from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
I am currently doing researches on wikis generally, and wikipedia or
jurispedia specifically.

Is the research team only working on the software or are you also
studying the impact of wikis, alternate uses, history, etc. ???

Le 27 mai 05 ? 02:20, Erik Moeller a ?crit :

> Delphine:
>
>
>> I find it indeed important that in the case of paid developpers
>> (which, imho there should be more of) the development needs addressed
>> be that of as many "communities" as possible, so that no project
>> feels
>> left out in the end.
>>
>
> That's why I want to organize community meetings as soon as
> possible, where we will discuss with members of each community the
> needs of their project.
>
>
>> However, in the light of what has been said on the other threads
>> about
>> official positions, I find the use of a logo quite strange.
>>
>
> The logo says "Research", it can be used by anyone in the Wikimedia
> context for research-related activities. Note that Jakob placed it
> on the general [[m:Research]] page as well without being a member
> of the team.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Research Team: Getting started


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems

body:
Very good letter, but please Ray, don't end it the way you do :)

It is kind of provocative, don't you think so ?

Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this
these days ?

Le 27 mai 05 ? 05:06, Ray Saintonge a ?crit :

> Dear Mr. Tanter:
>    You may be pleased to know that Emily Dickinson died in 1886.
> What determines the copyright on a work of literature is the date
> of original publication.  The fact that Harvard University
> republished some of her poems in 1955 would not give them any
> copyrights in the poems themselves unless perhaps they included
> poems that had not been previously published such as in the 1924
> edition of her complete works published by Little, Brown and Co.
>
>    We note too that Harvard would have copyrights to any prefaces,
> introductions, indexes, and editorial notes that may have
> accompanied their edition.  We sincerely hope that you have not
> found such materials in our files.  We also sincerely hope that our
> presentation does not infringe on the arrangement and selection
> process which Harvard undertook, although I would think that the
> term "complete" attached to the 1924 edition would be self-
> explanatory.
>
>    I also trust that you have also reviewed the files of the
> Copyright Office of the Library of Congress to verify that whatever
> copyrights Harvard may have had were properly renewed in or about
> 1983.
>
>    I am not personally an Emily Dickinson scholar, nor was I a
> party to the posting of these poems.  That certainly puts me at a
> disadvantage in the face of someone such as you, whose scholarship
> is evidently more familiar with that corpus of works.  That being
> said, we look forward to your response identifying precisely which
> poems are identical copies of the Harvard poems without being
> identical to those found in any earlier edition.  We would be glad
> to make any adjustment to ensure that our version of the poems
> conforms to the earlier version.
>    Should this response not be satisfactory, and you believe that
> the material should be the subject of a take down order, please
> note that such an order requires that you indicate a statement of
> your legal standing in this matter in relation to either Miss
> Dickinson or Harvard University.
>
>    Yours very truly,
>    Ray Saintonge
>    a Wikisource editor
>
> Angela wrote:
>
>
>> I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of
>> its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide
>> comments on it please?
>>
>> Angela
>>
>> ---- Forwarded message from tanter <tanter at tarleton.edu> ----
>>
>> Date: From: tanter
>> To: board
>> Cc: Reply-To: Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
>>
>>> Hello.  On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at
>>> this
>>> URL:
>>> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson.  You need to
>>> be aware
>>> that these poems are NOT in the public domain.  Harvard
>>> University owns the copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems
>>> published in the 1955 and
>>> later editions of her poetry.  The editions from the 1890s are
>>> public domain
>>> but the ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard
>>> edition. I haven't had
>>> time to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor
>>> review this
>>> because you may be violating copyright.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: monk at zoomcon.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BOPM and Malicious user javascript

body:
Hello Timwi,

Friday, May 27, 2005, 8:04:46 AM, you wrote:

> Instead, I think they should be blocked indefinitely, but anyone wishing
> to edit from such an IP should get a sensible message about the
> open-proxy problem and NOT a screen telling them they're "blocked".

Here's the clash with another problem discussed - what about
anonymity? What if someone wants to contribute (vastly), but cannot
afford to show his real IP-address (for example, these contributions
may lead him to jail in his country)?

You can't block open proxies for sure.

--
Best regards,
 monk                            mailto:monk at zoomcon.com


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Sam_Spade

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

I feel I am a "logged-in user(s) with a substantial history of valid
contributions, regardless of the reasoning for the block"

I feel that Mel Etitis has a long history of conflict with myself, and
should not be blocking me once, much less twice. Comments he made to
me by email after the incident (a conversation which I feel should be
fully disclosed) make this especially clear. I further feel that I
could have been warned, and challenge anyone to suggest that i was
aware that my edits were seen to be a 3rr violation, or that if I had
been advised thusly that I would have continued to revert. As I made
clear in my comment to David here, I do not feel that I had violated
the 3rr, and I have no intent to resume the questioned behaviours. I
request that I be unblocked.

Jack (User:Sam Spade)


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
On 5/27/05, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Blocking for 3RR is a technical enough procedure, regardless who
> implements the block, so long as the 3RR has been breached.
>
> Jack states that: "I do not feel that I had violated the 3rr," and of
> course, he is more than free to substantiate that claim with pertinent
> evidence, one which indicates that his 'feeling' corresponds to
> objective reality as others percieve it (i.e. that there was no 3RR).
>
> As for Jack and questionable emails, I'm sure User:FeloniousMonk has a
> thing or three to say about that.
>
> El_C

The third listed revert is not a direct revert. You could claim it is
a complex revert but it doesn't meet my standards (which normaly
involve past history of gameing the rule). If a block is disputed it
is standard practice that the user remains unblocked.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: V. Ivanov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Paid-for-articles WPs in smaller languages (was:
	bambara)

body:
The idea is not absolutely new.
We use the absolutely similar approach at the Ossetic Wikipedia (we
call it "Project <<Tskhinval Teachers>>".
The essence of the project is paying teachers from South Ossetia a
2,5-USD equivalent for every article (up from 2500 characters). We pay
nothing for the first article (regarding it as a test).

The Project have started in the middle of April and by now we have 3
interested persons in S. Ossetia, an extremely poor region where 2,5
USD can buy much more than even in the neighbouring North Ossetia. Two
large articles (both about Ossetian-language writers; but we do not
really limit the topics) have been already prepared; you can see them
both:
http://os.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B6%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8
http://os.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B7%D1%83%D1%86%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%A5%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B7%D1%8B-%D0%9C%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82

We are working on widening the network of involved teachers (and we
are also planning to involve local Ossetian-language journalists from
South Ossetia). We are also seeking ways to enlarge the funds of the
Project, for now we can pay not more than 20 articles by the whole
accumulated money (and we would like not only to pay for articles, but
also use some money for local advertisement of Wikipedia in both South
and North Ossetia).

The Project is not run by any organization, but by a group of
independent persons (mostly in North Ossetia and Moscow) interested in
the success of the Ossetian Wikipedia. So it's void of the risk, you
mentioned concerning the wo.wikipedia.

Best wishes,
Slavik

PS: We still have problems about statistics page in our WP: see
http://os.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
Can somebody fix that?

2005/5/27, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> Just to keep up with information.... I saw an announcement today in two websites, so thought it worth to say a bit about it
...
> The association Geekcorps recently (it started possibly 2 months ago) made a lot of efforts to try to stimulate a minor wikipedia in an african language.
> Along with work in translation of the interface, addition of major rules and principles of Wikipedia, Geekcorps also decided to motivate editors speaking
> bambara in Mali to participate to the bambara wikipedia (http://bm.wikipedia.org) in a *financial* way.

> The conditions : to live in Mali and to be able to write in bambara.
> The prize is : 200 CFA to earn per article written with at least 200 words (max 5000 CFA per person) plus a bonus prize for specific actions.

--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] 'Bad Behavior' plugin for MediaWiki

body:
I haven't tested or significantly examined this yet, but adventurous
souls may wish to try out the 'Bad Behavior' spambot detection &
blocking plugin for WordPress and MediaWiki:

http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/
http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/installing-and-using-bad-behavior/on-mediawiki/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Kevin Carillo

subject: [Wikitech-l] about having access to old_text through SQL

body:
Hello everybody.
I've successfully imported both cur and old tables.
However, I am realizing that the text parts in the "old" table seem to be in
a compressed format.
I do not know how Mediawiki is able to uncompress it and display it
properly.
 but I'd like to have access the the column "old_text" through SQL queries,
how could I do that?
Indeed, I need to know the real length of each edit or comment.

Thank you.

Kevin Carillo


from_name: Alphax

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US Education system (was NPR interview)

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

Christopher Mahan wrote:
> How do you explain to somebody that Toyota != Toyota Motor
> Corporation when their level of expertise is limited to US High
> School education level?
>

Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about other
countries?

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid-for-articles WPs in smaller languages (was:
	bambara)

body:
V. Ivanov a ?crit:

Hello Slavik

Thanks for your mail

 > The idea is not absolutely new.

We also mentionned it a few months ago as a solution to speed up the
thai language, but as far as I know, it did not lead to anything for now.

 > We use the absolutely similar approach at the Ossetic Wikipedia (we
 > call it "Project <<Tskhinval Teachers>>".
 > The essence of the project is paying teachers from South Ossetia a
 > 2,5-USD equivalent for every article (up from 2500 characters). We pay
 > nothing for the first article (regarding it as a test).
 >
 > The Project have started in the middle of April and by now we have 3
 > interested persons in S. Ossetia, an extremely poor region where 2,5
 > USD can buy much more than even in the neighbouring North Ossetia. Two
 > large articles (both about Ossetian-language writers; but we do not
 > really limit the topics) have been already prepared; you can see them
 > both:
 >
http://os.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B6%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8
 >
http://os.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B7%D1%83%D1%86%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%A5%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B7%D1%8B-%D0%9C%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82
 >
 > We are working on widening the network of involved teachers (and we
 > are also planning to involve local Ossetian-language journalists from
 > South Ossetia). We are also seeking ways to enlarge the funds of the
 > Project, for now we can pay not more than 20 articles by the whole
 > accumulated money (and we would like not only to pay for articles, but
 > also use some money for local advertisement of Wikipedia in both South
 > and North Ossetia).
 >
 > The Project is not run by any organization, but by a group of
 > independent persons (mostly in North Ossetia and Moscow) interested in
 > the success of the Ossetian Wikipedia. So it's void of the risk, you
 > mentioned concerning the wo.wikipedia.
 >
 > Best wishes,
 > Slavik

I am interested in your experience...
I went to see the wiki (difficult, I mostly see ??? on my computer), and
I saw that aside from ip contributions, the main two contributors are a
bot (it could be hidden if you wish this) and Amikeco.

Are you Amikeco or is it one of the authors you mentionned ?
If Amikeco is not the direct author of the article, does that mean he
copied in wikipedia the article written by another ?

I was also wondering if you set a sort of "validation" of the articles
written (a check of the quality of the article) ? Can you tell me how
many people are behind this experience ? Did they contacted teachers
they knew otherwise, or did a sort of list out of a university or high
school ?

I can perceive several ways to push the idea. Possibly organising a
presentation in a school or university, getting there with a poster,
some leaflets. Aside from financial issues, what are you exactly
planning to do in the future ? I really find the idea very interesting
and I would love to know more about what you are doing.

Anthere


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
On 5/27/05, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]
>
> 2. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]
>
> 3. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]
>
> 4. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]
>
> No complexity there that I can observe, sorry, I don't see it.
>
> El_C
>
> >The third listed revert is not a direct revert. You could claim it is
> >a complex revert but it doesn't meet my standards (which normaly
> >involve past history of gameing the rule). If a block is disputed it
> >is standard practice that the user remains unblocked.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Here is a direct comparison of the second "revert" and sam's previous version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neofascism_and_religion&diff=14283708&oldid=14269478

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Timwi (timwi at gmx.net) [050527 15:06]:

> Instead, I think they should be blocked indefinitely, but anyone wishing
> to edit from such an IP should get a sensible message about the
> open-proxy problem and NOT a screen telling them they're "blocked".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Blocked_proxy is what most people use
on en:.

Editable - tweak as appropriate.

- d.


body:
Sj (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [050527 15:50]:
> On 5/26/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> > The logo says "Research", it can be used by anyone in the Wikimedia
> > context for research-related activities. Note that Jakob placed it on
> > the general [[m:Research]] page as well without being a member of the team.

> Just a quick note:
> That logo is a mutant and must be exterminated.

I was just thinking there was something reminiscent of a [[:en:Dalek]]
about it ...

- d.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin

body:
If Mel Etitis is harassing you - and I haven't looked at this arbcom
case, so I don't know, your frustration is understandable. That said,
declaring what other people are and are not allowed to do is rarely a
good way to garner sympathy.

-Snowspinner

On May 27, 2005, at 5:20 PM, Cranston Snord wrote:

> Apparently, for the crime of disagreeing with a few Admins, I am
> now being targeted for abuse and harassment, including bogus
> inclusion in a RFAr which I believe was started under dubious
> motivation.
>
> I have left notice on Mel Etitis' talk page that I will not stand
> for what he has done, but I am informing you all on here as well.
> Mel Etitis is not allowed to edit my User page, nor is he allowed
> to delete messages or content from my Talk page. I want his, and
> the rest of his fellow admins', harassment of me to end.
>
> -Enviroknot
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://
> search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Riccardo Stagni

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia dump!

body:
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 02:14:15PM +0400, Sergey Samoylov wrote:
> there are many text like:
> [[ar:تصنيف:فلك]]
> [[an:Category:Astronom?a]]
> [[ast:Category:Astronom?a]]
> which wikipedia hides. But on mywikipedia it's showed as broken links.
> Why?
those link looking so strange are interwiki links! Please take a look
to: [[meta:Help:Interwiki linking]] and [[w:en:InterWiki]]

On [[meta:Interwiki map]] you can see the current interwiki map, which is
stored in the "interwiki" table of the database.

You can resolve your problem importing in your database the
"maintenance/wikipedia-interwiki.sql" file.

ciao
Riccardo
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subject: [WikiEN-l] (fwd) WikiLens wants YOU

body:
Forwarded for Dan Frankowski, dfrankow at cs.umn.edu.

- d.

Have you ever wanted to toss aside that pesky "neutral point of view"?
Wouldn't it be fun to get *opinionated*?
Would you help with a project similar to Wikipedia, but for opinions?

Wikipedia is a community-maintained encyclopedia based on fact ("Vampire
Watermelon" aside ;) ). WikiLens (http://www.wikilens.org) is a
community-maintained repository of *opinion*. Right now, those opinions
are expressed as ratings, comments, or lists, which are in turn digested
to show people useful information. For example, ratings are turned into
recommendations; lists are mentioned on each item page.

Think of Amazon, Epinions, MovieLens, or other web sites centered around
things (books, video games, movies, beers, vacation spots, plants, etc.)
and what people think of them, except this site is non-commercial,
editable by all, open content, open source. Users can create items and
even categories!

We are where Wikipedia was in 2001: a glorious idea to take over the
universe, not yet much content. That's where you come in! There are
still tons of features to add and bugs to squash. However, it's no fun
without users, so we'd greatly appreciate if you'd create an account and
try us out. Rate a few things, create some items, make some comments,
invite some buddies. Remember, the most important thing is your
opinions; the facts of a page are useful, but not as useful as ratings
or reviews. Most of all, have fun!

If you decide not to come back, tell me why. As we get feedback, we can
do the most important things first.

Feel free to answer questions or give feedback, either here, on
wikilens.org, or to dfrankow at cs.umn.edu.

Dan Frankowski

==============================================

Here is some additional detail if you want to more info.

*** STRUCTURE

You can think of the system as

- a wiki
- a recommender
- a social network (buddies' ratings influence your recommendations)

*** MOTIVATION

I am the staff scientist for GroupLens research at the University of
Minnesota, which has been studying recommender systems since the mid
90s. Our most well-known site is http://www.movielens.org, a movie
recommender. However, it does not allow much in the way of contribution,
and it is movies only. I am engaged in a project called "Recommenders
Everywhere", where we try to build tools and/or websites that allow
anyone to make recommenders to use people's opinions to sift through
content. See also http://wikilens.org/wiki.php/RecommendersEverywhere.

*** IT'S NOT MEDIAWIKI

As a Wikipedia user, you might ask, "Why is this system not based on
MediaWiki, my favorite?" I tried installing MediaWiki when I started
this project, and it wouldn't install without register_globals, and even
still I couldn't get it to work. Thus, I chose another popular wiki,
PhpWiki. Of course now MediaWiki is super easy to install and beautiful
looking. If I had to choose now, I might choose MediaWiki. However,
we're already invested in PhpWiki, and are unlikely to switch any time
soon unless there is an active user community clamoring for it.


from_name: no lssi no lssi

subject: [Wikitech-l] mysql problem with my image table

body:
Hello, im erchache from EL (enciclopedia.us.es).

I want to update from 1.3.11 to 1.4.x but i have
duplicate entries on image table, and program doesnt
finish update process.

With this sentence i can see all duplicated entries:

SELECT img_name FROM image GROUP BY img_name HAVING
count(img_name) > 1;

But now i cant do a delete with a subquery to erase
duplicate entries less one.

+-----------------------------------------------------+-----------------+
| img_name
| count(img_name) |
+-----------------------------------------------------+-----------------+
| Ac.artemisephesus.jpg
|               2 |

This is a example. i want to delete all duplicate
entries and set it to 1.

Any can help me? I want to make it with sql sentences
to automate process.

Im waiting for your replies.

Thanks.

______________________________________________
Renovamos el Correo Yahoo!
Nuevos servicios, m?s seguridad
http://correo.yahoo.es


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
> Why not word it the other way:  If an admin blocks,
> another admin shouldn't unblock.
>
> RickK

At the most basic level time online. An admin can't correct if they
are not online.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongful block

body:
Jack Lynch (jack.i.lynch at gmail.com) [050527 21:08]:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sam_Spade#3RR_violation
> I feel this was a wrongful block.

I've unblocked, though to keep the peace I would suggest you not be the one
to make it back that way again for now, but make your case on the talk
page. You'll know you've made your case when someone else makes the change.
(One of the points of 3RR is that not everything in the article has to be
correct right now :-)

- d.


from_name: Timwi

body:
monk at zoomcon.com wrote:
>
> What if someone wants to contribute (vastly), but cannot
> afford to show his real IP-address?

Then they log in.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: A survey about Wikipedia

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Timwi said:
>
>> Wow. I wouldn't have expected this kind of response from a
>> Wikimedian. When I read it, money hadn't even crossed my mind. Did
>> anyone else think  there might be money to be earned from this?
>
> You miss my point, I think.  This is come chap using the name of a
> prestigious university to perform a "survey", even successfully
> exploiting the goodwill of Wikipedia editors to have information
> about this survey published on our mailing list. All we're told is
> that this is part of a "non-commercial cross-cultural research
> project" and we're supposed to go to a non-secure http site
> registered in Michigan (not, aas far as I'm aware, part of Israel) to
> fill it in. I wouldn't respond to a chap with a clipboard in the
> street who told me this.  I'd laugh in his face. Who is he?

Even wower. You're completely assuming bad faith. Very untypical of a
Wikimedian. May I remind you of [[Wikipedia:Assume good faith]]?

> Why won't Haifa university's servers do?

The site is hosted on com.haifa.ac.il, which is not only in Israel, but
even a Haifa university server.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking policy violated

body:
Samuel Meyer wrote:
>
> According to policy, any good faith-effort to improve the
> encylcopedia is not considered vandalism.

Yes, but unfortunately good-faith edits aren't automatically marked as
such, you see. You've removed stuff, without an edit summary, and
I'm sure you'll understand how this can very easily be interpreted as
vandalism.

> Edits were made to delete information that was unsubstantiated and
> that was dismissive of these views without warrant.

You can move unsubstantiated information to the Talk page and request a
source. Ideally, people putting the information back in should provide a
source for it. If they just put it back without a source, contact them
on their User talk page to talk it over.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
> The typical American would be stunned to hear that there are more
> than  3,000 languages with more than 1,000,000 speakers each in the
> world today.

*I* am stunned to hear that you think that, especially after you are
showing yourself as the ultimate know-it-all.

There are only about 160 language spoken by more than a million.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Izynews and template "For wikipedia use only"

body:
Stephen Forrest a ?crit:
> On 5/27/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>Putting images under a "for wikipedia use only" has a name. It is called
>>a "copyright". So, in creating a tag "for wikipedia use only" to tag your
>>pictures, you are specifically putting copyrighted content in Wikipedia.
>>This is not alright as our goal is to provide "free" content.
>
>
> I think it would be beneficial to be clearer about what you mean here.
>  When you use 'copyrighted' in this and following paragraphs, you
> appear to not be referring to copyrighted works in general, but
> non-free copyrighted works.
>
> Any image released under the GFDL or any Creative Commons licence must
> be copyrighted; if it were not, it would be public domain.  Clearly we
> want to encourage these sorts of images (most of them) on Wikipedia.
> The three categories into which images and other works are divided
> are:
>
> (a) Public domain works
> (b) Copyrighted works with 'free' licences (e.g. GFDL, certain
> Creative Commons licences)
> (c) Copyrighted works that are not 'free' (e.g. fair use images, and
> all other images)
>
> (where 'free' is, of course, free libre, not free gratuit)
>
> Please use some phrase other than 'copyrighted' to describe category
> (c).  There is already far too much confusion about the use of the
> terms 'copyright' and 'public domain'.  We should really make a point
> of trying to use precise terminology when proscribing behaviour.
>
> Steve

Hi

Nod

You are absolutely correct. My apologies for not using the right
terminology.

"images for wikipedia use" are copyrighted non free images.

Ant


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
Jack Lynch (jack.i.lynch at gmail.com) [050527 21:48]:

> I have been reblocked. Thats kinda ironic, eh?

See [[WP:AN/3RR]].

- d.


body:
Chad Perrin wrote:
>
> 4.  Most Americans live in a very, very large contiguous span of
> English-speaking regions.

All of the official languages of the EU are indigenous to some country
or region that is now a member of the EU.

English is indigenous to England, Spanish is indigenous to Spain, and
French is indigenous to France. I find it amazing how easily and readily
European-descendent Americans and Canadians forget this.

We have a Navajo Wikipedia. We have a Nahuatl Wikipedia, a Cree
Wikipedia, an Inuktitut Wikipedia and a Cherokee Wikipedia. All of them
are barely used and have barely even a single article, despite the fact
that Nahuatl (for instance) is spoken by 1.3 million people.

The German Wikipedia is the second-largest, and yet, when I tell Germans
about Wikipedia, they invariably assume that it is English-only, and
they are very surprised when I tell them that a German Wikipedia exists.
Now imagine this Navajo speaker happens upon this English-only news
flash about the English Wikipedia, which doesn't even mention with a
single word that Wikipedias in any other languages exist, must less
Navajo. What are they going to think? You bet, they will assume it is
English-only.

We have more than enough English-speaking contributors already. I think
we - the interlingual community - have absolutely *every* right to voice
our resentment over English-language media being nauseatingly anglo-centric.

Timwi


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] history compression

body:
On 27/05/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > This
> > would also be more flexible because if data needs to be transferred to
> > another server there is no need to update all rows in the revision
> > table.
>
> You've got to update it *somewhere*.

Updating $serverurl or similar in a PHP file is easier than using
str_replace or similar for every entry of your revision table to
change the URL from the old to the new one.


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] history compression

body:
Tim Starling:
> The nice thing
> about the revision table is that it's small enough to be altered
> quickly. I think you can expect to see a VARCHAR(255) field containing
> something similar to a URI.

Is such a field really needed? The software could assemble an URI
from existing information like http://$server/$project/$rev_id. This
would also be more flexible because if data needs to be transferred to
another server there is no need to update all rows in the revision
table.

But I don't want to give unwanted advice here. The background of my
question is that I have written a Perl program that compresses page
histories much better than the currently used algorithm. And now I
want to write PHP code so that MediaWiki can access the data. But
HistoryBlobStubs make this more complicated.

This is how my method works: All revision texts are split into sections
(the delimiter is "\n=="). Unchanged sections are stored only once.
Sections are sorted by their headings. Then everything is compressed
with deflate().

This has several advantages:
* Less memory is used because many sections don't change from revision
  to revision. This is especially true for discussion pages.
* Compression and decompression is fast because deflate() is used and it
  needs to (de)compress less data.
* If the pages are larger than 32kB, compression is much better than
  can be achieved by simply concatenating revisions and compressing them
  with deflate() and even bzip2. On average, my method compresses about
  five times better than the currently used one. I have listed some values
  on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:El/History_compression

Now that I've read that the revision texts are about to be relocated
to external storage servers I wonder if it would be worth to write
the PHP classes at all. What software is going to run on the storage
servers? Is my method still competitive there?

--
5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail
+++ GMX - die erste Adresse f?r Mail, Message, More +++


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
El C (el.ceeh at gmail.com) [050527 23:44]:

> Now, Mel reblocked him, the right and just thing to do in the case of
> Jack's contempt for the rules everyone else is expected to adhere to,
> the rules I have always adhered to. I also note that David Gerard (who
> seems to mistakingly think I'm accusing him of something sinister -- I
> am not) is not objecting to the re-blocking, now that he had a closer
> looked at the evidence.

I didn't think you were accusing me of anything sinister :-) I chose not to
re-unblock so as not to continue a cycle of blocking/unblocking. If someone
agrees with me they'll unblock, if not they won't. There's lots of admins.

Even though *usually* if another admin removes a block the first one
shouldn't reblock, just to avoid the appearance of a blocking war. But if
Mel judges it's severe enough then I'm happy to wait until/if someone else
thinks Sam should be unblocked.

> Epiprologue: It all begins yesterday. I went and congratulated Chip
> Berlet on a fine article in the article's talk page, 4 days after
> Charles did (I only noticed it at that time). Mine was the 2nd comment
> in that talk page following Charles', and I intended to edit the intro
> (no content changes whatsoever, just make it less conversational:
> which I did) later that day, but when I got back home, I found Jack
> already start editing it. Ahhuhh. And so it begins, again.
> And all this is nothing, it dosen't even pretend to scratch the
> surface about Jack.

Sam can rub people up the wrong way, but I don't doubt his sincerity.
"Assume good faith" can require gritted teeth when someone is really
annoying you ...

- d.


from_name: Cranston Snord

subject: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin

body:
Slimvirgin has blocked me claiming that I am 129.7.35.1.

She is also lying and claiming that I am ElKabong; this appears to be
connected to her personal crusade along with Mel Etitis, Yuber, etc. to
harass said user.

I request this be removed immediately, I have not violated 3RR and am not
ElKabong.

-Enviroknot

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 95

body:
You are lying, David, and you are violating Wikipedia policy in doing so.

But since you are one of the admins who has been using this as an excuse to
harass users, I fully expected to see that from you, just as your cohorts
have been claiming alternately that I am ElKabong, or KaintheScion, or Sam
Spade, or any number of other users I may have missed in their accusations.

This is really getting quite silly, watching you and yours flail around
trying to scream "sockpuppet" whenever someone disagrees with you. Of
course, it completely violates Wikipedia policy on using Admin powers to
gain advantage in content disputes, but since your little cabal is so high
up you can just order a spurious ban any such user (as Slimvirgin just did
to me, and as your crew did to Sam Spade earlier) so that they cannot defend
themselves against the charges. Quite a neat racket you have going.

-Enviroknot

===============================

Message: 10
Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 10:03:27 +1000
From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Message-ID: <20050528000327.GW9978 at thingy.apana.org.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Cranston Snord (enviroknot at hotmail.com) [050528 07:20]:

>Apparently, for the crime of disagreeing with a few Admins, I am now being
>targeted for abuse and harassment, including bogus inclusion in a RFAr
>which I believe was started under dubious motivation.
>I have left notice on Mel Etitis' talk page that I will not stand for what
>he has done, but I am informing you all on here as well. Mel Etitis is not
>allowed to edit my User page, nor is he allowed to delete messages or
>content from my Talk page. I want his, and the rest of his fellow admins',
>harassment of me to end.

You are KaintheScion and I claim my 5p.

- d.

------------------------------

Message: 11
Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 02:33:46 +0200
From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Message-ID: <fb7fdd9c05052717334b85307e at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Would you mind backing up that statement with evidence from the
history tabs of articles and other pages?

--Mgm

_________________________________________________________________
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee?
Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


subject: [Wikitech-l] local database "old" without compression

body:
Thanks.
Is there any script (sql, PHP, Perl ..) that I could run (or write) that
could update my local table "old" that would replace the compressed old_text
fields by the uncompressed ones?
Indeed, the research project on which I work requires me to know the size of
each edit or comment in the table "old".

Kevin Carillo

Kevin Carillo wrote:
> I've successfully imported both cur and old tables.
> However, I am realizing that the text parts in the "old" table seem to be
in
> a compressed format.
> I do not know how Mediawiki is able to uncompress it and display it
> properly.
>  but I'd like to have access the the column "old_text" through SQL
queries,
> how could I do that?

The old_flags field indicates the format of the old_text field: whether
it's compressed, whether it's a serialized object, etc.

The simplest thing to do is to work within the MediaWiki framework and
use Article::getRevisionText() on the retrieved database row: this will
run the appropriate decompression and will unserialize and extract text
from HistoryBlob and HistoryBlobStub object rows.

You might also check Erik Zachte's statistics scripts, a perl-based
package, to see how he's reading data.

After we've gotten MediaWiki 1.5 in place over the next couple weeks
we'll be providing a simple XML wrapper format for the backup dumps
which won't be nearly as messy to deal with. (This is the same format
used by Special:Export.) This will include an importer tool which could
be used to import all the data to a local database without compression.

-- brion vibber (brion @  <mailto:> pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
Robert Brockway a ?crit:
> Hi all.  The file SchapelleCorbyInCell.jpg which is used in article
> [[Schapelle Corby]] has been flagged for removal.  I am surprised at this
> as it had previously been tagged with "non-free permission to use".
>
> I was the one who obtained permission to use this image (and two others)
> from Mercedes Corby, Schapelle's sister.  I had intended to get the status
> of the images clarified but I must admit I had not considered it a high
> priority as I felt we had at least the equivalent of fair use.
>
> Anyway I now reproduce part of the conversation between Mercedes Corby and
> myself in which she allowed permission for the images to be used:
>
> I said "I'd like to use a picture in the [Wikipedia] article. Would you be
> able to provide a picture of Schapelle that can be legally used in the
> Wikipedia article (ie, without copyright concerns)? If such a picture is
> available just email it back to me".
>
> Mercedes Responded (in part): "Attached is a photo taken at Schapelle's
> cell. This was taken by our camera.. Also if you are able to find the
> photo on the web of Schapelle, brother James and 2 freinds Katrina and
> Ally that was taken by Mums camera at the Brisbane airport so that one is
> fine to use aswell."
>
> Attached to the email from Mercedes were 2 of the 3 images I uploaded to
> Wikipedia, the 3rd being the mentioned group image which I did locate.
>
> After reviewing the wording of my request and Mercedes' response it is my
> contention the pictures are licenced under the GFDL.
>
> Comments?
>
> Rob

Hi

I think you made a mistake. You should post such mails to
wikien-l at wikimedia.org

Thanks

Ant


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin

body:
Would you mind backing up that statement with evidence from the
history tabs of articles and other pages?

--Mgm

On 5/28/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Cranston Snord (enviroknot at hotmail.com) [050528 07:20]:
>
> > Apparently, for the crime of disagreeing with a few Admins, I am now being
> > targeted for abuse and harassment, including bogus inclusion in a RFAr
> > which I believe was started under dubious motivation.
> > I have left notice on Mel Etitis' talk page that I will not stand for what
> > he has done, but I am informing you all on here as well. Mel Etitis is not
> > allowed to edit my User page, nor is he allowed to delete messages or
> > content from my Talk page. I want his, and the rest of his fellow admins',
> > harassment of me to end.
>
>
> You are KaintheScion and I claim my 5p.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
V. Ivanov a ?crit:
> 2005/5/27, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>:

Hi

>>I am interested in your experience...
>>I went to see the wiki (difficult, I mostly see ??? on my computer), and
>>I saw that aside from ip contributions, the main two contributors are a
>>bot (it could be hidden if you wish this) and Amikeco.
>
>
> I am also very happy about the users Alard and Ruslan (the letter name
> in Cyrillic): Alard helps immensely as a native speaker from a smaller
> town of Alagir; he works at an IT firm and is always on line, I can
> consult him via ICQ at any time; Ruslan is a native speaker of Digor
> dialect and he contributes about the places in western Ossetia, where
> the dialect is been spoken. He also promises a comprehensive article
> about Digor for the speakers of the main form.

All right

>>Are you Amikeco or is it one of the authors you mentionned ?
>
>
> ru, os, eo, av, cv:Amikeco/m:Slavik IVANOV

Ahah, you do not make things easy :-)

>>If Amikeco is not the direct author of the article, does that mean he
>>copied in wikipedia the article written by another ?
>
>
> As for the articles coming from the South Ossetian teachers, I get
> them by e-mail and put them to WP (after wikifying; they come as a
> simple text file or a Word file).

Just a side comment. Perhaps you should mention in the comment box the
name of the original author.

I would see two benefits
First it is more honest toward the author, who is credite is work.
Second, it is good image to show several people are contributing.

>>I was also wondering if you set a sort of "validation" of the articles
>>written (a check of the quality of the article)?
>
>
> Well, the validation is really simple by now:
> 1. Check numbers as far as it's possible (first of all dates of birth
> and death for biography articles);
> 2. Give the text to a native speaker from the North to test how
> understandable it is. Sometimes a phrase or two are not well composed
> and we change word order or do similare editing.
> I also have to pay attention to spelling: I have learnt the language
> by books and newspapers, so my spelling is very good (for me the
> Ossetic is first of all a written language), but for most Ossetians
> the language is first of all a spoken one -- and they often do
> spelling mistakes.

Nod. This seems a good process to me.

>>Can you tell me how
>>many people are behind this experience?
>
>
> 1 active teacher (female under 30), two more interested but not writing yet.
> Other people involved are:
> - volunteer co-ordinator in Tshkhinval (local journalist, ethic
> Ossetian): he helps us interact with the writers via e-mail;
> - volunteer co-ordinator at the Ossetic WP (me): putting the texts,
> wikifying them, spell-checking, finding proof-readers, raising funds,
> writing articles to Ossetia-related sites like iriston.ru, iryston.com
> and ossetia.ru, etc.
> - proof-readers (3 native speakers), sponsors (4 persons).

It is pretty impressive

>>Did they contacted teachers
>>they knew otherwise, or did a sort of list out of a university or high
>>school?
>
>
> The journalist informed the locals about the "first encyclopedia in
> Ossetian"; some of them got interested. Neither computers, nor
> Internet are widely available in S.Ossetia -- so the interest could
> rest just the interest, but then the bright idea appeared... :) And we
> proposed the payed writing for the persons, who were, as we had
> already known, really interested.
> We didn't advertised the project much because of 2 reasons:
> - we don't have much funds: maybe 5-20 articles a month are our limit;
> - we wouldn't like to make other people think that writing for WP must
> be payed; may they write for free if they can.

Nod. Both arguments are fair. I would like to know whether these
teachers have themselves good internet access ? Presumably quite limited ?

>>I can perceive several ways to push the idea. Possibly organising a
>>presentation in a school or university,
>
>
> You see, the schools and universities of a higher quality group are at
> Vladikavkaz. There Ossetians no longer use the language for scientific
> or similar purposes: the Russian is prevailing. The task of the
> Project is not only to find chip writers, but also to find the last
> literate speakers of Ossetian and pay them for being used.
>
> Among our further plans is looking for such people in the villages of
> North Ossetia, where exists at least one highly literate group: the
> teachers of the Ossetian language. But most of them are not at all
> good computer users... So we have many interesting challenges.

Perhaps a collaboration with computer offer ?

> We are also planning to meet authorities of the North Ossetian State
> University in order to organize presentations of Wikipedia at several
> faculties. The future Ossetian philologists and journalists might get
> much experience from writing texts in WP. Still such a presentation
> does not seem possible in the nearest future, for it's not easy for me
> to go to Vladikavkaz now. Born there, I live in St.Petersburg at the
> Baltic Sea at the moment.
>
> Sl.

Can you tell me more about the reasons why this does not seem possible
in the nearest future ?

I think your experience sounds very professional. I would like that with
Danny, we try to know more about it, and see how we could help. Some
organisations we met were suggesting rather similar schemes, and it
would be very interesting to outline the whole thing a little bit more.

Anthere


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] One last word about user genders (was:sco/fiu-vro
	in danger..)

body:
Delphine M?nard said:
> On 5/26/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>> On English Wikipedia (dunno about the others) there is a facebook page
>> where you can put your photograph if you want people to know stuff
>> like gender (or you can just say "I am male" or "I am female" on your
>> user page).  In general it doesn't make much difference, though, and
>> is not relevant to use of Wikipedia.  I've managed perfectly well for
>> about a decade usually roleplaying female online, and nobody ever
>> knows if I don't want them to know.  Even those who do know tend to
>> forget, such is the power of illusion.
>
> An illusion much harder to maintain in a language like French for
> exemple, where many times I will have to use a female form of a past
> participle or an adjective and give myself away ;-). It is quite an
> interesting thing to note , that English is  language with which it is
> much easier to hide your gender than with many other languages.

Ce n'est pas difficile devenir fran?aise, j'en suis certaine. ;)


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
On 5/28/05, Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Slimvirgin has blocked me claiming that I am 129.7.35.1.
>
> She is also lying and claiming that I am ElKabong; this appears to be
> connected to her personal crusade along with Mel Etitis, Yuber, etc. to
> harass said user.
>
> I request this be removed immediately, I have not violated 3RR and am not
> ElKabong.
>
> -Enviroknot
>
Enviroknot and 129.7.35.1 were blocked for 24 hours after being
reported on WP:AN/3RR by User:FeloniousMonk for violating 3RR at
[[Neofascism and religion]].

Based on the editing pattern, writing style, e-mails, and IP-address
comparisons of KaintheScion, ElKabong, and Enviroknot, they are
operated by the same person. IP address 129.7.35.1 lies within an IP
address range (resolving to the University of Houston) previously used
by that person, and Enviroknot very conveniently turned up to take
over the anon IP's reverts, reverting to the same version.

Sarah


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search

body:
I turned on the Lucene search for all our wikis a few hours ago.

Currently everything except German, Russian, and Esperanto is running
with the English stemmer. This may not produce totally correct results
on some languages, but seems to be "good enough" to return at least some
useful results in general.

The index updater still needs a little work to fully automate; currently
I'm just running a mass update of changed pages manually every couple of
days.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 5/26/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:

> On English Wikipedia (dunno about the others) there is a facebook page
> where you can put your photograph if you want people to know stuff like
> gender (or you can just say "I am male" or "I am female" on your user
> page).  In general it doesn't make much difference, though, and is not
> relevant to use of Wikipedia.  I've managed perfectly well for about a
> decade usually roleplaying female online, and nobody ever knows if I don't
> want them to know.  Even those who do know tend to forget, such is the
> power of illusion.

An illusion much harder to maintain in a language like French for
exemple, where many times I will have to use a female form of a past
participle or an adjective and give myself away ;-). It is quite an
interesting thing to note , that English is  language with which it is
much easier to hide your gender than with many other languages.

Delphine

--
~notafish


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid-for-articles WPs in smaller languages
	(was: bambara)

body:
2005/5/27, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> I am interested in your experience...
> I went to see the wiki (difficult, I mostly see ??? on my computer), and
> I saw that aside from ip contributions, the main two contributors are a
> bot (it could be hidden if you wish this) and Amikeco.

I am also very happy about the users Alard and Ruslan (the letter name
in Cyrillic): Alard helps immensely as a native speaker from a smaller
town of Alagir; he works at an IT firm and is always on line, I can
consult him via ICQ at any time; Ruslan is a native speaker of Digor
dialect and he contributes about the places in western Ossetia, where
the dialect is been spoken. He also promises a comprehensive article
about Digor for the speakers of the main form.

> Are you Amikeco or is it one of the authors you mentionned ?

ru, os, eo, av, cv:Amikeco/m:Slavik IVANOV

> If Amikeco is not the direct author of the article, does that mean he
> copied in wikipedia the article written by another ?

As for the articles coming from the South Ossetian teachers, I get
them by e-mail and put them to WP (after wikifying; they come as a
simple text file or a Word file).

> I was also wondering if you set a sort of "validation" of the articles
> written (a check of the quality of the article)?

Well, the validation is really simple by now:
1. Check numbers as far as it's possible (first of all dates of birth
and death for biography articles);
2. Give the text to a native speaker from the North to test how
understandable it is. Sometimes a phrase or two are not well composed
and we change word order or do similare editing.
I also have to pay attention to spelling: I have learnt the language
by books and newspapers, so my spelling is very good (for me the
Ossetic is first of all a written language), but for most Ossetians
the language is first of all a spoken one -- and they often do
spelling mistakes.

> Can you tell me how
> many people are behind this experience?

1 active teacher (female under 30), two more interested but not writing yet.
Other people involved are:
- volunteer co-ordinator in Tshkhinval (local journalist, ethic
Ossetian): he helps us interact with the writers via e-mail;
- volunteer co-ordinator at the Ossetic WP (me): putting the texts,
wikifying them, spell-checking, finding proof-readers, raising funds,
writing articles to Ossetia-related sites like iriston.ru, iryston.com
and ossetia.ru, etc.
- proof-readers (3 native speakers), sponsors (4 persons).

> Did they contacted teachers
> they knew otherwise, or did a sort of list out of a university or high
> school?

The journalist informed the locals about the "first encyclopedia in
Ossetian"; some of them got interested. Neither computers, nor
Internet are widely available in S.Ossetia -- so the interest could
rest just the interest, but then the bright idea appeared... :) And we
proposed the payed writing for the persons, who were, as we had
already known, really interested.
We didn't advertised the project much because of 2 reasons:
- we don't have much funds: maybe 5-20 articles a month are our limit;
- we wouldn't like to make other people think that writing for WP must
be payed; may they write for free if they can.

> I can perceive several ways to push the idea. Possibly organising a
> presentation in a school or university,

You see, the schools and universities of a higher quality group are at
Vladikavkaz. There Ossetians no longer use the language for scientific
or similar purposes: the Russian is prevailing. The task of the
Project is not only to find chip writers, but also to find the last
literate speakers of Ossetian and pay them for being used.

Among our further plans is looking for such people in the villages of
North Ossetia, where exists at least one highly literate group: the
teachers of the Ossetian language. But most of them are not at all
good computer users... So we have many interesting challenges.

We are also planning to meet authorities of the North Ossetian State
University in order to organize presentations of Wikipedia at several
faculties. The future Ossetian philologists and journalists might get
much experience from writing texts in WP. Still such a presentation
does not seem possible in the nearest future, for it's not easy for me
to go to Vladikavkaz now. Born there, I live in St.Petersburg at the
Baltic Sea at the moment.

Sl.
--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Edit & move rate limiter

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> I've whipped up a fairly basic rate limiter which can be used to provide
>> a brake to mass-floods of edits or page moves.
>
> That is great news.  However, I have one little concern.  Please could
> you try to make sure that, if a human editor hits the rate limit, they
> can just press "reload" to resubmit the same edit or move?  You see, I
> will often move or edit several pages in several tabs at the same time,
> and this way I can very easily hit the rate limit.

That's exactly what I aimed for, and at least with Firefox that's just
the way you can do it. I haven't tested IE etc but I _think_ it's got
the same form resubmission behavior.

Of course if you're still over the limit you'll still get an error page,
but you can keep reloading until the limit period expires. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Video thumbnailer feature

body:
Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
> Example:
> $ totem-video-thumbnailer -s 95 video.mpg thumb.jpg
>
> Opinion about adding this feature ?

Well, the usual concerns:
* security
* performance
* compatibility
* compartmentalizability

It'd be great to be able to run all this image stuff and other external
bits in an isolated chroot environment, preferably not on the main web
servers. Totem is a dependency hog, pulling in GNOME, GStreamer etc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
El C (el.ceeh at gmail.com) [050528 00:35]:

> >Sam can rub people up the wrong way, but I don't doubt his sincerity.
> >"Assume good faith" can require gritted teeth when someone is really
> >annoying you ...

> David, if this was really limited to the realm of annoyance, I would
> not be going through this lenghts, I hope you believe me.

I just love everyone and assume boundless good faith, of course ;-)

- d.


body:
Kevin Carillo wrote:
> I've successfully imported both cur and old tables.
> However, I am realizing that the text parts in the "old" table seem to be in
> a compressed format.
> I do not know how Mediawiki is able to uncompress it and display it
> properly.
>  but I'd like to have access the the column "old_text" through SQL queries,
> how could I do that?

The old_flags field indicates the format of the old_text field: whether
it's compressed, whether it's a serialized object, etc.

The simplest thing to do is to work within the MediaWiki framework and
use Article::getRevisionText() on the retrieved database row: this will
run the appropriate decompression and will unserialize and extract text
from HistoryBlob and HistoryBlobStub object rows.

You might also check Erik Zachte's statistics scripts, a perl-based
package, to see how he's reading data.

After we've gotten MediaWiki 1.5 in place over the next couple weeks
we'll be providing a simple XML wrapper format for the backup dumps
which won't be nearly as messy to deal with. (This is the same format
used by Special:Export.) This will include an importer tool which could
be used to import all the data to a local database without compression.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Peta Holmes

subject: [WikiEN-l] what to do with religious POV?

body:
I recently blocked an account for what looked like
link spamming. All the edits were adding a link to an
external  website that has something to do with Branch
Davidians vs. Koreshians and to a bunch of unrealted
articles like poverty and sex. I now have an 32kb
email in my inbox suggesting changes to the articles
they're concerned with so that they are more ''NPOV''.
I'm really not familar with anything to do with Waco
and the mess that followed, would anyone be willing to
take a look at the changes and get back to
the-branch.org, or should I just unblock the account
and let them edit in good faith and hope that the two
groups will sort it out between themselves.

--Peta Holmes

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article rating topics - speak now!

body:
[cc'ing to wikipedia-l]

Joseph Reagle (reagle at mit.edu) [050528 02:56]:
> On Thursday 26 May 2005 08:41, David Gerard wrote:

> > I particularly want to hear from academic researchers interested in
> > Wikipedia - you folk will LOVE this data. What things would you
> > particularly like to see reader/editor ratings of?

> At first blush, it would make sense to rate articles with respect to the
> criteria of what makes a good article as documented on:
>   [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_a_featured_article
>   [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles

Yeah. I went through the first of those and tried to write them as rateable
criteria. All improvements most welcomed.

>  So, it would be really interesting to see what are the most popular
> stub articles. (This to could be generated automatically from referrer, but
> can also be used so as to find the most popular poorly rated articles once
> we have that data.)

Indeed!

"Gather the data but don't do anything with it yet" is an idea that I think
will work very nicely *because* it separates layers properly. If we create
a pile of raw data, people will come up with *all sorts* of interesting
things to do with it. Then maybe we can go back and tweak what we collect.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Article rating topics - speak now!


body:
"Keep in mind there can be multiple users who are driven to start
participating in Wikipedia for the same reason, particularly in
controversial areas such as articles about the conflict in the Middle East,
cult figures, or Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Some have suggested applying
the 100-edit guideline more strongly in such cases, assuming that all
accounts with fewer than 100 edits are sock puppets. Generally, such beliefs
have been shown not to be well founded."

Not that Wikipedia policy appears to have any meaning when Admins like you
are pursuing a personal vendetta.

And I have not lied to you. I resent both your accusation and the language
you are using.

-Enviroknot

>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin
>Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 22:08:38 +1000
>
>Cranston Snord (enviroknot at hotmail.com) [050528 16:35]:
>
> > Slimvirgin has blocked me claiming that I am 129.7.35.1.
>
>
>That's because you are, you lying fuck. ElKabong = KaintheScion and
>KaintheScion = Enviroknot.
>
>I mean, it's good that you've stopped the personal abuse using this
>account.
>
>
> > She is also lying and claiming that I am ElKabong; this appears to be
> > connected to her personal crusade along with Mel Etitis, Yuber, etc. to
> > harass said user.
> > I request this be removed immediately, I have not violated 3RR and am
>not
> > ElKabong.
>
>
>No, you just have remarkably similar interests.
>
>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


body:
Given what I have seen of your behavior toward other users, coupled with
David Gerard's outburst, I get the feeling that nothing I say or do will
convince you to stop this.

It is a shame upon Wikipedia that people like you and David Gerard have been
given power.

-Enviroknot

>From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: slimvirgin at gmail.com,English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin
>Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 03:21:59 -0600
>
>On 5/28/05, Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Slimvirgin has blocked me claiming that I am 129.7.35.1.
> >
> > She is also lying and claiming that I am ElKabong; this appears to be
> > connected to her personal crusade along with Mel Etitis, Yuber, etc. to
> > harass said user.
> >
> > I request this be removed immediately, I have not violated 3RR and am
>not
> > ElKabong.
> >
> > -Enviroknot
> >
>Enviroknot and 129.7.35.1 were blocked for 24 hours after being
>reported on WP:AN/3RR by User:FeloniousMonk for violating 3RR at
>[[Neofascism and religion]].
>
>Based on the editing pattern, writing style, e-mails, and IP-address
>comparisons of KaintheScion, ElKabong, and Enviroknot, they are
>operated by the same person. IP address 129.7.35.1 lies within an IP
>address range (resolving to the University of Houston) previously used
>by that person, and Enviroknot very conveniently turned up to take
>over the anon IP's reverts, reverting to the same version.
>
>Sarah
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 96

body:
A small hint, David.

There's this technology called "DHCP" that came along a few years ago.

Learn about it.

==============
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 10:40:18 +1000
From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Message-ID: <20050528004017.GX9978 at thingy.apana.org.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050528 10:33]:

>Would you mind backing up that statement with evidence from the
>history tabs of articles and other pages?

Nope, but I have the matching IPs.

- d.

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


body:
Yawn.

Those who are in power, will stick together. It is necessary for the
perpetuation of their power.

Power also corrupts.

I have adequately explained what is going on, and I have referenced all the
Wikipedia policy that Gerard and his cohorts are violating.

Whether those in power actually care about Wikipedia policy or not... well,
you have just made it clear that YOU do not, and Gerard's burst of profanity
proved that he doesn't either.

-Enviroknot

>From: Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin
>Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 10:22:50 -0400
>
>You run into a problem here - David is one of the users who has the
>capability to actually check whether users are sockpuppets. So when  he
>says you're all on the same IP, it is not speculation. It is not a
>hypothesis based on similar editing patterns. It's an issue of "He  looked
>it up." So what you're doing has nothing to do with whether  it's likely
>that you're a sockpuppet - the technical evidence has  been checked.
>
>Adding to the problem is the fact that the other people who can check  this
>are also on this list, have no doubt read this by now, and are  thus also
>aware of the situation, and thus in on the conspiracy.
>
>So we have two hypotheses. 1) You are a sockpuppet, and are lying  about
>it. 2) You are not a sockpuppet, and there is a conspiracy  including
>DavidGerard, Tim Starling, and others to claim that you are  while citing
>non-existent technical evidence.
>
>Evidence for 1: David's citation of technical evidence, the fact that  you
>claim Wikipedia policy has been violated whenever something  happens that
>you don't like, your allegations of a vast conspiracy  specifically to run
>you off (The latter two being behavior that, to a  tee, resembles about a
>dozen other trolls)
>
>Evidence for 2: You say so.
>
>Now. Given that, what remotely persuasive or plausible reason can you
>offer for  accepting hypothesis 2?
>
>-Snowspinner
>
>On May 28, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Cranston Snord wrote:
>
>>Given what I have seen of your behavior toward other users, coupled  with
>>David Gerard's outburst, I get the feeling that nothing I say  or do will
>>convince you to stop this.
>>
>>It is a shame upon Wikipedia that people like you and David Gerard  have
>>been given power.
>>
>>-Enviroknot
>>
>>
>>>From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>>>Reply-To: slimvirgin at gmail.com,English Wikipedia <wikien-
>>>l at Wikipedia.org>
>>>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin
>>>Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 03:21:59 -0600
>>>
>>>On 5/28/05, Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Slimvirgin has blocked me claiming that I am 129.7.35.1.
>>> >
>>> > She is also lying and claiming that I am ElKabong; this appears  to be
>>> > connected to her personal crusade along with Mel Etitis, Yuber,  etc.
>>>to
>>> > harass said user.
>>> >
>>> > I request this be removed immediately, I have not violated 3RR  and am
>>>not
>>> > ElKabong.
>>> >
>>> > -Enviroknot
>>> >
>>>Enviroknot and 129.7.35.1 were blocked for 24 hours after being
>>>reported on WP:AN/3RR by User:FeloniousMonk for violating 3RR at
>>>[[Neofascism and religion]].
>>>
>>>Based on the editing pattern, writing style, e-mails, and IP-address
>>>comparisons of KaintheScion, ElKabong, and Enviroknot, they are
>>>operated by the same person. IP address 129.7.35.1 lies within an IP
>>>address range (resolving to the University of Houston) previously  used
>>>by that person, and Enviroknot very conveniently turned up to take
>>>over the anon IP's reverts, reverting to the same version.
>>>
>>>Sarah
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>
>>_________________________________________________________________
>>Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -  it's
>>FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/ direct/01/
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] patch for User.php: login with temp.password also
 indicates that the e-mail address is valid

body:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2259 asks to reenter two lines in User.php.

Users logging in with the temporary password can have their e-mail address confirmed implicitly, because they could have received the temp.passwd only via the stored e-mail address.


body:
Timwi (timwi at gmx.net) [050528 08:23]:

> Now imagine this Navajo speaker happens upon this English-only news
> flash about the English Wikipedia, which doesn't even mention with a
> single word that Wikipedias in any other languages exist, must less
> Navajo. What are they going to think? You bet, they will assume it is
> English-only.

As has already been pointed out, the multilingual nature of Wikipedia was
literally the VERY FIRST THING mentioned in the show. A ten-minute segment
then discussed in some detail the problems of small Wikipedias for large
numbers of people. Did you listen to the show before saying the above?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin

body:
Cranston Snord (enviroknot at hotmail.com) [050528 07:20]:

> Apparently, for the crime of disagreeing with a few Admins, I am now being
> targeted for abuse and harassment, including bogus inclusion in a RFAr
> which I believe was started under dubious motivation.
> I have left notice on Mel Etitis' talk page that I will not stand for what
> he has done, but I am informing you all on here as well. Mel Etitis is not
> allowed to edit my User page, nor is he allowed to delete messages or
> content from my Talk page. I want his, and the rest of his fellow admins',
> harassment of me to end.

You are KaintheScion and I claim my 5p.

- d.


body:
I find the whole thing hilarious.

Not only are you not interested in the truth, you're actively attacking me
for following Wikipedia guidelines and for bringing my case.

And I'm not KaintheScion, nor am I ElKabong. I have already posted that I
did not agree with their language - but given the abusive way you
collectively act, I now fully understand how you drove them to it.

I suppose I should have expected it. The Admins will stick together, right
or wrong, because to admit that Admins are doing wrong would erode their
ability to use their power to gain advantages in content disputes.

I suppose the next thing you'll do is slap a ban on me. It just wouldn't do
to have people speaking truth to power after all.

-Enviroknot

>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin
>Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 00:59:15 +1000
>
>David 'DJ' Hedley (spyders at btinternet.com) [050529 00:51]:
>
> > I don't actually think he should allow this abusive tirade to continue.
> > Snord is boring me now.
>
>
>At least he's out of Kain abusive mode. Getting called a "lying son of a
>fascist whore" was actually a new one on me. (Someone on IRC said
>"presumably they make the trains come on time.")
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
They're doing the same thing to you they did to me, and presumably other
users as well.

They've already made false accusations against me for entering into subjects
where I agree with you.

Power corrupts. And as it turns out, Wikipedia Admins are absolutely
corrupt, Absolute Power wasn't even required.

-Enviroknot

>From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>,English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block
>Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 17:09:54 +0200
>
>Arn't I supposed to be unblocked by now?
>
># 13:38, 27 May 2005 Mel Etitis blocked "User:Sam Spade" with an
>expiry time of 24 hours (3RR violation, replaced until reason for
>unblocking is given)
># 13:21, 27 May 2005 David Gerard unblocked User:Sam Spade (unblocked
>after discussion on wikien-l)
># 13:21, 27 May 2005 David Gerard unblocked User:#23606 (unblocked
>after discussion on wikien-l)
># 12:42, 27 May 2005 Mel Etitis blocked "User:Sam Spade" with an
>expiry time of 24 hours (3RR violation)
>
>Jack (User:Sam Spade)
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


body:
You run into a problem here - David is one of the users who has the
capability to actually check whether users are sockpuppets. So when
he says you're all on the same IP, it is not speculation. It is not a
hypothesis based on similar editing patterns. It's an issue of "He
looked it up." So what you're doing has nothing to do with whether
it's likely that you're a sockpuppet - the technical evidence has
been checked.

Adding to the problem is the fact that the other people who can check
this are also on this list, have no doubt read this by now, and are
thus also aware of the situation, and thus in on the conspiracy.

So we have two hypotheses. 1) You are a sockpuppet, and are lying
about it. 2) You are not a sockpuppet, and there is a conspiracy
including DavidGerard, Tim Starling, and others to claim that you are
while citing non-existent technical evidence.

Evidence for 1: David's citation of technical evidence, the fact that
you claim Wikipedia policy has been violated whenever something
happens that you don't like, your allegations of a vast conspiracy
specifically to run you off (The latter two being behavior that, to a
tee, resembles about a dozen other trolls)

Evidence for 2: You say so.

Now. Given that, what remotely persuasive or plausible reason can you
offer for  accepting hypothesis 2?

-Snowspinner

On May 28, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Cranston Snord wrote:

> Given what I have seen of your behavior toward other users, coupled
> with David Gerard's outburst, I get the feeling that nothing I say
> or do will convince you to stop this.
>
> It is a shame upon Wikipedia that people like you and David Gerard
> have been given power.
>
> -Enviroknot
>
>
>> From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: slimvirgin at gmail.com,English Wikipedia <wikien-
>> l at Wikipedia.org>
>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Completely unwarranted block by Slimvirgin
>> Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 03:21:59 -0600
>>
>> On 5/28/05, Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> > Slimvirgin has blocked me claiming that I am 129.7.35.1.
>> >
>> > She is also lying and claiming that I am ElKabong; this appears
>> to be
>> > connected to her personal crusade along with Mel Etitis, Yuber,
>> etc. to
>> > harass said user.
>> >
>> > I request this be removed immediately, I have not violated 3RR
>> and am not
>> > ElKabong.
>> >
>> > -Enviroknot
>> >
>> Enviroknot and 129.7.35.1 were blocked for 24 hours after being
>> reported on WP:AN/3RR by User:FeloniousMonk for violating 3RR at
>> [[Neofascism and religion]].
>>
>> Based on the editing pattern, writing style, e-mails, and IP-address
>> comparisons of KaintheScion, ElKabong, and Enviroknot, they are
>> operated by the same person. IP address 129.7.35.1 lies within an IP
>> address range (resolving to the University of Houston) previously
>> used
>> by that person, and Enviroknot very conveniently turned up to take
>> over the anon IP's reverts, reverting to the same version.
>>
>> Sarah
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
> it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/
> direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Research Team: Getting started

body:
Hi,
I think the focus (or focii) of the group is yet to be decided. As it
says on the page, there will probably be various focus groups working
on their points of interest and then coming together at some point in
time. Personally, I'm more interested in the
psychological/sociological end of Wikipedia, and also Wikiversity,
amongst other things. I'm sure if you have your own ideas, they'd be
useful in brainstorming the work of the group.

Cormac

On 5/27/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am currently doing researches on wikis generally, and wikipedia or
> jurispedia specifically.
>
> Is the research team only working on the software or are you also
> studying the impact of wikis, alternate uses, history, etc. ???
>
>
> Le 27 mai 05 ? 02:20, Erik Moeller a ?crit :
>
> > Delphine:
> >
> >
> >> I find it indeed important that in the case of paid developpers
> >> (which, imho there should be more of) the development needs addressed
> >> be that of as many "communities" as possible, so that no project
> >> feels
> >> left out in the end.
> >>
> >
> > That's why I want to organize community meetings as soon as
> > possible, where we will discuss with members of each community the
> > needs of their project.
> >
> >
> >> However, in the light of what has been said on the other threads
> >> about
> >> official positions, I find the use of a logo quite strange.
> >>
> >
> > The logo says "Research", it can be used by anyone in the Wikimedia
> > context for research-related activities. Note that Jakob placed it
> > on the general [[m:Research]] page as well without being a member
> > of the team.
> >
> > Erik
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050528 10:33]:

> Would you mind backing up that statement with evidence from the
> history tabs of articles and other pages?

Nope, but I have the matching IPs.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: history compression

body:
elwp at gmx.de wrote:
>
> The background of my
> question is that I have written a Perl program that compresses page
> histories much better than the currently used algorithm. And now I
> want to write PHP code so that MediaWiki can access the data. But
> HistoryBlobStubs make this more complicated.
>
> This is how my method works: All revision texts are split into sections
> (the delimiter is "\n=="). Unchanged sections are stored only once.
> Sections are sorted by their headings. Then everything is compressed
> with deflate().

Two questions spring to mind:

Firstly, when you say "unchanged sections are stored only once", does
this apply even if someone changes a section and someone else reverts
it, or if someone copies a section to another page? Maybe all the pages
should be split into sections, and all the sections stored individually?

Secondly, how great will the dependence between a revision and the
previous revision be? In other words, how many (compressed) revisions
will have to be retrieved in order to reconstruct the (uncompressed)
text of just one revision?

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Lists of computer science educators?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> So, my question is, are any of you aware of lists of professors and
> teachers in the field of computer science, particularly software?

When you say "professor", I assume that you're referring to university
professors.  At university level, computer science courses tend to
contain very little about programming, and in particular, the only
programming exercises students get will be at a very basic level.  For
example, I had to write a program to solve Towers of Hanoi...

I am somewhat of a "freelance" teacher "in the field of computer
science" for the University of Cambridge.  I cannot imagine any kind of
exercise consisting of work on MediaWiki that would be beneficial to
"my" students.  At one point, I attempted to encourage students to
implement a particular algorithm they were supposed to learn (I think it
was Dijkstra's algorithm), but none of them did and they still passed
the exams.  Even if they did implement such an algorithm, it is highly
questionable that the result would be useful for MediaWiki.

Timwi


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
Yes, but does "pronunc" in "pronunciation" sound anything like
"pronounce"? No, and you don't spell them the same, but they're
related.

Similarly, at least the way I say it, "inform" doesn't sound like the
first part of "information" (I would write it "infirmation" because it
sounds more like "infirm" than "inform), yet it's spelt identically.

And remember that even perscriptivists generally concede when
something had already passed into popular usage at least a generation
ago - "reknowned" may not be etymologically correct, and tightwads
such as yourself may peck to death those who have at some point or
another decided that the word is properly spelt that way, but if you
break it down - "re - known - ed" - it makes perfect sense because the
definition of the word I pronunce (make that "pronounce") as /ri 'nau
nd/ is something along the lines of "well-known". And please don't
question the "re-" prefix because you can "refer" to something without
having ever "fer"red to it before, you can "relate" to somebody
without having ever "late"d to them before, and you can "relish" or
"resign" or "refute" without having ever "lish"ed, "sign"ed, or
"fute"d before.

Mark

On 28/05/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > he _is_ a world-reknowned expert
>
> I highly doubt that.  Although he might be a _world-renowned_ expert.
> Throughout the past week, I have fixed on the order of one hundred
> articles with that spelling mistake in them.
>
> And here I am trying very hard to understand how someone can think that
> a word that is pronounced the way "renowned" is, can possibly have a k
> in it.  It is not even pronounced anything like "know" or "knowledge".
> Furthermore, as "gnostic" versus "agnostic" clearly teaches us, letters
> do not tend to become silent when there is a prefix before them.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've whipped up a fairly basic rate limiter which can be used to provide
> a brake to mass-floods of edits or page moves.

That is great news.  However, I have one little concern.  Please could
you try to make sure that, if a human editor hits the rate limit, they
can just press "reload" to resubmit the same edit or move?  You see, I
will often move or edit several pages in several tabs at the same time,
and this way I can very easily hit the rate limit.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: mysql problem with my image table

body:
no lssi no lssi wrote:
>
> With this sentence i can see all duplicated entries:
>
> SELECT img_name FROM image GROUP BY img_name HAVING
> count(img_name) > 1;
>
> But now i cant do a delete with a subquery to erase
> duplicate entries less one.

The problem, of course, is that if you try to delete "where img_name =
'some_name'", then you will remove both duplicates.

I have come across this problem before, at work where we use Microsoft
SQL Server.  Here I can add a new column to the table, define that
column to be an auto-incrementing primary key, and then use these
"temporary IDs" to delete all of the duplicates except one.

DELETE FROM img_name WHERE temporary_id IN
	(SELECT i2.temporary_id FROM img_name i1, img_name i2
	  WHERE i1.temporary_id < i2.temporary_id
	    AND i1.img_name = i2.img_name
	)

or something like that.

After the deletion, you can simply remove that temporary_id column again.

Timwi


from_name: Rick

body:
--- Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
> You are lying, David, and you are violating
> Wikipedia policy in doing so.

Somebody block this guy from the mailing list, please.

RickK

__________________________________________________
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body:
--- Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I find the whole thing hilarious.
>
> Not only are you not interested in the truth, you're
> actively attacking me
> for following Wikipedia guidelines and for bringing
> my case.

Yawn.  Bored now.  Typical troll behavior.  Move on,
nothing more to be seen here.

RickK

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Video thumbnailer feature

body:
Hi all

We do not propose a thumbnailer feature with videos.
Might be a good feature for commons...

Why ?

I took a look on totem-video-thumbnailer which can do that.

Example:
$ totem-video-thumbnailer -s 95 video.mpg thumb.jpg

Opinion about adding this feature ?

Best regards

Kelson


from_name: A. Decorte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How to change namespaces in Friulian Wiki?

body:
Hi, how can I change the namespace (for example Wikipedia to Vichipedie) in the
Friulian Wiki?
Thamks in advance
Andre


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: An idea

body:
On 5/28/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I highly doubt that.  Although he might be a _world-renowned_ expert.
> Throughout the past week, I have fixed on the order of one hundred
> articles with that spelling mistake in them.
>
> And here I am trying very hard to understand how someone can think that
> a word that is pronounced the way "renowned" is, can possibly have a k
> in it.  It is not even pronounced anything like "know" or "knowledge".
> Furthermore, as "gnostic" versus "agnostic" clearly teaches us, letters
> do not tend to become silent when there is a prefix before them.

172,000 google hits says that one day we will consider it a valid
spelling of something. :)
Lots of places you would expect to be spellchecked contain "reknowned".


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] history compression

body:
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 11:38:27PM +0100, Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> On 27/05/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > This
> > > would also be more flexible because if data needs to be transferred to
> > > another server there is no need to update all rows in the revision
> > > table.
> >
> > You've got to update it *somewhere*.
>
> Updating $serverurl or similar in a PHP file is easier than using
> str_replace or similar for every entry of your revision table to
> change the URL from the old to the new one.

The current implementation uses logical names within the database
and a logical name -> physical server mapping in LocalSettings.php.

The URL for an external revision is DB://cluster1/765765

In LocalSettings.php, the name cluster1 is mapped to a farm of three
mysql servers:

$wgExternalServers = array(
  'cluster1' => array(
        array( 'host'=> 'srv30', 'load' =>1)+$templateServer ,
        array( 'host'=> 'srv28', 'load' =>1)+$templateServer ,
        array( 'host'=> 'srv29', 'load' =>1)+$templateServer ,
  )
);

This provides both redundancy and flexibility.

Regards,

	JeLuF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
On 5/28/05, Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Power corrupts. And as it turns out, Wikipedia Admins are absolutely
> corrupt, Absolute Power wasn't even required.

Now that's going too far.

No issue is just black and white, and yes, unfortunately there are
politics ... and they are not trivial themselves.   There are some
admins who use the admin functions too hastily, or at times,
inappropriately,  but they are a minority. The majority of
administrators don't abuse their adminship, but the same group often
usually avoids the debates and politics... this also means that they
are not quick undo another administrators actions.

By making allegations like this you do nothing for your case... who
would want to help you after claims like this?     Already you've been
accused of being a sock by someone with a sufficient degree of access
to actually tell if you are a sock (well, tell if you edit from the
same IP as the user you're accused of being a sock of), and who
doesn't have any incentive to make up stories against you.  Running
around and calling people liars will not get you any friends here, if
you are really being wronged perhaps you and the person you are
accused of socking could ask wikipedia to disclose the addresses you
edit from to the world?   Most Wikipedians respond well to
rationality, and almost all people respond better to politeness.  I
understand why you do not feel you owe such kindness to those who have
given you trouble, but here you are addressing a much larger community
which is filled with people who have done you no wrong.

Ultimately, when you come to edit at Wikipedia you are improving our
communities encyclopedia for the world.  If a new users shows up and
gets treated rudely by the community (for whatever reason), the
expected behavior is for the new person to say "Fine, go without my
help... you're not paying me to be here!".  This sequence of events is
unfortunate, which is why we try hard encourage presuming good faith
and such... but this sequence is natural. So, when we see a brand new
users fighting with vigor for the ability to stay in a community that
has treated them poorly please forgive us for having strong doubts
about the motivation and identity of that editor.


body:
On 5/28/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> That's because you are, you lying fuck. ElKabong = KaintheScion and
> KaintheScion = Enviroknot.

David, I can appreciate your frustration... as well as your level of
certainty on this matter. :)

However, I feel you make our community look bad by using such intense
language in this case... it comes off as very emotionally charged and
it might cause an outsider to question the basis for you judgement. It
will almost certainly encourage a highly emotional reply.

I'm sure that the facts in this case are far more damning than any
vitriol you could produce, so you'd do us all better to just calmly
and politely send this sock back into it's drawer rather than
effectively bating it along and escalating the level of incivility
further.

Cheers


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: history compression

body:
Timwi:
> Two questions spring to mind:
>
> Firstly, when you say "unchanged sections are stored only once", does
> this apply even if someone changes a section and someone else reverts
> it,

Yes, if both revision texts reside in the same history blob. Up to
20 consecutive revisions are stored in one blob.

> or if someone copies a section to another page?

No.

> Maybe all the pages
> should be split into sections, and all the sections stored individually?

I doubt that this would improve the compression much, because texts aren't
copied that often.

> Secondly, how great will the dependence between a revision and the
> previous revision be? In other words, how many (compressed) revisions
> will have to be retrieved in order to reconstruct the (uncompressed)
> text of just one revision?

The complete history blob must be decompressed of course. But no previous
revisions need to be reconstructed. At the beginning of the uncompressed
history blob there is a section index for each revision followed by a list
of (position, length)-pairs for each section. So when a revision text is
to be extracted, this is what happens:
* uncompress history blob
* look up section list for the requested revision
* loop up section offsets and lengths
* concatenate sections

This is an example header (first 20 revisions of the german article
"Stern"):

00000020 00000025 00000142 00000260 00000001 # 20 revisions, 25 different
sections
0 # first revision has no heading: only one section
1 2 3
4 5 6
4 5 6 # conversion script: nothing changed
7 5 8
7 9 8
10 9 8
7 9 8
7 11 8
12 11 8
12 13 8
12 14 8
15 14 8
16 14 8
17 14 8
18 14 8
19 14 8
19 20 8
21 22 23
21 24 23
0 2579 # offset and length of the first section
2579 1176
...

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