subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy: bans

body:
Hi!

On Fri,  7 May 2004 14:37:06 -0700, uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>* If a user edits the same article with more than one user ID (sock puppet) within 10 days, they will be banned
>for a period of 7 days.

Then you have to be able to definitely tell who is and is not a sock puppet. I
have been accused of being one myself, although I have no clue whom I was
supposed to be a sock puppet for. (Not to mention that I had to look up the
word in the first place.) Also, some users simply share the same opinion,
without them being the same person. And IP addresses don't work all the time,
either; most Europeans don't have a fixed one, and I guess many non-Europeans
neither.

>* If a user reverts an article excessively without discussion and in such a way as to prevent useful work from
>being done on the article, the article should be protected.  If the user is culpable in more than three such
>pages within 10 days, they will be banned for a period of 7 days.

Again, this is easily written, but not always easy to confirm. The one who's
work is reverted will always complain "that they are just trying to do useful
work" and the one doing the reverting will always consider it "vandalising" or
"trolling". And not every article is about subjects easily understood by other
people, so that decision might be a triffle difficult to make.

>* If a user has a pattern of editing in bad faith, such as vandalism, threats of violence, personal attacks,
>legal threats, racism, the problematic edits should be reverted, regardless of where they are made (talk space,
>user page).  If they continue (more than five?) the user should be banned for 7 days.

That is the one point that can be easily determined to have taken place.

Greetings from Cologne
Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alex Regh

subject: [WikiEN-l] a preliminary idea on resolution of immediate disputes

body:
Hi!

On Fri, 7 May 2004 19:06:11 -0400, Fennec Foxen wrote:

>That way if, say, three sysops got together and listed a user for
>blocking, he could not be unblocked until three or more sysops got
>together and listed him for unblocking.

That sounds like a good idea, however, there is the potential problem of small
groups of sysops acting togehter on everything, small cabals, if you like.
Happens inevitably, and can start quite innocently by people starting ask
those with whom they get along, say in the chat, or a mailing list.

I'd therefore propose (although that has probably been done before) that there
is an option for getting more oppinions from other sysops, a sysop-channel on
IRC, for example, which would only be accessible to sysops, and where every
ban and every protection would need to find a mayoritiy of votes. Faster than
quickpolls, and if the channel is logged, the decisions can be found later,
too.

Greetings from Cologne
Alex

--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Anthere-
> > I would be happy that we begin thinking of how we
> > could "give" these "official titles" to
> participants,
> > so that they can fully help according to their
> > abilities and wilingness.
>
> Yes, that makes sense wherever there is a need for
> official contacts; in
> particular, every wiki should have a content
> partnership coordinator and a
> press contact. I'm not sure if we can legally
> transfer the position of
> treasurer like that, but it would be a shame if Mav
> couldn't continue his
> great work in that area.

Nod, absolutely. Mav should do it, and this is
precisely one of the example. Mav could directly have
this trusted position (I mean, he already has it right
? :-))

This said, I was not necessarily thinking of a "head",
ie, of *one* partnership coordinator or *one* press
contact. Just on fr, where we are far less numerous,
we were two press contact for the press release.
I would prefer a flat structure as much as possible.
The coordination just happens rather naturally on each
wiki; through discussion. It is the wiki way. People
interested in a topic just naturally gather and work
together.

I do not think that putting officially the
responsability in the hand of *one* person
specifically is the best option. It is not empowering
people. Rather, people will tend to rely on the *head*
to do things.

The idea is not to make someone the "chief" on a
matter. The idea is to make it possible for some
trusted users to talk to other people *external* to
the project, and have these external people know
*these* participants are trusted to discuss such
matters.

Also, I am not sure this should necessarily be
language specific. Some topics should not be language
specific, when that engage the entirety of the
project.

Let me give you an example. I don't know if that is
realistic, but that is for the *example*.
If Jimbo is away (are not available or whatever),
Brion could be officially trusted to purchase any
piece necessary to fix a server problem, or even buy a
server itself. He could have the "right" and "ability"
to spent money to do so. Or it could be Shaihulud. Or
whomever. We would know that Brion would have taken
the best solution, after discussion with others, and
he could "act". It does not mean he is the boss, it
means the community trusts him for such a move and
wants the "outside" to know this, and be able to check
this.

Would you call that delegation ?

> We should also decide which of these positions are
> going to be elected,
> and which ones are appointed. Coordination of the
> representatives from the
> different wikis could be handled here on
> foundation-l.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Well, the idea is not to fall into bureaucracy, ie in
some intensive voting. Some events just happen
naturally. Look, a long time ago (was it perhaps a
year ago now ?), Mav wrote on meta that he wanted to
be the treasurer. I think there was no opposition, or
rather support. Jimbo was fine with this as well. So,
Mav just naturally took care of these matters.
Similarly, when we had the first two press releases,
Yann and I said we were interested to take care of
this; and so it was. Perhaps the idea is not to run an
official election to vote who between Anthere or Yann
should be the "head" of this from now on and
coordinate all of it. We should let people do what
they feel like doing, and when they feel like doing
it.
It may be that some positions require a bit more of
structuring, but I fear you may not have understood
what I proposed.

Let me be very specific.

Say I wish to contact a big charitable association,
and perhaps try to make a partnership with them. I may
be the most appropriate person to do this because
1) I know them
2) they do things in a field I know, so I can talk
with them
3) I am interested in doing so

Now, say I contact them, and we proceed on negociation
for perhaps a donation from them, and perhaps they
want to be sure the donation is used for a specific
reason (ie, perhaps not to pay server or a german
wikireader, but they want to give money to send some
paper versions of Wikipedia in french, english and
arab somewhere in africa). This is not language
related. This is specific  request and involves
several branches of the project.

In my proposition, I contact them, I deal with them,
and when they ask if I have the right to negociate
this, and make some promises about how the money will
be used, I answer yes. And the deal is done.

In your proposition, I go see the coordinator of
partnership of french, spanish and english wikipedia.
I negociate with them to convince them to contact the
organisation. I explain them what is interesting to
negociate. I let them try to make a deal, that perhaps
do not interest them specifically. As for myself, I go
back editing a couple of articles, and wait for things
to proceed. Chance is, the deal is not done, and next
time, I do not go and ask the "coordinator". I just do
not do anything. Because I have felt it was not my
job, I become passive.

So, what I propose is not to name people to become
responsible of things in the name of others, but to
give opportunity to people to act themselves, rather
than to wait for a coordinator to do what they could
have done themselves.

__________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy: bans

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net a ?crit:
> The simplest thing to do with regard to trolls, vandals, and problematic POV editors with agendas is to
> formulate a clear policy and then authorize the existing administrators to enforce it.  It is not necessary for
> it to be prescriptive (3 edits in 24 hours etc), just clear.
>
> The quickpoll system is divisive and should be dismantled.  Bans and blocks can be reversed, and should be,
> when improperly used.
>
> Some examples to consider:
>
> * If a user edits the same article with more than one user ID (sock puppet) within 10 days, they will be banned
> for a period of 7 days.
> * If a user reverts an article excessively without discussion and in such a way as to prevent useful work from
> being done on the article, the article should be protected.  If the user is culpable in more than three such
> pages within 10 days, they will be banned for a period of 7 days.
> * If a user has a pattern of editing in bad faith, such as vandalism, threats of violence, personal attacks,
> legal threats, racism, the problematic edits should be reverted, regardless of where they are made (talk space,
> user page).  If they continue (more than five?) the user should be banned for 7 days.
>
> Make it clear.  Make it reasonably objective.  Leave it to administrators to be fair.  If the policy doesn't
> work, fix it, or go back to the current state of affairs.
>
> Does that make Wikipedia a cabal?  With 221 administrators and counting I think not.
>
> UninvitedCompany

Well, why not. But it all depends whether the policy has to be followed
to the point or not. If one sysop can enforce it, and another sysop
removing the enforcement is automatically labelled "wrong-doing sysop",
we in effect have a better management of bad people, but it does not
matter that there 220 other administrators.

The policy should then be such that
* there are *good* blocking guidelines
* a sysop following those guidelines can't be "guilty of sysop abuse"
* and a sysop reverting the first sysop can't be "guilty of sysop abuse"
either.

So, if the community widely agree, the guy will be blocked, but a unique
sysop trying to act will not be criticized too heavily for having
blocked perhaps too quickly. I think "fear" of acting often paralyse our
sysop :-)

Which I understand...


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Isam Bayazidi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] language limited funding/donation

body:
Alex Regh wrote:

>However, my guess is also that this would require *a lot* of rewriting of the
>software, so at best this can be a long-term option. But not one I'd dismiss
>right away.
>
>
Do I understand from this that the Mediawiki software have a limitation
in that regard ? I thought that there is already somehow a distribution
for the servers between English and non-English wikipedias.. as
sometimes English work, while other langs don't.. and in other times
non-English work fine, while English is not..

Does all Wikipedias currently share the same resources with equal
priorities ? or there is already certain setups that are made for Large
wikipedias such as English and German ?

Yours
Isam Bayazidi


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's problems

body:
: who want to work with you toward a common goal, as
opposed
: to putting up with the disruptions and distortions and
: evasions and downright lies that we get so used to here.
: (You want examples? Try Wik or Nico or RK. ...

More off-topic slander. I'm not surprised. I don't even
contribute to Wikipedia anymore, ever since many members on
this list became actively anti-Semitic.  It was bad enough
when proven Nazis like Stervertigo, and his cheerleader
Martin (MyRedDice) Harper were allowed to push their views
with the full support of this list.

It got worse when various list members wrote and telephoned
me privately in support, but admitted that they would never
speak out here in public because they were afraid of being
ganged up on (they were correct.)

It got even worse when your so-called arbitartors publicly
demanded that I accept admitted Nazis and work with them.
(Such quotes are still archived.) Sane people would see
that as obvious Jew-baiting; similarly, demanding that our
black contributors work with members of the Ku Klux Klan
would be racist black-hating. Yet sadly when this was
brought to the attention of this list, none of you
mentioned any problem with this.

It got even worse: In recent weeks Steve Rubenstein warned
you all about another Jew-hater who was constantly
vandalizing Wikipedia and clearly pushing Nazi websites.
Yet in response, you refused to ban this person.
Outrageously many of you said that you wanted this Nazi's
views, and that you wanted to find a way to keep him on as
a contributor.

People like you would be (and indeed, are) fired from
respectable encyclopedia projects.

Every wonder why so many people leave this project? It has
been taken over by leftists, anarchists, anti-science
whackos and hatemongers.

To be blunt, as long as you refuse to reform your system,
and as long as you allow these people to push hatred and
nonsense, Wikipedia will never be respected.  It may become
popular, as Google hits show, but then again the
Nazi-website "JewWatch" is popular as well. Being
associated with this kind of popularity is something that I
do not want.  I should have listed to my colleagues last
year, when they told me that they forbade their students
from using Wikipedia. They said it was anti-science,
anti-Semitic, out of control, and that without empowered
moderators it merely created facts by voting.

That is the kind of leftist Stanlinism-type "research" that
truly educated peopel abhor. Facts are not created by the
consensus of the most radical writers, no matter what the
deconstructionists and leftists among you might wish to
believe.

While Jimbo's idea of an open-source encyclopedia still is
a very good idea, Wikipedia will never be achieve this
goal. At best, it will be a good feeder and working sandbox
for articles that can be vetted by professionals for a
second-level, stable open-source encyclopedia, like Nupedia
was supposed to be. But the Wikipedia itself will at best
become well-known and infamous...not good.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
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body:
Hi!

On Sat, 08 May 2004 04:05:14 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:

>I don't know any details about Akamai (which is what Alex was
>specifically talking about), but I believe it's some sort of distributed
>caching system. Our biggest problems are on the database and apache
>servers that do the work of dynamic page generation; more front-end
>caches would be less helpful.

I don't know how they work, but I guess they have to have some mechanism for
the feedback, too. A distributed cache for reading would probably be helpfull
already, and in the long term it might make sense to distribute the databases,
too. After all, why should chinese and arabian (for example) entries have to
cross an ocean to get edited, those WPs are probably read there a lot more
than in America or Europe, too.

On the other hand, these are very long-term considerations; right now we
should concentrate on getting the hardware running we have and/or will get
soon.

Greetings from Cologne
Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


from_name: Cimon Avaro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 01:32, Theresa Robinson wrote:
> > I think Wikipedia tends to tilt slightly tilted towards the left of
> > center, and slightly towards an EU-centric viewpoint, vaguely along the
> > lines of BBC News's tilt (though theirs is somewhat more pronounced).
>
> How fascinating!  I tend to find wikipedia slanted slightly right-wing,
> with a wide spectrum of people to round it out.  It's very interesting
> that we can get such different opinions of the same group of people.
>

Well, for myself, I consider Wikipedia bumpy rather than slanted. That
is there are distinct lumps in the political landscape where a
particular location seems to be more extrusively occupied than others.
What we should strive for is to get enough of those lumps so we end up
with a cobble-stone pavement in the end, without notable potholes.

In a philosophical mood;

Cimon Avaro


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's problems

body:
Robert wrote:

>It got even worse: In recent weeks Steve Rubenstein warned
>you all about another Jew-hater who was constantly
>vandalizing Wikipedia and clearly pushing Nazi websites.
>Yet in response, you refused to ban this person.
>Outrageously many of you said that you wanted this Nazi's
>views, and that you wanted to find a way to keep him on as
>a contributor.
>
>
Perhaps you missed it, but Paul Vogel was banned for a year.

As far as banning people for racist views goes, I don't think we can do
that.  We can't ban people for *any* particular viewpoints.  Saying "we
don't ban people for their beliefs, except racism, we make an exception
for that one" is kind of odd.  What about other objectionable beliefs?
Should we ban Satanists?  A lot of people find Satanism as objectionable
as racism.  What about Stalinists?  There's too many ways to be offended.

Removing inappropriate material that is out of context and improperly
labeled is of course okay, especially if it's external links (since our
primary business is not a web directory).  And banning people for
repeatedly inserting links all over the place and refusing to stop is
okay too.  So we did end up banning him because of his personal attacks,
vandalism, and general unwillingness to work with others.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>...
> I would be happy that we begin thinking of how we
> could "give" these "official titles" to participants,
> so that they can fully help according to their
> abilities and wilingness.

I think that this a very good idea. But it will require a change in the bylaws.
However since the bylaws cannot be finalized until after two more trustees take
their positions and vote on them, I don't think this will be a problem so long
as the right people get elected.

I've already stated, several times in the past, that the roles of trustee and
the roles of corporate officers should be divorced from one another. This is
needed in order to provide proper checks and balances (the board oversees the
officiers and the foundation membership oversees the board).

> Basically, it requires 3 steps
>
> -------
>
> * setting up a list of "official titles", with
> associated description of what this encompasses
>
> Example : Wikimedia treasurer : someone to keep track
> of donations or other funding, and keep track of how
> money is spent
>
> Example : Public relations : someone who organise
> press releases, give interviews, etc. Trying to find
> funding probably comes in here.

Nod.

> We should set this list all together. There is already
> some stuff written about this on meta, but it was more
> planned for a board. Since the board will be very
> small, we should expand this to wikimedia (full) or
> foundation (those who paid the fee) participants.
>
> The list could be approved by the Board.

I agree that the board should appoint officers from a self-selected candidate
list.

> * Enlisting people for each role.
>
> Several if necessary.
> We obviously need only one treasurer for now; But
> definitly several public relation officials. Given
> Wikipedia concept, I don't think we need a head for
> PR, the community is the head, but we definitly do
> need at least a dozen people as PR officials.

Nod.

> I view this as fairly loose. Let's have a page on
> meta. People interested list themselves there. The
> community then approve or does not approve to give
> this "official" title. Finally, the board approve or
> not.

I strongly feel that it should be the other way around; the board appoints
officers and the foundation membership either approves or disapproves the
appointees. This provides a check against merely popular people being appointed
to positions they are not qualified to perform. The board members themselves
are the ones that are directly elected. Thus they are the ones legally
responsible for their appointees.

> * Last, on Wikimedia Foundation web site, we maintain
> a list of these official representative. Something
> very official looking, so that an "official
> representative" can point a potential partner this
> page to "prove" he is trusted by his peers for
> negociation.

Nod.

> What do you think ?

With a few minor changes as I noted, I think it is a great idea.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> ...
> I have no problem with multiple people filling a certain role, in fact I
> support it, but the number of people should be limited. For example we
> could say "one press officer for every country, or for every 40 million
> inhabitants of a country", so the US would end up with 6 press officers,
> Germany with 2, etc.

That is a neat idea.

-- mav

__________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>
>>Finally, we have found a wiki to which we can direct our trolls, instead
>>of trying to pawn them off on Meatball or Sheldon's Disinfopedia!
>>
>>
>I would recommend against that, actually.  I've talked to Juxho a fair
>bit, and he's a nice person who is trying to figure out how to have a
>nice wiki.  He didn't say this part, but I think he's just not quite
>sure what to do about this situation.
>
The problem with joking and being serious at the same time is that
you're pretty much guaranteed to be misunderstood.

If Juxho actually objects to having us steer trolls his way, then we
should respect that. From looking at Consumerium, along with what other
people had to say, I had the impression that he's relatively accepting
of them. But I can also see that this is a small wiki still trying to
find its identity.

Anyway, if Consumerium or some other site does really become a
TrollWiki, it could be useful in providing an outlet to divert some of
the pressure that occasionally builds up around here.

--Michael Snow
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's problems

body:
It took a while, Robert, but we did ban this guy for one year (I would have
banned him indefinitely). I would have banned him (if our policy permited)
for his anti-semitisim and systematic point of view editing (just as I would
ban you should the opportunity arise for systematic point of view editing,
if our policy permitted).

I don't know what we can do about someone who sees anti-Semitism everywhere
and thinks he is being persecuted. The problem is that you are a very
aggressive editor, constantly pushing your "scientism" point of view, so
folks are in fights with you. Perhaps some take cheap shots at you once they
learn you are sensitive. Then there are a few actual anti-Semites (I would
exclude those who are disturbed by the excesses of Zionism).

As to talking with folks, it slows you down, but generally is at least as
productive as writing articles. Your opponents would not be editing the
article you are unless they have a common interest in the topic. I think, at
least sometimes, great differences in perspective can be bridged or at least
understood. Not that I was ever able to do that with you. But, if you were
wiling to listen and think about others perspectives I think you might be
able to work with some editors with whom you think you can't work with.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 14:43:29 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's problems
>
> It got even worse: In recent weeks Steve Rubenstein warned
> you all about another Jew-hater who was constantly
> vandalizing Wikipedia and clearly pushing Nazi websites.
> Yet in response, you refused to ban this person.
> Outrageously many of you said that you wanted this Nazi's
> views, and that you wanted to find a way to keep him on as
> a contributor.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Georg Jaehnig

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Big dictionary under GFDL

body:
Hello,

you've problably seen the "Reta Vortaro", it's a big Esperanto
dictionary, providing information about Esperanto-words but also
translations of them into many languages:

http://www.uni-leipzig.de/esperanto/voko/revo/

Example: dog
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/esperanto/voko/revo/art/hund.html

It's downloadable in XML-format and - it is free under GFDL!
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/esperanto/voko/tgz/index.html

I think it would be great using this as a basic database of the new
Esperanto-Wiktionary (http://eo.wiktionary.org), but because of the
XML-format it should be easy to create word indexes of other
languages.

There is just somebody needed who knows how to convert the
XML-structure into Wiki-Code and how to import this into the existing
Wiktionaries.

--
Jorge | "Wenn Dich Regeln so nerv?s und depressiv machen,
         dass Du keine Lust mehr hast, am Wiki teilzunehmen,
         dann ignoriere sie einfach und mach weiter."
        Regel der Wikipedia. http://www.wikipedia.de


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

body:
On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 14:47 +0200, Alex Regh wrote:

> I don't know how they work, but I guess they have to have some mechanism for
> the feedback, too. A distributed cache for reading would probably be helpfull
> already, and in the long term it might make sense to distribute the databases,
> too. After all, why should chinese and arabian (for example) entries have to
> cross an ocean to get edited, those WPs are probably read there a lot more
> than in America or Europe, too.

More caching is planned for logged-in users and caching parts of a page
using ESI (http://www.esi.org) which is the main technology used and
partly developed by Akamai. Squid3 supports it, the new xhtml is
structured to simplify this, see the html comments at
http://test.wikipedia.org for some info on this.

There's still heaps of work to be done to ESI-enable MediaWiki:
* providing an efficient way to do the partial views
* purging parts
* maybe translating templates to ESI snippets as well to make the easily
purgeable
* Squid3 with esi/epoll stability testing)

Anybody wishing to help is welcome of course- the more hands, the
quicker this will happen.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Yes, that makes sense wherever there is a need for official contacts; in
> particular, every wiki should have a content partnership coordinator and a
> press contact. I'm not sure if we can legally transfer the position of
> treasurer like that, but it would be a shame if Mav couldn't continue his
> great work in that area.

Thanks :) Just rewrite the by-laws to separate the function of treasurer from
being one of the trustees to being a separate financial officer who is
appointed by the trustees and approved by the membership (same with the
secretary position - we also may eventually need a president and vice
president, but that can wait). The current by-laws are still in final draft
form so this should be an easy thing to do.

But as I said before, I don't want this position, I just want to make sure the
work gets done and am willing to do that work. If a Wikimedian who happened to
have relevant experience, who was trusted by board, and who wanted to do the
work showed up, then I would let them do that work and I would work in some
other area that needed attention. Until then, I serve at the pleasure of the
board.

I would be able to do a much better job if I had the ability to check the
Wikimedia bank account balance and transactions myself and had better access to
the PayPal account. As it is, I have to pester Jimbo about the bank account
balance every few weeks ( <cough> currently pestering </cough> ;) and the
limited PayPal access I have gives me raw data that are difficult to work with
(there seem to be advanced reporting features that I'm locked out of). I also
have no way to really account for expenditures and thus have not been tracking
that - that's not good.

But if a background check were conducted on me (Jimbo already has the info
needed for that) and I had an official position in the foundation, then I could
have the access I need in order to correctly report the foundation's finances.
Until then I'm perfectly fine with the limited access I do have. I feel that,
organizationally, it would set a dangerous precedent to give anyone such access
minus a background check and an official position that the officer (and
ultimately his/her boss, the trustees) are accountable for.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS: I haven't made a final decision yet, but so far I like what I'm hearing
from the leading trustee candidates and thus (so far) don't feel I need to run.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
Anthere-
> I would be happy that we begin thinking of how we
> could "give" these "official titles" to participants,
> so that they can fully help according to their
> abilities and wilingness.

Yes, that makes sense wherever there is a need for official contacts; in
particular, every wiki should have a content partnership coordinator and a
press contact. I'm not sure if we can legally transfer the position of
treasurer like that, but it would be a shame if Mav couldn't continue his
great work in that area.

We should also decide which of these positions are going to be elected,
and which ones are appointed. Coordination of the representatives from the
different wikis could be handled here on foundation-l.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


body:
Jimmy-
> At the same time, of course, I do recognize that donors care about
> what *they* care about, and frequently of course this would be their
> own language wikipedia.

We may solve this problem simply by requiring local branches to share all
proceeds with the mother organization, 50/50.

> THIS PART IS IMPORTANT -- $20,000 of new hardware is ordered and will
> be here within 2 week or so.

That sounds good! Could you send an update to Mav about our current state
of funds?

Also, are we still pursuing a refund or replacement for Geoffrin, or has
that already been addressed?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium and 142

body:
"Fennec Foxen" <fennec at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:3406cd4e04050716174153651c at mail.gmail.com...
> On Fri, 07 May 2004 14:30:37 -0700, Stan Shebs
<shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> > Having scanned their RC, I think they're going to be preoccupied
> > with their own problems more than attacking Wikipedia.  For instance,
> > 142.177 created some pages about some of our favorite people ("Auntie"
> > Angela, Tim Starling, and Erik Moeller) summarizing their evil deeds
> > (great reading, like watching Rashomon), then later somebody named
> > Juxho blanked them! A beautiful example of people bringing their
> > baggage with them wherever they go...
>
> Do the site owners know about this? Do you think this is just another
> friendly Recyclopedia which 142.177 is subverting to his own
> purpouses? How can we contact the owners and ask them whether they
> find this acceptable? =/

The site owner is Juxho. Stan Shebs noticed him blanking some things. I've
suggested to Juxho before that he might want to get rid of 142, but he's
happy to tolerate him, just deleting particularly objectionable material.
142 has been at consumerium for many months now.

142 is a professional wiki troll. He is active on many wikis. On some wikis
he encounters resistance, like Wikinfo or Wikipedia, and on others, he is
able to set up shop and write about his philosophy in detail, and edit the
wiki's statements of policy and direction to include his own peculiar views.

> Why doesn't 142.177 just spring for his own wiki hosting already? =b

He's been offered free hosting at least twice. But that's no fun. Unless
he's stepping on someone's toes while he writes, there's no point in
writing. Here's what he told me when I suggested moving off consumerium to a
wiki made just for him:

--START QUOTE--

Absolutely not. If you attempt such a move, you will be undone. Also if you
persist, defamed in ways that reach beyond wiki-space (fair game, as libel
of named parties was begun on your "mailing list").

The Content Wiki and Opinion Wiki of Consumerium will have very severe
governance problems. The Wikipedia problems are just a prototype or
foreshadowing of these. So while it is normal to have no-compromise
high-engagement faction-biased discourses like this one (why we would
engage), that by no means implies compromise on any principle. Be VERY clear
on this:

Many people would physically harm you without a bat of conscience for
severely reducing the odds of Consumerium or equivalent services functioning
as intended, or sabotaging it once "in play". Fair trade matters.
(Developing world education also matters, which is why User:Angela is an
anathema). That's just fact. You have no doubt seen anti-globalization and
pro-fair-trade marches on TV, and some get hurt, and some throw bricks back.

Failing to comprehend and avoid Consumerium Governance problems will, in
trolls' view, reduce the odds of success. Be absolutely clear: you are
making real-world enemies here, Tim Starling. And many real-world enemies do
in fact go so far as to kill to protect what they value. No amount of
agreement between this typist and that typist will change that in our
respective lifetimes. Insistence on technological means of arbitration only
escalates the conflicts and makes them worse. "You" as defined by your
typings, trollings and "blocks" are therefore not a person, but part of a
problem. One we intend to address by any means necessary. Your use of
technological power puts you morally in the wrong, by definition. Do not
align your body with your tools. It's a fatal mistake, and one most people
learn only when it's far too late, when they realize their tools cannot
protect them from whatever trolls they sought to silence. You are not owed
warnings - from here, it's next stop abyss. The next troll may be armed with
something more than truth and typing.

Therefore, the faction proposal, to deal with those issues of political
dispute where people violently disagree, and will do harm to each other if
not channeled into due process that respects factionally defined terms, as
such. Pursue it, or ignore it. It too is a technological stopgap. It will
work well enough for Consumerium Governance, or m:Wikipedia Governance, but
it will not solve all the world's problems. If you seek harmony, you are
best to abandon physics, software, and the Internet, and be a better
gardener.

The world tree is waiting...

-- END QUOTE --

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Tomasz Sienicki

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: Big dictionary under GFDL

body:
 Georg Jaehnig wrote:

> It's downloadable in XML-format and - it is free under GFDL!

 No, under GGPL.

> There is just somebody needed who knows how to convert the XML-structure
> into Wiki-Code and how to import this into the existing Wiktionaries.

 I any case, this would have to be done individually for each Wiktionary,
 as they use different templates (and some use no template at all).

 I believe the best thing to do is to create some page colleting info
 about free dictionary resources and leave any decisions and actions
 to respecitive Wiktionary communities.

--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
Anthere-
> I do not think that putting officially the
> responsability in the hand of *one* person
> specifically is the best option. It is not empowering
> people. Rather, people will tend to rely on the *head*
> to do things.

We also need to be careful not to let too many people speak in the name of
the Foundation whenever they feel like it. This is after all a community
of several thousands of members, and I think some screening needs to take
place before we decide that person X can be an official press contact, or
person Y can be a content partnership coordinator -- because our
reputation may be hurt, because people may make deals which the Foundation
does not want (and later has to undo), because people may neglect their
position and fail to respond to inquiries (hurting our reputation),
because people may fail to sufficiently communicate about what they are
doing, and so forth.

I don't think our positions are that far apart, though, especially since
you yourself mention that people would have an opportunity to object. So
if they object, what happens then? Will the person be unable to hold the
position they are interested in beacuse of a single objection? At this
point the natural solution is again to have a vote. I believe that at the
very least, any assumption of an official title needs to be prominently
announced, with a certain timeframe to raise objections, and a defined
process for resolving them.

I also tend to believe that such an assignment shouldn't cover very short
periods of time, to avoid communication problems of the type "I'm not the
content coordinator, anymore, try contacting Paul." - "Sorry, I resigned
last week, try contacting Amy." etc. If one only wants to assume an
official title for a *single* transaction, it is better to contact
whomever is currently holding that title.

I have no problem with multiple people filling a certain role, in fact I
support it, but the number of people should be limited. For example we
could say "one press officer for every country, or for every 40 million
inhabitants of a country", so the US would end up with 6 press officers,
Germany with 2, etc.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>(However, I do suppose that if a particular nation or area is not
>well-connected to the new, a local squid would boost them a fair
>amount.)
>
>The best possibility, technologically, to do what your potential donor
>wants to do, is to host a squid in your area, on an experimental basis
>perhaps, so that we can see if it makes a positive difference.
>
>
squid will help when there is more reading than writing .. for the
Wikipedia.. for small Wikis, probably there is more writing than
reading.. with editing and writing, squid won't have much effect I guess
(unless I don't fully understand the purpose of squid)

>At the same time, of course, I do recognize that donors care about
>what *they* care about, and frequently of course this would be their
>own language wikipedia.  That's not a bad thing, it's only natural.
>And I don't want to discourage donors who want to help -- particularly
>not if the alternative is to have them fund a fork out of frustration.
>
>
If it is technically possible, and the funding cover all costs of it,
it will be great to open such door, as Wikipedians will start to look
for local donors who may be interested to support that language
Wikipedia, and probably, this will help to make the "global" resources
and donations more effective in terms of resource sharing.

>THIS PART IS IMPORTANT -- $20,000 of new hardware is ordered and will
>be here within 2 week or so.  This includes a more powerful database
>server with faster CPUs, faster hard drives.  Our existing database
>server will still be here, so we will go from one strong machine to
>two strong machines.
>
>Additionally, I've order 4 1U servers which will be adapted and
>customized for roles as apache's, squids, fileservers, whatever we
>need.  I also hope that 1 or 2 of them will be sitting idle as
>"universal hot spares" so that we can quickly configure them to take
>on a role while we work on any other machines that are down.
>
>

I am no expert here, but in simple language, how much boost in the speed
Wikipedia will have ? 10% ? 50% ? more ?
and will those additions allow things like the "Search" to be enabled ?
or "Search" is resource eating in a way that we will not see it back any
time soon ?

Yours
Isam Bayazidi


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching stuff

body:
I've checked in today two updates for caching certain types of data,
which creates two new tables: querycache and objectcache.

querycache is used for QueryPage derivatives which are considered
"expensive": Wantedpages and its evil friends. For each special page, it
stores up to 1000 page title<->numerical value tuples, to be returned
sorted either forward or backwards.

Storing a largeish number in a table instead of the first 50 in
pre-rendered HTML in a hidden page solves a couple of problems: the
pages can be checked for existence etc at view time (a common complaint
on Wantedpages), you can page through a reasonable quantity if the first
page's worth has been dealt with, and the hidden pages will no longer
show up in contributions lists and other unexpected places.

The interface to QueryPage has changed a bit to accomodate the
requirement to save the data in an ordered fashion, though pages that
don't need to cache (such as Newpages, which is indexed reasonably well)
can still pull extra info.

objectcache is in theory usable as a generic memcached workalike that's
stored in the database. This seems to defeat the purpose of memcached...
;) but for the limited case of caching the all-messages bundle with
$wgUseDatabaseMessages it's almost as fast on a lightly loaded system at
least, and is a fair chunk faster than pulling every message individually.

Results of quick n' dirty benchmark, take with grain of salt:

DBM MEM OBJ median   X
  n   n   n   1432   1.0
  Y   Y   n   1550   1.08
  Y   n   Y   1566   1.09 <-
  Y   n   n   1815   1.27
DBM = $wgUseDatabaseMessages
MEM = $wgUseMemcached
OBJ = using objectcache
median = median milliseconds to render & load a short page in MonoBook
on my powerbook (no PHP, file or squid cache), on a run of 50 hits,
concurrency level 2.
X = time compared to baseline, pulling from raw language files

I've changed the interface of MessageCache to take the memcached
interface object rather than a true/false check whether to use the
global object. If not using memcached, the objectcache table will be
automatically used.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 23:04 +0300, Isam Bayazidi wrote:
> squid will help when there is more reading than writing .. for the
> Wikipedia.. for small Wikis, probably there is more writing than
> reading.. with editing and writing, squid won't have much effect I guess
> (unless I don't fully understand the purpose of squid)

There's alway more reading than writing, but only anonymous requests are
cached currently- it wouldn't help for editing right now.

> >At the same time, of course, I do recognize that donors care about
> >what *they* care about, and frequently of course this would be their
> >own language wikipedia.  That's not a bad thing, it's only natural.
> >And I don't want to discourage donors who want to help -- particularly
> >not if the alternative is to have them fund a fork out of frustration.
> >
> >
> If it is technically possible, and the funding cover all costs of it,
> it will be great to open such door, as Wikipedians will start to look
> for local donors who may be interested to support that language
> Wikipedia, and probably, this will help to make the "global" resources
> and donations more effective in terms of resource sharing.

An additional apache or (even more useful) another DB would help of
course.

However, i think that there's a lot of potential left in caching
(roughly 1/3 of all requests still aren't cached while the number of
edits should be something like 2% of all requests). See my earlier post
about this. Something like sponsored bounties for bigger tasks could
motivate developers to spend more time on these things.

Also the DB needs a decent 64bit Kernel to use the full RAM, something
that's impossible to do without a second DB.

> I am no expert here, but in simple language, how much boost in the speed
> Wikipedia will have ? 10% ? 50% ? more ?
> and will those additions allow things like the "Search" to be enabled ?
> or "Search" is resource eating in a way that we will not see it back any
> time soon ?

It's expensive for the DB, it might be ok to enable it again when both
DB's are set up, although sooner or later the growth will eat that
performance as well.
It seems to be a bit like highways- the more you build, the more are
needed..
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
I'm not ready to accept such a straw-man burden just to offset the
right's obsession with maximizing it.  But then the right is not
innocent in these things either.

One thing that characterizes those of us who support NPOV is that we are
willing to tale other points of view into account, and not engage in
venomous rhetoric to impose an historical guilt on today's individuals
just because their beliefs appear to have a superficial similarity to
those held by the leaders of certain notorious regimes.

Ec

Fred Bauder wrote:

>The burden of minimizing the significance of 100 million deaths falls on the
>left.
>
>>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Sat, 08 May 2004 00:48:25 -0700
>>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium
>>
>>Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>>Nope, What I mean by carrying the day is when a favorable spin is inserted
>>>and maintained, by means of reverts, by POV editors on the left.
>>>
>>>Fred
>>>
>>Ahhh!  You mean just like POV editors of the right.
>>
>>Ec
>>


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: images and the category system

body:
fabiform wrote:

> People have just started [[Wikipedia:List of images]] (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_images/Animals for an example).
> It's a sorted list/index of images displayed in a simple gallery (using the
> markup: [[Image:Image Name.gif|thumb|100px|left|Short Description]]).

Gaah. Not very maintainable, is it?

> It seems to me that this would be better organised using the category system.

Definitely.

> Would it be possible to create image categories which displayed their contents
> in a gallery like this, rather than as a list of links to image description
> pages?  I don't know how we'd deal with the captions, other than making them be
> the file name, which might not be that useful... but creating a category system
> by hand like these pages are doing does seem labour-intensive.

Actually, I really really think we should make it the filename. And I
also really really think that (a) people should name files better, and
(b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".

Timwi


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's problems

body:
On 05/08/04 21:43, Robert wrote:

> More off-topic slander. I'm not surprised. I don't even
> contribute to Wikipedia anymore, ever since many members on
> this list became actively anti-Semitic.  It was bad enough
> when proven Nazis like Stervertigo, and his cheerleader
> Martin (MyRedDice) Harper were allowed to push their views
> with the full support of this list.

I don't know if you can appreciate that this looks like the words
of someone off on crack, but it does to me. Perhaps I'm wrong.

> It got worse when various list members wrote and telephoned
> me privately in support, but admitted that they would never
> speak out here in public because they were afraid of being
> ganged up on (they were correct.)

Eegh. Send them to me. I've had legal threats from the Church of
Scientology for my other hobbies (dealing with the CoS), and pretty
much *anything* looks light-duty after you've been through their
mill.

> It got even worse when your so-called arbitartors publicly
> demanded that I accept admitted Nazis and work with them.
> (Such quotes are still archived.) Sane people would see
> that as obvious Jew-baiting; similarly, demanding that our
> black contributors work with members of the Ku Klux Klan
> would be racist black-hating. Yet sadly when this was
> brought to the attention of this list, none of you
> mentioned any problem with this.

I swear to God that I tried to work with Paul Vogel. And I'm
actually ashamed that I cheered when he was banned for a year.

> It got even worse: In recent weeks Steve Rubenstein warned
> you all about another Jew-hater who was constantly
> vandalizing Wikipedia and clearly pushing Nazi websites.
> Yet in response, you refused to ban this person.
> Outrageously many of you said that you wanted this Nazi's
> views, and that you wanted to find a way to keep him on as
> a contributor.

It would have been nice to have had access (not blind acceptance of,
but access to) to Vogel's views without his personality.

> Every wonder why so many people leave this project? It has
> been taken over by leftists,

And rightists. (Political partisans in general. I mind Usenet
newsgroup aus.politics, which, by the time I gave up on it in
1997, pretty clearly divided not by left or right, but by lucid
or frothing.)

 > anarchists, anti-science
> whackos and hatemongers.

Mr-Natural-Health's Alternative Medicine project looks entertaining.
I'll have to cast a closer editorial eye over it. He looks heavily
into rule lawyering. My goodness I love those sort of people.

> do not want.  I should have listed to my colleagues last
> year, when they told me that they forbade their students
> from using Wikipedia. They said it was anti-science,
> anti-Semitic, out of control, and that without empowered
> moderators it merely created facts by voting.

I would actually like to hear more about this.

> That is the kind of leftist Stanlinism-type "research" that
> truly educated peopel abhor. Facts are not created by the
> consensus of the most radical writers, no matter what the
> deconstructionists and leftists among you might wish to
> believe.

You appear to have POV against leftists. I'll have you know
I read the Guardian and vote Liberal Democrat!

> While Jimbo's idea of an open-source encyclopedia still is
> a very good idea, Wikipedia will never be achieve this
> goal. At best, it will be a good feeder and working sandbox
> for articles that can be vetted by professionals for a
> second-level, stable open-source encyclopedia, like Nupedia
> was supposed to be. But the Wikipedia itself will at best
> become well-known and infamous...not good.

The reason the partisan trolls of all stripes are a problem on WP
is that this is, in fact, the place, and that this is blindingly
obvious. We're writing source material for this century.

(So I'd better get the Australian Indie Rock project together
quick smart!)

- d.


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Permissions archive

body:
As we have a growing number of images which are taken by non-wikipedians
who have given permission to allow their image to be used under GFDL, it
might be a good idea to keep a central permanent record of these
permissions.

So along those lines, I'd like to suggest something like
permissions at wikipedia.org be setup so when anyone gets email permission to
use an image they can just forwarded it to that address.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: sannse

body:
Timwi wrote (in part)

> (b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".

Now that is a very good idea.

--sannse


body:
sannse wrote:

>Timwi wrote (in part)
>
>>(b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".
>>
>Now that is a very good idea.
>
I fail to see how they would really differ.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Facebook opens for buisness

body:
Timwi wrote:

> fabiform wrote:
>
>> --- Timwi
>>
>>> The idea itself is pretty good, but the page already demonstrates
>>> that it doesn't really work because almost everybody is going to try
>>> to be special and either distort their image beyond recognition
>>> (e.g. LordSuryaofShropshire) or use something that barely even
>>> depicts their self (e.g. Anthe). To a non-Wikipedian, this kind of
>>> thing reinforces the belief that Wikipedia is run/controlled by a
>>> bunch of weirdos.
>>
>> I think that the facebook illustrates [...] that a bunch of disparate
>> and widely separated (geographically and culturally) people can come
>> together
>> to do something amazing.
>
> Well, some of the articles already illustrate that. :-)
>
>> I would have to say that the fact that Anthere has chosen a shot of
>> herself
>> wearing a cheche [...] probably tells you more about her than if it
>> had been
>> a plain photo
>
>
> OK, in that case I'll upload a picture of a Golden Eagle playing the
> piano, and that'll tell you worlds more about me than a photo of myself.

Excellent.

I have no strong feelings either way about the facebook; the only thing
holding me back is the need to integrate my digital camera into
something useful.

I do have one observation about the pictures as they exist:  Jimbo's is
the only one with books in the background. :-\

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] On trolls, usenet and Wikipedia

body:
Proponents of a logical approach to life generate tremendous misery for
themselves when they try to rationalize illogical behaviours.

Ec

Rick wrote:

> It certainly is.  So why do they do it?
>
>
>
> RickK
>
> Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>     Point: isn't it PLAYING INTO THE HANDS of trolldom to attack
>     colleagues, who
>     happen to disagree with your version of troll-handling?
>
>     Point: against WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THE POWER IF YOU NEVER
>     USE IT,
>     there is WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THE POWER IF YOU CONSTANTLY
>     HAVE TO USE
>     IT.
>
>     The world today ... oh well, some people are just blinkered, anyway.
>
>     Charles
>


from_name: Rick

body:
It certainly is.  So why do they do it?

RickK

Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
Point: isn't it PLAYING INTO THE HANDS of trolldom to attack colleagues, who
happen to disagree with your version of troll-handling?

Point: against WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THE POWER IF YOU NEVER USE IT,
there is WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THE POWER IF YOU CONSTANTLY HAVE TO USE
IT.

The world today ... oh well, some people are just blinkered, anyway.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Selling books to increase funding

body:
Bod NotBod wrote:

> Basically I wanted to present an idea for increasing Wikipedia's
> funding by encouraging people to place more book references at the end
> of articles.
>
> I understand that there was a controversy about Amazon in the past,
> but according to...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources
>
> ...Wikipedia earns a commission on people who purchase through...
>
> http://www.priceowl.com/?site=wikipedia
>
> So, it occurred to me that if publicity is given to this it may
> increase revenue.

Jimbo tried an experiment of this sort some months back, and the
commissions produced were negligible to the point of ludicrous.  Given
the amount of controversy that such an idea would and has generated, it
would be pointless to give serious consideration to something that does
not provide meaningful benefits.

> You could be more aggressive about raising revenue this way, ie
> cutting down the list of links, at the first page I referred to, so it
> includes ONLY those that give Wikipedia a kick back - but I sense that
> would be regarded as against the spirit of Wikipedia.

That sounds like a classic example for the term "conflict-of-interest".

Ec


from_name: Antony Lewis

subject: [Wikitech-l] frames

body:
The new frameset un-trapper in wikibits.js prevents linking to Wiki in a
framed setting. My site www.wordwebonline.com provides an interface to
several references via a small top frame, and has just been spoilt by the
new frame killer. Would it be possible to allow frames, or perhaps only have
the frame killer on the main page? (I'm indexing wiki, so only linking
directly to wiki pages when they exist). At it stands I will probably have
to stop linking to wiki, which would be a shame.

If this isn't the right place to ask, please let me know.

thanks.

Antony


from_name: fabiform

body:
> >>(b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".
>
> >Now that is a very good idea.
>
> I fail to see how they would really differ.
>
> Ec

They wouldn't, but "move page" doesn't work for files.  If you want to rename
an image you currently have to save it to your computer, reupload it under a
new name, change any articles that point to the old name, and put the old image
up on images for deletion.  Not very efficient. :)

Fabi.

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subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Camille Constans wrote:

>Zwinger use now a raid1 setup with 2 250G drive IIRC.
>
>And it's very slow. I splitted a 10GB file , it took more than 2 hours to split it....
>With the old 80GB drive it was more faster
>
>We checked dma configuration with Tim Starling, dma is not enabled and cant be enabled :
>
>
# hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

 Model=Maxtor 7Y250M0, FwRev=YAR51EW0, SerialNo=Y62Z1BJE
 Config={ Fixed }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=7936kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2
 AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: (null):  1 2 3 4 5 6 7

# hdparm /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    =  0 (off)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    =  8 (on)
 geometry     = 30515/255/63, sectors = 490234752, start = 0

# hdparm -c 1 -d 1 -X udma2 /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
 setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
 setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
 setting xfermode to 66 (UltraDMA mode2)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 using_dma    =  0 (off)

# lspci | grep IDE
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 24d1 (rev 02)

An updated kernel with a more specific driver might help, but it'd be
surprising if DMA was working on the old drive then.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> sannse wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote (in part)
>>
>>> (b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".
>>>
>> Now that is a very good idea.
>>
> I fail to see how they would really differ.

It would have to also rename a potentially large number of files, and
then there's the question of providing redirects of some sort from the
old name.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Camille Constans wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>An updated kernel with a more specific driver might help, but it'd be
>>surprising if DMA was working on the old drive then.
>
> Tim checked on webserver, it was fine IIRC
>
> What gives hdparm -t /dev/hdc now ?

# hdparm -tT /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.20 seconds =640.00 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 12.65 seconds =  5.06 MB/sec

# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.24 seconds =533.33 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 17.91 seconds =  3.57 MB/sec

# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  multcount    = 16 (on)
  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
  using_dma    =  0 (off)
  keepsettings =  0 (off)
  readonly     =  0 (off)
  readahead    =  8 (on)
  geometry     = 9729/255/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0

# hdparm -c 1 -d 1 /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
  setting using_dma to 1 (on)
  HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
  IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
  using_dma    =  0 (off)

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.21 seconds =609.52 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 11.10 seconds =  5.77 MB/sec

Can't enable DMA on the old drive either, but at least it's a smidge
faster in 32-bit transfer mode.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Books which are useful to our readers are always welcome, IMO.

Very little revenue will come from this in any event, but it is good
resource for editors and readers.

Fred

> From: "Bod NotBod" <bodnotbod at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 19:49:37 +0100
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Selling books to increase funding
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> Not sure if this is the place to do this, but it's something I'd like Jim
> Wales opinion on - and it may provide a bit of respite from the rather fiery
> stuff about trolls and (shudder) death threats.
>
> I submitted a similar proposal to the Village Pump page, but I didn't get
> the impression it would meet the right eyes.
>
> Basically I wanted to present an idea for increasing Wikipedia's funding by
> encouraging people to place more book references at the end of articles.
>
> I understand that there was a controversy about Amazon in the past, but
> according to...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources
>
> ...Wikipedia earns a commission on people who purchase through...
>
> http://www.priceowl.com/?site=wikipedia
>
> So, it occurred to me that if publicity is given to this it may increase
> revenue.
>
> This could be done by mentioning it in the style guides and maybe having at
> is a category within the 'Pages needing attention', ie 'Pages Needing Book
> References'.
>
> You could be more aggressive about raising revenue this way, ie cutting down
> the list of links, at the first page I referred to, so it includes ONLY
> those that give Wikipedia a kick back - but I sense that would be regarded
> as against the spirit of Wikipedia.
>
> Now, clearly one would only want to encourage references to worthy books.
> Perhaps this could be done by asking that contributors only list books they
> have actually read OR are written by the person named in the article title.
>
> Anyway, figured it was an idea that wasn't going to do anybody any good if
> it just sat here in my head, so there it is.
>
> Bodnotbod.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Find a cheaper internet access deal - choose one to suit you.
> http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: frames

body:
> > or perhaps only have the frame killer on the main page?

> That would evade its purpose. It was originally installed

> when someone

> (ab)used frames to host their own homepage on a Wikipedia User-namespace
subpage.

Have the frame killer only on user-namespace pages?

I probably didn't explain how I'm linking very clearly. Most users access my
site as a web link from the WordWeb software (quite popular BTW, millions of
users). The idea it so provide quick reference to a range of different web
resources (explicitly acknowledging than no one source is 100% reliable).
One reference site containing the lookup word is automatically chosen and
shown right away. At the moment, if this is Wiki, there is no way for them
to see the other options - there is no way back to check in other
dictionaries because there was no linking page.

Obviously lots of my users might prefer a dictionary to an encyclopedia
entry, so this is not very good. Use of the top frame was working very
nicely...

> You should also avoid using "here" or "click here" as a link text. It

I agree, where did you find it?

thanks,

Antony


from_name: Volkan HATEM

subject: [Wikitech-l] similar pages

body:
Hi,

At Turkish Wikipedia (tr) we are discussing how we should use
redirections.

Because of historical reasons (I didn't want to explain the
gory details of character set standardization history) Turkish
character set was included in Latin-5. Even though all popular
operating systems support this character set, the user has to
configure it.

Regular (US) Q keyboards don't support these specialized Turkish
characters.

Because of these reasons many Turkish speakers living abroad
tend to substitute Turkish characters with other similar characters
(omitting umlauts for example).

What we want to do is to pre-process wiki URLs so that we
can redirect the request even if it was not typed using
proper Turkish characters.

I don't know if we can add a module like that, which will process
requests coming only to tr.wikipedia.org.

Thanks

-volkan

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Kenneth Alan has returned

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Decumanus wrote:
>
>> User:Kenneth Alan (formerly User:Kenne(Icelandic-edh)) has returned,
>
>
> Thanks for notifying.
>
> I don't get this user. Why are they redirecting their user pages to
> [[User:Lord Kenneth]] and even editing Lord Kenneth's user page, if
> they are not the same user? Admittedly, we can never be sure, but from
> what I gathered Lord Kenneth specifically denied being the same as
> Kenne??

Depends on what the definition of "same" is. :-) I think there's
little doubt they are all ids created by the same physical person,
the behavior, interests, and attitude are all consistent.

Stan


body:
 Timwi wrote:

> also really really think that (a) people should name files better

 Not before there's a warning if an existing file's about to get overwritten.
 Until then it's safest to use xx-weird-and-LONG-filenamez_q234234.jpeg

--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
sannse wrote:

>Timwi wrote (in part)
>
>
>
>>(b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".
>>
>>
>
>Now that is a very good idea.
>
>

But that would mean all image links would have to be changes as well.
Automatically! In the source!! That has been a taboo topic since the
talk about auto-fixing broken redirects...

Magnus


body:
Magnus wrote

> sannse wrote:
>
> >Timwi wrote (in part)
> >
> >
> >
> >>(b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Now that is a very good idea.
> >
> >
>
> But that would mean all image links would have to be changes as well.
> Automatically! In the source!! That has been a taboo topic since the
> talk about auto-fixing broken redirects...
>
> Magnus

Well I pictured it something like the system for "move page" - the old name
would still work via the equivalent of a redirect.  A link similar to the
one that directs people who move pages to fix double redirects would be
useful too ("please fix links on the following pages: <list of articles
using or linking to the image>").

Of course, I'm not a technical type so I don't know how easy/possible this
would be.

--sannse


from_name: Ray Kiddy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: short domain name.

body:
Maybe we could find somebody with a small island somewhere, something
named Walponia or Wayapenua or something, and get them to let us use
the country code/top level domain ".wp".  :-)

Anyone have an island to spare?

- ray

On May 6, 2004, at 1:10 PM, David Friedland wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Hunter Peress wrote:
>>> i think we should have a really short domain name. ideally 5 chars
>>> total, like:  wp.eu
>>>
>>> please try your respective countries.
>>>
>>> heres a page to document our efforts:
>>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Domain_Name
>> Please don't. Eventually some portion of them will get forgotten on
>> renewal, and the links will be broken.
>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> Not if they all get their ownership transferred to the foundation and
> get kept track of in a centralized location. We keep track of all
> kinds of stuff on a daily basis. Why wouldn't we be able to keep track
> of domain names?
>
> - David
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] The fun never stops

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I'd like to schedule a little downtime, about an hour (hopefully much
> less) circa 0200 UTC Monday morning (7pm PDT Sunday night). Should be
> reasonably low traffic and people will have plenty of warning if it's
> announced ahead of time.

The stunning lack of "yes, that sounds reasonable" or any movement
towards putting up a notice 24 hours in advance (and also Mothers' Day
scheduling mishaps ;) have lead to this downtime being CANCELED.

How does the same time Tuesday night/Wednesday morning sound?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Timwi wrote:
> I'm not sure that is such a good idea, performance-wise... ideally, it
> should go straight to the correct URL. People would otherwise constantly
> use "Copy link to clipboard" on these links and fill the web with
> nonsense links like http://de.wiktionary.org/fi:Kukkala, and we would
> forever have to keep the redirects working. They are starting to become
> a little difficult to keep track of, and I'm afraid it's only a matter
> of time until we will inadvertantly create an infinite loop of redirects
> somewhere.

One chief reason for making these links available is to allow interwiki
linking from *non-wikimedia* wikis as well. By using a single
established prefix (WikiPedia:) you can link to any of our languages
without begging third party site admins to add three hundred prefixes to
their interwiki maps.

It would be nice to use the "real" URLs directly on our own wikis, of
course, for the reasons you mention.

> In general, redirecting mechanisms should probably be revised to
> redirect straight to the correct place.

Timwi makes several good points I agree with about cleaning up the
functioning of the redirects to be cleaner and cacheable.

> For those who don't already know what's so bad about redirects: (1) Even
> just one redirect doubles(!) the server's response time.

That's not exactly true; the redirect bounce doesn't require rendering,
and if appropriately set up can be cached at the squid level. However,
the _best case_ time is doubled, where the best case time is a 301
redirect response followed by a 304 not modified, all based on caching,
with no content needing to be rendered or transferred or anything looked
up in a database. That should be pretty fast anyway. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
>>For those who don't already know what's so bad about redirects: (1) Even
>>just one redirect doubles(!) the server's response time.
>
>
> If redirects are that costly, would it be useful to run a bot say once a
> month to replace links to redirects by the final destination?
>
> The en: wikipedia contains over 5 million internal links. Over 500,000 or
> 10% are links to redirects. (the stats show 155 K redirect links but that is
> the number of redirect pages)

That's totally unrelated, the discussion is of HTTP redirects, which
produce another client->server request.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: frames

body:
Antony Lewis wrote:

> The new frameset un-trapper in wikibits.js prevents linking to Wiki in a
> framed setting.

That is its purpose. :-p

> My site www.wordwebonline.com provides an interface to
> several references via a small top frame,

This particular use of a frame is controversial. You probably shouldn't
do it that way.

> Would it be possible to allow frames,

Please, no :/

> or perhaps only have the frame killer on the main page?

That would evade its purpose. It was originally installed when someone
(ab)used frames to host their own homepage on a Wikipedia User-namespace
subpage.

> At it stands I will probably have to stop linking to wiki,

You quite definitely do not have to stop linking to Wikipedia pages
(your thought that you would have to do that is a clear indication that
your webpage design is flawed, not Wikipedia's). There is absolutely no
reason why you can't link to Wikipedia pages using either a simple link
(which would rightfully trigger the de-framer), or a link with
target="_top" (which, of course, would make your frame disappear).

Of course, another alternative would be to use target="_blank", if you
really really want to annoy the heck out of your visitors. ;-)

Now, I've taken a look at your webpage. As I already said, your
particular use of the top frame is a rather controversial topic. Of
course you don't mean any harm, but it is easy for visitors to think
that the things you link to (Encarta, Google, Chambers, etc.) are parts
of your site. I don't think Wikipedia would want that. There should
never really be several frames containing content from unrelated
websites in the same browser window. Even just from a user interface
design standpoint, that is a really bad idea.

As an aside, I find your navigation rather confusing. Clicking a link in
the left sidebar makes it change into a completely different sidebar, or
even disappear. It is pretty difficult to see where on your site one
currently is, and how to get back to where one was.

You should also avoid using "here" or "click here" as a link text. It
will annoy the heck out of all your users who (a) use a text browser;
(b) use any kind of tool that looks at links on a webpage, like the
"Jump" dialog in Opera or the GetRight Browser; (c) simply prefer to use
the keyboard to navigate links and suddenly find themselves on a page
with 100 links all of which say "here"; or (d) have a disability that
prevents them from using a mouse.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
Anthere wrote:

> I will be very frank with you Timwi, I think your comment is plain
> irrespectful, and a total dismissal of the variety of contributors to
> the project.

OK, I can see that. Thanks for pointing it out, and I apologise for any
feelings that were hurt by my message.

My opinion, however, still stands. I don't think I will agree to
participate in a picture gallery unless it is well-organised and allows
only images that follow certain criteria, just as it already applies to
articles.

Timwi


body:
fabiform wrote:

> --- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>The idea itself is pretty good, but the page already demonstrates that
>>it doesn't really work because almost everybody is going to try to be
>>special and either distort their image beyond recognition (e.g.
>>LordSuryaofShropshire) or use something that barely even depicts their
>>self (e.g. Anth?re). To a non-Wikipedian, this kind of thing reinforces
>>the belief that Wikipedia is run/controlled by a bunch of weirdos.
>
> I think that the facebook illustrates [...] that a bunch of disparate
> and widely separated (geographically and culturally) people can come together
> to do something amazing.

Well, some of the articles already illustrate that. :-)

> I would have to say that the fact that Anthere has chosen a shot of herself
> wearing a cheche [...] probably tells you more about her than if it had been
> a plain photo

OK, in that case I'll upload a picture of a Golden Eagle playing the
piano, and that'll tell you worlds more about me than a photo of myself.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York City

body:
The poll at [[Talk:New York, New York]] on whether or not to move the name of the city to [[New York City]] is over.  The vote was 17 for and 15 against.  Hardly a consensus.  If I tried to use that vote percentage as justification for deleting anything from VfD, people would be after me to remove my sysop status as a violation of consensus.  But [[User:Nohat]] has taken it upon himself to unilaterally move the page.  I have moved it back twice now, and will do it one more time in the 24 hour period, if necessary.  This is a direct violation of the naming convention for US cities and a violation of the meaning of consensus.

RickK

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body:
fabiform wrote:

>>>>(b) there should be "rename file" function akin to "move page".
>>>>
>>>Now that is a very good idea.
>>>
>>I fail to see how they would really differ.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>
>They wouldn't, but "move page" doesn't work for files.  If you want to rename
>an image you currently have to save it to your computer, reupload it under a
>new name, change any articles that point to the old name, and put the old image
>up on images for deletion.  Not very efficient. :)
>
Ahhh! I see the situation now. Thanks.

Ec


body:
Martin Harper wrote:

>>Books which are useful to our readers are always welcome, IMO.
>>
>
>Yes. It will also counteract the impression some viewers may get that Wikipedia
>is constructed entirely from webpage research. Ideally, I'd like us to get to a
>stage where if I'm interested in reading about Darwin, I go to [[Charles Darwin]]
>on Wikipedia, and browse down to "Further reading". You know: *eventually*.
>
Agreed. I also envision Wikisource as playing a significant role in
that.  That too is "very eventually".

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Another major disadvantage I thought of just now is that it poisons our
> namespace. Suppose some silly company makes some sort of product and (to
> be cool) calls it "fr:ea:ky". How would we name our article on it? It's
> only a matter of time until this will be an actual problem.

This is a non-starter; you can't link to such titles within the wiki,
because they are interwiki links. A manually constructed URL used to
just give an 'Illegal title' error, except where we had a special-case
on www.wikipedia.org to do outgoing redirects.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Number of articles function

body:
It seems that as a by-product of being a bureaucrat on English
Wiktionary, I'm starting to be asked technical questions about the
operations of the new other language Wiktionaries. These are well beyond
my expertise.

Ronline from the Romanian Wiktionary has pointed out that the
((NUMBEROFARTICLES)) function on that Main Page gives only the number
"-1".  That also seems to be the case in several other new Wiktionaries.
 While checking this I also noticed that the list of all articles by
title in same projects also comes up blank.

Perhaps someone more capable might look at this.

Ec


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Zwinger use now a raid1 setup with 2 250G drive IIRC.

And it's very slow. I splitted a 10GB file , it took more than 2 hours to split it....
With the old 80GB drive it was more faster

We checked dma configuration with Tim Starling, dma is not enabled and cant be enabled :

hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc
<TimStarling> /dev/hdc:
<TimStarling>  setting using_dma to 1 (on)
<TimStarling>  HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
<TimStarling>  using_dma    =  0 (off)

hdparm -t /dev/hdc give something like 3MB/s

Jimmy or Brion, if you could gives us more informations on what raid card we use.
Zwinger is now really a bottle neck, when I splitted the file on zwinger, it was slowing down all the cluster.

Maybe something to change in bios ? Jimmy remember something ?

Shaihulud


subject: [WikiEN-l] City of New York

body:
User:Nohat has now moved [[New York, New York]] to [[City of New York]], for which there was never a vote.

RickK

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New York City

body:
Afraid of having your mendacity aired for everyone to see?

RickK

David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
Rick wrote:
> The poll at [[Talk:New York, New York]] on whether or not to move the
> name of the city to [[New York City]] is over. The vote was 17 for and
> 15 against. Hardly a consensus. If I tried to use that vote percentage
> as justification for deleting anything from VfD, people would be after
> me to remove my sysop status as a violation of consensus. But
> [[User:Nohat]] has taken it upon himself to unilaterally move the page.
> I have moved it back twice now, and will do it one more time in the 24
> hour period, if necessary. This is a direct violation of the naming
> convention for US cities and a violation of the meaning of consensus.
>
> RickK

Let's keep these kinds of content disputes off the mailing list and on
the wiki, please.

-- David

_______________________________________________
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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium

body:
Fennec Foxen wrote:

>Why doesn't 142.177 just spring for his own wiki hosting already? =b

I think he tried that, and it didn't work out for him. Check out the
following URL:

http://hubley.org/wiki/

This page begins by declaring, "A wiki for hubley.org open content in
how to  manage sustainably in the public sector is growing at this
URL," but in fact that URL does not contain either a wiki or anything
that is growing. If you do an Internet Archive search for that URL,
you'll see that its content has barely changed since a year ago. I
suspect that he tried to create his own wiki at that URL and quickly
discovered that either (1) no one else wanted to join him there, or
(2) he couldn't control its content as much as he liked, or (3) both
of the above.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, May 2004)
--------------------------------


from_name: Bod NotBod

body:
Dear all,

Not sure if this is the place to do this, but it's something I'd like Jim
Wales opinion on - and it may provide a bit of respite from the rather fiery
stuff about trolls and (shudder) death threats.

I submitted a similar proposal to the Village Pump page, but I didn't get
the impression it would meet the right eyes.

Basically I wanted to present an idea for increasing Wikipedia's funding by
encouraging people to place more book references at the end of articles.

I understand that there was a controversy about Amazon in the past, but
according to...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources

...Wikipedia earns a commission on people who purchase through...

http://www.priceowl.com/?site=wikipedia

So, it occurred to me that if publicity is given to this it may increase
revenue.

This could be done by mentioning it in the style guides and maybe having at
is a category within the 'Pages needing attention', ie 'Pages Needing Book
References'.

You could be more aggressive about raising revenue this way, ie cutting down
the list of links, at the first page I referred to, so it includes ONLY
those that give Wikipedia a kick back - but I sense that would be regarded
as against the spirit of Wikipedia.

Now, clearly one would only want to encourage references to worthy books.
Perhaps this could be done by asking that contributors only list books they
have actually read OR are written by the person named in the article title.

Anyway, figured it was an idea that wasn't going to do anybody any good if
it just sat here in my head, so there it is.

Bodnotbod.

_________________________________________________________________
Find a cheaper internet access deal - choose one to suit you.
http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

body:
* Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> [2004-05-09]:
> fabiform wrote:
>
> >--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >>The idea itself is pretty good, but the page already demonstrates that
> >>it doesn't really work because almost everybody is going to try to be
> >>special and either distort their image beyond recognition (e.g.
> >>LordSuryaofShropshire) or use something that barely even depicts their
> >>self (e.g. Anth?re). To a non-Wikipedian, this kind of thing reinforces
> >>the belief that Wikipedia is run/controlled by a bunch of weirdos.
> >
> >I think that the facebook illustrates [...] that a bunch of disparate
> >and widely separated (geographically and culturally) people can come
> >together
> >to do something amazing.
>
> Well, some of the articles already illustrate that. :-)
>
> >I would have to say that the fact that Anthere has chosen a shot of herself
> >wearing a cheche [...] probably tells you more about her than if it had
> >been
> >a plain photo
>
> OK, in that case I'll upload a picture of a Golden Eagle playing the
> piano, and that'll tell you worlds more about me than a photo of myself.
>

There's been a discussion about it in the talk page. Do as you please in
order to identify yourself, but as with anything in the wikipedia, do not
assume a page has a definitive form for ever.

Cheers.

Pedro.

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

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


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Bod NotBod wrote

> Basically I wanted to present an idea for increasing Wikipedia's funding
by
> encouraging people to place more book references at the end of articles.

Can't be a good idea.  It would surely lose WP credibility.

Charles


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York City

body:
Rick wrote:

> a violation of the meaning of consensus.

Where there is no consensus, I don't see preferring the older version to
be a good tie-breaker.  Essentially, there is no decision on which name
should be used, and which it happened to have been at first is somewhat
arbitrary and irrelevant (lots of things are initially put at an
inappropriate location).  What this basically means is that we need more
discussion, a better set of options, and another, better-advertised
(perhaps on the village pump?), vote to produce a more clear decision.
Until then the name is in limbo and there's no decision.

For what it's worth, I think [[New York City]] is the best option, as
it's the one most people recognize it under.   The official city name is
[[City of New York]], and both that and [[City of New York, New York]]
are rather awkward-looking, and neither is a name anyone actually uses.
[[New York, New York]] and [[New York City]] are both unofficial city
names with much wider usage, and of the two the latter has significantly
more usage from what I can tell, especially internationally where
appending state names to US cities isn't done quite as frequently as it
is in the US.

-Mark


from_name: Asheesh Laroia

subject: [Wikitech-l] Another PHP 4.1 compatibility fix

body:
Here is attached a simple one-liner fix for is_a .  The one-liner comes
from http://us2.php.net/is_a .

Thanks,

Asheesh Laroia.

--
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right
to use the editorial ``we''.
                -- Mark Twain
-------------- next part --------------
Index: includes/GlobalFunctions.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/GlobalFunctions.php,v
retrieving revision 1.81
diff -r1.81 GlobalFunctions.php
19a20,26
> if(!function_exists("is_a")) {
> 	function is_a($anObject, $aClass)
> 	{
> 		return (get_class($anObject) == strtolower($aClass) or (is_subclass_of($anObject, $aClass)));
> 	}
> }
>
Index: includes/SkinPHPTal.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/SkinPHPTal.php,v
retrieving revision 1.59
diff -r1.59 SkinPHPTal.php
28a29
> 	require_once "GlobalFunctions.php";
30d30
<


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Webalizer stats missing or way too low every now and
	then

body:
Gaps or unrealistic low figures exist on many wikipedias on different days

e.g.
en: April 11-14 and 27-29
pl: April 19, May 5
de: May 1-2
ja: May 4
etc

See for example
file:///D:/Wikipedia/@Test/Csv/Webalizer/EN/usage_200404.html#DAYSTATS

Of course other days may be affected partially and show reasonable figures
which are yet in fact too low.

e.g. de: May 3 is suspect

For the international stats I assume extremely low figures are in fact
faulty and treat them as missing, except when a known outage occurred, like
in December 2003. However this is less than ideal.

Is there some explanation for irratical webalizer stats and possibly a cure?

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] localization

body:
I'm not sure if this is the right list to ask a localization related
question but I guess it is not totally irrelevant.

On MediaWiki:All_Messages there are no strings related to date and
time.
How can we localize date/time?

-volkan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover


from_name: Timwi

body:
Decumanus wrote:

> User:Kenneth Alan (formerly User:Kenne(Icelandic-edh)) has returned,

Thanks for notifying.

I don't get this user. Why are they redirecting their user pages to
[[User:Lord Kenneth]] and even editing Lord Kenneth's user page, if they
are not the same user? Admittedly, we can never be sure, but from what I
gathered Lord Kenneth specifically denied being the same as Kenne??

Timwi


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 08:51:08PM +0200, Erik Zachte wrote:
> Gaps or unrealistic low figures exist on many wikipedias on different days
>
> e.g.
> en: April 11-14 and 27-29
> pl: April 19, May 5
> de: May 1-2
> ja: May 4
> etc
>
> See for example
> file:///D:/Wikipedia/@Test/Csv/Webalizer/EN/usage_200404.html#DAYSTATS

I fear I don't have read access to your local disk drive.

	JeLuF


from_name: Samuel Kennedy

body:
So, would this be like, selling books with the books being somehow
linked to the articles about them?

On Sun, 09 May 2004 23:40:52 +0100, Martin Harper
<martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Books which are useful to our readers are always welcome, IMO.
>
> Yes. It will also counteract the impression some viewers may get that Wikipedia
> is constructed entirely from webpage research. Ideally, I'd like us to get to a
> stage where if I'm interested in reading about Darwin, I go to [[Charles Darwin]]
> on Wikipedia, and browse down to "Further reading". You know: *eventually*.
>
> -Martin
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
JeLuF wrote:
> I fear I don't have read access to your local disk drive.

Oops, I'll try to fix that :)

In the meantime try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/stats/usage_200404.html#DAYSTATS

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
On Sun, 09 May 2004 13:10:14 -0700
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Camille Constans wrote:
>
> >Zwinger use now a raid1 setup with 2 250G drive IIRC.
> >
> >And it's very slow. I splitted a 10GB file , it took more than 2 hours to split it....
> >With the old 80GB drive it was more faster
> >
> >We checked dma configuration with Tim Starling, dma is not enabled and cant be enabled :
> >
> >
> # hdparm -i /dev/hdc
>
> /dev/hdc:
>
>  Model=Maxtor 7Y250M0, FwRev=YAR51EW0, SerialNo=Y62Z1BJE
>  Config={ Fixed }
>  RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
>  BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=7936kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
>  CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455
>  IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
>  PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
>  DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
>  UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2
>  AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
>  Drive conforms to: (null):  1 2 3 4 5 6 7
>
> # hdparm /dev/hdc
>
> /dev/hdc:
>  multcount    = 16 (on)
>  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
>  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
>  using_dma    =  0 (off)
>  keepsettings =  0 (off)
>  readonly     =  0 (off)
>  readahead    =  8 (on)
>  geometry     = 30515/255/63, sectors = 490234752, start = 0
>
> # hdparm -c 1 -d 1 -X udma2 /dev/hdc
>
> /dev/hdc:
>  setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
>  setting using_dma to 1 (on)
>  HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
>  setting xfermode to 66 (UltraDMA mode2)
>  IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
>  using_dma    =  0 (off)
>
> # lspci | grep IDE
> 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 24d1 (rev 02)
>
> An updated kernel with a more specific driver might help, but it'd be
> surprising if DMA was working on the old drive then.

Tim checked on webserver, it was fine IIRC

What gives hdparm -t /dev/hdc now ?


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Webalizer stats missing or way too low every now
	and then

body:
On Sun, 2004-05-09 at 20:51 +0200, Erik Zachte wrote:

> Is there some explanation for irratical webalizer stats and possibly a cure?

Curly wasn't set up to transfer the logs properly for quite a while and
both browne and coronelli died in that period which caused some logs of
that day not to be transferred at midnight.
Webalizer can't analyze logs out of order, so it just discards them when
they arrive the next day.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New York City

body:
Rick wrote:
> The poll at [[Talk:New York, New York]] on whether or not to move the
> name of the city to [[New York City]] is over.  The vote was 17 for and
> 15 against.  Hardly a consensus.  If I tried to use that vote percentage
> as justification for deleting anything from VfD, people would be after
> me to remove my sysop status as a violation of consensus.  But
> [[User:Nohat]] has taken it upon himself to unilaterally move the page.
> I have moved it back twice now, and will do it one more time in the 24
> hour period, if necessary.  This is a direct violation of the naming
> convention for US cities and a violation of the meaning of consensus.
>
> RickK

Let's keep these kinds of content disputes off the mailing list and on
the wiki, please.

-- David


from_name: Martin Harper

body:
> Books which are useful to our readers are always welcome, IMO.

Yes. It will also counteract the impression some viewers may get that Wikipedia
is constructed entirely from webpage research. Ideally, I'd like us to get to a
stage where if I'm interested in reading about Darwin, I go to [[Charles Darwin]]
on Wikipedia, and browse down to "Further reading". You know: *eventually*.

-Martin


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York City

body:
Rick wrote:

> The poll at [[Talk:New York, New York]] on whether or not to move the
> name of the city to [[New York City]] is over.  The vote was 17 for
> and 15 against.  Hardly a consensus.  If I tried to use that vote
> percentage as justification for deleting anything from VfD, people
> would be after me to remove my sysop status as a violation of
> consensus.  But [[User:Nohat]] has taken it upon himself to
> unilaterally move the page.  I have moved it back twice now, and will
> do it one more time in the 24 hour period, if necessary.  This is a
> direct violation of the naming convention for US cities and a
> violation of the meaning of consensus.

Shouldn't this discussion be taking place on the relevant talk page
rather than the mailing list?

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] old revisions on test.wikipedia.org

body:
There's a weird phenomenon on test.wikipedia.org with 1427 old revisions
only holding the text 'abc'. If it was just a flawed manual mysql query
done around may 4 then we could be sure it's not a bug- if not we'd have
to do a fair bit of investigation.

This problem didn't appear in any other wiki running the cvs code, but
to know is better than to guess in this case. Would be a serious
bug/security problem otherwise.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

body:
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