body:
Fuzzyhead, I encourage you to re-read the forwarded message.

Perhaps you see it in terms of "Chinese Wikipedia" and "Chinese
language issues", however the reality is very different.

Somebody who was born with and has always lived with Mandarin is just
as much an interested or a disinterested party as Jimbo, David Gerard,
Angela, or Ray Santoinge.

This is about Cantonese and Wu not about, as you say, "Chinese".

The few Northeasterners who can understand that act very differently
in regards to this entire thing, contributing as outsiders of a group
(since they don't know Cantonese) rather than the arrogant way most
Northeasterns have acted here.

Now, I also "intentionally" withheld the information about the vote
from Italian Wikipedians. Is that vote stacking?

The "Chinese Wikipedia", as you call it, is in its current state a
BeiFangBaiHuaWen Wikipedia. The creation of a Cantonese Wikipedia or a
Wu Wikipedia is as relevant or as irrelevant to a BHW Wikipedia as to
an Italian or a German or an Arabic Wikipedia.

Now, you may contest this all I want, but the facts are simple:

1) I posted information about the vote to wikipedia-l, to inform
EVERYONE. people who are not subscribed should subscribe if they want
to receive such information, as that's the purpose of this list;
2) For their benefit, I notified ALL people whose babel templates
indicated they were native speakers of Cantonese. This included 6
people who voted AGAINST it, as well as those who voted for it. When
you stack votes, the votes you stack are generally all in your favour.
3) I sat back and waited. You being you, you didn't vote. Too bad. But
then, the vote is open for an infinite amount of time, so. And I'm
still sitting back and waiting -- anyone can vote. But I don't think
it's fair that a special tipoff goes to zhwiki community, so I think
I'm going to do some tipping off of my own if you don't mind (or even
if you do), as so far the poll seems to indicate that non-Chinese are
much more in favour of a separate Cantonese WP.

Mark

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
Date: 09-Sep-2005 20:07
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org

Jimbo, my whole point in informing an international mailinglist, and
ALL people who listed themselves as Cantonese speakers (including a
few who ended up voting against a Cantonese Wikipedia), was that it
seemed to me unfair to give Mandarin-only users an extra tip-off when
no other community got one.

And I have been quite right so far -- since Angela posted to zhwiki-l,
there have been a handful of new votes, including:

Ffootballchu, "support", from Hong Kong (a Cantonese-speaking area)

Zy26, "oppose", from "Northeast China" [zhongguo dongbei] (a
Mandarin-speaking area)
BenBenI, "oppose", from Chengdu (a Mandarin-speaking city)
Alexcn, "oppose", from Nanjing (a Mandarin-speaking city)

Now can you see why I am worried about fairness? I don't think it's
fair to let one Wikipedia vote on the creation of another Wikipedia,
rather I think it should be completely international OR up to the
people who speak the language.

Now, with this, it has been focused specifically towards zhwiki
community comment, which is giving the impression that the
Mandarin-speaking majority may have the final say on whether or not
the minority gets a separate Wikipedia. Now, from some points of view,
this may be fair (majority rules), but perhaps an analogy is in order:

If Kosovo wants to be internationally recognised as completely
independent from Serbia, who should vote on it? All of Serbia, or just
Kosovars? Certainly, if it is up to ALL of Serbia, they will remain
part of Serbia, while if it is up to the Kosovars only, they may very
well not.

It's similar with East Timor. Should all Indonesians have been allowed
to vote?? I don't think so. And they weren't -- only East Timorese
people were allowed to vote, and the overwhelming majority voted for
independence.

If Indonesians in general were allowed to vote, what do you think the
outcome would've been?

Now, currently this is largely unnessecary because "support" has more
votes by a large margin, but it's quite possible that more people from
zhwiki will come and vote. Some of them support, some of them against.

Now obviously not everybody falls within such a pattern: Hello World,
Sl, Jeromy~Yuyu, all Cantonese-speaking people, voted "against", and
Milcheflasch, a Mandarin speaker, voted "support".

But so far, I have been right: The majority of people for whom
Mandarin is the native language have voted "oppose", while the
majority of people for whom Cantonese, Wu, or Minnan is the native
variety have voted "support". In fact, even if you subtract Wu and
Minnan, the majority of Cantonese native speakers voted "support".

Now, this whole case has caused much frustration to me and all others
involved for a few reasons.

1) Quite a few users supporting on wikipedia-l, including zhwiki
members in good standing such as Milchflasch and Alex Kwan;

2) Quite a few people, including native speakers and quotes from
sources, confirming that Cantonese is indeed a very different and
largely mutually unintelligible written language;

3) Examples have been given;

4) Opposition almost entirely from non-Cantonese-speakers;

5) Test-Wikipedia articles have demonstrated just how different
Yueyubaihuawen (contemporary written Cantonese) and Baihuawen (based
on Mandarin) are, even on the most basic of levels (different words
for "is", "of", quite a few other very basic words, largely different
syntaxes, different vocabulary, etc.);

6) Jimbo said, and I quote: "I am told repeatedly by many people that
while Mandarian and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible in the
spoken form, in written form they are the same.  This is pretty
compelling for me." Who were these 'many people', we wondered (it was
discussed via PM on IRC, via private e-mails, and via instant
messaging)? What about all of the people who had come out of the
woodwork to say on Wikipedia-l that they AREN'T the same in written
form? Don't they count for anything?? For people working for a
separate Cantonese and eventually Wu and Hakka Wikipedias, this was
very confusing, discouraging, upsetting, and irritating all at the
same time.

7) Even non-Chinese Wikipedians have come out in support of a
Cantonese Wikipedia (and potentially others): Harvey Fiji, Walter van
Kalken, The Epopt, Arbeo, Nat Krause, Satyadasa, Katimawan, Chris
Sundita, Chamadrae, David Gerard, Wouter Steenbeek, Milos^ Rancic,
E2m, Oscar. The only non-Chinese who voted in opposition so far is
Elian. (if I've made a mistake and revealed someone's real name which
they prefer to keep secret, I apologise, but some are mailinglist
posters or people I know elsewhere).

Before the vote, everyone who wanted a Cantonese Wikipedia was
thinking, "what's the holdup?? how is it that andrew lih and
shengjiong ran over us with a steamroller in the court of Jimbopinion,
but we had the majority and we cited sources to support our argument
when they didn't???". That was the motivation for the vote, to have
something that screamed for attention by giving a concrete message of
how many people support it, that would be difficult to ignore.

Cheers
Mark

On 09/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > If I hold a vote on the creation of a Wikipedia in Venetian, do I have
> > to inform wikiit-l? No. Would it be nessecary? Probably not.
>
> Yes, that would be wise.  I can't think of any reason why *not* to
> inform them.
>
> > In fact, it has. Just because I didn't heed YOUR suggestions doesn't
> > mean I suck.
>
> No, you don't suck.  He didn't say that you suck, either.  Chill, man,
> it's WikiLove, ya know...
>
> > 4) The lack of announcement was partially intentional. I felt that it
> > was most fair to send a message to wikipedia-l, and international
> > mailing list, and then to individual Cantonese-speaking users.
>
> To me this sounds pretty much an unfair way to go about it.
>
> >>One reason the final (sixth) GNAA VfD was accepted after several
> >>controversial rounds of voting was because of how professionally the
> >>vote was administered. We should learn from that.
> >
> >
> > And by "we", you mean "Node", right?
>
> I think he means all of us.  This is a tough call, and therefore in
> order to generate widespread support throughout the entire community, a
> very professionally done vote is critical.
>
> This is why I'm opposed to rampant voting on everything.  The only valid
> purpose for a vote in Wikipedia is actually as a *poll* which seeks to
> build community consensus.  Deliberately excluding some interested
> parties is a great way to "win" a vote, but it is not a great way to get
> buy-in from the entire community.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG enabled

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:48:48AM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> I've enabled SVG uploads and rendering.
>>>
>> It might be useful to mention here that Firefox 1.5beta1 now has SVG
>> support compiled in and enabled by default. The implementation is still
>> slightly buggy, but works well enough for content developers to use for
>> testing, to try to shake out as many bugs as possible before 1.5 proper
>> is released.
>>
> Since SVG allows the embedding of javascript, we should not deliver SVG's
> that were uploaded to our users, unless someone provides a reliable
> javascript remover.

A checker for JavaScript was included in 1.5 branch a couple months
back. Of course another look over the code wouldn't hurt!

(We have for some time taken the precaution of serving uploads from a
separate subdomain, which should in most cases prevent attacks even if
they make it past upload filters; but it may not be complete protection,
particular for the sites on *.wikimedia.org domains where there might be
a session fixation attack.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
Badly organized votes don't determine consensus; they destroy it.

A vote will force a choice between two or more specific options, which
may even be poorly defined.  A true consensus may lie somewhere outside
of those specific options.

Ec

Phroziac wrote:

>Actually, Jimmy, aren't they to determine consensus, not build it?
>
>
>>This is why I'm opposed to rampant voting on everything.  The only valid
>>purpose for a vote in Wikipedia is actually as a *poll* which seeks to
>>build community consensus.  Deliberately excluding some interested
>>parties is a great way to "win" a vote, but it is not a great way to get
>>buy-in from the entire community.
>>
>>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for being bold

body:
Uh, he got blocked for an hour until the craptastic autoblocker did it's thing.

On 9/10/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> SPUI wrote:
> > Sam Korn wrote:
> >
> >> The fact that that was done following discussion and for good reasons.
> >>  It was aimed at being complete.  Your move seemed to be no more than
> >> trolling.  You should have realised that that kind of move was bound
> >> to create dissent and distaste.  If you want to move the pages back, I
> >> suggest discussing it first.
> >
> >
> > The same could be said about the move to AFD - it was bound to create
> > "dissent and distaste". I was merely being bold and using the "use
> > common names" policy.
>
> The name "Votes for deletion" violated a major part of [[WP:NOT]]:
> "Wikipedia is not a democracy".
>
> If articles are to be deleted, and they are not copyvios or CSDs, the
> community will try and come to a consensus.
>
> (Personally, I think blocking SPUI for this (for 24 hours) was a bit
> harsh. I'd have reverted everything, wait until 3RR was broken, and then
> add the whole incident to [[WP:LAME]]...)
>
> --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Bryan Derksen (bryan.derksen at shaw.ca) [050909 02:05]:

> Just the other day I stumbled across an article on VfD for which the
> entire text of the justification given for its nomination was:
> "NN, D"
> I'm hardly a newbie, but even for me it took a few minutes to figure out
> that "NN" meant non-notable. I checked the edit history of the editor
> who'd made the nomination and found about a dozen identical VfDs for
> other articles made at the same time. I voted "keep" on every last one
> of them because in my opinion the _nominations themselves_ were not
> adequate.

Don't you know it's a terrible personal attack to question the motives of a
deletion nomination? And calling a bogus nomination "bogus" just because it
has no connection whatsoever with the actual deletion policy is apparently
grievously insulting too.

> I didn't even bother reading the actual articles and for all I
> know based on the justification given the nominator hadn't read them
> either - he apparently didn't even bother to take the time to type out
> whole words. Got accused of violating WP:POINT, of course, but I
> completely stand by my actions.

Tony Sidaway gets accused of that as well for closing nominations per the
letter of the policy rather than the conventions of some VFD regulars.

> How about a policy whereby VfDs that don't adequately explain why the
> nominator made it can be summarily deleted? If someone proposes deleting
> an article they should at least show that they put effort into
> determining whether deletion was warranted.

The VFD regulars have bitterly resisted each and any attempts in this
direction, because then they might have to think or something before
nominating.

- d.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...

body:
Angela (beesley at gmail.com) [050908 06:06]:

> I've been thinking this over for a few days, and I believe the option
> of reunifying meta and the Foundation wiki makes most sense. The
> separation means little to external people and only causes extra work
> for internal people. If we need pages to be uneditable, we can just
> protect them rather than hiding them on a less visited, less wiki,
> site.

I predict the first thing to happen will be a pile of spurious deletion
nominations.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...


subject:
Using 'publish this page' to develop WMF website content on Meta
	(was	Re: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...)

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> This feature could also be used for WikiJunior ; development of
>> WikiJunior
>> books would still happen on Wikibooks, but we could also have a
>> static version
>> of published WikiJunior books at wikijunior.org. Parents and teachers
>> would
>> feel much more comfortable sending kids to a static, yet often
>> updated, website
>> instead of wiki that may have been vandalized a few seconds before
>> the kids get
>> there.
>
> I would imagine that this would also be a useful feature for
> Wikiversity (publishing a sylibus from a "teacher"), Wikibooks (making
> a 1.0 "version" of the book as a static version), and even Wikipedia
> (for "vetted" articles that have been through the wringer, have
> citations, and are of a more professional caliber that the typical
> Wikipedia article).  In short, a very useful feature for just about
> any current project.
>
> I'm not sure if this should become a new user group permission or
> simply something new for admins to play with.  Certainly if there was
> anything that was brought up by community concensus that should be
> "published", it could be then done technically by an admin.  The
> question would then become if the existing admins on most projects are
> overwhelmed with other issues and a new group of users with slightly
> more privileges than a regular registered user should get this power
> or if this should simply be with a community member that has the trust
> to become an admin anyway. In some ways it would be nice to add
> another "level" to the heirarchy of super-user privileges, so the jump
> from registered user to admin isn't quite as drastic, or could be done
> in a couple of steps rather than one.
>
> The answer to this question would discuss both the technical issues
> having to impliment this sort of feature and the social issues
> creating a new class of users.  Both I think are rather trivial, but
> I'm not totally sure.

As much as I may be attracted by the idea  of a Wikiversity, the above
exchange only succeeds in telling me that it is still very, very far away.

It must start with a VISION, and that is still lacking./

A Wikiversity will not be the result of writing a lot of tired textbooks
that just happen to be in electronic form.  It will not result from
tinkering with models of administrative structure.  Wikijunior, viewed
as a Wikiversity for the very young, will fare no better.  The
discussion only shows a determination to reinvent the square wheel of
existing structures.  Nevertheless, it may create a Nuversity, and if we
are lucky it, like Nupedia, may point in the right direction..

If one of our overarching goals is to make the richness of the world's
knowledge available in the poorest corners of the world, should we not
also do this in contexts that will be meaningful to those people?
Remember that when the OECD trots out its evaluations of various
educational systems these places don't show up on the radar.

There is no discussion about how people learn.  There is no mention of
the purpose and value of education.  There is no recourse to the
philosophers of education.  There are only proposals for how what we
don't have will be administered.

Ec


subject: legal paranoia (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list)

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>For example, as part of my research, I have several "article lists"
>from Encarta, Britannica and some other CD-ROM encyclopedias, but I've
>hesitated to make them public or contribute them to WP, for exactly
>this reason. Talking to a few lawyer folks on my campus has
>effectively convinced me I would not have a strong case for fair
>use/fair dealing. I'm willing to (and would like to be) proved wrong.
>
>
But the only way to prove you wrong would involve having the whole
matter end up in court.

Ec


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Structure of Wikiversity (was Re: Using 'publish
	this page' )

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>> I would imagine that this would also be a useful feature for
>> Wikiversity (publishing a sylibus from a "teacher"),
>
>
> As much as I may be attracted by the idea  of a Wikiversity, the above
> exchange only succeeds in telling me that it is still very, very far
> away.
>
> It must start with a VISION, and that is still lacking./

There are several problems right now with Wikiversity, and I would have
to agree that leadership is one of them.  There are, however, several
people that seem to be very comitted to the idea, and really want to
push it forward, regardless.  I, for one, don't think we need to wait
for more software tools.  They may be useful and have other applications
in other Wikimedia projects as well, but they are not strictly necessary
in order to get the project started.  What it needs is somebody that is
willing to say "damn the torpedos, we are going to get this accomplished!"

Preferably, I would like to see somebody with a background in
Instructional Technology or similar educational technology background to
get something like this put together.  I have been trying to work with
the interested parties that are active on Wikibooks to get their input
on the idea, and to scale back the idea, at least for now.  I've been
pushing strongly for now to get a sort of community adult education
center-type project going for now... in part because there is no way we
can even begin accrediation processes going the usual wiki-way.  There
have been other on-line adult education communities that have come
together largely through volunteers, and I think there is some merit
behind this general proposal.

On my own part, I would prefer to partner with some of these other
on-line educational communities rather than try to try and go it alone
like some of the active people contributing to Wikiversity seem to be
pushing for right now.  It also seems like from some viewpoints that
some of the participants want to create right from the beginning a fully
accredited multi-college research university, and I just don't see how
that can happen right away.  I got involved early on with
http://www.wgu.edu/ when it was just starting up, and I knew some of the
early organizers for that project.  It has been like pulling teeth
trying to get it going, and that had the full support of several state
legislatures, governors, and state boards of regents (particularly from
the state of Utah), and enough PhDs involved from the start that you
knew something was going to happen.  It will be years before Wikiversity
could ever get to this level or performance, if it ever will happen.

Another group that is much more modest, and the one I would like to use
as a model for Wikiversity, is http://www.vu.org/, Virtual University.
 This project started out as an education-based dial-up BBS in the San
Francisco bay area where people would get together and share ideas and
hold on-line classes.  When wide-spread internet connectivity started to
come around, they moved to internet servers and continued to teach
classes.  Most of their classes were completely free in the beginning,
and a very controvercial decision was made to start charging students
for "attending classes".  It is a modest fee, and mainly to help support
the server farm including IRC servers.  The instructors are still
largely volunteers, and rarely do they even use textbooks.  In this
regard Wikiversity is already ahead of VU with the Wikibooks project.
 In many ways I would like to see Wikiversity be more like the way VU
was before the "corporate takeover" of the project.

What I'm trying to say is that there are models to use on how to
organize the project, and ways to do it much better than some of these
other volunteer groups.  We also have an existing charitable
organization to help out with Wikiversity (the Wikimedia Foundation)
that can help smooth out some of the big problems that happen when you
move from a germ of a neat idea into something that may get popular to
the point that the resources of a single person can't pay for the server
farm with his/her pizza money.  All other on-line educational
communities usually get very bogged down on this one point at trying to
find out how to start raising money to pay for everything with new
organizational structures...and something I don't see being a huge
problem for Wikiversity.  That organization is already in place.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
$20  per term is quite modest, perhaps there is something to the
corporate takeover I am missing. Signed up anyway and will try it. No
doubt I will gain insight.

Fred

On Sep 10, 2005, at 7:06 AM, Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Another group that is much more modest, and the one I would like to
> use as a model for Wikiversity, is http://www.vu.org/, Virtual
> University. This project started out as an education-based dial-up
> BBS in the San Francisco bay area where people would get together
> and share ideas and hold on-line classes.  When wide-spread
> internet connectivity started to come around, they moved to
> internet servers and continued to teach classes.  Most of their
> classes were completely free in the beginning, and a very
> controvercial decision was made to start charging students for
> "attending classes".  It is a modest fee, and mainly to help
> support the server farm including IRC servers.  The instructors are
> still largely volunteers, and rarely do they even use textbooks.
> In this regard Wikiversity is already ahead of VU with the
> Wikibooks project. In many ways I would like to see Wikiversity be
> more like the way VU was before the "corporate takeover" of the
> project.


from_name: Eric & Michelle

subject: [Foundation-l] remove unsubscribe

body: remove unsubscribe


subject: [Foundation-l] remove unsubscribe

body: remove unsubscribe


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Sep 10, 2005, at 6:38 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> Fuzzyhead, I encourage you to re-read the forwarded message.
>
> Perhaps you see it in terms of "Chinese Wikipedia" and "Chinese
> language issues", however the reality is very different.
>
> Somebody who was born with and has always lived with Mandarin is just
> as much an interested or a disinterested party as Jimbo, David Gerard,
> Angela, or Ray Santoinge.
>
> This is about Cantonese and Wu not about, as you say, "Chinese".
>
>
>

This was definitely POV vote stacking and was intellectually
dishonest yes. Biased, unwiki and loaded with personal attacks.

You wonder why people don't trust you, this is why, you are not
trustworthy. The question as to whether Catonese is a separaete
*written* language is precisely the question that needs to be decided
by the community.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: a crazy idea...

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Angela (beesley at gmail.com) [050908 06:06]:
>
>
>>I've been thinking this over for a few days, and I believe the option
>>of reunifying meta and the Foundation wiki makes most sense. The
>>separation means little to external people and only causes extra work
>>for internal people. If we need pages to be uneditable, we can just
>>protect them rather than hiding them on a less visited, less wiki,
>>site.
>
>
>
> I predict the first thing to happen will be a pile of spurious deletion
> nominations.
>
>
> - d.

It goes without saying that this should not be done at the expense of
all the sometimes borderline pages sitting on meta. By borderline, I in
particular refer to
* the humor pages, frequently proposed for deletions
* the personal opinions
* etc...

I like the proposal in the sense the current situation is not practical.

I do not like it because I fear it will result in a sort of censorship,
with pages kept only those being of that awful CPOV. I wonder if
something like a namespace "foundation" could be created within meta,
which would clearly mention these pages are "official" (whatever that
means" while others may reflect other opinions.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: a crazy idea...


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikien-l Mailing List

body:
This looks like a reputable business - can't they be warned off with
reference to anti-spam laws?

On 9/10/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/10/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > roomity.com <http://roomity.com> have been attempting to subscribe to
> the lists,
> > including ones which are not publicly archived like the mediation one.
>
>
> Can someone (eg. Brion) block ban this address <maillist at roomity.com>
> from all of the lists? Or does it have to be done individually? I also
> got a direct mail from that address (with slightly different text to
> what Ray got) as a result of some posts to the wiki-research-l list,
> and i see they are subscribed to the foundation-news-l list, which I
> monitor (but can't ban anyone, unless they spam the list). (Nudging Sj
> who can do this at least.)
>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Re: new request for ASL/English wikipedia
	(Neil Harris)

body:
Craig Franklin wrote:

>Scr?obh Neil Harris:
>
>
>
>>ASL is most certainly a first-class language, but it _must be written_
>>to be usable in a text-based system like Wikipedia.
>>
>>
Where does it say in the goals of the WMF that everything is to be text
based? It says that we are "dedicated to encouraging the growth,
development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
free of charge." Not even the Wiki principles make it compulsary to be
text based.

>
>I think this is the key here.  Do deaf persons in the United States actually
>write ASL in their everyday lives.  A quick bit of Googling and research
>seems to indicate that there isn't even a settled orthography for ASL, so
>producing material in a written form seems counterproductive.  Half a
>million people might "speak" the language on a daily basis, but if only 5%
>of people understand the particular form of notation that is used, it's
>going to be close to useless for most deaf persons.  We might then run into
>a situation similar to the b?kmal/nynorsk, or the cantonese/mandarin
>fiascos, in which each variant of sign language demands a seperate wiki for
>itself.  If we allow an ASL wiki, then how can we say no to an Auslan wiki,
>a Gestuno wiki, an ISL wiki, etc.
>
>
This question is completely wrong. It suggests that ASL is more than any
of the other sign languages. Languages that are as destinct as German
from English.

>Sadly, I think that sign languages can, at the present time, be only
>classified as being spoken and not written.  If you can show me a commonly
>accepted written notation for ASL (that has, for example, 50%+ understanding
>from those who use ASL as a spoken language), that can be conceivably used
>on the internet, then I'll be the first to call for the wiki's creation.
>Unfortunately, I think this is a technical challenge that might not be
>possible at the present time (since SignWriting, which seems to be the most
>popular of the written notations, doesn't seem to have any Unicode support).
>
>- Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]
>
There are people who want wikipedias in sign languages. They will have
to overcome many organisational and technical problems before they will
see a functional project. The insistence that it needs to be written is
fundamentally wrong; if you were to insist that wiki principles need to
be adhered to, it would be more compatible with what we aim to be.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] new request for ASL/English wikipedia (Neil Harris)

body:
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 09:49:01AM +0200, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > ASL is most certainly a first-class language, but it _must be written_
> > to be usable in a text-based system like Wikipedia.
> >
> Where does it say in the goals of the WMF that everything is to be text
> based? It says that we are "dedicated to encouraging the growth,
> development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
> providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
> free of charge." Not even the Wiki principles make it compulsary to be
> text based.

Do you know of any wiki-like system that is not text-based ?
It's a very serious technical, not ideological, problem.


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> $20  per term is quite modest, perhaps there is something to the
> corporate takeover I am missing. Signed up anyway and will try it. No
> doubt I will gain insight.
>
> Fred
>
As I said, the decision to start charging money was controvercial.  The
main reason for the money is for keeping a full-time registrar as they
are now issuing Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for the courses.  That
was a few year ago, and it still is a good organization.  I'm not trying
to slight them at all.  There is a general attempt to move toward formal
accrediation to issue college credits, but that is a much harder leap to do.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for being bold

body:
> And how does someone know they're blocked before they try to edit and
> the autoblocker kicks in? Duh.

The blocking admin should have left a message to that effect for the
blocked user.

Dan


from_name: fallout at lexx.eu.org

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bot for French cities on Romanian Wikipedia

body:
You can get all the French commune articles here:
http://www.ausir.master.pl/france/ , but you'd probably have to translate
them and run a bot yourself.

--
Ausir


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for being bold

body:
On 9/10/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> The blocking admin should have left a message to that effect for the
> blocked user.

Ah yes, that was what I missed.  Mea culpa.

I undid the autoblocker anyway.

Sam


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 9/10/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, Jimmy, aren't they to determine consensus, not build it?

If it is determined there is no current consensus, then one helps to build it.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: steve whittet

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: RE: request for permission to use a screen shot
 from a digital map  to illustrate an article on wikipedia

body:
>X-VirusChecked: Checked
>X-Env-Sender: P.Milne at nls.uk
>X-Msg-Ref: server-2.tower-57.messagelabs.com!1125069113!83730371!9
>X-StarScan-Version: 5.4.15; banners=nls.uk,-,-
>X-Originating-IP: [193.130.15.156]
>Subject: RE: request for permission to use a screen shot from a digital
>map  to illustrate an article on wikipedia
>Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:00:57 +0100
>X-MS-Has-Attach:
>X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
>Thread-Topic: request for permission to use a screen shot from a digital
>map  to illustrate an article on wikipedia
>Thread-Index: AcWpC3qH23KB4//jTtaSU30zuqHjUgBQhyQg
>From: "Milne, Peter" <P.Milne at nls.uk>
>To: "steve whittet" <whittet at adelphia.net>
>
>Peter Milne
>Map Library Services Manager
>National Library of Scotland
>33 Salisbury Place
>Edinburgh
>EH9 1SL
>tel  0131 623 3970
>fax 0131 623 3971
>e   p.milne at nls.uk
>
>Dear Mr Whittet
>
>There will be no problem in granting permission to use this image for a
>contribution to such an admirable venture as Wikipedia (my opinion).  It
>fulfils all the criteria to be classed as non-profit and educational.  Can
>you give me the title or subject of the article and I will send a formal
>letter giving permission as a Word attachment.
>
>I look forward to hearing from you.
>
>Yours sincerely
>
>Pete Milne
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: steve whittet [mailto:whittet at adelphia.net]
>Sent: 25 August 2005 01:21
>To: Map Library
>Subject: request for permission to use a screen shot from a digital map
>to illustrate an article on wikipedia
>
>Hi,
>I would like to use a screen shot of the scale on a map
>entitled Milaria Scotia Regum - 1595 which you have
>on your website for a wikipedia article
>http://www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/map/early/scotland.cfm?id=130#
>your copyright for this page says
>
>
>Copyright
>Screen prints may be made of these maps for non-commercial
>educational and private purposes. Written permission must be obtained in
>advance to reproduce any digital material from the Library's collections,
>whether in hard copy or electronic forms.
><http://www.nls.uk/collections/maps/services/reprographics/permission.html>
>
>I'm unclear as to whether a screen capture for wikipedia meets
>your definition of non-commercial - educational and is permitted
>without filling out the form or whether you require the form
>because you would consider putting it on a page online
>a digital reproduction?
>
>regards,
>
>steve
>
>
>*******************************************************************
>Visit the National Library of Scotland online at www.nls.uk
>*******************************************************************
>This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you
>are not the intended recipient, please notify the ICT Helpdesk on
>+44 131 623 3789 or ict at nls.uk and delete this e-mail.  The
>statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the
>author and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Library of
>Scotland.  This message is subject to the Data Protection Act 1998
>and Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and has been
>scanned by MessageLabs.
>*******************************************************************


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 9/10/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Where does it say in the goals of the WMF that everything is to be text
> based? It says that we are "dedicated to encouraging the growth,
> development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
> providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
> free of charge." Not even the Wiki principles make it compulsary to be
> text based.

No, but the Wiki principles do make it compulsory to be easily edited.
The only alternative for text-based that anyone has brought forward is
to use videos of people signing. Using that method would mean that one
would have to re-sign the whole article each time one would want to
correct a small error. Not to mention that it is a highly
non-standardized system. It would be comparable to a system of having
a Wikipedia consisting completely of scans of hand-written articles,
or of sound files.

> >If we allow an ASL wiki, then how can we say no to an Auslan wiki,
> >a Gestuno wiki, an ISL wiki, etc.
>
> This question is completely wrong. It suggests that ASL is more than any
> of the other sign languages. Languages that are as destinct as German
> from English.

How does it suggest that? I would say it suggests exactly the
opposite. If ASL were indeed "more" than other sign languages, then it
would not be strange to include ASL, but exclude the others. Exactly
because it is not more, nor less, allowing one sign language would
imply allowing many.

> There are people who want wikipedias in sign languages. They will have
> to overcome many organisational and technical problems before they will
> see a functional project. The insistence that it needs to be written is
> fundamentally wrong; if you were to insist that wiki principles need to
> be adhered to, it would be more compatible with what we aim to be.

The one implies the other, in my opinion. Craig is showing a problem.
You answer "There will be problems to overcome, but that's no reason
not to do it." It would be much more helpful to give an indication of
HOW those problems might be overcome, rather than shooting the
messenger.

Andre Engels


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG enabled

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> I've enabled SVG uploads and rendering.
>
> SVG images are automatically rendered to PNG for thumbnails and inline
> display, currently using rsvg (of librsvg) as a converter backend. (If
> anybody sets up new Apaches in the cluster, make sure the librsvg2
> package is installed.)
>
> Note that some old SVGs might have bogus size information if the image
> table which causes rendering to fail; I'll try to get that worked out,
> but as a workaround you can re-upload the file.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
It might be useful to mention here that Firefox 1.5beta1 now has SVG
support compiled in and enabled by default. The implementation is still
slightly buggy, but works well enough for content developers to use for
testing, to try to shake out as many bugs as possible before 1.5 proper
is released.

-- Neil


body:
On 9/9/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > > Bullocks. This is legal paranoia.
> >
> > I'm sorry, but acting carefully on advice from actual lawyers is not
> > legal paranoia.
>
> A legal team who was split on the issue. I suggested a very simple way to avoid
> much of the potential issues; combine the lists. Thus my 'bullocks' statement
> in regards to deletion instead of merger. Deletion followed by nothing (what
> was done) is legal paranoia, while merger is a prudent compromise.

Simply combining the lists doesn't solve the problem, as it could be
deemed to be a derivative work, as others have pointed out.

> > Beyond that, of course I agree with the current concept of creating a
> > generally researched list from many sources of topics which we don't
> > have but should.
>
> My point all along (IIRC, the first comment on the Encarta list talk page was
> from me raising the merger issue).

But there is a difference between having the list available to a
restricted list of folks, or putting on meta: or in the en:Wikipedia:
namespace which is effectively "published."

For example, as part of my research, I have several "article lists"
from Encarta, Britannica and some other CD-ROM encyclopedias, but I've
hesitated to make them public or contribute them to WP, for exactly
this reason. Talking to a few lawyer folks on my campus has
effectively convinced me I would not have a strong case for fair
use/fair dealing. I'm willing to (and would like to be) proved wrong.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
At 02:08 AM 9/10/2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>Matt Brown wrote:
>
>>I'm also tired of the use of '<whatever>-cruft' as a reason for
>>deletion. There's a certain mindset that seems to think that the
>>existence of articles on minor but factual and verifiable topics
>>detracts from Wikipedia. To that, I'd say: everyone's pet interest
>>is a fringe interest to someone.
>I remember once coming across a VfD where someone wanted to delete
>an article because it was "sciencecruft". It was about some obscure
>mathematical thing I didn't understand, and probably that the
>nominator didn't understand either. :)

Just think of all the articles that are historycruft or geographycruft...


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>On 9/10/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Where does it say in the goals of the WMF that everything is to be text
>>based? It says that we are "dedicated to encouraging the growth,
>>development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
>>providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
>>free of charge." Not even the Wiki principles make it compulsary to be
>>text based.
>>
>>
>
>No, but the Wiki principles do make it compulsory to be easily edited.
>The only alternative for text-based that anyone has brought forward is
>to use videos of people signing. Using that method would mean that one
>would have to re-sign the whole article each time one would want to
>correct a small error. Not to mention that it is a highly
>non-standardized system. It would be comparable to a system of having
>a Wikipedia consisting completely of scans of hand-written articles,
>or of sound files.
>
>
>
Andre's analogy with scans of hand-written documents or sound files of
articles being read out is a very good one.

Just for the record, I am _in favour_ of starting Wikis for _all_ sign
languages, subject only to the normal rules for creating Wikipedias in
any new language, _if_ the technical problem of representing and editing
them in a Wiki can be solved.

I'm also not against someone making video files of signed Wikipedia
articles: but this would not be a Wikipedia, or even something closely
resembling one. It might, however, be a valid way of publishing
Wikipedia content, in the same way as publishing a printed or audiobook
version of Wikipedia content.

I've sent a message to the Unicode mailing list asking if there are
plans to encode the written forms of signed languages in Unicode. So
far, the answer has been a terse "Yes, there are plans."

We should also look at any possible trademark or other IP restrictions
on the writing systems: the term "SignWriting", for example, is
trademarked. See, for example,
http://signwriting.org/about/questions/quest0004.html, which still seems
slightly ambiguous to me. If we were to use it, we would probably want
either a more formal grant of GFDL-compatible rights to use the system
fromValerie Sutton and the Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting, or a
legal opinion that writing systems are not encumbered by
GFDL-incompatible restrictions.

We should also take the same considerations into account for Stokoe, or
any other writing system we might want to consider.

-- Neil


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikien-l Mailing List

body:
On 9/10/05, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm that's a worry. It's certainly an argument for keeping the mailing
> list archives private. Maybe we need to see if there's a way to mask
> email addresses on the archive from spam robots like this.

Who would you keep the archives private from? If you're thinking only
non-subscribers need to be kept out of them, then that wouldn't help
since roomity.com have been attempting to subscribe to the lists,
including ones which are not publicly archived like the mediation one.
If they're subscribing to the lists, they don't even need the archives
since they get the posts directly from the people they then try to
spam.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and
>try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for
>"topic area in which low-quality articles are being
>created faster than they are being improved."
>
>Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution
>isn't clear.

Yeah, such areas are a problem, but I believe this doesn't really
apply to a lot of the "cruft". Often it's just an easy starting point
for newbies... it's much easier to write about a Harry Potter
character than about most other topics, because the available
knowledge about Harry Potter characters is very small and manageable.
If it's easy to write the article, it's easy to improve it too.

But you mentioned a list of bipolar people. Yes, lists are deceiving
to many editors: it looks easy to add to a list (Hey, I don't even
have to write full sentences!), but if the list is to be useful, it
has to have well-defined criteria for what can be included and what
not, and suddenly things get much trickier.

         Chl


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikien-l Mailing List

body:
On 9/10/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> roomity.com have been attempting to subscribe to the lists,
> including ones which are not publicly archived like the mediation one.

Can someone (eg. Brion) block ban this address <maillist at roomity.com>
from all of the lists? Or does it have to be done individually? I also
got a direct mail from that address (with slightly different text to
what Ray got) as a result of some posts to the wiki-research-l list,
and i see they are subscribed to the foundation-news-l list, which I
monitor (but can't ban anyone, unless they spam the list). (Nudging Sj
who can do this at least.)

Cormac


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
> From: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>
>
> I'm also tired of the use of '<whatever>-cruft' as a reason for
> deletion.
> There's a certain mindset that seems to think that the existence of
> articles
> on minor but factual and verifiable topics detracts from Wikipedia.
> To that,
> I'd say: everyone's pet interest is a fringe interest to someone.
> Whether a
> Wikipedia article should exist on a topic should have nothing to do
> with how
> well one can disparage the subset of people interested in that
> particular
> topic.
>
> That said, if there's not enough to say about a topic, it might not
> deserve
> an article of its very own. I'm all in favor of e.g. grouping minor
> fictional characters together in an article 'Minor characters in
> <novel>',
> or whatever.
>
> -Matt

OK, this fool will walk in, donning asbestos suit, etc.

There are contributors, who enjoy contributing to
Wikipedia, who do not embrace or understand the
rudiments of scholarship.

Here's what I mean by "rudiments.

"List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder"
which was originally just a completely unsourced
list of raw names; confirmed, plausible, asserted,
and unlikely, all mixed together. It was nominated for
deletion, and consensus was that it was OK _provided
that_ the list confined itself to names for which there
was _a verifiable source citation._ I.e. it is OK to tell the
reader that the source was Kay Redfield Jamison's book
and let the reader decide how credible Jamison is.

The opening paragraph was rewritten to say "This is a list
of people accompanied by verifiable source citations," etc.

On a fairly regular basis, people will simply add names to
the list with no explanation or citation. OR, they will add
names accompanied with statements like "he has been very
open about this" or "it's been in the news" or "One of his
songs is entitled 'Lithium.'" I've been fairly pestiferous
about removing unsourced entries, usually moving them
to Talk with an explanation, and trying to half-coach the
people who added them.

And indeed some of them have been surprised that I
mean exactly what I say, and that while "Adam Ant:
Has spoken openly on television about his condition"
will not do, a web reference to an arts.telegraph article,
"Adam and his fall," is just fine.

Other have felt that the onus was somehow on _me_
to research and provide references for the names _they_
had added, thought I was questioning their honesty
when they asserted the existence of references, etc.

Now, all this is fine as far as it goes. There are some
inexperienced contributors, I try to police the article
a bit, I try to help a bit, I try to coach a bit, some of
the inexperienced contributors "get it," some of them
don't. The article slowly improves over time. All
Wiki-good.

The problem occurs when you have a topic area that
attracts a very large volume of contributions from
editors who do _not_ get the idea of what it means
for an article to be well-researched, thorough, and
accurate.

Wikipedia depends on the notion that bad articles
will get improved. That implies a certain kind of
balance or equilibrium.

I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and
try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for
"topic area in which low-quality articles are being
created faster than they are being improved."

Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution
isn't clear.

Wikipedia works only when _most_ articles are
in at least a quarter-decent state, and articles
that are really just drafts or placeholders or
article _requests_ disguised as articles are a relatively
small proportion of the whole.

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


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 10/09/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>
> >I'm also tired of the use of '<whatever>-cruft' as a reason for deletion.
> >There's a certain mindset that seems to think that the existence of articles
> >on minor but factual and verifiable topics detracts from Wikipedia. To that,
> >I'd say: everyone's pet interest is a fringe interest to someone.
> >
> I remember once coming across a VfD where someone wanted to delete an
> article because it was "sciencecruft". It was about some obscure
> mathematical thing I didn't understand, and probably that the nominator
> didn't understand either. :)

There was a spate of transuranic elements being put on VfD last
December (or November, or thereabouts), as "sciencecruft" - the only
thing that seemed to distinguish them was that they were ones where
the "common" name hadn't yet been officially agreed. Whether they
existed yet or not seemed to be considered an irrelevancy...

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


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
On Sep 10, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>
> Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution
> isn't clear.

I think the solution is perfectly clear. We fix the articles at a
reasonable rate. We accept that referencing is hard, and that it's
not going to be done as fast as any of us like. Those who are
knowledgeable about the subject do what they can. But we're
volunteers. And the job of going and finding references sucks. It's
why I don't contribute to critical theory articles anymore. The push
to reference has left it feeling too much like my job.

What do we really lose by having 100 mediocre-to-crappy articles on
obscure Pokemon? I mean, yes, I lose sanity if I try to read them,
but if they just sort of exist? The only thing I can think of that we
might lose is some respect. Here's the thing, though - this project
is four years old. We've built a pretty damn good encyclopedia in
four years. But anyone who expects this project to be
"done" (Whatever that means) or even close to "done" is being daft.
Yes, Wikipedia is a cause celebre in the online world right now. But
we can't let that push us into trying to sweep "cruft" under the
carpet because we're kind of embarassed that we have more Pokemon
articles than philosophy articles (Or whatever unfortunate statement
that's actually true you want to put in here).

The answer is to just say, "Hey, glad you see the potential in the
project. We agree, we're not there yet. Grab a keyboard and start
helping if you like. Otherwise, well, we'll keep on it. Check back in
another four years - we'll knock your socks off." And this is OK.
We're not going anywhere. Even if we lose the cause celebre status
and fall out of the top 100 on Alexa (Which I doubt we ever will),
that's OK - it just means we work with a smaller base of contributors
for a few years, and come back later with stories about how
"Wikipedia, much maligned for having more information on Pokemon than
philosophy, has finally come into its own."

And, honestly, I'd rather get it right in 2009 than decide in 2005
that wrong is good enough.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG enabled

body:
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:48:48AM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> >I've enabled SVG uploads and rendering.
> >
> It might be useful to mention here that Firefox 1.5beta1 now has SVG
> support compiled in and enabled by default. The implementation is still
> slightly buggy, but works well enough for content developers to use for
> testing, to try to shake out as many bugs as possible before 1.5 proper
> is released.
>
Since SVG allows the embedding of javascript, we should not deliver SVG's
that were uploaded to our users, unless someone provides a reliable
javascript remover.

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing Special Page

body:
On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 12:03:28PM -0700, Donald Wong wrote:
> I am having some trouble running the sample Special Page despite
> following the steps described, i.e. having included the file in
> LocalSettings and making appropriate changes to names, etc.  Any
> pointers on how to deal with this issue will be greatly appreciated.
>
> The sample Special Page I'm referring to is at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Writing_a_new_special_page
>
> After including the file in LocalSettings, I will get the following
> error from PHP:
> Fatal error: Call to undefined function: includable() in
> /var/www/mediawiki-1.4.9/extensions/ExampleSpecialPage.php on line 27

The includable() function is new in 1.5, it indicates whether a special
page can be included into another page, using {{Special:Something}}

	JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Time spent in page rendering

body:
On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 11:31:54PM +0100, Kate wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > Evan Martin wrote:
> > > I've often wondered this, so this is a great opportunity to jump in.
> > > Why not cache prerendered versions of all pages?
>
> > We do. :)
>
> ... sort of.  i still want to use the file cache for this, i'm sure we
> could massively reduce page render counts even over the normal parser
> cache, not to mention the startup time for the wiki (Setup.php).

Isn't this what we use squid for? Only for logged in users (and cache misses)
Setup.php et.al. are called. It's needed to load user preferences, "You've
new messages" notifications etc.

Regards,

jens


from_name: Craig Franklin

body:
Scr?obh Neil Harris:

> ASL is most certainly a first-class language, but it _must be written_
> to be usable in a text-based system like Wikipedia.

I think this is the key here.  Do deaf persons in the United States actually
write ASL in their everyday lives.  A quick bit of Googling and research
seems to indicate that there isn't even a settled orthography for ASL, so
producing material in a written form seems counterproductive.  Half a
million people might "speak" the language on a daily basis, but if only 5%
of people understand the particular form of notation that is used, it's
going to be close to useless for most deaf persons.  We might then run into
a situation similar to the b?kmal/nynorsk, or the cantonese/mandarin
fiascos, in which each variant of sign language demands a seperate wiki for
itself.  If we allow an ASL wiki, then how can we say no to an Auslan wiki,
a Gestuno wiki, an ISL wiki, etc.

Sadly, I think that sign languages can, at the present time, be only
classified as being spoken and not written.  If you can show me a commonly
accepted written notation for ASL (that has, for example, 50%+ understanding
from those who use ASL as a spoken language), that can be conceivably used
on the internet, then I'll be the first to call for the wiki's creation.
Unfortunately, I think this is a technical challenge that might not be
possible at the present time (since SignWriting, which seems to be the most
popular of the written notations, doesn't seem to have any Unicode support).

- Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikien-l Mailing List

body:
Has somebody tried to just e-mail them and ask them please not to spam us or
our list members?

Tell them we're not interested in their products and if they keep it up
we'll create a whole article about how they are a relentless spamming
company who doesn't respond to polite requests? ;-)

FF

On 9/10/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This looks like a reputable business - can't they be warned off with
> reference to anti-spam laws?
>
> On 9/10/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/10/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > roomity.com <http://roomity.com> <http://roomity.com> have been
> attempting to subscribe to
> > the lists,
> > > including ones which are not publicly archived like the mediation one.
> >
> >
> > Can someone (eg. Brion) block ban this address <maillist at roomity.com>
> > from all of the lists? Or does it have to be done individually? I also
> > got a direct mail from that address (with slightly different text to
> > what Ray got) as a result of some posts to the wiki-research-l list,
> > and i see they are subscribed to the foundation-news-l list, which I
> > monitor (but can't ban anyone, unless they spam the list). (Nudging Sj
> > who can do this at least.)
> >
> > Cormac
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for being bold

body:
SPUI wrote:
> Sam Korn wrote:
>
>> The fact that that was done following discussion and for good reasons.
>>  It was aimed at being complete.  Your move seemed to be no more than
>> trolling.  You should have realised that that kind of move was bound
>> to create dissent and distaste.  If you want to move the pages back, I
>> suggest discussing it first.
>
>
> The same could be said about the move to AFD - it was bound to create
> "dissent and distaste". I was merely being bold and using the "use
> common names" policy.

The name "Votes for deletion" violated a major part of [[WP:NOT]]:
"Wikipedia is not a democracy".

If articles are to be deleted, and they are not copyvios or CSDs, the
community will try and come to a consensus.

(Personally, I think blocking SPUI for this (for 24 hours) was a bit
harsh. I'd have reverted everything, wait until 3RR was broken, and then
add the whole incident to [[WP:LAME]]...)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Assisting Google's language recognition?

body:
On 9/10/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Evan Martin wrote:
> >
> > We've upped the rate a bit.  Please let me know if it causes any problems.
>
> You're making this sound like you work for Google and have some say or
> control over this, but you seem to specifically avoid saying this
> explicitly (or I missed it). Could you clarify this?

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-August/031229.html


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG enabled

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Jens Frank wrote:
>
>>
>> Since SVG allows the embedding of javascript, we should not deliver
>> SVG's
>> that were uploaded to our users, unless someone provides a reliable
>> javascript remover.
>
>
> A checker for JavaScript was included in 1.5 branch a couple months
> back. Of course another look over the code wouldn't hurt!
>
> (We have for some time taken the precaution of serving uploads from a
> separate subdomain, which should in most cases prevent attacks even if
> they make it past upload filters; but it may not be complete
> protection, particular for the sites on *.wikimedia.org domains where
> there might be a session fixation attack.)
>
Just for completeness sake, we should block _all_ scripting languages if
we are not doing so already, as Microsoft browsers, I believe, can also
execute other scripting languages such as Visual Basic, and there are
moves to add support for other scripting languages besides JavaScript in
Mozilla / Firefox products soon.

-- Neil


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
> It is comments like these that worry me, because it means there is
> very little knowledge about the ZH.wikipedia community, and of Chinese
> language/culture. Chinese is not a language owned by the "Beijing
> government."

1) The vast majority of Mandarin speakers are PRC citizens (not
counting Taiwanese as PRC citizens). Historically, Chinese emigration
has mostly been from Cantonese-, Minnan-, and Hakka-speaking areas
rather than Mandarin-speaking ones, so the larger Mandarin-speaking
communities outside of China are a very recent phenomenon.

2) You have said stuff about this before, about people not knowing
much about the zh.wiki community. You're being overidealistic. It's
quite easy to gauge public opinion on zh.wiki, and so far I've found
that every person you've told to be mistaken about the zh.wiki
community has pretty much been right.

3) The linguistic authority over the sweeping majority of speakers of
ALL Sinitic languages rests with the PRC gov't in Beijing. If they
should decide to replace hanzi entirely with pinyin or even cyrillic,
you can bet your ass such a change would be complete in a couple of
decades.

> Waerth, as someone who lives in Asia, you might know that most Chinese
> in SE Asia don't like to be referred to as "overseas Chinese" for
> exactly this reason. The term "Nanyang Chinese" is mostly preferred,
> which basically means Chinese of the Southern Seas. They are not tools
> or satellites of Beijing, and do not have any allegiance politically
> to the People's Republic of China. So it is fallacious to turn this
> into a political issue.

Why?? What percentage of zh.wikipedians are from south of the
PRC-Vietnam border? That's what I thought. Of course there is the
minority, but the vast majority of zh.wikipedians are from the
mainland, and smaller but very significant groups from HK and Taiwan.

Mainlanders may not be "tools" or "satellites" of Beijing, but they
are very much indoctrinated with the linguistic propaganda of the
Beijing gov't, and are unlikely to disbelieve it without personal
experience (thus, it seems Cantonese native speakers are voting
"support")

> To reaffirm this - at the Wikimania conference, there were as many
> Chinese Wikipedians from outside the PRC than from inside - Malaysia,
> Taiwan, Hong Kong, Germany, United States. We all got along
> swimmingly.

It's very easy to explain this. The main reason is because travel
costs are going to be much cheaper for a Chinese in Germany to get to
the Wikimania conference, than for a Chinese in Beijing to get to the
conference.

> I trust you and Node_ue will agree it is a legitimate thing to
> discuss, and that the opinion of Hong Kong folks has some relevance to
> the Cantonese Wikipedia discussion. But I would not be surprised to
> hear objection even to that.

Of course it is relevant. The whole point here is that Waerth and I
both think it's unfair to let anybody but the actual language
community make decisions about whether or not they should get a
Wikipedia, with exceptions for artificial languages perhaps.

And obviously, most Hong Kongers fall within the boundaries of the
Cantonese-speaking group. In fact, I'd be surprised if the meetup
wasn't mostly in Cantonese.

Having said that, since I can't be there, I hope that it will be made
very clear that this Wikipedia, if created, will be in
Yueyu-baihuawen. This seems to have confused people a little already
-- obviously Mandarin-based Baihuawen just read with Cantonese
readings is identical or nearly identical to normal Baihuawen.

> To my knowledge, "all ZH.Wikipedians" have not collectively come out
> with a position on the matter. Nor are they likely to, given the
> over-generalization.

On this point I agree with you. Most zh.wikipedians have not voted.
There are also a few zh.wikipedians who expressed opinions on the
village pump at zhwiki, but didn't go vote.

> > Why do Mandarin speakers feel they have to block
> > requests for other sinetic languages? It beats me .... apart from being
> > told by their government to be against it.
>
> Again, see above. Your equating a Mandarin speaker to a PRC citizen is
> simply wrong, and likely offensive to many ZH.Wikipedians.

It's difficult to avoid the fact that the vast majority of Mandarin
speakers are PRC citizens.

Having said that, I don't think it's so much people's government
telling them to, but rather inexperience with regional vernacular
writing.

One user on the zhwiki village pump said something along the lines of
"A Cantonese Wikipedia?? Maybe we should ask for a Chengdu dialect
Wikipedia!?", which is patently absurd since Chengdu is a Mandarin
dialect by any measure (although admittedly written Chengdu
vernacular, when it is used, does differ from putonghua-based
baihuawen, though not by enough to make it difficult to comprehend)

As Ffarr said, perhaps Mandarin speakers should try reading an article
on the test wikipedia before judging. They will probably find that
it's actually very difficult for them to read, which is contrary to
what they have been told since childhood.

Mark


body:
> This was definitely POV vote stacking and was intellectually
> dishonest yes. Biased, unwiki and loaded with personal attacks.

OK. Then you tell me, when I set up a poll, who am I supposed to tell?
Am I supposed to post to the village pump of every Wikipedia??

And how is vote stacking loaded with personal attacks?

> You wonder why people don't trust you, this is why, you are not
> trustworthy. The question as to whether Catonese is a separaete
> *written* language is precisely the question that needs to be decided
> by the community.

That's not a question. It's an established fact, there's a zh.wiki
article on "YueYuBaiHuaWen" (Cantonese written language). The question
is, does it deserve its own Wikipedia.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
> Eventually, of course.  But it certainly depends on the particular
> people involved.  If the sole administrator is doing a good job and is
> actively working to get more people involved, then why not?  Better to
> have an experienced wikipedian assisting there than to abandon them.

He doesn't appear to be "actively working to get more people
involved". Bombo is not a more experienced Wikipedian than Themalau or
Moyogo, as far as I can tell, and as I already noted he can speak
nearly no Lingala and seems to enjoy posting long articles entirely in
French.

> The point is, I see no reason for *us* to interfere.  If the other users
> have a complaint, then that's a different matter.

So, I'm not important enough? How are other users different from me? I
am a user on the Lingala Wikipedia, and frankly I'm a bit insulted by
that remark.

> I'm not thinking of them.  I'm thinking of newcomers.  Again, it seems
> fairly likely to me that there are fluent French speakers who are weak
> in Lingala who would be happy to come and help out.  Having the dual
> interface for a little while seems more or less fine to me.  When they
> want to fix it, I'm sure they will.  Why are you bothered about it?

Who is this "they"? Three out of the four recently active users seem
to not want it bilingual, but we don't have sysop capabilities. Bombo
does.

And the same is true for many other languages -- English speakers
wanting to help out on the Irish or Scottish Gaelic Wikipedias, German
speakers wanting to help out on the Plattduutsch Wikipedia, French
speakers wanting to help on the Breton Wikipedia, Spanish speakers
wanting to help on the Basque Wikipedia... yet none of them has a
bilingual user interface. Why?

> Ok, well, I'm quite sure they'll do as they see fit.  Trust them.

What about what I do, and what I see fit? As a Lingala Wikipedian, I
don't understand why my opinion should count for less than any other
user's.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
That would be like making a font with every single English word as a
separate letter.

Not feasible.

Mark

On 10/09/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> What about making a font with pictures of hands doing the signs, and
> making users download that?
>
> On 9/10/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/8/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be
> > > added to en wiki?
> > > And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries)
> > > read/write english?
> >
> > ASL is not English.  It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary.
> > But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the
> > bandwidth and space required to store them.
> >
> > Kelly
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> signature
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 09:49:01AM +0200, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>>ASL is most certainly a first-class language, but it _must be written_
>>>to be usable in a text-based system like Wikipedia.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Where does it say in the goals of the WMF that everything is to be text
>>based? It says that we are "dedicated to encouraging the growth,
>>development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to
>>providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public
>>free of charge." Not even the Wiki principles make it compulsary to be
>>text based.
>>
>>
>
>Do you know of any wiki-like system that is not text-based ?
>It's a very serious technical, not ideological, problem.
>
>
Hoi,
No I do not. However I do know that we had a presentation at Wikimania
where Wolfgang Georgsdorf broke a lance for Wikisign. A project that
would include a wikipedia in a signed language. If anything ask
Wolfgang; he is committed to this goal.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Phroziac wrote:

> What really bugs me is the deletionists who don't just say to delete
> it and tell why. They have to include personal attacks, and lame
> comments that just tend to make people mad. I've even witnessed admins
> doing this.
>
I see your point, Phroziac, but there are a couple of other issues
to consider:

* A surprising number of times, an article listed on AfD so squarely
(& if I may say it, routinely) fits the criteria that the entire
argument for deletion can be summed up in one or two words. An article
about (for example) a bartender in Eugene, Oregon that mixes a mean
gimlet is not worth an entry in Wikipedia based on that information
alone; depending on my mood at the time, I might explain that tending
bar does not make a person worthy of inclusion, or just label it as
"vanity" & move on to the next item.

* Many times, again, the reasons for deletion are so clear that
there is little more to be said. If I encounter a situation like this
would it be better to write "Delete. I agree" after my vote than to just
add "Delete"?

* Some of these nominations for deletion are so poorly written that
they beg to be made fun of -- or otherwise get under my skin. I find
that I tend to respond to these nominees much in the spirit that they
are written in: if a vanity article is written in Leet Speak, I'll
likely substitute one or two e's with a "3" in my a comment. If an
article is written professionally, I'll give it more respect.

* One thing that puzzles me is that if an article is nominated for
failing to establish notability, but the subject is notable & this
claim is repeated on AfD, then why doesn't the articles' supporters
make the needed improvements to the article immediately? Not only
would this immediately improve Wikipedia for end users, but it may
accelerate a consensus towards Keep? (I've withdrawn nominations
for articles in these cases.)

* And lastly, sometimes I contribute a vote/opinion about an article
if only one or two other persons have contributed, even if all I
have written is "Delete": I don't want someone wikilawyering a clear
choice for deletion because not enough people have expressed an
opinion about the article. (And I've made the opposite contribution,
too.)

In short, sometimes a detailed argument is needed on AfD; other times,
it's a case of "Fish. Barrel. Gun."

Geoff


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

body:
On 9/10/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Do we still query the database for all these links to decide whether
> they exist and (depending on user settings) whether they are stubs? As I
> recall, someone once had an idea to write a simple, light-weight daemon
> for this that uses a dictionary data structure (I presume they were
> thinking of a DAWG (directed acyclic word graph)) for this.

I'm not familiar with DAWG, but why wouldn't a nested sparse hash work?

link[from-id][to-title] = 0 if no link, 1 if link.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/goog-sparsehash/


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG enabled

body:
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 04:00:26AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jens Frank wrote:
> >On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:48:48AM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
> >>Brion Vibber wrote:
> >>
> >>>I've enabled SVG uploads and rendering.
> >>>
> >>It might be useful to mention here that Firefox 1.5beta1 now has SVG
> >>support compiled in and enabled by default. The implementation is still
> >>slightly buggy, but works well enough for content developers to use for
> >>testing, to try to shake out as many bugs as possible before 1.5 proper
> >>is released.
> >>
> >Since SVG allows the embedding of javascript, we should not deliver SVG's
> >that were uploaded to our users, unless someone provides a reliable
> >javascript remover.
>
> A checker for JavaScript was included in 1.5 branch a couple months
> back. Of course another look over the code wouldn't hurt!

Wow! That's nice :-)

JeLuF


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikien-l Mailing List

body:
Hmm that's a worry. It's certainly an argument for keeping the mailing
list archives private. Maybe we need to see if there's a way to mask
email addresses on the archive from spam robots like this.

~Mark Ryan

On 8/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I've received the following spam, masking as though it's from the
> mailing list.  Directly replying would be to the roomity address, and
> not to this mailing list.
>  Ec
>
> Joni Ellsworth wrote:
>
> > Ray,
> >
> > I was reading your posts on the Wikien-l mailing group yesterday, and
> > think our site may be of interest to you.  It will put all the posts
> > from the group on one page, and keep your inbox cleaner.
> >
> > There is nothing to buy, and there is a video demo, if you like.  If
> > you do get a chance to check it out, let me know what you think of it
> > - I would love to hear your thoughts.
> >
> > The site addy is http://www.roomity.com.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Joni Ellsworth
> > Community Operator
> > EMail: coasteraddict at roomity.com
> > URL:   http://www.roomity.com
> > Office: 214-827-3319
> >
> > To opt out of this email, please contact coasteraddict at roomity.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well
just be saying crap...

On 9/10/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 10, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
> >
> > Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution
> > isn't clear.
>
> I think the solution is perfectly clear. We fix the articles at a
> reasonable rate. We accept that referencing is hard, and that it's
> not going to be done as fast as any of us like. Those who are
> knowledgeable about the subject do what they can. But we're
> volunteers. And the job of going and finding references sucks. It's
> why I don't contribute to critical theory articles anymore. The push
> to reference has left it feeling too much like my job.
>
> What do we really lose by having 100 mediocre-to-crappy articles on
> obscure Pokemon? I mean, yes, I lose sanity if I try to read them,
> but if they just sort of exist? The only thing I can think of that we
> might lose is some respect. Here's the thing, though - this project
> is four years old. We've built a pretty damn good encyclopedia in
> four years. But anyone who expects this project to be
> "done" (Whatever that means) or even close to "done" is being daft.
> Yes, Wikipedia is a cause celebre in the online world right now. But
> we can't let that push us into trying to sweep "cruft" under the
> carpet because we're kind of embarassed that we have more Pokemon
> articles than philosophy articles (Or whatever unfortunate statement
> that's actually true you want to put in here).
>
> The answer is to just say, "Hey, glad you see the potential in the
> project. We agree, we're not there yet. Grab a keyboard and start
> helping if you like. Otherwise, well, we'll keep on it. Check back in
> another four years - we'll knock your socks off." And this is OK.
> We're not going anywhere. Even if we lose the cause celebre status
> and fall out of the top 100 on Alexa (Which I doubt we ever will),
> that's OK - it just means we work with a smaller base of contributors
> for a few years, and come back later with stories about how
> "Wikipedia, much maligned for having more information on Pokemon than
> philosophy, has finally come into its own."
>
> And, honestly, I'd rather get it right in 2009 than decide in 2005
> that wrong is good enough.
>
> -Snowspinner
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/8/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be
> added to en wiki?
> And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries)
> read/write english?

ASL is not English.  It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary.
But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the
bandwidth and space required to store them.

Kelly


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
On 9/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally I hate the word "cruft". It has been said earlier. One
> person's cruft is another person's essential info. We don't
> neccessarily need to sweep it up and hide it, but I don't think we
> should have a bunch of mediocre stubs hanging around when in the case
> of Pokemon they can be put in a list and break out if there's actually
> a good amount of info for an article.
>
> I'd also like the fact that there's a general page creation attitude.
> People prefer creating articles over improving existing ones, which
> means a lot of minor facts and bits of information are put in their
> own stubs when, really, they could be helpful in helping along an
> existing article.
>
> We should encourage people to find a home for their factoids in
> existing articles and cut down on stubs where possible and needed.
>
> True stubs can be improved, but when you're article ends up at AfD,
> you already made a mistake. Good stubs have enough info to show the
> subject can sustain a seperate article.

More on mergism and "cruft": what I don't quite understand is the
opposition many people have to merging small articles into larger
ones: schools into school district articles, fictional characters into
book articles, city landmarks into city articles.

With some articles you suggest merging and the creators respond as if
you wanted to delete the article entirely. I regard merging as an
improvement: information wants context, in order to be useful; maybe
it doesn't add to your article count, but it adds to the usefulness of
the encyclopedia.

"Wiki is not paper" is often cited -- but it's a stronger argument for
merging information than leaving small articles separate: since Wiki
is not paper, redirects are easy, and we do not have to worry about
someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed
elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information
at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search
function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on their own (and I do try
to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a
larger picture.

It doesn't really *hurt* to have lots of small trivial articles (I'm
deliberately ignoring referencing issues here; dpbsmith already made
that position perfectly clear), but it's a case where the whole is
indeed generally greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, a
large article which gets many visitors is far easier to maintain --
keep updated, patrol for vandalism, etc. -- than a collection of small
articles which get relatively few visitors each.

Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's
probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of
detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I
wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would
rightly get deleted were a sentence about me to be added) -- or if it
should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole
somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next
broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on
which there is no "music of X" article yet).

(Actually, please point out cases where this is not the case, if you
can: I'd like to see them.)

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: steve v

body:
I wonder to what degree some of the lawyers (the
cautious half) were taking into consideration the
pragmatic issue of getting drowned in legal fees,
rather than the legal merits of the issue.

A commie (as in 'mercial) encyclopedia might have an
interest in suing Wikipedia, even if it is on the
apparent flimsy basis of a claimed "derivative work,"
(from a list, no less).

I hear lawyers can cost a lot of money.
SV

--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/18/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> wrote:
> > Andrew Lih wrote:
> >
> > >For example, as part of my research, I have
> several "article lists"
> > >from Encarta, Britannica and some other CD-ROM
> encyclopedias, but I've
> > >hesitated to make them public or contribute them
> to WP, for exactly
> > >this reason. Talking to a few lawyer folks on my
> campus has
> > >effectively convinced me I would not have a
> strong case for fair
> > >use/fair dealing. I'm willing to (and would like
> to be) proved wrong.
> > >
> > But the only way to prove you wrong would involve
> having the whole
> > matter end up in court.
>
> I know, case law sucks, doesn't it? Such is the
> nature of fair use. :)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

______________________________________________________
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 10/09/05, Chris L?er <chris at zandria.net> wrote:
> At 02:08 AM 9/10/2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> >I remember once coming across a VfD where someone wanted to delete
> >an article because it was "sciencecruft". It was about some obscure
> >mathematical thing I didn't understand, and probably that the
> >nominator didn't understand either. :)
>
> Just think of all the articles that are historycruft or geographycruft...

And we have whole namespaces full of wikicruft! Delete, delete...

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


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
Don't consider the lack of direct challenge to you as a sign of
agreement or endoresement of the methodology. It could very well be
that folks have tuned out the more farcical arguments, like how
announcing a poll about Chinese language issues to Chinese Wikipedians
is not necessary.

And regarding your previous comment...

On 9/6/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> 4) The lack of announcement was partially intentional.

That pretty well sums it up.

In most places, that would be called vote rigging.

But as Jimbo said, that's why binding votes are frowned upon.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

I felt that it
> was most fair to send a message to wikipedia-l, and international
> mailing list, and then to individual Cantonese-speaking users.
>
> > Personal differences aside, the organizer of a vote, as an implicit
> > "overseer," should show restraint in terms of commenting on individual
> > votes and as a result, influencing the votes on the page.
>
> I'm not sure how comments on votes could influence them. Other than
> those directed towards Jeromy~Yuyu, my comments were in a spirit of
> disambiguation rather than challenging the reasoning behind votes, as
> some people appeared to think we were talking about writing a
> Baihuawen Wikipedia in Traditional Chinese and then calling it
> "Cantonese Wikipedia", rather than writing a YutYuhBakWaMaan Wikipedia
> as was the idea.
>
> > One reason the final (sixth) GNAA VfD was accepted after several
> > controversial rounds of voting was because of how professionally the
> > vote was administered. We should learn from that.
>
> And by "we", you mean "Node", right?
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: fallout at lexx.eu.org

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Bot for French cities on Romanian Wikipedia

body:
> Hi Ausir,
> Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, I seee to be
> getting an error message (Numer błędu - 404,
> Ten dokument nie istnieje) when accessing it. I would
> like to run the bot myself, but since I know next to
> nothing about coding, would I be able to use the
> source code they used at it.wiki?
> Ronline

Sorry, the link should be:
http://www.ausir.master.pl/francja/
As for the bot, I'm from Polish Wikipedia. Try talking either to Gac from
Italian Wikipedia or to tsca from Polish Wikipedia. By the way, we're
having a meeting at #wikimedia IRC channel tomorrow at 20:00 CET about bot-
generated articles international project.

Ausir


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On Saturday, September 10, 2005, at 05:07  PM, Phroziac wrote:

> I can agree, but i wasn't actually referring to that. I'm referring to
> things like (and directly quoting here)...
>
> Get a grip.
> Wow. I thought this was an encyclopedia.
> Next will be an article on the old lady who gives out boxes of raisins
> instead of candy on Halloween.

"If this gets kept, I'm adding an article for my Enormous Penis
Syndrome support group (our members are growing!)."

(funny, but demonstrates VfD mentality)

Thanks,
RN


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikien-l Mailing List

body:
On 9/10/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Who would you keep the archives private from? If you're thinking only
> non-subscribers need to be kept out of them, then that wouldn't help
> since roomity.com have been attempting to subscribe to the lists,
> including ones which are not publicly archived like the mediation one.
> If they're subscribing to the lists, they don't even need the archives
> since they get the posts directly from the people they then try to
> spam.
>
> Angela.

Yes, good point. I didn't think of that :)

~Mark


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>Don't consider the lack of direct challenge to you as a sign of
>agreement or endoresement of the methodology. It could very well be
>that folks have tuned out the more farcical arguments, like how
>announcing a poll about Chinese language issues to Chinese Wikipedians
>is not necessary.
>
>
It doesn't happen many times but I kinda agree with node on this issue.
Never before has it been made an issue that people from another
languagewikipedia should be informed when a new languagewikipedia from a
related language is being requested. Never in the two years that I have
been on wikimediaprojects has it been an issue. Now only for Cantonese
it is being made an issue. I find it very strange that Jimbo and Angela
all of a sudden come with these statements while in the past they have not.

Fact is that any attempt to create a wikipedia for other chinese
languages  has been torpedo'ed (or they tried to) sofar by mandarin
speakers. Who seem to agree with the Beijing government that any atempt
to create information in another Chinese language should be surpressed,
fact is it is an official policy by the Chinese government to discourage
the use of anything but Mandarin. Question is should we adhere by the
policies created in Beijing or use our own independent mindset? And yes
the fact that all ZH.Wikipedians feel that they should be heard on the
issue makes me feel it is a political issue rather than a normal one.
When the Frysian wikipedia and the Limburgish wikipedias were created
no-one on nl: was heard. And probably a couple would have voted against
it if they knew it, as the feeling is those two are not necessary as our
official language is dutch and everyone speaks it. Although the other
language requests that are on now for other dutch dialects have been
presented in the village pump, and people voiced opinions against it. No
one will even think about going to meta and tell they are against it.
Because they feel it is up to speakers of the languages in question to
decide for themselves. Why do Mandarin speakers feel they have to block
requests for other sinetic languages? It beats me .... apart from being
told by their government to be against it. I personally feel that if a
majority of native speakers of a language want a pedia they should be
granted their request no matter how many other non-speakers of their
language are against it!

The arguing that requesting a Cantonese wikipedia is the same as
requesting an american english wikipedia is in my opinion a bad
argument. American english and English english are mutuably
intelligible. Cantonese and Mandarin are not! And they are written in
different scripts according to 2 Hokkien Chinese Thai comedians that I
work with day in day out (they might also be politically motivated with
their answers as their parents were with the KMT and had to flee China)

Walter van Kalken (Waerth)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
Craig Franklin wrote:

> We might then run into a situation similar to the
> b?kmal/nynorsk, or the cantonese/mandarin fiascos, in which each
> variant of sign language demands a seperate wiki for itself.
> If we allow an ASL wiki, then how can we say no to an Auslan
> wiki, a Gestuno wiki, an ISL wiki, etc.

Why should you need to say no to an Auslan wiki, if a realistic
request were put forth?  The issues should be: can it be done with
current wiki technology?  And is there a sufficient community of
volunteers who are ready and able to accomplish an encyclopedia?

I have no idea how a sign language wiki would work.  What other
sign language websites are there?  Does DMOZ have a listing? The
article [[American Sign Language]] mentions two writing systems
and says "SignWriting is commonly used for student newsletters and
similar purposes."  That seems like a good start.  Just imagine
these student newsletters (do they have websites?) informing their
readers about the new ASL Wikipedia.  What writing tools,
character sets and keyboards do they use?

The Nynorsk Wikipedia, having more than 10,000 articles, is now
the most promising encyclopedic endeavor in that language since
1964.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Images dump

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> These are probably hosted on the Wikimedia Commons (which is a
> repository of liberally-licensed multimedia content,

No, it's not. It is a repository of liberally-licensed multimedia
content plus, paradoxically, a few restrictively-licensed logos from the
supposedly-so-free Wikimedia Foundation.

> if you do get the Commons dump, you can be fairly sure there are no
> images in it that are actually copyrighted,

The majority of content in the Commons is copyrighted. If it wasn't, it
couldn't be licensed, liberally or otherwise.

Timwi


body:
Evan Martin wrote:
>
> We've upped the rate a bit.  Please let me know if it causes any problems.

You're making this sound like you work for Google and have some say or
control over this, but you seem to specifically avoid saying this
explicitly (or I missed it). Could you clarify this?


body:
Kov?cs Endre J?nos wrote:
> Take a look at this query, then:
> http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3A%22Adolf+Hitler%22+site%3Awikipedia.org

Alright -- so it does the same kind of "punctuation-insensitive
matching" as it does with phrases without "inurl"; but that doesn't
change the fact that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler still
doesn't appear in the search results because it has an underscore there.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG disabled

body:
I've turned SVG upload and rendering back off for now.

rsvg/librsvg doesn't seem to provide any ability to shut off inclusions
of image files from the filesystem, nor does the current filter prevent
such uploads. This could be abused at a minimum to read an image with a
known filename from the restricted internal wiki, given knowledge of the
filesystem layout on the server (which is easy to get given our open
documentation).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cruft

body:
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Phroziac wrote:
> Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well
> just be saying crap...

Seconded.

Oh, and top-posting should be made a bannable offence. :-)

~~~~
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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