from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nupedia?

body:
I think the way forward from here is to emulate the systems used in
scientific peer review and publishing. What makes Wikipedia work, in
my opinion, is that is already emulates the model by which scientific
knowledge has been able to accumulate: an "information commons" to
which anyone can contribute and which anyone can use.

Until the 19th century, the scientific system was truly open to
anyone, and credentials didn't matter much. As the quality and
quantity of scientific information increased and its power to
transform technology and society became evident, the stakes got
higher and peer review entered the system as a way of trying to
determine which scientific projects should be funded and considered
reliable.

Right now Wikipedia is a hobby for most of the people who use it,
which places it in a position analogous to the days when science was
the hobby of gentleman tinkerers. I don't think many people right now
are particularly using Wikipedia as part of their job or in any other
context where they absolutely need to rely on its accuracy. When I
personally look things up on Wikipedia, for example, I don't have to
rely on its accuracy because there are other information sources that
I can use to double-check anything I find here. If its reliability
becomes more important to users, people will begin to develop more
deliberate procedures for fact-checking and credentialing.

One way that Wikipedia could incorporate peer review would be to
develop its own panels of accredited experts on various topics. Right
now users are a largely undifferentiated mass. There are some
differences between anonymous IP users, registered users and sysops,
but those differences merely reflect different permission settings in
the software and don't correspond to any distinctions in terms of
individuals' actual expertise in specific fields.

In the future, we may want to have some volunteer committees: a
science committee, a history committee, a humanities committee and so
forth. These could be further differentiated over time as need be.
For example, there could be science subcommittees in areas such as
biochemistry or particle physics. Individuals with credentials and
expertise in each field could be invited to serve. Suppose, for
example, the science committee consisted of several Nobel laureates
and other leading scientists. If a dispute arose over a particular
article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an
opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the
dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a
binding decision.

All of these changes would consist of social self-organization of
Wikipedia users. They wouldn't entail or require modifications of the
software.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Section editing bug

body:
You can confuse the section numbering with comments as follows:

<!--
== Don't count this section ==
-->

Visit http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keichwa and click on the last
[edit] button to see what I mean:

http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Keichwa&action=edit&section=19

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


list: textbook-l

from_name: EiLatLog at aol.com

subject: [Textbook-l] Help from TechSupport_re:page-popup.

body:
Dear Sir:
I have been having a problem in accessing some of the pages with the
free-encyclopedia and other pages.  When I try to go to the page there is a pop-up
BLANK page that freezes the screen and I have to use ctrl-alt-delete to re-start
AOL or else the PC. The page will not close and can be moved around but
nothing behind the pop-up is active....a total freeze frame.   Finally, with
attempts to re-access, ... I was able to create a log-on and USER NAME with a
password via the Italian resources, but English is my principle language and these
pages still have this blocking pop-up. Being able to log-in both via the Italian
and English main-pages has not helped.  have permitted cookies, but the
problem persists with Wikipedia.  Is there anything I can do to fix this?
THANKS!
Jim Gibbs,
Microbiologist
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from_name: Green Mountain

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logos

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>>"GM" == Green Mountain <greenmountain at alexandria.cc> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>    GM> Is including an image of a logo a breach of copyright?
>
>Logos are almost always copyrighted. Uploading them to Wikipedia is a
>breach of copyright law which may be defensible under the fair use
>doctrine, which see:
>
>      http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html
>
>Whether fair use images are appropriate for Wikipedia is a question
>for the ages.
>
>    GM> I would like to include the logo for Handspring Inc. . Will
>    GM> this be possible?
>
>Better ask: will it be necessary? Is it worth violating the idea of
>Free Content to have a curvy X with a circle at the bottom on some
>page? If you really think the article needs an illustration, why not
>draw a picture of a Visor yourself? Or take a photograph of someone
>using one? Use some image you own the copyright to.
>
>If you're insistent that only the corporate logo will do, you can
>always ask PalmOne corporation if it's OK to license their logo under
>the GFDL, of course:
>
>     http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission
>
>~ESP
>
>
>
Thanks.  I will take a photograph of my Handspring Visor, and use that.
(That X with a circle is actually a person named "flip" who is doing a
cartwheel.  LOL)

Greenmountainboy


from_name: Ramanan Selvaratnam

subject: [Wikipedia-l] curiosity

body:
On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 16:09, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Nothing, but operationally you reach the group who reads the lists,

lists in plural?

Are there other lists I should scan for what I need to find out and/or
keep up with.

Again, my interest is to understand Wikipedia better to structure a
newly started language module. There are few unanswered questions AFAIK.

Ramanan

> > From: "Oliver Brown" <oliver at kingturtle.com>
> > Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 18:45:24 -0800
> > To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
> > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] curiosity
> >
> > What exactly is discussed on the mailing list that can't or shouldn't or
> > isn't discussed on wikipedia-proper?
> > -oliver
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cache stats

body:
On Dec 13, 2003, at 03:54, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> Since this seems to be a significant fraction of the load, is there any
> reason why old revision views and diffs aren't cached? They are not
> going
> to change more or less forever, unless rolled back or something.

They're not a significant fraction at all; a quick grep of logs
indicates about 2% of page views are diffs or old revisions. They are
allowed to be cached client-side, though that only catches a small
fraction of the small fraction.

Caching old revisions and diffs doesn't make a lot of sense on the
server either, since they're not likely to be revisited often. They'd
have to be explicitly expired.

Also I suspect the majority of old and diff views are by logged-in
wikipediholics, which our current server-side cache doesn't handle.

Stats after most of a day:
** all wikis **
Page views: 863755
Cache hits: 537668 (62%)
Cache misses: 18113 (2%)
Client-side: 100648 (12%)
Uncacheable: 207326 (24%)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logos

body:
Logos in Wikipedia articles are fine in the English Wikipedia. See [[Wikipedia:Logos]] and its talk page for more on this question, including the beginnings of an English Wikipedia logo policy.

There's no reasonable chance of any non-encyclopedia logo used in the English Wikipedia being anything other than fair use, nor a significant chance of one being a trademark infringement.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nupedia?

body:
On 13 Dec 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > There will also always be a great many people who will not trust anything on
> > a wiki.
>
> And we should confirm this irrational fear by pointing them to a separate
> website? This would be very unfair. We should give people an opportunity
> to learn. Wikipedia's success is based on overcoming these kinds of fears.

I think you're missing an important point, that if we don't
create/distribute a stable version it will only be a matter of time before
someone else does. And that someone else might not care about encouraging
people to go to wikipedia.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia.com, wikimedia.net, wikimedia.de etc?

body:
Various wikimedia.* domains seem to have been bought up by unknown
third parties. Do we care?

wikimedia.net, wikimedia.biz, wikimedia.us seem to be the standard
domain reseller scum.

wikimedia.com brings up a generic 'under construction' page (in
German); the owner is a Daniela Rohrer at paracelsuspraxis.ch.

wikimedia.de is actually some sort of wiki (in German): "wikimedia ist
eine nichtkommerzielle unpolitische vereinigung zur foerderung des
InternetWieEsEinmalGedachtWar in form von wikis." I'm not quite sure
what's up with this; it's a TWiki and I can't figure out how to
navigate to anything usefully. (Well, and it's in German.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] curiosity

body:
Thanks Fred for most helpful info.

It seems it was me who was contributing some noise to this after all.

Regards,

Ramanan

PS: If anyone is still breaking their heads over :)any questions I might
have posed, most have been answered offlist.

On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 16:47, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Here's a URL to all the lists:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo
>
> It strikes me that this list might be useful to you:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/intlwiki-l
>
> Which deals with "Wikipedia multilingual issues"
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Ramanan Selvaratnam <rama at ukfsn.org>
> > Reply-To: rama at ukfsn.org, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 16:26:17 +0000
> > To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] curiosity
> >
> > On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 16:09, Fred Bauder wrote:
> >> Nothing, but operationally you reach the group who reads the lists,
> >
> > lists in plural?
> >
> > Are there other lists I should scan for what I need to find out and/or
> > keep up with.
> >
> > Again, my interest is to understand Wikipedia better to structure a
> > newly started language module. There are few unanswered questions AFAIK.
> >
> > Ramanan
> >
> >>> From: "Oliver Brown" <oliver at kingturtle.com>
> >>> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>> Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 18:45:24 -0800
> >>> To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
> >>> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] curiosity
> >>>
> >>> What exactly is discussed on the mailing list that can't or shouldn't or
> >>> isn't discussed on wikipedia-proper?
> >>> -oliver
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nupedia?

body:
Imran-
> I think you're missing an important point, that if we don't
> create/distribute a stable version it will only be a matter of time before
> someone else does. And that someone else might not care about encouraging
> people to go to wikipedia.

I am in favor of creating a stable branch of Wikipedia. I just don't think
it should be a separate website.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nupedia?

body:
Erik wrote:
>One way to do that is to create a safe vector of entry on
>the regular Wikipedia, and to promote it prominently as
>such. What is now just an inconspicuous link on the Main
>Page -- Brilliant Prose -- could eventually be developed into
>its own navigational structure within Wikipedia, a structure
>which allows people to easily absorb the wiki experience
>while alleviating their initial fears.

Sounds vague (again back to marketing and use-specialization). But go ahead
and prove me wrong. :) If an internal stable version does not work then we
can try an external one at Nupedia.org.

IMO, my idea has a greater chance of succeeding in a big way and fast but it
also has a greater chance of causing some harm to Wikipedia by reducing
direct traffic (but no more harm than already occurs from other websites
legally hosting our material - see below). Your idea, again IMO, has less of
a chance of succeeding but also less of a chance of harming Wikipedia (other
than wasting a whole bunch of time by many people if it fails).

But even if we do go with your idea Erik, there will be nothing to stop
anybody from having exactly what I proposed except we would not be the one's
controlling it (thinking of all the third party users of our database).

I still say that the best idea is to use the Nupedia name and domain for this.
But I am willing to abstain from blocking your effort Erik. At the very least
the remains of such an effort could be reformed into a queue for articles
Wikipedians deem good enough for Nupedia.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Manfred Mislik

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
I recently installed mediawiki and got tex to work after I read INSTALL
more closely to find out ocaml 3.0.6 is required :-)

Now I'm facing the "problem" that phase3 rewrites an url
http://domain.tld/wiki.phtml to http://domain.tld/wiki/wiki.phtml
Well this doesn't actually bother me much as long as everything gets
displayed correctly BUT it doesn't find ~/upload/ anymore since it writes
it as ~/wiki/upload/ and therefore doesn't show any images cause it cant
find them.

When I manually remove the *superfluous* wiki from the URL it works fine.

Now I read INSTALL and README a couple of times but couldn't find a hint
where I'm mistaken.

--


from_name: Alwin Meschede

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
Manfred Mislik schrieb:
> I recently installed mediawiki and got tex to work after I read INSTALL
> more closely to find out ocaml 3.0.6 is required :-)
>
> Now I'm facing the "problem" that phase3 rewrites an url
> http://domain.tld/wiki.phtml to http://domain.tld/wiki/wiki.phtml
> Well this doesn't actually bother me much as long as everything gets
> displayed correctly BUT it doesn't find ~/upload/ anymore since it
> writes it as ~/wiki/upload/ and therefore doesn't show any images cause
> it cant find them.

I think it should work if you change $wgScriptPath in LocalSettings.php
from /wiki to /

Alwin Meschede


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
You have tried

$wgUploadPath       = "{$wgServer}/upload";

> From: Manfred Mislik <wiki at tictric.net>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 00:26:17 +0100
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)
>
> Am Sat, 13 Dec 2003 22:34:37 +0100 hat Alwin Meschede <ameschede at gmx.de>
> geschrieben:
>
>> Manfred Mislik schrieb:
>>> I recently installed mediawiki and got tex to work after I read INSTALL
>>> more closely to find out ocaml 3.0.6 is required :-)
>>>
>>> Now I'm facing the "problem" that phase3 rewrites an url
>>> http://domain.tld/wiki.phtml to http://domain.tld/wiki/wiki.phtml
>>> Well this doesn't actually bother me much as long as everything gets
>>> displayed correctly BUT it doesn't find ~/upload/ anymore since it
>>> writes it as ~/wiki/upload/ and therefore doesn't show any images cause
>>> it cant find them.
>>
>> I think it should work if you change $wgScriptPath in LocalSettings.php
>> from /wiki to /
>
> Believe it or not. It's already set to /
> But I didn't do it intentionally :-)
> Anyway, that's not the solution :(
>
>>
>> Alwin Meschede
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
Am Sat, 13 Dec 2003 22:34:37 +0100 hat Alwin Meschede <ameschede at gmx.de>
geschrieben:

> Manfred Mislik schrieb:
>> I recently installed mediawiki and got tex to work after I read INSTALL
>> more closely to find out ocaml 3.0.6 is required :-)
>>
>> Now I'm facing the "problem" that phase3 rewrites an url
>> http://domain.tld/wiki.phtml to http://domain.tld/wiki/wiki.phtml
>> Well this doesn't actually bother me much as long as everything gets
>> displayed correctly BUT it doesn't find ~/upload/ anymore since it
>> writes it as ~/wiki/upload/ and therefore doesn't show any images cause
>> it cant find them.
>
> I think it should work if you change $wgScriptPath in LocalSettings.php
> from /wiki to /

Believe it or not. It's already set to /
But I didn't do it intentionally :-)
Anyway, that's not the solution :(

>
> Alwin Meschede
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Proposed table restructuring

body:
E23 wrote:
> Can you elaborate on how performance problems caused by slow sockets may
> manifest themselves? I executed the following query, which extract 17 MB of
> blobs in 1.5 seconds (on a slow computer). Are you perhaps referring to
> the general
> slowness added by retrieving data over network connections instead of
> using local files?
>
> $ time echo "SELECT cur_text FROM cur"|mysql wikidb >/dev/null
> real    0m1.449s
> user    0m0.990s
> sys     0m0.130s

Here, "time" measures "echo", you should rather "echo | time mysql",
but I think the resulting "real" (wall-clock) time is the same.
If you pipe the output to "wc -c", you will make sure all data is
retrieved and not just an error message.

These numbers look really good.  But you should include PHP's client
interface to the database in your tests.  Write a little PHP script
that makes repeated SQL statements to retrieve a total of 100 MB of
blob data, call that script once with wget, and measure the response
time.  Note that the 100 MB data shouldn't be returned over HTTP
(we're not measuring Apache's or wget's performance), only be
retrieved through the PHP--MySQL connection.

You could preload your database with blob data and design the test so
that you can vary the number of SQL calls and the number of records
retrieved per call (1000 calls x 0.1 MB, or 10 calls x 10 MB) and see
if that has any impact.  Running truss (Solaris) or strace (Linux) on
the Apache/PHP process during the call can also reveal what is going
on under the hood, especially the timing of the read(2) calls on the
database socket.

Whether the database is on the same server or accessed over a local
network doesn't necessarily have any impact on the performance or
bandwidth.  Of course, you will never see more than 12.5 MB/s over a
100 Mbit/s Fast Ethernet.  Disk I/O speeds (typically 40 MB/s) isn't
necessarily a limitation if the database server already caches all the
selected blob data in RAM.

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


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject:
Telling the whole story RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release
	:Logoputsch ontheFrenchWikipedia !

body:
Jimbo, I apologize. (One of these days, I'll learn to not write to the list
after a bad day...) For one, I didn't mean to attritbute any attitude of
censorship to _you_... but I've seen at least one article deleted on grounds
it "isn't relevant to en readers" when I disagreed with that assessment,
which has made me rather touchy about that kind of thing.

-- Jake


from_name: Vmehta11 at aol.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request

body:
Hello

           My name is Vic Mehta. I am a Mechanical engineer and I live in
Michigan. I like your site about all technical stuff on Thermodyanmics,
electronics, physics etc....

I was wondering if this is something, can I get on a CD or how do I download
everything for my reference. I only want this only if this is freely available.

Thanks
Vic Mehta
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from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nupedia?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Do we still need to be so oriented toward editing when we already have well
>over 4,000 edits a day and nearly 200,000 articles? A slow-down in editing
>and increased emphasis on getting things in stable form should become more of
>a priority. IMO, the best way to market that - both internally and externally
>- is by using nupedia.org to host the stable content.
>
>
I agree with everything mav said here.
I just *HATE* the name Nupedia.
It's the "nu" for "new", and also the fact that "new" won't really mean
much in, say, 20 years' time.


from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

references:
<oprz40qy0dl2wls5@mail.mislik.com> <3FDB85ED.8010003@gmx.de>
	<oprz47d3knl2wls5@mail.mislik.com>

body:
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 00:26:17 +0100, Manfred Mislik <wiki at tictric.net>
wrote:

> Am Sat, 13 Dec 2003 22:34:37 +0100 hat Alwin Meschede <ameschede at gmx.de>
> geschrieben:
>
>> Manfred Mislik schrieb:
>>> I recently installed mediawiki and got tex to work after I read
>>> INSTALL more closely to find out ocaml 3.0.6 is required :-)
>>>
>>> Now I'm facing the "problem" that phase3 rewrites an url
>>> http://domain.tld/wiki.phtml to http://domain.tld/wiki/wiki.phtml
>>> Well this doesn't actually bother me much as long as everything gets
>>> displayed correctly BUT it doesn't find ~/upload/ anymore since it
>>> writes it as ~/wiki/upload/ and therefore doesn't show any images
>>> cause it cant find them.
>>
>> I think it should work if you change $wgScriptPath in LocalSettings.php
>> from /wiki to /
>
> Believe it or not. It's already set to /
> But I didn't do it intentionally :-)
> Anyway, that's not the solution :(
>
$wgUploadPath is being set incorrectly in DefaultSettings.php, based on
the default $wgScriptPath.
What you need to do is copy from DefaultSettings.php, all lines which set
variables which depend on $wgScriptPath, into LocalSettings.php.

--
Jerome Jamnicky (aka jeronim)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
Telling the whole story RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Press
	release	:Logoputsch ontheFrenchWikipedia !

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>Jimbo, I apologize. (One of these days, I'll learn to not write to the list
>after a bad day...) For one, I didn't mean to attritbute any attitude of
>censorship to _you_... but I've seen at least one article deleted on grounds
>it "isn't relevant to en readers" when I disagreed with that assessment,
>which has made me rather touchy about that kind of thing.
>
It's hard to blame you.  Some deletions can express a POV as much as any
edit.  To make matters worse, once it has been deleted you no longer
know what it said.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nupedia?

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> I think the way forward from here is to emulate the systems used in
> scientific peer review and publishing. What makes Wikipedia work, in
> my opinion, is that is already emulates the model by which scientific
> knowledge has been able to accumulate: an "information commons" to
> which anyone can contribute and which anyone can use.

The issue that faces us is that of trying to find a dynamic equilibrium
between two opposing epistemologies.  The peer review approach tends to
be exclusionist, and although it's fine to be critical of the hypotheses
that are presented, there still needs to be latitude for them to be
presented in the first place without fear that they will be rejected
before they ae tested.

> Until the 19th century, the scientific system was truly open to
> anyone, and credentials didn't matter much. As the quality and
> quantity of scientific information increased and its power to
> transform technology and society became evident, the stakes got higher
> and peer review entered the system as a way of trying to determine
> which scientific projects should be funded and considered reliable.

Was it really open to anyone?  The credentials were different but they
still mattered.  As long as the means for the mass communication of
scientific information were not there, the credentials of the pulpit
were the ones that mattered.  The heresies of a Galileo were not within
the grasp of the common man; there was no gavel to gavel newspaper
coverage of his trial

> Right now Wikipedia is a hobby for most of the people who use it,
> which places it in a position analogous to the days when science was
> the hobby of gentleman tinkerers. I don't think many people right now
> are particularly using Wikipedia as part of their job or in any other
> context where they absolutely need to rely on its accuracy. When I
> personally look things up on Wikipedia, for example, I don't have to
> rely on its accuracy because there are other information sources that
> I can use to double-check anything I find here. If its reliability
> becomes more important to users, people will begin to develop more
> deliberate procedures for fact-checking and credentialing.

There's a problem when a source of information becomes too reliable.
 People become lazy; they stop looking critically at the text in front
of them; they begin to feel that they don't need to double-check.

> One way that Wikipedia could incorporate peer review would be to
> develop its own panels of accredited experts on various topics. Right
> now users are a largely undifferentiated mass. There are some
> differences between anonymous IP users, registered users and sysops,
> but those differences merely reflect different permission settings in
> the software and don't correspond to any distinctions in terms of
> individuals' actual expertise in specific fields.

Where are these "accredited experts" going to come from.  The paradox is
that the peers who do the peer review for the members of the
undifferentiated masses cannot come from what are now the acknowledged
experts.  The peer review must come from other members of the
undifferentiated masses.  Who ever said that the democratization of
knowledge would be any less messy than the democratization of political
institutions?

> In the future, we may want to have some volunteer committees: a
> science committee, a history committee, a humanities committee and so
> forth. These could be further differentiated over time as need be. For
> example, there could be science subcommittees in areas such as
> biochemistry or particle physics. Individuals with credentials and
> expertise in each field could be invited to serve. Suppose, for
> example, the science committee consisted of several Nobel laureates
> and other leading scientists. If a dispute arose over a particular
> article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an
> opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the
> dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a
> binding decision.

Perish the thought! Pontifical truth committees!  When they mediate and
render an opinion it is still just an opinion, and it may therby have
greater weight, but please, no binding decisions.  Promoting an
atmosphere of critical thinking would be a much greater accomplishment.

> All of these changes would consist of social self-organization of
> Wikipedia users. They wouldn't entail or require modifications of the
> software.

Of course it's a social problen, and not a software problem.

Ec

>


from_name: Joshua

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help

body:
*sigh* I'm a wiki newbie trying to setup MediaWiki 1.10.

My problem is none of the links work.  Whenever I click on them it stays on the main page.
After reading through the pages it was noted that this problem could occur due to not
setting register_globals = On in php.ini.  The variable had already been set correctly so
this couldn't be the problem.

My sql version is 3.23.58
Apache version Apache/1.3.27
PHP 4.3.4

http://www.adverserealms.com/wiki/wiki.phtml

Here are the steps I took

mysqladmin -u root password 'mynewpassword'

started mysql
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO emeraldwiki at localhost
    ->     IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Then I set my sql part of my LocalSettings file to the following

$wgDBserver         = "localhost";
$wgDBuser           = "emeraldwiki";
$wgDBname           = "mywiki";
$wgDBpassword       = "apassword";
$wgDBsqlpassword  = "anotherpassword";
$wgDBminWordLen      = 3;   # Match this to your MySQL fulltext
$wgDBtransactions   = false; # Set to true if using InnoDB tables

The install.php script seemed to run fine without any problems.

Any pointers would be appreciated.  I believe I laid out all the steps I took.  I can try
to be more clear if needed.

Thanks,
Joshua


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help

body:
On Dec 14, 2003, at 12:47, Joshua wrote:
> My problem is none of the links work.  Whenever I click on them it
> stays on the main page.
> After reading through the pages it was noted that this problem could
> occur due to not
> setting register_globals = On in php.ini.  The variable had already
> been set correctly so
> this couldn't be the problem.

Before you look at other things, make sure that's really set. Sometimes
there are multiple php.ini files present in the system, or Apache+PHP
hasn't been completely restarted and so hasn't reloaded the file.

Make a quick test.php like this:

<? echo "Testing: " . htmlspecialchars($testing); ?>

now try to load http://<yourserver>/test.php?testing=hello

If it doesn't say "Testing: hello", register_globals isn't on. Also try
the phpinfo() function which dumps a lot of configuration settings so
you can confirm they're right.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help

body:
How about these:

$wgStyleSheetPath   = "{$wgServer}/style";
$wgScriptPath       = "/wiki";
$wgArticlePath      = "{$wgScript}?title=$1";

> From: "Joshua" <josh at agog.com>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:47:01 -0500
> To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help
>
> *sigh* I'm a wiki newbie trying to setup MediaWiki 1.10.
>
> My problem is none of the links work.  Whenever I click on them it stays on
> the main page.
> After reading through the pages it was noted that this problem could occur due
> to not
> setting register_globals = On in php.ini.  The variable had already been set
> correctly so
> this couldn't be the problem.
>
> My sql version is 3.23.58
> Apache version Apache/1.3.27
> PHP 4.3.4
>
> http://www.adverserealms.com/wiki/wiki.phtml
>
> Here are the steps I took
>
> mysqladmin -u root password 'mynewpassword'
>
> started mysql
> mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO emeraldwiki at localhost
> ->     IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass' WITH GRANT OPTION;
>
> Then I set my sql part of my LocalSettings file to the following
>
> $wgDBserver         = "localhost";
> $wgDBuser           = "emeraldwiki";
> $wgDBname           = "mywiki";
> $wgDBpassword       = "apassword";
> $wgDBsqlpassword  = "anotherpassword";
> $wgDBminWordLen      = 3;   # Match this to your MySQL fulltext
> $wgDBtransactions   = false; # Set to true if using InnoDB tables
>
> The install.php script seemed to run fine without any problems.
>
> Any pointers would be appreciated.  I believe I laid out all the steps I took.
> I can try
> to be more clear if needed.
>
> Thanks,
> Joshua
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Timwi

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>First of all, there is no reason to believe that reading from one file
>>out of thousands is any faster than reading one record in the DB out of
>
> I agree that this is how it should be, but I have seen some real
> systems where file I/O bandwidth was considerably higher than database
> I/O bandwidth, even after tuning all buffer sizes and kernel
> parameters.

OK, clearly you have more experience with this than myself, so I won't
argue about your cases. But allow me to mention the two small bits of
experience that I have to offer:

* A company I worked for produced a (Windows) application with a
(MS-SQL) database backend where the database could potentially get
rather large. The Blobs stored in this case were images. The thing here
is that before my time as an employee, they attempted to use the file
system for the images, rather than Blobs. It turned out to be a
nightmare for exactly the reasons I mentioned. The customers were
complaining about the difficulty of creating consistent backups and
ensuring consistency across multiple revisions of the DB.

* The other thing I like to mention is LiveJournal. Their database
backend is pretty impressive and handles the load of almost a million
active users. They have never even dreamt of placing journal entries,
audio posts or user pictures into files in a file system. The way they
have it now they can easily create more database clusters and move users
(and their data) around between clusters using a little Perl script.
With a file system, that would be quite a bit more difficult.

That said, thinking about it in a much less practical and much more
abstract/general way, I have to wonder why Blobs and files are any
different. They are both a linear arrangement of bits. If the mechanics
that file systems such as NTFS or ext-2 use were the most efficient
known way of handling this data type, certainly databases would make use
of it instead of implementing something knowingly less optimal?

> Correct, although not entirely relevant.  Atomic transactions is
> nothing you rely on with MySQL anyway, data seldom moves, and for some
> uses you can move the filename and let the file stay where it is.

I think you're tying your thoughts too much to the way Wikipedia and
MySQL work today. There is no reason to believe that all the data will
always be in one physical database. Months ago I had already suggested a
system similar to LiveJournal's database clustering, and it was met with
enthusiasm save for the fact that not enough servers are available.
There is no reason to believe that the site architecture might not
change some time in the future in such a way that moving data may become
vital, as it is on LiveJournal already. And there is also no reason to
believe that MySQL will never support atomic transactions, or if it
does, that Wikipedia will never make use of it and start relying on it.

> "Database backup" is in general more complex than "file backup"

... but no way as complex as "backup of a data structure comprising a
database *and* a file system".

> The vast amount of I/O over the database
> client-server socket is when every page view has to read the blob from
> the database to the (PHP) application

The way to solve that is MemCacheD. ;-)

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Cache stats

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> views by logged-in users that aren't client-side cached.

I don't understand why you don't cache those?

I assume you're currently file-caching complete rendered not-logged-in
pages, right? Well, I don't understand why you have to do that, because
you're artificially limiting yourself to caching only non-logged-in page
views that way.

Admittedly, to change that now is a bit of work.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Request

body:
Hi.

Vmehta11 at aol.com wrote:

> I was wondering if this is something, can I get on a CD or how do I
> download everything for my reference. I only want this only if this is
> freely available.

You can download the database at http://download.wikimedia.org/. It is
not yet available on CD-ROM, but this is in the works.

The text is available under the GNU FDL. This means you can use the text
freely, but your derivative works must also be FDL'ed (freely available).

As far as I'm aware, you must also link back to Wikipedia.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Cache stats

body:
Timwi-
> I assume you're currently file-caching complete rendered not-logged-in
> pages, right? Well, I don't understand why you have to do that, because
> you're artificially limiting yourself to caching only non-logged-in page
> views that way.

There's a lot of dynamic stuff depending on user prefs, from numbered
headings to inline javascript to TOCs etc. You would effectively have to
move much of the parsing to a post-rendering stage, which would be a major
PITA to code and complicate the already ugly parser beyond recognition.
About the same could be gained with much less work by caching DB-intensive
operations, such as link checking, using memcached. There's no reason why
we shouldn't have an index of all page titles in memory.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request

body:
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 Vmehta11 at aol.com wrote:

>Hello
>
>           My name is Vic Mehta. I am a Mechanical engineer and I live in
>Michigan. I like your site about all technical stuff on Thermodyanmics,
>electronics, physics etc....
>
>I was wondering if this is something, can I get on a CD or how do I download
>everything for my reference. I only want this only if this is freely available.

Wikipedia content IS freely available, with only some restriction in
re-distributing. CD versions are vaguely planned, but no clear date is
set. Database dumps are available at http://download.wikipedia.org
If you want to download a browsable version, try
http://www.tommasoconforti.com/wiki/  Archives are in tar.bz2, so it's
possile that you will need a decompressor program.

Alfio


body:
Timwi wrote:
> That said, thinking about it in a much less practical and much more
> abstract/general way, I have to wonder why Blobs and files are any
> different. They are both a linear arrangement of bits. If the mechanics
> that file systems such as NTFS or ext-2 use were the most efficient
> known way of handling this data type, certainly databases would make use
> of it instead of implementing something knowingly less optimal?

I absolutely agree with this thinking.  The problem is that neither
Microsoft nor Oracle invites me to inspect their source code, and they
don't document (to me) what kind of tests their solution has been put
to.  It's like a dictator that says "you have to trust me", before
they blindfold you.  I prefer to trust my own eyes.

A similar, totally brain-dead, problem was that Sun's Java runtime
environment for a println() was found to make two separate operating
system calls to write(2), one for the string argument, and another one
for the newline character.  If two processes were appending lines to
the same log file using println("line"), you would certainly expect
that the result would be line1-newline-line2-newline, but sometimes it
turned out to be line1-line2-newline-newline, because the way the
separate write(2) calls interleaved with eachother.  The undesired
behaviour disappeared when the application was changed from
println("line") to print("line\n").  I don't remember which version of
Sun's JRE this was, or if it is still there.

This is where running truss or strace on the application can tell you
a lot of the stupid solutions that are hidden in big, complex systems.
If the source code is open, you have a chance to fix the problem.
Otherwise, you have to code around it.  In this perspective,
filesystems are less complex than databases, more likely to have been
thoroughly tested, and less likely to contain the most stupid bugs.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help

body:
$wgServer           = "http://www.adverserealms.com";
$wgScriptPath      = "/wiki";
$wgArticlePath      = "{$wgScript}?title=$1";

Joshua

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 6:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help

> How about these:
>
> $wgStyleSheetPath   = "{$wgServer}/style";
> $wgScriptPath       = "/wiki";
> $wgArticlePath      = "{$wgScript}?title=$1";
>
> > From: "Joshua" <josh at agog.com>
> > Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:47:01 -0500
> > To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Setup Help
> >
> > *sigh* I'm a wiki newbie trying to setup MediaWiki 1.10.
> >
> > My problem is none of the links work.  Whenever I click on them it stays on
> > the main page.
> > After reading through the pages it was noted that this problem could occur due
> > to not
> > setting register_globals = On in php.ini.  The variable had already been set
> > correctly so
> > this couldn't be the problem.
> >
> > My sql version is 3.23.58
> > Apache version Apache/1.3.27
> > PHP 4.3.4
> >
> > http://www.adverserealms.com/wiki/wiki.phtml
> >
> > Here are the steps I took
> >
> > mysqladmin -u root password 'mynewpassword'
> >
> > started mysql
> > mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO emeraldwiki at localhost
> > ->     IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass' WITH GRANT OPTION;
> >
> > Then I set my sql part of my LocalSettings file to the following
> >
> > $wgDBserver         = "localhost";
> > $wgDBuser           = "emeraldwiki";
> > $wgDBname           = "mywiki";
> > $wgDBpassword       = "apassword";
> > $wgDBsqlpassword  = "anotherpassword";
> > $wgDBminWordLen      = 3;   # Match this to your MySQL fulltext
> > $wgDBtransactions   = false; # Set to true if using InnoDB tables
> >
> > The install.php script seemed to run fine without any problems.
> >
> > Any pointers would be appreciated.  I believe I laid out all the steps I took.
> > I can try
> > to be more clear if needed.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Joshua
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sat, Dec 13, 2003 at 02:01:30AM +0000, Timwi wrote:
>
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> >Blob-like data can be stored on file
> >instead, with only a filename in the database.
>
> For reasons I don't understand, many people keep coming up with this
> idea, but it's a really bad idea.
>
> First of all, there is no reason to believe that reading from one file
> out of thousands is any faster than reading one record in the DB out of
> thousands. Secondly, it makes atomic transactions impossible. It makes
> backing up a consistent state of the database/file-system mix virtually
> impossible. It is too difficult to move data around without violating
> the consistency of the construct. And lastly, it makes creating a
> full-text search index quite a bit harder.
>
> Convinced yet? ;-)

No at all. There are good reasons to expect much higher performance.

* filesystem resides in kernel and uses extremely very fast context switches
  between kernelspace and userspace, database server has to communicate using
  sockets, what's MUCH slower. Because it's inside a kernel it has more access
  to disk drivers, can implement zero-copy data transfer, can use much faster
  locks, more efficient SMP etc.
* unless you store databases on raw partitions, you have to cope with problems
  like inefficient double caching of data, discontiguous storage, and lack
  of information about physical structure of data on disk
* filesystems are very specialized - they only provide a few operations for which
  they're extremely fast. If the operations needed happen to be those provided
  by the filesystem, we're likely to achieve really great performance,
  otherwise, we have to implement the operations needed ourselves, and the results
  probably won't be as good.

I think that we're going to see databases that are at least partially kernel-space
some day (some databases use raw partitions already). Just look at the difference
in speed between Apache and Tux. Reiserfs4 is supposed to be something between
a filesystem and a database, so what I'm saying isn't as off-base as it may seem
to people used to LAMP paradigm. Maybe it'll become LTuxReiserfs4P soon.

Backing up a Wiki was much easier in Phase I, when it was possible to use rsync.
Mirroring Wikipedia after the switch to MySQL started to require about two orders
of magnitude more bandwidth and CPU, and it became impossible to do it in real time.
Now you can only synchronize once a day.

And with regard to full-text index, it isn't any good now - it's slow, turned off
most of the time, and usually returns rather bad results. Moving away from MySQL
would allow us to create index that would provide better results.


subject: [WikiEN-l] hrs after disambig paragraph?

body:
Hi,

I have a question. Short version: do we want a hr (a horizontal rule; a
"----") following a disambiguation sentence at the beginning of an
article, such as "This article is about XYZ; for other meanings, see
articletitle (disambiguation)"?

I always thought those hrs were really ugly and disrupt the overall
structure of the page, because they separate the article title from the
article body in a much more pronounced way than in articles that don't
have this paragraph.

I also always thought that it was commonly agreed to use this format:

:''This article is about XYZ; for other meanings, see articletitle
(disambiguation)''

i.e. to use indentation and no hr.

Hephaestos cast doubt on my thoughts because he reverted my change
(http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Angel&action=history),
referring in his edit summary to [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation]] where,
however, I could not find any information about this.

What does everyone else think about this?

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Hi Tomasz,

naively judging from your vocabulary it seems that you know quite a bit
more about this than I do (heh, I've already said that once in this
thread), but I've spotted one thing you definitely forgot, so there may
be others hidden within the thicket of your technical terms:

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> * filesystem resides in kernel and uses extremely very fast context switches
>   between kernelspace and userspace, database server has to communicate using
>   sockets, what's MUCH slower.

What you're forgetting here is that even if you use file systems, you
will still have to use sockets to transfer the data to the webserver,
except in the special case where they happen to be on the same machine.
Relying on this special case is a serious sacrifice of architectural
flexibility. I do not expect the webserver and the database to remain on
the same machine for very much longer.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Agon S. Buchholz

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> wikimedia.de is actually some sort of wiki (in German): "wikimedia ist
> eine nichtkommerzielle unpolitische vereinigung zur foerderung des
> InternetWieEsEinmalGedachtWar in form von wikis."

This means something like "wikimedia is a noncommercial apolitical
organisation to support the InternetAsItWasMeantToBe in form of wikis".

They describe their goal pretty much interactive and P2p-like as "to get
away from a consumer network coming to a publishing [empowered] society"
. Wikimedia.de is supposed to become a "meta-wiki for discussion about
wikis". It is very alternative, and at least one user seems to be
affiliated with the German CCC (Chaos Computer Club).

It contains almost no content and has nothing to do with MediaWiki,
WikiMedia, or Wikipedia. I think, they chose the domain name "wikimedia"
because they're interested in the role of the media for the society and
think (as we do ;) that wiki has something to do with that - having in
mind something like the Radiotheorie by Bert Brecht, or the
Medienbaukasten by Hans Magnus Enzensberger (just an assumption). And
they seem to be interested in weed ;)

According to DENIC, the domain was registered on 10.06.2003 by Dominik
Kuehne, Stralauer Allee 21, D-10245 Berlin, GERMANY. Other people
involved are Marc Teichgr?ber ("RaDaR", radar at c-base.org) and Martin
Steldinger (TriBble, tribble-wikimedia at hanfplantage.de). If you want
to ask them something, try these mail addresses, or I can give them a
call, if they're in the phonebook.

> I'm not quite sure
> what's up with this; it's a TWiki and I can't figure out how to navigate
> to anything usefully. (Well, and it's in German.)

Seems to be a playground at the moment, it's no domain grabbing. Well, I
think, they chose the wrong wiki engine ;)

Greetings, -asb


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Cache stats

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Timwi-
>
>>I assume you're currently file-caching complete rendered not-logged-in
>>pages, right? Well, I don't understand why you have to do that, because
>>you're artificially limiting yourself to caching only non-logged-in page
>>views that way.
>
>
> There's a lot of dynamic stuff depending on user prefs, from numbered
> headings to inline javascript to TOCs etc. You would effectively have to
> move much of the parsing to a post-rendering stage, which would be a major
> PITA to code and complicate the already ugly parser beyond recognition.
> About the same could be gained with much less work by caching DB-intensive
> operations, such as link checking, using memcached. There's no reason why
> we shouldn't have an index of all page titles in memory.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Perhaps we could append a hash of the user preferences to the cache
filename. It would use lots of hard drive space, but it's simple to
implement and would produce little CPU load due since there's no need
for reprocessing. The idea would be to reduce page view time for people
with default, or very slightly altered, preferences.

-- Tim Starling.


body:
Timwi wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I have a question. Short version: do we want a hr (a horizontal rule;
> a "----") following a disambiguation sentence at the beginning of an
> article, such as "This article is about XYZ; for other meanings, see
> articletitle (disambiguation)"?
>
> I always thought those hrs were really ugly and disrupt the overall
> structure of the page, because they separate the article title from
> the article body in a much more pronounced way than in articles that
> don't have this paragraph.

I agree.
Also, many browsers seem to dislike HR elements, or at least be unsure
about how to render them. CSS for the HR element is shaky too. I would
say it is unecessary.


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] hrs after disambig paragraph

body:
For what it's worth, I think either way looks all right, but the hr was
preferred by the boilerplate at [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation]]. I see
that Eloquence has now changed the template and that's fine (although
I'm wondering a bit how long it's going to take to go through all of
them and change them to the new format).

- Hephaestos


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nupedia?

body:
I wrote:

>  > Until the 19th century, the scientific system was truly open to
>  > anyone, and credentials didn't matter much.

And Ray Saintonge responded:

>Was it really open to anyone?  The credentials were different but they
>still mattered.  As long as the means for the mass communication of
>scientific information were not there, the credentials of the pulpit
>were the ones that mattered.  The heresies of a Galileo were not within
>the grasp of the common man; there was no gavel to gavel newspaper
>coverage of his trial

I think Ray has confused "science" with "religion." The "heresy of
Galileo" was not a clash between opposing scientists. It was a clash
between science and religious dogma, in which religious dogma won by
virtue of its ability to imprison, torture and kill dissenters.
Galileo capitulated to the Catholic Church rather than suffer these
violent consequences. The "scientific system" to which I am referring
only emerged as religious authorities lost their power to engage in
this kind of repression, and it did indeed emerge much like the
Wikipedia did, as a system for the accumulation of knowledge in which
credentials had little significance. The Royal Society for the
Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 as England's
official scientific society, drew much of its inspiration from Sir
Francis Bacon's belief that scientific knowledge should come from all
quarters and walks of life. At the time of the society's charter, two
thirds of its members were interested amateurs rather than full-time
scientists. Rather than narrow specialists, scientists of the period
were wide-ranging intellectuals interested in all of the ideas of the
day, from physics to theology. They combined passion for knowledge
with practical interests in commerce, agriculture, and industry. "We
find noble rarities to be every day given in," wrote Bishop Sprat,
the first historian of the Society, "not only by the hands of the
learned, but from the shops of mechanics, voyages of merchants,
ploughs of husbandmen, gardens of gentlemen." That description sounds
uncommonly similar to the description that someone could write of the
Wikipedia today.

Of course, there were limitations to the idea of science being open
to anyone. In the 1700s, literacy was rare and most people were too
preoccupied with daily survival to engage in scientific dabbling or
publishing. Here too, though, there is a parallel to the Wikipedia.
There are no _formal_ barriers to participation in the Wikipedia, but
in practice only people with sufficient time and access to the
Internet are able to contribute, which currently excludes most of the
world's population. (Of course, that's not the fault of the
Wikipedia.)

Ray also wrote:

>There's a problem when a source of information becomes too reliable.
>  People become lazy; they stop looking critically at the text in front
>of them; they begin to feel that they don't need to double-check.

I don't think there is any evidence showing that reliable access to
accurate information dulls anyone's critical thinking faculties. In
any case, this problem is merely theoretical for the time being,
since the Wikipedia hasn't reached that level yet.

>Where are these "accredited experts" going to come from.  The paradox is
>that the peers who do the peer review for the members of the
>undifferentiated masses cannot come from what are now the acknowledged
>experts.  The peer review must come from other members of the
>undifferentiated masses.

I don't understand your reasoning here. Why can't the
"undifferentiated masses" on Wikipedia intentionally recruit the
advice of people who are currently "the acknowledged experts"? In the
rest of the real world, people do this all the time. When we hire a
physician or an attorney or an architect, most of us go to people who
have training, certification and specialized knowledge in those
fields. Just as I don't need to be a surgeon myself in order to find
a good one to take out my appendix, the "undifferentiated masses" on
Wikipedia don't need expertise in everything in order to identify and
recruit individuals who _do_ have that expertise. Of course, this
system won't be error-proof. (Nothing in this world ever is.)
However, it might help improve the quality and reliability of
information presented here.

I wrote:

>  > In the future, we may want to have some volunteer committees:
[SNIP]
>  > If a dispute arose over a particular
>  > article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an
>  > opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the
>  > dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a
>  > binding decision.

Ray responded:

>Perish the thought! Pontifical truth committees!  When they mediate and
>render an opinion it is still just an opinion, and it may therby have
>greater weight, but please, no binding decisions.  Promoting an
>atmosphere of critical thinking would be a much greater accomplishment.

I realize that the idea of giving "binding" authority to such a
committee is bound to raise concerns, and perhaps I'm thinking too
far into the future. The question of whether and when to delegate
such authority can only be answered after committees of this type
already exist and have been functioning for awhile in a purely
advisory role. I think that any such binding authority should be
given only after careful deliberation, and those in whom it is
entrusted should use it with caution and restraint. However, I think
it is a mistake to imagine that no one here ever has binding
authority over anyone else. We already have a system in place of
sysops who exert such authority, acting under the all-seeing gaze of
Jimbo, our Philosopher King. Just as sysops can step in now to curb
edit wars and vandalism, I think there could be a place in the future
for specialized expert committees to perform similar functions.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

body:
On Dec 15, 2003, at 16:38, Peter Danenberg wrote:
> - and should we allow for a shortened form of some sort, like <math
>   value="e=mc^2" />?

<math>e=mc^2</math> (19 chars)

<math value="e=mc^2 /> (22 chars)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Math renderings on new installation

body:
I've been trying to get mediawiki-1.1.0 to work. This time make math did
work and I get some math functions, but incomplete ones, see:

http://dev.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Trigonometry

By logging in and selecting HTML preferences you can get that part of it to
work but not PNG or the modern browsers selection.

These are the LocalSettings.php I have made on math.

$wgMathPath         = "{$wgServer}/math";
$wgMathDirectory    = "/public/html/colorado/math";

Any ideas?

Fred


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki

body:
Hi all,
It may be very intersting to be able to use {{msg:XXX}} from a
[MediaWiki:XXX] page even if this variable is not in the $wgAllMessagesEn
array.
On the French Wikipedia we created some standard messages for pages juged as
"stubs", "npov", "work in progress", etc. It may fantastic to be able to use
for example {{msg:?bauche}} (?bauche=stub) defined in a [MediaWiki:?bauche]
page to display the stub related preface.

Aoineko


body:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 05:31:28AM +0000, Timwi wrote:
>
> Hi Tomasz,
>
> naively judging from your vocabulary it seems that you know quite a bit
> more about this than I do (heh, I've already said that once in this
> thread), but I've spotted one thing you definitely forgot, so there may
> be others hidden within the thicket of your technical terms:
>
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >* filesystem resides in kernel and uses extremely very fast context
> >switches
> >  between kernelspace and userspace, database server has to communicate
> >  using
> >  sockets, what's MUCH slower.
>
> What you're forgetting here is that even if you use file systems, you
> will still have to use sockets to transfer the data to the webserver,
> except in the special case where they happen to be on the same machine.
> Relying on this special case is a serious sacrifice of architectural
> flexibility. I do not expect the webserver and the database to remain on
> the same machine for very much longer.

They're not on the same machine any more.

One big DB server + many small apache servers is not the only architecture
possible. Of course we have to use what hardware we have available, so
moving everything to filesystem is unrealistic at the moment.

But maybe for images and the math cache, it's better to keep everything
mirrored in real-time on every server. Then, filesystem-to-socket copying
is being done by sendfile() system call. In the most optimal circumstances,
it's going to tell network card driver to use disk cache as the source
of data to be sent, without moving data around. Reasonably recent Apache
should have some option to use it.


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: hrs after disambig paragraph

body:
On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 17:57, Timwi wrote:

> (What does "boilerplate" mean anyway, and where does that word come
from?)

Boilerplate is writing that is reused without being changed much from
the original. Programmers often use the term "boilerplate code", but the
term really comes from the early 1900s. Boilerplate is steel that is
used in steam boilers. It is text that is "strong as steel".

In the 1890s, boilerplate was actually cast or stamped in metal ready
for the printing press and distributed to newspapers around the United
States. Until the 1950s, thousands of newspapers received and used this
kind of boilerplate from the nation's largest supplier, the Western
Newspaper Union. Some companies also sent out press releases as
boilerplate so that they had to be printed as written.

(Paraphrased from
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci211686,00.html)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki

body:
> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > It may be very intersting to be able to use {{msg:XXX}} from a
> > [MediaWiki:XXX] page even if this variable is not in the
$wgAllMessagesEn
> > array.
> > On the French Wikipedia we created some standard messages for pages
juged as
> > "stubs", "npov", "work in progress", etc. It may fantastic to be able to
use
> > for example {{msg:?bauche}} (?bauche=stub) defined in a
[MediaWiki:?bauche]
> > page to display the stub related preface.
> >
> > Aoineko
>
> You can already do that, see the primary documentation:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
>
> And the organisation page for this feature on en:
>
> http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Custom_messages
>
> However unfortunately you can't use accented characters in message
> titles at the current time. This may well change in the near future, but
> for now, stick with A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphen (-) and underscore (_).
>
> -- Tim Starling

Yes, I just see it... that's great !
Sure, be able to use accented characters may be nice, but as it mainly for
maintenance purpose, it's not a priority.
Thanks all.

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hi all,
> It may be very intersting to be able to use {{msg:XXX}} from a
> [MediaWiki:XXX] page even if this variable is not in the $wgAllMessagesEn
> array.
> On the French Wikipedia we created some standard messages for pages juged as
> "stubs", "npov", "work in progress", etc. It may fantastic to be able to use
> for example {{msg:?bauche}} (?bauche=stub) defined in a [MediaWiki:?bauche]
> page to display the stub related preface.
>
> Aoineko

You can already do that, see the primary documentation:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace

And the organisation page for this feature on en:

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Custom_messages

However unfortunately you can't use accented characters in message
titles at the current time. This may well change in the near future, but
for now, stick with A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphen (-) and underscore (_).

-- Tim Starling


body:
John Robinson wrote:

> For what it's worth, I think either way looks all right, but the hr was
> preferred by the boilerplate at [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation]]. I see that
> Eloquence has now changed the template and that's fine (although I'm
> wondering a bit how long it's going to take to go through all of them
> and change them to the new format).

Well, I change them all as I find them :-)

Anyway, thanks for your input, and thanks to Eloquence for responding
quickly by changing the boilerplate. :-)

(What does "boilerplate" mean anyway, and where does that word come from?)

Timwi


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiTeX

body:
On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 11:01:40AM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
> (In fact, the prototype at <http://69.44.153.14/wikitex.php>
> prints nothing at all, which is a user-friendliness problem,
> but hardly a security flaw.)

I was forced to defer more complex error handling until we migrate to a
GUILE backend; but for our current bash implementation we can institute
a generic error handler.

> Otherwise I would not trust the module in question.

See the documentation at http://69.44.153.14/wikitex_doc.htm for
current blacklists; we'll continue to publish, as appropriate,
module-specific blacklists.

It seemed prudent, for instace, to disable GUILE directives in
Lilypond; though Lilypond author Han-Wen Nienhuys thinks GUILE's safe
module may suffice (see http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_markup).

> I think that it ought to put us directly inside the {equation*}
> environment.

Precisely; though authors will lose the ability to distinguish between
block ({equation*}) and in-line ($) rendering unlike PlanetMath,
convenience should have the preference here.  We'll probably also
place music directly into the \notes{} environment, in spite of
several useful things that you can specify beforehand (\relative c'').

Best,
Peter


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiTeX (for Chem formulas!)

references:
<brcvaq$6lt$1@sea.gmane.org> <8zijJLUSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<brdo3f$b0l$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<FFBB5616-2D0B-11D8-A09A-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>

body:
On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 05:30:56PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> For extra confusion, <math> is the root element in MathML,
> but our <math> is TeX-based.

That's precisely why I decided to go <rend class=math>, etc., and
pre-empt once and for all compatibility problems.

Best,
Peter


from_name: Matthew J. Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Junk mail

body:
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Linda mallett wrote:

> I just wanted to ask how come when I receive your e-mails it goes to the
> junk box and has very high risk for junk mail? That kind of bothers me.

This is entirely a guess by your email program, and is based on its
(necessarily imperfect) automated interpretation of the contents.

I would guess that the reason it thinks it's junk mail is because it's
addressed to a list, not you, and it contains a standard footer that looks
in some ways like that often attached to spam.

There is nothing dubious about the wikien-l emails except that they're
obviously not just being sent to you.  You should be able to tell your
email program that 'emails from this sender are not junk mail'.

-Matt


from_name: Linda mallett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Junk mail

body:
Hi

I just wanted to ask how come when I receive your e-mails it goes to the junk box and has very high risk for junk mail? That kind of bothers me.
Thank you
Linny
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references:
<brcvaq$6lt$1@sea.gmane.org> <8zijJLUSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<brdo3f$b0l$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> To even alleviate the problem of having to type "math" and
> the added problem that that is anglocentric anyway, one could use
> [[[...]]] for math, [{{...}}] for chem, [!!...!!] for music, etc.etc.

If we decided against the modular <rend class=music> approach and prefer
the token <music>, do we have a consensus on form; whether XML <music>,
wiki-esque [[[music]]], or allomorph [!!...!!]?

Best,
Peter


references:
<brcvaq$6lt$1@sea.gmane.org> <8zijJLUSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<brdo3f$b0l$1@sea.gmane.org> <20031215203416.GD8576@mitdasein.com>

body:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 07:34:16PM -0100, Peter Danenberg wrote:
> > To even alleviate the problem of having to type "math" and
> > the added problem that that is anglocentric anyway, one could use
> > [[[...]]] for math, [{{...}}] for chem, [!!...!!] for music, etc.etc.
>
> If we decided against the modular <rend class=music> approach and prefer
> the token <music>, do we have a consensus on form; whether XML <music>,
> wiki-esque [[[music]]], or allomorph [!!...!!]?

Please, let's use <music></music>, `[' has too many meanings already.


references:
<brcvaq$6lt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8zijJLUSpVB@erik_moeller>	<brdo3f$b0l$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20031215203416.GD8576@mitdasein.com>
	<20031215185157.GA3111@tavaiah>

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 07:34:16PM -0100, Peter Danenberg wrote:
>
>>>To even alleviate the problem of having to type "math" and
>>>the added problem that that is anglocentric anyway, one could use
>>>[[[...]]] for math, [{{...}}] for chem, [!!...!!] for music, etc.etc.
>>
>>If we decided against the modular <rend class=music> approach and prefer
>>the token <music>, do we have a consensus on form; whether XML <music>,
>>wiki-esque [[[music]]], or allomorph [!!...!!]?
>
> Please, let's use <music></music>, `[' has too many meanings already.

Interesting that you should say that, with "<" having similarly many if
not more meanings already.

It doesn't have to be "[", but personally I'm rather strongly opposed to
mimicking HTML/XML when it's not actually HTML or XML.

Timwi


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] It's free

body:
An free (GPL) encyclopedia is what we are creating, like it or not.
Already half a dozen other websites use the information our contributors
have put together.

As far as I know, those other websites don't contribute anything back.
But remember, they don't have to: that's what "free" means: we're giving
it away!

The only claim we can make on others is that IF THEY MAKE CHANGES, we
are allowed to get a free copy of their changes. Same as the Gnu/Linux
software project.

So there's nothing wrong with ANYONE burning a DVD with the current
version of Wikipedia, and giving it away to third world schools or
selling it for $50 each at Barnes and Noble. In fact, they can even
censor it by cutting out all the smut or political controversy, if they
want to -- and we have (believe it or not) already agreed in advance
that they can do so.

Did it ever occur to you that we, the content providers, might not be
the best judge of what ought to go into a dead-tree (or burnt-plastic)
hard copy of the encyclopedia?

Ed Poor


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Timwi-

> It doesn't have to be "[", but personally I'm rather strongly opposed to
> mimicking HTML/XML when it's not actually HTML or XML.

It is XML syntax. Making the entire wikisyntax XML is of course unwiki.
But in the case of multi paragraph constructs, it's useful and intuitive.

Given that there is unlikely to be support for your proposed syntax,
you'll either have to come up with a better one or tolerate this one,
which extends the current <math> syntax.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Given that there is unlikely to be support for your proposed syntax,
> you'll either have to come up with a better one or tolerate this one,
> which extends the current <math> syntax.

I can only repeat that the syntax I "proposed" was only an example. I
agree there are disadvantages to it, even though I think it's still much
better suitable for an international wiki than <math>...</math>.

It is pretty easy to come up with hundreds of possible syntaxes that are
all way better than <math>...</math> if only for the fact that they are
not anglocentric:

	{{{ ... }}}
	{!! ... !!}
         {?? ... ??}
	{@ ... @}
	{$ ... $}	# I actually like this one -- TeXy
	{$$ ... $$}	# or that
	{= ... =}

	{!123 ... !} for math and
	{!o/~ ... !} for music	(OK, not really serious)

You'd just have to pick one. Any one. It really doesn't matter which.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] a proposal on messages and templates

body:
I have written a proposal on handling messages and templates on
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_feature_request_and_bug_report_disc
ussion, but nobody seems to read that page. It's wikified, so I don't want
to repost it here.
Please read and comment. Some of it may be unclear, so feel free to ask.

zocky


references:
<brl5fc$dov$1@sea.gmane.org> <8zukB$GhpVB@erik_moeller>
	<brl94i$ltf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> 	{!o/~ ... !} for music	(OK, not really serious)

Is it a serious consideration that none of the examples are intuitive;
or is that more than made up for by the de-anglicization?

Peter


from_name: Mark Krueger

subject: [Wikitech-l] <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

body:
...to pop into the current debate about the tags, lets prefer
<music>Yeah</music> as well as <math> and <chem> (am I up-to-date or has
something been already decided?) for intuition reasons...

Mark Kr?ger
Fichardstrasse 50
60322 Frankfurt am Main
T: 069/95530009
E: mark at kruegerbrothers.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

body:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 11:27:06PM +0100, Mark Krueger wrote:
> lets prefer <music> as well as <math> and <chem> for intuition
> reasons...

Two considerations:
- how should tags be handled that have subsidiary attributes like
  music: <music tempo=50></music>;
- and should we allow for a shortened form of some sort, like <math
  value="e=mc^2" />?

Best,
Peter


subject: [Wikitech-l] <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

references:
<EJENIMNDFLKBMNBMAGKDKEEHCFAA.mark@kruegerbrothers.com>
	<20031216003804.GA20716@mitdasein.com>
	<BE301BC2-2F4F-11D8-A23C-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>

body:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 02:40:54PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> <math>e=mc^2</math> (19 chars)
> <math value="e=mc^2 /> (22 chars)

Lol, beautiful; hence "some sort of", like maybe <math "e=mc^2"> (15
chars)?

Peter


subject: AW: [Wikitech-l] <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

body:
> lets prefer <music> as well as <math> and <chem> for intuition
> reasons...

>Two considerations:
>how should tags be handled that have subsidiary attributes like
  music: <music tempo=50></music>;

	I am totally d'accord.

>and should we allow for a shortened form of some sort, like <math
  value="e=mc^2" />?

	I am totally d'accord with Brion:

<math>e=mc^2</math>

	no experiments for a couple of chars. World is already too complicated
(even after Saddam has been caught ;-) )


references:
<brl5fc$dov$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8zukB$GhpVB@erik_moeller>	<brl94i$ltf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20031216001219.GA13284@mitdasein.com>

body:
Peter Danenberg wrote:

>>	{!o/~ ... !} for music	(OK, not really serious)
>
> Is it a serious consideration that none of the examples are intuitive;
> or is that more than made up for by the de-anglicization?

No matter what mark-up is chosen, people would have to learn it for the
first time either way. Even to people who know both HTML and English,
<math>...</math> is at best slightly easier to remember, but not
intuitive to come up with.

Once you have inserted three formulas, you'll have remembered the
mark-up, no matter what it is (assuming it's not
*#@&$^%@*#^$%*^$% ... %$^*%$^#*@%^$&@#*).

This is therefore not much of a consideration.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

body:
Mark Krueger wrote:

> ...to pop into the current debate about the tags, lets prefer
> <music>Yeah</music> as well as <math> and <chem> (am I up-to-date or has
> something been already decided?) for intuition reasons...

We could have both.


body:
Timwi wrote:

>> * The other thing I like to mention is LiveJournal. Their database backend is pretty impressive and handles the load of almost a million active users. They have never even dreamt of placing journal entries, audio posts or user pictures into files in a file system. The way they  have it now they can easily create more database clusters and move users  (and their data) around between clusters using a little Perl script. With a file system, that would be quite a bit more difficult.<<

Not quite. LiveJournal identified blob transfer from their databases as a bottleneck and removed them to remove the bottleneck, as part of their work on removing the databases as a whole from bottleneck status, which in general meant shifting database things into memcached caches whenever possible. This moving started in earnest in early November.

LJ blobs (images and audio) are now on a NetApp box filesystem, completely apart from their user database cluster machines. You can see the overall architecture here:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_backend/974.html

A description of the move out of the database machines is here:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_backend/502.html

Without the third party Akamai servers they would be serving via their blob component, which would cache in memcached, loading into that from the NetApp filesystem if not in the cache already.

Addressing your concerns about integrity, the way to do that is to back up the images, then the database, then any new images. With all image names incorporating timestamps that will ensure that the images to match the database are available, at the cost of keeping some extra images - those deleted before the backup and new created during it.

LJ caches data into memcached with the memcached servers (sometimes several of them on one machine)  residing on the web servers (page builders), because the web servers are CPU-bound and have RAM to spare. Lets the machines do double duty.

Like Memcached, the blob component is open source.


body:
Timwi-

> It is pretty easy to come up with hundreds of possible syntaxes that are
> all way better than <math>...</math> if only for the fact that they are
> not anglocentric:

Indeed. They are Perl coder centric. Is it a coincidence that you are one?
:-)

Regards,

Erik (Perl coder)


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Timwi-
>
>>It is pretty easy to come up with hundreds of possible syntaxes that are
>>all way better than <math>...</math> if only for the fact that they are
>>not anglocentric:
>
> Indeed. They are Perl coder centric.

I don't see how they are. Just because of the curly braces, or what?
I've only used those because people have been complaining about square
brackets.

Timwi


from_name: Rob W.W. Hooft

subject: [Wikitech-l] <Math><Music><Chem> Tags

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Dec 15, 2003, at 16:38, Peter Danenberg wrote:
>
>> - and should we allow for a shortened form of some sort, like <math
>>   value="e=mc^2" />?
>
>
> <math>e=mc^2</math> (19 chars)
>
> <math value="e=mc^2 /> (22 chars)

Not only longer, apparently more prone to typo's as well. Add the
missing quotation and you end up at 23.

Rob

--
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug Report http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today

body:
This page currently dies with the error :

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
/usr/local/apache/common/php/Article.php on line 141

--
Gareth Owen
"It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia."
                                 -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
user_Jamesday wrote:
> status, which in general meant shifting database things into
> memcached caches whenever possible. This moving started in earnest
> in early November.

Very interesting.

Perhaps I should point out that my reported experience with blob I/O
bottleneck problems have been in systems where the database contents
were buffered in RAM, and not related to disk I/O.  In theory, such a
database should be fast enough to do anything that memcached promises
to do.  In practice, poorly designed software can easily slow down any
hardware.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Shirt / Wikipedia-Logo

body:
Jakob wrote:

>Hi there!
>
>Christmas is coming soon and a Wikipedia shirt would be a nice gift for a
>wikipedian. Any suggestions yet? The most important part is the logo *which I
>still have'nt found in a printable resolution*.
>
Although this is a very nice idea, it is much too late for this
Christmas, except perhaps for people who are equipped themselves to
produce such things.  Hallmark and other companies that produce a lot
for fixed date special occasions do their planning well ahead of time.
 It might still be early enough to plan for Christmas 2004

Ec


body:
On Dec 16, 2003, at 02:08, Gareth Owen wrote:
> This page currently dies with the error :
>
> Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
> /usr/local/apache/common/php/Article.php on line 141

Bad redirect. Bug fixed, and page replaced.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

references:
<brcvaq$6lt$1@sea.gmane.org> <8zijJLUSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<brdo3f$b0l$1@sea.gmane.org> <20031215203416.GD8576@mitdasein.com>
	<20031215185157.GA3111@tavaiah> <brl5fc$dov$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 08:27:21PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Interesting that you should say that, with "<" having similarly many if
> not more meanings already.
>
> It doesn't have to be "[", but personally I'm rather strongly opposed to
> mimicking HTML/XML when it's not actually HTML or XML.

`<' has only one use - starting/closing named tags. And adding more
tags is consistent with it. It's also trivial to parse.

Why are you opposed to using '<' this way ? I'm personally rather strongly
in favour, so I wonder what are your reasons. Is it because you think
people may confuse Wiki markup with XML (I don't think such confusion is
likely to happen), or because you don't like <foo></foo> tags in general ?


from_name: Jakob

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Shirt / Wikipedia-Logo

body:
Hi there!

Christmas is coming soon and a Wikipedia shirt would be a nice gift for a
wikipedian. Any suggestions yet? The most important part is the logo *which I
still have'nt found in a printable resolution*.

Greetings,
  Jakob


from_name: Ramanan Selvaratnam

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Authorise temp defn of free

body:
Hi Brion,

There are good chances you will recieve these request for authrisation
four times. Apologies.
Basically I had the message below posted at you meta home page than in
the ToDO list.
All comments from everyone intersted or with experience on the issue
please guide us on this.

--------
A bit of an urgent issue... So I will mail you and the Intl and Legal
list on this too.
I had this posted under your meta page not Todolist.

I heavily editted the front page of ta.wikipedia to capture the meaning
of free as in freedom (as set out in the FDL) as the often found
misunderstanding of 'free of cost' was magnified by the initial
versions. The job was made easy as Mayooranathan, the original
translator agreed and urged me to implement my change to LanguageTa.php
I have done the neccessary changes which should really be considered
*temporary* as the meaning of free as in freely distibutable or whatever
that it should be on Wikipedia has to be worked out with many other
capable individulas and possibly organisations, many with internet
presence.

So please authorise my temporay change to LanguageTa.php as it will help
convey the correct message to those who will inevitably browse through
to the front page as I go around advertising the ta module and the issue
of definition it self.

As for the appropriate text in the logo I have proposed a change to
mirror the style of the en logo and currently waiting confirmation from
Mayooranathan.

FYI there is a discussions page linked from the front page of
ta.wikipedia.
...

Ramanan


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Nupedia?

body:
On WikiEN-L:

I wrote:
>Do we still need to be so oriented toward editing when we already have well
>over 4,000 edits a day and nearly 200,000 articles? A slow-down in editing
>and increased emphasis on getting things in stable form should become more of
>a priority. IMO, the best way to market that - both internally and externally
>- is by using nupedia.org to host the stable content.

Tarquin responded:
>I agree with everything mav said here.
>I just *HATE* the name Nupedia.
>It's the "nu" for "new", and also the fact that "new" won't
>really mean much in, say, 20 years' time.

Suggestions....? I like name 'Nupedia' because;
1) it is a brand we already own
2) we already control the .com and .org
3) while not as famous as the name 'Wikipedia', it still is known of by many
people (over 40,000 hits on Google)
4) it is easy to pronounce
5) the 'nu/new' connection relates to the underlying concept (free content
created by a worldwide community of voluntary authors), not its age (thus it
will take the 'newness' a few hundred years to wear off - assuming that the
free content movement really takes hold).

However, what about the other Wikimedia projects? Should we try to buy-up
other 'nu' domains? At first I thought it would be a great idea to have a
Wikimedia-owned publishing house called "Numedia"  but alas that fine name is
taken http://numedia.com/ (the .org is owned by somebody else). But 'Nubooks'
would work (.org and .com available)... NumediaPublishing.org/com is
available but that name is too long.

Other problems:
*Nusource.com taken http://Nusource.com/ (.org available, however)
*Nuquote.com taken by a cybersquatter (.org available, however)
*Nutionary - NOOOO!!! Don't even think of it! Terrible, terrible name.
*Nudictionary.org/.com available but the name is just too long and too bland,
IMO.

We do own Gnupedia.org/.com but as somebody else already mentioned that that
title would indicate a stronger connection to the GNU Project than actually
exists and may in fact infringe on their trademark.

But I really don't think 'wiki' should be in the title of any Wikimedia
content that is published in non-editable form (that would include any static
website it is hosted on and any hardcopy such as books or a '1.0' version of
Wikipedia).

If you can't edit it, it ain't wiki!

So even though 'nu' can't be expanded to cover static versions of all
Wikimedia content, I think we should still use the 'Nupedia' name for a
static version of Wikipedia content unless a better scheme is hatched.

Better suggestions, of course, most welcome (especially if it is a single name
that could cover /all/ Wikimedia static content). Such a name could be used
by a Wikimedia publishing house - it in turn would publish Wikimedia-derived
encyclopedias, books, dictionaries and source texts after that content went
through some sort of approval process.

Just some thoughts of mine. Please add yours.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nupedia?

body:
Tarquin wrote:
>I agree with everything mav said here.
>I just *HATE* the name Nupedia.
>It's the "nu" for "new", and also the fact that "new" won't
>really mean much in, say, 20 years' time.

This thread is no longer about En.Wikipedia in particular. Answer at:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-December/013444.html

--mav


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Shirt / Wikipedia-Logo

body:
On a related note, I was thinking of getting myself some new business
cards and letterhead for the Wikimedia Foundation, using both the
Wikipedia logo and the Wikimedia Foundation logo.  Where's the highest
resolution version available?

Jakob wrote:

> Hi there!
>
> Christmas is coming soon and a Wikipedia shirt would be a nice gift for a
> wikipedian. Any suggestions yet? The most important part is the logo *which I
> still have'nt found in a printable resolution*.
>
> Greetings,
>   Jakob
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Nupedia?

body:
I don't have anything against the name Nupedia in and of itself, but I
wouldn't recommend diluting name recognition. It won't particuarly bother me
if that's the name used, I just recommend against it.

-- Jake


body:
No problemo, dude.  I'm sorry, too, I shouldn't have gotten so uppity
about it.

Jake Nelson wrote:

> Jimbo, I apologize. (One of these days, I'll learn to not write to the list
> after a bad day...) For one, I didn't mean to attritbute any attitude of
> censorship to _you_... but I've seen at least one article deleted on grounds
> it "isn't relevant to en readers" when I disagreed with that assessment,
> which has made me rather touchy about that kind of thing.

Can you tell us the example, because it's probably relevant to the
ongoing discussion of deletionism.  I find it hard to imagine what
could possibly be 'not relevant to en readers'.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A quick thought about 1.0

body:
Cunc has argued, correctly I think, that the idea of 1.0 may be
causing people to delete things that really need not be deleted.  For
this reason, he thinks it best to pursue 1.0 under a non-Wikipedia
brand name, possibly Nupedia.

But I have this counter-thought -- while I do agree that the idea of
1.0 has been causing people to do some things that I don't really
think are best, I think the solution to this is to hurry up and
actually implement a plan/software/whatever to permit those who have
deletionist tendencies (no insult meant by the term!) to work on that.

The idea is that Wikipedia can be *more* expansive once we have a 1.0
"certification" process to keep people happy.  No one can argue "that
doesn't belong in an encyclopedia" after that, because the simple
response is "well, it may not belong in 1.0, but it's o.k. for
wikipedia raw".

It's really the confusion between
Wikipedia-the-always-in-process-website and
Wikipedia-the-final-product-encyclopedia that causes the tension,
isn't it?  Well, maybe not completely, but I think that a formalized
1.0 process would tend to prevent people from thinking of
wikipedia-the-website as the sort of place where we need to limit
ourselves to some finite number of topics.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A quick thought about 1.0

body:
Andre wrote:
>Jimbo wrote:
>>...but I think that a formalized 1.0 process would
>>tend to prevent people from thinking of wikipedia-
>>the-website as the sort of place where we need to
>>limit ourselves to some finite number of topics.
>
>Get lost!

That was uncalled for. Why the hostility? Wikipedia is
an encyclopedia of connected and cross-referenced
encyclopedias. If somebody wants to start an
encyclopedia on a particular genre or topic area (such
as cartoons, biology, history or even smaller topics
such as works of literature like Lord of the Rings)
then that is fine. So long as the information is
confirmable, presented in an NPOV manor, is
on-topic/encyclopedic, and there is enough info to
fill a set of good-sized articles, then why should we
limit what we have in Wikipedia?

What and how much to include in '1.0' is another
matter since we have space constraints (even for a CD
version).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Nupedia?

body:
> From: Daniel Mayer on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 10:46 PM

> But I really don't think 'wiki' should be in the title of any
Wikimedia
> content that is published in non-editable form (that would include any
> static
> website it is hosted on and any hardcopy such as books or a '1.0'
version
> of
> Wikipedia).
>
> If you can't edit it, it ain't wiki!
>

I think this is absolutely right, and is probably why I subconsciously
have been disliking the name "Wikipedia" for a hardcopy version.

I personally think Nupedia is a good name for it, but if people can come
up with a better idea, then that would be great too.

--tc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NuPied ?

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Daniel Mayer a rit:
>
>> 4) it is easy to pronounce
>
> hummm...true

Not necessarily.  Is it /noo-/ or /nyoo-/, not to mention /n?-/ which is
a problem for English speakers.

>> 5) the 'nu/new' connection relates to the underlying concept (free
>> content created by a worldwide community of voluntary authors), not
>> its age (thus it will take the 'newness' a few hundred years to wear
>> off - assuming that the free content movement really takes hold).
>
> hummm....nupedia has nothing to do with "newness" but with "nakedness".

In the present age things don't stay new as long as they used to
centuries ago.  MS-DOS is for dinosaurs, and it hasn't been around for a
few hundred years.  The reference to nakedness is a natural French
reaction that won't be obvious to unilingual English speakers -- it's an
encyclopedia that brings us the naked truth. :-)

I believe that its origins have more to do with the animal, the gnu, and
free documentation licenses.

> Let me think...living nake...is a sort of freedom...the freedom of not
> following social norms, of being body free, caressed by soft wind,
> perhaps free like a dolphin (or an orca ?) to play in the ocean ?
>
> What does that means to me otherwise ?
>
> Yes, the freedom of walking barefoot, without the fear of being cut by
> a  broken coca cola can.

It makes me think of the movie "The Gods Must be Crazy". :-)

>> However, what about the other Wikimedia projects? Should we try to
>> buy-up other 'nu' domains? At first I thought it would be a great
>> idea to have a Wikimedia-owned publishing house called "Numedia"  but
>> alas that fine name is taken http://numedia.com/ (the .org is owned
>> by somebody else). But 'Nubooks' would work (.org and .com
>> available)... NumediaPublishing.org/com is available but that name is
>> too long.
>
> Nakesource
> Nakedquote
> Naketionary .... hummmm....why not.....
>
> NuPied !!!!!  Great name for a new project ?
>
> Eclecticology, what do you think ?

I must say that I don't have strong opinions on the name.  As an
inclusionist, I'm more likely to be involved in the old Wikipedia than
in the new 1.0 project.  There's always wikinu.org and if we want to
look at other top level domains how about wiki.nu if it weren't already
taken?

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images, copyrights & permissions

body:
I moved an image of a sports car to talk, because it contained a
copyright notice, and this conversation followed:

> I'm not sure we ought to use a copyrighted
> picture. --Uncle Ed 21:28, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

--> "permission to use with credits given" as it
--> says in the text you get if you click the picture.
--> We could perhaps replace "(c)" with "Photo by" if
--> that would make you feel better. // Liftarn

What's the policy? CAN WE assume that if someone assures us that (a)
they got, or (b) they are granting, permission -- then it's okay? MUST
WE show the copyright notice?

This reminds me about the guy who posted his own copyrighted article on
credit repair.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A quick thought about 1.0

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> > Cunc has argued, correctly I think, that the idea of 1.0 may be
> > causing people to delete things that really need not be deleted.  For
> > this reason, he thinks it best to pursue 1.0 under a non-Wikipedia
> > brand name, possibly Nupedia.
>
> Any evidence for that, or is this just the so-manieth attack against
> deletionism?

Well, I think it's right, but I also think that we don't really need
to come to any specific conclusion about it, so long as we have
avenues for people of different viewpoints to peacefully pursue their
goals.  That is, people who have a more "deletionist" viewpoint in
which the range of appropriate topics is more narrow can work on that
aspect of things, while people who have a more "completionist"
viewpoint in which the range of appropriate topics is more broad can
work on _that_ aspect of things.

> In other words, I should just let Wikipedia rot because I want to remove
> some things, and instead go to another project where a lot more deletion
> is necessary.

No, that's precisely what I'm arguing *against*.  This is exactly why
we should not have *another* project, but should instead pursue a
certification process within Wikipedia proper.

> Well, I disagree with that. I want Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia. The
> encyclopedia that 1.0 could have been had it had more space. I don't
> want Wikipedia to be just a dumping place for information that someone
> happens to want to write about.

Well, I agree with you that Wikipedia ought not to be "just a dumping
place for information".  But surely you will agree with me that there
is room for differing viewpoints on just where that boundary lies?  That
we ought not to pursue the narrowest possible viewpoint _solely_?

--Jimbo