
I am excited for the near future.

That said, please let us not use this particular grant to get our feet
wet.  It would
require multiple heroic efforts to submit an application in time, and
this grant isn't
designed for projects at our stage of development.  We need to pace
ourselves for
the long haul, not burn out our grant enthusiasts in the first sprint.
 (perhaps others
agree, which is why this thread died?)

Remember also that these organizations have personality and
memory (despite their assurances that if you apply for two different grants,
you must resubmit all materials the second time) -- submitting an inappropriate
or hasty application to an organization is not only embarrassing; it can damage
our chances of persuading them of our seriousness in the future, when a grant
suits us perfectly.  The NEH is large and generous; that would be a shame.

Our ideal first grant application would be
 + a simple descriptive application,
 + for a small and specific grant,
 + after consultation with the granting institution or with expert
advisors, and
 + for a project which is *already* being coordinated by a few wikimedians,
 + who know how they aim to accomplish it.

The NEH /reference materials/ grant is none of these things.

 - It requires a complex, persuasive application - fifty pages long,
with background,
general budgeting, and personnel information, none of which have ever
been drafted
for Wikimedia before.
 - It is for a large and general grant, not specific to any of our
previously-discussed subprojects [say, wikifamily or slotipedia or WP 1.0]; we
came up with a new and vague project on the fly -- 'develop ten
Humanities & Arts
Wikireaders, in subjects with good WP coverage' -- to complete the application.
 - Wikimedia has no consultants or relevant advisors yet, and is two
weeks too late
to have the recommended draft-review by an NEH officer.
 - As we had no project in motion which meets their grant requirements, we
have no obvious choices for key qualified project staff -- in this case, subject
experts, print professionals and executive editors -- with resumes on file and
time to devote in earnest to such a two-year effort.
 - Moreover, we have no draft
timeline, implementation plan, or comparative analysis of the benefits of our
proposed project over existing alternatives.

Finally, as Wikimedia grant-writing is still in its infancy, there is
no accepted
rhythm to the collaboration on grant writing -- on- and off-wiki, and over this
mailing list; with the board and community for content approval; or
with prufers
and copyeditors (for wiki drafts, layout drafts, and print proofs) for
quality control.
For a 50-page application, each of these steps is a significant effort.

A few specific comments:

On Sat, 3 Jul 2004 11:47:42 EDT, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Gentgeen has spoken with them, they are familiar with Wikipedia,
> and they encouraged us to apply for the grant.

My impression was that they knew WP well enough to know we were an
encyclopedia,
and respond with appropriate materials, not that they had any idea for
what project
we would be applying, nor that they particularly encouraged us to apply.

> We are asking for $500,000. This is a lot of money, but we believe that it will cover

This is a huge sum, as much as I estimated a few months back for printing *and
distributing* 100,000  copies of Wikipedia 1.0.  Why so much? What kind of
distribution are you envisioning?  Note that the grant requires that
we share at
least 33% of projected costs.

> We can do some amazing things with half a million dollars...

In particular, we can get completely wrapped up in one subproject for
the next two
years. If we budget for $500k, they will give us at most $340k and expect us to
raise (and spend on this project) the rest.  Is developing ten
humanities-related
WP-subsets how we want to spend our time and effort and other fundraising over
the coming months?

Perhaps we can apply for probe grants to help us gather usage
statistics and publish
wikimedia collateral, acquire advisors, and investigate new project
options, before
deciding to invest in a specific project*.

hoping we move patiently from strength to strength, without overextending or
overselling ourselves,
  +sj+

 * A suitable 5-10 page, $5-$10k NEH grant, due at the start of September,
requires we be an official 501(c)3.  Are we in the middle of our
waiting period for
approval, or still processing paperwork?  I know that can take a year
or more; how
far along are we?  This smaller grant may be flexible on the matter; we should
inquire and explain our circumstances.


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


from_name: Timwi

body:
Josh Cogliati wrote:

> Timwi, Thanks for the version of the patch.  I have some questions though.
> On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 12:07:08PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
>>>* Change it to a special page?
>>
>>No, please not!... I don't like special pages because they make the tabs
>>disappear. :) I'd really rather prefer if Special:Movepage were
>>converted to a simple &action=move thingie.
>
> Tim Starling made the argument that
> special pages were easier to link to and did not involve adding more
> UI stuff to Article.php.

In my mind, it makes sense to be able to link to pages that pertain to
the wiki as a whole (e.g. Special:Recentchanges) or to a user (e.g.
Special:Contributions), but I don't see the benefit in being able to
link to Special:Movepage. (Admittedly, there is an obvious benefit in
being able to link to the info page for an article... but quite frankly,
I think if we really need that so badly, we should come up with a new
syntax for it so that we can also link to edit, history, etc.

Suggestion: [[::history:Article title]]

> Would it be quicker to turn this into two query? Where the second query is
> something like:
> +                       $sql = "SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT old_user_text) FROM old WH
> ERE ".$old_clause . " AND old_user_text != " . $cur_author;

Ingenious! Brilliant! Thanks!

I've also made it so that the <title> now shows "Article title -
Information - Site name" as opposed to just "Article title - Site name",
so it is consistent with History.

While I was at it, I noticed missing or wrong <title>s when protect or
unprotect a page. I've fixed those too.

I'm attaching the entire patch again. I think it's committable like
this, although someone should still add an "info" tab to the skin or
else the info page is unreachable except by manually fiddling with the URL.

Timwi
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references:
<20040708034002.GA30078@toad.honors.montana.edu>	<ccj9th$4vr$2@sea.gmane.org>	<20040708133749.GA3528@toad.honors.montana.edu>
	<ccjm3n$95s$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Oops. I'm sorry about this huge patch that is mostly whitespace changes.
Here is the patch with whitespace changes ignored.
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body:
A neat request.  I have been using directory-level password-protection
to obtain similar restrictions, but would much prefer a system like this which
is built into the wiki software... and I imagine the offer to fund
this work will be
much appreciated.   Perhaps the bounty distribution system will get a
workout before any WM funds have been allocated to it !

+sj+

ps - I just saw somewhere on meta that you were the one to suggest the name
'wikiMedia' for an umbrella organization.  thank you for that.  ^ ^

On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 10:09:45 -0500, Sheldon Rampton
<sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:
> Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some
> irritating and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided
> that we want to be able to require contributors to register and to
> provide a confirmed email address when they do so.
< ...
> In addition, we would like to be able if necessary to turn on ...
>
> >All membership requests must be approved by the moderator. You will
> >receive a confirmation email when your membership has been approved.


body:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:52:11 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Low threshold indeed...
> Rick wrote:
> > Perhaps you should take a course in Wiki etiquette.  Congratulations.
> > You just made my list of people whose emails are blocked due to
> > obnoxiousness.

Perhaps you shall next block Jimbo's emails as well?

For efficiency, I would reccomend that you simply unsubscribe from the
mailing list, and send mail to a dummy address. It will be more
effective in the long run.


subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS as Newsgroup?

body:
Does mediawiki-cvs at wikimedia.org have a corresponding gmane newsgroup? I
couldn't find one.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WHEELER's anti-Semitism

body:
Jim Cecropia wrote

>Why is it (for speech reasons) NOT a public forum? It is not a membership
club, per se, anyone can post on it, and anyone can read it.

That just says it's effectively public.  It's not intended as a forum; we
all know what it is intended for, and 'WP is not a soapbox' says that is
_not_ as a forum.  If something is set up online for purpose A, and has a
policy saying that purpose B is not what it's for, it is quite reasonable to
enforce the non-use for purpose B where that conflicts with purpose A.
Purpose B could be advertising, self-promotion, or political ranting.

Charles


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH grant

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > I too wish to express my misgivings at getting the grant. There's
> > always strings attached, and targets have to be met, and so on.
> Who's
> > gonna run it? Who's gonna keep track of the money, the
> milestones,
> > etc...
> >
> > I would rather mav publish a monthly budget and post that to the
> > front page, like this:
> >
> > This month, we need $4000 to meet expenses. So far, users have
> > contributed $2800. Thank you!
> >
> > If budget is met, then you write:
> >
> > This month's budget has been met. Thank you!
> >
> >
> > It needs to be updated daily.
>
>
>
> I strongly disagree with this.
> A budget is not something you balance week per week or even month
> per
> month. We must plan it. In advance.

That's why you make a budget. You forecast your expenses into the
future, then figure out how much to bring in on a monthly basis not
to get int the red on any single month :)

> A budget is something you have
> to
> organise, to take into account structural needs, contingencies, and
> see
> how to best use the remaining.

Absolutely. It's called a reserve (for emergency) and for known
future capital expenses you plan accordingly (need to spend $10K in 5
months? collect $2K/month for 5 months)

> This month, we will spent about 12000 dollars in hardware. I think
> the
> best way is to have this money available in advance, and plan
> spending
> it on time. Not to call for donations during two weeks, then wait 2
>
> weekds for shipping.

Absolutely.

> I also am not very motivated by the idea of asking money all the
> time.
> That is just showing we do not manage well our funds.

If it's budgeted, then it won't look that way. You're right, if it's
always an emergency, then it looks bad.

> I think it much more positive that we make a call for donation just
> a
> couple of time a year, that donations are set in such a way that
> they
> can be monthly donation, and that the call for donation is made in
> parallele to a nice press release.

We are not national public radio.
I think that people are less likely to respond when you say: We need
a million dollars this week! instead of "this month, 5 thousands. and
next month, 5 thousands.  It seems much more manageable, plus you
feel your $50 is more appreciated.

>
>
> > I think we can raise more money that way than through grants

Ok, you may be right. But if there's more burden because of it, then
I don't know if it's that good.

> > Furtehrmore, once grant moeny starts rolling in, users will be
> able
> > to say: they're funded by grant money, so I'll not contribute.
>
> But asking money all the time will make them think we are heavy,
> and do
> not know how to manage money.

Well, asking for money after we get the grant, people will ask: What
the hell happened to the grant money?

>
> ------
>
> Okay, donations is one way to raise money, and we should use it.
> It is best that donations calls are made during a special event,
> when we
> can see we are just great.
>
> In about 2 to 3 months, Wikipedia will be 1 000 000 articles.
> This is a very serious milestone.
> We should at this occasion make a third global press release (this
> is a
> global milestone).

I wish we would stop making a big deal out of milestones. People
don't care that google indexed 5 billion pages. All they care about
is that they find what they need in the top 10.
Likewise, we should emphasize quality and completeness rather than
quantity, with user-friendlyness thrown in. Ever tried doing a
keyword search in a paper encyclopedia?

By the way, what are you still doing up? heh :)

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH grant


body:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 13:29:24 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> For upwards compatibility on upgrading existing wikis, I'd recommend
> using user_email for the 'unconfirmed' address and adding something like
> 'user_confirmed_email' for the confirmed one; thus users would be given
> the opportunity to confirm their e-mail address when they next visit.
> (But not doing so would not disable their accounts. Might show a message
> up top akin to the 'new messages' notification.)

While on the subject, it would be nice to allow users to list a secondary email
address, in case the first one dies, for password revivification &c -- that way
even if you want to use a semi-temporary address for communication with other
wiki users (and not a permanent address) you can have a private permanent
address on file in case you go offline on a 6 month safari and return
to find your
100MB of Yahoo! mail deleted and your account expunged... and then
realize you've
forgotten your Wikipedia password.

+sj+, feeling unfriendly towards the Yahooligans


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category:Stub

body:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 23:11:16 +0200, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Seems we need to break down large categories into several pages after
> all. What would be a good number of article links per page? 500? That
> would make 21 pages and counting, for this special case.

1000?  There's a third as much information as there is on a standard
history page,
I feel.  +sj+


from_name: Josh Cogliati

references:
<20040708034002.GA30078@toad.honors.montana.edu>
	<ccj9th$4vr$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<20040708133749.GA3528@toad.honors.montana.edu>
	<ccjm3n$95s$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 03:35:15PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> I've also made it so that the <title> now shows "Article title -
> Information - Site name" as opposed to just "Article title - Site name",
> so it is consistent with History.
>
> While I was at it, I noticed missing or wrong <title>s when protect or
> unprotect a page. I've fixed those too.
>
> I'm attaching the entire patch again. I think it's committable like
> this, although someone should still add an "info" tab to the skin or
> else the info page is unreachable except by manually fiddling with the URL.
Okay, here are my latest comments on the patch:
1.  If there is a talk page, but no article, it says no article text and
does not report statistics for the talk page.
This does happen occasionly in wikipedia, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:M.R.M._Parrott
(Note that the UI gets this wrong in that the article like is blue, not
red in monobook style)
This can be fixed with a little rearranging of the order of the stats and
a } move.

2.  If the article or the most recent user have a ' in their name,
the sql query errors out.  I think this could be fixed by changing
the $wgTitle->getDBkey() to $dbr->addQuotes($wgTitle->getDBkey())
and the $cur_author to $dbr->addQuotes($cur_author)

3.  Do the wfQuery's need fname?  What exactly is fname?

4.  As you noted, the info tab needs to be added.

5.  Has any developer tried the querys on votes for deletion, or
some other article with lots of edits/authors to see how long the query takes?

Other than the ' problem, I think the patch is acceptable.

--
Josh Cogliati


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 14:28:46 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan
<chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I too wish to express my misgivings at getting the grant. There's
> always strings attached, and targets have to be met, and so on. Who's
> gonna run it? Who's gonna keep track of the money, the milestones, etc...

I think these are all surmountable problems.  Each grant will have to have
someone in charge of running it, recruiting active contributors, and
maintaining the schedule (how do Article-of-the-Week and Pic-of-the-Day
work?), Mav will help that person keep track of the money, and everyone
involved will try to keep to the schedule with all their might.

But we should start small... Pic-of-the-Day is one thing; getting
a thousand deep articles translated and reviewed is another.

And we should renew our efforts to get support through donation, no
matter what.  Demonstrating a strong ongoing base of community support will
help overcome the obstacle of not yet being a proper 501c3.

I agree wholeheartedly with this:

> I would rather mav publish a monthly budget and post that to the
> front page, like this:

We should spur donations right away.  I hope we are planning to
get new machines in the coming week(s?); we need to replace the
money we are spending.  $2500 a month sounds like a reasonable
budget estimate for the rest of the year, and I think we could easily
meet that need through contributions.

 + Encouraging recurring donations is a good start;
 + Updating the main page with monthly budget info is another; also
 + Making donation easier (a PayPal button next to the 'donation'
link, direct credit card processing, etc.)
 + Providing an opt-in way for one-time WP contributors to find out
about new initiatives we need a low-traffic alternative to the
mailing lists which announces new projects, board selections,
major grant and project drives, and infrequent press releases);
 + Having contribution drives for specific uses
 + ..and much, MUCH MORE!  all yours for only <s>79.95USD</s> <s>59.95UDS</s>  29.97CAN !!
(payable in three easy installments of C$9.99.  taxes,
tarriffs, and international S&H not included)

-/-sj-/-


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


from_name: Ribamar Santarosa de Sousa

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category:Stub

body:
On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 11:11:16PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Did anyone look at [[Category:Stub]] lately? Well, "There are 10483
> articles in this category." And they are all on one page.
>
> Seems we need to break down large categories into several pages after
> all. What would be a good number of article links per page? 500? That
> would make 21 pages and counting, for this special case.
>

I think this should be preference-able, as search is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#prefsection-8

But the most important is breaking down of such page doesn't must be
indexed by number, but by entry. For example, breaking [[Category:Stub]]
in 3 pages:

---------

from [[!Xu mythology]] to [[Free energy suppression]]
from [[Free school]] to [[Olympique de Marseille]]
from [[Olympus C-770 Movie]] to [[??risvatn]]

--------

-- Riba


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH grant

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > It needs to be updated daily.
>
> I strongly disagree with this.

As the person who would have to do daily updates, I also strongly disagree as
well. :) But I could manage daily updates during a quarterly fund drive.

Aside: I guess a bot could be used to grep these data from our PayPal and
MoneyBookers accounts and display it on our donations page, but there are
potential security issues with that (not to mention the lack of a developer
volunteering to code such a thing).

> A budget is not something you balance week per week or even month per
> month. We must plan it. In advance. A budget is something you have to
> organise, to take into account structural needs, contingencies, and see
> how to best use the remaining.

The budget needs to be be adjusted at least once a quarter and most books I've
read subject suggest once a month adjustments. But since we are just starting,
once a quarter seems to be enough for now.

>...
> I also am not very motivated by the idea of asking money all the time.
> That is just showing we do not manage well our funds.
> I think it much more positive that we make a call for donation just a
> couple of time a year, that donations are set in such a way that they
> can be monthly donation, and that the call for donation is made in
> parallele to a nice press release.

I was thinking along the same lines.

> > I think we can raise more money that way than through grants
>
> > Furtehrmore, once grant moeny starts rolling in, users will be able
> > to say: they're funded by grant money, so I'll not contribute.

We can simply build into the budget a certain percentage of the server fund,
for example, that has to be raised through individual donations. IMO, such a
percentage for that fund should be set high (<50%).

> But asking money all the time will make them think we are heavy, and do
> not know how to manage money.

Nod.

> Okay, donations is one way to raise money, and we should use it.
> It is best that donations calls are made during a special event, when we
> can see we are just great.

That is true, but in order to balance the quarterly budget we would need a fund
drive each quarter. Could we manage 4 special events each year? A meet-up each
quarter could be a standing special event (hint: my idea of having the
quarterly board meeting in a different part of the world and fly the trustees
there).

> In about 2 to 3 months, Wikipedia will be 1 000 000 articles.
> This is a very serious milestone.
> We should at this occasion make a third global press release (this is a
> global milestone).

I agree.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH grant


from_name: Rick

body:
And perhaps you should mind your own business.

RickK

Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:52:11 +0200, Anthere wrote:
> Low threshold indeed...
> Rick wrote:
> > Perhaps you should take a course in Wiki etiquette. Congratulations.
> > You just made my list of people whose emails are blocked due to
> > obnoxiousness.

Perhaps you shall next block Jimbo's emails as well?

For efficiency, I would reccomend that you simply unsubscribe from the
mailing list, and send mail to a dummy address. It will be more
effective in the long run.
_______________________________________________
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body:
And perhaps you should mind your own business.

RickK

Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:52:11 +0200, Anthere wrote:
> Low threshold indeed...
> Rick wrote:
> > Perhaps you should take a course in Wiki etiquette. Congratulations.
> > You just made my list of people whose emails are blocked due to
> > obnoxiousness.

Perhaps you shall next block Jimbo's emails as well?

For efficiency, I would reccomend that you simply unsubscribe from the
mailing list, and send mail to a dummy address. It will be more
effective in the long run.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Slow Poke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category:Stub

body:
It seems like I'm the only one arguing about not using categories for
the stubs as they would uselessly slow down the servers. I still don't
get the need for using categories on stubs. For the full discussion,
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Stub#Category_stub

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


from_name: Anthere

body:
Low threshold indeed...

Rick wrote:
> Perhaps you should take a course in Wiki etiquette.  Congratulations.
> You just made my list of people whose emails are blocked due to
> obnoxiousness.
>
> RickK
>
> Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>     Perhaps you should stop blocking people then ?
>
>
>
>     Rick wrote:
>      > I used to have my email address available, but I got so much abusive
>      > email I changed my preferences.
>      >
>      > RickK
>      >
>      > Angela wrote:
>      >
>      > I proposed at
>      >
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Email_proposal
>      > that all sysops should have a valid email address, though I'm not
>     sure
>      > now whether that was a worthwhile proposal.
>      >
>      >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>      > Do you Yahoo!?
>      > New and Improved Yahoo! Mail
>      >
>      > - 100MB free stor age!
>      >
>      >
>      >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>      >
>      > _______________________________________________
>      > WikiEN-l mailing list
>      > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>      > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
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>     http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH grant

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>I am just now getting back into the swing of things.  Are there
>people who may agree or disagree with SJ's opinions here.
>
>Keep in mind that I have not yet reviewed the proposed grant
>application, nor the requirements of the grant, etc.
>
While this particular grant does seem unrealistically ambitious to me at
this point, just working on it is good experience for us. I don't know
if we should actually submit this one, but I do expect we will
eventually submit other grant applications. If this is a practice run,
then it will help generate basic material for us to use again later.

I've briefly looked around to get an idea of the kinds of grants we
might apply for (i.e. the kind whose purpose is to foster knowledge and
education generally, rather than those with an agenda to promote some
particular kind of information). At least in the US, it generally seems
to be required for us to qualify as a 501(c)(3) organization. I don't
know much about grant-making organizations in other countries, they may
or may not have similar expectations. I suppose it's possible that some
places might accept an application with the assurance that we're in the
process of qualifying, but I think it would be best if we can get that
issue taken care of first.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH grant