subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: clean up

body:
I agree with this; I added a comment on your proposal. ant

Rowan Collins a ?crit:
> On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 18:16:23 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The advantage of also listing the article on
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup is that it allows you
>>to see which are most recent, and also gives a brief summary of the
>>problem, so if you're only interested in finding articles with POV
>>issues you can focus just on those. Dividing the cleanup category into
>>different types, in a similar way to the division of stub tags might
>>lessen the need for the separate Cleanup page.
>
>
> Please see my proposal at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Cleanup#Yet_Another_Proposed_Replacement
> Basically, I think dividing into sub-categories by type/degree of
> cleanup needed makes *more* sense than dividing by time listed.
>
> One of the biggest problems with a time-based list is how to find a
> particular entry on it if you're following the link from the article
> to Cleanup, not vice versa. When an article on a tag tells you to look
> up, and remove, its entry on a page which is split into time-based
> archives, where do you begin?
>
> On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 13:53:18 -0700, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I also think it's a poor idea to list an article for cleanup - via any
>>method - without explaining what you think is wrong with it.  In fact,
>>my biggest issue with the cleanup concept is that it encourages the
>>'someone else's problem' mentality, though it does help for when you
>>feel like a little Wiki-tidying and need some pointers for problem
>>areas.
>
>
> That's why I think we should primarily encourage people to put a
> message on the talk: page saying "this needs X doing, but I don't have
> time/skills/confidence to do it", with an accompanying category tag
> which brings it to the attention of people looking for something to
> fix.
>
> On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 16:16:06 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>>I think they ought to go on articles, but with a higher threshold of
>>"suckiness".
>
>
> I'd agree to that: really bad articles don't lose anything by having a
> big "please edit me" begging label. Ones that just need more attention
> than they seem to be getting just need labelling more subtly and/or on
> the talk page - possibly subtly to the point of adding them to a
> category but otherwise not drawing attention to the fact.
>
> Every article needs work, and if you want to look what other people
> think needs doing on the article you're looking at, you should click
> "discussion" and should be able thereby to read people's thoughts.
>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Membership and payment

body:
Oops.

'''Sorry'''.

/me acknowledges his total ignorance of the (French? given name?)
"Anthere".
Sad, sad, sad, ;-)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 2 Oct 2004, at 04:18, Anthere wrote:

> Thanks for your clarification Jens :-)
>
> (I am relieved to see you could understand me)
>
> PS : she, not he, she.
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Schema change work in progress

body:
I'm working on code for the much-discussed database schema change.

See overview & in-progress schema conversion code:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Database_Schema_Changes/
October_2004

I've got various features up and running on the new schema and will
check in some code on a branch until it's sorted out and we've done
some test conversion runs to make sure it's not too out of whack.

This is intended to solve a number of major issues including:
* eliminate denial-of-service problem on page renames
* make revision ID number available and consistent for old and current
revisions
* speed up aggregate queries by not having to slog through text storage
to get at revision metadata

It also should reduce the update burden on the slave database servers
by not having to save every edit's text and data twice.

This current schema co-opts the existing old table for text storage,
ignoring the extra fields which are now moved off to other tables. This
should keep the initial conversion cost relatively low as the table
doesn't need to be rebuilt, just added to. The smaller metadata-only
tables should be easier to alter in the future as needed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Membership and payment

body:
No reason to be sorry :-)
Anthere is not a name. It is the french word for Anther.
But grammatically, it is a feminine form word.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/What_is_an_anther_%3F
Explanation here.

My name is Florence. Definitly feminine gender ;-)

Jens Ropers a ?crit:
> Oops.
>
> '''Sorry'''.
>
> /me acknowledges his total ignorance of the (French? given name?) "Anthere".
> Sad, sad, sad, ;-)
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
>
> On 2 Oct 2004, at 04:18, Anthere wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your clarification Jens :-)
>>
>> (I am relieved to see you could understand me)
>>
>> PS : she, not he, she.
>>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sj

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Copyright concerns (was Wikipedia spanks Encarta,
	Brockhaus)

body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 23:13:04 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> where someone (IIRC) tried to argue that a translation of an existing
> text was an original work--
>
> IT IS NOT!!!

As Mav wrote in response to the foundation list, noone is trying to
argue this.  Translations are most assuredly not original works.

"That is the question" referred to the question of how long a
paraphrase can be; intervening translation was only a
complicating factor.  It was clear once pointed out that it
wasn't worth taking any chances, and the paraphrase in
question was deleted.

> I'm seeing _a lot_ of naivety lately, as regards copyright:
>
> 1. That's a '''problem''' for the submitter (because they--not the
> Wikipedia--are legally fully liable for the text they are submitting to
> the Wikipedia).

Once a more formal review system is in place, and certain bits of
content are flagged "reviewed" or "stable", will this continue to be
true?  If a piece of copyvio goes unnoticed and is included in a
reviewed article, will there be liability for the reviewing group as
well as for the submitter?

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: On press releases and boasting

body:
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 20:49:37 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >elian writes:
> >>I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press
> >>release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians,
> >>feelings were mixed.
> >>
> >>
> >Well, it would be combined with other notices for the coming week.
> >But this professional content test (and it would not be a bad idea to
> >commission more of the same) is more newsworthy than the
> >successful completion of our fundraiser.
> >
> On this one, I agree with Elian. I doubt that a press release of this
> nature would have much impact because we haven't done anything worth
> mentioning (completing the fundraiser precipitated by our last press
> release doesn't qualify), this is something somebody else did.

A fine point.  Do you think a press release would be appropriate for
promoting a similar study, if it were commissioned by Wikipedia?

> And if the wikipedians on de: are skeptical about the value
> of a press release here, when the test relates specifically to them,
> I think that's a pretty good indication for the rest of us.

My initial interest in such a press release was sparked by interest
from wikipedians on de: .  Elian's post above was my first indication
that this enthusiasm was not universal.

> An alternative idea might be to play this up as part of a rollout for whatever
> new quality control system we develop - as in "Look how good we already
> are, now we're getting better".

Yes; I like Erik's idea of doing this once a sizeable number of
articles (1000?)
have passed through this system in at least one language.  At the same time,
we should commission a similar content comparison for en:...

--
+sj+


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Michael-
> An alternative
> idea might be to play this up as part of a rollout for whatever new
> quality control system we develop - as in "Look how good we already are,
> now we're getting better".

I think we should announce the first N reviewed articles, rather than the
rollout of the system itself. Other than that, I like the idea.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Oct 3, 2004, at 5:14 AM, Sj wrote:

> On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 20:49:37 -0700, Michael Snow
> <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> elian writes:
>>>> I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press
>>>> release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians,
>>>> feelings were mixed.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Well, it would be combined with other notices for the coming week.
>>> But this professional content test (and it would not be a bad idea to
>>> commission more of the same) is more newsworthy than the
>>> successful completion of our fundraiser.
>>>
>> On this one, I agree with Elian. I doubt that a press release of this
>> nature would have much impact because we haven't done anything worth
>> mentioning (completing the fundraiser precipitated by our last press
>> release doesn't qualify), this is something somebody else did.
>
> A fine point.  Do you think a press release would be appropriate for
> promoting a similar study, if it were commissioned by Wikipedia?
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

Advice: summarize their data in a table, and tout it as part of your
fundraiser. Include references to the article in future press releases
using phrases such as:

"Wikipedia, which has been rated higher by an independent group of
experts as broader and more in depth than many commercial offerings,"

and footnote the survey. That it was not commissioned by Wikimedia
foundation makes it more, not less, credible.

By itself, this is something that will disseminate, and it has already
been kick started into the English speaking world, however it is very
valuable over the long term as part of establishing the Wikipedia brand
name in people's minds as being equivalent to other inexpensive
encyclopedias. To put it in marketing terms, the positioning of the
brand is that Wiki is equal in quality, while being being "free" in
both the sense of cost and in the sense of being more democratic in its
content.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l A plea - live and let live

body:
This is what I feared.
Mark

--- "Eric B. and Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> >Which is what is almost always done.  Very few
> articles are actually
> >deleted.
> >
> >-Matt
>
> What are you talking about? Atleast 60% of the
> listed articles are deleted,
> meaning almost 100 articles per week. You can see
> for yourself if you look
> at and old revision like this one:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&oldid=6027505
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
> STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months
> FREE*
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>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
> On Sat, 2 Oct 2004, Michael Snow wrote:
> > On this one, I agree with Elian. I doubt that a press release of this
> > nature would have much impact because we haven't done anything worth
> > mentioning

I believe Elian was saying that it *is* going to be announced this week,
but as part of another major german press release, rather than on its own.

On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 21:03:53 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I agree with Elian too.  I've been using these results in a low-key
> way when I talk to the press, but usually I down play it.  When the
> question of quality comes up, I prefer to stress that we know we
> aren't perfect, and that we have a long way to go, but that we are
> proud of what we have already accomplished.
>
> The idea is that we should continue to portray ourselves as "a project
> to create..." rather than as a finished product.  Because, frankly, we
> do have a long way to go in many ways.

I agree with all of this, and hope that Wikipedia a hundred years from now
will still see itself not as anything like a finished product, but instead as
the imperfect start of something even greater.

> Putting out a press release crowing about this test just invites more
> hostile reviews to conduct the same type of test, but with an eye
> toward showing how broken we are in many ways.

Would this not be an improvement on the kinds of hostile tests critics
carry out now?  Some organizations pay good money for testers whose
sole job is to constructively show how broken their products are.

That said, it should be possible to mention these results without
crowing, yet without waiting for a yet-unfinalized review system to
review a thousand articles.  Perhaps in a press release announcing
a new project like the Commons, or a recent invitation to participate
in / speak at an important conference.

--
+sj+


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: devs and admins blog

body:
On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 05:56:10PM +0900, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> I proposed something similar some weeks ago, WikiForum.
> Here is the idea:
> - New thread is created into "thread:" namespace then anybody can edit
> it like all other pages.
> - Each time a thread file is edited a forum page is rebuild according to
> last modified thread.
> - The X lasted threads are fully included into forum page (like templates).
> - The Y next threads are included into a table showing some information
> (title, date of last modification, last modifier, etc.)
> - All is full Mediawiki compatible (same syntax, same user account, etc.).
> In fact the idea aimed on create an auto?cleaning village pump (=the
> forum) but I think we can enhance it to provide RSS/ATOM feed and so on.
> I created a prototype that some wikipedians tried, but I didn't carry on
> the development.
> If someone is interest in sharing experience and go on this idea or
> something similar, contact me.

Didn't you already have code for it? Some weeks ago, someone posted
test links for such a thing in IRC, was it you or hashar?

JeLuF


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Sj wrote:

> Yes; I like Erik's idea of doing this once a sizeable number of
> articles (1000?)
> have passed through this system in at least one language.  At the same time,
> we should commission a similar content comparison for en:...

What I'd *really* like is details on the quality review de: apparently
went through to get de: to such a state, and whether we can just do that
for en: as well. On the principle that we undeniably have lots of good
stuff, but hitting 'Random page' twenty times shows up our defects
glaringly.

- d.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia langage solresol

references:
<BAY18-DAV3gz3FB1FxQ00001f54@hotmail.com>
	<415F3F5F.6060909@yahoo.com> <BAY15-DAV2OwhK7iolT0002ad7d@hotmail.com>
	<9f02ca4c0410030920304af454@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Also, one major difference between Solresol/Frater and languages such
as Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian (now transformed into the Alemannic
wikipedia), Breton, etc which already have Wikipedias is this:
Solresol and Frater are "constructed languages" with no native
speakers. They are not "minority languages" like these other
languages, they are in a different category completely. There are 0
people who can read or write Solresol or Frater better than any
natural language.

This doesn't mean I wouldn't support a Solresol or Frater wikipedia;
all I'm saying is that these languages are not comparable.

--node

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 17:20:01 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> Francois,
>  please don't give up so easily. If you truly believe that this is
> something worth doing and encouraging, it should take more than a few
> people saying "maybe" rather than "yes" to make you give up. Nobody
> here has said "no" to your proposals; if you think you can make this
> work, then have courage and try to make it work, even when it seems
> difficult. I will try to address and discuss some of your current
> concerns below.
>
> On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 16:22:46 +0200, oboenfan <oboenfan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time
> > suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know,
> > it was naive) I was chocked.
>
> Yes, there has long been debate about whether we should use
> mailing-lists such as this. The main reason they still exist is that
> people find them more convenient for certain kinds of discussion than
> the wiki pages. They are not intended to be any less open.
>
> > The "no":
> > ---------
> > The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a
> > danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by
> > something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for
> > his evaluations and  you can even look what other user did criticize. You
> > can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the
> > problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki.
>
> Working out how we can ensure quality is one of the biggest issues
> facing Wikipedia today, but we know it, and we are constantly working
> to introduce mechanisms to help. You mentioning e-bay here is
> interesting, because they have had to try hard to solve a similar
> problem - how to measure trustworthiness of anonymous sellers over the
> Internet. Clearly, you feel that their current measures work well
> enough to trust - others might point out that it is still possible to
> fool people by making multiple small, genuine, sales to gain a
> reputation and then making a larger, fraudulent, sale.
>
> There will probably *always* be a struggle to improve such systems,
> but that should not stop us trying to create projects which have the
> chance for real beneifts.
>
> > You consulte
> > an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your
> > comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and
> > there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible
> > to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to
> > influence is a question of the specific detail.
>
> I'm not sure what you were trying to say with the example you gave
> here. If you meant that it is possible for Wikipedia to contain
> incorrect information, then again I say: this is something we are
> trying to address; the official policy is that Wikipedia should have a
> "Neutral Point of View" - any article which deliberately sets out to
> influence is one that needs fixing, and we are trying to find ways of
> spotting and labelling such articles.
>
> But your example almost suggests to me that the CIA's World Fact Book
> may be the one in error - or, at least, that there may be credible
> challenges to its figures. A *good* Wikipedia article would actually
> *help* here: with no agenda of its own, and no editorial control to
> suppress alternative viewpoints, any supportable statistics could be
> entered alongside each other, with a discussion of why each may be
> better or worse. This is an advantage of the wiki approach, not a
> disadvantage.
>
> > [...] And if
> > this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start
> > new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the
> > unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the
> > conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect,
> > somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning
> > solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second:
> > Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow
> > that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national
> > language.
>
> I disagree with your conclusions here: the various language wikipedias
> were started by individuals or small groups of people who thought it
> would be a useful, achievable project resulting in a useful resource.
> I have seen nobody say that you should not be allowed to propose this
> project; only people who are not sure whether it is achievable, or
> whether it would be useful. So prove them wrong: convince them that it
> could be achievable, and would be useful, and set about making it
> happen.
>
> > A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of
> > Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and
> > it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only
> > 10 Euro in Germany today)
>
> I'm not sure why you consider us as "reinventing the wheel"; no, we
> are not the first to write an encyclopedia, but we are the first to
> write a collabourative, multi-lingual, freely available (not only for
> no money, but also with no restrictions on copying and distributing),
> un-biased encyclopedia. How is that encouraging people to reinvent the
> wheel?
>
> > For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and
> > wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.
>
> Some decisions have to be considered carefully: if we allow too many
> versions of Wikipedia that turn out to be unsuccessful, we risk taking
> effort away from others that have better chances of success. On the
> other hand, if we create too few, we are failing in our aim of making
> information available to those who need it. So it is only natural that
> we want to pause and consider before saying "YES" to your proposal.
>
> > But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited
> > email-list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
> I still don't understand why you think of this list as
> "access-limited": you were able to post here, as is anybody else who
> wishes to. If you mean it is not well-enough publicised, that is a
> different matter: the discussions on this list are no more closed to
> the public than on our wikis.
>
> > and the opinion, that a persone can
> > only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place,
> > if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this
> > new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they
> > likely to be better served by another language  * Editors : who will work on
> > that new project, how many people ).
>
> You have to be aware that creating an encyclopedia in a new language
> is a big challenge, and not something that will just happen as soon as
> you decide to start. This is what Anthere meant about needing an
> audience and editors - it doesn't matter if they don't exist yet, but
> it matters if they never will. If you start a project where you are
> the only contributor, it will be extremely hard work, and you will not
> have the power of collaboration which makes Wikipedia work. If you
> start on a project where only you want to read it, all your effort
> will be wasted, and better spent elsewhere.
>
> So to make a project successful, you need to have reason to believe
> that your project will "gather steam": that there will soon be enough
> editors to make a real start, and that there are people out there who
> will find your work, use it, and with luck become contributors
> themselves. You don't need to already have a community, but you need
> to have the means to build a community. For a solresol encyclopedia,
> you need enough people who know solresol, or who are willing to learn
> it, that will be interested in reading it, and hopefully also in
> helping create it.
>
> In short: if you think there are people who will want to use this, and
> want to help you with it, those are your editors and readers, even if
> they don't know it yet. If you believe that they are out there, then
> you have my blessing to start, and probably that of most others here.
>
> Have courage.
> --
> Rowan Collins
> [IMSoP]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Translation] Fundraising thank-you banner

body:
The current fundraiser will be over soon; we should reach the target
goal early, within the next hour or so.  The fundraising banner will
be replaced by a thank-you banner for the rest of the day:

====
Thanks to you, we have reached our goal of $50,000 in
[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising donations].
We are grateful to everyone for their help. Donation breakdowns
are now available
[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2004/Q4 online].
====

Please translate this notice and send it to a sysop on your project.
( To edit your site notice, you need to change the protected page
[[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]] )

--
+sj+


body:
I agree.
I would like to know exactly how the qualitat offensive works.

Ant

David Gerard a ?crit:
> Sj wrote:
>
>> Yes; I like Erik's idea of doing this once a sizeable number of
>> articles (1000?)
>> have passed through this system in at least one language.  At the same
>> time, we should commission a similar content comparison for en:...
>
>
>
> What I'd *really* like is details on the quality review de: apparently
> went through to get de: to such a state, and whether we can just do that
> for en: as well. On the principle that we undeniably have lots of good
> stuff, but hitting 'Random page' twenty times shows up our defects
> glaringly.
>
>
> - d.


from_name: Eric B. and Rakim

body:
>Which is what is almost always done.  Very few articles are actually
>deleted.
>
>-Matt

What are you talking about? Atleast 60% of the listed articles are deleted,
meaning almost 100 articles per week. You can see for yourself if you look
at and old revision like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&oldid=6027505

_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: André Müller

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] Requests for logos

body:
>> Speaking of which, there is a list of logos that need to be updated
>> here: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-development_tasks_for_developers

> Thanks for the Lojban logo - but it should be "la uikipedias po'u le
zifre
> vricyjuncku"; without "la" it isn't grammatical. (Of course other
things on
> the Lojban Wikipedia aren't grammatical either, such as an abbreviated
date
> in a sentence; I should be a developer, if I had the time.)

Shouldn't it be "la uikipedias." even, with a dot behind the name?

- Andr?


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 23:31:25 +0100 Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Hmm, something that strikes me looking at those results is that on
>several categories Wikipedia seems to do worse on the "easy" topics
>but better on the "hard" ones. I don't know if I'm just imagining it,
>and it could just be a coincidence, but that seems like an interesting
>finding (were there any graphs in the article? one could probably
>construct a graph that demonstrated patterns like that).

I have done a count for it, and it doesn't seem that Wikipedia scores
consistently worse on 'easy' topics. In fact, Wikipedia scores about equally
(average about 3.5) on all three difficulties. Brockhaus scores similarly in
the easy and hard categories, but worse in the intermediate one. Encarta is
equal to Brockhaus in the easy and intermediate categories, but failing
clearly on the hard subjects - especially because of 6 zeroes.

Here are the numbers (for each encyclopedia and difficulty category the
number of 0/1/2/3/4/5 scores):

EP easy: 1/2/0/5/9/5, total 78 (average 3.5)
EP medium: 4/0/2/4/8/4, total 68 (average 3.1)
EP hard: 6/2/1/6/4/3, total 50 (average 2.3)

BH easy: 0/0/4/6/6/6, total 84 (average 3.8)
BH medium: 4/0/4/5/5/4, total 63 (average 2.9)
BH hard: 1/0/3/7/5/6, total 77 (average 3.5)

WP easy: 1/1/5/2/3/10, total 82 (average 3.7)
WP medium: 1/0/4/4/6/7, total 79 (average 3.6)
WP hard: 2/0/1/7/6/6, total 77 (average 3.5)

Still, there is _something_ true in what you say. Wikipedia's scores on easy
subjects seem to be more spread out than on the medium and hard subjects.
There are more 5s but also more 2s. On the other hand, Wikipedia's scores on
hard subjects show a general content of quality - only one 2 and no 1s among
20 subjects that at least had something.

Maybe it has something to do with the Wiki method of working on on one
another's texts. Maybe the more difficult texts are mostly work of one or
two people, with the rest only acting as a copy-editor. Apparently those are
giving good work. On the easier subjects, 'everyone' thinks he/she can write
something, which can have both positive and negative effects. The positive
one is the "cooperative editing" effect: The article gets constantly
improved and added upon, with many small parts leading to one great article.
The negative one is that the first version may have been written by someone
who does not know the subject very well, or is not a good writer. This may
lead to a poor structure of the text, which is not easily improved upon.
Also, when the improvement is better done by rewriting than changing the
existing material, those who know more about the subject might go write
their own piece on more specialist subjects instead. Perhaps it would be
interesting to compare Wikipedia's notes to the edit history of the pages.

Andre Engels


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Cooperation between Wikipedia and Wiktionary using
	templates

body:
Hoi,
Wikipedia and Wiktionary are currently the two biggest projects of
Wikimedia (as far as I know). These projects are quite seperate from
each other. They are more seperate than is good for either project.
Typically, the type of information in Wiktionary cannot be found in
Wikipedia, things like translations and pronounciation are better
developped in Wikipedia while more more encyclopedic information can be
found in Wikipedia.

To enhance the cooperation I added a template in Wiktionary (both in en:
and nl) called -info-. This template will refer to the Wikipedia article
with the same name as the Wiktionary article.
On Wikipedia (both en: and nl:) I have added a template called wikt,
this template has one parameter; this is the name of the article on
Wiktionary. The reason for a parameter is that Wikipedia has many
articles that are disambigued and given a name that differs from the
Wiktionary name. A second reason is that the nl:wiktionary does not have
first character capitalisation for article names any more. Here it is
important that the word is spelled correctly.

The importance of these interproject links is not only in giving more
information to our users, it is also important to make people aware that
dictionary content has its place and that it is really welcome in
Wiktionary. It makes for people that are used to contributing to
Wikipedia, to contribute to Wiktionary as well.

One nice word recently added to the nl:wiktionary is [[wikt:nl:grote
muggenorchis]], an orchid it has three translations. This information is
not really welcom on nl:wikipedia and this way it finds its place .. :)

Please add these functionalities to your wikipedia and wiktionary and
add it to the content you work on, it really makes us a greater
resource   !!

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Cooperation between Wikipedia and Wiktionary using
	templates


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Sj wrote:
>
>> Yes; I like Erik's idea of doing this once a sizeable number of
>> articles (1000?)
>> have passed through this system in at least one language.  At the
>> same time, we should commission a similar content comparison for en:...
>
> What I'd *really* like is details on the quality review de: apparently
> went through to get de: to such a state, and whether we can just do that
> for en: as well. On the principle that we undeniably have lots of good
> stuff, but hitting 'Random page' twenty times shows up our defects
> glaringly.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the English articles that
correspond to the ones, substituting only for the ones where the subject
would be culturally meaningless for an English speaking audience.
Encyclopedia Britannica could also replace Brockhaus.  This would ensure
that our own comparisons were based on a somewhat objective article
selection..

"Commissioning" such a study would make it difficult to defend that the
study was impartial.  A truly independent study must come from an
impartial outside source that has full control over its article
selection.  It would be interesting to see what a group like "Consumer
Reports" would do with this.

There is one futher observation from Lothar's list.  He noted that the
study pointed out that we did not have an article for the medical term
"Fontanelle".  This deficiency was quickly remedied, and I am sure that
the other deficiencies will also be reviewed.  It would be interesting
to review the same articles after 60 days.  That would measure the
capacity of each encyclopedia to quickly repair its shortcomings when
thay have been pointed out.

Ec


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia spanks
	Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
Hiho Sj,

Sj wrote:
>Elian wrote:

>>One last important thing: If something like this happens, please don't
>>start actions without consulting the local people involved. So far we
>>have good contacts to the c't. But things like a full text translation
>>of the article can seriously damage this relationship. And it would fall
>>back to us, not the international crowd.
>
> I am still saddened and amazed by this paragraph.

I didn't want to sadden you - my words were not directed to you, but
were meant more generally. I can understand your enthusiasm about the
article, but I felt that things moved too quickly and I was afraid that
things like the press release would be done whithout proper consideration.

> Not only wasn't action taken without consulting local people involved,
> but the idea that things which affect the de: press team, which is a
> credit to Wikipedia in general, do not affect the "international crowd",
> is particularly hurtful (and untrue).

It was not the de: press team, but german wikipedia in general I refered
to. It would be the german wikipedia which would have to stand the
scrutinizing views of journalists after such a press release. And it
would probably fail on this in many areas.

For the press team: yes, we would have the problems if c't complained
about a copyvio, but this case was resolved quickly (and it wasn't even
a translation but only a summary, as I heard later), so let's drop this
subject.

greetings,
elian


from_name: J. Grant

subject:
[Wikitech-l] W3C validator reports "missing index.html or
	Overview.html"

body:
Hello,

I wonder if you are aware that your web servers are incorrectly
configured at present..?  (I could be wrong..)

Below is a log from teh W3C link check validation util:

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

It looks like a config issue to me.  You can reproduce the problems by
entering my home page: http://jguk.org/ into the link checker.

Kind regards

JG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis
     What to do: The link is forbidden! This needs fixing. Usual
suspects: a missing index.html or Overview.html, or a missing ACL.
     Response status code: 403
     Response message: Forbidden
     Line: 58

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_I_Got_News_For_You
     What to do: The link is forbidden! This needs fixing. Usual
suspects: a missing index.html or Overview.html, or a missing ACL.
     Response status code: 403
     Response message: Forbidden
     Line: 111

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson
     What to do: The link is forbidden! This needs fixing. Usual
suspects: a missing index.html or Overview.html, or a missing ACL.
     Response status code: 403
     Response message: Forbidden
     Line: 109

--
Homepage: http://jguk.org/
Blog: http://jguk.org/#blog
Radio: http://jguk.org/#radio


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>This problem plagued the Oxford English Dictionary (1st edition), only the
>most dedicated volunteers were willing to tackle the dull words like "put"
>"see" "art" "the" etc, words like "transmogrify" or "fandango" were much
>easier.
>
>
That's an important and acute observatiuon.  I think that the same could
be said of Wiktionary.  The unusual words are easier because they are so
seldom used.  If you need to look up a word you are more likely to get
it right than if you rely upon your memory.

Still, I would not use the adjective "dull" to refer to the common
words.  It's their rainbow nature that makes them so difficult.

Ec


from_name: oboenfan

body:
Hi

Thank you Mark for your open approach of the request.

Anthere I will take bake my candidature for the two new languages.

As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time
suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know,
it was naive) I was chocked.

I did think about this matter during the evening and the night and I think
that different important points of view in the Wiki world are extremely
problematical.

I will now take my distance from the Wiki movement.

I was a long time thinking about the yes or the no to become a co-worker at
Wiki. Why?

The "no":
---------
The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a
danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by
something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for
his evaluations and  you can even look what other user did criticize. You
can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the
problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki. You consulte
an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your
comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and
there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible
to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to
influence is a question of the specific detail.
Two example:
The World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/fr.html writes for France:
"Languages:
French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal,
Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish)
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male:
99% female: 99% (1980 est.)"
The site http://www.educationnationale.com writes "Pourcentage des 16 ? 65
ans ?prouvant des difficult?s ? lire et ? comprendre des textes de la vie
quotidienne enqu?te OCDE, 1995) : Su?de 7,5 ; Pays-Bas 10,5 ; Allemagne 14,4
; Canada 16,6 ; ?tats-Unis 20,7 ; France 40,1 ; Pologne 42,6".
Between the 1 % of illeterate people of the WFB of the official institution
CIA (one information source of the President of the USA to start wars and
anihilate populations and cultures - Irak was a really problematic country
but Irak was not fundamentalistic and was theoretical lay/secular like
Turkey!) and the information of the other source (you can click on the link
"Quid" - French people considere Quid as an "eprouved" Wikipedia not as an
experiment!), there is a world of difference....
An you can see yourself in the differente wikis that the affirmation
"rapidly declining regional dialects and languages" is not certain! And if
this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start
new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the
unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the
conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect,
somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning
solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second:
Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow
that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national
language. For this reason especially in France did a law forbid the use of
special languages as the national language. Please enter following words
into the search motor www.yahoo.fr "loi fabius congr?s de milan" and you
will see a fantastic number of link on the problem that AS YOU today in
wikipedia the most important part of the population of France through his
leader as on the list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org did refuse to handicaped
people MORE THAN 100 YEARS ALONG the legitimity to develope own educative
solution especially signs languages to help the poor persones to live in the
dignity. See please http://www.a2mains.com/historique3.html . It is only a
little more as TEN YEARS legal to do that in France: propage an universal
language including a sign language: You will restrict the liberty with terms
like "audience" - "editors"- Well!

Now, the "yes", my devise in the web,
--------------------------------------
A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of
possibilities accessible for a great number of other persones. Different
editors, not all, have a great experience and qualification and invest a lot
of time for other. Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and
it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only
10 Euro in Germany today) but not fully round rather with a lot of corners.
But other give access at the knowledge to persones how would be have
difficulties because of the language of because of the deficit of the
production or import of book ware in her part of the world; I did already
explain that medicine students in West Africa did learn medicine from a
Chinese professor, who was only Chinese speaker... And books where extremely
rare at the same time in this African country. Other give access to non
conventional knowledge with reduced accessibility (like Solresol and
Frater - Try to get the complete sources that I have now...)

For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and
wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.

But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited
email-list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org and the opinion, that a persone can
only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place,
if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this
new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they
likely to be better served by another language  * Editors : who will work on
that new project, how many people ).

To Anwhere,

if I would have a kind of Catalan-Yahoo ( http://ct.yahoo.com/ ) for
solresol or frater, I would not move to Wikipedia (Catalan also is not a
national language; but they have a own yahoo...) after all the work would be
done and so annihilate my old work and make twice the same!

Good luck with your problematical project... I go away!

Truly ours

Fran?ois

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 1:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedia proposal

I thought Interlingue already had a Wikipedia?

Anyhow I think we should at least consider a Wikipedia for Solresol.

However Frater I have never heard of, but of course it would still be
open to discussion.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 1:53 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia langage solresol

> So, to sum it up, Johanna (I understood it was Johanna at least) would
> like to create two new languages wikipedias.
>
> I know neither of these two, which is in no way more than just a
statement.
>
> Generally, I think two things should govern a new language settings
> which are
>
> * Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that
> represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another
> language ?
>
> * Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ?
>
>
> Otherwise, waiting community feedback :-)
>
> anthere
>


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] clean up

body:
I love it when people keep telling everybody else what they should and shouldn't do, when they don't bother to do any of things they think other people should be doing.

RickK

Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
I also think it's a poor idea to list an article for cleanup - via any
method - without explaining what you think is wrong with it. In fact,
my biggest issue with the cleanup concept is that it encourages the
'someone else's problem' mentality, though it does help for when you
feel like a little Wiki-tidying and need some pointers for problem
areas.

-Matt

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
vote.yahoo.com - Register online to vote today!


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Cooperation between Wikipedia and Wiktionary
	using templates

body:
Gerard, were you not the one working on the GEMET issue ? I am not sure,
and I cant find the mails any more in the archive. If so, could you
please answer to my previous mail on the topic. If not, do you know who
could inform me ?

ant

Gerard Meijssen a ?crit:
> Hoi,
> Wikipedia and Wiktionary are currently the two biggest projects of
> Wikimedia (as far as I know). These projects are quite seperate from
> each other. They are more seperate than is good for either project.
> Typically, the type of information in Wiktionary cannot be found in
> Wikipedia, things like translations and pronounciation are better
> developped in Wikipedia while more more encyclopedic information can be
> found in Wikipedia.
>
> To enhance the cooperation I added a template in Wiktionary (both in en:
> and nl) called -info-. This template will refer to the Wikipedia article
> with the same name as the Wiktionary article.
> On Wikipedia (both en: and nl:) I have added a template called wikt,
> this template has one parameter; this is the name of the article on
> Wiktionary. The reason for a parameter is that Wikipedia has many
> articles that are disambigued and given a name that differs from the
> Wiktionary name. A second reason is that the nl:wiktionary does not have
> first character capitalisation for article names any more. Here it is
> important that the word is spelled correctly.
>
> The importance of these interproject links is not only in giving more
> information to our users, it is also important to make people aware that
> dictionary content has its place and that it is really welcome in
> Wiktionary. It makes for people that are used to contributing to
> Wikipedia, to contribute to Wiktionary as well.
>
> One nice word recently added to the nl:wiktionary is [[wikt:nl:grote
> muggenorchis]], an orchid it has three translations. This information is
> not really welcom on nl:wikipedia and this way it finds its place .. :)
>
> Please add these functionalities to your wikipedia and wiktionary and
> add it to the content you work on, it really makes us a greater
> resource   !!
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM


from_name: Alex Alderman

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia language ancient Greek

body:
What would people say to a wikipedia in ancient Greek?
 It has an ISO (grc), it's a pretty important language
historically, and it's studied by hundreds of
thousands of people worldwide.  Most every classics
department offers a course in Greek prose composition;
so, there would be plenty of nerdy people wanting to
write articles.  Having a wikipedia in the language
would help to encourage students to take composition
seriously, and it would strengthen students' grasp of
grammar tremendously.
The first western encyclopedias (like Suidas) were
written in Greek; so, there are plenty of public
domain entries to get the ball rolling.
There is a modern Greek wikipedia, but Ancient Greek
is really different from Modern demotic Greek in all
its most interesting qualities, like particles,
prepositions, and its huge vocabulary.  Greeks can
more or less understand ancient Greek, but students of
ancient Greek have little or no knowledge of Modern
Greek.
I'm a doctoral candidate in ancient Greek letters, and
I'd be willing to get the ball rolling.  Let me know
what you think.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Rowan Collins

references:
<BAY18-DAV3gz3FB1FxQ00001f54@hotmail.com>
	<415F3F5F.6060909@yahoo.com> <BAY15-DAV2OwhK7iolT0002ad7d@hotmail.com>

body:
Francois,
 please don't give up so easily. If you truly believe that this is
something worth doing and encouraging, it should take more than a few
people saying "maybe" rather than "yes" to make you give up. Nobody
here has said "no" to your proposals; if you think you can make this
work, then have courage and try to make it work, even when it seems
difficult. I will try to address and discuss some of your current
concerns below.

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 16:22:46 +0200, oboenfan <oboenfan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time
> suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know,
> it was naive) I was chocked.

Yes, there has long been debate about whether we should use
mailing-lists such as this. The main reason they still exist is that
people find them more convenient for certain kinds of discussion than
the wiki pages. They are not intended to be any less open.

> The "no":
> ---------
> The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a
> danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by
> something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for
> his evaluations and  you can even look what other user did criticize. You
> can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the
> problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki.

Working out how we can ensure quality is one of the biggest issues
facing Wikipedia today, but we know it, and we are constantly working
to introduce mechanisms to help. You mentioning e-bay here is
interesting, because they have had to try hard to solve a similar
problem - how to measure trustworthiness of anonymous sellers over the
Internet. Clearly, you feel that their current measures work well
enough to trust - others might point out that it is still possible to
fool people by making multiple small, genuine, sales to gain a
reputation and then making a larger, fraudulent, sale.

There will probably *always* be a struggle to improve such systems,
but that should not stop us trying to create projects which have the
chance for real beneifts.

> You consulte
> an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your
> comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and
> there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible
> to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to
> influence is a question of the specific detail.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say with the example you gave
here. If you meant that it is possible for Wikipedia to contain
incorrect information, then again I say: this is something we are
trying to address; the official policy is that Wikipedia should have a
"Neutral Point of View" - any article which deliberately sets out to
influence is one that needs fixing, and we are trying to find ways of
spotting and labelling such articles.

But your example almost suggests to me that the CIA's World Fact Book
may be the one in error - or, at least, that there may be credible
challenges to its figures. A *good* Wikipedia article would actually
*help* here: with no agenda of its own, and no editorial control to
suppress alternative viewpoints, any supportable statistics could be
entered alongside each other, with a discussion of why each may be
better or worse. This is an advantage of the wiki approach, not a
disadvantage.

> [...] And if
> this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start
> new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the
> unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the
> conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect,
> somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning
> solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second:
> Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow
> that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national
> language.

I disagree with your conclusions here: the various language wikipedias
were started by individuals or small groups of people who thought it
would be a useful, achievable project resulting in a useful resource.
I have seen nobody say that you should not be allowed to propose this
project; only people who are not sure whether it is achievable, or
whether it would be useful. So prove them wrong: convince them that it
could be achievable, and would be useful, and set about making it
happen.

> A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of
> Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and
> it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only
> 10 Euro in Germany today)

I'm not sure why you consider us as "reinventing the wheel"; no, we
are not the first to write an encyclopedia, but we are the first to
write a collabourative, multi-lingual, freely available (not only for
no money, but also with no restrictions on copying and distributing),
un-biased encyclopedia. How is that encouraging people to reinvent the
wheel?

> For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and
> wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.

Some decisions have to be considered carefully: if we allow too many
versions of Wikipedia that turn out to be unsuccessful, we risk taking
effort away from others that have better chances of success. On the
other hand, if we create too few, we are failing in our aim of making
information available to those who need it. So it is only natural that
we want to pause and consider before saying "YES" to your proposal.

> But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited
> email-list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org

I still don't understand why you think of this list as
"access-limited": you were able to post here, as is anybody else who
wishes to. If you mean it is not well-enough publicised, that is a
different matter: the discussions on this list are no more closed to
the public than on our wikis.

> and the opinion, that a persone can
> only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place,
> if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this
> new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they
> likely to be better served by another language  * Editors : who will work on
> that new project, how many people ).

You have to be aware that creating an encyclopedia in a new language
is a big challenge, and not something that will just happen as soon as
you decide to start. This is what Anthere meant about needing an
audience and editors - it doesn't matter if they don't exist yet, but
it matters if they never will. If you start a project where you are
the only contributor, it will be extremely hard work, and you will not
have the power of collaboration which makes Wikipedia work. If you
start on a project where only you want to read it, all your effort
will be wasted, and better spent elsewhere.

So to make a project successful, you need to have reason to believe
that your project will "gather steam": that there will soon be enough
editors to make a real start, and that there are people out there who
will find your work, use it, and with luck become contributors
themselves. You don't need to already have a community, but you need
to have the means to build a community. For a solresol encyclopedia,
you need enough people who know solresol, or who are willing to learn
it, that will be interested in reading it, and hopefully also in
helping create it.

In short: if you think there are people who will want to use this, and
want to help you with it, those are your editors and readers, even if
they don't know it yet. If you believe that they are out there, then
you have my blessing to start, and probably that of most others here.

Have courage.
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ödön von Horváth

body:
Could whoever has the relevant database access please remove this
version
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?
>> title=%d6d%f6n_von_Horv%e1th&action=edit&oldid=6312577
of the [[?d?n von Horv?th]] article history?
It included <!-- commented out --> German text (for translation) which
has subsequently been found to be an apparent violation of 3rd party
copyrights.

The current version is a simple stub which no longer includes the
offending text.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ödön von Horváth


body:
Sj wrote:

>On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 23:13:04 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>
>
>>where someone (IIRC) tried to argue that a translation of an existing
>>text was an original work--
>>
>>IT IS NOT!!!
>>
>>
>As Mav wrote in response to the foundation list, noone is trying to
>argue this.  Translations are most assuredly not original works.
>
The criterion for copyright is for creative works rather than original
ones.  The position of translations is ambiguous because they are
derivative works.  They owe their life to the original source, and the
publication of a translation without permission can indeed be an
infringement of copyright.  Nevertheless, in a country that recognizes
derivative works they are the subject of a new and additional copyright
that is owned by the translator even if his translation infringed the
original copyright.  A person who then infringes the copyright of the
translator could be infringing two copyrights at once.

>"That is the question" referred to the question of how long a
>paraphrase can be; intervening translation was only a
>complicating factor.  It was clear once pointed out that it
>wasn't worth taking any chances, and the paraphrase in
>question was deleted.
>
Paraphrases do not in themselves infringe copyright.  The information is
not copyrightable; only the manner of saying things may be copyright.

>>I'm seeing _a lot_ of naivety lately, as regards copyright:
>>
>>1. That's a '''problem''' for the submitter (because they--not the
>>Wikipedia--are legally fully liable for the text they are submitting to
>>the Wikipedia).
>>
>>
>Once a more formal review system is in place, and certain bits of
>content are flagged "reviewed" or "stable", will this continue to be
>true?  If a piece of copyvio goes unnoticed and is included in a
>reviewed article, will there be liability for the reviewing group as
>well as for the submitter?
>
There is indeed a lot of na?vet? in regards to copyrights, and it is
abundant on both sides of the issue.  Let's be realistic about it.  For
sure there is an initial liability on the part of the submitter, but
that's an awfully tough case to establish when submitters are
quasi-anonymous, or are willing to apologetically remove the offending
material when the infringement is brought to their attention.  The case
is not made easier by the complexities of transnational issues involving
the countries of the submitter, the server, and the original copyright
owner.  This makes talk of "full legal liability" rather hollow.  The
primary legal liability shifts to the Wikimedia Foundation rather early
in the process -- maybe as soon as the material is substantively amended
by anyone other than the original submitter.

In the event of a formal review process it is clear that the original
submitter will be taken off the hook because he will have had no input
into the review process unless he is also one of the reviewers.   The
legal liability (or more correctly the potential legal liability) will
fall on the Wikimedia Foundation as a legally incorporated person.  The
personal legal liability of the reviewers would depend on whether they
knew that there was a copyright infringement.  The reviewers are likely
to be scattered around the world; there would need to be some serious
money involved before a copyright owner would try to get them all into
the same courtroom, or start proceedings in a variety of different
jurisdictions.    These are all important considerations when
considering how realistic a legal case can be.

A far more likely scenario is that we would be asked to remove the
offending material.  That would trigger a review of the material, and,
if the request is justified, compliance.  That would be the end of it in
a great majority of cases.  An irrationally litigious individual could
go further, but nobody can protect himself from that eventuality.  It is
also possible that we may decide then that the request is NOT justified,
but the number of variations there are too many to consider in this
short response.

I personally believe that we could show a lot more courage in matters of
copyright.  There is a great deal of material out there that is
technically protected by copyright, but which could be republished with
impunity simply because there is no-one there to own the copyright.
This does not mean that we go ahead and willy-nilly republish anything
that strikes our fancy; that would be an act of stupidity.  Some
criteria would need to be followed.  Anything that we would so republish
(Wikisource being most affected) would need to state the possible
problems right up front, and to state that we would remove the material
if so requested by a person who establishes that he has the legal right
to make such a request.  If no-one makes a request for three years, the
limitation period for civil copyright suits, the doctrine of laches may
be applicable.

Ec


body:
Notice I said "constructed languages" with no native speakers rather
than "constructed languages" which by default means they have no
native speakers.

--node

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 00:19:46 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 11:51:18 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Also, one major difference between Solresol/Frater and languages such
> > as Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian (now transformed into the Alemannic
> > wikipedia), Breton, etc which already have Wikipedias is this:
> > Solresol and Frater are "constructed languages" with no native
> > speakers. They are not "minority languages" like these other
> > languages, they are in a different category completely. There are 0
> > people who can read or write Solresol or Frater better than any
> > natural language.
>
> While I generally see your point, I would advise against being too
> hasty on this point: I'm told, much to my surprise, that a few people
> are actually brought up speaking Esperanto as a first language; and on
> the other side, many "minority languages" will be *so* minority that
> most - if not, in some cases, all - users of the language will
> actually more often use, and thus be more proficient in, another, more
> mainstream language. This is true, for instance, of languages that are
> being "saved from extinction" by enthusiasts, and which may therefore
> be insufficient for any speaker, however proficient, to use as their
> *primary* tongue.
>
> So the distinction may not be so clear cut as you make out: there are
> "constructed languages" for which there are "native" speakers, and
> there are probably "minority languages" which are nobody's "mother
> tongue".
>
> Which all rather strengthens calls to take each proposed language on
> its own terms.
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
>
>
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
I agree, but I don't know if now is a good time to ask.

This list is just cooling down from some minor conflicts regarding
other ancient languages (Gothic, Anglo-Saxon), and I think the best
idea would be to send an e-mail to Tim Starling saying that you
promise not to ask for interface customisations, and that you won't
bug any devs for dev work after the creation of the Ancient Greek
wikipedia. He has said before that under such circumstances he is
willing to create a new Wikipedia; I think rather than ask on the ML
it'd be better to request it of him specifically so it's not as much
of an issue (if you already have some content by the time a debate
begins, you have shown that you are committed to working on it which
is often one of the arguments used against new Wikipedias, especially
in ancient or constructed languages).

--node

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 17:13:45 -0700 (PDT), Alex Alderman
<alexalderman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What would people say to a wikipedia in ancient Greek?
>  It has an ISO (grc), it's a pretty important language
> historically, and it's studied by hundreds of
> thousands of people worldwide.  Most every classics
> department offers a course in Greek prose composition;
> so, there would be plenty of nerdy people wanting to
> write articles.  Having a wikipedia in the language
> would help to encourage students to take composition
> seriously, and it would strengthen students' grasp of
> grammar tremendously.
> The first western encyclopedias (like Suidas) were
> written in Greek; so, there are plenty of public
> domain entries to get the ball rolling.
> There is a modern Greek wikipedia, but Ancient Greek
> is really different from Modern demotic Greek in all
> its most interesting qualities, like particles,
> prepositions, and its huge vocabulary.  Greeks can
> more or less understand ancient Greek, but students of
> ancient Greek have little or no knowledge of Modern
> Greek.
> I'm a doctoral candidate in ancient Greek letters, and
> I'd be willing to get the ball rolling.  Let me know
> what you think.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: kiddyr

body:
Please, please, consider adding columns for a uuid. See my previous
e-mail from May:

	Subject: UUIDs: help transwiki, unifying user tables, etc...

All that would need to be done is:

	- add a CHAR(16) BINARY column to table page as 'page_uuid'.
	- add a CHAR(16) BINARY column to table revision as 'revision_uuid'.
	- add a CHAR(16) BINARY column to table text as 'text_uuid'.

This would enable so many things to happen. I am not going to
specifically name what they are, because I keep to keep tripping over
pet issues that people have, and the central point does not get
discussed.

For now, nothing would even need to be done with these columns.

We can take a phased approach:

1 - add the columns now

2 - start to look at how to get the uuid added to the table at create
of page/revision/text. There are many examples of how to create UUIDs
in different languages.

3 - test and optimize same

4 - start a process to retroactively add uuid numbers to all
page/revision/text rows. These can be added, dropped, re-added, etc and
etc. When an id that you generate is unique and differentiable from any
uuid generated in the entire rest of the universe, it is possible to
stage this process, generate new uuids at any time, mix and match from
different tables, or whatever.

5 - start to look at queries that can use these uuid numbers.

6 - implement and optimize same.

Brion can do this first step and, once that is done, I can get started
on 2 and 3, offline. And if nobody has ideas by the time we come to
step 5, I'll eat my words and those columns can be dropped from the
table. No harm, no foul.

I am only going to say that it will be useful to have an id that is not
only unique among all the pages and all the revisions and all the text
rows, but that is also unique among all other servers that might be
sharing the load, and is also unique among all languages in all the
wikipedias, and is unique among all users of all wikipedias anywhere on
the planet.

I would be surprised if anyone cannot see at least one thing that
having this information would enable.

And once the columns are in place it will be worth it to fight those
battles, individually looking at what has been enabled and whether any
given feature is desirable or not.

- ray

On Oct 3, 2004, at 3:19 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I'm working on code for the much-discussed database schema change.
>
> See overview & in-progress schema conversion code:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Database_Schema_Changes/
> October_2004
>
> I've got various features up and running on the new schema and will
> check in some code on a branch until it's sorted out and we've done
> some test conversion runs to make sure it's not too out of whack.
>
> This is intended to solve a number of major issues including:
> * eliminate denial-of-service problem on page renames
> * make revision ID number available and consistent for old and current
> revisions
> * speed up aggregate queries by not having to slog through text
> storage to get at revision metadata
>
> It also should reduce the update burden on the slave database servers
> by not having to save every edit's text and data twice.
>
> This current schema co-opts the existing old table for text storage,
> ignoring the extra fields which are now moved off to other tables.
> This should keep the initial conversion cost relatively low as the
> table doesn't need to be rebuilt, just added to. The smaller
> metadata-only tables should be easier to alter in the future as
> needed.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] RFC: Approved Edits Only

body:
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 19:28:51 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> see below
...and then proceeded to quote the whole previous e-mail.

You are allowed to *delete* the quoted text, you know? Or the bulk of
it, such as up until the word "Because", so that you still get the
context of your reply...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikitech-l] RFC: Approved Edits Only

body:
see below

On 2 Oct 2004, at 09:10, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> On Friday 01 October 2004 13:36, Randy Becker wrote:
>> This is part of the reason I'm swaying away from the current course
>> I've taken, and towards a cleaner approach, but I will bring up the
>> "stable time" to see if it's an acceptable solution. Also, part of the
>
> I think that stable time is not possible solution. Most articles
> rarely remain
> stable for any longer amount of time. Someone will fix grammar, remove
> a
> comma... there will always be minor or major changes, especially as the
> changes don't propagate to the article, and the time will always be
> resetted.
>
>> problem with this is how does it reach a stable point, as *all*
>> evidence of an edit by a user should not be evident from the wiki,
>> except to sysops or the like. (editing should display the previously
>> approved entry, and only approved entries should appear in the history
>> etc.) Because of all of this, I'm thinking of trying to implement a
>> kind of queue of edits, which would bee looked at, and then approved
>> or rejected, and if rejected, just dropped, if approved, added as if
>> the user which submitted them had added them themselves.
>
> This is possible approach, but who is going to do the approving and
> rejecting?

Your questions shall be answered:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Wikimedia_meetup_2005#Possible_speakers_and_workshops

;-)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


body:
On 3 Oct 2004, at 12:19, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I'm working on code for the much-discussed database schema change.
>
> See overview & in-progress schema conversion code:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Database_Schema_Changes/
> October_2004
<snip>
> This is intended to solve a number of major issues including:
<snip>
> * make revision ID number available and consistent for old and current
> revisions

^^Yay! Go Brion!!  :-)


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] clusty

body:
The new search engine "clusty" features wikipedia fairly prominently.
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/03/1230223.shtml?tid=95

I overheard some talk about GNU FDL compliance, and I just wanted to
let everyone know that I talked to the CEO of Vivisimo last week
(before they launched) and (a) they love us and (b) there will be no
GNU FDL compliance problems with them.

So, I will contact them in a few days after I have a chance to
assess what, if anything, we'd like to have them adjust.

--Jimbo

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Requests

body:
Hoi,
Is it possible to refresh the content of a category ? I have added loads
of categories to templates. When all the categories are refreshed, more
than 4000 articles will be seen as being part of a category?

If it is possible, could someone do this for the nl:wiktionary ??

Background, I have added these categories on the request of an
en:wiktionary user who maintains that categories are likely to show more
than 500 entries in contrast to the references of an article or
template. It would be nice to have the links to the categories refreshed
so that we will know how well categories will do.

On the subject of categories, the Persian words read from left to right,
the category for Persion words reads them the wrong way round. I think
that there is already a bug in bugzilla but, it is different with the
Arabian words so I am not sure.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm, something that strikes me looking at those results is that on
> several categories Wikipedia seems to do worse on the "easy" topics
> but better on the "hard" ones. I don't know if I'm just imagining it,
> and it could just be a coincidence, but that seems like an interesting
> finding (were there any graphs in the article? one could probably
> construct a graph that demonstrated patterns like that).

This is sadly true and I'm part of the problem since I love to write about
specific topics concerning geology yet have never added much to core
geology-related articles such as [[geology]] or [[mineralogy]]. This also seems
to be true for articles about specific species (we have many well-developed
ones) vs articles about core biology-related topics (not many well-developed
ones).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia meetups

body:
There will be two different Wikipedia meetups in the US in the upcoming
weeks, and I don't believe anyone has mentioned this on the mailing list
yet. Since it's hard to be sure people will see it in one place, I'm
spreading the word as widely as possible. One meetup is in Chicago on
Sunday, October 24th, because Jimbo plans to be in town. The other
meetup is in Seattle on Saturday, November 6th, at the fascinating new
downtown public library. More information on both gatherings is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup

Interestingly enough, the Seattle meetup already has six firm
commitments, including people coming in from Vancouver, BC and Portland,
all without the draw of an appearance by our fearless leader. Meanwhile
only two people have signed up for the Chicago meetup, and that's
counting Jimbo himself. So I just have to ask, where are all the Chicago
Wikipedians? Is there nobody willing to make the trip even from
Wisconsin or Indiana (and Chicago's so much closer to the state line
than Seattle)? Doesn't anybody love Jimbo anymore?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Sj

body:
On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 18:05:43 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> I personally believe that we could show a lot more courage in matters of
> copyright.  There is a great deal of material out there that is
> technically protected by copyright, but which could be republished with
> impunity simply because there is no-one there to own the copyright.
> This does not mean that we go ahead and willy-nilly republish anything
> that strikes our fancy; that would be an act of stupidity.  Some
> criteria would need to be followed.  Anything that we would so republish
> (Wikisource being most affected) would need to state the possible
> problems right up front, and to state that we would remove the material
> if so requested by a person who establishes that he has the legal right
> to make such a request.  If no-one makes a request for three years, the
> limitation period for civil copyright suits, the doctrine of laches may
> be applicable.

This is a fascinating suggestion.  I have often grumbled to myself about the
difficulties of identifying copyright status for untraceable or anonymous (but
not explicitly licensed) content... of course there are issues of
tagging / hiding
questionable content so that reusers (in print, for instance) don't get bitten
for using it.

--
+sj+


body:
On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 15:59:12 +0100, J. Grant <jg at jguk.org> wrote:
> I wonder if you are aware that your web servers are incorrectly
> configured at present..?  (I could be wrong..)
>
> Below is a log from teh W3C link check validation util:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis
>      What to do: The link is forbidden! This needs fixing. Usual
> suspects: a missing index.html or Overview.html, or a missing ACL.
>      Response status code: 403
>      Response message: Forbidden
>      Line: 58

The "missing index.html or Overview.html" here is a red herring: all
the checker is saying is that when it tries to read the URL listed, it
gets a 403 error instead of the web page. I can only think that the
validator is sending out a user-agent that is blocked for some reason,
or is otherwise being blocked by the servers.

In fact, I notice http://validator.w3.org/about.html mentions the "LWP
Perl Modules"; probably the link validator is sending out the default
LWP user-agent, which is blocked to avoid badly written bots and
spiders.

Using the command-line GET tool:

> HEAD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis
> User-Agent: lwp-request/2.06
> HEAD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis --> 403 Forbidden

> HEAD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis
> User-Agent: something else
> HEAD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis --> 200 OK

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: clusty

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>The original article from SJ Mercury News about Clusty/WP isn't very good:
>"Clusty is also one of the first search sites to index and display
>results from the sometimes controversial Wikipedia, the online
>encyclopedia being compiled from contributions by Internet users. Some
>researchers do not view Wikipedia as an authoritative source of
>information because it is created by Web users."
>
>They should have said Clusty features Wikipedia in its own tab very
>prominently, and it even returns pictures from WP in the search
>results. Example:
>http://clusty.com/search?query=octopus+card&v%3Aproject=clusty-encyclopedia
>
>
I was wondering how they reached that rather bizarre piece of
misinformation. Considering that Dan Gillmor works for the Mercury News
and has written about Wikipedia frequently (always positively) and knows
it well, it's quite surprising to see them botch facts like that, even
if they choose a less glowing tone. However, Gillmor didn't write this
particular story, and I suppose the original reporter may have been the
victim of an editor who doesn't actually know anything about search
engines, but decided the explanation was too complex for the audience.

Anyway, it has to be gratifying when the latest innovations in the
search wars try to use Wikipedia in their press releases as an example
of how great they are.

--Michael Snow


from_name: ajkaraer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Perhaps,  help!....

body:
Dear Sirs:

I found a  round sterling silver tray. On it there is an ivy leaf and
following is engraved:

The 2950 Members of Princeton Ivy Club

Robert M. Brewer                       W.Boulton Kelly, Jr.
William F. Clarkson, Jr.             Ghomas E. Kilby,III
James M. Earl                            George C. Matthiessen
John S. Gray                               Benjamin H. Murray
Charles D. Halsey, Jr.               Ajlbert J. Redfway, Jr.
Stehphen S. Halsey                   Franklin D.Reeve
Chalmers Handy                        W. Cameron Slack
David L. Hopkins, Jr.                James C. Taylor
Sonstantine Hutchins, Jr.         Owen J. Toland, Jr.
Paul M. Ingersoll                       Paul C. Van Dyke
Philip T. Zabriskie

I am not a professional internet user.  I tried through Google to see anything under "The 1950 Members of Princeton Ivy Club" and some sites appeard but nothing related to 1950 members or their names.  I am just curious, did each of the above name had one tray ? Or only one tray was engraved all above names and this tray was in a museum? Ivy Club Museum?  How can I get in touch either with one of the above names or the establishment "Ivy Club", in order to be able to find out more.

You may not be able to help me at all.  That I understand and I thank you very much in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely yours,

Yashar Karaer


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] News sources citing our articles

body:
I just discovered the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source]] article
the other day. It did strike me, however, that several of the articles
that were referenced by less prestigious publications did not have any
external references. One example is the latest one that referenced Poker
- http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/1001poker01.html. This
article had little in the way of references (I've since gone through the
history with a fine tooth comb and found a few from the original
article), but I'm still unsure where the information about the history
of Poker came from!

I don't mean to make this specific to the Poker article. What I'm
suggesting is that if the press references one of our articles on the
press source page that we can absolutely make sure that our references
are up to scratch and our facts correct. Otherwise we're going to burn a
lot of news writers (who should have known better and done their /own/
research - but this is besides the point), and make us look bad.

I know it's a fair amount of work, but I'm basically putting this out
for comment on the mailing list.

One last thing: when it comes to referencing, it's great to have a
References section - but unless we have proper footnotes that quote the
page number of a publication we got the material from this makes it
*extremely* difficult for fact checkers to actually verify the
information in the story. Which helps give rise to factual inaccuracies
and POV.

Cheers,
Ta bu shi da yu


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Wikipedia langage solresol

body:
In the first instance, "with no native speakers" directly modifies
"constructed languages". It is meant to create a subset of constructed
languages, ie those that don't have native speakers (as opposed to
those constructed languages which *do* have native speakers), whereas
the latter one implicitly makes it clear that there is no other
possible interpretation than that no constructed languages have native
speakers (which is not true). ;)

--node

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:51:25 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Mark Williamson a ?crit:
> > Notice I said "constructed languages" with no native speakers rather
> > than "constructed languages" which by default means they have no
> > native speakers.
> >
> > --node
>
> I fail to see the difference :-)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Victor Fariña

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
Hi again
I develop a extremely simple extension (using the same technic as
graphviz extension and easytimeline extension)
with wich you can render SVG images online ...
The main utility for me (and the community) is to maintain a version
control over UML Diagrams and other
approachs . Instructions on how to use it and samples and downlads at my
wiki :
http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/SVG_extension
I am still working on it, so all sugestions are welcome ...

best regards

--
Problems with Windows - Reboot.
Problems with Linux   - Be root.

Vic (aKa CoffMan)
vic at wickle.com


body:
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 11:51:18 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, one major difference between Solresol/Frater and languages such
> as Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian (now transformed into the Alemannic
> wikipedia), Breton, etc which already have Wikipedias is this:
> Solresol and Frater are "constructed languages" with no native
> speakers. They are not "minority languages" like these other
> languages, they are in a different category completely. There are 0
> people who can read or write Solresol or Frater better than any
> natural language.

While I generally see your point, I would advise against being too
hasty on this point: I'm told, much to my surprise, that a few people
are actually brought up speaking Esperanto as a first language; and on
the other side, many "minority languages" will be *so* minority that
most - if not, in some cases, all - users of the language will
actually more often use, and thus be more proficient in, another, more
mainstream language. This is true, for instance, of languages that are
being "saved from extinction" by enthusiasts, and which may therefore
be insufficient for any speaker, however proficient, to use as their
*primary* tongue.

So the distinction may not be so clear cut as you make out: there are
"constructed languages" for which there are "native" speakers, and
there are probably "minority languages" which are nobody's "mother
tongue".

Which all rather strengthens calls to take each proposed language on
its own terms.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Importing RFEs from sourceforge

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> The disadvantage is that for those that *do* need importing, the bot
> does [that is, seems to have done with the bugs] a better job than I
> would manually: reversing the order of the sourceforge comments so
> that they are oldest-first, for instance.
>
> However, I could go through and close some on sf anyway, so that we
> wouldn't have to import all 403 currently open. If you'd prefer it
> this way round, grant some permissions to sf-user 'imsop', and I'll
> have a look for obvious candidates for closure tomorrow.

Just send me an e-mail when you've finished closing those that shouldn't
be migrated, and then I'll run the script again to migrate those that
are still open.

Thanks for volunteering to sift through them!

(And sorry for forgetting about the RFEs ;-) )

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: clusty

body:
On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:08:50 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Anyway, it has to be gratifying when the latest innovations in the
> search wars try to use Wikipedia in their press releases as an example
> of how great they are.
>
> --Michael Snow

Yes, it was very much a "which of these things is not like the others" list
of innovations.  That name and the 50's-throwback look of the site would
really get to me if I used the site for my searches, though.

+sj+