body:
On 4/24/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 11:34:10AM -0400, Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
> > With that said, I am interest in such project if it involves coding.
> > To make this change into a valid summer of code project, I propose to
> > do a wiki parser, for which I have already designed some draft rules
> > in a yacc/bison manner.
>
> Check the list archive; Tim or brion just pointed out in the last 48
> hours that the prep work for this is sufficiently wide ranging that
> it's unlikely to be the best choice of project (ie: if it requires
> modifying things, it's a Major Project).

Well, it is more like 72 hours ago. But it revolves around a different
project: the mediawiki php parser itself.

But a fast C/C++ parser is not a part of mediawiki and a complete
different matter.

Cheers,
--
Pedro de Medeiros - Computer Science - University of Bras?lia
Email: pedro.medeiros at gmail.com - Home Page: http://www.nonseq.net
Linux User No.: 234250 - ICQ: 2878740 - Jabber: medeiros at jabber.org


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Survey of New Media in this week's Economist (fwd)

body:
In message <Pine.LNX.4.64.0604240054230.6992 at hcs.harvard.edu>, SJ
<2.718281828-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>
>Speaking of research into collaborative media : here's the lead article
>about a recent Economist survey.  Wikipedia gets a kind tip.  Has anyone
>read the full report?

Yes, I posted a summary of the Wiki part to the WikiEN list a couple of
days ago.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] 2006-04-21T02:30 drastic slowdown postmortem

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The image fileserver is currently a potential problem, as the application
> servers use NFS to manipulate files on it. NFS is notoriusly tempermental, and
> if the server goes down it tends to hang for long periods of time, with similar
> problem results.
>
> Improvements to this could include minimizing our contact with the file server
> (avoid unnecessary reads and checks for file existence; we've got a damn
> database) and potentially using some more explicit file upload protocol which
> can fail gracefully.

One fairly simple thing to do would be to reduce the NFS timeout
substantially. Currently we use a timeout of 1.4 seconds, then it backs off
exponentially for a total of 1.4 + 2.8 + 5.6 = 9.8 seconds. If I'm reading
this right, that's in addition to the RPC timeout, whatever that is. I don't
know what amane's typical response time is at peak load, but I suspect it's
orders of magnitude less than that.

The structural problem with NFS is that a timeout is required on every
request. There's no global state, so every attempted read incurs the same
timeout penalty. I believe this is not a problem with AFS:

http://www.openafs.org/pages/doc/UserGuide/auusg004.htm#HDRWQ17

We do have the same problem with MediaWiki's MySQL, memcached and search
access, but at least we have straightforward application-level control over
timeouts and retries.

-- Tim Starling


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] Optional advertisement on wikipedia

body:
If we did this we could add it in our donation page so that ppl who click
thru to there might become users just to display the adds. This might
increase the revenue stream a bit more than what it otherwise would be.
Maybe also if we put an automated message on everyone's talk page about it
when we introduce it. en. has (i think) 1 million users, most of whom never
edit, but if even a small percentage of them read while logged in (quite
possible - is there some easy way to mine the Database data to find out?)
then most would see the message and a percentage would opt-in which would
still be 10s maybe even 100 thousand people.

paz y amor,
-rjs.

On 24/04/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 4/23/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I thought the Gates Foundation *was* a 501(c)(3) organization.  I
> > could be wrong about that, though.  Either way, a 501(c)(3) can be a
> > private foundation *or* a public charity.
>
> Just checked with Guidestar (I'd give a link, but you need a free
> account to see the information).  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
> "is a 501(c)(3)  Private Nonoperating Foundation."
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
DO NOT SEND ME WORD ATTACHMENTS - I *WILL* BITE!
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html>

Hit me: <http://robin.shannon.id.au> [broken]
Jab me: <robin.shannon at jabber.org.au>
Upgrade to kubuntu linux: <http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/breezy/>
Faith is under the left nipple. -- Martin Luther


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
I never quite understood the whole honorary degree thing; you get a totally
unrelated degree for doing something. Nevertheless, congratulations to
Jimbo.

On 4/24/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
>
> Monday, April 24, 2006
>
> GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
> degree recipients.
>
> Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
> former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
> Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
> ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.
>
> - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
>
> http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://ilya.nepfamily.com (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's Success Factors

body:
On 4/24/06, Hagen B?ttcher <h.boettcher at iu-bremen.de> wrote:
> Dear everybody,
>
> I am new to this list, but I need your help, as I am currently busy with my
> B.A.Thesis on Wikipedia's Success Factors.
> I would very much appreciate your comments and critique on the following:
>
> Wikipedia's success mainly depend on its users - the Wikipedians. In
> theory, everybody can be a Wikipedian. This thread is supposed to find
> out if the theory holds true in practice.

Hi Hagen,

I once wrote an essay on Wikipedia's success factors - you can read this at:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_small_scale_study_of_Wikipedia
Probably more interesting than the essay itself are the responses I
got to my questionnaire, which are available in the appendices to the
essay.

Joseph Reagle has written some excellent papers on Wikipedia - the
first one here is a historical background to the development of
encyclopedias leading to Wikipedia:
http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html
http://reagle.org/joseph/2004/agree/wikip-agree.html

There is really plenty written on Wikipedia (and its success) and you
can find these from wiki bibliographies, such as:
http://bibliography.wikimedia.de/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Research_Bibliography
(you will be able to access far more papers than I can, seeing as you
speak German).

For me, the success of Wikipedia is based on its openness, ie. anyone
can edit (this is how people get involved, and thereby join the
community). But even this can be problematised - putting the focus on
Wikipedians, as you are doing, openness could also be viewed as how
open we are to criticism from other points of view, and how well we
work in a collaborative space. Pretty much any of your factors could
be the work of a BA/Master's/PhD dissertation in themselves :-)

You will have to decide how much and in what detail you want to focus
on any of these issues, based on your time and words available. All
the best with it..

Cormac (User:Cormaggio)

>
> The idea is that the Wiki-community of Wikipedians is a special group
> of people, who have special characteristcs. To account for these
> special characteristics, I have provided the following Factor
> Model:
>
> User factors: - Openness - Neutrality -
> Flat hierarchy- Computer Skills - Motivation -
>
> Knowledge factors: - Tacit & Explicit knowledge - Fast changing rate - Peer
> review
>
> Technology factors: - Easy usability - Fast access - Infinite reach,
> multilingual - Flexible structure - Safe
>
> All these factors play together to accomplish the goal of succesful
> knowledge creation and knowledge sharing.
>
> See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Success_factors
>
> Comments, feedback and own ideas are very welcome!
>
> Thank you very much in advance for your time,
> Hagen
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Define and Formalize wiki markup

body:
A solid first step would be defining and formalizing, and then proposing
alternatives once the problems are known.  That several folks have attempted
something in the past is a clear indication that this needs to be done.

The Major part isn't the actual coding, it's reworking the old files for
any changes.  But it's hard to attempt buy-in for the Major work until
the defining and formalizing has been done.

I don't know whether the final product should be C or PHP or both, and won't
know until problems have been identified and buy-in has been accomplished.

I'm in favor of this project.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can the building owner be sued?

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 4/23/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 4/23/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
>>>>>
>>>>>So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
>>>>>writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
>>>>>owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
>>>>>down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
>>>>>removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
>>>>>message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
>>>>>people.
>>>>>
>>>>>You think the building owner can be sued?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.
>>>>
>>>>The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
>>>>question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>C'mon now, there are plenty of people who are not lawyers who are
>>>trying to guess.  Surely the fact that you are not a lawyer is not the
>>>reason you wouldn't even try to guess.
>>>
>>>
>>No, the real reason he isn't trying to guess is because he has good
>>sense. You don't see any lawyers trying to guess, do you?
>>
>>
>
>Are you implying that lawyers have good sense?
>
>Anyway, no, I don't see any lawyers trying to guess, but lawyers tend
>to be greedy and not give away their expertise without getting paid
>for it - one of the reasons I'm not a lawyer.
>
You may be confusing good sense with good cents. :-)

Ec


body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>>From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
>>
>>So someone goes to a community corkboard in an apartment building and
>>writes "John Heybobarebob is gay" on the bathroom door.  Then the
>>owner of the apartment building sees the defamatory statement, takes
>>down the message, and stores it in a closet with a bunch of other
>>removed messages.  Then a janitor goes into to the closet, takes the
>>message, and creates photocopies which she proceeds to hand out to
>>people.
>>
>>You think the building owner can be sued?
>>
>>
>I'm _certain_ the building owner can be sued.
>
>The question is, can the plaintiff win? That's a completely different
>question... and since IANAL I wouldn't even try to guess.
>
A more interesting example might arise if the statement (perhaps with
more imaginative phrasing) is on the wall above the urinal in a bar's
public washroom. The same janitor photographs it (along with crowded
other nearby messages that may include phone numbers advertising a good
time and a free dose of AIDS), and distributes copies of the photo to
his friends.  The drinking establishment is a tenant in the building
owned by a numbered Swiss company.  Have fun.

Ec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 152

body:
On 4/24/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "The recent fuss over Office actions demonstrates amply that even quite
> well established administrators feel that they can challenge and
> disregard the interests of the Foundation." Unfortunately it demonstrates nothing even remotely resembling the dark senario you choose to paint. No party involved *has* challenged, let alone felt entitled to challenge, the interests of the foundation.

To be specific, Geni removed office protection from an article about a
month ago without consulting Danny, and The Epopt, an arbitrator, has
recently removed a block on an another editor imposed by Danny.  I
don't need to paint any dark scenarios, they're already here.
Moreover the attacks on Office protection continue.


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/24/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
....
> - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
>
> http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml

This, of course, raises the question of how exactly one must address
Jimbo now; "Dr. God-king"? "the good God-king Dr. Wales"? "revered
founder and God-king of Wikipedia, and doctor of laws Mr. Wales?"

~maru
the mind boggles!


from_name: geni

body:
On 4/24/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/24/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > "The recent fuss over Office actions demonstrates amply that even quite
> > well established administrators feel that they can challenge and
> > disregard the interests of the Foundation." Unfortunately it demonstrates nothing even remotely resembling the dark senario you choose to paint. No party involved *has* challenged, let alone felt entitled to challenge, the interests of the foundation.
>
> To be specific, Geni removed office protection from an article about a
> month ago without consulting Danny,

Not quite true (the real situation is far more complex). In any case
there was either one heck of a statistical fluke (Danny managed to
resolve the situation which had been going on for a month within 24
hours of my actions) or he had indeed forgotten about it (remember at
that point office actions were limited to "short term" later Jimbo
stated this was one week. In short Danny was acting outside policy
(although I don't think deliberately).

WP:OFFICE is an interesting case as far as policy is concerned. We are
told (correctly) that it is vital to the survival of Wikipedia and yet
most of it appears to have been stitched together based on a mixture
of president and brief emails from Jimbo. Further more I can only find
one non English equivalent. Considering the amount of thought that
goes into most en.wikipedia policy it doesn't seem logical that a
policy this critical should be thrown together in such an ad hoc

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
> Hello, list members.
>
> I have noticed that there is a summer of code project for definition
> and formalization of wiki markup language. But it is stated in the
> current meta-wiki page that this would be "mostly a documentation step
> and developer discipline issue."
>
> Well, the summer of code rules clearly specify that a valid project
> can't be one of documentation, but of coding (and I assume "discipline
> issues", whatever that means, is also non-coding).

This wouldn't be a suitable SoC project, as it's a major core change with
far-ranging consequences and thus requires lots of compatibility work etc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
>
>> To make this change into a valid summer of code project, I propose to
>> do a wiki parser, for which I have already designed some draft rules
>> in a yacc/bison manner.
>>
>
> Have you looked at the existing parser attempts in SVN (I don't remember
> if they're all still there)? Getting the first 90% of a real parser for
> MediaWiki syntax will take a small fraction of the time required to get
> a full parser. This makes it easy to create another
> almost-but-not-quite-finished parser by the end of the summer, and we'd
> be no better off for it.
>
> I strongly recommend investigating the existing parser attempts, and
> finishing one of them.
>
<AOL>Me! Me!</AOL>

SVN module "wiki2xml", directory "php". Includes a mostly-working,
reasoably fast converter (almost-parser) to XML, and several subsequent
converters to XHTML, DocBook, OpenDocument, plain text. Includes a
script to convert a wikipedia dump to lots'o'text files, which can then
be browsed offline based on the wiki-to-XML-to-(X)HTML converters. I'm
currently working on plugging in the lucene engine to add offline
fulltext search.

Magnus


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] A case of vandalism?

body:
On Apr 24, 2006, at 3:57 PM, Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> Now clearly Huck is a dick, but do either the barnstars or saving a
> deleted article on his user page count as vandalism? It is clearly an
> attack on me as if people see I have awarded barnstars to this
> dickhead,
> they will likely think I am a dickhead.
It's a personal attack, and claiming other people said things they
didn't.  Both of these are quite enough to revert the pages in question
(protecting them if he continues to revert back) and blocking if it
continues.  Block under the reason of "disruption".  IMO.  I'm not
going to get involved, because I have a general policy of ignoring
Wikipedia dicks; but that's what I'd suggest to one of our admins more
willing to handle such things.  It's not vandalism, though - that
really only refers to "joe is gay" type of stuff.  Personal attacks,
such as this, are something else.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml

Monday, April 24, 2006

GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
degree recipients.

Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.

- Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.

http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:21 PM, Steve Block wrote:

> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> party reliable source.

I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?

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


from_name: Fruggo

subject: [Foundation-l] Dutch chapter

body:
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but this wasn't what I was suggesting. I hardly
recollect that two people were trying to start a chapter on their own, and I
do not think that that is the reason people do not trust the current
foundation (association) and/or its board members. I do think that some
people have coerced their opinion. How people feel about that is worsened by
the fact that board members only (very) reluctantly answer the questions of
Dutch Wikimedians.

I also like to make clear that I did or do not mistrust anyone, I believe
everyones intentions about a Dutch chapter are sincere (strong opinion or
not).

-Fruggo

Oscar wrote (among other things):

> maybe fruggo is right in suggesting that the current board and chapter is
> suffering from the mistrust that those two people that have tried to
> organize a chapter before, without any involvement or even knowledge
> thereof
> by the dutch communities, has left behind.
>
>
> On 4/19/06, Fruggo <fruggo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I believe Walter is right when he contradicts that there is a group of
> > admins that act against the wishes of the community. When the first
> plans
> > of
> > a Dutch Wikimedia organisation were made I contributed to the
> discussions
> > on
> > the Dutch Wikimedia website and I went to a (the first?) meeting of
> people
> > who were interested. It soon occurred to me that some people had very
> > strong
> > opinions on forming an organisation, and there was not many room for
> > dissident opinions. I got the impression that many people thought that
> the
> > organisation could/should have a say about the Dutch Wikipedia. I didn't
> > like the way some people (who were intent on becoming a board member)
> > seemed
> > to force their opinion on others, so I backed out of the development of
> > the
> > organisation. I believe that the way dissident opinions were handled is
> > now
> > an important source of the fear of many Dutch Wikipedians that the Dutch
> > foundation and association (but mostly the foundation, since that is the
> > least democratic) will not listen to the Dutch community.
> >
> > -Fruggo
> >
> > Walter Vermeir schreef:
> >
> > >
> > > > I think the biggest problem is that a certain group of Dutch
> > moderators
> > > take
> > > > decisions for example to block someone for a long time, without
> being
> > > > interested in the opinion of the community. Something there is some
> > > admin
> > > > power abuse done by that specific group of moderators. Now the case
> is
> >
> > > that
> > > [cut]
> > >
> > > The Dutch Wikipedia is not paradise. But you give the impression that
> > > there is a group of admins on the Dutch Wikipedia who are behaving
> > > strongly against the wishes of the community. And that those are now
> > > also controlling those new chapters.
> > >
> > > This is highly incorrect.
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 25, Issue 35
> ********************************************
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Dutch chapter


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
It's generally a recognition of some achievement outside of a university,
usually for people who have achieved celebrity in some way.  It's a nice
recognition of some achievement for the recipient, but it's also nice for
the university, which has another celebrity to add to its "list of celebrity
alumni."

k

On 4/24/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
> > http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
> >
> > Monday, April 24, 2006
> >
> > GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
> > degree recipients.
> >
> > Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
> > former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
> > Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
> > ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.
> >
> > - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
> >
> > http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml
>
> I understand nothing of these honorary degree.
> Jimbo is not a lawyer, nor does he have any special knowledge on legal
> issues. What does that mean to receive a degree in a topic you know
> nothing about ?
>
> /me confused.
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Christopher Erickson

body:
My beef is this ... What counts as a reliable source?  Does a mention of a
POV-pushing political phrase in heresy-hunting leftist rag count as a
reliable source, such that said phrase could be used to label people and
parties that may go 10 or 20% in the general direction claimed, but not the
100% claimed by the label applied to them?  Lately I've had such run-ins.
POV-pushing publications (even if respected by otherwise respectable people)
do not count as verifiability.   <probably a rabbit trail for your
conversation>
-- Chris (aka Gudsthegn)

On 4/23/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> party reliable source.  I figure it should be impossible to write an
> article without a third party reference, as per [[WP:V]], [[WP:NOR}] and
> [[WP:NPOV]], and so I hope that people will consider using that as the
> level for notability in areas where no other guidance exists.
>
> Thoughts welcomed at [[Wikipedia:Notability/Proposals]].
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.5/322 - Release Date: 22/04/06
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 167

body:
> From: "Mathias Schindler" <mathias.schindler at gmail.com>
> GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
> degree recipients.
>
> - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.

So when talking about legal matters he will have to say IAALBOAHL?


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch chapter

body:
On 24-apr-2006, at 10:22, oscar wrote:
in 5 meetings, see
http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Ontmoeten/Plaatsgevonden the
ideas
concerning the founding of the dutch chapter took their final form.
these
meetings have been open to everyone and have been announced well
before they
actually took place, and were each attended by various wikians, both
from
holland and from belgium. it was finally agreed upon by those
present, that
2 organizations would suit the dutch situation best, and would give
maximum
possibilities of being active and to apply for funding in holland;
both an
association (see: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statuten_VWN_%28en%29
and a
foundation, see: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statuten_SWN_%28en%29 were
founded - see also http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statuten/Reglement_FAQ,
translation not complete yet).

since the creation of these, negative comments have bursted from a
limited
number of wikipedians, rather loudly advocating their mistrust in the
chapter and the people involved.

etc. etc. etc.

I am afraid Oscar is misleading the members of this list again.

1) At first GerardM wanted a Dutch foundation with raising money for
the Florida based foundation as its sole purpose.
However, stirred by a remark by Jimbo, a lot of Dutch users wanted an
organization that had social aspects as well and could organize
meetings and engage in other activities, all democratically
controlled. For that a Dutch association was better. It is more
democratic, and would therefore suit us better, as the wiki's are
more or less democratic too.
On the other hand RonaldB had this idea that a foundation would be
better at raising money.

At the meeting I attended (November 11th, 2005) RonaldB kept pushing
and pushing his idea until everybody got bored, and we finally gave
in and decided there would be a Dutch association, as was the wish of
a majority of users, *plus* a Dutch foundation as was the wish of
less than a handful of users.
The foundation *would be created by the association*, ensuring a
somewhat democratic process. Oscar was very much in favor of that.

Now this foundation apparently has no longer the sole purpose of
raising money. It will be the main organization, together with a
toothless and money lacking association for the social aspects. The
interaction of the two organizations is unclear to me, but apparently
the association will be more or less at the mercy - at least
financially speaking - of the foundation.
As this is not what the Dutch users intended, a lot of them - not
just a small group as Oscar is suggesting here - feel betrayed.

2) Also the meetings were not all that open. For instance: the
meeting after the one I attended would be for the new board-members
only. At the wish of one of them they also decided in a split-second
that they would constitute themselves out of a group of would-be
board-members, *without an election or other democratic process*.
As I felt me being in a board together with GerardM would probably be
not a good idea (Muijz winks at Jimbo), I decided to quit the process
there. Much to my surprise I later on discovered there had been
several meetings after that one, and RonaldB had pushed there his
idea of creating a foundation *without* any democratic procedure at all.
(And RonaldB got his undemocratic way, again.)

To me the whole affair is a classic example of board-members not
listening to the community they are to represent. They rather feel
the users should listen to them. (!)

Returning the complaints by simply accusing the Dutch community, only
leads to more mistrust and more complaints - as always. And the pure
speculations of a board member about the nature of the complaints,
and about concerted action - as far as I am aware of there is none -
won't stop those either.

What also did not help the process was all information being put on a
special wiki and to be discussed solely *there*. The reason being
that Media-NL was and should not be limited to the Pedia alone.
While this is theoretically true, it only served as an extra barrier
between the new board and the users. The Dutch community is simply
too small for a lot of wiki's; our WikiNews for instance is more or
less braindead and the other projects don't flourish either. De
facto, Wikipedia-NL is the only flourishing community here. There
probably would have been less complaints and less mistrust had the
Dutch board-members not so strictly adhered to their rules - even
refusing to discuss matters at the vilage-pump of Wikipedia-NL.

+++ Muijz


from_name: Molu

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 168

body:
Congrats to Jimbo, but these honorary degrees remind me of Euclid's famous words-"There is no royal path to education". Maybe this is the answer?

wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
Message: 8
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 21:27:18 -0400
From: Katefan0
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo
To: "English Wikipedia"
Message-ID:
<95d0b4e50604241827t37573c4ctd509f936139bc56a at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

It's generally a recognition of some achievement outside of a university,
usually for people who have achieved celebrity in some way. It's a nice
recognition of some achievement for the recipient, but it's also nice for
the university, which has another celebrity to add to its "list of celebrity
alumni."

k

---------------------------------
Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone  calls to 30+ countries for just 2?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/24/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I never quite understood the whole honorary degree thing; you get a
> totally
> unrelated degree for doing something. Nevertheless, congratulations to
> Jimbo.

Doctor of laws even. I knew I was wasting my time in university. I just
should have started a wiki instead. :)

But yes, congratulations!

Garion


from_name: Pete Bartlett

body:
----- Original Message ----
From: Philip Welch
>> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
>> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
>> party reliable source.

>I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
>there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
>Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
>aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?

Recalling Jimbo's "Ten Things That Should Be Free"
(http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_manifesto.php)

in particular number 7: Free the Maps!

I would say absolute yes that information should be in a Wikimedia project that
seamlessly integrates into Wikipedia.

Pete


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-04-25

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!

Passed 300 of 303 tests (99.01%) FAILED!


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 164

body:
On 4/24/06, Stephane Charette <s_charette at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I disagree -- not happily resolved.  Here we are 9 hours later, and I'm still blocked.  Please see my talk page for details.

It seems you were caught by the autoblocker:

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

This feature is quite useful for stopping certain vandals, but
unfortunately it can also accidentally operate, in certain
circumstances, to prevent unblocked users from editing.

Another admin seems to have fixed the problem now.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
>
>> Do not try to do anything on your own that would complicate
>> everything.
>
> Of course not. I'm not talking about full disclosure. But in my
> opinion a little more information from the beginning on would have
> been nicer.

Sorry but well... We are kind of over-busy :-)

It's better to ask :-(

Thanks,

JBS


from_name: Ricky Reno

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
Without warning or vindication Alkivar has blocked my IP from editing for up
to a month while misleadingly insinuated that I have violated the 3rr. I
have been actively discussing the moniker issue pertaining to the Michael
Jackson intro for some time now unlike Alkivar whose participation thus far
has been merely blocking my IP. There has been no established consensus on
this issue as there have been a number of differing views on this subject
and the only alleged ?consensus? that has taken place has been among those
who unlike myself, never compromised which would constitute a legitimate
consensus. I feel that Alkivar has emphatically abused his power on this
occasion and has shown very poor discretion.

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair use image galleries in articles

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:

>The reason I'm taking the time to argue this point is that I find this
>drive to eliminate eminently justifiable fair use content frankly absurd
>and also detrimental to the encyclopedia.  If I read about the history
>of a company, I may very much like to know what their logo used to look
>like in the 50's, for example.  The only reasonable way to convey this
>information is by including a picture of the logo.
>
>Fundamentally, this is about what fair use really means.  The law leaves
>its definition deliberately vague, relaying instead on the common sense
>notion that a use is "fair" if it serves a useful purpose and does not
>unduly harm the copyright holder.  In this case, we're using these logos
>for the purpose of improving the coverage of a free encyclopedia, and
>we're not taking anything away from anyone by doing so.
>
>Mind you, if anyone actually were to complain about us including their
>logos, we should immediately take them down.  But until and unless it
>happens, it seems reasonable to me to assume that our use of company
>logos in an encyclopedic context, with proper attribution, is doing no
>actual or perceived harm to the copyright holders.
>
I agree with this approach.  I would be surprised if there were many
claims of copyright violation regarding logos unless the usage was
clearly abusive.  My understanding is that companies like Coca-Cola will
pay to show people using their product in a movie.  For them it's cheap
advertising.

For the most part I don't think that these companies are concerned at
all about the copyrights on these logos.  Trademarks would be another
matter, but we have nothing to worry about there because we're not
competing in their kind of business.

It's also important to remember that works published before 1989 in the
US had to have a copyright notice.  Without that they were and continue
to be in the public domain.  Copyright then was not automatic.

So I agree, in the absence of a complaint by the rightsholder including
the logos should be perfectly safe.

Ec


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] On chapter launching (Re: Dutch chapter)

body:
On 4/18/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> With some suprise I have seen from a distance a situation arise by
> people who did not involve themselves during the setup of the Dutch
> chapter. If anything I can vouch for the fact that one of the guiding
> principles during the setup of the chapter was to maximise the
> community aspect.

Hmmmmm ... it sounds quite similar to Japanese projects' situation.
The main difference is here is no legal body yet. Only discussion.
Perhaps from the same reason, I kept silence on that affair, but the
current cource of Dutch people makes me anxious.

So, I would describe what is going on meta around "Japanese chapter"
from my view. Please let me share your experience and impression. I
believe all people involved would be in a good faith, but their deeds
haven't seemed to me productive nor matured......

I would like to say I have never been involved, but should confess
already I left my footprint on those pages. I have found necessity to
express my objection and unfavored voice to them, those who were
discussing on [[meta:Wikimedia Japan]], created by an anon and then
none of those - two editors - I haven't known (I think I have
interacted with more than 100 editors on Japanese projects. Even 200.
But none of those who were editing on that page were unfamiliar to me)
.  One another editor supported to found the local chapter, but he is
known very young, and, ah, immature person, even in a good faith.

I don't think they are in a bad faith. Perhaps contrary. As for
involvement, and understanding what the Wikimedia project is, how
chapters and the Florida based Foundation interact with each other, or
whatsoever - my impression wasn't favored to them, honestly.

Since I believe they are in a good faith, and only now lack
understanding what  they (and we) need, but from this very reason, I
wouldn't have liked to interact with them. Still I don't. So I would
have liked  to keep a distant - very afar I have observed their
discussion, but one day one of them stated "every Japanese project'
editor, including anons, are considered to have membership of japanese
chapter" and "Aphaia would be our contact person to the Florida
Foundation" - note, I haven't  have been involved into their
discussion, nor have indicated to join "the chapter", I couldn't
avoid letting them know that they had no legal right to involved any
person  in such a way - people who woudln't their intention
explicitely.

Now, there are three editors listing themselves as "supporters to
found Wikimedia Japan". On that document, it states "when 20 people
support to settle the Japanese chapter, It will be settled". In my
humble opinion, it would be one of most naive prospecti around local
chapter launching, but if they are so naive to believe in their own
statements, their fate, and our own would be not different from the
Dutch community, I'm afraid.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
----- Original Message ----
From: Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>Frankly...
>
>Jimbo is sure enough the Foundator of Wikipedia.
>It does not make him a doctor of law.
>Or the board would not need to look so much for legal expertise from
>others....

>Jimbo did not study and graduate from this university either, so I fail
>to see how it bring recognition to the quality of the university...
>I hope real previous students appreciate.

>ant

I think there may be something of a language barrier issue here.
Amongst native English-speakers, only the very niave
are unaware of the difference between an honorary degree and a degree.

Hope that helps,
Pete


from_name: Michael Noda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/24/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's generally a recognition of some achievement outside of a university,
> usually for people who have achieved celebrity in some way.  It's a nice
> recognition of some achievement for the recipient, but it's also nice for
> the university, which has another celebrity to add to its "list of celebrity
> alumni."

It's also a way of getting said famous people to speak at your
commencement ceremony.

If anyone's going to be there, be sure to take a free image of Jimbo
in academic dress.  ;-)

-Noda


subject: [WikiEN-l] Run that by me, one more time?

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:

>On 4/23/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>At 16:45 +0300 23/4/06, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Gordon Joly wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Today's featured article (Main Page, 23rd April 2006)
>>>>
>>>> "Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language....."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Without even looking at the article, I'm guessing that "literature" and
>>>"Turkish language" are wikilinks.
>>>
>>>
>>Does that stop it being a tautology?
>>
>>
>It distinguishes "literature written in the Turkish language" from
>"literature written in the country of Turkey" from "literature written
>by Turks", all of which are valid interpretations of the phrase
>"Turkish literature".
>
That distinction escapes some people. :-)

All definitions are tautologies.

>There are no references that back this up, as far as I can see...
>
>Gordo
>
Of course that's because they're not needed.  All the author is doing is
defining the scope of the article.  It was his choice to select from the
list that Mark has outlined or even to make it about something else.  He
could say that Turkish literature was the literature of Vanuatu; that
would be counterintuitive and would be challenged, but as long as what
followed in the article was consistent with the definition it would not
be wrong.

Definitions do not always need references, and especially not when they
serve to disambiguate between reasonable possibilities.  References help
more when the possibilities are in conflict or when a neologism is at issue.

Ec


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
>
> Monday, April 24, 2006
>
> GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
> degree recipients.
>
> Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
> former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
> Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
> ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.
>
> - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
>
> http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml

I understand nothing of these honorary degree.
Jimbo is not a lawyer, nor does he have any special knowledge on legal
issues. What does that mean to receive a degree in a topic you know
nothing about ?

/me confused.

ant


subject: [WikiEN-l]  18 months

body:
MGM wrote:
>On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Philip Welch
>>>> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
>> >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
>> >> party reliable source.
>>>I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
>>>there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
>>>Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
>>>aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>>
>> Recalling Jimbo's "Ten Things That Should Be Free"
>> (http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_manifesto.php)
>>
>> in particular number 7: Free the Maps!
>>
>> I would say absolute yes that information should be in a Wikimedia project that
>> seamlessly integrates into Wikipedia.
>>
>> Pete
>>
>
> Perhaps, but a map is not an encyclopedia. It should all be free, but
> not everything should necesserilly be put in this particular project.
> Mgm

The free encyclopedia, the free dictionary, the free news reports, the free
media repositry, the free documents and quotes repositries, the free textbooks,
the free species directory, <redlink>the free thesaurus</redlink> and <redlink>the free atlas</redlink>

are all different sides of the same coin. With the technology provided by the Web
we should be mixing and integrating these much much more than we are.
It is a great shame that there is very little cross-project co-operation.
A further frustrating aspect of a large community directing a project is that
it is very conservative and keen to maintain the status quo.

Why is that as a community we haven't been badgering the board to do
anything dramatic since Wikinews was set up /18/ months ago.

Pete


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>> - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
>
> So when talking about legal matters he will have to say IAALBOAHL?

In the US at least, it's not the degree that makes you a lawyer. And I'm
not familiar with any bar that gives out honorary admissions.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
MGM, Geni and Erik wrote about:
>WikiAtlas

As it was the specific example of mapping data that spurred my mini-rant,
I wanted to quickly reply on that aspect. The more general stuff I hope to
say something more coherent on later.

To Geni: Yes copyright isn't on our side here. But the situation in the US
is better than many other places, so we could push ahead there.

To MGM: I want to encourage more general thinking than a binary "this is in"
/"this is out". Of course if we are writing about Pullman, Washington, to write in
prose about every junction would be tedious beyond belief. But on the hand,
why shouldn't (in an ideal Free world) the user have the possibility to open a sidebar
with a map of the area to the standard of Google Maps, with other places with a
Wikipedia article marked on. etc etc. We should have useful integration, not
standalone barely-speaking-to-one-another projects.

If that's a bit blue sky here's another example,
if you go to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London article
you will see some co-ordinates in the top-right corner (at least in Monobook skin -
not sure about the rest). Click those co-ordinates and you get a list of map resources
- it is an extension modelled on clicking on an ISBN. That is a simple idea, but
is really effective. I'd like to see that spread across all geographical articles just as
a simple start. Also, is there a show-stopping reason why the extension is not
turned on MediaWiki? (I'll try the other list for that)

Pete


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/25/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/25/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > And a doctors of law degree is almost always a honorary degree. I wonder
> why
> > they picked law for that.
> > The [[Doctor of Laws]] article doesn't explain it.
>
> But [[honorary degree|honourary degree]] does - apparently at many
> American universities, LLD is only given on an honorary basis.
>
> I would have expected Jimbo to get a Doctorate of Letters, if they
> were going to give him an honourary degree, that would be the more
> usual thing for someone like Jimbo (see [[Doctor of Letters]]).

I agree - I was surprised that it was a JD and not an LLD.  But I'm sure
they have their reasons...though, despite all the wranglings, I would see
Wikipedia as more of a revolutionary contribution to the world of writing
than to the world of law (WP:NLT and WP:OFFICE aside)

Ian


from_name: Elliott F. Cable

subject: [Wikitech-l] how to find out: "double" users and administrators

body:
On Apr 25, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Uwe Brauer wrote:
>
>     -  How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
>        and give the false impression that many users contribute. I
>        presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user
>        machines that might be misleading).
Search on meta for the CheckUser extension - perhaps somebody else
could provide you with a direct link.

>     -  How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a
>        specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators,
>        but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or
>        something like this?
Not quite sure what you mean - an administrator ('sysop') in on place
is a sysop everywhere on the wiki... What are you asking?


from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

subject: [WikiEN-l] A case of vandalism?

body:
This seems an interesting question. User:Hugh Minnoch wrote an article
that has just been deleted:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Floor_Two%2C_Mardon_Hall

You will see that he thought it all a bit of fun and I tried to put him
straight. I put this on his talk page:-

"Welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you come to appreciate what it is all
about. You might think that your article on a floor of one Hall at
Exeter University is a bit of fun, but it really just messes up a good
project. I fought to keep really good separate articles on the Halls at
Exeter, although I have no connection with the place. They were merged
into a single article. Halls of Residence are important and should be in
wikipedia. Your bit of fun really does not help. Try to help the
project. You might find it is worthwhile. --Bduke 12:46, 21 April 2006
(UTC)"

Seems civil enough to me. He blanked his talk pages within minutes.

He then put the contents of the deleted page on his user page.

Last night I noticed that he had added two barnstars to his user page
that claim they have been presented to him by me, although using my full
name which is on my user page and not my username. I added this to his
user paqe:-

"You break the most important rule on Wikipedia - Don't be a dick.
--Bduke 12:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)"

which is perhaps less civil. He responded by:-

"Brian my love grows for you with each encounter. Just tell me you'll be
mine!"

and added many more barnstars to his user page, again largely claiming
to come from me.

Now clearly Huck is a dick, but do either the barnstars or saving a
deleted article on his user page count as vandalism? It is clearly an
attack on me as if people see I have awarded barnstars to this dickhead,
they will likely think I am a dickhead.

I intend to leave him alone from now on, but I wondered what people
think about this and whether any admin feels anything should be done
about Hugh.

Cheers, Brian [[User:Bduke]]

--
         Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke at octa4.net.au
       Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia
    Phone 03-93992847. http://members.iinet.net.au/~linden1/brian/
Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Pedro de Medeiros schrieb:
> On 4/24/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>> Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
>>
>>> As a matter of fact, I did. Sometime ago. But code was difficult to
>>> understand, it wouldn't compile and running bison on the .y file
>>> returned lots (maybe 2000?) grammar conflicts.
>>>
>> The latter part of this is surprising. Timwi, can you clarify? I seem to
>> remember that the parser was incomplete, but what of it was there worked
>> fine.
>>
>
>
> If I am not mistaken, the name of the directory is flexbisonparse. CVS
> tells me it is several months stopped. Code was probably confusing
> because wiki syntax is not really context free, so there is a lot of
> considerations to make beforehand.
>
> I would also like to know from Timwi (or anyone who is involved with
> it) what is planned for this parser in the future and how it will be
> used.
>
>
>
>>> That depends also in what platform this parser need be, and also for
>>> what use.
>>>
>> Not really. My point was that it's easy to build a parser for *a lot* of
>> the MediaWiki syntax, and hard to build one for all of it. We need the
>> latter.
>>
>
>
> Ok. But what I said about writing the wiki parser is not besides the
> point: I suppose a complete wiki parser is pretty much needed. If one
> is to finish an incomplete parser or to rewrite a new one based on
> that is a matter of approach. And I think the existing one needs some
> heavy lifting and, from what I saw of it, it won't be an easy task to
> complete it.
>
>
>
>> Timwi's work used standard tools that would eventually produce a C
>> parser, IIRC. Of course none of the parsers in SVN are complete -- if
>> they were, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>>
>
>
> Yes, I guess it is pretty much unmantained nowadays. Most of it is
> more than 2 years old. I guess this serves as an indication that it
> needs a heavy lifting. :)
>
After Timwi stopped working on it, I had a look but couldn't make enough
sense of the lexer to contribute anything useful.

The parser was actually quite developed at the time, with the notable
exception of HTML-style tags; anything between two matching ones was not
parsed at all. If someone could add that, it would be 90% complete
(rough estimate).

Magnus


from_name: Sarah Ewart

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
You were warned repeatedly by numerous people over a long period of time. You chose to ignore all warnings.

On 25/04/2006 4:18:41 PM, "Ricky Reno" wrote:
> Without warning or vindication Alkivar has blocked my IP from editing for
> up
> to a month while misleadingly insinuated that I have violated the 3rr. I
> have been actively discussing the moniker issue pertaining to the Michael
>
> Jackson intro for some time now unlike Alkivar whose participation thus
> far
> has been merely blocking my IP. There has been no established consensus on
>
> this issue as there have been a number of differing views on this subject
>
> and the only alleged "consensus" that has taken place has been among
> those
> who unlike myself, never compromised which would constitute a
> legitimate
> consensus. I feel that Alkivar has emphatically abused his power on this
> occasion and has shown very poor discretion.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image server NFS recovery

body:
William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Where do I find the current details?
>
> https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/All_servers has no primary image server.

https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Amane

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Uwe Brauer wrote:
>     -  How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a
>        specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators,
>        but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or
>        something like this?

There is no such thing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Patrick, Brad

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
In the Anglo-American educational tradition, typically after a very
flowery speech, a degree is bestowed upon the individual "honoris
causa".   See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_laude

-B

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 9:33 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

Pete Bartlett wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>
>>Frankly...
>>
>>Jimbo is sure enough the Foundator of Wikipedia.
>>It does not make him a doctor of law.
>>Or the board would not need to look so much for legal expertise from
>>others....
>
>
>>Jimbo did not study and graduate from this university either, so I
>>fail to see how it bring recognition to the quality of the
university...
>>I hope real previous students appreciate.
>
>
>>ant
>
>
> I think there may be something of a language barrier issue here.
> Amongst native English-speakers, only the very niave are unaware of
> the difference between an honorary degree and a degree.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Pete

okay.
thanks

ant

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image server NFS recovery

body:
Where do I find the current details?

https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/All_servers has no primary image server.

https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Khaldun is only the backup server, and
is missing software versions.

Search found no NFS mount instructions other than:

   mount 10.0.0.4:/home /home

   zwinger:/home           /home                   nfs    bg,soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr,nfsvers=3  0

Neither of which seem to be related.

-------- Original Message --------
Knowing the specific version of the clients and server, and knowing the
mount options on the clients, will help us give a reasonable answer.

 From the description, though, it sounds like switching to NFS over TCP
would help.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

references:
<4448F04B.2040406@gmail.com> <e2de51$ts7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<444AEBB2.60400@gmail.com> <e2f6o6$as3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<444B6C1F.5080500@gmail.com> <e2g7qj$tn9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e2galj$72a$1@sea.gmane.org> <444BD46A.1010701@pobox.com>
	<e2hl42$onc$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 02:44:54PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> The structural problem with NFS is that a timeout is required on every
> request. There's no global state, so every attempted read incurs the same
> timeout penalty. I believe this is not a problem with AFS:
>
> http://www.openafs.org/pages/doc/UserGuide/auusg004.htm#HDRWQ17

Has anyone inspected what the potential gains and losses might be to
moving to something like AFS, GFS, Coda, etc?

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 02:07:42PM -0400, Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
> On 4/24/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 11:34:10AM -0400, Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
> > > With that said, I am interest in such project if it involves coding.
> > > To make this change into a valid summer of code project, I propose to
> > > do a wiki parser, for which I have already designed some draft rules
> > > in a yacc/bison manner.
> >
> > Check the list archive; Tim or brion just pointed out in the last 48
> > hours that the prep work for this is sufficiently wide ranging that
> > it's unlikely to be the best choice of project (ie: if it requires
> > modifying things, it's a Major Project).
>
> Well, it is more like 72 hours ago. But it revolves around a different
> project: the mediawiki php parser itself.
>
> But a fast C/C++ parser is not a part of mediawiki and a complete
> different matter.

As the other reply before you notes; clearly, I missed the import of
the OP's query.

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 11:49:27AM +0200, Dirk Riehle wrote:
> and I expect a standardized wiki markup to be an
> important topic (I hope we will have workshop on
> it).

I wish you hadn't told me that, Dirk.

My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that
that's how they've been used on Usenet and in email for almost 2x10E-6
centuries.

Now I have hope again.

You bastard.

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

body:
On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, William Allen Simpson wrote:

> The Major part isn't the actual coding, it's reworking the old files for
> any changes.  But it's hard to attempt buy-in for the Major work until
> the defining and formalizing has been done.

The fact that 90% seems to slide smoothly, and the other 90% is bumpy,
also seems to cry out for formalisation.

Once that is done, the 'other' 90% could perhaps be altered to make it
look more like 10%.

In other words, if it is formalised, we might have a good shot at
simplifying it.

Cheers,   Andy!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
Frankly...

Jimbo is sure enough the Foundator of Wikipedia.
It does not make him a doctor of law.
Or the board would not need to look so much for legal expertise from
others....

Jimbo did not study and graduate from this university either, so I fail
to see how it bring recognition to the quality of the university...
I hope real previous students appreciate.

ant

Katefan0 wrote:
> It's generally a recognition of some achievement outside of a university,
> usually for people who have achieved celebrity in some way.  It's a nice
> recognition of some achievement for the recipient, but it's also nice for
> the university, which has another celebrity to add to its "list of celebrity
> alumni."
>
> k
>
>
> On 4/24/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Mathias Schindler wrote:
>>
>>>http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
>>>
>>>Monday, April 24, 2006
>>>
>>>GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
>>>degree recipients.
>>>
>>>Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
>>>former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
>>>Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
>>>ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.
>>>
>>>- Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
>>>
>>>http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml
>>
>>I understand nothing of these honorary degree.
>>Jimbo is not a lawyer, nor does he have any special knowledge on legal
>>issues. What does that mean to receive a degree in a topic you know
>>nothing about ?
>>
>>/me confused.
>>
>>ant
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rich Morin

body:
At 1:44 PM -0400 4/25/06, Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
> That is what I think is implied when working on free software: you
> reuse and rebuild, standing on the shoulders of previous developers.
> :)

> The famous quotation...
>
> If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants
> -- Isaac Newton in: Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675/1676
>
> ...inspired the following variations:
>
> In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
> with the giants on whose shoulders we stand. -- Gerald Holton
>
> If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were
> standing on my shoulders. -- Hal Abelson
>
> In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. -- Brian K. Reid

  http://reddit.com/info/13pj/comments
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


from_name: Dirk Riehle

body:
I realize you are talking about MediaWiki markup
only, but I would like to encourage to also watch
what other wiki engines are doing. Wiki engine
implementers will come together at

WikiSym 2006 (www.wikisym.org/ws2006)

and I expect a standardized wiki markup to be an
important topic (I hope we will have workshop on
it). In any case, if you proceed with this work,
I would like to encourage you to keep the wiki
standards mailing list informed, see

http://www.wikisym.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/

We have plenty of engine implementers there fighting related problems.

Dirk

Dirk Riehle, ph: +49 172 184 8755, web: http://www.riehle.org
Interested in wiki research? Please see http://www.wikisym.org !

At 24.04.2006, Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
>Hello, list members.
>
>I have noticed that there is a summer of code project for definition
>and formalization of wiki markup language. But it is stated in the
>current meta-wiki page that this would be "mostly a documentation step
>and developer discipline issue."
>
>Well, the summer of code rules clearly specify that a valid project
>can't be one of documentation, but of coding (and I assume "discipline
>issues", whatever that means, is also non-coding).
>
>With that said, I am interest in such project if it involves coding.
>To make this change into a valid summer of code project, I propose to
>do a wiki parser, for which I have already designed some draft rules
>in a yacc/bison manner.
>
>Who should I talk to? Maybe I can email some of my draft yacc/bison
>parser to the mentor?
>
>
>Cheers.
>--
>Pedro de Medeiros - Computer Science - University of Bras?lia
>Email: pedro.medeiros at gmail.com - Home Page: http://www.nonseq.net
>Linux User No.: 234250 - ICQ: 2878740 - Jabber: medeiros at jabber.org
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
At 25.04.2006, Andy Rabagliati wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, William Allen Simpson wrote:
>
> > The Major part isn't the actual coding, it's reworking the old files for
> > any changes.  But it's hard to attempt buy-in for the Major work until
> > the defining and formalizing has been done.
>
>The fact that 90% seems to slide smoothly, and the other 90% is bumpy,
>also seems to cry out for formalisation.
>
>Once that is done, the 'other' 90% could perhaps be altered to make it
>look more like 10%.
>
>In other words, if it is formalised, we might have a good shot at
>simplifying it.

Isn't it the other way round? First you cut features, then you
formalize, and then you extend?

As said above, the first 80% are usually easy, and the last 20% will
cost you all your hair.

Dirk


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
> Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com>:
> On 4/25/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > This, of course, raises the question of how exactly one must address
> > Jimbo now; "Dr. God-king"? "the good God-king Dr. Wales"? "revered
> > founder and God-king of Wikipedia, and doctor of laws Mr. Wales?"
>
> Unfortunately, a person is not entitled to be called "doctor" if they
> only have an honourary degree. So just "God-king" for now.

That's not how [[Honorary degree]] has it (although that article makes a little
too much use of the prescriptive "may" and "should" for my liking). Maybe
Dr Wales should use whatever style the Wikipedia article dictates at any
given moment ...

-- Matt
[[User:Matt Crypto]]

P.S. Hearty congratulations to Jimbo, of course!


from_name: Roger Luethi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:14:30 +0200, Anthere wrote:
> Jimbo did not study and graduate from this university either, so I fail
> to see how it bring recognition to the quality of the university...
> I hope real previous students appreciate.

There is a current line of research in economics that looks at the effects
of non-monetary rewards. The patterns of "Dr h.c." awards (and similar
awards like the knighting in the UK) indicate that the institutions handing
them out do in fact expect to get some of the reputation of the recipients
by mere association.

The mechanism is akin to showbiz stars endorsing a product in a commercial,
or sponsorship in sports. Except that in the award case, reputation is
often the only currency exchanged.

Roger


from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUser
	information?

references:
<e1orb1$l37$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20060414204132.70510.qmail@web36209.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<e1phoj$m7o$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Hello all,
and welcome Brigitte and other Wikisource folks - take my greetings,
from an en/jawikiquote sysop.

Brigitte SB wrote:
> > However, in general the people who are trusted from a
> > Foundation perspective take little interest in the
> > running of the smaller projects.

As Anthere said, principally there is no causality between project
size and involvement to the Foundation level activities. They are many
editors who are active on smaller projects, Wiktionary or Wikinews
alike, and fairly involved into the Foundation activities, like Amgine
or Sabine Cratella. I could add myself to that list as one Wikiquote
editor.

And if you - and/or other Wikisource editors - are interested in this
sphere - Foundation activities concerning smaller project,
"translation & (small projects') promotion subcommittee" will
appropriate your interest and expect collaboration with you. If
circumstance allows, you would invite to join to it ;-) like just
Anthere show a typical course ... if you want to work with someone and
he or she does too, then you are getting involved more and more.

On 4/15/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> How does that happen ?
> Well, perhaps you start writing on this mailing list and I'll notice
> what you say sounds wise and interesting and willing to build something.
> And perhaps others will tell me they feel the same. And perhaps we'll
> exchange a couple of emails on minor issues (such as a checkuser) and I
> will find you a cool person. Then, perhaps I will go look at your page
> to see who you are. I will notice something which suggest you could be
> interested in a certain project, then I'll invite you to join for that
> task and you will agree. And we'll have fun doing that and do a good
> work. Repeat that a bunch of times, and that will be it.
>
> It is totally unrelated to the size or the nature of your favorite
> project :-)

> > This is really a larger and mor far reaching problem.
> > No one at Wikisource subscribed to this list until
> > someone told us that it had been decided here that our
> > copyright policy was not restrictive enough.  That is
> > when a few of the regular editors signed up.  I
> > imagine there are a great number of active projects
> > out there running their own little worlds, divested
> > from the Foundation in all but name.

I think I could share your case - I haven't seen here no other regular
of Wikiquote than Essjay, but anyway we haven't discussed about
Wikiquote at any rate - Generally it is rare to be involved into the
Foundation level activities unless some legal problem arises like on
French Wikiquote or English Wikisource.

And as Ant suggested, we don't monopolize this problem within us
editors of smaller projects, but with editors whose language is very
different from English and hence whose activities are rarely shown on
English world (no one has been so bold, at least as far as I know, to
send a mail directly to the foundation-l and ask someone to translate
into other language; it is in my opinion odd from principal because of
stated multilingualism of this mailing list, but as a plain fact it
could be - even on meta, I have been accused by someone because I
hadn't been submitted in "the language many people can read". It is a
strange opinion if someone doesn't speak in English, she doesn't
respect multilingualism, but such attitude is not unique)

Same gaps are sometimes observed between the largest project and
another in the same language. Some of
the former tend to think a way fitting to them are good universally -
we know it depends. The former are sometimes troublesome, since they
don't intentionally harm anyone and in the worst case, they are raged
as if they were mistreated. But, even though in pain, someone needs to
realize such things don't go as they think not in every time and
place, if their way isn't suitable to solve a particular issue.
Happily, not so in many times, but as a Wikiquote/Wikinews editor I
felt surely Wikipedia editors put their shoes on my toes in some
occasions. On the other hand, such unpleasant but apparent kicks have
stimulated  our relatively still projects. So we could say here,
diversity is sweet, and it is what we always need.

Not only big project editors but of smaller ones are therefore
strongly invited to join the Foundation activities.

As for checkuser issues, specially vote for giving trust to certain
editors, the current procedure is based on Wikipedia community
experiences. Now you pointed out it hasn't worked well on Wikisource.
Rules can be revised, but to revise it, we need to share our
experience with each other. So again, welcome to foundation-l.

> All good ideas.
> But but but, we tried the official liaisons (they were called
> ambassadors). It failed.
> Recruitement of people : yes indeed. But this can only happen when we
> start knowing each other a little bit more.
> I absolutely agree with you we have a major problem of communication.
> Actually, this has ALWAYS been the case. Just differently.
> When I joined, the english wp was on one version of the software and all
> others on an older version. There was no meta. There was no common
> mailing list (later, non english were parked on one list). Actually, the
> miscommunication was SO bad that a language even forked and is still
> suffering today of that fork.
> Last year, I tried to work to create Quarto with others interested in
> communication, such as Sj. It was a place where at least description of
> projects state could be made. By lack of human help, I gave up.
> Elian also maintained with Aphaia's help a project-state on meta. I
> think it is dead now.
> There are now several wikizines in different languages (plus Walter's
> global one), I hope they communicate a bit between themselves. But each
> essentially give news of a specific project. Not cross project
>
> If you have ideas, please, by all means, provide them. Or better,
> IMPLEMENT them.

Ahm, as for WMF website, naturally focusing on its linguistic
uniformity, now we are talking how we can improve it within wmfcc &
translation subcomm. I don't promise it will be a near future, but
want to say always new ideas and editors are welcome.
Note; to improve the WMF site, you needn't log it on. Most of its
content have been drafted and translated on Meta.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
It would help if you gave your IP and username. Alkivar probably acted
on a 3RR violation report, but without those details, it's hard to
check what really happened.

Mgm

On 4/25/06, Ricky Reno <juice2122 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Without warning or vindication Alkivar has blocked my IP from editing for up
> to a month while misleadingly insinuated that I have violated the 3rr. I
> have been actively discussing the moniker issue pertaining to the Michael
> Jackson intro for some time now unlike Alkivar whose participation thus far
> has been merely blocking my IP. There has been no established consensus on
> this issue as there have been a number of differing views on this subject
> and the only alleged "consensus" that has taken place has been among those
> who unlike myself, never compromised which would constitute a legitimate
> consensus. I feel that Alkivar has emphatically abused his power on this
> occasion and has shown very poor discretion.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Jimbo did not study and graduate from this university either, so I fail
> >to see how it bring recognition to the quality of the university...
> >I hope real previous students appreciate.
>
> >ant
>
> I think there may be something of a language barrier issue here.
> Amongst native English-speakers, only the very niave
> are unaware of the difference between an honorary degree and a degree.

And a doctors of law degree is almost always a honorary degree. I wonder why
they picked law for that.
The [[Doctor of Laws]] article doesn't explain it.

Garion


body:
Perhaps, but a map is not an encyclopedia. It should all be free, but
not everything should necesserilly be put in this particular project.

Mgm

On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Philip Welch
> >> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> >> party reliable source.
>
> >I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> >there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> >Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> >aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>
> Recalling Jimbo's "Ten Things That Should Be Free"
> (http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_manifesto.php)
>
> in particular number 7: Free the Maps!
>
> I would say absolute yes that information should be in a Wikimedia project that
> seamlessly integrates into Wikipedia.
>
> Pete
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
Timwi wrote:

>
>In reality, most non-native English speakers I know speak and write
>English way better than an average native speaker. In reality, among all
>speakers (native or non-native) there are huge variations in the level
>of skill, ranging from "lolz asl?" to Pulitzer-prize winning prose. It
>is *that* which the Babel templates are trying to gauge, *not* whether
>someone is a native speaker or not.
>
The distinction is routinely made in the language translation community
however, it's not just a Wikipedia thing and it's not just an English
language thing. It's simply that it's extremely rare for a non-native
speaker to have absorbed all the culture and reflexes that inform a
native speaker. For instance, a highly-educated non-native might not
realize that he/she is using words that are too big to be appropriate
in a particular context, or ones that passed out of common usage years
ago and are now only found in books from the 1980s. Ironically, this
is orthogonal to educational level and intelligence; even less-educated
native speakers can pick out the foreigners, even though they might not
be able to articulate what cues they are noticing.

Of course, since Babel templates are self-assigned, they say as much
about ego and confidence as about actual linguistic skill.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
On 4/25/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It would help if you gave your IP and username. Alkivar probably acted
> on a 3RR violation report, but without those details, it's hard to
> check what really happened.
>
> Mgm

My guess would be user Siddhartha21.

Garion


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch chapter - some
	background and more

body:
I am top posting and breaking the thread on purpose, as I am not
trying to address all the concerns in this thread, but rather trying
to give a little background and a different perspective.

I have followed, in my position as local chapter coordinator, the
different steps in the founding of both the Vereniging (member
association) and Stichting (Foundation). For those who are puzzled by
this double organisational background, let me give you some
explanation.

A Vereniging is a member organisation, much on the model of all other
Wikimedia Chapters. Its board is elected by the general assembly, made
up of members who pay their fees to be part of the organisation. Note
that members *have* to be part of the Wikimedia projects to be members
of the organisation. Which, if anything, puts the power in the hands
of *the community*.

A Stichting is a Foundation, much on the model of our Wikimedia
Foundation. It has a board that is appointed. One of the members of
this board is appointed by the Verijniging. The reason given for the
founding of this Stichting is that in NL, sponsors, and particularly
governement or other big non-profit organisation, are less enclined
handing out large sums of money to member organisations, as their
"stability" is not as important as that of Stichting.

In the process of the founding of both, there was already much
discussion, that discussion was open (the nl.wikimedia.org wiki is
open to whoever wants to discuss). People there voiced their concerns,
including me.

As I understand it, the Vereniging will be the primary point of entry
for any deals with sponsors that may come to Wikimedia Nederland, the
Stichting will be used as a "buffer" for great-scale projects
involving lots of money, potentially employing people etc.. In that
respect, I believe that the choices made were the good ones.

That's for the background.

Now. I have read in this thread many counter-truths and misleading
statements. Let us make one thing very very clear.

Chapters, whatever their form, color or shape, are not responsible for
the content of Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia projects. Never. Ever.
At best, they will increase the pool of editors through promotion for
the projects. At worst, they have to relay the problems that they are
aware of "may be problematic content" (potential legal issues) to the
Wikimedia Foundation. That's it. There's no *editor* Wikimedia France*
or *Wikimedia Polska* or *Wikimedia Nederland*. There are editors who
pertain only to the projects, there are editors who pertain to both
the project and the organisation. End of the story.

Allow me to doubt that any of the board members of Wikimedia Nederland
blocked anyone on the Dutch Wikipedia "on behalf of the Wikimedia
Nederland". If they did block anyone or edit, it was in their
responsibility as editors or admins, only answerable to the community.
Pretending the contrary is mixing oil and water. It simply does not
work.

As far as the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation is
concerned, the bylaws of both the Vereniging and the Stichting are
very clear, and leave no room for interpretation as to whether either
is ever going to take over the Wikimedia projects. They are not.

This is for my official statement.

Now, for those of you who have felt left out of the process, I will
say just this, going from a virtual project to an organisation is not
always an easy process. As a matter of fact, I have had the impression
that it was more painful for the Dutch than it has been for any of the
other chapters. However, I am confident that if you feel you need to
change things, you are empowered to do so.

*Backing down* from the founding process and *then* criticizing, is,
in my opinion, definitely not constructive. There is a wiki, it is
open, there is an organisation, you can become a member. The best you
can start with is making sure you have a voice in the Vereniging to
change things from the inside. It starts here:
http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ledenlijst.

Cheers,

Delphine

--
~notafish


from_name: Ricky Reno

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
>From: "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked
>Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:42:04 +0200
>
>It would help if you gave your IP and username. Alkivar probably acted
>on a 3RR violation report, but without those details, it's hard to
>check what really happened.
>
>Mgm
>
>On 4/25/06, Ricky Reno <juice2122 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Without warning or vindication Alkivar has blocked my IP from editing
>for up
> > to a month while misleadingly insinuated that I have violated the 3rr. I
> > have been actively discussing the moniker issue pertaining to the
>Michael
> > Jackson intro for some time now unlike Alkivar whose participation thus
>far
> > has been merely blocking my IP. There has been no established consensus
>on
> > this issue as there have been a number of differing views on this
>subject
> > and the only alleged "consensus" that has taken place has been among
>those
> > who unlike myself, never compromised which would constitute a legitimate
> > consensus. I feel that Alkivar has emphatically abused his power on this
> > occasion and has shown very poor discretion.
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> > http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> >
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

User:siddhartha21, Ip 71.30.225.162

Alkivar has rashly blocked me for a month for doing no different than the
people that disagreed with me. I have not violated the 3rr nor have I been
warned of wrong doing by Alkivar or any other Wikipedia administrator. Where
is the justification in me being blocked for a month for disagreeing with a
small faction Wiki users who have done the same things as myself however in
a more aggressive manner which has deterred others from continuing to
disagree with them?

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> MGM wrote:
> >On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----
> >> From: Philip Welch
> >>>> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> >> >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> >> >> party reliable source.
> >>>I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> >>>there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> >>>Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> >>>aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
> >>
> >> Recalling Jimbo's "Ten Things That Should Be Free"
> >> (http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_manifesto.php)
> >>
> >> in particular number 7: Free the Maps!
> >>
> >> I would say absolute yes that information should be in a Wikimedia project that
> >> seamlessly integrates into Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> Pete
> >>
> >
> > Perhaps, but a map is not an encyclopedia. It should all be free, but
> > not everything should necesserilly be put in this particular project.
> > Mgm
>
>
> The free encyclopedia, the free dictionary, the free news reports, the free
> media repositry, the free documents and quotes repositries, the free textbooks,
> the free species directory, <redlink>the free thesaurus</redlink> and <redlink>the free atlas</redlink>
>
> are all different sides of the same coin. With the technology provided by the Web
> we should be mixing and integrating these much much more than we are.
> It is a great shame that there is very little cross-project co-operation.
> A further frustrating aspect of a large community directing a project is that
> it is very conservative and keen to maintain the status quo.
>

Wikimaps sadly isn't really practicle. A lot of work goes into makeing
a map and a lot of that has to be done on the ground. If you want free
maps you may just have to wait for the copyright on OS maps and the
like to expire and then work from those.

> Why is that as a community we haven't been badgering the board to do
> anything dramatic since Wikinews was set up /18/ months ago.
>
> Pete

Because wikiversity din't really get the support some people were expecting.
--
geni


body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 April 2006 16:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 11:49:27AM +0200, Dirk Riehle wrote:
> > > and I expect a standardized wiki markup to be an
> > > important topic (I hope we will have workshop on
> > > it).
> >
> > I wish you hadn't told me that, Dirk.
> >
> > My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
> > MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that
>
> Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P

:-)

In general, no.  Handwritten underlines are customarily rendered in
print as italics, hence that mapping.  You're right; the extra
flexibility would be nice, but it doesn't match what I most commonly
see people do, and that was my goal.  It makes no sense changing markup
just for fun; mine was an Installed Base attempt to conform with the
Principle of Least Astonishment.

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/4/25, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:

> Now. I have read in this thread many counter-truths and misleading
> statements. Let us make one thing very very clear.
>
> Chapters, whatever their form, color or shape, are not responsible for
> the content of Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia projects. Never. Ever.
> At best, they will increase the pool of editors through promotion for
> the projects. At worst, they have to relay the problems that they are
> aware of "may be problematic content" (potential legal issues) to the
> Wikimedia Foundation. That's it. There's no *editor* Wikimedia France*
> or *Wikimedia Polska* or *Wikimedia Nederland*. There are editors who
> pertain only to the projects, there are editors who pertain to both
> the project and the organisation. End of the story.

I may agree with that, and you, but what about the Vereniging and
Stichting themselves? One reason this all started up is that the
Vereniging explicitly states in their statutes that it does not have
influence on the contents of the wikis. The Stichting as far as
possible copied the statutes of the Vereniging, but this point was
apparently on purpose left out.

> *Backing down* from the founding process and *then* criticizing, is,
> in my opinion, definitely not constructive. There is a wiki, it is
> open, there is an organisation, you can become a member. The best you
> can start with is making sure you have a voice in the Vereniging to
> change things from the inside. It starts here:
> http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ledenlijst.

The criticism is mostly directed to the Stichting, not the Vereniging.
Being a member of the Vereniging will not influence the Stichting.

As for me backing down from the founding process: There was a conflict
between two members in an early stage. I offered to interfere as a
mediator. This was just starting up when the other mediator told me
that because I wrote myself on nl.wikimedia.org, I could not be
independent as a mediator, and thus could not mediate. After that I
left the whole project in disgust. It's not the kind of thing I want
to hear. Apart from that, at the time I left it was clear that a great
majority was in favour of a Vereniging. Yet some people somehow
decided to create both.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
On Apr 25, 2006, at 4:58 AM, Pete Bartlett wrote:

> Why is that as a community we haven't been badgering the board to do
> anything dramatic since Wikinews was set up /18/ months ago.

Cuz Wikinews isn't good yet, Wikipedia is only good in one language
(German) and usable in a couple more (English, etc.), Wiktionary is
just there, Wikibooks is a mess, and Wikiversity doesn't even know
what it is yet.

It would be best if we didn't subdivide our efforts even more than
they are now, or we won't get anything done!

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