from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Improvement request: redirect, synonyms,
	fuzzy system (ENG/ITA)

body:
Perhaps a new feature of "aliases" which belong to an article, as a
separate feature to redirects
but built on top of the redirect feature in a well-thought-out way.
Perhaps at a later stage aliases
could completely replace redirects. Are there uses of redirects which
are distinct from aliases?
I'm assuming the concept of aliases owned by the article is easily understood.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

On 8/31/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/05, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > is an interesting one. Changing the system so that you keep the list of
> > redirects inside (at end) article A would have the benefit that you see
> > them at once and can maintain them better. Currently someone reading A
> > doesn't (easily) see all the redirects to it.
>
> I agree that this could be a useful feature, but I think it would need
> to be a little more subtle, and I can foresee some major issues with
> implementing it. Perhaps a separate box on the edit page listing
> "pages that redirect here" - generated dynamically, not stored with
> the page's content, as that could easily lead to inconsistencies.
>
> Another related question is how to deal with double redirects,
> particularly those caused when moving a page: Should the software fix
> them automatically [or implicitly do so, as it would if they were
> stored with the content]? Probably not, since a page move is sometimes
> to make way for a more suitable article at the old title, so the
> redirects may belong to one or the other. But in that case, how do you
> display such double redirects in the "backwards" list? Perhaps you'd
> not list them at all, and people could copy-and-paste them from the
> new redirect's edit page if appropriate.
>
> > If two articles have the same article name in their synonym list, an
> > disambigition (sp?) page could be automatically created (with a warning
> > issued to the editor that the current saved article asks for a redirect
> > which an already existing article also has).
>
> This is an important problem with editting the list backwards like
> this - an edit is usually considered "complete" when you click save,
> whereas this would be more of an interactive process, where you need
> to look at the feedback to see whether the software has actually
> allowed your changes.
>
> And what happens if I *remove* a redirect from the list - does the
> page get deleted, even though I don't have deletion rights? Or perhaps
> just changed to a blank page? Remember it might have history from
> before it was a redirect...
>
>
> Perhaps in the end what is needed is a move-page like function that
> lets you say "if any of these articles don't exist, make them redirect
> to X", which would then tell you which ones it had been unable to
> create so you could do them manually.
>
> Of course, even that would be open to abuse, since it potentially
> allows a user to create tons of junk redirects in very little time...
>
>
> > In the future one could even do away with each redirect to be it's own
> > article (which always seemed a bit awkward to me, you end up having to
> > not count these in a lot of places (redirects arent articles in the sense
> > of a real article, so they are no short articles, no real articles etc).
> > However, this would be a quite a change.
>
> The thing with this is that it just creates special cases elsewhere
> instead - if redirects weren't articles, then every time the software
> "follows" a link, it would have to first check if there was an article
> with that name, and then check if there was a redirect with that name.
> And any places where you *do* want to count redirects -
> Special:Wantedpages, for instance - would then have to explicitly
> include them. So I think this would be rather a case of swapping "six
> of one for half a dozen of the other".
>
> Also, what would happen to an article which was turned into a
> redirect? Would it have to be deleted, so that the text didn't mask
> the redirect - or perhaps it could still exist, but be hidden by the
> fact that the redirect existed; in which case, how would you revert it
> back to being an article? Although it seems weird editting the text of
> an article to turn it into a redirect, it does make sense to store
> that action in the edit history along with everything else, even if it
> has a *side-effect* of creating better metadata than we have now.
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
On 8/31/05, epzachte at chello.nl <epzachte at chello.nl> wrote:
> Cormac wrote:
> > For July 13th, under the columns C and D, I have the numbers 6,884 and
> > 798 respectively. Below this then are two much higher figures (11,285
> > and 1,629) - are these the maximum estimates and the above published
> > figure the conservative estimate, or how does it work exactly?
>
> Cormac, the July 13th figures are actual counts.
> The much higher July figures below it are forecasts for the complete month. Hence the +/- sign.

Thanks, Erik.

What's the margin of error here? Is it significant?

These stats never cease to amaze me, by the way :-)

Cormac


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump progress

body:
On 8/31/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> There's been some questions recently about public backup dumps (or the
> lack thereof). I've been working for the last few days on getting the
> dump generation infrastructure up and running in a more consistent,
> effective fashion.

Should contributions to peripheral things like this be limited to PHP?
 If I had a Python contribution, would it be used?

Also, on PostgreSQL schema--- is this being worked, or would it be
useful for me to work on it?  I'm doing a project using WP data on a
psql db.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Even an e-mail record from the author may not be enough.  We have no way of
> knowing or proving whether an electronic permission is in fact from a person
> who is authorized to give that licence.

To be honest I suggest that we cross that bridge as and when we come to
it -- I'm not sure what more we can reasonably be expected to do when it
comes to obtaining confirmation of permission than get a clear statement
by email.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Having this information available to all admins would likely not be any
> more secure than having it available.  Being sensitive to privacy issues
> has never been a criterion for becoming an admin.  On the other hand
> leaving this with one person could leave him overwhelmed once things
> start working properly.  Putting this through a committee of stewards
> and bureaucrats could make more practical sense.

What we seem to be building towards is the idea of a central repository
for confirmations of permission, managed by one or more responsible
individuals at or on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. This sounds to
me like the most sensible solution.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Miquel Turra

subject: [Wikitech-l] MURCIAN WIKIPEDIA: Wich is the next step.

body:
User Assarbe (Ain_xaitan at yahoo.es) says:

I have left a proposal for a new wikipedia in murcian (a language spoken by more than 300.000 persons) in the south-east of Spain, between the castilian and catalan) two weeks ago.I have already got the support of more than 6 persons. I am sure more people will be interested.

Well, now I want to know wich is the next step to do. Can I do thing something more at the moment?

Please, help me :)

Thanks

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

Correo Yahoo!
Comprueba qu? es nuevo, aqu?
http://correo.yahoo.es


from_name: Heinz-Josef Lücking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Demis maps

body:
Have also a look on http://www.giswiki.de/index.php/QuickWMS-Extension. It's
an extension for mediawiki that integrates web map services

Heinz

"Lars Aronsson" <lars-ABUHZ1rI0YgwFerOooGFRg at public.gmane.org> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:<Pine.LNX.4.61.0508310333360.26356 at sara.aronsson.se>...
>
> The company Demis in the Netherlands sells software for a map
> server and also runs a demo on their own site.  The map data for
> this demo have been collected from public domain sources, and the
> company doesn't claim any copyright for the generated maps.  The
> maps are not the very best, but good enough for many purposes.
> Some maps of this origin are already at Wikimedia Commons, e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-Hrusica-in-contex--raw.png
> and have been used for further processing, e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationArno.PNG
>
> I developed a simple tool that makes it easier to find the right
> map, and then I uploaded two dozens of them to
>
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_maps_from_demis.nl
>
> However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot
> effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts
> to use this tool.  They would prefer if somebody could buy the
> Demis software and run their own server.  Unfortunately, the map
> server only runs on Microsoft Windows.
>
> Does anybody have a Demis server running already, that I can use
> for my tool?  There are many WMS-compliant servers out there, but
> most have very fuzzy or complicated copyright restrictions.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars-ABUHZ1rI0YgwFerOooGFRg at public.gmane.org)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Demis maps

body:
"Thomas Koll" <tomk32-Mmb7MZpHnFY at public.gmane.org> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:<37469BEE-91DC-4526-8987-96AE8A1A7966 at gmx.de>...
>
> Am 31.08.2005 um 03:56 schrieb Lars Aronsson:
> > However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot
> > effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts
> > to use this tool.
>
> The map needs to be generated only once for Wikipedia, I don't think
> that
> more than a dozen Wikipedians will do that anyways. Simply don't
> propagate
> the existence of that service to prominently.
>

On the german wikipedia the existence of the demis web-mapping-service is
known more than a year ore more

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Karten#Weltweit_und_f.C3.BCr_jedes_La
nd

heinz
>
> > Unfortunately, the map
> > server only runs on Microsoft Windows.
>
> OK, that's always a reason to be concerned...
>
> ciao, tom
>
> --
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
> http://www.tomk32.de


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll

body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

> Dariusz Siedlecki a ?crit :
>
>> Still, note this - do we really want to attach 10 pages of GFDL
>> license to our print edition? I think a simple "Licensed under
>> CC-By-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/etc/etc)" would be okay - and
>> this is exactly what a text licensed under CC needs.
>
> Sure, but the CC licenses are not that clear ! Do you now what they
> mean when they say they are not "revokable" for example. We just
> talked about it for 2 hours on IRC yesterday.
>
> The CC licenses were not meant to be used precisely for Wikinews and
> they don't adopt the exact vocabulary we need to describe what we do.
> We have a chance to make it perfect, so let's do it rather than to
> rely on third parties legal work.

The one huge problem about rolling your own license is that you can also
introduce errors into the license that are unintended, or even cause
unintended problems that might cause heartburn in the future.  The
advertisement clause in the BSD license is a good example, which is
viral and can grow incredibly long if done properly.  The fact that the
GFDL is incompatable with the GPL (you can't use non trivial GFDL'd
software examples in a GPL'd computer program, for example) is one that
is really weird, particularly considering the two different licenses are
written by the same organization.

The usual Free Software Foundation "loophole" on this issue is the "use
this version of the license or later adopted version".  This is more of
a cop-out, and something that can cause further legal messes.  It does,
however, allow the chance that some time in the future a custom license
could be merged with the GFDL in a much better licensing arrangement,
provided the GFDL "upgrade" fixes some of the issues that most Wikinews
users are complaining about with that license.  Or fix the problems that
may come up when the draft license is issued, from those kinds of things
listed above.

Using a "standard" license means that the defense of using it will have
been vetted in legal circles, something that the GPL is currently going
through with the infamous SCO Linux case.  Defending the license also
gets popular and legal suport (sometimes) from the people who wrote the
license.  If we go it alone and write our own license, we don't get that
sort of protection and instead put the authors and (if approved by the
board) the Foundation board to stand alone with the license.  On the
other hand, if it is well written and very clear as well as reasonable,
it may get adopted by other groups besides Wikinews.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 17:11 +0100, Nick Boalch wrote:
> Theresa Knott wrote:
> >> What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
> >> to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
> >
> > I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
> > sensitive info, I doubt that  anyone would object to the email being
> > copied to the talk page would they?
>
> No, I can't imagine they would -- but if this sensitive info is removed
> then there's essentially no difference between an emailed authorisation
> and a random anonymous editor on the talk page claiming to be the
> author. Is my word that the confirmation was real enough?
>
> Cheers,
>
> N.
>

The way I've seen some editors handle this is promise to forward the
e-mail to anyone who requests a copy. Of course, this doesn't really
resolve the verifiability problem, because headers can be easily
spoofed. One suggestion I have is to ask the copyright holder to create
a PGP key set and sign the e-mail with his or her private key, as I and
some others on this list do with all our e-mails. As long as his or her
public key is available, which it always will be if placed on a public
key server and downloaded by individuals, the e-mail can be easily
verified. GnuPG, a PGP program, is freely available for all major
operating systems, and many mail clients, such as Evolution and Mozilla
Thunderbird, provide easy PGP integration.

--Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked?!?!?  Lunatics running the asylum??

body:
What happened was that I was unblocked by another admin (rather
quickly).  Afterwards me and Kim agreed on IRC that would move the
Requested Moves/mock voting thing to the user's user space if the user
wanted to, possibly leaving a link on the VfD talk page to it (I think).

Thanks,
RN


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New wikistats

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

> Finally new wikistats

Hooray! You're great :-) It took me half a weekend to get into the new
XML dump (probably because I wasted time playing around and learning a
new scripting language - see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Processing_MediaWiki_XML_with_STX
;-). Do you use XML::SAX in perl or how do you parse the dump?

Will there also be new csv files? The old ones have not changed:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/csv/csv.zip

Another thing: every time I want to visit the stat I have to search
because the base directories are not readable:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/

Can you please rename Sitemap.htm to index.htm or add a .htaccess file
that makes Sitemap.htm the default page?

Your home page http://eza.gemm.nl/ still points to
http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics/

So how about creating a HTTP redirect or something like that from

http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/       to
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikistats

so everybody can document the scripts there?

Good work and greetings,
Jakob


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New wikistats


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [WikiEN-l] Precedents for sanctioning creative disruption

body:
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. We have a longtime problem user in
our still rather small Hungarian Wikipedia.

I wanted to see what procedures the EnWiki editors have for dealing
with such behavior (what works and what doesn't).

I think the Plautus example is somewhat fitting.

Although this guy is a seasoned troll who made himself a reputation in
the last 5 years on religion related internet forums, I think he
doesn't speak English so you're absolutely safe. ;)

Thanks,
nyenyec

On 8/31/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> And exactly who are you suggesting is doing this?
>
> On 8/31/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm pretty sure this is what RFAr is for. Plautus satire is a possible
> > example of such a person, except his reason was chronic schizophrenia,
> > not trolling. But the effect is the same.
> >
> > - Ryan
> >
> > Nyenyec N wrote:
> >
> > >So if a user learns to do all this without violating the "hard"
> > >policies like [[WP:NPA]] and [[WP:3RR]] too much, can he go on
> > >forever?
> > >
> > >Can anyone point me to the closest precedent to this behavior and what
> > >happened to such creative trolls?
> > >
> > >Thanks, nyenyec
> > >
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> signature
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>On 8/8/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Michael Turley wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>If we don't already have one, we should establish a "permissions trustee"
>>>who would keep all such things confidential and in safe keeping, yet be
>>>
>>>
>>able
>>
>>
>>>to verify that the permissions stated match the permissions actually on
>>>file.
>>>
>>>When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia Foundation,
>>>they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
>>>don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that is
>>>
>>>
>>(or as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).
>>
>>
>>
>>Having this information available to all admins would likely not be any
>>more secure than having it available. Being sensitive to privacy issues
>>has never been a criterion for becoming an admin. On the other hand
>>leaving this with one person could leave him overwhelmed once things
>>start working properly. Putting this through a committee of stewards
>>and bureaucrats could make more practical sense.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>I agree with you completely regarding denying this role to the entire admin
>population in general.
>
>While I respect the dedication and ability of Bureaucrats, Stewards, and
>various committees on WIkipedia, I specifically stated "Trustee" because
>that is a legally defined role with specific legal duties and
>responsibilities that go with the role. Unless we're extraordinarily lucky,
>I expect we'll have to pay this Trustee something to accept the legal
>responsibilities that being such a Trustee entitles.
>
>Perhaps a better title is "Custodian of Records" as exemplified by the adult
>"entertainment" industry. (In the US, they're required to keep records to
>prove that all the participating actors and models are over 18 years at the
>time of production.) I don't know the details of these arrangements other
>than to say that the role is usually filled by contracting for an attorney
>to serve through a law firm, but suspect that the Custodian of Records is a
>specific type of Trustee defined by the law governing that industry.
>
What title we give to this person is of secondary importance.  I also
don't see why it can't be done by one or more volunteers..  That can be
determined by the actual volume of work.

There is another major difference from what you describe for the adult
film industry: the length of time for which the records will need to be
kept.  In their case the records may not be necessary once the
prosecution limitation period has expired.  We may need to track these
permissions for 70 years or more.

Ec


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>And exactly who are you suggesting is doing this?
>
>
You, obviously. ;-)

Just kidding. I was responding to his general question, not talking
about anyone in particular.

- Ryan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell checking in MediaWiki

body:
Heiko Evermann wrote:

>What are you planning to do with American English vs. British English?
>
>You would have two entries:
>1)
>title=colour
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_US
>orthography=USA-official
>2)
>title=color
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_GB
>orthography=GB official
>
>That is fine. But what about "bus"? would you have two entries?
>1)
>title=bus
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_US
>orthography=USA-official
>2)
>title=bus
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_GB
>orthography=GB official
>
>That (to my understanding) would double the entries for English, wouldn't it?
>And the translation of de:Bus would list en_US: bus, en_GB:bus?
>
>
There is no such thing as "official" orthography in English.  Also,
further variations may often apply for other English speaking countries.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fwd: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll

body:
Just a question, to reflect some possible misunderstanding.

According to the poll proposition, it seems that only wikinewsies are
allowed to participate to the poll. Is that so ? I am not sure as it
seems it would not be advertised on wikipedia mailing list if it was the
case. But the poll is mentionning wikinewsies only.

Can you clarify this point ?

Thanks

Anthere


from_name: Rajesh Olafson

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki database structure

body:
Thank you much Rowan.

I just look at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design to me it seem
as if this project is talking about different database structuer?

Is this true? Could this be teh first time a mediawiki project have a
different db structuer?
Is there policy saying that all mediawiki projects must have same db
structuer?

thanks you.

Rajesh

On 8/31/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 31/08/05, Rajesh Olafson <rolafson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do all teh various wikimedia projects really use the identical software
> -
> > with the same database structuer? - wikipedia, wikiquote, wiktionary
> etc?
>
> Yes.
>
> There are a couple of configuration differences - sub-pages allowed in
> the main namespace on Wikibooks, custom namespaces in various places,
> Wiktionary doesn't capitalise the first letter of titles (so "Foo" is
> not the same as "foo"), etc, but these are all options available to
> anyone installing the MediaWiki software, and make no difference to
> the basic database structure. There are also one or two additional
> extensions installed - such as the <DynamicPageList> on Wikinews -
> these are also available to anyone who wants them, and are relatively
> superficial.
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Heiko Evermann

body:
Hi Gerard,

Thank you for your answer.

> The German situation is a bit difficult. In actual fact there are only
> two orthographies because two Bundeslander did not pass as law that the
> new spelling would apply there as well. The consequence is that both old
> spelling and new spelling are valid. In a typical situation, the words
> that have been changed would get dated and be outdated. From a practical
> point of view I would only have the changed words and the new words
> included and I would treat them as if these two Bundeslander had voted
> in favour. For lookup purposes the difference is a SELECT statement in
> the query statement.
So you do not want to include the old spelling? From what I understood for Low
Saxon you also wanted to include historic spellings. But I may have
misunderstood that.

> The argument why all words have to be explicitly identified as belonging
> to an orthography is because it allows us to do other things than just
> producing lexicological information from the Internet. What in your
> perception is an "multiplication of entries" is in actual fact no such
> thing; an expression is registered only once for each language, dialect
> or orthography.
So
number of entries = (number of languages) x (number of dialects) x (number of
orthographies)?

What are you planning to do with American English vs. British English?

You would have two entries:
1)
title=colour
lang=EN
dialect=EN_US
orthography=USA-official
2)
title=color
lang=EN
dialect=EN_GB
orthography=GB official

That is fine. But what about "bus"? would you have two entries?
1)
title=bus
lang=EN
dialect=EN_US
orthography=USA-official
2)
title=bus
lang=EN
dialect=EN_GB
orthography=GB official

That (to my understanding) would double the entries for English, wouldn't it?
And the translation of de:Bus would list en_US: bus, en_GB:bus?

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
>
>Erik Zachte
>
>
>
Sorry for the rest of the list I will tell Erik something in Dutch ....

Ik hou van jou ;)

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


from_name: Fruggo

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews - Licensure straw poll

body:
>
> ilya haykinson wrote:

For what it's worth, it makes little sense for Wikipedia to use
> Wikinews content beyond what's considered fair use. Wikinews is not an
> encyclopedia and tries to not have any encyclopedic articles, and the
> Wikipedia "current events" section is really short enough of a mention
> that it's fair use at worst and wholly original at best.
>
>
>
Please consider that fair use is not an option for some (a lot of?)
Wikipedia's.

-Fruggo


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Demis maps

body:
Heinz-Josef L?cking wrote:
> Have also a look on
> http://www.giswiki.de/index.php/QuickWMS-Extension. It's an
> extension for mediawiki that integrates web map services

That sounds good, but who runs the WMS server and who owns the
data?  Can the sources handle (1) Wikimedia's strict freedom
requirement and (2) the Slashdot effect on their servers?

There are many such ideas in the [[category:Wikimaps]] on meta.
But we have to make a difference between futuristic ideas and
things that work here and now.  For example, today I inserted maps
in the Russian Wikipedia's article on lake Onega and in the Danish
Wikipedia's article on island Lolland.  These languages have
30,000 articles each, and still they don't have maps for some of
the most central parts of their own countries.  I look forward to
your SVG/JAVAX/WMS real time updated maps in 2007, with names in
the right language fetched from Ultimate Wiktionary.  But right
now this project needs some simple free maps to fill in the most
embarrasing blanks.  Within one year, Danish and Russian should
have 100,000 articles (assuming an annual growth factor of 3).
Many of these will be written by volunteers who get inspiration
from the beautiful maps.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B6%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BE
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolland

These maps are green-and-blue without names.  This is when you
download the PNG image from Commons and start GIMP to add names
and features in your favorite language.

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


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Heiko Evermann wrote:

>Hi Gerard,
>
>Thank you for your answer.
>
>
>
>>The German situation is a bit difficult. In actual fact there are only
>>two orthographies because two Bundeslander did not pass as law that the
>>new spelling would apply there as well. The consequence is that both old
>>spelling and new spelling are valid. In a typical situation, the words
>>that have been changed would get dated and be outdated. From a practical
>>point of view I would only have the changed words and the new words
>>included and I would treat them as if these two Bundeslander had voted
>>in favour. For lookup purposes the difference is a SELECT statement in
>>the query statement.
>>
>>
>So you do not want to include the old spelling? From what I understood for Low
>Saxon you also wanted to include historic spellings. But I may have
>misunderstood that.
>
>
Sorry, good try but no cigar. The words that are spelled differently
will both be in there. They will both have a record in ValidExpression
where the old spelling will have a value in the ValidUntil field and the
new spelling will have a value in the ValidFrom field.

There is room for historic orthographies, it may prove instructive in
demonstrating the ongoing Germanisation of Lower Saxon

>
>
>>The argument why all words have to be explicitly identified as belonging
>>to an orthography is because it allows us to do other things than just
>>producing lexicological information from the Internet. What in your
>>perception is an "multiplication of entries" is in actual fact no such
>>thing; an expression is registered only once for each language, dialect
>>or orthography.
>>
>>
>So
>number of entries = (number of languages) x (number of dialects) x (number of
>orthographies)?
>
>What are you planning to do with American English vs. British English?
>
>You would have two entries:
>1)
>title=colour
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_US
>orthography=USA-official
>2)
>title=color
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_GB
>orthography=GB official
>
>That is fine. But what about "bus"? would you have two entries?
>1)
>title=bus
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_US
>orthography=USA-official
>2)
>title=bus
>lang=EN
>dialect=EN_GB
>orthography=GB official
>
>That (to my understanding) would double the entries for English, wouldn't it?
>And the translation of de:Bus would list en_US: bus, en_GB:bus?
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Heiko Evermann
>
First of all I am not a specialist when it comes to the spelling of
American English or British English. Depending on there being an
official body that identifies correctly spelled English, a spelling can
be either validated by one organisation or by two organisations. When
this is the case, there is no need for duplication. This is
functionality implicitly there in the data design.

The examples that you show bear no relation to what UW will look like
nor how the edit screens will look like I am happy to say :) There is
this big difference in the attitude of the way Lower Saxon is treating
its orthograhies and the way Sicilan or Napolitan orthographies are
treated. The Lower Saxon seem really eager to have only one orthography
and therefore a mix of the different spellings is not likely to find
much apreciation by many.

The duplication of words that are spelled the same in different dialects
or orthographies is inherent in the database design. This is essential
if you want to have definitions and etymology in these dialects or
orthographies. If you are willing to accept that definitions and
etymology can be spelled in orthographies other than Sass there could be
a solution but as the nds.wikipedia also has to standardise on Sass, I
think this is a rather unlikely scenario.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: A. Nony Mouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Exercises in social engineering

body:
No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never practice
the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
 A. Nony Mouse

 On 8/31/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/31/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: RIPEMD160
> >
> > A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> > > Well how about that.
> > > Come into wikipedia IRC chat, get ambushed by NicholasT who's on his
> usual
> > > rampage, get sworn at and called names and challenged to "prove" this,
> then
> > > kickbanned before I can respond by jerks who scream "troll"?
> > > Aren't you people real nice pieces of work, huh?
> > > A. Nony Mouse
> > > who's in the right even if the overinflated egos won't admit it.
> > >
> >
> > I'm sorry, was there a point to this email?
> >
> > - --
> > Alphax | /"\
>
> His grapes went sour
>
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 31/08/05, Rajesh Olafson <rolafson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do all teh various wikimedia projects really use the identical software -
> with the same database structuer? - wikipedia, wikiquote, wiktionary etc?

Yes.

There are a couple of configuration differences - sub-pages allowed in
the main namespace on Wikibooks, custom namespaces in various places,
Wiktionary doesn't capitalise the first letter of titles (so "Foo" is
not the same as "foo"), etc, but these are all options available to
anyone installing the MediaWiki software, and make no difference to
the basic database structure. There are also one or two additional
extensions installed - such as the <DynamicPageList> on Wikinews -
these are also available to anyone who wants them, and are relatively
superficial.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked?!?!? Lunatics running the asylum??

body:
Kim's been acting a little strangely with votes lately, i've noticed.

On 9/1/05, Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I don't know what's going on here - I followed policy to the letter
> here.
>
> The page in question is -
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
> index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion&curid=1003209&action=h
> istory
>
> I was restoring comments blanked on the page by Kim Bruning, an admin,
> with the summary
>
> "BIG RV. Some id10t tried to implement voting on the "let's make sure
> vfd is not voting" discussion. Um. Ok. Undoing the screwage"
>
> (It wasn't my comment it was someone else's). Basically that dispute
> was they were renaming all "votes for deletion" pages to "articles for
> deletion", and assuming there was consesus to do so, but were not
> holding anything formal like a VfD process or whatever.
>
> That's irrelevant though, because I wasn't trying to prove anything at
> all. I just wanted to have a VfD conversation over it, and this was on
> the talk page which seemed appropriate (and evidently several other
> people thought so too).
>
> The summary before I reverted again was
> "Del the requested move vote again. I didn't look too hard who put it
> back, because if I did, I'd have to do really bad things to them"
>
> To which I responded on the talk page that I thought it would be better
> for them to come up with something better, rather than simply wiping it
> from the talk page.
>
> Anyway, there were NO warning on my talk page about the possiblity of
> violating WP:POINT or being blocked for 24 hours. This has a left a
> very bitter taste in mouth, and I don't know if I'll be coming back
> after this, as I have always thought I acted in a mature and
> responsible matter.
>
> Ryan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


body:
And exactly who are you suggesting is doing this?

On 8/31/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure this is what RFAr is for. Plautus satire is a possible
> example of such a person, except his reason was chronic schizophrenia,
> not trolling. But the effect is the same.
>
> - Ryan
>
> Nyenyec N wrote:
>
> >So if a user learns to do all this without violating the "hard"
> >policies like [[WP:NPA]] and [[WP:3RR]] too much, can he go on
> >forever?
> >
> >Can anyone point me to the closest precedent to this behavior and what
> >happened to such creative trolls?
> >
> >Thanks, nyenyec
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> One would think that all Wikipedias would be subject to the same set
> of copyright rules, since they're all operated out of Florida.  I've
> never understood why people think that the language content is written
> in has any impact on the law such content is required to comply
> with....

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but
in practice there is.

At the Swedish (language) Wikipedia village pump, if people decide
to meet up to discuss stories where they have received complaints
for copyright violations, they are likely to meet in Stockholm and
the complaints (if any) are likely to have originated from media
companies in the same town.  Both the media companies and the
wikipedians are subject to the laws of Sweden (with very few
exceptions), and if a conflict should escalate they will meet in a
court of law in Sweden.  It doesn't really matter if they use a
computer made in Taiwan or a server hosted in Florida.  Courts
sentence people, not servers.

Now, because the entire Wikipedia community is so prudent, this
whole scenario is very unlikely.  Copyright violations of this
kind are settled by removing the contents, and it is rare that any
rights holder would go to court to win damages.

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


body:
On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 23:27 -0500, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never practice
> the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
>  A. Nony Mouse

Good sir, this dissent is not allowed on Wikipedia. I have forwarded
this e-mail to cabal-l, where we will soon reach a decision on how best
to make you "disappear."

Sincerely,

Christopher Larberg
Vice-President of Communications, Wikimedia Cabal
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from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> One should not because it can matter. Say you made an illegal death
> threat against someone in your city, but you did it by posting it to a
> web site hosted in some country where that's not illegal. Which law
> would apply to you? If you do something illegal in your city/country
> the law applies to you there in addition to any laws from the country
> which hosts the web site if it has agreements with your country. Same
> thing with copyright, the editors need to abide by their laws, or
> there may consequences in their country, and they need to abide by the
> laws in Florida, USA or there may be consequeces for at least the
> Foundation, if not the editor.
> Dori

Not to mention avoiding fair use materials made German DVD edition
much easier to make.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump progress

body:
Ah, thanks Brion, very good news :-)

Minor bug in http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/af/pages_full.xml.gz

About 1 in 20 edits is attributed to <ip> where <username> seems more
appropriate:

<contributor><ip>John</ip><contributor>

Maybe it has been fixed already, I see lots of these in /af/, none in /nl/ .

Erik Zachte


from_name: Angela

body:
On 8/31/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> According to the poll proposition, it seems that only wikinewsies are
> allowed to participate to the poll. Is that so ? I am not sure as it
> seems it would not be advertised on wikipedia mailing list if it was the
> case. But the poll is mentionning wikinewsies only.

The poll is open to anyone who has a Wikinews user page. When I
advertised it on the Wikipedia mailing list, there was only one option
to vote for (CC-BY-SA) and the vote had already begun. The page has
undergone many changes since then, and the vote won't start until
September 6, so there is still time to discuss who should be allowed
to vote. Since the vote affects whether other Wikimedia projects will
be compatible with Wikinews, I think it's only fair to let people from
those projects express their opinions on the license.

Angela.


from_name: Dejan Papez

subject: [Wikitech-l] User interface transfer

body:
Hi! Is it possible and would someone knowledgeable be prepared to copy the user interface translation (Special:Allmessages in Wikipedia) from one project to another? I've greatly improved its translation to Slovenian in Slovenian Wikipedia and would now like to use it other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, especially in the English version of Wikipedia, in Slovenian Wiktionary, on Commons and also in Slovenian Wikisource (when it's ready). It would be a really too hard work to do it manually. Thanks very much.

Dejan Pape?

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
On 8/31/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> For a tad more privacy, but something that remain available should anyone
> need it, what about putting in on a subpage, deleting the subpage, and then
> putting an "admins only" link (ie, any admin can access it, so the
> permission stays with the project even if you leave, but it is not openly
> available to the public.

That's a nice idea, but might not work long term since the deleted
page archive is sometimes cleared out.

How about just copying the permission emails to the info-en at
wikimedia.org address? That way it will be permanently archived and
only viewable by people trusted to keep mails confidential (see
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department>). The non-confidential
parts should still be kept on the talk page though so everyone can see
why the article was not deleted.

Angela.


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 10:17:34PM -0400, Rajesh Olafson wrote:
> Thank you much Rowan.
>
> I just look at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design to me it seem
> as if this project is talking about different database structuer?
>
> Is this true? Could this be teh first time a mediawiki project have a
> different db structuer?
> Is there policy saying that all mediawiki projects must have same db
> structuer?

Our policies are Freedom and Neutral Point Of View. Software is only a tool
to achieve this. Whatever is best to achieve our goals can be done.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Angela wrote:
> How about just copying the permission emails to the info-en at
> wikimedia.org address? That way it will be permanently archived and
> only viewable by people trusted to keep mails confidential (see
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department>). The non-confidential
> parts should still be kept on the talk page though so everyone can see
> why the article was not deleted.

Ah, that would make a certain about of sense. If I start forwarding
permission emails to that address as of today, can you make sure I won't
get yelled at please? :)

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:
[verifiability]
> One suggestion I have is to ask the copyright holder to create a PGP key set
> and sign the e-mail with his or her private key, as I and some others on this
> list do with all our e-mails.

While that is the ultimate solution I'm unconvinced how many copyright
holders, in addition to doing us the favour of licensing their work
under the GFDL, would be prepared to learn how to use gpg just so they
could do it. We're asking *them* a favour and the onus is on us to make
it easy for them, I think.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On 01/09/05, Juanma Barranquero <lekktu at gmail.com> wrote:
> I must say, I would dispute the claim about the 300,000 people, as not
> a single murcian I know ever talked that language, or even *about*
> that language, to me. I'd be most linguistics experts would not
> classify "murcian" as a language, but as local variant of Spanish (but
> I assume this is gonna cause some friction :)

Well, why would they talk to you in Murcian, unless they thought you
spoke it? And why would they talk to you about Murcian, unless you
indicated an interest?

I speak English, but if I'm in Germany I don't tell everybody I meet
"HEY!!! I speak English!! English is a language spoken by this many
people in these countries, and here's an English lesson...", likewise
I doubt a Murcian speaker will do the same, or a Catalan speaker, or a
Basque or Spanish or French or German or Chinese or Arabic speaker.

People don't walk around advertising their language to everyone they talk to.

And it's only the rare person or the monolingual who talks to someone
in a language they won't understand -- there's no point for me to talk
to a monolingual Japanese speaker in English, when I can use Japanese
instead, so why would they speak Murcian to you rather than
Castellano?

Mark


from_name: David Harvey

subject: [Wikitech-l] which PHP version on wikimedia servers?

body:
Which version of PHP is running on the wikimedia servers? Is it >= 5.0?

Thanks

David Harvey


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 9/1/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 23:27 -0500, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> > No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never
> practice
> > the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
> > A. Nony Mouse
>
> Good sir, this dissent is not allowed on Wikipedia. I have forwarded
> this e-mail to cabal-l, where we will soon reach a decision on how best
> to make you "disappear."
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Christopher Larberg
> Vice-President of Communications, Wikimedia Cabal

While personally I'm quick to recognize the attempted humor and shake off
almost all alleged threats, I'd like to point out that threats far vaguer
than this resulted in the permanent block of another user recently that was
also thoroughly discussed on this mailing list.

Call me a killjoy if you must, but this is simply inappropriate.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] C2C Translation issues within MediaWiki: Request
	comment

body:
Hi all,

I would like to ask for everybody's opinions on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Problems_with_server-side_Chinese_to_Chinese_translation_in_MediaWiki

It includes examples, such as how "Queen Sonja" ends up being
converted as "After King Sonja".

Mark

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject:
[Wikitech-l] C2C Translation issues within MediaWiki: Request
	comment


from_name: Valentina Faussone

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: aliases

body:
> Perhaps a new feature of "aliases" which belong to
> an article, as a
> separate feature to redirects
> but built on top of the redirect feature in a
> well-thought-out way.
> Perhaps at a later stage aliases
> could completely replace redirects.

So you suggest to handle a alias-redirect page as a
list with "every term inside point to main article"?
We could then insert synonyms and equivalent
expression too. Sounds a good idea: a redirect seems
to be an alias anyway.
What about typing errors handling? A fuzzy system
would be easier then guessing all the possible
mispellings and inserting them.

Valentina Faussone

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: topi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Demis maps

body:
"Lars Aronsson" <lars at aronsson.se> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:Pine.LNX.4.61.0508310333360.26356 at sara.aronsson.se...
>
> The company Demis in the Netherlands sells software for a map
> server and also runs a demo on their own site.  The map data for
> this demo have been collected from public domain sources, and the
> company doesn't claim any copyright for the generated maps.  The
> maps are not the very best, but good enough for many purposes.
> Some maps of this origin are already at Wikimedia Commons, e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-Hrusica-in-contex--raw.png
> and have been used for further processing, e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationArno.PNG
>
> I developed a simple tool that makes it easier to find the right
> map, and then I uploaded two dozens of them to
>
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_maps_from_demis.nl
>
> However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot
> effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts
> to use this tool.  They would prefer if somebody could buy the
> Demis software and run their own server.  Unfortunately, the map
> server only runs on Microsoft Windows.
>
> Does anybody have a Demis server running already, that I can use
> for my tool?  There are many WMS-compliant servers out there, but
> most have very fuzzy or complicated copyright restrictions.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

Here is a screenshot of a email-contact i had on April 2004 with
www.demis.nl on the matter GNU FDL

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Demis_Best%C3%A4tigung.gif

Heinz


from_name: Evan Martin

body:
What do you mean by "entries" in the "Conclusions" section?  Perhaps
clarifying that will make your proposal easier to follow.

I don't know how MW's C2C works -- does editing the text in TC or SC
cause the other one to change as well?  How do you handle regional
variations in words?  (Like "bathroom" vs "restroom" in the various
Englishes, but I imagine it'd be more pronounced here because TC/SC is
often a regional thing as well.)

On 9/1/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to ask for everybody's opinions on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Problems_with_server-side_Chinese_to_Chinese_translation_in_MediaWiki
>
> It includes examples, such as how "Queen Sonja" ends up being
> converted as "After King Sonja".
>
> Mark
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
> The usual Free Software Foundation "loophole" on this issue is the "use
> this version of the license or later adopted version".  This is more of
> a cop-out, and something that can cause further legal messes.  It does,
> however, allow the chance that some time in the future a custom license
> could be merged with the GFDL in a much better licensing arrangement,
> provided the GFDL "upgrade" fixes some of the issues that most Wikinews
> users are complaining about with that license.  Or fix the problems that
> may come up when the draft license is issued, from those kinds of things
> listed above.

We can very well provide such a versioning in the License... but since
it would be a WNL versioning, we would be able to make it evolve to
correct problems instead of relying on third parties like CC or the FSF.

> Using a "standard" license means that the defense of using it will have
> been vetted in legal circles, something that the GPL is currently going
> through with the infamous SCO Linux case.  Defending the license also
> gets popular and legal suport (sometimes) from the people who wrote the
> license.  If we go it alone and write our own license, we don't get that
> sort of protection and instead put the authors and (if approved by the
> board) the Foundation board to stand alone with the license.  On the
> other hand, if it is well written and very clear as well as reasonable,
> it may get adopted by other groups besides Wikinews.

Well, besides me, there already are many lawyers, law teachers and
judges helping th e foundation today. They are helping and there is no
reason they would not defend us.

A license is simply a kind of contract, lawyers write them everyday.

What we need is only a well-written one that would be tailored for what
we do, that could help us understand the issues at stake, and that would
help to chose others licenses in the end.


body:
On 9/1/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 9/1/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 23:27 -0500, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> > > No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never
> > practice
> > > the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
> > > A. Nony Mouse
> >
> > Good sir, this dissent is not allowed on Wikipedia. I have forwarded
> > this e-mail to cabal-l, where we will soon reach a decision on how best
> > to make you "disappear."
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Christopher Larberg
> > Vice-President of Communications, Wikimedia Cabal
>
>
> While personally I'm quick to recognize the attempted humor and shake off
> almost all alleged threats, I'd like to point out that threats far vaguer
> than this resulted in the permanent block of another user recently that was
> also thoroughly discussed on this mailing list.
>
> Call me a killjoy if you must, but this is simply inappropriate.

I should clarify that it is only my own personal opinion that this is
inappropriate. I did not to intend to sound like I was making a declaration
on behalf of anyone other than myself.

You can still call me a killjoy if you want to. ;)

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [Wikitech-l] any plans to run on PHP 5?

body:
Thanks Gordon for letting me know that wikimedia servers currently
run PHP 4.3.11.

Are there any plans to be running PHP 5.x?

I am considering writing the next version of blahtex (LaTeX => MathML
converter) in PHP instead of C++, and there are certain language
features (in particular try/catch/throw) only present in PHP 5.x of
which I would like to take advantage.

David Harvey


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: aliases

body:
On 9/1/05, Valentina Faussone <valentina_faussone at yahoo.it> wrote:
> > Perhaps a new feature of "aliases" which belong to
> > an article, as a separate feature to redirects
> > but built on top of the redirect feature in a
> > well-thought-out way.
> > Perhaps at a later stage aliases
> > could completely replace redirects.
>
> So you suggest to handle a alias-redirect page as a
> list with "every term inside point to main article"?

Aliases would probably just be a section of the main
article or something like [[Alias:Foo]] [[Alias:Bar]] in
any place just like with Categories now.  But yes (:

> We could then insert synonyms and equivalent
> expression too. Sounds a good idea: a redirect seems
> to be an alias anyway.

Yes I think it seems best to keep the current inner
workings of Redirects but to take away the direct
interface to them, replacing it with the Aliases interface.

> What about typing errors handling? A fuzzy system
> would be easier then guessing all the possible
> mispellings and inserting them.

Now this would be much trickier. I think that should
exist in the search functionality. If the title as typed
doesn't exactly match any article (or Redirect/Alias),
then suggest the closest matches by the same
techniques used by Aspell for instance.

It would be best of all if there were sysop-editable
pages which provided control over the suggestions
for per-language handling.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> Valentina Faussone
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
> http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


subject: [Foundation-l] What? Why? Who?

body:
On 8/31/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:

> BBC reply:
>
> Hi Dan, thanks for your email. The top searches are the
> most-searched-for terms over an hour long period

Extended BBC reply:

... "after we apply one filter, manual, to this list which removes
duplications, massive spelling errors and offensive data."

Angela


subject: [Foundation-l] What? Why? Who?


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
Actually, the rule is "assume good faith until bad faith announces
itself."

Which it did from day one with you, and continues to.

-Snowspinner

On Sep 1, 2005, at 12:27 AM, A. Nony Mouse wrote:

> No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never
> practice
> the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
>  A. Nony Mouse
>
>  On 8/31/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 8/31/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: RIPEMD160
>>>
>>> A. Nony Mouse wrote:
>>>
>>>> Well how about that.
>>>> Come into wikipedia IRC chat, get ambushed by NicholasT who's on
>>>> his
>>>>
>> usual
>>
>>>> rampage, get sworn at and called names and challenged to "prove"
>>>> this,
>>>>
>> then
>>
>>>> kickbanned before I can respond by jerks who scream "troll"?
>>>> Aren't you people real nice pieces of work, huh?
>>>> A. Nony Mouse
>>>> who's in the right even if the overinflated egos won't admit it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm sorry, was there a point to this email?
>>>
>>> - --
>>> Alphax | /"\
>>>
>>
>> His grapes went sour
>>
>> Sam
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
Cormac:
> What's the margin of error here? Is it significant?

Cormac, I have no exact figures in terms of alphas and standard deviations.
The error greatly depends on the day of the month and the size of a
wikipedia.

The >average< forecast will become more accurate very fast, as the month
progresses, because 200 wikipedias contribute to the figure. But each
individual forecast may be wildly inaccurate early in the month.

TV coverage may double the activity in one wikipedia later in the month.
Global media attention (e.g. for Wikimania) will make all estimates too low.
Small wikipedias will have large differences in activity per month anyway.

I see it as a best guess only so that one can compare figures for the
current month with earlier months.
Without this forecast people would intuitively use the 31/13 method for Aug
13th, which will be much farther from the truth for columns C and D.

Cheers, Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New wikistats

body:
Jakob, thanks for suggestions.

> Do you use XML::SAX in perl or how do you parse the dump?

Home grown parser code, fast and simple.
It should survive most potential updates to the xml scheme,
but it can be broken, so xml purists will object to it, probably rightly so.

> Will there also be new csv files? The old ones have not changed:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/csv/csv.zip

Fixed for wikipedias, for other projects after next run.

> Another thing: every time I want to visit the stats I have to search
> because the base directories are not readable:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/

I added index.html file on both levels

> Your home page http://eza.gemm.nl/ still points to
> http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics/

Points now to http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/

> So how about creating a HTTP redirect or something like that from
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikistats
> so everybody can document the scripts there?

I added link at bottom of each page

Cheers, Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New wikistats


from_name: zhengzhu

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] C2C Translation issues within
	MediaWiki: Request comment

body:
On 9/1/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to ask for everybody's opinions on
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Problems_with_server-side_Chinese_to_Chinese_translation_in_MediaWiki
>
> It includes examples, such as how "Queen Sonja" ends up being
> converted as "After King Sonja".

Assuming the number 20,000 quoted in the "Statistics" section is accurate,
it does not
mean we need to have 20,000 entries in the database. For a lot of the
one-to-many mappings,
one of the "many" part occurs more often others, so a default rule to map
to that one character resolves a large portion of the problem.

But I don't have a good sense on what the actual number is and how good or
bad
the current situation is. The two examples you quoted should have been
resolved a long
time ago, though. If not, there are easy ways to fix them (in wiki fashion)
as described in
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%E7%9A%84%E7%B9%81%E7%AE%80%E5%A4%84%E7%90%86

--
zhengzhu


subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant
	brainstorming - a game with rules.

body:
There's a large tendency within the community to maintain the status
quo, so I don't think any radical changes are going to occur over the
next five years. I think the innovation will come with the uses people
make of our content rather than with the projects or organsation
themselves. Improvements will most likely be in areas we are already
thinking about, such as communication within the organsaition, and
validation of the content, rather than in completely new areas.

==Wikimedia 2010==
*Board and management

The Board has delegated much of their work to people in paid positions
or voluntary "official positions". This has left them with more time
for making higher level decisions including overall strategies and
partnerships with external parties. They are responsible for hiring
new staff, and for communicating the ethos of the Foundation to all
Wikimedia members and to the outside world. The majority of the Board
of Trustees are elected members of the community. They are supported
by a Board of Advisors, made up of people from relevant fields.

The Board keeps a proper minute book, with corporate resolutions. The
bylaws have been legally approved and are easy to find. All legal
paperwork is in order.

*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)

Positions include the following (whether they're paid, appointed
volunteers, or positions decided by the relevant Special Interest
Groups is something I'm not ready to predict).

CEO
Technical officer
Financial officer
Accountant
Print publishing co-ordinator
Secretaries
Grants co-ordinator
Lawyers
Communication team (including translation)
Business manager
R&D
PR
Advertising and promotion
Chapter co-ordinator

*Budget

The budget is 25 times larger than it was in 2005. Much of the
expenditure is handled by local chapters. Donated hardware from a
large range of sources all over the world has allowed us to keep costs
down. The primary costs on the budget are now special projects, such
as the global distribution of our content in various forms, and the
cost of staff. Hardware costs are still included in the budget, though
these increasingly refer to the cost of managing distributed hardware
that has been donated rather than buying our own hardware. Local
chapter reps liaise with paid technicians in their own area who are
responsible for maintaining the servers in those countries. Financial
records have been improved and are regularly audited.

*Fundraising scheme

Much of our funding comes from public donations, though these are now
smaller than the income we get from grants. We are still finding new
ways to raise money without the need to resort to advertising on the
site. Fundraising occurs not only on our own projects, but as part of
a huge effort across the internet as thousands of other sites
advertise our fundraising drives. Local chapters handle fundraising
efforts at a local level, allowing more and more people to donate
tax-free within their own country. Individual donors have more of a
say in how their donations are spent and are presented with a number
of options during each fund raising drive for what the bulk of their
money will be spent on.

*Philanthropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed

As the first real efforts to distribute our content to those without
internet access are showing signs of success, the focus moves towards
considering how to get content from those people rather than just
distributing it to them. New methods of contribution are being
explored, with the aim of allowing every person on the planet to be a
Wikimedian and not just a reader (or listener - as audio versions
become as popular as the text versions were 5 years ago).

Through partnerships with various publishing companies, the content
from all projects is regularly being printed, or made available in
audio versions. Books are being sold and given away all over the
world, bringing in revenue that allows us to keep expanding our
publishing projects and other philanthropic activities. The first
braille versions are being prepared.

*Projects

Teaching communities are beginning to develop to pass on the skills of
using MediaWiki and of encyclopedic writing. These are led by groups
all over the world who organise training and outreach days to bring
even more people into the Wikimedia community. Universities start to
incorporate this into their courses. Easier methods of inputting
content into the projects are being researched, which is expected to
decrease the need to teach people to use the software.

The projects appear less separated than they once did as automatic
links appear between them and single login allows users to edit across
them more easily. At the same time, users can choose to view only
sections of the projects. Those wanting to focus only on science
articles can view only those, with their own recent changes and own
discussion areas, preventing the problems of the projects becoming too
large to cope with.

*Content objectives

The content is all available under a free license, and simplifications
to the GFDL have made it much easier for people to reuse the content
without violating the license.

Wikimedia is by far the largest content provider in many languages.
Traditional content providers are looking for new models and moving
into niche markets rather than trying to compete with us.

The majority of content is still produced by volunteers, but some is
now donated as a result of deals with external parties, and as a
result of people being paid, though not directly by the Foundation,
for producing content, particularly in weak areas and small languages.

Different modes of viewing the content are available. Users can select
from options such as "show only validated versions", "show only
articles with cited sources", "show only articles approved by company
xyz". Some of these options are only available on external sites, as
co-branded versions by companies who want to add their own methods of
validation to the content. The possibility to view validated versions
has increased the credibility of the projects, which are now accepted
sources at all levels.

*Software objectives

All software used by all projects is open source.

The developers have finally given up telling people MediaWiki is not a
CMS. It is now a CMS, and a blog, and a database, and whatever else
people want it to be. :) The version used on Wikimedia's own projects
begins to be unrecognizable from the versions now being used
elsewhere, both as a result of better Wikimedia branding which makes
our own projects stand out, and as a result of the software being
tailored to each project rather than incorporating all of the features
now available in MediaWiki.

Work into making MediaWiki work better across distributed systems is
ongoing. The interface is fully internationalized in 200 languages.

A consortium of companies using MediaWiki internally and on their own
websites sponsor a team of security reviewers who work alongside the
MediaWiki developers to ensure no stable versions of the code are
released with security flaws. Many other companies using MediaWiki, or
with an interest in the content produced on it, regularly contribute
code, and this is checked by paid staff, leaving volunteers to focus
on the more popular aspects of development.

Efforts to standardise the markup are ongoing, and there is increasing
interoperability between different wiki engines.

*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation

Local chapters are heavily involved in promotion and the formation of
local partnerships. They have increasing independence, and the Board
relies on contracts and mutually-agreed guidelines to ensure the
chapters maintain the goals of the Foundation rather than attempting
to closely monitor their every move. Efforts to improve inter-chapter
communications are still being made, and though better than five years
ago, are still an area the Board is trying to improve upon.

*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)

Universities are participating to the projects through content
creation and software development. Regular promotional activities
happen at universities across the world. A range of partnerships have
been created, including global ones with the Foundation, and local
ones with local chapters. Informal partnerships are being made
regularly by users of all projects.

*Other (anything we did not think of)

Foundation policies and bureaucracy have continued to expand. These
now cover everything from privacy policies to NDAs to trademark use.

DMCAs are now a regular occurrence. Lawsuits are becoming more
frequent, but the legal team has handled these with no major issues so
far.

That's all for now. I'm off to buy edition 25 of Quarto, Wikimedia's
128 page magazine. ;)

Cofion cynnes,

Angela.


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Character usage

body:
On 8/30/05, James R. Johnson <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

>             We've been discussing switching the accented characters in the
> Old English wikipedia to macrons, and I was wondering, why does the accented
> ?sc character look so odd and out of place in the titles of articles?

I believe this is just a font issue.  The default sans-serif font for
Windows, Arial, appears not to have good support for Latin Extended-B
Unicode characters.

With Firefox on a vanilla Windows XP installation, the
aesc-with-macron looks somewhat fainter than other characters.  With
IE on the same machine, the aesc-with-macron doesn't even render for
some reason.

With Firefox on Fedora Linux, there's absolutely no problem: two aescs
are identical except for the accent.

Microsoft seems to have tried to fix this somewhat: they have a new
font, Arial Unicode, available with Office 2002 and later.  They have
instructions for installing it at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q287247/.

I followed these instructions and installed the font.  After selecting
Arial Unicode as my default sans-serif font in Firefox, I see no
difference between macronized characters and others. One catch,
however, is that italicized characters don't look as good as they do
in normal Arial.

Steve


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 01/09/05, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps a new feature of "aliases" which belong to an article, as a
> separate feature to redirects
> but built on top of the redirect feature in a well-thought-out way.

Well, isn't that what we're discussing - how to make it
"well-thought-out"? Like I say, I agree with the usefulness of the
idea, but I'm not yet sure how to deal with the subtleties of it.

> Perhaps at a later stage aliases
> could completely replace redirects. Are there uses of redirects which
> are distinct from aliases?

Well, some would say there *shouldn't be*, but in practice redirects
also get used for things like redirecting a sub-topic which doesn't
deserve its own article to a wider topic which contains it.
Personally, I think this is rather useful in cases where there will
probably *never* be an article just about the sub-topic ("List of
minor characters in X" are one example of this set-up) as it saves the
user an extra click. Such uses aren't really "aliases", but then
there's no real reason to separate them technically.

> I'm assuming the concept of aliases owned by the article is easily understood.

Yes, I get the idea of having them conceptually attached to the
article, but in terms of implementation this raises some complex
issues:
* How do you deal with the fact that a given title can be both an
article in its own right, and an alias defined by another article?
* How do you keep the code efficient if it has to check two places
(the list of redirects and the list of actual pages) every time it
wants to look up a title?
* If you abandon the current "redirect created by magic page content",
how do you convert a page to an alias, or vice versa?
* What happens when somebody tries to create an alias which is already
a page, or which is already an alias for something else?
* What happens when you remove something from the list of aliases?

The last three boil down to "where is the central point of control for
aliases" - given the title "Bar" which may or may not redirect to
"Foo", the current system requires all changes in that state to happen
on the "Bar" edit page. Being able to edit a separately-stored alias
called "Bar" via "Foo" would necessitate some way of the two edits
suppressing each other (you can't create an alias, because there's a
page there / you can't create a page, because there's an alias there)
and then some mechanism for overriding that (delete the page? blank
it? tick a 'notify watching users and create alias anyway' box? / edit
"Foo" to remove the alias? tick a special 'notify and confirm' box?).

So, like I say, maybe the most sensible thing would be to leave the
data-structures mostly as they are, but create some user-interface
tools which let you manipulate redirects en masse - "fix these double
redirects for me", "create redirects at these pages for me", and even
"edit the destinations of this list of redirects" are all features
which could be fairly straightforwardly automated within the existing
scheme. [They'd have to act like a kind of built-in bot, leaving
automatic edit summaries behind like moving pages now does.] Like I
say, who gets to do it would be an important question, because it
could potentially create a vandal's playground, but that's doable too
- indeed, more doable with a Special: page than with some voodoo built
into ordinary edit pages.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Nick Boalch wrote:

>> How about just copying the permission emails to the info-en at
>> wikimedia.org address? That way it will be permanently archived and
>> only viewable by people trusted to keep mails confidential (see
>> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department>). The non-confidential
>> parts should still be kept on the talk page though so everyone can see
>> why the article was not deleted.
>
> Ah, that would make a certain about of sense. If I start forwarding
> permission emails to that address as of today, can you make sure I won't
> get yelled at please? :)

I've made [[Template:Confirmation]] to be added to the talk pages of
articles where confirmation of permission has been obtained. Any
suggested changes before I start using it 'live' (and publicise it to
other admins processing [[WP:CP]])?

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Ting Chen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How to handel violation against GFDL

body:
Hello Folks,

in the chinese Wikipedia we have at the moment the following problem:

One of the major chinese webhoster (Sohu) had adapted parts of articles from
the chinese Wikipedia, without to mention that the parts are from Wikipedia
and without to mention that they are under GFDL. Contrary they places under
those articles their own standard copyright claim.

We have now wrote an e-mail to them to claim
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter with
a chinese translation), but our experience is that they would just ignore
us. So how should we handel this?

Regards
Ting.

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


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedia?

body:
Hi all.

We have a domain reserved for Luganda (Lugandan?) at lg.wikipedia.org.
It currently has no content, although it is open for editing.

Someone left a question on the en:wiki Help Desk about translating
articles into Luganda; I pointed them towards that site. However, it's
pretty much completely empty other than the main page, which I can see
being pretty daunting for a new user. Is there anything on meta:
intended to act as a "so, you're starting on an empty project" guide?

(Anyone who wants to leave other advice on the HD page, please do)

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


from_name: Juanma Barranquero

body:
Not that I have anything at all about a Wikipedia in murcian, or
quenya for that matter, but:

> murcian (a language spoken by more than 300.000 persons) in the
> south-east of Spain, between the castilian and catalan)

The ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/) has no entry for "murcian"
(not even for "panocho", which I assume you're referring to), neither
does the English Wikipedia. There *is* a reference in the Language
Museum (http://www.language-museum.com/m/murcian-panocho.htm),
however.

I must say, I would dispute the claim about the 300,000 people, as not
a single murcian I know ever talked that language, or even *about*
that language, to me. I'd be most linguistics experts would not
classify "murcian" as a language, but as local variant of Spanish (but
I assume this is gonna cause some friction :)

But anyway, the point is moot, I'm not gonna say to you whether you
should or shouldn't start a Murcian Wikipedia, of course (not that I
would have the slightest authority, I'm just a lurker here).

The problem is this one:

> two weeks ago.I have already got the support of more than 6 persons. I am > sure more people will be interested.

With a speaker base of 300K, most of them no interested at all in the
Wikipedia, do you really thing it is going to fly someday? I'd say the
real "collaborator base" is way too small to make a possible Murcian
Wikipedia successful. Or are you talking about a Wikipedia restricted
to all things murcian? (which would, perhaps, be more logical and far,
far easier)

Just curious, no hostility here,

                    /L/e/k/t/u


from_name: Christopher Larberg

body:
On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 20:54 +0000, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
> I agree with you, Michael. Death threats, even when they are meant as
> jokes, are in poor taste and not appropriate for Wikipedia. I'm not saying
> the person making the above comment should be banned, of course. (In fact
> I suspect that Michael and I would be among the first people to protest
> such an idea.) But it's probably a good idea to take care that jokes can
> not be misread. The person making completely inappropriate comments on
> Jimbo's family may well have considered himself to be "making a joke" (I
> don't know enough of the specifics of that case to be sure).

Woah, death threats? By "disappear," I meant "disappear from Wikipedia,"
since a common accusation leveled by disgruntled users is that admins
are trying to make their edits, spam pages, or whatever else "go away."
Guess I need to be a little more careful with my humor.

--Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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from_name: Heiko Evermann

subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell checking in MediaWiki

body:
Hi Gerard,
> The duplication of words that are spelled the same in different dialects
> or orthographies is inherent in the database design. This is essential
> if you want to have definitions and etymology in these dialects or
> orthographies. If you are willing to accept that definitions and
> etymology can be spelled in orthographies other than Sass there could be
> a solution but as the nds.wikipedia also has to standardise on Sass, I
> think this is a rather unlikely scenario.
Definition and etymology would be the same. Your approach would be a
duplication of efforts. It would be sufficient to allow one entry to belong
to several orthographis, as in  1:n instead of 1:1. So this is not inherent
in the database design. It is the design bug that I complain about for some
time.
1:n would allow us to enter the data the way we think appropriate. And it
still leaves us the opportunity to add individual entries when other users
really think that explanations must also be duplicated along the
orthographies (which I really doubt). So they can, if they want to, but they
are not forced.

Kind regards,

Heiko

--
Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko!
Satte Provisionen f?r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] any plans to run on PHP 5?

body:
David Harvey wrote:
> Thanks Gordon for letting me know that wikimedia servers currently  run
> PHP 4.3.11.
>
> Are there any plans to be running PHP 5.x?

At this time we have no particular plans to upgrade to PHP 5.

To consider it we would need to have a reliable opcode cache extension
to achieve equivalent performance to PHP 4.3+Turck MMCache. (Turck
MMCache is no longer maintained and is unreliable on PHP 5.)

If eAccelerator (based on Turck) is reliable and safe, we might use that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> I am really happy that their is
> finally some concrete "evidence" of all the prepatory work that has been
> done. As so often before, I would ask people to have a look at the data
> design of Ultimate Wiktionary;
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design . I am
> very happy to be able to ask you to follow the developments in CVS as well.

Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves!

A _namespace manager_ has been committed in a development branch for
further work. What this does is change how namespaces are configured and
allow for some future plug-in functions to take over handling of pages
in particular namespaces.

While this is a valuable step, please be aware that anything resembling
what UW will require is still a long way away.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ivan Krstic

body:
David Harvey wrote:
> Which version of PHP is running on the wikimedia servers? Is it >= 5.0?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version, it's 4.3.11.

-IK


from_name: Phroziac

body:
TINC

On 9/1/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, the rule is "assume good faith until bad faith announces
> itself."
>
> Which it did from day one with you, and continues to.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Sep 1, 2005, at 12:27 AM, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
>
> > No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never
> > practice
> > the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
> >  A. Nony Mouse
> >
> >  On 8/31/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> On 8/31/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >>> Hash: RIPEMD160
> >>>
> >>> A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Well how about that.
> >>>> Come into wikipedia IRC chat, get ambushed by NicholasT who's on
> >>>> his
> >>>>
> >> usual
> >>
> >>>> rampage, get sworn at and called names and challenged to "prove"
> >>>> this,
> >>>>
> >> then
> >>
> >>>> kickbanned before I can respond by jerks who scream "troll"?
> >>>> Aren't you people real nice pieces of work, huh?
> >>>> A. Nony Mouse
> >>>> who's in the right even if the overinflated egos won't admit it.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> I'm sorry, was there a point to this email?
> >>>
> >>> - --
> >>> Alphax | /"\
> >>>
> >>
> >> His grapes went sour
> >>
> >> Sam
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Miquel Turra

subject: [Wikitech-l] MURCIAN WIKIPEDIA: Wich is the next step.

body:
Well, I think more people would be interested in improve this project and colaborate in it.

If I'm right, I think there are wikipedia in languages as aragon?s or asturian with less speakers than murcian.

Most experts says murcian is a language between castilian and catalan with many arab elements. This thing makes possible to say that is a language with own personality and differenciated of castilian and, of course, of the catalan language.

Thanks

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

Correo Yahoo!
Comprueba qu? es nuevo, aqu?
http://correo.yahoo.es


from_name: Christof Damian

body:
On Thu, 01 Sep 2005, David Harvey wrote:
> Which version of PHP is running on the wikimedia servers? Is it >= 5.0?

its 4.3.11: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version

christof
--
Christof Damian
christof at damian.net


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia meeting today

body:
On 8/31/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was only suggesting putting notices on the 14 Wikinews projects.

For me putting notices on the 14 projects is impossible to be labelled
as "only" (I speak now from my own experiences as ex-Election Officer
who put notices on several projects - it took me over 3 days and even
so there were a lots of projects who we haven't put notices)

But I admit we have different views and sense; if you think it is not
a big deal, why you put those notices with your hand ?

Another technical solution is cross-project message inclusion -
MediaWiki allows it technically but disabled if I recall correctly.
Does it make a sense all WikiMedia project can include pages on a
certain closed wiki, like foundation wiki and all project share a same
noticeboard ? (a sort of shared sitenotice, but more lengthy message
can be put in this project-wide). noticeboard).

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


body:
On 01/09/05, Rajesh Olafson <rolafson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just look at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design to me it seem
> as if this project is talking about different database structuer?
> Is this true? Could this be teh first time a mediawiki project have a
> different db structuer?

Yes; this is a project which doesn't exist yet, and will use an
as-yet-uncreated version of the software. It's not yet clear (to me,
anyway) to what extent "Wikidata" will be incorporated into MediaWiki,
or if it will end up as a kind of "fork". Depends how much the new
features interfere with the old ones, I guess...

> Is there policy saying that all mediawiki projects must have same db
> structuer?

It's not really a policy, it's just that it's not the project which
defines the db structure, it's the software, so since all existing
projects use the same software, all their databases are very much
alike.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
>> On 31/08/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia
>>> Foundation,
>>> they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
>>> don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that
>>> is (or
>>> as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).
>>>
>>
>> I was just about to suggest that... have an email address at the
>> foundation to serve as a drop-box for this sort of permissions mail,
>> so we have a central record of it. This avoids there being a problem
>> if the requesting editor vanishes/falls under a bus/storms off in a
>> huff/loses all their mail, but preserves privacy in that unless
>> there's a pressing need to confirm the license no-one needs to have
>> access to it.
>>
> The requesting editor is only doing a job; the net results of a request
> should remain independent of him. What happens to the copyright owner is
> far more relevant.  If a copyright owner drops dead to-day his work will
> be protected until Dec. 31, 2075.  His as yet unborn grandchildren won't
> even know about the licence on grandpa's writings.  If they choose to
> dispute our use of his writings, proving that we have been licensed will
> be our burden.  A simple note from a long gone editor will prove
> nothing.  Even an e-mail record from the author may not be enough.  We
> have no way of knowing or proving whether an electronic permission is in
> fact from a person who is authorized to give that licence.
>

*cough* Digital signatures *cough*

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDFqiO/RxM5Ph0xhMRA/3fAKCc7pUtVWT4T4Ytoe1iZASMOVMaxQCgisIJ
ogC6FanEb1pCa8Txt9OysUc=
=SGOA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Christopher Larberg wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 17:11 +0100, Nick Boalch wrote:
>
>>Theresa Knott wrote:
>>
>>>>What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
>>>>to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
>>>
>>>I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
>>>sensitive info, I doubt that  anyone would object to the email being
>>>copied to the talk page would they?
>>
>>No, I can't imagine they would -- but if this sensitive info is removed
>>then there's essentially no difference between an emailed authorisation
>>and a random anonymous editor on the talk page claiming to be the
>>author. Is my word that the confirmation was real enough?
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>N.
>>
>
>
> The way I've seen some editors handle this is promise to forward the
> e-mail to anyone who requests a copy. Of course, this doesn't really
> resolve the verifiability problem, because headers can be easily
> spoofed. One suggestion I have is to ask the copyright holder to create
> a PGP key set and sign the e-mail with his or her private key, as I and
> some others on this list do with all our e-mails. As long as his or her
> public key is available, which it always will be if placed on a public
> key server and downloaded by individuals, the e-mail can be easily
> verified. GnuPG, a PGP program, is freely available for all major
> operating systems, and many mail clients, such as Evolution and Mozilla
> Thunderbird, provide easy PGP integration.
>

Damn! You beat me to it! (Yes, I read my email in descending thread
order, sometimes) :)

Oh, and both GPG and Thunderbird are Free Software.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDFqlA/RxM5Ph0xhMRA2y2AJ9UwyXVDEYDRMF9gUQCnx7hSSuy3ACdF7m2
vl61VM3IMJViqp0yr5LQb3Q=
=RbnQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>On 9/1/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 23:27 -0500, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
>>
>>
>>>No, merely a happy observation of how the cabal-in-control Never
>>>
>>>
>>practice
>>
>>
>>>the "good faith" that they spend so much time preaching.
>>>A. Nony Mouse
>>>
>>>
>>Good sir, this dissent is not allowed on Wikipedia. I have forwarded
>>this e-mail to cabal-l, where we will soon reach a decision on how best
>>to make you "disappear."
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>
>>Christopher Larberg
>>Vice-President of Communications, Wikimedia Cabal
>>
>>
>While personally I'm quick to recognize the attempted humor and shake off
>almost all alleged threats, I'd like to point out that threats far vaguer
>than this resulted in the permanent block of another user recently that was
>also thoroughly discussed on this mailing list.
>
>Call me a killjoy if you must, but this is simply inappropriate.
>
:-D
:-D  I suppose that the only fair way to react to this vision of a
threat there is to laugh at it the way one would for any other joke. :-D
:-D

Ec


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New wikistats

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:
<snip>
> For July 13th, under the columns C and D, I have the numbers 6,884 and
> 798 respectively. Below this then are two much higher figures (11,285
> and 1,629) - are these the maximum estimates and the above published
> figure the conservative estimate, or how does it work exactly?

C: number of wikipedians with more than 5 edits
D:   "    "       "        "   "    "   100 edits

As of july 13th the first row show the actual count from July 1st until
July 13th. As some people have not yet made 100 edits but might be doing
them by the end of the month (July 31th), the second row show an
estimation at the end of the month.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New wikistats


body:
I agree. Nobody goes saying wich is their language.

In te other hand, Murcian is a language because is a mixture of three languages: castilian, catalan and a great part of their lexicon is arab. Say that murcian is a dialect is like say that sicilian is a dialect... and there are a sicilian wikipedia... there aren't?

 Ad besides, the clasification language-dialect is very subjetive.

I think murcian wikipedia would be very interesting, and there are many people interested, more every day.

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

Correo Yahoo!
Comprueba qu? es nuevo, aqu?
http://correo.yahoo.es


body:
por cierto... nadie aqu? comprende el castellano?

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

Correo Yahoo!
Comprueba qu? es nuevo, aqu?
http://correo.yahoo.es