subject: [WikiEN-l] Female trolls?

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>That leads to all sorts of questions. What should female trolls be called?
>Are they as sweet and lovely as Tove Jansson's "Snork Maiden" in the
>Moomintroll books?
>
>According to http://www.whatson.is/default.asp?web_id=3&page_id=181 ,
>
>"Female trolls were usually more benevolent than male trolls. The female
>trolls would often yearn for the love of humans luring men to their caves
>with magic spells. In many cases the men would fall in love with the trolls
>eventually becoming trolls them selves. Sometimes the trolls would have
>children with humans a sort of a half troll. These half trolls would
>generally look like ordinary humans possessing the magical powers of the
>troll parent. Female half trolls would often be exceedingly beautiful and
>enchanting."
>
It sounds like female trolls catch a lot more fish.  Perhaps the Sirens
were really trolls. :-)

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Female trolls?

body:
That leads to all sorts of questions. What should female trolls be called?
Are they as sweet and lovely as Tove Jansson's "Snork Maiden" in the
Moomintroll books?

According to http://www.whatson.is/default.asp?web_id=3&page_id=181 ,

"Female trolls were usually more benevolent than male trolls.? The female
trolls would often yearn for the love of humans luring men to their caves
with magic spells.? In many cases the men would fall in love with the trolls
eventually becoming trolls them selves.? Sometimes the trolls would have
children with humans a sort of a half troll.? These half trolls would
generally look like ordinary humans possessing the magical powers of the
troll parent.? Female half trolls would often be exceedingly beautiful and
enchanting."


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Watchlist and time-wasting (was: Wik)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> How much strain on the server does a long watchlist cause? If limiting a
> watchlist to 100 entries would reduce my average WikiWait time from 5
> seconds to 4 seconds, I would be in favor of such a limit.
>
> My two biggest time-wasters at Wikipedia are:
> *trolls and other fools
> *the 5-second-or-more time lage

We have disabled or restricted watchlists in the past, when we were
working with less DB hardware. It doesn't seem to be necessary at the
moment. Note that you can generally get faster response by reading
articles with a different browser -- one where you're not logged in and
have no Wikipedia cookies. That way, pages are served from the squid cache.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Troll Silent, Troll Deep

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>The current policy on blocking provides that users with names that are
>objectionable to at least "some" users can be blocked after refusal to
>select another name. I have been treatening to block [[Troll Silent, Troll
>Deep]] under that policy but am awaiting a decision in JRR Trollkien. See
>TSTD's talk page. JRR Trollkien was unblocked so he could participate in
>arbitration. By the way, it is only the name not the user who would be
>blocked.
>
This is far removed from objectionable names.  That had to do with names
that were broadly objectionable for political, religious or obscenity
grounds.  "Troll" doesn't fall into any of these categories.  From what
I can see these individuals have done nothing more offensive than to
choose names that are not approved by a self-appointed cabal of
constipated con-troll freaks.  If they have engaged in other
misbehaviour that would be a separate matter which should be judged on
its own merits.

By creating this alleged policy you generate a whole new class of
offended people who will quite rightly take steps to challenge the
policy, such as by choosing names that include "troll".

Are all of these so-called policies really valid?  They are mostly
driven my people with an axe to grind, and ignored by the rest of us who
prefer to spend our time constructively.  This is bound to produce
biased votes.

Democratic principles are fine with me until I start to realize that the
old benevolent monarch is being replaced by a cadre of crypto-dictators
who have banned benevolence from their vocabularies.

Or from the 12th Hexagram of the I Ching (Wilhelm/Baynes edition)
    Heaven and earth do not unite;
    The image of STANDSTILL.
    Thus the superior man falls back upon his inner worth
    In order to escape the difficulties.
    He does not permit himself to be honored with revenue.

And in Wilhelm's commentary thereon

    "When, owing to the influence of inferior men, mutual mistrust
    prevails in public life, fruitful activity is rendered impossible,
    because the fundaments are wrong.  Therefore the superior man knows
    what he must do under such circumstances; he does not allow himself
    to be tempted by dazzling offers to take part in public activities.
     This would only expose him to danger, since he cannot assent to the
    meanness of the others.  Hetherefore hides his worth and withdraws
    into seclusion."

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames: sense of proportion

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Please keep in mind that it is only the name which is banned, not the user,
>who is free to select a new name and move on.
>
We understand that.  We just see no reason for the name to be banned.

Ec


from_name: Mark Richards

body:
Agreed.
Mark

--- dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> Seems me to be stretching a point _considerably_ to
> object to someone's
> username on the basis of it containing the substring
> "troll".
>
> Even if we grant a) that usernames that are
> obviously likely to give gross
> offense need to be dealt with, and b) that serious
> trolling behavior gives
> gross offense to Wikipedians, it does NOT follow
> that c) usernames containing
> the substring "troll" are grossly offensive to
> Wikipedians.
>
> Continuing to belabor this point: someone whose
> username contains the word
> "troll," who does not, in fact, troll, is not a
> problem. Someone whose
> username does not contain the word troll, who does,
> in fact, troll, is a
> problem.
>
> It's fair enough to assume that someone with a
> trollish username might be
> trying to send a signal, and should expect his/her
> activities to receive more
> attention than they might otherwise... but...
>
> Let's act on the basis of what people do, not what
> their usernames are.
>
> I beg to remain
> Yr. humble & obdt. servant
>
>    The Comptroller
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Switch query

body:
uery
>
>
>On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 08:24, Ivan Krstic wrote:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> > My research reveals that 24 port gigabit switches are
>available for under
>> > $600.  Managed switches a bit more, but still under $800.
>> >
>> > That seems worthwhile to me.
>>
>> I don't think you want to make this decision without at
>least getting
>> some rudimentary numbers to work with. I'd be surprised if
>you're maxing
>> out regular 100 Mbit/s ethernet, but two quick ways to check
>are MRTG on
>> routers, or ntop (in webserver mode) on the actual machines. My
>> knee-jerk response is that the types of things that
>wikipedia servers do
>> are CPU/IO bound, not network.
>
>gigabit could be useful for copying quickly big files to another
>machine for mirror/backup/etc..., today disks throughput are well above
>100Mbit/s for linear access.

I agree, last time, when Brion moved db from Suda to Curly, db was down during 2 hours, time to copy 60GB through a 100Mb network.

Shaihulud


body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>>Seems me to be stretching a point _considerably_ to object to someone's
>>username on the basis of it containing the substring "troll".
>>
>Disagree.  Atmosphere matters.  The whole troll-culture poisons the
>atmosphere.  It isn't 'amusing' or even 'outlaw'.
>
It's not about "troll-culture"; (whatever that is); it's about the right
to choose a name.  The poisoned atmosphere comes the self-righteous
crowd that goes around making all these petty complaints.

Ec


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a troll?

body:
Part of this discussion has me a little mystified, perhaps because I
don't watch the right articles. Who is doing all this trolling?

As I understand it, a Usenet-type troll is someone who tries to stir
up controversy for its own sake.  As applied to article editing, that
would be a "bad-faith edit" aka vandalism, where the troll knows that
the edit is not making the encyclopedia better but goes ahead and
makes it anyway.

Maybe there's a lot of this and I'm not seeing it, but what I do see
is a lot of good-faith edits characterized as trolling. The edits may
be poor or mistaken, and the person may be very stubborn in their
defense of a bad edit, but if they sincerely believe that the edit
is making the encyclopedia better, then it's inaccurate to call them
trolls. For instance, a rightie who hates WP's leftie-ness can
generate a huge ruckus by trying to "balance" what he/she perceives
as slanted articles, but every one of those edits is in good faith,
and the editor will think of him/herself as just as good and
dedicated an editor as anybody else here.

The cynical part of me suspects that accusation of trolling has
become a sneaky way to conduct content disputes - instead of
addressing the goodness or badness of an edit, call the person a
troll (especially if they become combative on talk pages), and try
to get others to assume that all the person's edits should be reverted
automatically. It should be pretty hard to prove bad faith without a
direct statement of intent from the purported troll, perhaps if
someone only argues on talk pages but never edits articles.

Stan


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Please keep in mind that it is only the name which is banned, not the user,
who is free to select a new name and move on.

Fred

> From: <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 13:12:39 -0500
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames: sense of proportion
>
> Seems me to be stretching a point _considerably_ to object to someone's
> username on the basis of it containing the substring "troll".
>
> Even if we grant a) that usernames that are obviously likely to give gross
> offense need to be dealt with, and b) that serious trolling behavior gives
> gross offense to Wikipedians, it does NOT follow that c) usernames containing
> the substring "troll" are grossly offensive to Wikipedians.
>
> Continuing to belabor this point: someone whose username contains the word
> "troll," who does not, in fact, troll, is not a problem. Someone whose
> username does not contain the word troll, who does, in fact, troll, is a
> problem.
>
> It's fair enough to assume that someone with a trollish username might be
> trying to send a signal, and should expect his/her activities to receive more
> attention than they might otherwise... but...
>
> Let's act on the basis of what people do, not what their usernames are.
>
> I beg to remain
> Yr. humble & obdt. servant
>
> The Comptroller
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] lost language.php

body:
Ingrid wrote:
> Can you me help?
> I have lost a very important file: the LANGUAGE.PHP, there in the INCLUDE
> folder was...can i became per mail?

If you've lost the download archive, get it again with all the files at:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=34373

Language.php goes in the 'languages' folder.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a troll?

body:
Absolutely - the term is not helpful in combatting
vandalism, as it has just become a term of abuse that
is levelled both a genuinely problematic users and
users with contentious but potentially legitimate
views.

Let's try to focus on behaviors, and try not to label
users.
Mark

--- Theresa Robinson <robinst at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> > Maybe there's a lot of this and I'm not seeing it,
> but what I do see
> > is a lot of good-faith edits characterized as
> trolling. The edits may
> > be poor or mistaken, and the person may be very
> stubborn in their
> > defense of a bad edit, but if they sincerely
> believe that the edit
> > is making the encyclopedia better, then it's
> inaccurate to call them
> > trolls. For instance, a rightie who hates WP's
> leftie-ness can
> > generate a huge ruckus by trying to "balance" what
> he/she perceives
> > as slanted articles, but every one of those edits
> is in good faith,
> > and the editor will think of him/herself as just
> as good and
> > dedicated an editor as anybody else here.
>
> I absolutely agree with you.  I find that the term
> "troll" means pretty
> much nothing, or it just means "somebody doing
> something I don't like."
> Even "vandal" is used by an awful lot of people for
> things other than "joe
> is gaaaaaaaaaay" edits, which to me are pretty much
> the only things I'd
> call vandalism.  And calling someone a troll, or a
> vandal, or whatever,
> rarely solves the problem.  It would be much more
> productive to be very
> specific about what the person is doing, and say "I
> disagree with the
> tenacity with which you exclude all but one POV from
> this article" or "it
> would really help if you told us why you were
> reverting all our edits"
> etc.  This is much more likely to result in a
> resolution.
>
> moink
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Laurent GUERBY

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

body:
On Thu, 2004-05-06 at 22:44, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Then the foundation will be paying for them in perpetuity. IMHO that's a
> waste of donors' money.

Not that big, a domain is around $10 / year.

Laurent


from_name: Ingrid

subject: [Wikitech-l] lost language.php

body:
Can you me help?
I have lost a very important file: the LANGUAGE.PHP, there in the INCLUDE
folder was...can i became per mail?
Thanks


subject: [Wikitech-l] Switch query

body:
On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 08:24, Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > My research reveals that 24 port gigabit switches are available for under
> > $600.  Managed switches a bit more, but still under $800.
> >
> > That seems worthwhile to me.
>
> I don't think you want to make this decision without at least getting
> some rudimentary numbers to work with. I'd be surprised if you're maxing
> out regular 100 Mbit/s ethernet, but two quick ways to check are MRTG on
> routers, or ntop (in webserver mode) on the actual machines. My
> knee-jerk response is that the types of things that wikipedia servers do
> are CPU/IO bound, not network.

gigabit could be useful for copying quickly big files to another
machine for mirror/backup/etc..., today disks throughput are well above
100Mbit/s for linear access.

> If you're well below 100 Mbit/s, why throw away the money if you can,
> say, buy extra RAM?

RAM is always useful :)

Laurent


body:
Seems me to be stretching a point _considerably_ to object to someone's
username on the basis of it containing the substring "troll".

Even if we grant a) that usernames that are obviously likely to give gross
offense need to be dealt with, and b) that serious trolling behavior gives
gross offense to Wikipedians, it does NOT follow that c) usernames containing
the substring "troll" are grossly offensive to Wikipedians.

Continuing to belabor this point: someone whose username contains the word
"troll," who does not, in fact, troll, is not a problem. Someone whose
username does not contain the word troll, who does, in fact, troll, is a
problem.

It's fair enough to assume that someone with a trollish username might be
trying to send a signal, and should expect his/her activities to receive more
attention than they might otherwise... but...

Let's act on the basis of what people do, not what their usernames are.

I beg to remain
Yr. humble & obdt. servant

   The Comptroller


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wiktionaries for all! - kinds of interlanguagelinks
	- utf-8

body:
>
>== Different topic, probably more important: ==
>
>Is there anything we can do for supporting a soon and smooth change of
>the character encoding from iso-8859-1 to utf-8, as long as the German
>Wiktionary is tiny? (I'm also willing to support the to utf-8
>transformation of the Wikipedia, off course. But there the constraints
>differ slightly, due to it's magnitude, and some days more or less to
>wait are off less influence on the effort.)

de wiktionary is not yet in utf-8 ? all wiktionary should be.

>Back to Wiktionary: I've
>saved a Lang.php to
>
>  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageWiktionaryDE.php
>
>in order to allow checking and improvement, so that it hopefully will
>become suitable for usage, but probably it's not required any more as
>de.Wiktionary is operational already.
>

LanguageDe.php is common for all wikis in de language. There's no a special language file for wiktionary.
(except for de maybe, there is 2 language file, 1 utf-8, 1 non-utf8 as de.wikipedia is not yet in utf-8)

Shaihulud


from_name: SteffenB

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wiktionaries for all! - kinds of interlanguage
	links - utf-8

body:
Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I've set up Wiktionaries for all 146 languages that have a Wikipedia.

Great work, I appreciate that! :-)
I hope, it is appropriate to answer in this list, even though it
concerns mainly interwiktionary issues:

Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I've set up a few basic kinds of interwiki links, which may be expanded or
> modified in the future. The "w:" prefix should link to the Wikipedia in the
> same language. Language prefixes link to other language Wiktionaries. To
> link to a different language Wikipedia, use [[Wikipedia:xx:Page]].
>

> The "Wiktionary:" prefix still links to the English Wiktionary, but a
> new "wikt:" prefix has been introduced which links laterally to the
> MediaWiki allowing "diagonal" linking, with the help of redirects. A
> link reading [[wikt:fi:kukkala]] on the German Wikipedia will link to
> http://de.wiktionary.org/fi:Kukkala, which will redirect to
> http://fi.wiktionary.org/Kukkala .

When adopting the Wikipedia (WP) structures however there should be
considered some significant differences in the needs for
interlanguage-links in the case of the Wiktionary (WD)! From each WD
entry have to be distinguished three different kinds of interlanguage
destinations:

1. The from the WP well known interlanguage links, displayed at the page
edge, does NOT link to translations, rather it links to the same
Homonyms in other WDs!
( de:Bank --> en:Bank,  --> fr:Bank )

2. The "normal" link to translations has it's destination within the
same WD.
( de:Bank --> de:bank, de:bench;  --> de:banque, de:banquette )

3. The actual (meaning-wise) interlanguage link would be one that leads
to the translation in the respective "native" WD:
( de:Bank --> en:bank, en:bench;  --> fr:banque, fr:banquette )
Due to ambiguity this link can not be handled in the same way as in WP.
It can be constructed manually of course:
Translations:
*Englisch: bench ([[:en:bench|English]]) [1], bank
([[:en:bank|English]]) [2, 3, 4, 5]
*Finnisch: something ([[:en:something|Suomi]]) [1,3], other
([[:en:other|Suomi]]) [2,4,5]
But that won't work in practice, to enter each time the native writing
of the respective Wiktionary language name, I suppose.

So it might be worth considering an interwiki-code for meaning-wise
interlanguage links. Whether this link in the text should display as the
  the native language name, or some other meaningful symbol,
respectively, is a further consideration to be done then. E.g. it might
be appropriate to introduce an "native-WD" symbol to indicate
meaning-wise interlanguage links in the text.

== Different topic, probably more important: ==

Is there anything we can do for supporting a soon and smooth change of
the character encoding from iso-8859-1 to utf-8, as long as the German
Wiktionary is tiny? (I'm also willing to support the to utf-8
transformation of the Wikipedia, off course. But there the constraints
differ slightly, due to it's magnitude, and some days more or less to
wait are off less influence on the effort.) Back to Wiktionary: I've
saved a Lang.php to

  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageWiktionaryDE.php

in order to allow checking and improvement, so that it hopefully will
become suitable for usage, but probably it's not required any more as
de.Wiktionary is operational already.

Greetings --SteffenB


subject: [WikiEN-l] Suggested implementation of Jimbo's quickpoll proposal

body:
Jimbo has suggested expanding the power of quickpolls to allow banning
until such time as the arbitration committee makes a decision. Hence the
arbitration committee becomes like a court of appeal.

To date, there have been lots of criticisms of quickpolls, on the talk
page and elsewhere. Most of them have been centred around the issue of
frivolous use. Jimbo suggested allowing only sysops to start quickpolls.

After some pondering, I've decided I like this proposal. It's reasonably
democratic, since someone with a real complaint is very likely to find
at least one sympathetic sysop. The sysop body is heterogeneous. And it
gives the community a way to take decisive action.

This could be implemented just by posting a policy statement at the top
of [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls]], saying that only sysops may start polls.
However, I'm of the opinion that simple technical barriers can be used
to great effect in enforcing policies. Perhaps we could put each
quickpoll in an unprotected MediaWiki: message, then have a list of
{{msg:}} tags in [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls]] itself. The list would then be
protected, preventing anyone except for sysops from adding items.

Theoretically a user could add a new quickpoll to the bottom of one of
the included messages. But if they do that, it is clear to all that they
have understood the policy and attempted to evade it. Others may remove
the quickpoll not only on the basis of policy, but also because the
listing is in the wrong place, and is incorrectly formatted.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
I agree with the notion of a "sense of proportion".  "Troll" is an
ordinary word, harmless enough, and we can at least conceive of a
hypothetical in which "JRR Trollkien" is just a clever name chosen by
a clever fan of the Lord of the Rings, etc.

At the same time, though, it doesn't take very long in looking at
Trollkien's user page to recognize that he's posted the old "Legion of
Trolls" stuff, many comments supporting the idea of deliberately
disrupting work on the Wikipedia in order to foster change, etc.

That's what problematic trolling *is*.  So, it isn't just the name,
it's the fact that the name is intended as provocation.  That is, the
name is not about trolls or Tolkien, but about trolling us.  (I think
the Internet Troll concept is derived from "trolling for fish", a
method of catching fish where you drag the bait through the water to
see what bites.)

Anyone who has a beef about sysops, who thinks that Wikipedia is a
ruthless dictatorship or oligarchy, etc., is more than welcome, God
knows, to come here and argue the point and complain about it and
suggest remedies.  But what they aren't welcome to do is engage in
trolling behavior just to cause trouble.  It's juvenile and annoying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JRR_Trollkien/Troll
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JRR_Trollkien/Legion_of_Trolls

Despite JRR Trollkien posturing that a ruthless cabal is out to get
him, our reponse to this has been typical, and something that I can't
quite make up my mind whether we should be globally proud of or
globally ashamed of... a long and tedious debate to try to find a
reasonable answer to the questions raised:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JRR_Trollkien

---------

I have great sympathy for revolutions and reformers, we will always
need them, and I for one will always welcome those who come in and
challenge us to rethink our policies and procedures.  That's very
healthy.  In his response on the Reguests for arbitration page,
Trollkien uses this as a defense, claiming, "what seems to be at issue
here is _dissent_."

That's bullshit, of course, and please excuse my language.  Dissent is
not a problem, just look around, it's all we ever do, and we all seem
to enjoy it well enough.  And realistically, it isn't even _civil
disobediance_ which is at issue in any major way.

It's just behaving like a juvenile jerk, that's what's at issue.

-----

Imagine someone who shows up at wikipedia whose area of expertise
happens to be collectible dolls.  This is not an area that most of us
know much about, so of course such a contributor would be welcome, and
would likely be editing stuff that's uncontroversial and not annoying
to anyone.  The history of collectible dolls, the story of various
annual toy crazes, and so on.

http://www.trollworld.com/trtr19.html

Such a person might name themselves "Trollina", after these dolls, and
why not?

--Jimbo


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use technical force or not

body:
In response to matters of Tannin, Wik, and the "Troll" user names:

The first thing we have to decide is whether we're going to use force to enforce policy.  At present, as a
practical matter, we only use force:

1) against "pure vandals"
2) through page protection to deal with disputes on particular articles
3) as a last resort.  We actually use bans about once a month, and less frequently than that if the very short
bans aren't counted.

Most policy violations don't result in meaningful sanctions.  Most bans are not enforced.

I don't think we want to continue this, because things have changed and the amount of damage being done has
increased.  The trouble now is not simple vandalism, as that gets reverted.  The problem is users who are
editing in bad faith, and who all the rest of us are expected to negotiate with, respect, compromise with,
include in consensus, not censor, and so on.

So, we have Wik with his endless edit wars, and a few others like him but less prolific.

We have people using Wikipedia as a forum for self-promotion, or promotion of a particular political view.

We have people who come here to disrupt, like the recent spate of "trolls."

All these people take time and energy to deal with and set everyone against each other.  I believe we are
presently stuck with policies and procedures that suited us well in the past but which we have outgrown.

The first step to fix this is to decide that we are going to start sanctioning people who contribute in bad
faith using technical means.  Once we agree on the principles, the details will flow naturally.  Yes, we need
to be careful and have checks and balances, but the present system is driving good contributors away.

UninvitedCompany


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Switch query

body:
>>gigabit could be useful for copying quickly big files to another
>>machine for mirror/backup/etc..., today disks throughput are well above
>>100Mbit/s for linear access.
>>
>>
>
>I agree, last time, when Brion moved db from Suda to Curly, db was down during 2 hours, time to copy 60GB through a 100Mb network.
>
>
>Shaihulud
>
>

Yes, I'd also vote for a Gigabit switch as a wise use of money.  The
extra headroom is well worth it, and the price difference minuscule
compared to the cost of the whole cluster which depends on it. And a
managed switch is a must: monitoring is much easier, you can turn
interfaces up and down remotely, even when a host is misbehaving, and do
all sorts of other cool stuff that will come in useful in future.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some time to review:

http://develop.consumerium.org

Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to organize leftist POV authors and get
them to edit at Wikipedia.

UninvitedCompany


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration

body:
There is a lack of satisfaction with the arbitration committee.  I share what I think are some of the sources of
this.

First, the committee was created to interpret existing policy.  There is little existing policy to interpret,
and no new policy being made.  If we want them to ban or otherwise sanction troublesome users, we need to
create such a policy as a community and ask them to follow it.  I believe they need guidance.

Second, they are a larger group with diverse opinions.  Compromise results, and the process takes time.  If we
want them to be more definitive and rapid, we should encourage them to work in smaller groups, perhaps
selecting three arbiters for each case -- or maybe only one.

You can see all this from the public records of their actions over the last few months.  No fly on the wall
required.

UninvitedCompany


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some time to review:
>
>http://develop.consumerium.org
>
>Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to organize leftist POV authors and get
>them to edit at Wikipedia.
>
>UninvitedCompany
>
Having scanned their RC, I think they're going to be preoccupied
with their own problems more than attacking Wikipedia.  For instance,
142.177 created some pages about some of our favorite people ("Auntie"
Angela, Tim Starling, and Erik Moeller) summarizing their evil deeds
(great reading, like watching Rashomon), then later somebody named
Juxho blanked them! A beautiful example of people bringing their
baggage with them wherever they go...

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy: bans

body:
The simplest thing to do with regard to trolls, vandals, and problematic POV editors with agendas is to
formulate a clear policy and then authorize the existing administrators to enforce it.  It is not necessary for
it to be prescriptive (3 edits in 24 hours etc), just clear.

The quickpoll system is divisive and should be dismantled.  Bans and blocks can be reversed, and should be,
when improperly used.

Some examples to consider:

* If a user edits the same article with more than one user ID (sock puppet) within 10 days, they will be banned
for a period of 7 days.
* If a user reverts an article excessively without discussion and in such a way as to prevent useful work from
being done on the article, the article should be protected.  If the user is culpable in more than three such
pages within 10 days, they will be banned for a period of 7 days.
* If a user has a pattern of editing in bad faith, such as vandalism, threats of violence, personal attacks,
legal threats, racism, the problematic edits should be reverted, regardless of where they are made (talk space,
user page).  If they continue (more than five?) the user should be banned for 7 days.

Make it clear.  Make it reasonably objective.  Leave it to administrators to be fair.  If the policy doesn't
work, fix it, or go back to the current state of affairs.

Does that make Wikipedia a cabal?  With 221 administrators and counting I think not.

UninvitedCompany


from_name: Delirium

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

body:
This idea isn't fully fleshed out yet, but a suggestion to see what
people think---how about we empower unilateral sysop action on the short
term, but of only a few sysops at a time in a rotating group?

As motivation, the basic problems seems to be that some things need to
be done right away, but due process takes time.  We can avoid due
process in really clear-cut cases of pure vandalism, but that's not
enough, and there are a lot of other cases left that cause significant
trouble for days or weeks on end until it's decided what to do.  To fill
this gap, some sysops have gone out on a limb and just unilaterally
banned users, sometimes with a backlash and sometimes with people
approving (and sometimes with people grudgingly approving, disliking the
principle of unilateral action but agreeing that something needed to be
done).

One proposal to fix this is quickpolls.  I like that idea, and think we
should pursue it, so perhaps my suggestion (if fleshed out) could be
integrated somehow as a complementary component.

I think there should be a schedule such that on any given day, there's a
designated three sysops who are empowered to take short-term unilateral
action, on the order of 24-hour bans.  Any one of them could take
action, and agreement of the other two could overrule any action (to
allow for quick overruling as well as quick action).  Scheduling in
advance would ensure that the three can actually be present for a good
portion of the day monitoring Wikipedia, so can serve as a contact point
for resolving disputes.  Consensus and committee stuff simply doesn't
get the job done on the short term, although quickpolls could
conceivably be made to work for some cases (ideas on that?).  Although
it has a top-down feel, I think having a rotating group would prevent
power from accumulating in anyone's hands---at any given time there
would be only 3 people who can do this, not the entire cabal of sysops,
and each sysop would have only one day at a time in which they'd have
such unilateral power.  I envision dealing with these things as very
quickly becoming more of a chore than some sort of privilege, so I hope
people won't be making power-hungry jumps at the chance to be the person
responsible for solving short-term disputes for a day.

Anyway, thoughts?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:
> Do you all really believe that WP is dominated by the left? All I ever
> seem to see is US rightists and nationalists. If Wikipedia was dominated
> by the left it would be a much more pleasant place to edit.

I do not believe that Wikipedia is dominated by anyone, right or left.

I think you will agree, Caroline, that it would be extremely
unfortunate if any large organization or group, left or right,
religious or anti-religious, etc., decided to target Wikipedia with a
deliberate agenda of changing it into propaganda.

So far we haven't seen that, and frankly I suspect that for any such
movement to succeed would be nearly impossible, because we have such a
large and diverse userbase mutually committed to fairness.

It's interesting that you think that leftists are "more pleasant" --
this has not been my experience.  My experience is that ideologues of
any kind are too often very tiresome to be around for very long.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
I think these different perceptions are a natural outgrowth of the
wiki process.  We all tend to notice biases that annoy us more than we
notice biases that confirm our opinions.  For highly
political/ideological people (like me, for example) the problem may be
even more severe -- people can become convinced that their own
opinions are just simple ordinary fact, and anything which challenges
their preconceptions must therefore be biased.

I am an ardent fan of the United States Second Amendment, though, and
I have been meaning to mention that some of the articles in that
general area exhibit a troubling pro-gun bias.  As a rule, I try not
to edit stuff like that, but ironically enough if I had to pick
something to edit today, that's where I would personally start.

But even here, and I think this is the ultimate secret of wiki, I
think that my desire to fix the pro-gun bias is actually an expression
in part of political motives.  Because I am fully convinced that my
position is right, I think that the best form of persuasion is a
totally neutral presentation of the facts.  Pro-gun bias actually
_damages_ the cause, because it will cause reasonable people to read
the article and dismiss it as biased.

I think that's why this all ultimately works so well.  Good natured
people are happy to let the facts shine through, because if they do,
then of course other people will draw the right conclusions.  Bias is
unnecessary and counterproductive.

--Jimbo

Theresa Robinson wrote:

> > I think Wikipedia tends to tilt slightly tilted towards the left of
> > center, and slightly towards an EU-centric viewpoint, vaguely along the
> > lines of BBC News's tilt (though theirs is somewhat more pronounced).
>
> How fascinating!  I tend to find wikipedia slanted slightly right-wing,
> with a wide spectrum of people to round it out.  It's very interesting
> that we can get such different opinions of the same group of people.
>
> moink
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

> Do you all really believe that WP is dominated by the left? All I ever
> seem to see is US rightists and nationalists. If Wikipedia was
> dominated by the left it would be a much more pleasant place to edit.

Well, it's the old relativism problem.  To a die-hard communist, Green
Parties look like right-wingers, and to a die-hard libertarian, most
countries' conservative parties look like left-wing socialists.  I think
this happens on Wikipedia a lot, to a lesser extent of course.

I think Wikipedia tends to tilt slightly tilted towards the left of
center, and slightly towards an EU-centric viewpoint, vaguely along the
lines of BBC News's tilt (though theirs is somewhat more pronounced).  I
find myself often being slightly on the conservative side of
disagreements on Wikipedia, while in wider US society I'm generally
pretty solidly left-of-center (I even like many of Noam Chomsky's books,
which to many people makes me automatically so far to the left that I've
fallen off the edge of the political spectrum).  All things considered,
I think the editorial tilt on Wikipedia is quite good, and on articles
with a lot of hashing out opinions ends up at a reasonable compromise.
For example, [[Israel]] neither reads like a pro-Israel nor an
anti-Israel article, and does an (I think) fairly admirable job of
presenting the issue.

Individual subsections differ quite a bit though, and some are
thoroughly tilted in either direction.  Sometimes it's not even a matter
of facts so much as the viewpoints of the person writing it being
transparent, which they shouldn't be.  When one reads an article, one
should not immediately be able to discern the ideology of the person who
put it there, and with a lot of Wikipedia's articles, you can.  Articles
should sound like the person writing it does not care what your
viewpoint on the issue is, while a lot of our articles sound like
they're trying to pursuade you a particular viewpoint is the correct
one.  Of course, each side thinks they're presenting the facts
"neutrally", and some people here are even pretty pretentious about how
"neutral" their pretty obvious biases are (on all sides), which doesn't
really help.  I think in particular on issues where people have
clear-cut opinions they ought to be cautious about claiming their
viewpoints are the neutral ones---one can use perfectly accurate facts
and still present them in a non-neutral way, so simply being factual
does not make one neutral.

-Mark


body:
Theresa Robinson wrote:

>>This idea isn't fully fleshed out yet, but a suggestion to see what
>>people think---how about we empower unilateral sysop action on the short
>>term, but of only a few sysops at a time in a rotating group?
>>
>>
>
>No, I don't really like this.  All sysops should be able to, or none.  Or
>better yet, some small group of sysops.
>
>
I guess I disagree completely---under no circumstances should all sysops
be able to ban any user at any time at their sole discretion.  And
having a rotating group I feel is far better than appointing a small
group of sysops as permanent custodians.

-Mark


from_name: Theresa Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is a troll?

body:
> Maybe there's a lot of this and I'm not seeing it, but what I do see
> is a lot of good-faith edits characterized as trolling. The edits may
> be poor or mistaken, and the person may be very stubborn in their
> defense of a bad edit, but if they sincerely believe that the edit
> is making the encyclopedia better, then it's inaccurate to call them
> trolls. For instance, a rightie who hates WP's leftie-ness can
> generate a huge ruckus by trying to "balance" what he/she perceives
> as slanted articles, but every one of those edits is in good faith,
> and the editor will think of him/herself as just as good and
> dedicated an editor as anybody else here.

I absolutely agree with you.  I find that the term "troll" means pretty
much nothing, or it just means "somebody doing something I don't like."
Even "vandal" is used by an awful lot of people for things other than "joe
is gaaaaaaaaaay" edits, which to me are pretty much the only things I'd
call vandalism.  And calling someone a troll, or a vandal, or whatever,
rarely solves the problem.  It would be much more productive to be very
specific about what the person is doing, and say "I disagree with the
tenacity with which you exclude all but one POV from this article" or "it
would really help if you told us why you were reverting all our edits"
etc.  This is much more likely to result in a resolution.

moink


subject: [WikiEN-l] Driven_off_by_trolls

body:
http://develop.consumerium.org/wiki/index.php/Driven_off_by_trolls

> From: uninvited at nerstrand.net
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri,  7 May 2004 14:16:02 -0700
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium
>
> Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some
> time to review:
>
> http://develop.consumerium.org
>
> Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to
> organize leftist POV authors and get
> them to edit at Wikipedia.
>
> UninvitedCompany
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Female trolls?

body:
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote

>That leads to all sorts of questions. What should female trolls be called?
>Are they as sweet and lovely as Tove Jansson's "Snork Maiden" in the
Moomintroll books?

IIRC the Groke was female but not at all lovely.

Charles


body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>"Ray Saintonge" wrote
>
>>It's not about "troll-culture"; (whatever that is); it's about the right
>>to choose a name.  The poisoned atmosphere comes the self-righteous
>>crowd that goes around making all these petty complaints.
>>
>
>If you don't _know_ troll-culture, that would be a bit of a
>disqualification?
>
>No right to choose an in-your-face-name.  What has that to do with writing
>an encyclopedia?
>
That last point is the important one.  If someone chooses an
in-your-face name I am not likely to complain about the name, but I
admit that I will look at his edits more critically than if he had
chosen something less controversial.  If his edits are consistently fair
and satisfactory I will eventually ignore the name, and no-one will have
noticed how much scrutiny I have applied to those edits.

Ec


from_name: Bod NotBod

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

body:
"There is no need to be scared. If they vandalise your articles, they will
bhe reverted. If necessary the pages will be protected. But if you are still
worried, send the details to me and I'll take the necessary action. I aint
scared of nobody." - Theresa

Thanks very much for the offer.  Angela has beaten you to it and I've sent
her the details.

I thought, after I sent my message, somebody would pick my up on the phrase
'my articles'.  Thanks, everybody, for not leaping on me for the use of such
heretic terminology.

I suppose I should say "articles I have a particular investment in" -
although even that has a secondary meaning that leans towards the
commercial.

Bodnotbod

_________________________________________________________________
Sign-up for a FREE BT Broadband connection today!
http://www.msn.co.uk/specials/btbroadband


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

body:
>Because I'm tired of being criticised for doing the right thing?

RickK

I asked how can this help.  So, you've got it off your chest.  I don't think
you have helped; and I ratchet you down another notch as credible witness.

Point: isn't it PLAYING INTO THE HANDS of trolldom to attack colleagues, who
happen to disagree with your version of troll-handling?

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

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

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
It seems that way. But as I review some of the articles regarding which I
have made serious efforts I notice that although leftists win a few fights
they don't really carry the day. And probably never can unless they can find
some way to prevent editing by the public. One thing to keep in mind is that
those of us who are sceptical about the practical realities of communism as
we have lived with it during the last 80 years may be equally sceptical
about George Bush (and his ilk).

Fred

> From: Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 23:03:07 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium
>
> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
>
>> Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some
>> time to review:
>>
>> http://develop.consumerium.org
>>
>> Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to
>> organize leftist POV authors and get
>> them to edit at Wikipedia.
>>
>> UninvitedCompany
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
> Do you all really believe that WP is dominated by the left? All I ever
> seem to see is US rightists and nationalists. If Wikipedia was dominated
> by the left it would be a much more pleasant place to edit.
>
> Caroline
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>It seems that way. But as I review some of the articles regarding which I
>have made serious efforts I notice that although leftists win a few fights
>they don't really carry the day. And probably never can unless they can find
>some way to prevent editing by the public. One thing to keep in mind is that
>those of us who are sceptical about the practical realities of communism as
>we have lived with it during the last 80 years may be equally sceptical
>about George Bush (and his ilk).
>
There is more to the left than just "communism".  That's one of those
words that is sometimes used as a conversation stopper; that word has
come to carry with it the connotative baggage of something that is evil
beyond redemption.  Many people who see value in the philosophy of
communism are just as disgusted with the excesses of someone like
Stalin.  They deeply resent those rightists who manoeuvre them into an
apparent defence of Stalin then use that as a straw man to discredit all
the positive elements of their beliefs.

What's wrong with your view is that you are starting from the position
that there is a fight in which one of the combatants must carry the day.
 What you say could be said equally well and equally accurately with
terms for left and right interchanged.  And that would be equally wrong.

Ec


body:
> This idea isn't fully fleshed out yet, but a suggestion to see what
> people think---how about we empower unilateral sysop action on the short
> term, but of only a few sysops at a time in a rotating group?

No, I don't really like this.  All sysops should be able to, or none.  Or
better yet, some small group of sysops.

moink


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
> I think Wikipedia tends to tilt slightly tilted towards the left of
> center, and slightly towards an EU-centric viewpoint, vaguely along the
> lines of BBC News's tilt (though theirs is somewhat more pronounced).

How fascinating!  I tend to find wikipedia slanted slightly right-wing,
with a wide spectrum of people to round it out.  It's very interesting
that we can get such different opinions of the same group of people.

moink


body:
> I guess I disagree completely---under no circumstances should all sysops
> be able to ban any user at any time at their sole discretion.  And
> having a rotating group I feel is far better than appointing a small
> group of sysops as permanent custodians.

Oh, sorry, I wasn't clear.  I would be against having a small permanent
group.  By a small group what I meant is that if *any* three sysops agree
they can ban someone temporarily.

moink


from_name: Fennec Foxen

body:
On Fri, 7 May 2004 18:38:04 -0400 (EDT), Theresa Robinson
<robinst at mit.edu> wrote:
> Oh, sorry, I wasn't clear.  I would be against having a small permanent
> group.  By a small group what I meant is that if *any* three sysops agree
> they can ban someone temporarily.

We've had some suggestions of this nature before (the "three strikes"
policy, for instance). I'd prefer to think of it as a "multilateral"
block (as opposed to the unilateral ones that always get unblocked).
That way if, say, three sysops got together and listed a user for
blocking, he could not be unblocked until three or more sysops got
together and listed him for unblocking.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
On Fri, 07 May 2004 14:30:37 -0700, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Having scanned their RC, I think they're going to be preoccupied
> with their own problems more than attacking Wikipedia.  For instance,
> 142.177 created some pages about some of our favorite people ("Auntie"
> Angela, Tim Starling, and Erik Moeller) summarizing their evil deeds
> (great reading, like watching Rashomon), then later somebody named
> Juxho blanked them! A beautiful example of people bringing their
> baggage with them wherever they go...

Do the site owners know about this? Do you think this is just another
friendly Recyclopedia which 142.177 is subverting to his own
purpouses? How can we contact the owners and ask them whether they
find this acceptable? =/

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


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's political slant or lack thereof

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

I honestly hadn't noticed any particular _political_ bias. One of the
odd characteristics of Wikipedia is that it is (a) huge, and (b)
doesn't lend itself to getting any kind of synoptic overview--so one's
view of Wikipedia is strongly shaped by the articles you care to read
and/or edit. So how you see Wikipedia becomes a kind of projective
test.

     Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: "What kind of folks
     live around here?" "Well, stranger, what kind of folks was
     there in the country you come from?" "Well, they was mostly
     a lowdown, lying, thieving gossiping, backbiting kind lot of
     people." "Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of
     folks you'll find around here." And the dusty gray stranger
     had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a
     clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: "What
     kind of folks live around here?" "Well, stranger, what kind
     of folks was there in the country you come from?" "Well,
     they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly
     lot of people." "Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the
     kind of folks you'll find around here."

        --Carl Sandburg, _The People, Yes_

(I'll save "The Blind Men and the Elephant" for another day).

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some time to review:
>
>http://develop.consumerium.org
>
>Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to organize leftist POV authors and get
>them to edit at Wikipedia.
>
Finally, we have found a wiki to which we can direct our trolls, instead
of trying to pawn them off on Meatball or Sheldon's Disinfopedia!

I agree with Stan that this is no threat to us. Trolls are far too
focused on provoking people to concentrate on promoting any political
agenda, and this site demonstrates that even trolls can be trolled. At
best, if it manages to remain coherent, this site might eventually
become a place for outside criticism of Wikipedia. And if we're going to
present knowledge to the world, criticism comes with the territory. The
way to deal with it is to answer it - see [[Wikipedia:Our Replies to Our
Critics]].

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
Nope, What I mean by carrying the day is when a favorable spin is inserted
and maintained, by means of reverts, by POV editors on the left.

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 17:22:36 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium
>
> What's wrong with your view is that you are starting from the position
> that there is a fight in which one of the combatants must carry the da


body:
> Seems me to be stretching a point _considerably_ to object to someone's
> username on the basis of it containing the substring "troll".

Disagree.  Atmosphere matters.  The whole troll-culture poisons the
atmosphere.  It isn't 'amusing' or even 'outlaw'.

Charles


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel banned for a year

body:
On 05/07/04 10:40, Delirium wrote:

> 1. Paul Vogel's editing priviledges on Wikipedia are revoked for a
> period of one year.
> As far as enforcement goes: In light of the decision, I've blocked
> 24.45.99.191, his most common IP address.  Even though he's used it
> consistently for some weeks, it has 'dyn' in the hostname, so I only
> blocked it for a month, lest it turn out to be dynamic.  Reblocking it
> for an additional month after that expires is a trivial matter if he
> returns anyway.  He's used a number of other addresses, most of them
> dynamic IPs, and relatively infrequently (and not in the past few days),
> so I have not blocked those.  Since he is now officially banned, any
> sysop may feel free to ban any reincarnations that pop up, although I'd
> recommend 24-to-48-hour bans unless you're sure it's a static IP of his.

Where is the best place to report violations? Here, a given page, IRC?
i.e., how to get a 48-hour ban in less than 12 hours?

- d.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

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

body:
In a message dated 5/7/2004 5:55:52 PM Eastern Standard Time,
isam at bayazidi.net writes:
Hi all..
In the Arabic Wikipedia (as with other Wikipedias) we suffer from poor
speed/performance, and a feature-stripped mediawiki (search-disabled and
so).. Anyhow, one of the members in the Arabic Wikipedia contacted me,
telling me that he can get Server power, and cover yearly costs for
Bandwidth/placement in a data-center.. But he said that he wanted to
have that server/bandwidth dedicated to the Arabic Wikipedia..

I wanted to know about the possibility of that.. is it "Technically"
possible ? of course, everything is under the Mediawiki foundation
umbrella, and server full access will be only for the mediawiki
developers in charge of such thing..

If that is absolutely not possible.. will it be possible to have a new
server added to the existing server farm, having it's cost covered, but
enabling all the nice feature for Arabic Wikipedia (after all we are
only 650 articles or so), and have a certain priority for Arabic
Wikipedia, while having the server doing what other servers do ?

The current performance/speed/status of Arabic Wikipedia (and other
wikipedias) is not a very good one.. and sooner or later
Language-limited donations will come, and they will be have to be dealt
with.. after all, full control is, and will always be, in the hand of
the mediawiki developers/admins .. the only difference is that the
server layer will be differently organized in a way to allow to dedicate
resources to wikipedias..

I dont see why it should be a problem, but I would add a stipulation--that
the Arabic server take another small Wiki under its wing (and server), so as to
prevent a fork, and help the folks there grow too.

BTW, Arabic is growing remarkably well, and I want to thank Isam for all his
efforts there.

Danny.
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body:
"Ray Saintonge" wrote

> It's not about "troll-culture"; (whatever that is); it's about the right
> to choose a name.  The poisoned atmosphere comes the self-righteous
> crowd that goes around making all these petty complaints.

If you don't _know_ troll-culture, that would be a bit of a
disqualification?

No right to choose an in-your-face-name.  What has that to do with writing
an encyclopedia?

Charles


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] tokipona inter-wiki links have stopped working

body:
Hi,

tokipona inter-wiki links have stopped working on en. Someone should
probably fix that.

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some time to review:
>
>http://develop.consumerium.org
>
>Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to organize leftist POV authors and get
>them to edit at Wikipedia.
>
>UninvitedCompany
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
Do you all really believe that WP is dominated by the left? All I ever
seem to see is US rightists and nationalists. If Wikipedia was dominated
by the left it would be a much more pleasant place to edit.

Caroline


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] The fun never stops

body:
The replicated database on curly fell out of synch a couple days ago and
can't be brought back up to date cleanly because, at least in part, the
binlog index file on suda has been removed -- several times -- since.
Even restoring the binlog files themselves (via symlink), the server
won't serve them back up through the replication interface because
they're not in the index, since it regenerated an index with a later
starting point and doesn't think anything older exists.

To replace the index file and get the link back up will require briefly
taking down MySQL on suda. This will also be a lovely opportunity to
move some of suda's data files onto its new hard disk to relieve space
pressure on the primary drive and split up the disk load which may help
performance.

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

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Nope, What I mean by carrying the day is when a favorable spin is inserted
>and maintained, by means of reverts, by POV editors on the left.
>
>Fred
>
Ahhh!  You mean just like POV editors of the right.

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
This is a thought from two personal experience
feedback, as well as Mav and Erik experiences.

I several times contacted external people or
organisations, either for press release, or other PR
activity, or for trying to negociate content release.
Usually, I used my real name, though not always. Twice
at least, I think there was no consideration given to
my proposition, because I was just a community member
and in no way had an official position. I suppose
other editors trying to reach the outside met similar
situation.

When one contact an important media group, or a
charitable organisation to ask for donations, or a
legal entity, one is expected to show some
"credentials". In particular as soon as money is
involved :-)

I think this type of activity, with "external" contact
will become more and more frequent and required. And
though this will be a lot the work of the Fundation
itself, I somehow doubt 3 members can manage it all.
Some regular participants will necessarily become more
and more invested in Foundation activities, without
being Board members.

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

Basically, it requires 3 steps

-------

* setting up a list of "official titles", with
associated description of what this encompasses

Example : Wikimedia treasurer : someone to keep track
of donations or other funding, and keep track of how
money is spent

Example : Public relations : someone who organise
press releases, give interviews, etc. Trying to find
funding probably comes in here.

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

The list could be approved by the Board.

-------

* Enlisting people for each role.

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

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

------

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

-------

What do you think ?

Anthere

__________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
I do not see well how it adresses the general issue
Tom. Perhaps I did not understand what you meant ?

As for mailing lists, I moderated the french one for a
year, and I had to delete between 10 to 20 spam per
day at some point.

Organisation of a press release is totally appropriate
on the wiki iself. I contributed a lot to the french
ones and collaborative work was quite successful. The
second press release was sent to many places, with few
double sending.

However, when I send the press release to some major
newspapers, I also received sometimes no answer, and
once an answer which said "could you get me in contact
with an official please". The only official I know
right now is Jimbo. I do not think it is Jimbo's job
to stamp a press release made by the french wikipedia.
He has other things to do.

How can a mailing list adress can help in showing this
journalist (or whoever), that I can be trusted and
sending a press release that is in line with the
community opinion of what Wikipedia is ?

Did you meet the problem ? How did you solve it ?

Anthere

--- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> On Sat, May 08, 2004 at 01:03:02AM -0700, Anthere
> wrote:
>
> > Example : Public relations : someone who organise
> > press releases, give interviews, etc. Trying to
> find
> > funding probably comes in here.
>
> on de: we have an info at wikipedia.de which is
> subscribed by
> a few of our administrators. Most mails are spam, a
> few
> easy questions and seldom we have to chat about the
> answer before sending it. It works quite fine.
>
> ciao, tom
> --
> == Weblinks ==
> * http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to
> change the world
> * http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 -
> Free Knowledge
> * http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet:
> bald im Druck
> * http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


from_name: Isam Bayazidi

body:
Hi all..
In the Arabic Wikipedia (as with other Wikipedias) we suffer from poor
speed/performance, and a feature-stripped mediawiki (search-disabled and
so).. Anyhow, one of the members in the Arabic Wikipedia contacted me,
telling me that he can get Server power, and cover yearly costs for
Bandwidth/placement in a data-center.. But he said that he wanted to
have that server/bandwidth dedicated to the Arabic Wikipedia..

I wanted to know about the possibility of that.. is it "Technically"
possible ? of course, everything is under the Mediawiki foundation
umbrella, and server full access will be only for the mediawiki
developers in charge of such thing..

If that is absolutely not possible.. will it be possible to have a new
server added to the existing server farm, having it's cost covered, but
enabling all the nice feature for Arabic Wikipedia (after all we are
only 650 articles or so), and have a certain priority for Arabic
Wikipedia, while having the server doing what other servers do ?

The current performance/speed/status of Arabic Wikipedia (and other
wikipedias) is not a very good one.. and sooner or later
Language-limited donations will come, and they will be have to be dealt
with.. after all, full control is, and will always be, in the hand of
the mediawiki developers/admins .. the only difference is that the
server layer will be differently organized in a way to allow to dedicate
resources to wikipedias..

I hope I will get a clear response, as my previous attempts to reach for
a response did not give me one..

Yours
Isam Bayazidi
Arabic Wikipedia
Amman - Jordan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Multilingual interface

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> Since that message, I've noticed some bugs and had no time to fix them, but
> now I think I can present a beta version. Note I worked against 1.2.0rc3 and
> not against the CVS; this because if I did something in the wrong way, and a
> rewrite is needed, I didn't want to adapt to CVS changes at the same time. I
> hope this will be no problem. I have to say that I have a SF account and know
> how to work with the CVS, so I can submit the code changes directly to it, if
> needed. Differences follow:

In general I would highly recommend *against* doing significant
development on the stable branch. Forward porting things is sometimes
more work than expected -- particularly when there are major changes --
or just doesn't get done and your neat new thing gets lost; if you put
it in the development version, you just have to wait and it'll become
the stable version. ;)

> I think that this is quite selfexplanatory. If $wgLanguageCode is a string,
> then there is old-fashioned monolingual interface. If it is an array, then a
> multilingual interface.
>
> LocalSettings.php:
> $wgLanguageCode = array("en","de","sr");

Neat! But there are some problems that need to be overcome.

First, it won't interact at all well with $wgUseDatabaseMessages, since
we have no way to distinguish which language a defined message is
intended to reach. Now, it's possible to just make the two modes
mutually exclusive, so you get the hardcoded messages if in non-default
language. That's probably ok.

Second, a number of language-specific options will affect how things are
parsed and stored. Namespace interpretation will be different; I notice
this is partially taken care of in your patch by run-time patching to
hardcode the English names, but some languages define additional aliased
names which would break under another class, and it would be preferable
to always use the content language's names rather than English.

Some languages are still using Latin-1 charset, and you really can't mix
Latin-1 with UTF-8. Besides the encoding of the messages themselves, the
fulltext search index is treated very differently between latin-1 and
UTF-8, and some languages such as Chinese and Japanese do some different
work to insert simulated word spaces. At some point (hopefully for 1.4)
we'll want to add language-specific sorting for displays of
titles/usernames etc, which will require generating and storing indexes
which depend on the content language.

As for the Latin1/UTF-8 thing, I'd like to just transition everything to
UTF-8. Hopefully we'll do that soon, as we've been moving tentatively in
that direction, and it'll end up a non-problem.

Most of the other stuff could be dealt with by defining a 'master
language' which controls the content encoding, namespace definitions,
logpage names, logpage content, material used for {{transposed}} and
substituted messages in content, etc, and a 'display language' which can
be selected by the user which will determine the language used for user
interface messages. This probably requires more work on the language
classes and messages to separate out links.

Also I'm not keen on changing the value and type of $wgLanguageCode. It
would be best I think to keep things predictable and separate the array
of selectable languages from the master/content language.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Isam Bayazidi wrote:
> Do I understand from this that the Mediawiki software have a limitation
> in that regard ? I thought that there is already somehow a distribution
> for the servers between English and non-English wikipedias.. as
> sometimes English work, while other langs don't.. and in other times
> non-English work fine, while English is not..
>
> Does all Wikipedias currently share the same resources with equal
> priorities ? or there is already certain setups that are made for Large
> wikipedias such as English and German ?

Everything shares the same servers. The only partial exception to this
at present is the front-end squid cache machines, which are roughly
divided between English Wikipedia (plus a couple of small wikis) and
Everything Else (including the couple of small wikis on the other
machine). Sometimes these are served by the same machine during
maintenance, or which machine is which may swap.

The only reason there's a split right now is that there was something
weird with our DNS service that doesn't let us declare both IP addresses
for the *.wikipedia.org hosts. This should change when we move over to
our own DNS server, which was supposed to happen months ago but is
waiting on... something? I'm not sure of the details. I think the
secondary DNS backup server has to get set up somewhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Isam Bayazidi wrote:
> Alex Regh wrote:
>> However, my guess is also that this would require *a lot* of rewriting
>> of the
>> software, so at best this can be a long-term option. But not one I'd
>> dismiss
>> right away.
>>
>>
> Do I understand from this that the Mediawiki software have a limitation
> in that regard ?

Technically, we could set up every wiki on a separate server of its own.
However this would be more difficult to administer, and would require
300 servers in its strictest interpretation. ;) Since our resources are
limited, we want to provide as much as we can to all wikis rather than
favoring some, though generally we've put a lot more restrictions on the
English Wikipedia because it's the biggest and takes the most resources.

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

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium

body:
The burden of minimizing the significance of 100 million deaths falls on the
left.

Fred

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


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] lost language.php

body:
On Friday 07 May 2004 15:10, Ingrid wrote:
> Can you me help?
> I have lost a very important file: the LANGUAGE.PHP, there in the INCLUDE
> folder was...can i became per mail?

You might get it at
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/wikipedia/phase3/languages/Language.php?rev=1.200


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
On Sat, May 08, 2004 at 01:03:02AM -0700, Anthere wrote:

> Example : Public relations : someone who organise
> press releases, give interviews, etc. Trying to find
> funding probably comes in here.

on de: we have an info at wikipedia.de which is subscribed by
a few of our administrators. Most mails are spam, a few
easy questions and seldom we have to chat about the
answer before sending it. It works quite fine.

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


body:
On Sat, May 08, 2004 at 10:46:31AM +0900, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> By the way, I friend tell me that Google (a read-only site) started with
> about 5000 machines (actually more than 10 times more). What it is our
> near/far future plane?

Google is NOT read-only after it crawls the whole world wide web.
A search engine is naturally a whole different and more distributable
(see grub) thing that a database-centric wiki.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
On Sat, May 08, 2004 at 01:25:17AM -0700, Anthere wrote:
> I do not see well how it adresses the general issue
> Tom. Perhaps I did not understand what you meant ?
>
> As for mailing lists, I moderated the french one for a
> year, and I had to delete between 10 to 20 spam per
> day at some point.
>
> Organisation of a press release is totally appropriate
> on the wiki iself. I contributed a lot to the french
> ones and collaborative work was quite successful. The
> second press release was sent to many places, with few
> double sending.
>
> However, when I send the press release to some major
> newspapers, I also received sometimes no answer, and
> once an answer which said "could you get me in contact
> with an official please". The only official I know
> right now is Jimbo. I do not think it is Jimbo's job
> to stamp a press release made by the french wikipedia.
> He has other things to do.
>
> How can a mailing list adress can help in showing this
> journalist (or whoever), that I can be trusted and
> sending a press release that is in line with the
> community opinion of what Wikipedia is ?

Ah I think you misunderstood. Our mailinglist is for those
asking US, not the other round.
For sending out our press releases we have a fluctuating group
of people who just mail them. We maintain a list of recipient[1]
That also works quite good.

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pressemitteilung/Empf%E4nger
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


from_name: Jimmy Wales

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

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

It is difficult for me to read this as anything other than a death
threat.  Pure bluster, perhaps, but I worry about this guy.

The elements here that I find most troubling --

1.  The dehumanization -- that you are not a person.

2.  The specific references to death and violence "fatal mistake" and
"you are making real-world enemies here".

--Jimbo


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

body:
To reassure you, the French Wikipedia (and all Wikipedia, I think) are using
"feature-stripped mediawiki" ;o)

I really hope all those features (search, SQL access, maintenance pages,
etc.) will be re-enabled when new servers will arrive (when?).

By the way, I friend tell me that Google (a read-only site) started with
about 5000 machines (actually more than 10 times more). What it is our
near/far future plane?

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Isam Bayazidi" <isam at bayazidi.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 7:57 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] language limited funding/donation

> Hi all..
> In the Arabic Wikipedia (as with other Wikipedias) we suffer from poor
> speed/performance, and a feature-stripped mediawiki (search-disabled and
> so).. Anyhow, one of the members in the Arabic Wikipedia contacted me,
> telling me that he can get Server power, and cover yearly costs for
> Bandwidth/placement in a data-center.. But he said that he wanted to
> have that server/bandwidth dedicated to the Arabic Wikipedia..
>
> I wanted to know about the possibility of that.. is it "Technically"
> possible ? of course, everything is under the Mediawiki foundation
> umbrella, and server full access will be only for the mediawiki
> developers in charge of such thing..
>
> If that is absolutely not possible.. will it be possible to have a new
> server added to the existing server farm, having it's cost covered, but
> enabling all the nice feature for Arabic Wikipedia (after all we are
> only 650 articles or so), and have a certain priority for Arabic
> Wikipedia, while having the server doing what other servers do ?
>
> The current performance/speed/status of Arabic Wikipedia (and other
> wikipedias) is not a very good one.. and sooner or later
> Language-limited donations will come, and they will be have to be dealt
> with.. after all, full control is, and will always be, in the hand of
> the mediawiki developers/admins .. the only difference is that the
> server layer will be differently organized in a way to allow to dedicate
> resources to wikipedias..
>
> I hope I will get a clear response, as my previous attempts to reach for
> a response did not give me one..
>
> Yours
> Isam Bayazidi
> Arabic Wikipedia
> Amman - Jordan
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Isam Bayazidi wrote:
> In the Arabic Wikipedia (as with other Wikipedias) we suffer from poor
> speed/performance, and a feature-stripped mediawiki (search-disabled and
> so)..

It is my belief that the speed/performance/features for all the
mediawikis are currently equivalent.  The only exception to that may
be some latency due to sheer distance and the speed of light around
the globe, but I believe that this is relatively minor.

(However, I do suppose that if a particular nation or area is not
well-connected to the new, a local squid would boost them a fair
amount.)

The best possibility, technologically, to do what your potential donor
wants to do, is to host a squid in your area, on an experimental basis
perhaps, so that we can see if it makes a positive difference.

> The current performance/speed/status of Arabic Wikipedia (and other
> wikipedias) is not a very good one.. and sooner or later
> Language-limited donations will come, and they will be have to be dealt
> with..

I think that this is likely, i.e. that there will be language-limited
donation offers.  And we do need to discuss what to do about that.

We are a global project, and I would like to encourage donors to think
globally as well.  From the point of view of global efficiency, then
for the most part, language-specific donations aren't going to help
much -- the most efficient architecture is one which clusters, not one
which divides.

At the same time, of course, I do recognize that donors care about
what *they* care about, and frequently of course this would be their
own language wikipedia.  That's not a bad thing, it's only natural.
And I don't want to discourage donors who want to help -- particularly
not if the alternative is to have them fund a fork out of frustration.

THIS PART IS IMPORTANT -- $20,000 of new hardware is ordered and will
be here within 2 week or so.  This includes a more powerful database
server with faster CPUs, faster hard drives.  Our existing database
server will still be here, so we will go from one strong machine to
two strong machines.

Additionally, I've order 4 1U servers which will be adapted and
customized for roles as apache's, squids, fileservers, whatever we
need.  I also hope that 1 or 2 of them will be sitting idle as
"universal hot spares" so that we can quickly configure them to take
on a role while we work on any other machines that are down.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> Finally, we have found a wiki to which we can direct our trolls, instead
> of trying to pawn them off on Meatball or Sheldon's Disinfopedia!

I would recommend against that, actually.  I've talked to Juxho a fair
bit, and he's a nice person who is trying to figure out how to have a
nice wiki.  He didn't say this part, but I think he's just not quite
sure what to do about this situation.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ahmad Al-rasheedan

body:
On Saturday 08 May 2004 04:46, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

> By the way, I friend tell me that Google (a read-only site) started with
> about 5000 machines (actually more than 10 times more). What it is our
> near/far future plane?
>

Wikipedia's model is not a commercial one and I assure you if a "Powered by
HP or IBM" is possible then you will get loads of server, as Isam said.

I like the fact Wikepedia is banner free and I hope it will stay this way.
This means Wikepedia will depend on support of believers of the project.

Regards,
--
Ahmad Al-rasheedan (http://webhost.fasttelco.com/asr)


body:
On Saturday 08 May 2004 04:34, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> I dont see why it should be a problem, but I would add a stipulation--that
> the Arabic server take another small Wiki under its wing (and server), so
> as to prevent a fork, and help the folks there grow too.
>
> BTW, Arabic is growing remarkably well, and I want to thank Isam for all
> his efforts there.

If one to fetch an Arabic server, what sort of specs are we looking at? 1U,
2U, RAM, Disk, etc?

Regards,
--
Ahmad Al-rasheedan (http://webhost.fasttelco.com/asr)


from_name: Alex Regh

body:
Hello!

On Sat, 8 May 2004 10:30:43 +0200, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

>Google is NOT read-only after it crawls the whole world wide web.
>A search engine is naturally a whole different and more distributable
>(see grub) thing that a database-centric wiki.

There is a company namend Akamai out there, and as far as I know, they
distribute websites like CNN and Microsoft, which are (especially the first)
updated frequently, and have some feedback features etc. So theoretically it
might be possible to use distributed servers for the WP. And in the long term
it might be a good idea, too; all the Wikipedias are growing fast, and have
users from all over the world.

However, my guess is also that this would require *a lot* of rewriting of the
software, so at best this can be a long-term option. But not one I'd dismiss
right away.

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

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


subject: [Wikitech-l] Multilingual interface

body:
On Friday 23 April 2004 13:46, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Apr 23, 2004, at 03:57, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > I have managed to make changes to code which enable users to choose
> > their user
> > interface language, feature sought at Wikisource, Wiktionary etc. To
> > whom
> > should I send the code?
>
> Same place you're posting this question. :)

Since that message, I've noticed some bugs and had no time to fix them, but
now I think I can present a beta version. Note I worked against 1.2.0rc3 and
not against the CVS; this because if I did something in the wrong way, and a
rewrite is needed, I didn't want to adapt to CVS changes at the same time. I
hope this will be no problem. I have to say that I have a SF account and know
how to work with the CVS, so I can submit the code changes directly to it, if
needed. Differences follow:

I think that this is quite selfexplanatory. If $wgLanguageCode is a string,
then there is old-fashioned monolingual interface. If it is an array, then a
multilingual interface.

LocalSettings.php:
$wgLanguageCode = array("en","de","sr");

Changes in SpecialPreferences.php were the most straightforward. If
$wpLanguage is satisfying name, they may go to the CVS, they do no harm even
if nothing else is imlepmented. I have put language chooser at the very top,
since users who do not know the main language will need it the most.

***
../../Documents/Download/mediawiki-1.2.0rc3/includes/SpecialPreferences.phpWed
Feb 18 03:14:56 2004
--- ./SpecialPreferences.php    Sat May  8 11:30:09 2004
***************
*** 87,92 ****
--- 87,93 ----
        global $wpSkin, $wpMath, $wpDate, $wpUserEmail, $wpEmailFlag, $wpNick,
$wpSearch, $wpRecent;
        global $wpSearchLines, $wpSearchChars, $wpStubs;
        global $wpRows, $wpCols, $wpHourDiff, $HTTP_POST_VARS;
+       global $wpLanguage;

        if ( "" != $wpNewpass ) {
                if ( $wpNewpass != $wpRetypePass ) {
***************
*** 116,121 ****
--- 117,123 ----
        $wgUser->setOption( "cols", validateInt( $wpCols, 4, 1000 ) );
        $wgUser->setOption( "stubthreshold", validateIntOrNull( $wpStubs ) );
        $wgUser->setOption( "timecorrection", validateTimeZone( $wpHourDiff,
-12, 14 ) );
+       $wgUser->setOption( "language", $wpLanguage );

        $namespaces = $wgLang->getNamespaces();
        # Set search namespace options
***************
*** 151,156 ****
--- 153,159 ----
        global $wpRows, $wpCols, $wpSkin, $wpMath, $wpDate, $wpUserEmail,
$wpEmailFlag, $wpNick;
        global $wpSearch, $wpRecent, $HTTP_POST_VARS;
        global $wpHourDiff, $wpSearchLines, $wpSearchChars;
+       global $wpLanguage;

        $wpOldpass = $wpNewpass = $wpRetypePass = "";
        $wpUserEmail = $wgUser->getEmail();
***************
*** 170,175 ****
--- 173,179 ----
        $wpSearchLines = $wgUser->getOption( "contextlines" );
        $wpSearchChars = $wgUser->getOption( "contextchars" );
        $wpRecent = $wgUser->getOption( "rclimit" );
+       $wpLanguage = $wgUser->getOption( "language" );

        $togs = $wgLang->getUserToggles();
        foreach ( $togs as $tname => $ttext ) {
***************
*** 213,223 ****

  /* private */ function mainPrefsForm( $err )
  {
!       global $wgUser, $wgOut, $wgLang, $wgUseDynamicDates;
        global $wpQuickbar, $wpOldpass, $wpNewpass, $wpRetypePass;
        global $wpSkin, $wpMath, $wpDate, $wpUserEmail, $wpEmailFlag, $wpNick,
$wpSearch, $wpRecent;
        global $wpRows, $wpCols, $wpSaveprefs, $wpReset, $wpHourDiff;
        global $wpSearchLines, $wpSearchChars, $wpStubs, $wgValidSkinNames;

        $wgOut->setPageTitle( wfMsg( "preferences" ) );
        $wgOut->setArticleRelated( false );
--- 217,228 ----

  /* private */ function mainPrefsForm( $err )
  {
!       global $wgUser, $wgOut, $wgLang,
$wgUseDynamicDates,$wgLanguageArray,$wgLanguageCode,$wgLanguageNames;
        global $wpQuickbar, $wpOldpass, $wpNewpass, $wpRetypePass;
        global $wpSkin, $wpMath, $wpDate, $wpUserEmail, $wpEmailFlag, $wpNick,
$wpSearch, $wpRecent;
        global $wpRows, $wpCols, $wpSaveprefs, $wpReset, $wpHourDiff;
        global $wpSearchLines, $wpSearchChars, $wpStubs, $wgValidSkinNames;
+       global $wpLanguage;

        $wgOut->setPageTitle( wfMsg( "preferences" ) );
        $wgOut->setArticleRelated( false );
***************
*** 269,275 ****
        $dsn = wfMsg( "defaultns" );

        $wgOut->addHTML( "<form id=\"preferences\" name=\"preferences\"
action=\"$action\"
! method=\"post\">

$qb:
\n" );

        # Quickbar setting
        #
--- 274,290 ----
        $dsn = wfMsg( "defaultns" );

        $wgOut->addHTML( "<form id=\"preferences\" name=\"preferences\"
action=\"$action\"
! method=\"post\">
");
!
!       if(is_array($wgLanguageArray)) {
!               $wgOut->addHTML("
Language:");
!               $wgOut->addHTML("<select name=\"wpLanguage\">");
!               foreach($wgLanguageArray as $v)
!                       $wgOut->addHTML("<option value=\"$v\"
".(($v==$wpLanguage)?"selected":"").">{$wgLanguageNames[$v]}</option>");
!               $wgOut->addHTML("</select>
");
!       }
!
!       $wgOut->addHTML("
$qb:
\n" );

        # Quickbar setting
        #

Most changes were needed to the Setup.php. Creation of an user and loading of
the language had to be executed earlier, but that is not a problem. But here
there was a big problem with circular dependency. User.php requires
Language.php because some default user settings are language-dependent. But,
apparently, an user must be created in order to know which language settings
to choose! I have not solved this in a satisfactory enough way, and all users
have, let's call them, international default settings:

*** ../../Documents/Download/mediawiki-1.2.0rc3/includes/Setup.php      Thu
Feb 26 14:37:26 2004
--- ./Setup.php Sat May  8 11:46:25 2004
***************
*** 123,129 ****
--- 123,146 ----
  wfProfileOut( "$fname-memcached" );
  wfProfileIn( "$fname-misc" );

+ if( !$wgCommandLineMode && isset( $_COOKIE[ini_get("session.name")] )  ) {
+         User::SetupSession();
+ }
+
  include_once( "Language.php" );
+ $wgUser = User::loadFromSession();
+ if(is_array($wgLanguageCode)) {
+       $wgLanguageArray=$wgLanguageCode;
+       if($_GET['language']&&in_array($_GET['language'],$wgLanguageArray)) {
+               $wgLanguageCode=$_GET['language'];
+       } else
if($_POST['wpLanguage']&&in_array($_POST['wpLanguage'],$wgLanguageArray)) {
+               $wgLanguageCode=$_POST['wpLanguage'];
+       } else {
+               $wgLanguageCode = $wgUser->getOption("language");
+       }
+ }
+ @include_once( "Language" . ucfirst( $wgLanguageCode ) . ".php" );
+ if(is_array($wgLanguageArray)) eval("\$wgNamespaceNames".ucfirst(
$wgLanguageCode )."=\$wgNamespaceNamesEn;");

  $wgMessageCache = new MessageCache;

***************
*** 148,159 ****
        $wgDateFormatter = new DateFormatter;
  }

- if( !$wgCommandLineMode && isset( $_COOKIE[ini_get("session.name")] )  ) {
-       User::SetupSession();
- }
-
  $wgBlockCache = new BlockCache( true );
- $wgUser = User::loadFromSession();
  $wgDeferredUpdateList = array();
  $wgLinkCache = new LinkCache();
  $wgMagicWords = array();
--- 165,171 ----

I have copied these international settings from English settings:

*** ../../Documents/Download/mediawiki-1.2.0rc3/includes/User.php       Sun
Mar  7 11:07:17 2004
--- ./User.php  Sat May  8 11:18:45 2004
***************
*** 11,16 ****
--- 11,26 ----
        /* private */ var $mBlockedby, $mBlockreason;
        /* private */ var $mTouched;
        /* private */ var $mCookiePassword;
+       /* private */ var $wgDefaultUserOptions = array(
+               "quickbar" => 1, "underline" => 1, "hover" => 1,
+               "cols" => 80, "rows" => 25, "searchlimit" => 20,
+               "contextlines" => 5, "contextchars" => 50,
+               "skin" => 0, "math" => 1, "rcdays" => 7, "rclimit" => 50,
+               "highlightbroken" => 1, "stubthreshold" => 0,
+               "previewontop" => 1,
"editsection"=>1,"editsectiononrightclick"=>0, "showtoc"=>1,
+               "showtoolbar" =>1,
+               "date" => 0, "language" => "en"
+       );

        function User()
        {
***************
*** 70,76 ****

        function loadDefaults()
        {
!               global $wgLang, $wgIP;
                global $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault;

                $this->mId = $this->mNewtalk = 0;
--- 80,86 ----

        function loadDefaults()
        {
!               global $wgLang, $wgIP, $wgLanguageCode;
                global $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault;

                $this->mId = $this->mNewtalk = 0;
***************
*** 78,84 ****
                $this->mEmail = "";
                $this->mPassword = $this->mNewpassword = "";
                $this->mRights = array();
!               $defOpt = $wgLang->getDefaultUserOptions() ;
                foreach ( $defOpt as $oname => $val ) {
                        $this->mOptions[$oname] = $val;
                }
--- 88,94 ----
                $this->mEmail = "";
                $this->mPassword = $this->mNewpassword = "";
                $this->mRights = array();
!               $defOpt = $this->wgDefaultUserOptions;
                foreach ( $defOpt as $oname => $val ) {
                        $this->mOptions[$oname] = $val;
                }

Unrelated to multilingual interface, this is needed because some PHP versions
stupidly throw an error when the file is not present:

*** ../../Documents/Download/mediawiki-1.2.0rc3/includes/GlobalFunctions.php
Thu Feb 26 21:08:45 2004
--- ./GlobalFunctions.php       Fri Mar 12 12:27:18 2004
***************
*** 231,237 ****
        global $wgReadOnlyFile;

        if ( "" == $wgReadOnlyFile ) { return false; }
!       return is_file( $wgReadOnlyFile );
  }

  $wgReplacementKeys = array( "$1", "$2", "$3", "$4", "$5", "$6", "$7", "$8",
"$9" );
--- 231,237 ----
        global $wgReadOnlyFile;

        if ( "" == $wgReadOnlyFile ) { return false; }
!       return @is_file( $wgReadOnlyFile );
  }

  $wgReplacementKeys = array( "$1", "$2", "$3", "$4", "$5", "$6", "$7", "$8",
"$9" );

So, what do you think?