from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Are TV screencaps reputable sources?

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
<snip>
>> Oh, and if quotes are copyrightable (and we can only use them under
>> "fair use"), please explain to me how Wikiquote can exist?
>>
> I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright
> on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the
> public domain.  I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the
> use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use"   Wikiquote can
> exist because of fair use.

IANAL, which is why I'm crossposting to foundation-l so that someone can
clarify this for us; does Wikiquote really only exist because of the
"fair use" provision in US law?

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

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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
<snip>
>> Oh, and if quotes are copyrightable (and we can only use them under
>> "fair use"), please explain to me how Wikiquote can exist?
>>
> I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright
> on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the
> public domain.  I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the
> use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use"   Wikiquote can
> exist because of fair use.

IANAL, which is why I'm crossposting to foundation-l so that someone can
clarify this for us; does Wikiquote really only exist because of the
"fair use" provision in US law?

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

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list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are TV screencaps reputable sources?

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
<snip>
>> Oh, and if quotes are copyrightable (and we can only use them under
>> "fair use"), please explain to me how Wikiquote can exist?
>>
> I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright
> on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the
> public domain.  I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the
> use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use"   Wikiquote can
> exist because of fair use.

IANAL, which is why I'm crossposting to foundation-l so that someone can
clarify this for us; does Wikiquote really only exist because of the
"fair use" provision in US law?

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

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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
<snip>
>> Oh, and if quotes are copyrightable (and we can only use them under
>> "fair use"), please explain to me how Wikiquote can exist?
>>
> I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright
> on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the
> public domain.  I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the
> use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use"   Wikiquote can
> exist because of fair use.

IANAL, which is why I'm crossposting to foundation-l so that someone can
clarify this for us; does Wikiquote really only exist because of the
"fair use" provision in US law?

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

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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
<snip>
>> Oh, and if quotes are copyrightable (and we can only use them under
>> "fair use"), please explain to me how Wikiquote can exist?
>>
> I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright
> on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the
> public domain.  I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the
> use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use"   Wikiquote can
> exist because of fair use.

IANAL, which is why I'm crossposting to foundation-l so that someone can
clarify this for us; does Wikiquote really only exist because of the
"fair use" provision in US law?

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

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> "I now understand why the GFDL is a bad license." Eben Moglen,
> Wikimania 2006

Tisk tisk. This is really out of context.

The invariant sections part of the GFDL sucks... but we explicitly
reject using that part of the license. In practice none of the clearly
negative parts of the license impact us...

The requirement to include the license itself is still debatable, and
for a text book oriented project I'd argue that a requirement to
include the license text is beneficial.

GFDL also remains the only widely used open-content license with a
clear intention of dealing with DRM. The language is not ideal, but I
think for textbooks the importance of DRM protection can not be
underestimated.

And as Erik pointed out elsewhere in the thread, the easy ability to
take from Wikipedia is hard to argue against...


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Financial Times column on open content

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>maru dubshinki wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 8/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>maru dubshinki wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>He would. There's a reason Dante located the exit of Hell and the
>>>>>mountain of Purgatory in the Southern Hemisphere...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Hmmm! Dante (1265-1321), Galileo (1564-1642). ;-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Are you accusing me of not knowing my Dante?
>>>
>>>"The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing
>>>through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere
>>>just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky studded with stars."
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy#Purgatorio
>>>
>>>
>>I hadn't thought of it as an accusation, but if you want to take it that
>>way you have that option.
>>
>>There is considerable doubt that Dante's reference to the other
>>hemisphere is to the southern one.  That strikes me as inconsistent with
>>the state of geographical knowledge in the early 14th century.  The
>>suggestion that Dante's exit from hell would be in Antarctica has no
>>basis in fact at all. Where in the text do you find evidence for this.
>>Antarctica was not discovered until much later.
>>
>>
>You're trolling again. He never said /anything/ about Antarctica.
>
Keep your bullshit to yourself.  Did you even bother to look at the
article that he mentioned; it makes numerous speculative and uncited
comments.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/16/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:

> We could orchestrate, for example, a policy that says "Wikiversity
> will not host materials that endorse a particular world-view". But
> then, we are excluding all religious material (and not all religious
> material is bad). It could well be argued that much of what most
> people consider to be appropriate educational material espouses a
> particular world-view, such as that of free-market economics,
> feminism, whatever.

I don't understand why a course about feminism needs to advocate
feminism, or why a course about free market economics needs to present
it as uncontroversial.  I don't see why religion cannot be discussed
neutrally. Really, for educational content in WV, I don't believe the
issue is much bigger than it is for Wikipedia. I would think that the
educational component of Wikiversity is about new structure,
presentation, methodology and interaction, but not about abandoning
NPOV.

Of course we might want to import resources that are clearly POV. They
can then be labeled as such in the same way it is done on Wikipedia.
POV can be viewed as a deficiency, rather than an attribute of the
content we have to accept.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica takes positions on many issues where we
strive for NPOV. For instance, it still describes male neonatal
circumcision as an important hygienic procedure, while the practice is
today extremely controversial. Many would find the Britannica article
preferable because it endorses their position. That does not mean it
is the right approach for us to take.

The _topic_  defines the scope. Free market economics doesn't need to
include a discussion of socialism, but it should include socialist
views _about_ free market economics. The most knowledgeable voices
about a topic should always be the ones that are the most
prominent--regardless of what they have to say. Defining
"knowledgeable" will be an interesting challenge, of course.

I don't think original research can be NPOV, but it can be
consensus-oriented and collaborative.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] What *should* WikiWYG do if you hand it wikitext?

body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:27:21PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Dan Li <dto at dev.java.net> wrote:
> > That mode already exists: http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/index.php/Testpage
> > (first enable wikiwyg from the toolbox on the left).
>
> No, I mean, a wysiwyg mode where wikitext is interpreted as wikitext,
> rather than being interpreted as text to be escaped. That would
> probably offend someone's paradigm though.

I think I'm the someone (:-), and as long as a) it's switchable and b)
it defaults to off, I wouldn't have any problem with it.

I think Simetrical is right, though (mark that down, willya :-) --
anything the WYSIWYG *can* do, the wikitext should not be interpreted
for (italics, bold, headers, etc).  Things like template calls and
parser functions can, for all of me, always be 'hot' -- as long as the
editor colorizes them or something so the editor can *see* that there's
something special about them.

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

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


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
I think people who believe that POV forks are the way to go, should
help out Wikinfo.

http://www.wikinfo.org

The rest should help improving articles in the spirit of NPOV.

May the best project win (mindshare, fame and glory).

-- nyenyec

On 8/16/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> You keep writing suggesting this. But the fact is, intentionally
> POV-forked articles are simply never going to exist on the Wikipedia
> project. The culture just won't accept it; the basic operating rules
> just won't extend to it. If you feel it is so essential, please feel
> free to take the database, fork it, and go work on another project.
>
> But continually harping on about forked! articles! solution! to! all!
> problems! achieves nothing.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007 - get ready for the third edition.

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 8/16/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Wikimania 2006 just closed its doors a week or so ago, and it is
>>already time to think about the next edition.
>>
>>
>
>Actually, it was time to do that about six months ago.  We really need
>to be planning these things more aggressively.  In my opinion, we
>should know where the next year's Wikimania is going to be before we
>start the planning for the current year.
>
>
>
Good Point,

Greg mentioned this this morning as well this was a hot topic of
discussion that needed addressing.

A few suggestions I'll put on the main site:

Polynesian Language Institute, Hawaii
Sidney, Australia. (great place but very expensive for a lot of folks)
Vancouver, BC (vansterdam)
Salt Lake City, Utah (UofU)
Mexico City
Cayman Islands
Dussledorf, FRG


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

in_reply_to:
<ebn66u$nrt$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from anthere9@yahoo.com on Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 02:33:33PM +0200

body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 02:33:33PM +0200, Anthere
wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
>
> It is still here.  Summary : we need to update the
> bylaws. On the page mentionned above, a new text is
> proposed. Please comment.
>
> Do we want regular dumps to be more frequent ?

Yes. This is one of the main objectives of the
wikimedia foundation.  The more copies of our content
exist, the more likely it is that the content will
survive and still be useful in 100 years.

I think we've all learned the lesson of the library of
Alexandria.

>
> Could it happen that all attempts to automatically "feed" on the content
>   may be blockable ?

Never! We need people to be able to access that data.
If you're worried about bandwidth, we could always
torrent our daily dump[1] ;-) (I wonder how well that
would work?)

> And that a requirement be made to "pay" to get the
> content in a decent fashion ?

I don't think we have a license to do this, even if we
would want to.

>
> Doing dumps is currently free. But one may argue in
> the future that dumps actually requires employee
> working time. And one might argue that this cost
> money and that this service should require by
> default financial participation.

Because our content is licenced to use under the GFDL,
I think we must provide the dump at no cost or at most
the administrative costs of making the dump. Even if
our lawyer were to tell us that legally we're not
quite obligated to do so, I still think we have the
moral duty to do so.

read you soon,
	Kim Bruning

Disclaimer: I could really use those dumps to do
research on how wikipedia really works at
this point in time. We'd also be less dependant on
toolserver.

[1] Yes I know we're currently having trouble with
getting a dump done even just once a month. I can
dream, can't I?

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Sidebar Translation for
	http://chr.wikipedia.org

body:
On 8/16/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> A user asked about the broken sidebar translation at chr.cherokee.org. I
> don't have the ability to alter the site. Here is what's there now:

This is not relevant to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you want to
discuss an external cherokee project, please get your own mailing list
for that.

Angela.


body:
> Angela wrote:
> >This is not relevant to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you want to
> >discuss an external cherokee project, please get your own mailing list
> >for that.
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> How do I do that? Link please?

http://www.google.com/search?q=mailing+list+hosting

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> Oh I see, Angela note the link in the Message header
> http://chr.wikipedia.org. Isn't this a Wikimedia Project or is there a
> separate list for this site?

chr.wikipedia.org is a Wikimedia project. The thing you keep spamming
this list about at chr.cherokee.org is not a Wikimedia project and I
would prefer if you would refrain from misleading people into thinking
it is.

Angela


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 8/16/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikimania 2006 just closed its doors a week or so ago, and it is
> already time to think about the next edition.

Actually, it was time to do that about six months ago.  We really need
to be planning these things more aggressively.  In my opinion, we
should know where the next year's Wikimania is going to be before we
start the planning for the current year.

I used to work for a non-profit that held an annual meeting in various
random places around the world.  They planned their annual meetings
three years ahead, so that at the start of the 2004 annual meeting
(which was held in Honolulu) they knew that the 2005 annual meeting
would be held in Charlotte at a specified convention facility, and
that the 2006 would be held in a specific city but not any specified
facility, and were down to two or three candidates for 2007.  Now,
their annual meetings are somewhat larger than ours (a typical year
would draw 4000 to 5000 attendees), but our current planning
timetables are far too compressed as it is and will only get worse as
interest continues to rise.  We should be planning at least two years
out.

I strongly urge that we should begin discussing venues for 2008 not
later than October of this year (by which point we should have 2007's
host city decided), and 2009's host city not later than February of
next year.  Going forward, the host city for year n+2 should be
decided not later than May of year n, and the venue decided not later
than May of year n+1.

Kelly

Kelly


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

references:
<94C2557A41E9334FB193979EAC1028BFD473@phoenix.lan.epstone.net>
	<ebtf47$28i$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<5c5f03dd0608151848o4af712qcf54ebffb88fee0b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
It would be nice to put such a limitation in place, but it probably
isn't necessary. If the community has trusted someone to make them a
Bureaucrat and give them the power to grant sysop and all the rest,
there should be no problem desysopping, at least on en wikipedia. I
wouldn't be so sure about the other projects.

Draicone

On 8/16/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> > I'll support a move towards allowing bureaucrats to desysop people on a
> > project-by-project basis, but I'd like to make sure it's well informed
> > by knowledge of the likely social consequences.
> >
>
>
> I'd be in favour of a policy (or even a technical limitation) that requires
> two bureaucrats to agree to desysop someone before it takes effect or is
> allowed.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 11:28:52AM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> > We can use a dedicated IP for scanning, to make automatic blocking of that
> > IP by firewalls irrelevant, and we can set up an informative reverse DNS
> > entry and a webserver on that IP, to ward off some of the abuse complaints.
>
> It was the abuse complaints that I was wondering about.  If those
> wouldn't be a problem, this would seem to be the sensible course.
> Assuming portscans aren't that expensive (I know that there's some
> latency involved, but that's okay for this), anything listed as an
> open proxy could be invisibly scanned and deblacklisted if appropriate
> anytime it tried to edit, which solves the problem of outdated
> entries.  Any IP that's not blacklisted as an open proxy could be
> portscanned and whitelisted if appropriate when it tries to edit, with
> some expiry period.  A block could force reevaluation of the
> appropriate address(es), just in case something is whitelisted and
> becomes compromised within the expiry period.

I would only like to note scanning for proxies is not the same thing
as portscanning.

Good proxy-scan consists of

-rather wide portscan
-tests on interesting ports
--that usualy means attempts to establish conection to
ANOTHER dedicated server on other ip, with running webserver
--for every service there are specific ways how to test for
weaknesses
-you evaluate the requests on the "recievening server"

Proxy scans are usually not welcome by admins, above described
procedure is exactly what a lot of spammers do, you are going
to receive some complains, and likely to end up on some blacklists.

Certainly informative reverse record is necessary, but part of
the "feedback" is automated.

> Now who wants to write this and set it up?  :)
>
> On 8/15/06, Jan Kulveit <jk-wikitech at ks.cz> wrote:
> > -how to develop the rbl ... I think it could be done the wiki way
>
> That would require a ton of effort keeping the list up-to-date that's
> really not needed.  You'd also have to constantly field complaints of
> misblocked IPs, which would be solved in days rather than seconds.  An
> automated solution is the way to go for this.

Automatic re-scanning of any blacklisted ip anytime it tries to
edit is IMO too expensive, you'll have to add some backoff/ expiry
period anyway, likely in scale of hours and days.

Better solution is to add automated removal upon human request - if
you're unhappy being blocked, you fill some form, you're re-tested and
if it's ok, removed. Effort is the same wether the initial data are
a wiki or completely in-house.

Jan Kulveit


body:
> Jeff obviously just pasted the wrong URL in the body. It was correct
> in his subject line, and the translations he provided were obviously
> for our site.

No, that wasn't obvious considering he's working on an external
Cherokee machine translated project and not on Wikipedia.

Either way, mediawiki interface translations are not relevant to this
Wikimedia Foundation mailing list.

Angela


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 16/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Somebody mentioned Wikinfo, which IIRC splits its articles
> > according different general points of view. That's at least
> > workable and in extreme cases might resemble our /draft method,
> > but ultimately the goal is integration according to NPOV.

> I think the quality of two separate articles written by
> anti-circumcisionists and pro-circumcisionists would be a hell of a
> lot worse than a single article fought over by both groups. At least
> we force them to engage with each other and find a tiny bit of common
> ground.

In that particular case, I also like what actually happened: activists
put out calls to action on mailing lists to push a POV, and ... a lot
of the people came to Wikipedia, liked what they saw and started
contributing with a view to NPOV. Informed by their POV, but not under
its spell.

The perennial proposals to run article forks seem to me to embrace
pathological behaviour. Most articles really aren't problematic.

- d.


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimania wrapup and thanks

body:
For those who took part online, but weren't subscribed to wikimania-l ...

Wikimania-l will be a social list for past and future wikimaniacs.
Consider subscribing if you took part this year or last and want a way
to stay in touch with other Wikimaniacs, or are thinking about
attending sometime in the future.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l

SJ

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>
Date: Aug 16, 2006 12:02 PM
Subject: Wikimania wrapup and thanks
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <wikimania-l at wikipedia.org>

Dear Wikimaniacs near and far,

Thanks to all for making Wikimania an amazing event this year.  It was
more fun than a barrel of edit-warriors from Gdansk... who probably
showed up Saturday night.  We had over 450 attendees, a quarter of
them from outside the US; over 50 journalists & media groups on-site;
85 presentations, workshops, and panels; 25 posters and 40 last-minute
lightning presentations; two great parties including robots and
holograms; a scavenger hunt  full of info <hmm>; a Web 1.0 elevator
pitch-off judged by time-travelling VCs, Wikimania Awards for great
free-content media and writing judged by Wikipedians and Creative
Commoners, and the 17th annual world Calvinball championship.  And 40
amazing volunteers who helped things run smoothly all year.

You can find media archives online.  We have raw video for the two
main rooms, but this is not yet online; however audio is available for
most sessions:
http://wikimania2006.wikime=dia.org/wiki/Archives

Video of the Web 1.0 elevator pitch-off will be available soon (Finne?)

We are working on the proceedings; some full presentations are
available already, and the discussions are not over -- all
presentations are open to comment.  A document with most of the
abstracts in one package will be available soon online.
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:Index

Finally, your feedback is appreciated, whether you attended in person
or remotely, in English or in other languages :
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Post_conference_comments

Summer regards,
      SJ

PS -- if you are inspired to launch a bid for your own favorite city
to host Wikimania next year, rough guidelines are up and cities are
being selected within the next 6 weeks (!!):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids

PPS - if you couldn't make it to Wikimania, and haven't filled your
wiki quotient for the summer, there is yet hope. Wikisym is coming up
next week, in Denmark:
http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/


from_name: Alex Powell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>
	<c4ec7cd60608160247p417a8dc4je2fc01f704138e7d@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0608160404v506fee7ah65c2edcf8b1ff09c@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Hi,

You're right, there are quite a few optimizations that can be taken
into account on article save. It is possible that on the full
wikipedia the code would need to be extremely complex to manage the
partial updates, but I haven't looked thru the code, just thought of
it as a suggestion. It would be handy on any mediawiki db - and superb
on wikipedia itself.

I've read a few of the Wikiwyg emails (there have been rather a lot,
and rather a lot of supurious debate!). My 2c on Wikiwyg is that most
editing tasks would be best achieved not from a Fckedit style editor,
but from an augemented text editor. The first steps are already there
with the (mostly useless) toolbar, but it could do a lot more before
complex wysiwyg would be needed.

Ideas:

* A quick button to create a correctly formatted table. Asking for
number of cols and rows. I find this a total pain, and it has rendered
tables worthless to me, as a small change breaks the table. It could
work as a DIV dialog or popup like fckedit.
* Namespace/interwiki suggestion when entering names (though obviously
what we have just been talking about is a step beyond!)
* Should also work with template insertion. Ultimately should scan the
template via XMLHttpRequest and give a list of template parameters
back to the user.
* Hot keys to make bold, italic, links etc (these may be there, but I
haven't noticed them).

I notice that the wikiwyg stuff doesn't actually work that well - the
indent in particular is lost, and if it is reduced to bold, italics
and bullets it seems a little pointless - certainly a lot of effort.
Most of the articles people complain about editing in Wikitext are
filled to the gunnels with templates and extensions (like ref). An
editor that handles those well is a tricky beast to design, let alone
write. HTML editors - which are much more mature -  tend to quickly
revert to the source, since it often is the best way to handle such
things.

However HTML editors work best when they suggest, and prod you along.
I'd say any Wiki editor needs to look more down those lines - things
like an auto preview of a template in a popup div would be far more
useful that the traditional word ribbon.

One issue I have with developing all of these is the speed of MW
startup. It cannot really be used to make AJAX type requests in its
current form, as pages often take seconds to render. Not sure the best
way to speed this up. The parser seems to be the slowest point in most
of my profiles, but simple too much code to run thru
for AJAX requests at the moment.

Best regards,

Alex Powell

On 8/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Alex Powell <alexp700 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was wondering if it had an extension to keep its index up to date -
> > an "OnArticleSave" hook. With that a really useful place to hook it in
>
> That would be cool. Only three cases would need to be treated:
> - brand new article: update the index taking into account that the new
> article may be a redirect
> - article that was a redirect is now a real article
> - article that was a real article is now a redirect
>
> This would affect a very small number of article saves, maybe like 1
> in 100 or less? Obviously this level of integration is going to
> require serious support from the developers.
>
> > would not be just the search, but also the edit box. Little bit of js
> > that checks for the user inputting [[, and then the suggest code kicks
> > in with possible article matches. It would make article linking a lot
> > easier.
>
> This sounds like something better left for the likes of Wikiwyg?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
> In an ideal world, the vendors should have fully-capable emulators available for
> free download and evaluation by web developers, so their products will actually
> be useful to the public.

It appears to have a simulator in the device's SDK:
http://developer.danger.com/site/faq/show#q28
http://developer.danger.com/site/docs/quicksim
http://developer.danger.com/site/simulator

However it sounds convoluted to set up, you seem to need to request a special account (and to already own one of these devices) to
use it, there's no guarantee that the simulator actually includes the device's web browser, and you may have to agree to an EULA
that involves signing over your first-born child.

In short, I'd hold out for an actual physical phone if I were you! ;-)

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>

body:
On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> For me, you can integrate it now and update the index (trie) after each xml dumps. When
> the compiler using a sql database will be ready you will be able to replace the update
> process with the new analyzer.
>
> If you need information about how to install it, don't hesitate to ask me.

Hi, I mean, integrated with *Wikipedia*, not integrated with MediaWiki
- this needs cooperation with various people, not least of whom is
Brion.

In the meantime, can anyone think of how to make this work as a
javascript hack? Would it be possible to make the interface compatible
(same size etc) with the monobook search box, so it could be included
somehow in a custom monobook.js script?

Steve


from_name: Jeff Carr

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 08/09/06 05:46, Plyd wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
>> For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
>> wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup language:
>> http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html
>
> Do you know a sandbox where we could try it ?

Yes!

1) Use Firefox
2) Install the extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/748/
3) Restart firefox
4) Install the wikipedia/mediawiki script:
   http://demo.wikiwyg.net/wikiwyg/demo/wikipedia/wikipedia.user.js
   (You will now have a "Install This User Script" in the Tools menu)

Now Firefox is ready to WYSIWYG edit.

Try out the demo mediawiki site:

1) Go to http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/
2) Click on "Wikiwyg Disabled" to switch to "Wikiwyg Enabled" (*)
3) Now edit!    http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/index.php/Testpage

You will see the normal [Edit] tags are now [Wysiwyg Edit]

Attached is a image of trying it...

Enjoy,
Jeff
oops, I see you wanted the non-free proprietary apple thing :)

(*) A beta site where it's enabled by default would be cool.


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hi Alex,

    There is no extension to have an index up to date at any moment in
wikipedia-suggest.
This is possible but that would use a lot of memory because the
compilation step that
reduce the size is not possible if you are modifying the index.
    The best way to have an index up to date at any the time will be to
have a distributed trie in order
to reduce the memory used per computer.

    Your idea to use the suggest during articles update is very good. Do
you think a daily update
of the index (with the sql database) will be enough ?

Best Regards.
Julien

Alex Powell wrote:
> Hi Julien,
>
> I was wondering if it had an extension to keep its index up to date -
> an "OnArticleSave" hook. With that a really useful place to hook it in
> would not be just the search, but also the edit box. Little bit of js
> that checks for the user inputting [[, and then the suggest code kicks
> in with possible article matches. It would make article linking a lot
> easier.
>
> One problem with it is I don't know how to work out where the text
> cursor is in a textarea from JS, but I guess you could just have it
> pop up somewhere, ready for people to click. Obviously to make it all
> work seemlessly the index would need to be up to date...
>
> Best regards,
>
> Alex Powell
>
> On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Steve,
>>
>> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>> On 8/15/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> With this modification, you will be able to use wikipedia-suggest on any
>>>> project using MediaWiki. I downloaded the last dump and updated my
>>>> website for the ten most popular languages of Wikipedia.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> This is nice, but I want it integrated into Wikipedia. How do we do that?
>>>
>>>
>> For me, you can integrate it now and update the index (trie) after each xml dumps. When
>> the compiler using a sql database will be ready you will be able to replace the update
>> process with the new analyzer.
>>
>> If you need information about how to install it, don't hesitate to ask me.
>>
>> Best Regards.
>> Julien Lemoine
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>
	<c4ec7cd60608160247p417a8dc4je2fc01f704138e7d@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/16/06, Alex Powell <alexp700 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering if it had an extension to keep its index up to date -
> an "OnArticleSave" hook. With that a really useful place to hook it in

That would be cool. Only three cases would need to be treated:
- brand new article: update the index taking into account that the new
article may be a redirect
- article that was a redirect is now a real article
- article that was a real article is now a redirect

This would affect a very small number of article saves, maybe like 1
in 100 or less? Obviously this level of integration is going to
require serious support from the developers.

> would not be just the search, but also the edit box. Little bit of js
> that checks for the user inputting [[, and then the suggest code kicks
> in with possible article matches. It would make article linking a lot
> easier.

This sounds like something better left for the likes of Wikiwyg?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hi Steve,

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Steve,
>> For me, you can integrate it now and update the index (trie) after each xml dumps. When
>> the compiler using a sql database will be ready you will be able to replace the update
>> process with the new analyzer.
>>
>> If you need information about how to install it, don't hesitate to ask me.
>>
>
> Hi, I mean, integrated with *Wikipedia*, not integrated with MediaWiki
> - this needs cooperation with various people, not least of whom is
> Brion.
>
> In the meantime, can anyone think of how to make this work as a
> javascript hack? Would it be possible to make the interface compatible
> (same size etc) with the monobook search box, so it could be included
> somehow in a custom monobook.js script?
>
>
I was talking about integration in *wikipedia*, but if I understand
correctly, you
are talking about doing query on my web site from wikipedia search box ?
If yes, it will probably be a little bit difficult because of browser
protection, you can
not use http request in javascript to another host.

Best Regards.
Julien


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ignoring AfD results / Redirection and deletion

body:
On 8/15/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Stories about AfDs failing (for no consensus) because votes are evenly
> split between "redirect" and "delete" are absurd, because all of the
> voters clearly do not want the article to continue to exist in its
> present form.
>
> Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most
> of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an
> article, not as a redirect and not deleted.

I've raised this issue several times: No one has really decided what
"keeping" or "deleting" means. Are we talking about content, or
entries in the article name space? Every time I merge two articles,
have I actually deleted an article out of process? Is there any
difference between deleting an article (but moving its content to
another article and setting up a redirect) and merging two articles?

One day we will learn to distinguish between the two fundamentally
different concepts:

*Banning an article topic: deciding that we do not, for the
foreseeable future, want a top-level article about a certain topic -
usually because it's too obscure or inherently unencyclopaedic or even
POV
*Removing content: Taking out chunks of text from an article, usually
because it's too crufty, unverifiable, or massively violates one of
our policies.

The first case is fairly rare, but does need some sort of formal
policy to decide if the topic - regardless of what's currently been
written about it - should exist in Wikipedia. Norman Technologies
might be a good example - we just decide if that company is "notable",
and if it's not, then we definitely never (for a short term definition
of never, like a year) want an article on it - regardless of the
current content.

The second case happens all the time and *does not* need a formal
process. It simply needs a couple of clueful people to show up, say
"this stuff shouldn't be here" and to move it to the talk page so
people can work out what to do with it, if anything.

The case of merging/replacing with redirects is similar: a few people
discuss and merge the two articles if consensus agrees that a separate
article is unjustified.

Until we collectively agree on this kind of reasoning, stupid AfDs
will keep happening. Frequently.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/15/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Somebody mentioned Wikinfo, which IIRC splits its articles
> according different general points of view. That's at least
> workable and in extreme cases might resemble our /draft method,
> but ultimately the goal is integration according to NPOV.

I think the quality of two separate articles written by
anti-circumcisionists and pro-circumcisionists would be a hell of a
lot worse than a single article fought over by both groups. At least
we force them to engage with each other and find a tiny bit of common
ground.

Steve


from_name: Michael Walfish

subject: [Wikitech-l] DoS attacks?

body:
Hello Wikitech,

I am curious about the degree (if any) to which Wikimedia experiences
DoS attacks on its servers. Mainly I'm curious about:

     (a) whether attacks happen; and

     (b) the character of the attacks themselves (application-level? SYN
     flood? ICMP flood?).

Is this mailing list the correct forum in which to ask this question? If
not, should I email noc at wikimedia.org? I am a graduate student doing
research on DoS attacks and would be extremely grateful for any
information or help.

Many thanks in advance.

-Mike Walfish


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>
	<c4ec7cd60608160247p417a8dc4je2fc01f704138e7d@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0608160404v506fee7ah65c2edcf8b1ff09c@mail.gmail.com>
	<c4ec7cd60608160431w61aa3cbeg93332cd0732b9821@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0608160440x4c7455a1o86cce5a714d44159@mail.gmail.com>

body:
> May be impossible in JavaScript? Not sure what hotkeys are permitted.
>

Pretty much everything can be picked up these days from IE - though
Firefox may report less than IE (I've had a few issues with FF's event
handling over the last few months).

> Like good code IDE's. These days you can code in a language you don't
> know at all just by relying on the online "prodding".
>

My model for the "suggestion" paradyme. Its friendly for novices and
experts - but keeps you close to what you are trying to achieve. More
powerful Wysiwyg features can always be added, but I believe all my
suggestions could be implemented as "quick wins", as they just involve
a bit of additional clientside script, not rewriting parser.php in JS
- a nightmare of maintenance waiting to happen.

With some careful planning extensions could even spec their own JS
suggest features and supply clientside code - allowing both sides of
the process to be merged into a framework.

> > I'd say any Wiki editor needs to look more down those lines - things
> > like an auto preview of a template in a popup div would be far more
> > useful that the traditional word ribbon.
>
> Nice. Suggest it. :)

Where?

Best wishes,

Alex


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>
	<c4ec7cd60608160247p417a8dc4je2fc01f704138e7d@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0608160404v506fee7ah65c2edcf8b1ff09c@mail.gmail.com>
	<c4ec7cd60608160431w61aa3cbeg93332cd0732b9821@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/16/06, Alex Powell <alexp700 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ideas:
>
> * A quick button to create a correctly formatted table. Asking for
> number of cols and rows. I find this a total pain, and it has rendered
> tables worthless to me, as a small change breaks the table. It could
> work as a DIV dialog or popup like fckedit.

Just FYI, there are Word macro scripts that successfully translate
to/from Word/MediaWiki tables.

> * Namespace/interwiki suggestion when entering names (though obviously
> what we have just been talking about is a step beyond!)
> * Should also work with template insertion. Ultimately should scan the
> template via XMLHttpRequest and give a list of template parameters
> back to the user.

Nice, would be fantastic if we had a formalised way of documenting
parameters. Then it could, for example, scan the <NOINCLUDE> part of
the template page for some special code and provide that too.
Otherwise, most templates could only tell you how many parameters to
provide, by scanning for {{{1}}}, {{{2}}} etc.

> * Hot keys to make bold, italic, links etc (these may be there, but I
> haven't noticed them).

May be impossible in JavaScript? Not sure what hotkeys are permitted.

> I notice that the wikiwyg stuff doesn't actually work that well - the
> indent in particular is lost, and if it is reduced to bold, italics
> and bullets it seems a little pointless - certainly a lot of effort.

It's a work in progress. I see that straight indents aren't currently
implemented. Obvioussly they'll convert to stacked :::'s. Indent works
on lists.

> Most of the articles people complain about editing in Wikitext are
> filled to the gunnels with templates and extensions (like ref). An
> editor that handles those well is a tricky beast to design, let alone
> write. HTML editors - which are much more mature -  tend to quickly
> revert to the source, since it often is the best way to handle such
> things.

That may continue to be the case. Tools for beginners and experts
alike should be encouraged.

> However HTML editors work best when they suggest, and prod you along.

Like good code IDE's. These days you can code in a language you don't
know at all just by relying on the online "prodding".

> I'd say any Wiki editor needs to look more down those lines - things
> like an auto preview of a template in a popup div would be far more
> useful that the traditional word ribbon.

Nice. Suggest it. :)

Steve


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
--- Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> Disagree. An article is an argument (a presentation thereof)
> and two people editing the same article is like two people talking at
> the same time, never letting the other ever talk.
>
> With two separate articles, there is of course still interaction -
> but now, the two people are trying to outdo each other who has the
> better article. Think about THAT.

You can disagree all you like, of course, but that doesnt mean that people whove been
doing this for years will all of a sudden change NPOV.

If you do have a point, its with regard to the limitations of wiki software
for efficiently handling controversial extremely high-energy editing. Thats an
issue for the software developers, and theyve solved a number of problems over
the years with regard to this very issue.

You can pitch solutions to them (search "mediazilla" ) for how to make the
software work more efficiently. They have a very efficient process for how to
deal with suggestions from the general public.

You should also read up on trust metrics, as those seem to be (somewhere) in
Wikipedia's future. Heres my basic breakdown of TM:
http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/campaigns-l/2006-July/000160.html

-Stevertigo

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608160353p7cd5d1d3uea53220537020cff@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2FD28.8070700@happycoders.org>

body:
On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
> I was talking about integration in *wikipedia*, but if I understand
> correctly, you
> are talking about doing query on my web site from wikipedia search box ?
> If yes, it will probably be a little bit difficult because of browser
> protection, you can
> not use http request in javascript to another host.

Ok, so that rules out integrating via a user script until the search
database is hosted at wikipedia?

In the meantime, I think you can achieve that with GreaseMonkey.

Steve


from_name: Damian Finol

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>> On 8/16/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Wikimania 2006 just closed its doors a week or so ago, and it is
>>> already time to think about the next edition.
>>>
>>>
>> Actually, it was time to do that about six months ago.  We really need
>> to be planning these things more aggressively.  In my opinion, we
>> should know where the next year's Wikimania is going to be before we
>> start the planning for the current year.
>>
>>
>>
> Good Point,
>
> Greg mentioned this this morning as well this was a hot topic of
> discussion that needed addressing.
>
> A few suggestions I'll put on the main site:
>
> Polynesian Language Institute, Hawaii
> Sidney, Australia. (great place but very expensive for a lot of folks)
> Vancouver, BC (vansterdam)
> Salt Lake City, Utah (UofU)
> Mexico City
> Cayman Islands
> Dussledorf, FRG
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
Greetings,

I love those cities a couple of comments though:

USA: Doing it in the USA is great, however there is a VISA issue when it
comes to people not from the WAIVER Program (Mostly non-europeans). This
year Berkman and Harvard where really good and provided an invitation
letter that helped many people get their Visa (Although in most of Latin
America appointments for Visa interviews are given within 5-6 month of
calling)

The one I like the most of all those cities, Is Mexico City, although I
think some place like Cancun would be better (Mexico City is a great
city and all but it's really, really overcrowded and maybe a bit
unsafe). Cancun has a lot of hotels and there are a lot of Flights
coming and going, plus it's in a central location for people in the
Americas and Europe (Most people from Europe will connect in Miami or
DFW). Not to mention, Cancun is Mexico's tourist city so many hotels and
locals can speak English.

I would love to say Rio De Janeiro In Brasil, but Americans will need a
visa to enter Brasil.

Either way, I think just like the World Cup and the Olympics, Wikimania
should jump continents, Last year it was Europe, this year was North
America, next year should be either Asia or Latin America.

Regards,

--
Damian A. Finol
X Semestre Ingenieria en Informatica
Universidad Rafael Belloso Chacin
http://www.igluve.org
Linux Counter # 199883
Maracaibo, Venezuela


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
-- I <stevertigo at wikipedia.org> wrote:

" Thats an issue for the software developers, and theyve solved a number of problems
over the years with regard to this very issue."

I do so love proofreading my own posts only
*after* Ive hit the send button. Eugh.

--- Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> It might be worth considering calling Wikipedia
> satire just to avoid legal problems. A lot of
> people call it worse things already, none of
> which gives WP legal advantages.

OMG. ROFL. I thought I had clicked on one of Jimbo's
comments when I read this.

Given a context of an exaggerated paranoia of legal threats to WP,
its eerily hard to disagree with this statement Dabljuh.
However most of us dont have such fears, and believe either 1) the
goodness of mankind to promote free information or 2) the craftiness
of upstart technologists to figure out how to eventually make Wikipedia
decentralized and therefore unattackable.

But putting fear and futurism aside, what would be the point of calling
ourselves "satirists" if that would only defeat our opinion of ourselves as
"encyclopedists."

-Stevertigo

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
> I took part in that thread and then, as now, as have not received a definitive
> answer and certainly no references at all to explain the orthography or the
> grammatical reasons for it.
>
> My main question is does Neapolitan use a) a single character that looks like
> an English double quote mark or two adjacent apostrophes or b) a character
> that looks like an English apostrophe which in certain situations can occur
> as a "double letter"?
>
it substitutes the letters that are not pronounced

Articles

'o (male)
'a (feamale)

de = preposition

like in Italian the preposition + the article become "one word" --> d''a

there is no "unique" character - one' belongs to the preposition the
other to the article

pe + 'a --> p''a

That is the rule of course it also depends on pronunciation whenever a
preposition that ends in a vowel meets a definite article this way of
writing is neccessary. There is no Neapolitan keyboard as such - some
created a keyboard layout that helps to type more easily, but that's all
- no official stuff.

The way of writing Neapolitan dates back to the 18th century when it
still was used as written language in everyday life - then due to
historical reasons Italian substituted Neapolitan. Of course some
changes are needed to adapt these old ways of writing and communicating
to our days ... only think about IT-terminology.

So well, the reason for having these double '' and for being them two
distinct chars hopefully is cleared by this. If not: please let me know.

Best, Sabine

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
On 8/16/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
> Is there any reason not to handle Wikiversity like the commons, and
> allow any license so long as it's free?
>
>
Well, isn't the clutter on Commons due to all these licenses a good reason
to you ?

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
>> I was talking about integration in *wikipedia*, but if I understand
>> correctly, you
>> are talking about doing query on my web site from wikipedia search box ?
>> If yes, it will probably be a little bit difficult because of browser
>> protection, you can
>> not use http request in javascript to another host.
>>
>
> Ok, so that rules out integrating via a user script until the search
> database is hosted at wikipedia?
>
Yes, until the XMLHttpRequest query is done on the same domain and if
you want to be efficient, the Tcp/Ip server I wrote to handle queries
needs to be on the same host to avoid redirections cost (You can wrote a
php wrapper on wikipedia.org that redirect queries to
suggest.speedblue.org but that would not be efficient).

> In the meantime, I think you can achieve that with GreaseMonkey.
>
Maybe, I do not know very well this firefox extension.

Best Regards.
Julien


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
On 8/16/06, Alex Powell <alexp700 at gmail.com> wrote:
> One issue I have with developing all of these is the speed of MW
> startup. It cannot really be used to make AJAX type requests in its
> current form, as pages often take seconds to render. Not sure the best
> way to speed this up. The parser seems to be the slowest point in most
> of my profiles, but simple too much code to run thru
> for AJAX requests at the moment.

Doesn't Julien's program run independently of MediaWiki itself?  That
is, I got the impression that the client wasn't sending a request to
index.php, it was sending it to Julien's program, so startup time for
MediaWiki doesn't matter.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELCIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44E21E27.3020102@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608152328lbbaffb5q5de606fe04eb3067@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2E210.1000907@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608160353p7cd5d1d3uea53220537020cff@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E2FD28.8070700@happycoders.org>
	<f1c3529e0608160442h1c02a45aw49a9c85a1264c706@mail.gmail.com>
	<44E30BD3.5020002@happycoders.org>

body:
On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
> Maybe, I do not know very well this firefox extension.

Looks like it:
http://diveintogreasemonkey.org/api/gm_xmlhttprequest.html
In particular: Unlike the XMLHttpRequest object, GM_xmlhttpRequest is
not restricted to the current domain; it can GET or POST data from any
URL.

It's very easy to convert any arbitrary javascript to be a
greasemonkey script that can be run on any page.

You say it would be inefficient to run the script from a server other
than the one where the compiled database is stored? Is that because
the "TCP/IP server" has a lot of communication with the database? Does
that mean that there is only a single, low volume request back and
forth between the client and the "TCP/IP server" each time the user
presses a key? If so, a grease monkey script sounds quite feasible...

Steve


body:
On 8/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> My first reaction is that it should have to be escaped in some magic
> Wikywyg syntax, which would presumably be accessible from the toolbar.
> Maybe tripled something, like ///insert '''wiki''text''''' here/// ?
> Something incredibly unlikely to occur naturally?

<nowiki> would work fine.  :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
>> Maybe, I do not know very well this firefox extension.
>>
>
> Looks like it:
> http://diveintogreasemonkey.org/api/gm_xmlhttprequest.html
> In particular: Unlike the XMLHttpRequest object, GM_xmlhttpRequest is
> not restricted to the current domain; it can GET or POST data from any
> URL.
>
Ok, it is perfect :)

> It's very easy to convert any arbitrary javascript to be a
> greasemonkey script that can be run on any page.
>
> You say it would be inefficient to run the script from a server other
> than the one where the compiled database is stored? Is that because
> the "TCP/IP server" has a lot of communication with the database? Does
> that mean that there is only a single, low volume request back and
> forth between the client and the "TCP/IP server" each time the user
> presses a key? If so, a grease monkey script sounds quite feasible...
>
Yes, there is a low volume query between the client and the server each
time the user presses a key (you can have a look at
http://suggest.speedblue.org/query.php?query=welcome to have an idea of
the volume).
Me previous idea was a php wrapper on wikipedia.org (opening a socket to
speedblue.org, get result and send it), that why I used inefficient, but
you found a better idea with a grease monkey script.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


from_name: effe iets anders

subject:
[Foundation-l] Please activate the English Wikiversity using
	whatever standard nomenclature accessible from the main
	portal page wikiversity.org

body:
> Also, there is now a mailing list you can sign up for:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiversity-l (although
> this is for some reason absent from the mailman main page).
>
> Cormac

Yaaaay! was already wondering when it would be set up ;-)

Lodewijk


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation's position on non-free images

body:
Tisza Gergo" wrote:

>There is an ongoing debate in the Hungarian Wikipedia community about
>image license policies. I didn't find anything about the Foundation's
>position on the issue (except for the rather vague [[m:Foundation
>issues]]), so I'll try to ask here:
>
>1) Which copyright law should be followed? The Hungarian law, the law of
>the United States or both? (And what about France and the Netherlands,
>where IIRC some of the Wikimedia servers are hosted?) This is an
>important question, as Hungarian copyright law is a lot more restrictive
>(there is no fair use, and works made by the government remain
>copyyrighted).
>
This is an issue that has been debated on the Wikimedia Commons for some
time now. And the prevailing concensus: None.

We just sort of muddle through this, although Commons does try very hard
to make sure that all of the content is cross compatable to all of the
Wikimedia projects and in as many places as it can be useful. This is
why fair-use is not allowed on Commons, for example. See below.

>
>2) What are the rules, if any, for non-free images? Should we follow
>[[Wikipedia:Fair_use#Policy]], or is every community free to create its
>own policies about non-copyleft media content?
>
Fair use policies are something that has been decided on a case by case
basis. en.wikipedia seems to have some good discussions about the issue,
although (since I wrote it) I like the policies on
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks%3AFair_use_policy and they have
stood up to some considerable review. This policy was actually based off
of the Italian Wikipedia's fair-use guidelines rather than en.wikipedia.
Some Wikimedia projects including some language version of Wikipedia
don't allow fair-use precisely because of the issues involved.

See also http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiuto%3ACopyright_immagini

I would recommend against allowing fair-use unless there are specific
requirements and needs oriented toward such images, such as perhaps
logos and similar items.

>
>3) Is it acceptable to use, in a way similar to fair use, images which
>are illegal in the strict sense, but safe to use? (Eg. under the
>Hungarian law, logos or book covers probably cannot be used without
>proper permission, which is often impossible to obtain - the copyright
>holder cannot be contacted, or doesn't understand a problem, or just
>doesn't care. On the other hand, it's obvious that no one will sue
>Wikipedia for advertising him or his product, especially when that
>advertising would be legal in most countries.)
>
>Tgr
>
>
I wouldn't necessarily count out a lawsuit just because it seems as
though it is free advertising. It is important to try and stay within
the bounds of the law and not presume that nobody will care. Besides,
there is so much free content available now through Commons that it
generally isn't an issue. As for worrying about Hungarian law affecting
you, if you are a Hungarian citizen you can still be a target for a
lawsuit under Hungarian law just for making the edits and creating the
content. In that case worrying about how local laws will affect you can
still be a concern and something for you to consider. And just because
the Foundation has an official privacy policy, an official legal request
can be used to try and find out who edited an article and try to find
their identity through ISPs and others. You are libel for the content
you contribute, including copyright infringements.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
On 8/16/06, Florian Straub <flominator at gmx.net> wrote:
> "Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote on Wednesday, August 16,
> 2006 8:13 AM
>
> > If you have ideas for improvements, I suggest implementing a model
> > with 5 or so fake debates in a user subpage, and again share the link
> > so we can compare it to the current model.
>
> What about having one page per day, discussing the deletion requests on the
> talk page of the image and collecting them by using a template on the daily
> page? Just an idea:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Flominator/Deletion_proposal

I'd rather skip it and go to a PROD like system.
Prod is still used on enwiki without toolserver, it's just done via
categories.. The toolserver support was nice but not absolutely
needed.

For us the toolserver support could be even more useful because it
could automagically detect usage, and offer filtered lists (whats up
for deletion that is used on my wiki). But we could get a prod like
system running without that support.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 05:50:14PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > I think I'm the someone (:-), and as long as a) it's switchable and b)
> > it defaults to off, I wouldn't have any problem with it.
> >
> > I think Simetrical is right, though (mark that down, willya :-) --
> > anything the WYSIWYG *can* do, the wikitext should not be interpreted
> > for (italics, bold, headers, etc).  Things like template calls and
> > parser functions can, for all of me, always be 'hot' -- as long as the
> > editor colorizes them or something so the editor can *see* that there's
> > something special about them.
>
> Sounds ok. What if there was a kind of "compatibility" mode where
> typing ' twice invoked italics (and removed the ''), and typing a
> third ' changed to bold instead. Just pondering...

Yeah; I wouldn't mind that either; might even use it.

But what do you do when you typed ''' but meant ''... and it's gone
now?  :-)

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

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


body:
On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> But what do you do when you typed ''' but meant ''... and it's gone
> now?  :-)

Backspace.  That's the convention in word processors for when it
magically converts something you typed to something else.  For
instance, if you type a URL-looking thing in Word, then hit space,
you'll get blue and underlining.  If you immediately hit backspace,
the blue and underlining disappears, but the space you entered
remains: no actual character is erased, it reinterprets the key as
meaning "undo the last automatic conversion" if that's applicable.

I think you can no longer do that as soon as you hit any other key,
though.  It has to be immediate.


body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 03:13:23PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > But what do you do when you typed ''' but meant ''... and it's gone
> > now?  :-)
>
> Backspace.  That's the convention in word processors for when it
> magically converts something you typed to something else.  For
> instance, if you type a URL-looking thing in Word, then hit space,
> you'll get blue and underlining.  If you immediately hit backspace,
> the blue and underlining disappears, but the space you entered
> remains: no actual character is erased, it reinterprets the key as
> meaning "undo the last automatic conversion" if that's applicable.
>
> I think you can no longer do that as soon as you hit any other key,
> though.  It has to be immediate.

I'll have to call that a miswart, if the modality of the cursor isn't
somehow indicated.  I see why it's a useful solution, though.  It could
be, however, difficult to explain why backspace converts three "'"s to
*none*, instead of two.

Perhaps not *converting* it until a character after it is typed...

Cheers,
-- jr 'will design other people's software for food' a
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

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


body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 09:14:48PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > But what do you do when you typed ''' but meant ''... and it's gone
> > now?  :-)
>
> I'm not sure "you" actually wanted: italics or two apostrophes? If you
> wanted italics, then you simply backspace the change to bold, and try
> again. If you wanted apostrophes, you backspace the change to bold,
> disable whatever that mode is, then type two apostrophes...

Let me clarify.

If you wanted the wikimode that '' gives you, and inadvertantly type
''' instead, optimally, backspacing should return you to '', rather
than eating the 'token' altogether, since 'civilians' don't know from
'tokens'.

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

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


list: textbook-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Textbook-l] Printed Versions of Textbooks

body:
I will use this opportunity for yet another shameless plug of my
wiki2xml tool:

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/wiki2xml/w2x.php

You can generate several output formats, including ODF (OpenOffice etc.)
from wikisource, or from a list of pages in a Wikimedia project.

The conversion is not exactly flawless, and some elements (e.g., math)
are not converted, but it should give you a decent starting point.

Magnus

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from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

body:
SJ wrote:

>Damian Finol writes:
>
>
>>unsafe). Cancun has a lot of hotels and there are a lot of Flights
>>coming and going, plus it's in a central location for people in the
>>Americas and Europe (Most people from Europe will connect in Miami or
>>
>>
>
>Cancun would be interesting.  How many Wikipedians are from around
>there?  (nudges Jair to check it out)
>
>
>
Flights to cancun are relatively inexpensive and hotels are very
reasonable as compared to Australia. The ruins there
from the Meso-American Culture are truly awe-inspiring. There's also
diving and crystal clear water and a lot of
beachfront (probably boring to folks from Florida).

Just make sure to provide lots of bottled water to avoid microsflora
issues from drinking from the local
water supplies. Other beverages I am certain will also be heavily relied
upon to by many of the attendees -- limes
included... :-)

Jeff


from_name: Jan-Åke Larsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Did you do any benchmarks? Because that's what I thought we'd do
> before rolling it live on wikipedia ;-)
> How much faster is the dvipng approach?

My tests indicate a factor 3.

I don't have a MediaWiki server to try it on, nor any real knowledge of
ocaml, so I wrote a small python snippet that re-rendered the same image
again and again, using the os.system() call.

Based on other experience, I expected something like two orders of
magnitude more, but here, the repetitive call to dvipng on a one-page
DVI makes for an overhead in startup time. Example:

100 one-page DVIs, one image per DVI, dvips->convert: 120 s
100 one-page DVIs, one image per DVI, dvipng:         39 s, a factor 3

(my machine, YMMV)

If one is willing to put in some more work instead of my simpleminded
patch there is more to gain, say if one were to collect math into larger
DVI files:

100-page DVI, one image per page,     dvipng:        0.5 s, a factor 240

This collection of images is perhaps not desirable in MediaWiki. But it
is also entirely possible to run dvipng in deamon mode, telling it which
DVI to render and the desired output file...

100 one-page DVIs, one image per DVI, deamon dvipng:  1 s, a factor 120

That would of course increase with the number of DVIs you render. The
startup/shutdown of the program is 0.4 s, so each DVI rendered is
0.6/100=0.006 s. Compare that to the 1.2 s via the dvips->convert route.
If startup is done _once_ and all images rendered with an already
running dvipng, the factor is 200. This would involve having a dvipng
process running indefinitely on the server, but makes for interesting
prospects, no?

/J?

--
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)


from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
Hello Sue,

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Sue Reed wrote:

> There is something strange and geeky about me mentioning the World
> Science Fiction convention on a wikimedia email list, but it fits the
> situation. They have a really great system of organizing and planning
> future conferences several years in advance. The convention is coming up
> for this summer in Los Angeles, the 2007 convention location was chosen
> by popular vote last year, and the 2008 convention location will be
> chosen at this year's convention.

Perhaps not so strange after all -- Worldcons have a great and
longstanding model; the best of the ones we looked at last year when
putting together the Boston bid*.

> One of the greatest benefits of pre-planning conventions this way is the
> pre-registration that happens. A) It gives you money to start working
> with right away. B) It allows you to realistically and sensibly
> negotiate with hotels and other vendors regarding number of people that
> will be attending, etc.

Yes, a great aspect to that system.  It also allows community members to
dicsuss the various bid options at interim, more regional events; recruit
potential staff; &c.

Anyone considering hosting Wikimania should read about the Worldcon
system, and there's a lot of material online:

http://worldcon.org/bids/

"Two years out" seems to be a good amount of advance notice for starting
a serious bid.  (More is needed for really enormous events that rent
out entire convention centers).

A good and readable description of what it might be like to go from musing
about a city bid to rounding up support and distributing promotional
material.  I particularly like the 14-hr turnaround from "we need
t-shirts" to selling the first dozen :

http://www.australia2010.org/timeline.html

Cheers,
   SJ

* And the WSFS is pretty close to Wikipedia in spirit if not in membership
-- for instance, they put together a Long List Committee to produce the
Long List of Worldcons, which comes with its own talkpage ("Notes on the
Long List of Worldcons").
http://www.nesfa.org/data/LL/index.html


subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 10:04:30PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
>   Two questions: Do any decent editing tools exist, specialised for
> editing wikis, and in particular, mediawiki wikis. Such a thing would
> have to be capable of browsing, but let you do editing in some kind of
> more sophisticated, enhanced way - whatever that is.
>
> Secondly, if such a thing doesn't exist (possible since I haven't
> heard of one), are there any real obstacles to it happening? Why has
> all the discussion of WYSIWYG wiki editing been focused on server-side
> implementations. With the exception of querying the database, why
> can't all this be implemented locally, allowing a possibly richer user
> experience by using native Windows (for example :)) calls, rather than
> the limitations of javascript.

It sounds as if you do *not* mean "embedded in a browser".

Do you, in fact, not mean that?

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

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


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
Hello,

We have lots of people from lots of projects familiar with lots of
different ways of organising noticeboards. Therefore I think we must
brainstorm to find a better model for our poor [[Commons:Deletion
requests]]. It simply creaks and groans under the weight of too many
requests, it is unmanageable.

Here are some requirements:
* The requests still have to be on the [[template:deletion requests]].
This is because the 'Commons-level' page is actually a 'shell' or
'wrapper' with some instructions, and these instructions can be
translated, while the actual requests themselves are not.
* Want to keep adding new items simple (possibly we can use tricks
with an input box similar to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:FPC#Nomination to keep it
outwardly simple)
* Want to be able to archive individual items - archiving a day at a
time is not appropriate because some debates drag on interminably
(sometime while we wait for more information, replies from other
people etc), and the system has to allow for these.

Some other ideas:
* Ability to watch certain debates only? This would require a separate
template for each item. I think a lot of people would find this
useful.
* Break up page according to ***type of request***? An obvious split
at this stage would be splitting off requests based on format
conversions, such as {{supersededSVG}} (since it seems people are
going to persist in requesting these for deletion, we should deal with
them in a more sensible manner). What other splits would be
appropriate? (Keep in mind it has to be simple for users to be able to
follow it - if they don't follow it, we're right back where we
started)
* Ability to flag debates as requiring participants having certain
skills or interests?? This would be really useful. If we could flag
debates as requiring say, German speaker, someone familiar with
derivative works, someone familiar with PD expiration in the US,
someone familiar with personality rights, someone familiar with
XYZwhatever. Then people would be able to decide what issues they're
interested in and look at those specifically. So this would again
require one template per debate, I imagine.

* Can we think up some extra-MW innovation and get some of our
toolserver friends to implement it? For example, before the en.wp DB
went kaput, en.wp had a very interesting toolserver-based thing for
dealing with 'proposed deletions' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PROD ).

* Need to keep track of those debates that drag on and maybe think up
a better process for dealing with them.

What are some other technical improvements that people would like to
see to this page, to make it more usable?

Are you aware of high-traffic noticeboards on other projects that are
managed easily and well? If so, provide some links so we can check
them out.

If you have ideas for improvements, I suggest implementing a model
with 5 or so fake debates in a user subpage, and again share the link
so we can compare it to the current model.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: HappyDog

subject:
[Wikitech-l] 404 on en.wikipedia.org: Server-side HTTP
	headerinstead of client-side meta-refresh?

body:
This thread has deviated quite significantly from the original question.

I don't believe anyone was suggesting that the internal redirects currently
in use behave in any other manner than the currently do.

The issue was with redirecting from (e.g.)

en.wikipedia.org/USA

to

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA

The original poster was proposing that this is done with a 'silent' 301
(page moved permanently) so that from a visitors point of view, typing
either of the above give the same result.  The fact that the page they view
will actually be 'United States', with a redirect note is not relevant to
this discussion, and there is no need to display any 'redirect' notice
unless the requested page is itself a redirect.

The advantages of this method is that the user doesn't get a 'page not
found, you will be redirected' message and either have to wait 5 seconds or
click a second link.  Instead they are instantly taken to the article they
want.  A second advantage is that the 301 error will inform the
browser/proxy to look for this page in the new location from now on (though
I don't know how efficiently current browsers/proxies deal with this).

The argument against this was that if people start making it a habit of
linking to en.wikipedia.org/USA and then the server structure changes, then
these links will no longer work.  A second argument was that certain pages
will not be accessible in this manner (e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki).

I hope that summarises the actual question and story so far and gets this
thread back on track.  Normal redirects are not in danger!

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
Addendum:
subpages.
subpages are enabled in the project (Commons) and user namespaces.
This means when you create User:page/foo or Commons:page/foo, it will
have an automatic 'parent link' to Commons:page. And you can also use
Special:Prefixindex to find all the children pages of Commons:page.

Subpages have not been enabled in the template namespace. This is why
template:PD-old/es doesn't contain an automatic parent link. If
subpages are not enabled, then the slash is nothing special, it is
just another character.

AFAIK, besides the fact that templates can take parameters, pages can
be transcluded in the same way as templates, the only difference being
that they need the namespace prefix. So

{{Commons:Welcome}}

is the same as

{{Welcome}} if Template:Welcome has the same information as
Commons:Welcome. So if you don't need to use parameters, then using
pages in the Commons namespace has the added advantage of automatic
parent links.

Just wondering if we can incorporate this into a new design somehow......

cheers
Brianna


from_name: Ron Hall

subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
>
> - embedded in a browser, using javascript or something similar to
> provide more power
>
    I don't know if you were soliciting comments or not, but I suspect
    that the first alternative is likely the most attractive - IMO, but
don't
    even begin to ask me how one actually builds such a beastie.

    r


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: wikipedia interview (Respekt, Czech Republic)

body:
For your interest - answers I just gave a journalist. Corrections welcomed.

Do we have a Czech Wikipedia press contact? If so, they should get in
touch with the journalist too - something about these questions leads
me to think the writer is thinking of Wikipedia is just the English
Wikipedia.

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
Date: 16-Aug-2006 16:27
Subject: Re: wikipedia interview
To: Martin Uhl?? - t?den?k Respekt <uhlir at respekt.cz>

On 16/08/06, Martin Uhl?? - t?den?k Respekt <uhlir at respekt.cz> wrote:

> I am a journalist working for the Czech political magazine Respect Weekly
> (www.respekt.cz), based in Prague, Czech Republic. I am working on a story
> about Wikipedia now and I would like to ask you few questions. Do you think
> you would have time to respond? Or should I rather call you? My deadline is
> Friday. The questions are:

I'll answer them as best I can right now, and will be happy to answer
in more detail as you need it.

> - The Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia has 5 paid employees. Is it
> true that all other participants of the Foundation's projects, e.g. all
> contributors to Wikipedia, work for free?

Yes, almost all Wikipedia contributors and administrators are
volunteers - including Jimmy Wales, who founded the project and still
leads it. I think some are paid by other companies (e.g. some of the
system administrators). But Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects are
built almost entirely on the work of volunteers.

> - Who created all the software which is needed to run Wikipedia? Were it
> paid programmers?

The Foundation employs Brion Vibber and Tim Starling as software
developers and Wikimedia system administrators. The Mediawiki software
itself is open source and is developed by a pool of mostly volunteer
contributors. The Foundation also has several volunteer system
administrators.

The wiki software is called MediaWiki. A page about its history is
here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_history

When Wikipedia started in January 2001, it ran on UseMod, a program
that already existed and was in use on many other wikis. (This is now
known as the "Phase I" software.)

In January 2002, a new version of the software (using PHP and with
data stored in a MySQL database) was written by Magnus Manske
specifically for Wikipedia, for greater scalability and functionality
(the "Phase II" software). This was used until late 2002 or early
2003, I think.

Around this time, Lee Daniel Crocker rewrote the software again, for
even more scalability and functionality (the "Phase III software").
Over 2003, Brion Vibber gradually became the lead developer. This
third version of the software was named MediaWiki in July 2003. The
software has been developed from this codebase since then.

The Mediawiki software is open source and free software, free for
anyone to use; and many websites use it, and many organisations and
companies use it internally. Its page is http://www.mediawiki.org/ .

> - What are the main incentives which drive so many contributors of Wikipedia
> to work for free? Some people say that for example admins and other
> high-ranking editors do it because they can exert control over others.

Most volunteers work on Wikipedia because they like the mission of the
project: to provide good free encyclopedias and other related
information sources, that others can freely reuse.

I do it because I like contributing to a collection of knowledge which
will be of use to others. I'm particularly pleased when something I've
written is used by others. Any project this size will also need
administration, an organisational structure, public relations and so
on.

An old Wikipedia page on why people edit it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who,_Why%3F

Sometimes people attribute an admin's actions against them to a sheer
wish for control over others, but I think this is largely erroneous in
assuming bad faith of the admins in question, who pretty much all
believe sincerely in the mission of the project. Of course, some
people are less good at working with others than other people might
be, and working with thousands of volunteers effectively is
intrinsically very difficult! Volunteer motivation is powerful but
very difficult to manage, because ultimately one doesn't have control
over a volunteer's actions - they have to want to do what you want
them to do. That is, you have to be convincing and motivating.

> - Do you consider having advertising on Wikipedia pages?

This is not expected ever to happen. The idea has been strongly
rejected by the community every time it is raised. In fact, a few
years ago, a lot of contributors to the Spanish Wikipedia left
Wikipedia.org to form another free encyclopedia project, Enciclopedia
Libre - because advertising on Wikipedia was even discussed!

Arguments for advertising are that we would make tremendous amounts of
money, and it would pretty much solve Wikipedia's funding problems.
Arguments against are that introducing advertising would lead to a lot
of the volunteers leaving immediately (I think this is the strongest
argument against) and that we want to keep ourselves completely
editorially independent of advertising.

The cost of no advertising for us is that we have trouble keeping up
with the server hardware demands of being the no. 17 website (Alexa
rating) in the world. All other organisations in the top 20 have
proper funding and a large technical staff! So instead of
inconveniencing the readers and editors with advertising, we end up
inconveniencing them with occasional server slowness, overload or
unavailability. The readers and editors seem to consider this a lesser
evil than advertising.

> - To improve the editorial control, Wikipedia has been thinking recently
> about having stable versions of articles that are considered to be finished,
> while further discussions about the content may happen elsewhere. Is it
> working this way now? I know that some articles are locked, but I am not
> sure if it is the same thing.

Locking is different from stable versions. Articles are locked to
prevent vandalism or other problematic editing. Although we prefer
semi-protecting articles rather than locking completely - this means
that people can only edit the article if they are logged in and have
had the account a few days. But we prefer to avoid even this where
possible.

It's possible for the Wikipedia model (free for all to edit, neutral
point of view) to produce a good finished product - the German
Wikipedia has done three released versions, on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM.
This proves that the Wikipedia model can produce a real encyclopedia
in product form that people will pay money for.

So the problem is then to get the other language Wikipedias to
releasable quality, or a subset of a given encyclopedia - for example,
not all of the English Wikipedia might be of release quality, but
perhaps a subset with good coverage of topics can be brought to
release quality.

Many models have been proposed for this, but I think it's unlikely the
volunteer community will want to have articles be locked for stability
- it's far too useful having the website be the live working draft
version of all articles.

Possibilities that have been proposed include having a separate
website for stable versions, or a link at the top of the article to an
agreed stable version - so that people wanting a good version can go
to that, or they can see the very latest version on the page itself.

I know that on the English Wikipedia it's still the subject of much
debate; I don't know what the state of debate is on other language
Wikipedias.

> Thanks a lot for your help.

I hope this has been of use to you! If you have any more questions,
please email me, or if necessary my phone number is +44 (7733) 223
584.

- thanks, David.


from_name: SJ

body:
Damian Finol writes:
> unsafe). Cancun has a lot of hotels and there are a lot of Flights
> coming and going, plus it's in a central location for people in the
> Americas and Europe (Most people from Europe will connect in Miami or

Cancun would be interesting.  How many Wikipedians are from around
there?  (nudges Jair to check it out)

Rio : visas could be easier for Americans than the other way around.
Brasil was the most difficult country to work with this year re:
visas.

> Either way, I think just like the World Cup and the Olympics, Wikimania
> should jump continents, Last year it was Europe, this year was North
> America, next year should be either Asia or Latin America.

Absolutely.  Wikimania should make an effort to showcase the
geographic and linguistic diversity of the projects, even/especially
where the diversity of the most-active Wikimedians lags behind -- this
is a chicken and egg problem.

On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
> > I strongly urge that we should begin discussing venues for 2008 not
> > later than October of this year (by which point we should have 2007's
> > host city decided), and 2009's host city not later than February of
> > next year.  Going forward, the host city for year n+2 should be
> > decided not later than May of year n, and the venue decided not later
> > than May of year n+1.

We could also take advantage of Wikimania as a center for discussion,
and have the bulk of a distributed planning meeting at Wikimania each
year about the coming three years -- encouraging new bids for year
n+3, deciding the host city for year n+2 [currently we're a year
behind that schedule] and discussing the venue for year n+1 [which
should already be reserved].

Jimmy Wales writes:
> I agree, and I was talking with some UK people who felt the same way...
> it is hard to get a good venue in some cases because they are reserved
> a full year in advance.
>
> Perhaps in the deliberations about next year's wikimania, we should
> ponder 2007 and 2008 simultaneously, since the choices are not fully
> independent, given our desire for ongoing geographical diversity.

Good speakers are also sometimes reserved a year in advance, and other
conferences want to know how to avoid conflicting with Wikimania's
dates.

Considering two years at once : it's true the choices are not
independent.  Hopefully we can set a schedule for decisions about 2008
and 2009 so that we shift smoothly to a less hectic calendar.

SJ

ps - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 16/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> But I *promise* you that you won't ever find a good solution for
> shit like libanon-israel or circumcision or - you name it - without
> making signed forks, where different (sets of) people can write
> multiple coherent articles about the same thing, instead of
> forcing everybody to mess with the same one.

Yeah, but I'm entirely unconvinced the result, even in the
pathological cases, would be better for the reader. The previous
example you gave - anti-circumcision activism - was dealt with not by
forking the articles, but by dealing with the problem editors. Since
they were the problem. Editors who can't cope with having to work
effectively with people of a different POV really shouldn't be editing
while they can't cope with it.

In cases like Israel-Palestine, the article conflict won't be solved
unless and until the real-world conflict is solved, and even then.
Probably it needs a permanent "current event" tag ;-)

I'm really not convinced that examples like this warrant throwing away
NPOV. I really think NPOV is Wikipedia's secret sauce. Not just the
wiki editing model - NPOV is the radically new thing Wikpedia does in
terms of the actual content.

- d.


from_name: hzzhang

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikipedia category

body:
Hi,

Does anyone know if wikipedia has a downloadable file for all its categories
information?
Just like dmoz's one?

http://rdf.dmoz.org/

Thanks

Tom

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/wikipedia-category-tf2118612.html#a5843097
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 09:37:31PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > If you wanted the wikimode that '' gives you, and inadvertantly type
> > ''' instead, optimally, backspacing should return you to '', rather
> > than eating the 'token' altogether, since 'civilians' don't know from
> > 'tokens'.
>
> I'm kind of totally confused. I was pretty much presuming that for
> normal "civilians", typing '' would give them '' - two apostrophes,
> which would be escaped when you save. If you're in some fancy mode
> where giving '' actually gives you italics, and ''' gives you bold,
> well, you can probably figure out why
> apostrophe-apostrophe-apostrophe-backspace gives you nothing at all.

Because I assumed you meant "I type '''this, and when I type the 't',
the system switches to bold, and makes the ''' disappear immediately",
which is pretty clearly not what you really meant.  :-)

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

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/16/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > > It could well be argued that much of what most
> > > people consider to be appropriate educational material espouses a
> > > particular world-view, such as that of free-market economics,
> > > feminism, whatever.
> >
> > It could well be argued that this is one of the things which is deeply
> > flawed about proprietary texts... the passing off of propaganda of
> > whatever kind as being educational materials.
> >
> > > This is a difficult issue that we can't simply dismiss out of hand.
> >
> > Certainly, we do need to discuss it in detail.  But I think it would be
> > a tragic mistake to dismiss NPOV out of hand based on arguments which
> > fail to draw on our deep experience with how it works and what it means.
> >
> > --Jimbo
>
>
> I think part of my reaction to the word "neutral" in this discussion
> is due to the fact that I don't really know what it means :-).

It's a very difficult topic.  For perspective: a french curriculum
about how to teach neutrally, for teachers in french-speaking belgium
--
http://www.academielouvain.be/view.php3?include=288&pere=139&print=0

Investing "NPOV" or the general sense of neutrality with different
meaning for each Project -- and taking this seriously, rather than
relying on the acronym as a totem, may be quite beneficial.  Other
examples in the Wikimedia family : there are certainly different
senses of neutrality needed for coping with linguistic or species
standards than there are when crafting encyclopedic articles.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity