in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00706C7@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 09:34:05AM -0400

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php
> > on line 17
>
> Do we need more bandwidth? Or is at a DOS attack (denial of service)?

It's not a bandwidth problem, per se.  I'm not sure what the problem
is exactly.  It is probably not an attack.

I restarted apache and mysqld.  Things seem happy now.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RFC on a few feature requests

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote in large part:

>* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
>of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
>Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
>might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
>listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
>that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
>This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
>SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

I know of no such reason; go ahead and change it.

>* The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find
>and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying
>a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

In general, not desirable, for the reasons that Andre gave.
In the case of redirects to the old page, however, desirable
(which Andre also said -- so Andre is just right).

>* While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel"
>etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence
>monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly
>hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most
>annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English
>name of the function which implements the special page. A table of
>equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable
>localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

As long as these show up in the user interface,
it seems only reasonable to translate the English.
(It also seems only reasonable to use ordinary capitalisation,
but Lee has some reason why that's a bad idea.)

>* For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as
>"Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
>namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I
>intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
>  'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>  be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>  into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
>  equal in the namespace portion?'
>In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

Seems harmless enough.

-- Toby


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > *Jimbo had said that he reserves the right to ban
> logged-in
> >users. Perhaps he meant only people antagonizing
> others with
> >historical revisionism or personal remarks -- not
> kids who replace
> >entire articles with the word "kool" -- but I'd
> like to see a
> >clarification from him.
>
> I see no particular difference between a vandal who
> logs in and a
> vandal who doesn't.  Of course, a person who has
> bothered to log in is
> less likely to be a vandal than someone who doesn't,
> at least in our
> experience so far.  And we've never really had a
> _persistent_ vandal.
>
> And so, yes, I'd like to say that I'll take the
> responsibility and
> political heat for banning (or failing to ban, as is
> more likely!) in
> cases that don't fit neatly into "simple vandalism",
> i.e. cases like
> '24' and Helga.
>
> And I'll make frowny faces at people who ban people
> as a method of
> settling a debate about content.  That's not
> WikiLove.

Hey Wikilover,

Will you come make frowny faces to half of the french
board next time it is jumping on the head of a
logged-in user trying to defend a CE/BCE issue that
stands no chance in front of conventions ? :-))

Looking forward that moment. Thanks alot.

peace

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Will you come make frowny faces to half of the french
> board next time it is jumping on the head of a
> logged-in user trying to defend a CE/BCE issue that
> stands no chance in front of conventions ? :-))

Well, "jumping on the head" isn't a ban.  I'd prefer if there were
no head jumping, but it isn't really something that we can have a policy
about.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: wojtek pobratyn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Power Search

body:
At 19:46 08.10.2002, you wrote:
> > Since I got no feedback about the extended search on Lee's test site,
>I
> > went ahead and put it into the CVS. It is also running on
> > de.wikipedia.org now.
>
>Thanks Magnus, it works fine! I really missed this.
>
>Kurt
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

yep, thanks a lot from me too. this is great!
WojPob


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
I agree with Brion's suggestions for:
* count total number of _pages_ (for "most wanted", "most popular") rather than links.
* namespace localization (yes, give the non-English Wikipedians whatever goodies they need!!)

I'm not sure about page rename:
* I like the prospect of eliminating a chain of redirects: Foo links to A, which redirects to B, which redirects to C. If Foo should link to C, then the new feature would eliminate two extra links -- Foo would link directly to C without any intervening redirects.
* But what about the look of the link? If I link to [[Hamlet (2000 film)]] and Mav renames the target article to "Hamlet (2000 movie)" -- then what happens to my link? Does it become [[Hamlet (2000 movie)]]?

I'm not sure about blocking.
*We must make sure we don't inappropriately block valid, logged-in users. (Just yesterday, I accidentally blocked a _valid_, anonymous user who was helping clean up the damage caused by an anonymous _vandal_; I apologized, of course, and will be more careful in the future.) Would this feature change help prevent such mistakes?
*Jimbo had said that he reserves the right to ban logged-in users. Perhaps he meant only people antagonizing others with historical revisionism or personal remarks -- not kids who replace entire articles with the word "kool" -- but I'd like to see a clarification from him.

Ed Poor


body:
At 10:13 09.10.2002, Brion wrote:
>There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd
>like some comments from other developers and power users before I go
>trashing the code on my own...
>
>* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
>of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
>Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
>might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
>listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
>that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
>This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple SQL
>queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

No really. I'm all for a change, it would make the lists much clearer and
comprehensible.

>* On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by
>username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by
>sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP
>addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow
>usernames to be blocked?

Editors with the ability to block others should be able to either see the
IP of each user, or if someone's paranoid about privacy, simply
be able to block-by-username. Both are feasible solutions, IMO.

>* The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find
>and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying a
>redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

Depends on the server-load this would cause. I don't think it's is really
that important.

>* While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel"
>etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence
>monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly hidden
>in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most
>annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English
>name of the function which implements the special page. A table of
>equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable localized
>names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

Good idea.

>* For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as
>"Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
>namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I
>intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
>
>   'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>   be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>   into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
>   equal in the namespace portion?'
>
>In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

No idea;-) Seriously, I really don't know.
Thanks a lot for the effort you guys put into this.

regards,
WojPob


body:
> Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php
> on line 17

Do we need more bandwidth? Or is at a DOS attack (denial of service)?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] some questions concerning copyright

body:
elian wrote:
> Someone wanted to place the emblem (coat of arms or whatever the correct
> english term is) of a city to the article about it and was unsure if this
> is legal. In Germany there are laws about "Hoheitszeichen" like flags,
> emblems, which restrict the right to use them.

What kind of restrictions are there?  I'm just curious.

> How is the legal situation? I suppose wikipedia is in the sphere of
> american law. If it's legal, do we have to redraw the emblems ourselves or
> can we take the "official" images?

It seems unlikely to me that the emblem of a city is copyright.
Aren't most of them really old, at the least?

Although wikipedia is in the sphere of American law, German
contributors who live in Germany might need to watch themselves with
respect to German law.

> Next question: what's the exact date before which works are copyright
> free in the U.S.? Does US-law apply for German books, scanned in Germany
> and put on a server in the US or do we have to ensure that they are
> copyright free in both countries? German law is "70 years after the death
> of the author".

We only have to obey American law.  In most respects, this is the most liberal
jurisdiction, so that's not really a constraint.

> PS: I heard something about a lawsuit Eldrigde vs. Ashcroft at the
> Supreme Court - will Mickey Mouse law finally be abolished?

It's possible.  But some legal experts think that the Supreme Court
will rule -- correctly, perhaps -- that the Constitution gives the
power to set the term of copyrights to the Congress, and that the
recent extensions fall well within the realm of the Congressional
public policy setting functions.

http://eldred.cc/ is a good resource to learn more.

Even if the Supreme Court rules one way, it is possible for Congress
to change their minds.  This is somewhat unlikely because (a) the
general public doesn't seem to care much and (b) the people who do
care, care a lot (and contribute mightily to congressional campaigns).

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CE / BCE (was: RFC on a few feature requests)

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >Will you come make frowny faces to half of the
> french
> >board next time it is jumping on the head of a
> >logged-in user trying to defend a CE/BCE issue that
> >stands no chance in front of conventions ? :-))
> >
> >
> >
> What *is* our convention on BC / BCE and AD / CE?
>
> On the en: wiki, the year, century, etc pages are
> called "BC", but I
> think a majority of articles use "BCE".
> I bumped into an article specifically about the
> naming system, which
> states that "BCE" and "CE" are now preferred, in
> general.
>
> perhaps we should take our own advice?

That's what I understood the en.wiki view was.

The french wikipedia "advice" (meaning current
decision) is very clear on that matter

1) it is an english abbreviation, as such has no room
in french language

2) it does not exist in any serious french-speaking
references and doesnot get enough hits on google, so
has no room on the french wiki (cf : cite your sources
thread :-))

3) it might be known and used by ultra-minorities, as
such its use on wikipedia could only damage our
reputation of reliability and not conform to
neutrality requirements.

hum, and consequently of 1) 2) and 3) it is suggested
that use of these abbreviations could even make
somebody liable of permanent banning as it could be
considered an act of sabotage of the whole
encyclopedia.

(I tried to have this summary/report not biaised :-))

Conclusion : the only place where these two words are
apparently being tolerated are in a [[BC]] and a
[[BCE]] articles.

Yup !

WikiLove to you all...(like the word)

-----

I invite any french-reading person to read below the
substance of the argument.

Anth?re

----- Passages choisis

- Ce n'est pas une abr?viation usuelle en fran?ais, y
compris parmi les travaux r?cents en recherche
historique. N'importe qui peut s'en convaincre en
allant consulter dans une bonne librairie les
derni?res parutions en histoire : dans TOUS les
ouvrages traitant des si?cles avant notre ?re,
l'abr?viation utilis?e est "av. J.-C."
- M?me en admettant, comme l'affirment nos six mulots,
que les abr?viations BC et BCE soient utilis?es par un
petit groupe de chercheurs fran?ais ? la pointe du
progr?s et repr?sentant une "culture particuli?re", il
ne me semble pas judicieux de fonder Wikipedia sur des
conceptions ultra-minoritaires qui diff?rent de
l'usage courant. Ce serait contraire au principe de la
neutralit?, qui ne doit pas s'appliquer seulement au
point de vue, mais aussi aux contenus et aux usages :
de m?me qu'il ne faut pas laisser n'importe qui
pr?senter ici de pures ?lucubrations comme des v?rit?s
scientifiques (cf. le r?seau Voltaire), on ne peut pas
accepter non plus l'usage d'abr?viations non conformes
? l'usage g?n?ral dans la discipline scientifique
consid?r?e.

----

Je maintiens que Wikipedia, en tant qu'encyclop?die,
ne doit pas ?tre un lieu d'exp?rimentation
conceptuelle ou terminologique, mais un moyen de
transmission de savoirs largement admis par la
communaut? scientifique. On peut bien s?r ?voquer
aussi des savoirs incertains, marginaux ou contest?s,
mais ? condition de les pr?senter comme tels. Les
abr?viations BCE et BC ne sont pas admises par la
communaut? des historiens fran?ais, et je ne comprends
vraiment pas, Anthere, comment tu peux y ?tre
favorable. Que fais-tu de la neutralit? de Wikipedia?
J?sus de Nazareth (alias le Christ) n'a pas une
"existence virtuelle", c'est un personnage historique
attest?, dont la naissance, pour des raisons
historiques, sert de point z?ro ? notre calendrier. Il
s'agit d'une convention que m?me les historiens ath?es
ne remettent pas en question. BC (before Christ) fait
d'ailleurs aussi r?f?rence au Christ.
Ma position n'est pas dict?e par une quelconque "ligne
du parti", il n'y a pas de dogmatisme de ma part, mais
simplement le souci que Wikipedia ne devienne pas une
encyclop?die excentrique contenant des bizarreries qui
compromettraient son s?rieux et sa cr?dibilit?.
L'emploi d'abr?viations fantaisistes me semble, de ce
point de vue, hautement nuisible.

Pour enfoncer le clou, voici quelques donn?es qui
devraient clore d?finitivement la discussion. J'ai
recherch? sur Google les expressions "si?cle BC" et
"si?cle av. J.-C.". Les r?sultats sont sans appel:
"si?cle BC" : 140 r?ponses; l'examen des URL montre
que la quasi-totalit? sont des sites personnels ou des
sites ?trangers (de pays non francophones), qui ne
peuvent pas constituer une r?f?rence s?rieuse
"si?cle av. J.-C." : 10 500 r?ponses ! parmi
lesquelles les sites officiels du Mus?e du Louvre, de
la Biblioth?que nationale de France, du minist?re de
l'Education, et d'un nombre important d'universit?s et
instituts de recherche francophones (et je n'ai pas
consult? toute la liste...)

Je consid?re qu'apr?s cela, si Mulot/Les? Six
s'obstine ? r?tablir BC ou BCE, cela s'apparente ? une
tentative de sabotage du wikipedia fran?ais et que
cela m?rite le bannissement perp?tuel (compte tenu des
nombreux probl?mes d?j? pos?s depuis longtemps par
cette personne).

------ fin de passages choisis

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiLove, or peace in the Middle East articles

body:
This week, Elian and Uriyan and I have been working harmoniously on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- the Wikipedia articles, that is. Apparently, Elian and Uriyan hit it off, and are e-mailing each other directly on some points.

Now, if we can find a way to include one or two other non-pro-Israeli contributors in this virtual oasis of delirious felicity...

Ed Poor


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Too many connections

in_reply_to: <3DA41EB6.8080008@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 02:19:02PM +0200

body:
That's bad news...  The max number of connections (default 100, I
think) for MySQL can be adjusted (and maybe it has been already).  I
would double (and triple) check to see if there are httpd processes
that open more than one connection to the database.  It will become
very important that the software only make use of as many database
connections as it needs.

Jason Richey

Magnus Manske wrote:

> I keep getting
>
> *Warning*: Too many connections in
> */usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php* on line *17*
> Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1
>
> at 14:17, German time, for both en (www) and de wikipedia.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at nupedia.com
> http://nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] RFC on a few feature requests

in_reply_to:
<3DA3E50D.2020403@pobox.com> from Brion VIBBER at "Oct 9, 2002 00:13:01
 am"

body:
> There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd
> like some comments from other developers and power users before I go
> trashing the code on my own...
>
> * "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
> of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
> Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
> might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
> listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
> that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
> This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
> SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

Being one of those who requested this (after noticing a page got #8 on 'Most
wanted pages' with 13 links of which 12 were from one page), I am all for it.

> * On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by
> username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by
> sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP
> addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow
> usernames to be blocked?

No opinion

> * The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find
> and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying
> a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

If so, then only on an optional basis. Sometimes one DOES want to keep the
links to the old page. As a precaution for when one might split the two
subjects again in the future.

For example, in the Dutch Wikipedia I recently moved 'Trebizonde' (English
'Trebizond') to 'Trabzon'. Trabzon is a city in northeast Turkey, Trebizond(e)
its old name. It has an important place in history, and it might well be that
in the future one would want to have a separate page about the history, or
perhaps about the independent state in the region around the city in the High
Middle Ages. And 'Trebizond(e)' would be a good name for such an article. If
that ever happens, it would be nice to have the links run right already.

One thing that I _would_ like to have, is to automatically change links _from
redirect pages_. Double redirects simply look extremely ugly and
non-informative, and are among the things we should most like to avoid.

> * While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel"
> etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence
> monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly
> hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most
> annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English
> name of the function which implements the special page. A table of
> equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable
> localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

Good idea.

> * For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as
> "Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
> namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I
> intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
>
>    'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>    be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>    into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
>    equal in the namespace portion?'
>
> In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

No opinion.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] RFC on a few feature requests


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- elian <elian at gmx.li> wrote:

> Next question: what's the exact date before which works are copyright
> free in the U.S.?

Everything published before 1911 is in the public domain. Everything
published between 1911 and 1978 gets 95 years of copyright protection
after the date of publication (in 2006, this will undoubtedly be
increased). Everything published after 1978 gets 70 years after the
death of the last author, the same as in the European Union. Most other
countries give a straight 50 years after author's death, which is
required by the Berne convention.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: tarquin

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> * "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_
> number of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per
> page_. Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of
> video games might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each
> Playstation game listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a
> count of _pages_ that link, rather than the raw number of links. I
> would tend to agree. This can be switched by the simple addition of
> "DISTINCT" to a couple SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the
> current behavior?

don't think so. One page requesting many times IMO counts the same as
one page requesting once.

>
>
> * On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by
> username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except
> by sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP
> addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow
> usernames to be blocked?
>
> * The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally
> find and change links to point to the new name in addition to just
> supplying a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

No. May make moves to slow. May edit links we don't want editing. (eg
someone links "realist" and we move it to "realism")

But changing the links on redirects would be VERY desirable.
eg:
A redirects to B.
we wish to move B to C.
the action automagically edits A so A now redirects to C.

> * While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial",
> "Speciel" etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English
> (hence monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are
> mostly hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs,
> and most annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw
> internal English name of the function which implements the special
> page. A table of equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily
> recognizable localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

excellent idea.

> * For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up
> as "Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't
> accept namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is
> a bug I intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
>
>   'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>   be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>   into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
>   equal in the namespace portion?'
>
> In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

it's not a habit we should get into (aliases all over would be
confusing) but not distinguishing between accent/nonaccent in the
namespace portion of a name would be useful.


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
>> Someone wanted to place the emblem (coat of arms or whatever
>> the correct English term is) of a city to the article about it
>> and was unsure if this is legal...

> It seems unlikely to me that the emblem of a city is copyright.
> Aren't most of them really old, at the least?

It's almost certainly not copyrighted, but they might still be
trademarks.  That's no impediment to our using them here, as long
as we use them in a way that make it clear that the inclusion of
the symbol is for documentation purposes only and does not imply
any endorsement or association with the city in question.

>> Next question: what's the exact date before which works are
>> copyright free in the U.S.?

There's no way to set an exact date; it depends on how long
authors live, which set of laws the work was copyrighted under,
and other factors.

>> PS: I heard something about a lawsuit Eldrigde vs. Ashcroft at
>> the Supreme Court - will Mickey Mouse law finally be abolished?

Lawrence Lessig is arguing the case before the court as we speak.
Wish him luck.  <http://eldred.cc>

>Even if the Supreme Court rules one way, it is possible for Congress
>to change their minds.  This is somewhat unlikely because (a) the
>general public doesn't seem to care much and (b) the people who do
>care, care a lot (and contribute mightily to congressional campaigns).

The /only/ issue before the court in Eldred is whether or not
Congress has the constitutional power to retroactively extend
copyrights the way they did in the Sonny Bono act.  If the court
rules that they do not, there's nothing Congress can do to
"change their mind"; "Steamboat Willie" will instantly and
permanently become part of the public domain, as will many other
works.


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Mulot was banned for a week because she tried to
> propose another angle of view, an historical timeline,
> that could enrich the wiki.

Who did the ban?

> Another user was banned
> along because he "made the mistake" to state of few
> truths.

Well, this is a bit vague, but I'm listening.  This doesn't sound like
a good reason to ban someone.

> I have no problem with your decision of being the only
> one with the right to ban logged-in user, but

Well, that's not exactly what I've said.  :-) I think that being
logged in or not logged in is really not important.  What's important
is that none of us (even me) ban anyone for anything other than
outright vandalism, without a long discussion first.  And after that
discussion, it falls on me to make a final decision.

> - people can still delete pages of those they don't
> agree with, instead of talking

This is by using a destructive delete?  No one is supposed to use a
destructive delete in an argument.  If they blank the page, well,
that's rude, but the other person can restore it from the history.
Episodes like this are unpleasant, but tend to end fairly quickly, and
both sides are "equal" in the fight.

> - I forecast threats of forking again, when french
> will know about that

I don't think there will be a fork.

It seems that fr.wikipedia.com is still on the Usemod software.  So I
could take away sysop privileges by changing the password.  I won't do
that right now, but I do not think that people should be banned for the
things you have mentioned.

But, I have only so far heard your side of the story.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
elian wrote:

>Maybe someone can answer these questions which came up on the German
>wikipedia recently.
>
>Someone wanted to place the emblem (coat of arms or whatever the correct
>english term is) of a city to the article about it and was unsure if this
>is legal. In Germany there are laws about "Hoheitszeichen" like flags,
>emblems, which restrict the right to use them.
>
Are these German restrictions really a question of copyright, or is it
about preventing people from using them in inappropriate ways?

>How is the legal situation? I suppose wikipedia is in the sphere of
>american law. If it's legal, do we have to redraw the emblems ourselves or
>can we take the "official" images?
>
Simply redrawing the emblems is not likely to solve anything.  If it's
too similar it would continue to violate the laws you're trying to
circumvent; if it's too different it would lose its encyclopaedic merit.

>Next question: what's the exact date before which works are copyright
>free in the U.S.? Does US-law apply for German books, scanned in Germany
>and put on a server in the US or do we have to ensure that they are
>copyright free in both countries? German law is "70 years after the death
>of the author".
>
This stuff can get terribly complicated, and even though there is a
simple US answer of 95 years for works published after 1923, there are
numerous exceptions that may apply to earlier works from this time span.
A mirror server in Germany would be clearly subject to German law.  A
mirror server here in Canada would follow the Canadian rule of author's
life plus 50 years.  One E-book site has an associated site based in
Australia, where the rule is similar to Canada's.  It warns its American
users that it may be illegal fro them to look at these works.

>I heard something about a lawsuit Eldrigde vs. Ashcroft at the
>Supreme Court - will Mickey Mouse law finally be abolished?
>
I understand that the open court arguments in the US Supreme Court were
just made yesterday.  It will understandably take some time for the
judges to consider their opinion.  It's impossible to guess how judges
will rule on anything.

Eclecticology


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] RFC on a few feature requests

body:
Paul Ebermann wrote:
> "Brion VIBBER" skribis:
>>* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
>>of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
>>Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
>>might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
>>listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
>>that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
>>This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
>>SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?
>
> [en]
> Is it possible to make this an option in the user
> preferences? The default should be the new behaviour.

Sure, in theory, but I really don't see why anyone would _want_ the old
behavior. It gets reported as a _bug_ with some regularity... :)

> [eo]
> Cxu eblas/senchavas fari tion opcio en la preferoj de
> la uzanto? La defauxlto estu la nova konduto.

Nu jes, teorie, sed mi simple ne komprenas, kial oni _volus_ elekti la
nunan. Oni suficxe ofte raportas gxin kiel 'cimo'... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] RFC on a few feature requests


subject: [Wikitech-l] Too many connections

body:
Lightning wrote:
> Is the software using persistent connections? If not is there a reason, or
> can i go ahead and change it?

Yes, it's using persistent connections. We just have a lot of them
simultaneously!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>Everything published before 1911 is in the public domain. Everything
>published between 1911 and 1978 gets 95 years of copyright protection
>after the date of publication (in 2006, this will undoubtedly be
>increased). Everything published after 1978 gets 70 years after the
>death of the last author, the same as in the European Union. Most other
>countries give a straight 50 years after author's death, which is
>required by the Berne convention.

By these rules, the EB1911 is still protected!

-- Toby


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

>If the court
>rules that they do not, there's nothing Congress can do to
>"change their mind"; "Steamboat Willie" will instantly and
>permanently become part of the public domain, as will many other
>works.
>
Not exactly, "Steamboat Willie" was produced in 1928.  With the 75 year
rule (assiming the copyright was properly renewed in 1956) it still will
be protected to the end of 2003.


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Mulot was banned for a week because she tried to
> > propose another angle of view, an historical
> timeline,
> > that could enrich the wiki.
>
> Who did the ban?

Ha. I honestly can't answer for at least 4 people
tried. Me included. Let's say we collectively hit the
button. For we didnot know how to do it and had to ask
around. It was to have a break from a discussion that
was leading nowhere. All the people there agreed at
that time (that is, except Mulot of course). But if I
decided to do it, it was for everybody to have a
break. I am not entirely sure why other people did it.

> > Another user was banned
> > along because he "made the mistake" to state of
> few
> > truths.
>
> Well, this is a bit vague, but I'm listening.  This
> doesn't sound like
> a good reason to ban someone.

It wasnot a good reason. I disagreed with that
banning. Does it never happen on the en.wiki that a
sysop ban somebody and another disagree with the
decision ? What happens then ? Well, I dropped the
matter, and unban all the ips after a week. That's
all.

> > I have no problem with your decision of being the
> only
> > one with the right to ban logged-in user, but
>
> Well, that's not exactly what I've said.  :-) I
> think that being
> logged in or not logged in is really not important.

I personally see no difference between these cases.

> What's important
> is that none of us (even me) ban anyone for anything
> other than
> outright vandalism, without a long discussion first.
>  And after that
> discussion, it falls on me to make a final decision.

But then, WHAT is outright vandalism ??? deleting a
page : yes. Entirely removing content of a page : yes.
Posting some goat stuff : yes.
But does changing the content of an article vandalism
??? "how much change" is vandalisme ???

I was not online the day that happened, so it is hard
to exactly know what happen. I'm not sure what I saw
was vandalism or not. Was too messy. Others that were
there could say better.
But what I read were one deciding to change things
without explanation beforehands, other adults
reversing over and over and over what she was trying
to do, and threatening to ban, and then some adults
coming to a talking behavior and direct attack that I
personally view as not acceptable. I saw people
talking over the other's behavior much more than
talking over the issue.

Clearly there was *much* try of discussion with Mulot.
And it was not successful. But then, how much room is
left when 5 to 10 people are flooding 1 alone ? none
present trying to make the debate more neutral ?

In reality, what would have probably been the best
solution would have been to protect the page, just to
keep the discussion live. But this is not possible in
usemod.

> > - people can still delete pages of those they
> don't
> > agree with, instead of talking
>
> This is by using a destructive delete?  No one is
> supposed to use a
> destructive delete in an argument.  If they blank
> the page, well,
> that's rude, but the other person can restore it
> from the history.

yes, that is supposed not to be used. However, one
suggested that option, to copy the page. Let her play
with it. Then delete it. And recreate it with the old
stuff. We didnot do that.

> Episodes like this are unpleasant, but tend to end
> fairly quickly, and
> both sides are "equal" in the fight.

Both sides are not equal in the fight when one side is
1, and the other side is 10 people with sysop power.

> > - I forecast threats of forking again, when french
> > will know about that
>
> I don't think there will be a fork.

Good. I don't think either. But I am tired to hear
some saying "we want that, and if the english are
annoying us, we fork". That's unproductive. And that's
tiring. And that is not what I believe best.

> It seems that fr.wikipedia.com is still on the
> Usemod software.  So I
> could take away sysop privileges by changing the
> password.  I won't do
> that right now, but I do not think that people
> should be banned for the
> things you have mentioned.

Yes you could do that. But I think that would not be
fair in the sense none of the sysop took decisions
that were not carefully thought of and asked by the
other wikipedians. I feel *very* incomfortable with
the way consensus and neutrality are achieved on the
fr, but not with the way we used blocking options.

When I say I see no pb with you taking the final
decision, I definitly see a problem in you not being
able to fully understand the context. Unless you read
french of course.
And I can't figure how you would extensively discuss
the matter with the user being the problem if this one
is not able to manage *your* langage.

> But, I have only so far heard your side of the
> story.

very true. The middle side.
You may ask others.
Aoineko, Erwan, Shaihulud, Curry, Mokona, Youssefsan,
Athymik, Xavier might tell you more. If they wish.

But if you want a *fair* view of what happened, you
might try to find the various people who most probably
represented Mulot or the six. They were a pain, but
they had it right.

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Brion wrote:
>.....
>This can be switched by the simple
>addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
>SQL queries; is there any reason to
>retain the current behavior?

Yes, please do this. The current set-up doesn't make
sense. In longish, technical articles with large
tables (like the element articles) I will often link a
single term in the introduction/definition paragraph,
in the table and in the body text under an appropriate
heading (one link each). The reason I do this is
because each of these areas are often used by readers
to the exclusion of other areas; most people will only
read the introduction/definition paragraph and quickly
glance at the table to get a good idea about what the
subject is and why it is important (thus if an
important topic is included in the intro then it
should be linked). Others will dive right into one of
the sections, such as Isotopes, to get info on only
that part (therefore it is important to have a topic
linked that directly relates to that section). Yet
other people will mostly focus on the technical
information in the table (links there act as a key for
the table, for example; DM -> [[decay mode]], iso ->
[[isotope]], or even van der Waals radius -> [[van der
Waals radius]] - which may be linked in the body text
but not noticeable, etc.). So for an element like
strontium which has the notable isotope Sr-90, the
term "isotope" may be linked in the first paragraph,
in the isotope section of the body text and in the
isotope section of the table. Each link is important
for the article but I don't think it should be counted
three times.

>* On blocking vandals; there's still
>no interface for blocking by username,
>and you can't get the IP address of a
>logged-in user except by sifting through
>the server logs. Should we retain and
>display IP addresses/hostnames of logged-in
>editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow
>usernames to be blocked?

I really like Anthere's idea of blocking by IP
/without/ giving away the IP address in the interface.
If this isn't easy to implement, then the next best
thing would be to limit the exposure of IPs to admins.

>* The administrative page rename feature
>on UseMod could optionally find and change
>links to point to the new name in addition
>to just supplying a redirect. We still haven't
>implemented this. Desirable?

Since all logged-in users can now move pages I think
that even having this option would be more trouble
than it is worth (maybe this should be an option
available only to Admins for at least the time being).
But I was wrong on my prediction of calamity that
would result from allowing green newbies to have the
ability to move pages, so I might also be wrong here.
What would be /very/ useful is the ability to
automatically fix redirects so that they don't become
double redirects.

>* While the "Special:" namespace may be
>localized ("Spezial", "Speciel" etc), the
>names of special pages are hardwired in
>English (hence monstrosities like "Spezial:
>Recentchanges"). While these are mostly
>hidden in the interface by descriptive
>names, the links, URLs, and most annoyingly
>the tooltips on the links all show the raw
>internal English name of the function which
>implements the special page. A table of
>equivalencies could be set up, allowing more
>easily recognizable localized names to be used.
>Good idea? Bad idea?

The user interface if far more important for
localization purposes than the internal stuff and
URLs. I would keep it as-is since this doesn't seem
very important while it sounds like it might be a lot
of work. There is also the fact that you have people
like me who just can't keep their hands off of wikis
in languages they don't speak. I would be lost if I
didn't have some ability to find out what the most
important links were. I do this by placing my mouse
pointer over a link I suspect is the correct one and
then I look at what the URL says. But what I think is
secondary to what the heavy users of the non-English
Wikipedias think.

>* For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace
>is tentatively set up as "Wikip?dia" (with acute
>accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
>namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't
>work, which is a bug I intend to fix, but
>additionally one tester asked:
>...
>In short, allow aliases for namespaces.
>Good idea? Bad idea?

This seems like a good idea to me.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
> Yep. I don't think they are really copyrighted, there rather
> appears to be special laws about them (as above). And the problem
> I forgot to mention: if we include them in Wikipedia it means we
> are putting them under a new licence, the GFDL, which knows nothing
> about these restrictions (which still apply). Or do I
> misunderstand the concept of GFDL here? So it seems we have a
> conflict here.

The GFDL only licenses the rights under copyright.  The restrictions
you mention above are more akin to _trademark_ restrictions, about
which GFDL has nothing to say (nor should it).  Just because it's
OK to put a picture of a Coke can here--or even put such a picture
in the public domain--that doesn't mean you could download it and
print it on your own cans and sell them as Coke.  They still have
the right to the use of their logos and such for identification.


from_name: Paul Ebermann

body:
"Brion VIBBER" skribis:

> There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd
> like some comments from other developers and power users before I go
> trashing the code on my own...
>
> * "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
> of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
> Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
> might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
> listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
> that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
> This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
> SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

[en]
Is it possible to make this an option in the user
preferences? The default should be the new behaviour.

[eo]
Cxu eblas/senchavas fari tion opcio en la preferoj de
la uzanto? La defauxlto estu la nova konduto.

> * For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as
> "Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
> namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I
> intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
>
>    'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>    be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>    into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
>    equal in the namespace portion?'
>
> In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

[en] Good Idea. In the German Wikipedia, I here think about
 "Benutzer" versus "Nutzer" (which I often confuse).
 In Esperanto, the question "Uzulo/Uzanto" or "Priparolu/Diskutu"
 is solved.

[eo] Bona ideo. En la germana vikipedio, mi pensas pri
 "Benutzer/Nutzer" (kiujn mi ofte konfuzas).
 En Esperanto, la demando "Uzulo/Uzanto" aux "Priparolu/Diskutu"
 estas solvata.

Pauxlo


body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> >Everything published before 1911 is in the public domain. Everything
> >published between 1911 and 1978 gets 95 years of copyright
protection
> >after the date of publication (in 2006, this will undoubtedly be
> >increased). Everything published after 1978 gets 70 years after the
> >death of the last author, the same as in the European Union. Most
other
> >countries give a straight 50 years after author's death, which is
> >required by the Berne convention.
>
> By these rules, the EB1911 is still protected!

Yes, I don't know where I got that 1911 number from. Rereading
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#hlc
everything published before 1922 is in the public domain.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
> Should http://meta.wikipedia.org/ and http://meta.wikipedia.com/ not point to
> the same place (at the moment the former points to the standard wiki (or it
> does when dns looked-up from here...

The meta wiki needs to be upgraded and moved to the new server... Jimbo
or Jason, if you can run mysqldump on the meta database and drop it in
my home directory on the new server I should be able to run it through
the appropriate conversions and get it set up.

Oh, and a tarball of the uploads directory, too, those'll have to be
copied over.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Too many connections

body:
> That's bad news...  The max number of connections (default 100, I
> think) for MySQL can be adjusted (and maybe it has been already).  I
> would double (and triple) check to see if there are httpd processes
> that open more than one connection to the database.  It will become
> very important that the software only make use of as many database
> connections as it needs.
>
Is the software using persistent connections? If not is there a reason, or
can i go ahead and change it?

Lightning


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Too many connections

body:
I keep getting

*Warning*: Too many connections in
*/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php* on line *17*
Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1

at 14:17, German time, for both en (www) and de wikipedia.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CE / BCE (was: RFC on a few feature  requests)

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> Many Jewish scholars prefer CE/BCE. I'd argue strongly for using
> those terms (rather than AD/BC) if dates need to be identified in
> articles
> on subjects like Jewish history or the Talmud.
>
> Oh, and an idle question: "A.D." is Latin, so makes as much sense in
> a French context as an English one (in both cases, validated by custom
> and familiarity), but what's the French equivalent of "B.C."?

I'm one who would leave it at the option of the writer, although some
consistency within any individual article is desirable.  In practical
terms only the BC/BCE is used extensively.  A year without any indicator
is presumed to be AD/CE.

If a person wants to use AD it is important to remember that it belongs
in front of the year, and not after.  The phrase "anno domini" means "in
the year of our Lord", "anno" being in the ablative case.  Thus we are
in AD 2002 not 2002 AD.

The French for BC is "avant J?sus-Christ" which is abreviated "av.
J.-C." and AD is "apr?s J?sus-Christ" or "ap. J.-C.".  Frankly, I find
the French usages make for awkward typing.

Eclecticology


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

body:
On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>> Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php
>> on line 17

> Do we need more bandwidth? Or is at a DOS attack (denial of service)?

Probably just some constant that needs to be tuned upwards. (I don't have
login, though.)

-- Daniel


from_name: elian

body:
Hello,

Maybe someone can answer these questions which came up on the German
wikipedia recently.

Someone wanted to place the emblem (coat of arms or whatever the correct
english term is) of a city to the article about it and was unsure if this
is legal. In Germany there are laws about "Hoheitszeichen" like flags,
emblems, which restrict the right to use them.

How is the legal situation? I suppose wikipedia is in the sphere of
american law. If it's legal, do we have to redraw the emblems ourselves or
can we take the "official" images?

Next question: what's the exact date before which works are copyright
free in the U.S.? Does US-law apply for German books, scanned in Germany
and put on a server in the US or do we have to ensure that they are
copyright free in both countries? German law is "70 years after the death
of the author".

greetings,
elian
PS: I heard something about a lawsuit Eldrigde vs. Ashcroft at the
Supreme Court - will Mickey Mouse law finally be abolished?


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: RFC on a few feature requests

body:
Brion Vibber wrote;

>* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
>of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
>Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
>might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
>listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
>that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
>This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
>SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?
>
A change would be better - or at least have the number of distinct pages
mentioned when using the current method.

>* The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find
>and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying
>a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?
>
Yes and no. In many cases (with subpages, f.e.), it would probably make
things a lot cleaner. But there are cases when this is not desirable.
Maybe it could be an optional feature?

Jeronimo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CE / BCE (was: RFC on a few feature requests)

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>The year 1 in either
>case started in a manger in Bethlehem, like it or not (and, yes, I
>know, there was no year 0 and Jesus was born, if at all, in 6 AD, one
>of my favorite paradoxes).
>
Just think, if we could correct the calendar on the basis of a birth in
AD 6 we would now still be in AD1996.  The people who made money over
the Y2K panic could have a second chance.

>BTW, what *are* the other systems likely to be encountered?  Muslim
>and Jewish are all I can think of, but maybe the Baalists have some
>preference that hasn't come to my agnostic attention.
>
There are quite a lot of them,  For an interesting treatment see
http://www.geocities.com/Calendopaedia/    We're at about the year 2752
AUC and 210 in the French Revolutionary Calendar

Eclecticology


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
> Many Jewish scholars prefer CE/BCE. I'd argue
> strongly for using
> those terms (rather than AD/BC) if dates need to be
> identified in articles
> on subjects like Jewish history or the Talmud.
>
> Oh, and an idle question: "A.D." is Latin, so makes
> as much sense in
> a French context as an English one (in both cases,
> validated by custom
> and familiarity), but what's the French equivalent
> of "B.C."?

We don't use AD *at all* in everyday life. Except on
some catholic tombal stones maybe ? and probably
religious catholic people. This is far too much asking
to reference to our "domini=seigneur" when talking
about time. More than 10 % of our population is from
north african countries also. Muslim usually. Why
would they talk about their lord ?

What we use is Av. J.C. (BC) and Ap. J.C. (AD)
Av is for avant (before)
Ap is for apr?s (after)
J.C. stands for J?sus-Christ.

So these references are entirely factual, relying upon
an historical man, without taking care of his holiness
or not. The only *detail* is the real of JC birth is
not at the right place.

Though our culture is mostly relying on christian
concepts, we try to separate church matters very much
from other matters. That's the way the constitution
was made.

__________________________________________________
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http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
--- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > But then, WHAT is outright vandalism ???
>
> Anything that isn't a genuine attempt to improve the
> article.
> If it was well intended its not vandalism, if it
> wasn't, it is.

I believe it was well intended. Thanks

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of old revisions

body:
On Wed, 2002-10-09 at 16:28, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> How do I delete old revisions? We have some former copyright violations
> that have been (or are beeing) rewritten now. But the old revisions
> should be deleted, I think.
>
Let's not. See

http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Avoid+Copyright+Paranoia

Think about google for a second. It stores copies of pages. But Google
isn't worried about copyright infringement because it doesn't try to
present those copies in any infringing way.

It's not copyright infringement to store a copy. It's copyright
infringement to design your site such that the intentional use is to
display copies. Since the intentional use of Wikipedia is the
publication of the latest version of the entries, if the latest version
of the entry has improperly copied material, that's possible
infringement.

Copies buried in earlier revisions do not infringement make.

We can potentially make revisions with copyrighted material more
private, but we don't need to purge them from the system.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
> Should http://meta.wikipedia.org/ and http://meta.wikipedia.com/ not point to
> the same place (at the moment the former points to the standard wiki (or it
> does when dns looked-up from here...

Okay, meta is now moved onto the new server at http://meta.wikipedia.org

The .com address has been pointed at it as an alias, and should go
through the system sooner or later. There may be some rough spots in
conversion; please check and comment on things that look horribly wrong.

Since we're now using Meta as a multi-lingual playground/meeting-place,
I've changed the encoding to Unicode (UTF-8), so pages can be titled in
any language.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Anthere wrote:

>Will you come make frowny faces to half of the french
>board next time it is jumping on the head of a
>logged-in user trying to defend a CE/BCE issue that
>stands no chance in front of conventions ? :-))
>
>
>
What *is* our convention on BC / BCE and AD / CE?

On the en: wiki, the year, century, etc pages are called "BC", but I
think a majority of articles use "BCE".
I bumped into an article specifically about the naming system, which
states that "BCE" and "CE" are now preferred, in general.

perhaps we should take our own advice?


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk>
|Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 19:52:13 +0100 (BST)
|
|On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
|> >What *is* our convention on BC / BCE and AD / CE?
|> >
|> >On the en: wiki, the year, century, etc pages are called "BC", but I
|> >think a majority of articles use "BCE".
|> >I bumped into an article specifically about the naming system, which
|> >states that "BCE" and "CE" are now preferred, in general.
|> >
|> >perhaps we should take our own advice?
|> >
|> I think we should give preference to the BC/AD system. Before I found
|> Wikipedia, I had never heard of the other convention, and I think BC/AD
|> is still the most used and best known system - the best reason for
|> preferring it over the other.
|
|I agree that it's the best known system, however most modern works use
|BCE/CE and that's what I was taught at school.
|
|I tend to use whatever is appropriate for the article in question, for
|instance articles related to the Christian world use AD/BC, those
|related to Arab world I've used the AH calender with CE/BCE date in
|brackets, etc.
|
|Imran
|--

It seems that we should go light on this one.  Depending on your point
of view, the switch from BC/AD to BCE/CE is either mildly hypocritical
or mildly polite to others, but no more in either case.  Is it more
comforting to the French (to choose a relatively neutral example of a
nation that tried to impose a different counting system) to say
"Common Era" rather than "Year of our Lord"?  The year 1 in either
case started in a manger in Bethlehem, like it or not (and, yes, I
know, there was no year 0 and Jesus was born, if at all, in 6 AD, one
of my favorite paradoxes).

On the other hand, since the actual year entries are all BC/AD I
believe they should stay.  Then we should make BCE/CE optional
depending on the writer's taste and keep other counting systems
available depending on the need to give a year in another counting
system because of the subject matter or other dictates of the article.
I can add something to the Manual of Style if there's no objection.

BTW, what *are* the other systems likely to be encountered?  Muslim
and Jewish are all I can think of, but maybe the Baalists have some
preference that hasn't come to my agnostic attention.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Mark Christensen

body:
> BTW, what *are* the other systems likely to be encountered?
> Muslim and Jewish are all I can think of, but maybe the
> Baalists have some preference that hasn't come to my agnostic
attention.

Don't forget the eastern schemes!  The Chinese calendar is far more
widely used than the western alternatives to the BC/AD scheme, if only
because it had less cultural contact with the main force for
standardizing dates in Europe -- the Roman Catholic Church (which drove
standards because they wanted everybody celebrating the same feasts on
the same day).

Mark Christensen


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: CE / BCE (was: RFC on a few feature
  requests)

body:
Many Jewish scholars prefer CE/BCE. I'd argue strongly for using
those terms (rather than AD/BC) if dates need to be identified in articles
on subjects like Jewish history or the Talmud.

Oh, and an idle question: "A.D." is Latin, so makes as much sense in
a French context as an English one (in both cases, validated by custom
and familiarity), but what's the French equivalent of "B.C."?
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
Hello,

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> This week, Elian and Uriyan and I have been working harmoniously on the
> Arab-Israeli conflict -- the Wikipedia articles, that is. Apparently,
> Elian and Uriyan hit it off, and are e-mailing each other directly on
> some points.

;-) yes. And Ed did act as a good mediator. For further discussions I
  thought of just creating something like a
  mailinglist so all participants of the project can share in.

> Now, if we can find a way to include one or two other non-pro-Israeli
> contributors in this virtual oasis of delirious felicity...

This would be really helpful. Uriyan and I thought also of reorganizing
the articles a bit. To see, what is already there, have a look at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arab-Israeli_conflict_editing_project

For a lot of things people willing to help need no specific knowledge of
Middle East politics but rather a good feeling when language or words are
not neutral.

There's one other thing I thought about: while Uriyan, Ed and I discuss
and try to make articles NPOV, it's desperating if constantly  people
not logged in come by and _add_ more bias to the articles. We need a
possibility to deal with this problem. Any suggestions?

I have no intention to waste my time by discussing with fanatics
(of both sides) who don't care about what we are trying to do about each
single edit.

One (radical) solution would be to make articles on this conflict editable
only by members who are ready to join in a general discussion.

Something which goes against general policy of wikipedia but would IMHO
make sense, is to first achieve a consens by the editors about some
fundamental questions. What do I mean by this?
(dangerous) example holocaust: I think that someone who denies that the
holocaust has happened is not able to add non-biased statements to the
article on holocaust.

Same for the articles on the conflict: somebody who denies Israel's right
of existence is *hmm* at least highly improbable to not bring bias in
what he writes. Instead everything he writes would be, neutral formulated
or not, be directed against this fact. Someone who denies that there _
are_ Palestinians is neither probable to write a non-biased article about them.

The strategy I propose would be to work out under all people who like to
participate in the project a minimum set of general statements to which all
participants can and do agree as a basis for editing.

Last thing: as long as these articles are not de-biased could someone
please remove the link to the Arab-Israeli conflict on the main page?

greetings,
elian


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> I see no particular difference between a vandal who
> logs in and a
> vandal who doesn't.  Of course, a person who has
> bothered to log in is
> less likely to be a vandal than someone who doesn't,
> at least in our
> experience so far.  And we've never really had a
> _persistent_ vandal.

I'd say Fartboy was pretty persistent... but he only
liked front page news. :)

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Imran Ghory

body:
On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
> >What *is* our convention on BC / BCE and AD / CE?
> >
> >On the en: wiki, the year, century, etc pages are called "BC", but I
> >think a majority of articles use "BCE".
> >I bumped into an article specifically about the naming system, which
> >states that "BCE" and "CE" are now preferred, in general.
> >
> >perhaps we should take our own advice?
> >
> I think we should give preference to the BC/AD system. Before I found
> Wikipedia, I had never heard of the other convention, and I think BC/AD
> is still the most used and best known system - the best reason for
> preferring it over the other.

I agree that it's the best known system, however most modern works use
BCE/CE and that's what I was taught at school.

I tend to use whatever is appropriate for the article in question, for
instance articles related to the Christian world use AD/BC, those
related to Arab world I've used the AH calender with CE/BCE date in
brackets, etc.

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


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:

> But then, WHAT is outright vandalism ???

Anything that isn't a genuine attempt to improve the article.
If it was well intended its not vandalism, if it wasn't, it is.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> elian wrote:
> > Someone wanted to place the emblem (coat of arms or whatever the correct
> > english term is) of a city to the article about it and was unsure if this
> > is legal. In Germany there are laws about "Hoheitszeichen" like flags,
> > emblems, which restrict the right to use them.
>
> What kind of restrictions are there?  I'm just curious.

It's forbidden to use them in misleading context, f.e. in letters for the
purpose to make them appear as coming from government institutions, or to
put them on products or use them in ads.

> > How is the legal situation? I suppose wikipedia is in the sphere of
> > american law. If it's legal, do we have to redraw the emblems ourselves or
> > can we take the "official" images?
>
> It seems unlikely to me that the emblem of a city is copyright.
> Aren't most of them really old, at the least?

Yep. I don't think they are really copyrighted, there rather appears to be
special laws about them (as above). And the problem I forgot to mention:
if we include them in Wikipedia it means we are putting them under a new
licence, the GFDL, which knows nothing about these restrictions (which
still apply). Or do I misunderstand the concept of GFDL here? So it seems
we have a conflict here.

> It's possible.  But some legal experts think that the Supreme Court
> will rule -- correctly, perhaps -- that the Constitution gives the
> power to set the term of copyrights to the Congress, and that the
> recent extensions fall well within the realm of the Congressional
> public policy setting functions.
>
> http://eldred.cc/ is a good resource to learn more.
>
> Even if the Supreme Court rules one way, it is possible for Congress
> to change their minds.  This is somewhat unlikely because (a) the
> general public doesn't seem to care much and (b) the people who do
> care, care a lot (and contribute mightily to congressional campaigns).

Thanks for the explanations :-)

greetings,
elian
--
Zucker ist der Stoff, der dem Tee einen bitteren Geschmack
 verleiht - wenn man vergisst, ihn hineinzutun...


body:
>
>
>What *is* our convention on BC / BCE and AD / CE?
>
>On the en: wiki, the year, century, etc pages are called "BC", but I
>think a majority of articles use "BCE".
>I bumped into an article specifically about the naming system, which
>states that "BCE" and "CE" are now preferred, in general.
>
>perhaps we should take our own advice?
>
I think we should give preference to the BC/AD system. Before I found
Wikipedia, I had never heard of the other convention, and I think BC/AD
is still the most used and best known system - the best reason for
preferring it over the other. However, that should be for the article
titles, I think we should be free to use it in text if somebody wants
to, just like we don't prefer US English over British.

Jeronimo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta

body:
Should http://meta.wikipedia.org/ and http://meta.wikipedia.com/ not point to
the same place (at the moment the former points to the standard wiki (or it
does when dns looked-up from here...
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of old revisions

body:
How do I delete old revisions? We have some former copyright violations
that have been (or are beeing) rewritten now. But the old revisions
should be deleted, I think.

Kurt


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> >Everything published before 1911 is in the public domain. Everything
> >published between 1911 and 1978 gets 95 years of copyright protection
> >after the date of publication (in 2006, this will undoubtedly be
> >increased). Everything published after 1978 gets 70 years after the
> >death of the last author, the same as in the European Union. Most other
> >countries give a straight 50 years after author's death, which is
> >required by the Berne convention.

Toby Bartels reacted:

> By these rules, the EB1911 is still protected!

I think the magic date is not 1911 but 1923 - 50 years before the extension
from 50 years to 75 years in 1973.

Andre Engels


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org

body:
We haven't decided yet exactly what to make the new www.wikipedia.org
project front page look like, but it seems pretty well decided that we
do want to move the English wiki to en.wikipedia.org and set up some
sort of multilingual and/or browser-language-setting-sensitive intro page.

(See: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org )

If there's no objection, I'm going to switch the URL redirecting around
tomorrow, so that www.wikipedia.org/* points to en.wikipedia.org/*
rather than the other way 'round. A new intro page can later be set up
at convenience.

Warning: login cookies won't automatically follow over, so everyone
using the English wiki will have to log in afresh after the switch even
if you've got "remember my password" checked.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


in_reply_to:
<200210100037.g9A0br505942@chakotay.uni-koblenz.de> (message from
	Andre Engels on Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:37:53 +0200 (CEST))

body:
|From: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
|X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS-perl11-milter (http://amavis.org/)
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:37:53 +0200 (CEST)
|
|> (and, yes, I know, there was no year 0 and Jesus was born, if at all, in
|> 6 AD, one of my favorite paradoxes).
|
|6 AD? The dates I have heared are all earlier than that, usually between
|7 BC and 4 BC. And I don't see why you would doubt that Jesus was born -
|either you believe in the Bible which says he did, or you do not believe
|that a miracle is involved, and then you'll have to accept that since he
|has lived, he must have been born.
|
|Andre Engels
|[Wikipedia-l]
|To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|

6 AD *is* between 7 AD and 4 AD.

I believe he was born, but so far as I know the Bible is the main
source that mentions him and there's a lot of inconsistency there and
the Bible itself is not contemporary with his life.  I'm not an
expert, but I was raised in the Methodist church and I have a lot of
respect for Jesus and his ideas, but I'm no longer particularly
religious.

Tom P.


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CE / BCE

body:
Anthere wrote:

>What we use is Av. J.C. (BC) and Ap. J.C. (AD)
>Av is for avant (before)
>Ap is for apr?s (after)
>J.C. stands for J?sus-Christ.

>So these references are entirely factual, relying upon
>an historical man, without taking care of his holiness
>or not. The only *detail* is the real of JC birth is
>not at the right place.

Interpreted literally, Av. J.C. means before his birth,
while Ap. J.C. means after his death.
This is untenable -- how do we date his lifetime --
so we reconcile ourselves to picking a specific moment in his lifetime
and dating from *that*.

But nobody said that this moment should be his birth.
Even Dionysius Exiguus didn't intend it to be his birth,
but instead to be the first new year *after* his birth
(since he didn't intend to change the annual calendar).
Since JC was presumably born sometime BC and surely died AD,
then we are indeed counting from some moment in his childhood.

Of course, there is the question of whether he existed at all,
but we can give him the benefit of the doubt.

-- Toby


body:
> (and, yes, I know, there was no year 0 and Jesus was born, if at all, in
> 6 AD, one of my favorite paradoxes).

6 AD? The dates I have heared are all earlier than that, usually between
7 BC and 4 BC. And I don't see why you would doubt that Jesus was born -
either you believe in the Bible which says he did, or you do not believe
that a miracle is involved, and then you'll have to accept that since he
has lived, he must have been born.

Andre Engels


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
elian wrote:
> Next question: what's the exact date before which works are copyright
> free in the U.S.? Does US-law apply for German books, scanned in Germany
> and put on a server in the US or do we have to ensure that they are
> copyright free in both countries? German law is "70 years after the death
> of the author".
>
> PS: I heard something about a lawsuit Eldrigde vs. Ashcroft at the
> Supreme Court - will Mickey Mouse law finally be abolished?

That is Eldred v. Ashcroft, http://eldred.cc/

The current U.S. law makes everything published before 1922 free,
while the European law makes everything free when 70 years have passed
after the *year* of death of the last creator (Urheber).  If the
Ashcroft side wins the current case, I think the U.S. law will be the
same as the European laws, but I'm not sure about this.  To be safe,
you would be wise to follow both laws.  On the other hand, perhaps
there is no reason to be paranoid.  I'm not a lawyer.

Note that some works are free of copyright, such as law text and some
other official government documents.  Works that are published with no
named creator (e.g. a T-Ford owner's manual) is free when 70 years
have passed after the year of publication.  Works with many creators
(e.g. writer + translator) are owned by all creators together, so a
translation into modern German of the Niebelungenlied can be
copyrighted by the translator.  The old Icelandic book Heimskringla
has a free English translation made in 1844, which is available
online, but more recent English translations are copyrighted,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimskringla

Wikipedia is a very good place to keep track of the death year of
various authors and translators.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Ha. I honestly can't answer for at least 4 people
> tried. Me included. Let's say we collectively hit the
> button. For we didnot know how to do it and had to ask
> around. It was to have a break from a discussion that
> was leading nowhere. All the people there agreed at
> that time (that is, except Mulot of course). But if I
> decided to do it, it was for everybody to have a
> break. I am not entirely sure why other people did it.

O.k., well, in a situation like that I would not agree, unless the
banned person was doing something destructive.  Simply disagreeing
with the majority is not good cause for banning.

Another way to take a break from an argument is to just: take a break.

> It wasnot a good reason. I disagreed with that
> banning. Does it never happen on the en.wiki that a
> sysop ban somebody and another disagree with the
> decision ? What happens then ?

Typically, the 2nd sysop would unban the person, and as a courtesy the
1st sysop would go along with it.  Usually this is all accompanied
with consultations with others.  There's a very strong presumption
against banning people.

> Well, I dropped the
> matter, and unban all the ips after a week. That's
> all.

That sounds like a good idea.

> But then, WHAT is outright vandalism ??? deleting a
> page : yes. Entirely removing content of a page : yes.
> Posting some goat stuff : yes.
> But does changing the content of an article vandalism
> ??? "how much change" is vandalisme ???

I don't think there's any simple formula for this.  I'd say that if
there's any major dispute over whether it is vandalism, then it really
isn't.

In our experience on en.wikipedia, the line between vandalism and
simple "bad writing" has always so far been pretty easy to draw.

If someone takes a good article, and edits it so it isn't as good,
that's not usually vandalism.  The right thing to do is to revert to
the old version, while editing it and attempting to accomodate any
legitimate points that the newcomer was trying to make.

> Clearly there was *much* try of discussion with Mulot.
> And it was not successful. But then, how much room is
> left when 5 to 10 people are flooding 1 alone ? none
> present trying to make the debate more neutral ?
>
> In reality, what would have probably been the best
> solution would have been to protect the page, just to
> keep the discussion live. But this is not possible in
> usemod.

Right.  I think that many social issues are caused by limitations of
the usemod software.  For example, "destructive delete" has always
been problematic.

> Both sides are not equal in the fight when one side is
> 1, and the other side is 10 people with sysop power.

That's true enough, except that as a matter of honor, I think that
sysops should not use their sysop power "in a fight".

There are three basic reasons that we have sysops.  First,
historically there have been some useful features that are
"destructive" -- deleting.  Second, there are sometimes true vandals,
and it's nice for people to be able to ban them right away instead of
waiting for me to do something about it.  And finally, there are some
commands (direct SQL queries) that might be really slow and should
therefore be used only rarely.

> Good. I don't think either. But I am tired to hear
> some saying "we want that, and if the english are
> annoying us, we fork". That's unproductive. And that's
> tiring. And that is not what I believe best.

Yeah, me too.

I fear that current tensions in the world (United States, 9/11, Iraq,
Europe, etc.) may lead to tensions in our little world.  This is not
necessary and it is something we should all be careful about.  We have
a peaceful humanitarian mission here that is bigger than the current
world political scene.

> Yes you could do that. But I think that would not be
> fair in the sense none of the sysop took decisions
> that were not carefully thought of and asked by the
> other wikipedians. I feel *very* incomfortable with
> the way consensus and neutrality are achieved on the
> fr, but not with the way we used blocking options.

O.k., well, I'm willing to defer to your judgment, then.  I understand
that these issues are complex and messy.

> When I say I see no pb with you taking the final
> decision, I definitly see a problem in you not being
> able to fully understand the context. Unless you read
> french of course.

Sadly, I do not.  So it is important for me to listen to you and
trust your reports.

> And I can't figure how you would extensively discuss
> the matter with the user being the problem if this one
> is not able to manage *your* langage.

That's right.  I can't do that.  So I have to trust the judgment of
those who speak French, to a very large degree.

--Jimbo


body:
elian wrote:
> > What kind of restrictions are there?  I'm just curious.
>
> It's forbidden to use them in misleading context, f.e. in letters for the
> purpose to make them appear as coming from government institutions, or to
> put them on products or use them in ads.

O.k., it sounds like we are safe there.

> Yep. I don't think they are really copyrighted, there rather appears to be
> special laws about them (as above). And the problem I forgot to mention:
> if we include them in Wikipedia it means we are putting them under a new
> licence, the GFDL, which knows nothing about these restrictions (which
> still apply). Or do I misunderstand the concept of GFDL here? So it seems
> we have a conflict here.

Well, the GFDL extends only so far as copyright and license.  Any
_other_ legal issues are separate and unaffected by GFDL.

For example, some kinds of political writings that are legal in the
United States are not legal in Canada.  Someone might write a
political essay and place it under GFDL.  The copyright issues are
taken care of by that, and it is of no consequence that these ideas
might be banned in Canada.

Another example, more specific to this case.  In the United States it
would be legal for someone to write a pro-Nazi essay and publish it
under the GFDL.  This essay would, if I understand things correctly,
be illegal in Germany.  But that's a separate issue from the copyright
issue.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>For example, some kinds of political writings that are legal in the
>United States are not legal in Canada.
>
What's this about?


in_reply_to: <3DA59999.5070408@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 08:15:37AM -0700

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >For example, some kinds of political writings that are legal in the
> >United States are not legal in Canada.

> What's this about?

Since this isn't really relevant to wikipedia, I'd like to move
further discussion offlist.  A recent case that came to my attention
is here:

http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={2934249E-2301-4687-85E8-2C7203C9B188}

But this sort of thing is common in Canada.

--Jimbo


body:
 Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
>>Ha. I honestly can't answer for at least 4 people
>>tried. Me included. Let's say we collectively hit the
>>button. For we didnot know how to do it and had to ask
>>around. It was to have a break from a discussion that
>>was leading nowhere. All the people there agreed at
>>that time (that is, except Mulot of course). But if I
>>decided to do it, it was for everybody to have a
>>break. I am not entirely sure why other people did it.

>O.k., well, in a situation like that I would not agree, unless the
>banned person was doing something destructive. Simply disagreeing
>with the majority is not good cause for banning.

OK. My belief is she was not destroying. But the others believed she was destroying. Along that belief, their action was justifiable. Mine was probably not.

>Another way to take a break from an argument is to just: take a break.

True. That's why I sometimes move my "home" to the en.wiki. I recommend moving to another wiki to any person needing a break. Especially one in which they don't feel very confortable with (another langage :-)). That's a good way to learn patience and humility.

>>t wasnot a good reason. I disagreed with that
>>anning. Does it never happen on the en.wiki that a
>>sysop ban somebody and another disagree with the
>>decision ? What happens then ?

>Typically, the 2nd sysop would unban the person, and as a courtesy the
>1st sysop would go along with it. Usually this is all accompanied
>with consultations with others. There's a very strong presumption
>against banning people.

The others played dead. And the 1st stick to his conviction. But I'll remember that

>There are basic reasons that we have sysops. First,
>historically there have been some useful features that are
>"destructive" -- deleting. Second, there are sometimes true vandals,
>and it's nice for people to be able to ban them right away instead of
>waiting for me to do something about it. And finally, there are some
>commands (direct SQL queries) that might be really slow and should
>therefore be used only rarely.

I entirely trust Aoineko and Shaihulud for not willingly doing any permanent damage on articles or software.

>I fear that current tensions in the world (United States, 9/11, Iraq,
>Europe, etc.) may lead to tensions in our little world. This is not
>necessary and it is something we should all be careful about. We have
>a peaceful humanitarian mission here that is bigger than the current
>world political scene.

I agree. Otherwise I would not spend time on this list.

As a matter of interest, one of the recurrent idea used by Mulot/6 was we didnot know how to discuss and accept different views as people did on the en.wiki, and that for that very reason the fr.wiki would never ever reach the en.quality. I mean, differences between us was used to infuriate people.

>>And I can't figure how you would extensively discuss
>>the matter with the user being the problem if this one
>>is not able to manage *your* langage.

>that's right. I can't do that. So I have to trust the judgment of
>those who speak French, to a very large degree.

Believe me, I am sorry you can't explain that directly to fr people, I'd be happy if they said what they thought here. I am also sorry most don't even read some of the discussions here. It would help a lot.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Maintenance page and web spiders

body:
The new maintenance page is great! But the links on it should be
disabled for non logged-in users so that web spiders don't exercise the
high-overhead functions on the maintenance page, bogging down the server.

For anoymous IPs they should probably just return a message like "You
must be logged in to use this function: please click here to create an
account."

Speculation: Could this be the reason for the recent outage?

Neil


body:
> |From: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
> |X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS-perl11-milter (http://amavis.org/)
> |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
> |Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> |Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:37:53 +0200 (CEST)
> |
> |> (and, yes, I know, there was no year 0 and Jesus was born, if at all, in
> |> 6 AD, one of my favorite paradoxes).
> |
> |6 AD? The dates I have heared are all earlier than that, usually between
> |7 BC and 4 BC. And I don't see why you would doubt that Jesus was born -
> |either you believe in the Bible which says he did, or you do not believe
> |that a miracle is involved, and then you'll have to accept that since he
> |has lived, he must have been born.
>
> 6 AD *is* between 7 AD and 4 AD.

Yes, but not between 7 _BC_ and 4 _BC_.

Andre Engels


from_name: Khendon

body:
On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 10:28:00AM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
> The new maintenance page is great! But the links on it should be
> disabled for non logged-in users so that web spiders don't exercise the
> high-overhead functions on the maintenance page, bogging down the server.

This might be better handled with robots.txt...

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


in_reply_to: <B9CB3875.4284%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 02:00:21PM -0400

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> I object strenuously. This is not a slam-dunk good idea at all. Please hold
> off at least a good while before doing this.

O.k., let's wait.

What are the objections?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Common userspace.

in_reply_to: <B9CB39EF.4285%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 02:06:39PM -0400

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Now that the various wikis are being put together on *.wikipedia.org, the
> user accounts need to be consolidated. There should not be walls between
> editing the various translations of the wikipediae.

I was wondering about that myself.  I wonder if there's much of a
problem with overlap already.

It'd be best, if we're going to do this, to do it sooner rather than
later.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Common userspace.

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Now that the various wikis are being put together on *.wikipedia.org, the
> user accounts need to be consolidated. There should not be walls between
> editing the various translations of the wikipediae.

May be worth considering. The system is very much not set up for that
presently; user data is stored in a table per-database, includes
per-wiki options, and the login cookies are limited to an individual
hostname, so don't cross languages.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Common userspace.


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>>I object strenuously. This is not a slam-dunk good idea at all. Please hold
>>off at least a good while before doing this.
>
>
> O.k., let's wait.
>
> What are the objections?

I ain't heard nobody but Cunc object so far, and he doesn't say why. I
await the reasons with bated breath, if he's got something better than
"the English Wikipedia needs a large pool of people working on it to
achieve neutrality and perspective, but I apparently don't give a rat's
ass about the contents of Wikipedia in other languages" to show for it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> My objection is not to putting English Wikipedia an en.wikipedia.org but
 > to REDIRECTING www.wikipedia.org to en.wikipedia.org -- it would
perpetuate
 > the problem it claims to be solving.

Ed, that's exactly what we do now, only you continue to see the WWW in
the URL instead of the EN. Links to www.wikipedia.(com|org)/wiki/blabla
_need_ to redirect to the English wiki because we've got thousands of
such links in search engines, bookmarks, and links from other sites.

As far as the main page...

> Let's first ask all the various language groups who are actively building
 > The Wikipedia how they would prefer for their readers to find them.
And ask
 > what www.wikipedia.org should be, to serve each language group.

Isn't that what we're doing at:
   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Khendon wrote:

>On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 10:28:00AM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>>The new maintenance page is great! But the links on it should be
>>disabled for non logged-in users so that web spiders don't exercise the
>>high-overhead functions on the maintenance page, bogging down the server.
>>
>>
>
>This might be better handled with robots.txt...
>
>
>
I'd do both. Robots.txt only keeps out well-behaved robots, but it's the
badly-behaved robots that cause most real trouble. And if they are badly
behaved enough to hammer links, they are probably also badly behaved
enough to ignore robots.txt.

Neil


from_name: Thesmelialichu at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CIA World Factbook

body:
Hi all, I'm a bit new so please be nice, I'm sorry if I inadvertently do
something wrong. I would normally lurk for a while, but I'd really like to
discuss this. Anyway, now that's over with.

Shouldn't facts and statistics taken from the CIA World Factbook be marked as
such with the year? Then the reader (or an editor) will know where then
information came from (which is important in my opinion when dealing with
facts) and if it is out of date or not. This is also useful for an editor. I
know it says so on the main country page, but not on the actual pages such as
economy of peru, and a user may come across these without going through the
main page. I realise we don't have to say where it came from as the CIA World
Factbook is public domain, I just think it would make the information that
bit more useful. Any opinions?

Alex Bradbury


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
>> If there's no objection, I'm going to switch the URL redirecting
>> around tomorrow, so that www.wikipedia.org/* points to
>> en.wikipedia.org/* rather than the other way 'round.  A new
>> intro page can later be set up at convenience.

> I object strenuously. This is not a slam-dunk good idea at all.
> Please hold off at least a good while before doing this.

I really hate saying this, but, um, I'm with Cunc here.
I also think it's a really bad idea to have www.wikipedia.org
be anything but the most direct route to the front page of
the English Wikipedia. Like it or not, that's where the
action is.  As long as the front page continues to have links
to the foreign wikis, I see no need to waste the time of 90%
of our users with a pointless "intro" page.


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> The primary objection is that this hasn't really been discussed.

It's been nothing _but_ discussed for months.

 > That said:
>
> 1) There isn't a clear picture of what overall policy this fits in with;

Naming standards: every encyclopedia wiki in the project is at
{languagecode}.wikipedia.(com|org) except the English one.

> 2) Whether whatever that overall policy is well-thought out and correct;

Well, it sounds rather reasonable to me.

> 3) What the consequences of the change from a usability perspective have not
> been delineated;

URLs are deliberately being preserved. User interface isn't any
different. One-time cookie change requires users to push the "login" button.

Front page not yet changed; new front page may make some people want to
change their bookmarks if they wanted the English encyclopedic front
page specifically.

> 4) "A new intro page can later be set up at convenience" is probably not how
> we want to do this;

Oh?

> 5) There are real, concrete benefits to having a default and preferred
> interface/language;

Which are?

> In other words, the pros and cons of such an act should be explicitly and
> clearly listed.  There are many reasons that www.google.com, www.dmoz.org,
> etc. (which all have multilanguage settings) have English as the default,
> and it's not just that the servers are US-based).
>
> Once that's done, we can weigh priorities.
>
> I personally think a better focus right now for the developers is to work on
> maximum integration of the different language wikis. If the backend is
> better integrated, frontend issues become easier to deal with.

If I'd just spent the 30 seconds to make the change without telling you,
I'd have a lot more time to focus on such things. ;)

> A big question that we are in the process of resolving now is whether we
> want to think of Wikipedia as a single project that has multiple
> translations, or as a bunch of largely independent projects specific to
> particular nations and language sets. I think the first conception is
> healthier and more productive over the long term. We really should think
> about this issue before we take broad actions that touch upon it.

"Translations" is an odd choice of words.

The *user interface of the program* is 'translated' from a central
source, but the encyclopedia articles aren't. Ideally they should all
contain the same (maximal quality, maximal amount of) information by
cross-pollination: new material added in any one language can be taken
over to the others. That's not a one-way street, and doesn't have to be
achieved by "translation".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CIA World Factbook

body:
Alex Bradbury wrote:
> Shouldn't facts and statistics taken from the CIA World Factbook
> be marked as such with the year?

Yes, excellent idea! When we copy stuff from an alamanac or fact book, let's always record the YEAR of the data. Populations get larger or smaller, leadership composition changes. We need to know WHEN this country had 12 million people suffering under this notorious dictator or that country had 22.3 million people enjoying the benevolence of that one.

Ed Poor


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 10/10/02 3:26 AM, "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>We haven't decided yet exactly what to make the new www.wikipedia.org
>>project front page look like, but it seems pretty well decided that we
>>do want to move the English wiki to en.wikipedia.org and set up some
>>sort of multilingual and/or browser-language-setting-sensitive intro page.
>>
>>(See: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org )
>>
>>If there's no objection, I'm going to switch the URL redirecting around
>>tomorrow, so that www.wikipedia.org/* points to en.wikipedia.org/*
>>rather than the other way 'round. A new intro page can later be set up
>>at convenience.
>
> I object strenuously. This is not a slam-dunk good idea at all. Please hold
> off at least a good while before doing this.

I notice Cunc didn't maintain the cross-most to intlwiki-L.

For those of you who may not be subscribed to wikipedia-l as well, check
the thread here:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/thread.html#5900

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources...

body:
[sorry that this is unthreaded. I'm looking at recent messages in the
archive and I'm not sure how you're meant to reply to them!]

When I use a website as a source of information, I almost always include
it under 'Further Reading', because I am not including ALL the
information on the page and someone might want to go there and see the
pictures, etc... if I don't list any pages, then the contents of that
article were probably dredged up from my memory. :)

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

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