subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Offensive photos policy

body:
>>Perhaps there is a software solution. We could add a field to the
>>"image" table called "img_rating," which could be used to indicate
>>potentially offensive characteristics of the image from a fixed list
>>of possibilities, e.g., "sex," "violence," "profanity,"
>>"scatological." The same fixed list could be added to user options,
>>so that people could choose themselves which types of images they
>>prefer not to see.
>
>
> There's some more discussion on the hiding/classification subject at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_content.
>
> Gabriel Wicke

Suggestions

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_content#Categories


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

body:
Delirium-
> Erik Moeller wrote:

>> For example, I could imagine that a compromise could be reached with the 8
>> users who insist on showing the Nick Berg photo inline to wait with any
>> such move for 1 year, to let the issue cool down, and to only include the
>> photo when user-side filtering technology is in place.

> I'd be willing to go along with that, though I think several other
> images, such as the dead body on [[Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal]] and
> the spread-open labia on [[clitoris]] should be treated similarly.

If they meet the suggested 80% threshold for linking rather than
displaying inline, they should be treated in the same way as the Nick Berg
photo until client side filtering at least in some basic form exists.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David Kastrup

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for TeX math rendering.

references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 10:27:40PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> > >>I have just taken a look at some Wikimedia pages, and it struck me as
> >>odd that inline math was rendered without attention to the baseline.
> >  HTML side is the difficult one, not the TeX side.
> > How to do that in HTML ?
>
> Well, if we can get the height in pixels of the image (easy) _and_ the
> Y-pixel position in the image of the baseline (????) it might be
> possible to use relative positioning on the <img> to bump it down a
> few pixels to match with the surrounding text baseline, something
> like:
>
>    <img src="/math/123465.png" style="position:relative; top:4px" />
>
> I haven't tested this theory, and that's dependent on getting the
> information out of the renderer.

Well, as I already wrote: the information can be retrieved by using
preview.sty and/or dvipng, easily.  dvipng has command line options
for writing out the ascender/descender information, and preview.sty
will output the interesting information if you just use the "lyx"
option.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re	recipes
	and how-tos?

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I have no objection to documenting ALL the ways to put in a light
> bulb. (There are more than one ways.)  Just because the first person
> to post on the subject has only presented one way of doing something
> does not in itself make that contribution POV.  If it is the only POV
> it is necessarily neutral.  If there are other POVs, the solution
> begins with others presenting them, not with censoring the one that's
> already there.

I see this as more a place for a Wikibook recipes book.  An article that
consists of 15 pages listing all the variations on chocolate cake is
ridiculous for an encyclopedia.  An encyclopedia isn't the place to get
detailed how-to instructions, but to get conceptual information.  This
is why the article on, say [[C programming language]] describes the
language, rather than being an intro to programming in C tutorial---if
you want a detailed intro to C, that's what an "intro to programming in
C" wikibook would be for.

I don't even see why this is an argument---it's so completely ridiculous
to have recipes in an encyclopedia, barring some famous ones, that I'm
baffled people are actually seriously defending the idea.

-Mark


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
--- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 05:01:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> For the WikiReaders I'm currently setting up a webshop. I'm still
> working at it, implementing a multi-seller function.
> The idea is that everybody can sell printings, CD/DVDs or
> merchandise stuff on the site. For the sellers the biggest
> advantage is the central marekt and for the customer cheaper
> shipping is a big advantage (I neither live in CafePress country
> nor do I have a credit card).

Sounds neat. The fact that CafePress only accepts US dollars and is only in
English is a big drawback. On top of that, they are pretty darn expensive.

> Maybe it's a good time to start discussions about an official
> Wikimedia shop. Comments?

I don't know since that would require us to have storage space, a distribution
system, a secure server to handle credit cards, and a staff to fill and send
out orders and deal with problems. Unfortunately CafePress has very little
competition and what little does exist has many of the same problems CafePress
does.

After some time searching, this is what I could find (all only in English and
only accept US dollars as far as I could tell):

http://www.t-shirts.com/
http://artapart.com/
http://coshops.com/retail/index.asp (looks a bit cheaper than CafePress)

For special events we could order in bulk and distribute merchandise by hand
(there still would be storage issues for the leftovers). There are many places
that we could use to create good quality merchandise on the cheap. What is
expensive is the CafePress-type service.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Important Election Notice

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as
>> they see fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for
>> each position, will be declared the winner.
>
> When there are only two positions to be filled, this should
> effectively turn the election into a joke.

Why would that be?  It's fine even if there were only one position to be
filled --- see [[approval voting]].

-Mark


from_name: Seth Ilys

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
Erik wrote:
>It has been brought to my attention that Cafepress, which we currently use
>to sell Wikimedia Merchandise at http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia , has
>some privacy issues.

These policies seem to me to be very much in line with what I'm used to
seeing at most commercial websites, and they don't concern me much. However,
it should of couse be made clear in the link to the CafePress shop that
CafePress is a company entirely external to, independent, and not
accountable to Wikipedia (assuming that isn't evident already).

In the ISBN links, we have links to a variety of commercial sites with (no
doubt) a variety of privacy and disclosure policies. If this is an serious
issue with CafePress, those should be re-examined as well. This certainly
doesn't sound as serious an issue as the Amazon.com commissions; if
necessary, we can defuse this issue in a similar way.

Furthermore, as a non-profit organization, aren't there disclosure
requirements regarding our direct donors?

-- Seth Ilys

_________________________________________________________________
Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://youroffers.msn.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness on small wikipedias?

body:
My apologies if this has come up before; I couldn't find anything in the
archives so thought I'd ask.

Is there something that makes the smaller Wikipedias really really
slow?  I've been noticing "edit this page" on el: often takes on the
order of 20-40 seconds, even during times when it's around 2-5 seconds
on en:.  Editing is the most egregious case, but even viewing pages can
take 10-20 seconds on el: but rarely more than 3 or 4 on en:, and page
loads time out maybe 3-5% of the time on el:, which almost never happens
these days on en: (for me, anyway).  It's not entirely consistent, but
it's a fairly noticeable difference.  I thought this might be something
to do with less-frequently-accessed wikipedias not having their database
tables in RAM as often, but it seems to happen even if I try editing the
same page 2-3 times in a row, after which I would've guessed the tables
should be loaded into memory (but I could be wrong on that).  In any
case, it makes editing or reading el: a lot more unpleasant than editing
or reading en:, which doesn't help with getting a small project going.

-Mark


from_name: boyd, rounin

subject: [WikiEN-l] RickK asserts I'm a vandal

body:
The facts of the the matter are that I was editing my own entry.

RickK does not even have an email address so I can't complain, directly to him,
so my apologies for this spam.


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
It has been brought to my attention that Cafepress, which we currently use
to sell Wikimedia Merchandise at http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia , has
some privacy issues. Specifically, they have a "web pixel clause":

  Pixels. Pixels, also called clear GIFs, are invisible files on Web pages
  that you visit. If you visit a page on the Site that contains a Pixel,
  the Pixel communicates with your computer to determine, among other
  things, whether you have been to that page before or viewed a particular
  advertisement. We may use Pixels to serve advertising, enhance email
  advertising and track usage of the Site.

And a somewhat weak personal data disclosure policy:

  we may disclose your Personally Identifiable Information when we believe
  in good faith that it is required by any applicable law or legal
  process, or if we believe we need to disclose it to protect or enforce
  our rights *or the rights of our members, users, or other third
  parties.*

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/privacy.aspx

I'd like to solicit feedback on
- whether these privacy issues are acceptable from the point of view of
the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
- whether any alternatives exist (i.e. merchandise-on-demand of similar
quality).

My point of view, right now, is that if no alternatives exist, we should
continue using Cafepress, and add a link to the Wikipedia article about
them on the page, where the privacy issues can then discussed from a
neutral point of view. However, I'd like to bring this out into the open
first. (Incidentally, I'll probably have to start that article as it
doesn't seem to exist yet.)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Boston meeting?

body:
I will be attending a family reunion in New Hampshire July 24-July 31.
That 2 1/2 months from now, so I am thinking that we have time to
organize a Wikipedia meeting there, fashioned after the meetings we
will be having in Europe this summer, i.e. informal gatherings
spontaneously organized.

I think that for most people the weekends are best, and so I
tentatively nominate July 25th, Sunday, as the best time for a
meeting.  I think that the best location would be Boston, since that's
closer to New York than New Hampshire is, and a big enough city on
it's own of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Boston

Please sign up, volunteer to organize, make suggestions, etc.

--Jimbo


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 05:01:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:

> I'd like to solicit feedback on
> - whether these privacy issues are acceptable from the point of view of
> the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> - whether any alternatives exist (i.e. merchandise-on-demand of similar
> quality).

For the WikiReaders I'm currently setting up a webshop. I'm still
working at it, implementing a multi-seller function.
The idea is that everybody can sell printings, CD/DVDs or
merchandise stuff on the site. For the sellers the biggest
advantage is the central marekt and for the customer cheaper
shipping is a big advantage (I neither live in CafePress country
nor do I have a credit card).
Maybe it's a good time to start discussions about an official
Wikimedia shop. Comments?

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: Mr Paul Vogel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pseudo Pantheism is Pan Atheism

body:
Pseudo Pantheism is Pan Atheism

Pan-atheism is a pseudo-pantheism that is akin to
marxist materialism and to scientific reductionism and
that does not believe in any internal meaning and in
any inherent purpose to human life and to the cosmos.

Pan-atheism is a "pseudo-pantheism" because
"pan-atheists" do not believe in the actual definiton
of pantheism which means "All in God and God in All";
rather their beliefs are better encapsulated by the
definition: "All is Nature" and "Nature is All".

See also
pantheism
Naturalistic pantheism
Classical pantheism
Cosmotheism
Also compare with: atheism ? nihilism ? Hedonism ?
Post-modernism

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/


references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com> <x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
> > Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
> >>Well, if we can get the height in pixels of the image (easy) _and_ the
> >>Y-pixel position in the image of the baseline (????) it might be
> > Well, as I already wrote: the information can be retrieved by using
> > preview.sty and/or dvipng, easily.  dvipng has command line options
> > for writing out the ascender/descender information, and preview.sty
> > will output the interesting information if you just use the "lyx"
> > option.
>
> Saying it's easy is nice, providing code to do it is better. ;)

What do you mean, "to do it"?

With preview.sty, the output is written into a single line, starting
with a unique keyword phrase, followed by four integers (the number of
the image, relevant width, depth and height) in the units of scaled
TeX points (of which there are exactly 65781.76 per Postscript point).

That _is_ the code to do it.  Its output is a single identifiable line
of complete trivially parseable ASCII.

Something like

Preview: Snippet 3 13200342 455360 36455

And then there is another line of completely trivially parseable ASCII
(keyword and 4 numbers) that tells the size of the border.

Something like

Preview: Tightpage 32891 32891 32891 32891

If you did not change the border sizes yourself (and no LaTeX code
outside of your control did), the numbers are fixed: 0.50001
PostScript points on each side.  So you need not even parse that
information.

Extracting these lines from the .log file or the terminal output is a
matter of matching with

^Preview: Snippet \([0-9]+\) \([0-9]+\) \([0-9]+\) \([0-9]+\)

and then using the \1 \2 \3 \4, with whatever matcher/processor you
happen to be working with.

Really, I am at a loss at what "code" to show for that.  It should be
a one-liner in most scripting languages.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiTeX module

body:
Salvete,

Quick question: per dictum JeLuFi, I move wikitex from its own module to
/extensions/wikitex; would someone from SF need to delete the now empty
module?

Best,
Peter


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy"
	re	recipes	and how-tos?

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I have no objection to documenting ALL the ways to put in a light
>> bulb. (There are more than one ways.)  Just because the first person
>> to post on the subject has only presented one way of doing something
>> does not in itself make that contribution POV.  If it is the only POV
>> it is necessarily neutral.  If there are other POVs, the solution
>> begins with others presenting them, not with censoring the one that's
>> already there.
>
> I see this as more a place for a Wikibook recipes book.  An article
> that consists of 15 pages listing all the variations on chocolate cake
> is ridiculous for an encyclopedia.  An encyclopedia isn't the place to
> get detailed how-to instructions, but to get conceptual information.
> This is why the article on, say [[C programming language]] describes
> the language, rather than being an intro to programming in C
> tutorial---if you want a detailed intro to C, that's what an "intro to
> programming in C" wikibook would be for.
>
> I don't even see why this is an argument---it's so completely
> ridiculous to have recipes in an encyclopedia, barring some famous
> ones, that I'm baffled people are actually seriously defending the idea.

What happens in Wikibooks is a different matter.  My involvement there
has been so minimal that it would be inappropriate for me to comment
about what they should or should not accept.  It is an autonomous
project, and it is not up to the rest of us to dictate their rules.

This is about whether recipes (and other forms of practical knowledge)
belong in Wikipedia.  An encyclopedia covers all sorts of knowledge, not
just those forms that a self-appointed elite would allow.  Is there
really a 15 page article of chocolate cake variations in Wikipedia? I
doubt it.  This is nothing more than a straw-man argument created for
the sole purpose of making an opposing argument look ridiculous.  (I
don't know enough about C-language to be able to say anything about that.)

I'm baffled by people who want to exclude such material.  I agree that
the mainstream English-language encyclopedias like Britannica have
traditionally omitted this kind of material, but we are not them, and we
have no need to restrict ourselves to the academic trappings that they
chose to adopt for their own purposes.

To take the matter even further afield (I've been reading Ivan Illich)
we are dealing with an attitude that reflects something that is wrong
with education in general, and universities in particular.  Wikipedia is
bound to appeal to a community of autodidacts with an incredible variety
of backgrounds.  No sphere of knowledge is so inferior that it needs be
ignored.  Education has become a process of buying into "The System", of
paying one's dues thereto, and receiving accreditation to elite circles.
 For the less capable it is intended to insure compliance.  The freeing
of knowledge thus applies to ALL aspects of knowledge.

The eventual third-world barely literate reader of our encyclopedia is
not going to open it to read about how the rich and powerful got there,
or about their complex science for launching astronauts, or about the
strutting gliterati gazing into the navel of their own foolishness.
 These only add acuity to their poverty.  For them, simple techniques to
enable them to bring a few of those things in their lives that we take
for granted will be greatly appreciated.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Important Election Notice

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>> Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as
>>> they see fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes
>>> for each position, will be declared the winner.
>>
>> When there are only two positions to be filled, this should
>> effectively turn the election into a joke.
>
> Why would that be?  It's fine even if there were only one position to
> be filled --- see [[approval voting]].

The point is one of process.  I am aware of FPTP and its problems, and I
certainly feel that we could improve on that method.  The time to do
that comes before the election starts.  There may be merit in approval
voting; it may also have its down side.  I can't say for sure.

What creates disrepute is the sudden adoption of these things *after*
the election process has started.  Did we learn nothing from our
experience with the logo vote?

Ec


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>It has been brought to my attention that Cafepress, which we currently use
>to sell Wikimedia Merchandise at <http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia>, has
>some privacy issues. Specifically, they have a "web pixel clause":

>  Pixels. Pixels, also called clear GIFs, are invisible files on Web pages
>  that you visit. If you visit a page on the Site that contains a Pixel,
>  the Pixel communicates with your computer to determine, among other
>  things, whether you have been to that page before or viewed a particular
>  advertisement. We may use Pixels to serve advertising, enhance email
>  advertising and track usage of the Site.

How exactly does this work?  The Pixel "communicates with [my] computer",
but my computer has been told not to answer communication requests,
such as are mediated by Javascript and cookies.  How does a GIF do this?

My friends and I have a hypothesis:  The Pixel is a 1x1 transparent GIF
that is stored on a special server that keeps track of requesting IPs.
So this server knows if a given Pixel has been requested by my IP before,
thus determining if I'd visited the page on which that Pixel lies as an <IMG>.

If we're right, then this isn't particularly evil.
It's inherent in HTTP that servers can see who requests files,
and this 1x1 transparent GIF <IMG> file is just an efficient application.
Conversely, people seriously interested in guarding their privacy
know how to circumvent such tracking.

>And a somewhat weak personal data disclosure policy:

>  we may disclose your Personally Identifiable Information when we believe
>  in good faith that it is required by any applicable law or legal
>  process, or if we believe we need to disclose it to protect or enforce
>  our rights *or the rights of our members, users, or other third
>  parties.*

I don't like this; "the rights of [...] third parties" is so vague
that they're not really promising any privacy for my PII at all.
Personally, I'm not concerned about the information that I give them,
which is no more than I give the clerk at K-Mart when I shop there;
still, it's useful to know that they're not promising anything
(just like K-Mart doesn't promise anything, so far as I've ever heard).

>My point of view, right now, is that if no alternatives exist, we should
>continue using Cafepress, and add a link to the Wikipedia article about
>them on the page, where the privacy issues can then discussed from a
>neutral point of view.

I believe that this is correct.  The lack of privacy protection
is no reason to stop using Cafe Press, but at the same time,
we should always be on the look out for others sales venues.
If we find alternatives that /do/ protect shoppers' privacy strongly,
then that's a reason to use only those alternatives and not Cafe Press.
But in the present market, Cafe Press is essentially unique.

An analogy:  The Wikipedia Foundation uses free, open-source software.
This is important for Jimbo's founding philosophy of Wikipedia,
so that anybody can copy not only the encyclopaedia but the entire site.
And of course, we're constantly modifying our software for our purposes.
But imagine an evil parallel universe in which Micro$oft controlled
all software copyrights with an iron fist, and the free software
and open source movements existed only in utopian fantasies.
Would we shut down our operations?  No, we would make do with what we had.
Come the revolution, /then/ we would switch to free, open-source software.
This analogy is exaggerated, but the same principles apply.

-- Toby


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SATA vs DMA

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Camille Constans wrote:
>>
>>> I'm afraid that the 4 new 1U boxes will be used quickly.... As our 5
>>> web servers are completely overloaded. And one squid, browne, is
>>> often at a load 20-30.  Just an idea, for the web servers, as we use
>>> only cpu on this boxes, maybe we could buy some inexpensive
>>> dual-athlon instead of mono-P4.
>>
>>
>>
>> Do others share this assessment?
>
>
> There's more efficiency to be gained in the software; we're still not
> saving rendered html and diffs and such in many places where we
> could/should.

According to Gabriel, the dominant use of CPU at the moment is rendering
logged-in page views. When that is removed by better caching, we could
be looking at a factor of 3 reduction in CPU load. After that, caching
diffs could produce a significant further saving.

As I've said before, the apache machines currently need CPU power, and
have very little use for disk or RAM.

Just for comparison, here's the cluster architecture used by my
theoretical physics group. We have 23 compute nodes plus a head node,
purchased over a year ago. Each node is a diskless single Pentium IV
with 1 GB RAM. 10 x 2GHz, 13x2.4 GHz, head is 550 MHz with a disk. 100
Mbps ethernet. It's rumoured to have been as cheap as chips, on the
order of A$10,000 (US$7,000). Now I'm not saying this architecture
precisely would be right for us, I'm just saying that there are ways of
getting CPU power without paying a lot of money.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Camille Constans

body:
On Fri, 14 May 2004 04:55:00 -0700
Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> My apologies if this has come up before; I couldn't find anything in the
> archives so thought I'd ask.
>
> Is there something that makes the smaller Wikipedias really really
> slow?  I've been noticing "edit this page" on el: often takes on the
> order of 20-40 seconds, even during times when it's around 2-5 seconds
> on en:.  Editing is the most egregious case, but even viewing pages can
> take 10-20 seconds on el: but rarely more than 3 or 4 on en:, and page
> loads time out maybe 3-5% of the time on el:, which almost never happens
> these days on en: (for me, anyway).  It's not entirely consistent, but
> it's a fairly noticeable difference.  I thought this might be something
> to do with less-frequently-accessed wikipedias not having their database
> tables in RAM as often, but it seems to happen even if I try editing the
> same page 2-3 times in a row, after which I would've guessed the tables
> should be loaded into memory (but I could be wrong on that).  In any
> case, it makes editing or reading el: a lot more unpleasant than editing
> or reading en:, which doesn't help with getting a small project going.

Small wikis are less often cached than big wikis as you said. And actually on our db server, we use only 1,6GB of memory on 4G we could use, because we use a 32bits linux instead of a 64bits. And the system disk is slow for our use, a raid5 with 3 disks. It's a bit faster since Jimmy put the new drives in db server.

The new db server, should resolve this problem.

Shaihulud


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PGP signing for "official" mail

body:
Perhaps this is just from hanging around on the Debian project, but for
"official" notices, I got used to the standard practice of them being
cryptographically signed using gnupg (http://www.gnupg.org).

Cryptographic signing serves two purposes: so that it was possible to
verify that they were:

a) from who they claimed to be from
b) that they had approved the message.

Would it be feasible for Wikimedia to adopt the same process?

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint):He followed me here from the hotel.
Leonard (Martin Landau): He was in your room?
Roger Thornhill (Carey Grant): Sure.  Isn't everybody?
  -- "North By Northwest
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] categories: separate category link table?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>> This would be hard to change later, so i'd like to start some discussion
>> on this now before the category feature goes live.
>>
>>
> Not really; a single SQL query should be enough to fill a new category
> table with values from the link table. The addition dates would be
> dummies, of course, but I could live with that. Downtime, if any, should
> be within minutes. Or we do it when we switch to the new DB server...

No, the problem is that *links to category pages* and *category links*
are conflated in link tables in the present code, while they do
different things.

Pulling the data from the present links table would not distinguish
them; you'd have to parse every page involved.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com>
	<x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com>
	<x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<c82vat$soj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<x5wu3ezrck.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>

body:
David, your suggestion is appreciated but as you are perhaps aware this
is a free software project developed by volunteers in their spare time.
Not every suggestion is going to get implemented immediately.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com>	<x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com>	<x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<c82vat$soj$1@sea.gmane.org>	<x5wu3ezrck.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<1084567271.1016.17.camel@venus>

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Hm, th easiest way to scale images relative to the font size should be
> to use em's for height & width (and possible offsets via
> position:relative), but usually browsers don't do a very good job at
> scaling images- so i'm not sure if this is desirable at all.

Yes, that's not going to look goot at all. Images are problematic for a
number of reasons: they don't scale well to different screen font sizes
(ugly scaling or appearance at wrong size), they don't scale well to
print resolution (ugly scaling), and they don't fit in well with
alternate color schemes (transparent background has been considered, but
would tend to fail if the user has overridden the background color to
black, making hardcoded black math text illegible).

The best way to scale math is to render it as inline HTML (only looks
decent for very simple stuff, as we do now) or MathML (which is provided
for in 1.3, but only works with some browsers, only works in well-formed
XHTML mode, and the MathML conversions haven't yet been completed.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

body:
It's currently not possible to link to a category without making that
page a member of it (See
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_issues#How_to_link_to_category_without_including_page_in_category).

This is a bit of a problem of course, Brion proposes a separate link
table for category-member links as a solution. This would also allow to
add a field that records the date when a page was added to the category
which would be very useful for sorting category overview pages by date.

This would be hard to change later, so i'd like to start some discussion
on this now before the category feature goes live.

Gabriel Wicke


body:
I've checked in some preliminary code for the categorylinks table,
including support for arbitrary sort key specification.

It needs checking to make sure that caches get cleared and that rename,
etc work properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Timwi

references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com>
	<x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com>
	<x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>

body:
David Kastrup wrote:

> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>
>>Saying it's easy is nice, providing code to do it is better. ;)
>
> What do you mean, "to do it"?

He means, send us a patch to the MediaWiki software that implements your
suggestion.

> With preview.sty, the output is written into a single line,

Either I'm dumb, or you have never mentioned how to get it (what anyway?
dvips or what?) to output this "single line".

> It should be a one-liner in most scripting languages.

Often the difficult thing is not to write the one line, but to figure
out where in the code to put it.

Additionally, you're forgetting that the LaTeX is (obviously) not
rendered and re-rendered and re-re-rendered for every single pageview.
The images are cached. Hence you would also need to come up with a way
to cache these extra values, and then tell the parser to output them in
the right place.

Programming that in PHP into the MediaWiki software is what Brion meant
by "the code to do it".

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
I think you've hit on the crux of the matter: if wik were merely an
edit-warrior who got into fights everywhere, he would've been banned
long ago.  It's true some of his edit count is due to edit wars, but
some of it is also due to simply being a very prolific editor with
apparently a lot of time to devote to Wikipedia, much of it on
relatively uncontroversial topics.  Sometimes he also turns out to be
right in his disputes, and his opponents use tactics no better than his,
which further complicates things.

I think in general Wik's behavior isn't a major problem in terms of
actual behavior, or at least no worse than any number of other users.
The reason he ends up coming up a lot is that there's just so *much* of
it.  Other controversial users he gets into edit wars with, like
User:Nico and User:Cantus, have far fewer edits of any sort (good or
bad), so simply have less of a presence on Wikipedia, and therefore even
when there are problems the problems are less frequent and more
isolated.  Wik is just everywhere, so when he gets into disputes, it's
hard to ignore them.

As for what to do, it's unclear.  The arbitration committee (on which
I'm on) has been mulling it over for a while, and among both committee
members and non-members, there are people who strongly favor banning wik
and people who strongly oppose it (there've been posts of both sorts on
this mailing list, for example).

The structural change is something that occasionally gets proposed but
hasn't been detailed to anyone's satisfaction yet.  The main issue is
how we can make things less "fragile" without also losing the
characteristic "anyone can edit any page" nature of Wikipedia.
Personally, I wouldn't be against losing some of that for
more-established pages---once an article has been hashed out over a
period of a year or two by hundreds of people, the ability for anyone to
change anything seems to do more harm than good.  In fact, most major
edits to something like, say, [[Israel]] will be reverted anyway unless
there is plenty of talk-page discussion about each point first, so maybe
it wouldn't hurt to make this restriction more technically-based.

-Mark


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
On Fri, 14 May 2004, Toby Bartels wrote:

> then that's a reason to use only those alternatives and not Cafe Press.
> But in the present market, Cafe Press is essentially unique.

We could do what people like Apache do and make arrangement with
specialist "geek" stores like www.jinxhackwear.com and
www.cashncarrion.co.uk to sell wikipedia merchandise.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: David Kastrup

references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com> <x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com> <x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<c82vat$soj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>
> > Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
> >
> >>Saying it's easy is nice, providing code to do it is better. ;)
> > What do you mean, "to do it"?
>
> He means, send us a patch to the MediaWiki software that implements
> your suggestion.

Since I don't even know what language your converters are written in,
this would be hard to do.

> > With preview.sty, the output is written into a single line,
>
> Either I'm dumb, or you have never mentioned how to get it (what
> anyway? dvips or what?) to output this "single line".

Pass the "lyx" option to the preview package.  I won't go looking for
Message Ids.

> > It should be a one-liner in most scripting languages.
>
> Often the difficult thing is not to write the one line, but to
> figure out where in the code to put it.

Right.  This is the reason that I was telling the people that
supposedly know the code about this possibility.

> Additionally, you're forgetting that the LaTeX is (obviously) not
> rendered and re-rendered and re-re-rendered for every single
> pageview.

I am not forgetting anything.  Obviously, the rendered final HTML
(which includes the ascender information, as well as the image
dimensions, as well as math rendered into HTML instead of PNG) has to
get cached somewhere already now.  Whether the images can be cached
depends on whether you want to go for the
image-size-fits-browser-font-size hacks of Jan-?ke, or just render at
a fixed size.  Since dvipng is rather light on resources and can even
be run continuously, it would be quite feasible to cache the .dvi
files (which are size independent) and rerender the png dynamically.

But of course you need not implement everything at once.  Just
replacing your current image generating process (which already _is_
there) with a dvipng-based process would be a start.

> The images are cached. Hence you would also need to come up with a
> way to cache these extra values, and then tell the parser to output
> them in the right place.

Does that mean that the Wiki pages are created dynamically each time
and only the images get cached?  The usual HTML specifications
_strongly_ recommend that the image dimensions are specified already
in the HTML so that the page layout engine needs not relayout the page
every time an image download completes.  So in case you are _not_
already caching the image dimensions, it might be an idea to do so.

> Programming that in PHP into the MediaWiki software is what Brion
> meant by "the code to do it".

Shrug.  As you please.  I am just telling you that software is here
that would quite benefit the appearance and efficiency of your
software.  I am willing to help doing what it takes to get you the
most of it from our project.  Jan-?ke, the author of dvipng, already
offered you the respective code to generate the HTML dynamically in
perl.

I can't say anything about him, of course, but I don't have the
resources to do your work.  I'll help with what it takes on the side
of preview.sty and other tools from our project to work for your
application (and they should actually work rather out of the box), but
that's about it.  It would be unfair to the users and developers of my
own projects if I invested the time needed to get acquainted with
yours, because the benefits are considered so small that nobody in the
project itself would want to invest any work on reasonably
good-looking math.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com>
	<x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <40A42A95.70409@pobox.com>
	<x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <c82vat$soj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<x5wu3ezrck.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>

body:
On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 22:27 +0200, David Kastrup wrote:

> I am not forgetting anything.  Obviously, the rendered final HTML
> (which includes the ascender information, as well as the image
> dimensions, as well as math rendered into HTML instead of PNG) has to
> get cached somewhere already now.  Whether the images can be cached
> depends on whether you want to go for the
> image-size-fits-browser-font-size hacks of Jan-?ke, or just render at
> a fixed size.  Since dvipng is rather light on resources and can even
> be run continuously, it would be quite feasible to cache the .dvi
> files (which are size independent) and rerender the png dynamically.

Hm, th easiest way to scale images relative to the font size should be
to use em's for height & width (and possible offsets via
position:relative), but usually browsers don't do a very good job at
scaling images- so i'm not sure if this is desirable at all.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>It's currently not possible to link to a category without making that
>page a member of it (See
>http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_issues#How_to_link_to_category_without_including_page_in_category).
>
>This is a bit of a problem of course, Brion proposes a separate link
>table for category-member links as a solution. This would also allow to
>add a field that records the date when a page was added to the category
>which would be very useful for sorting category overview pages by date.
>
>
A long time ago (Phase II, IIRC), someone also suggested alternate
listing abilities, especially for people. So, on [[George Bush]],
    [[Category:People|Bush, George]]
would later be sorted and listed as "Bush, George", rather than under
the real page title.
Which makes sense, but is also impossible to do with the current setup.

Then there's also the "image category" issue, where we'd get some kind
of automated photo album. Investment for wikimedia commons, at least.

>This would be hard to change later, so i'd like to start some discussion
>on this now before the category feature goes live.
>
>
Not really; a single SQL query should be enough to fill a new category
table with values from the link table. The addition dates would be
dummies, of course, but I could live with that. Downtime, if any, should
be within minutes. Or we do it when we switch to the new DB server...

Not to push my code or anything, but IMO we should go live with the
current code (unless there'd something broken with it), and switch over
later. I feel the time is right to introduce categories now. The
experience will will gain with using the current category system will be
very helpful in implementing a next stage, by avoiding flaws and adding
functions we simply cannot forsee by running it on a test page.

Magnus


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re
	recipes	and how-tos?

body:
On May 14, 2004, at 1:34 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Your distortion of NPOV as an excuse for getting rid of something you
> don't like in Wikipedia boggles the imagination!  Deletion is also an
> expression of POV, as been pointed out in the discussion about
> offensive images.  And what could be so offensive about the recipes?

I should be clearer: not including any chocolate cake recipe
(because there's more than one) does not express a POV, except
a POV on what should be in an encyclopedia.  But that's a meta-
POV and not what I meant.  Is that what you meant.

> I have no objection to documenting ALL the ways to put in a light
> bulb. (There are more than one ways.)  Just because the first person
> to post on the subject has only presented one way of doing something
> does not in itself make that contribution POV.  If it is the only POV
> it is necessarily neutral.  If there are other POVs, the solution
> begins with others presenting them, not with censoring the one that's
> already there.

Unless it's unfeasible to include every POV, such as every chocolate
cake recipe, which I think it is, in an encyclopedia.  A
wiki(cook)book, on the other hand, would do nicely.

> I'm sorry, but I have a hard time suffering fools gladly.

I wouldn't have it any other way, Ec.  :)

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


body:
On May 14, 2004, at 2:18 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> What happens in Wikibooks is a different matter.  My involvement there
> has been so minimal that it would be inappropriate for me to comment
> about what they should or should not accept.  It is an autonomous
> project, and it is not up to the rest of us to dictate their rules.

Ah!  I believe we may have hit upon the crux of the matter.  I see
Wikibooks as the place for many things which I would otherwise put
in the Wikipedia.  If you don't share this sentiment, I understand
your position much better.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com> <x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com> <x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<c82vat$soj$1@sea.gmane.org> <x5wu3ezrck.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<1084567271.1016.17.camel@venus>

body:
Gabriel Wicke <lists at wikidev.net> writes:

> On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 22:27 +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>
> > I am not forgetting anything.  Obviously, the rendered final HTML
> > (which includes the ascender information, as well as the image
> > dimensions, as well as math rendered into HTML instead of PNG) has to
> > get cached somewhere already now.  Whether the images can be cached
> > depends on whether you want to go for the
> > image-size-fits-browser-font-size hacks of Jan-?ke, or just render at
> > a fixed size.  Since dvipng is rather light on resources and can even
> > be run continuously, it would be quite feasible to cache the .dvi
> > files (which are size independent) and rerender the png dynamically.
>
> Hm, th easiest way to scale images relative to the font size should be
> to use em's for height & width (and possible offsets via
> position:relative), but usually browsers don't do a very good job at
> scaling images- so i'm not sure if this is desirable at all.

We are running in circles here.  Jan-?ke already gave the link
<URL:http://www.mai.liu.se/~jalar/dvipng/test.html> where this and
other ways of generating the display are not only discussed, but also
demonstrated, and he offered the code generating the images if anybody
was interested.

When Angus Leeming (who was not previously familiar with preview.sty
and dvipng) integrated previews into LyX, he took about three days.
And he had no offer of tested scripts that would already generate the
complete HTML, and he also had to integrate the output into a display
engine instead of just adapting scripts for a different scripting
environment.

Anyway, the converters are there, they are available, the various
methods of generating HTML are tested for you, you have a page where
this technique is demonstrated, you can take a look the respective
HTML, you can get the Perl scripts for generating them, and you can
get support for using them from the respective authors of the LaTeX
styles and the dvipng converter.  Everything that is released is
available under the GPL.

If you find that is not sufficient for you to feel it worth investing
even a comparatively small amount of work into getting rendering as
shown on the above web page, tough.

One can lead a horse to water.  Maybe it will get thirsty eventually.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>
	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com> <x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<40A42A95.70409@pobox.com> <x5n04btnes.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<c82vat$soj$1@sea.gmane.org> <x5wu3ezrck.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
	<40A544D7.9000301@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> David, your suggestion is appreciated but as you are perhaps aware
> this is a free software project developed by volunteers in their
> spare time. Not every suggestion is going to get implemented
> immediately.

Sure.  It was just a suggestion from the maintainer of free software
projects developed by volunteers in their spare time to let others
reap the benefits of our efforts, and an offer to support this by
whatever steps would be required in the context of our projects.

It is an offer of collaboration on a task that would entirely benefit
your project.  That is all that I feel qualified to offer.  I don't
have the resources to offer also doing the part of the work that has
to be done on your codebase, even though it would not seem that much
work in that area would actually be required before getting results.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


from_name: jacob roberson

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
subject:the wik user
instances of support for the user's misbehavior were requested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Wik&diff=3439565&oldid=3436380
this edit adds the comment:
>I'll be needing some help on [[Augusto Pinochet]]. [[User:172|172]] 21:57,
>3 May 2004 (UTC)

i arrived at wikipedia a few weeks ago, and have not conflicted with this
user, and so my evaluation may be considered more uncolored:
early upon arriving here, i perused the special database features, and found
the page for highest number of edits.  i thought the top users were quite
impressive, until learning about the bots.  i noted the wik user was not a
bot, and thought, well this is an impressive editor then.  i checked the
user page, and there found wales's very mild attempt at talking the user
down, and thus began to learn that the edit count was due to the anti-social
edit-warring, and that this user was legendary for this.  i have reviewed
the edit history extensively, and have found this reputation to be valid.

additionally, edit comments are almost entirely non-existant, with
occasional outbursts of abuse and taunts.  i don't recall a single usable
edit comment.  the edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Recent_deaths&diff=3349912&oldid=3348774
reverts an unnecessary but harmless stylistic edit by the musicitizen user,
and bears the taunt
>what do you think you're doing now?
as its comment.  it refers to the wik user's earlier series of unprovoked
and unanswered abusive comments accompanying reversions of the same user on
another matter, and conveys that further edits will be discouraged with
reversions.  the result of a simple query of edits per this user and the
comment string "rv" is demonstrative.

additionally, a few comments contain unyielding hypocrisy, such as "avoid
redirect; the solution to this is to ban MusiCitizen if he refuses even to
comment on the matter", and one comment suggests the cantus user "mind the
three revert limit".

this makes pages a mine field.  users have obtained this user as a personal
troll for an edit which is adverse, and presumably more will in the future.

the current "wik2" arbitration committee is careening toward a result which
is disjointed from the evidence presented: although the user is held to be
abusive and problematic, the only immovable conclusion is to not cause
offense or prevent editing, for fear of causing a departure.  the comment
>You will not get me to play along with trolls and POV pushers. If you
>succeed in getting me banned or prohibiting me from reverting which I'd
>consider equivalent, then I'll simply be off.
is not a threat to be appeased; it is a refusal to admit the very issue at
hand, i.e. the user's trolling and pov pushing; it is evidence that an
appeal of personality is believed to be an effective stalling tactic; and it
is evidence of incorrigibility.  additionally, it provides evidence that an
effective ban, ever elusive, may obtain in this case.

action is required additionally due to the efficacy of this user's edit
warring: although edit warriors generally stalemate each other, this user
prevails via simple volume, and has driven off most editors from articles
which have been claimed as personal preserves; this has established a pov
for each of these articles which cannot be dislodged.  presumably the recent
departures are not the last, and yet more editors will be driven off from
the entire project through this method.

note: the user is not merely a pure combonation of troll, vandal, edit
warrior, and pov warrior.  the category is instead "mixed".  there is a
class of edit of the sort associated with constructive users, i.e.
typographical, facts, article series, informations.  this is similar to the
mode of the anthony user after being warned for trolling.  thus the effort
will have to lose the appropriate with the profligately anti-social, the
baby with the bath water.

i conclude that this user may eventually plague me, and may make wikipedia
unusable.  due to the long-term futility of disciplinary measures in the
general case due to ip technical workarounds, i recommend a code solution
which reduces the fragility of the wiki contents.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page ? FREE
download! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
Much of the fire, as opposed to the light, that eminates from Wik concerns
editing disputes which do not affect the content of an article, being over
such questions as whether Vietnam is in Southeast Asia or in East Asia, or
whether Mongolia is in Central Asia or in East Asia, etc. So no matter
whether Wik "wins" or not, and he does usually win as he never gives up or
wastes time talking with other users about disputes, the article itself is
basically unaffected.

He does affect Wikipedia as he serves for others as a model of how to impose
your will and get your way. He will also (eventually) serve as an example of
what happens if you continually buck the minimum requests Wikipedia makes of
users in the way of etiquette.

Fred

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 19:47:58 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] the wik user
>
> The structural change is something that occasionally gets proposed but
> hasn't been detailed to anyone's satisfaction yet.  The main issue is
> how we can make things less "fragile" without also losing the
> characteristic "anyone can edit any page" nature of Wikipedia.
> Personally, I wouldn't be against losing some of that for
> more-established pages---once an article has been hashed out over a
> period of a year or two by hundreds of people, the ability for anyone to
> change anything seems to do more harm than good.  In fact, most major
> edits to something like, say, [[Israel]] will be reverted anyway unless
> there is plenty of talk-page discussion about each point first, so maybe
> it wouldn't hurt to make this restriction more technically-based.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
In a message dated 5/15/2004 5:28:01 AM Eastern Standard Time,
fredbaud at ctelco.net writes:
Much of the fire, as opposed to the light, that eminates from Wik concerns
editing disputes which do not affect the content of an article, being over
such questions as whether Vietnam is in Southeast Asia or in East Asia, or
whether Mongolia is in Central Asia or in East Asia, etc.
This whole post is kind of silly, but then again its assumptions are kind of
silly too. As for his editing disputes not affecting the content of an
article, the examples given prove that this is not the case. Geographic regions are
important ways of classifying political entities, cultures, flora and fauna,
etc. Misclassifying a country certainly does matter.

So no matter
whether Wik "wins" or not, and he does usually win as he never gives up or
wastes time talking with other users about disputes, the article itself is
basically unaffected.

Why does Wik usually win. In fact, he usually comes under attack. And if he
is right, what is wrong with winning. Are we expected to let everyone,
including those who are wrong, win equally? If he is right, why should he give up? If
the other user is just as persistent as he is, but motivated by some agenda
and the debate has been going on for ever, why should he keep reiterating the
old arguments to people who resort to rhetoric rather than fact?  As for the
articles being basically unaffected, that would only be true if we want the
articles composed entirely of platitudes. The importance of the articles lies in
the details.

He does affect Wikipedia as he serves for others as a model of how to impose
your will and get your way.
No, now you are assuming that his way is wrong, but he is able to get away
with imposing it anyway. That is patently false. In fact, this ad hominem attack
is simply a way for the poster to impose his will and get away with it.
He will also (eventually) serve as an example of
what happens if you continually buck the minimum requests Wikipedia makes of
users in the way of etiquette.

The only really interesting point here. Does etiquette mean that we have to
succumb to people who try to use Wikipedia to further their own agendas. In
fact, calling etiquettte is being used as a way "impose your will and get your
way" at the expense of accuracy. (Not that many of Wik's opponents are actually
paradigms of etiquette).

Fred
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from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re recipes
	and how-tos?

body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> I have no objection to documenting ALL the ways to put in a light
>>> bulb. (There are more than one ways.)  Just because the first person
>>> to post on the subject has only presented one way of doing something
>>> does not in itself make that contribution POV.  If it is the only POV
>>> it is necessarily neutral.  If there are other POVs, the solution
>>> begins with others presenting them, not with censoring the one that's
>>> already there.
>>
>>
>> I see this as more a place for a Wikibook recipes book.  An article
>> that consists of 15 pages listing all the variations on chocolate cake
>> is ridiculous for an encyclopedia.  An encyclopedia isn't the place to
>> get detailed how-to instructions, but to get conceptual information.
>> This is why the article on, say [[C programming language]] describes
>> the language, rather than being an intro to programming in C
>> tutorial---if you want a detailed intro to C, that's what an "intro to
>> programming in C" wikibook would be for.
>>
>> I don't even see why this is an argument---it's so completely
>> ridiculous to have recipes in an encyclopedia, barring some famous
>> ones, that I'm baffled people are actually seriously defending the idea.
>
>
> What happens in Wikibooks is a different matter.  My involvement there
> has been so minimal that it would be inappropriate for me to comment
> about what they should or should not accept.  It is an autonomous
> project, and it is not up to the rest of us to dictate their rules.
>
> This is about whether recipes (and other forms of practical knowledge)
> belong in Wikipedia.  An encyclopedia covers all sorts of knowledge, not
> just those forms that a self-appointed elite would allow.  Is there
> really a 15 page article of chocolate cake variations in Wikipedia? I
> doubt it.  This is nothing more than a straw-man argument created for
> the sole purpose of making an opposing argument look ridiculous.  (I
> don't know enough about C-language to be able to say anything about that.)
>
> I'm baffled by people who want to exclude such material.  I agree that
> the mainstream English-language encyclopedias like Britannica have
> traditionally omitted this kind of material, but we are not them, and we
> have no need to restrict ourselves to the academic trappings that they
> chose to adopt for their own purposes.
>
> To take the matter even further afield (I've been reading Ivan Illich)
> we are dealing with an attitude that reflects something that is wrong
> with education in general, and universities in particular.  Wikipedia is
> bound to appeal to a community of autodidacts with an incredible variety
> of backgrounds.  No sphere of knowledge is so inferior that it needs be
> ignored.  Education has become a process of buying into "The System", of
> paying one's dues thereto, and receiving accreditation to elite circles.
> For the less capable it is intended to insure compliance.  The freeing
> of knowledge thus applies to ALL aspects of knowledge.
>
> The eventual third-world barely literate reader of our encyclopedia is
> not going to open it to read about how the rich and powerful got there,
> or about their complex science for launching astronauts, or about the
> strutting gliterati gazing into the navel of their own foolishness.
> These only add acuity to their poverty.  For them, simple techniques to
> enable them to bring a few of those things in their lives that we take
> for granted will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Ec

I *deeply* agree with this.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
Shouldn't there be a [[hard cases make bad law]] page?

Wik-law would be a disaster (Wik being a classic ''hard case'').  Laws made
just to legislate round Wik, which would be the normal interpretation, risk
distorting the whole enterprise.

I'm still for resource-rationing here.

Charles


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Descriptive/proscriptive

body:
>
> I don't even see why this is an argument---it's so completely
> ridiculous
> to have recipes in an encyclopedia, barring some famous ones, that I'm
> baffled people are actually seriously defending the idea.
>
> -Mark

The problem I have is that some people are enunciating as a general
principle that encyclopedias should be "descriptive, not proscriptive."

I don't understand that and I believe it runs contrary to the
historical concept of an encyclopedia.

It's a question of degree. You, for example, acknowledge the legitimacy
of including "some famous ones." I'd be interested in knowing which
ones you feel qualify.

Personally, I'd certainly expect "Oysters Rockefeller" to be in an
encyclopedia and to include some discussion of whether it does or does
not contain spinach, and give at least one representative recipe. Quite
possibly one from the "spinach" camp and one from the "no spinach"
camp.

In the case of food dishes that are of obvious cultural importance,
representative recipes are relevant. Again, as the level of depth of an
article increases, we would begin with general principles (hollandaise
sauce is made from butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice or vinegar) but
obviously an article that gave the ingredients without explaining how
you turn them into hollandaise sauce is not covering the topic very
fully.

We don't need the recipe for Aunt Nettie's famous Marshmallow-Anchovy
Surprise Omelette that she always used to bring to the church potluck,
but it should be OK to say more about meatloaf than that it "is made
with seasoned ground meat (usually ground beef or a combination of
ground beef and other ground meats), which is formed into loaf shape
and baked."

Consider the passage from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition
which I will present later below. The whole article about the telegraph
is full of detailed circuit diagrams and mechanical diagrams at a level
which goes _far_ beyond the schematic illustration of basic principles.
Much of the Britannica 11th is at what might be called the
engineering-handbook level of depth and detail. From the information
given in "Telegraph" article, you could almost build a "Varley's Double
Cup insulator," or wire up a sounder for duplex working by either the
differential method or the bridge method.

In recent decades, encyclopedias in the United States have been
marketed to parents as a means of giving their high-school students an
"edge" in school, and the level of detail and maturity of discourse has
accordingly been dumbed down. The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica was clearly written by highly educated adults for highly
educated adults. The World Book seems to be written a high-school
textbook level; the current Britannica at, at best, a college level.
There is little of the "engineering-handbook-level" detail in it.

Like the Britannica 11th, Wikipedia is written (mostly) for adults by
adults. And, since Wikipedia is not paper, There should be no
artificial restrictions on the level of detail and depth in an article.
In many topics, once we get beyond an introduction with schematic
diagrams and general principles, we will naturally get into specifics
of actual practices.

My copy of the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" has recipes in it:

     REMOVING CARBON DEPOSITS FROM FLASKS

     First rinse flask with acetone or carbon disulfide to remove traces
     or tar. Add a few grams of magnesium nitrate. Heat gradually over
     a free Bunsen flame until water is all expelled and magnesium
     nitrate melts. Rotate the flask to distribute the melt
     and continue the heating till the brown fumes of nitric oxide
     cease to evolve. Finally cool and dissolve the residual
     magnesium oxide in dilute acid by boiling.

That's from an extensive section entitled "Laboratory Arts and
Recipes." If that's not a "how-to," I don't know what it is.

Now, here's a tiny part of what the Britannica 11th has to say about
telegraph operation. Descriptive or proscriptive?

     In order to maintain a system of telegraph lines in good working
     condition, daily tests are essential. In the British Postal
     Telegraph Department all the most important wires are tested every
     morning between 7:30 and 7:45 A.M. in sections of about 200 miles.
     The method adopted consists in looping the wires in pairs between
     two testing offices, A and B (fig. 4); a current is sent from a
     battery, E, through one oil of a galvanometer, g, through a high
     resistance, r, through one of the wires, I, and thence back from
     office B (at which the wires are looped), through wire 2, through
     another high resistance, r, through a second coil on the
     galvanometer, g, and thence to earth. If the looped lines are both
     in good condition and free from leakage, the current sent out on
     line I will be exactly equal to the current received back on line 2;
     and as these currefits will have equal but opposite effects on, the
     galvanometer needle, no deflection of the latter will be produced.
     If, however, there is leakage, the current received on the
     galvanometer will be less than the current sent out, and the result
     will be a deflection of the needle proportional to the amount of
     leakage.

     The galvanometer being so adjusted that a current of definite
     strength through one of the coils gives a definite deflection of the
     needle, the amount of leakage expressed in terms of the insulation
     resistance of the wires is given by the formula

     Total insulation resistance of looped lines = 3/4R(D/d 3/4);

     in which R is the total resistance of the looped wires, including
     the resistance of the two coils of the galvanometer, of the battery,
     and of the two resistance coils r and r (inserted for the purpose of
     causing the leakage on the lines to have a maximum effect on the
     galvanometer deflections). In practice the resistances r, r are of
     Io,000 ohms each. The deflection observed on the galvanorneter when
     the lines are leaky is d, while D is the deflection obtained through
     one coil of the galvanometer with all the other resistances in
     circuit; anu assuming that no leakage exists on the lines, this
     deflection is calculated from the constant of the instrument, i.e.,
     from the known deflection obtained with a definite current. For the
     purpose of avoiding calculation, tables are provided showing the
     values of the total insulation according to the formula,
     corresponding to various values of d. If the insulation per mile,
     i.e.; the total insulation multiplied by the mileage of the wire
     loop, is found to be less than 200,000 ohms, the wire is considered
     to be faulty. The climatic conditions in the British Islands are
     such that it is not possible to maintain, in unfavourable weather, a
     higher standard than that named, which is the insulation obtained
     when all the insulators are in perfect condition and only the normal
     leakage, dtie to moisture, is present.

     There are three kinds of primary batteries in general use in the
     British Postal Telegraph Department, viz., the Daniell, the
     bichromate, and the Leclanch. The Daniell Batteries, type consists
     of a teak trough divided into five cells by slate partitions coated
     with marine glue. Each cell contains a zinc plate, immersed in a
     solution of zinc sulphate, and also a porous chamber containing
     crystals of copper sulphate and a copper plate. The electromotive
     force of each cell is 1.7 volts and the resistance 3 ohms. The
     Fuller bichromate battery... (etc. etc.)

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net alternate:
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
On Sat, 15 May 2004, Charles Matthews wrote:

> Shouldn't there be a [[hard cases make bad law]] page?
>
> Wik-law would be a disaster (Wik being a classic ''hard case'').  Laws made
> just to legislate round Wik, which would be the normal interpretation, risk
> distorting the whole enterprise.
>
> I'm still for resource-rationing here.
>
Thank you, Charles. In response to your allusion to law, I consulted my
1933 edition of _Black's Law Dictionary_, only to find myself distracted
by finding & reading such entries as "Butler's Ordinance", "Mason Dixon's
Line", & the fact that the words "in" & "is" both have legal definitions.
Now I shall hate myself unless I can spend an hour or two this weekend
browsing this book, rather than busy at more important matters (like
contributing to Wikipedia).

FWIW, this is one of the older editions with the legal references (I
understand that the latest editions removed them, a change that made this
Dictionary less useful to lawyers). For example, the phrase "hard cases
make bad law" (according to my copy of Black's) appeared most famously in
Moore v. Pierson, 6 Iowa, 279, 71 Am. Dec. 409; & the related phrase
"hard cases are the quicksands of the law" in Metropolitan Nat. Bank v.
Campbell Commission Co. (C.C.), 77 F. 705.

Geoff


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
--- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 03:08:00AM -0700, Daniel
> Mayer wrote:
> > --- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> > > On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 05:01:00AM +0200, Erik
> Moeller wrote:
> > > For the WikiReaders I'm currently setting up a
> webshop. I'm still
> > > working at it, implementing a multi-seller
> function.
> > > The idea is that everybody can sell printings,
> CD/DVDs or
> > > merchandise stuff on the site. For the sellers
> the biggest
> > > advantage is the central marekt and for the
> customer cheaper
> > > shipping is a big advantage (I neither live in
> CafePress country
> > > nor do I have a credit card).
> >
> > Sounds neat. The fact that CafePress only accepts
> US dollars and is only in
> > English is a big drawback. On top of that, they
> are pretty darn expensive.
> >
> > > Maybe it's a good time to start discussions
> about an official
> > > Wikimedia shop. Comments?
> >
> > I don't know since that would require us to have
> storage space, a distribution
> > system, a secure server to handle credit cards,
> and a staff to fill and send
> > out orders and deal with problems. Unfortunately
> CafePress has very little
> > competition and what little does exist has many of
> the same problems CafePress
> > does.
>
> Damn, we're building the biggest encycopedia in the
> world. We can do such
> a little shop ourself.
>
> Except a few we could have external sellers in our
> shop, for me storage
> is no problem or costs, the 1000 WikiReaders won't
> take much space anyways.
> I hope that the devs can setup a secure server, can
> they?
> Here in Germany credit cards are quite unpopular,
> bank transfer is still
> number one and if I have to print another 1k copies
> of the WikiReader
> they might be sent out on bill/account and not on
> advanced payment.
>
> ciao, tom

Hello Tom

I am not sure I understood everything yet; but to who
are these wikireaders gonna be distributed ? Or,
through which means ? Several means ? Only through
internet ? In schools ? Meetings ? What are you
planning ?

Are they gonna be sold ? If they are, how much ? Why
sold ? Do you consider they are only instrument of
promotion, or knowledge distribution as well ? Were
the 3000 dollars  definitly given to support
WikiReaders, or are they a help to be reinbursed while
the WikiReaders are sold ?

Could you update the meta page accordingly. I think
that it is important that we keep track of
* promotional production
* distribution of free knowledge
* foundation money use

Both for us internally, perhaps for plannification of
annual money use later, and definitly for outsiders
who wish to follow foundation activity. If that is a
personal move to distribute knowledge, that is
interesting as well.

Ant

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Descriptive/proscriptive

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

>
> Consider the passage from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition
> which I will present later below. The whole article about the
> telegraph is full of detailed circuit diagrams and mechanical diagrams
> at a level which goes _far_ beyond the schematic illustration of basic
> principles. Much of the Britannica 11th is at what might be called the
> engineering-handbook level of depth and detail. From the information
> given in "Telegraph" article, you could almost build a "Varley's
> Double Cup insulator," or wire up a sounder for duplex working by
> either the differential method or the bridge method.
>
Something to consider is that as the total volume of knowledge has
increased, the publishers of print encyclopedias have had to make
some hard choices about what to include and what to leave out. (Of
course, they gloss over that, it sounds so - so - *tradesman*-like.)
The oldest encyclopedias seem to have a lot of recipe-like and other
mundane details (like preferred techniques for catching different
kinds of fish), but over time scientific, geographic, and historical
information would have tended to crowd out less-critical material,
since it would have been impossible to sell 500-volume print
encyclopedias.

On recipes specifically, I suspect that some of the objection is to
recipes with no supporting content. To me, a bald recipe for chocolate
cake is like a substub or an uncaptioned picture; I want to know who
thought of chocolate cake first, why some have flour and some don't,
etc. Auntie B's recipe is not encyclopedic for the same reason that
Auntie B herself isn't, there's just not much to say, but it would
make a fine "illustration" for the chocolate cake article:

    '''Chocolate cake''' is [[cake]] containing [[chocolate]]. First
    mentioned in a Dutch cookbook of 1675, [etc].

    The following recipe is from Fannie Farmer ca 1921:

    <recipe1>

    A more modern recipe:

    <recipe2>

Now is anybody going to want to come along and delete the recipes
from such an article?

Stan


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 03:08:00AM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de> wrote:
> > On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 05:01:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > For the WikiReaders I'm currently setting up a webshop. I'm still
> > working at it, implementing a multi-seller function.
> > The idea is that everybody can sell printings, CD/DVDs or
> > merchandise stuff on the site. For the sellers the biggest
> > advantage is the central marekt and for the customer cheaper
> > shipping is a big advantage (I neither live in CafePress country
> > nor do I have a credit card).
>
> Sounds neat. The fact that CafePress only accepts US dollars and is only in
> English is a big drawback. On top of that, they are pretty darn expensive.
>
> > Maybe it's a good time to start discussions about an official
> > Wikimedia shop. Comments?
>
> I don't know since that would require us to have storage space, a distribution
> system, a secure server to handle credit cards, and a staff to fill and send
> out orders and deal with problems. Unfortunately CafePress has very little
> competition and what little does exist has many of the same problems CafePress
> does.

Damn, we're building the biggest encycopedia in the world. We can do such
a little shop ourself.

Except a few we could have external sellers in our shop, for me storage
is no problem or costs, the 1000 WikiReaders won't take much space anyways.
I hope that the devs can setup a secure server, can they?
Here in Germany credit cards are quite unpopular, bank transfer is still
number one and if I have to print another 1k copies of the WikiReader
they might be sent out on bill/account and not on advanced payment.

ciao, tom

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: Lothar Kimmeringer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Human rights abuses in Iraq

body:
On Thu, 13 May 2004 04:23:29 -0700, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Why can't we just create a separate page called (something like) "Images
> of Iraqi prisoner abuse" or even "Images of Iraqi torture"?

The legal question: Are you the owner of the pictures that you
                    can publish them on Wikipedia unter GFDL?

My personal question: Why do you need pictures to be shown when
                      writing an entry for an encyclopaedia
                      about torture at all? Is this a picture-
                      book for children? Is Wikipedia in need
                      of getting attention on the cheap way
                      showing pictures that are shocking or
                      erotic to the public?

> I have tried (but been reverted by user:Rei) to balance the hundreds of
> thousands of murders under Saddam, and the countless mutilations,
> tortures and rapes (all kept secret by Iraqi officials) -- with the
> dozens (at most, hundreds) of similar but usually less serious incidents
> under Coalition auspices (all being investigated and publicized by
> American officials and journalists).

I don't want to start a discussion about the second iraqi
war, but just a few points:

 - It doesn't matter how many people were tortured by US and
   british soldiers, the effect on the iraqi public is
   devastating. After the lie on the weapons of mass destruction
   the claim of the invasion was the freeing of the people
   and the end of torture of innocent people. Now it was
   coming to the public that the soldiers of the US and
   Britain are doing exactly the same at exactly the same
   places.
 - You forgot to count the people that were dying because
   of the UN-embargo initiated by the US after the first
   iraqi war. News were talking about more than 100,000
   people, mainly children and old people, being dying in
   lack of medicine and other things.

> Let's do our best to report how many Iraqis were murdered, tortured,
> etc. on SADDAM'S watch as well as on Bush's watch.

That's the neutrality of a moderator of a soccer-game. Doing
the same on the number of deaths is a little sarcastic I think.

> Obviously it's going
> to be hard to find any pictures of Saddam's victims - one may imagine
> that possession of a digital camera or CD burner would be difficult for
> an ordinary Iraqi in the 1990s through March 2003 - and woe to him who
> says, "Oh, look, I found a CD with a bunch of incriminating pictures".

What's the purpose of putting a lot of pictures ... oh, I
said that already.

> There hasn't been a single question raised, either by US officials or US
> journalists, about punishing the people who gave that first disk of
> photos to CBS. That's a free society in action: find the problems, and
> fix them.

Interesting fact is that CBS was not publishing them until they
found out that other news-stations are going to do so, because
they were asked by the Pentagon to not send them.

Regards, Lothar
--
Lothar Kimmeringer                E-Mail: spamfang at kimmeringer.de
               PGP-encrypted mails preferred (Key-ID: 0x8BC3CD81)

Always remember: The answer is forty-two, there can only be wrong
                 questions!


subject: RickK != RK (Was: [WikiEN-l] the wik user)

body:
On Sat, 15 May 2004, Charles Matthews wrote:

> No, that's wrong.  It's wrong for Wik.  It's wrong for RickK.  We need
> enforcement on WP; but we do not need anyone who strides around on the basis
> that they're involved in carrying it out.
>
Are you sure you mean "RickK" & didn't mean "RK"? While I don't claim to
agree with everything RickK has contributed, I believe he's far less
controversial than RK.

Geoff


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Are they gonna be sold ? If they are, how much ? Why
>sold ? Do you consider they are only instrument of
>promotion, or knowledge distribution as well ? Were
>the 3000 dollars  definitly given to support
>WikiReaders, or are they a help to be reinbursed while
>the WikiReaders are sold ?
>
>
If I read Jimbo's announcement about it correctly, the $3000 is
basically a loan, intended to finance the initial print run, and
Wikimedia will make a certain portion of the profits on each sale to
recover the $3000.  In case profits are less than $3000, Jimbo's
personally guaranteed he'll make up any difference, so it's no risk to
the foundation's money (I believe he did this precisely for the reasons
you mentioned, that this isn't something we've yet decided the
foundation should spend its money on).

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Cafepress alternatives?


from_name: Jim Laurino

subject:
[Wikitech-l] categories: separate category link table? (wican:
	addressed to exclusive sender for this address)

in_reply_to:
<40A564FA.8010300@pobox.com> (from
	+wican+jimlaur+72e5af8b64.brion#pobox.com@spamgourmet.com on
	Fri, May 14, 2004 at 20:31:54 -0400)

body:
On 2004.05.14 20:31, Brion Vibber  - brion at pobox.com wrote:
> I've checked in some preliminary code for the
> categorylinks table, including support for arbitrary sort
> key specification.
>
Hello,

I recently became very interested in the category topic,
and I am very glad to find that this work is going on.

It seems clear that categories are necessary,
but may not be sufficient in themselves.

One useful idea seems to be roadmaps.
It seems that one may want to structure the order
of contents in a category in order to tell a story
that spans multiple articles.

I started a log of my thinking and exploration related
to this topic at wikipedia User:AJim/extensions.

I looked at the v 1.18 tables.sql categorylinks table,
and I think the cl_sortkey index is right on track
to support the kind of functionality I was looking for.

I am pretty new to this stuff. Will the changes that
Brion just made appear on the test wiki soon?
If so, how will I know?

Thanks,

Jim Laurino


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
> for fear of causing a departure

This is wrong in my case, and I suspect the rest of the arbitration cabal.
Personally, I'm entirely happy to "cause a departure". However, I have no desire
to cause a departure by being unreasonable or unfair, as I do not believe this
would be in the best interests of Wikipedia.

-Martin


subject: [WikiEN-l] the wik user

body:
Danny wrote

>Why does Wik usually win.

Because, inter alia, he appears not to give a damn about the human beings
involved.

>In fact, he usually comes under attack. And if he is right, what is wrong
with winning. Are we expected to let everyone, including those who are
wrong, win equally? If he is right, why should he give up?

In the case I have cited to this list, he is quite wrong; and has not
responded in the talk page in months.

>If the other user is just as persistent as he is, but motivated by some
agenda and the debate has been going on for ever, why should he keep
reiterating the old arguments to people who resort to rhetoric rather than
fact?

I'm persistent.  Oh, I'm certainly persistent.  I bring this up frequently.
I just think reverting isn't an argument.

>He does affect Wikipedia as he serves for others as a model of how to
impose
your will and get your way.
No, now you are assuming that his way is wrong, but he is able to get away
with imposing it anyway. That is patently false.

It is quite clear that Wik's way is wrong.  A Wiki composed of such Wikizens
would fail.

>The only really interesting point here. Does etiquette mean that we have to
succumb to people who try to use Wikipedia to further their own agendas. In
fact, calling etiquettte is being used as a way "impose your will and get
your way" at the expense of accuracy. (Not that many of Wik's opponents are
actually paradigms of etiquette).

Well, thank you for that, and I'm glad you're not descending to ad hominem
yourself.

Enforcer's Fallacy:  I tackle users who are on the wrong side of it.  So,
I'm entitled to a matching attitude.

No, that's wrong.  It's wrong for Wik.  It's wrong for RickK.  We need
enforcement on WP; but we do not need anyone who strides around on the basis
that they're involved in carrying it out.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Descriptive/proscriptive

body:
> Much of the Britannica 11th is at what might be called the
> engineering-handbook level of depth and detail.

Encyclopedias are traditionally rich on technology articles.  Doesn't follow
that they must be cookbooks.  By the way, I cook, but rarely consult a
recipe - occasional reference to Mrs. Beeton.  Articles about cooking - that
I could support.  Not recipes.

Charles

PS I have a recipe for chocolate soup sent to me by the [[User:tmxxine]]
group - anyone interested?  Now, if we could get them started ...


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Evan Prodromou] User name, nick, real name

body:
So, I wanted to forward this message, which originally went to
wikitech-l, to this list. It gives the reasons I thought a "real name"
field was useful for MediaWiki.

I've been on the road and offline for a couple of weeks; sorry this is
dredging up old issues.

~ESP

---8<---
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: User name, nick, real name
Organization: Evan Prodromou
X-PGP-Fingerprint: 1366 538C 1E7D 0093 C45B  1A50 A33C 1E7C 700A 0551
From: Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:31:38 -0400
Message-ID: <87vfk37jz9.fsf at unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux)
Lines: 73
Xref: unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us mail.archive.sent:5559

So, the way that MediaWiki is currently set up, we have two fields for
identifying a contributor:

         * user name
         * nick

I think (but don't know) that the idea here is that your "user name"
is your "real" name, like "Evan Prodromou", and your "nick" is going
to be a nickname, handle, or pseudonym, like "Mister Bad". This may
come from the tradition on some wikis, like Ward's Wiki, Meatball,
others, where using your real name is the norm.

It seems that on Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, and Wikitravel
(which I'm most interested in), this is not the case. People treat a
user name like a Unix, IRC, or other "user account": an abbreviated
name or a pseudonym. The "nick" field is generally just used for
making fancy signatures; in other cases, it's just used to provide a
_second_ pseudonym or abbreviation.

Now, I'm the last person to put down pseudonyms. I think they're a
crucial part of Internet culture. But real names can be useful for,
say, getting credit as a contributor to an article. Somewhere along
the way here we lost the slot for adding a "real name" to a user
account.

You can't provide your real name even if you want to. Putting your
real name in the user name slot is lost in the noise; I don't know,
when you have a user account like "Bob Frapples", whether that's a
clever pseudonym or actually your real name. Contributors who want to
have their real name recognized now put them on their user pages. But
this is kind of difficult for software to determine what a user's real
name is.

I'd like to embrace the reality of the situation and have two identity
fields, plus a display field:

        * User account name -- a pseudonym or abbrev or whatever
        * Real name -- preferred form of legal name
        * Signature -- fancy formatting for signatures

For these reasons, I'd like to propose the following:

* We add a nullable user field "user_real_name".
* The login/account creation page has an additional field for "real
  name", with an explanation that it's optional, and only for
  attribution, etc.
* The preferences page lets you change your real name.
* We change the documentation for the user name to note that it's a
  nickname and doesn't need to be your real name.
* We change the documentation for the "nick" field to note its use as
  a "signature" format.

Automatic attribution tools can use the real name field if it's
provided, or the preferred pseudonym ("Wikitravel user Hogwallop") if
not.

The user account name would continue to be shown everywhere it is now,
and the "nick" field would continue to be used primarily
(exclusively?) in the ~~~ signature areas. The main thing is that if
contributors want attribution under their real name, but identity in
the system under a nickname, they get it.

Lastly, I think an easy way to change your user name is necessary, to
make this shift in emphasis easier for those who want to. That's a
whole can of worms, there, but I don't think it's impossible to deal
with.

~ESP

---8<---

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Descriptive/proscriptive

body:
On Sat, 15 May 2004 14:20:48 +0100, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Much of the Britannica 11th is at what might be called the
>> engineering-handbook level of depth and detail.
>
>Encyclopedias are traditionally rich on technology articles.  Doesn't follow
>that they must be cookbooks.

Why should we restrict ourselves to what encyclopedias traditionally
do? We're Wikipedia, not some hidebound traditional encyclopedia.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the wik user

body:
On Fri, 14 May 2004 19:47:58 -0700, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>I think you've hit on the crux of the matter: if wik were merely an
>edit-warrior who got into fights everywhere, he would've been banned
>long ago.

This is no doubt true.

> It's true some of his edit count is due to edit wars, but
>some of it is also due to simply being a very prolific editor with
>apparently a lot of time to devote to Wikipedia, much of it on
>relatively uncontroversial topics.  Sometimes he also turns out to be
>right in his disputes, and his opponents use tactics no better than his,
>which further complicates things.
>
>I think in general Wik's behavior isn't a major problem in terms of
>actual behavior,

I disagree. When Wik's behaviour drives off respected members of the
Wikipedia community such as [User:Tannin], it is a problem for us
all.

Wik has made some useful edits. Unfortunately he also has a very
abrasive manner. This means that his behaviour often annoys other
Wikipedians, who are sometimes as a consequence discouraged from
further contributing to Wikipedia as a consequence.

It seems to me that the amount of good edits Wik has made may well
be less than the number of good edits other people have been
discouraged from making as a consequence of Wik's actions. If this
is the case, then Wik's overall effect is a negative one.

>The structural change is something that occasionally gets proposed but
>hasn't been detailed to anyone's satisfaction yet.  The main issue is
>how we can make things less "fragile" without also losing the
>characteristic "anyone can edit any page" nature of Wikipedia.

I'm not sure that's possible.

>Personally, I wouldn't be against losing some of that for
>more-established pages---once an article has been hashed out over a
>period of a year or two by hundreds of people, the ability for anyone to
>change anything seems to do more harm than good.

That may well be the case. Consider how the front page has been
protected, to stop vandals.

> In fact, most major
>edits to something like, say, [[Israel]] will be reverted anyway unless
>there is plenty of talk-page discussion about each point first, so maybe
>it wouldn't hurt to make this restriction more technically-based.

Where there are contentious pages -- of which [[Israel]] is one --
then perhaps the software could explicitly mark them as contentious
and deal with them differently from normal pages.

For example, how about a rule that contentious pages can only be
edited by logged-in users whose accounts have been active for at
least one month?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Descriptive/proscriptive

body:
On May 15, 2004, at 8:38 AM, Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

> It's a question of degree. You, for example, acknowledge the
> legitimacy of including "some famous ones." I'd be interested in
> knowing which ones you feel qualify.

My position is that:

1) a recipe can be used explicitly to illustrate a food if most
    recipes are similar to it, or

2) a recipe can be included when it is *the* recipe (this only
    applies, of course, to a recipe worthy of note).

Some have said that the condition for #2 is inherently POV.  I agree,
but would cite any decision on what is Wikipedia-worthy (as in the
old original-research debate) as precedent.

On May 15, 2004, at 12:30 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Auntie B's recipe is not encyclopedic for the same reason that
> Auntie B herself isn't, there's just not much to say, but it would
> make a fine "illustration" for the chocolate cake article:
>
>    '''Chocolate cake''' is [[cake]] containing [[chocolate]]. First
>    mentioned in a Dutch cookbook of 1675, [etc].
>
>    The following recipe is from Fannie Farmer ca 1921:
>
>    <recipe1>
>
>    A more modern recipe:
>
>    <recipe2>

This I would agree with, provided the recipes were truly
representative.  This is a judgment call.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


subject: [WikiEN-l] wik

body:
Martin Harper a ?crit:
>>for fear of causing a departure
>
>
> This is wrong in my case, and I suspect the rest of the arbitration cabal.
> Personally, I'm entirely happy to "cause a departure". However, I have no desire
> to cause a departure by being unreasonable or unfair, as I do not believe this
> would be in the best interests of Wikipedia.
>
> -Martin

I wonder if talking about someone by saying "The wik user" is very wikilove.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Descriptive/proscriptive

body:
Charles Matthews a ?crit:
>>Much of the Britannica 11th is at what might be called the
>>engineering-handbook level of depth and detail.
>
>
> Encyclopedias are traditionally rich on technology articles.  Doesn't follow
> that they must be cookbooks.  By the way, I cook, but rarely consult a
> recipe - occasional reference to Mrs. Beeton.  Articles about cooking - that
> I could support.  Not recipes.
>
> Charles
>
> PS I have a recipe for chocolate soup sent to me by the [[User:tmxxine]]
> group - anyone interested?  Now, if we could get them started ...

Yes... I am...


from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Elections

body:
> I hope that in two or three years we can change the allocation
> of the seats to "one per continent" (forget about Antarctia).

"Continent" is a very ambiguous term. See [[Continent]]. Also, where
would you put Turkey? What about Russia?

And what about the whole lot of Asian people which will be crushed (no
offence) under the weight of East Asian population, with very
different kinds of concerns? The same situation happens in some other
continent-bases organizations, like the publicly selected
representative for ICANN.

I really believe that even a division among DVD regions will work
better than continents.

roozbeh