from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-02-18

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Magic links: PMID incorrectly converts space to underscore... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 268 of 285 tests (94.04%) FAILED!


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andrew Finkenstadt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding "onmouseover" in extension

body:
On 2/10/06, Kai H?ner <mail at kaihuener.de> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to create an extension which has a tooltip to show information.
> To show the tooltip, I need an "onMouseOver" to call the
> javaScript-Function.
>

This might sound silly, but why not use the title="" attribute for the
anchor tag?

ref:  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980111.html


list: wikien-l

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A radical proposal

body:
On 2/18/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Nicely put. So how do we go about telling people that they're welcome
> > here, but they are guests, and have no rights whatsoever?
>
> Include a big picture of an open door in the welcome message, and
> gently remind them that it's just as easy for us to kick them out
> through a big open door as it is for them to walk in (prize for
> someone who can put this in a non-biting way?).

{{subst:test}} Otherwise know as oy we saw that.

--
geni


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom has completely lost its mind

body:
On 2/17/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/17/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If Wikipedia isn't mine, then who owns it? Who gets to decide whether
> Wikipedia is, to the best of my knowledge, owned by the Wikimedia Foundation.

I agree. But the Wikimedia Foundation only owns Wikipedia in one of
thre three following facets of Wikipedia:

1. Wikipedia, the worlds biggest collection of organised information.
2. Wikipedia, the great community who have created #1.
3. Wikipedia, the trademark and the servers used to run #1.

You argued that since I am not a member of the Wikimedia Foundation I
don't have the write to write "I'm a fish" on my user page, if I
recall. Also, to the best of my knowledge the Wikimedia Foundation has
not banned writing "I'm a fish" on my user page. And since you are
not, AFAIK, a part of the Wikimedia Foundation you really can not ban
writing "I'm a fish" on my user page.

Do you understand? The question of ownership is utterly irrelevant to
this discussion. Neither you nor I are owners, therefore please do not
try to make it sound like your opinion is the Wikimedia Foundation's
one.

> > is no Wikipedia-rule against writing pedophile on your user page. I
> > thought that was the whole reason for this email thread.
>
> There isn't a rule against it, but it doesn't mean you have a right to
> either. Well, that's my interpretation.

IANAL: In conventional IRL law you usually do not talk about rights.
You have crime and consequence. If you do X you will receive Y. If you
murder someone you will get between 4-20 years in prison. If you drive
to fast you will get a fine. You have the right to do anything that
doesn't have a consequence. Actually, you can do whatever you want but
if you are caught you'll suffer the consequences. Wikipedia rules and
policies works similarilly. It doesn't state what rights users have.
It states what we will do to users that commit actions that has
consequences.

Your talk about right is irrelevant. The question is whether writing
pedophile on your user page has a consequence or not.

> > Information has no moral value, it is neutral. It is the consumer of
> > the information that may *choose* to being disrupted or offended. Each
>
> Well that's one way of seeing it :)

If you ever take the time to go through the archives for wikien-l you
will find hundreds of threads where people have tried to objectively
assign an offensive value to some item. Is an image of clitoris
offensive? Is an image of autofellatio offensive? Is a swastika
offensive? Are the Muhammed cartoons offensive? All attempts to
measure offensiveness has failed. What is extremely offensive to
someone isn't offensive at all to someone else. It is very hard to see
above ones own cultural values, but if you do you will see that I'm
right.

> > and everyone is responsible for how he or she interprets the
> > information and what "mood" that puts him or her in. Within reasonable
> > limits of course - false information, hatespeech and goatse is not
> > good and is not allowed on Wikipedia.
>
> Sure, I can wander down the street waving a stick and anyone who
> "chooses" to get hit by it is responsible. Not a very useful model for
> building a community IMHO.

Try another analogy because this one just doesn't make sense.

> I think you're mischaracterising free speech. You can say what you
> want on the inside of *your* front door. I'm fairly certain that if
> you wrote a detailed plan for assassinating the president on the
> outside of your front door, you would regret it once the police found
> out.

I don't know the technical name of the crime, but I do know that it is
a crime planning to assassinate the president. It has nothing to do
with free speech.

> > Quite the contrary, it is important to emphasize that there is no
> > protection for offensiveness for anyone.
>
> Not true. We have policies for civility and that includes not using
> offensive language, personal attacks etc. We don't guarantee anyone a
> swearword-free environment, but we do try and make it pleasant.

A long time ago, in a thread similar to this, someone said that he was
offended by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine because he had a latent
drinking problem. He and many others (me included) shouldn't visit
certain parts of Wikipedia if we don't want to be offended. If you are
offended by someone saying that he or she is a pedophile, then I don't
think you should visit Wikipedia at all.

--
mvh Bj?rn


body:
> > Most constitutions (the one in the US for example) explicitly
> > guarantees every citizens right to free speech. Most countries also
> > have laws that makes saying and publishing certain things illegal. In
> > most countries with "free speech," you are allowed to put "almost any
> > poster you want on your front door." Similarly, Wikipedia allows you
> > to put almost any description of yourself you want on your user page.
> >
> > Quite the contrary, it is important to emphasize that there is no
> > protection for offensiveness for anyone.
>
> I don't know what you do for a living, but suppose you have an office
> at work. Do you get to put "almost any poster you want" on the front
> door of your office? Not at any workplace I've ever known of.

This has been gone over before.

Wikipedia is not a workplace and it is not workplace safe
Wikipedia may be offensive to you

Look in the mailing list archives for answers why Wikipedia must be
like the two statements above for it to operate.

--
mvh Bj?rn


body:
On 2/17/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/17/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Jew", "Muslim", and "American" are now "epithets", similar to "Nazi",
> > "racist" and "pedophile"?  And there's "no moral value" associated with
> > being a pedophile or a racist or a Nazi?
>
> "American" and "Muslim" are epithets along the lines of "Nazi" and
> "paedophile"?  As Steve Bennett said, eep.

Either you are deliberately misconstruing my words or you don't
understand what I'm writing.

Where I live, any of the following posters would "provoke righteous
outrage from a fairly large proportion of the community: "I'm a
pedophile", "I'm a Nazi", "I'm a socialist", "I'm a racist", "I'm a
communist", "I'm a Jew", "I'm a Muslim", "I'm a American", "I'm a
gay", "I'm hating you", "I'm liking your daughter", "I'm doing it with
your mum", "I'm better than you".... etc.. etc... etc...

In the intolerant community where I live, the labels American, Muslim,
Nazi and pedophile (among the other listed) on someones front door
would all "provoke righteous outrage ... "  I personally, believe it
is very bad to be a Nazi or a pedophile, I don't think it is any bad
at all to be an American or a Muslim. That is my *personal* opinion,
and I believe that my view on what labels are "bad" are not shared by
the rest of the world. Therefore, I do not want Wikipedia to decide
which values of X in "I'm a X" on someones user page is acceptable. If
you want Wikipedia to decide that, then please list the values of X
that are acceptable and the values of X that are unacceptable.

Also, I checked a dictonary for the word "epithet." Epithet is a
synonym for label (term used to characterize a person or thing) such
that as "American" in "George Bush is an American" is both an epithet
and a label. That was what I meant when using the word epithet. I also
found that epithet can be used in a derogatory way such as moron  can
be an epithet for a person you don't like.

To reduce the likelihood of further misunderstandings, please assume
that I'm not a hater of Americans or Muslims. OK?

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
>> (Where rights
>> come in is like this: if there's a law prohibiting having sex with
>> men, and you're convicted of it, you can take it to an appeals court,
>> and the court can decide that your constitutional right to privacy
>> invalidates the law against having sex with men.)
>>
>
> How do women feel about the law against having sex with men?

Yeah, I realized that halfway through, but decided to keep it in
because "the law against having sex with men, but only if you happen
to be a man yourself" was too long-winded.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
On 2/18/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2006, at 4:03 PM, BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:
>
> > IANAL: In conventional IRL law you usually do not talk about rights.
>
> I don't know where you live, but that's definitely *not* the case in,
> say, the United States. In the United States, rights are a very
> important part of law. In fact, the United States was founded based
> upon the philosophical foundation that the *purpose* of law is to
> protect people's rights. That's why the US Constitution has a "Bill
> of Rights" that state, in no uncertain terms, that people have
> certain rights that the government may not infringe upon. Most cases
> that make it to the Supreme Court are concerned with what rights
> people have and how those rights conflict or interact.

Again IANAL but I believe you are right. But for normal trials in the
US, is the constitution really involved? If you do something that the
normal law does not forbid, but that the US Constitution doesn't
guarantee your right to do, can the judicial system then decide
whether doing so is legal or illegal?

Steve Bennet said that there is no given right to write whatever you
want on your user page. I said that it hasn't been stated in any
Wikipedia law that writing pedophile on your user page is forbidden.
Considering those two facts (and no other facts such as "blatant
trolling") I believe that a normal judicial system would *not* find
writing pedophile on your user page forbidden. Yes?

--
mvh Bj?rn


body:
> I don't know what you think Wikipedia is, but I always thought
> Wikipedia was a project to write an encyclopedia. In that respect,
> the Wikipedia: and User: namespaces are definitely like a workplace?
> just as a workplace exists for the purpose of facilitating work, user
> pages exist *for the purpose of facilitating the writing of an
> encyclopedia*. I dunno, what do *you* think they're for?

If you mean workplace as in office, then NO. Neither the Wikipedia:
nor the User: name spaces are like a workplace. The behavioral
guidelines of most offices are so strict that not 0.01% of what is
allowed on Wikipedia would be allowed there. If you mean workplace as
in "a place where people do work," then yes, maybe. But be aware that
porn workers also has a place where they work.... The workplace
analogy is just stupid and doesn't work.

> As for "Wikipedia is not safe for work" and "Wikipedia may be
> offensive to you", those refer to the *encyclopedia*, and they're
> there because any compilation of the sum of human knowledge is bound
> to contain information that will offend someone. That doesn't give us

Contributors to any compilation of the sum of human knowledge is bound
to contain individuals that will offend someone. Defining who the
offensive individuals are is tricky. But it seems like you want to
define them by the labels they attach to themselves.

> We have articles on racism, and those articles contain material
> that's offensive simply because the fact that racism exists is a bad,
> offensive thing that we are fully documenting. That doesn't give me
> license to express racist opinions on talk pages or on my userpage--
> if I do so, I'm getting in the way of building an encyclopedia by
> pissing off the people I'm supposed to be collaborating with.

Regretfully, there are quite a few sick perverts around the world. Are
they disallowed from contributing to Wikipedia? Are they disallowed
from telling the world that they are sick perverts on their user page?
You are hand-waiving about that hate speech is not allowed on user
pages but no one has contested that! The question is whether you can
write "sick pervert" on your user page. Is the answer YES or is it NO?

--
mvh Bj?rn


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jakob Voss

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fight for Freedom of Geographic Data - how can
	Wikimedia help?

body:
Hi,

There is an oportunity - no: necessity - for active lobbying for Free
Knowledge in the European Union. The Proposed European Commission
Directive on European Spatial Data Infrastucture (INSPIRE) is
endangered to put more intellectual property rights on geographica data
in the European union.

See http://publicgeodata.org/WhatIsInspire and
http://space.frot.org/docs/inspire_directive.html

Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia chapters and Wikipedians obvoiously
should be interested in changing the European Directive to free
Geographic Data. In my point of view more than a petition or contacting
members of the parliament is needed (but of course these are basics). We
  need creative ideas of lobbying[1], simple examples why geographic
data needs to be free etc. Wikipedia is known and loved so maybe we
could use it's popularity to advert free geographic data. Last but not
least ideas also have to be implemented - that's the worst problem: in
my experience Wikimedia project's community members are lazy and slow in
doing something that is not *directly* related to their everyday work in
Wikipedia and Wikimedia organisation's community members like me are
busy, busy, busy. Any suggestions? I'm still searching for an occasion
and easy example [2] to convince your grandma, get into the media etc.

The discussion can be held at the public foundation-l mailing list,
can't it?

Greetings,
Jakob

[1] for instance influencing the people at this conference
http://www.direktportalen.com/dynaweb/gavlekongress/index.asp?page=2748&child=2732

[2] I'm sorry but the reasons given at
http://publicgeodata.org/WhySignThePetition and
http://space.frot.org/docs/uninspired.html and
http://space.frot.org/docs/why-free.html anre not very convincing - you
need something that influences Mr. average in his normal life. For
instance show Wikipedia (free, amazing, growing, flexible) and how
navigation systems could be with or won't be without free geographic
data. Well, there should be better examples...


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Russ Ryba

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Is it possible to have Custom Navigation Menus per
	Page?

body:
Good Morning Everyone!  :o)

I have what I hope is an interesting problem to someone reading this.  I
have been put in charge of creating a web site for my sons pre-school.  In
order to get everything up and running quickly, I installed MediaWiki.  It
works great and everyone is creating web pages and editing them.  I've very
quickly created bigger site then I ever thought I could do on my own.  It's
still not quite what they had in mind, but the content is mostly finished
now.

I've looked at putting all the text over into other CMS programs, but
everything I've tried so far is just horrible to edit and/or administer.
Some don't have what I want, or others like Mambo are just so complex I
would be stuck making every change.

The problem I have is that the Wiki site doesn't provide any hierarchical
navigation.  They want the ease of editing the Wiki, but with custom top and
left side navigation menus per page.  They also want to take away the edit
menus until users login, and move them to the left side when people do
login.  I have seen skins that move it to the left side so I know it can be
done.

I've started looking at the code - version 1.5.6.  Right now I think what I
want could be accomplished through templates and CSS.  I think something
like {{top_menu}} and {{left_menu}} that creates a div, span, or table...
then move that table around using CSS.  Then I think I need to have a custom
skin to put do all the right CSS stuff.

That seems like a lot of work and it also starts mixing "magic" wiki
templates to custom CSS styles that only work with certain skins which just
doesn't feel right.  I think it would work, but I'm not sure it's the Best
Way.  I've considered adding custom wiki tags too, but that also seems very
involved.  I will do that however if it is the Correct Way to do things.

Can any of you brilliant people out there point me to an extension or skin
that will accomplish what I'm trying to do?  I am a programmer by trade so
get as technical as you like.  I just don't know the MediaWiki thought
structure and design yet.  Any and all feedback or suggestions are
appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far,  I hope you'll take a minute
more to offer any assistance if you are able.  Regardless have a wonderful
day.

Thank you,

- Russ Ryba


body:
Good Morning All,

Kai -- you may want to check out the following page...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing#Templates

I have been researching how to change the Wiki and I stumbled on the H:
template that appears to exist already and does exactly what you describe.
Techincally it appears to use a span title attribute to accomplish the task,
but it would be a good starting point for a similar feature using
Javascript.

- Russ

On 2/18/06, Andrew Finkenstadt <pbrane at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/10/06, Kai H?ner <mail at kaihuener.de> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm trying to create an extension which has a tooltip to show
> information.
> > To show the tooltip, I need an "onMouseOver" to call the
> > javaScript-Function.
> >
>
> This might sound silly, but why not use the title="" attribute for the
> anchor tag?
>
> ref:  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980111.html
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jonathan & Kendra Dailey

body:
> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:40:02 -0000
> From: "Phil Boswell" <phil.boswell at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Marwari language Wikipedia
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <dt26fa$m08$1 at sea.gmane.org>
>
> "GerardM" <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:41a006820602160459n6962298i94ce18a378b56fb3 at mail.gmail.com...
> > On 2/16/06, Phil Boswell
> > <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> "Jonathan & Kendra Dailey"
> >> <jonathan-kendra_dailey at sall.com> wrote in message
> >> news:000401c632e1$583163a0$0201a8c0 at WinniethePooh...
> >> > Marwari is spoken by over 13 million people in India, Pakistan, and
> >> > Nepal.
> >> > It is related to Hindi but it is a distinct language with a long
> (1500
> >> > year)
> >> > written history and has a great amount of worldwide Diaspora.
> >> > How do we get this started?
> >> This would be the language you mean?
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwari_language
> >> It would appear from this and the article on Hindi that it is
> considered
> >> by
> >> many to be a dialect of the latter. If this is untrue, then those
> >> articles
> >> need to be updated :-)
> > According to Ethnologue:
> > http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90928 Marwari is seen
> > as a cluster of languages not as a single language.
> > Sometimes these things are not simple.. :(
>
> Maybe the reference is to the language:
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rwr
> rather than the family: they have the same name.
>
> feh!
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

[JD:] In the interest of full disclosure, I am an SIL linguist working in
this language (rwr, Marwari).  I am hoping to use Wikipedia (along with
other online resources) as a medium for language development activities.
For instance, it helps mother tongue speakers to learn to write, edit, and
hone their written language skills.

I do mean the language not the cluster.  The cluster has more like 30+
million speakers.  Marwari would be the largest with, depending on how you
slice the pie, between 13 and 19 million speakers.

It has a low lexical similarity with Hindi.  My own research has shown urban
speakers have "more Hindi" than rural speakers but the similarity is near
60%.

Jonathan


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Steve,

>   What is the worst possible thing that could happen if we removed
> userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine"
> user pages.

I find userpages very useful.  They often give me an idea of how a user
approaches Wikipedia, and through that what they'll probably be like to
interact with: do they take pride in their contributions (brag lists,
etc.), are they good with fiddling with wikicode (pretty userpages), are
they generally practical and edit-oriented (impersonal userpage, with a
list of reminders, useful templates, etc.), are they kooks (userpage
full of ravings, foul-mouthed comments about The Beatles and Queen
Brenda, etc.), are they confident users (a userpage that says "I'm new
here and don't know my way around", probably means "no"), are they silly
sausages (a userpage with hundreds of userboxen, many of which aren't
even applicable but look pretty, what with all those fair use images),
where are they from and how provincial are they ... you get the idea.

I could probably live with losing my own userpage.  It's not really
doing all /that/ much that's useful.  However, I'd like to hang on to
the userpages of others ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.10/263 - Release Date: 16/02/2006


from_name: Tom "TK" Kuegler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting the email addresses of registered users

body:
Hello All:

Is there any way to get the email addresses of the people who register in
MediaWiki?

I have looked all over the place but do not see a way to really manager the
registration process.

Thanks,

TK


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A rational proposal

body:
My concern is that newbies don't stay new, and that this whole thing -
both the userboxes and the war against them - is not going to give
them a great start.

I think to a degree Wikipedia has reached that stage Usenet did, where
suddenly the influx of new people is beyond the rate at which they
tend to acclimate to the older culture.  There are so many newbies
that a newbie-culture can develop without having to join the existing
one.

My thoughts: move all userboxes to user: space, so that they are
obviously not official and not part of the encyclopedia project
proper.  Then ignore them except for awful examples.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] A thought about "in popular culture" sections

body:
On 2/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about computer and video games? What if no-one else has ever written
> about it? Should we not have articles on them?

I find it hard to believe there exists a shipped game that nobody
wrote a word about, ever.

For one thing, there's the developers/manufacturers - ad copy, documentation.

Then there are things like magazine reviews, new product announcements
in the press, etc.

There's online reviews and news for anything published after the late 80s or so.

The problem is that most of these sources are ephemeral and possibly
hard to lay hands on.

-Matt


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> Stop worrying about userboxes and write an encyclopedia already. If
> and when userboxes interfere with encyclopedia-writing activities,
> react in an appropriately minimalist fashion and proceed with the
> encyclopedia-writing.

Hear hear. As a community, we give userboxes a disproportionate amount of
attention and debate.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
>
> > Most constitutions (the one in the US for example) explicitly
> > guarantees every citizens right to free speech. Most countries also
> > have laws that makes saying and publishing certain things illegal. In
> > most countries with "free speech," you are allowed to put "almost any
> > poster you want on your front door." Similarly, Wikipedia allows you
> > to put almost any description of yourself you want on your user page.
> >
> > Quite the contrary, it is important to emphasize that there is no
> > protection for offensiveness for anyone.
>

This kind of liberty is important for governments to grant because

(A) They have a monopoly on coercion and
(B) They do not grant you a right to fork, and they do not always grant you
a right to leave.

Neither of which applies to Wikipedia.

"If you don't like it, leave" doesn't apply to federal governments, and an
oppressive government
can really hurt you. The analogy between Wikipedia and a government, or the
US Bill of Rights
is completely out of place.

Ryan


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
My thought exactly.

Fred

On Feb 18, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Matt Brown wrote:

> My concern is that newbies don't stay new, and that this whole thing -
> both the userboxes and the war against them - is not going to give
> them a great start.
>
> I think to a degree Wikipedia has reached that stage Usenet did, where
> suddenly the influx of new people is beyond the rate at which they
> tend to acclimate to the older culture.  There are so many newbies
> that a newbie-culture can develop without having to join the existing
> one.
>
> My thoughts: move all userboxes to user: space, so that they are
> obviously not official and not part of the encyclopedia project
> proper.  Then ignore them except for awful examples.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 2/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>How about computer and video games? What if no-one else has ever written
>>about it? Should we not have articles on them?
>>
>
>I find it hard to believe there exists a shipped game that nobody
>wrote a word about, ever.
>
Heh, if nobody ever wrote about it, I'd say that's a good
definition of non-notable.

>
>For one thing, there's the developers/manufacturers - ad copy, documentation.
>
>Then there are things like magazine reviews, new product announcements
>in the press, etc.
>
>There's online reviews and news for anything published after the late 80s or so.
>
>The problem is that most of these sources are ephemeral and possibly
>hard to lay hands on.
>
I take that as a good reason to have WP - people with the ephemeral
sources get the factual content out of their material and make it
available to a wider audience. There are a number of WP articles
that already have the most detailed information online anywhere,
just by virtue of using print sources.

Stan


from_name: Will "Sceptre" Noble

body:
On 2/18/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Jimmy,
>
> > The Germans have a nice way of putting it on the front page:
> >
> > "Gute Autorinnen und Autoren sind immer willkommen ? die ersten Schritte
> > sind ganz einfach."
> >
> > This means:
> >
> > "Good authors are always welcome - the first steps are quite easy!"
> >
> > Contrast with the English:
> >
> > "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
> >
> > I am not advocating a change (nor opposing it); I am just making an
> > observation.
>
> I like that idea.  I do have a question for the Germans, though: on
> en-WP we often get trolls and vandals arguing that they can't be blocked
> because "it says anyone has the right to edit, and I'm 'anyone'!"  Do
> trolls on de-WP say "it says good authors are always welcome, and I'm a
> good author!"?
>
>
> (Sorry, whimsical mood.  It'll pass.)
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse

Possibly (but in German, of course), but their contributions would say
otherwise (e.g. If an editor vandalised George W. Bush with "HEIL HITLER",
it's obviously not a good edit.

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 2/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nicely put. So how do we go about telling people that they're welcome
> here, but they are guests, and have no rights whatsoever?

Include a big picture of an open door in the welcome message, and
gently remind them that it's just as easy for us to kick them out
through a big open door as it is for them to walk in (prize for
someone who can put this in a non-biting way?).

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improvements to diffs

body:
Red text in diffs is too hard to read. Maybe something
like a blue-purple would be better.

Red chould be used for minor specific changes, if
there be a way to differentiate between different
string lengths, but thats getting too much into the
workings of the diff module...

SV
 PS: Dont bother me with comments about this
 belonging at mediazilla.

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


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of userpages

body:
What's the worst thing that could happen if we got rid of userpages
altogether? Wikipedia would grind to a halt because most of the users would
probably leave. Not because they're hugely attached to their userpages, but
because it would be a ringing endorsement of the conduct of certain admins
(deleting inflammatory userboxes without a policy for it, and then when
there IS a policy for it they abuse THAT, and block people who disagree with
them, etcetera) in this whole userbox mess.

Cynical


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] 100K edits for RobotGMwikt

body:
Hoi,
Today, the bot that I run has passed the 100.000 edit marks on the
English Wiktionary. This is a result that is nice but still, I have very
much mixed feelings about it. It is a good thing because having the
interwiki links on Wiktionary promotes cooperation. The bad sentiment is
because it is such a waste of resources. For Wiktionary it is not that
bad; I just run the bot and it is process that is largely automatic. I
do check every now and again, sometimes the software is updated and that
does merit some checking.

For Wikipedia the situation is in my opinion more bleak. Many people
spend a lot of effort in getting the interwiki links right. Where the
Wiktionary process is a simple automatic process, the Wikipedia
interwiki is a laborious affair. It is also a process where we know that
a change because of some disambiguation is only done after some time.
Many of the smaller wikipedia projects do not have people working on the
interwiki links and it is here where the interwiki links would be most
valuable.

It has been argued in the past that some innovation for the interwiki
process is needed. There are some suggestions on Meta...

Oh yes, the Wiktionary process allows me to update concurrently on MANY
wiktionaries. When you add up all the updates that RobotGMwikt has done,
it could be something like 250.000+. Then again, I do not care that much
about such statistics. It is just an indicator for the need for innovation.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] 100K edits for RobotGMwikt


from_name: FxParlant

body:
Maybe you could check this thread
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki/10364

Then my layout :
(I'm in upgrading labor, so everything is ugly, and I just took the thre
e column css from skidoo)
http://www.fxparlant.net/Main_Page

Ask me if you want to know more

Fran?ois

Russ Ryba wrote:
> Good Morning Everyone!  :o)
>
> I have what I hope is an interesting problem to someone reading this.  I
> have been put in charge of creating a web site for my sons pre-school.  In
> order to get everything up and running quickly, I installed MediaWiki.  It
> works great and everyone is creating web pages and editing them.  I've very
> quickly created bigger site then I ever thought I could do on my own.  It's
> still not quite what they had in mind, but the content is mostly finished
> now.
>
> I've looked at putting all the text over into other CMS programs, but
> everything I've tried so far is just horrible to edit and/or administer.
> Some don't have what I want, or others like Mambo are just so complex I
> would be stuck making every change.
>
>
> The problem I have is that the Wiki site doesn't provide any hierarchical
> navigation.  They want the ease of editing the Wiki, but with custom top and
> left side navigation menus per page.  They also want to take away the edit
> menus until users login, and move them to the left side when people do
> login.  I have seen skins that move it to the left side so I know it can be
> done.
>
> I've started looking at the code - version 1.5.6.  Right now I think what I
> want could be accomplished through templates and CSS.  I think something
> like {{top_menu}} and {{left_menu}} that creates a div, span, or table...
> then move that table around using CSS.  Then I think I need to have a custom
> skin to put do all the right CSS stuff.
>
>
> That seems like a lot of work and it also starts mixing "magic" wiki
> templates to custom CSS styles that only work with certain skins which just
> doesn't feel right.  I think it would work, but I'm not sure it's the Best
> Way.  I've considered adding custom wiki tags too, but that also seems very
> involved.  I will do that however if it is the Correct Way to do things.
>
>
> Can any of you brilliant people out there point me to an extension or skin
> that will accomplish what I'm trying to do?  I am a programmer by trade so
> get as technical as you like.  I just don't know the MediaWiki thought
> structure and design yet.  Any and all feedback or suggestions are
> appreciated.
>
>
> Thank you for taking the time to read this far,  I hope you'll take a minute
> more to offer any assistance if you are able.  Regardless have a wonderful
> day.
>
> Thank you,
>
> - Russ Ryba


body:
Yes, this confused me. A template is part of the encyclopedia.
Userboxes are more self-expression. Separating them out will help.

Fred

On Feb 18, 2006, at 12:29 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 2/18/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>
>>> I think to a degree Wikipedia has reached that stage Usenet did,
>>> where
>>> suddenly the influx of new people is beyond the rate at which they
>>> tend to acclimate to the older culture.  There are so many newbies
>>> that a newbie-culture can develop without having to join the
>>> existing
>>> one.
>>>
>
> Is this true? It's a fairly bold statement...is there evidence for it?
>
>
>>> My thoughts: move all userboxes to user: space, so that they are
>>> obviously not official and not part of the encyclopedia project
>>> proper.  Then ignore them except for awful examples.
>>>
>
> That seems reasonable - encyclopaedic templates and userboxes should
> probably not be mixed. We could always create a "user template:"
> namespace too.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] MW1.5: When do magic words bind in transclusion?

in_reply_to:
<mailman.75.1140285080.4010.wikitech-l@wikimedia.org>;
	from wikitech-l-request@wikimedia.org on Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at
	05:51:20PM +0000

body:
I'm working on a (clearly :-) non-WMF project using MediaWiki, and I've
tripped over something that I can't figure out how to do using the
templating language.

Several things I've seen in various WP templates suggest there are many
thing about that part of the parser that I don't understand (and can't
locate doco for), but if there's a better list than this on which to
ask, please let me know.

And so, to the problem:

I'm trying to use MW as a database.

I just wanted to get out of the way up front that I realize that's the
problem here.  :-)

I have a template ("A").

This template is instantiated on many pages ("A"->"B", "A"->"C", "A"->"D").

Those pages are in turn transcluded onto other pages:

"A"->"B"->"E"
"A"->"B"->"F"
"A"->"B"->"G"
"A"->"C"->"H"
"A"->"C"->"I"
"A"->"C"->"J"
"A"->"D"->"K"
"A"->"D"->"L"

What I'm trying to accomplish is to include a link on "A" that, when
the user is looking at "I" will permit them to edit "C".

I had been hoping that I could include the PAGENAMEE magic word in the
template ("A") as part of an HTTP edit link, but alas, PAGENAMEE (and
presumably all the other magic words that pertain to pages) bind so
late in the parse chain that they point to "I" in that situation.

In a situation like this, is there any reasonable way to grab the name
of "C" from inside the code of "A"?  Something with subst:, maybe?

The actual pages are
A: http://tbkinfo.net/wiki/index.php/Template:Infobox_Show
C: http://tbkinfo.net/wiki/index.php/O%27Maddy%27s_House
I: http://tbkinfo.net/wiki/index.php/O%27Maddy%27s

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

	A: No.
	Q: Should I include quotations after my message body?


subject: [Wikitech-l] No new Wikipedias anymore? :(

body:
Angela wrote:
>> About a year ago I requested a new language (!) it's still not set up, there
>> are about a dozen of new approved languages awaiting set up. When will there
>> be some new activity in the set up of new languages? The new languages which
>> were lastly introduced are functioning perfectly and have some good
>> articles. I wonder should the page "request a new language" page not even be
>> deleted, it's just standing there...
>>
>
> Perhaps the existence of the Special Project Committee
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> will solve
> this problem?
>
> Angela.
Hoi,
As far as I am aware the "special projects committee" does not have
anything but a name and an initial list of people. There is no
indication what this committee will be about except for that it is to be
about "special" things. There is nothing special about a request for new
projects. There are existing procedures for things like new projects.
Until any committee has been given a mandate by the board to assume a
role it should be business as usual.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Angela

body:
On 2/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   What is the worst possible thing that could happen if we removed
> userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine"
> user pages.

You can take away user pages, but you won't remove the desire for
users to express themselves and explain who they are. I expect we'd
see signatures becoming more like mini-user pages rather than being a
link to a user page if you did this. I think the main danger here
would be losing a sense of community if there was no way of finding
out anything about a person and everyone became anonymous. We need to
remove the "hands off it's mine" view of user pages, not remove the
user pages. It's not the pages themselves that are the problem.

Angela.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body: SELECT user_email FROM user WHERE user_name = '...';


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
On Feb 18, 2006, at 3:18 AM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> How about computer and video games? What if no-one else has ever
> written
> about it? Should we not have articles on them?

The real killer, actually, is ironically academic works. Tons of
major 20th century theorists in English haven't had secondary sources
written that neatly summarize them. Plenty that use their thought for
other ends or that disagree with them, but those are both problematic
as sources for obvious reasons.

The NOR policy does provide for this sensibly, though - primary
sources are acceptable sources, so long as you don't engage in
"novel" interpretation of them.

The problem is that this often does allow for the "in popular
culture" sections.

-Phil


from_name: Servien Ilaino

body:
Hi,

About a year ago I requested a new language (!) it's still not set up, there
are about a dozen of new approved languages awaiting set up. When will there
be some new activity in the set up of new languages? The new languages which
were lastly introduced are functioning perfectly and have some good
articles. I wonder should the page "request a new language" page not even be
deleted, it's just standing there...

Serv


from_name: Thor

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for new language on WP

body:
Brion,

Hyway reay ouyay efusingray otay ivegay emay hetay hancecay otay roducepay
Ikipediaway niay igpay atinlay???  Eway lreadyay avehay Ikipediaway niay
anguageslay hattay on'tday sistexay, (sco.wikipedia.org)

Thor


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 18/02/06, Thor <efaulk2274 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Brion,
>
> Hyway reay ouyay efusingray otay ivegay emay hetay hancecay otay roducepay
> Ikipediaway niay igpay atinlay???  Eway lreadyay avehay Ikipediaway niay
> anguageslay hattay on'tday sistexay, (sco.wikipedia.org)

Please keep your cheap shots for, say, Klingon. (Oh, wait, we deleted that one)

That Scots doesn't exist is a common belief, based on the assumption
that the language is the same as the "Scottish English" dialect common
north of Carlisle but with a bit of a comedy accent. Ho hum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

I have no great love for the language or the wiki, but I figure that
when I can't understand bits of it and I'm a fluent English speaker
from Scotland, this may just indicate something.

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


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Angela wrote:
> You can take away user pages, but you won't remove the desire for
> users to express themselves and explain who they are. I expect we'd
> see signatures becoming more like mini-user pages rather than being a
> link to a user page if you did this. I think the main danger here
> would be losing a sense of community if there was no way of finding
> out anything about a person and everyone became anonymous. We need to
> remove the "hands off it's mine" view of user pages, not remove the
> user pages. It's not the pages themselves that are the problem.

I agree.  The more I think about this, the more I refine my view of what
I think is "the problem" with these userboxes.  "The problem" is not
people's self-expression, the problem is that by having these things in
the Template namespace we are implicitly suggesting that these are
endorsed by the Wikipedia community, and that plastering a bunch of
advocacy stickers on your userpage is the right and normal way to be a
good Wikipedian.

One of the reasons we've always been so successful is deep and profound
respect for individuality, *mostly* manifested by a willful abandonment
of advocacy in our interactions and work.  I show my respect for other
people's individuality by not shouting about my own worldview, and I
admire and respect others who do the same.

This is why I've become more and more convinced that the right thing to
do is to take any and all userboxes which don't fit some very very
narrow "practical" uses into people's personal userspace.  If you want
to decorate your userpage with your advocacy for the death penalty and
support for animal rights and so on, well, you know, whatever.

I think it's lame, but whatever.

However, that does *not* mean that I am complacent about having these
things in a common space which seems to suggest not just "well,
whatever" but "here's the thing you're supposed to do!"

If I wasn't such a slow editor, and if I knew how to run a bot, I'd be
likely to create a huge massive stir by going through every single
template in the problematic categories and edit every single user page
to subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go.

Please no one else do this... yet. :)

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/18/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> An advantage of collapsing user and talk pages into one is that it
> immediately simplifies your signature. There's only one page to link
> to.

I do that anyway. I've never really seen the point of including your
user page in your sig. If they want to get to it, they can go through
the talk page.

Steve


body:
On 2/18/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Actually, the charter of the Foundation appears to indicate all of us
> are members of the Foundation. Maybe you mean "not a member of the
> Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees"? And I think much of the rest of
> your post is a strawman -- Steve only pointed out a fact (Wikipedia is
> owned by the Wikimedia Foundation); he didn't ban (or say he could ban)
> you from putting "I'm a fish" on your userpage. And while you certainly
> can do that, the Wikimedia Foundation can very well ban you from doing
> it. So, yes, the question of ownership is very relevant to this
> discussion, especially since you brought it up ("If Wikipedia isn't
> mine, then who owns it?").

Thanks, you clarified perfectly.

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A psychopathic proposal

body:
Kill them all. With fire. Spare not a single one.

On a slightly more serious note; the problem is now twofold. There's
the userbox mess to clean up, and the mess it's made in the community
- ripping the oldies and newbies apart - to clean up too. I'm thinking
a bit of friendly re-education into what Wikipedia culture is might
not be amiss. Instead of stating, "you don't get it"; teach people
what "it" is.

Rob Church


body:
As I understood it, there was a lack of communication between the
board and the developers as to when new languages could be set up. The
pages on Meta seemed to be accumulating dust despite there being some
cases with strong concensus to set up a new language wiki. It wasn't,
as far as I know, a question of developer time given it's not that
hard for us to add a new wiki.

Perhaps it's time someone laid the cards out and said, "you can create
new language wikis when X is done and someone requests it on Y"?

Rob Church

On 18/02/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/18/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Until any committee has been given a mandate by the board to assume a
> > role it should be business as usual.
>
> Even if business as usual means "No new Wikipedias anymore? :( " ?
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: John Lee

body:
BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:

>On 2/17/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 2/17/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If Wikipedia isn't mine, then who owns it? Who gets to decide whether
>>>
>>>
>>Wikipedia is, to the best of my knowledge, owned by the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>>
>
>I agree. But the Wikimedia Foundation only owns Wikipedia in one of
>thre three following facets of Wikipedia:
>
>1. Wikipedia, the worlds biggest collection of organised information.
>2. Wikipedia, the great community who have created #1.
>3. Wikipedia, the trademark and the servers used to run #1.
>
>You argued that since I am not a member of the Wikimedia Foundation I
>don't have the write to write "I'm a fish" on my user page, if I
>recall. Also, to the best of my knowledge the Wikimedia Foundation has
>not banned writing "I'm a fish" on my user page. And since you are
>not, AFAIK, a part of the Wikimedia Foundation you really can not ban
>writing "I'm a fish" on my user page.
>
>Do you understand? The question of ownership is utterly irrelevant to
>this discussion. Neither you nor I are owners, therefore please do not
>try to make it sound like your opinion is the Wikimedia Foundation's
>one.
>
>
Actually, the charter of the Foundation appears to indicate all of us
are members of the Foundation. Maybe you mean "not a member of the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees"? And I think much of the rest of
your post is a strawman -- Steve only pointed out a fact (Wikipedia is
owned by the Wikimedia Foundation); he didn't ban (or say he could ban)
you from putting "I'm a fish" on your userpage. And while you certainly
can do that, the Wikimedia Foundation can very well ban you from doing
it. So, yes, the question of ownership is very relevant to this
discussion, especially since you brought it up ("If Wikipedia isn't
mine, then who owns it?").

John


from_name: Anthere

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>
>>>About a year ago I requested a new language (!) it's still not set up, there
>>>are about a dozen of new approved languages awaiting set up. When will there
>>>be some new activity in the set up of new languages? The new languages which
>>>were lastly introduced are functioning perfectly and have some good
>>>articles. I wonder should the page "request a new language" page not even be
>>>deleted, it's just standing there...
>>>
>>
>>Perhaps the existence of the Special Project Committee
>><http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> will solve
>>this problem?
>>
>>Angela.
>
> Hoi,
> As far as I am aware the "special projects committee" does not have
> anything but a name and an initial list of people. There is no
> indication what this committee will be about except for that it is to be
> about "special" things. There is nothing special about a request for new
> projects. There are existing procedures for things like new projects.
> Until any committee has been given a mandate by the board to assume a
> role it should be business as usual.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

Hi

It has more than a name and initial list. There has been an initial
discussion on its scope in the past few weeks on internal wiki.

The creation of the committee has been approved just a couple of days
ago by the board. Its more precise scope and initial procedures will be
drafted in the next few days/weeks.

I do not see why this committee would be involved in the creation of new
languages, but this might of course be discussed (though to be fair, I
would prefer to avoid our implication here). However, the role of the
committee is to promote some projects and to speed up some decisions
currently in the hands of the board. It is not to replace community
decision making, nor to torture developers.

Right now, the rules of creation are rather clear in most cases. The
creation of new languages is not pending due to the board not taking a
decision, but due to a technical lag :-) No committee will change this...

ant


from_name: Jeffrey M. Smith

body:
On Saturday 18 February 2006 13:28, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> This is why I've become more and more convinced that the right thing to
> do is to take any and all userboxes which don't fit some very very
> narrow "practical" uses into people's personal userspace.

Have you seen [[Wikipedia:Userfying userboxes]] ?  That policy proposal says
that you think it's a good idea, but whether or not you've actually said this
seems to be challenged.  One valid problem with that proposal is that it
encourages userbox templates to be recreated as sub-pages in the user
namespace, which would again make them available as templates for use across
multiple user pages.  (While this might be fine for non-POV userboxes, I'd
imagine you'd have the same objection to POV templates in userspace as you do
for POV templates in the template namespace.)

> If I wasn't such a slow editor, and if I knew how to run a bot, I'd be
> likely to create a huge massive stir by going through every single
> template in the problematic categories and edit every single user page
> to subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go.
>
> Please no one else do this... yet. :)

Well, with the T1-justified deletion spree of politics or belief-oriented
userboxes[1] paired with [[User:Pathoschild]] 's efforts to subst the
contents of these deleted userboxes onto user pages, I think this is already
taking place.

[1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/queries/en_del_userbox

--
[[User:Jeffrey Smith]] <wikipedian at jeffsmith.us>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A modest proposal.

body:
On 2/18/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 2/17/06, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I would like to see all userboxes done through substitution instead
> >>of making TfD weep openly, which this would do.
> >>
> >>-Phil
> >>
> >>
> >Fair use is difficult enough to sort out as it is. If they are useing
> >un subst templates I can kill the fair use vio in seconds. Otherwise I
> >have to go through every person with the image on their user page and
> >ask them to remove it.
> >
> >
> If it's not fair use, don't ask, remove it for them. Then leave a
> friendly note on their talk page explaining what you've done.
>
> --Michael Snow

Sorting through a page of messy code to find the right image  link is a pain.

--
geni


from_name: Any File

subject: [Wikitech-l] Captcha on IT Wikinews

body:
I wonder why the Captcha autentication is required during registration
on Italian Wikinews.

An user has complained that he/she was not able to see the image.

I have done some test and sometime the page hangs up.

On the same subject:
What is the precedure that shuld be followed by impared people who can
not see the image?

AnyFile


body:
On 2/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can't, you released all rights to them under the GFDL as soon as you put
> them on Wikipedia.
>
Close but no. GFDL doesn't apply to patents however my previous post
counts as prior publication.

> Get real. Jimbo hath spoken on thy matter, and polemic or inflamatory
> templates are fair game, ie. can be shot during hunting season, which on
> Wikipedia is always. A reminder that Dick Cheney is *not* invited to
> edit... :)

So the link to WP:TOOLS is in the sidebar where exactly?

WP:CSD exists to provide highly objective criteria unser which admins
can delete in order to take pressure of the various XFD processes. TFD
is not overloaded and T1 is insanely objective and badly phrased. For
exaple [[Template:Nazism]] is clearly inflammatory.

--
geni


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] The sad story of training material to learn Farsi

body:
Hoi,
A long time ago, I have worked hard creating teaching material for
people to learn Farsi. Farsi or Persian is the language spoken in
Iran. The material was the material used by a teacher that I know.

The material was created at http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Farsi. It was in
the days when everything was still there. The original material had
one basic flaw; it was written left to right while Farsi is written
from left to right.  While working on this material, it struck me that
it is really sad that you have to create teaching material that is as
basic as this for every language.

As we were creating the concepts for what was called "Ultimate
Wiktionary" but what is currently known as WiktionaryZ, it came to me
that we should not have the Dutch words there as the translation for
the Farsi content, but that we should have the translation of the
Farsi words in the language of the student. This would mean that
everybody can use the material.

Today I was asked by someone where the Farsi lessons were, somebody
actually wants to use it.. This means that all this effort had people
use it... It meant that all the pronunciations were going to be
listened to... The material is not there anymore .. it is not useful
anymore ..

I do not doubt that the people who worked on it intended well, but at
this moment it is not Farsi / Dutch, it is not Farsi / English it is
certainly unusable.

The timing could have been worse; Brion is busy with the integration
of the namespace manager. It is therefore possible to have pages in
the fa.wikibooks that are specific for the Dutch language and pages
specific for the English language. Alternatively we could have a
namespace for Farsi content in the nl.wikibooks. This would mean
however that we should be able to have a namespace that is oriented in
a different direction from the other namespaces in a database. I do
not know if we can do this already, I am sure however that we will
want something like this for the right to left languages like Farsi in
WiktionaryZ.

Now there is one practical question remaining; what will we do with
the Farsi lessons in the fa.wikibooks that were originally intended to
teach Dutch people Farsi.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikitech-l] The sad story of training material to learn Farsi


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/17/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
<snip>
>>"The Arbcom recommends to Jimbo a declaration as policy:
>>* Rather than permitting all userboxes and disallowing only the worst
>>ones, policy shall follow the model on de: and move to certain
>>userboxes being permitted and all others limited or forbidden.
>>* Userboxes for human languages spoken and for geographic location are
>>unlimited.
>
>
> Are timezones geographic locations?
>

Yes.

>
>>* A user may display three other userboxes, whether by template, page
>>transclusion, code substitution, image or other means. Other userboxes
>>may be subject to deletion discussion on WP:TFD,
>
>
> Define userbox. Three is excessive and I'm claiming interlectal
> property rights on the idea of multi issue userboxes (so no one can
> use it)
>

Can't, you released all rights to them under the GFDL as soon as you put
them on Wikipedia.

>
>>: except those
>>susceptible to speedy deletion under T1."
>>
>
>
> T1 is an abuse of CSD.
>

Get real. Jimbo hath spoken on thy matter, and polemic or inflamatory
templates are fair game, ie. can be shot during hunting season, which on
Wikipedia is always. A reminder that Dick Cheney is *not* invited to
edit... :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
Angela wrote:
> On 2/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>  What is the worst possible thing that could happen if we removed
>>userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine"
>>user pages.
>
>
> You can take away user pages, but you won't remove the desire for
> users to express themselves and explain who they are. I expect we'd
> see signatures becoming more like mini-user pages rather than being a
> link to a user page if you did this. I think the main danger here
> would be losing a sense of community if there was no way of finding
> out anything about a person and everyone became anonymous. We need to
> remove the "hands off it's mine" view of user pages, not remove the
> user pages. It's not the pages themselves that are the problem.
>

I am reminded here of the incredibly intricate signatures present on
Uncyclopedia, including postnominals which indicate what awards a user
has won...

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

body:
On 2/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Geoff Burling wrote:
> > On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Habj wrote:
> >
> >
> >>The title of this email made me stunned. Fortunately, there was nothing
> >>about Irish children in it.
> >>
> >
> > "A modest proposal" has been overused as the title of an essay. Much as
> > "X considered harmful".
> >
>
> Modest proposals considered harmful? :)
>

Well, since the very first "A Modest proposal" proposed that people
should start eating babies, I'd say yes :P


from_name: Will "Sceptre" Noble

body:
On 2/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
> > On 2/17/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> <snip>
> >>"The Arbcom recommends to Jimbo a declaration as policy:
> >>* Rather than permitting all userboxes and disallowing only the worst
> >>ones, policy shall follow the model on de: and move to certain
> >>userboxes being permitted and all others limited or forbidden.
> >>* Userboxes for human languages spoken and for geographic location are
> >>unlimited.
> >
> >
> > Are timezones geographic locations?
> >
>
> Yes.
>
> >
> >>* A user may display three other userboxes, whether by template, page
> >>transclusion, code substitution, image or other means. Other userboxes
> >>may be subject to deletion discussion on WP:TFD,
> >
> >
> > Define userbox. Three is excessive and I'm claiming interlectal
> > property rights on the idea of multi issue userboxes (so no one can
> > use it)
> >
>
> Can't, you released all rights to them under the GFDL as soon as you put
> them on Wikipedia.
>
> >
> >>: except those
> >>susceptible to speedy deletion under T1."
> >>
> >
> >
> > T1 is an abuse of CSD.
> >
>
> Get real. Jimbo hath spoken on thy matter, and polemic or inflamatory
> templates are fair game, ie. can be shot during hunting season, which on
> Wikipedia is always. A reminder that Dick Cheney is *not* invited to
> edit... :)

Neither is King William II of England, for that matter :D

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


body:
Snowspinner wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2006, at 12:47 PM, Fastfission wrote:
>
>>But I had a recent thought about it. Wouldn't any discussions about
>>the impact or prevalence of something in popular culture need to have
>>been discussed by a secondary source first before it was allowed into
>>an article under WP:NOR?
>
>
> NOR has long been a bit slippery with fiction, both popular and
> literary. The problem is that by the most hardline interpretation of
> NOR, plot summaries of novels aren't allowed. Unfortunately (or
> fortunately, depending on your perspective), bending NOR for
> fictional texts has led to things like the "in popular culture"
> sections. But unbending it is its own sort of problematic.
>

How about computer and video games? What if no-one else has ever written
about it? Should we not have articles on them?

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

subject: [Textbook-l] Fwd: The sad story of training material to learn Farsi


body:
Philip Welch wrote:
>>>>IANAL: In conventional IRL law you usually do not talk about rights.
>>>
>>>I don't know where you live, but that's definitely *not* the case in,
>>>say, the United States. In the United States, rights are a very
>>>important part of law. In fact, the United States was founded based
>>>upon the philosophical foundation that the *purpose* of law is to
>>>protect people's rights. That's why the US Constitution has a "Bill
>>>of Rights" that state, in no uncertain terms, that people have
>>>certain rights that the government may not infringe upon. Most cases
>>>that make it to the Supreme Court are concerned with what rights
>>>people have and how those rights conflict or interact.
>>
>>Again IANAL but I believe you are right. But for normal trials in the
>>US, is the constitution really involved? If you do something that the
>>normal law does not forbid, but that the US Constitution doesn't
>>guarantee your right to do, can the judicial system then decide
>>whether doing so is legal or illegal?
>
>
> That depends. First off, the US Constitution (specifically, the Ninth
> Amendment) says that you have certain government-protected rights
> above and beyond what the Constitution specifically protects. One
> example that the courts have upheld is the "right to privacy", which
> allows you to buy contraceptives, have an abortion, or have sex with
> men without governmental interference.
>
> So yes, in general, under US law you have the right to do anything as
> long as you aren't committing a crime or a tort. You can't be
> convicted of something that isn't expressly prohibited. (Where rights
> come in is like this: if there's a law prohibiting having sex with
> men, and you're convicted of it, you can take it to an appeals court,
> and the court can decide that your constitutional right to privacy
> invalidates the law against having sex with men.)
>

How do women feel about the law against having sex with men?

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

body:
On 2/18/06, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> (see [[WP:FISH]]).

You do realize that [[WP:FISH]] is an actual, working link, right? :)

ABCD


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

in_reply_to:
<dt85vr$44h$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from Platonides <Platonides@gmail.com> on Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at
	11:05:14PM +0100

body:
On Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at 11:05:14PM +0100, Platonides wrote:
> Maybe you could instatiate A in B as {{A|B}}, in C as {{A|C}} etc. to get C
> in A, when A gets into I?

I could, if that's the only solution.  But everything except A will be
being created by civilians.

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

	A: No.
	Q: Should I include quotations after my message body?


body:
On 2/18/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> > I think to a degree Wikipedia has reached that stage Usenet did, where
> > suddenly the influx of new people is beyond the rate at which they
> > tend to acclimate to the older culture.  There are so many newbies
> > that a newbie-culture can develop without having to join the existing
> > one.

Is this true? It's a fairly bold statement...is there evidence for it?

> > My thoughts: move all userboxes to user: space, so that they are
> > obviously not official and not part of the encyclopedia project
> > proper.  Then ignore them except for awful examples.

That seems reasonable - encyclopaedic templates and userboxes should
probably not be mixed. We could always create a "user template:"
namespace too.

Steve


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Jimmy,

> The Germans have a nice way of putting it on the front page:
>
> "Gute Autorinnen und Autoren sind immer willkommen ? die ersten Schritte
> sind ganz einfach."
>
> This means:
>
> "Good authors are always welcome - the first steps are quite easy!"
>
> Contrast with the English:
>
> "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
>
> I am not advocating a change (nor opposing it); I am just making an
> observation.

I like that idea.  I do have a question for the Germans, though: on
en-WP we often get trolls and vandals arguing that they can't be blocked
because "it says anyone has the right to edit, and I'm 'anyone'!"  Do
trolls on de-WP say "it says good authors are always welcome, and I'm a
good author!"?

(Sorry, whimsical mood.  It'll pass.)

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.11/264 - Release Date: 17/02/2006


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 2/18/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> I like that idea.  I do have a question for the Germans, though: on
> en-WP we often get trolls and vandals arguing that they can't be blocked
> because "it says anyone has the right to edit, and I'm 'anyone'!"  Do
> trolls on de-WP say "it says good authors are always welcome, and I'm a
> good author!"?

They just need a grammar lesson. Anyone *can* edit, but not everyone *may* edit.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Task forces

body:
On 2/16/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >* How would task forces be created?
> >
> Somebody starts a talk page
>
> >* How would members of a task force be appointed?
> >
> Let anyone participate at any time.
>
> >* Is a single "policy committee" a better idea than having multiple task
> >forces?
> >
> Whatever ... It makes no difference.
>
> >* How do we ensure that a task force is representative of opinion across
> >Wikipedia/has community support?
> >
> That's impossible.
>
> >* How do we ensure that time spent dealing with policy does not affect
> >contributors' time spent on encyclopaedic articles?

Spot on, Ec :)

> :-D  Extend the length of the day beyond 24 hours.

Now *there's* a project worth doing.  Does this involve Superman and
world-sized gyroscopes?

++SJ


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] rel=nofollow on talk pages?

body:
I've noticed a number of attempts by editors to push links to their
websites into talk pages, where they are much less likely to be removed
or <nowiki>'d than links in articles. I understand the reason for not
having rel=nofollow in the article space; however, I can't see any
reason not to have rel=nofollow applied to links to sites outside
Wikipedia in talk pages, which would stop rewarding this behaviour.

The alternative of removing or <nowiki>ing these links, is both
time-consuming and counter-productive, as it prevents all links from
being followed, not just abusive ones, and putting all talk pages in
robots.txt would be even more counter-productive by preventing any
external indexing of talk pages.

-- Neil


from_name: Patrick Collison

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Lonelypages

body:
Hi,

Is there any easy way of excluding pages with category links in
Special:Lonelypages? (i.e., if a page is a member of a category,
chances are it's not orphaned, even if it has no _direct_ links.)

I don't remember ever seeing this come up on the mailing lists, but
it sounds like an obvious question...

-Patrick


from_name: Guy Chapman

body:
On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 07:27:49 -0800, you wrote:

>I think to a degree Wikipedia has reached that stage Usenet did, where
>suddenly the influx of new people is beyond the rate at which they
>tend to acclimate to the older culture.  There are so many newbies
>that a newbie-culture can develop without having to join the existing
>one.

<AOL />

Oh, wait, this is a mailing list, not Usenet, isn't it? ;-)

>My thoughts: move all userboxes to user: space, so that they are
>obviously not official and not part of the encyclopedia project
>proper.  Then ignore them except for awful examples.

But make sure the welcoming committee gently inform people that Trolls
Are Evil.

And I really really don't think that the perennial argument between
left and right in American politics (which of course is right and far
right for the rest of us...) helps build an encyclopaedia, any more
than proclaiming yourself a paedophile does.  For a while I've been
using a flag in my wikisig, this debate has persuaded me to stop. It's
also led me to think hard about the real wiki culture, and amending my
ways to fit in with it (which can't be bad).  But maybe the boxen are
good, in that they warn us to look out for bias from that editor.

Anyway, what is needed, I think, is an "official" statement that the
war is over, and it's time to move on.  People I admire and respect
have done things which I think they should not have done, and that has
in some cases got them into trouble.  These are not evil people, they
are just folks like us with strong opinions.  I want to get back to
normal, whatever normal is.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken


body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Habj wrote:
>
>
>>The title of this email made me stunned. Fortunately, there was nothing
>>about Irish children in it.
>>
>
> "A modest proposal" has been overused as the title of an essay. Much as
> "X considered harmful".
>

Modest proposals considered harmful? :)

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

body:
Maybe you could instatiate A in B as {{A|B}}, in C as {{A|C}} etc. to get C
in A, when A gets into I?

"Jay R. Ashworth" wrote:
> I have a template ("A").
>
> This template is instantiated on many pages ("A"->"B", "A"->"C",
> "A"->"D").
>
> Those pages are in turn transcluded onto other pages:
>
> "A"->"B"->"E"
> "A"->"B"->"F"
> "A"->"B"->"G"
> "A"->"C"->"H"
> "A"->"C"->"I"
> "A"->"C"->"J"
> "A"->"D"->"K"
> "A"->"D"->"L"
>
> What I'm trying to accomplish is to include a link on "A" that, when
> the user is looking at "I" will permit them to edit "C".
>
> I had been hoping that I could include the PAGENAMEE magic word in the
> template ("A") as part of an HTTP edit link, but alas, PAGENAMEE (and
> presumably all the other magic words that pertain to pages) bind so
> late in the parse chain that they point to "I" in that situation.
>
> In a situation like this, is there any reasonable way to grab the name
> of "C" from inside the code of "A"?  Something with subst:, maybe?
>
> The actual pages are
> A: http://tbkinfo.net/wiki/index.php/Template:Infobox_Show
> C: http://tbkinfo.net/wiki/index.php/O%27Maddy%27s_House
> I: http://tbkinfo.net/wiki/index.php/O%27Maddy%27s
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra


from_name: Angela

body:
> About a year ago I requested a new language (!) it's still not set up, there
> are about a dozen of new approved languages awaiting set up. When will there
> be some new activity in the set up of new languages? The new languages which
> were lastly introduced are functioning perfectly and have some good
> articles. I wonder should the page "request a new language" page not even be
> deleted, it's just standing there...

Perhaps the existence of the Special Project Committee
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> will solve
this problem?

Angela.


body:
On 2/18/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Until any committee has been given a mandate by the board to assume a
> role it should be business as usual.

Even if business as usual means "No new Wikipedias anymore? :( " ?

Angela.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improvements to diffs

body:
I guess it's just a personal preference, I find red quite easy to read.

Mgm

On 2/18/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Red text in diffs is too hard to read. Maybe something
> like a blue-purple would be better.
>
> Red chould be used for minor specific changes, if
> there be a way to differentiate between different
> string lengths, but thats getting too much into the
> workings of the diff module...
>
> SV
> PS: Dont bother me with comments about this
> belonging at mediazilla.
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A radical proposal

body:
On 2/18/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I agree.  The more I think about this, the more I refine my view of what
> I think is "the problem" with these userboxes.  "The problem" is not
> people's self-expression, the problem is that by having these things in
> the Template namespace we are implicitly suggesting that these are
> endorsed by the Wikipedia community,

The evidence suggests they are accepted

> and that plastering a bunch of
> advocacy stickers on your userpage is the right and normal way to be a
> good Wikipedian.
>

Admitting your POV is the first stage towards atchiveing NPOV.

> One of the reasons we've always been so successful is deep and profound
> respect for individuality, *mostly* manifested by a willful abandonment
> of advocacy in our interactions and work.

Generaly I've found it's more that the advocates are outnumbered by
those who don't care enough to form a POV but do want the advocates to
stop being anoying

> This is why I've become more and more convinced that the right thing to
> do is to take any and all userboxes which don't fit some very very
> narrow "practical" uses into people's personal userspace.  If you want
> to decorate your userpage with your advocacy for the death penalty and
> support for animal rights and so on, well, you know, whatever.
>
> I think it's lame, but whatever.
>
> However, that does *not* mean that I am complacent about having these
> things in a common space which seems to suggest not just "well,
> whatever" but "here's the thing you're supposed to do!"
>

Do you have any evidence that it does? Most new editors are not really
up to speed on the template namespace anyway.

> If I wasn't such a slow editor, and if I knew how to run a bot, I'd be
> likely to create a huge massive stir by going through every single
> template in the problematic categories and edit every single user page
> to subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go.
>
> Please no one else do this... yet. :)
>

They can't. Running an authorised bot will get you blocked. Deliberate
attempts to make fair use vios harder to trace are also not
recomended.

--
geni


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-02-19

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Magic links: PMID incorrectly converts space to underscore... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 268 of 285 tests (94.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom has completely lost its mind

body:
May it please the God-King, the Court's Judgement is as follows:

Henceforth the Court shall recognise that all Parties to this Thread,
whether past, present or future, are Fish, having the Qualities of
Fish and the Rights , Duties and Debentures of Fish.  They are hereby
empowered to place on their Userpages, whether by Hand, Flipper, Claw,
Pincer, pectoral Fin, Pseudopod, Mandible, or through any other Means
available to Fish, being Denizens of the Water, or by any Agency
natural or supernatural, the Words "I am a Fish" in English or any
other language generally comprehensible to Wikipedians of the common
Sort (see [[WP:FISH]]).

Signed this day of February, the Year of our Lord

Tony Sidaway

Clerk of Court of the God-King Jimbo (Piscatorial Division)


body:
On 2/19/06, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/18/06, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > (see [[WP:FISH]]).
>
> You do realize that [[WP:FISH]] is an actual, working link, right? :)
>

I kinda guessed it would have something appropriate.

You searched for "WP:ABCD" [Index]

No page with that title exists.

You can create this article or request it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Disturbing post on Reference Desk, requiring action

body:
On 2/19/06, Robert Merkel <robert.merkel at benambra.org> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Painless_suicide
>
> As a concerned human being, I would like to see if we can help to locate
> this user ASAP and get them some help if at all possible (and assuming
> they haven't acted already).
>

The person here didn't ask for help of that kinds, and his comments,
such as I read them, indicate that he's in a fairly rational frame of
mind and, if he needs to, able to seek the help he needs.  Although
this is a public page, I suggest that an approach consistent with
Wikipedia's privacy policy is appropriate.  The Samaritans (a
telephone befriending organization that originated in the UK) deal
with calls of this nature every day, and there are similar
organisations available 24/7 in many countries.  Their methodology, as
I understand it, is similar to that of the confessional.  They'll
listen and provide friendly advice, but they don't (except perhaps in
exceptional circumstances) intrude.  This may be an appropriate model
to adopt here.


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bot flagging for bureaucrats

body:
For some time, there have been discussions of extending bot flagging to
local bureaucrats. I recently asked some of the stewards about it, and
received an overwhealming response from them in favor of doing so. I also
spoke with Angela, who indicated it was her understanding that the proposal
was waiting "for the code, not approval." Subsequently, I spoke with brion,
who said that the code was there, it was simply a matter of the devs being
told to implement it.

It seems to me that (for once?) we have a proposal that just about everybody
likes: Local communities get to make thier own decisions about bot flagging,
and have them enacted locally, by someone who is familiar with the local
rules and the given debate, and the stewards are relieved from what has
become an unpleasant task. It also seems that both sides are waiting for
each other, not realizing the other side is waiting for them!

I'd love to see this proposal enacted sooner rather than later, so I'm
asking: What do we need to do to get this done? Do the devs need an order
from the Board? *pokes the Board* "The Devs need an order." Do the Board
need to be made aware that the switch is ready to flip on thier word? *pokes
the Devs* "The Board doesn't know it's ready to go."

What next?

Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A rational proposal

body:
On 2/18/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My thoughts: move all userboxes to user: space, so that they are
> obviously not official and not part of the encyclopedia project
> proper.  Then ignore them except for awful examples.

Look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pathoschild/Projects/Userboxes

Isn't this amazing?  The guy is getting fan mail on his user talk page
because he's replacing templates with equivalent wiki code!

And see this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pathoschild/Projects/Userboxes/Policy

I think this is the future.


body:
On 2/18/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> If I wasn't such a slow editor, and if I knew how to run a bot, I'd be
> likely to create a huge massive stir by going through every single
> template in the problematic categories and edit every single user page
> to subst them and/or move them to user space, deleting them all as I go.
>
> Please no one else do this... yet. :)
>
>

Er, it didn't happen in any organised way, but in fact, that is
precisely what has been happening.

Basically a bunch of admins went bananas and started deleting stuff
they thought was bad, and at the same time another guy started quietly
retrieving stuff and substing on other people's user pages using some
kind of semi-automatic browser tool.

And you know what?  The users hate the admins but they love the guy
who does the substing.  As long as they get their pretty pastel boxes
back, the reasonable ones happy, and the more reasonable admins are
happy.

I think we're headed for consensus!


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
> Is it me, or does geni appear to disagree with nearly everything ever
> proposed on the mailing list? Maybe he just likes playing devil's
> advocate, but whenever I see something by geni, I immediately know
> it'll
> disagree with someone somewhere. :)

Is this a test, to see if geni disagrees with your hypothesis?

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Jonathan,

You would be the first SIL linguist to request a new language and work
for its development, which I think could be an exciting beginning to a
broader cooperation and a more equitable distribution of Wikipedia
languages (currently, the vast majority of articles are written in
European languages, followed by East Asian languages, with African,
American, Pacific, and Australian languages and languages from the
rest of Asia coming in with only a tiny minority of articles; even the
majority of existing Wikipedias are in European languages)

Mark

On 18/02/06, Jonathan & Kendra Dailey <jonathan-kendra_dailey at sall.com> wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:40:02 -0000
> > From: "Phil Boswell" <phil.boswell at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Marwari language Wikipedia
> > To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> > Message-ID: <dt26fa$m08$1 at sea.gmane.org>
> >
> > "GerardM" <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote in
> > message news:41a006820602160459n6962298i94ce18a378b56fb3 at mail.gmail.com...
> > > On 2/16/06, Phil Boswell
> > > <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> "Jonathan & Kendra Dailey"
> > >> <jonathan-kendra_dailey at sall.com> wrote in message
> > >> news:000401c632e1$583163a0$0201a8c0 at WinniethePooh...
> > >> > Marwari is spoken by over 13 million people in India, Pakistan, and
> > >> > Nepal.
> > >> > It is related to Hindi but it is a distinct language with a long
> > (1500
> > >> > year)
> > >> > written history and has a great amount of worldwide Diaspora.
> > >> > How do we get this started?
> > >> This would be the language you mean?
> > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwari_language
> > >> It would appear from this and the article on Hindi that it is
> > considered
> > >> by
> > >> many to be a dialect of the latter. If this is untrue, then those
> > >> articles
> > >> need to be updated :-)
> > > According to Ethnologue:
> > > http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90928 Marwari is seen
> > > as a cluster of languages not as a single language.
> > > Sometimes these things are not simple.. :(
> >
> > Maybe the reference is to the language:
> > http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rwr
> > rather than the family: they have the same name.
> >
> > feh!
> > --
> > Phil
> > [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
> [JD:] In the interest of full disclosure, I am an SIL linguist working in
> this language (rwr, Marwari).  I am hoping to use Wikipedia (along with
> other online resources) as a medium for language development activities.
> For instance, it helps mother tongue speakers to learn to write, edit, and
> hone their written language skills.
>
> I do mean the language not the cluster.  The cluster has more like 30+
> million speakers.  Marwari would be the largest with, depending on how you
> slice the pie, between 13 and 19 million speakers.
>
> It has a low lexical similarity with Hindi.  My own research has shown urban
> speakers have "more Hindi" than rural speakers but the similarity is near
> 60%.
>
> Jonathan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
> The more I think about it, the more I agree with the first. I find it
> harder to assume good faith when someone blatantly states their strong
> POV.

This depends--context is everything. For instance, I'm libertarian,
but I've edited [[Libertarianism]] because I like to pretend I know
something about the subject. In the interest of full disclosure I
might mention that I am libertarian, which might unknowingly color my
contributions. If I edited a lot about politics (I don't), I might
want to outright state, "Here are my biases, if they get in my way
let me know and help me improve."

If someone's pushing a POV, you can tell from editing patterns alone.
On the other hand, if someone is making valuable, good-faith, albeit
biased contributions, it's a lot easier to assume good faith when
they say straight out "here's my bias, if it shows in my
contributions too much feel free to correct."

> Someone says "I am anti-abortion", then proceeds to edit pages
> pertaining to abortion - what are you going to assume? That he's there
> to fix typos?

This might surprise you, Steve, but people with a strong interest in
something generally have an opinion about it too, and vice versa.
People usually edit articles about their own interests, after all.

Abortion in particular is the biggest issue where people's opinions
tend to create blind spots. Pro-lifers tend to fail to understand and
appreciate abortion-choice arguments while abortion-choicers tend to
fail to understand and appreciate pro-life arguments, and no one
seems willing to acknowledge that the other side holds their opinions
in good faith. It's these blind spots which make it utterly crucial
for us as editors to be open with one another about our biases so we
can correct one another's mistakes.

> For the same reason that we don't allow strong POV usernames
> (AntiAbortionCrusader etc), shouldn't we discourage stating of POVs on
> userpages?

Not if we want to get an encyclopedia written according to the
neutral point of view.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 2/18/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> I understand the reason for not
> having rel=nofollow in the article space;

You do? I'm glad someone does, because all I know about thus far
involves a misconception about *users* not being able to follow
nofollow links.

The fact of the matter is that english Wikpedia has been specifically
targeted by spammers due to our lack of nofollow and high popularity.
They continue this because it is high payoff even though most of the
links get removed. Worse yet, they have begun using more sneaky
tactics, such as mirroring free content (like the Linux documentation
project content) then adding these URLs to pages. Our users get
screwed because they follow the links only to find stale data on an
advertising (and sometimes malware) laden page.  Such sites are a fact
of life, but if we can decrease the payoff from spamming Wikipedia we
should.

Even when there isn't spamming, the lack of nofollow makes it all the
harder of our editors to assume good faith from people who just show
up to add externals... every bit of possible inappropriate motivation
which we can exclude from consideration should be excluded.

So rather than asking the developers to spend time on yet another
feature, why don't we take another pass at enabling nofollow site wide
again?  The code is already there for that, and enabled on most
Wikimedia sites other than english Wikipedia.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Definitely a problem. Not a lot of useful input from Geni.

Fred

On Feb 19, 2006, at 12:05 AM, John Lee wrote:

> Is it me, or does geni appear to disagree with nearly everything ever
> proposed on the mailing list? Maybe he just likes playing devil's
> advocate, but whenever I see something by geni, I immediately know
> it'll
> disagree with someone somewhere. :)
>
> John
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: charles matthews

body:
 "Guy Chapman" wrote

>But maybe the boxen are
> good, in that they warn us to look out for bias from that editor.

That would be excellent then: we would be able to waive 'assume good faith'
for whole scads of editors we come across.  What a relief!  Maybe I have
misjudged the little critters.

Charles


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 2/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> For the same reason that we don't allow strong POV usernames
> (AntiAbortionCrusader etc), shouldn't we discourage stating of POVs on
> userpages?

The problem with userboxes, stated bluntly, is that people are willing
to say much more aggressive and divisive things with userboxes than
they'll generally say when they're writing it in their own words.  For
one thing, turning an opinion into a pithy 'This user ...' statement
gets rid of nuance and equivocation, and for another thing, many seem
to be more comfortable displaying others' words than saying the exact
same thing themselves.

-Matt


from_name: Apeksha Bhambhani

subject: [WikiEN-l] Interface with Mediawiki (Wikipedia)

body:
Hii all ,
  We have developed a web mapping application . And would like to integrate it with MediaWiki  - software which runs Wikipedia . Our mapping application uses MapServer,Php/Mapscript , as the scripting language and MySql as the database. Our application accepts user clicks on the image provided by us .And points are plotted .We have developed a Php file to accomplish this. Could anybody tell us how to interface our application with Mediawiki so as to contribute to Mediawiki and Wikipedia. Any help would be appreciated . Will our php file be interfaced as a Special Page / Extension - HELP ?
  Apeksha

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