subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l sigh, 142.177

body:
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 17:37:14 -0400
> From: rednblack at alum.mit.edu
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l sigh, 142.177
> To: Discussion list for English-language Wikipedia
> 	<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <E1A0SwE-0002Og-00 at genovevo.net>
>
>
> Well, p'raps you're right. Anyhow, the day is too
> long in the end, and the
> opportunities for fights too many... I'm done with
> this one. I'm going to have
> a wonderful evening now, and I hope you will as
> well.
>
> Saurabh

Mine was very good thank you. We were celebrating my
son birthday :-)

I am glad you gave your opinion and will think about
it.
I must say I am a bit bothered by your "there is no
way I will accept this essay, and I don't want this
article protected". As I already say, the previous
article was  interesting, but fell short of many
explanations.

Incidentally, I noticed your name (I suppose it is
your name not last name). Is it from jewish origin ?
Is it female or male name ?

Anthere

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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Joachim Kerschbaumer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
Hi Mav (or Jimbo),
Re http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fundraising.html
In your function of Treasurer for the board, I think it would be really
helpful to add Information (on a subpage?) regarding how much is already
there / who gave on what date. A lot of comments (especially on the german
wikipedia) are always "Who is this Jimbo", "What is this
Wikimedia-Fondation", "Why should we trust this people", "Can we not have
our own German Server/Organisation"... Maybe with a little bit of
transparency we could show them that this is a really "Open" Organisation.

Maybe something like this:

List of Donations as of xx.xx.2003 in total 123.4 USD:
Date / Amount / Real-Name / (Country?)
Date / Amount / Wiki-Username
Date / Amount / (wants to stay) Anonymouns
Date / (wants to keep amount secret) / Name or Anonymous
...

If the users see that the amount send was officially stated/received
somewhere, maybe they would put more trust (and money) into Wikimedia/pedia.

Just an Idea,
Fantasy :-)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- K Forstner <kurt.forstner at chello.at> wrote:
> Wikipedia actually forces me to take an indefinite
> break until the whole
> thing is running properly again. A couple of days
> ago, I wikified a long
> page and for once forgot to copy it before pressing
> the "save" button.
> Needless to say, the whole thing was lost
> irrevocably before I had realized
> my mistake. Yesterday I was careless again and added
> five titles to
> Kingturtle's reading list -- lost forever. Now I
> just wanted to update a
> page -- impossible.
>
> I'm still amazed that this is not being discussed.
> Instead, I am inundated
> by e-mails about bots, most of which are just copies
> of old e-mails with one
> sentence added at the bottom. I don't understand
> participants' priorities
> here.
>
The issue of the bots has been resolved, I think.
Steve seems to have stopped arguing, so I think it's
OK to go ahead with the bot.
>
> I have been used to having a look at Wikipedia first
> thing whenever I sit
> down at my  computer. I guess I'll keep doing so and
> occasionally try to
> edit an article, but since all good features
> (watchlist, search function
> etc.) are more or less gone and as it now usually
> takes one minute or so to
> get from the edit history back to the article I
> don't think I'll be able to
> contribute a lot. This is just too frustrating.
>
> Whatever happened to the "new server madness"?
>
> KF

Funny, I haven't been experiencing any of those
problems.
LDan

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from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Welcome back Adam

body:
So, is this happening? What username is Adam editing under?
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


from_name: Jim Guide

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why Wikipedia Runs Slow - A Suggestion

body:
Hello folks. I posted the following on the 'Why Wikipedia Runs Slow' meta
page, but thought it might get more exposure here on the list. My apologies
if you've already discussed this in depth....

I was a developer a while back for the (purportedly) 17th busiest website in
the world and though the sysadmins were more directly involved in improving
response speed, I ended up doing a lot of stuff myself. The way that
Wikipedia is slow is very similar to problems we had. The delays are almost
all in the initial request for new pages. Once the connection is made,
content usually comes across rapidly. This usually points to some sort of
full queue in software, or a full queue due to excessive connections on a
single machine causing a hardware wait state. New url requests are made to
stand in line, sometimes because settings for maximum simultaneous
connections are too low, or the settings are high enough but all RAM is
consumed servicing current requests, etc,. This may seem obvious, but it
lets us de-emphasize other potential problems such as bloated overworked DB,
bogged disk fetches, etc. So, based on all this, I would say the greatest
single improvement would be to set up some sort of simple DNS round robin
(true load balancing could come later). I'm not sure what your current
server setup is, but if you could have at least two Apache servers running
on two machines with one of them running the Round Robin algorithm I think
the majority of your response problems would disappear. Don't listen to
those who say Round Robin is a naive approach. It's true that allocation of
new connections is done in a "dumb" way (in a two server setup it will just
throw every other connection to the secondary webserver)-- but that's all
you really need, I think. Suddenly each machine is servicing half the client
connections and everything is fast... Of course, maybe the reasons for your
slowness are more complex, but based on what I can see from the client side
my suspicion is that a simple Round Robin would clear it all up and that
simply adding new Apache processes on new servers as you grow would make you
at least 10 times faster during peak times than at present. -- JDG --


from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The issue of the bots has been resolved, I think.
> Steve seems to have stopped arguing, so I think it's
> OK to go ahead with the bot.

"Stopped arguing" -- Nobody bothered to answer the
last email or to really deal with the issue of POV. Is
this how consensus works, eh?

~S~

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Welcome back Adam

body:
Allan-
> So, is this happening? What username is Adam editing under?

Contrary to his promise to use the name "Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]", Adam is again
editing under the name Pizza Puzzle, after he has lied to Jimbo about not
having used that name in the past. (Jimbo has been in denial about this
since it was first brought up.) He has not openly acknowledged on his user
page yet that he is Adam, although he left a comment on Tim Starling's
saying that he "did lots of good work with all my names".

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 15:19, Steve Vertigum wrote:
> --- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The issue of the bots has been resolved, I think.
> > Steve seems to have stopped arguing, so I think it's
> > OK to go ahead with the bot.
>
> "Stopped arguing" -- Nobody bothered to answer the
> last email or to really deal with the issue of POV. Is
> this how consensus works, eh?

What's to deal with? The source of the information is labeled; if
there's not something more useful at hand, that's good enough for now.

As you _may_ recall, Wikipedia works by an iterative process: articles
created now can be improved later.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> What's to deal with? The source of the information
> is labeled; if
> there's not something more useful at hand, that's
> good enough for now.
>
> As you _may_ recall, Wikipedia works by an iterative
> process: articles
> created now can be improved later.

The problem is the implied validation of likely POV
material by Wikipedia should it allow it to be
uploaded *en masse. I have no problem with it being
added *by hand. I for one dont want to see Wikipedia
favoritism going toward taking sides in an ethnic
dispute-- with POV numbers disguised as "statistics."
Im sure there are other who agree with me, despite
their silence.

Theres also the issue that these number according to
their source are under "Moral copyright" -- something
that perhaps Alex (not just the non-lawyers) should
comment on.

Respectfully to all,
~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking of POV -- MR Sheldon Rampton?

body:
Sheldon, if youre there,

Ive looked at some of the material on Disinfopedia,
and think most of it too valuable to leave to it
alone.  I would encourage at some point an integration
of those date to Wikipedia-- as much of it is
encyclopedic.

The only failing of Disinfo that I can see so far
(besides the fact that "Disinfo" doesnt bring up DisP
on a Google search) is its disconnection from
Wikipedia, and the division of energy that it
represents.

Not to mention NPOV -- that the occasional crass
comment actually hurts the legitimacy of the DisP as a
source.

please see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_California_recall#The_premise_for_the_recall

for an example of how Disinfopedia energy would be
better served on Wikipedia. Until I made this change,
little was present in the article about the Energy
crisis.

Respectforking yours,
~S~

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from_name: Schneelocke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 300,000 draws near...

body:
> Things that would be real nice but not absolutely
> necessary, IMO:
>
> 1) Upgrade Pliny (our webserver) and Larousse (our
> database server). I'm tempted to move this item up...

By all means, do so. I hate to say it, but Wikipedia's performance is often
quite abyssmal - it can easily take a few minutes to save a large page after
an edit, and I am under the impression that all other accesses to Wikipedia
are also greatly stalled during that time.

--
 4:20PM  up 31 days, 42 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.10, 0.09, 0.08

Every non-empty totally disconnected perfect compact metric space is
homeomorphic to the Cantor set.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Replication on its way

body:
I've gone through the code, and altered about 200 instances of wfQuery() to
specify whether it is reading or writing. No warranty expressed or implied.
It's in CVS.

Reading:
wfQuery( $sql, DB_READ, $fname );

Writing:
wfQuery( $sql, DB_WRITE, $fname );

Currently, wfQuery doesn't do anything with this information, but the idea
is to have a list of database servers in LocalSettings.php. Using 0 for the
extra parameter would connect to the first server on the list, and send the
query. DB_WRITE (-2) would use whatever the current master is, presumably
this can be changed if the master goes down. DB_READ (-1) would invoke some
sort of load balancer to decide where to send the query.

I haven't really looked into the synchronisation issues yet, but I have a
feeling it won't be a big problem.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Welcome back Adam

body:
Erik wrote:
 >Allan-
 >> So, is this happening? What username is Adam editing under?
 >
 >Contrary to his promise to use the name "Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]", Adam is again
 >editing under the name Pizza Puzzle <snip>

I don't think any such promise was made: see Jimbo's post at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-September/006469.html
Quoth he: "I don't really care what name he uses as long as it's consistent."

Lee (Camembert)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Replication on its way

body:
"Brion Vibber" wrote:
> Just a quick note: we don't have the disk space on larousse at present
> to mirror the whole database.

Will we have enough next week?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 15:44, Steve Vertigum wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > What's to deal with? The source of the information
> > is labeled; if
> > there's not something more useful at hand, that's
> > good enough for now.
> >
> > As you _may_ recall, Wikipedia works by an iterative
> > process: articles
> > created now can be improved later.
>
> The problem is the implied validation of likely POV
> material by Wikipedia should it allow it to be
> uploaded *en masse. I have no problem with it being
> added *by hand.

Have you anything better that can be uploaded en masse?

The bot's being set up now. It's only a few hundred pages, which is
peanuts to a project this size. They can be improved individually or en
masse if there's anything more than empty talk.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Have you anything better that can be uploaded en
> masse?
>
> The bot's being set up now. It's only a few hundred
> pages, which is
> peanuts to a project this size. They can be improved
> individually or en
> masse if there's anything more than empty talk.

I understand. How many is a "few hundred"?

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- Steve Vertigum <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
And can we consult a solicitor on the copyright issue?

The central objection is to include "statistical" data
on Israel, while there is not some similar data
dealing with "occupied territories" for refugees. To
add data about Israel irrespective of any date about
refugees would be to prejudice the argument-- it is
yet another small victory for those who want to
"legitimize" by propagation of information (like MLP)
the Israeli side of the equasion-- this time on
Wikipedia. Go ahead and add it-- I still havent heard
anybody challenge my principles here.  Once again,
this would represent a way to establish legitimacy for
a state which has violated more international
sanctions than any other, has legalized torture, and
still asks people to regard its behaviours as
sacrosact and saintly.  There is every good reason to
postpone any action on this -- the project has gone
along fine for years without them. Until some of the
more fluid concerns are dealt with -- siezed lands,
illegitimate territories, etc.  I find it
disappointing that people her fail to have the cajones
to adhere to basic principle. They are just numbers
after all.

With due respect,
~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- Steve Vertigum <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
>
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > Have you anything better that can be uploaded en
> > masse?
> >
> > The bot's being set up now. It's only a few
> hundred
> > pages, which is
> > peanuts to a project this size. They can be
> improved
> > individually or en
> > masse if there's anything more than empty talk.
>
> I understand. How many is a "few hundred"?
>
> ~S~

<1000, at most. Probably <500. Israel isn't that big,
remember. They can always be edited by bot, anyway.
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
> The problem is the implied validation of likely
> POV
> material by Wikipedia should it allow it to be
> uploaded *en masse. I have no problem with it
> being
> added *by hand.
> ~S~

What if someone made a computer program to assemble
the pages, then manually uploaded them. What if they
were really fast at looking up data and typing? Where
do you draw the line? What's the difference?
LDan

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list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] http://wikibooks.org/

body:
Should work as a direct canonical URL now... the updates may not have
made it through to everyone, so I haven't made the old URL into a
redirect just yet; both textbooks.wikipedia.org and wikibooks.org should
access it directly.

I've also set up WikiBooks as an interwiki prefix on all the wikimedia
wikis, it uses the new address.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Welcome back Adam

body:
On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 16:16, Lee Pilich wrote:
> Erik wrote:
>  >Allan-
>  >> So, is this happening? What username is Adam editing under?
>  >
>  >Contrary to his promise to use the name "Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]", Adam is again
>  >editing under the name Pizza Puzzle <snip>
>
> I don't think any such promise was made: see Jimbo's post at
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-September/006469.html
> Quoth he: "I don't really care what name he uses as long as it's consistent."
>
Speaking of consistency, I'm not sure if he reads this list anymore, but
he told me that he's planning on requesting the password for "Lir" and
using that, since it was his original username. I think he might be
using Pizza Puzzle in the interim.


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database locked?

body:
Does anyone have any idea how long meta.wikipedia.org will be displaying
"Database locked for a few minutes" when you try to edit?
After 2 and a half hours it's starting to feel like "Mars is a few miles
 from Earth".

--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
Fantasy wrote:
>Hi Mav (or Jimbo),
>Re http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fundraising.html
>In your function of Treasurer for the board,

Er, ah, I just volunteered to be treasurer if nobody else who was
qualified/motivated didn't want the position. Nothing official at all at this
point.

>I think it would be really helpful to add Information
>(on a subpage?) regarding how much is already
>there / who gave on what date.

We can't give out that info if the people who are donating don't want us to
release their names. Currently there is no way for people to indicate whether
or not they want their donation to be anonymous, but I'm sure we could post
periodic PDFs with the dates and amounts (no names).

>A lot of comments (especially on the german
>wikipedia) are always "Who is this Jimbo",

He's the guy that pays the bills and makes all this happen (over a quarter
million US bucks and counting last time I checked). What more is needed than
that?

>"What is this Wikimedia-Fondation", "Why should
>we trust this people",

So far the Foundation is just Jimbo and the reason you should trust him is
because he has never given any reason not to be trusted while being in a
position that could cause the end of the project on a simple whim (or to
bastardize the concept by making it commercial; have you ever seen an add on
Wikipedia?). He is now legally subordinate to the Foundation but as I said he
is the Foundation so far. I still trust him completely though.

>"Can we not have our own German Server/Organisation"...

Why? The Wikimedia Foundation /is/ the German organization too and we are far
more stronger by pooling our resources instead of fragmenting them.

>Maybe with a little bit of transparency we could
>show them that this is a really "Open" Organisation.

Slow down - we still need to set the darn thing up. Yes, it legally exists but
a great deal of work still has to be done by the community to make the
Wikimedia Foundation actually become more than just Jimbo.

>Maybe something like this:

>List of Donations as of xx.xx.2003 in total 123.4 USD:

And Euros, Yen, Canadian dollars and Pounds just so that people outside the US
can get a grasp on what the numbers actually mean (even though the actual
bank account will only have US dollars in it).

>Date / Amount / Real-Name / (Country?)
>Date / Amount / Wiki-Username
>Date / Amount / (wants to stay) Anonymouns
>Date / (wants to keep amount secret) / Name or Anonymous
>...

As I said there is currently no way for people to indicate all this info.

IMO, all we really should be worried about (especially at first) is pure
numbers and dates, not who contributed how much. The "who" has to be kept
confidential at least until we get a way for people to indicate that they
wouldn't mind having this info made public. Even then it should be a
community decision on whether or not to make the 'who' info easily available;
last thing we need is for people to think that the size of their donations
somehow gives them more power in our community. Merit and a good track record
should still be the number one criteria we consider for that type of thing.

>If the users see that the amount send was officially
>stated/received somewhere, maybe they would put
>more trust (and money) into Wikimedia/pedia.

For now at least, this info will have to be placed on a page on meta. I think
I heard that we have received about US$1,000 in donations so far and that
Jimbo put a couple thousand in the account when he opened it.

IIRC from skimming Wikitech-l, what we have right now in funds is almost what
we need to upgrade our current servers, but there has been some talk about
also buying a US$6,000 server in a few months (giving us a three server
set-up). That's why a mention of the Foundation and our fundraising drive is
an important thing to mention in the press release.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Jim Guide wrote:
>I was a developer a while back for the (purportedly)
>17th busiest website in the world and though the
>sysadmins were more directly involved in improving
>response speed, I ended up doing a lot of stuff myself.

Eh gads! We really need somebody with your experience. Please sign up for
Wikitech-l at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

>The way that Wikipedia is slow is very similar to problems
>we had. The delays are almost all in the initial request for
>new pages.

I am not a developer, but I've gotten the same sense by reading/skimming
Wikitech-l (checking to see if links are active or edit also was a big drain
until we started to cache pages for non-logged-in users).

>Once the connection is made, content usually comes
>across rapidly.

Nod. At least for non-logged-in users accessing cached pages...

>This usually points to some sort of full queue in software,
>or a full queue due to excessive connections on a single
>machine causing a hardware wait state.

We often get "too many connections" errors and Apache has to be restarted
often. I also remember the developers having to increase the number of
connections allowed setting a few different times.

>[lot of technical stuff and seemingly good suggestions]...

>I'm not sure what your current server setup is,

Two machines: ref
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005976.html

Pliny (supposed to be just a database server)

Software: MySQL, Apache 1.3.27, Linux kernel 2.4.20
Tasks:     Host all wiki databases, crunch database queries, webserving the
non-English Wikipedias, Wiktionary, meta, Wikiquote and Wikibooks.
Hardware:
Tyan S2462 motherboard
2 Gig RAM (4 512Meg modules of ECC Reg. 266 MHz PC2100 DDR RAM in 4
slots)
2 Processor AMD Athlon MP 1800+/266FSB
Adaptec AIC-7899P SCSI U160 controller
1 IBM 36 GB SCSI Ultra 160 / 10 K RPM
1 IBM 36 GB SCSI Ultra 320 / 10 K RPM (running as U160, of course)
Dual onboard 3Com 10/100 (3C982) adapters

Larousse (supposed to the webserver for all wikis)

Software: Apache 1.3.27, Linux kernel 2.4.20
Task:       Webserving the English Wikipedia
Hardware:
TYAN S2518UGN motherboard
2Gig RAM (4 512 Meg modules of ECC Reg. 133 MHz PC133 SDRAM in 4 slots)
Pentium III 866MHz processor w/256K cache
Adaptec AIC-7899 SCSI U160 controller
1 Quantum Atlas 18 GB SCSI U160 Drive, currently unused and known to be
troublesome (awaiting some testing)
IBM 36 GB SCSI U160 Drive
Dual onboard Intel 10/100 (eepro) adapters

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005976.html also
has info on our short term and intermediate term upgrade plans. Oh and you
may find this bit from Jimbo interesting;

"..[short term upgrades will leave] us with two nearly identical machines, and
thus well-poised for these two to be equal load-balancing frontend
webservers in the future, when we may buy a MEGA MONDO db machine."

So I think we are already onto your line of reasoning. IIRC we have the money
for the short term upgrades, and hopefully will have the US$6,000 needed for
the 'MEGA MONDO db machine' after a few more months of donations.

>[more great stuff for wikitech-l]...

Cheers!

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why Wikipedia Runs Slow - A Suggestion

body:
"Jim Guide" skribis:

> Hello folks. I posted the following on the 'Why Wikipedia Runs Slow' meta
> page, but thought it might get more exposure here on the list. My apologies
> if you've already discussed this in depth....

Maybe you should look in the archives of the
wikitech-l-Mailinglist, not this one.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical
news:news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical

... and post your suggestions there.

Paul


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
Then you haven't been paying attention, have you?  Or are you just ignoring all of those letters which object to your objections?

RickK

Steve Vertigum <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com> wrote:

--- Steve Vertigum
wrote:
 I still havent heard
anybody challenge my principles here. -l

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from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003, Steve Vertigum wrote:
>
> The central objection is to include "statistical" data
> on Israel, while there is not some similar data
> dealing with "occupied territories" for refugees. To
> add data about Israel irrespective of any date about
> refugees would be to prejudice the argument-- it is
> yet another small victory for those who want to
> "legitimize" by propagation of information (like MLP)
> the Israeli side of the equasion-- this time on
> Wikipedia. Go ahead and add it-- I still havent heard
> anybody challenge my principles here.

You haven't heard anyone dispute this because it's
irrelevant to the matter. You are arguing POV, which belongs
to the appropriate Talk: page, or to the meta page that LDan
created over on meta.

Steve, take the matter to the appropriate place.

Geoff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun with domain names

body:
Brion wrote:
>Changes I've just made, which could take a couple
>days to go through the system:

Ah, so that is why I got all those weird 'Zone.Editor@ mmp1###.verio-web.com'
messages. ;)

>- *.wikimedia.org should point directly to larousse
>(had been just wikimedia.org and www.wikimedia.org)
>- mail to wikimedia.org or www.wikimedia.org should
>go to mail.wikipedia.org

I don't know if this is what you wanted, but http://*.wikimedia.org/ displays
the current en.wikipedia database and the domain and subdomain in the address
links are persistant ( see http://meta.wikimedia.org and click around).

>- *.wiktionary.org should point directly to pliny ("")
>- *.wikibook.org, *.wikibook.com should point directly to pliny

Also persistant, but no biggie since the Wikibooks database is displayed.

>- wikibooks.org, www.wikibooks.org should point directly to pliny

Sweet! Wikibooks is at its new home. Thanks Brion!

>I don't know who has wikiquote.org/com, it's not
>in the list that mav sent me last month.

Jimbo bought those and I thought that Jason said he was going to forward them
to http://quote.wikipedia.org ....

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Wikipedia stuck

body:
"Anthere" <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:20030920125847.92054.qmail at web41708.mail.yahoo.com...
> Thinking about it...when Wikipedia was down yesterday,
> only the english wikipedia displayed a red message
> saying  it was not editable, but allowed read only.
> On the french wikipedia, it was just and that was all.
> No warning message saying "well, guys, sorry, we are
> trying to fix the stuff" and not even read-only
> wikipedia.
>
> I don't know if this is due to the existence of the
> two servers and if it would have been possible that
> the fr wikipedia be read only as well.
>
> If it is possible, could it be that we switch to read
> only mode and alert message as well, instead of just
> letting people wondering why the whole site is not
> working at all ?
>
> Sorry if I just don't understand the organisation of
> that at all. I just think it is real bad that people
> just don't know what is going on.

Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about that. We could display an
error message on en: because the requests for en: web pages go to larousse,
and larousse was working fine. The database was on pliny, and that server
was not responding.

Requests for web pages on the other-language wikis go straight to pliny, not
via another webserver. If I had root access (and assuming I also had some
vague understanding of linux networking), I might have been able to pull an
IP aliasing trick like Brion did last time larousse went down. That involves
making larousse pretend to be pliny. I imagine Brion would have attempted
that if he had more time.

Soon, the other-language webserving will also be moved to larousse, which is
fine as long as larousse doesn't crash.

-- Tim Starling <t=starling=physics=unimelb=edu=au>


subject: [Textbook-l] http://wikibooks.org/

body:
Brion wrote:
>Should work as a direct canonical URL now...
>the updates may not have made it through to
>everyone, so I haven't made the old URL into
>a redirect just yet; both textbooks.wikipedia.org
>and wikibooks.org should access it directly.
>
>I've also set up WikiBooks as an interwiki
>prefix on all the wikimedia wikis, it uses the
>new address.

Sweet! Thanks Brion!

--mav


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
Reminds me. There really should be a Wikimedia-l, imho. Wikimedia is more
than just the 'pedia, after all! (Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote...) I'd
kind of like to get in on WM planning discussions- I worked for a nonprofit
(in education, at that) for 5 years, was at one point in charge of
reorganizing all the documentation and policy for it, have dealt with a lot
of this stuff before.

-- Jake


from_name: Anthere

body:
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 23:46:53 +1000
> From: "Tim Starling" <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Wikipedia stuck
> To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <bkhlmr$atp$1 at sea.gmane.org>

> Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about
> that. We could display an
> error message on en: because the requests for en:
> web pages go to larousse,
> and larousse was working fine. The database was on
> pliny, and that server
> was not responding.
>
> Requests for web pages on the other-language wikis
> go straight to pliny, not
> via another webserver. If I had root access (and
> assuming I also had some
> vague understanding of linux networking), I might
> have been able to pull an
> IP aliasing trick like Brion did last time larousse
> went down. That involves
> making larousse pretend to be pliny. I imagine Brion
> would have attempted
> that if he had more time.
>
> Soon, the other-language webserving will also be
> moved to larousse, which is
> fine as long as larousse doesn't crash.
>
> -- Tim Starling <t=starling=physics=unimelb=edu=au>

Okay. Thanks very much for the explanation Tim.

Anthere

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
--- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Sep 2003, Steve Vertigum wrote:
> >
> > The central objection is to include "statistical"
> data
> > on Israel, while there is not some similar data
> > dealing with "occupied territories" for refugees.
> To
> > add data about Israel irrespective of any date
> about
> > refugees would be to prejudice the argument-- it
> is
> > yet another small victory for those who want to
> > "legitimize" by propagation of information (like
> MLP)
> > the Israeli side of the equasion-- this time on
> > Wikipedia. Go ahead and add it-- I still havent
> heard
> > anybody challenge my principles here.
>
> You haven't heard anyone dispute this because it's
> irrelevant to the matter. You are arguing POV, which
> belongs
> to the appropriate Talk: page, or to the meta page
> that LDan
> created over on meta.
>
> Steve, take the matter to the appropriate place.
>
> Geoff
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Textbook-l] http://wikibooks.org/

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Should work as a direct canonical URL now... the
> updates may not have
> made it through to everyone, so I haven't made the
> old URL into a
> redirect just yet; both textbooks.wikipedia.org and
> wikibooks.org should
> access it directly.
>
> I've also set up WikiBooks as an interwiki prefix on
> all the wikimedia
> wikis, it uses the new address.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Cool! Thanks, Brion. Is it possible to do the same for
http://www.wikiquote.org/ ?
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Break

body:
> --- Steve Vertigum
> <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> And can we consult a solicitor on the copyright
> issue?
>
> The central objection is to include "statistical"
> data
> on Israel, while there is not some similar data
> dealing with "occupied territories" for refugees. To
> add data about Israel irrespective of any date about
> refugees would be to prejudice the argument-- it is
> yet another small victory for those who want to
> "legitimize" by propagation of information (like
> MLP)
> the Israeli side of the equasion-- this time on
> Wikipedia. Go ahead and add it-- I still havent
> heard
> anybody challenge my principles here.  Once again,
> this would represent a way to establish legitimacy
> for
> a state which has violated more international
> sanctions than any other, has legalized torture, and
> still asks people to regard its behaviours as
> sacrosact and saintly.  There is every good reason
> to
> postpone any action on this -- the project has gone
> along fine for years without them. Until some of the
> more fluid concerns are dealt with -- siezed lands,
> illegitimate territories, etc.  I find it
> disappointing that people her fail to have the
> cajones
> to adhere to basic principle. They are just numbers
> after all.
>
>
> With due respect,
> ~S~

The US doesn't have data on illegal immigrants, yet we
still allow its data to be on 30,000 pages. Should we
say that since the US doesn't have data on illegal
immigrants, by using their data, we are allowing their
argument of saying that illegal immigrants shouldn't
be counted is good? Of course not. And if you dispute
that, it has already been decided by precident and
changing that decision would require the deletion of
thousands of pages with the creation of a new bot
that's potentially destructive.
LDan

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from_name: Merritt L. Perkins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

body:
          Servers
          I have wanted a simple easy to understand description of what
servers are and what they do.  Here is what I have figured out.
          After reading the discussions about servers I looked in
catalogs and read the descriptions of the servers that they had to offer.
 A server is very much like an ordinary personal computer except it is
larger and may have several very large hard drives to provide a lot of
memory.  There has to be some way that other servers or computers can
connect to it and communicate with it.  An ordinary personal computer
could be used as a server but it couldn't store very much information.
          One server model may have a full tower case, large power
supply, special motherboard with two to four microprocessors, and six
10,000 rpm SCSI hard drives four of which are hot-swappable (can be
changed while the server is operating).  They cost about $6,000.
          Several servers may be involved in routing a call from your
computer to its destination.  One server may be able to handle the calls
from several computers at the same time.  A group of several servers may
be located in one place and do different things and more than one can be
loaded with the same data so that if one server fails another can take
over or more than one server can share the traffic.
      As the Encyclopedia gets larger and activity increases Wikipedia
will probably need more and more server capacity.
          Merritt L. Perkins
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Donations

body:
          Donations
          I think that before a person donates he would like to know how
much has already been donated, how many donations have been made, and
perhaps the amount of the smallest and largest donation in each currency.
 If one person donates twice it would be counted as two donations.
Most people probably would not want their name, date, or amount of their
donation published and it would be a lot of extra work to publish such a
list.  If you want to keep such a record for your own information that is
up to you but I think it is not necessary.
                             Merritt L. Perkins
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
--- Adam Raizen <araizen at newmail.net> wrote:

> 69 municipalities, 141 local councils, and 53
> regional councils, for a
> total of 263 articles. The local councils and
> regional councils contain
> smaller towns within them, but I don't have data on
> them, so at present
> any information about them will have to be added
> manually.

I see-- and what treatment are you giving to towns
which exist in violation of the various UN and
US-Israel agreements over the years?

Its only been the past couple months that Israel has
bent to international pressure to dismantle a
settlement -- how are you treating these? Are these
registered as non-existent?  Are you adding the former
Arabic names of towns, recently  and not-so recently
incorporated into Israel?

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 11:04, Steve Vertigum wrote:
> I see-- and what treatment are you giving to towns
> which exist in violation of the various UN and
> US-Israel agreements over the years?

I've no idea whether they're in Adam's data or not, but if they _exist_,
they _exist_ and this fact should be noted.

> Its only been the past couple months that Israel has
> bent to international pressure to dismantle a
> settlement -- how are you treating these? Are these
> registered as non-existent?  Are you adding the former
> Arabic names of towns, recently  and not-so recently
> incorporated into Israel?

Steve, do you *HAVE THIS DATA*?

If you *HAVE IT*, you can add it.

If you don't have it, please see about finding it, because we'd all love
to have it in the 'pedia, but you seem to be the most interested. That
gives you the responsibility for satisfying your own interests and
getting the data.

Write to the UN. Write to the Palestinian Authority. Write to whatever
watchdog, peace, justice, and relief organizations you think might have
information, and *get it* and *add it*. BE BOLD IN UPDATING PAGES!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Geoffrey Thomas

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

body:
--- "Merritt L. Perkins" <mlperkins3 at juno.com> wrote:
>           Servers
>           I have wanted a simple easy to understand description of what
> servers are and what they do.  Here is what I have figured out.
>           After reading the discussions about servers I looked in
> catalogs and read the descriptions of the servers that they had to offer.
>  A server is very much like an ordinary personal computer except it is
> larger and may have several very large hard drives to provide a lot of
> memory.  There has to be some way that other servers or computers can
> connect to it and communicate with it.  An ordinary personal computer
> could be used as a server but it couldn't store very much information.
>           One server model may have a full tower case, large power
> supply, special motherboard with two to four microprocessors, and six
> 10,000 rpm SCSI hard drives four of which are hot-swappable (can be
> changed while the server is operating).  They cost about $6,000.
>           Several servers may be involved in routing a call from your
> computer to its destination.  One server may be able to handle the calls
> from several computers at the same time.  A group of several servers may
> be located in one place and do different things and more than one can be
> loaded with the same data so that if one server fails another can take
> over or more than one server can share the traffic.
>       As the Encyclopedia gets larger and activity increases Wikipedia
> will probably need more and more server capacity.
>           Merritt L. Perkins

Can you license this to the GFDL so it can be included (with some
adaptations) in the article [[Server]]? The current article is a bit
short.

[[User:Geoffrey]] Thomas

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from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:

>>69 municipalities, 141 local councils, and 53
>>regional councils, for a
>>total of 263 articles. The local councils and
>>regional councils contain
>>smaller towns within them, but I don't have data on
>>them, so at present
>>any information about them will have to be added
>>manually.
>>
>>
>
>I see-- and what treatment are you giving to towns
>which exist in violation of the various UN and
>US-Israel agreements over the years?
>
>Its only been the past couple months that Israel has
>bent to international pressure to dismantle a
>settlement -- how are you treating these? Are these
>registered as non-existent?  Are you adding the former
>Arabic names of towns, recently  and not-so recently
>incorporated into Israel?
>
>
First of all, he's already mentioned that data on the territories (West
Bank, Gaza Strip) is not included, which is where most of these issues
would arise.  The remaining disputed areas are the Golan Heights and
East Jerusalem; in both cases the issues could be solved simply by
linking to those two articles, which explain the disputed situation.

As for former names, I'd say add them if you have them; if not, they can
be added later.  Most of the cities and towns in Turkey have former
Greek names (as well as many former Greek residents, who have since been
made into refugees), and I don't see anyone objecting that we're
including data biased towards the occupying Turkish government in
Wikipedia.  (In fact, I think there are lots of Greece/Turkey and
Palestine/Israel parallels, but that's another matter).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
--- Adam Raizen <araizen at newmail.net> wrote:
> Just to clarify, and to give Steve more ammunition
> to attack the data
> :-), there's no data on *Palestinians* in the
> territories, but there is
> data on Israeli settlements. (That is, it's data on
> citizens of Israel,
> so it includes data on Druze in the Golan and Arabs
> in East Jerusalem.)
> For the settlements in the territories, the fact
> that they're in the
> territories is noted in the article.
>
> If anyone has data on Ramallah, Nablus, etc., please
> add it. It's just
> that the Israeli government doesn't collect it.
>
> -- Adam Raizen

Before Steve gets into his screaming rants, I think we
should come up with constructive solutions. Maybe you
should add a notice on all of the pages that they only
refer to citizens of Israel.
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
> I see-- and what treatment are you giving to towns
> which exist in violation of the various UN and
> US-Israel agreements over the years?
>
> Its only been the past couple months that Israel has
> bent to international pressure to dismantle a
> settlement -- how are you treating these? Are these
> registered as non-existent?  Are you adding the
> former
> Arabic names of towns, recently  and not-so recently
> incorporated into Israel?
>
> ~S~

Seeing as those towns, which you say shouldn't be
there, exist, I think they should have articles. And I
don't think that a lack of certain information can be
enough to say that other information can't be
uploaded.
LDan

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from_name: Gustav Foseid

subject: [WikiEN-l] Edting [[Norway]]

body:
I (Gustavf) believe I have become involved in an edit war over a small
detail on the [[Norway]] page with user Heine. Could an administrator
please take a look at it and decide if the page needs protection.

If the page is protected a small note on the talk page would be
appreciated.

--
Gustav Foseid


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Contributions Bug

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 13:09, Nils Kehrein wrote:
> Hi,
>
> when the page is loaded, and one clicks on "next 50" (or what it is
> named in english) it really shows the next fifty contributions
> starting from #101, not #51.

'next'/'prev' buttons are known to be faulty there, it's using the
offset in the wrong place.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

body:
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:

>           One server model may have a full tower case, large power
> supply, special motherboard with two to four microprocessors, and six
> 10,000 rpm SCSI hard drives four of which are hot-swappable (can be
> changed while the server is operating).  They cost about $6,000.
>
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/2216141


subject: [Wikitech-l] errors in German database?

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 16:31, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Could somebody please check the German database for errors?
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Whatlinkshere&target=Maggie_Simspon
> shows no results, but
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Seiten%2C_die_gel%F6scht_werden_sollten
> links there.
>
> Spezial:Whatlinkshere today also listed a page that didn't link to the
> pertaining page (sorry, I closed the browser tab too quick and forgot
> which page it was).

The link tables aren't very reliable. Hell, none of this is reliable. We
don't wrap anything in transactions, so an update can die partway
through (between SQL statements) and leave things inconsistent between
tables.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
--- Adam Raizen <araizen at newmail.net> wrote:

> If anyone has data on Ramallah, Nablus, etc., please
> add it. It's just
> that the Israeli government doesn't collect it.
>

Well that certainly says it all.  :|

Brion's point is well taken -- cprompt's is not.

Im glad to hear that the number of articles is rather
small -- only a few hundred -- meaning that what takes
Adam one fell swoop will take me only a couple years
to edit, etc. :)  In all honesty I cant fault the use
of these stats as a starting point-- just nobody get
in my way when I edit them -- with the claim that
these numbers are more legitimate or official.

I look forward to it-- its of course easier to
bulldoze over things than it is to build them.

Seriously, I appreciate the honest and attemtps to
answer the unanswerable--(Be glad you have someone to
represent an opposing view) Ga'bless you all -- except
you C'prompt, you jerk.

-S-

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
> Well that certainly says it all.  :|
>
> Brion's point is well taken -- cprompt's is not.
>
> Im glad to hear that the number of articles is
> rather
> small -- only a few hundred -- meaning that what
> takes
> Adam one fell swoop will take me only a couple years
> to edit, etc. :)  In all honesty I cant fault the
> use
> of these stats as a starting point-- just nobody get
> in my way when I edit them -- with the claim that
> these numbers are more legitimate or official.
>
> I look forward to it-- its of course easier to
> bulldoze over things than it is to build them.
>
> Seriously, I appreciate the honest and attemtps to
> answer the unanswerable--(Be glad you have someone
> to
> represent an opposing view) Ga'bless you all --
> except
> you C'prompt, you jerk.
>
> -S-

So, you're going to find some other source of
statistics and replace the statistics that are
currently there? Every source is contravercial and
someone opposes it.

If you manage to find UN statistics that don't have
less data, then I wouldn't object, but I just think
that such statistics don't exist. I don't see what's
the problem with the Israeli statistics. You *still*
haven't even presented a motive for Israel to do
something wrong with the statistics, letalone proof.
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
I disagree.  That should be on one page that is linked to from each of the pages, which Adam is already doing.

RickK

Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Adam Raizen wrote:
> Just to clarify, and to give Steve more ammunition
> to attack the data
> :-), there's no data on *Palestinians* in the
> territories, but there is
> data on Israeli settlements. (That is, it's data on
> citizens of Israel,
> so it includes data on Druze in the Golan and Arabs
> in East Jerusalem.)
> For the settlements in the territories, the fact
> that they're in the
> territories is noted in the article.
>
> If anyone has data on Ramallah, Nablus, etc., please
> add it. It's just
> that the Israeli government doesn't collect it.
>
> -- Adam Raizen

Before Steve gets into his screaming rants, I think we
should come up with constructive solutions. Maybe you
should add a notice on all of the pages that they only
refer to citizens of Israel.
LDan

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from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

body:
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:
> I have wanted a simple easy to understand description of what
> servers are and what they do.  Here is what I have figured out.

Dear Merrit, could you please,

1) Describe how this is relevant to this list?

2) Make similar research into the concept "annoying newbie"?

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


from_name: Adam Raizen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Have you anything better that can be uploaded en
>>masse?
>>
>>The bot's being set up now. It's only a few hundred
>>pages, which is
>>peanuts to a project this size. They can be improved
>>individually or en
>>masse if there's anything more than empty talk.
>
>
> I understand. How many is a "few hundred"?

69 municipalities, 141 local councils, and 53 regional councils, for a
total of 263 articles. The local councils and regional councils contain
smaller towns within them, but I don't have data on them, so at present
any information about them will have to be added manually.

-- Adam Raizen


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
> But it is true that many German Wikipedias (and I'm one of them) think
> that things are evolving much too slow,

We are all volunteers here so I don't know why you think things are moving so
slow. Everything seems to be running at an acceptable level considering the
fact that we have grown from the 10,000th most popular website to the 1,000th
most popular website in less than half a year. Sorry, but I just don't have
sympathy for people who are impatient in light of these two facts.

>and that there isn't much we can do about it.

We could use more developers and more cash. That is something that can be
done.

>Our servers have been much too slow most of the time, but
> Ibiblio has offered to host parts of the project or the whole thing if
> we wanted.

And Ibliblio would magically not be slow while hosting the 1,000th most
popular website on the Internet while also hosting many other websites for
free?

>I'm sure others would also host Wikipedia with greatest
> pleasure. But Jimbo has rejected this offer.

It is important for our developers to have complete access to the servers that
Wikimedia projects run on. Otherwise outages will be significantly longer and
we would not have any way to fix things ourselves when it is the server that
is the problem. Read only mirrors are a very real possibility but in order to
get that to work we need somebody to code the functionality. Jimbo supports
the idea of read only mirrors but somebody has to code that to make it happen
in a near real time and seemless way. Any volunteers?

> Now we are waiting for him to fill out the foundation's request for tax
> exempt status,

And how is that going to be useful to anybody outside of the US? IIRC the
paperwork has been filed but we are waiting on the super-efficient US federal
government to make a decision. Sorry, but Jimbo can't control that.

>to open a German/European bank account,

Paypal accepts Euros and last time I checked Euros was the currency of
Germany. But there are still plans to open a German/European bank account if
that would make donating across the pond cheaper, but these plans are only a
month or two old. Give Jimbo some breathing room and volunteer info on which
banks would be best and even volunteer to act as an agent of the Wikimedia
Foundation so that /you/ can open up the account on behalf of the foundation.
/That/ would move the whole thing along. Remember Jimbo also has a business
to run and nobody is paid to work on any Wikimedia project.

>to buy a new server, etc.

The parts needed to upgrade our two severs has /already/ been bought by Jimbo
and are going to arrive this week and be installed by Jason free of charge
care of Jimbo. BTW, it is a bit selfish to think that he should continue to
fork out more and more cash after already spending so much on Wikimedia. Give
the guy a break and donate some Euros so that we can buy a new database
server.

/You/ can do a lot more than just complain.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Textbook-l] http://wikibooks.org/

body:
LDan wrote:
>Cool! Thanks, Brion. Is it possible to do the same for
>http://www.wikiquote.org/ ?

He would have if he had access to the admin interface to manage those domain
names. Only Jason and Jimbo have the username and password info for those
domains so far.

--mav


from_name: Nils Kehrein

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Contributions Bug

body:
Hi,

when the page is loaded, and one clicks on "next 50" (or what it is
named in english) it really shows the next fifty contributions
starting from #101, not #51.

Regards,
Nils.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion for better response times

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 18:29, E23 wrote:
> Example: n processes arrive at the same time. If the necessary CPU time
> for every process is t seconds, all processes will finish after t*n
> seconds in a concurrent system.
>
> If, on the other hand, the processes run completely serialized, one
> after another, the first process will finish after t seconds, the second
> one after 2*t seconds and so on up to n*t seconds for the n:th process.
> This gives an average running time of t*n/2 seconds, with a worst case
> time of t*n.

My very naive quick testing shows that while there is an improvement in
the median time when locking kicks in, there is no significant
difference in average (mean) response time; the shorter times for some
are paid for by a significant increase in the length and proportion of
slow responses for others.

See benchmark:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_response_times
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/1/1d/Lock-times.png

Of course, I could be doing something wrong, and this benchmark is very
very naive, making no attempt to work with different types of requests.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: JDG

subject: [Wikitech-l] Why Wikipedia Runs Slow - A Suggestion

body:
Hopefully I have the right list now...

I was a developer a while back for the (purportedly) 17th busiest website in
the world and though the sysadmins were more directly involved in improving
response speed, I ended up doing a lot of stuff myself. The way that
Wikipedia is slow is very similar to problems we had. The delays are almost
all in the initial request for new pages. Once the connection is made,
content usually comes across rapidly. This usually points to some sort of
full queue in software, or a full queue due to excessive connections on a
single machine causing a hardware wait state. New url requests are made to
stand in line, sometimes because settings for maximum simultaneous
connections are too low, or the settings are high enough but all RAM is
consumed servicing current requests, etc,. This may seem obvious, but it
lets us de-emphasize other potential problems such as bloated overworked DB,
bogged disk fetches, etc. So, based on all this, I would say the greatest
single improvement would be to set up some sort of simple DNS round robin
(true load balancing could come later). I'm not sure what your current
server setup is, but if you could have at least two Apache servers running
on two machines with one of them running the Round Robin algorithm I think
the majority of your response problems would disappear. Don't listen to
those who say Round Robin is a naive approach. It's true that allocation of
new connections is done in a "dumb" way (in a two server setup it will just
throw every other connection to the secondary webserver)-- but that's all
you really need, I think. Suddenly each machine is servicing half the client
connections and everything is fast... Of course, maybe the reasons for your
slowness are more complex, but based on what I can see from the client side
my suspicion is that a simple Round Robin would clear it all up and that
simply adding new Apache processes on new servers as you grow would make you
at least 10 times faster during peak times than at present. -- JDG --


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
Just wanted to say that Steve is a jerk and I support your efforts to
make the Wikipedia as complete as possible, given the data available to
us. :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Steve Vertigum wrote:
>
>>> 69 municipalities, 141 local councils, and 53
>>> regional councils, for a total of 263 articles. The local councils and
>>> regional councils contain smaller towns within them, but I don't have
>>> data on
>>> them, so at present any information about them will have to be added
>>> manually.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I see-- and what treatment are you giving to towns
>> which exist in violation of the various UN and
>> US-Israel agreements over the years?
>> Its only been the past couple months that Israel has
>> bent to international pressure to dismantle a
>> settlement -- how are you treating these? Are these
>> registered as non-existent?  Are you adding the former
>> Arabic names of towns, recently  and not-so recently
>> incorporated into Israel?
>>
> First of all, he's already mentioned that data on the territories (West
> Bank, Gaza Strip) is not included, which is where most of these issues
> would arise.  The remaining disputed areas are the Golan Heights and
> East Jerusalem; in both cases the issues could be solved simply by
> linking to those two articles, which explain the disputed situation.

Just to clarify, and to give Steve more ammunition to attack the data
:-), there's no data on *Palestinians* in the territories, but there is
data on Israeli settlements. (That is, it's data on citizens of Israel,
so it includes data on Druze in the Golan and Arabs in East Jerusalem.)
For the settlements in the territories, the fact that they're in the
territories is noted in the article.

If anyone has data on Ramallah, Nablus, etc., please add it. It's just
that the Israeli government doesn't collect it.

-- Adam Raizen


from_name: Joachim Kerschbaumer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
Mav wrote:
> but I'm sure we could post periodic PDFs with the dates and amounts (no names).

That was what I meant. Names/country is just optional (paypal free-TXT
could be used for that).

>>A lot of comments (especially on the german wikipedia) are always "What is this Wikimedia-Fondation"...
>So far the Foundation is just Jimbo and the reason you should trust him...

It took me totally by suprise, I think you really got me wrong. I said
"comments", this is not my opinion!!!
I trust Jimbo, nearly as much as you ;-)
But: There are a lot of people in Europe that are sceptical when they
hear "An american Organisation..." so I would like to show them:
Wikimedia is totally open, you can trust this guys. But I need a little
bit support in proving that, so the request for this list was just an
Idea how to improve the trust of european people in an american
organisaion.

>Slow down - we still need to set the darn thing up.

Sorry for hurrying, it is just a strange feeling to send out a
Wikimedia-pressrelease and asking for donations and then when people ask
"Sending money to America...???" you have to explain and explain...
But it is mainly the responsability of the german wikipedia to make this
things clear for Germany. Sadly my Wiki-time is currently really
restricted due to holiday (my wife want's me to take even Wiki-holidays
on our Holidays... ;-)
I tried to start the german donations-page and I hope I get some support
in my efforts on this on de.wikipedia.

> last thing we need is for people to think that the size of their donations
> somehow gives them more power in our community.

I agree with you, and that was not the point. The point was: a user
currently has just no way to check that his money was received
somewhere. So one way to check would be the list with date/amount, even
without name would be a help. Just to see "aha, it seems to have
arrived".

> For now at least, this info will have to be placed on a page on meta. I think
> I heard that we have received about US$1,000 in donations so far and that
> Jimbo put a couple thousand in the account when he opened it.

That is exactly what I am looking for. If you could make public this
infos would be great.

I hope you understand now what I meant and thanks for your time,
Fantasy :-)

PS:
> Er, ah, I just volunteered to be treasurer...
On my list of trustworthy people on Wikipedia you are number one, you
have my support ;-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
I can not believe it, again!

Mav, just in the moment I pressed the send-button to the previous email
I got this comment on the German Donations-Page:

"Ohne eine eigene Organisation in Deutschland ist die Wikipedia, bzw.
die deutsche Wikipedia mit all ihren Anspr?chen doch sowieso zum
Scheitern verurteilt. Gibt es etwa keine?!!!"

translated:
"Without a separate Organisation the German Wikipedia with all its
Claims is condemned to fail anyway. Is there really not one?!!!"

Maybe with comments like this you can imagine how hard it is to tell
people in Germany "Wikipedia is hosted in America"...

Sorry to bother you again with this,
Fantasy :-)


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
Joachim Kerschbaumer wrote:

> translated:
> "Without a separate Organisation the German Wikipedia with all its
> Claims is condemned to fail anyway. Is there really not one?!!!"
>
> Maybe with comments like this you can imagine how hard it is to tell
> people in Germany "Wikipedia is hosted in America"...

Come on Fantasy, Heinz is a known troll, don't take this serious.

But it is true that many German Wikipedias (and I'm one of them) think
that things are evolving much too slow, and that there isn't much we can
do about it. Our servers have been much too slow most of the time, but
Ibiblio has offered to host parts of the project or the whole thing if
we wanted. I'm sure others would also host Wikipedia with greatest
pleasure. But Jimbo has rejected this offer.
Now we are waiting for him to fill out the foundation's request for tax
exempt status, to open a German/European bank account, to buy a new
server, etc.

I know this sounds ungrateful, and I'm sorry for this. I adore Jimbo for
what he has done, and I'm very thankful that he has spend so much money
on the project. But it's also true that he's a bottle-neck like most
benevolent dictators are.

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

body:
          Server
          Please feel free to use what I wrote about servers in any way
you like.  If you want to use it in am Encyclopedia article it needs to
be edited to remove the first person references and written in the third
person.  Allowance needs to be made for the fact that the Encyclopedia
will be read as some indefinite time in the future.
          I tried to write this as an introductory explanation of what
servers are and what they do.  It would seem silly to a person who spends
all day working with servers but most computer users understand little
about servers.
You may find information about servers in ?howstuffworks? on the
Internet.
Most people who work with computers don't know much about electronics.
They would not know what I was talking about if I described a circuit
board using an LM3900N quad comparator which could choose which one of 4
outposts to actuate depending on the value of the resistor connected to
the input.  They would not know anything about operational amplifiers.
They would not know that LM stands for linear monolithic or what that
means.
I am a life member of IEEE, a life member of Computer Society, and
subscribe to Dr. Dobbs Journal but most people never heard of them.  They
give me access to a vast amount of technical information but I have made
little use of it.
When I get the time. I would like to write Encyclopedia articles on many
subjects: Rose of Sharon, Jesse Ramsden, Queen Christiana of Sweden,
Count Rumsford, William Strutt, vitamin B12, screws and a long list of
other subjects.  I would need to look and see what is already in the
Encyclopedia.
I started collecting information about vitamin B12 after I was diagnosed
as having pernicious anemia, which is easily treated.
                    Merritt L. Perkins
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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
> Joachim Kerschbaumer wrote:
>
>> translated:
>> "Without a separate Organisation the German Wikipedia with all its
>> Claims is condemned to fail anyway. Is there really not one?!!!"
>>
>> Maybe with comments like this you can imagine how hard it is to tell
>> people in Germany "Wikipedia is hosted in America"...
>
>
> Come on Fantasy, Heinz is a known troll, don't take this serious.
>
> But it is true that many German Wikipedias (and I'm one of them) think
> that things are evolving much too slow, and that there isn't much we can
> do about it. Our servers have been much too slow most of the time, but
> Ibiblio has offered to host parts of the project or the whole thing if
> we wanted. I'm sure others would also host Wikipedia with greatest
> pleasure. But Jimbo has rejected this offer.
> Now we are waiting for him to fill out the foundation's request for tax
> exempt status, to open a German/European bank account, to buy a new
> server, etc.
>
> I know this sounds ungrateful, and I'm sorry for this. I adore Jimbo for
> what he has done, and I'm very thankful that he has spend so much money
> on the project. But it's also true that he's a bottle-neck like most
> benevolent dictators are.
>
>
> Kurt

It's also my feeling and I suppose that it's the case of a lot of other contributors.

Looxix


subject: [Wikitech-l] errors in German database?

body:
Could somebody please check the German database for errors?
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Whatlinkshere&target=Maggie_Simspon
shows no results, but
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Seiten%2C_die_gel%F6scht_werden_sollten
links there.

Spezial:Whatlinkshere today also listed a page that didn't link to the
pertaining page (sorry, I closed the browser tab too quick and forgot
which page it was).

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 00:03, Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:
> Sorry for my newbies question, but there's something i dont
> understand. Many web site around the world have only one DB
> server and many load balancing web server. Slashdot for
> example IIRC. Ok it must be a quadri processor... but it's
> very fast !
>
> I'm not really sure, that pliny is the bottleneck.

At the moment, for the most part it's not -- because we've turned off a
lot of features that are heavy on the database. Searching, 'wanted
pages', 'orphans', etc.

Of course, it's further loaded down by serving web pages for everything
but the English-language site, since larousse is much too loaded by that
to take the rest on.

> The Larousse server is a piii866, it's a bit short for what we want
>  to do I think. I hope the next upgrade will improve Larousse,
>  then we'll can move other wikis to it. And we'll see if Pliny
>  is really the bottleneck.

The current upgrade plan is to upgrade both pliny and larousse to
similar levels (dual Athlon 2800s, iirc), and hopefully get the web load
better handled. This should happen in the next few days. Hopefully we'll
get warning before the downtime, which hopefully will be short. :)

Then there is talk of next getting a big honkin' server for the
database, which will leave pliny free as a second web server.

Database replication meanwhile can be handy for several things:

* Live backup server! If the master database server dies, but we've got
a replicated server keeping up constantly, we can switch over to it
fairly quickly and stay online.

* Performance. If we get all those slow things turned back on, the load
on the database will increase. Relatively slow check-a- hojillion-pages
operations could be run from a slave server without affecting
performance for everyday reading & writing.

* Mirroring? An offsite server with its own copy of the database being
updated live could provide a more (or perhaps fully-) functional mirror,
offloading traffic from the main server and somewhat reducing response
times (for read-only operations at least) for people far from North
America.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki namespace operational

body:
Remember this post?

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005988.html

You all thought I was just daydreaming didn't you? heheheh :)

I have implemented a feature whereby almost all text messages in MediaWiki
can be edited through the web interface. It is in CVS, and in my directory
on larousse:

http://test.wikipedia.org/w/tim/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:All_messages

I've sent this to both wikitech-l and wikipedia-l. Hopefully it's not too
technical for wikipedia-l.

Features
---------
* wfMsg now checks the database for a page in the MediaWiki namespace, by
the same name as the message. If it finds it, it loads it. If it doesn't, it
falls back to Language.php
* Reasonably efficient (more on this later)
* The install script automatically creates articles for all the messages
existing in the language file. By default, all these articles are protected.
There are myriad security problems associated with allowing anyone to edit
any message. We will unprotect the ones which we decide are safe.
* The UI is [[MediaWiki:All messages]], which is created by the install
script. It contains a table with all the message names, edit links for each
one, default text and current text.
* To make the "current text" column possible, I have added an extra markup
entity: {{MSGNW:recentchangestext}} will be replaced with an escaped version
of that message as the page is rendered. {{MSG:recentchangestext}} is the
unescaped version.
* While I was at it, I added a frivolous crowd-pleasing feature:
{{SUBST:xxxx}}. This tag is replaced by the given message as the article is
saved, just like ~~~~ signatures. Hence someone could easily create a
[[MediaWiki:Stubwarning]] article, and then append {{SUBST:stubwarning}} to
the bottom of a stub article, which would automatically be expanded to the
standard stub boilerplate when the user clicks "save".
* The wfMsg behaviour is controlled with $wgUseDatabaseMessages, and is off
by default. The substitution tags cannot be turned off at this point in
time.

Caveats
---------
* No handy "edit this page" link on special pages just yet
* There's a minor problem with message names that have spaces in them. No
big deal.
* The new namespaces (there's a MediaWiki_talk as well of course) don't show
up in the power search yet

Efficiency
---------
* Two cache levels:
    - a per-thread cache in a PHP static variable. This is mainly for the
benefit of wfGetDB, which gets the "noconnect" and "nodb" messages every
time there is a query.
    - memcached (untested). My use of memcached is documented in
memcached.doc
* I have written in DefaultSettings.php that use of this feature is not
recommended unless memcached is installed. If memcached turns out to be too
slow for this application, we can always use shared memory.
* The time required for substitution tags should be insignificant.

The main motivation for this feature is to allow other-language wikipedias
to translate their interfaces more easily. However, there are also gains for
en:, since we can use these pages in a way similar to the way
[[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] is used.

Note that my previous attempt at implementing something like this, involving
putting colons at the start of messages, has been deleted.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Break

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 23:00, Steve Vertigum wrote:
> --- Adam Raizen <araizen at newmail.net> wrote:
>
> > If anyone has data on Ramallah, Nablus, etc., please
> > add it. It's just
> > that the Israeli government doesn't collect it.
> >
>
> Well that certainly says it all.  :|
>
> Brion's point is well taken -- cprompt's is not.
>
> Im glad to hear that the number of articles is rather
> small -- only a few hundred -- meaning that what takes
> Adam one fell swoop will take me only a couple years
> to edit, etc. :)  In all honesty I cant fault the use
> of these stats as a starting point-- just nobody get
> in my way when I edit them -- with the claim that
> these numbers are more legitimate or official.
>
> I look forward to it-- its of course easier to
> bulldoze over things than it is to build them.
>
> Seriously, I appreciate the honest and attemtps to
> answer the unanswerable--(Be glad you have someone to
> represent an opposing view) Ga'bless you all -- except
> you C'prompt, you jerk.
>
> -S-
The color of my face is best described as crimson.

I meant that off-list to Adam, and the word jerk was intended
lightheartedly. I tried to reply to my own posting to explain that,
after I realized I had addressed the list..only that time, the reply WAS
offlist, and shortly after I received a reply.

I apologize for being offensive and insulting, even if (and especially
if) it was targetted at someone who was not intended to hear it. Here's
the original message I meant to send.

     From:
cprompt
<cprompt at tmbg.org>
 Reply-To:
cprompt at tmbg.org
       To:
cprompt at tmbg.org
  Subject:
Re:
[WikiEN-l]
Re: Break
     Date:
Sun, 21 Sep
2003
18:53:48
+0000

On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 18:49, cprompt wrote:
> Just wanted to say that Steve is a jerk and I support your efforts to
> make the Wikipedia as complete as possible, given the data available
to
> us. :-)
>
hehe..that was meant to be offlist to Adam. Before I get lashed (as I
should be), I knew that I shouldn' tbe using the word jerk. A better
phrase would be "playing devil's advocate", which is more at what Steve
seemed to be doing, with the what-if scenarios and arguing for NPOV,
even if others didn't deem it to be NPOV. I felt that Adam would
interpret it as light-hearted as I meant it, but I don't think that
others on the list would feel that way.

Attached is a JPG of how red my face is! :-) (#FF0000, i think)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stats

body:
On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 01:00, Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:
> Hey Brion,
>
> No stats this week ?
>
> Maybe we passed the 300 000 and you dont want somebody know that ;-)

Erik Zachte, the statsmaster, has some updates to the stats script and
asked me to hold off on running them until he had it ready.

I hope they didn't get lost by my spam filters. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > It is important for our developers to have complete access
> to the servers that
> > Wikimedia projects run on. Otherwise outages will be
> significantly longer and
> > we would not have any way to fix things ourselves when it
> is the server that
> > is the problem. Read only mirrors are a very real
> possibility but in order to
> > get that to work we need somebody to code the
> functionality. Jimbo supports
> > the idea of read only mirrors but somebody has to code that
> to make it happen
> > in a near real time and seemless way. Any volunteers?
>
> Me, me! :)
>
> I've started working on DB replication. We should be able to set up a
> remote slave server once I'm done. The MySQL manual says you can even
> have slave servers connecting over a modem, just dialling up
> occasionally to get the latest updates. So having one in a different
> city or something shouldn't be a problem. There might be a
> few UI issues
>   to sort out. I guess we'd have to set up a method of
> mirroring images
> too.

Sorry for my newbies question, but there's something i dont understand. Many web site around the world have only one DB server and many load balancing web server. Slashdot for example IIRC. Ok it must be a quadri processor... but it's very fast !

I'm not really sure, that pliny is the bottleneck.

The Larousse server is a piii866, it's a bit short for what we want to do I think. I hope the next upgrade will improve Larousse, then we'll can move other wikis to it. And we'll see if Pliny is really the bottleneck.

My 2 cents


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memory leak in apache on pliny?

body:
I found it leaking again and have restarted Apache. Further, I've
changed the cronjob which did a soft ('graceful') Apache restart every
half hour during US midday into a hard restart every hour (on the 34
minute mark) all day long.

This could cut off downloads, which kinda sucks.

Also, I've changed 'go' to avoid the fulltext search (on the title field
only, but still these often get stuck) if $wgDisableTextSearch is on.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Hello.

I've been following the discussions on the problems with the web
servers. It seems that there are too many concurrent processes for the
limited hardware we are currently using. I believe I read numbers
somewhere of a steady load of 20+ processes in the run queue on one of
the servers. Of course there will be a lot of context switching going
on, with some overhead. But worse, it will guarantee that all processes
get the worst possible total running time.

Example: n processes arrive at the same time. If the necessary CPU time
for every process is t seconds, all processes will finish after t*n
seconds in a concurrent system.

If, on the other hand, the processes run completely serialized, one
after another, the first process will finish after t seconds, the second
one after 2*t seconds and so on up to n*t seconds for the n:th process.
This gives an average running time of t*n/2 seconds, with a worst case
time of t*n.

In other words, I think we could gain a significant performance gain by
reducing the number of concurrent processes. I admit I have no idea how
this works today, if there is such a limit in place already. Nor do I
know whether this can be easily solved with some apache or PHP directive
  (although I find it very likely).

With this in mind, you can have a look at the attached code, which
should illustrate the concept. It can surely be optimized, I don't need
pointed out what kind of atrocity it is to implement counting semaphores
by using MySQL named locks. Nevertheless, it was quickly implemented and
works quite well. Also, any overhead from implementation inefficiencies
is too small to be easily measured on my not-too-powerful PC. If it has
the predicted effect, any overhead would probably be neglible compared
to the gains.

Should anyone care to test this out on a live wiki (I haven't got a
clone running, so it's untested in that aspect), it's quite easy. Just
copy the two semaphore functions somewhere where they are included, and
then edit wiki.phtml so that it calls the functions before and after
main work, as well as starting and flushing the buffer. Like so:

   ob_start();
   wait_for_semaphore();
   // Page generation - wikicode parsing
   release_semaphore();
   ob_flush();

Yours,
E23, swedish wikipedia.
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stats

body:
Hey Brion,

No stats this week ?

Maybe we passed the 300 000 and you dont want somebody know that ;-)


body:
I read the mysql book and they said we shouldnt use replication for Read and
Write.

We have to set up a master server, only one for writing, and slaves server
for reading. We dont need to have a permanent connection between master and
slaves, that's fun !

But as far as I understood, we need to lock the master for each new slave,
this could take time with Go of data we have....

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Starling [mailto:ts4294967296 at hotmail.com]
> Sent: 22 September 2003 09:24
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mirroring (was Re: Fundraising)
>
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > We could even set up a full read-write server on the other
> side of the
> > world, and redirect users to a different domain name as
> they arrive,
> > based on their location. Users could specify their
> preferred mirror in
> > their user preferences. We could even make larousse the default for
> > logged-in users, that way most edits go to a web server
> which is close
> > to the master DB.
>
> Actually, it's not really mirroring then. What would you call it? A
> distributed cluster?
>
> -- Tim Starling.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andre Engels [mailto:engels at uni-koblenz.de]
> Sent: 22 September 2003 10:14
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mirroring (was Re: Fundraising)
>
>
> On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > I was suggesting making a read-only mirror by mirroring the database
> > rather than just the HTML. Every time a page is updated on
> the main DB
> > server, an update would automatically be sent to the
> mirror. It's a very
> > simple method, which meets Daniel's requirements of short
> latency. The
> > idea would be that the mirror would serve web pages by
> getting articles
> > from its local copy of the database, rather than from the
> other side of
> > the world or country or whatever.
> >
> > We could even set up a full read-write server on the other
> side of the
> > world, and redirect users to a different domain name as they arrive,
> > based on their location. Users could specify their
> preferred mirror in
> > their user preferences. We could even make larousse the default for
> > logged-in users, that way most edits go to a web server
> which is close
> > to the master DB.
>
> Would it not be better to keep the mirrors read-only, and
> have them redirect
> to the master for write-access? To have writing in several
> places causes
> significant overhead in avoiding edit conflicts and such.
>
> Andre Engels

The Mysql Manual say that. We haven't really many write to need master/slaver write too. Off course, I think it's possible to set a slave as master if the master is down.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Bot for generating articles on cities in Israel

in_reply_to:
<20030917040609.99587.qmail@web80703.mail.yahoo.com>;
	from utilitymuffinresearch2@yahoo.com on Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at
	09:06:09PM -0700

body:
I haven't read the entire thread, but it's really getting pretty out
of control already.  I think Steve's objections are specious and
typical of him.

Steve Vertigum wrote:
> This isnt good enough--you cant simply add statistics
> from Hamas and stipulate these with a buried link to
> an article which explains that "these stats may not be
> NPOV"

Is Hamas in the practice of publishing population statistics?

If so, then it would be appropriate to add their statistics with
exactly that same sort of disclaimer.  This would actually make for a
very interesting and useful set of articles, and a more general
article could cover the different claims of different organizations.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to:
<20030917201306.46736.qmail@web41808.mail.yahoo.com>;
	from littledanehren@yahoo.com on Wed, Sep 17, 2003 at 01:13:06PM
	-0700

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I wouldn't, under any circumstances, accept data
> from Congo under any circumstances.

I think I agree with Daniel, but let me be a bit more specific.

I wouldn't *personally* trust data from Congo, but I think that if
they publish detailed statistics on anything, it would be appropriate
for Wikipedia to publish them, assuming we did so in such a fashion
that legitimately indicated why some people might have reason to doubt
those numbers.

Clearly, and as Adam Raizen has indicated, the use of statistics from
the government of Israel should be appropriately sourced, and a page
could legitimately discuss how those statistics might be biased.  (But
even here, NPOV is necessary, so actual complaints against the data or
actual support for the data needs to be appropriately sourced.)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Finishing up about the damn bot

in_reply_to:
<3F6B2815.2080002@newmail.net>;
	from araizen@newmail.net on Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 06:00:21PM +0200

body:
Adam Raizen wrote:
> Okay, since discussion seems to have been exhausted and 7 or 8 people
> are in favor and 1 against, can User:IsraBot on both en.wikipedia and
> he.wikipedia be given bot status? I should get a chance to start it
> running tomorrow evening.

I wonder if you could post for us, here or (preferably) on the wiki
somewhere, the template you plan to use?  This would be helpful in
trying to find some common ground, if possible, with even Stevertigo.

The potentially controversial tidbit in all this would be exactly how
you link to an explanation of where the numbers come from, I guess.

Stevertigo would like for you to say "These are politicized numbers
from the murderous apartheid Jews".  But that isn't NPOV.  :-)

Others might argue, though, and legitimately, that the exact wording
that you do choose should not inappropriately legitimize or validate
the statistics beyond a level that would be uncontroversially accepted
by reasonable partisans.

--Jimbo


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Oh geez... If you have some proof, let's see it.  Otherwise you're
> just spreading FUD. Almost every official statistic in Wikipedia
> has a political opponent or conspiracy theorist ready to challenge
> its validity; that's why we say "according to the Census Bureau"
> or whatever, so if somebody has some differing numbers, they
> can add those, citing the alternate source, rather than having an
> edit war.  In the case of Israel, there are plenty of reasons to
> challenge any UN numbers - and plenty of books doing just that, in
> great detail - so it's not neutral to simply declare that UN
> numbers must be better than Israeli numbers.

I agree with Stan completely.

This would be much more of a sensible argument if Stevertigo could
give us an *example* of how the Israeli statistics differ (if they do)
from other sources.  Does Hamas publish detailed statistics of Israeli
suburbs?  (Of course not.)  Does the UN?  (I doubt it, but...)

If there are competing statistical numbers, then *of course* we should
include them all somehow, *and* link to a discussion of the
controversy over the numbers.

But.. if there is no actual controversy other than a general dislike
of Israel... what's all the fussing about?

--Jimbo


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User identities in Diff'ing

body:
This has been a pet peeve for a while, but is there a reason why the
Users are not listed when a "diff" between versions is displayed?

     "Revision as of 06:51, 22 Sep 2003"
     "Current revision"

I constantly find myself going to edit history after hitting "cur" just
to find out who did what.  It would be nice to have it all on one
screen, such as:
     "Revision as of 06:51, 22 Sep 2003 (User:Cabalamat)"
     "Current revision (User:Fuzheado)"

-User:Fuzheado


subject: [WikiEN-l] Bot for generating articles on cities in Israel

in_reply_to:
<3F6818D3.5000501@telus.net>;
	from saintonge@telus.net on Wed, Sep 17, 2003 at 01:18:27AM -0700

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I've looked at the site and found this in the copyright notice:
>
>     User must respect the "moral rights" of the CBS and the State of
>     Israel in the copyrighted material. Therefore, when quoting from
>     the copyrighted material, User must attribute the source to the
>     Central Bureau of Statistics of the State of Israel. In addition,
>     User may not alter, modify or in any other fashion change the
>     copyrighted material, and may not do any other act which might
>     diminish the value of the copyrighted material in a manner which
>     would cast aspersion on the State of Israel or on the CBS.
>
>
> It seems to me that using this material could at least in part be a
> violation of copyrights.. Has anyone looked into this.

The statistics that we would be using fall under "fair use", and so we
don't need permission at all.  Their conditions on the data are
something that "fair users" can choose to respect or not -- they can't
be legally binding on such use.  (Alternatively, this may not be 'fair
use' but 'just facts' which can't be copyrighted anyway.)

As it turns out, of course, we *will* attribute the statistics to
them, and endeavor to report them accurately.  And of course, as a
matter of policy, Wikipedia should not cast aspersions on anyone.

So I think we *will* meet the conditions, but I also think we should
regard this as a happy circumstance, not something that we are legally
or morally required to do *by their license*.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Some Practical Copyright Issues

body:
There was a comment yesterday in the New York Times which brings up some
copyright and fair use issues:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/weekinreview/21ZELL.html

Particularly interesting is the dynamics of how rapidly a notorious episode
get spread around and becomes an item.

We kind of imagine we are in somehow a private space and not under scrutiny
and we are, but under certain circumstance we could easily serve as the
source of something that results in a lot of unfavorable publicity.

Fred


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Servers

body:
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:

>
>             Server
>
>           Please feel free to use what I wrote about servers in any
> way you like.  If you want to use it in am Encyclopedia article it
> needs to be edited to remove the first person references and written
> in the third person.
>
No, it's up to YOU to do this.
If you want to write encyclopedia articles -- please do!
Go to the Wikipedia site and start writing:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server

But please stop posting irrelevant stuff to this list. As you may have
noticed it is starting to annoy some people.

tarquin


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Islamism - no parallel encyclopedia within Wikipedia

body:
Anthere writes:
> can't help but take with a grain of salt the issue
> you raise above, with the fact you listed
> [[Militant Islam]] for deletion just after RK redirected
> it with justifications which were not convincing.

That's nonsense. The reasons stated were not only
convincing, they always have been STANDARD WIKIPEDIA
POLICY.

It is a clear violation of Wikipedia NPOV and naming policy
to make an exact copy of an article we already have,
retitle it, and then edit it to push your own political and
religious views.  People may not create their own private
encyclopedias within Wikipedia which bypass our normal peer
review process.

If someone doesn't like the article on [[Flowers]], or on
[[History]] or on [[Islamism]], they are welcome to work
with others in editing it and improving it. But they may
not copy this article, and make their own POV version of
it, and set up their private enyclopedia within Wikipedia.

This is hardly "not convincing".  This is the standard
Wikipedia policy that all of us have always followed from
the beginning. If people like EntmootsOfTrolls find
themselves unable to follow our NPOV policy, and unable to
work with others in reaching a consensus, then they should
stay away from those articles altogether.

Robert (RK)

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