from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] A tidy way of handling "popular culture" references

references:
<b8ceeef70608230102q5afcd6e5lbe5cf1a28a1d8a76@mail.gmail.com>
	<44EC21DA.8090405@gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70608230422ga252223p38beda6473036081@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050608230426x1dd5fa9dta8dbdfb86b0f5e85@mail.gmail.com>
	<1amoe29d5u42flhnm07hpd9v5p0cpn5m8q@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140608230647m4231d2c9gae5db46a0cb1b978@mail.gmail.com>
	<moqoe299u6ucga9qgj3tj69iinuj8t96t6@4ax.com>

body:
On 8/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:47:12 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >OTOH it's a very popular line of stuff to add.
>
> Popular with whom?  The people who already knew it?  Or people who
> have never played that browser game and never will?

Popular with those adding it, I would imagine.

-Matt


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?")

body:
On 8/22/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It was a BoF discussion.  There were essentially no materials
> presented; I made a short extemporaneous opening statement, and then
> opened the floor for discussion, which ensued for about an hour.
> There may be an audio recording, although if there is I am not aware
> of it.  Sorry.

Was there any consensus on whether consensus scales? :)

Even a roundup of any general themes would be very useful and interesting.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

references:
<44E9A0AF.8080108@web.de>
	<ece7r5$ps6$1@sea.gmane.org>	<44EAB0D6.70007@web.de>
	<ecfi2a$gq1$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi schrieb:
> Hi Magnus,
>
>
>> Or we could use a "mixed" solution:
>> * I upload my file to a publically accessible file (ftp or http, no
>> matter), if it's not already online
>> * I call "Special:Upload?source=web"
>> * The upload <input> is replaced with a simple text input row for the URL
>> * Instead of using the PHP upload mechanism, MediaWiki just copies the
>> file through ftp/http
>>
>
> Why are you suggesting an extra different upload page?
I don't.
>  Why not just add
> a radio button right there on the Upload page?
>
I have already implemented it. It is the same upload page, just with the
textbox instead of the <input type=file>. It uses a little extra code in
SpecialUpload.php, is all.
> However, as Brion Vibber already mentioned, there are significant
> security issues with this. I have a suggestion that might solve them; if
> I have overlooked a security problem that this doesn't solve, please let
> me know.
>
On concerns by Brion and Tim, I've rewritten the copy-from-URL part
using CURL, which makes the function less susceptible for
malicious/broken sources.
> My suggestion is thus:
>
>   * The upload page displays (if the "upload from web" option is
>     selected) a randomly-generated token. This token is generated only
>     once for every user, and then stays the same.
>   * When uploading a file, the user needs to submit two URLs:
>     * One that points to a text file containing the above token
>     * One to the actual file he wants to upload
>   * The upload is allowed only if the two files are on the same domain
>     (or in the same directory, depending on how draconian you want it).
>
This isn't really a security feature, as an Evil User (tm) can still
upload any file (s)he wants.

It could, however, be a measure against newbies trying to copy random
files from the web. They can do that, however, right now - thy only have
to save the file locally, as long as it's not too large. So, it would
prevent newbies with no own web space from uploading large files. Is
that really worth the bother?

If activated, my implementation by default only grants admins the right
to upload large files. So, to solve my original problem, I'd have to
find a commons admin, and write on his/her talk page to please upload
the files I stored at (URL), maybe give the file description/license
there or insert it myself once it's up. As long as the overall number of
large files to upload is low, that should work just fine.

Or I'll have to run for admin myself. I have a feeling I might be
accepted ;-)

Magnus

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060823/4c937e3c/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On Aug 23, 2006, at 9:32 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> On 23/08/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
>
>> If was thinking of letting MediaWiki enforce edit summaries. Why
>> would
>> that be a waste of time? At least the "Prompt me when entering a
>> blank
>> edit summary" preference should be enabled by default for
>> anonymous and
>> new users.
>
>
> The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
> summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".

Nonsense! I'm sure at least 10% of our contributors will go with
"boobies" instead.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
On 8/23/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> The problem is different senses of 'subcategory': there's [1] "the set
> of objects in B are a strict subset of the set of objects in A", which
> is loop-proof, and [2] 'B is a topic that is usually discussed in the
> context of A'
>
> For example:
>
> London -[2]-> Thames Valley -[1]-> London, comes to mind
>
> Russia -[2]-> Soviet Union -[1]-> Russia, as well.

Good explanation!

> See [[WordNet]] for a serious attempt to tease out the relationships
> between concepts in detail: there are _lots_ of possible ways that one
> thing can be related to another.

One major complication not to forget is that our categories are at the
*article* level, not at the *topic* or *concept* level. Often one
article = one topic, but not always: for example, [[Beamish and
Crawford]] is about both a brewery and a beer. [[Controlled Impact
Demonstration]] covers the topics of an air safety program, a type of
jet fuel, and a specific event.

If anyone has some schemas or diagrams or whatever that could attempt
to make sense of this, I'd love to see them. Clearly a strict
hierarchy as the only classificational structure is inappropriate.
However, we can also do better than unstructured tagging. What's a
good compromise? How can we get the benefits of a hierarchy where it
works, and the flexibility of tagging when it doesn't?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] en: well on the way to ... 2 million!

body:
On 8/23/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually let's look at this question from the other direction. For how
> > many countries do we have at least a stub on every ruler?
>
> Going back to when?

Well, each of those three probably has a defined beginning - I know
that both the UK and US do.  That's if you are talking about the
political entity, of course, not the geographical area.

-Matt


body:
On 8/23/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I feel this may be slightly beside the point.

Probably - I was just exercising my inner pedant.

-Matt


body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus

I quite like the tidy "References to succubi in modern times" section.
There's just a single sentence on each reference, with the name of the
TV show or whatever in bold. I would not be ashamed to see more
sections like this.

Steve


from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On Monday 21 August 2006 16:57, Kelly Martin wrote:
> At my Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?") one participant
> brought up the consensus building methodolgy used at Apache; someone
> else during Wikimania (Lessig, perhaps) mentioned IETF "rough
> consensus".  My counterpoint to both of these suggestions (and which I
> made at Wikimania) is that if I were to walk into an IETF meeting or
> an Apache Software Foundation discussion and expect to have a say in
> the discussion, I would likely be shown the door.  Both of those

(I'm still sad my presentation was scheduled at the same time as yours.)

[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/how-communities-work-well
2006 Aug 23 | How online communities work well

   In 1999, while I was a fellow at the Berkman Center, I wrote a paper
   on [5]Why the Internet is Good; in it, I noted 10 factors in Internet
   community policy formation (e.g., IETF) that contribute to their
   success. When I consider other open content communities I still find
   this framework to be useful, even in the case of the Wikipedia.
     * Open Participation: IETF (mostly), WP (more so).
       No one is really excluded from the IETF, but you do have to pay
       the meeting attendance fee and the interest in this sort of
       technical things. Nearly any literate person might have an
       interest in the Wikipedia.
     * No Kings, but Elders?: IETF (mostly), WP (slightly less so).
       Both the IETF and the Wikipedia have meritocratic governance
       structures, which I now call [6]paramount leadership. I think the
       main difference here is that many Wikipedians can live very
       happily without ever encounter in questions of governance; they
       can work on their own particular interests and make substantive
       contributions they are. At the IETF, everyone is striving for a
       single standard.
     * Consensus and Competitive Scaling: IETF (partly), WP (partly).
       In my 1999 essay I speak about the difficulties of consensus
       scaling but note it can work when combined with many the later
       factors: "This is because of competitive scaling: a small group of
       people get to produce their best work under consensus, and then
       compete, coordinate, cooperate, and learn with other groups." In
       the standards arena it is possible for small groups of people to
       work on informally competing specifications, and let the best one
       win. (I talk further about this in [7]design by committee and the
       possibilities of red/blue team design.)
     * Implementation and Enforcement: IETF (mostly), WP (not really).
       At the Wikipedia it can be difficult to dispassionately test
       whether a given policy is unambiguously better than another
       policy. And the technical domain when has the capability to
       implement alternatives and see whether they work.
     * Limitation of Scope: IETF (yes), WP (yes).
       Just as "a Working Group to be extremely rigorous in defining and
       enforcing the scope of its activity" the Wikipedia community has
       been strict in specifying what their mission is, an Encyclopedia,
       and is not.
     * Funded Mandates and Lack of Fiat: IETF (mostly), WP (mostly).
       "The implementation and operational use of a technical policy
       demonstrate an interest and ability to deploy the policy at
       large."
     * Uniform Enforcement: IETF (mostly), WP (mostly).
     * Descriptive Policy: IETF (mostly), WP (mostly).
     * Policy Deprecation: IETF (partly), WP (not much).
       "It is useful for a policy that is no longer in operation to be
       stricken from the books; it simplifies the understanding one must
       have about one's regulatory environment." This is basically
       Shirky's observation about the formation of policy.
     * Metrics: IETF (mostly), WP (less so).
       This is tied to the implementation issue, but in the technical
       domain it can be very nice to know that a particular algorithm
       works 20% faster than the old way of doing things. The realm of
       natural language and human meaning is less amenable to these types
       of metrics.
...
References
...
   5. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/reagle/regulation-19990326.html#_Native
   6. http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/ethno/leadership.html#heading12
   7. http://goatee.net/2003/07.html#_02we-a

]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Sydney aka FloNight <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I think this type of illegal activity is a real possibility and is another reason that we should ban PR firms from our site.

Just remember that we can't "ban PR firms". Can't be done. Not possible.

Steve


body:
On 8/22/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> D> For example, we have at least a basic article on every single town in
> D> the U.S. (thanks to the census database) and almost all in the U.K., but
> D> don't even have articles for every state or province of some countries,
> D> let alone all the cities and towns.
>
> There are a lot of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants for which
> we have no article...

I probably wouldn't be surprised if there were cities in China, India,
Indonesia etc with more than 500,000 or even 1 million with no
article.

 > Fun fact: there is a European city with 160,000 inh. having no article!

You're winning so far ;)

> I can guess that the number of missing incumbents is around a couple of
> thousands. Many of them ruled countries of which the average
> westerner never heard. :-)

Yeah, it would be a shame if *notable* former rulers were missing...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 00:39 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > There are a lot of drive-by commentless date changes. Much (but not
> > all of them) are vandalism.  They are often difficult to fact check,
> > and these days with so much vandalism reverted by bots, I'm worried
> > that even more date changes are being missed.
>
> I can't necessarily speak for anyone else, but my instinct would be to
> revert edits that consist solely or almost solely of uncited date
> changes on sight and ask the editor responsible to provide a reference
> in the article if he or she wants to re-add . As editors, we should have
> a high standard of verifiability for such basic and easily researched
> facts as dates.

Thanks for raising this issue, it's something that had bothered me. I
see a lot of these little changes (frequently population changes,
number of career wins of some sportsperson etc...) and am torn between
assuming good faith (and respecting the wiki model that people are
making small improvements), and suspecting vandalism.

Could we replace the linked "Edit summary" text next to the edit
summary box with something more explanatory, like "Please explain this
change"? Maybe just for anons?  I don't want to revert good changes,
but without a description or anything, it's really tough!

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
	wasn't it?

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Agreed, drawing any conclusions other than "nothing terrible happened"
> > is pretty difficult - we didn't set out to collect any data, and we
> > don't really have any.
>
> I asked what data we are missing, and no one has named any.
>
> Please don't cloud a complicated issue further with uninformed conjecture.

Ok:
- How many new pages were created per day by anons prior to the change?
- What proportion of those new pages survived 1 month?
- How many new entries at AfC were created per day since the change
(preferably, month by month stats to see the long term trend)
- What proportion of those entries became articles which survived 1 month?
- What proportion of attempts to create a new page by an anon result
in an AfC entry?
- What proportion of attempts to create a new page by an anon result
in the anon registering an account?
- What proportion of attempts to create a new page by an anon result
in the anon registering an account then coming back 4 days later and
doing the job?

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I'd certainly put it in the top 100, even the top 10, although probably
> not the top 3.  When a user looks up an article, the worst possible
> result would be to find a misleading or otherwise incorrect article.
> The second-worst result would be to find no article.  The third-worst
> would be to find a somewhat shoddy but not misleading or wrong article.
> So I'd rank "we don't cover that at all" pretty high on the list of ways
> our coverage of a topic could suck.

I agree. I personally feel that a one sentence description with a URL
link to a page that covers the subject thoroughly is a *very* valuable
addition to our encyclopaedia. I wonder if others agree?

Steve


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] perjorative terms under [[WP:LIVING]] in article lead

body:
"David Gerard" wrote

>I think even strong supporters of [[David Icke]]
> would have a hard time seriously arguing the point, for example.

It was once pointed out to me that, pedantically speaking, pejorative implies position B in an A/B pair, where the denotation is roughly the same but the connotation is that B is worse. Or something.  Well, it wasn't explained like that, but 'pejorative' once was like a worse type of comparative.

In that light, anyway, I think 'conspiracy theorist' is not necessarily a pejorative. It applies to anyone who postulates a (successful, hidden) conspiracy. Would 'cartel theorist' be a bad thing to call someone who postulates cartels? All those non-Stratfordian Shakespeare theorists postulate unlikely, hidden things; but accept labels saying that they think conventional literary history is just wrong.

I think the pejorative forms of 'conspiracy theorist' include 'barking conspiracy theorist', 'anti-Masonic nutter and conspiracy theorist' and so on.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>"David Gerard" wrote
>
>
>>I think even strong supporters of [[David Icke]]
>>would have a hard time seriously arguing the point, for example.
>>
>>
>It was once pointed out to me that, pedantically speaking, pejorative implies position B in an A/B pair, where the denotation is roughly the same but the connotation is that B is worse. Or something.  Well, it wasn't explained like that, but 'pejorative' once was like a worse type of comparative.
>
It's not just a matter of degrees, but of characterizations.  If it's
just a matter of comparatives then why not just use A?  Why do you need
to include allusion and innuendo to circumvent verifiability?

>In that light, anyway, I think 'conspiracy theorist' is not necessarily a pejorative.
>
"Not necessarily" logically only implies that there is at least one
instance where the claim is not pejorative.  On those terms I agree with
you.  But rather than isolate those few claims where it does not apply
you choose to imply that it is applicable to all.

>It applies to anyone who postulates a (successful, hidden) conspiracy. Would 'cartel theorist' be a bad thing to call someone who postulates cartels? All those non-Stratfordian Shakespeare theorists postulate unlikely, hidden things; but accept labels saying that they think conventional literary history is just wrong.
>
By slight-of-hand you have projected the practice of these other
theorists of multiple cartels and literatures onto the person who
postulates a single theory.  This is indeed an argument that may be
common among conspiracy theorists.  You also use the word "postulate"
which is stronger than the simple "support".  That they have
"postulated" also needs to be verifiable.  It's also important to
distinguish between "conspiracy theory" which applies ad rem, and
"conspiracy theorist" which applies ad hominem.

>I think the pejorative forms of 'conspiracy theorist' include 'barking conspiracy theorist', 'anti-Masonic nutter and conspiracy theorist' and so on.
>
Almost the entire range of conspiracy theorists is also a subset of the
pejorative forms.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Blank pages being delivered at en?

body:
I'm still getting this occasionally, and particularly when going
"back" to a previous page. Looking in the "document model inspector"
(err, not sure what it's called in english), I see the following
elements:
#document
-HTML
--HEAD
--BODY
---PRE

None of these nodes seem to have any text or attributes associated with them.

Hmm.

Steve

On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/20/06, Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com> wrote:
> > Actually, I've been getting these blank pages too, and I'm not using
> > Google Accelerator. Using Firefox on WinXP and MacOSX, ZoomTown (local
> > broadband ISP). I haven't been seeing this with any other website.
>
> Ok, I just got another one. I notice that I'm only getting these at
> work (Firefox 1.5.0.6), and not at home (Firefox 1.0.something). XP in
> both cases, various firefox extensions.
>
> I have saved the source code of a "blank page" to a text file.
> Comparing this to the result of the reloaded page is yielding me
> confusing results - not 100% sure I can trust FireFox's "show page
> source"? It seems to be either identical to the "correct" output, or
> minus a few unimportant linefeeds. However, the "view rendered source
> chart" extension shows just the string "<HTML></html>".
>
> I'm tempted to think this is a FireFox anomaly? Some odd race
> condition where it's rendering the page and *then* retrieving the full
> source?
>
> Steve
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 23/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> > I'd certainly put it in the top 100, even the top 10, although probably
> > not the top 3.  When a user looks up an article, the worst possible
> > result would be to find a misleading or otherwise incorrect article.
> > The second-worst result would be to find no article.  The third-worst
> > would be to find a somewhat shoddy but not misleading or wrong article.
> > So I'd rank "we don't cover that at all" pretty high on the list of ways
> > our coverage of a topic could suck.

> I agree. I personally feel that a one sentence description with a URL
> link to a page that covers the subject thoroughly is a *very* valuable
> addition to our encyclopaedia. I wonder if others agree?

Yep. aka a good stub. (e.g. [[lxrun]], which tells an interested
person not a whole lot, but at least what it is and a reference to
look further.)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Article and info for Interview on The Right Hook

body:
On 23/08/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> As long as the press maintains its compulsion to apologize for looking
> at us we can only bask in the publicity.  What more can we ask of them
> then that they get the url right? :-)

That's Wickypedia dot com. WICKY-PEEE-DIA-DOT-COM.

- d.


from_name: Frederic Bayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hi Julien,
>
>
>> The latest version of the sources with all these modifications is
>> available at :
>> http://suggest.speedblue.org/tgz/wikipedia-suggest-0.31.tar.gz
>>
>
> Some search suggestion updates:
>
> * Got rid of the race condition in autocomplete when user types fast (e.g. can type "new" fast without having it lose the
> highlighting on " York").
> * Removed the first field from the JSON response from TcpQuery (basically client was asking a question, and getting a response from
> server that said "the question you asked is this, and the answer is this" - however we only need the answer back, not the question).
> Also removed a handful of spaces that aren't needed in the JSON data.
> * Pressing "Enter" on a response which has no matches will now invoke MediaWiki's "Special:Search" on that query.
> * Moved the URL to the wiki to index.php (as "var baseUrl"), which hopefully means that a single WSuggest.js file can be used for
> both English and French.
> * Added a CHANGELOG file to keep track of what's changed + release dates.
> * With the "var autocomplete" + delete key stuff (intKey == 8), I think the intent was to update the suggestion list (but not the
> autocomplete) if the user presses the backspace/delete keys. Added a 'showAutocomplete' boolean parameter for this.
> * If the user searched for "XYZ Affair", then deleted the "Y" to give "XZ Affair", it would still show "XYZ Affair" as the only
> matching result (when really there are no matching results). To prevent this removed the 'cache' boolean var.
>
> Patch against 0.31 is at http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/wikipedia-suggest-0.31-diff.txt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Dear Nick! Thank you for the Web-Adress, very useful. But how can we
install the Suggest to the Wikipedia, and if we will, why not also
install it to other sister Projects.

Greetings,
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Abzt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>On Aug 23, 2006, at 9:32 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>>On 23/08/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If was thinking of letting MediaWiki enforce edit summaries. Why
>>>would
>>>that be a waste of time? At least the "Prompt me when entering a
>>>blank
>>>edit summary" preference should be enabled by default for
>>>anonymous and
>>>new users.
>>>
>>>
>>The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
>>summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".
>>
>>
>Nonsense! I'm sure at least 10% of our contributors will go with
>"boobies" instead.
>
A single random letter would be more efficient... especially when
otherwise the edit summary would be longer than the edit itself.

Ec


from_name: Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C]

subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
I'm interested in MediaWiki running with Oracle and after searching
through the archives it appears there was an attempt back around version
1.5 - 1.6 but nothing since then.  Is there a plan to support Oracle in
the future or has it be put on the shelf?

The WikiMatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) reports MediaWiki supports
Oracle.  I guess that is incorrect at this time?

-Jim


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Ruud Koot wrote:

>David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>>The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
>>summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".
>>
>>
>Such an edit summary would at least make it clear we're dealing with
>vandalism. Sock puppets might reveal themselves by using similar
>nonsense summaries. It might be worth the added nuisance?
>
It seems like the subtext message to vandals is, "If you want your
vandalism to last accompany it with a sensible edit summary." :-)

Ec


from_name: gil penchina

body:
Hmm.  tough one.

I do think there was general perception that TRUE consensus does not
scale as too many people get involved, and that as a result two bad
things happen:
1.  Some votes get held hostage by a single bad actor
2.  Some people are afraid to voice disagreement in fear of upsetting
the consensus

I walked away thinking that Kelly's best way to prove this, is to show
analytically the average time to get a vote, and the % of votes being
approved - and see if the data proves that as the number of people with
a vote increases, the time to decisions slows to a crawl, and more and
more decisions never happen.

If true- it would be pretty compelling.  No one in the room seemed to
have a religious belief that 100% AYE votes were per-se the right answer

Gil
Gil at wikia.com

Kelly Martin wrote:
> I don't think there was consensus on anything; there were some
> strongly held opinions in the room and not all of them were mine.
>
> There seemed to be a general feeling that RfA on WP is no longer a
> consensus mechanism, but instead a supermajority mechanism, and that
> RfA does not do a very good job of selecting administrators, but also
> not a very bad one.
>
> There was some discussion of alternative mechanisms for consensus
> building, such as the ASF and another site the name of which eludes
> me.
>
> I think it's better for someone other than myself to try to summarize
> the points as I was a biased participant rather than an impartial
> observer.  Perhaps Gil Penchina, who graciously moderated the
> discussion, or one of the observers who was not from enwiki, could
> provide a better summary than I.
>
> Kelly
>
> On 8/23/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8/22/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > It was a BoF discussion.  There were essentially no materials
>> > presented; I made a short extemporaneous opening statement, and then
>> > opened the floor for discussion, which ensued for about an hour.
>> > There may be an audio recording, although if there is I am not aware
>> > of it.  Sorry.
>>
>>
>> Was there any consensus on whether consensus scales? :)
>>
>> Even a roundup of any general themes would be very useful and
>> interesting.
>>
>> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>


body:
On 8/23/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> It was once pointed out to me that, pedantically speaking, pejorative implies position B in an A/B pair, where the denotation is roughly the same but the connotation is that B is worse. Or something.  Well, it wasn't explained like that, but 'pejorative' once was like a worse type of comparative.

Presumably it comes from the latin 'peior' "worse". I'm not convinced
that etymology helps solves arguments though...:)

Steve


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 23/08/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>> As long as the press maintains its compulsion to apologize for looking
>> at us we can only bask in the publicity.  What more can we ask of them
>> then that they get the url right? :-)
>>
>
>
> That's Wickypedia dot com. WICKY-PEEE-DIA-DOT-COM.
>
>
>
Note: wickypedia.com has already been registered by Yet Another Domain
Parking Outfit.

-- Neil


subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
 008 pages for the servers?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> The problem is different senses of 'subcategory': there's [1] "the set
>> of objects in B are a strict subset of the set of objects in A", which
>> is loop-proof, and [2] 'B is a topic that is usually discussed in the
>> context of A'
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> London -[2]-> Thames Valley -[1]-> London, comes to mind
>>
>> Russia -[2]-> Soviet Union -[1]-> Russia, as well.
>>
>
> Good explanation!
>
>
>> See [[WordNet]] for a serious attempt to tease out the relationships
>> between concepts in detail: there are _lots_ of possible ways that one
>> thing can be related to another.
>>
>
> One major complication not to forget is that our categories are at the
> *article* level, not at the *topic* or *concept* level. Often one
> article = one topic, but not always: for example, [[Beamish and
> Crawford]] is about both a brewery and a beer. [[Controlled Impact
> Demonstration]] covers the topics of an air safety program, a type of
> jet fuel, and a specific event.
>
> If anyone has some schemas or diagrams or whatever that could attempt
> to make sense of this, I'd love to see them.

Indeed they have. However, the main efforts in this direction are so
complex and abstract that they are effectively unusable for ordinary
mortals. See, for example, http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/

> Clearly a strict
> hierarchy as the only classificational structure is inappropriate.
> However, we can also do better than unstructured tagging. What's a
> good compromise? How can we get the benefits of a hierarchy where it
> works, and the flexibility of tagging when it doesn't?
>
>
I like [[WordNet]]'s (relatively) simple way of identifying different
classes of relationships: even things like (say)
[[located-in::Category:Places in Texas]], or
[[subset-of::Category:Places in Texas]] would still be easier to read,
write and understand than stuff like (for example)

<owl:Class rdf:ID="TexasThings">
  <owl:equivalentClass>
    <owl:Restriction>
      <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#locatedIn" />
      <owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#TexasRegion" />
    </owl:Restriction>
  </owl:equivalentClass>
</owl:Class>

-- Neil


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Frederic Bayer wrote:
> Dear Nick! Thank you for the Web-Adress, very useful. But how can we
> install the Suggest to the Wikipedia, and if we will, why not also
> install it to other sister Projects.

Since the list threads are rather long, please summarize and put details on a
request at bugzilla.wikimedia.org. :)

I'm taking a few days off, but will be back to set things like this up next week
(unless you can get Tim et al to do it faster).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060823/41be4f47/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanitizer.php

body:
Robert Jones wrote:
> I can use most html on the wiki, just not the tags/attributes with
> characters ! and - as they get converted in the same way that tags not
> included in the Sanitizer get converted. I am looking for a way around
> this as I need to use a !DOCTYPE tag and a http-equiv at the top of my
> article. Putting them in a skin won't work as I need to have the
> choice of including them or not on each page.

The thing is that those *won't work* in the wiki portion of the page. They
*need* to be output into the skin portion or they would have no effect.

Thus what you need is for your page to alter the skin output by setting some
variable. Please note this will have effects on caching, so be careful to either
include the information in the ParserOutput object which is cached, or to
disable the parser cache.

-- brion bivbber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060823/543c4def/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] problem with statistics

body:
Frederik Eaton wrote:
> Every page load in my MediaWiki installation actually turns into two
> requests, one with header
>
> Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
>
> and one with header
>
> Accept: image/png,*/*;q=0.5
>
> both for the same URL (e.g.
> GET /~frederik/pfcq/wiki/index.php/Domain_theory/Homomorphism_of_preorders
> )

Did you do something like setting $wgLogo to ""?

It sounds like the browser is trying to load the same URL as an image.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060823/058e93de/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 23/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some of these lists of references could be interesting, but if they
> were turned into actual [[List of references to Y in popular culture]]
> they'd probably get AfD'ed.

Different references are interesting to different people. I think
making these seperate "List of references to..." would be a great way
to handle the problem. It is a lesser of two evils.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
I don't think there was consensus on anything; there were some
strongly held opinions in the room and not all of them were mine.

There seemed to be a general feeling that RfA on WP is no longer a
consensus mechanism, but instead a supermajority mechanism, and that
RfA does not do a very good job of selecting administrators, but also
not a very bad one.

There was some discussion of alternative mechanisms for consensus
building, such as the ASF and another site the name of which eludes
me.

I think it's better for someone other than myself to try to summarize
the points as I was a biased participant rather than an impartial
observer.  Perhaps Gil Penchina, who graciously moderated the
discussion, or one of the observers who was not from enwiki, could
provide a better summary than I.

Kelly

On 8/23/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It was a BoF discussion.  There were essentially no materials
> > presented; I made a short extemporaneous opening statement, and then
> > opened the floor for discussion, which ensued for about an hour.
> > There may be an audio recording, although if there is I am not aware
> > of it.  Sorry.
>
>
> Was there any consensus on whether consensus scales? :)
>
> Even a roundup of any general themes would be very useful and interesting.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: habj

subject: [Foundation-l] Board election notice on the English Wikipedia

body:
2006/8/22, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com>:
>
>
> #siteNotice {display: none}
>
> will make it disappear

I just picked up at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Sitenotice

#BoardCandidateNotice { display: none; }
in your personal css will make just the election note disappear, not all
future site notices.

/habj


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Sam Pointon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 23/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ultimately we need some sort of wiki-meta-data system which is seperate
> from the articles...

Such a system would have far more applications than just preventing
date vandalism. I was toying with an idea like this a little while
ago, to help sort out some of the metadata mess in biography articles
(specialised infobox + dates in lead + persondata = redundancy!). I
have looked at the Semantic Wikipedia's efforts, but they seem to be
exactly backwards to what I have in mind: specifying the raw facts
somewhere, something like this pseudosyntax and made-up dates:

<metadata-specification>
  <date-of-birth>[[19 July]] [[1891]]</date-of-birth>
  <date-of-death>[[6 August]] [[1954]]</date-of-death>
<metadata-specification>

and then being put into the article wherever needed (again pseudosyntax):

{{random-specialised-infobox |
born = <metadata>date-of-birth</metadata> |
 died = <metadata>date-of-death</metadata>}}

Mr Smith (<metadata>date-of-birth</metadata> -
<metadata>date-of-death</metadata>) ...


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way of
	handling "popular culture" references)

body:
On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not a great sloganist, but something more like "Everyone can help"
> or "Contribute today" etc would be truer.

'Good contributors are always welcome', perhaps.

-Matt


from_name: Freply Spang

body:
On 8/22/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It was a BoF discussion.  There were essentially no materials
> presented; I made a short extemporaneous opening statement, and then
> opened the floor for discussion, which ensued for about an hour.
> There may be an audio recording, although if there is I am not aware
> of it.  Sorry.
>
> Kelly
>
>
There was a video recording, but I don't know the name of the person who was
doing it. I believe it was the person who mentioned his experiences of
living in an intentional community, if that rings any bells for anyone.

Freply


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch rankings

body:
This is a subscription site, but perhaps some nl: folks can report the
stats?

Dutch *Wikipedia* rises in site
rankings<http://www.telecom.paper.nl/site/news_ta.asp?type=abstract&id=138810>
Telecom Paper (subscription) - Houten,Netherlands
The Dutch version of *Wikipedia* has proven a success, according to internet
ratings group Multiscope. One out of three Dutch internet *...

*


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
On 8/23/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 23/08/06, Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] <sullivan at mail.nih.gov> wrote:
> > I'm interested in MediaWiki running with Oracle and after searching
> > through the archives it appears there was an attempt back around version
> > 1.5 - 1.6 but nothing since then.  Is there a plan to support Oracle in
> > the future or has it be put on the shelf?
>
> I don't think there's an official effort. From time to time, people
> whinge about it, and our lead developer invites them or their
> organisation to contact him if interested in helping out, but nothing
> happens.
>
> This isn't unusual; it took a good deal of time for us to get decent
> PostgreSQL support.
>
> > The WikiMatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) reports MediaWiki supports
> > Oracle.  I guess that is incorrect at this time?
>
> Yes. I wouldn't trust services that don't seem to verify or update
> information, myself...
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

Hrm.  I just installed 1.7.1 for the first time and noticed following this
conversation that the Oracle support went away.

That's fine for the time being... I'm going to have a much smaller wiki than
any of the WMF wiki... but I would see value in having the Oracle capability
back in.

Looking at the Oracle support in 1.6.8, it doesn't look all that complicated
at first glance.  But I haven't been doing any mediawiki programming to
date.  Who do I talk to about the supportability and support issues which
the Oracle stuff was seeing?

Thanks.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
I found this in the 1.7.0 release notes
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/tags/REL1_7_0/phase3/RELEASE-N
OTES.  I guess this says it all.

== Compatibility ==
Experimental Oracle support has been dropped as it is unmaintained.

Oh well, I'll need to find another wiki or get my DB people to also
support MySQL, which they snear at, so it may take many meetings with
lots of free food.

-Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Church [mailto:robchur at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 10:24 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

On 23/08/06, Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] <sullivan at mail.nih.gov>
wrote:
> I'm interested in MediaWiki running with Oracle and after searching
> through the archives it appears there was an attempt back around
> version
> 1.5 - 1.6 but nothing since then.  Is there a plan to support Oracle
> in the future or has it be put on the shelf?

I don't think there's an official effort. From time to time, people
whinge about it, and our lead developer invites them or their
organisation to contact him if interested in helping out, but nothing
happens.

This isn't unusual; it took a good deal of time for us to get decent
PostgreSQL support.

> The WikiMatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) reports MediaWiki supports

> Oracle.  I guess that is incorrect at this time?

Yes. I wouldn't trust services that don't seem to verify or update
information, myself...

Rob Church
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

body:
AWe> It's not tidy, it's ugly and inconsistant. To top it off, there's a
AWe> notice at the top saying "For usage of the succubus in popular culture,
AWe> see [[Succubi in fiction]]" - so what the bloody hell is this section
AWe> even doing in this article?

I've seen worse: The content of this article used to be in
[[The Raven]], a large part of it was about pop culture...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven_in_popular_culture


body:
>> I can guess that the number of missing incumbents is around a couple of
>> thousands. Many of them ruled countries of which the average
>> westerner never heard. :-)

SB> Yeah, it would be a shame if *notable* former rulers were missing...

Perhaphs a guy who ruled a 19th century Europan country
(population: ~5 million) for about 10 years? :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandru_II_Ghica
(Wallachia; 1834-1842 and 1856-1858)


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/23/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's not tidy, it's ugly and inconsistant. To top it off, there's a
> notice at the top saying "For usage of the succubus in popular culture,
> see [[Succubi in fiction]]" - so what the bloody hell is this section
> even doing in this article?

Heh, I missed that. The perennial problem: there are 50 X. It would be
good if the article had about 5 X. But which ones?

Some of these lists of references could be interesting, but if they
were turned into actual [[List of references to Y in popular culture]]
they'd probably get AfD'ed.

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
> If you can't distinguish between a small correction or vandalism, this
> probably means the fact isn't sourced. Either add a source, or if you
> can't at least a {{citeneeded}} or related tag.

Right. In my mind there are really two tightly related problems:

1) Catching that a simple piece of factual data has been changed.
and
2) Actually verifying that the change is good.

(1) is more important, because if we don't know that a change is made
we can't verify it... But I also think that (1) is the easier part to
improve... We could have a bot detecting many such changes and place
them on a list, for example. Not a complete solution, but with a
little effort we could probably quadruple our effectiveness.  Over
time, such features could be enhanced in a decentralized way by things
like invisible <fact></fact> tags that tell bots about immutable text.
(bot would keep a list of fact tags it has seen in an article and warn
if one is changed or removed)

Some cynical offlist mail I received suggested that I might really be
advocating stable versions here.... and it's true that I think stable
versions will be a vast improvement on this point.  But even with
stable versions I'm not confident that such changes would get the high
level of scrutiny they deserve, and that any technical or social
improvements we come up with would also be useful in a future with
stable versions.

(2) is much harder...   If the fact is cited to an online resource
then it is just a question of motivation to get people to check.  ...
But what if it's cited to an offline resource or, more commonly, not
cited at all?

I have mixed feelings about how to address (2)...

We could, for example, treat the case like a dispute over uncited
material, where our default action is usually to remove the uncited
claims and request that the disputing parties provide citations. But
since there is so much totally uncited basic data, such a policy would
have the effect of creating a new form of vandalism... and potentially
result in an overall reduction of good information.  We could also
revert unless the later editor justifies their claim.... but I've seen
a number of comment less date changes which did check out, so that too
has problems.

I like the suggestion of changing the edit summary text to the most
simplistic "Please explain your edit" or the like.  I am not sure I
see the benefits in mandatory edit summaries... at least today the
lack of a summary is a reasonable indicator that the edit may need a
deeper look.


from_name: Ruud Koot

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Thanks for raising this issue, it's something that had bothered me. I
> see a lot of these little changes (frequently population changes,
> number of career wins of some sportsperson etc...) and am torn between
> assuming good faith (and respecting the wiki model that people are
> making small improvements), and suspecting vandalism.

If you can't distinguish between a small correction or vandalism, this
probably means the fact isn't sourced. Either add a source, or if you
can't at least a {{citeneeded}} or related tag.

> Could we replace the linked "Edit summary" text next to the edit
> summary box with something more explanatory, like "Please explain this
> change"? Maybe just for anons?  I don't want to revert good changes,
> but without a description or anything, it's really tough!

Indeed. I believe edit summaries should be made mandatory, that would
really help to detect vandalism.

Ruud


body:
On 8/23/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> >> I can guess that the number of missing incumbents is around a couple of
> >> thousands. Many of them ruled countries of which the average
> >> westerner never heard. :-)
>
> SB> Yeah, it would be a shame if *notable* former rulers were missing...
>
> Perhaphs a guy who ruled a 19th century Europan country
> (population: ~5 million) for about 10 years? :-)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandru_II_Ghica
> (Wallachia; 1834-1842 and 1856-1858)

Heh, speaking of countries "of which the average westerner never heard"...

Actually let's look at this question from the other direction. For how
many countries do we have at least a stub on every ruler?

* The US
* Australia
* UK
* France
...?

Incidentally, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Chinese_monarchs
is pretty impressive, but there are redlinks.

Steve


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/23/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >
> > >New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've
> > >seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100
> > >task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.
> > >
> > >
> > I'd certainly put it in the top 100, even the top 10, although probably
> > not the top 3.  When a user looks up an article, the worst possible
> > result would be to find a misleading or otherwise incorrect article.
>
> Why's that so bad? They can just edit it to fix it.
>

how do they know it is misleading or otherwise incorrect?
--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 23/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > The second-worst result would be to find no article.

> > Why's that so bad? They can just create it.

> Heh, "I went to this book looking for some information which I was
> lacking. It didn't have it either, so I just added it."
> Nothing wrong with this picture? :)

"looked it up and added it."

Don't you find yourself searching in vain for the "edit this page"
link on other websites?

- d.


from_name: gil penchina

body:
Again - I am not the expert - but it was a question of whether consensus
(defined as everyone has to agree) vs majority vote was the best answer.

Gil

Anthony wrote:
> On 8/23/06, gil penchina <gil at wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hmm.  tough one.
>>
>> I do think there was general perception that TRUE consensus does not
>> scale as too many people get involved, and that as a result two bad
>> things happen:
>> 1.  Some votes get held hostage by a single bad actor
>> 2.  Some people are afraid to voice disagreement in fear of upsetting
>> the consensus
>>
>> I walked away thinking that Kelly's best way to prove this, is to show
>> analytically the average time to get a vote, and the % of votes being
>> approved - and see if the data proves that as the number of people with
>> a vote increases, the time to decisions slows to a crawl, and more and
>> more decisions never happen.
>>
>> If true- it would be pretty compelling.  No one in the room seemed to
>> have a religious belief that 100% AYE votes were per-se the right answer
>>
>> Gil
>> Gil at wikia.com
>
> Now I'm confused.  Voting definitely doesn't scale.  But was Kelly
> suggesting that the fact that voting doesn't scale has something to do
> with a claim that consensus decision making doesn't scale?
>
> Anthony
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 23/08/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:

> If was thinking of letting MediaWiki enforce edit summaries. Why would
> that be a waste of time? At least the "Prompt me when entering a blank
> edit summary" preference should be enabled by default for anonymous and
> new users.

The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:26:43 +0100, "Oldak Quill"
<oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

>Different references are interesting to different people. I think
>making these seperate "List of references to..." would be a great way
>to handle the problem. It is a lesser of two evils.

But likely to be indiscriminate.  The first bar of Dies Irae is the
sound played when you kill minor character X in browser game Y, and so
on.  It doesn't exactly advance the sum of human knowledge.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:20:47 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>Incidentally, I have managed to get my edit summary usage up to 100%.
>It was tough, but I've finally changed my habits.

Ditto.  I added a script to monobook.js :-)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 23/08/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
> > summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".

> Such an edit summary would at least make it clear we're dealing with
> vandalism. Sock puppets might reveal themselves by using similar
> nonsense summaries. It might be worth the added nuisance?

Perhaps, or perhaps the vandal detection bots could look for blank
entries. Or perhaps they do now.

- d.


body:
On 23/08/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:26:43 +0100, "Oldak Quill"
> <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

> >Different references are interesting to different people. I think
> >making these seperate "List of references to..." would be a great way
> >to handle the problem. It is a lesser of two evils.

> But likely to be indiscriminate.  The first bar of Dies Irae is the
> sound played when you kill minor character X in browser game Y, and so
> on.  It doesn't exactly advance the sum of human knowledge.

OTOH it's a very popular line of stuff to add.

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> One major complication not to forget is that our categories are at the
> *article* level, not at the *topic* or *concept* level. Often one
> article = one topic, but not always: for example, [[Beamish and
> Crawford]] is about both a brewery and a beer. [[Controlled Impact
> Demonstration]] covers the topics of an air safety program, a type of
> jet fuel, and a specific event.

I don't think that's a problem.  *Categories* are still at a concept
level, after all, and even if they aren't, hierarchy would still work
as expected (just there wouldn't be many available strict
supercategories).  [[Beamish and Crawford]] would be in both
[[Category:Breweries]] and [[Category:Beers]].  Arguably that breaks
down the idea of strict super-/subsets, but there's no reason to apply
that to articles as a whole if it would make sense to apply it to only
part of an article that deals with multiple topics.

On 8/23/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> I like [[WordNet]]'s (relatively) simple way of identifying different
> classes of relationships: even things like (say)
> [[located-in::Category:Places in Texas]], or
> [[subset-of::Category:Places in Texas]] would still be easier to read,
> write and understand than stuff like (for example)
>
> <owl:Class rdf:ID="TexasThings">
>   <owl:equivalentClass>
>     <owl:Restriction>
>       <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#locatedIn" />
>       <owl:someValuesFrom rdf:resource="#TexasRegion" />
>     </owl:Restriction>
>   </owl:equivalentClass>
> </owl:Class>

We don't even need [[located-in::]] for the main encyclopedia (leaving
aside the mythical Wikidata, which is a good idea but still in the
indefinite future).  We just need three types of relationships:
related-to, superset-of, subset-of.

=Category:Humans=
:''The main article for this category is [[Human]].''

==Subcategories==
All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.

* People by city
* People by company
* People by country of residence
* People by nationality
* People by occupation
* People by political orientation
* People by race or ethnicity
* People by religion
* People by status
. . .

==Supercategories==
All {{PAGENAME}} are each of the following.

* Apes

==Related categories==
* Lists of people

==Articles about {{PAGENAME}}==
There are no articles about {{PAGENAME}} that are not also about a
[[#Subcategories|subcategory]] of {{PAGENAME}}.

==Articles related to {{PAGENAME}}==
* Human
* Person
* People


references:
<b8ceeef70608230102q5afcd6e5lbe5cf1a28a1d8a76@mail.gmail.com>
	<44EC21DA.8090405@gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70608230422ga252223p38beda6473036081@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050608230426x1dd5fa9dta8dbdfb86b0f5e85@mail.gmail.com>
	<1amoe29d5u42flhnm07hpd9v5p0cpn5m8q@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140608230647m4231d2c9gae5db46a0cb1b978@mail.gmail.com>
	<moqoe299u6ucga9qgj3tj69iinuj8t96t6@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140608230805k74e26eb4m55af5d592a6da467@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
> actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
> back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
> them this is not a good idea.

Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?

;)


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Actually, the "upload from web" available for anyone would improve things,
as there wouldn't be so much "no source". We could find the url from where
it was caught. I am assuming the original url appearing on the summary.
Now, the instructions to "move to commons" are download file, go to commons,
fill summary, *upload file*, and press upload. It could be, as simple as go
to commons, fill summary, fill url, upload. Even easier if you use the
commonshelper, as it would fill almost all for you. I think the part where i
spent most time in the 'to commons' process is in the down/uploading, as the
file full of bytes must cross the net.
Then you could add more tricks to it, as having a bot checking license for
uploads from flickr, auto-nfd blacklisted urls, etc.

Platonides


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Thanks for raising this issue, it's something that had bothered me. I
> > see a lot of these little changes (frequently population changes,
> > number of career wins of some sportsperson etc...) and am torn between
> > assuming good faith (and respecting the wiki model that people are
> > making small improvements), and suspecting vandalism.
>
> If you can't distinguish between a small correction or vandalism, this
> probably means the fact isn't sourced. Either add a source, or if you
> can't at least a {{citeneeded}} or related tag.

Sure, but extremely few dates anywhere are sourced. Consider a
midlength article with no sources at all, and someone comes and
changes one date. Sure, you can put {{citeneeded}}. But will it help?

We're not quite at the point of treating unsourced information as the
exception as the rule :)

> Indeed. I believe edit summaries should be made mandatory, that would
> really help to detect vandalism.

Um, what does "mandatory" mean. If you're talking about a technical
solution, it's a waste of time.

Incidentally, I have managed to get my edit summary usage up to 100%.
It was tough, but I've finally changed my habits.

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The second-worst result would be to find no article.
>
> Why's that so bad? They can just create it.

Heh, "I went to this book looking for some information which I was
lacking. It didn't have it either, so I just added it."

Nothing wrong with this picture? :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Um, what does "mandatory" mean. If you're talking about a technical
> solution, it's a waste of time.
>
> Incidentally, I have managed to get my edit summary usage up to 100%.
> It was tough, but I've finally changed my habits.

If was thinking of letting MediaWiki enforce edit summaries. Why would
that be a waste of time? At least the "Prompt me when entering a blank
edit summary" preference should be enabled by default for anonymous and
new users.

Ruud


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
> summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".

Such an edit summary would at least make it clear we're dealing with
vandalism. Sock puppets might reveal themselves by using similar
nonsense summaries. It might be worth the added nuisance?

Ruud


body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:47:12 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> But likely to be indiscriminate.  The first bar of Dies Irae is the
>> sound played when you kill minor character X in browser game Y, and so
>> on.  It doesn't exactly advance the sum of human knowledge.

>OTOH it's a very popular line of stuff to add.

Popular with whom?  The people who already knew it?  Or people who
have never played that browser game and never will?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 04:24:09PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> This isn't unusual; it took a good deal of time for us to get decent
> PostgreSQL support.

Does this mean that we now, officially, *have* decent PostgreSQL
support?  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 01:11:41PM -0400, Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] wrote:
> I found this in the 1.7.0 release notes
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/tags/REL1_7_0/phase3/RELEASE-N
> OTES.  I guess this says it all.
>
> == Compatibility ==
> Experimental Oracle support has been dropped as it is unmaintained.
>
> Oh well, I'll need to find another wiki or get my DB people to also
> support MySQL, which they snear at, so it may take many meetings with
> lots of free food.

If you're going to have them support two DBMS's utilize that PG
support, and then they can port their Oracle work over to it, too, As
Time Goes By...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 23/08/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:47:12 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> wrote:

> >> But likely to be indiscriminate.  The first bar of Dies Irae is the
> >> sound played when you kill minor character X in browser game Y, and so
> >> on.  It doesn't exactly advance the sum of human knowledge.

> >OTOH it's a very popular line of stuff to add.

> Popular with whom?  The people who already knew it?  Or people who
> have never played that browser game and never will?

The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
them this is not a good idea.

- d.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Oracle Support?

body:
On 23/08/06, Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] <sullivan at mail.nih.gov> wrote:
> I'm interested in MediaWiki running with Oracle and after searching
> through the archives it appears there was an attempt back around version
> 1.5 - 1.6 but nothing since then.  Is there a plan to support Oracle in
> the future or has it be put on the shelf?

I don't think there's an official effort. From time to time, people
whinge about it, and our lead developer invites them or their
organisation to contact him if interested in helping out, but nothing
happens.

This isn't unusual; it took a good deal of time for us to get decent
PostgreSQL support.

> The WikiMatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) reports MediaWiki supports
> Oracle.  I guess that is incorrect at this time?

Yes. I wouldn't trust services that don't seem to verify or update
information, myself...

Rob Church


body:
On 23/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm still getting this occasionally, and particularly when going
> "back" to a previous page. Looking in the "document model inspector"
> (err, not sure what it's called in english), I see the following
> elements:
> #document
> -HTML
> --HEAD
> --BODY
> ---PRE

1. What pages?
2. Which version of Firefox?
3. Which extensions?
4. Other conditions to reproduce?

Rob Church


body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:05:44 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
>actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
>back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
>them this is not a good idea.

Quicker just to rangeblock AOL :-)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
> Yes, let's. Experiments go both ways, remember...

Oh good. I was wondering when this experiment was going to end. For purely
selfish reasons from the perspective of a mostly logged-out user, you see.

But as a rationalization, I can go with:

> > 2.  We will lose good new pages created by anons of good will.

My first IP address was http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/209.167.55.131

As you see, after briefly checking that I could, in fact, edit, I jumped right
in with article creation. What would happen if I wandered into Wikipedia today?

- The articles I created exist now, and that field has much better coverage now.
Would I have new articles to contribute?

Absolutely, there are many missing topics in that area still. Even some of the
red-links I created way back then I still haven't made blue (nor has anyone else).

- Wouldn't I just register an account?

Don't know. Hard to say what I would do. But, quite aside from the question of
whether anon creation of new articles should be allowed, have people actually
tried to logout (WHAT did he say? log OUT? Burn him!) then follow a red-link to
create an article, and follow the process through? There might be some
improvements to be made there. I have tried to be deliberately Wiki-naive, and
have wound up either lost in AfC, or correctly submitting to AfC which then
promptly gets ignored. And I don't think I was being unreasonably dense. Even if
I guess that the CORRECT choice from the article-not-found page is actually
"create an account", at the end of it I wind up back at the main page. The
obvious thing to do here is to back up in the browser history, but this doesn't
help, unless I guess that I have to back up one PAST the article-not-found page
to the original red-link page and click it again! An unlikely guess.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it is precisely these obstacles
which also cuts down on the nonsense.

Regards,
Dan Mehkeri


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia.htm

Well, looks like we've been found out. Then again, maybe that's just
what the Cabal wants him to think.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060823/a0d1d3c2/attachment.pgp


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 8/23/06, gil penchina <gil at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Hmm.  tough one.
>
> I do think there was general perception that TRUE consensus does not
> scale as too many people get involved, and that as a result two bad
> things happen:
> 1.  Some votes get held hostage by a single bad actor
> 2.  Some people are afraid to voice disagreement in fear of upsetting
> the consensus
>
> I walked away thinking that Kelly's best way to prove this, is to show
> analytically the average time to get a vote, and the % of votes being
> approved - and see if the data proves that as the number of people with
> a vote increases, the time to decisions slows to a crawl, and more and
> more decisions never happen.
>
> If true- it would be pretty compelling.  No one in the room seemed to
> have a religious belief that 100% AYE votes were per-se the right answer
>
> Gil
> Gil at wikia.com

Now I'm confused.  Voting definitely doesn't scale.  But was Kelly
suggesting that the fact that voting doesn't scale has something to do
with a claim that consensus decision making doesn't scale?

Anthony


body:
On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Now I'm confused.  Voting definitely doesn't scale.  But was Kelly
> > suggesting that the fact that voting doesn't scale has something to do
> > with a claim that consensus decision making doesn't scale?
>
> Voting doesn't scale? In the sense that you get a bad result, or what?
> Now *I*'m confused. :)
>
In the sense that if you vote on every single issue you wind up
with...AfD...an enormous waste of time on the part of everyone.

Anthony


body:
On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Now I'm confused.  Voting definitely doesn't scale.  But was Kelly
> > > suggesting that the fact that voting doesn't scale has something to do
> > > with a claim that consensus decision making doesn't scale?
> >
> > Voting doesn't scale? In the sense that you get a bad result, or what?
> > Now *I*'m confused. :)
> >
> In the sense that if you vote on every single issue you wind up
> with...AfD...an enormous waste of time on the part of everyone.
>
See [[Direct democracy#Arguments against direct democracy]],
especially "Scale. Direct democracy works extremely well on a small
system."

Anthony


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually let's look at this question from the other direction. For how
> many countries do we have at least a stub on every ruler?

Going back to when?

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:20:47 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
> <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Incidentally, I have managed to get my edit summary usage up to 100%.
> >It was tough, but I've finally changed my habits.
>
> Ditto.  I added a script to monobook.js :-)

It's actually now part of Mediawiki.  Look at
Preferences->Editing->Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary.
It's very irritating, and therefore very useful.

--
Sam


body:
On 8/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, each of those three probably has a defined beginning - I know
> that both the UK and US do.  That's if you are talking about the
> political entity, of course, not the geographical area.

This is very true.  However, how many *other* countries do?  Take
Germany.  Do you go back to reunification in 1990, separation in 1945,
the beginning of Bismarck's empire in 1871 or some point in the far
off past?  It is not obvious, and I expect many other countries will
have similar difficulties.

I feel this may be slightly beside the point.

--
Sam


body:
On 8/23/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Going back to when?

The start of writen records.

--
geni


body:
On 8/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I feel this may be slightly beside the point.
>
> Probably - I was just exercising my inner pedant.

What other reason is there for editing Wikipedia?

--
Sam


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
Hello all,

Today I was asked to put some quote on the WMF-wiki, and went surfing
on the wiki. It appeared to me:
A - that the catigorization was very weird. Everything is based on
languages, and some multilangual pages are just put into the category:
English. Wouldn't it be more logical to put it all  in
subject-categories?

B - The Wiki is way outdated. For instance: the page [[Awards]].
Didn't we win any awards since 2004? In that case we are doing a bad
job!

C - The criteria are very unclear: In the page Awards is also
mentioned that Wikipedia was in the top 100 once, but is that an
award? And for http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Community_meetup :
What local meetups should be mentioned? Should they be mentioned at
all? Should all conferences about Wikimedia be mentioned? These are
probably just a few examples of a lot more similar things.

This alltogether looks quite messy. And at the end, especially for a
foundation ''based'' on the internet, the website is a businesscard.
So enough reason to do something about it.

Would it be an idea to make a team of people (not just one) who can
restructure the Wiki, categorize nicely, try to update, delete what is
unnessecairily (like the french version of the awards page: all empty
but the langbar) and coordinate with the translation-committee? It
should mostly be structural changes.

Together with that, could there be a namespace in Meta with all pages
on WMF-wiki, where they can be adapted, and after adaption the
improved version can be set over to WMF-wiki? That way the pages can
be adapted much easier, without asking too much time of the small
group with an account on the WMF-wiki.

Please give your view on this. Thank you.

Greetings, Lodewijk Gelauff aka effeietsanders


body:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:23:44 -0700, "Matt Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> Popular with whom?  The people who already knew it?  Or people who
>> have never played that browser game and never will?

>Popular with those adding it, I would imagine.

So are garage bands.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
How would you distinguish honest errors from malicious vandalism,
especially with reagrd to something like dates? I could edit an
article to reflect that World War 2 ended in 1935, without intending
to do so because of a typographical error? Unless the edit is obvious
vandalism, (like saying World War 2 ended in 2045-which cannot,
reasonably, be termed a typograhical error), it would be difficult to
seperate the vandals from those who make such errors while typing or
as a result of looking up the date from a source that is not correct.


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
> > But that will be if the policy will not receive approval?
>
> Please tell us.

OK. The approval voting is on going now in Russian Wikipedia
(discussion befor the voting was sluggish). Text is translation of the
English policy.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/?????????:???????????/?????????????

After first day:

48 votes

64% pro
30% contra
6% neutral

We need at least 67% for approval.

--
Alexander Sigachov


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> There are a lot of drive-by commentless date changes. Much (but not
> all of them) are vandalism.  They are often difficult to fact check,
> and these days with so much vandalism reverted by bots, I'm worried
> that even more date changes are being missed.
>
> I believe this is one of the most serious and shameful areas of
> factual error on Wikipedia, although perhaps it is not the most urgent
> nor the easiest to improve on...
>
> An example:
> Tonight I reverted a date vandalism to [[Pioneer plaque]] which was
> made over a year ago
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pioneer_plaque&diff=14242706&oldid=13186287).
>
> In that case, it would appear that the edits of a good user hid the bad diff.
>
> Does anyone have any good ideas kicking around in their heads on how
> to improve this situation... I've thought of some things but I'd like
> to collect some ideas.
>

Ultimately we need some sort of wiki-meta-data system which is seperate
from the articles...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060823/a4ae2941/attachment.pgp


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus
>
> I quite like the tidy "References to succubi in modern times" section.
> There's just a single sentence on each reference, with the name of the
> TV show or whatever in bold. I would not be ashamed to see more
> sections like this.
>

It's not tidy, it's ugly and inconsistant. To top it off, there's a
notice at the top saying "For usage of the succubus in popular culture,
see [[Succubi in fiction]]" - so what the bloody hell is this section
even doing in this article?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060823/60945a0e/attachment.pgp


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch rankings

body:
On 8/23/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a subscription site, but perhaps some nl: folks can report the
> stats?
>
> Dutch *Wikipedia* rises in site
> rankings<http://www.telecom.paper.nl/site/news_ta.asp?type=abstract&id=138810>
> Telecom Paper (subscription) - Houten,Netherlands
> The Dutch version of *Wikipedia* has proven a success, according to internet
> ratings group Multiscope. One out of three Dutch internet *...
>
Here is the complete dutch text about this:

http://www.multiscope.nl/persbericht-volledig.phtml?uniek=20060823085833


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
At 14:59 +0100 19/8/06, David Gerard wrote:
>On 19/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  I do so wish people would stop trying to legislate cluefulness. Read
>>  [[m:Instruction creep]] until you understand why.
>
>
>And I see someone has added a beautiful and oh so apposite quote to
>[[m:instruction creep]]:
>
>     Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity. When I was CTO
>of a web design firm, I noticed in staff meetings that we only ever
>talked about process when we were avoiding talking about people. "We
>need a process to ensure that the client does not get half-finished
>design sketches" is code for "Greg fucked up." The problem, of course,
>is that much of this process nevertheless gets put in place, meaning
>that an organization slowly forms around avoiding the dumbest
>behaviors of its mediocre employees, resulting in layers of gunk that
>keep its best employees from doing interesting work, because they too
>have to sign The Form Designed to Keep You From Doing The Stupid Thing
>That One Guy Did Three Years Ago.
>
>     - Wikis, Grafitti, and Process, Clay Shirky, 2003-08-01
>
>
>- d.

So, who is Greg's manager?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Finne Boonen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch rankings

body:
effort at translation.

henna/Finne

Dutch Wikipedia grows like cabbage (~grows very hard)

The Dutch version of the free online encyclopeida Wikipedia as a big
succes. The website has become a fixed entree in the Visiscan top 10,
made by the reasearchbureau Multiscope. One out of 3 Dutch (country)
internet users visits it at least once each month.

6th website in the Netherlands
With a reach of 32% nl.wikipedia.org scored a 6th position in the
Multiscope Visiscan top 250 of most visited Dutch (country?) websites.
The reach quadrupled in the last 2 years (juli 2004 = 7%)

The strong growth that wikipedia is going through is comparable with
the development history of proven internet concepts as Startpagina and
Marktplaats (dutch portalsites)

Reasons for succes
The dutch public appreciates Wikipedia with a grade of 8.1, within the
categorie Portals-guides and referenceworks, this is the highest grade
received by a site. Possible other reasons for the success of
wikipedia is the huge number of articles (220.000+) and links to the
Dutch homepage ('44.000+). For these reasons, wikipedia is deeply
entrenched in the Dutch web.

Wikipedia's succes is not a standalone story, the website is part of
an international group of websites with user generated content, such
as youtube, mysapce and flickr, all of which are also popular in the
Netherlands.

Future
Wikipedia has a lot more potential in the Netherlands, the helped
namerecognition (37%) has not yet reached it's maximum. Strong point
of wikipedia is a strong majority of people that are familiar with the
website are also visitors of the site. Within it's category Wikipedia
is the only site visitors state intentions of visiting within 3
months.

Threaths
The growth of wikipedia looks as if it's flattening in the last few
months. This is true for it's entire category however, and migth be a
seasonal trend. The visitintensity of Wikipedia, 2 visitis per
visitor/month is for now still a lot lower then for other big Dutch
sites. This (partially) causes the site to score only the 42th
position when comparing total amount of time spent on the internet.

About Multiscope visiscan
Multiscope visiscan is an online benchmark research for Dutch
websites. The research maps name recognition, reach and appreciation
of the top 1000 websites in the Netherlands. Customers can use the
results of the research to compare websites with an independant
standard. Multiscope Visiscan measures the reach via a countrywide
representatif panel and registers this groups surfing habits
continuously. Multiscope Visiscan also measures the name recognition
and appreciation on a quarterly basis within at least 10.000
respondants from it's online panel.

On 8/23/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a subscription site, but perhaps some nl: folks can report the
> > stats?
> >
> > Dutch *Wikipedia* rises in site
> > rankings<http://www.telecom.paper.nl/site/news_ta.asp?type=abstract&id=138810>
> > Telecom Paper (subscription) - Houten,Netherlands
> > The Dutch version of *Wikipedia* has proven a success, according to internet
> > ratings group Multiscope. One out of three Dutch internet *...
> >
> Here is the complete dutch text about this:
>
> http://www.multiscope.nl/persbericht-volledig.phtml?uniek=20060823085833
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> A single random letter would be more efficient... especially when
> otherwise the edit summary would be longer than the edit itself.
>
> Ec

I belive that problem is being worked on (rm rv sp MT).

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way of handling
	"popular culture" references)

body:
On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
> > actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
> > back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
> > them this is not a good idea.

> Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?

OH YES PLEASE.

> ;)

Really! Really really!

- d.


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] php 5.1 and MW 1.6.7

body:
Has anyone had any issues running MW 1.6.7 and php 5.1.2 together?
We're seeing some odd things like rollbacks failing because edit
tokens aren't matching, and wpEditTime's aren't being set properly, so
revert's having been working for us.

Thanks,
Travis


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/08/06, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
>
> > If was thinking of letting MediaWiki enforce edit summaries. Why would
> > that be a waste of time? At least the "Prompt me when entering a blank
> > edit summary" preference should be enabled by default for anonymous and
> > new users.
>
>
> The result will be (a) added nuisance (b) to exchange blank edit
> summaries for "asdfsadfsadfsadf".

B) is good. Another way to annoy nuisance edits, and another data
field for the bots to latch onto.

~maru


body:
On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> As far back as there is a single, known ruler for an area not less
> than half the size of the present day country.
>
> (since I'm making the rules up as I go along anyway)
>

That causes problems with city states and France.

--
geni


from_name: Peter Jacobi

body:
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
> actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
> back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
> them this is not a good idea.

"Buy your own servers!" -- or would that
be "OK, we'll buy our own servers"?

Anyway, whoever becomes the trunk, I very
much assume that this will be one fissure
in the forking to come.

[[User:Pjacobi]]

--

"Feel free" ? 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ...
Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail


body:
On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> OH YES PLEASE.
>
>
> > ;)
>
>
> Really! Really really!
>
>
> - d.

You would probably have to clear that with the communications committee.

--
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/23/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. What pages?

All of them. This afternoon it was happening fairly frequently when
saving pages, almost at 50%!
Though I've had this happen once when clicking on an external link
from Wikipedia, which makes me less convinced that it's really a
MediaWiki problem. More observation needed.

> 2. Which version of Firefox?

Only seen it with the version I reported before, 1.5.0.6 I think
(whatever I said last time).

> 3. Which extensions?

Lots. But none recently installed. That's what made me think it was
possibly Google Web Accelerator (which I have since disabled, and it's
still happening). Probably more likely the trigger was a FireFox
self-update?

> 4. Other conditions to reproduce?

So far only one other person has mentioned ever seeing anything like
this, so I don't think we're at that stage yet. I've never seen it
happen twice on the one page simply by refreshing - so whatever it is,
it's going to be very difficult to determine a sequence of events that
reproduces it reliably...

For the time being I'll keep observing, but if anyone knows better
diagnostic tools, I"d like to hear about them.

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 23/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:20:47 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
> > <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Incidentally, I have managed to get my edit summary usage up to 100%.
> > >It was tough, but I've finally changed my habits.
> >
> > Ditto.  I added a script to monobook.js :-)
>
> I think I switched on the "prompt me" but finally manage to remember
> it anyway. The two hardest summaries for me to come up with are:
> - redirects (I usually put either "rd" or "rd common misspelling" etc)
> - changes to my monobook.js - too bad the RfA nazis don't take into
> account *what* you're editing when you fail to leave an edit summary
> :)

Redirects seem to automatically produce an edit summary now...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 8/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> 'Good contributors are always welcome', perhaps.

The inclusionists would have field day.

--
geni


from_name: Jelle Zijlstra

subject: [Wikitech-l] counting articles in subcategories

body:
Hi,

You can use CatScan (
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php), which
however has some disadvantages, such as a maximum number of pages (1000, I
thought). Generally, it's a great tool, though. :-)

Ucucha/Jelle

On 8/22/06, Claudi Meneghin <clamengh at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>   could you please be so kind to tell me if there is a way to count all
> articles within a category and all of its subcategories? I.e. something
> like:
>   There are X articles in this category and all subcategories.
>   Many thanks,
>   Claudi
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> D?couvrez un nouveau moyen de poser toutes vos questions quelque soit le
> sujet ! Yahoo! Questions/R?ponses pour partager vos connaissances, vos
> opinions et vos exp?riences. Cliquez ici.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Jelle S. Zijlstra
Rijnzichtweg 153
2342 AZ Oegstgeest
jelle.zijlstra at gmail.com


from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

>> For what it's worth, if you use MediaWiki with a Postgres database,
>> dates *are* stored as true timestamp fields. The only big problem I
>> found when converting them over was with the archive table, which still
>> needs to at least emulate a char(14) due to the URLs generated within
>> the code.
>
> Er... no?
>
> If it looks like it does, that's a bug in Special:Undelete and should be fixed.

That's good to hear. From what I recall, there was some code inside of
SpecialUndelete.php that I did not want to mess with, so I made the workaround.
I'm swamped this week, but if someone wants to take a look, I know it's related
to the "timestamp" URL inside the list of deleted pages, e.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Evil_fat_guys&timestamp=20060823210315

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
End Point Corporation
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200608231709
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iD8DBQFE7MRHvJuQZxSWSsgRAjNZAKDSCzqv+OPZ9Y2qmCQevb5yr7DsPQCfQ0wW
k3V2p3r1H3OWToKBbtemXBI=
=FqbX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Edit reviewing in place at de: - how's it working?

body:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060823-7569.html

Any reports on how it's working?

- d.


body:
On 23/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> You would probably have to clear that with the communications committee.

Of course, because it's our major advertising strap line.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
Hello,
  At en wikipedia, I clicked edit on Talk:British Isles (terminology)
and received this message:

--
User is blocked

	Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing.
You were blocked by Pathoschild for the following reason (see our
blocking policy):
Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
"Ilikesheeeeeeeeeeep". The reason given for Ilikesheeeeeeeeeeep's
block is: "Violation of the Username policy (too long, confusing,

Your IP address is 72.14.192.5.

...etc.
--

This was obviously some kind of database fart because it disappeared
when I tried again, and because that IP address isn't close to mine :)
Anyway, just thought I'd mention it.

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't you find yourself searching in vain for the "edit this page"
> link on other websites?

Yep. Well, no - I don't use other websites much any more, for that reason ;)

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is very true.  However, how many *other* countries do?  Take
> Germany.  Do you go back to reunification in 1990, separation in 1945,
> the beginning of Bismarck's empire in 1871 or some point in the far
> off past?  It is not obvious, and I expect many other countries will
> have similar difficulties.

As far back as there is a single, known ruler for an area not less
than half the size of the present day country.

(since I'm making the rules up as I go along anyway)

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> But likely to be indiscriminate.  The first bar of Dies Irae is the
> sound played when you kill minor character X in browser game Y, and so
> on.  It doesn't exactly advance the sum of human knowledge.

It could be somewhat ordered. Start with whole books, movies or TV
series that are named after, or totally based on the thing. Then TV
episodes, signifcant parts of movies etc. Then really well known
references (eg, when the Simpsons deliberately "spoils" the Empire
Strikes Back is a pretty well known moment, even for the Simpsons).
Then the "anything goes" section.

Delete the "anything goes" section every 6 months.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:20:47 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
> <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Incidentally, I have managed to get my edit summary usage up to 100%.
> >It was tough, but I've finally changed my habits.
>
> Ditto.  I added a script to monobook.js :-)

I think I switched on the "prompt me" but finally manage to remember
it anyway. The two hardest summaries for me to come up with are:
- redirects (I usually put either "rd" or "rd common misspelling" etc)
- changes to my monobook.js - too bad the RfA nazis don't take into
account *what* you're editing when you fail to leave an edit summary
:)

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> > favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?
>
>
> OH YES PLEASE.

Is it time? Maybe. "Anyone can edit" is really starting to carry a
stigma with it. Instead of the intended meaning of "You can help" it's
being interpreted as "Idiots are editing".

I would prefer a bit more thought before plunging into "Good writers
always welcome" though. Two major flaws for me are that we don't need
"good writers" - people adding references, copyediting, updating
figures, etc are not "writers" as such; also, even Stephen King is not
welcome if he doesn't work within NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR...

I'm not a great sloganist, but something more like "Everyone can help"
or "Contribute today" etc would be truer.

Steve


body:
On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/23/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Now I'm confused.  Voting definitely doesn't scale.  But was Kelly
> > > suggesting that the fact that voting doesn't scale has something to do
> > > with a claim that consensus decision making doesn't scale?
> >
> > Voting doesn't scale? In the sense that you get a bad result, or what?
> > Now *I*'m confused. :)
> >
> In the sense that if you vote on every single issue you wind up
> with...AfD...an enormous waste of time on the part of everyone.
>

Ah no you don't. If you voted on every issue speedy would not exist.

--
geni


from_name: Pill

subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
Some days ago on de.wp a user reported that he suddenly was logged in as
another user on Wikipedia. That happend on his own desk and in in his
opinion it was not possible that anyone else was at his computer. Maybe this
is associated with this problem? Imagine an anonymous is suddenly an admin
...

--
-- Pill (wiki.pill at gmail.com)