from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 8/10/02 4:20 PM, "lcrocker at nupedia.com" <lcrocker at nupedia.com> wrote:
>>An advantage of using double breackets only is that we'll then
>>be able to use single brackets as regular punctuation, which would
>>be especially handy in math articles, among others.
>
> Since the number of times we make links in Wikipedia vastly outnumbers the
> times we use single brackets as regular punctuation, it would benefit the
> efficiency of the project to have single brackets denote links.
>
> Or so the argument goes.

Looking at [[Wikipedia:How does one edit a page]], I notice that most of
our wiki markup breaks down into roughly two types:

One or more symbols at the beginning of a line; terminated by line end
  - " " space for preformatted text
  - *, #, : etc for lists

Two or more symbols, terminated by the same number of symbols:
  - ''italics'', '''bold'''
  - == Headings ==, === more headings ===, ==== etc ====
  - [[Freelinks]]

So using double brackets is:
* consistent with our other markup
* not a significant effort (oh no, double keystrokes!)
* much less likely to conflict with legitimate use of single characters
(see below)

> The counter-argument I think would have something to do with the
> alternative, that is, how would we denote unmagical brackets when necessary?

Currently the very unwieldy <nowiki>[a]</nowiki>.

>>The answer to your first question is easy--you know where the code
>>is.  Like everything else here in Wiki land, the "authority" falls
>>on the ones willing to do the work.
>
> Again, Wiki land != Wikipedia backend code development. What I'm saying is
> that being in charge of the code vests huge power, which behooves at least a
> front of humility. Is that coherent?

What do you want, the programmers should walk three steps behind
everybody else and not speak unless spoken to? ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Transitioning toward a clean wiki syntax.

body:
> Again, Wiki land != Wikipedia backend code development. What I'm
> saying is that being in charge of the code vests huge power, which
> behooves at least a front of humility. Is that coherent?

I agree that it confers a responsibility to honestly work with the
users and writers, to build consensus, solicit input, and listen.
I think I do.  "Humility", I'll admit, is not something I'm very
good at, nor do I see it as very useful.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
On Saturday 10 August 2002 10:15 am, Jan Hidders wrote:
> When people see lots of nested tags such as on
>
> ? http://www.wikipedia.com/w/wiki.phtml?title=Duesseldorf&oldid=131461
>
> they are not likely to add anything to it.

Yes, I just about fell out of my chair when I saw the markup in edit mode. It
was very discouraging and I just went on (and everyone nows I am guilty of
using and promoting tables to present list-like data).

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Sysop access

body:
On Saturday 10 August 2002 12:01 pm, Tim wrote:
> Jimmy Wales, Wikipedians,
>
> I would like to request Sysop access to Wikipedia. ?I have been
> contributing for about 6 months now as user:Enchanter.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Tim

I would do it myself but there isn't yet an interface for this. Hopefully LDC
or Jimbo saw your note and have already promoted you.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
On Saturday 10 August 2002 10:15 am, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
> When someone makes a GUI frontend to
> Wikipedia, those features will become more
> sophisticated (wysiwyg).

Blasphemy! GUI? WYSIWYG? Now that would be unwiki.

Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful is because there is a bit
of a learning curve to being a contributor (small, but it is there). I hate
to say it, but this small learning curve acts as a kind of filter against
those that have nothing but incoherent and random nonsense to "contribute".

If the basic concept ain't broke, why fix it? Wiki is dead easy to learn
anyway. But it does require some cognitive faculty and mental discipline to
get the hang of.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Benevelent dictators

body:
On Saturday 10 August 2002 12:01 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> On 8/10/02 2:13 PM, "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> >?Perhaps you can prove it incorrect; don't do anything, and see whether
> >?things go the way you want them to. ;)
>
> Or maybe we can have guidance come from consensus, not fiat.

Apples and oranges here. Wiki and free software development work differently
-- in free software development you /need/ benevolent dictators or what you
get is the type of performance and other software problems we had in Phase
II. Correct me if I am wrong, but under Phase II each developer could on a
whim add or take away things. Now everything major has to be reviewed by a
single highly competent and hard working person -- Lee.

And the result is a very functional website that makes it possible for
thousands of people to do things in the Wiki Way.

Just because we do things the Wiki Way with editing and other non-software
items /does not/ mean that we should extent this to the underlying software
(except where policy is concerned). If the software doesn't work then
Wikipedia is useless. Simple as that.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
>> Two or more symbols, terminated by the same number of symbols:
>> - ''italics'', '''bold'''
>> - == Headings ==, === more headings ===, ==== etc ====
>> - [[Freelinks]]

> Except that headings can also be denoted by single '='s (or at
> least they used to be), and we have single brackets in use for
> external links. BTW, I'm mainly playing devil's advocate here.

I do appreciate a devil's advocate; just understand that if yours
is the only objection to something, it's likely to carry little
weight.

The single-equal = Headings = are gone, and have been since the
Phase III software was installed.  That was entirely a fiat decision
on my part.  I examined the database to see that they were almost
never used, and I thought having == through ====== be directly mapped
to H2 through H6 was nice and simple.  Only the article title gets
an H1.  I haven't heard a peep about it, so it looks like that
decision didn't bug anyone.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
>> When someone makes a GUI frontend to
>> Wikipedia, those features will become more
>> sophisticated (wysiwyg).
>
> Blasphemy! GUI? WYSIWYG? Now that would be unwiki.
>
> Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful is because
> there is a bit of a learning curve to being a contributor (small,
> but it is there). I hate to say it, but this small learning curve
> acts as a kind of filter against those that have nothing but
> incoherent and random nonsense to "contribute".
>
> If the basic concept ain't broke, why fix it? Wiki is dead easy
> to learn anyway. But it does require some cognitive faculty and
> mental discipline to get the hang of.

While I'm receptive to the "pons asinorum" argument, I rather like
the idea of a GUI wiki interface someday.  That's why I want to get
the markup language adequately specified and unambiguous, and why
I entered a feature request for myself to design a stable API for
fetching and editing pages.  We'll just make sure that setting up
the GUI application requires them to enter a URL or something. :-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Benevolent dictators

body:
> ...in free software development you /need/ benevolent dictators
> or what you get is the type of performance and other software
> problems we had in Phase II. Correct me if I am wrong, but under
> Phase II each developer could on a whim add or take away things.
> Now everything major has to be reviewed by a single highly
> competent and hard working person -- Lee.

Well, that's not really the way it is--but it's kind of become
that way accidentally.  There's no real difference in process other
than the bug tracker.  Other developers can and have checked in
their own code (Brion and Magnus, specifically).  It's just that
99% of the work is being done by me at the moment.  But there's no
technical reason you or anyone else couldn't.  A complete stranger
sent me a patch file for a bug fix a few days ago.

Of course, just as in the wiki, I can back out changes made by
others if I think they're unstable or otherwise ill-advised.  And
Brion could back out mine if he wanted, and he has access to the
server to install stuff just like I do as well.  So far we haven't
had the equivalent of an "edit war" with the code, but we might if
one of us makes a real drastic change.

And of course, even with a benevolent dictator model, anyone is
free to question their benevolence...


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 8/10/02 4:20 PM, "lcrocker at nupedia.com" <lcrocker at nupedia.com> wrote:

>> Just wondering: when did LDC become in charge of determining
>> what Wikipedia's syntax should be?
>>
>> WRT to the double/single bracket issue: We're suffering from a
>> legacy problem, since the double-bracket syntax was originally
>> uncommon (as opposed to CamelCase), it was okay that it was more
>> tedious than single-bracket.
>>
>> The best thing from a usability standpoint to do would be to
>> switch from double brackets to single brackets.
>
> An advantage of using double breackets only is that we'll then
> be able to use single brackets as regular punctuation, which would
> be especially handy in math articles, among others.

Since the number of times we make links in Wikipedia vastly outnumbers the
times we use single brackets as regular punctuation, it would benefit the
efficiency of the project to have single brackets denote links.

Or so the argument goes.

The counter-argument I think would have something to do with the
alternative, that is, how would we denote unmagical brackets when necessary?

> The answer to your first question is easy--you know where the code
> is.  Like everything else here in Wiki land, the "authority" falls
> on the ones willing to do the work.

Again, Wiki land != Wikipedia backend code development. What I'm saying is
that being in charge of the code vests huge power, which behooves at least a
front of humility. Is that coherent?


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Parsing TeX

in_reply_to: <20020810131944.GA1314@math-lw-n02.ucr.edu>; from toby+wikipedia-l@math.ucr.edu on Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 06:19:44AM -0700

body:
On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 06:19:44AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
> >Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> >>One of the first pages that I looked at was [[Wikipedia:How does one
> >>edit a page]]. [...] Now, if I hadn't known TeX already, I wouldn't have
> >>been heartened to see a reference to it. What do you propose to write
> >>there?
>
> >That mathematical variables are preferrably enclosed in [$ and $] and that
> >if you want to use sub- and superscript in them you can write [$x_n$] and
> >[$c^2$].
>
> And that you'd better not write "[$x% = x/100$]", because that won't work.

Since when is "x% = x/100" a common variable name? That's the only thing I
talked about in my short explanation.

> And you'd better not write "the right [[coset]] [$H\G$]".

Doing group theory is not what I would call "doing only a little
mathematics". The pages on group theory will probably contain more LaTeX
anyway.

> And woe to the person that tries to say "the set [${a,b,c}$]".

Again, this is only a logical thought if you already suspect that there is
more between [$ and $] then just variable names.

> >Apart from that there would be another section containing more
> >explanation for writing complex math with [$ .. $] and [$$ .. $$]. This
> >would probably be the same as what you would write for [[math: ..]]. We
> >cannot get around mentioning LaTeX somewhere.
>
> Well, that's just it.
> We must mention LaTeX to make [$c^2$] work your way.

Were in my little explanation did I use the word LaTeX?

> But we don't need to mention it for other solutions.

If you propose [[math: ... ]] then we also cannot explain what it does
without mentioning LaTeX.

> But I agree that having 2 systems of notation is problematic.
> I just find it even *more* problematic to have 1 system of notation
> that will mystify anybody that tries to use a percent symbol or a brace.

Of course, but if you introduce LaTeX something like that is going to happen
anyway. Please keep in mind that all the time I have been arguing that *if*
we introduce a mark-up for LaTeX *then* it's better to have one mark-up for
variables and expressions. That doesn't say anything about what we should do
if we don't introduce LaTeX, but I suspect you already know what my position
then will be.

> That's not what I meant; what's relevant to me is the argument against
> <var>. If that's really not right, then it could put a new perspective on
> *my* view of the matter, even if it doesn't affect *yours*.

I don't have an argument against <var> per se. I have argued that (1) if we
already have ''' and <i> I don't think the added complexity of <var> is
justified and (2) if we already have mark-up for LaTeX then we could also
use that for variable name, so then we also don't need <var>. Since we
already exchanged our arguments on (1) and no more new points were raised, I
don't see any point in continuing that discussion.

> But since you and I are the only people discussing this now, and I'm
> standing in opposition to you, still you should care about that.

Oh, but I do. It's just that I have a busy day time job (that tends to flow
over into my weekends) where I have to write articles with dead-lines and
teach classes at university the next day. So I like to keep my discussions
short and to the point so there is also some time left to also actually add
something to Wikipedia.

-- Jan Hidders


body:
On 8/10/02 6:06 PM, "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Looking at [[Wikipedia:How does one edit a page]], I notice that most of
> our wiki markup breaks down into roughly two types:
>
> One or more symbols at the beginning of a line; terminated by line end
> - " " space for preformatted text
> - *, #, : etc for lists
>
> Two or more symbols, terminated by the same number of symbols:
> - ''italics'', '''bold'''
> - == Headings ==, === more headings ===, ==== etc ====
> - [[Freelinks]]
>
Except that headings can also be denoted by single '='s (or at least they
used to be), and we have single brackets in use for external links. BTW, I'm
mainly playing devil's advocate here.

>> Again, Wiki land != Wikipedia backend code development. What I'm saying is
>> that being in charge of the code vests huge power, which behooves at least a
>> front of humility. Is that coherent?
>
> What do you want, the programmers should walk three steps behind
> everybody else and not speak unless spoken to? ;)
>
Preferably hopping on one foot.


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Sysop access

body:
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedians,

I would like to request Sysop access to Wikipedia.  I have been contributing
for about 6 months now as user:Enchanter.

Many thanks,

Tim

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> Hmm.  That might work too, and would be even simpler. Thanks for
> the suggestion--I solicit comments on that as well. I don't think
> it would be too bad, though, to have an "external/internal"
> separation between one-bracket and two-bracket links if your idea
> has some technical problem I don't see right now.  That's pretty
> simple to understand an use.

The internal/external could be a point, but is [[de:<German phrase>]]
really an internal or external link?  And ISBN: is clearly an external
link, so should that be in single brackets?  I think the colon is what
marks an external link.  A separate namespace is as foreign as an
external website (or set of websites, as in the ISBN: case).

In my own wiki, I have been experimenting with various namespace:word
combinations as a shorthand for external links.  This always fails
when "word" needs to be a "phrase".  You need that closing bracket,
whether single or double.

PhpWiki (the software at http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/) uses single
brackets for everything.  I don't know why UseModWiki started with
double brackets.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
On 8/10/02 5:42 PM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful is because there is a bit
> of a learning curve to being a contributor (small, but it is there). I hate
> to say it, but this small learning curve acts as a kind of filter against
> those that have nothing but incoherent and random nonsense to "contribute".

I doubt that, frankly. The learning curve is minimal, and deliberately so.
The filter is a byproduct of the everyone-can-edit-every-page.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 02:25 PM 10/08/02 -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>On Saturday 10 August 2002 10:15 am, Jan Hidders wrote:
> > When people see lots of nested tags such as on
> >
> >   http://www.wikipedia.com/w/wiki.phtml?title=Duesseldorf&oldid=131461
> >
> > they are not likely to add anything to it.
>
>Yes, I just about fell out of my chair when I saw the markup in edit mode. It
>was very discouraging and I just went on (and everyone nows I am guilty of
>using and promoting tables to present list-like data).

I, too, am a table nut; I love tables, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.
But I do my best to make my table code _elegant_, and I try to keep it
separate from the text part of the article as if it were a type of image
object. I hope that whatever happens, the ability to use genuine HTML table
markup (or something equivalent to it) won't be removed from Wikipedia;
when it's used appropriately, it can be pretty easy to work with.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Sysop access

body:
> I would do it myself but there isn't yet an interface for this.
> Hopefully LDC or Jimbo saw your note and have already promoted you.

Done, and hint taken :-)

I seem to recall someone else asked this week as well, but it wasn't
someone I knew, so I was waiting for someone else to say "Yeah, he's
a reasonable guy" or something, and I forgot.


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Fact Factory: a Wikipedia knock-off

body:
So, I was browsing in dmoz's open content encyclopedia
section
(http://dmoz.org/Computers/Open_Source/Open_Content/Encyclopedias/),
and what did I see? The Fact Factory:
http://the-fact-factory.com/

Someone has copied a fist-full of Wikipedia content
and started his own "collaborative project to create a
complete encyclopedia from scratch". This one is
loaded with ads. It's been very poorly done; many of
the edit links are broken and things like the
Wikipedia FAQ have been left unchanged.

Of course, there's nothing to stop anyone from doing
this, so long as they comply with the GFDL.
However,I'm not convinced that The Fact Factory is in
compliance. It mentions on the front page that the
content was originally from Wikipedia, "but has now
taken on a life of its own". The article pages,
however, do not mention  the original sources of the
articles.

So, do we want to do anything about this? Looking at
the site, I don't think it's going to do any harm,
especially considering the shoddy feel of the place. I
thought maybe Jimbo would want to contact the
webmaster and ask him what his intentions are.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Trolling

body:
Mirwin, it's not that complicated.

It's Larry using his Nupedia email account. Larry is
no longer employed by Bomis. He thinks you're a troll.
He is informing you of his personal opinion. That's
all.

If you're feeling out-gunned by Larry's mail account,
you can get mirwin at nupedia.com if you register at
nupedia.com. Then you can reply to Larry with the
authority of nupedia.com backing you! What fun!

Stephen G.

-- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
wrote:
>
>
> Toby Bartels wrote:
> >
> > mirwin wrote in part:
> >
> > >Is this an unknown "troll" attempting to fan the
> flames of
> > >local controversy or is this actually Mr. Sanger
> (perhaps unwisely)
> > >using an old account at Bomis?
> >
> > I always thought that it was silly when people put
> disclaimers in their sig:
> > "The views expressed are mine alone and not those
> of my ISP.".
> > I mean, who would ever think that an entity was
> supporting a view
> > just because it appeared after the @ in an address
> or in a Received: header?
> > But perhaps these disclaimers are necessary after
> all.
> >
>
> A lot of people use mail accounts for both business
> and
> personal purposes.  Sometimes clarification of the
> specific
> role in which they are acting or who they are
> representing
> is useful.  Sometimes it is customary and a matter
> of courtesy.
> Sometimes it is mandatory.
>
> Mr. Sanger used to be employed fulltime by Bomis and
> played
> a lead role in the early establishment of Wikipedia
> as a
> "founder" and as an "editor-in-chief".   I have the
> impression from
> various email reviewed and events witnessed upon
> Wikipedia
> and meta.wikipedia that he also got drawn
> occasionally into
> the role of a community "enforcer".
>
> Mr. Wales has now stepped into an "enforcer" role by
> default
> as the owner since Mr. Sanger left fulltime
> employment with Bomis.
> This is documented in various places on
> meta.wikipedia, wikipedia,
> and the archives of this mailing list.
>
> It would be useful to me to know what role the
> person using
> Mr. Sanger's Nupedia account to send private
> inflammatory
> emails thinks they are acting in and that person's
> actual identity.
> If it is Mr. Sanger then his credibility and
> reputation is
> diminished with me and perhaps with the community,
> now that I have
> chosen to publish it to the mailing list. If it is
> not Mr. Sanger,
> then there may be an issue of security or integrity
> failure
> within the Bomis workforce or the within the
> community which has access
> to the Bomis network beyond sending email through
> the list servers.
>
> Have other people participating at Wikipedia, and
> still here
> obviously, encountered this type of behavior from
> Mr. Sanger's
> email account?   Was the behavior encouraged by
> other members
> of the community to drive off unpopular people or
> unpopular
> viewpoints?
>
> To summarize some of the issues:
>
> Does Mr. Sanger think he has the widespread
> support of the Wikipedia community in attempting to
> incite me
> or is this merely personal recreation?
>
> Is this actually Mr. Sanger or is it someone
> attempting to
> discredit him and/or the Wikipedia community?
>
> Is this a misguided attempt to drive off an
> unpopular viewpoint
> or questions rather than address them via the
> community discussion
> forums?
>
> If a security breach is in progress (someone unknown
> has logged
> into Mr. Sanger's account and used it without regard
> (or with malicious
> intent) for Bomis, Nupedia, Wikipedia and Mr.
> Sanger's reputation and
> credibility) has it been initiated by someone within
> the community or
> an external agent?
>
> regards,
> mirwin
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Search for scanos

body:
Can we have a way to search for articles containing the tilde and the box
character, both of which are common in scanned text?

phma


body:
--- lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> > Again, Wiki land != Wikipedia backend code
> development. What I'm
> > saying is that being in charge of the code vests
> huge power, which
> > behooves at least a front of humility. Is that
> coherent?
>
> I agree that it confers a responsibility to honestly
> work with the
> users and writers, to build consensus, solicit
> input, and listen.
> I think I do.  "Humility", I'll admit, is not
> something I'm very
> good at, nor do I see it as very useful.

I'll take honesty, consensus-building, input
solicitation and listening over a front of humility
any day. I think you're see problems where none exist
again, Cunc.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 10 August 2002 10:15 am, Hr. Daniel
> Mikkelsen wrote:
> > When someone makes a GUI frontend to
> > Wikipedia, those features will become more
> > sophisticated (wysiwyg).
>
> Blasphemy! GUI? WYSIWYG? Now that would be unwiki.
>
> Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful
> is because there is a bit
> of a learning curve to being a contributor (small,
> but it is there). I hate
> to say it, but this small learning curve acts as a
> kind of filter against
> those that have nothing but incoherent and random
> nonsense to "contribute".

Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
"Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet). It's an
intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki
page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal
to the VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't
participate, which leaves those of us who read and
write to get on with rational discourse."

I think he's probably right. We should remember that
one of the reasons why Wikipedia has been successful
while other encyclopedia projects have not is the wiki
way of contributing.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> So, I was browsing in dmoz's open content encyclopedia
> section
> (http://dmoz.org/Computers/Open_Source/Open_Content/Encyclopedias/),
> and what did I see? The Fact Factory:
> http://the-fact-factory.com/
>
> Someone has copied a fist-full of Wikipedia content
> and started his own "collaborative project to create a
> complete encyclopedia from scratch". This one is
> loaded with ads. It's been very poorly done; many of
> the edit links are broken and things like the
> Wikipedia FAQ have been left unchanged.

"Today is Thursday, August 16, 2001, servertime (Pacific Standard
Time)."  Looks like this has been around for a while now...

Dreadful as it is, it's still a wiki; I've added a link back to
www.wikipedia.com on the main page. RecentChanges shows no other edits
in the last 90 days; I suspect it's quite moribund.

> Of course, there's nothing to stop anyone from doing
> this, so long as they comply with the GFDL.
> However,I'm not convinced that The Fact Factory is in
> compliance. It mentions on the front page that the
> content was originally from Wikipedia, "but has now
> taken on a life of its own". The article pages,
> however, do not mention  the original sources of the
> articles.

In that particular regard, that's not much different than
enciclopedia.us.es (which is quite active and doesn't run advertisements).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
At 07:19 PM 8/10/02 -0700, Stephen G. wrote:
>So, I was browsing in dmoz's open content encyclopedia
>section
>(http://dmoz.org/Computers/Open_Source/Open_Content/Encyclopedias/),
>and what did I see? The Fact Factory:
>http://the-fact-factory.com/
>
>Someone has copied a fist-full of Wikipedia content
>and started his own "collaborative project to create a
>complete encyclopedia from scratch". This one is
>loaded with ads. It's been very poorly done; many of
>the edit links are broken and things like the
>Wikipedia FAQ have been left unchanged.
>
>Of course, there's nothing to stop anyone from doing
>this, so long as they comply with the GFDL.
>However,I'm not convinced that The Fact Factory is in
>compliance. It mentions on the front page that the
>content was originally from Wikipedia, "but has now
>taken on a life of its own". The article pages,
>however, do not mention  the original sources of the
>articles.
>
>So, do we want to do anything about this? Looking at
>the site, I don't think it's going to do any harm,
>especially considering the shoddy feel of the place. I
>thought maybe Jimbo would want to contact the
>webmaster and ask him what his intentions are.

Well for one thing the copy was made a few months ago and you can't edit
the pages, despite a link to do so. All the ads remind me of Netscape.com.
Looks like it's going to fall of it's own weight.

Fred Bauder


body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > So, I was browsing in dmoz's open content
> encyclopedia
> > section
> >
>
(http://dmoz.org/Computers/Open_Source/Open_Content/Encyclopedias/),
> > and what did I see? The Fact Factory:
> > http://the-fact-factory.com/
> >
> > Someone has copied a fist-full of Wikipedia
> content
> > and started his own "collaborative project to
> create a
> > complete encyclopedia from scratch". This one is
> > loaded with ads. It's been very poorly done; many
> of
> > the edit links are broken and things like the
> > Wikipedia FAQ have been left unchanged.
>
> "Today is Thursday, August 16, 2001, servertime
> (Pacific Standard
> Time)."  Looks like this has been around for a while
> now...
>
> Dreadful as it is, it's still a wiki; I've added a
> link back to
> www.wikipedia.com on the main page. RecentChanges
> shows no other edits
> in the last 90 days; I suspect it's quite moribund.

Another stupid thing is all of the user pages from
that time have been copied as well. I edited my to say
that I am not a contributor to the Fact Factory.
Everybody else should check to see if they are listed
as well.

> > Of course, there's nothing to stop anyone from
> doing
> > this, so long as they comply with the GFDL.
> > However,I'm not convinced that The Fact Factory is
> in
> > compliance. It mentions on the front page that the
> > content was originally from Wikipedia, "but has
> now
> > taken on a life of its own". The article pages,
> > however, do not mention  the original sources of
> the
> > articles.
>
> In that particular regard, that's not much different
> than
> enciclopedia.us.es (which is quite active and
> doesn't run advertisements).

It's my understanding the the Spanish project did not
copy the whole Spanish database, but contributors who
left Wikipedia took the content that they wrote and
copied it over. I'm not totally sure, however.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Transitioning toward a clean wiki syntax.]

body:
 > being in charge of the code vests huge power, which behooves at least
a front of humility. Is that coherent?

I thought it was Laziness, Impatience and Hubris, actually ... ;-)

Though what's convenient for the end-user is often hell for the programmer.


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:

> So, do we want to do anything about this? Looking at
> the site, I don't think it's going to do any harm,
> especially considering the shoddy feel of the place. I
> thought maybe Jimbo would want to contact the
> webmaster and ask him what his intentions are.

I noticed that major sections are missing so it is
obviously a fork from way back.

I think it emphasizes that what makes Wikipedia work
is the active community of contributors, not the database
or the software.   Since they are a clone that forked
from Wikipedia, we know they had a somewhat viable
starting point from the standpoint of working software
and some initial data.

Perhaps we should take care to maintain and grow
our community of contributors while we attempt to
improve the software and database.

I must say that I found the dramatic improvement in
Wikipedia since the fork date very encouraging!

regards,
mirwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Saturday 10 August 2002 10:15 am, Hr. Daniel
> > Mikkelsen wrote:
> > > When someone makes a GUI frontend to
> > > Wikipedia, those features will become more
> > > sophisticated (wysiwyg).
> >
> > Blasphemy! GUI? WYSIWYG? Now that would be unwiki.
> >
> > Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful
> > is because there is a bit
> > of a learning curve to being a contributor (small,
> > but it is there). I hate
> > to say it, but this small learning curve acts as a
> > kind of filter against
> > those that have nothing but incoherent and random
> > nonsense to "contribute".
>
> Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
> WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
> "Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet). It's an
> intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki
> page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal
> to the VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't
> participate, which leaves those of us who read and
> write to get on with rational discourse."
>
> I think he's probably right. We should remember that
> one of the reasons why Wikipedia has been successful
> while other encyclopedia projects have not is the wiki
> way of contributing.

I think he is dead wrong.  Graphics has been at the
fore front of computer development because it is so
critical to effective presentation and assimilation
of information.

The sections on engineering and technology are not
going to improve very fast until we have some type of
easy graphics markup for at least diagrams.

Alternatively, I guess we can write some excellent
procedures up coaching random drop in technologists who are
not computer wizards (there are many in various engineering
fields) in how to create png files from diagrams.

A problem with this approach is that we lose the wiki
way of contributing that you refer too.  Each graphic
is a unique work of art and a complete production task
in and of itself.

SVG may be a partial or complete solution for this, I
have not checked on it for a while.

I am unfamiliar with LaTex, does it do diagrams as
part of its typesetting?

I think a lot of people will put up with text wiki currently
because of the obvious value of collaboration on the
internet.  Collaborate with a distributed team of
self selected interesting and interested people once
and publish it to the entire internet.  This is a
powerful draw that outweighs the definate drawback
of returning to primitive text editors.

If we want to attract specialists to help us improve
our content quality and depth we can probably do so by
improving our graphics collaboration tools.

Axel, Jan and some others have been after LaTex.  Why?
Because it greatly improves their efficiency and
capability of presentation.

Engineers need diagrams, sketches and drawings.
Organic Chemists need molecular diagrams.
MDs need anatomical graphics, overlays,
Generals need maps.
Animation is useful at times .... no I do not
know how to allow casual dropins to tweak an animation clip.

Maybe as we expand we will have sub communities evolve
around special skillsets and use of appropriate tools.

Encarta was multimedia a decade ago.

It is my prediction that the first simple to start using
WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet) Wiki will leave all
others in the dust.

My opinion is based upon memories of the transitions:
Wordstar to WordPerfect  (preview what you get before printing)
WordPerfect to Word      (WYSIWYG)

I know of no word processor user who ever looked
back after the ability to see before printing and
then see onscreen as you work arrived.

As H2G2.com would recommend ... Don't Panic!

We do not need all these whiz bang tools right away to
get started but it is worth keeping in mind that we
will/may need them eventually to remain competitive or viable.

regards,
mirwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] @wikipedia.org

body:
On Saturday 10 August 2002 11:35 pm, you wrote:
> If you're feeling out-gunned by Larry's mail account,
> you can get mirwin at nupedia.com if you register at
> nupedia.com. Then you can reply to Larry with the
> authority of nupedia.com backing you! What fun!
>
> Stephen G.

I have been dying for a maveric149 at wikipedia.org (or .com if .org is not
possible; grumble, .com, grumble) email address for months now.

Jimbo, Lee et al. is this possible? I currently pay Yahoo! 30 bucks US a year
for my email account - I would much rather have that money go to the project
instead (If Jimbo doesn't need it to pay for current expenses then it can sit
in a savings account for the future non-profit Wikipedia Foundation).

Then again we might want to hold off on this idea until the non-profit is
set-up. Then Wikipedia email accounts would be one of the member privileges
for contributing ($) members of the non-profit.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
|Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 20:34:37 -0600
|
|At 07:19 PM 8/10/02 -0700, Stephen G. wrote:
|>So, I was browsing in dmoz's open content encyclopedia
|>section
|>(http://dmoz.org/Computers/Open_Source/Open_Content/Encyclopedias/),
|>and what did I see? The Fact Factory:
|>http://the-fact-factory.com/
|>
|>Someone has copied a fist-full of Wikipedia content
|>and started his own "collaborative project to create a
|>complete encyclopedia from scratch". This one is
|>loaded with ads. It's been very poorly done; many of
|>the edit links are broken and things like the
|>Wikipedia FAQ have been left unchanged.
|>

<snip>

|
|Well for one thing the copy was made a few months ago and you can't edit
|the pages, despite a link to do so. All the ads remind me of Netscape.com.
|Looks like it's going to fall of it's own weight.
|
|Fred Bauder
|
|

I looked up Louis Armstrong, which I wrote much of in wikipedia, and
found no article, but ads for ten different Louis Armstrong books, and
ads for a bunch of other books.  It seems to be an attempt to get
people to go to Amazon.  Makes me think twice about the proposal to
make the wikipedia's ISBN links go to a bookstore, even though it is
really not the same.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
On Saturday 10 August 2002 11:35 pm, you wrote:
> Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
> WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
> "Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet). It's an
> intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki
> page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal
> to the VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't
> participate, which leaves those of us who read and
> write to get on with rational discourse."
>
> I think he's probably right. We should remember that
> one of the reasons why Wikipedia has been successful
> while other encyclopedia projects have not is the wiki
> way of contributing.
>
> Stephen G.

Well said Stephen. I'm glad you dug-up that original quote.

However Mirwin does have a point about the need for specialist-type
functionality. But I am unconvinced that the only way to do this is to
abandon text-based Wiki; why not simply extend the capabilities of Wiki
markup and hide much of this in special namespaces if needed?

I know I spend a large percentage of my time on a Word document simply
playing with the formating (this tendency is also supported by a good deal of
research on worker productivity). In Wikipedia there are few obvious
formating choices which leads to more concentration on content than
presentation. Somebody has already said that Wikipedia is not PowerPoint. I
tend to agree.

Given our rate of growth I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong with
the way we are currently doing things and introducing a GUI might lead to
loads of mediocre material as the VideoAddicts invade. If somebody else
develops a Wiki GUI and we begin to loose contributors because of it, then we
can incorporate that into our code (most Wiki software is GPLd, no?).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Google-test bot

body:
I just ran into a fairly significant copyright infringer that did a wholesale
copy of text on Joseph Wilson Swan and Internet Chess Club and a somewhat
complex job involving several websites with the Light bulb article (see
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Talk:Light_bulb). The IP of the contributor who
did this was blocked as a result (pending his/her asking the list for a block
removal).

The internet chess article is now fine because several users have since
edited the text extensively (removing "advertising" like qualities - they
were not aware of the copyright violation). The light bulb article is similar
but there still are some entire sentences that are word for word the same
(not to mention the obvious parentage of many other sentences).

My question is this; would it be possible for a bot to be programmed to
search Google for longish strings of text that are inserted into wikipedia
and then log the results when strings are matched? This bot could crawl
through new diffs in Recent Changes and log possible violations that would
then have to be reviewed by a human to see if there is in fact any violation.

This of course will pick up a lot of public domain text but if we also
encouraged users to 'cite their sources' these legit uses of text can be
quickly skipped over in the log. Common phrases would also be logged if the
bot wasn't programmed to minimize this by maybe centering a string search on
a period (thus spanning parts of two sentences).

The above copyright violations happened several days ago and were obviously
missed by the militia. Subsequently several users edited and expanded the
offending text which causes major version control headaches when there still
are obvious violations mixed with legit contribs.

Having a bot do much of the work would free up human resources (this also
would reduce duplication of effort -- sometimes several people will perform a
Google test on a suspicious entry while at other times nobody does a test).

Yes I know this is an example of a bot that could be a good community member.
I take back my previous comment (it all depends on what the bot does).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
At 01:27 AM 8/11/02 -0400, Tom  Parmenter wrote:
>
>I looked up Louis Armstrong, which I wrote much of in wikipedia, and
>found no article, but ads for ten different Louis Armstrong books, and
>ads for a bunch of other books.  It seems to be an attempt to get
>people to go to Amazon.  Makes me think twice about the proposal to
>make the wikipedia's ISBN links go to a bookstore, even though it is
>really not the same.

Making the ISBN links go to a book store search engine giving you
comparative prices is very different from Amazon links which usually are
quite a ways down the list if you search for comparative prices especially
if you add shipping. I think Addall or ABE search links are pretty helpful
since they can return enormous amounts of useful information.  Amazon and
BN live off book buyers ignorance.

Fred Bauder


in_reply_to: <200208102020.g7AKKXx30437@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 01:20:33PM -0700

body:
On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 01:20:33PM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> An advantage of using double breackets only is that we'll then
> be able to use single brackets as regular punctuation, which would
> be especially handy in math articles, among others.

Btw, what is also used in math articles is curly brackets ('{') for sets
such as {1, 2, 3} and { f(x) | x in S }. So if you are going to use them for
mark-up (I seem to remember you wanted to use them for styles) I'd prefer
them doubled ( {{...}} ) or tied in with some other symbol( [{..}] ),

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
On 10-08-2002, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote thusly :
> >> When someone makes a GUI frontend to
> >> Wikipedia, those features will become more
> >> sophisticated (wysiwyg).
> > Blasphemy! GUI? WYSIWYG? Now that would be unwiki.
> > Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful is because
> > there is a bit of a learning curve to being a contributor (small,
> > but it is there). I hate to say it, but this small learning curve
> > acts as a kind of filter against those that have nothing but
> > incoherent and random nonsense to "contribute".
> > If the basic concept ain't broke, why fix it? Wiki is dead easy
> > to learn anyway. But it does require some cognitive faculty and
> > mental discipline to get the hang of.
> While I'm receptive to the "pons asinorum" argument, I rather like
> the idea of a GUI wiki interface someday.  That's why I want to get
> the markup language adequately specified and unambiguous, and why
> I entered a feature request for myself to design a stable API for
> fetching and editing pages.  We'll just make sure that setting up
> the GUI application requires them to enter a URL or something. :-)

Whatever has happened to the Abiword's Wikipedia plugin ?

I have no opportunity to check it up right now ?


body:
On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 06:15:32PM -0600, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> [...] I hope that whatever happens, the ability to use genuine HTML table
> markup (or something equivalent to it) won't be removed from Wikipedia;
> when it's used appropriately, it can be pretty easy to work with.

In case we don't go with the style-sheet option, I made a proposal on

http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Wiki_markup_tables

for replacing the HTML table syntax with something more Wiki. It's the
second proposal. It's more compact then HTML so it allows you to make it
look a bit more WYSIWYG in the edit text, but still allows you to do most of
the important stuff you can do with tables.

Actually it could also be combined with a style-sheet proposal. Just replace
the attributes in {{al=c,...}} with a single style name {{animal-table}}.
That would mean added complexity (two ways of doing the same) but also
create an intermediate level of doing formatting:
1. (easiest) no formatting
2. (harder) formatting with HTML attributes
3. (hardest) defining a separate style in CSS2

I imagine the people would usually just want to do a little formatting with
the help of HTML attributes, and once a certain table format gets re-used a
lot, we could factor it out into a style.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special pages - the long lost articles

body:
Hi,

Is there buried somewhere a kind of special page that
lists articles not edited for a long time (say 4 months) and additionally
being short articles ?
If not, would it be helpful to create such page ?

I also would like to draw you attention to the short articles
special page. There are dozens of articles that need expansion or deletion.

Regards,
kpj.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

in_reply_to: <3D56045D.D6054EFA@surfbest.net>; from mri_icboise@surfbest.net on Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 11:29:49PM -0700

body:
On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 11:29:49PM -0700, Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
> The sections on engineering and technology are not
> going to improve very fast until we have some type of
> easy graphics markup for at least diagrams.

You want editable graphcs? Good news. There is an open W3C standard for
that, it's called SVG (scalable vector graphics), and it's in XML. We could
probably integrate that by considering it as just another image format. You
could even give it an edit screen if one wanted to edit it by hand, but the
simplest would be to have people download it and edit it with an SVG editor
and then re-upload it. As far as representing it goes, Mozilla is beginning
to support it, there is a free Acrobat view/plug-in, but for other browsers
we would have to convert it to PNG, and yes, svg2png exists. :-)

There's even a Wiki about this:

  http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/default.asp

Why didn't we think of this before?

-- Jan Hidders


body:
> Is there buried somewhere a kind of special page that
> lists articles not edited for a long time (say 4 months) and
> additionally being short articles ?
> If not, would it be helpful to create such page ?

I had such a thing planned; there's even a "neglected pages"
source file in the code, I just never got around to putting the
code into it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> On Saturday 10 August 2002 11:35 pm, you wrote:
> > Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
> > WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
> > "Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet). It's an
> > intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki
> > page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal
> > to the VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't
> > participate, which leaves those of us who read and
> > write to get on with rational discourse."
> >
> > I think he's probably right. We should remember that
> > one of the reasons why Wikipedia has been successful
> > while other encyclopedia projects have not is the wiki
> > way of contributing.
> >
> > Stephen G.
>
> Well said Stephen. I'm glad you dug-up that original quote.
>
> However Mirwin does have a point about the need for specialist-type
> functionality. But I am unconvinced that the only way to do this is to
> abandon text-based Wiki; why not simply extend the capabilities of Wiki
> markup and hide much of this in special namespaces if needed?
>
> I know I spend a large percentage of my time on a Word document simply
> playing with the formating (this tendency is also supported by a good deal of
> research on worker productivity). In Wikipedia there are few obvious
> formating choices which leads to more concentration on content than
> presentation. Somebody has already said that Wikipedia is not PowerPoint. I
> tend to agree.

You miss part of the point.  I have not seen anyone proposing
to eliminate text, only augment it.  It would be better if
people were saying Powerpoint is not Wikipedia.  Asteroids, Space
Invaders, Warcraft, Starcraft, etc. are not Wikipedia.

Having developed and given a few PowerPoint presentations I tend
to agree that Wikipedia is not PowerPoint.  I would not stake the future
of my projects and career on Wikipedia's current presentation
capabilities
if PowerPoint were available to present or summarize key information to
decision makers.

The question we wish potential readers to be asking is:
"Why waste time on video games when Wikipedia has 3D presentation
tools and examples which I can read about and manipulate to see how the
real
world works according to leading scientists and educators?"  It is fun
to catch apparent mistakes made by busy smart people and propose ways to
fix them.

There are theories that play is a mammal's way of preparing
for the future.  Flight simulator's are getting popular as games.
Why?  Apparently it is fun, for some, to prepare for flying jumbo jets,
military jets, or Piper Cubs .... via an accurate graphics simulation
or presentation in response to the user's inputs.

Why do people spend time on formatting?

Engineers carry around stacks of drawings in the field.  Why?

The information is presented in a form more compact and easier to
follow than equivalent but more voluminous stacks of text.  It is
easier to trace mistakes, figure out corrections, and then redline
the drawing to record the changes.

Regarding this community obsession with forcing contributors to
concentrate on text content and completing high quality articles.
It is counterproductive in a volunteer project. If the volunteers are
enjoying themselves in the stacks then the
work will get done because we will soon have sufficient volunteers.
Hopefully, some of the work that gets done will be graphics and
formatting.

Our goal is not to revolutionize publishing by rolling the presses
back to the days of text only documents.  The stated goal is to
produce a free online Encyclopedia of high quality which readers
will enjoy comprehending and editors will enjoy improving.

>
> Given our rate of growth I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong with
> the way we are currently doing things and introducing a GUI might lead to
> loads of mediocre material as the VideoAddicts invade.

Mediocre diagrams are much better for some purposes than even
outstanding text.   Pick up an old trigonometry text published
before graphics capabilities got cheap.  Compare it to a modern
trigonometry or statics text.  The lack of diagrams and heavy
dependence on text based theorems is not old fashioned quality.
It reflects the economics of publishing a hundred years ago when
graphics were produced via hand carved lanolin blocks suitable
for typesetting.

Most introductory statics course spend weeks training engineering
students to always draw and analyze free body diagrams prior to writing
down the equations to calculate forces, stresses, etc.  Why?

Comprehension of all the forces involved is required to reliably
avoid mistakes that are easy to introduce in the equations.  The
pictures of vectors in 3 dimensions are much easier to comprehend
and track mentally than the balancing terms in the equations.

If somebody else
> develops a Wiki GUI and we begin to loose contributors because of it, then we
> can incorporate that into our code (most Wiki software is GPLd, no?).

Perhaps.  Reaction and copy catting is a poor strategy in the
open source free mind share game.

Consider the difference of a few months or a year in the Wikipedia
and "The Fact Factory".  Now consider "The Fact Factory" plus effective
GUI editing tools or procedures.   How many "video addicts" are
necessary
for "The Fact Factory" to overtake Wikipedia in volume and quality of
content in graphics intensive subjects such as ..... human knowledge.

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to convey information
from the team that compiled it to the readers.  This is even
more important for Wikipedia than Britannica because Wikipedia's
project model is built around the assumption that some of its
readers also become future editors.

Perhaps an alternative to overly complicating the existing wiki text
interface is too establish some procedures and policies for
tracking submitted graphics and source files.  Having a set
of community recommended free tools for preparing graphics and
encouraging
the source files to be GPL'd or FDL'd and loaded into user accessible
locations (for download) when the graphic is inserted would assure that
the graphic can be tweaked.   Not as easily as from a greatly desired
Super GUI with all bells and whistles simple enough for a "video
addict" to start using; but still wikifiable rather than starting
from scratch.

regards,
mirwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> What's the preferred way to include a non-breaking space in a
> Wikipedia article?

A space between other spaces will be automatically made a non-breaking
space (so if you put double or more spaces, you get them). If you want a
non-breaking space between letters, you probably want to use the
character entity   like in HTML:

   This should not break.

Yes, it's ugly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG graphics

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> SVG graphics support was suggested on wikipedia-l. I like the idea;
> that's why I tried it for Nupedia once, but... :-(
> Proposal:
> * [[svg:foobar]] is just plain-text editable, but displays as an image
> * A link to [[svg:foobar]] is displayed as an image as well
>
> Optional, after saving an edit to [[svg:foobar]], an image (foobar.png)
> could be created via svg2png (never tried that, though). The image would
> then be displayed instead of the SVG, and "real" SVG display could be
> turned on in the user options (until most browsers support native SVG).
>
> I didn't make this a feature request yet.

I'm not sure that SVGs are sufficiently user-friendly for it to make
sense to edit the source wiki-style, except perhaps for the simplest of
images (maybe for [[Square]] and [[Triangle]]...). To me, it makes more
sense to keep them in the [[image:]] space, with automagic conversion[1]
when we notice we're dealing with a *.svg. People can save the file,
edit it by hand or in an editor, and reupload; old revisions of uploaded
files are now kept and can be reverted easily if need be.

[1] Options for display could be:
* Inclusion of SVG code in single X(HT)ML document (for the future)
* Link to SVG as an <img> (Mozilla should handle this? I think)
* Link to SVG as <object> using plugin (ex, Adobe SVG viewer)
* Conversion to PNG
* ?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Sysop access

body:
> > I would do it myself but there isn't yet an interface for this.
> > Hopefully LDC or Jimbo saw your note and have already promoted you.
>
> Done, and hint taken :-)
>
> I seem to recall someone else asked this week as well, but it wasn't
> someone I knew, so I was waiting for someone else to say "Yeah, he's
> a reasonable guy" or something, and I forgot.

That someone else was me. On Wikipedia as user:Andre_Engels

Andre Engels, engels at uni-koblenz.de (formerly engels at win.tue.nl)


body:
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|Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 08:49:10 -0600
|
|At 01:27 AM 8/11/02 -0400, Tom  Parmenter wrote:
|>
|>I looked up Louis Armstrong, which I wrote much of in wikipedia, and
|>found no article, but ads for ten different Louis Armstrong books, and
|>ads for a bunch of other books.  It seems to be an attempt to get
|>people to go to Amazon.  Makes me think twice about the proposal to
|>make the wikipedia's ISBN links go to a bookstore, even though it is
|>really not the same.
|
|Making the ISBN links go to a book store search engine giving you
|comparative prices is very different from Amazon links which usually are
|quite a ways down the list if you search for comparative prices especially
|if you add shipping. I think Addall or ABE search links are pretty helpful
|since they can return enormous amounts of useful information.  Amazon and
|BN live off book buyers ignorance.
|
|Fred Bauder

Well, maybe, but BN/Amazon are a well of information for Wikipedia
writers too.  I usually get my ISBN numbers there, check book titles,
etc.

Tom P.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
On 11-08-2002, Jan Hidders wrote thusly :
> On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 11:29:49PM -0700, Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > The sections on engineering and technology are not
> > going to improve very fast until we have some type of
> > easy graphics markup for at least diagrams.
> You want editable graphcs? Good news. There is an open W3C standard for
> that, it's called SVG (scalable vector graphics), and it's in XML. We could
> probably integrate that by considering it as just another image format. You
> could even give it an edit screen if one wanted to edit it by hand, but the
> simplest would be to have people download it and edit it with an SVG editor
> and then re-upload it. As far as representing it goes, Mozilla is beginning
> to support it, there is a free Acrobat view/plug-in, but for other browsers
> we would have to convert it to PNG, and yes, svg2png exists. :-)
> There's even a Wiki about this:
>   http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/default.asp
> Why didn't we think of this before?
Yes, I like the idea. Is this the way to go for Wikipedia ? The developers team, please let us know.

Regards,
kpjas


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Sysop access

body:
--- Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> > > I would do it myself but there isn't yet an
> interface for this.
> > > Hopefully LDC or Jimbo saw your note and have
> already promoted you.
> >
> > Done, and hint taken :-)
> >
> > I seem to recall someone else asked this week as
> well, but it wasn't
> > someone I knew, so I was waiting for someone else
> to say "Yeah, he's
> > a reasonable guy" or something, and I forgot.
>
> That someone else was me. On Wikipedia as
> user:Andre_Engels
>
> Andre Engels, engels at uni-koblenz.de (formerly
> engels at win.tue.nl)

Yeah, he's a reasonable guy. Or something. ;-)

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
At 08:19 PM 8/11/02 +0100, Matthew Woolcraft wrote:
>What's the preferred way to include a non-breaking space in a
>Wikipedia article?

What's the reason for including a non-breaking space in the Wikipedia article?

That's not snideness: it's key to the answer.

In some cases, the answer is that you don't need or want one--you don't
know what
the viewer's browser is or how wide the window is, so there's no point
trying to govern
layout to that degree.

If you're doing a table, we're still sorting out table markup, but it's
likely to define rows
and columns, not spaces.

For a map or other illustration, there are better ways of handling graphics.

If the space is part of a name, you can either accept that the linebreak
may occur
between "van" and "Gogh" in "Vincent van Gogh" (usually no big deal) or use the
HTML.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
On Sunday 11 August 2002 15:47, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> At 08:19 PM 8/11/02 +0100, Matthew Woolcraft wrote:
> >What's the preferred way to include a non-breaking space in a
> >Wikipedia article?
>
> What's the reason for including a non-breaking space in the Wikipedia
> article?

They're used in some of the taxoboxes for tiny indentation.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
"Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" wrote:

> Whatever has happened to the Abiword's Wikipedia plugin ?
>
> I have no opportunity to check it up right now ?

Apparently it is still viable.  Links to it (and Wikipedia)
are available at: http://www.abisource.com/download/plugins.phtml


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 11:29:49PM -0700, Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> >
> > The sections on engineering and technology are not
> > going to improve very fast until we have some type of
> > easy graphics markup for at least diagrams.
>
> You want editable graphcs? Good news. There is an open W3C standard for
> that, it's called SVG (scalable vector graphics), and it's in XML. We could
> probably integrate that by considering it as just another image format. You
> could even give it an edit screen if one wanted to edit it by hand, but the
> simplest would be to have people download it and edit it with an SVG editor
> and then re-upload it. As far as representing it goes, Mozilla is beginning
> to support it, there is a free Acrobat view/plug-in, but for other browsers
> we would have to convert it to PNG, and yes, svg2png exists. :-)
>
> There's even a Wiki about this:
>
>   http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/default.asp
>
> Why didn't we think of this before?
>

Sorry Jan, I did not mean to imply that graphics editing
had not been considered.  I was attempting to weigh in
on the point that graphics is an important presention tool
for our stated project goals.

I agree we must press on with what we have but it makes
me nervous to hear people claiming the text only wiki
interface is an advantage that should be preserved.

I do not know enough about the software we are currently
using to know if this is feasible or worth looking into but
there seems to be a full suite of open/free source tools coming
available to assist distributed teams in building and managing
web sites and content with version controlled collaboration
based on W3C open standards.

The links I list below state goals and objectives that
sound much like Wikipedia's current functional infrastructure
to me.

Perhaps we could plan on completing the current round of
development for our current simple text based wiki.

The next round of development, or a separate parallel branch
starting soon, (or perhaps already started?) could aim for a
complete markup environment as per W3C standards, specifications
that allows users to use the next generation of markup WYSIWYG
tools of their choice, i.e. the ones that get out of
vaporware stage.

Obviously a key point in any feasibility study would be
defining the interface or porting route between our
current target system and the next generation infrastructure
so the database would port with few errors and relatively intact.
I doubt we want to hand edit a couple of hundred
thousand articles.

These links look applicable to any such feasibility study:

http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/
http://www.webdav.org/
> What is WebDAV?
>        Briefly: WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP
>        protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.

http://www.webdav.org/other/faq.html
http://www.webdav.org/mod_dav/
http://www.midgard-project.org/midgard/

Midguard looked particularly interesting as it claims
to integrate well with PHP.

Once again, please accept my apologies.  I realize that
much of the discussion going over my head on the list is
in regard to these standards.  If there is currently a
project plan or milestone schedule file somewhere laying
these things out as a loose set of current intentions
a link to it would be appreciated.  If detailed discussion
is available in the list archive the approximate time
frame would also be useful and appreciated.

regards,
mirwin


body:
On 11-08-2002, Tom Parmenter wrote thusly :
> |At 01:27 AM 8/11/02 -0400, Tom  Parmenter wrote:
> |>I looked up Louis Armstrong, which I wrote much of in wikipedia, and
> |>found no article, but ads for ten different Louis Armstrong books, and
> |>ads for a bunch of other books.  It seems to be an attempt to get
> |>people to go to Amazon.  Makes me think twice about the proposal to
> |>make the wikipedia's ISBN links go to a bookstore, even though it is
> |>really not the same.
> |Making the ISBN links go to a book store search engine giving you
> |comparative prices is very different from Amazon links which usually are
> |quite a ways down the list if you search for comparative prices especially
> |if you add shipping. I think Addall or ABE search links are pretty helpful
> |since they can return enormous amounts of useful information.  Amazon and
> |BN live off book buyers ignorance.
> Well, maybe, but BN/Amazon are a well of information for Wikipedia
> writers too.  I usually get my ISBN numbers there, check book titles,
> etc.

Interestingly a site (e-zine?) called "Write away" for internet writers
recommends "The Fact Factory" as "Great Free Online Encyclopedia"
See for yourself:
http://www.heislerink.com/cgi-bin/MaxWebPortal_V10

Regards,
kpjas


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
What's the preferred way to include a non-breaking space in a
Wikipedia article?

-M-


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
At 06:18 PM 8/11/02 -0700, mirwin wrote:
>
>
>"Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" wrote:
>
>> Whatever has happened to the Abiword's Wikipedia plugin ?
>>
>> I have no opportunity to check it up right now ?
>
>Apparently it is still viable.  Links to it (and Wikipedia)
>are available at: http://www.abisource.com/download/plugins.phtml
>
>From there:
>> Wikipedia Plugin
>> This plugin will give you integrated access to Wikipedia, an incredible,
free encyclopedia.
>> Downloads: Linux Intel RPM. Please select a mirror:
>> USA1 - USA2 - EU
>
>The mirror links show the version as xxxx1.0.2.1.i386.rpm so apparently
>it is only available on linux.
>
>Excellent PR!  :)

Well the windows wikipedia plugin is in the utilities bundle at the top of
that page but when you select in in abiword (under tools) it connects to this:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?search=>

Which is no good.

(I'm not at all sure how it should work but that's what happens now)

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Making redirects out of bad page names

body:
Something to consider mentioning on
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia%3AHow_to_use_redirect_pages :

Someone's just made a ton of redirects along the lines of

[[06-05]] ---> [[June 5]]

The only page that links to [[06-05]] &co is [[List of British Columbia
Premiers]]. I think it would have been preferable to edit the text on
that page: for dates there is a clearly-established house style.
If articles seek to link to dates like "July 24th", the text should be
edited, rather than have a slew of redirects for all imaginable date
formats.
In general, badly-formed links should be fixed directly, rather than
throwing another redirect page in.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG graphics

body:
SVG graphics support was suggested on wikipedia-l. I like the idea;
that's why I tried it for Nupedia once, but... :-(
Proposal:
* [[svg:foobar]] is just plain-text editable, but displays as an image
* A link to [[svg:foobar]] is displayed as an image as well

Optional, after saving an edit to [[svg:foobar]], an image (foobar.png)
could be created via svg2png (never tried that, though). The image would
then be displayed instead of the SVG, and "real" SVG display could be
turned on in the user options (until most browsers support native SVG).

I didn't make this a feature request yet.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
> What's the reason for including a non-breaking space in the Wikipedia
> article? That's not snideness: it's key to the answer.

I was looking at some of the music articles, where breaking something like A C
E over two lines looks very bad.

But   does look nasty in the source - do you think it would put
people off from editing?

-M-


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
> WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
> "Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet). It's an
> intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki
> [...]
> I think he's probably right. We should remember that

I think the Portland Pattern Repository (on the topic of
object-oriented programming) and Wikipedia (a general purpose
encyclopeida) are enough different in scope and target audience to
have different rules.  Besides, Wikipedia is now far bigger than
the PPR, and no longer a follower but a leader.

I also think a GUI is unwiki only as much as it is unhuman for man to
go to the moon.  Nobody had done it before 1969.  Some thought it was
impossible.  It might not be really useful, but there could be value
in proving that it is possible and learning from the experience.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Lee (?) wrote:

>The single-equal = Headings = are gone, and have been since the
>Phase III software was installed.  That was entirely a fiat decision
>on my part.  I examined the database to see that they were almost
>never used, and I thought having == through ====== be directly mapped
>to H2 through H6 was nice and simple.  Only the article title gets
>an H1.  I haven't heard a peep about it, so it looks like that
>decision didn't bug anyone.

I didn't realise that it was a change from Phase II
(I didn't notice it until Phase III), but I think that it's just right.
<h1> for the title, so the next is <h2>, and we go from there.
I also notice that starting from <h3> doesn't work right if
numbered heading are set (as I have them set in my preferences).
This justifies me in changing all top level === to == when I see them,
which then enforces a consistent and logical look to the pages.
Great!!!

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Just wondering: when did LDC become in charge of determining what
>Wikipedia's syntax should be?

While I think that your fears are unjustified, Cunc,
at the same time I feel that I know where you're coming from.
Lee has said that he doesn't value humility, and it shows;
but this is his personality type, and I don't think
that he intends to be a tyrant (which I hope that you agree with).

This is one reason that I was trying to get a discussion forum
for bugs and features that more people would see than this list.
When Lee closes a request because he doesn't want to implement it,
it looks dictatorial and arbitrary to me, and *I* know better --
imagine what it must look like to a random user that doesn't!
But this is a problem of perception, because Lee *does*
bow to popular opinion -- and solicit it, as he did this time.

My opinion on the discussion thing, BTW,
is that the best thing to do might well be
to put a link to [[Wikpedia-L]] on [[Bug reports]],
with instructions that while SourceForge is for ''reporting'',
''discussion'' of bugs and features takes place on the list.
Does anybody object to my adding that?

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
> > WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
> > "Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet).
> It's an
> > intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a
> wiki
> > [...]
> > I think he's probably right. We should remember
> that
>
> I think the Portland Pattern Repository (on the
> topic of
> object-oriented programming) and Wikipedia (a
> general purpose
> encyclopeida) are enough different in scope and
> target audience to
> have different rules.

I'm not suggesting a rule, but simply making an
observation. I'm also not against GUIs and multimedia,
as long as we don't lose focus, trying to make
everything flashy and clickable. If someone wants to
make a GUI client for Wikipedia, great. Let's just not
make it mandatory for contributing.

> I also think a GUI is unwiki only as much as it is
> unhuman for man to
> go to the moon.  Nobody had done it before 1969.
> Some thought it was
> impossible.  It might not be really useful, but
> there could be value
> in proving that it is possible and learning from the
> experience.

Sure, as long as it doesn't get in the way of creating
a truly useful, copylefted encyclopedia. I don't think
there's some doctrinal WikiWay that cannot be bent or
reshaped. The very nature of Wikipedia itself is quite
different from any other wiki.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote in part:

>I am unfamiliar with LaTex, does it do diagrams as
>part of its typesetting?

Not as such, although it can handle some in limited capacities
using its table making abilities.  This is mostly used
only for perfectly rectangular commutative diagrams.

But with sufficient programming and funky fonts,
these capabilities can be extended a great deal,
and there is a TeX/LaTeX package, Xy-pic,
that can handle diagrams of all sorts.
For an example of its work, see [[Image:Separation axioms]].
(After several conversions, this is lower quality than it could be.)
This would be a possible but advanced exercise in LaTeX,
but it's a pretty trivial application of Xy-pic.

That said, I'm not at all sure that Xy-pic lends itself to a GUI.
LaTeX, OTOH, does.  So while we might not use it for diagrams,
a GUI front end for LaTeX and a GUI front end for tables
might solve the problems that we're having with each of these.

>Axel, Jan and some others have been after LaTex.  Why?
>Because it greatly improves their efficiency and
>capability of presentation.

Although I've been dragging my feet on this,
it's essentially the user interface that's bothering me.
I too would like to have LaTeX if we can make it user friendly.
A GUI may well be just the way to go about that.

I've seen people here at UC Riverside use Scientific Workplace,
which is among other things, a GUI front end to LaTeX.
Or so it claims; its implementation of LaTeX is rather horrid IMO.
But it shows the possibilities of a WYSIWIG interface for TeX,
and that's an idea that that we might want to look into.
(We can't use Scientific Workplace as such, which is just as well,
but there are other WYSIWIG front ends to LaTeX, such as LyX.
I really don't know anything about these, however.)

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

body:
--- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
wrote:

<snip>

> I agree we must press on with what we have but it
> makes
> me nervous to hear people claiming the text only
> wiki
> interface is an advantage that should be preserved.

I don't think anyone is claiming that. For my part, I
think that the text interface is very important; that
doesn't mean that a GUI is out of the question. I just
want to be able to do everything with my keyboard. If
others think a GUI would be better for them, I have no
objection, so long as the GUI doesn't render the text
interface obsolete.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:

>But   does look nasty in the source - do you think it would put
>people off from editing?

Since Wikipedia web pages are in Latin-1,
an alternative would be to type in the 8-bit character directly:
"?".

List: What are the pros and cons of this approach?

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Parsing TeX

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Jan Hidders wrote:

>>>That mathematical variables are preferrably enclosed in [$ and $] and that
>>>if you want to use sub- and superscript in them you can write [$x_n$] and
>>>[$c^2$].

>>And that you'd better not write "[$x% = x/100$]", because that won't work.

>Since when is "x% = x/100" a common variable name? That's the only thing I
>talked about in my short explanation.

Ah, now it is me that is not understanding you.
You intend to render [$...$] by calling LaTeX
(possibly using a script to render simple things in other ways,
but still ultimately to make LaTeX the arbiter of meaning), right?
But now should I understand that you won't normally use it
in an expression like [$x^2y = z_1$]; you'd write [$x^2$][$y$] = [$z_1$],
and save the full power of LaTeX for the fancy stuff?
That would keep people from trying [$x% = x/100$], mostly.

>>And you'd better not write "the right [[coset]] [$H\G$]".

>Doing group theory is not what I would call "doing only a little
>mathematics". The pages on group theory will probably contain more LaTeX
>anyway.

The current [[Factor group]] (there is no [[Coset]])
would barely improve with LaTeX.

>>>Apart from that there would be another section containing more
>>>explanation for writing complex math with [$ .. $] and [$$ .. $$]. This
>>>would probably be the same as what you would write for [[math: ..]]. We
>>>cannot get around mentioning LaTeX somewhere.

>>Well, that's just it.
>>We must mention LaTeX to make [$c^2$] work your way.

>Where in my little explanation did I use the word LaTeX?

If [$...$] calls LaTeX, then I hope that you mention it ''somewhere''.
I understand that you don't have to mention it at the ''beginning''.

>>But we don't need to mention it for other solutions.

>If you propose [[math: ... ]] then we also cannot explain what it does
>without mentioning LaTeX.

I already agreed that [[math:...]] is essentially the same as [$...$],
if both call LaTeX; it's $$...$$ as <var>...</var> that doesn't need this,
because it ''doesn't'' call LaTeX.

>>But I agree that having 2 systems of notation is problematic.
>>I just find it even *more* problematic to have 1 system of notation
>>that will mystify anybody that tries to use a percent symbol or a brace.

>Of course, but if you introduce LaTeX something like that is going to happen
>anyway. Please keep in mind that all the time I have been arguing that *if*
>we introduce a mark-up for LaTeX *then* it's better to have one mark-up for
>variables and expressions. That doesn't say anything about what we should do
>if we don't introduce LaTeX, but I suspect you already know what my position
>then will be.

I also am speaking about ''if'' we introduce a markup for LaTeX;
but my argument is that it shouldn't make simple things any harder,
or introduce surprises into simple things (like weird behavior for "%").

>>That's not what I meant; what's relevant to me is the argument against
>><var>. If that's really not right, then it could put a new perspective on
>>*my* view of the matter, even if it doesn't affect *yours*.

>I don't have an argument against <var> per se. I have argued that (1) if we
>already have ''' and <i> I don't think the added complexity of <var> is
>justified and (2) if we already have mark-up for LaTeX then we could also
>use that for variable name, so then we also don't need <var>. Since we
>already exchanged our arguments on (1) and no more new points were raised, I
>don't see any point in continuing that discussion.

I remember these, and I agree that there's no point in rehashing them.
It's the comment that <var> was never intended for mathematical variables
that caught my eye.  I'd like to hear more about that, if you want,
either here or elsewhere.  But we can continue the main discussion meanwhile.

>>But since you and I are the only people discussing this now, and I'm
>>standing in opposition to you, still you should care about that.

>Oh, but I do. It's just that I have a busy day time job (that tends to flow
>over into my weekends) where I have to write articles with dead-lines and
>teach classes at university the next day. So I like to keep my discussions
>short and to the point so there is also some time left to also actually add
>something to Wikipedia.

I'm mostly staying away from the discussion of tables for this reason ^_^.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG graphics

body:
On Sun, Aug 11, 2002 at 12:52:32PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>
> I'm not sure that SVGs are sufficiently user-friendly for it to make
> sense to edit the source wiki-style, except perhaps for the simplest of
> images (maybe for [[Square]] and [[Triangle]]...).

I agree, editing that XML by hand is not going to be much used. There are
already applets out there that let you do some editing on an image. See, and
be amazed:

  http://twiki.org:80/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/TWikiDrawPlugin

Unfortunately it's not using SVG although they seem to consider it. See:

  http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/TWikiDrawSvgPluginDev

It's a nice reminder of what is possible.

> To me, it makes more sense to keep them in the [[image:]] space, with
> automagic conversion[1] when we notice we're dealing with a *.svg.

For conversion to PNG I just tried the Batik tools. They are in the form of
Java jar files. At the moment I cannot get it to render text in images, but
it also complains about some missing fonts, so that could be my fault. For
the rest it seems to be working fine. In case you are interested and want to
try it yourself:

  http://xml.apache.org/batik/

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction of current and ongoing events of historical significance

body:
What do the people on the list think of articles like
[[Stock market downturn of 2002]] and [[United States invasion of Iraq]]?
Much previous discussion is at the pages linked from
[[Talk:Stock market downturn of 2002]] and [[Talk:Main Page]].
See also the The Cunctator's Aug 11 00:34 PDT change to
[[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]].

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Naming conventions (city names)

body:
I saw the tail end of discussion of this issue on this list,
but I didn't participate and, thinking that the issue was decided,
but also thinking that the decision was (to an extent) wrong,
and seeing no mention of the dissent that I remembered from the list
on the page [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names)]],
I added a statement of my opinion, just for the record, on the talk page.

To my surprise, many others chimed in to say that they felt the same,
and in fact some have now been saying that the issue was ''never'' decided.
If that is true, then the naming conventions page is in error
(to the extent that it purports to describe settled policy).

I urge this list to look at the talk page mentioned above,
as well as [[Talk:Naming conventions]], where people (not me) are discussing
not the convention itself but the process by which it was reached.

'''I especially urge natives and residents of the British Isles,
and other native English speakers in Europe, to weigh in!!!'''

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Making the ISBN links go to a book store search engine giving you
> comparative prices is very different from Amazon links which usually are

I just learned that Amazon.com has some new web services stuff, that
might be interesting.  You can download their kit, and write your own
applications on your own website.  I haven't checked it out yet, but
the info is on http://www.amazon.com/webservices

I guess they are not placing their reviews under GFDL, though... that
would have been a great service!  Is it OK to put book reviews in
Wikipedia (on an Amazon scale)?  Do we know how many book reviews are
already in Wikipedia?  Or should there be a separate wiki for this?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > Making the ISBN links go to a book store search
> engine giving you
> > comparative prices is very different from Amazon
> links which usually are
>
> I just learned that Amazon.com has some new web
> services stuff, that
> might be interesting.  You can download their kit,
> and write your own
> applications on your own website.  I haven't checked
> it out yet, but
> the info is on http://www.amazon.com/webservices
>
> I guess they are not placing their reviews under
> GFDL, though... that
> would have been a great service!  Is it OK to put
> book reviews in
> Wikipedia (on an Amazon scale)?  Do we know how many
> book reviews are
> already in Wikipedia?  Or should there be a separate
> wiki for this?

There is a fairly new wiki dedicated to books called
BookShelved (http://bookshelved.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl).
It sounds like just the place for book reviews.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction
  of current and ongoing events of historical significance

body:
At 04:18 AM 8/12/02 -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
>What do the people on the list think of articles like
>[[Stock market downturn of 2002]] and [[United States invasion of Iraq]]?
>Much previous discussion is at the pages linked from
>[[Talk:Stock market downturn of 2002]] and [[Talk:Main Page]].
>See also the The Cunctator's Aug 11 00:34 PDT change to
>[[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]].


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
On Monday 12 August 2002 03:56, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> >But   does look nasty in the source - do you think it would put
> >people off from editing?
>
> Since Wikipedia web pages are in Latin-1,
> an alternative would be to type in the 8-bit character directly:
> "?".
>
> List: What are the pros and cons of this approach?

If the browser is set to UTF-8, which is necessary to view pages that have
characters beyond Latin-1, and the nbsp is preceded by an accented letter
(C0-FF), the browser will display them as one character. I don't know what it
will do if it sees an A0 by itself.

phma


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
>
> > What's the reason for including a non-breaking space in the Wikipedia
> > article? That's not snideness: it's key to the answer.
>
> I was looking at some of the music articles, where breaking something like A C
> E over two lines looks very bad.
>
> But   does look nasty in the source - do you think it would put
> people off from editing?

I'd suggest just putting a <BR> before the string that you want to keep
together so that it starts out on a fresh line and has plenty of space
to fit itself in together... that's how I'd do it anyway.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Collaborative, up-to-the-minute construction of
 	current and ongoing events of historical significance

body:
>
>That's one opinion. Mine is different.

It's ok, you can tell me...

Fred


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
> tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:
>>Someone's just made a ton of redirects along the lines of
>>
>>[[06-05]] ---> [[June 5]]
>>
>>I think it would have been preferable to edit the text on that page:
>
> Amen.  If only because 06-05 is *clearly* [[May 6]] :)

Surely not! 06-05 is part of a date in ISO long format. With links it'll
look like so: [[YYYY]]-[[MM-DD]]

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-breaking space

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Monday 12 August 2002 03:56, Toby Bartels wrote:
>>Since Wikipedia web pages are in Latin-1,
>>an alternative would be to type in the 8-bit character directly:
>>" ".
>>
>>List: What are the pros and cons of this approach?
>
> If the browser is set to UTF-8, which is necessary to view pages that have
> characters beyond Latin-1, and the nbsp is preceded by an accented letter
> (C0-FF), the browser will display them as one character. I don't know what it
> will do if it sees an A0 by itself.

If your browser is set to UTF-8 on an ISO-8859-1 page, you're doing
something very wrong.

(Perhaps you're running Netscape 4.x, which has bugs that prevent it
from showing non-Latin-1 character entities unless you switch to a more
inclusive character encoding, thereby trashing any directly encoded
non-ASCII characters?)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

> Something to consider mentioning on
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia%3AHow_to_use_redirect_pages :
>
> Someone's just made a ton of redirects along the lines of
>
> [[06-05]] ---> [[June 5]]
>
> I think it would have been preferable to edit the text on that page:

Amen.  If only because 06-05 is *clearly* [[May 6]] :)
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

in_reply_to: <3D571E4D.9824075@surfbest.net>; from mri_icboise@surfbest.net on Sun, Aug 11, 2002 at 07:32:45PM -0700

body:
On Sun, Aug 11, 2002 at 07:32:45PM -0700, Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
> Sorry Jan, I did not mean to imply that graphics editing
> had not been considered.  I was attempting to weigh in
> on the point that graphics is an important presention tool
> for our stated project goals.

No aplogies needed. I agreed that having editable graphics is important and
I just wanted to share that the technology is already there. In fact, it is
I who has to apologize to the developers because they had already considerd
it. They are are discussing it again at the moment.

> I agree we must press on with what we have but it makes
> me nervous to hear people claiming the text only wiki
> interface is an advantage that should be preserved.

It has to be preserved because we want Wikipedia to be as accessible as
possible and not just to people with WebDAV-enabled browsers or something.
It's quite possible to provide an extra WebDAV interface, but what problem
would that solve? That doesn't mean we cannot also have next to the
text-only interface more user-friendly (more graphical, more WYSIWYG,
whatever) interfaces. In fact, that will probably happen anyway because
there are developers who think it is worth their time. But Wikipedia will
always have to stay simple enough to be usable with a text-only interface.

-- Jan Hiders


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

in_reply_to: <20020812075215.GC4502@math-lw-n02.ucr.edu>; from toby+wikipedia-l@math.ucr.edu on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 12:52:15AM -0700

body:
On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 12:52:15AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Michael R. Irwin wrote in part:
>
> >I am unfamiliar with LaTex, does it do diagrams as
> >part of its typesetting?
>
> Not as such, although it can handle some in limited capacities
> using its table making abilities.  This is mostly used
> only for perfectly rectangular commutative diagrams.

Actually you can get pretty far with the picture environment. A friend of
mine wrote a PhD thesis on Petri nets, and he did all his pictures in that.
However, I still think that for graphics SVG is a better format.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG graphics

body:
> SVG graphics support was suggested on wikipedia-l. I like the
> idea; that's why I tried it for Nupedia once, but... :-(
> Proposal: [[svg:foobar]] is just plain-text editable, but
> displays as an image; A link to [[svg:foobar]] is displayed as
> an image as well.  Optional, after saving an edit to
> [[svg:foobar]], an image (foobar.png) could be created via
> svg2png (never tried that, though). The image would then be
> displayed instead of the SVG, and "real" SVG display could be
> turned on in the user options (until most browsers support
> native SVG).

That's pretty much what I had in mind as well, but SVG isn't
mature enough yet to think about.  For now, people can upload
the "source file" for a drawing in SVG, as well as uploading a
PNG version, and just link to the PNG in the article.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Gareth Owen wrote:
>
>> tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:
>>
>>> Someone's just made a ton of redirects along the lines of
>>>
>>> [[06-05]] ---> [[June 5]]
>>>
>>> I think it would have been preferable to edit the text on that page:
>>
>>
>> Amen.  If only because 06-05 is *clearly* [[May 6]] :)
>
>
> Surely not! 06-05 is part of a date in ISO long format. With links
> it'll look like so: [[YYYY]]-[[MM-DD]]
>
Exactly!  The [[06-05]] alone was taken out of context.  The redirects
allow the ISO long format to work, and at most there will only be 366
such redirects.  Multiple ways of doing things can be great, if you keep
a few things in mind.
    1. Don't expect anybody else to do things your way.
    2. It is grossly impolite to change anybody else's work in an
article to fit your way of doing things.
    3. Make the necessary redirects or other adaptations that will allow
your way to function in a context of Wikipedia orthodoxy.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: City names

body:
I'm at work right now so I can't go into any detail
(shocking, yeah I know) but it looks like the city
naming convention might become disambiguation based
(meaning it will only be used when there are in fact
different things/other cities that share the city's
name).

We are now working out the details and invite anyone
interested in this topic to visit
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/wikipedia_talk:naming_conventions_(city_names)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
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HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
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body:
At 07:05 AM 8/12/02 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:

>"Current events is not a news page. We shouldn't be in the business of
>writing articles about breaking news stories, unless indeed we can be very
>confident, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, that in the future
>there will be a significant call for an encyclopedia article on that topic.
>One very significant danger is that news articles must be kept current in
>order to remain accurate. Wikipedians might begin a news article and then
>simply lose interest in the topic, whereupon the article becomes
>inaccurate. In short, we aren't set up to be an amateur news organization,
>and we shouldn't try to compete with professional news organizations."
>
>In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not yet
>determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be
>significant when it does. It is pretty clear that an article that does
>doesn't attract participation is a loser. If an article does attact
>significant participation it provides a record of contemporary views of the
>event.
>
>I think any event might be mentioned in current events with links to
>existing or proposed background articles. The event itself might not be a
>worthy article.

Indeed. This is why I put a note in Current events about the Colombian
state of emergency, but made the links to Colombia and the president (who
doesn't yet have an article).
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org